Introduction

In one of many memorable scenes in Robert Graves’ novel I, Claudius, the future emperor Claudius, then a boy and a protege of the historian Livy, is introduced by him to another famous historian, C. Asinius Pollio, shortly before the latter’s death in 4 CE. A debate ensues, in which it is revealed not only that Pollio has remained a firm and independent republican through the reign of Augustus, but also that he has a very different view of the writing of history from that espoused by Livy. Livy represents a romantic, patriotic view of history: he does not regard research as especially important, and believes that it may even be damaging if it undermines the heroic image of the Roman past. For Livy, the primary role of the historian is to transmit unquestioningly the traditional stories of Rome’s greatness. Pollio, on the other hand, believes that the historian’s job is to track down the evidence, to use it to get at the truth, and to present that truth to the world regardless of whether patriotic readers will find it uncomfortable.

There is little doubt whom Graves wishes us to see as winning this debate. Pollio’s view of history trumps Livy’s at every turn, and accordingly obtains the allegiance of the young Claudius, himself already inclined to prefer truth to fiction. And the argument is anyway loaded by the extent to which Pollio’s position conforms to the preferences of the modern reader: with no patriotic issues of our own at stake, and with a long tradition of academic, ‘‘positivist’’ historiography behind us, we can readily identify with the seeker of unvarnished truth over the upholder of an unquestioned tradition.

Graves’ image of Pollio as the fearless follower of evidence opposed to the romantic Livy is so seductive that it is a disappointment to realize how slender its own historical basis is. It is recorded that Claudius as a boy worked with Livy (Suet. Claud. 41.1), and that Pollio criticized Livy for Patavinitas (‘‘Paduanity’’ - Livy was born in Padua), but this latter is recorded in the context of linguistic usage (Quint. 1.5.56; 8.1.3), and would therefore naturally be taken to be a criticism of Livy’s language rather than his theory of history. It is also recorded that Pollio criticized Caesar’s Commentaries - but not, as far as we know, Livy - for a careless disregard for truth (Suet. DJ 56.4, cf. 55.4). But for the rest of Graves’ fantasy there is no evidence. We know a good deal about Pollio’s life, but very little about his history. We have just one extended verbatim quotation, a handful of brief fragments, and a poem in praise of the unfinished work by Horace (Carm. 2.1). Added to this are a number of passages in later writers such as Appian and Plutarch which are assumed to be based on Pollio, often because he is a primary figure in the narrative, but where it is generally impossible to distinguish Pollio’s input from the later author’s own slant. There is little here to allow the conclusion that Pollio was closer than Livy to meeting the criteria of a modern academic historian. Certainly he accused Caesar of inaccuracies, but such criticisms of one’s historical rivals are ubiquitous in ancient historiography: they are indeed frequent in Livy himself. It is a reasonable deduction from the ‘‘Pollio’’ sections in later historians that his account of Caesar’s campaigns gave an unusually prominent role to his own autopsy (Morgan 2000), but this hardly can be regarded as a guarantee of a dispassionate critical acumen.

Graves was writing a novel, and it is of little consequence - or surprise - that the debate he describes depends more on his imagination than on historical evidence (even if that is perhaps ironic given its subject matter). It is more disturbing when the same image appears to have infiltrated the scholarly literature. Syme famously set out an antithesis between Pollio and Livy so close to Graves’ as to make it look as if he might have unconsciously been influenced by him: here too Pollio appears not only as the anti-Augustan independent, but also as the anti-Romantic lover of truth, Livy as the complacent and uncritical Augustan patriot. The Patavinitas jibe is reworked into an assault on the entire manner of historical writing that Livy is presumed to espouse (Syme 1939: 486, also 5-7, 482-485): ‘‘Pollio knew what history was. It was not like Livy.’’ Pollio has likewise been represented as a quasi-modern positivist historian in various other places (e. g., Kornemann 1896: 603-606, 649; Pierce 1922: 37, 64-66).

The idea of Pollio’s political independence under the principate was comprehensively, if controversially, challenged some years ago (Bosworth 1972b; but see contra, e. g., Morgan 2000: 60-69). But the idea that he stood for a particular, anti-Livian style of historiography has not received an equally clear refutation, and has more insidious ramifications. For Graves’ and Syme’s antithesis between Pollio and Livy is a particular example of a far more widely held interpretation of late republican historiography: the claim that its exponents fell into two distinct groups, one of serious political figures writing serious political history, the other of non-politicians romanticizing the past, each group with its distinctive subject matter, manner, and structure. Not least among the aims of this chapter will be to challenge that reading of both the surviving and the lost historians of the period while offering a different, more broadly based perspective for viewing their works.