First, the scope of this chapter needs to be clarified. I am taking the starting point of the ‘‘late republic’’ to be the regime of Sulla in 82-80 bce. This inevitably leads to some artificial distinctions, since it is not always possible to date historians with the appropriate precision: in particular the annalists Valerius Antias and Claudius Quadrigarius seem to have been writing approximately at the time of Sulla, but I shall have little to say about them here (cf. above, p. 264). The endpoint for the purposes of the chapter will be the death of Augustus in 14 ce. This too is artificial: it is not based on a belief that the republic lasted that long as a political system, or even that 14 CE represents a major political watershed in other respects, but rather it reflects the fact that a number of the most prominent historians of the Augustan period, including indeed both Livy and Pollio, are most notable as historians of the republic, and their work aligns more naturally with their predecessors than with their successors, despite the vastly changed political circumstances under which they were writing. After Livy Latin historiography focused primarily on the empire, and will accordingly be treated in the next chapter. There were, however, some historians who wrote contemporary history under Augustus, and as such prefigure the mainstream histories of the empire: these too I shall leave aside here.
For a modern reader, this period of historiography is marked by two outstanding figures: Sallust (C. Sallustius Crispus) and Livy (T. Livius). With each of them, however, only a minority of their work survives. From Sallust we have the short monographs known as the War of Catiline (describing the attempted revolution of the Roman aristocrat L. Sergius Catilina in 63 bce) and the War ofJugurtha (on the Roman war in Africa in the late second century bce against the Numidian king Jugurtha). But we have lost almost entirely his five-volume Histories, covering the history of Rome between 78 and 67 bce, although it was much read in later antiquity, and accordingly a substantial number of fragments survive either excerpted or in palimpsest or quoted by later authors. As for Livy, of the 142-volume history that he published, covering the entire history of Rome from its foundation to the death of Augustus’ stepson Nero Drusus in 9 bce, only thirty-five volumes survive: 1-10 and 21-45, covering respectively the period from the foundation to 293 bce, and 219-167 BCE. Of the rest we have relatively few fragments - the sheer size of this history doubtless precluded its full bulk from circulating widely - but we do have brief summaries (the so-called Periochae) of almost all of the remaining books.
The other Latin histories of the period are lost (apart from the commentarii of Caesar and his followers: above, p. 271). The one about which we know by far the most is the forty-four-book Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, the surviving fragments of which include not only content lists for each book (the so-called ‘‘Prologues’’), but also a large-scale epitome by the later writer Justin. From these we have a close knowledge of the structure and the contents of the work, both of which are quite exceptional in Latin historiography (see §5). There are then a number of other historians for whom we have sufficient fragments or references to get at least a vague picture of the scope and sometimes manner of their work: this is the case not
Only with Pollio but also with L. Cornelius Sisenna, C. Licinius Macer, Aelius Tubero, L. Arruntius, and Fenestella. (There is a complex problem as to whether there were one or two historians by the name of Aelius Tubero, and, if two, which fragments should be assigned to which. Cicero [Q. fr. 1.1.10] refers to his brother’s aide L. Tubero writing history, but Livy 4.23.1 and Suet. DJ 56, 83 name their source as his son Q. Tubero.) There are even more historians, however, who are hardly anything more than names to us: examples include Libo, Q. Hortensius Hortalus, C. Sulpicius Galba, Tanusius Geminus, Octavius Ruso, Octavius Musa, and C. Clodius Licinus. There is also the odd situation of L. Lucceius, not a single fragment or summary of whose work survives, but who is more widely known than many better attested writers, since Cicero wrote a famous (if shameless) letter to him (Fam. 5.12) requesting that Lucceius incorporate an account of Cicero’s own deeds into the history that he was writing.
A common image of the period is based around two aspects of these historians, whether lost or surviving (see, e. g., Badian 1966; Timpe 1979; also - but with some significant qualifications - Petzold 1993). The first is the manner of their history: whether they continued in the tradition of comprehensive year-by-year, so-called ‘‘annalistic’’ history, taking as their theme the history of the earlier republic, or whether they wrote thematic history about periods within living memory. The second issue centers on their own qualifications to write: whether they were (or had been) active political and military figures either writing history which covered matters within their experience or at least giving an account of events which they did not experience personally, but where their their broad knowledge of public life enabled them to give an informed and rational analysis, or whether they were ‘‘armchair’’ historians writing without having held high public office or military commands, and basing their work primarily upon their reading.
It is moreover implied that these two aspects were broadly correlated: that the ‘‘annalists’’ increasingly withdrew into formulaic literary fantasies, whereas the nonannalists wrote contemporary or near-contemporary thematic histories that reflected far more accurately the realities of politics and war in Rome. As examples of the latter group one may mention not only Pollio, a leading public figure writing a history of the Civil Wars which is generally thought to have started from 60 bce (Hor. Carm. 2.1.1; but note Woodman 2003: 199-213), but also Sisenna, who was praetor in 78 and then went on to hold a command under Pompey, but died in 67 while on service; his history was in at least twenty-three volumes, and covered the period from approximately 90 to 79 bce. The former, the ‘‘annalistic’’ and non-political group, includes Antias and Quadrigarius, and later Fenestella, whose history was in at least twenty-two volumes and a few of whose fragments - e. g., HRR F 10 - did include material that one would associate with an ‘‘annalistic’’ arrangement.
