SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

  G. Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion (Chicago UP, 1970) proposes the ‘excrement interpretation’ of the Forum inscription. One classic statement of nineteenth-century scepticism on the Roman kings can still be found in Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History (Dodd, Mead, 1905). Fabius Pictor’s population estimate is quoted at Livy, History 1, 44. A translation of the letter to Teos is given in Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, volume 2 (see General, above), along with further details on the Antium calendar. Livy dismisses the idea of Numa being a pupil of Pythagoras at History 1, 18. The bronze for the decoration of St John Lateran is documented in John Franklin Hall, Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era (Indiana UP, 1996). The Latin names in early Etruria are discussed by Kathryn Lomas, ‘The polis in Italy’, in Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece, edited by Roger Brock and Stephen Hodkinson (Oxford UP, 2002). The François Tomb is the subject of one chapter in Peter J. Holliday, The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts (Cambridge UP, 2002). Wiseman in Unwritten Rome (see Chapter 2) sceptically reviews the evidence for the large houses near the Forum. Pliny’s complaints about the Cloaca Maxima are in his Natural History 36, 104. For Martial’s quips on Lucretia, see his Epigrams 11, 16 and 104, and for Augustine’s reflections, see City of God 1, 19. Pliny, Natural History 34, 139 hints that Lars Porsenna held power in Rome. The phrase ‘getting rid of kings’ is borrowed from John Henderson’s article with that title in Classical Quarterly 44 (1994), which scrutinises the surname ‘Rex’. Livy, History 7, 3 refers to the nail in the Capitoline temple, and 2, 5 to the formation of the Tiber’s island. The Greek theorist is again Polybius. Mortimer N. S. Sellers discusses later appropriations of the Roman ideal of liberty in ‘The Roman Republic and the French and American Revolutions’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, edited by Harriet I. Flower (Cambridge UP, 2014).

  Chapter 4

  In addition to useful chapters in A Companion to the Roman Republic, edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert MorsteinMarx (Blackwell, 2007), the conflicts in early Republican Rome are the theme of Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders, edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub (Univ. of California Press, 1986). A careful overview of office holding in the early Republic is given by Christopher Smith, ‘The magistrates of the early Roman Republic’, in Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic, edited by Hans Beck et al. (Cambridge UP, 2011). The structures of Republican political life in general are the subject of C. Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (Univ. of California Press, 1980).

  The ‘chief praetor’ is mentioned at Livy, History 7, 3; the translation ‘colonels’ I have borrowed from T. P. Wiseman (in Remus; see Chapter 2). The suspicious burnt layer in the Forum and elsewhere is noted by Filippo Coarelli in Il Foro Romano 1 (Quasar, 1983) and Il Foro Boario dale origini alla fine della repubblica (Quasar, 1988). The Tomb of the Scipios on the Appian Way is the theme of Filippo Coarelli, ‘Il sepolcro degli Scipioni’, in his Revixit Ars: Arte e ideologia a Roma (Quasar, 1997). The sarcophagus of Barbatus is well analysed by Harriet I. Flower, in The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2011), who disposes of the common idea that his epitaph is a much later composition; translations of the main epitaphs from the family mausoleum are available online, at www.attalus.org/docs/cil/epitaph.html (see also Livy, History 10 for the context of Barbatus’ career). Duris’ comments on Sentinum are quoted by Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 21, 6. For Roman barbers, see Varro, On Country Matters 2, 11. An up-to-date analysis of the work of Fabius Pictor is included in The Fragments of Roman Historians, edited by T. J. Cornell (see Chapter 2); the exploit of the Fabii is described by Livy, History 2, 48–50; Coriolanus is carefully scrutinised by Tim Cornell, ‘Coriolanus: Myth, History and Performance’, in Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome, edited by David Braund and Christopher Gill (Exeter UP, 2003). A glimpse of ancient dentistry is offered by D. J. Waarsenburg, ‘Auro dentes iuncti’, in Stips Votiva, edited by M. Gnade (Allard Pierson Museum, 1991). The Loeb collection Remains of Old Latin, volume 3 (Harvard UP, 1938), assembles the fragments of the Twelve Tables, but the most up-to-date edition is in Roman Statutes, edited by M. H. Crawford (Institute of Classical Studies, 1996). The irritated lawyers are mentioned by Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 20, 1. On the conversion of the Roman senate to a permanent body, see T. J. Cornell, ‘Lex Ovinia and the emancipation of the senate’, in The Roman Middle Republic: Politics, Religion and Historiography, edited by C. Bruun (Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2000). The baseline for the archaeology of Veii is still J. B. Ward-Perkins, ‘Veii: the historical topography of the ancient city’, Papers of the British School at Rome 29 (1961), with now Roberta Cascino et al., Veii, the Historical Topography of the Ancient City: A Restudy of John Ward-Perkins’s Survey (British School at Rome, 2012). Propertius’ view is found at Elegies 4, 10. On a possible circuit wall earlier than the fourth century, see S. G. Bernard, ‘Continuing the debate on Rome’s earliest circuit walls’, Papers of the British School at Rome 80 (2012). The tragedy on Sentinum is by Lucius Accius; its extant fragments are in Remains of Old Latin 2 (Harvard UP, 1936). The Esquiline tomb is discussed by Holliday, The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration (see Chapter 3). The ‘Upper’ and ‘Lower’ Seas are referred to by Plautus, Menaechmi 237 and Cicero, Letters to Atticus 9, 5. The Roman impact on the landscape is well emphasised by Nicholas Purcell, ‘The creation of the provincial landscape’, in The Early Roman Empire in the West, edited by Thomas Blagg and Martin Millett (Oxbow, 1990).

