The Biography
The Roman Empire in the time of Hadrian (c. 138 AD), showing the imperial provinces of Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior. Pannonia was a province bounded on the north and east by the Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and upper Italy, and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia. — as Praefect of cavalry and legatus, Paterculus served for eight years (from AD 4) in Germany and Pannonia under Tiberius.
Gerulata, a Roman military camp located in ancient Pannonia, modern day Rusovce, Slovakia
Marcus Velleius Paterculus
From ‘1911 Encyclopædia Britannica’, Volume 27
MARCUS VELLEIUS PATERCULUS (c. 19 B.C.-c. A.D. 31), Roman historian. Although his praenomen is given as Marcus by Priscian, some modern scholars identify him with Gaius Velleius Paterculus, whose name occurs in an inscription on a north African milestone (C.I.L. viii. 10, 311). He belonged to a distinguished Campanian family, and early entered the army. He served as military tribune in Thrace, Macedonia, Greece and the East, and in A.D. 2 was present at the interview on the Euphrates between Gaius Caesar, grandson of Augustus, and the Parthian king. Afterwards, as praefect of cavalry and legatus, he served for eight years (from A.D. 4) in Germany and Pannonia under Tiberius. For his services he was rewarded with the quaestorship in 7, and, together with his brother, with the praetorship in 15. He was still alive in 30, for history contains many references to the consulship of M. Vinicius in that year. It has been conjectured that he was put to death in 31 as a friend of Sejanus, whose praises he celebrates in a most fulsome manner.
He wrote a compendium of Roman history in two books dedicated to M. Vinicius, from the dispersion of the Greeks after the siege of Troy down to the death of Livia (a.d. 29). The first book brings the history down to the destruction of Carthage, 146 B.C.; portions of it are wanting, including the beginning. The later history, especially the period from the death of Caesar, 44 B.C., to the death of Augustus, A.D. 14, is treated in much greater detail. Brief notices are given of Greek and Roman literature, but it is strange that no mention is made of Plautus, Horace and Propertius. The author is a vain and shallow courtier, and destitute of real historical insight, although generally trustworthy in his statements of individual facts. He may be regarded as a courtly annalist rather than an historian. His knowledge is superficial, his blunders numerous, his chronology inconsistent. He labours at portrait-painting, but his portraits are daubs. On Caesar, Augustus and above all on his patron Tiberius, he lavishes praise or flattery. The repetitions, redundancies, and slovenliness of expression which disfigure the work may be partly due to the haste with which (as the author frequently reminds us) it was written. Some blemishes of style, particularly the clumsy and involved structure of his sentences, may perhaps be ascribed to insufficient literary training. The inflated rhetoric, the straining after effect by means of hyperbole, antithesis and epigram, mark the degenerate taste of the Silver Age, of which Paterculus is the earliest example. He purposed to write a fuller history of the later period, which should include the civil war between Caesar and Pompey and the wars of Tiberius; but there is no evidence that he carried out this intention. His chief authorities were Cato’s Origines, the Annales of Q. Hortensius, Pompeius Trogus, Cornelius Nepos and Livy.
Velleius Paterculus was little known in antiquity. He seems to have been read by Lucan and imitated by Sulpicius Severus, but he is mentioned only by the scholiast on Lucan, and once by Priscian. The text of the work, preserved in a single badly written and mutilated MS. (discovered by Beatus Rhenanus in 1515 in the abbey of Murbach in Alsace and now lost), is very corrupt. Editio princeps, 1520; early editions by the great scholars Justus Lipsius, J. Gruter, N. Heinsius, P. Burmann; modern editions, Ruhnken and Frotscher (1830-39), J. C. Orelli (1835), F. Kritz (1840, ed. min. 1848), F. Haase (1858), C. Halm (1876), R. Ellis (1898) (reviewed by W. Warde Fowler in Classical Review, May 1899); on the sources see F. Burmeister, “De Fontibus Vellei Paterculi,” in Berliner Studien für classische Philologie (1894), xv. English translation by J. S. Watson in Bohn’s Classical Library.
Introduction to Velleius Paterculus by Frederick W. Shipley
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE TEXT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SIGLA
INTRODUCTION
“Dicere enim solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non aliqua parte prodesset.” Pliny, Ep. III.5.10, quoting a saying of his uncle.
Velleius Paterculus does not rank among the great Olympians of classical literature either as stylist or as historian. But, as Pliny the elder says, no book is so poor that one cannot get some good out of it, and there is much in this comparatively neglected author that is worth reading once, at least in translation. In its aim to include all that is of value and interest in Greek and Latin literature from the days of Homer to the Fall of Constantinople the Loeb Library is performing what is perhaps its most valuable service in making more generally available the content of those comparatively unknown authors who, for stylistic or other reasons, are not to be reckoned among the great classics or do not deserve a careful study in the original.
