In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great

by David Grant

  If these individuals are to be discounted, do we have alternative historians who might fit the bill and who were respected by Tacitus, recalling that the praenomen, Quintus, is absent from early manuscript headings? Tacitus cited two historians who provided detail for his Annals, the work that covered the Julio-Claudian emperors: Fabius Rusticus, ‘an angry outsider’, and more interestingly, a Cluvius Rufus, a ‘dispassionate insider’.131 Both were of equestrian rank and both were intimately involved in the politics of the day.

  ‘VÆ, PUTO DEUS FIO!’– ARGUMENTS FOR A FLAVIAN PUBLICATION DATE132

  Before we argue for an alternative identity we should take a look at the Flavian dynasty, for Vespasian’s rule included many of the ingredients to challenge Nero’s as a Curtian publication period, though it conspicuously lacked some too. But we should also consider the probability that the Historiae Alexandri Magni Macedonis was the product of many years’ work, potentially spanning the terms of more than one emperor, and for all we know, the final chapter might have been redrafted numerous times to fit the occasion before finally being published.

  After Nero and the ‘year of the four emperors’ (69 CE), Vespasian came to power for ten years and he brought the first true political calm since Tiberius’ death over thirty years before. The intervening years had witnessed the intrigues associated with Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho and Vitellius. On December 20th 69 CE, Vitellius was defeated, and Vespasian, already proclaimed emperor by his troops in Egypt and Judaea that July, could now enter Rome and end civil war. So here we find a good home for Curtius’ ‘sheathing of swords’.133 The chaotic advance of Vespasian’s troops under the command of Antonius Primus did result in a fire that again destroyed much of Rome, though no doubt the conflagration was easily attributed to retreating forces. Calm was restored and so ‘torches’ were metaphorically doused. And to quote Suetonius, Rome was ‘given stability by the Flavian family’.134 But as Milns and Bosworth remind us, the use of trepidare, along with ‘rhetoric’ ‘too tame’ for the structure, suggest an event yet to happen, and that seems to rule Vespasian out.135

  However, a ‘flourishing empire’ did follow in which much of the capital was rebuilt without the Neronian excesses, including a Temple of Peace.136 Coinage was minted with the slogan Roma resurgens and Vespasian was remarkably ‘down to earth’ compared to the imperium of the previous decades. Much of the rustic virtue of Cato resurfaced in him, minus the republican zeal. Vespasian had suffered his own humiliations: Caligula had once filled his aedile toga with mud.137 Furthermore, he is recorded as being tolerant of criticism and supportive of the literati and the arts, providing salaries from the Privy Purse to poets and teachers of rhetoric including Quintilian who was soon elevated to consul.138 Vespasian even had a sense of humour; his alleged last words ‘Væ, puto deus fio! – ‘Oh dear, I think I am turning into a god!’– epitomised what was purportedly an extremely dry wit.139

  Benign historians such as Josephus flourished; he was the remarkable sole survivor of forty fighters besieged at the hillside town of Jotapata (Yodfat) in Judaea in 67 CE, a siege in which Vespasian himself almost lost his life.140 As the walls fell to the Roman ballistae and battering rams on the forty-seventh day, the last survivors drew lots as part of a collective suicide pact. The last lot fell to Josephus, who, after talking the second-to-last man out of death, was presented to Vespasian and then offered his services, predicting his captor would some day become emperor at Rome. It was prophetic, and Josephus, a renowned academic and prodigy from an early age, began his new career under the Flavians with free imperial lodging with an income as a Roman citizen.141

  Vespasian is likely to have fostered an environment in which an imperial history might be published, if it sidestepped the complex web of intrigues of the recent civil wars.142 Thus an account of Alexander could have been circulated then. Philosophers were not so fortunate, and Helvidius Priscus, outspokenly pro-republic, was put to death, though according to Suetonius, it was reluctantly called for by the emperor.143 Curtius’ hopes for the longevity of ‘the line of this house’ would equally relate to the Flavians. Moreover, Curtius’ prayer for a ‘long duration’ hinted at an exacerbation born of recent turbulence that immediately preceded Vespasian’s term. Tacitus’ own introduction to the year 69 CE suggested it was almost the last for Rome, thus the ‘last night’ finds its place comfortably.