However, it is hard to see that this broad dichotomy stands up to much scrutiny (Verbrugghe 1989; Marincola 1999). The connection between annalistic history and politically inexperienced writers is the easiest to break down. Licinius Macer wrote at least sixteen books, and ‘‘annalistic’’ material is far more strongly attested for his work than it is for Fenestella (e. g., HRR FF 10, 13, 16); his history dealt not with contemporary or near-contemporary events but with the early republic. Yet he was highly active politically, including a famous tribunate in 73 bce, a praetorship, and governorship of a province. Both Tuberos also engaged extensively in political and military activity, and at least one of them wrote about the earlier republic including material that is likely to attest to an annalistic arrangement (e. g., HRR FF 6, 7). And while it is true that Sisenna and Pollio primarily wrote contemporary history, their fragments do not allow us to determine whether they in fact adopted an annalistic format - there are too few actual fragments of Pollio, and though there are more than 140 fragments of Sisenna, almost all of them are decontextualized phrases cited by grammarians which give no evidence of the character of the work. It is perfectly possible that one or both of them organized their work annalistically. Sisenna HRR F 127 says that it is preferable to write thematically than piecemeal, but this is in the context of the organization of the events of a single summer, and thus is more likely to attest to an overall annalistic arrangement than to deny it.
The connection between these supposedly non-annalistic writers and more reliable, politically informed history is equally problematic. As was said above, there is no evidence that Pollio’s history was marked by a particular critical acumen when it came to politics or any other topic; there is as least as much evidence for critical reasoning and political awareness in the fragments of Fenestella (e. g., HRR FF 9, 21). It is certainly true that Sisenna was much praised for his reliability by later Roman writers, and that we can with reasonable probability convict some annalistic writers of outright invention (notably Valerius Antias and Licinius Macer: on the latter see, e. g., Livy 7.9.3-5 = HRR F 16). But even Sisenna, despite claiming that dreams should not be believed, did not apply similar critical skepticism to other supernatural events (Cic. Div. 1.99 = HRR F 5), while Macer’s history was famously marked by his willingness to challenge traditional history on the basis of documents - the so-called ‘‘linen books,’’ which (unless he invented them himself, which is unlikely, though it cannot be entirely excluded) precisely attests to the fact that he did not uncritically rely on accepted tradition, but sought an empirical approach to history.
So if the picture of a sharp division in Roman historiography in the late republic is not well supported in the surviving fragments and attestations of the historians in question, where does it come from? It appears to arise from a combination of factors. The earliest Roman historians were certainly senators, and it can be plausibly argued that their histories were a continuation of their political activities; it is also true that it is only relatively late that one finds clearly non-senatorial historians (though the precise social status of quite a number of historians is unknown). But combined with this is an uncritical acceptance of certain ancient theories and prejudices about the proper qualifications for a historian, along with a tendency to develop overschematic antitheses between those historians who do survive. Various theorists of history in the ancient world suggest that political and military experience is an essential prerequisite for a historian, not merely because being an eyewitness of the particular events about which he is writing was felt to give him a privileged position, but more generally because of the insight that he will thereby receive into the conduct of war and politics more widely. This standpoint is associated above all with Polybius (whose work is marked by polemical attacks, above all against ‘‘armchair’’ historians whose experience is gained solely from libraries), but it represents a tradition that has its roots in Thucydides. This is then combined with hints in the fragments of lost Roman historians - in particular Sempronius Asellio HRR FF 1-2 - that some Romans saw a distinction between ‘‘annals,’’ which (allegedly) consisted of bare facts without analysis, and ‘‘history,’’ in which proper causes and explanations for events are given. From this the conclusion is reached that serious critical history was written by politicians, especially (but not only) those writing thematic history about their own time, while annalists were primarily non-politicians uncritically transmitting tradition, or indeed even going beyond that by inventing sensational material where tradition was lacking.
In general one would expect that modern scholars, who themselves after all rarely have political and military experience and usually conform more to the practices of the ‘‘armchair’’ historians, would be more skeptical than the ancients about the primacy of direct political experience in creating a good historian. Nor is it at all obvious that accounts of the distant past are going to reveal less historical acumen than accounts of the more recent past. But in the case of the late republic such skepticism has tended to be muted. One possible reason is that the dichotomy appears to map very well onto the two major surviving historians of the period: Sallust and Livy.
Already in antiquity there was a recognition that this pair represented the high point of republican historiography, and they were treated as strongly contrasting figures: Sallust as the ‘‘Roman Thucydides,’’ Livy as the ‘‘Roman Herodotus,’’ for example (Quint. 10.1.101; cf. 2.5.19). In modern accounts that antithesis has been maintained and developed into a more general contrast between Sallust, the pessimistic, disillusioned politician writing intense studies of his corrupted society, and Livy, the naive, relaxed, and optimistic celebrator of past virtue on a grand annalistic scale. It is certainly true that Sallust was a senator and Livy was not; it is also true that Sallust’s two surviving monographs concern events within living memory treated thematically, whereas Livy’s surviving history concerns the long distant past and is treated annalistically. But, as will be seen, the dichotomy between them is often drawn far too starkly.
World History
