Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Review- The Roman Revolution


The Roman Revolution(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).
With the publication of Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution, the history of the late Roman Republic and the transition to the Principate changed radically. Indeed, Syme sapped the basis of traditional arguments: the transition from Republic to Principate would no longer be dominated by the will of a few men, geniuses in their own right. Syme demoted Sulla, Pompeius, Caesar, Octavianus and Antonius to the realm of subjects, to an extent reactors to historical changes, rather than prime agents of change. For Syme, these great protagonists hid from historians two fundamental truths. The first is that behind any great regime, no matter the kind, there lurks in the background, the agency of an oligarchy, acting for their families, shuffling and reshuffling alliances so as to ensure their own successes. Octavianus’[1] revolution lay in his ability to masquerade his authority as part of the great republican ideals, as working with these oligarchs for the restoration of their privileges (p.2). The second prefigures the longue durée: it is the accident of history. Death, old age, and civil war were as much a part of the story as the agency of men.
                Syme’s articulated his greatest criticism of the history of the fall of the Roman Republic as linked to historical sources. Indeed, through the accident of history, the large majority of available documentation is loyal to the principate. The single averse source, Caius Asinius Pollio, does not survive.  Sallust died before the establishment of the principate, and Tacitus is a late source (p.4-6). Contemporary sources were intimately tied to the regime. As Syme demonstrates, Octavianus’ chief propagandist Maecenas had discovered Vergil and Horace. These two major authors owed everything to the new regime of Octavianus. Their patron, an equestrian, would not have risen through the ranks of the Republic, undoubtedly blocked by the interests of the oligarchs.[2]  Vergil and Horace themselves would have had little prospects in the republic. Both were of obscure origins. Vergil was born in Mantua, in Gallia Cisalpina, the son of a landowner, while Horace was the son of a wealthy freedman from Apulia, who had fought on the side of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (p.252-254). Syme had already demonstrated the distaste of the oligarchy for these new-comers, whether foreigners (and especially Gauls) or equestrians in the senatorial reaction against Caesar (chapter 6). The Res Gestae Divi Augusti is of course skewed and biased, and should not be used as a guiding thread in the historical narrative of the time period (p.523). Syme tacitly, throughout the book, asserts Dio’s claim that “the task of the historian has been aggravated beyond all measure,” because “the great question of policy […] were now decided by a few men” (p.407). The sources, then, were wholly unsatisfactory: they were either skewed and unchecked by counter-narratives, or the mystery that shrouded governmental decisions obstructed the ancient historian in his task to acquire reliable information.
                Syme found his sources in the compilation and analysis of the lives of men in their historical contexts, in prosopography. This method allowed for Syme to reconstruct a history of the period, free from the biases of governmental histories, which, as we have seen, were wholly inadequate for a reliable history. Like Sallust, Syme begins his history of the fall of the Republic with Sulla. Sulla’s power, Syme shows rested largely on an alliance with the Caecilii Metelli. Indeed, Sulla had married a Metella, Q. Metellius Pius had been a general of Sulla, and in 79 B.C., the two consuls P. Servilius Vatia and Appius Claudius Pulcher were respectively son and husband of Metelli women. The Claudii and the Porcii were the other two families that controlled the senate (p.20-26), together with the more ancient Aemilii.  For the next half-a-century, the names of the families controlling the senate might change, but the concept remains. The political scene of the Roman Republic was dominated by a group of people. It is the nature and composition of that group that evolves.
                The composition of the senate under Pompeius was ostensibly the same as it had been under Sulla. Pompeius, himself the son of a knight, was of recent nobility. The accession of his family to the closed circle of consular families was largely due to an alliance with the Scipiones in the second century B.C, that is, his family was a client family, and their clientele was not based in Rome (p.30-31). He acquired his authority via a series of military successes, first as a member of Sulla’s party defeating the remaining supporters of Marius, and then through an extraordinary tribunician command to defeat the Pirates. Still, behind his achievements loomed the power of the Metelli and the Aemilii via marriage. Caesar’s own meteoric rise came from an alliance initially with Crassus, and subsequently with Pompeius.  These three men were able to exert influence over the politics of their time through a tight control of the consulate, and key military successes. The latter, though independent of the oligarchy, was crucial, as it gave the “dynasts”-as Syme calls them- auctoritas and the support of the army (chapter 3). Caesar’s senate was enlarged, but the powerhouses remained, since, unlike Sulla, Caesar chose not to purge the Senate of his enemies. The enlargement of the Senate to provincials from Gallia Cisalpina and Italy did not abate the power of the Fabii, the Claudii, the Cornelii, the Aemilii and the Servilii who retained control over the consulship (Chapters 5-7).[3]
