Surely R., the author of an impressive series of monographs on Roman history and on the classical tradition, is also the foremost expert on scholarship on M. Furius Camillus, a towering figure in Roman history from c. 400 to c. 365 bce. As quickly becomes clear in R.'s most recent work, the tradition is massive. Who indeed, with an interest in the history of the Roman Republic, would not be fascinated by the complex character of Furius Camillus – successful general and triumphator four times, once censor, and multiple times consular tribune, interrex, dictator – whose actions are mainly described in Livy's Books 5 to 7 and in Plutarch's Life of Camillus?
However, R.'s main purpose is not to provide a historiographical account of the research involving Camillus and the historical context in which he is found, but it is a question of establishing what is known about this Roman hero. In other words, the intention is to compose a reliable biography, and the inclusion of ‘documentary study’ in the title indicates a wish to prioritise the ancient sources. The book is structured in eight chapters; and, after initially presenting methodological considerations, the treatment advances chronologically from the siege of Veii to the compromise between patricians and plebeians in 367 bce and to the substantial conclusion.
In the first chapter, ‘Sources and Method’, the task is ‘to see if there is any evidence which suggests to us that Camillus was a real person’ (p. 15). Comfortingly, the first subsection is labelled ‘Contemporaneous sources’ and discusses two inscriptions and one statue. But common to all three pieces of evidence is that they are only known from much later literary references, of which the oldest dates to some three centuries after the hero's death (Diodorus Siculus), and none of these later sources claim that they provide a verbatim quote of an ancient inscription. One question, not addressed by R., is what name was used for the hero in the 390s bce, when, as we read, a gold krater was sent to Delphi and three gold bowls were dedicated to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. There is little reason to believe that a Roman leader would have used a cognomen (such as ‘Camillus’) in an official dedicatory inscription at such an early date (see C. Bruun, in: C. Bruun [ed.], The Roman Middle Republic [2000], pp. 41–68, esp. 49–56), and no source actually claims that Camillus’ name was written on the krater at Delphi. That the gens Furia existed we can believe (although the name may well have been written Fusius). But if, perchance, an ancient inscription or object citing some magistrate called M. Furius/Fusius turned up or was observed in the second or first century bce, when Roman annalists and other writers were hard at work, there were many conclusions a Roman intellectual might draw, many ways in which a new legend could be shaped.
R.'s discussion of the literary sources shows that Cicero in the 50s bce was well aware of a Roman hero called Furius Camillus. A few decades later, Camillus appears in half a dozen places in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ work, while Livy's rich account was undoubtedly based on what some earlier annalists had written. Certain historical events in which we find Livy's Camillus involved, such as the Gallic occupation of Rome, are mentioned also in earlier fragmentary sources of republican literature (Fabius Pictor, Polybius, Claudius Quadrigarius), but Camillus does not appear. Except for Plutarch's rich account, most of the literature after Livy in which Camillus is mentioned should properly be seen as the ‘reception’ of Camillus, which is how R. labels a section of his first chapter in which the account includes, for instance, Ammianus, Themistius, Malalas and later Byzantine chroniclers.
The section on reception is followed by one on ‘Historical method’, which is structured around fifteen tenets (pp. 47–52). One may note no. 14, ‘it is unlikely that the very latest discussion will have the definite answer’, when it comes to problems that have been discussed for centuries. R. is opposed (rightly, in my view) to the ‘“but see now” club’ (p. 50), i.e. the belief that one's footnotes fulfil scholarly requirements as long as one has googled to find the most recent monograph or article on any given topic. In truth, this rule must apply to R.'s own monograph, and future scholars ought to study it carefully, to ascertain what might profitably be cited and what is to be avoided (to borrow from Liv. praef. 10).
The six main chapters – ‘Beginnings to Veii’, ‘The Capture of Veii’, ‘From the Capture of Veii to Exile’, ‘The Gallic Sack’, ‘The 380s’ and ‘Last Years’ – show the amazing range of interpretations that can be found in past scholarship. All historians are obviously products of their own time, as R. clearly shows in rejecting many past ideas and theories. The nine-page bibliography, not impossibly long, contains nine works from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, 34 from the nineteenth, and 43 works from the twentieth century up until World War II. Many more works carry later dates, and authors of the most recent decades, such as G. Forsythe, J. Gaertner, S.P. Oakley, T. Späth, J. von Ungern-Sternberg and U. Walter, are rarely missing.
One is not surprised to find Theodor Mommsen (labelled a ‘fantasist’ in his treatment of the Gallic sack of Rome [pp. 155–6]; chastised for calling the tradition on Camillus ‘the most lying of all Roman legends’ [p. 224]), Friedrich Münzer (the 1910 entry in Pauly–Wissowa), Ettore Pais (vilified for exercising stern source criticism in the early twentieth century, ‘the best known recent engine of destruction’ [p. 52]), Gaetano De Sanctis (the golden krater brought to Delphi is a historical fact [p. 87]), Santo Mazzarino (plausibly on Aristotle's view on Rome's saviour in 390 bce [p. 18]; commended for pointing to Macr. Sat. 1.11.37, which contradicts the canonical account of Camillus in 390–389 bce [p. 49]) and Erich Burck (a fundamental study of Livy from 1933, an article on Camillus from 1964) among scholars often quoted.
These and other scholars have frequently wanted to see the figure of Camillus, as presented in texts of the late Republic or the Augustan age, as a reflection of some near-contemporary political leader. Most commonly parallels with the lives of Sulla or Augustus have been identified, but R. strongly refutes all such theories (pp. 216–23).
More space might have been accorded to the approach to the Roman historical tradition championed by T.P. Wiseman, whose seminal work considers ways in which Roman annalists could have been influenced by family legends, ballads, theatrical representations and sundry material evidence. But what some might call hypercriticism (p. 51) does not mean discarding Roman republican history in general. The question is rather: how much is knowable about the details of military and political events in the late fifth/early fourth centuries bce? The Fasti Capitolini, a continuous record of Roman office holders, carved in stone in Augustan times, is cited by R. among the reliable primary sources (pp. 27–8). Camillus appears repeatedly, as does his contemporary L. Furius Medullinus. Medullinus who? Nine times elected chief magistrate 413–391 bce (p. 55), more than Camillus, he is the least known of all Rome's great republican leaders. The hero Roman legend forgot, or something else? The author of these lines combined the information of this neglected Furius with the existence of another early great Roman, the warrior Marce Camitlnas represented in a fresco in the famous François tomb at Vulci (Bruun 2000). Did later creative writers forge one dominant hero from such raw material? This suggestion presupposes later interpolations in the Fasti (a priori not implausible) to accommodate both Medullinus and Camillus. The theory is presented in a garbled fashion (pp. 55, 57, 139, 229–30), and part of it is mistakenly attributed to Walter (Memoria und res publica, Zur Geschichtskultur der römischen Republik [2004]) (p. 226).
R. was facing a daunting task in covering the research of the past several centuries while simultaneously writing a biography, based on historical sources, of a hero from Rome's distant past. The tension between these two strands is not always resolved in a way that benefits readers, who, nevertheless, will come away with an enhanced understanding of Roman historical research.
