The Earliest Romans: A Character Sketch

by Ramsay MacMullen

"A vibrant account that puts flesh on the bare bones of early Roman history."
---Celia Schultz, University of Michigan
 
The ancient Romans' story down to 264 B.C. can be made credible by stripping away their later myths and inventions to show how their national character shaped their destiny. After many generations of scholarly study, consensus is the account in writers like Livy is not to be trusted because their aims were different from ours in history-writing. They wanted their work to be both improving and diverting. It should grow out of the real past, yes, but if that reality couldn't be recovered, or was uncertain, their art did not forbid invention. It more than tolerated dramatic incidents, passions, heroes, heroines, and villains. If, however, all this resulting ancient fiction and adornment are pruned away, a national character can be seen in the remaining bits and pieces of credible information, to explain the familiar story at least in its outlines. To doubt the written sources has long been acceptable, but this or that detail or narrative section must always be left for salvage by special pleading. To press home the logic of doubt is new. To reach beyond the written sources for a better support in excavated evidence is no novelty; but it is a novelty, to find in archeology the principal substance of the narrative---which is the choice in this book. To use this in turn for the discovery of an ethnic personality, a Roman national character, is key and also novel. What is repeatedly illustrated and emphasized here is the distance traveled by the art or craft of understanding the past---"history" in that sense---over the course of the last couple of centuries. The art cannot be learned, because it cannot be found, through studying Livy and Company. Readers who care about either of the two disciplines contrasted, Classics and History, may find this argument of interest. "Like Thucydides of the hyperactive Athenians and de Tocqueville of the nation-building Americans, MacMullen here draws a character sketch of the early Romans---the men who built Rome, conquered Italy, and created an empire. Based on profound familiarity with history, evidence, and their better-known descendants, attention to what they did and failed to do, remarkable insight, empathy, constructive imagination, and not without humor, he reconstructs the homo Romanus and thus helps us imagine what he was like, and understand why he achieved what he did. This little book is informative, full of important ideas, and delightful to read."
---Kurt Raaflaub, Brown University Jacket Marcus Fabius and Quintus Tannius. Fresco. Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy. Courtesy of Scala / Art Resource, NY..

208 pages, Hardcover

First published August 19, 2011

About the author

A specialist in Roman social history and the rise of Christianity in the Roman world, Ramsay MacMullen was Dunham Professor of History and Classics at Yale University, where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 1993. Educated at Phillips Exeter and Harvard, from which he held all three of his degrees, MacMullen taught at the University of Oregon and Brandeis before moving to Yale.

Reviews

[Bonnie_blu · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. MacMullen takes an interesting approach trying to ferret out the nature of the ancient Romans. He examines the royal period (to 509 B.C.E.) and the early Republican period to 264 B.C.E. in order to determine which behaviors, practices, and rites continued over hundreds of years and how they revealed Roman character. His analysis shows that the Romans were conservative, tolerant, aggressive, and practical. These traits allowed the Romans to expand and consolidate their conquests / alliances in a manner that greatly reduced the chance of rebellion since the conquered / allied peoples became part of the Republic and not subjects of it. Rome was an inclusive society that readily accepted new gods and people. In addition, it gave freed slaves citizenship with all the rights that it entailed. Many writers of the ancient world were amazed by this. Ancient Rome was truly a unique experiment in empire building; one that succeeded for almost a 1000 years in the western Mediterranean and another 1000 years in the eastern.

My only complaint about the book is MacMullen's love of run-on sentences (six or more lines long). Too often his writing style requires the reader to go through some mental gymnastics in order to follow his train of thought and to connect the dots. However, the effort is worth it since the book contains a great deal of valuable information.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quite different book from what I was expecting and a bit difficult to read, but rewarding nonetheless. MacMullen thinks that there is little that we can believe from the histories of Rome by ancient authors like Livy when they describe the period from the city's founding up to the first Punic War, and thus we must look at more reliable evidence (such as that provided by archaeology). In this book, he sketches what he believes is the Roman "national character": conservative, tolerant (in its adaptation of and allowance for other cultures), aggressive, and practical. His exploration of the tolerant and aggressive aspects of Roman culture can help the reader to understand how the later Roman Empire both allowed local authorities to rule their own areas and demanded submission to Rome. MacMullen's description of Roman aggressiveness reminded me of Augustine's famous indictment in City of God of the Roman libido dominandi (lust for domination).