This chapter offers a perspective on Latin literature from the neighbouring field of Roman history. It discusses what appears to be a growing intellectual divide between the two fields, a divergence that is surprising given the increased focus on the politics of literature among Latinists. The essay also offers some suggestions for bridging the gap.I suggest that Latinists could take a much broader view of the structures of power in which Latin texts were embedded, rather than focusing on the phenomenon of autocracy and high politics, that they might profitably continue to extend their attention to non-literary texts and especially inscriptions, and that they could work harder to speak to historians.

Was demythologization driven by a change in taste among Rome’s aristocratic elite, as they increasingly retreated from public life to the comforts of their rural villas? This chapter turns to sarcophagi featuring bucolic and philosopher imagery, the most popular of the mythless genres, and to theories that appeal to politics, especially the changing political fortunes of Rome’s traditional senatorial families, when trying to account for their popularity.

Was demythologization a response to the Third-Century Crisis? With the empire reeling from the combined pressures of civil war, barbarian invasion, plague, and economic depression, perhaps Rome’s elite were drawn to bucolic, seasonal, and philosophical scenes for the allegorical tranquility they offered, as a form of refuge from the turmoil of real life? This chapter interrogates this thesis, with far-reaching implications for how we understand similar arguments launched about other periods in world art.

The introduciton opens my exploration of Cicero’s notion of will. I argue that the will is an original Latin contribution to the Western mind. Cicero’s letters, speeches, and treatises show how his skill for language gave him a subtler take on events and a richer repertoire of persuasion. Practical uses of will are foremost: mapping alliances, winning elections, and navigating the “economy of goodwill.” From his earliest writings, however, voluntas emerges in normative claims about law and politics: that Rome’s mass of precedents could be rationalized through Greek ideas. Chief among these is Plato’s precept that reason must rule, and thus an alliance of philosophy and tradition can save the dying Republic. Transmuting political failure into philosophical innovation, Cicero lays the foundation for an idea – the will and its freedom – with tremendous consequences for Western thought. For Cicero, voluntas populi becomes the binding force of a nominally popular but functionally aristocratic constitution. If this state of affairs looks familiar in today’s “democratic” republics, we have Cicero in part to thank. Insistence on the singularity of popular will and mistrust of the common citizen lie at the heart of today’s political crisis and will require Ciceronian creativity to fix.

While Cicero’s self-fashioning has been a subject of great scholarly interest already, my approach is more granular, emphasizing variability and adaptation in Cicero’s use of eight distinct personae to generate political leverage through the shaping of persuasive political narratives. The speeches from his return from exile in 57 BCE to his death in 43 have received relatively little scholarly attention (some more than others), and this book offers a comprehensive and innovative account of that part of the corpus. Cicero’s time in exile and the rise of the “first triumvirate” combined to change the political landscape, not only for Cicero but in general, creating new challenges in the rebuilding and maintenance of his influence. Each of the eight personae gives readers a framework in which to understand Cicero’s rhetorical strategies, and to see how his arguments and accounts of the world around him are shaped to address his political goals. A persona consists not only of social role and status but also of character traits, affective responses, and relationships to others.

This chapter examines the commentary tradition of a one-line fragment of Ennius’ Annals, qui vicit non est victor nisi victum fatetur (513 Skutsch). Although modern commentators have adduced a broad range of comparanda, their selection of historical parallels reflects preconceived notions of what the line must mean. By returning to the line’s original context in a late-antique scholium on the Aeneid, we are better able to appreciate the line as an epic fragment. Parallels drawn from Ennius and other poets allow for a different reading of the fragment, and suggest alternative methodologies for the use of fragments in historical arguments.

The fourteen papers in this volume take advantage of advances in the study of Ennius’ Annales that have occurred in the generation since Otto Skutsch published his monumental edition and commentary on the poem, while also taking advantage of Jackie Elliott's recent provocation to question the most basic assumptions that underlie Skutsch’s work. The result is a collection of essays as diverse in their individual interests and objectives as we believe Ennius and his Annals also were. The essays are organized under four rubrics, namely (1)Innovation, (2) Authority, (3) Influence, and (4) Interpretation. An afterword reflects on the findings of the volume as a whole, with equal emphasis on new questions that the individual papers raise and on solutions that they propose, while raising additional points that should provoke further research.

All historical applications of formal economic models require justification – not merely within their own closed system of logic, but in a wider historiographical context which includes serious and thoughtful substantivist critiques of the formalist enterprise more generally and especially of applied economic theory. Even if new institutional economics is not the solution, are there other ways Roman economic historians might use economic theories to better understand the economic choices made by the inhabitants of the ancient world as well as the embedding contexts which channeled such choices? History and economics, despite fundamental differences embedded in each discipline, can meaningfully and symbiotically intersect. Economics offers Roman historians valuable and helpful organizing concepts, so long as these concepts are used within an agenda of historical understanding.