The Roman Historians

Ronald Mellor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134816514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The Romans' devotion to their past pervades almost every aspect of their culture. But the clearest image of how the Romans wished to interpret their past is found in their historical writings. This book examines in detail the major Roman historians:
* Sallust
* Livy
* Tacitus
* Ammianus
as well as the biographies written by:
* Nepos
* Tacitus
* Suetonius
* the Augustan History
* the autobiographies of Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus.Ronald Mellor demonstrates that Roman historical writing was regarded by its authors as a literary not a scholarly exercise, and how it must be evaluated in that context. He shows that history writing reflected the political structures of ancient Rome under the different regimes.

1

ORIGINS OF ROMAN
HISTORIOGRAPHY

Greek antecedents

While many ancient societies learned writing systems from more advanced neighbors, most worked out their own literary genres in terms of their own intellectual and cultural environment. The Romans adapted their letter forms from the Greek alphabet they received, probably via the Etruscans, from the Greek-speaking cities of southern Italy, but it was centuries before the Romans actually developed a written literature. By 265 BCE, Rome had control of the entire Italian peninsula and its cultural life fell increasingly under the influence of Greeks from southern Italy who came to Rome as tutors, slaves, and prisoners-of-war. Since the Romans had as yet no indigenous literature, they took what they could from the Greeks. The earliest surviving fragments of Latin poetry are from a translation of Homer’s Odyssey into Latin by Livius Andronicus, a Greek slave captured at Tarentum. In addition to epic, the earliest comic and tragic poetry in Latin were also translations of Greek plays.

Greeks had been writing history for three centuries before the first Roman, Fabius Pictor, turned his hand to historical prose. Homer had long before provided the earliest example of oral poetry which contained praise, or encomia, of famous men. In fifth-century Athens Herodotus and Thucydides followed Homer in providing a third-person narrative of great deeds. Their historical masterpieces gave written history some of its notable characteristics. Thus Herodotus wrote his history of the Persian Wars on an epic scale. The early books set forth the geographical and cultural background of the eastern Mediterranean peoples: Persians, Egyptians, Scythians, Lydians, and Ionian Greeks. In the Homeric tradition, he invented speeches for his characters – wholesale fabrications in which he was followed by virtually every subsequent Greek and Roman historian. Herodotus’ goal was to give pleasure to the reader and to recreate the past. But Herodotus also needed to establish the credibility of his story. The poet Homer claimed to be inspired by the Muse, but the historian claimed his authority by his personal observation (autopsy) and by doing research. Hence he dutifully went to Egypt to question local priests on Egyptian culture, but he also embellished his history with imaginative elaborations and thrilling drama. The story of Solon and Croesus bears the hallmark of a Sophoclean tragedy rather than history, but Herodotus knew his audience and their taste. In an age of limited literacy, many more Athenians heard Herodotus’ recited performances of his history than could yet read the text. He needed to ensure that his listeners, and his readers as well, be entertained, as they had been by epic poems.

Several decades later Thucydides introduced a more austere way of writing history in his treatment of the Peloponnesian War. He developed a scientific history intended to be useful to statesmen when similar events recur. He regarded the true utility of history to be for the future, when it would be a “possession for all time” for generations to come. He was unconcerned, even scornful, about the entertainment of his reader; he preferred to convey a truthful picture of the war and the motivations of the contending parties. He was without question an “elitist” who addressed his book to future political leaders. Although some see in Herodotus and Thucydides only the stark contrast between historians who seek to entertain by telling stories and those who wish to educate – a contrast said to persist after 2,500 years between purveyors of popular history and academic historians – there is in fact much that they have in common. Both were primarily concerned with contemporary history or the history of the recent past. Most of their sources were oral, since there were few earlier historical writings and no archives available. They truly engaged in an “inquiry,” but few of their successors did much of what we would recognize as primary research; they tended to rewrite history that they found in earlier books. Both Herodotus and Thucydides felt free to invent speeches when it seemed appropriate, and both constructed historical scenes to resemble the tragedies then so popular in Athens.

