HEADING

With this Latin heading, we perhaps start with an implicit statement that Augustus' deeds are worthy both of being recorded in history and of being celebrated in the highest form of poetry, epic. This might be indicated if the way in which the words rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem form a solemn spondaic hexameter verse is not purely coincidental (Koster (1978) 242; Hoeing (1908) 90; see 1.1n. exercitum privato consilio ; 27.1n. Aegyptum ).

The heading at Ancyra is in much larger lettering (8–4 cm) than the rest of the inscription (2 cm), and extends over the first three columns of the text. At Antioch, the heading extends above the first two columns. The original inscription at Rome must also have had a similar heading (perhaps, taking our cue from Suetonius, index rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem terrarum imperio populi Romani subiecit et impensarum quas in rem publicam populumque Romanum fecit, ‘summary of the achievements of the deified Augustus, by which he made the world subject to the rule of the Roman people, and of the expenses which he incurred for the state and people of Rome’), since otherwise the start of the inscription, annos undeviginti natus (‘Aged nineteen years old’), is too abrupt (Koster (1978) 246). The grandeur of the language suggests that the heading was composed at Rome, even though not by Augustus himself.

I'm glad to be able to take this opportunity to thank Graham Oliver, whose enthusiastic and congenial collaboration over a paper for the Triennial Conference on the RGDA initially inspired the idea of undertaking this project. I'd also like to acknowledge the role played by my students at Warwick, notably the three cohorts who have grappled the Augustan age with me, who often make me clarify my ideas, and generally help inspire me by their enthusiasm for the subject. Michael Sharp has been supportive of the book from start to finish, offering invaluable practical help. Three Cambridge University Press assessors made helpful suggestions in planning the shape of the book in its infancy; Stephen Mitchell and the other Cambridge University Press reader provided copious suggestions for guiding the original typescript towards maturity; I hope that they like what they find now. Any faults in the book remain the result of my oversight or stubbornness. For help in compiling the illustrations I'm indebted to Michael Sharp, Stephen Mitchell, and my father. I'm grateful to Richard Abdy of the British Museum for permission to reproduce some of the images of coins already to be found in the LACTOR sourcebook, The Age of Augustus, ed. M. G. L. Cooley. Family support has been crucial, and I'm incredibly fortunate to have such tolerant children, husband, parents, and mother-in-law. Among other things, I'd single out the constructive criticism and practical help from Melvin and my parents, and the innumerable hours of childcare undertaken by my mother-in-law.

When I teach Plato, I begin, as many of us do, with the dialogues surrounding the trial and death of Socrates. And I find that for the most part my students enthusiastically embrace what they take to be Socrates' urging - to continually question our beliefs and our claims to know. Indeed, they understand this to be what their college education involves, and to a point I agree with them. But surely that is not all education involves. As Eva Brann says, “the claim, so often made in prose and poetry that the quarry is nothing and the quest everything, turns the pursuit of truth into a mere exercise, which is, for all its strenuousness, rather idle. Why look when one does not mean to find?”

Whatever else we can say about Socrates, it is surely the case that for him the pursuit of truth was no “mere exercise.” Yet my students' view of Socrates as emphasizing questioning above all has its echoes in contemporary scholarship. Let me take as one example Dana Villa's conception of “Socratic citizenship,” which emphasizes the critical, dissident force of Socratic interaction. Here Socratic elenchus is not so much a method of philosophical investigation as a method of inducing perplexity; no one ever figures out what justice or piety really is. Socrates' activities, Villa argues, are best characterized by the notion of “dissolvent rationality,” where what is dissolved through the use of reason is the lazy or dogmatic assumption that the beliefs we hold are true. The point of the perplexity that results is a slowing down, a “greater hesitancy in action” that may help us avoid injustice.

Tyranny and the Emergence of Historical Thinking

Herodotus and Thucydides, jointly responsible for the invention of history in the West, suggest an intriguing connection between historical thinking and the overcoming of tyrannical aspiration. On this topic, the historians should be regarded as fundamentally like-minded. Both object to the conventional tale of how Athens freed herself of her tyrants, the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton and their alleged overthrow of the Peisistratid ruling family in 514 B.C.E. In the process of contesting this cherished tradition and replacing the tyrannicides with their own favored characters, Herodotus and Thucydides carve out a role for the historian in defining political identity. Herodotus, the Father of History, steps into the shoes of Solon, famed wise man of Athens, while Thucydides, often referred to as the Father of Objective History, assumes a Periclean role, his character of choice. Presumably each seeks to maintain control over the interpretation of these figures in a way that was not the case with the iconography of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The historical accounts preclude any mere celebration of self and require, instead, an immersion in a complex set of particular details. Ultimately, Athens was to receive the heroes she deserved: the Herodotean Solon and the Thucydidean Pericles.

