Ronald Syme
Biographic Data
| ID | 1136648 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ronald Syme |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ronald |
| FAMILY NAME | Syme |
| SIGNATURE | SYME R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Newbold College of Higher Education |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 124 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 532 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 124 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1928 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Alexandru Popa, Frontiera Imperiului Roman din Dacia în drum spre Lista patrimoniului mondial. Pro bleme și responsabilităţi pentru cercetarea arheologică, protecția patrimoniu lui și turism / The Lim…
Today, limes is an en vogue term in Romania. Scientific research, heritage protection and, more recently, politic discourse – they all deal, directly or indirectly, with issues regarding the Frontiers of the Roman Empire in today’s Romania. In the context of nominating the Frontiers of the Roman Empire as a serial site of UNESCO World Heritage, each of the previously mentioned domains has its responsibilities towards the monument itself. In this …
American Journal of Ancient History
The historic American Journal of Ancient History. This volume contains 8 articles: John G. Griffith, 'A Note on the First Eisphora at Athens', G.V. Sumner, 'The Pompeii in Their Families', Allen M. Ward, 'Caesar and the Pirates II: The Elusive M. Iunius Iuncus and the Year 75/4', Chr. Habicht, 'Athenisches Ehrendekret vom Jahre des Koroibos (306/5) für einen königlichen Offizier', Robin Seager, 'Amicitia in Tacitus and Juvenal', Sarah B. Pomeroy,…
Approaching the Roman Revolution: Papers on Republican History
This volume collects twenty-six previously unpublished studies on Republican history by the late Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989), drawn from the archive of Syme's papers at the Bodleian Library. This set of papers sheds light on aspects of Republican history that were either overlooked or tangentially discussed in Syme's published work. They range across a wide spectrum of topics, including the political history of the second century BC, the age of S…
The Working Of Patronage
HE Princeps and his friends controlled access to all positions of honour and emolument in the senatorial career, dispensing to their adherents magistracies, priesthoods and provincial commands. The quaestorship admitted a man to the highest order in state and in society, the consulate brought nobility and a place in the front ranks of the oligarchy.
Title Pages
The Proscriptions
CAESAR’S heir now held Rome after the second attempt in ten months. The first time he had sought backing from senior statesmen and from the party of the constitution. Now he was consul, his only danger the rival army commanders. For the moment, certain brief formalities. To bring to trial and punishment the assassins of Caesar, a special court was established by a law of the consul Pedius ; along with these state criminals a convenient fiction re…
The First March On Rome
AT the beginning of the month of August certain political intrigues went wrong, and hopes of concord or of dissension were frustrated. Brutus and Cassius did not return to Rome and the rival Caesarian leaders were reconciled through the insistence of the soldiery.
Caesar The Dictator
Ulla was the first Roman to lead an army against Rome. Not of his own choosing-his enemies had won control of the government and deprived him of the command against Mithridates. Again, when he landed in Italy after an absence of nearly five years, force was his only defence against the party that had attacked a proconsul who was fighting the wars of the Republic in the East. Sulla had all the ambition of a Roman noble: but it was not his ambition…
The Domination Of Pompeius
The Pompeii, a family of recent ennoblement, were of non-Latin stock, as the name so patently indicates, probably deriving their origin from Picenum, a region where they possessed large estates and wide influence.1 Cn. Pompeius Strabo, after shattering the Italian insurrection in Picenum, used his influence and his army for personal ends and played an ambiguous game when civil war broke out between Marius and Sulla. Brutal, corrupt and perfidious…
Philippi And Perusia
N the first day of the new year Senate and magistrates took a solemn oath to maintain the acts of Caesar the Dictator. More than this, Caesar was enrolled among the gods of the Roman State,1 In the Forum a temple was to be built to the new deity, Divus Julius; and another law made provision for the cult in the towns of ltaly.2 The young Caesar could now designate himself ‘Divi filius’. Under the sign of the avenging of Caesar, the Caesarian armie…
The Cabinet
