From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (31 page)

The earliest Romans to write histories were some senators who lived during the Hannibalic War. Somewhat surprisingly they composed their works in Greek, not Latin: this was partly because they wanted to justify and explain Roman policy to the Greek world. Though they found some imitators in the second century, Cato the Censor set the example of writing in Latin when he composed an account of Rome’s origins and history down to his own day. Other writers then began to treat Roman history in a year-by-year ‘annalistic’ manner: one of the earliest of them was L. Calpurnius Piso, the consul of 133, whose work ran from the origins of Rome down to his own day. An important development took place
c.
123 when the Pontifex Maximus published in
eighty books the Annales Maximi. This was a systematic arrangement of the material provided by the Tabulae Pontificum, which had for centuries been set up annually in the Regia and gave the names of the magistrates (
fasti
) and other matters of public interest. The publication of this material in convenient and ‘standard’ form stimulated other writers. In Gracchan times Cn. Gellius wrote Annales on a fuller scale than his predecessors, and the son-in-law of Laelius, C. Fannius (
cos.
122), was the author of an authoritative history, perhaps from the origins, but probably of his own times. Three later annalists of the Sullan age, Valerius Antias, Claudius Quadrigarius and C. Licinius Macer (tribune in 73) wrote on an extended scale (Valerius in at least seventy-five books) and elaborated their material. By literary devices and rhetorical skill they heightened the interest of their works, but their facts were often less reliable than those of their more sober predecessors. Valerius in particular confused and misrepresented much, partly under the political and family influences of his own day. The works of these three writers are particularly important because they were later extensively used by Livy who gave the annalistic tradition of Roman history its classic form.

Beside the strictly annalistic tradition another method of historical presentation developed, partly from the example of the earlier senators who had written in Greek and from the more discursive work of Cato, but chiefly under the impact of the Universal History of Polybius, the Greek statesman who had been interned in Italy and had won the friendship of Scipio Aemilianus (p. 11). He wrote to show how and why Rome had united the world and how her empire was bringing material and moral advantages to its members. The same idea and viewpoint also inspired the
Histories
of Posidonius, a Greek philosopher (
c.
135–51/50 B.C.), who continued the history of Rome and the eastern and western peoples with whom she same into contact from the point where Polybius’ work had ended (146 B.C.) down to Sulla’s dictatorship. He wrote from the standpoint of the Roman nobility, while his personal contacts with Marius and Pompey led him to dislike the former and admire the latter. The works of Polybius and Posidonius, with their justification of Roman imperialism, their wider interest in mankind as a whole, and their historical accuracy, made a tremendous impact on Roman thought. One of the immediate effects was that Sempronius Asellio (military tribune at Numantia in 133) wrote a history of his time (down to at least 91 B.C.), following Polybius’ more pragmatic attitude. Although Posidonius’
Histories
do not survive, they influenced Roman historians as Sallust, Caesar and Tacitus, and Greek writers as Plutarch and Diodorus: the last, who lived at the end of the Republic, wrote a Universal History down to 54 B.C. in forty books.

In an age when the individual began to count more in public life men naturally turned to composing their autobiographies or Memoirs: Aemilius Scaurus, Rutilius Rufus, Q. Catulus and Sulla all did so, and though their works
are lost they are reflected in the use made of them by Plutarch for his
Lives
. Biography is represented by the
De Viris Illustribus
, written by Cicero’s friend Cornelius Nepos who came to Rome from Cisalpine Gaul: in this book of Lives he compared famous Greeks and Romans. He also wrote some longer biographies, e.g. of Cato the Censor and Cicero, together with a universal history in three books. In his surviving work, a small part of
de Vir. Ill.
, his value as a historian is not great. Another friend of Cicero, Atticus, provided some material for historians when he produced a
Liber Annalis
, a chronological table of Roman history, and drew up pedigrees of some famous families as the Fabii and Aemilii. He also wrote a Greek monograph on Cicero’s consulship. The historical monograph had been introduced at Rome by Coelius Antipater, who composed after 121 B.C. an account of the Second Punic War in seven books. Written in Latin with vividness and literary skill and based on Carthaginian as well as Roman sources, this work set a new fashion in addition to providing a standard history of its period. The example was followed by Caesar and Sallust.

