[The Table of Contents is listed below.]
Much has already been said about the theme of decadence in Latin literature between the late Republic and the Augustan age; nonetheless, this book does not lack ambition or originality. What differentiates Vassiliades’s approach is that he does not treat decadence as a literary stereotype but rather as an historical-philosophical theory evolving from author to author. Sallust and Livy are the focus of his volume, since they are the first extant authors whose works are explicitly aimed at describing the process of a political community decaying. Vassiliades’s overall purpose is twofold: to demonstrate that Livy follows the lead of Sallust in giving this theme such a prominent position and to show Livy’s degree of intentionality in differentiating himself from Sallust in many significant respects. While previous studies typically focus on certain programmatic sections of the two historians’ works, or on a limited number of episodes, Vassiliades instead takes into account their narratives as a whole, so as to analyse to what extent their respective views on decadence affect their historical accounts. In doing so, Vassiliades largely exceeds the expectations raised by his title. His volume proves to be not just a comparative analysis of Sallust’s and Livy’s statements about the decadence of the Roman Republic, but an overall ground-breaking interpretation of the philosophical premises and the political goals underlying their historiographical activity.
The volume opens with a broad methodological introduction. Afterwards, it splits into three extended sections (each of them subdivided into various chapters) respectively addressing the stages of the decadence of the Roman Republic, its causes, and its possible remedies according to Sallust and Livy.
In the first section of his book, Vassiliades follows M. Paschalis[1] in observing that Livy repeatedly alludes to Sallust in his praefatio, but he builds on this earlier work by arguing that Livy does so in order to stress his disagreement with his model, as far as decadence is concerned. In fact, even though Livy almost certainly draws on Sallust in presenting decadence as a gradual process accelerating over its last phases (cf. Liv. praef. 9 and Sall. Cat. 2, 4; 9, 1 and 10, 6; Hist. fr. 1, 16 M.), a closer look at his extant books clearly reveals that he strongly dismisses both Sallust’s earlier idea that this process started after the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE (Cat. 10, 1; Iug. 41, 1–2) as well as his later pessimistic belief that the Romans have always been vicious, save during the wars against the Etruscans and those against the Carthaginians, due to metus hostilis (Hist. fr. 1, 11 M.). Conversely, in books 1–10 Livy consistently stresses the ability of early Romans to overcome any social or political crisis, while clearly seeking to demonstrate through a series of episodes from book 25 onwards (e.g., Marcellus’ siege of Syracuse in books 24 and 25, the case of Pleminius in book 29, Cato’s speech against luxury in book 34, Vulso’s triumph and the suppression of the Bacchanals in book 39) that the first signs of decadence, as already suggested by D. Levene,[2] date back to the historical period idealised by Sallust between the Hannibalic and the Third Macedonian War. In the final chapter of this section Vassiliades analyses the manner in which the two authors compare decadence metaphorically to a disease. Even though Sallust seems to use this imagery in a more hyperbolic manner than Livy, neither of them seem explicitly to rule out the possibility of resolving this crisis of Roman decadence. This leads Vassiliades to convincingly conclude that Sallust (at least in his two monographs) and Livy avoid determinism.
As mentioned above, the following section of the volume addresses the problems surrounding the causes of decadence. According to Vassiliades, over the course of his historiographical survey, Sallust demonstrates an increasing tendency to present decadence as the result of uncontrollable factors. In contrast, Livy seems to minimise their influence on historical causation, so as to emphasise the human capacity to fix decadence. First, while in his first monograph Sallust says that fortuna is responsible for decadence (Cat. 10, 1), Livy instead seems to conceive of fortuna as dependent on human actions; namely, fortuna is the way gods reciprocate Roman people’s virtuous or vicious behaviour. [3] Second, in his later works Sallust says that mankind naturally tends towards vice and people choose to follow virtus only if they are forced to do so by metus hostilis (Iug. 41. 2; Hist. fr. 1, 7 e 11 M.). Conversely, in Livy’s account decadence seems to be independent from metus hostilis. As said above, in Livy’s narrative the first symptoms of decadence appear much earlier than the destruction of Carthage and the subsequent end of the metus hostilis, which is conceived mainly as a tool used by the ruling class in order to strengthen social cohesion. According to Vassiliades, decadence in Livy’s narrative seems to have originated from the fact that people have ceased to follow leaders characterised by consilium (‘wisdom’), as occurred in the past, and to have started preferring leaders characterised by impetus (‘haste’), such as demagogues. However, this process proves to be neither linear nor uninterrupted. Through many examples Livy points out that decadence can be stopped or reversed, if and when the populace decides to follow the advice of good leaders.
This brings Vassiliades to the final section of his volume, in which Sallust’s and Livy’s views on the possible remedies for decadence are compared. As Vassiliades shows, Sallust abandons any hope of fixing moral decadence through historiographical activity. None of his characters is explicitly presented as a model to imitate, while the readers themselves are characterised as insensitive towards the moral lessons of history, as already observed by A. Feldherr.[4] Sallust justifies his choice to write history otherwise: through literature he wants to achieve personal glory and give proof of that animi uirtus in pace that the Romans have proved to be lacking since the fall of Carthage (Cat. 2, 3). On the contrary, in his praefatio Livy does not restrict himself to reaffirming the exemplary aim of history-writing. As argued by Vassiliades, the historian seems to look at the moral restoration encouraged by Augustus as a concrete opportunity to reverse decadence, even though there is no evidence for Livy being a court historian.
