Análisis de la información de las entrevistas

Cicero’s relationship to Tusculum offers a window into how the city seems to have been perceived at Rome in the Late Republic. To the novus homo from an undistinguished town in the Campanian hills, Tusculum was both a shining example of the potential for self-advancement promised by the Roman political system and a constant reminder of the second-class status he would never fully escape. Cato’s ascent from humble origins in a farming family from Tusculum provided a model for the career of a municipal new man that Cicero employed in his own philosophical work; when Cicero presents Cato as an example of the relationship a municeps ought to have with his duae patriae, it is

alongside Cicero himself and his own hometown of Arpinum.171 _{He purchased a villa at}

Tusculum and attempted to assimilate himself to his aristocratic peers, but found that he

170 _{Champlin 1992, 107} 171 _{Cicero De leg. 2.5.}

continued to encounter bias—the prestige of a Tusculan pedigree was not something he could acquire within a generation. The impression of Tusculum’s relationship to Rome that comes from Cicero’s writing and biography is consistent with the positive

characterization of Tusculum’s historical relationship with Rome that can be constructed from several sources across a wide chronological rangeand which suggests that an association with Tusculum would be highly valued. Given that this relatively positive version of Tusculum’s incorporation does not appear to be consistent with the most historically plausible account of the event, and is in conflict with several sources that suggest a much more pessimistic reading of Tusculum’s relationship with Rome prior to its conquest, how can we account for its persistent presence in the cultural memory of Tusculum?

While Tusculum’s early admission into Roman citizenship is certainly a central factor in the cultural memory of Tusculum’s past, it does not fully explain the

characterization of the city that persisted centuries after this event. Though Tusculum is the first Latin city said to have gained the Roman civitas in any historiographical or documentary source, and the antiquity of Tusculum’s admission to Roman citizenship is a repeated motif in literary sources, there are no examples of Tusculum being described as the “first” municipium or the first Latin city to become a Roman civitas.172 Nor is a relatively early date of Roman citizenship the sole factor that differentiates other Latin cities’ histories of rebellion or cooperation with Rome, or the relative success of their families in politics. However, Tusculum’s Roman citizenship did offer its citizens the

172 _{Either the antiquity of Tusculum’s citizenship or the early date at which Tusculans}

held Roman political offices is mentioned at, among others: Cic. Font. 41, Tac. Ann. 11.24, Vell. Pat. 2.128

opportunity to pursue political office at Rome from an early date, and the exceptional case of the gens Mamilia obtaining citizenship as a reward for service at an even earlier date gave Tusculan families a chronological advantage in the accumulation of politically influential families. Ultimately, the success of these Tusculan families at Rome seems to have contributed to the continued positive reception of Tusculans at Rome by influencing the way in which Tusculum’s history of interactions with Rome was remembered. The Romans were aware of the possibility that family histories and genealogical claims could be influenced (or even dictated) by the politicalaims of the family’s descendants: in the Brutus, Cicero criticizes family histories preserved in the form of laudatory funeral orations for the various embellishments that have been added by families seeking to increase their own prestige—invented triumphs, consulships, and connections to famous historical figures.173 They also recognized that these claims had the potential to affect cultural memory beyond a particular family’s genealogy, as these false statements could

173 _{Cic. Brut. 62. Et hercules eae quidem exstant: ipsae enim familiae sua quasi}

ornamenta ac monumenta servabant et ad usum, si quis eiusdem generis occidisset, et ad memoriam laudum domesticarum et ad illustrandam nobilitatem suam. quamquam his laudationibus historia rerum nostrarum est facta mendosior. multa enim scripta sunt in eis quae facta non sunt: falsi triumphi, plures consulatus, genera etiam falsa et ad plebem transitiones, cum homines humiliores in alienum eiusdem nominis infunderentur genus; ut si ego me a M'. Tullio esse dicerem, qui patricius cum Ser. Sulpicio consul anno x post exactos reges fuit. (And assuredly some of these (funeral orations dating to before Cato) are certainly extant: for their families were in the practice of preserving them as trophies of honor and memorials, and for use when someone of the same family died, and for remembering the renown of their household, and for illustrating their own nobility. Yet our history has been made more erroneous by these panegyrics. For many things were written in them which did not happen: false triumphs, an abundance of consulships, false genealogies and false transitions to plebeian status, when men of humbler birth mingled their own family with another one of the same name; as if I should say that I was descended from Manius Tullius, who was a patrician and served as consul with Servius Sulpicius ten years after the kings were expelled.)

