Reassessing the ‘Cumaean Chronicle’: Greek Chronology and Roman History in Dionysius of Halicarnassus

2007 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
pp. 50-67
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Gallia
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Early History ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Greek Source ◽  
Greek World

A biographical digression on the Cumaean tyrant Aristodemus Malacus in Dionysius' Roman Antiquities has elicited widespread speculation about the existence of an early Greek source for events in Italy contemporaneous with the origins of the Roman Republic. The communis opinion about the importance of this hypothetical ‘Cumaean chronicle’ warrants reconsideration on two grounds. First, the events in question fall well before the development of Greek historical writing concerned with contemporary events. Second, we must not overlook the potential impact on the tradition of Roman historians who wished to integrate their city's early history with that of the wider (Greek) world.

Lykophron's Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
South Italy ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Area Of Origin

This book is an original, accessibly written, contribution to Roman and Hellenistic history. Its subject is a long (1474-line) ancient Greek poem, Lykophron’s Alexandra, probably written about 190 BC. The Trojan Kassandra foretells the conflicts between Europe and Asia from the Trojan Wars to the establishment of Roman ascendancy over the Greek world in the poet’s own time, including the founding of new cities by returning Greeks through the Mediterranean zone, and of Rome by the Trojan refugee Aineias, Kassandra’s kinsman. Simon Hornblower now follows his detailed commentary (OUP 2015, paperback 2017) with a monograph asserting the Alexandra’s importance as a historical document of interest to political, cultural, and religious historians and students of myths of identity. Part One explores Lykophron’s geopolitical world, especially south Italy (perhaps the poet’s area of origin), Sicily, and Rhodes, and argues that the recent (in the 190s) hostile presence of Hannibal in south Italy is a frequent if indirectly expressed concern of the poem. Part Two investigates the poem’s relation to Sibylline and other anti-Roman writings, and argues for its cultural and religious topicality. The Conclusion shows that the 190s BC were a turning-point in Roman history, and that Lykophron was aware of this.

Roman History

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-148
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Social History ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Drivers Of Change ◽  
Ancient Economy

A bumper edition this time, by way of apology for COVID-necessitated absenteeism in the autumn issue. The focus is on three pillars of social history – the economy (stupid), law, and religion. First up is Saskia Roselaar's second monograph, Italy's Economic Revolution. Roselaar sets out to trace the contribution made by economics to Italy's integration in the Roman Republic, focusing on the period after the ‘conquest’ of Italy (post 268 bce). Doing so necessitates two distinct steps: assessing, first, how economic contacts developed in this period, and second, whether and to what extent those contacts furthered the wider unification of Italy under Roman hegemony. Roselaar is influenced by New Institutional Economics (hereafter NIE), now ubiquitous in studies of the ancient economy. Her title may be an homage to Philip Kay's Rome's Economic Revolution, but the book itself is a challenge to that work, which in Roselaar's view neglects almost entirely the agency of the Italians in the period's economic transformation. For Roselaar, the Italians were as much the drivers of change as the Romans; indeed, it is this repeated conviction that unifies her chapters.

How to Write Anti-Roman History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
Greek Historiography ◽  
Philosophical Underpinning

In this chapter, Tim Whitmarsh reconstructs an example of a type of history writing—accounts with a pronounced anti-Roman bias—that has left only exiguous traces in the extant collection of ancient textual sources. Whitmarsh traces this oppositional history by scrutinizing the several categories of professed opponents whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus ventriloquizes. Whitmarsh tentatively identifies Metrodorus of Scepsis as a likely target of Dionysius’ critiques and then reverse engineers Metrodorus’ arguments, drawing also on criticisms that Plutarch appears to have directed at Metrodorus. Whitmarsh finds, in the arguments he excavates from Metrodorus’ opponents, an anti-providential idea of random historical “swerves” that served to undercut Roman claims to greatness. He concludes by lamenting the loss of Metrodorus’ work, arguing that it would have provided not just a counterweight to the heavily pro-Roman emphasis in extant Greek historiography, but also an example of an entirely different philosophical underpinning.

