After the Past. Andrew Feldherr
points towards ahistoricity receives an important qualification thanks to Livy’s emphasis on the historical specificity of each evocation of the exemplum. Thus the mode of exemplarity itself comes to bear witness to the distinction between temporality and timelessness. And from the perspective of the individual interpreter of the past—and here the models within the text surely have the potential to model how Livy’s own readership will understand history—exemplarity becomes in and of itself a way of negotiating between the strong sense of distance between the old republic and the present in which behaviors are selected for imitation, and the will to overcome that distance.
16 16 Nep. Cato 3.4; See discussions in Dillery (2009, 99–101); Gotter (2009, 110–112). Sallust mimics this practice in the “Archaeology” (Cat. 6–13), which names only Aeneas and Sulla.
17 17 proinde quasi praetura et consulatus atque alia omnia huiusce modi per se ipsa clara et magnifica sint ac non perinde habeantur, ut eorum qui ea sustinent virtus est “as if praetorships and consulates and all other things of that sort were distinguished and magnificent in and of themselves and not esteemed in proportion to the virtue of those who undertake them” (Jug. 4.8).
18 18 Compare the preface to the Histories (1.11 M), where the moment of Rome’s greatest spatial extent (51 BCE) is contrasted with the period when it possessed the best mores (between the Second and Third Punic Wars).
19 19 Note especially the important argument of Earl (1972) that the form of prologue Sallust chose for both of his monographs would have given particular emphasis to the connection with philosophy by recalling the beginnings of Aristotle’s esoteric works, then first circulating in Rome. Cf. esp. p. 856 on the effects of this allusion.
20 20 Tiffou (1973), for example, argues that Sallust in the monographs “believed in the possibility of reviving the golden age [of Rome’s past]” (p. 581), though he sees the Histories as expressive of a new pessimism.
21 21 I am not suggesting that Brutus’ aim in this treatise was to encourage a retreat into “philosophical” exile. Quite the contrary; Tempest (2017, 56–77) argues that Brutus’ policies in the years before Caesar’s assassination aimed above all at a reconciliation between the dictator and his civil war opponents. Cf. also Sedley’s (1997) analysis of Brutus’ philosophical position: as a Platonist rather than a stoic, Brutus would not simply have claimed that virtus, as the necessary and sufficient cause of true happiness, provided an escape from political circumstances. Instead, his actions as a tyrannicide reveal a Platonic perception that political freedom was itself a good. Therefore, even if within Brutus’ text the picture of Marcellus’ exiled virtutes constitutes a foil to the main argument, or his return ticket to the Caesarean future, it nevertheless shows the topicality of this concern about the place of virtutes in the new state.
22 22 The quantity of scholarship on the prefaces to Sallust’s monographs is in proportion to their distinctiveness. Main issues include whether they have an intrinsic connection to the works that follow or are simply self-standing exercises (for the latter position see esp. Boissier 1903). Efforts have also been made to trace the archaeology of Sallust’s ideas, emphasizing either Platonic (esp. Egermann 1932) or stoic (e.g., Pantzerhielm-Thomas 1936) affiliations. Helpful overviews of the debate include La Penna (1968, 15–67) and Earl (1961, 5–17), who stresses the compatibility of Sallust’s moral philosophy with traditional Roman aristocratic ideals, and Tiffou (1973, 13–35). The latter provides the most extensive analyses of the prologues, and of their interpretative importance for reading the monographs that follow. Like Earl, he would reject the distinction between Greek philosophy and Roman moral practices; in his case based on a rather reductive a priori assertion that “le Romain n’a pas la sens de la transcendance” (p. 284). Also especially notable is the reading of Leeman (1954–1955), who sees both prologues as carefully composed defenses of Sallust’s choice to write history. For more recent treatments, see below, n. 23.
