Preface: The Senatus Consultum De Cn. Pisone Patre

Abstract

The Senatus Consultum De Cn. Pisone Patre Preface As the journal begins its one hundred twentieth year, and the penultimate year of the twentieth century, it seems appropriate to devote an entire issue to one of the most important discoveries of the latter part of the century, the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre found in several copies in Spain, and recently published in both Spanish and German with exemplary speed, care, and openness by a team of scholars. The inscription raises issues covering a broad spectrum of classical studies. The Roman Senate on 10 December B.C. 20, at the request of the princeps Tiberius, published the decisions resulting from its investigation of the elder Piso’s behavior toward Germanicus and the domus Augusta. The decree, with a subscriptio by Tiberius, was published throughout the empire. Up to this point we have depended especially upon the narrative of Tacitus to understand this challenge to Tiberius’ position, supplemented recently by the honors decreed by the Senate for Germanicus preserved on the Tabula Siarensis, discovered also in Spain. The extraordinary historical importance of the senatus consultum regarding Piso is obvious, and detailed in the studies which follow. Previously we have worked through the ironic veil of Tacitus’ suspicion; now we have directly the no less carefully crafted statement by the Senate of its own position vis-à-vis the imperial house and one of its own most distinguished members. Archaeologists and historians may here discover new information on the nature of damnatio memoriae, affecting both inscriptions and buildings, as well as cultural-historical evidence for the state’s control over mourning customs, naming, and other traditional family practices. [End Page vii] Notable, if perhaps not surprising, is the prominence of the imperial women, Livia (more properly, Julia Augusta, as in the inscription) first of all. For the literary scholar, the decree provides a valuable check on Tacitus’ account, more interesting in many ways than the Lyon text of Claudius’ speech, for it reaches to the heart of the historian’s shaping of his account of the Tiberian years. Moreover, every student of imperial literature, especially of Livy and the Augustan poets, will be struck by the imperial ideology of virtue implied in this document (and explored especially in David Potter’s paper in this issue). The paramount role of Augustus and his successor as models of civic virtue and guarantors of peace to the community is remarkable. The power of the traumatic years of civil war over the minds of the senators—or at least over their public statements—even fifty years after Actium reminds us of our own efforts still to deal with the much briefer convulsion of World War II. If our own literature, literary criticism, philosophy, history, and whole view of society are still shaken by that event, how much more must have been the Romans’. This new inscription gives us a welcome window into the mental climate of these years. The particular occasion for this collection of essays, with a text of the decision of the Senate and a new translation, was the APA/AIA joint seminar organized by Cynthia Damon and Sarolta Takács for the meeting of December 1997. The seminar’s proceedings seemed so useful that it was determined soon after to publish the whole together, and this issue of the Journal seemed an appropriate venue. I am grateful to Professors Damon and Takács for overseeing the assemblage of papers, text, and translation and encouraging the constant interchange among the members of the seminar which has enhanced their quality. The three papers and Flower’s response are essentially those delivered in December 1997; changes and additions through July 1998 were incorporated where possible. As supplements to the seminar papers we are happy to add articles from Damon on Tacitus’ narrative in the light of the senatus consultum and from Julián González on the honors voted for Germanicus. In addition, Edward Champlin has contributed a review article on the original German and Spanish co-publications of the senatus consultum. P.A.S. [End Page viii] The special editors for this issue extend their thanks to many friends and colleagues in this country and...