Carsten Hjort Lange

The second century BCE was a time of prolonged debate at Rome about the changing nature of warfare. From the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218 to Rome’s first civil war in 88 BCE, warfare shifted from the struggle against a great external enemy to a conflict against internal parties. This book argues that Rome’s Italian subjects were central to this development: having rebelled and defected to Hannibal at the end of the third century, the allies again rebelled in 91 BCE, with significant consequences for Roman thought about warfare as such. These "rebellions" constituted an Italian renewal of the war against their old conqueror, Rome, and an internal war within the polity. Accordingly, we need to add 'internal war' to the already well-established dichotomy of foreign and civil war.

This fresh analysis of the second century demonstrates that the Roman experience of internal war during this period provided the natural stepping-stone in the invention of civil war as such. It conceives of the period from the Second Punic War onward as an 'antebellum' period to the later civil war(s) of the Late Republic, during which contemporary observers looked back at the last 'great war' against Hannibal in preparation for the next conflict.

Many of the wars of the Late Republic were largely civil conflicts. There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their power.Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic. At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman socio-political order: the triumph, and argues that a commander could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil aspect of the war did not have to be denied.Carsten Hjort Lange provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as "normal" reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic. -


Reviews

“The first comprehensive monograph on the Roman triumph in the momentous civil war era, this insightful and thought-provoking study is as much a study of a well-known but poorly understood aspect of late republican Roman political life as an alternative viewpoint on the historic transition from Republic to Empire. This original and readily accessible book much advances our understanding of one of the Roman aristocracy's foremost rituals in a transformative period and is bound to stimulate further debate and reflection.” –  Frederik J. Vervaet, Associate Professor of Ancient History, The University of Melbourne, Australia

“Carsten Hjort Lange's book is the first to tell the story of what happened to the triumph – Rome's highest military honor – in a long period of civil war. In doing so, he offers new answers to the urgent question of how societies end civil war and come back together as one. There is bold and confident argument throughout, culminating in a superb discussion of the triumph's development under the emperor Augustus and its foundational role in the establishment of imperial government.” –  Josiah Osgood, Professor of Classics, Georgetown University, USA

See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/triumphs-in-the-age-of-civil-war-9781474267847/#sthash.zJIWwL0U.dpuf

SEE PROMOTIONAL CODE!

From the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218 to the Social War in 91, the Romans had prolonged debates about the changing nature of warfare, culminating in Rome’s first civil war in 88 BCE. The Second Punic War was a war of survival against Rome’s great enemy, Carthage, but also saw Rome’s subject-allies rebel on a large scale, equalling an internal war within the polity of Rome. The forthcoming monograph ‘From Hannibal to Sulla: The Birth of Civil War in Republican Rome‘ proposes that internal war was a natural stepping-stone in the invention of the concept of civil war. A brief look at the American Civil War and the impact of the 2020 presidential election helps to explain these conceptual developments.

Abstract: The Romans were not afraid of talking about civil war and regularly did so, even if they did not always spell it out in explicit terms. Civil war had a great impact upon society and involved numerous levels of justification—chiefly, in the case of Rome, through the erection of victory monuments as conspicuous civil war markers in the city of Rome itself. Erected by the victor, these often displayed a positive and sanitised version of civil war which highlighted not the horrors of war but rather its successful termination, so creating a positive exemplum out of the conflict. Nevertheless, regardless of these efforts to sanitise the language and thus shaping the memory of a civil war, its story could not be retold without people remembering its terrors. Such monuments served to keep the memory of civil war alive and testify to the long-term impact of conflict. In addition, the long list of civil war monuments that we know of testifies to an ongoing debate about warfare at Rome. Unlike our modern counterparts—for example scholars of the American Civil War, who have no need to repeatedly reconstruct the context of their civil war monuments—we as ancient historians need to establish the civil war context of these ancient memorials first and foremost.

