Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (57 page)

31
Ibid.
, 8.1.

32
Ibid.
, 8.8.

33
Ibid.
, 8.6.

34
Petronius, 119.

35
Plutarch,
Pompey
, 57.

36
Cicero,
To Friends
, 8.14.

37
Ibid.
, 2.15.

38
Appian, 2.31.

10: World War

  
1
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 7.1.

  
2
Lucan, 1.581. A poetic touch, no doubt, but a haunting and apt one.

  
3
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 8.2.

  
4
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 8.11.

  
5
Plutarch,
Cicero
, 38.

  
6
Cicero,
In Defence of Marcellus
, 27.

  
7
Anon.,
The Spanish War
, 42.

  
8
Caesar,
The Civil War
, 3.8.

  
9
Plutarch,
Caesar
, 39.

10
Caesar,
The Civil War
, 3.82.

11
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 30.

12
Plutarch,
Pompey
, 79.

13
Cicero,
To Friends
, 2.12.

14
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 2.5.

15
Plutarch,
Antony
, 27.

16
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 51.

17
Plutarch,
Cato the Younger
, 72.

18
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 37.

19
Cicero,
To Friends
, 9.15.

20
Ibid.
, 15.19.

21
Florus, 2.13.92.

22
Cicero,
Philippics
, 2.85.

23
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 77.

24
Plutarch,
Brutus
, 12.

25
Velleius Paterculus, 2.57.

26
Plutarch,
Caesar
, 63.

27
Cassius Dio, 44.18.

28
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 82.

29
Or so it was claimed by Seneca. See
On Anger
, 3.30.4.

30
Suetonius,
The Deified Julius
, 82.

11: The Death of the Republic

  
1
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 14.9.

  
2
Ibid.
, 14.21.

  
3
Cicero,
To Friends
, 4.6.

  
4
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 14.21.

