Velleius Paterculus (2)
The Roman History
In 1515, the manuscript of Velleius Paterculus' Roman history was discovered in the abbey of Murbach in the Alsace by a humanist scholar who called himself Beatus Rhenanus but whose real name was Bilde von Rheinau (1485-1547). Five years later, he published the text. Although the original manuscript is now lost, we know that it was badly written and contained many errors.Yet, the discovery was immediately recognized as very important. In those days, Paterculus' now deservedly famous description of the conflict between the Romans and the Germanic tribes, which culminates in his account of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, seemed remarkably relevant to the conflict between the German reformer Marten Luther and the Roman Catholic church. Today, the Roman history is appreciated as one of the most readable abridgments of Roman history that have come down to us, and an important source for the reign of the emperor Tiberius. In fact, Paterculus' treatise is the only surviving historical study from the early empire.
Beatus Rhenanus called the text Roman History, and although many scholars have used this title ever since, it is in fact a bit misleading. Paterculus does certainly focus on Rome, but he situates its history in a larger context. Maybe Compendium of world history would have been a better title, although it was obvious to his contemporaries that the conquests of Rome had changed universal history into Roman history. This was an accepted point of view, developed already by the Greek historian Polybius of Megalopolis (c.200-c.118) in his World History.
Paterculus is also indebted to the Roman historian Sallust (86-34), who stated that the fall of Carthage in 146 had been the most important turning point in the history of Rome. Until then, the Romans had been virtuous people, but now that they no longer had a serious enemy, their greed was no longer checked and they were corrupted by luxury. Civil war became inevitable. Paterculus agrees:
The Roman history
Literature
When Rome was freed of the fear of Carthage, and her rival in empire was out of her way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in headlong course. The older discipline was discarded to give place to the new. The state passed from vigilance to slumber, from the pursuit of arms to the pursuit of pleasure, from activity to idleness.
As if to stress this point, the Roman history is divided into two halves. In the first book, Paterculus describes the events until the capture of Carthage. In this part, which unfortunately contains two long lacunas, there is much room for Greek, oriental and Carthaginian history. The words quoted above are the introduction to the second book, which describes the Roman civil wars and the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.
| Book I |
|
| Book
II
chs.1-28 |
Roman corruption after the fall of Carthage; Roman defeats in Hispania; Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus; Numantine War; Gaius Sempronius Gracchus; Germanic incursions; famous orators; Numidian War; Marius versus the Germanic tribes; Social War; Mithradatic War; Sulla; Cinna; Sulla's dictatorship. |
| Book
II
chs.29-58 |
Rise of Pompey the Great; Sertorius; War against the pirates; Lucullus; Conspiracy of Catiline; Pompey versus Mithradates; Digression on Roman provinces; First Triumvirate; Defeat of Crassus; Julius Caesar conquers Gaul; Civil war between Pompey and Caesar; Caesar's dictatorship; Caesar's death. |
| Book
II
chs.59-93 |
Adoption of Octavian; Octavian versus Marc Antony; Second Triumvirate; Battle of Philippi; Suicide of Brutus and Cassius; Perugine War; Octavian's war against Sextus Pompeius; Marc Antony's war against the Parthian empire; Cleopatra; Naval battle of Actium; Suicide of Marc Antony and Cleopatra; Octavian sole ruler; Blessings of his reign. |
| Book
II
chs.94-131 |
Beginning of the career of Tiberius; Conquest of Raetia; Defeat of Lollius; Beginning of the Germanic Wars; Gaius Caesar in the east; His death; Tiberius appointed as Augustus' successor; his Germanic wars; Tiberius suppresses the Pannonian and Dalmatian revolts; Varus' defeat in the Teutoburg Forest; Tiberius' punitive actions; He becomes emperor; Blessings of Tiberius' reign. |
In his first book, Paterculus devotes much space to the achievements of non-Roman people (especially the Greeks). As far as the author of this article is aware, Paterculus is the first Roman historian to write universal history. This is interesting, because the Roman History was dedicated to Marcus Vinicius, consul in 30 CE, who is often addressed in the second person. One is tempted to think that Paterculus tried to remind the chief magistrate of Rome that the Roman empire had become a truly Mediterranean empire, and that this created certain responsibilities. If so, the author's thoughts were seriously out of season: during the reign of the conservative Tiberius, the empire was still there to serve Italy.
Perhaps this interpretation is far-fetched, but there may be more implied criticism in the Roman history. Although Paterculus includes the usual, compulsory remarks about the blessings of the reign of the emperor Augustus, his account of the augustan age is essentially the story of a series of military disasters: the defeat of Lollius in 16 BCE, a Thracian insurrection, the rebellion of the Pannonians and Dalmatians in 5 CE, and the battle in the Teutoburg Forest in 9. The introduction to the reign of Augustus is ambiguous - to say the very least:
The civil wars were ended after twenty years, foreign wars suppressed, peace restored, the frenzy of arms everywhere lulled to rest; validity was restored to the laws, authority to the courts, and dignity to the Senate; the power of the magistrates was reduced to its former limits, with the sole exception that two were added to the eight existing praetors. The old traditional form of the republic was restored.[Roman History 2.89.3]
This is the equivalent of praising general Pinochet for bringing peace to Chile. Marcus Vinicius and any other senator reading the Roman History knew that Augustus was responsible for the last fourteen years of civil war, that the power of the magistrates was not restored to former limits but simply curtailed, and that the monarch had restored the republic in form only. Unless Paterculus believed Vinicius to be an utter fool, this summary of the reign of Augustus is extremely ambiguous.
