PRESUNCIÓN DE INOCENCIA A TRAVES DE LA HISTORIA EN MÉXICO

Thus far it has become evident that there is a premium on correctly understanding whether the gods have ‘really’ intervened. Where Livy is critical in connection with prodigies, he is criticising interpretations: mice nibbling gold should not have been taken as a prodigy; people panic at times of stress and mistakenly report phenomena that might well not have been prodigies. This is perfectly consistent with his exemplary purpose: just as a consul might be criticised for rashness, so too can people be censured for their religious mistakes. We should, however, also note the rarity of such criticisms. Livy is not intending to insult his educated readers with a tedious list of minor quibbles but rather to work with them: there are considerations in the way he writes beyond some tedious and pedantic desire to sift belatedly through prodigy notices. His is one of many interpretative voices in the text and the position he makes for himself has a direct bearing on how we should understand his presentation of the polyphony that is Roman religious interpretation. It is a selection of those voices that are now examined: opinions are being weighed as well as counted in the Ab Vrbe Condita.

(i) The Historian as Interpreter

If Livy is to write an exemplary history, he must first establish his right to do so: his non-senatorial origins - and therefore weak credentials - have already been mentioned. Throughout the narrative he takes care both to espouse modesty and hesitancy, and also to establish the authority that he needs to make explicit criticism. This difficult combination demands that he select his criticisms with a sense of measure: it would be out of keeping with his strategic display of insecurity to flaunt his ability to discern correctly the hand of the gods in events. Incessant intervention to question prodigy

reports would be crude and in all likelihood spoil the desired effect - to indicate to the audience that Livy is perfectly capable and knowledgeable in religious matters. Thus his criticisms are much reduced in frequency and the level of authorial intervention is governed by this factor, probably more than any other. In his selection and presentation of material, Livy is as much constructing his own position as designing the Republic, and expert knowledge coupled with polite restraint are his trademarks. Indeed we might go further: it is not so much that Livy is opposing his own assessment to that of the

maiores as that he is following their lead in exercising his judgement.128 Thus he partakes of the proper Roman activity of distinguishing genuine from false prodigies: but he does not press the point. Even his distinctions between ‘objective’ prodigies (i.e. those that physically happened) and hallucinatory ones bears the hallmark of the expert at work, classifying the material with ease and skill. Anyone can spot a prodigy, but it is the mark of an expert that not only are such patterns detected, but that they are noted merely in passing.

Tastefully presented in this way, Livy’s subdued omniscience translates directly into power. The question is therefore, to what end does he deploy it? For the most part the differential in authority is invisible as Livy merges his perspective with that of the venerable res publica for which he has such respect; the leading men soberly practise their art in the clear and uninterrupted gaze of the historian who keeps himself approvingly in the background. Thus there is often a sense of consensus - at times, we might even forget the existence of the historian but for his attempts to vary the reporting of the latest prodigy reports. But this seamless coherency between auctor and actor is only applied to certain processes and then with differing levels of assent. There are moments where Livy exercises his right to discriminate between proper and improper conduct and we have a whole range of levels of his consensus or disagreement with the agent(s). This arrogation of absolute authority should not go unstressed: an epideictic historian requires nothing less in his task of restoring a tottering Rome. Livy’s specific

gambit of underplaying his hand, given his lowly origins and low political status, should not deceive us; there is no surrender to the authority of the tradition or his sources and he will readily criticise where he feels it is necessary.

None of this should surprise us: just because an aristocrat has been made a consul, there is no reason to think that he will make a good, or exemplary, magistrate and general. Livy is very happy to criticise individuals who, he considers, have not performed well enough.129 What is less well explored is the extent of his selectivity in validating different officials. This is most notable between those concerned with what we might, with caution,130 call ‘political’ and ‘religious’ spheres of action. There is a temptation, based on modem parallels, to assume that priests had a monopoly on religious matters. In fact, it is more complicated than that: there are different centres of gravity with respect to religious interpretation in Livy’s Roman society, different voices granted different weight and jurisdiction; of these it is the priests to which we turn first.

129 As well as the obvious explicit methods of criticism, there is the more nuanced presentation of speeches, for which see Chaplin (1993) esp. 120-124.

130 Central to this thesis, and to a great deal of current and recent work on Roman religion, is the tenet that religious and political activity should not, and cannot, be divorced. It was the acting magistrate, for instance, who recited the prayer formula dictated by the priest: nonetheless the fact remains that certain men were functioning as priests, and others as annual magistrates, and their authority was distinct and peculiar to the position they held. See especially the introduction to Beard & North (1990); North (1986) 257-258 on Scheid (1985a); for the status of priests Scheid (1978); Szemler (1986); on priesthood and families North (1990b).

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