Sextus Pompeius Research Articles

Why Octavian Married Scribonia

SummaryThis article revises the existing explanations for the marriage between Octavian and Scribonia, which emphasised the young Caesar’s desire for an accommodation with Sextus Pompeius, including a mutual normalization of relations and even an alliance. In reality, such actions were never on the agenda of either politician. The marriage to Scribonia was primarily a message addressed by Octavian to Antonius during a period of tense relations in the year 40 BCE, but also to the Roman plebs and to the veterans.

Rome’s Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire by Richard Alston

Reviewed by: Rome’s Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire by Richard Alston Joe Wilson Richard Alston. Rome’s Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xxiii, 370. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-19-973976-9. Rome’s Revolution emphasizes the role that the soldiers, as well as the informal political networks and connections that predominated in Roman politics, played in the period from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the establishment of the empire. Alston complains in his preface that “conventional accounts of the revolution have become bloodless” (viii) without citing any particular offenders. Unlikely: the proscriptions of the triumvirs, wars civil and foreign, battles fought in venues from the Alps to Armenia, and the assassination of Caesar himself guarantee that blood remains integral to an account of the wars. That said, the violence of the revolution and the role that the soldiers played as both dispensers and arbiters of that violence remain to the fore throughout this work. Alston begins with the murder of the dictator in 44. He notes that the belief that Caesar felt some special concern about his status as dictator for life lacks merit; in all likelihood, Caesar embarked on his last day with his customary confidence, and the assassination may have been more shocking to him than to most of the senate. A retroactive chapter then covers events from the conflict of Marius and Sulla to Caesar’s civil war with Pompey. Alston’s real tale begins after the assassination. Alston notes the hostility of Cicero, as opposed to the general neutrality of senators, many of whom supported Antony. He relegates Octavian’s entry into Italy to a flashback as he advances his tale to Mutina and gives a detailed account of the military and political maneuvering that accompanied the campaign. Alston includes Appian’s account (BC 3.68) of the battle in the marshes at Mutina to emphasize the solid professionalism of the combatants. Reports of the victory at Mutina led to celebrations within the city, but the aftermath of the battle demonstrated Antony’s considerable skill as a soldier and politician. He extricated his defeated army without difficulty, brought Lepidus and his troops over to his side, and repositioned himself to become the ally of Octavian, who had demanded his own “seat at the table” from the senate. Alston gives a great deal of the credit to Antony himself: his charm and his political perspicacity, in contrast with the cluelessness of his opponents. Alston also emphasizes the roles that the soldiers played in reconciling Lepidus to Antony and in Octavian’s march on Rome. The union of Antony and Octavian culminated in the establishment of the triumvirate, the clinical brutality of the proscriptions, and the final suppression of the assassins at Philippi. Alston does a particularly good job explaining the financial aspects of the proscriptions as a source of funding for the triumvirs and juxtaposing his accounting to the slaughter’s horrifying effect on the Roman psyche. The aftermath of Philippi saw Antony in the east, enjoying the pleasures offered by Cleopatra, while Octavian performed the considerably duller task of settling affairs in Italy, including the suppression of Lucius Antonius and the siege of Perusia. Alston gives full weight to the bloody slaughter that followed that city’s surrender. Antony returned from the east to support his brother, but the soldiers of Antony and Octavian persuaded the generals to renew their alliance at Brundisium. Alston turns next to an account of the triumviral wars, of Octavian’s hard-fought victory over Sextus Pompeius and his incursions into Dalmatia, and [End Page 429] Antony’s campaigns in the East against the Parthians. He argues that Antony was for the most part successful, despite a later tradition hostile to the general. Alston goes into some detail on the Donations of Alexandria, Antony’s efforts to legitimize his position in Egypt, and the defeat at Actium. He adds a succinct chapter explaining Octavian’s settlement of affairs in Alexandria and the east after the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra, acknowledging that, in Roman thinking, at least, Octavian had every right...

<em>Monstruosa Species</em>: Scylla, Spartacus, Sextus Pompeius and Civil War in Sallust's <em>Histories</em>

Through the figure of Scylla, Sallust evokes Sextus Pompeius as part of his critique of contemporary politics. Although the Histories narrate the years following Sulla's death, they are an allegorical critique of Sallust's own world. Scylla appears in an excursus on Sicily in Sallust's account of the Spartacus War. Although the Spartacus War taxed Rome for three years, the state downplayed the threat posed to the security of the republic. Likewise, the triumvirs downplayed Sextus' threat by portraying him as a mere pirate. Sallust evokes Sextus in the context of the Spartacus War to suggest that, despite the triumvirs' dissimulation, Sextus was a threat, and that the state was as unstable during the triumviral years as it was during those turbulent years after Sulla's death.

