It is worth repeating that a substantial factor in this line of behaviour was the lack of extensive written record keeping in the society – something true of essentially all ancient societies. Whereas the United States, for example, has and refers back to its centuries-old written constitution as a guide to the legality of contemporary actions, the Romans had no such document. To make matters more problematic, many if not most of the written documents that existed in the Republic were not collected together in any sort of easily accessible fashion. Instead, they were scattered among the families of the censors, consuls, and other magistrates who created them with little thought for a system of archiving and retrieval. Cicero’s speeches and letters provide excellent testimony to the difficulty of obtaining records for even basic facts, such as the names of those who were on a committee a century before or the exact text of decrees of the senate.3 In short, Roman society generally had to go on memory when it came to decisions about what was and was not tradition, custom, and law. Thus they fought often and passionately, so many debates affecting the distribution of prestige and honour, and so many hinging upon the relevant standards of propriety, law, and custom.
Ultimately, Marcellus was incredibly successful at crafting a military and political reputation that would span the centuries. He did not, however, pose a threat to the continued existence of the Republic. This would seem to be an unnecessary statement, except that less than a century later individual aristocrats could and did begin to challenge the limits of the Roman political system in ways that would eventually lead to catastrophic infighting in the political class, civil wars, and the disintegration of the Republic. Many things, however, had changed for the Romans in the century after Marcellus’ death. They went on to rule the Mediterranean, and as the demands of empire and the rewards increased, opportunities arose for individuals to push the limits on competition past their breaking point. Where Marcellus could receive an extended command in Italy by the will of the people, Pompey some 140 years later received a command against the pirates of the eastern Mediterranean that allowed him to engage in campaigns of conquest in the ancient Near East that were unthinkable to Romans of Marcellus’ day. Marcellus was, so far as is known, the first to receive such honours as games and festivals in his honour from a major Greek city; such honours would multiply for generals in the centuries after his death. In short, the Roman world was very different in 50BC from what it was at the end of the third century. Marcellus was perhaps the most successful aristocrat of his day, but ultimately, his ambitions were well harnessed within the still strong rules of competition.
* * *
When Livy began his monumental history he expressed what was a common idea among ancient historians, that the study of history was the study of moral examples:
In history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see. In that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.4
By the standards of the Romans themselves, then, Marcellus, the sword of the Republic, had earned a place among the very greatest who had ever led the Republic. His victories were carved in stone on the lists of triumphs; his deeds enshrined in the works of the poets and playwrights; his family itself rose from a modestly successful political family to one of the great noble families of the Republic. The legend of Marcellus would go on far beyond most other Romans. In death, he became the exemplar of the virtus that he claimed to display so often in life.
Appendix
Marcellus’ Record by Comparison
Since the text so often refers to Marcellus’ great success as a politician and commander and the distinction of his record, it is appropriate to set out clearly how his record compared to those of his peers. When it came to the total numbers of honours and offices, Marcellus’s record was unrivalled quantitatively. By the year of his death he had the following honours:
• five elections to the consulship (though he was forced to step down in 215, the Roman records marked this as an official consulship);
• two praetorships (that are known);
• four years as proconsul;
• membership in the college of augurs for almost two decades;
• a triumph at Rome, a triumph on the Alban Mount, and an ovation;
• the spolia opima;
• the personal patronage over Syracuse.
A number of these honours had never been granted to any Roman in living memory, notably election as the second plebeian to the consulship, the spolia opima, and the divine honours bestowed by the Syracusans. Marcellus held imperium as praetor in 216, the year of Cannae. From that year on, he held imperium as either a consul or proconsul until he died, a total of nine consecutive years. Of the sixteen consulships available from 215 to 208, Marcellus was elected to four.
Consider, in comparison, the records of the other great aristocrats of the time. Fabius Maximus was consul in 233, 228, 215, 214, and 209, censor in 230, and dictator in 217. He earned a triumph over the Ligurians in 233 and a triumph over Tarentum in 209. He had been an augur since 265 and a pontifex since 216. He also received the prized honour of princeps senatus in 209 and 204.1 His was certainly an extraordinarily successful career. As far as military commands went, however, he had only held imperium for four of the ten years from 218 to 208, when Marcellus died.
