Glew, 'Livy Book XXXVIII (189-187 B.C.)', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9505
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9505-glew-livy
@@@@95.5.9, Walsh, ed., Livy 38
P. G. Walsh, Livy Book XXXVIII (189-187 B.C.). Warminster:
Aris & Phillips, 1993. Pp. 212. $49.95 [hb], $24.95 [pb]. ISBN
0-85668-598-4 [hb], 0-85668-599-2 [pb].
Reviewed by Dennis Glew -- Moravian College
glewD@moravian.edu
With the appearance of this volume, P. G. W[alsh] reaches
the midpoint of a project that will eventually extend to the
entire pentad consisting of Books 36-40. His edition of Book 36
with translation and commentary was published by Aris & Phillips
in 1990, Book 37 (reviewed in BMCR 2.6.21 by Christina S.
Kraus) in 1992.
The organization and scope of the new volume closely
resemble those of its predecessors. In an Introduction, W. offers
his own capsule history of the period Livy covers here, an
appraisal of Livy's historical accomplishment in Book 38, a
succinct review of literary features of the book, and a
discussion of the Latin text. There are two bibliographies in the
Introduction, one of secondary works discussing historical issues
involved in Book 38, the other of historiographical studies of
Livy. The bulk of the volume consists of the Latin text and W.'s
translation, presented Loeb-style on facing pages. W's.
commentary, about half again as long as Livy's Latin, appears
immediately thereafter and is followed by 12-page apparatus and
indexes of persons and of places and events. At the beginning
there is also a set of maps.
In a Preface, W. observes that his book is "aimed at a wider
audience than the more specialised editions which emanate from
the university presses." The translation was prepared, he adds,
with students' needs in mind, and in the commentary many of his
observations seem to be directed specifically to a student
audience (e.g., the explanation of instauratio of votive games
[38. 35. 6] and the description of the Comitium [38. 56. 12]). In
view of this, it is surprising not to find here any discussion of
Livy's life or of the circumstances of the publication of Book 38
or its pentad. (The only indication of date of publication is
W.'s comment [38. 50. 6] that Livy was interested in libertas, "a
theme topical in the 20s BC when this book was composed.") Both
subjects are covered in the introduction to Book 36, and space
constraints may have precluded repeating that earlier discussion.
But a cross-reference to it would have been helpful to students
who may not buy all three volumes. (Not many will, I would think,
at a price of $25 per book.) In any case, instructors will be
glad to have the new volume available for use in class, even if
at some points they may want to disagree with W.'s assessment of
Livy's achievement.
W.'s translation stays close to the Latin, and its accuracy
is a welcome improvement over the Loeb, whose shortcomings at
many places W. notes. (See, e.g., his comments on chapters 8. 5,
33. 5, and 37. 10.) In the half-dozen extended sections that I
examined closely, I found only one minor blemish, a passage in
which W.'s rendering of the Latin might surprise a reader who
does not look at the original. Preparing for battle with the
Gauls, the consul Volso is said to have "noted that ... the
slopes were solid earth underfoot" (38. 20. 4). He was concerned,
then, that the footing might be unstable, or so one could think.
But Livy is contrasting clear ground with terrain that is too
rocky or precipitous to be accessible to the Roman troops. The
Oxford Latin Dictionary, citing this same passage, translates
"terrenus" (3) as "earthy (esp. of ground or terrain free from
rocks and stones)." The passage would be clearer if one adjusted
the translation to something like the following: [Volso] "noted
that ... the slopes were free from rocks and stones."