                The first major break in the composition of the Senate occurred after Second Civil War, between the Triumvirs Octavianus, Antonius and Lepidus, and the Liberators, Cassius and Brutus.  Already in 43 B.C., in the absence of the Liberators (who had fled), the senate numbered a mere seventeen consulares (out of 900) (p.164). Because the Senate naturally turned to these consular men for authority and guidance, not to mention the administration of the wealthy provinces, the Senate appeared to lack any major form of authority. Their dependence on the major families, was further felt since some of the major players, Lucius Munatius Plancus, M. Aemilius Lepidus and C. Asinus Pollio, were either too far to be relevant, or to intelligent to play the game, and preferred to wait before choosing an allegiance. In other words, the first civil war had decimated the Senate, and deprived it of leadership (Chapter 12). This breach becomes more evident in buildup of the conflict between Antonius and Octavianus, and the subsequent victory of Octavianus.[4] The purges promulgated immediately before and continued after Philippi further exacerbated the Senate’s depletion of consulares. Cicero’s death in 43 B.C. was just a footnote in Syme’s narrative. Though Antonius emerged as the victor, the defeat of his partisans at Perusia, and his absence from Rome allowed Octavianus to replenish the Senate, much in the same way Caesar had, building on a coalition of men from obscure backgrounds but with great abilities (Agrippa, Maecenas), and the old families (chapter 17). The Galatian proconsuls during the early Principate show a clever mix of members of the old oligarchy and new men (chapter 26). Likewise, the party of Tiberius was composed of both “old” houses and new men, all of whom were either too young to owe much of their position to Augustus, or who had a vested interest in pursuing old familial glory (chapter 28).
                Syme’s greatest tour de force lays in his subtle comparison between discourse and prosopography, especially in the later chapters of the book. Indeed, Augustus’ position rested on a careful rhetoric that masked the larger revolution. If Caesar had renewed the Senate with rebel rousers from Gaul, and opened positions to the equestrians, and shamelessly restored the Marian party, when the Senators themselves were largely from the Sullan party (Chapters 5-6), Augustus carefully crafted a discourse around the continuity of the old republican order. The “settlement of 23 B.C.” Syme argues, buried the Republic, but was clouded by discourses of continuity. Augustus had almost died, and relinquished the consulate, and was replaced by L. Sestius, once a republican, now a devout servant to the state.  In exchange, Augustus obtained proconsular imperium over the Empire, and he began to exercise the powers of the tribune (as opposed to simply holding them).[5] The Senate had willingly given up: by removing the consular ornaments from the titulature of Augustus, the Senate had effectively removed itself from the basis of power of Augustus. Indeed, Syme argues,  “the new settlement” set up the two pillars on top of which the regime is based: the army (proconsular imperium) and the people (tribunicia potestas). In other words, Augustus had shown deference towards the senate and liberated its most prestigious office, all the while entrenching his position beyond the reach of the powerful, opportunistic familial dynasties that had plagued the end of the Republic (chapter 23).
In terms of control of discourse, Augustus was able to use patronage to his advantage: the men that he placed in positions of power had effectively become his clients. Some men, like for instance, Agrippa, had also acquired tremendous wealth from their service with Augustus. In the rebuilding program of Rome by his clients, Syme argues, Augustus had become omnipresent in the empire. Then, by securing advancements for the members of his party, Augustus was able to control the system he had created (chapter 25). Thus, Syme’s demagogue, through a careful manipulation of rhetoric and the accidents of history (war, death, and old age) was able to replace the old oligarchy with his own, thus establishing a monarchy and ending the Roman Revolution.
                The criticism of such a text is tricky. Firstly, Syme’s arguments have permeated any lecture on the Roman Republic, and in this way, have become somewhat canonical. Secondly, the benefits of the anthropological concept of cultural relativism, which tempered the way historians analyzed discourse, did not emerge until the 1970’s. One can hardly fault Syme on that ground.
                Still, one can see a limit to prosopography as displayed in Syme’s work. The purpose of the Roman Revolution was to completely reevaluate the discourse previous generations had crafted. Extreme views could and should be adopted. The heroes (Cicero, Caesar, Pompeius) have become, at the very least, shameless promoters. In the case of Cicero, Syme overplays his hand. It is true that Cicero was not consistent in his affiliations. He had opposed Pompei, but fought for him against Caesar (chapter 3); he had initially turned a blind eye to Octavianus, before pushing him forward as the savior of the Republic, even giving Octavianus’ illegal army of veterans Senatorial clearance and legality (chapter 10). The speeches are a special target of Syme, who shows that, from a philological perspective, Cicero was exceedingly vague, using words devoid of political sense. Indeed, the libertas of the Roman people carried no real actual significance (p.152-153). For Syme, Cicero was attached primarily to his own advancement (p.139). The argument is dangerous. That the words used in Cicero lacked precise meaning is not uncommon in general political discourses, and Cicero still shows remarkable consistency in choosing a side that would, in the end, help the salvation of the Republic. Was Octavianus the most dangerous threat to the Republic? Objectively, Antonius’ power base resembled Caesar’s. His authority was extensive (Gaul), and his army powerful. He also, in 43 had placed Hirtius and Pansa as consuls, probably because of their lack of auctoritas (p.149). Octavianus’ army was small in comparison, and only coupled with D. Brutus could Octavianus really pose a threat to Antonius. Is it a stretch to see Cicero as genuinely concerned, as seeing Octavianus as a little threat that could be controlled? In other words, perhaps Cicero’s loyalties did indeed lie with the Republic that he so desperately wished to save, and that his alliances reflect a genuine belief in the person who would save the republic.
                Prosopography, as displayed in the Roman Republic, really acts as a check on available sources. Like other non-literary checks, archaeology for instance, one runs the risk of transforming one type of source as a slave to the other. Syme wants his Cicero to be an opportunistic demagogue, therefore, he becomes one. His alliances seem to reflect a lack of consistency, so too should his speeches. Still, Syme’s work provided a complete reevaluation of a historical discourse that had become canonical. Syme’s analysis shattered the field, and his methodology has allowed for an objective use of information contained in the sources.


