A History of the Roman World

by Scullard, H. H.

  MAP V

  MAP VI

  Graeco-Roman mythology might give rise to widespread scepticism, but the educated could seek salvation in Greek philosophy, which now penetrated into Rome. In 173 two Epicurean philosophers were expelled from Rome and in 161 philosophers and rhetoricians in general suffered the same fate. The practical Roman did not take naturally to philosophy, mistrusting its abstract teaching, especially of those who held the object of life to be pleasure, albeit those pleasures of reflection chosen by reason rather than physical pleasures. In 159 (or 168) the Stoic Crates, delayed at Rome by an accident, started to lecture. It was impossible to stem the tide from Greece. In 155 the heads of the three great philosophic schools, Critolaus the Peripatetic, Diogenes the Stoic and Carneades the Academic came to Rome on a political embassy. While waiting they gave lectures and Carneades startled his respectable audience by accepting principles one day which he refuted the next and by propounding the theory that justice was a convention. This new teaching aroused the interest of the ‘intellectuals’ of the Scipionic circle, which was joined by the Stoic Panaetius about 144 BC. The manner in which the teaching of the Porch was adapted to Roman life is a subject which falls beyond the scope of this volume.9 Suffice it to add that Stoicism taught the Romans a new doctrine of the relation of man to God; and even more influential than its theological and moral theories was the fact that it offered men a new way of life. Its appeal lay largely in the possibility of the practical application of its teaching to everyday life. The comprehensiveness of the Stoic ideal exercised a profound and inspiring influence in the Roman world at a time of religious bankruptcy, and it reinforced men’s moral reserves, until another religion from the Orient, very different from the earliest eastern cults that reached Rome, brought a still broader view of the universal brotherhood of man and offered a different way of life from that laid down by the Stoic sage. If the promise of the early religious experience of the Roman people was not fulfilled, at any rate the early Christian Church had to reckon with many of the phases of its development, besides receiving into its own vocabulary such words as ‘religion’, ‘piety’, ‘saint’ and ‘sacrament’. Roman Stoicism made its contribution to the thought of Christianity; the organization of the old state religion impressed itself on that of the new priesthood; and even the petty numina of the countryside survived long enough to influence the Roman Catholic conception of the division of function among the saints and to provoke the derision of the Church Fathers.

  XIX

  SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES

  1. ARCHAEOLOGY AND INSCRIPTIONS

  Archaeological material provides the main basis of our knowledge of the prehistory and ethnology of Italy. The nature of Etruscan civilization and the appearance of early Rome and other Italian towns has been revealed largely by the spade. The result often confirms in a striking manner the later literary tradition which can thus be tested and controlled at many points, though elsewhere much of the early history must remain hypothetical. There has been a reaction from the hypercritical and destructive attitude displayed towards early Roman history at the beginning of this century by E. Pais, who later indeed himself somewhat modified his earlier views; and this reaction is due in part to the new light shed by archaeological research. The material provided also illustrates later phases of Rome’s conquests in Italy and the Mediterranean world. As examples there may be cited the discovery of a Chalcolithic settlement and Iron Age huts at Rome, of the site of Politorium, of the thirteen altars and the probable ‘tomb of Aeneas’ at Lavinium, of the castrum at Ostia which dates the Roman colony to the mid-fourth century; excavations which reveal the early prosperity of Ardea and its decline after the Samnite Wars; the Greek, Lucanian and Roman phases exemplified in the splendid fortifications and other buildings at Paestum; the Etruscan, Greek, Samnite and Roman stages in the development of Pompeii; the early growth of colonies, as Minturnae, Cosa and Alba Fucens. Beside the laying bare of cities and buildings archaeologists have supplemented the literary tradition by the discovery of coins (p. 318 ff.) and inscriptions. Apart from those inscriptions which illustrate the dialects, constitutions and religious history of Italian towns, the majority which survive are concerned with Roman contacts with the Hellenistic world.

