Cassius Dio's Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic: The Roman History, Books 3-56 9004373608, 9789004373600

Table of contents :
Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series
Acknowledgements
Table of Speeches
Chapter 1
Introduction
1 From One King to Another
2 Speechwriting and the Historian
3 Cassius Dio and the Decline of the Republic
4 The Historian and his World
5 Using This Book
Chapter 2
Method
1 The Composition of Dio’s Speeches: Three Problems
1.1 Narrative and Dramatic Setting
1.2 Sources and Models
1.3 Rhetorical Education and Moralising Argument
2 Three Problems, or Three Strengths?
Chapter 3 Oratory
1 Beginnings: Early Roman Oratory
2 Decline: Dynasty and Deception
3 Restoration: Augustus and the Principate
Chapter 4
Morality
1 Envy and Odium
2 Selfish Ambition, or Love of Honour?
3 Covetousness and Cupidity
4 Moral Revolution, or Constitutional Change?
Chapter 5
Institutions & Empire
1 Successive Office-Holding and the High Command
2 The Dictatorship and Tyranny
3 Tradition and Innovation
Chapter 6
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic The Roman History, Books 3–56 By

Christopher Burden-Strevens

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Julius Caesar, sculpture ca. 1512–14 by Andrea di Pietro di Marco Ferrucci. Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Burden-Strevens, Christopher, author. Title: Cassius Dio’s speeches and the collapse of the Roman Republic : the  Roman history, books 3–56 / Christopher Burden-Strevens. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Historiography of  Rome and its Empire, 2468-2314 ; vol. 7 | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020015805 (print) | LCCN 2020015806 (ebook) |  ISBN 9789004373600 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004431362 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Roman history. |  Rome—History—Historiography. | Speeches, addresses, etc.,  Greek—History and criticism. | Rhetoric, Ancient. Classification: LCC DG205 .B88 2020 (print) | LCC DG205 (ebook) |  DDC 937/.07—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015805 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015806

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-2314 isbn 978-90-04-37360-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-43136-2 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

For Catherine Steel optimo monitori

∵

Contents Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series ix Carsten H. Lange and Jesper M. Madsen Acknowledgements x Table of Speeches xiii 1 Introduction 1 1 From One King to Another 1 2 Speechwriting and the Historian 9 3 Cassius Dio and the Decline of the Republic 14 4 The Historian and his World 21 5 Using This Book 31 2 Method 36 1 The Composition of Dio’s Speeches: Three Problems 36 1.1 Narrative and Dramatic Setting 37 1.2 Sources and Models 70 1.3 Rhetorical Education and Moralising Argument 112 2 Three Problems, or Three Strengths? 145 3 Oratory 149 1 Beginnings: Early Roman Oratory 152 2 Decline: Dynasty and Deception 162 3 Restoration: Augustus and the Principate 181 4 Morality 192 1 Envy and Odium 196 2 Selfish Ambition, or Love of Honour? 215 3 Covetousness and Cupidity 227 4 Moral Revolution, or Constitutional Change? 243 5 Institutions & Empire 248 1 Successive Office-Holding and the High Command 252 2 The Dictatorship and Tyranny 275 3 Tradition and Innovation 300 6 Epilogue 306 Bibliography 319 Index 335

Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series Carsten H. Lange and Jesper M. Madsen Brill’s Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series aims to gather innovative and outstanding contributions in order to identify debates and trends, and in order to help provide a better understanding of ancient historiography, as well as how to approach Roman history and historiography. We would particularly welcome proposals that look at both Roman and Greek writers, but are also happy to consider proposals which focus on individual writers, or individuals in the same tradition. It is timely and valuable to bring these trends and historical sources together by founding the Series, focusing mainly on the Republican period and the Principate, as well as the Later Roman Empire. Historical writing about Rome in both Latin and Greek forms an integrated topic. There are two strands in ancient writing about the Romans and their empire: (a) the Romans’ own tradition of histories of the deeds of the Roman people at home and at war, and (b) Greek historical responses, some developing their own models (Polybius, Josephus) and others building on what both the Roman historians and earlier Greeks had written (Dionysius, Appian, Cassius Dio). Whereas older scholarship tended to privilege a small group of ‘great historians’ (the likes of Sallust, Livy, Tacitus), recent work has rightly brought out the diversity of the traditions and recognized that even ‘minor’ writers are worth exploring not just as sources, but for their own concerns and reinterpretation of their material (such as The Fragments of the Roman Historians (2013), and the collected volumes on Velleius Paterculus (Cowan 2011) and Appian (Welch 2015)). The study of these historiographical traditions is essential as a counterbalance to the traditional use of ancient authors as a handy resource, with scholars looking at isolated sections of their structure. This fragmentary use of the ancient evidence makes us forget to reflect on their work in its textual and contextual entirety.

Acknowledgements The greater part of this book was written during the spring and summer months of 2019 at the Fondation Hardt near Geneva, at my father’s house in Margate, Kent, and at my partner’s flat in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris. I owe, first and foremost, a great debt of gratitude to all three: to the Fondation Hardt for awarding me one of its residential scholarships for young researchers in the first instance, and then to its general secretary Gary Vachicouras and its housekeeper Heidi Dal Lago for their kind hospitality; to my father, for his endless greatness of heart and good humour, and for valiantly putting up with me as a housemate for two and a half years; and to Frank, for his ever-useful advice over a kir cassis, for serving as my critical reserve of energy and motivation (especially with chapter 2; we got there in the end), and for our helpful exchanges of bad prose. To return the favour even half as generously while he writes up his own project this year will be a great feat. Le temps passe et court. My Ph.D. supervisors, Prof. Catherine Steel and Dr Henriette van der Blom, first put me onto the track of Cassius Dio when I began my doctorate in 2012. I am tremendously grateful to them both—not only for alerting me to Dio in the first place and for guiding so supportively the project that ensued, but also for their kindness and generosity in the years that have followed. They have continued to offer advice, criticism, and support throughout my career, and that is a debt these acknowledgements cannot repay. It was perhaps deliberate that they set me to work on Cassius Dio at a time of renewed interest in his work, and this interest has led to extremely exciting advances in our understanding of the Roman History even in the last eight years. Two new research collaborations—the Dioneia round-table and the Cassius Dio: Between History and Politcs network—have recently concluded their work, and my own research has benefitted enormously from the opportunity to exchange ideas with their members across the globe. In particular, the research, discussions, and advice of Graham Andrews, Suloo Asirvatham, Chris Baron, Estelle Bertrand, Marianne Coudry, Valérie Fromentin, George Hinge, Adam Kemezis, Jesper Majbom Madsen, Chris Mallan, Konstantin Markov, Carsten Hjort Lange, Julie Langford, Mads Linholmer, Josiah Osgood, John Rich, Andrew Scott, Gianpaolo Urso, and Kathryn Welch have proven invaluable in recent years. I am lucky to call such colleagues my friends. I am also grateful to those organisations and individuals who made this work feasible. At Brill Academic Publishers I must thank Mirjam Elbers and Giulia Moriconi, as well as Brill’s copy-editors for their diligence and dedication. The meticulous corrections and helpful guidance of Dr Luke Pitcher (Somerville

Acknowledgements

xi

College, Oxford) paved the forward road for this project when it was examined as a doctoral thesis, and I remain overawed at his encyclopaedic knowledge of Greek literature. The anonymous reviewer of an ancestor of this manuscript gave it exceptionally full and diligent attention, and offered invaluable suggestions for its improvement; any errors or omissions that remain are entirely my own. Moreover, as chief editors of Brill’s Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series, Carsten Hjort Lange and Jesper Majbom Madsen have never faltered in their patience. It is a mark of their tact that I am not sure whether to thank them more for pretending to ignore my delays or for always finding gentle words to remind me of them. Finally, I wish to recognise the contribution made by my colleagues and students at the universities of Glasgow, Durham, and Kent since submitting my Ph.D. in 2015. It was Lisa Hau who first ignited my interest in historiography as an undergraduate. I have vivid memories of struggling late into the night through pages of Thucydides on the tenth floor of Glasgow University Library, looking up every second word in the LSJ and simply deleting particles which confused me. But returning to Thucydides together each morning with rested eyes, the particles no longer mattered: her teaching showed me that the tragic beauty of his accounts of the Sicilian Expedition and the Athenian Plague are indeed gifts for all time. Dr Hau subsequently supervised my undergraduate dissertation and supported my onward move to an academic career, and I thank her for her friendship and faith. Last of all, I am grateful to my colleagues at Durham and Kent for perhaps the most important boon of all: the security, nowadays vanishingly rare, to work on my research among a genuine community of scholars in stable and high-quality employment. Anne Alwis, Patty Baker, James Corke-Webster, Barbara Graziosi, Jennifer Ingleheart, Amy Russell, and Ellen Swift were particularly instrumental in giving me these opportunities. It is extremely difficult for working-class children in the UK—especially those from non-university backgrounds—to access Latin and Greek. Successive governments have decided, in their wisdom, that if a subject appears elitist, the solution to that problem is to restrict its availability only to the elite. Even if the aspiring student negotiates that hurdle and proceeds to doctoral study, he or she must now face a string of short-term, insecure, and even zero-hour contracts; a narrow majority of university teaching in the UK is now delivered on this basis, and this injustice is widely reproduced elsewhere in the world also. I am grateful to have been lucky enough to escape that trap early on, and thankful to the universities of Durham and Kent for investing in me. As an educated man living through an age of political upheaval and anxiety, Cassius Dio placed great stock in education and its capacity to elicit virtue as one solution to the ills of

xii

Acknowledgements

his time. To Dio, education (paideia) was not a product, but a gift—the great corrector of the tyrant and despot, and the best weapon against populism and ignorance. He may wonder whether our leaders, in governments and universities alike, have fully taken the message on board. Paris January 5th, 2020

Table of Speeches The table below is not designed as an exhaustive list of every speech in Dio’s work, but rather provides an index of all the formal orations in oratio recta which have been selected from Books 1–56 of the Roman History for discussion below. The proposed reading list for each oration is necessarily brief and select­ive, and intends to serve as a starting-point on recent work for those making a specific study of an individual speech.

xiv

Table of Speeches

Speaker

Location

Subject

Julius Proculus

frg. 6.1aa; cf. John Lyd. Mag. 1.7.

Romulus’ disappearance

Tanaquil Brutus

Ambassador Brutus Menenius Agrippa Marcus Curtius

Setting

Campus Martius; to the people Zonar. 7.9 Servius Tullius’ at Rome; to condition the people frg. 12.1–3a, 8, 9, 11 danger of change; at Rome; in private to allies founding of the Republic frg. 4–5b requests from the to the Senate deposed Tarquin frg. 6–7, 10 denying Tarquin’s to the Senate requests Zonar. 7.14.8–9 reconciliation of the Aventine; to the plebs patricians and plebeians the Forum; to frg. 30.2–4; Zonar. self-sacrifice; nature of man the people 7.25.1–9. self-sacrifice; against treaty with Samnites self-sacrifice; opposes ransom by Carthage

to the Senate

frg. 40.31; Zonar. 8.4

debate on peace with Rome

Fabricius

frg. 40.34–38

on patriotism, greed, and virtue

at Tarentum; in private to Pyrrhus at Tarentum; in private to Pyrrhus

Cineas

Zonar. 8.4.9–12

Pyrrhus’ peace proposals

Postumius Albinus

frg. 36.17–18a; Zonar. 7.26.14–15.

Regulus

Zonar. 8.15.4–5

Cineas-Milo

to the Senate

to the Senate

Possible Model Livy 1.16; Plut. Rom. 27.3–28.3. Livy 1.41.4–5. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.73–75 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.4–5 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.75; 5.4–5 Livy 2.32.9; Plut. Cor. 6 Livy 7.6.1–6; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 14.11 Livy 9.8–9

— cf.: Gell. 7.4; Hor. Carm. 3.5.18–40; Sil. Pun. 6.467–489 —

App. Samn. 10.13–14; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 19.15–18 — cf. Plut. Pyrrh. 18.2–5;

xv

Table of Speeches

Interpretative Functions

Select Discussions

See pp. Below

introduces central themes of lying and deception in political oratory

Rich 2019

152–154

sustains focus on above; rejects idealising traditions introduces central themes of lack of moderation leading to ruin, and dangers of constitutional change misrepresents rule of the Tarquins; successfully countered by Brutus reflects on danger of dishonest persuasion in political decision-making limited; presents a model of the virtuous use of oratory in political life

Kemezis 2014; Rich 2019

154–156

Fromentin 2016; Burden-Strevens 2020

95–100; 127; 157–159

Fromentin 2016

95–100; 157–159

Fromentin 2016; Burden-Strevens 2020 de Franchis 2016; Fromentin 2016; Rich 2019

95–100; 157–159

highlights central themes of human nature and exemplary self-sacrifice

Oakley 1998; Rees 2011; Jones 2016; Rich 2019

37n.5; 69–70; 146; 161

contrast with Roman imperialism in the Levene 1993; Oakley 2005; Late Republican narrative Rich 2019

34n.125; 94; 122; 159–160

161

model of exemplary self-sacrifice and patriotism; cited as exemplum in later speeches

Millar 1964; Gendre & Loutsch 2001; Rich 2019

demonstrates model of genuine debate on foreign policy, absent from Late Republican books symbolises ideal of Republican virtue; contrast with speeches of dynasts

Lefkowitz 1959; Schettino 2006; 3 Kemezis 2014; Rich 2019

demonstrates model of genuine debate on foreign policy, absent from Late Republican books

Lefkowitz 1959; Schettino 2006; 1–2 Kemezis 2014; Rich 2019

Millar 1964; Fechner 1986; Kemezis 2014; Coudry 2019

160

3–6

xvi

Table of Speeches

(cont.)

Speaker

Location

Subject

Setting

Possible Model

Scipio Aemilianus

frg. 70.2–3

justifying youth seeking office

Livy 26.19.1–2; cf. App. Pun. 112

Anonymus

Zonar. 9.30.7–8

against razing Carthage

Campus Martius (?); to the people to the Senate

Pompeius

36.25–26

refusing power; recusatio imperii

contio at Rome; Cic. Man. 61–62 to the people

Gabinius

36.27–28

Catulus

36.31–36a

in favour of the lex Gabinia against the lex Gabinia

Cicero-Philiscus

38.18–29

consolation on exile

Caesar

38.36–46

harangue on justness of war

contio at Rome; Cic. Man. 27–28 to the people contio at Rome; Cic. Man. 50, to the people 61–62; cf.: Plut. Pomp. 25.5–6; Val. Max. 8.15.9; Vell. Pat. 2.32.1–3 in private in — Macedonia cf. Plut. Mor. 599–607 to lieutenants Caes. B. Gall. 1.40; at Vesontio cf. Plut. Caes. 19

Caesar

41.27–34

harangue on to mutineers at App. B. Civ. 2.47; military discipline Placentia Suet. Iul. 69

Caesar-mutineers 42.52–54

dismissal from service

Caesar

to the Senate reassurance; rejects accusation of tyranny

43.15–18

at Rome

— cf. Polyb. 36.2

App. B. Civ. 2.93; Suet. Iul. 70; Plut. Caes. 51; Tac. Ann. 1.42 —

xvii

Table of Speeches

Interpretative Functions

Select Discussions

See pp. Below

direct and deliberate contrast with Pompeius and the lex Gabinia

Moscovich 1992; Urso 2013; Coudry 2019; Rich 2019

162–165; 256–258

final (extant) genuine debate on a foreign policy issue; foreshadows decline in Roman imperialism demonstrates political success of even obvious dissimulation and fraud; foreshadows Octavian’s recusatio in Book 53 represents subordination of tribunate to the political ambitions of dynasts foreshadows consequences of lex Gabinia; reflects on dangers of extraordinary command; shows weakness of traditional arguments for the status quo sole explicit causation for the exile of Cicero; foreshadowing of his death; corrosiveness of licentia explains Senate’s inability to supervise generals; shows interference of selfish aims in imperial policy and success of lies mimics Caesar’s self-justification in the de Bello Civili; characterises Caesar’s greed and cupidity further characterises Caesar as scheming and duplicitous (unique within the tradition)

Hose 1994; Simons 2009; Rees 2011

163–164; 267

Jameson 1970; Vervaet 2010; van der Blom 2011

62; 77–79; 166–169; 201; 258

Montecalvo 2014; Burden-Strevens 2018 Rodgers 2008; Kemezis 2014; Coudry 2016a, 2020; BurdenStrevens 2016, 2019

62–63; 73–76; 169–170; 201 63–69; 85–88; 130; 210–211; 218–219; 259–264; 282–286

Millar 1961; Fechner 1986; Gowing 1998; Rees 2011; Kemezis 2014; Fomin 2015 Hagendahl 1944; Fechner 1986; Lachenaud & Coudry 2011; Rees 2011; Bertrand 2016; Kemezis 2016 Stekelenburg 1976; Chrissanthos 2001

53–60

Fantham 1985; Chrissanthos 2001

105–107

shows necessity of constitutional change: any autocrat in a Republic can only be viewed as a tyrant

Millar 1964; Fechner 1986; Urso 2016b; Welch 2019

174–177; 288–290

100–104; 171–174; 204–205; 219; 235n.144; 265–267 105–107; 125–126; 237

xviii

Table of Speeches

(cont.)

Speaker

Location

Subject

Setting

Possible Model

Cicero

44.23–33

recommending an amnesty

to the Senate

Antonius

44.36–49

funerary laudatio the Forum; to the people for Caesar

Cicero

45.18–47

invective against Antonius

to the Senate

— cf. Cic. Phil. 1.1; Vell. Pat. 2.58.4; Plut. Cic. 42.3 App. B. Civ. 144–146; cf. Cic. Att. 14.10 Cic. Phil. 2, 5, 8

Calenus

46.1–28

invective against Cicero

to the Senate

Cic. Phil. 2, 5, 8; cf.: Cic. Off; [Sall.] Inv. Cic.; Plut. Cic. 41.4

Agrippa

52.2–13

praise of the Republic

Rome; in private to Octavian

— cf. Suet. Aug. 18.1

Maecenas

52.14–40

advice for the ideal monarch

Rome; in private to Octavian

— cf. Suet. Aug. 18.1

Octavian

53.3–10

refusing power; recusatio imperii

to the Senate

Aug. RG. 1–10, 13, 20–25, 34

Livia-Augustus

54.14–21

the value of clemency

Augustus

56.2–9

Tiberius

56.35–41

the Palatine; in — private cf.: Ovid Pont. 2.7.9; Suet. Aug. 65.2 — marriage and the Forum, procreation to some equestrians funerary laudatio Rome; to the — for Augustus people cf. Suet. Aug. 100.3

xix

Table of Speeches

Interpretative Functions

Select Discussions

See pp. Below

highlights lost potential of oratory as positive force, and prevalence of tyranny and violent usurpation

Fechner 1986; Montecalvo 2014; Burden-Strevens 2018

6–9; 202–204; 228; 290–293

successfully misrepresents Caesar’s career; reverses benefit of Cicero’s speech; causes renewed stasis contrasts unrestrained invective in Republic with constructive freedom of speech under Augustus lists reasons for which Cicero could not effectively defend the status quo

Kennedy 1968; Gowing 1992; Welch 2019

7–9; 205–206; 237–242

Fromentin & Bertrand 2008; Montecalvo 2014; Mallan 2016; Burden-Strevens 2018 Gabba 1955; Fromentin & Bertrand 2008; Stone 2008; Montecalvo 2014; Mallan 2016; Burden-Strevens 2018; Welch 2019 Millar 1964; McKechnie 1981; ironically summarises benefits of Republican government proven false in Ruiz 1981; Horst 2010; Adler 2012; Markov 2013; the preceding narrative; forces reader Ando 2016; Vielberg 2016 to critique the Republic Millar 1964; Ruiz 1981; summarises failures of Republican Dorandi 1985; Horst 2010; government and foreshadows reforms Kuhlmann 2010; Adler 2012; necessary for Augustus’ success Ando 2016; Vielberg 2016 Manuwald 1979; Reinhold shows success of Augustus historical self-justification; final deceptive speech & Swan 1990; Rich 2010; in the Roman History; exposes reliance Vervaet 2010 of regime upon lies and military force defends Augustus’ actions as Octavian; Giua 1981; Rich 1989; Swan predicts mercy as cause of his success; 2004; Dowling 2006; Adler 2011 contrasts him with Sulla

79–84; 91–92; 185–186

Millar 1964; Swan 2004; Kemezis 2007; Fomin 2015, 2016 final summary of reasons for stability of Manuwald 1979; Fechner 1986; Rich 1989; Welch 2019 Augustus’ regime

37n.5; 69–70; 146; 184

limited; notes some specific provisions of lex Iulia; shows ideal ruler

89–92; 185–186

40–45; 99; 124–125; 186; 220–221; 268–269; 295–297 24–26; 45–53; 198; 208–209; 221–223; 264–275; 297–300 108–111; 126; 177–182; 210–212; 224–225; 272–273; 312–313 127; 187–190; 226–227; 310

98–99; 184–185; 307–315

chapter 1

Introduction 1

From One King to Another

By the close of 280 BCE Rome’s first major engagement with the Hellenistic world had taken a sour turn, and her enthusiasm was at a low ebb. Pyrrhus, ruler of the north-western Greek kingdom of Epirus, had invaded Italy under the pretext of defending the Greek-speaking community of Tarentum against Roman aggression. At the Battle of Heraclea he utterly routed the Roman army—thrown into disarray by its first experience against war-elephants— and in the aftermath many allied city-states in southern Italy, sensing a welcome reversal in Rome’s ever-increasing fortunes, defected to his side.1 Rome was ready for a truce.2 The immediate danger to the city itself had passed—after the bloody disaster at Heraclea, both sides manoeuvred and skirmished without a pitched engagement—3 but the threat of a hostile army in southern Italy remained, backed by all the major Hellenistic kingdoms.4 As the campaign season drew to an inconclusive end, Pyrrhus’ envoys arrived in Rome with proposals. His chief ambassador Cineas addressed the Senate, emphasising the generosity of his master’s terms: he had already released, without ransom, the Roman captives taken at Heraclea; he had come not for gain, but in defence of others, and had refrained from loot and sack; and he now proposed a treaty of friendship and alliance, with the promise of much future benefit for both parties.5 Cineas’ persuasion worked. The Senate debated the matter, but most were eager to see it resolved, and were even remarkably pleased; Pyrrhus had sent generous gifts of gold and purple fabrics which delighted the aristocrats (and their wives).6 The debate was turning out just as Pyrrhus had hoped. 1  The account of the Pyrrhic War given here is largely based upon Cass. Dio frg. 40.4–47 and Zonar. 8.2–6, which together represent our fullest surviving ancient treatment of the conflict except for the fragments of Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 19.5.1–20.12.3. Plut. Pyrrh. 13–26 is also useful, as are the fragments of Appian preserved in the Excerpts of Constantine (Samn. 7.1–12.2). The epitomes of Livy (Per. 12.2–14.3), Florus (Epit. 1.18), and Justin (Epit. Phil. 18.1–2) are empty shells and used little here. 2  App. Samn. 10.2; Plut. Pyrrh. 18.5; Zonar. 8.4. 3  Plut. Pyrrh. 17.4–5; Zonar. 8.4. 4  Justin Epit. Phil. 17.2.13–15; 18.2.9. 5  Zonar. 8.4.9–12. 6  Interestingly, Zonaras and Dio are unique in this regard; our other sources claim that the aristocrats refused these bribes (Diod. 22.6.3; Plut. Pyrrh. 18.5; Val. Max. 4.3.14), but as so often the Roman History takes a more cynical (and realistic) view. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_002

2

chapter 1

At that moment, Appius Claudius Caecus was carried in to the chamber. Infirm, blind, and now quite ancient—he had held the censorship over thirty years prior—, he declared his vehement opposition to any treaty with an enemy on Italian soil. Let Pyrrhus sail back home and make his proposals from there, rather than insulting Rome with a smile at the head of an invading army. The terms were specious and not advantageous to the state; Pyrrhus’ advisors should be expelled, and their bribes and attractive words with them.7 The old censor’s speech won the day. In Cassius Dio’s own words (frg. 40.40), the nature of oratory is such, and its power so great, that under its influence even the Romans of that time changed their course to the opposite. Oratory caused hatred and zeal to take the place of fear of Pyrrhus and the previous change of heart invited by his gifts.8 τοιαύτη μὲν ἡ τοῦ λόγου φύσις ἐστὶ καὶ τοσαύτην ἰσχὺν ἔχει ὥστε καὶ ἐκείνους ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τότε μεταβαλεῖν καὶ ἐς ἀντίπαλον καὶ μῖσος καὶ θάρσος τοῦ τε δέους τοῦ Πύρρου καὶ τῆς ἐκ τῶν δώρων αὐτοῦ ἀλλοιώσεως περιστῆναι. With this statement, Cassius Dio transforms the wake of the Battle of Heraclea from a straightforward account of negotiations between two states into an exploration of the dramatic place of public speech within the course of historical events. The debates at Rome in 280 BCE thus assume a programmatic function within the Roman History: they reveal the ambiguous power of oratory. Cineas’ speech had inspired the Romans both with fear and with gratitude for Pyrrhus’ generosity, swaying them to make a decision that was only superficially in their best interests. Caecus, in turn, roused precisely the opposite senti­ment. The power of oratory to stir the emotions leads directly to political decision-making—for good, or for ill—and may be considered in and of itself a direct cause of political action. But that is only part of the story of the aftermath of Heraclea. What so impressed upon Pyrrhus the need to make these overtures in the first place, so soon after the start of the conflict? Certainly the strategic position was a factor. The season had brought victories, but these came at a high cost. It is the Epirote 7  This address was famous in Roman literature and historiography. Several versions of this speech exist: Zonar. 8.4 reports it in indirect statement, while App. Samn. 10.2, Ennius Ann. 199–200, and Plut. Pyrrh. 19.1–3 give dramatic set-pieces. An alleged copy of Caecus’ speech was in circulation in the 1st century CE (Sen. Ep. 114.13; Tac. Dial. 18.4, 21.7). 8  Kemezis 2014, 107 rightly notes the significance of this statement for our understanding of Dio’s view of oratory in the earlier Roman past compared with the decline of the Late Republic.

Introduction

3

king’s success in battle that gives us the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’: when congratulated on his triumph, he famously quipped that another victory would ruin him.9 He had also failed, despite his best attempts, to induce Rome’s allies to defect, and had to retreat to the safety of Tarentum to wait out the winter.10 However, important as they may be these considerations are not the central focus of Cassius Dio’s retelling. Roman prowess in battle impressed Pyrrhus, and Roman manpower too—11 but it was again the force of oratory that swayed him to change course and seek peace with Rome. A Roman embassy had come to Tarentum. Awaiting the deputation there, Pyrrhus had expected the Romans to offer terms of surrender, or to propose such reparations as one would expect from the defeated. He was disappointed. The leader of the embassy, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, began to speak.12 So far from begging for peace, Fabricius simply demanded the return of the Romans captured on the field at Hercalea, and addressed his enemy with curt and rustic simplicity. No mention was made of peace, and no request for it.13 The implication was clear: a resolute people would fight on resolutely. Dumbfounded, Pyrrhus retreated to his quarters alongside his advisors, Cineas and Milo, to take their advice. Would it be worthwhile to pursue further any enterprise in the face of such implacable Roman virtus? Both put forward extensive speeches arguing their case for and against continuing the conflict, but Cineas, who was impressed by the Romans’ severity, succeeded in advocating peace.14 At this point, Pyrrhus addressed himself to Fabricius directly. Would he not switch sides, help him to secure peace with Rome, and accept an honoured position as his counsellor and general? A king’s friendship would bring kingly 9  Cassius Dio attributes the bon mot to Pyrrhus after Heraclea (frg. 40.19), but Plutarch after the Battle of Asculum in the following year (Pyrrh. 21.9). 10  Our ancient sources give slightly different accounts of Pyrrhus’ movements after the battle. Cf. App. Samn. 10.3; Flor. Epit. 1.18.24; Zonar. 8.4. 11  Hence the (also famous) dictum that the decimated Roman legions were “growing back like hydras”. Cassius Dio gives this quip unequivocably to the king (frg. 40.28), Plutarch to his advisor Cineas (Pyrrh. 19.5), and Appian states both possibilities (Samn. 10.3). 12  Here again our sources disagree. All state that there were two embassies after the Battle of Heraclea: one of Fabricius to Pyrrhus at Tarentum, the other of Cineas to the Senate at Rome. The version given here places Fabricius’ visit first, followed by Cineas’ journey to Rome (so Justin Epit. Phil. 18.2.4–5; Livy Per. 13.3–6; Zonar. 8.4). Plutarch, however, reverses the order (Pyrrh. 18.2–6). 13  Cass. Dio frg. 40.30. 14  Much of this is lost, but Cass. Dio frg. 40.31 preserves the closing part of Cineas’ direct speech; Zonar. 8.4 confirms that Milo began the debate in Dio’s original. The altercation between Pyrrhus’ advisors appears uniquely in the Roman History; Dionysius of Halicarnassus merely mentions that the king took the advice of his friends (Ant. Rom. 19.13.7).

4

chapter 1

rewards.15 Again, Fabricius’ response was a disappointment. Rejecting the proposal (and the bribe) outright, he reflected at length on the virtues of duty to country and the vices of greed and ambition (frg. 40.36–37): Actually, since you call me your friend, I would even happily give you some of my own riches. For they are much more secure and enduring than yours, and no one resents or plots against them—neither populations nor tyrants. And most importantly of all, every person increases these riches the more that they share in them. But what are these riches I am talking about? I mean: enjoying everything one has as if it were infinite; keeping one’s hands off of the possessions of others as if they were accursed; wronging no-one, and doing good to everyone. I would add more, if I were less busy. ὥστ᾽ ἔγωγε ἡδέως ἄν σοι, ἐπειδὴ καὶ φίλος μοι φὴς εἶναι, ἐκ τοῦ ἐμαυτοῦ τι πλούτου χαρισαίμην· πολλῷ γάρ τοι καὶ ἀσφαλέστερος καὶ ἀθανατώτερός ἐστι τοῦ σοῦ, καὶ οὔτε τις αὐτῷ φθονεῖ οὔτε τις ἐπιβουλεύει, οὐ δῆμος, οὐ τύραννος· καὶ τὸ μέγιστον, ὅσῳ τις ἂν αὐτοῦ πλείοσι μεταδιδῷ, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ μεῖζον αὔξεται. τίς οὖν οὗτός ἐστιν; τὸ τοῖς ὑπάρχουσί τινι ὡς καὶ παμπληθέσιν οὖσιν ἡδέως χρῆσθαι, τὸ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων ὡς καὶ μέγα τι κακὸν ἐχόντων ἀπέχεσθαι, τὸ μηδένα ἀδικεῖν, τὸ πολλοὺς εὐεργετεῖν, ἄλλα μυρία ἃ σχολὴν ἄν τις ἄγων εἴποι. Fabricius’ incorruptibility again dashed Pyrrhus’ hopes. Attempting to suborn the Romans’ ambassador had proven fruitless; the effect of Fabricius’ words, like those of Cineas a moment earlier, was to impress upon the king the need to conclude a treaty as quickly as possible with such an unyielding foe. This is what led to Cineas’ visit to the Senate at Pyrrhus’ behest, and Appius Claudius Caecus’ defiant rejection of the king’s terms. For Cassius Dio, the strategic facts—the disposition of Pyrrhus’ troops, the imperative to seek short-term gains rather than wintering in a foreign land, the Roman advantage in manpower, and so forth—are of secondary importance. What matters here, as Dio will say explicitly himself in the senate-house debates to come, is oratory. Oratory had the power to convince Pyrrhus of what even the facts of Heraclea had not: the game would be up, sooner or later. Speeches mattered— sometimes even more than battles.16 15  Cass. Dio frg. 40.33; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 19.14.1–6. 16  So Plut. Pyrrh. 14.1: “[Cineas] confirmed that old saying of Euripides: namely, that ‘all can be won by eloquence that even the sword of enemies may gain’” (ἐβεβαίου τὸ Εὐριπίδειον, ὅτι ‘πᾶν ἐξαιρεῖ λόγος ὃ καὶ σίδηρος πολεμίων δράσειεν ἄν’).

Introduction

5

The famous conversation between Fabricius and Pyrrhus was already well-established in the Greek tradition of writing Roman history. The mis-en-scène—contrasting the luxury and ambition of a Hellenistic king with the rustic gravity and civic duty of an old-time Roman general—was too satisfying to be omitted. Fabricius is emblematic of a distinctly Roman set of ideas about virtue: severity, rusticity, simplicity, brevity. The opportunity to use this conversation to emblematise the moral rectitude of the early Roman past was not lost on Appian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch,17 long before Dio set his stylus. However, Cassius Dio’s version took little from his predecessors’,18 and it has been rightly said that his vision of Fabricius, “more Stoic than statesman”,19 is used not as a necessarily political reflection but rather as a model of virtue in general. Yet for Cassius Dio (and only Cassius Dio), Fabricius’ virtue is about more than ethics in the sense of individual behaviour. Rather, the old Roman general and the entire narrative of which he is part symbolise a political system where oratory serves the public interest. The account of the aftermath of Rome’s defeat at Heraclea in 280 BCE boasts an exceptional array of speakers—more in one relatively short narrative episode than at any other point in the Roman History—, all of whom are engaged in effective and genuine debate. No one voice commandeers the forum. We thus have, at Tarentum, Fabricius’ terse demand that the Roman soldiers captured in battle be released, the altercation between Pyrrhus’ advisors over whether or not to pursue the war, the king’s personal appeal to the Roman ambassadors and then to Fabricius himself, and Fabricius’ upright and sturdy response. This is followed by the debates in the Senate at Rome, incorporating Cineas’ attractive presentation of his master’s terms, and Appius Claudius Caecus’ emphatic rejection of them. Public speech is the main vehicle of political events, presenting a range of political opinions which are debated on their merit, and Fabricius is the most explicitly virtuous of these. The overall impression, to quote a recent study, is of a decision-making process based on genuine deliberate oratory, where orators,

17  App. Samn. 10.4; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 19.15–18.8; Plut. Pyrrh. 20.8–9. 18  Good comparisons of Dio’s version with those of our other sources are given in Coudry 2019 and Rich 2019. Our historian probably used Dionysius’ as a model—those of Appian and Plutarch were too brief for this purpose—but reworked the content substantially. Recognition of Dio’s debt to Dionysius as a literary model is now coming to light: see for example Fromentin 2016. 19  Coudry 2019.

6

chapter 1

advocating courses of action in which they believe for the public good, elicit effective and positive action.20 Almost two and a half centuries after Pyrrhus’ invasion, a battle of a very different sort had reached its bloody conclusion, and renewed fighting was about to begin. There had been only one casualty—the dictator, Gaius Julius Caesar—, yet his death had just as dramatic an impact on the history of the Roman Republic as all the fallen at Heraclea. In the immediate aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, the civic heart of the city of Rome was being divided into (literally) two camps. The tyrannicides, the self-professed “liberators” of their patria, marched from Caesar’s mutilated body to the Capitol and barricaded themselves in; the next day they went down to the Forum and addressed the populus in praise of their deed, before retreating again.21 That night, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus—former ally of the late dictator and future triumvir—occupied the Forum with his troops and, in the morning, delivered an address of a very different sort, excoriating Caesar’s assassins.22 Overlooking the Forum from the temporary safety of the Capitoline, the tyrannicides must have been able to hear Lepidus’ speech against them. The effect must have been chilling and vital. The next day, Marcus Tullius Cicero rose to speak in the precinct of Tellus (44.25.1–4). Can’t you see what has happened? The Roman people are being yet again divided and ripped apart. While some are choosing this side and others that side, they are already being divided into two parties and two camps. The one faction have seized the Capitoline as if they’re afraid of the Gauls or something, and the other faction are preparing to besiege them from the Forum as if they were Carthaginians rather than Romans. Haven’t you heard that even though our ancestors were oftentimes so at loggerheads with each other as to occupy the Aventine or the Capitoline—and some of them even the Sacred Mount—, still, when they were reconciled on equal terms, or when they each compromised a little with one another, 20  Magisterially, Kemezis 2014, 107. As Rich 2019 has recently shown, the contrast between Dio’s use of speeches in the early books compared with the Late Republican sections is not quite as sharp as Kemezis suggests, at least on the level of distribution and quant­ ity, and as we will see in Chapter 3 (‘Oratory’) Dio’s early Republican orators can lie and mislead just as successfully as those of the later books. Fromentin 2019 has rightly noted the importance of Kemezis’ discussion for our understanding of the early decads of the Roman History and Chapter 3 is much indebted to his approach. 21  App. B Civ. 2.120–123; Cass. Dio 44.21.1–3; Plut. Iul. 67.3–7. 22  Cass. Dio 44.22.2. Our other sources omit the speech of Lepidus.

Introduction

7

they immediately stopped hating each other? And that, in peace and harmony, they carried on the remainder of their lives in such a way that they won many wars together? ἦ οὐχ ὁρᾶτε μὲν τὰ γιγνόμενα, καὶ ὅτι διαιρεῖταί τε καὶ περισπᾶται ὁ δῆμος αὖθις, καὶ οἱ μὲν ταῦτα οἱ δὲ ἐκεῖνα προαιρούμενοι διχῇ τε ἤδη νενέμηνται καὶ διχῇ στρατοπεδεύονται, καὶ οἱ μὲν τὸ Καπιτώλιον προκατειλήφασιν ὥσπερ τινὰς Γαλάτας φοβούμενοι, οἱ δὲ ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς πολιορκεῖν αὐτοὺς παρασκευάζονται καθάπερ Καρχηδόνιοί τινες ἀλλ᾽ οὐ Ῥωμαῖοι καὶ αὐτοὶ ὄντες; οὐκ ἀκούετε δὲ ὅτι καὶ πρότερον πολλάκις διχογνωμονησάντων τινῶν ὥστε καὶ τὸν Ἀουεντῖνόν ποτε καὶ τὸ Καπιτώλιον, ἔστι δ᾽ οὓς αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν ὄρος κατασχεῖν, ὁσάκις μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἴσοις, ἢ καὶ βραχύ τι συγχωρήσαντες οἱ ἕτεροι τοῖς ἑτέροις, κατηλλάγησαν, μισοῦντές τε ἀλλήλους εὐθὺς ἐπαύσαντο, καὶ ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ ὁμονοίᾳ τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ χρόνου διήγαγον οὕτως ὥστε καὶ πολλοὺς καὶ μεγάλους πολέμους κοινῇ κατορθῶσαι; Unlike the private conversation between Fabricius and Pyrrhus, the ‘Amnesty speech’ of Cicero on March 17th 44 BCE is a verifiable historical event.23 If Cicero published it, no vestige of it now survives; the version of it that Cassius Dio wrote for his Book 44, above, is the closest we will come to the orator’s actual words.24 But the strategy worked. The tyrannicide and Caesarian factions were indeed stirred by Cicero’s sentiments to reach a compromise: the former would ratify Caesar’s acts, and do no harm to his adherents; the latter gave the same undertaking, and handed over the son of Lepidus and the son of Antonius as a promise of good behaviour.25 Cicero’s speech on the Amnesty of 44 BCE—at least in the Roman History—had saved the Republic. But the reprieve was illusory. In Dio’s account, Marcus Antonius is made to undo Cicero’s work within a matter of hours. The people, initially pleased to be free of the dictator, were roused to indignation by the generosity of his will toward them. Anger at his loss was mounting.26 Sensing the potential, Antonius brought Caesar’s corpse, still covered with blood and gaping wounds, into the 23  Cic. Phil. 1.1; Att. 14.10, 14.14. Cf. Plut. Cic. 42; Vell. Pat. 2.58.4. 24  See Burden-Strevens 2018 for the case in favour of the historicity of Dio’s ‘Amnesty speech’ of Cicero. 25  Cass. Dio 44.34.1–6. App. B Civ. 2.133–135 in fact gives the credit for the reconciliation of the two sides to Antonius, not to Cicero, whose encomium on amnesty is only mentioned after it was already a fait accompli (2.142). Consequently the two sources give quite radic­ ally different accounts both of Cicero’s prominence in these proceedings and of the sincerity of Antonius’ desire for peace and stability in the short term. 26  App. B Civ. 2.143; Cass. Dio 44.35.2–3; Plut. Iul. 68.1–2.

8

chapter 1

Forum and exposed it to the people. Standing over it, he began to address the assembled crowd. The funeral oration that Dio places into Antonius’ mouth is calculated to exert the maximum possible damage. Caesar’s virtues were unparalleled; all his campaigns had been in the service of the people, and not himself; his treatment of Rome’s allies was unimpeachable; he grieved bitterly for the death of his dear, dear friend, Pompeius Magnus; he was wholly innocent in the recent civil war; and the responsibility for it lay firmly with those who had just come down from the Capitoline.27 Dio’s Antonius reaches his peroration. “And now you lie slaughtered in the Forum where you so often proceeded in the triumphal crown! stabbed to death, you have been cast down upon the rostra where you so often addressed the people! alas for your bloodied grey hair, alas for your tattered toga!”.28 Of course, the reader of the Roman History knows that Antonius has deliberately misrepresented most aspects of Caesar’s career: the entire speech is a cynical lie. But it served Antonius’ purpose. Immediately, the assembled throng became enraged. They seized the dictator’s corpse and burned it upon a pyre on the spot, in the Forum; the surrounding buildings were narrowly saved. People were thrown from the slopes of the Capitoline. Hunting for the tyrannicides in the hope of vengeance, the enraged mob mistakenly killed aristocrats unfortunate enough to have names similar to those of the assassins.29 When the panic had subsided, it was deemed prudent to entrust the ratification of Caesar’s acts and all the related paperwork to Antonius, in an effort to save the terms of the Amnesty. The crisis had added significantly to his personal power as a dynast,30 and he would continue to wield that power for a further thirteen years of civil war. Antonius’ speech undid at a stroke the knot Cicero had worked so hard to bind. Apart from the basic skeleton of historical events, the entire scenario depicting the aftermath of the Ides is Dio’s own invention. In the Roman History, the sequence of events in March 44 BCE is wholly dependent upon two highly developed set-piece speeches which function as a pair: Cicero arguing for 27  Cass. Dio 44.36–49. These arguments are noticeably different from the less inflammatory (but equally gloomy) funeral oration given by Antonius at App. B Civ. 2.144–146, and again Dio treats the consul as more cynical and mendacious than Appian. 28  Cass. Dio 44.49.3–4. 29  App. B Civ. 2.147; Cass. Dio 44.50.1–4; Plut. Iul. 68.1–7; Suet. Iul. 85.1. Cf. Cic. Att. 14.14, who laments that Atticus’ prediction had come true: a public funeral for Caesar would have disastrous consequences. 30  Our sources are certainly not silent on this. Cicero complains repeatedly about the powers given to Antonius as consul in the weeks following Caesar’s assassination, especially his misuse of his documents and acta (Att. 14.12, 14.13, 14.14, 14.21; cf. Phil. 2.97, 2.100).

Introduction

9

reconciliation, and Antonius undoing it. Whether they were actually delivered as presented in the story told by Dio is not quite the point. We cannot verify Dio’s source for Cicero’s oration on the Amnesty, and he gives Antonius a long funeral speech where earlier sources were more laconic or even denied its existence.31 But the speeches are so relevant to the specific historical situation, and so integral within Dio’s interpretation of how and why it transpired, that the narrative would fail utterly without them. We are evidently in a very different Rome to the one Fabricius refused to abandon after Heraclea. Multi-part debates with a genuine deliberative purpose have given way to lengthy monologues which subordinate the fora of public debate to the whims of individual statesmen. Persuasion in the interest of motivating effective political action has ceased to operate: Cicero’s last defence of the res publica, though far more successful than other speeches of its type, is still easily thwarted by yet another dynast. Though paired, the orations of Cicero and Antonius are not a debate: they pull in opposite directions without addressing one another in a manner conducive to the public good. And so far from defending the interests of a free Republic, public speech has become a means to conceal one’s private attempts to subvert it. For Cassius Dio, the story of the decline of the Roman Republic is, equally, the story of the decline in Roman oratory. 2

Speechwriting and the Historian

The purpose of this book is to explore that story, and in so doing to underline the fundamental importance of speeches within Cassius Dio’s explanatory method. Dio consciously used the formal orations throughout his Republican narrative, from its inception in Book 3 to its end in Book 53, as a medium of historical analysis and explanation. Necessarily, public speech therefore also becomes a driving force in his causation of the decline of the libera res publica and the changing character of public speech a significant historical problem in and of itself. The most basic premise of this book is that to identify and understand Cassius Dio’s original interpretation of the end of the Republic, we have to read the speeches with great care. Indeed, it is principally in these compositions—and not, surprisingly, in the narrative—that the key to his interpretation can be found. They are extended loci of political, philosophical, 31  Suetonius (Iul. 84.2) incorrectly writes that Antonius did not give a laudatio, instead simply ordering that the Senate’s decree on reconciliation and amnesty be read out and adding a very few words. But Cicero (Att. 14.10) clearly states that a moving laudatio was given.

10

chapter 1

and theoretical reflection which interact in a deliberate way both with the narrative that surrounds them and indeed with each other. Accordingly these set-pieces create meaningful sequences of events, foreshadow or reflect on their causes, and in short hold together the entire story-arc of the Roman History. This conclusion should not necessarily come as a surprise in view of ancient discussions of the role of rhetoric in history-writing, and in view of recent studies of the use of speeches in the major historians.32 However, the ancient authors themselves could not agree definitively on the use of speeches. At the one extreme, such material could be used to inject high rhetorical drama into the narrative for purely literary effect, showing off the historian’s mastery of the compositional art and devoid of an explanatory purpose. This is certainly the role advocated by the prolific satirist Lucian, who speaks of historiographical speeches as “the freedom to play the orator and show off the dazzle of your words”.33 So Lucian characterises the function of speeches in an historical work as a playground for the use of elegant sophistries.34 Similarly, Quintilian’s concerns are basically stylistic rather than interpretative: he praises historians for the vividness, emotion, and lofty imagination of their speeches, but not for the value of these in the historical analysis.35 Diodorus of Sicily’s prescriptions are virtually identical. In Diodorus’ view speech was an ornament—useful for enlivening and variegating the narrative, nothing more—and he excuses himself for indulging in the opportunity to enjoy it. If we take Diodorus at his word, some readers evidently found these bravura displays rather tedious; so much so, in fact, that they deliberately skipped them and read only the narrative.36 The claim of this book is that reader who skipped the speeches in the Roman History would not have understood it. Dio’s use of formal orations stands in sharp contrast to the epideictic tastes of Lucian, Quintilian, and Diodorus. Indeed, his deployment of such material—to interpret and explain the causes of specific events and the decline of the libera res publica in the round—is far closer to the approach advocated by Polybius, who wrote over four centuries prior, than to the Imperial theorists of historiographical rhetoric. In a 32  See for example Marincola 2007, 119, where one recognised function of speeches in historio­graphy can be to serve as “abstract analysis of the underlying issues at stake in actions that were seen as important or distinctive … political, almost philosophical, analyses in miniature”. It is important to note that most studies of the speeches in Cassius Dio explicitly deny that they fulfilled the purpose outlined by Marincola; see further below within this section. Woodman 1988 is a now-classic treatment of the rhetorical formation of classical historiogaphy. 33  Lucian Hist. Consc. 58. Compare Quint. Inst. Or. 10.101.1, where the same point is made. 34  So Fomin 2016, 224n.12. 35  Quint. Inst. Or. 10.101–104. 36  Diod. 20.1–2.

Introduction

11

celebrated passage, Polybius castigates his predecessor Timaeus for all the faults in his use of speeches, and intimately connects this task to the proper work of the good historian. In Polybius’ opinion the author should not use such compositions for the purpose of “showing off his oratorical power”; this advice is the direct opposite of Lucian’s, and Diodorus’ too. Rather, for Polybius the purpose of speech is to “ascertain the reason why what was done or spoken led to failure or success”. The formal orations are thus connected inextricably to the interpretation and explanation of the causes of events, and in consequence to the didactic purpose of history: “for when we add the cause of a thing, the study of history becomes fruitful”. In short, for Polybius it is the speeches which “sum up events and hold the whole history together” (ἃ σχεδὸν ὡς εἰ κεφάλαια τῶν πράξεών ἐστι καὶ συνέχει τὴν ὅλην ἱστορίαν).37 Evidently rhetoric in classical historiography provoked a range of attitudes, and it is a mistake to treat any one author’s method as representative. Unfortunately, no methodological statement of this type survives in Dio’s Roman History. At no point does the narrator explain his approach to speeches like Thucydides, Polybius, or Diodorus. Here there are two possibilities: either no such statement was made, or it was included in one of the lost portions of the text, most probably the Preface.38 In ancient (certainly Greek) history-writing, the opening Preface served as the programmatic locus par excellence: here the author could explain his view of the particular virtue of History, inveigh against the failures of his predecessors, advocate his own distinctive method, and survey a range of recurring themes or factors of history which would be integral to the exposition to follow.39 From Dio’s programmatic statement on “the particular nature and the great power of oratory” in the aftermath of Heraclea (τοιαύτη μὲν ἡ τοῦ λόγου φύσις ἐστὶ καὶ τοσαύτην ἰσχὺν ἔχει),40 we might infer that he gave some discussion to speech-writing in the Preface. However, almost all of Dio’s Preface is lost. A recent study has tried to negotiate this difficulty by reinterpreting the opening vestiges of the Roman History (frg. 1.2), arguing that Dio did indeed make a methodological statement about 37  Polyb. 12.25a–25b. Cf. Thuc. 1.22. For analysis of Polyb. 12.25 in particular, see Wiater 2014. Importantly, for the relationship between Polybius’ speeches and his historical narrative in general, see also Wiater 2010. 38  On which see the excellent discussion in Fromentin 2013. Making use of Zonaras and Dio’s intertextual clues, Fromentin suggests persuasively that Dio’s preface will have contained a periodisation of Roman history into four major eras of βασιλεία, δημοκρατία, δυναστεία, and μοναρχία (as Appian and Tacitus). There is, however, no comment here on the use of speeches. 39  E.g. App. Praef.; Dion Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.1–8; Polyb. 1.1–15, 3.1–32; Sall. Cat. 1–4; Tac. Ann. 1.1–4. 40  Cass. Dio frg. 40.40.

12

chapter 1

the formal orations in his introduction. Apparently, he emphasised an explicit contrast between the diction of his speeches on the one hand and the diction of the narrative on the other, with competing claims to accuracy and truthfulness in each.41 On this reading the speeches—in ornate style—were the “epideictic ornamentation”, and the narrative—in plain style—was the “factual and analytic core”.42 But the Greek of the relevant passage does not in fact draw this contrast, and the proposed reinterpretation (though attractive) puts words into the historian’s mouth. The lack of an explicit methodology in the Preface or elsewhere means that we have to divine the role envisaged for speeches in the Roman History for ourselves. Modern attempts at doing so have tended to find these compositions wanting at best and useless at worst. Although the first major modern study of the text—Fergus Millar’s 1964 monograph—treated it with markedly more sympathy than much earlier work, his overall assessment was withering: “Dio’s speeches carry further the tendency towards generality and lack of apposite detail which characterises his History as a whole … in general their interest must lie not in what they can contribute to historical knowledge, but in the insight they can give into the mind of a senator writing under the Severi”.43 This deadening view has been much cited and influenced Dio scholarship without challenge until the 2010s. The overall impression is of “a rhetorician, eager to show off his skills, and the political moralist”.44 One interpretation of the lex Gabinia debates of Book 36 concludes that “Dio’s choices of speakers and occasions often serve his philosophical or moralising agenda better than they serve history”.45 Apparently, the speeches rarely move beyond the commonplace, were indebted to conventional tropes drawn from the Imperial schools of rhetoric, and served little function in the Roman History beyond advertising the cultural prestige of their author and lending drama to the narrative.46 That view has enjoyed a currency far wider than its merit. In very recent years a few short but important studies have rightly challenged that position, making special case studies of the lex Gabinia debate and 41  Fomin 2016, 227–230 for the argument in the round. 42  Fomin 2016, 229 for the explicit contrast between ornamental speeches and analytic diegesis. 43  Millar 1964, 83. My emphasis. 44  Rich 1989, 89. 45  Rodgers 2008, 297. 46  This view has long been predominant. To focus only on a range of studies produced across the last half century, see for example: Millar 1961; Millar 1964; Reardon 1971; Stekelenburg 1971; McKechnie 1981; Reinhold 1988; Lintott 1997; Rodgers 2008; Fomin 2015, 2016.

Introduction

13

Caesar’s address to his mutinying troops at Vesontio (Besançon), both in the fourth decad.47 However, these excellent analyses have been confined to individual rhetorical episodes rather than developing a broader survey of the Roman History’s use of speeches in the round, as this book proposes. Moreover, scepticism about the historical value of these compositions continues today even in spite of useful recent findings. To paraphrase a most recent discussion, Dio apparently used the speeches as epideictic ornamentation instead of an instrument of historical analysis.48 On this view, we can explain the historian’s choices of when and how to include a speech through rhetorical and paideutic considerations, and in any case these compositions, divorced from their proper historical context, could belong anywhere in the narrative; they are like school-exercises.49 This approach restates conclusions that are already a century old.50 Happily, more up-to-date work evinces the growing but still nascent understanding of the formal orations as the key to Dio’s interpretation of historical events.51 This understanding now needs to be developed in order to be of use to traditional historians and students, not only to those who have made Dio’s historiographical method their special interest. What is most fundamentally at stake is that the speeches reflect the quality of Dio as a source in general. The apparent tendency of the speeches toward moralising banalities with no real connection to the historical events of their dramatic context has been attributed, wrongly, to the historian’s interpretative and narrative skill in the round.52 This is of profound importance to Roman historians. The Roman History is by a substantial margin our most detailed surviving historiographical source for the most dramatic decades of the history of 47  See the excellent studies in Kemezis 2016; Coudry 2016a. Other important recent studies of individual speeches include Markov 2013; Davenport & Mallan 2014; Mastrorosa 2014, although these focus on the historian’s (often contemporary) political views rather than the speeches as a medium for historical analysis of the Republican context. 48  Fomin 2015, 237. 49  Fomin 2015, 220–221. Cf. Millar 1964, 79 and Kemezis 2007, 275, the latter with a more nuanced and careful treatment in general. 50  E.g. Burgess 1902; Vlachos 1905; Rice Holmes 1911. 51  So Fromentin 2019, 49–50, summarising Burden-Strevens 2015a: “les analyses abstraits et les γνῶμαι contenues dans les discours fournissent les clés d’interprétation des événements.” 52  Millar 1964, 83 explicitly treats the poverty of the formal orations as representative of the history as a whole. This view continues to exert an influence. For example, see Lintott 1997 for a survey of Dio’s errors of fact and interpretation, with marked emphasis at 2498– 2503 on the scepticism with which Dio’s account should be treated because of its highly rhetor­ical flair; Lintott does not mention that the same can be said of Thucydides, Sallust, Tacitus and all the rest. The rhetorical packaging continues to make scholars wary of its contents, e.g. Gowing 1992; Rodgers 2008; Fomin 2015, 2016.

14

chapter 1

the res publica. The direct tradition—that is, the historian’s own words, largely untampered with and unmediated—begins at 69 BCE in Book 36 and ends two decads later with the death of Augustus in 14 CE. This detailed narrative can be exceptionally useful for our reconstruction of this period, provided that historians understand how the text works in historiographical terms: simply put, how and why Dio wrote what he did. This applies not only to the direct tradition, but to the entirety of the Republican narrative, from its beginning in Book 3 onward. For the earlier history of the Republic until his text breaks off with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE, Dio was evidently independent of both Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.53 He produced a distinctive re-working of both Latin and Greek traditions for the earlier history of Rome, shaping it to reflect his particular interests and occasionally providing information wholly new within the tradition and unique to the Roman History.54 In the recounting of all of these events, Dio devoted vast attention and labour to the place of oratory: for example, almost a quarter of Books 36–56 consists of speech.55 To understand his interpretation of the rise and collapse of the Roman Republic, it is necessary to follow Diodorus’ advice and read the speeches as integral parts of the historical narrative, not to skip them. 3

Cassius Dio and the Decline of the Republic

Yet it is curious that Cassius Dio never explains a grand or coherent theoretical framework for that process in his own narrator-voice. The long decline of the Republic into factional strife and eventually civil war followed by the rise of Augustus’ Principate was evidently the central theme of the Roman History, as has been repeatedly shown;56 but Dio the Historian seems at first glance largely silent on how that process was achieved. Looking largely at the narrative alone, Fergus Millar argued that Dio appears to have conceived of no 53  Cornell 1995, 3n.6. Excellent recent surveys in Urso 2016 and Urso 2019 demonstrate Dio’s independence from Livy in the first three decads, suggesting ample use of pre-Livian sources for Rome’s earliest centuries. 54  For recent studies, see the collected chapters in Burden-Strevens & Lindholmer 2019. See also Simons 2009 with a heavier emphasis on source-criticism. 55  Swan 2004, 26: “the fact that speeches occupy about a quarter of Dio’s fully extrant books (36–54) indicates how fundamental a constituent of historiography he deemed them to be.” 56  Most recently in Madsen 2020, although the central place of the Republican narrative and transition to Principate within the Roman History has long been recognised; see for example Swan 1997.

Introduction

15

explicit framework of causation for explaining the events that he relates. This view is not usually challenged.57 However, if we incorporate the speeches into our analysis, a very different picture emerges. It is a mistake to look for Dio’s distinctive contribution to our understanding of Republican history in the narrative alone—that is, the supposedly “factual and analytic core”. Rather it is the speeches that are the main vehicle of Dio’s explanation for the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and the point at which the key factors of his history are most elaborately articulated. These factors straddle four main explanatory axes. In sum these four axes constitute Cassius Dio’s causal interpretation of the transition from Republic to monarchy, and will be the principal focus of this book. In each one of these four causes of the decline of the libera res publica, speeches were an essential instrument in the historian’s analytical technique. First and foremost there was the problem of rhetoric itself, as we have already seen. Cassius Dio explored the moral ambiguity of public speech more fully than any other surviving historian of Rome, and used the formal orations to connect this issue intimately to the eventual failure of the Republic. In the account of its last decades in particular (Books 36–53), it is evident that Dio presents all public speech as either corrupt or ineffective. The historian achieves this by creating direct and often explicit contradictions between the claims of his speakers and the observations of the authoritative narrator. Importantly, this holds just as true for statesmen who seek to preserve the traditional order as for those who seek to overturn it. At points of major constitutional crisis, the Roman History stages grand interventions from well-meaning but critically misguided statesmen: to Cicero’s dramatic appeal for an amnesty shortly after the Ides of March we may add the warning of Quintus Lutatius Catulus the Younger about the growing power of Pompeius, or Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa’s last ditch attempt to save the Republic after the defeat of Antonius and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.58 In each case the orator praises the vision of a res publica that simply does not exist in the historian’s narrative: like Cato,

57  Millar 1964, 115: “the long years of working through the whole of Roman history brought Dio to formulate no general historical views whatsoever … the opinions he expresses are therefore incidental, and largely called into existence by the demands of literary form.” Cf. Kemezis 2014, 93, who takes a more nuanced approach but remains reserved: “Dio seldom if ever applies to any one incident the analytical acumen of a Polybius or a Thucydides, and he does not show the talent those historians do for condensing complex stretches of history into a compelling framework of causal explanation.” 58  Cass. Dio 36.31–36.4, 44.23–33.5, 52.2–13.7.

16

chapter 1

they speak as if they were in the Republic of Plato, not the cesspit of Romulus.59 Their attempts fail miserably. In contrast, attempts to misguide the populus are consistently successful—with disastrous consequences for the Republic. Dio’s especial interest in the ambiguous power of oratory may not surprise, and could be attributed simply to imitation of one of his literary models. Historians had always theorised on this topic. In a celebrated passage during his account of the political upheaval at Corcyra (Corfu), Thucydides famously argued that in times of civil strife, words change their meanings: regardless of their stripe, all factions declare fair and specious motives to mask their greed and ambition.60 Tacitus evokes a similar idea, and in his Annals uses oratory to lay bare the fundamental paradox of the Imperial regime: in creating the illusion of libertas, Tacitus’ speakers merely emphasise the reality of Julio-Claudian despotism.61 However, Cassius Dio radically expanded the importance of this theme and applied it for the first time to the historiography of the Roman Republic. Livy, Sallust, and Appian have nothing comparable to the Roman History as far as the corrosive impact of rhetoric on public life is concerned; they show little interest in the misleading power of speech. Dio, on the other hand, correctly recognised that oratory played a destructive part in the story of the Republic in its own right. Moreover, this book shows that his awareness of the moral ambiguity of rhetoric emerged not only from his imitatio Thucydidis—influence though this no doubt was—but from a dissatisfaction and even anxiety with those who, in his own time, laid specious claims to cultural and intellectual authority.

59  Greenhalgh 1980, 88 on the oration of Catulus against the lex Gabinia. Of course this effect is deliberate, and it is the historian’s intention to characterise the speaker in this way. For Cato, cf. Cic. Att. 2.1.8. 60  Thuc. 3.82. The bibliography on the relationship between Dio and Thucydides is considerable. Much work has traditionally been devoted to linguistic study of the verbal parallels between the pair, especially in the 19th century: e.g. Melber 1891; Litsch 1893; Kyhnitzsch 1894; Vlachos 1905. In the ensuing century Dio’s imitatio Thucydidis came to be seen often as a problematic aspect of his work (i.e. striving for the display of erudition and rhetorical effect) and as a reason to treat it with scepticism, e.g. Millar 1964, 42; Manuwald 1979, 280–284; Lintott 1997, 2499–2502. Returning to this question, Rees 2011 has shown the fundamental importance of Thucydides within Cassius Dio’s approach to human nature; further discussion in Chapter 4 (‘Morality’). 61  Though common in the opening sections of Tacitus’ historical works (Ann. 1.1–11; Hist. 1.1), this theme is most fully explored in the Dialogue on Oratory (see especially 20–32). But there are important differences between Cassius Dio and Tacitus. Tacitus treats the advent of the Principate as a cause of the decline of rhetoric. Cassius Dio was certainly aware of this perspective (see 53.19), but in an important difference locates the degener­ ation within the lifetime of the Republic itself.

Introduction

17

The second of Dio’s four explanatory axes is morality and ethics. Here the historian was evidently indebted to the Roman historiographical tradition of moral decline, yet refocussed it in a radical way. For Latin authors, the moral and therefore political degeneration of the Roman Republic was expressed in two causes and two turning-points. The first of these was the proliferation of decadence and greed (luxuria atque avaritia), directly facilitated by the accumulation of private wealth from empire. Both Livy and Sallust link these vices to Rome’s increasing contacts with Asia Minor: as wealth poured in from the decadent Greek East, it infected the character of the individual.62 Yet secondly, the blessings of the Republic’s success also corrupted the character of the community as a whole. Both Sallust and Tacitus treat the fall of Carthage as a watershed moment: in 146 BCE Rome’s great enemy was finally destroyed. No longer united by the fear of a common enemy (metus hostilis), the scions of Romulus became as fratricidal as their great progenitor.63 Cassius Dio’s moral framework for the decline of the Republic is rather different. He was certainly aware of the Latin tradition and could not ignore it: the destruction of Carthage gets a mention,64 while the themes of decadence and greed are more significantly elaborated.65 Yet unlike Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus, Dio’s ethical framework focusses above all on Rome’s constitution and its susceptibility to external pressures. Drawing from arguments grounded in human nature, the historian believed that ‘democracy’ (δημοκρατία)—the Greek translation for the free Republic—66 was inherently flawed. Its most basic characteristics in Greek political philosophy, i.e. equality of political privilege (ἰσομοιρία) and equality before the law (ἰσονομία), were in Dio’s view incompatible with man’s desire to surpass and dominate others. To practice moderation under such a system was only possible for a short time and on the condition that the citizens of this δημοκρατία had but limited access to temptation, resources, and the taste of power.67 To add those ingredients was to apply the necessary stimuli for the system to break down. Vices dormant but ever-present in human nature then burst forth, exacerbated directly by the 62  Livy 36.9; Sall. Cat. 11–12. 63  Sall. Hist. frg. 1.10–13 (1.11–16M); Iug. 41; Tac. Hist. 2.38. See Fechner 1986, 136–154 for Dio’s relationship to the theory of metus hostilis, arguing that he was much indebted to Sallust. For the opposing view, see Hose 1994, 381–405. 64  Zonar. 9.30.7–8. 65   Sion-Jenkis 2000 and Kuhn-Chen 2002 give much discussion of the significance of these moral themes to Dio’s Late Republican narrative, and we will return to these in more detail in Chapter 4 (‘Morality’). 66  Aalders 1986, 296–299; Freyburger-Galland 1997, 116–123. 67  Cass. Dio 44.2, 53.16.

18

chapter 1

competitive system of δημοκρατία: envy, ambition, greed, and cupidity were both caused by the system and destroyed it in turn. In Dio’s view, only a change of constitution—the end of the Republic and the return of monarchy—could save Rome from itself, as the speeches of the Augustan narrative demonstrate. In the Roman History, the moral degeneration of the res publica is intimately connected to the Republican constitution itself, and not merely to the growth of empire as in the Latin tradition. A third and related explanatory lens which Dio holds up to the failure of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ rule is political institutions. His marked preoccupation with the institutions of the res publica and the corrosive effect of those institutions upon political culture is especially distinctive in the historiography of the Roman Republic, and has much to teach us. Recent work has shown the importance of Cassius Dio as a source for Rome’s political institutions—especially the magistracies—and his value in providing new information on this topic otherwise unknown within the tradition.68 In particular, the historical narrative of the city’s earliest centuries in the first two decads of the work is rich in detailed explanations of the functions and origins of the Roman magistracies.69 Yet it is in the speeches that Dio gives some of his fullest analysis of the complex and often dramatic relationship between the fragility of the Republican constitution and the political institutions which diffused its centres of power. Similarly, these speeches also set out the historian’s vision of the proper functioning of the ideal monarchy (that is, Augustus’) and how the reform of Rome’s institutions would lead to political stability. Dio’s theoretical reflection on this subject is ambitious, and is by no means restricted only to the regular magistracies (the cursus honorum). The speeches written for Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus during the narrative of the Punic Wars in the second decad, for example, explore the problems of prorogation and extra-ordinary and extra-legal positions of command; these issues will later receive even more detailed treatment in the lex Gabinia debates of Book 36.70 The dictatorship—Rome’s supreme emergency magistracy, tenable only under specific restrictions—is extensively problematised in the speeches, and Dio (uniquely) explores the dictatorship as a key factor in the Republic’s failure to manage its empire and as a practical justification for Augustus’ rule.71 68  The fullest treatment of this subject is Urso 2005, with special attention paid to the fragments of the Early Republic. 69  Urso 2016a; Urso 2019. 70  Cass. Dio frg. 70.2–3. 71  See Burden-Strevens 2019 for a more developed argument on this point than the one pursued here, including analysis of the numismatic evidence for the 50s BCE in connection with Pompeius’ possible ambitions for a dictatorship.

Introduction

19

Moreover, the enormous Agrippa-Maecenas debate of Book 52 clearly serves as the historian’s final and summative reflection on all the institutional failings of the old res publica, before explaining the success of Augustus’ programme of reforms to the architecture of provincial government and the composition and role of the Senate.72 Dio was not merely a source for Rome’s political institutions but rather a genuine theorist of them, and the formal orations played a critical part in that undertaking. Fourth and finally, there was the problem of Empire itself. Writing in the early 3rd century CE, Cassius Dio took a dim view of imperial expansion in general: he praises Augustus for arresting the hitherto rapid advance of Rome’s borders and opposes in frank terms further expansion in his own Severan day.73 His concern for the Severan age is principally the waste of manpower and resources involved, and the increasing insubordination and indiscipline of the army. For the period of the Republic, however, Dio repeatedly and emphatically used the speeches to explore the causal relationship between imperial expansion and political instability. As we have already seen, his predecessors had long since formulated the decline of the Republic with regard to its empire, treating the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE as a symbolic turning-point. By the Severan period the approach was predictable enough, and it made little sense to ignore the well-established view that Rome was a victim of her own success. In this regard Dio was the inheritor of a long tradition. 72  The Agrippa-Maecenas debate is the most controversial and widely-discussed of all Dio’s rhetorical episodes. A common approach has been to divide pair in a way that the histor­ ian never intended, undertaking specific studies of only one individually but not both together. These studies have unearthed fruitful and important aspects of the episode but do not generally consider its role within Dio’s analysis of the specific historical context of its transitional setting, viz. as a reflection on the reasons for the decline of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime. A common angle has been to focus on Maecenas as a benchmark for the historian’s own political views on kingship, especially regarding the Severan present: see e.g. Hammond 1932, 88–102; Bleicken 1962, 444–467; Millar 1964, 102–118; Dorandi 1985, 56–60; Fechner 1986, 71–86. Agrippa is more of an oddity: “usually dismissed as conventional rhetoric, following a pattern of the traditional suasoria of the schools, filled with rhetorical topoi” (Reinhold 1988, 170). It has been conventionally viewed as a deliberately short and unpersuasive prelude to the main feature of Maecenas’ oration (so Gabba 1955, 316; Gabba 1984, 72; Strasburger 1977, 48; McKechnie 1981, 151–153; Fechner 1986, 71–86); this has been challenged recently by Adler 2012, 477–520. Adler rightly claims (2012, 483) that the debate as a whole “contains many of the historian’s own opinions”, but this is not quite the point. It is certainly clear that the episode expresses Dio’s own views, but views on what? Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’) restores the debate to the historical context of its setting and shows that, while it undoubtedly articulates Dio’s contemporary views, its explanatory and interpretative role at this point in the Roman History is essential for his historical analysis. 73  Cass. Dio 75.3.3, 76.13.1–2.

20

chapter 1

But the Roman History took this tradition and wholly transformed it, developing a complex framework of moral, political, and constitutional outcomes of Republican expansion. On the moral level, Dio clearly accepted the view that the fruits of Empire provided statesmen with new opportunities to satis­fy the ambition, greed, and desire for glory and power that were inherent in human nature. This is the least original and least interesting aspect of his framework from an historical point of view. Far more exciting, however, are the political and constitutional dimensions of his interpretation. On the political level, Dio used the speeches to illustrate the corrosive effect of Late Republican imperialism upon the decision-making process. The sheer turpitude of Rome’s imperialism in this period and the transformation of its sphere of influence into a springboard for the ambitions of a few dynasts led, in Dio’s view, to an utter degeneration in political rhetoric: the need to conceal the truth of affairs in the empire from Senate, soldiers, and citizens meant that the command system—which must begin with the fora of decision-making, SPQR—could no longer operate effectively. This is a process which begins not with the destruction of Carthage (so Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus), but rather with the figure of Scipio Africanus, whom Dio constructs in a deliberate way as a dynastic prototype.74 Moreover, on the constitutional level Rome’s conflicted position as both mistress of the world and yet also a Republic (δημοκρατία) was unsustainable. The historian says in his own voice that a Republic could not rule an empire for long, and shaped the voices of his speakers to match.75 Dio was especially interested in the psychological impact of empire upon its governors: the autocratic ambitions and imperative to compete that emerged from Rome’s ever-increasing need for prorogation and extra-ordinary commands.76 There was, of course, no alternative within the status quo of traditional liberty; for Dio, monarchy was the only answer. Oratory, morality, institutions, and empire: these are the four components of Dio’s interpretation of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime. That long process is book-ended by two speeches, both at the end of a monarch’s reign: the address of Lucius Junius Brutus on the foundation of the Republic after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, in Book 3; and the funeral oration of the new emperor Tiberius over the body of Augustus in Book 56. From the rise of Rome’s first consul to the death of 74  See Coudry 2019, esp. 140. 75  Cass. Dio 44.2. 76  For an important treatment of the psychological impact of extended periods of command upon provincial governors and generals, see notably Eckstein 2004; Burden-Strevens 2016; fuller discussion in Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’).

Introduction

21

Rome’s first emperor, Cassius Dio crafted an historical interpretation spanning half a millennium of the res publica in which speech was both an essential explanatory instrument and a direct cause of constitutional change in its own right. It is therefore at Book 3 that we begin, and at Book 56 that we will end. Before beginning, however, it remains to say a few words on Dio’s intellectual world and the structure and approach of what is to follow. 4

The Historian and his World

By any reckoning, Cassius Dio was ideally placed to write a monumental history of Rome. By the time of Commodus’ assassination and the end of the Antonine dynasty in 193 CE, Dio was perhaps around thirty years old; he had already been a member of the Senate for a few years by this point and an eyewitness to the latter years of Commodus’ ill-starred reign.77 His narrative of the turbulent transition from Antonine to Severan—and the bloody fates of the short-lived emperors Pertinax and Didius Julianus—gives us some of our best information for his advanced rhetorical and oratorical training, the uses he found for that training before setting to work on his Roman History,78 and more generally for how he approached his task and the resources at his disposal. Most importantly of all, it is evident that the theme of this book—rhetoric and oratory—genuinely mattered to Dio and played a pivotal role in his career, even in his very survival. This is one of several possible explanations for his remarkable interest in the power of speech and the keen attention given to this theme in his Roman History. His account of the usurper Didius Julianus’ rise is a case in point. Following the assassination of the short-lived emperor Pertinax, Julianus returned from exile to seek the throne. Arriving at the Castra Praetoria, he outbid his competitor Sulpicianus for the loyalty of the Praetorians—“as if at some bazaar or the auctioneers’”—79 and was acclaimed 77  For a summary of Dio’s life and career, see Millar 1964, 5–27. Cassius Dio was probably praetor in 194 CE (74.12.2) and held his second consulship in 229 CE (80.5.1). For a pros­ opography, see PIR 2 C 492. The dates of Dio’s first consulship and other provincial commands are unclear: for this debate cf. Schwartz 1899, 1684–1686; Vrind 1923, 163–8; Gabba 1955, 289–301; Eisman 1977, 657–673; Reinhold 1988, 1–4; Swan 2004, 1–3. 78  The proposed dates of composition for Dio’s history vary. The earliest proposals envisage completion of the bulk of the work as early as the 210s CE (so Gabba 1995, 295–301; Millar 1964, 28–32; Swan 1997; 2549–2555; Swan 2004, 28–36); on this view Dio will have begun around the time of Septimius Severus’ accession and continued to revise the text after completion. However, Letta 1979 and Barnes 1984 have argued that the Roman History may not have been substantially complete until the 220s or 230s. 79  Cass. Dio 74.11.3.

22

chapter 1

emperor. That evening Cassius Dio took his bath, had dinner, and reluctantly pushed his way through the throng of soldiers surrounding the senate-house to ‘approve’ the unfortunate new appointment. At this point Dio notes his acute personal anxiety: as an advocate he had previously prosecuted Julianus with some success in court—perhaps in a trial for conspiracy ten years prior—and now expected retribution.80 This brief notice is intriguing, since it is the only direct attestation we have that our historian spoke in a formal public setting.81 Evidently, a prominent role as an orator could garner enemies in the dangerous world of the Severan Court; the personal risk to Dio was probably a very real one. Fortunately for us, the anticipated revenge did not come to pass. Julianus was ousted within months: another claimant, Septimius Severus, took Ravenna and the Praetorian Guard murdered Julianus as he reclined in the palace. So it is with the rise of Severus that Cassius Dio mentions his first known literary composition: a pamphlet, probably laudatory in tone, discussing the omens and portents that foretold Severus’ accession. Dio wisely addressed it to the new emperor and sent him a copy. Severus—no doubt delighted to find divine approbation for his rule—complimented the young senator enthusiastically on his penmanship, and supported his political career also.82 That career took him to the highest echelons of Roman Imperial politics. The gamble had paid off: his elegant literary blandishments secured their object. Thus, rhetoric had not only put the young Lucius Cassius Dio in real danger at an early point in his career; it additionally secured and furthered that career at a time of significant upheaval and change. It is not difficult to imagine that these experiences cemented Dio’s view of rhetoric as both an instrument and (crucially) a weapon in the arsenal of any capable politician. This perspective, indeed, sums up the presentation of public speech in his Roman History. After securing the career itself the next question is what to do with it, and here Dio betrays his surprising disquiet with many aspects of his contemporary world. Dio’s career took him to the foremost intellectual centres of his age. Yet he appears to have disapproved of their individual identities and independence, and he took a dim view of the claims of their inhabitants to cultural and intellectual authority. For the first two decades of his life we can only guess the route of travels he may have made for his education, on which he 80  Cass. Dio 74.12.2. 81  Millar 1964, 104 suggests that the historian “probably” declaimed some of his speeches publicly in the manner of Herodotus. This will never be more than a guess, and we simply have no evidence for such a claim. 82  Cass. Dio 73[72].23.1–3.

Introduction

23

discloses nothing. However, by the early 180s CE he was evidently in Cilicia accompanying his father, who was governor (as legatus) of the province at the time.83 Certainly Cilicia was hardly Athens or Rome, but its capital Tarsus was an important intellectual centre with its own philosophical school. In addition to Augustus’ tutor Athenodorus,84 the region produced many intellectuals identified in the biographies of the sophists written by Dio’s contemporary, Philostratus: in Cilicia lesser-known sophists such as Philagrus and Maximus of Aegae jostled with the more famous Alexander Peloplaton and also Antiochus, the emperor Caracalla’s pet Cynic.85 As the son of the provincial governor and perhaps a member of his consilium, Dio will have spent much time in Tarsus and possibly also at Aegae. Aged around eighteen, he may have used these visits to attend declamations and finish his education as well as to observe provincial government in action. Other brief autobiographical notices give testimony to Dio’s peregrinations in the Greek East. In his account of the plots against the short-lived emperor Elagabalus, Dio happens to remark that he was able to obtain reliable information about one such coup which had been planned within the fleet stationed at Cyzicus. In so doing he also informs us of his time in the foremost intellectual centres of Asia: “this information about the fleet I write following personal investigation myself nearby at Pergamum, which alongside Smyrna had been entrusted to my charge by the emperor Macrinus”.86 This must refer to Dio’s administrative position as curator of the two cities in 217–218 CE. Pergamum and Smyrna were within the first rank of hubs of intellectual activity in the Imperial period. Their output was prolific: Aelius Aristides himself, Aristocles, Heraclides, Nicetes, Polemo, and Scopelian among many others counted among their notable natives and guests,87 and at Smyrna one of the chief magistrates during Dio’s time—featured repeatedly on the city’s coinage—was himself a self-professed sophist (Claudius Rufinus Sophistes).88 Like Cilicia earlier, the historian’s autobiographical notices about Pergamum and Smyrna are not intended to stress his status as an eastern intellectual; he makes no 83  Cass. Dio 73[72].7.2. Dio’s father, Cassius Apronianus, was governor of Dalmatia (69.1.3) as well as legatus of Cilicia (69.1.3, 73.7.2); if one Greek inscription is to be believed he must also have obtained the consulship (IGRR 3.654). For the prosopography, see PIR II C 413. 84  Of whom Dio was certainly aware; see Cass. Dio 52.36.2–4. 85  Philost. VS 568–570 (Antiochus); VA 1.3, 1.12 (Maximus); VS 570–576 (Peloplaton); VS 578–581 (Philagrus). 86  Cass. Dio 80[79].7.4. 87  Philost. VS 518–585 (Aristides); VS 567–568 (Aristocles); VS 613–615 (Heraclides); VS 511–512 (Nicetes); VS 530–545 (Polemo); VS 514–521 (Scopelian). 88  S NG VI, 1394; SNG Copenhagen 1378, 1380; cf. also the coinage of Rufinus’ predecessor as strategos at Smyrna, Attalus Sophistes (SNG von Aulock 2243).

24

chapter 1

mention of the cultural life of these places he visited nor of their academic pedigree. Rather they emphasise his autopsy as an eyewitness source of the events he describes, and his seniority and reliability as a Roman statesman. Leaving these aside, we are also able to date other periods where Dio was based in further cultural centres of the age: we know of a stay at Rome as Caracalla’s amicus (212–213 CE)—a short stint within what will presumably have been numerous years at Rome—89 and of course his time as an imperial comes at Nicomedia in the winter of Caracalla’s Parthian campaign. Tarsus, Pergamum, Smyrna, Nicomedia: these formed part of the nucleus of intellectual activity in the Greek world of the High Empire.90 Yet Dio’s attitude to such provincial centres—and his wording suggests that he has even major conurbations in mind—is surprisingly cold. The enormous speech of Maecenas which occupies much of Book 52 is our best evidence for what may be justly described as the historian’s radical centralising programme and his Romano-centric vision of the Empire. It has rightly been emphasised that Maecenas’ speech reflects the historian’s own views on the ideal government of the Empire,91 although scholars have tended to overlook the sheer scale of Dio’s attack on the culture of the polis. Dio’s centralising vision, articulated in the voice of Maecenas and his recommendations to Octavian, leaves few aspects of the cultural life of the poleis untouched.92 He makes the following prescriptions. The communities of the Greek cities should never be given responsibility over major decisions, nor meet in their assemblies. They should not construct public buildings to a greater size or number than is necessary. Their incessant competition for status and prestige in public games must be squashed; only by banning such games will their foolish rivalries (φιλοτιμίαις ἀλόγοις) come to an end. Life-long pensions for the winners of any contest are to be banned—presumably for winners of the declamatory agon too. Foreign visitors, dignitaries, and ambassadors should not be pressured into making gifts to the polis to celebrate their arrival. Moreover, the emperor should not be induced by flattery to allow these cities to over-spend, nor allow foreign visitors 89  Millar 1964, 18–19. 90  See Bowersock 1969, 17–29; Anderson 1993, 24–28. 91  E.g. Hammond 1932, 88–102; Bleicken 1962, 444–467; Millar 1964, 102–118; Dorandi 1985, 56–60; Fechner 1986, 71–86. However, we must remember that it is a mistake to view commentary on contemporary politics as its sole purpose. We will see later that Maecenas’ words to Octavian on the foundation of the Principate shortly after the Battle of Actium are fully embedded within their dramatic context: they articulate the historian’s interpret­ ation of the failure of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime at this crucial point of transition in the narrative. 92  The recommendations listed here are given in full at Cass. Dio 53.30.2–10, 53.37.9–10.

Introduction

25

to contribute to such profligacy. All systems of local coinage and weights and measures should be abolished. The poleis must also cease to send embassies to the emperor to seek favours, recognition, or special dispensations; all appeals should go to the provincial governor instead. Cities should also be forbidden from assuming empty honorific titles and so falling into rivalry with one another. In short, everything possible must be done to stop the cities of the Greek East from competing fruitlessly for markers of distinction and prestige, and their mutual rivalries must cease. Taken together, these recommendations are unique within the Greek literature of the Imperial period. The overall effect of Dio’s vision is to deprive the poleis of their identities and independence. His time in Tarsus, Nicomedia, and Pergamum and Symrna (in that order) seems to have left no noticeable impression on his outlook except one of distaste and a desire to retain Rome as the centre of gravity within the Empire.93 Certainly he writes of his native city of Nicaea fondly as his πατρίς, and returned to it at the end of his career.94 But his personal connection to Nicaea seems not to have unduly coloured his restrictive approach to the rights and privileges of the poleis of the Greek East. These he addresses first and foremost from the perspective of a Roman provincial governor. It has often been noted that Dio speaks of the Senate with the first person plural, ἥμεις, identifying as “we” the senatorial order to which he proudly belonged.95 Yet the historian also writes of “we” (that is, “we Romans”) more generally in geopolitical contexts, particularly when discussing the military and political relationships between Rome and other states. Despite choosing to write his work in Greek, Dio specifies provinces and regions with their Roman names, not with their Greek equivalents. This should not surprise: he was proconsul of Africa in 223 CE, legatus of Pannonia Superior in 226 CE, and held his second consulship alongside Severus Alexander in 229 CE. The historian thus speaks in what I have termed elsewhere his ‘consular voice’:96 as a representative of the Empire and in the language of the governing authority. Dio went to Pergamum to be an imperial administrator, not to fawn over sophists and intellectuals. It is not difficult to imagine that certain of Maecenas’ recommendations may be a direct response to Dio’s extensive personal experience, especially as curator of Pergamum and Smyrna. Maecenas’ suggestion that such cities 93  That is not to say that Cassius Dio has any particular affection for the city of Rome itself or bias toward it in comparison to the other great conurbations of the Empire; for this argument see Gowing 2016. 94  Cass. Dio 80.5.2. 95  E.g. Palm 1959, 81; Aalders 1986, 283; Swain 1996, 403. 96  See Burden-Strevens 2015b for fuller discussion.

26

chapter 1

should be forbidden from constructing excessively grand public buildings and spending too much on games and contests, nor should put pressure on foreign visitors and dignitaries to contribute to such frivolities,97 betrays the historian’s experience as a financial administrator in the Greek East and perhaps also indicates the kinds of tedious demands made of him as a visiting dignitary himself. Dio records that Macrinus attempted to deprive Pergamum of certain privileges in 218 CE; this probably occurred during Dio’s post as curator there and may even have arisen at his behest. This led to a squalid altercation between princeps and polis in which the Pergamenes “heaped many stupid insults on the emperor” (πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα ἐς αὐτὸν ἐξύβρισαν).98 Similarly, elsewhere in his narrative Dio notes with impatience the habit formed by the cities of his own day to assume honorific titles or to award them to their inhabitants;99 these too are marked out for prohibition in his speech of Maecenas. Dio’s central­ ising vision of the Empire, which proposes to deprive the great poleis of much of their status and prestige, may thus be traced back to his own experience of provincial government. The picture of Lucius Cassius Dio that emerges here is a deal more sceptical, even anxious, about his contemporary world than that offered in many older scholarly reconstructions—many of which have sought to emphasise his ‘sophistic’ tendencies, his literary and cultural pretensions, and his slavish imitation of Thucydides and Demosthenes. On such a reading of the Roman History we should be suspicious of the text as an historical source in view of its obviously ‘rhetorical’ dimensions.100 Happily, much recent work is now exposing this view for the prejudice that it really is. The reading of Dio offered in this book proposes to account for his ambitions as a political theorist and as a distinctive interpreter in his own right of the political evolution of Rome.101 97  Cass. Dio 52.30.4–5. 98  Cass. Dio 79.20.4. 99  Cass. Dio. 54.23.8. 100  See Brunt 1992, 38n.52 for one excellent critique of such an approach: “because of the overtones of ‘rhetorical’ in English, modem critics of ancient writings which they characterize as rhetorical convey the innuendo (sometimes deliberate) that it is variously conventional, unrelated to the facts, exaggerated, insincere, deliberately deceptive, and so forth”. For a similar view, cf. Lintott 1997, 2498–2503 on Dio’s alleged unreliability as a ‘rhetorical’ historian. 101  The recent edited collection, mostly Francophone, of Fromentin et al. 2016 is a notable example of the new approaches to Dio’s political theory that may be uncovered when we cast off tired criticisms of his rhetorical style and instead incorporate rhetoric within his conception of history-writing. Especially important analyses of the rhetorical dimensions of the Roman History are offered by Bellissime 2016, 363–378; Coudry 2016b, 485–518; Lachenaud 2016, 397–430.

Introduction

27

The chief claim of this book is that rhetoric and the use of speeches served those ambitions rather than detracting from them. That is not to say that the historian had no intellectual pretensions of his own. Dio freely expands on his view of where cultural and intellectual authority does and does not lie. He was fundamentally suspicious of the misappropriation of cultural authority by the poorly educated, and anxious about the irresponsible use of rhetoric and its power by untrustworthy individuals in general. The central locus for this kind of critique is again the speech of Maecenas in Book 52. Dio presents himself as an authoritative narrator and intellectual whom the reader can trust, and does so by positioning himself in opposition to other groups. For example, his Maecenas (52.36.2–4) exhorts Octavian to allow no one to reject the gods or to be a magician. Soothsaying is of course necessary, and you should always appoint some diviners and augurs that people who wish to consult with them can turn to. But there should be absolutely none who practice magic tricks. For men like this, who speak the occasional truth but really speak falsehoods for the greater part, often encourage many people to make trouble. And indeed, many of those who pretend to be philosophers do the very same thing. For this reason, then, I warn you be on your guard against these people. Do not believe, just because you have experienced Areius and Athenodorus and other good men, that all others who say they pursue philosophy are like these; for some, using this profession as a screen, wreak many thousand ills upon communities and citizens alike. μήτ᾽ οὖν ἀθέῳ τινὶ μήτε γόητι συγχωρήσῃς εἶναι. μαντικὴ μὲν γὰρ ἀναγκαία ἐστί, καὶ πάντως τινὰς καὶ ἱερόπτας καὶ οἰωνιστὰς ἀπόδειξον, οἷς οἱ βουλόμενοί τι κοινώσασθαι συνέσονται‧ τοὺς δὲ δὴ μαγευτὰς πάνυ οὐκ εἶναι προσήκει. πολλοὺς γὰρ πολλάκις οἱ τοιοῦτοι, τὰ μέν τινα ἀληθῆ τὰ δὲ δὴ πλείω ψευδῆ λέγοντες, νεοχμοῦν ἐπαίρουσι. τὸ δ᾽ αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ τῶν φιλοσοφεῖν προσποιουμένων οὐκ ὀλίγοι δρῶσι· διὸ καὶ ἐκείνους φυλάσσεσθαί σοι παραινῶ. μὴ γὰρ ὅτι καὶ Ἀρείου καὶ Ἀθηνοδώρου καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν πεπείρασαι, πίστευε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους πάντας τοὺς φιλοσοφεῖν λέγοντας ὁμοίους αὐτοῖς εἶναι· μυρία γὰρ κακὰ καὶ δήμους καὶ ἰδιώτας τὸ πρόσχημά τινες τοῦτο προβαλλόμενοι δρῶσι. This passage is revealing of the associations that Dio, as a contemporary statesman and political theorist, formed between categorically different ideas. His Maecenas warns against the falsehoods spoken by persuasive tricksters and magicians, and associates these directly with false philosophers who use the

28

chapter 1

very same tactics (τὸ δ᾽ αὐτὸ τοῦτο). False philosophy, illusion-making and trickery, and dishonest speech are aligned in the same thought. The overriding concern is for who to trust in the Empire: genuine philosophers such as Areius and Athenodorus, or those who use philosophy as a screen, deceiving their audiences with alluring falsehoods like tricksters and magicians? This passage has hitherto not received the attention it merits for our understanding of Dio’s claim to intellectual authority and of his anxieties regarding the misuse of rhetoric. The case, obviously, is not that he disliked philosophers as such:102 he notes that the excellence and virtue of the young Marcus Aurelius was heightened even further by his association with philosophers,103 and he criticises those who pretended to pursue the noble path of philosophy in order to enrich themselves and curry favour with the emperor.104 Rather, Dio’s concern is for the danger posed to individuals and communities by their misleading claims. Mountebanks, magicians, tricksters, false philosophers—all these share in common a habit of speaking convincing falsehoods and causing upheaval (τὰ δὲ δὴ πλείω ψευδῆ λέγοντες, νεοχμοῦν ἐπαίρουσι).105 The figure of emperor Caracalla serves as the ultimate parody of cultural authority in Dio’s Roman History. His ventures in Asia Minor in 215–217 CE provide Dio with an opportunity to mock the emperor’s pretentious misappropriation of intellectual culture. Here Dio records, as an eyewitness source and imperial comes, the ridiculous behaviour of the emperor at his winter-quarrters in Nicomedia, in Dio’s native Bithynia in the Greek East (78.18.1–4). He squandered money, wasted time in fruitless and profligate exertions, and ignored his mother Julia Domna’s advice. While Julia Domna acted as his chief secretary and hosted receptions for all the prominent provincials in the area, Caracalla pretended to adopt an ascetic lifestyle, growing his beard and boasting that he needed only the bare necessities of life—all the while demanding vast sums from his entourage (including Dio) and lavishing it upon his freedmen.106 Dio presents the Roman emperor as a satire on the self-professed ascetic philo­ sopher. Yet for all his play-acting as a Greek philosopher, Caracalla was no Hellene. He is a parody of Hellenism. Upon crossing the Hellespont, his first act was to hold memorial games for Achilles, in which he even participated 102  P ace Millar 1964, 13, who misinterprets the following passage. 103  Cass. Dio 72.35.6. 104  Cass. Dio 72.35.2. 105  Curiously, this is more or less the way in which Dio describes Apollonius of Tyana at 78.18.4 (cf. Lucian, Alex. 5 for a similar view of Apollonius as a fraud and impostor). It is a marked contrast from the encomiastic treatment given to the sophist in Dio’s contemporary Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana. 106  Cass. Dio 78.18.1–4.

Introduction

29

himself: he lavished prizes on the victors, Dio caustically notes, “as if they had accomplished some great deed or other, or had actually captured ancient Troy itself”.107 During his sojourn at Nicomedia, Caracalla took to drilling his Macedonian phalanx—one of the more pompous examples of his imitation of Alexander the Great.108 Dio mocks the emperor’s emulation of Alexander as unseemly and inappropriate: in addition to calling himself “Alexander” and declaring that the great king had been resurrected in his own person, he even took to using cups and weapons rumoured to have belonged to him.109 This adoration was not sufficient to spare Alexandria, however. Upon arriving there Caracalla had much of the population put to the sword and the temples plundered in retribution for a perceived slight.110 Caracalla’s obsessive imitatio of Alexander is one of the more extreme and ridiculous examples of the misappropriation of cultural and intellectual authority; the people of Alexandria apparently found it as risible as Dio himself.111 Obviously Dio had no dispute with philhellenism as such, nor elided the importance of Greek culture in the formation of the educated elite. His concern is rather for its more ostentatious and theatrical manifestations, which are characterised as un-Roman and unbecoming. Dio prized his Greek learning while retaining also an awareness of its limitations and of Rome’s particular strengths. He deliberately chose to write his work in the archaising dialect of Classical Athens; but this was an appropriate choice for a work of the Roman History’s grandiose status and scope—an annalistic history of Rome from its earliest origins to 229 CE—and even in spite of this choice its author repeatedly prefers Latin etymologies and Roman toponyms.112 What emerges is a fusion of the Attic dialect of a Greek intellectual with the geopolitical vocabulary of a Roman provincial governor and statesman. There are several passages which display the historian’s wide learning, and these are often abstruse: Dio’s excursus on the relationship between the calendar, the movements of the planets, and musical theory is particularly recondite.113 But digressions of this type are actually very infrequent for the enormous size of the work, and Dio notes elsewhere points on which “we” Romans have surpassed the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, for example on the source of the Nile.114 107  Cass. Dio 78.16.7. 108  Cass. Dio 78.18.1. 109  Cass. Dio 78.7.1. 110  Cass. Dio 78.22–23. 111  Hdn. 4.9.2–3. 112   Burden-Strevens 2015b for examples. 113  Cass. Dio 37.18–19. 114  Cass. Dio 75.13.3–5.

30

chapter 1

Most importantly of all, the historian’s relationship with the literatures of both Greece and Rome demonstrates his advanced literate education in both traditions. The former has traditionally received far more attention than the latter. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the Greek classics—especially Thucydides and Demosthenes—informed his stylistic choices, and there are numerous verbal parallels and allusions between Dio’s language and that of Classical prose works.115 Much unfair criticism has been made of this,116 and scholars routinely assume that these allusions and parallels were always conscious and deliberate. Yet their presence is not especially surprising when we consider the historian’s education throughout childhood and adolescence. Dio’s schooling was certainly conducted in Greek, and the absorption of canonical texts—through reading, memorisation, re-elaboration and imitation—formed the essential basis of that schooling. But we shall also see, in the following chapter, that Dio had read widely in Latin literature, including the works of Cicero, Sallust, Seneca, Caesar, and Augustus’ Res Gestae and possibly also his memoirs. Cassius Dio’s relationship to the political and cultural world around him exerted a profound impact upon his Roman History. He had a keen awareness of the power of rhetoric as a weapon and a tool—possibly as a result of his youthful engagement in the drama of the rise of Didius Julianus and Septimius Severus to the throne. His career brought him to travel widely around the Empire he undertook to narrate, presumably giving him access to private and public collections of source-texts about which, sadly, he discloses nothing. Yet these travels informed Dio’s general political views as well as his work as such. As an imperial administrator and representative of Roman imperial rule, Dio had little patience for the historic independence and identities of the great cities of the Empire, especially in the East. Even more importantly for our purposes, those who used their persuasive powers to lay claim to wisdom, cultural and intellectual authority, or to justify unreasonable positions, were to Dio a source of acute disquiet. He was concerned in general about the power of rhetoric, and draws from a long tradition of viewing speech as a double-edged sword to be wielded for good or ill. His history of the Late Republic in particular 115  The bibliography on the historian’s linguistic debt to Thucydides and Demosthenes is astonishingly ample, and there is no need to repeat the evidence collected on this topic over the past hundred years. For studies which collect the verbal parallels with Demosthenes and (especially) Thucydides, see Melber 1891, 290–297; Litsch 1893; Kyhnitzsch 1894; Schwartz 1899, 1690–1691. 116  E.g. Vlachos 1905; Millar 1964, 42; Manuwald 1979, 280–284; Saylor Rodgers 2008; and, recently, Parker 2008, 77, who speaks of Dio’s “near-pathological need to use Thucydidean words and phrases”.

Introduction

31

evinces his view of the worst political consequences that might issue from so powerful a weapon when corruptly misused. 5

Using This Book

The four interpretative axes discussed above form the nucleus of this book. These themes—‘Oratory’, ‘Morality’, ‘Institutions’, and ‘Empire’—occupy Chapters 3 through 5 of this book and may be read as a series of case-studies. These explore Dio’s use of speeches across Books 3–56 of his Roman History to elucidate his historical argument about the role played by each of these four questions in the collapse of the Republic and the solidification of Augustus’ rule. The reader interested only in the text from an historical standpoint—that is, Cassius Dio’s causal interpretation, how this relates to other authors in the tradition, and how convincingly it holds in the light of other evidence—may begin there. However, the argument of this book is that the speeches were an integral part of Dio’s explanatory method and the main vehicle of his historical analysis. Accordingly, our knowledge of this important aspect of his approach to the writing of history can only be incomplete if we do not consider also his methodology. How was Dio trained as a rhetorician and writer? Were the speeches in the Roman History all purely products of his imagination, or did he have sources? If so, which, and how did he exploit them? What effect did Dio’s rhetorical education have on his modes of historical causation and explanation? And what were his techniques for staging debates and integrating these within the historical narrative? These important questions are addressed in the large chapter-section immediately to follow (‘Method’). This book discusses almost all of the speeches across Books 3–56 of the Roman History. A guide to those orations from Books 3–56 discussed in this book may be found in the ‘Table of Speeches’ immediately prior to this chapter: this table serves in the manner of an index, and the reader looking for detailed discussion of one particular rhetorical episode or an aspect of it (sources, themes, analytical function, and so forth) may start there. The table and this book as a whole focus principally on Dio’s use of direct statement, which constitutes the overwhelming bulk of the analysis in line with the historian’s own compositional choice. Dio used direct statement (oratio recta) very expansively, and preferred to write his orations in the live voice of the speaker rather than in indirect, or reported, speech (oratio obliqua).117 Earlier Roman historians such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Livy tended to mix both styles, 117  Rich 2010, 19–20.

32

chapter 1

whereas our historian almost always preferred the former. The definition of a ‘speech’ or ‘formal oration’ for the purposes of this book is any extended oratorical episode, in public or in private, given to one or more identified speakers and written by the historian himself according to established rhetorical precepts. As such, two modes of discourse are deliberately left out of this discussion. The first is witty or celebrated ‘one-liners’ and bons mots (dicta); these belong in a very different rhetorical tradition to speeches in historiography and most were almost certainly not Dio’s own invention or composition.118 The second is rumours and vague reports of what certain people may have been saying (rumor and fama), occasionally written down by Dio in the Tacitean manner.119 These cannot count as ‘formal oration’ in any sense. These definitions may all seem obvious enough at first glance; yet the fragmentary nature of the text complicates our task, and occasionally reduces the identification of a speech or formal oration to an act of guesswork. Book 36 begins the direct tradition of events from 69 BCE–46 CE, where the manuscripts are of sufficient quality to give an (almost) uninterrupted stretch of Dio up to Book 60 and the first years of emperor Claudius’ reign. Prior to this, however, our knowledge of the first three decads of the Roman History is dependent upon two main sources: the Excerpts of Constantine and Zonaras’ Epitome of Histories, respectively compiled in the Byzantine Empire between the 10th and early 12th centuries CE. Both of these preserve vestiges of Dio’s speeches, but in rather different ways. On the one hand the Excerpts of Constantine are our most important source of fragments in the strict sense, purporting to be direct copies of the historian’s exact words.120 Yet the evidence that they preserve of the speeches is often mutilated. The excerptors commissioned by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus took extracts from a range of classical authors, dividing these into collections arranged by theme: ‘On Virtues and Vices’ (Excerpta de Virtutibus et Vitiis), ‘On Moral Sayings’ (Excerpta de Sententiis), ‘On Embassies’ (Excerpta de 118  See Laurence & Paterson 1999 for a survey of some of the difficulties of addresses of this type, not least their tendency to be placed into the mouths of multiple different speakers in different contexts. 119  So Gibson 1998; Feldherr 2009; Austin 2015. 120  Subject to minor modifications at the beginning and end of fragments. On such changes see Roberto 2009, 79–82. The Excerpts of Constantine are not the only source of direct fragments, and my purpose here is not to give a full survey. An anonymous grammatical text from perhaps the seventh century CE, the On Syntax, preserves 141 short quotations. The Florilegium attributed to Maximus the Confessor also draws some sixty moral maxims from the Roman History, with further supplied by another lexicon, the Collection of Useful Sayings. Mallan 2019 and Rich 2019 give useful overviews of the sources of the fragments, with accompanying bibliography and discussion.

Introduction

33

Legationibus), and ‘On Conspiracies’ (Excerpta de Insidiis). These excerpts provide precious evidence for the content of the Roman History before Book 36, and especially for the use of speeches. In particular the Excerpta de Virtutibus et Vitiis is of exceptional importance: since it took moralising statements as its central theme, the collection preserves many fragments which either clearly derive from a speech in Dio or seem to do so.121 Yet the nature of the evidence depends on the individual whims of the excerptors: they seldom sought to preserve the formal orations intact, but rather passed down snippets of especial gnomic or linguistic interest to them.122 Many of the resulting isolated fragments (possibly) drawn from speeches are therefore difficult to attribute to any particular orator or setting. In this book, fragments which can be associated with a specific oratorical context on a compelling basis are included; otherwise they will be excluded, especially if Boissevain’s 1895–1901 edition of Dio found them inattributable. In other words, we will not try to interpret something if we cannot be reasonably confident of what it is we are interpreting. On the other hand, Zonaras is a much better guide to the performativity, arrangement, and use of speeches in the earlier portions of the Roman History. John Zonaras, private secretary to the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, composed a history of the world in eighteen books from Creation up until the death of Alexios I in 1118 CE. The resulting work, his Epitome of Histories, used Books 1–21 of Cassius Dio as the principal source for its own Books 7–9, charting the period from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy to the destruction of Carthage. Zonaras draws so closely from the Roman History that—his own historiographical project notwithstanding—his work may be called an abridgement and close paraphrase of it.123 As a result he provides a rather different advantage to the Excerpts of Constantine. The Epitome takes greater liberties with Dio’s exact words, often paraphrasing them where the Excerpts faithfully copied them; yet it takes fewer liberties with his structure. As a magisterial study has recently shown, Zonaras is an important and often faithful guide to the historian’s use of speeches in the first two decads.124 His methods were varied. 121  See the useful table in Rich 2019, 226 for an overview of the various sources of direct discourse fragments in Cassius Dio’s early books. 122  The aims and methods of the Constantinian excerptors have been the subject of several recent studies: Roberto 2009; Németh 2010; Németh 2013; Treadgold 2013. See Mallan 2019a for an up-to-date analysis of the literary project of the excerptors in relation to their use of Cassius Dio. 123  Simons 2009, 29–32f. and especially Mallan 2018b explore in detail the epitomator’s method of work and his use of his source-text. For Zonaras’ historiographical project, see Berbessou-Broustet 2016. 124  So Fromentin 2019, 51.

34

chapter 1

Sometimes he found a full direct speech in the Roman History and reduced it to a short report in indirect speech, identifying the speaker, arguments, context, and consequences. At other points he retained an abridged version of an original direct speech taken from Dio; on one occasion he even gives an expanded version.125 This kind of material gives good testimony for the use of formal orations in Books 1–21 and will be included here. Other notices, however, are more deceptive. Zonaras will occasionally state the bare fact that someone spoke; this does not necessarily indicate that Dio included a speech, and indeed is poor evidence for it. He may also give a summary in a few words (e.g. “each addressed their army and encouraged it to battle”),126 which again may have been no more than this in the original text of the Roman History. Where Zonaras gives specific and detailed information he is of immense value, and material of that type will be discussed to the exclusion of brief notices or reports; brief reportage of speech in oratio obliqua given by Zonaras is generally excluded from the analysis offered here.127 The study of the formal orations in Cassius Dio’s early books is still in its infancy. Finally, the basic mode of analysis in this book is intratextual and stylistic, using approaches that have been fruitfully applied to other historians in the past twenty years.128 The Roman History abounds in intratextual passages which are rich in allusion and paraphrase to other parts of the work, and these passages serve either to foreshadow or to reflect back on the causes of events (prolepsis and analepsis). A speaker might, for example, predict the likely consequences of the measure being discussed and the precise reason for those consequences, only to be proven correct in the ensuing narrative. This comes without comment from the authoritative narrator; his speaker has already done the interpretative work for him. Alternatively, the specific content of a formal oration might be directly contradicted by earlier factual information in the historical narrative—even of many books prior—, producing an ironic effect which proves the historian’s argumentative point. It is claimed here that the construction of these sequences is deliberate. Its effect will not have been lost on attentive readers. We should remember that many ancient audiences will have been attuned to such intratextualities, certainly more so 125  Compare the remarkable closeness of Zonar. 7.14.8–9 and Cass. Dio frg. 17.10–11 (Menenius Agrippa’s speech to the seceding plebs). 126  Zonar. 9.14.2, regarding Hannibal and Scipio Africanus before the battle of Zama in 202 BCE. 127  For example, the brief report of Appius Claudius Caecus’ speech at Zonar. 8.4. 128  For example: O’Gorman 2000 on irony and misreading in Tacitus; Wiater 2010 on interactions between speech and narrative in Polybius; Hau 2016 on the moral dimension in Diodorus of Sicily.

Introduction

35

than the modern reader struggling through the Greek. Recall (memoria) was an essential aspect of the elite schoolboy’s education and a skill deliberately trained even in the earlier years of schooling,129 followed by more advanced memory-training in preparation for declamation at a later stage. A paraphrase or repeat of a passage already seen by the audience may have had a more arresting and immediate effect upon the educated ancient reader than upon the modern reader, even equipped with all his/her apparatus of literary criticism. This applies also on the level of stylistic analysis, even of individual words or short recurring phrases. One claim of this book is that Dio purposefully created meaningful continuities and contrasts in his use of words and those of his orators. ‘Ambition’ (φιλοτιμία), ‘envy’ (φθόνος), ‘fortune’ (τύχη), and the loaded distinction between the public good and personal interests (τα ἴδια, τα κοινά) are especially ambiguous terms in the Roman History, all intimately connected to the collapse of the Republic and the transition to Augustus’ regime. The ambiguity of these terms was as old as Greek literature itself, and Dio transposes these ambiguities into a Roman idiom. A staunch defender of the status quo might praise φιλοτιμία as a Republican virtue: the healthy competition which drives the individual to excel.130 But another, several books later, might bemoan its corrosive effect upon the state. The two no longer speak the same language, and can hardly find consensus on what res publica means.131 Or in the twilight hours of the Republic, an orator might praise equality (ἰσονομία) as “a beautiful word to hear and most just in its workings”. But it is futile. The reader already knows that the case is the opposite: to Dio, equality had “a pleasant-sounding name whose nice appearance is refuted in its workings”.132 The antithesis returns, but is inverted. Thucydides was right: in civil war, words do change their meanings after all. The effect is both ironic and tragic. It is a dramatic staging for the last moments of the Roman Republic.

