Senatorial historiography

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a senatorial historians call historian those ancient historical works that decidedly Roman history from the perspective of the Senate describe.

Stages of development

republic

Even in the republican era , Roman historiography , which began quite late in comparison to the Greek, was decisively supported by people from the senatorial environment. The senator Quintus Fabius Pictor wrote in the second half of the 3rd century BC. BC - still in Greek - a now lost work of history from the legendary early days of Rome to its present. Soon afterwards, the Latin Origines ("origins") of Catos the Elder were created , of which only fragments have survived, but which reveal a high intellectual level of their senatorial author. Of the following historical works of senatorial character, those of Sallust and Gaius Asinius Pollio are among the best known . While the early works of Roman historians were still structured in an annalistic way and thus dealt with longer periods of time, arranged according to years, the later authors (such as Sallust and Asinius Pollio) increasingly devoted themselves to contemporary history. The Commentarii of Gaius Iulius Caesar served him to legitimize his war in Gaul and the civil war that followed, but were strictly speaking not works of history.

Imperial times

At the beginning of the imperial era, Titus Livius wrote a universal history of Rome, but he did not belong to the senatorial ruling class, as did several of the historians who followed him (e.g. Velleius Paterculus , who was a senator but was not a member of the nobility ).

The special character of senatorial historiography in the Roman imperial era is related to the nature of the form of government of the principate : since Emperor Augustus , the res publica , which was apparently renewed after the civil wars , was in fact ruled by a monarch, the princeps , who was dominated by his vast clientele , his auctoritas , his vast fortune and control over the army held a position of power that was formally legalized by the granting of special powers (especially the imperium proconsulare [ maius ] and the tribunicia potestas ). The venerable Senate was largely disempowered, but continued to exist and represented a long indispensable body that legitimized the position of the emperor and, in the form of the senators, also represented a social elite that the princeps could not do without, at least until the 3rd century . Significantly, all emperors before their rule (and formally still afterwards) were senators up to this time: Officially, power remained with the "Senate and People of Rome" ( Senatus Populusque Romanus ); the senators took great care to uphold this fiction.

Since the Senate was an assembly of the imperial elite even during the imperial era , most of its members had a pronounced classical education ( paideia ); many were literary, and it was natural for them to take up history after they withdrew from politics. Like most of the ancient literature, most of these works are lost today (see also Loss of Books in Late Antiquity ), but those of the two most important, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, have at least partially been preserved: Written around 100 AD Tacitus , a former suffect consul , a Latin representation of the years from 14 to 68 (the annals ) and from 69 to 96 (the histories ) in originally 30 books. Tacitus relied on a whole series of now lost works, such as that of Aulus Cremutius Cordus . Cordus had praised Brutus in his historical work and described Cassius as the last Roman, which was taken as an insult to majesty ; most copies of his work were burned by resolution of the Senate. The same thing happened under Augustus Titus Labienus .

Senatorial historiography flourished especially in the 1st century, with some authors such as Servilius Nonianus or Cluvius Rufus themselves being senators, while others, such as Aufidius Bassus , were evidently of the knightly class, but seem to have written from a similar perspective. What all these historians have in common is that their works are now practically lost without a trace, although they may have served as models for later authors. This also applies to the Historia Romana in 31 books that Pliny the Elder wrote. After Tacitus, the great Roman historiography of the senatorial type became extinct for the time being - or more precisely: The corresponding works, such as that of Servilius Nonianus or Marius Maximus (who, however, wrote emperor biographies), are now practically completely lost and therefore cannot be evaluated. Through Suetonius , biography became a popular genre around 120, with the emperors now completely at the center; Suetonius relied on several sources that are now lost.

The senator and two-time consul Cassius Dio , who wrote in the early 3rd century, continued the tradition of the great senatorial historiography with his 80 books in the Greek language of Roman history - however, as far as can be seen, he lacks a return to the lost history "Republican freedom" ( libertas ), which was typical of the work of Tacitus. Nevertheless, Dio emphasizes the great difficulty of being able to access sources for the period from Augustus on, the content of which was not filtered or censored in the sense of the emperors. Since central processes are no longer public, it is also difficult to decide which information is reliable: Every historian now runs the risk of reporting things that are mere rumors, while many things that actually happened are nothing learn more. Like Tacitus, Dio also measures rulers essentially by their behavior towards the Senate.

In the Roman Empire, therefore, very few historians wrote, even if they wrote contemporary history, about the immediate present in which they wrote their work, since critical portrayals of the emperors could be dangerous for the authors. Often they described a period up to a few years before the drafting period, when another emperor was in power and criticism could thus be more easily exercised; Panegyricists reported more about the contemporary rulers who only reported positive things.

