were Q. Fabius Pictor[1] and L. Cincius Alimentus, who lived during
the Second Punic War and wrote in Greek. We are told by Dionysius
that they treated the earlier history summarily, but wrote more
fully of their own times. The were followed in their use of the
Greek language by C. Acilius (introduced a Greek embassy to the
senate, 155 B.C.) and A. Postumius Albinus (consul, 151 B.C.). In
the meantime, however, M. Porcius Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.),
the leader of the national party at Rome and a vigorous opponent
of Greek influence, had treated of Roman antiquities in his Origines.
This work was not purely annalistic, but treated of the ethnography
and customs of the Italian peoples, &c. Cato founded no school
of antiquarian research, but his use of the Latin language as the
medium of historical writing was followed by the annalists of the
Gracchan period, L. Cassius Hemina, L. Calpurnius Piso (consul,
133 B.C.), C. Sempronius Tuditanus (consul, 129 B.C.), Cn. Gellius,
Vennonius, C. Fannius (consul, 122 B.C.), and L. Caelius
Antipater.[2]
By these writers some attempt was made to apply canons of criticism
to the traditional accounts of early Roman history, but they did
little more than rationalize the more obviously mythical narratives;
they also followed Greek literary models and introduced speeches,
&c., for artistic effect. Where they wrote as contemporaries,
however, e.g. Fannius in his account of the Gracchan movement,
their works were of the highest value. About the beginning of
this period Polybius (q.v.) had published his history, which originally
embraced the period of the Punic wars, and was afterwards continued
to 146 B.C. His influence was not fully exerted upon Roman
historians until the close of the 2nd and early part of the 1st century
B.C., when a school of writers arose who treated history with a
practical purpose, endeavouring to trace the motives of action and
to point a moral for the edification of their readers. To this school
belonged Sempronius Asellio, Claudius Quadrigarius, Valerius
Antias and C. Licinius Macer (d. 66 B.C.). Their writings were
diffuse, rhetorical and inaccurate; Livy complains of the gross
exaggerations of Valerius (whom he followed blindly in his earlier
books), and Macer seems to have drawn much of his material from
sources of very doubtful authenticity. Contemporary history was
written by Cornelius Sisenna (119–67 B.C.), and the work of Polybius
was continued to 86 B.C. by the Stoic Posidonius (c. 135–45 B.C.),
a man of encyclopaedic knowledge. From the Gracchan period
onwards the memoirs, speeches and correspondence of distinguished
statesmen were often published; of these no specimens are extant
until we come to the Ciceronian period, when the Speeches and Letters
of Cicero (q.v.) and the Commentaries of Julius Caesar (q.v.)—the
latter continued to the close of the Civil War by other hands—furnish
invaluable evidence for the history of their times. We possess
examples of historical pamphlets with a strong party colouring in
Sallust's tracts on the Jugurthine War and the conspiracy of Catiline.
During the same period Roman antiquities, genealogy, chronology,
&c., were exhaustively treated by M. Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.)
(q.v.) in his Antiquitates (in 41 books) and other works. Cicero's
friend, M. Pomponius Atticus, also compiled a chronological table
which was widely used, and Cornelius Nepos (q.v.) wrote a series of
historical biographies which have come down to us.
In the Augustan age the materials accumulated by previous generations were worked up by compilers whose works are in some cases preserved. The work of Livy (q.v.) covered the history of Rome from its foundation to 9 B.C. in 142 books; of these only 35 are preserved in their entirety, while the contents of the rest are known in outline from an epitome (periochae) and from the compendia of Florus and later authors. Diodorus Siculus (q.v.) of Agyrium in Sicily followed the earlier annalists in the sections of his Universal History (down to Caesar) which dealt with Roman affairs; Dionysius of Halicarnassus (q.v.), in his Roman Archaeology (published in 7 B.C.), treated early Roman history in a more ambitious and rhetorical style, with greater fulness than Livy, whose work he seems to have used. Universal histories were also written in the Augustan age by Nicolaus of Damascus, a protégé of Herod the Great, and Trogus Pompeius, whose work is known to us from the epitome of Justin (2nd century A.D.). Juba, the learned king of Mauretania installed by Augustus, wrote a History of Rome as well as antiquarian works. Strabo (q.v.), whose Geography is extant, was the author of a continuation of Polybius's history (to 27 B.C.). The learning of the time was enshrined in the encyclopedia of Verrius Flaccus, of which we possess part of Festus's abridgment (2nd century A.D.), together with an Epitome of Festus by Paulus Diaconus (temp. Charlemagne). An official list of the consuls and other chief magistrates of the republic was inscribed on the walls of the Regia (rebuilt 36 B.C.), followed somewhat later by a similar list of triumphatores; the former of these is known as the Fasti Capitolini, (C.I.L.I.2, 1 sqq.), since the fragments which have been recovered are preserved in the Palace of the Conservatori on the Capitol. The Forum of Augustus (see Rome, section Archaeology) was decorated with statues of famous Romans, on the bases of which were inscribed short accounts of their exploits; some of these elogia are preserved (cf. Dessau, Inscr. Lat. sel. 50 sqq.).
