Livy 5 notes

Some general notes: the past

• Concept of ‘auctoritas maiorum’ - used only 13 times and 11 are patricians

  • A common body of wisdom?

  • Livy does believe that the past was better than the present but he does not agree with the assumption that the past was a utopian age of wisdom and virtue!

  • At prae 10 he suggests that he is not providing solid benchmarks but that each figure should be chosen for oneself as an exemplum

  • The past offers examples to shun as well as emulate (bits of virtue in villains and flaws in the heroes eg. Camillus celebrates his triumph over Veii with splendor more becoming of a god than a man = chariot drawn by white horses [23])

  • Also find Appius Claudius - has an opening speech against the tribunes of the plebs

    • And ‘a man already from youth stepped in battles with the plebeians’

    • Is much more scornful than Camillus - ‘for a long time now finding no pretext to stire up trouble’

    • He commits quite a bit of slaughter but also contributes to Roman law

  • = the patres are portrayed as helpful when a unit but not always unified AND never representative of ‘Romans’ (a distinct category of people)

General notes .2 : Troy in Rome

• The necessity of violence before a founding (Troy before Lavinium, and Alba Longa before Rome)

• The fall of Veii?

  • Appius Claudius does actually use Troy as a foil for Veii (and siege does take 10 years)

  • Success is achieved by mining underground (very Trojan horse like)

  • Capture of Etruscan haruspex = capture of Helenus?

  • opulentissima 3x

• Camillus also takes an Achillean role (is exiled but then desired back so returns for great victory)

  • ‘prayed to the immortal gods that if he were innocent and wrongly injured, they might cause his ungrateful city to miss him sorely at the first opportunity’

• Romans as Trojans

  • Gauls enter Italy to depopulate their nation at gome (much like Zeus concerning the Greeks in Euripides’ Helen)

  • fatum urgens = the fall is Fated!

  • Acceptance of Vestal virgins into wagon similar to Aeneas carrying the Penates

  • Old men killed in home = emblematic of Priam’s death

  • Gauls stricken with plague like in Iliad 1

General notes .3 : ethnographical mirror

• ‘Foreign and domestic customs serve as potential models, both positive and negative, for the Romans’

• Unlike the Romans, Veii elect a king (no military tribunes)

  • BUT because of the tribunes’ superbia and wealth and ‘disgust at the annual intriguings which was sometimes the cause of dissension’

  • Choosing a king? Caesar…

• The Faliscan school teacher - ‘there are rights of war as well as of peace…I shall conquer them with Roman arts - courage, toils and arms - as I conquered Veii’

  • Camillus tells him that he is not ‘similis tui’

• BUT foreigners can also act like Romans and Romans not

  • Results of this are punishment = Romans are MEANT to act like Romans

  • ‘in the other line of battle, nothing was like (similis) the Romans, neither among the leaders, nor the troops’ [38]

  • ratio and fortuna on the Gauls’ side instead

  • AND they ignore the warning from Marcus Caedicius because he is a lowborn!

  • Romans send gifts to Delphi to thank Apollo and pirates intercept the embassy = chief magistrate as ‘a man who behaved more like the Romans than his own people’ (Romanis vir similio quam suis)

General notes .4 : Romans gendered

• Gender in Appius Claudius’ speech

  • ‘not like the summer birds in the very commencement of autumn look out for shelter and a retreat’

  • ‘Are we to suppose the bodies of our soldiers are so effeminate, their minds so feeble…’

  • ‘would maintain that both their minds and their bodies were possessed of manly endurance’

• And lack of women in the narrative overall

  • At 50, see aristocratic women gain the right for eulogies when they give up their wealth to pay the Gallic ransom (no time spent on it, but is revolutionary to mention)

  • Most of book 5 takes place in the world of the military thus women as useless

    • Only act we see women perform is lament

    • They are allowed on the hill even if it means less food for everyone (extra baggage)

    • But what about the hidden labour - making the food, looking after children, healing sick and injured?

  • Not even the vestal virgins are named (though they are crucial)

General notes .5 : last bits

• The loss:

  • Begins when individual soldiers desert their post because they think of their family before interests of the state

  • And in 38, no gods invoked beforehand!

  • Gallic chieftain who devised a successful military strategem !

