In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Historian L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi and the Roman Annalistic TraditionJ. LinderskiGary Forsythe. The Historian L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi and the Roman Annalistic Tradition. Lanham, MD, New York, and London: University Press of America, 1994. viii + 552 pp. Cloth.L. Calpurnius Piso, consul in 133, censor in 120, and a writer of history, should be pleased: this is a learned monograph. First, a computation. In the standard edition (...) by H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae (2d ed., Lipsiae 1914) the extant forty-five fragments of the Annales of Piso cover twenty pages (118–37; in fact much less: a substantial space, more than one-third, is taken by the testimonia and apparatus printed at the bottom of each page). Forsythe’s monograph runs (excluding indices, bibliography and the edition of the fragments) to 408 pages. This amounts to about thirty or so pages of discussion for one page of Piso; if we applied the same method to an author partially or fully extant, for example Livy, the first five books of Livy which cover in the Oxford edition 381 pages would have required a modern work of over eleven thousand pages. For the sake of a further comparison we may note that the standard commentary on the first pentad of Livy (by R. M. Ogilvie [Oxford 1965]) contains 774 pages (the ratio is 2.03 : 1, but the pages of the commentary are larger, and so the real ratio is in the neighborhood of 3 : 1), and it is a very erudite commentary. This demonstrates vividly that the book de Pisone rerum scriptore must be concerned with something more than just Piso; nor can it be just a commentary on the fragments for even the most extensive commentary could not by any stretch of the imagination have reached this prodigious length.The subtitle informs us that the subject of the book is not only Calpurnius Piso but also “the Roman Annalistic Tradition”; thus Piso, his Annales, and the historiographic background. Unfortunately the book lacks an introduction in which the author would have set forth his goals and charted the way of achieving them. The text itself plunges directly into Piso’s political career (1–24), and then turns to a discussion of the Annales as a work of history and literature (25–73), and finally to a minute analysis of each fragment (75–408). The book is rounded off by a new edition of the testimonia and fragmenta (409–97), and by an extensive bibliography and index (499–552).Chapter 1. The Calpurnii Pisones were treated in the RE by F. Münzer, a great authority, but his article is very brief. Hence a full treatment of the historian’s family is welcome. The question arises whether it is necessary in a book about historiography. Furthermore some interpretations are questionable: the idea (3–7) that the mission (in 210–209) of a forebear of the historian, C. Piso, to secure for Rome Etruria and the Etruscan grain was somehow connected with his cognomen Piso (which Roman grammarians explained as derived from pinsere, “to grind grain”) will strike many as far-fetched. A similar conceit crops up on p. 21: Piso’s concern over the agrarian law of C. Gracchus “should perhaps be viewed in the context of his family’s possible involvement with milling and the state grain supply. The family’s surname meant ‘mortar’.” This borders on the [End Page 329] ridiculous—in an otherwise sober account. It is also awkward to speak of “the Lex Acilia of C. Gracchus” (23). There are good points too: the explanation of the origins of the lex Calpurnia de repetundis in terms of Roman clientela is very well taken indeed (15–16). Forsythe may also be right in rejecting M. Crawford’s interpretation of the coin Roman Republican Coinage (Cambridge 1974) no. 418 as indicating Piso’s pontificate.Chapter 2 deals with Piso’s education and with his work. It contains a good discussion of Piso’s personal surname Frugi, of his character, of Greek influences on the method of argumentation in his Annales, and of Piso’s Greek and Latin sources. The truly detective work to establish the... (shrink)
No categories