Roman Amoralism Reconsidered
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Roman Amoralism Reconsidered The Political Culture of the Roman Republic and Historians in an Era of Disillusionment Michael C. Alexander Roman Amoralism Reconsidered The Political Culture of the Roman Republic and Historians in an Era of Disillusionment Michael C. Alexander Roman amoralism reconsidered : the political culture of the Roman Republic and historians in an era of disillusionment / Michael C. Alexander Copyright © 2018 by Michael C. Alexander. This book is made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. It can be freely duplicated and shared, in whole or in part, without altering the work, as long as the title of the work and the name of the author of the work are stated. Duplication and sharing are permitted only for non-commercial uses. Please consult the blog to obtain a printable file of this book, and for information on ordering a soft-cover bound copy. http://romanamoralismreconsidered.com/ First edition, 2018 Online ISBN 978-0-692-06643-0 Print ISBN 978-0-692-06642-3 TABLE OF CONTENTS FORWARD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CHAPTER ONE Introduction: “It’s politics” .................................................................... 1 Précis ................................................................................................................. 1 Definition of amoralism .................................................................................. 3 Examples of political cultures characterized by amoralism ......................... 6 CHAPTER TWO Ancient evidence for amoralism .......................................................... 12 Historical sources .......................................................................................... 14 Philosophical and rhetorical treatises ..........................................................29 The Commentariolum Petitionis .................................................................... 53 CHAPTER THREE Amoralism and the historiography on Roman Republican politics .... 57 Prosopographical historiography: from Gelzer to Gruen .......................... 58 Roman Republic vs. Roman Empire ............................................................ 82 Amoralism in the Commentariolum Petitionis ............................................ 84 The effect of amoralism on the historical interpretation of the Commentariolum Petitionis ...........................................................................94 The fading of amoralism in the historiography of the Roman Republic .... 95 Etic versus emic .............................................................................................. 97 CHAPTER FOUR Amoralism and the writing of history in an era of disillusionment .. 108 From etic to emic, and debunking as an etic approach .............................. 111 The influence of disillusionment on twentieth-century thought ............... 125 CHAPTER FIVE Conclusion .......................................................................................... 136 One theme and two sub-themes .................................................................. 136 Amoralism: is it dead? ................................................................................. 139 APPENDIX ONE Scholarly reaction to the Ironic Interpretation of the Commentariolum Petitionis ............................................................................................. 142 APPENDIX TWO The philosophical basis of Alterum est tamen boni viri, alterum boni petitoris .............................................................................................. 149 i APPENDIX THREE The importance of asking whether Roman Republican political culture was amoral .......................................................................................... 157 WORKS CITED ................................................................................... 165 INDEX ................................................................................................ 184 INDEX LOCORUM ............................................................................ 188 Forward and Acknowledgments I presented aspects of this book in talks before the Illinois Classical Conference (October 2006), the Association of Ancient Historians (April 2010), the University of Pisa (November 2014), and the Classical Association of the Midwest and South (April 2017). This book has also benefitted from assistance given to me by Greg Anderson, Asha Bhandary, Kai Brodersen, John D’Emilio, Arthur Eckstein, Richard Fried, Richard John, Constance Meinwald, D. Mark Possanza, and John Ramsey. I particularly wish to thank Jed Atkins for reading my section on Latin philosophical sources and offering me guidance that helped me avoid significant errors. My acknowledgment of the help provided by these scholars should not be interpreted as implying their agreement with the views that I express here, or even that they have read all or part of the manuscript. I wish to express my gratitude for the benefits that I received as a member of the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I also wish to express my gratitude for the advice and services offered to me by Sandra De Groote, Scholarly Communications Librarian of the University Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. I am also grateful to the Department of Classics of the University of Pittsburgh for having provided me with access to the libraries of the University of Pittsburgh. Finally, it is a pleasure to express my gratitude to Stefanie Kletke for her work in copy-editing the manuscript and formatting it into a book. For those who are interested, I have established a monitored blog where comments related to this book can be posted, at: RomanAmoralismReconsidered.com. Michael C. Alexander Pittsburgh, PA, United States, August 2017 iii Chapter One Introduction: “It’s politics” Précis In this book, I will challenge a commonly held modern belief about the Roman attitude toward their own political system during the Republic, namely that the Romans thought their own morality did not apply to politicians when those politicians were engaged in political activity within the domestic Roman political system. Herein, I refer to this attitude as “amoralism.” In the three central chapters (Chapters Two through Four), I present three propositions: 1. Chapter Two. No extant ancient evidence exists for amoralism in the political culture of the Roman Republic either from: a) contemporary historical sources, or b) contemporary philosophical or rhetorical treatises composed by Marcus Tullius Cicero. In fact, these treatises counter amoralism. The lack of ancient evidence for Roman Republican amoralism is the core contention of this book. (This book treats Roman political culture solely insofar as it relates to amoralism.) 2. Chapter Three. An unstated belief in Roman amoralism permeated much of the historical scholarship about Roman Republican politics that was written from roughly the early 1900s to the mid-1980s; this belief coincided with a commonly held negative view of ancient Rome. Though many Roman historians have since abandoned amoralism in general, in part because of a change in the way Roman history was/is written from an “etic” approach (i.e., as an outside observer) to an “emic” approach (i.e., as a subject), its presence in Roman Republican political culture has heretofore never been refuted. In appendices to Chapter Three (Appendices One and Two), I further argue that: a) belief in Roman amoralism is revealed by most historians’ willingness to treat the Commentariolum Petitionis (herein abbreviated as Comm. Pet.) as a straightforward account of how to run an election campaign, and b) amoralism better explains the philosophical basis on which this work ostensibly recommends 1 Roman Amoralism Reconsidered that candidates for office violate traditional morality than an “accommodation of circumstantial necessity.” 3. Chapter Four. In the absence of ancient evidence, historians’ assumption of amoralism in the political culture of the Roman Republican is primarily a reflection of the kind of political history that was frequently written during what I refer to as an “era of disillusionment,” roughly from the early 1900s to the 1980s, during which the quest for, and perpetuation of, power, along with money, were assumed to be key components of politics. Contemporary disillusionment with politics and government left a mark on the writing of history, leading historians to explain human conduct in terms of low motives (power and wealth) rather than high motives (such as displaying good character or promoting the common good through beneficial public policies). Historians at this time were therefore inclined to accept as plausible those explanations of political conduct that were based on the premise that politicians were granted a dispensation from the morality which otherwise applied within a society. Events of this era encouraged these attitudes among historians. I wish to stress each of the three central chapters combine to make one basic point, even though Chapter Four travels far from the history of Rome, either in terms of what happened in ancient Rome, or how the history of what happened at Rome has been written. While in Chapter Two I attempt to present and discuss all relevant ancient sources, and in Chapter Three I provide representative samples from books and articles about Roman Republican history to show that they were imbued with amoralism, in Chapter Four I do not try to “cover” a subject, in the sense of presenting an