I begin this section with a warning that the theoretical problems raised earlier are issues even when we consider specific cases, and that even the form of this chapter could potentially be misleading. That is, the mere fact of collecting the examples below (nowhere so grouped in antiquity) runs the risk of assuming they share a common identity. On the other hand, we should not be overly confident about the grouping: the texts vary widely in length, they are not treated together in antiquity, and, in absolute terms, they are spread across decades. Nonetheless, I will focus on the demonstrable similarities of these works.
M. Aemilius Scaurus (162-88 [or earlier], cos. 115) wrote three books On his Own Life, but we have only six or seven fragments, preserved primarily in brief quotations in grammatical works, and so selected for their linguistic, not historical, interest. Most of the fragments refer to military action, but one (the longest) speaks of the very modest inheritance Scaurus received from his father. Thus the text may have related most or all of his life, and at any rate it was not strictly an account of his official activities. Cicero knew the work in 45 and praised it as ‘‘useful,’’ but at the same time claimed that it was no longer read in his time, even though others of Scaurus’ works remained popular (Cic. Brut. 112). Finally we are told by two later sources that the work was dedicated to one L. Fufidius, about whom we know little else.
P. Rutilius Rufus (ca. 156-after 78; cos. 105) wrote at least five books entitled, like Scaurus’ work, On his Own Life. There are nine surviving fragments specifically attributed to this work, and most of them to a specific book within it. These are all very brief, and they too are preserved in grammatical works. The situation, however, is somewhat complicated by the existence of a work Plutarch calls his ‘‘Histories.’’ Some fragments attributed to Rufus but not to any particular work almost certainly belong to these histories (e. g., HRR F2, giving the date of the death of Scipio in 183), but others come from the period of Rufus’ life (HRR F 4, the conspiracy of Saturninus and Glaucia in 100) or in their original context were probably background information (e. g., the institution of the market-day cycle). Scaurus and Rufus are discussed together in a passage of Cicero’s Brutus cited above, but Rufus’ memoir is not discussed. Admittedly, Cicero’s main point is to treat them as orators, but the omission is still striking, especially since Cicero was himself a defender of Rufus’ reputation after the latter’s supposedly unjust conviction on charges of extorting money from his provincial subjects. More than a century later, Tacitus refers to Scaurus and Rufus together as writers of their own lives, though it is not entirely clear that he has read either.
Q. Lutatius Catulus (ca. 149-87; cos. 102) wrote a single book On his Consulship and Deeds. There are only three clear fragments, all preserved in Plutarch’s Marius., and all describing differences between Catulus’, Sulla’s, and Marius’ accounts of the battle of Vercellae in 101. (Catulus also wrote a work called the Common History, but the early date of the events recounted make it easy to rule out an autobiographical work as the source of unattributed fragments.) Since On his Consulship is preserved only in Greek, and there seemingly in paraphrase rather than translation, it is difficult to discern anything about its composition. Cicero, however, praises the style of the work as ‘‘gentle and similar to Xenophon’s’’ (Brut. 132), which signals a fairly plain style, aiming at grace more than impact. In addition, it was dedicated to a minor but friendly poet named A. Furius Antias. Finally, despite the supposed qualities of the work, it was largely unknown by the mid-40s. Much later Fronto (Ver. Imp. 2.15) refers to a ‘‘letter of Catulus in which he laid out on the model of historical writing his deeds, with their costs and benefits, deserving of a triumph.’’ (The reference to a letter is possibly an error on Fronto’s part.)
