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Historiography and Biography
Christina Kraus
1.Some Formal Considerations. It is striking that the narrative history of Rome by Romans was for decades written in Greek. The earliest known native historian, who crystallized in written form the traditions and self-image of the Roman aristocracy, also established some of this history’s most salient characteristics. Q. Fabius Pictor (see also Goldberg, Chapter 1 above) had a military career and participated in an official embassy to Delphi during the second Punic war (218-202 BCE). Though literary Latin existed in Fabius’ day, one can easily see why an experienced diplomat would choose to write Rome’s history in the lingua franca of the Mediterranean; the language of the histories of Alexander the Great, whose conquests and pre-eminence were already being self-consciously challenged by the Romans; and the prestige language, above all, of the great works of Greek literature, not least of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and of the Hellenistic historians of the west, especially Timaeus.
Fabius’ was, as far as we can tell, a truly Greco-Roman text (Dillery (2002)). It was probably annalistic in structure—that is, organized chronologically by the annually elected consuls: a distinctly Roman dating system. Following Fabius’ lead, history at Rome was written by men who had held public office, almost always by senators, for audiences of their own kind. Even when historians of less exalted status began writing, their texts were not markedly different from those of their precursors: Roman historia concentrated on the collective deeds, both political and military, of great Roman individuals who worked together—albeit in competition for public recognition and glory—for the good of the res publica. It was by definition patriotic, concerned with the patria, or fatherland. Moreover, like its Greek precursors it was narrative history, using what we may call novelistic devices to create lifelike characters, bring distant places and past events in front of the mind’s eye, and inspire emotions in its audience.
Authors might start, as Fabius did, ab urbe condita (‘from the founding of the city’, i.e. from the beginning; cf. the works of Cassius Hemina and Cn. Calpurnius Piso Frugi); or they might write the history of a smaller segment, often a war (cf. Coelius Antipater on the second Punic war, Sallust on the Jugurthinewar, or Asinius Pollio on the civil wars); or universal history, of the whole inhabited world (first essayed in Latin c1 BCE by Cornelius Nepos). Some, like M. Porcius Cato ‘the Elder’ (234-149 BCE), chose a hybrid form. His seven-book Origines was initially organized by topic, the founding of Italian cities (perhaps following a tradition of Hellenistic ‘ktisis’, or ‘founding’, literature), but shifted midway to a chronological record of Rome extending up to Cato’s own day, and naturally including the politician-turned-historian’s own deeds (Astin (1978), chapter 10). This work, the first history written in Latin, is also the first to have been preserved in any quantity: though still fragmentary, enough of Cato’s prose remains to give a tentative idea of the style and technique that Latin historical narrative would henceforth imitate.
2. History’s Purpose, History’s Rhetoric. From the beginning, Roman history focussed on the life, character, and deeds of exemplary men and women, both good and bad.Synchronic history—e.g., genealogical, religious, or anthropological history—was written in a different stylistic register and a primarily non-narrative form now often referred to as antiquarianism; still, historical narratives could and did engage with economic, social, and anthropological issues, though they tended to analyse them through the lens of personal interaction among human actors. History’s purpose, again from the beginning, seems to have combined commemoration with education: re-citing the great deeds (res gestae) of the past in order to build a collective memory that would in turn serve as predictor and guide to the future (Gowing, forthcoming). This blend of entertainment with didactic utilitas was designed to make ‘men less willing to do harm, and more eager to serve the commonwealth’ (Sempronius Asellio, c2 BCE, F 2). So too Sallust (86-35 BCE), for whom writing history ‘is as useful to the commonwealth as are the occupations of others,’ and who sees historical narrative as the written equivalent of the inspiring physical representations of dead Roman notables (BJ 4.3-6); Livy (59 BCE–CE 17), who describes his history as ‘health-giving and fruitful’ for his reader’s commonwealth (Preface 10); and Tacitus (CE 56-120), for whom history is designed at least partly to provide practical lessons for those who cannot themselves distinguish good and bad (A. 4.33.2).