  Of the laws, treaties and public documents some survived long enough to be recorded by ancient historians; others have been unearthed in modern times. Examples of the former are the Twelve Tables, the foedus Cassianum, and Rome’s early treaties with Carthage, recorded by Polybius. The latter are illustrated by the surviving Forum inscription; the treaty with Aetolia; the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC and that relating to Thespiae in 170; the decree of Aemilius Paullus, granting freedom to a small Spanish town; the letters of the Scipios to Colophon and Heraclea.1

  2. CALENDARS AND FASTI

  In early days the Pontifex Maximus drew up a list of days on which it was fas or nefas to transact business. This calendar gave the names and dates of those religious festivals which concerned the whole state. Examples of such calendars survive; though nearly all date from the Empire and contain the calendar as revised by Caesar, they nevertheless reproduce the skeleton of the original calendar, which was ascribed to Numa, and form a main source of our knowledge of early religious practice. In the absence of any system of eras the year to which the calendar referred would be denoted by affixing the names of the chief magistrates. The Pontifex at first probably recorded on the calendar any outstanding event of the year, but when these events became numerous he set up in the Regia a white tablet to record the names of the magistrates and the events of the year, such as wars, triumphs, temple foundations, eclipses and portents. These Tabulae Pontiflcum were probably first collected and published in eighty volumes of Annales Maximi by Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex Maximus of 130 BC. How many other lists of magistrates existed we do not know; we hear, for example, of libri magistratuum on linen rolls (libri lintei) which an annalist, Licinius Macer, said he found in the temple of Juno Moneta. These lists clearly formed a primary source for annalists when they first desired to reconstruct and write up the history of Rome. Many chronological tables were in circulation towards the end of the Republic; for instance, Cicero’s friend Atticus compiled a liber Annalis. In the reign of Augustus two important lists were set up on the triumphal arch of Augustus in the Forum at Rome: the Fasti Consulares which recorded the names of the consuls, censors, dictators, masters of the horse, decemvirs and consular tribunes from the beginning of the Republic, and secondly the Fasti Triumphales which listed the magistrates and pro-magistrates who had obtained triumphs from the time of Romulus. Of these lists we have considerable fragments, now called the Capitoline Fasti because they are preserved in the Palazzo dei Conservatori Museum on the Capitol; the missing portions can be reconstructed from other sources, such as an anonymous compiler known as the Chronographer of AD 345. That similar lists existed in Rome before the time of Augustus is shown by the discovery of a calendar and list of consuls and censors on the walls of a private house of c. 70 BC at Antium.2

  The crucial question is how far the Fasti of the fifth and fourth centuries are reliable; for the later period their authenticity is not doubted. The credibility of the whole of early Roman history depends to a considerable extent upon the answer. It is admitted on all sides that the early lists are not free from errors and falsifications. Mommsen’s belief in their substantial reliability was succeeded by the hypercritical attitude of Pais who denied them virtually any value. A reaction followed, led by the saner counsels of De Sanctis, and even Pais somewhat modified his earlier views, but unanimity is far from being reached. A primary consideration is the possibility of the survival of early documents after the sack of Rome in 390. It has sometimes been maintained that all the old temples perished in the fire. Archaeological research has shown that this is not true in the main, though in the case of the Regia itself a verdict of ‘not proven’ must be returned.3 And if the Gauls spared the temples they probably spared the
archives and records which they contained. It is noteworthy that though Athens was burnt by the Persians in 480 and 479 a list of eponymous magistrates of the city going back two centuries earlier survived. But though the probability of the survival of early records be admitted, the errors of the Fasti cannot be overlooked. Both Livy (viii, 40) and Cicero (Brut. 62) tell how tradition was impaired by funeral eulogies and family pride which appropriated to itself the glory of exploits belonging to others. It is sometimes said that since the plebeians did not hold the consulship until 367 all plebeian names in the Fasti before that date must be forgeries due to the class and family pride of the great plebeian families; and an occasion for the falsification is found in the Lex Ogulnia (c. 300) which admitted plebeians to the college of pontiffs (p. 111). This raises the question: when were the Tabulae of the pontiffs begun and when were they first publicly exposed? They may not have been made public earlier than c. 300 when popular demand became vocal, because before then the nobility had other ways of getting any information they required. This, however, does not mean that the annales started then. Cicero (de orat., II, 12, 52) expressly says that they went back to the beginnings of the Roman state. Beloch, however, denies this; on the evidence of the only genuine fragments of the annales which refer to an eclipse, also mentioned by Ennius, he assigns the beginning of genuine records to a little before 288, which is the date he conjectures for the eclipse which must have been the first in a series. But the evidence is far from satisfactory and Beloch himself can only find a few interpolations in the consular Fasti of 486–364 BC and has accepted the Fasti Triumphales as a useful source.4 In the Fasti of the fifth century many names occur which were unknown in later times; there can be little reason to suppose that these are interpolations. Further, since patricians and plebeians often had the same names in early times and as original patrician names sometimes passed over to plebeian families, it is not necessary to assume that all the names in the Fasti which were later plebeian need be plebeian inventions. Thus it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Fasti are substantially sound from the beginning of the fifth century and that, despite some later inventions, a reliable list of names is to be found. It is also easy to exaggerate the extent to which the lists used by the later Roman annalists differed from one another.

