Underlying the notion of “Traditional structures of power in the Roman Empire”, is a fundamental question: how have Roman politics conceived tradition, transformation and innovation – often at the same time – to ground evolution within political society? This apparently simple question allows us to consider our evidence, our profession as historians, and above all our responsibilities in the present debates within a civil society that is often at a loss of bearings and confronted with the wavering foundations of our rationality. Even though mos maiorum and the respect of tradition in Roman political society have been studied at some length during the last decades, the conception and significance of res nouae and innovation are still undervalued.1 From the huge corpus of evidence, this paper will select a few documentary dossiers that range from the first century BCE to the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries CE, focusing on the context of the last decades of the res publica and the first three centuries of the Principate.
1 Introduction: History, Historians, Memory, Tradition, and Innovation
As a starting point to this subject, we should question our practices and certain discursive biases, which punctuate the reflections of historians, particularly in France: ‘permanence and change’, ‘continuity and rupture’, ‘tradition and novelty’.2 A small selection of publications may illustrate this point. J. Liebeschuetz’s pioneering work, which has not received the attention it deserves, deals with the above-named dynamic in a specific framework, Roman religion, and quite rightly so, particularly in its chapter 2 devoted to the “Augustan revival” (55–100), which deals with religious and moral reforms. But he also analyses the issue in the fifth and final chapter on the Late Empire, “Towards the later empire”, which devotes a section to the ‘Diocletianic revival’ (235–252).3 A next dynamic enquiry questioning the forces of change or re-foundation can be found in two companions on Roman religion published two decades later. Both study ritual practices and organisation of cults in Rome (and the Roman world) and have left their mark on historiography. In the same year, 1998, textbooks by J. Scheid and by M. Beard, J. North & S. Price were published: the first one followed up a first approach to this theme in an essay entitled ‘Religion and Piety in Rome’, J. North having dealt with ‘conservatism and changes in Roman religion’ before in a paper published in 1976.4 The conclusive observation was to underline the driving role of the emperor as the main source of innovation, even if some princes could express a clearer refusal of foreign cults (Augustus or Hadrian), others like Claudius fed on the past, e.g. by creating the ritual of the jubilees on the basis of the ludi saeculares, at the risk of being mocked by his contemporaries.5 This field was propitious as illustrated by the, quasi-conclusive, last chapter of J. Scheid’s Romulus and his brothers, devoted to the reform/restoration of the Arvals brotherhood under Augustus, a ‘political’ element if ever there was one, associating the defeated and the victors, the Romulean tradition and the figure of the new founder.6
A different approach was taken by O. Hekster, who emphasised the importance of a dynastic construction of memory in his book devoted to the emperors and their memorial policy, through the use of ancestral links. Regarding Tetrarchic innovation and the constraints of tradition he noted: ‘The ways in which ancestors are commemorated will always be embedded in a society’s (regularly changing) socio-cultural framework’. Vespasian’s or Septimius Severus’ choices could illustrate the wealth of the options considered: from fictitious adoption to the Augustan nomenclature and a privileged relationship to a predecessor, such as Galba, in imperial monetary issues.7
Currently, attention to memory constructions abounds, and to the way in which they can be received and assimilated by what we usually call the ‘collective/social/cultural memory’.8 The ‘memory turn’ of the last few decades, to which I have been able to contribute through analysing the risks of imperial memory (condemned, rehabilitated, diverted),9 has nourished our studies through the contributions of anthropology, sociology, philosophy and, of course, history. I only mention the names of P. Connerton, P. Ricoeur, K. Galinsky, and finally K.-J. Hölkeskamp who has embraced this field of contemporary research in order to renew our conceptions of the Roman Republic and its modes of operation.10 A passage from K.-J. Hölkeskamp’s work suffices to explain his angle of approach, especially when compared with M. Halbwachs’ definitions: “The remarkable omnipresence of the multidimensional, and often quite ambiguous, exempla maiorum – which were designed to ‘exemplify’ (in a specific sense of the word) and affirm values, ‘role models’, ideal standards, expectations, and patterns of desirable behaviour in an intricate web-like (sub)text – can now also be fitted into the wider (con)text of the Republican political culture”.11
2 Mos (maiorum)/Mores and Consuetudo12
Two Ciceronian quotations, one from de Oratore and one from his In P. Vatinium Testem Interrogatio form perhaps the best illustration of what behaviour in society, in private as well as in public, implies in a political face-to-face society; one of collective control made of observations, compromises, and taboos, but also one in which deviations of norms are collectively managed, leading to a co-construction of what is acceptable as collective norm.13 These two quotations place us in medias res in the perspective of a late-Republican conception of tradition, of the ancients’ custom which likens usage or usages to a consuetudo:
Nor again, Crassus, am I greatly troubled by those histrionics of yours, the favourite medium of philosophers, setting forth that by the spoken word no man can kindle the feelings of his hearers, or quench them when kindled (though it is in this that the orator’s virtue and range are chiefly discerned), unless he has gazed into the depths of the nature of everything, including human characters and motives: in which connexion the orator must needs make philosophy his own; and in this pursuit we see that whole lives of most talented and leisured persons have been consumed. The copiousness of their learning and the wide range of their art I am so far from despising that in fact I ardently admire these: yet for ourselves, busied in the public life of this community, it is enough to know and give expression to such things concerning human characters as are not alien to human character.14
