‘‘For famous and important men, there should be an account of their leisure activities no less than of their serious business.’’ When Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 bce) in 170 or so set about writing a history of‘‘the deeds of the Roman People’’ (HRR FF 1,2), there was no doubt that he intended to master this task just as he had mastered everything else. Born a homo novus (‘‘new man,’’ i. e., without noble ancestors), Cato had worked his way from Tusculum up to the highest rank of the Roman aristocracy: quaestor in 204, five years later aedile of the people (199), 198 praetor of Sardinia, and in 195 the maximus honos, the consulate, followed by a triumph in 194 - this splendid career was indeed ‘‘serious business.’’ Just like the great nobles of his day, Cato too was driven by a thorough (self-)identification with and commitment to the fate of the res publica. In fact, his particular commitment to Roman collective values such as sternness, modesty, and a simple way of life earned him the reputation of an odd bird, as it were, which soon became a characteristic of Cato’s perception as a paradigmatic figure of virtue ( exemplum virtutis) in Roman cultural memory.
Cato embarked on his Origines (‘‘Origins’’) with the claim to do a good job and, most likely, to stand out from his predecessors. A generation earlier, in the midst of the Second Punic War, Quintus Fabius Pictor was the first Roman to write a history of Rome in prose (von Albrecht 1997: 371-374). Born probably around 270, Fabius participated in repeated campaigns against the Ligurians and Gauls during the 230s (cf. FGrHist 809 FF 19b, 20), and may even have held a praetorship in one of those years. After the devastating defeat of Cannae (216 bce) he was entrusted with an embassy to Delphi to seek divine advice for the battered state. This mission must have been a crucial experience. On his trip, Fabius was very likely confronted with resentments against Rome, which could have been a decisive factor in his decision to compose a historical work that would present the Roman view of current affairs.
The main impulse, however, came from Rome itself. It resulted from the deep crisis in the Roman state after Cannae. In response to the overwhelming conflict with Carthage, the question of driving forces in politics must have arisen. It was a question that promised to uncover the past and its relevance for the present, and it thereby offered orientation throughout the current crisis (Walter 2004: 229-255). This need for orientation becomes visible in Pictor’s organization of Roman history. Fabius created an intelligible continuum that ran from Heracles’ arrival in Italy through Romulus up to the most renowned nobles of his times. For as much as he stood in the tradition of Greek ktisis (‘‘foundation’’) history writing, still his work was no simple foundation story. To be sure, Greek authors such as Diocles of Peparethos had already been telling such foundation legends about Rome. Yet for Fabius Pictor, this spatium mythicum was not a separate space, lying far off in the past. In his work it became the basis for the Roman state, whose customs, institutions, and rule had been providentially announced in the early period, and which created a compelling mission for the present (cf. esp. FF 1,4, 11).
The task of Fabius was twofold: to establish a chronological network of historical material which was available only through a complex, stratified mixture of individual and collective memories; and to produce a coherent narrative - the poet Naevius had dealt only with a small portion in his Punic War - from Romulus and the foundation of the city (ab urbe condita) to the Hannibalic War. A remark in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (AR 1.6.2) indicates that Fabius’ history was divided into three large sections (cf. Timpe 1972): first the sweeping section on the foundation, which included the first years of the republic (FRH 1 FF 1-22); second, ‘‘the antiquities after the foundation-phase,’’ that is, the period from the decemvirate (451/0) to the Pyrrhic War (280-75), which Fabius handled summarily and with factual points of emphasis (FRH 1 FF 23-26, with Beck 2003); and third, the contemporary history from the First Punic War, written carefully, meticulously, and cogently (FRH 1 FF 27-32). The work was divided into several books. Long narrative passages about Romulus and Remus make it plain that Fabius’ history was not a mere compilation of facts and data. The treatment of current events was vivid, structurally sophisticated, and even analytic, at least when it came to an explanation of the Roman position in international affairs. Given Pictor’s intentions, it is easy to see why the work was written in Greek. Addressing an educated public (Greek, Roman, and ‘‘barbarian’’), this was the only language suited to reach a wide circle of readers (Badian 1966: 4).
Fabius set standards, and his achievement was recognized by Lucius Cincius Alimentus, Aulus Postumius Albinus, and Gaius Acilius, all of them educated senators who followed Fabius Pictor in the first decades of the second century in matters of language, form, and theme (cf. Verbrugghe 1982 on Cincius). Cato was different. Unlike them, he was a man of consular rank, which meant higher prestige, and unlike Fabius’ other immediate successors, Cato was determined to use this prestige to modernize Roman culture (Timpe 1970/1). Part of this modernization was to Latinize the historiographic genre: Cato wrote in Latin, and no Roman historian after him would return to Greek (Publius Rutilius Rufus notwithstanding [cf. below, p. 269]). It was a signal that the Romans possessed both a language and a set of intellectual abilities which were competitive with the lingua academica of the Greeks as well as their cultural achievements.