  Chapter 5

  Modern debates on Roman imperialism go back to William V. Harris’s classic study War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 BC (Oxford UP, 2nd edition, 1985), which puts a strong case for aggressive Roman expansion. The work of Arthur Eckstein – for example, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (Univ. of California Press, 2006) – offers an alternative view, which in many ways I have followed in this book; even more powerful is J. A. North’s brief essay ‘The development of Roman imperialism’, in Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981). The cultural origins of Roman literature and the interaction between the Roman and Greek worlds are explored by Erich S. Gruen in Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Cornell UP, 1992) and very differently by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill in Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2008). Brian C. McGing, Polybius (Oxford UP, 2010) is a succinct introduction to the historian; Polybius’ main analysis of Roman politics is found in Book 6 of his Histories. Useful discussions of the Roman wars against the Carthaginians and of their major players include A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford UP, 1967), Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC (Cassell, 2003), and A Companion to the Punic Wars, edited by Dexter Hoyos (Blackwell, 2011). Philip Kay discusses economic aspects of Roman imperialism in Rome’s Economic Revolution (Oxford UP, 2014). Roman funerals and commemoration are the subject of Harriet I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford UP, 1999). Important contributions to the debates on the popular element of Roman politics include John North, ‘Democratic politics in Republican Rome’, in Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society, edited by Robin Osborne (Cambridge UP, 2004), Fergus Millar, The Crowd in the Late Republic (Michigan UP, 1998), Henrik Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge UP, 2001) and Robert Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge UP, 2004).

  The warlike Muse is imagined by Porcius Licinius, quoted in Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 17, 21. Aemilianus’ tears are described by Polybius, Histories 38, 21–22. The story of Pyrrhus’ stunt with the elephants is told by Plutarch, Pyrrhus 20; the rams are discussed by Sebastiano Tusa and Jeffrey Royal, ‘The landscape of the naval battle at the Egadi Islands’, Journal of
Roman Archaeology 25 (2012). A translation of the surviving fragments of Ennius’ epic on Rome (the Annales, or Chronicles) is included in volume 1 of the Loeb collection Remains of Old Latin (Harvard UP, 1935); Livy’s ‘quotation’ from Maharbal is at History 22, 51. The reality of the Battle of Cannae is discussed by Victor Davis Hanson in Experience of War: An Anthology of Articles from MHQ, the Quarterly Journal of Military History (Norton, 1992); Aemilius Paullus’ quip on battles and games is quoted by Polybius, Histories 30, 14, while Polybius’ advice to Aemilianus is recorded by Plutarch, Table Talk 4. Cato’s jibe about the elderly Greeks is mentioned by Polybius, Histories 35, 6, and the story of the unfortunate crow by Cassius Dio, Roman History 36, 30. Polybius notes the Roman habits of Antiochus Epiphanes at Histories 26, 1, and Valerius Maximus tells the anecdote about Scipio Nasica in his Memorable Deeds and Sayings 7, 5. Jupiter’s prophecy is scripted at Aeneid 1, 278–79. A translation of the inscription from Teos is given in Robert K. Sherk, Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus (Cambridge UP, 1984); the Spanish mines are discussed in Kay’s Rome’s Economic Revolution; the vocabulary of empire is a theme in John Richardson, The Language of Empire: Rome and the Idea of Empire from the Third Century BC to the Second Century AD (Cambridge UP, 2011); and the idea of obedience is stressed by Robert Kallet-Marx, Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 BC (Univ. of California Press, 1996). The trick of Laenas is described by Polybius, Histories 29, 27; the Greek ambassador who fell down the sewer was Crates of Mallos (Suetonius, On Grammarians 2); and jokes about bad Roman accents in Greek are recorded by, for example, Dionysius, Roman Antiquities 19, 5. For the inscription of Lucius the mercenary, see Sherk, Rome and the Greek East; and for the Cossutii, Elizabeth Rawson, ‘Architecture and sculpture: the activities of the Cossutii’, Papers of the British School at Rome 43 (1975). The establishment of Carteia is noted by Livy, History 43, 3, and the presence of ‘prostitutes’ by the surviving ‘Summary’ of the lost Book 57 of his History. The historian Lucius Annaeus Florus compared later spoils to ‘the cattle of the Volsci’ (Epitome 1, 13). The awkward ‘happy ending’ is in Terence’s Hecyra; the relevant plays of Plautus are The Persian and The Little Carthaginian, and one joke about ‘barbarising’ is in the prologue of the Asinaria (‘Comedy of asses’). Many of Cato’s bons mots are collected in Alan E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford UP, 1978); the insistence of standing up at the theatre is mentioned by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 2, 4.