  • ‘all the distinctions that set the Romans apart from their enemies have been obliterated’

• Opening of book 5: ‘although peace had been achieved elsewhere, Rome and Veii armed themselves with such anger and loathing that it was obvious that the end was nigh for whichever was defeated’

• Opening of entire text: suggests that his readership will not be interested in the earlier origins (fun nonetheless)

  • Entirely at odds with the idea that the present day stems directly from the past

  • And at 6.1, suggests that they don’t have reliable sources on great antiquity (if any, would have been destroyed in fire) = have to use traditions!

Chapter 39]

• Open at the Gauls realising their victory but still scared (thus they do not enter the city of Rome yet)

  • The Romans believe all who fled to Veii is dead so lament UNTIL ‘fear for the state overcame private grief’ and they turn to the Gauls (return of Roman spirit)

    • Opposite to the two commanders who in the battle prioritise their own ego over the success of battle

    • ‘The Roman leaders possessed more hatred towards each other than courage against the enemy’

    • ‘he preferred to be conquered by enemy than conquer with a friend’

  • Believe they will enter at sunrise, then sunset, then night until the next day comes (creating suspense) and they decide to encamp on the citadel and Capitoline (soldiers and able-bodies senators with wives and children)

    • Livy enters the mind of the Romans and imagines how they would have felt during this moment (acc & inf = not the truth)

  • The plebs are told to scatter and to make this easier, the elite elders take their place in their homes ready to die (do not wish to be a burden on the scanty forces of armed men)

Chapter 40]

• The old men say final goodbye and give advice to the youth, and the sorrow of this is only elevated by the desparate questions of the women

  • The other plebs whom there was no space for poured out of the city for Janiculum

  • The Quirinalis flamen and the vestals decide what rites to bring with them and what to bury by the Quiriline house (where NOW forbidden to spit)

  • Carrying over the sublicine bridge when L.Albinius, a pleb, spots them departing and thus orders his family to vacate the wagon and carries them instead to Caere (‘sacriligious that the state priests and rites of the Roman people walk and be carried on foot’)

  • Like Aeneas! Again shows Roman cult / state over family (private)

  • And the retreat is not flight but deliberate to allow for those in Rome to have less burdens

• Lucius Albinius here and Marcus Caedicius before are the only plebs mentioned in this book

  • The manner in which history comes to us (members of patrician families would sustain promotive traditions eg. for funerals)

  • Not ‘essentially’ an issue of elitism for Livy

  • Can also get the names of the tribunes of the Plebeians in lsits of magistrates

Chapter 41]

• The elders now proceed to their homes, ‘resolved to die’ and some say that M. Folio led them in song about dying for their state and Roman citizens

• The Gauls now enter on the next day, without passion because of the intermittent days BUT immediately go seek spoils (from closest or furthest houses)

  • avaritia as influencing both Gauls BUT also Romans

  • People are not supportive of Camillus’ dedication of 1/10 spoils to Apollo in [24]

  • And they are only interested in the luxurious image of Veii

  • Thus too, the Gauls only see the city as a site for plunder (value the material wealth)

• But when they all return to forum, still scared to enter the houses of the elders but when they do, they look in admiration

  • ‘more similar in their majesty to gods’

  • And view them as statues = literally empty vessels (and cannot understand their dress - used for triumph or tensa = reveal their authority)

  • Then said that M. Papirus struck a Gaul with his ivory staff when he had stroked his beard → all then slaughtered and fire thrown through the emptied buildings

  • Would we find this tale from his family? Potentially even a laudatory funeral play

Chapter 42]

• When the Gauls are done despoiling the city, they start to burn it (but slowly) and we then move to the Romans’ perspective on the hill as they try to understand what they see and hear

  • ‘wherever the yells of the enemy, the mourning of wife and child, the sound of flames and the crashing of falling buildings arose…’ = overwhelming sight (use of the senses)

  • + velut ad spectaculum = just like a performance of sorts

  • Worse for them as they have to see all of their city beseiged, but soon after night and day again and again, they become desensitised and see their weapons as the only remaining hope

    • Chiasmus of nox, diem, lux, noctem here to emphasise the repetition of day and night

    • aliquot dies = so many days

Chapter 43]

• The Gauls soon get bored of attacking buildings and thus try to make an attack on the citadel = form a tortoise shell formation and ascend

  • The Romans ‘did nothing out of fear or anxiety’ but when the Gauls were halfway up, they threw themselves at them and so successfully destroyed them that they never tried that again

• The Gauls thus decide to collect resources (the corn had been destroyed in fire) thus turn to the Veiian plain

  • But ‘Fortune’ led the Gauls to move closer to Ardea where Camillus was exiled!