Sea power as a concept is a question of input (the fleet, shipsheds, and related maritime industry) and output and control (influence exerted on other people’s use of the sea). This can be approached theoretically from two classic angles: the destruction of the enemy fleet in decisive naval battles (power at sea) vs. how sea power can influence the outcome of events on land (power from the sea). In reality, sea control may have been impossible due to the limitations of ancient ships, whereas sea denial—denying the enemy the local use of the sea—was not. Ancient naval history is consequently not just about naval battles, but also about naval infrastructure: harbours, ships, trained sailors, shipsheds, and a complex naval organization. Roman naval activity before 260 BCE is highly disputed, but whatever we make of this, the First Punic War and Cn. Duilius’ victory at Mylae in 260 BCE marked a radical departure from traditional Roman strategy. The fleet turned into a tool of aggression. The prize was Sicily. After the First Punic War, Roman fleets were involved in numerous hostilities and wars. However, the Roman fleet was an ad hoc organisation: there was no permanent fleet, and temporary fleets arose circumstantially in order to confront crises and emergencies. With the victory of Augustus came a standing Roman fleet, protecting Rome and Italy with naval bases. It was only at this late stage that the navalists—champions of a permanent fleet—won the day. After Actium, Rome controlled the Mediterranean and there was simply no room for any enemy naval bases.

Abstract: From Thucydides to Kalyvas, civil war is associated with wickedness and personal animosities. This contribution seeks to view the violence of the Late Republican civil war through the lens applied to it by Cassius Dio. It focusses on Dio’s portrayal of the use of violence by Young Caesar upon the fall of Perusia early in 40 BCE—allegedly followed by the killing of three hundred Senators and equites as well as the Perusine citizens. Violence was not only a conspicuous part of civil war, but also had a distinct purpose—viz. the elimination of personal enemies and the confirmation of power. This use of indiscriminate as opposed to selective violence speaks volumes about the balance of power in Italy: Young Caesar was not in total control in 41-40 BCE. Dio did not wholeheartedly commit to the story of the three hundred, but he still mentions it: clearly this concerns not only Dio’s wish to understand human nature and the leading civil war protagonists; it concerns also the impact of civil war, and the historian’s approach to it through narrative.

The greatest honour and the grandest spectacle Rome could bestow on a military commander was to allow him the glory of celebrating a triumph. In the period from 29 to 19 BCE eight people who were not part of the imperial family triumphed. Balbus proved to be the very last commander to do so. Accordingly the Fasti Triumphales concludes with the name of a man whose uncle, L. Balbus (maior), was a native of Spain who became the first foreigner to be made consul. This paper will reflect on whom these eight victors were and how they choose to celebrate their own victories, a task hampered by the fact that much of our evidence centres on Augustus himself. Further questions arise: how was it possible for these men to celebrate a triumph in a period which allegedly saw the monopoly of triumphal celebrations? Were there any significant changes to the triumph during this period, or are these developments part of an ongoing process which began during the Late Republic? Did they triumph in ways similar to earlier republican victors? Was it possible for them to create their own triumphal history, to personalize their celebration and triumphal afterlife, or did their success end up becoming part of the Augustan ideology?

All attempts to trace the historical development in the early books of Cassius Dio are hampered by their fragmentary state. It seems, however, that in addition to the excursus on magistracies and the triumph, Dio also stressed the phenomenon of stasis and civil war and the general tendencies that caused internal struggle. Libourel (1974) rightly highlighted that the early books contain more violence than our parallel evidence. Yet why this is so remains uncertain. Cassius Dio was not simply writing contemporary history into the past, but sought to describe the origins of specific phenomenon. In doing so he emulated Thucydides' model of stasis and views on the human nature (3.81-85). Dio wanted to understand Roman history, including civil strife, as part of the realities of power in the light of long-term experience. This paper proposes to look at stasis in Cassius Dio, asking whether "stasis" refers to any form of internal violence, or more specifically to what in Latin would be a bellum civile. In the surviving books of Cassius Dio stasis and dynasteia appear to be cyclically alternating phenomena: as individual dynasteiai are not stable forms of rule, they inevitably create the conditions for stasis. Interestingly, these tendencies-internal strife-seem to date to the founding of the city as an integral aspect of Rome's legacy.

From Thucydides to Kalyvas, civil war is associated with wickedness and personal animosities. This article seeks to comprehend the violence during the civil war of the Late Republic. It will claim that behaviour during the Roman civil war period was actually typical of comparable conflicts, in particular in terms of indiscriminate and selective violence. with a focus on two case studies: the murder of Cicero during the proscriptions in late 43 BCE and the use of violence by Young Caesar after the civil war at Perusia, ending early in 40 BCE. Violence was not only a conspicuous part of civil war, but had a distinct purpose to it: the elimination of personal enemies and securing power.

