In the matter of religion, also, Dionysius makes no concealment of his attitude. He frequently refers to a divine providence. He speaks scornfully of the professors of atheistic philosophies, ‘if philosophies they should be called,’ who deny that the gods concern themselves with the affairs of mortals (ii. 68, 2; viii. 56, 1). He, for his part, is assured that the gods do sometimes intervene on behalf of the righteous (ii. 68 f.) and also to punish the wicked, as in the case of Pyrrhus (xx. 9 f.). The Romans, in particular, because of their piety and other virtues, had frequently been the recipients of divine favour, while the designs of their enemies were brought to naught (v. 54, 1; vi. 13; vii. 12, ‘; viii. 26, 3). The gods, he holds, manifest their will through portents, and the disregarding of these may be severely punished, as in the case of Crassus (ii. 6. 4). Hence he recorded from time to time a goodly number of portents which he regarded as particularly noteworthy. With respect to the myths, he looked upon many of them, in which the gods played shameful parts, as blasphemous (ii. 18, 3); and, though he recognized that some of the Greek myths had a certain value as allegorical interpretations of natural phenomena, or as consolations in misfortune or other similar ways, he nevertheless felt that for the ignorant mass of mankind they did more harm than good, and he was more inclined himself to accept the Roman religion (ii. 20). It is to be observed that in relating myths he nowhere implies his own belief in them, but generally introduces them with some qualifying phrase, such as ‘it is said,’ ‘they say,’ etc.
Dionysius doubtless made what he considered to be a thorough study of Roman political institutions; but his narrative constantly shows that he came far short of a real understanding of many of them. His failure to distinguish accurately between patricians and senators and between the patrum auctoritas and a senatus consultum is a source of no little confusion; but, worse still, he often uses the Attic term προβούλευμα (preliminary decree) both for senatus consultum and for patrum auctoritas. His frequent use of ‘patricians’ for ‘senators’ is easily explained when we compare Livy, who constantly uses the word patres for both patricians and senators. This ambiguous term was doubtless found by both historians in their sources; indeed, in a few instances Dionysius carelessly retained the word as ‘fathers’ (v. 33, 2; vi. 69, 2). In making his choice between the renderings ‘patricians’ and ‘senators’ he seems to have adopted the former wherever the patres seemed to be opposed as a class to the plebeians (e g., iv. 8, 2; viii. 82, 4; ix. 42, 3). The term patrum auctoritas was apparently no better understood by Livy than by Dionysius; even for the early period he several times represents the auctoritas as preceding the vote of the comitia, and after the Publilian law of 339, which required the auctoritas to be given before the people voted, he uses patrum auctoritas and senatus consultum indiscriminately. There is, in fact, every reason for believing that the term patrum auctoritas had become obsolete even in the time of the older annalists who were Livy’s chief sources. But Dionysius, with sources before him that probably showed no greater misunderstanding of this term than does Livy, made matters much worse as the result of his assumption that the patrum auctoritas, and indeed any decree of the senate, was usually a preliminary decree to be ratified by the people. This view justified him in using the word προβούλευμα, the name given to the programme of business prepared by the Athenian Boule for the consideration of the Ecclesia. It can hardly have been the desire to use the word προβούλευμα that led him to adopt its essential implications; for he often uses δόγμα or φήφυσμα in the same way for a decree of the senate that was to be ratified by the people. He must have had some reason in the first place for believing that the patrum auctoritas was a necessary preliminary to action by the people. We know that it was customary for the consuls, as a matter of practical convenience, to ask the senate’s advice and secure its approval before bringing any important matter before the people, inasmuch as the action taken in the comitia would have to receive the patrum auctoritas later in order to be valid. If Dionysius was aware of this custom but not of its purpose, he might well reason that it was absurd for the senate to give its approval more than once to the same business, and hence, since he knew the patrum auctoritas was required for all votes of the people, he would naturally identify this term with the preliminary approval of the senate. It is true this view of the matter seems to be directly opposed to an important statement which he makes at the very outset. When defining the powers of the senate and of the people as established by Romulus, he states that the senate was to ratify the decisions of the people, but adds that in his own day the reverse principle was followed, the decrees of the senate then requiring the approval of the people (ii. 14, 3). The natural implication of his statement is that the change had come about in fairly late times, but he nowhere in the extant books has anything more definite to say on the subject. In a very few instances he speaks of the ‘patricians’ (doubtless to him identical with the senators) as ratifying a vote of the people afterwards, e g., in the case of the election of Numa (ii. 60, 3) and the appointment of the first tribunes (vi. 90, 2); but as early as the election of Ancus Marcius he represents the people as ratifying the choice of the senators (iii. 36, 1), and a little later speaks of this as the normal procedure (iv. 40, 2; 80, 2). In the last passage he is more explicit, declaring it to be the duty of the senate to consider in advance (ττροβουλεύειv) all matters relating to the general welfare, and the duty of the people to ratify their decision. It is fairly evident, then, that Dionysius’ own theory was that a προβούλευμα of the senate had been necessary from the beginning. If his narrative occasionally violates this theory in practice, it is probably either because his sources were so explicit in particular instances that he felt he could not contradict them, or because he was negligent now and then and forgot to make his practice conform consistently to his theory. Another important matter in which he failed to make theory and practice coincide at all times will be mentioned a little later. It is not clear whether he believed the plébiscita, also, required a προβούλευμα; his language is at times ambiguous and his accounts of the procedure in the case of various plébiscita are inconsistent with one another. He held the mistaken view that all senators were patricians, even under the republic; for he believed that plebeians were made patricians before being admitted to the senate (ii. 47, 1; v. 13, 2). But it is not in constitutional matters only that he made serious errors; there is confusion also in his account of religious matters. Thus, he uses ‘haruspex’ for ‘augur’ in ii. 22, 3, and his account of the duties of the pontifices (ii. 73) contains many errors.
