Josiah Osgood

The Pen and the Sword: Writing and Conquest in Caesar's Gaul

Julius Caesar was remembered in later times for the unprecedented scale of his military activity. He was also remembered for writing copiously while on campaign. Focusing on the period of Rome9s war with Gaul (58––50 BCE), this paper argues that the two activities were interrelated: writing helped to facilitate the Roman conquest of the Gallic peoples. It allowed Caesar to send messages within his own theater of operations, sometimes with distinctive advantages; it helped him stay in touch with Rome, from where he obtained ever more resources; and it helped him, in his Gallic War above all, to turn the story of his scattered campaigns into a coherent narrative of the subjection of a vast territory henceforward to be called ““Gaul.”” The place of epistolography in late Republican politics receives new analysis in the paper, with detailed discussion of the evidence of Cicero.

Suetonius and the Succession to Augustus

In his biography of Augustus Suetonius offers no discussion of Augustus’ plans for succession, nor in subsequent lives is ‘succession’ ever used as a rubric to organize material or judge emperors. The contrast with modern scholars of the Caesars is striking. Barbara Levick, for example, devotes a chapter of her study of Tiberius to the “Dynastic Catastrophe” and a chapter of her Vespasian to “Vespasian and His Sons.”1 More explicitly, Anthony Barrett has an early chapter in his life of Caligula on “The Struggle for the Succession” and Miriam Griffin a retrospective chapter in her life of Nero on “The Problem of the Succession.”2 Contributors to Barrett’s serial Lives of the Caesars regularly include a section on the succession (e.g., Werner Eck on “Succession” in his chapter on Augustus, Anthony Birley on “Hadrianic Succession” in his chapter on Marcus Aurelius).3 In my own recent study of the principate of Claudius the problem of succession is foregrounded throughout.4 Whole articles and monographs are devoted to various aspects of the subject, and it looms large in a remarkable essay by Paul Veyne “Qu’ était-ce qu’ un empereur romain?”.5 Suetonius’ practice, to be sure, is followed by Fergus Millar, who (as Keith Hopkins noted in a review) never mentioned in The Emperor and the Roman World the problem of succession, despite its evident interest to modern historians.6 It certainly is anachronistic, and arguably misleading, to use such phrases as “succession policy” when speaking of Roman emperors, especially early Roman emperors, and Millar’s avowed goal in his study was

The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome (review)

well versed in contemporary literary theory. He does not always escape the jargon and opacity that too often mar the writing of such contemporary theorists, but if balbinus can love Hagna’s polyp, those of us who care deeply about latin poetry can easily overlook such stylistic pimples. And if there are places in this book where Harrison suggests interpretative possibilities that he leaves unprobed, that is not necessarily a bad thing. His book ably demonstrates the potential value of generic enrichment as a critical tool, and those very areas we may wish he had discussed further are there for us to explore.