And I wish also to know this from you, with what design or with what intention you attended at the banquet given by Quintus Arrius, an intimate friend of mine, in a black robe? who you ever saw do such a thing before? who you ever heard of having done such a thing? What precedent had you for such conduct, or what custom can you plead for it? […] Were you ignorant of the usual practice on such occasions? had you never seen a feast of the sort? had you never, when a boy or young man, been among the cooks? had you not a short time before satisfied your ancient voracity at that most magnificent banquet of Faustus, a noble young man? And when did you ever see the master of a feast and his friends in mourning, and in black robes, while sitting at a feast? What insanity took possession of you, that you should think, that, unless you did what it was impious to do, unless you insulted the temple of Castor, and the name of a feast, and the eyes of a citizen, and ancient custom, and the authority of the man who had invited you, you had not given sufficient proof that you did not think that a properly decreed and formal supplication?15
The first passage is from the de Oratore (which is dated 55 BCE) and explicitly deals with hominum mores, which is not surprising for a text from the homo politicus, who is engaged with the people in the forum. The second passage, from his 56 BCE speech against Vatinius, condemns the latter’s wearing of a dark mourning toga in a festive setting, at a public banquet. This is enough to exclude Vatinius from the practice inherited from an ancestral usage, from that mos uetus which should be clear to everyone, even if some rules are implicit and not governed by law. In his accusatory rhetoric, Cicero notes how his memory fails when searching in vain for an exemplum that could justify such behaviour. There is, he argues, no precedent that would allow a public validation of Vatinius’ attitude. I will return in fine to this collective construction of normed behaviour and to the need – in order to free oneself from certain rules – to ‘re-found’ practices through more or less implicit references, using a biased reading of ancient customs, or at least through an a posteriori reconstruction of traces of a collective memory, acceptable to all.16 It is then that these constitutive links between tradition and innovation are expressed, which most often implies apprehending the forms taken by the transformation. This is why it is appropriate to take account at greater length of what these ‘res novae’ could be. We have selected three aspects of them, which structure a collective reading of the new, as considered in the practices of politics in Rome; a city confronted with the pitfalls of dysfunction and bloody confrontations since the middle of the second century BCE.
3 Res nouae Conceived as ‘Ethnic’ Characters
As a starting point for the first stage, two passages from Caesar and Horace allow us to consider what novelty, change, and even – in some Modern translations – ‘revolution’ can mean in our late-Republican sources. It seems to me that the judgements that can be found in these two passages, which focus on peoples and their customs, the Gauls, the Greeks, and ‘us’ the Romans, make them appear real ethnic traits. In the words of Caesar:
Now Dumnorix had very great weight with the Sequani, for he was both popular and open-handed, and he was friendly to the Helvetii, because from that state he had taken the daughter of Orgetorix to wife; and, spurred by the desire of the kingship, he was anxious for a revolution, and eager to have as many states as might be beholden to his own beneficence.17
He knew well enough that almost all the Gauls were bent on revolution, and could be recklessly and rapidly aroused to war; he knew also that all men are naturally bent on liberty, and hate the state of slavery. And therefore he deemed it proper to divide his army and disperse it at wider intervals before more states could join the conspiracy.18
Caesar was informed of these events; and fearing the fickleness of the Gauls, because they are capricious in forming designs and intent for the most part on change, he considered that no trust should be reposed in them.19
Similarly, Horace noted, “Whereas if novelty had been detested by the Greeks as much as by us, what at this time would there have been ancient?”.20
It is clear that the echoes of the behaviour of the Gauls in their conquerors’ society, as noted by Caesar form part of negative definition of their character. There is a reproving tone towards any practice that is not rooted in a past that would legitimise it, nor in any collective validation, whether forced or not. The same applied to the ‘sacred’ union of the Greeks and Romans against the new, as addressed by Horace in his letter to Augustus, who is also questioning the relationship between the two peoples, culturally and politically – it is in this long missive which compares the behaviour of the Greeks and of the Romans that we find the famous verse: ‘Subdued Greece subdued her fierce conqueror, and carried the arts into rustic Latium’. J. Kennedy has taken stock of the uses of the word res in his thesis on the ‘Imperial Republic’ in this context, and notes: “Propre aux Gaulois, étrangère aux Romains, la nouveauté est assimilée à l’indécision ainsi qu’à une forme d’instabilité qui trouve ses origines dans l’immoralité, voire dans les lacunes intellectuelles des Gaulois. Cette grille de lecture est systématiquement employée par César pour déconsidérer les entreprises politiques et militaires de certains chefs gaulois, à l’instar de Dumnorix le Séquane”.21 We shall see how this specific type of denigration developed in a strictly Roman political context. We can glimpse the scope of these judgements over a longer period of time, noting how a veritable construction takes on through the second, third and fourth centuries CE, which with a few notable exceptions within imperial discourse, holds strictly negative connotations, illustrating rejection.
