Roman historiography begins either with Fabius Pictor, who between 215 and 200 wrote a history of Rome in Greek, or with Cato’s Origines, a work discussed above in the context of Cato’s anti-Hellenism and begun sometime after 170 (see also Chapter 2).9 Before these men wrote, the sources for Roman history existed primarily in the Annales, yearly records kept by the priests and in family traditions and public documents. Fabius and Cato were the first to apply Greek standards of investigation to the source material with an eye to discovering the truth about the past, and they composed a narrative that presented Rome both to itself and to the world. It is typical of Roman identity-formation that we are asked to choose between a work about Rome in Greek addressed to Greeks and a work in Latin by one of the period’s most vocal opponents of excessive Greek influence.
By the time Fabius wrote, the Greeks had already taught other nations to write history in Greek and in the Greek manner. But the Greeks did not write their own national history. They remained even in the Hellenistic period a fractious collection of kingdoms, leagues, city-states without any unifying political and cultural identity: a Spartan was not an Athenian. When Fabius wrote, however, a Tuscan or a Sabine or a Latin could be a Roman, and Fabius helped establish the myths that Romans claimed as their own (see also Chapter 22). He standardized the foundation myth of Romulus and Remus. He ordered his material in terms of the Roman chronology of the Annales. He recorded customs, ceremonies, and cultural history. While it is easy to understand his decision to use Greek, since he was using Greek methods and Greek sources to address a world whose international culture was Greek, it is also important that the first historical version of Roman identity is itself a kind of translation, not of Greek into Latin, but of Latin experience into Greek, a form of self-objectification. He began the task of seeing Roman history in the light of Greek history and of measuring the Roman past in terms of the Greek past.
If Roman historiography begins in Greek with Fabius, it becomes fully Roman when Cato writes his Origines. It is, of course, another irony that, while the Romanaristocrat Fabius writes in Greek, it is the ‘‘new man’’ from Tusculum that writes in Latin. But Cato’s conception of Rome is as important as his use of Latin: First, Rome is hybrid (the ‘‘aborigines’’ are from Achaia and the Sabines from Sparta; Latin is a Greek dialect). Second, and complicit with its hybridity, Rome is a ‘‘Republic,’’ a ‘‘public entity,’’ a possession of the People. As a result, ‘‘Romanness’’ has nothing to do with birth and everything to do with service to the Republic. When Cato refused to record the names of leaders in the wars he wrote about and, instead, referred to them by their military titles, he went much further than any other Roman in making an important point about Roman identity. A large part of what makes one Roman is the alignment of one’s own personal self-aggrandizement with the larger aggrandizement of Rome (see also Chapters 17 and 23). In Cato’s extreme presentation this reflects a tension within Roman identity between self-aggrandizement (which, of course, would characterize Cato’s own brilliant career) and the loss of self required when one is reduced or assimilated to one’s role as Roman. It would be interesting to know how Cato handled the problem when he quotes from his own speeches, but his unique presentation itself aligns his presentation of Rome with his self-presentation. This alignment is also part of an ideology that would formalize ‘‘treason’’ as the crime of maiestas, as putting personal power ahead of the Republic (the word means literally a crime against the ‘‘greater-ness’’ of the state) and sees ‘‘exile’’ as a loss of life: it was thought of as ‘‘capital punishment’’ because a separation from the center (Rome) that gave shape and meaning to one’s self-aggrandizing activities was a loss of life.
We turn now to Sallust, a Sabine born in Amiternum in 86 and probably a member of his municipal aristocracy. After a checkered career as a politician, which included expulsion from the Senate in 50, he turned to history writing (see also Chapter 2). He wrote two monographs, one on the Conspiracy of Catiline and another on the African war against Jugurtha, and an annalistic history beginning with the events of 78 and continuing down to at least 67. Among other things, his work continues the record of Roman identity-formation as an alignment of personal aggrandizement with the aggrandizement of Rome.
I think Athenian history was pretty great and glorious, but still a little less significant than its reputation. Because Athens produced men of great talent, Athenian deeds are known throughout the world. The virtue of those who did the deeds is equated with the talent of those who celebrated them. Rome, on the other hand, never had that advantage because men with the greatest understanding were men of action’’ (Cat. 8.2-5)
It’s a complex trick that Sallust performs here: the praise of Athenian historiography simultaneously detracts from the prestige of Athens and adds to the prestige of Sallust’s chosen project, one that enhances the prestige of Rome.
Competitive self-aggrandizement put to the service of Rome is even a theme of Sallust’s history: ‘‘The hardest struggle for glory was between Romans themselves’’ (Cat. 7.5) and ‘‘Quarrels, discord, strife was practiced with enemies; citizens competed with citizens for virtue’’ (Cat. 9.2). And who were these citizens? ‘‘As I understand the tradition, the city of Rome was founded and inhabited in the beginning by Trojans, who came in exile with their leader Aeneas after wandering about without any fixed home. They were joined by aborigines, an agrarian people without laws, without governmental authority, free and unrestrained’’ (Cat. 6.1). For Sallust this native hybridity was held together by a discourse of virtue: men should work as hard as possible to be remembered for a long time; they should exercise strength of mind and of body, but the body should serve the mind.11 Ironically, however, Catiline himself is the example that demonstrates and aggravates the ways in which this discourse does not work: he was known for remarkable strength of mind and body;
He could make his body serve his mind with incredible endurance; and, if Sallust the historian is successful in his monograph, Catiline will indeed be remembered for a long time: ‘‘This criminal event I consider especially memorable because of the extraordinary nature of the crime and its danger’’ ( Cat. 4.4).
The tension between Roman morality and Roman history that Sallust presents is one that makes his history a satirical one and it is one that finds Roman identity to be deeply divided, rhetorically motivated, and aggressively self-destructive.1 One instance will illustrate. Near the end of the work on Catiline, Sallust compares two men of extraordinary virtue, but different character, Cato the younger and Julius Caesar (see also Chapter 17). In the comparison the virtues of one man cancel out the virtues of the other. ‘‘Caesar was considered great for charity and generosity; Cato for integrity.’’ Does this imply that Caesar’s generosity is self-serving or that Cato’s integrity is mean-spirited? ‘‘Caesar achieved glory by giving, helping, forgiving; Cato by not offering bribes.’’ It is as if Cato’s virtue attacks Caesar’s virtue by turning benevolence into bribery. The problem of virtue has become so rhetor-icized that virtue is put in conflict with itself.13 As Sallust objectifies the disintegration of the Republic, he discovers that identity (here called ‘‘nature and character’’) is even for ‘‘virtuous men’’ a manipulative, competitive capacity to assume a rhetorical position vis-a-vis another. What is missing is the centripetal force of Rome as an understood or agreed upon center, at the same time that it is deployed as the rhetorical center.
World History
