The Fifth-Century Crisis

Abstract

This essay seeks to establish the parameters of our uncertainty concerning one of the most difficult periods of Roman history, the period between the traditional end of the Roman monarchy and the passing of the Licinio-Sextian legislation. In addition to some methodological observations, the essay attempts to offer a model for understanding Roman choices and decisions in a period of change and transformation.This collection of essays offers a variety of approaches to what is in many respects the most complicated and least well understood period of Roman history, viz. the period from the end of the sixth century BC, which the ancient tradition associated with the fall of the monarchy, to the Licinio-Sextian legislation of the fourth century, which at least potentially represents the moment in which the Roman republican constitution, with two annual magistrates, became a stable feature of Roman history. Although the essays in this collection also cover earlier and later periods, I shall focus on the central problems of the first century and a half of the Republic. 2Modern authors have sometimes spoken of a fifth century crisis, 3 but I am using the term here to indicate not only the possibility of a genuine historical downturn but also the highly problematic nature of our engagement with this period. Paradoxically, whilst the sixth century BC is more distant in time, and arguably less well supported by the sources, it seems to some extent rather more comprehensible. 4 It is not that we have invented a crisis because the sources have let us down; rather, the problematic nature of the source material may itself be indicative of the problems faced by central Italy at this time.1 I am very grateful to Jeremy Armstrong and James Richardson for the invitation to a highly stimulating conference and to contribute to this volume, and I am grateful also for their comments on this essay. 2 The standard treatment in English is Cornell (1995) 215-345. See Flower (2010) 35-57 for the interesting argument that this period saw several 'republics. ' Contra North (2010). 3 Notably in the collection Crise et Transformation (1990). 4 See now Lulof and Smith (eds) 2017. Part of the reason for the apparent familiarity may of course be that the ancient sources found it easier to fit the period of the kings into an existing historiographical mould, that of Greek tyranny.2 Throughout this volume, the reliability of the sources is of course a (perhaps the) key problem, 5 and the approach I want to take is not to rehearse yet again that specific methodological challenge (for which see the introduction to this volume), but to argue that there are certain approaches which are required of us when dealing with this period. It is not impossible to construct a history of the fifth and early fourth centuries BC, even if we start from a position of considerable scepticism, but we need to be highly attentive to the leaps in reasoning we are making. I want therefore to offer a reconstruction of this period which I believe to be consisten...

Debating Early Republican Urbanism in Latium Vetus: The Town Planning of Gabii, between Archaeology and History

“… 4 For a recent general approach to the difficulties of writing the history of Rome and Latium in the long fifth century, with salutary attention to methodological concerns, see Smith 2017.…”