Quintus Valerius Soranus (born between BC,Conrad Cichorius, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus", Hermes 41 (1906), p. 67; American Journal of Philology 28 (1907) 468. died 82 BC) was a Latin poet, grammarian, and tribune of the people in the Late Roman Republic. He was executed in 82 BC while Sulla was dictator,T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 99 B.C.–31 B.C. (New York: American Philological Association, 1952), p. 68. ostensibly for violating a religious prohibition against speaking the arcane name of Rome, but more likely for political reasons.Conrad Cichorius, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus", Hermes 41 (1906) 59–68, remains the most thorough discussion of the evidence; English abstract in American Journal of Philology 28 (1907) 468. The cognomen Soranus is a toponym indicating that he was from Sora.Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, 1985 printing), entry on "Soranus", p. 1793.
A single elegiac couplet survives more or less intact from his body of work. The two lines address Jupiter as an all-powerful begetter who is both male and female. This androgynous, unitarian conception of deity,Jaime Alvar, "Matériaux pour l'étude de la formule sive deus, sive dea", Numen 32 (1985), pp. 259–260. possibly an attempt to integrate Stoic and Orphic doctrine, has made the fragment of interest in religious studies.Edward Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 66–68; Attilio Mastrocinque, "Creating One's Own Religion: Intellectual Choices", in A Companion to Roman Religion, edited by Jörg Rüpke (Blackwell, 2007), p. 382.
Valerius Soranus is also credited with a little-recognized literary innovation: Pliny the Elder says he was the first writer to provide a table of contents to help readers navigate a long work.Pliny the Elder, preface 33, Historia naturalis; John Henderson, "Knowing Someone Through Their Books: Pliny on Uncle Pliny (Epistles 3.5)", Classical Philology 97 (2002), p. 275.
Life and political career
Cicero has an interlocutor in his De oratore praise Valerius Soranus as "most cultured of all who wear the toga",Marcus Tullius Cicero, De oratore 3.43: litteratissimum togatorum omnium. and Cicero lists him and his brother Decimus among an educated elite of socii et Latini;Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus 169. that is, those who came from allied polities on the Italian Peninsula rather than from Rome, and those whose legal status was defined by Latin right rather than full Roman citizenship. The municipality of Sora was near Cicero's native Arpinum, and he refers to the Valerii Sorani as his friends and neighbors.Cicero, Brutus 169: vicini et familiares mei; Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 34. Soranus was also a friend of Varro and is mentioned more than once in that scholar's multi-volume work on the Latin language.Marcus Terentius Varro, De lingua latina 7.31, 7.65, 10.70; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 2.10.3; Edward Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 65.
The son of Q. Valerius Soranus is thought to have been the Quintus Valerius Orca who was praetor in 57 BC.Giovanni Niccolini, I fasti dei tribuni della plebe (Milan 1934), pp. 430–431. Orca had worked for Cicero's return to public lifeMarcus Tullius Cicero, Post reditum in senatu 23. and is among Cicero's correspondents in the Epistulae ad familiares (Letters to Friends and Family).Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 13.4 (= 318 in the chronological edition of Shackleton Bailey), 13.5 (= 319 SB), 13.6 (= 57 SB), 13.6a (= 58 SB); discussion in John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas: Sacred Institutions and Roman Counterparts, vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), pp. 248–249.
Cicero presents the Valerii brothers of Sora as well schooled in Greek and Latin literature, but less admirable for their speaking ability.Cicero, Brutus 169: non tam in dicendo admirabilis quam doctus et Graecis litteris et Latinis. As Italians, they would have been lacking to Cicero's ears in the smooth sophistication (urbanitas) and faultless pronunciation of the best native Roman orators.Edwin S. Ramage, "Cicero on Extra-Roman Speech", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 92 (1961) 481–494, especially pp. 487–488. This attitude of social exclusivity may account for why Valerius Soranus, whose scholarly interests and friendships might otherwise suggest a conservative temperament, would have found his place in the civil wars of the 80s on the side of the popularist Marius rather than that of the patrician Sulla.John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas, vol. 2 (Berlin 1995), pp. 249–250. It might also be noted that Cicero's expression of this attitude is double-edged: like Marius and the Valerii Sorani, he was also a man from a municipium, and had to overcome the same obstructing biases that he adopts and expresses.Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 34 et passim.
In 82 BC, the year of his death, Valerius Soranus was or had been a tribune of the people (tribunus plebis), a political office open only to those of plebeian rather than patrician birth.
