The last half-century has revealed Roman historiography to be strikingly complex and sophisticated. Consequently, scholarship on the area has flourished and the volume under review here is only one of several such books studying Roman historiography published in the last handful of years. The book contains an introduction and 11 chapters, and is part of the extraordinarily productive series Historiography of Rome and its Empire, published by Brill. I will first give a brief overview of the different contributions, whereafter I will discuss some wider questions raised by the book.

The Introduction by Aske Poulsen sets out the aims of the book: it seeks to explore how various historiographers used, manipulated and exploited the past for their own authorial agendas. The Introduction also includes a summary of each chapter. The first section, “Coming to Terms with the Principate”, opens with Roberto Cristofoli’s chapter on Velleius Paterculus, which presents us with a careful comparison of Velleius’ account of the Battle of Actium with the parallel sources. Its conclusion that Velleius Paterculus generally followed Augustan propaganda is perhaps not particularly surprising but Cristofoli deserves praise for drawing on the recent re-evaluation of Velleius and taking this writer seriously as a historian in his own right. The second chapter by Rachel Love focuses on Florus: she points out that Florus mostly ignores the workings of politics in his narrative of Rome’s external wars. Love argues that this results in a new version of Roman history in which the state plays a minimal role in the development of that history. Hereby, “Florus mitigates the trauma of the Republic’s destruction” (p. 63). The section finishes with Kai Ruffing’s chapter which re-evaluates Tacitus as an uninhibited supporter of monarchy and as an actual propagandist for Trajan’s reign. This is essentially based on Tacitus’ participation in the regime through his tenure of offices. However, scholars have long argued that Tacitus’ political stance cannot be deduced (mainly) from his political career, the so-called “biographical fallacy”, and Ruffing never convincingly refutes this widely held view. Essentially, Tacitus’ tenure of office might as well indicate resignation, realism or moderate support for the monarchy rather than sincere enthusiasm.

The second section, “Intertextuality and Intratextuality”, opens with a splendid chapter by Christopher Krebs, which focuses on Caesar’s Commentarii: firstly, through a careful philological analysis of Caesar’s language, he argues that Caesar’s account of Labienus’ battle near the Seine used Labienus’ report as its source of basic facts. After this exercise of Quellenforschung, Krebs argues (again through a meticulous philological analysis) that Caesar’s narrative draws extensively for inspiration on Polybius’ account of Hannibal crossing the Rhône. This, in turn, sheds light on Caesar’s (and perhaps other historiographers’) mode of composition. The next chapter, by Ulrike Roth, argues that Livy’s account of the Gallic sack of Rome draws on Polybius’ account of the sack of Phoenice. This, in turn, is viewed by Roth as an attempt by Livy to reframe the role of the Gallic sack in Rome’s wider history. Christina Kraus’ chapter focuses on Livy and his story of the Faliscan school teacher betraying his city to Camillus. Like Roth’s, this chapter has a highly literary focus, exploring how Livy uses the tool of comparatio to create connections between the account of the Faliscan school teacher and, for example, the capture of Romans on their way to Delphi by Liparian pirates. This literary approach continues in Aske Poulsen’s chapter, which argues for an intertextual relationship between Marcellus’ speech against Paetus in Tacitus’ Annales and Calgacus’ speech in the Agricola. This invites the reader to reinterpret the latter in the light of the former, a promising type of retrospective intertextual relationship that merits further study more widely.

The final section, “The Frontiers of Historiography”, opens with Rhiannon Ash’s chapter which argues that Tacitus’ portrayal of Agrippina’s shipwreck is suffused with elements pertaining to theatre, such as the presence of slaves and freedmen, the numerous instances of direct and indirect speech and the mention of gods. This dramatization, in turn, is supposed to intensify the denunciation of Nero’s reign. The excellent chapter by Johan Vekselius contains a careful analysis of Roman expressions of grief, mainly during the reign of Tiberius. He does well to deconstruct Tacitus’ critical portrayal of Tiberius in mourning and then adeptly explores the competing conceptions of “correct” displays of mourning, one lauding emotional displays and another idealising self-control. This analysis has ramifications for our understanding of mourning and self-presentation in the Roman world more broadly. The chapter by Kyle Khellaf focuses on migration narratives in Livy and Sallust among others, drawing on a large number of theories and theoreticians (e.g. hodology, dromology, Deleuze, border theory, Freud, nomadology, Thirdspace). However, it is not always clear exactly how these contribute to the analysis. He also argues that digressions in historiography should be viewed as a form of migration or exile. The final chapter by Anne-Marie Touati “sets out to investigate what the material record might reveal about the perception and usage of history in Roman Pompeii” (p. 298). She argues that the material evidence shows a usage of the past by Pompeiians aimed at expressing pride in their town, underlining its prestige and highlighting the distinction of one’s family.

As is evident from this overview, the literary approach of Woodman-Wiseman is a significant influence (especially in section two), and this is highlighted in the Introduction as well (p. 2). However, this approach is now half a century old and has been nuanced and critiqued in recent years, for example for divorcing writers from their historical background.1 Consequently, a more thorough contextualisation of the volume in recent scholarship on Roman historiography would have been useful as part of the Introduction. Another aspect which could have received more explicit attention is “the thorny question of when similarities and overlaps turn into conscious engagement and allusion” (p. 127), to borrow Roth’s phrase. This is a problem that looms large in several chapters and is not always convincingly surmounted: for example, Roth’s key argument for the intertextual relationship between Livy and Polybius is that Fortuna/Tyche play important roles both in Polybius’ sack of Phoenice and in Livy’ Gallic sack, combined with her assertion that the first influence of Tyche in Polybius occurs during his narrative of the Gallic sack. However, Tyche is, as Roth admits, not mentioned in Polybius’ Gallic sack, and it seems unlikely that ancient readers, or authors, without our modern possibilities for word searches and data analysis would have made the same tripartite connection as Roth.

This ties into a larger issue regarding the conception of Roman historiography: while very few scholars today would completely reject the Woodman-Wiseman view that Roman historiography had a certain literary element, there is wide divergence regarding the degree of literariness ascribed to Roman historiographers by modern scholars. This, in turn, results in widely diverging evidentiary and argumentative thresholds for when “similarities and overlaps turn into conscious engagement and allusion”. A more explicit engagement with this problematic issue in the book more widely would have strengthened it significantly.

A final point to be made is that the focus of the book is somewhat narrow given that Tacitus looms large in 5 and Livy in 3 of the 11 chapters. Although much remains to be learned about these writers, they are two of the most studied Roman historians and a wider scope, e.g. including Late Antiquity through Ammianus Marcellinus, would have been welcome. Even a chapter on imperial history writing in Greek, for example on Herodian or the still understudied Appian, would not have been out of place in a volume focusing on “Roman historiography”.

Despite these reservations, however, the book, which has been carefully edited and contains only a few mistakes, contains some excellent chapters and is a fine example of scholarship in the Woodman-Wiseman tradition. More broadly, it remains a welcome addition to the recent outpouring of scholarship on Roman historiography, and will be an important resource for scholars and students alike.

Note:
1 For a critique of Woodman, see e.g. Emma Dench, The Roman historians and twentieth-century approaches to Roman history, in: A. Feldherr (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Roman Historiography, Cambridge 2009, pp. 394–406.