Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography 9789004445086, 9004445080

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Notes on Contributors
References and Abbreviations
Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series
Introduction: Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography
Part 1 Coming to Terms with the Principate
Chapter 1 Velleius Paterculus and the Battle of Actium
Chapter 2 In Short, the Republic: Florus and the (Re)Written Republic
Chapter 3 Principatus ac Libertas!? Tacitus, the Past and the Principate of Trajan
Part 2 Intertextuality and Intratextuality
Chapter 4 “Making History”: Constructive Wonder (aka Quellenforschung) and the Composition of Caesar’s Gallic War (Thanks to Labienus and Polybius)
Chapter 5 When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes … Livy (and Polybius) on the Gallic Sack of Rome
Chapter 6 Livy’s Faliscan Schoolmaster
Chapter 7 From Thrasea Paetus to Calgacus – or Was It the Other Way Around? An Example of Tacitean Intratextuality
Part 3 The Frontiers of Historiography
Chapter 8 The Staging of Death: Tacitus’ Agrippina the Younger and the Dramatic Turn
Chapter 9 Tiberius and Tears: Grief and Genre
Chapter 10 Migration and Mobile Memory in the Roman Historical Digression
Chapter 11 Epilogue: History in Pompeii
Index Nominum et Rerum
Index Locorum

Citation preview

Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography Edited by

Aske Damtoft Poulsen Arne Jönsson

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Clio, muse of history, ca. 240 AD. Detail of a 10,36m × 5,92m mosaic from the Roman villa near present-day Vichten in Luxembourg. Collection of the National Museum of History and Art Luxembourg, Photographer: Christof Weber. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Usages of the past in Roman historiography (Conference) (2018 :  Lund, Sweden) | Damtoft Poulsen, Aske, editor, author. | Jönsson, Arne,  editor. Title: Usages of the past in Roman historiography / edited by Aske Damtoft  Poulsen, Arne Jönsson. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2021] | Series: Historiography of  Rome and its empire, 2468–2314 ; volume 9 | These questions formed the  backbone of a conference entitled “Usages of the Past in Roman  Historiography”, which took place at Lund University 11–12 January  2018—Preface. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020046127 (print) | LCCN 2020046128 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004445024 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004445086 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Rome—Historiography—Congresses. | Rome—History—Errors,  inventions, etc.—Congresses. | Historians—Rome—Attitudes—Congresses. Classification: LCC DG205 .U83 2018 (print) | LCC DG205 (ebook) | DDC  937.0072—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046127 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046128

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-2314 isbn 978-90-04-44502-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44508-6 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Aske Damtoft Poulsen and Arne Jönsson. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 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. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii Notes on Contributors ix List of Figures xii References and Abbreviations xiv Historiography of Rome and Its Empire Series xv Carsten H. Lange and Jesper M. Madsen Introduction: Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography 1 Aske Damtoft Poulsen

Part 1 Coming to Terms with the Principate 1 Velleius Paterculus and the Battle of Actium 25 Roberto Cristofoli 2 In Short, the Republic: Florus and the (Re)Written Republic 40 Rachel Lilley Love 3 Principatus ac Libertas!? Tacitus, the Past and the Principate of Trajan 69 Kai Ruffing

Part 2 Intertextuality and Intratextuality 4 “Making History”: Constructive Wonder (aka Quellenforschung) and the Composition of Caesar’s Gallic War (Thanks to Labienus and Polybius) 91 Christopher B. Krebs 5 When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes … Livy (and Polybius) on the Gallic Sack of Rome 115 Ulrike Roth

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6 Livy’s Faliscan Schoolmaster 146 Christina Shuttleworth Kraus 7 From Thrasea Paetus to Calgacus – or Was It the Other Way Around? An Example of Tacitean Intratextuality 169 Aske Damtoft Poulsen

Part 3 The Frontiers of Historiography 8 The Staging of Death: Tacitus’ Agrippina the Younger and the Dramatic Turn 197 Rhiannon Ash 9 Tiberius and Tears: Grief and Genre 225 Johan Vekselius 10 Migration and Mobile Memory in the Roman Historical Digression 262 Kyle Khellaf 11 Epilogue: History in Pompeii 298 Anne-Marie Leander Touati Index Nominum et Rerum 327 Index Locorum 335

Preface How did Roman historians use, and manipulate, the past? What did they seek to accomplish by participating in its re-creation, what tools did they have at their disposal to do so, and which underlying conceptualisations of history can we glimpse behind their efforts? These questions formed the backbone of a conference entitled “Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography”, which took place at Lund University 11–12 January 2018. Inspired by Christina S. Kraus’ 2014 article “Long Ago and Far Away … The Uses of the Past in Tacitus’ Minora”, participants were encouraged to explore late republican and early imperial historiographical texts through the inclusively ambiguous concept “usage of the past”. Welcoming both close readings of specific passages and panoramic discussions of broader issues in the study of Roman historiography, the conference aimed to facilitate debate not only about the literary-rhetorical nature of historiography, i.e. how past textualised events provided a framework within which new historical texts were (consciously or unconsciously) placed and given meaning, but also about conceptualisations of historical change during transformative periods of Roman history, i.e. how portrayals of the past might reveal unstated assumptions about the passing of time and indicate expectations of the future. The raison d’être of the current volume was to provide participants with the opportunity to develop their arguments further by drawing on the feedback received and discussions begun at the conference; to seek answers to the questions raised and debated, but not – due to the usual constraints of such academic gatherings – given the necessary time to mature through re-reading, re-thinking, and re-phrasing. Moreover, since we felt that certain areas of Roman historical writing were not adequately covered at the conference, two additional scholars were invited to contribute: Christopher Krebs (University of Stanford) has done so with a paper on Julius Caesar’s reworking of Labienus’ report on his campaign along the Seine; Roberto Cristofoli (University of Perugia) with a paper on Velleius Paterculus’ engagement with earlier traditions in his treatment of the Battle of Actium. While the papers of the volume cover a wide range of themes and writers, their shared point of departure from the concept “usage of the past” constitutes its red thread. The following introductory chapter will outline the key themes of the volume, situate it within previous research on usages of the past and/in Roman historiography, and present its papers.1 1 Some of the papers presented at the conference have been published elsewhere: Ellen O’Gorman’s paper on “Sensing the Republic in Tacitus” has been published as

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The editors would like to express their gratitude to a number of people, foundations, and academic institutions without whom/which neither the conference nor this volume would have seen the light of day. Firstly, the financial costs of the conference were shouldered by Thora Ohlssons Stiftelse, Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, Sven och Dagmar Saléns Stiftelse, and Harald och Tonny Hagendahls Stiftelse. These also contributed to fund translation and preliminary proof-reading of certain papers for the volume. Secondly, Carsten Hjort Lange and Jesper Majbom Madsen, the editors of Brill’s “Historiography of Rome and its Empire” series, provided invaluable help and guidance in getting the volume ready for publication. Excellent feedback was delivered by the anonymous reader appointed by them. Thirdly, work on the volume was carried out at various academic institutions, each of which deserves a special thanks: while the foundation of the project was laid at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University and major advances were made at the Swedish Institute in Rome, it would not have reached its present, felicitous conclusion were it not for the time and serenity offered by a two-year fellowship at the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Bristol University, courtesy of the Carlsberg Foundation. Fourthly, and finally, heartfelt thanks are due to all those who have taken part in the making of the volume as authors (also for their significant efforts as internal reviewers), proof-readers, translators, artists, and last, but not least, participants at the conference. Arne Jönsson and Aske Damtoft Poulsen

“Conspicuous Absence: Tacitus’ de Re Publica” in Elena Giusti’s and Tom Geue’s (eds.) Unspoken Rome (Cambridge, 2019); Dennis Pausch’s paper on “Livy’s Battle in the Forum between Roman Monuments and Greek Literature” may be found in Kaj Sandberg’s and Christopher Smith’s (eds.) Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome (Brill, 2018); and the observations and arguments presented by Edwin Shaw in his paper on “Talking and not talking about Carthage in Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum” are currently finding their way into his forthcoming monograph Sallust and the Fall of the Republic: Historiography and Intellectual Life at Rome, also to be published in Brill’s “Historiography of Rome and its Empire” series.

Notes on Contributors Rhiannon Ash Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Merton College, Oxford, and Professor of Roman Historiography, Oxford University. She publishes widely on Latin prose narratives but has special research interests in Tacitus. Her other research interests include ancient epistles, Greek and Roman biography, battle narratives, paradoxography, Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Pliny the Elder, and Pliny the Younger. She has previously co-edited Classical Quarterly and now co-edits (with John Marincola and Tim Rood) Histos, the electronic journal of Ancient Historiography. Roberto Cristofoli Professor of Roman History at the University of Perugia. Besides many papers published in scientific journals, in proceedings and in miscellaneous books on various aspects of Roman history and of Latin literature, he has written four monographs devoted to the last decades of the Roman Republic (and his current research activities also focus on this period of Roman history), as well as other monographs devoted to Caligula, to Constantine, and to the food and the role of dietetics in ancient Rome. Aske Damtoft Poulsen Carlsberg Foundation Internationalisation Fellow at Bristol University, where he is working on a project on “Peace and Power in the Roman Principate”. Having done his BA and MA in Classical Studies at Oslo University, he graduated from Lund University in 2018 with a thesis on Accounts of Northern Barbarians in Tacitus’ Annales and spent the academic year 2018/2019 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish Institute in Rome. He has published articles on (the lack of) mercy in Virgil’s Aeneid, on the language of freedom and slavery in Tacitus’ Agricola, and on side-shadowing devices in Tacitus’ Annals 1–2 (in de Gruyter’s forthcoming Ancient and Modern Philosophies of History, ed. A. Turner). Arne Jönsson Professor emeritus in Latin at Lund University and former vice-chairman of the board of the Swedish Institute in Rome and the Villa San Michele Foundation on Capri. He has specialised in historical-philological research with editions and studies on St. Birgitta of Sweden, Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, Sophia Elisabet Brenner (Sweden’s first woman poet), and the Linnaeus disciple Daniel Rolander. In 2017 he edited (with Gregor Vogt-Spira, Marburg

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University) a collection of articles entitled The Classical Tradition in the Baltic Region: Perceptions and Adaptations of Greece and Rome for Olms Verlag. Kyle Khellaf Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Classics at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches courses on Greek civilization, classical receptions, comparative theories of empire, and gender and sexuality in antiquity. He has recently published articles on Polybius’ digressions and the Roman poet Propertius, and is guest-editing a special issue of the journal Ramus on Deleuze, Guattari, and the classics. His current book project, The Paratextual Past, examines how digression fundamentally shaped Greco-Roman historiography. Christina Shuttleworth Kraus Thomas A. Thacher Professor of Latin at Yale University. She has research interests in commentaries and the commentary tradition, Latin historiography and biography, and Latin prose style. She serves on the advisory boards of Brill’s ‘Historiography of Rome and Its Empire’ and of ‘Trends in Classics’ (de Gruyter), and was a co-founder of the Yale Initiative for the Study of Antiquity and the Premodern world (now ARCHAIA). She has recently published (with C.A. Stray) Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly Genre (2016), and (with Marco Formisano) Marginality, Canonicity, Passion (2018). Christopher B. Krebs Associate Professor of Classics at Stanford University. He studied classics and philosophy in Berlin, Kiel, and Oxford and has been teaching classics at Stanford since 2012. He works in the fields of intellectual history, Greek and Roman historiography, and Latin philology, and is the author of two books on Tacitus, including A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (2011), and the co-editor of two volumes on Greek and Roman historiography, including The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (2018). He is currently finishing a commentary on Caesar, Bellum Gallicum VII for Cambridge University Press. Anne-Marie Leander Touati Senior professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University. Her main research interests are in Roman art, message transmission through artistic expression, image narratives and syntactic organisation of iconography, and reception studies. She is head of two research projects in progress: One is the publication and study of all marble objects, ancient pieces, and early-modern emulations in the Swedish Royal collections at the end of

Notes on Contributors

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the 18th century. A large part of the collection, acquired from the estate of the late Giovanni Batista Piranesi, includes an array of decorative marbles. The other, begun while she was Director of the Swedish Institute in Rome (1997– 2001), revisits a city-block in Pompeii that was unearthed in the 19th century. Its aim is to give a comprehensive documentation and historical analysis of life lived in “Insula V1” through close study of its standing structures. Rachel Lilley Love Assistant Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, where she works on Roman historiography, specialising in minor and so-called “sub-literary” forms of historical writing. She graduated from Yale University in 2019 with a thesis on historical epitomes in the Livian tradition. Her current book project is on Latin historical epitomes and the Livian tradition. Ulrike Roth Reader in Ancient History at Edinburg University. She works on slavery from the Roman republican to the early medieval period, with a particular focus on non-urban forms of slave exploitation as well as the role of enslaved women in the Romans’ slave system. She is also interested in the ways in which slavery was conceptualised in antiquity, and especially how attitudes to slavery and freedom have shaped Greek and Roman historiography. This interest has led to an ongoing engagement with the Roman historian Livy, from which her contribution to this volume springs. Kai Ruffing Professor of Ancient History at the University of Kassel. He studied History and Latin Philology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, where he received his PhD in Ancient History in 1997. He has also held positions in Heidelberg and Marburg, where the qualification of a professor was conferred on him in 2005. His main research interests are the economic and social history of the Ancient World, the contacts between the Mediterranean World and the Ancient Near East, the history of the Roman Empire, classical receptions and last, but not least, ancient historiography. Johan Vekselius Postdoctoral researcher in Ancient History at Stockholm University, where he works on politics in ancient Rome. He wrote his dissertation on tears and weeping in Roman political culture at Lund University. His current project uses contemporary political science theories to further our understanding of populism and the people in the Roman world, while he continues his work on the representation of emotions and emotional displays in ancient literature.