4 Res novae and ‘Politics’ within the City: Practices and Historical Discourse
To analyse the next stages of the long-term construction of a discourse using novelties in a dynamic reprobation, the process can be usefully compared to similar imperial celebrations of tradition, such as transformations presented as ‘re-foundation’ of the res publica (the so-called r.p. restituta), like the cults or the ancient mores praised by Augustus and some of his successors.22 It is worth noting that, in this discursive elaboration, the same logic of behavioural observance makes it possible to denigrate the bad princes, these ‘exemplary’ figures of tyrants and/or usurpers that the biographical sources, from Suetonius to the Historia Augusta, will gradually impose.23
The copious documentary record, drawn from witnesses, historians and biographers, starts with Caesar and Velleius Paterculus and leads us to the Historia Augusta and Eutropius; i.e. from the imperatores-dictatores Sulla24 and Caesar,25 to Hadrian, Trebonianus Gallus, Hostilianus, and Volusianus,26 according to our sources of the last third of the fourth century, or the very beginning of the fifth century. The Antonine and Late-Antique sources unanimously and uniformly identify res nouae with revolts or revolutions. As early as Tacitus and Suetonius, who both deal with the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians, plots and conspiracies embody a model of contestation of imperial power, whether the events concern Rome or e.g. the Kingdom of Armenia, the focus of Roman and Parthian quarrels and schemes (about Mithridates, betrayed by his nephew27 ). This link between res novae and revolution legitimises the detestation of all new things, as Horace once claimed. I will not comment in detail on the various examples, which a fairly exhaustive inventory has enabled me to establish, retaining for this purpose the Latin sources that are closest to the realities that concern us.
I insist on taking into account the context of some events presented as ‘revolutionary’, and to pay particular attention to the only positive echo that we find in Claudius’s speech to the senators to a res nova, considered as the driving force of Roman history. Both Sylla in Velleius (supra n. 24) and Caesar in his pro domo plea (supra n. 25) envisage in the same terms those who oppose their power, auctores nouarum pessimarumque rerum, and those at the origin of noui generis imperia, who go so far as to question the normal functioning of institutions, in relation to these iura magistratuum commutari. Such a presentation of the successive contexts of the Civil Wars, and the establishment of dictators with constituent powers within a res publica that some might consider endangered by their own actions, is systematised in a new institutional framework in which the powers of the Imperator Caesar Augustus cannot be satisfied with any contestation. This is the case for the res nouae which are identified with the conspiracies that challenge the dynastic legitimacy studied by I. Cogitore.28
I can give a few examples: under Tiberius, Libo Drusus, and Seianus,29 or discussion about Cornutus’ innocence;30 under Nero, Rubellius Plautus,31 and during the 68–69 crisis Montanus facing Civilis,32 or Lucius Piso in Africa;33 and finally under Domitian, the consulares Civica Cerealis, Salvidienus Orfitus, and Acilius Glabrio, who were all eliminated by the prince.34 The account of the elimination of Crassus, by a procurator of Hadrian, but iniusso eius, could be seen as very similar in this respect.35 The mention of revolts and revolutions occurs throughout the principates (as under Nero or Domitian). It is specifically clear at moments of accession, when all potential opponents to the new prince were suppressed.
