Through the previous quadriennium, the concepts of crisis, trauma and securitas have re-acquired a certain urgency and thus serendipitously rendered this volume quite timely. Originating in a conference held at the end of 2016, it is the product of one of a number of projects making up the OIKOS Anchoring Innovation research initiative. It brings together eleven of the eighteen papers delivered at that conference, with the addition of a specially commissioned twelfth contribution. In a manner reminiscent of Mary Beard's SPQR with its commencement in medias res, the editors Jacqueline Klooster and Inger Kuin start this volume amid the crisis provoked by the Catilinarian conspiracy, using that event as a case study to discuss definitions of ‘crisis’ and to consider the various forms that response might take.
Using classical Athens as exemplary of the ancient Greek experience, Tim Whitmarsh discusses the idea of political revolution and crisis, unpacking the implications of and tensions between four different ideological strains in Athenian thought regarding democracy: the revolutionary, the essentialist, the imperialist and the counter-revolutionary. Taking her cue from the poetry of Horace and its Augustan context, Michèle Lowrie investigates the evolution of the concept of securitas as a response to the crisis posed by the political turbulence and civil wars of the late Republic, highlighting the complex interplay of metaphor and governance. Together these three contributions of the first part adumbrate the themes and scope of this volume.
The second part investigates Greek responses to crisis and its trauma. Focusing on the phenomenon of ‘tragic history’ and seeking to explain what practitioners such as Duris, Phylarchus and Agatharchides were intent upon accomplishing, Lisa Irene Hau makes an extremely attractive case for interpreting such historiography as aiming to expand readers’ sensibilities and thereby provide exemplary history to be avoided. Revisiting the personal experience of Polybius and the turning-points of Greek history between the late third and mid-second century b.c.e., Andrew Erskine makes an equally compelling case for understanding Polybian historiography as a response to the trauma associated with the affirmation of Roman hegemony over the Aegean world.
The third part is dedicated to Roman responses to the trauma produced by crisis. Offering a rigorous definition of the concept of ‘historical crisis’ and making a strong case for viewing the Sullan civil war as an example, Alexandra Eckert examines the ways in which Roman society worked through this trauma over the course of the 70s and 60s and how this influenced future developments. Focusing on Lucan's depiction of civil war and Roman strategies of recovery from trauma, Annemarie Ambühl contributes a sophisticated, nuanced reading of that poet's historical epic that makes an excellent case for understanding Lucan to have offered a vision of civil war without alternative and incapable of redemption by posterity. The fourth part examines strategies of resolving civil war at Rome. Taking the Italian campaign of early 49 b.c.e. and the capitulation of Corfinium for his subject, Luca Grillo argues that Caesar's narrative is indebted to Thucydides and makes a case for seeing Caesar as alluding to the Social War, with Caesar presenting himself as the solution to the problem posed by Ahenobarbus. In a characteristically thorough review of the period 31–27 b.c.e., Carsten Hjort Lange offers various reflections on how Young Caesar won the peace made possible by victories at Actium and Alexandria and finally achieved a lasting settlement. This essay felicitously unites contemporary theory, comparative history and a profound acquaintance with the sources. Situating the constitutional debate between Agrippa and Maecenas in Book 52 of Cassius Dio's Roman History within a historical tradition that reaches back to Herodotus and taking an intratextual approach to its interpretation, Mathieu de Bakker offers a fresh perspective on the paradoxes of the speech attributed to Agrippa. The fifth and final part is dedicated to the theme of civil war and the family at Rome. In a seminal contribution, Josiah Osgood and Andreas Niederwieser focus upon the family histories of M. Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 78), L. Cornelius Cinna (pr. 44) and M. Junius Brutus (tr. pl. 83), exploring the ways in which civil war affected families’ public visibility and the strategies employed to avoid oblivion, such as architecture and writing. Focusing on spouses and marriage (e.g. Cato the Younger, Marcia and Hortensius), Andrew Gallia follows with a contribution that investigates what impact the experience of civil war had on Roman ideas of the family as a social and legal institution and as a metaphor useful for thinking about society and the state.
This volume offers discussions of how we define and frame a ‘crisis’ (especially in the introduction of Klooster and Kuin and the contribution by Eckert) that readers will find useful. It also offers persuasive readings of well-known phenomena from a different perspective, as with Erskine on Polybian historiography as a coping mechanism and Lange on reconciliation through rehabilitation and power-sharing. Moreover, it raises issues clearly deserving further investigation. One example is the use of fire as a metaphor for war and civil war in particular (thought turns to the destruction of Perusia in 40 b.c.e. to which Hor., Carm. 2.1.7–8 surely alludes). Likewise, the conception of suicide as a coping mechanism that allowed the elite to avoid the indignity of execution (e.g. Ahenobarbus at Corfinium: Caes., B Civ. 1.22.6; Plut., Caes. 34.6–8) merits serious consideration and more extensive treatment. There are, it must be added, some unfortunate gaps. The obvious imbalance in the treatment of Greece and Rome is comprehensible in view of the deplorable tendency to renege on providing a publishable paper after participating in a conference. So, too, the unfortunate failure to use the work of Hannah E. Cornwell on pax (2017) and David Wardle on Suetonius (2014) may perhaps be explained by their recent date. Other omissions, however, are not so easily explained. When writing about the Roman family and civil war in the late Republic, the failure to utilise the abundant testimony of Cicero and the solid work of Susan M. Treggiari to discuss such phenomena as divorce or exile and separation is regrettable. We are in a unique position to be able to write in detail about the relations of Cicero, Terentia and Tullia. And what of Livia Drusilla? Memorably described as Ulixes stolatus by a great-grandson, she survived not only her sharing in the proscription of her first husband but also the numerous adulterous liaisons of her second husband (who had proscribed the first!) to outlive them all and supplant the latter's own daughter, ending her days as the priestess of his cult.
Notwithstanding such problems, the volume as a whole came together well and the contributions not only interact with one another, but also individually tend to advance the discussion. As a result it is certain to stimulate further work. This volume elegantly deals with the topic of crisis and its sequel in a coherent and insightful manner that makes it extremely useful for courses and seminars at the graduate and post-graduate level. With its focus on the political and socio-cultural trauma of civil war and conquest, this volume constitutes a significant contribution to trauma and memory studies.