Figures 3.1 RIC II Nerva 86. Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster. M2086. Photo: Robert Dylka 74 3.2 RIC II Trajan 343. Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster. M2129. Photo: Robert Dylka 75 4.1 Map of Labienus’ Campaign by the Seine, by French officer and archaeologist Eugène Georges Henri Céleste Stoffel (1821–1907) 98 5.1 Schematic representation of Roman success as a rising trend in Polybius 133 5.2 Graphic representation of the triangular relationship between the Gallic Sack, tyche and Roman rule in Polybius 134 6.1 Left: “Camillus and the Schoolmaster of Falerii”, by Domenico Corvi (1721–1803). Right: “School-boys flogging the School-master”, by John Leech (1817–1864) 148 8.1 “The Shipwreck of Agrippina”, by Gustav Wertheimer (1847–1902). Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 2007 199 9.1 Portrait head of Emperor Tiberius, Villa San Michele, Anacapri, Island of Capri, Italy. Photographer: Pelle Bergström. With kind permission from SKARP agent AB 226 10.1–5 Five images by Tony de los Reyes which constitute part of his series entitled Border Theory: (10.1) “System of Logical Abuse/Blue Green”, 2017; (10.2) “rio grande/colorscale 4”, 2014; (10.3) “illuminated river/flujo libre”, 2012; (10.4) “rio grande/colorscale 9”, 2014; (10.5) “rio bravo/rancho el comedor”, 2014. Images reprinted with the generous permission of the artist 263 11.1 Monumental entrance to the House of the Little Bronze Bull (V 1,7), Pompeii, second century BC. Photo: Hans Thorwid. Photogrammetry: Carolina Larsson. 3D reconstruction: Stefan Lindgren 299 11.2 Riot in the Amphitheatre fresco from House I 3,3, Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 112222. Courtesy of the photographer: Carole Raddato 303 11.3 Detail of Riot Fresco, north of the amphitheatre. Photo: Carole Raddato 306 11.4 Detail of Riot Fresco, in the arena. Photo: Carole Raddato 307 11.5 Detail of Riot Fresco, by the city wall south of the amphitheatre. Photo: Carole Raddato 307 11.6 Detail of Riot Fresco, missiles thrown from the exterior terrace of the summa cavea on opponents in the street below. Photo: Carole Raddato 308

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11.7 Earthquake reliefs in previous onsite display in the House of Caecilius Iucundus (V 1,26), Pompeii. Photo: Ernest Nash. Fototeca Unione, American Academy in Rome. Image used courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford 312 11.8 Earthquake reliefs in onsite display before 1927. Watercolour by Luigi Bazzani. Reproduction published in A. Maiuri, Pompeii, Novara 1929. Source: www.romeinspompeii.net/bazzani.html 313 11.9 Re-cycled column in the garden of Caecilius Iucundus. Photo: Hans Thorwid, Swedish Pompeii Project. Courtesy of Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei 317 11.10 Corinthian capital re-cycled in the masonry of the second floor of the north garden portico of the House of Caecilius Iucundus. Water colour by the Swedish architect Isac Gustaf Clason, 1884. Photo: Linn Ahlgren, Swedish Pompeii Project. Courtesy of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm 318

References and Abbreviations References to ancient texts follow, whenever possible, the Oxford Latin Dictionary (OLD) for Latin texts and the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ) for Greek texts. Common abbreviations include:

“BNP” for Brill’s New Pauly (2002–2011), edited by H. Cancik, H. Schneider & M. Landfester, English edition by C.F. Salazar. “LCL” for Loeb Classical Library, wherefrom many translations are taken.

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 the 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.

Introduction: Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography Aske Damtoft Poulsen

…

Sino ad allora avevo pensato che ogni libro parlasse delle cose, umane o divine, che stanno fuori dai libri. Ora mi avvedevo che non di rado i libri parlano di libri, ovvero è come si parlassero fra loro. Alla luce di questa riflessione, la biblioteca mi parve ancora più inquietante. Era dunque il luogo di un lungo e secolare sussurro, di un dialogo impercettibile tra pergamena e pergamena, una cosa viva, un ricettacolo di potenze non dominabili da una mente umana, tesoro di segreti emanati da tante menti, e sopravvissuti alla morte di coloro che li avevano prodotti, o se ne erano fatti tramite. Umberto Eco, Il Nome della Rosa: Quarto giorno, Terza

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Origins and Aims of the Volume

Few pieces of writing illustrate better than Eco’s description of murmuring parchments the literariness of history: that the past, for all its action-packed events, is textual – and intertextual. If we accept that history is made up of stories, that stories are preserved (primarily) in the shape of texts, and that texts make sense in relation to other texts, then our understanding of the past would appear to depend on our understanding of the interactions between texts. While texts cannot help but interact with one another, interactions among them may also be the result of authorial intent and designed to achieve certain purposes, whether that is to legitimate (or denigrate) a socio-political order, to corroborate (or question) the validity of a moral system, or to promote (or undermine) a collective identity among a group of people. In these cases, one might speak of “usages of the past”: how a text – or its author, depending on one’s epistemological persuasion – uses other texts in order to make sense of past events for present purposes. The current volume includes eleven papers on such usages of the past in Roman historiography and other forms of

© Aske Damtoft Poulsen, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445086_002

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historical writing,1 asking where they might be found, what they look like, how they function, and for what purposes they are employed. The theoretical foundations of the volume are those laid down by T.P. Wiseman and A.J. Woodman as part of the ground-breaking “rhetorical turn” in the study of ancient historiography.2 While not every paper collected here shares the unapologetically literary approach pioneered by Wiseman and Woodman, they all appreciate the inherent literariness of Roman historical texts. In the (recent) words of Christopher Smith, “the Roman knowledge of their past cannot be distinguished from their invention of it; the very act of writing down history constructs stories, imposes interpretation and encourages debate.”3 Thus, whether the value we ascribe to these texts derives ultimately from a wish to reconstruct the events they narrate, to access the minds of their creators and the moments of their creation, or to explore them as works of political thought and/or literary art, we need to elucidate the parameters within which they were created. We need to understand how they work as texts.4 The title of the volume highlights the attention paid by its contributors to the literary nature of Roman historiography and its interpretive consequences. With “usage”, we wish to underline that narratives of the past are always constructed, always ideological. By pluralising the word (“usages”), we wish to highlight the multitude of ways in which and purposes for which past events can be used to create meaning in and for the present. 1 As noted in the preface, the conference from which the volume originated was focused more narrowly on Roman historiography. While the editors have chosen to retain “historiography” in the title of the volume, they concede that its field of inquiry could also be described with the more inclusive term “historical writing”. Given that ancient historiography was closely related to other genres (cf. esp. part three, “The Frontiers of Historiography”), it was felt that a nuanced appreciation of its usages of the past ought to take the fuzziness of these generic boundaries into consideration. The current volume, then, includes discussions also of Caesarian commentarii, Augustan poetry, Tiberian inscriptions, Trajanic coins, and even some Pompeian frescoes. 2 Wiseman 1979; Woodman 1988. The theoretical roots of the “rhetorical turn” – also known as the “Wiseman-Woodman revolution” – were formed in the wake of Hayden White’s work on the rhetorical elements of historical writing. As noted by White, the transformation of past events into a narrative entails the construction of a plot. The historian not only decides which events to include but is also responsible for sewing them together into a coherent whole. This construction of plot is the most obvious act of fictionalisation carried out by the historian, since by it she decides what the events mean: to the events she adds the story (White 1973, esp. 1–42). For an all-out attack on Wiseman, Woodman, and their successors, see Lendon 2009. For more nuanced appraisals of the “rhetorical turn” in ancient historiography, see Feldherr 2009, 6–8; Laird 2009; Marincola 2009; Levene 2010; Ash 2012, 10–11. 3 Smith 2018, 7. 4 Cf. Innes 2000, 1–5.

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This, indeed, is the main aim of the volume: to explore the interpretive possibilities offered by an approach that starts from the premise that Roman historians consciously shaped their narratives of past events in various ways and for various purposes. The temporal span of the volume extends from Caesar (Krebs) to Florus (Love), with significant attention devoted to Livy (Roth, Kraus, Khellaf) and Tacitus (Ruffing, Damtoft Poulsen, Ash, Vekselius, Leander Touati) and somewhat less to Velleius Paterculus (Cristofoli) and Sallust (Khellaf).5 Although some papers also consult material sources (Ruffing on Trajanic coinage; Leander Touati on Pompeian frescoes), the volume deals primarily with usages of the past in literary-historical texts, asking how real-life events are turned into narratives, how narratives interact with one another, and how such interactions contribute to the creation of meaning. The volume does not pledge allegiance to any overarching theory or methodology. Its coherence lies instead in the concern of all papers with how specific visions of the past are activated and what they achieve. The papers share four interrelated assumptions: (i) the significance ascribed to past events depend on the stories told about them; (ii) socio-political conditions and the production of historical truth are intimately linked; (iii) since accounts of the past are never ideologically neutral, recounting the past is therefore a way of exercising power in the present; (iv) accounts of the past are always also usages of the past, whose study – whether in literary texts or in material culture – may reveal attitudes to the present and expectations and/or aspirations for the future. 1.1 Previous Scholarship on Usages of the Past Collectively, the papers of the volume respond to a contemporary boom within scholarship on approaches to the past in antiquity. Three major edited volumes have appeared since the 2018 conference in Lund, all of which may fruitfully be read as companion pieces to the papers collected here. Firstly, the ambitious Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World (Baines et al. 2019) comprises 24 papers covering a vast range of ancient cultures, including the Near East, Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, and even the Maya. While its wide sweep of ancient historiographical traditions is brilliantly suited to highlight how different socio-political contexts give rise to different usages of the past, the volume’s two papers on Roman historical writing can do no 5 While the most well-known (scil. best preserved) Roman historians are all treated in some way or another, some key texts and themes have been left untouched. In the former category belong Caesar’s Commentarii de bello civili, Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, and a great many books from Livy’s Ab urbe condita. In the latter belong questions of alternative history and historical hindsight, on which see Morello 2002; O’Gorman 2006a; Pelling 2013b; Low 2013; Grethlein 2013.

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more than gesture towards the variety within this incredibly rich and varied tradition.6 Secondly, Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome (Sandberg & Smith 2018) investigates “the manifold ways in which Roman writers needed and then used the past as a repository of shared knowledge, as a source of authority, and as a rich vein of inspiration.”7 While the volume devotes particular attention to the early Roman historiographical tradition as an intellectual enterprise inspired by the physical monuments of the city and Greek literary models, its papers also explore the distinction between historians and antiquarians, the usage of history by orators, the depth of historical knowledge among the populace, and the literary aspects of historiography.8 Thirdly, Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome (Gildenhard et al. 2019a) focuses more narrowly on how the past acquired new meanings during the socalled “Augustan Age”, a term whose ideology it sets out to deconstruct.9 Its ten papers employ both texts and material sources to explore how Roman politics of the past changed with the establishment of an autocratic regime. Although these three collections appeared in print too late to be taken into consideration by the contributors of the current volume, the reader will find significant overlap in terms of premises, themes, and approaches. Individually, the papers of this volume employ “usages of the past” as a concept with which to connect with and contribute to current debates in scholarship on Roman historical writing. The memory of the Republic during the Principate is treated by Roberto Cristofoli and Rachel Love, whose papers on how, respectively, an individual event and a long-term development were entrusted to the written record pursue questions that have dominated research 6 Baines et al. 2019; on Roman historiography, see the papers by Kraus and van der Blom. The volume originated from the conference “Historical Consciousness and Historiography (3000 BC–AD 600)”, which took place in September 2014 at Oxford University. 7 Smith 2018, 2. 8 Sandberg & Smith 2018. The volume draws inspiration from Feeney 2016 on how Roman literature emerged (240–140BC) through a systematic appropriation of the Greek literary tradition. On the origins of historiography in Rome, see esp. the papers by Rich, Chassignet, and Beck. On the literary aspects of historiography, see esp. the papers by Pausch, Scapini, and Di Fazio. As noted by Smith (2018, 5), “these essays, at the more literary end of the understanding of Roman historiography, are less concerned with any potential truth element in the events; the truth lies in the persuasiveness and probability of the picture constructed in the eyes of their contemporary readers.” 9 Gildenhard et al. 2019a. The volume originated from a workshop of the same title, which took place in September 2013 at Cambridge University. For another recent re-interpretation of the Augustan Age, see Morrell, Osgood & Welch 2019. Both rely heavily on Wallace-Hadrill 2008.

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on Roman imperial political culture in the first two decades of the 21st century. Especially prominent have been the monographs of Gowing and Gallia, which drew on the burgeoning field of memory studies in order to investigate how the remembered Republic manifested itself in the literary and material culture of the Principate.10 The interpretive challenges posed by the political nature of Roman historiography are tackled by Kai Ruffing, whose emphasis on the importance of the context wherein the act of historical writing takes place is a healthy reminder of Habinek’s observation that for prominent Roman politicians, “literature is politics by other means”.11 The distinction between rhetoric and “historiographical truth”, a distinction which has come to exercise somewhat of a polarising force within the scholarly community ever since the effects of the “Wiseman-Woodman revolution” started to be felt among the adherents of more traditional historical methods, plays a key role in the papers by Christopher Krebs and Rhiannon Ash, both of whom focus on the (blurring of) boundaries between historiography and other forms of literature.12 The revolutionary tremors are felt also in the papers by Christina S. Kraus and Aske Damtoft Poulsen. The former, an investigation into the interpretive potential of an historical exemplum, intervenes in the recently revitalised study of Roman exemplary ethics. At the forefront of this revitalisation stand the recent monographs of Langlands and Roller, who, in contrast to earlier treatments of exempla as conveyors of ready-made and readily applicable moral excerpts, investigate exemplarity as a cultural phenomenon and its use “as a medium for communicating … ethical issues and debates, as well as a complex of meta-exemplary principles that guide learners in handling exempla and implementing their lessons.”13 The latter, an analysis of the effects and functions of an intertext between two historical texts, joins a growing number of studies that seek to understand the peculiarities of intertextuality in a genre that aims at some form of truthful reconstruction of extratextual events. As noted by Pelling, although intertexts in historiography are fairly similar to

10 11

Gowing 2005; Gallia 2012; cf. Gildenhard et al. 2019a. Habinek 1998, 13. On the interrelationship between literature and politics in the ancient world, see also Dominik, Garthwaite & Roche 2009; Foxhall, Gehrke & Luraghi 2010. 12 On the “Wiseman-Woodman revolution”, see note 2 above. On the blurring of boundaries between historiography and other forms of writing, see Miller & Woodman 2010; Joseph 2012. 13 Langlands 2018, 4: “… These include sensitivity to the difficulties of interpreting exemplary deeds, awareness of the importance of motivation and especially awareness of situational variability, whereby virtues must be enacted differently depending on the circumstances.” Cf. Roller 2018.