The arguments summarised so far are just some of Vassiliades’s main points, but there are plenty of other specific issues he skilfully tackles in his lavish monograph. The readers interested in any specific themes can easily find what they need by looking through the detailed index locorum at the end of the volume.
Vassiliades’s command of previous studies proves to be outstanding. His bibliography ranges from 19th-century scholarship to the latest contributions in French, English, German, Italian and modern Greek. As far as I can tell, he misses just one relevant entry (which is a surprisingly small error, given the enormous scholarly traditions about Sallust and Livy). The sole lacuna is an essay by M. Jaeger,[5] in which some of Vassiliades’s conclusions about Livy are prefigured; namely, how this historian (25, 40, 1–3) corrects Sallust (Cat. 11, 6) on considering Marcellus, and not Sulla, as the first ever Roman commander responsible for stimulating his fellow-citizens’ obsessive interest in Greek art.
Apart from this small oversight, I have just one substantial criticism. Vassiliades sometimes has too much faith in the possibility of reconstructing the content of Livy’s lost books from their respective periochae. For instance, at p. 133 he asserts that, in all probability, social conflicts received less emphasis in books 11–20 than in books 1–10, because in their periochae one cannot find terms such as discordia, ambitio, auaritia and luxuria. Similarly, at p. 191 Vassiliades is tempted to dismiss the idea that, in Nasica’s speech against the destruction of Carthage in Livy’s lost book 49, this character alluded to the theory of metus hostilis (as in the parallel narratives of Appian and Florus) simply because there is no clear evidence for that in the periocha of this book (cf. Liv. per. 49, 2). Despite these small missteps, however, his main argument is not weakened: as shown above, Vassiliades provides more than enough evidence that Livy disagreed with Sallust about Roman decadence in the historian’s extant books alone.
What is more concerning is that the length of Vassiliades’s book may hinder the circulation of his innovative and compelling contributions. In this respect, his volume does present some of the negative features typical for a revised dissertation. The author could have spent fewer pages paraphrasing the texts discussed and recapitulating the partial conclusions at the end of each chapter. In many cases, these summaries may have proven more effective if they had been placed in the introduction of the same chapter, so as to help the reader to catch up with the following argument.
Regardless, this book ultimately deserves close consideration for its all-encompassing approach and far-reaching conclusions. Anybody with a research interest in the theme of decadence in Latin literature, as well as in Sallust and Livy, should not be intimidated by its length. They will undoubtedly profit from Vassiliades’s monograph.
Table of Contents
Avant-propos: p. 9.
Préambule: p. 11.
Remerciements: p. 15.
INTRODUCTION: p. 17.
1. PRÉSENTATION DE LA DÉCADENCE: VOCABULAIRE, ÉTAPES HISTORIQUES ET MÉTAPHORES.
Chapitre 1. Penser et définir la décadence en Grèce et à Rome avant Salluste et Tite-Live: p. 41.
Chapitre 2. Les étapes historiques de la décadence de la res publica: de Salluste à Tite-Live: p. 57.
Chapitre 3. La res publica, son temps historique et la représentation de sa vie: p. 219.
Conclusion: p. 275.
2. L’INTERPRÉTATION DE LA DÉCADENCE. LES CAUSES DE LA MALADIE DE LA RES PUBLICA.
Introduction. La recherche des causes et la question de la décadence de la cité: p. 279
Chapitre 1. Les facteurs extra-humains et la décadence: la fortuna, le fatum et les dieux: p. 283
Chapitre 2. Un facteur historico-psychologique et la décadence: le metus hostilis: p. 343
Chapitre 3. L’homme, sa nature et leur rôle dans la décadence de la res publica: p. 395
Conclusion: p. 503
3. LA GUÉRISON DE LA RES PUBLICA: À LA RECHERCHE DES REMÈDES À LA DÉCADENCE
Introduction. La recherche des remèdes à la décadence : un postulat à l’historiographie ? : p. 507
Chapitre 1. Salluste et les remèdes à la décadence: p. 511
Chapitre 2. Tite-Live et les remèdes à la décadence: p. 549
Conclusion. Les remèdes à la décadence, de Salluste à Tite-Live: p. 597
CONCLUSION GÉNÉRALE: p. 601
Annexe: description des crises de la première décade de l’Ab Vrbe Condita: p. 609
Bibliographie: p. 631
Index des passages cités et commentés: p. 67
Notes
[1] M. Paschalis, “Livy’s praefatio and Sallust,” PhD dissertation, Ohio 1980, pp. 110–126.
[2] D.S. Levene, Livy on the Hannibalic War, Oxford-New York 2010, pp. 86–126.
[3] In this respect, Vassiliades follows D.S. Levene, Religion in Livy, Leiden 1993, 13–15 and 30–33.
[4] A. Feldherr, “«Magna mihi copia est memorandi»: modes of historiography in the speeches of Caesar and Cato (Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 51–4)”, in J. Grethlein and C.B. Krebs, Time and narrative in ancient historiography: the «plupast» from Herodotus to Appian, Cambridge and New York 2012, 95–112.
[5] M.K. Jaeger, “Once more to Syracuse: Livy’s perspective on the Verrines” in W. Polleichtner (ed.), Livy and Intertextuality: Papers of a Conference Held at the University of Texas at Austin (October 3, 2009), Trier 2010, 15–45 (in part. 24–25).