Quintus Fulvius Flaccus’ career seems to match that of Marcellus better. Flaccus held the consulship in 237, 224, 212, and 209, a censorship in 231, and praetorships in 215 and 214. He was dictator in 210, magister equitum in 213, and proconsul in 210 and 208.2 So he held imperium from 215 to 208, a record very close to that of Marcellus. A close look at his commands stops the comparison. He was the urban praetor in 215 and 213, tasked with judging law cases at Rome, and his primary service as magister equitum was to hold consular elections.3 His string of field commands did not compare to those of Marcellus, and Flaccus never triumphed.
The elder Publius Cornelius Scipio did have a run of consecutive commands comparable to those of Marcellus. After serving as consul in 218, Scipio had his command in Spain renewed regularly from 217 until his death in 211.4 Yet he only won election to the consulship once, and while his task in Spain was critical to the Roman war effort, it effectively removed him from Italian affairs and elections. Scipio simply could not compete with the number of elected offices and victory celebrations Marcellus had.
Other figures were clearly not as successful. Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul in command at Cannae, wielded imperium for a number of years after that battle. He served as proconsul in Picenum from 215 to 213 and as propraetor in Etruria for 208 and 207. Clearly, Varro was able to obtain commands, but not of the number and type that Marcellus did.5 T Manlius Torquatus, was far more distinguished than Varro and held consulates in 235 and 224, was elected censor in 231, served as propraetor in Sardinia for 215, and was dictator in 208.6 He had even won a triumph over the Sardinians in 235.13 From the beginning of the war with Hannibal to the death of Marcellus, however, he held imperium once.
Only Scipio Africanus held more successive commands than Marcellus. From 210 to 201, Scipio was a pronconsul.7 Even the great Africanus would only hold the consulship twice, however, and he had not even held his first by the time Marcellus died. He was simply too young to be a rival to Marcellus during the latter’s life.
Notes and References
Introduction
1. Plut. Marc. 9.
2. Plut. Marc. 1 (Scott-Kilvert trans.).
3. On Fabius Pictor: Michael von Albrecht (revised by Gareth Schmeling), A History of Roman Literature from Livius Andronicus to Boethius: with Special Regard to its Influence on World Literature, Volume 1 (Leiden, 1997); Mnemosyne; Supplementum, Vol. 165.1, pp. 371–372.
4. On Cato: Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature, pp. 390–396.
5. The seminal study of Polybius is FW Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polyb
ius, 3 Vols. (Oxford, 1979); See also the more general FW Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley, 1990).
6. Cic. de Div. 2.3.
7. The critical English studies of Livy include PG Walsh, Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge, 1961); TJ Luce, Livy: the Composition of His History (Princeton, 1978); More recently, see DS Levene, Livy on the Hannibalic War (Oxford, 2010). See also Robert Ogilvie’s preface to Aubrey De Selincourt (trans.), The Early History of Livy (London, 2002).
8. Liv. Preface 9–11. (De Selincourt trans.).
9. Liv. Preface 11–12. (De Selincourt trans.).
10. On Roman historians between Cato and Livy: Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature, pp. 374–386.
11. Cic. Brut. 62. Translated by Michael Crawford in Roman Republic (Cambridge, Ma., 1993), p. 9.
12. Liv. 8.40. cf. 7.9.3–6. (Radice trans.).
13. PG Walsh, ‘The Negligent Historian: ‘Howlers’ in Livy’, in Greece & Rome, Second Series, 5 (1958), pp. 83–88. The translation of Polybius is his; the translation of Livy is mine.
14. EM Carr, ‘The Tragic History of Marcellus and Livy’s Characterization’, in The Classical Journal, 80 (1985), pp. 131–141, gives an excellent comparison of aspects of Livy and Plutarch’s accounts of Marcellus; the differences he attributes in part to Livy’s greater use of Coelius Antipater as a source.
