Bocchus, king of Mauretania, surrenders Jugurtha to Sulla.
105
Cimbri and Teutones defeat two Roman armies at Arausio, near the river Rhône.
104
Marius, Consul II, reorganizes Roman army equipment and tactics.
Jugurtha starved to death after appearing in Marius’s triumph.
Second Sicilian slave war.
103
Marius, Consul III, trains army in Gaul.
Saturninus elected tribune, works in partnership with Marius.
Land allotments in Africa assigned to Marius’s veterans.
102
Marius, Consul IV, defeats Teutones at Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence).
101
Marius, Consul V, and Catulus defeat Cimbri near Vercellae (Vercelli).
100
Saturninus, Tribune II.
Marius, Consul VI, breaks with Saturninus.
Rioting in Rome. Senate passes the Final Decree. Marius restores order. Saturninus and his followers lynched.
Second Sicilian slave war ended.
98
Marius leaves politics and travels to Asia as a privatus.
97–92
Sulla, as proconsul of Asia, orders Mithridates, king of Pontus, out of Paphlagonia and Cappadocia. Mithridates obeys.
91
Marcus Livius Drusus, Jr., elected tribune. His plans to enfranchise the Italian allies fail. Drusus assassinated.
War of the Allies (Social War) breaks out.
Mithridates takes Bithynia. Aquillius incites invasion of Pontus.
90
Roman reverses in the Social War. Legislation grants Roman citizenship to Italian allies.
89
Roman victories in Social War.
88
Social War restricted to the Samnites, who yield.
Sulla Consul I.
Sulpicius Rufus, tribune, proposes to transfer command of war against Mithridates from Sulla to Marius.
Sulla marches on Rome, captures the city, repealsSulpicius’s legislation.
Marius flees to Africa.
Mithridates overruns Asia Minor, orders massacre of Romans and Italians. Mithridates invited to “liberate” Greece.
87
Cinna and Marius seize Rome, massacre opponents.
Sulla lands in Greece, besieges Athens.
86
Fall of Athens. Pontic army evacuates Greece after two defeats.
Marius, Consul VII, dies.
Cinna sends army to Asia (taken over by Sulla in 84).
85
Sulla negotiates peace treaty with Mithridates at Dardanus, near Troy.
84
New Italian citizens distributed among all the tribes.
Cinna murdered by mutineers.
83
Sulla lands in Italy.
Second Mithridatic War (to 82).
82
Civil war in Italy. Sulla wins battle of the Colline Gate.
Proscriptions start.
81
Sulla appointed dictator, reforms the constitution and the criminal law.
80
Sulla Consul II.
79
Sulla resigns as dictator.
78
Sulla dies.
75 (or 74)
King Nicomedes bequeaths Bithynia to Rome.
74
Mithridates invades Bithynia. Lucullus given command against him.
73–71
Slave revolt in Italy, led by Spartacus.
68
After successful campaigning against Mithridates, Lucullus’s troops become restless.
67
Pompey given command against pirates, whom he clears from the Mediterranean.
66
Pompey given command against Mithridates.
63
Mithridates commits suicide.
Cicero elected consul.
62
Pompey’s eastern settlement; he returns to Italy.
61
Senate refuses to confirm Pompey’s settlement and land allocations for his soldiers.
60
Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus agree alliance, known as the First Triumvirate.
59
Caesar elected consul.
58–50
Caesar’s conquest of Gaul.
49–45
Civil war.
48
Battle of Pharsalus.
44
Caesar assassinated.
43–33
Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus establish Second Triumvirate.
Proscription. Cicero put to death.
32–31
Civil war.
31
Antony and Cleopatra defeated at the Battle of Actium.
30
Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide.
27
Octavian/Augustus establishes new constitutional settlement.
43
Invasion of Britannia.
Dedication
In memory of
the poet
José-Maria de Heredia,
my forebear
and
another student of Rome
LA TREBBIA
L’aube d’un jour sinistre a blanchi les hauteurs.
Le camp s’éveille. En bas roule et gronde le fleuve
Où l’escadron léger des Numides s’abreuve.
Partout sonne l’appel clair des buccinateurs.
Car malgré Scipion, les augures menteurs,
La Trebbia débordée, et qu’il vente et qu’il pleuve,
Sempronius Consul, fier de sa gloire neuve,
A fait lever la hache et marcher les licteurs.
Rougissant le ciel noir de flamboîments lugubres,
A l’horizon brûlaient les villages Insubres;
On entendait au loin barrir un éléphant.