EADEM magistratuum vocabula.’1 Names persist everywhere while substance changes. Like the individual senator, the Senate as a body preserves dignitas but loses power as the Princeps encroaches everywhere, grasping more and more. He retains his imperium in the city of Rome; he controls admission to the high assembly ; he takes charge of public provinces; he appoints proconsuls, though with respect for forms preserved ;3 and he conveys requests, mo…
Abbreviations
The Roman Oligarchy
When the patricians expelled the kings from Rome, they were careful to retain the kingly power, vested in a pair of annual magistrates; and though compelled in time to admit the plebeians to :r.olitical equality, certain of the great patrician houses, Valeni, Fabii and Comelii, none the less held in turn a dynastic and almost regal position.1 The Senate again, being a permanent body, arrogated to itself power, and after conceding sovranty to the …
The Organization Of Opinion
In Rome of the Republic the aristocracy guided literature through individual patronage. As in politics, the other classes were susceptible to auctoritas, taking their tone and their tastes from above. Political invective was vigorous, ferocious—but indiscriminate, save when there was a government in being. Then it mustered for the attack. Pamphlets and poems assailed the Threeheaded Monster, concentrating, as was just, upon Pompeius Magnus; and t…
Tota Italia
HE year 33 e.c. opened with Octavianus as consul for the second time : with its close, the triumviral powers were to expire. The rivals manoeuvred for position: of compromise, no act or thought. Octavianus moved first. Early in the year he delivered a speech before the Senate, criticizing the acts of Antonius in the East.1 Antonius replied with a manifesto. He took his stand upon legality and upon the plighted word of covenants, which was a mista…
The National Programme
O far the manner in which power was seized and held, the working of patronage, the creation of an oligarchy and system of government. Security of possession, promotion for loyalty or merit and firm rule in Rome, Italy and the provinces,that was not enough.
The Doom Of The Nobles
‘Stemmata quid faciunt?’ The satirist Juvenal makes mock of pedigrees. Not, however, with all the fierce, free invective of a robust democrat. Juvenal derives his names and examples from the descendants of the Republican nobility-but not the living. Few of them, indeed, survived in Juvenal’s day, and they mattered not at all. The Empire had broken their power and their spirit. The satirist did not dare to deride the new nobility, the oligarchy of…
Caesar’S Heir
By the terms of his will Caesar appointed as heir to his name and fortune a certain C. Octavius, the grandson of one of his sisters. On the paternal side the youth came of a respectable family that lacked nobility: his grandfather, a rich banker established at the small town of Velitrae, had shunned the burdens and the dangers of Roman politics.1 Ambition broke out in the son, a model of all the virtues. He married Atia, the daughter of M. Atius …
Crisis In Party And State
THE pretext of a special mandate from Senate and People was not merely a recognition of the past services and unique eminence of Caesar’s heir, not merely a due guarantee of his dignitas and pledge of civil concord or vested interests there was work to be done. The restored Republic needed a friendly hand to guide its counsels and set in order its imperial dominions and a firm authority to enforce a programme of social and moral regeneration.
Princeps
N his sixth and seventh consulates C. Julius Caesar Octavianus went through a painless and superficial transformation. The process was completed in a session of the Senate on January 13th, 27 B.c., when he solemnly announced that he resigned all powers and all provinces to the free disposal of the Senate and People of Rome. Acclamation was drowned in protest. The senators adjured him not to abandon the Commonwealth which he had preserved. Yieldin…
Appendix: The Consuls
The Government
THOUGH by no means as corrupt and inefficient as might hastily be imagined, the governing of all Italy and a wide empire under the ideas and system of a city state was clumsy, wasteful and calamitous. Many able men lacking birth, protection or desperate ambition stood aloof from politics. They could hardly be blamed. The consulate was the monopoly of the nobiles: after the consulate, little occupation, save a proconsulate, usually brief in tenure…
The Caesarian Party
Caesar, who took his stand on honour and prestige, asserted that Pompeius was disloyal. Caesar had made enemies through Pompeius—and now Pompeius had joined them.1 A just complaint, but not integral truth: a Sullan partisan before turning popular is, Pompeius by his latest change of front came back to earlier alliances.