An important and well-established trend in classical Greek political theory reads texts in their historical and political context as fully as the sources allow, believing that what we know about these texts' roles in the vigorous controversies of their own time helpfully informs efforts to use this material to reflect on our own time. In this chapter we bring this interpretative approach to bear on Aristotle's Constitution of Athens (hereafter AthPol), a text that tells the story of Athenian constitutional history over several centuries and presents a detailed account of the laws and institutions of the Athenian democracy of Aristotle's time. This text, recovered only in 1891, is often assumed to be of interest to historians and constitutional scholars but not to political theorists because, beyond occasional philosophical observations and/or expressions of political bias, it is said to neglect matters of normative concern. We disagree. In our view, complex normative concerns shape the AthPol, and history and theory inform each other in that text, as they do in Aristotle's ethical and political writings, more generally. For these reasons we support an integrated and continuous reading of Aristotle's practical works, including the Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and AthPol. Although we do not address the issue of authorship directly, our argument contributes reasons for favoring Aristotle's authorship.

While the works of Plato and Aristotle draw universal attention from students of political philosophy, Thucydides' reception has been more limited and localized. Most frequently, he is sought for his contributions to international relations theory, often accessed through a small number of set pieces such as the Melian dialogue. Whatever the reasons for this relative lack of attention, it is unfortunate, for Thucydides is an important conversation partner not only with more familiar voices within the so-called Western tradition of political philosophy but also with modern political theorists who discuss the functions and disorders of political institutions and political cultures. In this connection, Thucydides may have more to contribute to democratic political theory than is often supposed. Appreciating his contributions means taking him at his word when he writes early in Book 1 of the History that he has composed “a possession forever, and not a competitive entry to be heard for the moment” (1.22). Yet the precise meaning of this very ambitious claim is unclear. Interpreting it is inseparable from coming to grips with the kind of work this is.

Assessments of the genre of Thucydides' work proliferate. He has been read as a historian who narrates and explains the most striking events of his time, as a social theorist who discovers the deepest causes of political disorder, and as a memorializer of the civic leadership of Pericles. To the extent that we are convinced by one or more of these judgments, however, Thucydides’ voice is heard as conclusive and monologic and the political thought that emerges from the pages of his work stands apart from the immediate context of political life.

According to the traditional view among ancient historians, the provincial cities of the Roman Empire suffered from an endemic shortage of public resources, brought about by a tax-greedy central government that left the cities few revenues of their own. Consequently, city governments were unable to finance much in the way of public amenities, and it was only the private money of elite citizens acting as public benefactors that prevented the permanent decline of the Empire's civic infrastructure. Euergetism, in short, was the motor of the civic economy. As we saw in the previous chapter, this latter part of the theory is evidently false. Overall elite expenditure on munificence was fairly modest and did not have much effect on the urban economy, most gifts were small-scale and the wide majority were non-utilitarian in nature, i.e. prestige projects and highly ideologically charged public events rather than direct contributions to the material or social welfare of the non-elite citizenry. Yet all of this again raises the question of the financial capabilities of civic governments. For if benefactors did not habitually finance the bulk of the civic infrastructure, even if they occasionally made substantial contributions, then it must have been the civic treasury that did so. From Pliny's letter to Trajan about the theatre at Nicaea in Bithynia, cited in the previous chapter, and from additional evidence it is clear that cities and private benefactors often acted together.

What did benefactors receive in return for their generosity? Ever since the first publication of the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss's famous Essai sur le don in 1923–4, it has been a commonplace of anthropological studies of the gift that giving is always for a return, that it, in fact, constitutes a form of exchange. This, however, places the ancient historian studying Greco-Roman public giving in a somewhat awkward position. For the main thesis of one of the most authoritative works ever published on the subject of euergetism is precisely that ancient benefactions did not require something in return. In his monumental study Le pain et le cirque, Paul Veyne is in fact strongly opposed to any social scientific explanation of euergetism (reciprocity, redistribution and so forth). Instead, Veyne argues that benefactions were chiefly a means for the elite to emphasise the social distance between themselves and their fellow citizens. According to Veyne, their generosity did not bring them any clear economic, social or political advantages. It was, in this sense, disinterested. Benefactors, Veyne argues, simply gave for the psychological satisfaction that could be derived from being generous, that is, for the pleasure of giving.

How to resolve the potential conflict of interpretations here? My view is that the anthropologists have the better of it. Veyne, I think, has many interesting, original and worthwhile things to say on euergetism, yet we should part company with him on the so-called disinterested nature of ancient munificence.