The Disintegration of Natural Law: George Buchanan, Hugo Grotius, and the Thebaid.
In the previous chapter I focused on how Angelo Poliziano transformed Renaissance poetics, finding a philosophical and aesthetic exemplarity in the occasional nature of Statius’s Sylvae, one, in my view, that sets a standard for the interpretation of Statius in the early modern period. By recognizing that the impromptu and epideictic nature of the Sylvae as a type of poetic misdirection, Poliziano reveals the poetico-historical circumstances that make Statius’s mutability his defining feature. As a result, Poliziano places interpretive agency in the hands of the individual learned reader, and it is my contention that his methods for interpretation according to historical context and textual philology, found especially in the Miscellenea, Oratio, and Silvae, impel subsequent readers to revisit Statius when and where the guidance of so many other poets fails.
It is a significant fact that Poliziano’s work on Statius remained largely (and deliberately) apolitical. With the exception of his treatise on the Pazzi Conspiracy and his eulogy for Lorenzo de’ Medici, Poliziano rarely expresses political or social ills openly; and, as was mentioned before, he had very good reason not to do so. For Poliziano the understanding of later scholars, such as Muret and Lipsius, among others, of similitudo temporum as a normative impetus for Renaissance scholars and politicians does not hold up. Poliziano did not see his world as a simile of Rome, in which studying the ancient authors becomes a way of defining, correcting, and, in some cases, predicting
modern social ills. Rather he maintains a conviction that to pursue antiquarian knowledge was important for its own sake, participating in a type of Petrarchan vita contemplativa. But this view was not widely shared even during his own time. As a result, both during his life and especially afterwards, during the great Ciceronian controversy, Poliziano’s work comes under heavy scrutiny.1 Nevertheless, scholars neither condemn wholesale nor disregard his philological discoveries and methodological improvements in textual emendation and conjecture. Poliziano, in fact, remains a guiding figure for much of the sixteenth century; only limited approximately to matters historical, philological, and antiquarian. Thus, the otium Poliziano so valued and cherished is not the path chosen by our subsequent readers of Statius. In fact, quite the opposite.2
I
Speaking very generally, in northern Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century more and more humanists attempt to access and seize ancient and classical precedent so that they may gain political and social authority rather than explore it purely on its own merits. This movement coincides with the efforts of many humanists to include their versions of Christianity in intellectual endeavors, and ultimately helps reform not only the Catholic Church but also the remaining medieval social and intellectual structures and institutions. Promoted most vociferously and vigorously by Erasmus of Rotterdam, this movement has far-reaching consequences throughout the period and across Europe, many of which are outside the scope of this chapter. Yet, through the intellectual battles fought by Erasmus and many other scholars a different kind of scholarship arises and then coalesces.
Responding to reforming efforts within and without the Catholic Church, the moral and ethical treatment of classical precedent and ideas generally pertaining to
religion, philosophy, government, and law, and their application within the modern context of a reformed (albeit thoroughly fractured) Europe, causes dramatic shifts in the thoughts and perceptions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century humanists. Their reconsideration of classical precedent paves the way for bold new ideas especially within government and law, both positive and natural – the latter being the heart of this chapter. Consequently, the focus on classical texts in terms of law and philosophy allows for scholars to engage in politically sensitive debates without necessarily having to make direct overtures toward different Christian sects. Since ancient authors were very often precluded from being “enlightened,” their contributions could be used in purely epistemological excercises, a point which must not be overlooked.
The turn to classical precedent for many scholars of the period naturally begins with its leading Roman lights: Vergil and Cicero.3 Entries from commonplace books of the period make it quite clear that the notions offered by both writers are absorbed and steeled in any number and variety of ways. What needs noting here, however, is that the reason each of these authors has such authority is not necessarily found solely in the ideas contained within their works – though this is certainly part of their appeal. Rather it is that the ideas they express are clear and for the most part well-defined. Cicero and Vergil, in other words, offer clear guidance to their readers, since there is very little ambiguity in their works. This is not to say that there are not dust-ups along their well- worn paths about various problems in lacunae, emendation, or interpretation; only that the authors themselves are not inherently difficult to read and digest. Their styles and content are, in the main, clearly and deliberately intelligible.4 The same goes for many other classical authors as well. Yet, there are a select few Roman authors who could not, and were not to, be among the ranks of Vergil and Cicero with regard to these
aforementioned generalizations, authors such as Tacitus, Seneca, Lucan and Statius. Interest in such authors rises impressively during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in northern Europe due to their perceived political and social relevance. Indeed, of the first three authors much has already been said and needs no further elaboration here; for Statius, however, there is almost nothing.