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those in poetry (at least from a formal point of view), we might care about our inferences in different ways.14 The Roman historians’ use of texts written by their Greek colleagues – an issue touched upon also by Krebs – is addressed more extensively by Ulrike Roth, whose discussion of the role ascribed to Tyche/Fortuna in the rise of Rome sheds light on the nature of cross-lingual literary interactions within the realm of historical writing. While studies on intertextuality in Latin poetry have always  – instinctively, and seemingly effortlessly  – crossed the Greco-Roman divide and frequently stress the ideological dimensions of such crossings, studies on intertextuality in Roman historiography rarely venture beyond the confines of the Latin language and thus rarely remark upon the “specific ideological charge  … to Roman historians’ engagement with their Greek predecessors”.15 The emotions of the ancient world and their portrayal in literature, a sub-discipline which has generated some extraordinary interdisciplinary research in the last decade-and-a-half through the application of cognitive theory to ancient texts, are treated by Johan Vekselius. His analysis of the portrayal of grief and mourning among a variety of ancient historians highlights the political implications of the performance of an emotion which scholars have approached primarily from a philosophical perspective and mainly through the works of Cicero and Seneca.16

14 Pelling 2013a, 19; on intertextuality in Roman historiography, see also Woodman 1979; 2009; Pelling 1999; 2019, passim; O’Gorman 2006b; 2009; Damon 2010; Marincola 2010; Levene 2010 (esp. p. 85: “historiography in particular has generic features that significantly alter the terms in which allusions need to be discussed”); Haimson Lushkov 2013; Elliott 2015. On intertextuality in Roman poetry (to which such studies were originally confined), see Conte 1974/1986 and 2017; West & Woodman 1979; Barchiesi 1984; Thomas 1986; 1999; Fowler 1997/2000; Hinds 1998; Edmunds 2001. See also Ginsberg (2017, 5–16), who astutely draws on both traditions as she lays down the methodological groundwork for an intertextual reading of Roman historical drama, i.e. the Octauia. 15 O’Gorman 2009, 240. Some noteworthy exceptions are Renehan 1976 (Sallust and various Greek writers), Scanlon 1980 (Sallust and Thucydides), Rodgers 1986 (Livy and Thucydides; cf. Polleichtner 2010; Levene 2010, 111–7), Levene 2010, chap. 2 (Livy and Polybius), Champion 2015 (Livy and various Greek historians), and Spielberg 2017 (Sallust, Tacitus, and Thucydides). For broader treatments of Greco-Roman literary interactions, see Hutchinson 2013 (on the period 100BC–AD200); König, Langlands & Uden 2020 (on the “long second century”, AD96–235). 16 Spearheading the “history of emotions” movement in classical studies has been, at least for the Roman world, Kaster, whose 2005 monograph, however, mentions mourning only in passing (pp. 98–9). On grief and mourning in Cicero and Seneca see note 41 in Vekselius’ paper. On the emotions of the ancients, see also Braund & Gill 1997; Konstan 2006; Caston & Kaster 2016; Cairns & Nelis 2017.

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Kyle Khellaf discusses the role of digressions in offering spatial access to the “plupast”, a fairly recent coinage which nonetheless already drives research on the temporalities of ancient historical writing, while he simultaneously treads new theoretical ground by incorporating perspectives from migration and border studies.17 While key concepts such as “Hodology” (the study of paths) and “Thirdspace” were coined already in the latter part of the 20th century, the post 9/11 shattering of the dream of a borderless world community has made them increasingly useful – not least as counterweights to the dominance exerted by narratives of origin – for understanding the construction of identity. Finally, Anne-Marie Leander Touati’s discussion of the commemoration of historical events in the material culture of Roman Pompeii builds on the scholarly tradition that casts the spotlight on the culture of the non-elites. However, by investigating the material evidence side-by-side with key literary sources, it bridges two persistent gaps in classical scholarship: between text-based and imagebased studies and between studies of elites and non-elites.18 1.2 Some Purposes of and Four Forms Taken by Usages of the Past Historical texts may use the past for a variety of purposes, including aesthetic, personal, epistemological, and ideological. An historian may wish to legitimise a certain political order (cf. Cristofoli on Velleius Paterculus and the Augustan regime; Ruffing on Tacitus and the Trajanic regime), to come to terms with a traumatic political transformation (cf. Love on Florus’ reboot of Roman history), to turn an aesthetically barren account of events into proper historical writing (cf. Krebs on Caesar’s use of Polybius when reworking the fundamentals of Labienus’ report), to accentuate a particular conceptualisation of Rome’s path to world rule (cf. Roth on Livy’s account of the Gallic Sack of Rome; Khellaf on historical digressions on origins, migrations, and intercultural amalgamation), to highlight the perversions of autocracy (cf. Vekselius on Tacitus’ portrayal of Tiberius’ mourning behaviour; Ash on Tacitus’ portrayal of Nero’s theatricality), to question the stability of the Roman moral and political systems (cf. Kraus on Livy’s account of the fall of Veii), and to consolidate group cohesion (cf. Leander Touati on the “riot fresco” in Pompeii). Usages of 17

On “Hodology”, see de Jonge 1967–8; Turnbull 2007; on “Thirdspace”, see Bhabha 1994; Soja 1996. On the role of migration in the construction of historical identity, see Chambers 1994. On the border as a process (rather than a product) of social division, see Nail 2016. For the term “plupast”, see Grethlein & Krebs 2012. 18 On non-elite Roman art and culture, see esp. Clarke 2003; cf. Joshel & Hackworth Petersen 2014; MacLean 2018. On the depth of historical knowledge among non-elite Romans, see Sandberg & Smith 2018, part 3; on the commemoration of historical events in material culture vis-à-vis literary sources, see part 5.

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the past in Roman historical writing, in other words, were both multifarious and nefarious. While we do not seek to impose a strict definition or rigid categorisation of the diverse usages of the past in Roman historical texts, it may nonetheless be useful to offer some tentative distinctions between their possible guises in order to highlight the particular interpretabilities at play in each case. As suggested by the introductory citation from Eco’s Name of the Rose, the forms taken by usages of the past may be understood within the framework of imitation/ exemplarity and intertextuality: just as a person’s actions are judged through comparison with previous actions (whether her own or those of others), so an account of past events derives meaning from its relationships with other texts and with other parts of the same text. Four types may be distinguished. Firstly, a real-life historical person may model behaviour on that of a predecessor, as when Pompey and Caesar invoke Alexander the Great (App. 12.117, Suet. Caes. 7; cf. Vekselius on Tiberius imitating Julius Caesar’ self-control). The fact that “events themselves can allude to earlier events” constitutes, in the words of Cynthia Damon, “an additional layer of interpretability … peculiar of historiographical intertexts”.19 This kind of imitation is interpretively knotty for two reasons: (i) since it embraces a wide spectrum of self-awareness – from unconscious (a daughter taking after her mother) to deliberate imitation (an emperor modelling his rule on that a predecessor) –, its omnipresence makes it difficult to tease out the significance of individual examples; (ii) since past actions are preserved for us in the shape of texts and objects, their real-life constellations/configurations are accessible only through these. In other words, a textual representation of an act of imitation will never correspond completely to the original and may diverge significantly from it. The interpretive complexity in coming to grips with the original act of imitation may be illustrated by the emperor Claudius’ speech on extending senate membership to the primores Galliae. The words spoken during the relevant senate debate in AD48 are represented in two versions: on the fragmentarily preserved Lyons Tablet (CIL XIII 1668) and in Tacitus’ Annals (11.24). While fairly similar, there are still notable differences between the two versions. For example, Tacitus’ omission of the imperial and inclusion of the republican precedents mentioned by Claudius on the tablet obscure the emperor’s 19 Damon 2010, 381, 385. On real-life imitation and its effects in historiography, see also Marincola 2010, 265–6; Levene 2010, 85. As noted by Marincola, the sensation of timelessness in ancient societies and the consequent “unhistorical thinking” of their inhabitants would have spurred (p. 265) “a certain ‘intertextuality’ of real life”. Given that past and present (and future) were deemed qualitatively similar, examples from the past were powerful forces in the present.

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effort to draw on the authority of his predecessors. If the tablet represents what Claudius said or wished to be heard, then the historian, it would seem, has exercised his artistic license.20 Even assuming that the Lyons Tablet (in its original, unfragmented form) did provide a close report of what was said in the senate, the rare survival of such inscriptions means that we are, for the most part, restricted to the evidence provided by literary texts. Given that Tacitus’ historiographical practices are unlikely to have been exceptional, our access to original acts of imitation is correspondingly limited. Moreover, some acts of imitation preserved for us may lack real-life counterparts. They may never have existed beyond the page.21 While clear-cut examples are hard to come by (given that we can seldom exclude entirely the possibility of real-life imitation), it appears to follow naturally from the acknowledgement of the literariness of historical writing that historical writers were inclined to let their characters model themselves on their predecessors. In other words, literary characters, just like real-life people, may – at the behest of their creators – allude to or mimic others. In fact, it might even be argued that the sphere of allusive action enjoyed by literary characters is wider than 20 Griffin 1982; Kraus & Woodman 1997, 98–9. Other examples include Augustus imitating Camillus’ republicanism (Gaertner 2008, 51–2) and the emperor Otho modelling his suicide on that of Cato the Younger in order to shape his own posthumous reputation (Ash 2007, 200). See also Ginsburg (1993, 92) on the senatorial debate at Tac. Ann. 3.33–34 about whether or not the wives of governors should be allowed to accompany their husbands into their designated provinces: “We cannot know, of course, to what extent the speakers in the actual debate of AD21 alluded to and exploited the debate over the Lex Oppia as a model for themselves and to what extent Tacitus was responsible for creating such a connection between the two debates”. Even the seemingly straightforward example of Pompey donning a cloak that once belonged to Alexander the Great for his 61BC triumph is interpretively problematic. Not only is our access to the action provided by a text written 200 years later by Appian, said historian refuses to vouch for the claim (12.117): αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Πομπήιος ἐπὶ ἅρματος ἦν, καὶ τοῦδε λιθοκολλήτου, χλαμύδα ἔχων, ὥς φασιν, Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Μακεδόνος, εἴ τῳ πίστον ἐστιν, “Pompey himself was borne in a chariot studded with gems, wearing, so they say, a cloak of Alexander the Great, if anyone can believe that” (transl. by H. White 1913, LCL, slightly modified). Regardless of whether the parenthetical ὥς φασιν refers to the time of action or to the time of writing, the nature and significance of Pompey’s original action remain unclear. The cloak may (or may not) once have belonged to Alexander the Great and Pompey may (or may not) have promoted the claim that it had. 21 On the difficulty of distinguishing between real-life and literary intertextuality, i.e. to determine whether the act of imitation belongs to the doer or to the writer, see Marincola 2010, 265–6; cf. Damon (2010, 386) on Tacitus’ relation of the rumour that Nero alluded to burning Troy during the great fire in Rome (Ann. 15.39.3): praesentia mala uetustis cladibus adsimulantem, “assimilating present calamities to olden disasters” (transl. by Woodman 2004).

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that of their real-life counterparts, since they are not bound to a specific moment in time and may thus allude to both earlier and later events (cf. Damtoft Poulsen on how Tacitus’ Eprius Marcellus invokes Calgacus in his accusation against Thrasea Paetus).22 A particularly revealing example of historical characters engaging anachronistically with history is provided by Livy’s account of the 195BC debate about the potential repeal of the Lex Oppia (Liv. 34.2–7). As noted by Chaplin, both Cato and Valerius make impossible points: Cato deplores the importation of luxuries from Greece and Asia (34.4.3), despite the fact that Livy himself explicitly writes that such imports started arriving in Rome 8 years later (39.6.7); Valerius musters Cato’s own Origines against him (34.5.7), despite the fact that it had not yet been published at the time of the debate.23 Secondly, an historian may provide an account of events in which he was himself involved, as when Velleius Paterculus narrates Tiberius’ Germanic and Pannonian campaigns (Vell. 2.104.3, 111.3; cf. Krebs on Labienus’ account of his 52BC campaign; Ruffing on Tacitus’ treatment of the accessions of Nerva and Trajan; Leander Touati on historical frescoes in Pompeii). In this case, the historian engages directly with past events. Thirdly, an historian may engage with earlier texts (or earlier parts of the same text) or objects either to offer a new interpretation of the events presented therein/on, as when Livy draws on Polybius for his narrative of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps (Levene 2010, 136–44; cf. Krebs on Caesar’s use of Labienus), or to portray other events through their lens, as when Tacitus models his Sejanus on Livy’s Hannibal, who, in turn, is modelled on Sallust’s Catiline and Jugurtha (O’Gorman 2009, 238–9; cf. Krebs on Caesar’s use of Polybius; Roth on Livy’s use of Polybius; Kraus on Livy’s use of himself). In these cases, the historian engages indirectly with past events, directly with past text(s).24

22

23

24

For a more recent example of a fictional character alluding to a future historical person, see Darius III in Oliver Stone’s 2004 film Alexander. Although supposedly unintentional, the Persian king’s resemblance to Osama Bin Laden did not pass unnoticed among viewers and reviewers (Eakin 2004; Engen 2007; García Sánchez 2012, 52). Chaplin 2000, 98–9. This goes against the claim made by Damon (2010, 381) that literary characters – unlike historical actors – were unaware of “the literary and historical precedents for their situations”. On the potential of intertextuality to embrace anachronism and disrupt ordinary temporality, see O’Gorman (2006b; 2009, 239) and Damtoft Poulsen in this volume. On the effects of the disparity in knowledge about past actions and their consequences between (i) historians and their audiences and (ii) contemporary witnesses, see Marincola 2010, 268–9. A similar sort of imitation may be witnessed in art and architecture, as when the designers of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus decided to model it on Polyclitus’ Doryphorus; cf. Galinsky 1996, 24–5.

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While falling naturally under the rubric of classic intertextuality, the particular nature of historical writing means that this third type of usages of the past features its own interpretive peculiarities. In other words, although intertextuality (especially the deployment of allusions) in historical writing is fairly similar to that of poetry – unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the notorious difficulty of delineating the boundaries between the two forms of writing –, the former’s commitment to some form of truthful reconstruction of extratextual events means that we might deal with our inferences in different ways. For instance, given that conformity with an already accepted causal explanation suggests plausibility, intertextual links may increase the persuasiveness of an historical narrative. Moreover, since similarities with (or differences from) past events prompt reflection on historical continuity/discontinuity, intertextuality facilitates interpretation: it invites the reader to try and make sense of the text. While this characteristic of intertextuality is pertinent also to poetic texts, especially those which deal with a mythological, and therefore quasi-historical, subject matter, it assumes extra importance in the genre that deals specifically with interpretations and explanations of the past.25 Fourthly, an historian may re-interpret a course of events by employing a characteristic style or mode of writing, as when Tacitus opts for an annalistic format in his narrative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (cf. Love on Florus’ use of the ab urbe condita format in his re-writing of Roman republican history; Cristofoli on Velleius Paterculus’ negotiation of various earlier traditions in his treatment of the battle of Actium; Ash on Tacitus’ use of dramatic aspects in his account of the murder of Agrippina the Younger).26 Unlike the cases where meaning is created through usage of specific texts, these examples tend to involve interaction with entire traditions (cf. Cristofoli and Ash) or even cultural memory writ large (cf. Love). In these cases, the word “usage” is therefore better reserved for the “how” than the “what”, for the methods rather than the texts and/or objects used: in order to give a desired interpretation of past events, the historian uses rhetorical manoeuvres (e.g. omissions, simplifications, erasures of causal links; cf. Cristofoli and Love), generic markers (e.g. dramatic phrasing, subject matter, and plot composition; cf. Ash), and larger structuring devices (start-and-endpoints of the narrative, book divisions, digressions, choice of material and main characters/forces, including attribution of agency; cf. Love and Khellaf).