129  See Bloomer 2011. 130  This positive sense of φιλοτιμία was still current in Greek literature of the Imperial period, for example in Dio of Prusa (Or. 4.4; 44.5) and Plutarch (Pol. Prag. 798c, 819f). In this sense it signifies competition among local elites to surpass one another in their euergetism toward the polis and thus to acquire individual prestige by way of serving the community. 131  In this respect Dio is close to more modern theories about the decline of the Roman Republic, where scholars have emphasised the ways in which the shared assumptions and language of the aristocracy were breaking down: see for example Eder 1996; Hölkeskamp 2010. 132  Cf. Cass. Dio 44.2.1 and 52.4.1.

chapter 2

Method 1

The Composition of Dio’s Speeches: Three Problems

Dio tells us vanishingly little about his methods of work in general. The modern reader is seldom given the privilege of an invitation into the Roman consular’s study, even where he might enjoy several such visits with Polybius. The case is especially true for Dio’s practice as a speechwriter: no form of programmatic or methodological statement is ever offered. We are left to piece together a picture of his technique from the only evidence available to us: the speeches themselves. Did he compose them separately as rhetorical exercises—perhaps as standalone set-pieces for declamation or amusement in the court of the emperor Caracalla? There is of course no evidence of Dio having declaimed his historiographical speeches in this way; all we can assert is that he certainly practiced juridical and political oratory in public during his career. Again, did he invent them entirely ‘freehand’ without use of an earlier source or model to inform the content of his own product? Dio betrays his familiarity with existing historiographical works on only two occasions by name,1 and otherwise never reveals his sources—certainly not for the speeches. There is then Dio’s rhetorical education. The traces of an advanced rhetorical training are obvious in the Roman History. Does that imply that his speeches took their arguments from a rhetorical handbook or manual, assembling a series of commonplaces that might be described as ‘conventional rhetoric’, and rarely moving to the level of complex and original historical analysis? All three of these suggestions have been regular aspects of Dio scholarship for much of the previous century. Some recent studies have also maintained such a reading.2 On this view, the speeches in the Roman History were pure fiction: they were devised by the historian himself without careful attention to any source-material beyond what might facilitate a touch of literary imitatio. Their frequent recourse to ‘moralising’ tropes and commonplaces drawn from the rhetorical schools rendered them banal and inappropriate for a political history of the Republic. They were products entirely of Dio’s imagination (or rather the poverty thereof); as such they bear little relation to what is known 1  Cass. Dio 43.9.2–3, 44.35.3. 2  For example, Rodgers 2008 and Fomin 2015, 135–235. A fuller survey of the scholarship on all three of these alleged faults in Dio’s methodology is given below.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_003

Method

37

of Republican oratory—important topics of debate, modes of argumentation and rhetorical strategy—, and instead belong in a ‘sophistic’ thought-world divorced from their historical setting. And divorced from Dio’s narrative, too: a common approach has been to regard many of the formal orations as essentially ‘rhetorical’ in the negative sense,3 having little to do with the actual historical diegesis that surrounds them. This view maintains that they were instead used to articulate Dio’s philosophical or moralising views in general, or as propaganda pieces for his concerns about the Severan period: the discipline of the army, the conduct of the ideal emperor, Severus’ wars with Parthia, and so forth. They seem, in short, fictitious moralisings, a mere display of Dio’s rhetorical prowess which add little to the work as a history as such. The large methodological chapter to follow proposes to re-evaluate that pos­ition in a series of three relatively detailed studies. The analysis offered here will not be exhaustive, but adduces what seems to me the best evidence for understanding three important components of Dio’s method: 1) the embeddedness of the speeches within the historical narrative; 2) the historian’s use of source-material, for example previous written versions of a speech; and 3) the role of ‘moralising’ forms of argument as a means of analysis, explanation, and persuasion. Dio’s methodology is important. It is precisely because some scholars have viewed his approach as careless that they have also treated the speeches as insignificant. In contrast, this chapter shows that Dio’s method was more precise and deliberate than typically realised. Their careful use of source-material where available, close connection with their surrounding narrative, and deployment of argumentative techniques learned in the rhetorical schools made them more effective—not less!—as interpretative instruments in Dio’s history of the Republic. 1.1 Narrative and Dramatic Setting It remains a commonplace in modern scholarship that Dio did not consciously seek to embed his speeches within the narrative which envelops them. On this view, the formal orations were basically standalone set-pieces in the manner of rhetorical exercises—4 there will be more to say on this point later—and for this reason could belong anywhere in the narrative.5 Accordingly, as a general 3  So Brunt 1994, 38n.52 for the definition. 4  Fomin 2015, 194. 5  Most recently the study of Fomin 2016 devotes a section to “Speeches That Could Belong Anywhere in the Narrative”. However, in this section Fomin in fact focusses on only a tiny minority of Dio’s speeches—two, the speech of M. Curtius and Augustus’ address on marriage and procreation in Book 56. For a recent and important study of the latter see Kemezis 2007, who concludes at 275 that “the speeches that Dio gives Augustus in Book 56 are both

38

chapter 2

rule the historian simply inserted them wherever the fitting moral situation arose: he was, in other words, “‘on the watch’ for the appropriate and plausible situations to insert a speech so as to correspond to his rhetorical aims”.6 This view was especially popularised by Fergus Millar’s 1961 study of Dio’s speeches: here Millar argued that the historian’s intention in including them was usually not to illuminate the historical situation, but rather to draft a rhetorical elaboration of the moral issues involved in it.7 The seminal Study of Cassius Dio which followed shortly after applied this view to a wide range of Dio’s speeches: they “carry further the tendency towards generality and lack of apposite detail which characterises [the] history as a whole … their interest must lie not in what they can contribute to historical knowledge, but in the mind of a senator writing under the Severi”. At its most critical, Millar’s Study characterised them as a collection of “commonplace moral attitudes to the issues at stake”, “disappointing”, “banal”, and “unoriginal”.8 Criticism over the ensuing half century has more or less cemented this view, divorcing the rhetorical episodes in the Roman History from the specific diegetic and historical context Dio selected for them. Gowing’s 1992 syncrisis of Cassius Dio and Appian endorses it (“when Dio does include a speech, it is a long and involved creation, usually with scant relevance to the specific situation”),9 and much recent work has followed suit. This characterisation has been applied even to rhetorical episodes in the Roman History to which it is manifestly inappropriate, such as the important Agrippa-Maecenas debate of Book 52. One study describes the suasoria of Agrippa as “a mere rhetorical declamation that fails to rise to the level of a political program”.10 Its riposte in Maecenas is quite consistently treated as an ahistorical discourse on Severan politics in the 3rd century CE, rather than as an exploration of the political situation at the time of the Augustan Settlement.11 To quote a most recent discussion of the relationship between speeches and narrative in Dio:

  highly general in nature … It appears that Dio wrote a set-piece passage about Augustus and marriage, which he could have put anywhere, and he chose, at some cost in rhetorical verisimilitude, to put it in Book 56.” Wrongly, this focus on one or two of the least compelling examples of the historian’s technique has come to be treated as representative of the whole; see below. 6  Fomin 2015, 186. 7  Millar 1961, 15. 8  Millar 1964, 82–83. 9  Gowing 1992, 244. My emphasis. 10  Zawadski 1983, 283. My emphasis. 11  To list a few of the most important examples: Hammond 1932; Bleicken 1962; Millar 1964 102–118; Dorandi 1985; Kuhlmann 2010.

Method

39

the role assigned to all speeches in Dio’s history is purely epideictic; they are often divorced from the actual given historical circumstances and, more importantly, from their real historico-political analysis … stylistically speeches are separated from the main narrative; they display the features of careful compositional design consistently employing rhetorical τόποι appropriate for this or that type of oration; speeches tend to universality; often the internal line of argument is built entirely on the chain of gnomai that explain one another in succession … in choosing whether to include or omit a speech, it seems, stylistic and compositional design criteria prevail for Dio over considerations of historicity.12 It is of course a mistake to search for historicity in any of Dio’s speeches, except perhaps those of the contemporary portions of the text.13 From a Rankian perspective, ‘historicity’ denotes the drive to depict events as they really happened;14 or, regarding our theme, to make an historical speaker deliver ipsissima verba, the very same words actually spoken on a past occasion. Thucydides and Polybius may claim to do this, but both admit the necessity of invention to capture the essence of what was said or would have been plausibly said in the given context. The mistake made in the claims quoted above (and throughout the study from which they derive) is to regard “historicity” and “historico-political analysis” as closely related. They are not. The celebrated Mytilene Debate is largely packaged in Thucydides’ own words (and finely stylised ones at that), but inventio does not preclude the function of historical and political analysis on the part of the historian. Moreover, the long-held position that Dio’s speeches are as a general rule “divorced” from their narrative setting and circumstances—and therefore did not facilitate his historical analysis— may be disproved by re-evaluating a few of the most famous examples of this critique. 1.1.1 Agrippa and Maecenas The Agrippa-Maecenas debate of Book 52 poses the fewest difficulties. Simply put, the deracination of either of these compositions from their historical and 12  Fomin 2015, 218. Cf. 185: “It is indeed clear that in Dio there is a persistent tendency to place the politico-philosophical analyses in the main narrative … and isolate speeches as purely rhetorical elements.” My emphasis. 13  For an especially important recent discussion of the relationship between Dio’s speeches and historicity, see particularly Bellissime 2016, 363–378, who rightly emphasises that in composing the formal orations Dio would not aim for anything approximate to a modern notion of ‘historicity’. Verisimilitude, rather, was the sine qua non for a capable historian and the appropriate use of his rhetorical education. It is for this that we should search. 14  Ranke 1824, 423: famously, “[der Historiker] will bloss zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen”.

40

chapter 2

interpretative context in the Roman History is manifestly wrong and utterly bizarre. It may be that some critics have skipped over the narrative and analysed either or both parts of this controuersia in isolation as standalone products. But this was not the historian’s intention—if so, why not publish a jeu d’esprit instead?—and the flaw lies within their reading rather than Dio’s writing. Let us begin with Agrippa’s oration. Its purpose is simple: to convince Octavian, having recently defeated Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius at the Battle of Actium, to relinquish his newly-acquired power and restore the Republic to liberty. The argument rests on a comparison of Republican government with monarchy, exploring both through a set of political criteria: civic virtue (52.2– 5); government finance (52.6); the administration of justice (52.7); controlling aristocratic competition (52.8–9); the dizzying effects of power (52.10); the distribution of favours and honours (52.11–12); and examples from Republican history of overweening ambition and consequent downfall (52.13). The peroration is lost in a lacuna in chapter 13, but by this point Agrippa is clearly reaching his conclusions and will not have continued much further; what remains is probably the extent of his points in favour of Republican government. The historian’s principal technique to attain his interpretative purpose is the use of irony. Agrippa repeatedly adduces arguments in favour of δημοκρατία— that is, the Republic—which in fact implicitly call to mind earlier portions of Dio’s narrative and authorial comments. This works both on the level of detailed verbal parallels and inversions, and of sweeping generalisations contradicted by many previous relevant examples in Dio’s account of the last decades of the res publica. This technique of implicit recall serves to refute Agrippa’s case in real time, point by point, and it is the reader—not the author—who constructs that refutation for himself as he reads. Of course, in order to function this technique necessarily presumes upon a reader already well-versed in the Roman History and familiar with the preceding narrative: in other words, a reader who connects the speech to the narrative, as intended. In praising a phantom Republic that no longer exists in the text, Agrippa merely serves as a final opportunity to summarise Dio’s interpretation of the historical problems which have accelerated its entropy. This contradictory relationship between speech and narrative is indicated from the opening of Agrippa’s comparison of the civic virtues of monarchy and democracy (52.4.1–2): Democracy both has a pleasant-sounding title and is most just in practice. For how can it not be just for men to share all their other blessings in common? And how can it not be best for them to attain distinction in no

Method

41

other area than virtue, when they are of the same nature and race as each other, have been reared within the same principles and educated within the same laws, and provide the service of their minds and bodies to their country in equal measure? ἡ μὲν τοίνυν ἰσονομία τό τε πρόσρημα εὐώνυμον καὶ τὸ ἔργον δικαιότατον ἔχει. τήν τε γὰρ φύσιν τὴν αὐτήν τινας εἰληχότας καὶ ὁμοφύλους ἀλλήλοις ὄντας, ἔν τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἤθεσι τεθραμμένους καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὁμοίοις νόμοις πεπαιδευμένους, καὶ κοινὴν καὶ τὴν τῶν σωμάτων καὶ τὴν τῶν ψυχῶν χρῆσιν τῇ πατρίδι παρέχοντας, πῶς μὲν οὐ δίκαιον καὶ τἆλλα πάντα κοινοῦσθαι, πῶς δ᾽ οὐκ ἄριστον ἐν μηδενὶ πλὴν ἀπ᾽ ἀρετῆς προτιμᾶσθαι; This is a direct inversion of Cassius Dio’s authorial comments at the opening of Book 44, where the historian prefaces his account of Julius Caesar’s assassination with a critique of the flaws of democracy and the benefits of monarchy (44.2.1–2): Democracy has an attractive name and seems to bring equality of opportunity to all through equal rights, but actually, in practice it is proven not to accord at all with its title. Monarchy, on the other hand, is unpleasant to hear but most useful for constituting the state. For it is easier to find one good man than many, and even if this seems difficult to some, surely the alternative must be agreed as impossible. For it is not possible for all men to attain virtue. δημοκρατία γὰρ ὄνομα μὲν εὔσχημον ἔχει καί τινα καὶ ἰσομοιρίαν πᾶσιν ἐκ τῆς ἰσονομίας φέρειν δοκεῖ, ἐν δὲ δὴ τοῖς ἔργοις ἐλέγχεται μηδὲν ὁμολογοῦσα τῷ προσρήματι· καὶ τοὐναντίον ἡ μοναρχία δυσχερὲς μὲν ἀκοῦσαι, χρησιμώτατον δὲ ἐμπολιτεύσασθαι ἐστί. ῥᾷόν τε γὰρ ἕνα τινὰ χρηστὸν ἢ πολλοὺς εὑρεῖν· ἄν τε καὶ τοῦτο χαλεπόν τισιν εἶναι δοκῇ, πᾶσα ἀνάγκη ἐκεῖνό γε ἀδύνατον ὁμολογηθῆναι εἶναι· οὐ γὰρ προσήκει τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀρετὴν κτᾶσθαι. The coherency of these two passages is too striking to be mere coincidence. In comparison they suggest that when penning the speech, Dio consciously and deliberately chose to attribute statements to Agrippa which the preceding narrative disproves. The remainder of the suasoria is constructed with similarly deliberate and ironic care. As we proceed through each of the speaker’s comparative topics—civic virtue, the administration of justice, and so forth— the reader may easily recall points in the preceding diegesis which give the lie

42

chapter 2

to Agrippa’s praise. The survey offered here is not exhaustive, and one might easily choose further factoids in the preceding portions of the Roman History which disprove the idealistic vision of the Republic voiced by Dio’s speaker. On civic virtue, for example, Agrippa claims that under a δημοκρατία, all men are satisfied with the honours conferred upon them and content with the punishments for their transgressions. This argument is grounded in human nature: since all men seek to rule, they readily submit to being ruled themselves, and because they dislike being surpassed by the successes of their peers, so they do not seek to outdo others with their own achievements. Under such a system, people joyfully exhibit virtue and eagerly bestow honour and distinction on the virtue of others; in contrast, everyone detests the wicked and pities the unfortunate, “for everyone treats the loss and shame arising from these things as shared by the whole state”.15 Under monarchies, on the other hand, precisely the opposite conditions prevail. The aristocracy beneath the king, being fiercely competitive, seek to overreach one another with as little personal risk as possible. In their devotion to their selfish interests, they regard the successes of others as their own personal loss and vice versa.16 This characterisation presents monarchical political culture as a factious and egocentric zero-sum game,17 and δημοκρατία as its virtuous opposite, founded on the principles of ἰσομοιρία (equality of portion or opportunity) and ἰσονομία (equality before the law). What is this grim prognostication of the evils of monarchy, if not a clear reflection on Dio’s portrayal of the Late Republic? Agrippa’s praise of δημοκρατία is easily refuted in its results. On the aristocrats’ apparent desire not to surpass their peers, for example, we think of the historian’s comparison of Pompeius and Caesar: “the former wished to be second to no man, and the latter to be first of all”.18 It can hardly be said that in the two decads prior to Book 52, Dio’s dynasts are satisfied with the honours conferred upon them: their rise and fall is routinely explained through their harmful desire ever to acquire more, and their inability to bear their good fortune moderately.19 Furthermore, Agrippa’s presentation of democracy as a virtuous form of government, under which the good are proudly promoted and the wicked are restrained by the community, 15  Cass. Dio 52.4.5–8. 16  Cass. Dio 52.5.1–2. 17  See Lindholmer 2019 for a persuasive study of Dio’s presentation of Late Republican political culture as a “zero-sum game”, characterised above all by corrosive competition; of course the monarchy described here by Agrippa is in fact Dio’s view of the Roman δημοκρατία. 18  Cass. Dio 41.54.1. 19  Further detailed examples of this point can be found throughout this chapter.

Method

43

bears little relation to the careers of even more minor players in Dio’s recent history: compare, for example, the futility of Catulus’ and Cato’s efforts to stabilise the state with the success of the tribunes Gabinius and Clodius. In presenting δημοκρατία as an harmonious collaboration and monarchy as a squalid contest for privilege, Agrippa serves to remind the reader that the political culture of the res publica has come to be as bankrupt as the tyranny to which it is compared. Beyond the realm of virtue, Agrippa’s statements make more concrete institutional and political points which clearly reflect Dio’s view of the weakness of the Republic, and call to mind its worst failings. The most important of these is the problem of provincial government. Agrippa summarises the likely difficulties Octavian’s monarchy will face as follows (52.8.4): It will be absolutely necessary for you to have many assistants in governing so vast an inhabited world, and I suspect that all of them will need to be of a brave and noble disposition. But if you entrust both legions and provinces to men such as these, you and your government will be in danger of being overthrown. νῦν δὲ πᾶσά σε ἀνάγκη συναγωνιστὰς πολλούς, ἅτε τοσαύτης οἰκουμένης ἄρχοντα, ἔχειν, καὶ προσήκει που πάντας αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀνδρείους καὶ φρονίμους εἶναι. οὐκοῦν ἂν μὲν τοιούτοις τισὶ τά τε στρατεύματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐγχειρίζῃς, κίνδυνος ἔσται καὶ σοὶ καὶ τῇ πολιτείᾳ καταλυθῆναι. This is, on the one hand, a real foreshadowing of some of the tensions between centre and periphery that Octavian will have to face as princeps in the narrative to follow. The case of Cornelius Gallus as Augustus’ second prefect of Egypt will pose difficulties: his incursions into neighbouring states—seemingly without Augustus’ authorisation—asserted his independence, and Dio notes the threatening pride with which Gallus erected monuments to celebrate his personal achievements.20 As governor of Macedonia, Marcus Primus will also go on to challenge the new princeps’ position, attacking the client-kingdom of Thrace and causing Augustus significant embarrassment at his trial.21 20  Compare Cass. Dio 53.23 with Suet. Aug. 66 and Vell. Pat 2.91. Gallus was recalled, tried, and killed himself in a major embarrassment for Augustus’ regime. For Gallus’ inscriptions, see CIL III 14147.5 (= ILS 8995), with discussion in Minas-Nerpel & Pfeiffer 2010 and Maltby 2011. 21  Cass. Dio 54.3. See Stockton 1965 for the ramifications of Marcus Primus’ humiliating and botched trial, leading (possibly) to a conspiracy against Augustus’ life.

44

chapter 2

But on the other hand, Agrippa’s admonishment on the danger of ambitious provincial governors surely summarises a fundamental historical problem in Dio’s account of the Late Republic with which the reader is fully familiar. This is made more explicit by the words that immediately follow. With now-characteristic delusion, Agrippa claims that the menace of ambitious provincial governors corrupted by the taste of power is not present in democracies (!), “for the more men are wealthy and strong, so all the more do they vie with one another (φιλοτιμοῦνται) and augment the state”.22 The reader has seen this idea before. In his attempt to dissuade the Quirites from appointing Pompeius to a position of extraordinary sole power under the lex Gabinia, Catulus argues in Book 36 that his authority should instead be delegated to a number of commanders: “and they will vie with one another (φιλοτιμήσονται) all the more eagerly, since as autonomous agents they will gain for themselves the glory for their successes”.23 Agrippa thus recalls Catulus’ earlier (idealistic) description of competition, or φιλοτιμία, as the hallmark of a healthy democratic state and a workable alternative to autocracy. We of course know otherwise. Φιλοτιμία is never a virtue in Dio’s Late Republican narrative: it consistently denotes corrosive or excessive ambition.24 Agrippa’s warning about the danger of provincial commanders to the government of the state clearly recalls the vices of the Republic and the disastrous careers of Marius, Sulla, Sertorius, Pompeius, and Caesar—precisely the historical exempla he deploys at 52.13, in case the reader had not already made the connection. We will return to φιλοτιμία as one of the historian’s key moral themes for the decline of the Republic and the stability of Augustus’ regime in more detail in Chapter 4 (‘Morality’). It is not necessary to ‘rehabilitate’ the speech of Agrippa to demonstrate its importance in Dio’s narrative story-arc of the end of the Republic. It does not provide a “realistic alternative to imperial government”, because that is not its purpose.25 Nor did the historian seek to make its claims convincing; that would be antithetical to his design.26 Situated at this point of transition in the 22  Cass. Dio 52.9.1. 23  Cass. Dio 36.36.2; cf. 36.32.1 for a similarly naive view, not at all Dio’s own but intended to characterise the speaker. 24  See Sion-Jenkis 2000, 79–80 and Kuhn-Chen 2002, 168–169 for a special study of φιλοτιμία in Dio’s work. 25  P ace McKechnie 1981. 26  It is a common approach to treat the speech of Agrippa as the ‘weaker’ party in the controuersia of Book 52: e.g. Gabba 1955, 316; 1984, 72; Strasburger 1977, 48; McKechnie 1981, 151–153; Fechner 1986, 71–86. Adler 2012 has recently applied operational code analysis to show Agrippa’s consistency with Dio’s views in general, but to ‘rehabilitate’ the speech in

Method

45

political history of Rome, the delusional suasoria of Agrippa reiterates one final time some key aspects of Dio’s explanation for the failure of Republican government. By promoting the δημοκρατία to possess all the virtues that the reader of the Roman History knows it no longer has, Agrippa’s speech works in concert with the narrative that precedes it. The result is not only ironic, but also more effective than a bald authorial statement from the historian himself. The speaker is not lying, but rather misguided, and uses an outmoded political language that no longer bears any relation to the reality of Dio’s story. It is an efficient means of recapitulating on the historian’s view while also making a broader point about the weakness of conventional arguments for preserving the status quo. Maecenas’ response (52.14–40) is rather different: weighty, detailed, and generally devoid of the long and sententious expressions of Agrippa’s oration. Evidently, much of its content responds to the historian’s contemporary poli­ tical concerns. However, it is an error to treat the text purely as a Severan political pamphlet. This has been all too commonplace: most modern approaches tend to divorce the set-piece from the narrative which precedes and follows it. They read the text as a standalone composition which Dio inserted into his narrative at the opportune moment without regard for his explanation of the decline of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime. It was once called—mistakenly—“a pure treatise περὶ βασιλείας” in the manner of a rhetorical exercise.27 Fergus Millar’s 1964 study did much to nuance this view, treating it as “a serious, coherent, and fairly comprehensive plan for coping with what Dio conceived to be the evils of his time”,28 and this has remained the most common interpretation since. It is legitimate to speak of “the use of the infamous speech of Maecenas to embody Dio’s reflections on the problems of the empire”,29 and a recent summary enumerates the relevant questions for understanding it as follows: Is this sort of discussion historical? What is its compositional role in the general structure of the Roman History? Which emperor of the Severan dynasty could be its addressee? Within those speeches, what is the relation between generalities, rhetorical and ideological clichés and Dio’s

this way does not make his presentation of δημοκρατία any more realistic, and it is clearly a deliberate contrast with the reality of Dio’s narrative. 27  Burgess 1902, 206n.2. 28  Millar 1964, 107. My emphasis. 29  Anderson 1993, 106–107.

46

chapter 2

own political views? How real or utopian are the suggestions formulated by him?30 Strikingly, this list of topics omits the question of Maecenas’ role in the historical narrative into which Dio inserted it. The topics listed relate to its third-century context—its addressee, the historian’s political views, the feasibility of its suggestions—and practically ignores an equally important concern, viz. why it is even in an interpretative history of the end of the Republic at all. Let us therefore briefly take a different avenue. Setting aside the surprising prejudice that Dio’s speeches were epideictic ornamentation divorced from their historical and narrative context31—and accepting, certainly, that one of the functions of Maecenas is to respond to contemporary Severan concerns—, let us reintegrate this composition into the historical diegesis and encounter it as Dio’s reader would have. Like Agrippa, Maecenas is used to recapitulate the historian’s interpretation of the flaws in Republican civic culture, provincial government, and aristocratic competition. Unlike his counterpart, however, Maecenas also serves to foreshadow the political structure of the Principate and in short to summarise in one place Dio’s interpretation of the reasons for Augustus’ success. Accordingly he looks forward as well as back within the narrative. The speech can be divided into five parts. First, the proemium (52.14–18) emphasises that enlightened kingship differs from tyranny, and is necessary to save both the state and Octavian himself. A summary is given of the reasons for Rome’s civil wars and for Octavian taking up arms. The second section (52.19– 26) deals with the rights and responsibilities of the Senate and the equestrian order. It includes instructions on how to keep local elites loyal and prevent rebellions, and on organising the prerogatives of provincial governors in such a way as to insulate the centre from challenges on the periphery. The third section (52.27–30) discusses the administration and financing of the army, tax reform, and as we saw in the Introduction to this book, the poleis of the Greek East. Section four (52.31–34) broaches legislative and judicial matters, including the protocols for trying members of the Senate, ways to involve senators in the legislative process, and the importance of clemency and ciuilitas. The fifth and final section (52.35–40) broadly covers the moral condition of the emperor and the Empire, including his treatment of his subordinates from spies to freedmen and elites. Importantly, this section also illustrates the princeps’

30  Makhlajuk & Markov 2008, 48. 31  Pace Fomin 2015, 2016.

Method

47

need to decline ostentatious honours and to reject both the appearance and the name of kingship and other detested titles. Even a cursory glance at the issues addressed by Dio’s Maecenas elucidates the thinking its author applied to the collapse of the Republic, and calls to mind key moments in the earlier narrative. The speaker begins by advising Octavian to set up a distinctive type of monarchy—the Principate—which does not enslave the people and is not tyrannical.32 Rather, the regime should be collaborative: an enlightened despotism under which the monarch rules in constant dialogue with his advisers. These advisers as well as the magistrates themselves ought to be appointed on their merit by the princeps rather than by lot or individual “craze for office” (σπουδαρχίᾳ). In this way envy (φθόνος), ambition (φιλοτιμία), and ultimately strife (στάσις) will all be held in check.33 On these Dio’s Maecenas elaborates (52.15.5–6.): Democracy has all of these vices just named … they have been most frequent in our time, and there is now no other way to stop them. The proof of this? We have been at war, and engaged in civil war, for a long time now. The cause of this? The multitude of our population and the enormity of our affairs. For our people are diverse, and being drawn from many races and cultures they possess a range of temperaments and desires. These considerations have brought us to such a point that we can now administer our empire only with the greatest difficulty. ταῦτα γὰρ πᾶσα μὲν δημοκρατία ἔχει· οἱ γὰρ δυνατώτεροι, τῶν τε πρωτείων ὀρεγόμενοι καὶ τοὺς ἀσθενεστέρους μισθούμενοι, πάντα ἄνω καὶ κάτω φύρουσι· πλεῖστα δὲ δὴ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν γέγονε, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ἄλλως παύσεται. τεκμήριον δέ, πάμπολυς ἐξ οὗ χρόνος καὶ πολεμοῦμεν καὶ στασιάζομεν. αἴτιον δὲ τό τε πλῆθος τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τὸ μέγεθος τῶν πραγμάτων· ἐκεῖνοί τε γὰρ παντοδαποὶ καὶ τὰ γένη καὶ τὰς φύσεις ὄντες καὶ ποικίλας καὶ τὰς ὀργὰς καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἔχουσι, καὶ ταῦτα ἐς τοσοῦτον προῆκται ὥστε καὶ πάνυ δυσχερῶς ἂν διοικηθῆναι. These words reflect Dio’s famous authorial statement at 44.2, where he explains that it was impossible for an empire as large as Rome’s, ruling men of many and diverse races and natures and encompassing such vast wealth and resources, to be governed democratically and yet still retain moderation and harmony. Evidently Maecenas’ argument about the fundamental cause of Rome’s civil 32  Cass. Dio 52.15.1. 33  Cass. Dio 52.15.1–4.

48

chapter 2

wars is the historian’s own, and serves to reiterate his position at this point of transition in the narrative. In keeping with Maecenas’ focus on the expanse of Empire, enormous attention is given to the problem of provincial government in the speech. Maecenas insists that under the new regime, consuls and praetors—though still elected for tradition’s sake—should not be entrusted with armed forces during their term. To do so, he warns, would add the real power of military command to the distinction of prestigious titles of office, so increasing the likelihood of rebellion. Instead, he recommends that legions and provinces only be entrusted to governors after they have spent some time as private citizens.34 For the reader of Dio’s narrative, the recent experience of the Late Republican dynasts looms large here, and its readers will be familiar with Maecenas’ logic: it is the historian’s own. In his account of the electoral crisis of 53 BCE, Dio records a decree passed in that year mandating that no former holder of imperium should assume a command abroad before a hiatus of five years had elapsed. His interpretation is revealing: the Romans instituted this reform “in order that these men, by not being in a position of power immediately after holding one, would cease their craze for offices”.35 In identifying jealous grasping for office or σπουδαρχία as a fundamental flaw in the Republic’s administration of its empire, Maecenas articulates one of Dio’s main historical interpretations about the collapse of the Republic. Indeed, his oration repeatedly emphasises the real dangers of ambitious provincial commanders to the central government:36 it is impossible not to think of the recent experience of Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, and Caesar in that context, and therefore these comments are closely connected to the preceding portions of the Roman History. In addition to reflecting on the preceding series of events, Maecenas is also used to offer an analysis of the real danger to Octavian in the immediate histor­ ical and narrative context. It is noteworthy that the historian never provides this analysis in his own voice: only in the suasoria of Maecenas does Dio summarise the risks to Octavian’s position in the aftermath of the Battle of Actium. The chief risk to the young dynast’s position lay in relinquishing his power and so leaving himself open to retribution from his many enemies. “Who”, Maecenas asks, “will spare you if you give your powers back to the people or entrust them to another, when you have injured so many people and practically all of these will aim for supreme power for themselves?”.37 None of these, 34  Cass. Dio 52.20.4. 35  Cass. Dio 40.46.2. 36  Cass. Dio 52.15.3, 17.3–4, 19.3, 20.3–4, 22.6, 23.2–3. 37  Cass. Dio 52.17.2.

Method

49

he continues, would be prepared to forgive Octavian for his actions or allow him to survive as a rival. The exempla which follow prove this point in a manner consistent with the historian’s earlier interpretations. Maecenas brings forward the case of Pompeius: when he had relinquished his extraordinary powers (δυναστεία) as Octavian is proposing to do,38 he became subject to scorn and plotting (κατεφρονήθη καὶ ἐπεβουλεύθη), and ultimately lost his life.39 This can only refer to Dio’s explanation of the general’s return from the East in 62 BCE, when after landing at Brundisium as Sulla twenty years before, Pompeius symbolically chose to disband his legions and so disavow claims to being a Sullan imitator. In Dio’s view this deprived him of leverage, leaving him powerless and ultimately frustrated in his attempts to have his political and other arrangements in the East confirmed by the Senate. The historian’s interpretation is revealing: “he thus learned that he had no real power, but only the name and the envy for his former powers, receiving no real benefit from them; and accordingly he regretted disbanding his legions so soon and surrendering himself to his enemies”.40 Maecenas therefore offers a cogent analysis of Octavian’s historical position which merits serious consideration: it was necessary for him either to carry on, or to be ruined. Having come to this point, there could be no turning back. Sulla’s fortune lay in dying quietly of old age in the country shortly after surrendering his powers; Octavian did not have that option after Actium. How, then, was the young dynast to avoid the fate of all those who came before him? The answer lay in creating a stable monarchy with an omnipotent centre veiled beneath a civilian guise. Here Dio’s speaker not only looks back on the disastrous history of the Late Republic, but also foreshadows the future Augustus’ reforms within the provincial administration, and the creation of his imperial self-image. As has been briefly remarked elsewhere, Maecenas’ recommendations are indeed the steps that the princeps will go on to take in the ensuing narrative.41 Turning first to provincial government, Maecenas advises Octavian to appoint imperium-bearing officials himself, shearing them of much of their traditional power: such a course would prevent “the same things happening all over again”, viz. excessive power and ambition on the part of provincial 38  It is not necessary for our purposes here to define δυναστεία precisely: the connotation in this case is of near-autocratic or extra-legal power, but its polyvalence has been discussed fully by Freyburger-Galland 1993. 39  Cass. Dio 52.17.3. 40  Cass. Dio 37.50.6. 41  See Reinhold 1988.

50

chapter 2

commanders, and renewed civil war.42 This is precisely what the princeps will go on to do in the narrative, personally appointing those governors entrusted with the powerful provinces under the emperor’s control.43 Moreover, the speaker recommends that these officials be paid a salary, both to limit their personal expenditure and to reduce the scope for corruption and extortion.44 This, again, Augustus puts into effect.45 Most importantly of all, Maecenas repeatedly emphasises the need to deprive the traditional organs of state—the Senate, magistrates, and governors—of much of their effective power, and in short to keep the aristocracy weak and the emperor strong:46 this would be imperative for the survival of the regime. That this is the historian’s own view of the necessary steps to cement the new monarch’s power is confirmed by his brief analysis of Augustus’ changes to the allocation of provinces under the settlement of 27 BCE (53.12.1–3): Wishing to appear ‘republican’, he undertook the charge and purview of all public affairs, on the grounds that these required his care. Yet he declared that he would not rule all the provinces himself nor govern those which he did forever. He gave the weaker provinces to the Senate, stating that these were peaceful and free from war, and he retained control of the stronger provinces, stating that these were troublesome and difficult, either having enemies on their borders or posing significant potential for a revolt. Ostensibly this was so that the Senate might enjoy the finest part of the empire without trouble while he would have all the toils and dangers; but in reality, he used this pretext so that the Senate would be unarmed and incapable of resistance, while he alone would have arms and maintain soldiers. βουληθεὶς δὲ δὴ καὶ ὣς δημοτικός τις εἶναι δόξαι, τὴν μὲν φροντίδα τήν τε προστασίαν τῶν κοινῶν πᾶσαν ὡς καὶ ἐπιμελείας τινὸς δεομένων ὑπεδέξατο, οὔτε δὲ πάντων αὐτὸς τῶν ἐθνῶν ἄρξειν, οὔθ᾽ ὅσων ἂν ἄρξῃ, διὰ παντὸς τοῦτο ποιήσειν ἔφη, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν ἀσθενέστερα ὡς καὶ εἰρηναῖα καὶ ἀπόλεμα ἀπέδωκε τῇ βουλῇ, τὰ δ᾽ ἰσχυρότερα ὡς καὶ σφαλερὰ καὶ ἐπικίνδυνα καὶ ἤτοι πολεμίους τινὰς προσοίκους ἔχοντα ἢ καὶ αὐτὰ καθ᾽ ἑαυτὰ μέγα τι νεωτερίσαι δυνάμενα κατέσχε, λόγῳ μὲν ὅπως ἡ μὲν γερουσία ἀδεῶς τὰ κάλλιστα τῆς ἀρχῆς καρπῷτο, 42  Cass. Dio 52.20.3. 43  Cass. Dio 53.13.2–5. 44  Cass. Dio 52.23.1. 45  Cass. Dio 53.15.4–6. 46  E.g. Cass. Dio 52.15.2, 19.1–4, 20.3–4, 21.3–7, 23.2–3, etc.

Method

51

αὐτὸς δὲ τούς τε πόνους καὶ τοὺς κινδύνους ἔχῃ, ἔργῳ δὲ ἵνα ἐπὶ τῇ προφάσει ταύτῃ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν καὶ ἄοπλοι καὶ ἄμαχοι ὦσιν, αὐτὸς δὲ δὴ μόνος καὶ ὅπλα ἔχῃ καὶ στρατιώτας τρέφῃ. Maecenas thus articulates quite clearly the historian’s case: in order to retain his position, the new princeps would need to reign in essence as a military dictator. But it would have to a seemingly benevolent, unobjectionable tyranny. Here a final and related point emerges: the necessity of cloaking his power under an attractive cover. Dio writes of Augustus’ desire to appear δημοτικός in readjusting the status quo. This cannot mean ‘democratic’ in the traditional sense, and denotes instead Roman conceptions of the ideal princeps: a monarch who dresses and behaves in a manner suggestive of equality with the senatorial aristocracy, the ‘citizen-king’ whose untranslatable virtue of ciuilitas represents the antonym of tyrannical rule.47 Interestingly, Agrippa’s speech never admits of this possibility: his discussion of the virtues and vices of democracy and monarchy respectively compares them to the Republic on the one hand and ‘tyranny’ (τυραννίς) on the other—that is, monarchical government in its degenerate form. Positive notions of kingship, such as enlightened despotism (βασιλεία), are never mentioned in Agrippa’s suasoria,48 because the Republican statesman’s default language of monarchy, regnum, has no positive connotation. To speak of enlightened or benevolent kingship in Agrippa’s vocabulary would be a contradiction in terms. Resurrecting the recent example of Julius Caesar, Agrippa admonishes Octavian to remember the retribution visited upon his adoptive father for aiming at monarchy in this way.49 When read in relation with the preceding narrative, these words again offer Dio’s analysis of the immediate historical context and the real danger of Octavian’s position. In the Roman History, Caesar misunderstands—fatally—the importance of appearances. He had made himself a king in appearance as well as reality after the Hellenistic idiom. Adopting the dress of the ancient kings of Alba Longa, he allowed a golden throne and bejewelled crown to be carried into theatres in his absence, and in short allowed himself to grow corrupted by distinction. This, of course, is precisely what his enemies wanted: Caesar’s enemies in the Roman History 47  For the classic study of the Roman emperors and ciuilitas see Wallace-Hadrill 1982, who explicitly aligns Dio’s use of δημοτικός with the concept (and was the first to do so, rightly). 48  Or at least never in a Roman context. Βασιλεία is mentioned once by Agrippa at 52.10.2 with reference to systems of government among “Greeks and barbarians” (ὅθεν, οἶμαι, καὶ Ἕλληνες καὶ βάρβαροί τινες οὐδὲ διδομένας σφίσι βασιλείας ἐδέξαντο). 49  Cass. Dio 52.13.4.

52

chapter 2

wished to rouse envy and hatred against him. In seeking monarchy, Agrippa warns, Octavian risked repeating the mistakes of the past.50 As before, Dio uses Maecenas to pose the solution to such a conundrum and to foreshadow the success of Augustus’ regime. Certainly he acknowledges the risk: Caesar not only lost his position but also his life.51 However, what follows are concrete suggestions for avoiding a repeat performance. As princeps, Octavian should be easy of access and welcoming of frank and unrestrained advice (52.33); he should seek the loyalty of his subjects through kindness and generosity rather than through fear (52.34); unlike Caesar, he must always take care to decline prodigious honours, being aware that these in fact undermine his power (52.35); and, finally, he should take care over his title. If Octavian fears the title of ‘king’, he may rule as ‘Caesar’ instead. Should the need for further names arise, “they will give you the title of imperator, as they once gave to your father, and will revere you with another name too, so that you may enjoy the reality of kingship without the hatred which is attached to the name”.52 Maecenas lays the roadmap for a successful monarchy with the appearance of ciuilitas at its core. Broadly, the practices he outlines are those which Augustus will go on to pursue in Dio’s narrative. The Agrippa-Maecenas dialogue is the cornerstone of Dio’s Roman History, and we will return to it repeatedly in what follows, especially in Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’). But setting aside other questions to be broached later, our purpose at this point has been merely to establish its centrality to the histor­ical diegesis of which it is part. There is surely no need to ask whether it is a rhetorical exercise. A most recent study is right to note that it is impossible to ignore its “close connection to conventional rhetoric”,53 but then the same may be said of all speeches in ancient historiography (and indeed all speeches in general!). It does not follow that the obvious presence of rhetorical training—another theme to be broached shortly in this chapter—renders the dialogue purely “epideictic”. Agrippa and Maecenas stand at an important junction in the historian’s narrative and are embedded fully within it. In Agrippa, Dio emphasises that the conceptual language of Republicanism had ceased to accord with the reality: conventional arguments for the preservation of the δημοκρατία merely recall, 50  See Burden-Strevens 2019 for a fuller exploration of this aspect of Dio’s interpretation; also Burden-Strevens 2016. 51  Cass. Dio 52.17.3. 52  Cass. Dio 52.40.2. 53  Fomin 2015, 214: “No scholarly study of the Agrippa-Maecenas debate of book fifty-two can disregard the fact of its close connection to conventional rhetoric”.

Method

53

through their proven fallibility in the narrative, the deterioration of recent affairs, and Agrippa cannot envisage a monarchy except in terms of regnum. Maecenas, on the other hand, has a more realistic understanding of the recent past. He serves to set out one final time Dio’s view of the inherent instability of a res publica corroded by careerism (σπουδαρχία), envy (φθόνος), and ambition (φιλοτιμία), and the significant role played by provincial government in creating that instability. However, by proposing concrete suggestions for creating a military dictatorship under a benevolent guise, Maecenas foreshadows that Augustus’ later reforms in the narrative will be a direct cause of the stability of his regime. 1.1.2 Cicero and Philiscus The analytical function of other dialogues in the Roman History is rather less clear. In particular, the conversation between Cicero and Philiscus in Book 38 seems at first sight to bear little relation to its narrative, dramatic, or histor­ ical context. Its very setting certainly places it at a remove. Following his exile at the hands of Clodius in 58 BCE, Cicero encounters an otherwise unknown sage, Philiscus, while tarrying in Macedonia. The narrative of political events in the year at Rome pauses at this point for the staging of the dialogue, before returning to Rome again immediately after its close, at which point Dio explains the process of the statesman’s recall. The effect is to restrict the entire period of Cicero’s banishment to a rhetorical set-piece which stands apart from the historical diegesis of events as such. Its content additionally seems to distance it from Dio’s interpretative purpose, at least superficially. Philiscus’ ostensible aim in speaking is to reassure his interlocutor about his exile, and in so doing he uses such commonplace arguments as one would expect to find in a philosophical consolation (consolatio philosophiae). His points are indebted to the language of Plato and Greek tragedy; this literary world is recalled by the metaphors used (especially nautical), comparing the vicissitudes of fortune to the undulations of the sea and so forth.54 Even the line-up is ahistorical: ‘Philiscus’ does not otherwise appear in the Roman History and is inserted merely for the purposes of the dialogue. The choice of name may be inspired by the sophist Philiscus of Thessaly, whose visit to Rome in 212–213 CE Dio may have been present to witness. But there is no need to identify Dio’s Philiscus

54  E.g. Cass. Dio 38.18.5, 20.4. See Jones 2016 for a recent study of Dio’s familiarity with Plato, including verbal parallels.

54

chapter 2

as a real person:55 his name serves merely as a recognisable shorthand for ‘philosopher’,56 and his identity is insignificant. Accordingly the dialogue is usually treated as an epideictic flourish and an example of Dio’s ‘sophistic’ tendencies:57 “to the highest degree a case of a generalised speech in the style of a philosophical tract”.58 It has been variously characterised as an exercise in encomium or consolatio de exsilio,59 and modern readings always regard it as entirely divorced from its narrative context. Fergus Millar’s claim that it has “no function within the History, unless to underline the weakness of Cicero’s character” remains influential.60 A compelling new analysis suggests that the exchange may in fact be a consolatio ad Dionem: on this view the historian, having withdrawn from political life in 229 CE, penned the words of Philiscus to seek solace himself.61 This must be the case: numerous points in the dialogue, such as Philiscus’ recommendation that Cicero be satisfied with his former consulship and retire to the coast to write history like Thucydides or Xenophon, certainly reflect Dio’s experience. But that does not fully explain the historian’s choice to interpolate this material at this point in his narrative. I believe that we can connect the Cicero-Philiscus dialogue more fully to Dio’s interpretation of events in the early 50s BCE than most modern treatments would have us accept. Despite its obviously Greek philosophical packaging, the discourse of Cicero and Philiscus never loses sight of the recent political events it immediately follows. In fact, it is the point in the Roman History at which the author offers his fullest analysis of the controversy (and consequences) of Cicero’s oratorical career, and, significantly, the only occasion where he states explicitly the cause of his exile. Dio thus gives the narrative of events in the narrative proper, but the interpretation of those events in the speech. To perceive the relationship between these two components, we need to turn to the narrative foregrounding the dialogue first. Book 38 opens with Caesar’s election to the consulship and the debate surrounding his land distribution bill, including a survey of his opponents and his supporters. Dio moves on to record Caesar’s scheming to get other parts of his legislative programme passed, including his quinquennium as governor of Illyricum and Cisalpine 55  For the possible identity of Philiscus, see Philippson 1938, 2384; Millar 1961, 16; 1964, 50; Stekelenburg 1971, 22; Letta 1979, 158. 56  So Fechner 1986, 49. 57  Gowing 1998, 377–378. 58  Fomin 2015, 205. 59  Burgess 1902, 207 (encomium); Millar 1961, 16 (consolatio). 60  Millar 1964, 51. 61  Kemezis 2014, 289–290 for the argument and the accompanying evidence.

Method

55

Gaul, and his marriage alliances with Pompeius and Calpurnius Piso. In short, the first eight sections of the book deal with Caesar’s overweening ambition and his controversial methods to secure his own power. Cicero finally enters the scene at 38.9.2 with the so-called ‘Vettius Affair’, listed (bizarrely) as a member of a conspiracy to kill Caesar with Lucullus as his accomplice.62 Dio treats this imbroglio as the beginning of the enmity between Caesar and Cicero, and the abandonment of the latter by Pompeius:63 it is accordingly the catalyst of his downfall and the beginning of the exile narrative. Cicero is the central character from this point. The narrative turns to focus on his actions—chiefly those which displease Caesar—and offers these neutrally without authorial analysis or comment. That Dio will reserve for the dialogue to come shortly. Above all, the narrative centres around his oratorical performances. While speaking in defence of Antonius Hybrida—under accusation for involvement in the alleged Catilinarian conspiracy—Cicero vigorously attacked Caesar, “even going so far as to hurl insults at him”.64 The consul did not immediately respond, but preferred to wait for an opportunity to exact his revenge discreetly. That opportunity came in the person of the tribune Clodius, whom he “secretly primed against Cicero”.65 According to Dio, the consul and the tribune worked to dissolve Cicero’s support among the people, Senate, and equestrians, hoping to make him an easier target for retribution when he was no longer loved and feared by others. The historian pauses at this point to reflect on the orator’s reputation. He again focusses on Cicero’s oratorical career and the political danger it invited (38.12.5–7): For he annoyed many people with his speeches, and the number of those indebted to him for some favour by no means equalled those who were alienated by some wrong. Moreover, most men more readily feel irritated at offences than grateful to anyone for kindness. They think that they have repaid those who speak on their behalf by their fee, while their real goal is to undermine their opponents in some way. Cicero made most bitter enemies for himself by always striving to get the better of even the most powerful men and using unadulterated and excessive frankness of speech to everyone in equal measure, since he eagerly sought a 62  Unusually, Cass. Dio 38.9 is our only account to implicate Cicero in the alleged plot against Caesar’s (or another’s?) life: cf. Cic. Att. 2.18, 2.24; Plut. Luc. 42–43; Suet. Iul. 20–21; App. B. Civ. 2.8–14. For some classic attempts to disentangle the so-called ‘Vettius Affair’ see McDermott 1949; Allen 1950; Ross Taylor 1950. 63  Cass. Dio 38.10.1. 64  Cass. Dio 38.10.4. 65  Cass. Dio 38.12.1.

56

chapter 2

reputation for cunning and eloquence such as no one else had, even in place of a reputation as a good citizen. As a result of this, and because he was the greatest boaster of all and thought no one his equal, scorning all with his speeches just as in his manner of life and thinking himself a different breed to everyone else, he was boorish and hateful. For this he was envied and despised even by those he otherwise pleased. παμπληθεῖς γὰρ ἐκ τῶν λόγων ἐλύπει, καὶ οὐκ ἐς τοσοῦτον οἵ τι ὠφελούμενοι ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ᾠκειοῦντο ἐς ὅσον οἱ βλαπτόμενοι ἠλλοτριοῦντο. πρὸς γάρ τοι τῷ τοὺς πλείους τῶν ἀνθρώπων προχειρότερον ἐπὶ τοῖς δυσχερεστέροις ἀγανακτεῖν ἢ τῶν ἀμεινόνων χάριν τισὶν ἔχειν, καὶ τοῖς μὲν συναγορεύσασί σφισιν ἀποδεδωκέναι τὸν μισθὸν νομίζειν, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀντιδικήσαντας ἀμύνεσθαι τρόπον τινὰ προαιρεῖσθαι, πικροτάτους ἐχθροὺς ἑαυτῷ ἐποίει περιεῖναί τε καὶ τῶν κρατίστων ἀεί ποτε ἐπιχειρῶν καὶ τῇ παρρησίᾳ πρὸς πάντας ὁμοίως ἀκράτῳ καὶ κατακορεῖ χρώμενος, ἅτε καὶ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ δύνασθαι συνεῖναί τε καὶ εἰπεῖν ἃ μηδεὶς ἄλλος, καὶ πρὸ τοῦ χρηστὸς εἶναι δοκεῖν, θηρώμενος. ἔκ τε οὖν τούτου, καὶ διότι μέγιστόν τε ἀνθρώπων ηὔχει καὶ οὐδένα ἐξ ἴσου ἑαυτῷ ἦγεν, ἀλλὰ ἔν τε τοῖς λόγοις ὁμοίως καὶ ἐν τῷ βίῳ πάντας τε ὑπερεφρόνει καὶ ἰσοδίαιτος οὐδενὶ ἠξίου εἶναι, φορτικός τε καὶ ἐπαχθὴς ἦν, καὶ ἀπὸ τούτων καὶ ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων οἷς ἤρεσκε, καὶ ἐφθονεῖτο καὶ ἐμισεῖτο. From this point matters come to a head. Clodius (or rather Caesar, as Dio writes)66 outwits Cicero and draws up his lex Clodia to secure the orator’s exile. Pompeius and Caesar—both in cahoots—offer Cicero conflicting advice in order to mislead him, and he decides to remain in Rome and fight his case. Yet he has been deserted. In addition to Pompeius and Caesar, even Cicero’s allies Piso and Gabinius chose not to defend or praise him when brought before the people. Crassus, too, took the side of Clodius and the mob.67 Cicero went into exile before the bill condemning him could be passed, and the law came into effect: “and so far from meeting any opposition, the law was even supported by those very people, among others, who had previously seemed to be most fighting Cicero’s corner”.68 The narrative foregrounding the Cicero-Philiscus dialogue clearly emphasises the controversy of Cicero’s oratorical career, establishing it as the key factor in his abandonment by his allies. Accordingly, the dangers of advocacy and public speech form one of the central themes of the dialogue. It can hardly 66  Cass. Dio 38.14.3. 67  Cass. Dio 38.15–16. 68  Cass. Dio 38.17.6.

Method

57

be claimed that it is divorced from its narrative: in recalling recent events, Philiscus underlines Dio’s interpretation that, above all, the orator’s excessive frankness of speech was the principal cause of his exile. Consequently the role played by Clodius is markedly de-emphasised—in the Roman History he is in any case a mere pawn of Caesar—and the historian gives focus instead to the self-inflicted cause of Cicero’s abandonment by his allies. The machinations of Caesar and Clodius are the beginnings of his exile, but they are emphatically not its cause: that Dio ascribes to his oratorical performances. Philiscus establishes this theme at the very beginning of the dialogue. Chastising his interlocutor’s lack of courage, the philosopher asks how one as well-educated and seasoned in the courts as he can lose heart so easily.69 Cicero’s immediate response sustains the focus on oratory: he claims that Philiscus should not be surprised to find so great an advocate in this parlous state, since to speak for others in their time of need is easier than to counsel oneself.70 Allusions to Cicero’s career in the courts and the Forum occur repeatedly in this part of the dialogue, but at this stage do not take on any particular significance beyond maintaining the theme of oratory, and characterising the speakers also. When offered advice, for example, Cicero responds that the power of words is such that he would not be surprised if it restored to courage “even me, I, who have been so brilliant in the Senate and assemblies and law courts!”71 Dio here gives an effective characterisation, viva voce, of the kind of boastfulness that he claims brought the orator into such disfavour in the first place.72 But shortly after this opening, Dio forms a more explicit connection between Cicero’s public career and the cause of recent political events. Drawing from familiar consolatory arguments, Philiscus exhorts the exiled Cicero to take heart: he has his physical health and strength, and sufficient sustenance to live. The loss of his wealth and status should not vex him; everything beyond one’s mortal needs is superfluous. He did not require these boons when he had them, and should not grieve for having now lost them.73 This thought is conventional enough, and arguments of this kind have done much to advance the view that the Cicero-Philiscus dialogue is a generalising set of tropes divorced from their narrative context. Yet what follows is of greater importance to Dio’s narrative. “Most of these blessings”, Philiscus continues, “were not inherited 69  Cass. Dio 38.18.1. 70  Cass. Dio 38.18.2. 71  Cass. Dio 38.19.1. 72  P ace Gowing 1992, 244, who suggests that Dio did not generally pay attention to characterisation in his speeches. 73  Cass. Dio 38.19.2–20.2.

58

chapter 2

by you so as to make you more personally concerned about them. Rather, they were earned by your own tongue and your own speeches, and that is how you lost them too. Do not therefore be troubled, if your position has been lost in the same way it was won”.74 Philiscus is the closest Dio ever comes to offering an unambiguous and assertive explanation for the cause of Cicero’s banishment. Having focussed in detail on his oratorical career and the enmities arising from it in the earlier narrative of Book 38, the historian gives his Philiscus arguments which are consistent with the exile narrative and which explain its fundamental cause. All this serves to show is that the historian did not carelessly drop the Cicero-Philiscus dialogue into the narrative the moment the appropriate moral situation occurred. He had more significant aims in mind than a mere display of rhetorical prowess in the manner of an epideictic exercise. Much of its content, as we have seen, was conventional and indebted to familiar commonplaces of the rhetorical schools, as well as to the language of Plato and consolatory literature more generally. Yet this set-piece also belongs firmly within its narrative context. It does not lose sight of recent events, and is consistent with the historian’s account of them. Indeed, it aids in his interpretation of them, since the explanation that Philiscus furnishes for Cicero’s exile clearly serves as the historian’s own. It is hardly a sophisticated and detailed political analysis—this Dio reserved for other set-pieces in the Roman History whose function is less difficult to place, and less controversial—, yet it is a mistake to treat the exchange of Book 38 as a mere generalising aside with no function in the book. And indeed, beyond the book. For Philiscus’ words not only underline the cause of Cicero’s recent banishment; they additionally foreshadow the consequences that will arise if the orator does not change his course and milden his excessive boasting and pugilism. In his peroration, the speaker advises Cicero to accept his fate and retire to a quiet life of literature and philosophy. He accepts, however, that Cicero may be tempted by the same impulse for glory and for a prestigious role in public life that Dio’s authorial voice so bitterly criticised earlier in the book (38.29.1–3). If you really are eager to return home and seek renown in the state, then even though I do not wish to say anything unpleasant, I do fear—looking at the state of affairs and bearing in mind your frankness of speech, and beholding the power and number of your enemies—that you will never be safe. If again you must go into exile, you will be able to change course; 74  Cass. Dio 38.20.3–4.

Method

59

but if you suffer some mortal fate, you will not be able to do so then! How could it not be awful, and how not shameful, for one’s severed head to be set up in the Forum, for any man or woman who stumbles upon it to desecrate? Do not resent me as one casting evil upon you, but rather listen to me as a prophet. Do not let the fact that you have some powerful friends deceive you; for those who seem to love you will be of no help to you against your enemies, as you have just learned yourself. ἂν δὲ δὴ τήν τε κάθοδον σπουδάσῃς καὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ πολιτείᾳ λαμπρότητα ζηλώσῃς, δυσχερὲς μὲν οὐδὲν εἰπεῖν βούλομαι, φοβοῦμαι δέ, ἔς τε τὰ πράγματα ἀποβλέπων καὶ τὴν σὴν παρρησίαν ἐννοῶν, τήν τε δύναμιν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἀντιστασιωτῶν σου θεωρῶν, μήποτέ τι καὶ αὖθις σφαλῇς. καὶ εἰ μὲν ἐν φυγῇ γένοιο, μεταγνώσῃ μόνον, εἰ δέ τι ἕτερον ἀνήκεστον πάθοις, οὐδὲ μετανοῆσαι δυνήσῃ. καίτοι πῶς μὲν οὐ δεινόν, πῶς δ᾽ οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἀποτμηθῆναί τέ τινος τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ ἐς τὴν ἀγορὰν τεθῆναι, κἂν οὕτω τύχῃ, καὶ ἄνδρα τινὰ αὐτῇ καὶ γυναῖκα ἐνυβρίσαι; καί με μὴ ὡς φαῦλά σοι οἰωνιζόμενον μισήσῃς, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς διοσημίαν τινὰ προδεικνύντα φύλαξαι. μηδέ σε ἐξαπατάτω τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι καὶ φίλους τινὰς τῶν δυνατῶν ἔχεις· οὐδὲν γάρ σε ὠφελήσουσιν οἱ δοκοῦντες φιλεῖν πρὸς τοὺς ἐχθρῶς διακειμένους, ὥσπερ που καὶ πεπείρασαι. Of course, Cicero’s grave fault in the Roman History consists in failing to change course after his return, as Philiscus here recommends. That excessive frankness of speech (παρρησία) which infuriated Caesar and Pompeius in 58 BCE, and which alienated those allies such as Gabinius and Piso who would otherwise have come to his defence, remains a feature of his character, and will come to claim him again. The ‘philippic’ invective of Book 45—to which we turn in the next section—is the best expression of that fatal flaw.75 In Philiscus, Dio predicts the cause of Cicero’s eventual death. In the narrative of 43 BCE to come, the historian does not pause to comment on why his assassination was necessary or desirable to the triumvirs. Cicero receives no necrology, and no grand explanation of the cause of his death. That is reserved for the oration of Philiscus alone: it is the speech, not the narrative, which assumes the explanatory burden. Philiscus offers a tantalising counterfactual possibility: a scenario in which Cicero could have been saved, retiring quietly into private life after 75  For a fuller discussion of the ‘philippic’ and ‘anti-philippic’ polemics of Books 45–46 as examples of the corrosive effects of unbridled free speech in Dio’s view of the Republic, and for the historian’s approach to παρρησία more generally as both a virtue and a vice (especially in his Augustan narrative), see recently Mallan 2016.

60

chapter 2

his return from exile—writing history by the sea, perhaps, like Xenophon or Thucydides—, and content with his previous distinctions and a privileged consular dignity in the Senate. Philiscus presents the necessary option for the orator’s salvation, but we know that the latter will not take it. The vivid detail of his decapitation and desecration—“by any man or woman”—obviously looks forward to Antonius’ wife Fulvia and her creativity with hair-pins.76 Yet Philiscus’ peroration and his prediction of Cicero’s death achieves something which Dio’s narrative of 43 BCE does not. From a causal standpoint it ties the events of 58 BCE and 43 BCE together as twin manifestations of the same two problems, both mentioned as Philiscus’ closing words: Cicero’s παρρησία on the one hand, and the fickleness of his allies on the other. The latter had failed to defend him against Caesar and Clodius, and they would fail to save him from Antonius and Octavian fifteen years later; the former was the fundamental weakness in his character which brought him (twice) to perdition. Like Agrippa and Maecenas, the consolatio philosophiae of Cicero and Philiscus looks both forward and back within its narrative, and has an important part to play in the story-arc of Dio’s Roman History. 1.1.3 The Lex Gabinia Speeches We can conclude this part of our analysis with the important debate in Book 36 on the lex Gabinia. The historian constructs the debate with deliberate care, dividing it into three parts: Pompeius, using the tactic of recusatio imperii, makes a show of rejecting the honour in order to acquire it all the more easily; Gabinius, as rogator of his law, naturally urges it upon the people; and Quintus Lutatius Catulus, the conservative former consul, speaks in opposition to it. The historical context is genuine: the lex Gabinia of 67 BCE proposed to grant an extraordinary command of three years’ duration, with purview over the entire Mediterranean coast extending to fifty miles inland in all directions, to an unspecified individual.77 In Dio the rogator of the law, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, had Pompeius in mind and indeed acted with his approval;78 this is probably correct. The ostensible purpose of so prestigious and unconstitutional a measure was to combat the threat of the Mediterranean pirates whose reach had extended sufficiently far to sack the port of Ostia the previous year. The dramatic setting of the debates in Dio may be inspired by Cicero’s de Imperio

76  Cass. Dio 47.8.4. 77  For an overview of the specific terms of the law and the sources, see Ferrary 2007. For the debate surrounding the scope of Pompeius’ imperium see Jameson 1970. 78  Cass. Dio 36.23.4.

Method

61

Gnaei Pompei;79 this speech of 66 BCE on another command for Pompeius (the lex Manilia) confirms that Gabinius’ controversial proposal aroused vocal opposition, and Dio’s account is consistent with this. Like the oration of Agrippa and the Cicero-Philiscus dialogue, the function of the lex Gabinia episode within Dio’s text has recently been described as more or less “epideictic”:80 that is, separated from the historical diegesis as a purely rhetorical set-piece intended to display its author’s rhetorical prowess and erudition, set apart from the interpretative superstructure of the narrative. This approach holds that “the debate itself may be recognized as an example of Dio’s tendency for epideictic speechifying using the formula of the προγυμνάσματα”.81 It views the drills of the rhetorical schools as the starting-point for interpreting the function of the debate.82 Now, this approach is more or less justified if what we are searching for is historicity, viz. to what extent Dio’s rendering of the debate reflects what was verifiably said in the given situation. In this case such a search would be problematic indeed. We cannot verify whether one of Dio’s characters, Catulus, actually spoke in 67 BCE;83 Pompeius may not have 79  Fuller discussion of this point follows in the next section. For general surveys of Dio’s apparent use of the de Imperio Gnaei Pompei, see Ooteghem 1954, 170n.1; Rodgers 2008, 308–312; Montecalvo 2014, 25–47. In general scholars avoid the possibility that Dio was consulting Cicero directly as a source open in front of him during the composition of his lex Gabinia orations (so also Fechner 1986, 44 n.35: “ob man deshalb auf eine direkte Benutzung Ciceros durch Dio für diese Stelle schließen darf, ist fraglich”). They overlook also his use of Cicero as a rhetorical model as well as a source of arguments as such for the speakers. See further below. 80  So the summary at Rodgers 2008, 297 on Dio’s version of the debate. 81  Fomin 2015, 211. 82  Ibid.: “the starting point for the interpretation of the function and historical authenticity of the Pompey-Gabinius-Catulus debate at 36.25–36 may lie, too, somewhere in the realm of conventions of school rhetoric”. 83  This has caused scholars much consternation and is regularly used in support of the (odd) view that the historian’s purposes in staging the debate were “epideictic speechifying”. In fact there is absolutely nothing to indicate that Catulus did not speak against the lex Gabinia of 67 BCE and, conversely, much evidence to suggest that he did. Rodgers 2008, 289 argues that Catulus did not speak against the lex Gabinia as he is made to do in Dio, even though all our sources have him doing so (Cass. Dio 36.36; Plut. Pomp. 25.5–6; Val. Max. 8.15.9; Vell. Pat. 2.32.1–3). She basis this on a reading of Cic. Man. 63–64, in which Cicero summarises Catulus’ objections to Pompeius’ power; in her view, in summarising Catulus’ views in this way Cicero is “clearly describing a very recent event” (i.e., his opposition to the lex Manilia of 66 BCE, not the lex Gabinia of the previous year). But there is nothing whatsoever in the Latin of Cic. Man. 63–64 to suggest that Cicero is describing a recent event: if there is, Rodgers does not specify what. The opposition of Catulus quoted by Cicero could just as easily have occurred in 67 BCE (against the lex Gabinia) as all our sources attest. Where Dio evidently does distort is to omit Hortensius from the debate altogether: he spoke in both years (so Morstein-Marx 2004, 181–182).

62

chapter 2

spoken on this theme either;84 and many of the arguments used—as we shall see in the next section—evidently derive from Cicero’s de Imperio Gnaei Pompei of the following year. But our aim here is not to establish the historicity of the debate—a fruitless exercise, and not Dio’s intention either. Our question is the function of this episode in the narrative of the Roman History, embedded within it as a medium of analysis and explanation. Here again the historian’s purposes were far from purely epideictic. In view of its importance to Dio’s interpretation of the problems that beset the Late Republic, we will return frequently to the lex Gabinia debates of Book 36 later. For the time being, let us simply concentrate briefly on a few examples which show its close connection to Dio’s narrative and its suitability for its dramatic and historical context. First, the speeches explore the real danger of extraordinary commands to the Republican constitution by reflecting repeatedly on Pompeius’ exceptional career to this point. Those portions of the Roman History which detail Pompeius’ earlier career are lost, but the basic facts of his ascent will of course have been in the text. Here the historian draws together those facts and analyses their significance. Note, for example, that all three speakers emphasise the dangerous irregularity of Pompeius’ rise. The general himself, feigning to reject the command, reminds his hearers of “how many labours in Sicily and in Africa I undertook before I had as yet come fully of age, and how many dangers I encountered in Spain before I was even a senator”.85 To complete the picture, Pompeius adds that the triumph he was awarded for his campaign against Sertorius in Spain—“when no one else was either willing or able to undertake it”—was also itself contrary to custom (παρὰ τὸ νενομισμένον).86 Gabinius’ reply to all this sustains that theme. In seeking to advertise the extent of the general’s services to the state, he in fact summarises all the irregularities which will provoke Catulus’ anxious response shortly. Picking up the baton of Pompeius’ command against Sertorius, for example, the tribune notes that no one but him was found equal to the task: he was even sent out in place of both of the consuls, despite being under-age and not yet even a senator.87 In the long and rhetorically elaborate passage that follows, Gabinius returns again and again to these irregularities: could Pompeius not be entrusted with legions now as an adult, when he was entrusted with them “in his boyhood” 84  The Roman History is our only source to have Pompeius speaking in response to Gabinius’ rogatio. 85  Cass. Dio 36.25.2. 86  Cass. Dio 36.25.3. 87  Cass. Dio 36.27.4.

Method

63

(ἐν μὲν μειρακίῳ)? Would he not prove a competent commander now as a general, when he proved himself one as a young equestrian? And would they not send out Pompeius, now an ex-consul, even though they were prepared to do so “before he could properly hold office” (οὐδὲ ἄρχειν ἔτι πω καὶ τότε δυνάμενον)?88 Catulus’ wary response gives the historian’s analysis of the challenge such unconstitutional practices posed to the status quo of Republican government. His argument begins by stating frankly that, first and most importantly, it is unwise to entrust individuals with one command after another. Recalling the exempla of Marius and Sulla, Catulus serves to articulate the historian’s own interpretation of the cause of their decline into autocratic ambition: long and unconstitutional periods of command (36.31.3–4). This has not only been forbidden by the laws, but has also been found by experience to be most perilous. What made Marius what he became was practically nothing else than being entrusted with so many wars in the shortest space of time and being made consul six times in the briefest period; and similarly Sulla became what he was because he held command of the armies so many years in succession, and later was appointed dictator, then consul. For it does not lie in human nature for a person—I speak not alone of the young but of the mature as well—after holding positions of authority for a long period to be willing to abide by ancestral customs. τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἐν τοῖς νόμοις ἀπηγόρευται καὶ πείρᾳ σφαλερώτατον ὂν πεφώραται. οὔτε γὰρ τὸν Μάριον ἄλλο τι ὡς εἰπεῖν τοιοῦτον ἐποίησεν ἢ ὅτι τοσούτους τε ἐν ὀλιγίστῳ χρόνῳ πολέμους ἐνεχειρίσθη καὶ ὕπατος ἑξάκις ἐν βραχυτάτῳ ἐγένετο, οὔτε τὸν Σύλλαν ἢ ὅτι τοσούτοις ἐφεξῆς ἔτεσι τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν στρατοπέδων ἔσχε καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο δικτάτωρ, εἶθ᾽ ὕπατος ἀπεδείχθη. οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐν τῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων φύσει ψυχήν, μὴ ὅτι νέαν ἀλλὰ καὶ πρεσβυτέραν, ἐν ἐξουσίαις ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐνδιατρίψασαν τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσιν ἐθέλειν ἐμμένειν. The analysis is direct and incisive—there is no trace of stock arguments from the rhetorical schools here—and surely reflects Dio’s view of the recent experience of Marius and Sulla, familiar to readers of the Roman History. Yet it also foreshadows Pompeius’ transformation into an autocratic dynast himself, and explains in advance the cause of that transformation. Like Philiscus, Catulus serves an almost prophetic role, presaging and explaining what is to come in the narrative. In his account of the beginnings of Caesar’s civil war, 88  Cass. Dio 36.28.1–3.

64

chapter 2

Dio explains that Pompeius had come too far to back down: when he reflected on all the positions of power and command he had held, he could not stand to be eclipsed.89 The lex Gabinia debate thus represents a “turning-point” in the historian’s narrative.90 Catulus warns that the honour of the specific extraordinary command under discussion will promote a hitherto promising and successful young general to a dangerous position of power: another Marius or Sulla will be the result. On the level of Dio’s wider causal analysis, the lex Gabinia speeches thus survey the longue durée of Pompeius’ career and locate 67 BCE as the point at which the recurring problem of successive office-holding put him on a path destructive for himself and calamitous for the Republic. Secondly, these orations clearly reflect the actual political circumstances of their immediate narrative setting. The description offered of the wild zeal of the populus, for instance, is surely important in the historical context. At the beginning of his recusatio imperii, Pompeius states that the mob should not be so insatiable in their enthusiasm for him.91 This is of course false modesty, but its importance is underlined by Catulus’ repetition of this thought. In his exordium, he enjoins the people to listen calmly to the arguments put before them, and only deliberate afterwards. He continues: “for, if you raise an uproar, you will perhaps fail to receive some useful suggestion which you might have heard; but if you pay attention to what is said, you will be sure to discover something definitely to your advantage”.92 Both of these statements immediately follow Dio’s own account of the raging of the crowd. Prior to Pompeius’ address, the people are depicted rushing into the Senate to kill members opposed to the bill; prior to Catulus’, the tribunes Trebellius and Roscius are frightened into withdrawing their opposition by the fury of the mob.93 We may wish to read Pompeius’ and Catulus’ appeals for calm simply as appropriate openings for the speaker and situation. Yet they surely reflect the actual circumstances of their narrative context. More importantly, these appeals underline a genuine historical problem in Dio’s account of the Late Republic in general: the frenzy of the mob and the its cynical manipulation by powerful dynasts. They invite us to ask whether the lex Gabinia (and similar tribunician legislation) would have 89  Cass. Dio 41.56.1–3. Cf. also 41.10.3, where Pompeius’ enthusiasm for continuing the civil war against Caesar is explained by virtue of his alliances with potentates in the east that he had gained during his periods of command there. 90  So the excellent study of Coudry 2016a. To this we add here that the lex Gabinia also seems, in Dio’s view, a turning-point in Pompeius’ career and the beginning of his decline into δυναστεία. 91  Cass. Dio 36.25.1. 92  Cass. Dio 36.31.1–2. 93  Cass. Dio 36.24.

Method

65

been possible at all without the wild enthusiasm of a popular mass ill-disposed to reason, and they make this complicit in the dynast’s political success. Finally, Catulus is used to analyse the specific parameters and risks of the command in question, and does so in a way that foreshadows later political developments in the narrative. This analysis is developed in three statements. First, the extraordinary command proposed by Gabinius would give Pompeius control over a large number of lieutenants (legati) and the privilege of selecting them; but this is a risk to the state. It would be more appropriate, Catulus argues, for these legati to be elected by the people and to act as individuals in the service of the state rather than of one supreme commander.94 Secondly, extravagant honours of the kind proposed ultimately harm their beneficiaries just as much as the community; unable to bear their good fortune, they become puffed up and are ultimately ruined.95 Thirdly, the prestige of the lex Gabinia will incur the envy and hatred of Pompeius’ peers.96 Significantly, all three of these observations are relevant to the future progress of Pompeius’ career, and all three serve as predictions valorised in the narrative to come. On the power of the general to select his lieutenants, for example, Catulus’ analysis is important. Immediately after the passage of the lex Gabinia, Dio records that Pompeius was given the right to select fifteen legati for his campaign against the pirates.97 The subsequent narrative depicts Pompeius using these new clients to the fullest in order to interfere in politics at Rome, and especially in the consular elections. In 62 BCE, while still in the east Pompeius sent ahead one of these legati, Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi Calpurnianus, to seek election for the following year. His aim was presumably to have a loyal ally and client at the head of state to usher in his proposals for redrawing the political map of the east, and securing land on which to settle his veterans. The comitia were even postponed to accommodate Piso’s arrival (!), and he was unanimously elected thanks to vigorous support from Pompeius for his candidate.98 The following year Dio records that another two of Pompeius’ legati, Lucius Afranius and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, were also elected as consuls with the backing of their generalissimo. The price for his support would be their compliance with his will: “for he hoped that, through them, he could accomplish whatever he desired”. But his hopes were in vain. Afranius, “who understood how to dance better than to do business”, offered him no help at all; 94  Cass. Dio 36.35–36. 95  Cass. Dio 36.31.3–4, 35.1. 96  Bekk. Anecd. 157, 30: Δίων λς βιβλίῳ: ‘οὔτε ἀνεπίφθονον ἔσται αὐτῷ πάντων τῶν ὑμετέρων μοναρχῆσαι.’ Carey’s LCL edition sensibly attributes this fragment to the speech of Catulus. 97  Cass. Dio 36.37.1. 98  Cass. Dio 37.44.3.

66

chapter 2

Metellus “vigorously opposed him in everything”.99 Smarting from Pompeius’ recent divorce of his sister, Metellus opposed Pompeius’ programme so bitterly that the latter contrived to put him in prison; to embarrass his former ally further, the consul simply convened the Senate from his cell.100 The emphasis laid by Catulus on the process of choosing legati, and his warning that these will be the servants of Pompeius rather than the state, is therefore important. Viewed in this way alongside the narrative, it reveals Dio’s interpretation that the lex Gabinia increased Pompeius’ control over the consular elections at Rome— even if his best laid plans did not always bring the desired results. Catulus’ emphasis on the moral and ethical consequences of the command foregrounds subsequent events in the narrative in a similar way. On jealousy, for instance, he is made to predict that Pompeius’ extraordinary position will not be free from envy. In fact, all three speakers in the lex Gabinia debate mention the risk of the envy and hatred that such an honour would arouse.101 Given the distinctive place of φθόνος in the historian’s approach to the Late Republic and its centrality within his causation of its decline, we will return to this theme in more detail later.102 But we may briefly note that the φθόνος which Catulus predicts will result from the extraordinary honour of the lex Gabinia does indeed come to claim Pompeius, and when it does Dio links it explicitly to his previous positions of command. As we have just seen, Pompeius’ attempt to secure his political arrangements in the east through the agency of his former legati failed miserably. Contrary to his expectation, Afranius became a feeble ally and Metellus a formidable opponent. After detailing this, Dio adds an intriguing note (37.50.5–6): And so, since he could accomplish nothing because of Metellus and the others, Pompeius declared that they were jealous of him and that he would communicate this to the people. However, as he feared that he might fail to win them over too and incur even greater shame, he abandoned his demands. Thus he realised that he did not have any real power, but only the name and the envy for the positions of power he had once held. ὁ οὖν Πομπήιος ἐπειδὴ μηδὲν διά τε τὸν Μέτελλον καὶ διὰ τοὺς ἄλλους διεπράξατο, ἔφη μὲν φθονεῖσθαί τε ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ πλήθει τοῦτο δηλώσειν, 99  Cass. Dio 37.49.1–3. 100  Cass. Dio 37.50.1–4. 101  Cass. Dio 36.26.1–2, 29.2–3; Bekk. Anecd. 157, 30. 102  For a fuller discussion, see Burden-Strevens 2016 and Chapter 4 (‘Morality’) below.

Method

67

φοβηθεὶς δὲ μὴ καὶ ἐκείνου διαμαρτὼν μείζω αἰσχύνην ὄφλῃ, κατέβαλε τὴν ἀξίωσιν. καὶ ὁ μὲν οὕτω γνοὺς ὅτι μηδὲν ὄντως ἴσχυεν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ὄνομα καὶ τὸν φθόνον ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἠδυνήθη ποτὲ εἶχεν. Dio surely has the lex Gabinia in mind here. The consequences of that envy were profound indeed, for it is Pompeius’ inability to act upon his return from the east—due in no small part to the reluctance of his former allies and the φθόνος felt toward him—that drives him into the alliance with Caesar and Crassus that will control Republican politics for the coming years. The grim predictions made about φθόνος in all three lex Gabinia speeches may seem mere commonplace, but they are intimately connected to the unfolding of future events and the analysis the historian will offer in his narrative. Envy would come, and it drove Pompeius into the cabal of the so-called ‘First’ Triumvirate. Likewise, Catulus’ admonishment that “great honours and excessive powers exalt but then ultimately destroy even great men” is similarly prophetic.103 The inability of the powerful to bear their good fortune, leading to their fall from grace and (usually) destruction, is not a simple rhetorical trope—familiar though the maxim may have been in the schools of the Empire. It is a recurring theme and major explanatory premise in the Republican portions of Dio’s Roman History, especially in his explanation of the fate of controversial political figures such as the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Caesar—and Pompeius himself also.104 Catulus’ foreshadowing of Pompeius’ exaltation and eventual decline mirrors the historian’s own interpretation to come. In his narrative of the aftermath of the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Dio summarises the various reasons for Pompeius’ catastrophic defeat and panicked flight to Alexandria and his doom. He stresses the general’s complacency. He had usually always been evenly-matched with his enemy and thus did not “take his victories for granted”, but this time he expected an easy win against Caesar. With an excess of self-confidence, he took no precautions, preparing no refuge and arranging his troops lackadaisically. When the time came to fight he charged in headlong rather than awaiting the opportune moment, either because he assumed he would win anyway, or because he had taken poor advice. The result of his over-confidence was defeat and ruin.105 Here Dio pauses to give his final necrology of Cn. Pompeius Magnus. The necrology is sermonising and highly antithetical, but is worth quoting in full. It is the historian’s final reflection on 103  Cass. Dio 36.35.1. 104  See below for fuller discussion of the examples of the Gracchi, Sulla, and Caesar. 105  Cass. Dio 42.1.

68

chapter 2

the general’s meteoric rise and fall, and the irony of the lex Gabinia’s beneficiary dying at sea (42.5.1–5): The fate of Pompeius Magnus was such as to prove the fallibility and strange fortunes of the human race. His foresight left nothing to be desired—he was always secure against any hostile attempt—, and yet he was deceived. Since boyhood he had won many unexpected victories in Africa, Asia, and Europe by both land and sea, yet now at fifty-eight he was defeated without reason. He had mastered all the seas of Rome, and yet died on the very same; and having once been ‘master of a thousand ships’, as the saying goes, he was slain in a little boat off Egypt even in a way by Ptolemy himself, whose father he had restored to his country and kingdom. That Ptolemy, whom Roman soldiers were still guarding at Gabinius’ instruction because of Pompeius and the Egyptians’ hatred for Ptolemy’s father, himself seemed to be the one to put Pompeius to death by Roman and Egyptian hands. Pompeius, once thought so powerful among the Romans that he even received the nickname ‘Agamemnon’, was now butchered just like the lowest of the Egyptians themselves— near Mount Casius and on the very same day when he had once celebrated a triumph over Mithridates and the pirates. τοιοῦτον μὲν τὸ τέλος τῷ Πομπηίῳ ἐκείνῳ τῷ μεγάλῳ ἐγένετο, ὥστε καὶ διὰ τούτου τήν τε ἀσθένειαν καὶ τὴν ἀτοπίαν τοῦ ἀνθρωπείου γένους ἐλεγχθῆναι. προμηθείας τε γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐλλείπων, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ κακουργῆσαί τε δυνάμενον ἀσφαλέστατος ἀεί ποτε γενόμενος ἠπατήθη, καὶ νίκας πολλὰς μὲν ἐν τῇ Ἀφρικῇ πολλὰς δὲ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ τῇ τε Εὐρώπῃ παραδόξους καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλασσαν ἐκ μειρακίου ἀνελόμενος ἡττήθη παραλόγως ὀκτώ τε καὶ πεντηκοντούτης ὤν, τήν τε θάλασσαν τὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων πᾶσαν ἡμερώσας ἐν αὐτῇ ἐκείνῃ διώλετο, καὶ χιλίων ποτὲ νεῶν, ὡς ὁ λόγος ἔχει, ἄρξας ἐν πλοιαρίῳ τινί, πρός τε τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ πρὸς τοῦ Πτολεμαίου τρόπον τινὰ οὗ ποτε τὸν πατέρα ἔς τε ἐκείνην ἅμα καὶ ἐς τὴν βασιλείαν κατήγαγε, διεφθάρη· ὃν γάρ τοι καὶ τότε ἔτι στρατιῶται Ῥωμαῖοι διὰ τὴν τοῦ Πομπηίου χάριν ὑπὸ τοῦ Γαβινίου, διὰ τὸ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἐς τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ μῖσος, καταλειφθέντες ἐφρούρουν, οὗτος αὐτὸν δι᾽ αὐτῶν ἐκείνων ἑκατέρων ἀπεκτονέναι ἔδοξε. Πομπήιος μὲν δὴ κράτιστος πρότερον Ῥωμαίων νομισθείς, ὥστε καὶ Ἀγαμέμνονα αὐτὸν ἐπικαλεῖσθαι, τότε καθάπερ τις καὶ αὐτῶν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἔσχατος, πρός τε τῷ Κασίῳ ὄρει καὶ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐν ᾗ ποτε τά τε τοῦ Μιθριδάτου καὶ τὰ τῶν καταποντιστῶν ἐπινίκια ἤγαγεν, ἐσφάγη. Dio returns again and again to the theme of Pompeius’ extraordinary command at sea because he considered 67 BCE and the lex Gabinia a significant

Method

69

turning-point in the general’s career. It was the beginning of his transformation into a dynast like Marius and Sulla before him, with all the envy and hatred for his unconstitutional and extra-legal powers that such a role within the Republic would bring. His ambition catapulted him to an unparalleled position, but such a position—as Catulus foreshadows—exalted and ultimately destroyed him. Once again the importance of the lex Gabinia debate within Dio’s story cannot be ignored. Certain of its arguments may seem mere commonplace, but what the historian in fact offers is a careful analysis of the histor­ical issues at stake and the risks of the command both to Pompeius himself and to the community. We have here re-evaluated some of the more infamous examples of Cassius Dio’s alleged tendency to divorce his speeches from their narrative, historical, and dramatic context. I do not think we can maintain the recently-expressed view that the role assigned to all of these compositions was purely epideictic. On the contrary. In Agrippa, we are certainly presented with an unrealistic view of the Roman Republic. In Cicero and Philiscus, we encounter conventional consolatory literature (perhaps even directed at the historian himself), suffused with commonplaces about the perils of public life and advocacy. Moreover, the lex Gabinia episode as constructed by Dio does not conform to modern notions of historicity. Yet none of this per se suggests that these orations were drafted separately from the diegesis as rhetorical exercises and simply interpolated at the appropriate time. Dio consciously and deliberately composed them within the narrative, and indeed as an integral part of it. The techniques of analepsis and prolepsis—reflecting on past developments and foreshadowing future ones—are used even in those speeches which critics have mistakenly set most apart from the story-arc of the Roman History. Often they underline his interpretation of the causes of events. Rhetorical considerations were not, it seems, the only factor. The analysis offered here is of course not exhaustive: we might say the same of the address of Brutus on the foundation of the Republic, the speeches of the Pyrrhic War narrative, Caesar’s exhortations to his troops and the Senate, or the private dialogue on clemency between Augustus and Livia. We will address these as they arise in the following chapters. Additionally, a very small number of Dio’s speeches up to Book 56 are difficult to place within their narratives: the address of Marcus Curtius prior to his self-sacrifice, and Augustus’ oration on marriage and child-rearing, are both notorious.106 Yet even these 106  The speech of M. Curtius (Cass. Dio frg. 30.2) has attracted criticism for its vacuity, much of it justified: see Millar 1964; Oakley 1998, 99; Fomin 2015, 196–198. The important study of Rich 2019 does, however, rightly note that it at least emphasises Dio’s familiarity with the theme of self-sacrifice in the Roman exemplary tradition (compare, for example, with

70

chapter 2

are not wholly without an interpretative function, and their vacuity is absolutely the exception rather than the rule. We may also question to what extent the analysis offered in Dio’s speeches is the product of his own reasoning, or derived from arguments in an earlier source; in other words, where invention began and what were its limits. It is thus to the problem of Dio’s sources that we turn next. 1.2 Sources and Models All of the speeches in Books 3–56 of the Roman History from the birth of the Republic to the death of Augustus may be called ‘fictional’ in one sense. For brief snippets of direct quotation, the historian will sometimes assert that his character “said these exact words”,107 but that is never the case for the set-piece formal orations he composed himself. In discussing the extent to which Dio drew inspiration from earlier versions for inclusion in his own speeches, we must begin on the premise that none of them is an accurate transcript or a faithful copy of what the historian had read. Granted, Dio usually chooses to insert a speech only where the tradition indicates that someone spoke:108 for example, Caesar’s harangue of his mutinying troops at Vesontio in 58 BCE or Cicero’s long appeal for an amnesty in the chaos following the Ides, both recorded in contemporary sources. Yet even where a speech in Dio takes an historical fact as its starting-point and where a previous version exists in one of his sources, he invents the majority of his speakers’ arguments himself, and they articulate his own analysis. Whether this makes the speeches necessarily ‘unhistorical’ or ‘ahistorical’ is less straightforward than may at first appear. Noting their fictional character, some scholars have concluded that Dio’s purposes were essentially rhetorical: on this view the speeches served their author’s philosophical or moralising agenda better than they serve his history,109 and they are often dismissed as

the case of Horatius Cocles) and presents an idealistic contrast with the role of public speech in the later portions of his work. A recent study has shown the very close relationship between Augustus’ address on marriage and procreation (56.2–9) and Libanius’ Progymnasmata: the point to infer here seems that Dio could have placed such a speech at any point (see Fomin 2015, 198–202; 2016); he assembled its content from rhetorical exercises. However, as that study acknowledges, Augustus’ address does make specific mentions to the provisions of the lex Iulia of 18 BCE and therefore to its proper historical context (on which see Swan 2004, 230–231). 107  E.g. Cass. Dio 59.26.9; 62.15.1; 63.26.4. 108  So Millar 1961, 15. 109  Rodgers 2008, 297.

Method

71

‘pure fiction’ or ‘purely rhetorical’.110 This stance is problematic for two reasons. First, the fact that Dio invented appropriate and credible arguments for his speakers in response to specific historical situations does not in itself suggest a purely rhetorical agenda. Ancient historians regularly did so as a means of exploring major historical themes or points of interpretative interest. Invention had always served the purposes of history.111 Secondly, Dio’s inventio had limits. It is unlikely that he composed the speeches entirely ‘freehand’. On the contrary: where source-material was available—for example, published speeches, or earlier historiographical set-pieces—he appears both to have known it and used it. From published speeches, he often derived not only arguments to attribute to his orators, but even rhetorical strategies and turns of phrase used to articulate those arguments. Moreover, in earlier historiographical works Dio found models to adapt: he often kept the essential thrust of a previous histor­ ian’s speeches as handed down in the tradition, while also modifying the content to fit his interpretative and explanatory purposes. Thus the speeches in Books 3–56 of the Roman History usually have a previous written version as their point of departure, and in some famous cases approximate to it quite closely. Recognising that fact does not call the historian’s originality into question, but rather demonstrates his creative adaptation of source material—often contemporary with the particular scene he is depicting. Where possible, it was Dio’s intention to create a credible portrayal of the role played by oratory in the political life of the Republic through the use of contemporary sources. The question is less whether some of the speeches are fictional, but rather what sort of fiction they are: wholly fabricated epideictic set-pieces divorced from the world of Republican oratory, or re-elaborations of genuine historical evidence, adapted to suit the economy of the historian’s narrative?

110  Examples of this view are very numerous indeed. For a selection, see: Millar 1961, 15; Homeyer 1964, 28; Millar 1964, 81; Gowing 1992, 227–228, 239; Rodgers 2008, 296. Oddly (and most recently), Fomin 2015, 208–212 argues that even those orations which bear a very close relationship with an earlier written version, such as Dio’s lex Gabinia debates and Cicero’s de Imperio Gnaei Pompei, were invented by the historian himself from the formulae of the progymnasmata, without use of a prior written source-text. For a remarkable (and solitary) alternative view that there may be more historical truth in Dio’s presentation of Roman oratory than usually thought, see Berrigan 1966, 59. 111  So again Marincola 2007, 119, describing one function of speeches in historiography as “abstract analysis of the underlying issues at stake in actions that were seen as important or distinctive … political, almost philosophical, analyses in miniature”.

72

chapter 2

1.2.1 Oratorical Sources For Dio’s account of the Republic and the reign of Augustus, there are five set-pieces whose setting and content approximate so closely with a contemporary text as to suggest direct use of an oratorical source on the historian’s part. Incidentally, all of these are contained within multi-part controuersiae: the lex Gabinia debate of Pompeius, Gabinius, and Catulus; and the ‘philippic’ and ‘anti-philippic’ polemic between Cicero and Antonius’ ally, Q. Fufius Calenus, which straddles Books 45 and 46. The inspiration and content for both of these settings derived from earlier published speeches whose original oratorical context was similar to that reproduced in Dio’s narrative. The lex Gabinia debate of 67 BCE, as we have already mentioned, is remarkably similar to Cicero’s de Imperio Gnaei Pompeii in support of the lex Manilia, delivered in the following year. Moreover, the invectives of Cicero and Calenus in Books 45 and 46 famously reproduce arguments from all fourteen of the genuine Philippics against M. Antonius (variously delivered between late 44–early 43 BCE). Two points are immediately apparent. First, Cicero seems to have a special place. As we saw in the previous section our historian nurtured a marked antipathy for him, but it does not follow that he refused to read and use his work. The Cicero-Philiscus dialogue of Book 38 confirms that the historian admired his rhetorical art even as he disliked his conduct as a statesman. Dio does not belong to the school of anti-Ciceronian Greek rhetores like the Smyrnan L. Cestius Pius who scorned the orator’s talent.112 And yet (to come to our second point), Cicero was not unique to Dio as a source for consultation. He additionally sought inspiration from other rhetorical, quasi-oratorical, and historiographical texts. The close relationship between the lex Gabinia speeches of Book 36 and Cicero’s de Imperio Gnaei Pompei is obvious, yet scholars generally avoid the suggestion that Dio used the latter directly as a source.113 Partly this is due to chronological issues. In using the de Imperio in the manner suggested here, Dio transposed Cicero’s arguments in favour of the lex Manilia (and a further prestigious command for Pompeius) to his account of the previous year. There were evidently public debates held on both laws in both years. Yet Dio viewed both the lex Gabinia and lex Manilia as twin manifestations of the same problem— Pompeius’ excessive and unconstitutional personal power—and accordingly

112  Sen. Suas. 8.13. 113  Scholars have instead listed the parallels between the two texts without discussing the wider implications of these parallels in our understanding of how Dio wrote speeches: see for example Ooteghem 1954, 170n.1; Rodgers 2008: 308–309; Montecalvo 2014, 34–35.

73

Method

collapsed the two into a single rhetorical episode, in order to explore that problem in detail as soon as the relevant political situation first arose. What therefore seems important to Dio is not to reproduce accurately what was said at its precise point, but rather the kinds of argument that were historically articulated in his sources in response to analogous political issues. It is a snapshot of the genuine historical situation, but taken to fit a predetermined narratological frame. This distortion of Dio’s has attracted some recent criticism,114 but it can be found throughout ancient historiography: Thucydides and Sallust also collapse rhetorical episodes in this way in order to reconcile faithful reporting of debates with the demands of the narrative and the reader’s patience.115 Cicero’s arguments in support of Pompeius in 66 BCE are given not to Cicero in the Roman History, but to Gabinius, who necessarily speaks as rogator of his own law. In the first section of his address, Dio’s Gabinius emphasises three points: Pompeius’ good fortune ( felicitas or τύχη); his exceptionality as the only capable candidate for the generalship; and the need for the citizens to support him unanimously. All three are found in a parallel section of the de Imperio (Cass. Dio 36.27.5–6 = Cic. Man. 27–28): βουλοίμην μὲν γὰρ ἂν πολλοὺς ὑμῖν ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας εἶναι, καὶ εἴγε καὶ εὔξασθαι δεῖ, εὐξαίμην ἄν· ἐπεὶ δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ εὐχῆς τὸ πρᾶγμα τοῦτό ἐστιν οὔτ᾽ αὐτόματόν τῳ παραγίγνεται, ἀλλὰ δεῖ καὶ φῦναί τινα πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐπιτηδείως, καὶ μαθεῖν τὰ πρόσφορα, καὶ ἀσκῆσαι τὰ προσήκοντα, καὶ παρὰ πάντα ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ χρῆσθαι, ἅπερ που σπανιώτατα ἂν τῷ αὐτῷ ἀνδρὶ συμβαίη, χρὴ πάντας ὑμᾶς ὁμοθυμαδόν, ὅταν τις τοιοῦτος εὑρεθῇ, καὶ σπουδάζειν αὐτὸν καὶ καταχρῆσθαι αὐτῷ, κἂν μὴ βούληται.

utinam, Quirites, uirorum fortium atque innocentium copiam tantam haberetis ut haec uobis deliberatio difficilis esset quemnam potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello praeficiendum putaretis! nunc uero cum sit unus Cn. Pompeius qui non modo eorum hominum qui nunc sunt gloriam sed etiam antiquitatis memoriam uirtute superarit, quae res est quae cuiusquam animum in hac causa dubium facere possit? ego sic existimo, in summo imperatore quattuor has res inesse oportere, scientiam rei militaris, uirtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem.

114  E.g. Rogers 2008, 297–300; Fomin 2015, 209. 115  See recently Burden-Strevens 2018, 122–123.

74 For I would wish that you had many good men, and if it were necessary to pray for it, then that is what I would do. But since that blessing is not a praying matter and does not come of its own accord to anyone, but rather requires that one be naturally inclined to it, and learn what is relevant, and practice what is required, and above all must enjoy good fortune—all of which I suppose very seldom occur in the same one man—you must, therefore, all cleave to him with one accord, and make use of him, whenever such a man is found—even if he himself does not wish it.

chapter 2

I wish, citizens, that you had such a great abundance of brave and honest men that the choice of who you thought most suitable to set at the head of such momentous affairs and so great a war were a difficult one! But since at this time there is this one Gnaeus Pompeius, who has surpassed not only the glory of those men now living but even the recollection of our history, what is there that can make anyone’s mind doubtful in this case? For I think that the greatest general must have the following four qualities: a knowledge of military affairs, valour, authority, and good fortune.

The two passages are a close match. Both begin with the wish, in aporia, that Rome had more capable candidates, and move on to stress Pompeius’ uniqueness as the only individual to possess the qualities of the ideal general. These qualities number four: Dio’s grouping in polysyndeton (δεῖ καὶ φῦναί…καὶ μαθεῖν…καὶ ἀσκῆσαι…καὶ χρῆσθαι) mirrors Cicero’s four in asyndeton (scientiam rei militaris, uirtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem). Although the lists are different, good fortune is included in each. Moreover, both appeal to the audience to unanimously approve of such an exceptional candidate when found. Dio’s effective knowledge of the de Imperio is confirmed by further points in Gabinius’ encomium, and here he takes a peculiar step. It has long been recognised that the arguments of Dio’s Gabinius are ‘similar’ to those of Cicero in his speech on the lex Manilia. Yet Dio did not restrict his use of the de Imperio merely to the arguments adduced in support of Pompeius’ command. He appears also to have re-elaborated Cicero’s phrasing, mirroring not only the case made but also the rhetorical packaging of that case. In the part of his rogatio which focusses on Pompeius’ exceptional career in his youth, Gabinius retains Cicero’s wording as well as his argument (Cass. Dio 36.28.2–3 = Cic. Man. 28): ἀλλ᾽ ὃν ἔφηβον ὄντα ἄρχειν εἵλεσθε, τοῦτον ἄνδρα γεγονότα ἀποδοκιμάσετε; καὶ ᾧ ἱππεῖ ἔτ᾽ ὄντι τοὺς πολέμους ἐκείνους ἐνεχειρίσατε, τούτῳ βουλῆς γεγονότι τὴν στρατείαν ταύτην οὐ

qui e ludo atque e pueritiae disciplinis bello maximo atque acerrimis hostibus ad patris exercitum atque in militiae disciplinam profectus est, qui extrema pueritia miles in exercitu summi fuit

Method

75

πιστεύσετε; καὶ οὗ καὶ πρὶν ἀκριβῶς πειραθῆναι, μόνου πρὸς τὰ τότε κατεπείξαντα ὑμᾶς ἐδεήθητε, τούτῳ νῦν, ἱκανώτατα αὐτοῦ πεπειραμένοι, τὰ παρόντα οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκείνων ἀναγκαῖα ὄντα οὐκ ἐπιτρέψετε; καὶ ὃν οὐδὲ ἄρχειν ἔτι πω καὶ τότε δυνάμενον ἐπὶ τὸν Σερτώριον ἐχειροτονήσατε, τοῦτον ὑπατευκότα ἤδη ἐπὶ τοὺς καταποντιστὰς οὐκ ἐκπέμψετε;

imperatoris, ineunte adulescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator, qui saepius cum hoste conflixit quam quisquam cum inimico concertauit, plura bella gessit quam ceteri legerunt, pluris prouincias confecit quam alii concupiuerunt, cuius adulescentia ad scientiam rei militaris non alienis praeceptis sed suis imperiis, non offensionibus belli sed uictoriis, non stipendiis sed triumphis est erudita.

1] But he, whom you chose to command as a youth, you will reject now that he’s a grown man? 2] He, to whom as an eques you entrusted those wars, you will not entrust this campaign now that he’s a senator? 3] Of him who alone you had need for the emergencies back then before putting him properly to the test, will you not now entrust this, an emergency no smaller than those ones, now that you have more than sufficiently tested him? 4] And he, whom you engaged against Sertorius when not yet able to hold a magistracy, you will not now send against the pirates now that he’s a consular?

1] He who set out from school and juvenile education for his father’s army and the discipline of the camp in the midst of the greatest war and fiercest foes; 2] who became the soldier of the greatest general when in the height of boyhood, then himself became the general of a great army upon attaining adolescence; 3] who fought with the enemy more often than any other, waged more wars than others have even read about, subdued more provinces than others have dreamed of; 4] whose youth was trained to military matters not by another’s precepts, but by his own commands.

It is not simply an unusual coincidence that both speakers construct their argument about Pompeius’ exceptional career in his youth in tetracolon, surveying his earlier years in four successive thoughts. Like Cicero, Dio also embellishes the tetracolon with anaphora: each colon begins with the relative pronoun ὃς, mirroring Cicero’s repeated use of qui. And again like Cicero, the repetition of the pronouns in Gabinius’ speech employs polyptoton: Dio exaggerates the rhetorical technique of his source, beginning each colon with a different case (ὃν, ᾧ, οὗ, ὃν), while in Cicero the polyptoton is restricted to the nominative and genitive (qui, cuius). There are two serious possibilities to explain these repeated similarities. Either Dio read the de Imperio in the course of his note-taking and copied

76

chapter 2

down notes into his aide memoire; or he had Cicero’s text open in front of him while writing Book 36. The other two possibilities are spectacular coincidence or an intermediary. Neither of these holds water. For the first, Dio says that he was aware of Cicero’s speech of 66 BCE in favour of the lex Manilia,116 and copies of the text were available in the Imperial period.117 For the second, Dio could evidently read Latin—he did not need a Greek rhetor to read Cicero for him—and emphasises in the Preface that he had read “practically everything written about the Romans by anybody”.118 This invites us to be relatively inclusive in enumerating his potential sources, and it is hardly possible that he omitted Cicero from ten years of reading and research for his Roman History. The two passages surveyed here constitute just under half of Dio’s rogatio of Gabinius (36.27.5–28.3), and were evidently modelled closely on sections 27–28 of the de Imperio. This evinces a peculiar aspect of the historian’s use of his source which is rather distinctive within ancient historiography. Dio’s predecessors had not shied away from drawing specific arguments from their source for a speech-act. Tacitus’ oration of Claudius on admitting Gauls to the Senate, for instance, was evidently based upon an earlier epigraphic record of a genuine speech the emperor gave in Lyon in 48 CE.119 The parallels between Claudius’ address in the so-called Lyons Tablet and its descendant in Tacitus are close: the historian obviously preserved the main elements of Claudius’ argument for the enfranchisement of the Gauls. However, Tacitus refashioned these in his own style: his version captures the gist, the ξυμπάση γνώμη, of his source, yet is rhetorically his own invention and creation.120 The same may be said of the speeches Arrian composed for Alexander and his associates in the Indica and Anabasis.121 Dio’s use of Cicero here is somewhat different. Where the source was of especially high quality and available, the historian’s inventio had limits. He found in the de Imperio not only a source for historical arguments in favour of Pompeius’ power, but additionally a rhetorical model for an oration of his own.

116  Cass. Dio 36.43.2. 117  The continuing popularity of the text is evidenced by a letter of the rhetorician Fronto to the young Marcus Aurelius, with a copy of the oration attached, and much praise of its improving content. See MacCormack 2013, 252; Montecalvo 2014, 46. 118  Cass. Dio frg. 1.2. For Dio’s ability to read Latin, see Burden-Strevens 2015a. 119  Compare Tac. Ann. 11.23–24 with CIL 13.1668. 120  For the content of Tacitus’ version compared with the original, noting Tacitus’ preserv­ ation of Claudius’ arguments but within his own rhetorical packaging, see Griffin 1982; Griffin 1990. 121  Hammond 1999.

Method

77

This comes at no sacrifice to the historian’s sovereignty over his product— Gabinius remains a display of his erudition and compositional art—yet the detailed use of contemporary source-material makes his staging of the debate rather less fictional than might at first appear. Dio of course took such liberties with the de Imperio as were necessary for his interpretative aims. In an innovation of the tradition, he was the first to have Pompeius speak on the subject of the lex Gabinia. As we will see more fully in Chapter 3 (‘Oratory’), his purpose in doing so was to elaborate the general’s mendacity and to demonstrate how effective dissimulation and fraud could be in the declining rhetorical culture of the Late Republic. Peculiarly, Dio took arguments from Cicero’s speech on the lex Manilia and gave them not only to their direct historical analogue—Gabinius on the lex Gabinia—, but also to Pompeius himself. He thus assigned Cicero’s ‘positive’ case in 66 BCE not to the obvious choice of one speaker as in his source, but to two. In his recusatio imperii, the Pompeius we find in the Roman History is made to enumerate his earlier services to the state chronologically—the Sullan civil war, Sicily, Africa, Spain—and does so again in a strikingly similar manner to Cicero’s text (Cass. Dio 36.25.1–4 = Cic. Man. 61–62): αὐτός τε γὰρ ἐκ παίδων κέκμηκα, καὶ ὑμᾶς δεῖ καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἄλλους σπουδάζειν. ἢ οὐ μέμνησθε ὅσα μὲν ἐν τῷ πρὸς τὸν Κίνναν πολέμῳ ἐταλαιπώρησα, καίτοι κομιδῇ νέος ὤν, ὅσα δὲ ἔν τε τῇ Σικελίᾳ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀφρικῇ ἔκαμον, μηδέπω καθαρῶς ἐς ἐφήβους τελῶν, ὅσα δὲ ἐν τῇ Ἰβηρίᾳ ἐκινδύνευσα, μηδὲ βουλεύων πω; ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἅπασιν οὐχ ὅτι ἀχάριστοι πρός με ἐγένεσθε ἐρῶ. πόθεν; πολλοῦ γε καὶ δεῖ· πρὸς γὰρ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὧν πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων παρ᾽ ὑμῶν ἠξιώθην, καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ πιστευθῆναί με τὴν ἐπὶ τὸν Σερτώριον στρατηγίαν, μηδενὸς ἄλλου μήτ᾽ ἐθελήσαντος μήτε δυνηθέντος αὐτὴν ὑποστῆναι, τό τε ἐπινίκια καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνῃ παρὰ τὸ νενομισμένον πέμψαι μεγίστην μοι τιμὴν ἤνεγκεν. ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι πολλὰς μὲν φροντίδας πολλοὺς δὲ κινδύνους ὑπέμεινα, κατατέτριμμαι μὲν τὸ σῶμα …

quid tam nouum quam adulescentulum priuatum exercitum difficili rei publicae tempore conficere? confecit. huic praeesse? praefuit. rem optime ductu suo gerere? gessit. quid tam praeter consuetudinem quam homini peradulescenti cuius aetas a senatorio gradu longe abesset imperium atque exercitum dari, Siciliam permitti atque Africam bellum que in ea prouincia administrandum? fuit in his prouinciis singulari innocentia, grauitate, uirtute, bellum in Africa maximum confecit, uictorem exercitum deportauit. quid uero tam inauditum quam equitem Romanum … triumphare? … quid tam inusitatum quam ut, cum duo consules clarissimi fortissimique essent, eques Romanus ad bellum maximum formidolosissimumque pro consule mitteretur? missus est.

78 For I have toiled since my infancy, and you ought to be favouring others as well. Or do you not recall how much hardship I endured in the war against Cinna even though I was just a youth? Or how I exerted myself in Sicily and in Africa, even though I had not yet come of age? Or how many risks I ran in Spain, although not yet a senator? I will not say that you have been ungrateful to me for these services. Why would I? Quite the opposite. For in addition to the many and great other benefits of which you have deemed me worthy, the greatest distinction was conferred upon me by your choice to entrust me with the war against Sertorius—with no one else willing or able to undertake it—and by your choice to give me a triumph for that campaign, contrary to custom. But as I have endured many anxieties and many hardships, I am worn away in body …

chapter 2

What could be so novel as for a little stripling of a private citizen to enlist an army in a time of difficulty for the Republic? He enlisted it. To command it? He commanded it. To conduct the whole affair excellently under his own leadership? He conducted it. What could be so uncustomary as to give imperium and an army to a mere lad, whose youth still kept him far away from senatorial rank? To have Sicily and Africa entrusted to him and the war to be carried out there, too? In these provinces he conducted himself with singular trustworthiness, distinction, and valour. What, truly, could be so unheard of as for a Roman eques to triumph? … What was ever so unusual as a situation in which, when there were already two highly distinguished and brave consuls, a Roman eques should be sent as proconsul to a most important and formidable war? He was sent.

If we expand our focus to encompass not only the arguments deployed but also the artistic packaging of those arguments, then Dio’s technique again suggests a rhetorical model for re-elaboration in Cicero, and not merely a source to copy. In the first half, both passages string together anaphora in the pronouns ὅσα and quid. Dio adopts the same technique as his source in order to make the same argumentative point, surveying Pompeius’ feats in the Sullan civil war, Sicily, Africa, Spain, and finally culminating with his triumph as an eques for his defeat of Sertorius. As in the de Imperio, Dio also uses brachylogy to balance long phrases with short, arresting stops: Cicero’s interjections of confecit, gessit and so forth may have inspired the historian’s sudden πόθεν; πολλοῦ γε καὶ δεῖ. Finally, the closing words of Pompeius’ recusatio, exhorting the people to choose some other person, “although I won’t seem to favour anyone by naming names”, also reflects Cicero’s phrasing earlier in his speech (ego autem nomino neminem; qua re irasci mihi nemo poterit).

Method

79

Dio thus took a genuine published oration from the Late Republic and transplanted it to an analogous historical situation. Like his colleagues and predecessors, his purpose was not to provide a transcript; ancient historians never reproduced in a verbatim fashion published speeches that were already available to the reader elsewhere.122 Yet quite unlike his predecessors, Dio showed close attention to the literary embellishment of his source-text. By adopting not only the arguments but also the rhetorical strategies originally used to polish them in his source, Dio in one sense competes with Cicero while also providing what seemed to him an authentic snapshot of the types of popular oratory used to advance Pompeius’ career in the 60s BCE. This approach—fascinating in historiographical terms, but perhaps horr­ ifying to modern historians—does not stand alone in the Roman History, and is paralleled in a more famous case. In Book 45, Dio gives his own version of Cicero’s Philippics. The similarity of the historian’s Book 45 to Cicero is well-documented and has long been recognised.123 The earliest detailed study concluded that in many points it approximates so closely to the original Philippics that one might call it a ‘translation’ of Cicero into Greek.124 Yet this slightly misses the point. As we have seen, where Dio had high-quality oratorical source material his practice was rather to refashion it in a manner he considered faithful to the source while still composing his ‘own’ product, collapsing or expanding analogous historical occasions so as to fit the frame of his narrative. This practice is certainly in evidence in Dio’s version of a Ciceronian polemic against Marcus Antonius. For obvious reasons, the historian did not stage all fourteen Philippics. What he offers instead is a merging of several into one rhetorical moment. While parallels have been found between Dio and the entire corpus,125 the Roman History principally fuses together three of Cicero’s invectives: the Second Philippic, Fifth Philippic, and Eighth Philippic. The historical context in Dio is the earliest days of January 43 BCE, so corresponding to the setting of the Fifth Philippic. However, Dio merges this with the addressee of the Eighth Philippic, Q. Fufius Calenus: his version addresses Calenus directly (45.46.1: ὦ Καλῆνε). As for the content, Dio’s polemic of Cicero draws above all 122  Brock 1995, 209: “ancient historians as a general rule avoided treating in direct speech those orations which were accessible to the reading public”. See Marincola 2007, 120–127 for fuller discussion. 123  Among many others, e.g.: Millar 1964, 54; Stekelenburg 1971, 80; Fechner 1986, 64; Gowing 1992, 238n.34. 124  Fischer 1870, 1–28, esp. 27. 125  Haupt 1884, 687–692; Gowing 1992, 238n.34.

