Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T16:34:53.322Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Livy's Alexander Digression (9.17–19): Counterfactuals and Apologetics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

Ruth Morello
Ruth Morello*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Orthodox historians have tended to dislike attempts to think counterfactually about the past, on the grounds that ‘virtual history’ offers little more than entertainment and degenerates too easily into banal trivialities. In addition, it provokes fears about the offending historian's commitment to the truth and the consequent effect on his readers’ historical memories; a recent essay in the New Statesman, deploring the increasing presence of counterfactual history in the syllabus for national exams in British schools, condemned it as an agent of ‘collective amnesia’. E. P. Thompson was more trenchant: ‘unhistorical shit’. Yet popular and professional interest in counterfactual history continues to grow, spawning a recent radio series and a number of books on the ‘what if?’ theme. It seems, then, an opportune time to reconsider the famous passage of counterfactual history in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, the Alexander digression at 9.17–19, a passage which, it so happens, one popular website lists as the first example of the genre. This paper offers, after a brief survey of previous scholarship (Section II), an account of Livy's allusions both to his sources and predecessors and to his own text (Section III), followed by an integrated reading (Section IV) which will argue more fully that the passage embodies central Livian ideas about the utility of historical writing, that it is thematically tightly woven into its place in Book 9, and, finally, that it offers a powerful critique of one-man rule which has important consequences for our understanding of the historian's view of Augustus.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 92 , November 2002 , pp. 62 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Ruth Morello 2002. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper was first delivered before colleagues at the University of Manchester in autumn 2000. Subsequently, I have profited enormously from the comments and suggestions not only of this journal's anonymous readers, but also of Tim Cornell, Alison Sharrock, John Moles, Tony Woodman, and especially Stephen Oakley, who scrutinized and improved almost every page and generously made sections of his forthcoming commentary on Livy Book 9 available to me in typescript.

References

1 Ferguson, N., Virtual History (1997), 1–20Google Scholar, surveys the range of responses to counterfactual history.

2 Sardar, Z., New Statesman, 1 May 2000, 25–7.Google Scholar

3 Thompson, E. P., ‘The poverty of theory’, in idem, The Poverty of Theory’ and Other Essays (1978), 300 (see Ferguson, op. cit. (n. I), 5).Google Scholar

4 Most recently: Cowley, R. (ed.), What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, (2000)Google Scholar; Tally, S., Almost America: From the Colonists to Clinton: A ‘What If?’ History of the US (2000)Google Scholar. For the increasing interest in the counterfactual among classicists, see Brodersen, K. (ed.), Virtuelle Antike: Wendepunkte der alten Geschichte (2000)Google Scholar.

5 http://www.uchronia.net.

6 9.17.10–11. On the army's technical expertise, cf. 9.17.15 (commanders' skills); 9.19.6–9 (army equipment and deployment).