25 26

On imitation/exemplarity and intertextuality in historiography, see note 14 above. Cf. Russell 2019 on how the shape and format of the senatorially erected Fasti Capitolini promoted a specific understanding of the past that stressed the importance of the senate as a collective.

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The Papers of the Volume

The volume is divided in three parts. Part 1, “Coming to Terms with the Principate”, comprises three papers on the significance of the establishment of an imperial regime for Roman conceptions and usages of the past. The first two, which make for excellent companion pieces to Gildenhard et al. 2019a, explore how (if not the princeps, then) the imperial historian could “smooth over  – and smother  – the complexities of the historical record”.27 Roberto Cristofoli analyses Velleius Paterculus’ account of the battle of Actium and its aftermath in Egypt. By identifying the peculiarities of the Velleian narrative through comparison with other writers, he allows us not only to recover and reconstruct the diverse historical traditions surrounding the events that finalised the Caesarian revolution and inaugurated the imperial period, but also to grasp how Velleius navigated his predecessors’ narratives and pushed a proAugustan version.28 In conclusion, Cristofoli argues that Velleius’ tendency to synthesise previous traditions while simultaneously obliterating and/or altering unfortunate causal connections reveals a trademark practice in ancient historians’ usages of the past. Rachel Love’s paper investigates the legacy of ab urbe condita historiography under the Principate. Noting the preference for abbreviated forms of historical writing during the Empire, she uses Florus’ Epitome as a case study of how such abbreviated formats helped revitalise traditional modes of historical writing. In Love’s analysis, Florus navigates the same perceived breakdown in public discourse as his 2nd century contemporaries, most notably Tacitus, Juvenal, and Pliny the Younger. In contrast to his fellow historian Tacitus, however, Florus leverages the unique formal aspects of the epitome to overcome the traumatic rupture constituted by the fall of the Republic.29 Drawing on literary reactions to similar traumatic experiences, she demonstrates succinctly how Florus 27 Gildenhard et al. 2019b, 25; see esp. Biesinger on how Augustus countered the threat posed by Sallustian-style prognoses of perpetual historical decline by proposing and ritually inaugurating a new saeculum; Havener on how traditional “triumphalist history” was brought to an end with the placement of Augustus’ military exploits outside and above customary memorial practices (cf. Rich 2014; Lange 2016); and Osgood on the transformation of family history with the emergence of new political and social realities. See also van der Blom 2019 on the selective use and simplification of republican history in imperial rhetorical exercises. 28 On the historiography of the late republican civil wars, see also the papers collected in Lange & Vervaet 2019. The Battle of Actium is discussed by Lange; Velleius’ treatment of the civil wars by Cowan. 29 On the Latin literary landscape under Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian, see König & Whitton 2018.

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attempts to “reboot” the entire historical tradition by portraying the past as one of continuity rather than of fragmentation and internal power-struggles. Instead of offering new interpretations of specific events, Florus (p. 64) “offers readers a new path from the earliest days of Rome, from the earliest histories of Rome to the present.”30 In the final paper of this part, Kai Ruffing analyses Tacitus’ accounts of the back-to-back accessions of Nerva and Trajan in AD96 and 98, respectively. Ruffing dives into one of the most controversial (and longstanding) disputes in Tacitean scholarship, namely that of the historian’s political opinions. While some recent interpretations of his political outlook have resurrected the idea of a “red” – i.e. revolutionary and anti-imperial – Tacitus, Ruffing promotes the idea of a “purple”  – i.e. unashamedly monarchical  – Tacitus. He does so by challenging us to reconcile the literary and material evidence, that is, Tacitus’ devastating criticism of emperors and his highly successful political career under their reigns. Crucial for Ruffing’s argument is the claim that Roman historical writing was inherently political, meaning that (p. 70) “it is impossible to consider Tacitus’ political thoughts without taking his biography and his political career into consideration”. Since the literary artist cannot be separated from the pragmatic politician, it is unlikely that Tacitus’ historical works would contain a damning indictment of the system of government in which he himself participated actively. Ruffing concludes that Tacitus’ usage of the past was designed, on the contrary, to promote acceptance of the new Trajanic regime.31 Part 2, “Intertextuality and Intratextuality”, includes four papers exploring usages of the past in Roman historical texts through the terminology and methodology of intertextuality. Christopher Krebs discusses how Labienus’ victory against the Gauls in 52BC was “made” into history by Caesar in his Gallic Wars (7.57–62). Through close analysis of the episode, Krebs identifies un-Caesarian linguistic elements, i.e. elements that would appear to originate from Labienus’ original report. Arguing that Caesar used Labienus’ military report as a “factual source” for the events and Polybius’ account of Hannibal on the banks of the Rhone as a “source of inspiration”, he suggests that such a mix of facts and literature – which conforms to the historiographical method 30 Love’s observations may fruitfully be read together with Biesinger’s 2019 analysis of the statues on Augustus’ Forum, whose elogia tend to simplify internal history (esp. episodes of internal conflict) and focus on foreign affairs (esp. military triumphs). In the words of Biesinger, the language (p. 92) “offers a radically restricted and restrictive perspective on history that does not encourage debate and controversies”. On the memory of the Republic during the Principate, see Gowing 2005; Gallia 2012. 31 On the political nature of Roman historical writing, see also Biesinger 2019. On Tacitus’ self-presentation and the political context wherein he wrote, see Sailor 2008; Strunk 2017.

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outlined in Cicero’s de Oratore and to the careful reconstruction of which he gives the name of “constructive wonder” – may well illustrate Caesar’s modus scribendi at large. By asking how Caesar used different texts/pasts for different purposes, Krebs raises questions about the special nature of intertextuality in historical writing, especially the distinction between “factual” and “inspirational” sources. His neologism “constructive wonder” lays out a new approach for coming to grips with the literariness of Roman historical writing and the debates that have followed in the wake of the “rhetorical turn”.32 Polybius remains at centre stage in Ulrike Roth’s paper, which deals with Livy’s usage of the Greek historian in his account of the Gallic Sack of Rome. After identifying a range of parallels with Polybius’ account of the Illyrian capture of Phoenice, Roth focuses on the role played by Tyche/Fortuna, helpfully distinguishing between fortune’s general purpose (i.e. the unstoppable drive to Roman world rule) and its many particular manifestations (i.e. the causes of the outcomes of individual battles and wars). Like Krebs, she offers nuanced observations on the role(s) and function(s) of intertextuality in historical writing, especially regarding what she calls (p. 127) “the thorny question of when similarities and overlaps turn into conscious engagement and allusion”. In her analysis, Livy’s account (including its location within his oeuvre) is designed to challenge the Greek historian’s interpretation of the sack and its significance for the Roman path to world rule: rather than positing the sack as the beginning, Livy promotes a continuous and unbroken Roman history that goes all the way back From the foundation of the city.33 With Christina S. Kraus’s contribution, we let go of Polybius but hang on to Livy, whose intratextuality is now explored. Starting from the practice of exemplarity – “the mode of interpretation that dominates Rome’s historiographical imagination and its cultural memory” (p. 151) –, Kraus offers a reinterpretation of an episode that has generally been read as a typical Livian illustration of the superiority of Roman values over Greek: the account of the schoolmaster who betrays Falerii Veteres to the Romans during the central Italian wars in 396BC (5.24–28). Through a contextual analysis of the account within its narrative 32

For an example of a Roman historian (Tacitus) using a “factual” source (Velleius) for aesthetic effect and an “inspirational” source (Virgil) for factual detail, see Woodman 2009, 4–5. On the relationship between rhetoric and “historiographical truth”, see Laird 2009; Levene 2010. 33 On Livy’s engagement with Polybius, see Levene 2010, chap. 2. On Polybius’ impact on Roman historiography more generally, see Davidson 2009 (with mention of Livy on pp. 128–9). On the use of Greek models in Roman historiography, see also Pausch 2018. On the role of Tyche/Fortuna in Greek and Roman conceptualisations of historical change, see Hutchinson 2013; Hau 2016.

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context and with an eye for Livy’s use of comparatio, she reveals significant interaction both with the preceding account of the capture of Veii and the subsequent anecdote about the Liparan pirates, as well as with the narrative of internal affairs. The episode in question, she concludes, does not illustrate Roman moral superiority as much as it problematises Roman value systems. The tool used by Livy to achieve this is comparatio, whose power to ascribe significance to events makes it a driving force in his re-creation of the past.34 In the final paper of this part, by Aske Damtoft Poulsen, intratextual practices are again under scrutiny, though now within an entire corpus rather than a single book. Damtoft Poulsen investigates a parallel between Marcellus’ senate-floor accusation against Thrasea Paetus in Annals 16 and Calgacus’ famous pre-battle speech in Agricola. Notwithstanding the historical impossibility of such an allusion (with the speeches delivered in AD66 and 83, respectively), he argues that Marcellus portrays his victim as a Roman Calgacus. After deconstructing the logic on which Marcellus’ portrayal is based and the effect it has within its rhetorical situation, Damtoft Poulsen asks how Tacitus’ contemporary readers might have reacted to the comparison between one of their most celebrated martyrs and a Caledonian chieftain. Not only does the allusion serve “to deconstruct the intertwined ideologies of benevolent imperialism and imperial benevolence” (p. 186), it also demonstrates that Roman historians might (allow their characters to) engage in anachronistic allusive activities – and that the results of such activities create interpretive difficulties/ possibilities.35 Part 3, “The Frontiers of Historiography”, includes three papers on generic and geographical fusion. Rhiannon Ash explores the boundaries between historiography and drama, asking what it means “when a notorious incident from the past is presented to us in a historical narrative as if it were the finale of a staged drama unfolding before our very eyes” (p. 197). Taking her cue from Quintilian’s designation of historiography as proxima poetis (10.1.31), she analyses the dramatic aspects in Tacitus’ account of the murder of Agrippina the Younger in AD59 (Ann. 14.1–13). Through a comparison with the account of Agrippina’s death in the pseudo-Senecan Octauia (309–376), she demonstrates that Tacitus’ account is in fact the more “stagey” of the two. In conclusion, Ash suggests that Tacitus’ dramatic shaping of the murder is designed to intensify the denunciation of Nero and to satisfy the moralising agenda of his unique brand of historiography.36 34 35 36

On exemplarity and its interpretability, see Langlands 2018; Roller 2018. On the effects and functions of intertextuality in historiography, see pp. 8–11 above. On tragic motifs in accounts of early Roman history, see Scapini 2018.

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Johan Vekselius next investigates how Tiberius’ mourning behaviour was put to use by a range of different writers. While most attention is devoted to Tacitus, he also touches on the writings of Seneca, Suetonius, Cassius Dio, and the author of the Consolatio ad Liuiam, as well as the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre. Paying particular attention to generic conventions and the power of exemplarity, Vekselius demonstrates that an emperor’s expression of grief was a key element in his self-presentation. He also provides historical context for the portrayals of Tiberius’ behaviour by offering a survey of the various mourning strategies available to elite Romans when faced with the loss of family and kin, from composed self-control to extrovert weeping. In conclusion, Vekselius suggests that Tacitus mercilessly used Tiberius’ mourning behaviour as a way to criticise the emperor and to describe (what he considered) the perversions of his rule.37 Kyle Khellaf ’s contribution, the final paper in this part, draws inspiration not only from migration and border theory but also from contemporary works of art that try to catch the essence of borders and frontier spaces.38 As noted by Khellaf, a significant number of digressions in historiography deal with questions of migration, settlement, and intercultural contact and conflict. As such, they transport readers from primary narrative time to the “plupast” in order to provide aetiologies for major historical conflicts. Khellaf investigates such ethnographical and ethno-geographical digressions in Sallust and Livy (and Polybius, again), focusing specifically on how their different configurations of the “plupast” reveal different conceptualisations of historical origins and intercultural amalgamations. Noting that the disruption brought about by these digressions – through “glimpses of mixed origins, fluid timescapes, modulating attitudes about empire, and non-linear narratives” (p. 290)  – replicates their accounts of wandering, intercultural identity politics, and cultural displacement, he argues that digressions offer readers a kind of historiographical mimesis by virtue of their combined narratological dislocation and itinerant subject matter. The paper not only highlights the potential for identity politics inherent in the stories we tell of our distant past, but also opens up for a new interdisciplinary research avenue on ancient literature and border theory. The epilogue, written by Anne-Marie Leander Touati, offers a different perspective on usages of the past in the Roman world by looking primarily at material evidence from Pompeii. Asking what kind of achievements were celebrated, where, by whom, and why on a local level, she notes that 37 On tears and crying and their portrayal in ancient literature, see Fögen 2009; Hagen 2017. 38 de los Reyes, T. (2012–2018). Border Theory . See pictures on p. 263. On migration and border theory, see note 17 above.

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commemoration of historical events is relatively rare in Pompeii, significantly rarer than representations of mythological stories. Her analysis focuses on two frescoes, one depicting the AD59 riot in the amphitheatre and the other the earthquake of AD62/63. Through close “readings” of the frescoes and comparative analyses with the literary evidence (both events are treated in historiography), she pinpoints the different purposes to which commemoration of past events could be put in literary vis-à-vis material sources: while Tacitus’ interest in the riot seems to stem from its role in the downfall of Livineius Regulus, the Pompeian fresco – situated in a secluded portion of a modestly sized atrium house – was probably intended to consolidate community cohesion. Leander Touati’s discussion of these two local usages of the past not only reminds us that most ancients came into contact with the past through physical objects (to which one might perhaps add rituals), it also sheds light on the depth of historical knowledge and the functions of historical commemoration among non-elites in Roman Italy. Bibliography Ash, R. (2007). Tacitus: Histories 2, Cambridge & New York. Ash, R. (2012). “Introduction”, in R. Ash (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Tacitus (Oxford & New York): 1–35. Baines, J. et al. (eds.) (2019). Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World, Sheffield & Bristol, CT. Barchiesi, A. (1984). La Traccia del Modello: Effetti Omerici nella Narrazione Virgiliana, Pisa. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture, London & New York. Biesinger, B. (2019). “Rupture and Repair: Patterning Time in Discourse and Practice (from Sallust to Augustus and Beyond)”, in I. Gildenhard et al. (eds.), Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome (Cambridge): 81–96. Blom, H. van der (2019). “Roman Republican History in Imperial Rhetorical Exercises”, in J. Baines et al. (eds.), Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World (Sheffield & Bristol, CT): 359–375. Braund, S.M. & Gill, C. (eds.) (1997). The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature, Cambridge. Cairns, D. & Nelis, D. (eds.) (2017). Emotions in the Classical World: Methods, Approaches, and Directions, Heidelberg. Caston, R.R. & Kaster, R.A. (eds.) (2016). Hope, Joy, and Affection in the Classical World, New York.