[1] For the sake of clarity, Octavianus will remain Octavianus until the discussion of the principate.
[2] On the context for the rise of Maecenas and other kings, see p.235-238, chapter 18; on the politics of the oligarchs, see specifically chapter 2, where Syme exposes the machinations of the large families, especially the Metelli.
[3] Syme’s appendix is tremendously useful for corroborating his evidence.
[4] Syme struggles with this victory, since, as he demonstrated in chapters 7-9, Antonius clearly had the upper hand.
[5] From then on, Augustus would date his years from the acquisition of the tribunicia potestas.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Grafton Book Review



At the Crossroads of Arts and Science

A Review of The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton

Reviewed by Laurent Cases



Monographs or articles of academic value contain some method of citation; it is natural for scholars to expect that any scholarly work should contain a way to assess a given statement, as well as assess its reliability. Students of pre-modern history are well aware that such methods as footnotes or endnotes are fairly recent. After all, the ancients did not use footnotes or endnotes. Herodotus, instead of citing his sources, would use the word φὰσιν to indicate divergent storylines in sources. This practice endured well into the byzantine period, as the historian Zonaras, when discussing the fate of the Palmyrene empress Zenobia, also citing the two main narratives, would also use that same word marker found in Herodotus (Zon 607). At the other end of the spectrum, historians began to collect documents and data in order that they might sustain a point. Eusebius of Caesarea is a case already mentioned in Grafton’s work. Optatus of Milevis, in Against the Donatists, attached to his manuscript a flurry of documents with the aim of demonstrating the validity of his position.

