SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

  Chapter 8

  Good introductions to some of the main topics include Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Croom Helm, 1986), Florence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Blackwell, 1994), Life, Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire, edited by D. S. Potter and D. J. Mattingly (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1999), Roman Women, edited by Augusto Fraschetti (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, volume 1, edited by Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge (Cambridge UP, 2011), Christian Laes, Children in the Roman Empire: Outsiders Within (Cambridge UP, 2011) and Henrik Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge UP, 2011).

  The twenty-five books on the Latin language (some of which survive) are by Marcus Terentius Varro; Cicero’s jokes are one theme in my Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up (Univ. of California Press, 2014). Susan Treggiari sees things from the side of Cicero’s female relations in Terentia, Tullia and Publilia: The Women of Cicero’s Family (Routledge, 2007). The story of the dinner with Caesar is told in Letters to Atticus 13, 52; Gore Vidal’s essay is in his Selected Essays (Abacus, 2007). The classic study of Roman marriage is Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford UP, 1993); Claudia’s epitaph is included in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome (Duckworth, 3rd edition, 2005). The tough line of Egnatius Metellus is highlighted by Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6, 3; Livia’s wool working is mentioned in Suetonius, Augustus 73, Volumnia Cytheris by Cicero, Letters to Atticus 10, 10 and 16, 5. Marilyn B. Skinner, Clodia Metelli: The Tribune’s Sister (Oxford UP, 2011) attempts to reconstruct Clodia’s career; the tricky court case is what we know as In Defence of Caelius. The problems of Verres’ dinner are discussed by Catherine Steel, ‘Being economical with the truth: what really happened at Lampsacus?’, in Cicero the Advocate, edited by J. Powell and J. Paterson (Oxford UP, 2004). Cicero’s reference to women’s weakness is at In Defence of Murena 27, the joke about tying his son-in-law to a sword at Macrobius Saturnalia 2, 3. Glimpses into the marriage of Quintus and Pomponia are at Letters to Atticus 5, 1 and 14, 13. Marriage age is discussed in Brent D. Shaw, ‘The age of Roman girls at marriage’, Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987). Terentia’s view of an old man’s infatuation is reported by Plutarch, Cicero 41; Cicero’s quip is praised by Quintilian, Handbook on Oratory 6, 3. Evidence for ancient contraception is collected by John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Harvard UP, 1994). The letter from the husband in Roman Egypt is included in Jane Rowlandson, Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook (Cambridge UP, 1998). Issues of life expectancy and family relations are discussed in Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge UP, 1997). House ownership is the theme of Elizabeth Rawson, ‘The Ciceronian aristocracy and its properties’, in her Roman Culture and Society (Oxford UP, 1991). Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton UP, 1994) explores the layout of the Roman house; Pliny, Natural History 36, 5–6 discusses Scaurus’ house; and the problem of luxury is highlighted in Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge UP, 2002). The Antikythera wreck is documented in The Antikythera Shipwreck: The Ship, the Treasures, the Mechanism, edited by N. Kaltsas et al. (National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 2012). The Sestii are a case study in John H. D’Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Harvard UP, 1981). The bright idea of slave uniforms is mentioned in Seneca, On Mercy 1, 24, slave runaways in Cicero’s Letters to Friends 5, 9; 5, 10a; 13, 77 and Letters to Atticus 7, 2. Tiro is a major focus of my ‘Ciceronian correspondences’, in Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by T. P. Wiseman (Oxford UP, 2006), and his collection of Cicero’s jokes is criticised by Quintilian, Handbook on Oratory 6, 3. Greg Woolf, ‘Monumental writing’, Journal of Roman Studies 86 (1996), discusses the explosion of writing. The ménage à trois is described in the long epitaph of Allia Potestas, translated in Lefkowitz and Fant, Women’s Life in Greece and Rome.

  Chapter 9

  The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, edited by Karl Galinsky (see Chapters 6 and 7), is a good introduction to this period, as is Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, edited by Fergus Millar and Erich Segal (Oxford UP, 1984). Augustus, edited by Jonathan Edmondson (Edinburgh UP, 2009), is a collection of some of the best recent essays on the emperor. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1988) transformed our understanding of the art and architecture of the period. The period of civil war following the death of Caesar is the subject of Josiah Osgood, Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2006). Jane Bellemore, in Nicolaus of Damascus (Bristol Classical Press, 1984), gives a translation of the surviving sections of his early biography of Augustus (or see www.csun.edu/~hcf11004/nicolaus.html). Alison Cooley’s Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Cambridge UP, 2009) translates Augustus’ own account of his life, with a full discussion.

