Roman Historiography

This chapter argues that Virgil's uses of late Republican history in the Aeneid are not always partisan, and are better seen as uses of historical writing (historiography). As a case study I look at two stories about general Sertorius, which seem to inspire supernatural episodes in the epic: Hercules' assault on the monster Cacus in Aeneid 6, and the beloved tame deer in Aeneid 7. Sertorius was a rebel, and enemy of Pompey the Great. Nonetheless, Virgil seems to echo historical texts about him without taking a direct political stance.

La civiltà romana si fonda sulla memoria: per il cittadino romano il passato definisce l'identità e l'appartenenza, giustifica gli equilibri politici e gli assetti sociali, costruisce un codice di valori di riferimento condivisi. La connessione tra storia e politica, sempre assai stretta nell'esperienza romana, determina la coincidenza frequente tra storiografi e protagonisti sulla scena, che intendono l'impegno letterario come uno degli strumenti della loro azione politica. Il volume illustra come, al di là del suo evidente apporto informativo in merito al concreto dipanarsi degli eventi storici, la storiografia, nei vari generi in cui si articolò, rappresenti una chiave di lettura imprescindibile per la conoscenza della civiltà romana nelle sue differenti manifestazioni. Questa nuova edizione, interamente rivista, amplia la prospettiva storiografica ai contributi dell'oratoria e della poesia, per ricostruire la coscienza storica del civis nelle sue molteplici manifestazioni testuali.
Il volume costituisce la seconda edizione dell'Introduzione alla storiografia romana pubblicata nel 2010. Il volume è stato aggiornato sia nel testo che nella bibliografia alla luce delle più recenti pubblicazioni sui temi specifici oggetto di indagine. Comprende, inoltre, due nuovi capitoli: cap. 10 (Rohr, pp. 157-174) e cap. 20 (Manca, pp. 301-312). Sono di F. Rohr le pp. 19-178 e 261-268; sono di M. Manca le pp. 179-260 e 269-312.

The primary stimulus to this essay is the widely referenced narrative in Sima Qian’s *Records of the Grand Historian* (*Shiji* 史記) about the assassination attempt against the king of Qin by Jing Ke, a tale repeatedly examined in later historical records.  In the later records, the Jing Ke narrative is most often cited as a cautionary tale, as a heroic albeit clumsily executed attempt to end a tyrant’s rule. Yet what is actually most striking about the tale is not any supposed courage or heroism but how inept and ill-conceived the whole escapade is.  Using parallels with Roman assassination narratives, I argue that a careful parsing of early assassination attempts reveals their frequent anti-heroic and clownish portrayal.  I conclude that the *Records* account is thus less a condemnation of tyranny than a sardonic critique on the self-aggrandizement of both the monarch and his aspiring deposers.  What it is not is a cautionary lesson about the wages of tyrannical rule.

The paper focuses on Tacitus’ account of the speech made by Claudius in 48 CE in favour of the admission of the primores of ‘long-haired’ Gaul to the senate, examining arguments used by the historian to clarify the reactions to their request and the reasoning adopted by the emperor to convince the senators to accept it. Besides expressing awareness of the efficacy of the criteria used by Romans to create a supranational imperial order, the passage shows Tacitus’ ability to highlight the political meaningfulness of Claudius’ intervention, making it a model worthy of surviving and being mentioned many centuries later in modern culture. In this vein, the second part of the paper analyzes some 16th and early 17th century references to the emperor’s speech in authors such as Justus Lipsius, Scipione Ammirato, Jean Bodin, Traiano Boccalini, Hugo Grotius. Within their works, also dedicated to examining the birth, development and decline of States, we see that besides recalling an episode occurring many centuries before, some key-intellectuals made utilized the story into a valid exemplum to promote a model of efficacious government favouring integration as a means of consolidating modern states.