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Parens Patriae And Livy's Camillus1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

T.R. Stevenson
T.R. Stevenson*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Extract

The titles Parens Patriae and Pater Patriae seem to have been employed controversially in ideological battles of the late Republic, especially from the consulship of Cicero onwards. It seems clear that, among other ideas, these polyvalent titles were capable of evoking the traditional Greek antithesis between the good king (who behaves as a gentle father to his people) and the tyrant, but whereas it is the tyrant who kills citizens in Greek thought, at Rome there was an understanding that the father could execute grown-up dependants who were threatening the state. This ambiguity both complicated and energised debates about the autocratic behaviour of the leading men of the late Republic. In other words, the father analogy was intended as a positive characterisation of the warlords and other leaders but its prominence in the first century BCE shows how anxious the Romans were about limiting and justifying the killing of citizens only as a last resort for the good of the state. Noticeably, Julius Caesar advertises the title Parens Patriae on his coins, and he was evidently invoked as Parens in the Forum cult which flourished for a time after his death. When Cicero speaks of his behaviour in 63 BCE and the positive interpretations put upon it by his friends, he tends to use the terms parens and pater synonymously. We ought to follow this cue and think that there is a fair degree to which the two can be synonymous. On the other hand, Caesar's supporters might have intended a contrast with his ideological rival Cicero, who had executed the Catilinarian conspirators without a trial. Their aim might have been to emphasise connotations of state benefactor and saviour rather than coercive aspects to do with patria potestas and the ius uitae necisque. The form Parens Patriae appears on the face of it to be less potentially threatening than Pater Patriae and more inclined to stress ideas of lifegiving, nurturing, and the like.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 27 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2000

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Footnotes

1.

An early draft of this paper was read at the 14th Annual Pacific Rim Latin Literature Seminar held in Hobart in June 2000. I would like to thank all those who offered suggestions at that time, especially Peter Davis and John Penwill. The biggest debt is owed to Marcus Wilson, who somehow found time amid many responsibilities to read and comment upon various drafts in detail. They are certainly not responsible for any errors.

References

2. Stevenson, T.R., ‘The Ideal Benefactor and the Father Analogy in Greek and Roman Thought’, CQ 42 (1992), 421–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id. ‘The “Divinity” of Caesar and the Title Parens Patriae’, in Hillard, T.W., Kearsley, R.A., Nixon, C.E.V., Nobbs, A.M. (eds.). Ancient History in a Modern University: Proceedings in Honour of Professor E.A. Judge, Vol. 1: The Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome (Grand Rapids MI and Cambridge UK 1998), 257–68Google Scholar.

3. Stevenson, ‘Caesar’ (n.2 above), 267f. with refs.

4. Cic. Dom. 94 (parens); Sest. 121 (pater); Pis. 6 (parens); cf. Plut. Cic. 23.3; App. BC 2.7 (both implying pater patriae). Tacitus refers to the nomen patris patriae at Ann. 1.72 and the parentis patriae…uocabulum at Ann. 2.87.

5. Aug. RGDA 35.1: tertium decimum consulatum cum gerebam, senatus et equester ordo populusque Romanus uniuersus appellauit me patrem patriae idque in uestibulo aedium mearum inscribendum esse atque in curia et in pro Augusto sub quadrigis, quae mini ex senatus consulto positae sunt, decreuit (‘While I was administering my thirteenth consulship the Senate and the Equestrian Order and the entire Roman People gave me the title of Father of the Fatherland, and decreed that this title should be inscribed upon the vestibule of my house and in the Senate-House and in the Forum Augustum beneath the quadriga erected in my honour by decree of the Senate’); cf. Suet. Aug. 58.

6. Livy 1.16.3–4: deinde a paucis initio facto deum deo natum, regem parentemque urbis Romanae saluere uniuersi Romulum iubent;…fuisse credo turn quoque aliquos qui discerptum regem patrum manibus taciti arguerent (‘Then, when a few men had taken the initiative, they all with one accord hailed Romulus as a god and a god’s son, the king and father of the Roman city;…There were some, I believe, even then who secretly asserted that the king had been rent in pieces by the hands of the Senators’); cf. 1.16.6: Romulus…parens urbis huius (‘Romulus…the father of this city’); 4.3.12: Romulus, parens urbis (‘Romulus, father of the city’). Ennius has the Roman People mourn Romulus in these terms: Cic. Rep. 1.64 [= Enn. Ann. 117–21 V]: o Romule, Romule die,/qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt!/o. pater, o genitor, o sanguen dis oriundum! (‘O Romulus, godly Romulus, what a guardian of your country did the gods beget you! O father, O begetter, O blood sprung from the gods!’)