Ancient notions of historical accuracy were very different from modern expectations that history should be ‘scientific’ or ‘objective.’ Though programmatically claiming to write the ‘truth’, all historians presented that truth in artistically persuasive ways, availing themselves of the ‘paint box’ of rhetoric (Cic. Att. 2.1 [21].1-2). That paint box contained a professional rhetorician’s full range of stylistic and argumentative devices, including those suited to the high or ornamental style, in keeping with the ancient descriptions of historia as both a ‘job for the orator’ (Cic. De Orat. 2.62) and as ‘the closest thing to [epic] poetry’ (Quint. 10.1.31).
Aristotle distinguished between history and poetry: ‘poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal, I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speaks or acts, according to probability or necessity….The particular is—for example—what Alcibiades did or suffered’ (Poet. 1451b). But no historian has room for every detail. More importantly, since unique past experiences can be comprehended only by assimilation to the familiar and the stylized, any literary rendition of past events will inevitably move into the realm of the figurative, indeed, of the poetic. That is doubly true for ancient artistic prose, with its overriding sense of literary history and rhetorical conventions. In Rome, the links between history and epic were particularly close, given that Roman history was the subject of some of the earliest Latin epic poems. And while oratory and epic are far apart in many ways, they share a primary aim of telling a persuasively realistic, emotionally compelling story: one can compare Odysseus’ weeping at the song of the fall of Troy (Homer, Od. 8.499-531) with Quintilian’s advice to the young orator on how to describe things vividly, using precisely the theme of the capture of a city (Quint. 8.3.67-71).
This literary climate, in which poetry, oratory, and history shared important fundamental qualities, had significant consequences for ancient historiography. Since audiences, like authors, were used to the elaborate, traditional system within which ancient rhetoric operated, historical narrative tended to describe not ‘real life’ but a world made recognizable by other literature, including oratory (Oakley (1997) 10). Within that literary and rhetorical framework, departures from or manipulation of convention could both establish originality and engage the reader more actively in the process of communication (Rigney (1992) 220). Moreover, the close relationship felt to subsist between history and epic meant that the vocabulary and the poetics of historia were nearer those of elevated verse than those of more ‘practical’ prose such as philosophy or the scholarly treatise. Even Caesar, who consciously downplays the high artistic qualities of his prose, repeatedly uses the epic paradigm of the besieged city (e.g., BG 7.47-51), and relies on the ‘topos-code’ of the decadent Asiatic east to ‘build a network of correspondences’ with past texts and events (Rossi (2000)). At the same time, his deliberate use of the same single word for a given thing (e.g., always using flumen for ‘river’) renders Caesar’s superficially precise text useless for pragmatic reconstruction of topography, battlefields, even events as a whole.
3. History’s Language. The style of Roman historiography ranges from Caesar’s super-efficient plain style to Florus’ ornate, emotive prose. Yet within that diversity there is a universal tendency to aim for variatio. On a basic level, this is achieved by alternating narrative with digressions, or by interspersing it with historiographical variants or discussions of method. Both formal digressions and narrative may borrow from the language and style of other, related literature, such as ethnography, paradoxography, or the antiquarian treatise. So Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum includes a full-scale ethnography of North Africa (cf. also Livy 5.33-5 on the Gauls, Tacitus H. 5.2-10 on the Jews); Livy has antiquarian passages on Roman drama (7.2) and Samnite armour (9.40), while Velleius Paterculus analyses literary hotspots (1.16-18, 2.9, 2.36) and catalogues colonies (1.14-15); Caesar and Curtius Rufus have expansive technical descriptions (BG 4.17, Curt. 4.2-3); Tacitus includes a short, analytical history of Roman law (A. 3.25-8), an interlude on the marvellous phoenix (A. 6.28, cf. Cato F 39 and 52 on amazing beasts), and creatively reworks paradoxographical travellers’ tales to describe Neronian Rome (A. 15.36-7: see Woodman (1998) 168-89).