Et là-bas, sous le pont, adossé contre une arche,
Hannibal écoutait, pensif et triomphant,
Le piétinement sourd des légions en marche.
J-M H
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My faithful twin props in England have been my agent, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, and the London Library. My exemplary editor on the far side of the Atlantic, Will Murphy, ably supported by assistant editor Katie Donelan, has tolerated broken deadlines and been a fountain of wise advice. As with my previous books, Professor Robert Cape of Austin College, Texas, has kindly read a draft and offered valuable comments and suggestions.
I am indebted to the dentist Shahin Nozohoor for advice on the state of Pyrrhus’s teeth.
I am grateful to Penguin Books for permission to quote extensively from its translations of Livy and Polybius.
SOURCES
The main evidence for our knowledge of the history of the Roman Republic is books, mostly written from the first century B.C. to the period of the high empire in the third century A.D. Monkish summarizers and authors of miscellanies of various kinds stretch into the Byzantine era. Most offer narrative accounts, but those which address Rome’s beginnings do not succeed in distinguishing fact from legend and, where there are gaps in the records, tend to fill them in with what was thought to be appropriate rather than with what actually happened. Events from the Republic’s declining years are allowed to reshape early stories. Sometimes an incident that took place in one era is copied and inserted into a previous one.
Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17), a northern Italian and an almost exact contemporary of the emperor Augustus, wrote a vast history from Rome’s foundation to his own day. When complete, it comprised 142 “books” (that is, long chapters). However, much ancient literature failed to survive the fall of empire and the judgments of Christian monks. Today, we have only thirty-five of Livy’s books. He was a literary artist of a high order, and some of his set pieces are gripping to read, but he added moral color and drama to his canvas; this needs to be cleaned off before the bare essentials of a partial trut
h can be discerned.
By contrast, the Greek Polybius (about 200–118), who spent much of his life as an exile in Rome, where he mixed in leading circles, wrote of the (for him) recent past. He investigated the period between 264 and 146, when Rome emerged as a leading Mediterranean power. No great stylist, he was a stickler for accuracy. He spoke to survivors of the events he described, examined documents (for example, treaties), paid attention to geography (often visiting sites in person) and was present at some occasions himself. “The mere statement of a fact may interest us,” he remarked. “But it is when the reason is added that the study of history becomes fruitful.” His general attitude resembles that of Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century. Of the original forty volumes of his History, only the first five are extant in their entirety; much of the work has come down to us in collections of excerpts that were kept in libraries in Byzantium.
Another talented Greek was Plutarch, whose life straddled the turn of the first century A.D. He had the off-the-wall idea of writing “parallel” lives of famous Greeks and Romans—for example, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. These comparisons threw little new light on Plutarch’s subjects, but each biography is a fascinating stand-alone text. The author profitably plundered every source he could lay his hands on, although he did not always sufficiently assess their reliability. He made no claim to be a historian and was, rather, a moralist who explored the impact of character on men’s destinies. He had a sharp eye for the telling anecdote. Plutarch was also a copious essayist, and his works bring together a wide range of useful information on the Greek and Roman world.
Toward the end of the first century, a Greek, Diodorus Siculus, published a “universal” history, although in fact it concentrates on Greece and his homeland of Sicily, and later Rome. Fifteen of a total of forty books survive, and others in fragments. He is a rather careless writer and is only as trustworthy as his often unnamed sources, which he tends to follow closely.
Cassius Dio (about 164 to after 229) was a Greek who became a Roman senator and consul. He wrote an eighty-book history of Rome from its foundation to A.D. 229. Ten books on the Punic Wars are lost. The part dealing with the period from 69 B.C. to A.D. 46 survives, although with gaps after A.D. 6. The rest has come down in fragments and summaries. He is stolid, usually sound but unexciting.
In the shadows, behind the writers we have are those numerous historians on whom they depended, but whose work has disappeared. One of these was the first Roman to compose a history of the city, a Roman senator named Quintus Fabius Pictor, who lived in the second half of the third century. He wrote in Greek, partly because he wanted to apply Greek principles of historiography to Rome and partly to acquaint the Hellenic world with this newly emergent state.
Quintus Ennius (230–169) wrote an epic, Annales (Annals), which tells the story of the Roman People from the fall of Troy and the wanderings of Aeneas down to his own times; only tantalizing fragments remain. His friend Marcus Porcius Cato, the Censor, did much the same with his Origines, also lost; his originality was to write in Latin prose.
A number of important, but lost, Greek historians took notice of Rome, among them Hieronymus of Cardia and Timaeus of Tauromenium (a Sicilian whose alleged distortions aroused the ire of Polybius).