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Chambers, I. (1994). Migrancy, Culture, Identity, London & New York. Champion, C.B. (2015). “Livy and the Greek Historians from Herodotus to Dionysius: Soundings and Reflections”, in B. Mineo (ed.), A Companion to Livy (Oxford & Malden, MA): 190–204. Chaplin, J. (2000). Livy’s Exemplary History, Oxford & New York. Clarke, J.R. (2003). Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA. Conte, G.B. (1974/1986, ed. & transl. by C. Segal). The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and other Latin Poets, London & Ithaca, NY. (orig. published as Memoria dei poeti e sistema letterario: Catullo, Virgilio, Ovidio, Lucano, Turin). Conte, G.B. (2017). Stealing the Club from Hercules: On Imitation in Latin Poetry, Berlin & Boston. Damon, C. (2010). “Déjà vu or déjà lu? History as intertext”, in F. Cairns & M. Griffin (eds.), Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar, Fourteenth Volume: Health and Sickness in Ancient Rome; Greek and Roman Poetry and Historiography (Cambridge): 375–388. Davidson, J. “Polybius”, in A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge): 123–136. de Jonge, D. (1967–8). “Applied Hodology”, Landscape 17, 10–11. Dominik, W.J., Garthwaite, J. & Roche, P.A. (eds.) (2009). Writing Politics in Imperial Rome, Leiden & Boston. Eakin, E. (2004). “Ancient Conqueror, Modern Devotees”, New York Times 26.09.2004. (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/books/ancient-conqueror-modern-devotees .html – accessed 06.07–2020). Edmunds, L. (2001). Intertextuality and the Reading of Roman Poetry, Baltimore. Elliott, J. (2015). “The Epic Vantage-Point: Roman Historiographical Allusion Reconsidered”, Histos 9, 277–311. Engen, D.T. (2007). “Oliver Stone’s Alexander: Personal Concerns and Poor Timing”, Classical Outlook 84, 113–117. Feeney, D. (2016). Beyond Greek: the Beginnings of Latin Literature, London & Cambridge, MA. Feldherr, A. (2009). “Introduction”, in A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge): 1–8. Fögen, T. (ed.) (2009). Tears in the Graeco-Roman World, Berlin & New York. Fowler, D. (1997/2000). “On the Shoulders of Giants: Intertextuality and Classical Studies”, in D. Fowler (ed.), Roman Constructions: readings in postmodern Latin (Oxford): 115–137 (orig. published in Materiali e discussioni 39, 13–34). Foxhall, L., Gehrke, H.-J. & Luraghi, N. (eds) (2010). Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece, Stuttgart. Gaertner, J.F. (2008). “Livy’s Camillus and the Political Discourse of the Late Republic”, Journal of Roman Studies 98, 27–52. Galinsky, K. (1996). Augustan Culture, Princeton.

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Gallia, A.B. (2012). Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics, and History under the Principate, Cambridge and New York. García Sánchez, M. (2012). “Soberbia y molicie: Cambises, Jerjes, Darío III Codomano y otros ilustres perdedores aqueménidas”, in F.M. Simón, F. Pina Polo & J.R. Rodríguez (eds.), Vae Victis! Perdedores en el mundo antiguo (Barcelona): 43–55. Gildenhard, I. et al. (eds.) (2019a). Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome, Cambridge. Gildenhard, I. et al. (2019b). “Attending to the Past: On the Politics of Time in Ancient Rome”, in Gildenhard et al. (eds), Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome (Cambridge): 1–36. Ginsberg, L.D. (2017). Staging Memory, Staging Strife: Empire and Civil War in the Octavia, Oxford & New York. Ginsburg, J. (1993). “In maiores certamina: Past and Present in the Annales”, in T.J. Luce & A.J. Woodman (eds.), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton): 86–103. Gowing, A.M. (2005). Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture, Cambridge. Grethlein, J. & Krebs, C.B. (eds.) (2012). Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography: The ‘Plupast’ from Herodotus to Appian, Cambridge & New York. Grethlein, J. (2013). Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography: ‘Futures Past’ from Herodotus to Augustine, Cambridge & New York. Griffin, M.T. (1982). “The Lyons Tablet and Tacitean Hindsight”, Classical Quarterly 32, 404–418. Habinek, T.N. (1998). The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome, Chichester & Princeton, NJ. Hagen, J. (2017). Die Tränen der Mächtigen und die Macht der Tränen. Eine emotionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung des Weinens in der kaiserzeitlichen Historiographie, Stuttgart. Haimson Lushkov, A. (2013). “Citation and the Dynamics of Tradition in Livy’s AUC”, Histos 7, 21–47. Hau, L.I. (2016). Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus, Edinburgh. Havener, W. (2019). “Augustus and the End of ‘Triumphalist History’”, in I. Gildenhard et al. (eds.), Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome (Cambridge), 111–131. Hinds, S. (1998). Allusion and Intertextuality: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry, Cambridge. Hutchinson, G.O. (2013). Greek to Latin: Frameworks and Contexts for Intertextuality, Oxford & New York. Innes, M. (2000). “Introduction: using the past, interpreting the present, influencing the future”, in Y. Hen & M. Innes (eds.), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge): 1–8.

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Joseph, T.A. (2012). Tacitus the Epic Successor: Virgil, Lucan, and the Narrative of Civil War in the Histories, Leiden & Boston. Joshel, S.R. & Hackworth Petersen, L. (2014). The Material Life of Roman Slaves, Cambridge & New York. Kaster, R.A. (2005). Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, Oxford & New York. König, A. & Whitton, C. (eds.) (2018). Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: Literary Interactions, AD 96–138, Cambridge. König, A., Langlands, R. & Uden, J. (eds.) (2020). Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235: Cross-Cultural Interactions, Cambridge. Konstan, D. (2006). The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Toronto. Kraus, C.S. & A.J. Woodman (eds.) (1997). Latin Historians (Oxford). Kraus, C.S. (2014). “Long Ago and Far Away … The Uses of the Past in Tacitus’ Minora”, in J. Ker & C. Pieper (eds.), Valuing the Past in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden & Boston): 219–242. Kraus, C.S. (2019). “Fabula and History in Livy’s Narrative of the Capture of Veii”, in J. Baines et al. (eds.), Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World (Sheffield & Bristol, CT): 345–358. Laird, A. (2009). “The rhetoric of Roman historiography”, in A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge): 197–213. Lange, C.H. & Vervaet, F.J. (eds.) (2019). The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War, Leiden & Boston. Lange, C.H. (2016). Triumphs in the Age of Civil War: The Late Republic and the Adaptability of Triumphal Tradition, London & New York. Langlands, R. (2018). Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome, Cambridge & New York. Lendon, J.E. (2009). “Historians without history: Against Roman historiography”, in A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge): 41–61. Levene, D.S. 2010. Livy on the Hannibalic War, Oxford & New York. Low, K. (2013). “Memoriae eximere: AD 41 and the Survival of Republicanism under the Principate”, in A. Powell (ed.), Hindsight in Greek and Roman Historiography (Swansea): 201–221. MacLean, R. (2018). Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture: Social Integration and the Transformation of Values, Cambridge & New York. Marincola, J. (2009). “Historiography”, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to Ancient History (Oxford & Malden, MA): 13–22. Marincola, J. (2010). “The Rhetoric of History: Allusion, Intertextuality, and Exemplarity in Historiographical Speeches”, in D. Pausch (ed.), Stimmen der Geschichte: Funktionen von Reden in der antiken Historiographie (Berlin & New York): 259–289.

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Miller, J.F. & Woodman, A.J. (eds.) (2010). Latin Historiography and Poetry in the Early Empire, Leiden & Boston. Morello, R. (2002). “Livy’s Alexander Digression (9.17–19): Counterfactuals and Apologetics”, Journal of Roman Studies 92, 62–85. Morrell, K., Osgood, J. & Welch, K. (eds.) (2019). The Alternative Augustan Age, Oxford & New York. Nail, T. (2016). Theory of the Border, Oxford & New York. O’Gorman, E. (2006a). “Alternate Empires: Tacitus’s Virtual History of the Pisonian Principate”, Arethusa 39, 281–301. O’Gorman, E. (2006b). “Intertextuality, Time and Historical Understanding”, in A.L. Macfie (ed.), The Philosophy of History (Basingstoke): 102–117. O’Gorman, E. (2009). “Intertextuality and historiography”, in A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians (Cambridge): 231–242. Pausch, D. (2018). “Livy’s Battle in the Forum between Roman Monuments and Greek Literature”, in K. Sandberg & C. Smith (eds.), Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome (Leiden & Boston): 279–300. Pelling, C. (1999). “Epilogue”, in C.S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden & Boston): 325–357. Pelling, C. (2013a). “Intertextuality, Plausibility, and Interpretation”, Histos 7, 1–20. Pelling, C. (2013b). “Historical Explanation and What Didn’t Happen: the Virtues of Virtual history”, in A. Powell (ed.), Hindsight in Greek and Roman Historiography (Swansea): 1–24. Pelling, C. (2019). Herodotus and the Question Why, Austin. Polleichtner, W. (2010). “Fabius, Scipio, and the Sicilian Expedition: a Practical Lesson on Reading Thucydides”, in W. Polleichtner (ed.), Livy and Intertextuality. Papers of a Conference Held at the University of Texas at Austin, October 3, 2009 (Trier): 67–92. Renehan, R. (1976). “A traditional pattern of imitation in Sallust and his sources”, Classical Philology 71, 97–105. Rich, J. (2014). “The Triumph in the Roman Republic: Frequency, Fluctuation and Policy”, in C.H. Lange & F.J. Vervaet (eds.), The Roman Republican Triumph: Beyond the Spectacle. Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementum 45 (Rome): 197–258. Rodgers, B.S. (1986). “Great Expeditions: Livy on Thucydides”, Transactions of the American Philological Association 116, 335–352. Roller, M.B. (2018). Models from the Past in Roman Culture: a World of Exempla, Cambridge. Russell, A. (2019). “The Augustan Senate and the Reconfiguration of Time on the Fasti Capitolini”, in I. Gildenhard et al. (eds.), Augustus and the Destruction of History: The Politics of the Past in Early Imperial Rome (Cambridge): 157–186.

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Sailor, D. (2008). Writing and Empire in Tacitus, Cambridge & New York. Sandberg, K. & Smith, C. (eds.) (2018). Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome, Leiden & Boston. Scanlon, T.F. (1980). The Influence of Thucydides Upon Sallust, Heidelberg. Scapini, M. (2018). “Echi dalle tragedie tebane nelle storie di Roma arcaica”, in K. Sandberg & C. Smith (eds.), Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome (Leiden & Boston): 301–321. Smith, C. (2018). “Introduction”, in K. Sandberg & C. Smith (eds.), Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome (Leiden & Boston): 1–13. Soja, E.W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Malden, MA. Spielberg, L. (2017). “Language, Stasis and the Role of the Historian in Thucydides, Sallust and Tacitus”, American Journal of Philology 138, 331–373. Strunk, T.E. (2017). History after Liberty: Tacitus on Tyrants, Sycophants, and Republicans, Ann Arbor. Thomas, R.F. (1986). “Virgil’s Georgics and the Art of Reference”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90, 171–198. Thomas, R.F. (1999). Reading Virgil and His Texts: Studies in Intertextuality, Ann Arbor. Turnbull, D. (2007). “Maps Narratives and Trails: Performativity, Hodology and Distributed Knowledges in Complex Adaptive Systems –an Approach to Emergent Mapping”, Geographical Research 45, 140–149. Wallace-Hadrill, A. (2008). Rome’s Cultural Revolution, Cambridge & New York. West, D.A. & Woodman, A.J. (eds.) (1979). Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, Cambridge. White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore, MD. Wiseman, T.P. (1979). Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature, Leicester. Woodman, A.J. (1979). “Self-imitation and the Substance of History: Tacitus, Annals 1.61–5 and Histories 2.70, 5.14–15”, in D.A. West & A.J. Woodman (eds.), Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge): 143–155. Woodman, A.J. (1988). Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: four Studies, London & New York. Woodman, A.J. (transl.) (2004). Tacitus: The Annals, Cambridge & Indianapolis. Woodman, A.J. (2009). “Introduction”, in A.J. Woodman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (Cambridge): 1–14.

Part 1 Coming to Terms with the Principate

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Chapter 1

Velleius Paterculus and the Battle of Actium Roberto Cristofoli 1

Introduction

Velleius Paterculus treated the events of Actium and the end of Mark Antony more than fifty years after they had occurred. Essentially, he could find them elaborated in three historical-ideological traditions: firstly, a tradition aligned with Augustan propaganda and ideology, which had been most significantly expressed, even before the princeps’ Res Gestae, in Horace’s Epode 9, Virgil’s description of Aeneas’ shield, and Propertius’ Elegy 4.6; secondly, a tradition hostile to Augustus, which for us is constituted by lost works and which could have been represented best in Seneca the Elder’s Historiae, fragments of which have recently emerged;1 and thirdly, a version of the events that cannot be defined as hostile to Augustus, but which was not aligned with important postulates of the historical (re-)interpretation supported by the Principate: it includes Propertius 2.16 and 3.11, and later a part of Plutarch’s tradition (Ant. 65–77), Florus (Epit. 2.21), and Cassius Dio (50.32–35, 51.5–10). However, to judge from the Livian Periochae 132–133 (which refer to books published only post excessum Diui Augusti,2 perhaps not by accident), it was precisely in the Paduan historian that the most significant elaboration of this version could be found. In Velleius’ historical work, Antony’s eastern period is re-interpreted as a sequence of failures. Velleius also notes, as do other traditions,3 that Antony sold such unhappy results as successes. For instance, Velleius seals the retreat from the Parthian campaign (2.82.3), perhaps not accidentally, by the image of the fuga of Antony from Parthia, which inevitably alluded to that of Actium (cf. 2.85.3: prima occupat fugam Cleopatra. Antonius fugientis reginae quam pugnantis militis sui comes esse maluit, “Cleopatra took the initiative in the flight; Antony chose to be the companion of the fleeing queen rather than of 1 Valeria Piano has discovered (inside Pap. Herc. 1067, first thought to contain a political oration and conserved in the Officina dei Papiri Ercolanensi in Naples) and recomposed fragments of this work: cf. Piano 2018. 2 Mss. N, P, Ry, π. 3 See Flor. Epit. 2.20.10; D.C. 49.32.1–2. For a recent discussion of Velleius’ representation of republican history, see Yakobson 2019. Cowan 2011 covers various aspects of Velleius’ historiographical project.