W.'s chief emphasis is on history, not philology. As he
states in his Preface, "... the main thrust of the notes is
towards clarification of the historical events and the
historian's aims and methods in presenting them." With regard to
the former, W.'s discussion is succinct but considered. His
comments about Livy's aims and methods, on the other hand,
sometimes are unconvincing, but here, too, there is much that is
very useful. In particular, his observations about Livy's
language and story-telling techniques are one of the finest
features of the commentary. W. is careful to explain difficult
passages, and he often draws the reader's attention to the ways
in which Livy achieves his effects. (For example, W. points out
that the past perfect "nudaverant" at 7. 4 results in "thrusting
the reader into the existing situation," while the historic
infinitives at 24. 13 enhance the graphic quality of the
description.) Among many others things, there are good comments
about Livy's variation of tenses (6. 3) and his use of indirect
discourse (42. 9-12). Not surprisingly, W. has particularly
valuable points to make about the way Livy applies his favorite
means of describing set scenes, many of which W. himself first
elucidated.[[1]] These include the use of dialogue (see, e.g.,
38. 14. 7), the "stages" technique in battle descriptions (38. 5.
3-4 & 25. 12-13), dramatic elements in battle accounts (38. 40.
10), and the "psychological" representation of crowds. W.'s
analysis of the rhetoric of Manlius' speech to the Senate (38.
45ff.) is also fine. In general, the commentary is full of
excellent observations about the way Livy tells his tale, and no
one interested in reading Book 38 carefully will want to miss it.
But there are also observations about Livy's aims and
methods that are not persuasive, and students who use this
commentary will have to be told that there is more to this story
than one might gather from this volume alone. In a series of
publications T. J. Luce[[2]] has demonstrated that Livy was a
careful, deliberate craftsman, not a mere rhetorician (as some of
W.'s comments may suggest), and Luce and others (including
especially Gary Miles[[3]]) have made a convincing case for
believing that, instead of being a derivative thinker, Livy had a
view of Roman history that was innovative in several important
respects. Also, A. J. Woodman has directly challenged the notion
that ancient historians, Livy included, wrote with the same aims
as modern historians and thus that they should be judged by the
same standards.[[4]] None of that thinking is reflected in this
volume, and very little of it is even acknowledged. As a result,
the Livy who emerges from W.'s treatment is a distinctly minor
figure, important insofar as he preserves material from older,
more reliable sources (as W. would judge them) but largely
incapable of significant contributions of his own, entertaining
in good moments but always subject to slip-ups of every sort.
Even when W. acknowledges that the historian has dealt with a
difficult, controverted subject (the trial, death and tomb of
Scipio Africanus) with energy, he still concludes that "Livy
cannot escape criticism; he should surely have analyzed the
competing versions of events before committing himself to
manifest improbabilities..." (56. 1ff.). "Mediocre history, but
magnificent eloquence," W.'s judgment of this part of Livy's
account, could serve as his characterization of Book 38,
generally.
W.'s largely negative evaluation of Livy's work seems to
rest on two assumptions, first, that the historian's chief
responsibility was to transmit completely and precisely any
information available in his sources and, second, that Livy was
incapable of adapting this information for positive purposes of
his own. Accordingly, when Livy changes the account of his
sources in virtually any way in Book 38, W. is almost always
critical. Sometimes he demands more than is really needed. At
25.5, for example, W. states that Livy "carelessly omits to add
the detail in Polybius that Attalus was accompanied by military
tribunes; the negotiations were not left to the Pergamene prince
alone." But this can be supplied from the context. At other
times, W. asserts without discussion that Livy adjusts Polybius
merely to reduce complexity or detail (24. 2; 37. 5) or as a
result of simple misunderstanding or carelessness (25. 6-7; 33.
1). W. identifies problems of geography and chronology,
especially, with an alacrity that borders on enthusiasm. Livy's
description of the course of the Sangarius, for instance, is
compromised by "geographic frailties" (18. 8), and the ager
Belbinatis was restored to Megalopolis thanks to a decree
which "Livy inaccurately attributes ... to the Achaeans rather
than to the Hellenic League" (34. 8). Similarly, when Livy
mistakenly indicates (33. 1) that Philopoemen was reelected to
the office of strategos of the Achaean League at the
beginning of 188, W.'s response is to cite Errington, "who
attributes Livy's error to a misunderstanding of Polybius'
Greek." As for the date of the consul Flaccus' return to Rome at
the end of 189, W.'s only comment (35. 1) is that "Livy's
chronology is confused."