Caesar’s
Commentaries
on the Gallic and Civil Wars (the former based on his annual despatches to the Senate) provided material for future historians rather than claimed to be in themselves
historia
in the Roman sense of the word; they have already been briefly discussed (
chapter VII
, n. 5). Although their publication no doubt had a political purpose and the author was not free from a natural desire to establish the rightness of his conduct, they bear the stamp of essential truth: the simple and vigorous style, the lucidity of language and exposition, the unobtrusiveness of the writer, and the candour with which he lets the facts speak for themselves, all this suggests a basic honesty rather than a sinister manipulation of the facts. Some implicit self-justification there may have been, but scarcely deliberate tendentious distortion. The
Commentaries
cannot but show events as Caesar himself saw them and Caesar was both a general and a politician, fighting first for position, then for
dignitas
and survival.

The eighth book
De Bello Gallico
was written by A. Hirtius (
cos.
43), an officer of Caesar, who lacked Caesar’s military experience. Hirtius was also probably the author of a continuation of Caesar’s
Civil War
, the
Bellum Alexandrinum
, though he did not take part in that war himself; this book includes Caesar’s campaign at Zela. Two other works deal with Caesar’s campaigns: the
Bellum Africum
(of 47–6 B.C.), written by a competent soldier who was not a staff officer, and the
Bellum Hispaniense
(campaign of Munda), written in awkward Latin by an eye-witness.

Something has also already been said about the historical works of Caesar’s supporter, C. Sallustius Crispus,
¹⁰
who after serving him in the civil war, was appointed governor of Africa (p. 47;
chapter III
, n. 13; VI, n. 4; VII, n. 20). Thereafter he was accused of extortion, but avoided trouble and spent his
remaining days in his famous Gardens (
Horti Sallustiani
) in Rome. In 43 he published his account of the Catilinarian Conspiracy (
Bellum Catilinae
) and his
Bellum Iugurthinum
some two years later. After 39 B.C. he turned from monographs to a full
History
of Rome, beginning from 78 B.C. where an earlier writer, L. Cornelius Sisenna (who had started from the Social War) had left off, and continuing the story down to 67 B.C. But whereas Sisenna had written from the conservative point of view, the five books of Sallust’s
Historiae
and his monographs champion the popular cause. Both the
Catiline
and the
Jugurtha
denounce the degeneracy and corruption of the Optimates, and the former also defends Caesar from the charge that he was involved in Catiline’s conspiracy; both therefore are political pamphlets rather than impartial and detailed accounts of their subject-matter. In style Sallust followed Thucydides and developed a terse, archaic manner which was epigrammatic, vivid and effective, but he fell woefully short of his master in objectivity of matter. Yet despite his bias, he by no means always exalts his hero Marius (partly because he made use of Sulla’s
Memoirs
), and his vivid character sketches, even of politicians of the other side, are not always unfair. Unfortunately only a few fragments of his chief work survive. Two
Letters to Caesar
and an
Invective against Cicero
are also attributed to Sallust, but their genuineness is very doubtful (see
chapter VII
, n. 20). Sallust was much concerned with the corrupting effects of power, ambition and avarice on character, but his views are not original and he should not be claimed as a great thinker. As a critical historian he cannot be placed among the great, but his literary skill raises him high among the writers of Rome.

Oratorical skill became of increasing value to its possessors, whether displayed in the Senate House, lawcourts or Assemblies. Distinction in oratory or law, it was said, ranked with nobility of birth and military service as one of the three claims to the consulship. It was owing to his powerful oratorical gifts that Cicero won his way to the consulship and into the ranks of the nobility. Increasing numbers of young Romans studied the technique of public speech, whether at Rome or at the Greek rhetorical schools in the East. In Cicero’s opinion Roman achievement first equalled that of Greece in the oratory of Gaius Gracchus and his successors, many of whom published their speeches after delivery. Two masters of the next generation whom Cicero admired were M. Antonius (
cos.
99), grandfather of the triumvir, and L. Crassus (
cos.
95). When Cicero himself began to practise, the chief figure at the Roman bar was Q. Hortensius Hortalus (114–50), who favoured the Asiatic school of oratory which was more floral and ornamental than the simpler and more restrained Attic style that was cultivated by many, including
young Caesar. Cicero himself followed a style midway between these two extreme schools, and with such success that when he triumphed over Hortensius at the trial of Verres he gained the first place, which he retained for the rest of his life.