23 23 This opposition within the content of the passage itself mirrors a notable divergence in scholarly approaches to the passage. For, alongside more traditional efforts to explain the content of the prefaces, whether to account for their philosophical affiliations or to analyze their relevance to the work that follows, recent readings of the prefaces tend to stress their sequential impact on their audience, who struggle to reconcile potential contradictions and ambiguities. Noteworthy examples of the latter approach include Batstone (1990); Feeney (1994); Woodman (in Kraus and Woodman 1997, 13–16); and Gunderson (2000). Again, the distinction is between a focus on the preface’s ideational content, timeless and indeed tralatitious, and the inevitably linear way it is experienced within the text.
24 24 Gunderson (2000, 90) also observes the prominence of first-person pronouns in the final sentences of this chapter, but for him this betokens Sallust’s claim to an authorial mastery that he associates with virtus rather than the diminution of authority I am suggesting.
25 25 The link between vis and virtus that emphasizes the progression derives perhaps from etymology as well as assonance. While virtus transparently suggests the qualities of a man (vir), the form of that word in turn could be explained by the greater force (vis) attributed to the male. See Maltby (1991, 647 and 649 s.v.v. vir and virtus).
26 26 For the contemporary intellectual challenges involved in reconciling the traditional Roman pursuit of glory with different Greek ethical systems, see Long (1995, esp. p. 217 n. 11, on Sallust).
27 27 Batstone (1990, 121); also Gunderson (2000, 90–1), with fuller analysis.
28 28 It may also be noted that the historical moments that Sallust depicts here do not so much describe the contents of Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ histories as their starting points: Cyrus’ rise to power in Asia is the prelude to the conflict between Greeks and Persians, and the unified supremacy of Sparta and Athens fractures in Thucydides’ narrative. From this perspective, historiography no longer provides the sure proof of this fact about human nature but rather suggests its insufficiency or even contestation, as though the story starts once the conclusion seems to have been reached.
29 29 Since my analysis of this passage resembles in many respects that of Gunderson (2000, 91–8), it may be helpful for me to differentiate our arguments. He as well sees this moment in the text as the point of contact between philosophy and history, and also as putting the historian very much within a historical narrative. His analysis stresses a close parallelism between Sallust’s intellectual mastery and the will for political domination that is his subject. The inherent instability of Sallust’s intellectual position, which results from the inevitable duality of the oppositions he tries to hierarchize, between, for example, master and slave and mind and body, stands revealed when he applies them to an analysis of historical processes. The projection of Sallust’s desire to impose authority by prioritizing mind over body runs up against the recognition that this is itself a political struggle as much as an intellectual one. My reading by contrast relies on the possibility of keeping the strands of Sallust’s discourse apart, of allowing for alternative readings of the passage rather than inevitably collapsing them into a deconstructive one.
30 30 Batstone (1988, esp. 14 and 29; also 2010b, 61–4).
31 31 For an account of how this formula is, even in Cicero, immediately complicated when it is applied to real history (Herodotus is awfully enjoyable), see Krebs (2009, 102) and Woodman (2012, 9–10).
32 32 The context justifies this transition from judging history to interpreting it, since the issue that prompts the reflection itself involves a problem of interpretation: Is the “real” tree under which the dialogue is set to be identified with a tree mentioned in Cicero’s (epideictic) poem on Marius?
33 33 Thuc. 3.82.4. On the differences between Cato and Thucydides, and for a fuller account of the sentence’s role in Sallust’s text, see Batstone (2010b, 47–8); also Gunderson (2000, 87). See also Büchner (1983), who however takes Cato’s words as an expression of Sallust’s own viewpoint. In an important recent discussion, Spielberg (2017) reads the Thucydidean passage as a “meta-topos,” an exposure of a common rhetorical trick that therefore distinguishes the discourse of historiography from partisan abuses of language. By making a similar charge part of Cato’s speech, she argues, Sallust again presents it as a polemical strategy, and this furthers his “attempts … to set