80

chapter 2

else from the Second Philippic, and the concordances are numerous and striking. That the historian had at least the Second Philippic open in front of him is suggested by the fact that his ‘Cicero’ implicitly locates his speech as second in the ‘series’. His orator opens by reiterating the “recent” (πρῴην) defence he has made in a previous speech both for his departure from Rome and for his long absence following Caesar’s assassination.126 This is a reference to the exculpatory content of sections 1–11 of the First Philippic, where Cicero responds to these criticisms of his conduct. The speech we find in the Roman History is therefore implicitly set up as ‘part two’ of the drama. Dio therefore collapsed several of the Philippics not only in content, as has long been recognised, but more importantly in context, addressee, and sequence. It was once suggested that Dio based his ‘philippic’ exchange on the text of an unknown Greek rhetor who read Cicero for him:127 on this view he cannot seriously have gone back to the Latin original himself in the process of his reading and note-taking. There is no evidence to support this except prejudice, and I do not think that we need to conjure such a phantom into being. Let us turn instead to the evidence before our eyes. Similarly to his use of Cicero for the lex Gabinia debate, Dio preserves not only the specific arguments found in his source but also the order in which those arguments occur. That is not to say that the historian used the Second Philippic consistently throughout: his version ignores the description of Antonius’ political career given at Philippics 2.48–56, the list of rhetorical questions on Antonius’ activities in the late Pompeius’ house at 2.67–70, and the long critique of his travels in the Mediterranean at 2.70–84. Otherwise, however, the argumentation is a remarkably close match. Dio’s Cicero moves from the proemium into the beginning of the polemic proper by insisting that Antonius is an enemy of the state (45.20.4 = Phil. 2.2). The examples that he proceeds to give are taken straight from the Second Philippic: Antonius was a bandit (45.20.4 = Phil. 2.5); he had been unfaithfully editing the late Caesar’s documents for corrupt purposes (45.23.6 = Phil. 2.8); he was a prostitute in his youth (45.26.2 = Phil. 2.45), and Cicero insists that he will spare the grisly details of this for the sake of modesty (45.26.2 = Phil. 2.47). He had romped in Italy with pimps and prostitutes (45.28.2 = Phil. 2.58), disgracing the lictors, still crowned with laurel, with such company (45.28.2 = Phil. 2.58). His conduct in office was little better: while conducting business in a public meeting he had even vomited in the tribunal (45.28.2 = Phil. 2.63).

126  Cass. Dio 45.18.1. 127  Haupt 1884, 689–693; Zielinski 1912, 280–288.

Method

81

Then we come to Antonius’ greed. Dio’s Cicero, like Cicero himself, expresses his shock that he alone dared to purchase the estate of Pompeius (45.28.3 = Phil. 2.64), noting the utter dismay of the people at the sight of the auction (45.28.3 = Phil. 2.64). Antonius immediately squandered all of the great general’s property (45.28.4 = Phil. 2.66), conjuring up the vivid image of the sea-monster Charybdis (45.28.4 = Phil. 2.66). At this point both texts state, paraliptically, that they will omit the degeneracy of Antonius’ personal life to deal with his crimes against the state, especially during the period of the recent civil war (45.29.1 = Phil. 2.70). Again, Dio here leaves out the long discourse on Antonius’ conduct on travel and campaign in the Mediterranean which occupies sections 70–84 of the Second Philippic. Picking up the thread at section 85, Dio turns to Antonius’ naked harangue of the people at the Lupercalia (45.30.1 = Phil. 2.85), followed by the infamous ‘crowning’ of Caesar (45.31.3 = Phil. 2.86) and the shock that he should take it upon himself to establish a king without ‘our’ consent (45.32.1–2 = Phil. 2.86). Dio stops using the Second Philippic at section 86 with the crowning of Caesar. At this point, unusually, the historian loops back to an earlier point in his source, from 2.25 to 2.41.128 Continuing to focus on the late dictator, Dio’s Cicero refutes the allegation that he was responsible for Caesar’s death, but notes that this would be praise if true, not defamation (45.41.1 = Phil. 2.25); besides, the responsibility for his death was as shared as much by Antonius as any other (45.41.1 = Phil. 2.34), and both invectives accuse him of being too cowardly to be involved in the assassination plot in any case (45.41.1 = Phil. 2.35). Then, finally, comes the question of inheritances. Antonius did not receive his patrimony from his father (45.47.3 = Phil. 2.42); instead, he inherited from people he had never met (45.47.5 = Phil. 2.41). In its main elements the architecture of both orations is fundamentally the same from beginning to end, and progresses consecutively. The breaks, at which the historian appears not to have reproduced details from Cicero, can be explained by the structure of Dio’s text as a whole. There was no need to provide the summary of Antonius’ political career articulated in Phil. 2.48–56, as the particulars had been outlined earlier in the narrative. Dio apparently did not feel the need to incorporate the lengthy selection of rhetorical questions at Phil. 2.67–70 into his own version; it was arguments that the historian

128  The reasons for this ‘loop’ are unclear. It may be that after excerpting details from the Second Philippic in the course of his reading and research, Dio set the text aside, but returned to it later.

82

chapter 2

required, not rhetorical questions, which were easy enough for Dio to devise of his own accord. The absence of an enumeration of Antonius’ travels abroad at Phil. 2.70–84 is harder to explain: it is peculiar that the historian omitted this especially long and incriminating section of the argument, although this can perhaps be again justified by the record he provides of Antonius’ travels throughout his career earlier in the diegesis. There seems to have been no need for Dio to reproduce criticisms in the speech that were already supplied in the narrative. All told, there are no fewer than twenty-one points at which the arguments of Dio’s Cicero and the ‘historical’ Cicero run in tandem: the same points, proceeding in the same order. So far the Second Philippic evidently served as a source of arguments for the version provided in the Roman History, but it cannot yet be called a rhetor­ ical model in the manner of the de Imperio Gnaei Pompei. Yet a brief rhetorical analysis shows that points in Dio’s invective of Cicero against Antonius resemble very closely the specific wording of parts of his source. As with the lex Gabinia speeches, this usually occurs where the historian found Cicero’s original embellishment of an argument especially striking, and accordingly Dio reproduces not only the argument itself but also the manner in which it was articulated in the original text. Note, for example, that after comparing Antonius to a Charybdis (45.28.4: καταπέπωκεν ὥσπερ ἡ Χάρυβδις = 2.66: quae Charybdis tam uorax?), both speeches use paraleipsis or praeteritio at the point of transition to his conduct in political life (Cass. Dio. 45.26.2 = Cic. Phil. 2.47): δὴ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ βίον τάς τε ἰδίας ἀσελγείας καὶ πλεονεξίας ἑκὼν παραλείψω, ὅτι αἰδοῦμαι νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα ἀκριβῶς καθ᾽ ἕκαστον.

sed iam stupra et flagitia omittamus: sunt quaedam quae honeste non possum dicere. tu autem eo liberior …

But I shall pass over his private life and his lusts and his greed, since (by God!) I am ashamed to detail them point-by-point.

But let us leave aside, now, your depravity; there are some things which cannot be with decency said. You’re all the freer for that …

Dio’s imitatio Ciceronis works here not only on the level of aligning particular rhetorical techniques with specific points in the argument as found in his source, but also on the level of close verbal parallel. With αἰδοῦμαι νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα, the historian imitates Cicero’s pretence of shame at detailing the disgrace of Antonius’ private life (as of course he has just done in lavish detail), and the prurience of his statement sunt quaedam quae honeste non possum dicere. That prurience recurs in a later passage, again modelled closely on the Second Philippic (Cass. Dio. 45.29.1 = Cic. Phil. 2.70):

Method

83

ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐάσω· τὰς δὲ δὴ ὕβρεις ἃς τὸ κοινὸν ὕβρισε, καὶ τὰς σφαγὰς ἃς κατὰ πᾶσαν ὁμοίως τὴν πόλιν εἰργάσατο, πῶς ἄν τις σιωπήσειεν;

sed omitto ea peccata quae non sunt earum partium propria quibus tu rem publicam uexauisti; ad ipsas tuas partis redeo, id est ad ciuile bellum.

And so I shall leave that aside; for how could one remain silent about the outrages which you committed against the state, and the slaughter you inflicted upon all the city alike?

But I pass over those offenses which have no connection with the part you took in harassing the Republic; I return to that in which you bore so principal a share,—that is, the civil war.

At this point in the argument, both orators move into a new section devoted to Antonius’ conduct in the Caesarian civil war. Like Cicero, Dio divides his subject’s ὕβρεις or peccata into two: those pertaining to his private life, and those pertaining to his public life and the harm he has wrought on the state (κατὰ πᾶσαν ὁμοίως τὴν πόλιν εἰργάσατο = quibus tu rem publicam uexauisti). In transitioning between these spheres of Antonius’ activity, Dio again retains the paraleipsis or praeteritio originally used to couch that transition in the Latin text. For only one of many other possible examples of the historian’s imitatio, we can consider the close verbal parallel in his account of the popular reaction at Antonius’ purchase of the late Pompeius’ estate (Cass. Dio. 45.28.3 = Cic. Phil. 2.64): τὴν τοῦ Πομπηίου οὐσίαν μόνος ἀνθρώπων ἀγοράσαι ἐτόλμησε, μήτε τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἀξίωμα μήτε τὴν ἐκείνου μνήμην αἰδεσθείς…ἀλλ᾽ ἐφ᾽ οἷς πάντες ἔτι καὶ τότε ἐθρηνοῦμεν, ταῦτα μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς ἁρπάσας.

qui ad illud scelus sectionis auderet accedere, inuentus est nemo praeter Antonium, praesertim cum tot essent … qui alia omnia auderent … Dolor— bona, inquam, Cn. Pompei Magni! … gemitus tamen populi Romani liber fuit..

He alone among men dared to purchase the estate of Pompeius, having regard neither for his own dignity nor the memory of that great man … At the sight of him grasping at these things with pleasure, we all groaned, and still do now.

No one was found who would dare to commit that criminal purchase, except Antonius, even when there were so many there who would commit any crime!… The grief—the goods, I say, of Pompeius Magnus!… the Roman people groaned freely.

Our historian evidently did not intend to provide a translation, yet his Greek clearly demonstrates the extent of Cicero’s influence. The basic argument is that only Antonius (μόνος ἀνθρώπων = inuentus est nemo praeter

84

chapter 2

Antonium) made an offer on the great general’s property, but Cicero’s language lends extra vigour. As in the Second Philippic, Dio’s orator expresses his shock that Antonius alone ‘dared’ to purchase Pompeius’ estate (ἐτόλμησε = auderet), and the ‘groaning’ of the populace at the pitiable sight (ἐθρηνοῦμεν = gemitus). To maintain that Dio was not directly using the de Imperio Gnaei Pompei or the Philippics, preferring instead some unknown Greek rhetor who digested the texts for him, carries a significant burden of proof. It would be necessary to identify who this Greek rhetor was and to find evidence of his unknown text. Neither have appeared. It would also require us to ignore the evidence that Dio read Latin—which he of course did—129 and to forget that the de Imperio and Philippics were both available in the historian’s lifetime. In using these texts in the way proposed here, Dio was not simply ‘copying’ Cicero. Rather, he seems to have taken down a selection of arguments from the source as a starting-point in his notes. We can imagine the effect that such a process had on the final product: the apparent coincidence that Dio’s points proceed in exactly the same order as Cicero’s is really the product of bullet-points, so to speak, in the historian’s hypomnemata. Added to this, however, is a distinctive and surprising technique, special in the corpus of ancient historiography: for Dio a published oration could serve as a rhetorical model as well as a source tout court. The historian’s close attention not only to the statements made but also to the actual phrasing and articulation of those statements is highly unusual and transparently not an accident. In an innovative re-invention of the Thucydidean principle, Dio is concerned just as much with how something was said as with the simple gist or ξυμπάση γνώμη of what was said. To determine this is a luxury which depends on the quality of our evidence and the vicissitudes of transmission. In Cicero’s case we are blessed with the original material as well as the Roman History, and can compare the two texts. We do not have the same luxury for other speeches in Dio, and probably neither did he. Dio’s inuentio worked by degrees relative to the quality of the evidence at his disposal. The vagaries of transmission may have prompted Dio to find creative solutions in developing multi-part debates, too. We have seen his use of Ciceronian texts to construct a Ciceronian case: Gabinius on his law in Book 36 or Cicero against Antonius in Book 45 are strong examples. Here the historian’s technique is novel and surprising, but not necessarily complicated in itself. But both of these set-pieces have interlocutors who represent the opposing side: 129  For a brief survey of the evidence, see Millar 2005, 32–33; Burden-Strevens 2015a, 39–44; Burden-Strevens 2018, 119–120.

Method

85

Q. Lutatius Catulus, whose dissuasio on the lex Gabinia we have already seen (36.31–36), and Q. Fufius Calenus’ enormous ‘anti-philippic’ retort to Cicero on Antonius’ behalf (46.1–28). Were these speeches entirely invented, or does some of their content approximate with an earlier source? The case of Catulus is especially difficult: if Catulus ever published a wary speech on the topic of Pompeius’ power then not the slightest mention of it survives, and Cicero in the Brutus discounts him from his list of orators of the age.130 In that context, we may be tempted to guess that its starting-point is the rhetorical schools: an invented oration based upon schoolroom exercises.131 But intriguingly, the points raised by Catulus to contest the lex Gabinia in Dio’s history are remarkably similar to those reported in the de Imperio Gnaei Pompei. In his speech of 66 BCE, Cicero liberally quotes and paraphrases the arguments of both opponents to the lex Gabinia and lex Manilia, Catulus and Q. Hortensius Hortalus, in order to refute them. His distortions notwithstanding, these paraphrases or testimonia furnish valuable evidence of the actual case made against Pompeius’ extraordinary commands in the first half of the 60s BCE. I think that there are strong grounds for believing that Dio reconstructed Catulus’ speech on the basis of the testimonia found in his source. According to Cicero, Catulus and Hortensius made three arguments. First, Hortensius stated that great power ought not to be entrusted to one man alone, even to the most exceptional;132 secondly, Catulus argued that extraordinary commands contravene the prescriptions of the mores maiorum;133 and thirdly, in the section of his oration devoted specifically to Catulus’ objections (59–63), Cicero states that Catulus objected on the grounds that it was inappropriate to give command to a priuatus rather than to an existing magistrate or promagistrate.134 All three are reproduced directly in Dio’s dissuasio of Catulus. His first and most important point (πρῶτον μὲν καὶ μάλιστά) holds that “we should never entrust such great commands to a single man, one after another” (36.31.3: δεῖν μηδενὶ ἑνὶ ἀνδρὶ τοσαύτας κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ἀρχὰς ἐπιτρέπειν). At a later point in his oration, he repeats this point, adding also a concession: that it is neither appropriate nor beneficial to entrust all the Romans’ affairs to one man (ἑνί τινι), “even if he were the best man of all” (36.35.1: κἂν τὰ μάλιστα ἄριστός τις ᾖ). 130  Cic. Brut. 133. 131  So Fomin 2015, 211. 132  Cic. Man. 52: quid ait Hortensius? si uni omnia tribuenda sint, dignissimum esse Pompeium, sed ad unum tamen omnia deferri non oportere. 133  Cic. Man. 60: in ipso Cn. Pompeio in quo noui constitui nihil uolt Q. Catulus quam multa sint noua summa Q. Catuli uoluntate constituta recordamini. 134  Cic. Man. 50, 61–62.

86

chapter 2

This concession is important in helping us to determine Dio’s source. Now, there were many sources of the principal argument. Velleius Paterculus, for example, records that Catulus opposed Pompeius’ command on the basis that concentrations of power were harmful (neque omnia in uno reponenda adiecissetque).135 This objection is also found in Plutarch and Sallust.136 Yet only two of our sources record the concession that even if Pompeius were the most worthy man for the command, nevertheless he should not hold it. Those two sources are Dio (κἂν τὰ μάλιστα ἄριστός τις ᾖ) and Cicero (si uni omnia tribuenda sint, dignissimum esse Pompeium). This suggests that among the various sources of opposition to Pompeius’ power in the first half of the 60s, Dio did not choose an historiographical predecessor who read Cicero for him (Paterculus, Plutarch, or Sallust), but rather preferred to go back directly to the oratorical source. The second objection we find in Cicero, concerning ancestral custom, is also adopted by Dio’s dissuasio of Catulus. Taking a defensive line, Cicero in the de Imperio elaborates at some length on this theme. It had evidently been produced as an argument against Pompeius in 67 or 66 BCE (Cic. Man. 60): Now, let no innovation be introduced contrary to the precedents and customs of our ancestors. I will not say that our forebears always observed their customs in times of peace and chose what was expedient in times of war, and always accommodated their planning to the changing circumstances of new situations. I will not mention that two great conflicts—the Punic war and the Spanish war—were waged by a single general, nor that the two mighty cities which most threatened this our empire—Carthage and Numantia—were destroyed by that same general Scipio. Nor will I remind you that you and your ancestors only recently decided to put the fate of the empire in the hands of Gaius Marius, so that the same man took care of the war against Jugurtha, and the Cimbri, and the Teutones. As for that Gnaeus Pompeius, in whose case Quintus Catulus wishes no innovation to be introduced, let us remember how many innovations have in fact already been made, and with the most willing consent of Quintus Catulus too! at enim ne quid noui fiat contra exempla atque instituta maiorum. non dicam hoc loco maiores nostros semper in pace consuetudini, in bello utilitati 135  Vell. Pat. 2.32.1. 136  Compare: Cass. Dio 36.36a; Vell. Pat. 2.32.1–3; Val. Max. 8.15.9; Plut. Pomp. 25.10; Sall. Hist. 5.24M; surely a well-attested admonishment of Catulus against the law.

Method

87

paruisse, semper ad nouos casus temporum nouorum consiliorum rationes accommodasse, non dicam duo bella maxima, Punicum atque Hispaniense, ab uno imperatore esse confecta duasque urbis potentissimas quae huic imperio maxime minitabantur, Carthaginem atque Numantiam, ab eodem Scipione esse deletas, non commemorabo nuper ita uobis patribusque uestris esse uisum ut in uno C. Mario spes imperi poneretur, ut idem cum Iugurtha, idem cum Cimbris, idem cum Teutonis bellum administraret; in ipso Cn. Pompeio in quo noui constitui nihil uolt Q. Catulus quam multa sint noua summa Q. Catuli uoluntate constituta recordamini. Obviously, Cicero hones in on the mores maiorum in order to refute a genuine case made by the historical opposition to Pompeius’ extraordinary commands. We may reasonably expect that the tension between innovation and ancestral custom was genuinely raised as grounds to oppose them, as Cicero reports. According to his usual practice Cicero will have edited his speech—the text is not necessarily a transcript of his exact words—, but the orator also had a knowledgeable audience, and we can set aside the possibility that he entirely invented this point.137 Tellingly, the objection of the mores maiorum does not recur in any other accounts of the Gabinian and Manilian laws: it is absent from Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus, and Sallust (in his albeit fragmentary state). That is, except for Dio’s account of the debate. In Book 36, Dio’s Catulus insists that long periods in office erode generals’ respect for ancestral customs (τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσιν), and that the extraordinary command would effectively vitiate the traditional magistracies (τὰς μὲν πατρίους ἀρχὰς καταλύητε).138 We cannot discount the possibility that Dio invented the mores maiorum point as a “standard optimate argument”.139 If so, then however we approach this, the historian was either using the de Imperio directly, or had a better understanding than his predecessors of the kinds of conservative Republican argument that were effective. The third and final testimonium of Catulus’ words recorded by Cicero concerns Pompeius’ status as a priuatus or private citizen, viz. an individual not currently in office as a magistrate or promagistrate. Again in the part of his oration devoted specifically to refuting Catulus’ objections (59–63), Cicero suggests that Pompeius’ status as a priuatus had at several points in his career been raised by conservatives to oppose grants of power to him. “What”, he asks, “could be so novel as for a little stripling of a private citizen to enlist an 137  See Morstein-Marx 2004, 26. 138  Cass. Dio. 36.33.4. 139  Leach 1978, 68.

88

chapter 2

army in a time of difficulty for the state? He enlisted it” (Cic. Man. 61: quid tam nouum quam adulescentulum priuatum exercitum difficili rei publicae tempore conficere? confecit). The orator goes on: when the Senate were debating whom to send against Sertorius in Spain, an unnamed senator had insisted that “we should not send a priuatus as a proconsul” (Cic. Man. 62: non oportere mitti hominem priuatum pro consule). In response, Lucius Philippus had quipped that Pompeius should be sent not pro consule but rather pro consulibus: that is, not with proconsular authority but on behalf of the two consuls who were unable to do their duty. In addition, earlier in his speech Cicero argues that Pompeius would be the ideal commander to select “even if he were a priuatus”.140 Why would Cicero labour the point of Pompeius’ status as a priuatus in this way, if it were not actually raised as an objection in 67 BCE?141 Let us assume that it was. Again, among our ancient sources for the lex Gabinia debate this argument is reproduced uniquely in Dio’s speech of Catulus; all other sources omit it. After his defence of the mores maiorum, Dio’s Catulus admonishes against “entrusting some strange and hitherto unheard-of command to a private citizen” (36.33.4: ξένην δέ τινα καὶ μηπώποτε γεγενημένην ἡγεμονίαν ἰδιώτῃ προστάξητε). The case made by Catulus in Book 36 of the Roman History thus approximates very closely with the historical opposition to Pompeius’ extraordinary commands as recorded in the de Imperio. Dio gives arguments to his Catulus that appear only in Cicero’s text—they are not recorded in intermediary accounts of the lex Gabinia debate—and on several occasions. This might be discounted as pure coincidence were the points of contact less numerous, but all the main testimonia of Catulus and Hortensius’ opposition to the lex Gabinia and lex Manilia find their way into Dio’s oration. It seems that the de Imperio Gnaei Pompei therefore served as a source not only for its direct analogue—the speech of Gabinius in support of Pompeius and his law—but also as a source of arguments to attribute to the opposing side. In other words, the historian ‘reconstructed’ the case against Pompeius’ extraordinary commands from the same text he used to build the case in support of them. To propose this is not to credit Dio with unrealistic subtlety: the evidence was plain enough to see in 140  Cic. Man. 50: quod si Romae Cn. Pompeius priuatus esset hoc tempore, tamen ad tantum bellum is erat deligendus atque mittendus. 141  It can only have been raised in 67 BCE, since in 66 BCE during the lex Manilia debate Pompeius was not a priuatus: he was still in possession of his extraordinary imperium under the terms of the lex Gabinia of the previous year. This confirms that Cicero is recording the opposition to Pompeius expressed in both years. Since this occurs in the part of the argument devoted to Catulus’ objections, this is also grounds for arguing that Catulus did speak in 67 BCE as all our ancient sources attest. Pace Rodgers 2008.

Method

89

his source, and this straightforward process enabled him to develop both sides of the case on the basis of a single oratorical text. Yet his use of the source is certainly sophisticated, and gives the lie to the misconception of his alleged crudity. Dio expanded the de Imperio into a suite of three rhetorically elaborate speeches, adopting the basic argumentative skeleton of the original and, where possible, imitating the manner in which the original arguments were expressed, and reconstructing also the opposite side of the debate. This innovative and remarkable combination of techniques is to my knowledge unique to the Roman History within the corpus of ancient historiography. Dio retained intellectual ownership over the speeches as an advertisement of his own erudition and inventive prowess while also using contemporary source material to develop what he considered an authentic snapshot of genuine debates in the first half of the 60s BCE. The same practice is possibly in evidence with the Philippics. We have seen how Dio’s version of the invective against Antonius in Book 45 draws from Cicero, especially the Second Philippic. This is a relatively straightforward example of the historian’s imitatio and is traditionally recognised as such; but we have suggested here that the detailed range of parallels can only arise from Dio’s close engagement with the Philippics as a source-text during the writing process. Calenus’ ‘anti-philippic’ response (46.1–28) is less straightforward. In the Second Philippic, Cicero records numerous testimonia of Antonius’ recent attacks upon him: in a manner similar to his reportage of Catulus and Hortensius’ words in the de Imperio, he provides direct quotations and paraphrases of his opponent’s arguments in order to refute them. Scholars have tended to shy away from the possibility that Dio developed his polemic of Calenus by re-elaborating these testimonia, preferring to suggest lost texts. Most of these texts are conveniently unavailable for comparison, and the hypothesis is especially bizarre when we consider that Dio almost certainly had the Second Philippic open in front of him. Gabba, for example, argues that he drew from the anti-Ciceronian invectives of Asinius Pollio—142 every Roman historian’s favourite lost Quelle. Older work explained the concordances by virtue of Dio’s general absorption of unspecified anti-Ciceronian literature, perhaps a Greek rhetor (who?) that wrote a polemic (which?).143 Millar’s authoritative study rejected this view, but suggests that the main source for Dio’s 142  Gabba 1957. Both Gabba 1957 and Millar 1964 recognise that Cicero in the Second Philippic gives fragments and testimonia of Antonius’ words which could have provided anti-Ciceronian material for Dio’s speech of Calenus, but both set aside the possibility that the historian used these testimonia as a basis for his Calenus. 143  Haupt 1884, 689–693; Zielinski 1912, 280–288.

90

chapter 2

speech of Calenus must be general anti-Ciceronian material of an unspecified nature (what?) from the Imperial period.144 An alternative is Antonius’ own published responses to Cicero, or ἀντιγραφαί; these are lost and we last hear of them in Plutarch around a century and a half before the Roman History.145 The most recent suggestion is that Dio invented the speech of Calenus wholesale, “constructed out of many memorable phrases and whole arguments borrowed from Demosthenes”; on this view all of the arguments it contains were simply invented by the historian.146 A final possibility is the pseudo-Sallustian Inuectiua in Ciceronem: Gabba identifies ten parallels between the Inuectiua and Dio’s speech of Calenus.147 But in fact, there is no need to imagine any source for Dio’s Calenus other than the Latin text of Cicero himself, not least because the number of concordances is greater than pseudo-Sallust’s Inuectiua and because we can be confident that the historian was reading the Second Philippic anyway. There is no need to invent what has already been found. The Second Philippic preserves in total fourteen of Antonius’ accusations against Cicero. In a series of quotations and testimonia, Cicero repeats those contentions which Antonius had levied against him in reply to his First Philippic of September 44 BCE: i) he had violated their friendship (2.3); ii) he had been ungrateful for Antonius’ retiring from the augurship contest in his favour (2.4); iii) he had taken advantage of Antonius’ beneficia (2.5); iv) he had sent him friendly letters and was now changing face (2.8); v) he had demonstrated misconduct in his consulship (2.12); vi) the Capitoline had been full of armed slaves on Cicero’s watch (2.16); vii) he had mistreated Antonius’ uncle, Lentulus (2.17); viii) Clodius was slain by his contrivance (2.21); ix) he had advised and rejoiced at the death of Milo (2.21); x) the alienation of Pompeius and Caesar was Cicero’s fault, and by extension the civil war too (2.23); xi) he had spurred individuals on to Caesar’s assassination (2.27); xii) he was an accomplice in the plot (2.28); xiii) he was disliked and as such received few inheritances (2.40); and xiv), Cicero returned from voluntary exile under cover of darkness and in un-Roman dress (2.76). Strikingly, only two of these recriminations of Antonius preserved in Cicero’s text do not find their way into Dio’s ‘anti-Philippic’ of Calenus. The speech makes no mention of accusations i) and iv), that Cicero had violated his friendship with Antonius and was displaying hypocrisy in changing face 144  Millar 1964, 52–55. 145  Plut. Cic. 41.4. 146  Rodgers 2008, 317–318. 147  Gabba 1955, 318–321; Gabba 1957, 167n.1.

Method

91

after a cordial exchange of letters. The reason for their omission is unclear. It may be that Dio found them out of character for the speaker: Calenus may not have seemed the best-placed to comment on the friendship formerly enjoyed by the pair, or to have read their correspondence. The other accusations, public and political, are faithfully reproduced, but Dio omits those two which do not fit the prosopopoeia. The distribution of these concordances is rather haphazard, and noticeably different to what we have seen earlier. For Cicero’s invective of Book 45, the criticisms levelled against Antonius are not only those of Cicero himself but also proceed in roughly the same order as they appear in the Second Philippic. This suggests that Dio had the text open at some point and took down successive notes, preserving the original structure of what he had read. But for Calenus in Book 46, the Ciceronian material is compressed into only three short clusters and is arranged in no apparent order. 46.2.2–46.4.2 reproduces eight testimonia from the Second Philippic; 46.20 preserves three; and a couple of sentences in 46.22.3–5 reproduce four in rapid sequence. The first cluster focusses on the entire background and process of Cicero’s exile: his estrangement of Caesar and Pompeius (46.2.2 = Phil. 2.33); his responsibility for Clodius’ death at Milo’s hands (46.2.3 = Phil. 2.21) and for that of Caesar through Brutus (46.2.3 = Phil. 2.27; 46.3.3 = Phil. 2.27); Cicero’s consulship and the death of Catiline (46.2.3 = Phil. 2.11), followed by his harsh treatment of Lentulus (46.2.3 = Phil. 2.18); and, finally, the foreignness of his conduct in exile (46.3.2 = Phil. 2.76) and his lack of inheritances stemming from his provincial background (46.4.2 = Phil. 2.40). In the second brief cluster, Dio’s Calenus returns to Cicero’s consulship. Here again the earlier argument that he ought to be punished for his consulship is repeated (46.20.1 = Phil. 2.11); Dio also repeats Antonius’ accusation that the Capitol was filled with armed slaves during Cicero’s term (46.20.1 = Phil. 2.16), and returns again in detail to the injustice done to Lentulus (46.20.3–5 = Phil. 2.18). The third and final cluster deals again with the assassination of Caesar and Antonius’ political favours for Cicero: the orator’s involvement in the plot (46.22.3 = Phil. 2.27) and the tyrannicides’ exultant proclamation of Cicero’s name (46.22.4 = Phil. 2.28); and, finally, his ingratitude toward Antonius’ beneficia for ceding the augurship to him (46.22.5 = Phil. 2.4) and for sparing him at Brindisi (46.22.6 = Phil. 2.5). Whole sections of Calenus’ speech cannot be traced back to Cicero. The intervals between the three clusters are filled with material demonstrably not from the testimonia in the Second Philippic, for example the vulgar and graphic excursus on Cicero’s background (46.4–7) and general criticisms of his mediocrity, covetousness, hypocrisy, and boastfulness (46.7–10). Contemporary Latin

92

chapter 2

sources contained these criticisms—some of Asinius Pollio’s comments on Cicero were so vulgar that even he decided not to circulate them—148 but such generalising polemic need not derive from a particular source at all. It is rather the specific and usually political arguments that were of sufficient interest to Dio for reproduction. However, even during these otherwise nondescript intervals between the three clusters which parallel closely with Antonius’ testimonia, we nevertheless find Calenus responding directly to arguments made by Cicero himself in the Second Philippic. Calenus defends Antonius against the criticism made of his youthful relationship with Curio, and gives a rather weak exculpation of his nudity at the Lupercalia and his gift of two thousand acres of land to the rhetor Sextus Clodius; these points directly respond to Cicero’s claims in the Second Philippic.149 Whether the historian devised these ripostes himself from excerpts and quotations of the original recorded in his hypomnemata or derived them from another source is speculation. But they demonstrate further that in this less sophisticated section of the oration, comprised mainly of personal abuse rather than the genuine arguments of Antonius recorded in the Second Philippic, Dio incorporated the historical material even here. Where Cassius Dio had access to an oratorical source whose context was analogous to one he wished to include, he used it. Such sources from the Late Republic were generally limited, and only the most famous case—Cicero— seems to have furnished the required material. This he used in innovative ways which evince his careful reading and note-taking, including even rhetorical inspiration from the source and the use of a single text to create multi-part controuersiae. There were indeed limits to Dio’s inuentio: it is hardly possible to call the lex Gabinia debate and the ‘philippic’ exchange pure fiction. Tremendous attention has traditionally been given to listing similarities and parallels between the Roman History and the writings of Thucydides and Demosthenes. Convincing though these findings are, they are both the symptom and the cause of a particular attitude. As a supposedly ‘sophistic’ author, Dio was apparently more interested in the Greek classics than in the sources actually produced during the most detailed period of his enquiry. Scholarship has invented unknown Greek compilers or rhetores who read Latin texts for him, assuming him unable or unwilling to go back to the contemporary sources in the original language. Moreover, some historians’ concern with authenticity has led them to overlook Dio’s conception of what authenticity meant and the ways in which he sought to achieve it. All this is representative of Cassius Dio’s 148  Sen. Suas. 6.17. 149  Cass. Dio. 46.5.1 = Cic. Phil. 2.45; Cass. Dio. 46.5.3 = Cic. Phil. 2.86; Cass. Dio. 46.8.2 = Cic. Phil. 2.43.

Method

93

quality as an historian. But it is a flawed and prejudicial picture, based upon 19th-century claims that are still too often repeated. 1.2.2 Historiographical Models The scope for invention was rather wider with earlier versions of speeches in historiography than with famous published orations of the kind represented by Cicero. In the course of his reading and research Dio naturally found rhetorical set-pieces in the works of previous historians: Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Sallust, and also quasi-historiographical works with a biographic focus, such as Caesar’s war commentaries and Augustus’ Res Gestae. Here Dio seems to have taken, in general, very little from the original source. Although he adopted the historical context and setting for these speeches—and often a few points of their essential argumentative thrust—, he altered their content quite dramatically. In the more egregious cases, the final result in the Roman History is almost entirely unrecognisable from its earlier counterpart. This suggests two points. First, Dio viewed speeches in historiography as a different type of evidence to published oratorical speeches. Published orator­ ical speeches were to be treated with special care: as we have seen, the content and usually structure of the argumentation were preserved, and Dio also retained certain components of the rhetorical packaging. Conversely, the rhetorical set-pieces in earlier works of history-writing gave Dio freer rein. He recognised them as products of his predecessors’ imagination. He certainly used them as a point of departure; but beyond that his inuentio assumed the greatest importance, certainly more so than when dealing with published oratorical texts. Secondly (and in consequence), the increased scope for inuentio brought about by an historiographical speech as opposed to a published oratorical text gave Dio more room to explore his own historical interpretation. As we have seen, many of the points articulated by Gabinius, Catulus, Cicero and Calenus were faithfully carried over from an oratorical source. Dio selected them for inclusion based on the point he wished to make (for example, concerning the danger of extraordinary commands), but they are not his own arguments. The case is different with speeches prompted by the historiographical tradition. Here the historian invented the argumentation apparently almost wholesale, giving distinctive and new versions of earlier historiographical speeches whose content was entirely shaped by his own explanatory aims and the interpretative view he wished to express regarding the specific dramatic context or the history of the Republic more broadly. A brief word on the sources. Our intention is not to give a detailed discussion of the historiographical sources Dio used for his narrative in general, except insofar as they informed his speeches. Ample treatment has already been given

94

chapter 2

to this topic elsewhere. However, it is probably not satisfactory to conclude that where a composition of Dio’s does not closely resemble an earlier historiographical version, he must have been unaware of the latter. Frustratingly (for us), he is mostly silent on the texts he had read; but unless his claim to have read “practically everything written about Rome by anybody” over a decade of research and note-taking is nonsense,150 we should work on an inclusive basis. He had read Livy,151 although recent scholarship has shown (importantly) that Dio was far less dependent upon him than previously thought. Especially for the earliest centuries of the Republic, the Roman History appears to have drawn from pre-Livian traditions.152 In keeping with this, the speeches in Dio’s first two decads evince his attempt to provide a distinctive competitor to Livy. Far less recognised is the historian’s debt to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, now lately coming to light.153 Intriguingly, Dio’s speeches of Brutus on the foundation of the Republic and Menenius Agrippa on the First Secession of the Plebs seem to take their cue from Dionysius’ Roman Antiquities. We will return to this point in a moment, but for the time being let us park the obvious point that Dio had indeed read the major Greek alternative to Livy for the earlier centuries of Rome’s past. For the later Republican portions of his work the historian was also aware of quasi-historiographical texts and in one case says so. For the narrative of Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul he evidently used Caesar’s commentarii, blending the commentaries with other sources;154 his harangue of Caesar to his mutinying troops at Vesontio (38.36–46) is inspired by Book 1 of the de Bello Gallico. Dio also states that he is aware of Augustus’ Res Gestae, but oddly this rare explicit notice of an earlier text has been taken to indicate that he had not read it.155 In his account of the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, Dio notes that the populus were excited and enraged by the news of the late dictator’s 150  Cass. Dio frg. 1.2. 151  Schwartz 1899, 1697–1714 more or less cemented this view, and a host of scholars during the 20th century followed suit, e.g.: Blumenthal 1913; Marx 1933; Charlesworth 1934; Bender 1961; Mette 1961; Millar 1964; Harrington 1970; Pelling 1979. However, see Manuwald 1979, 168–258 for the entire demolition of the long-held assumption that Dio relied principally upon Livy’s lost Late Republican and Augustan narratives, an assumption described by Pelling 1983, 226 as a “flimsy prejudice”. 152  Most recently and importantly, Urso 2016a; Urso 2019. 153  Most recently, see the study of Fromentin 2016 on Cassius Dio’s relationship with Dionysius of Halicarnassus as a literary model. 154  For discussion of Dio’s use of Caesar’s commentaries see: Zecchini 1978; Micalella 1986; McDougall 1991. 155  Millar 1964 suggests, on the basis of the garbled figure given by Dio and discussed here, that he cannot have read the Res Gestae; I find this quite incredible.

Method

95

bequest to them: he left “to each of the citizens either 120 sesterces as Octavian [Augustus] himself records, or 300 sesterces, as other sources record” (δραχμάς, ὡς μὲν αὐτὸς ὁ Ὀκτάουιος γράφει, τριάκοντα, ὡς δὲ ἕτεροι, πέντε καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα ἑκάστῳ σφῶν, Cass. Dio 44.35.3). The former is a reference to RG 15.1, but the figure is garbled: in his own account Augustus states that he gave each citizen 300 sesterces, not the 120 noted in Dio (plebei Romanae viritim HS trecenos numeravi ex testamento patris mei). This must be a simple error: he has obviously found the correct figure of three hundred when reading the Res Gestae, but confused it with “other sources” (ὡς δὲ ἕτεροι) in his notes, and accidentally swaps the two figures around. Notices of this kind are extremely rare in the Roman History, and where rarely Dio specifies a written source it is safe to assume that he had read it. The same may be said for Sallust, whose work the historian knew.156 The oration of Brutus following the expulsion of the Tarquins survives only in fragments in Dio’s third book—which must in its original form have been entirely devoted to the first year of the Republic—,157 yet these are sufficient to detect Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ influence. Dionysius’ account of the expulsion of the Tarquins has four main rhetorical parts. First, Brutus and his associates discuss the fate of Lucretia, the horrors of tyranny, and their plan of action for rousing the people to choose a republic, largely in dialogue format interspersed with sections of both direct and indirect speech (4.70–72). This is followed by Brutus’ first set-piece oration (4.73–75), in which he privately persuades his patrician allies of the benefits of founding a republic and how to achieve it. His address to the people comes third (4.77–83), much of it devoted to criticising the tyranny of the Tarquins and exhorting the people to action with praise of Lucretia’s honour. Finally, a brief exchange in both direct and indirect speech has the ambassadors of the exiled Tarquinus Superbus appealing to the Senate for his restoration or, failing that, the return of his property, and Brutus’ response in the same senate-meeting (5.4–5). Broadly, Dio seems to have retained this multi-part structure. We can determine this thanks to the ordering of the fragments (frgs. 12.1–12.11),158 which 156  Cass. Dio. 43.9.2–3. 157  Rich 2019. 158  The attribution and interpretation of these eleven fragments is difficult. Earlier editors originally divided them between direct speeches (indicated strictly by lexical clues, such as use of the second person plural) on the one hand, and Dio’s authorial comments on the other hand. On such a conservative reading, the only fragments we can confidently ascribe to Brutus’ address are Cass. Dio frgs. 12.6, 12.7, and 12.10. A further two evidently belong to the speeches given by Tarquinius Superbus’ ambassadors (frgs. 12.4, 12.5). The other six fragments, all gnomic in character (frgs. 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.8, 12.9, 12.11) were thus

96

chapter 2

the tenth-century excerptors commissioned by Constantine VII copied down according to the order in which they found them. A first set-piece oration of Brutus (frg. 12.1–3a) warns an unknown audience of the dangers of sudden changes of government. This was certainly followed by the ambassadors’ request for the restoration of Tarquin or his property (frg. 12.4–5b), and closes with what seems to be a further speech of Brutus rejecting their overtures and discussing the ethics of power (frg. 12.6–11). The narrative setting of these fragments has not survived, but the similarity of Dio’s structure to Dionysius’ suggests that the settings may also have been similar, with Brutus’ first speech in private to his patrician allies, the ambassadors’ appeal before the Senate, and Brutus’ response to the Senate also. The (probably) two speeches of Brutus in the Roman History recognisably take Dionysius as their point of departure while also introducing new content to elaborate its major interpretative axes and themes. To consider the similarities first, a few arguments are evidently not Dio’s own. For example, the first speech of his Brutus argues that all changes are dangerous, and those in forms of government especially so. This had an earlier predecessor in Dionysius: πᾶσαι μὲν γὰρ μεταβολαὶ σφαλερώταταί εἰσι, μάλιστα δὲ αἱ ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις πλεῖστα δὴ καὶ μέγιστα καὶ ἰδιώτας καὶ πόλεις βλάπτουσι. διὸ οἱ νοῦν ἔχοντες ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεί, κἂν μὴ βέλτιστα ᾖ, ἀξιοῦσιν ἐμμένειν ἢ μεταλαμβάνοντες ἄλλοτε ἄλλα ἀεὶ πλανᾶσθαι.

καινὴν μὲν οὐδεμίαν οἴομαι δεῖν ἡμᾶς καθίστασθαι πολιτείαν κατὰ τὸ παρόν· ὅ τε γὰρ καιρός, εἰς ὃν συνήγμεθα ὑπὸ τῶν πραγμάτων, βραχύς, ἐν ᾧ μεθαρμόσασθαι πόλεως κόσμον οὐ ῥᾴδιον, ἥ τε πεῖρα τῆς μεταβολῆς, κἂν τὰ κράτιστα τύχωμεν περὶ αὐτῆς βουλευσάμενοι, σφαλερὰ καὶ οὐκ ἀκίνδυνος.

assigned to the narrator-voice by Boissevain 1895, 35 and Fechner 1986, 21–28. However, Rich 2019, 237 argues (and I think rightly) that although these fragments make no grammatical indication of direct speech, the extensive and developed philosophical and theoretical reflection is more common to Dio’s speeches than his narrative, and these too are therefore likely to come from Brutus’ suasoria. It would certainly be remarkable for Dio to cluster so many gnomic statements of this type in so short a space of narrative, and with Rich 2019 I believe we can be less conservative than Boissevain. For the purposes of this analysis, all of these eleven fragments are treated as speech fragments. We should also note that several of them (as discussed here) are similar in content to Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ speech of Brutus, even where they give no explicit lexical indication of oratio recta.

97

Method

All changes are very dangerous, and especially do those in governments work the greatest and most numerous evils to both individuals and states. Sensible men, therefore, choose to remain under the same forms continually, even if they be not the best, rather than by changing, now to one, now to another, to be continually unsettled. Cass. Dio frg. 12.3a

We ought not in the present situation to establish a new form of government. For the time to which we are limited by the circumstances is short, so that it is not easy to reform the constitution of the state, and the very attempt to change it, even though we should happen to be guided by the very best counsels, is precarious and not without danger. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.73.1

Dio here imitates Dionysius’ point that the emergence of the Republic ought not to constitute an entire change of government: monarchical power will not be banished from the state, but will instead devolve to two elected magistrates. This is a distinctive claim, and it is too coincidental to imagine that Dio invented it. He may also have picked up further inspiration from the Roman Antiquities: his Brutus emphasises the danger of change in and of itself (πᾶσαι μὲν γὰρ μεταβολαὶ σφαλερώταταί εἰσι), reflecting a similarly general statement in Dionysius (ἥ τε πεῖρα τῆς μεταβολῆς…σφαλερὰ καὶ οὐκ ἀκίνδυνος). Again, both concede that sudden change is perilous even where it seems well-advised: compare Dio’s κἂν μὴ βέλτιστα ᾖ with Dionysius’ κἂν τὰ κράτιστα τύχωμεν περὶ αὐτῆς βουλευσάμενοι. Brutus’ second oration in the Roman History may also have been influenced by its probable earlier model in Dionysius. Its likely purpose as in Dionysius is to question, in response to the appeal of the Tarquins’ ambassadors, “what good this course of action will do for anyone” (πῶς δ᾽ ἂν καὶ λυσιτελήσειέ τινι τοῦτο πρᾶξαι, frg. 12.6). Here Dio’s Brutus encourages his audience—likely the Senate, as in Dionysius—to act “just as I think Romulus appointed you to” (ὥσπερ που καὶ Ῥωμύλος ἡμῖν ἐπέσκηψεν, frg. 12.7). This must be a reference to the powers and responsibilities of the Senate or magistrates under Brutus’ plan for the future res publica, emphasising their continuity with the monarchical regime. In Dionysius this point arrives in Brutus’ first discussion in private with his fellow patricians, where he advises them that the magistrates of the Republic ought to consult with the Senate in everything “just as the kings formerly did” (σκοπεῖσθαι μέντοι φημὶ χρῆναι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἅπαντα μετὰ τοῦ συνεδρίου τῆς βουλῆς, ὥσπερ οἱ βασιλεῖς ἐποίουν, Ant. Rom. 4.75.3). Dionysius therefore seems the most likely candidate among Dio’s historiographical predecessors as a starting-point for the speeches of Brutus and the broad structure of the episode. Both Livy and Plutarch record that decisions were reached and speeches

98

chapter 2

given on the foundation of the Republic,159 but do not use this as an opportunity to draft formal orations. Dio seems to have made some—albeit limited—use of the Roman Antiquities as an historiographical model. Yet it is rather his innovations and inventions in the episode that are of especial interest. He alots two substantive arguments to Brutus that are not found in earlier accounts of the foundation of the Republic, and both of these underpin major interpretative themes in his Roman History. The first is a discourse on the vicissitudes of fortune (frg. 12.9): Kingship requires not only great virtue, but also great understanding and rectitude. It is not possible for anyone who holds it to be moderate without these virtues. Many, for example, who are raised unexpectedly to great status cannot bear their fortune; rather, they are overcome with giddiness, suffer a reverse, and destroy themselves and those subject to them. ὅτι τὸ τῆς βασιλείας πρᾶγμα οὐκ ἀρετῆς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπιστήμης καὶ συνηθείας, εἴπερ τι ἄλλο, πολλῆς δεῖται, καὶ οὐχ οἷόν τέ ἐστιν ἄνευ ἐκείνων ἁψάμενόν τινα σωφρονῆσαι. πολλοὶ γοῦν ὥσπερ ἐς ὕψος τι μέγα παρὰ λόγον ἀρθέντες οὐκ ἤνεγκαν τὴν μετεώρισιν, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοί τε καταπεσόντες ὑπ᾽ ἐκπλήξεως ἔπταισαν καὶ τὰ τῶν ἀρχομένων πάντα συνηλόησαν. In its dramatic context, this commentary relates ostensibly to the ethics of kingship, a theme elaborated at length in Dionysius. Those who are raised unexpectedly to greatness lose their moderation and virtue, leading to the ultimate destruction of themselves and those around them. However, this is in fact a central theme to Dio’s narrative of the Republic, and Brutus’ gnomic statement has universal force. The speech of Brutus at the very beginning of Dio’s Republican history thus serves to underline one of its recurring historical interpretations from the start. Earlier in this chapter we saw Catulus’ prediction in the lex Gabinia debate of Book 36 that the honour of an extraordinary command would exalt and ultimately destroy Pompeius; this is precisely the interpretation that Dio applies to his downfall after Pharsalus.160 Sulla, Marius, and Caesar likewise fall from grace in the Roman History because they are unable to bear moderately and virtuously the blessings of fortune. This point is repeated, with reference to Sulla, in Tiberius’ laudatio funebris for Augustus

159  Cf. Livy 2.3.5; Plut. Publ. 2.3–3.3. 160  Cass. Dio 42.1.

Method

99

in Book 56.161 Similarly, Agrippa’s defence of δημοκρατία in Book 52 warns the triumphant Octavian that, should he choose to follow Caesar’s example and reign in the manner of a king, “people will think that we have fallen victims to our own good fortune and have lost our minds because of success”.162 As we shall see in Chapter 4 (‘Morality’), Dio’s point as articulated in Agrippa and Tiberius is that the moderation and rectitude of Augustus’ regime succeeded in breaking the Republican cycle of prosperity followed by downfall—a cycle foreshadowed from the very inception of the res publica with the speech of Brutus in Book 3. The second point emphasises another of Dio’s major historical premises: the ambiguity of rhetoric. We have already seen the historian’s recurring interest in this theme in the previous chapter. In what seems to be part of the peroration of Brutus’ address to the Senate, he exhorts the ordo to take a sceptical view of the claims of Tarquinius Superbus’ devotion to Rome and love for its people made by his emissaries; fragments of these claims survive. Once again Dio’s Brutus begins by responding to the specific historical situation before broadening his comments to a universal moral principle (frg. 12.10): And as for your future course, take as evidence what they have actually done, rather than being deceived by the lies they tell while supplicating you. Anyone can make up well-chosen words, but their awful deeds arise from their real intentions. Therefore, base your judgement on what a man has done, not on what he says he will do. καὶ περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐξ ὧν ἔπραξαν τεκμήρασθε, ἀλλὰ μὴ ἐξ ὧν πλάττονται ἱκετεύοντες ἀπατηθῆτε· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀνόσια ἔργα ἀπὸ γνώμης ἀληθοῦς ἑκάστῳ γίγνεται, συλλαβὰς δ᾽ ἄν τις εὐπρεπεῖς συμπλάσειεν· καὶ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἐποίησέ τις, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἀφ᾽ ὧν φησι ποιήσειν, κρίνετε. The speaker warns his hearers to treat with suspicion the well-chosen words of false claimants: persuasive though these might seem, they usually mask awful intentions. As the chapter to follow discusses in more detail, the deceptiveness of oratory was an especially important theme to Cassius Dio as an historian of the Republic. His account of a political system based upon public debates presents the corrosion of such debates as a driving force in the fragmentation and eventual collapse of ordered political life. 161  Cass. Dio 56.38. For fuller discussion of Tiberius’ laudatio funebris for Augustus, see Chapter 6 (‘Epilogue’). 162  Cass. Dio 52.2.4.

100

chapter 2

So far as we can ascertain from the lacunose evidence, the speeches of Brutus and the ambassadors of the Tarquins were the first lengthy and highly developed set-piece debate in the Roman History. Brutus’ words are obviously invention: discounting Dionysius’ influence, they almost entirely reflect the historian’s choice of what is appropriate to the speaker and the situation. But I would suggest that this choice tells us much about Dio’s motivation in staging the debate in the way he does. Taking a previous historiographical model, likely Dionysius, as a point of departure, he reworked the original in such a way as to insert new material into the tradition. He kept the basic thrust of the oration as found in his sources, retaining a few fundamental points, but beyond this re-elaborated it entirely to introduce his major interpretative themes. Dio could have borrowed substantially from an earlier source, but apparently chose not to. He instead marked the opening of his Republican narrative with a dramatic exposition of the problems of immoderation in character and falsehood in speech which will shape the course of events to come. The harangue of Caesar to his troops at Vesontio (38.36–46) is one of the more famous examples of Dio refashioning entirely an oration already extant in a previous historiographical source.163 The context is 58 BCE and Caesar’s Gallic campaign. The king of the Germanic tribe of the Suebi, Ariovistus, had been recently enrolled among the friends and allies of Rome, but was now making incursions across the Rhine. Two Gallic tribes (the Sequani and Aedui) appealed to Caesar for protection. In Dio’s account, the latter sends a deliberately intolerable ultimatum to Ariovistus and, knowing that it will be rejected, uses this as a pretext for war. Disturbed at the situation, Caesar’s troops elect to mutiny rather than face Ariovistus and the Germans.164 By Dio’s time two copies of the exhortation at Vesontio already existed: the parallel speech of Caesar in the de Bello Gallico (BGall. 1.40), and a much shorter composition in Plutarch’s biography of the dictator (Caes. 19). It is doubtful that Dio was prompted by the latter. First, Plutarch’s version is nothing more than a few lines of indirect speech: Caesar instructs the mutineers to leave for their cowardice, says that he will make do with only the loyal tenth legion, and compares himself and the Germans favourably to Marius and the Cimbri. Secondly, Plutarch’s attitude toward Caesar in this episode is precisely 163  Conventionally, scholars have viewed the address of Caesar to his mutinying troops at Vesontio as straightforwardly representative of the historian’s own opinions on imperial expansion: see for example Hagendahl 1944, 37; Gabba 1955, 304–305; Christ 1974, 275– 279; Zecchini 1978, 33n.60. Rightly, Fechner 1986, 216 has criticised this mistaken view; for further discussion see Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’). For an excellent recent study of Cassius Dio’s Vesontio speech, see Kemezis 2016. 164  This at least is the narrative offered in Cass. Dio 38.34–35.

Method

101

the opposite of Dio’s. The biographer attributes all the blame for the conflict to Ariovistus and the Suebi: they were intolerable and hostile neighbours (ἀφόρητοι τοῖς ὑπηκόοις αὐτοῦ γείτονες) against whom Caesar began a just campaign, “absolutely”—Plutarch insists—“in defence of the Gauls” (ἄντικρυς ὑπὲρ Κελτῶν ἐπολέμησε).165 Appian, who does not provide a speech, presents the conflict similarly to Plutarch: Ariovistus was, apparently, the aggressor.166 Dio would have found these versions hopelessly naive and rejects both. In the Roman History, the Sequani and Aedui see that Caesar wanted war (τήν τε ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῦ ἰδόντες) and give him precisely the pretext he so desired (πρόφασιν τοῦ πολέμου). Despite enrolling Ariovistus among Rome’s amici et socii himself, Caesar considered this of no importance in comparison with the glory to be gained by victory and the personal power such glory would bring (πρὸς δὲ δὴ τὴν ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου δόξαν καὶ τὴν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς ἰσχὺν οὐδὲν τούτων ἐφρόντισε).167 That Dio took his cue from Caesar’s commentarii rather than Plutarch’s biography is furthermore suggested by three parallels between the two. Impressed (or horrified) by the liberties Dio enjoyed with his model, scholars have tended to emphasise only the ways in which his version differs from Caesar’s original. They are correct, but this wrongly obscures the reality of the historian’s approach with historiographical speeches in general: he took the context of the model, one or two of its arguments to retain the overall point, and then elaborated widely his own historical interests and themes. First and most tellingly of all, Dio records the astonishing detail from the de Bello Gallico that Caesar’s troops were questioning the legitimacy of his campaign against Ariovistus. Outside of the commentarii this point is repeated only in Dio: οὔτε γὰρ ἄλλως ἀγνοεῖτε αὐτὰ ὥστε καὶ μαθεῖν δεῖσθαι, οὔτ᾽ ὀλιγώρως αὐτῶν ἔχετε ὥστε καὶ προτροπῆς χρῄζειν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι τινὰς τῶν στρατιωτῶν ᾔσθημαι αὐτούς τε θρυλοῦντας ὡς οὐ προσήκοντα τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον ἀνῃρήμεθα…

165  Plut. Caes. 19.1. 166  App. Gall. 17.1. 167  Cass. Dio 38.34.3.

Haec cum animaduertisset, conuocato consilio omniumque ordinum ad id consilium adhibitis centurionibus, uehementer eos incusauit: primum, quod aut quam in partem aut quo consilio ducerentur sibi quaerendum aut cogitandum putarent.

102

chapter 2

You are not so ignorant of these matters that you need to learn them, nor so indisposed toward them as to need encouragement. But since I have learned that some of the soldiers are chattering away, saying that the war we have begun is none of our business … Cass. Dio 38.37.1

When he noticed this, Caesar summoned a council and summoned to it the centurions of all the ranks. There he severely chastised them, “first of all because they thought it their business to enquire or even think about where they were being led or with what objective.” Caes. BGall. 1.40.1

It is important to note that the historian is not himself concerned with Caesar’s legal position in apparently overstepping the boundaries of his province to deal with Ariovistus, on which much has been written.168 Clearly he recognised the issue: he writes that the mutiny at Vesontio occurred because “all the soldiers were saying that they had no business with this war and that it had not been decreed, but was merely being fought because of Caesar’s private ambition” (καὶ ἐθρύλουν ὅτι πόλεμον οὔτε προσήκοντα οὔτε ἐψηφισμένον διὰ τὴν ἰδίαν τοῦ Καίσαρος φιλοτιμίαν ἀναιροῖντο).169 This authorial comment—which arrives in the chapter immediately before Dio’s orator begins to speak—sets up a rather neat verbal parallel: Caesar’s statement that he has heard soldiers chattering (θρυλοῦντας) to the effect that the war is not their business (οὐ προσήκοντα τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον) directly mirrors the historian’s commentary a chapter prior (καὶ ἐθρύλουν ὅτι πόλεμον οὔτε προσήκοντα), but this time with the significant and ironic omission of his personal ambition (φιλοτιμία), which the parallel implicitly recalls to the reader. Setting that aside, this unique point of Dio’s Caesar suggests that the historian took the de Bello Gallico as his model, not Plutarch or Appian. A couple of other points indicate that the historian did indeed adapt arguments from his literary model despite the obvious uniqueness of his creation. Again absent from Plutarch’s trimmed-down harangue, but present only in Dio and Caesar, is the accusation that Ariovistus was changing face: he had sought the friendship of the Roman people only now to reject it. Both emphasise the fairness of Caesar’s terms relative to the rashness and contempt of the German king: 168  See Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’) below for fuller discussion and a review of the scholarship. 169  Cass. Dio. 38.35.2. The exceptionality of the detail has been noted by Hagendahl 1944, 26: “Dio is the only classical author who gives the remarkable piece of information that Caesar within his own army had been accused of starting a war on his own with no authority from the senate and the general assembly”.

103

Method

καί μοι εἴ τις ὑμῶν ἐκεῖνο ὑπολαμβάνει, τί δὴ τηλικοῦτον ὁ Ἀριόουιστος μέληκεν ὥστ᾽ ἀντὶ φίλου καὶ πεπλημ­ συμμάχου πολέμιος ἡμῖν γενέσθαι … καίτοι τί μὲν ἐγὼ ἄδικον ἢ ἀνεπιεικὲς ἢ φορτικὸν ἐποίησα μεταπεμψάμενος αὐτὸν ὡς φίλον καὶ σύμμαχον; τί δὲ ἐκεῖνος ὕβρεως καὶ ἀσελγείας, οὐκ ἐθελήσας ἐλθεῖν, ἐκλέλοιπεν; ἆρ᾽ οὐ δυοῖν ἀνάγκη θάτερον, ἤτοι ὑπωπτευκότα αὐτόν τι κακὸν πείσεσθαι ἢ ὑπερπεφρονηκότα ἡμᾶς τοῦτο πεποιηκέναι;

Ariouistum se consule cupidissime populi Romani amicitiam adpetisse; cur hunc tam temere quisquam ab officio discessurum iudicaret? Sibi quidem persuaderi cognitis suis postulatis atque aequitate condicionum perspecta eum neque suam neque populi Romani gratiam repudiaturum. Quod si furore atque amentia impulsum bellum intulisset, quid tandem uererentur? Aut cur de sua uirtute aut de ipsius diligentia desperarent?

And if one of you should answer me with “ah, but how can Ariovistus have wronged us so much that he should become our enemy rather than our ally?”… nevertheless, what did I do that was wrong or unforgiving or arrogant in summoning him as a friend and ally? And what outrage and insolence has he left undone in refusing to come?! He can only have done this for one of two reasons: either he suspected that we would do him harm, or he felt contempt for us.

Ariovistus, during the former’s consulship, had most eagerly sought the friendship of the Roman people; how could anyone imagine that he would now abandon his duty so rashly? Caesar, for his part, was persuaded that when his demands were known and the fairness of his terms realised, Ariovistus would not reject his favour nor that of the Roman people. Still, even if he should be driven by madness and rage to declare war, what were they so afraid of? And why lose faith in their own courage, or his diligence?

Cass. Dio 38.42.1–3

Caes. BGall. 1.40.2–4

To these overlaps we may also add Caesar’s insistence that the loyal tenth legion will be enough for him—reproduced by Dio from the commentarii—170 and finally the range of historical exempla adduced by his Caesar. In (only) this latter respect Plutarch adapts material from the de Bello Gallico much more faithfully than Dio. Plutarch’s general exhorts his troops to courage by recalling previous victories against the German Cimbri and Teutones, citing the example of Marius also.171 This is a close reflection of Caesar’s original ( factum eius hostis periculum patrum nostrorum memoria Cimbris et Teutonis a C. Mario 170  Cass. Dio 38.46.3 = Caes. BGall. 1.40.15. 171  Plut. Caes. 19.4.

104

chapter 2

pulsis, BGall. 1.40.5). Dio does indeed imitate this deployment of exempla in the mouth of Caesar (τὰ δ᾽ αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ περὶ τῶν Γαλατῶν καὶ Κελτῶν ἄν τις εἰπεῖν ἔχοι), but expands it quite dramatically to serve as a sort of historical survey of Roman imperialism from the Pyrrhic War up to the invasions of the Cimbri at the end of the 2nd century BCE.172 This choice is peculiar—and it brings us to the question of Dio’s interpretative purpose in composing his speech and how this modified his use of the de Bello Gallico as a logographic model. While Dio took more from Caesar’s commentarii than is usually recognised— indeed, he actually preserves about half of the argumentation of the original speech—it is obvious that he invented widely. His use of Caesar parallels that of Dionysius: preserving the context and several of the main arguments of the literary model, he then develops freely beyond that starting-point. As we will see in the ensuing discussion—especially Chapter 3 (‘Oratory’) and Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’)—, Dio’s address to the mutineers at Vesontio is one of most elaborate and significant examples of his use of inuentio to set out his main arguments regarding the degeneration of Republican politics. It can hardly escape the reader’s notice, for instance, that the words of his Caesar are a fiction in the most pejorative sense: his appeals to patriotism and claims of defending Rome’s allies are presented as a deliberate fraud, exemplifying the disintegration of oratory as an instrument for the public good. His long selection of exempla from the invasion of Pyrrhus to the present day serve as a history of Roman imperialism in miniature; this invites the reader to compare the illegitimacy of Caesar’s aggressive and self-interested campaigning with earlier conflicts presented in Dio’s narrative as legitimate and mentioned in the speech. The list may be inspired by Caesar’s exempla of the Cimbri and Teutones in the de Bello Gallico, but the historian expands it so as to demonstrate the turpitude of Late Republican imperialism and its subordination to factional interests. Other important aspects of Dio’s interpretation, such as the difficulty of controlling the actions of ambitious provincial commanders far from senatorial oversight, also loom large in his oration of Caesar.173 We will return to these points in more detail later; for now we are only concerned with the limits of Dio’s inuentio and how he reconciled it with a degree of faithfulness to an existing historiographical model. Caesar’s handling of his mutinying soldiers furnished Dio with other opportunities to demonstrate his awareness of the tradition while also reworking it in pursuit of his interpretative aims. After Vesontio the Roman History records two further instances of insubordination which called for a speech of Caesar: 172  Cass. Dio 38.37–38. 173  Cass. Dio 38.41. Further discussion to follow in Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’).

Method

105

one at Placentia in 49 BCE (41.27–35) and another at Rome in 47 BCE (42.53– 54). Perplexingly, the case here is precisely the opposite to that of the de Bello Gallico: many ancient historians record a speech on both of these occasions,174 but Caesar in the de Bello Civili ignores the two mutinies altogether. He deliberately omitted the first at Placentia, and the second at Rome lay beyond the temporal scope of his commentary.175 His omissions notwithstanding, Dio’s predecessors certainly took the opportunity to give their own versions of harangues of Caesar to his troops: Suetonius is the first among our surviving sources to record them, but it has been suggested that the choice to include them may have originated early with Asinius Pollio.176 A speech at Placentia is mentioned by Appian (B. Civ. 2.47) and Suetonius (Iul. 69); for the harangue at Rome two years later versions were also given in Appian (B. Civ. 2.93), Suetonius (Iul. 70), and Plutarch (Caes. 51). Dio reproduces both, but with opposing degrees of faithfulness to what he found in his reading. For Caesar’s second speech (at Rome) Dio must have been inspired by Appian or the tradition from which Appian worked. In the Roman History the address is, in fact, three short acts of direct speech, interspersed with indirect speech and authorial comment on the reactions and thoughts of its hearers. The troops first ask to be released from service, hoping to be persuaded to stay with the promise of reward. Caesar’s initial response calls their bluff: “of course, Quirites, you are correct; for you must be fatigued and worn down by your wounds”.177 This line occurs in all prior accounts of the oration, and was so famous that one of Tacitus’ speeches even uses it as an exemplum.178 Plutarch and Suetonius both insist that this was all Caesar had to say on this occasion, adding nothing more (Caes. 51: ἐπετίμησε μὲν αὐτοῖς τοσοῦτον ὅσον ἀντὶ στρατιωτῶν πολίτας προσαγορεῦσαι; Iul. 70: sed una uoce, qua ‘Quirites’ eos pro militibus appellarat). Yet Dio goes a little further than this, and adds more speech-acts to emphasise Caesar’s mendacity and manipulation. His is the only account of the Rome mutiny to characterise the general in this way. For example, following the clamour of the mutineers to remain in his service his Caesar insists that, although he will pay them the promised rewards, their dismissal is final. Here Dio notes his duplicity: “Caesar only said this to deceive them, since really they were indispensible to him”.179 After a short account of 174  Suet. Iul. 69–70; Plut, Caes. 5, 19; App. B.Civ. 2.47, 2.93. 175  See Chrissanthos 2001 for discussion of the historicity of the mutiny at Placentia and an analysis of the sources. 176  Chrissanthos 2001, 65–66. 177  Cass. Dio 42.53.3. 178  Tac. Ann. 1.42. 179  Cass. Dio 42.54.1.

106

chapter 2

his further promises (in indirect speech), Caesar’s final speech-act reminds the soldiers that none will be compelled to follow him, but those who wish to may re-enlist.180 Dio’s arrangement of the episode is remarkably similar to Appian, who like Dio gives Caesar three short statements, similar in content to Dio’s and punctuated by further reportage of his words in oratio obliqua and of the troops’ reactions. The Roman History almost never arranges speeches in this way: long set-pieces are its usual practice, with the audience’s reaction reserved until the end. It is too coincidental that Dio should drastically change his method at this point and produce a composition so similar to Appian’s in content and structure. The historian appears to be following a prior historiographical model closely (including also the famous Quirites quote directly from the tradition); but the deliberate characterisation of Caesar as scheming and manipulative is probably his own unique addition, and is consistent with his portrayal elsewhere.181 The harangue at Placentia is an entirely different case. So far as we can judge, Dio borrowed very little from a prior historiographical model and invented widely. Suetonius (Iul. 69) merely reports that Caesar discharged the ninth legion in disgrace and insisted on punishment for the architects of the mutiny. Appian (B. Civ. 2.47) furnishes a short direct oration: Caesar reminds his troops of the rapidity and success of their advance under him and blames Pompeius and his legions for prolonging the war by retreating; he excoriates them for reneging on their pledge to serve him for the entirety of the conflict; and, accusing them of ingratitude toward his generosity, he states his intention to decimate the ninth legion. The total is a few sentences of Greek. Dio’s version is far longer and its historiographical model—if such existed— is impossible to determine. Stekelenburg confidently claimed that Dio’s source for the speech was the (wholly lost) Book 110 of Livy: he adduces four points which were “certainly” in Livy’s version and reproduced in the Roman History.182 There is no evidence for this: Stekelenburg does not and cannot establish whether these points were ever in Livy at all and never furnishes evidence from the alleged derivatives of Livy that he claims support such a relationship. On the basis of this assumption, he concluded that

180  Cass. Dio 42.54.3. 181  See Kemezis 2016 for Dio’s use of speeches to characterise Caesar in this way, with fuller discussion in the chapter to follow (Chapter 3: ‘Oratory’). 182  Stekelenburg 1976, 48–49.

Method

107

To try to analyse Caesar’s (read: Dio’s) reflections in order to discover the philosophy that lies behind them, would be as wearisome as it would be vain. They are the worn-out cliches of the old philosophical school that can be considered as part of the intellectual stock-in-trade of any educated Roman.183 Stekelenburg’s view is not entirely without merit, for two reasons. First, it is hard to escape the conclusion that much of the speech is based upon Dio’s view of military discipline in general and addresses his contemporary concerns above all other considerations. But it is important to note that this anachronism is the exception rather than the rule in Dio’s speeches, especially of the Late Republic. Secondly, several of the ideas in Caesar’s Placentia harangue in the Roman History are certainly stock arguments, well-attested in earlier speeches to mutinying troops. Caesar’s uncertainty over whether to call them soldiers or enemies (41.27.3–4), his hope that only a few are seditious (41.27.6), insistence that he is not afraid to die at their hands (41.27.9), and his reflection on his glorious career (41.28.9) and promise of retribution (41.29.7–8) are all familiar tropes from historiographical speeches of this type.184 But these are clustered only in the first third of the exhortation, and the remainder does articulate some of Dio’ historical interests. Caesar’s claim to be campaigning only to serve the good of his country and to defend it from the megalomania of Pompeius is an obvious lie,185 and contributes to his characterisation as a scheming dynast and fallacious (but convincing) orator while also reflecting Caesar’s genuine claims in the de Bello Civili. Likewise, his closing statement interacts in a satisfying way with his presentation in the narrative: he insists that he desires neither power nor wealth (οὔτε δυναστείας οὔτε πλεονεξίας ἐπιθυμῶ),186 but of course the reader has already seen Dio identify exactly these as his main objectives. Assuring his troops that he is not so eager for personal gain as to lie, deceive, or flatter (ψεύσασθαι καὶ θωπεῦσαι καὶ κολακεῦσαί) also reminds us that these are precisely the favoured tactics of Dio’s Caesar,187 and one of the main reasons for his temporary success. There is no need to suggest any particular source or model for these or other points. They are Dio’s invention—inserted to emphasise, ironically, the effectiveness of fraud as a political instrument in the Late Republic—and they betray a much greater 183  Stekelenburg 1976, 53. 184  For an overview of these formulae and their development, see Hansen 1993; Ehrhardt 1995; Anson 2010. 185  Cass. Dio 41.32.1. 186  Cass. Dio 41.35.4. 187  Cass. Dio 41.35.4.

108

chapter 2

degree of inuentio than the speeches of Brutus in Book 3 or Caesar at Vesontio and Rome, which are at least comparatively more faithful to the tradition. Certain of Dio’s speeches may also have been influenced by other types of contemporary historical material. These cannot be called ‘sources’ as such nor even necessarily ‘historiographical’, yet may well have inspired his compositional choices and provided rhetorical settings on which to model his own speeches. The recusatio imperii of Octavian in Book 53 is one such case. Dio was the first historian to give Octavian an oration before the Senate in the wake of his victory at Actium, making a (false) show of laying down his powers and restoring them to that body.188 The fact is not usually acknowledged that in presenting the young dynast in this way, Dio gives a snapshot of Augustus’ techniques of self-presentation and political communication that are easily recognisable in the Res Gestae. Given Augustus’ central importance to the story-arc of Dio’s Roman History and the latter’s profound interest in the first princeps’ career,189 it would be astonishingly careless of the historian to neglect the Res Gestae in his research. As we have already discussed, this is unlikely in view of his apparent familiarity with the text. What we therefore appear to have in the recusatio imperii of Book 53 is an address which, however fictitious, nevertheless tallies well with the contemporary evidence in order to give a credible illustration of Octavian-Augustus’ political tactics. First and foremost, even the simple device of recusatio imperii captures neatly the oratorical strategy of Augustus as recorded in his memoir. Famously, the Res Gestae repeatedly enumerates the privileges and titles that Augustus declined to accept; these were obviously an important dimension of his self-fashioning as a ciuilis princeps vis-a-vis the Senate. He lists: refused triumphs (RG 4); declined consulships both annual and perpetual (RG 5) as well as the dictatorship (RG 5); a rejected innovation to grant him unprecedented care of the public morals, noting his insistence upon receiving a colleague (RG 6); his unwillingness to become pontifex maximus when offered (RG 10); the omission of his name on buildings he restored (RG 20); his refusal of golden crowns or their equivalent in cash from the municipia of Italy (RG 21); his modesty in removing eighty silver commemorative statues erected in his honour (RG 24); and, finally and most importantly, the actual decision itself to ‘restore’ his powers to the Senate, the inspiration and starting-point for Dio’s recusatio 188  Cf. Vervaet 2010 on Augustus’ use of the tactics of recusatio imperii and dissimulatio; Vervaet argues that in this regard Cassius Dio’s picture of Augustus’ rhetorical strategies is broadly correct, and that Augustus derived this not from Caesar, but from Pompeius. Further in Rich 2010, with fuller discussion in the chapter to follow (Chapter 3: ‘Oratory’). 189  For Cassius Dio’s view of Augustus and the importance of the first princeps as a central figure in the Roman History, the seminal study of Manuwald 1979 is still important.

Method

109

imperii (RG 34: rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli). The Res Gestae is a conscious exercise in self-promotion through self-effacement. Is this not the Augustus of Dio’s speech? (53.4.3–6.4): I relinquish my power entirely and restore everything absolutely to you: the armies, the laws, and the provinces—not only such powers as you entrusted to me, but even those which I myself have since acquired for you. I do this so that you may recognise that from the very beginning I never desired a position of power, but merely wished to avenge my father, cruelly butchered, and to rescue the state from its many and varied ills. It would be better had I never become involved in public life in this way in the first place; that is, I wish that the state had not required this much of me, living instead in peace and harmony just as our forefathers once did, and that those of my generation had enjoyed the same from the beginning. But since destiny (or so it seems) has led you to such a point that you had need of me and put me to the test, even though I was still but a youth, I have acted insofar as the circumstances required that I do, and have achieved all of it with an eagerness beyond my youth and success beyond my means. Nothing whatsoever could have dissuaded me from helping you in your time of peril: no toil, no fear, neither the threats of my enemies nor the entreaties of my friends, not the multitude of conspirators nor the desperation of my foes. I have given myself over to you for every circumstance, sparing nothing, and you know all I have done and suffered as a result. From all this I have drawn no personal gain except that of protecting my country; and you now live in peace. And since good fortune has worked nobly through me to return you to peace without treachery and harmony without dissent, take back your freedom and your Republic. Take over your armies, provinces, and subjects, and govern yourselves just as you used to. Do not be amazed that I should say this, even as you perceive my clemency in other respects, my mildness, my love of quiet, all the while remembering that I have never accepted any extraordinary privilege beyond that allotted to others even when you voted these for me many times. But do not scorn me as foolish either just because I do not wish to rule you and so vast an inhabited world even when it is possible for me to do so. For if one considers what is just, I think that it is most just of all for you to manage your own affairs. If one considers what is expedient, I deem it most expedient of all that I should hold no power, nor be envied and plotted against, and that you on the other hand should be governed freely, wisely, and harmoniously. And if one considers what is glorious—and

110

chapter 2

many people choose wars and dangers for the sake of glory—, how could surrendering so great an empire not add enormously to my renown, and how could I not gain great fame for returning willingly to private life after such a huge position of power? Therefore, if any one of you believes that another man in my position could not keep his head and say honestly what I am saying, at least let him believe it of me. For even though I could recount to you all the many great benefits you have received both from me and my father, for which you could quite reasonably love and honour us more than any other, I would say nothing of the sort, nor could I pride myself on anything except this: that he rejected monarchy when it was offered to him, and that I lay it aside when I already have it. Dio was not the first historian to stage this kind of imperial communication through a dramatic speech. Tacitus had already done so with his recusatio imperii of Tiberius on his accession in 14 CE, and Dio’s cynical account of the hypocritical thoughts which occupied the audience of Octavian’s speech after its close evidently owes much to the Annales.190 Yet he was the first historian to give Octavian a set-piece oration before the Senate to ‘relinquish’ his powers, and the end result captures (faithfully!) many key aspects of Augustus’ self-presentation. This is not a coincidence, and I would suggest that the Roman History took the Res Gestae as an historiographical model at this point. The claim of Dio’s Octavian to have entered public life solely for the purpose of avenging his cruelly-slain father reflects Augustus’ claim in his memoir (53.4.4 = RG 2). His emphasis on the powers entrusted to him—and not seized—by the Senate and people of Rome mimics a recurring note in the Res Gestae, where the Senate’s initiative is continually emphasised (53.4.3, 53.5.1–2 = RG 1, 5, 6, 8, 34). Both Dio’s Octavian and the historical Augustus legitimise their intervention by underlining the great peril of the Republic and their desire to liberate it from its oppressors (53.4.4, 53.5.3–4 = RG 1–2, 24–25). In the Roman History just as the Res Gestae, the first princeps claims to have accepted no extraordinary privilege beyond that which was customary or available to others even when thrust upon him (53.6.1 = RG 6, 10, 24, 34). The theme of pax, presenting Octavian’s period as a young warlord as necessary for the state to enjoy peace and harmony, naturally takes its cue from the Res Gestae (53.5.4 = RG 13), as does his clementia during the civil war itself (53.6.1 = RG 3). Finally, there is the boast to have restored the business of government in its entirety to the Senate and people of Rome (53.4.3, 53.5.4, 53.6.4 = RG 34). 190  Compare Cass. Dio 53.11 with Tac. Ann. 1.11.

Method

111

In all his key arguments Dio’s Octavian recounts his rise to power in precisely the way Augustus wished it to be remembered. No matter that in the Roman History this narrative is a sham and an illusion disbelieved by its hearers; in any case it is doubtful whether the Senate under Augustus’ rule credited its pretences any more than the Senate in the Roman History.191 What matters instead for our purposes here is that the historian’s portrayal of the kind of political communication necessary to cement Augustus’ power was not pure fiction: it was based upon contemporary evidence. By using that material as a model for the arguments of his speaker, Dio captures accurately the elaborate self-justification of Augustus’ regime. The speeches of the Roman History are in general neither a suite of commonplaces fabricated from stock arguments of the rhetorical schools, nor a verbatim record of what the historian found in his sources. To hold either of these views is a mistake. They are instead an assemblage of a range of sources and models which the historian used as a basis at no discredit to his own rhetor­ical art or compositional prowess. Where a previous version of a speech existed, he read and used it. He appears to have drawn a distinction between published oratorical works on the one hand, from which he drew not only the main arguments but even imitated parts of the rhetorical style, and historiographical speeches on the other; these he recognised as invention, but still kept some of their argumentative thrust as the point of departure. Moreover, in cases where his evidence was contemporary or analogous to the situation he wished to depict—recall here Cicero, Caesar, and the Res Gestae—the final product gives a better and more faithful snapshot of Republican oratory than is usually recognised by Dio’s critics. Gabinius’ arguments in favour of Pompeius’ increasing power, and their inverse in Catulus, reflect genuine evidence on this subject from the first half of the 60s BCE. The ‘philippic’ exchanges of Books 45–46 portray Roman invective quite at its worst, but then this was what Dio found in his contemporary sources. Similarly, Caesar’s harangue at Vesontio in the Roman History retains much more of Caesar’s original argument than is usually realised, and Augustus’ claims in Book 53 even more so. To call such compositions “unhistorical” or “ahistorical” fails utterly to accept ancient historiography on its own terms. All historiographical speeches were the product of inuentio, and Dio’s had recognisable limits.

191  Consider, for example, the many alleged conspiracies against Augustus’ regime (especially in the 20s BCE), for which much evidence has sadly not survived; their very existence hardly suggests an aristocracy uniformly convinced by the pretences of the pater patriae. For discussion, see the study of Vio 2000 on dissent and conspiracy in the Augustan era.

112

chapter 2

1.3 Rhetorical Education and Moralising Argument A third and final recurring problem in the modern critical reception of Dio’s approach to the composition of speeches is moralising. Unsurprisingly, his speakers frequently deploy universal ethical statements (sententiae or γνῶμαι) in order to support their own arguments and to articulate the historian’s view of how and why things happen. This is hardly exceptional in a work of Greek historiography: a recent major re-evaluation of the role of what has come to be called (in general pejoratively) ‘moralising’ in ancient history-writing has shown the profound importance of the moral dimension as a means of causal interpretation and explanation among Dio’s predecessors.192 Yet the tendency of the Roman History to deploy such universal moral language is usually either ignored as an unfortunate lapse in the method of an otherwise good historian, or (more commonly) derided as an example of his poverty of imagination and lack of analytical acumen.193 More importantly for our purposes, the “banal moralisings” of Dio’s speeches are too often treated as representative of the quality of his history as a whole: they are, in short, a collection of commonplaces and tropes, like the Roman History itself. This view was famously expressed by Millar in his landmark Study of Cassius Dio and has been a trope of its own ever since.194 With reference to Dio it is still common to treat the historian’s proper role as an interpreter of the past and his use of moral argument as opposed and mutually contradictory aims: we may speak of him serving his philosophical or moralising agenda better than he serves history,195 for example, or his tendency to obscure the facts because he wished to make a particular moral point with a pithy turn of phrase.196 On this view ‘moralising’ is never a positive component of Dio’s work, and seems disappointing, banal, and unoriginal.197 There are two problems with this position. First, it is necessary to define what ‘moralising’ actually means; criticism of this aspect of Dio’s work is usually as vague and insubstantial as the aspect concerned. Whose morals? Those of the historian personally, of the depicted speaker, or of society at large? And 192  See Hau 2016 on ‘moral history’ in the Greek world, from Herodotus to Diodorus. See also Shapiro 2000 for a study of moral statements in Herodotus, and Morrison 2006 for Thucydides. 193  E.g. Vlachos 1905; Millar 1961; Millar 1964; Harrington 1970; Reardon 1971; Stekelenburg 1971; Lintott 1997. 194  Millar 1964, 83: “Dio’s speeches carry further the tendency towards generality and lack of apposite detail which characterises his History as a whole”. 195  Rodgers 2008, 297. 196  Lintott 1997, 2501–2502. 197  Millar 1964, 82–83.

Method

113

directed at whom? At the historian’s audience, the depicted speaker’s audience, or everyone? These are not identical categories. Dio in fact uses moral statements of three types, some of which (importantly) are not even his own view, but rather characterise what would be appropriate for a specific historical context or speaker. The first type may be called ‘audience referent’: an historical speaker makes a seemingly universal moral claim, but one persuasive only to the audience in the depicted context, and not necessarily shared by the historian himself nor his readers. For example, a conservative Republican consular may in his speech declare that “it is neither appropriate nor advantageous to entrust everything to one man”.198 As a monarchist Dio did not agree, and probably neither did much of his readership;199 the intention is to simulate an argument that would have been persuasive to the depicted audience in the Late Republic. This is effective prosopopoeia, not banal moralising.200 The second type is strictly ‘universal’: a speaker deploys a sententia which both the depicted audience and Dio’s contemporary readership can be expected to accept. Thus Cicero in the dialogue with Philiscus in Book 38 may opine that “it is easier to counsel others in need than to be strong oneself when suffering”.201 Neither the historian, nor the speaker, nor either of their audiences would be likely to disagree; it is perhaps didactic in itself, but above all it characterises the speaker and lends weight to his arguments. A third and especially important type is ‘authorial’ moralising: ethical statements placed into the voice of the authoritative narrator, not one of his orators. These are certainly didactic, but didacticism is not their sole aim. Crucially, sententiae of this type often have a causal dimension: Dio uses them in order to explain and interpret the origins of historical events, and to set into motion chains of causation which begin with a moral problem grounded in human nature. Hence in the early fragments of his work, Dio comments—perhaps on the murder of Romulus at the hands of the Senate, departing radically from

198  Cass. Dio. 36.35.1. 199  Our historian is rightly described as a “loyal adherent of monarchy” by Simons 2009, 11 among several others; his belief in monarchy as the only reasonable form of government has been recently re-established by Madsen 2020 passim. However, note Kemezis 2014, 129: “in Dio’s own world, monarchy had long ceased to be something one was for or against”. 200  P ace Reinhold 2002, 52, who claims that “all [Dio’s] comments, whether his own animadversions or those he puts into the contrived speeches of historical figures, concern (almost without exception) Roman senators and emperors.” This is not the case. 201  Cass. Dio. 38.18.2.

114

chapter 2

Livy’s idealistic account—202 that “all mankind cannot endure being ruled by what is like him and similar to him, partly because of envy and partly because of contempt”.203 This thought seems innocuous enough and, to those uninterested in the Roman History’s interpretative framework, banal. Yet the inability of men to share power with their peers is a fundamental component of Dio’s approach to history, and as we shall see in Chapter 4 (‘Morality’) a central axis in his own interpretation of the decline of the Republic into stasis and civil war. Moral argument was not, therefore, antithetical to Dio’s work as an historian but rather complementary to it. Critiques of Dio’s ‘moralising’ are also questionable when we consider the conventions of ancient historiography in general and its relationship to rhetor­ ical education. It was commonplace for ancient writers (especially histor­ ians!) to inveigh against their predecessors’ failings: the methods they used to conduct their research, their excessively florid or prosaic style, their use of speeches, and above all their accuracy and credibility. However, ancient histor­ ians never—ever—criticised each other for moralising per se. Immoderate claims to wisdom might earn one an unflattering reputation as a would-be philosopher, but the use of sententiae, even liberally, was never considered inappropriate for an historical work. On the contrary: ancient authors might even praise each other for the loftiness of their sentiments.204 This is telling, and evinces the obvious differences between ancient and modern conceptions of history-writing and its purpose. The moral dimension had a central place in classical historiography. The crux of that is rhetorical education. In the process of learning to write the ancient student was repeatedly asked to reason and argue on a moral basis—not, clearly, because such arguments were weak, but because they were persuasive. The rhetorical schools of the Empire taught the young pupil to write, think, and speak in the manner of an upstanding aristocrat. Importantly, significant attention was also paid to historiography in the rhetorical schools, in the form of canonical examples for emulation and as an exercise for composition. The student was therefore taught not just to write and think morally, but to write and think morally about the past, and to approach the task of narrating it with an ethical lens. Before turning in more detail to Dio’s use of moral arguments for the collapse of the Republic in Chapter 4, then, it will be

202  See Urso 2016a and Urso 2019 for fuller discussion of the Roman History’s independence from Livy for the early history of Rome. 203  Cass. Dio frg. 5.12. 204  Quint. Inst. Or. 10.31–32, 101–102.

Method

115

worthwhile to discuss the kind of rhetorical education he will have received and how this may have informed his analysis of the past. 1.3.1 The Progymnasmata As the Greek-speaking son of a Roman consul and therefore a highly privileged member of the elite, Dio certainly received an advanced education in rhetoric (and, therefore, composition). It is likely that before moving on to the drafting of speeches as such and then to advanced declamation, he will have followed the curriculum popular among pedagogues of the period: the progymnasmata. The progymnasmata were a set of exercises practiced in the rhetorical schools of the Imperial period as a training preliminary to advanced composition and declamation.205 They taught boys, aged perhaps roughly seven to fifteen,206 to be able to speak and write on any number of subjects: the probability of a myth, the advantages or drawbacks of an imagined law, a critique of Homer, or the delivery of invective and panegyric. The process began with the most basic of drills: memorising and copying down improving sententiae. But the final objective was to produce an orator equipped to answer a morally complex hypothetical question—“should one marry?”—on the spot (a thesis); or, at the most advanced stage, to debate two sides of a political issue (a controuersia). Our best evidence for these exercises is derived from the surviving handbooks of progymnasmata themselves, all of which (except perhaps one of disputed dating) were written in the third century CE or later.207 There can, however, be no doubt that such drills already formed the basis of elite rhetor­ ical education well before Dio’s time. We know as early as Cicero and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium that the exercises in narrative-writing, commonplaces, and use of maxims were being practiced as early as the first century BCE,208 and these consistently find their way into the later collections of progymnasmata. A century before Dio, Quintilian recommends a 205  Excellent modern surveys of the progymnasmata—their structure, content, development, and aims—are given in: Webb 2001; Kennedy 2003; Gibson 2014. 206  The age-range is the suggestion of Fisher 1987, 45–51. Practice will have varied considerably: see Dionisotti 1982, 121 and Webb 2001, 297. 207  See Kennedy 2003, i–x for an overview. The third-century Pseudo-Hermogenes arrives around a century after Cassius Dio will have been educated. Aphthonius’ and Nicolaus’ treatises likely follow in the fourth and fifth centuries, respectively. The only surviving tract of progymnasmata that may have been available in the historian’s time is that of Aelius Theon, once believed to date to the first century CE. However, Heath 2003 suggests that it probably in fact dates to the fourth century. Kennedy 2003 also points out that we know of the manuals of Harpocration, Minucianus, and Paul of Tyre, all probably from the second century CE. 208  Cic. Inv. 1.27, 2.77; Rhet. Her. 1.12, 2.9, 4.56–57.

116

chapter 2

broad range of the exercises found in the manuals, including maxim, quoted maxim or anecdote, fable, narrative, confirmation, and refutation.209 Indeed, this trad­ition probably goes back much further. The term ‘gymnasmata’ first appears in the 4th-century BCE Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, where the author recommends preliminary exercises as a means to understand the formal elements of composition.210 Aristotle’s Rhetoric, too, recommends half of the fourteen exercises which later find their way into the Imperial corpus of progymnasmata.211 We are therefore to imagine a programme possibly only categorised in the manual format around the High Empire, but already in use among Greeks in the Hellenistic period and quite commonly indeed throughout the Greco-Roman world by the first century BCE.212 All but one of our surviving collections of progymnasmata divide the exercises into fourteen parts, with each stage becoming gradually more difficult; their precise order may vary,213 but the general trajectory is consistent. Following the order in which they appear in Aelius Theon’s treatise (the only one to have survived which may have been available in Dio’s time),214 these are: moral maxim; quoted maxim or anecdote; fable; narration; confirmation; refutation; vivid description; speech-in-character; encomium; invective; comparison; proposition; and law. In the preface to his edition, Theon advertises this curriculum as ideal for the formation of not only orators, but also (importantly) of history-writers,215 and this much is evident from the range of exercises themselves. The drill in quoted maxim or anecdote (chreia) required the student to lodge an act of speech within contextual prose.216 Narrative (narratio) strung together a coherent sequence of events; like vivid description (ecphrasis) its use as a preparation for historiography is obvious, involving accounts of campaigns, battle-scenes, and natural disasters. Encomium, invective, and comparison (syncrisis) trained the budding historian to describe and compare individuals as examples for emulation or avoidance. And speech-in-character (prosopopoeia) was furthermore of essential use: both rhetorical theorists (e.g. Quintilian, Lucian) and Greek historians alike (Thucydides, Polybius) empha209  Quint. Inst. Or. 1.9, 2.4, 10.5. 210  [Arist]. Rh. Al. 1436a 23–27. 211  Arist. Rhet. 2.20. These are fable, maxim, narrative, encomium, vivid description, and thesis. 212  For the estimated date, Clarke 1951, 165; Hock & O’Neill 1986, 10; Kennedy 2003, xi. 213  Penella 2011, 82–83 gives an overview of these variations; these are also tabulated in Kennedy 2003, xiii. 214  See the notes above and Heath 2003. 215  Theon, Prog. 70. 216  For a detailed study of the chreia in ancient rhetoric, see Hock & O’Neill 1986.

Method

117

sised the importance of making speakers say what would be credible for their character and appropriate for the specific situation,217 and the progymnasmata deliberately trained the young orator in this type of characterisation. Every component of the progymnasmata was in a sense moral. The basic building-block was the versatile sententia, learned by heart and then routinely redeployed throughout the later exercises. The process of committing a moral maxim to memory and then going on to reproduce it in anecdotes, fables, comparisons, encomia and invectives and so forth involved a process of internalisation: the student would instinctively reapply his arsenal of memorised moral thoughts throughout his education and, in later life, throughout a range of historiographical, political, and even private discourses.218 Such a process developed enduring habits of mind that permanently marked the way in which ancient authors wrote. The pegagogues speak of ‘moulding’ or ‘imprinting’ the student through this curriculum, leaving him permanently marked and marked out by it.219 We might today describe it as the development of rhetorical ‘reflexes’: it is precisely because these exercises were elementary that they reveal “the lowest common denominator of training and reveal the basic conceptions of language, categories of composition, and modes of thought which informed both the production and reception of rhetorical and other texts”.220 In this context, we should not be at all dismayed to see ancient historians (especially of this period) deploying an abundance of moral argument and reasoning. Such reasoning was deliberately designed to be persuasive. If the writer or speaker was an elite man trained in the progymnasmata, writing or speaking for elite men raised within the same system, moral argument was expected and even automatic. This had an obvious tactical value: the moral focus of compositional instruction made students more successful as adult speakers when they addressed audiences which shared those values: the tendency to deal with general considerations of the possible, the true, the just, the fitting, or the expedient had its value. The exercises equipped the boys with a ready command of the arguments and other amplifying material that could be adduced in support of the commoner major premises, and might easily persuade audiences of their truth.221 217  Quint. Inst. Or. 10.1.101; Luc. Hist. Conscr. 58; Thuc. 1.22; Polyb. 12.25a. 218  Bloomer 2011, 123. 219  Theon, Prog. 60, 61; Ps.-Hermog., Prog. 1.1; Quint., 1.1.36, 1.3.1, 1.3.12; Anderson 1993, 49; Morgan 1998, 259–260; Webb 2001, 290, 309; Gibson 2014, 6. 220  Webb 2001, 292. 221  Clark 1957, 210.

118

chapter 2

Moralising, then, was not merely a mode of sermonising but rather served to lend authority and persuasiveness. Some of the handbooks posit a direct relationship between morality on the one hand, and credibility and authority on the other.222 When the student of the Imperial period came later to the more advanced compositional exercises essential to historiography and oratory, he would be well-equipped from his training in the progymnasmata to meet these challenges with an instant recall of the socially-acceptable mores of the Greek and Roman elite, and to argue upon that basis from truths that all present could be presumed to accept. As such, it is precisely those universalising ethics which seem commonplace and banal to the modern perspective which would have been strong and persuasive to the ancient one. The progymnasmata thus taught Dio not only to write, but to write and argue morally. Crucially, these tasks were explicitly and repeatedly aligned with the past in the rhetorical schools: to write and argue morally was not separate from the proper work of the historian but instead an integral part of it. There is no evidence to suggest that ‘history’ existed at all as a subject in schools; ancient pupils did not study history as such or as a course in its own right.223 Rather, the acquisition of historical knowledge was a corollary of practicing rhetorical and compositional drills set in contexts of past time, and imitating model historical texts. Most of the preliminary drills recommended that pupils mine details from the works of previous biographers and historians in order to fulfil the requirements of the corresponding exercise. In Theon, for example, the exercise in fable brought the student to imitate fabulous passages of Herodotus, Philistus, Theopompus, and Xenophon and the historical contexts in which they were embedded.224 For confirmation and refutation Theon mentions only historical texts as exemplars: he suggests that students support or reject factual narratives and myths in Herodotus, Ephorus, Thucydides, and Theopompus.225 Later drills such as encomium furthermore required students to mine these sources, with the addition of Xenophon and Plutarch, for the bio­graphical details of the historical character assigned to the student for study.226 The progymnasmata were thus as much an instruction in history as

222  Nicol. Prog. 21–22. 223  See the important study in Gibson 2004. 224  Theon. Prog. 66. Compare Hdt. 1.141; Phil. frg. 6; Theopomp. frg. 127; Xen. Mem. 2.7.13–14. 225  Theon. Prog. 67. Compare Hdt. 2.45, 4.42–45; Eph. frgs. 13, 17, 18a; Thuc. 1.20; Theopomp. frg. 153–54. 226  Theon. Prog. 68; Aphth. 27; Nicol. 51–52. Compare Hdt. 1.107–108; Plut. Per. 3.2, 8.2, 39.2; Xen. Ag.; Theopomp. frg. 256; Thuc. 2.35–46.

Method

119

they were in composition or morality. To quote a recent study, “one could simply not learn to argue without learning how to argue about history”.227 Returning to Dio, the curriculum described above exerted a significant impact upon the way in which he approached the task of his Roman History. I wish to linger here on only two aspects of the progymnasmata which are easily identifiable in his work: the use of gnomic statements (sententiae), and the structuring of narrative episodes into moralising ‘stories’ which have a didactic purpose, in the manner of fable ( fabula). Dio seems to have placed sententiae into his history in such a way as to present individual moral failures as the cause of even major political and military events in the Late Republic. In doing so he explains the causes of historical events within a moral and philosophical framework shared by and common to both the narrator and his reader. In the speeches, certain of his characters also make universal ethical statements of the ‘audience referent’ type: the historian views these sentiments as unrealistic and expects his reader to do likewise, but they are appropriate to the depicted dramatic context and are assumed (sometimes wrongly) to be persuasive by those who voice them. This has an ironic intention, presenting those who deploy such sententiae either as calculating and self-interested, or naive and blind to the true nature of the problems facing the Republic. Both signal further the decline of Republican political debate—our theme in the next chapter—as well as the important role of moralising in the structuring of Dio’s narrative and his shaping of historical explanation and interpretation. 1.3.2 The Sententia The sententia, first, is a short moral statement or aphorism with a universal application, usually derived from the corpus of Classical literature. These need little detailed explanation: recommended by Quintilian to be of strictly ethical value,228 collections of moral maxims first appear in the Hellenistic period and emerged out of a literary tradition of universally moral writing which began as early as Homer.229 Short and memorable, the sententia could be redeployed in any number of compositions in which its ethical force was appropriate and relevant: poetry, historiography, and in various branches of speechwriting. They not only had the moral valour required to situate the words of the speaker or writer within the accepted moral code of the elite (and thus to lend credibility to the composition). In their derivation from the Classical canon— Menander was a common source of sententiae, and quotations of him appear 227  Gibson 2004, 116. 228  Quint. Inst. Or. 1.9. 229  Morgan 1998, 120–151; Bloomer 2011, 139–169.

120

chapter 2

in several fragments of the Roman History—230 they also possessed the cachet of antiquity. In addition to its edifying purpose, the maxim also appears to have been used in the earliest stage as an exercise in handwriting.231 As a grammatically-complete expression in direct speech, the maxim could then be incorporated into more complex exercises later, after it had been copied and memorised. It is, in short, “a statement taken from life, which demonstrates what happens or should happen in life”;232 Aristotle defines it in similar terms.233 Despite recent advances in our understanding of the moral dimension in Greek historiography, we know comparatively little about the role of sententiae and moralising more generally in the Roman History. Where investigated this is usually treated as a further example of its dependence upon Thucydides and conscious imitation of his style. Hence most recently: Since imitation of Thucydides has traditionally been viewed as an established tendency in our author, gnomai [sententiae] in Dio Cassius should not perhaps require extensive analysis except for the purpose of ascertaining their relative frequency and the extent of Dio’s dependency on Thucydidean usage.234 Now it is certain that many of Dio’s moral thoughts are Thucydidean insofar as they take a cynical (or realist) view of human nature: the ‘authorial’ type regularly argue that men do not share power, seek always to get the better of their peers, put forward false motives for their self-interested designs, and so forth. But that is not the full range of his philosophical thought—many of his sententiae are not concerned with these themes—, and much of Dio’s moralising elsewhere need not derive from a particular model at all except his own arsenal of precepts acquired through education or absorbed during the research process. Further, there is more of interest in Dio’s use of sententiae than their numerical frequency relative to Thucydides and the extent of their dependency upon Thucydidean usage. In any case, the same study has expertly shown that the Roman History’s distribution of sententiae is radically different from that of Thucydides. There are some 216 moral maxims in Dio’s work: he allotted these rather equally between himself and his speakers, making generous use of ‘authorial’ gnomic 230  Bloomer 2011, 142. 231  Cribiore 1996, 44–46. 232  R  het. Her. 4.17. 233  Arist. Rh. 2.21. 234  Fomin 2015, 136.

Method

121

statements in the narrator-voice (101 instances) compared to ‘audience referent’ and ‘universal’ sententiae placed in the mouths of speakers (93 instances). The allocation of the remaining twenty is difficult to determine either way.235 Thucydides, on the other hand, almost never uses authorial sententiae: his 200 or so moral maxims are always articulated within his speeches, and never in the narrator-voice except twice.236 It thus appears that the Roman History’s approach to moralising was not derived directly from Thucydides. Indeed, its choice to balance the distribution of sententiae across the narrator-voice and prosopopoeiai is a good deal more interesting and innovative than Thucydides’ stricter usage. The mirroring of moral maxims between the speeches and the authorial narrative enables Dio to construct a call-and-response between the two—often with an ironic or otherwise meaningful effect, as such moral statements are repeated, inverted, valorised, or rejected. Dio’s sententiae additionally cover a wider array of philosophical and polit­ ical themes than those of Thucyides, and tend (despite their universalising language) to refer to very specific problems and phenomena. Meister categorised Thucydidean maxims as belonging to four types: some relating to the psycho­ logy of human behaviour, some to the nature of statecraft, some to imperial rule, and others to the nature of war.237 The Roman History expands these categories and applies them to the history of Republican Rome in a distinctive way, developing a broad philosophical framework whose purposes were absolutely explanatory and interpretative. A brief survey of some of these themes, articulated through sententiae, may demonstrate the historian’s consistent interest in a particular range of moral topics which he repeatedly used as a means of explaining the causes of past events, and as a form of ‘artistic proof’ in his historical account.238 Common themes include: the inability of men to share power; the need to bear success and good fortune moderately; ruling and being ruled; the relationship between self-interest and the good of the community; the causes of social conflict and civil strife; the pervasiveness of envy and discord among equals; the tyranny of the powerful; and the perils of sudden and dramatic change. We will turn to these themes in more detail in Chapter 4

235  Fomin 2015, 135ff. 236  Morrison 2006, 116. 237  Meister 1955, 77–87. 238  Hence the excellent definition of Anon. Seguerianus 145 provided by Fomin 2015, 170: “Some pisteis [proofs] are non-artistic, some artistic. Those are non-artistic which we provide from material at hand, and those are artistic which we derive from the art of rhetoric” (τῶν δὲ πίστεων αἱ μὲν ἄτεχνοί εἰσιν, αἱ δὲ ἔντεχνοι· ἄτεχνοι μὲν ἃς ἐξ ἑτοίμου ποριζόμεθα, ἔντεχνοι δὲ ἃς ἐκ τῆς τέχνης λαμβάνομεν).

122

chapter 2

(‘Morality’); for the moment let us focus only on Dio’s use of sententiae to elaborate some of those themes. The inevitability of strife among equals recurs throughout the historian’s Republican account. This is an appropriate theme: a res publica whose workings were founded on the principle of competition between theoretically and legally equal members of the aristocracy seemed to Dio naive and impractical. His general view is established in the earliest portions of the Roman History with the case of Romulus and Remus: assuming that its attribution is correct, in one fragment Dio explains that the conflict between them arose “because of the innate predisposition among men to quarrel with their equals”.239 This evinces two features of his approach to moralising. First, such sententiae are polyvalent: though applied to the case of Romulus and Remus and therefore to the monarchy of the Regal Period, the moral force of this statement is of course universal and can therefore apply to other phenomena, for example Republican politics. One historical context can thus provide the moral setting for establishing a principle valid also in other unrelated contexts.240 Secondly, moral thoughts can have a strictly interpretative force: we cannot gauge by what other means Dio attempted to explain Rome’s most famous fratricide, but the sententia certainly did so. The same techniques are in evidence as we move into the Republican narr­ ative proper. The Secession of the Plebs, for instance, furnished an ideal opportunity for reflecting on the inherent instability of power-relations among theoretical equals. Faced with proposals from the patricians and the persuasion of Menenius Agrippa,241 the plebeians feared that the moment they disbanded and returned to their homes according to the agreement, they would lose their recently-won gains. Accordingly they elected representatives (the first tribunes 239  Cass. Dio frg. 7.2–3. 240  Compare the sententia on the conflict between Romulus and Remus to Numa’s institution of religious rites at Cass. Dio frg. 6.3: “since he understood well that the majority of mankind hold in contempt what is of like nature with themselves and in daily association with them, through a feeling that it is no better than themselves, but, as a result of their belief in the divine, worship that which is unseen and different as being superior, he dedicated a certain piece of ground to the Muses” (Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ εὖ ἠπίστατο τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ μὲν ὁμοφυές σφίσι καὶ σύννομον ἐν ὀλιγωρίᾳ ὡς μηδὲν βέλτιον ἑαυτῶν ὂν ποιουμένους, τὸ δὲ ἀφανὲς καὶ ἀλλοῖον ὡς καὶ κρεῖσσον πίστει τοῦ θείου θεραπεύοντας, χωρίον τέ τι ταῖς Μούσαις ἱέρωσεν). 241  Cass. Dio frg. 17.10–11. Note that, like Livy (2.32.9) and Plutarch (Cor. 6), Dio’s speech of Menenius Agrippa uses the Aesopic fable of The Belly and the Limbs (Perry Index No. 130) to convince the masses of the plebeians to reconcile themselves with the patrician class. See Fromentin 2016 and Rich 2019 for recent studies of the speech and its place in the tradition.

Method

123

of the plebs).242 In Dio’s account they appear to have quickly fallen into quarrelling with each other, to which he adds the following note: “whenever a large number band together and commit outrages for their own advantage, whatever equal agreements they have made initially embolden them, but they later become divided and are punished on some pretext”.243 This kind of sententia provided Dio’s explanation not only for the disagreements of the plebeians, but of their patrician counterparts also: it is perhaps on the inability of the decemviri to manage affairs harmoniously that Dio opines “it is always difficult for a body of many men to be of one accord, especially when they share a position of power”.244 Dio interprets the contretemps between Caesar and Pompeius in a similar vein: he explains their (ultimately catastrophic) rivalry to outdo each other by virtue of the fact that “men can least of all stand to be surpassed by their equals and companions”.245 These sententiae are authorial: placed into the mouth of the narrator voice, they articulate his view of universal truths and are of course intended to convince. Dio takes a moral thought—for example, that it is difficult for a large group of people in power to coexist harmoniously—and simultaneously valorises and confirms it through past events while also using it to explain the cause of those events. The repeated affirmation of this principle exerts an ironic and meaningful effect when it is later rejected by some of Dio’s speakers. Note, for example, that both Catulus in Book 36 and Agrippa in Book 52 directly contradict these authorial sententiae. Agrippa insists that δημοκρατία is the most excellent system because the more great men there are within the state, the more they vie with each other to serve and enhance it as much as possible.246 Catulus, similarly, argues that it is better to have a number of commanders of equal status in power than only one, since these will compete with each other to the benefit of the Republic.247 The reader of the Roman History will find these claims unconvincing, and that is the historian’s intention. Having established the underlying faults of democratic government from the earliest portions of the history with universal sententiae—equality of political privilege leads to conflict, not harmony—, Dio ‘sets up’ Catulus and Agrippa to fail, so to speak. Satisfyingly, then, it is precisely by having his orators praise the status quo that the historian reminds his audience of its fallibility: the Republic was, in Dio’s view, based upon impractical and unrealistic tenets (equality, healthy 242  Zonar. 7.14–15. 243  Cass. Dio frg. 17.14. 244  Cass. Dio frg. 17.15. 245  Cass. Dio 41.53.3. 246  Cass. Dio 52.9.1. 247  Cass. Dio 36.36.1–2.