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his fighting soldiers”; 2.85.6: qui ad eius arbitrium direxit fugam, “since it was by her will that he had resorted to flight”).4 Octavian, for his part, as we know from other traditions, did not deny the misleadingly triumphant messages of his triumviral colleague. In the period when the final encounter between the two lone triumvirs still active on the scene was deemed inevitable (from 36BC onwards), it was, after all, not advantageous for him to present his soon-to-be opponent as someone who had become a shadow of himself, since this would have diminished the glory of a potential victory. Velleius enters into the details of the Actian events at 2.82.4. Antony, because of his passion for and nearness to Cleopatra, having identified himself with Liber Pater (Father Bacchus), and being, by now, prey to vices, licentiousness, and flattery,5 bellum patriae inferre constituit, “resolved to make war upon his country”. In his designation of the war as civil, then, Velleius for once distances himself from the Augustan propaganda. However, in his negative treatment of Antony’s eastern campaigns and emphasis on his deficient valour and moral integrity, Velleius (whose qualities as an historian should not be diminished, as was done at length in the past)6 reflects claims that must have been introduced into Octavian’s propaganda immediately preceding the conflict and spread in Greece during the last part of 32BC up to September 31BC. These claims appear to have been aimed at convincing his soldiers not to fear an enemy commander who was clearly no longer invincible. 2

The Opposing Forces

At Actium, Velleius puts Octavian at the head of the “Caesarian party” (Iulianarum partium, 2.84.1). The historian – writing when, in the words of Sir Ronald Syme, the young dux had transformed a faction into a government7 – 4 Cf. Woodman 1983, ad loc. Translations of Velleius are by F.W. Shipley 1924, LCL. 5 Cf. also 2.86.3: … post eneruatum amore eius Antonii animum, “after this leader [Antony] had become demoralized by his passion for her [Cleopatra]”. 6 Among the various examples, see esp. Lana 1952 and Syme 1978. However, no less indicative are the opinions of those who, while not considering him a propagandist, nevertheless believed, with Hellegouarc’h, that “Velleius n’est pas un historien […] c’est un écrivain de cour, comme en ont connu tous les régimes de pouvoir absolu” (1964, 684). 7 Syme 1939, 524. The terminus ante quem for the writing of Velleius’ historical work is AD30, the year in which Marcus Vinicius, the dedicatee of the work, was consul (he held the position from January 1 to June 30); according to some, the work was written in just a few months: Sumner (1970, 284) claims that he did not start working on the text before the late summer of AD29. However, the now prevailing opinion posits a long editorial work beforehand, with the references to Marcus Vinicius inserted at the very end, after his election to the consulship.

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already sees in Octavian’s coalition and followers the foundation on which he would place Rome’s “transformation within continuity” into a system of government organised differently, linking it to the legacy of Caesar and the bond with the gens Iulia in the widest sense.8 In light of the premise that Octavian’s actions – which in any case for Velleius do not constitute a substantial break with the Republic, not even in 27BC with the establishment of the Principate9 – were guided if not by the gods, as the poets might imply, then at least by fortuna,10 the historian records, as Plutarch and Dio would do in greater detail, how already the preliminary skirmishes indicated an inevitable and obvious victory for Octavian. Velleius too, then, aligns himself with the interpretation of the battle endorsed by almost all ancient traditions, including those that merged in the accounts of Plutarch and Dio: namely that the victory of Octavian and the defeat of Antony occurred at Actium. Many modern scholars, however, have attentively considered and preferred the possibility (advanced only by an isolated part of the tradition)11 that the events of 2 September 31BC actually constituted a minor success for Antony and Cleopatra, who achieved their (admittedly limited) objective of breaking through the blockade enforced by Octavian and Agrippa, escaping from the Ambracian Gulf, and returning to Egypt, where they would be able to reorganise.12 On the question of chronology in the composition of Velleius’s work, see e.g. Elefante (1999, 21–8), Yardley & Barrett (2011, xxiii–vi), and Rich (2011, 84–7), the latter of whom reaches different conclusions from those of Elefante and Yardley & Barrett. 8 On the ratification of Octavian’s right to consider himself the sole heir of Caesar, see the considerations of Woodman 1983, ad loc. 9 Vell. 2.89.4: prisca illa et antiqua rei publicae forma reuocata, “the old traditional form of the republic was restored”; cf. Christ 2003, 77: Velleius “betont dabei gerade nicht die tiefe Zäsur in der römischen Verfassung sowie in den Strukturen und der Macht verteilung des Imperiums, sondern die Kontinuität”. 10 On fortuna in Velleius’ work, see e.g. Lana 1952, 221–30; Hellegouarc’h 1964, 676–80; Domainko 2015, 77–86. 11 D.C. 50.14.3–15.4, 30.3–4; cf. Tarn 1931, 187–8. 12 Kromayer, in a famous paper (1899, 1–54) giving predominant worth to the accounts of Plutarch, Dio, and the Livian tradition (Florus and Orosius), went so far as to exclude any “betrayal” by Cleopatra (commonly attributed to the queen in all previous investigations of the battle). Based on his reading of a part of the tradition of Dio, Kromayer instead postulated that it was in fact Antony’s plan (at this point demoralised by the failing campaign, the consequent defections, and his fleet’s numerical inferiority) to break through Octavian’s naval blockade (p. 33: “… und konnte froh sein, wenn es gelang, mit Gewalt die Blockade zu sprengen und unter dem Eindrucke dieses Erfolges die hohe See zu gewinnen. Die ganze Schlacht war für Antonius nur ein Ausfalls- und Durchbruchsgefecht”) and leave the Ambracian Gulf, in order to return to and reorganise in Egypt; this theory (with few modifications) has been endorsed, among others, by Holmes (1928, 157), Carter (1970, 214: “… his primary aim remained to escape with as many ships and men

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After detailing at length – through juxtapositions that recall Prop. 4.6 (2.84.1: in hac parte … in illa; hinc … illinc; haec … illa) – the greater tonnage of Antony’s ships13 and the various defections from Antony’s camp, which, however, are as possible”), Huzar (1978, 219), Kienast (1982, 71: “Wahrscheinlich hat Antonius diese Schlacht von vornherein als Durchbruchsschlacht geplant”), Osgood (2006, 374), and Laspe (2007, 520: “Antonius führte bei Actium keine Schlacht um den Sieg, er wollte nur entkommen”: he therefore divided his fleet in an unusual manner into autonomous and unconnected fronts, in order to force Octavian to divide his own fleet in turn and with the result that holes would be created in the formation, allowing Cleopatra to escape with the war-chest; indeed this would have been the sole aim of the battle: “Antonius, Cleopatra und der Kriegskasse das Entkommen aus Octavians Würgegriff zu ermöglichen”, even though this meant sacrificing or actually betraying the fleet; hence, according to Laspe, (p. 521) “die Schlacht bei Actium ist daher das Einzige, was Marcus Antonius in diesem Krieg wirklich geglückt ist”). Ferrabino 1924, in reaction to Kromayer’s reconstruction, focusing on Horace’s Epode 9, and attributing to Antony a clear desire to engage in battle in order to defeat his enemy (470), considered Antony betrayed at Actium, not by Cleopatra, but rather by Sosius, who (like Canidius) advocated a land-battle (p. 471; cf. Plut. Ant. 63.6–7) and for this reason “retrocedette, quasi sconfitto, fin dentro il golfo” at the very moment in which Cleopatra’s sixty ships cut Octavian’s fleet in two between the center and the right wing. In 1931 Tarn put forward the theory that to this day seems to me the most satisfactory, esp. in the light of Plut. Ant. 63.8 and 64.4 (p. 188): “[Antony] had, not one plan, but two alternative plans: to win a victory if possible, but if not possible to make for Egypt”; he would have planned to wait until the wind started to blow north, and then either “[…] turn Octavian’s left, driving him southward before the wind and making his army in turn the besieged”, or, in the case of failure, return to Egypt (p. 195), as he was indeed forced to do, also because most of his soldiers would no longer have had the determination to fight and returned to port; this seems to be reflected at Hor. Epod. 9.19– 20, verses which, according to Kromayer (1933, 361–83), should be referred to previous battles. Murray-Petsas (1989, 131–3) and Lange 2011 take stock of the question, the latter of whom – arguing that Dio’s account is inconsistent and not to be trusted – shrewdly noting (p. 610): “… Kromayer’s view rests on a fundamental perversity: we are asked to believe that Antonius and Cleopatra sought the outcome that in fact led to their destruction and death”. Underlining how Antony’s situation on the eve of Actium was not as disastrous as Kromayer believed, Lange returns to the claim that (p. 611) “at Actium Antonius was fighting for victory”; Cleopatra, however, grabbed the initiative with her sudden, unplanned escape (p. 621): “Cleopatra’s action is therefore best explained by supposing that she panicked and prematurely assumed that the day was lost”. For an appraisal of the significance of the Battle of Actium, see also Fratantuono 2016. 13 Before Velleius, only Propertius (3.11.44; 4.6.47) refers to the tonnage of Antony’s ships as greater than Octavian’s (Murray-Petsas 1989, 143–51). After Velleius, Plutarch reiterates the superior tonnage of Antony’s ships (Ant. 65.7–8; 66.1–2; cf. also Flor. Epit. 2.21.5–7), while Dio on the one hand states that Octavian’s ships at Actium were equal in number to those which he had deployed against Sextus Pompey (50.19.3), but on the other describes Octavian’s ships as bigger than those of Sextus (49.1.2; 3.2; cf. App. BC 5.106): thus, either Octavian modified the ships used previously but left unchanged their number (250–260 ships: cf. Plut. Ant. 61.4 and Oros. 6.19.8–9 against the hyperbolic Flor. Epit. 2.21.5), or – as

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not ascribed to the rifts between the Roman and Egyptian components of the army, Velleius describes the different objectives of the two adversaries: Antony fought for the ruina of the world, Octavian for its salus (2.85.1). He then dwells on the disposition of the respective fleets, underlining how, contrary to the feeble Antony, Octavian ubique aderat, “was present everywhere” (2.85.2; cf. 2.85.3: omnia in altera parte fuere, dux, remiges, milites, in altera parte nihil praeter milites, “on the one side was everything – commander, rowers, and soldiers; on the other, soldiers alone”), guided by the aforementioned fortuna in his movements across the theatre of battle. According to Velleius, “the command of the right wing of Caesar’s fleet was entrusted to Marcus Lurius” (dextrum nauium Iulianarum cornu M. Lurio commissum, 2.85.2), while Plutarch ascribed its command to Octavian himself (Καῖσαρ … αὑτῷ τὸ δεξιὸν κατέλιπε, “Caesar … reserved the right wing for himself”, Ant. 65.2).14 This apparent discrepancy, however, may be, at least partly, resolved in the light of the aforementioned expression ubique aderat: Octavian moved swiftly back and forth between the parts of his fleet that were in the most difficulty. The more significant discrepancy is between Velleius’ claim that Agrippa was entrusted with the general management of the battle (commissum … Agrippae omne classici certaminis arbitrium, “Agrippa had full charge of the entire conflict at sea”, 2.85.2) and Plutarch’s assertation that he commanded only the left wing (see again Ant. 65.2). Thus, whereas in Velleius significant emphasis is put on Octavian’s contribution (yet again in virtue of the ubique aderat), in the tradition followed by Plutarch the roles of both Octavian and Agrippa, placed on each side of their battle-line, are overshadowed by that of Antony, who moves between his ships in a row-boat (έπεφοίτα πανταχόσε κωπήρει, “Antony visited all his ships in a row-boat”, Ant. 65.2). Velleius then attributes the command of Octavian’s left wing to Lucius Arruntius, who by Plutarch is instead placed – not explicitly, but nevertheless in a manner deducible by the combined remarks at Ant. 66.4–5 – at the centre of the battle-line.15 The sources differ also in their reconstructions of the command structure of Antony’s army. Velleius maintains that the fleet was entrusted to L. Gellius Publicola and C. Sosius (2.85.2), the only consulars  – along with P. Canidius, to whom was entrusted the ground troops – who remained faithful to Antony.16 Plutarch instead attributes command of the right wing to Publicola

14 15 16

Dio seems to suggest (50.23.2, 29.1–4) – Antony’s ships at Actium were bigger than those of Octavian, which in turn, years before, had been bigger than those of Sextus Pompey. Translations of Plutarch’s Life of Antony are by B. Perrin 1920, LCL. Cf. Pelling 1988, ad loc. Cf. Syme 1939, 296.

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and Antony himself (Ἀντώνιος μὲν τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας ἔχων καὶ Ποπλικόλας, “Antony had the right wing, with Publicola”, Ant. 65.1), and, unlike Velleius, states that Caelius was put in charge of the left wing, while Marcus Octavius and Marcus Insteius were at the head of the centre. According to Plutarch, it was Caelius’ left wing that initiated the battle by forcing the right wing of Octavian’s fleet to withdraw (Ant. 65.7–8). In Dio’s account (31.4), however, it is Octavian who carries out the first hostile manoeuvre.17 Velleius, for his part, refuses to tackle the problem of establishing which of the two fleets attacked first. 3

The Queen’s Escape and the Inevitability of Octavian’s Victory

Velleius fully endorses the Augustan interpretation of Cleopatra’s escape, which Antony seconded as a deserter (desertor exercitus sui factus est, “[he] became a deserter from his own army”, 2.85.3). He does not portray the escape, as did Horace at Epod. 9.30 and Florus in his Epitome (2.21.8), as the decisive event in a battle that, up to that point, could have gone either way. In Velleius’ account it appears instead as a necessary acknowledgement of the inevitability of Octavian’s victory, who had proven himself stronger. Plutarch, on the other hand, who here follows a tradition not aligned with Augustan propaganda, relates that, “although the sea-fight was still undecided and equally favourable to both sides” (ἀκρίτου δὲ καὶ κοινῆς ἔτι τῆς ναυμαχίας συνεστώσης, Ant. 66.3), Cleopatra – to the amazement of her enemies – ordered her sixty ships to set sail in order to cut through the enemy line and move towards the opening of the gulf (66.6), at which point Antony moved to a quinquereme and followed (66.7–8). Dio’s version is similar: the Severan historian too introduces his narration of Cleopatra’s escape by noting how, until that moment, the battle had been open to any outcome, with neither fleet able to prevail over the other (ἀγχωμάλου οὖν ἐπὶ πολὺ τῆς ναυμαχίας οὔσης καὶ μηδετέρων ὑπερέχειν πῃ δυναμένων τέλος τοιόνδε τι ἐγένετο, “the battle was indecisive for a long time and neither antagonist could get the upper hand anywhere”, 50.33.1);18 Cleopatra’s escape, which occurs suddenly, is here ascribed not to a precise plan – which the historian had indeed mentioned earlier – but to the impatience of a woman, and moreover of an Egyptian woman, in the face of uncertainty. The flight, regarded by other authors (e.g. Josephus) as a

17 Prop. 4.6, as far as can be deduced from the poetic framework, would seem to imply the same; see esp. v. 53. 18 Transl. by E. Cary & H.B. Foster 1917, LCL.