Dux
HE adversary spent the winter in Greece, ready in his preparations of army and fleet, but not perhaps as resolute as he might appear. Antonius now had to stand beside Cleopatrathere could be no turning back. Patrae at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth was his head-quarters. His forces, fed by corn-ships from Egypt, were strung out in a long line from Corcyra and Epirus to the south-western extremity of Peloponnesus. The land army under the command…
Pax Et Princeps
When a party has triumphed in violence and seized control of the State, it would be plain folly to regard the new government as a collection of amiable and virtuous characters. Revolution demands and produces sterner qualities. About the chief persons in the government of the New State, namely the Princeps himself and his allies, Agrippa, Maecenas and Livia, history and scandal have preserved a sufficient testimony to unmask the realities of thei…
History in Ovid
Emperors and biography: Studies in the 'Historia Augusta'.
The Imperial Finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan
The work of the spade and the use of common sense have done much to mitigate the influence of Tacitus and Pliny and redeem the memory of Domitian from infamy or oblivion. But much remains to be done. The policy of this able and intelligent Emperor has been vindicated on the frontiers, but is still, in the matter of finance, condemned as extravagant and ruinous. Not only is this the view of those who, with the warrant of the senatorial tradition, …
Caesar, the Senate and Italy
The central and revolutionary period of Roman history runs from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus to Augustus' seizure of sole power and establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Caesar's heir prevailed through the name of Caesar—‘puer qui omnia nomini debes’; and he perpetuated the name, as title, cult and system, to distant ages. Yet Augustus as Princeps did not invoke Caesar's rule to provide precedent and validity for his own. Quite the re…
Ammianus and the Historia Augusta
Emperors and Biography. Studies in the Historia Augusta
Ten Studies in Tacitus
Piso Frugi and Crassus Frugi
Civil wars are not always murderous to the upper order in society. Many of the nobiles managed to weather the storm and prosper thereafter in the years of peace, happily exploiting the new dispensation. Some had ancient pedigree and nothing else to commend them, but the stock of the dynasts Sulla, Pompeius, and Crassus enjoyed high prestige and carried dynastic pretensions: peers and rivals to the Caesars of the Julian and Claudian line. Their al…
Some Notes on the Legions Under Augustus
A papyrus dated to the year 8 B.C. attests the existence of the legion XXII Deiotariana and, indirectly, that of the other legions as well in the series with numbers running from XIII to XXII. It is therefore no longer necessary to say anything about the theory of Mommsen, that eight of them were raised all at once at the time of the Pannonian Revolt, and the other two after the disaster of Varus, or about the milder form in which Hardy served it…
Tacitus: Some Sources of his Information
I. When a consular turned to the writing of history he had full years of experience behind him; and the reminiscences of elderly survivors, not missed by an alert youth, carried a man nearly a century into the past. The mass of knowledge thus accruing has not always been taken into account by adepts of Quellenforschung . A senator's employment could hardly fail to affect his beliefs and opinions. It might be expected to leave traces here and ther…
Anatolica: Studies in Strabo
No historian of ancient Rome in this century has had a greater influence on historical research or won greater international acclaim than Sir Ronald Syne (1903-89). His outstanding position was due mainly to his first two books, The Roman Revolution, which appeared in 1939, and Tacitus (two volumes, 1958) - although he went on to produce many more monographs, and seven volumes of his Roman Papers have so far appeared. The long gap between his fir…
Hadrian and Italica
Italica in the province of Baetica is the ‘patria’ of the Aelii. Hadrian duly bears the tribe of that municipium , the ‘Sergia’. However, the place of a man's birth is not always the same as the legal ‘origo’ of his family. A child may see the light of day somewhere else, according to the rank and occupation of his parent. The consular historian, probably Narbonensian by his ‘patria’, might have been born at Augusta Treverorum or Colonia Claudia:…
The Spanish War of Augustus (26-25 B. C.)