7. Livy 2.60.3: sibi parentem alteri exercitui dominum datum ab senatu memorans (‘They declared that to them the Senate had given a parent, to the other army a tyrant’).

8. Livy 5.49.7–8: dictator reciperata ex hostibus patria triumphans in urbem redit, interque iocos militares, quos inconditos iaciunt, Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis haud uanis laudibus appellabatur. seruatam deinde bello patriam iterum in pace haud dubie seruauit cum prohibuit migrari Veios, et tribunis rem intentius agentibus post incensam urbem etper se inclinata magis plebe ad id consilium (‘The dictator, having recovered his country from her enemies, returned in triumph to the city; and between the rough jests uttered by the soldiers, was hailed in no unmeaning terms of praise as Romulus and father of the fatherland and a second founder of the city. His native city, which he had saved in war, he then indubitably saved a second time, now that peace was won, by preventing the migration to Veii, though the tribunes were more zealous for the plan than ever, now that the city lay in ashes, and the plebs were of themselves more inclined to favour it’). See Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939)Google Scholar, 305f.

9. On the elements of the Camillus legend, see Münzer, F., RE vii. 324–48Google Scholar; Momigliano, A., ‘Camillus and Concord’, CQ 36 (1942), 111–20Google Scholar = Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Rome 1960), 89–104Google Scholar. For a more conservative estimate, see Homo, L., CAH Vol. 7Google Scholar, 566ff. Livy’s treatment is analysed by Ogilvie, R.M., A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (Oxford 1965), 669–752Google Scholar; cf. Oakley, S.P., A Commentary on Livy Books Vl–X, Volume I: Introduction and Book VI (Oxford 1997), 376–79Google Scholar. The first words of Camillus’ elogium from the Forum Augustum are instructive: ‘He did not allow migration to Veii after the city was captured’ (CIL I2, 191,7 = ILS 52).

10. The trope of the consolations of exile is fully developed by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations 5.107ff. (cf. Ad Fam. 4.4.4; 7.3.4). It was conventional to assert that no man could be in exile if he was among good men (Cic. Fin. 5.54).

11. Livy 5.51.1–2; cf. 9.4.8; 22.59.1, etc.; Walsh, P.G., Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge 1970), 222Google Scholar; Stevenson, ‘Benefactor’ (n.2 above).

12. For Livy’s presentation of Roman history as a story of space (rather than time) and memory, in which landscape and monuments acquire and preserve meaning, see Jaeger, M., Livy’s Written Rome (Ann Arbor 1997), esp. 7–14Google Scholar.

13. Miles, G.B., Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca and London 1995), 79–88Google Scholar. For passages in which Livy refers to pietas, see Moore, T.J., Artistry and Ideology: Livy’s Vocabulary of Virtue (Frankfurt am Main 1989), 56–61Google Scholar. The most comprehensive study of Livy’s view that Roman success depends upon pietas is that of Levene, D.S., Religion in Livy (Leiden 1993), esp. 200–03Google Scholar; cf. Forsythe, G., Livy and Early Rome: A Study in Historical Method and Judgement (Stuttgart 1999), 87–98Google Scholar.

14. Livy 5.52.2: urbem auspicato inauguratoque conditam habemus; nullus locus in ea non religionum deorumque est plenus; sacrificiis sollemnibus non dies magis stati quam loca sunt, in quibus fiant (‘We have a city founded with due observance of auspice and augury; no corner of it is not permeated by ideas of religion and the gods; for our annual sacrifices, the days are no more fixed than are the places where they may be performed’).

15. For the idea of a panoramic and omniscient ‘wallview’ (teikhoskopia), or vista looking out from a city, see Stewart, A., Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge 1997)Google Scholar, 21f. The concept of enargeia (vivid presentation) is most comprehensively developed by Feldherr, A., Spectacle and Society in Livy’s History (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1998), esp. 4–19Google Scholar; cf. Paul, G.M., ‘Urbs Capta: Sketch of an Ancient Literary Motif’, Phoenix 36 (1982), 144–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 145: ‘In Hellenistic writers, descriptions of captured cities provided an opportunity for the display of a historian’s skill in enargeia and the description of pathe.’

16. Kraus, C.S., ‘“No Second Troy”: Topoi and Refoundation in Livy, Book V’, TAPA 124 (1994), 267–89Google Scholar, at 277.

