Between Narrativity, Memory, and Administration: Lists in Roman Historiography

Martin Stöckinger

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-76970-3_2

Abstract

AbstractThis contribution examines the function of lists in Roman historiography. It considers passages from Cicero’s rhetorical works (on the Annales Maximi), Tacitus’ Histories, the emperor Augustus’ Res Gestae, and Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum. The relationship of lists and narrativity is the central focus of the investigation. Moreover, it sheds light on the medium of writing that is crucial for the lists under consideration, the role of bureaucracy and administration, and the entanglement of list-keeping and political and religious power.

Highlights

Lists as History, History as ListThe relationship of lists, cultural memory, history, historiography, and narrativity has always been intimate
As becomes clear in the sections to follow, the crucial element in this kind of elaboration is a crucial element of narrativity in general: when Antonius propounds his theory on how history should be written he puts particular stress on the category of motivation, that is, of creating causality between otherwise isolated events.14. He states that “it [...] requires [...] for the events a statement of what was done or said and of how, and, when the outcome is discussed, that all the causes are explained, whether the result of chance, wisdom or recklessness” (Cic. de orat. 63).15. If we combine this phrase with his criticism of the list-like and in his words un-rhetorical Annales Maximi, we find that Cicero’s view is not very original: Aristotle had already criticized the genre of historiography in general for relating actual—and we could add: contingent—events; poets, by contrast, narrate “events that might occur [...] in terms of probability and necessity”
The Annales Maximi and the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (RGDA) are conceived as inscriptions, Tacitus’ list playfully alludes to an actual document, namely Augustus’ logbook of the empire, and Gregory, in his list of bishops, explicitly refers to his work as a piece of writing which is handed down to his successors and which may not be destroyed, cut, or shortened