I INTRODUCTION
Scholarship on Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Antiquitates Romanae (henceforth AR) has focused primarily on the first two books, which deal with the arrival of Aeneas in Latium and the founding of Rome, and on Dionysius’ relation to other versions of Rome's foundation, such as Virgil's Aeneid and Livy's Ab Urbe Condita.Footnote 1 Dionysius’ account of the foundation of the city presents the Romans as a nation of Greeks (ethnos hellenikon), and their customs and institutions as an improvement on those of their ancestors. The argument concerning the Greek origin of the Romans, which he sets out to demonstrate in his work, might initially project Dionysius as an obsequious defender of his adoptive fatherland in the face of anti-Roman propaganda by Greek sources. However, in this paper, I argue that Dionysius’ initial presentation of the Romans as Greeks proves to be much more nuanced and complex when read side by side with the narrative of the concluding books of the AR, a largely unexplored section of the work, of which only fragments survive.Footnote 2 Enough remains to say that Dionysius kept true the promise made in the preface (1.8.2) and concluded his narrative with the events of the Pyrrhic War and its aftermath, ending just before the outbreak of the First Punic War (265 b.c.).
The events of the war with Pyrrhus, marking as they do Rome's perceived first encounter with historical Greeks, create a ring composition with the beginning of the story in which the Trojan exiles first come into contact with the descendants of the Greeks then living in Italy. The narrative of this encounter provides an important lens through which to analyse and reassess the argument Dionysius advances at the beginning of his work concerning the Greekness of the Romans and their customs. Parallel to Dionysius’ claim about the ethnic kinship of Rome and Greece runs a deeper demonstration of how the former has surpassed and indeed supplanted the Greek world in the quintessentially Greek areas of morality and conduct. Yet this culturally-based definition of Roman ‘Greekness’ is accompanied, particularly in the last portion of the narrative, by a troubling awareness of its inherent instability as the Romans increasingly display the same tendencies which eventually caused the ‘barbarization’ of Greece.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the conclusion of the work in the context of the historiographical and cultural project that Dionysius outlines in the preface. While more recent scholarship on the AR has considered the construction of the authorial persona and its relation to its contemporary audience, most work has typically been in the tradition of Quellenforschung, with little emphasis placed on narrative structure and technique.Footnote 3 Instead, in this paper I will focus on Dionysius’ relation to his sources only in so far as this will help us to understand Dionysius’ shaping of his material in the context of the project he sketches out in the preface to his work. I will first provide an overview of the structure of the AR and Dionysius’ place in the tradition of Greek (and, as we shall see, Roman) accounts of the history of Rome's rise to power. Secondly, I will analyse what survives of the concluding books of the AR, focusing especially on Dionysius’ narrative technique and on the thematic and structural relation between the ending and the rest of the work.
II THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS IN THE ANTIQUITATES ROMANAE
In the AR, Dionysius of Halicarnassus sets out to provide a chronological account of the history of Rome from its origin down to the beginning of the First Punic War. In writing this work, Dionysius admits to having a specific agenda, which he lays out in the preface: to correct the view, which he perceives to be widespread among the Greeks, of the Romans as a barbarous race who came to rule the world through chance and the whim of Fortune. By contrast, his account presents the Romans as an ethnos hellenikon, true heir to the greatness of the Greeks, and their customs as more advanced than those of their ancestors. Thus, though the format of the AR is essentially chronological, its narrative is interspersed with digressions on the origin and nature of Rome's most important customs and institutions and a comparison with their Greek counterparts.Footnote 4
The AR comprise twenty books, of which 1–11 survive in their entirety with a unified manuscript tradition. For Books 12–20, on the other hand, we have only fragments gathered from a variety of different sources, mostly the collection of passages from a number of different historians arranged thematically and put together in the tenth century by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, quotations in the Souda and Stephanus of Byzantium, and excerpts taken from an epitome of the AR which are preserved in a manuscript from the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.Footnote 5 Dionysius starts his account from the very beginning of Rome's history with the events following Troy's fall and Aeneas’ arrival in Latium. As he himself explains in the preface to the work, Dionysius has chosen to focus his account on the early origins of the city to demonstrate to his Greek audience the fundamental Greekness of Roman culture, its customs and institutions and thus replace their misconception of the Romans as barbarians. In doing so, Dionysius wants to fill a gap. The first Roman historians writing in Greek, the annalistic writers Cincius Alimentus and Fabius Pictor, he says, touched only summarily on the origins of Rome. Similarly, the Greek historians who wrote about Rome, Hieronymus of Cardia and Timaeus of Tauromenium, wrote about the city but only tangentially — the former in the course of his work about the Epigoni, the latter in his universal history and in his monograph on the Pyrrhic War (AR 1.5.4).
Dionysius further announces that his intention is to bring his narrative down to the beginning of the First Punic War which began ‘in the third year of the 128th Olympiad’ (265 b.c.).Footnote 6 Dionysius’ choice of chronological boundaries is clearly significant. For by concluding his narrative before the start of the First Punic War from which the historian Polybius had begun his, Dionysius implicitly presents himself as his continuator.Footnote 7 It is not actually certain where Dionysius’ narrative stopped. While the beginning of the First Punic War is dated to 265 b.c. (the third year of the 128th Olympiad), the last surviving fragment from Book 20 covers a revolt instigated by a Samnite in 269 b.c. We have thus lost the narrative of the years 269–265 b.c., and perhaps a formal conclusion of the type that Polybius appended to his Histories. While the revolt in Samnium in 269 b.c. is the last extant episode, the main event forming the centrepiece of the two concluding books was quite clearly the Pyrrhic War.
To summarize the main historical events of the war:Footnote 8 in 281 b.c., under threat of attack from Rome, the people of Tarentum called to their rescue King Pyrrhus of Epirus as they had once called his uncle, Alexander I. Pyrrhus’ offer to act as an arbitrator between Tarentum and Rome is rejected by the Romans who face the Epirote king in battle at Heraclea in 280 b.c. Though Pyrrhus wins the battle, the Romans realize a small victory at Capua shortly after. All sources report an incident in which an exchange of prisoners was proposed either by the Romans or by Pyrrhus after Heraclea (Plut., Pyrrh. 20; Appian, Samn. 10; Livy, Perio. 13.1–6; Dio 40.1) or after Ausculum (Justin 18.2). However, the accounts differ significantly in their dating of the episode and offer contrasting versions of the outcome of the exchange. Ennius (Ann. 183–90 Skutsch) gives an impressive speech to Pyrrhus in which he refuses to accept compensation for the prisoners’ release but the dating of the episode and placement of the fragment are uncertain. Despite valiant efforts to reconstruct the historical truth behind the contrasting accounts, the episode of the exchange of prisoners remains one of the most elusive problems in the historiography of the Pyrrhic War.Footnote 9 It is after the Battle of Heraclea that Pyrrhus sends his adviser Cineas to Rome to negotiate a peace deal which is refused thanks to the vehement intervention of Appius Claudius Caecus. The following year (279 b.c.), the Romans are narrowly defeated again at Ausculum. Finding the cost of his victory too much to bear, Pyrrhus attempts to establish his power in Sicily but is forced to leave Syracuse after displaying increasingly tyrannical behaviour. He is eventually defeated by the Romans in the Battle of Beneventum in 275 b.c.