  Marble bust of Vespasian. The most enduring epitaph of his emperorship was the Flavian Amphitheatre, otherwise known as the Colosseum, started by him and finished by his son, Titus.

  Taken at face value, the prosperity of Tyre remains a problem, for the Jewish Wars brought upheaval to the region even if the thirteen references to the city in Josephus’ Jewish Wars never mention Tyre’s part; the Phoenician city remained neutral, or arguably loyal to Rome, perhaps for the commercial benefit that came from supplying the legions.144 But, as we noted, Curtius’ was an encomium constructed when the need to mollify outweighed the literal truths, and when a Pax Romana could be invoked in a largely rhetorical sense.145 Josephus confirmed that Vespasian had visited the region in 67 CE in the company of Agrippa II, king of the adjacent provinces.146 If this later Flavian publication date can be successfully argued for, then the Curtius Rufus who died in Africa around 55 CE can once again be discounted as our historian.147

  ALIQUID STAT PRO ALIQUOT: A POSSIBLE NEW IDENTITY

  Numerous scholars credit much of the material Tacitus used for his biographical detail of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and the ‘year of the four emperors’, to the much admired Cluvius Rufus, a historian whose name appeared again in the accounts of Plutarch, Pliny, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and most likely Josephus; the citations made it clear that he was their source as well as, significantly, their subject matter.148

  Josephus’ coverage of the deaths of Caligula (which occupied three-quarters of his nineteenth book) and the Claudian coup is certainly the most detailed surviving account in the absence of Tacitus’ books seven to ten; it was penned with the confidence of a historian drawing on at least one impeccable ‘inside source’, and it is replete with the dialogue of conspirators reproduced in a verbatim and non-rhetorical style. As early as 1870 Mommsen proposed Cluvius Rufus was the ‘inside source’ who provided this detail. Josephus, whose praenomen, incidentally, also remains unknown, professed the importance of akribeia, ‘exactness’, in Thucydidean style, in his preface.149 Assuming he adhered to his own methodology (never a safe assumption), then his choice of source would have mirrored that requirement; if Mommsen was correct, then Josephus also held Cluvius Rufus in high esteem.

  Cluvius Rufus was also most likely the archetype for Suetonius’ detail for the assassinations of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, and he provided detail for Plutarch’s biographies of Galba and Otho, that is assuming Plutarch did not simply extract from Tacitus.150 Suetonius had initially been well placed to access the court archives when he was given the freedom of the imperial library under Trajan, then holding the office of ab epistulis, secretary, under Hadrian. However, his verbal indiscretion, or physical affair, with the empress Vibia Sabina, lost him imperial favour (and most likely his jus trium liberorum too), so Suetonius must have resorted to using testimonia from earlier historians such as Cluvius Rufus thereafter.151

  The unnamed common source was clearly an eyewitness to events and we know that Cluvius Rufus had been an intimate of Nero and at the centre of the post-Nero intrigues of Galba, swiftly moving his allegiances to Otho and Vitellius after him; he needed to reassure the latter of his innocence in the charges brought against him, and what was obviously an eloquent defence resulted in a new imperial post. Cluvius was once again in imperial favour: he was one of two witnesses (with Silius Italicus) party to the surrender pact being discussed by Vitellius and Flavius Sabinus, the prefect of Rome and the city’s cohorts (he was actually the brother of Vespasian), when surrounded by Vespasian’s forces in late 69 CE.152

  It would be specious to create a link to the auth
or of Alexander’s history through the similarity in name alone, but other parallels do exist. Cluvius is a ‘lost historian’ in that none of his works survive and his praenomen is also uncertain.153 His identification with the senators referred to by Suetonius and Tacitus confirmed he too followed the cursus honorum in the Julio-Claudian era as a political nobilis.154 He was born as late as 8 CE and was an ex-consul by year 65 CE (and as early as 41 CE if a ‘Cluitus’ mentioned by Josephus actually refers to Cluvius), possibly acting variously as a suffect consul under Caligula, then as a senator, and later as a governor appointed by Galba (if not Nero himself before his death) to Hispania Tarraconensis in 68 CE, the province Galba had previously governed under Nero.155