A compendium of Roman history, hastily compiled by an army officer as a memorial volume to commemorate the elevation to the consulship for the year A.D. 30 of his friend and fellow-Campanian, Marcus Vinicius, could hardly be expected to rise to the level either of great history or great literature. And yet, taken for what it is, a rapid sketch of some ten centuries of history, it is, in spite of its many defects, which will duly be pointed out, the most successful and most readable of all the abridgements of Roman history which have come down to us. Abridgements are usually little more than skeletons; but Velleius has succeeded, in spite of the brief compass of his work, in clothing the bare bones with real flesh, and in endowing his compendium with more than a mere shadow of vitality, thanks to his own enthusiastic interest in the human side of the great characters of history. The work, after the large lacuna in the first book, covers uninterruptedly the period from the battle of Pydna to A.D. 30, a period which practically coincides with that covered by the final 97 books of Livy for which no manuscript has come down to us, and one which is but partially treated in the extant portions of the works of other Roman historians of first rank. It is therefore valuable, if for nothing else, in that it furnishes us with a connected account of this period which is at any rate much more readable than the bare epitomes of Livy. Besides, it has certain excellences of its own in the treatment of special subjects, especially the chapters on literary history, in which the author has a genuine if not very critical interest, the chapters on the Roman colonies, and those on the history of the organization of the Roman provinces, and in some of the character portraits of the great figures of Roman history. Even in the treatment of Tiberius, in spite of its tone of adulation which historians have so generally condemned, we have a document which must be considered along with the famous delineation by Tacitus, as representing the psychological attitude toward the new empire of the group of administrative officers of the equestrian order who ardently supported it without any of the yearnings felt by the senatorial class for the old regime as it existed in the days before the empire had shorn them of their former governmental powers.
As has already been said, the work is a commemorative volume as well as an historical abridgement, and under this pardonable pretext the author feels free to depart from historical objectivity and give his work a personal note. Thus he honours Vinicius not merely by the dedication, but by addressing him frequently in the vocative case, by bringing the more important dates into chronological relation with his consulship, and by bringing into prominence the ancestors of Vinicius who had played any historical role worthy of consideration. Vinicius, who like the author himself was an official of the administration, would also lend sympathetic ears to his rhapsodic eulogy of his old commander, now the emperor Tiberius, and of his prime minister Sejanus, then in the heyday of his power and the virtual head of the government. In
doing the honours, in this commemorative volume, he also takes occasion to mention, as something in which his friend would be interested, the participation of the author’s own ancestors in the events which he is narrating, and, when he reaches his own times, like the painters of the Renaissance he sees no harm in introducing himself into the canvas as one of the minor participants in the historical pageant.
To this naïve and innocent egotism we owe all our information in regard to the author and his family, since the sparse references in later literature contribute nothing to our knowledge of either. We thus learn that he reckoned among his ancestors on his mother’s side Decius Magius, a distinguished citizen of Capua who remained loyal to the Romans when Capua went over to Hannibal, and Minatius Magius, who raised a legion and fought on the Roman side in the Social War, for which service he received Roman citizenship; that his father served in Germany as prefect of horse; that his father’s brother Capito supported Agrippa in his indictment of Cassius for the murder of Caesar; that his paternal grandfather C. Velleius Paterculus served as praefectus fabrum under Pompey, Marcus Brutus, and Tiberius Nero, the father of the emperor; that he was chosen as one of the judges by Pompey in 55 B.C., and that in 41 B.C. he killed himself because he was physically unable to follow Nero in his flight from Naples. The historian himself, C. Velleius Paterculus, also played the role of loyal officer, seeing service as military tribune in Thrace and Macedonia, and accompanying Caius Caesar in A.D. 1 on his visit to the eastern provinces. While there he was an eyewitness of the conference between Caius and the son of the Parthian king on an island in the Euphrates. Later he served under Tiberius for eight consecutive years, first as prefect of horse and then as legatus, participating in his German and Pannonian campaigns. In A.D. 6 he was elected quaestor, and while still quaestor designate he led a body of troops to reinforce Tiberius in Pannonia on the occasion of the great mutiny. As quaestor, in A.D. 7, he gave up the privilege of a provincial appointment to become a legatus under Tiberius in Pannonia. In the winter of A.D. 7‑8 he was one of the legati in charge of winter quarters. His brother, Magius Celer Velleianus, was also a legatus of Tiberius and distinguished himself in the Dalmatian campaign. Both were decorated with military honours at the triumph of Tiberius in A.D. 13. Both were praetors for the year A.D. 15 and were proud of the distinction of having been the last to be nominated to the praetorship by Augustus and the first to be named by Tiberius. Here the chapter of his military career apparently closes. He does not seem to have risen higher than the praetorship in the fifteen years which intervened between the holding of that office and the consulship of Vinicius, though he may have held provincial appointments. He must have enjoyed some leisure in these years, since he hints at having in preparation a more comprehensive historical work, and his genuine enthusiasm for literature, and his familiarity with the rhetorical studies then so much in vogue, must postulate some time for their development, even though his literary work still shows many marks of the novice.