The extant fragments of the AR cover the whole duration of the war and stretch over two books. Book 19, it seems, was devoted entirely to it and related the first two crucial years of the conflict (282–280 b.c.). The book must have ended with the events following the Battle of Heraclea and the negotiation between Pyrrhus and Fabricius over the exchange of prisoners, which happened in the autumn of 280 b.c.Footnote 10 By contrast, Book 20 covers a much longer period of time, spanning more than thirteen years. It certainly included the narrative of the Battle of Ausculum in 279 b.c., fragments of which are explicitly assigned to Book 20 in the manuscript tradition. This was followed by Pyrrhus’ failed Sicilian expedition and his final defeat at Beneventum in 275 b.c.; the book then covered a number of unrelated events down to the beginning of the First Punic War in 265 b.c. Considerable uncertainty, however, surrounds the order of the fragments in the opening sequence of the book. According to the latest edition of the AR under the direction of Sylvie Pittia in the Budé series, the book opened not (as thought by Kiessling and Jacoby) with the Battle of Ausculum, but with an excursus on Magna Graecia followed by the massacre of the people of Tarentum at the hands of the Roman-appointed commander Decius.Footnote 11 Despite the fragmentary state of our text, it seems clear that Pyrrhus’ demise will have been the most extended and elaborate episode of the final book of Dionysius’ AR.
Thus, while Dionysius’ narrative extended beyond Pyrrhus’ defeat at the hands of the Romans, we are more than justified in looking at this major episode as in some sense the climax and culmination of the whole work. How then does the Pyrrhic War function as ‘closure’ to the historical work of Dionysius? What place does this concluding episode have in the architecture of the AR? What function does it perform in Dionysius’ cultural project?
III CLOSURE IN DIONYSIUS
The way in which texts achieve ‘closure’ has been the subject of intense study in recent scholarship on the Classics.Footnote 12 By this word, scholars commonly refer to the degree to which the concluding section of a literary text does (or in some cases does not) resolve tensions and questions posed by the work and in the process creates a satisfactory sense of ending for the reader.Footnote 13 Closure is primarily related to structure: it is only when events are perceived as being related by some principle or design that we can perceive an end point. The study of the many ways in which this sense of an ending is achieved in literature encompasses both formal motifs such as epilogues, prayers, invocations etc. — that is, formal devices typically found in concluding sections — and thematic continuities or discontinuities between the beginning and the conclusion of a work and between the conclusion and the rest of the work. It is this last aspect that will concern me here.
Closure is an important aesthetic principle for Dionysius of Halicarnassus himself. In the Letter to Pompeius Geminus, Dionysius quotes from the second book of his lost treatise On Imitation in which he discussed the question of which poets, historians and philosophers should be imitated.Footnote 14 According to Dionysius, the first task for writers of history is to choose a subject (hypothesis) which is both noble (kale) and pleasing (kekharismene).Footnote 15 The author then goes on to illustrate this and other general prescriptions for effective historical writing through an extended comparison of Herodotus and Thucydides. First comes the choice of subject. Thucydides is criticized for deliberately choosing a hypothesis which is anything but inspiring and thauma-inducing, and Herodotus praised for rightfully advertising the marvellous nature of his subject matter (Letter to Pomp. Gem. 3.6). Second comes the delineation of the beginning and end point of the narrative. Here, Dionysius’ criticism of Thucydides is instructive. According to Dionysius, Thucydides should not have ended his work in mediis rebus as he did, but should have recounted all the events of the war as he had promised and ended with a remarkable and pleasing conclusion, such as the return of the exiles from Phyle:
κρεῖττον δὲ ἦν διεξελθόντα πάντα τελευτὴν ποιήσασθαι τῆς ἱστορίας τὴν θαυμασιωτάτην καὶ μάλιστα τοῖς ἀκούουσι κεχαρισμένην, τὴν κάθοδον τῶν φυγάδων τῶν ἀπὸ Φυλῆς ἀφ’ ὧν ἡ πόλις ἀρξαμένη τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀνεκομίσατο.
It would have been better, after describing all the events of the war, to end his history with a climax, and one that was most remarkable and especially gratifying to his audience, the return of the exiles from Phyle, which marked the beginning of the city's recovery of freedom. (Pomp. 3.10)
For Dionysius, a good ending (teleute) has to fill his readers with the greatest thauma (θαυμασιωτάτην) and in doing so give them pleasure (τοῖς ἀκούουσι κεχαρισμένην). Though Dionysius does not say so explicitly, Herodotus’ chosen end-point — the punishment of the barbarians — is a morally satisfactory and therefore pleasing conclusion of the kind that Thucydides failed to achieve. This view of the end of Thucydides’ Histories and the proposed alternative should be read side by side with Dionysius’ criticism of the historian's starting point: Thucydides, he says, began his narrative at the point where the affairs of the Greeks started to decline and not, for example, with his country's splendid achievements after the Persian War.Footnote 16 Interestingly, the alternative ending that he proposes is something of a potential new beginning in itself, as the return of the exiles from Phyle is said by Dionysius not only to mark the conclusion to the Peloponnesian War but also the beginning of the city's recovery of freedom (ἀφ’ὧν ἡ πόλις ἀρξαμένη τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀνεκομίσατο). Thus there is a certain element of ring composition to the historiographical plot that Dionysius is recommending. In addition, the narrative can include even negative or challenging events but its overall subject should be inspiring and edifying. In order for that to happen, the historical work should end with a thauma-inducing event containing some resolution and capable of bringing the narrative full circle back to its thaumasia hypothesis. It is useful to compare Dionysius’ views on the ideal telos of historiographical plots with what our rhetorical sources prescribe for the ending of speeches. Beside the importance of appealing to the emotions, an effective ending should contain an element of recapitulation (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις or recapitulatio) to refresh the memory of the audience.Footnote 17 What Dionysius outlines in the section of the Letter to Pompeius Geminus discussed above is in effect some form of recapitulatio on a thematic level as the end of the work is expected to fulfill the standards of thauma to which the beginning should also conform.
How does Dionysius’ practice relate to this theorizing when it comes to the place of the war with Pyrrhus at the conclusion of the AR? Dionysius was not the first author to give ‘closural status’ to the Pyrrhic War. Ennius almost certainly devoted the entire sixth book of his Annales to it.Footnote 18 Although no fragments referring to events after the Battle of Beneventum (275 b.c.) survive, the book very likely covered some events of the eleven years between it and the outbreak of the First Punic War (265 b.c.), with which Book 7 began. Crucially, Ennius too seems to have considered the Pyrrhic War something of an historical and consequently narratological watershed: the sixth book opened with a rhetorical question emphasizing the scale and significance of the war about to be narrated.Footnote 19 In addition, Ennius’ seventh book begins with a second proem in which he explained that he would not describe in detail the First Punic War as it had been related by his uncouth predecessor Naevius. The new beginning marked by this second proem in Book 7 has the effect of presenting the Pyrrhic War as a climactic and highly significant historical event.