But in matters of detail such as this, surely Livy's methods
of work (for one thing) need some consideration. Luce has shown
that the historian prepared the material of each pentad before
beginning to write and that when he composed, he relied on memory
instead of consulting his source(s) directly.[[5]] This practice
of writing from memory probably accounts for many of Livy's minor
historical mix-ups. As one reviewer observed, "Although the
evidence is slight (when Livy reproduces a list that also appears
in Polybius, the order of items is often changed, for example),
Luce's thesis is consistent with a rhetorical education and might
help to explain a number of peculiarities in Livy's text
..."[[6]] This is not to suggest that Livy's mistakes do not
matter or that W. is at fault for identifying them. But it would
be helpful, especially for the students for whom this work was
prepared, if W. would, among other things, take note of the
difficulties that faced the historian when he prepared and
composed his life's work. Just to check citations was a headache
that often led ancient scholars to quote from memory, something
they did more confidently than we would today because they had
trained their memory better than we have ours. Still more useful,
of course, would be to re-evaluate Book 38 in the light of what
Woodman and others have shown about the aims and methods of
ancient historians.
The second assumption implicit in many of W.'s comments,
that Livy does not adapt his sources to serve purposes of his
own, keeps W. from considering positive explanations of the
changes he notes. Take, for example, his comments on the role of
Tiberius Gracchus in the attacks on Scipio Africanus (52. 3 - 53.
7). Livy, in brief, says that when Scipio was threatened with
arrest by several plebeian tribunes for failing to answer charges
they had brought against him, other tribunes decreed that the
trial should be delayed, and one of them, Ti. Gracchus, who was a
political opponent, no less, of Africanus, rose to the latter's
defense, decrying the injustice of indicting a hero of his
stature. So convincing was Gracchus' oration that even his
colleagues who had initiated the charge had second thoughts, and
in a subsequent meeting of the Senate, "profuse thanks were
offered by the whole [senatorial] order, and especially by those
of consular rank and the older senators, to Tiberius Gracchus,
because he had put the public interest before private
disagreements" (53. 6 [W.'s trans.]). Now, concerning Gracchus'
part in the episode, W. usefully observes that "other accounts
make no mention of his intervention on behalf of Africanus," but
by way of explanation he suggests only that "the suspicion arises
that it has been invented by sources hostile to the later
Gracchi, to contrast the behavior of the father towards the
senatorial order with that of his sons" (52. 9). Surely, however,
one ought at least to weigh the possibility that Livy himself
shaped the story as he did for particular reasons. Near the
beginning of his career, as Livy recounts it, Scipio had made a
dramatic public intervention on behalf of the Roman state,
rallying the people following the disaster at Cannae: "I shall
not abandon the Roman republic nor will I allow another Roman
citizen to abandon it" (22. 53. 10). His impassioned speech on
that occasion had the same effect that Gracchus' oration has near
the end of Scipio's life, reversing public opinion and preventing
a terrible mistake. The fatalis dux, who as a young man
saved the state as though by divine inspiration, is himself
rescued in his old age, as Livy has him describe it (51. 11),
when another Roman recalls the people to their principles. There
is a balance, that is, between the beginning and the end of
Scipio's career. Perhaps this symmetry in the story of Africanus
came from "sources hostile to the later Gracchi," but in view of
Livy's attention to such matters (as documented by scholars from
Burck through Luce) it seems entirely reasonable to suspect that
Livy himself was responsible for changing the annalistic account
to introduce it. Why the historian sought symmetry in this story
would then be a matter for discussion in the commentary. Such
questions will not come to mind, however, unless one is prepared
to give Livy some credit for originality in the telling of his
history.
In his comments on one episode in Book 38, W. does draw
attention to the way Livy shaped one received story, but having
presented the evidence, he stops short of discussing its purpose.
