The following study of political literature will focus on the different sub-genres. This classification only responds to a didactic necessity, to help make sense of a wide range of different texts. Unfortunately, due to fragmentary evidence, lack of content precludes a more accurate division. In many cases, the correct categorisation of political literature is difficult because of the lack of detail in the sources: many have been preserved fragmentarily, while others are mentioned only by their title. Scholars still debate the actual form, and even the political stance, of Varro’s Tricaranos on the triumvirate. M. Furius, called Bibaculus, composed Annales belli Gallici, a poem about Caesar’s war against the Gauls.Footnote 1 Scholars hesitate between considering it a eulogy or a criticism against the general.Footnote 2
The main division will differentiate between verse and prose. The ‘works in verse’ category ranges from carefully crafted poems by Lucilius or Licinius Calvus to popular verses that were sung on the streets. The ‘works in prose’ definition also covers different degrees of craftsmanship. As we shall see, the definition of some of these sub-genres is problematic for scholars. For instance, sources sometimes use libelli as a synonym for what we would call a pamphlet, and on other occasions to describe an open letter, or a fake edict. Other works of political literature in prose can include placards posted in the city, memoirs and historical writings, or graffiti. Only speeches will be omitted from the analysis, since the sheer number of works precludes any detailed discussion, and all of them, because of their character, should be considered as political literature.
Not all oral utterances on politics should be included in the category of political literature. There was a difference between satura or other kinds of political verse and rumours or chats of various types. Those that fit into the first category and which could be considered part of political literature were not conversations, but literary texts whose language had been crafted. Of course, they had different degrees of workmanship: a triumphal song drawing attention to Caesar’s loose sexual morals was less elaborated than a poem by Lucilius criticising politicians who accepted bribes. However, in both of them there was an attention to language per se and a message was reflected upon, in contrast with an on-the-spot political conversation. Even so, as we shall see, in some cases these boundaries were blurred, and oral and written verse interacted.
This chapter brings together pieces from different genres with a clear objective in mind: analyse works related to political life, in order to disclose their common strategies and goals, and show how, despite the different intended audiences, they created and circulated public opinion. Not only they engaged in a political debate, they also worked as a system of communication to propagate public opinion. To disclose their working mechanisms within the regular practice of Roman politics, this study will focus mainly on the period before the Triumvirate.
5.1 Satura, Verse, Popular Verse
Modern definitions of the satura are problematic, since the concept had various uses in the Roman world. Rudd has proposed the figure of a triangle to express the character of satires: a conjunction between attack, entertainment, and preaching.Footnote 3 As Wiseman has pointed out, part of the evidence defined satura as an early form of drama (Livy, Valerius Maximus).Footnote 4 Nevertheless, the extant satires and satirists, such as Horace or Persius, do not fit into this category, since they wrote non-dramatic poems. Horace mentioned that Lucilius’ satires were represented in public by actors.Footnote 5 Even so, the same poet stated that he wrote for the reasonably educated, excluding those who were very learned and the extremely ignorant.Footnote 6 One of Varro’s Menippean Satires, On Envy, addressed the public directly.Footnote 7 Nevertheless, all these texts were also intended to be read in private.
For the second century BC, the evidence is scarce, probably due to the lack of sources. Spurius Mummius, who accompanied his brother to the siege of Corinth in 146 BC, apparently sent home witty verses in letters. His works did not circulate widely, since his letters were kept by the family, and read aloud to visitors and friends, such as Cicero.Footnote 8 Hazelton Haight has suggested that Spurius Mummius’ work was in keeping with a long literary tradition, stemming from Sappho and Theognis, of little poems in the form of letters.Footnote 9 Latham, however, attributes a Roman origin to this genre, thus placing its beginning with Spurius Mummius.Footnote 10
Nevertheless, among the political literature written at that time, Lucilius’ poetry stands out, being considered by Horace as the origin of Latin satire.Footnote 11 Lucilius was the earliest Roman satirist, who lived during the second century BC. Not all of his poetry qualifies as political literature, just as not all of Catullus’ poems could be included in that category. He was an eques, but was no foreigner to political life, as he was close to the Scipiones. Nevertheless, the level of his political involvement, in relation to his literary works, has been discussed and challenged.Footnote 12 Gruen, for instance, has argued that Lucilius wrote to chastise the weaknesses of contemporary society, usually regardless of party divisions.Footnote 13 He has identified several topics related to current affairs that appear in the satirist’s works: the proud nobiles; irregularities in the Senate; criticism of those who courted the people; criticism of people’s votes; corruption; the plight of the socii; grain distribution; and sumptuary laws, amongst others.Footnote 14 Rudd suggests that Lucilius linked Roman political quarrels with moral vituperation.Footnote 15
Lucilius’ first two books of poems constitute political literature. The first, named Concilium deorum, is a parody of a divine assembly, which closely resembled the Roman Senate. The similarities with Roman politics were pushed further by Lucilius, who made the gods speak with the vocabulary of the deliberations at the Senate: agere (the ‘daily agenda’ proposed by the magistrate in charge) and sententiam dicere. In that divine assembly, the gods decided to kill the man who bore the greatest responsibility for the pernicious moral situation of the times: Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, censor in 147 BC, condemned for provincial corruption by the lex Caecilia repetundarum.Footnote 16 Lucilius’ attacks against Lentulus Lupus were appreciated in later times for their fierceness, since the two most important Roman satirists mentioned them: Horace and Persius.
Nevertheless, there is an important difference between Lucilius’ political literature and that of the first century BC: Lucilius wrote the poem after Lupus’ death, although Coffey suggested that it had circulated privately before that moment.Footnote 17 Thus, during the second century BC, and even in the latter part of that century, there were still qualms about writing this kind of work about a living person. Was it a residue of Naevius’ condemnation or just political delicacy? Was criticising a living person in a book something that was not done or was not considered proper? This view changed over time; at least in the first century BC, vicious criticism of contemporaries was part of normal political life.
Lucilius’ second book of poems featured a humorous discussion of the accusation de repetundis, of Quintus Mucius Scaevola (consul in 117 BC and well-known jurist), brought to trial by the young T. Albucius.Footnote 18 Interestingly, Lucilius did not show sympathy for any of them. He seemed to despise Scaevola, but hated Albucius’ Epicurean ideas. In the poem, Lucilius recalled the circumstances of the accusation and then presented both Albucius’ and Scaevola’s deliveries in court. The language is extremely carefully chosen, contrasting the accuser’s Hellenised flowery speech with Scaevola’s sober legal style. This work was also recalled by Persius in his praise of Lucilius.
