Agrippa Menenius Lanatus

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Menenius Lanatus tells his parable (B. Barloccini, 1849)

Agrippa Menenius Lanatus (also Menenius Agrippa ) (* before 540 BC; † 493 BC) was a politician and consul in the early days of the Roman Republic , the 494 BC. Through a parable that supposedly moved plebeians to break off their first secession .

Life

Agrippa Menenius Lanatus dressed in 503 BC. The consulate . It is not clear from what state it comes: Since the consulate up to the Leges Liciniae Sextiae of the year 367 BC. BC was reserved for the patricians , it makes sense to assign it to this class; after Titus Livius , on the other hand, he was a plebeian . According to Livius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus , he is said to have celebrated a triumph over the Aurunkians . Agrippa Menenius is said to have died in great poverty, so that the Roman state paid for his burial. The ancient historian Hans Georg Gundel does not believe this message, which was also handed down by Livy and Dionysius , that it was a " specimen paupertatis", a prime example of commendable modesty highlighted by the moral historiography of antiquity.

The parable of the stomach and limbs

As during the conflict of the orders v the plebeians 494th When they moved from the city to the Aventine or Mons Sacer to protest against their unjust treatment by the patricians, the Senate sent Agrippa to persuade them to return. According to Livius, Ab urbe condita 2,32,9, he succeeded in doing this by reciting a parable: According to this, the limbs of the body would have stopped their activity so that they would not always have to serve the lazy stomach . As a result, however, they would have weakened themselves and so realized that in a structured whole such as the body or the state, each part has a meaningful function for the whole. The plebeians saw this and ended their secession.

Ancient historical research regards this story as a legend from later times. According to the British ancient historian A. Drummond, it does not come from Roman, but from Greek literary or philosophical sources. In truth, the plebeians broke off their strike because the patricians had allowed them to elect two magistrates of their own every year, the people's tribunes , which were supposed to have the right to intervene against all decisions of the Senate and the other magistrates.

Reception history

The fable was widely received. Dietmar Peil found more than 150 versions, variants, adaptations and quotations of this fable in the literature, which differ in their outcome and interpretation and are partly related to Menenius Agrippa, partly also without him.

The apostle Paul used it in the first century when he wrote the first letter to the Corinthians when he described the church as the body of Christ , composed of many parts with very different tasks ( 1 Cor 12 : 12-30  Lut ). Roman historians transmit divergent versions, but always in an identical historical context: Agrippa succeeds in persuading the plebs to return to the city with the fable of the quarrel between the limb and the stomach, which has been considered evidence of the effectiveness of rhetorical skills since ancient times . But all Roman historians also recall the political concessions made to the plebeians. All versions of fables that have been handed down from antiquity provide morality by turning it into the political, in that they transfer the relationship between the stomach and the limbs to that of the authorities and their subjects. In the Middle Ages the collections, in which different variants of the stomach-limb fable, generalize the morality to the mutual dependence within the society beyond the in the narrower political sense.

At the beginning of the modern era, Erasmus Alberus takes a new approach to the interpretation of the Agrippa fable through politicization: The accusation of economic exploitation is fought off by the demand to honor the supposedly indispensable authorities and to obey them. This change to a rule-stabilizing argument is favored by the political attitude of the authors representing the principles of the Reformation, the Rom. 13.1 and 1. Petr. 2, 13 rise to the political program and thus stand on the side of the authorities. Nathan Chyträus, for example, uses the stomach and limbs fable as an appeal to obedience and willing payment of taxes. In 1595 Georg Rollehagen turned it into an anti-democratic argument, as it were, in Froschmeuseler : This fable shows the consequences of the state-endangering motto "Everyone for himself, got for us all", which Rollehagen sees particularly widespread in democracy. The most famous fable poet of modern times, the French Jean de La Fontaine, brings a more economic insight and justifies the initial comparison with the central function of the royal court in the economic cycle.

In the 18th century, the heyday of the fable, the conflict between the limbs and the stomach is usually interpreted politically. Daniel Wilhelm Triller brings a new view of the problem: In the dispute of rank, the gastric achievements deserve the greatest recognition. However, he does not formulate morality as an appeal directed at both parties, but seems to address primarily the subjects on whom he imposes the service as a duty with the modal verb “must”; the official duties, however, appear as a requirement that has already been fulfilled. Triller's version of the fable legitimizes existing relations of domination, immunizing them against possible criticism, as it were in accordance with the principles of nature. The Benedictine Willibald Kobolt compares the stomach with the "Rent = Cammer" of a state, to which everyone has to pay their contribution and with whose means the prince has to care for the well-being of the country. The illustrated collection “Aesopi Leben und auserlesene Fabeln”, published in Nuremberg in 1760, has a prose version of the Agrippa fable and morality on p. 91 f.: “Honor your authorities and give what is due to them, because they only swear this office to you leads to benefit. "

In the 19th century, the stomach and limbs fable entered children's and youth literature for educational purposes. Aesop for children by Johann Heinrich Ernestis , published in Nuremberg in 1821 , places particular emphasis on social interdependence. Karl Heinrich Caspari assigns the Agrippa fable to the 4th commandment and emphasizes and praises the willingness to serve.

