Roman History Books and More

how well do you know marcus didius?

Three quizzes on the adventures of Marcus Didius Falco:

My First Falco Quiz covers The Silver Pigs and Shadows in Bronze.

My Second Falco Quiz covers "Falco On His Metal", the omnibus volume containing Venus in Copper, The Iron Hand of Mars, and Poseidon's Gold.

My Third Falco Quiz covers "Falco On The Loose", the omnibus volume containing Last Act in Palmyra, Time to Depart, and A Dying Light in Corduba.

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."

more on hermann broch's 'death of vergil'

I said earlier that Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil is a difficult and ambitious book.  In the appendices to my German edition, the author discusses his work at length at various stages and revisions.  He worked on it for seven years, from 1938 to 1945.

There is a brief description of the novel (or poem as the author insists it is) at Wikipedia (as usual, handle with care).  English readers will have the comfort to know that the translation by Jean Starr Untermeyer, a friend of Broch's, was closely supervised by the author.  He himself also addressed the difficulty of translating this work in the above appendices.

reading about the augustan era: novels of virgil

Again, I'm spending time in doctors' and hospital waiting rooms, drinking vile stuff – well actually no so vile, nowadays they mask the barium with a fruit smoothie taste – and waiting for the stuff to work through my body before a CT-scan.  In circumstances like these, ambitious nonfiction is not the thing to read.  (My apologies to Mary B.)

However, keeping in with the "Roman Revolution" theme, I grabbed an old favorite, David Wishart's I, Virgil – unfortunately it seems to be seriously out of print right now.  For those readers who know Wishart only from the Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus mystery novels, with their wine-swilling hero and his anachronistic modern gumshoe language, this 1995 novel would come as a real surprise.

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

the triumph of caesar: new gordianus mystery in the stores in may

Steven Saylor's last Roma Sub Rosa mystery, The Judgment of Caesar, ended ambiguously:  Did Gordianus and Bethesda die or not? Well, here is the answer, in the stores by May:

The Triumph of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome

Product Description (Amazon.com page)
The Roman civil war has come to its conclusion, Pompey is dead, Egypt is firmly under the control of Cleopatra (with the help of Rome's legions), and for the first time in many years Julius Caesar has returned to Rome itself. Appointed by the Senate as Dictator, the city abounds with rumors asserting that Caesar wishes to be made King,€“ the first such that Rome has had in centuries. And that not all of his opposition has been crushed.

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.

robert fagles, translator of the classics, dies at 74

Books

Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74

By CHARLES McGRATH

Published: March 29, 2008 NYT

Mr. Fagles was a renowned translator of Latin and Greek whose versions of Homer and Virgil became unlikely best sellers.  read on

Photo: Robert Fagles in 2006. Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

robert fagles’ aeneid translation

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.")

coleridge and goethe, together at last

Not even tangentially related, but I found it too fascinating to have it go unnoticed:

Coleridge and Goethe, together at last
A provocative new edition of Faustus claims to solve a literary mystery and unite two of Romanticism's greatest poets.

The price is rather stiff though . . .

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.

   

reprise: late antiquity

I posted this in June 2007, and it might be timely again:

late antiquity, spätantike: when did it happen?

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

      

cicero: in verrem

Cicero, Rome's famous advocate, acted as prosecutor in only one case, in 70 BCE, against Gaius Verres (Wikipedia, handle with care). Verres, who basically raped Sicily while governor, went into exile before the case came to a verdict.  Thus Cicero, who opened the prosecution by simply presenting the witnesses and their damning stories, never got to make his speeches, but he had them published, as was his practice.

As so often, Perseus Digital Library, who has the translation, is not accessible, but there is another site, The Society for Ancient Languages:

In C. Verrem Actio I
In C. Verrem Actio II Liber I-V

The Latin Library has the Latin test, In Verrem, as has Pagina Prima.

book chats: final installment of gibbon, february 20 & march 5

We come to the end of  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon on February 20 and March 5.

Online: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Chapters XXXVI to the end of Volume III
From the sack of Rome by the Vandals to King Arthur, followed by Gibbon's General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

The second half of Chapter XXXVII and most of Chapter XXXVIII are strictly speaking outside our period.  However, after Chapter XXXVIII Gibbon has a section discussing the causes of the fall of the Western Empire.

If there is time left, we might discuss other literature on the Fall of Rome.

final round of 'fortune's favorites'

The final discussion of Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough on February 6  will concentrate on Chapter VI through the end.  Some of the event move back to an earlier time.

• Pompey gets a much-needed lesson in humility and warcraft from Quintus Sertorius and realizes that there is more to Metellus Pius than he thought.  Sertorius meets his end.
  
• Caesar becomes a father and makes his mark in the courts.
• Introduction of the Claudii/Clodii and of the young Antonii after the deaths of their respective fathers.
• Caesar goes back to the East, the death of King Nicomedes, and the entertaining story of Caesar and the Pirates. Caesar makes his own little war.
• The Spartacus uprising, in a different viewpoint than the usual fictional narratives.
• The first consulate of Pompey & Crassus.
• Cicero and the prosecution of Gaius Verres.
• Marcus Cato and the basilica story.
• Bold funeral games for Aunt Julia and Cinilla.

gibbon's memoirs unabridged, in print & online

Bingley mentions Edward Gibbon's Memoirs in this comment.  The edition cited is greatly abridged and supposedly highly censured.

There is a complete facsimile print edition around titled  The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon: Printed verbatim from hitherto unpublished MSS., with an introduction by the Earl of Sheffield.  Highly enjoyable for people who love to read memoirs. 

