technically panegyrics, devote themselves to the celebration of Messalla and his family (1.7 and 2.5), and scatters his other
poems with laudatory allusions. Patronage survives the changes in status of poets and poetry. The phenomenon is of course
observable in the circle of Maecenas, and elsewhere. So we ask ourselves: To what extent is this literary patronage like the
old kind? What are both parties now getting out of it?
Some basic points can be inferred-Ovid, who was patronized early in his career by Messalla, is informative. These upper-
class poets were not dependent economically in the way that their predecessors had been (though more on this anon). What
they obtained was the encouragement of a great man usually himself a litterateur, the cachet of being associated with a well-
known group of poets, access to such like-minded people (they would meet and some would even live in the great man's
house), and perhaps above all publicity. Although at this time literature is intensely literate, written ultimately to be read and
propagated in texts, an initial and important mode of communication is oral: various kinds of readings-private readings
among the poets, semi-public and public recitations (formal public recitationes were instituted in Rome by Asinius Pollio).
This was the scene in which a poet might make his name, and the chance to recite to an audience organized by a great patron
was crucially important to a rising poet. Horace deplored both the institution of recitation and the fact that fame accrued
thereby; but deploring it did not remove it, and even Horace himself recited. As for the patron, he had the natural satisfactions
that such patronage brings, and he had, too, his chance of a piece of immortality. And in the circle of Maecenas something
else was happening.
In the first Augustan period, Maecenas is the Augustan patron, mediating between poets and princeps. We can identify very
important points of difference between his circle and, say, Messalla's. First, Augustus naturally wanted his heroic deeds
enshrined in an epic-his piece of immortality. The trouble was that Maecenas' poets-Virgil, Horace, and subsequently
Propertius-had to a varying extent scruples, moral and literary. The accommodating Tibullus could include celebrations of
Messalla and his military exploits amongst his elegies in praise of love and peace. Not so Propertius. Besides, he was not an
epic poet. Nor was Horace. Neither, to begin with, was Virgil. This presented a problem. These men were not old-style client-
poets to be booted into an uncongenial genre. But Augustus was, to put it mildly, powerful. How does one deal -with, on the
one hand, upper-class poets with scruples and, on the other, an Emperor who wants an epic? The answer is that one is
diplomatic, one mediates, one explains; and it is greatly to Maecenas' credit that his poets had the freedom, for a time, to
decline impositions or fulfil them in their own individual way (as will be illustrated below).
Besides the moral and artistic sensitivity of his poets, Maecenas' circle was different from others in other and crucial respects.
First and simply, the scale of I what was on offer. These poets were not humble paupers, but Horace at least needed a living,
and all had lost property in the land confiscations of the trium-viral period. What Maecenas and Augustus bestowed on
Horace and Virgil was vast (particularly, it seems, in Virgil's case), enabling them to live in very comfortable leisure in town
or country. A certain moral pressure must therefore have been felt by these morally sensitive artists. Secondly, the task
towards which they were being pressured was not just to immortalize the heroic deeds of the greatest general. It was
something unique to the circle of Maecenas, reflecting the unique nature of his and later Augustus' patronage. Augustus and
the state were effectively synonymous. To be in his patronage, directly or indirectly, was to be in the patronage of
government, and there was a pressure to publicize the government's policies and to burnish its image. This task could be seen
as invidious, but I it could also be seen as a challenging responsibility; and with varying degrees of I enthusiasm and
directness, these scrupulous poets tackled it.
The nature of patronage in the imperial circle changes with the second Augustan period. Indeed this change may be seen to be
part-cause of the second period arising. The sophisticated Maecenas, for reasons that cannot be defined with certainty, fades
in importance, and the poets come under the direct patron- I age of the emperor. His hand was heavier, and it was becoming
increasingly so. Political life around 20 B.C. reveals a more confidently autocratic ruler (witness, for instance, the marriage
laws of 18 B.C.), and poetry, lacking the mediation of Maecenas, must also respond to his touch. A fourth book of Odes is
elicited from an unwilling Horace, for example, containing what he had largely avoided in recent years: panegyric. The
'educator of citizens' becomes the court poet-but he has ways of striking back.