[41] Hubbell, The Influence of Isocrates on Cicero, etc. (Yale, 1913).
[42] Tacitus, Dialogus 19, 37, 38.
[43] Cicero is well aware of the fact that the suppression of the old political freedom was endangering style: Brutus 21, 324.
CHAPTER VI
REPUBLICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND LIVY
The Romans, like all builders of empires, were avid readers and writers of history. Their first two epics were the stories of the growth of Rome; the numerous autobiographies of the Republican period were the political apologiae of public men like Marius, Sulla, Scaurus, and Lucullus, who had given all their time to the affairs of state; before Livy composed his great work, at least a score of historians had written bulky accounts, now all lost, of the whole or some part of Rome’s amazing story. Now that we have only fragments left of that splendid historical library it is easy to fall into serious misconceptions regarding the ideals and aims of those who wrote the nation’s history. To these errors the Middle Ages contributed not a little by canonizing all the ancient authorities so that when modern historical criticism came into vogue the reaction against authority went too far and skepticism overleaped the mark. Furthermore, a group of modern critics, who know little about the past, impressed by the absence of rationalism in the medieval writers, have invented a theory of progress which denies all intelligence to human beings who lived before the eighteenth century. A recent book, misnamed The Making of the Modern Mind, actually begins its account with the dark ages, thereby succeeding fairly well in creating an impression of consistent progress, but it wholly neglects the great civilization which had reached the heights and fallen before the period discussed. One might with equal fairness write a biography of Ruskin by ignoring his creative early period and beginning with his emergence from his mental coma during his old age.
As archaeological discoveries at Rome are confirming much of the tradition which Mommsen and his successors rejected, it is becoming necessary for us to revise our conception of the methods of the early Roman historians. We now know that in its essentials the traditional picture of a large and prosperous Rome at the end of the regal period is correct.[1] We know something of its extensive walls, of its imposing temples, and of its far-reaching commerce. We are gaining no little respect for Livy’s conception of a strong Sabine element in Rome, of the participation of Latins and Etruscans in the revolutionary wars that ended the regal period, and of a temporary weakening of Rome in the early decades of the Republic, when the Latins gained their independent status and the Sabellic tribes threatened the existence of the Latin League. If Mommsen were writing today, he would certainly accept a large part of early political history, for he himself in his Staatsrecht rehabilitated much of the constitutional history which he had previously excluded from his volumes. I do not mean that we are ever going to reinstate the embroidery of fictitious battle-scenes and long senatorial debates woven from family legends into the accounts of the early period. Livy himself, who has left us the best account of this picturesque tradition, warns the reader adequately when he explains why he has freely included legend in the first part of his work. But with the archaeological evidence before us, it is now possible to estimate what knowledge of the earlier Republican period was available to the annalists and to judge from this what use they made of their knowledge. We know, for example, that they had access to large collections of laws, senatus consulta, treaties, and priestly annals, and that they drew the correct inferences from the extensive remains of the city about them, a city which did not greatly change its ancient aspect until after the Second Punic War. The fact that in the attempt to synchronize the consular list with temple records which did not quite accord, they fell into a slight discrepancy of a few years in the chronology of the early period does not materially affect its value.
Various recent books on historiography[2] make little or no reference to these revisions of our knowledge. They are being written as though nothing had been discovered since Wachsmuth and the early critical work of Pais. What is equally disturbing, they continue to assume that Roman senators like Fabius and Cato, who constantly had to consult Rome’s laws and treaties in order to direct senatorial debate on intricate matters of international relations, immediately forgot the value of facts when they undertook to write history. It is no longer justifiable, however, to group all Roman annalists together in one category. If the early annals of Rome tell practically the same story as the remains, there must have been a great difference between the statesmen who first recorded the facts and the romancers of Sulla’s day who wrote popular books for the purpose of entertainment.
We may classify the historical writers of the Republic into three distinct groups with reference to their methods and their employment of their sources. In the century before Gaius Gracchus, we know of some eight statesmen who told the story of Rome from the beginning up to their own day. These are Fabius Pictor, senator and pontifex, who had served in the army in 225 B.C., L. Cincius Alimentus, a praetor and general in the Hannibalic war, Cato, consul and censor, C. Acilius, a senator, Postumius Albinus, a consul, Cassius Hemina, Fabius Servilianus, consul and commentator on pontifical law, Calpurnius Piso, consul, censor, and reformer of the courts, and Sempronius Tuditanus, a jurist, who while consul conquered Histria. They all wrote at a time when there were few “general readers,” and their works were in the main intended for the information of magistrates, senators, jurists, and a small circle of readers closely connected with the ruling classes. These men were all thoroughly acquainted with Rome’s laws and treaties.
After the Gracchan revolution we find a decided change in the tone and purpose of history. The democratic upheaval had enlarged the circle of readers by bringing large masses into the political arena, and had created a demand for histories that were more easy to read and more sympathetic toward the aspirations of the common people. In addition, a diffusion of the knowledge of Greek, which made available the colorful histories that Alexandrian culture had produced, and which fostered a taste for a more florid style in written and spoken Latin, tended to turn readers away from the dry factitive annals of the preceding century and to encourage professional writers to satisfy the new taste. The first story-teller to meet the new demand was apparently Cn. Gellius of the Gracchan age, who seems to have filled in the meager outline of early Republican history with an abundance of interesting legends. The period that had been covered in seven rolls by the sober Piso required ninety-seven in the library that Gellius produced.