Modern scholarly discussion has concentrated on the question as to whether the Alban Mount triumph was a ‘real’ triumph or not: Mommsen, for example, prioritises the fact that these ceremonies are mentioned on the Fasti Triumphales and were thus by definition recognised as triumphs, perhaps even equal to the triumph proper. Many other scholars, however, disagree. This article seeks to reconsider the development of the Alban Mount triumph from the third century to the time of Augustus. It will be argued that the Alban Mount triumph developed from voices of protest into ceremonies that merited mention on the Fasti Triumphales. The Alban Mount triumphs of the past were retrospectively introduced into the triumphal list, even though it was celebrated by the virtue of the commander’s imperium and not officially sanctioned. Caesar’s ovation in 44 was the first to coincide with the Feriae Latinae, on the Alban Mount. The ovation was not celebrated on the Alban Mount, but in Rome: his entry into Rome was on returning (adventus) from the Feriae Latinae. Just as Caesar may well have invoked the exemplum of Marcellus’ ovation of 211, Young Caesar later thought it wise to mention Caesar’s ovation of 44 as the precedent for his own problematic joint ovation with Antonius in 40, listing them on the Fasti Triumphales. This intriguing decision continues to create problems of conceptualising the Alban Mount victory celebration.

Many of the wars of the Late Republican period were largely civil conflicts, and there was thus a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimate their power. Most of the rules and conventions relating to triumphs thus appear to have been articulated as the development of Roman warfare brought new issues to the Senate’s attention. This paper will examine these tensions and the ways in which they were resolved. The traditional war-ritual of the triumph and the topic of civil war have both received renewed interest in recent scholarship. However, attempts to define the relationship between them have been hampered by comments in the ancient evidence that suggest the celebration of a triumph for victory in a civil war was contrary to traditional practices. Nevertheless, as this paper will argue, a general could expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could be represented also as over a foreign enemy (the civil war aspect of the victory did not have to be denied); only after a victory in an exclusively civil war was this understood to be in breach of traditional practices.

The bimillennium of Augustus’ death on 19 August 2014 presents an excellent opportunity to revisit and re-evaluate Cassius Dio, a key source for the history of Augustus and his successors. Next year also presents us with the opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Fergus Millar’s monograph A study of Cassius Dio, a book that remains at the centre of Augustan scholarship and Roman historiography. Regardless of what we think of Dio as a historian, there is no denying that he occupies a central position in Roman historiography. He is the fullest surviving source for the reign of Augustus and fundamental to the study of the Principate until 229 CE, when he retired from Roman politics.

Traditionally Dio is not viewed as one of Rome’s finest historians. The modern tendency is to look at historical events mainly in their contemporary context. That in turn naturally leads to a focus almost exclusively upon periods for which we have such evidence. This approach has narrowed the scope of the subject of historiography as well as history in general. Critical of this approach, we wish to determine how Cassius Dio can be used as evidence, not whether he can be used. A late source such as Dio would have worked from contemporary evidence when writing on Augustus, at least implicitly. Another issue is the politics of Dio. In the words of Peter Michael Swan (2004, The Augustan Succession, 17) “He shared neither Livy’s nostalgia for the lost Republic nor Tacitus’ aversion to Augustus’ regime as dominatio”. Nowadays there seems to be a tendency to approach imperial sources as a means of revealing emperors and their deceptive ways, certainly so with Augustus. This is what might be called the right-or-wrong approach to history. Using this approach, Dio is not always helpful. This conference aims to understand Dio, rather than to accept or refute him. Of course we need to explain some of the deficiencies of Dio, but this is only possible if we accept that Dio was a figure in his own right, and this includes his activity as a historian. The conference thus proposes to focus on the encouraging characteristics of Dio's work as a piece of historical evidence, without forgetting some of his rather obvious shortcomings. It is our belief that this is best done if we focus on comparing Dio’s contemporary world with the past with which he engages as a historian.

Contact:
Jesper M. Madsen, Associate professor phd.
Department of History/ University of Southern Denmark, Odense
Email: majbom@sdu.dk

Dr Carsten H. Lange
Temporary Lecturer, Aalborg University, Denmark
Email:  lange@cgs.aau.dk