17. The Palladium, a statue of an armed goddess, usually identified as Athena, was said to have been brought from Troy and preserved with other sacra in the shrine of the Vestals. It was an essential part of Rome’s claim to her Trojan past. Ogilvie thinks it belongs at the very earliest to propaganda of the third century when Rome was waking to her international responsibilities: Ogilvie (n.9 above), 746.

18. For the concept of ‘architectural memory’, see Kraus, C.S., ‘Livy’, in Kraus, C.S. and Woodman, A.J. (eds.), Latin Historians: Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics No. 27 (Oxford 1997), 50–81Google Scholar, at 57f.

19. The comitia centuriata was in origin the army on parade (Livy 1.43.1) and, therefore, met outside the city’s sacred boundary or pomerium (Aul. Gell. 15.27.4). As a result, Livy is less than absolute in asking: Quid alia quae auspicato agimus omnia fere intra pomerium, cui obliuioni aut cui neglegentiae damus? (‘What about the other matters nearly all of which we transact, after taking auspices, within the pomerium?)

20. There were two straw huts with thatched roofs called casae Romuli, one on the southwest corner of the Palatine and one, referred to here, on the Capitol: Verg. Aen. 8.654; Dion. Hal. 1.79; Plut. Rom. 20; Dio 48.43, 54.29; Vitruv. 2.1.5; Sen. Contr. 2.1.5.

21. Cf. Ogilvie(n.9 above), 748: ‘So close are the resemblances in detail between Cicero’s and Camillus’ words that it is difficult not to believe that Cicero has directly inspired L.’

22. Cf. Livy 5.54.5: argumento est ipsa magnitudo tarn nouae urbis (‘This is proved by the very greatness of so new a place’). For the connection between space and memory, see Miles (n.13 above), 223; Jaeger (n.12 above), esp. 7–14; cf. 10 (monumenta as ‘reminders’).

23. Cato fr.24 P; Serv. ad Aen. 9.446; Ovid, Fasti 2.669ff.; cf. Dion. Hal. 3.69; Lactantius, Inst. 1.20; Augustine, de Civ. Dei 5.21.

24. Ogilvie (n.9 above), 750.

25. The Romans’ return to pietas seems completely demonstrated by their behaviour here, in contrast to their previous failure to heed a divine warning about the Gauls (5.32.6–7). For another speech by Camillus, this time interrupted rather than reinforced by fortuna, see Livy 6.9.3; Walsh (n.11 above), 58. Chaplin, Jane D., Livy’s Exemplary History (Oxford 2000), 86–88Google Scholar, distinguishes between Camillus’ internal and external audience and finds that ‘the internal audience’s response to the final omen shows the reading audience that the religious lessons of Book 5 have been successfully absorbed’ (88).

26. In general, archaeologists do not believe that Rome was subject to a general conflagration that might be associated with the Gallic sack, and rather than reconstruction they emphasise repair and unplanned, piecemeal development over centuries: Ogilvie (n.9 above), 751.

27. Ogilvie (n.9 above), 743.

28. I agree with Ogilvie (n.9 above), 742.

29. Cf. Kraus, C.S. (ed.), Livy, Ab Urbe Condita Book VI (Cambridge 1994), 12Google Scholar.

30. Cicero’s word for the rhetorical superstructure of history is exaedificatio (De Oral. 2.63); cf. Kraus (n. 18 above), 5, 56f.

31. E.g. 5.51.1∼5.46.10; 51.6∼15; 51.7∼32.6; 52.3∼46.2; 52.8∼17.2; 52.10∼23.3; 52.11∼31.3; 53.9∼44.5; 54.5∼33.

32. A. Drummond, in OCD 3, 616.

33. Miles (n.l3 above), esp. 102–08.

34. Elsewhere, with an imprecise air, Livy uses round numbers: 360 (5.40.1) and 400 years (5.45.4).

35. Ogilvie (n.9 above), 749.

36. Miles (n.l3 above), 95.

37. Kraus (n.l6 above), 278–82.

38. M. Claudius Marcellus, the consul of 51 BCE, ordered the flogging of a citizen of Novum Comum to show that he did not recognise Caesar’s claim that they were citizens: Cic. Att. 5.2.3 and 11.2; Plut. Cues. 29.1; App. BC 2.26; cf. Suet. lul. 28; Broughton, MRR II, 241.

39. E.g. Varro, Ant. Rer. Diu. 1.1; Cic. Harus. Resp. 32; Nat. Deor. 1.82.

40. Edwards, C., Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (Cambridge 1996)Google Scholar, 50 n.19, citing Gros, P., Aurea templa: recherches sur l’architecture religieuse de Rome à l’époque d’Auguste (Rome 1976), 24Google Scholar and 29.