124

chapter 2

competition, collaboration among peers) which are proven as such in the authorial sententiae. Such sententiae as Dio’s “men can least of all stand to be surpassed by their equals and companions” are not mere commonplace; they are central to the historian’s theoretical critique of the fundamental elements of Republicanism (that is, δημοκρατία). In Classical Greek political thought, ‘equality’ and ‘democracy’ were deemed inextricable: equality before the law (ἰσονομία) and equality of portion or opportunity (ἰσομοιρία) were such integral features of the democratic system of government as to be used straightforwardly as synonyms for δημοκρατία.248 Dio roundly rejected these principles and, therefore, the fundamental basis of democratic government itself. We have already seen, at the beginning of this chapter, his famous gnomic excursus comparing monarchy and democracy in Book 44. This excursus contains several authorial sententiae, all of which clearly articulate the historian’s theoretical approach to democracy. He concedes that such a system may “seem to bring equality of opportunity to all through equal rights”, yet its results are far less attractive than its pleasing name. Monarchy is to be preferred, and here Dio explains why in universal terms. First, it is easier to find a single good man than many of them. Secondly, it is impossible for many men at once to possess the virtue necessary to govern harmoniously together. In short, he concludes, to practice moderation under a democracy is impossible.249 Of course Dio’s Agrippa, as we have already seen, ironically inverts the force of these sententiae with a gnomic statement of his own: “equality before the law [viz. democracy] both has a pleasant-sounding name and is most just in practice”.250 The placement of these mutually contradictory and exclusive sententiae arises not from Dio’s carelessness but from his deliberation. The moral claims of the authorial narrator and those of the speaker are in a sense competing with one another, but this is a declamation contest that Agrippa is never going to win. Closely related to the above is the theme of ruling and being ruled. Whether in Athens or Rome, the basic principle of non-monarchical government involved temporary stretches of authority for the individual followed by long periods under the authority of others. Even the most successful politician in Republican Rome—before the innovations of the first century BCE, at least— might expect to spend no more than five years in office during a political 248  See Vlastos 1953 and Lombardini 2013 on the synonymous relationship between ἰσονομία and δημοκρατία. For a fuller study of isonomia, isomoiria, and isegoria within democracy in general see the chapters in Resnick 1997. 249  Cass. Dio 44.2. 250  Cass. Dio 52.4.1.

Method

125

career of forty years or more.251 In Dio’s view, a δημοκρατία could only function if political animals were, necessarily, prepared to accept such a system: to rule temporarily and to be ruled temporarily (but more) in turn. That he saw such a principle as integral to the democratic and Republican systems of government is confirmed by the sententiae he selects for Agrippa’s defence of the status quo (52.4.5): All men of course claim the right to rule, and for this reason they submit also to being ruled in turn. They are unwilling to have others surpass them, but this is why they do not wish to surpass others either. They rejoice in the honours conferred upon them by their equals, and approve of the punishments placed upon them by the laws. ἄρχειν τε γὰρ πάντες ἀξιοῦσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἄρχεσθαι ἐν τῷ μέρει ὑπομένουσι· καὶ πλεονεκτεῖσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλουσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐδ᾽ αὐτοὶ πλεονεκτεῖν ἀναγκάζονται. ταῖς τε τιμαῖς ταῖς παρὰ τῶν ὁμοτίμων χαίρουσι, καὶ τὰς τιμωρίας τὰς ἐκ τῶν νόμων ἐπαινοῦσι. This is of course a characterisation only of what it would be appropriate for Agrippa to say, and not at all a reflection of the historian’s opinion. We have seen already the authorial sententiae from the fragmentary earlier portions of his work, in which he asserts that all men despise being ruled by their equals and feel envy and contempt for them (frg. 5.12), and similarly that all men naturally quarrel with their equals and wish to rule others (frg. 7.2–3). Dio clearly did not believe that all men willingly submit to being ruled because they claim that right themselves, and Agrippa’s misguided sententia again competes, unavailingly, with the historian’s own. Yet the principle is evidently germane to Dio’s conception of δημοκρατία (why else select it for Agrippa’s speech?). A variation on this sententia recurs within several speeches in the history. Intriguingly and ironically, with the exception of Agrippa—who serves precisely to detail all the ideals that the Republic had lost—it is exclusively deployed by dynasts who seek absolute power for themselves. For instance, Julius Caesar elaborates this theme before his mutinying troops at Placentia (41.33.4–5): The principle of ruling and being ruled has been established among men by natural law: this is both necessary and for the best. Without this, it is impossible for any system to endure for even a brief period. For the man stationed above another it is his duty to discover and command what is 251  Steel 2013.

126

chapter 2

required, and for the man stationed beneath him it is his duty to obey without question and to attend to his orders. φύσει τε γὰρ ἀναγκαίᾳ τινὶ καὶ σωτηρίᾳ τὸ μὲν ἄρχειν ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὸ δὲ ἄρχεσθαι τέτακται, καὶ ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν ἄνευ αὐτῶν καὶ ὁτιοῦν καὶ ἐφ᾽ ὁποσονοῦν διαγενέσθαι. προσήκει τε τῷ μὲν ἐπιστατοῦντί τινος ἐκφροντίζειν τε τὰ δέοντα καὶ ἐπιτάττειν, τῷ δὲ ὑποτεταγμένῳ πειθαρχεῖν τε ἀπροφασίστως καὶ ἐκπονεῖν τὸ κελευόμενον· ἐξ οὗ καὶ μάλιστα τό τε ἔμφρον τοῦ ἄφρονος καὶ τὸ ἐπιστῆμον τοῦ ἀνεπιστήμονος ἐν παντὶ προτετίμηται. It would perhaps be possible for the reader to take these words of Dio’s Caesar at face value, were it not for the fact that he is described in this very same book as one who “did not care if he ruled over even an unwilling people, gave orders to men who hated him, and lavished honours upon himself”.252 Dio typecasts Caesar as covetous of sole rule almost from his first appearance in the Roman History. Thus Caesar serves not to articulate the historian’s actual view of the true nature of government, but rather to satirise and discredit a view Dio firmly opposed. The principle of ruling and being ruled in turns, so essential for the proper functioning of a δημοκρατία, was in Dio’s opinion as flawed and unrealistic as ἰσονομία and ἰσομοιρία themselves. The same is the case for the orations of the triumvirs, who, as the authoritative narrator writes, made their compact in order to give the impression of ruling on equal terms while each individually sought sole rule for himself.253 In his false recusatio imperii, Octavian supplicates the Senate to grant him one final favour: the pleasure of living out his life in peace as a private citizen. This is of course cant—his intention in speaking is simply to have sole rule confirmed by seeming to shun it—254 but the democratic principle of ruling and being ruled in turn ironically returns. “For in this way”, Octavian states, “you will realise that I understand not only how to rule, but how to be ruled myself, and am able to follow orders just as much as I have given them”.255 His rival Antonius makes a virtually identical claim in his exhortation prior to the battle of Actium.256

252  Cass. Dio 41.54.1. 253  Cass. Dio 47.1.1: Cf. 37.55.2: “men work more zealously against their enemies than they cooperate with their friends” (πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀντιπράττειν ἢ συναγωνίζεσθαι τοῖς ἐπιτηδείοις). 254  As the historian explicitly states at Cass. Dio 53.2.6. 255  Cass. Dio 53.9.1. 256  Cass. Dio 50.17.5.

Method

127

Dio’s consistent political philosophy insists that all men of any worth seek to rule others and, when they have power, they seek yet more. This philosophy gets its clearest expression in a sententia of Livia during her speech on clemency in Book 55,257 yet he articulates it also in authorial sententiae in his account of the Regal Period. In that context, we ought not to view the gnomic statements of his Agrippa and Caesar as a reflection of the poverty of the historian’s thinking, but rather as a critique of the fundamental elements of democracy and Republicanism. The claim that “all men of course claim the right to rule, and for this reason they submit also to being ruled in turn” will have seemed hopelessly naive to Dio’s reader, precisely because it is antithetical to the historian’s view of human nature as valorised in the narrative. His sententiae are not, therefore, to be treated as banal moralisings but rather as important instruments in his explanatory toolkit which reflect often sophisticated and developed political views. One of the Roman History’s most prominent moral questions is the inability of men to bear their good fortune moderately. Dio places sententiae to valorise this theme both in authorial comments and in the mouths of his speakers, and it is of fundamental importance to his explanation of the failures of many Roman statesmen and the successes of Augustus. The historian establishes this principle at a very early stage, so demonstrating the importance of sententiae to his interpretative framework and the programmatic role played by the now-fragmentary early books within the Roman History as a whole.258 It first arrives in the vestiges of Book 3, probably in the speech of Brutus: “many men who are exalted unexpectedly to a position of greatness cannot bear their meteoric rise but are struck down by it, suffer a reverse, and destroy their subjects along with themselves”.259 In this context Brutus’ words are with reference to the nature of kingship and the fate of the Tarquins, but the force of the wisdom expression can (and will) be applied by the historian to any individual with a position of foremost leadership in the state: the Gracchi, Sulla, Marius, Cicero, Pompeius, and Caesar himself. In what survives of Dio’s earlier Republican books, Cn. Marcius Coriolanus is the first leading generalissimo whose demise is explained in this way. According to the tradition Coriolanus, the mytho-historical hero of Rome’s war with the Volsci in the early 5th century BCE and victor at the siege of Corioli, subsequently fell into disfavour with the people for opposing poor relief during 257  Cass. Dio 55.14.6. 258  On the importance of the long-neglected first two decads within the Roman History as a whole see recently the collected chapters in Burden-Strevens & Lindholmer 2019. 259  Cass. Dio frg. 12.9.

128

chapter 2

a period of famine. For this and other indications of his increasing boldness and haughtiness, he was exiled, defected to his former Volscian enemies, and marched on Rome.260 At this point Dio appends a sententia, certainly his own addition and not found in earlier accounts (frg. 18.2): It is not easy for one to be strong in every situation or to be excellent in both the arts of war and the arts of peace at the same time. For those who are strong in body tend to be weak in mind, and constant good fortune does not usually extend to every aspect of one’s life. Because of this fact, although he had once been raised to the foremost position by the citizens he then fell from grace shortly afterward at their hands, and although he had subjected the city of the Volsci to his own, it was alongside the Volsci that he threw his native land into mortal peril. οὐ γάρ ἐστι ῥᾴδιον οὔτε ἐν πᾶσί τινα ἰσχύειν οὔτε ἐν ἑκατέροις ἅμα τοῖς τε πολεμικοῖς καὶ τοῖς εἰρηνικοῖς πράγμασιν ἀρετὴν ἔχειν· οἵ τε γὰρ τοῖς σώμασιν ἰσχυριζόμενοι ἀνοηταίνουσιν ὡς πλήθει, καὶ τὰ ἀθρόως εὐτυχήσαντ᾽ οὐκ ἐπὶ πᾶν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ ἀνθεῖ. δι᾽ οὖν ταῦτ᾽ ἐς τὰ πρῶτά ποθ᾽ ὑπὸ τῶν πολιτῶν ἀρθείς, ἔπειτα πρὸς αὐτῶν οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον ἐξέπεσεν, καὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν τῶν Οὐόλσκων τῇ πατρίδι δουλώσας τὴν οἰκείαν αὖ μετ᾽ ἐκείνων ἐς πᾶν κινδύνου κατέστησεν. The explanatory function of the sententia is made clear by Dio’s Greek. It is because of (δι᾽ οὖν ταῦτ᾽) the universal principle that good fortune is not permanent nor extends to every aspect of one’s life that Coriolanus suffered the extraordinary and paradoxical reverse of becoming the hated enemy of his native land and the ally of his former foes. This signals the historian’s deliberate intention to use moral argument as a means of explaining the causes of past events. The story of Coriolanus additionally exemplifies Dio’s view of human nature more broadly. In the Roman History he evidently falls victim to the flaw of failing to be satisfied with his existing successes. In canvassing for the consulship and becoming enraged at his failure to secure it, he betrays the general fault of πλεονεξία or acquisitiveness which Dio identifies in his excursus on the causes of the First Punic War as a general problem with man’s nature: that is, “the desire always to acquire more, derived from that instinct which is innate to the majority of mankind, and especially when they are doing well”.261 In Coriolanus’ case it is this acquisitiveness, coupled with the mutability of 260  Compare Livy 2.33–2.40 and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 7.21–67. 261  Cass. Dio frg. 43.2.

Method

129

fortune and, finally, his inability to bear moderately the fruits of his successes, which exalt and ultimately destroy him. Such a moral explanation may from time to time apply to states. To the fate of the Tarentines—who in their over-confidence believed themselves untouchable and arrogantly insulted Rome, only to be defeated later—, Dio adds the following note: “even success can become the cause of misfortune to men when it arrives in undue measure, for it seduces them into folly”.262 But it is with the fate of individuals that this sententia most holds water in the Roman History. The Gracchi are a notable case. The elder of the two tribunes of the plebs, Tiberius, is described by Dio as an exemplary figure. Yet his character became degenerate, Dio writes, in direct proportion to the power and strength he achieved. The more he succeeded, the further he slipped into a cycle of ambition that led him, in spite of himself, to ruination: “for the more numerous and powerful his advantages became, the more he was led from his natural virtues into ambition; and once he had been turned from the path of excellence, he veered (albeit unwillingly) onto the worst of all”.263 His younger brother Gaius did not possess the same quality of character, but was nevertheless raised to power and then destroyed in the same way: “as it turned out, even the members of his faction came to hate him because of his excessive δυναστεία, and he was destroyed by precisely the same methods he had employed”.264 Dio’s belief in the danger posed by success and good fortune to the powerful receives an even more elaborate treatment in the character of Sulla. Following his now-lost account of the battle of the Colline Gate, the historian pauses to deliver an excursus on the corruption exerted upon him by power and success. Prior to the absolute defeat of his enemies, Sulla was a conspicuous and renowned figure, thought to be so humane and pious that he must have had even Fortune herself as an ally because of his virtue. Yet after his victory in the civil war he changed so drastically that one would not recognise his former deeds and new ones as those of the same person: “thus, or so it seems, he was unable to bear his good fortune”.265 Here Dio adds a further sententia to the effect that it is difficulty and adversity that keeps one virtuous; success and exaltation, on the other hand, bring about the opposite.266 To use the historian’s exact words, it was as if Sulla had left behind his former self outside the walls of Rome, and

262  Cass. Dio frg. 39.3. 263  Cass. Dio frg. 83.1. 264  Cass. Dio frg. 85.3. 265  Cass. Dio frg. 109. 266  Cass. Dio frg. 109.2.

130

chapter 2

in the dizzying heights of victory and power became just as base and cruel as Marius and Cinna. Finally, the confrontation between Caesar and Pompeius and its aftermath are treated in similar terms as a valorisation of the principle that prestige and might raise aloft but then ruin those who cannot bear them moderately. The case of Pompeius we have already seen in our discussion of the lex Gabinia debates of Book 36. In a deliberate foreshadowing of what will in fact come to pass—and a clear reflection of Dio’s political philosophy—Catulus warns that great honours and excessive powers initially exalt but ultimately destroy even the finest men.267 This reflects the historian’s own interpretation of the envy and hatred Pompeius incurred for his previous honours on his return from Asia in 62 BCE, and his disastrous and fatal over-confidence at the Battle of Pharsalus. As for Caesar, his dramatic fall from power is attributed to the same basic flaw in human nature (44.3): Caesar’s death had the following cause. He had incurred an odium which was not entirely without justification, except insofar as it was in fact the senators themselves who exalted him and made him conceited with the novelty and excess of the honours they gave him. Then they found fault with him for precisely these honours and accused him of being only too happy to accept them and of behaving more haughtily because of them. It is indeed the case that Caesar was wrong to accept the things voted to him and believed himself really worthy of them; but the greatest wrong was committed by those who, having initially honoured him as he deserved, then led him into recrimination for the privileges they had conferred. He did not dare to reject all of them (so as not to appear contemptuous), yet nor again was he able to accept them safely; for excessive honour and praise make even sensible men conceited. ἔσχε δὲ ὧδε, καὶ αἰτίαν τήνδε ὁ θάνατος αὐτοῦ ἔλαβεν· οὐ γὰρ δὴ καὶ ἀναίτιον πάντῃ τὸ ἐπίφθονον ἐκτήσατο, πλὴν καθ᾽ ὅσον αὐτοὶ οἱ βουλευταὶ ταῖς τε καινότησι καὶ ταῖς ὑπερβολαῖς τῶν τιμῶν ἐξάραντές τε αὐτὸν καὶ φυσήσαντες ἔπειτα ἐπ᾽ αὐταῖς ἐκείναις καὶ ἐμέμφοντο καὶ διέβαλλον ὡς ἡδέως τέ σφας λαμβάνοντα καὶ ὀγκηρότερον ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ζῶντα. ἔστι μὲν γὰρ ὅτε καὶ ὁ Καῖσαρ ἥμαρτε, δεξάμενός τέ τινα τῶν ψηφισθέντων οἱ καὶ πιστεύσας ὄντως αὐτῶν ἀξιοῦσθαι, πλεῖστον δὲ ὅμως ἐκεῖνοι, οἵτινες ἀρξάμενοι τιμᾶν αὐτὸν ὡς καὶ ἄξιον, προήγαγον ἐς αἰτίαν οἷς ἐψηφίζοντο. οὔτε γὰρ διωθεῖσθαι πάντα αὐτὰ ἐτόλμα, μὴ καὶ ὑπερφρονεῖν νομισθείη, οὔτ᾽ αὖ λαμβάνων ἀσφαλὴς εἶναι 267  Cass. Dio 36.35.1.

Method

131

ἐδύνατο· τὸ γὰρ ὑπερβάλλον τῶν τε τιμῶν καὶ τῶν ἐπαίνων χαυνοτέρους πως καὶ τοὺς πάνυ σώφρονας. As Rome’s first monarch, Caesar receives a far more forgiving and charitable treatment from the monarchist Dio than the Gracchi, Sulla, or Pompeius. In the end it is the Senate, and not the scheming Caesar, who cynically understand the realities of power as the historian has repeatedly explained them: honour, titles, fame and prestige may encourage even the most moderate to lose his head (in both senses), with catastrophic consequences. The historian evidently had this principle in mind from the beginning of his Republican narrative. Introduced from its very inception with the speech of Brutus in Book 3, the sententia has not only a universal application, but (more importantly) a consistent explanatory purpose. Book 3 and the oration of Brutus foreshadow the historian’s interpretation of major political developments to come—the exile of Coriolanus, the fate of the Gracchi, the transformation of Sulla and Pompeius into corrupt dynasts, and finally the assassination of Caesar himself. Dio’s use of sententiae is thus a deal more sophisticated than at first appears. They are, in fact, the best barometer of his political and philosophical views and the end result evinces the deliberate care with which he deployed them. Especially noteworthy are the competing claims made by sententiae in the authorial narrative and those made by Dio’s speakers. Despite being so often treated as the model for Cassius Dio’s Gnomik, Thucydides’ practice was highly dissimilar. We have seen Agrippa’s praise for the essential principles of democratic government, but of course the sententiae in the authoritative narrator-voice refute them even before their first articulation. This is only one part of the historian’s wider critique of δημοκρατία in general, which he viewed as fundamentally incompatible with human nature except for the briefest period. Submitting to the direction and authority of others, sharing power among equals, equality before the law (ἰσονομία) and equality of opportunity (ἰσομοιρία) were all, in Dio’s opinion, antithetical to man’s innate desire to rule others and his wish ever to acquire more. Those wishes and desires drove the aristocracy, even in a Republic, to commit unspeakable acts. It is only possible to gauge this aspect of the historian’s theoretical framework by taking his selection and arrangement of sententiae in the manner intended: as a means of proof in and of themselves, and a persuasive mode of argument about the past. 1.3.3 The Fable The implicit connection Dio formed between the writing of history and the valor­isation of universal moral truths is indicated even more clearly by the way in which he structured narrative episodes. A rarely recognised and yet strikingly

132

chapter 2

common feature of the Roman History is to isolate narrative episodes as ‘stories’ in themselves, each closing with a concluding moral maxim or epimythium (literally, ‘after the story or μῦθος’).268 The purpose is to sum up a specific event with an ethical point which is illustrated and proven by the event itself, while also serving to explain the cause or source of the event. The historian’s frequent return to this kind of device, which I term here ‘fable-structure’, is revealing of three points. First, Dio’s rhetorical education in the progymnasmata exerted a permanent impact on the way he wrote, even down to narrative structure on the granular level. Secondly, he viewed narrating the past and drawing moral lessons from it as one and the same object: the facts of history proved (in Dio’s view) the facts of human nature. Third and most pertinently for our purposes, moralising served as an important means of causal explanation: the success of failure of the particular endeavour described in the ‘fable-structure’ could be attributed directly to the virtues or vices of the individuals involved. We have already seen these three points in Dio’s balancing of sententiae across his speeches and narrative, but now let us turn briefly to the architecture of the diegesis proper, where the same principles are at work. The main elements of the fable ( fabula, μῦθος, or λόγος) are still recognisable today and have changed little since its regular use as a composition exercise in the rhetorical schools of the Roman Empire. The fable is “a fictitious story giving the appearance of truth”:269 a short narrative recounting events that the reader or listener knows to be false or improbable, but which nevertheless demonstrates the truth of a moral idea. As a complete diegetic unit, the fable has a clear beginning and end, containing at least two main characters (usually animal or non-human) who must negotiate an altercation or other moral situation.270 As a short story, the fabula furthermore provided context, actions, and often direct or indirect speech. Erroneous schoolchildren’s copies on papyri suggest that it was an exercise in listening and copying at the earliest stage,271 but pupils were later called upon to compose their own fables.272 Its suitability for young children was inherent in the form: the moral of the story was always unequivocal, and its focus on animals and the impossible lent it a particularly “persuasive charm” (ψυχαγωγία).273 268  Although old, Perry 1940 remains an excellent discussion of the origins and use of the epimythium in the development of fable and in persuasive speech more generally. 269  Theon. Prog. 72. 270  For a history of the development of the fabula, which it is not my intention to give here, see the studies in: Fisher 1987; Adrados 1999–2003; Holzberg 2001; Gangloff 2002. 271  Adrados 1999–2003, 115–117. 272  Theon. Prog. 75–76. 273  Nicol. Prog. 9.

Method

133

In the rhetorical handbooks we hear of rhetoricians first assigning their students a sententia and then requiring them to invent a tale which exemplified its truth. This is an important point: in the schools the purpose of narration, even of preposterous events, might begin with valorising the moral of a story. The student’s first attempt at a proper composition—grammatically advanced, combining acts of speech with paratactic compression through absolutes and participles—began, and ended, with proving a moral idea.274 By Dio’s time the format of the fabula had long since crystallised, with the overall moral point of the tale usually reserved to the end as an epimythium. The famous story of The Tortoise and the Hare (Perry Index No. 226), for example, might conclude: “many people have good natural abilities which are ruined by idleness; on the other hand, sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence”.275 More sermonising examples of epimythia can be found,276 but these were usually brief and memorable. While the later collections of progymnasmata state that the concluding moral could in fact be placed at the beginning of the tale,277 the preference was clearly to reserve it until the end. By the time of the earliest surviving collection of fabulae compiled by Phaedrus in the first century CE,278 the closing maxim had become the standard. Like Lucian,279 the protagonist in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana treats the epimythium as commonplace in the fabulist’s toolkit: “for the poet, after he has told his tale, leaves the sane reader torturing himself to work out whether it really happened; but one like Aesop, who tells a story we know to be false and then adds the moral, shows that he has used a fiction for the benefit of his audience”.280 Could an ancient historian’s approach to writing truly have been influenced by what seems, to modern eyes, a children’s schoolroom exercise? Here we should recall both their popularity and their explicitly persuasive function. Within classical rhetoric, the fabula served above all as a form of illustration by example: it demonstrated the veracity of a universal truth by narrating fictitious events which proved the argued point by analogy. Both Aristotle and

274  So Bloomer 2011, 129. 275  Gibbs 2002, 237. 276  Phaed. Fab. 3.10, 4.11, 4.20, 5.4. 277  Nicol. Prog. 10–11. 278  The earliest known collection by Demetrius of Phalerum, mentioned in Diog. Laert. 5.580, does not survive. 279  Luc. Bacch. 8. 280  Philost. VA 5.14.

134

chapter 2

Cicero recommend fable as a form of artistic proof within persuasive speech.281 Nicolaus’ progymnasmata explicitly states that the primary purpose of the fable was to convince.282 Among historians fabulae as such were used by Herodotus, Xenophon, Diodorus of Sicily, and Livy. We do not therefore need to imagine that the argumentative possibilities provided by fable would have been unattractive to Dio, even decades after his formal education was complete. Moreover, the didacticism inherent in the fabula came to generate its own explicitly persuasive language. By the time of Phaedrus, the closing epimythium was regularly introduced with οὕτω or οὕτως (‘thus’): eighty-two of his two hundred and thirty fables begin their concluding moral in this way.283 Other expressions such as οῦν (‘therefore’) and γαρ (‘for, since’) may also be found, linking the moral point of the epimythium to the content of the preceding narr­ative. The origins of this language are Classical. In the Classical period the reciter of a fable (especially in persuasive speech) might conclude prosphon­ etically, underlining the relevance of their story to the current audience by stating “thus you too take care that …” (οὕτω δὲ καὶ σύ), or similar.284 The conventional epimythium in the Imperial period will therefore be a concluding moral with a universal moral application that closes a unit of narrative with the words οὕτω, οὕτως, οῦν, or γαρ. Dio regularly structures narrative episodes in this way, especially in order to use points of high drama to explore the relationship between his principal moral themes and their effects upon political life. For example, Dio will occasionally describe the failure of generals to conduct their duties—and the often dramatic consequences that may ensue—through the lens of individual failures of character. In these cases he pauses the narrative of events and moves into an excursus on the moral problems at work, concluding the excursus with an epimythium. The failure of L. Licinius Lucullus to make progress in his campaign against Mithridates during the Third Mithridatic War, for instance, is explained by Dio not as the result of strategic error but rather in consequence of Lucullus’ poor ἔθος. The historian first recounts the details of the campaign in a strictly diegetic mode. In 67 BCE Lucullus arrived in Asia with high hopes, expecting to recover all the Romans’ recently-lost ground with a string of easy victories. He was disappointed. Mithridates encamped in a defensive position on high ground near 281  Arist. Rhet. 2.20; Cic. Part. Or. 30. However, Cicero does not use fable in any of his extant orations. 282  Nicol. Prog. 10–11. 283  Perry 1940, 397. 284  Examples at Hdt. 1.141; Soph. Aj. 1146; Plat. Phaed. 60c; Xen. Mem. 2.7.13–14; Arist. Rhet. 2.20. For the ‘prosphonetic’ epimythium see Nicol. Prog. 10.

Method

135

Talaura and, wisely, refused to make a sortie. Awaiting such an event in vain with his troops, Lucullus was attacked by Mithridates’ allies. News then arrived that Tigranes of Armenia, too, was marching against him. Mutinous talk began to arise in the legions, encouraged by Clodius and by reports that the consul M’. Acilius Glabrio was already on the way to address Lucullus’ failures. Unsure of whether to set out or to stand his ground, Lucullus struck camp and set out to meet Tigranes in the field. Here the troops mutinied: after following their general away from Talaura to a crossroads, they marched away to Cappadocia in direct defiance of his orders. The ‘Valerian’ legion even withdrew from service altogether.285 Having recounted these factual details, Dio pauses the diegesis to interpret the cause of the disaster in his own authorial voice. The excursus is, in fact, a standalone set-piece—after which the historical diegesis resumes— on Lucullus’ character, and a moralising ‘story’ in its own right (36.16): Let no one be surprised that Lucullus, the most excellent general among men, who was the first of the Romans to cross the Tarsus with an army for war, who overcame two strong kings and would have captured them if he had wished to end the war quickly, was not able to control his men, nor that they were always restive and finally deserted him. For he asked a lot of them, was unapproachable, strict in his demands for work and implacable in his punishments. He did not understand how to entice men with speech, nor to attach them by mercy, nor to ingratiate him by bestowing honours or wealth. These are important in any multitude, but especially in an army. For this reason his soldiers only obeyed him so long as the going was good and they won rewards comparable to the risks incurred. But when things went wrong and their hopes had been replaced by fear, they no longer paid any heed to him. The proof of this is that when Pompeius took charge of the very same men (for he even re-enlisted the Valerians), he kept them in an entirely peaceable state. So much does one man differ from another. καὶ θαυμάσῃ μηδεὶς ὅτι στρατηγικώτατος ἀνδρῶν ὁ Λούκουλλος γενόμενος, καὶ πρῶτός τε Ῥωμαίων τὸν Ταῦρον σύν τε στρατῷ καὶ ἐπὶ πολέμῳ διαβάς, καὶ δύο βασιλέας οὐκ ἀσθενεῖς ἐπικρατήσας, ἑλών τ᾽ ἂν εἴπερ ταχέως διαπολεμῆσαι ἐβεβούλητο, οὐκ ἐδύνατο τῶν συστρατευομένων οἱ ἄρχειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀεί τε ἐστασίαζον καὶ τέλος ἐγκατέλιπον αὐτόν. πολλά τε γάρ σφισι προσέταττε, καὶ δυσπρόσοδος ἀκριβής τε ἐν ταῖς τῶν ἔργων ἀπαιτήσεσι καὶ ἀπαραίτητος ἐν ταῖς τιμωρίαις ὢν οὐκ ἠπίστατο οὔτε λόγῳ τινὰ προσαγαγέσθαι οὔτε ἐπιεικείᾳ ἀναρτήσασθαι, 285  Cass. Dio 36.14–15.

136

chapter 2

οὐ τιμαῖς, οὐ χρημάτων μεταδόσει προσεταιρίσασθαι, ὧν πάντων ἄλλως τε καὶ ἐν πλήθει, καὶ μάλιστα στρατευομένῳ, δεῖ. καὶ διὰ τοῦθ᾽ οἱ στρατιῶται, ἕως μὲν εὖ τε ἐφέροντο καὶ τὰς ἁρπαγὰς ἀνταξίας τῶν κινδύνων εἶχον, ἠκροῶντο αὐτοῦ, ἐπεὶ δὲ ἔπταισαν καὶ ἐς φόβον ἀντὶ τῶν ἐλπίδων ἀντικατέστησαν, οὐδὲν ἔτι προετίμησαν. τεκμήριον δὲ ὅτι τοὺς αὐτοὺς τούτους ὁ Πομπήιος λαβών καὶ γὰρ τοὺς Οὐαλεριείους αὖθις κατελέξατὀ οὐδ᾽ ὁπωσοῦν στασιάζοντας ἔσχε. τοσοῦτον ἀνὴρ ἀνδρὸς διαφέρει. Dio explains the mutiny after Talaura in inherently moral terms: it was simply the failings in Lucullus’ character which precipitated the revolt. Moreover, in Dio’s interpretation this revolt had significant historical consequences in the short term. Immediately after this excursus on Lucullus’ character, the historian states that directly because of the mutiny, Mithridates won back most of the territories he had lost, reversing Roman progress in the war.286 The consul designate, Q. Marcius Rex, furthermore refused to provide Lucullus assistance, on the grounds that Lucullus was unable to control his men.287 Though a pause in the narrative, the ‘story’ of Lucullus’ character thus has significant historical consequences in the immediate term. The moral that the reader is intended to infer from this stand-alone tale is postponed until the end, and has a universal application indicated by the present tense and the absence of definite articles: τοσοῦτον ἀνὴρ ἀνδρὸς διαφέρει. This closing moral message—that a man’s character is everything—has of course been fully exemplified in the story which precedes it on Lucullus’ vices and the revolt of the army. It is not clear whether this ‘fable-structure’ is a conscious and deliberate choice on the historian’s part, or an accidental reflection of the compositional techniques imparted during his rhetorical education. What is clear, however, is that Dio uses moral themes for his explanation of the causes of historical events as well as for strictly didactic purposes. By closing the compositional unit with the moral maxim it valorises, Dio gives a persuasive interpretation of Lucullus’ failures which ancient readers would be prepared to accept. Pompeius’ defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus is developed in a similar way. Directly after his account of the battle, Dio pauses the historical narrative to describe the defeated dynast’s over-confidence in his haphazard preparations for the final clash with Caesar, and the impotent horror that arrested him in consequence of his surprising failure. Importantly, the diegesis as such resumes immediately after this excursus on Pompeius’ mental state, narrating his flight first to Larissa, his adieu to his wife and children, and then onward to Lesbos 286  Cass. Dio 36.17.1. 287  Cass. Dio 36.17.2.

Method

137

and Egypt. The excursus thus stands (at 42.1) as an independent compositional unit between the battle narrative at the end of Book 41 and the account of Pompeius’ last days to follow (42.2–4). Dio closes the excursus—the ‘story’, so to speak, of the dangers of over-confidence—with an epimythium (42.1.4–5): For whenever something befalls a man unexpectedly and in great surprise, it weakens his spirit and throws his reasoning awry, so making him the worst and weakest judge of what should be done. For reason cannot abide with panic: if reason grasps the situation first, it nobly casts fears away, but if it only arrives second, it is overcome. ὅταν γάρ τι ἀπροσδοκήτως τέ τινι καὶ μετὰ πλείστου παραλόγου προσπέσῃ, τό τε φρόνημα αὐτοῦ ταπεινοῖ καὶ τὸ λογιζόμενον ἐκπλήσσει, ὥστ᾽ αὐτὸν κάκιστόν τε καὶ ἀσθενέστατον τῶν πρακτέων κριτὴν γενέσθαι· οὐ γὰρ ἐθέλουσιν οἱ λογισμοὶ τοῖς φόβοις συνεῖναι, ἀλλὰ ἂν μὲν προκατάσχωσί τινα, καὶ μάλα γενναίως αὐτοὺς ἀπωθοῦνται, ἂν δ᾽ ὑστερήσωσιν, ἡττῶνται. The epimythium to this μῦθος is deliberately persuasive. It anticipates the reader’s incredulity (“how can so great a general have taken such a foolish misstep?”), and to respond to it provides an explanation, couched in universalising moral language. This is made more convincing, according to the rhetorical conventions of the time, by its placement at the end of the compositional unit. The capriciousness and instability of fortune in general is another of the major themes of the Roman History, and obviously bears a close relation to the failures of Lucullus and (especially) Pompeius. In fact, the established commonplace regarding Fortune’s tendency to suddenly desert her former favourites is Dio’s preferred theme for the deployment of epimythia. His account of the justice served to the perpetrators of the Sullan proscriptions is a textbook ‘fable-structure’: a self-contained and discrete unit of narrative telling a particular story which ends with a moral maxim. Dio first narrates the events of 65 BCE, including Pompeius’ campaigning in the East (37.1–7a) and closing the year with annalistic ‘end-year’ details on events in the city of Rome: omens, portents, laws and decrees, and actions of magistrates (38.8–9). At this point the diegesis proper moves on to a single paragraph devoted to summing up events in 64 BCE (37.10.1–3): In the following year—the consulship of Figulus and of Lucius Caesar— only a few events came to pass, but these are notable for the paradox that they illustrate in the human condition. For the man who had killed Lucretius at Sulla’s instruction, and another who had murdered many

138

chapter 2

of those proscribed by him, were tried and punished for their murders. Julius Caesar worked especially hard to bring this about. Thus, changing circumstances regularly weaken even those who were once most powerful. τῷ δὲ ἐχομένῳ ἔτει, τοῦ τε Φιγούλου καὶ τοῦ Καίσαρος τοῦ Λουκίου ἀρχόντων, βραχέα μέν, μνήμης δ᾽ οὖν ἄξια πρὸς τοὺς τῶν ἀνθρωπείων πραγμάτων παραλόγους συνηνέχθη. ὅ τε γὰρ τὸν Λουκρήτιον ἐκ τῆς τοῦ Σύλλου προστάξεως ἀποκτείνας, καὶ ἕτερός τις συχνοὺς τῶν ἐπικηρυχθέντων ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ φονεύσας, καὶ κατηγορήθησαν ἐπὶ ταῖς σφαγαῖς καὶ ἐκολάσθησαν, τοῦ Καίσαρος τοῦ Ἰουλίου τοῦθ᾽ ὅτι μάλιστα παρασκευάσαντος. οὕτω καὶ τοὺς πάνυ ποτὲ δυνηθέντας ἀσθενεστάτους αἱ μεταβολαὶ τῶν πραγμάτων πολλάκις ποιοῦσι. Dio’s closing maxim of course operates on a didactic plane: the reader is invited to draw a lesson about the mutability of fortune from the passage of past events. But this lesson also serves to explain the cause and source of those events. It appears that the historian is not concerned with detailing Julius Caesar’s involvement in this episode—and episode it is, stepping apart from the main historical diegesis—, or analysing his political motivations. He may not have had an answer. What he instead provides is an argument grounded in his consistent belief in the instability and danger of sudden or great change, or μεταβολαὶ: it is μεταβολαὶ which precipitate the decline of even the most powerful, as the fates of the Gracchi, Sulla, Pompeius, and Caesar himself in the Roman History demonstrate. Immediately after his epimythium Dio moves on to narrating the events of 63 BCE, incorporating the defeat of Mithridates, Pompeius’ return, and the alleged Catilinarian Conspiracy (37.11ff.). The summary of events in 64 BCE is thus crafted as a self-contained episode which is both explained and closed by the concluding moral. The later proscriptions of the triumvirate of Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavian provided equally fertile ground for Dio to use compositional techniques imparted by the progymnasmata. Book 47 begins with the return of the triumviri to Rome and the omens that were taken to predict their fate, focussing again on the theme of man’s rise and fall (47.1–2). For Antonius, a sinister chanting heard out of nowhere “presaged his triumphs and the destruction that would emerge from them”. For Lepidus, a visitation by a friendly serpent and an aggressive wolf “foreshadowed his power and the misfortune to follow it”. For Octavian (predictably), one eagle swept down from the heavens and skewered two lesser birds sitting above his tent. From here Dio narrates the conduct of the proscriptions in general, in highly dramatic style (47.3–9), before restricting his focus. He rejects a detailed and accurate description of all the stories of murder and bravery in the proscriptions, promising instead to

Method

139

recount only those few most worthy of remembrance. What follows is a short narrative of especially conspicuous examples of bravery and self-sacrifice by slaves to save their masters (47.10) and some further examples to demonstrate “the uncertainty of life”: the murder of Cicero at the hands of a man he had once defended, for instance, and the almost fatal similarity between M. Terentius Varro’s name and that of a proscribed man. Dio concludes his dramatic set-piece on the sufferings of the proscribed as follows (47.11.4–5): That case [of Varro] bore witness to the uncertainty of life, as do the following: Lucius Philuscius had been previously proscribed by Sulla and escaped, yet was listed on the tablet once more and perished. On the other hand, Marcus Valerius Messalla was condemned to death by Antonius, and yet not only continued to live safely but even became consul later in place of Antonius himself. Thus, many emerge safe from the most hopeless dangers while just as many who feel no fear are destroyed. For this reason one should neither be so stricken by the misfortunes of the moment as to lose hope, nor be so exalted by current joys as to lose his head. Rather, placing his hopes for the future between those two extremes, he should prepare sensibly for either event. τὸ δὲ δὴ ἀστάθμητον τοῦ βίου καὶ ἐξ ἐκείνου ἐτεκμηριώθη, ὅτι Λούκιος μὲν Φιλούσκιος ὑπό τε τοῦ Σύλλου πρότερον ἐπικηρυχθεὶς καὶ διαφυγὼν ἔς τε τὸ λεύκωμα αὖθις τότε ἐσεγράφη καὶ ἀπέθανε, Μᾶρκος δὲ Οὐαλέριος Μεσσάλας ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀντωνίου θανατωθεὶς οὐχ ὅπως ἐν ἀσφαλείᾳ διεβίω, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὕπατος ἀντ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐκείνου ὕστερον ἀπεδείχθη. οὕτως ἔκ τε τῶν ἀπορωτάτων πολλοὶ περιγίγνονται καὶ ἐκ τῶν θαρσούντως ἐχόντων οὐκ ἐλάττους ἀπόλλυνται· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο χρὴ μήτε ἐς τὸ ἀνέλπιστον πρὸς τὰς αὐτίκα συμφορὰς ἐκπλήττεσθαί τινα μήτε ἐς τὸ ἀφρόντιστον ὑπὸ τοῦ παραχρῆμα περιχαροῦς ἐπαίρεσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἐς τὸ μέσον ἐπ᾽ ἀμφότερα τὴν ἐλπίδα τοῦ μέλλοντος τιθέμενον ἀσφαλεῖς ἐφ᾽ ἑκάτερα τοὺς λογισμοὺς ποιεῖσθαι. This is one of Dio’s most lengthy and sermonising epimythia. Again, the concluding moral is used to close not only the thought but also the ‘story’ of the sufferings and trials of individuals as a whole. The narrative moves on immediately to more prosaic concerns: Dio marks this transition with the bridging sentence “such, then, was the course of events at that time”. In what follows he records the defections of the proscribed to Brutus, Cassius, and Sextus Pompeius (47.12), the possible number of the murdered (47.13), the disposal of their property and offices (47.14–15), the ‘contributions’ levied even on those still living (47.16–17), and the extraordinary honours dedicated by the triumvirs

140

chapter 2

to Caesar’s memory (47.18–19). Events then turn to external and military affairs. Within the economy of the book, therefore, Dio’s ‘fable-structures’ and their closing epimythia serve as structuring devices as well as a means of interpreting and explaining the past through a moral lens. The same practice—again on the theme of the mutability of Fortune—is in evidence with the volte-face of Cicero’s return from exile (39.6.1): That is what happened in Gaul. Meanwhile, Pompeius brought about a vote for Cicero’s recall, so bringing home the very same man he himself had expelled by means of Clodius. Thus, it seems, man’s condition can change so quickly, and people receive the very opposite treatment from those they expect to help or harm them. ταῦτα μὲν ἐν τῇ Γαλατίᾳ ἐγένετο, Πομπήιος δὲ ἐν τούτῳ τὴν κάθοδον τῷ Κικέρωνι ψηφισθῆναι διεπράξατο. ὃν γὰρ διὰ τοῦ Κλωδίου ἐξεληλάκει, τοῦτον ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐπανήγαγεν· οὕτω που τὸ ἀνθρώπειον δι᾽ ὀλίγου τε ἔστιν ὅτε μεταβάλλεται, καὶ ἀφ᾽ ὧν ὠφελήσεσθαί τινες ἢ καὶ βλαβήσεσθαι νομίζουσι, τὰ ἐναντιώτατα ἀντιλαμβάνουσι. The vicissitudes of fate, leading from the exaltation of men to great status to their sudden and unexpected fall (and, rarely, vice versa), is one of the Roman History’s most common explanatory premises. We have seen already that it is a major factor in the decline of the Gracchi, Sulla, Pompeius, and Caesar, all of whom are raised to a great height by their ambition only to be destroyed by it. To Dio, history was a repository of virtues and vices from which an important moral lesson could be imparted. In school he was consciously and deliberately instructed to view the task of narrating events, real or fictitious, through a moralising prism. From his earliest experience of writing to his last declamation with the schoolroom rhetorician, the elite student did not cease to separate the moral from the literary. It is a defective view, without merit, that when ancient historians such as Dio used moral forms of argument they did so in the expectation that they would appear banal or unpersuasive. The case is exactly the opposite. The process of learning to compose history—the genre taken so often as a model for imitation and a source of factual knowledge in school—inculcated in the writer a moralising conception of history itself. Through the fabula, the ancient pupil learned to approach narrative as the exemplification and valid­ ation of ethical thoughts. Importantly, these ethical thoughts were not simply edifying didacticism (which might be achieved in any genre, not only historio­ graphy), but were intrinsic to the historian’s purpose of identifying the αἰτία,

Method

141

the cause, of past events.288 I would suggest that in Dio’s ‘fable-structures’ we see the vestiges of that training in the progymnasmata and its enduring effect upon his approach. By reserving the moral of the story to the end, so to speak, Dio uses techniques learned in his rhetorical education to more effectively sum up, at a most emphatic point of closure, the fundamental issues in human nature which render each situation more or less likely to produce the result that it does. It is important to note that this principle does not apply uniquely to the Republican narrative of the Roman History, and Dio continued to use these techniques throughout his work as a means of applying his main political and philosophical views to the passage of events. The transition from Republic to Empire, and therefore from a year-on-year (annalistic) structure to a biographical (or ‘biostructure’) mode to fit the lifetime of a single princeps,289 naturally invited epimythia for the close of each emperor’s μῦθος at his death. After narrating the suicide of the short-lived emperor Otho, for example, Dio closes the scene with an antithetical conclusion: “for after living most disgracefully, he died most nobly; and though he had seized the empire by a most villainous deed, his taking leave of it was most honourable”. The entire narrative of Otho as a whole then ends (and that of Vitellius begins), with an epimythium (64[65].1): When those in Rome heard of the fate of Otho, they immediately and unsurprisingly changed their allegiance. For Otho, whom they had formerly praised and had prayed to triumph, they now abused as an enemy; and Vitellius, whom they had once cursed, they now honoured and called emperor. Thus, it seems, nothing in human affairs is constant: both the most prosperous and the most unfortunate must make an as-yet uncertain choice, and receive either praise or blame, either honour or dishonour, according to the shifting of their fortunes. 288  So Polyb. 12.25b. 289  The extent to which the Roman History may be called ‘annalistic’ for its Republican portions has recently emerged as a topic of debate into which it is not relevant to wade here. Swan 1987 and 1997 has surveyed some aspects of ‘annalistic’ historiography on the basis of Livy—e.g. alternating ‘urban’ and ‘external’ sections, closing with ‘end-year’ details such as laws, elections, and omens—and identifies this method in Dio. For a general survey of annalistic history-writing, see also Rich 2011 followed by Rich 2016 on its application to Dio specifically. Lindholmer 2018 has recently challenged this view, demonstrating the innovative ways in which the historian supplanted and exploited the conventions of annalistic historiography. On the other hand, for the ‘biostructuring’ of the Roman History in the imperial portions—that is, arranged around the life of a single princeps rather than year-by-year—see the important study of Pelling 1997.

142

chapter 2

οἱ δ᾽ ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ὡς ἤκουσαν τὸ τοῦ Ὄθωνος πάθος, παραχρῆμα, ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ἦν, μετεβάλοντο· τόν τε γὰρ Ὄθωνα, ὃν πρότερον ἐπῄνουν καὶ νικᾶν ηὔχοντο, ἐλοιδόρουν ὡς πολέμιον, καὶ τὸν Οὐιτέλλιον, ᾧ κατηρῶντο, καὶ ἐπῄνουν καὶ αὐτοκράτορα ἀνηγόρευον· οὕτω που οὐδὲν πάγιόν ἐστι τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, ἀλλ᾽ ὁμοίως οἵ τε ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ἀνθοῦντες καὶ οἱ ἐν τῷ ταπεινοτάτῳ ὄντες ἀστάθμητά τε αἱροῦνται, καὶ πρὸς τὰς τύχας σφῶν καὶ τοὺς ἐπαίνους καὶ τοὺς ψόγους τάς τε τιμὰς καὶ τὰς ἀτιμίας λαμβάνουσι. Otho will not reappear in the Roman History from this point. With the epimythium, his story ends: the fable-structure demarcates the point of transition in Dio’s account as well as underlining the particular truth in human nature that it evinces. The historian uses precisely the same technique in order to conclude the reign of Pertinax and to open the machinations of Didius Julianius for the imperial throne, and structures it identically. The straightforward historical diegesis of his last days and the manner of his unfortunate death (74.8–10) concludes with the moral to be drawn from his μῦθος, before passing directly over to Julianus’ ascent to power. “Thus died Pertinax, who tried to change everything in a moment”, Dio writes. “Despite his wide experience he did not understand that it is impossible to reform everything at once in a safe way, and that political change in particular requires time and wisdom”.290 Though ostensibly ethical, this epimythium is not mere moralising, and is a central component of Dio’s conservative political philosophy. The danger of drastic change in political affairs and the need instead to find gradual solutions is underscored from the earliest portions of the work with the speech of Brutus in Book 3.291 In the Roman History, Augustus’ realisation of this fact is one of the reasons for his success; there will be more to say on this point later. The life of Julia Domna, likewise, closes with one of Dio’s longer and more sermonising epimythia. Upon hearing the news at Antioch of the murder of her son, the emperor Caracalla, in 217 CE, she had initially wished to starve herself to death. Faute de mieux she had also attempted to stab herself, which Dio explains may have aggravated the cancer in her breast. The new emperor Macrinus—little pleased at her schemes to have him unseated, so Dio

290  Cass. Dio 73[74].10.3: οὕτω μὲν ὁ Περτίναξ ἐπιχειρήσας ἐν ὀλίγῳ πάντα ἀνακαλέσασθαι ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐδὲ ἔγνω καίπερ ἐμπειρότατος πραγμάτων ὤν, ὅτι ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν ἀθρόα τινὰ ἀσφαλῶς ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ εἴπερ τι ἄλλο, καὶ πολιτικὴ κατάστασις καὶ χρόνου καὶ σοφίας χρῄζει. 291  Cass. Dio frg. 12.3a.

Method

143

records—ordered her into exile, and she died.292 The account closes, according to the historian’s regular practice, with a moral lesson (79.24): Thus Julia, who was born a commoner and raised to a great position, who had lived through her husband’s reign unhappily because of Plautianus, who had watched her younger son die in her own lap and resented the elder as long as he lived, right to the end, and who finally heard of his assassination, fell from power during her life and destroyed herself. From this, anyone who looks at her life must realise that not all who come into great power can be happy, unless their lives contain some genuine and unadulterated pleasure, and unmixed and lasting good fortune. καὶ ἡ μὲν οὕτω τε ἐκ δημοτικοῦ γένους ἐπὶ μέγα ἀρθεῖσα, κἀν τῇ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡγεμονίᾳ περιαλγῶς πάνυ διὰ τὸν Πλαυτιανὸν ζήσασα, τῶν τε υἱέων τόν τε νεώτερον ἐν τοῖς αὑτῆς κόλποις κατασφαγέντα ἐπιδοῦσα καὶ τὸν πρεσβύτερον ζῶντά τε ἀεὶ διὰ τέλους διὰ φθόνου ἔχουσα καὶ φονευθέντα οὕτω μαθοῦσα, τῆς ἀρχῆς ζῶσα ἐξέπεσεν καὶ ἑαυτὴν προσκατειργάσατο, ὥστε τινὰ ἐς αὐτὴν ἀποβλέψαντα μὴ πάνυ πάντας τοὺς ἐν ταῖς μεγάλαις ἐξουσίαις γενομένους μακαρίζειν, ἂν μὴ καὶ ἡδονή τις αὐτοῖς τοῦ βίου καὶ ἀληθὴς καὶ ἀκήρατος καὶ εὐτυχία καὶ ἀκραιφνὴς καὶ διαρκὴς ὑπάρχῃ. The force of this concluding moral is more explicitly didactic than those of Dio’s Republican narrative. The reader is addressed almost directly to take from Julia’s fate a particular lesson about human affairs, and its explanatory function within the Roman History is accordingly limited: it speaks to the universal rather than necessarily interpreting the cause of the former empress’ fate. Nevertheless, it evinces still the historian’s use of compositional techniques which were firmly inculcated during his rhetorical education. The moral dimension had an important place in Dio’s approach to writing history and—certainly in his Republican narrative—explaining its course. None of this means that Cassius Dio was incapable of the kind of rigorous political and institutional analysis that modern historians prefer to find in the works of ancient writers. The ensuing shorter chapters—especially Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’)—will reveal his development of such an analysis across the speeches of Books 3–56 of the Roman History, where Dio formulated a complex and often original causation for the transformation of the res publica. Yet arguments grounded in morality, ethics, and human nature had an equally important role in his work, and their importance has usually 292  Cass. Dio 79.23.

144

chapter 2

been obscured beneath the deadening hand of criticism. Precisely as he was trained to do in the rhetorical schools, Dio used such arguments deliberately as a form of artistic proof (in both his speeches and his narrative) to emphasise those moral failings which the reader could be expected to recognise as a genuine problem. By locating these maxims within a value-system common to both himself and his audience, he filled his text with thoughts that were highly persuasive to the similarly-educated reader. In view of Cassius Dio’s education in the progymnasmata it is unsurprising that he approached the task of evaluating and writing the past through a transparently moral lens. Perhaps more surprising, however, is the direct relationship between moral sentiment and historical explanation. For all its universality, Dio’s moralising is occasionally quite astute. He viewed the ultimate cause of Cicero’s exile not through the lens of Caesar and Pompeius’ political needs, but rather through those flaws in his character—his insufferable boasting and excessive frankness of speech—which repelled even his former allies.293 Such criticisms of Cicero’s character were live even in the Late Republic—they are not an anachronism—, and they do not surprise, either. Cicero was perhaps lucky that the self-penned epic poem devoted to his consulship, which boasted o fortunatam natam me consule Romam,294 did not attain a wider currency. Dio’s moralising also prompts us to ask other questions about the ethical cases he brings into focus. Could the mutiny of Lucullus’ troops and, in consequence, the disarray of his Mithridatic campaign—which led to the lex Manilia of 66 BCE, and a further prestigious command for Pompeius—have been prevented if he had been milder? Might the perpetrators of the Sullan proscriptions have stayed their hand—so preventing much turbulence and discord in the longer term—if they had reflected on the possibility that their prosperity was temporary? By verbalising his evaluation of the ethical problems which underlay major military and political movements in a universal moral language—a mutinying army, the enfeeblement of Pompeius at the hands of his envious inferiors and his consequent entry into the Triumvirate, the exile of Cicero—the historian rendered his interpretation of these events more convincing to the ancient reader, not less.

293  Cass. Dio. 38.12.4–7. 294  Allen 1956. Note also Cicero’s infamous and repeated boasts to have saved the Republic, e.g. Rep. 1.7; Phil. 2.1.

Method

2

145

Three Problems, or Three Strengths?

We began this lengthy section on the composition of Dio’s speeches with three methodological issues. The first is the historian’s apparent tendency to compose formal orations as standalone set-pieces, divorced from their narrative and historical setting. Such a view has maintained (even in very recent work) that—as a general rule—Dio’s speeches could belong anywhere in the narrative. The logical result of this is that the historian did not place them into his work with particular care for his interpretative aims: they were rather ‘dropped’ into the diegesis wherever the relevant moral situation might occur, and may even be described as rhetorical exercises in and of themselves. The second concerns Dio’s relationship with earlier source-material. There has long been a consensus that the speeches in the Roman History are “pure fiction” or “purely rhetorical”: this implies that the historian invented them entirely, and indeed often invented without a particular concern for verisimilitude or a realistic portrayal of the characters who speak. Incidental similarities between Dio’s account and what we find in the contemporary evidence— parallels with the published works of Cicero, for instance—may on this view be dismissed as a schoolroom exercise in imitatio on Dio’s part, without suggesting that he directly consulted contemporary oratorical sources himself during his research. The schoolroom raises a third important problem. Dio’s advanced rhetorical education has long been recognised, yet our understanding of how that education shaped his approach to narrating and (importantly) explaining the past has been remarkably limited. His use of moralising sententiae—in both his speeches and his narrative—clearly represents the most obvious vestige of that training. This moralising language has traditionally found little favour: it has been taken often (too often) as representative of Dio’s banality, crudity, and poverty of imagination. All three of these issues are of fundamental importance in determining the role of speeches within the Roman History. How can we possibly take these compositions seriously into account as the main vehicle of Dio’s interpretation regarding the collapse of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime, if they are little more than fictitious rhetorical exercises assembled from commonplaces and banalities? By re-evaluating these three aspects of Dio’s method, this chapter proposes precisely the opposite conclusion. In most instances, the speeches of the Roman History have a direct relation to the narratives and contexts in which they are embedded. Even those which have long baffled enquiry, such as the

146

chapter 2

consolatio philosophiae of Cicero and Philiscus, concentrate on historical themes which are explicitly relevant to the career of the orator and articulate the causes of his exile (unusually, more directly than the narrative). Agrippa, too, may speak of an ideal res publica that does not exist in the historian’s narrative, but then that is precisely Cassius Dio’s point: conventional arguments for the preservation of the status quo had ceased to accord with the reality. In the totality of Books 3–56, there are in fact only two rhetorical episodes whose content bears vanishingly little relevance to the given historical setting: the speech of M. Curtius prior to his act of self-sacrifice, and the address of Augusus to the equites on marriage and procreation. These are obviously the exception rather than the rule, and yet bizarrely some recent studies have used them as evidence that speeches in Dio could belong anywhere in the narrative. This claim is not supported by the evidence, and wrongly takes a small part as representative of the whole. In the case-studies to follow we will see many more examples of Dio using analepsis or prolepsis within the speeches, reflecting on the causes of previous events and foreshadowing those to come. There is a consistent dialectical relationship between Dio’s speeches and Dio’s narrative. Moreover, we cannot escape the conclusion that all of the formal orations are fictitious and composed by the historian himself. Yet that does not necessarily suggest that they do not attain verisimilitude, nor that they shun a realistic portrayal of the given orator’s persona or strategy.295 In fact, I have suggested here that as a general rule, Dio used earlier source-material wherever it was available. He did so deliberately in order to create what seemed to him a faithful and credible version of a speech actually delivered in the history of the Republic. It is usually ignored, for example, that his recusatio imperii of Octavian in Book 53 in fact reproduces all the main aspects of Augustus’ self-justification in the Res Gestae. The lex Gabinia speeches reflect a host of genuine arguments for and against Pompeius’ power articulated in the first half of the 60s BCE by Cicero, Catulus, and Hortensius. Caesar’s harangue of the mutineers at Vesontio reproduces around half of the arguments attested in its model in the de Bello Gallico. The ‘philippic’ exchanges of Books 45–46 reproduce not only the actual points made by Cicero and Antonius against one another, but even Cicero’s idiolect and the specific rhetorical strategies used to make those exact points. This was not a coincidence, and the case made in the above is as follows. When Dio chose to include a speech, he first read existing or analogous earlier 295  So Bellissime 2016, rightly emphasising that it is verisimilitude, and not modern ideas of ‘historicity’, that Dio had in mind.

Method

147

versions, choosing contemporary material wherever possible. He meticulously noted down specific arguments, often in the order in which they appeared in the original, for reproduction in his own version. This did not involve a loss of intellectual ownership. The speeches are a display of Dio’s rhetorical craft. Moreover, he elaborated and expanded widely in pursuit of his own interpretative aims. Yet they were evidently based upon an argumentative framework that seemed to the historian genuine and verifiable through the available evidence. The result is a more realistic and faithful presentation of Republican oratory than is usually supposed. To reject this case requires positive evidence to the contrary. Dio’s ‘moralising’, too, is a more sophisticated component of his work than would at first appear. I hope to have shown here that the moral dimension extended to Dio’s very conception of history itself. That is not an accident, nor a peculiar failing on his part in particular. His ‘fable-structures’ reveal the continuing influence of a deeply moralistic rhetorical education upon the way in which he wrote, even down to the structuring of narrative episodes. To Dio, history was both a source of moral lessons and a process that could be explained through them. The progymnasmata, formalised by Dio’s time into a clearly-recognisable and well-defined curriculum, inculcated precisely that conception of history by combining—repeatedly—the memorisation, repetition, and redeployment of sententiae with the composition of gradually more complex narratives, often in dialogue with earlier historiographical texts. Dio will have been encouraged to write and argue morally, and to write and argue morally about the past. This inevitably exerted a profound impact upon the way he explained the decline of the Republic. His critique of δημοκρατία is a theoretical one, yet we have seen that it takes a moral basis grounded in human nature. Its fundament­al principles of competition among peers of equal status, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, were in his view impossible to sustain owing to man’s inherent disposition to quarrel with his equals and wish to rule others. Sententiae to this effect in the narrative directly contradict opposing sententiae in the speeches. At other points, moralising sententiae are not mere banalities but rather reveal fundamental factors of Dio’s history and its most important historical premises and themes: the need to bear good fortune moderately and the disasters that attend those who fail to do so; the perils of unbridled ambition and competition; and the uncertainty and mutability of success, which may exalt a Gracchus or Sulla to a great height only to desert them for their over-confidence. An elite reader of the 3rd century CE who had enjoyed an education similar to Dio’s would have found such explanations convincing and persuasive precisely because they were grounded in universal moral truths.

148

chapter 2

The speeches of the Roman History were well-suited to the historian’s interpretative purpose not in spite of his method, but because of it. In this chapter-section, we have seen Cassius Dio’s rhetorical formation in the round: his profound belief in the power of rhetoric and his suspicion of its abuse; his use of existing source-material for his speeches, often in as much detail as the evidence available to him would allow; and his use of moral forms of argument—developed throughout his rhetorical education—as a form of persuasive proof in itself. Having established these points, let us now turn to the four main explanatory axes which Dio develops in his speeches as the principal causes of the collapse of the Republic and its replacement by Augustus’ Principate: oratory, morality, institutions, and empire.

chapter 3

Oratory There is no greater wrong one can do than to lie to you. For in view of the fact that our political process is based upon speeches, how can we govern ourselves properly if those speeches are false? Demosthenes, On the False Embassy 184

∵ In 343 BCE, Demosthenes posed the above question to the Athenian assembly. The subject of his prosecution was his arch-rival, the statesman and orator Aeschines. The charge was παραπρεσβεία, or improper conduct as an ambassador: according to the writ, Aeschines had deliberately failed to represent Athens’ interests in negotiations with her enemy, Philip II of Macedon, and had even been bribed by him to persuade the assembly back home to accept his war-mongering without retaliation. Demosthenes was not the first to alert Athens to the inherent susceptibility of an open democracy to subversion by corrupt agents: half a century before, Thucydides and Plato connected the misleading power of dishonest speech explicitly to the workings of democracy. ‘Fake news’ is not a modern phenomenon. Half a millennium later, Cassius Dio’s Roman History took that critique and chose for its subject not a single politician but an entire political system. In a famous methodological statement—to which we will return in the conclusions to this chapter—Dio describes frank and free speech, or παρρησία, as a fundamental and essential component of the Roman Republic just as in any democratic (or quasi-democratic) state.1 He correctly understood what modern histories of the Roman Republic rightly emphasise: that public speech was one of the most important instruments of statecraft, the main driver of poli­tical events and, at a later time, the battleground upon which competing

1  Cass. Dio 53.16; cf. 47.39.2. Mallan 2016 provides excellent discussion of the centrality of παρρησία to Dio’s view of the Republican system; see also Polyb. 2.38.6 and 6.9.4–5 for an earlier expression of the importance of free speech to democratic government.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_004

150

chapter 3

visions of the res publica sought legitimation from a populus Romanus increasingly called upon to referee disputes within the aristocracy itself.2 Evidently much had changed since the twilight of Demosthenes’ democratic Athens and the zenith of the Roman Republic, yet Dio rightly perceived that the same basic question remained, tied inherently to the form of government rather than its specific conditions. How could a political process conducted through speeches ever be secure, if the speeches themselves were false? Cassius Dio explored the problem of oratory more fully than any surviving histor­ian of Rome. He explicitly and repeatedly linked the corruption of the political process to the corruption of the fora of public debate. In the Roman History this corruption is not immediate, but gradual. To Dio the changing character and use of oratory was, in short, a direct cause of the instability of the Roman Republic; conversely, Augustus’ reinvention of the role of public speech in poli­ tical life was one of the reasons for his survival. Set-piece formal orations were understandably the most effective and persuasive way of demonstrating that argument in real time, viva voce. Accordingly, the basic claim of this chapter is that to describe the speeches as sophistic or “epideictic ornamentation” tout court,3 necessarily ignores one of Cassius Dio’s most important and distinctive historical interpretations for the decline of the Republic and the success of Augustus’ regime. The Roman History explores not only the permutations of the Roman political order, but also—as an intrinsic part—the changing character of Roman oratory. Two basic approaches to describing the nature of that change are now current. The first—recent, but already influential—holds that Dio saw the development of oratory across Republican history quite straightforwardly as a process of degeneration.4 Rome declined from a “golden age of rhetoric”, in which oratory served the public good and speakers effected positive change as a result of the genuine debate of honest propositions, to a “dynasty mode” in the Late Republic. Here all public speech was either corrupt or ineffective: in relating speeches the historian’s purpose was no longer to explain the reasoning of key decisions, but rather to “portray rhetoric itself and how it functioned, what sorts of propaganda were effective, and how impotent more enlightened forms of discourse might be”.5 We may term this an ‘idealised’ view, common in Latin historiography: on such a view oratory, like virtually all other aspects

2  So Steel 2006, 2013; Morstein-Marx 2004. 3  Pace Fomin 2015, 67. 4  See Kemezis 2014, 104–112. 5  Kemezis 2014, 111.

Oratory

151

of Roman political culture, wilted from its best to its worst condition just as empire, wealth, and luxury bloomed.6 But a very recent reappraisal proposes a more sceptical approach. Dio did not create a simply idealistic picture of a virtuous ‘early Rome’, and describes Rome’s first centuries in a markedly more violent and pessimistic manner than Livy and Sallust for example. Accordingly he did not idealise oratory in the earlier res publica either.7 This position argues that speakers were always more or less prone to deceiving their audiences, and comparably successful in doing so regardless of the period; moreover, it is a mistake to think that all or even most statesmen in the earlier history of Rome were exclusively motivated by the public interest. In short, “here, as in other respects, Dio portrays the early Republic in a way which is less idealised and has more in common with his view of the Late Republic”.8 This ‘consistent’ view, according to which both Roman politics and Roman oratory were always liable to corruption and misdirection in roughly equal measure, is a much more radical departure on Dio’s part from the generally idealising trend of the Roman historiographical tradition. This first of three case-studies proposes a middle route between those two opposing approaches. As we have seen earlier, Cassius Dio was certainly aware of the ambiguous power of rhetoric and deeply suspicious of its abuse; he applied this theme to all portions of his Roman History, and not only to the Late Republic. He deliberately introduced this historical problem from the earliest parts of his work, so underlining its importance to his causal explanation to follow. As such, it is precisely by not idealising the early history of Rome that Dio is able to highlight one of his most important interpretative themes and historical premises.9 Yet we can hardly escape the conclusion that the relationship between oratory and politics becomes increasingly troubled as Dio’s story accelerates toward the collapse of the Republic, and the corrosion of oratory and political life more emphatically entwine. The historian’s focus becomes more cynical, and he develops narrative techniques to lay bare, with increasing irony, the deception and fraud of his speakers. Moreover (and startlingly), oratory disappears almost entirely from the Roman History with the death of Augustus in 14 CE. This fact, more than anything else, evinces the importance 6  The locus classicus for this trope is perhaps Sall. Cat. 6–13. 7  Rich 2019. 8  Rich 2019, 278. 9  See Lindholmer 2019 for a recent study of the ways in which Dio broke with a generally ‘idealising’ tradition of the earliest centuries of Rome’s history in a distinctive way, while still preserving some positive and favourable aspects of the tradition nevertheless. For further on the Roman History’s ‘realistic’ attitude to early Rome see Libourel 1974 and Lange 2019.

152

chapter 3

Dio attached to formal orations as an interpretative instrument for his history of the Republic: they were simply no longer needed for his purposes after the centrepiece of his work—the transition from Republic to Empire—10 had been completed. The first part of this case-study focusses on the fragmentary first two decads of the Roman History. In this portion, rich in speeches yet surprisingly under-studied, Dio consciously chose to explore the problem of oratory where his predecessors did not, although its worst effects are constrained by consensus surrounding the political process. In the second part we turn to his presentation of oratory in the Late Republic, beginning with Scipio Aemilianus in the 2nd century BCE and ending with the recusatio imperii of Octavian in Book 53. My particular focus here will be on the literary methods Dio uses to present a remarkable proportion—in fact, almost all—of his Late Republican speakers as corrupt and dishonest, and the political success that such manipulation achieves. Finally, the third part surveys Dio’s interpretation of the ‘restoration’ of political discourse under Augustus and with him the transition to a new (and permanent) rhetorical mode for the remainder of the Roman History. 1

Beginnings: Early Roman Oratory

For the earlier history of Rome, Dio by no means slavishly followed the historio­ graphical tradition. In fact, as far as speech is concerned he consciously and deliberately refashioned it in order to highlight the deceptive powers of rhe­ toric and to introduce public speech as an enduring historical problem in itself, whose danger and intensity will increase dramatically in the later Republican period. This emerges even at the beginnings of his history in Book 1. Our intention is to focus in the main on Dio’s Republican narrative, but two cases from his Regal Period will serve to illuminate the point. The first is the address of the equestrian Julius Proculus to the Quirites on the mysterious ‘apotheosis’ of Romulus. Here the Roman History diverged quite radically from the idealising course pursued by its predecessors. Dio’s account is a good deal more cynical (and realistic) than either Livy or Plutarch,11 and he shaped the role of speech within the episode accordingly. The basic factoids given in all three versions are as follows: having achieved much success in his wars against the neighbouring Latins, Rome’s first king came into disfavour 10  Recently, Madsen 2020 argues this point very persuasively; the transition from res publica to monarchy as such was evidently the central theme of the historian’s project. 11  Cf. John Lyd. Mag. 1.7; Livy 1.16; Plut. Rom. 27.3–28.3.

Oratory

153

with the patricians, to whom he granted only limited influence and prestige. After a successful bout of campaigning, Romulus convened a public meeting of some kind—either a session of the Senate in the Vulcanal or a review of the army in the Campus Martius. During the meeting a violent storm and eclipse of the sun occurred, in which Romulus mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. Of the three accounts of what followed, Livy’s is the most problematic. His saccharin version insists that the youths, horrified at the sight of the empty throne, were perfectly satisfied with the explanation given by the Senate: that Romulus had been snatched away to heaven by a whirlwind.12 When the brouhaha died down, all saluted Romulus as a god and prayed that he would be propitious to his people. Livy admits that some at the time may have suspected that the king had been torn limb from limb by the angry senators, but he rejects this theory as incredible.13 He prefers instead the other theory that Romulus indeed became a god, “which has been made current thanks to the admiration and concern felt for him at the time”.14 In Livy’s version, at this point an equestrian, Julius Proculus, ran before the assembly and delivered a speech assuring the people that Romulus had appeared before him as a god to reassure him that all was well. There is no suspicion of skullduggery: Proculus is described as a dignified and authoritative statesman who speaks out of concern for the people’s longing for their lost king and to calm their ire against the Senate.15 Now Plutarch’s version does admit of both possibilities: the biographer simply relates that some versions record Romulus’ murder by the Senate in the Vulcanal, and others suggest his apotheosis on the Campus Martius. But on Julius Proculus’ intervention, Plutarch is just as romantic as Livy. In the Life of Romulus, Proculus is described as “a man of the noblest birth, the most reputable character and a trusted intimate of Romulus himself”.16 Moreover, Plutarch writes that the people not only believed his reassuring speech but were even filled by divine inspiration to accept it.17 Dio’s account rejected the fairy-tale of Romulus’ apotheosis and declared unambiguously for his murder. It is preserved in a 6th-century Byzantine source which was evidently using the Roman History.18 He records that the Senate 12  Livy 1.16.2. 13  Livy 1.16.4. 14  Livy 1.16.5. 15  Livy 1.16.5. 16  Plut. Rom. 28.1. 17  Plut. Rom. 28.3. 18  See Maas 1992 for discussion of John Lydus’ historiographical project on the origins of Rome’s magistracies and the sources from which he drew, among them the Roman

154

chapter 3

detested Romulus because he behaved toward them in a tyrannical manner,19 all the while lavishing gifts upon the soldiers. Accordingly, the aristocrats surrounded the king while he was addressing them in the senate-house and tore him to pieces. As for the magical cloud, Dio writes that “they were favoured in their desire for concealment by a violent storm and an eclipse of the sun”.20 The storm is a helpful and coincidental accessory to the murder, nothing more. Romulus’ murderers were at this point uncertain of how to proceed: since the people were eagerly searching for their leader, ought they to confess their deed, or declare another king? As in all versions of the tale, Julius Proculus then appears (John. Lyd. Mag. 1.7): While the people were thus excited and were planning to take some action, a certain Julius Proclus, a knight, having arrayed himself as if he were just now returning from somewhere, rushed into their midst and cried: “Grieve not, Quirites! I have myself beheld Romulus ascending to the sky. He bade me tell you that he has become a god and is called Quirinus and also bade me admonish you by all means to choose someone as king without delay, and to continue to live under this form of government.” At this announcement all believed and were relieved of their disquietude. They straightway built a temple to Quirinus, and unanimously decided to continue to be ruled by a king; but here their harmony ended. If this Byzantine epitome is anything like its original in the Roman History, as is most likely—this episode is distinctively Dionean in its main elements—, then Dio presented Proculus’ speech as a deception. He omits any positive comment on the equestrian’s character or intentions and indeed suggests that these are dishonest. Note the conceit of Proculus’ intervention: he had altered his appearance to give the impression of spontaneity, “as if he were just now returning from somewhere”. Premeditation is obviously implied. Dio seems to have quite emphatically rejected the main aspects of a positive tradition and to have focussed instead on Romulus’ murder and the use of speech by the aristocracy to deceive the people of this fact. The speeches of Queen Tanaquil and Servius Tullius similarly focus on the themes of deception and demagoguery, this time in the context of a palace coup. The story given in Livy recounts that Tanaquil, an Etruscan noblewoman, History. For the importance of Dio’s early books in general as a source on Rome’s institutions and magistracies see Urso 2005. 19  Cass. Dio frg. 5.11. 20  John Lyd. Mag. 1.7.

Oratory

155

had migrated to Rome with her husband; after arriving the latter was renamed Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, gained great renown, and was elected the fifth king of Rome. Tanaquil and Priscus then took into their service a slave-boy, Servius Tullius, who seemed destined for greatness by a divine flame which surrounded him as he slept and yet did not harm him. The king accordingly married Servius Tullius to his daughter. After decades on the throne, Tarquinius Priscus finally fell prey to an assassination attempt and lay dying at the palace.21 For the next steps Livy and Cassius Dio give accounts that are consistent in their main details, but diverge in important respects. In the Ab Urbe Condita, Tanaquil approached Servius Tullius while his father-in-law, the king Priscus, lay wounded and dying (though still alive). She assiduously ordered her husband’s wounds to be cleaned and medicines prepared, in the hope of his salvation. Yet realising, reluctantly, the likelihood of the king’s death, she summoned Servius Tullius, and “begged him not to leave his father-in-law’s death unavenged, nor to abandon his mother-in-law Tanaquil to the scorn of her enemies”.22 The pair agree that Servius Tullius should assume the throne in the best interests of the state. Tanaquil, accordingly, addressed the people from her window. Tarquinius Priscus was wounded, but recovering; they would see him returned soon; in the meantime, the king had decided to enact a regency, surrendering his powers temporarily to his son-in-law Servius Tullius until such time as he recovered.23 Livy recognises that this is a deliberate deception, yet invites us to sympathise with the characters and their motives. Servius then consolidated his power through legitimate means, arranging marriage-alliances among the aristocracy and winning favour and renown among nobles and commons alike by his valour in war.24 Dio’s version is far more cynical and differs in three points from Livy’s. First, he notes Tanaquil’s self-interest with a detail absent from the Ab Urbe Condita. Prior to making her address to the people, Tanaquil exhorted Servius Tullius to seize power and promised him her support in this endeavour on the condition that her sons would get something out of the bargain: when they came of age, Servius should surrender the monarchy to them.25 Secondly, the situation of her speech is different. Leaning out of her window as in Livy, the queen harangues the populus (Zonar. 7.9):

21  Livy 1.34–1.40. 22  Livy 1.41.2. 23  Livy 1.41.4–5. 24  Livy 1.42. 25  Zonar. 7.9.

156

chapter 3

Do not be afraid! My husband is alive and you will probably see him soon. But for the time being he has entrusted public business to Tullius, so that he may regain his health in peace and that his condition may not get in the way of the business of government. Unlike in Livy, the Tanaquil of the Roman History has no residual hope of her husband’s survival and recovery: he is already dead. Tanaquil in the Ab Urbe Condita presents a ‘white lie’ in the interests of the state, with a continuing but faint hope that Priscus will rally; Dio’s queen, on the other hand, lies absolutely and outright while her husband is already going cold. Third and finally, in the Roman History the new king Servius Tullius cements his power not through marriage alliances and military valour, but by deceiving the people just as much as Tanaquil. Zonaras’ epitome, which followed Dio very closely, records the populism and demagoguery through which he consolidated his rule. He openly took possession of the kingdom, “at first putting forward the sons of Tarquinius Priscus as an excuse, claiming that he was the guardian of their royal office”.26 He sought the favour of the mob, even going so far as to promise citizenship to slaves—this astonishing detail is unique to Dio. Moreover, when the patricians became angry at him for his actions, he called an assembly of the people, “and by saying many alluring things to them, he so disposed them toward him as to vote him the kingdom outright and at once”.27 We cannot determine whether Dio structured the episode in precisely this way—i.e., merely reporting indirectly the speeches of Servius Tullius—, or whether Zonaras has reduced what was originally a set-piece formal oration in Roman History to a brief reportage.28 What is clear, however, is the historian’s consistent interest in deception and fraud, and John Rich is right to note recently that “if Dio did write an extended speech for Servius Tullius, it will have been as disingenuous as many of those in the extant [Late Republican] books”.29 The dangerous power of oratory was therefore on display even from the first book of the Roman History, and Dio used the Regal Period as an opportunity to rework famous speeches from the tradition to reflect that theme in an original way. Yet there is no trace of public debate as such being yet corrupted by dishonest speech (and, in consequence, corrupting political life), since for the Regal Period Dio does not seem to have staged debates. Controuersiae are nowhere 26  Zonar. 7.9.7. 27  Zonar. 7.9.7. 28  See Fromentin 2019 for a magisterial discussion of Zonaras’ handling and reworking of the formal orations he found in the original text of the Roman History, with further in Rich 2019 on his method of changing oratio recta into brief reportage. 29  Rich 2019, 233.

Oratory

157

to be found in the earliest fragments of the work. The first identifiable pair of set-piece speeches summarising the reasons for and against a political action is that of Tarquinius Superbus’ ambassadors and Lucius Junius Brutus in Book 3. We have already seen (in the previous chapter) that our historian seems to have taken Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities as the point of departure for the Brutus-Ambassador episode, and seems to replicate Dionysius’ overall staging as well as several of Brutus’ arguments. Yet Dio recalibrates the debates of ‘509’ BCE in two further ways which reflect his historical interests so fully that we may suggest these are his own addition to the tradition. First, Dio obviously gave the ambassadors of Tarquin a set-piece address in oratio recta where Dionysius did not, and evidently used this to made them speak in a manner the reader knows to be disingenuous and ironic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus merely reports what they are alleged to have said in oratio obliqua, and their claims—though doomed to fail—are not in themselves incredible or objectionable. They ask that Tarquinius be permitted to address himself to the Senate. Should anyone object to his account of his actions, he will voluntarily submit himself to the judgment of a popular trial. Depending upon such a judgement, he offers either to reign under a constitution of the citizens’ choosing, or to retire peacefully as an equal and private citizen. Finally, the ambassadors exhort the Senate to show clemency in allowing Tarquin to defend himself, and to view clemency both as right and pragmatic for their self-interest.30 Every component of the oration in Dionysius is a request: no false claims are made about the exiled king and the ambassadors are presented as unbiased intermediaries. In contrast, Dio’s Roman History took the opposite approach by characterising the emissaries as manipulative. Two of their claims are fortunately preserved. In the first of these, the ambassadors claim that “[Superbus’] father also ruled over you blamelessly”;31 in the second, that “you need take nothing else as proof that [Superbus] loves you except the mere fact that he wishes to live among you”.32 Both of these, and especially the second, will immediately strike the reader as false. Superbus’ father, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, is given a positive assessment by Dio at his first appearance, but he notes that his excellence did not continue,33 and he is characterised for the remainder as a scheming autocrat. The reader (and the depicted audience) are unlikely 30  Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.4. 31  Cass. Dio frg. 12.4. 32  Cass. Dio frg. 12.5a. 33  Cass. Dio frg. 9 for the positive character assessment. However, note the change in his character for the worse at 9.4.

158

chapter 3

to believe the ambassadors’ re-writing the history of Priscus’ reign in this way. More obviously, if (as seems incontrovertible) Dio followed the established tradition of Tarquinius Superbus’ tyranny, then the protestations of his love for the Roman people must entirely contradict the actual facts of the narrative. It is likely that much of the oration unfolded in this manipulative way.34 Such uncreditable claims will have been recognisably untrue to any reader, and Dio evidently chose to insert dramatic irony into the staging of the debate where his predecessors did not. Secondly, Brutus’ response explicitly highlights the danger of oratory to poli­ tical decision-making. Again, no trace of this detail is in Dio’s likely historiographical model for the speech, and it is probable that he devised it himself to articulate one of his most important historical themes. We have briefly mentioned this passage in the previous chapter; let us return to it now to underscore one of the Roman History’s most central explanatory axes. A preserved fragment of his address, seemingly from the peroration, admonishes (frg. 12.10): And as for your future course, take as evidence what they have actually done, rather than being deceived by the lies they tell while supplicating you. Anyone can make up well-chosen words, but their awful deeds arise from their real intentions. Therefore, base your judgement on what a man has done, not on what he says he will do. καὶ περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐξ ὧν ἔπραξαν τεκμήρασθε, ἀλλὰ μὴ ἐξ ὧν πλάττονται ἱκετεύοντες ἀπατηθῆτε· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἀνόσια ἔργα ἀπὸ γνώμης ἀληθοῦς ἑκάστῳ γίγνεται, συλλαβὰς δ᾽ ἄν τις εὐπρεπεῖς συμπλάσειεν· καὶ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ὧν ἐποίησέ τις, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἀφ᾽ ὧν φησι ποιήσειν, κρίνετε. It may be coincidental—and perhaps no more than this—that Brutus’ warning seems to have a programmatic and methodological force within the Roman History. As we shall see in the next section, one of Dio’s favoured techniques was to create a direct and explicit antithesis between what his actors say in the formal orations, and what they do in the factual narrative. He appears already to have been experimenting with this technique through the false claims made by Tarquinius Superbus’ ambassadors in Book 3, and such contrasts between speeches and narrative will be a regular feature of the Late Republican books. It is perhaps too neat to suggest that Brutus’ exhortation is a ‘key’ or ‘cipher’ of sorts, given by the historian to his reader as an instruction on how 34  So Rich 2019, 239: “the embassy’s speeches were probably the first of Dio’s set pieces of dramatic irony”.

Oratory

159

the speeches ought to be read in his Republican narrative: on such a reading Brutus’ warning is addressed not really to the depicted audience, but to the historian’s. If it is, then this suggests a quite remarkable subtlety on Dio’s part and a high degree of metapoetic sophistication. It is certainly intriguing that this controuersia represents the only speech-act in the Roman History in which a speaker warns the audience that his opponent is lying. Although set-piece debates and dishonest speeches will be very frequent indeed in Books 36–53, the participants in these debates never criticise their opponents’ mendacity: it is almost an accepted aspect of political life and too obvious for comment. At this turning-point in the history of Rome and the beginning of his Republican narrative, Dio marked out oratory and its potential misdirection as a central theme. As we move into a new rhetorical mode—an age of debate, emblematic of a true δημοκρατία—, the Brutus-Ambassador exchange highlights the risks that the pollution of such debates will pose to political decision-making, and perhaps serves as a guide to the reader’s interpretation of speeches in the Roman History in general also. (S)he should judge Dio’s speakers not on the basis of what they say, but in relation to what they do. The case is not, however, that all oratory in the earlier portions of Dio’s work is either corrupt or ineffective in a way comparable to the Late Republican books. Quite the opposite. Note, importantly, that the deception of the emissaries from Tarquinii does not attain its object, precisely because a staunch defender of the res publica—Brutus—is apt to speak a political language that accords with the reality and persuades his listeners. This stands in marked contrast to all later attempts to uphold the Republican system (including Catulus, Cicero, and Agrippa), which as we shall see in the next section are ultimately feeble and in vain. Moreover, there are abundant examples of Roman statesmen (and women!) speaking, as Adam Kemezis has rightly pointed out, from an apparently genuine concern for the public good.35 Curiously, the early compositions tend to be far shorter and less rhetorically elaborate than those of Books 36 onward. It is hard to escape the sense of a certain rustic simplicity and brevity—of honest advice unobscured by excessive rhetorical artifice. The finest expression of this bucolic virtue is the private discussion between Pyrrhus and Gaius Fabricius Luscinus.36 Certain cases prove that this is no mere accident of transmission, but was a deliberate choice on the historian’s part. Take, for example, Menenius Agrippa’s 35  Kemezis 2014, 104–112. 36  See Coudry 2019, 147–153 for a study of the exemplary nature of Fabricius’ dialogue with Pyrrhus and the traditional Roman virtues it is intended to symbolise, and Rich 2019, 251–255 for comparison between Dio and earlier models for the speech.

160

chapter 3

speech to the plebs during the so-called First Secession of 494 BCE. The plebeians, infuriated at their patrician creditors, had seceded to the Aventine (or the Sacred Mount), so withdrawing themselves in effect from the populus Romanus until such time as their grievances should be resolved. In response the patrician Menenius Agrippa addressed them, recounting the fable of The Stomach and the Limbs to demonstrate that just as the ‘idle’ stomach gives energy to the ‘active’ members, so do the patricians give benefit to the plebeians.37 He attained his object: the masses were convinced to repair to their homes and to resume their (for now) subordinate position in the res publica. The tradition of Agrippa’s speech was an old one, perhaps as old as formal Roman historiography itself:38 Livy apologises for including it given the “rustic and crude” character of Agrippa’s manner of speaking (prisco ac horrido modo dicendi).39 Its very fame may have left Dio little room to manoeuvre, but as we have seen he was hardly opposed to innovating or modifying what he found in his sources. Unusually, the version given by Dio’s epitomator Zonaras is here (and only here) longer than the historian’s original; this is a safe basis for assuming that the short and vividly simple oration in the direct fragments is indeed preserved more or less complete, since Zonaras never expands in this way elsewhere.40 The Punic Wars likewise provided opportunities to idealise Roman valour and self-sacrifice. The speech of Regulus is a notable example to survive both in a few fragments of Dio’s original and in an abbreviated but coherent version in Zonaras’ epitome. Marcus Atilius Regulus, consul in 256 BCE, had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians following his defeat. A few years after his capture, his captors instructed him to return to Rome—under a solemn oath that he would travel back to Carthage after the completion of his mission—in order to negotiate a truce or prisoner exchange. Accordingly Regulus and the other Carthaginian ambassadors arrived at Rome, and were met by the Senate outside the city walls. In Zonaras’ version—whose wording will in his usual practice have closely followed Dio’s, but no doubt shortened—Regulus makes two statements. In the first he insists that although his body is a Carthaginian chattel, his spirit is entirely Roman; he therefore dissuades the Senate from any negotiated settlement with Carthage.41 In the second, Regulus persists in

37  Cass. Dio frg. 16.10–11. 38  Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.83.2 notes the antiquity of the tale; Ogilvie 1965, 312–313 suggests that it originated in Roman historiography with Fabius Pictor. For a comparison of this speech with Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ version, see Fromentin 2016. 39  Livy 2.32.8. 40  Cf. Zonar. 7.14.8–9. 41  Zonar. 8.15.2.

Oratory

161

his advice, acknowledging with grim but patriotic resolve that it will mean his death (Zonar. 8.15.4–5):42 After these remarks Regulus stated also the reasons for which he favoured rejecting the proposals, and added: “I know, to be sure, that manifest destruction awaits me, for it is impossible to keep them from learning the advice I have given; but even so, I esteem the public advantage above my own safety. If any one shall say, ‘Why, then, do you not run away, or stay here?’ he shall be told that I have sworn to them to return, and I will not transgress my oaths, not even when they have been given to enemies. My reasons for this attitude are various, but the principal one is that if I abide by my oath, I alone shall suffer disaster, but if I break it, the whole city will be at risk.” Regulus’ resigned address is not the first of its type in the Roman History. Final words before their self-sacrifice in service of the state are also given by Marcus Curtius prior to his leap into a chasm in the Forum,43 and by the consul of 321 BCE, Spurius Postumius Albinus, who himself advocates that he should be handed over to the Samnites as retribution for a repudiated oath.44 John Rich is right to note the importance of the themes explored in these orations—duty and heroic selflessness—within the Roman historiographical tradition and so Dio’s conscious interaction with it.45 Yet it is also important to emphasise that no speeches of this type could possibly occur in the historian’s Late Republican narrative. In the later books, oratory has almost no capacity to serve the public good whatsoever; certainly no statesman will propose a course of action ruinous to himself but beneficial to the res publica. The speeches of Brutus, Agrippa, Fabricius, and Regulus illustrate an entirely different oratorical culture absent from the later portions of Dio’s work. Dio’s presentation of speech in the earlier history of Rome is neither a golden age of deliberative oratory nor yet a cynical exploration of the corruption of political debate by deception and fraud. The former would be inconsistent with his generally realistic, non-idealising vision of the early history of 42  Dio’s account of the speech-episode begins at frg. 43.26–27, but at this point the text breaks off. Possible fragments attributed by Schwartz 1899, 1718 to Regulus’ speech are frg. 43.13–15, but see Rich 2019, 258n.99 for the limitations of this view; it may only be a guess. 43  Cass. Dio frg. 30.2–4; Zonar. 7.25.1–9. Oakley 1998, 99 notes the vacuity of the speech, but see Rich 2019, 244–245 for a more nuanced view on the importance of the speech for underlining Dio’s central historical themes. 44  Cass. Dio frg. 36.17a, 36.17b, 36.18a; Zonar. 7.26.14–15. 45  Rich 2019, 260.

162

chapter 3

Rome, which broke in many aspects with the Latin historiographical tradition and is preferable to it; the latter Dio will reserve for his Late Republican books. What the first two decads offer instead is a moderate and balanced illustration of the potential impact of public speech upon decision-making. There are conspicuous demonstrations of excellence; speeches are, if not more numerous, then certainly shorter than those of the first century BCE;46 several are articulated with a rustic brevity and vivid simplicity; the public interest does prevail. Yet this portrayal did not prevent Dio from introducing the moral ambiguity and deceptive power of rhetoric from the first books of his Roman History. Explorations of this theme—the orations of Julius Proculus, Tanaquil, Tarquinius Superbus’ emissaries, and Brutus—are clustered together in an arresting and meaningful way. Like a composer establishing the motif in the first movement of a concerto, Dio deliberately introduced and repeated the theme of oratory’s ambiguous power in the first three books of his text. These speeches thus assume a programmatic function within the Republican narrative of the Roman History as a whole—and foreshadow the decline to come. 2

Decline: Dynasty and Deception

In his account of the Third Punic War—leading to the final defeat and destruction of Carthage—Dio perhaps staged only two major set-piece occasions of speech. Both are ostensibly about the conflict with Rome’s mortal enemy, yet both also mark a critical turning-point in the Roman History and an important foreshadowing of the decline to follow. The first was a speech of Scipio Aemilianus.47 In 148 BCE, Aemilianus canvassed for the consulship of the next year. The appointment was both irregular and unconstitutional: the young but already decorated military tribune was below the age requirement for the office and had not even held a position in the cursus honorum yet. In the fragment 46  For lists of the speeches in the first twenty books of the Roman History, see (in ascending order of completeness): Schwartz 1899, 1718; Kemezis 2014, 106–107n.35; Rich 2019. Cf. also de Franchis 2016, 203–204 for comparison with Livy. Kemezis 2014, 106 suggests that orations in the first two decads tend to be “more numerous and to have been arranged in more complex clusters of debate”; those of the Late Republican portions were in contrast sparser, but longer. Contra Rich 2019 (esp. 275–276). 47  The attribution of the fragments of this speech (Cass. Dio frg. 70.2–3) to an oration of Scipio Aemilianus is that of Boissevain 1895, 313–314, following Melber. Urso 2013, 7n.1 and Rich 2019, 269–270 propose on the basis of contextual clues that the fragments in fact relate to an oration of Scipio Africanus to his appointment to the Spanish command of 210 BCE. I have here preferred to follow Boissevain’s suggestion, but the reading I make of Dio’s text here functions in either case.

Oratory

163

of his oration that remains, Aemilianus argues that youth should not be a bar to office. Provided he has an excellent nature, good fortune, and proper judgement from the beginning, the young man will always do well; simpletons, on the other hand, will always fail regardless of their age. No fool will ever turn out wise, nor any simpleton sensible; the passing of the years makes no difference. He closes by stating that it is not length of years but rather innate excellence that the people should use as their test in conferring honours, and especially positions of military command.48 Aemilianus’ arguments won the day: he was elected and brought the Third Punic War to a successful conclusion in the following year. Rome’s final victory over Carthage in 146 BCE invited a speech of a very different kind, this time a multi-part controuersia debating the fate of Carthage in the Senate. It now survives only in Zonaras’ abridgement, yet the level of detail and specificity suggest an oration of some length and import in Dio’s original (Zonar. 9.30.7–8): Cato expressed the opinion that they ought to raze the city and blot out the Carthaginians, whereas Scipio Nasica still advised sparing them. And thereupon the Senate became involved in a great dispute and contention, until someone declared that “for the Romans’ own sake, if for no other reason, it must be considered necessary to spare them. With this nation for antagonists they would be sure to practise valour instead of turning aside to pleasures and luxury; whereas, if those who were able to compel them to practise warlike pursuits should be removed from the scene, they might deteriorate from want of practice, through a lack of worthy competitors.” καὶ ὁ μὲν Κάτων κατασκάψαι τὴν πόλιν καὶ τοὺς Καρχηδονίους ἐξαφανίσαι δεῖν ἐγνωμάτευσεν, ὁ δὲ Νασικᾶς φείσασθαι τῶν Καρχηδονίων καὶ ἔτι συνεβούλευε. κἀντεῦθεν εἰς ἀντιλογίαν πολλὴν προήχθη καὶ ἀμφισβήτησιν τὸ συνέδριον, ἕως ἔφη τις ὅτι εἰ καὶ δι’ οὐδὲν ἕτερον, ἀλλά γε ἑαυτῶν ἕνεκα φείσασθαι αὐτῶν ἀναγκαῖον νομίζοιτο ἄν, ἵν’ ἀνταγωνιστὰς αὐτοὺς ἔχοντες ἀρετὴν ἀσκῶσι, καὶ μὴ πρὸς ἡδονὰς καὶ τρυφὴν τράπωνται, τῶν δυναμένων αὐτοὺς καταναγκάζειν εἰς ἄσκησιν τῶν πολεμικῶν περιαιρεθέντων, καὶ χείρους ὑπ’ ἀνασκησίας γένωνται, ἀξιοχρέους ἀντιπολέμους μὴ ἔχοντες. The familiar scholarly obsession with Dio’s imitatio Thucydidis might insist that the historian is here aping the famous Mytilene Debate or the Melian Dialogue, but this is a mistake. What the Roman History has instead in mind is 48  Cass. Dio frg. 70.2–3.

164

chapter 3

the Sallustian-Tacitean tradition of metus hostilis, attributing the beginnings of Rome’s moral decline to the disappearance of capable threats to its power. Now the debate (if it happened at all) cannot have unfolded in the manner presented here: for a start, Cato the Elder had died three years earlier and was probably unavailable for comment. It is also unusual that the emphatic advice to spare Carthage comes from an unnamed orator. So far as we can judge from what remains, this was the only set-piece speech delivered by an an­onymous individual in the Roman History. Specific orators are named; the historian could have attributed these sentiments to Scipio Nasica if he wished, yet did not. These peculiarities mark out the debates of 146 BCE on the fate of Carthage as especially important: they mark a turning-point in Dio’s history of the Republic, foreshadowing the proliferation of greed, envy, and ambition to come. The anonymous senator might as well be the historian himself.49 Both of these set-pieces contrast sharply with the presentation of public speech in the extant Late Republican books in the direct tradition (Books 36–53). For the Carthage debate, it is remarkable that nothing compar­ able to the debates of 146 BCE will occur again in the Roman History; genuine deliberation over the proper, just, and advantageous course of action in Rome’s empire disappears entirely from this point. In the Late Republican books, the empire will more or less serve as the playground of the major dynasts, and debates surrounding it will simply be commandeered by them or their cronies. For Scipio Aemilianus’ speech, on the other hand, the oration on his consulship and command—and the illustration of his character in general—serves as the direct antonym of Pompeius and the lex Gabinia debates of Book 36. Although it has been recently proposed, there is absolutely nothing in the fragments of Scipio Aemilianus’ oration to suggest that he is speaking out of self-interest in the pursuit of δυναστεία, or extraordinary and extra-legal personal power.50 There is also no trace of him attempting to deceive his audience. Indeed, both of these routine faults of public speech in Dio’s Late Republic—dynasty and deception—are actually ruled out in the historian’s character-summary of Aemilianus, which in the original will have occurred shortly before his oration. Dio describes Aemilianus as a uniformly excellent and virtuous man. He always understood the best course of action, thanks 49  For Dio’s use of the ‘anonymous senator’ as a turning-point, or marker, in the decline of the Republic, see Simons 2009, 177–186. 50  Rich 2019. See Freyburger-Galland 1996 for the most detailed survey of the historian’s various definitions for δυναστεία; further comments in Kuhn-Chen 2002 191–195. Its importance as a structuring device is rightly shown by Kemezis 2014, who argues that δυναστεία is in itself a “mode” or period of the Republican narrative of the Roman History, marked by factional interests and internecine conflict.

Oratory

165

to his careful examination of all matters. Even when faced with crisis—as Fortune’s wheel so often dictates in war—he was always prepared, for he never trusted recklessly to luck. He executed his plans like a general, but when the time came for action, he threw himself wholeheartedly into them just as a commanded soldier. He rightly recognised the instability of human affairs, and planned accordingly.51 In short (frg. 70.4.9): Because of these qualities, and especially because of his moderation and his amiability, among all men only he—or at least, he more than most—was never envied by his peers, nor anyone else. He preferred to make himself the equal of his inferiors, no higher than his equals, and the subordinate of his superiors. Accordingly he passed beyond the reach of jealousy, which is the one downfall of great men. τοιγαροῦν μόνος ἀνθρώπων ἢ καὶ μάλιστα διά τε ταῦτα καὶ διὰ τὴν μετριότητα τήν τε ἐπιείκειαν οὔτ̔᾽̣ ὑπὸ τῶν ὁμοτίμων οὔθ᾽ ὑπό τινος ἐφθονήθη. ἴσος μὲν γὰρ τοῖς ὑποδεεστέροις, οὐκ ἀμείνων δὲ τῶν ὁμοίων, ἀσθενέστερος δὲ τῶν μειζόνων ἀξιῶν εἶναι, κρείττων καὶ τοῦ φθόνου τοῦ μόνου τοὺς ἀρίστους ἄνδρας λυμαινομένου ἐγένετο. All these virtues are the direct antithesis of Pompeius’ vices. In moderation and ambition Aemilianus knew his place; Pompeius wished to be second to none.52 Aemilianus was so excellent and humble that he never fell prey to envy; Pompeius was repeatedly marred by it.53 Aemilianus never so trusted in his good fortune as to be surprised by a sudden reverse; Pompeius reckless over-confidence made him believe himself untouchable, and he was destroyed by it.54 Deception and δυναστεία—present but rare components of earlier Republican political culture—were not yet the norm, but by Pompeius’ time would become so. In Dio’s Roman History, oratory itself is one of the main vehicles of that change. It becomes the obedient servant of autocratic ambitions and, therefore, a principal cause of the weakness of the Republican regime. Schemes to mislead the people are universally successful; conversely, honest but misguided attempts to preserve the status quo consistently fail in their efforts. Speech, necessarily, motivates action; it follows that in a political system based 51  Cass. Dio frg. 70.4–9. 52  Cf. Cass. Dio 41.54.1. 53  Cf. e.g. Cass. Dio 35.26.2–3; 37.50.5–6; Bekk. Anecd. 157, 30. 54  Cf. Cass. Dio 42.1–2.

166

chapter 3

upon speeches, the resulting actions will be corrupt where the speeches themselves are also. Dramatic irony represents one of Dio’s most important techniques for illuminating this degradation of oratory in the final decades of the libera res publica. It functions in two ways. First, the historian arranges his story in such a way as to ensure that the narrative undercuts the speeches, so undermining the credibility of the depicted orator. We have already seen this technique at work in the previous section, where the claims of Tarquinius Superbus’ ambassadors—to love the Roman people and so forth—are directly contradicted by the preceding diegesis. For the Late Republican narrative, however, these techniques become far more frequent and important. This often takes the form of a narrative ‘preface’: a long phrase immediately before the beginning of an oration, giving the historian’s interpretation of the orator’s aims in speaking, his private thoughts, and the preparations he has made in advance. Secondly, on a more granular level Dio weaves dramatic irony throughout the Late Republican speeches by deploying a recurring set of moral ideas. Pious (and insincere) exhortations to retain important elements of traditional republicanism—for example, the need to keep the selfish interests of the individual (τα ἴδια) separate from deliberations about the common interests of the state (τα κοινά)—are common in formal orations of this type. Such hypocrisy reflects an important and genuinely historical aspect of Late Republican oratory: the manipulation of patriotic arguments conventional to the status quo by those who seek to subvert it. These ‘audience referent’ moral ideas, ostensibly shared by the depicted audience but not by the historian himself and his readers, additionally demonstrate Dio’s awareness of familiar tropes in Republican oratory and the effectiveness of his prosopopoeia. Dio’s ‘narrative prefaces’ for the lex Gabinia debate of 67 BCE are especially artful, and both Aulus Gabinius (as rogator of the law) and Pompeius (as its beneficiary) receive detailed summaries of their intentions prior to speaking. The tenor of their speeches is, of course, entirely inconsistent with the ‘truth’ presented in the voice of the authorial narrator. The former, he writes, proposed the law either at Pompeius prompting or because he wanted to ingratiate himself to him; in any case he certainly did not do so because of his concern for the common good, as he was an utter reprobate in every way.55 After exploring the possibility of prior collusion between the pair—this idea merits serious consideration, since speakers in the contio would often have time to prepare—56 Dio unveils Pompeius’ tactic: dissimulatio. In having Pompeius 55  Cass. Dio 36.23.4. 56  So Steel 2006, 4–7.

Oratory

167

disingenuously refuse power in order to secure it all the more easily, Dio captures accurately what we know of Pompeius’ oratorical persona. Historically, the recusatio imperii or insincere refusal of honours was a favoured Pompeian trick, especially in the contio where he could compensate for his rather average oratory by making direct appeals to the people and advertising his military achievements.57 To Dio’s credit, all these elements are present in Book 36. In keeping, then, with this persona, Dio underlines Pompeius’ intentions in the same manner as of Gabinius (36.24.5–6): Pompeius thoroughly lusted after the command, and because of his own ambition and the enthusiasm of the throng, he already regarded the position not so much as an honour as the failure to win it a disgrace. Further, because he saw the opposition of the aristocracy he wished to seem forced to accept it. For he always affected not at all to desire what he really did desire; and he pretended more than ever now, because of the envy that would follow if he willingly sought the command, and the glory if he should be deemed the most worthy even ‘against his will’. ὁ Πομπήιος ἐπιθυμῶν μὲν πάνυ ἄρξαι, καὶ ἤδη γε ὑπό τε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φιλοτιμίας καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ δήμου σπουδῆς οὐδὲ τιμὴν ἔτι τοῦτο, ἀλλ᾽ ἀτιμίαν τὸ μὴ τυχεῖν αὐτοῦ νομίζων εἶναι, τὴν δὲ ἀντίταξιν τῶν δυνατῶν ὁρῶν, ἠβουλήθη δοκεῖν ἀναγκάζεσθαι. ἦν μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἄλλως ὡς ἥκιστα προσποιούμενος ἐπιθυμεῖν ὧν ἤθελε· τότε δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον, διά τε τὸ ἐπίφθονον ἄν γε ἑκὼν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀντιποιήσηται, καὶ διὰ τὸ εὐκλεὲς ἄν γε καὶ ἄκων ὥς γε καὶ ἀξιοστρατηγητότατος ὢν ἀποδειχθῇ, ἐπλάττετο. Dio here lays repeated emphasis not only on Pompeius’ selfish aims—his personal desires (ἐπιθυμία) and ambition (φιλοτιμία)—but also on his mendacity (προσποιούμενος, ἐπλάττετο). We will discuss the centrality of such selfish desires to the Roman History more fully in the following chapter. This manipulation is, importantly, presented as necessary for the dynast to achieve such aims without incurring envy (τὸ ἐπίφθονον) and to acquire greater renown (τὸ εὐκλεὲς). Dio’s Pompeius recognises that necessity, and modifies his strategy accordingly. The historian felt it important to guide the reader toward the 57  See Vervaet 2010 on Pompeius as the model for Augustus’ later use of the tactics of recusatio imperii and dissimulatio; see also Rich 2010. Van der Blom 2011 has made a special study of the general’s performances in the contio, emphasising his generally lacklustre oratorical talent but effective use of his military achievements and direct appeals to the people.

168

chapter 3

correct interpretation of the speech to follow, providing the requisite critical lens to view the importance of deceptive speech as a cause of Pompeius’ poli­ tical success. What follows is a string of statements which the reader knows from these prefatory remarks to be false. Pompeius, first, insists that it is inappropriate that one person be continually invested with power, and that the Quirites must confer offices upon others as well. He furthermore deflects accusations of cupido dominandi from himself by putting the responsibility for his growing political might down to the “insatiability” of the people for his services (ἀπλήστως).58 These, obviously, are postures. Pompeius then briefly relays his military achievements in Sicily and Africa against the forces of C. Marius. These are used by Dio’s Pompeius as disingenuous proof that he has endured many hardships, many dangers, and is in short worn out in both body and soul from a lifetime’s devoted service to the people.59 We may ask how fully these claims in the speech are contradicted by the ‘truth’ of the preceding narrative. Frustratingly, Cassius Dio’s account of these campaigns is lost, aside from one fragment detailing Pompeius’ earliest ventures in Italy.60 This is the only narrative material we have to compare to this section of the recusatio on the speaker’s early military career. Fortunately, what little remains gives us a reliable idea of how Dio will have treated Pompeius’ rise to power. In the fragment, Dio records that although he had not yet attained manhood, before fighting for Sulla’s Sicilian and African campaigns Pompeius first gathered a force of his own at Picenum and “set up his own petty lordship there” (δυναστείαν ἰδίαν συνίστη). The choice of the term δυναστεία in Pompeius’ first appearance in the Roman History is obviously significant. It will characterise his career throughout the text, not just here at his first appearance. It is no great stretch of the imagination to posit that Dio presented the early campaigns of his Pompeius in Sicily and Africa in the same fashion as they began and as the rest of his career is presented: as a quest for δυναστεία. Having read this account, then, Dio’s reader would probably be struck by the polarity between Pompeius’ own patriotic spin on his earliest campaigns and the unflattering narrative a few books before. Pompeius then asserts in his list of his military achievements that “I alone was deemed worthy to undertake the campaign against Sertorius, when no one else was willing or able to undertake it”.61 This is cited as further ‘proof’ of his 58  Cass. Dio 36.25.1. 59  Cass. Dio 36.25.2–3. 60  Cass. Dio frg. 107.1. 61  Cass. Dio 36.25.3.

Oratory

169

exhaustion from a lifetime’s devoted service to Rome. Again, this is a posture. As with Sicily and Africa, Dio’s record of the Sertorian War in Hispania is lost, and so comparison between speech and narrative is impossible. We know from Plutarch, however, that others certainly were willing and able to undertake the Sertorian War, and that Pompeius was hardly elected to the honour unwillingly as he is made to falsify in Dio. Plutarch records that Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius was already engaged against Sertorius in 76 BCE. But Pompeius, desiring a proconsulship of his own in Hispania, remained hard by Rome with an army and refused to disband it even when ordered to, offering excuses not to relinquish it and remaining by the city under arms. In the wake of Sulla’s comparatively recent march on Rome, the Senate read the threat and finally gave him the command he desired.62 For Dio not to include so important and controversial an episode in the general’s meteoric rise to power seems to me quite incredible; we can therefore imagine that Pompeius’ claims will again have directly contradicted the earlier narrative. A more obvious indicator of Pompeius’ deceit lies in the irony which the historian applies to his statements. In the closing section of his recusatio, Dio’s speaker accuses the Quirites of “pretending” to show concern for his safety: “for if any of you persist in this demand, remember that all positions of power cause envy and hatred; and although you do not care about this fact—it is shameful that you pretend to (προσποιεῖσθαί)—nevertheless, it would be most grievous to me!”.63 The accusation of pretence from one who “always affected (προσποιούμενος) not at all to desire what he really did desire” is absurd, and deliberately so. Dio has his Pompeius ironically project the moral failings of his own rhetorical style onto his audience in order to render more clear his explanation of the moral ambiguity of Late Republican political oratory. Gabinius’ rogatio sustains the farce. I have already outlined the historian’s narrative preface, which stressed the turpitude of the tribune’s character and his prior collusion with Pompeius. Building upon that foundation, the speech continues Dio’s demonstration of the success of fraud as a political instrument in the Late Republic. It opens with another ironic twist: Gabinius observes that “Pompeius’ behaviour in this matter is worthy of his character: he neither seeks the command nor accepts it when it is given to him”.64 Pompeius’ actions here, Dio has already informed the reader in the narrative preface, certainly were worthy of his character: he was an habitual liar.