It is not hard to see why both Ennius and Dionysius would ascribe such significance to this conflict. As Judith Mossman has pointed out in her study of Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus, the Romans had had contact with mainland Greeks well before Pyrrhus’ time.Footnote 20 Yet the war with Pyrrhus is consistently constructed in the extant sources as the first encounter between Romans and Greeks from the mainland. The artificiality of the narrative is of course symptomatic of the need to identify a starting point for Graeco-Roman relations. In Plutarch, for example, on the eve of the Battle of Heraclea, Pyrrhus, who has never seen the Romans, is struck by their discipline and orderly conduct which cause him to question his opinion of them as barbarians.Footnote 21 Pausanias highlights the significance of the conflict from the point of view of the Greeks who meet the Romans in battle for the first time during the Pyrrhic War.Footnote 22 From what we can gather from our reading of the extant fragments, Dionysius too constructed his narrative as a first-time encounter in which the theme of ignorance and knowledge appears constantly.Footnote 23
At the same time, the clash with Pyrrhus’ Greeks also begins a new era for Rome, since it marks the first moment in which the city is forced to confront powers from the wider Mediterranean.Footnote 24 Livy's account of the Pyrrhic War unfortunately has not survived but in introducing the Samnite War, the historian advertises the conflict as the first in a series of wars greater than any previously recorded.Footnote 25 The Samnite War is followed chronologically by the Pyrrhic and Carthaginian Wars and compared to them in magnitude and danger posed to the state.Footnote 26 These last two, involving as they do foreign invading armies, are clearly paired off against the first and introduce a new phase in the history of Rome's expansionism. Polybius similarly attributed momentous significance to the Pyrrhic War which in his opinion marked the first time the Romans attacked the rest of Italy, as if they were fighting not over foreign territory, but over what already belonged to them as private property.Footnote 27
Thus, the Romans’ first encounter with a major player from the wider Mediterranean forms an ideal telos for Dionysius because it represents a turning point in Roman affairs and therefore a potential starting point for a new chapter in the history of Rome. One might compare the way in which Dionysius’ suggested alternative ending to Thucydides’ Histories, the return of the exiles from Phyle, would have marked the beginning of the city's recovery of freedom as well as concluding the narrative of the war. At the same time, the Pyrrhic War afforded Dionysius the opportunity to revisit the question that dominates the beginning of the work, namely the issue of the ethnic identity of the Romans. The encounter between Pyrrhus and the Romans is presented as the final test of the true identity of the latter, and the narrative, I suggest, displays close connections to the beginning of the work where the problem of who the Romans are is initially introduced.
IV THE GREEKNESS OF THE ROMANS: BETWEEN ETHNICITY, CULTURE AND MORALITY
The question of the ethnic character of the Romans is first introduced in the preface to the AR, where Dionysius argues that almost all Greeks are ignorant about the early history of Rome and believe that the Romans come from a mixed group of vagabonds and barbarians and have ascended to world domination through chance. Dionysius’ aim in the AR is to correct this erroneous notion and prove without a doubt that far from being barbarians, the Romans are in fact Greek in origin:
Ταύτας δὴ τὰς πεπλανημένας, ὥσπερ ἔφην, ὑπολήψεις ἐξελέσθαι τῆς διανοίας τῶν πολλῶν προαιρούμενος καὶ ἀντικατασκευάσαι τὰς ἀληθεῖς, περὶ μὲν τῶν οἰκισάντων τὴν πόλιν, οἵτινες ἦσαν καὶ κατὰ τίνας ἕκαστοι καιροὺς συνῆλθον καὶ τίσι τύχαις χρησάμενοι τὰς πατρίους οἰκήσεις ἐξέλιπον, ἐν ταύτῃ δηλώσω τῇ γραφῇ, δι’ἧς Ἕλληνάς τε αὐτοὺς ὄντας ἐπιδείξειν ὑπισχνοῦμαι καὶ οὐκ ἐκ τῶν ἐλαχίστων ἢ φαυλοτάτων ἐθνῶν συνεληλυθότας.
In order, therefore, to remove these mistaken notions, as I have called them, from the minds of the many and to replace them with true ones, in this work I shall show who the founders of the city were, at what periods each group came together, and through what turns of fortune they left their native countries. By this means I intend to prove that they were Greeks and came together from nations neither the smallest nor the most contemptible. (AR 1.5.1)
In seeking to prove the existence of a blood relationship between Greeks and Romans, Dionysius adopts a strategy typical of the Greek ethnographic tradition which sought to assimilate non-Greeks by connecting their origin with the activities of various Greek heroes.Footnote 28 The idea that the Romans were of Greek origin is found at least as early as the fourth century alongside the Aeneas legend.Footnote 29 This latter version, which is followed by Virgil and Livy and which made the Romans descendants of the Trojans, proved more successful in that it enabled the Romans to associate themselves with the Greek tradition while at the same time affirming a distinct identity. Footnote 30 Dionysius’ version is actually a compromise between the two accounts since he argues that the various groups which came together to form Rome were all of Greek origin, including the Trojans, whose ancestor, Dardanus, is said to have come from Arcadia.Footnote 31 The epideixis of Rome's Greekness ends in the last chapter of Book 1, where Dionysius announces that he has now achieved his demonstration of the Greek origin of the Romans.Footnote 32 In addition to establishing the shared kinship of Greeks and Romans, Dionysius seeks to prove that many of Rome's customs and institutions are in fact derived from Greek practices.Footnote 33 As he himself asserts before introducing a digression on the ludi magni in Book 7, the demonstration of the Greek roots of Roman cultural institutions is a necessary complement to the narrative of Roman origins in Book 1 (AR 7.70.2). This is particularly true, Dionysius says, in relation to the early history of Rome, since it may otherwise be possible to argue that the Romans borrowed such customs, or at least the ones clearly derived from Greece, from the Greeks after their conquest of the Mediterranean in the second century b.c.Footnote 34 In what follows, Dionysius focuses specifically on the events of the ludi which have undisputable connections with Greek rituals, many of which are no longer practised in his day.Footnote 35 The digression allows Dionysius not only to demonstrate once again the Greekness of the Romans, but also to praise the Romans for preserving Greek customs and institutions neglected by the Greeks themselves.Footnote 36
The epideixis of Rome's Greekness is also evident in Dionysius’ account of the founding of Rome's constitution. In Book 2, for example, in the section dedicated to Romulus’ legislative actions, he traces several Roman institutions to Greek customs:Footnote 37 the celeres, Romulus’ private guard, were borrowed from the Spartans (2.13.3–4), as was the role assigned to the Senate by which, in the founder's intention, the decisions of the king had to be ratified (2.14.2).Footnote 38 The characters too appeal anachronistically to Greek models and examples in their speeches: thus Romulus comforts the Sabine women by pointing out that the rape and forced marriage of foreign women is an ancient Greek custom (2.30.5–6). And in Book 3, Tullius defends the practice of granting citizenship to foreigners with the example of Athens (3.11.3–4).