Cato’s second strategy to set himself apart from the Fabian tradition was the incorporation of the histories of the peoples and landscapes of Italy, which were treated at length in the second and third books of Cato’s Origins. Their local genealogies and rites, foundation myths, and historical origins (all of which is included in the Latin term origines) were perceived as integrated parts of a cultural community, into which Rome, the Latins, and the allies had melted (cf. Gotter 2003). This concept, it should be said, did not find reception amongst future historians, nor did another peculiarity of Cato’s, i. e., that he seemingly omitted the names of Roman consuls and other magistrates throughout most sections of his work (cf. HRR F 88). Even so, Cato’s emphasis on the emancipation of Roman culture, his portrayal of Roman collective values (esp. virtus Romana: F 83), and, last but not least, his focus on political rhetoric and harsh domestic debates highlight the fact that historiography entered a new era with Cato.
But did it really? The common views on early Roman historiography, which is all too often equated with the so-called annalistic tradition, have been taken with a large pinch of salt recently. This is also true for the perceptions of the underlying principles of the annalistic tradition, its inherent scheme(s), and its traditional division into three developing stages (early, middle, later annalistic), all of which have been challenged with good reasons. It is time to address this problem.
The long prevailing view had been determined by Cicero’s harsh criticism of the early Roman historians (De Or. 2.51-53; cf. also Leg. 1.6-7):
Let me remind you that in the beginning the Greeks themselves also wrote like our Cato, Pictor, and Piso. History was nothing more than a compilation of yearly chronicles, and for the purpose of this matter [...] the chief priest, from the beginnings of Roman history down to the time when Publius Mucius Scaevola was chief priest, committed to writing all the events of each year, and displayed them on a white tablet and exhibited the tablet at his house, in order that the people might have the opportunity to learn about them. These are the records that even today are called the annales maximi. A similar type of writing was adopted by many, and they have left only memorials of dates, people, places, and events, devoid of any distinction. In this way, just as the Greeks had their Pherecydes, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, and others, so we have their equivalents in our own Cato, Pictor, and Piso, who have no idea by what means speech is given distinction - such things, after all, have only recently been introduced here -, and who suppose that, provided what they say is understood, the sole virtue of speaking is brevity. (tr. May and Wisse)
Even though there are many who think that Cicero simply cannot be wrong, the first sentence of this quotation evidently is. Connecting Pictor’s and Cato’s histories so closely with the annales maximi (on which see Frier 1979/1999) was - and still is - a mistake. In fact, Cato explicitly disapproved of the priestly chronicles, lamenting that he ‘‘do[es] not care to write what is in the table kept by the pontifex maximus: how often grain was expensive, how often darkness or something else obstructed the light of the moon or sun’’ (HRR F 77). Cicero, who could not have seen the tabulae anymore, but only (if anything) the book-edition which had been produced by Mucius Scaevola around 130, was either unaware of this statement of Cato’s or he simply ignored it. Also, he must have dismissed Fabius’ accounts of events such as the fighting in Sicily during the First Punic War (FGrHist 809 F 18), which were by no means a mere listing of‘‘dates, people, places, and events.’’
The idea of parallel Greek and Roman developments is also inaccurate. The earlier chapters of this Companion have made it clear that Greek historiography did not develop from chronicle to history. Herodotus and Thucydides had no usable lists at their disposal; rather, they created their works by collecting, judging, and combining elements of oral tradition(s), occasionally benefiting from individual inscriptions or previous literary works at most. The same goes for Rome. The notes of the high priest documented the activity of the pontifices, especially the restoration of harmony with the gods. They also included information on the election and action of magistrates, since their conduct of public affairs was subject to prior consultation of auspices through which the gods expressed their approval. The list’s initial entries - for example, types of days (dies fasti, nefasti), intercalary months, and fixed festivals - would thus have been augmented by a wide range of disparate data on magistrate’s action, census figures, or even ad hoc notations such as eclipses and rises in grain prices (cf. Forsythe 2000: 6-9 vs. Bucher 1987 on the nature of the evidence). But these tabulae formed only a part of the source material for the early Roman historians, and they certainly did not serve as a genuine model in matters of form (FRH I: 32-37). The road to the annalistic scheme ran differently.