Nevertheless, Coffey has pointed out that Lucilius could enjoy the freedom to criticise such high-ranking politicians because of the friendship and support of Scipio and Laelius. Furthermore, he belonged to the equester ordo.Footnote 19 He was apparently also a person of certain wealth, with a house in Rome and an estate in Sicily.Footnote 20 This status marked him above any freedman or Greek, who could not have sustained political or social pressure with his writings. This picture has driven many researchers to put aside the significance of Scipionic patronage.Footnote 21 Lucilius was a man of sufficient standing not to have had such levels of dependence. His relationship with Scipio and Laelius was built around friendship rather than patronage; Gruen points out the irreverent banter of some of Lucilius’ verses mentioning Scipio.Footnote 22 While taking this into account, Raschke had proposed that Lucilius began writing ‘highly politicised verses’ after Numantia, at a time when Scipio was widely attacked by the nobiles and had turned to the equestrian order for support.Footnote 23 Scipio had been criticised before his command in Numantia by many senators, especially Metellus Macedonicus and Lentulus Lupus.Footnote 24 Coffey has pointed to the absence of political themes in Lucilius’ work after Scipio’s death in 129 BC. There are no mentions of Caius Gracchus or Marius. These omissions may be attributed to Lucilius’ absence from Rome, to his non-involvement in politics after his friend’s death, or simply to issues of transmission.Footnote 25 Through his collaboration with Scipio, Lucilius would have gained access to the nobiles. This hypothesis is attractive, but the idea that Lucilius would have profited from the situation can be dismissed. Cicero stated that mutual help was one of the characteristics of friendship. Nevertheless, the idea that Lucilius wrote the satires as a way of helping Scipio in his politics is tantalising.Footnote 26
Lucilius’ satires were still in vogue during the following century. Readings of his work were held by his friends and grammarians Laelius Archelaus and Vettius Philocomus. By that time, the relevance of his political literature had probably waned, but this was short-lived: Coffey has remarked that Pompey’s circle was interested in them, especially since Pompey was Lucilius’ great-nephew.Footnote 27 Pompey’s freedman Pompeius Lenaeus and his follower Curtius Nicias wrote studies on Lucilius. Nevertheless, as Rawson has pointed out, this fact does not imply that Pompeians were the exclusive proprietors of Lucilius’ literary tradition, since satura does not seem to have implied a specific political stance.Footnote 28 Suddenly, these political satires were relevant once again; Lenaeus’ attack on Sallust could be linked to Lucilian satire.Footnote 29 Interestingly, ‘Lucilian’ was used as a synonym for ‘invective’ during the Republic, thus linking the terms and demonstrating that Lucilius’ satires were part of political literature.Footnote 30 This relevance ensured their survival, at least during the Late Republic and Principate; Lucilius then fell from favour during late Antiquity.Footnote 31
Lucilius’ tradition was not abandoned in the first century BC. Varro was, without doubt, his most devoted, but not slavish, follower.Footnote 32 He wrote the Menippean Satires, fragmentarily conserved, which have been categorised as a specific variety of satires. In fact, the term ‘Menippean Satire’ was invented by Justus Lipsius in 1581.Footnote 33 Weinbrot has defined the genre as: ‘A kind of satire that uses at least two different languages, genres, tones, or cultural or historical periods to combat a false and threatening orthodoxy. (…) It is a genre for serious people who see serious trouble and want to do something about it.’Footnote 34 It featured a mixture of prose and verse, written in ordinary but polite language. The extremes of very vulgar or very educated language were only used for ironic purposes.Footnote 35
Varro has been considered not as the Latin version of Menippus, but as a new benchmark in the evolution of the genre.Footnote 36 Writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries considered Varro more elegant than the crude and cynical Menippus.Footnote 37 Varro did not seem to write in a subversive sense, but rather reinforced traditional norms and virtues.Footnote 38 Relihan has defined Varro’s work as a mixture of Menippus and Lucilius, suggesting that Varro was parodying his own encyclopaedic knowledge.Footnote 39 As Lucilius had before him, Varro contemplated Roman society and politics, and criticised it thoroughly. Mosca has suggested that the latter opposed modern times, whereas Lucilius entered into a polemic against them.Footnote 40 On this point, few of Varro’s satires could be related to contemporary politics.Footnote 41 One was named Marcopolis, subtitled On Political Power, and is in a fragmentary state.Footnote 42 In the remaining satires, the name of only one politician is preserved: that of Crassus, who was mentioned because of his wealth.Footnote 43 Sometimes, it is even difficult to gauge the nature of the writing, such as in Varro’s work Tricaranos (the three-headed monster) published in the moment of the first Triumvirate in 60 BC.Footnote 44 Its character has long puzzled academics. Varro’s friendship with Pompey is well known, and he even served in Pompey’s agrarian commission.Footnote 45 Some authors, like Carcopino, considered it anti-triumviral propaganda.Footnote 46 Anderson stated that Varro’s work only mocked the use of that term, ‘three-headed monster’, by opponents.Footnote 47 Astbury proposed that Varro supported the Triumvirate in the beginning, but later repented.Footnote 48 Wiseman considers that there is no reason to suppose that it was critical.Footnote 49 Others, such as Rawson, declared their puzzlement at the situation.Footnote 50 Thus, knowledge of the title does not give us enough information to estimate the possible impact of the work. Even its form is unknown: it could have taken the shape of a pamphlet or even a satire.
Other kind of verses, not only satura, could be also labelled ‘political literature’. Catullus’ poetry against Pompey and Caesar and his entourage, especially Mamurra, has been analysed comprehensively, especially in recent years. Looking at Catullus’ poetry from the point of view of invective and political life, it is clear that those works were representative of ‘political literature’.Footnote 51 Tatum has remarked that Catullus’ political works share much in common with oratory, especially social criticism, attacks against newcomers, sexual misconduct, theft, and prodigality.Footnote 52 Catullus’ fierce attacks were aimed at key participants, such as Pompey or Caesar, and even at lesser-known figures, such as Mamurra, through which the big players could be reached. Catullus 29, the notorious poem, attacked Caesar’s lieutenant, who had plundered many Roman provinces because of his uncontrolled hunger for gold. The last two verses shifted the blame for this situation onto Caesar and Pompey, whose virtues are also criticised.Footnote 53 Other poems, such as 57, ponder upon the sexual misconduct of Mamurra and Caesar. Catullus’ works were addressed to public opinion, and reached it successfully: according to Suetonius, Caesar complained that the poems against Mamurra had cast a perpetua stigmata upon his own reputation.Footnote 54 His poems were closely linked to political reality; nevertheless, Catullus’ reputation in the following centuries ensured that these invectives were recopied, and thus reached us.Footnote 55 Other authors did not have such good fortune.
C. Licinius Calvus was Catullus’ contemporary and a proficient writer of political verse. His political activity, though he did not reach any magistracy, should not be overlooked.Footnote 56 Of his written works, few fragments have survived since, by the first century AD, memory of them was already fading. Calvus’ verses were probably as important during the 50s as Catullus’ attacks. Nevertheless, the former’s work has only been preserved in fragments, despite his reputation as a powerful Atticist orator and love poet.Footnote 57 Only Tacitus mentioned that his speeches against Vatinius were still read.Footnote 58
Three persons were attacked in the fragments preserved: someone called Curius, of dubious attribution; Caesar; and Pompey. Criticism of Curius was related to his affection for gambling.Footnote 59 This piece would not gain a place in political literature unless Hollis’ hypothesis is accurate and Curius was expelled from the Senate for this reason.Footnote 60 More importantly, Calvus criticised the key players of the Republic, which drew the interest of later historians in this part of his poetry. Licinius Calvus also wrote verses against Tigellius Hermogenes, the musician and singer favoured by Caesar and Octavian and hated by Cicero, but only the mention of them by the latter has survived.Footnote 61
Caesar was attacked for his sexual mores, a typical Roman insult. Suetonius described Calvus’ elegiac couplet as notissimus: ‘All that Bithynia and Caesar’s bugger ever possessed.’Footnote 62 The subject of the verses was not original. Suetonius mentioned that Caesar’s relationship with Nicomedes of Bithynia was criticised, in different forms (speeches, letters, and poetry) at least by Dolabella, Curio pater, Bibulus, Caius Memmius, Cicero, and even Caesar’s own soldiers.Footnote 63 Hollis has suggested that, similarly to Catullus’ poem against Mamurra, Calvus was censoring not only Caesar, but probably also another companion who enriched himself in the conquest of Bithynia.Footnote 64 Courtney also points out that ‘the wealth of Bithynia’ is the main point of the verse.Footnote 65 In time, Calvus’ relationship with Caesar was repaired through the latter’s initiative.Footnote 66 In 54 BC, he defended in court C. Cato, a supporter of the triumvirs, but was also involved in the accusation against Vatinius, with whom he had a bitter feud, and who was being supported by the triumvirs.Footnote 67 Therefore, no suspicions of censorship could arise.
Pompey was also the target of Calvus’ attacks: ‘Magnus, whom everyone fears, scratches his head with one finger. What would you say he’s after? A man!’Footnote 68 Modern academics doubt whether this couplet stood alone or whether it was part of a longer work.Footnote 69 Criticism took what was probably a nervous gesture and turned it into passive homosexuality.Footnote 70 The allusion to this type of body language was used in a more public manner by Clodius in February 56 BC, when Pompey appeared in the trial against Milo on his behalf.Footnote 71 Before a contio filled with his partisans, he asked them insulting questions, the answer for each one being, of course, Pompey; including: ‘Who scratches his head with one finger?’Footnote 72 Apparently, Pompey felt much humiliated by this situation. Calvus’ poem is not dated, and it has been suggested that it could allude to the scene with Clodius.Footnote 73 Thus, oral public opinion and interaction between elite and the people traversed all the way to written political literature. Almost a century later, Seneca the rhetor quoted his poem against Pompey about head scratching, but did not mention the name of the author.Footnote 74 It is unknown whether Seneca quoted directly from Calvus or was using a secondary work.