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fully-fledged betrayal,19 breaks the deadlock, and Antony follows the queen. Dio too, then, attributes Cleopatra’s flight and Octavian’s consequent victory not to the latter’s evident and acknowledged superiority, but rather to an error of judgment on the part of Cleopatra, whose flight compromised Antony’s position and determined a battle whose outcome was still hanging in the balance. In Velleius, then, the heroic resistance of Antony’s soldiers, even after their commander’s flight, is not intended to suggest that Antony could have won the battle if he had not fled: as mentioned above, Velleius had already stated clearly that the battle was lost for Antony’s fleet before it began (2.84.1): debellatum apud Actium, ubi longe ante quam dimicaretur, exploratissima Iulianarum partium fuit uictoria, “the decisive battle took place at Actium. The victory of the Caesarian party was a certainty long before the battle”. The dogged resistance of Antony’s soldiers  – denied only by Propertius at 4.6.51–52 in order to glorify Octavian and support the claim that Antony and Cleopatra waged a bellum iniustum – serves rather to contrast the moral integrity of Antony’s soldiers with his own licentiousness. While he did not hesitate to abandon his troops because of his passion for a foreign queen, they remained faithful to their commander-deserter to the very last. Finally, Octavian is portrayed in a most favourable light because he accords clementia to Antony’s soldiers after they have reluctantly surrendered and before they have explicitly asked for it.20 In fact, and in contrast to the portrayals of Octavian as a ruthless winner in alternative traditions (cf. D.C. 51.2), Velleius follows the historical interpretation established in Res Gestae and presents Octavian as a champion of clementia after Actium (2.86.1–2).21 He even suggests that if Octavian had been the only commander at the start of the Triumvirate or the only victor at Philippi, he would have showed the same moderation then.22 The accusation of cruelty is thus turned both implicitly (si sic licuisset, “had he been allowed to do so”, 2.86.2) and explicitly (the deaths of Decimus Brutus and Sextus Pompey, 2.87.2) against Antony: as he had done already at 2.66.1, then, Velleius overturns the tradition later recovered by Suetonius (Aug. 13.1–2), which, by highlighting the respect enjoyed by Antony even among his enemies, condemns Octavian’s ruthlessness towards the vanquished (even while acknowledging the later clemency of Augustus; cf. Suet. Aug. 51). Velleius may here be 19 Joseph. Ap. 2.5.59. 20 Cf. Rohr Vio 2000, 322. 21 Cf. Aug. RG 1.3: uictor omnibus u[eniam petentib]us peperci, “as victor I was merciful to all citizens who asked for pardon” (transl. by Cooley 2009). On Res Gestae and Velleius, see Hellegouarc’h 1980. For the suggestion that Roman historians are more likely to have consulted Augustus’ autobiography than his Res Gestae, see Lange 2019, 198. 22 Cf. Lobur 2008, 121.

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recovering elements belonging to the phase of Octavian’s propaganda immediately prior to Actium: this phase (ca. 33–32BC), in contrast to the preceding, included scathing frontal attacks against Octavian’s former triumviral colleague, though without reaching the furious tones of the speeches delivered to the soldiers during the campaign in Greece. This kind of propaganda, however, was dropped after the victory at Actium, when the retrieval of a more positive memory of Antony served to extoll the glory of the man who had defeated him, open a climate of general reconciliation with Antony’s surviving followers, and end the painful chapter of the civil wars. Velleius, then, aligned himself with the assumptions that Actium had been a battle decided in Octavian’s favour even before it began, and that Cleopatra’s escape was an acknowledgement of the futility of resistance. Both assumptions were introduced and fostered by most of the poetic sources. Horace’s Epode 9, the source chronologically closest to the battle of Actium, is the first to interpret it as a victory for Octavian and a defeat for Antony and Cleopatra: not only does it portray Octavian’s enemies as forced to withdraw by the superior strength of their opponents, it also interprets Cleopatra’s flight as the inevitable consequence of a defeat already sealed. Horace’s version, rather than being ascribed to what Ferrabino defines as an autonomous prehistoriographical version of the battle,23 constitutes in our view not only the first re-definition of the battle by Octavian’s propaganda (in fact, Horace was not even present at the battle), but also the first evidence of the departure, in Octavian’s propaganda, from accusations of licentiousness and feebleness against Antony and Cleopatra. The two adversaries are instead (partially) redeemed as defeated but worthy adversaries who were forced to give up not because of their own shortcomings, but because of the superior and unequalled strength of the future princeps. Horace would provide the same interpretation in Carm. 1.37: Cleopatra, whose fault was her excessively ambitious plans against Rome, is a brave and dauntless woman, who had the courage to face a death that snatched her away from a humiliating triumph. Virgil, in his description of Aeneas’ shield (A. 8.685–688),24 preserves Antony’s reputation untarnished in the moment he headed into battle, exone­ rates Cleopatra from any accusation of cowardice, and portrays the Roman divinities engaged in a theomachy (parallel to the battle between mortals) in which they challenge and defeat their Egyptian counterparts. This

23 Ferrabino 1924, 467–8. 24 This section of the Aeneid was probably among the first, if not the first, to take shape, around 26BC: cf. D’Anna 1957; La Penna 2005, 272, 376; Cristofoli 2008a, 195–6.

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interpretation is brought to its extreme implications in Propertius’ Elegy 4.6 of 16BC:25 Apollo, the patron of civilization and the only divinity by Octavian’s side,26 leads him to victory solely by urging him to follow his arrow, which predestines him to win a battle in which there were no cowards, but only members of a civilisation destined to prevail and members of a civilisation destined to be defeated and re-assimilated into the Roman Empire. Propertius, at this point at the peak of a progressive integration into the ideological-ethical system constituted by Augustus  – who by 20BC had positioned himself at the head of the circle of poets previously overseen by Maecenas –, aligned himself with the latest and most complete account of recent history developed by the Augustan propaganda. Among other things, this account even suggested that the ratification of Caesar’s divinity would depend on the successes of his adoptive son and portrayed the renunciation of the clash with the Parthians and the addition of a Parthian province (another aspect that could create a divergence of views between Augustus and Maecenas) as a consequence of Augustus’ wish to leave glorious endeavours to his grandchildren.27 The assumption about Cleopatra’s cowardice, which discredited her imperial plans as excessive in relation to her moral stature, however, was affirmed in other literary treatments of the Actian events: firstly, by a Propertius not yet aligned with Augustan ideology28 (Cleopatra is a lascivious woman at 3.11.30 and 39; Actium is connected to Pharsalus and presented as a final offshoot of the civil wars at 3.11.33–38), who already in Book 2 had scorned the queen’s flight as the result of a heinous love and as a prelude to plans equally craven,29 and then, at 3.11.51, by means of an effective hypallage, spoke of the fearful Nile as the landing place of the retreating ships. Subsequently, Cleopatra’s 25 Book 4 of Propertius’ Elegies, composed entirely between 20 and 16BC, reflects – both in its choice of themes and in their actual treatment – the context of the substitution of Maecenas at the head of the “Circle of poets” by Augustus himself upon the latter’s return from his eastern expedition: for the possible reasons, see Cristofoli 2014, 203–14. 26 After the battle of Actium, Apollo was honoured by Octavian in many ways, even if the raised tropaeum on the hill where his encampment and praetorium had risen was dedicated to Mars and Neptune, as is understood by the inscription placed on the façade of the lower terrace (confirmed by Suet. Aug. 18.2); see Murray-Petsas (1989, 76) with the revision of the text in Zachos 2003, 76. 27 Prop. 4.6.80–82; cf. Cristofoli 2008b, 195. 28 Books 2 and 3 of Propertius’ Elegies were composed between 28 and 21BC: in more detail, book 2 between 28 and 25BC, and book 3 between 24–23 and 21BC (cf. Fedeli 1985, 29, 157); the dating of some elegies of the latter are lowered even further by several scholars, e.g. Cairns (2006, 404), who dates 3.4 to late 20BC. 29 Prop. 2.16.39–40: hunc infamis amor uersis dare terga carinis / iussit et extremo quaerere in orbe fugam, “a base love made him [Antony] turn his ships in flight and seek refuge at the ends of the world” (transl. by G.P. Goold 1990, LCL).

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cowardice was re-affirmed (and further elaborated) by an historian not so much in opposition to Augustus – in fact, we find no redemption for Augustus’ enemies in his writing, nor is the battle of Actium interpreted any differently than a defeat of Antony –, but (much like Propertius in 2.16 and 3.11) simply an historian not in line with the premises of the victor’s propaganda: Livy. In fact, when Florus (Epit. 2.21.11) attributes the outbreak of the war against Cleopatra – considered civil,30 as in Velleius, and thus in opposition to Octavian’s claim that it had been appointed to him because he had ended the civil wars – to her request to receive Rome as a pledge of love from the lustfully subservient Antony, one may envisage a dependence on his favourite source, i.e. Livy, as attested by Liv. Per. 132 (a passage which stands at the peak of an historical-conceptual development that, as demonstrated, counted poets among its protagonists): cum M. Antonius ob amorem Cleopatrae, ex qua duos filios habebat, Philadelphum et Alexandrum, neque in urbem uenire uellet neque finito IIIuiratus tempore imperium deponere bellumque moliretur quod urbi et Italiae inferret … Marcus Antonius because of his passion for Cleopatra, by whom he had two sons, Philadelphus and Alexander, was unwilling to return to Rome or to lay down his command when his term on the Board of Three ended; he organized a campaign of invasion against Rome and Italy …31 When Florus mentions Cleopatra’s flight and, once back in Egypt, her desperate plans to save her own life by seeking other shores,32 one might think that this not very heroic version of the final phases of the queen’s existence – to 30

After his account of the capture of Alexandria and the death of Cleopatra, Florus remarks (Epit. 2.21.12) hic finis armorum ciuilium, “thus the civil wars came to an end” (transl. by E.S. Forster 1929, LCL). On Florus’ (short) treatment of the battle of Actium and its consequences, see also Love in this volume (p. 160). On the treatment of civil war in the Roman historians of the Late Republic and Early Empire, see the papers collected in Lange & Vervaet 2019. On Actium as a civil war, see also Lange 2016. 31 Transl. by A.C. Schlesinger 1959, LCL. 32 Epit. 2.21.8–9: prima dux fugae regina cum aurea puppe ueloque purpureo in altum dedit. mox secutus Antonius, sed instare uestigiis Caesar. itaque nec praeparata in Oceanum fuga nec munita praesidiis utraque Aegypti cornua, Paraetonium atque Pelusium, profuere: prope manu tenebantur, “the queen led the retreat, putting out into the open sea in her golden vessel with purple sails. Antonius soon followed her, but Caesar was hard upon his tracks. And so neither their preparations for flight into the Ocean, nor their occupation of the two promontories of Egypt, Paraetonium and Pelusium, with garrisons availed

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which a few of the traditions followed by Plutarch (Ant. 69.3–5, 73.3, 76.3–4, 83.4) and Dio (51.6, 10.4–12.5) conform, but from which, as we will see, Velleius distances himself33 – could also, in turn, be traced back to Livy. 4

The Aftermath of Actium

With chapter 87 of Book 2, Velleius moves on to events following Actium. After noting that Octavian went to Egypt immediately after Actium, he inserts the phrase ultimam bellis ciuilibus imposuit manum (“[Octavian] put the finishing touch upon the civil wars”, 2.87.1), which may be understood either as a correction of the slogan reproduced by Augustus himself in the Res Gestae (3.1), according to which he had won not a proelium but rather a bellum at Actium, or as a way of affirming that only a final settlement to a war entirely won at Actium was outstanding. Although the question is still debated among mo­ dern scholars and it has been pointed out more than once that the importance of Actium in the war was probably emphasised in Octavian’s propaganda,34 almost all the ancient traditions agree, as mentioned above, that Octavian’s victory happened at Actium. While aware that the war continued into 30BC, most of them tend to see it as practically concluded on 2 September 31BC: Velleius, for his part, turns to the ambiguous expression bello Actiaco Alexandrinoque (2.88.1), whose meaning is difficult to pin down, either “Actian-Alexandrian war” (considering them as one) or “Actian and Alexandrian war” (considering the battles in Egypt in 30BC as an almost autonomous extension to the Actian battle that had concluded Octavian’s victorious Greek campaign).35 Still, that he introduces the battle of Actium with the expression aduenit deinde maximi them aught; they were almost within Caesar’s grasp” (transl. by E.S. Forster 1929, LCL). Cleopatra’s cowardice is stressed also by Dio (Lange 2011, 619). 33 Livy is counted among Velleius’ sources: the fact that Velleius distanced himself from Livy in his treatment of these events, and already in the general planning of his work moved away from the Paduan historian by choosing to compose a compendium, obviously does not mean that he consistently distanced himself from him in the entire work. On Velleius’ sources, see Hellegouarc’h 1984, 412–7; Yardley & Barrett 2011, xxix–xxxi. 34 Against Syme (1939, 298), see e.g. Ferrabino 1924, 472 (“nulla tuttavia era deciso”); Rohr Vio 2000, 297; Cristofoli 2016, 167. Cf. Roddaz 1984, 178: “La reddition ou la destruction, dans les heures qui suivent, du reste de la flotte orientale, mais surtout, quelques jours plus tard, la soumission de l’armée d’Antoine permettront de faire entrer Actium et ses vainqueurs dans la légende, et à une habile ‘propagande’ de transformer un succès limité en victoire totale, placée, de surcroît, sous le patronage des dieux”. 35 Woodman (1983, ad loc.) affirms convincingly that Velleius “regards the Alexandrian campaign in 30 as a mere ‘mopping up’ operation”.