L. Cornelius Sulla (138-78; cos. 88) left behind at his death twenty-two books on his own life. The title of this work is often given as Commentaries by modern authorities, but no Roman author uses the corresponding Latin term. Plutarch frequently uses a roughly parallel Greek term, but its sense is broader than the Latin word (see §4). All other references are to ‘‘deeds’’ or (once) ‘‘history,’’ and we may prefer to assume something like that was the title (cf. here Catulus’ work). Plutarch is easily our single best source for the work, but a half-dozen fragments also come from nearly as many Latin authors. The subject matter appears to include all of Sulla’s life and beyond. HRR F 2 from the second book makes reference to an ancestor named Publius who became flamen dialis (a major priesthood) in the late third century, which suggests Sulla began with a leisurely treatment of family history. Sulla is also said to have been writing up until two days before his death. On the other hand, he had already reached the year 86 in Book 10, suggesting that the narrative of his own life slows down again in the later parts. It may be that the reference to P. Cornelius Sulla was some kind of flashback. The work was dedicated to L. Licinius Lucullus, friend and staff officer, who had improved an earlier draft through his literary expertise. It seems to have been circulated broadly only after Sulla’s death. None of the literary sources which treat the other works of ‘‘autobiography’’ as such mention Sulla’s despite its monumentality.
All four writers have several similar features in their political trajectories. On the one hand, all were quite successful in that they reached the consulship. At the same time, they had careers in other respects troubled. First, all but Sulla were defeated the first time they ran for the consulship (Catulus two more times). Sulla lost in his first run for the praetorship, and was likely blocked from running for the consulship when first eligible because he was under indictment. (His later dictatorship was, of course, won by force.) Second, all four were in fact the target of prosecutions that seem to have had at least partly political motivations. Rufus even spent two decades of his life in exile. Such prosecutions were considerably more common in republican Rome than they are today. Alexander (1993) has estimated that about one Roman politician in three would have faced prosecution during his lifetime. Still, the conjunction of four out of four is perhaps not a coincidence. Third, none of them was from the core Roman nobility, the group that produced generation after generation of elected officials. Scaurus, Catulus, and Sulla were all from families very old and thus of high social standing, but ones that had not had much political prominence in the recent past. Rufus was a ‘‘new man,’’ someone whose ancestors had never even held political office.
Not only did these men have somewhat precarious political careers individually, but they may also have lived in a time when the rules of politics were changing more generally. They began writing shortly after a pair of events which seem to mark a transformation in popular participation in Roman politics. First, in the early second century, a series of laws introduced the secret ballot in popular voting. Second, we are told that in 145 bce a politician named C. Licinius Crassus was the first to address political speeches to the crowd of citizens in the Forum, rather than a group assembled in the Comitium (an open-air meeting place adjacent to both Forum and Senate house). The effect of this was to address a substantially larger audience and probably one with less predictable political sympathies. Both ancient and modern authorities have connected this change with the rise of ‘‘popular’’ politicians whose mark was the ability to mobilize recently enlarged numbers of voters to show up and act on their legislative proposals. Historians who otherwise have wide differences have tended to agree that the late republic saw such mass mobilization of voters by charismatic speakers take on an increased (if not entirely new) importance. Whether or not Rome actually became more ‘‘democratic,’’ the standard political arsenal had changed.
Flux also appears at a third and final level if we look at the broader history of Roman cultural production. Many have noted that ‘‘literature’’ in anything like the modern sense came very late to Rome; the conventional marker of Livius Andronicus’ composition of dramas in 240 will give a serviceable date. Only slightly less noted is that the development of artistic prose seems to have come even later. The elder Cato (234-149) is the first author recorded to have published in later recognized ‘‘literary’’ genres such as history, oratory, and the technical manual. It has been something of an embarrassment, however, for this version of literary history, that some parts of Cato’s wuvre are, from the point of view of later literature, much more sophisticated than others. Moreover, we now realize that Cato’s distancing of himself from Greek intellectual traditions is largely a useful fiction, and so cannot account for his ‘‘primitive’’ features. Sciarrino (2004) has recently argued that the problem is misconceived. The late third and early second centuries were a time of negotiation between various forms of (potentially) authoritative verbal practice: performance vs. text; socially prominent individuals vs. marginal professionals vs. popular traditions; inspiration vs. traditional authority. In this context, it would not be surprising to find experimentation with forms that did not necessarily survive later. We should consider, therefore, whether our authors took advantage of this cultural fluidity to respond to their peculiar social and political situations.
World History