William Shakespeare let Menenius experience a failure with his parable in his 1608 tragedy Coriolanus (I / 1). In the 17th century, Jean de Lafontaine rewrote the story into one of his fables . In 1936 the philosopher Ernst Bloch described the parable as “one of the oldest social lies”. The story was brought back to the stage in connection with Shakespeare by Bertolt Brecht in his posthumously left drama fragment Coriolan by Shakespeare and by Günter Grass in his drama The Plebeians Rehearse the Insurrection from 1966.

swell

literature

  • Michael Hillgruber: The story of Menenius Agrippa. A Greek fable in Roman historiography. In: Antiquity and the Occident. 42, 1996, pp. 42-56.
  • Christian Müller: Menenius 5th In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 7, Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01477-0 , Sp. 1237.
  • Friedrich Münzer: Menenius 12th In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen antiquity (RE). Volume XV, 1, Stuttgart 1931, Col. 840-843.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Livy: Ab urbe condita 2,33,10; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 6.96.
  2. ^ T. Robert S. Broughton : The Magistrates Of The Roman Republic. Vol. 1: 509 BC - 100 BC Case Western Reserve University Press, Cleveland 1951. Reprinted unmodified 1968. (Philological Monographs. Ed. Of the American Philological Association. Volume 15, Part 1), p. 8.
  3. ^ JS McClelland: The Crowd and the Mob. From Plato to Canetti. 2nd Edition. Unwyn Himan, London 2010, p. 37.
  4. ↑ Titus Livius: Ab urbe condita 2, 16, 8 f .; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 5, 44, 5
  5. ↑ Hans Georg Gundel: Menenius. In: The Little Pauly . Dtv, Munich 1979, Volume 3, Sp. 1213.
  6. ↑ Hans Georg Gundel: Menenius. In: The Little Pauly. Dtv, Munich 1979, Volume 3, Sp. 1213; Heinz Bellen : Fundamentals of Roman history. From the royal times to the transition of the republic to the principate. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1994, p. 19.
  7. ^ A. Drummond: Rome in the fifth century II. In: AE Astin, MW Frederiksen and RM Ogilvie (eds.): The Cambridge Ancient History , Volume 7.2: The Rise of Rome. 2nd Edition. Cambridge 1990, p. 214.
  8. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 199.
  9. ↑ Eckhard J. Schnabel : "The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians". R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 2006, p. 724.
  10. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 8.
  11. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 16.
  12. ↑ Sybille Rusterholz: Dietmar Peil, The dispute between the limbs and the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. in arbitrium. Volume 6, Issue 3, p. 225.
  13. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 87.
  14. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 94 ff.
  15. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 97 f.
  16. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 102.
  17. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 104.
  18. ↑ Jean de La Fontaine: œuvres. Paris 1883/5, Volume 1, pp. 206-209.
  19. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 123 f.
  20. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 106.
  21. ^ Daniel Wilhelm Triller: New Aesopian Fables, in which all kinds of edifying moral teachings and useful life rules are presented in a bound speech. 1740, 2nd edition. Hamburg 1850, pp. 297-299.
  22. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 3 ff.
  23. ↑ Willibald Kobolt: Schertz and Ernst together, That is: A change from one hundred and eighty short and curious stories and fables. Augsburg 1747, p. 407 ff.
  24. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 108.
  25. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 109.
  26. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 115.
  27. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 116.
  28. ^ Karl Heinrich Caspari : Spiritual and secular to a popular interpretation of the small catechism Lutheri in church, school and house. Erlangen-Leipzig 15th edition 1892 (first 1853?)
  29. ↑ Dietmar Peil: The conflict of the limbs with the stomach. Studies on the tradition and history of interpretation of the fable of Menenius Agrippa from antiquity to the 20th century. (= Microcosm. Contributions to literary studies and meaning research. Volume 16). Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1985, p. 117 ff.
  30. ↑ Jean de Lafontaine: The limbs and the stomach . German translation from 1923 on Zeno.org , accessed October 27, 2012.
  31. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Political measurements, time of plague, Vormärz . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1970, pp. 172-176.
personal data
SURNAME Menenius Lanatus, Agrippa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Menenius, Agrippa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Consul in the early days of the Roman Republic
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 493 BC Chr.