Not only gifted poets wrote political verse. C. Trebonius, suffect consul in 45 and one of the conspirators against Caesar (he was charged with keeping Mark Antony outside the Senate), wrote versiculi against the former in 44 BC.Footnote 75 He was murdered later by Cornelius Dolabella, following Antony’s instructions.Footnote 76
The treatment of popular verses as political literature is a controversial choice. Their means of transmission was oral, so they could instead be analysed together with gossip and rumours. Sometimes they were written poems, which became popular and were sung. At other times, the opposite occurred. However, the interaction between oral and written verse was more active than in other instances of oral expression. The playwright Naevius was the author of a famous verse against the Metelli, which was probably sung in the theatre.Footnote 77 While it is not known whether Licinius Calvus’ verses against Caesar were read aloud, popular verses were certainly sung in public, thus permitting the circulation of public opinion.
In many cases, it is difficult to draw a line between a satura, for instance, and popular verse, if not for the fact that a satura was usually written by a member of the elite, while popular verse was not transmitted through a written medium. Some scholars have categorised it as subliterature, drawing attention to its borderline nature between oral and written, which is, in turn, an artificial division. Authors like Horace played with that contrast between high and low tradition of verses in their workFootnote 78. Verses occupied a midpoint between written and oral expression of public opinion.
Yavetz identified popular verse, which uttered invective against some politicians, as one of the most used and useful vectors of public opinion.Footnote 79 It has rightly been described by Ruffell as ‘a promiscuous, public, uncontrolled, and anti-hierarchical literary form’.Footnote 80 Its popular character, in some cases, could be equalled to those brief graffiti messages attested by the sources. Populi versus were considered by Cicero as one of the ways in which the people expressed their own opinion, their voluntas.Footnote 81 In his speech Pro Sestio, Cicero boasted proudly of the verses sung by the people in his favour, taken from the lines of a play and cued by an actor, who improvised some of the lines.Footnote 82
Verses, because of their brevity and playful nature, could be catchy, making it probable that they would be repeated. They thus made a very useful vehicle for circulating public opinion. For this reason, verses were frequently used as weapons in the courts of justice; thus, public opinion, centred within the corona, which usually surrounded the trials, would help win cases.Footnote 83 At the end of the second century BC, the orator Lucius Licinius Crassus brought his enemy, the popular Caius Memmius, to trial for extortion. Crassus argued that the walls of the whole of Tarracina were inscribed with the following words: L.L.L.M.M.; to explain it, he said that Memmius had quarrelled with someone named Largus over a woman. Thus, the graffito would read Lacerat Lacertum Largi Mordax Memmius: ‘Mordacious Memmius lacerates Largus’ limb’.Footnote 84 According to Harnecker, it was probably an electoral notice.Footnote 85 Cicero admitted that Crassus had made up the joke; but his iambic senary was Crassus’ way of besmearing Memmius’ character and of ensuring that this criticism was repeated throughout the city. Licinius Crassus, as a young man, brought Caius Papirius Carbo to court. When Carbo saw that the most likely outcome was condemnation, he committed suicide.Footnote 86 Popular opinion on this case gave vent through the following trochaic septenarius: ‘After Crassus became carbon, Carbo became fat.’Footnote 87
Verses also featured in public assemblies and other moments of habitual political life. In the tense political situation of the fifties BC, political factions clashed physically in the city, but also verbally. In 56 BC, both Pompey and Clodius spoke to the people, and the day ended in a heavy fight. Narrating the events of the day, Cicero highlighted that Pompey behaved courageously that day, and that Clodius had problems withstanding the attacks.Footnote 88 The contio was dominated by the optimates, so Clodius endured cries, shouts, and ‘the most obscene verses’ (versus obscenissimi) against his sister and himself.Footnote 89 In another case, a candidate for the praetorship, of disputed identity, started to offer stork in his dinners. Apparently, the new custom of eating this delicacy did not catch on well with the people; they jokingly attributed to the revenge of the storks his failure to gain the magistracy: ‘Rufus inventor of pickled stork / a man more picky than both the Plancii / did not pick up seven votes at the polls / the voting public avenged his fowl play.’Footnote 90 Interestingly, it was an expression of public opinion that was expressed in this epigram, explaining jokingly the reasons why the people chose not to vote for him. People joked about the new senators named by Caesar in verses that were sung around the city: ‘Caesar led the Gauls in triumph, led them to the senate house; / Then the Gauls took off their breeches, and put on the laticlave’.Footnote 91
These verses could also become graffiti or painted notices in walls. For instance, the consul Ventidius Bassus was attacked through cruel verses, which were written per vias, throughout the whole city of Rome, when he became suffect consul in 43 BC: ‘Assemble all soothsayers and augurs! / A portent strange has taken place lately; / for he who curried mules is consul now’.Footnote 92 The attacks made fun of Bassus’ origins: stemming from an obscure family from Picenum, he and his mother were made prisoners during the Social War and were even carried during Pompey Strabo’s triumph.Footnote 93 He later became an army contractor, providing mules and carriages for the magistrates going to provinces.Footnote 94 The locations of these verses offer a glimpse into the diffusion of public opinion. The Forum, piazzas, streets and crossroads have been mentioned by the sources; their character as meeting places made them spaces for the exchange and circulation of public opinion.Footnote 95 Interestingly, via is used in the plural, meaning that the texts were repeatedly inscribed to achieve maximum exposure.
Versus or carmina triumphalia, sung by soldiers during the triumph, are probably the most numerous in the sources. Ancient historians attached importance to these expressions of military public opinion. There are some previous allusions to military songs during triumphs, many of them consisting of praise for the soldiers. In 186 BC, the triumph of Cn. Manlius was followed by these kinds of eulogies.Footnote 96 The sources probably focused more on deprecatory verses for their negative view of the triumphant general, even though the general was not always the main star of the parade.Footnote 97 These songs have been interpreted has having an apotropaic function, protecting people from the ‘evil eye’, or even a sociological function, reincorporating the triumphant general to the level of his peers, in order to obliterate anything that could place him above them.Footnote 98
Suetonius in particular took account of many songs against Caesar by his own soldiers in 46 BC, when Caesar celebrated his triumph in the Gallic Wars. These verses covered sexual mores (Caesar’s hypothetical relationship with King Nicomedes; his promiscuity), the financial situation (plunder of the Gauls), and even everyday life in camp (bad diet): ‘All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him; / See! now Caesar rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls, / Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued Caesar’.Footnote 99 Interestingly, these verses caught on more widely later, since Suetonius qualified them as vulgatissimi. They spread around the citizens and circulated. This is apparently the only instance of the imitation and spreading of triumphal verses into political life. Verses were easy to remember. Another of these verses, quoted by Dio Cassius, touched on Caesar’s political situation and his allegation that he had started the civil war to avoid being led into a trial, in a parody of a well-known lullaby: ‘Finally, on top of all this, they all shouted together that if you do right, you will be punished, but if you do wrong, you will be king.’Footnote 100
5.2 Political Literature in Prose
Terminological problems are endemic in this category, mainly because the ancient sources do not seem consistent to modern scholars. A term like libelli actually covered a whole range of forms and purposes: tracts given to the soldiers during the civil war; writings by absent senators exposing their point of view; letters and fake edicts; invectives; and pamphlets.Footnote 101 For instance, Brutus described Philippics five and seven as orationes, and later as libelli.Footnote 102 Actually, it is true that they were both: first, a speech in the Senate, and, later, a published work. Sources variously mention biblion or libellus, a small book; nevertheless, the term libellus was also applied to a letter asking for a petition or for information. Libelli could also be propositi, then becoming a ‘placard affiché’, a poster. Corbier has warned about mistaking these posters for pamphlets, arguing that posters were closer to oral popular verses.Footnote 103 Nevertheless, both posters and pamphlets share the common characteristics of political character: immediacy and the desire to interfere with public opinion.
Our hypothesis of a new category, political literature, would solve that problem. An ancient writer would not have thought of Homer and Horace as belonging to the same broad category, that of verse, but we can and do. Distinctions between them, as established in these chapters, have methodological and epistemological reasons.