In his speeches Cicero raised Latin prose to its highest point in this sphere. A rich vocabulary, amplitude of expression and great attention to the rhythm of his clauses produced a sonorous and majestic style, which might be varied with subtle strokes of irony, wit, or bitter invective. This result was not reached by mere natural talent; oratory was now a skilled and technical art, and Cicero not only studied the theory, but also wrote upon it. The most important of his rhetorical treatises are the three books of the
De Oratore
, the
Brutus
and the
Orator
.

In Cicero the culture of the later Republic is seen at its best. Unsurpassed in the field of oratory, he also turned his hand to works on political theory (p. 135 f.) and philosophy (p. 173), to translations of Greek authors, and to poetry; his most famous poem was the one he composed on his own consulship (
de consulatu meo
) in which he appears to have shown a lack of skill surprising in such a master of prose-rhythms. Not the least of his contributions were his private letters which he wrote to his friends without any idea of later publication. They are among the most interesting legacies of antiquity, not only for the flood of light that they throw upon the Roman world of his day, but also for the revelation of his own thought and personality. Through them we have a more intimate knowledge of Cicero than of almost any other figure of antiquity. There he stands revealed, in all his strength and weakness, and, taken all in all, few other statesmen of his day, had their private thoughts been thus recorded, would have provided so worthy an example of the culture and humanity of the age.

During the Ciceronian period Roman education was organized on similar lines to that in the Hellenistic world.
¹²
Apart from children who were educated at home by private tutors, boys and girls went to a primary school where they learned to read, write and count at the instruction of a
magister ludi
, whose profession was despised. Many a Roman, beside Horace, in later life remembered his cane if not his flogging. Those who were fortunate enough to proceed to a secondary education went to a school presided over by a
grammaticus
, who was generally badly paid. There they would make some acquaintance with the works of Livius Andronicus, Ennius and the comic poets, and with such texts as the Twelve Tables: when through Varro (see below) Latin grammar was studied scientifically, it too would be included in the curriculum. But Latin was not the only language: many young Romans
learnt Greek at home from Greek slaves and education became bilingual. Higher education consisted chiefly of rhetorical studies. Greek rhetoricians held classes in Rome, and many young Romans went to study at Greek university towns, as Athens; Cicero and Caesar both studied rhetoric at Rhodes. In 93 the first school for the study of Latin rhetoric was opened at Rome by a supporter of Marius, but it was closed the next year by the aristocratic censors. Political motives may have operated: the Optimates may not have wished to make it easier for Populares to gain oratorical skill. Further, a
Manual of Rhetoric
dedicated to Herennius and written in the 80s B.C., suggested as themes for declamation not only traditional Greek subjects but also topical questions about the Gracchi, Saturninus, Drusus and Sulpicius; the unknown author seems to have been favourable to the popular party, although not suppressing arguments on the other side: such topics might prove inflammable.
¹³
Cicero through his rhetorical writings (p. 170) helped to promote the teaching of Latin eloquence, but it does not seem to have gained a real foothold in Rome until the time of Augustus.

The growth of scholarship is illustrated by L. Aelius Stilo, who was born at Lanuvium about 150 B.C. Of equestrian rank and a Stoic in belief, he wrote on many subjects, including grammar, etymology and literary criticism, and produced critical editions of Ennius and Lucilius. His pupils included Cicero and Varro. The life of M. Terentius Varro (116–27), who became one of Rome’s greatest scholars, was not one of unbroken academic calm. A supporter of Pompey, he was pardoned by Caesar who appointed him keeper of his intended public library; he was then outlawed by Antony, but settled down peacefully after the Civil War. His writings were encyclopaedic in range. Among those that survive in part are a treatise on Latin grammar and vocabulary (
De lingua Latina;
25 books) and the three books on agriculture. His
Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum
, in 41 books, is a great loss. Other works included 15 books on famous Greeks and Romans, dialogues, an encyclopaedia of
artes liberales
, and 150 books on Menippean satires; in all he published some 620 volumes.