A few words must be said about Dionysius’ chronology. His date for the founding of Rome was 751 B.C., two years later than that adopted by Varro; and this difference between the two chronologies remains constant for the first 304 years of the city down to the time of the decemvirs (the period covered by Books I.-X.). At that point the gap widens: — Dionysius represents the decemviral rule as continuing for a third year, while Varro assigned to it only two years. Accordingly, for the halfdozen years covered by Book XI. Dionysius’ dates are three years later than those of Varro. The fragments of the last nine books do not give any dates; but three sporadic references in the earlier books to events of the third and first centuries B.C. show that for this late period his dates are the same as Varro’s. Dionysius devotes two chapters (i. 74 f.) to explaining how he arrived at the date 751 for the founding of the city, and for fuller information refers the reader to a separate work that he had published to show how the Roman chronology was to be reduced to the Greek. There are other passages also which bear witness to the particular interest he felt in matters of chronology. Notwithstanding all the attention he devoted to this side of his work, modern scholars have for the most part been very harsh in their judgments of him in this very regard, accusing him of carelessness generally in the matter of his dates and, in particular, of following one system of chronology for the period treated in his History and another for events
nearer his own day. Our historian had to wait long for his vindication; but one of the most recent investigators in the field of Roman chronology, Oscar Leuze, has come ably to his defence and shown that at least the more important of these charges of inaccuracy rest upon misunderstanding of Dionysius’ real meaning or of his usage.
Like most of the later Greek historians, Dionysius uses the reckoning by Olympiads, usually adding the name of the Athenian archon. From the beginning of the republic he normally gives the Greek date only for the first year of each Olympiad, identifying the intervening years merely by the names of the Roman magistrates. As the Athenian official year began in mid-summer and the Olympiads year of the historians either in mid-summer or early autumn, whereas the Roman consular year began, in later times, on January 1, though in earlier times at various seasons of the year, the Greek historians were confronted with an awkward problem in synchronizing Roman and Greek dates. The solution apparently followed by Dionysius, and probably by Polybius and Diodorus also, was to adopt the later Roman year of uniform length for all periods of Roman history, and to identify a given Roman year with the Olympiadic year in the course of which it began, rather than with that in which it ended (as is the modern practice). The dates given in the notes of the present edition follow this principle, only a single year being indicated as the modern equivalent of the Greek year, instead of parts of two years. Thus Olymp. 7, 1 is identified as 751 B.C. instead of 752/1. The only exceptions are a few dates of non-Roman events, where Dionysius was probably not concerned with the exact Roman equivalent.
Dionysius was in theory opposed to the annalistic method of writing history. In his Letter to Pompeius (chap. 3) he criticized Thucydides’ chronological arrangement of events, by winters and summers, as seriously interrupting the continuity of the narrative, and praised Herodotus for adopting the topical order. Yet when he himself was to write a history of Rome he evidently found it impracticable to avoid following the annalistic method in vogue among the Romans. For the regal period, it is true, he arranges the events of each reign under the two headings of wars and peaceful achievements. But beginning with the establishment of the republic, he treats the events of each year by themselves, first naming the consuls or other chief magistrates. For the greater part of the period that he covers this method could cause no confusion, as the military campaigns were of short duration; and it had the further advantage of avoiding monotony, since the narrative was constantly alternating between wars abroad and dissensions at home.