62  Plut. Pomp. 17.3. Vervaet 2010 reads his actions as a direct threat. 63  Cass. Dio 36.26.1. 64  Cass. Dio 36.27.1.

170

chapter 3

As in Pompeius’ recusatio, so here does Gabinius’ exhortation spell out a number of patriotic falsehoods. A good man—an ἀγαθός ἀνὴρ like Pompeius, for example—does not desire offices, and so the people should reward the general’s humility by granting him an honour he does not request. They must do so, he continues, in pursuit “not of what is gratifying to Pompeius, but what is of benefit to the state”.65 We are already aware from Dio’s introductory remarks that Gabinius, the κάκιστος ἀνήρ, is in no position to lecture on the duties of the ἀγαθός ἀνήρ. Dio has also spelled out that the tribune, who now instructs the people not to attempt to gratify Pompeius (κεχαρισμένον), may himself have proposed the law precisely in order to gratify him (χαρίσασθαί οἱ ἐθελήσας). These minute verbal contrasts between speech and narrative are soph­isticated, and emphasise the ease with which conventional arguments for the public good may be imitated in pursuit of individual political success in Dio’s Late Republic. Despite Catulus’ valiant intervention—discussed in the previous chapter— the lex Gabinia was ratified. The cadre of genuinely patriotic deliberative oratory epitomised in Catulus’ dissuasio fails to persuade, leaving open the way for dynasts such as Pompeius and Gabinius to mislead the people through dishonest rhetoric and to seize further δυναστεία. Cassius Dio was the only historian to form that interpretation in this case. His is the only one of our several accounts of the lex Gabinia to present the moral corruption of Pompeius’ and Gabinius’ oratory as the cause of their successful grasp at control over the state. Plutarch makes no mention of Pompeius’ dissimulatio and says nothing of his collusion with the tribune; neither, furthermore, is given a speech.66 Appian’s account is similarly brief, preserving only the details of the law and obliterating Gabinius’ role altogether.67 Velleius Paterculus records only the circumstances of the case and Catulus’ objections, but says nothing of Pompeius’ and Gabinius’ deception;68 the same is the case in Valerius Maximus.69 Uniquely, Cassius Dio alone chose to explore the problem of the moral probity of rhetoric in the events of 67 BCE, and to emphasise its causative role in the success of experiments with autocracy. We should not be too surprised if Dio was correct about the extent to which Pompeius employed such tactics as dissimulatio before the people to make the case for his extraordinary position within the state. 65  Cass. Dio 36.27.2–3. 66  Plut. Pomp. 70. 67  App. Mith. 94. 68  Vell. Pat. 2.31–32. 69  Val. Max. 8.15.9.

Oratory

171

The speeches of Caesar deploy similar techniques of dramatic irony to highlight the dictator’s intent to deceive, and to illustrate the success of such strategies in the debased political culture of the Late Republic. Like the lex Gabinia debates, Dio’s version of Caesar’s harangue to his mutinying troops at Vesontio begins with prefatory remarks which lift the veil on his true intentions; moreover, both the Vesontio speech and Caesar’s address to the Senate after his victory at Pharsalus boast claims that are directly contradicted by the preceding narrative. To turn to the first of these, Dio deliberately establishes the dramatic context for Caesar’s oration in such a way as to exaggerate his duplicity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the story in the Roman History runs that two Gallic tribes, the Sequani and Aedui, approached Caesar as friends and allies of Rome in 58 BCE. They did so to invite him to attack the Germanic king Ariovistus, upon whom they wished to exact revenge over a dispute. More importantly, they did this as a “favour” to Caesar, because they saw that he had his own designs on Ariovistus (τήν τε ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῦ ἰδόντες). Indeed, by requesting Caesar’s intervention, they happened to be asking for precisely what he himself wanted.70 As with the speeches of Pompeius and Gabinius, then, Dio lays the ground by bringing forth the possibility of prior collusion between the two parties just before the speech act. A further similarity to the structuring of the lex Gabinia debate lies in the survey given of Caesar’s intentions. His motives are described in a similar manner to those of Pompeius, including desire for glory and prestige. Just as Caesar had once deliberately provoked the Herminians into war to cement his reputation as a conqueror during his praetorship in Lusitania,71 so too with Ariovistus did he desire a specious πρόφασις for war in order to satisfy his own φιλοτιμία. The narrative preface runs (38.34.3–35.3): For Ariovistus was the king of those Germans … and Caesar himself as consul had enrolled him among the friends and allies of Rome. But when compared with the glory to be gained from war with him and the power it would bring, Caesar cared not at all for these facts, except in so far as he wanted to get a pretext for war … and because of this, he sent for him, pretending to want to speak about something. But when Ariovistus did 70  Cass. Dio 38.34.1–2. For an excellent modern study of the “rhetoric of lies” of Caesar’s harangue at Vesontio, see Kemezis 2016. The approach adopted here is similar; Kemezis and I both maintain that Dio’s Caesar represents, in microcosm, the problem of rhetoric in Dio’s view of the Late Republic, but with different evidence and emphasis. 71  Cass. Dio 37.52.3.

172

chapter 3

not obey, and replied ‘if Caesar wants to speak to me, let him come to me himself!’… Caesar became angry on the ground that he had insulted all the Romans, and immediately demanded all the allied hostages from him … but he did this not in order to scare Ariovistus, but to enrage him, and thereby to gain a good and credible pretext for war…. meanwhile, the soldiers heard that Ariovistus was preparing vigorously for war … and they were terribly afraid … indeed, the talk on everyone’s lips was that they were undertaking a war which was neither their business nor had been decreed by the Senate, but was merely on account of Caesar’s private ambition … So, when Caesar learned this, he did not address the mass of the soldiers at large … but instead gathered together his captains, and said in their company words similar to these which follow here. ἦρχε μὲν γὰρ Ἀριόουιστος τῶν Κελτῶν ἐκείνων…καὶ ἐς τοὺς φίλους τούς τε συμμάχους αὐτῶν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Καίσαρος ὑπατεύοντος ἐσεγέγραπτο· πρὸς δὲ δὴ τὴν ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου δόξαν καὶ τὴν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς ἰσχὺν οὐδὲν τούτων ἐφρόντισε, πλὴν καθ᾽ ὅσον παρὰ τοῦ βαρβάρου πρόφασιν τῆς διαφορᾶς … καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μετεπέμψατο αὐτὸν ὡς καὶ διαλεχθῆναί τι αὐτῷ δεόμενος. ἐπειδή τε οὐχ ὑπήκουσεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔφη ὅτι ‘εἴ τί μοι βούλεται Καῖσαρ εἰπεῖν, αὐτὸς πρὸς ἐμὲ ἐλθέτω’ … ὀργήν τε ὡς καὶ πάντας τοὺς Ῥωμαίους προπεπηλακικότος αὐτοῦ ἐν τούτῳ ἐποιήσατο, καὶ παραχρῆμα τούς τε ὁμήρους τῶν συμμάχων ἀπῄτησεν αὐτόν … ταῦτα δὲ ἔπραξεν οὐχ ὅτι καὶ καταπλήξειν αὐτόν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι ἐξοργιεῖν κἀκ τούτου πρόφασιν τοῦ πολέμου καὶ μεγάλην καὶ εὐπρεπῆ λήψεσθαι ἤλπισεν … κἀν τούτῳ οἱ στρατιῶται, ἀγγελίας ἐλθούσης ὅτι τε ὁ Ἀριόουιστος ἰσχυρῶς παρασκευάζεται … δεινῶς ἠθύμησαν … καὶ ἐθρύλουν ὅτι πόλεμον οὔτε προσήκοντα οὔτε ἐψηφισμένον διὰ τὴν ἰδίαν τοῦ Καίσαρος φιλοτιμίαν ἀναιροῖντο … μαθὼν οὖν ταῦτ᾽ ἐκεῖνος τῷ μὲν πλήθει τῶν στρατιωτῶν οὐδὲν διελέξατο … τοὺς δὲ δὴ ὑπάρχους καὶ τοὺς ὑπομείονας ἀθροίσας τοιάδε ἐν αὐτοῖς ἔλεξεν. There are further similarities between Dio’s handling of this episode and that of the lex Gabinia. We should recall that the Roman History is, once again, our only source to bring the deceit and pretence of the dynast to the fore. Plutarch states that Caesar warred against Ariovistus “absolutely in defence of the Gauls” and that these Germans were an intolerable threat. He nowhere mentions Caesar’s duplicity and presents him as the righteous party.72 A fragment of our other source, Appian, actually states that Ariovistus was the aggressor, 72  Plut. Caes. 19.1.

Oratory

173

attacking Caesar’s emissaries without provocation.73 Only Dio, again, uses this historical context to explore the problem of oratory’s increasing subjection to autocratic ambitions in the Late Republic, and the effectiveness of such strategies in justifying courses of action that were harmful to it—in this case, further cementing Caesar’s reputation as a conqueror among the masses. On the granular level, Dio intentionally weaves irony throughout the speech in order to exaggerate the speaker’s hypocrisy. Even the first sentence of Caesar’s harangue has this intention. He begins by instructing his audience that it is inappropriate to deliberate about public interests in the same way as private interests. In other words, he exhorts the audience to keep selfish interests out of politics: “for although we may for ourselves wish the course that is most expedient and safe, for the people we should adopt and follow only the measures that are best”.74 This is, as we learn from the narrative preface, an ironic inversion of the actual situation, since in the Roman History it is in fact Caesar’s audience who object to conflict with Ariovistus on the grounds of immorality, citing their general’s ambition (φιλοτιμία).75 He closes the proemium by instructing his subordinates to “think not about what is agreeable and safe to you personally (τὸ ἴδιον ἡδὺ καὶ ἀσφαλὲς), but rather what is good and advantageous for all Romans”.76 These are transparent verbal clues: since Caesar’s motivation is entirely selfish, he is the poorest imaginable advocate of separating private interests (τα ἴδια) from the public good (τα κοινά). Indeed, the essential problem with the Late Republic in the Roman History is that dynasts such as Caesar routinely treat the two concerns as one and the same: the business of state (τα κοινά) is the private demesne (τα ἴδια) of individual dynasts, nothing more. There is, then, the outright lie that the Ariovistus campaign was a defensive engagement occasioned by the need to defend Rome’s allies, the Sequani and Aedui, from a German attack: “we have come not to laze about carefree, but in order to manage properly the affairs of our subjects, keep secure the property of our allies, and ward off those who try to wrong them”.77 The reader already knows that this is nonsense: the Sequani and Aedui invited Caesar to attack Ariovistus not in their defence but because they wanted revenge. Ariovistus was, furthermore, a friend and ally of the Roman people and had been made such by Caesar himself, as Dio states in his prefatory remarks to the speech:78 73  App. Gall. 17.1. 74  Cass. Dio 38.36.1. 75  Cf. Cass. Dio 38.35.2. 76  Cass. Dio 38.36.3. 77  Cass. Dio 38.36.5. 78  Cass. Dio 38.34.3.

174

chapter 3

the campaign can hardly be described as a quest to preserve Rome’s allies in this context. Like Pompeius, Dio’s Caesar additionally deflects the taint of pretence by ironically accusing others of the same. Just as the habitual fraudster Pompeius accused the Quirites of “pretending” (προσποιεῖσθαί) to be concerned for his well-being, so too does Caesar accuse Ariovistus of double-dealing and disloyalty (38.44.3–4): When he once wished to benefit us and chose to be well-treated by us in return, he rightly obtained his wish; just so too now, then, should he most rightly be considered an enemy when he pursues the opposite course. Do not be surprised that I am saying these things now, even though it was I who used to defend his interests in the Senate and assemblies. For I hold the same view now as I did back then; I’m not changing front! And what view is that? To honour and reward good and trustworthy men, but to dishonour and punish evil and untrustworthy men. He is the one who is changing front. ἡνίκα εὐεργετεῖν τε ἡμᾶς ἐβούλετο κἀντ᾽ εὖ πάσχειν ἠξίου, δικαίως ἐκείνων ἐτύγχανεν, οὕτω καὶ νῦν, ἐπειδὴ τἀναντία αὐτῶν πάντα ποιεῖ, δικαιότατα ἂν ἐν ἐχθροῦ μέρει νομισθείη. καὶ μὴ θαυμάσητε εἰ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ πρότερόν ποτε καὶ ἐν τῇ βουλῇ καὶ ἐν τῷ δήμῳ χρηματίσας τινὰ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ, εἶτα ταυτὶ νυνὶ λέγω. ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ καὶ τότε καὶ νῦν τὴν αὐτὴν γνώμην ἔχω καὶ οὐ μεταβάλλομαι. τίς δέ ἐστιν αὕτη; τοὺς μὲν ἀγαθοὺς καὶ πιστοὺς καὶ τιμᾶν καὶ ἀμείβεσθαι, τοὺς δὲ κακοὺς καὶ ἀπίστους καὶ ἀτιμάζειν καὶ ἀμύνεσθαι. ἐκεῖνος δέ ἐστιν ὁ μεταβαλλόμενος. From Dio’s own interpretation of the circumstances which led to the mutiny at Vesontio the reader can easily recognise this as absurd. According to the histor­ ian Caesar had made Ariovistus a friend and ally of Rome himself during his consulship, but chose to disregard these facts given the opportunity to acquire power and glory by stabbing him in the back. The historian has consciously chosen to represent Caesar as the hypocrite in the narrative, but then have his speaker project that fault onto another in the speech to follow. In case the reader was already not sufficiently convinced of the general’s hypocrisy, he is even made to confess that he used to champion Ariovistus’ interests in the Senate and assemblies, when it suited him; the justification he gives for this volte face is intentionally weak and illogical. The short oration of Caesar before the Senate in 46 BCE in the wake of Pharsalus (43.15–16), reassuring the ordo that he will not become a tyrant, has

Oratory

175

received markedly less attention than the Vesontio speech. Yet it is just as important for articulating, in real time, Dio’s view of the turpitude of oratory in the Late Republic and its subordination to the selfish interests of the dynastic clique. Discussions of this speech have tended to focus on its potential sources. This question we can set aside. No surviving text other than the Roman History has Caesar reassure the Senate of his benevolence or reject accusations of adfectatio regni. It may be that the historian indeed invented both the content and occasion.79 This conclusion certainly seems preferable to using the speech as evidence for the dictator actually speaking in this context or even for what was actually said.80 But the fact that the historian invented the occasion for his own purposes does not mean that we necessarily need to regard it as “a fiction, a propaganda speech packed with imperial slogans”,81 nor to think that the speech relates simply to Dio’s own time and has little to do with Caesar.82 It provides further exploration of the historical problem of the moral ambiguity of public oratory in the Late Republic; and of how Caesar, like his predecessors Pompeius and Gabinius, capitalised on that ambiguity for his own political ends. Unlike the previous three speeches and the recusatio of Augustus which will close this part of our study, Dio does not provide a narrative ‘preface’ to the speech of Caesar in the Senate. He sets up no explicit interpretation of the speaker’s true motives to be used as a lens for reading the speech to follow (which will, of course, obfuscate those motives). He does, however, outline the circumstances which led his Caesar to the rostrum in 46 BCE. According to Dio, he perceived that the Senate had grown afraid of his great power and suspicious of his haughtiness, and that they feared to suffer just as before under the tyranny of Sulla. Immediately prior to this introduction, the historian additionally numbers the extraordinary and monarchical honours which had been voted to him. In the narrative immediately before the speech, then, the historian focuses on the speaker’s absolute power.83

79  As Millar 1964, 81 concludes. 80  P ace Klotz 1917, 244. Heimbach 1878, 29 had rightly much earlier concluded that Dio’s speech of Caesar was likely a wholesale invention without a preceding oratorical source or historiographical model. 81  So Millar 1964, 80, quoting Béranger 1953, 197. 82  P ace Millar 1961, 13. See Urso 2016b for a good re-evaluation of this oration in the light of Dio’s later speeches of Septimius Severus, where the same exempla of Marius and Sulla are deployed and similar themes explored. Accepting this fact does not, however, divorce the oration from its Late Republican context. 83  Cass. Dio 43.14.3–15.1.

176

chapter 3

The proemium of the speech underlines that intention. “O Senators”, the dictator begins, “—I can do anything I like without being called to account. I can do anything I wish with impunity. But you should not think that I will do or say anything harsh just because this is the case”.84 To think that this opening—surely Dio’s own analysis of the historical situation—is intended to be re­assuring rather than intimidating! Dio’s speaker goes on to mollify the Senate by stating that, although Marius and Sulla initially secured the support of others by making benevolent proclamations only to later become tyrants, he will not do the same. Nor, indeed, should the senators believe that he had been operating under a disguise the whole time (προσποιητῶς) only to reveal his true nature now, in the fullness of his power.85 Caesar additionally reassures the patres that he is by no means so aggrandised by his success that he would wish to wield kingly power.86 But Dio’s narrative of the dictator’s career gives the lie to these statements. He is consistent both in stating that Caesar had always aimed at sole power and in presenting him as a deceitful pretender adept at assuming precisely the disguises he rejects. Dio records in the previous book, for example, that upon seeing the severed head of Pompeius, Caesar had wept and lamented; but people mocked him later for this transparent disguise (προσποιήσει) of grief.87 Dio writes here that he had always aimed at δυναστεία from the very beginning, and hated Pompeius bitterly as his competitor: his mourning was simply a sham, a προσποίησις. Indeed, Caesar came to Egypt for the sole purpose of destroying Pompeius; finding the job done, he “faked and made a show of vexation at his murder”.88 Prior to this, in Book 41, the historian records that both Caesar and Pompeius stated publicly that they alone were fighting for Rome’s interests: but in fact, all either desired was the advancement of his own.89 This selfish duplicity is equally perceptible to the reader in the narrative of Caesar’s consulship. The historian writes that from the very start, he arranged most of the business of state independently and imperiously, as if he were already a monarch. But as for proposals which were to his own benefit, “he arranged them through others, because he was extremely careful not to offer anything to himself; and through this tactic he all the more easily accomplished everything that he desired”.90 84  Cass. Dio 43.15.2. 85  Cass. Dio 43.15.3–5. 86  Cass. Dio 43.15.5. 87  Cass. Dio 42.8.1–2. 88  Cass. Dio 42.8.3. 89  Cass. Dio 41.17.3. 90  Cass. Dio 38.8.3.

Oratory

177

Contrary to his own claims, hiding his longing for δυναστεία behind a screen of pretence and obfuscation is thus a defining characteristic of Caesar’s career in the Roman History. By having his speaker assert that he had neither assumed disguises nor yet sought autocratic power, Dio brings to the fore precisely those aspects of the speaker’s duplicitous character which the speech is ostensibly staged to reject. The ‘lie’ of the speech and the ‘truth’ of the authorial narrative again move in opposing directions. Even Caesar’s advertisement in the speech of his clementia toward his enemies—the most famous of his alleged virtues—is contradicted by Dio’s narrative.91 Shortly prior to his oration, the historian writes that Caesar executed L. Afranius and C. Memmius Faustus sine iudicio, and had his cousin Lucius Julius Caesar killed in secret after a show-trial, even though the man had surrendered himself as a voluntary suppliant.92 In Dio’s account such back-handed bloodthirstiness is not uncommon: he writes that Caesar’s tactic in general was not to attack adversaries openly but to have them disposed of in secret.93 Dio lays out all these incriminating details just shortly before Caesar’s speech in the Senate; he expects the reader to remember them when they come to the oration. The antithesis of speech and narrative is deliberately constructed to emphasise the dictator’s mendacity. Fifth and finally, there is the recusatio imperii of Octavian before the Senate in Dio’s account of 27 BCE, promising (falsely) to restore the libera res publica. Tellingly, it is the last deceptive speech in the Roman History: none of the compositions in the twenty-seven remaining books will characterise a speaker as being wilfully hypocritical. This aspect is particular to the Late Republican orations and to the ‘programmatic’ speeches of the first three books, which set out Dio’s historical interest in the deceptive power of oratory at an early stage. Significantly, the recusatio of Octavian is not only the historian’s last deceptive speech, but his last speech of the Republic. In this way, the years 67–27 BCE— from the narrative of the δυναστεία of Pompeius and Caesar to its replacement with the μοναρχία of Augustus—are framed by two major constitutional innovations, the lex Gabinia and the Augustan Settlement, each of which in the historian’s interpretation were successful because of rhetorical dissimulatio. Again, like all of his other four mendacious speeches (except that of Caesar in the Senate), the historian focalises the orator’s true aims in a short interpretative preface immediately prior to the proemium. These prefatory remarks 91  Cass. Dio 43.17.3. 92  Cass. Dio 43.12.2–3. 93  Cass. Dio 43.13.2: See also the description of Caesar’s ‘bloodlust’ at Cass. Dio 43.9.1, and Rodgers 2008, 311 on Dio comparing Caesarian crudelitas to Marius and Sulla.

178

chapter 3

in Octavian’s case are noticeably less negative than the previous examples, in keeping with Dio’s positive attitude toward the first princeps generally after his accession.94 But the similarities between Octavian’s intentions and those of Pompeius four decades earlier are striking. Both concealed their true motives; both wished to be honoured all the more for seeming to reject power but being ‘forced’ to accept it; and both colluded with their supporters in advance. After recounting Octavian’s actions in the city—his dedication of a temple to Apollo, celebration of the Circensian games, gifts of grain to the people and money to the senators, and so forth—Dio begins (53.4.4): When he received approval and praise for these actions, he wished to show his magnanimity a second time, in order that he would be honoured even more by such a deed and have his monarchy confirmed willingly by the people, rather than appearing to have forced them to ratify it unwillingly. And so, after priming his closest associates in the Senate, he entered the curia in his seventh consulship, and read out words similar to these which follow. εὐδοκιμῶν τε οὖν ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ ἐπαινούμενος ἐπεθύμησε καὶ ἑτέραν τινὰ μεγαλοψυχίαν διαδείξασθαι, ὅπως καὶ ἐκ τοῦ τοιούτου μᾶλλον τιμηθείη, καὶ παρ᾽ ἑκόντων δὴ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὴν μοναρχίαν βεβαιώσασθαι τοῦ μὴ δοκεῖν 94  Cassius Dio’s presentation of the first princeps has been a matter of debate. Noting the contrast between his unfavourable treatment of Octavian in the Republican books and his more sympathetic characterisation in the narrative of his reign as Augustus, older scholarship suggested that Dio changed source and simply followed the opinions of each uncritically: see for example Charlesworth 1934, 875–876 and Levi 1937, 415–434 for this argument. The work which followed did not attribute this change in tone solely to the historian’s sources. Millar 1964, 83–102 argues that Dio drew his account from a medley of sources, and responded both to Octavian as a dynast and Augustus as princeps with a mixture of approval and indignation in equal measure. On the other hand, Manuwald 1979, 273–276 concludes that the shift in Dio’s presentation of Augustus can be explained by the changing nature of the subject-matter: he was bound to attract more criticism as a triumvir and Republican warlord, and his final necrology upon his death is positive, but rather sober (“zwar nüchtern, aber uneingeschränkt positiv”). More recent studies emphasise, and rightly in my view, that the historian approved of Augustus as a model ruler, but found the actions of Octavian the dynast less laudable, and moulded his presentation accordingly to each: for this view see Reinhold 1988 and Rich 1989. This approach has most recently been reiterated by Kemezis 2014, 120–126: Kemezis argues that it was not possible for Octavian to be a noble dynast. Only in the new narrative mode of the Principate and within the new framework of monarchical rule could his positive characteristics flourish, liberated from the constraints of Republican competition. That view is the one accepted in this study, not least because it is justified by Dio’s approval of monarchy and critique of δημοκρατία.

Oratory

179

ἄκοντας αὐτοὺς βεβιάσθαι. κἀκ τούτου τοὺς μάλιστα ἐπιτηδείους οἱ τῶν βουλευτῶν παρασκευάσας ἔς τε τὴν γερουσίαν ἐσῆλθεν ἕβδομον ὑπατεύων, καὶ ἀνέγνω τοιάδε. Dio’s decision to emphasise Octavian’s duplicity is not fanciful: John Rich has recently shown that the career of Octavian-Augustus was a history of deceptions to secure his grip on power.95 In the previous chapter, we have already seen the way in which the speech of Book 53 in the Roman History imitates many aspects of Augustus’ self-presentation in the Res Gestae, including (importantly) his tactic of declining honours. It is hardly possible that the offering of such powers will not have involved some manner of public proclamation or statement and, possibly, a public recusatio on Augustus’ part. Thus, in having his Octavian publicly reject power Dio was not doing anything especially peculiar. The only contentious point is whether we accept his interpretation that the princeps did so disingenuously, pretending not to desire what he truly did. The Roman History is the only source to suggest such. That is unanswerable—we cannot read Augustus’ mind—but it is clear that Dio believed so, and that this in his view was one reason for the successful ratification of his sole rule in the wake of Actium. That is the interpretation that the false recusatio of Book 53 was written to demonstrate. Reading the oration in this vein, then, the historian again establishes the same sorts of contradictions between speech and narrative he constructed in the four earlier speeches. Like Caesar in the Senate, Dio’s Octavian begins by summarising his might: should he wish, he can rule alone forever, since he is at his most popular with the people, his most powerful with his army, and least threatened from factious elements.96 He goes on to state that he will relinquish these powers, however, and restore the Republic, “so that you may know this: that from the beginning I never desired any unconstitutional power (δυναστείας)… for I wish that I hadn’t had to take such a hand in affairs as I did, and that the state had not required me to do this”.97 This is a transparent lie and Dio presents it as such. The narrative preface has already served as the historian’s anteoccupatio, disproving these postures in advance by underlining Octavian’s desire for monarchy. The earlier diegetic material creates precisely the same contrasts. In his prelude to the Battle of Actium, the historian states quite explicitly that Octavian, like his rival Antonius, was trying to secure supreme power for himself: both, apparently, 95  Rich 2010, passim. 96  Cass. Dio 53.4.1. 97  Cass. Dio 53.4.4–5.1.

180

chapter 3

were consciously trying to appropriate everything for themselves in order to seize any advantage they could over the other.98 Again, the narrative is quite clear that Octavian’s purpose in speaking was to have his absolute power confirmed, not to lay it aside. The historian furthermore gives the lie to his Octavian’s claim that he has accepted no extraordinary privileges. The patres should not be surprised, the orator argues, that he would relinquish such great authority, when they see his love of quiet and a life free from politics (ἀπραγμοσύνην)—this is especially farcical—, “and when you also reflect that I have never accepted any extraordinary privilege, nor anything beyond what many others have, even when you awarded them”.99 Obviously the speaker can hardly lay claim to ἀπραγμοσύνη after the preceding six books of fierce competition between himself and Antonius, during which both dynasts appear quite at their worst. Nor can he reasonably affect to have never accepted excessive honours beyond those conferred upon others. Dio details an ample list of extraordinary privileges at the opening of Book 53—again, just before the recusatio—including Octavian selecting and inaugurating a praetor urbanus of his own choice in addition to new magistrates, abolishing and creating new laws as he wished, and forbidding senators to travel outside of Italy without his personal permission.100 The claim is clearly absurd, and is designed to be read as such. Dio extends this absurdity to much greater proportions with the use of irony, an element which, as I have set out here, he liberally employed in the Late Republican speeches. For such irony to work there must of course be an understanding between narrator and reader of the void which separates appearance (the speech) from reality (the narrative). The total of such ironic statements in Dio’s false recusatio of Octavian would be difficult to enumerate, and the overview here is not exhaustive. One may consider, for example, the speaker’s transparently untrue assertion that he wishes the senators to manage their own affairs without his oversight;101 or his claim that, in praising himself for his patriotic abdication, he is “certainly not boasting, for indeed, I would never have said any of this, if I thought I’d gain any personal advantage from it!”.102 We may also consider the irony of his rhetorical question, regarding his generosity in ‘laying aside’ power, of “who could be found more magnanimous than I? Who more nearly divine!”;103 or, lastly, the string of speciously 98  Cass. Dio 50.1.1. 99  Cass. Dio 53.6.1. 100  Cass. Dio 52.42.6, 53.7.3, 53.8.1. 101  Cass. Dio 53.6.2. 102  Cass. Dio 53.7.4. 103  Cass. Dio 53.8.1.

Oratory

181

patriotic Republican sentiments scattered throughout the speech of a scheming autocrat.104 One reading of Octavian’s recusatio imperii suggests that Dio used the speech as “a final, comprehensive opportunity to display the advantages of the Republic”.105 The case is precisely the opposite. The very openness of δημοκρατία, where debates were necessarily held in public, was one of its greatest fallibilities. In Dio’s view, during the final decades of the libera res publica the fora of public debate could no longer function properly—and the system consequently no longer continue—because they were commandeered by dynasts who concealed their motives behind attractive phrases. “Anyone”, Brutus warns on the foundation of the Republic in Book 3, “can make up well-chosen words; but their awful deeds arise from their real intentions”.106 How true that will prove. Like all liars in Dio’s Late Republican books, Octavian succeeds in securing his aims in speaking. As with the lex Gabinia or Caesar’s war­ mongering for further prestigious conquests, Augustus’ monarchy became an historical fact, but only after the act of deceptive speech which Dio presents as instrumental in its ratification. To be a successful orator in the histor­ ian’s late res publica had nothing to do with articulating the morally superior case; in fact it was usually a disadvantage. In Dio’s interpretation the decline of Republican oratory was a major cause of instability in its own right which severely weakened the established order, providing repeated opportunities for the major actors to increase their own δυναστεία. The recusatio of Octavian was certainly a final opportunity to reflect upon the Republic—but in a way that only showed its flaws. 3

Restoration: Augustus and the Principate

According to Dio, Octavian’s address to the Senate in 27 BCE produced mixed results. In a passage remarkably reminiscent of (and perhaps inspired by) Tiberius’ accession in Tacitus’ Annals, he interprets the varying sentiments of the young dynast’s audience.107 A small handful already knew his cynical intentions and applauded enthusiastically; he had of course primed these allies in advance. Of the remainder, it is important to note that some suspected him of lying, but not all: in Dio’s presentation, the speech convinced many. But in 104  Cass. Dio 53.5.1, 53.5.3–4, 53.6.2, 53.8.4–6. 105  P ace Fechner 1986, 88. My translation. 106  Cass. Dio frg. 12.10. 107  Cf. Tac. Ann. 1.11.

182

chapter 3

both cases, the result was the same. The sceptical could not safely accuse him, and the convinced were delighted to see the end of strife and the return of stability at last. “Thus, all those in doubt were either compelled to believe him, or else pretended to do so”.108 It is the last time in the Roman History a statesman will use his rhetorical prowess to deceive his hearers, and public oratory ceases entirely to exert a degenerative impact upon political life. That does not mean that Dio was excessively idealistic about Augustus or fooled by the claims of the regime. He was a capable historian, an experienced statesman and provincial governor, who devoted over two decades to his research project. Though a profound sceptic of democratic government, Dio was no Imperial propagandist. Alongside Tacitus, the Roman History is our best source for understanding what Aloys Winterling has described as the para­ dox of the Imperial regime: a monarchy ruling over an aristocracy steeped in a Republican cultural memory, which continued to call itself the res publica and retained traditional offices and modes of communication familiar to the first century BCE.109 Ciuilitas, the outward discourse of the ‘citizen-king’ or primus inter pares, was a sleight of hand which helped the monarch and the aristocracy to negotiate the tension between the past and the present.110 Dio recognised that the system combined military dictatorship with aristocratic legitimation: it is significant that, immediately after affording the senators the respect they were due with his recusatio, Augustus’ very first act was to double the pay of his bodyguards.111 So Dio intimately understood the inherent hypocrisy of the Principate. That hypocrisy is best analysed in a famous methodological statement from Book 53 (53.19): Thus, the constitution was changed at that time for the better and safer: for it was surely impossible for the people to survive any longer under a Republic. Still, I cannot describe events which happen after this point in 108  Cass. Dio 53.11. 109  Winterling 2009, esp. 103–120. 110  For the seminal discussion of the importance of ciuilitas as a legitimising mode of mon­ archical communication in the Imperial Period, see Wallace-Hadrill 1982. 111   Cass. Dio 53.11.5. See Ando 2016, 567–580 for a recent study of the role of the Agrippa-Maecenas debate within Dio’s analysis of the internal tensions of the Principate, viz. as a de facto autocracy gilded with Republican niceties. Ando shows that, to Dio, the tension between the conventional communication of power on the one hand, and the corrosive effect of possessing it on the other, was an unresolved (and perhaps unresolv­ able) problem in the Principate. Maecenas’ proposals to Augustus establish an irreconcilable dichotomy between public communication and the realities of power from the very birth of the Principate.

Oratory

183

the same way as former times. Previously, all matters used to be reported to the Senate or assemblies—even from afar. For this reason all people learned of them and many wrote them down. Because of that, even if what had been said among them was really because of fear or favour or enmity, the truth of these matters could nevertheless be ascertained in some way from the works of those who wrote them down or from public records. But from this time onward, most events began to be conducted in secret and in silence. And even if they be made public somehow, they are disbelieved because they cannot be verified; or it is suspected that everything is said and done according to the wishes of the powerful and their cronies. ἡ μὲν οὖν πολιτεία οὕτω τότε πρός τε τὸ βέλτιον καὶ πρὸς τὸ σωτηριωδέστερον μετεκοσμήθη· καὶ γάρ που καὶ παντάπασιν ἀδύνατον ἦν δημοκρατουμένους αὐτοὺς σωθῆναι. οὐ μέντοι καὶ ὁμοίως τοῖς πρόσθεν τὰ μετὰ ταῦτα πραχθέντα λεχθῆναι δύναται. πρότερον μὲν γὰρ ἔς τε τὴν βουλὴν καὶ ἐς τὸν δῆμον πάντα, καὶ εἰ πόρρω που συμβαίη, ἐσεφέρετο· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πάντες τε αὐτὰ ἐμάνθανον καὶ πολλοὶ συνέγραφον, κἀκ τούτου καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια αὐτῶν, εἰ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα καὶ φόβῳ τινὰ καὶ χάριτι φιλίᾳ τε καὶ ἔχθρᾳ τισὶν ἐρρήθη, παρὰ γοῦν τοῖς ἄλλοις τοῖς τὰ αὐτὰ γράψασι τοῖς τε ὑπομνήμασι τοῖς δημοσίοις τρόπον τινὰ εὑρίσκετο. ἐκ δὲ δὴ τοῦ χρόνου ἐκείνου τὰ μὲν πλείω κρύφα καὶ δι᾽ ἀπορρήτων γίγνεσθαι ἤρξατο, εἰ δέ πού τινα καὶ δημοσιευθείη, ἀλλὰ ἀνεξέλεγκτά γε ὄντα ἀπιστεῖται· καὶ γὰρ λέγεσθαι καὶ πράττεσθαι πάντα πρὸς τὰ τῶν ἀεὶ κρατούντων τῶν τε παραδυναστευόντων σφίσι βουλήματα ὑποπτεύεται. Vigorous searches have been made for a programmatic or methodological statement on speeches in the Roman History,112 but this is the closest we will come. We do not need to put words in the historian’s mouth. We have moved from the transparency of the Republic, where events were reported openly (ἐσεφέρετο). The words said (ἐρρήθη) may have been biased by enmity or favour, of course—but Dio states that, as an historian, he sought to verify the accuracy of what was said. Under the emperors, however, public business is conducted in public silence (δι᾽ ἀπορρήτων); or even if open proclamations are made (δημοσιευθείη), these are mistrusted because a culture prevails of speaking only to advance the interests of the ruling power (λέγεσθαι). This seems to me to suggest two points. First, it confirms that in the process of writing his Republican narrative Dio did deliberately research the words and speeches purportedly given. We have seen, in the previous chapter, his use of oratorical and historiographical materials as sources and models for his own speeches: 112  P ace Fomin 2016, 227–230.

184

chapter 3

Cicero, Caesar, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Res Gestae. This methodological statement is the closest Dio comes to stating that he actively searched for such material. Secondly, the historian informs us that, as Rome’s oratorical cult­ure changed, so too—necessarily—will his speeches. Dio’s speeches of the Principate have received far less attention than those of the Late Republic. The bulk of the scant scholarship elucidates how the historian used them to articulate his concerns about his own period. These fall under identifiable themes which are clearly present. The speeches of Livia and Cassius Clemens, for example, concern the clemency of the emperor (ἐπιείκεια);113 as a survivor of Commodus and Caracalla, Dio was especially interested in this theme.114 The battle exhortations of Boudicca and Marcus Aurelius are fundamentally concerned with magnanimity (μεγαλοψυχία), kindness (φιλανθρωπία), and other manifestations of kingly virtue.115 Finally, some words of Hadrian on the adoption of Antoninus Pius exemplify Dio’s recognition of the unfortunate contrast between legitimate succession under the Antonine ‘adoptive emperors’ and the internecine dynastic struggles of the Severan age.116 After the reign of Augustus, Dio’s speeches of the Principate also dramatically shorten: the longest, the exhortations of Boudicca and Marcus Aurelius to their soldiers, number only three chapters each. This may be due to abridgement by the epitomator Xiphilinus, but we still have the first seven books (Books 53–60) available for comparison in the direct tradition, from Augustus’ accession up to the reign of Claudius (27 BCE–46 CE). The only speeches of comparable length to the Republican books are all concerned with Augustus: the recusatio imperii, Augustus’ address on marriage and procreation, the dia­ logue on clemency with Livia, and Tiberius’ funeral oration for the first emperor. After Augustus leaves the scene, there are no speeches whatsoever for 113  As Manuwald 1979, 120–127 has shown, ἐπιείκεια is the rendering of clementia most commonly found in Dio, though it seems to me that φιλανθρωπία has a similar sense in many contexts. However, cf. Wallace-Hadrill 1981, 307. 114  Little attention has been hitherto given to the speech of Cassius Clemens at Cass. Dio 75[74].9. For brief comments of the ‘clemency speech’ of Livia (55.16.2–21.4), to which we return in more detail below, see Stekelenburg 1971, 134; Giua 1981, 324–325; Rich 1989; Swan 2004, 147–149; Dowling 2006, 66–67; the only full study is that of Adler 2011. 115  I am yet to find a detailed study of the speech of Marcus Aurelius (72[71].24–26). For the speech of Boudicca at Cass. Dio 62.3–6, see Gowing 1997, especially for its characteris­ ation of Nero and discussion of Imperial virtues. Adler 2008 regards Boudicca’s harangue as a critique of Roman expansionism. See also Gillespie 2015. 116  Davenport & Mallan 2014 give detailed discussion of the speech of Hadrian at Cass. Dio 69.20.2–5, emphasising its use in Dio as a praise of the system of imperial adoption from among the ranks of the Senate. Further brief comments in Barnes 1967, 76–77.

Oratory

185

the reign of Tiberius and only one—short, one chapter in length—for that of Caligula.117 Xiphilinus may, therefore, have abridged the formal orations in his epitome; but the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula in Dio’s original suggest that this is not simply Xiphilinus’ distortion. After the death of Augustus, speeches in the Roman History become far shorter and less frequent. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, after completing the central story-arc of his Roman History—the rise and decline of the Republic and its replacement by Augustus’ regime—Dio’s history became more descriptive and diegetic, and less interpretative and expansive. The explanatory possibilities offered by direct speech thus assumed less importance. Yet its reduced role notwithstanding, oratory does change for the better in Dio’s history. This is because it is shorn of its open, ‘democratic’ forum, and addresses deliberation not to a body of equals—who, in Dio’s view, could never govern themselves harmoniously—118 but to a superior power. The princeps, not the Senate or people, becomes the focus of persuasion. In the Roman History, Imperial oratory is, in fact, the direct opposite of Late Republican oratory. Under the Republic, we have seen honest and well-meaning advice in the public interest consistently fail in its objects (Catulus, Cicero, Agrippa), and fraudulent speech uniformly succeed in securing the δυναστεία of those who wield it (Pompeius, Gabinius, Caesar, Antonius, Octavian). The inverse is the case after Book 53. The Imperial adviser, who steers the monarch toward the good of the state, arrives as an understandably important rhetorical persona. Such advisers always succeed in their efforts, with appreciable and positive results for the state. As a magisterial study has recently shown, the ‘restoration’ of oratory in the Roman History depends upon παρρησία: the freedom of the individual to speak his or her mind before the emperor.119 Although Dio considered παρρησία a hallmark of Republican and democratic government, we have seen that its presentation in the Late Republican narrative is markedly negative: it is repeatedly misused for self-interested political objectives at the expense of harmony. The ‘philippic’ and ‘anti-philippic’ invectives of Books 45–46 express this most 117  Cass. Dio 59.16. This speech is in fact quite extraordinary, since it is oratio obliqua within oratio recta: as he barracks the Senate, Caligula is made to quote an address allegedly delivered to him by Tiberius. It is the only speech-episode in the Roman History where one orator performs an extended prosopopoeia of another. 118  E.g. Cass. Dio frg. 5.12; frg. 6.3; frg. 7.2–3; frg. 17.14–15; 44.1–2; 48.1.2; 50.1.1. These passages all underline the historian’s belief, as discussed in Chapter 2, that it was contrary to human nature for individuals to share power and to govern themselves harmoniously on a basis of theoretical equality. 119  See importantly Mallan 2016.

186

chapter 3

fully, and Philiscus’ consolatio states frankly that Cicero’s immoderate παρρησία was the cause of his exile.120 But under Augustus, παρρησία is reinvented as a positive force which enables a more harmonious government. This development is already foreshadowed in the Roman History’s first imperial counsellors, Agrippa and Maecenas, in Book 52. The former ends his proemium with a promise to offer his advice freely, recognising that Octavian has little patience for hearing flattery and lies.121 As for the latter (52.33.6), Grant the right to speak freely and without fear to anyone who wishes to offer you advice on whatever subject. For if you are pleased with his advice you will gain much benefit from it, and if you are not persuaded you will not be harmed by it. Praise and reward those who convince you, since you yourself will gain the credit for what they have worked out; but do not dishonour or punish, ever, those who fail to convince you, since you should be considering their good intentions rather than criticising their failure. τήν τε παρρησίαν παντὶ τῷ βουλομένῳ καὶ ὁτιοῦν συμβουλεῦσαί σοι μετὰ ἀδείας νέμε· ἄν τε γὰρ ἀρεσθῇς τοῖς λεχθεῖσιν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, πολλὰ ὠφελήσῃ, ἄν τε καὶ μὴ πεισθῇς, οὐδὲν βλαβήσῃ. καὶ τοὺς μὲν τυχόντας τῆς γνώμης καὶ ἐπαίνει καὶ τίμα τοῖς γὰρ ἐκείνων ἐξευρήμασιν αὐτὸς εὐδοκιμήσεισ, τοὺς δ᾽ ἁμαρτόντας μήτ᾽ ἀτιμάσῃς ποτὲ μήτ᾽ αἰτιάσῃ· τὴν γὰρ διάνοιαν αὐτῶν δεῖ σκοπεῖν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τὴν οὐκ ἐπιτυχίαν μέμφεσθαι. 20th-century readings of Maecenas speech would suggest that the historian wrote this merely as propaganda for the contemporary, Severan context. They are only half right. The oration evidently sets out Dio’s view of the qualities necessary to be a good emperor. But it is precisely because Augustus follows this advice—that is, meeting Dio’s criteria for the good emperor—that he and his new regime survive. The oration is by no means divorced from its dramatic and historical setting. It foregrounds the historian’s interpretation of the first princeps’ success: Augustus’ liberality with free and open speech is presented as a cause, in its own right, of the stability of the regime as a replacement for the Republic. 120  Cass. Dio 38.20.3; 38.29.1; see Chapter 2 above. Mallan 2016 collects several examples from what he regards as Dio’s illustration of Late Republican παρρησία (licentia) at its worst and least restrained: the ‘philippic’ and ‘anti-philippic’ exchanges of Books 45–46, where παρρησία is repeatedly mentioned; see Cass. Dio 45.18.2; 45.35.1–2; 45.46.3; 46.9.4; 46.15.3. 121  Cass. Dio 52.3.3.

Oratory

187

His reign as a whole is described in a manner consistent with these principles. When Augustus stood in defence of Nonius Asprenas at the latter’s trial and the prosecutor “indulged in excessive παρρησία”, the prosecutor himself later appeared before the princeps to have his morality scrutinised. Augustus acquitted him, in a display of magnanimity, on the grounds that the man’s παρρησία was necessary for the good of the state.122 On another occasion, when the emperor was on the verge of sentencing men to death, Dio records that Maecenas had convinced him otherwise. Augustus, far from being displeased, was glad: “because whenever he was given over to unfitting passion as a result of his own nature or the stress of his affairs, he was set right by the παρρησία of his friends”.123 He refrained from delivering his sententia first in the Senate, but rather came last, preferring to allow the senators to express their own opinions without fear.124 Moreover, he ordered the laws he had enacted to be inscribed and made public in the Senate, inviting its members to speak out if any displeased them.125 Suetonius, too, praises Augustus’ tolerance of παρρησία.126 But in the Roman History it is particularly emphasised as a stabilising aspect of his rule, predicted to be such in the speech of Maecenas and standing in stark contrast to the world of Late Republican oratory. The dialogue between Augustus and Livia is Dio’s lengthiest development of this idea. Set in camera in his narrative of 4 CE, the dialogue delivers a lengthy advocacy of the political and moral virtue of mercy. Its immediate historical context is the plot of Cn. Cornelius Cinna Magnus, for whom the emperor’s wife advises clemency after his botched assassination attempt. Curiously, the conspiracy is mentioned only in Dio and Seneca’s De Clementia (from which our historian may, or may not, have drawn some of his more conventional arguments).127 There has therefore been a debate over whether the conspiracy existed at all, but there is little reason to assume that Seneca fabricated it as an exemplum to persuade Nero to behave himself.128 The characterisation of Livia in this role of merciful adviser certainly fits: both Ovid and Suetonius depict Livia counselling the emperor to treat his subjects mercifully,129 and Dio too states that she frequently intervened to save the lives of senators. Like 122  Cass. Dio 55.4.3. Dio does not name Asprenas himself; Rich 1989, 102 supplements the name from Suet. Aug. 56.3. 123  Cass. Dio 55.7.2–3. This point is repeated in Augustus’ necrology at 56.43.1. 124  Cass. Dio 55.34.1. 125  Cass. Dio 55.4.1. 126  Suet. Aug. 51, 56. 127  So Millar 1964. 128  For the debate on the existence of the conspiracy, see Grimal 1986; Dowling 2006 66f; Adler 2011. 129  Ov. Pont. 2.7.9; Suet. Aug. 65.2.

188

chapter 3

most of the conspiracies of Augustus’ reign, our knowledge is patchy.130 Seneca gives the ringleader as L. Cornelius Cinna, yet Dio states Cn. Cornelius Cinna Magnus; Seneca dates it to Augustus’ Gallic campaign of 13–16 BCE,131 Dio to 4 CE. Probably the Roman History had the correct conspirator, but the wrong date,132 and must have taken a different source from Seneca as his cue. Like Agrippa, Livia begins by asking the emperor to grant her παρρησία.133 This secured, she moves on to give her assessment of the situation. Violence and retribution from the emperor will only produce more violence in turn; gentle treatment and forgiveness, on the other hand, mollifies. Just as physicians use surgery and cautery to remove an infected part in order to spare the whole, so must the good emperor punish selectively and pragmatically.134 The arguments are recognisable and conventional—they are similar in many respects to those deployed by Philiscus in the consolatio of Book 38—, but two points at least are of interest for our purposes. They are two summaries of the historical situation, one demonstrably untrue and the other more straightforward. First, Livia explains why Cinna Magnus’ conspiracy came to pass in the first place. Apparently, the aristocracy had grown suspicious of Augustus because they believed him to be putting many to death, some out of anger, some out of desire for their wealth, and others because of fear of their bravery or envy of their virtue.135 These rumours, apparently, are circulating because of enmity and anger, or at the hands of espionage agents under pay. Such spies, Livia continues (55.18.6), are putting about many lies, reporting not only that so-and-so did something terrible or are about to do so, but even report people’s reactions to things said: that, when so-and-so spoke, one man hearing it said nothing, or another laughed, or another cried. πολλὰ καὶ ψευδῆ σκευωρεῖσθαί φασιν, οὐ μόνον ὅτι τι δεινὸν ἔπραξάν τινες ἢ καὶ ποιήσειν μέλλουσι λέγοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅτι ὁ μὲν ἐφθέγξατο τοιόνδε τι, ὁ δὲ ἀκούσας ἐσιώπησεν, ἄλλος ἐγέλασεν, ἄλλος ἐδάκρυσεν. 130  On the conspiracies of Augustus’ reign the study of Vio 2000 is important, but can not always be conclusive. Andersen 1938, n.74 and Millar 1964, 87–90 hypothesise that Dio may have had access to an antiquarian or thematic source which recorded the various plots against the first princeps’ regime. 131  Sen. Clem. 1.9.2. 132  For this view see Shotter 1974, 307; Grimal 1986, 50; Dowling 2006, 66; Adler 2011, 135–139. 133  Cass. Dio 55.16.1. 134  Cass. Dio 55.17. 135  Cass. Dio 55.18.5.

Oratory

189

This assessment of the situation is bizarre and plainly wrong. Livia describes a tyrannical police-state, but Dio nowhere suggests that the Augustan regime presented any of these characteristics. He was certainly capable of anger;136 but in general Dio takes pains to repeatedly emphasise his clementia and moderation.137 It is difficult to believe that this is a serious historical reflection upon the Augustan Principate; if it were it would be a very inept volte-face on the part of its author. Perhaps the historian was simply incompetent, and happened to forget his own narrative of Augustus’ rule? The description given here of the unjustified murders of many, either out of personal hatred or desire to gain their wealth, has more in common with traditional accounts of the proscriptions of Sulla or the Triumvirate than Dio’s Augustan books. Out of place, too, is the paranoid mention of spies reporting the words or actions of bystanders, again reminiscent of literary accounts of the proscriptions of the Late Republic. Yet this is precisely the point: Livia summarises what the Augustan regime in the Roman History was not by describing it in these terms. Her arguments have nothing to do with the reign of Augustus (at least not in Dio’s view), but they certainly do recall, quite vividly, his account of the Sullan proscriptions. Her suggestion of informants reporting who smiled, laughed, was silent, or cried and then condemning them on that basis—completely unattested in the narrative of Augustus’ reign—matches closely Dio’s wording of the Sullan proscriptions: “to cry or to laugh proved fatal on the spot; and thus many were killed, not because they had said or done anything wrong, but because they had frowned or smiled. So closely were their faces observed”.138 This vivid thought is all the more memorable since it occurs only in Dio among our accounts of the proscriptions of 82 BCE.139 Moreover, Livia’s bizarre suggestion that the princeps was suspected of murdering “many out of anger, and many out of desire for their wealth” overlaps closely with Dio’s interpretation of the motives of Sulla and his allies: “they murdered all they saw who surpassed them in any way, some out of envy and others because of their money”.140 Finally, Livia’s reference to legions of spies being paid for information—wholly absent in Dio’s account of Augustus’ reign—again calls to mind the praemium awarded for the successful capture of the proscribed under Sulla.141 Livia’s claims would seem ridiculous to any diligent reader of the Roman History, and that is its 136  Cass. Dio 54.19.1–3, 55.10.14–15. 137  Cass. Dio 53.24.4–6, 54.23, 54.27.4, 55.10.16, 55.14.2. 138  Cass. Dio frg. 109.16. 139  Cf. App. B Civ. 1.95–96; Plut. Sull. 31–32; Vell. Pat. 2.28. 140  Cass. Dio frg. 109.10. 141  Cf. App. B Civ. 1.95; Plut. Sull. 31.4; Suet. Iul. 11; Vell. Pat. 2.28.3.

190

chapter 3

author’s intention: they recall not the Rome that is, but the (Republican) Rome that has been left behind. A second point of interest arrives in Livia’s peroration. To close, she reminds Augustus to keep a merciful course. Should he do so, then his previous misdeeds will be forgiven as necessary; should he not, then his past actions will be viewed as deliberate malice. In a statement that is entirely the historian’s own view, she adds that the means of Octavian’s rise to power were justified by its ends: “for it is impossible for a man to guide so great a city from Republic to monarchy without spilling blood in the process”.142 That this apologia for Octavian’s actions as a dynast is the historian’s own is confirmed by his necro­logy of the first emperor. He writes that if any citizens remembered his misdeeds in the civil wars, they “attributed them to the necessity of his circumstances”; so great was the difference between Octavian the bloody dynast and Augustus the noble emperor.143 Dio’s Livia thus proposes that mercy will be important for the preservation of Augustus’ image and the stability of his reg­ ime. His rise to power may have necessitated drastic action, but these wounds could heal, provided he be moderate in the exercise of his power. As with Maecenas, Augustus again follows the advice of his wise counsellor: her παρρησία succeeds in bringing harmony. Dio records that he released all the accused with a word of caution, and even appointed Cinna Magnus as consul for the following year. As a result of this act (κἀκ τούτου), Dio interprets, the emperor so conciliated his critics that for the remaining decade of his reign he was never plotted against again.144 As so often in Dio’s res publica restituta, oratory in the form of sound advice produced stabilising and ultimately beneficial historical results. It is a profound and obvious contrast with the speeches of the Late Republic. The case is not that the historian was entirely fooled by the claims of the regime, and neither should we be overly romantic about Rome’s first emperor. Augustus burned books.145 Suetonius records the lengths he went to in order to control and occasionally repress information.146 Dio recognised that repress­ ion, and says so in the methodological statement of Book 53 with which we began. Paradoxically, he even on occasion used ‘free speech’ as a weapon for stifling dissent, not airing it out. The career of Marcus Primus as governor of Macedonia is a case in point. Primus had allegedly attacked a ‘friend and ally’ 142  Cass. Dio 55.21.4. 143  Cass. Dio 56.44.1. 144  Cass. Dio 55.22.2. 145  Cass. Dio 56.27.1. See Howley 2017 for an excellent modern discussion of book-burnings under the early Principate. 146  Suet. Aug. 32.2, 35–36, 39, 55–56, 65, 67.2.

Oratory

191

of Rome in Thrace without authorisation; when tried, he claimed in his defence that the action was sanctioned by Augustus himself. Augustus naturally denied this claim, but many jurors were not convinced and voted to acquit. Further trials for conspiracy ensued, in which several jurors were, again, not convinced by Augustus’ case. His solution to this embarrassment was simply to abolish the secret ballot in such cases, and demand that convictions for maiestas be secured only by a unanimous vote.147 This was certainly a convenient measure to pass: it deliberately rigged the procedure. Forcing senators to bring their opinions out into the open singled out critics of the glorious leader. Wrongly, Dio puts a favourable slant on this procedural trick. Yet he was aware of the hypocrisy of the regime in general. His Augustus came to power as a warlord—oftentimes a staggeringly brutal one—148 and continued to underpin that power with military force. Oratory in the form of sound advice—an Agrippa, Maecenas, Livia—was the essential moderating influence. The history of Rome’s permutations, from monarchy to Republic and back again, was to Cassius Dio inseparable from the character of public speech. He did not treat its earliest centuries as a golden age of deliberative oratory; the speeches of Julius Proculus, Tanaquil, Brutus, and the ambassadors from Tarquinii reveal his interest in the ambiguity of rhetoric at an early stage. Yet there is nothing here to compare to the turpitude of public debate in his extant books: in the Late Republic, virtually all attempts to persuade the people are either corrupt or ineffective, with catastrophic consequences for the res publica. Dio explored the destructive impact of oratory upon political life more fully than any surviving historian of the first century BCE: its destabilising influence could not be countered, he argues, until the fora of debate themselves were restricted. This is another important component of his theoretical critique of δημοκρατία and justification of monarchy. Demosthenes’ question finds its answer in Books 1–56 of the Roman History: no political process based upon speeches could ever continue to function properly, if the speeches themselves were false. With constitutional change came also a change, for the better, in the role of oratory within the state.

147  Our only source for this embarrassing scenario is Cass. Dio 54.3. For a discussion of the debacle and its aftermath (leading to the conspiracy of Varro Murena and Fannius Caepio), see Stockton 1965. 148  An especially troubling historical example lies in Octavian’s alleged massacre of some three hundred members of the aristocracy, including senators and equestrians, at Perusia in 40 BCE. On this astonishing event our sources are utterly contradictory: Cassius Dio maintains that it did happen, Appian that it did not. Lange 2020 provides an important, up-to-date study of this episode.

chapter 4

Morality The Romans were flourishing in military power and enjoyed complete harmony with one another. Just as most people are led by untempered good fortune to audacity yet some others from great fear to resolve, so did the Romans at that time differ to most. For the more they were fortunate, the more they were moderate. Against their enemies they displayed the courage proper to manly virtue, but toward each other they offered the forbearance which goes hand in hand with good order. They used their material power in pursuit of secure moderation, and their orderliness for the acquisition of real bravery; they did not allow their good fortune to turn into arrogance nor their forbearance to turn into cowardice. For they believed that if they acted in this way, good sense could be ruined by brav­ ery and boldness ruined by fear, but that under their current conditions their moderation was becoming more secure through bravery and their good fortune more reliable through good order. It was especially because of this that they conducted so successfully the wars which came upon them, and administered their own affairs and those of the allies so well. Cass. Dio frg. 52.1–2

∵ In his account of the Second Punic War, Dio pauses to assess the moral rect­ itude of the Romans at the end of the third century BCE. The idealising picture above is unusual, since he was not generally romantic about the earlier history of Rome. Unlike Sallust or Livy, Dio did not hold up the first centuries of the Republic as a model of political order; indeed, his version is the most cynical and pessimistic to have survived within the Roman historical tradition.1 Yet 1  The marked pessimism of Dio’s account of earlier Roman history was first noted by Libourel 1974, who attributed this to the historian “following” a distinctive but now inextant annalistic source. More recently, the collected chapters of Burden-Strevens & Lindholmer 2019 em­ phasise that his focus on corruption, competition, stasis and ambition in the earliest days of Rome emerged from the historian’s own theoretical critique of democracy and his attempt to make the Republican story-arc of the Roman History internally coherent: see Lange 2019; Lindholmer 2019.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_005

Morality

193

he seems to have treated Rome’s conflict with Hannibal as the one period at which the Roman δημοκρατία was at its best. This must be the period Dio had in mind in the famous opening of Book 44, when he writes that if democra­ cies have been successful in the past, they have only been so for a brief time while they were not so corrupted by size and strength to become insolent be­ cause of their good fortunes (ὕβρεις σφίσιν ἐξ εὐπραγίας), nor jealous because of their ambition (φθόνους ἐκ φιλοτιμίας).2 Dio’s excursus on the excellence of the Romans during the Second Punic War connects, explicitly, the morality of individuals to the stability of the political order. Harmony (ὁμονοία), mod­ eration (τὸ μέτριον), and good sense (τό σωφρονοῦν) are achieved through re­ straint, bravery, and the level-headed enjoyment of their successes. Unlike Sulla, Pompeius, and Caesar, the Romans of the late third century BCE have the wisdom to bear their good fortune moderately, leading to sound and cohesive government (ἄριστα ἐπολίτευσαν).3 Roman historians from the first century BCE onward had always treated the increasing instability of the res publica in moral terms.4 Dio was no exception. For Livy, it was the successes of the early second century which posed pressing moral challenges to the status quo:5 the repeal of the lex Oppia, the foreshad­ owing of the corrosive influence of decadence (luxuria) upon the state with C. Manlius Vulso’s return from Asia, and the danger of excessively powerful generals with the Trials of the Scipios a few years later all contrast sharply with his idealising portrait of early Rome.6 For Sallust, the fall of Carthage was the turning-point: with the destruction of Rome’s great enemy and, therefore, the disappearance of a capable threat to keep Rome on its toes (metus hostilis), its empire was changed from “the justest and finest” into a cruel and perverted tyranny.7 Only after the fall of Carthago aemula imperii Romani did moral de­ cline take root: pride, cruelty, neglect for the gods, love of money, and excessive ambition.8 Sallust speaks of moral decline almost as if of a sudden and unex­ pected change in human nature. 2  Cass. Dio 44.2. 3  Fechner 1986, 186 has rightly argued that Dio believed that the corruption inherent in human nature could only be prevented by a “Stabilitätsideal”: the res publica was constantly threat­ ened by internal instability arising from the weakness of the Republican framework itself, but the practice of moderation in political life could neutralise or reduce such threats. 4  See Lintott, 1972b. 5  So also Morstein-Marx & Rosenstein 2010, 643: “It is surely to the early and middle second century that we need to look more closely for the factors that heightened the potential for elite division to the inflammable level reached in 133”. 6  E.g. Livy 34.1–8, 36.9, 38.50–60, 39.7. 7  Sall. Cat. 10.6. 8  Sall. Cat. 10.4–5.

194

chapter 4

It was once argued that, like Livy and Sallust, Cassius Dio conceived of eth­ ical decay as contingent upon imperial expansion and the removal of metus hostilis. In that regard, then, human nature (φύσις) in the Roman History altered along with the circumstances.9 Under such a conception, negative modes of human behaviour—such as ambition, greed, envy and so forth—emerged in direct consequence of the augmentation of the empire. More recently, how­ ever, Martin Hose has suggested that the Roman History was not conceived according to a framework of moral decline (a Dekadenzmodell), because this would be inconsistent with the conception of human nature which Dio in­ herited from Thucydides.10 If human nature remains the same, Hose argues, then it is impossible that the populus Romanus could suddenly degenerate from nobility and excellence into their opposites with the advent of empire and security.11 As a ‘Thucydidean’ historian with a ‘Thucydidean’ impression of mankind, Dio had to believe that human nature (φύσις) was innate, constant, and consistent: men could be driven by ambition or the pursuit of profit at any time. However, there are some problems with this view. First, Thucydides’ account of the civil unrest at Corfu shows that he believed human nature to be muta­ ble under some circumstances: it was not necessarily constant, and different aspects of man’s φύσις could alter or emerge according to the circumstances.12 Secondly, Dio did not take all of his political thought from Thucydides, and his evident admiration for that historian on a stylistic level is not sufficient to pro­ hibit other influences. In fact, Dio’s view of the relationship between human nature, moral decay, and the decline of the Republic is much closer to Tacitus’ than Thucydides’. In the Histories, Tacitus writes of ambition as innate to the human condition. In his view, love of power and desire for domination was an ancient and deep-seated part of man’s nature. However, it only increased and burst forth with the growth of empire. This explosion of immorality oc­ curred when the world had been subdued and rival nations defeated. From that security, civic fragmentation and ultimately civil war emerged.13 Tacitus thus integrates two seemingly contradictory approaches. Vices such as ambi­ tion were indeed ever-present and innate: this is a consistent, constant, and more Thucydidean view of human nature. However, those vices can intensify (or their results become more harmfully pronounced) with the application of 9  Fechner 1986, 136–154. 10  Hose 1994, 381–383. 11  Hose 1994, 405. 12  Thuc 3.82.2; for this argument see Rees 2011, 40–41. 13  Tac. Hist. 2.38.

Morality

195

external stimuli such as the growth of wealth and empire: this is a develop­ mental and more Sallustian view of human nature. The Roman History took this premise and expanded it on a dramatic scale. Tacitus’ view of human nature forms a brief digression in his account of the conflict between Otho and Vitellius; Dio, on the other hand, explored in detail the effects of this intensification of vice across many books, linking it closely to the collapse of the Republic. The Roman History assumes that human morality as such did not change, but rather that integral and innate parts of it could be prompted, magnified, encouraged, or indeed suppressed by the political sys­ tem. In other words, Dio believed that the moral decline and imperial augmentation of Rome caused an acceleration in the problems ‘inherent’ in Republican politics, caused by human nature. Dio believed that constitutional change could affect human nature, either suppressing its worst elements or exaggerat­ ing and altering its effects.14 This chapter explores Dio’s contribution to the theory of moral decline in Roman historiography. He believed—and says explicitly in his own voice—that it was impossible for a Republic based upon competition among the aristo­cracy to govern a wide empire, and that with the acquisition of wealth and territory came the means and opportunity for the aristocracy to satisfy its worst inher­ ent vices. Four such vices are given especial prominence, and will be the focus of this case-study: envy (φθόνος), ambition (φιλοτιμία), cupidity (ἐπιθυμία), and desire for gain or advancement (πλεονεξία). The speeches often mirror this moral framework, with a repeated focus on the historical consequences of moral decline for the political system. The historian’s authorial comments demonstrate that this did not arise as the result of a change in man’s φύσις, but was rather exaggerated by Rome’s increasing fortunes, and lay dormant to surface at any time. Intriguingly, these four vices—which exert a destructive force on public life and are often interpreted by Dio as causes, in themselves, of political action—disappear almost entirely from the Roman History with the advent of Augustus’ monarchy. In the speeches of the Augustan regime—and especially the laudatio funebris of Tiberius which closes it—the historian re­ flects a final time upon those vices, and their replacement by a more virtuous political culture shorn of the worst excesses of competition. 14  Rees 2011, 53. Rees’ study gives the fullest modern discussion of Cassius Dio’s attitude toward human nature and its importance as an explanatory instrument in his narrative of the Republic.

196 1

chapter 4

Envy and Odium

Envy, or φθόνος, is possibly the most frequent and important of all Dio’s aspects of emotive causation: that is, his methods of explaining why people act in the way they do on the basis of their emotional reactions. Strictly speaking, φθόνος carries with it two senses: invidia, the ‘evil eye’ of begrudging another for their successes; and odium, a profound dislike of a person with or without a specific connection to envy or resentment for their privileges.15 As a causal factor in its own right, φθόνος is dramatically more frequent and important within the Roman History than in other Greek accounts of the Republic, and especially its decline. In the entirety of Appian’s Civil Wars, narrating the whole period from the Gracchi to the triumviral period in detail, the morpheme -φθον-, indicating envy—this may be part of a noun, a verb, a participle, or even an adverb— occurs twenty-one times.16 This figure seems significant, but pales in compar­ ison with Dio. Plutarch, for his part, uses envy only seldom as an explanation for the ways in which individuals act. In Appian’s Mithridatica, moreover, it appears only once.17 Let us compare the forty years in Appian from Sulla’s dictatorship to Caesar’s assassination, where envy is mentioned twenty-one times, with a comparable forty years in Dio: from the resumption of the direct tradition in Book 36 and 69 BCE to the Augustan Settlement in Book 53, just over four decades later. Here φθόνος is mentioned over three times as much, occurring sixty-nine times.18 It is telling that nine of these occur in the narra­ tive of Caesar’s assassination and funeral;19 there will be more to say on this in a moment. Thus, Cassius Dio evidently applied a framework of historical causation to the late res publica in which the emotive aspect, the jealous begrudging of an­ other’s success, plays a central role in aristocratic discord above and beyond his Greek predecessors or indeed any predecessors. That is not to say that Classical Greek historians had not already laid the framework for evaluating human act­ ions in this way: it was not, of course, unprecedented to conceive of envy as 15  See Kaster 2003. 16  App. B Civ. 1.1.11, 1.3.22, 1.5.35, 1.6.48, 1.8.71, 1.9.79, 2.1.21, 2.2.9, 2.2.14, 2.9.57, 2.14.99, 2.18.127, 2.18.134, 2.19.140, 2.19.142, 3.1.5, 3.7.44, 3.8.60, 3.13.89, 4.2.10, 5.9.78. 17  App. Mith. 557. 18  Cass. Dio 36.14.3, 36.24.6, 36.26.1, 36.26.2, 36.29.2, 36.43.4, 37.23.4, 37.50.6, 38.11.2, 38.11.4, 38.12.7, 38.21.2, 38.36.4, 38.39.2, 39.25.4, 39.26.1, 39.26.2, 39.37.4, 40.8.1, 40.51.1, 41.28.1, 42.1.3, 42.20.5, 43.12.1, 43.18.3, 44.1.1, 44.2.3, 44.3.1, 44.7.3, 44.29.3, 44.36.5, 44.36.5, 44.39.2, 44.43.1, 45.4.3, 45.8.1, 45.11.4, 46.8.3, 46.17.2, 46.55.2, 47.15.4, 47.33.2, 47.38.3, 48.45.6, 49.7.5, 49.18.7, 49.21.1, 49.23.2, 49.41.6, 51.12.7, 52.2.2, 52.2.2, 52.11.3, 52.15.3, 52.25.4, 52.26.4, 52.30.8, 52.31.4, 52.31.4, 52.33.8, 52.33.9, 52.33.9, 52.40.2, 53.3.1, 53.6.2, 53.8.6, 53.10.3, 53.23.3, 53.29.6. 19  Cass. Dio 44.1.1, 44.2.3, 44.3.1, 44.7.3, 44.29.3, 44.36.5, 44.36.5, 44.39.2, 44.43.1.

Morality

197

a motivating factor in the hostile actions of elites. As both Harrison and Rees have shown of Herodotus and Thucydides respectively, φθόνος often causally underpinned the cynical manoeuvres of individuals.20 Yet Dio’s incorporation of this emotive aspect into his causation of the collapse of the res publica is too important, and too widespread, to be a mere reflection of his classicising tendencies. Much scholarship has been devoted to his admiration for the lang­ uage and thinking of Thucydides.21 Yet Dio connected φθόνος intimately to the decline of the Republic and its replacement by Augustus’ rule in a distinctive way, tied not only to his understanding of human φύσις but also—much more importantly—to the specific character of the political constitution itself. This can be demonstrated in three points particular to the role of φθόνος in the Roman History. First, it is innate to human nature. Secondly, it is at its most acute within the framework of competition among theoretical equals, who vie with each other for status and honour; in such contests the loser, naturally, is aggrieved to be outshone by a former peer. Thirdly, it can also exert a positive force. With Augustus’ ‘accession’ in 27 BCE, envy not only virtually disappears entirely from the narrative, but is even reinvented in meaning where rarely it occurs. In the Augustan narrative, envy is in fact transformed into a positive thread within the political fabric. Cassius Dio therefore perceived φθόνος as a defining characteristic of Late Republican political culture and interpreted this as the cause of major, and destructive, constitutional movements. He accord­ ingly elaborated this in some detail and with great frequency in his speeches of this period, so confirming their embeddedness within his framework of histor­ ical causation. In her survey of Greek conceptions of history, Barbara Kuhn-Chen has spec­ ified that φθόνος in the Roman History occurs especially between former equals who begrudge the advancement or enrichment of a former peer of compa­ rable status.22 This is precisely so, yet omits the logical next step: Dio’s theo­ retical critique of democracy (that is, the Republic). Φθόνος in the histor­ian’s assessment was the natural result of any system in which individuals of equal status attempted to compete. As we have already seen in our survey of Dio’s moral approach to history in Chapter 2 (‘Method’), the principle of equality 20  Harrison 2003; Rees 2011, 30–35. 21  See e.g. Melber 1891, 290–297; Litsch 1893; Kyhnitzsch 1894; Schwartz 1899, 1690–1691; Millar 1964, 42; Manuwald 1979, 280–284; Aalders 1986, 94; Lintott 1997, 2499–2500; Parker 2008 77; Rees 2011 62–86. Dramatically less work has been undertaken on Dio’s relation­ ship with Herodotus, on which a detailed study would be most opportune; Jones 2016 has recently likened the Agrippa-Maecenas controuersia to the constitutional debate at Hdt. 3.80–82 as an example of Dio’s “classicising” tendencies. 22   Kuhn-Chen 2002, 179.

198

chapter 4

and free competition was a fundamental characteristic of his view of the res publica: he conceived of δημοκρατία as underpinned by, and defined by, equal­ ity of opportunity or portion (ἰσομοιρία) and equality before the law (ἰσονομία). It was therefore inevitable, in Dio’s view, that φθόνος must proliferate under the Republic, just as in all δημοκρατίαι (44.2.3): For indeed, if there has ever been a strong democracy, it has only been at its best for a short time, so long as it had neither the size in population nor the material strength to call forth the envy that results from ambition or the aggrandisements that result from prosperity. εἰ γάρ που καὶ δημοκρατία τις ἤνθησεν, ἀλλ᾽ ἔν γε βραχεῖ χρόνῳ ἤκμασεν, μέχρις οὗ μήτε μέγεθος μήτ᾽ ἰσχὺν ἔσχον ὥστε ἢ ὕβρεις σφίσιν ἐξ εὐπραγίας ἢ φθόνους ἐκ φιλοτιμίας ἐγγενέσθαι. Envy was therefore, in short, germane to the Republican political order. But to this universal statement Dio adds an important caveat. Envy is indeed the natur­al result of any system of power-sharing and competition among theoret­ ical equals, such as a δημοκρατία. Yet its worst effects can be curtailed by one of Dio’s most favoured restraining influences: the moderation (τὸ μέτριον) which leads to good sense (τό σωφρονοῦν). He here specifies that the Republic could indeed flourish and prosper, but only so long as its population (μέγεθος) and might (ἰσχὺν) were restricted to the scope appropriate for a democracy: in es­ sence, a city-state. Yet for a “city-state which rules the world”, to quote the histor­ ian’s own words, it was impossible to practice such moderation; Dio states this bluntly in terms in Book 44,23 and again in the speech of Maecenas in Book 53.24 Dio’s contention is not simply that all men who must compete with one an­ other or apportion power among themselves are naturally envious, but rather that they are especially so—and with more egregious consequences—when the stakes are higher. The political organisation of the state is therefore of fun­ damental importance. William Rees has rightly observed that to the historian, the meteoric rise of the Roman empire was a form of constitutional change in itself.25 Rome passed from the Regal Period to a genuinely free Republic, yet then expanded far and wide; this inevitably changed the functioning of the political system for the worse. It was thus replaced by a new monarchical con­ stitution in which competition among the aristocracy was no longer the main 23  Cass. Dio 44.2.4. 24  Cass. Dio 52.15.6–16.4. 25  Rees 2011, 53.

Morality

199

vehicle of political life. Dio himself periodises Roman history in this way: the time of the kings (βασιλεία), the free Republic (δημοκρατία), the corrupted age of the Late Republic (δυναστεία), and the Principate (μοναρχία).26 It is that third age, termed by Adam Kemezis the “dynasteia-mode”,27 at which Rome’s empire is at its height, competition among the leading statesmen is at its most vicious, and envy—in direct consequence—is at its most pervasive and destructive. Envy was thus ever-present in human nature, but like all aspects of Dio’s conception of φύσις it could be suppressed or exaggerated by the political circumstances. As so often in his Roman History, the author used the early books to underline his major historical themes and premises in a programmatic way which would inform the reader’s reception of the enormous Republican narrative to follow. That φθόνος was an integral part of human nature is under­ lined even from Book 1. Here, probably on the murder of Remus by Romulus, Dio closes the episode with an epimythium on the vices inherent in mankind, called forth by their unfortunate experiment in power-sharing: “for thus it is that, by its very nature, the human condition cannot bear to be ruled by what is similar and familiar to it, partly from envy (φθόνῳ) and partly from contempt”.28 This authorial judgement evidently applies to human nature in general, yet it is obliquely related to Dio’s critique of δημοκρατία by virtue of the specific circumstances: the relationship between Romulus and Remus was one of theo­ retical equality and, therefore, unstable and liable to envy. Dio links φθόνος to the fundamental principles of the Republic more directly elsewhere. In summarising the increasing contretemps between Caesar and Pompeius in Book 39, for example, he interprets that the latter had come to realise that their former equality (ἰσομοιρία) was coming to an end. Caesar had begun to surpass him, and envy would be the natural result. The reflection (in an ‘embedded focalisation’)29 is of course not Pompeius’ interpretation of the political circumstances, but the historian’s own (39.26.1–2): Pompeius regarded the situation as grave. For he realised that there are two things which can ruin a friendship—fear, and envy—, and that it is only possible to prevent these by absolute equality in fame and strength. For as long as people have these two in equal measures, their friendship is 26  Dio himself periodises Roman history just prior to the Augustan Settlement at 52.1; it is likely that it will also have figured in the now-lost Preface to his work, on which see Fromentin 2013. 27  Kemezis 2014, 94–104. 28  Cass. Dio frg. 5.12. 29  See De Jong et al. 2004 on embedded focalisation within ancient literature, including a survey of the scholarship.

200

chapter 4

firm; but when the one surpasses the other in any respect, then the inferior becomes jealous and hates the superior, while the stronger grows to dis­ respect and insult the weaker. When both sides are thus disposed—the one vexed at his inferiority and the other exalted by his advantage—they finally come to strife and war in place of their former friendship. οὐκ ἐν ἐλαφρῷ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἐποιήσατο. καὶ γὰρ ἐνόμιζε δύο τε εἶναι τὰ τὰς φιλίας τινῶν συγχέοντα, τό τε δέος καὶ τὸν φθόνον, καὶ ταῦτα ἀπ᾽ ἀντιπάλου καὶ τῆς δόξης καὶ τῆς ἰσχύος μόνως μὴ συμβαίνειν· ἕως μὲν γὰρ ἂν ἰσομοιρῶσί τινες αὐτῶν, καὶ ἐκείνας ἐρρῶσθαι, ἐπειδὰν δ᾽ ὑπεράρωσί τι οἱ ἕτεροι, ἐνταῦθα τό τε ἐλαττούμενον φθονῆσαν μισεῖν τὸν κρείττονα καὶ τὸ κρατοῦν καταφρονῆσαν ἐξυβρίζειν ἐς τὸν χείρονα, καὶ οὕτως ἀπ᾽ ἀμφοτέρων τὸν μὲν τῇ ἐλαττώσει ἀγανακτοῦντα τὸν δὲ τῇ πλεονεξίᾳ ἐπαιρόμενον, πρός τε διαφορὰς καὶ πρὸς πολέμους ἐκ τῆς πρὶν φιλίας ἀφικνεῖσθαι. Man’s inherent disposition toward envy of his former equals, coupled with the failure of the Late Republic to deliver genuine equality of political privi­ lege (ἰσομοιρία), thus had far-reaching political consequences. Dio’s interest in φθόνος is not a mere dalliance with the language of Thucydides. It is integral to his problematisation of the Republic as a political system based upon free competition, and an explicit cause of strife (διαφορὰς) and, ultimately, civil war (πολέμους). This problem evidently increases in intensity with the growth of empire and increased resources for competition. It is important to note that φθόνος is in general rare in the early portions of the Roman History as a cause or motivat­ ing factor in individuals’ actions, certainly so until the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus.30 As we saw in the previous chapter with the exemplary figure of Scipio Aemilianus, it was even possible for leading statesmen to escape the risks of envy altogether,31 thanks to the reduced resources and scope for com­ petition which came with a small, cohesive empire based solely upon Italy. Dio clarifies this point with the speech of Maecenas: here the orator states that the troubles of the Republic began when it looked beyond Italy and began expand­ ing into different continents.32 It is here then, in the “dynasteia-mode”, where φθόνος is at its most acute, encouraged by the profound change in material political circumstances which came with imperial expansion.

30  Cass. Dio frgs. 19, 43.1–2, 57.20, 57.54, 57.62, 63, 70.9, 74. 31  Cass. Dio 70.4.9. 32  Cass. Dio 52.16.1–2.

Morality

201

The formal orations themselves certainly demonstrate that Cassius Dio aligned these compositions with his own theoretical conception of the prob­ lems inherent in δημοκρατίαι. In Chapter 2 (‘Method’) we have already briefly mentioned φθόνος in Dio’s analysis of the historical situation in 67 BCE; let us return to it briefly now before moving on to Cicero, the Agrippa-Maecenas dia­ logue, Octavian’s address to the Senate, and the ‘reinvention’ of φθόνος under Augustus. In his narrative comments prior to Pompeius’ false recusatio, the histor­ian states without equivocation that the motives that underlay the speaker’s choice of dissimulatio were, above all, to accrue greater honour by appearing to have been forced to accept the command; and to avoid the φθόνος that seeming to have deliberately sought out those powers would generate.33 These concerns, accordingly, are repeated by Dio’s Pompeius, who pretends to reject the hon­ ours of the lex on the grounds that all positions of power are causes of envy and hatred.34 No man, moreover, could happily live among those who envied him.35 In the context of the speech this is presented as part of the misleading, but persuasive, value of the recusatio: Pompeius in the depicted situation is all the more successful with the people—and Catulus, in contrast, fails to persuade— because he capitalises on very real concerns about φθόνος which the historian in the preceding narrative has already stated were a genuine problem. To con­ tinue labouring Dio’s point, the exhortation of Gabinius which follows then encourages the general not to fear the jealousy of his opponents, but rather to aim to succeed all the more for this reason and thus spite his traducers.36 And, finally, Catulus’ defence of the traditional status quo rounds off this thought about envy by predicting, on the historian’s behalf, that the near-monarchical power of the Gabinian law cannot fail to bring jealousy to its beneficiary.37 It seems clear that the historian particularly wished to bring φθόνος to the forefront in his lex Gabinia speeches. Rightly so, for we have already seen its direct political consequences. Catulus’ prediction comes true. After the many successes of his command even Pompeius’ friends and former allies turned against him: his puppet-consuls for 60 BCE, Metellus and Afranius, were of no help to him after his return to Rome and deliberately obstructed all his poli­ tical arrangements in the East.38 In another focalisation of Pompeius’ private thoughts—again the historian’s own interpretation of the actual historical 33  Cass. Dio 36.24.6. For a more developed argument, see Burden-Strevens 2016. 34  Cass. Dio 36.26.1. 35  Cass. Dio 36.26.2–3. 36  Cass. Dio 36.29.2. 37  Bekk. Anecd. 157, 30. 38  Cass. Dio 37.49–50.

202

chapter 4

circumstances—Dio connects the general’s political impotence after his re­ turn from the East directly to the honours and positions he had once held, and the envy arising from them (37.50.5–6): And so, since he could accomplish nothing because of Metellus and the others, Pompeius declared that they were jealous of him and that he would communicate this to the people. However, as he feared that he might fail to win them over too and incur even greater shame, he aban­ doned his demands. Thus he realised that he did not have any real power, but only the name and the envy for the positions he had once held. ὁ οὖν Πομπήιος ἐπειδὴ μηδὲν διά τε τὸν Μέτελλον καὶ διὰ τοὺς ἄλλους διεπράξατο, ἔφη μὲν φθονεῖσθαί τε ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ πλήθει τοῦτο δηλώσειν, φοβηθεὶς δὲ μὴ καὶ ἐκείνου διαμαρτὼν μείζω αἰσχύνην ὄφλῃ, κατέβαλε τὴν ἀξίωσιν. καὶ ὁ μὲν οὕτω γνοὺς ὅτι μηδὲν ὄντως ἴσχυεν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ὄνομα καὶ τὸν φθόνον ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἠδυνήθη ποτὲ εἶχεν. The disastrous consequence of this φθόνος was the alliance between Caesar, Crassus, and Pompeius formed later that year. Dio explains the latter’s moti­ vation. He had realised that he was not as strong as he wished to be, and saw Caesar and Crassus’ influence on the rise. Sensing an opportunity to prevent them doing harm to him—and, importantly, hoping to regain his former power by sharing in their present advantages—he joined the so-called triumvirate.39 Pompeius’ entry into the alliance is thus framed as a direct response to his own lack of political might at the hands of Metellus and his jealousy, and as an attempt to recoup some of his lost prestige and cachet. In the lex Gabinia speeches, Dio sets into motion a chain of political events which began with envy; and which ended, ultimately, with the destructive alliance between Crassus, Caesar, and Pompeius. The historian’s amnesty-speech of Cicero reflects some of these concerns about the political ramifications of φθόνος. These statements on envy take on a special explanatory significance when situated within the context of the preceding narrative, which must be turned to first. In his account of the as­ sassination of Caesar immediately prior to Cicero’s defence of the res publica, Dio details his own interpretation of the auspicious state of the constitution under the dictator’s leadership and of the factors which precipitated the end of this period of stability. He writes that the tyrannicides were prompted to action by “a terrible frenzy which fell upon them, because of jealousy (φθόνῳ) 39  Cass. Dio 37.56.3.

Morality

203

of his advancement and hatred of his position of honour above them”.40 We are evidently still in a Late Republican mode: Caesar may have been, in prac­ tice, a monarch, but the attitudes of the aristocracy and the outward poli­tical framework had remained that of a δημοκρατία. It was therefore inevitable that the Senate should despise Caesar’s advancement far beyond the bounds of equality (ἰσομοιρία and ἰσονομία) that they had once enjoyed. Cynically, they understood this. This φθόνος was their tactic, their deliberate creation: almost all voted him ever-more extravagant honours not in order to gratify him, “but in order that he might be the more swiftly destroyed, wishing to make him envied (ἔς τε τὸ ἐπίφθονον) and resented all the sooner”.41 Uniquely, therefore, φθόνος was not only the cause of the civil war between Pompeius and Caesar, but also of the formation of their alliance and the latter’s eventual downfall. Dio presents a Late Republican political class perfectly aware of the capac­ ity of extraordinary honour to bring its holder into disrepute; but additionally states clearly his view that the result of this φθόνος was merely further disaster for Rome. Dio’s Cicero makes a similar argument shortly after this explanation of the historical causes, and results, of the dictator’s assassination. In this immediate narrative context, the orator’s comments on competition and factional dis­ unity and fragmentation are significant. He exhorts the Romans to (44.24.3–5): give up our mutual enmities, or jealousies, or whatever else one should call them, and return to our former state of peace and friendship and har­ mony. We should remember, if nothing else, that as long as we conducted our government in this latter way, we acquired wealth and fame and terr­ itories and allies. But since we have been led into injuring one another, we have become decidedly worse off. And I for my part think that nothing can save the state at this time unless we adopt a policy this very day and with all possible speed, or else we will never be able to regain our former position. τὰς μὲν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔχθρας ἢ φιλονεικίας, ἢ ὅπως ἄν τις αὐτὰς ὀνομάσῃ, καταλύσασθαι. πρὸς δὲ δὴ τὴν παλαιὰν ἐκείνην εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν ἐπανελθεῖν, ἐνθυμηθέντας τοῦτό γε, εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο, ὅτι τέως μὲν ἐκείνως ἐπολιτευόμεθα, καὶ χώρας καὶ πλούτους καὶ δόξαν καὶ συμμάχους ἐκτησάμεθα, 40  Cass. Dio 44.1.1. 41  Cass. Dio 44.7.3. Significantly, Dio here frames hatred as νέμεσις: not hatred as such, but rather just retribution for a wrong committed. This is an effective embedded focalisation of the attitudes of the Republican aristocracy toward ‘the tyrant’. See Kaster 2003.

204

chapter 4

ἀφ᾽ οὗ δὲ ἐς τὰ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κακὰ προήχθημεν, οὐχ ὅσον οὐκ ἀμείνους ἀλλὰ καὶ πολὺ χείρους ἐγενόμεθα. καὶ ἔγωγε τοσούτου δέω νομίζειν ἄλλο τι σῶσαι ἂν ἐν τῷ παρόντι τὴν πόλιν, ὥστ᾽ ἂν μή τι τήμερον καὶ ἤδη γε ὅτι τάχιστα προβουλεύσωμεν, οὐδ᾽ ἀναλαβεῖν δυνησόμεθα. While reading Cicero’s reflection upon senatorial competition the reader can­ not fail to think of the assassination of Caesar which occurred a few chapters before; nor indeed of the historian’s reflection on the harmony and stability which his regime brought, dashed utterly by the φθόνος of his competitors. Cicero serves as an important reflection at what Dio describes as a crucial moment of stasis, in which the historian uses his orator to set out his explan­ ation: competition among the Roman aristocracy had bred φθόνος, leading to Caesar’s murder and to renewed strife. Only by abandoning that course could the Republic be saved. This point is furthermore made implicit by the list of exempla which Dio’s Cicero relays later in the oration. Citing Marius, Sulla, Cinna, Strabo, Pompeius, and Caesar as proof of “all the time we have spent wearing ourselves out in fighting one another’”,42 the historian’s message is that the same was of course happening yet again in 44 BCE; and this resulted directly from the φθόνος of Caesar’s enemies, his former equals in the senatorial class. Dio seems to have made a conscious and deliberate choice in the amnesty-speech to bring for­ ward the theme of rivalrous competition, and he predicates this upon an immediately preceding narrative in which φθόνος takes centre-stage as the principal cause of dynastic power-struggles and internecine conflict. There is then the example of Julius Caesar in his exhortation to the mutiny­ ing troops at Vesontio. Ironically, Caesar is made to repeat Dio’s own belief that, in a system in which two parties are equal, those left behind by the suc­ cesses of the other will inevitably envy their new superior. This is an abso­ lute reflection of the historian’s narrative comments on Romulus’ murder of Remus and his excursus on the inevitability of φθόνος in a large and power­ ful δημοκρατία. To justify his conflict against the ‘aggressor’ Ariovistus, Caesar claims that many are plotting against the Romans’ prosperity: “for everything that lifts people above their peers arouses emulation and jealousy (φθονεῖται); and consequently eternal warfare is waged by all inferiors against those who excel them in any way”.43 On this principle, he argues, it is necessary to take the fight to Ariovistus: he has provoked this conflict as a result of his own φθόνος toward his equals.

42  Cass. Dio 44.27.4–28.5. 43  Cass. Dio 38.39.2.

Morality

205

This argument is not only ironic because of the ‘narrative preface’ immedi­ ately prior, which lays bare the general’s disingenuous intent. It is additionally ironic because Caesar—the monarchist and dynast—takes Dio’s fundamen­ tal critique of the weakness of the Republic and applies it to a speech full of false Republican slogans. It is also transparently untrue. In the Roman History, Ariovistus is neither the aggressor nor (importantly) an equal. He is a subordi­ nate, an amicus et socius technically and practically subservient to Rome. This is a further example of Dio’s presentation of Caesar’s willingness to misrepre­ sent the actual circumstances in order to attain his self-interested objects, and of the success of such arguments in persuading their audiences in the final decades of the Republic. Caesar would, as we know, fall prey to φθόνος himself on the Ides of March. Yet like Pompeius, he was also plagued by it at other points in his military ca­ reer, and here Antonius’ laudatio funebris is important. We will turn to this oration in more detail later in this chapter, with a particular focus on Dio’s presentation of Late Republican imperialism and its corrosive effects on poli­ tical oratory. But this speech, too, sets out the historian’s evaluation of the ef­ fect of φθόνος on the state, and these merit brief consideration here. Within Antonius’ speech, the historian lodges an interpretation of the cause of Caesar’s recall from his adventures in Gaul by his enemies in the 50s BCE. After a reflec­ tion on (and misrepresentation of) his successes, the orator summarises the hostile intent of those back in Rome (44.43.1): If certain persons had not begun to stir up revolution and compelled him to return home before the appropriate time, because they envied him—or rather, envied you—then he would have subdued all Britain along with the other islands surrounding it and all Germany up to the Arctic Ocean. καὶ εἴγε μὴ φθονήσαντες αὐτῷ τινες, μᾶλλον δὲ ὑμῖν, ἐστασιάκεσαν, καὶ δεῦρο αὐτὸν πρὸ τοῦ προσήκοντος καιροῦ ἐπανελθεῖν ἠναγκάκεσαν, πάντως ἂν καὶ τὴν Βρεττανίαν ὅλην μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων νήσων τῶν περικειμένων αὐτῇ καὶ τὴν Κελτικὴν πᾶσαν μέχρι τοῦ ἀρκτικοῦ ὠκεανοῦ ἐκεχείρωτο. This is intriguing for our purposes for two reasons. First, it is important to note that, just as Octavian’s recusatio imperii in Book 53 reflects the Augustan self-image crafted in the Res Gestae, so too does Antonius’ laudatio capture Caesar’s self-justification in the de Bello Civili.44 It is possible to make too much 44  Cf. for example the account of the senate-meeting given at Caes. B Civ. 1.2, where the de­ cision to recall Caesar is framed purely in terms of personal enmity toward him and the factional interests of Pompeius and his threats.

206

chapter 4

of this; but it would certainly be unusual for Dio to fail to have read the second of Caesar’s war-monographs and for this to have had no effect upon his under­ standing of important aspects of his self-justification. Secondly, Dio uses this speech to distill the causes of Caesar’s recall, and thus the civil war to follow, into a single assertive statement. Many aspects of Antonius’ speech are disingenuous, but in his narrative of 50 BCE the histor­ ian does indeed present the motives of those who worked for Caesar’s recall just as unfavourably as Antonius does. He writes that Marcellus instigated the measure because he desired the immediate downfall of Caesar, since he was of Pompeius’ faction.45 Furthermore, Marcellus wished to have Caesar replaced as commander “before the appointed time” (πρὸ τοῦ καθήκοντος χρόνου). This close overlap with Antonius’ reflection in his speech upon Caesar being re­ called “before the appropriate time” (πρὸ τοῦ προσήκοντος καιροῦ) perhaps sug­ gests that, on this point at least, Antonius is expressing views consonant with the historian’s own interpretation; there is no tension between the speech and the narrative in this one respect. Dio’s orator certainly adds a propagandistic flair: his statement that the Pompeians’ attempt to recall Caesar was prompted by their φθόνος not against the general himself but against the whole Roman people (μᾶλλον δὲ ὑμῖν) is patently absurd, and a good example of Dio’s use of speech as a means to characterisation of the speaker. Yet it is difficult not to imagine that Cassius Dio did believe that the φθόνος of Caesar’s enemies pre­ cipitated their manoeuvres against him in 50 BCE, as Antonius states, and the speech sums up that view succinctly. Marcellus’ intervention, motivated by his φθόνος and that of Pompeius, of course had dramatic political ramifications. Immediately after narrating these plots at Rome, Dio writes that Caesar was on no account inclined to become a private citizen after his lengthy position of command, and feared falling into the hands of his enemies.46 In consequence he courted favour at Rome, drew more senators to his side, collected further money and troops, and in short prepared for war. Paradoxically, then, the φθόνος of Caesar’s opponents in fact strengthened his position and caused a rift in the Senate.47 Caesar would, of course, cross the Rubicon the next year. Dio’s speeches thus reveal his recurring interest in the Late Republican cycle of advancement beyond the limits of equality; the φθόνος incurred by these advancements; and the destruction that such φθόνος would always bring. It is 45  Cass. Dio 40.59.1. 46  Cass. Dio 40.60.1. We will return to this important statement in more detail in the next chapter. 47  Cass. Dio 40.61–62.

Morality

207

an essential component of his theoretical critique of δημοκρατία, germane to human nature and yet called forth by Rome’s increasing fortunes. How could such a cycle be broken? Cassius Dio used the Agrippa-Maecenas debate to reflect a final time upon the problem of Late Republican φθόνος, and to outline his interpretation of the solution. In his assessment it was the absolute power of a single monarch in Augustus that broke the cycle of competition and envy, restoring the elite to relative harmony. Significantly, the opening lines of Agrippa’s misguided defence of democracy begin by warning Octavian against the dangers of φθόνος to all monarchs, and the last line of Maecenas’ response advises him on how to avoid that φθόνος. The controuersia is thus book-ended at its open and close by two opposing statements, both relevant to one of Dio’s most im­ portant historical interpretations of the weakness of Republican government. Agrippa begins in his usual manner with a deliberately weak and illogical statement whose veracity is directly disproven by the preceding narrative (52.2.2–3): Do not be surprised, Caesar, if I try to turn you away from monarchy, even if under that system I would acquire many benefits from it—or at least if you held it. For if it were to be in your interest, I would of course desire it very much. But since monarchy does not offer the same benefits to rul­ ers as to their friends, but the friends can reap the fruit of all the benefits they wish safely and unenvied and the rulers on the other hand get only the jealousies and dangers, I have decided as usual to look not to my own interests, but to yours and the common good. μὴ θαυμάσῃς, ὦ Καῖσαρ, εἰ μέλλω σε ἀποτρέπειν ἀπὸ τῆς μοναρχίας, καίπερ πολλὰ καὶ ἀγαθὰ ἀπολαύσας ἂν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς σοῦ γε αὐτὴν ἔχοντος. εἰ μὲν γὰρ καὶ σοὶ ὠφέλιμος γενήσεσθαι ἔμελλε, καὶ πάνυ ἂν αὐτὴν ἐσπούδασα· ἐπειδὴ δ᾽ οὐδὲν ὅμοιον τοῖς τε αὐταρχοῦσι καὶ τοῖς φίλοις σφῶν παρέχεται, ἀλλ᾽ οἱ μὲν καὶ ἀνεπιφθόνως καὶ ἀκινδύνως πάνθ᾽ ὅσα ἐθέλουσι καρποῦνται, τοῖς δὲ καὶ φθόνοι καὶ κίνδυνοι συμβαίνουσιν, οὐ τὸ ἐμαυτοῦ ἴδιον, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις, ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν τό τε κοινὸν προϊδέσθαι ἐδικαίωσα. To this point, the reader has seen time and again the deleterious effects of φθόνος; but certainly not in a monarchy. The grave threat of envy has been played out, quite recently in the narrative, in the example of Caesar’s assas­ sination, precipitated in Dio’s view by the φθόνος of his enemies. Other fig­ ures, such as Pompeius, furthermore suffered seriously as a result of their enviable positions and took the Republic down with them as a result. Envy

208

chapter 4

as a motivating factor in hostile senatorial action furthermore pervades Dio’s account of this period more generally. As such, these opening lines of Agrippa on the danger of φθόνος clearly rehearse a key factor in the collapse of the Republic. In fact, Agrippa’s admonishment has everything to do with the final decades of the libera res publica in the Roman History and absolutely nothing to do with the actual character of Augustus’ rule. That is not to say that φθόνος was not a real risk to Octavian’s position in the historian’s view. In Chapter 2 (‘Method’) we have already seen Maecenas sum­ marising, at length, the challenges the Augustan regime would have to face; his purpose here serves as the voice of the historian, and Agrippa’s comments too fulfil that function. In his dialogue with Pyrrhus, the exemplary Fabricius warns the Epirote king of the danger of φθόνος to all tyrants.48 In establishing him­ self as one, and so seeming to exalt over his peers and trample on Republican ἰσομοιρία and ἰσονομία, Octavian risked meeting the same fate as Caesar. “You remember”, Agrippa warns later, “how they proceeded against your father”.49 The conundrum lay in reconstituting the state in such a way as to secure the reality of monarchy while simultaneously observing the outward appearance of equality—as Caesar failed so drastically to do. Maecenas’ response proposes the answer to that conundrum in its closing lines (52.40.1–2): Decline the title of king—if you really do desire the reality of monarchy but fear the name of it as an accursed thing—and rule alone under the title of ‘Caesar’. But if you come to require other epithets, then the people will give you the title of ‘imperator’, just as they gave it to your father; and they will revere you with another way of address, so that you may reap the fruit of kingship’s power without the envy which attaches to the name of ‘king’. ὡς εἴ γε τὸ μὲν πρᾶγμα τὸ τῆς μοναρχίας αἱρῇ, τὸ δ᾽ ὄνομα τὸ τῆς βασιλείας ὡς καὶ ἐπάρατον φοβῇ, τοῦτο μὲν μὴ προσλάβῃς, τῇ δὲ δὴ τοῦ Καίσαρος προσηγορίᾳ χρώμενος αὐτάρχει. εἰ δ᾽ οὖν καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν ἐπικλήσεων προσδέῃ, δώσουσι μέν σοι τὴν τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, ὥσπερ καὶ τῷ πατρί σου ἔδωκαν, σεβιοῦσι δέ σε καὶ ἑτέρᾳ τινὶ προσρήσει, ὥστε σε πᾶν τὸ τῆς βασιλείας ἔργον ἄνευ τοῦ τῆς ἐπωνυμίας αὐτῆς ἐπιφθόνου καρποῦσθαι. Dio’s Augustus followed this prescription to the letter. Maecenas’ solution— that is, the historian’s solution—to the problem of Republican φθόνος lay 48  Cass. Dio frg. 40.15. 49  Cass. Dio 52.13.4.

Morality

209

in a sleight of hand: to create a monarchy under a civilian guise, dressed in the language of traditional liberty. The Romans, Dio states immediately after Octavian’s transformation into Augustus in Book 53, “hated the name of mon­ archy so much that they called their rulers neither dictators nor kings, nor any other such name”.50 In other words, they chose no unprecedented or strictly monarchical title. But since monarchy was in any event necessary they chose the name imperator, even for rulers who had not conquered in battle, “in order that those rulers might seem to derive their power not from domination, but from the laws”.51 Augustus thus assumed the title. In the historian’s assessment it is precisely by doing so that the new princeps avoided the φθόνος which had killed Caesar; were this not sufficiently clear, Maecenas mentions his fate alongside his final recommendation. In Dio’s view—and as his Maecenas recommends—Augustus’ avoidance of the appearance of kingship remedied the problem of φθόνος. The fora in which the Republican elite had attempted to compete—the Senate floor, popular elections and assemblies, and the provinces—were not only brought under monarchical control, as Dio explains in Book 53. They were brought under the control of a monarch who, by avoiding the trappings of kingship which had brought fatal φθόνος to Caesar,52 avoided φθόνος himself, and secured the transition from Republic to Principate.53 It is a romantic picture. But it is not entirely defective, and in fact approximates very closely with modern thinking about patterns of imperial communication and the impor­ tance of ciuilitas—“citizenness”—to Augustus’ historical success.54 We of course owe the term ciuilitas to Latin political thought. But it was Dio, and Dio alone, who surveyed the history of the Republic in such a way as to place ciuilitas at the centre of a comparison between Caesar’s failure and Augustus’ survival. Crucially, in the historian’s work the appearance of Augustus’ power preserved the framework of traditional liberty, including limited scope for honour and cosmetic competition, while asserting also the princeps’ 50  Cass. Dio 53.17.2. 51  Cass. Dio 53.17.3. 52  Fuller discussion in Chapter 5 (‘Institutions & Empire’). 53  So Burden-Strevens 2016. 54  Winterling 2009, 111–112: “It was Augustus who mastered this method perfectly on the part of emperor and thus achieved a relatively wide-reaching acceptance of his position. He dispensed with giving orders and with extraordinary honors of his person, treated his senatorial colleagues as equals, yet at the same time systematically secured the basis of his real position of power. Conversely, the republican institutions formally operated as if there was no emperor—but at the same time, as a rule, the senate and magistrates did what accorded with the imperial will”. See also Wallace-Hadrill 1982.

210

chapter 4

equality with his peers: the primus inter pares. Dio recognised the façade with­ out under-estimating its importance. In the Roman History that balancing-act removed entirely the problem of φθόνος from political life. With constitutional change came a change in the para­meters according to which competition operated; and, therefore, a re­ duced risk of that envy which Dio held as inevitable in a system based upon competition between theoretical equals who might transgress its bounds. This change has best been summed up by William Rees. “Given the ‘fact’ that people dislike feeling inferior to those with whom they were once equals, this inevi­ tably creates instability. In a monarchy, conversely, because one man is born to his rank, as it were, no such jealousy exists because people accept innate authority more naturally”.55 In the text of the Augustan Principate, the role of φθόνος is transformed in two ways. On the one hand, this emotive aspect of aristocratic disunity dis­ appears almost completely from the narrative and ceases to be a factor of his­ tory. On the other hand, where rarely it does occur—notably in the speeches of Livia and Tiberius—the object of envious desire radically shifts, from the acquisition of δυναστεία in all its forms (renown, hegemony, might, wealth) to the acquisition of virtue. We shall discuss here all of the examples; there are not many, and this fact is telling. Φθόνος is mentioned four times in Augustus’ recusatio imperii before the Senate in the narrative of 27 BCE. His characterisation here, as we have already seen in Chapter 2, is similar to that of the other Late Republican dynasts—and so too are the statements he makes about envy. In a quite remarkable passage, Dio’s Octavian affects to refuse monarchy on the grounds that he is worn out by the many hardships he has suffered, and that he wishes to avoid the envy and hatred (τὸν φθόνον καὶ τὸ μῖσος) that autocratic rule will invite. Significantly, these arguments are a perfect match with those deployed in the recusatio im­ perii of Pompeius forty years earlier in Book 36: we are still very much in a Late Republican mode.56 The historian signals to his readers that, as Octavian’s powers have not yet been constitutionally confirmed, the speaker is still a par­ ticipant in a culture where power generates envy. Octavian repeats this argument a second time later in the speech, stat­ ing that he wishes to be free from jealousy and plots (μήτε φθονεῖσθαι μήτε ἐπιβουλεύεσθαι).57 There are other clear parallels between Octavian’s recusatio and that of Pompeius. It may perhaps be that Catulus’ response to Pompeius’ 55  Rees 2011, 31. 56  Cf. Cass Dio 36.25.5–26.1, 53.8.6. 57  Cass. Dio 53.6.2.

Morality

211

recusatio in Book 36, which warns that “his task as monarch (μοναρχῆσαι) over all your possessions will not be free from envy (οὔτε ἀνεπίφθονον)”,58 looks forward to this moment. Catulus is certainly a foreshadowing of Octavian’s position, and the resulting pair is satisfying. In the first speech of Augustus’ monarchy, the historian locates the orator’s concerns about jealousy within a destructive and distinctly Late Republican framework, and reflects on the in­ evitability of that problem without a radical re-evaluation of the constitution. Hesitantly, however, the speech additionally looks forward to the reinven­ tion of φθόνος by the Augustan regime. Section 53.10 is, in short, a compact list of all the negative factors which Dio attributed to the decline of the Republic. Octavian exhorts the Senate to avoid innovation and to preserve Rome’s estab­ lished customs; to treat their private means as the common property of the state, and not vice versa; to treat the allied communities and subject nations fairly and not use them against one another; and to ensure discipline and loy­ alty among the army to the state, not to an individual. Nothing could be further from the Roman History’s depiction of the Late Republican narrative which has just closed. Nevertheless, among these recommendations Dio’s Octavian also looks forward as well as back (53.10.3): Always entrust the magistracies both in peace and war to the best and most prudent men, neither feeling envy for them nor indulging in rivalry on account of making this man or that more prosperous, but instead on account of preserving and enriching their country. τάς τε ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς εἰρηνικὰς καὶ τὰς πολεμικὰς τοῖς ἀεὶ ἀρίστοις τε καὶ ἐμφρονεστάτοις ἐπιτρέπετε, μήτε φθονοῦντές τισι, μήθ᾽ ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὸν δεῖνα ἢ τὸν δεῖνα πλεονεκτῆσαί τι, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὴν πόλιν καὶ σώζεσθαι καὶ εὐπραγεῖν φιλοτιμούμενοι. Dio constructs an ideal in this passage of a regime in which φθόνος is absent and competition is directed toward honourable objectives. The subsequent narrative of Books 53–56 is quite consistent with that positive vision. Strikingly, throughout his account of Augustus’ reign Dio only mentions φθόνος where it is actively prevented by the emperor’s ciuilitas, care for his image, and respect for the prestige of the aristocracy. This is a major departure from the political culture of the preceding decads. Thus in his list of Agrippa’s generous public works and the status and fame he attained as a result, Dio states that Agrippa not only incurred no φθόνος for his position, but was even honoured greatly by 58  Bekker, Anecd. 157, 30.

212

chapter 4

the emperor and all the people; the reason for this was that he collaborated equally with Augustus in all the most humane projects (φιλανθρωπότατα).59 Later, when famine and ill omens plagued the city and the populus demanded that Augustus be given further powers, the latter—in a show of his ciuilitas— declined the dictatorship offered to him, “and rightly guarded against the envy and hatred that title would arouse”.60 His success is interpreted directly as a re­ sult of his wish not to be seen to transgress his (fabricated) position as primus inter pares and equal with the most senior senatorial aristocracy. His magna­ nimity and generosity were further displayed when he allowed many of his sub­ ordinates to celebrate triumphs and to have grand public funerals, again taking care to seem to afford the aristocracy no less honour than he would award to himself; Dio writes that he granted such honours unstintingly and without envy (ἀφθόνως).61 Moreover, Dio interprets Augustus’ selection of Tiberius as his successor as motivated by the need to find a man of distinction who, like Agrippa, could conduct the emperor’s business without envy (ἄνευ φθόνου).62 The historian repeatedly insists upon Augustus’ success in creating the impres­ sion of equality with the nobility, and the φθόνος that is consequently avoided by such measures. Where rarely φθόνος occurs in Augustus’ reign, Dio focusses exclusively on how capably the new regime counteracted it through a system of apparent (but confected) equality between princeps and patres. The laudatio funebris of Tiberius for the first emperor repeats that case ex­ plicitly. A few details notwithstanding, its summary of Augustus’ success in removing φθόνος from the state by means of the above principles absolutely accords with the historian’s own interpretation. The oration mentions envy five times,63 and each occurrence serves to articulate and explain Dio’s own view of the way in which the new monarchy broke the pernicious cycle of am­ bition and envy that had characterised the Late Republic. In the first instance, Tiberius begins in the conventionally eulogistic manner by asking the indul­ gence of his audience, should his words not match the excellence of the de­ ceased. Here Dio adds to the rhetorical trope a detail which is entirely his own (56.35.5–6): I am not worried that you will accuse me of weakness for being unable to attain your desires, nor that you will be jealous toward him, whose virtues 59  Cass. Dio 54.23.3–4. See also 54.29.2–3 for this thought in Agrippa’s necrology. 60  Cass. Dio 54.1.2–5. 61  Cass. Dio 54.12.1–2. 62  Cass. Dio 54.31.1. 63  Cass. Dio 56.35.5, 56.35.6, 56.40.1, 56.40.5, 56.40.6.