7 Standard bibliography: Anderson, W. B., ‘Contributions to the study of the ninth book of Livy’, TAPA 39 (1908), 89–103;Google Scholar idem, Livy Book 9 (1928), esp. 255–8; Momigliano, A., ‘Livio, Plutarco e Giustino su virtù e fortuna dei Romani’, Athenaeum 12 (1934), 45–56;Google Scholar P. Treves, Il mito di Alessandro e la Roma d'Augusto (1953); Alfonsi, L., ‘Sul passo liviano relativo ad Alessandro Magno’, Hermes 90 (1962), 505–6;Google ScholarLuce, T. J., ‘The dating of Livy's first decade’, TAPA 96 (1965), 209–40;Google Scholar E. Burck, Vom Menschenbild in der römischen Literatur (1966), 327ff.; Breitenbach, H. R., ‘Der Alexanderexkurs bei Livius’, Museum Helveticum 26 (1969), 146–52;Google Scholar A. Toynbee, ‘If Alexander the Great had lived on’, in idem, Some Problems of Greek History (1969), 441–86; O. Weippert, Alexander-Imitatio und römischen Politik in Republikanischer Zeit, diss. Augsburg (1972), esp. 1–16 and 224–49; J.-Cl. Richard, ‘Alexandre et Pompée: àpropos de Tite-Live 9.16.19–19.17’, Mélanges P. Boyancé (1974), 653–99; Wirth, G., ‘Alexander und Rom’, in Alexandre le Grand, image et réalité, Entretiens sur l'Antiquité Classique 22 (1975), 181–210;Google ScholarBraccesi, L., ‘Livio e la tematica di Alessandro in etá Augustea’, CISA 4 (1976), 179–99;Google ScholarSantangelo, V. Viparelli, ‘Ironia e ideologia nell' excursus del 9 libro delle Storie di Livio’, BStudLat 8 (1978), 43–55;Google Scholar F. W. Walbank, ‘Livy, Macedonia and Alexander’, in Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honour of Charles F. Edson (1981), 335–56; Santoro, F.L'Hoir, , ‘Heroic epithets and recurrent themes in Ab urbe condita’, TAPA 120 (1990), 221–41;Google ScholarIsager, J., ‘Alexander the Great in Roman literature from Pompey to Vespasian’, in Carlsen, J., Due, B., Due, O. Steen and Poulsen, B. (eds), Alexander the Great: Reality and Myth, Analecta Romani Instituti Danici 20 (1993), 75–84;Google ScholarBiffi, N., ‘L'excursus liviano su Alessandro Magno’, BStudLat 25 (1995), 462–76;Google ScholarSuerbaum, W., ‘Am Scheideweg zur Zukunft: Alternative Geschehensverlaüfe bei römischen Historikern’, Gymnasium 104 (1997), 36–54;Google Scholar G. Forsythe, Livy and Early Rome (1999), 114–18.

8 cf. Conway, /Walters, , CQ 12 (1918), 100:Google Scholar a ‘boyish yet thoughtful deliberatio’. E. T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (1967), 228, regarded the post Caudine narrative as being full of ‘rhetorical irrelevancies’, including the ‘long-winded essay’ on Alexander. In 1971 J. Briscoe (in T. Dorey (ed.), Livy (1971), 13) still accepted Anderson's view: ‘the section intrudes somewhat unhappily into the narrative’.

9 Anderson, op. cit. (n. 7, 1908), 94 (repeated in his commentary, op. cit. (n. 7, 1928), 256).

10 Treves, op. cit. (n. 7), 15.

11 9.17.2.

12 9.18.6. These are usually identified as Timagenes and Metrodorus of Scepsis.

13 9.16.19.

14 Lipovsky, J., A Historiographical Study of Livy Books VI-X (1981), 141Google Scholar; Burck, op. cit. (n. 7), 326. For analogies between 9.17–19 and the Gallic digression (5.33.2–35.3), which seems to separate the Gallic Sack from the rest of Book 5, see Viparelli Santangelo, op. cit. (n. 7), 44; Oakley, S. P., A Commentary on Livy Books VI-X (1997), vol. i, 113Google Scholar.

15 Lipovsky, op. cit. (n. 14), 151. Cf. Salmon, op. cit. (n. 8), 226, 229.

16 Burck, op. cit. (n. 7), 325.

17 ‘È infatti solo l'excursus che permette di considerare conclusa la vicenda di Caudio e di giudicarla nella sua esatta prospettiva storica’, Viparelli Santangelo, op. cit. (n. 7), 45.

18 Treves, op. cit. (n. 7), 20; Marincola, J., Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (1997), 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Gruen, E. S., ‘Augustus and the ideology of war and peace’, in Winkes, R. (ed.), The Age of Augustus (1985), 70.Google Scholar

19 von Haehling, R., Zeitbezüge des T. Livius in der ersten Dekade seines Geschichtswerkes: nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, Historia Einzelschr. 61 (1989), 57Google Scholar; cf. Luce, op. cit. (n. 7), 228 for possible allusion to the disasters of Crassus in the desert and Antony in the mountains; Richard, op. cit. (n. 7); Santoro L'Hoir, op. cit. (n. 7), 240: ‘the entire gratuitous episode seems to make sense in relation to the rest of the narrative only if Livy intended it to foreshadow the pivotal battle of his own century’.

