Valerius Maximus 7.7.6.   Text and translation taken from this book.   There is much going on here, not just with gender, but also ethnic (and religious) prejudice, the status of freedmen in relation to their former masters and the relative authority of different magistrates.

So if you don’t get this image.  Google it.  It’s rather a touchstone of modern cinema.  I was delighted to come across this passage of Cicero in my readings today and learn that the dramatic scene has a classical antecedent on the Roman stage!   I must learn more about the Dulorestes of Pacuvius, in which Thoas, King of the Tauri, wishes to kill whichever of the two captives brought before him was Orestes.  Cicero writes in the de Finibus:

Do we forget the strong emotion that we feel when we hear or read of some deed of piety, of friendship or of magnanimity? But I need not speak of ourselves, whose birth, breeding and education point us towards glory and towards honour; think of the uneducated multitude, — what a tempest of applause rings through the theatre at the words:

I am Orestes,

and at the rejoinder:

No, no, ’tis I, I say, I am Orestes.

And then when each offers a solution to the king in his confusion and perplexity:

Then prithee slay us both; we’ll die together:

as often as this scene is acted, does it ever fail to arouse the greatest enthusiasm? This proves that all men without exception approve and applaud the disposition that not only seeks no advantage for itself, but is loyal and true even to its own disadvantage.

Earlier in the same work he’d introduced the moral dilemma of the two friends in this manner:

or being Pylades will you say you are Orestes, so as to die in your friend’s stead? or supposing you were Orestes, would you say Pylades was lying and reveal your identity, and if they would not believe you, would you make no appeal against your both dying together?

Of the booty taken by me no one, except the quaestors of the city—that is, the Roman people—has touched or will touch a farthing. At Laodicea I think I shall accept sureties for all public money, so that both I and the people may be insured against loss in transit. As to what you say about the 100,000 drachmae, in a matter of that kind no concession to anyone is possible on my part. For every sum of money is either treated as booty, in which case it is administered by the praefecti or it is paid over to me, in which case it is administered by the quaestor.

This is a very, very cranky letter (even for Cicero!) written as he’s leaving his governorship of Cilicia at the end of his term to the (much lower ranking) proquaestor serving as acting governor in the adjoining province of Syria.  The interesting part to me is the idea that there was such sophisticated banking that Cicero could choose not to travel with the vast amount of wealth he acquired and instead take only the surety of the deposit with him back to Rome.  This isn’t just good enough for personal transaction, but also for state business.

Interested in this sort of thing?  The go-to book is Hollander, Money in the Late Roman Republic.

ne mi quidem ipsi tunc placebat diutius abesse ab rei p. custodia ; sedebamus enim in puppi et clavum tenebamus ; nunc autem vix est in sentina locus

This is from a very free letter to L. Papirius Paetus in the last months of 46 BC.  What I enjoy about this usage of a common metaphor (Plato’s Republic, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex) is its creativity and sarcasm.  It is not didactic or ideological in function here, but rather a colorful expression of frustration.

I did not myself at that time desire to absent myself for any length of time from the guardianship of the constitution: for I was sitting at the helm and holding the rudder; whereas now I have scarcely a place in the hold.

Since Meadows and Williams 2000, we’re in the habit of talking about coinage as monuments in miniature.  Given how much Augustus (and later generations) changed the face of Rome, it is hard to recover the physical culture of commemoration in the city and even harder is to ascertain early attitudes towards such monuments.   All of which means we have less to frame our understanding of the coins.  BUT, nicely we have this self aware fragment (reliquia really) of Ennius, preserved in the Historia Augustae 25.7.6-8:

These barbarians, then, Claudius overcame by his own inborn valour and crushed in a brief space of time, suffering scarcely any to return to their native soil. What reward for such a victory, I ask you, is a shield in the Senate-house? What reward is one golden statue? Of Scipio Ennius wrote: “What manner of statue, what manner of column shall the Roman people make, to tell of your deeds?” We can say with truth that Flavius Claudius, an emperor without peer upon earth, is raised to eminence not by any columns or statues but by the power of fame.

Here is Courtney 1993:

Horace Ode 4.8 does remain VERY disputed.

We’ve lots of testimony about the circulation of speeches and letters which may or may not be genuine, which may or may not have been intended for public consumption.  One day I’d like to spend sometime thinking about the culture of the written word at the end of the republic, especially  what can or cannot be believed.  This is from Cicero’s speech on his house:

I’m playing with the idea that regibus regna reddere might have sounded Ennian to Cicero’s audience or that he might have been inspired for the alliterative turn of phrase from his exposure to Ennius.  Just speculative, but here are some supporting details:

When commenting on Aeneid 3.333 (…regnorum reddita…) Servius is reminded at least by the verb of Ennius:

more veteri pro ‘data’ accipiendum est: ‘re’ ergo abundat. Ennius annalibus “ad illa reddita nuptam”, et alibi “isque dies post aut Marcus quam regna recepit” pro accepit. aut ‘reddita’, quod Heleno debebatur imperium.

Skutsch on his commentary on F.56 of Ennius’ Annales does not believe that there is anything particularly archaic about this use of reddere.

Statius uses the phrase reddere regna to start THREE different lines in his Thebiad (2.541, 7.390, 10.583).  Book 7 in particular is known for having Ennian echoes.

Among the fragments of Ennius we find:

 mortalem summum Fortuna repente

Reddidit †summo regno famul †ut †optimus esset (Ann. 312-313)

parentes vinculis exemisse, patri regnum reddidisse atque ita in (Euhem. 90)

And, of course, alliteration is often associated with Ennius…

L. Mummius and his inscriptions hold a special place in my heart.  But I must confess (there are a lot of those today it seems!): I’ve never thought about his connection to early Latin poetry before today:

This is from Ll. Morgan’s

Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse

Pliny NH 36.26. This temple was built out of the spoils of the victory over the Callaeci, 132BC.  Are Scopas’ works supposed to be read in relation to one another?  Or was the original juxtaposition of the two founding Roman deities meaningless at this date?

There are plenty of examples in Cicero’s constitutional writings of people being ‘too free’, but I this phrase in a public oration struck me a rather unusual (Pro Flaccio 72):

The Freedom of the Greeks is usually something defended or given by the Romans, not disparaged…