Historiography

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Historiography

Caesar. It is ironic that Gaius Iulius Caesar, a contemporary of Cicero and Catullus, and certainly another contender for the title of Most Important Roman of the Republic, is barely studied any more in schools and universities; generations of Latin students have been turned off the subject by having to read about his martial exploits, mostly in the Gallic War. He actually came from Rome itself, and his writings are arguably the most Roman of all the literature that survives. His works take the form of a commentary, notes taken down as a basis for a full-fledged history. Since he himself was the protagonist in the warfare he describes, his account is of course necessarily subjective. While some books of the Greek historian Thucydides read like sketches or early drafts of a history, Caesar’s “notes” are not obviously modeled on any Greek author and read like a lean but paradoxically finished product, including some of the geographical and ethnographic digressions characteristic of ancient historiography. His style is as remarkable as Cicero’s, with a tendency to formulaic expressions. He deserves to be read again as a man of letters and a politician rather than as a general and used as a training ground for translating ablatives absolute or indirect speech.

Critique of the Aristocracy. The historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus (generally called Sallust in English) appeals much more to the modern mind than does Caesar. In his two monographs, The War with Catiline and The Jugurthine War, written after Caesar’s death and Sallust’s retreat from public life, consciously echo both the format and the style of the famous Greek historian Thucydides. Even the fragmentary Histories in five books seem to have included some quasi monographs within their annalistic structure. Sallust’s view of Roman history is highly critical of the Roman aristocracy, which, in the war against the Numidian king Jugurtha, proves itself to be incompetent and corrupt. The sly crook Jugurtha manipulates the Roman aristocrats to his own advantage until Gaius Marius, a man of common origins, puts an end to aristocratic shortcomings and to the war. The Roman revolutionary Catiline (see also under Cicero) exemplifies, for Sallust, everything that is wrong with the young aristocrats: they have all fallen prey to ambitio (ambition) and avaritia (greed). These two vices have, in Sallust’s analysis, taken root since the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.E. Like most ancient historians, Sallust therefore sees history as a process of rise and fall. His own period is presented as one of moral and political decline, and the culprits are clearly the ruling Roman noblemen. His abrupt, sententious style, which avoids Ciceronian periods and balance, can be seen as an expression of his dissent.

Ab urbe condita. One of the greatest historical sources for ancient Rome is the massive work of Titus Livius, or Livy, as he is called in English. His annalistic history, referred to as Ab urbe condita or From the Foundation of the City, begins with Aeneas and, in its final form, ends with the death of Augustus’s stepson Drusus in 9 C.E. The work was originally conceived in 120 books, ten times the length of the Aeneid, ending with the death of Cicero (and of the republic). This design already indicates Livy’s great love for the republican form of government and the glorious days of senatorial rule, a fact apparent to the emperor, who jokingly called him a supporter of Pompey the Great. Livy added the final 22 books to cover the most recent years and presumably acknowledge the achievements of Augustus. It has been argued that Livy’s Ciceronian style indicates his overall approval of the status quo, while dissenters such as Sallust and Tacitus choose a terse, cryptic manner of writing. Only books 1-10 (early Rome down to the third Samnite War), 21-45 (second Punic War and war against Macedonia), and a fragment of 120 survive. The contents of the lost volumes are summaries called periochae. The vast amount of material is arranged at least in part in chunks of ten books called decades, which may have been the original units of publication. In collecting the material for this huge work, Livy necessarily relied on the accounts of previous historians who often had their own axes to grind. Like his Greek precursor Herodotus, Livy has been judged to be insufficiently critical of his sources. This is not entirely true, as can be seen in the vexed question of Hannibal’s route across the Alps (“I cannot understand why there should be any doubt about the route he followed over the Alps, or why it is often supposed that he crossed by the Pennine Alps” [21.38 translation by de Sêlincourt]). Livy weighs the accounts carefully and then forms his judgment. His guiding principle, however, is not the often biting criticism of Sallust or Tacitus, but rather an interest in what the Greeks called aitia (causes, origins), thus connecting the past with the present. Furthermore, Livy seems well informed about Roman army administration and public finances, so he must have used at least some archival material.