20 The latter, at least, connect digression to context by pointing also to 9.15.7 (on the recovery of standards surrendered at Caudium, ‘receptis omnibus signis’) in support of their interpretation, reading it as an allusion to the recovery of the standards lost at Carrhae (see Treves, op. cit. (n. 7), 20).

21 ORF I.I–II; Kennedy, G., The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), 26–9Google Scholar. The translation is that of Kennedy. For the speech, cf. Cic., Cato Maior 16, Brut. 55, 61; Livy, Per. 13; Quint., Inst.Or. 2.16.7; App., Samn. 10.4–6. For a full account of the problems of dating and authenticating its subject matter, see Weippert, op. cit. (n. 7), 10–17.

22 Alexander was a favourite subject for rhetorical display. Surviving examples, largely of the type which conditioned Anderson's reponse to the digression, include the suasoriae of the Elder Seneca urging Alexander to travel across Ocean (Suas. 1) or to enter Babylon (Suas. 4), and the debates (represented in Plutarch's De fortuna Romanorum and De Alexandri magni fortuna aut virtute) about the relative importance of fortune and virtue for the success of Rome and of Alexander.

23 Livy's interest in, and familiarity with, Parthian matters is suggested by Per. 100, which tells us that the book contained a departure from the narrative of Roman affairs, namely an account of the war in the 60s B.C. between Phraates of Parthia and Tigranes the Armenian, although the chronological gap between the composition of Book 9 and Book 100 limits the usefulness of this evidence in relation to the digression.

24 There is other evidence, too, for Livy's interest in counterfactuals: Seneca (NQ. 5.18.4) reports that the historian was uncertain whether it would be better if Caesar had never been born, although he does not indicate whether this debate appeared in one of Livy's philosophical/historical dialogues or in a digression from later books of the AUC. Suerbaum (op. cit (n. 7), 42) notes counterfactual speculation also in Book 2.1.3–6, as to the effect Brutus' actions would have had if they had taken place earlier in Rome's history.

25 von Haehling, op. cit. (n. 19), 25 n. 17. 9.18.12 strengthens the likelihood that it is the reader in his historical activity of surveying the monuments of history (see Praef. 9–10) who is the addressee of 9.18.11.

26 Praef. 3, ‘iuvabit tamen’; 9.17.2, ‘tamen... libeat’. On pleasure as naturally associated with digressions, see A. J. Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography 106.15.

27 For deverticulum, see TLL V.1.854.23–65. On deversoria and deverticula, cf. Gowers, E., ‘Horace, Satires 1.5: an inconsequential journey’, PCPS 39 (1993), 50–1Google Scholar.

28 R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (2nd edn, 1970), 23ff. Cf. Leeman, A., Helikon 1 (1961), 30f.Google Scholar; Paschalis, M., Livy's Praefatio and Sallust, diss. Ohio State University, (1982)Google Scholar; Korpanty, J., ‘Sallust, Livius und ambitio’, Philologus 127 (1983), 61–71;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMoles, J. L., ‘Livy's Preface’, PCPS 39 (1993), 141–68Google Scholar.

29 At 9.17.3 the use of pollere (see W. D. Lebek, Verba Prisca (1970), 300) helps to mark these conventionalities as Sallustian (contrast Caesar's potest in BG 6.30.2).

30 ‘igitur talibus viris non labor insolitus, non locus ullus asper aut arduus erat, non armatus hostis formidulosus: virtus omnia domuerat’. ‘So for such men toil was not unaccustomed, no terrain was harsh or arduous, an armed enemy held no fears: manly virtue had subdued everything’, Cat. 7.5; cf. ‘nunquam ab equite hoste, nunquam a pedite, nunquam aperta acie, nunquam aequis, utique nunquam nostris locis laboravimus’, ‘never have we had difficulties from enemy cavalry, never from infantry, never in open battle, never on even terrain, certainly never on our own ground’, 9.19.15–16.