Claudius’s valorisation of novelty (nova res)36 in a rereading of Roman history ab Vrbe condita takes a different view. It should be ultimately put in relation with the Augustan reading of the mos maiorum, and addresses the variety of formas statusque res p(ublica) nostra. My master, A. Chastagnol, insisted, in Le Sénat romain à l’époque impériale, on reading this passage of the tabula in those terms:
La première colonne nous fournit ensuite un récit un peu confus d’événements historiques: l’empereur étale son érudition pour réfuter deux objections qui ont été faites au projet qu’il soutient. Il veut démontrer en effet que l’histoire de Rome, depuis ses origines, n’a été qu’une suite d’innovations successives, façon comme une autre de présenter sa proposition et de répondre en même temps aux critiques conservatrices qui ont été formulées contre ses vues. L’analyse de l’évolution permet en outre de signaler au passage que les Romains, dès l’époque la plus ancienne, se sont toujours montrés accueillants aux étrangers, et même que des rois étrangers ont gouverné excellemment la ville: l’étruscomane Claude ne saurait trouver meilleur exemple, pour illustrer son propos, que le souverain étrusque Servius Tullius, dont il raconte la légende pour notre plus grand profit; il s’ensuit que le Sénat ne doit pas avoir peur de s’ouvrir largement aux provinciaux.37
5 Res novae and Social Behaviour
It is useful, recalling K.-J. Hölkeskamp’s comments on the political culture of the Roman Republic quoted above, to take two great nobiles, Stoic philosophers and eminent actors in the politics of their time, Cicero and Seneca, as witnesses in their common disapproval of res novae, in two letters addressed to friends, in one case to Lucius Lucceius in 56, in the other to Lucilius in 63–64:
And if I can induce you to undertake what I suggest, you will, I assure myself, find a theme worthy even of your able and flowing pen. From the beginning of the conspiracy to my return from exile it seems to me that a fair-sized volume could be compiled, in which you will be able to make use of your exceptional knowledge of civil changes, whether in disentangling the causes of the revolution or suggesting remedies for its calamities, while you reprehend what you consider blameworthy, and justify what you approve, setting forth your reasons in either case; and if you think you should treat the subject with exceptional freedom of speech, as has been your habit, you will stigmatize the disloyalty, intrigues, and treachery of which many have been guilty towards me.38
If you would obtain a mental picture of that period, you may imagine on one side the people and the whole proletariat eager for revolution – on the other the senators and knights, the chosen and honoured men of the commonwealth; and there were left between them but these two – the Republic and Cato. I tell you, you will marvel when you see ‘Atreus’ son, and Priam, and Achilles, wroth at both’. Like Achilles, he scorns and disarms each faction.39
Cicero, in his text, addressed the person who took on the task of writing a favourable version of his actions as consul of 63 BCE, when Cicero was confronted with Catilina’s coniuratio, then driven into exile, and finally returned back to the city of Rome after the destruction of his house. In the passage, Cicero militates in favour of the expression of a scientia ciuilium commutationum (as a “science of the mutations of political regimes”) that could elucidate the causes of this revolution and propose remedies to what is presented as a disease, incommodae. As for Seneca, who explains in a long letter motivated by his state of health what adversity really is: he takes the example of Cato who comes to embody the res publica between a people – who are similar to the crowd (uulgum rendered here in this very connoted English translation as ‘proletariat’) and are in search of new things – and the members of the ordines who are presented as sancti et electi. Cato is praised by Nero’s tutor for his courage and steadfastness. Seneca emphasises how he finally embodies freedom in an enslaved homeland against those – Caesar, Pompey, Crassus – who are responsible for the distressing situation of the civil wars. This portrayal of a versatile people, sympathetic to all kinds of protests, can be usefully compared to Tacitus’ portrayal a few decades later of the Urbs during the 68–69 CE crisis, filled with spectators of urban violence. It adds to the previous approach, directed by the reading of the revolutions that take place in the face of the different principes; a social dimension consistent with an identification of the nobiles as the guarantors of a certain tradition.40 However, Seneca’s construction of this imago of past times suggests another understanding of late-Republican political society, since the res publica and Cato are at the centre of the demonstration; the two ‘extremes’, the people and the elites, seeming from then on to be unable to embody, either one or the other, the Roman state, its values, its traditional heritage, this mos (maiorum) to which we have devoted this investigation!
6 Epilogue: Dealing with mos maiorum, restitutio, and Innovation
At the end of this survey, it seems to me that the Augustan discourse,41 partly carried by the theme of the so-called res publica restituta, which has been widely discussed in recent years, but also by the prince’s own words in his Res gestae diui Augusti (RG), can shed light on this finely staged dialectic between tradition and res novae, from the end of the Republic proper until the turn of the Christianisation of the Empire and the last fires of senatorial historiography. It is useful to compare chapter 6 of the RG with the famous aureus published by J.W. Rich and J.H.C. Williams in 1999, which continues to supply debates among historians of Roman law and of the institutions and practices of politics in Rome, from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE:
[consulibus M(arco) V]in[icio et Q(uinto) Lucretio] et postea P(ublio) Lentulo et Cn(aeo) L[entulo et terti]um [Paullo Fabio Maximo] e[t Q(uinto) Tuberone senatu populoq]u[e Romano consentientibus] ut cu[rator legum et morum summa potestate solus crearer, nullum magistratum contra morem maiorum delatum recepi.
