Lucius Coelius Antipater

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Lucius Coelius Antipater (* between 180 BC and 170 BC; † around 120 BC) was a Roman lawyer and historian . He was the first Roman to write a historical monograph . This dealt with the Second Punic War in seven books , but was only preserved very fragmentarily .

Life

It is not known when Lucius Coelius Antipater was born, but since he is older than the one around 119 BC. Roman historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna , born in BC , but above all a peer of the consul from 122 BC. BC, Gaius Fannius , as well as teacher of around 140 BC. Chr. Born orator Lucius Licinius Crassus in eloquence was Coelius likely 'birth year as the period from 180 to 170 v. To be set. In addition to the name form Coelius, which is preferred in modern specialist literature , the variant Caelius has also been handed down in the manuscripts of ancient authors. The assumption, which is sometimes made because of his nickname Antipater , that Coelius was a freedman of a representative of the Coelier family, contradicts the statement by Cornelius Nepos that Voltacilius , Pompey's teacher , was the first freedman to publish a historical text. It was assumed that the father of Coelius belonged to the class of freedmen, but today this thesis is also considered refuted.

Little is known about Coelius' living conditions. He had a good education, for example sufficient knowledge of Greek, so that he was able to evaluate the historical work of Silenus von Kaleakte in this language for his own monograph on the Hannibal War. He was also trained in the field of law and was gifted with rhetoric. Apparently he was not a senator and was not employed in the civil service, but he was in closer contact with some important contemporaries, such as Gaius Sempronius Gracchus , Lucius Aelius Stilo and Lucius Licinius Crassus, whom he not only taught but whose familiar friendship he also enjoyed. He died after Gaius Gracchus, i.e. after 121 BC. BC, but maybe not until a few years after 117 BC. BC, if the circumnavigator Eudoxos that Coelius saw was Eudoxos from Kyzikos .

plant

Extent, time of writing, title, dedication

Lucius Coelius Antipater pioneered the genre of historical prose monograph in Rome. He deviated from the previously usual procedure of the annalists of telling the history of Rome from its mythical beginnings and limited himself to a seven-book description of the Second Punic War , the completion of which he continued until after 121 BC. Worked. However, the playwright Gnaeus Naevius had already written a historical epic about the First Punic War before him .

The speaker Cicero states at one point that Coelius' work was called Bellum Punicum . All other authors refer to it as Historiae , while Nonius alone continuously cites it as Annales . Because of the different names of the work and the existence of some fragments of antiquarian content dealing with the history of legends, ethnography and word research, first in 1670 J. Meursius put forward the hypothesis that Hans Theodor Plüss revisited two centuries later and more thoroughly justified by Wilhelm Sieglin that Coelius, in addition to his Work on the Hannibal War published another book, which presented the history of Rome and all of Italy in the manner of Catos Origen . Today, however, the unanimous view in modern research is that Coelius only wrote one work, the monograph on the Second Punic War, and that the fragments mentioned, which are somewhat out of the ordinary, were in various digressions of the work.

Coelius probably dedicated his work to the important grammarian Lucius Aelius Stilo and not - as the handwritten tradition of Cicero, Orator 230 indicates - to Laelius , since Laelius probably no longer lived to see the death of Gaius Gracchus mentioned in Coelius' writing. Rather, L. Aelius is likely to have been distorted in the Cicero copies in Laelius .

Structure, sources

In the Proömium of his work, Coelius was the first Roman historian to discuss the stylistic problems of his portrayal. Approximately 68 fragments have survived, on the basis of which only a few statements can be made about the distribution of the material among the seven books of the work. The first book probably dealt with the course of the Hannibal War up to 216 BC. Took place, for the Romans with a catastrophic defeat ending the battle of Cannae . The landing of Scipio in North Africa in 204 BC. Was told in the sixth book. In a fragment from the seventh book, the capture of Syphax is described, which was carried out in 203 BC. Took place. Thus, the seventh book should be the representation of the up to 201 BC. The end of the war.

Because Coelius, in contrast to earlier annalists, limited himself to a historical object of just under two decades, he was able to conduct a more extensive and more detailed study of the sources. He also found relatively extensive literature on the topic he had chosen. He was based, among other things, on the annals of the oldest Roman historian Quintus Fabius Pictor , as can be deduced from the comparison between the surviving texts of Titus Livius and Polybius . Catos Origines also evaluated Coelius, as Aulus Gellius testifies. It is uncertain whether he also used Lucius Cincius Alimentus and Polybios as informants. On the other hand, it is certain that Coelius - probably the first Roman historian - also consulted opposing sources. For this purpose he read the work of Silenus von Kaleakte , who accompanied Hannibal on his campaigns and gave an account of it as an eyewitness. Furthermore, Coelius also took into account subordinate sources such as the laudation , which the son of the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus on his 208 BC. His late father held. Finally, Coelius did not ignore oral traditions and sometimes even preferred written representations that contradict them.

Coelius apparently tried to report the truth as far as possible by critically evaluating his sources and trying to find the historically most likely version from the sometimes discrepant reports. For example, according to the testimony of Livy, he apparently strove to find the correct one among the divergent descriptions of the death of Marcellus.

Presentation, style

Coelius was the first Roman historiographer to use his rhetorical skills extensively in his work. He did not just want to string together facts in an unadorned manner, but rather make the presentation more captivating based on the tragic Hellenistic historiography. The form of the monograph allowed him to group the material around two antagonistic "main heroes", Hannibal and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , and to develop it dramatically with several turning points of the event. Coelius made use of tension-generating means such as sensational exaggerations, the mention of earthquakes and other natural forces, as well as inserting excursions about the founding of cities and cults, inserting speeches he had composed himself and telling prodigies , dreams and anecdotes. However, due to his dramatic-rhetorical presentation, Coelius ran the risk that he occasionally did not always accurately reproduce historical facts. Apparently he was very positive about the Scipions and avoided mentioning facts that would have made them appear in a bad light.

