Roman History Books and More

the cambridge companion to ovid

The Cambridge Companion to Ovid seems to be a book worth reading, according to this Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

"The editor of this volume, Philip Hardie, is one of those responsible for the rise in Ovid's fortunes, and many of the contributors that he has recruited for this volume have done their parts as well.  But the essays on the whole do not merely reprise earlier themes;  and Hardie has also recruited some less obvious but highly suitable collaborators, with the result that the collection makes a striking impression and succeeds on two separate fronts.  As a summary of where Ovidian scholarship has been, it is, with perhaps one or two caveats, very successful indeed;  and as an effort to indicate fruitful directions for future work, the volume should have a stimulating effect."

ovid: reading schedule for june

We have two chats planned for June about the works of the poet Ovid (Wikipedia, handle with care).  With the limited time we have, I think it's best to concentrate on his two major works:

June 4	The Metamorphoses the creation and history of the world
June 11	(optional) other works*
June 18	Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) plus Amores, Remedia Amoris?

*If anyone wishes to discuss the other works, I offer another chat in between, on June 11. I'm especially interested in the poems and letters from exile (Tristia, Ex Ponto, Ibis).  And there are also the Fasti.

online book chats

This blog is an adjunct to The Roman History Reading Group which meets on the first and third Wednesday of each month except August in our chat room (with download instructions for both Mac and Windows users), from 9:30 to 11:00 p.m. US EST.  (This means that in Asia and Australia/Pacific, it's daytime.)  Here is a world time clock as a general assistance for non-USAns.

2008 scheduled reading list (updated April 2)

On April 16 and May 7 & 21 we will discuss The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme. (April 2 was canceled)

This is followed by a discussion of the works of the poet Ovid, June 4 & 18.

Join us!

ovid at britannica online: testing webshare feature

Ovid
Roman poet
Latin in full Publius Ovidius Naso

(now, if only JSTOR would follow suit)

coin hoards from the times of the civil wars and the triumvirs' proscriptions

Josiah Osgood, in his Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire, an excellent complement to Syme's The Roman Revolution, writes about coin hoards during the time of the proscription.

These hoards have been discovered in Italy and he points out the obvious: The increased frequency of finds from the times of upheaval indicates that buried coins were not recovered because their owners most likely perished.

He cites M. Crawford (1969) "Roman Republican coin hoards."

ovid: 'full view' google books

Google Books has a number of 'full view' books of and about Ovid, the former mostly 19th century translations.

[Blog: Inside Google Book Search]

ovid translations online updated

See my update

syme's 'roman revolution': what's covered in chapters 13 through 22

The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme:  May 7 chat covers quite a range of period. (Luckily, we have plenty of time):

• XIII: THE SECOND MARCH ON ROME
  Consolidations:  Antonius wins over the generals; Octavian manipulates the Senate into his first consulate.
• XIV: THE PROSCRIPTIONS
  "The Republic had been abolished.  Whatever the outcome of the armed struggle, it could never be restored…"  Exhaustive discussion of the proscriptions in Rome and Italy.  A new Senate and and a new generation of "marshals."  The new composition of the Caesarian and "Catonian" parties.
• XV: PHILIPPI AND PERUSIA
  The outcome of Philippi was "final and irreversible, the last struggle over the Free State.  Henceforth nothing but a contest of despots over the corpse of liberty … No battle of all the Civil Wars was so murderous to the aristocracy.  Among the fallen were recorded the noblest names of Rome."
  Although the events leading up to and at Perusia were badly managed, Octavian's state of affairs remain precarious.

book chat 'the roman revolution' – second of three installments, may 2

The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme:

The May 2 chat will cover Chapters XIII to XXII.

(another edition at cheap prices)

A list of online ancient resources in the English translation to footnotes relating to the above chapters (with more to come):

Note: As so often, Perseus (Cicero)  is not working at this writing.

• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
  (Volumes 3 & 4 mainly)
• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters to and from Brutus (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
• M. Tullius Cicero, Orations, The fourteen orations against Marcus Antonius (Philippics) C. D. Yonge, Ed.