Execution The fullest account of the infamous death of Valerius Soranus is given by Servius, who says he was executed for revealing the secret name of Rome:Matthias Klinghardt discusses the religious case in "Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation: Their Use and Function in Ancient Religion", Numen 46 (1999), pp. 43–45; see also H. S. Versnel, "A Parody on Hymns in Martial V 24 and Some Trinitarian Problems", Mnemosyne 27 (1974), p. 374, especially note 44.
Servius's account presents several difficulties. Crucifixion was a punishment generally reserved for slaves in the Late Republic;Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, entry on "Crux", Bill Thayer's LacusCurtius edition; Elizabeth Rawson, "Sallust on the Eighties?", Classical Quarterly 37 (1987), pp. 175–176; K.M. Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments", Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), p. 53 et passim; for full discussion, see M. Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World (London 1977), especially "Crucifixion and Roman Citizens" and "The 'Slaves' Punishment", chapters 6 and 8. Valerius Maximus, a historian in the early Principate, reckoned that the punishment should not be inflicted on those of Roman blood even when they "deserved" it.Valerius Maximus, 2.7.12. Moreover, a tribune's person was by law sacrosanct."Tribune" at Livius.org ; fuller discussion of the tribunate at Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "Tribunus", Bill Thayer's LacusCurtius edition.. Finally, it is unclear whether the ten tribunes should possess the knowledge of Rome's secret name,"This name and the name of the tutelary deity of Rome had to be handed down from one generation of Roman priests and magistrates to the succeeding one": Jerzy Linderski, "The Augural Law", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 16.3 (1986), p. 2255, note 424. The story of Valerius Soranus, Linderski assumes, indicates that tribunes knew the name; the reasoning may be circular. or in what manner Soranus would have publicized it. Among sources earlier than Servius, both Pliny the Elder and Plutarch note that Valerius Soranus was punished for this violation.Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis 3.65; Plutarch, Roman Questions 61. The late antique grammarian Solinus (1.4) also reports that Valerius Soranus was killed for profaning the name of Rome, connecting the act to the Roman goddess Angerona, whose cult statue depicted her with a sealed mouth. It has been suggested that the name was revealed in his one work for which a title is known, the Epoptides. The title, if interpreted as it sometimes is to mean "tutelary deities", offers an apt context.Thomas Köves-Zulauf, "Die Ἐπόπτιδες des Valerius Soranus", Rheinisches Museum 113 (1970) 323-358. "Tutelary deities" is not the universal translation: see discussion under Literary Works. But elsewhere Servius—so too Macrobius—implies that the name remained unrecorded.Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid 1.277; Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.9; John Pairman Brown, Israel and Hellas, vol. 2 (Berlin 1995), p. 250. The ancient sources on the violation make a distinction without, in the outcome for Soranus, a difference; some say the arcanum not to be revealed was the secret name of Rome, and others that of Rome's tutelary deity, see L'identità segreta della divinità tutelare di Roma. Un riesame dell' affaire Sorano. Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2011.
Quintus Valerius Soranus has been identified with the Q. Valerius, described as philologos and philomathes ("a lover of literature and learning"),Plutarch, Life of Pompey 10.4: φιλόλογος ἀνὴρ καὶ φιλομαθής. whom Plutarch says was a supporter of Marius. This man was put to death by Pompey in Sicily,Conrad Cichorius, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus", Hermes 41 (1906), p. 59; T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, vol. 2, 99 B.C.–31 B.C. (New York: American Philological Association, 1952), p. 68; Edward Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 65. where he would have accompanied Carbo, the consular colleague of the recently murdered Cinna. Carbo was executed by Pompey.Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans, translated and edited by Richard Gordon (Cambridge: Polity, 2007) p. 133.
In 1906, Conrad Cichorius published an articleConrad Cichorius, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Valerius Soranus", Hermes 41 (1906) 59–68; English abstract in American Journal of Philology 28 (1907) 468. that organized the available evidence for the life of Valerius Soranus and argued that his execution was a result of the Sullan proscription in 82. The view of his death as politically motivated has prevailed among modern scholars:
But if Varro originated the story, his reasons are hard to tease out of the roiled politics of the Late Republic. Although Varro was the friend of Valerius Soranus, in the civil war of the 40s he was on the side of the Pompeians; Caesar, however, not only pardoned him, but gave him significant appointments.For the development of the story of Valerius Soranus as a cautionary tale, see Trevor Murphy, "Privileged Knowledge: Valerius Soranus and the Secret Name of Rome", in Rituals in Ink: A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome (Stuttgart 2004), pp. 127–137. The biases of the contemporary sources were not lost on Plutarch in his account of the killing:Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 105.