  The best modern analysis of the details of Caesar’s assassination is in T. P. Wiseman, Remembering the Roman People (Oxford UP, 2009). The stories of Octavian’s early brutality and the ‘banquet of the twelve gods’ are told by Suetonius, Augustus 27 and 70. Decapitation is the subject of Amy Richlin’s ‘Cicero’s head’, in Constructions of the Classical Body, edited by James I. Porter (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2002); Seneca’s Suasoriae (Pleas) 6 and 7 give a flavour of the rhetorical exercises on the subject of Cicero’s death. Appian, Civil War 4 is a good source of anecdotes about the proscriptions. Josiah Osgood, Turia: A Roman Woman’s Civil War (Oxford UP, 2014) explores the female bravery commemorated on the epitaph; Judith Hallett brings the sling bullets from Perugia to life in ‘Perusinae glandes’, American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977). Cleopatra’s departure is noted by Cicero, Letters to Atticus 14, 8. The disapproving account of Cleopatran luxury is Pliny, Natural History 9, 119–21; Plutarch, Antony 50 reports his treatment of Alexandria as if it were Rome; and there is plenty of sensible discussion of Antony and Cleopatra in C. B. R. Pelling, Plutarch: Life of Antony (Cambridge UP, 1988). The ‘below stairs’ source is mentioned by Plutarch, Antony 28. Konstantinos L. Zachos, ‘The tropaeum of the sea-battle at Actium’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 16 (2003), analyses the monument. The story of ravens is told in Macrobius, Saturnalia 2, 4. Debates at the funeral are reported by Tacitus, Annals 1, 9. Price and Thonemann, The Birth of Classical Europe (see General) stress Augustus’ abolition of nothing. For the importance of civilitas, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Civilis princeps’, Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982); for the chameleon and the sphinx, Julian Saturnalia 309 and Suetonius, Augustus 50. The display of ‘maps’ is discussed by Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1991), with Pliny, Natural History 3, 17. Jas Elsner emphasises the importance of building in the Res Gestae in ‘Inventing imperium’, in Art and Text in Roman Culture, edited by Elsner (Cambridge UP, 1996). The inscription on the calendar of Asia is translated in Sherk, Rome and the Greek East (see Chapter 5). One attempt to calculate the total cost of the Roman army is by Keith Hopkins, ‘Taxes and trade’ (see Chapter 1). The senate is discussed by P. A. Brunt in ‘The role of the senate’, Classical Quarterly 34 (1984); the defeat of the Romans in Germany is the subject of Peter S. Wells, The Battle That Stopped Rome (Norton, 2004). Egnatius Rufus and other opponents are discussed by K. A. Raaflaub and L. J. Samons II, ‘Opposition to Augustus’, in Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate, edited by Raaflaub and Mark Toher, problems of succession by The Julio-Claudian Succession: Reality and Perception of the “Augustan Model”, edited by A. G. G. Gibson (Brill, 2013). Livia’s role is fully documented in Nicholas Purcell’s ‘Livia and the womanhood of Rome’, in Augustus, edited by Jonathan Edmondson.

  Chapter 10

  Important overviews of the
rulers and the political life of Rome during the first two centuries of the empire include Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (Bristol Classical Press, revised edition, 1992), P. A. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford UP, 1990), R. J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton UP, 1984) and Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge UP, 1985), especially Chapter 3. The biographical approach remains popular, despite the fragile factual base. Nevertheless, Aloys Winterling, Caligula: A Biography (Univ. of California Press, 2011) and Edward Champlin, Nero (Harvard UP, 2003) are interesting for their revisionist stances on two ‘monstrous’ emperors. I have also used the gratifyingly sober accounts of Claudius by Barbara Levick (Routledge, 1993), Nero: The End of a Dynasty by Miriam T. Griffin (Routledge, revised edition, 1987) and Hadrian: The Restless Emperor by Anthony R. Birley (Routledge, 1997).