Yet, even as a student of this particular historical tradition, footnotes are in fact second nature when crafting a discourse about the time period, even if their purpose has remained largely unsought, their true nature unidentified. In Grafton’s own words, “most students of historiography, for their part, have interested themselves in the explicit professions of their subjects, rather than their technical practices, especially those that were tacitly, rather than explicitly transmitted and employed” (p.26). Still, footnotes have become an integral part of the tools of the historian, and their use, hence, is a vision of a certain kind of history. Grafton’s work traces the development of the footnote as a mirror of larger historical trends, and changes in the mentalités of scholars and authors alike.

Chapter one of Grafton’s work introduces the conundrum that he seeks to resolve. The historian, Grafton states, has two major tasks: to examine all of the sources relevant to a certain historical problem, and to create an original narrative from these sources. Footnotes, Grafton states, are the proof that both tasks have been carried out (p.4-5). Grafton extrapolates on the implications of this statement. First, footnotes are the marks of appurtenance to a professional fellowship. By writing footnotes, Grafton states, the apprentice stakes a claim at being a historian, and perhaps most important, at being a member of a group by engaging in a discussion with the members of that group (p.7-17). The inherent problem is that, though the young historian enthusiastically displays this membership, as the historian ages, the footnote becomes a hindrance: it breaks the narrative, and affects the accessibility of the text. That is, the writing of a historical narrative becomes a science rather than an art form.

Chapters two and three evaluate this hypothesis, that footnotes evolved (out of simple glossings on manuscripts) from the marriage between history (the art of narrative) with philology (the science of source criticism). At the center of this marriage, scholars have argued, is the figure of Ranke. Ranke, Grafton argues, had become obsessed with the recreation of the past, “as it was” after the cruel realization that the Louis IX and Charles of Burgundy of Walter Scott had not existed. Grafton does point out that footnotes had existed prior to Ranke: Gibbon (in chapter 1) and Gucciardini both acted as predecessors to Ranke with respect to the use of footnotes. However, as Grafton demonstrates, Ranke used his footnotes differently, that is, while Gucciardini used sources rather heavily to cite any and all sources, Ranke refined this model by viewing footnotes as the quotation and citation of proper sources. Chapter three is concerned with the establishment of this marriage between philology and history. Though a historian, Ranke’s fame had been in his criticism of Gucciardini, and specifically, Ranke’s demonstration that Gucciardini had invented certain speeches in his history (Chapter 2). Grafton shows further that the combination of philology and history changed the nature of history: “history should tell the double story of the historical past and the historian’s research” (p.67). Not only did Ranke reject that notion of history, but philology, as a method, had been around since the Renaissance. Then, the footnote did not originate with Ranke and the German academics of the nineteenth century.

The link established between footnote and scientific history holds, however, as Grafton demonstrates in chapter four, as he examines the attitudes of eighteenth century philosophes. Voltaire, on the one hand disliked foonotes as exhibition of pedantic knowledge that got in the way of the historical narrative, while Tissot on the other hand, viewed footnotes as a natural apparatus of historical research. Tissot’s point is exemplified further in the anecdote of a debate between Gibbon and Davis, as Davis argued that Gibbon’s footnotes were used as a clever artifice to avoid detection. The underlying point is that, by the time Gibbon was writing, academic historical works necessitated the use of footnotes.

Chapters five and six explore different ways in which footnotes predated the enlightenment. Again following that footnotes stem out of the philological tradition, Grafton focused on De Thou, the legal historian, who was instrumental in propagating the use of first-hand accounts as the best source for an event. These sources were largely quoted in footnotes. Most interestingly, Grafton uses the folios of Ben Johnson’s Sejanus, heavily annotated undoubtedly as a shield against potential repression in a tense political climate, to show essentially that footnotes were used in lieu of collection of sources. Chapter six looks to antiquarianism and antiquarian attitudes as the earliest archetypes of footnotes. Indeed, the desire to annotate texts to give them credence can be found in the Greek historical tradition of the fourth century B.C.E, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Greek historians and Jewish lawyers used heavy text collection as support for a wide range of problematic issues; for instance, the demonstration that Biblical codes predated Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. The antiquarians, Grafton demonstrates, had a profound effect on the development of footnotes, in that “their [antiquaries] methodical criticism prodived the model for he analytical, though not the narrative, procedures that Robertson and Möser used” (p.187). However, antiquaries did not annotate: the sources were discussed in the text proper. Then, antiquarians might have provided the impetus for analytical history and have created an intellectual model for the footnote, but they clearly did not “invent” the footnote.