Elite Romans had absolute flexibility as to how they could criticise, praise, and act politically through writings. They used public speeches (invectives, like the In Pisonem), or speeches that were not actually delivered in public, but were probably distributed among friends and circulated in writings. There were also the liber (such as Hirtius’ Anticato, which is also called epistula) and letters (open letters with a pedagogical objective, Lehrbriefe). These were eulogistic (such as the various writings praising Cato) or deprecating accounts (such as Dellius’ letters to Cleopatra). They all belong to the genre of political literature, with the additional characteristic of being written in prose. Within this category, the forms that the genre takes could be very fluid. Furthermore, succinct references and the absence of context of practically all works make it very difficult to establish further subdivisions.
5.2.1 Pamphlets or Tracts
Terminological boundaries are blurry: Eich states that there is a terminological problem with the concept of pamphlets.Footnote 104 Not all libelli were pamphlets, and vice versa. Pamphlets were a sign that writing was an important political tool for the elite and that these writings could reach far more people than social ties. According to Brunt, pamphlets were a sign of the breakdown of patronage ties; at a moment in which senators needed more support, pamphlets meant the possibility of reaching a wider audience.Footnote 105 In a city in the process of expansion, with growing citizen and elite bodies, they were a means by which an idea or an opinion could be spread more quickly and widely. They also provided new venues for circulating public opinion. Furthermore, they did not depend exclusively on social networks, although pamphlets used them, especially for ensuring circulation, since friends copied the text. Pamphlets provided more details than verses, for instance. When Calvus mentioned the alleged relationship between Nicomedes and Caesar, he did not share any details beyond the names and the sexual reproach. Caius Memmius, on the other hand, not only related that Caesar had served as cup-bearer but also maintained that some Roman merchants (negotiatores), whose names he even quoted so that they could in theory bear witness twenty-two years later, had participated in the banquet.Footnote 106
The survival rate of pamphlets is extremely low. We have just a few lines of some of them, and only mentions of the existence of the rest. Furthermore, up to a point, their analysis is skewed because, as with other works of political literature, only those of interest in later decades and centuries were mentioned. In the case of pamphlets, survival was only guaranteed for those that mentioned Caesar, thanks to Suetonius, whose biography of Caesar is a goldmine of references to pamphleteers.Footnote 107 The range of works spans the whole of Caesar’s life: Suetonius mentioned writings before the civil war (such as Curio pater’s dialogue), during the civil war (Caecina’s pamphlet), during Caesar’s dictatorship (the Anticatones), and even after the Ides of March (such as, probably, Ampius Balbus’ deprecatory historical works). It is unknown whether he had direct access to them or extracted them from Republican or later sources, now lost to us, which mentioned these works.Footnote 108 Taking into account Suetonius’ interest in this material, all mentions of pamphlets related to Caesar are critical and injurious. Apart from Caesar, later sources mentioned pamphlets in relation to two other principal figures, Pompey and Cato the Younger, but their use is less extensive. Finally, pamphlets are also referred to during the civil wars of the 40s and 30s.Footnote 109
Criticism of Caesar, as we know from Suetonius, ranged from before the civil war to after its conclusion, although the chronology is not always clear. The work of T. Ampius Balbus, tribune of the plebs in the turbulent year 63 BC and a staunch Pompeian, was deeply critical of Caesar: ‘No less arrogant were his public utterances, which Titus Ampius records: that the state was nothing, a mere name without body or form; that Sulla did not know his “ABC” when he laid down his dictatorship; that men ought now to be more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word as law.’Footnote 110 It is difficult to ascertain whether this fragment belongs to a work circulated before, during, or after the civil war. Ampius Balbus had been a supporter of Pompey since at least the 50s, when the latter backed him for the elections of 55 BC. When he was later prosecuted for electoral corruption, both Pompey and Cicero pleaded on his behalf.Footnote 111 Ampius Balbus voiced his ferocious opposition to Caesar just before and during the war, earning him the nickname tuba belli civilis.Footnote 112 In fact, his attitude meant that many Caesarians opposed his pardon, which Cicero managed to extract in October 46 BC.Footnote 113 Around that time, Ampius Balbus was compiling a set of biographies, and Caesar was included among the subjects.Footnote 114 Rawson has suggested that the work was more a history, partly of contemporary events.Footnote 115 Ampius Balbus might have let Cicero, Pansa, and Tilius Cimber beg Caesar to end his exile, while he was writing thunderous works against the dictator.
C. Memmius was another pamphleteer whose work has been preserved because of his criticism of Caesar: ‘Caius Memmius makes the direct charge that he acted as cup-bearer to Nicomedes with the rest of his favourites at a large dinner, and that among the guests were some merchants from Rome, whose names Memmius gives.’Footnote 116 Memmius, a staunch Pompeian partisan married to Sulla’s daughter, had been hostile to Caesar and the triumvirate. His accusations carried weight since he had personally been in Bithynia as a governor.Footnote 117 He reconciled with Caesar in the late 50s, in order to have Caesar’s and Pompey’s support for his candidacy to the consulship, which he lost after a scandal related to electoral corruption.Footnote 118 Suetonius did not specify what kind of work Memmius wrote against Caesar. It could have taken the form of a pamphlet or even a written speech, as with some other of his contemporaries. The biographer mentioned Memmius’ bitter orationes against him, to which Caesar answered back, in writing, with equal bitterness (‘non minore acerbitate rescripserat’).Footnote 119 Using Occam’s razor, Memmius’ fragments preserved in Suetonius could be attributed to these speeches, which were not necessarily delivered in public, as has been mentioned before, although Memmius could have written further works against the dynast, mentions of which have not been preserved. Interestingly, Caesar entered into a writing duel with him, matching his acerbic and mordant comments.
Dolabella and Curio pater also wrote actiones against Caesar, again in line with Memmius’ work. The difference, though, between these authors and the latter is noted by Suetonius: Memmius delivered a more specific accusation, while Dolabella and Curio relied on general abuse on the subject of Caesar’s relationship with King Nicomedes. Dolabella called him ‘the queen’s rival, the inner partner of the royal couch,’ and Curio, ‘the brothel of Nicomedes and the stew of Bithynia’.Footnote 120 Osgood suggests that in fact Dolabella’s accusations were the first to appear, and the rest of the authors followed him. Homosexual accusations were common against young Romans when they presented themselves in court.Footnote 121 Furthermore, Caesar as a young man had prosecuted Dolabella de repetundis in order to cement his reputation.Footnote 122
Curio pater was a senior politician during the 50s, having been consul in 76 BC. He was a staunch anti-Caesarian until his death in 53 BC.Footnote 123 His work against Caesar is described by Cicero as a librum, set in the form of a dialogue between Pansa, his son Curio, and himself:
As in that book where he represents himself as walking away from a session of the Senate which Caesar as consul had convoked, and talking with my young friend Pansa and his own son Curio. The whole dialogue took its start from his son’s asking what business the senate had transacted, in the course of which Curio inveighed at length against Caesar, and discussion arose between the interlocutors in the manner of dialogue.Footnote 124
Cicero derided his work because of several anachronisms, and joked about Curio’s bad memory.Footnote 125 Memmius’ work and his own had something in common: both arose from men who had been to Bithynia. In Curio’s case, he had even met and spent time with the king: after the peace of Dardanos in 85–84 BC, Curio returned King Nicomedes to Bithynia and King Ariobarzanes to Cappadocia.Footnote 126 Nevertheless, Curio’s tirade against Caesar did not stop at his youthful peccadillo, since it covered his alleged implication in the first Catilinarian conspiracy, his relationship with Pompey, and even his behaviour in Gaul.Footnote 127 Again, explanations about the form of the work are speculations. Could it have been a philosophical work, similar to Cicero’s dialogues? Curio pater was not known for his interest in philosophy. The setting, with the tirade against Caesar on the steps of the Senate, need not have been related to the core of the work: for instance, Varro’s third book on agriculture opened with the characters waiting for the results of an election after voting, and included an episode on electoral bribery before starting on the main topic of the book.Footnote 128 A third possibility would imply that the main point of Curio’s writing was merely criticism against Caesar.