When the Romans turned to Greek models for history, they drew less on Herodotus and Thucydides than on later Greek writers who wrote in the very theatrical world of the Hellenistic city-state. Cicero regarded Herodotus as no more truthful than epic poets like Ennius, and he thought Thucydides deficient as a rhetorical model. Some Hellenistic writers emphasized the dramatic and rhetorical aspects of historical writing that elicited an emotional response from their readers, and that type of historian was pilloried by the Greek satirist Lucian:

Again, such writers seem unaware that history has aims and rules different from poetry and poems. In the case of the latter, liberty is absolute and there is one law – the will of the poet … So it is a serious flaw not to know how to keep the attributes of history and poetry separate, and to bring poetry’s embellishments into history – myth and eulogy and the exaggeration of both: it is as if you were to dress one of our tough, rugged athletes in a purple dress and the rest of the paraphernalia of a pretty whore and paint his face. Heavens, how ridiculous you would make him look, shaming him with all that decoration.

(How to Write History 8, tr. Kilburn (Loeb))

The greatest Greek historian of the Hellenistic age, Polybius (202–120 BCE), also harshly criticized the emotional approach to history, and he preferred a more analytical style of history. Since he deeply believed that history is cyclical and thus would “repeat itself,” he saw great utility for political leaders to study history carefully. Though Fabius and Cato had already written the earliest Roman histories before Polybius completed his own history of the growth of Roman power, Polybius’ historical achievement made him the dominant influence on later Roman historical writers. With Livy and Tacitus, Polybius became one of the three greatest historians of Rome and so, despite his Greek origins and language, he deserves more than cursory mention in this book.¹

His father was the leading figure in the Achaean League – an alliance of Greek city-states – and young Polybius held military office and also served on embassies. When the Achaean League rose against Roman domination, Polybius was one of 1,000 Achaeans taken to Rome “to stand trial.” In fact they were interned as hostages in cities throughout Italy until 152, when the 300 survivors were allowed to return to Greece.

During his years in exile this young Greek transformed himself into a great historian. At a time when the Roman nobles were becoming interested in Greek culture, Polybius’ intelligence, education, and political shrewdness brought him into the intellectual circle of Scipio Aemilianus, the adopted grandson of the conqueror of Hannibal. Under Scipio’s patronage Polybius was able to travel throughout Italy, as well as gain access to family libraries and state archives in Rome. He abandoned an earlier plan to write a history of the Achaean League, deciding instead to demonstrate to his fellow Greeks how Rome became in little more than a century the greatest power in the Mediterranean world.

Polybius traveled to Spain and Gaul with Scipio, and remained with him and the Roman army throughout the Third Punic War, which ended with the final destruction of Carthage in 146. The historian died about 120 – falling from a horse in his native Greece at the age of eighty-two.

Polybius had a clear idea of his historiographie goals. He wished to write what he called “pragmatic history,” which would be, above all, politically useful. In this, his model was Thucydides. A mere factual narrative was not sufficient; the historian must evaluate causes and connections to provide a truly useful explanation of how and why events occurred. Polybius was particularly contemptuous of the Hellenistic attitude toward historical writing as entertainment, and he often attacked by name historians whose books included mythical genealogies, tragic drama, or emotional scenes.

In Polybius’ view, the ideal historian should not only search for truth, but he should be exceptionally well prepared for his task. It was Polybius who first argued passionately for the importance of archival research and set out requirements for an historian:

1 political experience to understand the actual practice of politics and to evaluate sources;

2 geographical knowledge, preferably from personal travel;

3 reliance not only on earlier historians, but personal examination of archives, inscriptions, and treaties.

Polybius’ initial goal was to write a universal history in Greek of the period from 220 to 168 BCE. Later events caused him to extend the history through the fall of Carthage and Corinth to 144 BCE. Of the entire work of forty books, only the first five are fully preserved, while the others survive in large or small excerpts. The first two books set the background from the outbreak of the First Punic War (264 BCE), and the narrative proper begins in the third book. Since Polybius believed that Rome’s strength lay in her institutions, he devoted all of his sixth book to a description and analysis of the Roman constitution and the Roman army. He looked at the Roman constitution through the lens of Aristotle’s political theory and found a “mixed constitution” with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He thought its greatest strength was the balance between competing interests. Though Polybius’ analysis presents an incomplete picture of Roman political life, it became enormously influential on eighteenth-century thinkers like Montesquieu and Jefferson, and thus formed the basis of the “balance of powers” in the United States constitution.