The Roman revolution
The Roman Revolution is a profound and unconventional treatment of a great theme - the fall of the Republic and the decline of freedom in Rome between 60 BC and AD 14, and the rise to power of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, Augustus. The transformation of state and society, the violent transference of power and property, and the establishment of Augustus' rule are presented in an unconventional narrative, which quotes from ancient evidence, …
Ammianus and the Historia Augusta
Some Imperatorial Salutations
I. CAESARS HEIR could not expect ever to surpass the triple pomp of 29 B.C., and he did not bother to celebrate a triumph again, even for his much advertised subjugation of Spain, when he took the field for the last time. Caesar Augustus knew other ways of remaining supreme in military prestige or moving towards a monopoly. Restraint offered an argument and pretext for curbing the pretensions of others. Proconsuls were permitted triumphs in the f…
People in Pliny
Alluding to the scanty sources for the reign of Trajan, the historian Gibbon came out with a melancholy pronouncement: ‘the glimmerings of an abridgement or the doubtful light of a panegyric’. Gibbon's mind was on warfare and government. A later age is drawn to a wider and more subtle theme: the study of society. A document of unique value exists, the correspondence of Pliny. It illuminates class and rank and behaviour—and a whole region of North…
The dating of Pliny's latest letters
When announcing the first instalment, the author made a firm declaration: ‘collegi non servato temporis ordine’. The note of elegant disdain suitably echoes a poet: ‘postmodo collectas, utcumque sine ordine iunctas’;. In fact, care for balance and variety predominates. Nevertheless, when Pliny came to recount public transactions, he had to respect a ‘temporis ordo’, as many signs indicate. Mommsen in his classic study was able to work out the chr…
Domitius Corbulo
Of the campaigns of Domitius Corbulo, not much remains to be said at so late a date in the annals of erudite investigation. His significance for social and political history is another matter. Corbulo's early career excites curiosity. And, later, the effort is not vain to look for links between Corbulo and certain persons, families, or groups destroyed by Nero in 65 and 66, in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy; and scrutiny of the legates …
Approaching the Roman Revolution: Papers on Republican History
This volume collects twenty-six previously unpublished studies on Republican history by the late Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989), drawn from the archive of Syme's papers at the Bodleian Library. This set of papers sheds light on aspects of Republican history that were either overlooked or tangentially discussed in Syme's published work. They range across a wide spectrum of topics, including the political history of the second century BC, the age of S…
Guard Prefects of Trajan and Hadrian
For a space of forty years, from 98 to 138, few praefecti occur on named attestation. In fact only six : two registered in isolation, four in collegiate pairs. Apart from seasons of disturbance, the holders of this useful and necessary office tend to evade notice in written history. It was not until 2 B.C. that Caesar Augustus appointed commanders of the Praetorian cohorts, so Cassius Dio states. The occasion might excite curiosity: perhaps after…
The Son of the Emperor Macrinus
I. On one aspect the reign of Macrinus is a brief interlude in the story of the Severan dynasty. Antoninus Caracalla was assassinated on April 8, 217. A year had hardly elapsed when chance and the potency of his name and memory led to the proclamation of the boy Elagabalus, alleged to be his son (at Emesa on May 16, 218). The rapid and dramatic actions engross attention and dominate the narrations that survive, to the obscuration of sundry other …
Tacitus, The Man and His Work
Marcus Lepidus, Capax Imperii
The theme ‘capax imperii', immortalized by Tacitus’ verdict on the Emperor Galba, runs through his writings, and imparts a unity to the record of conspiracies and civil wars. It emerges quickly in the Annals. Augustus, so an anecdote alleges, discussed the matter when his end was near, and made play with the names of three men. M. Lepidus, he said, had the capacity but no desire; Asinius Gallus was eager but not good enough; Arruntius, however, w…
Who was Decidius Saxa
The world of learning owes debts many and varied to Sir Henry Stuart Jones: it is the Camden Professor and historian of Rome that Oxford knows best. In Roman history, wherever knowledge may be deepened and however horizons may be widened, the transformation of the Roman State and the transition from Republic to Principate must ever claim the centre of interest. For this reason a paper concerning one of Caesar's partisans, a military man from Spai…
Rhine and Danube Legions under Domitian
When literary records are few and faulty, the movements of legions win a certain importance as historical evidence, not least for the wars of Domitian. Whole legions were not displaced for purposes trivial or temporary; it might almost be said that in Flavian times, when a legion leaves a province, it leaves it for good. The aim of the present enquiry is, therefore, to narrow as far as may be the margin of dangerous error that fringes the subject…
The Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus
The Flavian writers of epic verse took their business seriously enough and seldom permitted themselves anything that might pass for an allusion to contemporary events: so much so that only an ingenuity that runs a risk of being perverse can wrest from them much more than what they have themselves chosen to say in their dedications or invocations. Where the man survived to complete and edit his work, such a dedication, the last thing to be written…
The Imperial Finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan
The work of the spade and the use of common sense have done much to mitigate the influence of Tacitus and Pliny and redeem the memory of Domitian from infamy or oblivion. But much remains to be done. The policy of this able and intelligent Emperor has been vindicated on the frontiers, but is still, in the matter of finance, condemned as extravagant and ruinous. Not only is this the view of those who, with the warrant of the senatorial tradition, …