Chapter seven is the culmination of Grafton’s reasoning. In this chapter, he believes that he has identified the archetypal footnote, both in form and in spirit, of the modern footnote: Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary. Perhaps forced by necessity to hide important data in his footnotes to avoid repression from censure, Bayle undoubtedly believed in full and appropriate citations. Grafton’s aforementioned quote about the duality of the historian that Ranke rejected is fully formed for Bayle who saw himself as a narrator and commentator (p.200). Bayle’s commentary arose from the criticism of Descartes, who had elevated mathematical knowledge and method as the pinnacle of truth. Footnoting arose out of Bayle’s belief that historical knowledge was more accurate and applicable than mathematical truth. The final step in the evolution of the footnote came with Jean Le Clerc, who crafted the footnote in its modern form: clear, concise and accessible. Then, according to Grafton, one can find the origins of the footnote in the Republic of Letters, in the reaction against Descartes and mathematical truth, and in the definition of history as a scientific endeavor.

Grafton’s masterful study has taken the form of the dialogue between history, and the art of historical writing, and the science of source criticism. Indeed, though the book purports to delve into the history of the footnote, Grafton instead takes his readers on a journey into the ways in which historians have conceptualized their craft. Why Grafton chose the footnote as his focal point is made clear in the first chapter. Indeed, the footnote is the way in which one expresses appurtenance to a certain intellectual group. It is the mark of the historian’s craft.

Grafton’s methodology is set forth in his preface when he states that “the footnote is not so uniform and reliable as some historians believe. Nor is it the pretentious authoritarian device that other historians reject.” This dichotomy in attitude between science (sentence 1) and the art (sentence 2) is at the core of the footnote. From Ranke’s rejection of the footnote as an ugly alteration of what is otherwise an art form (chatper 2) to Bayle’s extolling of the footnote as a necessary tool, Grafton’s book offers countless examples of scholars torn between the scientific approach to their craft (via source criticism) and the art of crafting a historical narrative. Gibbon’s footnotes are characterized as truthful and accurate but inaccessible, while Möser filled his pages with an extreme amount of footnotes, so as to make his discourse barely legible. Grafton’s clear and precise examples bring the wrenching conflict between the artist and the scientist in all historians to life.

Grafton’s book also exemplifies his belief that a history should show both the narrative and the historical inquiry. Indeed, Grafton begins with the end: Ranke and the evolution of the historical method in the German universities during the nineteenth century (a topic developed more fully in his other work Worlds Made by Words), and breaks down the ideology of Ranke and Niebuhr to its core components. Moving backwards, he then identifies the various influences of Ranke and Niebuhr: Voltaire’s remarks against the pedantic footnotes, the scientific dismantling of the Donation of Constantine by Valla, or the grand literary narratives of Gucciardini and Bruni. Grafton then states that these are but the components that lay behind the idea of the footnote, but that they do not explain the footnote itself (nor do they answer the deeper question on the nature of the Historian’s craft). He finally reaches the first formulation of the idea of the footnote in the response of the liberal arts (via Bayle and Le Clerc) to methodical science (Descartes).
Grafton’s method, traced along the lines of inquiry and discourse, is at the core of what is perhaps my only critique of this book. Grafton’s own training as an early modern Western historian comes to light in this work. Indeed, Grafton does not account for the Greek historical tradition. In chapter five, Grafton jumps from Herodotus to Eusebius of Caesarea, forgetting in the process to address the important historian Thucydides with any depth. Grafton reproduces the bias of Ranke and Le Clerc that the ancients did not have footnotes. This is in theory correct, but the Greeks’ use of the word φὰσιν as a means to distinguish between multiple accounts deserved to be investigated in this context. Lastly, Grafton forgets two important ancient historians: Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus. Both of these historians deserve attention as writers of grand narratives to be sure, but also as expositors of some historical truth.[1] While there are no footnotes in classical histories, the process of inquiry and the exposition of truth by sorting out sources deserved a greater place in the narrative, rather than what felt like a footnote in Le Clerc’s

[1] Ammianus, for instance, made abundant use of primary eyewitness accounts, like imperial reports and possibly merchants. Guy Sabbah, La méthode d’Ammien (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), esp. the second part.