CHAPTER FOUR

AB URBE CONDITA: WHEN VIRI WERE VIRI

Livy, like Thucydides, observed human nature and viewed history as a lesson for mankind in which great moral issues were at stake. 1 Toward this end, Livy went even further than did Thucydides, framing his history in "a series of moral episodes ... designed to bring out the character of the leading figures," thus reducing great events of the past to a level comprehensible to his reading public. 2 By endowing his characters with clear-cut virtues and vices, Livy was able to present his readers moral exempla with which they could readily identify. As P.G. Walsh writes, the real heroes of Ab Urbe Condita are pietas,fides, concordia, ratio, clementia, and so forth, who all wage continual war against the villains furor,ferocitas, temeritas, libido, luxuria and their like. 3 Because of this polarized framework, Livy's presentation of Roman history is a pano• ramic chiaroscuro of dichotomies. His dualistic premise demands sim• plistic characters so that the reader may know where a particular personage stands in the moral scheme. 4 An incidental component in the creation of what are, at best, two-dimensional characters, was the historian's use of vir and homo as capsule identifications. Livy's masculine terminology reflects that of Cicero in that he generally employs vir for the distinguished and homo for the humble, the foreigner (with an ethnic adjective), and as a term of abuse, sometimes in direct evocation of the Republican orator. The historiographical idiom, however, permits greater freedom and variation of usage than did the forensic speech. An instance is Livy's treatment of tribunes of the plebs. Since he is not bent on defaming them, as was Cicero, Livy, if he employs a gender term, presents them as viri. As with Cicero, moral qualifications determine whether a character is a vir or a homo; but where the orator's ethical yardstick was based upon factional politics, the historian's is founded upon unified loyalty to Country. Thus salient fidelity to Rome may elevate a man of low or foreign birth to the status

1 R.M. Ogilvie, Introduction, Livy: the Early History of Rome (Harmondsworth, 1960- 71) 8. 2 Ibid., 9. 3 P.G. Walsh, Livy, His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge, 1961) 66; cf. T.J. Luce, Livy, the Composition of His History (Princeton, 1977) 231-232. • Walsh (supra, n. 3) 82-109; Luce (supra, n. 3) 232. 64 THE CICERONIAN TRADITION AND ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY of vir; on the other hand, disloyalty to country or the breaking of an oath is enough to demote an otherwise vir to the rank of homo.

The Clarissimus, the Consularis, and the Conservative Vir The Roman historical vir of Livy in many ways resembles the Roman political vir of Cicero. Usually a consular, he is morally sound and acts in the interests of the Republic; never rash, he deliberates carefully and displays moderation on all occasions. Livy's ex-consuls are viri consulares, clari or clarissimi. Active in public life, they fight to the death for the Republic. 5 Like the consulares of Cicero's day, they play the game of factional politics for high stakes, and sometimes lose, as when the Senate refuses Q. Minucius a triumph equal to that of G. Cornelius in 197. In consequence, Minucius awards himself one, iure imperii consularis, to be held upon the Alban Mount where, he sniffs, so many other clari viri have been forced by jealous colleagues to hold theirs (33.23.3). 6 Vir clarissimus may have been an official epithet used in senatorial business, as is indicated when the tribune L. Valerius Tappo employs it of the consul Cato, his opponent in the debate over the Lex Oppia (34.5.2). 7 Livy essayed for verisimilitude in his speeches, 8 and it is likely that he has employed the term proper for a tribune to use of a consul. The epithet's status value is also illustrated when Scipio Nasica, extolling the gens Cornelia, is outraged that his cousin, Lucius, a vir clarissimus and fortissimus, might be imprisoned with latrones (38.59.10). Moral implications as well as social are inherent in the term when Gn. Octavius pontificates to his junior officers on the permutations of human fortunes, maintaining that the real vir is one who will remain steadfast in the overwhelming winds of success and whose courage will not be soured by the uses of adversity (35.8.7). Meritorious service to the

5 Vir consularis: 6.17.3; 22.53.4. Clarissimus vir, Q. Fabius, master of horse: 8.32.15. Multi c/ari viri are candidates forthe censorship in 199 (32. 7.3). Other consulars, Sempronius: vir tam c/arus at insignis, killed in Lucania (25.17.4); Africanus: a maior et c/arior vir, hounded by ungrateful tribunes (38.50.4); elsewhere Africanus expounds upon omnis aevi c/ari viri (28.43.6). Cf. Valerius and Verginius, augurs: 3.7.6; Lepidus, pontifex maximus, and multi c/ari viri: 40.42.12; cf. 37 .57.9; 38.53.4. 'e.g., M. Claudius Marcellus (26.21.2-6). For Minucius' entire story, Liv. 33.22-23. 7 A controversy exists whether Cato was termed vir gravissimus or vir c/arissimus. D. W. Packard opts for c/arissimus, A Concordance of Livy (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) s.v., vir; J. Briscoe supports this on grounds that gravissimus with vir rarely appears in Cicero (as opposed Lo three columns for c/arissimus), and that the expression is seen nowhere else in Livy. A Commentary on Livy. Books 34-37 (Oxford, 1981) 55. 8 Ogilvie (supra, n. 1) 9.