Livy's Camillus and the Political Discourse of the Late Republic

Extract

An analysis of the parallel accounts in Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch shows that the seemingly Augustan traits of Livy's Camillus already featured in late annalistic sources. Camillus' speech at Livy 5.51–4 condenses and expands late annalistic themes and fuses them with Ciceronian reminiscences. One reason for this fusion is Cicero's own self-fashioning as a new Camillus (particularly, in his post-exilic speeches). The accounts of the Civil War suggest that Pompey and Caesar, too, exploited the Camillus paradigm. The parallels between Livy's Camillus and Augustus probably result from the latter's attempt to silence the Republican opposition by appropriating one of its most powerful paradigms.