Yet the question surrounding the ethnic identity of the Romans is from the start characterized by a fundamental ambiguity and an unresolved issue. On the one hand, Dionysius stands firmly by the notion that the Romans are not only ethnically, but also culturally Greek. On the other, his narrative constantly emphasizes the superiority of Roman customs and institutions to those of the Greeks. The theme is first introduced in the preface where the Romans are presented as far superior to anything that Greece or any other land ever produced:
μαθοῦσί γε δὴ παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας, ὅτι μυρίας ἤνεγκεν ἀνδρῶν ἀρετὰς εὐθὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς μετὰ τὸν οἰκισμὸν, ὧν οὔτ’ εὐσεβεστέρους οὔτε δικαιοτέρους οὔτε σωφροσύνῃ πλείονι παρὰ πάντα τὸν βίον χρησαμένους οὐδέ γε τὰ πολέμια κρείττους ἀγωνιστὰς οὐδεμία πόλις ἤνεγκεν οὔτε Ἑλλὰς οὔτε βάρβαρος.
… particularly when they will learn from my history that Rome from its beginning, immediately after being founded, produced infinite examples of virtue in men whose superiors, whether for piety or for justice or for life-long self-control or for martial virtue, no city, either Greek or barbarian, has ever produced. (AR 1.5.3)
The demonstration of the superiority of Roman customs is scattered throughout the work.Footnote 39 For example, the Roman policy of making conquered territories Roman colonies and of granting citizenship to some of them is radically superior to the Greek practice of emphasizing birthrights and expelling foreigners.Footnote 40 In Book 2, Dionysius traces the origin of the Roman institution of clientela in comparable Thessalian and Athenian practices but notes that, while the latter have departed from their custom, by this practice the Romans have achieved unprecedented cohesion and peace in their society (2.9–11).Footnote 41 The censorship too is presented by Dionysius as a peculiarly Roman institution and one that is by far superior to any method employed by the Greeks to exercise control over private customs (AR 20.13.2). Roman civilization is thus seen both as being part of Greek culture and as being in many ways superior to it.
Another model for constructing ethnic identity was available to Dionysius, one which allows him to provide a partial solution to the problem of Roman superiority in relation to Greece. If in Book 1 Dionysius emphasizes the importance of shared Graeco-Roman ancestry, as the work progresses, he seems to emphasize more and more the centrality of morality and behaviour as opposed to blood in the formation of ethnic identity. A fragment from Book 14 contains an interesting digression on the megaloprepeia of the Romans. Dionysius praises the Roman display of clementia towards the people they vanquish and contrasts their behaviour with the brutality that the Greeks have used towards one another throughout their bloody history (AR 14.6.1–4). Dionysius’ comment on the difference between Greeks and barbarians is instructive:
τὸ γὰρ Ἑλληνικὸν οὐκ ὀνόματι διαφέρειν τοῦ βαρβάρου ἠξίουν οὐδὲ διαλέκτου χάριν, ἀλλὰ συνέσει καὶ χρηστῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων προαιρέσει, μάλιστα δὲ τῷ μηδὲν τῶν ὑπὲρ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν <εἰς> ἀλλήλους παρανομεῖν. ὅσοις μὲν οὖν ταῦτα ἐπὶ πλεῖον ὑπῆρξεν ἐν τῇ φύσει, τούτους οἶμαι δεῖν λέγειν Ἕλληνας, ὅσοις δὲ τἀναντία βαρβάρους.
For I considered that Greeks are distinguished from barbarians, not by their name nor on the basis of their language, but by their intelligence and their predilection for good behaviour, and particularly by their refraining from any inhuman behaviour towards one another. All in whose nature these qualities prevail I believe ought to be called Greeks, but those of whom the opposite is true, barbarians. (AR 14.6.5)
Greekness here is not a matter of blood, but of cultural values and behaviour. Dionysius is tapping into what was by then a well-established way of constructing Greek identity. Jonathan Hall has traced the process by which this definition of Greekness based on culture rather than kinship increasingly gains ground from the fourth century b.c. onwards as a way to affirm Greek, and above all, Athenian cultural supremacy in the face of the political crisis that the Greek poleis were undergoing.Footnote 42 What I wish to stress here is how Dionysius uses this culture-based notion of Greekness to offer a solution to the problem of Rome's superiority to Greece, attributing what he sees as Rome's unsurpassed achievements in the sphere of morality and politics as belonging to the cultural mission of Greece. Thus, though surpassing the Greeks in the areas of morality and conduct (and thereby differing from them), in their pursuit of rationality and good conduct the Romans are paradoxically more ‘Greek’ than the Greeks. What starts as a narrative of Roman superiority thus becomes a demonstration of how Rome is in effect carrying on the Greek cultural project.Footnote 43 A parallel for this way of approaching Rome's role in relation to Greek culture is afforded by the preface to On Ancient Orators, where Dionysius states his theory that the rise of the Roman Empire has reversed the decline of Greek rhetoric and allowed its revival.Footnote 44
V BOOK 19: BARBARIZED GREEKS AND HELLENIZED ROMANS
The view of Rome as either enabling or taking over the Greek cultural project becomes especially important in the last portion of the AR, in which the Romans are for the first time confronted with a Greek world which is already experiencing a serious moral and political decline. In the narrative of their first encounter, despite the Greeks’ fixation on their ethnic identity, it is the Romans who show themselves the authentic heirs and bearers of Greek cultural values. The issue is played out in the first extant fragment from the prelude to the Pyrrhic War. Postumius, sent by the Romans to Tarentum to negotiate an agreement, is mocked by the Greek inhabitants of the city for his imperfect Greek. The Tarentines, Dionysius says, were paying attention not to the content of Postumius’ message, but to the finer details of his speech:
καί τινα αὐτοῦ διεξιόντος λόγον οὐχ ὅπως προσεῖχον αὐτῷ τὴν διάνοιαν ἢ λογισμοὺς ἐλάμβανον οἱ Ταραντῖνοι σωφρόνων ἀνθρώπων καὶ περὶ πόλεως κινδυνευούσης βουλευομένων, ἀλλ’ εἴ τι μὴ κατὰ τὸν ἀκριβέστατον τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς διαλέκτου χαρακτῆρα ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λέγοιτο παρατηροῦντες ἐγέλων, καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀνατάσεις ἐτραχύνοντο καὶ βαρβάρους ἀπεκάλουν καὶ τελευτῶντες ἐξέβαλλον ἐκ τοῦ θεάτρου. (AR 19.5)
As he was speaking to them, the Tarentines, far from paying attention to him or thinking seriously as men should do who are sensible and taking counsel over the state at a time of danger, watching rather to see if he would say something that departed from the most exact Greek idiom, laughed, became exasperated at his threats, called them barbarous, and finally were ready to expel them from the theatre.
