Editing Gaius Maecenas (section)

==''Maecenate'' (patronage)==
[[File:Bakalovich at Maecenas' reception.jpg|thumb|[[Stefan Bakałowicz]]: ''At Maecenas' Reception Room'', 1890]]
[[File:Page 30. — Frog; the seal-device of Mecaenas. If Isaac Taylor be right in interpreting his Etruscan, name, MAIKNE, as Frog-man (analogous to the Italian Ranuccio), the great statesman had put in his seal a rebus on his name, &c (frog).jpg|thumb|Frog on an engraved gem: the seal-device of Mecaenas.<ref>{{Cite book|last=King|first=Charles William|url=https://archive.org/details/handbookofengrav00king/page/n11/mode/2up|title=Handbook of Engraved Gems|publisher=George Bell and Sons|year=1885|edition=2nd|location=London|pages=viii}}</ref>]]
Maecenas is most famous for his support of young poets; hence, in most European languages, his name has become an [[eponym]] for "patron of arts": in French, ''mécène''; in Italian, ''mecenate''; in Spanish, ''mecenas''; in German, ''Mäzen''; in Polish, ''mecenas''; in Czech, ''mecenáš''; in Hungarian, ''mécenás''; in Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian, ''меценат''. The eponym has been in use since at least the composition of ''Laus Pisonis'' ("Praise of Piso") by an unknown author in the first century CE. [[Edmund Spenser]]'s shepherds complain that there is no "Mecoenas" in England in the 1570s.<ref>Nora Goldschmidt, "Friends in High Places" (review of [[Emily Gowers]], ''Rome's Patron: The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas'', Princeton, February 2024, {{ISBN|978 0 691 193144}}, 463 pp.), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 46, no. 14 (18 July 2024), pp. 33-34. (p. 33.)</ref>  

Maecenas supported [[Virgil]], who wrote the ''[[Georgics]]'' in his honour. It was Virgil, impressed with examples of [[Horace]]'s poetry, who introduced Horace to Maecenas. Indeed, Horace begins the first poem of his ''Odes'' (''Odes'' I.i) by addressing his new patron. Maecenas gave him full financial support as well as an estate in the Sabine Mountains. [[Propertius]] and the minor poets [[Varius Rufus]], [[Plotius Tucca]], [[Valgius Rufus]], and [[Domitius Marsus]] also were his protégés.

His character as a munificent patron of literature – which has made his name a household word – is gratefully acknowledged by the recipients of it and attested by the regrets of the men of letters of a later age, expressed by [[Martial]] and [[Satires of Juvenal|Juvenal]]. His patronage was exercised, not from vanity or a mere [[Amateur|dilettante]] love of letters, but with a view to the higher interest of the state. He recognized in the genius of the poets of that time not only the truest ornament of the court, but the power of reconciling men's minds to the new order of things, and of investing the actual state of affairs with an ideal [[glory (religion)|glory]] and [[majesty]]. The change in seriousness of purpose between the ''Eclogues'' and the ''Georgics'' of Virgil was in a great measure the result of the direction given by the statesman to the poet's genius. A similar change between the earlier odes of Horace, in which he declares his epicurean indifference to affairs of state, and the great national odes of the [[Carminum liber tertius|third book]] has been ascribed by some to the same guidance. However, since the organization of the Odes is not entirely chronological, and their composition followed both books of ''[[Satires (Horace)|Satires]]'' and the ''[[Epodes (Horace)|Epodes]]'', this argument is plainly specious; but doubtless the milieu of Maecenas's circle influenced the writing of the Roman Odes (III.1–6) and others such as the ode to Pollio, Motum ex Metello (II.1).

Maecenas endeavoured also to divert the less masculine genius of [[Propertius]] from harping continually on his love to themes of public interest, an effort which to some extent backfired in the ironic elegies of Book III.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Raccette-Campbell |first=Melanie |date=2013 |title=The Construction of Masculinity in Propertius |url=https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/35931/1/Racette-Campbell_Melanie_J_201306_PhD_thesis.pdf |journal=Graduate Department of Classics University of Toronto}}</ref> But if the motive of his patronage had been merely political, it never could have inspired the [[affection]] which it did in its recipients. The great [[charisma|charm]] of Maecenas in his relation to the men of genius who formed his circle was his simplicity, cordiality and sincerity. Although not particular in the choice of some of the associates of his pleasures, he admitted none but men of worth to his intimacy, and when once admitted they were treated like equals. Much of the wisdom of Maecenas probably lives in the ''Satires'' and ''Epistles'' of Horace. It has fallen to the lot of no other patron of literature to have his name associated with works of such lasting interest as the ''Georgics'' of Virgil, the first three books of Horace's ''Odes'', and the first book of his ''Epistles.''

Two poems in the ''[[Appendix Vergiliana]]'' are [[elegiac poetry|elegies]] to him. [[Virgil]] cannot have written them, as he died eleven years before Maecenas; they may have been written by [[Albinovanus Pedo]].<ref>Duff, J. W. ''Minor Latin Poets'' (Cambridge, 1934) pp.114–5</ref>