The Rise of Rome

Aventine Hill. These documents probably went back to the beginning of the Republic and in the early centuries were thin and basic. Treaties, laws, and dedications were also written down, sometimes as inscriptions on stone or in bronze.

From the second century B.C., educated Romans became interested in antiquarian studies. It has been wittily said that an antiquarian can be defined as “the type of man who is interested in historical facts without being interested in history.” Cicero’s friend Varro was the greatest antiquarian of his age and an indefatigable author. Ancient texts such as the Twelve Tables, the buildings and monuments of Rome, the state archives, the Latin language, the calendar, religious cults, family histories, social customs, place names, and ritual formulas fell under his scrutiny. Unfortunately, some interpretations were wildly off the mark, especially in the field of etymology, but much curious and interesting information was gathered. Another copious antiquarian was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who flourished at about the same time as Augustus; his aim was to reconcile the Greeks to the rule of Rome. He is a prosy bore, but his lengthy Roman Antiquities is a treasure-house of curious detail about Rome’s legendary beginnings.

Cicero makes useful comments in his Republic on the city’s early history, which are not only interesting in themselves but reveal what was the received narrative in the first century. In Laws, he studies the nature of law and proposes detailed reforms of Rome’s constitution.

Roman and Greek historians had little to say about social matters, the arts and design, the role and status of women, and economic development. They focused their attention on political and military affairs and on the deeds of great men. Fortunately, much of Cicero’s private correspondence has survived, and illuminates what it was like to live through the destruction of the Republic. So have a variety of medical texts—for example, the writings of Celsus. Some poets in the late Republic and the empire evoke the upper classes at leisure. However, for a broader picture of how the Greco-Roman world functioned, we must depend on the increasingly sophisticated and instructive findings of the archaeologist and on a multitude of carved inscriptions, which throw a fascinating light on the doings of local authorities across the Mediterranean region and on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. This material is fragmentary and can be hard to interpret but is nonetheless valuable for that.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ancient Texts

Sources not cited here are published both in the original language and in translation by Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are listed under Abbreviations in the Notes section. Other translations I have made use of or consulted appear below.

Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, trans. R. J. White, The Interpretation of Dreams (Park Ridge, 1975).

Asconius: Commentaries on Five Speeches of Cicero, trans. and ed. Simon Squires (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1990).

Aurelius Victor (attributed), De viris illustribus, Andreas Schottus (8 vols., Antwerp, 1579).

Aurelius Victor (attributed), De Caesaribus, www.roman- emperors.org/epitome.htm.

Bible (Good News Bible, 1966; New York: American Bible Society).

Catullus, Carmina (Odes), trans. James Michie (London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1969) (Also in Loeb).

Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum [CIS]. Pars Prima Inscriptiones Phoenicias Continens (Paris, 1881).

Eutropius, Flavius, Breviarium (Abridgement of Roman History), trans. H. W. Bird (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993).

Festus, Breviarium rerum gestarum populi Romani (Summary of Roman History), ed. W. Forster (1874), C. Wagener (1886).

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Carmina (Odes), trans. James Michie (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1967) (Also in Loeb).

Horace, The Complete Odes and Epodes, trans. W. G. Shepherd (London: Penguin Books, 1983).

Horace, Satires and Epistles, Persius, Satires, trans. Niall Rudd (London: Penguin Books, 1973).

Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, H. Dessau (Berlin, 1891–1916).

Livy, The Early History of Rome, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (London: Penguin Books, 1960).

Livy, Rome and Italy, trans. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1982).

Livy, The War with Hannibal, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965).

Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1976).

Orosius, Paulus, Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII (“Seven Books of History Against the Pagans”). See the Latin Library, www.thelatinlibrary.com/.

Plautus, The Comedies, trans. various hands, 4 vols. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John F. Healy (London: Penguin Books, 1991).

Plutarch, Makers of Rome, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965).

Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic, trans. Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1958).

Polybius. The Rise of the Roman Empire, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1979).

Propertius, The Poems, trans. W. G. Shepherd (London: Penguin Books,1985).

Sallust, The Jugurthine War, The Conspiracy of Catiline, trans. S. A. Handford (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1963).

Terence, The Comedies, trans. Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. C. Day-Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. W. F. Jackson Knight (London: Penguin Books, 1956).

Virgil, The Georgics, trans. C. Day-Lewis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940).

Selected Modern Studies

Citations are usually the author’s surname.