Roman Historical Narratives

Scholarship on Book 5 of Cicero’s Letters to Friends has often considered it an incoherent assemblage of letters belatedly discovered and arranged together, without much scheme, only after the compilation of the other books in IV-V AD (Cavarzere 2007; White 2010). I argue that its letters (as in other books in the collection: Beard 2002; Gunderson 2007; Gibson 2012; Grillo 2016; Martelli 2017; Gibson 2022) were posthumously selected and re-organized around specific narrative and thematic threads.

Ammianus Marcellinus’s history survives as eighteen books numbered from 14 to 31, describing the years 353 to 378. His last paragraph (31.16.9) declares that his work had begun with Nerva’s accession in 96; the extant books cross-refer about thirty-five times (without book numbers) to the lost books. This paper offers a new conjecture about the nature of these lost books, which have troubled many scholars who have given them thought.

Reading Cato’s Origins in Antonine Rome: fact and fiction in Gellius’ Attic Nights

While the historicity of the first secession of the plebs (c. 493 BCE) is somewhat debatable, it remains canonically the first major development in the ‘conflict of the orders,’ a nearly two-century struggle between mass and elite that gradually produced, via constitutional reforms, the socio-political foundations of the mid and late Roman republican state (Cornell; Lintott; Raaflaub; Mignone; Forsythe).

Livy’s depiction of Philip V contains several episodes that may be read as exempla. Philip is used by Livy’s historical personae as an exemplum of a ruler attempting to maintain control, both successfully and disastrously. Antiochus III uses Philip as an example of a king who lost power to Rome (37.25.6), whereas Scipio Africanus uses Philip in the same scenario to show the benefits of an alliance with Rome (37.25.11). Philip himself uses exempla to teach his sons about successful fraternal relations (40.8.7-16).

After the disaster at Trasimene in 217 BCE the Romans sought the gods’ help, vowing a ver sacrum, an archaic ritual sacrifice of all the year’s offspring (Livy 22.10.1-6). Livy’s report of the vow has been interpreted as evidence for archaic religious practice as well as the ritual origins of Roman law. This paper reassesses the Ver Sacrum vow by analyzing its Latin style and narrative contexts to offer insight into Livy’s presentation of law, a neglected topic (cf. Milnor 2007).