  
5
Ibid.
, 14.12.

  
6
Ibid.
, 14.4.

  
7
Ibid.
, 16.7.3.

  
8
Cicero,
Philippics
, 2.1.

  
9
Ibid.
, 10.20.

10
Ibid.
, 13.24–5.

11
Cicero,
To Atticus
, 16.8.1.

12
Cicero,
Philippics
, 3.3.

13
Cicero,
To Friends
, 11.20.

14
Suetonius,
The Deified Augustus
, 26.

15
Appian, 3.92.

16
Pliny the Elder, 34.6.

17
Cicero,
Letters to Atticus
, 14.1.

18
Virgil,
Eclogues
, 4.4–9.

19
Plutarch,
Antony
, 26.

20
Suetonius,
The Deified Augustus
, 69.

21
The Achievements of the Divine Augustus
, 25.2.

22
Plutarch,
Antony
, 75.

23
The Achievements of the Divine Augustus
, 3.2.

24
Seneca,
On Mercy
, 1.2.2.

25
Cassius Dio, 53.16.

26
Ennius,
Annals
, fragment 155.

27
Horace,
Odes
, 4.5.1–2.

28
Ibid.
, 3.6.45–8.

29
Ibid.
, 3.24.36–7.

30
Velleius Paterculus, 2.89.

31
Virgil,
Georgics
, 1.145–6.

32
Virgil,
Aeneid
, 6.792–3.

33
Ibid.
, 8.669–70.

34
Horace,
Epodes
, 2.1–6.

35
Cicero,
Philippics
, 13.30.

36
Suetonius,
The Deified Augustus
, 99.

37
Ovid,
The Art of Loving
, 3.112–13.

38
Livy, 43.13.

39
Cicero,
The Republic
, 1.68.

Ancient …

Classical sources are often given the blanket label ‘primary’, when in reality they may be no such thing. Call Plutarch, who was born in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, a primary source for the fall of the Republic and one might as well call Carlyle a primary source for the life of Frederick the Great. Even so, documents from the period covered by this book
have
been preserved – and, by the standards of ancient history, a voluminous quantity of them. Most were written by Cicero: speeches, philosophical works and letters. A few works by his contemporaries have also survived: most notably the commentaries of Caesar, two monographs by Sallust, fragments of works by the great polymath Terrentius Varro, maxims culled from the dramas of a mime-writer, Publilius Syrus, and the work of two poets, Lucretius and Catullus. Lucretius’ poem
On the Nature of Things
provides a fascinating counterpoint to the letters of Cicero: the work of a man who consciously withdrew from the clamour and frenzy of public life. Catullus, who was almost certainly a lover of Clodia Metelli, and a friend of Caelius – though see Wiseman’s
Catullus and His World
– paints vivid sketches of the capital’s party set, sometimes full of pathos, more often scabrous, witty and abusive.

Greeks also wrote about Roman affairs. One of the first to do so was Polybius, brought to Rome as a hostage in 168
BC
, befriended by Scipio Aemilianus, and a witness to the destruction of Carthage. His
History
provided a penetrating analysis of the Roman constitution and the rise of the Republic to mastery over the entire Mediterranean. Of Posidonius’ writings, little has survived – only a few scraps here and there. Bulkier fragments have been preserved of the
Library of History
, an immense, forty-volume universal history written by Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian writing even as the Republic collapsed. A generation later, the geographer Strabo, who came from Mithridates’ old kingdom of Pontus, wrote an exhaustive gazetteer of the Roman world – including Italy and Rome herself. This was supplemented by
the labours of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whose
Roman Antiquities
was written as an introduction to Polybius, and contains invaluable information derived from the earliest Roman annalists.

In a sense, the entire literature of the Augustan period can be seen as a commentary on the fall of the Republic: in profoundly different ways it is a theme that runs throughout the poetry of Virgil, Horace and Ovid; and through Livy’s great history of Rome. Even though the books of that history which covered the late Republic have been lost, an abridgement of Livy’s work by the late-first-century
AD
poet Florus has survived. Then there is the testimony of Octavian himself, in the form of
The Achievements of the Divine Augustus
– a lengthy self-justification set up in public places throughout the empire and a superlative exercise in spin.

Even after Augustus’ death, Roman writers kept returning to the heroic years of the Republic’s end. Details from the period filled Valerius Maximus’ compendium of
Memorable Deeds and Sayings
, and Velleius Paterculus’
Roman Histories
, both composed during the reign of Augustus’ successor, Tiberius. The philosopher Seneca, tutor and adviser to Nero, mulled over the lessons of liberty betrayed. So too did his nephew, Lucan, in his epic poem on the civil wars,
The Pharsalia
, and Petronius, in his considerably less elevated prose work,
The Satyricon.
All three ultimately committed suicide, the only gesture of republican defiance still permitted Roman noblemen under the rule of the Caesars. ‘A monotonous glut of downfalls’ – so Tacitus, writing at the beginning of the second century
AD
, described the judicial murders that had blotted the recent history of his country. Rome’s ancient inheritance of freedom seemed to have vanished, drowned in blood. In Tacitus, bleakest of historians, the ghost of the Republic haunts what the city has become.

None of his near contemporaries could rival Tacitus for the clarity and mercilessness of his perspective. Instead, for most, the history of the Republic had become a quarry to be mined for entertainment or elevated anecdotes. The elder Pliny’s
Natural History
provided character sketches of Caesar, Pompey and Cicero, along with an inexhaustible supply of more eclectic information. Quintilian, in his treatise on rhetoric,
The Education of an Orator
, often referred back to Cicero and the other orators of the last years of the Republic, and is an invaluable source of quotations for writers who have otherwise been lost. So too is Aulus Gellius, in his chatty collection of essays,
The Attic Nights.
Suetonius, author of a racy
Lives of the Caesars
, wrote muck-raking portraits of the two deified warlords, Julius and Augustus. King of the biographers, however, was Plutarch, whose portraits of the great men of the late Republic have
been the most influential, because they are the most readable, of any historian’s. Vivid with moralising and gossip, they portray the Republic’s collapse not as a revolution or a social disintegration, but as the ancients tended to see it: a drama of ambitious and exceptional men.