31 ‘mihi multa legenti, multa audienti’, Cat. 53.2; ‘mihi multa agitanti’, Cat. 53.4. Cf. ‘quibus saepe … cogitationibus volutavi animum’, Livy 9.17.2. Cf. Vell. 1.16.1.

32 ‘silentio praeterire non fuit consilium’, Cat. 53.6; ‘quibus saepe tacitus cogitationibus volutavi animum’, Livy 9.17.2.

33 ‘quos quoniam res obtulerat’, Cat. 53.6 (cf. ‘resipsa hortari videtur’, Cat. 5.9); ‘tanti regis ac ducis mentio … eas evocat in medium’, Livy 9.17.2.

34 Cat. 53.5 contains a textual crux, but the image seems clear. Livy's model of an idealized past is, as so often, less monolithic than that of the Sallustian monographs. On the one hand, Livy flatters Rome by ascribing fully-developed disciplina to the regal period while Sallust dates the beginning of really intensive training only to the competitive post-regal era. On the other, Livy's assessment of Roman success is more nuanced in allowing for setbacks due to unfavourable conditions (9.19.15–16) and political obstacles to consular achievement (9.18.13–16).

35 See, recently, Levene, D., ‘Sallust's Catiline and Cato the Censor’, CQ 50 (2000), 170–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Pliny, N.H. 8.11. See D. Kienast, Cato der Zensor (1954), 109–10; A. J. Woodman, Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (2.94–131) (1977), 30f. On the parallels between Catonian practice and the strategies of Livy's text, see C. S. Kraus, Livy. Ab Urbe Condita Book VI (1994), 17 n. 69.

37 If, as is now usually assumed, Sail., Hist. fr. 8M (‘nam a principio urbis ad bellum Persi Macedon-icum’) is a reference to the scope of Cato's Origines, we may be looking at a more subtle allusion to Cato's work: Livy's digression, after all, refers briefly to events and people within the same timespan, i.e. a principio urbis (cf. 9.17.1; 9.17.11) ad bellum Persi Macedonicum (cf. 9.19.14). For comment and bibliography on the Sallustian fragment, see P. McGushin, Sallust. The Histories, Books i–ii (1992), 67–9.

38 Restituit rem means, literally, ‘made the state stand again’. This line is quoted by Livy at 30.26.9. Cf. Ogilvie's comments on Livy Praef. 9. On Ennius and the Alexander digression, see Alfonsi, op. cit. (n. 7), 506; Pinsent, J., ‘Livy 6.3.1 (caput rei Romanae): some Ennian echoes in Livy’, LCM 2 (1977), 15;Google Scholar Santoro L'Hoir, op. cit. (n. 7), 231; Oakley, S. P., A Commentary on Livy Books VI–X (1998), vol. ii, 445Google Scholar. For the unus homo motif in elogia, see Cic, Cato Maior 61 on A. Atilius Calatinus (‘hunc unum plurimae consentiunt gentes populi primarium fuisse virum’) and CIL I.28 on Scipio (‘hone oino ploirume cosentiont R[omani]/ duonoro optimo fuise viro’).

39 I owe this suggestion to Stephen Oakley.

40 A further engagement at 9.17.15 with ‘Pyrrhic’ material is pointed out by Weissenborn-Müller (1890), ad loc: Livy's eulogy of his commanders' technical military skills (9.17.15) contrasts with 35.14.8–9, where Hannibal (naming the three greatest generals as Alexander, Pyrrhus, and himself) credits Pyrrhus with first development of several of these skills. Clearly, then, the Alexander digression gives Rome the opportunity to ‘defeat’ all three of the world's greatest generals.

41 8.34. On disciplina and the sources of Roman military strength as a central theme in Book 8 as a whole, see Lipovsky, op. cit. (n. 14), 102, 130.

42 8.7.19, ‘cum aut morte tua sancienda sint consulum imperia aut impunitate in perpetuum abroganda, nee te quidem … recusare censeam, quin disciplinam militarem culpa tua prolapsam restituas’.

43 Having abandoned the clupeus for the scutum and the phalanx for the maniple and subsequently for even more flexible deployment of well-spaced groups, 8.8.3. Cf. 9.19.7–8.