In the consulship of Marcus Vinicius and Quintus Lucretius [19 BC], and later of Publius Lentulus and Gnaeus Lentulus [18 BC], and thirdly of Paullus Fabius Maximus and Quintus Tubero [11 BC], even though the senate and people of Rome were in agreement that I should be appointed on my own as guardian of laws and customs with supreme power, I accepted no magistracy conferred upon me that contravened ancestral custom.42
Obverse and reverse aureus of Augustus 18 BCE–16 BCE (BM 1995,0401.1). Obverse image: Laureate head of Octavian r. –. Obverse inscription: IMP • CAESAR • DIVI • F • COS • VI. Reverse image: Octavian, togate, seated left on sella curulis, holding out scroll in right hand; scrinium on ground to left. Reverse inscription: LEGES • ET • IVRA • P • R • RESTITVIT. Note: For this coin, also see J.W. Rich & J.H.C. Williams, ‘Leges et Iura P. R. Restituit: A New Aureus of Octavian and the Settlement of 28–27 BC’, The Numismatic Chronicle 159 (1999), 169–213.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
The whole monumentum of Ancyra plays with temporalities, the legitimization of the acts of the so-called saviour of the res publica facing a factio, the repository of a potestas equal to that of all magistrates but endowed with an auctoritas unlike any other.43 In fact, the text is a subtle presentation of innovation under the guise of the strictest respect for tradition. Is it not the key word for the cults, the monumental adornment of the city, the relations with the client kingdoms, and finally the whole of recent Roman history? The princeps embodies this restitutio which is at work in the monetary issue of 28, when the changes to come, in 27 on the one hand, and in 23 on the other, are being prepared. The legend Leges et iura populi Romani or populo Romano shows the affirmation of an apparent respect for the norms of the res publica, after the turmoil of the civil wars. There is no res nova here, but rather a reverence for the mos maiorum recalled in connection with the curatorship of laws and morals. The one who presents his family and his behaviour as exemplary (even if disastrous events in the family or military sphere came to darken the perfect image of the re-founder of the urbs), can embody the mos, give a definition to be followed by both the members of the ordines as the populus Romanus. Both groups must celebrate a providential man, this privileged intermediary between men and gods, on a daily basis, as he officially asserts through his tria nomina. As we have seen, only Claudius deviated from this pattern to claim a completely different Roman history, made up of multiple innovations that ensured the City’s universal destiny. But the exemplum of some and counter-example of others both participate in the fixing of a narrative,44 of a gesture claiming Eternity, from the founder celebrating recreated ludi saeculares to the innovative heir delivering to the successors a model for the commemoration of the dies natalis Vrbis. It seems to me that the fate reserved in provincial epigraphy for the celebration of all kinds of municipal and imperial (milestones) refecit, which translates attention to the past but glorifies the present, is the best illustration of the dynamic dialectic linking tradition and innovation.45
I borrow from J-M. David words to conclude, provisionally, what, from the tribunes of the plebs to the holders of the tribunicia potestas, seems to account for a successful agreement under the gaze of men and gods between the scrupulously preserved heritage of the past and its permanent reinvention:
Ainsi fonctionnait d’acte en acte, ou de geste en geste, l’innovation en matière politique. Un modèle était imité, mais il était aussitôt enrichi par l’adjonction d’un comportement nouveau. Le paradigme était tout à la fois conservé et transgressé. […] L’exemplum était donc là qui, par sa capacité d’identification métaphorique, autorisait la reproduction d’un comportement et l’identification à quelque grand prédécesseur, mais qui était également susceptible d’être enrichi par l’invention d’un trait nouveau qui viendrait alors renforcer et renouveler sa puissance émotive. C’est à ce compte finalement, et sous réserve que l’innovation fût acceptée par une opinion publique que nécessairement elle provoquait, que l’on imagine que les aristocrates romains aient pu par la manipulation d’une topique constamment renouvelée prétendre tout à la fois conserver et élargir un mos maiorum qui n’était fait au fond que de comportements accumulés.46
E.g. about tradition, exempla, auctoritas senatus and mos maiorum: J.-M. David, ‘Maiorum exempla sequi: l’exemplum historique dans les discours judiciaires de Cicéron’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge 92/1 (1980), 67–86; A. Graeber, Auctoritas Patrum, Formen und Wegen der Senatsherrschaft zwischen Politik und Tradition (Berlin 2001); G. Zecchini, Cesare e il mos maiorum (Stuttgart 2001); and for the conception of res nouae: a few elements in A. Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (Cambridge 2010); and C. Moatti, Res publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique (Paris 2018), on the Ciceronian reflexions about the crisis of the Res publica, but without a specific interest to res nouae (2nd part: ‘Le nom de la chose’, 157–248).
About French Historical approaches, two recent collective enquiries: C. Gauvard & J.-F. Sirinelli, eds., Dictionnaire de l’historien (Paris 2015), and Y. Potin & J.-F. Sirinelli, eds., Générations historiennes xixe–xxie siècle (Paris 2019).
J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford 1979).
J. Scheid, La religion des Romains (Paris 1998); Id., Religion et piété à Rome (Paris, 20012 [1985]), about ‘Restoration and Re-foundation of Pious Rome’; M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome, 1. A History; 2. A Sourcebook (Cambridge 1998); J. North, ‘Conservatism and change in Roman religion’, Papers of the British School of Rome 44 (1976), 1–12.
S. Benoist, Rome, le prince et la Cité. Pouvoir impérial et cérémonies publiques (ier siècle av.–début du ive siècle ap. J.-C.) (Paris 2005), chap. VII “Jeux séculaires et jubilés de la Rome éternelle”.
J. Scheid, Romulus et ses frères. Le collège des frères arvales, modèle du culte public dans la Rome des empereurs (Rome 1990), ‘La restauration augustéenne’, 679–732.
O. Hekster, Emperors and Ancestors. Roman Rulers and the Constraints of Tradition (Oxford 2015), 322; about Septimius Severus’ politics, 209–217, and Vespasian’s choices, xxxviii–xxxii & 55–56.
M. Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris 1997 [1950 posthumous]), 94–95, quoted by S. Gensburger, ‘Halbwachs’ studies in collective memory: A founding text for contemporary “memory studies”?’, Journal of Classical Sociology 16–4 (2016), 396–413, 401: “If collective memory derives its force and duration from a group of individuals, these are after all individuals who remember as members of a group. The common memories in this mass are interdependent, and it is not always the same memories that will seem strongest to each group member. We suggest that each individual memory represents a point of view on the collective memory. This point of view changes, depending on the place I occupy, and the place I occupy changes depending on the relations I pursue with other milieus. Thus it is not surprising that not everyone makes the same use of a common tool. In trying to explain this diversity, however, we always return to a combination of influences that are, by nature, social..
A conclusive volume of the collective research program ‘The victims of abolitio memoriae’ (VAM) will be published next year: S. Benoist et al., L’Abolitio memoriae à Rome et dans le monde romain (ier av. n. è.–ive de n. è.). Réflexions méthodologiques et études de cas (Villeneuve d’Ascq).
P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge 1989); P. Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago & London 2004); K. Galinsky, ed., Memory in Ancient Rome and Early Christianity (Oxford 2016) and K.-J. Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic. An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research (Princeton & Oxford 2010).
K.-J. Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic, op. cit. (n. 10), 66–67.
M. Bettini, ‘Mos, mores, und mos maiorum. Die Erfindung der „Sittlichkeit“ in der römischen Kultur’, in M. Braun, A. Haltenhoff & F.-H. Mutschler, eds., Moribus antiquis res stat Romana. Römische Werte und römische Literatur im 3. und 2. Jh v. Chr. (Munich 2000), 303–352; C. Bur, ‘Auctoritas et mos maiorum’, in J.-M. David & F. Hurlet, eds., L’auctoritas à Rome. Une notion constitutive de la culture politique (Pessac 2020), 65–89; and a series of papers about ‘the conflicts of ethos’ dealing with mos maiorum and consuetudo, Revue historique, 705–707 (2023).
I refer to Catherine Baroin’s analyses of in an essay to be published by the University Press of Rennes on Habitus, gestus, incessus. Normes du corps et de la présentation de soi dans le monde romain, dissertation University of Lille 2019.
Cic., De or. 1.219: Neque uero istis tragoediis tuis, quibus uti philosophi maxime solent, Crasse, perturbor, quod ita dixisti, neminem posse eorum mentis, qui audirent, aut inflammare dicendo aut inflammatas restinguere, cum eo maxime uis oratoris magnitudoque cernatur, nisi qui <rerum omnium> naturam et mores hominum atque rationes penitus perspexerit, in quo philosophia sit oratori necessario percipienda; quo in studio hominum [quoque] ingeniosissimorum otiosissimorumque totas aetates uidemus esse contritas. Quorum ego copiam magnitudinemque cognitionis atque artis non modo non contemno, sed etiam uehementer admiror; nobis tamen, qui in hoc populo foroque uersamur, satis est ea de motibus animorum et scire et dicere quae non abhorrent ab hominum moribus. (transl. E.W. Sutton, Loeb no. 348).
Cic., Vatin. 30 & 32 passim: atque etiam illud scire ex te cupio, quo consilio aut qua mente feceris ut in epulo Q. Arri, familiaris mei, cum toga pulla accumberes? quem umquam uideris, quem audieris? quo exemplo, quo more feceris? […] hunc tu morem ignorabas? numquam epulum uideras? numquam puer aut adulescens inter cocos fueras? Fausti, adulescentis nobilissimi, paulo ante ex epulo magnificentissimo famem illam ueterem tuam non expleras? quem accumbere atratum uideras? dominum cum toga pulla et eius amicos ante conuiuium? quae tanta (te) tenuit amentia ut, nisi id fecisses quod fas non fuit, nisi uiolasses templum Castoris, nomen epuli, oculos ciuium, morem ueterem, eius qui te inuitarat auctoritatem, parum putares testificatum esse supplicationes te illas non putare? (transl. R. Gardner, Loeb no. 309).
About the notion of traces (tracks …), the conference we organized with Beate Dignas in Oxford on 12–13 November 2021 (Somerville College and Maison française d’Oxford), to be published next year.
Caes., Gall. 1.9.3: Dumnorix gratia et largitione apud Sequanos plurimum poterat et Heluetiis erat amicus, quod ex ea ciuitate Orgetorigis filiam in matrimonium duxerat, et cupiditate regni adductus nouis rebus studebat et quam plurimas ciuitates suo beneficio habere obstrictas uolebat. (transl. H.J. Edwards, Loeb no. 72).
Caes., Gall. 3.10.3: Itaque cum intellegeret omnes fere Gallos nouis rebus studere et ad bellum mobiliter celeriterque excitari, omnes autem homines natura libertati studere et condicionem seruitutis odisse, prius quam plures ciuitates conspirarent, partiendum sibi ac latius distribuendum exercitum putauit. (transl. H.J. Edwards, Loeb no. 72).