41. Note the discussion of Edwards (n.40 above), 45–52.

42. Herodian 1.6.5, a comment attributed to Claudius Pompeianus and directed to Commodus; cf. Ov. Tristia 4.4 (res est publica Caesar); Dig. 48.22.18 (the patria moves with the emperor). By contrast, Herodian’s Severus thinks of Rome as ‘the very seat of empire’ at 2.10.9. Note also Cic. Ep. ad Brutum 1.16.8 (Rome is where a citizen may be free); Sen. Clem. 1.19.8; Hist. Aug. Hadrian 8 (the state belongs to the people not the emperor); Tac. Ann. 13.4 (on keeping the palace and the state separate).

43. Ogilvie (n.9 above), 742; cf. Walsh (n.11 above), 17.

44. Ogilvie (n.9 above), 742.

45. Walsh (n.11 above), 17, citing Plut. Cam. 31f.

46. Edwards (n.40 above), 47. Note that M. Minucius Rufus is made to turn Camillus’ arguments against Fabius Maximus at Livy 22.14.4–14.

47. Walsh (n. 11 above), 17.

48. Kraus (n.16 above), 285–87. At 287 she says: ‘It seems that Tacitus, then, reads occupatae in Livy not just as “haphazardly settled” but as covertly recalling the enemy occupation that the city has just undergone, with nearly fatal results. He is unquestionably right. Under the innocent meaning is another, running crosswise to it, as the sewers run haphazardly under the forma urbis.’

49. Edwards (n.40 above), 52.

50. Kraus (n.16 above), 267–89; cf. Paul (n.15 above), 147–49, and esp. 151–53, for Livy’s evocation of the destruction of Troy in Book 5.

51. Kraus (n.16 above), 273; cf. Miles (n.13 above), 5–13, on the Gallic sack resulting from Roman greed and disregard of religion.

52. Kraus (n.29 above), 5; cf. Oakley (n.9 above), 110, who feels that it is ‘possible that books vi–x were published towards the beginning of the period 30–25’.

53. Walsh, P.G., Livy: Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics No. 8 (Oxford 1974), 5Google Scholar: ‘[The] view of Livy as propagandist for the régime is now happily out of favour.’

54. Syme (n.8 above), 463–65; Miles (n.13 above), 47–54. Among the Zeitgeist group may be numbered Walsh (n.11 above), 6, 16–18; Levene (n.13 above), 247f.; Kraus (n.29 above), 6f. nn.22–25; Oakley (n.9 above), 378f.; Chaplin (n.25 above), 192–96.

55. Walsh (n.ll above), 17f.

56. Oakley (n.9 above), 379.

57. Edwards (n.40 above), 50.

58. Kraus (n.29 above), 13.

59. Kraus (n.29 above), 8f. Note on page 9 her point that Livy’s heroes are different to those commemorated in the Forum Augustum; cf. Chaplin (n.25 above), 168–96, on Livy and the Forum Augustum. In Kraus (n.18 above), 74, she sees the AVC as ‘both a criticism and a celebration of Rome, a text which both affirms and questions the traditions on which the city was built, and with which it may rebuild itself’.

60. Miles (n.13 above), 204–08, writes of the early books of Livy acting both to empower and constrain the charismatic leader.

61. Quint. 1.5.56, 8.1.3; cf. 1.7.24 on Livy’s Paduan spelling.

62. On which see Hendrickson, G.L., ‘A Witticism of Asinius Pollio’, AJP 36 (1915), 70–75Google Scholar.

63. Kraus (n.29 above), 1 n.2: ‘L.’s subject was not just the governing class, but the growth of Rome to include Italy and after it the world—i.e. the whole populus Romanus’; cf. 26f. For the vast scholarship on the charge of Patauinitas, see Miles (n.13 above), 51; Feldherr (n.15 above), 29 and n.84.

64. Cf. Edwards (n.40 above), 48: ‘For Livy’s earliest readers, it would have been difficult not to see his celebration of Camillus’ commitment to the physical site of Rome as a positive response to Octavian’s well-publicised commitment to the city.’