Amongst writers of the imperial period who dealt with republican history the most important are Velleius Paterculus, whose compendium of Roman history was published in A.D. 30; Plutarch (c. A.D. 45–125), in whose biographies much contemporary material was worked up; Appian, who wrote under the Antonines and described the wars of the republic under geographical headings (partly preserved) and the civil wars in five books, and Dio Cassius (v. infra), of whose history only that portion which deals with events from 69 B.C. onwards is extant. The date of Granius Licinianus, whose fragments throw light on the earlier civil wars, is not certain.
The evidence of inscriptions (q.v.) and coins (q.v.) begins to be of value during the 150 years of the republic. A series of laws and Senatus consulta (beginning with the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, 189 B.C.) throws light on constitutional questions, while the coins struck from about 150 B.C. onwards bear types illustrative of the traditions preserved by the families to which the masters of the mint (III viri monetales) belonged.
Modern Authorities.—The principles of historical criticism may be said to have been formulated by Giambattista Vico (q.v.), whose principi di scienza nuova were published in 1725. The credibility of the traditional account of Roman republican history was called in question by Louis de Beaufort (Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l'histoire romaine, 1738); but the modern critical movement dates from Niebuhr, two volumes of whose Römische Geschichte appeared in 1811–12 (the third was published after his death in 1832, his lectures in 1846). The early history of Rome was fully treated by Niebuhr's follower, F. C. A. Schwegler, whose Römische Geschichte in 3 vols. (1853–58) was continued to 327 B.C. by O. Clason (vols. 4 and 5, 1873–76). A reaction against the negative criticism of Niebuhr was headed by J. Rubino, who showed in his Untersuchungen über römische Verfassung und Geschichte (1839) that the growth of the Roman constitution might be traced with some approach to certainty by the analysis of institutions. It was left for Theodor Mommsen (Römische Geschichte, 1st ed., 1854–56; Eng. trans. new ed. in 5 vols., 1894; Römische Forschungen, 1864–79; Römisches Staatsrecht, 1st ed., 1872–75 [in the Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer, begun by Becker in 1843 and continued under the supervision of J. Marquardt]; Römisches Strafrecht, 1899, and many other works) to reduce Roman constitutional history to a science. Mommsen substituted for the detailed criticism of the traditional narrative a picture of the growth of Italian civilization based on linguistic, literary and monumental evidence. W. Ihne (Römische Geschichte, 8 vols., 1868–90) dealt more fully with the course of events as related by ancient historians. L. Lange's Römische Alterthümer (1856–71), 3 vols., treated constitutional history in a narrative form. In more recent times Eduard Meyer has treated of early Italian history in his Geschichte des Alterthums, vols. ii.-v. (1893–1902); and Ettore Pais, in his Storia di Roma, vols. i.-ii. (1893–99), has subjected the narratives of Roman history down to the Samnite wars to a searching and in many cases exaggerated criticism. De Sanctis, in his Storia dei Romani (2 vols., 1907) (down to the establishment of the Roman hegemony in Italy), combines radical criticism of tradition with a constructive use of archaeological and other evidence. Heitland's Roman Republic (3 vols., 1909) is a fresh and independent work. The last century of the republic has been the subject of many works (see reff. in text and biographical articles). W. Drumann (Geschichte Roms, 1834–44; new ed. by Groebe in progress) gave an exhaustive biographical account of the contemporaries of Caesar and Cicero; A. H. J. Greenidge's History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 70 (vol. i. 1904) was unfortunately cut short by the author's early death in 1906; G. Ferrero's Grandezza e Decadenza di Roma (in progress, Eng. trans. of vols. i., ii., 1907; iii.-v., 1909) is ambitious but unsound.
II. Imperial Period: Ancient Sources.—The memoirs of Augustus as well as those of his contemporaries (Messalla, Agrippa, Maecenas, &c.) and successors (Tiberius, Agrippina the younger, &c.) have perished, but we possess the Res gestae divi Augusti inscribed on the walls of his temple at Ancyra (ed. Mommsen, 1883). Few historical works were produced under the earlier Julio-Claudian emperors; Cremutius Cordus lost his life under Tiberius for the freedom with which his opinion of the triumvirs was expressed. Aufidius Bassus wrote the history of the civil wars and early empire, perhaps to A.D. 49, and this was continued by Pliny the Elder (q.v.) in 31 books, probably to the accession of Vespasian.[3] These works, together with those of Fabius Rusticus, a friend of Seneca, and Cluvius Rufus, a courtier under Nero, were amongst the authorities used by Tacitus (q.v.), whose Annals (properly called ab excessu divi Augusti) and Histories, when complete, carried the story of the empire down to A.D. 96.[4] Tacitus wrote under Trajan, upon whom the younger Pliny pronounced his Panegyric; Pliny's correspondence with Trajan about the affairs of Bithynia, which he administered in A.D. 111–13, is of great historical value. Suetonius (q.v.), who was for some time secretary of state to Hadrian, wrote biographies of the emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, which contain much interesting gossip. Arrian, a Bithynian Greek promoted by Hadrian
- ↑ For these writers see further under Annalists and Livy.
- ↑ Caelius's work dealt only with the Second Punic War.
- ↑ The Jewish Antiquities and Jewish War of Josephus (q.v.), composed under the Flavian dynasty, are of great value for the events of the writer's time.
- ↑ The Histories (A.D. 69–96) were written before the Annals.