Polybius was not without bias: his Achaean birth prejudiced him against the Macedonian kings, just as his loyalty to Scipio led him to vilify Scipio’s opponents. While his psychological and political analysis never reached the level of Thucydides, it is to Polybius that we owe the creation of history-writing as a professional calling. He set standards for the analysis of sources, for geographical and political knowledge, and for practical experience that few later historians have been able to equal. He had greater influence on Roman historical writing than any other Greek historian.

A final important Greek influence on Roman historical writing was the historian and philosopher, Poseidonius (135–50 BCE). He was educated in Athens by the leading Stoic philosopher, Panaetius, and was in due course himself a teacher of Cicero in Rhodes. Poseidonius saw the Roman Empire as the incarnation of the ideal Stoic world state – the cosmopolis. He had traveled much around the Mediterranean, and his history showed his interest in ethnology, linguistics, and rhetoric. He wished to write a universal history of all peoples, and his important material on the Celts found its way into Caesar’s Gallic War. Though only fragments of his work survive today, Poseidonius had a substantial philosophical and historical impact on Roman historians.

Despite all these Greek models, the Roman historiographical tradition developed differently. Greek historians demonstrated their competence and credibility by discussing their methods, showing their research, and often engaging in intellectual polemic with other writers. A Roman historian did few of these things; his claim to authority and credibility usually rested on family background, public career, or military achievements. Nevertheless, Roman writers took over such favorite Greek historical topoi as the commander s speech on the eve of battle or the siege and capture of a city.

From its very beginnings Roman historical writing was narrower in scope and less tolerant in its attitudes. Roman historians were initially not interested in the history of the whole world nor in the geography and customs of other peoples; instead they focused on the Roman state and the political life of the community. Before the Romans ever wrote history, they read of Greek achievements both in poetry and history and developed a defensive posture toward their accomplished predecessors. Thus Rome’s desire to rival the heroic ancestry of the Greeks created a chauvinistic historiography whose ethnocentrism left little sympathy for Rome’s opponents. A lack of parochialism allowed Greek historians to exhibit a Homeric sympathy for both sides in a conflict, which can be seen in the accounts of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars by Herodotus and Thucydides. To the intensely moralizing Romans, the detached and clinical history of Thucydides would most likely seem amoral. The Romans’ polemical, partisan, moralizing strain, first used by historians against Rome’s enemies, was increasingly deployed against one faction or another in the domestic struggles in Roman political life.

Sources of the Roman past

While the Romans looked to the Greeks as models for the writings of history, important indigenous traditions also shaped the form and subject matter of Roman historiography for centuries. Though no Roman wrote historical prose before the end of the third century BCE, more than five centuries after the founding of the city, the Romans still preserved the real or imagined achievements of their ancestors and there was remarkable agreement on the earliest traditions. To keep the memory of famous forebears before the young, encomia were said to have been pronounced at dinners and wax masks (imagines) of ancestors were kept on display in the atrium of an aristocratic Roman home for exhibition at funeral processions. Funeral addresses, which linked the achievements of the recently deceased with the exploits of his ancestors across the centuries, were either kept in family archives or passed orally from generation to generation with embellishments and distortions. However untrustworthy, these encomia are an early expression of the Roman desire to illuminate and guide the present through the past:

I have often heard that Quintus Maximus, Publius Scipio, and other eminent men of our country, were in the habit of declaring that their hearts were set mightily aflame from the pursuit of virtue whenever they gazed upon the masks of their ancestors. Of course they did not mean to imply that the wax or the effigy had any such power over them, but rather that it is the memory of great deeds that kindles in the breasts of noble men this flame that cannot be quelled until they by their own prowess have equally the fame and glory of their forefathers.

(Sallust, Jugurtha 4, 5, tr. Rolfe (Loeb))

In the pre-literate culture of the monarchy and early Republic, such oral traditions could be passed on for centuries.

A number of anc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Origins of Roman Historiography
• 2 Sallust
• 3 Livy
• 4 Tacitus
• 5 Ammianus Marcellinus
• 6 Roman Biography
• 7 Autobiography at Rome
• 8 Historical Writing at Rome
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index