Tracts written against the latter multiplied, of course, during the civil war. However, some were not restricted to traditional abuse, based on personal and physical characteristics, but were concerned with another much more dangerous kind of argument: that of religion.Footnote 129 In the aftermath of the war, Caesar applied his policy of clementia in an attempt to reconcile and reintegrate his former enemies into the political body. He forbade all returns until he had personally supervised every case.Footnote 130 Some exceptions were allowed, such as those of Cicero and Decimus Laelius, who were granted permission by Mark Antony.Footnote 131 Pompeians were pardoned en masse after Caesar’s final victory in Hispania, with the exceptions of those who had caused him serious offence (anêkestois).Footnote 132
However, not all Pompeians were pardoned straight away: T. Ampius Balbus was among those who had to lobby for the possibility of returning. He managed to obtain a pardon, thanks to Cicero’s intervention in 46 BC.Footnote 133 Of all the notorious Pompeians who lived in exile, two of them were never pardoned, despite efforts on their behalf: A. Caecina and P. Nigidius Figulus. Cicero worked to get both of them pardoned, but to no avail. Caecina’s father had been defended by the orator in the homonymous speech in 69–68 BC. The son even described himself as a client of Cicero.Footnote 134 The latter spared no efforts to achieve his pardon: he revised the work that Caecina was writing to ingratiate himself with Caesar; he advised Caecina to stay in Sicily as a place of exile; he talked to Oppius and Balbus, Caesar’s right-hand men, and even sent letters of recommendation to the future proconsul of Sicily and the governor of Asia, in case Caecina moved there.Footnote 135 Evidence about Nigidius Figulus is not so specific, but Cicero again tried to work for his pardon. He described Nigidius Figulus as amicissimus, and declared that the best advice about saving the res publica had come from him.Footnote 136 He wrote to him in 46 BC to inform him that he was going to befriend the Caesarians who were closest to Caesar; furthermore, he added, the man with most influence on the matter wanted him pardoned.Footnote 137 These hopes were not probably well founded, since Nigidius Figulus died in exile, probably in 45 BC. Della Casa has suggested that Cicero could even have prepared a fourth Oratio ad Caesaris clementiam in his favour.Footnote 138
Both Caecina and Nigidius Figulus had something in common: they were haruspices and had employed religious arguments in their tracts against Caesar. Caecina, according to Suetonius, wrote a pamphlet at the beginning of the war that the historian qualifies as a book full of reproaches (criminosissimus).Footnote 139 Caecina was aware of the real reason for his exile: his writings against Caesar.Footnote 140 Nigidius Figulus was a well-known Pythagorean, who restored that doctrine in Rome, and a reputed astrologer and haruspex.Footnote 141 At the beginning of the civil war, he circulated a katarché, or study of the position of the planets, which presented a bleak anti-Caesarian outlook for the days to come. His tract became special because it was a prediction, which turned out to be so famous that it outlived its historical context, and was employed by Lucan in the Pharsalia.Footnote 142 For a long time, the prediction was believed to be a creation of Lucan, particularly since the seventeenth century, when Kepler tried in vain to establish the exact date of the prediction by the position of the planets.Footnote 143 General consensus today tends to accept that Lucan was transcribing Nigidius Figulus’ katarché.Footnote 144 Scholars have proposed that the faulty position of the planets should be attributed to a deliberate decision by Nigidius Figulus, who wanted to match them with his bleak vision of a res publica in the hands of Caesar.Footnote 145 Another interpretation, in a metaphorical sense, identified each planet with an important politician: Scorpio (Caesar, inflamed by Mars), Orion (Pompey), Venus (Julia), Jupiter (the late Crassus), and Mercury (Cicero).Footnote 146
His contemporaries had remarked that Caesar did not pay great attention to religious predictions, and his biographers delighted in noting the occasions on which Caesar ignored or despised them.Footnote 147 Nevertheless, he was aware that, despite his personal opinion, most Romans did not share his sceptical view of predictions.Footnote 148 Furthermore, in the context of civil war and the quest for a new legitimacy, he could not alienate possible support.Footnote 149 Sexual, physical, or political accusations could easily be counterattacked. Nevertheless, Caecina’s and Nigidius Figulus’ opinions stemmed from the gods and their designs. Furthermore, haruspices did not view a possible future (like the augurs), but the only possible future, closing all doors to interpretation, making these tracts with religious arguments against Caesar a dangerous weapon. The dictator could not allow such writers in the new regime.
However, not all works that are preserved attacked Caesar. His powerful ally, and later rival, Pompey also got his share. By the late 50s, when Pompey’s presence and influence in Rome managed to overwhelm the optimates, Brutus wrote against him in his De dictatura Cn. Pompeii.Footnote 150 Brutus hated Pompey, whom he accused of the treacherous murder of his father in 77 BC, refusing to talk to him even during the civil war.Footnote 151 This work was probably related to the political situation in 53–52; after a few unsuccessful elections, which were put off for different reasons, and the violent aftermath of the murder of Clodius, the optimates were worried about Pompey’s stand. It was rumoured that the people wanted to name him dictator. To defuse that possible problem, senators decided to elect him consul without colleague.Footnote 152 Quintilian preserved an extract of this work, which possibly sets the tone: ‘for it is better to rule no man than to be a slave to any man: since one may live with honour without ruling, whereas life is no life for the slave’.Footnote 153 Accusations of wanting to establish a dictatorship were not limited only to the title. Brutus also returned to Pompey’s sanguinary behaviour during Sullan times, a long-lived topic: ‘Marcus Brutus, who said that his hands were stained and even steeped in civil blood’.Footnote 154 Even the dreaded and politically charged concept of ‘king’ was applied to Pompey: “At this same time, so Marcus Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose mental infirmity made him somewhat free with his tongue, after saluting Pompey as ‘king’ in a crowded assembly, greeted Caesar as ‘queen’”.Footnote 155
Memories of Cato would be a battlefield, but the struggle had started before his death. Metellus Scipio, Pompey’s father-in-law and consul in 52 BC, lashed out furiously against him. Their feud did not stem from a political problem, but a personal one: Metellus had been betrothed to Lepida, and had broken the engagement. In the interim, Cato got engaged to her, but Metellus changed his mind and ended up as the groom. Cato’s friends advised him against going to court, so he started writing iambic verse in the style of Archilochus.Footnote 156 The Greek poet was noted in antiquity for being the archetypal poet of blame, and for his slanderous language.Footnote 157 Metellus Scipio, incensed, wrote a work in prose (biblion) that abused Cato.Footnote 158 The content of the book was not strictly personal, since political feuds between Metellus Scipio and the Catonians continued during the 50s.Footnote 159 Piotrowicz has proposed that Metellus was even involved in the triumvirs’ desire to get rid of Cato and in his sending off to Cyprus.Footnote 160 Metellus’ work contained grave accusations, such as the allegation that Cato had committed embezzlement or peculatus in Cyprus. Cato had been sent there as propraetor in 58 BC to complete the annexation of the island; once he arrived, he auctioned the royal treasury and sailed back to Rome. He was not prosecuted, even though he could not produce the accounts or any copies of them, since one had sunk with one of the ships, and the other had burnt in a fire.Footnote 161 Evidently, Cato’s reputation after his death and the intense debates about him ensured that Metellus Scipio’s work continued to be discussed.Footnote 162 Piotrowicz argued that Caesar’s Anticato did in fact borrow arguments from that work.Footnote 163 Geiger suggested that it was published only few months after Cato’s return from Cyprus, probably to capitalise on the current situation, as political literature does by definition, and on Cato’s failure to produce the accounts.Footnote 164 Biblion does not tell us much, but we should probably concern ourselves more with the importance of the content than with the form.
Nevertheless, the concept of ‘pamphlet’ usually invokes negative associations, which these ancient texts do not always have. One of the objectives of this study is to show that these writings were not used only during the civil wars, but were a standard way to present one’s point of view in absentia. Taking into account the number of magistrates who were habitually out of the city in service, either in the army or in the administration, and regardless of those who sent their views directly to the Senate (as Caesar or Pompey did, eventually), these tracts, brochures, or pamphlets were probably a common feature of Roman politics. After the Catilinarian conspiracy had been suppressed, the tribune of the plebs Metellus Nepos, amongst others, declared that the Senate could not condemn citizens without trial.Footnote 165 He had been haranguing the people since December and was considered an opponent of Cicero’s action, so much that Catiline even offered himself to him in libera custodia.Footnote 166 Debate between Nepos and Cicero became heated, and Nepos forbade Cicero to deliver his final speech on leaving his consulship. Cicero’s vitriolic address against the tribune triggered an offended and angered personal letter to him from Nepos’ brother, Metellus Celer, which has been conserved, together with Cicero’s reply.Footnote 167 In this situation, Nepos tried to pass a proposal that would bring Pompey and his army to Rome to deal with the situation. A heated contio took place, where two tribunes vetoed the proposal, snatched the text from Nepos’ fingers, and put their hands over his mouth when he tried to recite it.Footnote 168 A fight ensued, and the tribune disappeared, leaving the city for Pompey’s camp. However, he departed ‘after publishing some piece of writing against the senate’.Footnote 169 His action did not meet with success, since Pompey declined to act, but he tried to make his ideas heard by all means possible.