Morality

213

surpassed your own. For who does not know that even if all men came together, they could not sing praises worthy of him, and that you will all willingly grant him these triumphs, not envying the fact that none of you could equal him, but even taking pleasure in his lofty excellence? οὐ γὰρ δὴ καὶ ἐκεῖνο δέδοικα, μὴ ἤτοι ἐμοῦ ἀσθένειάν τινα καταγνῶτε, ὅτι μή δύναμαι τῆς ἐπιθυμίας ὑμῶν τυχεῖν, ἢ αὐτοὶ τῷ ὑπερβάλλοντι ὑμᾶς τῆς ἀρετῆς αὐτοῦ φθονήσητε. τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἐπίσταται τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι οὔτ᾽ ἂν πάντες ἄνθρωποι συνελθόντες ἀξίους αὐτοῦ ἐπαίνους εἴποιεν, καὶ πάντες ἐθελονταὶ τῶν νικητηρίων αὐτῷ παραχωρεῖτε, οὐχ ὅτι οὐδεὶς ἂν ὑμῶν ἐξισωθείη οἱ φθονοῦντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ ὑπερέχοντι αὐτοῦ ἀγαλλόμενοι; The language is hyperbolic, and Augustus’ reign was no utopia even to Dio. But the focus of φθόνος has clearly shifted dramatically in the speeches follow­ ing the Settlement of 27 BCE. Jealousy is no longer directed toward those con­ cerns which the reader will recognise from the Republican narrative—rivalry for fame, hegemony, power, and wealth—, but rather toward virtue, or ἀρετή. In the Roman History, to envy another for their ἀρετή occurs only in the Augustan books; it is mentioned also in the speech of Livia. Now there are a number of inconsistencies in the speech of Tiberius which are discordant with the narra­ tive of the princeps’ regime. As Bernd Manuwald and John Rich have already pointed out,64 Tiberius is made to speak as if Augustus has already been de­ ified and he himself already ratified as his successor; this is chronologically incorrect. He additionally claims that Octavian’s resignation was sincere—a statement that the reader knows to be perfectly false after its elaborate treat­ ment in the recusatio. But it is clear that, despite these infelicities, Dio uses his Tiberius to create an idealised picture of the reinvention of φθόνος by the Augustan regime and its correction of spiteful envy under the Late Republic. For example, in his list of Augustus’ benefactions and public building works, Tiberius states that he permitted others to erect buildings in their own name, “always looking to the public good, but never envying anyone for the individual fame that they ob­ tained from these works”.65 The narrative confirms that this is the historian’s own position: the reader has already seen the truth of this from his account of the harmonious relationship between the princeps and Agrippa, who incurred φθόνος neither from Augustus himself nor anyone else for his building projects. Later in the laudatio, the speaker lauds the first emperor’s unenvious (ἀφθόνως) 64  Manuwald 1979, 136–139; Rich 1989, 104. 65  Cass. Dio 56.40.5.

214

chapter 4

encouragement of the status, prestige, and reputation of his subordinates.66 This again mirrors Dio’s description of the unbegrudging (ἀφθόνως) generosity and magnanimity Augustus displayed when he allowed his inferiors to cele­ brate triumphs and to enjoy grand public funerals. Thus Tiberius’ summary of the benefits of his reign can only be read as a reflection of the historian’s own view of the innateness of φθόνος to the Republic and its resolution under Augustus: “for who would not choose to be safe without trouble, to prosper without danger, and to enjoy the blessings of the constitution without envy?”.67 Cassius Dio’s repeated concentration upon envy as a recurring consequence of the Late Republic’s failure to organise public life is not strictly moral. Like all historians, he certainly judged the instability of the res publica in substan­ tially moral terms. But importantly, as an experienced statesman and political theorist in his own right Dio tied envy to the strictures of the political sys­ tem itself. In the Roman History, φθόνος was the natural consequence of a con­ stitution founded upon equality and free competition among an aristocracy of peers. Such a system was incompatible with the historian’s conception of human nature; but its worst results could be restrained by limitations in ac­ cess to the extraordinary wealth and glory that came with empire. With the application of those stimuli, opportunities for competition increased, and φθόνος increased with it. The result was repeated transgressions of the basic principle of equality, and repeated downfalls, reverses, and assassinations— all with catastrophic consequences for the Republic. With the removal of that principle and the moderating influence of a hierarchical system based upon monarchical rule, competition—and necessarily, therefore, φθόνος—ceased to pose the same risks. In his most detailed reflection on the reign of Augustus in the laudatio funebris, Dio mentions φθόνος more than in any other speech in his text and in every instance suggests that in his interpretation it was no longer a factor of history in political life. This is a striking departure from the place of envy in Dio’s speeches of the Late Republic, in which it is universally connected to factional discord and political violence. As such, the historian brought an element to the decline of the Roman Republic and the success of the Augustan Principate which was distinctively his own, but which can only be ascertained by reading his speeches.

66  Cass. Dio 56.40.6. 67  Cass. Dio 56.40.1.

Morality

2

215

Selfish Ambition, or Love of Honour?

Ambition or φιλοτιμία has been described as “the dominant and most destruct­ ive vice in Dio’s history”.68 That is not quite true; the historian mentions φθόνος in its negative (i.e. pre-Augustan) sense three times as often as φιλοτιμία,69 and he therefore gives envy a far more prominent role than ambition in his explan­ atory framework. Nevertheless, like envy φιλοτιμία is frequently interwoven through the fabric of the rise and fall of the Republic in the Roman History and its replacement by the Augustan regime. It accordingly occurs in Dio’s speeches as well as his narrative. Yet there is an ambiguity in Dio’s focus on φιλοτιμία, and that ambiguity directly reflects his interpretation of the collapse of the Republic and the suc­ cess of Augustus’ regime. In Greek thought, φιλοτιμία may have both a positive and a negative dimension. In the former sense, it denotes the healthy rivalry between individuals to outshine each other in service of the state;70 in the latter, it signifies personal and self-interested ambition. Both senses exist in the Roman History, but evince four peculiar features which were evidently the historian’s deliberate interpretative choice. First, like φθόνος Dio viewed it both as an innate vice and yet precipitated by the political circumstances. Before Pharsalus, for example, the two main dynasts were spurred on by their “innate ambition” (φιλοτιμίᾳ ἐμφύτῳ),71 and Gaius Gracchus too was ambitious and turbulent by nature (φύσει).72 Yet in Dio’s view it could advance or recede according to the circumstances: Tiberius’ Gracchus’ φιλοτιμία surfaced only because of his many and un­ expected successes.73 Secondly, φιλοτιμία disappears entirely from the Roman History after Augustus’ death. Its last mention is at 56.14.3 during the narra­ tive of Tiberius’ campaign in Dalmatia under Augustus’ instructions; there will be more to say on this significant point in a moment. Thirdly, in spite of its double entendre φιλοτιμία never carries a positive connotation in the Late Republican books of the Roman History.74 It assumes a consistently negative 68  Rees 2011, 13. 69  See Cass. Dio 36.1.2, 37.57.3, 39.26.2, 39.42.4, 41.28.2, 41.35.4, 41.55.4, 42.53.2, 43.38.1, 44.21.1, 44.29.2, 44.47.1, 45.14.1, 45.24.2, 45.26.1, 45.26.3, 46.41.2. 70  See for example Plut. Pol. Prag. 798c, 819f; Dio Or. 4.4, 44.5. Further discussion in Sion-Jenkis 2000, 79–80; Kuhn-Chen 2002, 168–169. 71  Cass. Dio 41.53.2. 72  Cass. Dio frg. 85.1. 73  Cass. Dio frg. 83.1. 74  So rightly Kuhn-Chen 2002, 168, who points out that the Roman History never presents φιλοτιμία in its virtuous definition in the Late Republican books. Rees 2011, 16 suggests other­wise; but this is a misunderstanding, since the examples he selects of φιλοτιμία having

216

chapter 4

force with the arrival of Tiberius Gracchus in (possibly) Book 24, and remains so through to the Augustan Settlement. Lastly, with the final collapse of the Republic and the transition to a stable monarchy, ambition (like φθόνος) is re­ invented as a positive aspect of public life and regains the sense of noble emu­ lation or patriotic rivalry that had long been absent from Dio’s story. The historian was certainly aware of this latter sense. In his account of the Second Samnite War, one of his now-fragmentary speeches is made to advocate clemency, and praises φιλοτιμία as a virtue. The context is the ‘trial’ of Fabius Rullianus, under accusation by the dictator Papirius Cursor for engaging the enemy in defiance of his explicit instructions. Like Livy, Dio stages an interven­ tion from Rullianus’ father, M. Fabius Ambustus, to appeal for mercy.75 His son, he argues, had been over-bold in the past, but forgiveness at the opportune moment can always make such hasty spirits change their reckless ways, “es­ pecially when they have acted from bravery rather than trouble-making, and ambition (φιλοτιμίας) rather than baseness”.76 In juxtaposing φιλοτιμία and πονηρία, Ambustus praises an ideal of healthy rivalry in the interests of the state. To this point that ideal still exists in Dio’s history, and the orator’s words are matched by the content of the narrative. During the naval battles of the First Punic War, for example, Dio writes that the Romans were not disheart­ ened by their humiliating defeat at the Battle of the Lipari Islands (260 BCE), but rather were encouraged to fight on all the harder: it was their φιλοτιμία, above all, which spurred them on to the struggle with even greater zeal than before.77 Moreover the exemplary general Gaius Fabricius Luscinus—who in his conversation with Pyrrhus warns that ambition and distrust are ever the evil handmaidens of the tyrant—78 was so virtuous, and so far above envy­ ing his peers, that he even managed to shun the temptation toward φιλοτιμία altogether.79 After the close of the Conflict of the Orders,80 φιλοτιμία exerts no a positive interpretation in these books come exclusively from the speeches of Catulus and Agrippa. They obviously do not reflect what is really happening in the narrative. 75  Cf. Livy 8.30–36. For surveys of Dio’s version of the oration in comparison to Livy’s see Millar 1964, 79; Oakley 1998, 704–707; Rich 2019, 243–246. 76  Cass. Dio frg. 36.3. 77  Cass. Dio frg. 43.7. 78  Cass. Dio frg. 40.15. 79  Cass. Dio frg. 40.2. 80  Cass. Dio frg. 23.4. On the election of the so-called consular tribunes, Dio writes that they were so individually ambitious that they could no longer rule in harmony with one an­ other, but rather decided to fulfil their functions in succession. This is the only occurrence of φιλοτιμία in its pejorative sense prior to the Late Republican books, and obviously ap­ plies to the stasis of the Conflict of the Orders in contrast to the relative harmony that will follow.

Morality

217

corrosive impact upon politics in Dio’s Republic: either its negative effects are avoided, or its positive sense alone is implied. The second century BCE heralded a dramatic shift for Dio. Although the historian never says so in his own voice, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Rome’s new-found position of pre-eminence in the Mediterranean pro­ vided the necessary stimulus for φιλοτιμία to break its bonds. It first begins with the figures of Tiberius Gracchus and Scipio Aemilianus. The former, un­ derscoring a common theme of Dio’s that we have already seen, was unable to bear nobly his unexpected good fortune. His character was ruined as a re­ sult: the greater his fortunes became, the more he was induced to destructive φιλοτιμία.81 Scipio, for his part, is characterised in the Roman History as a gen­ uinely excellent individual who avoided φθόνος by means of his moderation, restraint, and willing acceptance of equality with his peers. Yet he, too, had begun by the end of his career to show a certain φιλοτιμία, uncharacteristic and unfitting for his otherwise supremely virtuous nature.82 By the first century BCE, Dio connects φιλοτιμία explicitly to stasis and faction for the first time. The two most prominent stasiarchs (στασίαρχοι) of the time, M. Livius Drusus and Q. Servilius Caepio, were each driven toward strife (τὸ φιλόνεικον) by their ambition and longing for dominant power (δυναστείας τε ἐπιθυμηταὶ καὶ φιλοτι­ μίας ἄπληστοι).83 By the first century BCE, Dio has begun to connect ambition explicitly to the causes of stasis and civil war. From this point onward, φιλοτιμία consistently signifies that harmful and destructive ambition which characterises Dio’s view of Late Republican poli­ tical culture in the round, except in one quite crucial respect. A positive ideal of φιλοτιμία in the form of virtuous emulation does continue to exist—but only in the speeches. For our purposes, this fact is important. It establishes a pro­ found tension between the formal orations and the historical narrative. That tension calls to the reader’s mind the significance of φιλοτιμία and its process of decline from an earlier Republican ideal to a Late Republican vice. Catulus, Agrippa, and Octavian all praise the benefit to be derived from the patriotic rivalry (φιλοτιμία) of Roman statesmen, yet this has ceased utterly to exist in the Roman History. Those who speak to defend the status quo are so blind to the na­ ture of their predicament that even their vocabulary no longer matches that of the historian: their language has ceased to accord with the reality, and praises concepts long since dead. Only with a change of constitution—to an estab­ lished monarchical order in which every man knows his proper place—could 81  Cass. Dio frg. 83.1. 82  Cass. Dio frg. 84.1. 83  Cass. Dio frg. 96.1.

218

chapter 4

the major dynasts’ jostling for supremacy come to an end, and so φιλοτιμία resume its beneficial place in the body politic. This interpretation of Dio’s first arrives with the dissuasio of Q. Lutatius Catulus against the lex Gabinia. Here the speech and its surrounding diegesis are paired in a deliberate and contrasting way, and Dio will use this technique routinely in his critique of φιλοτιμία’s destructive role. One of Catulus’ final arguments in opposition to Pompeius’ extraordinary command against the pirates concerns its concentration of power. It would be better, Catulus argues, for Pompeius’ legati to be chosen not by the generalissimo himself as his direct subordinates, but rather by the people, and for each legatus to have his own independent authority. This would not only accord more harmoniously with Republican principles of equality of political privilege, but would even pro­ duce better results (36.36.2): For in this way they will take greater care over the war, since each of them will be entrusted with his own role in it and can lay against no one else any responsibility for its neglect. Moreover, they will vie (φιλοτιμήσονται) more keenly with each other because they are independent and will each gain the glory individually for their achievements. οὕτω μὲν γὰρ καὶ φροντιοῦσι τοῦ πολέμου μᾶλλον, ἅτε καὶ ἰδίαν ἕκαστος αὐτῶν μερίδα πεπιστευμένος καὶ ἐς μηδένα ἕτερον τὴν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς ἀμέλειαν ἀνενεγκεῖν δυνάμενος, καὶ φιλοτιμήσονται πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀκριβέστερον, ἅτε καὶ αὐτοκρατεῖς ὄντες καὶ τὴν δόξαν ὧν ἂν ἐργάσωνται αὐτοὶ κτησόμενοι. Catulus thus maintains that a return to the time-honoured traditions of the Republic, encompassing the fair and equal distribution of power and pos­ ition, will encourage such φιλοτιμία as the reader has already seen during the naval battles against Carthage: the noble emulation that drives the individual to excel. Yet even just prior to this oration, φιλοτιμία has come to assume a very different meaning. We should recall that in the narrative preface before Pompeius’ recusatio imperii a few chapters prior, it was ambition that drove Pompeius to seek the extraordinary command in the first place—with all the destructive consequences that would soon follow. “For Pompeius”, Dio writes, “lusted greatly after rule, and because of his ambition (φιλοτιμίας) and the pop­ ular enthusiasm he regarded the command no longer as an honour, but the failure to win it as a disgrace”.84 As we saw in the previous chapter, Dio viewed the Late Republic as a period of decline in political oratory: conventional 84  Cass. Dio 36.24.5–6.

Morality

219

arguments for the status quo lose their grip on reality. Catulus was perhaps the historian’s first and most detailed articulation of that view. His political vocabulary reflects that of the speeches of Fabius Ambustus and Fabricius, but the world of the Samnite Wars and Pyrrhus’ invasion has long been left behind. Like Pompeius, Caesar is of course defined by his φιλοτιμία. Dio holds them as equal in this regard, both prompted by their innate ambition (φιλοτιμίᾳ ἐμφύτῳ) and both, just as all men, hating to be outdone by their equals.85 Caesar’s harangue of the mutinying troops at Vestontio in Book 38 illustrates Dio’s view of the extent of his φιλοτιμία and the lengths to which he would go to satisfy it, including manipulation and deceit of those in his charge. As we have already seen in Chapter 2, it is in fact Caesar’s troops and not the general himself who are the arbiters of morality in this episode, and this detail is even alluded to in Caesar’s de Bello Gallico. Even threatening to desert him for his immorality, it is they who note that the planned campaign against Ariovistus has not been approved by the Senate, and allege that their leader has no ob­ ject in view other than the pursuit of his personal φιλοτιμία.86 They articulate the historian’s own interpretation of Caesar’s motivations, much though the speech will go on to obfuscate them. Intriguingly, the speech is book-ended by φιλοτιμία. It occurs not only in the narrative preface immediately prior to the oration, but also in a closing summary at its end. After Caesar has reached his peroration, Dio interprets the reactions of his hearers: none raised an objection, even though some saw through the fraud of his words and disbelieved him. They all, accordingly, re­ ported his arguments in favour of war to the rest of the camp; and they eas­ ily persuaded the rest of the soldiers to yield obedience. Some of the soldiers, Dio writes, were eager to obey Caesar because they had been singled out and chosen in preference to others; and the rest willingly fell in step with them “through emulation of the others (φιλοτιμουμένους)”.87 Caesar and his troops thus serve as contrasting examples, directly at either end of the speech, of φιλοτιμία and its potential. The former represents its harmful impact upon political life, causing unjustified wars and cementing his own path to the δυναστεία which will destroy the Republic; the latter retain that φιλοτιμία which encompasses productive rivalry and emulation. Yet even here their φιλοτιμία is misdirected: Caesar’s troops are vying with each other not to upbuild the state as recommended by Catulus, but in the service of an individual dynast. 85  Cass. Dio 41.53.2–3. 86  Cf. Cass Dio 38.35.2 and Caes. BGall. 1.40.1. Discussion in Hagendahl 1944; Gabba 1955; see also above. 87  Cass. Dio 38.47.1.

220

chapter 4

Agrippa and Maecenas provide the longest and most ironic exposition of ambition’s deleterious impact upon the Late Republic. The tension between the idealistic view of φιλοτιμία voiced by a well-meaning but misguided speaker, and the grim reality of its actual effects shown in the narrative, is here at its most obvious. Yet the episode additionally points forward to the capacity of constitutional change to relax the worst effects of ambition upon the state, and in effect foreshadows the success of Augustus’ regime. In his defence of the now-doomed δημοκρατία, Agrippa twice argues that φιλοτιμία is a beneficial force. In both instances his understanding of this am­ biguous term is restricted exclusively to that positive sense which is entirely absent from the Late Republican narrative; it is a repetition of Dio’s technique with the dissuasio of Catulus in Book 36. To turn to the first of these, Agrippa first compares the scope for individual excellence and renown under mon­ archies and democracies, attempting (of course) to dissuade Octavian from the former and to promote the latter. Under monarchies, he argues, any brave, high-spirited, or wealthy man must be an ever-present danger to the position of the monarch. Should Octavian ever give such men real power equivalent to their merits—especially positions of command within the provinces— there will inevitably be a risk that the central government will be overthrown.88 Leaving aside the transparent irony of this statement after Dio’s long account of the (Republican) civil wars, it is Agrippa’s focus on φιλοτιμία which rounds off the historian’s interpretation. Such risks as these, the speaker argues, are not present in democracies: “for the more men are wealthy and brave, the more do they vie with one another (φιλοτιμοῦνται) and benefit the state”.89 Agrippa’s language calls to mind all that the reader has seen before, and the comparison is not flattering. It is not difficult to find recent examples of φιλοτιμία’s fall from the lofty ideals promoted by the speaker. We may consider, just a few books earlier, Dio’s interpretation of the private thoughts of the three triumvirs—one of whom, importantly, is Agrippa’s addressee!—on their di­ vision of the empire amongst themselves: “everything they had once gained while acting together to overthrow their enemies, they now began to set up as the prize for their ambitions (φιλοτιμίας) against one another”.90 The reader may also recall Dio’s famous excursus on Republican government in Book 44, where he states in terms that democracies encourage envy and destructive ambition.91 Moreover, the relationship between Pompeius and Caesar is the 88  Cass. Dio 52.8.1–5. 89  Cass. Dio 52.9.1. 90  Cass. Dio 48.1.3. 91  Cass. Dio 44.2.

Morality

221

direct opposite of Agrippa’s idealising picture. When Pompeius heard of his ri­ val’s many successes in Gaul, he felt such an ambition (φιλοτιμίᾳ) to outdo him that he even began to disparage and traduce Caesar and his achievements be­ fore the Senate.92 This can hardly be called a competition between the wealthy and brave to vie with one another to benefit the state. Agrippa’s praise of the Republic serves to underline Dio’s view of its faults, nothing more. His second argument is similarly unpromising. In a syncrisis of methods of revenue collection and financing, he maintains that under monarchies, no in­ dividual ever contributes their private means willingly to the public purse: this is because the subjects of a monarch are selfish, and think it the task of oth­ ers (not least the monarch himself) to make sacrifices while their own boons should accrue unhindered.93 In democracies, on the other hand, precisely the opposite conditions prevail: many willingly make large contributions above and beyond what is ordinarily required of them, “making their generosity a matter of patriotic emulation (φιλοτιμίας) and obtaining, in return, honours worthy of their contribution”.94 Only one figure in Dio’s Late Republican narrative will ever act in this way, and that is Agrippa himself. He channelled his own money into the restor­ ation of the Aqua Marcia, the connection of which to Rome had recently been severed by the destruction of its pipes. Here the historian adds an important note: Agrippa performed this benefaction with modesty and moderation, even though he was at the same time using his private means to further his own φιλοτιμία.95 Dio recognises his ambition—which must be in the negative sense, since the concessive contrasts it with modesty and moderation—, but he excuses it. Agrippa’s argument is disproven even by the facts of his own ca­ reer. It was indeed possible to give unstintingly in the genuinely public interest under a democracy, as he argues; the problem is that he was the only person doing so, and in any case even he looked to his personal ambition. As we shall see in the next section, it is not generosity that characterises Dio’s view of the Late Republic, but rather cupidity and greed. Maecenas has a more realistic understanding of the hazards of φιλοτιμία. As we have repeatedly seen, there is no need to treat Maecenas’ statements with scepticism or disbelief. He is the historian’s most trustworthy instru­ ment for expressing his own political opinions concerning both the transition from Republic to Principate and the proper conduct of the monarch in his 92  Cass. Dio 39.25.3. 93  Cass. Dio 52.6.3–4. 94  Cass. Dio 52.6.2. 95  Cass. Dio 49.42.3.

222

chapter 4

own Severan day. Unlike his counterpart, Maecenas recognises the reality of φιλοτιμία and the danger it has come to pose in the last decades of the libera res publica. Immediately after his exordium, Maecenas summarises, in short, the changes necessary to stabilise the state. Octavian should not make himself a tyrant—unlike Agrippa, Maecenas recognises that monarchy can be achieved without tyrannical regnum—96 but should rather enact all the appropriate laws in consultation with the aristocracy. He and his advisers should conduct all wars themselves, and the choice of magistrates and officials should rest like­ wise with them. In this way, he advises (52.15.4–5), whatever business transacted would likely be performed correctly, in­ stead of being referred to the public or debated out in the open, entrusted to partisans or exposed to their ambitious rivalries. We would then happily enjoy our present blessings, rather than waging dangerous wars or dread­ ful civil strife. Every democracy carries with it these evils—for the more powerful men, reaching out for supremacy and co-opting lesser men, turn everything upside down—, and they have been especially frequent in our country … οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μάλιστα τά τε πραττόμενα ὀρθῶς διοικηθείη, μήτε ἐς τὸ κοινὸν ἀναφερόμενα μήτε ἐν τῷ φανερῷ βουλευόμενα μήτε τοῖς παρακελευστοῖς ἐπιτρεπόμενα μήτε ἐκ φιλοτιμίας κινδυνευόμενα, καὶ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ἡμῖν ἀγαθῶν ἡδέως ἀπολαύσαιμεν, μήτε πολέμους ἐπικινδύνους μήτε στάσεις ἀνοσίους ποιούμενοι. ταῦτα γὰρ πᾶσα μὲν δημοκρατία ἔχει· οἱ γὰρ δυνατώτεροι, τῶν τε πρωτείων ὀρεγόμενοι καὶ τοὺς ἀσθενεστέρους μισθούμενοι, πάντα ἄνω καὶ κάτω φύρουσι· πλεῖστα δὲ δὴ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν γέγονε … This explicit analysis of the ills of the Late Republic is Dio’s own, and φιλοτιμία lies at its heart. The problem with an excessively large and wealthy imper­ ial Republic consists in the lack of an explicit hierarchy: the leading figures (δυνατώτεροι), consequently, all aim to acquire the supreme power for them­ selves (τῶν τε πρωτείων ὀρεγόμενοι). The Gracchi, Scipio Aemilianus, Sulla, Marius, Crassus, Caesar, Pompeius, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavian himself: Dio’s narrative implicates all in the φιλοτιμία which drives toward autocracy. The reader has repeatedly seen the disastrous careers of their partisans, the “lesser men” (τοὺς ἀσθενεστέρους) co-opted to that goal: Pompeius with Gabinius, Marcellus, and his legati; Caesar with Clodius, Labienus, and Antonius at first; the triumvirs with just about everyone. The historian is a good deal more direct 96  See e.g. Cass. Dio 52.15.1.

Morality

223

in his critique of the Late Republic here than even in his own authorial com­ ments in the excursus on democracy at the beginning of Book 44. That excur­ sus is largely general in nature; Maecenas, on the other hand, specifies at this crucial point of transition that the Roman Republic has indeed suffered deeply from all the vices named, and φιλοτιμία is given its rightful place among these. Ambition and corrosive rivalry may, of course, occur in any period, and here we should remember that the historian treated it as innate to φύσις. Not all of Maecenas’ discourse on φιλοτιμία relates to the transition from Republic to Principate: as we have seen in the Introduction, much of the latter part was devoted to concrete suggestions for reform in the empire, especially within the poleis of the Greek East.97 Here Dio’s Maecenas retains φιλοτιμία in its negative sense: he exhorts Octavian to curtail the expenditures of the poleis in order to “prevent them wearing themselves out in futile contests and quarrelling with each other in stupid ambitious rivalries (φιλοτιμίαις)”,98 and later to “choke off in every way their mutual enmities and rivalries (φιλοτιμίας)”.99 The perspect­ ive on φιλοτιμία within the polis provided here is radically different from that of Dio of Prusa or Plutarch, who mention it to praise the munificence of the aristocracy toward their city and their dedication to its interests.100 Certainly by Book 52 and Maecenas, Dio’s reader would by now be convinced of the dan­ gers of φιλοτιμία when pushed to unreasonable extremes. The Late Republican portions of the Roman History, from the last days of Scipio Aemilianus to the dramatic pause before the Augustan Settlement, thus present φιλοτιμία as a consistently negative force. The historian repeat­ edly underlines its importance in his causative framework for the destabilis­ ation and eventual toppling of the Republic: it drove the Gracchi to ruin, drew Livius Drusus into stasis, and infected the minds of all the leading statesmen of the first century BCE. The result was civil war. By this point Dio’s reader may, or may not, recall the bygone days of earlier Republican Rome, in which Ambustus could laud that patriotic φιλοτιμία that leads the young to bravery, or Rome’s naval forces to give their all in service of the state against Carthage. Yet his speakers remain tragically aware of that world. Catulus and Agrippa cling to an idealising definition of φιλοτιμία that has ceased utterly to ac­ cord with the events of which they are part: they speak as if they were in the Republic of Plato, not the sink of Romulus.101 That is precisely the historian’s 97  Cass. Dio 53.30.2–10, 52.37.9–10. 98  Cass. Dio 52.37.10. 99  Cass. Dio 52.30.3. 100  Plut. Pol. Prag. 798c, 819f; Dio Or. 4.4, 44.5. 101  So Greenhalgh 1980, 88 on Catulus’ dissuasio in Book 36. He does not note that the unreal­ istic and unconvincing character of Catulus’ speech is the historian’s deliberate intention.

224

chapter 4

intention, and it captures the weakness of conventional arguments for the stat­us quo more accurately than Dio’s critics have allowed. So far as we can judge from what has survived, it was Cicero who first pointed out that con­ servative defenders of the old order were losing the argument at the end of the libera res publica: he satirised Cato’s speeches as unrealistic, more akin to Plato’s Republic than to the cesspit that Republican politics had become.102 Dio’s Catulus and Agrippa do not have the vocabulary—quite literally—to de­ scribe the changes happening around them, but perhaps they were not alone. However, with Augustus’ accession and a transformation of the political structure, φιλοτιμία regains its positive sense. Like φθόνος, ambition not only ceases to pose a risk to the political order but is even sublimated into a bene­ ficial impulse. Its role in the Roman History after 27 BCE is minor—it is men­ tioned only a few times during the account of Augustus’ regime, and never again after his death—and even where it occurs it has an exclusively positive connotation. Ambition had ceased to be an important thread in the political fabric, except where it drives men to excel. This can only, again, emerge from the constitutional structure. We have seen in Maecenas’ speech the historian’s view, as a final summary on the Late Republic, that all the major figures were aiming at the vacant ruler’s seat for themselves; and we have also seen his in­ terpretation that φιλοτιμία in its pejorative sense was the defining character­ istic of all the leading dynasts of the first century BCE. With the hierarchical structure of monarchy and the real limitation on the extraordinary power al­ lotted to individuals outside of the monarch’s chosen circle, the worst effects of φιλοτιμία—at their most destructive in a rich and expansive δημοκρατία— would recede. This interpretation of the historian is foreshadowed even in the recusatio imperii of Octavian in Book 53 (53.10.3): Always entrust the magistracies both in peace and war to the best and most prudent men, neither feeling envy for them nor indulging in rivalry (φιλοτιμούμενοι) on account of making this man or that more prosperous, but instead on account of preserving and enriching their country. τάς τε ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς εἰρηνικὰς καὶ τὰς πολεμικὰς τοῖς ἀεὶ ἀρίστοις τε καὶ ἐμφρονεστάτοις ἐπιτρέπετε, μήτε φθονοῦντές τισι, μήθ᾽ ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὸν δεῖνα ἢ τὸν δεῖνα πλεονεκτῆσαί τι, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὴν πόλιν καὶ σώζεσθαι καὶ εὐπραγεῖν φιλοτιμούμενοι.

102  Cic. Att. 2.1.8.

Morality

225

We recognise this, rightly, as cant. Octavian in Book 53 is still speaking within the persona of a Late Republican dynast,103 and the historian has ensured that this be laden with dramatic irony. We do not credit his claims to Republican virtue, and neither in fact to do most of his depicted audience.104 Yet for all its hypocrisy, Octavian’s instruction for statemen to vie (φιλοτιμούμενοι) not for the gain of this individual or that, but rather for the preservation and enrich­ ment of the state, does foreground the wholesale change in φιλοτιμία that will emerge in the subsequent books. Agrippa’s φιλοτιμία, for example, is reinvented from its Late Republican mode. As the ally of a dynast and triumvir, he had once lavished his own money upon the repair of the Aqua Marcia in order to satisfy his own per­ sonal ambition. Such acts were the stepping-stone to a greater position within the Republican state. As the counsellor of a monarch and princeps, however, Agrippa’s φιλοτιμία is presented in an entirely different light. He beautified the city at his own expense, first building the Basilica of Neptune to commem­ orate his naval victories and then constructing a gymnasium; he next com­ pleted the Pantheon.105 Initially, Dio records, he wished to name the structure after Augustus and feature a statue of the princeps as its centrepiece; when the latter declined the honour, he placed his own name on the architrave and statues both of himself and Augustus in the ante-rooms. The historian’s summ­ ary evinces the changing and positive role of φιλοτιμία as a motivating force in individual action: he acted not because of an ambition to make himself Augustus’ equal,106 but rather from genuine and sincere loyalty toward the em­ peror, and an unwavering concern for the public good. Augustus consequently felt no threat to his position, and honoured him all the more.107 In this instance self-interested ambition is prevented by the secure frame­ work of what Dio deemed the ideal political relationship: the vertical ties of obligation and loyalty between a forbearing ciuilis princeps and his aristocratic adviser, cemented by trust, free speech, and clear understanding of hierarchy. By definition, such a relationship was only possible under the aegis of a mon­ archical constitution. As an imperial comes and court intellectual and politi­ cian, Dio of course had a personal stake in advocating such a relationship, but that is not his only purpose: it is also interpreted as an important causal factor

103  As rightly pointed out by Rich 2010; Vervaet 2010. 104  See the authorial summary of the Senate’s reaction to the recusatio at 53.11. 105  Cass. Dio 53.27.1–3. 106  Cass. Dio 53.27.4. 107  Cass. Dio 53.27.4.

226

chapter 4

in the stabilisation of the state after the factionalism and internecine conflicts of the Late Republic. Elsewhere, φιλοτιμία in its pejorative sense is not only prevented by the constitutional framework but is even redefined into its pristine and positive condition, denoting the patriotic rivalry among individuals to serve the state. By the time of the Augustan books, this sense has long since lapsed: leaving aside the fantasies of Catulus and Agrippa’s speeches, it has not occurred in the narrative since the naval battles against Carthage in Book 11.108 This fact alone suggests that to Dio, the expansion of the Roman Empire beyond the shores of Italy provided the initial stimulus for the vices inherent in human nature, such as φιλοτιμία and φθόνος, to intensify. With Augustus’ rule, healthy and patriotic rivalry returns. One such positive interpretation of φιλοτιμία occurs during Tiberius’ campaign in Dalmatia at Augustus’ request. At the siege of Adretium, Tiberius was able to make scant progress and eventually decided to storm the enemy fortifications. Here Dio describes the rivalry (φιλοτιμία) felt by both sides, the one to scale the walls and the other to repel them; those who watched, both the Dalmatians above and Tiberius’ men below, were them­ selves inspired to feel this emulation at the sight.109 But fittingly, one of the last mentions of φιλοτιμία in the Roman History occurs in a speech. It takes place in the address of Livia to Augustus, encour­ aging him to forgive Cn. Cornelius Cinna Magnus for his scheming against the regime (55.16.4–5). If it is true that one cannot make the noble into the ignoble, or the brave into the cowardly, or the wise into the foolish (all of which are impossi­ ble); and if one should not curtail the prosperity of others or humble their ambitions when they have done nothing wrong (all of which is unjust); and if, finally, the necessity of defending oneself or preventing attacks in ad­ vance makes us paranoid and disreputable—if all of this is true, then come. Let us now change our course and spare some of the conspirators. For in my view, a lot more good is done by kindness than by harshness. καὶ μήτε τὸ γενναῖον δυσγενὲς μήτε τὸ ἀνδρεῖον δειλὸν μήτε τὸ ἔμφρον ἄνουν ἔστι ποιῆσαι ῾ἀδύνατον γάρ᾽, μήτ᾽ αὖ τὰς περιουσίας τινῶν περικόπτειν ἢ τὰς φιλοτιμίας ταπαινοῦν μηδέν γε πλημμελούντων χρή ῾ἄδικον γάρ᾽ τό τ᾽ ἀμυνόμενον ἢ καὶ προκαταλαμβάνοντά τινας καὶ ἀνιᾶσθαι καὶ κακοδοξεῖν

108  See again Cass. Dio frg. 43.7. 109  Cass. Dio 56.14.3.

Morality

227

ἀναγκαῖον ἐστί, φέρε μεταβαλώμεθα καί τινος αὐτῶν φεισώεθα. καὶ γάρ μοι δοκεῖ πολλῷ πλείω φιλανθρωπίᾳ ἤ τινι ὠμότητι κατορθοῦσθαι. In Livia’s oration, φιλοτιμία is not a vice; indeed, it is positively to be encour­ aged. So far from it being pragmatic and necessary to curtail ambition in order to stabilise the state, to do so would in fact be unjust. This is a radical volte face on the pre-Augustan books, and certainly reflects the positive role of φιλοτιμία in Books 53–56 as presented in the narrative. It may be argued that Livia, whom Tacitus presents as naturally ambitious for herself and her son,110 speaks here out of her own self-interest.111 Yet Dio himself never accuses the empress of ambition or acquisitiveness, and in fact regularly praises her efforts to spare the lives of senators, to assist their wives, and in general to ensure harmonious relationships between the aristocracy and the ruling power.112 There is no need to second-guess Livia’s words in this instance. Unlike Catulus, Agrippa, and Octavian, her depiction of φιλοτιμία accords with the reality of Dio’s narrative. Shorn of its service to the autocratic desires of Late Republican dynasts and the competitiveness of the Republican political framework, the individual drive to excel—emblematised in the figures of Agrippa and Tiberius’ soldiers—could again resume an appropriate position within the state, moderated and chan­ nelled by the strictures of a monarchical system. 3

Covetousness and Cupidity

A third and final component of Cassius Dio’s moral interpretation for the de­ cline of the Republic and its replacement by a stable Principate consists in his presentation of human desire. The Roman History explains the actions of individuals (especially in the Late Republic) through the lens of two forms of desire: πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία. As Barbara Kuhn-Chen has pointed out, both of these aspects of human nature are strongly related, but we should resist

110  On Tacitus’ hostility to Livia, see Barrett 2001. Recently, Bertolazzi 2015 has proposed that the Livia of the Roman History is used as a foil to reflect on Dio’s view of Julia Domna. 111  This has been suggested by Adler 2011, 148–50, who suggests that Dio may be deliberately undercutting Livia’s message at one brief point in her speech in camera with Augustus. He notes that, ironically, while it was she who most advised Augustus toward clementia with those who plotted against his life, it was in fact Livia herself who was most suspected of poisoning him. This is an ironic touch to add to the speech, but it is hardly good evidence that the historian seriously credited the rumour. 112  Cass. Dio 58.2.3.

228

chapter 4

the temptation to conflate the two,113 and Dio applies them somewhat dif­ ferently. Πλεονεξία (“grasping, arrogance”) denotes the over-zealous pursuit of one’s own advantage and, within a δημοκρατία, particularly that grasping which characterises an arrogant and presumptuous character eager to surpass his peers and theoretical equals. It is the quest for gain beyond what is allot­ ted to others. Ἐπιθυμία (“desire, longing”), on the other hand, signifies a lust or desire which is similarly selfish yet does not necessarily invite comparison with the boons of one’s competitors. It is absolute; two characters may both display ἐπιθυμία for the same aim in equal measure and, for a time, enjoy com­ parable returns. Unlike πλεονεξία, in the Roman History ἐπιθυμία usually has a specific object in view: individuals especially lust after autocratic rule (ἐπιθυμία τοῦ ἄρχειν), factional leadership (δυναστεία), wealth (χρημάτα), glory (δόξα, τὸ εὐκλεὲς), and might (ἰσχὺς).114 It is additionally important to note that ἐπιθυμία is not consistently pejorative.115 Its force may simply note a wish or desire in the neutral sense, seen for example in Tiberius’ apology to the audience of his laudatio funebris for having no words to match the praise they desire for the deceased Augustus.116 Like envy and ambition, Dio viewed πλεονεξία as inherent within human na­ ture and often expresses this in gnomic language. In his account of Mithridates and Tigranes’ attempts to induce Arsaces of Persia to declare war on Rome, for example, he writes that they warned Arsaces he would be next if he did not intervene: “for every victorious force is, by nature (φύσει), insatiable for success, and sets no limit to its greed (πλεονεξίας)”.117 In his speech on the Amnesty, Dio’s Cicero declares that limitless greed and arrogance (πλεονεξία) is the natur­al result of good fortune;118 this is certainly the historian’s own view. Antonius, equally, is described as covetous and eager to surpass others by his very nature (ὑπ᾽ ἐμφύτου πλεονεξίας).119 Dio formed a similarly innate conception of ἐπιθυμία. For instance, on the reconciliation of Tullus Hostilius and the dictator of Alba Longa, Mettius Fufetius, he writes that they gave up their initial contention yet argued instead about which of the two of them should rule alone: “for they saw that it was 113  P ace Kuhn-Chen 2002, 165–167. On the distinction between the two see Rees 2011, 18. 114  See below for the examples of Metellus Creticus, Crassus, Gabinius, Antonius, and Caesar, all of whom are motivated by ἐπιθυμία for this range of selfish advantages. 115  So correctly Rees 2011, 18n.39. 116  Cass. Dio 53.35.2. 117  Cass. Dio 36.1.2. Dio is more hostile to Rome here than our other sources. See the discuss­ ion in Sherwin-White 1984, 108–120; Kallet-Marx 1995, 250–254. 118  Cass. Dio 44.29.2. 119  Cass. Dio 45.14.1; cf. also 45.26.

Morality

229

impossible for them to come to an harmonious agreement on equal terms, be­ cause of the inherent ἐπιθυμία of men to quarrel with their equals and to rule others”.120 This statement arrives early in the Roman History—it is probably a fragment of Book 2—and thus assumes a programmatic force. The “desire to rule” (ἐπιθυμία τοῦ ἄρχειν) explored here will frequently return in the Late Republican narrative, and indeed the motivations of all its major players will be interpreted in this way: Cicero, Pompeius, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Lepidus, Antonius, and Octavian.121 However, like envy and ambition the historian did not believe these vices were inevitable in all events. The specific circumstances could exaggerate their prevalence and their worst effects, but a differing set of circumstances could restrict or even sublimate them. They are not, in short, constant. Martin Hose has argued that Dio viewed these vices as “psychological impulses”: un­ erring factors of history in and of themselves which drive forward the course of events in an anthropologically constant manner.122 This is not quite true, for just as with envy and ambition, so too with πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία did the historian connect these moral themes intimately to the particular point of Rome’s political evolution. The Late Republic takes the lion’s share. The frag­ mentary state of the text notwithstanding, πλεονεξία occurs only twice in the entirety of the Roman History from the Regal Period up to the fourth decad.123 Yet in the sixteen books that cover the rise of Pompeius to the Augustan Settlement, πλεονεξία is mentioned twenty times: most of these are clustered around the civil war, the assassination of Caesar, and the rise of the triumvirate.124 The historian even goes so far as to describe πλεονεξία as endemic to the last decades of the libera res publica: at that time absolutely no one except Cato acted in the common interest without a thought to their private gain and ad­ vantage (πλεονεξία).125 Yet in a further display of what may now be called Dio’s usual and consistent pattern, πλεονεξία disappears entirely from the narrative after the Augustan Settlement. It is mentioned only three times in the remaining twenty-seven

120  Cass. Dio frg. 7.3. 121  See Kuhn-Chen 2002, 169–171. 122  Hose 1994, 436. 123  Cass. Dio frg. 38.1; frg. 43.1 (on the causes of the First Punic War). Note that a third occur­ rence, at frg. 73.4 on the war with Viriathus in Spain, states that the war was not conducted for the sake of πλεονεξία. 124  Cass. Dio 36.2, 37.57, 39.26, 39.44, 41.28, 41.30, 41.35, 41.55, 42.53, 43.58, 44.21, 44.23, 44.29, 44.47, 45.14, 45.24, 45.26, 46.41, 52.2, 52.13. 125  Cass. Dio 37.57.3.

230

chapter 4

books,126 and none of these instances suggest that it exerts a profound or cor­ rosive effect upon political life among Roman citizens. Thus, although the historian regarded covetousness and cupidity as innate and constant dimen­ sions of man’s nature, their visibility and role adapted to the development of the political system. The catalyst for that change was imperial expansion and, with it, constit­ utional change from the Republican city-state focussed on Italy to a Republican empire spanning the entire Mediterranean. Two points confirm this. First, in Book 53 (as we have already seen above), Maecenas attributes Rome’s decline to the spread of its imperium overseas: nothing but ill had been their lot, he argues, since Rome began to acquire territories and colonies far from the Italian mainland.127 Dio expresses a similar view in his own voice at the begin­ ning of Book 44.128 Secondly, in the historian’s Republican narrative πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία occur most frequently of all with reference to imperial and pro­ vincial matters. In this respect they differ from envy and ambition. Φθόνος and φιλοτιμία characterise political, urban, and domestic affairs: a statesman might resent the successes of his rival within the empire, but those resentments are usually articulated within the city itself. Πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία, on the other hand, occur with especial prominence in Dio’s description of the conduct of generals abroad. The overall impression created is of a change within the em­ pire itself: in the last decades of the Republic, it has become nothing but a playground for the leading dynasts to satisfy their grasping, covetousness, and desires. Dio implants this view into the voice of Lucullus, who rejected the gov­ ernorship of Sardinia offered to him on the grounds that corruption was now endemic among Roman provincial governors in general.129 That this was the historian’s own view is borne out by the motives he ascribes to the actions of commanders within the empire, all of which are character­ ised by πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία. In Crete, Metellus took Eleuthera by treachery and then extorted money from the inhabitants.130 In the East, Crassus’ pro­ consulship and quinquennium was particularly depraved: he had no specific aims in view, but desired (ἐπιθυμήσας) a course of action that would bring him

126  See Cass. Dio 53.23 (describing the vices which Agrippa did not have); 54.21 (describing a non-Roman, a sophist from the Indus); 79.26 (on the corruption of the soldiers in Dio’s Severan day). 127  Cass. Dio 52.16.2. 128  Cass. Dio 44.2.4. 129  Cass. Dio 36.41.1. 130  Cass. Dio 36.18.2.

Morality

231

glory and riches.131 Finding his proconsular province of Syria unprofitable, he began a long and fruitless engagement with Parthia: he had no just cause for war and no one had voted for it, but he had heard it was rich for plundering.132 In Egypt, Gabinius first accepted bribes from Ptolemy XII to secure his restora­ tion to the throne and then, after his arrival, began extorting money from the local population. Like Crassus, he was disappointed with the money and also planned an invasion of Parthia to gain its wealth for himself.133 In Macedonia, Antonius Hybrida ravaged and plundered territory indiscriminately, even that of the friends and allies of Rome.134 Fellow-historians, too, were not above the covetousness and cupidity that Dio describes as endemic in the provinces of the Late Republic. Sallust had been given Numidia, “ostensibly to manage, but in reality to harry and plunder”.135 Dio’s criticism of Sallust’s hypocrisy at this point is especially satisfying: despite writing such bitter remarks in his histor­ ical works about those who fleeced others, he did not himself practice what he preached, and chiselled his own condemnation upon his histories as neatly as a tablet of stone.136 But the historian’s fullest exploration of the scope furnished by the growth of empire for covetousness and cupidity was evidently Caesar. His career pro­ vided Dio with ample opportunity for using the dramatic setting of speeches to reflect upon the relationship between empire and moral decline. The form­al orations surrounding Caesar’s meteoric success on campaign additionally prompted Dio to incorporate another more distinctive and original aspect into this reflection: a demonstration of the corrosive impact of πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία upon political oratory in Rome. The long laudatio funebris of Antonius for the assassinated dictator in Book 44 deliberately misrepresents many key aspects of Caesar’s military career and rouses the grieving crowd into a frenzy, so undoing all the reconciliation of Cicero’s amnesty speech. Thus, Caesar’s career and its end in the Roman History serve not only to make the more con­ ventional point—that Rome’s expansion destabilised the centre and bred autocratic ambitions—, but also to give a new and surprising addition to the 131  Cass. Dio 40.12.1. 132  Cass. Dio 40.12.1. 133  Cass. Dio 39.56.1. 134  Cass. Dio 38.10.1. 135  Cass. Dio 43.9.2. 136  Cass. Dio 43.9.2–3. For an evaluation of this passage and the evidence for Sallust’s alleged corruption see Barr 2012, 58–63. In Sallust’s defence see Syme 1964, 34, who observes that corruption charges were a convenient means of removing political opponents from power and may often have been false.

232

chapter 4

tradition. The dynasts’ imperative to conceal their πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία in the empire—the sphere militiae—led to distortions and misrepresentations of that activity in the civic sphere, domi. Before moving on to Antonius’ laudatio funebris and Book 44, let us first turn to a few of the more arresting exam­ ples of the turpitude of Caesar’s military career in the Roman History and the speeches deployed to illustrate its character. Dio’s first detailed account of a military operation directed by Caesar arrives in 61 BCE with a provincial command in Lusitania the year after his praetor­ ship. Dio writes that one of the particular exigencies of the area was banditry and brigandage; Caesar might have been able to clear it without too much diffi­ culty, yet he was unwilling to do so and deliberately neglected his duty. He had grander ambitions for himself. He was “eager for glory” (δόξης τε γὰρ ἐπιθυμῶν), and in emulation of Pompeius and other great generals, his ambitions were anything but small.137 He wanted a glorious victory to further his prestige at Rome, and hoped (so Dio writes) to use that prestige as a stepping-stone to the consulship (37.52.3–4). Because of these considerations, although it was possible for him to re­ main at peace as I have said, he set out for the Herminian Mountains and ordered its inhabitants to move down into the plain. He gave the pretext that this was so they should not come down raiding from the heights; but in fact, it was because he knew perfectly well that they would never do what he asked, and he would therefore have some grounds for war. This is what happened. They took up arms, and he overcame them. ἀπ᾽ οὖν τούτων, ἐξὸν αὐτῷ εἰρηνεῖν, ὥσπερ εἶπον, πρὸς τὸ ὄρος τὸ Ἑρμίνιον ἐτράπετο καὶ ἐκέλευσε τοὺς οἰκήτορας αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰ πεδινὰ μεταστῆναι, πρόφασιν μὲν ὅπως μὴ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐρυμνῶν ὁρμώμενοι λῃστεύωσιν, ἔργῳ δὲ εὖ εἰδὼς ὅτι οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτὸ ποιήσειαν, κἀκ τούτου πολέμου τινὰ ἀφορμὴν λήψεται. ὃ καὶ ἐγένετο. τούτους τε οὖν ἐς ὅπλα ἐλθόντας ὑπηγάγετο. Dio’s relaying of this episode draws our attention not only to the great heights of Caesar’s cupidity, important though this may be for his characterisation. It additionally highlights the destructive consequences of that cupidity within the actual sphere of the commander’s operations. Caesar’s desire for glory was such that he deliberately neglected the bandits in the area—the reader will already have read Dio’s excursus on the horrors of brigandage in the previous 137  Cass. Dio 37.52.1.

Morality

233

book—138 and made an unprovoked attack on a third party. Surprisingly for a Roman consul, on more than one occasion the historian describes Roman im­ perialism of the Late Republic as “slavery” (δουλεία).139 With examples of this kind, it is not difficult to see why. Having crushed the deliberately manufactured opposition in Lusitania, the Caesar of the Roman History believed that he had achieved sufficient to justify a consulship for himself. He departed his province for Rome to contest the elections even before his successor arrived (dereliction of duty number three), expecting both a consulship and a triumph to welcome him home. For the latter he was disappointed; Cato and others vigorously opposed the award of a triumph. “So”, Dio writes, “he let that pass; for he hoped to achieve many more and greater deeds and celebrate triumphs for them after he had been elected consul anyway”.140 This brief survey of Caesar’s private thoughts foreshadows his future plans for further conquests and glory after his consulship, and the subsequent narr­ ative unfolds just as Dio predicted. His presentation of Caesar’s command in Lusitania in Book 37 is in fact remarkably similar in its main elements to the campaign against Ariovistus in Book 38. We have already discussed the Ariovistus scenario in detail in the previous two chapters on the ‘decline’ of Republican oratory and on Dio’s sources, but let us briefly return to it to under­line its moral themes. Just as Caesar was motivated by his ἐπιθυμία to declare an unjust war in Lusitania (δόξης τε γὰρ ἐπιθυμῶν), the case is the same in Germany. The Gallic tribes of the Sequani and Aedui in Dio’s view “made a note of Caesar’s cupidity” (τήν τε ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῦ ἰδόντες) and accordingly they deliberately offered him an excuse to go to war with Ariovistus as a “favour” to him (εὐεργεσία).141 Additionally, just as he had sought a “pretext” (πρόφασις) for marching against the innocent inhabitants of the Herminian Mountains, so once again did he consciously seek a πρόφασις for overstepping the bounds of his province and entering Germany. The analysis offered of Caesar’s intentions closely mirrors that of Pompeius on the lex Gabinia two books earlier:

138  Cf. Cass. Dio 36.20.1–23.3. 139  Cass. Dio 36.19.3, 38.38.4, 39.22.3, 39.54.2, 40.14.4, 41.13.3, 43.20.2. As Fechner 1986, 223 rightly notes, Dio’s Roman History is our most hostile and brutal account of Roman impe­ rialism in the Late Republic. 140  Cass. Dio 37.54. 141  Cass. Dio 38.34.1.

234

chapter 4

In comparison, however, with the glory to be derived from the war and the power which that glory would bring, Caesar heeded none of these consid­ erations, except in so far as he wished to get some pretext for the quarrel from the barbarian, so that he should not appear to be in any way the ag­ gressor against Ariovistus. Therefore he sent for him, pretending that he wished to have a conference with him. Ariovistus, instead of obeying, replied: “If Caesar wishes to say any­ thing to me, let him come to me him­ self” … Thereupon Caesar became angry on the grounds that he had in­ sulted all the Romans.

Pompey greatly desired the command, and because of his own ambition and the zeal of the populace no longer now so much regarded this commis­ sion as an honour as the failure to win it a disgrace; when he saw the oppo­ sition of the optimates, he desired to appear forced to accept. He was al­ ways in the habit of pretending as far as possible not to desire the things he really wished, and on this occasion did so more than ever, because of the jeal­ ousy that would follow, should he of his own accord lay claim to the lead­ ership, and because of the glory, if he should be appointed against his will as the one most worthy to command.

πρὸς δὲ δὴ τὴν ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου δόξαν καὶ τὴν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς ἰσχὺν οὐδὲν τούτων ἐφρόντισε, πλὴν καθ᾽ ὅσον παρὰ τοῦ βαρβάρου πρόφασιν τῆς διαφορᾶς, μὴ καὶ προϋπάρχειν τι ἐς αὐτὸν νομισθῇ, λαβεῖν ἠθέλησε. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μετεπέμψατο αὐτὸν ὡς καὶ διαλεχθῆναί τι αὐτῷ δεόμενος. ἐπειδή τε οὐχ ὑπήκουσεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔφη ὅτι ‘εἴ τί μοι βούλεται Καῖσαρ εἰπεῖν, αὐτὸς πρὸς ἐμὲ ἐλθέτω· … ὀργήν τε ὡς καὶ πάντας τοὺς Ῥωμαίους προπεπηλακικότος αὐτοῦ ἐν τούτῳ ἐποιήσατο.

ὁ Πομπήιος ἐπιθυμῶν μὲν πάνυ ἄρξαι, καὶ ἤδη γε ὑπό τε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φιλοτιμίας καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ δήμου σπουδῆς οὐδὲ τιμὴν ἔτι τοῦτο, ἀλλ᾽ ἀτιμίαν τὸ μὴ τυχεῖν αὐτοῦ νομίζων εἶναι, τὴν δὲ ἀντίταξιν τῶν δυνατῶν ὁρῶν, ἠβουλήθη δοκεῖν ἀναγκάζεσθαι. ἦν μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἄλλως ὡς ἥκιστα προσποιούμενος ἐπιθυμεῖν ὧν ἤθελε· τότε δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον, διά τε τὸ ἐπίφθονον ἄν γε ἑκὼν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἀντιποιήσηται, καὶ διὰ τὸ εὐκλεὲς ἄν γε καὶ ἄκων ὥς γε καὶ ἀξιοστρατηγητότατος ὢν ἀποδειχθῇ, ἐπλάττετο.

Cass. Dio 38.34.3–5

Cass. Dio 36.24.5–6

Of course in the harangue of his mutinying troops that follows, Dio’s Caesar will disavow any personal ἐπιθυμία, πλεονεξία, and φιλοτιμία. We have already seen those specious claims of Caesar’s which describe his motives as pre­ cisely the opposite of the self-interest that characterises him in general. Most import­ant (and ironic) of all is his insincere opening appeal to his hearers to separate deliberation concerning affairs of state (περὶ τῶν κοινῶν) from those

Morality

235

concerning their own narrow self-interest (περί τῶν ἰδίων).142 This is highly significant. In the very first line of Caesar’s exhortation, Cassius Dio under­ lines in explicit terms his interpretation of the fundamental historical prob­ lem of Late Republican imperialism. A Roman general declares an unjust and aggressive war, by means of calculated deception, for no other reason than to satisfy his personal ἐπιθυμία τὴς δόξης and φιλοτιμία; and he begins his ora­ tion by exhorting the massed troops to keep their private ambitions out of debates on these matters. The irony is obvious. But more importantly, it serves to demonstrate Dio’s view of the historical situation and brings this to the read­ er’s attention from the beginning. Just as Pompeius before him, Caesar in Gaul deliberately obfuscated his selfish intention to use the empire as a launchpad for his own ambitions and desires, and insinuated his own private interests into the debate. The exempla placed into the speaker’s mouth additionally evince the delib­ erate care Dio gave to rendering the oration a meaningful reflection on the im­ morality of empire in the Late Republic. In what might be described as a brief history of Roman imperialism, Caesar exhorts his troops to recall the glories of their ancestors and to fight just as vigorously as they in the defence of Rome. For his exempla, Caesar chooses the major conflicts of the mid-Republican past: the conflicts with Carthage, Pyrrhus, Macedon, and the Seleucid Empire.143 The Romans of those times, he argues, “understood well that advantages are preserved by the same methods by which they are acquired”;144 the Romans of this time, then, should defend their homeland and their allies just as fully. 142  Cass. Dio 38.36.1. 143  Cass. Dio 38.38.2–3. 144  Cass. Dio 38.38.3: ἀλλ᾽ ἅτε εὖ εἰδότες ὅτι διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων καὶ κτᾶται τὰ ἀγαθὰ καὶ σώζεται. This passage and Caesar’s harangue at Vesontio in general was once used as evi­ dence of Cassius Dio’s personal belief in the importance of ‘defensive’ imperialism: this is the interpretation of Gabba 1955, 303–308. According to Gabba, since Dio inherited all his opinions from Thucydides, he therefore took Thucydides’ view of the necessity of conflict for self-preservation (itself derived from the works of the sophist Carneades) and advo­ cated it himself in the speech of Caesar. This unusual view was accepted in later work, for example Christ 1974, 275–279 and Zecchini 1978, 33n.60. Hagendahl 1944, 37 additionally treats “Caesar’s” justification of Roman imperialism as the historian’s own. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As Fechner 1986, 216 has rightly observed, the only evidence for such a reading of Cassius Dio’s views on imperialism lies in the exhorta­ tion at Vesontio, and the oration is a self-conscious and deliberate fraud. Its arguments in favour of war with Ariovistus are disingenuous and specious; it is, if anything, a parody of such attitudes to foreign policy. I do not wish to wade into the debate surrounding ‘defen­ sive imperialism’ in general here. For the view of Roman imperialism in the Republic as essentially self-interested and aggressive, see famously Harris 1979. For ‘defensive’ or more

236

chapter 4

The comparison these exempla invite between Caesar’s campaign of 58 BCE and the wars of the preceding centuries is not a flattering one, and deliber­ ately so. It guides the reader to reflect on the tyranny that Rome’s empire has become, amply displayed by Dio in the narrative itself. The mention of the Punic Wars may prompt the attentive reader to recall the patriotic rivalry (φιλοτιμία) among Rome’s sailors to outdo each other in their naval battles against Carthage; it also recalls the exemplary figures of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus. Again, the reader of the Roman History cannot see Pyrrhus’ name without recalling also the excellence of Fabricius and his long address to Pyrrhus in Book 9.145 With this short list of exempla, Dio gives a far more per­ suasive and effective proof of his argument regarding the corruption of Late Republican imperialism than a straightforward authorial assertion could de­ liver. In contrast to former times, covetousness and cupidity are now the order of the day. Caesar’s first expedition to Britain in 55 BCE is described in a similar light. It places renewed emphasis upon the general’s self-interested desire for per­ son­al renown and upon the political cachet that such renown would bring. Dio writes that Caesar was particularly eager to cross over to the island (ἐπεθύμησε διαβῆναι) because opportunities for war in Gaul—and therefore chances to win glory—were less abundant now that it had been pacified.146 Caesar is again presented as a warmonger and a charlatan. The British expedition was a disappointment. Rejecting utterly the self-justification of Caesar’s comment­ arii and in a sense supplanting (or upstaging) them, Dio writes that very little was achieved. Caesar was prompted to return by new uprisings in Gaul, and sailed back to the continent.147 But his ἐπιθυμία τὴς δόξης had been fulfilled, all the same (39.53.1): So he sailed back to the mainland and put an end to the disturbances. From Britain he had won nothing for himself or for the state except glory for having conducted an expedition against its inhabitants; but on this he prided himself greatly and the Romans at home likewise magnified it to a remarkable degree. nuanced views contra Harris 1979, see Frank 1914, Sherwin-White 1984, and Kallet-Marx 1996. Rich 2004 has recently attempted to find a middle ground, exploring the fluctua­ tions in Roman foreign policy that justified, at times, periods of active self-interest with intervals of hesitation or defensiveness. 145  Cass. Dio frg. 40.34–38. For an important study of the speech, see most recently Coudry 2019. 146  Cass. Dio 39.51.1. 147  Cass. Dio 39.52.1–3.

Morality

237

καὶ ὁ μὲν ἐς τὴν ἤπειρον ἀναπλεύσας τὰ ταραχθέντα καθίστατο, μηδὲν ἐκ τῆς Βρεττανίας μήτε ἑαυτῷ μήτε τῇ πόλει προσκτησάμενος πλὴν τοῦ ἐστρατευκέναι ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς δόξαι. τούτῳ γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς ἰσχυρῶς ἐσεμνύνετο καὶ οἱ οἴκοι Ῥωμαῖοι θαυμαστῶς ἐμεγαλύνοντο. Dio thus treats Caesar’s British campaign, just as those in Lusitania and in Germany, as nothing more than an unjustified stepping-stone on the gener­ al’s path to the destruction of the Republic. Caesar in the Roman History is, indeed, defined by his ἐπιθυμία and πλεονεξία. To underscore the irony, he is even made to claim in the harangue of his mutinying soldiers at Placentia that these two vices are not his true intention,148 but the reader knows otherwise. It is important to note that he is not necessarily worse than any other provincial governor in Dio’s account of the last decades of the free Republic, excepting Cato and perhaps Lucullus; his depravity simply functions on a grander scale to match his ambitions. In Dio’s interpretation, the enlarged physical space of the empire—Spain, Gaul, Britain, Syria, Numidia, Egypt—created also a moral space in which ἐπιθυμία and πλεονεξία could be exercised. These vices, certainly, were inherent aspects of human φύσις which lay dormant; but the proliferation in the opportunities and means to satisfy these led naturally to a proliferation in the vices themselves. It was of course necessary for the major dynasts, such as Pompeius and Caesar, to whitewash that stain by disguising their true inten­ tions and misleading the audiences of their speeches about them. That degeneration in the reporting and discussion of military matters— which in Dio’s view necessarily and naturally followed from the corruption of empire itself—reaches its nadir in Antonius’ laudatio funebris. The funeral ora­ tion of Book 44 for Caesar (44.36–49) is set shortly after Caesar’s assassination and in the immediate aftermath of Cicero’s speech on the Amnesty (44.23–33). It therefore functions as part of a pair, and this is important to recognise in placing the oration within Dio’s explanation of the effect of amoral imperial­ ism upon political oratory. Cicero’s speech on the Amnesty is conciliatory in tone and achieved results which directly alleviated the factional crisis of the Caesarians and the tyrannicides. Dio writes that it succeeded in persuading the Senate to vote to restore harmony.149 At the same time, the assassins them­ selves promised to preserve the acta of the dictator intact, and all were eager to honour the spirit and letter of Cicero’s proposal.150 The oration led directly to cohesion and reconciliation. 148  Cass. Dio 41.35.4. 149  Cass. Dio 44.34.1. 150  Cass. Dio 44.34.3.

238

chapter 4

Antonius’ funeral speech, which follows a few chapters later, achieves the opposite result.151 In his prefatory remarks, the historian writes that the people, initially glad to be rid of Caesar’s δυναστεία, were calm.152 But after hearing the dictator’s will, the populus became excited: “and Antonius”, Dio begins, “aroused them yet more by recklessly bringing the body into the Forum, just as it was, covered in blood and open wounds, and by then delivering a speech to them which was ornate and brilliant, but not at all appropriate for the situa­ tion”.153 The oration will lead, as Dio will later clarify in his concluding summ­ ary, to renewed anger, fragmentation, and civil war. As such, Dio’s ‘defence’ of the δημοκρατία in Cicero alleviates the crisis; and its immediate successor in Antonius, a dynast who himself used the empire for his own enrichment, renews it. Antonius devotes around a quarter of the speech to a reflection on Caesar’s military career (44.40–44). In his introduction, he states that he will mention only the dictator’s services to the state (τὰ κοινὰ), focussing purely on his act­ ions as a magistrate and passing over his campaigns unmentioned.154 This is momentarily confusing, since the majority of this part of the speech does in fact detail Caesar’s campaigns. Yet this failed ‘attempt’ by Dio’s Antonius to separate the domestic from the foreign—to dissociate domi and militiae— underscores precisely the historian’s argument. It was not possible to separate the two. The self-interested actions of generals on campaign abroad were not a phenomenon distinct from the politics of the Late Republic; they were the politics of the Late Republic. The speeches of Pompeius, Gabinius, and Caesar all demonstrate the lengths to which such commanders had to go in order to disguise the true nature of their policies and so enable their misdirection of the empire—and, in consequence, of the state itself—to continue. In his survey of Caesar’s military career Antonius returns to all three of the areas we have just seen: Spain, Gaul, and Britain. In each, the commemoration he delivers is directly and obviously antithetical to the ‘truth’ that the reader has already seen in the previous authorial narrative. He begins with the com­ mand in Lusitania following Caesar’s praetorship (44.41.1–4): First of all, this man went on campaign in Spain; but finding its inhabit­ ants disloyal, he did not allow them to become unconquerable under the 151  For a survey of the source-tradition for this oration and a summary of the distinctiveness of the version presented in the Roman History, see Chapter 1 (‘Introduction’) above. 152  Cass. Dio 44.35.1. 153  Cass. Dio 44. 35.4. 154  Cass. Dio 44.40.1–3.

Morality

239

name of peace, nor did he prefer to spend his time as governor in peace and quiet rather than do what was best for the state. Instead, since they would not willingly change their behaviour, he brought them to their senses un­ willingly … for this reason, you voted him a triumph for this and immedi­ ately made him consul. From this fact it was absolutely clear that he had not waged this war for his own desire for glory, but as a preparation for our future prosperity. In any case, he set aside the celebration of the triumph because of pressing public business, and after thanking you for the honour, he entered the consulship, happy with that alone as his glory. ὁ γὰρ ἀνὴρ οὗτος πρῶτον μὲν πάντων στρατηγήσας ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ, καὶ ὕπουλον αὐτὴν εὑρών, οὐ περιεῖδέ σφας ὑπὸ τῷ τῆς εἰρήνης ὀνόματι ἀνανταγωνίστους γιγνομένους, οὐδ᾽ εἵλετο αὐτὸς ἐν ἡσυχίᾳ τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς χρόνον διαγενεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ κοινῇ συμφέροντα πρᾶξαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπειδήπερ ἑκόντες οὐ μετεμέλοντο, καὶ ἄκοντάς σφας ἐσωφρόνισεν…τοιγάρτοι καὶ τὰ ἐπινίκια αὐτῷ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἐψηφίσασθε καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν ὕπατον εὐθὺς ἐδώκατε. ἐξ οὗ δὴ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα διεφάνη τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι οὔτε ἐπιθυμίας οὔτε εὐκλείας οἰκείας ἕνεκα τόν τε πόλεμον ἐκεῖνον ἐποιήσατο καὶ πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ παρεσκευάζετο. παριδὼν γοῦν τὴν πέμψιν τῶν νικητηρίων διὰ τὸ τὰ πράγματα κατεπείγειν, καὶ χάριν μὲν ὑμῖν τῆς τιμῆς γνούς, ἀρκεσθεὶς δὲ αὐτῇ ἐκείνῃ πρὸς τὴν δόξαν, ὑπάτευσε. This passage abounds in ironies. The speaker misrepresents Caesar’s activities in Lusitania as “what was best for the state” (τὰ κοινῇ συμφέροντα), although the reader knows that he was motivated purely by the desire for personal glory (δόξης ἐπιθυμῶν).155 Its inhabitants were not “disloyal” (ὕπουλον) as described by Antonius, but peaceful; in reality it was Caesar who deliberately precipi­ tated the conflict by securing a pretext against them.156 Antonius states that Caesar “chose not to spend his time in peace and quiet”. This is true, but it is an ironic truth: in his own account of the events Dio writes that Caesar could have enjoyed a peaceful province, but chose to stir up war instead.157 Then there is the consulship and the triumph. Antonius’ oration presents the consulship as a willing gift of the people, but it is clear that in Dio’s narrative interpretation, Caesar conspired for it and sought to achieve it through the glory of unjust aggression. Moreover, Dio writes Caesar did not willingly set aside his triumph in order to attend to pressing matters of state, as his Antonius is made to vaunt: rather, Cato vigorously opposed it and did everything possible to prevent the 155  Cf. Cass. Dio 37.52.1. 156  Cf. Cass. Dio 37.52.3. 157  Cf. Cass. Dio 37.52.1.

240

chapter 4

move. Caesar only capitulated when he thought that pressing the issue would endanger his plans for the consulship.158 To top it all, Antonius ends his enco­ mium with the claim that Caesar took office happily, satisfied with that alone as his glory (ἀρκεσθεὶς δὲ αὐτῇ ἐκείνῃ πρὸς τὴν δόξαν, ὑπάτευσε). Hardly so! Since Dio repeatedly identifies ἐπιθυμία τὴς δόξης as the cause of all of Caesar’s cam­ paigns, this verbal parallel constructs an obvious and deliberate irony. This polarity between the truth of Caesar’s corrupt actions in Lusitania and their misrepresentation in Antonius is a highly sophisticated example of the pairing of prosopopoeiai with narrative. Though separated by seven books and sixteen years of events, Dio makes these two narratives of Caesarian expansion as contradictory as possible on every point. But this is not merely a display of compositional technique. By constructing the panegyric in this manner, Dio valorises his broader argument about the corruption of rhetoric on the empire. The misrepresentation of the moral baseness of Late Republican imperialism as the service of the state (τὰ κοινά) rather than oneself (τὰ ἴδια) will enamour and then enrage the audience, vitiating Cicero’s attempts to promote harmony and cohesion and leading ultimately to renewed conflict. Before these ramifications, however, the historian sets out further exam­ ples. For Gaul, Antonius raises the contentious issue of alliances. Advertising “how many and how great” Caesar’s achievements were in this sphere (ὅσα αὖ καὶ ἡλίκα), Dio’s orator side-steps the issue of Ariovistus’ status as a betrayed friend and ally of Rome while simultaneously recalling it: “so far from being burdensome to our allies, he actually helped them, because he was in no way suspicious of them and furthermore saw that they were being wronged”.159 Of course this refers to the campaign, ostensibly in defence of the allied Aedui and Sequani, against Ariovistus’ incursions. Again the narrative and the speech are inconsistent. As we have seen, in the actual account the Aedui and Sequani called Caesar to their defence because they sensed his desire for war (ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῦ ἰδόντες). He deliberately provoked the conflict solely for the sake of δόξα and ἰσχύς.160 There may also be a deliberate contrast between Antonius’ state­ ment that the general was “not suspicious” of Rome’s allies (μήτε τι αὐτοὺς ὑπώπτευσε) and the accusations of disloyalty, suspicion, and changing front which Caesar levies against Ariovistus in the Vesontio speech of Book 36 (ὕποπτός ἐστιν).161 Again in his panegyric before the populus, Dio’s Antonius misrepresents Caesar’s actions in Gaul as an act for the good of the Republic: 158  Cf. Cass. Dio 37.54.2. 159  Cass. Dio 44.42.2. 160  Cf. Cass. Dio 38.34.1–3. 161  Cf. Cass. Dio 38.44.4.

Morality

241

on two occasions the speaker states that these campaigns were undertaken “for our sake” (ταῦθ᾽ ἡμῖν προσκατείργασται),162 when the narrative truth is a war of self-interested aggression whose object was to satisfy the corruption in Caesar’s φύσις. After Spain and Gaul, Dio’s Antonius turns finally to the general’s exped­ ition to Britain in 55 BCE. This, too, is presented consciously and deliberately by the historian, by virtue of his earlier narrative of the event, as a false misrep­ resentation (44.43.1–3): And had not certain people in their envy of him, or rather of you, provoked discord and compelled him to return before the needed time, then he would certainly have taken all of Britain along with the other islands that lie about it, and all Germany up to the Arctic Ocean … nevertheless, those men who had come to regard the constitution as no longer public, but their own property, prevented him from subjugating the rest of these and pre­ vented you from holding sway over them. καὶ εἴγε μὴ φθονήσαντες αὐτῷ τινες, μᾶλλον δὲ ὑμῖν, ἐστασιάκεσαν, καὶ δεῦρο αὐτὸν πρὸ τοῦ προσήκοντος καιροῦ ἐπανελθεῖν ἠναγκάκεσαν, πάντως ἂν καὶ τὴν Βρεττανίαν ὅλην μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων νήσων τῶν περικειμένων αὐτῇ καὶ τὴν Κελτικὴν πᾶσαν μέχρι τοῦ ἀρκτικοῦ ὠκεανοῦ ἐκεχείρωτο…οὐ μέντοι καὶ ἐπέτρεψαν οἱ τὴν πολιτείαν μηκέτι κοινὴν ἀλλ᾽ ἰδίαν αὑτῶν νομίζοντες εἶναι, οὔτε τούτῳ τὰ λοιπὰ προσκαταστρέψασθαι οὔθ᾽ ὑμῖν πάντων αὐτῶν κυριεῦσαι. Here those who began to lobby for Caesar’s recall in 51 BCE are illustrated emo­ tively as the enemies not only of the general, but of the populus Romanus as a whole. Of course what in fact induced Caesar to return from Britain, in Dio’s account, was not the envy of his opponents in the city as Antonius falsifies, but an uprising in Gaul, as both Dio and Caesar’s commentarii record in their narratives of the event.163 The resurgence of the distinction between public and private interest is also important in this excerpt (οἱ τὴν πολιτείαν μηκέτι κοινὴν ἀλλ᾽ ἰδίαν αὑτῶν νομίζοντες εἶναι). Throughout, Caesar’s military activity has been unwaveringly depicted as a quest for the selfish objectives of δόξα, φιλοτιμία, and δυναστεία. In Dio’s narrative the case of Britain was no different: he went for glory (τοῦ ἐστρατευκέναι ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς δόξαι). In Antonius’ laudatio, this truth is inverted. Caesar is made a champion of the common cause in the face of egocentric 162  Cass. Dio 44.42.5, 44.43.2. 163  Cf. Cass. Dio 39.52.1–3.

242

chapter 4

senatorial opposition. Of all of Dio’s speakers who discuss imperial matters, only one—Catulus—genuinely recognises the need to separate one’s private and selfish interests (τὰ ἴδια) from the interests of the state (τὰ κοινά), and he speaks in a manner consistent with this separation. Recall the opening of Caesar’s harangue at Vesontio, where he instructs his hearers to take counsel differently about their private interests and the public interests, and to keep the two separate and distinct.164 But in doing so—falsely and disingenuously, of course—he merely reiterates the historian’s view that such a distinction had utterly disappeared. All military dynasts, in Dio’s interpretation, used debates on foreign policy to further their private ambitions. To Caesar he gives the rich­ est and most detailed expression of this point, but it is also elaborated in the speeches of Pompeius and Gabinius. In Antonius, this theme is raised for one last time. Like Caesar, Gabinius, and Pompeius, Antonius’ refusal to follow the Catulan model of honest debate for the common good misdirects the populus. The political consequences of Antonius’ falsification of Caesar’s actions in Spain, Gaul, and Britain are immediate in Dio’s reconstruction. As in Appian’s account, they nullify the harmony fostered by Cicero’s successful address.165 But Dio’s speech of Antonius, and his explanation of the consequences, is far more detailed and intense than the comparatively laconic Appian. In Dio, speech motivates action in a way that is immediate and profound. Directly after the laudatio (τοιαῦτα τοῦ Ἀντωνίου λέγοντος), the audience became ex­ cited, then enraged, and went on a hunt for the tyrannicides, reproaching the Senate on the way. Setting up a pyre in the middle of the Forum, they nearly burned it down; this was prevented by the intervention of the soldiers and some rioters were thrown headfirst from the Capitoline. The tribune Helvius Cinna was murdered. An altar set up to Caesar was dismantled by the consuls, those who erected it punished, and the office of dictator abolished. Antonius took Dolabella as his colleague to prevent him from inciting further stasis (μὴ στασιάσῃ) and was corrupt in his administration of those acts of Caesar which all, following the example of Cicero’s amnesty speech, had previously pro­mised to recognise. Finally, Lepidus’ own power was increasing and a marriage alli­ ance between himself and Antonius, as well as the title of pontifex maximus, were needed to keep him in check.166 With this register of renewed discord, fragmentation, and Antonius’ and Lepidus’ increasing δυναστεία, Book 44 closes—and a new narrative, this time of Augustus’ rise to power, now begins.

164  Cass. Dio 38.36.1. 165  App. B Civ. 2.146. 166  Cass. Dio 44.50, 44.53.

Morality

4

243

Moral Revolution, or Constitutional Change?

To close this study of the moral and ethical lens Cassius Dio applied to Rome’s transition from Republic to Principate, let us consider two cases from the in­ fancy of Augustus’ regime: the consular elections of 22 and 19 BCE. For the first of these two years, one of the consulships had been kept in reserve for the princeps; the question thus opened of who ought to fill the second place. In Dio’s account, the elections were a disaster. The candidates and the electors descended into a bitter struggle regarding whom to elect—significantly, Dio describes the quarrel as a stasis (ἐστασίασεν). After much brouhaha, the victor M. Lollius Paulinus entered office. Yet Augustus did not take up his reserved place, and a renewed struggle broke out among two new candidates. Between them, they threw everything into such disorder that Augustus had to be re­ called from Sicily. To alleviate the anarchy (ἄναρχον), Augustus commanded that both candidates compete for the office in absentia, and Lepidus was finally elected after much renewed strife (πάνυ αὖθις διηνέχθησαν). Since the situation remained unstable, Augustus invested Agrippa with superintendence over the administration of the city; to seal the deal and give him a position superior to the new consuls, he married him to his daughter Julia. Agrippa stabilised the situation.167 “Thus”, Dio writes, “this event shows that it was impossible for the Roman people any longer to be safe under a democratic system”.168 The guiding hand of a monarch, superior even to the consuls and able to direct the political process, brought Rome back from the brink of renewed violence. Three years later a similar situation occurred. Under the direction of the incumbent consul, Sentius, the time came to elect officials for the following year. Careful to preserve the semblance of Republican traditions, Augustus again declined to take up the place reserved for him. The contest began for his vacant seat. The result was the same as in 22: the candidates and electors fell once again into stasis and murders even occurred (στάσις τε αὖθις ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ συνηνέχθη καὶ σφαγαὶ συνέβησαν). This time, Augustus had learned his lesson. He did not re-open a contest for the second consular chair: rather, he installed a candidate of his own choosing. He did this, Dio writes, because he realised that there would be no end to the evils of stasis, competition, and violence unless he took charge. He additionally assumed the powers of a consul for life, with twelve lictors, and the prerogatives of a censor for the next five years.

167  Cass. Dio 54.6.1–6. 168  Cass. Dio 54.6.1.

244

chapter 4

The Senate begged him to set the state to rights once more and to enact such laws as he saw fit. The pinceps agreed.169 The events of 22 and 19 BCE reveal Dio’s conviction of the weakness of democratic and Republican government and of the opportunities provided by monarchy for stabilising the state. Free competition among an aristocracy of theoretical equals and peers led directly, so the historian argues, to stasis and violence. Having finally emerged from a century of violence and internecine conflict, the return of competition for office within the traditional Republican framework risked also the return of civil war. A monarchical hierarchy—with the princeps at the head, his closest advisors in second place, and only then the consuls and regular office-holders below—presented the only viable means of organising a state of Rome’s wealth, power, and size. In this chapter, we have seen that Dio inextricably linked the moral decline of the Late Republic to its form of government. The system of δημοκρατία, based as it was upon competition for office and status among an elite notion­ ally equal in opportunity and equal before the law, was not in itself inherently immoral or amoral. It could even produce positive results under certain con­ ditions. We began this chapter with Dio’s assessment of Roman politics at the time of the Second Punic War; in that period it was characterised, at least for a time, by considerable harmony. The conflict between patricians and plebeians had been resolved, leading to a new patricio-plebeian nobility allied by shared economic interests and equality of political privilege.170 The Republican instit­ utions of the city-state continued to function largely as intended: Rome’s imperium at the time entailed only two praetorian provinces (Sicily and Sardinia-Corsica), and its Italian empire yoked together self-governing muni­ cipalities with colonies of veterans and surplus population to the north. After a remarkably pessimistic account of Roman politics in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Dio’s Rome had settled to become the largely stable city-state which ruled Italy. Yet a city-state could not rule the world. Dio’s speech of Maecenas says so explicitly, and its political thought reflects modern thinking on the history of the Republic very closely. Eighty years ago, Sir Ronald Syme famously de­ scribed the attempt to rule the Mediterranean within the framework of a city-state as clumsy, wasteful, and calamitous.171 In the next and final chapter, we will turn to this view in more detail. The exigencies of a wide empire chal­ lenged traditional patterns of office-holding: the prorogation of commands 169  Cass. Dio 54.10. 170  So Cornell 1995, 242–271, 327–344. 171  Syme 1939, 387.

Morality

245

necessarily increased; time-honoured institutions such as the dictatorship be­ came impractical; and the Republic turned to innovative but ultimately harm­ ful solutions to organise its empire. In Dio’s view the Republican Empire was the prisoner of the framework it had inherited, and tagged on initially effective but ultimately corrosive solutions to its problems without seriously interrogat­ ing the assumptions upon which the framework was based.172 Viewed in this way, the critique offered by the Roman History is theoretical in a way that will be recognisable to modern historians. Yet it is also deeply ethical and moral, and that moral explanation derived directly from Dio’s theo­ retical critique of Republican government. He regarded envy, ambition, and covetousness and inherent to human φύσις. Such vices could be constrained by the political system, provided that it was conducted moderately within the parameters of the city-state; yet to quote Maecenas again, “ever since we were led outside the peninsula and crossed over to many continents and many islands … nothing good has been our lot”.173 The acquisition of wealth and empire provided the necessary stimulus for φθόνος, φιλοτιμία, πλεονεξία, and ἐπιθυμία to define the political process. The traditional Republican patterns of office-holding and channels of competition directly exacerbated these vices; they had become objects in themselves well as vehicles of δυναστεία. Only a fundamental change in the political system—monarchy—could alleviate their worst effects. This is precisely what happens in Dio’s narrative of Augustus’ reign: φθόνος, φιλοτιμία, πλεονεξία, and ἐπιθυμία disappear almost entirely from the account and cease utterly to exert any negative impact upon political life. Of course the historian was not attempting to argue that the aristocracy under the Augustan regime suddenly became paragons of virtue. He was not so naïve as to propose a moral revolution. The electoral debacles of 22 and 19 BCE in the Roman History demonstrate that men were just as prone to self-interest and egocentrism as they had been for the preceding century, and indeed for every century of Rome’s history. Rather, it was the democratic channels of competition which exerted the destabilising influence, exaggerated by the promise of the fruits of empire and the opportunities for self-aggrandisement and glory of governorships and military commands. Monarchy, as Maecenas recommends in Book 52, provided the framework for curtailing such compet­ ition. To remove the cause would remove the effect. 172  So Meier 1995, 357: “Society could no longer cope with its problems within the framework of traditional liberty, but it was unwilling to renounce this liberty. This was the essence of the crisis without alternative.” Further discussion below, taking these propositions as a point of departure for analysing Dio’s interpretations. 173  Cass. Dio 52.16.1–2.

246

chapter 4

No ancient historian of Rome had analysed its transition from Republic to Principate in quite this way. The Roman History offers a perspective which is unique and distinctive in the historiography of the Republic. It is a survey of the longue durée which ties together both Greek and Roman traditions. Dio yoked together three elements: Latin theories of moral decline, centered around luxuria, cupido dominandi, and metus hostilis and propounded by Livy and Sallust; his reception of the thinking of Thucydides, especially focussed upon constant vices in human φύσις; and, finally, his own independent ana­ lysis of the weakness of Republican and democratic government when faced with the challenges and opportunities of a wide empire. By uniting those three approaches—Latin historiography, Thucydides, and his own political anal­ysis on competition and democracy—, Dio attempted a remarkably ambitious re-evaluation of Rome’s moral decline. His decision to write such an analysis in Greek was also crucial for its ef­ fectiveness, and here Dio’s sophistication is especially apparent. The historian had a Greek equivalent for many of the common Roman moralising explan­ ations of the Republic’s decline. For cupido dominandi (lust for power) and am­ bitio (ambition), Dio had φιλοτιμία. For luxuria (decadence and avarice), our historian used πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία. And for invidia (jealousy) and odium (hatred), the Roman History gave φθόνος. Here the difference between Latin historiography and Dio’s project is remarkable. Luxuria, cupido dominandi, in­ vidia, and odium are never positive terms. There is no ambiguity: they can exert nothing but a corrosive force and their meaning in Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus is consistently pejorative.174 The moral language applied by our historian to the decline of the Republic was entirely different. Drawing on Greek traditions that were as old as Hesiod and Archaic Greek lyric poetry, many of the vices in the Roman History are not categorically negative and can indeed produce positive results.175 In this chap­ ter, we have seen the decline of Republican φιλοτιμία and its reinvention by the moderating influence of monarchical hierarchy. Its positive sense—of patri­ otic emulation in the service of the state—is certainly present in Dio’s earlier 174  Lintott 1972b. 175  I am grateful to Dr Luke Pitcher (Somerville College, Oxford) for drawing to my attention the history of such ambiguities in Greek lyric and their possible influence on the flexibil­ ity of Dio’s moralising language. Just as in the Roman History, φθόνος in Greek lyric did not necessarily have to be pejorative: Pindar writes that it is better to be envied than to be pitied (Pind. P. 1.85, cf. also Hdt. 3.52.5). Strife (Ἔρις) could have a similarly productive or destructive definition (Hes. WD 11–26), and this approximates closely with Dio’s use of φιλοτιμία both as a cause of conflict (in the Late Republic) and as a constructive force that drives one to excel (under Augustus).

Morality

247

history, yet disappears. It is replaced, consistently, by that self-interested am­ bition which characterises all the major dynasts of the Late Republic. With Augustus, φιλοτιμία returns to its positive force. Envy undergoes a similar process: routinely negative in Dio’s Republican books and a significant cause of instability and faction in its own right, φθόνος disappears from the narra­ tive with Augustus’ reign and, where rarely it is mentioned, its aims are virtue or excellence rather than individual gain. Desire and covetousness, likewise, are shorn of their corrupting sense. That selfish ἐπιθυμία which in Dio’s Late Republic had glory, autocracy, wealth and might for its sole objects returns to its neutral sense with Augustus, and will retain it henceforth. The ambiguity and flexibility of these terms is itself deserving of our attention: it enables the historian to create meaningful contrasts and verbal parallels between sections of his narrative. Where φιλοτιμία, φθόνος, and ἐπιθυμία occur in the Augustan books, the historian invites us to reflect on the turpitude of the Late Republic, and the stability that monarchy had brought. The formal orations were of essential importance for articulating these histor­ical interpretations and served as their main vehicle. To remove the speeches from the Roman History, or to read them as separate compositions in the manner of a rhetorical exercise (as one study has recently suggested),176 would efface entirely their explanatory intent. We would not see Catulus and Agrippa praising a vision of a patriotic φιλοτιμία that no longer exists in the corrupted world of Dio’s narrative, and so be blind to Dio’s view of the weakness of conventional arguments for the preservation of the status quo. Readers would miss Agrippa and Maecenas’ reflections on the harm exerted by φθόνος upon political life, their assessments of the real danger of envy to Octavian’s pos­ ition, and Maecenas’ solutions for preventing it. We would also have no sense of how the scope for satisfying acquisitiveness, greed, and self-interest within the empire, emblematised in πλεονεξία and ἐπιθυμία, directly caused a corro­ sion of political oratory. The speeches of Pompeius, Gabinius, and Antonius’ laudatio funebris for Caesar demonstrate the patent need of individual dynasts to mask their selfish ambitions and the effectiveness of their strategies of dis­ simulation in securing further commands and honours. In Antonius’ case in particular, the misrepresentation of Caesar’s career as a patriotic crusade for the public good had immediate and catastrophic consequences. The speeches are thus our best evidence for Dio’s contribution to the time-honoured tradi­ tion of moralising theories for Republican decline. They illustrate not only the distinctiveness of his moral thought within the historiography of Rome, but also the sophistication of his compositional technique in articulating it. 176  P ace Fomin 2015, 2016.

chapter 5

Institutions & Empire Though by no means as corrupt and inefficient as might hastily be imagined, the governing of all Italy and a wide empire under the ideas and system of a city-state was clumsy, wasteful, and calamitous. Sir Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution

…

Society could no longer cope with its problems within the framework of traditional liberty, but it was unwilling to renounce this liberty. This was the essence of the crisis without alternative. Christian Meier, Caesar

∵ Modern histories of the Late Republic rightly place a marked emphasis on the institutions of the res publica.1 By the age of its last generation the system of annual magistrates, chosen in person within the city of Rome by an electorate organised by property and tribe, had endured (according to the tradition) for almost half a millennium. That system certainly demonstrated some capacity to adapt to the needs of its increasingly wide empire:2 regular ‘provinces’ in the geographical sense of the term emerged in the late third century, each with its own annual governor; Rome began regularly to flirt, around the same time, with the extension of commanders’ tenure; and time-honoured city-state institutions such as the dictatorship were replaced by an increasing number of regular magistrates and, later, the so-called ‘extraordinary commands’ (imperia extraordinaria).3 The Republic of Brutus had not been preserved in aspic; in the words of Harriet Flower, it was an adaptive and vital, but brittle, res publica.4 1  See for example Syme 1939; Brunt 1988; Lintott 1997, 208–213; Richardson 2001, 564– 598; Flower 2010, 61–79; Morstein-Marx & Rosenstein 2010, 625–637; Steel 2013, 62–120; Ungern-Sternberg 2014, 78–100. 2  So Flower 2010. 3  For a general overview of these developments see Gargola 2010; North 2010. 4  Flower 2010, 79.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_006

Institutions & Empire

249

Yet for all this tinkering, Republican Rome never fundamentally revisited the basic aspects of the system in proportion to the radical enormity of the changes it underwent.5 Even the most unusual aspects of the Sullan reorganisation of the state in the late 80s BCE—such as the curtailment of the tribunate of the plebs—could be packaged, with some justification, as a return to traditional practices.6 Despite the irregularity of its implementation, Sulla’s constitution is often recognised as conservative in its intent, and a response to the innovations of the preceding fifty years.7 It is a dismal disappointment that Cassius Dio’s account of the Social War and the beginnings of the incorporation of the Italian socii into the franchise has not survived; as an administrator and provincial governor who demonstrates his interest in the franchise in the speech of Maecenas, Dio would have had much to say about this sclerotic process, which the free Republic never fully managed to complete.8 In the final century of the Republic the basic system of regular annual magistracies endured apparently unchallenged in mainstream political discourse;9 but its more famous incidents of civil strife (stasis) betrayed individuals’ dissatisfaction with that system. When applied to a wide empire the regular limits of the res publica failed to satisfy the desire of individuals for honour within the state, with explosive results and periodic experiments in autocracy: the Scipios, the Gracchi, Marius and Sulla, and finally Pompeius, Caesar, and the triumvirs. The Republican system was less a framework than an encadrement: a ‘boxing-in’ which framed and yet limited political ambitions, impossible to transgress without undermining the consensus surrounding the basic assumptions of the system.10 5  We should not be misled by Cicero at Rep. 5.2 into thinking that the “basic outline” (extrema lineamenta) of Republican institutions had ceased to exist. 6  Steel 2013, 107: “the Romans were exposed to a baffling and unpredictable mix of the trad­ itional and the unprecedented”. 7  Gabba 1976, 137 proposes that Sulla’s basic purpose was to re-establish the traditional pre-eminence of the senatorial oligarchy in response to the populism of previous decades; Wiseman 1971 and Hantos 1988, 45–61 emphasise the ‘senatorial’ nature of Sulla’s reforms. More recent work on the other hand has emphasised the radical nature of his new constitution: see Flower 2010, 117–134 with a review of the relevant scholarship. But see importantly Steel 2013, 126–138 for a more conservative reading of the Sullan constitution as an apparent return to the status quo ante; on this reading he was more of an innovator in the development of Roman imperialism than in the basic framework of the institutions of the res publica. 8  Steel 2013, 89–91, 101–102, 130–136. 9  So Morstein-Marx & Rosenstein 2010, 633. 10  On the importance of consensus and the ways in which the shared assumptions of the aristocracy were deteriorating in the Late Republic, see Eder 1996.

250

chapter 5

Cassius Dio understood this tension remarkably well. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that understanding, as displayed in the dialectic between his speeches and his narrative. Dio is only lately coming to be understood as a theorist of the impact which the institutions of the Late Republic exerted on its final decline and replacement by a more stable Augustan regime.11 His description and analysis of the origins of the magistracies in the earlier history of Rome has been masterfully discussed,12 but not in a way which surveys his entire spatium historicum from the rise of Rome’s first consul (or praetor) in Book 3 to the death of its first emperor in Book 56, nor which connects these institutions to Dio’s causal explanation. Yet his interest in the constitutional evolution of the polity is obvious, and Marianne Coudry has very recently emphasised the importance of the lex Gabinia debates in his political reflection.13 This final case-study proposes to explore three aspects of the historian’s interpretation of Rome’s institutions and empire and their deleterious effects upon political stability: prorogation and successive office-holding, with an emphasis on competition and the psychological impact upon the major dynasts; the decline, resurgence, and abolition of the dictatorship and its replacement by monarchy as such; and the tension between tradition and innovation emblematised in the figures of Caesar and Pompeius on the one hand and Cato, Bibulus, and Catulus on the other. Dio developed his own distinctive argument concerning the relationship between the institutions of the res publica, its decline, and the comparative success of Augustus’ regime. If only by virtue of the sheer scope and size of his work, he investigated the impact of the Republic’s institutions upon its fall more fully than any surviving historian—either Latin or Greek—of ancient Rome; and the formal orations were an essential component of that analysis. Earlier writers of course influenced his ideas and showed a comparable inter­est in these topics. Polybius’ survey of Roman political culture in Book 6 11  See especially the recent studies of Platon and Coudry in the collection of Fromentin et al. 2016, both investigating the role of Senate and magistrates in Dio’s account of the transition from Republic to Principate. Coudry (2016b, 609–624) analyses Books 36–40 not as a history of ‘great men’ but rather, as she claims, as an attempt by Dio to write a history of the Republic as a political regime. What clearly emerges from this analysis is the historian’s keen interest in constitutional function and dysfunction, and the destructive impact of the latter on the ability of the established order to inspire consensus. Shifting this analysis to the aftermath, Platon (2016, 653–678) focusses on fundamental structural problems in the relationship between Senate and emperor. To Platon, Dio treats the cycle of flattery and despotism in monarchies as corrosive and sadly embedded in the dialectic between the Imperial Senate and their emperor. 12  See Urso 2005. 13  Coudry 2016a.

Institutions & Empire

251

of his history, though in many respects imperfect,14 established an important trad­ition of linking the Roman ‘constitution’ to its military and political successes in the Greek language. As we saw at the beginning of the previous chapter, Dio regarded the Romans of the Second Punic War to be flourishing in their finest condition.15 It may not be a coincidence that his positive assessment coincides with that of Polybius, who places his excursus on the excellence of Rome’s constitution at the beginnings of his account of the Second Punic War also. Yet Polybius did not live to see the rise of the Gracchi and the turbulence of the century that followed,16 and does not acknowledge that aspects of Rome’s political process could or would be counter-productive in themselves. Dio did. Turning to Appian, Dio’s most comparable Greek predecessor rightly lays emphasis on the dictatorship and possibly influenced him;17 to this we will return later. Yet Appian’s narrative, for all its excellence, is highly compressed, and its limited scope—from the Gracchi to the triumviral period—prevents him from developing an analysis on Dio’s scale, from monarchy to free Republic to δυναστεία and back again. The dictatorship was, Dio argues, of profound histor­ ical importance in all of these periods, and the failure of that office precipitated the failure of the res publica itself.18 On the other hand, partly for generic reasons the biographies of Plutarch seem to have had little impact upon Dio’s theoretical approach to the destabilising effects of Rome’s institutions upon the political fabric. As for its possible Latin sources and predecessors, the Roman History evid­ ently took Suetonius’ theory of the psychological impact of prorogation and successive office-holding upon individual statesmen. But Suetonius, as we shall see, applied this problem only briefly to the career of one politician—Julius Caesar—and did not attempt a structural analysis.19 To Dio, unlike Suetonius, in the last decades of the Roman Republic it was the very framework of office and command itself which engendered autocratic designs on the part of 14  For discussion of Polybius’ survey of the Roman constitution, its reliability, and its flaws, see: Walbanlk 1957, 155–183; Lintott 1997, 16–26; Walbank 2002, 277–292; cf. also Millar 1984 for a defence of its basic claims, especially the emphasis given upon the powers of the populus. 15  Cass. Dio frg. 52.1–2. 16  Note, however, his very satisfying prediction at 6.9.12 of “the change from excellence to its opposite which is sure to come some day” (τῆς εἰς τοὔμπαλιν ἐσομένης ἐκ τούτων μεταβολῆς). 17  See Kalyvas 2007; further discussion below. 18  For related development of this argument, see Burden-Strevens 2019. 19  Eckstein 2004 provides a magisterial discussion of Suetonius as a starting-point for evaluating the provincial administrator as an “internal threat” to the Republic; see further below.

252

chapter 5

all leading statesmen, and the germ of that argument can in fact be detected earlier with the figures of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus. Cassius Dio moved away from the character of Caesar himself—necessarily the main focus and province of the biographer—20 to consider the ways in which his career represented the structural faults of the political system. As for the continual spectre of Livy’s influence, it is impossible to judge from what remains of the Late Republican portions of the Ab Urbe Condita in the later Periochae. What we can determine, however, is that Dio took existing ideas about Roman politics and expanded them quite dramatically to form his own independent ana­ lysis of the relationship between the institutions of the polity and its decline. 1

Successive Office-Holding and the High Command

The danger of individuals passing long periods in power, either as prorogued magistrates, under extraordinary commands, or simply by being re-elected, forms one of the Roman History’s most prominent explanations for the instability of the Republican regime. In its author’s interpretation, it was the foremost cause of the autocratic ambitions of the generals of the Republic, precipitated by their longing for δυναστεία. Yet δυναστεία was not a desire that could be sated, or at least certainly not in the Late Republic: it was exponential, increasing in intensity with each success gained. This is the view that the historian places into the mouth of Cicero in the Amnesty speech of Book 44,21 and it is certainly borne out by the unfolding of his narrative. Since the formal orations were so essential to the Roman History for articulating its major historical premises, themes, and interpretations, Dio accordingly used several of his speeches to reflect on the distribution of power under the libera res publica and to explore its noxious influence. These include the orations of Scipio Aemilianus on his election to the consulship, Catulus against the lex Gabinia, Caesar at Vesontio, and the Agrippa-Maecenas debate. It is a story-arc of the problem of power, ambition, command, and the danger of the periphery to the centre. That is a story-arc which begins with the rise of Scipio Aemilianus: he foreshadows the φιλοτιμία and φθόνος that will character­ise the great commanders of the Late Republic.22 Yet it will end on 20  So Stadter 2009. 21  Cass. Dio 44.29.2. 22  See recently Coudry 2019 for this view, who treats the presentation of Scipio Aemilianus (or Scipio Africanus) in the Roman History as a deliberately-constructed dynastic prototype, foreshadowing (and yet avoiding) the faults of the warlords of the Late Republic.

Institutions & Empire

253

a salutary note: the speech of Maecenas serves to summarise explicitly Dio’s interpretation of the necessary reforms to the provincial administration, and the stability that such reforms will bring to Augustus’ Principate. Whether directly or indirectly, this aspect of Dio’s history of the Republic is indebted to a chance notice in Suetonius’ Life of Julius Caesar.23 Our historian was not the first to recognise the danger of extended periods of command to the res publica, though he expanded the point into a wider and far more sophist­ icated structural analysis than his predecessors. In the biography, Suetonius introduces an excursus on the causes of the Caesar’s war with Pompeius: his pretext for the war, he writes, was that the Senate were treating unfairly those tribunes of the plebs who were loyal to him. But leaving aside his specious claims, various theories for its real cause had been passed down. In the middle of his list of these theories lies a precious gem. Some authors, Suetonius writes, “believe that he was seized by an addiction to ruling” (quidam putant captum imperii consuetudine). He was arrested by an habituation—a consuetudo—to commanding others, and after weighing up his own strength and that of his enemies he grasped the opportunity to usurp supreme power.24 Suetonius’ testimony is valuable, but stops short of a structural analysis for two reasons. First, he does not explain the possible origins of that addict­ ion to ruling (imperii consuetudo), nor explain why it so occupied Caesar in particular. The biographer’s focus, again, is straightforwardly on the personal character of his subject. Secondly, he writes that Caesar had always desired absolute power even from his earliest youth—aetate prima concupisset is hardly credible—25 and describes his imperii consuetudo as “seizure” (captum). It was a sudden change, not a gradual development. This is a misleading picture, and Dio’s analysis is good deal better. He states baldly that by the end of the 50s BCE, Caesar simply had no intention whatsoever of returning to a quiet life as a private citizen after holding so long and great a period of command.26 His habituation to power developed, and was at its nadir on the eve of the Civil War. By this time he had possessed imperium in almost unbroken succession for thirteen years: praetor, governor of Lusitania, consul, and then proconsul in Gaul. Commanding had simply become his habit, and he was loath to give it up. Importantly, the Caesar created by Dio is aware of this process and the risks involved: he recognised the psychological 23  On the complexities of Dio’s relationship with Suetonius see Millar 1964, 85–87, 105; Manuwald 1979, 260–268; Rich 1989; Swan 1987; Swan 1997. I find the suggestion of an intermediate source between Suetonius and Cassius Dio unusual. 24  Suet. Iul. 30.5. Cf. also App. B Civ. 2.28, who makes a similar argument. 25  Suet. Iul. 30.5. 26  Cass. Dio 40.60.1.

254

chapter 5

impact of continual and repeated commands upon their holders, and that his ambitions were neither exceptional nor unique to himself. In the account of his third consecutive term as dictator and consul in 46 BCE, Dio explains Caesar’s motive in restricting the term of promagistrates (43.25.3): Because he himself had ruled the Gauls for many years in succession and as a result of this had been led to desire absolute power and to increase his military might, he limited by law the term of propraetors to one year and proconsuls to two consecutive years, ruling that absolutely no one be permitted to hold any command for a longer time than this. ὅτι τε αὐτὸς πολλοῖς τῶν Γαλατῶν ἐφεξῆς ἔτεσιν ἄρξας ἔς τε τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ τῆς δυναστείας μᾶλλον προήχθη καὶ ἐς τὴν παρασκευὴν τῆς ἰσχύος ἐπηυξήθη, κατέκλεισε νόμῳ τοὺς μὲν ἐστρατηγηκότας ἐπ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν τοὺς δὲ ὑπατευκότας ἐπὶ δύο ἔτη κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ἄρχειν, καὶ μηδενὶ τὸ παράπαν ἐπὶ πλεῖον ἡγεμονίαν τινὰ ἔχειν ἐξεῖναι. Two accounts of this law survive which predate Dio: Cicero’s First Philippic and Suetonius’ biography.27 Neither mention the dictator’s previous career as a commander and governor. Among our ancient sources, only Dio argued that Caesar’s own experience of ruling Gaul precipitated his reassertion in 46 BCE that commanders ought not to wield power over extended periods. The Caesar of the Roman History is aware of the psychological effects of commanding abroad for years at a time, and wished to prevent a repetition of his own career and a challenge to his position. The problem, evidently, was not unique to Caesar alone as suggested by Suetonius. As Arthur Eckstein has written, the experience of governing a large province on one’s own, the experience of exercising sole responsibility over large regions and great numbers of people, the experience of independence and power and control, the taste for it (and in some cases the great wealth that could be derived from it)—all this sometimes created what one might call an ‘imperial counterculture’ to the law-ruled state existing at the centre … In the centre, politicians had to deal with many foci of power, and they had to cooperate at least minimally with one another, to be dependent upon one another to some extent. Out in the provinces, however, it was different:

27  Cic. Phil. 1.9; Suet. Iul. 42.1–3.

Institutions & Empire

255

often one person, one superior person, made all major decisions. Out of this difference, conflict could develop.28 This critical approach to the instability of the final century of the Roman Republic has rightly assumed an important place in our understanding of the period. But it is not the invention of a modern historian: it was Dio’s. The Roman History presents imperii consuetudo, the habituation or addiction to commanding, as an issue not only in the specific context of Caesar’s career, but as a wider structural problem. This is confirmed by his account of the electoral chaos of 53 BCE and Pompeius’ stab at the dictatorship, to which we will return in more detail in the next section. Dio specifically writes that a decree was passed at this time to the effect that no-one formerly invested with imperium should accept a position of command abroad without first spending an interim period of five years as a private citizen. The interpretative note he adds is not attested anywhere else in the tradition, and was surely his own: the Romans passed this decree “in the hope that, by not being continually in a position of power immediately after the last one, these people would stop competing so viciously for office”.29 In the historian’s view, Romans of the Late Republic had come themselves to realise the real menace of imperii consuetudo, and tried in vain to stop it. Of course it was too little, too late. Dio was aware of the existing laws which already forbade successive office-holding: both the lex Genucia of 342 BCE, prohibiting repeated tenure of the same magistracy within one decade;30 and, more importantly, the lex Villia annalis of 180 BCE. This mandated a two-year hiatus between magistracies and (probably) the eligibility criteria for tenure, including attainment of a more junior position in the cursus honorum and a minimum age requirement.31 The late res publica, naturally, saw repeated deviations and direct contraventions of this law.32 Sulla’s attempt to modify the law during his dictatorship in itself serves as proof that the lex Villia annalis had lapsed (for why re-introduce what is already being observed?), yet this too was futile. Dio recognised that Rome’s empire was simply too large and diverse to practically accommodate a system of annually-elected magistrates, and milit­ ary operations in different spheres required that specific expertise which is necessarily developed by time and experience. Tellingly, we have to look to the speech of Maecenas for the only explicit expression of this view in his history. 28  Eckstein 2004, 285. 29  Cass. Dio 40.46.1–2. 30  Livy 8.42. The ten-year rule seems at the time to have been only temporary: see Brennan 2002, 65–67. 31  Cic. Phil. 5.17; Livy 40.44; Polyb. 6.19. 32  On which see Williamson 2005, 101–110.

256

chapter 5

The replacement of military crisis in Italy with military crisis abroad gave elites justification to exercise their longing for prolonged power with a disregard for the legal restrictions; and the popular assemblies, in any case, could and repeatedly did disregard those restrictions. The result was imperii consuetudo and autocratic desires. The Roman History’s first articulation of that argument probably arrived with the figure of Scipio Aemilianus and his campaign for the consulship in 148 BCE during the Third Punic War. Rome’s third and final war against Carthage began disastrously. This perhaps came as a surprise. Carthage no longer represented even the shadow of a serious threat to Rome: of its empire only a strip of modern-day Tunisia remained, and its feeble position was confirmed by its willingness to accede to Rome’s ever-more unreasonable demands in order to prevent renewed conflict.33 The tradition of metus hostilis and the destruction of Rome’s old enemy, which Dio acknowledges once but otherwise rightly ignores,34 is especially defective in this light. Despite the obvious weakness of their enemy and the confirmation of this fact in the negotiations, the Senate assigned Carthage as the provincia of both consuls at the start of the conflict—a clear sign of the importance attached to it. Both were defeated in battle. Their replacement of the following year fared little better, although his military tribune, Scipio, acquitted himself admirably on campaign.35 His popularity increased. Appian records that when Scipio returned to Rome, he put himself forward as a candidate for the aedileship: he had not yet held a position in the cursus honorum, and at thirty-seven was ineligible for the most senior offices. However, the people in their enthusiasm for his exploits elected him consul. The incumbent consuls protested the illegality of the measure, to which one of the tribunes responded that the populus Romanus was sovereign. A solution was reached: if we trust Appian, then in a further constitutional oddity the Senate agreed to repeal the lex Villia annalis for one year on Scipio’s account, only to re-introduce it the following year.36 Dio’s account of this process is almost entirely lost, and Zonaras reduces the whole episode to a single short statement of Scipio’s election and ineligi­ bility. But like Appian, Dio must have treated this scenario and its political importance in some detail, since he marked it with an extended direct speech for Scipio in favour of his election. Only one fragment of it now survives (frg. 70.2–3): 33  So Scullard 2002, 310–316. 34  See his nod to this tradition in the speech of the ‘anonymous senator’ at Zonar. 9.30.7–8, with Simons 2009, 177–186. 35  App. Pun. 103–104. 36  App. Pun. 112.