  This lucrative region of northern Spain was an expansion of the former province of Hispania Citerior, the mines of which were so lucidly described by Pliny who became Procurator of the region during the ‘gold rush’ of 73 CE.156 And it seems that Cluvius did take some part in Caligula’s assassination, if an episode recorded by Josephus is accurate and if the same Rufus is being referred to. If so, he was a careful operator; when questioned on rumours of political change by a senator sitting beside him – who then confided in him that ‘the programme for today will include the assassination of a tyrant’ – Cluvius denied any knowledge of it and quoted a line from Homer: ‘Quiet, lest one of the Achaeans should hear your word.’157

  Although his work is lost, we do know that Cluvius Rufus published historical accounts; Plutarch’s Roman Questions cited him as the source for an answer on Dionysiac origins, so he appears something of an antiquarian; in this case his knowledge stretched back to a plague of 361 BCE, the time of Alexander’s father’s reign.158 Pliny preserved a dialogue between Cluvius and the veteran governor of Germania Superior, curiously named Lucius Verginius Rufus, who had quelled the Vindex rebellion of 68 CE for Nero; Cluvius made an insincere-looking apologia pertaining to elements of his book that the governor might disapprove of:159

  You know, Verginius, how binding is objectivity in writing; thus, if in my Histories you happen to read anything not to your liking, I ask that you forgive me. And he to him, ‘Why don’t you know Cluvius, that what I did I did only that you may be free to write what you deem right?’160

  The dialogue has spawned many different interpretations, each involving the intrigues behind Nero’s fall and the calamitous year that followed.161 Late in Nero’s term, Verginius’ legions had twice attempted to elevate him to the emperorship, and he had twice declined the role, so his riposte underpins his philosophical position on the usurpation of power. It seems the two men in the dialogue were central to those intrigues.

  Pliny later described Verginius’ ‘double-vocation of history’ with he was ‘… one who outlived his moment of glory by thirty good years: he read poems and histories about himself and became a member of his own posterity.’162 Cluvius’ reference to his own Histories suggested he published more than one account, or at least biographed more than a single emperor or period. His care with imperial issues suggests these were unlikely to have been accounts of those then in power.163 It also raises a further question: were Lucius Verginius Rufus and Cluvius Rufus related?

  The Cluvii were situated in Capua in the 3rd century BCE and moved to Puteoli in Campania (a region now centred on Naples) a century later, enjoying a long history of commerce with Greeks and political success as praetors, senators, consuls and governors.164 Virginius Rufus is attested as hailing from Mediolanum, modern Milan in Northern Italy, so if they were related, it would have been a ‘new’ family attachment. But name alone is an uncertain prosopographic method of establishing blood ties. The traditional tria nomina (praenomen, nomen, cognomen) evolved as ambitions widened, and when, to reinforce status or ancestry, new naming conventions were used. Genealogies were further clouded by adoption within the aristocratic classes and by the confusion between nomon gentile (clan name) and cognomen (the line within the gens) in later manuscripts.

  Uncertainty aside, the careers of Verginius Rufus and Cluvius Rufus bear remarkable resemblances to one another through this period. Both were political survivors par excellence; Verginius Rufus, regarded as a novus homo, a ‘new man’ in Rome, came from humble origins: equestri familia, ignoto patre – a ‘mere equestrian family, and a father unknown to fame’ – according to Tacitus.165 He was honoured with a consulship by Otho and elevated again thirty years later by Nerva (30-98 CE), the consul then beside him. Verginius penned poetry from the literary salon of his villa at Alsium in between, and he enjoyed intimate friendship with (and guardianship of) Pliny the Younger, whose letter, To Voconius Romanus, eulogised him; an admiring Tacitus eventually delivered his funeral oration.

  As far as Cluvius Rufus’ career, Tacitus stated he received the following treatment from the Stoic philosopher Heldivius Priscus: ‘So he began his speech by praising Cluvius Rufus, who, he said, though just as rich and just as fine an orator as Marcellus, had never impeached a single individual in Nero’s time.’166 If Cluvius evidently blew with the political wind, or rather set his sails to gybe past the squalls that whipped through those years, his oratory must have been politically neutral too, perhaps in the style of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, which also sidestepped the traditional polemics on tyrants, dictators, and trappings of absolute power. But that would not have prevented Cluvius profiling Alexander, with the aforementioned discretion and care attached to any imperial comparisons.