5.2.2 Open Letters
Open letters, Lehrbriefe or littérature de conseils, were another format of political literature, attested particularly during the first century BC.Footnote 170 A mixture of the private letter and the pamphlet, they were in theory addressed to private individuals, usually close friends, but were distributed afterwards among kindred spirits. These letters also aimed to influence contemporary politics. They appear to be statements of opinion on the part of the writer, opinion that the author wanted to make public but without doing so too obviously.
Three works have survived completely (at least as far as we are aware): the Commentariolum petitionis (Handbook on electioneering), the first letter to Quintus Cicero by his brother Marcus (on the good governor), and Sallust’s letters to Caesar.Footnote 171 However, these are not isolated examples, since there are mentions of similar works. Varro wrote to Pompey on the workings of Roman government, specifically on senatorial procedures (Eisagôgikos), in 71 BC. Even so, the character of this later work could also have been that of a commentarius, rather than an open letter, and it was recopied at least until the second century AD, when Gellius was able to read it.Footnote 172 Cicero’s painstaking letter to Caesar, written after the civil war, is only mentioned in the sources, though the whole process behind its composition is recorded.Footnote 173
Open letters became more common during the civil war. In the decades beforehand, they had been used mainly as a complementary method, used at times when politicians could not present their views from an official point of view, be it in the Senate, at a contio, or at any other political gathering, particularly in moments of political confusion. The situation in 49 BC was exceptional in terms of its effect on the communication of public opinion. Habitual channels of communication broke down because of the war: the two sides were established, sociability in Rome disappeared, and the coming and going of news was curtailed. Many private letters actually became open letters. At the beginning of the war, Cicero sent a letter to Caesar in which he tried to explain his position. Warned that the latter had sent it to various parties, the orator asserted that he did not mind if his letter was even read out loud in a contio.Footnote 174 During those confusing moments, such letters served as statements of opinion; for instance, Caesar and Pompey exchanged some letters in which they tried to negotiate. Cicero commented that Pompey’s reply had been actually written in order to be displayed, and mentioned unfavourably Pompey’s choice of the writer, Sestius, who, in the orator’s opinion, was not up to the task.Footnote 175 With normal channels of communication cut off, letters, often private, became part of political literature.
5.2.3 Memoirs and Historical Writings
Did memoirs form part of political literature? Autobiography and memoirs in the Roman world have been a much-discussed topic in recent years.Footnote 176 Most biographical texts, or mentions of them, appeared from the Middle Republic onwards.Footnote 177 Autobiographies of the second century BC had a main characteristic: self-celebration.Footnote 178 Nevertheless, Riggsby has pointed out that the Romans distrusted the genre per se because of the adrogantia it entailed and the ethical difficulties it posed, since the reader could not discern whether the self-praise came from bad people or from good.Footnote 179
Publius Rutilius Rufus, consul in 105 BC, wrote a De vita sua in at least five books, in which he discussed his condemnation de repetundis, linked more to political reasons than to actual extortion. In the same period, Q. Lutatius Catulus wrote a personal memoir in the style of Xenophon.Footnote 180 Sulla was probably the most important Roman politician to write his memoirs, in which he glorified and self-exculpated himself.Footnote 181 He was aware of the importance of this work for his legacy as a politician, since he was still working on it days before his death.Footnote 182 Although the text is lost, Plutarch used it heavily for his life of Sulla.Footnote 183 The corpus Caesarianum could be considered as an autobiography.Footnote 184 In 45, Marcus Fadius Gallus wrote a laudatory memoir of his friend Cato the Younger, just a year after his death.Footnote 185 Munatius Rufus, another friend of the deceased, did likewise, probably in a Memorabilia in the tradition of Xenophon.Footnote 186 For his biography, Plutarch apparently did not use Munatius Rufus’ work directly, but knew it through the homonymous work of Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus, the Roman Stoic and opponent of the emperor Nero.Footnote 187
Remains of the memoirs of other Romans have only persisted as scattered mentions. Their character, relevance and circulation were probably very uneven. General Lucullus wrote a self-laudatory work, as did Aurunculeius Cotta, Caesar’s legate in Gaul. Varro the antiquarian also added memoirs to his vast array of writings.Footnote 188
Scholars have been puzzled by the low-to-nil survival of autobiographies. Tatum, for instance, attributes it to the fact that military glory was the main reason for this kind of writing; for this reason, only Sulla’s and Caesar’s commentarii retained their value.Footnote 189 However, if we take into account the character of political literature, another reason emerges: as with all political literature, biographies were concerned with making an immediate impact, and were written for instant consumption, although also with posterity in mind. Later scholars might be interested in Varro’s Antiquities or Cicero’s speeches, which had an academic, literary and pedagogic supplementary value, but they would not be interested in works of self-praise. Obscurity was also a secondary reason: the memoirs of a legate of Caesar’s in Gaul were not probably very much sought after, whereas Sulla had been an important politician who had remodelled the Roman constitution in the first century BC, which ensured that his work was recopied for a while, and was still available at least two centuries later, when Plutarch used it extensively.
Contemporary historical writing could also become a means to vent public opinion. In the year of Caesar’s consulship, Cicero began a work that he named anekdota, a secret history of his time, or some kind of memoir.Footnote 190 It may be considered in the vein of Procopius’ homonymous work, a secret history of Justinian and Theodora’s reign. Cicero apparently used this text to express his anger against Caesar and Crassus. There are no hints that it was published during his lifetime, but it was never too far from his mind.Footnote 191 According to Dio Cassius, Cicero gave the book to his son, sealed, to be read and published after his death.Footnote 192 Asconius mentioned as title Expositio consiliorum suorum.Footnote 193 Jal has proposed that some of its contents were used in the Philippics.Footnote 194 Some excerpts might have circulated among friends and like-minded politicians.
5.2.4 Graffiti and Placards
Milnor has pointed out the difficulties in ascertaining what graffiti meant for contemporaries.Footnote 195 The social and economic status of the graffiti writers has been long debated, with particular focus on the archaeological evidence of Pompeii. Harris, for instance, has adopted a range of 20–30 per cent for the literate population, which meant that the writers must have belonged to the elite.Footnote 196 Nevertheless, the volume of graffiti and variations in style and orthography suggest a wider spectrum of both writers and readers.Footnote 197 These kinds of texts had many aspects that aided their diffusion: they were short; the messages were not very complex (due to the length of the texts); they were located in visible places; and they could be read aloud in a very short time. Furthermore, due to their length, they could be remembered and repeated, assuring their spread and fulfilling the aim of the writer.
Graffiti as a form of popular political literature were already attested when Tiberius Gracchus became tribune of the plebs, during the passing of the agrarian law in 133 BC: ‘However, the energy and ambition of Tiberius were most of all kindled by the people themselves, who posted writings on porticoes, house-walls, and monuments, calling upon him to recover the public land for the poor.’Footnote 198 Morstein-Marx has proposed the viewing of the graffiti as a representation of ‘hidden transcripts’, a concept based on James C. Scott’s theory on dominant discourse. Scott argued that the dominant discourse is written down by the elite to reassert their legitimacy. Resistance, however, goes underground, and only emerges in ‘hidden transcripts’.Footnote 199 Nevertheless, the fact that the probable writers (although not the only ones) did not belong to the elite should not imply that the character of the graffiti was always one of resistance to an official discourse: it was also a way of communicating opinion.Footnote 200
Tiberius Gracchus’ proposal of land distribution was as much part of the official discourse as his opponents’ view. Thus, could we argue that a graffito is a means of resisting a dominant transcript, when in fact writing on a wall is just participating in a political situation and its discussion, taking one side or another? As this study attempts to show, graffiti were not the only form of bottom-up political communication. People were perfectly able and equipped to make their opinion circulate, even right up to the top, through rumours, political nicknames, popular verses and so forth.Footnote 201 With a few exceptions, the relationship between elite and popular communication was characterised not by confrontation or by collaboration, but by a complex and fluid interplay.