  The assassination of Gaius is analysed by T. P. Wiseman, The Death of Caligula (Liverpool UP, 2nd edition, 2013), translating and analysing Josephus’ account in his Jewish Antiquities 19. Eric R. Varner, Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture (Brill, 2004) discusses the recarving of portrait statues. The ancient source for most lurid anecdotes about Gaius is Suetonius’ biography: the mistranslated passage about sex at dinner (24), the ‘seashells’ (46). The victims of Claudius are tallied at Suetonius, Claudius 29. Commodus in the amphitheatre provides the opening to my Laughter in Ancient Rome (see Chapter 8); the ‘little fishes’ appear in Suetonius, Tiberius 44, and the fly killing in Suetonius, Domitian 3. There is a story along the lines of ‘pecunia non olet’ in Suetonius, Vespasian 23; Vespasian’s triumphal common sense is quoted by Suetonius, Vespasian 12. The set piece with the collapsible boat is at Tacitus, Annales 13, 3–7. The sardonic quip about plots is attributed to Domitian at Suetonius, Domitian 21 and to Hadrian at Augustan History (SHA), Avidius Cassius 2. The graffiti about the ‘Golden House’ is quoted by Suetonius, Nero 39. Susan Treggiari analyses ‘Jobs in the household of Livia’ in Papers of the British School at Rome 43 (1975). The desk job of the emperor is conjured up by Fergus Millar, ‘Emperors at work’, in Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, edited by Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004). Augustus’ judgement on the chamber pot case is translated in Sherk, Rome and the Greek East (see Chapter 5). Sacrificial biscuits are discussed by Richard Gordon, ‘The veil of power’, in Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World, edited by Mary Beard and John North (Duckworth, 1990). Fronto’s comment on imperial images is made in his Letters 4, 12. Caroline Vout reflects on ‘What’s in a beard’ in Rethinking Revolutions Through Ancient Greece, edited by Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge UP, 2006). The scale, impact and financing of the Colosseum are themes in Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Profile, 2005). For the Talmudic story of Titus’ death, see Gittin 56 B; for Domitian’s mirrored walls, Suetonius, Domitian 14; for the ‘Golden Sheep’, Tacitus, Annales 13, 1. ‘The secret of imperial rule’ are the words of Tacitus, Histories 1, 4. Vespasian’s miracles are mentioned by Suetonius, Vespasian 7 and Tacitus, Histories 4, 81–82. Hugh Lindsay, Adoption in the Roman World (Cambridge UP, 2009) discusses the adoption of imperial heirs and the wider background. Pliny’s remarks are from his Panegyric 7–8; Galba’s speech is scripted in Tacitus, Histories 1, 14–17. Hadrian’s poem is in the Palatine Anthology 6, 332. The story of Tiberius and the sharp senator is reported by Tacitus, Annales 1, 74, ‘men fit for slavery’ at 3, 65 and Nero’s first speech at 13, 4. Hadrian’s execution of the ex-consuls is alleged by Augustan History (SHA), Hadrian 5. Alain Gowing, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge UP, 2005) explores exactly that. Cordus is supposed to have pointed out that Livy had praised Pompey (Tacitus, Annales 4, 34). For Lucan’s death, see Tacitus, Annales 15, 70. Domitian’s black dinner party is described by Cassius Dio, Roman History 67, 9. The conversation at dinner with Nerva is quoted at Letters 4, 22; Tacitus’ admission is made at Histories 1, 1. Cassius Dio, Roman History 66, 12 and Suetonius, Vespasian 15 mention clashes between Helvidius Priscus and Vespasian. Pliny reports Fannia’s illness at Letters 7, 19. Cassius Dio, Roman History 63, 26 references the temple of Venus Sabina. The subtlety of emperor worship is a major theme in S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge UP, 1986), which discusses the inscription from Gytheum; a translation is included in Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, volume 2 (see General). Livia’s ‘reward’ is noted by Cassius Dio, Roman History 56, 46, Vespasian’s quip by Suetonius, Vespasian 23.

  Chapter 11

  Roman city life and planning are discussed by Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City (see Chapter 1), including a chapter on Timgad. Useful overviews of non-elite lives in ancient Rome are given by Jerry Toner, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (Polity, 2009) and Robert Knapp, Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men and Women … the Romans That History Forgot (Profile, 2013). The Romans, edited by Andrea Giardina (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993), includes essays on representative characters of all ranks of Roman society, including the poor. Despite the title, the Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature, edited by William Hansen (Indiana UP, 1998), includes translations of plenty of the Roman material I discuss in this chapter. John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representations and Non-elite Viewers in Italy, 100 BC–AD 315 (Univ. of California Press, 2003) explores popular art. An influential but pessimistic view of levels of literacy is found in William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Harvard UP, 1991).