Finding Libo: Numismatic, Epigraphic and Topographic Evidence for the Cursus Honorum of L. Scribonius L. f. Libo, cos. 34 b. c. e.

The following essay uses numismatic, epigraphic, and topographic evidence to reconstruct the cursus honorum of L. Scribonius Libo, an important but enigmatic adherent of Pompeius Magnus and advisor to Sextus Pompeius. It aims to contextualize and elucidate aspects of his early career in the historical milieu of the 60s - 50s b. c. e., including: his moneyership and the ideology of his coins as they relate to the financial crisis of 63-62; the year(s) and location of his quaestorship; a possible aedileship; and the year and provincia of his praetorship.

Monstruosa Species: Scylla, Spartacus, Sextus Pompeius and Civil War in Sallust's Histories

Through the figure of Scylla, Sallust evokes Sextus Pompeius as part of his critique of contemporary politics. Although the Histories narrate the years following Sulla's death, they are an allegorical critique of Sallust's own world. Scylla appears in an excursus on Sicily in Sallust's account of the Spartacus War. Although the Spartacus War taxed Rome for three years, the state downplayed the threat posed to the security of the republic. Likewise, the triumvirs downplayed Sextus' threat by portraying him as a mere pirate. Sallust evokes Sextus in the context of the Spartacus War to suggest that, despite the triumvirs' dissimulation, Sextus was a threat, and that the state was as unstable during the triumviral years as it was during those turbulent years after Sulla's death.

Magnus Pius: Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic by Kathryn Welch

470 BOOK REVIEWS Magnus Pius: Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic. By KATHRYN WELCH. Swansea and London: Classical Press of Wales, 2012. Pp. 350. Hardcover,£50.00/$100.00. ISBN 978-1-905-12544-9. he triumviral period necessarily figures in grand narratives, but is less popular as a subject for research, in spite of the fact that there is plenty of source-material, even if little is contemporary. The danger is that we see the Principate as the inevitable consequence of Julius Caesar’s murder and his testamentary arrangements. The Muse of History, of course, tends to be hard on losers: a minor humiliation is that they rarely appear in exam questions and, even when they do, they are ignored by candidates. As the introductory chapter, “The Lost Republic,” makes clear, this book is a protest against this neglect, where it joins recent contributions to the period by Josiah Osgood’s Caesar’s Legacy (2006) andAnnie Allély’s Lepide le triumvir (2004). The problem with the subject is simple: we know little about Sextus Pompeius, except for the time between the battle of Philippi and his death, and what we are told is mediated by sources which, whether sympathetic to Caesar Octavianus or Antonius, would have reason to downplay his importance. If for Augustus Livy was a “Pompeianus,” this support does not seem to have been extended to his younger son (p. 21). Welch’s solution is to extend the topic so as to be a study of the Pompeian cause from the civil war of 49 BC onwards. After the introduction, chapters are devoted to the Pompeian naval strategy and Pompeian naval power, the pursuit of this policy by his sons after his death, and the attempt to resuscitate the Republic after Caesar’s murder. Chapter 5, entitled “A Republican Triumvirate?,” sets Sextus Pompeius beside Brutus and Cassius as the opposition to the triumvirs. In Chapter 6 Sextus comes at last fully into view in the struggles between Philippi and the treaty at Misenum; Chapter 7 follows Sextus down to his death. The last chapter discusses how Sextus’ exploitation of pietas, as slogan and value, may be regarded as a precedent for its exploitation by Augustus later. Welch succeeds in restoring Sextus’ importance, if not in making us believe in his Republicanism. Her stress on the significance of naval power in the civil wars is a helpful corrective to any over-emphasis on the Caesarian legions. There is also much useful discussion on the in-and-outs of diplomacy and campaigning. Important questions, however, remain unanswered and perhaps unanswerable. The members of the elite who fled from the Triumvirate to Sicily were of necessity anti-Caesarian, but were they genuinely Republican? How far did Sextus’ more T BOOK REVIEWS 471 junior officers and men have political sentiments, apart from personal loyalty to him? What was the attitude of leading Romans with property in Sicily? Here we may suspect that many actively supported Sextus and paid for it, to judge from Agrippa’s possession of major estates there (see Horace, Ep. 1.12). Above all, where did his money (generously illustrated in a number of plates) come from? Did he still have access to Spanish metal, when in Sicily? His funding no doubt relied a great deal on the diversion of provincial revenues, as did that of Brutus and Cassius, but he was probably also a plunderer by necessity, while his enemies used extremesof taxation. Some further issues may be noted by the way. Decimus Brutus’ legions were, surely, already in Cisalpina when he went out in 44 (p. 129). Calenus’ speech in Dio Cassius (p. 128) is poor evidence for anything except the anti-Ciceronian rhetoric of the period, both before and after the latter’s death, and Dio’s ability to stage a Demosthenic debate. Hence we should not assume that the argument in the senate in the first daysof January 43 (p. 145) wasessentially between Calenus and Cicero. The consular called first might have been Servilius Isauricus or Lucius Piso; Lucius Caesar certainly spoke after Cicero (Phil. 5.5–6). Historians, misled by Antonius’ rhetoric and the survival of Cicero’s speeches...

