From 2019 to 2023 the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the ANHIMA Centre organized a seminar series on crises under the Roman Republic, which brought together a most impressive cohort of French scholars (mostly early- and mid-career) and covered an equally striking range of topics and problems. This book is the first instalment of the proceedings of that seminar; another collection, which will be devoted to economic and religious developments, will follow in due course. The key intellectual coordinates of the project are clearly set out in this volume, which is opened by an effective and characteristically elegant preface by Jean-Michel David: an admirable summary of key recent trends in the study of the Roman Republic, which stresses the emphasis that has been placed on the study of continuities, and on the exploration of the structural factors – whether institutional or ideological – that steered the course of Republican history in the long term; recent developments in the historiography on the period have led to an increasing attention to disruptions and discontinuities, and indeed to the factors of crisis that punctuated the Republican period. This volume joins the debate by focusing on a specific set of case studies: the traumatic junctions (traumatismes), the ‘shocks to the system’ that presented the Republican order with a substantial challenge and called for robust intervention. This is a clear methodological choice, which avowedly leaves out of account the factors of long-term decline and instability, and focuses on a specific set of incidents: that is, after all, the meaning that the word ‘crisis’ has mostly had in the history of the historiography on the Roman Republic, from the seventeenth century onwards. This has a further significant implication, which is one of the key messages of the book. Instead of focusing on the late Republican period and its crisis (or crises), the discussion opens up the compass much more widely, and gives considerable space to the Hannibalic War: that is partly a function of the interests of several contributors and of the distinguished scholarly tradition on this period in France, but is an important historiographical point too, which invites readers to think beyond the convenient specialism divides that have long been shaping the discipline. Reflecting on the analogies and differences between two periods that are so often looked at in mutual isolation can be a productive exercise.
The essays in this collection can mostly be approached as self-standing contributions, which do not engage in sustained dialogue with one another. However, some important work in that space is done by the pieces with which the three editors introduce the three sections into which the volume is organized: the ‘propos liminaires’, which focus on problems of historiography and conceptualization, introduced by Maria Bats (p. 15-21); responses to military and diplomatic developments, prefaced by Jean-Claude Lacam (p. 71-76); and political practice and representations, introduced by Raphaëlle Laignoux (p. 177-182). Readers who are seeking general orientation on the contents of this book will do well to start from those introductory pieces, which also do a good job in placing the volume within wider international debates.
On the whole, the bibliographical coverage of this book is very strong, and reaches out to very recent work. There is also a clear commitment to situating the conversation in a deeper historiographical landscape. Hence the choice to start with the discussions of two classic works, significantly by two of the editors: Lacam on Toynbee’s Hannibal’s Legacy (p. 23‑34), and Laignoux on Syme’s The Roman Revolution (p. 35-68). Lacam rightly stresses the importance of some of the pioneering insights of Toynbee’s book, whilst acknowledging the depth of the disagreement that it has prompted (for a comparable pursuit, cf. C. Ando, in K.‑J. Hölkeskamp-S. Karatas-R. Roth, eds., Empire, Hegemony or Anarchy? Rome and Italy, 201-31 BCE, 2019). Laignoux finds a distinctive angle in the flurry of recent work on Syme by using his work as a starting point in the definition of the concepts of crisis and revolution, and by identifying the treatment of the period from 49 to 30 BCE as a distinctive phase that requires fresh consideration in its own right, and does warrant discussion as a revolutionary conjuncture.
This book has a thematic structure: let us follow a different thread, though, and take chronology as our standpoint. Two fronts neatly emerge: the two opening historiographical pieces effectively foreground them. The Hannibalic War is rightly brought into focus as an existential challenge to the Republic and to the ability of its leadership structures to cope with the demands of a rapidly shifting conflict. The quality of the evidence leaves scope for the study of carefully hedged conjunctures. Sophie Hulot (p. 79-92) frames the 218‑216 BCE period as an age in which there is a substantial disagreement in Rome over the strategy to be pursued in the war and the pace and intensity of the response to Hannibal’s invasion, which is revealing of wider disagreement on the conduct of the republic and the definition of the interest of the people. Henri Etcheto (p. 185-198) discusses the aftermath of the defeat at Lake Trasimene, the major trauma it caused, and the effort that the senatorial historiography, notably Fabius Pictor, made to cast it as the first step in the revival of the campaign, and in the strength of the Roman people. The problem is explored from a different viewpoint in Mathieu Engerbaud’s paper (p. 273-287), which is devoted to the treatment of the defeated commanders in Rome during the Hannibalic War: the long-established view that the defeated magistrates received a rehabilitation of sorts by being allowed to retain their commands is effectively questioned; the decision to extend their mandates is explained with operational needs, and with the need to secure a reasonable degree of stability and continuity in the Roman military setup. The problem of recognising and rewarding military achievement and sanctioning ineffective and damaging behaviour is a constant theme in the management of the Republican order. Clément Bur (p. 289‑300) turns to the role of the censorship, and specifically that of M. Fabius Buteo (on which cf. Barber, Historia 69, 2020). The regimen morum has a central role to play in that connection, both in marginalising those in favour of a negotiated outcome of the war and in shaping the rhetorical motif of the rejection of defeat at all costs: a theme that also made his way into the literary tradition on the Samnite Wars.
