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The Evolution, Abandonment, and Resurrection of the Roman Dictatorship

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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2017 The Needed Man: The Evolution, Abandonment, and Resurrection of the Roman Dictatorship Mark B. Wilson The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1998 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE NEEDED MAN: THE EVOLUTION, ABANDONMENT, AND RESURRECTION OF THE ROMAN DICTATORSHIP by MARK WILSON A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 © 2017 MARK WILSON All Rights Reserved Page ii The Needed Man: The Evolution, Abandonment, and Resurrection of the Roman Dictatorship by Mark Wilson This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. –––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Date Joel Allen Chair of Examining Committee –––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Date Andrew Robertson Acting Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Joel Allen Jennifer Roberts Liv Yarrow THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Page iii ABSTRACT The Needed Man: The Evolution, Abandonment, and Resurrection of the Roman Dictatorship by Mark Wilson Advisor: Joel Allen Despite being an integral institution of the Roman state, employed frequently and routinely from the Republic’s earliest crises to the last days of the climactic fight with Hannibal, the Roman dictatorship is profoundly misunderstood. Perplexed by the idea of the Roman Republic—a state born out of the rejection of the preeminence of any one man—nonetheless investing the power of the state in a single unelected individual, and reacting to the anomalous first-century BCE dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar, both late- Republic historians and modern scholars have consistently described the office in ominous and fundamentally mythological terms that are largely contradicted by the remembered actions of actual dictators. This study has collated stories and records from various ancient sources, including Polybius, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and others, into a narrative of 85 pre-Zama dictatorships held by 67 men from a broad range of families and experience and acting to resolve a variety of emergent problems both civil and military. This narrative has furnished insights into how the dictatorship was used and the role that it played in the Romans’ conception of their state. The emerging picture of the archaic Roman dictatorship is of an office that was both rigidly conditioned by an iteratively reinforced body of precedents and, at the same time, flexible enough to adapt to the constantly developing needs of the Republic. On the one hand, the mechanics were fixed at inception and did not change: Rome called for a dictator in reaction to some emergency for which the current magistrates were insufficient; the consuls had both the prerogative and the duty to choose that man who would best resolve the problem at hand and who would act Page iv on behalf of all of Rome; the dictator so named, after choosing a junior colleague called the magister equitum, did what was necessary to resolve the need that had created him, after which he resigned immediately, restoring Rome to stability and normality at the earliest possible moment by eliminating the dictatorship along with the crisis that spawned it. Iron precedent bound the consul to choose the needed man and the dictator to cleave his actions solely to the mandate originating in Rome’s call for a dictator and resign on resolution, effectively confining and directing the powers vested in him. On the other hand, the dictatorship, itself a demonstration of Rome’s adaptability by providing early on a second, emergency system to fix what the normal state could not, also adroitly changed as Rome did: new, single-task variations emerged as the Republic reshaped itself in the fourth century, and later it freed consuls to go to war in the third while remaining robust enough to serve as a critical tool in the war with Hannibal. Far from being the all- powerful office depicted in the mythology, however, the dictatorship was tethered both by its imperative to restore ordinary government as swiftly as possible and by its origins in the protection of all Romans; it was therefore superseded by the proliferation of promagistracies, which had no imperative to remove themselves nor to abjure faction, and by the advancing preeminence of the senate, which increasingly sought to safeguard Rome’s traditions and greatness while primarily representing the needs of the conservative elite. Nonetheless, for three centuries of routine operation the dictatorship functioned as an ingenious and highly effective means by which the Republic was able to transcend even those crises, both domestic and military, that it was otherwise unprepared for. Page v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Sources ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Categories of Evidence .............................................................................................................. 8 Roman Historians ............................................................................................................... 10 Greek Historians ................................................................................................................. 12 Biographers and Antiquarians ........................................................................................... 13 Inscriptions ........................................................................................................................... 14 Dating ....................................................................................................................................... 16 The Dictatorship in Livy ........................................................................................................ 19 Taxonomies of the Dictatorship ................................................................................................ 23 The Caussae Do Not Provide an Effective Taxonomy ......................................................... 23 Attested Caussae .................................................................................................................... 25 Issues Translating the Caussae ............................................................................................ 27 The Caussae in the Narrative Sources ............................................................................... 29 The Innovation of New Caussae ......................................................................................... 33 The Relevance of the Caussae ............................................................................................. 39 The Mandate ............................................................................................................................ 42 The Mythology of the Dictatorship in Classical Writings .................................................... 48 Ancient Epitomes of the Dictatorship Contradict the Narrative History ....................... 48 The Dictatorship as Characterized by the Epitomes .......................................................... 52 Polybius on Q. Fabius Maximus ....................................................................................... 52 Cicero’s Dreams of the Ideal Republic ............................................................................ 54 Dionysius’s Indictment of the Roman People’s Self-Enslavement .............................. 60 Zonaras and the King by Another Name ......................................................................... 67 Pomponius on Summa Potestas ............................................................................................ 70 Festus on Provocatio and Optima Lex .................................................................................... 71 Other Descriptions of the Dictatorship ............................................................................ 74 Epitomal Myths in Summary ................................................................................................. 77 Misrepresentation of the Dictatorship in Secondary Scholarship ....................................... 79 Mommsen’s Dictatorship ........................................................................................................ 80 Treatments of the Dictatorship in Modern Secondary Literature ................................... 97 Golden on the Dictatorship as Crisis Management ....................................................... 97 Hartfield’s Analysis of the Shift in Caussae ..................................................................... 101 Brennan’s Problematic Aside
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