How precisely? The main impetus came from another literary genre. During the 180s, Quintus Ennius (239-169 bce), an immigrant of Messapian origin who was brought to Rome by Cato, composed a monumental epic on the history of Rome from the downfall of Troy to his own day. The work, written in hexameters, was called Annales, just like the earliest history works in prose. It was a huge success. Recitations attracted large crowds, and many readers memorized long passages. Its main innovation was that Ennius, a foreigner in Rome, discovered a pioneering way that verified his presentation of Roman history; so far only members of the Senate had presented written accounts on that topic. Ennius arranged his material in such a way that the work was conceived as a commentary on the tabulae of the high priest. He included repeated features such as the names of magistrates, notes on religious matters, information about public duties, news on campaigns and triumphs, censorial measures, trials, and so on. When deployed along with other historical contents, such formulations lent the text a certain profile. More than that, the work gained an extratextual authority, since the material had been organized after the year-by-year model of the pontifical chronicles (Gildenhard 2003; Walter 2004: 258-279).
Fabius Pictor and his most immediate successors - members of the aristocracy as they were - had no particular need for extratextual authority. But Ennius started from a different point of departure. His Annales paved the way for what has today become the name-giving principle of the annalistic tradition, i. e., that historiography included year-by-year patterns which followed a certain form and style (McDonald 1957 is still useful). Historians of the following generations increasingly turned to this strategy of self-authentification. They repeated, and expanded, those formal features. Some of them even developed a pedantic fetishism of exactitude which also appeared in enumerations of military troops, in the documentation of smaller operations, and in dense lists of festivals and gods. The scheme of alluding to the priestly chronicle emerged as a narrative pattern which first and foremost provided authority and which evoked authenticity. It does not mean that the genre was, as scholars had thought for so long, determined by annalistic dryness nor that it lacked all sorts of structural questions and analytic approaches, let alone that its ‘‘sole virtue of speaking was brevity.’’
The origins of Roman historiography were determined by a variety of intellectual approaches, narrative patterns, and authorial intentions. Given this diversity, it is easy to understand why recent scholarship tends to reject passe-partout concepts that elucidate early history writing at Rome. Rather, it has been stressed that the term ‘‘annalistic’’ is to a certain degree misleading, since it does not provide a ‘‘consistent and precise definition that respects generic theories and ancient linguistic usage’’ (Timpe 2003: 294; cf. Rich 1997). Today the term is hardly more than a conventional designation for the early historians (‘‘annalists’’) and their works (‘‘annals’’), implying that several (but not all) Roman historians chose to arrange their works according to a year-by-year style. It does not mean uniformity.
The development of the genre in the second half of the second century bce makes this clear. After Fabius’ and Cato’s efforts to promote historiography, other members of the aristocracy succeeded in picking up the stylus and producing written accounts of Roman history. One of the most prominent figures was Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, tribune in 149, praetor in Sicily (in 139?), consul in 133, and censor (in 120?), who wrote seven books of annales from the beginnings of Rome to his own times (Forsythe 1994). Piso proved that historiography could be used as a sharp weapon in politics. His vivid picture of the Struggle of the Orders reflected the turbulences and turmoil in the decade that followed the controversial tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 (HRR FF 22-24). Pinpointing the beginnings of moral decline at Rome, there is an inherently censorial tone in Piso’s work, who was full of dislike for the decadent jeunesse doree of the day (note the strong language in F 40). This agenda might have triggered the idea to adapt to Ennius’ annalistic style. In fact, Piso became the first historian who did include repeated features such as the names of magistrates on a large scale (FF 26-27), and there is reason to think that he did so because this technique supported his moral agenda.
The major new development of those decades was, however, that historiography evolved into a literary genre which was no longer limited to authors of senatorial rank. The forerunners were Lucius Cassius Hemina (Santini 1995), who seems to have written slightly earlier than Piso, and Gnaeus Gellius, an author of ‘‘exceptional verbosity’’ (Frier 1979/1999: 187) who composed at least twenty-seven books of annales. Both men were not members of the political classe dirigeante. The genuine concerns of historiography are well attested in their histories. Military affairs, legislation, internal strife: these topics were treated at great length, and - as in Piso - both accounts reflect the political quarrels of the days during which they were written (esp. Hemina HRR F 17). Yet, when Hemina or Gellius reported on those issues, it was no longer the statement of the ‘‘makers’’ of politics, but rather the analysis of the uninvolved observer. In other words, their texts had little, if any, social authority.
One strategy of compensation was, as will have become obvious by now, to employ annalistic features. A second one lay in new research techniques. Since the days of Fabius Pictor historiography was driven by a curiosity in the origins of present phenomena: What were the origins of the Roman calendar? How did the alphabet evolve? Who created the Roman tribes {tribus), and when was this done? To illuminate any of those questions historians turned to etymologies and aetiologies. They offered a possible explanation of beginnings, cultural techniques, and social practices, and helped to make sense of them through an understanding of their origins, while simultaneously shedding light onto the darkness of earlier times {cf. Rawson 1976: 247-255). To be sure, Hemina and Gellius were not the first to raise those questions and to apply etymological methods, but they clearly put more emphasis on them than their senatorial predecessors. Hemina’s Annales thus even acquired the touch of a learned cultural history.