  Chapters 6 and 7

  Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations by Mary Beard and Michael Crawford (Duckworth, 2nd edition, 2000) is a brief account of the main issues of this period; Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (Little, Brown, 2003) is an excellent popular history. One of the sharpest analyses of socio-economic changes in the late Republic remains the first chapter of Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge UP, 1978). The major characters of these chapters have attracted modern biographies, although (apart from Cicero; see Chapter 1) there is almost never enough material to tell a life story in the conventional sense. That said, Robin Seager, Pompey the Great (Blackwell, 2nd edition, 2002) is a careful political account of Pompey’s career; Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (Yale UP, 2006) offers a clear outline of what we know of Julius Caesar, and W. Jeffery Tatum, The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999) of what we know of Cicero’s great adversary; Barry Strauss, The Spartacus War (Simon and Schuster, 2009) is a reliable popular overview of Spartacus and his slave uprising. Note that I refer to Pompey, Caesar and Crassus as the ‘Gang of Three’, though they are more commonly now known by the spuriously formal title ‘The First Triumvirate’.

  The fullest account of the destruction of Carthage is Appian, Punic Wars; its archaeology is discussed by Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History (Blackwell, 1995). Polybius, Histories 38, 20 records the suicide of Hasdrubal’s wife, and Pliny, Natural History 18, 22 highlights the works of Mago. Corinthian bronze is discussed at Pliny, Natural History 34, 7. Key anecdotes about Mummius are found in Polybius, Histories 39, 2 (gaming boards) and Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 1, 13 (‘new for old’, also reprised in a much later collection of Roman jokes, the Philogelos). His spoils are discussed by Liv Yarrow, ‘Lucius Mummius and the spoils of Corinth’, Scripta Classica Israelica 25 (2006). For Cato’s stunt with the figs, see Plutarch, Cato the Elder 27. Polybius cites the view that the Romans now aimed at extermination for its own sake at Histories 36, 9. Virgil references Mummius at Aeneid 6, 836–37; Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2, 1 reflects on the abandonment of virtue. Maria C. Gagliardo and James E. Packer provide an up-to-date discussion of Rome’s first permanent stone theatre in ‘A new look at Pompey’s Theater’, American Journal of Archaeology 110 (2006). Plutarch’s Tiberius Gracchus is the source of many of the details of, and comments on, his life: the first political bloodshed since the monarchy (20), the story of Tiberius’ ‘conversion’ (8), ‘masters of the world’ (9), Aemilianus’ Homeric quotation (21). Alessandro Launaro, Peasants and Slaves: The Rural Population of Roman Italy (200 BC to AD 100) (Cambridge UP, 2011) is an important recent discussion of the demography and agricultural history of Italy, though D. W. Rathbone, ‘The development of agriculture in the “Ager Cosanus” during the Roman Republic’, Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981), remains one of the clearest introductions to the problems; ‘fighting for their own displacement’ is the phrase of Keith Hopkins in Conquerors and Slaves. On the rituals of Roman elections, see Hopkins, ‘From violence to blessing’, in City States in Classical and Medieval Italy, edited by A. Molho et al. (Franz Steiner, 1991). Cicero’s reference to partes is at On the State 1, 31, and his huffing and puffing over the secret ballot is at On the Laws 3, 34–35. Juvenal, Satires 10, 81 coined ‘bread and circuses’. The Roman food supply is clearly discussed by Peter Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 1999); see also, for the Thessaly inscription, Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone, ‘The background to the grain law of Gaius Gracchus’, Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985). The outburst of Frugi is recorded by Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3, 48, Gaius’ turning away from the comitium and demolition of the seating by Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus 5 and 12, the exchange with the consul’s attendants and the carving on the Temple of Concord by Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus 13 and 17. Modern theories of the emergency powers act are fully discussed by Gregory K. Golden, Crisis Management During the Roman Republic: The Role of Political Institutions in Emergencies (Cambridge UP, 2013). Gaius’ words on the affair of Teanum are quoted by Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 10, 3 (as are Cato’s earlier complaints about the consul dissatisfied with his supply arrangements). P. A. Brunt, ‘Italian aims at the time of the Social War’, in his The Fall of the Roman Republic (Oxford UP, 1988), and H. Mouritsen, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Institute of Classical Studies, 1998) are major interventions on different sides of the question of motivation for the Social War. The friezes from Fregellae are discussed by F. Coarelli, ‘Due fregi da Fregellae’, Ostraka 3 (1994), and Praeneste by Wallace-Hadrill in Rome’s Cultural Revolution (see Chapter 5). For the Social War as a civil war, see Florus, Epitome 2, 18; for ‘seeking citizenship’, Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2, 15 and for ‘wolves’, 2, 27. Publius Ventidius Bassus, the general who appeared on both sides of the triumph, features in Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6, 9. The siege of Pompeii is documented in Flavio Russo and Ferruccio Russo, 89 a.C.: Assedio a Pompei (Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2005); the heads in Sulla’s atrium are mentioned by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 3, 1; the new low in the quotation of Greek is referred to by Appian, Civil War 1, 94; the dictator’s death and epitaph are at Plutarch, Sulla 36–38. Catiline’s misdeeds in the proscriptions are recorded by Plutarch, Sulla 32. The evidence on Spartacus is collected in Brent D. Shaw, Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief His
tory with Documents (Bedford/St Martins, 2001). Cicero refers to the problems at Pompeii in his speech In Defence of Lucius Sulla 60–62; the story of the comic at Asculum is told by Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 37, 12.

