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I. Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Introduction
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New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 27: Latin Historians , 1997 , pp. 1 - 9
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Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

Notes

1. On the problematic notion of ‘event’ see e.g. Veyne, P., Writing History (Manchester, 1984)Google Scholar s.vv. ‘events’ and ‘facts’ (Index) and Mink, L.O., Historical Understanding (Ithaca, 1987)Google Scholar s.v. ‘event’ (Index). On sources as texts which reflect reality only indirectly, see e.g. Veyne, 4–5 ‘in no case is what historians call an event grasped directly and fully; it is always grasped incompletely and laterally, through documents and statements, let us say through tekmeria, traces, impressions ... Of the text of man, the historian knows the variations but never the text itself.’ It is possible to take the further step of asserting that there are no past events beyond texts: that all history is in fact only events under a description.

2. Given our concern exclusively with texts, we have consciously ignored archaeological remains in our discussion. Such remains can confirm or challenge the historical model built from textual sources; it is worth noting, however, that archaeological data mean nothing by themselves: they too must be contextualized and interpreted. For examples of that process see Beard, M. and Henderson, J., Classics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1995).Google Scholar

3. For an introduction to modern critical approaches such as ‘reader-response’ theory and their application to the classics see the essays and suggestions for further reading in de Jong-Sullivan (1994); for an introduction to the chief concepts of literary criticism see Lentricchia, F. and McLaughlin, T., edd., Critical Terms for Literary Study (Chicago, 1990).Google Scholar

4. On the distinction between the story and the way it is told see Chatman, S., Story and Discourse (Ithaca, 1978)Google Scholar; on historical narrative, in addition to the items cited in nn. 1 above and 13 below, see White, H., Metahistory (Baltimore, 1973)Google Scholar. The fundamental texts for the discipline of narratology (the study of how stories work) are Genette, G., Narrative Discourse: an Essay in Method (Ithaca, 1980)Google Scholar and Bal, M., Narratology (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar; others are listed in the General Bibliography to de Jong-Sullivan (1994), 282–3.

5. Cornell (1995), 1–2.

6. For more on the early historians see bibliographical Appendix; for Livy’s sources see Oakley (1997), 13–20.

7. Livy’s annalistic history of Rome from its founding will have become universal in its later books (now lost) as Rome conquered the oikoumene; other representatives of the genre include Diodorus Siculus (an Augustan historian writing in Greek) and Pompeius Trogus (also Augustan, whose work was epitomized in the third century A.D. by Justin). For the three types of history see Wiseman, , ‘Practice and theory in Roman historiography,’ (1987), 246-8Google Scholar (orig. published 1981).

8. Evaluation of this picture, which has not been seriously challenged at least in so far as it refers to the style of the early historians (but see Goodyear, CHCL 2.269-70), is made extremely difficult by the loss of pre-Sallustian Latin historiography. For a sketch of the evolution of history from Fabius Pictor onwards see Leeman (1963), 187–90, and A. S. Gratwickin CHCL2. 149–52; for the techniques of the annalists see Oakley (1997), 72–99.

9. So, cautiously, Oakley (1997), 25. The standard study is Frier, B. W., Libri Annales Pontificum Maximorum (Rome, 1979)Google Scholar, although almost everything concerning the Annales is controversial. In French see now Chassignet, M., ed., L‘Annalistique Romaine: Tome 1, Les Annales des Pontifes et l‘Annalistique Ancienne (fragments) (Paris, 1996), xxiii–xlii.Google Scholar

10. For the character of the Annales see Cato 77P (famines, eclipses), Cic. Leg. 1.6 (‘nothing can be more jejune’), De orat. 2.52-3 (lists), Servius on Verg. Aen. 1.373 (names of magistrates).

11. His Greek contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus was even more detailed on this period; on him see Gabba, E., Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome (Berkeley, 1991).Google Scholar

12. Bucher (1987 [1995]), an excellent discussion (quotation from p. 38).

13. For a highly illuminating discussion of the differences between such lists and narrative history see White, H., The Content of the Form (Baltimore/London, 1987), 1–25 Google Scholar.