  • He ‘asked where those men were who he took Veii and Falerii with, who waged other wars with more bravery than luck’ => enters an Ardean meeting for first time and addresses them

Chapter 44]

• Speech of Camillus to the Ardeates

  • Communal danger has driven him to speak, and where else could he help them than in war which he was unconquered in back home (‘but driven out by ungrateful people in peace’)

  • The Ardeates now should help Romans against the mob of Gauls who bring more fear than strength

    • ‘Scattered bunch’

    • ‘wander aimlessly among the countryside. They are filled by food and wine greedily seized…scatter at random in the manner of wild beasts’

      • Apparently they entered Italy because of wine (greed as initial reason)

    • Should now allow anything of theirs to become ‘Gaul’ & he will hand them over like cattle slaughtered in sleep

Chapter 45]

• Both just and unjust persuaded that there was no other such man in battle = attack at night (naked bodies slaughtered, no battle)

  • Some fled to Antia where they were killed by townspeople and Tuscans too (but they then began to despoil their land and attack the garrisons of Veii)

  • Romans become so angered they nearly attack (the Gauls had attacked the Etruscans first), but are calmed by Q. Caedicius (‘they lacked a leader equal to Camillus’)

  • Thus, the next night they enact an even greater slaughter of the Etruscans at the salt-mines

• Etruscans described as ‘people obsessed before all with religious rituals especially because they excelled in performing them’

  • YET here they ravage the Roman land (multifaceted people!)

Chapter 46]

• Sluggish siege of Rome when suddenly C. Fabius surprises both Romans and Gauls by departing from Capitoline to reach the Quiriline hill for a Fabii ritual

  • Gauls either astonished at audacity or moved by piety (‘which this people do not neglect’)

• At Veii, now Romans arrive who had been wandering through the fields (+ some from Latium voluntarily)

  • BUT ‘strong body lacked a head’ = Camillus!

    • Sometimes you do need one-man rule?

    • In 2.1, freedom from kings only worked when the people were ready for it (repulic or monarchy functions in specific instances and not always)

  • But first need to consult the senate before they make a decision (‘modesty so ruled their deicisions and protected the distinction of affairs even in desparate measures’)

  • → Pontius Cominus foated down the Tiber, climbed the Capitoline the secret way and got the agreement of the senate for Camillus to be made dictator (thus he leaves Ardea)

  • = Camillus subordinating himself to established tradition (accepts law even when it harms him eg. the exile)

  • Also consulted the senate about the spoils from Veii (which complicated matters)

  • Camillus returning from exile is symbolic for the return of Roman morals

Chapter 47]

• The Gauls find the path that the messenger took (either saw footprints or of own accord) and on starlit night, they send a man up and then pull up the armed men after

  • The guards don’t hear, the dogs neither BUT the geeze who had been brought for Juno (and fed despite the scarcity) began to honk and Marcus Manlius (consul 3 years prior) rushes up and drives a Gaul down the mountain

  • MM was provided gifts for his virtue (half a pound of spelt and quartarius of wine) & one man is thrown off mountain for not hearing the enemy

Chapter 48]

• More than just the siege caused suffering as now a wicked famine overcome both sides

  • Pestilence for the Gauls who had placed camp in low place (used to cold and wet so illness spread from hot and dry + burning piles of their men indiscriminantly)

    • = Gallic piles (the landscape of Rome changed by this occurence)

• But now a truce is made (but the Gauls now make fun of the Romans’ famine = bread is thrown off of the capitoline)

  • BUT while the dictator was preparing to lead forth the cavalry, the army on the Capitoline got wearier and wearier until they finally give in to a surrender

  • Pact formed between Q.Sulpicius and Brennus, the king of the Gauls → 1000 pounds of gold

  • BUT indignity added on that the Gauls were dishonest and when the tribunes accused, a sword was added and intolerable cry heard - ‘woe to the conquered!’

