I’m tucked up in a sunny bay window on a comfy chaise lounge. The blanket I’m crocheting for my youngest daughter is now large enough to cover me as I work the edges. So why in good heavens am I making a blog post?
Well I have LibriVox on. Specifically I’m enjoying listen to a very soporific reading Livy book 23.
And I cannot help thinking that Pacuvius Calavius seems very much a Julius Caesar or August type figure. He presents himself as clement, maintains the structure of government while presenting himself as the savior of both the people and the elite, all while being coming a de facto autocrat. I wonder if this is a case of Capua being “good to think with”. The emphasis on Pacuvius’ marriage connections are Rome equally curious—Claudii and Livii!
It doesn’t mean the man isn’t ‘real’, but rather I wonder how much Livy enjoyed meditating on how the episode paralleled politics of his own day…
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Other thoughts:
Is the cannibal accusation against Hannibal just a trope about what it means to be uncivilized, or is it possibly related to antisemitic tropes? The latter seems unlikely. The accusation is found in fuller form in Polybius
One scholar has speculated that the origins of the antisemitic trope goes back to Alexandria and Apion and conflation with the Isis cult, but this seems a stretch.
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The whole banquet scene and then back alley conversation between the younger and elder Pacuvius Calavius about whether to murder Hannibal seems ripped from the stage: an unknowable yet dramatic moment on which history turns. Makes me think of Wiseman’s hypothesis that much historical knowledge at Rome derives from theater productions.
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“obtaining the necessary permission to mount his horse, he published an edict that all who had been guilty of capital offences or who were in prison for debt and were willing to serve under him would by his orders be released from punishment and have their debts cancelled. 6000 men were raised in this way, and he armed them with the spoils taken from the Gauls and which had been carried in the triumphal procession of C. Flaminius. He then started from the City with 25,000 men.”
I am so confused about where these 6000 men were… the Romans didn’t go in for mass imprisonment, debt bondage (nexum) had been abolished. I having a hard time imagining physically where these men lived and under what conditions…
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“the rest returned in safety to Praeneste with their commanding officer (praetore), M. Anicius, who had formerly been a notary (scriba). To commemorate the event his statue was set up in the forum of Praeneste, wearing a coat of mail with a toga over it and having the head veiled. A bronze plate was affixed with this inscription: “Marcus Anicius has discharged the vow he made for the safety of the garrison of Casilinum.” The same inscription was affixed to the three images (signis) standing in the temple of Fortune. … There is more obscurity as to what happened to the Perusians, as there is no light thrown upon it by any monument of their own or any decree of the senate.”
I wonder the material of the statue? Can we say it was not bronze because of the inscription medium is explicitly mentioned? Why three signis in the same temple? Are the truly images? Or could he have dedicated his standards? The word is ambiguous. It could mean many v different types of dedication from a statue to a panel painting. The toga is an interesting detail as the passage includes a refusal of Roman citizenship by the Praenestine troops in favor of their local citizenship. We tend to think of it as a ‘sign’ of Roman citizenship, which Anicius might have as praetor… but is it also the garb of other Latin people? The passage made me pause because I tend to think of Livy emphasizing his written sources not monuments but his concern to mention the lack of contemporary documentation for the Perusians is note worthy…
Liv Mariah Yarrow 