Guide to Life. Ancient writers of history conceived of their craft less as a recording of what actually happened than as a guide to lives. Readers were meant to draw lessons for their own lives and times from their accounts. For Livy this means that individuals shape history, standing out as either models of conduct such as Scipio, or negative examples such as Hannibal. The latter is directly characterized in book 21.4 as a godless villain reminiscent of Sallust’s Catiline, a man of iron constitution: “Indefatigable both physically and mentally, he could endure with equal ease excessive heat or excessive cold; he ate and drank not to flatter his appetites but only so much as would sustain his bodily strength. His time for waking, like his time for sleeping, was never determined by daylight or darkness”. (21.4 translation by de Sêlincourt). Scipio, on the other hand, is indirectly characterized by his deeds, foremost of which is his carrying his wounded father out of the battle at the Trebia (21.46) as Aeneas had carried Anchises out of Troy. Roman pietas (sense of duty toward gods, country, and family) like this cannot help but win out in the end against an opponent who has nulla religio (no respect for religious observances, 21.6).

Dramatic Episode. The other building block of Livy’s account is the dramatic episode. In a work of this proportion it is difficult to keep the reader’s attention. Brilliantly described individual events are Livy’s remedy. Who could forget the twin accounts of how the elephants are taken across the river Rhône (21.28)? The version in which they are shipped on rafts symbolically anticipates the Carthaginians’ situation in Italy: surrounded by a hostile medium,

those who lose their cool fall into the river, while those who stay calm in spite of their fear make it to the other side. Another famous episode occurs in 21.37 on the south side of the Alps, where the Carthaginians cut a serpentine path into a rocky precipice to allow their elephants to descend. This is done in four days by heating the rock with fire and then pouring vinegar on it. Whether true or not, this account highlights the extraordinary difficulties of the Alpine crossing in a much more vivid way than logistical considerations would. Consider this: Hannibal used North African elephants, which were smaller than the West African ones in modern zoos. A West African animal eats about 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of vegetation per day. Hannibal managed to get thirty-seven elephants into Italy. Even if his smaller elephants consumed only half of the West African’s ration, Hannibal would have had a major supply problem on his hands. This requirement is why he crosses in fall when the harvest has been brought in and stores are generally full. It is also the reason for local opposition to his force: “Coming to the territory of another mountain tribe, a numerous one for this sort of country, Hannibal encountered no resistance, but fell into a cunningly laid trap. In fact he nearly succumbed to the very tactics in which he himself excelled.” (21.34, translation by de Sélincourt). Hannibal needed to raid the winter supplies of the mountain dwellers, essentially leaving them to starve. Instead of this dry analysis, Livy gives us colorful episodes of deceiving the local opposition, of men and beasts rolling down mountainsides, creatures slipping and sliding on the ice, breaking through and getting stuck, as well as the rock episode.

Rise and Fall. While the narrative focuses on individual episodes, the overall scheme of Rome’s history is the familiar pattern of rise and fall already found in Herodotus. Like Sallust, Livy sees Rome as ascending until the year 146 B.C.E. when Corinth and Numantia were destroyed. The decline of the republic finds its logical end in the death of Cicero, its most vocal champion, in book 120. The scheme of rise and fall, however, allows for a new period of recovery under Augustus which, like the Aeneid, ends on a sad note with the death of Augustus’s own stepson. In Livy, too, empire has its price.

Astute Observer. A writer of similarly great interest to the social historian is Gaius Caecilius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), who, in the published version of his speech for the emperor Trajan in the Senate as well as in the nine-book collection of prose letters, offers unrivalled documentation for life around 100 C.E. Literature ran in his family, since his uncle and adoptive father of the same name had written an encyclopedic work called Natural History covering all human knowledge about nature. The younger Pliny’s published speech, titled Panegyric, started a tradition of writing such formal praises of an emperor’s virtues. In his published letters he describes Roman life in his day from a detached perspective. The most famous example is his description of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in which his uncle dies:

“The closer they came, the hotter and thicker the ash that was now falling on his ship. Now black pumice stones and rocks that were burnt and broken by fire were falling. Now the collapse of the mountain and a sudden wave fell on the opposing shore. Hesitating whether he should turn back, he soon told the helmsman who was encouraging him to do just that: ‘Fortune favors the brave. Steer towards Pomponianus!’ He was in Stabiae cut off by the middle of the bay.” (Letters 6.16).