Dealing with Caesar: Finding Politics between 42 and 27 BC

AbstractThe idea that ‘the republic died at Philippi’ was an essential element in the discourse of the principate because it denied legitimacy to the resistance that followed. Yet, until 36, the republicans' control of the seas under Sextus Pompeius' leadership allowed the continuation of military resistance which all too often was embarrassingly successful. Restoring Sextus Pompeius to his rightful place in the alliance against the triumvirate allows us to rethink the narrative of the war as well the ways his supporters contributed to the politics of thenovus statuseven after his defeat.

Reading Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer with René Girard

In his 1 998 book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Italian original in 1995), Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben draws attention of his readers to an enigmatic of archaic Roman sacer or man.1 As Agamben notes, sacer was object of a peculiar form of violence, which suggests that Agamben's work on sacer offers a good starting point for a reflection on entanglement of the and violence. According to Agamben, violence that befalls sacer classifiable neither as sacrifice nor as homicide and therefore opens a sphere of human that is neither sphere of sacrum facere nor that of profane action (HS 82-83). In this light, Agamben proposes, homo sacer presents originary figure of life taken into sovereign ban and preserves memory of originary exclusion through which political dimension was first (HS 83). Agamben's attention to violence that befalls sacer suggests that his interest in this figure is motivated by larger frame of Homo Sacer-book, namely, his attempt to expose violent character of sovereignty. However, it is important to raise question of whether Agamben's interpretation of sacer - useful as it may be in context of his philosophico-political project - makes any sense at all in light of ancient Roman sources that are relevant for a discussion of this figure. The aim of present essay is to formulate an answer to this question. Questioning Agamben's interpretation of sacer does not mean that I reject legitimacy of overall aim of his Homo Sacer-project (i.e., unmasking violence of sovereignty), but I do contend that this aim does not justify an interpretation of sacer that is completely at odds with historical reality and that amounts to nothing but a fanciful creation by Agamben. We will find out that Agamben's interpretation of sacer is indeed problematical in light of ancient sources, and we will conclude this article by exploring an alternative interpretation of sacer, an interpretation that will be inspired by work of French- American literary critic Rene Girard.2 Introducing Homo Sacer The sacred man is one whom people have judged on account of a crime. It is not permitted to sacrifice this man, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide; in first tribunitian [sic] law, in fact, it is noted that if someone kills one who is sacred according to plebiscite, it will not be considered homicide. This is why it is customary for a bad or impure man to be called sacred. (HS 71) This fragment is Agamben's translation of definition of sacer offered by second-century Roman grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus in his De verborum significatione (On Significance of Words),3 an encyclopaedia of obsolete terms that was originally compiled by another Roman grammarian, Marcus Verrius Flaccus (ca 55 BCE-20 CE), but that only survived under form of shortened version of it produced by Festus. The definition of sacer quoted by Agamben appears under lemma sacer mons (sacred mount). According to Festus, this mountain was place to where plebeians, Roman citizens not belonging to aristocracy, retreated during secession of plebs which took place around 493 BCE. This secessio plebis was a kind of general strike during which plebs left Rome out of dissatisfaction with harsh debt rules at that time and which was solved by allowing plebeians to have their own magistrates, so-called tribunes, and to become in this way constituted as an assembly possessing political power (as narrated by Roman historian Titus Livius in The History of Rome, book II, chapter 32- 33).4 As noted by American historian Judy Gaughan, first tribunician law mentioned in quotation above taken by Agamben from Festus is best understood as the first regulation passed by [newly constituted] plebeian assembly. …