Whereas other classical poets were perceived clearly to state their poetic and even political ends, and thus to guide the reader, Statius, due to the difficulty of his poetry and content, offers no such guidance. Since he composed the Thebaid under and perhaps complicit with Imperial Roman ideology during the reign of the Emperor Domitian (81-96 CE), early modern readers gladly accepted his ambiguous narrative on Theban incest, patricide, fratricide and civil war not as a sign of weakness but as a cultural connective that responds to both social and intellectual pressures. Two such readers of Statius, George Buchanan (1506-82) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) expand the understood intent in parts of the Thebaid to alter the intense legal debates over sovereignty and tyranny put forth by the Houses of Stuart and Orange, respectively. Buchanan’s and Grotius’s attempts to nullify purely religious influence over the critical debates about authority allows them to develop and transform the Thebaid’s antithetical examples of natural law and absolutism into mandates for returning to republican government and the establishment of international law and rights.5
It is, indeed, rather unheard of to mention Statius's Thebaid as an essential or even noteworthy text in Renaissance discussions on natural and positive law. And perhaps this is unjust. For through one of the happier coincidences of the Renaissance, Buchanan and Grotius both comment in their very own copies of the Thebaid in a manner which
suggests that Statius’s text epitomizes the very breakdown of natural and positive law, and plays a significant role in their own primary works on law and moral philosophy. In light of this, Buchanan’s De iure regni apud Scotos Dialogus (Dialogue) and Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis (DJBP), works that treat both topics – albeit in very different fashions – warrant a closer look with regard to Statius’s Thebaid.6
It must be stated immediately that neither Statius nor his Thebaid is necessarily the impetus for the ideas expressed by Buchanan and Grotius in theirs works. Instead, the extant evidence suggests that Statius and the Thebaid help to refine and confirm the normative, lego-political thoughts that Buchanan and Grotius were struggling to resolve within their respective periods. In the Thebaid they read a work which commented on its own time during the reign of Domitian, but is also appropriate for understanding the politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, it must be made clear that Buchanan’s and Grotius’s readings of the Thebaid are predicated upon the commentary proffered by Lactantius Placidus (5th - 6th century CE), one which explicitly highlights the degeneration of natural law and nature through terms such as fas and ius. To clarify, my assertion is not that Statius is explicitly interested in positive and natural law per se; but rather that both Buchanan and Grotius recognize, through Lactantius’s commentary, the underlying moral and ethical concepts of fas / nefas and ius / lex to be uniquely employed and corrupted within the Thebaid. This recognition, in turn, ultimately helps order their respective treatises where they pertain to natural and positive law.
Looking at the Thebaid, one may first ask the question of why a reading of it would be important for either Buchanan or Grotius. To answer this question by simply stating that both scholars see the Thebaid through a lens of civil war, though somewhat differently, is tenuous at best. The obviousness of brother against brother, which would have easily appealed to any classical scholar of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, not the least of which to those in France, Scotland and the Netherlands, is too vague and unconvincing since these simplistic notions strain the understood political and historical import of Statius among Roman epicists during this period. Similar to our contemporary understanding of Statius, the early moderns held that, in contrast to the Aeneid where Vergil carefully reconstructs Rome’s foundation in terms of religious motifs such as mores, pietas, and fas / fatum, Statius composes the Thebaid in terms of destruction and decivilization, that is ira, odium, and nefas – similar to Lucan’s Pharsalia. Peeling away the Vergilian veneer, Lucan goes a step further than Statius and eliminates the gods themselves, removing all remaining notions that morals and ethics have any religious and (hence, substantive) political connection. Statius, however, maintains the presence of the gods throughout, and Jupiter himself holds the leaders and citizens of Argos and Thebes (and even Athens, eventually) accountable for their thoughtless transgressions. Statius’s retention of the gods, specifically Jupiter’s actions is, in my mind, particularly responsible for Grotius’s and Buchanan’s interest in the Thebaid. For through Jupiter, Statius shows how religion intersects with law; these are precisely the topics which are of most value to our scholars.
Further binding our scholars together are a number of similarities as both were equally prolific in matters literary, historical and theological. Each was a political exile
in Paris; each imitated Statius in the silva genre; each wrote legal treatises pertaining to the rights of man; each wrote famous Latin biblical dramas; and each even translated Euripides from Greek into Latin (Medea and Alcestis for Buchanan; the Phoenissae for Grotius).7 This final connection through Euripides proves more than a little revealing, since it is from the Phoenissae that the ideas expressed by both Buchanan and Grotius merge – and why should they not, since the Phoenissae is the Thebaid’s precursor.
The seemingly simple comparison between the Thebaid and the Phoenissae is perhaps not so simple, especially when it is understood that during Buchanan’s lifetime Greek texts were generally hard to come by and there were very few people who could actually read them. In fact, Buchanan himself becomes one of a handful of translators of Euripides, following the precedent of Erasmus; so it is no surprise to find him thinking of the Phoenissae when reading and commenting on the Thebaid.8 It is equally unsurprising to find Grotius doing the same, since by his time (the late sixteenth, early seventeenth centuries) the greatest Greek scholars, except Isaac Casaubon, reside in the Netherlands and teach at Leiden University where Grotius was schooled. Still, while we might reasonsably expect these scholars to have read the Phoenissae, it is quite unexpected to see them embrace both Statius and Euripides for similar ends. So it needs explaining how and why they did so; and to do that we must first turn to Cicero.
