Vulgus и turba: толпа в классическом Риме

Abstract

В статье исследуется отношение римских авторов классического периода к толпе, употребление слов vulgus и turba. The aim of the article is to consider the attitude of the Roman authors of the classical period towards the mob, their use of the words vulgus and turba. There is a common opinion about the pejorative attitude of the Roman authors towards vulgus, but this conclusion is based on the analysis of individual authors, rather than on the corpus of texts. The word vulgus first appears in the works of the authors of the 2nd c. B.C. as the definition of common people and partly replaces plebs. For the first Roman comedy writers vulgus is an unfamiliar and seldom used word, denoting something where in public opinion originates without a pejorative connotation. Turba is more familiar to them, it denotes commotion, disorder, concentration of people (with sometimes a pejorative connotation). As long as the social structure of Rome did not experience upheavals, the attitude towards vulgus was disdainfully neutral. The situation changed with the advent of the epoch of civil wars when the lower strata of Roman citizens began to take an active part in the political struggle. The danger of losing power was the reason for the hatred of the «old» boni, defenders of the Roman oligarchy, to vulgus. For Sallustius and Catullus (and to a lesser extent for Accius and Cicero) the opposition of vulgus and boni (potentes) became a rhetorical cliché. Such an opposition was typical only of that social milieu, and in the works of the other authors of the 1st c. B.C. vulgus is treated quite neutrally. Unlike Sallustius, Caesar used vulgus, with one exception, neutrally. It is not surprising: Caesar appealed to this vulgus and sought to win its sympathies. With the establishment of the emperors’ power, vulgus represented by the Roman plebs urbana acquired a stable place in society and only some excesses, which aroused indignation on the part of some authors, made them use the word turba. We can find a completely neutral attitude towards vulgus in the works of Seneca and even of Petronius. Only Tacitus attempting to restore the lost idyll of the senate republic denounces vulgus catered to by the emperors. But it was the final accord of the senate tradition, a peculiar «rhetorical nostalgia». His contemporaries, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius, were far more impartial. We can see again the opposition of two traditions - a rhetorically expressed contempt for the mob on the part of the educated senate elite and a bureaucratically calm (one can say businesslike) attitude towards the relationship between those who had power and the low strata (first of all, plebs urbana). In Digestae vulgus has no pejorative connotation; this well-behaved, if impoverished, group can be made happy with insignificant hand-outs; it is the riotous and looting turba that should be resolutely rebuffed. Vulgus is not a social term. Nor is it terminus technicus. In the 1st c. B.C. vulgus became a swearword of the part of the Roman elite trying to put up a rhetorical barrier between «us, well-educated, holding power» and the main population (we are different, we are not vulgus). The new power, however, considered vulgus among its supporters, and it is not accidental that not only Caesar, and loyal to the new power Pliny the Younger and Suetonius, but also Lucan, a senate oppositionist, did not seek to denounce «the ignorant mob». Name of the famous Vulgata (the Latin translation of the Bible) has a lot in common with the Lucilius’ choire, but not with the Sallustius-Horace riff-raff. It is impossible to imagine this kind of attitude to ὄχλος in Greece. Odilos is degenerating but full-powered demos, whereas vulgus in Rome initially has no real power. The existence of vulgus is a specific feature of Rome, and this fact is reflected in the works of Roman authors.