The Roman Republic and the Hellenistic Mediterranean by Joel Allen

Author:Joel Allen [Allen, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118959367
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Some of Plautus’s contemporaries dwelt on more patriotic themes, largely in service to the Roman aristocracy. Quintus Fabius Pictor, who led an embassy to Delphi after the disaster at Cannae (Chapter 7), wrote a history of Rome, which was in prose and in Greek. He gravitated toward the accomplishments of members of leading families, a category to which he himself belonged. Quintus Ennius also praised contemporary Romans, but in meter and in Latin. A poem of 200, called the Scipio, likely celebrated the hero of the Punic War, and another, the Ambracia, recounted the feats of Fulvius Nobilior’s siege (see above). Ennius and Fulvius Nobilior reportedly took heat from Cato the Elder, who objected to the use of literature for purposes, as he saw it, of political propaganda. There may have been more than a tinge of hypocrisy to Cato’s remark, if true, given that it was he who singled Ennius out when Ennius was serving under him in Sardinia in 204, during the Second Punic War.

The rivalry between Cato and Fulvius Nobilior spilled over into the urban fabric of the city as each sponsored large, beautiful buildings in competition with one another. Cato, in spite of his occasional bromides against fancy Greek culture, built the Basilica Porcia in 184 at the northwestern corner of the Forum. The name itself – basilica, derived from basileus and meaning something like, “a king’s hall” – implied an affinity for styles from the Hellenistic East. Airy and light, the large interior space was ideally suited for public business or court proceedings of different kinds and became the architectural form of choice for major buildings around the Forum for centuries. Within a decade, two other, more elaborate basilicae went up on the north and south edges of the Forum. One was commissioned by Fulvius Nobilior when he was censor in 179; originally the Basilica Fulvia, it would be renamed the Basilica Aemilia by the senator who completed the construction. Across the square, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who like Cato would earn his name from military service in Spain (Chapter 9), built the Basilica Sempronia, also in the 170s.

Fulvius Nobilior’s greatest donation to the city was the Temple of Hercules Musarum, or, Hercules in his role as the leader of the Muses. Again, we see the mixture of a Greek idea with Roman self‐regard: works within the complex included a statue group of the nine muses retrieved from Ambracia, wealthy and Hellenic, alongside a small, rough shrine to Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. The temple also somehow displayed an annotated list of Roman leaders and their accomplishments called the Fasti. By cataloging episodes from deep in Rome’s past, the Fasti would have catered to antiquarian tastes. Hercules brought two strands of culture together, as the pan‐Mediterranean hero was thought to have spent time at the Tiber crossing during one of his many journeys and thus had a Roman affiliation. His leadership of the quintessential women of the arts suggested the proper way for Greek culture to be deployed – in service to Roman muscle.

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