Institutions & Empire

257

What exactly is the appropriate age-limit—for those who have grown out of childhood, obviously—for beginning to think sensibly? What precise number of years have we decided is necessary for one to do what is required? It is true, isn’t it, that whenever men are invested with an excellent nature and good fortune, they think and do what is right from the very beginning, whereas even if many years pass, those of advanced years but little intellect will never grow wiser? For one may well get better as he advances in age; but you cannot make a sage out of a fool nor a fool out of a sage. Therefore, do not discourage your young men with the argument that they should be forbidden from undertaking any of the required duties. Quite the opposite: you should be urging them to undertake enthusiastically all of the tasks appropriate for them, so that they can seek office even before old age. You will even make their elders better, too, by this course: first, by presenting them with many competitors to keep them on their toes, and secondly by making it clear that you will give commands to all your citizens not on the basis of their years, but of their innate excellence. τίς γάρ ποτε καὶ ὅρος ἡλικίας τοῖς γε ἅπαξ ἐκ μειρακίων ἐξελθοῦσι πρὸς τὸ τὰ δέοντα φρονεῖν ἔπεστι; τίς ἀριθμὸς ἐτῶν πρὸς τὸ τὰ προσήκοντα πράττειν ἀποδέδεικται; οὐχ ὅσοι μὲν ἂν τῇ τε φύσει καὶ τῇ τύχῃ χρηστῇ χρήσωνται, πάντα ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς εὐθὺς ἃ δεῖ καὶ φρονοῦσι καὶ πράττουσιν, οἱ δὲ ἐν τῇδε τῇ ἡλικίᾳ βραχὺν νοῦν ἔχοντες οὐδ᾽ ἂν αὖθίς ποτε, οὐδ᾽ εἰ πολλὰ ἔτη διέλθοι, φρονιμώτεροι γένοιντο; ἀμείνων μὲν γὰρ ἄν τις αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ προϊούσης τῆς ἡλικίας ὑπάρξειεν, ἔννους δ᾽ ἐξ ἀνοήτου καὶ ἔμφρων ἐξ ἄφρονος οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἷς ἐκβαίη. μὴ μέντοι τοὺς νέους ἐς ἀθυμίαν, ὡς καὶ κατεγνωσμένους τὸ μηδὲν τῶν δεόντων πράττειν δύνασθαι, ἐμβάλητε· πᾶν γὰρ τοὐναντίον προτρέπεσθαι αὐτοὺς ὀφείλετε πάντα τὰ προσήκοντα αὐτοῖς προθύμως ποιεῖν ἀσκεῖν, ὡς καὶ τιμὰς καὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ πρὸ τοῦ γήρως ληψομένους· ἐκ γὰρ τούτου καὶ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους βελτίους ποιήσετε, πρῶτον μὲν ἀνταγωνιστὰς πολλοὺς ἀποδείξαντες, ἔπειτ᾽ ἐνδειξάμενοι ὡς καὶ τἆλλα πάντα καὶ τὰς ἡγεμονίας μάλιστα οὐκ ἐξ ἀριθμοῦ ἐτῶν ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀρετῆς ἐμφύτου πᾶσι τοῖς πολίταις δώσετε. It is important to emphasise that Scipio is not speaking in the guise of one of Dio’s Late Republican dynasts. This speech might have a very different colour if delivered in the period after the Gracchi, where as we saw in the previous chapter φιλοτιμία assumes a consistently negative meaning. Yet there is no sign of dishonest intentions, and these in fact are ruled out by the historian’s narr­ ative. It was in this same Book that Dio gave his authorial assessment on the character of Scipio Aemilianus: he was a supremely virtuous figure who knew

258

chapter 5

his place, was so excellent that he escaped entirely the φθόνος of his equals, and (importantly) never coveted positions which might raise him unduly to an overweening position beyond his peers.37 To read his speech as disingenuous would directly contradict this view,38 and especially the latter point: we cannot have both at the same time, and must assume that his intentions in the original text were presented as honest. He was eager for command, certainly: unlike Appian (who makes Scipio into the passive recipient of the office, effacing his intentions), Dio signals that it was indeed possible to seek office for the right reasons. Dio was not blindly pessimistic or cynical. Scipio is even made to argue that the increased competition from the young may keep their elders on their toes. This is a positive interpretation of the potential for ambition and compet­ ition (φιλοτιμία) to be sublimated to the patriotic interest; yet unlike Catulus and Agrippa—as we saw in the previous chapter—Scipio’s positive definition of φιλοτιμία still accords, dimly, with the reality of Roman political life. Dio will thus have presented Scipio’s election as technically unconstitutional and illegal, but not yet in itself a harmful challenge to the status quo, and cert­ ainly not an experiment in δυναστεία.39 Yet the historian’s next speech-episode to explore the problems of office-holding and military command—Pompeius, Catulus, and the lex Gabinia—is the direct opposite. In a satisfying inversion of Scipio Aemilianus’ arguments, Pompeius in his false recusatio imperii is made to claim that he is too old, and tired, to undertake the honour of the extraordinary command. “I am worn out”, he states, “both in body and soul; so do not keep reckoning that I am still young, nor counting up that I am so and so many years old”.40 In 67 BCE, Pompeius was only 39; still ineligible for the consulship, and only two years older than Scipio Aemilianus at the time of his election. Dio’s Scipio seeks honestly a command that he wants on the grounds that his youth should not disqualify him; his Pompeius feigns to reject a command that he covets, pleading old age. It is an exceptional example of the historian’s compositional art and his flair for dramatic irony. 37  Cf. Cass. Dio frg. 70.4–9. 38  P ace Rich 2019, 278. 39  Coudry 2019 gives excellent discussion of the use of Scipio Africanus as a foreshadowing of the Late Republican dynasts of the Roman History. Note esp. 140: “Dio used this episode as an opportunity to present, in the shape of arguments from Scipio’s opponents, his own ideas about the dangers of commands conferred by extraordinary processes for the stability of the political system. This is a device he uses in other parts of his narrative for the same purpose, which reveals the recurrence of political topics of this kind throughout his account of the Roman Republic as a whole. The figure of Scipio is used mostly to bring to light structural features of the Republican regime, not to eulogise his achievements.” 40  Cass. Dio 36.25.4.

Institutions & Empire

259

Yet it was with the dissuasio of Catulus that Dio expressed—assuredly for the first time in this level of detail—his view of the danger posed to the trad­ itional order by irregular appointments, successive office-holding, prorogation, and extraordinary commands. Broadly, for our purposes here the address may be divided into three sections. The first maintains that the lex Gabinia is forbidden by law; the historian may have the lex Villia annalis in view at this point (36.31.3–36.32.3). The second, that the extraordinary new powers enshrined in it are unnecessary as long as other imperium-holders exist (36.33.1– 36.34.4). And the third, that the proposed command would be better exercised by a number of commanders, appointed in the regular way by the people and directly answerable to them (36.35.1–36.4).41 We have seen these arguments already in previous discussions; let us return to them a final time in this chapter to reveal Dio’s interpretation of the problem of imperii consuetudo in his history. All three sections have at their heart the fundamental question of imperii consuetudo and the effect of prolonged power both upon the individual and upon the Republic. The opening to Catulus’ first argument is worth quoting in full (36.31.3–4): First and most importantly, I say that we should never entrust so many commands to a single man, one after another. For this is not only forbidden by law, but has been found to be very dangerous in our experience. Nothing else made Marius ‘what he became’, so to speak, except being entrusted with so many wars in the shortest space of time and being made consul six times in the briefest period. Nor Sulla, except that he commanded our armies for so many years in succession and after this was made dictator, then consul. For it is not in human nature, not only in the youthful spirit but the elder too, to wish to abide by the customs of our ancestors when one has been in power for a long time. ἐγὼ τοίνυν πρῶτον μὲν καὶ μάλιστά φημι δεῖν μηδενὶ ἑνὶ ἀνδρὶ τοσαύτας κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ἀρχὰς ἐπιτρέπειν. τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἐν τοῖς νόμοις ἀπηγόρευται καὶ πείρᾳ σφαλερώτατον ὂν πεφώραται. οὔτε γὰρ τὸν Μάριον ἄλλο τι ὡς εἰπεῖν τοιοῦτον ἐποίησεν ἢ ὅτι τοσούτους τε ἐν ὀλιγίστῳ χρόνῳ πολέμους ἐνεχειρίσθη καὶ ὕπατος ἑξάκις ἐν βραχυτάτῳ ἐγένετο, οὔτε τὸν Σύλλαν ἢ ὅτι τοσούτοις ἐφεξῆς ἔτεσι τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν στρατοπέδων ἔσχε καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο δικτάτωρ, εἶθ᾽ ὕπατος ἀπεδείχθη. οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἐν τῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων φύσει ψυχήν, μὴ ὅτι νέαν ἀλλὰ

41  Jameson 1970, 546 and Fechner 1986, 45–46 both define these three sections slightly differently.

260

chapter 5

καὶ πρεσβυτέραν, ἐν ἐξουσίαις ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἐνδιατρίψασαν τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσιν ἐθέλειν ἐμμένειν. This is the closest Dio ever comes—at any point in his surviving work, at least—to explaining the origins of the lust for power that led Marius and Sulla to seize control. Historically Marius held six consulships, and five of them in near-unbroken succession between 107–101 BCE to combat the threat of Jugurtha in Numidia and a possible invasion of the Cimbri. Sulla, for his part, took continual charge of the First Mithridatic War between 87–83 BCE before serving as dictator and then consul in the two following years, as Dio’s Catulus outlines here. “Nothing else”, he states, made Marius and Sulla degenerate other than these protracted periods of authority, particularly abroad but also in domestic magistracies. This passage—within a speech, and not the narrative—serves as Cassius Dio’s first and most elaborate treatment of the problem of prolonged personal power under the Republic; we are to infer that Pompeius, too, was a further iteration of that problem. Importantly, Catulus is additionally made to note that such irregular but increasingly frequent transgressions of the established order are corrosive to Republican traditions and undermine consensus surrounding its basic assumptions: this is articulated, quite appropriately, in the language of mores maiorum (τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσιν). Imperii consuetudo and the mores maiorum are illustrated in tension, concurrently existing and yet diametrically opposed. The historian’s narrative of the careers of Marius and Sulla survives only in exiguous fragments, providing little material for comparison with Book 36. But what little has remained confirms the congruence of Catulus’ arguments with Dio’s own historical interpretation. In the aftermath of the battle of the Colline Gate, Dio describes the shift in Sulla’s character following his victory over the Marians. He had once been considered foremost in humanity and piety (φιλανθρωπίᾳ τε καὶ εὐσεβείᾳ), but then proceeded to surpass even Marius and Cinna in the brutal horrors he inflicted. Above all, Dio ascribes the cause of this degeneration to Sulla’s experience of “absolute conquest” (τοῦ παντελῶς κρατήσειν).42 It was this, in Dio’s view, which corrupted the general and made him institute a tyranny over the Republic.43 This, of course, followed directly after his command in the Social War (91–88 BCE), then against Mithridates 42  Cass. Dio frgs. 108.1–109.1. 43  For discussion of the ‘tyranny’ of Sulla’s dictatorship, see further below. Urso 2016b has argued that the “myth of Sulla”, i.e. of Sulla as an exemplum of crudelitas, was a late phenomenon beginning in the early Principate; but for important studies on the tyrannical dimensions of his office see Hinard 1988; Hurlet 1993; and especially Eckert 2016, who has recently re-evaluated the aftermath of Sulla through the prism of cultural trauma.

Institutions & Empire

261

(87–86 BCE), followed by further command in the east (85–83 BCE) and, final­ly, his dictatorship and consulship (82–80 BCE). Evidently Caesar was not the first statesman of the Republic to fall victim to his own imperii consuetudo. The requirements of military crisis and expertise in the context of a wide empire made this inevitable even for individuals who would under different political circumstances have been considered upright and good. In the second section of his dissuasio Catulus is made to assert that the unconstitutional powers of the lex Gabinia were not only illegal and dangerous, but were in any case not required. The regular system of annual pro-magistrates was, so he argues, functioning perfectly well. “For why bother to elect the yearly magistrates at all, if you are not going to use them for such tasks? Surely not just so they can roam about in purple-bordered togas?”.44 Leaving aside Dio’s alleged imitation of Demosthenes in this thought,45 Catulus’ argument is doomed to fail. For by this point in the Roman History, traditional patterns of office-holding were not functioning perfectly well. Rome had already resorted to an imperium extraordinarium in its recent history: Pompeius’ command was certainly an innovation, but it had a notable precedent in the extraordinary command given to M. Antonius some years prior.46 Moreover, immediately before the lex Gabinia episode the historian has already explained, in his authorial voice, that the menace of Mediterranean piracy was out of control: the piratical raids had grown so bold that even Ostia was sacked, and the existing system of command had not yet succeeded in alleviating the problem.47 The earlier portions of Book 36 additionally show a litany of failures and depravities on the part of regular commanders and promagistrates: the extortion and savagery of Metellus’ campaign in Crete, described by Dio as a self-interested venture for the sake of δυναστεία, is given a particularly lavish treatment.48

44  Cass. Dio 36.33.2. 45  Placing this passage alongside Dem. 4.25, Rodgers 2008, 315 argues that Dio (in a further example of his shallow use of Catulus to advertise his paideia) consciously imitated Demosthenes in this thought. But there is really little similarity between the two except the basic point that existing magistrates should be permitted to do their jobs. In the context of a debate concerning Pompeius’ power, the quip about purple-bordered togas is rather neat, and has nothing to do with Demosthenes: Cicero at Att. 1.18.6 jokes that “our good friend Pompeius is protecting his togulam illam pictam with his silence”—a further fitting example of his dissimulatio as reflected in Book 36 of Dio. 46  See Jameson 1970 for discussion, especially about the extent of Pompeius’ imperium under the lex Gabinia and comparison to M. Antonius’ command earlier. 47  Cf. Cass. Dio 36.20.1–23.3. 48  Cf. Cass. Dio 36.18–19.

262

chapter 5

Ironically, against this narrative foreground Catulus is made to claim that Pompeius’ extraordinary command will harm the res publica where the existing system of regular magistracies does not (36.34.3–4): How can it be right that a new command be created, and that for three years and over all affairs within Italy, without Italy, and, in a word, over everything? For I think that you all know how many disasters come to states from this practice, and how many men have frequently disturbed our people and wrought incalculable harm upon themselves because of their lust for extra-legal powers. πῶς δ᾽ ἂν ὀρθῶς ἔχοι καινὴν ἡγεμονίαν, καὶ ταύτην ἐς ἔτη τρία καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ὡς εἰπεῖν καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ καὶ τοῖς ἔξω πράγμασιν, ἀποδειχθῆναι; ὅσα γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ τοιούτου δεινὰ ταῖς πόλεσι συμβαίνει, καὶ ὅσοι διὰ τὰς παρανόμους φιλαρχίας τόν τε δῆμον ἡμῶν πολλάκις ἐτάραξαν καὶ αὐτοὶ αὑτοὺς μυρία κακὰ εἰργάσαντο, πάντες ὁμοίως ἐπίστασθε. This is, on the one hand, a very real reflection of the historian’s own on the challenge posed by imperia extraordinaria to Republican traditions. What we have here is a calm reflection on the Republican practice of entrusting individual commanders with military authority over long periods,49 and on the disastrous consequences of this practice. The proposed command, of three years, with many legati, away from the capital and senatorial oversight, was in the historian’s view anathema to the conservative statesman. But on the other hand, it also invites the question of what alternatives were available. The pro­ spect is not encouraging. If there were other viable alternatives for solving the military crisis within the empire in a manner permissible within the framework of traditional liberty, Dio is unaware of them and presents the contemporary political class as equally nonplussed. In fact, there were not. Except for the dictatorship—a hopeless and unworkable remedy in this context, discussed further below—Catulus has no practicable institutional solutions to propose to counter the piratical menace. In that context, and in view of the populus’ wild enthusiasm for Pompeius,50 the lex Gabinia was quite inevitable. The result would be the ratification of Gabinius’ rogatio, a further irregular command for Pompeius, and in consequence further δυναστεία. To close with the third section of Catulus’ reflection on the dangers of imperii consuetudo, we may also recall an earlier point discussed in Chapter 2: 49  So Münzer 1927, 2090. 50  Cass. Dio 36.24.

Institutions & Empire

263

the suggestion that great honours and powers exalt, and then destroy, even the best men.51 We have already seen the ways in which Dio uses his orators, including Catulus, as a means of prognostication, foreshadowing and explaining the causes of future developments in the ensuing narrative. The historian judged the ramifications of the lex Gabinia in markedly moral terms. He set out in this speech, first, a prediction of the φθόνος which would indeed later result from the prestige of that command, rendering Pompeius politically impotent and driving him into the Triumvirate; and, second, a foreshadowing of Pompeius being exalted and then destroyed by the excessive honour of the command, realised at Pharsalus in 48 BCE, when Pompeius’ complacency after an exceptional military career left him defeated and, ultimately, ruined.52 However, Catulus’ prediction is polyvalent. It not only serves to predict the corruption that the lex Gabinia will foster in Pompeius’ character and therefore the destruction he will wreak on the Republic. It also foregrounds a more general argument about the deleterious effects of extensive periods in power, and the megalomania that such long stretches encourage. When Catulus claims that it is “neither remotely advantageous nor appropriate to entrust all our affairs to one man alone”,53 and predicts that such prestige will exalt and destroy its beneficiary, he declares nothing new and surprising to the reader. Dio’s audience have already observed the truth of this statement in the earlier accounts of Marius and Sulla’s degeneration into brutality and autocracy: Sulla especially was exalted by his great and continual power, and then destroyed by that same agency. To grant Pompeius yet another position of great authority, enshrined in the lex Gabinia, would make him as habituated to power as his predecessors. This is precisely what the later consequences of Pompeius’ imperii consuetudo turn out to be. In his prefatory comments before the Battle of Pharsalus, Dio outlines that both Pompeius and Caesar were ambitious for dominion. He envisages the pair enumerating their former campaigns: the former recalling Africa, Spain, Asia, and his pirate command; and the latter remembering Lusitania, Gaul, the crossing of the Rhine, and his expedition to Britain. “And since both of them believed that all these achievements were now at stake, and longing to appropriate for themselves the glories of the other, they urged themselves on”.54 The pair were thus incited to battle, and indeed to the civil war, by their long and glorious military careers. Caesar, we have already seen, 51  Cass. Dio 36.35.1. 52  See Chapter 2 (‘Method’) above. 53  Cass. Dio 36.35.1. 54  Cass. Dio 41.56.2–3.

264

chapter 5

had no intention of becoming a private citizen again after commanding for such a long time (ἐκ χρονίου ἡγεμονίας);55 but Pompeius, too, had been similarly corrupted by his imperii consuetudo. Dio places Pompeius in a continuum of ambitious generals whose lengthy tenure of military authority corrupted and destroyed both them and the res publica. Important though this was to the historian’s theory, Dio’s structural analysis of the Late Republican distribution of imperial power did not stop at the auto­ cratic ambitions of individual dynasts. It involved also a problematisation of the actual scope of the commander or governor’s sphere of operations, and the impossibility of supervision of the periphery by the centre. Cassius Dio understood clearly the difficulty of administering transparently and efficiently a Republican empire which depended upon the allocation of provinciae by lot, notionally annual positions of command, and the open reporting and debate of military matters. He states explicitly in the speech of Maecenas that by the time of its staseis and civil wars, the business of the Republic had grown so vast that it was impossible to administer in anything but a sclerotic and cumber­ some way within the bounds of the existing framework: its population was enormous, encompassing an extraordinary diversity of cultures across a wide geographical area.56 Corruption, inefficiency, and an insouciant attitude to the central government were the result on the part of its governors and generals. On this crucial question Dio’s Maecenas (and, therefore, Dio himself) had an astute point. Provincial government was perhaps the closest the Republican statesman would ever come to experiencing almost monarchical prerogatives.57 He had the power, quite literally, of life and death over the troops under his command. In developed areas, he was the supreme arbiter of justice and the representative of Roman law and Roman rule;58 in less developed, disorganised, or rebellious areas he enjoyed considerable freedom of action and permission to act on his own initiative.59 Dio presents Caesar’s eight years in Gaul more or less as a rampage northward, including a very flexible interpretation of the extent of his provincia.60 His experience is not generally representative, 55  Cass. Dio 40.60.1. 56  Cass. Dio 52.15.6. 57  Eckstein 2004. 58  Millar 1992, 28. 59  See Richardson 2001, 564–598. 60  Hence the controversy surrounding the legality of his campaign against Ariovistus, which Dio uniquely seems to have tried to critique. Caesar had legitimate authority in Gaul; he did not have legitimate authority in Germany. Caesar was able to claim the right to campaign against Ariovistus on the basis of a senatorial decree of 61 BCE, stipulating that whoever obtained Gaul must defend the Aedui and other friends and allies of Rome (quicumque Galliam prouinciam obtineret … Haeduos ceterosque amicos populi Romani

Institutions & Empire

265

but rather an extreme example of the lengths to which such initiative could be taken. Freedom from the constraints of traditional libertas—of civic life and the necessity of co-operation within checks and balances—afforded a liberty of its own. Standing courts (quaestiones perpetuae) to investigate the conduct of especially exploitative provincial governors had existed since 149 BCE, but were viable as mediation only for the most influential and well-connected provincials who could draw upon Roman patronage within the urbs.61 Primitive channels of communication, poor infrastructure beyond the road network, terrain, and the wide expanse of empire itself also added considerably to the freedom of governors and reduced the capacity of the Senate to exercise its purview. The dynasts of the Late Republic were, in essence, warlords—and they enjoyed it.62 Excluding perhaps the oration of Maecenas, the harangue of Caesar to his officers at Vesontio offers the Roman History’s most important analysis of these problems. Nothing comparable is present in the historian’s narrative; it was again in the speeches that Dio presented, viva voce, his overarching interpret­ ation of the failures and instability of the outgoing Republic. Now Caesar, as we have repeatedly seen, is not to be trusted. His arguments are a specious and deliberate fraud and the historian consciously created them as such. However, the justification he offers for his unprovoked attack upon Ariovistus is intended to be precisely that: a justification of the reasons for which his officers and men ought to trust his judgement to act on his own initiative, without the necessity of senatorial oversight or detailed reporting back home. Crucially, in Caesar the historian directly connects the general’s excessive freedom of action—and, therefore, his decision to declare unjust wars in the pursuit of his own δυναστεία—to the political structure of the Republic itself. Responding to the astonishing (and probably genuine!) detail in Dio that certain members of his entourage were questioning the legality of his war against Ariovistus,63 Caesar begins (38.41.1–3): defenderet; cf. Caes. B Gall. 1.35.4). He accordingly presented the march against Ariovistus as fulfilment of the decree. But for discussion of the legal question see Hagendahl 1944 and Ramage 2001. He did not, in any case, seek the authorisation of the Senate, on which see Mommsen 1874, 1088: “wenn ein mit Rom befreundeter Staat gegen einen anderen mit Rom nicht im Bundniss stehenden dessen Hilfeleistung erbittet, so bedarf der Feldherr … der Autorisation des Senats”. 61  On the permanent courts for hearing cases of res repetundae the treatment given in Kunkel 1962 is still important. 62  An early example of this tendency can be found in Polyb. 10.40: Scipio Africanus, he writes, would have made himself a king on the back of all his many long campaigns, were it not for his sense of duty to the Republic. 63  Hagendahl 1944, 26.

266

chapter 5

If anyone thinks that we should be less disposed toward this war because it has not been investigated by the Senate nor voted upon by the people, then let him consider the following fact. Of all the wars that have fallen to us before, some have indeed come about as a result of prior preparation and reportage, but others have happened on the spur of the moment too. Now when an uprising occurs while we are still in the city and keeping quiet, and when the enemy’s initial complaint is voiced in some embassy or other, then we must of course have an enquiry and demand the taking of a vote; only after this do we send out consuls and praetors and assign them to their tasks. However, if a crisis occurs after commanders have already left for their duties, then these necessarily are no longer brought to the Senate for a decision; they must instead be grasped on the spur of the moment before they have the chance to increase. Such matters are, if you like, ‘decreed and ratified’ by the urgency of the situation itself. εἰ δ᾽ ὅτι μήτε ἐξήτασται περὶ τοῦ πολέμου τούτου παρὰ τῇ βουλῇ καὶ παρὰ τῷ δήμῳ μὴ ἐψήφισται, διὰ τοῦτό τις ἧττον οἴεται δεῖν ἡμᾶς προθυμηθῆναι, λογισάσθω τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι πάντες οἱ πόλεμοι ὅσοι πώποτε γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν, οἱ μὲν ἐκ παρασκευῆς καὶ προεπαγγέλσεως οἱ δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ καιροῦ συμβεβήκασι. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὅσα μὲν ἂν οἴκοι τε μενόντων ἡμῶν καὶ τὴν ἡσυχίαν ἀγόντων κινηθῇ καὶ ἐκ πρεσβείας τινὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν ἐγκλημάτων λάβῃ, καὶ σκέψιν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν καὶ δεῖ καὶ ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι γίγνεσθαι καὶ ψῆφον ἐπάγεσθαι, καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο τούς τε ὑπάτους ἢ καὶ στρατηγοὺς προστάττεσθαί σφισι καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις ἐκπέμπεσθαι· ὅσα δ᾽ ἂν ἐξεληλυθότων ἤδη καὶ ἐξεστρατευμένων τινῶν ἐκφανῇ, ταῦτ᾽ οὐκέτ᾽ ἐς διαγνώμην ἄγεσθαι χρή, ἀλλ᾽ ὡς καὶ δεδογμένα καὶ κεκυρωμένα ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς τῆς χρείας προκαταλαμβάνεσθαι πρὶν αὐξηθῆναι. The importance of this passage has never to my knowledge been sufficiently appreciated. Caesar is made to rationalise his action against Ariovistus on the basis that a Republican general and provincial governor is trusted to take his own initiative. This action is, of course, motivated entirely by his self-interest and δυναστεία. The speech presents the entire process of determining the just war (bellum iustum) under the Republic—involving embassies, a demand for restitution or compensation, a debate in the Senate and a public vote—64 as impossible in a wide empire. To Dio the very scope of empire, and the concomitant difficulties and delays in communication and oversight, increased also the scope of the commander’s prerogatives. We should here recall that, 64  See Billows 2005 for a summary of the procedure and origins of investigating and declaring the bellum iustum under the Republic.

Institutions & Empire

267

following the debate on the fate of Carthage between Cato, Scipio, and the unnamed senator in Book 21,65 a genuine debate upon foreign policy will never again happen in the Roman History. In the exhortation of Caesar at Vesontio, Dio sets out his position clearly: it was not possible for the institutions of the res publica to properly supervise or direct the actions of its provincial govern­ ors. Its political processes were slow and inefficient. Accordingly the general, trusted to act on his own initiative and authority, necessarily had to sidestep those processes altogether in times of crisis—or could choose to, if a situation beneficial to himself arose. Such poor communication and cumbersome channels of purview directly increased the prerogatives, and therefore the imperii consuetudo, of the Republic’s great dynasts: they were more like monarchs than ever before. Caesar rounds off this point with a critique of the authorities in the urbs, who in any case lacked the specific expertise to understand the exigencies of the situation. Why else, he asks, did the people elect him for five years under the lex Vatinia to assume this command—“a thing never done before”—if not to act as he saw fit? Why did they send him out with four legions immediately after his consulship, so continuing his unbroken succession of commands, if not to take the fight to such enemies as he decided? No: the war against Ariovistus, and indeed all others of Caesar’s choosing, had been entrusted to him in advance by the lex Vatinia itself. In this decision, Dio’s speaker argues, the Senate and people were right: since they were at such a great geographical distance from the affairs under discussion, they simply would not have been able to understand what was occurring, nor to determine the proper course of action in a timely manner.66 Caesar’s statements are a spectacular refutation of the entire process of Republican decision-making in imperial affairs. In Dio’s view, the institutions of the res publica, which necessarily revolved around collective debate far away in the city of Rome itself, were simply not fit to govern a wide empire. Generals acted in their own way, and too often in their own selfish interests, simply because they could. Within such a system, to develop a taste for such power—an imperii consuetudo—was not surprising. In Dio’s interpretation, only a reassessment of the fundamental principles on which the Republic was based could ensure the efficient administration of the imperium Romanum and prevent the resurgence of autocratic ambitions on the part of individual commanders. The answer, therefore, lay with monarchy and a radical alteration of the decision-making process. For the answer to the problem of imperii consuetudo and the historian’s view of the necessary 65  Zonar. 9.30.7–8. 66  Cass. Dio 38.41.4–7.

268

chapter 5

remedies, we must turn—as so often—to the Agrippa-Maecenas debate of Book 52. To Dio, the key to halting the corrosive issue of the distribution of power, and particularly over-lengthy periods within the empire, lay within the first princeps’ reforms to the provincial administration. But before positing his solutions, the historian first takes a final opport­unity to summarise the extent and nature of the issue and the historical problems that would genuinely confront Octavian’s fledgling regime. Marshalling his arguments in favour of the res publica, Agrippa outlines a weak argument for rejecting monarchy. An emperor, he states, would need to have many helpers— helpers sent out to the corners of the empire, far from his superintendence and supervision. Such people would accordingly pose a great risk to the central authority.67 Yet so far from serving as a grounds to reject monarchy, this merely reiterates, more fully, what has by this point in the narrative proven to be such a fundamental flaw of Dio’s Republic. In a long and elaborate passage best viewed in full, Agrippa makes his case (52.8): Then again, apart from those who are guilty of wrongdoing, there are many men who pride themselves, some on their birth, others on their wealth, and still others on something else, who, though in general not bad men, are yet by nature opposed to the principle of monarchy. If a ruler allows these men to become strong, he cannot live in safety, and if, on the other hand, he undertakes to impose a check on them, he cannot do so justly. What, then, will you do with them? How will you deal with them? … For if you allow these various classes to grow strong, you will not be able to deal with them easily. True, if you alone were equal to carrying on the business of the state and the business of warfare successfully and in a manner to meet the demands of each situation, and needed no assistant for any of these matters, it would be a different matter. As the case stands, however, since you would be governing this vast world, it would be quite essential for you to have many helpers; and of course they ought all to be both brave and high-spirited. Now if you hand over the leg­ ions and the offices to men of such parts, there will be danger that both you and your government will be overthrown … If, on the other hand, you entrust nothing to these men, but put affairs in charge of common men of indifferent origin, you will very soon incur the resentment of the first class, who will think themselves distrusted, and you will very soon fail in the greatest enterprises … And yet I need not explain to you all the evils that naturally result from such a condition, for you know them 67  Cass. Dio 52.8.1–8.

Institutions & Empire

269

thoroughly; but this one thing I shall say, as I am constrained to do—that if a minister of this kind failed in every duty, he would injure you far more than the enemy. ἔτι τοίνυν πολλοὶ χωρὶς τῶν τι ἀδικούντων, οἱ μὲν γένει, οἱ δὲ πλούτῳ, οἱ δὲ ἑτέρῳ τινὶ ἐπαιρόμενοι, ἄλλως μὲν οὐ κακοὶ ἄνδρες, τῇ δὲ δὴ προαιρέσει τῇ τῆς μοναρχίας ἐναντίοι φύονται· καὶ αὐτοὺς οὔτ᾽ αὔξεσθαί τις ἐῶν ἀσφαλῶς δύναται ζῆν, οὔτ᾽ αὖ κολούειν ἐπιχειρῶν δικαίως τοῦτο ποιεῖν. τί ποτ᾽ οὖν τούτοις χρήσῃ; πῶς αὐτοὺς μεταχειρίσῃ…ἂν δὲ ἐάσῃς ταῦθ᾽ ὡς ἕκαστα αὔξειν, οὐκ ἂν ῥᾳδίως αὐτὰ διάθοιο. καὶ γὰρ εἰ αὐτὸς μόνος πρός τε τὸ τὰ πολιτικὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ τὰ πολεμικὰ καλῶς καὶ κατὰ καιρὸν πράττειν ἐξήρκεις, καὶ μηδενὸς συνεργοῦ πρὸς μηδὲν αὐτῶν ἔχρῃζες, ἕτερος ἂν ἦν λόγος· νῦν δὲ πᾶσά σε ἀνάγκη συναγωνιστὰς πολλούς, ἅτε τοσαύτης οἰκουμένης ἄρχοντα, ἔχειν, καὶ προσήκει που πάντας αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀνδρείους καὶ φρονίμους εἶναι. οὐκοῦν ἂν μὲν τοιούτοις τισὶ τά τε στρατεύματα καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ἐγχειρίζῃς, κίνδυνος ἔσται καὶ σοὶ καὶ τῇ πολιτείᾳ καταλυθῆναι…ἂν δὲ δὴ τούτοις μὲν μηδὲν ἐπιτρέπῃς, τοῖς δὲ δὴ φαύλοις καὶ τοῖς τυχοῦσι τὰ πράγματα προστάσσῃς, τάχιστα μὲν ἂν ὀργὴν παρ᾽ ἐκείνων ὡς ἀπιστουμένων λάβοις, τάχιστα δ᾽ ἂν ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις πταίσειας…καὶ μὴν ὅσα ἐκ τούτου κακὰ γίγνεσθαι πέφυκε, τὰ μὲν ἄλλα οὐδὲν δέομαί σοι σαφῶς εἰδότι διηγεῖσθαι, ἐκεῖνο δὲ δὴ μόνον ἀναγκαίως ἐρῶ, ὅτι ἂν μὲν μηδὲν δέον ὁ τοιοῦτος πράττῃ, πολὺ πλείω ἄν σε τῶν πολεμίων βλάψειεν. This serves, on the one hand, as one of Dio’s most extended loci of reflection on the risks to Octavian’s position as monarch. But on the other hand, its modes of thought are distinctly Late Republican. The problems and hazards that Agrippa summarises have no precedent in the historian’s narrative except for the last century of the history of the Republic. It surely invites the reader to reflect on all the challenges to the central authority by ambitious and high-spirited commanders that they have seen before: Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Caesar, and the triumvirs to name only the most important, to the exclusion of lesser re­presentatives of δυναστεία such as Metellus Creticus. In case we were not already sufficiently convinced of the historian’s point, the speaker later uses precisely these figures as exempla.68 Agrippa’s comments are just as much an analepsis to, and reflection of, Dio’s view of the instability of the Late Republic as a prolepsis to the hazards of monarchy as such. The risks of imperii consuetudo remained, but to this point it has been a defining and characteristic flaw of the last century of the libera res publica. 68  Cass. Dio 52.13.2–4.

270

chapter 5

The hazards were, however, real. In Maecenas, Dio delineates his evaluation of the institutional measures necessary to rectify the destructive organisation of military power under the Republic and to secure viable constitutional change. He is made to offer three suggestions which relate directly to imperii consuetudo, all of which promise to enable the new princeps to “rule well and without danger”,69 and all of which Octavian—now Augustus—will go on to implement in the ensuing Books. First, Dio underlines through his Maecenas the necessity of cleansing the Senate of any unsavoury figures: “since some, on account of our civil wars, have become senators who are unworthy of the privilege”.70 He should then hand-pick their replacements himself, selecting candidates to join the govern­ing class not on the basis of their wealth—indeed, he should donate the required monies if necessary—but those who are of good birth and good character. This, the speaker suggests, will rectify the deficiency in capable assist­ants to rule Augustus’ empire, posited earlier by Agrippa: “for in this way you will have many helpers and will secure the loyalty of the leading provincials; and the provinces, having no leaders of distinction, will not cause political revolutions”.71 Secondly, Augustus ought to make all appointments himself.72 Magistrates and imperial governors should no longer be selected by the popular vote within the framework of free competition, nor be assigned to their tasks by lot. The historian’s analysis here is incisive, and again reflects his history of the Late Republic and his theoretical critique of a δημοκρατία organised according to the principles of competition among notional equals. All appointments, Maecenas states, should be made by the emperor, and should certainly not be entrusted to the plebs or the citizen body to fill. The reasoning behind this argument of Dio’s Maecenas is revealing: “for otherwise, the people will cause civil strife because of those offices, and the senators will use them to further their ambitions”.73 At the close of the previous chapter, we have already seen this argument valorised in the events of the Roman History. In 22 BCE, the new emperor made the mistake of allowing the people a free choice for the consuls of the following year: stasis, competition, and violence ensued. Only the intervention of his closest advisor Agrippa, invested with powers superior to those

69  Cass. Dio 52.18.7. 70  Cass. Dio 52.19.1. 71  Cass. Dio 52.19.3. 72  Cass. Dio 52.20.3. 73  Cass. Dio 52.20.3.

Institutions & Empire

271

of the regular consuls, mollified the unrest. Three years later Augustus did not repeat this error, and filled the vacant curule chair with his own candidate.74 Moreover, to ensure that the Republican magistracies and pro-magistracies within the provinces of the empire be shorn of their potential to overthrow the central power, Maecenas recommends that Augustus deprive them of their traditional power and initiative—recall Caesar at Vesontio—and instead make them titular. In this way, those in receipt of the privileges of office will continue to enjoy the prestige of their titles, but will be henceforth unable to cause another revolution (νεωτερίσαι). “Do this”, the speaker advises paraliptically, “so that the same things do not happen all over again”.75 His third and final point is of the most importance for our understanding of the destructive and destabilising impact of imperii consuetudo upon Rome’s empire in the Roman History. Crucially, Maecenas insists on a long hiatus between a magistrate’s post in the city and his position of command abroad. We began this part of our analysis with the well-intentioned but ultimately futile attempts of the Senate in 53 BCE, and then Caesar in 46 BCE, to institute such a hiatus. Rightly in Dio’s opinion, they understood the source of their predicament: successive tenure of office and protracted periods in command were inimical to Republican traditions and poisonous to the framework of traditional liberty. Dio’s Catulus also recognised this, and says so—yet by 67 BCE and the lex Gabinia the dangerous precedents had already been long-established. To set right this fault, therefore, provincial governors and commanders should not go out immediately after their civic office, but rather should wait. Even more importantly, they should not remain under arms nor be invested with troops during this period (52.20.4): So deprive the magistracies of their power to such an extent that, although you will not be taking away any of their prestige, you will give no one who wishes it the chance to cause another revolution. This is how it will be, then, if you assign them mainly to domestic affairs. And do not allow any of them to have armed forces during their term nor immediately afterward. Rather, allow them only after a lapse of some time, as much as seems sufficient to you in each instance. For in this way, none of them will stir up revolutions, since they will never be put in command of legions while still enjoying the prestige of their titles, and they will be more peaceable after they have been private citizens for a time.

74  Cass. Dio 54.6, 54.10. 75  Cass. Dio 52.20.4. For a related development of this point, see Burden-Strevens 2016.

272

chapter 5

τῆς δ᾽ ἰσχύος παράλυσον τοσοῦτον ὅσον μήτε τοῦ ἀξιώματός τι αὐτῶν ἀφαιρήσει καὶ τοῖς νεωτερίσαι τι ἐθελήσουσι μὴ ἐπιτρέψει. ἔσται δὲ τοῦτο, ἂν τά τε ἄλλα καὶ ἐνδήμους αὐτοὺς ἀποφήνῃς, καὶ μήτε ἐν τῷ τῆς ἀρχῆς καιρῷ ὅπλα τινὶ αὐτῶν ἐγχειρίσῃς μήτε εὐθύς, ἀλλὰ χρόνου διελθόντος, ὅσον ἂν αὐτάρκη ἑκάστῳ σφῶν νομίσῃς εἶναι. οὕτω γὰρ οὔτε τινὲς νεοχμώσουσι, στρατοπέδων κύριοι ἐν τῷ τῶν ὀνομάτων φρονήματι γενόμενοι, καὶ χρόνον τινὰ ἰδιωτεύσαντες πεπανθήσονται. The connection between the protracted tenure of military authority and the capacity for revolution is spelled out plainly and repeatedly indeed. Through his orator, the historian lays out his interpretation of the appropriate remedy to a distinctly Late Republican issue, first articulated in Catulus four decades earlier: that no individual should be entrusted with many positions of command, one after another.76 The result was imperii consuetudo, anarchy, ambition, and civil war. Maecenas’ recommendations foreground precisely the reforms that Augustus will apply to the provincial administration in Book 53, and therefore directly serve to explain the cause of the relative success and stability of his rule. In the immediate aftermath of Octavian’s recusatio imperii, Dio surveys the nature of these modifications and the ensuing pattern of imperial government they would establish for much of the remainder of the Principate. First, wishing to appear “Republican” (δημοτικός), the new princeps declared that he would not govern all the provinces himself.77 Instead, he assigned some to the purview of the Senate and others to the personal jurisdiction of the emperor. To the former, Dio explains, Augustus gave those weaker provinces in secure parts of the empire which, necessarily, required fewer legions, “on the pretext that they were safer and peaceful and not at war”. To himself, in contrast, he assigned the more heavily fortified provinces, on the grounds that they were more dangerous and troublesome and therefore spared the Senate bother. Ostensibly (λόγῳ) he did so as a favour to the Senate, arguing that they might in this way enjoy the best of the empire without personal danger; but in real­ ity (ἔργῳ) his purpose was to weaken the command-pool of the senatorial aristocracy, leaving them unarmed and feeble with access to fewer legions.78 Maecenas’ package of reform had begun: the governing class—the “imperial 76  Cf. Cass. Dio 36.31.3. 77  The Greek term δημοτικός is Dio’s usual translation for ciuilis, i.e. denoting an emperor who acts in the manner of a regular citizen or with a show of equality with the rest of the aristocracy; see Wallace-Hadrill 1982 for Dio’s translation. 78  Cass. Dio 53.12.1–3. See Millar 2001, 271–291, 314–320 for important analysis of this passage and its historical reliability, especially regarding the ‘senatorial’ provinces.

Institutions & Empire

273

counterculture” of the outgoing Republic, in Eckstein’s words—would be weak, and the emperor—the “centre”—would be strong.79 To complete the package, Augustus furthermore decreed that the govern­ ors of his own, ‘imperial’ provinces be selected by the princeps himself; but that those of the ‘senatorial’ territories be chosen at random and by lot.80 Disappointingly the historian provides no explicit analysis of the historical ramifications of this measure, but its implications are obvious. The random allocation of commands within the empire by lot weakened the traditional aristocracy, while in inverse proportion the direct oversight of the emperor rendered the centre strong (53.13.1). This, then, was the appointment of the provinces. But as Caesar wished— naturally!—to lead the Romans far away from thinking that he had monarchy in view, he undertook to rule the provinces given to him for only ten years; for he promised to bring them into good order within this time, and proclaimed boastfully that, if they were pacified sooner, he would return them all the more quickly to the Senate. τὰ μὲν οὖν ἔθνη οὕτω διῃρέθη, βουληθεὶς δὲ δὴ καὶ ὣς ὁ Καῖσαρ πόρρω σφᾶς ἀπαγαγεῖν τοῦ τι μοναρχικὸν φρονεῖν δοκεῖν, ἐς δέκα ἔτη τὴν ἀρχὴν τῶν δοθέντων οἱ ὑπέστη· τοσούτῳ τε γὰρ χρόνῳ καταστήσειν αὐτὰ ὑπέσχετο, καὶ προσενεανιεύσατο εἰπὼν ὅτι, ἂν καὶ θᾶττον ἡμερωθῇ, θᾶττον αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐκεῖνα ἀποδώσει. Augustus’ boastful proclamations and his wish—“naturally”, Dio ironically intones—81 to obfuscate his manoeuvres to secure absolute power are presented, deliberately, as a means of clothing Augustus’ reforms to the provincial administration and cementing his power behind a veneer of Republicanism. His audience were not blind to his claims; the historian records the disbelief, and even admiration of his hypocrisy, that arrested the minds of his readers.82 It was a fraud; but in Dio’s view it was a necessary one, and facilitated the implementation of Maecenas’ (that is, Dio’s) suggestions for solidifying Augustus’ nascent imperial rule. The cycle of command, ambition, imperii consuetudo, and autocratic ambition had been resolved—at least for a time. 79  Eckstein 2004, 285. 80  Cass. Dio 53.13.2–6. See Hurlet 2006 for discussion of the relationship between the princeps and the promagistrates he selected to govern ‘his’ provinces. 81  The use of δὴ is obviously ironic; see Denniston 1954, 229–236. 82  Cass. Dio 53.11.

274

chapter 5

The speeches of Scipio Aemilianus, Catulus, Caesar, Agrippa, and Maecenas form a logical unity which evinces the historian’s profound interest in the de­ stabilising effect of the Republic’s institutions upon its Mediterranean empire. With constitutional change, monarchical oversight, and the removal of free competition, imperii consuetudo ceased to pose a serious threat to the imperial centre. Dio was not so naive or dishonest as to suggest that even those assist­ ants selected by the new princeps himself disavowed ambitions of their own. The scandals surrounding Cornelius Gallus as procurator of Egypt, and Marcus Primus as governor of Macedonia, demonstrate the repeated challenges to Augustus’ position.83 Man’s nature, as we saw in the previous chapter, had not changed: this was an institutional and constitutional revolution, not a moral or ethical one. Nor indeed had Roman imperialism as such, nor Dio’s view of it, necessarily changed: Estelle Bertrand has rightly emphasised that many features of Roman imperialism in the Republican books of the Roman History feature also in its Imperial portions. The dangers of sudden and dramatic change (μεταβολαί), and powerful and ambitious provincial governors, remained always in Dio’s conception of the Roman empire.84 To adopt the terms of Josiah Osgood’s recent study, the “world state” of the new emperor was secure, but not unassailable.85 Yet the growing pains of the regime did not seriously threaten it. After a century of stasis and direct attacks upon the city of Rome by its own commanders, some stability returned. Civil war relented and became a memory for almost a hundred years until the revolts of Vindex and Galba in 68. The location of Vindex’s defeat and the initial crushing of his rebellion—Vesontio—offered Cassius Dio the setting for one of the most remarkable critiques of empire in Roman historiography. The harangue of Caesar to his mutinying troops in Book 38 underlines genuine problems in the organisation of a Republican empire which will all be recognisable to modern historians: distance, geography, poor communication, and the resultant tension between the commander’s initiative and the right of SPQR to direct and decide. The institutions of the Republic, involving free competition, senatorial debate, and the popular vote, were simply ill-adapted to the needs of a world empire. The commander had become a warlord, and this was directly facilitated, unintentionally and disastr­ ously, by the institutions of the SPQR. In Dio’s interpretation, the case at the 83  Suet. Aug. 66; Cass. Dio 53.23; Vell. Pat. 2.91. 84  See Bertrand 2016, 679–700. 85  See the brief overview at Osgood 2018, 210–214. On the challenges to the stability of the new regime (particularly from magistrates and commanders), see: Stockton 1965; Philipps 1997; Vio 2000; Minas-Nerpel & Pfeiffer 2010; Maltby 2011.

Institutions & Empire

275

outbreak of Caesar’s civil war was not that he wished to become a monarch, but rather that he wished to remain one. He was not the first; but the speech of Maecenas sets out Dio’s analysis of the necessary measures to make him the last. 2

The Dictatorship and Tyranny

A second and equally important aspect of the Roman History’s institutional framework for the fragmentation and ultimate replacement of the free Republic lies in the dictatorship. In an entirely new way within Roman historio­graphy, Dio implicated the Republican dictatorship intimately in the failure of the political centre to organise and manage its empire abroad and to respond to crisis at home, linking it also to the durability of Augustus’ Principate. In this final extended section of our analysis, the speeches of Catulus, Caesar’s address to the Senate after Pharsalus, Cicero on the Amnesty of 44 BCE, and Agrippa and Maecenas will remain important. These, coupled with the historian’s own authorial comments on the dictatorship in his early books and again in the Augustan narrative, demonstrate further his marked interest in the relationship between Rome’s institutions and its political stability. The scope and history of the dictatorship in a sense justified that choice. Within a decade of the alleged foundation of the res publica in 509 BCE, Rome was already (according to the tradition) appointing its first dictators. The office was invested with extraordinary power of near-autocratic dimensions.86 Like the regular magistrates, he was apparently not immune entirely from prosecution after his term of office had elapsed: we know of very rare cases in which dictators were called to account for their actions after laying down their functions.87 But the very rarity of these indications suggests that in practice the norm was not to prosecute a dictator after his resignation. Theoretically at least, the dictator probably possessed imperium no greater than that of the regular consuls (perhaps called ‘praetors’ in the first century of the Republic).88 On this view, since the consuls had inherited directly the powers of the Roman kings to wield in annual and unbroken succession—imperium auspiciumque, the right to command and to consult the gods—there could be no greater 86  Nicolet 2004 gives an excellent summary of the scope of the office and its powers, including its innovations under Sulla and Caesar. 87  Livy 7.4.5. See Broughton MMR 1.118 for a summary of the reasons attested for which dictators might be called to account after their resignation (at least according to the tradition). Lintott 1999, 111–112 in any case notes the questionable authenticity of such reports. 88  See the discussion in Urso 2019.

276

chapter 5

authority, and the dictator thus technically shared an imperium equal with that of the consuls.89 The key difference lay in his sphere of activity. Unlike the consuls, the dictator could exert extraordinary powers within the sacred boundary of the city itself, the pomerium.90 What seems a minor technicality was in fact a curtailment (but not abolition) of regular civic institutions. The dictator could initially—at least for its first decades—not be obstructed in his duties even by the tribunes of the plebs,91 although the tribunes’ capacity to react assertively increased over time.92 He had the right to convene the Senate and the popular assemblies, and in short exerted considerable power. This power was, however, moderated by four prescriptions.93 First, the maximum term for a Roman dictator was fixed at six months: as with all the other magistracies, its temporal limitation reasserted the principle that monarchy as such had been expunged from the res publica. Secondly, he was appointed for a specific emergency task (causa)—organising elections, a military camp­ aign, holding games, or performing rituals—and was expected to resign upon the completion of that causa. Thirdly, the dictator was not permitted to leave Italy: he could exert his imperium solely on the peninsula, and never abroad. Finally, in practice it was still necessary for the dictator to collaborate with the Senate; to act against their wishes was possible, but difficult and ill-advised. The dictatorship operated under these parameters for three centuries. From the appointment of Titus Lartius in 501 (or 498) BCE, the res publica regularly called upon dictators—in rare periods even in successive years—to resolve domestic and military emergencies, until the office lapsed in 202 BCE and was not used again. Not, that is, until the infamous experiments with Sulla in 82 BCE and Caesar at the end of the Republic. Both altered the dictatorship in radical ways and unleashed its autocratic potential.94 In both cases the six-month term was not

89  So Brennan 2000, 599; Drogula 2015, 119, 168–179. 90  The dictator thus had the right to have 24 lictors bearing fasces—twice as many as a consul—as attested in Polyb. 3.87; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.24.2; Plut. Fab. 4.3. He may have retained only half of these within the limits of the city itself, but at the same time magistrates with the right to carry fasces had to relinquish them when appearing before a dictator (Livy 22.11.5). See Drogula 2015, 119, 168–179. 91  Our ancient sources at least suggest that the dictator was immune to provocatio: Livy 2.18.8, 3.20.8; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.58.2; Plut. Fab. 9.1. But this may be a mistake. 92  See the examples in Lintott 1999, 111; esp. Liv. 7.3.1–9. 93  For this summary and the evidence see Lintott 1999, 109–113; Nicolet 2004, 265–266. 94  For this reason Nicolet 2004, 265–270 distinguishes between a “classical” or “regular” dictatorship from (allegedly) 501 to 202 BCE, followed by the “revived” and “irregular” dictatorships of the first century BCE.

Institutions & Empire

277

applied. Sulla may or may not have resigned in time,95 but in a radical innov­ ation it was not stipulated that he must do so; Caesar of course held it for five years and then, finally, for life. The recent experience of civil war additionally widened the ambit of their causae: Sulla’s appointment “for the purpose of making laws and reconstituting the state” (legibus faciendis et rei publicae constituendae causa) was an unprecedented novelty of enormous scope, and Caesar took the dictator’s task at its most general (rei gerendae causa) and made it monarchy, including plans to leave Italy while still invested with its powers. Historians prior to Dio certainly allowed these experiences to colour their interpretation of the dictatorship; the Roman History was not the first source to bring the problem into focus. As with its elaboration of the theme of imperii consuetudo in Suetonius, Dio developed existing ideas within the Roman historiographical tradition in ways that were often elaborate and distinctive to it. Yet the Roman History took the Roman dictatorship in a radically different direction to its predecessors. Andreas Kalyvas has recently shown that Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Appian already incorporated a critique of the dictatorship within their works. Reflecting on the horrors and innov­ ations of the first century BCE and retrojecting these into the distant past, they argued that the dictatorship was by its nature tyrannical and antithetical to Republican libertas: to them it had a chequered history and dark reputation since its first inception.96 This is certainly suggested by their accounts of the appointment of the first dictator at the turn of the fifth century. Livy treats the rise of a dictator as a moment of great apprehension for the plebs. A new war with the Latins was imminent and the neighboring Sabines were making menacing incursions, including the abduction of Roman citizens. Moreover, the surrounding Latin communities had united and formed a league of thirty. Rome was surrounded and panicked. The apprehensions were such that a dictator was nominated for the first time. When the plebeians saw the rods and axes of the official before them, they were terrified and, in the context of the Conflict of the Orders, finally began to obey the orders of their betters. The dictator was a far worse force than the patrician consuls: there was no hope of aid nor appeal, and no

95  For the debate surrounding the duration of Sulla’s dictatorship, see Badian 1970; Hinard 1999; and Flower 2010, 119n.3 with accompanying surveys of the literature. It seems clear that Sulla’s dictatorship was innovative insofar as it did not have a time-limit. However, the evidence that he nevertheless did resign it within the appointed six-month term is compelling. 96  Kalyvas 2007, passim.

278

chapter 5

safety for the people except in slavish obedience to the dictator’s commands.97 Livy emphasises the terror that the dictatorship inspired. Dionysius of Halicarnassus goes further, and describes the office straightforwardly as comparable to monarchy in its degenerate form: tyranny. According to his Roman Antiquities, the Senate and patricians only instituted this office in response to the lex Valeria de provocatione: they wished to abrogate provocatio and to remove the new-found powers of the plebeians by creating a new office unhindered by it. It was in his view a specious mechanism, “by means of which to deceive the poor and to surreptitiously take away the law which made their liberty secure”.98 In keeping with this pessimistic view, Dionysius repeatedly describes the Roman dictatorship as a form of tyranny as such. Since it had power “greater than the laws”, it was a tyranny; he compares this “elective tyranny” (αἱρετὴ τυραννίς),99 disguised by its misleading name, to similar powers cloaked under attractive titles in the Greek states. Dionysius’ picture is wrong and misleading for several reasons. First, the lex Valeria de provocatione was probably not in fact abrogated by the nomination of a dictator.100 Secondly, his powers were not technically greater than the law; for almost all of its history its scope was limited by the law, and the dictator was expected to collaborate with the Senate and other magistrates. By 210 BCE, the tribunes could even obstruct his actions and demand that he change course.101 Third and finally, Dionysius cannot explain why the res publica persisted with the dictatorship so regularly for three centuries if it did indeed encapsulate that tyranny which was so antithetical to the most basic assumptions which guided the Republican distribution of power. Evidently Dionysius, and to a lesser extent Livy, viewed the history of the dictatorship through the lens of the innovations and degradations of the first century BCE: they have the alleged tyranny (τυραννίς) of Sulla and Caesar in mind. Dio was aware of this interpretation of the relationship between dictatorship and τυραννίς, but rejected it. His argument, as we can deduce from the speeches and their surrounding narrative, is as follows. The powers of the Roman dictator were indeed monarchical, but it was a limited monarchy. Since the guiding hand of autocracy was beneficial and necessary—particularly in times of crisis—the dictatorship furnished a temporary resort to the best that monarchy had to offer, and this explains why Rome persisted with it for three 97  Livy 2.18.8. 98  Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.70.4. 99  Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.73.2; see also 5.70.5. 100  Lintott 1999, 111. 101  Livy 27.6; Plut. Fab. 9.

Institutions & Empire

279

hundred years. However, the traditional framework of Republican liberty made it impractical, and especially so as a remedy to military crisis within a wide empire. The six-month term and stipulation that the dictator remain in Italy deprived it of its potential. New plenipotentiary offices were required to address the far-flung exigencies of the imperium Romanum. But the alternat­ ives to it proposed—prorogation, successive office-holding, and extraordinary commands—were, as we saw in the previous section, disastrous for the res publica. After the upheaval of the Sullan regime, the office moreover suffered on reputational grounds: it was not only impractical, but had come to be perceived as tyrannical and dangerous. Now the historian himself evidently did not agree. He states himself, as we shall see later, that the Romans of the Late Republic, like his historiographical predecessors, were mistaken in conflating dictatorship and tyranny. After Sulla, they turned to radical alternatives which were corrosive to the existing political framework and undermined the consensus it had once enjoyed. The result was faction, δυναστεία, civil war, and eventually the return of monarchy as such. Dio was, to my knowledge, the first and only historian to seriously implicate the Roman dictatorship’s failure to address civilian and military crisis in the collapse of the res publica itself, and to link it to the success and stability of Augustus’ regime. According to his usual practice, Dio used the earliest books of his Roman History as a means of foregrounding that argument in a programmatic way. His story begins with an authorial comment on the appointment of the first dictator, Titus Lartius, surveying the scope of his office and the reasons for its inauguration. Significantly, the historian uses this moment as an opportunity to foreshadow the controversies of Sulla and Caesar to come much later in his work (Zonar. 7.13): On account of the Tarquins the Romans hated the name of ‘king’. But they chose one under another name, because they desired the benefit (especially in times of war and civil strife) that kingship could provide. Thus in its powers the dictatorship was equal to kingship, except that the dictator was not permitted to ride on horseback except on campaign, nor to spend from the public treasury unless that right were specifically voted to him. He could try men and execute them at home and on campaign—not only plebeians, but even equestrians and senators. Not even the tribunes were able to make a complaint against him or to undertake actions against him, and no appeal could be taken from him. The office lasted for no more than six months at a time, so as to ensure that no individual, by lingering too long in such great power and unhampered authority, should become haughty and get carried away by the longing for autocratic rule. This was

280

chapter 5

what would later happen to Julius Caesar, when he had been judged worthy of the dictatorship contrary to the precedents established by law. τὴν μὲν γὰρ τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπωνυμίαν διὰ τοὺς Ταρκυνίους ἐμίσησαν, τὴν δ’ ἐκ τῆς μοναρχίας ὠφέλειαν θέλοντες, ὡς πολὺ ἰσχυούσης ἐς τὰς τῶν πολέμων καὶ τῶν στάσεων περιστάσεις, ἐν ἄλλῳ ταύτην ὀνόματι εἵλοντο. ἦν οὖν, ὡς εἴρηται, ἡ δικτατωρεία κατά γε τὴν ἐξουσίαν τῇ βασιλείᾳ ἰσόρροπος, πλὴν ὅτι μὴ ἐφ’ ἵππον ἀναβῆναι ὁ δικτάτωρ ἠδύνατο, εἰ μὴ ἐκστρατεύεσθαι ἔμελλεν, οὔτε ἐκ τῶν δημοσίων χρημάτων ἀναλῶσαί τι ἐξῆν αὐτῷ, εἰ μὴ ἐψηφίσθη· δικάζειν δὲ καὶ ἀποκτείνειν καὶ οἴκοι καὶ ἐν στρατείαις ἠδύνατο, καὶ οὐ τοὺς τοῦ δήμου μόνους, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἱππέων καὶ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς βουλῆς. καὶ οὔτ’ ἐγκαλέσαι τις αὐτῷ οὔτ’ ἐναντίον τι διαπράξασθαι ἴσχυεν οὐδὲ οἱ δήμαρχοι, οὔτε δίκη ἐφέσιμος ἐγίνετο ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ. οὐκ ἐπὶ πλέον δὲ τῶν ἓξ μηνῶν ἡ τῆς δικτατωρείας ἀρχὴ παρετείνετο, ἵνα μή τις αὐτῶν ἐν τοσούτῳ κράτει καὶ ἐξουσίᾳ ἀκράτῳ χρονίσας ὑπερφρονήσῃ καὶ πρὸς ἔρωτα μοναρχίας ἐκκυλισθῇ. ὅπερ ἐς ὕστερον καὶ ὁ Καῖσαρ Ἰούλιος ἔπαθεν, ἐπεὶ παρὰ τὰ νενομισμένα τῆς δικτατωρείας ἠξίωτο. This account evidently treated the inauguration of the dictatura in a strikingly different manner to his predecessors. Dio did not, like Livy, envisage the pleb­ eians being cast into a panic, nor emphasised its intimidating intent. Nor was it a specious scheme to tyrannise over the plebeians; the Roman History states that all, including patricians and equestrians and senators, were subject to its jurisdiction. He certainly equated its powers with those of the monarch, but evidently not to that autocracy which was base, violent, and considered itself beyond the reach of the law (τυραννίς). He did not, like Dionysius, view it incorrectly as a form of tyrannical rule in and of itself. Quite the contrary: he even states that the Romans of this time recognised the benefit to be derived from sole rule, particularly in conditions of strife and conflict at home and abroad. Dictatorship was to Dio a temporary return to the stabilising influence of an autocratic hierarchy, consistent with his view that monarchy was the best form of government to live under even if its title is not pleasing to the ear.102 The early Romans, realising the potential benefits of a director to assume charge of the state (subject to strict limitations of prerogative and duration), accordingly chose monarchy under another name. Evidently Dio did not view the dictatorship as a form of tyrannical rule in itself, nor retrojected the events of the first century BCE onto the earliest years of the res publica. Yet he did look forward to its degeneration in later times: the satisfying prolepsis to Caesar’s 102  Cass. Dio 44.2.1.

Institutions & Empire

281

dictatorship foreshadows its illegality, and the controversy of his innovations. Caesar will make himself a monarch, but the mechanism he selected and altered—dictatorship—will not enable him to rule legitimately. Our historian’s view on this question is in fact much closer to Cicero—whose works he had of course read—than to his fellow historians. In the second book of the Republic, Cicero devotes a passage of his analysis of the Roman constit­ ution to the dictatorship, articulated in the voice of Scipio (2.51–56). Tarquinius Superbus, he states, had ruined all the potential of monarchy to bring good order; not because he wielded powers that were in themselves unjust, but simply because he used them corruptly. It was necessary to find a replacement, a rector rei publicae: “so let us set up another in his place, a good man, wise and expert in everything and dignified in civic life: a tutor and steward, as it were, of the state”.103 The discussion moves on to the creation of the first dictator. After the experience of Tarquinius Superbus, the Romans came to detest the title of ‘king’. It was not in itself bad; they had longed for Romulus after his disappearance, for example. They were caught at an impasse: they desired the benefit of kingship, but could not bear even to hear the name.104 The answer lay in the dictatorship: a new kind of power similar to monarchy, but limited. Under its auspices, the Roman people went on to achieve great prosperity and renown.105 The perspectives adopted on the potential of dictatorship, at least in theory, in the Republic and Dio’s Roman History are remarkably similar. Both underline that the Romans of the early Republic wished for the temporary benefit of a director—a tutor et procurator rei publicae—yet could not tolerate the name of kingship itself. In both, this odium derives from the recent tyranny of Tarquinius Superbus. They therefore chose to institute a new office which, though neither technically nor explicitly monarchy, nevertheless enjoyed powers similar to it. The results, the Republic states, were successful. Dio’s own account of the actions of Rome’s dictators, from Titus Lartius’ appointment to the eve of its long hiatus with C. Servilius Geminus’ tenure in 202 BCE, is largely consistent with this positive vision of a temporary return to autocracy within the limits of a Republican framework. In a nod to the trad­ ition, Cincinnatus is valiantly praised for suppressing Spurius Maelius’ alleged conspiracy to overturn the status quo.106 Lucius Papirius Cursor and Aulus Cornelius Cossus Arvina acquit themselves admirably in the Samnite wars, and the former sees sense when advised to show clemency to his renegade 103  Cic. Rep. 2.51. 104  Cic. Rep. 2.52. 105  Cic. Rep. 2.56. 106  Cass. Dio frg. 23.2; cf. frg. 20.

282

chapter 5

magister equitum.107 In the war against Hannibal, Dio praises Fabius Cunctator for the wisdom of his strategy; he reserves his criticism for the impetuous magister equitum Rufus.108 Other dictators, such as Marcus Junius Pera, saved Rome with their actions.109 Camillus, lastly, was an exemplary figure illustrated by the historian in exceptionally positive terms.110 Dio’s narrative of these years is fragmentary, and much of it is preserved now only in Zonaras’ (faithful) epitome. Yet in what remains the historian evidently presents the dictatura functioning positively and as intended: a temporary resort to the best that monarchy had to offer in the interests of the state, regulated by legal limit­ ations that were in most cases faithfully observed. It was not to last. The speeches of the Late Republican portions of the Roman History articulate Dio’s analysis of the profound change in Roman attitudes toward the dictatorship in the first century BCE. In addition to its increasingly vexed reputation, they furthermore show that the institution was no longer suited to the needs of Rome’s vastly-enlarged empire. The historian thus bifurcates his interpretation into two channels. The former was already well-established within the tradition: the dictatorship had acquired a tyrannical reputation after Sulla’s tenure. The latter was entirely new and distinctive to the Roman History: the toxicity and unviability of the dictatorship led Rome to develop new, unconstitutional, and ultimately corrosive solutions to address the needs of its empire. Monarchy as such, and Augustus, represented the only practical remedy to this institutional impasse. In a further sign of its importance to the historian’s institutional analysis, the dissuasio of Catulus against the lex Gabinia voices both of these interpret­ ations. Arriving shortly after his now-lost account of the reign of Sulla, Catulus almost certainly represents the historian’s first attempt to undertake this institutional reflection. In a revealing passage, Catulus is made to assert that the lex Gabinia will be a disaster. In order to tackle the threat of Mediterranean piracy, the populus Romanus ought not to resort to dangerous innovations and extraordinary commands, but rather make appropriate use of their existing institutions (36.34): But if it is indeed necessary to elect an official alongside the yearly magistrates, there is already an ancient precedent, that is, the dictator. However, our ancestors did not establish this office for every circumstance, nor for 107  Zonar. 7.26; Cass. Dio frg. 36.26. 108  Zonar. 8.25–26. 109  Zonar. 9.2. 110  Cass. Dio frg. 21; frg. 24.4.

Institutions & Empire

283

a period longer than six months. Therefore, if you do require such an official, it is possible for you to engage either Pompeius or any other man as dictator without transgressing the law nor failing to deliberate carefully for the common good—on the condition that this be for no longer than the allotted time nor outside of Italy. For you are not unaware, I think, that our ancestors zealously preserved this limitation, and that no dictator can be found who served abroad, aside from one who went to Sicily and achieved nothing. But if Italy requires no such person, and if you cannot bear not only the function of a dictator but even the name—as is clear from your anger against Sulla—then how could it be right to create a new position of authority over practically everything within Italy and outside it for three years? εἰ γάρ τοι καὶ παρὰ τὰς ἐπετησίους ἀρχὰς ἀνάγκη τις εἴη ἑτέραν ἑλέσθαι, ἔστι καὶ τούτου παράδειγμα ἀρχαῖον, λέγω δὲ τὸν δικτάτορα. καὶ τοῦτον μέντοι τοιοῦτον ὄντα οὔτε ἐπὶ πᾶσί ποτε τοῖς πράγμασιν οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν οὔτε ἐπὶ πλείω χρόνον ἑξαμήνου κατεστήσαντο. ὥστ᾽ εἰ μὲν τοιούτου τινὸς δεῖσθε, ἔξεστιν ὑμῖν, μήτε παρανομήσασι μήτ᾽ ὀλιγώρως ὑπὲρ τῶν κοινῶν βουλευσαμένοις, δικτάτορα εἴτε Πομπήιον εἴτε καὶ ἄλλον τινὰ προχειρίσασθαι, ἐφ᾽ ᾧ μήτε πλείω τοῦ τεταγμένου χρόνονμήτε ἔξω τῆς Ἰταλίας ἄρξῃ. οὐ γάρ που ἀγνοεῖτε ὅτι καὶ τοῦτο δεινῶς οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἐφυλάξαντο, καὶ οὐκ ἂν εὑρεθείη δικτάτωρ οὐδεὶς ἄλλοσε πλὴν ἑνὸς ἐς Σικελίαν, καὶ ταῦτα μηδὲν πράξαντος, αἱρεθείς. εἰ δ᾽ οὔτε δεῖται ἡ Ἰταλία τοιούτου τινός, οὔτ᾽ ἂν ὑμεῖς ὑπομείναιτε ἔτι οὐχ ὅτι τὸ ἔργον τοῦ δικτάτορος ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ τὸ ὄνομα ῾δῆλον δὲ ἐξ ὧν πρὸς τὸν Σύλλαν ἠγανακτήσατε’, πῶς δ᾽ ἂν ὀρθῶς ἔχοι καινὴν ἡγεμονίαν, καὶ ταύτην ἐς ἔτη τρία καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ὡς εἰπεῖν καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ καὶ τοῖς ἔξω πράγμασιν, ἀποδειχθῆναι; It will be immediately recognisable that Catulus’ suggested alternatives are entirely without worth in the context of the piratical menace of 67 BCE. In order to combat a complex and enduring threat within the empire overseas, the speaker proposes a magistracy which is, by its very nature and definition, restricted. The Romans should with all haste elect a dictator to rectify the problem. The dictator must magic away the Mediterranean pirates from his seat in Italy, which he of course will not be permitted to leave. With a wave of his fasces, he must also make them disappear in time for his resignation within the six-month term. Caulus’ proposals are so far off the mark as to be almost amusing. This profound disconnect between the traditional solutions for military crisis and the actual demands of the historical situation clearly did not emerge

284

chapter 5

from Dio’s incompetence. He evidently had not forgotten the practical limit­ ations on the dictator’s sphere of operations, nor its short tenure: the rather neat historical detail mentioned by Catulus of the dictator who went to Sicily and accomplished nothing is an oblique reference to Aulus Atilius Calatinus’ despatch to Sicily in 249 BCE, almost two centuries before the lex Gabinia. The historian understood the history and parameters of the office and had done his research.111 Catulus’ last stand is illogical and unworkable, but that is precisely the historian’s point. So far from arguing against the extraordinary command of the lex Gabinia, Dio’s orator merely verbalises the historian’s interpretation of why there was no other alternative than to give Pompeius further δυναστεία. Catulus has no practical remedies to propose for the menace of Mediterranean piracy: the dictatorship could not solve it, nor the regular annually-elected magistrates. The framework of traditional liberty simply could not accommodate an empire of Rome’s size and complexity. New plenipotentiary powers were necessary, and these came—disastrously—in the form of Pompeius’ extra­ordinary command. Among our many sources for the lex Gabinia, precisely none mention the dictatorship within the debate. It is absent from Dio’s model for this speech-episode in Cicero’s de Imperio Gnaei Pompei.112 It is not mentioned in the fragments of Sallust on the debate,113 nor in Valerius Maximus,114 nor Velleius Paterculus,115 nor in Plutarch.116 This discourse on the dictatorship is entirely Dio’s interpolation, intended to reflect and explore his interpretative interest in the Republic’s institutions. He elected independently to insert a crit­ ique of the dictatorship because he considered its institutional failure historically important, and a key justification for other unconstitutional emergency commands. Moreover, the deficiencies of the Republican dictatorship were not solely practical, but reputational. Catulus adduces the loaded exemplum of Sulla’s tenure. Satisfyingly, this in fact inverts Dio’s authorial comment on the inaugur­ ation of the office with Titus Lartius centuries earlier. The Romans of 501 BCE, he writes, desired kingship but could not bear the name after Tarquinius 111   Burden-Strevens 2019, 153n.50: “Obviously Dio had done his research to insert this rather neat historical detail, and the recall suggests hypomnemata of particularly high quality”. 112  See Chapter 2 (‘Method’) above for the case that our historian was using Cicero directly as his source. 113  Sall. Hist. 5.20–24M. 114  Val. Max. 8.15.2. 115  Vell. Pat. 2.32.1–3. 116  Plut. Pomp. 25.5–6.

Institutions & Empire

285

Superbus; they accordingly instituted the dictatorship. Yet now, Catulus observes that in the wake of Sulla it is the name of ‘dictator’ that the populus Romanus cannot stand to hear.117 This is surely Dio’s own assessment of Roman attitudes toward the dictatorship in the 60s BCE. As we have already seen from the fragments of Sulla’s reign, Dio characterised Sulla’s dictatorship as a brutal tyranny, notorious for its crudelitas.118 The Roman History routinely uses Sulla as an exemplum of cruelty. Dio writes that Caesar’s extension of the pomerium during his own dictatorship “was thought similar to the acts of Sulla”; but he, in fact, treated the wives of those slain in his war for power with such generosity that he “put Sulla’s cruelty greatly to shame”.119 Pompeius’ motivation, too, in disbanding his legions at Brundisium upon his return from the East— very shortly after Catulus’ speech—was his awareness that “people regarded Marius’ and Sulla’s deeds as hateful”.120 Dio understood already what is now an emerging area in modern scholarship on the last decades of the res publica: the ‘psychological trauma’ of Sulla’s period in office and the profound impact it had on the political attitudes of the Republic’s last generation.121 Admittedly, Q. Lutatius Catulus the Younger is not the best choice of speaker to verbalise Dio’s view of the ill repute of Sulla and the dictatorship in the 60s BCE. His father had sided with Sulla, committing suicide rather than face Marius following this latter’s occupation of Rome; and the younger Catulus himself argued for the retention of the Sullan constitution during his consulship.122 It has also been suggested that by the dramatic context of 67 BCE, the crudelitas of Sulla had not yet entered Republican political discourse:123 the “myth of Sulla” on this view developed late, perhaps even in the Imperial Period.124 This may not be strictly true, since its origins are already detectable in Cicero’s fawning over Sulla in the Pro Roscio and his repeated mentions of crudelitas. Parallel evidence also demonstrates clearly that there were already 117  Cf. Cass. Dio 36.34.3 and Zonar. 7.13. 118  C  rudelitas had always had a nearly synonymous relationship with tyranny in classical thought. See e.g.: Plat. Rep. 8.566b; Cic., Cat. 2.14; Dom. 75, 94; Fin. 4.31; Inv. 2, 49.144; Cael. 52, 89; Phil. 2.117, 13.18; Rep. 2.26, 2.48; Verr. 1.82. Ample discussion in Béranger 1935, 85–94 and Dowling 2000, especially with respect to Sulla. 119  Cass. Dio 43.50.2. 120  Cass. Dio 37.20.6. 121  See Eckert 2016 for a full modern treatment of this topic, with accompanying scholarship.  . Lutatius Catulus Major, suicide: Cic. Or. 3.9; Brut. 307; Tusc. 5.56; Diod. 38.4.2–3; Vell. 122  Q Pat. 2.22.3–4; Val. Max 9.12.4; Plut. Mar. 44.8; App. B Civ. 1.74. Q. Lutatius Catulus Minor, consulship: Sall. Hist. 1.47–48; App. B Civ. 1.105. 123  Dowling 2000. The earliest mention of Sulla as an exemplum of crudelitas in Dowling’s view arrives at Cic. Cat. 3.10. 124  Urso 2016b.

286

chapter 5

fundamental critiques of the dictatorship as an emblem of tyranny in the Late Republic, certainly by the 50s BCE.125 What we may assert without argument, however, is that the Roman History used Catulus and the lex Gabinia debates for the first time in Roman historiography to develop a unique bipartite problematisation of the Republican dictatorship as a political institution: it was both reputationally toxic for crisis at home and practically unavailable for crisis abroad. The historian reiterated this interpretation in his account of the electoral crisis of 54–53 BCE. In this year electoral competition simmered into bribery and then boiled over into violence. Even in the seventh month the vacancies still had not been filled; Rome was without consuls and the imperium auspiciumque had devolved to its temporary caretakers, the interreges. The latter were prevented from addressing the crisis and organising new elections on account of unfavourable omens and obstruction by the tribunes. In this context of utter chaos (continually stressed in Dio’s narrative of the year), Pompeius was nomin­ated in absentia as dictator, presumably for the purpose of organising elections (comitiorum habendorum causa).126 Here Dio’s version departed drastically from those of his predecessors. Appian and Plutarch suggest that Pompeius was deliberately scheming to prepare the ground for his own dictatorship. In their accounts, it was only thanks to Cato and Bibulus working together to halt “the unadulterated tyranny of a dictatorship” (τῆς ἀκράτου καὶ τυραννικῆς ἐκείνης) that Pompeius’ ambitions were curtailed.127 To prevent a dictatorship, they proposed a quite radic­al compromise: a sole consulship for Pompeius in 52 BCE, an extraordinary step which in itself demonstrates the scale of contemporary anxieties about Rome’s traditional emergency magistracy. Their sinister view of the general’s intentions—and the illustration they give of the general aversion to the dictatorship as such—is suggested also in the letters of Cicero from this year and the numismatic evidence, both of which attest to the suspicion with which it had come to be regarded by the 50s BCE.128 Dio’s interpretation of this peculiar incident is exceptional. He seems to have refashioned the scenario in ways that might at first be explained by the overall economy of his narrative. In the Roman History Pompeius was away from the city at the time of the proposal, and the tribunes—seeking to prolong the disorder in their own interest and to forestall the election of new 125  See Burden-Strevens 2019 for the evidence on both of these points. 126  Cass. Dio 40.45; cf. Cic. Att. 4.17. 127  App. B Civ. 2.23.1; Plut. Pomp. 54.3. 128   Burden-Strevens 2019.

Institutions & Empire

287

consuls—proposed a dictatorship in absentia in order to buy time. “By this pretext”, Dio writes, “they secured a very long delay; he was out of town, and none of those present wanted to vote for a dictatorship because they all hated that institution owing to Sulla’s cruelty”.129 This delay was intentional: the tribunes knew already that their proposal would create much further debate, and perhaps panic, without a realistic hope of its ratification. It was what might be termed today a wrecking amendment. The Pompeius of the Roman History did not fall for the trap. He returned to the city, declined the dictatorship offered to him—apparently without dissimulatio—and accepted a sole consulship, taking steps also to ensure the election of new consuls.130 Shortly afterward he additionally came to recognise that it was unwise to hold the consulship alone any longer: “for now that he had obtained the glory for the vote of this honour, he wished to avoid the envy it would arouse”.131 Dio’s analysis of the electoral debacle of 53 BCE is in many respects to be preferred to Plutarch and Appian’s. If, as they state, the mere mention of a dictatorship was so controversial as to provoke such anxieties about tyranny— this is suggested also in Cicero’s letters—,132 then it is difficult to imagine why such a capable politician would seek it so eagerly. The Pompeius in Plutarch’s Life and the Civil Wars is blinded by his own ambition. Dio’s Pompeius, on the other hand, refused it; and this refusal is framed as a genuine and more importantly astute calculation of the political situation. He recognised that the practical advantage of a dictatorship to his position would be limited, but the reputational damage potentially severe. The means of his installation would also be fraught. In 53 BCE an appointment to the dictatorship was not possible in the regular way—through the nomination of an incumbent consul—since both seats were vacant at the time. The only means would have been to seek an extraordinary nomination from an interrex: in other words, a revival of Sulla’s tactic forty years earlier.133 It is easy to see why Pompeius did not adopt such a course. So Pompeius in this year is made recognise, correctly, Dio’s argument concerning the prevailing aversion to the dictatorship as a tyrannical institution 129  Cass. Dio 40.45.5. 130  Cass. Dio 40.46.1. 131  Cass. Dio 40.51.1. 132  Cic. Att. 4.18.3; Q. Fr. 2.13.5, 3.4.1, 3.8.4–6, 3.9.3. 133  Ramsey 2016, 309 has recently noted how dismally unappealing such a choice may have been. It is possible, Ramsey argues, that Pompeius wanted a dictatorship in late 54 BCE, when a regular appointment by the incumbent consuls would have been possible. The following year, however, none were in office; the circumstances were more chaotic and panicked, and Pompeius wisely avoided a repeat of Sullan precedents.

288

chapter 5

in the aftermath of Sulla, and modified his strategy accordingly. Caesar, on the other hand, was in Dio’s view a more daring gambler. The former wished to rule over a willing people, to be loved, and to be second to none; the latter was happy to issue orders even to those who hated him (provided they only obey) and longed to be first of all.134 The conflation between dictatorship and monarchy in its degenerate form, tyranny, returns in Caesar’s first addresses to the Senate as dictator in Book 43. Like all of Caesar’s speeches, it is laden with irony. He claims that, though he has conquered, he will enjoy his good fortune moderately and will not get carried away on a wave of exaltation;135 in Dio his problem, like all the dynasts of the Roman History, consists in failing to follow this prescription. He avers that he has been consistently open and has not concealed his true nature behind a disguise;136 Caesar is of course the arch-dissembler of the Roman History, even more so than Pompeius. He further­more claims to have come to power almost as if by accident, seeking only to admonish and punish the enemies who have declared war on the Republic;137 his real motivation in the narrative is self-interest and δυναστεία. But these ironies are brought to their most acute expression when Caesar, the Roman dictator, discusses the nature of tyranny. He does so in such a manner as to underline Dio’s view of the increasing disrepute of dictatorship and its conflation with monarchy in its base form. In the proemium, the orator’s very first line is bald statement of his illegitimate position of superiority over his peers. “O Senators—I can do anything I like without being called to account. I can do anything I wish with impunity. But you should not think that I will do or say anything harsh just because this is the case”.138 Such language is intended to be reassuring, but is not. It is the language of a tyrant, and Dio says himself that the fears of Caesar’s audience were not allayed.139 Immediately, he goes on to use the exempla of Marius and Sulla: his predecessors may once have seemed excellent, but in the height of their powers they revealed their true nature, and adopted a course diametrically opposed to those they had previously claimed. His own reign, he promises, will be much better.140 This is certainly the historian’s own view—Caesar need not be mistrusted on this point—, but with this comparison the new dictator maladroitly places himself in their rank. Marius and Sulla, he claims, were tyrants, quite unlike himself; 134  Cass. Dio 41.54.1. 135  Cass. Dio 43.15.6. 136  Cass. Dio 43.15.5. 137  Cass. Dio 43.15.7. 138  Cass. Dio 43.15.2. 139  Cass. Dio 43.18.6. 140  Cass. Dio 43.15.3–4.

Institutions & Empire

289

yet in forming this comparison Dio’s Caesar is characterised as unwittingly marking himself third in the series of generals who seized power violently in Rome, and the second dictator to do so. Caesar’s ‘tyrant-speech’ to the Senate poses an inescapable and genuine histor­ical dilemma arising from Dio’s basic conceptions of the Republican political framework. This dilemma consists in the tension between the need for the stabilising effects of autocracy on the one hand, and the terms with which that autocracy is defined on the other. The historian emphatically did not consider Caesar’s rule tyrannical. He writes, as we have seen, that as dictator he put the cruelty of Sulla greatly to shame. He was capable of vicious acts; but in general his monarchy was a positive step toward what Dio believed to be the only form of constitution that could end the bloody cycle of competition, ambition, envy, and stasis. He lambasts the tyrannicides for plunging the state back into civil war when it at last possessed a stable government.141 In an objective judgement, based upon the Classical notion that tyranny is a failure of ethics,142 Caesar’s monarchy could not be considered a τυραννίς. Yet subjectively, from the Late Republican perspective and within the framework of the established status quo, it was impossible for the monarch— whether we term him dictator, triumvir, or anything else—to rule legitimately for an indefinite period. Like Sulla, Caesar took a traditional office and removed its strictures of duration and scope: he made a limited resort to the best that monarchy had to offer into an unlimited autocratic rule. Such an autocrat, regardless of his excellence, could never in Republican political culture be any­ thing but a despot. Dio believed that Caesar had the character to be a good monarch; but as dictator he could never be a legitimate one, and therefore never rule safely or well.143 For Caesar to compare himself to Marius and Sulla, even favourably, only underlines that illegitimacy; the dictator has no exempla to choose from except tyrants. Even Caesar’s last act in the narrative before his ‘tyrant-speech’ is significant and reveals his lack of legitimation: he removed the name of Catulus, the staunch Republican of Book 36, from the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline, and replaced it with his own.144 Catulus’ plea for a return to time-honoured institutions, such as the dictatorship, had been satisfied—but it was not at all the dictatorship he intended. 141  Cass. Dio 44.1. 142  See Béranger 1935 for a summary of the different failings of ethos deemed characteristic of the tyrant in ancient Greek political thought. 143  Accordingly, Nicolet 2004, 272–276 acknowledges the ways in which Caesar attempted to legitimise his position but ultimately could not. It was the perversion of the dictatorship itself beyond its proper legal limits which undermined his position. 144  Cass. Dio 43.14.6.

290

chapter 5

Dio’s Caesar was not a tyrant; but his regime was a tyranny to the aristocracy, and could never have been anything else. Cicero’s address in favour of an Amnesty between the Caesarian and tyranni­cide factions in Book 44 underlines that intention. Obviously enough, his purpose is to conciliate and mollify the two sides. In keeping with that purpose, he is not made to criticise the late dictator directly, nor compares his rule directly to a τυραννίς; to do so would undermine the irenical purpose of the oration and infuriate precisely that Caesarian faction it seeks to placate. Yet Dio’s Cicero has no conceptual language to describe the recent experience of Caesar’s unlimited dictatorship except tyranny. This is, on the one hand, an effective and accurate characterisation of the orator’s stance. Cicero consistently described the last dictator of the Roman Republic as a tyrant, or at least when it was safe to do so.145 On the other hand, and more importantly for our purposes, the exempla selected for the speech and its general argumentative thrust articulate the historian’s view that within the Republican framework still largely accepted by the aristocracy, Caesar’s unlimited dictatorship was indeed perceived as a tyranny, regardless of his excellence of character. The conventional status quo and the political language associated with it could not yet accommodate monarchy—even under the guise of dictatorship—in a legitimate way. Only a radical transformation of the overall political framework and the development of a new political language (however cynical) could make such a revolution possible and confer the necessary semblance of legitimacy. Cicero begins by asserting his conciliatory intent. He will not anger his audi­ ence by rehearsing the many privations of the recent civil war, nor the injuries committed by the Caesarians and the tyrannicides against one another. His proemium emphasises the necessity of coming to an agreement without raking over past ills: “I do not wish to cause any offence even at the beginning of my speech” (δυσχερὲς δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἀρχόμενος τῶν λόγων εἰπεῖν βούλομαι).146 This is a sober and credible presentation of what will surely have historically been the orator’s strategy. We know that Cicero did deliver a proposal for an amnesty in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, in the precinct of Tellus on March 17th 44 BCE. If he published the speech, it is nowhere to be found; the sole version in the Roman History is the closest we will ever come to his actual words.147 Whether or not Dio had a source or model for the oration—and this

145  Cic. Fam. 12.1.1–2; Att. 7.11.1. Cf. also: Cat. 2.14; Dom. 75, 94; Fin. 4.31; Inv. 2, 49.144; Cael. 52, 89; Phil. 2.117, 13.18; Rep. 2.48; Verr. 1.82. 146  Cass. Dio 44.23.3. 147  So Burden-Strevens 2018.

Institutions & Empire

291

is now impossible to determine—,148 the mollifying and careful tone struck by his Cicero accurately reflects what the genuine historical situation demanded and Cicero’s likely response to it. But for all its constructive intent, the Republican orator cannot imagine the recent experience of Caesar’s autocracy in any language beyond that of tyranny. Necessarily he avoids insulting the late dictator. But the historical exempla he selects and the particular emphasis given to them reveal the historian’s ongoing critique of the popular aversion to the dictatorship in the last decades of the Late Republic and its conflation with τυραννίς (44.26.1–4): I will offer you an example from that finest and most ancient city, from which even our ancestors were not averse to drawing their laws. For it would be shameful for us, who so far exceed the Athenians in might and wisdom, to deliberate worse than they did. I speak of something that you all know, here. At one time, those Athenians were in a state of civil strife and because of this were vanquished by the Spartans, and were then tyrannised by the more powerful of their citizens. And they did not drive out their ills until they came to a compact and agreement to set aside their past grievances (many and severe though these were) and to never bring forward accusations about these or bear malice toward anyone because of them. Thus, when they had come to their senses in this way, they not only ceased to be tyrannised and revolutionary, but even flourished in every way, and regained their state and lay claim to rule over all the Greeks. ἓν δ᾽ οὖν ὅμως τῆς ἀρίστης καὶ ἀρχαιοτάτης πόλεως, παρ᾽ ἧς οὐδ᾽ οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἐπάγεσθαί τινας νόμους ἀπηξίωσαν, παρέξομαι· καὶ γὰρ αἰσχρὸν ἂν εἴη τοσοῦτον ἡμᾶς καὶ τῇ ῥώμῃ καὶ τῇ γνώμῃ τῶν Ἀθηναίων ὑπερέχοντας χεῖρον αὐτῶν βουλεύεσθαι. ἐκεῖνοι τοίνυν ῾λέγω δὲ ὃ πάντες ἴστἐ στασιάσαντές ποτε, 148  Outside of Dio an ‘Amnesty-speech’ is nowhere to be found, even if we do know that Cicero did speak on this theme shortly after the Ides of March. Scholars have long struggled with what to make of Dio’s version. Schwartz 1899, 1719 suggested that the historian may have been reproducing a now-lost published oration of Cicero’s; this is intriguing and possible in the light of Dio’s usual practice with Ciceronian texts, on which see Chapter 2 above. Alternative theories have taken extremes: Gudeman 1894, 147n.3 argued that its contents were entirely invented, and Homeyer 1964, 28 that Dio copied-and-pasted it unchanged from his source (“ein rein rhetorisches Produkt, das Dio unverändert aus seiner Quelle ubernommen hat”). Of these two at least the latter is definitely wrong; no ancient historian ever gave ipsissima verba, and indeed actively sought not to when reproducing a speech found in one of their historiographical sources. The historian may have got the basic framework for his ‘Amnesty-speech’ of Cicero from excerpts cited in Quintilian, on which see Millar 1961.

292

chapter 5

καὶ ἐκ τούτου καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων καταπολεμηθέντες καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν δυνατωτέρων πολιτῶν τυραννηθέντες, οὐ πρότερον ἀπηλλάγησαν τῶν κακῶν πρὶν συνθέσθαι καὶ διομολογήσασθαι τῶν τε συμβεβηκότων σφίσι, πολλῶν που καὶ δεινῶν ὄντων, ἐπιλήσεσθαι, καὶ μηδὲν τὸ παράπαν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν μήτε ἐγκαλέσειν ποτὲ μήτε μνησικακήσειν τινί. τοιγάρτοι σωφρονήσαντες οὕτως οὐχ ὅτι τυραννούμενοι καὶ στασιάζοντες ἐπαύσαντο, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν εὐθένησαν καὶ τήν τε πόλιν ἀνεκτήσαντο καὶ τῆς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἀρχῆς ἀντεποιήσαντο. It is no coincidence that Cicero is made to use the exemplum of the Athenian Amnesty of 403 BCE. This is neither a jeu d’esprit nor a further reflection of the historian’s classicising tendencies; it was justified by his sources. The Athenian Amnesty is precisely the exemplum that Cicero himself used on March 17th 44 BCE.149 Dio’s characterisation captures also other recognisable features of the orator’s idiolect, such as the repetitive use of superlatives (ἀρίστης καὶ ἀρχαιοτάτης). But leaving these aspects aside, the orator’s discourse on tyranny is important in the context of the surrounding narrative. Prior to this oration, the historian recounts the extraordinary power of the most recent dictator, the monarchical honours voted to him, the φθόνος resultant from these, and the nat­ure of his de facto kingship, nominally dictatorship, over Rome.150 Dio’s Cicero cannot in this context state that Caesar’s dictatura was a tyranny. Rather, by using oblique references he brings the increasing alignment between Rome’s emergency magistracy and degenerate regnum to the fore, and in a manner appropriate to the oratorical and historical setting. Dio’s Cicero additionally links the last dictator and those who came before him to one of the most characteristic traits of tyranny in Classical political thought: usurpation.151 This again is achieved without mentioning Caesar explicitly, but the inference to be drawn is obvious. Like Catulus in Book 36, he begins with the exempla of Marius and Sulla. The former prospered, was driven out, and returned in force: “you all know”, Cicero intones paraliptically, “what he went on to do next” (ἴστε οἷα εἰργάσατο). Sulla too was defeated, made himself master of the city through violence, and then left no terrible deed undone (ἔπειτα δυναστεύσας οὐδὲν ὅ τι οὐχὶ τῶν δεινοτάτων ἔπραξε). Sulla’s dictatorship is defined not as a legitimate magistracy, but a δυναστεία.152 In a manner similar 149  Cic. Phil. 1.1. Cf. also Vell. Pat. 2.58.4; Plut. Cic. 42.3. As Gelzer 1943, 327 notes, the choice of the Athenian Amnesty of 403 BCE was not a poor exemplum for Cicero to choose. 150  Cass. Dio 43.14. 151  See Béranger 1935. 152  Cass. Dio 44.28.1–2.

Institutions & Empire

293

to Caesar’s ‘reassuring’ address to the Senate, Cicero places the late dictator in the same series as Marius and Sulla. His monarchy could not be imagined in any other terms. Any general who marches on Rome and usurps the res publica must be a tyrant, regardless of his title (44.24.1–2): Formerly—and not very long ago—those who had military power usually became masters of the government, so that they could dictate to you what you ought to deliberate on rather than you determining what they ought to do. But now practically everything is at such a point that affairs are in your hands and lay to your charge: whether by your own means you should either seize harmony and with it liberty, or seditions and civil wars once again and from these a slave-master. πρότερον μὲν γάρ, οὐκ ὀλίγος ἐξ οὗ χρόνος, οἱ τὰ ὅπλα ἔχοντες καὶ τῆς πολιτείας ἐγκρατεῖς ὡς τὸ πολὺ ἐγίγνοντο, ὥστ᾽ αὐτοὺς ὅ τι δεῖ βουλεύειν ὑμῖν ἐπιτάττειν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὑμᾶς ὅ τι χρὴ πράττειν ἐκείνους προσκοπεῖν· νῦν δ᾽ ἐς τοῦτο καιροῦ πάνθ᾽ ὡς εἰπεῖν τὰ πράγματα πάρεστιν ὥστε ἐφ᾽ ὑμῖν τε αὐτὰ εἶναι καὶ ἐς ὑμᾶς ἀνακεῖσθαι, καὶ παρ᾽ ὑμῶν ἤτοι τὴν ὁμόνοιαν καὶ μετὰ ταύτης τὴν ἐλευθερίαν, ἢ στάσεις καὶ πολέμους ἐμφυλίους αὖθις καὶ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν καὶ δεσπότην λαβεῖν. In Greek and Roman political philosophy, obtaining power through military means was the hallmark of τυραννίς. The notion of tyranny had traditionally been linked to violent usurpation since Plato: what set tyrants apart from kings was the brute force by which they secured their rule.153 The inference to be made from this statement seems clear and functions as Dio’s own interpret­ ation. Caesar, like Sulla, had seized control of Rome through the leverage offered by military power. Dio ensures that the reader does not miss the inference by stressing the recency of this. It is Caesar that is designated. Importantly, application of this leverage led to political inversion, as Cicero states: generals, who ought to be at the disposal of the Senate to command, had used their might to upturn the relationship between military and government. This inversion of the relationship between the senatorial and military elements begot two dictators—Sulla and Caesar—or rather, in Dio’s illustration of the contemporary perspective, two “slave-masters” (δεσπόται) in the words of his Cicero. Under the lex Antonia, the dictatorship was permanently abolished. The supreme emergency magistracy of the res publica had evidently fallen far since its first appearance in the Roman History. The first century BCE and its experiments with autocracy had precipitated its degeneration: it had declined from 153  See e.g. Arist. Pol. 5.10; Plat. Rep. 2.3, 8.19; Diog. PL. 3.83; Hdt. 1.8–15; Cic. Rep. 1.64.

294

chapter 5

a useful recourse to the stabilising effects of monarchy, limited by strict conditions, to an impractical and unviable office with an evil reputation. Yet unlike Dionysius and Appian—who wrongly criticise it as a tyrannical institution in itself—Cassius Dio astutely recognised that the office itself was not the issue. His commentary on the lex Antonia is distinctive (44.51.3): The consuls tore down Caesar’s altar and punished those who took issue with the act. They also published a law to the effect that no one should ever again become dictator, invoking dreadful curses and specifying the death penalty for anyone who proposed or supported it as well as even setting a bounty on their heads. They did this as a provision for the future, thinking that the disgrace of men’s deeds lay in their titles. But they did not realise that such deeds really arise from the combination of military power with the character of the individual office-holder, and so they disgrace the particular title under which they happen to be done. οἱ οὖν ὕπατοι ἐκεῖνόν τε ἀνέτρεψαν, καί τινας ἀγανακτήσαντας ἐπὶ τούτῳ ἐκόλασαν, καὶ νόμον ἐξέθηκαν μηδένα αὖθις δικτάτορα γενέσθαι, ἀράς τε ποιησάμενοι καὶ θάνατον προειπόντες ἄν τέ τις ἐσηγήσηται τοῦτο ἄν θ᾽ ὑποστῇ, καὶ προσέτι καὶ χρήματα αὐτοῖς ἄντικρυς ἐπικηρύξαντες. ταῦτα μὲν ἐς τὸ ἔπειτα προείδοντο, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ὀνόμασι τῆς τῶν ἔργων δεινότητος οὔσης, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐκ τῶν ὅπλων καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἑκάστου τρόπων καὶ γιγνομένων αὐτῶν καὶ τὰς τῆς ἐξουσίας, ἐν ᾗ ποτ᾽ ἂν τύχῃ δρώμενα, προσρήσεις διαβαλλόντων. Dio’s argument is not that he, the historian with hindsight, regarded the Republican dictatorship as necessarily tyrannical, stained with crudelitas and tainted with the memory of usurpation. Rather, he shows that the Romans of the first century BCE wrongly believed this to be the case, and assumed (in vain) that abolishing it would forestall a repeat performance. The dictatorship had become too toxic to serve as a blueprint for sole rule, but it was not in and of itself the problem. It is a mark of his quality as an historian that Dio attributed motivations and impulses to his characters that he did not himself accept. The Romans were, in his view, blind to the true nature and causes of their predicament, and reacted in ineffective and ultimately catastrophic ways: Pompeius’ extraordinary command, the bizarre innovation of his sole consulship in 52 BCE, the assassination of Caesar, and eventually the abolition of the dictatorship itself. Dio implicates both practical and moral reasons in the failure of the dictatorship to address the foreign and domestic crises of the res publica, and therefore among the causes of the collapse of the Republic itself.

Institutions & Empire

295

But the necessity of monarchy remained. As we have repeatedly seen, Dio argues that it was no longer possible for Rome to be governed harmoniously, nor safely, under a δημοκρατία. Its empire was simply too vast to justify the regular system of annual magistracies.154 Prorogation, extraordinary commands, corruption, immorality, and ambition and imperii consuetudo were the result. At the same time, the legitimate mechanism which enabled the temporary stability of monarchical rule—dictatorship—was no longer practical or attract­ ive. It was an impossible paradox: autocracy was needed to save the Republic, and yet could no longer operate within the traditional framework.155 For Dio the Augustan regime provided the solution to that institutional conundrum. Once again it is Agrippa and Maecenas who bring us to our close, and the events of the early years of the first princeps’ reign. Like Cicero, Agrippa cannot imagine the monarch in any other guise than that of the tyrant. Who, he asks, would not be outraged to realise that Octavian’s claims to have marched against his enemies purely to avenge the murdered Caesar were all a ruse? He would be deemed untrustworthy, crooked, malicious, and depraved. Octavian might rule the world by such means—that is, as a tyrant—, but would not and should not do so.156 Agrippa’s attitude toward monarchy is distinctly Republican: he describes regnum not as the rule of king, but of a degenerate tyrant, and cannot credit any other interpretation of the word. Significantly, Agrippa alludes to the fate of Caesar at several points. He first argues that in democracies and Republics, competition among the aristo­ cracy is to the benefit of the state, and the state for its part rejoices in those whose competitiveness leads them to a pre-eminent position. That is, unless one of them conceives of a desire for tyrannical power (πλὴν ἄν τις τυραννίδος ἐπιθυμήσῃ); in such a case the would-be tyrant is severely punished (τοῦτον γὰρ ἰσχυρῶς κολάζουσι).157 It is obvious enough that the historian has Caesar’s downfall in mind here, whose dictatorship was viewed as tyrannical by his contemporaries and ultimately met a bloody punishment. Agrippa brings the fate of Caesar more sharply into focus later (52.13.3–4): For it is difficult for this state, which has enjoyed a Republican government for so many years and rules so many races of men, to consent to become a slave to anyone. You have heard that they banished Camillus when he had white horses at his triumph, and you have heard that they impeached 154  E.g. Cass. Dio 44.2.4, 52.15.6, 54.6.1. 155   Burden-Strevens 2019, 134. 156  Cass. Dio 52.2.3–7. 157  Cass. Dio 52.9.1.

296

chapter 5

Scipio when they had condemned him of being grasping. And you remember how they set out against your father because they formed a certain suspicion that he was aiming at monarchy. δυσχερὲς γάρ ἐστι τὴν πόλιν ταύτην, τοσούτοις τε ἔτεσι δεδημοκρατημένην καὶ τοσούτων ἀνθρώπων ἄρχουσαν, δουλεῦσαί τινι ἐθελῆσαι. καὶ ἀκούεις μὲν ὅτι τὸν Κάμιλλον ὑπερώρισαν, ἐπειδὴ λευκοῖς ἵπποις ἐς τὰ ἐπινίκια ἐχρήσατο, ἀκούεις δὲ ὅτι τὸν Σκιπίωνα κατέλυσαν, ἐπειδή τινα πλεονεξίαν αὐτοῦ κατέγνωσαν, μέμνησαι δὲ ὅπως τῷ πατρί σου προσηνέχθησαν, ὅτι τινὰ ὑποψίαν ἐς αὐτὸν μοναρχίας ἔσχον. Again like Cicero, Agrippa—and by extension the traditional status quo— cannot conceive of the relationship between an autocrat and the aristocracy in any terms other than those of the master and the slave. Dio’s Cicero warns of the “slave master” (δεσπότην) that arises through usurpation following stasis, violence, and civil war.158 His Agrippa takes up this thread: how could such a state as the res publica ever consent willingly to its own enslavement (δουλεῦσαί)? Agrippa is more explicit later: tyranny, he argues, is the natural and inevitable product of monarchy.159 For all its praise of a halcyon, phantom democracy that has long since ceased to exist in the harsh reality of Dio’s Roman History, Agrippa certainly serves to articulate the historian’s analysis one essential problem. How could Octavian possibly continue to wield power in a legitimate and permissible way, without suffering Caesar’s fate? The framework of traditional liberty had endured for half a millennium. That framework was encapsulated by key elements, such as free elections, around which the basic assumptions surrounding the system coalesced. However, even these had ceased to operate: the chaos and violence of the 50s BCE and the complete domination of political life by factional inter­ests was an especially dark period, and the formalisation of the ‘second’ Triumvirate as a legal and constitutional entity confirmed the effective end of free Republican institutions. But Agrippa argues that to take the next step—monarchy as such—was a tremendous risk and ideological anathema. The res publica had certainly endured autocrats before: Sulla had been one in practice and Caesar in truth. But neither of these dictators were able to establish consensus or legitimacy: the former serves as an exemplum of tyrannical crudelitas throughout; the latter can only be described (obliquely and politely) as a tyrant by the speeches 158  Cf. Cass. Dio 44.24.2. 159  Cass. Dio 52.13.6.

Institutions & Empire

297

of Cicero and Agrippa. Dio thus uses Agrippa to pose an implicit historical question: how could Octavian legitimise his position, where his predecessors did not? The dictatorship was not an option: repudiating its useful origins, it had become an instrument of τυραννίς. He could not continue indefinitely as a triumvir: Dio viewed the Triumvirate as an extra-legal and unconstitutional exercise of δυναστεία. Yet he could not return safely to civic life as a private citizen, either: Maecenas’ analysis explains this baldly.160 To Dio the solution lay in the outward presentation of Augustus’ power on the ethical level, and the title he should adopt on the institutional level. This was a critical opportunity to prevent a repetition of Caesar’s mistakes. Caesar had failed to recognise what Agrippa knew: the res publica would never accept a king after the Hellenistic model. He had accepted extraordinary privi­ leges: he was granted a golden throne; he wore the red shoes of the ancient kings of Alba Longa; he took the triumphal garb in perpetuity; he was made overseer of every man’s conduct, obtained the right always to speak first in the Senate, and appointed magistrates of his own choosing. He even consented to his near-deification: his statue on the Capitoline faced directly that of Jupiter, his name was made sacrosanct, he accepted the honour of a new and ridiculous form of address—“Jupiter Julius”—and his gilded and bejewelled throne was carried, like those of the gods, into the theatre even in his absence.161 The outward communication of his dictatorship was, as has long been recognised, that of a Hellenistic monarchy implanted into the city of Rome.162 The Roman dictatorship became a Greek tyranny. Augustus made no such error. Once again—and for the last time in this book—the oration of Maecenas analyses the necessary remedies to the various hurdles that Agrippa (and therefore Dio) recognised in Rome’s path to mon­ archy and stability. Part of the solution lay in the title the new emperor was to adopt. He must reign neither as ‘dictator’ nor ‘king’, but princeps (52.40.1–2): Decline the title of king, if you really do desire the reality of monarchy but fear the name of it as an accursed thing, and rule alone under the title of ‘Caesar’. But if you come to require other epithets, then the people will give you the title of imperator, just as they gave it to your father; and they will revere you with another way of address, so that you may enjoy 160  Cass. Dio 52.17. 161  See the extensive list of the dictator’s excessive honours and privileges at Cass. Dio 44.4– 6, explicitly interpreted by the historian as the direct cause of his downfall. 162  For the classic treatment of the Hellenistic trappings of Caesar’s monarchy, see Carson 1957; Rawson 1975.

298

chapter 5

the reality of kingship without the odium which attaches to the name of ‘king’. ὡς εἴ γε τὸ μὲν πρᾶγμα τὸ τῆς μοναρχίας αἱρῇ, τὸ δ᾽ ὄνομα τὸ τῆς βασιλείας ὡς καὶ ἐπάρατον φοβῇ, τοῦτο μὲν μὴ προσλάβῃς, τῇ δὲ δὴ τοῦ Καίσαρος προσηγορίᾳ χρώμενος αὐτάρχει. εἰ δ᾽ οὖν καὶ ἄλλων τινῶν ἐπικλήσεων προσδέῃ, δώσουσι μέν σοι τὴν τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος, ὥσπερ καὶ τῷ πατρί σου ἔδωκαν, σεβιοῦσι δέ σε καὶ ἑτέρᾳ τινὶ προσρήσει, ὥστε σε πᾶν τὸ τῆς βασιλείας ἔργον ἄνευ τοῦ τῆς ἐπωνυμίας αὐτῆς ἐπιφθόνου καρποῦσθαι. The phrase σεβιοῦσι δέ σε καὶ ἑτέρᾳ τινὶ προσρήσει is an elegant play on words, and foreshadows Octavian’s reinvention as Augustus (σεβαστός). Yet in addition to looking forward, Maecenas also looks back. Citing once more the exemplum of Caesar’s dictatorship, the wise counsellor advises the young dynast of the need to find a new and uncontaminated exercise of powers. Failure to do so, he states, would arouse odium and—the repeated exempla of Caesar indicate—a repetition of violent past events. Octavian is guided to operate outside of the recognisable political language of dictators, kings, and tyrants. He is rather made to understand the importance of the terms with which power is defined, and the security that presenting his rule in an innovative and hitherto unheard-of way will confer upon his regime. Blending tradition with innovation, Octavian became princeps and Augustus after the necessary sham of his refusal of monarchy before Book 53. Caesar had no talent for the ritual of recusatio imperii, and allowed his dictatorship to be dressed in the trappings of Hellenistic tyranny. In contrast, the Augustus of the Roman History mastered this form of communication: for all his reprehensible actions as a dynast and triumvir, Octavian became Dio’s ethical and political benchmark of the ideal Roman monarch.163 He had learned the lessons of Caesar’s dictatorship and its bloody end. That argument finds its denouement in the events of 22 BCE, five years after the Augustan Settlement which in Dio’s view set Rome on the path to a new consensus surrounding the distribution of power, and ended for almost a century the corrosive cycle of ambition, envy, and civil wars. Significantly, it is concerned again with the dictatorship (54.2.1–5):

163  See the notes to Chapter 3 (‘Oratory’) above for a survey of the scholarship on Dio’s attitudes to Augustus. To reiterate the most recent and credible view, the historian found his conduct as a dynast appalling, but his rule as an emperor generally laudable: for this view see Reinhold 1988; Rich 1989; Kemezis 2014, 120–126.