M. Vinicius ( Cos . 19 B.C.)
I. The New Inscription from Cales. II. The Date of the Operations Recorded by the Inscription Dessau 8965. III. The Identity of the General. I. The following inscription ( Not. Scav. 1929, p. 31) was recently discovered at Cales: M. Vinicius P.f., M.n., L.pron., cos. II, VII vir [epu]lonum, sodalis Augustalis, thriumphalibus ornamentis, quinq(uennalis) viam ab angiporto aedi[s] Iunonis Lucinae usque [ad] aedem Matutae et [clivum] ab ianu ad g[isi…
Some Notes on the Legions Under Augustus
A papyrus dated to the year 8 B.C. attests the existence of the legion XXII Deiotariana and, indirectly, that of the other legions as well in the series with numbers running from XIII to XXII. It is therefore no longer necessary to say anything about the theory of Mommsen, that eight of them were raised all at once at the time of the Pannonian Revolt, and the other two after the disaster of Varus, or about the milder form in which Hardy served it…
Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I, II, III. Pars I. Consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Borussicae iteratis curis ediderunt Edmundus Groag et Arturus Stein. Berlin and Leipzig: De Gruyter…
Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I, II, III. Pars I. Consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Borussicae iteratis curis ediderunt Edmundus Groag et Arturus Stein. Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1933. Pp. xvi + 375. M. 38. - Volume 24 Issue 1
Lentulus and the Origin of Moesia
The ancient evidence for the wars and conquests of Augustus is not only fragmentary: the fragments themselves are capricious and misleading. Chance and design have conspired to produce a like result; and the interested partiality of contemporary authorities has been nobly seconded by the ignorance or the indifference of subsequent compilers. The successes of the Princeps and of his stepsons received ample commemoration and overshadowed the achiev…
The Spanish War of Augustus (26-25 B. C.)
In Memoria Lui Vasile Parvan. Volum publicat de Asociatia Academicǎ ‘Vasile Pârvan’ a foştilor membri ai Şcoalci Române din Roma. Bucuresti: 1934. Pp. 326. In sterling 18s. 6d
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Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I, II, III. Pars II. Consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Borussicae iteratis curis ediderunt Edmundns Groag et Arturus Stein. Berlin and Leipzig: De Gruyte…
Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. I, II, III. Pars II. Consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Borussicae iteratis curis ediderunt Edmundns Groag et Arturus Stein. Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1936. Pp. xxii + 399. RM. 38. - Volume 26 Issue 2
Inscriptiones Italiae (Academiae Italicae consociatae ediderunt. Vol. x, fasc. 2–3; Vol. XIV, fasc. 1). Roma: La Libreria dello Stato, 1934, 1936, 1936. Lire 80, 80, 100
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Pamphylia from Augustus to Vespasian
Who was Decidius Saxa
The world of learning owes debts many and varied to Sir Henry Stuart Jones: it is the Camden Professor and historian of Rome that Oxford knows best. In Roman history, wherever knowledge may be deepened and however horizons may be widened, the transformation of the Roman State and the transition from Republic to Principate must ever claim the centre of interest. For this reason a paper concerning one of Caesar's partisans, a military man from Spai…
Pollio, Saloninus and Salonae
A calm has succeeded the clamour of the Virgilian Bimillenary, to be shattered all too soon by the commemoration of Augustus. In this brief interval there may be leisure to examine a question touching the career of Asinius Pollio and the history of the years 42·39 B.C. The Virgilian celebrations evoked two outstanding studies of the Fourth Eclogue , a poem dedicated to Pollio and written during—or perhaps just after—the consulate of Pollio (40 B.…
The Allegiance of Labienus
Ill fortune bore down the family of the Labieni, and an ill repute hangs over their memory. Q. Labienus, an ally of Saturninus, perished miserably, cut down in the Curia by good citizens. His nephew, T. Labienus, Caesar's legate in Gaul from the first campaign to the last, deserted to Pompeius Magnus at the outbreak of the Civil War, conveying promises which he failed to implement, was held in scant honour by his new allies, and met his death at …