Lucius Coelius Antipater became the embodiment of this new professionalization. Born a member of the lower ranks of the aristocracy, Coelius did not try for a political career. Lacking both military expertise and an intimate knowledge of senatorial affairs, he first and foremost had to rely on his research skills. Innovative research became an acid test for him, and the sixty-seven fragments which are extant indicate that Coelius did well {Herrmann 1979). The first claim of his work was to reach a new level of investigation - an investigation for historical ‘‘truth’’ {HRR F 2). This implied not only an ‘‘arduous exploration of sources,’’ as Thucydides {1.22) and many experts after him had lamented, but also the necessity to consult, and to analyze, anti-Roman sources {FF 11, 34). The second pillar of Coelius’ account was the deliberate use of a sophisticated language. With Coelius historiographic prose dissociated itself from everyday language and obtained new standards in form and style. It is not surprising that his historiae were dedicated to the leading philologist of the day, Lucius Aelius Stilo. The most profound innovation of Coelius’ was, however, that he turned away from writing Roman history ab urbe condita to the present day. He picked a thematic approach, i. e., he focused on a single topic: the Second Punic War. Coelius produced a seven-book monograph, written between 120 and 110 {von Albrecht 1997: 381-383), on this event. The significance of this step is only fully understood when compared with the Greek world. In Greece, historiography started with a groundbreaking monograph, Herodotus’ History. At Rome, this format was only established a century or so later after Fabius Pictor’s history ab urbe condita. Yet it is interesting to see that in both cases the obvious choices for a monographical topic were the most severe military threats to which both societies had been exposed: in Greece the Persian Wars, at Rome the Hannibalic War.
This does not mean that narratives ab urbe condita were dead with Coelius. In the first century bce, Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius, Valerius Antias, and Gaius Licinius Macer reverted to this principle {Quadrigarius might have started his annales with the sack of Rome by the Gauls and its ‘‘second foundation’’ by the dux fatalis Marcus Furius Camillus). Their histories were characterized by an extensive usage of annalistic structures and at times thrilling narratives. Most notably, their tendency to include all sorts of fictitious documents and statistics led to what has been called an ‘‘expansion of the past’’ {Badian 1966: 11), which meant an ever-growing {pseudo-) knowledge of historical episodes and events. Reverting to the ab urbe condita model at the same time might have been regarded as an effort to flog a dead horse, since historiography had become a genre which was shaped by experimental approaches rather than intellectual immobility. In the last generation of the Roman republic historiography therefore displays once again the heterogeneity of the genre, in which the year-by-year narrative from the beginnings of Rome down to the present had become only one way of structuring the past among others (Walter 2003).
No matter how frequently the early Roman historians included annalistic features in their works (e. g., Coelius hardly any, Piso quite significantly, Valerius Antias excessively), and no matter how intensively the historiographical tradition of the republic in general was committed to a year-by-year structure, the mere principle of presenting history as some sort of commentary on the time-honored tabulae of the high priest became the most important characteristic of Roman historiography. The tendency of verifying histories via annalistic modes and means signaled continuity, security, and institutional stability from the beginnings of Rome to the present. Annalistic structure thus provided an intellectual frame for a peculiar perception of the past, in which the historiographic tradition amalgamated with other elements of Roman cultural memory, especially the self-identification with the exempla virtutis and the commitment to mos maiorum, the ‘‘customs of our ancestors’’ (Pina Polo 2004). Livy’s 142 books ab urbe condita are the most towering - and the final - monument of this approach. But even then it was by no means unchallenged. As ever, so in the age of Augustus, historiography was determined by conflicting and competitive approaches, just as the concepts of writing history had so often been altered since Fabius Pictor and Cato had first embarked on this exciting journey.
FURTHER READING
The two most recent editions of the fragments of the early Roman historians are FRH and AR; the former has a German translation of the fragments, the latter a French one. Both works also contain commentaries on authors and texts as well as concordances to the older edition, HRR. For Ennius’ Annales, Skutsch 1985 is the standard text. Frier 1979/1999 continues to be an important contribution, even though his views on the annales maximi have been challenged, most recently by the papers in Eigler et al. 2003. Several ancient authors have been covered in excellent monographs, esp. Calpurnius Piso (Forsythe 1994) and Cassius Hemina (Santini 1995). Timpe’s learned articles on Fabius Pictor and Cato (1972 and 1970/1) continue to be immensely influential. This is also true for the much-cited Badian 1966. The most comprehensive account on the inherent motifs, methods, and messages of early Roman history writing now is Walter 2004, who adds much to the current debate on the social mechanics of collective memories.
World History
