LH1: Lesson - The Writing of Rome's History

The Writing of Rome's History

What is history? In its most basic form, history is a record of what has happened in the past. But the real question is: how is history written? Who writes it and why? If you can answer these questions, you can gain a better understanding of the topics selected by a particular historian.

Painting Info: Romolo e Remo by Peter Paul Rubens, painted in 1615-1616 CE. The painting shows the infant twins, Romulus and Remus, with a she-wolf. Additional figures in the painting include the god Tiber (left) watching over the twins and the shepherd Faustulus discovering the twins (right).

Ancient Roots

The Romans, from a fairly early period in their history (remember the city was founded, traditionally, in the middle of the 8th century BCE), kept detailed records. These records were called annales and were kept by the priestly class (the Pontifex Maximus kept a record called the Annales Maximi).

But when we say "kept records" what does that mean? It was generally just what it sounds like: a catalog of events and a record of the names of those who were in charge. In fact, during the Republic (from around the 6th century BCE), Romans named the years after the two consuls who were in charge each year. Instead of saying "in XYZ year" Romans would say "during the consulship of XYZ" to mark when something happened. As a concrete example, Julius Caesar and Marcus Bibulus were co-consuls in 59 BCE, so the Romans would refer to that year as "the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus".

So, for each year, the annales would include who was in charge and general information about major events: if there was a war or a famine or some change in policy that was significant, the annalist for that year would make note of it, so that it would be remembered for future generations.

Changing Times and Changing Goals

As you can probably imagine, these early annals were quite dry. It would be like making a bullet point list of facts and trying to convince someone that it was an "interesting read"!

Things changed after the 2nd Punic War (~3rd century BCE). Because of their success in driving out and conquering the Carthaginians (Hannibal and his armies), Rome was no longer a small backwater on the Tiber River but was now a major player in the Mediterranean region. Not much later, Rome successfully conquered and took control over several formerly Greek colonies, becoming the major force in the Mediterranean (~2nd century BCE).

Now, Romans had an eye to tell their story in a way that would put Rome at the center: to argue that Rome deserved its place in power. Additionally, Roman writers took huge inspiration from the conquered Greeks. They read the histories of Greeks like Herodotus and Thucydides and realized they could use history as a cudgel to justify their present actions.

History as Propaganda and Factionalization

This justification of present actions has a name: it is called propaganda, which is a way of creating a narrative. Propaganda tends to focus on pointing out the good things done by "the good guys" and how everything done by "the bad guys" was bad for the state. Roman historians took to propaganda and from the earliest written historical accounts (from people with names like Quintus Fabius Pictor and Lucius Cincius Alimentus), history was used to present a particular vision of what happened. No longer a set of dry facts, history was told to make a point.

For many Roman historians, especially in the age of Augustus (1st century CE), a different type of propaganda emerged. For these historians, Livy (pictured in the statue to the left) being one, their view was that Rome was too decadent, a cesspool of lowlife layabouts who had no respect for tradition or valor. Livy in particular wrote his history as a vehicle to remind Romans about "who they really were" - focusing on tales of heroic Romans from the early Republic (Horatius Cocles or Mucius Scaevola), wherein regular Romans showed great virtue. It was a sort of propaganda meant to shame the contemporary society into being better - look at what we could be instead of what we currently are.

On the flip side of this drive to betterment, there was also an emergence of competing narratives within Rome. As in so many other areas of life, politics would determine how the story would unfold. If you supported Sulla in the civil war, your history justified Sulla's actions. If instead, you supported Marius in the conflict, your history was critical of Sulla's actions, instead favoring Marius' policies. This separation of viewpoints is called factionalization, where each faction has its own personalized history, filled with propaganda supporting their views.

Methods of Writing History

There are two main forms of historical account in Rome: annals and the monograph. 

Histories written as annals followed the earliest tradition of Roman history (remember the Annales Maximi from above?) and recorded history in the order in which events happened. The most frequent starting point was the founding of Rome, so many of these historical records were called Ab Urbe Condita (this is, in fact, the name of Livy's work that we'll be reading!). The goal of an annalistic history was to record the events of history as being connected - this happened, then this happened as a result, and after, this happened because of these prior events. This is likely not so different from what most students think of when they think about history: our history textbooks often take this approach (a sequential approach to telling history). 

Unlike the annals, some Roman historians preferred to write monographs. A monograph is a large work on a single topic. For example, a historian might write about the Punic Wars, and their history would include great detail about the event (not only what happened, but how/why did it happen and what were the outcomes, etc.). This hyper-focused method is a great way to present a complex issue. Another branch of this method is biography: instead of writing a monograph about an event, the author writes a monograph about a particular person. Famous monographers were Sallust, who wrote about the civil war between Sulla and Marius, and Suetonius, who wrote a series of biographies of the early emperors (we'll be reading selections from Suetonius' Life of the Caesars in this course). Modern students are not unfamiliar with this type of historical account: you've likely read biographies or autobiographies and most students are familiar with historical accounts about specific events (books or documentaries about the US Civil War, for instance).

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