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discriminis dies (“then came the day of the great conflict”, 2.85.1) is indicative of the importance that he attaches to it.36 Thereafter, Velleius speaks of Antony’s suicide, describing it as carried out non segniter (“not without spirit”, 2.87.1, my translation). In this way, he redeems, at least partially, the figure of Antony the commander and gives back to the triumvir the moral vigour that he had lost.37 The same can be said of Cleopatra, who faces suicide, expers muliebris metus (“untouched by a woman’s fears”, 2.87.2), through the bite of a single asp.38 Thus, as mentioned above, Velleius opts for the version introduced by Horace (Carm. 1.37.21–32) and aligned with the Augustan propaganda: in opposition to the traditions suggesting that she considered renewed flight, he presents Cleopatra’s suicide as carried out with courage. This tradition, which preserves Cleopatra’s internal strength in the same way that it had made no mention of cowardice at Actium, may be found also in a part of Plutarch’s biography of Antony (83–86; cf. 66.3–4) as well as in Dio (51.13–14; cf. 51.6, 10.4–12.5). Velleius does not treat Octavian’s problematic situation in Rome in 30BC within the context of that year’s campaigns, postponing it until after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra. In this way, he prevents the reader from seeing the full picture, that is, that the future princeps needed to quickly put an end to the Egyptian campaign because of the emergency that demanded his presence in Rome. Furthermore, the historian does not specify the peculiar ways in which the conflicts of 30BC in Egypt were carried out: preceded by negotiations between Octavian and Cleopatra (with the exclusion of Antony), these battles were frequently cut short before they begun because the Egyptian troops surrendered without a fight, as in the case of the decisive encounter at the end of July 30BC, which preceded Antony’s suicide. Finally, Antony’s suicide is completely unrelated to the news, brought to him by Cleopatra, of her analogous decision to take her own life. As far as the queen is concerned, the manner of her suicide is disputed, and her body was never recovered.39 36 See also 2.86.1: quid ille dies terrarum orbi praestiterit, ex quo in quem statum peruenerit fortuna publica, quis in hoc transcursu tam artati operis exprimere audeat?, “Who is there who, in the compass of so brief a work, would attempt to state what blessings this day conferred upon the world, or to describe the change which took place in the fortunes of the state?”. On the conceptualisation of the Actian and/cum Alexandrian War(s) in the ancient sources, see Lange 2009, 90–3. He also (pp. 95–123) discusses the victory monument put up at Actium; cf. Lange 2016, 141–53. 37 On the “cathartic” suicide in Velleius, see Lobur 2011, 214. 38 An ample part of the tradition attests to more than one snake: cf. Hor. Carm. 1.37.27; Verg. A. 8.697; Prop. 3.11.53; Flor. Epit. 2.21.11. 39 For a reconstruction of Antony and Cleopatra’s last year, with a review of the problems, see Cristofoli 2016.

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Conclusions

In this part of Velleius’ work, then, rather than an attempt to synthesise different traditions and provide a summary, one could perhaps speak of a conscious erasure of the causal links between the events. While time and space have precluded a broader analysis in this paper, this does indeed appear to have been one of the main methods used by ancient historians to insert their own leanings and sentiments into their narratives: not so much the alteration of facts, but the negation of the relations and connections between them, in order to deprive the reader of the possibility to identify inopportune links and draw conclusions that were either unwelcome or inconsistent with the historical and class ideology wherein each of the ancient scriptores inevitably inserted himself. Bibliography Cairns, F. (2006). Sextus Propertius: The Augustan Elegist, Cambridge & New York. Carter, J.M. (1970). The Battle of Actium, London & New York. Christ, K. (2003). “Geschichtsbild und Zeitgeschichte bei Velleius Paterculus”, in T. Hantos (ed.), Laurea Internationalis. Festschrift für Jochen Bleicken zum 75. Geburtstag (Stuttgart): 61–80. Cooley, A. (2009). Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Cambridge & New York. Cowan, E. (ed.) (2011). Velleius Paterculus: Making History, Swansea. Cristofoli, R. (2008a). “Antonio e Cleopatra nell’Eneide e nell’elegia di Properzio”, in C. Santini & F. Santucci (eds.), I personaggi dell’elegia di Properzio: atti del convegno internazionale, Assisi, 26–28 Maggio 2006 (Assisi): 193–212. Cristofoli, R. (2008b). “Properzio, le insegne di Crasso e la politica orientale di Augusto”, Giornale Italiano di Filologia 60, 171–196. Cristofoli, R. (2014). “Properzio e Mecenate”, in G. Bonamente, R. Cristofoli & C. Santini (eds.), Properzio e l’Età augustea: cultura, storia, arte. Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Propertius, Assisi-Perugia, 25–27 May 2012 (Turnhout): 181–220. Cristofoli, R. (2016). “Dopo Azio: L’ultimo anno di Marco Antonio e la sorte di Cleopatra”, in A. Setaioli (ed.), Apis Matina. Studi in onore di Carlo Santini (Trieste): 167–178. D’Anna, G. (1957). Il problema della composizione dell’Eneide, Rome. Domainko, A. (2015). “The Conception of History in Velleius Paterculus’ Historia Romana”, Histos 9, 76–110.

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Elefante, M. (1999). Velleio Patercolo: I due libri al console Marco Vinicio: introduzione, testo e traduzione, Naples. Fedeli, P. (1985). Properzio: Il Libro Terzo delle Elegie, Bari. Ferrabino, A. (1924). “La battaglia d’Azio”, Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 52, 433–472. Fratantuono, L. (2016). The Battle of Actium, 31 BC: War for the World, Barnsley. Hellegouarc’h, J. (1964). “Les buts de l’œuvre historique de Velleius Paterculus”, Latomus 23, 669–684. Hellegouarc’h, J. (1980). “Les Res Gestae d’Auguste et l’Historia Romana de Velleius Paterculus”, Latomus 39, 803–816. Hellegouarc’h, J. (1984). “État présent des travaux sur l’Histoire Romaine de Velléius Paterculus”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.32.1, 404–436. Holmes, T.R. (1928). The Architect of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, Oxford. Huzar, E.G. (1978). Mark Antony: A Biography, Minneapolis, MN. Kienast, D. (1982). Augustus: Prinzeps und Monarch, Darmstadt. Kromayer, J. (1899). “Kleine Forschungen zur Geschichte des Zweiten Triumvirats, VII: Der Feldzug von Actium und der sogenannte Verrath der Cleopatra”, Hermes 34, 1–54. Kromayer, J. (1933). “Actium: Ein Epilog”, Hermes 68, 361–383. La Penna, A. (2005). L’impossibile giustificazione della storia. Un’interpretazione di Virgilio, Rome & Bari. Lana, I. (1952). Velleio Patercolo o della propaganda, Turin. Lange, C.H. (2009). Res Publica Constituta: Actium, Apollo and the Accomplishment of the Triumviral Assignment, Leiden & Boston. Lange, C.H. (2011). “The Battle of Actium: a Reconsideration”, Classical Quarterly 61, 608–623. Lange, C.H. (2016). Triumphs in the Age of Civil War: The Late Republic and the Adaptability of Triumphal Tradition, London & New York. Lange, C.H. (2019). “Augustus, the Res Gestae and the End of Civil War: Unpleasant Events?”, in C.H. Lange & F.J. Vervaet (eds.), The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War (Leiden & Boston): 185–209. Lange, C.H. & Vervaet, F.J. (eds.) (2019). The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War, Leiden & Boston. Laspe, D. (2007). “Actium. Die Anatomie einer Schlacht”, Gymnasium 114, 509–521. Lobur, J.A. (2008). Consensus, Concordia and the Formation of Roman Imperial Ideology, New York & London. Lobur, J.A. (2011). “Resuscitating a text: Velleius’ History as Cultural Evidence”, in E. Cowan (ed.), Velleius Paterculus: Making History (Swansea): 203–218. Murray, W.M. & Petsas, P.M. (1989). Octavian’s Campsite Memorial for the Actian War, Philadelphia.

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Osgood, J. (2006). Caesar’s Legacy. Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire, Cambridge & New York. Pelling, C.B.R. (1988). Plutarch: Life of Antony, Cambridge. Piano, V. (2018). “P.Herc. 1067: alcune considerazioni bibliologiche”, in Atti del XVI Convegno di Egittologia e Papirologia, Siracusa, 29 settembre–2 ottobre 2016 (Siracusa): 89–109. Rich, J. (2011). “Velleius’ History: Genre and Purpose”, in E. Cowan (ed.), Velleius Paterculus: Making History (Swansea): 73–92. Roddaz, J.M. (1984). Marcus Agrippa, Paris. Rohr Vio, F. (2000). Le voci del dissenso: Ottaviano Augusto e i suoi oppositori, Padua. Sumner, G.V. (1970). “The Truth about Velleius Paterculus: Prolegomena”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 74, 257–297. Syme, R. (1939). The Roman Revolution, Oxford. Syme, R. (1978). “Mendacity in Velleius”, American Journal of Philology 99, 45–63. Tarn, W.W. (1931). “The Battle of Actium”, Journal of Roman Studies 21, 173–199. Woodman, A.J. (1983). Velleius Paterculus: The Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41– 93), Cambridge. Yakobson, A. (2019). “Velleius Paterculus, imperial ideology and the old Republic”, in C. Rosillo-López (ed.), Communicating Public Opinion in the Roman Republic (Stuttgart): 273–294. Yardley, C.J. & Barrett, A.A. (transl.) (2011). Velleius Paterculus: The Roman History, Indianapolis, IN. Zachos, K.L. (2003). “The tropaeum of the sea-battle of Actium at Nikopolis: interim report”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 16, 65–92.

Chapter 2

In Short, the Republic: Florus and the (Re)Written Republic Rachel Lilley Love 1

Introduction: Beginnings

When Fabius Pictor (FRHist no. 1) wrote the first indigenous history of Rome at the close of the 3rd century BC, he took the entire span of the city’s history as his subject, from its mythic prehistory up until events in his own life.1 Around the same time, Cincius Alimentus (FRHist no. 2) would repeat the procedure, composing a history that spanned almost the entirety of the available Roman timeline, and hence, setting a precedent for those who came after him.2 The war monograph – scholarly tradition holds – was the contribution of L. Coelius Antipater (FRHist no. 15) sometime between 121 and 91BC.3 The 1 The contents of Pictor’s early Rome narration are handily preserved for us on the fragments of a 2nd-century BC dipinto found in the gymnasium at Tauromenium. Initially published in Manganaro 1974, the text reveals that Fabius “recorded the arrival of Heracles in Italy and […] of Lanoios […] by Aeneas and […] much later there were Romulus and Remus, and the foundation of Rome by Romulus […]” (ed. and trans. Battistoni 2006). The exact end point of Pictor’s history is uncertain: the last identifiable fragment (FRHist no. 1, F.23=Peter 27) concerns the losses at Lake Trasimene in 217BC. FRHist (1.167) puts the end point of Pictor’s history between 217 and 213BC. 2 The relative chronology of Pictor and Alimentus is not certain, but convention places Alimentus second in the tradition; see FRHist 1.180. The fundamental evidence on the scope of both Pictor and Alimentus comes from Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.6.2): ὧν εἰσι πρεσβύτατοι Κόιντός τε Φάβιος καὶ Λεύκιος Κίγκιος, ἀμφότεροι κατὰ τοὺς Φοινικικοὺς ἀκμάσαντες πολέμους. τούτων δὲ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἑκάτερος, οἷς μὲν αὐτὸς ἔργοις παρεγένετο, διὰ τὴν ἐμπειρίαν ἀκριβῶς ἀνέγραψε, τὰ δὲ ἀρχαῖα τὰ μετὰ τὴν κτίσιν τῆς πόλεως γενόμενα κεφαλαιωδῶς ἐπέδραμεν, “of these [the early Roman historians] the oldest are Q. Fabius and L. Cincius, both of whom flourished during the Punic Wars. Each of these men recorded in detail the events he witnessed because he had personal experience of them, but gave cursory treatment to the ancient material that happened after the founding of the city.” All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 3 Principal studies of Coelius Antipater are listed at FRHist 1.256. More recently, on the significance of Antipater’s title and its relation to historiographic modes, see Krebs 2015. On the dates of Antipater’s composition, see Badian 1966, 15–7: 91BC is the accepted terminus ante quem, as this is the dramatic date for Cicero’s de Oratore, which mentions the maior sonus of Antipater’s historiae (2.54), see FRHist 1.257.

© Rachel Lilley Love, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004445086_004

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historian’s Bellum Punicum took the Hannibalic War (218–201BC) as its subject and circumscribed its chronological limits accordingly.4 In doing so, the history broke new ground: almost all prior Latin historians, it would seem, designed their histories according to a model that considered Roman origins relevant to every historical narrative; Antipater, however, introduced a reconfiguration of just how much of the Roman timeline a work needed to cover in order to include all relevant historical information.5 The scope of Antipater’s revision should not be overstated. Certainly Polybius had familiarised Greek-literate Roman audiences to the concept of the war monograph roughly 30 years earlier.6 Moreover it is possible that Antipater’s earlier contemporary, C. Fannius, had already introduced exclusively contemporary history at Rome.7 Nor is it reasonable to assume that Roman historians prior to Antipater and Fannius were insulated from Greek traditions of historiography, which had long since incorporated diverse chronological limits. Presuming they were exposed in any degree to non-Roman traditions of historical documentation, early Roman historians were well aware that they need not begin a primordio, but the available evidence suggests that they preferred to stick to Fabius’ original chronological scope all the same. It would be only 200 years after Fabius, however, that this mode of historiography would find its greatest exponent: Livy. The chronological limits of Livy’s history – in particular the beginning – are so integral to the work that it shares its very title with its point of departure: ab Vrbe Condita.8 That title has also 4 On chronological limits as a categorical identifier for modes of historiography, see Marincola 1999a, 304–5. 5 Or at least a renegotiation of where foundational history must fall within the narration, as Antipater includes embedded digressions on material outside the assumed scope of his work (e.g. FRHist no. 15, F. 48 on the Latin War of the 5th century, and FRHist no. 15, F. 49 on the quaestorship of Gaius Gracchus in 126BC). 6 If they had not already encountered the format in any number of earlier Greek historians, most notably Thucydides; see Rood 2007. On Polybius’ Roman audience, see Champion 2004, 173–203; Pelling 2007, 244–58. 7 On the scope of Fannius’ history, see Badian 1966, 14. Fannius’ exact dates are unknown, though he is uncontestably located within the last two decades of the 2nd century BC. On the problems with securely identifying the historian Fannius, see Shackleton Bailey 1968, 400. Cornell (2018, 182–201) has recently brought to light how widespread the issue of overlapping or geminated nomenclature is within Republican historiography, and the degree to which the automatic association of historian with known politicians further obscures the picture. 8 The best evidence for the title under which Livy’s history circulated in antiquity is (or was) preserved in an early 5th century palimpsest, rewritten at the start of the 8th century at the Abbey of Luxeuil. The explicit to Book 5 on folio 274 v. reads ti liui b urbe ndita