65. Momigliano, A.D., JRS 30 (1940), 75–80Google Scholar (esp. 79f.); Gruen, E.S., Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca NY 1992)Google Scholar; Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘The Roman Revolution and Material Culture’, in La Révolution Romaine après Ronald Syme: bilans et perspectives (Geneva 2000 = Fondation Hardt Entretiens sur I‘antiquité classique 46), 283–313Google Scholar, esp. 29–303 on the buildings, and 313: ‘The result is a mos Italicus.’ Mouritsen, H. appears to go a bit too far in arguing that the Social War was an Italian rebellion which aimed to supplant Rome: Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography (London 1998)Google Scholar. Too many Italians appear to have desired Roman citizenship: cf. Beard, M. and Crawford, M., Rome in the Late Republic2 (London 1999), 91Google Scholar.

66. Cf. Walsh (n.11 above), 91f. (Camillus as a figure of concordia and clementia), 222 and 228 (his altruistic patriotism). On concordia as a relative concept, see Briscoe, J., ‘The First Decade’, in Dorey, T.A. (ed.), Livy (London and Toronto 1971), 20Google Scholar n.36.

67. Aug. RGDA 35.1; Suet. Aug. 58.2.

68. Feldherr (n.15 above), esp. 78, where Livy is pictured tapping into centres of authority that give his work a special status, different from other literary accounts of the past.

69. Wiseman, Peter, for instance, has forcefully argued the latter view: Roman Drama and Roman History (Exeter 1998)Google Scholar.

70. On Livy’s complex attitude towards Augustus: Miles (n.13 above), 93; cf. Briscoe (n.66 above), 11, for Livy’s scepticism (4.20.5 ff.) about Augustus’ ‘evidence’ for the military rank of A. Cornelius Cossus. Syme (n.8 above), 308f, gives the political background.

71. Miles (n.13 above), 79–88, and Levene (n.13 above), 200–03, are fundamental on this; cf. Feldherr (n.15 above), 37–50.

72. Feldherr (n.15 above), esp. 78.

73. The contrast between these two is most fully developed by Jaeger (n.12 above), 57ff., esp. 76 and 88 (Manlius as tyrant).

74. For this contrast as fundamental to employment of the father analogy, and in particular the titles Pater Patriae and Parens Patriae, see Stevenson, ‘Benefactor’ (n.2 above), and id. ‘Social and Psychological Interpretations of Graeco-Roman Religion: Some Thoughts on the Ideal Benefactor’, Antichthon 30 (1996), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A number of writers have seen the struggle between selfish motives and the claims of civic duty and pietas: Walsh (n.11 above), 222; Miles (n.13 above), esp. 82–85; Jaeger (n.12 above), 184.

75. Miles (n.13 above), 84.

76. Miles (n.13 above), 99: ‘The interpretation of Roman history in Livy’s first pentad grew out of a particular synthesis of recent ideas that did not exist in the literary tradition before Livy [referring to Parens Patriae as a title with a controversial history].’

77. An attachment of caritas (‘affection’) is highlighted at 5.54.3; cf. 2.1.5.

78. Luce, T.J., ‘Design and Structure in Livy 5.32–55’, TAPA 102 (1971), 265–302Google Scholar, and Livy: The Composition of his History (Princeton 1977).

79. Levene (n.13 above), 193.

80. Levene (n.13 above), 200f.; Kraus (n.16 above), 283f. (e.g. a pre-foundation period, foundation, ethnographies, Hercules, Camillus as Romulus, the evocation of rituals associated with the city’s foundation), 286 n.67: ‘Book V, it seems, is all about comparison.’

81. The phrase also links with Ennius, Annates 155Sk. = 502V., apparently also deriving from a speech by Camillus. See Skutsch, O., The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford 1985)Google Scholar, 314f.; Levene (n.13 above), 201 n.67.

82. Livy 1.19.5: [Numa decided to imbue the citizens, uncivilised in those days, with fear of the gods.] qui cum descendere ad animos sine aliquo commento miraculi non posset, simulat sibi cum dea Egeria congressus nocturnos esse (‘As he could not instil this into their hearts without inventing some marvellous story, he pretended to have nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria’). On Livy’s presentation of Numa, see Levene (n.13 above), 134–37.

83. Polyb. 6.56.6–15; cf. Cic. Diu. 2.70; Levene (n.13 above), 136 n.44, 137 n.47.

84. Levene (n.13 above), 136, seems to favour a message for leaders (‘there is certainly no indication that this political use of religion is to be deprecated’); cf. 246, where it is argued that sceptical statements are not privileged over belief in Livy’s work, which seems to allow both divine and human influence over historical events.

85. For example, Camillus’ arrival before the Gauls can scarper off with their ransom (5.49.1): Feldherr (n.15 above), 80.