His style harmonizes with the rhetorical tendency of Coelius' work, which was influenced by Asian and to which the author took great care, as Cicero praises. In contrast to Cato, Coelius used simple language and thoughtful words and was short and lively in expression. The latter he achieved through asyndetically strung together sentences and the frequent use of the historical present , the dominance of which in the narrative increased the clarity of the events described. In an effort to create ornate period structures, Coelius used Hyperbata ; and the use of rare vocabulary should decorate the presentation. Fronto testifies that Coelius took the epic writer Quintus Ennius as his model, whose imitation is likely to have given the speech a poetic tinge on several occasions. Cicero recognized that Coelius overtook his predecessors in his endeavors to effectively stylize his historical work, but this represented only a relative advance compared to the literary standard of the classical period.

reception

Coelius' monographic account of the Second Punic War was widely acclaimed and had a long lasting impact. Cicero paid her a lot of praise, particularly examining Coelius' style and borrowing material for his preoccupation with dreams and prodigies. The later Caesar murderer Marcus Junius Brutus made an extract from Coelius' work. The form of the historical monograph that Coelius had pioneered in Rome was only used again by Sallust . Later historians extensively exploited Coelius' work as a prime source for the Hannibal War. Modern research tried in particular to determine to what extent Livy consulted Coelius, whom he cited ten times by name, as an informant. It is often assumed that Livy referred to Coelius to a greater extent, particularly in books 21 and 22 of his historical work Ab urbe condita , which describe the beginnings of the Second Punic War . Cassius Dio could also have used Coelius as an information base, while this is less likely for Plutarch and Appian . Pliny the Elder names Coelius among the sources for books 2, 3, 31 and 36 of his Naturalis historia .

During the era of the Second Sophistic , Coelius, like other archaic writers, was highly respected for his style, as evidenced by Fronto. Emperor Hadrian , who had a preference for antiquity, valued Coelius more than Sallust. A Paul who is possibly identical with the poet Iulius Paulus, who belongs to the circle of friends of Aulus Gellius , wrote a linguistic commentary on the work of Coelius. His vocabulary also provided grammarians such as Aulus Gellius, Nonius Marcellus , Flavius ​​Sosipater Charisius and Priscian with a lot of material for their linguistic research. These grammarians also handed down the majority of the literal fragments of Coelius' script.

expenditure

  • Hans Beck , Uwe Walter (ed.): The early Roman historians. Volume 2: From Coelius Antipater to Pomponius Atticus (= texts on research 77). Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-14758-8 , pp. 35–83.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Werner Suerbaum, The archaic literature. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 431.
  2. ^ Velleius Paterculus , Historia Romana 2, 9, 6.
  3. ↑ Cicero , De legibus 1, 6.
  4. ↑ Cicero, Brutus 102.
  5. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 185 .; also Werner Suerbaum, Die archaische Literatur. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 431.
  6. ↑ Nepos at Sueton , De rhetoribus f 27.1.
  7. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 185 ..
  8. ↑ a b Cicero, De divinatione 1, 49.
  9. ↑ Cicero, Brutus 102; Sextus Pomponius , Digesta 1, 2, 2, 40 (who rates Coelius' legal competence less than Cicero).
  10. ↑ a b Cicero, De divinatione 1, 56.
  11. ↑ Cicero, Orator 229 f .; Rhetorica ad Herennium 4, 12, 18.
  12. ^ Cicero, De oratore 2, 54.
  13. ^ Pliny , Naturalis historia 2, 169.
  14. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 185 f.
  15. ↑ a b c d Werner Suerbaum, The archaic literature. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 432.
  16. ^ Cicero, Orator 230.
  17. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 186.
  18. ↑ J. Meursius, Macrobii opera cum Notis Pontani, Meursii, Gronovii , Leiden 1670, S. 202nd
  19. ^ Hans Theodor Plüss, De Cinciis rerum Romanarum scriptoribus , Bonn 1865.
  20. ^ Wilhelm Sieglin, The Fragments of Lucius Coelius Antipater , in: Yearbook of Classical Philology , Supplementary Volume 11 (1880), pp. 1 ff.
  21. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 187.
  22. ^ Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 10, 24, 7.
  23. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 188.
  24. ↑ a b Werner Suerbaum, The archaic literature. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 433.
  25. ↑ a b Livius, Ab urbe condita 27, 27, 13.
  26. ^ A b Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 189.
  27. ↑ a b Cicero, De oratore 2, 54 f. and De legibus 1, 6.
  28. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185-194: here 189 f.
  29. ^ Fronto , Epistulae ad Verum 1.
  30. ^ Fronto, Epistulae ad M. Caesarem 4, 3.
  31. ↑ a b c d Werner Suerbaum, The archaic literature. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 434.
  32. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 190.
  33. ^ Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 13, 8.
  34. ↑ Historia Augusta , Hadrian 16, 6.
  35. ^ Charisius , Ars grammatica p. 161, 8; 181, 11; 281, 25 ed.Barwick.
  36. ↑ Werner Suerbaum, The archaic literature. From the beginning to Sulla's death , p. 435.
  37. ^ Paul Gensel: Coelius 7 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 185–194: here 191.
personal data
SURNAME Coelius Antipater, Lucius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman lawyer and historian
DATE OF BIRTH around 180 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH around 120 BC Chr.