  The activities of Verres in Sicily are the subject of Cicero’s final speech Against Verres 2, 5. Gaius’ sharp words are recorded by Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus 2. Both the Penguin and Loeb editions of Cicero’s Letters are arranged in roughly chronological order; although this loses the logic of the original book division and demands a different numbering system, it makes the material from particular periods of his career (including his provincial governorship) easy to access. His philosophical treatise on provincial rule is Letters to his Brother Quintus 1.1. The law of Gaius can be found in Roman Statutes, edited by M. H. Crawford (see Chapter 4), and in a full study by A. Lintott, Judicial Reform and Land Reform in the Roman Republic: A New Edition, with Translation and Commentary, of the Laws from Urbino (Cambridge UP, 1992). The Roman equites are discussed by P. A. Brunt, ‘The equites in the late Republic’, in his The Fall of the Roman Republic, and publicani by Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (see Chapter 4). The senator who returned to his province in exile is mentioned by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 2, 10. The slogan ‘Rome for sale’ goes back to Sallust, War Against Jugurtha 35, 10. The impact of Marius’ army reforms and the ‘private’ armies of the late Republic are one theme of a classic essay by Brunt, ‘The army and the land’, in The Fall of the Roman Republic. The death of Marius is described by Plutarch, Marius 45. Cicero’s speech advocating Pompey’s command is known by two titles, On the Command of Pompey and In Support of the Manilian Law. The old pirate is conjured up by Virgil, Georgics 4, 125–46; Valerius Maxinus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6, 2 quotes the phrase ‘kid butcher’. F. W. Walbank discusses ‘The Scipionic legend’ in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 13 (1967). Horace Odes 2, 1 pinpoints 60 BCE as a key turning point; Cato’s remark is quoted by Plutarch, Pompey 47; the notebook is joked about, sardonically, in Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4, 8b. The fate of Crassus’ head is mentioned by Plutarch, Crassus 33; Cicero’s unsuccessful plea on behalf of Clodius’ murderer is his In Defence of Milo. The absence of wine is noted in Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War 2, 15 and 4, 2, the position of the Druids at 6, 13–16. Catullus’ reference is in his Poems 11; the ‘crimes’ of Caesar are stressed by Plutarch, Cato the Younger 51 and Pliny, Natural History 7, 92. The Greek visitor who saw the heads was Posidonius, quoted by Strabo, Geography 4.4. Peticius is mentioned by Plutarch, Pompey 73; the story of Soterides is explained by Nicholas Purcell, ‘Romans in the Roman world’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, edited by Karl Galinsky (Cambridge UP, 2005). Cato’s lurid death is described by Plutarch, Cato the Younger, 68–70. The incident at the Lupercalia is examined by J. A. North, ‘Caesar at the Lupercalia’, Journal of Roman Studies 98 (2008). For jokes about the short-term consul, see Cicero, Letters to Friends 7, 30 and Macrobius, Saturnalia 2, 3.