Only ten years later, after the death of his brother Caius and the massacre of his followers, the consul Opimius was charged with the erection of a temple to the goddess Concordia. The original temple had been built to commemorate the peace between plebeians and patricians after the Aventine secession, so it had strong plebeian connotations.Footnote 202 The anger and opinions of the people were vented in a graffito written on the temple at night: ‘An act of madness made the temple of Concordia.’Footnote 203 This popular act of disagreement was a criticism of the manipulation of traditional plebeian symbols by the elite. In this case, the expression is more one of dissent, and Morstein-Marx has argued in the sense of the ‘hidden transcripts’ in that, since it was done at night, it was covert.Footnote 204 However, this graffito is also exceptional, in the sense that it was not done within the framework of a normal political discussion, and at a time of peace, but in the aftermath of the massacre in the Aventine Hill of Caius Gracchus and his followers. Such an extremely repressive political incident was not common during the Late Republic, since it went well beyond a simple skirmish in the Forum with a few wounded people as a result.Footnote 205 In fact, these assassinations could only be equated to those that took place during the civil war between Marius and Sulla and during the proscriptions.Footnote 206
This kind of popular political literature is also attested in the 40s, when graffiti appeared at Brutus’ tribunal, making allusions to his namesake, the founder of the Roman Republic, and probably encouraging one of the most flagrant misreadings of public opinion in the Late Republic.Footnote 207 The conspirators assumed that Caesar’s popularity was on the decline, and acted as such, expecting to be cheered on and supported by the people. However, they had oversimplified the actual public opinions, which were not one but several, and reality slapped them in the face.Footnote 208
However tantalising these examples are, as in other instances with graffiti, Milnor’s suggestion about their nature should be stressed: ‘Each text is unique, written by a single hand, in a single place, at a single moment in time.’Footnote 209 In the case of political graffiti, another feature should be noted: that of having a purpose in mind. The person who wrote on the walls of the Temple of Concordia had an opinion to express and decided to do so using a durable means. Thus, graffiti were part of political literature as described at the beginning of this section: they referred to an immediate situation, which they criticised or praised; their objective was to take active part in that discussion (that is, by expressing their public opinion); and they were of a public nature, written where all passers-by could see them (in the case of Rome, mostly in the Forum). They were not, however, always controversial: in fact, they were part of the working mechanisms of the circulation of public opinion, at different levels. The Republican sources do not treat the sporadic references to graffiti as exceptional, even though the main source, Cicero, barely mentions them.Footnote 210 Nevertheless, this absence should not determine our perspective: Cicero, who was very much focused on elite public opinion and the courts, barely spared a glance for brokers of public opinion in Rome. As noted in the introduction, Caelius provided a much more detailed picture of these mechanisms, even mentioning some that are totally absent from the sources, such as susurratores (although graffiti are not mentioned).
Pamphlets or writings, libelli, could not only be distributed or read or recopied but also posted up for everyone to see. In this respect, these placards came close to oral verses or even graffiti. Shortly before Caesar’s murder, the entrance of new senators to the Senate was a point of polemic. The officials had been appointed directly by the dictator, and some Romans criticised them for being from outside the city: ‘Let no-one consent to point out the Curia to a new senator.’Footnote 211 Suetonius did not mention exactly where those writings were located. They were not graffiti, since the biographer clearly stated libellus.
The use of placards or public announcements is attested for the same period. For instance, when Caesar as dictator wanted to recommend his own candidates for magistracies, he sent his advice to the tribes by way of these libelli: ‘And these he announced in brief notes like the following, circulated in each tribe: ‘Caesar the Dictator to this or that tribe. I commend to you so and so, to hold their positions by your votes.’Footnote 212 Juvenal mentioned that these libelli as placards could be pasted on the porticus, the colonnade.Footnote 213
This means of expressing public opinion was also found outside the city of Rome. During the stay of Mark Antony in Athens, the Athenians, wanting to court his favour, offered him Minerva in marriage. The triumvir asked for a thousand talents as dowry. This request sparked public anger, which was expressed through libelli and also through graffiti: ‘When the sum was demanded, several abusive libelli were put about and some even reached the eyes of Antony himself: for example, the one written on the base of a statue of his because he had both Octavia and Cleopatra as wives: “Octavia and Athena to Antony; take your property”’.Footnote 214 This last sentence made reference to the Roman formulation for divorce. The anecdote was still in memory in Seneca the Elder’s time. These posted libelli therefore acted as alternatives or complements to the graffiti on Roman walls. We are at loss, however, as to the size of the libelli or whether they were any more visible than graffiti. The nature of the texts in the libelli does not seem to have been very different from the graffiti: one or two sentences were considered enough to convey a message effectively.
This long enumeration does not exhaust the variety of forms that political literature in prose could take, sometimes even in unexpected ways. Well-known epigrams (sententiae) were also common in the Late Republic for voicing public opinion. In one of Seneca the Elder’s rhetorical treaties, the orator Albucius mentioned four of them, probably dated to the 40s, after the death of Caesar: ‘any of the triumvirs who does not hate you finds you a burden’;Footnote 215 ‘ask, Cicero, and implore one man, only to become the slave of three’;Footnote 216 ‘when you come before Antony, Cicero, you will beg – to die’.Footnote 217 ‘Why do we lose heart? The republic too has its triumvirs’, with a reference to Brutus, Cassius, and Sextus Pompeius.Footnote 218 In this case, the epigrams survived because of oral memory. Seneca was probably born in the mid-50s, so he was only 15 to 20 years old when the civil war of the 40s took place. Furthermore, Seneca wrote a history of Rome from the civil wars until his own death at the beginning of the 30s AD, published by his son.Footnote 219 Seneca thus reflected on this period, which shows in the number of references to otherwise lost works that were in circulation in the 40s to 30s BC, such as Dellius’ letters to Cleopatra, or these very epigrams.Footnote 220
During Caesar’s consulship, his colleague Bibulus tried to block every measure that he could. After many debates in the Senate and attacks in the contiones, he decided to shut himself in at home and proclaim adverse omens. Nevertheless, political business appears to have continued: ‘from that time on, Caesar managed all the affairs of state alone and after his own pleasure; so that several witty people, pretending for the sake of a joke to sign and seal testamentary documents, wrote “Done in the consulship of Julius and Caesar,” instead of “Bibulus and Caesar”, writing down the same man twice, by name and by surname’.Footnote 221 These witty people, urbani, an adjective frequently used in this sense in the Late Republic, were especially linked to places and occasions of heavy exchange of information: conversations, banquets, and contiones.Footnote 222 They probably produced fake wills, which would be recopied or read in public. We are at a loss as to the venue, but it could have been a dinner or any public reading. Wherever it was, it was another instance of the expression of public opinion through writing.
Another kind of political writing existed in Rome in relation to the circulation of information: these are mentioned as commentarius rerum urbanarum, acta, acta urbana, acta rerum urbanarum and res urbanas actaque omnia, at least by Cicero.Footnote 223 Cicero described the acta rerum urbanarum as a usual way to keep informed about politics and everything happening in Rome whilst away in the provinces.Footnote 224 When Cicero left for Cilicia, his friend Caelius took to heart the task to keep him up to date. In several bundles of letters, he sent information, which he called commentarius rerum urbanarum.Footnote 225 The first report did not travel with his letter, but was handed to L. Castrinius Paetus. Either Caelius sent them separately to minimise the risk of losing them, or the timing of the writing was different.