enter the historical record and change the memory of the past.174 The role of family histories in emphasizing (or embellishing) certain events in the broader historical record, while it cannot fully rewrite the memories of a contentious relationship, provides a context for reading more problematic episodes that allows them to be interpreted as part of a coherent, positive narrative—though the tracesof a possibly less amicable

relationship remain. In the case of Tusculum, a number of episodes that paint the gens Mamilia in a flattering light also have the effect of depicting Tusculum, and Tusculum’s relationship to Rome, positively; while stories that may have been influenced by the descendants of the Mamilii are particularly easy to identify, other families with Tusculan origins probably promoted stories about their ancestors as well. The early date at which Tusculan families came to Rome and began participating in politics and aristocratic competition contributed to the abundance of Tusculan families known to have attained political success at Rome. The number of Tusculan families who had a vested interest in promoting a positive memory of their own ancestors’ relationship with Rome could, in turn, have offered a large number of ways for the historical record to be influenced, as Cicero laments, by embellished claims and reinterpreted stories. Ultimately, the more flattering characteristics associated with Tusculum might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: as more Tusculan families were elected to office, and as the date of the earliest Tusculans to hold political office at Rome became more and more remote, the cultural value of being connected to the increasingly “ancient” and “honored” municipium grew as well.

In the following two chapters, by contrast, I examine the effect of receiving Roman citizenship significantly later than the majority of cities in Latium. Like

Tusculum, Tibur and Praeneste had a unique path to Roman citizenship. Left independent of Rome at the conclusion of the Roman-Latin wars in 338 BCE, but deprived of territory they had previously controlled, Praeneste and Tibur had contentious relationships with Rome up to—and after—they received Roman citizenship centuries later as a result of the Lex Iulia de Civitate Latinis Danda of 90 BCE.

CHAPTER TWO: TIBUR

I. INTRODUCTION

As one of the few communities in Latium that approached Rome’s size and influence during the regal period and early Republic, Tibur represented a potential rival to Rome and her successful expansion into central Italy; the history of Tibur’s relationship to Rome during the Republic is one of continued hostility to Roman power, and the city’s relative strength seems to have allowed it to remain free of Roman rule after most of Latium had become Roman territory by the end of the 4th century BCE.175 Roman sources record frequent wars with Tibur, either alone or allied with other Latin cities, during the periods when the Romans and Latins were not bound by peace treaties, and a Tiburtine attack on Rome in 359 BCE is one of the very few episodes in Early and Middle Republican history in which an enemy is said to have directly assaulted the city of Rome.176

Itaque insequenti anno M. Popilio Laenate Cn. Manlio consulibus primo silentio noctis ab Tibure agmine infesto profecti ad urbem Romam venerunt. Terrorem repente ex somno excitatis subita res et nocturnus pavor praebuit, ad hoc multorum inscitia, qui aut unde hostes advenissent...177

Therefore, in the following year when M. Popilius Laenas and Cn. Manlius were consuls, they came to the city of Rome in the first quiet of the night, having set out from Tibur in a hostile battle-array. The sudden occurence and the nocturnal alarm caused terror in those roused from sleep hastily, as did the ignorance of many [about] who the enemies were or whence they had come...

175 _{Estimates of 6}th _{century territorial holdings as first hypothesized by Beloch 1926, 178:}

Rome, 822 km2; Tibur, 351km2; Praeneste 262.5 km2.None of the other cities reach 200 km2, and all but Ardea and Lavinium are less than 100km2. Further discussion in CAH VI. 243-7 includes comparative charts and map. See also more recent discussion, population figures, and estimates of productive capacity in Cornell 2000, 204-8.

176 _{In addition to the historiographic sources, the Fasti Capitolini also record several}

conflicts with Tibur.

Despite the brevity of this episode in Livy’s narrative, it describes a vivid moment of panic in the city as the Romans realize an enemy has reached their city without any notice or alarm until they had already arrived. The incident occurs within 50 years of the sack of Rome by the Gauls, and the terror in Livy’s narrative suggests fear of a similar incident in the Romans as an unseen army woke them from their sleep. Although the Romans routed the attacking army easily, the initial alarm caused by the Tiburtines’ ability to reach the city in a single night under cover of darkness exemplifies the threat posed by a hostile force living close to Rome: the Tiburtines are able to assault the city with no warning. Furthermore, Tibur’s location in the foothills of the Apennines, controlling the valley that eventually held the Via Tiburtina, placed the city between Rome and enemies including the Volsci and the Samnites. The Tiburtines demonstrated the danger that their city represented for Rome by controlling such a strategically significant location in the year before their attack on Rome, 360 BCE, when they had provided aid to the Gauls and ensured their safe passage to and from Campania.178 Tibur’s strength and natural

advantages, together with the city’s history of hostility towards Rome, combine in Livy’s narrative to characterize republican-era Tibur as a potential threat to Rome.