While the Tarentines deride the Romans for their imperfect Greek, and call the ambassadors barbaroi, it is their own behaviour which is in fact barbarian.Footnote 45 Their laugh is expressive of their hybristic scorn for the mutability of human fortunes and as such arguably anticipates an impending disaster. The Tarentines, in other words, behave like the stereotypical tyrant who refuses to yield to advice and proceed according to reason and with moderation.Footnote 46 Moreover, their behaviour displays the opposite qualities to those that Dionysius has so far ascribed to good leaders: the Romans at several critical junctures are described in terms that evoke the sensible men taking counsel over the endangered state.Footnote 47 And λογισμός is also a virtue claimed by Dionysius, the narrator, in the preface.Footnote 48 Later in the same book, Dionysius reaffirms the decadence of the life and customs of Tarentum in a statement placed in the mouth of one of its inhabitants, a man named Meton. In portraying the Tarentines as soft Easterners, Dionysius is tapping into a traditional view of the Greeks of Southern Italy as morally corrupt and debauched.Footnote 49 Wishing to warn his fellow-citizens against the dangers of inviting a powerful king into their city (AR 19.8: ἵνα τύχοι προσοχῆς καὶ διδάξειεν αὐτούς, ὅσα μετὰ τῆς βασιλικῆς ἐξουσίας εἰς πόλιν ἐλευθέραν καὶ τρυφῶσαν εἰσελεύσεται, ‘so that he may get their attention and show them all the evils that would come with royal power into a free and luxury-loving city’), Meton comes into the same public space where Postumius had spoken wearing a garland and pretending to be drunk as if coming back from a banquet and embracing a flute-girl. Responding to his people's laughter at the sight of his drunkenness, Meton warns them that they will not be able to experience freely the joys of the symposion under a king. The Tarentines, however, refuse to listen to the advice and Meton is expelled while still speaking, proving that the city that he called ‘free’ is after all already behaving in a tyrannical fashion.Footnote 50 Thus, already in the prelude to the war, we begin to see a fundamental shift in the representation of cultural and ethnic categories: the Tarentines, who are and who see themselves as Greeks, are acting in the most un-Greek fashion, while the Romans embody the virtues of rationality and self-control and are thus true inheritors of Greek values.Footnote 51
Pyrrhus too at first constructs the ethnic identities of his allies and of his enemy along the same lines as the people of Tarentum. In his first message to his enemy, the Epirote king, who has been summoned to defend the Tarentines, threatens the Romans with war if they do not agree to appoint him as an arbitrator to decide the conflict between them and the Greeks of Southern Italy. He states that he will not allow the Romans ‘to plunder Greek cities’ (AR 19.9.4: πόλεις Ἑλληνίδας ἀναρπάζειν), thus supporting the view that the Tarentines are the true inheritors of the virtue of the Greek mainland and that the Romans are outside conquerors and barbarians.Footnote 52 Pyrrhus’ attitude, however, has already begun to shift after the first clash with the Romans, the Battle of Heraclea. We have unfortunately lost the narrative of Cineas’ mission, but the indirect tradition gives us several long fragments that presumably follow on from the failed attempt at reconciliation after Heraclea and these feature a Roman request for an exchange of prisoners.Footnote 53 In response to the Roman envoy, Fabricius, Pyrrhus asks instead for the establishment of a pact of philia. Recognizing at last the virtue of the Romans, he adds: ‘Otherwise I could never agree to hand over to you so many brave men’ (AR 19.13.4: ἄλλως δ’οὐκ ἂν ὑπομείναιμι πολλοὺς καὶ ἀγαθοὺς ὑμῖν προέσθαι). However, unlike Ennius, whose Pyrrhus proclaims a heroic disdain for belli commercia (Ann. 183–90 Skutsch), Dionysius presents a strongly pro-Roman version in which, while seemingly offering peace, the Epirote king tries to bribe Fabricius into persuading the Senate to make peace with him. Predictably, however, he fails. In reply to the king's overtures, Dionysius gives the Roman Fabricius a very extended speech which is in many ways a manifesto of Roman values.Footnote 54 Although he represents in many ways the figure of the corrupt villain, nevertheless, just like other supposedly anti-heroic figures such as Catiline or Hannibal, Pyrrhus is capable of occasionally exhibiting praiseworthy qualities, including frankness.Footnote 55 In reply to Fabricius’ speech, Pyrrhus rightly acknowledges the nobility of the Romans he has come to know and his previous ignorance of their true value:
Οὐκέτι θαυμάζειν ἐπέρχεταί μοι, διὰ τί περιβόητος ἡ πόλις ὑμῶν ἐστι καὶ τοσοῦτον ἡγεμονίας περιβέβληται μέγεθος, τοιούτων ἀνδρῶν οὖσα τροφός.
‘It no longer occurs to me to wonder why your city is renowned and has encompassed such a great dominion, since she is the nurse of such men.’ (AR 19.18.8)
Pyrrhus’ claim that Rome's fame (διὰ τί περιβόητος) was a cause for wonder (θαυμάζειν) echoes the narrator's prescription for a thaumasia hypothesis. His claim that Rome's standing is no longer a cause for wonder (οὐκέτι θαυμάζειν ἐπέρχεταί) thus signals that the narrator's aim of proving the thauma that is Rome has been fulfilled and that the end of the work can be expected to be reasonably close.