Caes., Gall. 4.5.1: His de rebus Caesar certior factus et infirmitatem Gallorum ueritus, quod sunt in consiliis capiendis mobiles et nouis plerumque rebus student, nihil his committendum existimauit. (transl. H.J. Edwards, Loeb no. 72).
Hor., Epist. 2.1.90–91: Quodsi tam Graecis nouitas inuisa fuisset / quam nobis, quid nunc esset uetus?
J. Kennedy, Une res publica impériale en mutation. Penser et pratiquer le pouvoir personnel à Rome, de Sylla à Trajan (Ceyzérieu 2023), chap. 1.5 ‘Penser les mutations du politique: perceptions romaines de la nouveauté’.
See F. Hurlet & B. Mineo eds., Le principat d’Auguste. Réalités et représentations du pouvoir. Autour de la Res publica restituta (Rennes 2009); and C. Moatti 2018, op. cit. (n. 1), 251–269.
E.g. S. Benoist, ‘Trahir le prince: lecture(s) de l’Histoire Auguste’, in: A. Queyrel Bottineau, J.-C. Couvenhes & A. Vigourt, eds., Trahison et traîtres dans l’Antiquité (Paris 2013), 395–408; ‘Usurper la pourpre ou la difficile vie de ces autres “principes”’, in: Id. & C. Hoët-van Cauwenberghe, eds., La vie des autres. Histoire, prosopographie, biographie dans l’Empire romain (Villeneuve d’Ascq 2013), 37–61; ‘Nomina, tituli et loci: en quête d’une définition des personae du princeps’, in: P. Le Doze, ed., Le costume de prince. Vivre et se conduire en souverain dans la Rome antique d’Auguste à Constantin (Rome 2021), & ‘Boni et mali principes, un empire en jeu(x): discours, figures et postures impériales’, Kentron 36 (2021), 183–206 (https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03561723).
Vell. Pat., 2.19.1: Tum Sulla contracto exercitu ad urbem rediit eamque armis occupauit, duodecim auctores nouarum pessimarumque rerum, inter quos Marium cum filio et P. Sulpicio, urbe exturbauit ac lege lata exules fecit.
Caes., Civ. 1.85.8: Omnia haec iam pridem contra se parari; in se noui generis imperia constitui, ut idem ad portas urbanis praesideat rebus et duas bellicosissimas prouincias absens tot annis obtineat; in se iura magistratuum commutari, ne ex praetura et consulatu, ut semper, sed per paucos probati et electi in prouincias mittantur; in se etiam aetatis excusationem nihil ualere, cum superioribus bellis probati ad obtinendos exercitus euocentur; in se uno non seruari, quod sit omnibus datum semper imperatoribus, ut rebus feliciter gestis aut cum honore aliquo aut certe sine ignominia domum reuertantur exercitumque dimittant.
Eutr. 9.5: Mox imperatores creati sunt Gallus Hostilianus et Galli filius Volusianus. Sub his Aemilianus in Moesia res nouas molitus est; ad quem opprimendum cum ambo profecti essent, Interamnae interfecti sunt non conpleto biennio.
Tac., Ann. 12.44.5: ita Radamistus simulata aduersus patrem discordia tamquam nouercae odiis impar, pergit ad patruum, multaque ab eo comitate in speciem liberum cultus primores Armeniorum ad res nouas inlicit, ignaro et ornante insuper Mithridate.
I. Cogitore, La légitimité dynastique d’Auguste à Néron à l’épreuve des conspirations (Rome 2002).
Tac., Ann. 2.27.1: Sub idem tempus e familia Scriboniorum Libo Drusus defertur moliri res nouas. Suet., Tib. 65.1: Seianum res nouas molientem, quamuis iam et natalem eius publice celebrari et imagines aureas coli passim uideret, uix tandem et astu magis ac dolo quam principali auctoritate subuertit.
Tac., Ann. 4.28.3: adseuerabatque innocentem Cornutum et falso exterritum; idque facile intellectu si proderentur alii: non enim se caedem principis et res nouas uno socio cogitasse.
Tac., Ann. 13.19.3: illa, spe ultionis oblata, parat accusatores ex clientibus suis, Iturium et Caluisium, non uetera et saepius iam audita deferens, quod Britannici mortem lugeret aut Octauiae iniurias euulgaret, sed destinauisse eam Rubellium Plautum, per maternam originem pari ac Nero gradu a diuo Augusto, ad res nouas extollere coniugioque eius et imperio rem publicam rursus inuadere.
Tac., Hist. 4.32.3: ad ea Ciuilis primo callide: post ubi uidet Montanum praeferocem ingenio paratumque in res nouas, orsus a questu periculisque quae per quinque et uiginti annos in castris Romanis exhausisset, ‘egregium’ inquit ‘pretium’ laborum recepi, necem fratris et uincula mea et saeuissimas huius exercitus uoces quibus ad supplicium petitus iure gentium poenas reposco.