Institutions & Empire

299

The people in Italy were suffering as a result of pestilence and famine, for the plague was everywhere and no one worked the land. I imagine that the same was the case in other parts too. But the Romans, thinking that these things were happening to them for no reason other than that they did not have Augustus as consul, wished to engage him as dictator; and after shutting up the Senate in the curia they compelled them to enact this by a vote, threatening that they would burn them all inside otherwise. After this, they took the twenty-four fasces and approached Augustus, begging him to consent to be made dictator as well as curator of the grain-supply, just as Pompeius had once done. Under compulsion he accepted the latter of these, and ordered that two men be chosen each year from among those who had served as praetors at least five years previously, so as to see to the distribution of grain. But he did not accept the dictatorship, and indeed rent his clothes when he could find no way of convincing the people otherwise, either by argument or begging. For as he already had power and honour in excess of the dictators anyway, he rightly guarded against the envy and hatred that title would bring. πονούμενοι οὖν ὑπό τε τῆς νόσου καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ λιμοῦ ἔν τε γὰρ τῇ Ἰταλίᾳ πάσῃ ὁ λοιμὸς ἐγένετο καὶ τὴν χώραν οὐδεὶς εἰργάσατο· δοκῶ δ᾽ ὅτι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἔξω χωρίοις τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο συνηνέχθη. νομίσαντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι οὐκ ἄλλως σφίσι ταῦτα συμβεβηκέναι, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι μὴ καὶ τότε ὑπατεύοντα τὸν Αὔγουστον ἔσχον, δικτάτορα αὐτὸν ἠθέλησαν προχειρίσασθαι, καὶ τήν τε βουλὴν κατακλείσαντες ἐς τὸ συνέδριον ἐπηνάγκασαν τοῦτο ψηφίσασθαι, ἀπειλοῦντές σφας καταπρήσειν, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα τὰς ῥάβδους τὰς τέσσαρας καὶ εἴκοσι λαβόντες προσῆλθον αὐτῷ, δικτάτορά τε ἅμα δεόμενοι λεχθῆναι καὶ ἐπιμελητὴν τοῦ σίτου, καθάπερ ποτὲ τὸν Πομπήιον, γενέσθαι. καὶ ὃς τοῦτο μὲν ἀναγκαίως ἐδέξατο, καὶ ἐκέλευσε δύο ἄνδρας τῶν πρὸ πέντε που ἀεὶ ἐτῶν ἐστρατηγηκότων πρὸς τὴν τοῦ σίτου διανομὴν κατ᾽ ἔτος αἱρεῖσθαι, τὴν δὲ δικτατορίαν οὐ προσήκατο, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα προσκατερρήξατο, ἐπειδὴ μηδένα τρόπον ἄλλως σφᾶς ἐπισχεῖν, μήτε διαλεγόμενος μήτε δεόμενος, ἠδυνήθη· τήν τε γὰρ ἐξουσίαν καὶ τὴν τιμὴν καὶ ὑπὲρ τοὺς δικτάτορας ἔχων, ὀρθῶς τό τε ἐπίφθονον καὶ τὸ μισητὸν τῆς ἐπικλήσεως αὐτῶν ἐφυλάξατο. By studiously avoiding the dictatorship which Sulla and Caesar had borne before him, Augustus warded off a repetition of the Caesarian precedent: the envy and hatred (ἐπίφθονον καὶ μισητὸν) which could, in the historian’s view, have destroyed the new regime as easily as previous ones. Caesar accepted extravagant honours, and the φθόνος they created became the explicit and direct cause of his murder. Augustus made no such mistake. As Dio interprets,

300

chapter 5

he had no need of a dictatorship in any case. His authority as princeps, uncontaminated by the memory of previous titles and institutions, was already superior to that of any prior official, and in Dio’s view the wise monarch had no need to add further distinctions and honours to the reality of his power. Such honours served not to confirm power, but to undermine it. In contrast to his predecessors, Augustus negotiated successfully the transition from Republic to Principate by adopting a monarchy under a civilian guise. His reluctance to accept even the curatorship of the grain-supply (ἀναγκαίως ἐδέξατο), and his rejection of the dictatorship itself, evince that affected humility and ciuilitas on which Augustus prided himself in the Res Gestae: he there makes a deliberate point of declining the dictatorship as a proud distinction.164 Dio’s speech of Maecenas highlights the crucial significance of the appearance and description of the new emperor’s power for his survival. It was, on an uncharitable reading, a charade: Augustus swapped the golden throne, red shoes, and purple robe of Caesar for Livia’s homemade tunics.165 But this char­ ade was an important cause of his historical success, and modern scholars now recognise the centrality of such modes of communication to the stability of the Principate.166 The δημοκρατία of the Roman History had seen several tyrannies: the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar rank chief among these, but we might also add the δυναστεία of Marius, Pompeius, and the triumvirs—Octavian included. Paradoxically, in the historian’s analysis it was only under Augustus’ monarchy that Rome could escape from tyranny. 3

Tradition and Innovation

When Christian Meier in his seminal Caesar described the “crisis without alternative” that plagued the last generation of the Roman Republic, he posited a conundrum that Dio understood reasonably well.167 The capacity of the 164  Aug. RG 5. 165  Cf. Suet. Aug. 73. 166  So Wallace-Hadrill 1981, 1982 passim; Winterling 2009, 110–113; Osgood 2018, 206–208. 167  The theory of the “crisis without alternative” espoused by Meier 1995, 357 (and earlier in 1980, 201–205) has found endorsement among Roman historians (e.g. Hölkeskamp 2004; Morstein-Marx & Rosenstein 2010), but not without controversy. Flower 2010, 117–134 proposes that the Sullan constitution did indeed represent an alternative to crisis, and that Cicero intended his Republic to serve as a genuine programme of reform that might represent an alternative. Without wading into this debate, my intention here is simply to demonstrate that Cassius Dio’s historical interpretation admits of neither of these views: he deemed the Sullan regime unproductive and the interventions of Cicero hardly more promising.

Institutions & Empire

301

traditional political framework of the late res publica to address its many exigencies was crumbling. Its vast empire could not be administered effectively by a system of annual magistracies, nor in a manner which apportioned parity of honour to the governing class and adequate supervision over their activities. Its burgeoning population endured startling political and economic inequalities which the res publica could not solve: constant disputes over the dis­tribution of land and grain found satisfactory outcomes only in a manner which horrified the traditional aristocracy and aroused often violent suspicion of the reformers’ motives.168 To add insult to injury, much of this citizenry either could not vote in practice—possible only by travelling to the urbs itself—or were systematically marginalised by a timocratic voting system.169 Finally, its elite could not or would not implement effective solutions to these problems at the cost of its economic and political advantages, and viewed the preservation of the overall status quo as an end in itself. Appealing to Rome’s traditional customs, or mores maiorum, was both an argument against reform per se and the expression of an ideological attitude. It is emblematic of this attitude that the Latin term for innovation—res novae—has another meaning: revolution. That tension between tradition and innovation may be summed up as the corrosive combination of a patent need for radical reform with the inability of the Republican framework to accommodate such reform productively. The case is not that the res publica was narrow, myopic, and inflexible. But its last decades, and the addition of vast swathes of territory and population to the imperium Romanum, saw extraordinary innovations which challenged the basic assumptions underpinning the system. Conservatives reacted with horror and often violence. These innovations, Dio argues, could only function harmfully and illegitimately within the existing political system: the extra­ ordinary commands of the lex Gabinia and lex Vatinia, proposed by tribunes and ratified by the people, are his best examples. This chapter has explored two aspects of that analysis, both focussed on Rome’s institutions. In the first part, we have seen Dio’s view that the sheer size of Rome’s empire vitiated traditional patterns of office-holding. That analysis perhaps began with the speech of Scipio Aemilianus on his elect­ ion to the consulship contrary to lawful precedents; as usual, the historian marked the occasion with a formal oration because he wished to highlight its 168  The classic treatment of these inequalities remains Brunt 1971. 169  See North 2010 for a general overview of the structure. Important reservations on this picture are provided by magisterial studies which emphasise at least the need for the aristocracy to appeal to the urban masses, even those in lower property classifications: see Millar 1984; Yakobson 1992. Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that poorer citizens had to travel to Rome to enjoy these privileges, and vast numbers could not.

302

chapter 5

historical importance. Although this arrives, significantly, around the point in his text where the vices of φιλοτιμία and φθόνος begin to increase drastically in frequency and intensity, Scipio’s election is not yet problematic in itself. By the time of the lex Gabinia debates, that situation has changed entirely. So far from defending the status quo, Catulus merely serves to reiterate its inability to address the crises of empire. He has no feasible suggestions for an alternative to Pompeius’ extraordinary command; this expresses Dio’s own view that there were not in fact any. Yet Catulus also articulates the historian’s interpretation of the inevitable historical consequences of this Catch-22: like Sulla and Marius before him, the repeated and unbroken succession of prestigious offices and commands will undermine Pompeius’ respect for the basic elements of the Republican system. He, like them, will grow habituated to the experience of rule and command: imperii consuetudo was both inimical to the framework of traditional liberty and yet directly encouraged by its stubborn persistence. Caesar will suffer the same fate. His imperii consuetudo is perhaps even greater than Pompeius’, yet unlike his rival he makes little show of concealing it. The speech of Caesar at Vesontio ties, in one place, the historian’s critique of the Republic’s inability to govern the empire through the annually-elected commanders with a startling analysis of its powerlessness to supervise them. Dio recognised that distance, geography, terrain, and poor infrastructure only enhanced the power and initiative of generals in the field: this was perhaps manageable when the servants of the res publica campaigned in the Po Valley or Sicily, but hardly so in Belgium or Armenia. Caesar uses that distance as a key justification for his decisions. The Senate in Rome, the speaker claims, could hardly understand the intricacies of the empire it arrogated to its charge; the traditional foreign policy channels, including debate, an enquiry, and public vote were moreover bloated and sclerotic. His disingenuousness is obvious, but that does not obstruct the historian’s genuine analysis of the inability of the centre to supervise the periphery. Caesar’s imperii consuetudo, like that of Sulla, Marius, and Pompeius, was only possible because of the scope of empire. The result was civil war. In the second part, we have explored Dio’s theoretical approach to the dictatorship. As a fervent adherent of monarchy, the historian believed in the stabilising effects of a temporary return to autocracy. He did not, like his predecessors in the Greek historiography of Rome, view the dictatorship as a troublesome institution; quite the contrary, for he took Cicero’s line of emphasising its positive potential. Paradoxically, dictatorship could and did channel the need for the efficient decision-marking furnished by monarchy within the legitimate constraints of a Republican system.

Institutions & Empire

303

Yet in the Late Republic, that vision collapsed. Dio’s speeches reveal his distinctive interest in the dictatura not only as an institution pockmarked by the innovations of the first century BCE, but also as a further expression of Rome’s inability to govern its wide empire. In Dio’s view crisis at home and abroad clearly required the guiding hand of an autocratic figure, yet Rome’s traditional system for providing such direction could no longer operate in either sphere. At home, its reputation in the aftermath of Sulla’s crudelitas was toxic: contemporary Romans’ aversion to the dictatorship is confirmed by the literary and numismatic evidence from the 50s BCE. Abroad, the supreme emergency magistracy of the res publica was wholly inappropriate to meet the challenges of empire: its six-month term and restriction to Italy was obviously impractical. While the oration of Catulus in Book 36 serves to verbalise both of these interpretations—a combination unique in Roman historiography—it is elaborated and refined by those to follow. Caesar’s dictatorship prompted further reflections on the increasingly dark and tyrannical reputation of the office in the minds of contemporaries. As dictator, Caesar has no exempla to compare himself to but usurpers and tyrants in his address to the Senate; Cicero on the Amnesty can conceive of monarchical power in nothing but tyrannical terms. The guiding hand of monarchy was required to save the state, yet the traditional mechanism for suppressing emergencies could no longer operate. Agrippa and Maecenas provide the denouement to both aspects of this institutional analysis. The two cannot be separated. The former functions as a re­capitulation of these problems and a prediction of their continuing danger; the latter articulates Dio’s interpretation of the necessary innovations to surmount them. The solution lay both in the reality of Augustus’ power and in its present­ation: while hand-picking provincial governors himself for terms of two to three years, and—crucially—ensuring a hiatus between their civic magistracies and commands abroad, he should cloak this power in a civilian guise. To prevent a repetition of the fate of Caesar before him, Augustus must reject the more contaminated titles and honours of the past, ruling not as dictator, but imperator and princeps. The Senate, shorn of free competition, would allocate provincial commands by lottery; the princeps would hand-pick his own loyal governors. It was a wholesale revision of the basic elements of the Republican approach to provincial government, and contributed significantly in Dio’s view to the stability of Augustus’ rule. For all his conservatism, the historian recognised the need for reform in the Late Republic. He criticises the obstinacy of those opposed to it even as he acknowledges their good intentions. Dio reacts with horror to the Gracchan modification of the jury album, reducing senatorial control over the courts,

304

chapter 5

but notes the potential benefit of his land-redistribution bill.170 Almost a century later, the agrarian reform of Caesar’s first consulship pits against one another the forces of innovation and the forces of tradition, and not in a way that reflects well on the latter. The swollen population of the city, Dio writes, was leading to frequent rioting and instability; decades of disturbance and spoliation in the countryside moreover harmed agricultural production.171 In proposing a redistribution of agricultural land to the poorer citizens, Caesar’s motives were evidently to court popular appeal and to “make the people his own to an even greater degree”.172 But the measure itself was blameless and exemplary in Dio’s view. No one unwilling to sell their land would be forced, and it would be purchased at the minimum of its registered value; a large senatorial commission of twenty should undertake this charge, so sharing the honour of the decision-making and preventing the hysterical charges of oligarchy that Cicero had levied against Rullus four years prior.173 He offered to strike out any clauses from the bill which could not command a majority. In what might be called uncharitably a populist touch—yet nevertheless important— he added that the extraordinary wealth of empire gained through the service of its citizens should in part return to them. As far as concerned the proposal itself, Caesar was utterly beyond reproach.174 The reaction of conservative senators sums up Dio’s view of their selfishness, hostility to change, and slavish observance of the status quo. They were furious precisely because Caesar’s measure was impossible to criticise, and its excellence embarrassed them for their inactivity and betrayed their apathy. They voiced no opposition, but in a repetition of the events of 133 BCE they dithered, obstructed, delayed and in short frustrated the bill. Their motives were self-interested on two fronts: those not included in the proposed agrarian commission personally resented the absence of their own names, and they wished also to prevent the popularity they rightly recognised was Caesar’s goal.175 Eventually Cato rose to speak (38.3.1): Marcus Cato was an upright man, was opposed to innovation, and yet had little influence owing to his lack of education and weak nature. Even though he actually had no fault to find with the proposal, he nevertheless urged that they should in general abide by the existing system and take no steps beyond it. 170  Cass. Dio frg. 83.1. 171  Cass. Dio 38.1.2–3. 172  Cass. Dio 38.1.1. 173  Cic. Ag. 1.21–27, 2.1–16. 174  For the full overview, see Cass. Dio 38.1.1–7. 175  Cass. Dio 38.2.1–3.

Institutions & Empire

305

ὁ δὲ δὴ Κάτων ὁ Μᾶρκος ῾ἦν δὲ ἄλλως μὲν ἐπιεικὴς καὶ οὐδενὶ νεοχμῷ ἀρεσκόμενος, οὐ μὴν καὶ ῥώμην τινὰ οὔτε ἐκ φύσεως οὔτε ἐκ παιδείας ἔχων᾽ τοῖς μὲν γεγραμμένοις οὐδὲν οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐπεκάλει, τὸ δ᾽ ὅλον ἠξίου τῇ τε παρούσῃ σφᾶς καταστάσει χρῆσθαι καὶ μηδὲν ἔξω αὐτῆς ποιεῖν. Cato’s problem lies not in his intentions—he was indeed an upright man—but his perception. His opposition to the bill is framed not as a rational response to the demands of the situation, but as an ideological aversion to change. Caesar’s colleague Bibulus fared little better, and gets similarly short shrift. The refusal of the senatorial aristocracy to co-operate with a measure that was in the historian’s view beneficial and necessary prompted a reiteration of the Gracchan experience: finding his endeavours blocked by the Senate, Caesar circumvented them and communicated his proposals directly to the populus Romanus instead.176 Bringing his colleague Bibulus to a contio, Caesar enquired of him what in the bill was so problematic that he and the Senate should obstruct it. Bibulus did not answer the question—he could not do so honestly without unmasking the factiousness and self-interest of his clique— and simply responded that he would tolerate no innovation during his term of office. Cynically, Caesar assured the populus that they would have their land if only Bibulus wished to collaborate with his colleague in the proper manner. Bibulus blustered and went away: “you shall not have this law this year, even if all of you want it!”.177 It was futile, and the lex Iulia agraria was passed. Like the Catulus of Book 36, Cato and Bibulus were not corrupt—Dio praises them in their necrologies—,178 but merely naive. Their appeals to uphold the traditional system fall on deaf ears partly because the system itself had ceased to function as intended, and could no longer continue. In the electoral crisis of 53 BCE, it was Cato and Bibulus who worked together most to prevent a possible dictatorship for Pompeius. Relying on the language of traditional liberty but modifying it in unusual ways in the wake of Sulla, their disastrous alternative to a dictatorship was a sole consulship for Pompeius. Catulus, too, cannot find remedies to the piratical menace of 67 BCE that are either practical or permissible within the system of Republican institutions: the result was the lex Gabinia. In Dio’s ana­ lysis, only fundamental constitutional change could address the disconnect between Rome’s institutions and its empire. The answer, again, was Augustus’ monarchy.

176  Cass. Dio 38.4.1–2. 177  Cass. Dio 38.4.3. 178  Cass. Dio 37.46.3, 43.11.6.

chapter 6

Epilogue In 14 CE, the emperor Augustus lay dying. Fittingly, he was one of the last survivors to recall what the res publica had once been. The last generation of Dio’s Roman Republic had already ebbed away: Metellus, Pompeius, Gabinius, Marcellus, Cicero, Cato, Caesar, Labienus, Clodius, Brutus, Cassius, Antonius, and Lepidus and all the rest had long since died. Even his closest advisors Agrippa and Maecenas had quitted the scene. Left alone on the stage, Augustus summoned the council of twenty he had installed to guide him in public busi­ ness in his old age and infirmity, to give them their final instructions. Famously, he declared that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it made of marble. Like a comic actor at the close of a mime, Dio writes, he asked for the council’s applause—“and in so doing ridiculed most tellingly the whole life of man”.1 As the curtain fell on Augustus’ reign, many routes were available to Dio for analysing the event as an historian and authoritative narrator. With his death the last link between Republic and Principate had been severed. The continuous stasis and internecine conflict that had marked Dio’s history since the rise of Tiberius Gracchus had receded; when it resurfaced in the consular elections of 22 and 19 BCE, the stabilising influence of monarchical rule had cut it short. The menace of ambitious provincial governors, following the pre­ cedents of Sulla, Pompeius, and Caesar, had ceased to pose a genuine threat to the Imperial centre. Octavian the bloodstained dynast had become Augustus, the model ciuilis princeps. He had followed the letter and spirit of Maecenas’ recommendations for stabilising his rule. He had survived. The most straightforward approach to explaining that long and tumultu­ ous process would have been for the historian himself to zoom out in his own voice. The historian’s explicit judgement on the transition from Republic to Principate might be achieved in an assertive but necessarily lengthy para­ graph of causal interpretation. Such an excursus could develop a snapshot of the main characters, arrayed in all their contorted attitudes, with Augustus as the final frame in an overarching interpretation of the last century of Rome’s history. He could, in other words, simply say what he thinks. Yet when he comes to do so, Dio’s final summary is brief, and makes little attempt to analyse his regime and success in particular detail.2 Augustus was 1  Cass. Dio 56.30. 2  Cass. Dio 56.43.4–44.2.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004431362_007

Epilogue

307

much missed: by combining monarchy with democratic elements, he both pre­ served liberty while also maintaining order. It was a mixed regime of democ­ racy without stasis and monarchy without enslavement to a tyrant. Anyone who could even remember his actions in the civil wars attributed them to the extreme circumstances rather than to his character: so great was the differ­ ence between Octavian the warlord and Augustus the emperor. “In summary”, Dio writes blandly, “I assert that he put an end to all the factional strife, and changed the government in such a way as to greatly strengthen it”. The final result, as Bernd Manuwald concluded forty years ago, is generally positive but rather pale,3 and shuns any macro-level interpretation. However, the Roman History already had a richer and more satisfying method for such an historical analysis: direct speech. The funeral oration for Augustus which Dio placed into the mouth of Tiberius reflects his own distinct­ive interpretative themes and major historical premises so remarkably closely that its main arguments cannot have derived from an external source.4 His product is the only one of its kind to survive within Roman historiography: Suetonius records the tradition of Tiberius’ laudatio funebris,5 but like the am­ nesty speech of Cicero in Book 44 the Roman History provides our only surviv­ ing version. The funeral oration serves as the analytic core at this turning-point in the story-arc of the Roman History, and Dio’s final opportunity to summarise the transition from Republic to Principate.6 After the formulaic eulogistic opening—the speaker can find no words to match the excellence of his subject, et cetera—Tiberius moves on to articulate a detailed analysis of Augustus’ success, including also historical aspects of his self-justification. He entered public life in a time of turmoil: after the conspir­ acy against Caesar, the young Octavian marched out in order to avenge his fa­ ther, “fearing neither the multitude of his enemies, nor the magnitude of his duties, nor hesitating because of his youth”.7 The Greek is a close direct para­ llel with the expression of the same argument in Augustus’ recusatio imperii 3  Manuwald 1979, 273–276. 4  Pace Manuwald 1979, 133–140, who suggests that the historian was closely following a source for the Tiberius laudatio. 5  Suet. Aug. 100.3. 6  Pace Rich 1989, 104n.105, who argues that we cannot use the oration of Tiberius as a baro­ meter for the historian’s own historical views. Cf. also Fechner 1986, 88: Fechner suggests that at this point in the narrative the Principate was so firmly established that in composing the speech Dio avoided any further discussion of the old Republic and the new form of govern­ ment. This view is unusual, since most of the oration is in fact directly concerned with these two topics. 7  Cass. Dio 56.36.2.

308

chapter 6

of Book 53,8 and captures accurately the historical cloaking of the young dynast’s ambitions behind the screen of filial pietas. Tiberius moves on to analyse Augustus’ strategy during the most recent civil war. He first attached himself to the most powerful factions—Antonius and Lepidus—and used this alliance to defeat the rest: Brutus, Cassius, and Sextus Pompeius. When these were finally out of the way, he turned on the remaining two triumvirs. His ap­ proach was to alternate his allegiances so as not to have to fight all of them at once, and in so doing to “save the majority of us” (ὥστε τοὺς πλείους διασῶσαι). It is all spin, naturally. Octavian’s role in the proscriptions is deliberately effaced; his rise was not for the sake of gain, but pietas for his butchered father; he participated unwillingly in the Triumvirate to neutralise his enemies piece­ meal and so save Rome from the tyranny of a faction. What the historian has here produced is not of course a belletristic nonsense, but rather a recognis­ able summary of the main aspects of Augustus’ apologia in the Res Gestae. Strikingly, this is furthermore the only point in the Roman History at which Dio sets out the young dynast’s overall strategy in dealing first with the tyranni­ cides, then the scion of Pompeius, then finally his fellow triumvirs. In the next part of his argument, Tiberius moves on to place Augustus within the previous century of Roman history. The exempla he selects are revealing, and underline key stabilising aspects of his rule in the narrative (56.38): So for the reasons I have just mentioned, you deemed this man worthy of the title of Augustus. As his first act after ridding himself of civil war—in which his actions and experiences were not what he himself wanted, but what heaven ordained—he chose to spare the lives of most of the ene­ mies who had survived his battles. He thus chose not to follow the pre­ cedent of Sulla, who was called Felix or The Fortunate. There is no need to recount all of them by name: for who does not know about Sosius, Scaurus the brother of Sextus, and especially Lepidus, who continued to live long after his defeat and served as high priest for the remainder of his life? And even though Augustus honoured his companions with many great gifts, he did not allow them to do anything arrogant or viol­ ent. You know perfectly well the various men in this category, especially Maecenas and Agrippa, and I need not continue to enumerate them further. Augustus possessed two qualities which have never been found before in the same one man. I know, of course, that some conquerors have spared their enemies, and others have not permitted their compan­ ions to become arrogant. But both of these qualities have never been 8  Cf. Cass. Dio 53.5.2–3.

Epilogue

309

continuously and consistently found in one man. Take as proof of this the fact that Sulla and Marius continued to hate even the children of those who opposed them; I need not mention the less important examples. On the other hand, Caesar and Pompeius stayed their hands, at least for the most part, and yet allowed their friends to do many things inconsistent with their own characters. This Augustus alone combined and blended both qualities, so that even to his enemies he made defeat seem like a victory, and to his allies he proved that real felicitas consists in virtue. ὁ τοίνυν Αὔγουστος οὗτος, ὃν δι᾽ αὐτὰ ταῦτα καὶ τῆς ἐπωνυμίας ταύτης ἠξιώσατε, ἐπειδὴ τάχιστα τῶν ἐμφυλίων πολέμων ἀπηλλάγη καὶ πράξας καὶ παθὼν οὐχ ὅσα αὐτὸς ἤθελεν ἀλλ᾽ ὅσα τῷ δαιμονίῳ ἔδοξεν, πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς πλείους τῶν ἀντιστάντων οἱ καὶ περιγενομένων ἐκ τῶν παρατάξεων ἔσωσεν, ἐν μηδενὶ τὸν Σύλλαν μιμησάμενος τὸν εὐτυχῆ ὀνομαζόμενον. και ἵνα μὴ πάντας αὐτοὺς καταλέγω, τίς οὐκ οἶδε τὸν Σόσσιον, τίς τὸν Σκαῦρον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Σέξτου, τίς τὸν Λέπιδον αὐτόν, ὃς καὶ ἐπεβίω τοσοῦτον τῇ ἥττῃ χρόνον καὶ ἀρχιέρεως διὰ παντὸς αὐτοῦ ὢν διετέλεσεν; ἔπειτα δὲ τοὺς συνεξετασθέντας οἱ πολλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις δωρεαῖς τιμήσας οὔθ᾽ ὑπερήφανόν τι πράττειν οὔθ᾽ ὑβρίζειν εἴασεν. ἀλλ᾽ ἴστε γὰρ ἀκριβῶς καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τούς τε ἄλλους καὶ τὸν Μαικἠναν καὶ τὸν Ἀγρίππαν, ὥστε με μηδὲν μηδὲ τούτους ἐξαριθμήσασθαι δεῖσθαι. δύο μὲν δὴ ταῦτ᾽ ἔσχεν οἷα ἐν οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ ἑνὶ ἐγένετο. ἤδη γὰρ οἶδ᾽ ὅτι καὶ ἐχθρῶν τινες ἐφείσαντο καὶ ἕτεροι τοῖς ἑταίροις ἀσελγαίνειν οὐκ ἐπέτρεψαν· ἀλλὰ ἀμφότερα τῷ αὐτῷ ἅμα διὰ πάντων ὁμοίως οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτῳ ποτὲ ἄλλῳ ὑπῆρξε. τεκμήριον δέ, Σύλλας μὲν καὶ Μάριος καὶ τοὺς παῖδας τῶν ἀντιπολεμησάντων σφίσιν ἤχθηραν· τί γὰρ δεῖ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνδρῶν τῶν μικροτέρων μνημονεύειν; Πομπήιος δὲ καὶ Καῖσαρ τούτου μὲν ἀπέσχοντο ὥς γε ἐπίπαν εἰπεῖν, τοῖς δὲ δὴ φίλοις οὐκ ὀλίγα παρὰ τὰ ἑαυτῶν ἤθη ποιεῖν ἐφῆκαν. ἀλλ᾽ οὗτος οὕτως ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν ἔμιξε καὶ ἐκέρασεν ὥστε τοῖς τε ἐναντιωθεῖσίν οἱ νίκην τὴν ἧτταν ἀποφῆναι καὶ τοῖς συναγωνισαμένοις εὐτυχῆ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀποδεῖξαι. Setting aside the hyperbole necessarily appropriate to the speaker and the situation, this important passage accurately mirrors the historian’s own inter­ pretation of Augustus’ solidification of the state, and does so by way of com­ parison with the great dynasts of the Late Republic. Unlike Marius and Sulla, he showed moderation in victory: when at last he had obtained supreme power for himself alone, he pardoned his enemies and reincorporated them into the res publica restituta, so ending the cycle of retribution and revenge for past ills. This is, indeed, the course he adopted in Dio’s historical narrative,9 which 9  Cf. Cass. Dio 53.24.4–6, 54.23, 54.27.4, 55.14.2, 55.10.16.

310

chapter 6

was influenced perhaps by Augustus’ claims to clementia in the Res Gestae.10 Tiberius argues that he was superior in this regard even to Caesar, who treated his opponents mercifully “for the most part, at least” (ὥς γε ἐπίπαν). This is again consistent with Dio’s own view of the late dictator’s famed clementia: he was generally merciful, but capable also of acts of shocking brutality and re­ tribution, and preferred in any case to exact his revenge in secret. Throughout his narrative of the first princeps’ reign, the historian furthermore uses Agrippa and Maecenas consistently as emblematic of the overall stability of his rule: he both readily took their advice and honoured them for their services to the state, and neither became so overweening or proud as to wish to usurp his position.11 This, again, returns in the laudatio funebris. It is additionally import­ ant to note that the apologia Tiberius gives for Octavian’s reprehensible and bloody actions as a dynast—“not what he himself wanted, but what heaven ord­ained”—is the historian’s own opinion, occurring first in the speech of Livia and then in his authorial necrology of Augustus itself.12 This justification has here been dressed up in the encomiastic language of a laudatio, but its intent is fundamentally the same as the historian’s analysis: Octavian could never be a good dynast, but he could make a good emperor if only he could steer Rome away from its δημοκρατία. Yet the exemplum of Sulla perhaps represents the most satisfying component of this analysis, and brings the historian’s interpretation of Augustus’ mon­ archy full-circle. In the opening and closing lines of his point, Dio’s Tiberius recalls Sulla’s nickname: Felix (τὸν εὐτυχῆ ὀνομαζόμενον). Yet it was Augustus, not Sulla, who demonstrated that it was virtue, in the form of moderation and clemency, that represented true felicitas (εὐτυχῆ τὴν ἀρετὴν). As we saw earlier in this book, Sulla—like all the dynasts of Dio’s Late Republic—could not bear his own good fortune. He was once thought foremost in humanity and piety, to such an extent that even Fortune herself seemed to be his ally (τὴν τύχην σύμμαχον). Yet in the fullness of his power he changed: after his victory at the Colline Gate, he returned to Rome and slaughtered his enemies for enmity, for wealth, or out of sheer spite. The horror of the proscriptions is recalled vividly in the speech of Livia on clemency in Book 55.13 “Thus”, Dio writes, “it seems that he could not bear his felicitas” (οὕτως, ὡς ἔοικεν, οὐκ ἤνεγκεν εὐτυχήσας).14 10  Cf. Aug. RG 3: Bella terra et mari ciuilia externaque toto in orbe terrarum suscepi uictorque omnibus ueniam petentibus ciuibus peperci. Externas gentes, quibus tuto ignosci potuit, conseruare quam excidere malui. 11  Cf. Cass. Dio 53.27.1–3, 54.23.3–4, 55.7.2–3. 12  Cf. Cass. Dio 55.21.4, 56.44. 13  Cf. Cass. Dio 55.18.6, frg. 109.16. 14  Cass. Dio frg. 109.1–2.

Epilogue

311

The laudatio of Tiberius holds aloft contrasting exempla of the exercise of mon­archical power: Sulla and Augustus, Republican general and ciuilis princeps, failed dictator and successful monarch. Further points in the encomium obviously express Dio’s historical analysis of the state of the Republic in its last decades and its successful replacement by Augustus’ regime. “You knew well”, Tiberius states, “that Republican govern­ ment could never accommodate itself to interests so vast, and that the leader­ ship of one man would be the best way of preserving them”.15 This critique of δημοκρατία, which the historian viewed as ill-suited to governing a wide empire, we have repeatedly seen as Dio’s own: it occurs in the authorial excursus of Book 44, in the oration of Maecenas, and even in Caesar’s harangue of the Vesontio mutineers.16 Whether rightly or wrongly, Cassius Dio genu­ inely believed that by the time of the so-called Augustan Settlement, Rome’s aristocracy were exhausted, depleted, and ready for peace even at the price of the basic principles of the Republican constitution: he interprets that some had come, finally, to realise that their δημοκρατία was the mother of stasis.17 Tiberius serves to underline—for the final time in Dio’s Roman History—that after the disastrous experiments with autocracy of the first century BCE, some had at last reconciled themselves with the new reality. Tiberius goes on. Augustus repaired many public buildings and erected new ones, some in his own name and many more in others’; he permitted his associ­ ates to do likewise, constantly with an eye to the public good and never envying them the personal fame arising from these benefactions.18 He forgave many of those who plotted against him with such kindness that they never again found a reason to subvert his rule.19 He cleansed the Senate of factious elements left over from the civil wars, and gifted money to new men that they might fill its ranks; within the Senate he gave his opinion on a basis of equality with other members of the ordo and communicated all necessary and important matters to them.20 He rewarded those who married and had children. He slowed the rate of Rome’s imperial expansion, refusing to subjugate additional territories which, “while seeming to give our empire more power, might have entailed the loss of what we already had”.21 Finally, he allowed all to speak their minds

15  Cass. Dio 56.39.5. 16  Cf. Cass. Dio 38.41, 44.2.4, 52.15.6. 17  Cass. Dio 53.11.2. 18  Cass. Dio 56.40.5. 19  Cass. Dio 56.40.7. 20  Cass. Dio 56.41.3. 21  Cass. Dio 56.41.6.

312

chapter 6

freely before him, and showed such liberality that he did not keep inheritances bequeathed to him, but rather donated them to the children of the deceased.22 This analysis is genuine: it is a direct reflection of all those policies for which the first emperor receives praise from the historian in his own narra­ tive. Tiberius serves to articulate Cassius Dio’s own political philosophy, and connects this directly to the causes of the survival of Augustus’ Principate. The pragmatic ciuilis princeps, in Dio’s view, must perform all of the above actions in order to negotiate the tension between the fact of Rome’s monarchy and the memory of its Republican past. The historian does not take the opportunity to tie together these diverse aspects of Augustus’ approach and to evaluate their success in his narrative: that function he reserves for the speech alone. There were deceptions and falsehoods, predictably; and these, according to Dio’s usual practice, are highlighted by sophisticated verbal parallels and intra­textualities. Tiberius praises the decision of Octavian to ‘restore’ the libera res publica: the sham recusatio imperii developed at ironic length in Book 53. He recalls the decision of the young dynast to “lay once again at your feet the armies, the provinces, and revenues” (τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τὰ ἔθνη καὶ τὰ χρήματα ἐς τὸ μέσον ὑμῖν κατέθηκεν). This of course mirrors the claim given to Dio’s Octavian in his recusatio to “restore to you absolutely everything, the armies, laws, and provinces” (ἀποδίδωμι ὑμῖν πάντα ἁπλῶς, τὰ ὅπλα τοὺς νόμους τὰ ἔθνη).23 Tiberius additionally returns to the new princeps’ reorganisation of the empire: he under­took personal charge of those provinces which were troublesome and at war (ἐπίπονα καὶ ἐμπολέμια), allowing the Senatus Populusque Romanus to enjoy those which were peaceful and free from danger (εἰρηναῖα καὶ ἀκίνδυνα).24 This ironically repeats the historian’s analysis of Augustus’ reforms to the pro­ vincial administration in Book 53: he in fact retained the heavily-manned and stronger provinces in order that he should have access to the greater number of legions, but put forward the pretext that these were the more difficult and dangerous (σφαλερὰ καὶ ἐπικίνδυνα). In contrast, he returned the weaker pro­ vinces to the Senate, ostensibly because these were peaceful and free from war (εἰρηναῖα καὶ ἀπόλεμα); but in reality, he wished to enfeeble the governing class and alleviate its capacity for challenging the central authority.25 On the one hand Tiberius’ praise of the first princeps retains that dramatic irony which was one of Dio’s favoured techniques. But on the other hand—and much more importantly—it calls once again to the reader’s attention a critical 22  Cass. Dio 56.41.7–8. 23  Cf. Cass. Dio 53.4.3, 56.39.4. 24  Cass. Dio 56.40.2–3. 25  Cass. Dio 53.12.

Epilogue

313

historical explanation for the stability of Augustus’ power. He may well have been the archetype of the ciuilis princeps, as Dio’s Tiberius himself states and the historian himself believed; this mollified the senatorial aristocracy and en­ deared them to his rule. But it was always a military dictatorship cloaked in a civilian guise, and the periphery never again had sufficient means to challenge the centre in a revolutionary manner. The laudatio funebris of Tiberius is a fitting end to our study for two rea­ sons. First, in all its main elements it is entirely characteristic of Cassius Dio’s composition and use of speeches in his Roman History. In this book, I hope to have shown the remarkable sophistication of these compositions and their importance to the historian’s explanatory method. It is true that Dio never provides a detailed or overarching analysis of the decline of the Republic, nor the stability and success of Augustus’ monarchy, in his own narrator-voice; he chose instead to set out the causes of this process viva voce in the speeches of Maecenas, Tiberius, and to a lesser extent Livia. This is, in fact, representative of his approach to the writing of history in general. Frustratingly, Cassius Dio very seldom develops lengthy analytical excursus in his own voice. We have returned so frequently to his famous critique of the futility and instability of δημοκρατία in Book 44 precisely because statements of this type are vanish­ ingly few. Its very fame emerges from its rarity. This apparent reluctance to form a wider analysis, explicitly and in his own voice, on the macro-level— that is, interpreting not only the thoughts or intentions of an individual at one specific time, but rather engaging in a structural analysis—has done much to tarnish Dio’s reputation as an historian. I hope to have demonstrated that a radically different picture emerges when we incorporate the speeches into our evaluation of the Roman History. They are, indeed, the main vehicle of his causal interpretation for the trans­ formation of the Roman res publica. Some were evidently of more fundamen­ tal importance to the story-arc of their author than others: the dissuasio of Catulus on the lex Gabinia, Caesar’s exhortation of the Vesontio mutineers, Cicero’s speech on the amnesty of March 44 BCE, the Agrippa-Maecenas de­ bate, Octavian’s recusatio before the Senate, and the final reflections on the Augustan regime with Tiberius’ funeral oration are all essential to the histor­ ian’s institutional and moral analysis of the Republic and its failures. These have been given disproportionately wide treatment here. Yet this must emerge from the vicissitudes of transmission also. It is likely that the speech of Brutus on the foundation of the Republic in Book 3 will have served a quite central purpose, and will have attained a lengthy development commensurate with its aim: to foreshadow the faults of the res publica to come—including the re­ curring theme of oratory’s ambiguous power—and to reflect on stasis and its

314

chapter 6

causes, chiefly a lack of moderation in the practice of politics. Like the dissuasio of Catulus, Scipio Aemilianus’ oration on his technically unconstitutional and illegal appointment to the consulship of 147 BCE must, in my view, also have marked a turning-point in the Roman History. It symbolised the begin­ nings of that tension between the needs of Rome’s enlarged empire and the inability of the traditional framework to address those needs, which will exert such catastrophic consequences in Dio’s narrative of the first century BCE. The loss of these set-pieces is profoundly regrettable. Tiberius’ funeral oration furthermore evinces Dio genuine enjoyment of dramatic irony. Such ironies not only delight the reader—and the historian himself, who evidently took genuine pleasure in constructing them. Rather, they most often serve to highlight the historian’s major historical interpret­ ations and themes. The patriotic claims of Pompeius, Caesar, and even Octavian himself are disproven by the reality of the diegesis; but as we have seen in Chapter 3, these ironies first and foremost illustrate Dio’s view of the corrosive effect which oratory had come to exert upon political life. In con­ trast, genuine attempts to guide the populus Romanus away from the path of dynasty and deception are plagued by similar ironies. We have seen in Chapter 4 the various ways in which Catulus and Agrippa are made to praise a vision of the res publica that no longer exists. Even the vocabulary that they choose to describe the political process no longer has the same definition as that adopted in the narrative. Dio’s orators might also deliberately misrepre­ sent the past in the pursuit of their own ends: the ambassadors of Tarquin in Book 3, and Antonius’ laudatio funebris for Caesar in Book 44, both aver ostensible truths for their selfish advantage, proven otherwise in the narrative. The key difference between the pair, of course, consists in their success. The emissaries from Tarquinii failed to obtain their object, since oratory retained the power to persuade effectively and for the right reasons; their claims are countered by Brutus. Antonius, on the other hand, misrepresents not only Caesar’s military career but also the character of Roman imperialism in the Late Republic in general, and in so doing reverses utterly the temporary benefit of Cicero’s appeals for calm. The Roman History explored the problem of rhet­ oric, and its ambiguous power, more fully than any surviving history of Rome. The result was not merely a fun read; Dio envisaged a great work of literature. Importantly, the Tiberius of Book 56 additionally recalls the historian’s care­ ful interest in Rome’s institutions and the management of its empire. Chapter 4 has shown his distinctive refashioning of the moralising traditions of Latin historiography. Dio combined the terminology of invidia, luxuria, metus hostilis and so forth with Thucydidean conceptions of human nature and his own analysis of the effect of the constitutional structure on individuals’ emotions

Epilogue

315

and actions. Yet his approach to the decline of the Republic was not moralising in the strict sense of the word, and his purposes were not generally didactic. I have suggested in Chapter 5 that Dio’s speeches provide an analysis of the institutions of the res publica not to be found in his narrative, yet which was nevertheless of fundamental importance in its collapse. Using at several points the exempla of its last century—Marius, Sulla, Caesar, and Pompeius—, Tiberius reiterates Dio’s view of the need for reform to the provincial admin­ istration and the stability that ensued in consequence. The reader has by this point seen that need repeatedly underlined. Unlike Suetonius, our histor­ ian viewed imperii consuetudo—the habituation to commanding that came from successive and repeated office-holding—as a systemic fault of the Late Republic. It was not simply Caesar’s vice: Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, and indeed the entire governing class fell prey to it. The framework of annual magistrates and commanders, elected in the urbs and dispatched on rotation to the prov­ inces, could not govern an empire of Rome’s prodigious size. Innovation was necessary: but the innovations selected, including prorogation and extra­ ordinary commands, undermined the basic architecture of the system and its capacity to inspire consensus. These arguments find their best expression in the speeches on the lex Gabinia and the Agrippa-Maecenas debate, and they pose a dilemma resolved in the narrative of Book 53 and Tiberius’ laudatio. For the dictatorship, on the other hand, Dio developed a sophisticated bipartite problematisation of Rome’s emergency magistracy, apparently unique within ancient historiography. A temporary recourse to the guiding hand of monarchy was necessary, yet could no longer operate within the established framework. Dictatorship was impractical and ill-suited to the requirements of empire, so justifying yet more extraordinary commands and prorogations; yet the experi­ ments with Sulla and Caesar had also transformed it into a tyranny. Only con­ stitutional change could resolve that conundrum. Yet Tiberius provides a fitting close for a second and equally telling reason. With his peroration, it was not only Augustus who bowed out of the Roman History; it was, to an extent, speech itself. Dio closed the narrative of the Republic’s trials and permutations, from the ascent of Rome’s first consul to the death of its first emperor, with an analysis in direct speech of the causes of Augustus’ success. Speech will never again assume the same importance. As we have summarised briefly in Chapter 3, formal oration disappears almost entirely from the Roman History with the close of the Augustan narrative. This was not merely an accident of transmission: the reign of Tiberius (in the direct tradition) contains no speeches, and that of Caligula (again in the direct tradit­ ion) a short set-piece of one chapter’s length. A small handful of half a dozen pepper the remaining two decads—covering nearly two centuries of Rome’s

316

chapter 6

history—and never longer than three chapters. In addition, the narrative it­ self becomes dramatically more compressed, and the spatium historicum accelerates. As Dio himself remarks in Book 53, the importance of public oratory within political life declined dramatically with the advent of Imperial rule. It is diffi­ cult to escape the sense of a certain loss: that as Rome’s constitution changed to the historian’s desired form (or at least a version of it), the opportunities for crafting those lengthy, stylised, ironic and highly interpretative speeches which were so characteristic of his historiographical method accordingly de­ creased. The grand centrepiece of Books 3–56 of the Roman History was com­ plete. It appears that Dio did not use speech in the Principate in the manner of Tacitus, laying bare the fundamental hypocrisy of the Imperial regime. Those techniques, no doubt inspired by Tacitus’ cynical portrayal of Roman history, he transposed to his Republican and Augustan books. In place of weighty debates—or in the case of Dio’s Late Republic, controuersiae such as those of Cicero and Antonius, evidently paired and yet not debating productively— other oratorical forms will take precedence. As our lens moves from the Forum to the Palatium, so do the quotations and witty remarks of the princeps come more into focus. Though present in Dio’s work, these afforded the historian little scope for invention and compositional art; Imperial dicta necessarily purport to be the genuine words of the emperor, and by the first century CE Romans were already forming corpora and compendia of witty sayings.26 Dio’s Zeitgeschichte, the contemporary history of Books 73–80 which records his ex­ perience of the Severan court as an eyewitness, is perhaps his contribution to that tradition: the Imperial dicta it contains are worthy of further study.27 To return to where we began, Fergus Millar’s observation in his 1964 Study of Cassius Dio was correct. The quality of Dio’s speeches is indeed represent­ ative of the character of his work as a whole, and of his status as an historian.28 Dio’s speeches carry further the tendency toward institutional analysis, access to wide and varied source-material, and political reflection that characterises 26  See Laurence & Paterson 1999. 27  See the preliminary observations in Burden-Strevens 2015b on Dio’s use of Homeric quo­ tation in Imperial dicta. 28  P ace Millar 1964, 83: “Dio’s speeches carry further the tendency towards generality and lack of apposite detail which characterises his History as a whole … in general their in­ terest must lie not in what they can contribute to historical knowledge, but in the insight they can give into the mind of a senator writing under the Severi”. It must be noted in conclusion that the late Prof. Millar’s contribution to our understanding of Cassius Dio has been significant. His landmark 1964 Study of Cassius Dio provided our first modern evaluation of the Roman History, generating much further careful work.

Epilogue

317

his History as a whole. Undertaking the most ambitious project in Roman historiography since Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, Dio assembled a coherent and often original interpretation of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and its replacement by a stable monarchy. Working closely, where available, with con­ temporary oratorical and historiographical materials (both Greek and Latin), Dio based his presentation of Republican rhetoric upon the best evidence at his disposal, often reproducing (and even reconstructing) genuine argu­ ments otherwise lost or opaque to us. Certainly he gives a credible, and to him authentic, presentation of the historical opposition to Pompeius commands in the 60s BCE, the likely arguments adduced by Cicero in his lost amnesty speech of March 17th 44 BCE, and the public self-justification of Augustus’ rise to power. His historical arguments and interpretations, played out viva voce and in real time, are often more persuasive and compelling than a bald author­ ial statement, the like of which the historian usually avoided. Persuasion, after all, was rhetoric’s purpose and function, and Cassius Dio had mastered the art.

Bibliography Aalders, G. (1986). “Cassius Dio and the Greek World”. Mnemosyne 39, 282–304. Adler, E. (2008). “Boudicca’s Speeches in Tacitus and Dio”. Classical World 101/2, 173–195. Adler, E. (2011). “Cassius Dio’s Livia and the Conspiracy of Cinna Magnus”. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51, 133–154. Adler, E. (2012). “Cassius Dio’s Agrippa-Maecenas Debate: An Operational Code Analysis”. American Journal of Philology 133/3, 477–520. Adrados, F. R. (1999–2003). A History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. 3 Vols. Leiden & Boston. Allen, W. (1950). “The ‘Vettius Affair’ Once More”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 81, 153–163. Allen, W. (1956). “O Fortunatam Natam …”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 87, 130–146. Andersen, H. A. (1938). Cassius Dio und die Begründung des Principats. Berlin. Anderson, G. (1993). The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. London. Ando, C. (1999). “Was Rome a Polis?” Classical Antiquity 18/1, 5–34. Ando, C. (2016). “Cassius Dio on Imperial Legitimacy, from the Antonines to the Severans” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 567–580. Anson, R. (2010). “The general’s pre-battle exhortation in Graeco-Roman warfare”. Greece & Rome 57, 304–318. Austin, L. (2015). “Rumor as a Literary Device in Tacitus”. Histos Working Papers 2015/4, 1–17. Badian, E. (1967). Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic. Pretoria. Badian, E. (1970). Lucius Sulla: The Deadly Reformer. Sydney. Barnes, T. D. (1967). “Hadrian and Lucius Verus”. Journal of Roman Studies 57, 65–79. Barnes, T. D. (1984). “The Composition of Cassius Dio’s Roman History”. Phoenix 38, 240–255. Barr, J. (2012). “Sallust: Corrupt Politician and Historian”. Crossroads 6/1, 58–63. Barrett, A. (2001). “Tacitus, Livia and the Evil Stepmother”. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Neue Folge, 144/2, 171–175. Bellissime, M. (2016). “Fiction et rhétorique dans les prosopopées de l’Histoire romaine: les marges de liberté de l’historien” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 363–378. Bellissime, M. & Berbessou-Broustet, B. (2016). “L’Histoire romaine de Zonaras” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 95–112.

320

Bibliography

Bender, F. B. (1961). An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio Book 54. Diss. Pennsylvania. Béranger, J. (1935). “Tyrannus: Notes sur la notion de la tyrannie chez le Romains particulièrement a l’époque de César et de Cicéron”. Révue des Études Latines 13, 85–94. Béranger, J. (1953). Recherches sur l’aspect idéologique du principat. Basel. Berbessou-Broustet, B. (2016). “Xiphilin, abréviateur de Cassius Dion” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 81–94. Berrigan, J. R. (1968). “Dio Cassius’ Defence of Democracy”. Classical Bulletin 44, 42–45. Bertolazzi, R. (2015). “The Depiction of Livia and Julia Domna by Cassius Dio: Some Observations”. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 55, 413–432. Bertrand, E. (2016). “Point de vue de Cassius Dion sur l’impérialisme romain” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 679–700. Billows, R. (2005). “International Relations” in P. Sabin et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare. Volume I: Greece, the Hellenistic World and the Rise of Rome (Cambridge): 303–24. Bleicken, J. (1962). “Der Politische Standpunkt Dios Gegenüber der Monarchie: Die Rede des Maecenas Buch 52.14–40”. Hermes 90/4, 444–467. Bloomer, W. M. (2011). The School of Rome: Latin Studies and the Origins of Liberal Education. California. Blumenthal, F. (1913). “Die Autobiographie des Augustus”. Wiener Studien 36, 84–103. Boissevain, U. P. (1895–1931) (ed.). Cassius Dio Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum quae supersunt. 5 Vols. Berlin. Bowersock, G. W. (1969). Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford. Bowersock, G. W. (1974) (ed.). Approaches to the Second Sophistic. New York. Brennan, T. (2000). The Praetorship in the Roman Republic. 2 Vols. Oxford. Brock, R. (1995). “Versions, ‘Inversions’ and Evasions: Classical Historiography and the ‘Published’ Speech”. Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 8, 209–224. Broughton, T. R. S. (1951). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Volume 1: 509 B.C.– 100 B.C. New York. Brunt, P. A. (1966). “The Roman Mob”. Past & Present 35/1, 3–27. Brunt, P. A. (1971). Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic. London. Brunt, P. A. (1988). The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays. Oxford. Brunt, P. A. (1994). “The Bubble of the Second Sophistic”. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 39, 25–52. Burden-Strevens, C. (2015a). Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic. Diss. Glasgow. Burden-Strevens, C. (2015b). “Ein völlig romanisierter Mann? Identity, Identification, and Integration in the Roman History of Cassius Dio and in Arrian” in S. Roselaar (ed.), Processes of Cultural Change and Integration in the Roman World (Leiden & Boston): 287–306.

Bibliography

321

Burden-Strevens, C. (2016). “Fictitious Speeches, Envy, and the Habituation to Authority: Writing the Collapse of the Roman Republic” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 193–216. Burden-Strevens, C. (2018). “Reconstructing Republican Oratory in Cassius Dio’s Roman History” in C. Gray et. al. (eds.), Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions (Oxford): 117–143. Burden-Strevens, C. (2019). “The Republican Dictatorship: an Imperial Perspective” in J. Osgood & C. Baron (eds.), Cassius Dio and the Late Roman Republic (Leiden & Boston): 131–157. Burden-Strevens, C. (2020, in press). “The Agrippa-Maecenas Debate” in A. Scott & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Cassius Dio (Leiden & Boston). Burden-Strevens, C. & Lindholmer, M. O. (2019) (eds.). Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome: the ‘Roman History’, Books 1–21 (Leiden & Boston). Burgess, T. C. (1902). Epideictic Literature. Chicago. Carson, R. A. G. (1957). “Caesar and the Monarchy”. Greece & Rome 4/1, 46–53. Cary, E. (1914–1927). Cassius Dio: Roman History. 9 Vols. Cambridge, Mass. Charlesworth, M. P. (1934). “Literary Authorities for Roman History”. The Cambridge Ancient History 10, 866–876. Chrissanthos, S. G. (2001). “Caesar and the Mutiny of 47 B.C.”. Journal of Roman Studies 91, 63–75. Christ, K. (1974). “Caesar und Ariovist”. Chiron 4, 252–291. Clark, D. L. (1957). Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education. New York. Clarke, M. L. (1951). “The Thesis in the Roman Rhetorical Schools of the Republic”. Classical Quarterly 1, 159–166. Constantini, L. (2016). Magic in Court. Understanding the Forensic Strategies and the Charges against Apuleius in the ‘Apologia’. Diss. Leeds. Cornell, T. (1955). The Beginnings of Rome: Italy from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 B.C.). London. Coudry, M. (2016a). “Cassius Dio on Pompey’s Extraordinary Commands” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 33–50. Coudry, M. (2016b). “Institutions et procédures politiques de la République romaine: les choix lexicaux de Cassius Dion” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 485–518. Coudry, M. (2019). “The ‘Great Men’ of the Middle Republic in Cassius Dio’s Roman History” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 126–164. Coudry, M. (2020, in press). “The Republican Speeches” in A. Scott & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Cassius Dio (Leiden & Boston).

322

Bibliography

Cribiore, R. (1996). Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Atlanta. Davenport, C. (2012). “Cassius Dio and Caracalla”. Classical Quarterly 62, 796–815. Davenport, C. & Mallan, C. (2014). “Hadrian’s Adoption Speech in Cassius Dio’s Roman History and the Problems of Imperial Succession”. American Journal of Philology 135, 637–68. De Franchis, M. (2016). “Tite-Live modèle de Cassius Dion, ou contre-modèle?” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 191–204. De Jong, I., Nünlist, R., & Bowie, A. M. (2004) (eds). Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden & Boston. Dionisotti, C. (1982). “From Ausonius’ Schooldays? A schoolbook and its relations”. Journal of Roman Studies 72, 83–125. Dorandi, T. (1985). “Der ‘gute König’ bei Philodem und die Rede des Maecenas vor Octavian (Cassius Dio lii, 14–20)”. Klio 67, 56–60. Dowling, M. (2000). “The Clemency of Sulla”. Historia 49/3, 303–340. Dowling, M. (2006). Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World. Ann Arbor. Drogula, F. K. (2015). Commanders and Command in the Roman Republic and Early Empire. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill. Eckert, A. (2016). Lucius Cornelius Sulla in der antiken Erinnerung: Jener Mörder, der sich Felix nannte. Berlin. Eckert, A. (2018). “Good Fortune and the Public Good: Disputing Sulla’s Claim to be Felix” in H. Van der Blom, C. Gray, & C. Steel (eds.) Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision (Cambridge): 283–298. Eckstein, A. (2004). “From the Historical Caesar to the Spectre of Caesarism: The Imperial Administrator as Internal Threat” in P. Baehr & M. Richter (eds.), Dictatorship in History and Theory (Cambridge): 279–298. Eder, W. (1996). “Republicans and sinners: the decline of the Roman Republic and the end of a provisional arrangement” in R. Wallace & E. Harris (eds.), Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History, 360–146 B.C. in Honor of E. Badian (Norman): 439–461. Ehrhardt, C. T. (1995). “Speeches before Battle?”. Historia 44/1, 120–121. Eisman, M. M. (1977). “Dio and Josephus: Parallel Analyses”. Latomus 36, 657–673. Fantham, E. (1985). “Caesar and the Mutiny: Lucan’s Reshaping of the Historical Tradition in De Bello Civili 5.237–373”. Classical Philology 80/2, 119–131. Fechner, D. (1986). Untersuchungen zu Cassius Dios Sicht der Römischen Republik. Hildesheim. Feldherr, A. (2009) (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Cambridge. Ferrary, J.-L. (2007). “Loi Gabinia créant un commandement extraordinaire contre les pirates et le confiant a Pompée (pl. sc.)” in Lepor. Leges Populi Romani, directed

Bibliography

323

by J.-L. Ferrary and P. Moreau (online). Paris: IRHT-TELMA. URL: http://www .cn-telma.fr/lepor/. Fischer, J. W. (1870). De fontibus et auctoritate Cassii Dionis in enarrandis a Cicerone post portem Caesaris a.d XVI Kal. Apr. de pace et Kal. Ian. Anni a. Chr.n. 43 habitis orationibus. Diss. Leipzig. Fisher, E. (1982). “Greek Translation of Latin Literature in the Fourth Century A.D.” in J. J. Winkler & G. W. Williams (eds.), Later Greek Literature (Cambridge): 173–216. Fisher, B. (1987). A History of the Use of Aesop’s Fables as a School Text from the Classical Era through the Nineteenth Century. Diss. Indiana. Flower, H. (2010). Roman Republics. Princeton. Fomin, A. (2015). How Dio Wrote History. Diss. Rutgers, New York. Fomin, A. (2016). “Speeches in Dio Cassius” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 217–237. Frank, T. (1914). Roman Imperialism. New York. Frend, W. (1956). “A third-century inscription relating to Angareia in Phrygia”. Journal of Roman Studies 46, 46–56. Freyburger-Galland, M.-L. (1996). “ΔΥΝΑΣΤΕΙΑ chez Dion Cassius”. Ktema 21, 23–27. Freyburger-Galland, M.-L. (1997). Aspects du vocabulaire politique et institutionnel de Dion Cassius. Paris. Frisch, H. (1946). Cicero’s Fight for the Republic. The Historical Background of the Philippics. Copenhagen. Fromentin, V. & Bertrand, E. (2008). Dion Cassius: Histoire romaine livres 45–46. Paris. Fromentin, V. (2013). “Zonaras abréviateur de Dion Cassius: a la Recherche de la Préface Perdue de l’Histoire Romaine”. Erga-Logoi 1, 23–39. Fromentin, V. (2016). “Denys d’Halicarnasse, source et modèle de Cassius Dion?” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 179–190. Fromentin, V. (2019). “La fiabilité de Zonaras dans les deux premières décades de l’Histoire romaine de Cassius Dion: le cas des discours” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 27–52. Gabba, E. (1955). “Sulla storia romana di Cassio Dione”. Rivista Storica Italiana 67, 289–333. Gabba, E. (1957). “Note sulla polemica anticiceroniana di Asinio Pollione”. Rivista Storica Italiana 69, 317–339. Gabba, E. (1976). Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies. Berkeley. Gabba, E. (1984). “The Historians and Augustus” in F. Millar & E. Segal (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford): 61–88. Gangloff, A. (2002). “Mythes, fables, et rhétorique a l’epoque impériale”. Rhetorica 20/1, 25–56.

324

Bibliography

Gargola, D. J. (2010). “Mediterranean Empire (264–134)” in R. Morstein-Marx & N. Rosenstein (eds.), A Companion to the Roman Republic (Chichester): 147–166. Gelzer, M. (1943). Das erste Konsulat des Pompeius und die Übertragung der großen Imperien. Berlin. Gendre, M. & Loutsch, C. (2001). “C. Duilius et M. Atilius Regulus”, in M. Coudry & T. Späth (eds.), L’Invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique (Paris): 131–172. Gibbs, L. (2002) (trans.). Aesop’s Fables. Oxford. Gibson, B. A. (1998). “Rumours as Causes of Events in Tacitus”. Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 40, 111–129. Gibson, C. A. (2004). “Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata”. Classical Philology 99/2, 103–129. Gibson, C. A. (2009). “Two Technical Terms in Greek Progymnasmata Treatises”. Rhetorica 152/2, 141–149. Gibson, C. A. (2014). “Better living through prose composition? Moral and compositional pedagogy in ancient Greek and Roman progymnasmata”. Rhetorica 31/1, 1–30. Gillespie, C. (2015). “The Wolf and the Hare: Boudica’s Political Bodies in Tacitus and Dio.” Classical World 108, 403–29. Giua, M. A. (1981). “Clemenza del sovrano e monarchia illuminata in Cassio Dione 55.14–22”. Athenaeum 59, 317–337. Giua, M. A. (1983). “Augusto nel libro 56 della Storia Romana di Cassio Dione”. Athenaeum 61, 439–456. Gowing, A. M. (1990). “Dio’s Name”. Classical Philology 85, 49–54. Gowing, A. M. (1992). The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio. Michigan. Gowing, A. M. (1997). “Cassius Dio on the Reign of Nero”. Aufsteig und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.34.3, 2558–2590. Gowing, A. M. (1998). “Greek Advice for a Roman Senator: Cassius Dio and the Dialogue between Philiscus and Cicero (38.18–29)”. Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 10, 373–390. Gowing, A. M. (2016). “Cassius Dio and the City of Rome” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 115–135. Grant, M. (1995). Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation. London. Greenhalgh, P. (1980). Pompey: The Roman Alexander. London. Griffin, M. T. (1982). “The Lyons Tablet and Tacitean Hindsight”. Classical Quarterly 32/2, 404–418. Griffin, M. T. (1990). “Claudius in Tacitus”. Classical Quarterly 40/2, 482–501. Grimal, P. (1986). “La conjuration de Cinna, mythe ou realité?” in J.-M. Pailler (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Monsieur Labrousse. Toulouse. Gudeman, A. (1894). “Literary Frauds among the Romans”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 25, 140–164.

Bibliography

325

Hagendahl, H. (1944). “The Mutiny of Vesontio: a problem of tendency and credibility in Caesar’s Gallic War”. Classica et Mediaevalia 6, 1–40. Hammond, M. (1932). “The Significance of the Speech of Maecenas in Dio Cassius, Book LII”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63, 82–102. Hammond, N. (1999). “The Speeches in Arrian’s Indica and Anabasis”. Classical Quarterly 49/1, 238–253. Hansen, M. H. (1993). “The Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography: Fact or Fiction?”. Historia 42/2, 161–180. Hantos, T. (1988). Res Publica Constituta: die Verfassung des Dictators Sulla. Stuttgart. Harrington, J. D. (1971). Cassius Dio: A Reexamination. Diss. Kentucky. Harris, W. V. (1979). War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 BC. Oxford. Harrison, S. (2000). Apuleius. A Latin Sophist. Oxford. Harrison, T. (2003). “The cause of things: envy and the emotions in early Greek historiography” in D. Konstan & K. Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite, and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh): 43–63. Hau, L. I. (2016). Moral History from Herodotos to Diodoros of Sicily. Edinburgh. Haupt, H. (1882). “Jahresberichte. Dio Cassius”. Philologus 41, 140–158. Haupt, H. (1884). “Jahresberichte. Dio Cassius”. Philologus 43, 678–701. Heath, M. (2003). “Theon and the History of the Progymnasmata”. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 43, 129–160. Heimbach, G. (1878). Quaeritur, quid et quantum Cassius Dio in historia conscribenda inde a l. XL useque ad l.XLVII e Livio desumpserit. Bonn. Hinard, F. (1988). “De la dictature à la tyrannie. Réflexions sur la dictature de Sylla” in F. Hinard, (ed.), Dictatures. Actes de la Table Ronde de Paris, 27–28 Février 1984 (Paris): 87–96. Hinard, F. (1999). “Dion Cassius et l’abdication de Sylla”. Revue des Études Anciennes 101, 427–432. Hock, R. F. & O’neill, E. N. (1986). The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, Volume I: The Progymnasmata. Atlanta. Hock, R. F. (1997). “The Rhetoric of Romance”, in S. E. Porter (ed.), A Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 BC–AD 400 (New York): 445–465. Hölkeskamp, K.-J. (2010). Reconstructing the Roman Republic. An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research. Trans. H. Heitmann-Gordon. Princeton. Holzberg, N. (2001). Die antike Fabel: eine Einführung. Darmstadt. Homeyer, H. (1964). Die Quellen zu Ciceros Tod. Baden-Baden. Horst, C. (2010). “Zur politischen Funktion des Demokratiebegriffes In der Kaiserzeit: Eine Interpretation der Reden Des Agrippa Und Maecenas” in V. V. Dement’eva & T. Schmitt (eds.), Volk und Demokratie im Altertum (Göttingen): 189–208. Hose, M. (1994). Erneuerung der Vergangenheit: Die Historiker im Imperium Romanum von Florus bis Cassius Dio. Stuttgart.

326

Bibliography

Howley, J. A. (2017). “Book-Burning and the Uses of Writing in Ancient Rome: Destructive Practice between Literature and Document”. Journal of Roman Studies 107, 213–236. Hurlet, F. (1993). La dictature de Sylla: Monarchie ou magistrature Republicaine? Brussels. Hurlet, F. (2006). Le proconsul et le prince d’Auguste à Dioclétien. Bordeaux. Jameson, S. (1970). “Pompey’s Imperium in 67: Some Constitutional Fictions”. Historia 19/5, 539–560. Jones, C. P. (1978). The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom. Cambridge, Mass. Jones, B. (2015). The Sophistic Roman: Education and Status in Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny. Diss. Seattle. Jones, B. (2016). “Cassius Dio: Pepaideumenos and Politician on Kingship” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 297–315. Kallet-Marx, R. (1995). Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 BC. Berkeley. Kalyvas, A. (2007). “The Tyranny of Dictatorship: When the Greek Tyrant Met the Roman Dictator”. Political Theory 35/4, 412–442. Kaster, R. (2003). ‘Invidia, νέμεσις, φθόνος, and the Roman Emotional Economy’ in D. Konstan & K. Rutter (eds.), Envy, Spite, and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh): 253–276. Kemezis, A. M. (2007). “Augustus the Ironic Paradigm: Cassius Dio’s Portrayal of the Lex Julia and Lex Papia Poppaea”. Phoenix 61/3–4, 270–85. Kemezis, A. (2014). Greek Narratives of the Roman Empire Under the Severans. Cambridge. Kemezis, A. (2016). “Dio, Caesar and the Vesontio Mutineers (38.34–47): A Rhetoric of Lies” in Lange, C. H. & Madsen, J. M. (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 238–257. Kennedy, G. (1968). “Antony’s Speech at Caesar’s Funeral”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 54, 99–106. Kennedy, G. (2003). Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric. Atlanta. Kuhlmann, P. (2010). “Die Maecenas-Rede bei Cassius Dio: Anachronismen und intertextuelle Bezüge” in D. Pausch (ed.), Stimmen der Geschichte: Funktionen von Reden in der antiken Historiographie (Berlin): 109–124. Kuhn-Chen, B. (2002). Geschichtskonzeption griechischer Historiker in 2. und 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr.: Untersuchungen zu den Werken von Appian, Cassius Dio und Herodian. Frankfurt. Kunkel, W. (1962). Herkunft und soziale Stellung der Römischen Juristen. Weimar.

Bibliography

327

Kyhnitsch, E. (1894). De contionibus, quas Cassius Dio historiae suae intexuit, cum Thucydideis comparatis. Diss. Leipzig. Lachenaud, G. & Coudry, M. (2011). Dion Cassius, Histoire romaine livres 38, 39 et 40. Paris. Lange, C. H. (2019). “Cassius Dio on Violence, Stasis, and Civil War: The Early Years” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 165–189. Lange, C. H. (forthcoming 2020). “Cassius Dio on Perusia: A Study in Human Nature During Civil War” in J. M. Madsen & C. H. Lange (eds.), Cassius Dio the Historian: Methods and Approaches (Leiden & Boston). Laurence, R. & Paterson, J. (1999). “Power and Laughter: Imperial Dicta”. Papers of the British School at Rome 67, 183–197. Leach, J. (1978). Pompey the Great. London. Lefkowitz, M. R. (1959). “Pyrrhus’ Negotiations with the Romans, 280–278 B. C.”. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 64, 147–177. Letta, C. (1979). “La compozisione dell’opera di Cassio Dione. Cronologia e sfondo storico-politico” in E. Gabba (ed.), Ricerche di storiografia greca di età romana (Pisa): 117–189. Levene, D. S. (1993). Religion in Livy. Leiden, New York and Cologne. Levi, M. A. (1937). “Dopo Azio: Appunti sulle fonte augustee: Dione Cassio”. Athenaeum 15, 415–434. Libourel, J. M. (1974). “An Unusual Annalistic Source Used by Dio Cassius”. Amercian Journal of Philology 95, 383–393. Lindholmer, M. O. (2018). “Reading Diachronically: A New Reading of Book 36 of Cassius Dio’s Roman History”. Histos 12, 139–168. Lindholmer, M. O. (2019). “Breaking the Idealistic Paradigm: Competition in Dio’s Earlier Republic” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 190–214. Lintott, A. W. (1972a). “Provocatio: From the Struggle of the Orders to the Principate”. Aufsteig und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 1.2, 226–267. Lintott, A. W. (1972b). “Imperial Expansion and Moral Decline in the Roman Republic”. Historia 21, 626–638. Lintott, A. W. (1997). “Cassius Dio and the History of the Late Republic”. Aufsteig und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 11.34.3, 2497–2523. Lintott, A. W. (1999). The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford. Litsch, E. (1893). De Cassio Dione imitatore Thucydidis. Diss. Freiburg. Lombardini, J. (2013). “‘Isonomia’ and the Public Sphere in Democratic Athens”. History of Political Thought 34/3, 493–420. Maas, M. (1992). John Lydus and the Roman Past. London. Maccormack, S. (2013). “Cicero in Late Antiquity” in C. Steel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero (Cambridge): 251–305.

328

Bibliography

Madsen, J. M. (2016). “Criticising the Benefactors: The Severans and the Return of Dynastic Rule” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 136–158. Madsen, J. M. (2020). Cassius Dio. London. Makhlajuk, A. V. & Markov, K. V. (2008). “Historian and Challenges of His Times: Cassius Dio’s Roman History as a Document of the Third-Century Historical and Political Thought,” Herald of Ancient History [VDI] 2, 38–56. Mallan, C. (2013). “The Style, Method, and Programme of Xiphilinus’ Epitome of Cassius Dio’s Roman History”. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 53, 610–644. Mallan, C. (2014). “The Rape of Lucretia in Cassius Dio’s Roman History”. Classical Quarterly 64/2, 758–771. Mallan, C. (2016). “Parrhesia in Cassius Dio” in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician (Leiden & Boston): 258–275. Mallan, C. (2019). “The Regal Period in the Excerpta Constantiniana and in Some Early Byzantine Extracts From Dio’s Roman History” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 76–96. Maltby, R. “‘The Gallus Monument’. Review of F. Hoffmann, M. Minas-Nerpel, & S. Pfeiffer (eds.), die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus. Übersetzung und Kommentar. (Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 9)”. Classical Review 61/2, 605–607. Manuwald, B. (1979). Cassius Dio und Augustus: Philologische Untersuchungen zu den Bucüern 45–56 des Dioniscüen Geschichtswerkes. Wiesbaden. Marincola, J. (2007). “Speech in Classical Historiography” in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Chichester): 294–324. Markov, K. (2013). “The Concepts of ‘Democracy’ and ‘Tyranny’ in the Speech of Agrippa in Cassius Dio 52.1–13: Conventional Rhetoric or Political Theory?” in A. Mehl, A. V. Makhlajuk & O. Gabelko (eds.), Ruthenia classica aetatis novae: A Collection of Works by Russian Scholars in Greek and Roman History (Stuttgart): 215–231. Marx, F. A. (1933). “Die Quelle der Germanenkriege bei Tacitus und Dio”. Klio 26, 321–329. Mastrorosa, I. G. (2014). “Octavien à la veille d’Actium chez Dion Cassius (L., 24–30): Haranger les troupes en diffamant l’adversaire”. Exercises de rhétorique 3, 1–13. McDermott, W. C. (1949). “Vettius Ille, Ille Noster Index”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 80, 351–367. McDougall, J. (1991). “Dio and his Sources for Caesar’s Campaigns in Gaul”. Latomus 50, 616–638. McKechnie, P. (1981). “Cassius Dio’s Speech of Agrippa: A Realistic Alternative to Imperial Government?”. Greece & Rome 28/2, 150–155.

Bibliography

329

Meier, C. (1980). Res publica amissa: Eine Studie zur Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Frankfurt. Meier, C. (1995). Caesar. Berlin. Meister, C. (1955). Die Gnomik im Geschichtswerk des Thukydides. Winterthur. Meister, K. (1990). Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung: Von den Anfangen bis zum Ende des Hellenismus. Stuttgart. Melber, E. (1891). Der Bericht des Dio Cassius über die gallischen Kriege Caesars, Vol. 1: Die Kriege mit den Helvetieren und gegen Ariovist. Munich. Mette, H. J. (1961). “Livius und Augustus”. Gymnasium 68, 269–285. Meyer, P. (1891). De Maecenatis oratione a Dione ficta. Diss. Berlin. Micalella, A. M. (1986). La Fonte di Cassio Dione per le Guerre Galliche di Cesare. Lecce. Millar, F. (1961). “Some Speeches in Cassius Dio”. Museum Helveticum 18, 11–22. Millar, F. (1964). A Study of Cassius Dio. Oxford. Millar, F. (1984). “The political character of the classical Roman Republic, 200–151 BC”. Journal of Roman Studies 74, 1–19. Millar, F. (2001). Rome the Greek World, and the East: Volume 1: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution. Chapel Hill. Millar, F. (2005). “Rome in Greek Culture: Cassius Dio and Ulpian” in L. Troiani & G. Zecchini (eds.), La cultura storica nei primi due secoli dell’impero romano (Rome): 17–40. Minas-Nerpel, M. & Pfeiffer, S. (2010). “Establishing Roman Rule in Egypt: The Trilingual Stela Of C. Cornelius Gallus From Philae,” in K. Lembke, M. Minas-Nerpel & S. Pfeiffer (eds.), Tradition and Transformation. Egypt under Roman Rule (Leiden & Boston): 265–298. Mommsen, T. (1874). Römisches Staatsrecht. Vol. 2.1. Cambridge University Press reprint 2010. Cambridge. Montecalvo, M. S. (2014). Cicerone in Cassio Dione: elementi biografici e fortuna dell’opera. Lecce. Morgan, T. (1998). Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds. Cambridge. Morrison, J. V. (2006). Reading Thucydides. Columbus, Ohio. Morstein-Marx, R. (2004). Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge. Morstein-Marx, R. & Rosenstein, N. (2010) (eds.). A Companion to the Roman Republic. 2nd edition. Chichester. Moscovich, M. J. (1992). “The political context of Dio Cassius Fr. 70.2–3”, Ancient History Bulletin 6/1, 18–23. Münzer, F. (1910). “Q. Fufius Calenus (Fufius 10)”, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 7.1, 204–207. Münzer, F. (1927). “Q. Lutatius Catulus (Lutatius, 8)”, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 13.2, 2082–2094.

330

Bibliography

Nawijn, W. (1931). Index Graecitatis, Vol. 5. Berlin. = Boissevain, U. P. (1895–1931) (ed.). Cassius Dio Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum quae supersunt. Berlin. Németh, A. (2010). Imperial Systematization of the Past. Emperor Constantine VII and His Historical Excerpts. Diss. Central European University, Budapest. Németh, A. (2013). “The Imperial systematisation of the past in Constantinople: Constantine VII and his Historical Excerpts” in J. König and G. Woof (eds.), Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge): 232–258. Nicolet, C. (1984). “Augustus, Government, and the Propertied Classes” in F. Millar & E. Segal (eds.), Caesar Augustus. Seven Aspects (Cambridge): 89–128. Nicolet, C. (2004). “Dictatorship in Rome” in P. Baehr & M. Richter (eds.), Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism (Cambridge): 263–278. North, J. (2010). “The Constitution of the Roman Republic” in R. Morstein-Marx & N. Rosenstein (eds.), A Companion to the Roman Republic (Chichester): 256–277. O’Gorman, E. (2000). Irony and Misreading in the ‘Annals’ of Tacitus. Cambridge. Oakley, S. P. (1998). A Commentary on Livy Books VI–X. 2: Books VII–VIII. Oxford. Oakley, S. P. (2005). A Commentary on Livy Books VI–X. 3: Book IX. Oxford. Ogilvie, R. M. (1965). A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5. Oxford. Ooteghem, J. Van (1954). Pompée le Grand. Bâtisseur d’Empire. Brussels. Osgood, J. (2018). Rome and the Making of a World State, 150 BCE–20 CE. Cambridge. Palm, J. (1959). Rom, Römertum und Imperium in der Griechischen Literatur der Kaiserzeit. Lund. Parker, G. (2008). The Making of Roman India. Cambridge. Pelling, C. (1979). “Plutarch’s Method of Work in the Roman Lives”. Journal of Hellenic Studies 99, 74–96. Pelling, C. (1983). “Review of Manuwald, Cassius Dio und Augustus”. Gnomon 55, 221–226. Pelling, C. (1997). “Biographical history? Cassius Dio on the Early Principate”, in M. Edwards & S. Swain (eds.), Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (Oxford) 117–144. Penella, R. (2011). “The Progymnasmata in Imperial Greek Education”. Classical World 105, 77–90. Perry, B. E. (1940). “The Origin of the Epimythium”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 71, 391–419. Philipps, D. A. (1997). “The Conspiracy of Egnatius Rufus and the Election of Suffect Consuls under Augustus”. Historia 46/1, 103–112. Philippson, R. (1938). “Philiscus (Philiscus 8)”, Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 19.2, 2384. Pitcher, L. V. (2011). “Characterisation in Ancient Historiography” in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Malden, MA): 102–117.

Bibliography

331

Pitcher, L. V. (2012). “Cassius Dio” in I. De Jong (ed.), Space in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden & Boston): 257–268. Ramage, E. S. (2001). “The bellum iustum in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico”. American Journal of Philology 89/1, 145–170. Ramsey, J. T. (2016). “How and Why Was Pompey Made Sole Consul in 52 BC?”. Historia 65/3, 298–324. Ranke, L. Von (1824). Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514. Leipzig. Rawson, E. (1975). “Caesar’s Heritage: Hellenistic Kings and their Roman Equals”. Journal of Roman Studies 65, 148–159. Reardon, B. P. (1971). Courants Littéraires Grecs dans les IIe et le IIIeme siècles après J.-C. Paris. Rees, W. (2011). Cassius Dio, Human Nature, and the late Roman Republic. Diss. Oxford. Reinhold, M. (1988). From Republic to Principate: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History, Books 49–52 (36–29 BC). Atlanta. Reinhold, M. & Swan, P. M. (1990). “Cassius Dio’s Assessment of Augustus” in K. A. Raaflaub, M. Toher, & G. W. Bowersock (eds.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (Berkeley) 155–173. Resnick, P. (1997). Twenty-First Century Democracy. Montreal. Rice Holmes, T. (1911). Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul. 2 Vols. London. Rich, J. W. (1989). “Dio on Augustus”, in A. Cameron (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (London): 86–110. Rich, J. W. (1990). Cassius Dio. The Augustan Settlement (‘Roman History’ 53–55.9). Warminster. Rich, J. W. (2004). “Fear, Greed, and Glory: The Causes of Roman War Making in the Middle Republic” in C. Champion (ed.), Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources (Chichester): 46–66. Rich, J. W. (2010). “Deception, lies and economy with the truth: Augustus and the establishment of the Principate” in A. J. Turner, J. H. K. O. Chong-Gossard & F. J. Vervaet (eds.), Private and Public Lies. The Discourses of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden & Boston) 167–191. Rich, J. W. (2011). “Structuring Roman History: The Consular Year and the Roman Historical Tradition”. Histos 5, 1–43. Rich, J. W. (2016). “Annalistic Organisation and Book Division in Dio’s Books 1–35” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 271–286. Rich, J. W. (2019). “Speech in Cassius Dio’s Roman History, Books 1–35” in C. BurdenStrevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.), Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 217–284.

332

Bibliography

Richardson, J. (2001). “The Administration of Empire” in J. Crook, A. Lintott & E. Rawson (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 9. The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–43 BC. 2nd edition (Cambridge): 564–598. Roberto, U. (2009). “Byzantine Collections of Late Antique Authors: Some Remarks on the Excerpta Historica Constantiniana” in M. Wallraff & L. Mecella (eds.), Die Kestoi des Julius Africanus und ihre Überlieferung (Berlin): 71–84. Rodgers, B. (2008). “Catulus’ Speech in Cassius Dio 36.31–36”. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 48, 295–318. Ross Taylor, L. (1950). “The Date and the Meaning of the Vettius Affair”. Historia 1/1, 45–51. Ruiz, U. E. (1981). Debate Agrippa-Mecenas en Dion Cassio. Respuesta Senatorial a la Crisis del Imperio Romano en Época Severiana. Madrid. Russell, D. A. (1963). “Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus”. Journal of Roman Studies 53/1–2, 21–28. Schettino, M. (2006). “L’histoire archaïque de Rome dans les fragments de Dion Cassius” in E. Caire & S. Pittia (eds.), Guerre et diplomatie romaines (Aix-en-Provence): 61–75. Schwartz, E. (1899). “Cassius (40)”. Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 3.2, 1684–1722. Scullard, H. (2002). A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC. London. Shapiro, S. O. (2000). “Proverbial Wisdom in Herodotus”. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 130, 89–118. Sherwin-White, A. N. (1973). The Roman Citizenship. 2nd edition. Oxford. Sherwin-White, A. N. (1984). Roman Foreign Policy in the East, 168 BC to AD 1. London. Shotter, D. (1974). “Cn. Cornelius Cinna Magnus and the Adoption of Tiberius”. Latomus 33, 306–313. Simons, B. (2009). Cassius Dio und die römische Republik. Untersuchungen zum Bild des römischen Gemeinwesens in den Büchern 3–35 der Ῥωμαϊκά. Berlin. Sion-Jenkis, K. (2000). Von der Republik zum Prinzipat: Ursachen für den Verfassungswandel in Rom im historischen Denken der Antike. Stuttgart. Sordi, M. (1971). “Cassio Dione e il VII Libro del De Bello Gallico di Cesare” in L. Ferrero (ed.), Studi di Storiografia Antica in Memoria di L. Ferrero (Turin): 167–183. Speyer, W. (1956). “Zur Verschwörung des Cn. Cornelius Cinna”. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 99, 277–284. Stadter, P. (1980). Arrian of Nicomedia. Chapel Hill. Stadter, P. (2007). “Biography & History” in J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Chichester): 1082–1107. Steel, C. (2006). Roman Oratory. Cambridge. Steel, C. (2013). The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC. Edinburgh. Stekelenburg, A. V. Van (1971). De redevoeringen bij Cassius Dio. Diss. Leiden.

Bibliography

333

Stekelenburg, A. V. Van (1976). “Cassius Dio and Lucan as Heirs to Livy: The Speech of Julius Caesar at Placentia”. Acta Classica 19, 43–57. Stockton, D. (1965). “Primus and Murena”. Historia 14/1, 18–40. Stone, A. M. (2008). “Greek ethics and Roman statesmen: de officiis and the Philippics”, in T. Stevenson & M. Wilson (eds.), Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology (Auckland): 214–239. Strasburger, H. (1977). “Geschichte und Politik in Altertum” in H. Fenske, W. Reinhard, & E. Schulin (eds.), Historia Integra. Festschrift für E. Hassinger (Berlin): 33–50. Swain, S. (1991). “The Reliability of Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists”. Classical Antiquity 10/1, 148–163. Swain, S. (1993). “Thucydides 1.22.1 and 3.82.4”. Mnemosyne 46/1, 33–45. Swain, S. (1996). Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250. Oxford. Swan, P. M. (1987). “Cassius Dio on Augustus: A Poverty of Annalistic Sources?”. Phoenix 41, 272–291. Swan, P. M. (1997). “How Cassius Dio Composed his Augustan Books: Four Studies”. Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt 2.34.3, 2524–2557. Swan, P. M. (2004). The Augustan Succession: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History Books 55–56 (9 BC–AD 14). Oxford. Syme, R. (1939). The Roman Revolution. Oxford. Syme, R. (1958). “Pseudo-Sallust”. Museum Helveticum 15, 46–55. Syme, R. (1964). Sallust. Cambridge. Treadgold, W. (2013). The Middle Byzantine Historians. Basingstoke. Ungern-Sternberg, J. Von (2014). “The Crisis of the Republic” in H. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic. 2nd edition (Cambridge): 78–100. Urso, G. (2005). Cassio Dione e i magistrati. Le origini della repubblica nei frammenti della ‘Storia romana’. Milan. Urso, G. (2013). Cassio Dione e i sovversivi. La crisi della repubblica nei frammenti della ‘Storia romana’ (XXI–XXX). Milan. Urso, G. (2016a). “Cassius Dion témoin de traditions disparues: les premiers siècles de la République” in V. Fromentin, E. Bertrand, M. Coltelloni-Trannoy, M. Molin, & G. Urso (eds.), Cassius Dion: nouvelles lectures. 2 Vols. (Bordeaux): 143–158. Urso, G. (2016b). “Cassius Dio’s Sulla: exemplum of cruelty and republican dictator”, in C. H. Lange & J. M. Madsen (eds.), Cassius Dio: Greek intellectual and Roman politician (Leiden & Boston): 13– 32. Urso, G. (2018). “Cassio Dione e le fonti pre-liviane: una versione alternativa dei primi secoli di Roma” in C. Burden-Strevens & M. O. Lindholmer (eds.) Cassius Dio’s Forgotten History of Early Rome (Leiden & Boston): 53–75. Usher, S. (1969). The Historians of Greece and Rome. London.

334

Bibliography

Van Der Blom, H. (2011). “Pompey in the Contio”. Classical Quarterly 61/2, 553–573. Vervaet, F. J. (2010). “Abrogating despotic power through deceit: the Pompeian model for Augustan dissimulatio” in A. J. Turner, J. H. K. O. Chong-Gossard & F. J. Vervaet (eds.), Private and Public Lies. The Discourses of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden & Boston): 133–166. Vielberg, M. (2016). “Ciceros Staatsschrift und die philosophische Tradition der Verfassungsdebatte bei Cassius Dio und Philostrat.” Wiener Studien 129, 233–256. Vio, F. R. (2000). Le voci del dissenso: Ottaviano Augusto e i suoi oppositori. Padua. Vlachos, N. P. (1905). “Demosthenes and Dio Cassius”. Classical Review 19/2, 102–106. Vlastos, G. (1953). “Isonomia”. American Journal of Philology 74/4, 337–366. Vrind, G. (1923). De Cassii Dionis Vocabulis Quae ad Ius Publicum Pertinent. The Hague. Walbank, F. W. (1957–1979). A Historical Commentary on Polybius. 3 Vols. Oxford. Walbank, F. W. (2002). Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections. Cambridge. Wallace-Hadrill, A (1981). “The Emperor and His Virtues”. Historia 30/3, 298–323. Wallace-Hadrill, A. (1982). “Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King”. Journal of Roman Studies 72, 32–48. Webb, R. (2001). “The Progymnasmata as Practice”, in Y. L. Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden & Boston): 289–316. Welch, K. (2019). “Cassius Dio and the Virtuous Roman” in J. Osgood & C. Baron (eds.), Cassius Dio and the Late Roman Republic (Leiden & Boston): 97–128. Wiater, N. (2010). “Speeches and Historical Narrative in Polybius’ Histories: Approaching Speeches in Polybius” in D. Pausch (ed.), Stimmen der Geschichte: Funktionen von Reden in der antiken Historiographie (Berlin). Wiater, N. (2014). “Polybius on Speeches in Timaeus: Syntax and Structure in Histories 12.25A”. Classical Quarterly 64/1, 121–135. Williamson, C. (2005). The Laws of the Roman People: Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic. Michigan. Winterling, A. (2009). Politics and Society in Imperial Rome. Chichester. Wiseman, T. P. (1971). New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C.–A.D. 14. New York. Wiseman, T. P. (1979). Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature. Leicester. Woodman, A. J. (1988). Rhetoric in Classical Historiography. London. Yakobson, A. (1992). “Petitio et Largitio: Popular Participation in the Centuriate Assembly of the Late Republic”. Journal of Roman Studies 82, 32–52. Zawadski, R. (1983). “Die Konzeption der römischen Staatsverfassung in der politischen Doktrin des Cassius Dio”. Analecta Cracoviensia 15, 271–318. Zecchini, G. (1978). Cassio Dione e la Guerra Gallica di Cesare. Milan. Zielinski, T. (1912). Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte. 3 Vols. Leipzig.

Index Afranius, L. 65–66, 177, 201–202 Agrippa-Maecenas Debate (52.2–40)  19, 35–53, 182n.11, 197n.21, 207–209, 220–223, 268–272, 295–300, 313–315 Agrippa, M. Vipsanius On the Republic (52.2–13) 15, 40–45, 99, 124–125, 186, 220–221, 268–269, 295–297 Public services of 211–214, 221, 225, 243, 310 Agrippa, Menenius On the plebeian secession (frg. 16.10–11)  34n.125, 94, 122, 159–160 Alba Longa 51, 228–229, 297 Albinus, Sp. Postumius 161 Ambassadors Speech to the Senate (frg. 12.4–5b)  95–97, 100, 157–159, 166 Ambustus, M. Fabius 216, 219, 229 Annalistic historiography 137, 141, 141n.289, 192n.1 Antonius, M. Published response to Cicero 90 Speeches of At Actium (50.16–22) 126 Funeral oration for Caesar (44.36–49) 7–9, 205–206, 231, 237–242, 314 Appian 16, 100, 101, 102, 105–106, 170, 172–173, 191n.148, 196, 242, 251, 256–258, 286–287, 294 Aristotle 116, 120, 133 Arrian 76 Asinius Pollio 89, 92, 105 Asprenas, L. Nonius 187 Attic See: Hellenism Augustus At Perusia 191n.148 Dio’s attitude toward 178n.94, 182, 190–191, 306ff. Res Gestae 30, 94–95, 108–111, 179, 184, 205, 300, 308–310 Speeches of Dialogue with Livia (54.14–21) 127, 184, 187–190, 226–227

On marriage and procreation (56.2–9) 37n.5, 69–70, 146, 184 Recusatio imperii (53.3–10) 108–111, 126, 177–182, 210f., 224–225, 272–273, 312–313 Success, causes of 50–52, 99, 127, 150, 182, 185–191, 208–214, 225–227, 243–247, 270–275, 297–300, 308ff. Auaritia 17 Bibulus, M. Calpurnius 250, 286, 305 Boudicca On the emperor Nero (62.3–6) 184 Britain See: Caesar, C. Julius Brutus, D. Junius 139, 308 Brutus, L. Junius On foundation of Republic (frg. 12) 20, 69, 95–100, 108, 127, 131, 142, 157–159, 162, 181, 191, 313–314 Caecus, Ap. Claudius 2, 4, 5, 34n.127 Caepio, Q. Servilius 217 Caesar, C. Julius  In Britain 205, 236–237, 241–242, 263 In Gaul 100–102, 172, 233–236, 240–241, 254, 264–265 In Lusitania 171, 232–233, 238–240, 253, 263 Monarchy of 51, 202–203, 289–290, 297 Speeches of Harangue at Vesontio (38.36–46)  12–13, 94, 100–104, 146, 171–174, 204–205, 219, 235n.144, 240, 265–267, 302 To mutineers at Placentia (41.27–34)  105–107, 125–126, 237 To mutineers at Rome (42.52–54)  105–107 To Senate (43.15–18) 174–177, 288–290 Caesar, L. Julius 137, 177 Calatinus, A. Atilius 283–284 Calenus, Q. Fufius Invective against Cicero (46.1–28) 89–92 Caligula (Gaius) 185, 315

336 Camillus, M. Furius 282 Caracalla (Antoninus) 23–24, 28–29, 36, 142, 184 Carthage 14, 17, 19, 20, 33, 86, 160, 162, 193, 218, 223, 226, 235, 236, 256 Debate concerning (Zonar. 9.30.7–8)  163–164, 267 Cassius Apronianus 23 Cassius Clemens To Septimius Severus (75[74].9) 184 Cassius Dio Life and career of 21–31, 54 Political and philosophical views of  17–18, 27–31, 41, 47, 121–131, 214ff., 250ff., passim Working methods of 25, 36–148, 183–185 See also: Roman History Cassius Longinus, C. 139, 308 Cato Censorius, M. Porcius 163–164, 267 Cato Uticensis, M. Porcius 15–16, 43, 224, 229, 233, 237, 239–240, 286–287, 304–305 Catulus, Q. Lutatius Maior 285 Catulus, Q. Lutatius Minor Against the lex Gabinia (36.31–36a) 15, 43, 44, 63–69, 85–88, 130, 210–211, 218–219, 259–264, 282–286 Cestius Pius, L. 72 Cicero, M. Tullius As rhetorical model 30, 72–93 Dio’s attitude towards 55–56, 72, 144 Speeches of Dialogue with Philiscus (38.18–29)  53–60, 69, 146 Invective against Antonius (45.18–47) 59, 79–84, 91–92, 146, 185–186 On the Amnesty (44.23–33) 6–9, 15, 159, 202–204, 228, 231, 237, 242, 252, 290–293 Cincinnatus, L. Quinctius 281 Cineas Dialogue with Milo (frg. 40.31) 3 Proposals to the Senate (Zonar. 8.4.9–12) 1–2 Cinna, L. Cornelius 78, 188, 204, 260 Cinna, C. Helvius 242 Cinna Magnus, Cn. Cornelius 187f., 226 Cities (Greek) Dio’s attitude toward 24–26

Index Dio’s travels in 22–23 See also: Maecenas, C. Cilnius Ciuilitas 46, 50–52, 71, 108, 182, 209, 211–212, 222, 225, 300, 306, 312 Civil war Dio’s experience of 21–23 Republican, causes of 000 Claudius 32, 76, 184 Clementia 110, 177, 184, 187–191, 227n.111, 310 Clodius Pulcher, P. 43, 53–57, 60, 90–91, 135, 140, 222 Comitia See: Elections Commodus 21, 184 Competition, political 35, 40, 42n.17, 44, 46, 122, 124, 147, 180, 192n.1, 195, 197–200, 204, 210, 214, 243–245, 250, 257–258, 270, 274, 295 Coriolanus, C. Marcius 127–129, 131 Cossus Arvina, A. Cornelius 281 Crassus, M. Licinius 56, 67, 202, 222, 230–231 Cunctator, Q. Fabius Maximus 282 Cursor, L. Papirius 16, 281–282 Curtius, M. Self-sacrifice (frg. 30.2–4) 37n.5, 69–70, 146, 161 Demosthenes 26, 30, 90, 92, 149, 150, 191, 261, 261n.45 Dictatorship 18, 275–300 In other authors 277–281 Origins of 275, 279–282, 284–285 Diodorus of Sicily 10–11, 12n.192, 14, 34n.128, 134 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5, 14, 30–31, 93–94, 95–98, 157–158, 160n.38, 278f., 294 Dolabella, P. Cornelius 242 Drusus, M. Livius 217, 223 Dynasteia 107, 129, 165, 168, 170, 176–177, 179, 181, 199, 219, 228, 242, 252, 257, 262, 265, 269, 279, 284, 288, 297, 300 Education See: Hellenism, Progymnasmata, Rhetoric Elagabalus 23 Elections 54, 65–66, 141n.289, 209, 233, 243–245, 248, 270–271, 286–287, 306

337

Index Empire See Roman Republic, The Epimythia See: Fabula Epithumia (ἐπιθυμία) 101, 167, 171, 195, 227–247, 254 Equality, republican 17, 35, 41–42, 121–126, 131, 147, 185n.118, 197–200, 203–204, 206, 208, 214, 217–218, 244 Excerpta Constantiniana 32–33 Exempla M. Aemilius Scaurus 308–309 Q. Caecilius Metellus Creticus 269 L. Cornelius Cinna 78, 204 P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus 295–296 L. Cornelius Sulla 44, 63, 176, 204, 259–260, 269, 283–285, 288–289, 292, 308–309 M. Furius Camillus 295 C. Julius Caesar 44, 204, 208, 269, 295–296, 309 C. Marius 44, 63, 86, 100, 103, 176, 204, 259–260, 269, 288–289, 292, 309 Cn. Pompeius Magnus 44, 49, 204, 269, 309 C. Pompeius Strabo 204 Pyrrhus of Epirus 104, 235–236 Q. Sertorius 44 C. Sosius 308–309 Fabricius Luscinus, C. Response to Pyrrhus (frg. 40.33–38) 3–5, 159, 161, 208, 216, 219, 236 Fabula Defined 131–134 Narrative structuring device 134–143 Faustus, L. Memmius 177 Fortune Mutability of 35, 42, 53, 65, 67–68, 98–99, 121, 127–131, 137–143, 165, 192–195, 217, 228, 288, 310–311 Fulvia 60 Gabinius, A.  On the lex Gabinia (36.27–28) 43, 62–63, 73–76, 169–170, 201 Galba, S. Sulpicius 274 Gallus, C. Cornelius 43, 274 Gaul See: Caesar, C. Julius

Geminus, Cn. Servilius 281 Glabrio, M’. Acilius 135 Gracchi, The 67, 127, 129–131, 138, 140, 147, 196, 200, 215–217, 222, 223, 249, 251, 257, 303, 305, 306 Hadrian On the adoption of Antoninus Pius (69.20.2–5) 184 Hannibal 34n.126, 192–193, 282 Hellenism 23–25, 28–30, 54, 57–58, 68, 92–93, 120, 163–164, 197, 261 Herodotus 22n.81, 112n.192, 118, 134, 197 Hesiod 246 Hortensius Hortalus, Q. 61n.83, 85, 88, 89, 146 Human nature 17–18, 20, 42, 63, 112–144, 193–200, 207, 214–215, 223, 227–229, 237, 243, 246, 259, 274 Hybrida, C. Antonius 55, 231, 231, Imperia extraordinaria 18, 20, 44, 60–69, 85–88, 93, 98, 218f., 248, 252–275, 279, 282, 284, 294, 301ff. Imperii consuetudo 20, 48, 63–64, 253–277, 295, 302, 315 Invectiva in Ciceronem 90 Isomoiria (ἰσομοιρία) See: Equality Isonomia (ἰσονομία)  See: Equality Julia Domna 28, 142–143, 227n.110 Julianus, M. Didius 21–22, 30 142 Julius Proculus On Romulus’ disappearance (frg. 6.1aa) 152–154 Land reform See: Laws Laws leges agrariae 54, 301–304 lex Antonia 293–294 lex Clodia 56 lex Gabinia 12–13, 18, 44, 60–69, 166–170, 250, 258–264, 282–286, 301 lex Genucia 255 leges Iuliae 70n.106, 305 lex Manilia 61, 72–77, 85, 87, 88, 144 lex Oppia 193

338 Laws (cont.) lex Valeria de provocatione 278 lex Vatinia 267, 301 lex Vilia annalis 255–256, 259 Legati Of Pompeius 65–66, 218f., 222, 262 Lepidus, M. Aemilius 6, 138, 243 Libertas 16, 20, 209f., 245n.172, 248, 262, 265, 271, 277, 278, 284, 293, 296, 297, 302, 305 Lipari, Battle of 216 Livia Dialogue with Augustus (54.14–21) 127, 184, 187–190, 226–227, 310 Dio’s attitude toward 187, 227 Livy 14, 16–17, 20, 30, 93–94, 97, 106–107, 114, 134, 141n.289, 151–156, 160, 192–194, 216, 246, 252, 277–278, 317 Lucian 10–11, 116, 133 Lucullus, L. Licinius 55, 134–137, 144, 230, 237 Lusitania  See: Caesar, C. Julius Luxuria 17, 193, 246, 314 Maecenas, C. Cilnius As wise advisor 186–187, 310 On monarchy (53.14–40) 45–53, 198, 208–209, 221–223, 264–275, 297–300 Recommendations for the poleis 24–26 Macrinus, M. Opellius 23, 26, 142–143 Marcellus, C. Claudius 206, 222 Marcius Rex, Q. 136 Marcus Aurelius Education of 28, 76n.117 On Avidius Cassius’ rebellion (72[71].24–26) 184 Marius, C. 44, 48, 63, 64, 67, 69, 86, 98, 100, 103, 127, 140, 168, 175n.82, 176, 177n.93, 204, 222, 249, 259–261, 263, 269, 285, 288, 289, 292, 293, 300, 302, 309, 315 Menander 119–120 Messalla Corvinus, M. Valerius 139 Metellus Celer, Q. Caecilius 65–66, 201–202 Metellus Creticus, Q. Caecilius 230, 269 Mettius Fufetius 228–229 Metus hostilis 17, 163–164, 193–194, 246, 256, 314 See also: Carthage, Sallust, Tacitus

Index Mithridatic Wars, The 134–136, 228, 260–261 Monarchy Dio’s view of 18, 20, 113, 124, 208–209, 279–281, 312 Moralising 12, 36–38, 112–114, 118–144, 192–247 Octavius, C. See: Augustus Otho 141–142, 195 Otho, L. Roscius 64 Ovid 187 Paideia See: Hellenism Parrhēsia (παρρησία) 55–56, 58–59, 60, 149–150, 185–191, 311–312 Paulinus, M. Lollius 243 Pera, M. Junius 282 Pertinax, P. Helvius 21, 142 Phaedrus 133–134 Pharsalus, Battle of 67–68, 98, 130, 136f., 171, 174, 215, 263–264 Philiscus Dialogue with Cicero (38.18–29) 53–60, 188 Identity of 53–54 Philostratus, L. Flavius 23, 28n.105, 133 Philotimía (φιλοτιμία) 24, 35, 44, 47, 102, 129, 167, 171–173, 193, 195, 198, 215–227, 230, 234–236, 241, 245–247, 252, 257–258, 302 Phthonos (φθόνος) 35, 47, 53, 66–67, 121, 130, 167, 196–214, 215–217, 224, 226, 230, 245–247, 252, 258, 263, 287, 292, 299, 302 Piso Calpurnianus, M. Pupius 56, 59, 65–66 Plato 16, 53, 58, 149, 223–224, 293 Plautianus, C. Fulvius 143 Pleonexia (πλεονεξία) 82, 107, 128, 195, 199–200, 227–242, 245–247, 296 Plutarch 5, 86, 87, 90, 97, 100–103, 105, 118, 152, 153, 169, 172, 196, 223, 251, 284, 286–287 Polybius 10–11, 35–36, 39, 116–117, 250–251 Pompeius Magnus, Cn. Demise of 67–68, 98, 130, 136–137, 263 Early career of 62–63, 168

Index Entry into triumvirate 67, 201–202 On the lex Gabinia (36.25–26) 62, 77–79, 166–169, 201, 258 Pompeius Magnus Pius, S. 139, 308 Primus, M. Antonius 43, 190–191, 274 Progymnasmata 61, 115–119, 132–134, 144–147 See also: Fabula, Sententia Ptolemy XII Auletes 231 Punic Wars, The 160–161, 192–193, 216, 235–236, 251, 256 Pyrrhus of Epirus 1–5, 104, 159, 208, 219, 235–236 Quintilian 10, 115–116, 119, 291n.148 Recusatio imperii 60, 64, 77–78, 108–111, 126, 146, 152n, 166–170, 175–184, 201, 205, 210–213, 218, 224, 258, 272, 298, 307, 312–313 Regulus, M. Atilius 160 Rhetoric Ambiguity of 15–16, 20, 27–28, 30, 99, 104f., 151–159, 162–181, 231–242, 313–314 Dio’s training in 21–23, 114–119 In classical historiography 10–14 Power of 2–4, 11, 21–22, 30 Roman History, The Composition, dates of 21n.78 Criticisms of 12–15, 26, 30, 36–38, 70–71, 73, 92–93, 107, 112 Lost portions of 11–12, 62, 168–169, 249, 260–261 Narrative, sources of 36, 93–95, 251–252 Speeches, sources or models of 9, 36, 70–111, 290–291 Appian, Bellum Ciuile 105–106 Augustus, Res Gestae 108–111 Caesar, de Bello Gallico 100–104 Caesar, de Bello Ciuili 107, 205–206 Cicero, de Imperio Gnaei Pompei  60–62, 72–79, 284 Cicero, Philippicae 79–92 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 95–98 Livy, ab Urbe Condita 153, 155–156, 160

339 Plutarch, Vita Romuli 153 Plutarch, Vita Caesaris 100–101 Transmission of 32–34, 153 Roman Republic Decline, causes of 14–21, 306ff. Command structure 18–20, 43–44, 48, 104, 248–305 Dictatorship 18–19, 275–300 Dissensus 35n.131, 217–218, 223–224 Expanse of empire 104, 198–200, 230–242, 244–245, 248–305 Inequalities 300ff. Moral explanations 17–18, 20, 192–247 See: Dynasteia, Epithumia, Imperii consuetudo, Luxuria, Metus hostilis, Philotimia, Phthonos, Pleonexía Reactionism, conservatism 300–305 Rhetorical culture 9, 15–16, 20, 58–60, 104–108, 149–191, 231–242 Romulus 16–17, 97, 113–114, 122, 152–154, 199–200, 204, 223, 281 Rufus, M. Minucius 282 Rullianus, Q. Fabius 216 Sallust 16–17, 20, 30, 73, 86, 87, 93, 95, 151, 192–195, 231, 246, 284 Saturninus, C. Sentius 243 Scipio Aemilianus, P. Cornelius Speech on youth (frg. 70.2–3) 18, 162–165, 217, 236, 252, 256–258, 301–302 Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius 20, 236, 252 Scipio Nasica, P. Cornelius 163–164 Second Sophistic, The See: Hellenism Seneca 30, 187–188 Sententia Defined 117, 119–120 Dio’s use of 119–131 In other authors 120–121 Septimius Severus 22, 30, 175n.82 Servius Tullius 154–156 Severus Alexander 25 Social War, The 249, 260–261 Sources See: Roman History, The

340 Speeches See: Roman History, The Spurius Maelius 281 Stasis 47, 114, 192n.1, 204, 217, 223, 242–244, 249, 270, 274, 289, 296, 306–307, 311, 313 Suetonius 9n.31, 105–106, 187, 190, 251–254, 277, 307, 315 Sulla Felix, L. Cornelius Character, transformation of 63, 67, 98, 129–130, 140, 260–261, 310–311 Dictatorship of 137–138, 175, 189, 249, 255, 276ff., 284–286, 292–293 Felicitas of 308–311 Superbus, L. Tarquinius 20, 281 Tacitus 16–17, 20, 32, 76, 105, 110, 181–182, 194–195, 227, 246, 316 Tanaquil Address to the people (Zonar. 7.9)  154–156 Tarentum 1, 3, 5, 129 Thucydides 11, 16, 26, 30, 35, 39, 54, 60, 73, 92, 116, 118, 120–121, 131, 149, 163, 194–197, 200, 235n.144, 246

Index Tiberius Funeral oration for Augustus (56.56.35–41) 20, 98–99, 184–185, 307–315 Titus Lartius 276, 279, 281, 284 Triumvirates, the 67, 126, 138–139, 189, 202, 220, 229, 263, 296–297, 308 Tullus Hostilius 228–229 Tyranny 47, 51, 121, 175–177, 188–189, 275–300 Valerius Maximus 87, 170, 284 Varro, M. Terentius 139 Velleius Paterculus 86, 87, 170, 284 Vettius Affair, The 55 Vindex, C. Julius 274 Vitellius 141, 195 Vulso, C. Manlius 193 Xenophon 54, 60, 118, 134 Xiphilinus 184–185 Zonaras 32–34, 156, 160, 163, 256, 282