Fictitious Speeches, Envy, and the Habituation to Authority: Writing the Collapse of the Roman Republic

Burden-Strevens, C. (2016) Fictitious Speeches, Envy, and the Habituation to Authority: Writing the Collapse of the Roman Republic. In: Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician, Odense, Denmark, 29-31 Oct 2016, pp. 191-216. ISBN 9789004324169 (doi: 10.1163/9789004335318_012)

Abstract

In this paper, I explore Cassius Dio’s use of his speeches as a means of historical explanation. From an analysis of several speeches of the Late Republic and how they are consonant with the narrative material surrounding them, I argue that Dio made these compositions consistent with a causal framework that he applied to the decline of the res publica. This framework appears to be distinctively the historian’s own.These compositions, I suggest, were embedded within Dio’s account of these years to explain the causes, and consequences, of two fundamental historical problems. The first is the ‘habituation to command’ (imperii consuetudo) of ambitious commanders; the second is the centrality of envy (φθóνος) to political life. I demonstrate that although these issues do not disappear entirely from Dio’s later account, the historian viewed them as especially Late Republican and as historically significant drivers of constitutional change. Even where they are demonstrably fabricated, Cassius Dio nevertheless used the speeches to reflect upon these issues, to predict their later political ramifications, and to posit remedies later followed by the Augustan Principate.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Burden-Strevens, Mr Christopher
• Authors: Burden-Strevens, C.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Classics
• ISBN: 9789004324169

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