Non-digressive sections as well vary in tone and style. The criteria for choice of style at any given point are effectiveness and appropriateness: consideration of what kind of language will best achieve the persuasive and artistic aims of the author, with careful attention to the linguistic decorum (degree of poetic diction, elaboration of syntax, use of tropes, etc.) dictated by the passage’s content and purpose. Historiographical narrative includes scenes constructed from tragic and comic conventions (e.g., the story of Lucretia at Livy 1.57-9; see Wiseman (1998)); passages imitative of military communiqués (Fraenkel (1956)) or of ancient epic (e.g., Livy 1.29, the fall of Alba Longa) or of epigraphic language; and especially of speeches, deliberative, judicial, and epideictic, presented in reported, free indirect, and direct speech.
This alternation of descriptive narration and speeches is perhaps the most characteristic feature of ancient historical narrative, one probably borrowed from epic. Beyond using them for simple characterization and argumentation, in their speeches historians from the time of Herodotus on articulate the terms in which they perceive a given debate to have been conducted, often using speeches as extra-narrative analyses of historical trends, ideologies, and causality. Inserted orations can even, through intertextual reference, afford an opportunity for comparative historical analysis: so, when Tacitus’ senators debate the propriety of sending governors’ wives to the provinces with their husbands (A. 3.33-4), their language and arguments evoke a famous mid-republican debate on luxury (Livy 34.1-8), offering Tacitus’ readers a chance to compare his text with Livy’s as well as using the earlier historical situation as a lens through which to refract the later (Ginsburg (1993))
Finally, from its Herodotean beginnings ancient history used speeches to enhance the sense of vivid presence. For to fulfil their pragmatic, didactic, and ethical aims, historians had to hook, and keep, their audience. The attraction of literary artistry cannot be underestimated: scenes such as the battle of the Horatii and the Curiatii at Livy 1.24-5, or the Pisonian conspiracy at Tacitus A. 15.48-74, grip us by their deployment of spectacular effects, suspense, and appeal to extra-literary experiences such as theatre-going or gladiatorial combat. But persuasion works best when the emotions are deeply engaged, and ancient rhetoric makes a special study of how to trigger, and use, a jury’s emotions. So the technique of vivid description centred on the inspiration of emotion: ‘Thucydides is always striving for this vividness in his writing, desiring eagerly to make the listener a spectator, as it were, and to produce in those reading the events the astounding and disturbing emotions experienced by those who saw them’ (Plut. De glor. Athen.=Moralia 347A). What Plutarch says of Thucydides is true right through the tradition of ancient historiography, particularly so in Rome, where as we have seen, there was a perceived relationship between history and oratory, especially political oratory. Speeches and other verbal utterances (shouts, bons mots, etc.), which by their evocation of living human voices create an immediate sense of presence, are an essential part of the process of making a reader or audience see an event. The stylistic and rhetorical qualities of historiographical prose, then, are not incidental, but fundamental: like the honey on the cup of medicine in Lucretius’ famous simile (1.933-50) the pleasure afforded by historia’s poetics blends with its didactic content, resulting in the pedagogical seduction of the reader.
4. Reading History. Most Roman historiography from Fabius Pictor to Caesar is preserved in relatively short fragments. The few longer fragments which survive, quoted apparently verbatim from the narratives of Cato the Elder, Calpurnius Piso (c2 BCE), Claudius Quadrigarius (c1 BCE), and a contemporary, but anonymous, writer (Claudius F 12), have been exhaustively analysed, especially in comparison with their later adaptations by Livy. The style of these writers was described tendentiously by Cicero as lean, uncouth, childish, and full of lassitude (De Leg. 1.6-7)—tendentiously, because he was himself putting forth a ‘superior’ style for historia, one more in keeping with his own theories. Modern scholars tend to take up Cicero’s criticisms, but to grant these early historians a ‘vigour’ and ‘vitality’ of style that compensates for their repetitiveness and paratactic (i.e. unsubordinated) syntax. Rather than rehearsing the arguments here, I will focus on another aspect of these early histories: that is, their apparent concentration on human actors and their habits, or mores.
