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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
The biography of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, covering the last eight decades of the Republic and written at the precise moment of the establishment of monarchy by Octavian, ought always to have been treated both as one of the best introductions to the period, and as an exposition, from a unique angle, of some of the values expressed in Roman society. But now, more than ever, there may be a place for a brief essay which attempts to bring out both some values exhibited in this particular text and the way in which these were taken up, distorted, and deployed in the propaganda of the Augustan regime. For, first, the larger background of late-Republican scholarship, antiquarianism, historiography, and biography has been fully explored by Elizabeth Rawson; second, Joseph Geiger has argued for the originality of Nepos as a writer of political biography; third, we have a major study of the ethical models which it is the purpose of the biography to hold up for emulation. Finally, John North, in an important review-article on recent works on Roman religion, has identified three significant characteristics of late-Republican religiosity: a scholarly or antiquarian perception of religious change, often seen as decline; the identification of religion as the subject of a particular form of discourse; and a shift in focus within the sphere of religion, from the community as a whole to great men within it. All three come together, as we will see below, in the passage of Nepos' biography in which he records how, some time in the 30s B.C., Atticus suggested to Octavian that the now roofless temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol should be repaired.
1. Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 15–16 on historiography and antiquarianism. This paper, as will be evident, makes no attempt to explore the wider deployment of antiquarian studies in the Augustan period.
2. Geiger, J., Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography (Historia Einzelschriften 47, Stuttgart, 1985)Google Scholar.
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5. The sparse biographical data are collected in Schanz, M., Hosius, C., Geschichte der römischen Literatur 4 i (Munich, 1927), pp. 351–2Google Scholar.
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7. Fragments in Marshall, P. K., Cornelii Nepotis Vitae cum fragmentis (Teubner, 1977), pp. 101–2Google Scholar. Catullus 1, 11.5–7: ‘cum ausus es unus Italorum/omne aevum tribus explicare chartis,/doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis.’
8. Compare the discussion by Hellegouarc'h, J., Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République2 (Paris, 1972), esp. pp. 397–411Google Scholar.
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12. This passage is not taken into account in RE s.v. ‘Legatus’, xii (1925)Google Scholar, cols. 1141–3. Note however Schleussner, B., Die Legaten der römischen Republik (Munich, 1978), p. 154Google Scholar, noting the parallel provided by Diodorus, 37.8.1.
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14. For a good account of this, Mitchell, T., Cicero: the Ascending Years (New Haven, 1979)Google Scholar.
15. Most editors read ‘(M.) Servio, fratri Sulpicii’. But see Mattingly, H., Athenaeum 53 (1975), 265Google Scholar and n.14 in favour of retaining the reading of the Leiden MS: ‘M. Servilio fratri Sulpicii.’
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17. Broughton, , MRR i 290Google Scholar (Sex. Iulius Caesar, praetor in 208); 418 (Marcius, P. Rex, legatus in 171Google Scholar); 471 (Q. Marcius Rex, praetor in 144).
18. See esp. Wiseman, T. P., ‘Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome’, G&R 21 (1974), 153Google Scholar, now reprinted in his Roman Studies, Literary and Historical (Liverpool, 1987), p. 207.
19. On the transformation of the Forum see Zanker, P., Forum Romanum: die Neugestaltung durch Augustus (Tübingen, 1972)Google Scholar, and now of course the major re-examination by Coarelli, F., Il Foro Romano ii: periodo repubblicano e augusteo (Rome, 1985), esp. pp. 258f.Google Scholar; his reconstruction of the placing of the Fasti is followed here.
20. On the progressive monopolization of public honour by the Imperial family see esp. Eck, W., ‘Senatorial Self-Representation: Developments in the Augustan Period’, in Millar, and Segal, , op. cit. (n.ll), p. 129Google Scholar.
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24. Syme, R., ‘Imperator Caesar: a Study in Nomenclature’, Historia 7 (1958), 172Google Scholar = Roman Papers i (Oxford, 1979), p. 361Google Scholar.
