15 - Characterization and complexity: Caesar, Sallust, and Livy

Summary

It would be hard to over-estimate the role that characterization of individuals played in Roman historiography. The reasons for this are many and complex; only some of them can be touched on here. Of seminal importance was the prevailing moral didacticism of ancient history, which inclined Roman historians to portray events as dependent on the actions of individuals and these actions, in turn, as “indexes of goodness or badness of character.” The influence of the heroic characters of epic and drama, with their central roles in a narrative of events, would have been pervasive, especially in light of the fact that from the time of Naevius and Ennius the subject-matter treated by poets and writers of Roman history had often overlapped, with historians retailing myth and legend, on one hand, and playwrights and epic poets writing of recent Roman historical events on the other. A focus on individuals played an obvious role in the purely affective appeal of earlier historical texts in both Greek and Latin, and Roman historians could look especially to their Hellenistic Greek predecessors for models of gripping narratives that revolved around the virtues or, more often, vices of a major actor.