  3. THE HISTORIANS5

  The first historian to take serious notice of Rome’s history was curiously not a Roman but a Greek, Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily (c. 350–260 BC) who was impressed by Rome’s defeat of Pyrrhus which showed the Greek world that a new power was arising in the west. Timaeus, who was exiled from Sicily, lived mainly in Athens, where he wrote a history of Sicily and also a history of Pyrrhus. In his historical work he discussed Rome’s origins and dated its foundation to the same year as that of Carthage; he also referred to the introduction of coinage, the census classes and Roman customs such as the sacrifice of the October horse, while he personally questioned the inhabitants of Lavinium about the Roman Penates there. He was later fiercely criticized by his fellow Greek historian Polybius, who aimed at becoming Rome’s chief historian, but his work remained popular. However, before the days of Polybius the Romans had decided that it was time for them to begin to write their own history.

  The earliest Roman historians were Q. Fabius Pictor, L. Cincius Alimentus, Postumius Albinus and Acilius (p. 346), but they too all wrote in Greek. They were senators whose purpose was in part to expound and justify the Roman way of life in the light of past history to the Greek world with which Rome was then coming into contact. They recounted the legends of the regal period for what they were worth, but they probably did not elaborate their accounts of the first two centuries of the Republic for which reliable evidence was limited. There is little reason to suppose that men who as consuls argued the merits of laws and treaties in the Senate or who as praetors sat in judgment in the courts, lost all their critical faculties when they came to write history. They knew the value of documents and though they presumably had a natural pro-Roman and aristocratic bias, their accounts were essentially trustworthy. The most important of this group of senatorial historians was probably Fabius Pictor, who may be exonerated from the charge recently brought against him that he falsified Rome’s early history by antedating the period of her power vis-à-vis the Latins (p. 422). He struck a moralistic and didactic note, emphasizing Rome’s moral code in domestic and public life, and history was to him a serious business, not unworthy of the leisure time of a Roman senator. His influence was considerable, since his work was used by Polybius, not least for his account of the First Punic War and for the causes of the Second. Fabius and these other historians wrote in Greek partly in order to explain Rome to the Greek world, but partly also because the Latin language had not yet been sufficently moulded as a vehicle for historical prose. This was the achievement of Cato.