To reach the comparison of the Phoenissae with the Thebaid would not necessarily have been to simply compare one text with the other. Rather it seems much more probable that since the topics discussed under the pretext of moral philolosphy (including natural and positive law, tyranny, and proper rule) are continually present in the minds of our scholars it is more likely that texts which pertain to them specifically
would have been at the forefront of their thoughts. In the early modern period, the classical author with the most to say about these topics and who was respected most was Cicero. In particular, his work entitled De officiis comments specifically on the topics that most interest Buchanan and Grotius. Here it bears stating how important the De officiis is to the early modern period, as it is literally the second book printed with movable type after Gutenberg’s Bible. In total, there are ninety-one versions of it produced in one hundred years; and Erasmus and Melancthon published a pocket-sized version of it, so that it could always be at arms’ length. Additionally, during the medieval period there were more copies of the De officiis produced than any other classical text. As a result church fathers, such as Jerome, Augustine and Aquinas, use it to develop their own perspectives on moral philosophy. All this is to say that the De officiis stands alone in importance and serves to a fair degree as a type of commonplace-book for early modern scholars, including Buchanan and Grotius.
One instance where the De officiis certainly retains this effect is in the third book where Cicero recalls an anecdote about Caesar and Thebes and addresses Euripides’s Phoenissae. Specifically, he discusses how Caesar comes to use the perverted logic of Eteocles for justifying his pursuit of power.9 Cicero quotes him as saying:
Ipse autem socer in ore semper Graecos versus de Phoenissis habebat, quos dicam, ut potero, incondite fortasse, sed tamen, ut res possit intellegi:
‘Nam si violandum est ius, regnandi gratia Violandum est; aliis rebus pietatem colas.’
Capitalis [Eteocles vel potius Euripides], qui id unum, quod omnum sceleratissimum fuerit, exceperit!...ecce tibi, qui rex populi Romani dominusque omnium gentium esse concupiverit idque perfecit! Hanc cupiditatem si honestam quis esse dicit, amens est; probat enim legum et libertatis interitum earumque oppresionem taetram et detestabilem gloriosam putat. Qui autem fatetur honestum non esse in ea civitate, quae libera fuerit quaeque esse debeat, regnare, sed ei, qui id facere possit, esse
utile, qua hunc obiurgatione aut quo potius convitio a tanto errore coner avellere? Potest enim, di immortales, cuiquam esse utile foedissimum et taeterrimum parricidium patriae, quamvis is, qui se eo obstrinxerit, ab oppressis civibus parens nominetur?
(Caesar was always quoting those lines from the Phoenissae of Euripides (Ishall translate them as well as I can, giving attention to intelligibility rather than elegance:
“If right be contravened, let it for rule Be contravened; or else pursue the good.”
Eteocles, or rather Euripides, deserved to be put to death for making such an utterly unscrupulous exception… For here you have a supreme example of a man whose ambition was to be absolute ruler of the world, and achieved it! Anyone who says that this is an honourable goal is mad: for he not only assents to the abandonment of law and liberty, but glories in the foul and detestable act of their subjection. But what of the man who admits that it is wrong to establish absolute rule in a state which has a tradition of freedom which it deserves to maintain, and yet considers that it can be to a man’s advantage to gain such rule? Is he not to be deterred from such a wrong idea by every conceivable condemnation and reproach? What advantage, in Heaven’s name, could be deferred from that most foul and disgusting murder of the state? And yet the man who perpetrated it was given the title of ‘Father’ by the very people he had enslaved.” 10
Cicero is more than clear here: the moral degeneration and the devolution of government under tyrants, both ficitional and real, are detestable; and the loss of pietas (as Cicero translates and cites Caesar’s rendering) in the Phoenissae is at the very heart of a corrupted state. Indeed, for Cicero both Eteocles and Caesar are madmen (amentres), literally losing their ability to rationalize while in pursuit of power as well as losing sight that duty should always be maintained.
There are two points here in which Cicero’s work is eminently important to Buchanan and Grotius. First, is how he maintains the connection between reality and fiction vis-à-vis Caesar and Euripides; second, is how Cicero puts in its proper perspective a state’s degeneration and death by underscoring that without pietas both liberty (libertas) and law (ius) also vanish. Both of these must be thoroughly unpacked
before moving on to a reading of each of our scholar’s major works at hand in this chapter. Since there is no prima facie victrix causa for the story within the Thebaid, nor its primary source Euripides’s Phoenissae, “fraternas acies” is nothing more than blood spilled in vain; in other words, it was done merely out of “regnandi gratia violandum est” and not for the good of the people.
III
According to Theban mythology, it is the citizenry who decree the rules for governing Thebes, since they “elect” their king. It may seem somewhat misguided to call Oedipus an elected figure, but for Buchanan and Grotius Oedipus did not inherit the throne of Thebes, but was given it by the citizenry. Any and all power given to the king of Thebes after the murder of Laius is representative and not given by god. So it is this very electoral process that is precisely the backdrop to the entire Theban saga for both Buchanan and Grotius, though, not necessarily Statius or Cicero. It bears keeping in mind as well that Oedipus does not begin to seek out Laius’s murder until he has four full-grown children, so that his leadership via the people has started a tradition, which for Buchanan and Grotius, cannot be overturned. As evidenced by their life-long efforts