Fabricius’ speech centres on the themes of eleutheria and autarkeia previously introduced by Meton. In a passage full of pathos, Fabricius rejects the notion that the wealth Pyrrhus would give him could bring him more happiness than the high esteem in which his citizens hold him. More importantly, he stresses freedom (eleutheria) as a fundamental attribute of Roman life and identity in contrast to the luxurious and debauched life style to which the Greek ruler is accustomed:
ὅπου γὰρ οἱ γεννηθέντες ἐν βασιλείαις καὶ τυραννίσιν, ὅταν εὐγενῶς ἔχωσι, τῆς ἐλευθερίας γλίχονται καὶ πάνθ’ ἡγοῦνται τἀγαθὰ ταύτης ἐλάττω, ἦ που οἱ ἐν ἐλευθέρᾳ καὶ ἑτέρων ἄρχειν μαθούσῃ πόλει βιώσαντες πρᾴως οἴσουσι τὴν ἐκ τῶν κρειττόνων ἐπὶ τὰ χείρω μεταβολήν, ἐξ ἐλευθέρων ὑπομείναντες δοῦλοι γενέσθαι, ἵνα λαμπρὰς παρατιθῶνται καθ’ ἡμέραν τραπέζας καὶ πολλοὺς θεράποντας περιάγωνται καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ παίδων εὐπρεπῶν ἀφειδεῖς ἀπολαύσεις λαμβάνωσιν, ὥσπερ ἐν τούτοις τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης εὐδαιμονίας κειμένης, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐν ἀρετῇ;
For when those born under monarchies or tyrannies, if they are of noble disposition, crave freedom and consider all other blessings inferior to it, will those, I wonder, who have lived in a state which is free and has learned to rule over others, bear easily the change from better to worse, agreeing to become slaves instead of free men, in order to sit at splendid tables every day, to be attended everywhere by a multitude of slaves, and to have unrestrained enjoyment of handsome women and boys, as if human happiness depended upon these things and not virtue? (AR 19.18.4)
In Platonic fashion, eleutheria for Fabricius is simultaneously personal and political: it consists in the free subject's ability to exercise control over the self and not to be controlled by outside forces, be they urges and desires or political entities.Footnote 56
Fabricius’ moral critique constructs a clear-cut opposition between the moral and political freedom of the Romans and Pyrrhus’ tyrannical way of life. But this dichotomy is in fact put in question by the surrounding narrative and in particular by a number of authorial comments which draw a contrast between Roman traditional customs and their present state of decadence.Footnote 57 Although Dionysius’ statements highlighting Rome's decline cover different areas of Roman private and public life, the most common complaint concerns the tyrannical aspirations of his contemporaries.Footnote 58 In Book 5, for example, Dionysius remarks on the collegiality of Larcius, the consul in charge of the war against the Fidenates who would later become the first Roman to be appointed as dictator. Noting his decision to ask the Senate how he should treat the Fidenates (who had meanwhile surrendered), he says:
οὕτως δ’ ἄρα πολιτικὰ ἦν τὰ τῶν τότε ἡγεμόνων ἤθη καὶ πλεῖστον ἀπέχοντα τυραννικῆς αὐθαδείας, ἣν σπάνιοί τινες τῶν καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἡγεμόνων ἴσχυσαν ἐξουσίας ἐπαρθέντες μεγέθει διαφυγεῖν, ὥστε παραλαβὼν τὴν πόλιν ὁ ὕπατος οὐθὲν ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ γνώμης ἔπραξεν, ἀλλ’ ἀποθέσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους κελεύσας τὰ ὅπλα καὶ φρουρὰν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄκραν καταλιπὼν αὐτὸς εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἀπῄει, καὶ συναγαγὼν τὸ συνέδριον ἀπέδωκεν αὐτοῖς σκοπεῖν, τίνα χρηστέον τοῖς παραδοῦσιν ἑαυτοὺς τρόπον
So respectful towards the state was the behaviour of the commanders at the time, it seems, and so far removed from tyrannical presumption (which only a few of the commanders in our days, elated by the greatness of their power, have been able to escape), that the consul, after taking over the city, did nothing on his own initiative, but ordering the men to lay down their arms and leaving a garrison in the citadel went himself to Rome, and summoning the Senate, left it to them to consider in what manner those who had surrendered themselves ought to be treated. (AR 5.60.2)
Dionysius traces dictatorship back to early Greece, giving as a parallel the figure of the aisymnetes (5.73.3). According to Dionysius, all Greek cities were originally ruled by kings who acted justly and respected established norms.Footnote 59 But the degeneration into which kingship easily precipitates after a while led the poleis to abolish monarchies (5.74.1–2). In times of crisis, however, states are prone to restore, if only temporarily, kingly powers, as in the case of the Thessalian archoi and the Spartan harmostai, and finally the Roman institution of dictatorship, which Dionysius calls ‘elective tyranny’ (5.74.3). This periodic and benign use of absolute power was continued by all dictators who came after Larcius until the time of Sulla, who, according to Dionysius, was ‘the first and only dictator who exercised his power with harshness and cruelty’ (5.77.4).Footnote 60 A second authorial comment on the topic of tyranny comes in Book 10 at the conclusion of the story of Cincinnatus, who was called from the plough to be appointed as dictator. Dionysius says that he felt compelled to relate in great detail this story in order to show that unlike contemporary leaders, men of old led frugal lives and, ‘far from aiming at royal power, actually refused it whenever it was offered’ (10.17.6: ὡς … βασιλικὰς οὐ διώκοντες ἐξουσίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ διδομένας ἀναινόμενοι).
In condemning the tyrannical aspirations of contemporary leaders, Dionysius steps outside of the narrative of his archaiologia, evaluating the present state of affairs in his own voice. The striking pose he adopts and the seemingly scathing criticism of contemporary Rome have naturally attracted the attention of scholars. Dionysius’ anti-tyrannical stance has been read as evidence of his dependence on a lost source from the Caesarean period and the rhetoric against adfectatio regni which, it is argued, was particularly popular during that time, or as proof of his anti-imperial and anti-Augustan tendency.Footnote 61 But eleutheria and tyranny are not only categories in Roman political discourse; they also play a crucial role in the construction of Greek ethnic identity. As Edith Hall has argued, starting with the birth of Athenian democracy in the fifth century, the categories of Greeks and barbarians are often polarized by Greek authors along political lines, with the freedom and democracy of Athenian culture being seen in opposition to the despotism of the barbarians.Footnote 62
It is useful, then, to see Dionysius’ use of the categories of eleutheria and tyranny in the light of the traditional Greek concept of barbarian tyranny. We have seen above how despite their rhetoric in favour of eleutheria, the Tarentines are in effect collectively behaving like tyrants both in their enslavement to bodily pleasures and in their unwillingness to listen to advice. Once again, the lengthy speech by Fabricius in defence of the Roman values of eleutheria and autarkeia, which almost certainly concluded Book 19, constructs the Romans as the true heirs to the free Greeks in opposition to the tyrannical and thus barbarized Tarentines. At the same time, Dionysius’ narrative hints at the relative instability of this polarity within the overall course of Roman history, highlighting the ways in which at least some present-day Romans have regressed into behaviours which are elsewhere characterized as non-Greek.
Pyrrhus, on the other hand, wants to present himself as a good king (basileus), performing the duties of arbitrator between the Tarentines and the Romans and displaying, at least at the beginning, some positive qualities. But his story represents precisely the tendency of kings to mutate into tyrants which Dionysius highlights explicitly in his discussion of dictatorship in Book 5 and implicitly in his condemnation of the authadeia of contemporary leaders. After the Battle of Ausculum, Pyrrhus crosses to Sicily where he hopes to establish himself. The portion of the narrative dealing with Pyrrhus’ expedition is unfortunately lost, but a number of surviving fragments recount Pyrrhus’ preparations to cross back to Italy. It is clear that by this time Pyrrhus is being depicted by Dionysius as the typically blind and arrogant tyrant who gives way to the bad advice of a group of corrupt flatterers advising him to use the treasures stored in the temple of Persephone at Locri (AR 20.9). In introducing Pyrrhus’ decision to return to Italy, Dionysius interestingly emphasizes Pyrrhus’ change from king to despot, noting that his leadership was not that of a king but of a despot (διὰ τὸ μὴ βασιλικὴν φανῆναι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν αὐτοῦ ταῖς ἐπιφανεστάταις πόλεσιν, ἀλλὰ δεσποτικήν (AR 20.8)). This opposition between kingship and tyranny recalls an earlier passage from the discussion of tyranny in Book 5, in which Dionysius had opposed the kingly government of Greek cities to the despotism characteristic of the barbarians:
κατ’ ἀρχὰς μὲν γὰρ ἅπασα πόλις Ἑλλὰς ἐβασιλεύετο, πλὴν οὐχ ὥσπερ τὰ βάρβαρα ἔθνη δεσποτικῶς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ νόμους τινὰς καὶ ἐθισμοὺς πατρίους.
