Craftsmen, Identity, and Status in the Literature of Flavian Rome

Abstract

This dissertation integrates material, literary, and social historical perspectives on crafts to show how Flavian era authors reflect on the status and social value of their writing. The poet Martial is the focus of this study, and I pattern his descriptions of low-status trades and crafts with depictions in other writers of the period, including Pliny the Elder and Juvenal. The four chapters analyze the metaliterary potential of the full range of craft production imagery by looking in turn at materials, objects, and artists in Flavian texts. Chapter 1 traces the social and moral connotations of clay and highlights the use of the Latin word lutum (mud, clay) in Martial as simultaneously a mark of social inferiority as well as a mark of pride in the epigrammatic genre. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the metapoetics and literary significance of clay objects such as tableware and statuettes. Chapter 2 suggests that Martial uses these objects as part of a larger allusive framework to panegyrize and subtly subvert the emperor during the Saturnalia, while Chapter 3 examines how Martial conceives of the epigrammatic poet as an anonymous potter in contrast to renowned canonical artists. The raw material and the finished product are both significant images for imperial writers to organize and overturn moral and social hierarchies, and the artist and craftsman in these texts become catalysts for social approval and denigration. To highlight this phenomenon, Chapter 4 shows how Juvenal adapts Martial’s and Pliny the Elder’s texts to comment on the pitfalls of Roman patronage. Overall, my research highlights the versatility of craft imagery in the construction of identity between elite and non-elite circles in Flavian Rome and provides a counterpoint to grand imperial image-making.