Citing an unpublished paper by Dr. S. P. Oakley, W. observes (14)
that in reviewing the encounter between Manlius Volso and the
Cibyran ruler, Moagetes, Livy brands Moagetes "tyrannus
five times ... (Polybius uses tyrannos only twice) 'to
cast a pejorative light'" (14. 3). In the Introduction, W. offers
the suggestion that Livy's changes "underline the masterful
demeanour of the consul and the submissive response of the
tyrant" and serve to "make this a memorable encounter" (p. 12).
Apparently, Livy has no goal in adjusting Polybius' account
beyond entertainment. That, again, needs to be justified. W. also
believes that in this same episode "Livy's portrayal of the
consul makes him less angry and more dispassionately judicial; so
he omits Polybius' claim that Volso called Moagetes 'the most
hostile of the Asian despots towards Rome'" (14. 7). But Livy's
Volso expresses no concern at all about reasons of state;
Moagetes' hostility toward Rome simply does not concern him.
Volso is driven solely by personal greed. It would be out of
character for him to grow angry.
W.'s predisposition to read Book 38 as, at best, a resume of
Livy's sources is particularly clear in his treatment of Volso's
application for a triumph (44. 9 - 50. 3). Livy juxtaposes two
speeches, one by L. Furius Purpurio and L. Aemilius Paulus
attacking the commander, the other by Volso in response. In an
excellent discussion of the rhetoric of the orations, W. observes
that "the general's reply is carefully ordered according to
Quintilian's scheme for the deliberative speech" and that "the
speech of the commissioners has no oratorical structure but
merely follows Volso's activities chronologically" (45). A
startling conclusion, however, follows from this: "The disparity
between the lengths and presentation of the two speeches suggests
that Livy favors Volso's cause" (ibid.; see also 50. 3). But W.
himself concedes that Volso's justification of his expedition is
contrived: "his argument here is hollow, since he had decided on
a military campaign from the outset" (48. 12). In fact, the
oration is largely a tissue of fabrications and
misrepresentations, and one immediately suspects that it is a
work of deliberate irony. This seems clear especially in Volso's
indictment of the Gauls for plundering and ravaging the land of
their neighbors (47. 12), the very thing the Romans had done
under his leadership and that would later be a standard charge
against them.[[7]] As regards the speech's length and structure,
it should be recalled that in Livy's judgment, the campaign
against the Gauls was a turning point in Roman history: "the
start of foreign luxury was brought to the city by the army from
Asia" (39. 6. 7). It is not surprising that the historian would
choose to highlight such an occasion with a powerful oration, and
the one he prepared fits the situation perfectly. Volso's speech,
a pack of lies, reflects precisely the moral corruption that Livy
believed resulted from the Galatian expedition. Also, it gains
force from comparison to the weak oration of Volso's adversaries
that precedes it, which itself is marred by misrepresentations
(as W.'s useful comments point out). Altogether, it is an ugly
encounter that Livy describes, and it seems clear that the
historian is on the side of the loser, the Roman people. To one
who reads Livy as a modern historian, this may seem to be
"mediocre history, but magnificent eloquence." But that is to
miss the point, I believe.
NOTES
[[1]] P. G. Walsh, "The Literary Techniques of Livy," RhM
97 (1954), 7-97-114, id., Livy, His Historical Aims and
Methods (Cambridge, 1961), 173-190.
[[2]] See especially "Design and Structure in Livy: 5.32-55,"
TAPA 102 (1971), 265-302, and Livy: The Composition of
His History (Princeton, 1977).
[[3]] Gary Miles, "Maiores, Conditores, and Livy's Perspective
on the Past," TAPA 118 (1988), 185-208; id., "The Cycle of
Roman History in Livy's First Pentad," AJP 107 (1986),
1-33.
[[4]] A. J. Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography
(Portland, 1988).
[[5]] Livy: The Composition of His History, 185-229.
[[6]] G. W. Houston, rev. Luce, Livy: The Composition of His
History, CP 75 (1980), 73-77.
[[7]] Sources and discussion in B. Forte, Rome and the Romans
as the Greeks Saw Them (Papers and Monographs of the American
Academy in Rome, 24) (Rome, 1972).