As regards his sources, Dionysius states in his preface (chap. 7) that he had consulted the works of the approved Roman historians, — Cato, Fabius Maximus (Servilianus?), Valerius Antias, Licinius Macer, Aelius (Tubero), Gellius, Calpurnius (Piso) and many others, — and that he had also derived information from conversations with the most learned men. And at the end of Book I. (chap. 89) he refers to his careful reading of many works by both Greek and Roman writers on the subject of the origin of the Romans. His claim certainly appears to be justified, so far at least as Book I. is concerned. In this one book he cites no fewer than thirty Greek authors, most of them historians or logographers, and seven Roman writers, — Cato, Tubero and Piso, of those named above, and Fabius Pictor, Lucius Alimentus, C. Sempronius (Tuditanus) and Varro. To the last-named he owns his indebtedness for his account of the old cities of the Aborigines (chaps. 14 f.); but he probably owes considerable more to him in this book in places where he has not named his source. After the birth of Romulus and Remus there was scarcely any further occasion for using Greek sources; and he usually mentioned the Roman historians only in cases where there were divergent traditions. He naturally considered it to be his task as a historian to reconcile the different traditions so far as possible and present a smooth, uninterrupted narrative; and in the main he has succeeded very well in doing so. But now and then he found such divergences among his sources that he could not ignore them. In such cases he presents the two or more versions and either expresses his own preference or, quite often, leaves the decision to the reader. At times he makes the decision with the greatest confidence, especially in matters of chronology. He is prompt to discover anachronisms, and rebukes rather sharply the historians who have carelessly perpetuated them; Licinius Macer and Cn. Gellius are thus censured on two occasions (vi. 11,2; vii. 1, 4), also Fabius Pictor (iv. 6 f.; 30, 2 f.), while Calpurnius Piso Frugi is named in one instance (iv. 7, 5) as the only one to give the correct version. It is generally recognized that he followed the late annalists as his principal sources; their histories were generally very voluminous, and in them he could find the full, detailed accounts which he frequently gives. His political orientation is that of the annalists of Sulla’s time, who were strong champions of the senate’s supremacy. They wrote their annals as propaganda, deliberately falsifying their account of events from time to time in order to make it appear that the senate had held from the first, or at least from the beginning of the republic, the same dominant position in the State
that it held in the second and first centuries before Christ. They did this by representing the senate as having been consulted in early times on various occasions where tradition made no mention of any action on its part. Dionysius seems to have held the extreme view that even under the monarchy the senate had played a dominant part, the king’s power being limited much as at Sparta (ii. 14, 1 f.; cf vi. 66, 3). This was his theory; but in actual practice his narrative mentions very few specific occasions where the senate was consulted by the king, and we gain the impression that the power of the latter was virtually supreme. But from the moment of the establishing of the republic his account of events is in strict agreement with his theory. His failure to reconcile practice and theory earlier argues a lack of inventiveness either on his part or on that of his sources; it probably did not seem worth the trouble to work out the details. This view of the senate’s original supremacy was the view taken also by Cicero in his De Republica; but it was not the view of Livy, who followed earlier annalists and rightly held that the senate had only gradually gained its wide powers. It is just such differences in orientation as this that make it fairly certain that Dionysius was not using Livy as his source in the numerous passages where their accounts seem at first sight strikingly similar. Besides the authors cited by Dionysius, he also mentions a number of inscriptions, both at Rome and elsewhere, and there are sporadic references to the annales maxi mi, the records of the censors, etc.; but he does not say that he had seen any of these himself, and it is probable that he found the references in the annalists.
The first historian to cite Dionysius was Plutarch, who modelled his style upon that of the Antiquities. Schwartz held that Dionysius was Plutarch’s sole source for his Coriolanus, but this view is opposed by Bux. The Romulus and Numa may each eon- tain a little from the Antiquities, the Camillus is chiefly based on Livy. Dionysius is twice quoted in the Pyrrhus, but not enough of his account is preserved to enable us to make any accurate comparison between the two.
SCRIPTA RHETORICA
The shorter works of Dionysius have generally gone under the name of Scripta Rhetorica; but they contain more of literary criticism than of technical rhetoric. They are all in the form of letters addressed to some literary friend, patron or pupil. There is no internal evidence to show whether they were composed before or after the History was published; but it is generally assumed that Dionysius wrote them from time to time during the years that he was engaged upon his great work. Although no absolute dates can be assigned to these several treatises, the relative order in which they were composed can be determined in most cases by means of the frequent references in one to what the writer has already discussed or proposes to discuss in another. The order in which Roberts arranges them is as follows:
1. First Letter to Ammaeus.
2. On the Arrangement of Words.
3. On the Ancient Orators.
4. On the Style of Demosthenes.
5. On Imitation: Books I., II.
6. Letter t
o Cn. Pompeius.
7. On Imitation; Book III.
8. On Dinarchus.
9. On Thucydides.
10. Second Letter to Ammaeus.
Egger would transpose the second and third items, seeing a greater maturity of judgment in the treatise on the Arrangement of Words. As regards the Dinarchus, he says we can be sure only that it was later than the Ancient Orators.
Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79) Page 703