14. Purcell (1993), 141, Bucher (1987 [1995]), 20; in general Culham, P., ‘Archives and alternatives in republican Rome,’ CP 84 (1989), 100–15.Google Scholar

15. Cornell (1995), 4.

16. Cornell (1995), 5, 7–9.

17. Rawson (1985), 233–49.

18. See Fehling, D., Herodotus and his ‘Sources’, trans. Howie, J. G. (Leeds, 1989 Google Scholar; orig. published 1971), a highly controversial study but one which has effectively rocked the boat.

19. Scholars often speak of a ‘hard core’ of factual information that was preserved, to be elaborated by freely invented details: RICH, 77–8, 90–3, Oakley (1997), 21.

20. Oakley (1997), 22–3. We hear of historical ballads and other kinds of oral tradition: see Cornell (1995), 10–12.

21. ‘The value of the literary tradition concerning early Rome,’ in Raaflaub, K. A., ed., Social Struggles in Archaic Rome (Berkeley, 1988), 58.Google Scholar

22. ‘Cicero and historiography,’ in Miscellanea di Studi Classici in Onore di Eugenio Mannt (Rome, 1979)Google Scholar 1.318=Studies in Greek History and Thought (Oxford, 1988), 188, often cited as a standard discussion of the subject.

23. Usher, S., The Historians of Greece and Rome (London, 1969 Google Scholar, corrected repr. Bristol, 1985); Grant, M., The Ancient Historians (London, 1970, repr. 1995)Google Scholar. The quotation is from Fornara (1983), 200.

24. Review of Wisemany (1979) JRS 72 (1982), 203–6 Google Scholar.

25. See Cornell, T. J., ‘The formation of the historical tradition of early Rome’, in PP, 67–86 Google Scholar; Wiseman (1987), esp. 293–6 (reply to Cornell’s review, orig. published 1983) and 384, and Historiography and Imagination (Exeter, 1994).

26. RICH, 70–116. Cf. also Luce, T. J., ‘Ancient views on the causes of bias in historical writing’, CP 84 (1989), 16–31 Google Scholar.

27. See e.g. Peiling, C. B. R., ‘Truth and fiction in Plutarch’s Lives’ , in Antonine Literature, ed. Russell, D. A. (Oxford, 1990), 19–52 Google Scholar and the essays by Wiseman and Moles in Gill, C. and Wiseman, T. P., edd., Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. For example, Michael Crawford, in the second edition of his standard introduction to the Roman republic, acknowledges that Wiseman’s ‘determined assault’ may result in ‘a prudent agnosticism’ about the early period of Rome but says that Woodman’s argument is based on ‘a misconception of the nature of history’ – evidently taking it for granted that the nature of historical writing has not changed in the course of the last two thousand years or more (The Roman Republic (London, 21992), 220).

29. E.g. Leeman (1963), 78–81; von Albrecht (1989), 86–101. Other fragments which overlap with Livy’s text are Coelius IIP (~ Livy 21.22.5) and 20P (~ Livy 22.3.11, 5.8); the story of Maharbal promising Hannibal dinner on the Capitoline (Cato 86P ~ Coelius 25P ~ Livy 22.51.1-3); and another single combat, Livy 7.26 ~ Quad. 12P (though the latter is thought not to be by Quadrigarius). For full discussion of, and commentary on, the passages in Livy’s first decade see Oakley’s forthcoming volumes of commentary; on literary comparisons see Vardi, A. D., CQ 46 (1996), 492–514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. For recent discussions and extensive bibliography see Gruen, E., Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (London, 1993)Google Scholar and Dench, E., From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines (Oxford, 1995 Google Scholar). Livy retrojects the problem of immigration into early Roman history: it is the process both by which Rome grows (beginning with the asylum: 1.8.4-6) and by which it is threatened with corrupting influences from outside (e.g. Praef 11).

31. Woodman (1977), 30–45.

32. On these elements see also below, pp. 61–2; the classic study of their contribution to historiographical style is McDonald, A. H., ‘The Style of Livy’, JRS 47 (1957), 155–72 Google Scholar.