In other phases of the conflict Rome proved a nimble and effective operator. In 213, the Scipios led a diplomatic mission to the king Syphax, in which the centurion Q. Statorius played a significant role: Charles Alban Horvais (p. 93-106) revits that episode as an early instalment of a longer-term strategy that Rome would be pursuing in North Africa, partly as a way of responding to the recent changes in Sicily, where Syracuse had changed its allegiance. Another crucial feature of the Roman response to Carthage was the willingness to resort to the dictatorship, a magistracy that is widely associated with the solution of a crisis: a well-known dossier of eleven tenures that Alexis Mészáros revisits (p. 199‑215), rightly distinguishing between those that were created to elect the magistrates (eight in total) and those that played a role of strategic significance (some engagement with M. Bellomo’s Il comando militare a Roma nell’età delle guerre puniche, 2019 would have been useful). The other thematic core of the book is the tail end of the late Republican period: the two decades of civil war that Laignoux identifies as an area in need of greater scholarly attention.
Two important contributions to this volume fit in neither camp, though – but they warrant close attention. Audrey Bertrand (p. 107-122) has an excellent discussion of colonisation in the early second century BCE, which may conceivably emerge as the reference treatment of a development that is one of the most significant themes in the history of an age of change and transition. Charles Parisot-Sillon (p. 123-138) offers an important account of coinage production at times of crisis, effectively bridging the two key foci of this period, with examples drawn from both contexts and from some provincial settings – an interesting cluster of cases are drawn from the Alpine region near Geneva.
The second block of contributions on the late Republic revolve around two main thematic foci. The first one is the army as a venue of political participation and engagement. François Cadiou (p. 141-152) offers a masterful discussion of how the experience of civil warfare shaped a new kind of Roman soldier, issuing a caveat of great interpretative significance: the evidence for a fundamental shift in the behaviour of late Republican soldiers is flimsy at best, and the emphasis ought to be placed on factors of continuity. The interplay between the status of soldier and that of citizen is also relevant to the brief contribution of Pierre Cosme (p. 169-174), which focuses on a specific mode of crisis response: tears, notably those of Roman soldiers. In the same section Bertrand Augier (p. 153-168) builds on Cadiou’s earlier work on military recruitment to stress the enduring weight that traditional constitutional mechanisms had in determining the compliance of the troops for the best part of the republican period, and then argues that a fundamental shift intervened in the Triumviral age, when the legacy of Caesar leads to the short-lived emergence of a new identification between army and people, and of a new political role of the troops, which then fades away from view by the end of the decade. That does not entail an end of the interest in imperatorial power and its definition: as Guillaume de Méritens de Villeneuve shows (p. 259-269), there is a recurring interest in the definition of imperator that is apparent throughout the self-representation strategies of late Republican leaders, from Octavian to Cn. Pompeius.
The other front of interest of the late Republican strand of the volume is institutional history. Laurent Gohary (p. 217-228) focuses on a very specific issue: the nature of the powers of Caesar in 49 BCE, and notably the dynamics of his election to the dictatorship, with his choice not to resort to the interregnum, which would have evoked the precedent of Sulla, and to hold the dictatorship for a mere ten days in order to oversee the elections. There is a clear pattern of respect for the established practice of public religion, which is all the more acutely important at a time of profound disruption. All the other late Republican papers focus on specific junctions, which are all of political significance, but arguably not moments of crisis as such: the consulship of Antony after Caesar’s death and its legislative programme, discussed by Élizabeth Deniaux (p. 231-242), who has an important analysis of the developments of early June 44 BCE and the rupture between Antony and Cicero; the coinage of L. Flaminius in the same year (RRC 485), which Thibaud Lanfranchi (p. 243-257) analyses in connection with the tradition on Octavian’s candidacy to the tribunate for 43 BCE, for whose historicity there are good arguments; the circulation of senatorial records in 44-43 BCE, for which Cicero’s correspondence offers invaluable evidence, which can be triangulated with some later sources, as Maria Bats reminds us (p. 301‑314). The closing piece of the volume takes a somewhat wider focus, and turns to changes in political culture: Marie‑Claire Ferriès (p. 315-329) looks at new models of conduct among senators, at an age of unprecedented danger, and stresses the relative diversity of approaches and conduct within that social milieu.
This book does not provide a systematic treatment of crisis or crises in the Roman Republic, nor does it seek to do so (much as the title might suggest otherwise). Its key ambition is to bring to the fore a range of inherently problematic junctions, and to draw attention to actors whose significance has been underestimated. As a collection that raises new questions or asks old ones more precisely than has hitherto been the case, it is a clear success; and it is equally effective as a statement of the vitality and interest of the current French historiography on the Roman Republic.
Federico Santangelo, Newcastle University
Publié dans le fascicule 2 tome 126, 2024, p. 629-632.