44 8.8.15.

45 8.8.18.

46 The death of Decius (9.17.13), as Livy describes it in 8.9.9–14, demonstrates the capacity of the Romans to succeed despite the loss of a commander. The account of the battle at Veseris surely illustrates at least one of the points made at 9.18.13–19: Manlius' masterly management of the battle after Decius' death can do duty as an instance of a commander compensating for the temeritas of a colleague. For this reading of 8.9.9–14, see R. Morello, ‘Livy on devotio and disciplina’, Revue de Philologie (forthcoming).

47 cf. 9.17.17, ‘vestigia domesticae cladis’.

48 Kraus, C. S., ‘“No second Troy”: topoi and refoundation in Livy, Book V’, TAPA 124 (1994), 268Google Scholar. For digressions which offer readers symbolic invasions of the territory described, see Kraus, C. S. and Woodman, A. J., Latin Historians (1997), 40–1.Google Scholar

49 See Morello, R., ‘Place and road: neglected aspects of Livy 9.1–19’ (forthcoming). Cf. Kraus, op. cit (n. 47), 286Google Scholar; Jaeger, M., ‘Guiding metaphor and narrative point of view in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita’, in Kraus, C. S. (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (1999), 183–93Google Scholar. On the road metaphor in Greek writers, see Becker, O., Das Bild des Weges und verwandte Vorstellungen im Frühgriechischen Denken, Hermes Einzelschr. 4 (1937)Google Scholar. For the road image used to introduce or describe digressions, see, e.g., Quint. 4.3.14.

50 Suerbaum, op. cit. (n. 7), 45.

51 9.3.12 (Herennius); 9.6.10(Calavius). Cf. Viparelli Santangelo, op. cit. (n. 7), 46 n. 11.

52 9.7.15; 10.4–5; 12.3–4.

53 See Morello, op. cit. (n. 49).

54 ‘Nemo unus erat vir quo magis innixa res Romana staret’, 9.16.19; ‘unum Alexandrum’, 9.18.18. See Santoro L'Hoir, op. cit. (n. 7), 230–41.

55 Drinking: 9.16.13 ‘capacissimum’ (cf. Dio fr. 36, 23) ∼ Sen., Ep. 83.23. Livy's Papirius, though, can take his food and drink. Athletics: 9.16.13 (where Livy comments on Cursor's name, and uses the word cursu) ∼ Plut., Alex. 3.5; De Alex. fort. 1.9. Rages: 8.30.10ff. Cf. 8.35.10 ‘trucem dictatoris iram’; 8.35.12 ‘ira alienavit animos’ ∼ Sen., De ira 3.17.1–3. On Papirius' ira, see Lipovsky, op. cit. (n. 14), 119f.

56 Not all of them quite contemptary (Breitenbach, op. cit. (n.7), 148).

57 Contrast the special foreknowledge given to the reader of Camillus' importance (5.19.2), and the subsequent confirmation of that importance (5.32.7; 6.1.4), orthe exclusive focus on Papirius' son at 10.38.1, while his consular colleague's name is sup-pressed until 10.39.1. Ammianus restores Papirius' solitary status (‘the only one (solus) considered fit to resist Alexander, if he had set foot on Italy', 30.8.6); cf. Oros. 3.15.10 and Jo. Lyd., Mag. 1.38.

58 Santoro L'Hoir, op. cit. (n. 7), 238, slips up here: the name in apposition to ‘ultor unicus’ is not Papirius but Cornelius. For Livy's unusually copious use of unicus, see Dutoit, E., ‘Unicus, unice chez Tite-Live’, Latomus 15 (1956), 481–8Google Scholar. For the significance of Camillus during the Caudine disaster, see especially 9.4.14. On the annalistic uncertainty as to the commander of the Revenge Expedition, see Forsythe, op. cit. (n. 7), 72–3.

59 A. J. Pomeroy, The Appropriate Comment. Death Notices in the Ancient Historians (1991), 163 n. 43; Kraus, op. cit. (n. 36), 128, 176, 226.