All the surviving verbatim narrative extracts are vignettes: a tribune leading a diversionary action while the main army escapes a trap (Cato F 83); a plebeian scriba asserting his authority to patrician mockers (Piso F 27); Roman soldiers fighting Gauls in single combat (Claudius F 10b and F 12). The end of Cato’s tribune is quoted directly by Aulus Gellius (3.7):
The immortal gods granted the military tribune a fate in keeping with his courage. It happened thus. Though he had been wounded in the battle in many places, yet there was no wound to his head and they identified him among the dead, unconscious because of his wound and from loss of blood. They carried him off and he recovered; often thereafter he performed brave and active service for the state and because he led that march to distract the Carthaginians saved the rest of the army. But it makes a great deal of difference where you perform one and the same service. Leonides the Spartan [who] did something similar at Thermopylae and on account of his virtues all Greece conferred on him exceptional thanks and honors, and decorated him with tributes to his most outstanding renown: with pictures, statues, inscriptions, histories, and in other ways they treated his deed as most welcome, but the tribune of the soldiers was left little praise for his deeds, though he did the same thing and saved the day. (tr. Horsfall : 1989)
Like the other narrative fragments, this one highlights an individual’s actions in a politico-military (rather than a domestic) context; shows a striking concern for visual detail and for drawing an audience in through the use of direct speech or spectacular language; and is simultaneously interested in commemoration and in exemplarity—that is, in preserving and celebrating Roman actions, while providing models for future behaviour, both within the text and without. Despite his closing complaint about the lack of commemoration available in Roman history, Cato’s text is clearly meant to provide just that. Such self-consciousness, too, about the nature and purpose of history is frequent throughout the Roman historians.
By Ciceronian standards, Cato’s prose is underdeveloped; yet its (self-conscious) simplicity and ruggedness provided a model for subsequent historians, much as Cato’s contemporary Ennius forged an archaizing style for Latin epic. Cato was closely imitated by Sallust, both in style—Sallust employed a research assistant to find unusual Catonian words—and in mindset (Levene 2000). Even before Sallust, the functional prose style of Caesar’s narratives has a distinctly Catonian feel, as does their concentration on the virtuous, often unnamed soldiers of Caesar’s army (cf. Cato F 88). By choosing to call his works ‘Commentaries’ (Kelsey 1905)—a word with many uses, but invariably associated with outlines, summaries, technical treatises, or lists—Caesar proclaims his text’s affiliation with the plain style and the military communiqué. Yet (and again like Cato) he is throughout experimental, raising the stylistic level—and consequently the literary capital—of the commentarius, which thereby becomes one form of proper historia. (It is especially interesting that Caesar’s challenging stance evoked pointed criticism from a rival contemporary historian, Pollio: Suet. DJ 56.4.)
All novelty requires familiar ground from which to stand out, and Caesar frequently advertises his affiliation with the mainstream of Roman historiography, as in his account of two rivalrous centurions (BG 5.44):
In this legion there were two men (viri) of great courage…Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus. There were constant disputes (controversias) between them as to which had precedence….While the fighting at the defences was at its fiercest, Pullo said ‘Why are you hesitating, Vorenus? What chance are you waiting for of proving your valor (virtutis)? Today will decide the dispute (controversiis) between us.’ With these words he made his way outside the defences and launched an attack where the enemy ranks were densest. Nor indeed did Vorenus remain within the defences, but followed on, fearing (veritus) what men would think of him…. Pullo’s shield was pierced and a dart (verutum) stuck in his swordbelt; this knocked (avertit) his sheath aside and hindered his attempt to draw his sword. While he was in difficulties the enemy surrounded him. To the rescue came his rival Vorenus…Straightaway the Gauls turned their attention (convertit) to him…now he was surrounded, and Pullo came to his aid. They both…returned safely within the defences, to great acclaim. Thus fortune played with them (versavit)…so that…it was impossible to decide which should be preferred in valor (virtute). (translation Hammond (1996), modified).