Tac., Hist. 4.38.1: Interea Vespasianus iterum ac Titus consulatum absentes inierunt, maesta et multiplici metu suspensa ciuitate, quae super instantia mala falsos pauores induerat, desciuisse Africam res nouas moliente L. Pisone; 49.2: is crebris sermonibus temptaueritne Pisonem ad res nouas an temptanti restiterit, incertum, quoniam secreto eorum nemo adfuit, et occiso Pisone plerique ad gratiam interfectoris inclinauere.
Suet., Dom. 10.2: Complures senatores, in iis aliquot consulares, interemit; ex quibus Ciuicam Cerealem in ipso Asiae proconsulatu, Saluidienum Orfitum, Acilium Glabrionem in exilio, quasi molitores rerum nouarum; ceteros leuissima quemque de causa.
HA, Hadr. 5.6: quamuis Crassum postea procurator egressum insula, quasi res nouas moliretur, iniusso eius occiderit.
CIL 13.1688 (ILS 212), Ludgunum: Equidem primam omnium illam cogitationem hominum, quam / maxime primam occursuram mihi prouideo, deprecor, ne / quasi nouam istam rem introduci exhorrescatis, sed illa // potius cogitetis, quam multa in hac ciuitate nouata sint, et / quidem statim ab origine urbis nostrae in quo<d> formas / statusque res p(ublica) nostra diducta sit.
A. Chastagnol, Le Sénat romain à l’époque impériale. Recherches sur la composition de l’Assemblée et le statut de ses membres (Paris 1992), 80–81; a decade earlier, I had witnessed the shaping of his ideas during his seminars in 1983–1984.
Cic., Fam. 5.12.4: Quod si te adducemus, ut hoc suscipias, erit, ut mihi persuadeo, materies digna facultate et copia tua; a principio enim coniurationis usque ad reditum nostrum uidetur mihi modicum quoddam corpus confici posse, in quo et illa poteris uti ciuilium commutationum scientia uel in explicandis causis rerum nouarum uel in remediis incommodorum, cum et reprehendes ea, quae uituperanda duces, et, quae placebunt, exponendis rationibus comprobabis, et, si liberius, ut consuesti, agendum putabis, multorum in nos perfidiam, insidias, proditionem notabis. (transl. W. Glynn Williams, Loeb no. 205N).
Sen., Ep. 104.31: Si animo conplecti uolueris illius imaginem temporis, uidebis illinc plebem et omnem erectum ad res nouas uulgum, hinc optumates et equestrem ordinem, quidquid erat in ciuitate sancti et electi, duos in medio relictos, rempublicam et Catonem. Miraberis, inquam, cum animaduerteris ‘Atriden Priamumque et saeuom ambobus Achillem’ [Verg., Aen. 1.458] utrumque enim inprobat, utrumque exarmat. (transl. R.M. Gummere, Loeb no. 77).
About the 68–69 crisis in Rome, S. Benoist, ‘Le prince, la cité et les événements: l’année 68–69 à Rome’, Historia 50.3 (2001), 279–311; Ibidem, Le pouvoir à Rome: espace, temps, figures (ier s. av.–ive s. de notre ère), douze variations (scripta varia) (Paris 2020 2nd edition), 55–86; and about the Tacitean reading of Roman crowd, the pioneering study by Z. Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps (Oxford 1969), French translation by M. Sissung, with addenda: La plèbe et le prince: foule et vie politique sous le haut-empire romain (Paris 1984).
A few developments about reforms and innovation: Y. Rivière ed., Des réformes augustéennes (Rome 2012); A. Marcone, Augusto. Il fondatore dell’Impero che cambiò la storia di Roma e del mondo (Rome 2015).
A. Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Text, Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge 2009). (RG 6.1).
About the conception of Augustus’ auctoritas, the debate between G. Rowe, ‘Reconsidering the Auctoritas of Augustus’, Journal of Roman Studies 103 (2013), 1–25, and K. Galinsky, ‘Augustus’ auctoritas and Res gestae 34.3’, Hermes 143 (2015), 244–249, with F. Hurlet as moderator in:‘De l’auctoritas senatus à l’auctoritas principis. À propos des fondements du pouvoir impérial’, in: David & Hurlet eds. 2020, op. cit. (n. 12), 351–368.
To deal with biography, autobiography and conception of history and memory, S. Benoist, ‘Biography, History, and Memory. About some Imperial Figures’, BICS 60–1 (2017), 49–62.
Even if I acknowledge the juridical importance of the refecit mention in Roman and provincial inscriptions, about which see M. Horster, Bauinschriften römischer Kaiser. Untersuchungen zu Inschriftenpraxis und Bautätigkeit in Städten des westlichen Imperium Romanum in der Zeit des Prinzipats (Stuttgart 2001).
J.-M. David, ‘Conformisme et transgression: à propos du tribunat de la plèbe à la fin de la République romaine’, Klio 75 (1993), 219–227, quotation from 224–225.