The details of his description of the augustan age are no less telling. For example, we learn about Augustus' failure as a father (his daughter Julia's children "were to be blessings neither to herself nor to the state", 2.93.2), and Paterculus singles out for praise consul Gaius Sentius Saturninus, who used the absence of Augustus to punish corruption. The implication is that Augustus was unable to cope with these excesses.
It is not hard to see why Paterculus was skeptical about the blessings brought to humankind by Augustus. During his own active career as a soldier, he had seen the wars of the pax augusta. Although he was not directly involved in the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, Paterculus took part in the retaliatory campaigns, and he also had first-hand experience with the difficult Pannonian and Dalmatian wars. He must have understood that the Roman conquest of the earth was not a pretty thing when one looked into it too much, and knew how empty the boasts of Augustus were and how shallow his propaganda was.
There is another reason for Paterculus' skepticism. The long and interesting descriptions of the Pannonian and Dalmatian Wars and the Germanic campaigns were excellent means to introduce the martial qualities of Tiberius, Paterculus' patron, who "by virtue of his services had long been a Caesar before he was such in name" (2.104.3).
This remark is one of the many examples of Paterculus' enthusiastic loyalty to his former comrade-in-arms. Unfortunately, he often crosses the line where an acceptable (and praiseworthy) loyalty degenerates into flattery. In those cases, he is no longer a historian, but becomes a panegyrist.
Varus
On the other hand, Tiberius can not have been very pleased with certain details of the Roman History. One example is Paterculus' description of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest. In the years after the disaster, general Quintilius Varus was blamed for the Roman defeat. During the reign of Tiberius, however, Varus' noble family attempted to restore the memory of its relative. The soldiers of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth legions were responsible, they said. Tiberius, who had by marriage been connected to Varus, was his personal friend, and favored the Roman nobility anyhow, was inclined to support this revision. Paterculus, however, who had known all the Roman officers who had perished in the disaster, reminded his readers of the heroic behavior of the legionaries, and concluded that
from all this, it is evident that Varus, who was, it must be confessed, a man of character and of good intentions, lost his life and his magnificent army more through lack of judgment in the commander than of valor in his soldiers.[Roman History 2.120.5]
battle in the Teutoburg
Forest can be read here.
We do not know Tiberius' opinion about this judgment, but he was probably not amused. Marcus Vinicius must have understood who was really responsible: Augustus, who had appointed the friend of Tiberius.
The same sentiment is expressed by Publius Annius Florus, the author of an Epitome of Roman history, published a century after Paterculus, but using a source from Paterculus' age. Florus writes:
It could be wished that Augustus had not set such store on conquering Germany also. Its loss was a disgrace which far outweighed the glory of its acquisition. But since he was well aware that his father, Julius Caesar, had twice crossed the Rhine by bridging it and sought hostilities against Germania, he had conceived the desire of making it into a province to do him honor.
of Florus' description of
the battle in the
Teutoburg Forest
The story of the defeat in the Teutoburg Forest also illustrates the other qualities of Paterculus' Roman History. The description of Varus contains some criticism ("That he was no despiser of money is demonstrated by his governorship of Syria: he entered the rich province a poor man, but left it a rich man and the province poor") but is essentially friendly ("a man of character and of good intentions").
After the almost comical description of Varus' behavior in Germania ("sitting on his tribunal he wasted the time of a summer campaign in holding court and observing the proper details of legal procedure"), there is a turn to the real tragedy, which Paterculus introduces suddenly ("after this first warning, there was no time left for a second"). The story also contains a sad philosophical comment:
It is usually the case that heaven perverts the judgment of the man whose fortune it means to reverse, and brings it to pass -and this is the wretched part of it- that that which happens by chance seems to be deserved, and accident passes over into culpability.Paterculus reflects upon the human condition, gives a balanced and not uncritical portrait of a man he has known, and changes in a few lines from what amounts to comedy to sad tragedy. The result of this unexpected change is that the reader feels compassion with those brave men whose lives suffered a similar change in fortune. Whatever one may think of Paterculus' frequent hyperboles and his sometimes clumsy sentences, he knows how to tell a good, varied story. He was a narrator, not a writer.[Roman History, 2.118.4]
For a very long time, Paterculus has been regarded as a mere flatterer and a poor historian. This attitude is simply wrong. He was writing during the years in which Tiberius' praetorian prefect, the notorious Seianus, played an important role in Roman politics. Criticism could only be expressed in a very indirect way, and Paterculus did so. As we may have seen above, it can not be excluded that he incurred Tiberius' wrath.
Finally, it is unfair to say that Paterculus was a bad historian. It is true, he did not consult archives, and it is also true that his analysis runs less deep than that of an author like Tacitus. But these are not the standards to be applied. The ancients thought that a historian had to have first-hand experience with politics and warfare, ought to have interviewed the main actors of his story, and should have visited the countries he was describing. From this point of view, the only one that mattered in Antiquity, Velleius Paterculus was the perfect historian.
Literature
- The text of the Roman history can be found here.
- K. Christ, "Velleius und Tiberius" in Historia 50 (2001) 180-192
- Marion Giebel, "Nachwort" in C. Velleius Paterculus, Historia Romana - Römische Geschichte (1989 Stuttgart)
- C. Kuntze, Zur Darstellung des Kaisers Tiberius und seiner Zeit bei Velleius Paterculus (1985 Frankfurt am Main)
- Barbara Levick, Tiberius the politician (1976; 1999)
- Ulrich. Schmitzer, Velleius Paterculus und das Interesse an der Geschichte im Zeitalter des Tiberius (2000 Heidelberg)
- R.J. Starr, "The Scope and Genre of Velleius' History" in the Classical Quarterly 21 (1981) 162-164