Chapter 49]

• ‘But both gods and men prohibited the Romans to live in ransom’ !!

  • Before the ashamed price was completed, the dictator appeared and ordered the Gauls leave (dictator = magistrates have no power)

  • ‘homeland returned through iron, not gold’

  • Rewriting the history of how Rome was saved (would have survived after but in shame)

  • Proven that Rome was only strong because of wealth, not military, courage or piety

• ‘Now the fortune shifted, now the works of the gods and the decisions of mankind aided the Roman cause’ and the Gauls were routed (camp also destroyed and the dictator returned in triumph to the city)

  • ‘He was called Romulus and a father of the state and another founder of the city with no empty praise’

  • Saved his homeland again however from the migration to Veii (the plebs supported this plan)

  • ‘This was the reason for not giving up the dictatorship after his success, since the senate was entreating him to not leave the state in an uncertain situation’

• Camillus called Romulus = another conditor

  • Romulus as not only conditor (also have Servius Tullus and THEN Augustus)

  • Interesting that in the 25 Greek accounts of the foundation of Rome, Romulus never appears

Chapter 50]

• Camillus immediately turns to the rites of the state

  • All shrines seized by the enemies returned (boundaries established & rites of purity celebrated)

  • Treaty of thanks for people in Caere

  • Capitoline games because Jupiter Optimus Maximus kept Capitoline safe

  • Temple of the new way to the Aius Locutius was built for the omen heard before the war

  • Gold given to Jupiter’s throne

  • And then Camillus gives a speech to oppose the tribunes of the plebs who were riling up the people to move to the ‘prepared city of Veii’ = priority of luxury and comfort over native rites

    • Is Veii’s choice to choose a monarch more understandable when dealing with these tribunes?

    • ‘while there was political agreement and success in the war, suddenly and aggressively…’

Chapter 51]

• Speech = would not have come to Rome even if asked as dealing with these tribunes is so annoying

  • But fate overcome his will YET if they leave now, what was the point?

  • So many rites handed down through the city and yet you think that neglect of worship means nothing?

  • Veii war = did not end before water was procurred from the Alban lake by warning of the gods (needed to get confirmation from Delphi first)

  • And the Gallic sack did not happen before the rights of people were violated by our envoys, and they not punished?

  • ‘Therefore, conquered, seized and put to ransom, we were punished by god and man alike in order that we be an example for the entire world’ = Rome at centre of world

  • And see this in AC’s speech - ‘whether, pray, are the neighbouring states to suppose that the Roman people are such, that if anyone shall sustain their first assault and that of very short continuance, that they have nothing to fear afterwards?’ [6]

• BUT when we decided to think of the gods, everything changed and the gods ‘poured fear and flight and destruction onto our enemies, who blinded by avarice cheated the treaty in the weight of gold and trust also’

• Camillus’ speech here is given more prominence than in other texts (Plutarch, Camillus - tribunes gave speeches, Camillus and then others → omen)

  • And he makes the points that the tribunes do (eg. head under Capitoline, shrines of fathers)

Chapter 52]

• ‘We founded this city on omens and rites; no place in this city is not full of rites and gods; the days were no more fixed for the sacrificial rites than those places in which they were to happen’

• Then asks if they admired the deeds of young C.Fabius who risked his life for his family rites!

• But could the rites be done at Veii? Not unless you disrupt them somehow = could the couch for the banquet of Jupiter be moved from the Capitoline? Eternal fire of Vestal Virgins or the shield of Mars Gradivus (some of these rites are older than the city’s birth!)

  • From the mountains of Alba and Lavinia

• Then discusses the rites that Livy himself lists (validation for both narrative and Camillus)

  • ‘Camillus’ great speech with its many allusions to the program of Livy’s own history makes clear how putting the past on display itself constitutes a political act, which here affects the preservation of precisely the traditions itself recalls’

• ‘Would you make Veintii priests in place of Roman ones?’

Chapter 53]

• IF one would argue that the city is too wasted now and the plebs will have to rebuild their homes, you should remember that the tribunes of the plebs tries to move to Veii before this war even started

  • ‘Since we will seem not to have departed as victors, but to have lost our homeland, conquered’

  • AND if they decided to return, they would keep Rome! And if not them, the Aequi or Volsci? - ‘do you wish those to be now Roman and you Veientes?’