The Criminals in Virgil's Tartarus: Contemporary Allusions inAeneid6.621–4

AtAen. 6.562–627 the Sibyl gives Aeneas a description of the criminals in Tartarus and the punishments to which they are condemned. The criminals are presented to us in several groups. The first consists of mythical figures, the Titans (580–1), the sons of Aloeus (582–4), Salmoneus (585–94), Tityos (595–600) and Ixion and Pirithous (601–7). Next Virgil turns away from mythical figures to particular categories of criminal. He mentions those who hated their brothers, who assaulted a parent, who cheated acliens, who gloated over wealth they had acquired without setting aside a part for their family, who were put to death for adultery, and those who, breaking their masters' (‘dominorum’, 613) trust, made war on their country (608–14). The reference to the contemporary scene is unmistakable. The mention of a cliens (609) indicates that we have moved from Greece to Rome. Moreover, ‘quique ob adulterium caesi’ (612) brings to mind Augustus' concern over moral standards, the subject of legislation in 28B.c., 18B.c.andA.d.9; thelex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis(18B.c., but no doubt in the air for some time previously) gave to fathers of adulteresses the right to put to death both guilty parties. Thirdly, ‘arma...impia’ (612–13) is an obvious reference to civil war (cf.Geo. 1.511–14;Aen. 1.294–6), which as Servius argues is more narrowly defined by ‘nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras’ (613) so as to exclude Caesar and Octavian: undoubtedly the allusion is to the war against Sextus Pompeius, which Augustan propaganda chose to represent as a war against runaway slaves. Virgil continues by sketching the penalties paid in Tartarus by such men (614–17). While doing so, however, he retreats once again into the realm of mythology: the punishments he describes are those more normally associated with Sisyphus and Ixion (rolling a stone uphill, suspension on a wheel). This reversion is completed at 617–20 where, confusingly, Virgil denies that he has been alluding to events of contemporary significance by naming two mythical personages, Theseus and Phlegyas (the father of Ixion). Virgil therefore implies, but then denies, contemporary relevance. It is this kind of protean elusiveness (most marked, perhaps, in theEclogues) which makes the contemporary allusions in Virgil so difficult to pin down.

Lucan's Apotheosis of Nero

S IiNCE epic poets customarily state their subject at the beginning of their poems it may be assumed that at the time Lucan wrote verses 1-66 of the Bellum civile he had fixed in his mind the outline of the whole, however vague the particulars of the design may have been and however altered they may have become as the work progressed. In 1950 R. T. Bruere suggested that the complete poem would have encompassed the whole period of civil warfare from 49 B.C. to the peace following Actium.1 More recently, 0. A. WV. Dilke has inclined to the same view,2 whereas H. P. Syndikus has reiterated the traditional termini of 15 March 44 B.C. or Philippi in 42,3 and H. Haffter has implausibly proposed that Lucan's tenth book, had it been finished, would have marked the end of the epic (47 B.C.).4 To the present writer the hypothesis that Lucan planned to include the entire period of plus8 quam civilia bella which ended only with the overthrow of Antony and Cleopatra seems the only tenable one. Scholars favoring an earlier terminal point fail to appreciate the implications of the prophecy made by the witch Erictho to Sextus Pompeius tibi certior omnia vates/ ipse canetSiculi8 genitor Pompeius inarvi8, BC 6. 812-13. As verbal and other similarities make plain, Lucan is here recalling the verses preceding the appearance of Anchises to Aeneas in Sicily (Aen. 5. 700-2: Aeneas... / nune huc ingentis, nunc illuc pectore curas/ mutabat versans, Siculisne resideret arvis).5 Just as Anchises appeared to his son in the Aeneid, so it may be presumed that Pompey was to appear to his son Sextus in Lucan's poem. From this it results not only that the poem was to continue into 43 B.C., since Sextus did not reach Sicily until this year, but that (since Pompey was to advise Sextus on his future course) the latter was to play a role of significance in the poem, as he did in the later stages of civil warfare until his defeat off Naulochus in 36 and his death the following year. The overthrow of Sextus would however be an impossible ending for a poem dealing with plus quam civilia bella, for Actium, the culminating and final engagement of the morethan-civil struggle, was yet to come. This paper will argue that certain features of Lucan's description of Nero's future apotheosis at the opening of his first book give strong additional support to the hypothesis that the poet proposed to treat the entire period of civil warfare that preceded the establishment of the pax Augusta after Actium.