From the beginning each Greek city was ruled by kings, but not despotically, like the barbarian nations, but according to certain laws and inherited customs. (AR 5.74.1)
Pyrrhus’ change from basileus to despotes in the final stages of the war is thus clearly symptomatic of his progressive ‘barbarization’.
VI BOOKS 1 AND 20: ROMANS MEETING GREEKS
In addition to marking the final demonstration of the barbarization of the Greeks, the Pyrrhic War is also used by Dionysius to revisit the issue of Rome's standing relative to Greek culture that he introduced at the beginning of his work. This is not in itself surprising given the fact that even outside Dionysius’ narrative the character of Pyrrhus is in itself curiously poised between the future and the past. Pyrrhus’ uncle and predecessor on the throne had been Alexander I of Epirus, who had married a daughter of Philip II of Macedon. Pyrrhus, who was thus distantly related to Alexander the Great, self-consciously modelled himself on his great ancestor and was often compared to him for his courage and tactical abilities.Footnote 63 The issue of whether Alexander or the Romans would have prevailed if they had clashed was still pressing for Livy, who considered the potential outcomes of this imagined conflict in a long digression in Book 9.Footnote 64 Thus, the conflict with Pyrrhus, momentous in its own right, gains further significance because the Epirote king is in some sense a surrogate for Alexander the Great. While the Pyrrhic War undoubtedly marked Rome's first encounter with a Greek commander and the beginning of a new stage of its history, it also paradoxically represented the enactment of the conflict with a prodigious past enemy that the Romans never had a chance to confront.
Pyrrhus’ desire to follow Alexander is furthermore reflected in his emulation of the king's self-presentation as a second Achilles.Footnote 65 Coins minted by Pyrrhus during his lifetime, showing Thetis and Achilles on the reverse, bear witness to his claim to be a descendant of the house of Aeacus, and thus a descendant of Achilles.Footnote 66 Pausanias states that Pyrrhus was emboldened to wage war against the Romans by the example of Achilles’ victorious struggle with the Trojans from whom the former descended.Footnote 67 While the significance of Pausanias’ statement is still debated, it is quite obvious that the connection between Pyrrhus and Achilles is amply exploited by Dionysius in the concluding episodes of the AR.Footnote 68 The story of Pyrrhus’ encounter with the Romans contains something of a paradox: if the events of the Pyrrhic War project the reader forward in time foreshadowing Rome's imperialistic struggles, Pyrrhus himself is in many ways a character very much anchored in the mythical past. Thus, while anticipating Rome's struggles with the next powerful foreign invader — the Carthaginians — the character of Pyrrhus in Dionysius conjures up for Roman readers the narrative of their beginnings and invites them to read the present events against the grain of those of the past.
A fragment from Book 20 belonging to the narrative of the events after the Battle of Ausculum contains what seems to be Pyrrhus’ definitive acknowledgement of the superiority of the Romans.Footnote 69 The scene almost certainly came from the narrative of the aftermath of an episode which is widely known from other sources.Footnote 70 According to the tradition, after the Battle of Ausculum, Pyrrhus’ physician approached the Romans and offered to poison the king for a reward. The consul Fabricius, horrified by the treachery of the doctor, sends a letter informing his enemy Pyrrhus of the plot. Our fragment in all probability describes Pyrrhus’ reaction to this letter, as can be deduced by the Homeric quotation which Pyrrhus fictionally places in the mouth of the Romans:
Αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ Πύρρος τοὺς Ὁμηρικοὺς ἐπιφθεγξάμενος στίχους, οὓς Ἕκτωρ αὐτῷ πεποίηται πρὸς Αἴαντα λέγων, ὡς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων εἰρημένους πρὸς ἑαυτόν•
καὶ μετὰ τοῦτ’ εἰπών, ὅτι κινδυνεύει πονηρὰν πεποιῆσθαι τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τοῦ πολέμου πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ὁσιωτάτους Ἑλλήνων καὶ δικαιοτάτους, μίαν ἔφη θεωρεῖν ἀπαλλαγὴν τοῦ πολέμου καλὴν καὶ συμφέρουσαν, εἰ φίλους ἀντὶ πολεμίων αὐτοὺς ποιήσαιτο, φιλανθρωπίας τινὸς μεγάλης καταρξάμενος.
Pyrrhus himself, having uttered the Homeric lines which Hector is represented by Homer as speaking to Ajax, as if they had been addressed by the Romans to himself, ‘I would not hit you, then, who are so brave, treacherously, but openly, if I so may’. And afterwards declaring that he had probably been wrong in starting a war against people who were the most pious and most just among the Greeks, said he saw only one honourable and advantageous end to the war, and that was to make friends of them instead of enemies, beginning with some great display of kindness. (AR 20.6.1–2)
In a striking inversion of the familiar device of incorporating Homeric lines in one's own speech, Pyrrhus here rewrites Fabricius’ message and, impersonating the Romans, puts in their mouth the words Hector used in reply to Ajax’ provocations in Il. 7.242–3. While Pyrrhus seems here to be complimenting the Romans on their honesty and courage, his quotation may in fact be less flattering than it appears on the surface. In the episode in question, Hector is being challenged by Ajax to a duel. Although Hector replies defiantly with the words quoted, in the preceding lines he is clearly described as being afraid of Ajax (7.214–18). In addition, readers might find a certain tragic irony in Hector's reply: for he notably will find his death in an open confrontation with another Greek chieftain from which he cannot withdraw himself. There seems to be a subtext to Pyrrhus’ fictitious reply and one that functions as a reminder and warning of the inevitability of defeat for the Romans. Nevertheless, Pyrrhus’ quotation is followed by an acknowledgement of the moral superiority of the Romans and his renewed invitation to strike a peace deal.
In assigning to the Romans the role of Trojans, the Homeric quotation takes the reader back to the very beginning of the work (and hence of Roman history), reminding us of the ethnic origin of the Roman people. More specifically, Pyrrhus’ recognition should be read alongside a particular episode in Book 1 of the AR which marks the first encounter of the Trojan exiles with a descendant of the Greeks then living in Italy. This too is structured as a recognition. AR 1.57–8 relates Aeneas’ first encounter with Latinus and the king's welcoming acceptance of the Trojans into his land.Footnote 71 In Dionysius, Latinus is at first hostile to the recently arrived Trojans who are laying waste his territory, and prepares to make war against them. On the eve of the battle, however, a god appears to him in a dream and tells him to welcome the exiles into his land. When the two kings finally meet, a brief dialogue ensues in which Aeneas presents himself and his companions as fellow Greeks and begs to be accepted into the land. Struck by the orderly appearance of the Trojans and moved to pity by Aeneas’ story, Latinus invites him to stay. The two exchange oaths of allegiance and promise to share the land in friendship.
These two episodes frame the narrative and are clearly parallel: both involve a Greek king in a hostile encounter with the Romans; the climactic point of both is each king's acknowledgement of the virtue of his opponent and the expressed desire to terminate the war and establish philia. Dionysius thus opens and ends his Roman archaiologia with acts of recognition of Roman identity on the part of a Greek. These acts of recognition could be read as protreptic: the Greek characters, who are forced by the events to change their former negative opinion of the Romans, mirror the Greek audience of the AR with its preconceptions about the Romans, preconceptions which Dionysius is hoping to change with his narrative.