His compendium is divided into two chronologically unequal parts. The first book, preserved in a fragmentary condition, began with the times immediately preceding the fall of Troy, dealt rapidly with the early history of Greece in the first seven chapters, reached the founding of Rome in chapter viii, and ended with the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C. The second book covers the period from the time of the Gracchi to the consulship of Vinicius in A.D. 30, and is on a much fuller and more comprehensive scale, especially from the consulship of Caesar to the end. This greater fulness as he approaches his own times is to be explained partly as a traditional proceeding, and partly because, as he himself says, he had in preparation a more comprehensive work covering the period from the beginning of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey down to his own day, and in consequence he had larger amount of material to assimilate. Here and there he checks the rapidity of his narrative to dwell at greater length upon topics in which he had a personal interest, as for example the references to literary history, the two digressions upon the colonies and provinces of Rome, the participation of members of his own family in historical events, and his own share in the events of the last fifteen years of the reign of Augustus.
Both the virtues and defects of Velleius as an historical writer can be best explained on the supposition that until the year A.D. 15, when he was about thirty-five years of age, all his time had been absorbed in his military duties, and that it was only in the period of comparative leisure which followed that he discovered a new hobby in literary and biographical studies. These he approached with all the fresh interest and naïve enthusiasm of the amateur. His outlook is still the uncritical attitude of the dilettante. Nil admirari had not become his motto. He is still, at the time of writing what is apparently his maiden book, in the stage of appreciation and admiration, and, while his critical faculties are still untrained he has at any rate not become cynical or blasé. He can still find romance in the history about which more mature writers had ceased to wonder. In the new rhetorical tendencies of Silver Latin he found a medium well adapted to give expression to his enthusiasm and admiration. As an historian he has not learned to weigh evidence; he has made no close study of the sources; in giving his chronological references he unwittingly mixes up the dates of the Catonian and the Varronian eras; in his haste he overlooks events and is obliged to insert them out of their proper order. In fact his attitude is rather that of the journalist than of the historian. There is little evidence, however, of deliberate falsification. Even his extravagant eulogy of Tiberius for which he has been so severely censured may be explained at least in part as an example of the soldier’s uncritical, but loyal and enthusiastic devotion to his old commander, which reflects the attitude toward the emperor of the military and official, as opposed to that of the senatorial class and of the sympathisers with the old republic. At the worst it is an interesting example of court history. His interest in history is biographical rather than strictly historical. He is particularly fond of making portraits of the personages of history, which he does with a considerable degree of success. The second book, in particular, is one long gallery of such portraits which are brought into relation to each other by a slender band of historical data. In fact the book is a sort of illustrated Who’s Who of Roman history. Nor does he confine himself to the great figures such as the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Cicero, Pompey, and Caesar; he is equally fond of portraying the characters of deuteragonists like Clodius, Curio, Lepidus, and Plancus. Some of these portraits are among his best. While these characterizations tend to destroy historical proportion they add greatly to the human interest.
We have said that Velleius gives the impression of having been an amateur who took to historical writing as a new hobby somewhat late in life. Signs of this are not wanting in his style. It has all the pretentiousness of the novice. He desires to soar before he has completely learned to fly. Writing in an age when rhetoric was the vogue, and contaminated poetical as well as prose writing, he cannot refrain from bringing in all the rhetorical figures and producing all the rhetorical effects. All the colours of the poet and the rhetorician are applied with lavish hand where he aspires to fine writing; rhetorical questions, exclamations, and even apostrophe; rhetorical rhythm, laboured antitheses, glittering epigrams, sometimes far-fetched, and excessive hyperbole. For this reason his use of superlatives in his praise of Tiberius has perhaps been taken too seriously. The superlative is used with almost as much frequency in eulogizing other historical personages including Pompey, in spite of author’s ardent imperialism. In fact the superlative had already suffered so much rhetorical abuse that it had come to have little more value than a positive. Furthermore his style is lacking in the clarity, the ease, and the poise of the experienced writer. This is especially the case in the interminable periods which crowd his work. Some of them are veritable labyrinths. The periods of Cicero, no matter what their length, are architectural units; in Velleius the nucleus of the period is often so overloaded with phrases, clauses, and incidental parent
heses that the period bears much more resemblance to a stone almost completely hidden by parasitic barnacles than to a structure developed on a logical and artistic plan. This is partly due to the attempt to condense into a single sentence the content of whole chapters which he finds in his sources. In consequence these periods are the despair of the translator, and there is frequently nothing for it but to break them up into smaller units which can be more readily handled in an uninflected language. And yet, with all his faults, Velleius is an author whom, as Norden has said in his Antike Kunst-Prosa, one reads with interest from beginning to end; and if readability is the real test this quality carries with it its own apology. Were it not for the difficulty of his intricate periods, his work, by reason of its content, its biographical trend, and its human interest, would be the ideal first reading-book for beginners of Latin. Macaulay, who does not admire his style and condemns his flattery, says: “Velleius seems to me a remarkably good epitomist. I hardly know of any work of which the scale is so small and the subject so extensive,” a historian’s testimony to the measure of success which he has achieved in the task which he undertook, namely, that of writing a multum in parvo of historical condensation.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 64