25 - Reflections of Roman political thought in Latin historical writing

Summary

Isolating ‘political thought’ in Latin historical narratives is more difficult than in the works of historians who wrote in Greek. Explicit theorizing was not a Roman characteristic. But that does not mean that what Roman historical writers wrote did not reflect their conceptions of political institutions and structures and of how they changed over time. The further that a particular statement about historical events deviates from ‘real’ history (as in the analyses which we find in Plato or Aristotle, or in the Greek elements in Cicero), the easier it is to identify – and isolate – such a statement as ‘political thought’; but statements that correspond to the collective morality of a culture represent ‘political thought’; too.

Rome was a society used to accepting authority, whether that of the head of the household (paterfamilias) at home (domi) or the commander (imperator) in war (bello, militiae). From the fourth century bc on, warfare became the most important element in the Roman value-system. In war, obedience to the commander could not afford to be challenged; but the language in which domestic political issues were discussed was equally based on authority – that provided by the speaker’s virtus (proved by his own great deeds or those of his ancestors) or by ancestral tradition, mos maiorum, from which the speaker selected those precedents (exempla) which supported his argument. When the consul Cornelius Scipio Nasica at a contio (formal public gathering) in 138 bc heard views with which he disagreed, he did not try to persuade, but told his assembled fellow-citizens: ‘Please be silent. I know better than you what is best for the state.’