In contrast, Horace Odes 1.7, published around the same time as the relevant books of Livy, describes the city in his own day as a peaceful retreat:179

me nec tam patiens Lacedaemon nec tam Larisae percussit campus opimae, quam domus Albuneae resonantis et praeceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis.180

178 _{Livy 7.9-11}

Neither unyielding Lacedaemon

nor the plain of fertile Larisa so strikes me, as the home of echoing Albunea

and the rushing Anio and the grove of Tiburnus, and orchards soaked by swift streams.

To the poet, the city of Tibur has become a thoroughly unthreatening landscape, so completely assimilated into a retreat for Rome’s elite that he can praise it specifically in contrast to sites of adventure abroad.181 The city is distinguished by the physical

features—rivers and orchards—that create the lush landscape into which villas of wealthy Romans nestle, serving as a luxurious retreat from the chaos of business in the city or military concerns abroad. Horace’s poetry anticipates the continued development of Tibur’s relationship to Imperial Rome that culminates in the construction of Hadrian’s elaborate villa, which sprawls across the Tiburtine countryside and inspired imitators for centuries. The Tibur that threatened Republican Rome appears to have almost

disappeared by the beginning of the Empire.

In this chapter I reconstruct the Roman cultural memory of Tibur and its eventual incorporation by Rome, to the extent that the surviving literary and material evidence permits. Admittedly, there are no surviving sources contemporary to the period of greatest conflict between Rome and Tibur, the 5th-early 3rd centuries BCE, and there are

180 _{Hor. Carm. 1.7.10-14}

181 _{The poem opens with a priamel that proclaims the poet’s affection for Tibur over a}

series of twelve Greek cities, ending with the emphatic statement that neither

Lacedaemon (Sparta) nor the Thessalian city of Larissa affects Horace as much as Tibur (using the oddly violent percussit, line 11). In addition to Lacedaemon and Larissa, Horace rejects Rhodes, Mytilene, Ephesus, Corinth, Thebes, Delphi, Tempe, Athens, Argos, and Mycenae (Hor. Carm. 1.7.1-9). In addition to declaring Horace’s preference for Tibur over these famous cities of Greece, the priamel functions as a recusatio on the topic of poetic composition, one of the leisurely pursuits that Horace associates with the town.

very few sources dating from the middle of the 3rd century BCE to the early 1st century BCE. The sources we do have from the later Republic and Empire cannot and do not represent Roman perspectives on Tibur contemporary to its conquest. Instead, they represent the image of Tibur passed down to later generations, and that is the topic of this chapter. My primary goal is not to reconstruct the historical events associated with the city’s conquest and gradual assimilation into the expanding Roman empire, but rather to identify loci of anxiety about the nature of Tibur’s relationship to Rome. The challenge posed by Tibur’s physical and topographical features is made manifest by the city’s extended history of hostility to Rome and its continued resistance to integration until 90 BCE, when the city accepts Roman citizenship. During the last century of the Republic, the Roman image of Tibur begins to be transformed into that of the suburban villa site populated by Roman elites recorded by Horace and several of his contemporaries, and well represented in the physical remains of the ancient site, and Tiburtine elites begin to appear in positions of power at Rome. This development, however, is chronologically contemporaneous with sources continuing to describe Republican Tibur as a threat to the city of Rome. This chapter aims to examine our contradictory evidence in juxtaposition in order to create a comprehensive picture of the Roman cultural memory of the city of Tibur.

II. CIVIC ENTITY

In this chapter, I first examine sources that discuss Tibur as a civic entity or cohesive group—a civitas, defined by its government and institutions. These sources talk about decisions made and actions taken by the city at large, such as declaring war or signing

treaties; Roman treatment of the city as a unit (as when deciding whether to not to offer its citizens Roman citizenship or rights en bloc); and institutions or characteristics associated with the community. Some themes, such as Tibur’s relative antiquity, appear across a variety of time periods and genres, demonstrating their persistence in the Roman cultural memory of Tibur. Others, including resistance to Roman integration, hostility against Rome, and welcoming Roman exiles and enemies, seem to drop off over time and the last attested examples date to the late Republican or Augustan period. The eventual cessation of references to these tropes occurs contemporaneously with the development of references to Tibur as a new type of place, a calm suburban retreat from the urban chaos of Rome. This shift in Roman references to Tibur took place decades after the city was enfranchised in 90 BCE, demonstrating that the earlier cultural memory of the city persisted after Tibur’s relationship with Rome had changed permanently.