Their existence and contents have been the subject of much debate; depending on the scholar, they may or may not coincide with the acta diurna, established by Caesar in 59 BC as a way to report the laws, and the debates and decisions of the Senate.Footnote 226 Furthermore, the fact that the acta diurna continued during the Principate, although they stopped reporting about the Senate and turned into an organ for self-propaganda of the emperors, does not help to clarify the question.Footnote 227 Pliny included the acta in his bibliographies (books 7, 8, and 10), and cited them several times.Footnote 228 Carcopino and Jal, amongst others, considered the acta diurna as a tool at the service of power, as official propaganda from above, and as a way to influence public opinion.Footnote 229 The authenticity of fragments of the acta diurna, published in 1615 by the antiquarian Pighius, has divided scholars. The text narrates events from 168 BC, but the actual writing of the text that was preserved, if not a forgery, would probably have come from Augustan times. These fragments were mentioned by other historians such as Justus Lipsius and Juan Luis Vives. However, the absence of evidence about the monument from which they were taken fosters doubts, and some anachronisms support these hesitations.Footnote 230 Lintott, after many doubts, considers them, sadly, as a forgery, as does Fowler.Footnote 231 In fact, the erudite scholar Juan Luis Vives, much learned in Roman history and language, could be the best candidate for the author.Footnote 232
The identification of the commentarius rerum urbanarum with the acta diurna has been proposed. Nevertheless, the evidence is inconclusive and not contemporary. Caelius’ report included not only the deliberations of the Senate but also gossip and rumours. The commentarius rerum urbanarum seems to have been produced by unknown specialists, and then recopied by scribes in order to be sent to members of the elite who were away from Rome. When Caelius mentioned that the operarii were writing it, he probably made an allusion to the scribes who copied it, but not to its compilers. Depending on what kind of information he was sending, a scribe could recopy an edict or a senatus consultum, but not have access to rumours and gossip. The author, mentioned by Cicero in his reply, seems to have been a Chrestus (Chresti compilationem).Footnote 233 He had been identified as Caelius’ agent, which is highly unlikely due to the nature of Caelius’ first letter. Caelius stated that he had found a man to do it and that he had paid. He could have been an independent agent, learned in Roman daily politics and gossip, thus frequently found at the Forum. Furthermore, he was someone considered reliable enough in his information by Caelius and Cicero. Caelius was well acquainted with the brokers of news and opinion in the Forum: in fact, his letters provide us with terms for circulators of public opinion that were hitherto unknown, such as susurratores and subrostrani.Footnote 234 However, White and other scholars take a more sceptical view, noting that compilatio is a Ciceronian hapax. Therefore, they understand ‘Chresti compilationem’ as theft committed by a slave, rather than as a medium of news.Footnote 235
In 48 BC, we find another example of Roman politicians using that source of information, when Cicero again referred to the rerum urbanarum acta, which he knew was being sent to his friend Cornificius. One of the questions is whether the author of the work was still Chrestus or whether there were multiple acta or commentarii available. Regardless of the author, it was probably not an official report. Caesar’s acta diurna were official, but the presence of rumours and gossip in the rerum urbanarum indicates that the material could not have come from official sources, which would not be sufficiently impartial to privilege gossip in favour of, or against, some politicians.
Further knowledge about the acta rerum urbanarum cannot be gleaned from the sources. We are still at a loss about their scope of circulation, whether they were private bespoke reports for friends abroad, or texts compiled to be sold. The presence of rumours and gossip, however, makes them important for the circulation of information and public opinion. They constitute a borderline case of political literature, since the scarcity of the sources does not give grounds to argue that they had the object of influencing public opinion, even though their choice of rumours and political problems probably did so.
In conclusion, political literature is a concept that brings together a variety of texts with the objectives of circulating information and influencing public opinion. These writings were relevant to the political situation of the time, and featured not only criticism but also praise. They were distributed within a relatively wide circle, regardless of the identity of their authors. Finally, they had a certain literary form and intention. This concept does not only include written public opinion but also borderline cases, such as popular verse, with huge catchment power, in that they were very well suited to being repeated. Political literature, however, is subject to the paradox of transmission: the immediacy that made a work successful in its time would make it unworthy of being recopied, because it was too dated and too stuck at a fixed point in time, and therefore not of timeless interest.
This chapter has reviewed political literature, which was previously scattered among different genres. It contained a mixture of high (elite) literature and also that of more popular character (popular verse, graffiti). Both had the same objectives (to participate in politics and get involved with public opinion) and sometimes used similar strategies. Political misbehaviour or criticism of sexual mores was found in popular verses that circulated around the city or in carefully crafted speeches delivered in the Forum. Leaving aside the matter of their literary value, a speech of Cicero in which he accused Clodius of committing incest with his sister or the versus obscenissimi about the same matter that were sung against him by the audience of a contio shared the same political objective and strategy. The boundaries in some of these cases were blurred: verses, for instance, crossed them, and occupied a middle point between oral and written public opinion. Witty verses could criticise political decisions, such as the election of new senators by Caesar or Ventidius Bassus’ rising career from rags to riches. Sometimes they circulated through oral means, but they also could be inscribed on walls around the city, becoming graffiti. Their sticking power was therefore probably much higher.
Political literature in verse or prose allowed ideas and opinions to reach much further than the physical presence of their author. It eschewed the categories of time or space, since readers or listeners did not actually have to be present at the exact moment or at the exact place at which a speech was delivered. They could be at work, at leisure or even outside Rome. Furthermore, the use of the concept of ‘political literature’ allows us to solve the terminological problem of categories such as ‘pamphlets’ or libelli, which cover different kinds of works and which have puzzled scholars due to their apparently inconsistent use in the sources.
This analysis of political literature paints a picture of a complex political work, in which the acquisition of literacy could be an advantage, but lack of it did not exclude someone entirely from an active role in the public sphere or from the expression and circulation of public opinion through political literature.
Despite the fragmentary nature of the sources, can we identify an increase in the use of political literature? The abundance of sources for the final decades of the Republic and especially the period of the civil wars would point to such a conclusion. However, many works, whose fragments or references have come down to us, only did so because they attacked someone important and, thus, were used as sources by later historians or biographers. For this reason, Caesar is the politician about whom the largest number of pamphlets and verses has been preserved. Sources offer us a glimpse of the fact that other less renowned people were also the objects of such literature.
However, the situation evolved. By Ciceronian times, political literature was already composed of vicious abuse and the slander of contemporaries, all of which was accepted as part of the political game. The previous century had seen reticence in some cases to criticise living people, and even accusations of slander in courts. Such changes allowed the boom of political literature, which could then engage in contemporary politics, and thus become more relevant. Furthermore, political literature bridged distances in a constantly increasing empire. For this reason, the period of the civil wars of the 40s was especially prolific; by that time, such literature had become a powerful weapon, and political players were scattered across the Roman territories and beyond. Political literature eschewed geographical distance and enabled communication.
Political literature was therefore an active element of Roman politics. It was a system of communication, but not exclusively for the elite. The rest of the citizens used it, to different degrees, and had a fair amount of leeway in their use of it. Morstein-Marx has recently proposed the term ‘plebeian communicative agency’, exemplified by the graffiti, as: ‘The ability both to resist and critique the dominant, elite discourse, and to initiate communication rather than solely responding with applause or shouts to the prompting of senatorial speakers, as in the contio.’Footnote 236 Thus, anonymous graffiti, often written at night, could form part of these attempts to communicate ‘bottom-up’. He concludes that graffiti seem to have been a common feature of the political landscape. Nevertheless, he asserts that they were a kind of ‘background noise’ that the elite would prefer not to hear.Footnote 237
Scott’s ‘hidden transcripts’ and the oppositional ideology that lurks behind a facade of acquiescence, as proposed by Morstein-Marx, have been useful in understanding relationships of power and the political nature of the Roman Republic. However, popular public opinion superseded these ‘hidden transcripts’: plebeian public opinion was frequently open and undisguised; it often went along with elite opinion, and no presumption of constant opposition should be made; however, in many other cases, popular public opinion did oppose elite public opinion openly, through gossip, rumours, verses, and shouts in the streets, along with the already well-known clapping or shouting in the theatre or at the games. Despite trying to impose their own opinions, senators occasionally decided to play along with popular public opinion in their own interests, transforming themselves into ‘champions of the people’. Thus, popular public opinion was not exactly a ‘hidden transcript’ or the occasional emergence of a discourse of resistance. With the exception of some cases, the relationship between elite and popular communication was characterised not exclusively by confrontation or collaboration, but by a complex and fluid interaction.
Together with sociability, and the complementary circulation of information by oral means (essentially through rumours and gossip), political literature created and propagated public opinion within the public sphere. It formed part of the standard workings of the Roman political system during the Late Republic.
