Reading the Roman Revolution 20: Tota Italia

In 2019, I started to re-read Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution and have just finished chapter 19 when I arrived on Cyprus. At the time I promised “Because I’m in the field these days and it’s a bit harder to find time for slow reading, I’m going to pause this project at the very cusp of war. It’ll resume later this summer, when I have a bit more time!” Little did I know that I wouldn’t return with it for five years.

In Chapter XX: Tota Italia, war between Octavian and Antonius had become all but certain. Syme returns to Italy from the East and describes the situation on the Peninsula. Octavian controlled Rome and was desperate to make clear the Antonius and his ally Cleopatra were the enemy of the Roman people. Octavian, on the other hand, was sought to defend of the Roman constitution even as he violated both legal and traditional precedents. It seems eerily relevant for today that neither side produced a compelling argument, but this mattered less for most of the nobiles than their own survival. Syme quotes Horace: “Quo quo scelesti ruitis?”

“Those who were not deceived by the artifices of Octavianus or their own emotions might be impelled by certain melancholy reflections to the same course of action, or at least of acquiescence. The better sort of people in Italy did not like war or despotic rule. But despotism was already there and war inevitable. In a restoration of liberty no man could believe any more. Yet if the coming struggle eliminated the last of the rival dynasts and thereby consummated the logical end of the factions, compacts and wars of the last thirty years, though liberty perished, peace might be achieved. It was worth it not merely to the middle class, but to the nobiles. Their cause had fallen long ago, not perhaps at Pharsalus, but finally and fatally at Philippi. They knew it, and they knew the price of peace and survival.”

The chapter concludes with those infamous lines from Vergil’s Aeneid 8:

Hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis.

oOo

The short essay is part of my Reading The Roman Revolution at 80 project. It’s so awesome that I have two hashtags: #ReadingRomanRevolution and #ReadingRonaldat80. I explain the project here. You can read the rest of the entries here.