Livy, Licinius Macer and theLibri Lintei

1958 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 40-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
Conventional Manner ◽  
Considerable Detail

C. Licinius Macer is little known outside the citations by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Cicero classifies him among the Roman historians but says nothing about the scope or contents of his work. From the fragments we can see that it dealt with the whole field of Roman history from the earliest times, evidently in the conventional manner used by Annalists and with considerable detail. Livy cites him seven times but not beyond the first Decade since he appears to prefer other Annalists for later history. These citations, however, are of great value because they reveal what sources Licinius himself quoted, e.g. 4, 7, 12, ‘Licinius Macer auctor est et in foedere Ardeatino et in linteis libris ad Monetae inventa’; 23,1 ‘… et Tubero et Macer libros linteos auctores profitentur … Licinio libros haud dubie sequi linteos placet’; 20, 8 ‘libri quos linteos in aede repositos Monetae Macer Licinius citat identidem auctores’. Thus we are taken behind our surviving authorities to the question of their information in the Roman historical tradition.

Roman History

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-287
Author(s):  
Lucy Grig
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Political History ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Cultural Turn

This being my first attempt at writing the Roman History subject review, some kind of comment on the nature of the field as illustrated by this issue's crop of books seems appropriate. Firstly, the paucity of books focusing on the period of the Roman Republic is striking, especially if Cicero is taken out of the equation; the Imperial period clearly dominates, though the study of Late Antiquity (in which I must declare an interest) is still clearly on the rise. In terms of subject matter, traditional political history is obviously still largely out of fashion, religion is on a roll and the ‘cultural turn’ continues its rise (again I declare an interest), but the economy is making a late comeback (thanks to the formidable industry of the Oxford Roman Economy Project). This issue's collection offers a healthy mix of genres: biographies, student textbooks/sourcebooks, edited volumes, ‘companions’, and substantial monographs, including both revised PhDs and the reflections of more seasoned scholars, books for specialists and novices alike. I shall be interested to see how the balance of both subject matter and methodology appear in future issues.

Thucydides: History, Science and Power

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Fitzsimons
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Rapid Growth ◽  
Early History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Principal Subject

Greek historical writing began at much the same time as Greek philosophic-scientific speculation. It experienced an even more rapid growth than philosophy, which it resembled in culminating its development in two men of genius. Contemporary events, the principal subject matter of early history, became the subject of inquiry, when some among the literate could not look at or understand events in the epic or mythic terms that had served the past and had to serve as a past.

scholarly journals Republican friendship and the fall of the Roman Republic in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama

2021 ◽  
pp. 018476782110293
Author(s):  
Ross Moncrieff
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
The Ideal

This article synthesises historical scholarship on early modern friendship and classical republicanism to argue that Cicero, through the ideal of ‘republican friendship’, exerted a much greater influence over early modern understandings of Roman history than has previously been realised. Exploring Roman plays by William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, with reference to other classical dramas, it examines how dramatists used the Ciceronian ideal of republican friendship to create a historical framework for the political changes they were portraying, with Jonson using it to inform a Tacitean perspective on Roman history and Shakespeare scrutinising and challenging the nature of republican friendship itself.

scholarly journals An attempt at legal regulation of ambitus (canvassing before Roman elections) in the period of the Roman Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 309-328
Author(s):  
Nataša Deretić ◽  
Milan Milutin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Entire Period ◽  
Broad Definition ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
The Republic

The emergence of pre-election canvassing, for which the Roman state had a special term - ambitus - has outlived centuries, so that we find this phenomenon even today. We shall here try to answer the question as to whether the campaigning before elections is a type of corruption after analyzing laws dating from the period of the Roman Republic. Defining ambitus is no easy task. A very broad definition would define it as the use of illegal methods to persuade a voter to vote for a particular candidate. This definition applies to the entire period of the Republic, and even later, to the end of the Roman history. In an attempt to understand the meaning of ambitus, it is not completely clear what means are illegal. Is it recruiting voters, blackmailing, bribing, giving presents, rendering or promising favours, organizing free feasts, staging public games, etc.? What was the punishment? Who could be punished? These things varied both during the period of the Republic and throughout the entire Roman history.

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