The Origins of Roman Historiography

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The Origins of Roman Historiography
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Periodization

• Traditional date for the founding of Rome 753
  BCE
• 753 BCE 509 BCE Regal Period
• 509 BCE 49 BCE Republican Period
• 49 BCE 30 BCE Revolutionary Period
• 30 BCE 284 CE Principate
• 284 CE 475 CE Dominate

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Downtown Rome ca 753 B.C.
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Iron Age Hut Urns
http//www.vroma.org/images/jwalker_images/jw-13.j
pg
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Physical Geography of Italy
http//galileo.rice.edu/images/things/italy_map.bm
p
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Greek Influences

• Greeks had settled Sicily and Southern Italy
  (Magna Graecia) since ca. 780 BCE)
• Influenced by both Etruscans and Greeks through
  trade, diplomacy, and warfare (i.e. art and
  architecture hoplite warfare anthropomorphized
  gods writing myth and literature)
• Much Greek influence came to Rome through the
  Etruscans (though some of it was direct)

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Linguistic Cultural Geography of Italy
http//www.arcaini.com/ITALY/ItalyHistory/AncientL
anguagesLatest2.jpg
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Sources available to Roman Historians

• Imagines wax death masks, as clay masks
  displayed in atrium of aristocratic houses
• Epitaphs
• Official records commentarii accounts of
  elected officials
• Some family archives
• XII Tables earliest code of law set up in Roman
  forum in 450 B.C.

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Sources continued

• Decrees of Senate
• Plebicides resolutions of the plebeian Assembly
• Annales maximi kept by pontifex maximus (chief
  priest) in the Regia in Forum
• Anneales recorded consuls, military triumphs,
  religious prodigies, other events that needed
  religious rituals famines, eclipses

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Source problems

• Annales most important records for early period
• Criticism annales are chronicles disconnected
  records, no plot, no attemp to make causal links
  between events no true history without
  causation
• Family records tend to exaggerate family
  accomplishments, embellished,
• However, relatively reliable

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Earliest writers of Roman History

• Gnaeus Naevius 270 201 B.C.
• Quintus Ennius 239 169 B.C.
• Quintus Fabius Pictor b ca. 250 B.C.
• Marcus Porcius Cato 234 149 B.C.
• Polybius 202 120 B.C.