  Priscus’ praise, if it was praise and not a slight, suggests that although Cluvius’ tact prevailed through Nero’s emperorship, it did not exclude him the odd declamatio thereafter. The delayed polemic could be backed up by a further explanation from Tacitus on the source challenge behind his Annals:

  But, while the glories and disasters of the old Roman commonwealth have been chronicled by famous pens, and intellects of distinction were not lacking to tell the tale of the Augustan age, until the rising tide of sycophancy deterred them, the histories of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero, were falsified through cowardice while they flourished, and composed, when they fell, under the influence of still rankling hatreds.167

  Though by now these are quite familiar themes, they were acutely relevant here.

  A 1960 study by Townend proposes the frequent use of Greek in Suetonius’ biographies of the Caesars could be traced to Cluvius Rufus, passages conspicuous in that they ‘attribute the worst excesses to the main characters’.168 Campania was the most Hellenised part of Italy and it is possible that Cluvius was a philhellene himself with his attested Greek ties. If correct, this suggests he was prepared to become a ‘sensational and polemical writer’ when the political climate permitted.169 This chronique scandaleuse, based around the court secrets he was privileged to, does not, as Wiseman has pointed out, preclude the lurid and scandalous being true.170

  However, it is just as likely, or perhaps more probable, that Cluvius was the source of Tacitus’ more lenient treatment of Nero, displaying the tact, not sensationalism, which Priscus attached to him; Cluvius was, indeed, maintaining the ‘golden mean.’171 In which case the source of Suetonius’ Greek is more likely Pliny (also from the Como-Milan region) who tagged Nero an ‘enemy of mankind’.172 Pliny used Greek extensively, both isolated words and longer phraseology, because there were often no direct Latin equivalents for the subtle undertones of many Greek words and terms he found in his sources.173 But sprinkling Graeci onto Latin prose was a running theme through the Silver Age, providing texts with an archaic charm, especially using extracts from poetry, to impress an educated audience. It may also have been a necessary means of implication and innuendo when simple straight-talk was not always possible.174

  Moreover, Cluvius Rufus had been part of Nero’s inner circle, acting as the emperor’s herald or master of ceremonies at the new Greek-style artistic contests, the Neronia, where he announced the emperor would be singing the story of Niobe.175 And he accompanied Nero on his artistic tour of Greece in 66-67 CE, probably when Cl
uvius was in his fifties.176 Notably, the future emperor, Vespasian, accompanied them too, falling out of favour with Nero for the apathy he showed towards his performances.177 So Cluvius was unlikely to have later published a biography that painted Nero as the monster Suetonius portrayed, for this would have called into question his own close association. His account was indeed most likely another quarantined affair. Tacitus was clear that Cluvius, possibly as an eyewitness, credited Agrippina with incestuous behaviour towards her son (possibly when she sensed she was losing authority over him), when others claimed the roles had been the reverse.178 And though Claudius’ suspicious death from the ‘food of the gods’ became a popular comical theme in Rome, it remains an allegorical episode and one Tacitus (possibly influenced by Cluvius’ account) curiously refused to endorse.179

  In complete contrast to his treatment of the governor of Africa, Tacitus, whose style was also visibly influenced by Sallust and Virgil, referred to Cluvius Rufus as ‘an eloquent man’. Cluvius appears to have capably bottled essences from the Golden Age of Latin in his Histories; ‘eloquent’ was a term afforded to Tacitus himself by Pliny the Younger.180 We don’t know when Cluvius Rufus died; 70 CE has been suggested because Tacitus stated Spain was left vacant by his absence, but this does not require his death, only his retirement from the region.181 We have four fragments and one anecdote of Cluvius’ work.182 Nonetheless, ‘Cluvius has been recognised more and more as a literary artist’ and that is consistent with the style, or the attempted eloquentia, we read in Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Magni Macedonis Alexandri.183

  Oratory was, as we know from Cicero, a close cousin of history, and so Cluvius was well placed to litter a non-contemporary account with epideictic speeches. The ‘striving for rhetorical tour de force’ is evident in a number of speeches found in Josephus’ coverage of the downfall of Caligula and the accession of Claudius.184 If Josephus’ vivid recounting of the aftermath and the plight of the people is truly based on Cluvius’ style and vocabulary, and if Suetonius’ description of Nero’s last hours was likewise sourced, then we have further evidence of a technique reminiscent of that narrating the chaos at Babylon in the wake of Alexander’s death.185