Gaius Maecenas Fandom

During Octavian’s continued absence from Rome, Maecenas shared with Agrippa (Octavian’s executive lieutenant) the position of informal vice-regent. He could use Octavian’s seal and even alter his dispatches at will and continued to be deeply involved with foreign and domestic affairs after Octavian, now Augustus, had established his principate (27). He was the most trusted of advisers, holding his own in competition with the Agrippa faction.

This is a role, that particularly in the United States, is still sorely needed and dramatically lacking. It is a role that the Museum of Contemporary Cuts is attempting to fill by mediating between patrons and artists, providing an understanding of the importance of platforms within which free expression is paramount to the achievement of works of art and not sycophantic, decorative, and propagandistic works at their worse. Freedom from the materiality of the world to be able to carve out space and time to produce something freed from restraints that might aspire to be a work of art. Patronage and money enter directly and predominantly in this relationship and propaganda is just another element of the equation. Propaganda is but one element of the complex exchange between client and patron, and one not necessarily too pernicious, as Ernst Gombrich puts it, [1] compared to the preeminent need, superseding all other considerations, to cash art for dollars. Wheatley’s elegy was published in London in 1771 and a year later Susanna Wheatley began soliciting Bostonians to support a collection of her poems.

Category:Gaius Maecenas

Propertius and the minor poets Varius Rufus, Plotius Tucca, Valgius Rufus, and Domitius Marsus also were his protégés. His great wealth may have been in part hereditary, but he owed his position and influence to his close connection with the emperor Augustus. He first appears in history in 40 BC, when he was employed by Octavian in arranging his marriage with Scribonia, and afterwards in assisting to negotiate the Treaty of Brundisium and the reconciliation with Mark Antony. As a close friend and advisor he had even acted as deputy for Augustus when he was abroad. Contemporary patronage appears to be failing at understanding the basic tenets of Mecenatism and the methodology needed to choose the artist that could be patronized. The complexity of the relationship between Mecenas and his artists was based on a patron-client relationship which in Rome had such a complex legal status, religious connotations, and moral obligations that is not comparable to the notion of patron-client that we reason with today.

His name has become a byword in many languages[22] for a well-connected and wealthy patron. In various languages, it has even been coined into a word for (private) patronage (mainly cultural, but sometimes wider, usually perceived as more altruistic than sponsorship). A verse of the student song „Gaudeamus igitur” wishes longevity upon the charity of the students’ benefactors („Maecenatum”, genitive plural of „Maecenas”). All these things filled him with pride; but he was grieved at the death of Maecenas. He had received many benefits at his hands, for which reason he had entrusted him, though but a knight, with the oversight of the city for a long period; but he had found him of especial service on occasions when his own temper was more or less uncontrollable.

Maecenas, Patron of the Day

When Agrippa, indeed, could remain at Rome, he seems to have had the preference, as on the occasion of Augustus’s expedition into Sicily in B. (D. C. 54.6.)
But when Agrippa accompanied the emperor, as in his Spanish campaign in B. 27, it is hardly to be doubted that Maecenas exercised the functions of Augustus at Rome. The 8th and 29th odes of the third book of Horace, which, although we cannot fix their precise dates, were evidently written after the civil wars, contain allusions to the political cares of Maecenas. In both urbs is used in a sufficiently common sense for respublica; and though in the latter the word civitatem is taken by the scholiast to allude to the office of praefecus, yet the phrase quis deceat status points to infinitely higher functions than those of a mere police magistrate. It may be observed, too, that both odes refer to the fobreign affairs of the empire.

• It is certain that such a connection existed; and the historian just cited mentions a report that Augustus’s motive for going into Gaul in B.
• Wheatley persevered, though, and continued writing poetry and letters attacking slavery.
• All these things filled him with pride; but he was grieved at the death of Maecenas.
• His patronage was exercised, not from vanity or a mere dilettante love of letters, but with a view to the higher interest of the state.
• Alain Locke presents us with one of the most lucid and most compelling arguments made in favor of art and against propaganda, particularly because it is coming from the side of the oppressed.

Those kings have to have been leaders in one of the towns of ancient Etruria. He then led negotiations at Brundisium on behalf of Octavian (Appian, Civil Wars 5.64) and continued to liaise with Antony over the next years (Appian, Civil Wars 5.92). Maecenas was sent to Rome to ensure order and to prevent who might have been loyal to Pompeius from revolting (Appian, Civil Wars 5. 99). Maecenas is the second most prominent of the close advisers of Augustus after Agrippa. Like Agrippa, very little is known for certain about his background and he certainly did not come from a family distinguished in the politics of Rome.

Dictionary Entries Near Maecenas

Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century poet and the first person of sub-Saharan African descent to publish a book, published a poem „To Maecenas” as the first poem in her 1773 book Poems on Various subjects, Religious and Moral. Though the approximate site is known, it is not easy to reconcile literary indications to determine the gardens’ exact location, whether or not they lay on both sides of the Servian ager and both north and south of the porta Esquilina. Common graves of the archaic Esquiline necropolis have been found near the north-west corner of the modern Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, that is, outside the Esquiline gate of antiquity and north of the via Tiburtina vetus; most probably the horti Maecenatiani extended north from this gate and road on both sides of the ager. The „Auditorium of Maecenas”, a probable venue for dining and entertainment, may still be visited (upon reservation[15]) on Largo Leopardi near Via Merulana. It was in 38 BC that Horace was introduced to Maecenas, who had before this received Lucius Varius Rufus and Virgil into his intimacy. In the „Journey to Brundisium,”[7] in 37, Maecenas and Marcus Cocceius Nerva – great-grandfather of the future emperor Nerva – are described as having been sent on an important mission, and they were successful in patching up, by the Treaty of Tarentum, a reconciliation between the two claimants for supreme power.

• For Romans individual power required the operation of reason and restraint and the great man needed his friends to keep him in place.
• Among the poets he patronized were the celebrated Virgil and Horace – both of whom he befriended.
• On his return to Rome, Caesar is represented to have taken counsel with Agrippa and Maecenas respecting the expediency of restoring the republic.
• Their relationship gives the lie to the stereotype of the modern Great Man, whose greatness allows none to stand in its way.

Auctioneers would charge her a 20% fee in buyer’s premium, which would make the investment considerably more expensive. In comparison, Maecenas allows her to invest in a number of different art pieces easily, paying only 3% in fees via bank transfer or credit card. Chelsea Gallery wants to acquire a https://cryptolisting.org/coin/art $3M piece to expand its Warhol collection. Instead of getting a 3-year art-secured loan at a 13.5% annual interest, it can raise funds from Maecenas investors by listing some of their artwork at a 8% one-off fee. Manage your Fine Art investment portfolio in an active, real-time trading environment.