Cleopatra's End

T at the end of the third act of Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra waits the fury of Antony, who has seen her eyes with Caesar's man. The substance of her defense is implied in one half-line: Not know me yet? (III. xiii. i57) .1 Apparently, Antony believes that he does know her, for he goes on to one more gaudy night, defeat, and suicide. The scene has been final for Enobarbus, who chooses to stand with Rome's virtues even when he can no longer be a part of Rome's story. For readers and onlookers, however, the enigma of Cleopatra goes on. I think we do not fully know her until the fifth act. Then the power and point of Shakespeare's dramatic sequence become clear. Up to the moment of Antony's suicide Cleopatra is poetically enlarged in two thematic lines. She is vitality and change, the fecund earth, the Nile's slime and ooze, and the inconstant moon-sea spirit. None of these rhetorical elements is of course foreign to her historical and concrete presence. She is Cleopatra, a woman and Woman. She is also an embodiment of Rome's antithesis, the reckless indulgence of appetite, the assertion of personal rather than public values. Both Antony and we must to some degree suspect her motives. Given the poetic development of her history, we cannot believe her capable of the selfless act. She is all artifice and will. Others may die or decay in fortune; will go on. Antony is not the Roman of the play. Rather, it is Caesar who sets the Roman standards of order and power. He and not Antony is able to establish a universal peace. Dramatically, however, he seems by contrast cold. He uses rather than makes events. The threat of Sextus Pompeius is our revelation of Caesar and his way. He circumvents the threat by way of Antony's charm and the counterpoise of Antony's soldiership. Caesar is a close observer of the tides in men's lives and their times, and he remains uncommitted until the tide may carry him forward. Even then he remains the cool manipulator, does not become the passionate leader. For all of Caesar's power is in aloofness. He will not be a child o' th' time, as Antony urges in the flush of the pottle-pots (II. vii. i05). He possesses the moment but is never possessed. He has only to watch with politic horror the course of Antony's riotous decay. Only at the very end of the action is Caesar touched by Cleopatra, when she looks like sleep, / As would catch another Antony / In her strong toil of grace (V. ii 349-351). These words are out of character, for Cleopatra has won a victory over Caesar at last. And we feel closer to the man as he leaves the stage. Through most of the play Antony is somewhere between Caesar and Cleopatra, Rome and Egypt. He is, in Cleopatra's words, a heavenly mingle 1 All quotations are from the edition of G. L. Kittredge (Boston, I936).

Some Observations on the ‘Origo Gentis Romanae’

I. Two manuscripts of the fifteenth century—Cod. Bruxellensis (Pulmanni), bibl. regia 9755–63 and Cod. Oxoniensis (Bodl. Canon. Class. Lat. 131)—have preserved for us a ‘corpus’ including three pamphlets: (1) the so-called ‘Origo gentis romanae’ (a title, we shall see, not supported by evidence); (2) the ‘Liber de viris illustribus urbis Romae’; (3) ‘Aurelii Victoris Historiae abbreviatae,’ more commonly known as ‘Caesares’. The ‘Liber de viris illustribus’ has also been transmitted to us in a different tradition which omits the last nine lives (Caesar, Octavianus, Cato, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, Sextus Pompeius, Marcus Antonius, Cleopatra) and differs in other respects as well.

Mumiceps, II

A Previous article made a linguistic study of municeps. The present examines the Roman discussions of the word. I hope further to discuss the definitions of Verrius Flaccus, the history of the ius, and the juridical concept.Roman historical and legal discussion of municeps is to be found in the Digest (50. 1. 1, Ulpian), in the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (16. 13), and in the De verborum significatu of Sextus Pompeius Festus (p. 126 L.) and its epitome by Paulus (pp. 117 and 155 L.). It comprises legal definitions, which must have had at least contemporary validity, historical definitions of what the word meant at different periods in its history, and the citation of precedents with or without historical detail. Of these the last two are the most important.