Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic: Politics in Prose by Ayelet Haimson Lushkov
In her book, Ayelet Haimson Lushkov sets out to examine how authors wrote about magistracy in the Roman Republic, and how they used the idea of magistracy as a particularly good device to convey cultural ideas and examples. [End Page 545] She is primarily interested in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, although she expands her inquiry on occasion to include some passages from other authors, such as Cicero, Sallust, Plutarch, and Valerius Maximus. She argues that these authors used their descriptions of magistrates and magistracies to exemplify both the conflicts among competing Roman values and the ways in which these conflicts were resolved. Another primary focus of the book is Livy’s use of magistracy as a literary device with which to craft examples (exempla) for his audience to study. Because magistracies held such far-reaching importance for Romans, Haimson Lushkov believes magistrates were particularly effective literary tools; not only were they institutional leaders in the state, but they also held great cultural/historiographical and semiotic value, because they were “both the subject and the organizing principle of Roman history” (5) and “a shorthand for speaking about an entire ideological system” (6). Thus magistracy is studied here as a medium ancient authors—and Livy in particular—used to present exempla of Roman values and culture to their audience. Haimson Lushkov seeks to make three contributions with her book: to study Livy as a theoretician of exemplarity, to study magistracy as a textual phenomenon, and to study “exemplarity as a meta-cognitive tool that unifies political and literary theory” (26). She pursues these goals through close readings of several episodes in Livy’s text (supported by a few similar inquiries into other authors) that are intended to explore the many ways magistracy was used to convey fundamental ideas.
After a substantial introduction that lays out the argument and approach of the book, chapter 1 focuses on the conflict between magistracy and kinship, and what the tension between these two ideas says about the Republic itself. Several stories are considered, including: when Brutus (the founder of the Republic) as consul ordered the execution of his own sons; when the plebeian tribune C. Flaminius was dragged off the speaker’s platform by his father in 232 b.c.e.; when the consul Q. Fabius Maximus (cos. 213 b.c.e.) ordered his famous father—Fabius Maximus “the Delayer”—to dismount from his horse; and when the consul Manlius Torquatus (cos. 340 b.c.e.) executed his own son for disobeying orders. Although Roman authors often include stories intended to display and explore Roman values, Haimson Lushkov argues that these episodes have particular importance because the main players are magistrates, and therefore their actions speak about the Republic as much as about the individuals themselves. Thus exempla of conflicts between magistrates and their kin illustrate fundamental principles of the Roman state itself. She concludes the chapter by suggesting that “the exemplary tradition thus reveals the tension between father and consul as constitutive of republican magistracy, and, in the episodes analyzed here, offers an image of the magistrate as someone who simultaneously causes discomfort and feels it. The mutually driven verecundia is finally what separates republican magistracy from its tyrannical counterparts” (60).
Chapter 2 focuses on Livy’s account of the Roman disaster at the Cau-dine Forks in 320 b.c.e., which Haimson Lushkov analyzes as a rich example of consular activity and behavior. Examining the consul as a military leader, as a [End Page 546] counselor, and as a representative of Rome, the chapter focuses on the ability of Livy’s narrative to present conflicting images or ideas of the magistrate. Thus Livy struggles with the very definition of a consul, while simultaneously presenting exempla intended to instruct the reader on good magisterial behavior.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on magisterial elections as a device to explore and define the qualifications for office. Chapter 3 is a close reading...