  The seven books of Cato’s Origines, written from c. 168 to 149, followed Hellenistic historians who dealt with the founding of cities (ktiseis), but they were written in Latin; Cato created Latin history. His treatment of his theme in the Origines varied considerably in different parts: the first three books dealt with the origins of Rome (book i) and of the other cities of Italy; books iv and v covered the events from the First Punic War to 167 BC, but in the last two books Cato extended his scale and even inserted some of his own public speeches, thus approaching autobiography. His treatment was discursive (capitulatim); he used local legends and Hellenistic traditions, as well as Fabius’ work. He did not spare his own political opponents or minimize his own exploits, but (unlike the senatorial historians) he wrote with an anti-aristocratic bias which suppressed the names of famous generals, though he ironically recorded that of Surus, the bravest Carthaginian war elephant. Although this idiosyncrasy was not followed by later writers, the Origines formed a link between the work of his predecessors and that of the group of ‘older’ annalists who began a fresh reconstruction of Roman history. They are represented by Cassius Hemina and Calpurnius Piso (consul in 133).

  The publication of the Annales Maximi by Scaevola then established the ‘definitive’ form of this material which was used by the ‘later’ annalists from Cn. Gellius to the Sullan annalists (Claudius and Valerius) and Livy. These men wrote for a wider public which had become acquainted with the rhetorical histories of Greek writers, and many were influenced by party interests. They wrote too on a larger scale: by making greater use of the material in the Annales Maximi, by utilizing the traditions preserved (partly orally) in the great families, and by rhetorical treatment, Gellius devoted 20 books to the events of 500–300, which Piso more soberly had recorded in two (with an average of perhaps some twelve lines to a year). Q. Claudius Quadrigarius (c. 78) may partly have avoided this danger by starting his history with the year 390, but his contemporary Valerius Antias ran to at least 75 books of rhetorical and unreliable historical romance. In the Ciceronian age the demand for more reliable reference books was met by antiquarians who wrote commentaries and encyclopaedias on legal, constitutional and religious institutions. Their researches led to the discovery of a number of constitutional documents of considerable antiquity and value, but their object was not always purely theoretical and historical; they often sought to find precedents to justify existing procedure. Among the annalists Licinius Macer and Aelius Tubero claimed to have undertaken documentary research. Licinius found in the temple of Juno Moneta some books written on linen, libri lintei, which contained lists of senior magistrates. His political views and family connections will have affected his interpretation of the past: as a popularis and a plebeian tribune in 73 BC, he saw the struggle of the orders in the light of contemporary events, and as a Licinius he will not have minimized the importance of the Licinian rogations.

  We now come to the historians proper, who based their work on the annalists. Of these the greatest is Livy who, while Augustus was restoring the state, wrote an account of the Roman people from the landing of Aeneas to 9 BC in 142 books; of these books i–x (to 293 BC) and
xxi–lxiv (218–167) survive. The success which he achieved is due partly to his greatness as a writer, partly to his co-operation with Augustus’ attempt to restore the ancient Roman virtues, for above all Livy’s history is a pageant of the worthies of the Roman state. His honesty and fairness stand out in contrast with the fabrications of an Antias. His value as a historian depends on the sources which he used in any given part of his narrative; where he follows Polybius or the older annalists he is trustworthy, where he uses Claudius and Valerius (as he does in a large part of the fourth and fifth decades) he is less so. He recounted the legends of early Rome, but he did not mistake them for historical fact. One grave charge against him is his neglect to consult original sources and documents; he was content to use published accounts. This may be explained, if not excused, when the practical difficulty of consulting unclassified and uncatalogued documents is realized, especially since the historian was writing a work about three times the length of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. For the lost books we have ‘tables of contents’ (periochae); fuller epitomes existed, of which a fragment has been found in a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus lived in Rome at the same time as Livy and wrote in Greek a Roman Antiquities in 20 books, of which 10 survive intact, the rest in extracts. The work covers the period from the foundation of Rome to 264 BC and was published in 7 BC. In his first book Dionysius used Greek writers, in later books the annalists, especially the more recent ones; his attitude towards his sources was uncritical. Another Greek historian of Rome is Cassius Dio, consul in AD 229. His History of Rome from early times down to his own consulship was completed in 80 books. The first 35 of these are lost, but we have an Abridgement made by Zonaras in the twelfth century AD. For the older period he used annalistic sources, which resemble Dionysius more than Livy; for the second century he made some use of Polybius.