Chapter 1
1. Plut. Marc. 2.1–2. (Perrin trans.).
2. SP Oakley, ‘Single Combat in the Roman Republic’, in Classical Quarterly, 35 (1985), pp. 409–410.
3. Helpful surveys of aristocratic politics include N Rosenstein, ‘Aristocratic Values’, in N Rosenstein and R Morstein-Marx (eds.), A Companion to the Roman Republic (West Sussex, 2006), pp. 365–382; See also TC Brennan, ‘Power and Progress under the Republican Constitution’, in H Flower (ed.), Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 31–65.
4. A Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1999), pp. 129–131.
5. TC Brennan, The Praetorship of the Roman Republic, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 85–95, discusses the introduction of the second, third and fourth praetors. See also Lintott, Constitution of the Roman Republic.
6. The classic study of assemblies comes from LR Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley, 1961), pp. 50–75. See more recently, Lintott, Constitution of the Roman Republic, pp. 40–63.
7. Fergus Millar has done much to remind historians that the Republic was more than an oligarchy. See ‘The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200–151 BC’, in Journal of Roman Studies, 74 (1984), pp. 1–19; ‘Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 BC)’, in Journal of Roman Studies, 76 (1986), pp. 1–11; and, most recently, his chapter on approaches to the subject in his The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor, 2002), pp. 1–12.
8. FX Ryan, Rank and Participation in the Republican Senate (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 96–136, provides an outstanding analysis of the scholarship and evidence on these thorny issues.
9. See AE Astin, ‘The Lex Annalis before Sulla’, in Latomus, 16 (1957), pp. 588–613, and 17 (1958), pp. 49–64; RJ Evans and M Kleijwegt, ‘Did the Romans like Young Men? A Study of the Lex Villia Annalis: Causes and Effects’, in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 92 (1992), pp. 181–195.
10. Plut. Marc. 2.3; on the age range covered by the description, see KJ Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, Ma., 1978), p. 16, p. 86.
11. R Develin, Patterns in Office-holding (Brussels, 1979), pp. 71–80. The ages of magistrates in office is a complex subject and very little hard data is available. Develin’s minimum ages for 11 of the 20 plebeian consuls from 199 to 180 are relatively secure, however, and there is no compelling reason in this instance to doubt his figures. The average age given is my own, calculated from Develin’s table on page 79. Develin notes, however, that he would augment the ages of the plebeian consuls in a number of cases.
12. M Claudius Marcellus’ offices: military tribune (208), tribune of the plebs (204), curule aedile (200), praetor (198), consul (196), censor (189). TS Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Vol. 2 (New York, 1951), p. 546.
13. Develin, Patterns in Office-holding, pp. 63–71, for the period from 286–201.
14. Develin, Patterns in Office-holding, pp. 63–71. Averaging Develin’s estimates for the ages of plebeian consuls provides an age of 36. Develin’s estimates are often minimums, however, and he urges that several years be added in a majority of instances, giving the top end of 39.
15. Plutarch Marc. 3 notes the Romans feared the Gauls more than any others.
16. RF Vishnia, ‘Cicero ‘De Senectute’ 11, and the Date of C Flaminius’ Tribunate’, in Phoenix, 50 (1996), pp. 138–145.
17. Polyb. 2.21.7–9.
18. Polyb. 2.22.1; Plut. Marc. 3.1.
19. Polyb. 2.23.4.
20. Polyb. 2.25.1.
21. Polyb. 2.23.
22. Polyb. 2.25.1–11.
23. Polyb. 2.26.1–8.
24. Polyb. 2.27.1–3.
25. Polyb. 2.27.4.
26. The scholarship on the Roman army in the Republic is extensive. For some of the more detailed recent studies, see J Rich and G Shipley, War and Society in the Roman World (London, 1993); A Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War, 100 BC–AD 200 (Oxford, 1996); Adrian Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War (Oxford, 2000); J McCall, The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (London, 2001); A Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (New York, 2003). Helpful recent articles include P Sabin, ‘The Face of Roman Battle’, in Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (2000), pp. 1–17; A Zhmodikov, ‘Roman Republican Heavy Infantrymen in Battle (IV – II Centuries BC)’ in Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 49 (2000), pp. 67–78.