While the recognition scenes in Books 1 and 20 are clearly parallel, there are a number of important differences between them which suggest a progression. The first scene focuses on Latinus’ recognition of the Romans as Greeks. Thus, when Latinus first sees the Trojans, they appear to him to be ‘armed like Greeks, drawn up in an orderly formation and purposefully awaiting conflict’ (1.57.3: ὁρῶν δὲ αὐτοὺς ὡπλισμένους τε ὡς Ἕλληνας καὶ ἐν τάξει εὐκόσμῳ ἀκαταπλήκτως τὸ δεινὸν ὑπομένοντας). The divinity that appears to him in a dream bidding him to accept the Trojans into his land refers to them as Greeks and it is because of his feelings for the whole Greek race that Latinus is persuaded to accept the Trojans as friends and allies.Footnote 72 By contrast, by the end of the AR the similarity between Greeks and Romans is a given. During the Battle of Ausculum, for example, Dionysius explicitly comments on the Greek soldiers acknowledging the fact that the Romans are their equals in combat.Footnote 73 In fact, their similarity is so strong that it leads to an impasse, as the first two battles are unable to resolve the conflict. While the clash nominally leaves Pyrrhus the victor, his losses are so heavy that the two battles can hardly be counted as a victory (hence the expression ‘Pyrrhic victory’).Footnote 74
It is thus significant that in the final recognition scene, Pyrrhus acknowledges that the Romans are not equal, but superior among the Greeks when he admits that he had probably made a mistake in planning a war against people who were ‘the most pious and most just among the Greeks’ (πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ὁσιωτάτους Ἑλλήνων καὶ δικαιοτάτους). Pyrrhus’ focus on the piety of the Romans not only highlights one of their traditional virtues, but also foreshadows the events to follow. His defeat at the hands of the Romans at Beneventum is ascribed by the narrator to the kholos of the goddess Persephone, whose treasure — stored in her temple at Locri — Pyrrhus had plundered to raise funds for his expedition from Sicily to the mainland (AR 20.10.1).
More importantly, in the recognition scene in Book 20, Pyrrhus’ words focus precisely on those virtues of eusebeia and dikaiosune which Dionysius had singled out as traits which distinguished the Romans from the rest of mankind — the Greeks included — and which marked them as superior to every race.Footnote 75 If Pyrrhus’ words echo, recapitulate and confirm the narrator's thesis in the preface bringing full circle the narrative epideixis of Roman superiority, it is not a coincidence that Pyrrhus first enters the scene in this fragment as a poietes of sorts, impersonating the Romans and assigning roles to the characters in his narrative. His role as a surrogate narrator is supported by his use of language which is otherwise characteristic of the authorial persona. Thus the word hypothesis (κινδυνεύει πονηρὰν πεποιῆσθαι τὴν ὑπόθεσιν τοῦ πολέμου), besides referring to any starting point or undertaking, is also the word for the subject matter of the historiographical work.Footnote 76 Thus, the two recognition scenes together highlight both aspects of Dionysius’ vision of Rome's relation to Greece as he outlines them in the preface. The story, which started as a demonstration of the Greek origin of the Romans by the narrator and culminated in the recognition and acceptance of the Trojans by a Greek king, ends with the recognition of the moral superiority of the Romans on the part of another Greek king.
VII DIONYSIUS AND THE RE-BARBARIZATION OF THE ROMANS
So far, I have argued that the extant fragments from the last two books show that Dionysius has constructed the narrative of the Pyrrhic War as a final revelation of the ‘cultural Greekness’ of the Romans and of the corresponding ‘barbarization’ of the Greek world. Yet Dionysius is far from offering an unambiguous validation of Rome's moral superiority, as the scattered comments concerning the decadence of contemporary Romans already indicate. Despite his confidence in Rome's standing, Dionysius warns readers that the moral supremacy the Romans have acquired by remaining true to their Greek heritage is under threat. His narrative is partially addressed to Roman aristocrats, offering them exempla from their history that they can follow in order to reaffirm Rome's Greek heritage and thus reverse the impending moral decline (1.6.4–5). Dionysius’ choice to end his narrative before the outburst of the Punic Wars allows him to leave the issue of the causes of Roman decline unresolved. For the conflict with Carthage and the cessation of the metus hostilis, which came as a consequence of its defeat, were seen by some historians as marking the beginning of the deterioration of Roman mores.Footnote 77 By ending before the Punic Wars, Dionysius can be the historian of Rome's successes without needing to confront directly the problem of its moral demise. Yet his scattered comments on the tyrannical aspirations of contemporary Roman leaders echo the concern with the proliferation of ambitio and avaritia which Sallust, among others, had identified as one of the main causes of Roman decline and had attributed to the cessation of the metus hostilis. Thus, while he does not linger on the issue of Rome's decadence and its root causes, opting instead to couch his narrative as a celebration of Roman superiority, by setting his comments on contemporary Roman morality within the frame of the Roman discourse on ethical decline and its causes, Dionysius subtly hints at the consequences of the Roman conquests and expansionism which lie outside his chronological boundaries.Footnote 78
However, in the extant narrative from the concluding books, Dionysius already highlights the danger of corruption that contact with the morally depraved Greeks of Southern Italy poses to the Romans, and in so doing shifts his focus once again to the tyrannical aspirations of Roman leaders. Side by side with the tale of Fabricius’ exemplary act of selflessness, Dionysius sets the story of the Roman commander, Decius, whom Fabricius puts in charge of defending the philo-Roman city of Rhegium from the reprisal of the Tarentines and their allies (AR 20.4–5).Footnote 79 Lured by the splendid wealth of the Greek city, Decius orders the Roman legion under his command to slay the most prominent citizens of Rhegium and installs himself as the city's tyrant.Footnote 80 In contrast to Livy who attributes responsibility to the Romans without mentioning Decius (31.31.6), Dionysius — like Polybius before him (1.7.6–13) — chooses to present the commander as Campanian by birth (20.4.3). This allows him to focus the attention of his readers on the Roman tendency towards authadeia without directly involving a Roman-born citizen. Decius eventually incurs harsh punishment at the hands of the Romans for his impious deeds, but his story illustrates the pressure that the barbarized Greeks’ degenerate way of living exercises over the Romans. Thus Dionysius concludes the story by stating that Decius and his secretary managed to avoid death by decapitation, a punishment that had been decreed for all the conspirators, and instead commit suicide. Dionysius presents two alternative versions: one in which the two men outwit the guards, the other in which they obtain their objective by bribing the Roman soldiers.Footnote 81 The historian does not commit himself to either version, but the possibility that Roman soldiers may have been bribed insinuates the presence of a greedy tendency in the Romans.Footnote 82 In the face of the barbarization of the Greeks embodied in their political and bodily enslavement, the story of Decius highlights the possibility of yet another reversal as the Romans show signs of the same political tendency towards tyranny which eventually caused the decline (and barbarization) of the Greek world.