60 Lentulus' father: 9.4.8. Camillus: 9.4.14. ‘Not gold but arms’ motif: 9.4.16. The memory of Camillus will again be problematic in the third decade, where unique, Camillan, status is once more treated as a matter for irony: see Dutoit, op. cit. (n. 58), 486 and Kraus, op. cit. (n. 36), 128.

61 Exactores regum must be pointed in this context: Roman disciplina was first practised not only by kings like Alexander, but also by those who drove them out.

62 P. Hardie, The Epic Successors of Virgil (1993), 3.

63 Richard, op. cit. (n. 7), 663.

64 On Fabian number games in other contexts, see Hardie, op. cit. (n. 62), 5.

65 cf. 9.19.12.

66 Note already the collective singular Romanum.

67 9.19.5. Again, Alexander's achievements are minimized: those conquered by the Romans were to be respected, while little profit or satisfaction was to be found in breaking and harnessing hordes of orientals.

68 The chiastic arrangement (‘immobilis … constans’) helps to ensure that constans is felt by the reader not only in its syntactically natural meaning as the participle from consto, but also in an adjectival sense: the Macedonians are unwieldy or immobile, while the Romans' very flexibility makes them stand firm.

69 Rather unfairly, Alexander's inexperience of Romans is countered by the Romans' experience of Macedonians in wars long after Alexander's death; the counterfactual can bend the normal rules of historical time and use ‘future exempla’.

70 Both meanings of aetas ('lifetime’ and ‘era’) may be felt here.

71 Excellence as both soldier and leader is a conventional recipe for a commander's success. See Woodman, op. cit. (n. 36), 198, 228.

72 Livy has already deplored contemporary neglect of the once flourishing citizen army at 7.25.7–9, a passage of which, as Stephen Oakley has pointed out to me, 9.19.2–4 is clearly reminiscent.

73 That Livy's notion of concordia, though, is less idealizing than that of Sallust has already been demonstrated by the list of obstacles to consular achivement at 9.18.13–15.

74 For the potential for etymological play on mille and miles, see R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (1991), 384, s.v. miles.

75 The dangers of such a situation were pointed out by Cicero even in the context of eulogy of Caesar (Pro Marc. 7,22, ‘nam quis est omnium tarn ignarus rerum … qui non intellegat tua salute contineri suam et ex unius tua vita pendere omnium? … doleoque, cumres publica immortalis esse debeat, earn in uniusmortalis anima consistere’, ‘for who is so ignorant of the whole situation … that he does not understand that his safety is contained in yours and that the lives of all depend on yours alone? … and I grieve that, when the state ought to be immortal, it takes its stand in the life of a single mortal’). Cf. Tac, Ann. 1.11.

76 Breitenbach, op. cit. (n. 7), 150–1.

77 Livy's awareness of the potential drawbacks of a free, non-monarchical system is revealed already at 2.1.4–7, but there, too, he states his belief that a strong, mature, unified community can overcome those drawbacks. Once again, concordia is the key (implicit in 2.1.5 ‘animos eorum consociasset’ and explicit in 2.1.11 (on the influence of the Senate) ‘id mirum quantum profuit ad concordiam civitatis iungendosque patribus plebis animos’).

78 39.6.7. Moreover, Livy's greatest predecessor had fulminated against Rome's inability to manage secundae res (Jug. 41.3, cf. Cat. 11.7).

79 9.1.7 ‘tuarum irarum’; 9.13.4 ‘ira militaris’; 9.14.13 ‘dulcedinem irae’.

80 The irony of this contrast is pointed by the interjection ‘hercule’.

81 TLL V,1 1922:34–43.

82 Some time before 25 B.C. Propertius (2.34.61–2) explicitly alludes to Vergil's treatment of Actium (Aen. 8.675–713) as well as to the opening of the Aeneid (Propertius 2.34.63–4). On the dating of the AUC, seen. 85 below.