  One-legged tables and multiple rings are described by Pliny, Natural History 34, 14 and 33, 24. Pliny the Younger’s villa at Laurentum is described in Letters 2, 17 and discussed in a chapter of Roy K. Gibson and Ruth Morello, Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger (Cambridge UP, 2012). The law with specifications on a minimum number of roof tiles is part of a local charter for the town of Tarentum, translated in Kathryn Lomas, Roman Italy, 338 BC–AD 200: A Sourcebook (Univ. College London Press, 1996). The rich residents of Timgad are the subject of Elizabeth W. B. Fentress, ‘Frontier culture and politics at Timgad’, Bulletin Archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques 17 (1984). The lack of city zoning, including ‘moral zoning’, is discussed by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Public honour and private shame: the urban texture of Pompeii’, in Urban Society in Roman Italy, edited by Tim J. Cornell and Kathryn Lomas (UCL Press, 1995). Juvenal’s complaints are in his Satires 3; at most, plostra (heavy carts) were banned during the daytime, to judge from regulations going back to Julius Caesar found at Heraclea in southern Italy – the ‘Table of Heraclea’, translated in Roman Statutes, edited by M. H. Crawford (see Chapter 4). Fronto’s version of ‘bread and circuses’ is in his Introduction to History 17 (part of his series of Letters). Cicero’s scorn of work is at On Duties 1, 150–51. The continuity of the majority of British lifestyles under the Romans is a point forcefully made by Richard Reece in My Roman Britain (Oxbow, 1988). Marginal Romans are discussed by John R. Patterson, ‘On the margins’, in Death and Disease in the Ancient City, edited by Valerie M. Hope and Eireann Marshall (Routledge, 2002). For the demand for day labourers, see David Mattingly, ‘The feeding of imperial Rome’, in Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City, edited by Jon Coulston and Hazel Dodge (Oxford Univ. School of Archaeology, 2000); Ancarenus Nothus features in another fine essay in the same volume, ‘Living and dying in the city of Rome’ by John R. Patterson. Details of the textile works outside Rome are in S. Musco et al., ‘Le complexe archéologique de Casal Bertone’, Les Dossiers d’Archéologie 330 (2008). Work is the theme of S. R. Joshel, Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1992) and N. Kampen, Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia (Mann, 1981). The tomb of Eurysaces is discussed by Lauren Hackforth Petersen, The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History (Cambridge UP, 2006). A transla
tion of the rules for the collegium (not in this case a specifically trade organisation) is included in Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, volume 2 (see General). The inscription relating to the bakers’ strike is translated in Barbara Levick, The Government of the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2002). The slogans (and the bar paintings) from Pompeii are discussed in Mary Beard, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (Profile, 2008). For laundry workers, see Miko Flohr, The World of the Fullo: Work, Economy, and Society in Roman Italy (Oxford UP, 2013). Juvenal’s Ostian bar is conjured up in Satires 8. Roman gambling in all its aspects is the subject of Nicholas Purcell, ‘Literate games: Roman society and the game of alea’, in Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society, edited by Robin Osborne (see Chapter 5). Jerry Toner, Roman Disasters (Blackwell, 2013) is an accessible book on all the kinds of misfortunes, from flooding to fire, that threatened ordinary Romans. Crimes (and responses to them) in Roman Egypt are documented in technical detail by Benjamin Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt (Oxford UP, 2011) and Ari Z. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). The case of the woman from Herculaneum (Petronia Justa) is discussed by Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum (see Prologue). Curses from Roman Bath are translated in Stanley Ireland, Roman Britain: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 3rd edition, 2008); the Oracles of Astrampsychus are translated in The Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature, edited by William Hansen. The spirit of Phaedrus’ fables is beautifully captured by John Henderson in Telling Tales on Caesar: Roman Stories from Phaedrus (Oxford UP, 2001) and Aesop’s Human Zoo: Roman Stories about our Bodies (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004); see especially Phaedrus, Fables 1, 2; 1, 3 and 1, 28. Riots are attested by Suetonius, Claudius 18, Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1, 15 (Aspendus) and Tacitus, Annales 14, 42–45 (murder of a senator). For literate culture among ordinary Romans, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Scratching the surface: a case study of domestic graffiti at Pompeii’, in L’écriture dans la maison romaine, edited by M. Corbier and J. P. Guilhembert (Paris, 2011), and Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford UP, 2014). The Bar of the Seven Sages is an important topic in Clarke’s Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans and Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 BC–AD 250 (Univ. of California Press, 2007).