27. Polyb. 6.19–26 is the main source for this book’s account of the Roman army.
28. Polyb. 6.26.1–7.
29. Polyb. 6.25; see also McCall, Cavalry of the Roman Republic, pp. 36–52.
30. See for example, Polybius’ descriptions of deployments at Trebia (3.72.10–73.1) and Cannae (3.113).
31. CJJJ Ardant du Picq (Colonel JN Greely and Major RC Cotton trans.), Battle Studies, 1921; Electronic version available at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7294/pg7294.html.
32. Polyb. 2.27.1–28.1.
33. Polyb. 2.30.6–9 (Paton trans.).
34. Polyb. 2.30.1–9.
35. Polyb. 2.31.1–6.
36. Polyb. 2.31.8–11.
37. Polyb. 2.32.1–33.9; Liv. Per. 20.8.
38. Polyb. 2.34.1.
39. Plut. Marc. 6.1.
40. WV Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (Oxford, 1979), pp. 10–40, offers a seminal survey of the aristocracy’s attitudes to war. JA North’s review article, ‘The Development of Roman Imperialism’, in Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981), pp. 1–9, provides an excellent reflection on Harris and on the motivations for aristocrats to go to war.
41. Polyb 2.34.3–4; Plut. Marc. 6.2.
42. Polyb. 2.34.5; Plut. Marc. 6.3 – though Plutarch has it that the Gauls and Marcellus just happened to meet at Clastidium.
43. Polyb. 2.34.6.
44. Plut. Marc. 6.3.
45. Liv. 27.25.7–10.
46. M McDonnell, Roman Manliness (Cambridge, 2006), p. 188, pp. 216–224, provides a detailed consideration of the issues involving Fabius, Marcellus, and the temple to Honos, including raising the question of Fabius’ potential rivalry with Marcellus. The discussion over the next few pages is indebted to him.
47. McDonnell, Roman Manliness, pp. 188.
48. Plut. Marc. 6.6–7.4.
49. Liv. Per. 20.11; Verg. Aen. 6.855–859; Plut. Marc. 7.1–3; Val. Max 3.2.5. Prop 4.10.
50. Polyb. 2.34.8–9; Plut. Marc. 7.4.
51. Plut. Marc. 6. (Scott-Kilvert trans.).
52. Again, Polybius refers to such at the Telamon: 2.27.6.
53. Polyb. 2.27.7; 2.30.3.
54. Polyb. 2.30.8.
55. Polyb. 2.28.9–11,
2.30.9.
56. Polyb. 2.34.8. (Moore trans.).
57. Polyb. 2.34.8 (Moore trans.); See also McCall, The Cavalry of the Roman Republic, p. 57.
58. Polyb. 2.34.10–14.
59. For a recent analysis of the triumph, see Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, Ma., 2009).
60. This discussion of the spolia opima is based on Harriet I Flowers, ‘The Tradition of the Spolia Opima: M Claudius Marcellus and Augustus’, in Classical Antiquity, 19 (2000), pp. 34–64.
61. Harriet I Flowers, ‘Fabulae Praetextae in Context: When Were Plays on Contemporary Subjects Performed in Republican Rome?’, in The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 45 (1995), p. 183.
62. Virg. Aen. 6.855–859.
63. Plut. Marc. 8.1 (Paton trans.).
64. Plut. Marc. 8.1–3. (Paton trans.).
65. Flower, ‘The Tradition of the Spolia Opima’, in Classical Antiquity, 19 (2000), pp. 34–64.
66. For a review of this model of Roman politics, see KJ Hölkeskamp, ‘Fact(ions) or Fiction? Friedrich Münzer and the Aristocracy of the Roman Republic: Then and Now’, in International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 8 (2001), pp. 92–105.
Chapter 2
1. A Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (London, 2001), pp. 27–28.
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