• The Histories of Appian, The Civil Wars on LacusCurtius
  beginning with Book II
• Cassius Dio on LacusCurtius beginning with Book 45
• Tacitus, Annals

• Plutarch: Cicero
• Plutarch: Antony
• Plutarch: Marcus Brutus
• Suetonius: Augustus

juvenal on the beeb

Towards the end of last year we read Juvenal's Satires.  Those who want to explore Juvenal some more may be interested to know that BBC Radio 3 is featuring Juvenal in their series Greek and Roman Voices next week. The programmes will be broadcast at 11pm (BST = GMT +1) each night from Monday 14 April to Thursday 17 April, and available on the internet for seven days after being broadcast.

reading schedule for 'roman revolution' by sir ronald syme – revised

Revised schedule for The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme:

April 16	Chapters I to XII
May 2	Chapters XIII to XXII
May 21	Chapters XXIII to XXXIII

another edition at cheap prices

tacitus & gibbon on augustus' fake republicanism

Ronald Syme in The Roman Revolution (1939) writes that "Neglect of the conventions of Roman political terminology and of the reality of Roman political life has sometimes induced historians to fancy that the Principate of Caesar Augustus was genuinely Republican in spirit and in in practice – a modern and academic failing.  Tacitus and Gibbon knew better."  Here are Tacitus and Gibbon in their own words:

Tacitus (Annals 1.2):

[1.2] When after the destruction of Brutus and Cassius there was no longer any army of the Commonwealth, when Pompeius was crushed in Sicily, and when, with Lepidus pushed aside and Antonius slain, even the Julian faction had only Caesar left to lead it, then, dropping the title of triumvir, and giving out that he was a Consul, and was satisfied with a tribune's authority for the protection of the people, Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous past. Nor did the provinces dislike that condition of affairs, for they distrusted the government of the Senate and the people, because of the rivalries between the leading men and the rapacity of the officials, while the protection of the laws was unavailing, as they were continually deranged by violence, intrigue, and finally by corruption.

before this gets lost in the shuffle: illustrations to ovid's metamorphoses

From The Ovid Project. The text links for the Baur – in German – are next to the plates:

• The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Engravings by Johannes Baur. 1703.
  (A couple of typos:  It should read Verwandelungs Bücher, and the artist is Johann Wilhelm Baur)
• Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished Mythologized and Represented in Figures

Image: Baur Plate 3: Aetas aurea

looking ahead to june chats: ovid translations

In June, we plan to discuss a cross section of Ovid's work.  In our Reading List for 2008, I promised to research good translations.  I still have to check what of Ovid is in print besides Loeb Classical Library and wander down to the library to see what's out there and cull the selections and comment in a later post.

Meanwhile, if you want to look at online editions before you spend any money, there are:

• Perseus (scroll down) various translations from the 16th through early 20th centuries.
• Sacred Text (Metamorphoses 1717, Love Books 1930).
• THEOI, E-TEXTS LIBRARY
• A.S. Kline, Poetry in Translation & Mirror site (scroll down on each) contemporary.  You can either read this online or download.  The site is free but the author would appreciate a donation.  Certainly a lot of work and thought has gone into this.

online sources for footnotes in syme's 'the roman revolution' – I (updated April 2)

Footnotes in Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution are more often than not citations in Latin and Greek, mostly of Cicero, Appian, and Dio in the book's Chapters I through XII, relating to the first of our three chats.  For those who like to explore these more, especially Cicero's letters, here are those available online in the English translation:

• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
  (Volumes 3 & 4 mainly)
  
• M. Tullius Cicero, Letters to and from Brutus (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh)
• M. Tullius Cicero, Orations, The fourteen orations against Marcus Antonius (Philippics) C. D. Yonge, Ed.

• The Histories of Appian, The Civil Wars on LacusCurtius
  beginning with Book II
• Julius Caesar's War Commentaries
• Cassius Dio on LacusCurtius beginning with Book 39
• Lucan's Pharsalia
  
• Sallust on LacusCurtius
• Tacitus, Annals

• Plutarch, Lives
• Suetonius: Divus Julius
• Suetonius: Augustus

prosopography

Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution, our upcoming chat subject, makes extensive use of prosopography (from prosopon, the Greek word for "character" or "person," together with graphein, the Greek verb "to write"), as defined by G.W. Bowersock:

"the cumulative study of the careers of individual people as a means of escaping from a more abstract, impressionistic, and doctrinaire historiography."