Pliny describes all of this disaster from a safe distance. He laments the deaths of poets Silius Italicus and Martial. Generally, he tries to find something positive to say about the people he describes.

Tacitus’s Critique of Monarchy. One of Pliny’s closest friends was Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the most unusual historian that Rome produced. Apart from his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola, and his ethnographical account of Germany, he also wrote a work (in Ciceronian style, which he subsequently abandoned) called Dialogue on Orators, on the decline of oratory. Of his Histories, dealing with the civil war of 68-69 C.E., four books and some fragments have come down to us; his most famous work, the Annals, was probably left unfinished at his death, which is why only books 1-4, part of 5, 6, part of 11, 12-15, and parts of 16 remain. The picture he gives of the principate in his Annals is the gloomiest and most critical to be found anywhere. While he claimed to write “without anger or bias” (sine ira et studio, 1.1), one cannot help but note that in his view the only good emperor is a dead emperor. Tiberius’s reign starts with the devastating phrase “primum facinus novi principatus fuit Postumi Agrippaecaedes” (“the first crime of the new régime was the murder of Agrippa Postumus,” 1.6). Tacitus’s portrait of Tiberius is devastating: A somewhat dark and unapproachable character who would not have done well in the television age, Tacitus sets him up against his nephew Germanicus, whom he had to adopt at Augustus’s behest. In Tacitus’s account, the able general Tiberius, who had salvaged many potentially disastrous situations for Augustus, can do no right, whereas the inept but popular Germanicus can do hardly any wrong. Germanicus is set up as a check on Tacitus’s cruel and violent character, which reveals itself in stages. After Germanicus’s death Tiberius becomes slightly less cruel, but hides it behind the even crueler face of Sejanus, his right-hand man and commander of the palace guard: Of audacious character and untiring physique, secretive about himself and ever ready to incriminate others, a blend of arrogance and servility, he concealed behind a carefully modest exterior an unbounded lust for power. Sometimes this impelled him to lavish excesses, but more often to incessant work. (4.1, translation by Grant). When Sejanus is discovered as having plotted to become emperor himself, Tiberius finally reveals his true nature in a bloody purge of Sejanus’s supporters. Tacitus’s picture of Nero is similarly stylized. First, his mother Agrippina manages to control the young monster, then his tutors and advisors Seneca and Burrus, but when he has eliminated all of them, he reveals his childish, conceited, and fiendish true nature. While Tacitus’s picture of Nero probably has a great deal of truth to it, Tiberius was much more able as an administrator than Tacitus would have one believe. In his account, anything apparently positive done or said by Tiberiusis interpreted as hypocrisy. The emperor is violent by nature and his administration becomes a civil war on his own people. (All this is told in a prose style that sends Latin students screaming for help.) Tacitus cultivated in the Annals a remarkable style that avoids parallel grammatical constructions and balance, thereby making the reader pause, reread, and think again. This deliberately difficult style has recently been seen as a hallmark of historiographers who are highly critical of the times they describe, such as Thucydides and Sallust. This picture seems to fit Tacitus quite well, since he had demonstrated that he was perfectly capable of writing like Cicero in his Dialogue on Orators.

Suetonius: Lives of People such as Ourselves. Tacitus’s contemporary and fellow-historian, Gaius Sueto nius Tranquillus, chose a different style, outlook, and format for his works. His preferred genre was biography. Of his Lives of Famous Men we only have the ones on teachers of grammar and rhetoric. His 12 Lives of the Caesars, however, have survived largely intact. Biography had been cultivated in Greece by such authors as Plutarch, but Suetonius develops a different approach: rather than proceeding chronologically he describes different “rubrics,” which describe an emperor’s personal virtues and vices. His main interest is in the emperor’s private lives, delving into court gossip about scandals, and personal shortcomings. Emperors suddenly look like any human being rather than gods on earth: the emperor Claudius, Suetonius says, hardly ever left the dining room not bloated and drunk so that a feather was put in his mouth for relieving his stomach as he went to sleep immediately and kept his mouth open while asleep (Claudius 33.1). Seeing an emperor as fully human is exactly the effect that Suetonius tried to create.