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Cornelius Nepos, ‘Atticus’ and the Roman Revolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Fergus Millar
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Extract

The biography of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, covering the last eight decades of the Republic and written at the precise moment of the establishment of monarchy by Octavian, ought always to have been treated both as one of the best introductions to the period, and as an exposition, from a unique angle, of some of the values expressed in Roman society. But now, more than ever, there may be a place for a brief essay which attempts to bring out both some values exhibited in this particular text and the way in which these were taken up, distorted, and deployed in the propaganda of the Augustan regime. For, first, the larger background of late-Republican scholarship, antiquarianism, historiography, and biography has been fully explored by Elizabeth Rawson; second, Joseph Geiger has argued for the originality of Nepos as a writer of political biography; third, we have a major study of the ethical models which it is the purpose of the biography to hold up for emulation. Finally, John North, in an important review-article on recent works on Roman religion, has identified three significant characteristics of late-Republican religiosity: a scholarly or antiquarian perception of religious change, often seen as decline; the identification of religion as the subject of a particular form of discourse; and a shift in focus within the sphere of religion, from the community as a whole to great men within it. All three come together, as we will see below, in the passage of Nepos' biography in which he records how, some time in the 30s B.C., Atticus suggested to Octavian that the now roofless temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol should be repaired.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 1988 , pp. 40 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

Notes

1. Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 15–16 on historiography and antiquarianism. This paper, as will be evident, makes no attempt to explore the wider deployment of antiquarian studies in the Augustan period.

2. Geiger, J., Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography (Historia Einzelschriften 47, Stuttgart, 1985)Google Scholar.

3. Labate, M. and Narducci, E., ‘Mobilità dei modelli etici e relativismo dei valori: il ‘personaggio’ di Attico’, in Giardina, A., Schiavone, A., Società romana e produzione schiavistica iii: modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni soziali (Rome and Bari, 1981), p. 127Google Scholar.

4. North, J., ‘Religion and Politics, from Republic to Principate’, JRS 76 (1986), 251Google Scholar.

5. The sparse biographical data are collected in Schanz, M., Hosius, C., Geschichte der römischen Literatur 4 i (Munich, 1927), pp. 351–2Google Scholar.

6. See Ewins, U., ‘The Enfranchisement of Cisalpine Gaul’, Pap. Brit. Sch. Rome 23 (1955), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peyre, C., La Cisalpine Gauloise du IIIe au Ie siècle avant J–C (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar. Nepos himself might therefore have gained the Roman citizenship per magistratum, or, as any well-placed peregrinus might, through a viritane grant. He would remain none the less an example of the ‘outsiders’ from this region to whom we owe so much of our conception of Rome.

7. Fragments in Marshall, P. K., Cornelii Nepotis Vitae cum fragmentis (Teubner, 1977), pp. 101–2Google Scholar. Catullus 1, 11.5–7: ‘cum ausus es unus Italorum/omne aevum tribus explicare chartis,/doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis.’

8. Compare the discussion by Hellegouarc'h, J., Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République2 (Paris, 1972), esp. pp. 397–411Google Scholar.

9. Horsfall, N., ‘Some Problems in the “Laudatio Turiae”’, Bull. Inst. Cl. Stud. 30 (1983), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See e.g. Nicolet, C., L'Ordre équestre á l'époque républicaine i (Paris, 1966), pp. 434fGoogle Scholar.

11. For the functions of equites under Augustus, and their predominantly military character, see esp. Nicolet, C., ‘Augustus, Government and the Propertied Classes’ in Millar, F. and Segal, E. (edd.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford, 1984), p. 89Google Scholar.

12. This passage is not taken into account in RE s.v. ‘Legatus’, xii (1925)Google Scholar, cols. 1141–3. Note however Schleussner, B., Die Legaten der römischen Republik (Munich, 1978), p. 154Google Scholar, noting the parallel provided by Diodorus, 37.8.1.

13. See esp. Wiseman, T. P., New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 BC–AD 14 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

14. For a good account of this, Mitchell, T., Cicero: the Ascending Years (New Haven, 1979)Google Scholar.

15. Most editors read ‘(M.) Servio, fratri Sulpicii’. But see Mattingly, H., Athenaeum 53 (1975), 265Google Scholar and n.14 in favour of retaining the reading of the Leiden MS: ‘M. Servilio fratri Sulpicii.’

16. Brunt, P. A., ‘Nobilitas and Novitas’, JRS 72 (1982), 1Google Scholar.

17. Broughton, , MRR i 290Google Scholar (Sex. Iulius Caesar, praetor in 208); 418 (Marcius, P. Rex, legatus in 171Google Scholar); 471 (Q. Marcius Rex, praetor in 144).

18. See esp. Wiseman, T. P., ‘Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome’, G&R 21 (1974), 153Google Scholar, now reprinted in his Roman Studies, Literary and Historical (Liverpool, 1987), p. 207.

19. On the transformation of the Forum see Zanker, P., Forum Romanum: die Neugestaltung durch Augustus (Tübingen, 1972)Google Scholar, and now of course the major re-examination by Coarelli, F., Il Foro Romano ii: periodo repubblicano e augusteo (Rome, 1985), esp. pp. 258f.Google Scholar; his reconstruction of the placing of the Fasti is followed here.

20. On the progressive monopolization of public honour by the Imperial family see esp. Eck, W., ‘Senatorial Self-Representation: Developments in the Augustan Period’, in Millar, and Segal, , op. cit. (n.ll), p. 129Google Scholar.

21. For the details see RE Supp. vi (1935), cols. 1227–9Google Scholar; Rawson, , op. cit. (n.l), pp. 198–9Google Scholar; 230–1. If we knew what Varro's πεπλογραφία was (Cicero, An. 16.11.3), we might have to conclude that some version of the Hebdomades or De imaginibus was in circulation in 44 B.C.

22. On this Zanker, P., Forum Augustum: das Bildprogramm (Tübingen, 1968)Google Scholar; Anderson, J. C., The Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora (Collection Latomus 182, Brussels, 1984), ch. 2Google Scholar. For the elogia, the standard edition by Degrassi, A., Inscriptiones Italiae xii.3: Elogia (1937)Google Scholar, with Tun, S. R., ‘Frammenti delle statue dei summi viri nel Foro di Augusto’, Dial, di Arch. 3 (1981), 69Google Scholar.

23. Livy, 4. 19–20, with the invaluable comments of Ogilvie, R. M., Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, ad loc.

24. Syme, R., ‘Imperator Caesar: a Study in Nomenclature’, Historia 7 (1958), 172Google Scholar = Roman Papers i (Oxford, 1979), p. 361Google Scholar.