Online, there is Gutenberg:  Memoirs of My Life and Writings.

There doesn't seem to be a Google Book available yet.

round two of 'fortune's favorites'

Discussion of Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough on January 16 will concentrate on Chapters III through V.

We have:

• Pompey's first triumph (he is also making progress in the wife business)
• Sulla busy legislating (and making mischief)
• the death of Dalmatica
• Cicero defending Roscius (and getting married)
• Caesar in the East (a little too good to be true?) meeeting King Nicomedes, and proving himself in battle, busily making enemies along the way
• a lot of new characters at Mitylene of future significance
• Metellus Pius growing into his role as Pontifex Maximus
• The Alexandrian successions, and other goings-on in the East
• Pompey intriguing
• Sulla's last fling and death
• Gaius Verres' first black deeds
• Lepidus' and Brutus' insurrection; Servilia looking for a new husband
• and Pompey getting his Spanish command

q. caecilius metellus pius

Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology) was a scion of the prolific gens caecilia, ally of Sulla, proconsul in Spain fighting Sertorius, and Pontifex Maximus.

I have blogged him and them in the past: the gens caecilia and the metelli – metellus pius, so consider that post a refresher as we read Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough.

cn. pompeius magnus (pompey)

Cn. Pompeius Magnus (better known to the English speaking world as Pompey), the unofficial "first triumvir" and later adversary of C. Julius Caesar, is one of the more intriguing, exasperating, and tragic figures of the late republic.

Our current read, Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough, opens with a young and cocky Pompey  eagerly offering his troops to Sulla to march against Rome and follows his career through March 69 BCE, when he becomes consul for the first time, side-stepping the cursus honorum in typical Pompey fashion.

Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology has a lenghty discourse on him, beginning here.  N.S. Gill has a number of links at Pompey - Cn. Pompeius Magnus, such as Pompey's Wives.

In print there is Pompey the Great: A Political Biography by Robin Seager.

on translating fiction

Being bi-lingual and interested in languages and literature, I have or so I like to believe, a fine ear (or eye) for literary translations in the languages I know.  Here is a recent experience:  A short while ago, I read The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross, a history of classical music in and of the 20th century.  Excellent!  Related blog, with musical examples.  The author relates that a number of American musicians/composers have read Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuehn As Told by a Friend. This sent me back to my library to re-read the novel, in the original German, about a composer who makes a Doctor Faustus-like deal with the Devil and eventually sinks into insanity, coinciding with the turmoil of the 1920s in Germany and the rise of Nazism.  The novel is a tour de force in prose, and I wondered how this could actually be translated into English without loosing its impact.  Not very well, I decided, after I had borrowed the above linked 1997 edition, translated by John E. Woods.  As a matter of fact, I could not bring myself reading much of the book, it was too painful.  Somewhere out there, there is a translation authorized by Thomas Mann, but it's out of print. 

The question though is, do translations ever work satisfactorily?

latest mccullough book out: antony and cleopatra

The latest – and presumably final – book in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is out:

Antony and Cleopatra, A Novel

It covers the period from 41 to 30 BCE, and ends with an epilogue, "Metamorphosis"  (i.e., Gaius Caesar into Augustus), 29 to 27 BCE.

Cover image
of the UK edition

online resources when reading "fortune's favorites"

There are plenty of online resources to help with reading our next book, Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough.

Aside from ancient sources, such as Plutarch (also here and here), Divus Julius by Suetonius, and Book 1 of Appian's Civil War, there are two exhaustive sites regarding Caesar:

• N.S. Gill at Ancient/Classical History at About.com: Articles on Gaius Julius Caesar and pages on this site with resources and biographies of Julius Caesar.
• Suzann Cross: Gaius Julius Caesar: The Last Dictator, A biography of Caesar and Rome, 100 - 44 B.C.  This includes biographies of Caesar's contemporaries.

N.S. Gill also has Sulla - Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 B.C.) and Pompey - Cn. Pompeius Magnus.

I'm sure there is more, and I'll blog it as I come across it. 

'venus in copper' and juvenal

Our current read, Venus in Copper, the third mystery in Lindsey Davis' Marcus Didius Falco mystery series, takes entirely place in Rome.  Falco is commissioned to prove that a certain Severina Zotica has murdered her previous husbands, and asked to prevent her from marrying and murdering a fourth.  Most of the characters in this drama with the usual twists and turns we've come to expect from Ms. Davis, are rich freedmen and freedwomen.  Meanwhile, Falco also has to deal with palace intrigues and Vespasian's son and co-ruler Titus, who pays him back a favor by presenting him with a turbot, resulting in a hilarious feast, with none other than Titus present.

Since just prior to this upcoming chat on Wednesday we discussed Juvenal's Satires, three of them vividly come to mind:

Satire 3: The Evils of the Big City
Satire 4: The Emperor's Fish (no English version online)
Satire 6: Roman Wives – Death is better than Marriage

(See also Bingley's post: prison)

"a good mystery: why we read"

From the New York Times:

Page Turner
A Good Mystery: Why We Read
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: November 25, 2007
At a time when books appear to be waging a Sisyphean battle against the forces of the Internet, the notion that someone could move from literary indifference to devouring passion seems, sadly, farfetched.

Image Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

chat preference for juvenal's satires so far

Since we can't discuss all of Juvenal's Satires in our chat next Wednesday, here are some preferences by regular chat members as of this writing:

Satire 1
Why Write Satire?
It is Hard not to Write Satire.
Programmatic satire in which Juvenal states that his purpose is to write satire in a world where sinners are men of power.