But where did the first Roman historians find the information they needed to fill their narratives? Family tradition was a useful source: the great aristocratic houses preserved details of their ancestors, of the offices they held and of the triumphs they celebrated. However, caution was needed, for the spirit of emulation often led to exaggerated claims.
Then there must have been oral traditions, which may have expressed themselves as dramas performed during the ludi: for instance, the story of the overthrow of the first Tarquin reads like a theatrical farce. (We know that in the late Republic, plays that dealt with Roman themes were regularly presented—for example, about Romulus, the overthrow of the kings, and the Battle of Sentinum during the Samnite Wars.)
Officials of the Republic kept archives. The pontifex maximus was responsible for the annales maximi, annual accounts of important events and the names of officeholders. Other institutions may also have kept records, and the plebs had their own files in the Temple of Ceres on the Aventine Hill. These documents probably went back to the beginning of the Republic and in the early centuries were thin and basic. Treaties, laws, and dedications were also written down, sometimes as inscriptions on stone or in bronze.
From the second century B.C., educated Romans became interested in antiquarian studies. It has been wittily said that an antiquarian can be defined as “the type of man who is interested in historical facts without being interested in history.” Cicero’s friend Varro was the greatest antiquarian of his age and an indefatigable author. Ancient texts such as the Twelve Tables, the buildings and monuments of Rome, the state archives, the Latin language, the calendar, religious cults, family histories, social customs, place names, and ritual formulas fell under his scrutiny. Unfortunately, some interpretations were wildly off the mark, especially in the field of etymology, but much curious and interesting information was gathered. Another copious antiquarian was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who flourished at about the same time as Augustus; his aim was to reconcile the Greeks to the rule of Rome. He is a prosy bore, but his lengthy Roman Antiquities is a treasure-house of curious detail about Rome’s legendary beginnings.
Cicero makes useful comments in his Republic on the city’s early history, which are not only interesting in themselves but reveal what was the received narrative in the first century. In Laws, he studies the nature of law and proposes detailed reforms of Rome’s constitution.
Roman and Greek historians had little to say about social matters, the arts and design, the role and status of women, and economic development. They focused their attention on political and military affairs and on the deeds of great men. Fortunately, much of Cicero’s private correspondence has survived, and illuminates what it was like to live through the destruction of the Republic. So have a variety of medical texts—for example, the writings of Celsus. Some poets in the late Republic and the empire evoke the upper classes at leisure. However, for a broader picture of how the Greco-Roman world functioned, we must depend on the increasingly sophisticated and instructive findings of the archaeologist and on a multitude of carved inscriptions, which throw a fascinating light on the doings of local authorities across the Mediterranean region and on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. This material is fragmentary and can be hard to interpret but is nonetheless valuable for that.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ancient Texts
Sources not cited here are published both in the original language and in translation by Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are listed under Abbreviations in the Notes section. Other translations I have made use of or consulted appear below.
Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, trans. R. J. White, The Interpretation of Dreams (Park Ridge, 1975).
Asconius: Commentaries on Five Speeches of Cicero, trans. and ed. Simon Squires (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1990).
Aurelius Victor (attributed), De viris illustribus, Andreas Schottus (8 vols., Antwerp, 1579).
Aurelius Victor (attributed), De Caesaribus, www.roman-emperors.org/epitome.htm.
Bible (Good News Bible, 1966; New York: American Bible Society).
Catullus, Carmina (Odes), trans. James Michie (London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1969) (Also in Loeb).
Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum [CIS]. Pars Prima Inscriptiones Phoenicias Continens (Paris, 1881).
Eutropius, Flavius, Breviarium (Abridgement of Roman History), trans. H. W. Bird (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993).
Festus, Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani (Summary of Roman History), ed. W. Förster (1874), C. Wagener (1886).
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Carmina (Odes), trans. James Michie (Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin Books, 1967) (Also in Loeb).
Horace, The Complete Odes and Epodes, trans. W. G. Shepherd (London: Penguin Books, 1983).
Horace, Satires and Epistles, Persius, Satires, trans. Niall Rudd (London: Penguin Books, 1973).
Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, H. Dessau (Berlin, 1891–1916).
Livy, The Early History of Rome, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (London: Penguin Books, 1960).
Livy, Rome and Italy, trans. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1982).
Livy, The War with Hannibal, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965).
Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1976).
Orosius, Paulus, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (“Seven Books of History Against the Pagans”). See the Latin Library, www.thelatinlibrary.com/.
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