The Origin of Cornelius Gallus
C. Cornelius Gallus requires brief introduction or none at all. A poet in his own right, the friend of Virgil and of Pollio, Gallus is enshrined for ever in literature—and in literary legend, for the inept fictions of Servius and his tribe will survive the most damaging of revelations, remembered even when refuted. Not only that—Gallus is a conspicuous figure in the social and political history of the revolutionary age
Caesar, the Senate and Italy
The central and revolutionary period of Roman history runs from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus to Augustus' seizure of sole power and establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Caesar's heir prevailed through the name of Caesar—‘puer qui omnia nomini debes’; and he perpetuated the name, as title, cult and system, to distant ages. Yet Augustus as Princeps did not invoke Caesar's rule to provide precedent and validity for his own. Quite the re…
C. Koch, Der römische Juppiter (Frankfurter Studien zur Religion und Kultur der Antike, herausgegeben von Walter F. Otto, xiv). Frankfurt -a.-M: V. Klostermann, 1937. Pp. 136. RM. 5.25
C. Koch, Der römische Juppiter (Frankfurter Studien zur Religion und Kultur der Antike, herausgegeben von Walter F. Otto, xiv). Frankfurt -a.-M.: V. Klostermann, 1937. Pp. 136. RM. 5.25. - Volume 29 Issue 1
The Roman Revolution
Personal Names in Annals I–VI
Names of persons in the Codex Mediceus prior exhibit familiar corruptions, and many of the necessary corrections were easily made. The cogent evidence was often external—the same character appeared elsewhere in Tacitus, or in some other writer, and inscriptions might certify the orthography of a name or even permit the identification of an individual. None the less, there were, and there are, traps and uncertainties. First, an inoffensive or unim…
The Consuls of A.D. 97: Addendum
No year can excite a sharper curiosity than that which was introduced by Nerva, the new Emperor, and L. Verginius Rufus, each holding the fasces for the third time. A small but significant fragment of the Ostian Fasti was recently discovered by G. Barbieri. It came too late to be used by A. Degrassi in his Fasti Consolari (1952), but that scholar was fortunately able to publish it in his ‘Aggiunte’ (p. 288), whence JRS XLIII (1953), 150, with bri…
Marcus Lepidus, Capax Imperii
The theme ‘capax imperii', immortalized by Tacitus’ verdict on the Emperor Galba, runs through his writings, and imparts a unity to the record of conspiracies and civil wars. It emerges quickly in the Annals. Augustus, so an anecdote alleges, discussed the matter when his end was near, and made play with the names of three men. M. Lepidus, he said, had the capacity but no desire; Asinius Gallus was eager but not good enough; Arruntius, however, w…
Some Pisones in Tacitus
At this late date there is not much prospect of producing new and cogent emendations in Tacitus. ‘Hoc artificium periit.’ Past excesses counsel sobriety, and there has been a strong revulsion. Among the items which scholars unjustly impugned and prematurely corrected were a number of proper names, their sole offence often being rarity or an unusual shape. However strange a name may look, it should not lightly be altered. The vast and vivid nomenc…
The Friend of Tacitus
The aspiration to fame being open, avowed, and honourable, it was no scandal if a Roman of consular rank insisted on a mention in books of history written by a friend and destined (it was clear) to undying renown. Pliny saw his chance ( Epp. VII, 33). There was another way and device. By publishing his own correspondence, Pliny was able to put in circulation a kind of autobiography, subtle and unimpeachable. The collection carries no fewer than e…
The Origin of the Veranii
‘VERANIUS’ is an uncommon gentilicium , with brief and transient notice in Loman annals. The earliest Veranius on record is the friend of Catullus. iccording to Catullus (28; 47), he was abroad on the staff of a governor while, or just after, the poet was with Memmius ( pr . 58) in Bithynia. The governor was Piso, clearly L. Piso ( cos . 58), proconsul of Macedonia till the summer of 55. Veranius, it emerges elsewhere (9. 5 ff.; 12. 14 ff.), had …
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