    • Is one’s identity that tied to the land they live in, not the people they live with?

    • Rumours circulating before Caesar’s assassination of his wisht o move the capital of Roman empire to Alexandria or Troy (Suetonius, Caesar 79.3)

    • Cassius Dio records the same thing about Antony

• So hard to rebuild a city? Our founder lived in a hut with shepherds and farmers among our sacred monuments and household gods!

  • Lived in forests and marshes

  • The hut symbolises the earlier, more virtuous Rome even to 4th century Romans (idea of the past as better and more rustic represented as a consistent motif even in the past!)

Chapter 54]

• What would they do if Veii set alight? Move again?

  • The Fidenii or Gabii?

  • The land we call mother - ‘but our care for our homeland depends on buildings and timber?’

  • Even though he was hurt by the injury from the Roman people, ‘all these images ran forth, the hills and the plain and the Tiber and the places I would often look and the sky under which I was born and raised’

    • Emphasis on the nature of Rome! Not the buildings (they can be replaced - do not see the city as material like the Gauls)

    • hic, hic, hic - as if he would have been pointing to the places as he spoke

• God and man chose this place for founding the city for a reason (hills are most healthful, river advantageous for resources, close to sea but not exposed to danger of foreign ships, middle region of Italy = city as the heart of Italy)

  • 365 years the city has stood!

  • They have beaten the Volsci & Aequi

  • All of Etruria

  • And it was on the Capitoline that a human head was found = seat of the empire

  • And Juventas and Terminas would NOT move

  • = Rome as having a fixed caput & terminus (what defines a unit)

• Rome as city and Rome as state identified together (the state necessitated the city for survival)

Chapter 54 .2]

• 365 years from founding! And 365 years after this = 27BC (possible date for publication)

  • Thus Romulus - Camillus - Augustus as equal years apart

  • Romulus is also compared to Augustus maybe when he is described as augustiorem

  • + Numa (character who enacts war to create period of peace so unique it only ever happens when ‘the second time, which the gods granted our age to see, after the Actian war by the commander-in-chief Caesar Augustus, when peace was brought about on land and sea’

    • + in the res gestae, the temple of Janus Quirinus is closed when peace on land and sea gained

    • Numa founded this temple!!

• Camillus as intended to be an Augustus?

  • Does exemplify Augustan pietas, by refounding what was already there (restoring Roman religious identity)

  • At 4.20.7, Augustus is called ‘templorum omnium restitutorem ac conditorem’

  • And Camillus as parens patriae at 5.49 (Augustus as pater urbium in Horace ode 3.24)

  • The temples Augustus restored were not most popular but those that evoked the past carefully = Jupiter Feretrius (Romulus), Victoria (Evander) and Saturn (Hercules)

• Interestingly, Brutus is also labelled a conditor (or Roman libertas) in B8…

Chapter 55]

• End of speech = moved the men with these words (especially those about the gods!!)

• But as the senate was deliberating events in the curia Hostilia, the cohorts were returning from their garrisons and by chance stood in a line in the forum as the centurion shouted out in the Comitium ‘standard-bearers, set down the standard; here the best place for us to remain’

• = Senate pour out of the house and accept the omen, thus the bill was rejected and city built indiscriminantly (built in a year!)

• ‘the rush to build the roads dismissed any care, while they built in empty spaces while their own and others’ rights were being dismissed’

  • THUS the old sewers, which first followed the public ways, now lie beneath private dwellings (hidden meaning to words?)

  • And city is more similar to appropriation than division! Still about greed?

• = idea of Rome as fundamentally changed (‘Rome endures because of its ancient customs and its men’ Ennius)

  • However, we also see new rites crop up here = city as constantly growing

  • ‘as though fro its roots, more fruitful and more flourishing than before’ in opening of B6 = Rome is changed for the better!

  • Relevant to audience who have just lived through civil war

• How much of Camillus’ speech are we meant to align with Roman thought?

  • Senate only agrees after they hear the omen

  • Religious scruple and omen over place

  • Like AC is not listened to until omen (or were both / either omen fixed?)

• LAST WORD OF BOOK 5 IS SIMILIS! All about comparison and identity politics!