In late antiquity , in the 4th century, the so-called Enmann Emperor's story emerged , which is lost today, but which was used by several Breviators (including Aurelius Victor ) and in which the events were described from a senate-friendly perspective, during the last major one Latin historian of antiquity, the former military Ammianus Marcellinus , who sharply criticized the senators of Rome for their vicious life. Although the work has not survived, the Annales of Virius Nicomachus Flavianus should also be mentioned here due to the author's social background . Probably around 400 an anonymous (non-Christian) author wrote a collection of biographies of Roman emperors, the very problematic Historia Augusta , in which an emphatically pro-senatorial point of view was represented. Also Procopius of Caesarea wrote still in the 6th century , at the end of antiquity, from such a perspective.

Characteristics and problems

The following features are typical of senatorial historiography:

  • The authors were very educated and knew the political business from personal experience. The thematic focus is therefore on the politico-military history.
  • Because of their position, they were able to use state archives for their research. Overall, you were therefore in a good position to obtain reliable information.
  • Like most ancient historians, they claimed to be committed only to the “truth” and - in the words of Tacitus - to write sine ira et studio (“without anger and zeal”), which is often just a topical motive was.
  • At the same time, like all ancient historians, they created literary works of art, often with a strong will to form and with the aim of entertaining the readers.
  • The selection and interpretation of the material as well as the assessment of the actors (especially the emperors) are influenced by the authors' senatorial point of view to a much greater extent than earlier research realized. Emperors who did not treat the senators with sufficient respect in their eyes were “revenged” by portraying them negatively after their death. At the same time, one had to take into account the fact that parts of the Senate had cooperated with the respective ruler and benefited from him. Therefore, the senatorial historians sometimes used very subtle and sophisticated manipulation techniques.

In summary, it can be said that senatorial historiography is an indispensable source . But it reflects the point of view and the worldview of a small, very proud (and quite divided) elite. It should be taken into account that emperors, who are posthumously depicted in gloomy colors in these works, were sometimes perceived and judged differently by other parts of the population. So was Nero quite popular well for a large part of ordinary people, especially in the Greek East of the empire, while Domitian at least enjoyed the sympathy of the army. Both are represented in Suetonius and Tacitus (Domitian in the surviving part of his histories only marginally mentioned, but whose image of Domitian can be read in the corresponding passages of Agricola ) consistently negative.

This relativization of the picture of individual emperors drawn in the senatorial sources does not necessarily lead to a complete reversal of the assessments of their personality and performance that have been common since the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nero, for example, continues to be barely judged positively by most ancient historians, even taking into account the bias of the sources. There is no reason to assume that the senatorial historians have oriented themselves exclusively to the interests of the Senate as a corporation and completely disregarded overriding state interests. However, their presentation was influenced by the extent to which the respective emperors ruled in agreement with the Senate and respected the traditional rights of the senators.

literature

  • Michael von Albrecht : History of Roman Literature. 2 volumes. 3rd edition (as TB). Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2003.
  • Dieter Flach : Roman historiography. 3rd revised edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-534-13709-4 .
  • John Matthews: The Emperor and his Historians. In: John Marincola (Ed.): A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography. Volume 1 (of 2). Blackwell, Malden MA et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-405-10216-2 , pp. 290-304.
  • Ronald Syme : Tacitus. 2 volumes. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1958.
  • Dieter Timpe : Ancient historiography. Studies on historiography. Edited by Uwe Walter . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-534-19353-0 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ See von Albrecht (2003), vol. 1, p. 290ff. and p. 654ff.
  2. ↑ On Tacitus cf. Syme (1958). Stephan Schmal, for example, offers a more recent overview: Tacitus . Hildesheim 2005.
  3. ↑ John Wilkes: Julio-Claudian Historians . In: Classical World 65 (1972), p. 177ff.
  4. ↑ von Albrecht (2003), vol. 2, p. 1104ff.
  5. ↑ Dio 53:19. The following is still fundamental to Dio's work: Fergus Millar : A Study of Cassius Dio . Oxford 1964.
  6. ↑ F. Paschoud: How do you speak of the living emperor. In: K. Vössing (Ed.): Biography and Prosopography. Stuttgart 2005, pp. 103-118.
  7. ↑ Introductory and with further literature: Klaus-Peter Johne : Historia Augusta . In: The New Pauly . 5: 637-640 (1998).
  8. ↑ See Prokopios, Anekdota , 12,12ff. See also Averil Cameron : Procopius and the Sixth Century . London 1985, pp. 249f.
  9. ^ Tacitus, biography De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae des Gnaeus Iulius Agricola .