Dictionaries describe it as "a study that identifies and relates a group of persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context," or "a collection of biographical sketches used by social and political historians studying a particular historical period."

major characters in 'the ides of march' – cytheris, lucius mamilius turrinus

There are two more characters of note in the 'fantasia' The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder.

Lucius Mamilius Turrinus is a fictional friend of Caesar, maimed in the Gallic Wars and living in seclusion on Capri.  Never appearing in person nor in writing, he is the dictator's confidant, and The Journal to him is the vehicle of Caesar's thoughts, which do drive the novel.  As posted before, the playwright Edward Sheldon (1886-1946) was the inspiration for the character of Turrinus.

The courtesan Cytheris has a brief mention in Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology:

CYTHERIS, a celebrated courtezan of the time of Cicero, Antony, and Gallus. She was originally the freedwoman and mistress of Volumnius Eutrapelus, and subsequently she became connected in the same capacity with Antony, and with Gallus the poet, to whom, however, she did not remain faithful.  Gallus mentioned her in his poems under the name of Lycoris, by which name she is spoken of also by the Scholiast Cruquius on Horace. (Sat. i. 2. 55, 10. 77 ; comp. Serv. ad Virg. Eclog. x. 1; Cic. Phil. ii. 24, ad Att. x. 10, 16, ad Fain. ix. 26 ; Plut. Ant. 9; Plin. //. N. viii. 16.) [L. S.]

major characters in 'the ides of march' – julia marcia, cleopatra

Bust of  Cleopatra from the Altes Museum in Berlin, Germany.

Julia Marcia (Julia Caesaris), aunt of Julius Caesar and widow of Gaius Marius, is portrayed as the typical staunch Roman matron.  In real life long deceased, in the novel she is Caesar's contact to the Vestal Virgins with regard to the Bona Dea rites, this particular one, also anachronistically, a part of Wilder's 'fantasia.'

Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology has not much to say of her:

first impression on syme's 'roman revolution'

I spent over two hours in the allergist's office today, mostly sitting around waiting for reactions to various "oral challenge" doses, long enough to read the Introduction and first chapters of The Roman Revolution.

Of course I'd read it in the past. But like so many books I have forgotten, I had to start fresh again.  WOW!

Selected pages of some of these chapters, though not the Preface, can be found at Google Books, otherwise copyrighted.  The 2002 reprint.

In the Reference section of the Google book, there are various links including a Bryn Mawr Review about another book, a review which nonetheless devotes several paragraphs to Syme the person and "The Roman Revolution."

major characters in 'the ides of march' – clodia, catullus

Clodia Pulchra, widow of Metellus Celer, is a major character in The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder's "fantasia" about the last nine months of Caius Julius Caesar's life.  Her brother, the famous/infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher, also makes appearances.

Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology has the stemma claudiorum, a brief entry on Clodia and a lengthy one on Clodius, as well as on the poet Caius Valerius Catullus, a biography cum assessment.

Clodia was Cicero's bête noire and appears in a number of novels/mysteries about Roman history, with various interpretations of her persona.  Probably her most sympathetic treatment is in the Roma Sub Rosa series by Steven Saylor.

a helpful 1948 review of 'the ides of march'and a rather personal biography

From way back when I own the German translation of The Ides of March, and a few years ago I acquired a used copy of the original novel which turned out to be the 1948 edition.

In the book there is an undated leaflet simply labeled "Printed in U.S.A.," containing a review called "A Report by Clifton Fadiman" (Wikipedia biography, handle with care) and "Thornton Niven Wilder" by Rosemary C. Benét, wife of Stephen Vincent Benét.  Googling, I found her name frequently, and among other things she was a reviewer for The New Yorker.  This may have been a Book of The Month Club leaflet. (Update:  the novel was indeed the March 1948 Book of the Month Club selection.)

I scanned it the leaflet, and here it is:   Download The-Ides-of-March-leaflet.pdf

on reading 'the ides of march'

I've started re-reading Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March, our upcoming chat subject (March 26).  It's not the easiest novel to read, not because of the letter format, but of the quite dense content.  This is not a book one can speed-read:  a sentence missed, and one can easily be lost.

So for the members of our group I suggest to start as early as possible.