83 Suetonius, Div.Aug. 40.5, ‘en dominos rerum gentemque togatam’. This in itself is not enough to support the case, given that we have no way of knowing when Augustus quoted the line. Nevertheless, that the Aeneid passage may lie behind 9.18.16 is also suggested by a further echo of Aen. 1.278 (‘his ego nec metas rerum nee tempora pono’). On Vergil as regularly more ‘Augustan’ than Livy, see A. J. Woodman, ‘Virgil the historian: Aeneid 8.626–62 and Livy', in J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn (eds), Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of C. O. Brink (1989), 132–45, although Woodman takes the view that in Book 8, at least, Vergil is responding to Livy.

84 Syme, R., ‘Livy and Augustus’, HSCP 64 (1959), 27–87;Google ScholarMette, H. J., ‘Livius und Augustus’, Gymnasium 68 (1961), 269ff.Google Scholar; Petersen, H., ‘Livy and Augustus’, TAPA 92 (1961), 440–52;Google ScholarWalsh, P. G., ‘Livy and Augustus’, PACA 4 (1961), 26–37;Google Scholar E. Badian, ‘Livy and Augustus’, in W. Schuller (ed.), Livius: Aspekte seines Werkes (1993), 9–38; K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture (1996), 280–7; Kraus and Woodman, op. cit. (n. 48), 70–4.

85 Woodman, op. cit. (n. 26), 134–5; Moles, op. cit (n. 28), 153; Luce, op. cit. (n. 7), 231. I am unconvinced by Burton, P., ‘The last republican historian: a new date for the composition of Livy's first pentad’, Historia 49 (2000), 429–46,Google Scholar who argues for a start date of 33 B.C. for Book 1.

86 9.18.19, ‘there would have been many Romans to match Alexander …, each of whom could live or die according to his own fate without public crisis’. The expendability of Livy's great exempla is revealed, in some cases, in the very acts which make them great; in the case of the Decii, for example, their deaths actually revitalize the Roman battle effort, which is then perfectly co-ordinated by their surviving colleagues.

87 On the ‘mismatch’ between the content of the AUC and the elogia of the Forum Augustum, see Luce, T. J., ‘Livy, Augustus and the Forum Augustum’, in Raaflaub, K. A. and Toher, M. (eds), Between Republic and Empire. Interpretations of Augustus and his Pnncipate (1990), 123–38Google Scholar.

88 Isager, op. cit. (n. 7), 83.

89 Pliny, NH 37.10. Cf. Suet., Aug. 50; Cass. Dio 51.3.5–7 See Weippert, op. cit. (n. 7), 214–23; Gruen, op. cit. (n. 18), 68.

90 Lipovsky, for example, shows no interest at all in the content of the digression.

91 See (e.g.): the emphasis on Roman disciplina and the re-establishment of Roman control, 9.20.10; Fabius' expedition through the Ciminian wood, 9.38.4–6; unsuccessful Samnite ambush, 9.31.6–16; electoral synchronism with both Sack and Forks avoided by Papirius as dictator, 9.38.15–39.1; Samnites sent under the yoke by Fabius at Allifae, 9.42.6–7. Cf. Burck, op. cit. (n. 7), 326, on the significance of 42.7 in relation to the disaster at the beginning of the book.

92 ‘ea est Romana gens, quae victa quiescere nesciat’, 9.3.12; ‘aut Romana se ignorare ingenia aut silentium illud Samnitibus flebiles brevi clamores gemitusque excitaturum’, 9.7.4.

93 Notions of ‘turning’, ‘turning away’, or ‘turning aside’ in the digression are common to Livy (‘declinarem’, 9. 17.1), the reader (‘deverticula’, 9. 17.1), and Alexander himself (‘in Europam vertisset’, 9.16.19); even the name of Alexander, the ‘man-averter’, eloquent in this context, is trumped by the name of Rome, which outlasts turning fortune (‘vertenti fortunae’, 9.17.7), and finally defeated by that of the anonymous miles who has always ‘turned away’ foreign invaders and will continue to do so (‘avertit avertetque’, 9. 19.17).

94 Moles, J. L., ‘Truth and untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides’, in Gill, C. and Wiseman, T. P. (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (1993), 88–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suerbaum, op. cit. (n. 7), 38–9.