The majority of contributors to this volume cite the essay by E. O'Gorman, ‘Intertextuality and Historiography’ (in A. Feldherr [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians [2009]), which distinguishes three types of intertextuality, namely, in descending order of the strength of the claims made: (1) the type that leads us to reinterpret the intertext itself (Tac. Ann. 1.9–10, for instance, leads to reinterpretation of the Res Gestae of Augustus); (2) the type that explicitly reports and analyses variant sources (Ann. 14.2.1–2 assesses two other accounts of Nero's relations with his mother); and (3) the type that echoes the language of the intertext (Ann. 2.61.1 echoes Aen. 2.13–16). O'Gorman, to be sure, does not claim to offer a complete typology but only to suggest the range, nor does her essay pass unchallenged: A. Haimson-Lushkov (p. 96 n. 8) criticises her dismissive stance towards the second type. In the volume under review, no examples of type 1 are produced, but quite a few of types 2 (Haimson-Lushkov's contribution, in particular) and 3 (for instance, M. Jaeger's showing that Verrines 2.4 and 5 are echoed in Livy 24 and 25). The last type obviously represents a far wider spectrum of possibilities than the other two: whereas their intent is circumscribed, its intent is far more diffuse, its effects nearly numberless.
None the less, most of the material in the book falls outside those three groups, and so a more systematic and comprehensive description of historiographical intertextuality remains a desideratum – a work that would do for historical writing what S. Hinds' Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (1998) has done for poetry. The intrepid soul who attempts to furnish such a description would do well to start from this volume, which offers a variety of interesting intertextual readings.
The first two contributions focus on place. In ‘Once More to Syracuse: Livy's Perspective on the Verrines’, M. Jaeger engagingly develops Livy's relation to Verrines 2.4 and 5 in his narratives about that city. Cicero, who deals with the inner parts of the city – the regia, the curia, the forum – as sites of political controversy, she contrasts with earlier historians, most conspicuously Thucydides, who refer to the outer parts of the city – walls, gates, outposts – in connection with sieges. Livy, she shows, depicts both the city of the historian and the city of the orator, and so incorporates Cicero into his own monumental history. She reveals the reader of Livy as looking over Marcellus' shoulder while he recalls events from Syracuse's glorious past (25.24.11–15). Perhaps there was an opportunity here to propose that Livy's text leads to reinterpretation of Cicero.
J. Chaplin treats a site in Greece itself: ‘Historical and Historiographical Repetition in Livy's Thermopylae’. On three occasions the defenders of the pass were defeated because the enemy encircled them: in 480, the Greeks were defeated by the Persians; in 279, the Greeks by Brennus and the Galatians; in 191, Antiochus III by the Romans. Livy narrates the third episode in Book 36, and C. succeeds in showing that the opposing commanders, Antiochus and Acilius, have read their Livy – that is, they act as if aware of what the narrator has observed about themselves – and that they are conscious of the history of the place where they are about to engage.
P., ‘Fabius, Scipio, and the Sicilian Expedition: a Practical Lesson on Reading Thucydides’, also links Livy to the history of the Peloponnesian War. He focusses on the debate in Book 28 about whether or not the Romans should send an expedition to Africa, which he interprets as a debate about how to use historical exempla correctly. Fabius Maximus, on the basis of the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily, argues against the expedition, which is championed by Scipio. Whereas Fabius in his speech distorts the facts as presented by Thucydides, in his reply Scipio invokes a different, more apt historical example, the invasion of north Africa by Agathocles. On what basis P. sees these stances as an ‘attack’ on Thucydides is unclear.
Haimson-Lushkov's ‘Intertextuality and Source-Criticism in the Scipionic Trials’, which is especially rich in bibliography, draws a parallel between the competition among the contending parties in the lawsuits (Scipio Africanus and the tribunes) and the competition among the varying historical accounts (Livy, Valerius Antias, et al.). The episode abounds in direct critical comment by Livy, paraphrase and quotation of speeches, and citation of sources, both documentary and material. It consists of a linear and logical master narrative, yet contains traces of contradictory voices. Like P. analysing another set of speeches that involves Scipio, she interprets the speeches delivered at the trials as concerned with the proper use of historical exempla. And like several other contributors, she views Livy's intertextual references as conveying inter alia his superiority to his predecessors.
Livy's portrait of Hannibal is viewed from a fresh angle by T. Moore, ‘Livy's Hannibal and the Roman Tradition’. After showing how Hannibal not only exemplifies great wickedness in Livy's pages but displays positive characteristics too, M. points to a second source of complication in the portrait – intertextuality. Upon the established Roman tradition of hostility towards Hannibal, as seen in the De amicitia and the Satyrica, for instance, Livy casts doubt in several ways: a number of instances of source criticism; the use of distancing expressions like fama est and ferunt when narrating several key events; and the setting of certain elements of the hostile tradition within clearly tendentious speeches. All these tend to undercut the usual Roman picture of Hannibal.
N. Popov-Reynolds, ‘The Heroic Soldier as Exemplum in Cato and Livy’, identifies a recurring figure in Roman historiography. The constants in the various stories are that the heroic soldier acts alone in response to an imminent threat to the army or the people, in speech proposes beforehand a course of action, and is altered in appearance (and sometimes in cognomen too) as a result of his action. Several negative exempla, such as the son of Manlius Torquatus, are also found in Livy. P.-R. shows that the figure of the heroic soldier serves audiences both within and outside the text.
Sallust, barely mentioned elsewhere in the volume (there is no index), is the intertext that A. Feldherr focusses on in ‘Hannibalic Laughter: Sallust's Archaeology and the End of Livy's Third Decade’. The end of the Second Punic War was a crucial turning point in Roman history, but it was also ambiguous. In a very sophisticated analysis, F. teases out the relations between Livy's account and the remarks Sallust makes near the beginning of the Catilina. Livy, he finds, builds on Sallust's model of historical reception. He concludes by contrasting in an enlightening fashion exemplary and historicising approaches to the past, which can be likened to O'Gorman's comment that intertextuality is at odds with the singularity of history.
This volume, useful despite a number of typographical errors, joins the small but swelling library that documents the New Livy, which already includes, to name just two other books, J. Chaplin and C. Kraus' viewpoint-driven collection of essays for the Oxford Readings in Classical Studies series, Livy (2009), and D. Levene's impressive study, Livy on the Hannibalic War (2010), which, even before its publication, was cited by the majority of the contributors to this volume.