* * *

On another note:  I wish our newscasters and their writers would be more educated.  On Sunday, a newscaster on one of the cable networks announced – in more or less these words – "Today are the Ides of March, when the Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles."

lauro de bosis and edward sheldon friends of thornton wilder

Thornton Wilder dedication of  The Ides of March reads:

This work is dedicated
to two friends:

LAURO DE BOSIS
Roman poet, who lost his life
marshaling a resistance against
the absolute power of Mussolini;
his aircraft pursued by those of the Duce
plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea;
and to

EDWARD SHELDON

who though immobile and blind
for over twenty years
was the dispenser of wisdom,
courage, and gaiety
to a large number of people.

original reviews of "the ides of march" by thornton wilder

The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder will be our next read, on March 26. (Please note the deviation from our regular monthly schedule.)

Wilder called the novel  "… a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic... Historical reconstruction is not among the primary aims of this work."

I found a couple of book reviews from the New York Times and Time, and JSTOR – food for thought for our upcoming book chat.

• Books of the Times:  Download books-of-the-times.pdf  (February 18, 1948)
• Mr. Wilder's Roman Fantasia:  Download mr-wilders-roman-fantsia.pdf  (February 22, 1948) 
• Dossier on Julius Caesar  (February 23, 1948)
• Review by classicist Paul MacKendrick in the  The Classical Journal, Vol.44.No.1  (Oct., 1948), pp. 65-67  Stable URL  (restricted  access)

Image courtesy The Wisconsin Historical Society, "Thornton N. Wilder, head and shoulders studio portrait of Thornton Wilder, c.1949."  (Roughly the time period in which he wrote "The Ides of March.")

another timely reprise: two books on the fall of the roman empire

With regard the to the Fall of the Roman Empire, a reminder of two much talked about books published in 2005, which you may find in your public library:

The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
by Peter Heather

The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization
by Bryan Ward Perkins

The books have been reviewed jointly at BMCR.  I was looking for any reviews in JSTOR, byt they are none.  However, apart from the fact that Ward-Perkins is a prolific reviewer himself, putting both book titles in the search box generated a number of papers on the fall of Rome.

   

the salic law

Gibbon in Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule, Laws of the Barbarians, ff., cites the Salic Law. 

Wikipedia (as usual handle with care) has a  good article on the lex salica and it's long-time effects on Europe:

Salic law

 

from britannia to england

As well as the establishment of the Frankish kingdom in France, Gibbon’s Chapter XXXVIII also describes the coming of the Saxons to Britain. The fifth and sixth centuries, what used to be called the Dark Ages because of the paucity of historical knowledge about them, are now commonly called the Sub Roman or Post Roman Period. There is still much we don’t know about developments in this period but the tools of archaeology and genetics have increased our understanding to a certain extent. Just about the only thing that can be said without controversy is that in 397 Britannia was part of the Roman Empire and in 597 the first Christian missionaries from continental Europe arrived to start the conversion of the Angle and Saxon kingdoms of England.

Recent discoveries in archaeology and genetics have provided new evidence, so this well-illustrated book, which serves as an introduction to the late Roman and Anglo-Saxon period as a whole down to 1066, is in some ways out of date even though it was only published in the 1980s. How much this new evidence would cause the authors to present a different narrative of events is another matter.

gibbon – and tacitus – on the gauls

More talking points for Wednesday:

In our current read, Gibbon in chapter Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule begins with:

The revolution of Gaul
THE Gauls, ⁽¹⁾  who impatiently supported the Roman yoke, received a memorable lesson from one of the lieutenants of Vespasian, whose weighty sense has been refined and expressed by the genius of Tacitus. ⁽²⁾

Footnote (2): "Tacitus, The  Histories, iv. 73, 74. To abridge Tacitus would indeed be presumptuous;  but I may select the general ideas which he applies to the present state and future revolutions of Gaul."

Here is the link to Tacitus Online in general, and Histories Book 4 in particular.  [4.73] and [4.74]  relate the the"speech" of the general Cerialis to an assembly of Treveri and Lingones, during the revolt of Civilis and Classicus.

gibbon's "general observations" as a discussion point

In the last chapter of Volume 1 of  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West, which we will discuss next Wednesday (together with the preceding Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule), Gibbon looks at the Europe of his day and gives us an optimistic picture typical of the period of Enlightenment.

Volume 1 was published first in 1776.  Gibbon died a very sick man in 1794 at the age of 56 .  He lived in Lausanne until 1793 and "shared the common abhorrence" of the French Revolution. Had he lived longer, he would have experienced the final excesses of the revolution and the rise of Napoleon from close by.  Would he have reconsidered his words

The reign of independent barbarism is now contracted to a narrow span; and the remnant of Calmucks or Uzbecks, whose forces may be almost numbered, cannot seriously excite the apprehensions of the great republic of Europe ⁽⁶⁾.  Yet this apparent security should not tempt us to forget that new enemies and unknown dangers may possibly arise from some obscure people, scarcely visible in the map of the world.

and looked closer to home?

backgrounds readings on gibbon (mostly late antiquity)

Here are some books I find helpful as we read the final chapters of Edward Gibbon's  The Decline And Fall  In The West, Volume 1.

• Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, A.D. 400-700
  by Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson
• From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms (Rewriting Histories)
  by Thomas Noble
• and this old standby, though a bit of a time stretch:
  Mohammed and Charlemagne
  by Henri Pirenne

      

saint gregory of tours

Gibbon's main source in Chapter XXXVIII is Gregory of Tours (c. 538 - 594).  He was the son of a senator from Clermont (Sidonius Apollinaris' see) who seems to have died while Gregory was still quite young.  Gregory was educated by his uncle Avitus, the bishop of Clermont.  In 573 Gregory became bishop of Tours.  Many of his predecessors were his relatives.  He is best known for his "Ten Books of Histories" or as it is more commonly known these days "The History of the Franks."

Background:
Some pictures of artefacts from Gregory's time.

Map:
Gaul after the death of Clovis (from wikipedia)

final gibbon book chats: last installment, march 5

In the March 5 and final installment of  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire we are covering:

Chapter 38: Barbarian Rule
Reign and Conversion  of  Clovis.  - His  Victories  over  the Alemanni, Burgundians, and  Visigoths. - Establishment of the French Monarchy in  Gaul.  - Laws  of the Barbarians.  - State of the Romans (in Gaul).  - The  Visigoths  of Spain.  - Conquest of Britain by the Saxons.

This covers the period from 476 to 582 CE, with the larger portion concerning itself with the transformation of Gaul from province to kingdom.

General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West, an essay of about 3200 words.

more on monasticism

The figures Gibbon particularly draws our attention to in the early history of monasticism are St. Anthony in Egypt and St. Martin in Gaul.

Monasticism seems to have started in Egypt, and we have accounts of some of the monks by  Rufinus and Palladius. Perhaps the most famous of the monks was St. Anthony, a life of whom was written by his contemporary admirer, Athanasius. The Catholic Encylopaedia has a more modern account.

Anthony has been a popular subject for painters: Hieronymus Bosch painted a lurid picture of Anthony's temptation by demons. Another picture on the same subject was painted by Matthias Grünewald as part of the Isenheim Altarpiece, which also contains a more restful picture of Anthony's visit to St. Paul the Hermit.

final gibbon book chats: first of two installment, february 20

In the February 20 installment of  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire we are covering:

Chapter 36: Fall in the West

Sack of Rome by Genseric, king of the Vandals. - His Naval Depredations. - Succession of the Last Emperors of the West, - Maximus - Avitus - Majorian - Severus - Anthemius - Olybrius - Glycerius & Nepos - Augustulus. - Total Extinction of the Western Empire. - Reign of Odoacer, the First Barbarian King of Italy.    

Chapter 37: Monastic Life

Origin, Progress, and Effects of the Monastic Life. - Conversion of the Barbarians to Christianity and Arianism. - Persecution of the Vandals in Africa. - Extinction of Arianism among the Barbarians.

Bingley has commented on Gibbon and monasticism earlier.

the edifices of rome, c. 457 ce, as per gibbon (and ammianus)

Gibbon in his typical moralizing mood: The Edifices of Rome

The edifices of Rome.
The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals for the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest, that afterwards operated without shame or control, were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the people: and the temples which had escaped the zeal of the Christians were no longer inhabited either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation whose repose was seldom disturbed either by study or business.

gibbon & bury: a timely reminder

A reminder that Bingley created a page named  Gi