History Old and New: A Perspective*

Echos du Monde ClassiqueiClassical Views XXXIII, n.s. 8, 1989, 333-340 HISTORY OLD AND NEW: A PERSPECTIVE· 333 The torrent continues: in Roman Papers IV and V a further forty-two of Professor Syrnc's articles and essays are now to hand (a total of just over seven hundred pages), written, merely, between 1981 and 1985. They follow fast on The Augustan Aristocracy (1986), the thirty chapters of which were prepared in the decade 1972-1982, and the recent publication of four other volumes of papers composed over a long period of time (Roman Papers I-II [1979], III (1984) llistoria Augusta Papers [1983]). Rate of productivity and quantity of output equally impress (or depress), and there is no sign of abatement. The accomplishment is prodigious. For summary of the contents of the new collection I quote Symc's editor (who is again the compiler of an important index): The younger Pliny and Tacitus are to the fore, with a variety of other authors not far behind: Strabo, the Senecas, the elder Pliny, Statius, Martial, Quintilian, Arrian, and Cassius Dio . Emperors, naturally, are prominent: starting with Caesar Augustus and Tiberius, although-in comparison with RP i-iiithese two recede, with more attention going to the Flavians and Antonines, above all to Hadrian. But other figures emerge into the light: Italians, such as Bruttius Praesens, the friend of Pliny and of Hadrian, and an assortment of Transpadane notables; a glittering array of eastern magnates, from Julius Quadratus Bassus to Avidius Cassius; and the 'Hispano -Narbonensian nexus' that produced the Antonine dynasty, Sura and Servianus, the heirs of Domitius Afer, the Pedanii, Dasumii, Calvisii. A remarkable galaxy of persons barely mentioned in the ancient literature, or known only from epigraphy, is redeemed for history.' Redeemed for what kind of history, the question will occur at once-with a response immediately predictable: for still, as always in the past, "the true subject," in Syme's estimation, "is the history of the governing class" (703)- "the better sort," as he continues to call them is a much-used phrase that today presses on the offensive. As always, therefore, there is much on "government • An essay in review of Ronald Syrnc, Roman Papers IV and V, edited by Anthony R. Birley (Oxford 1988), and of Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles 1987). This review article was completed in October 1988 . Its author and the editors of EMC /CV record with regret the death of Sir Ronald Syme on September 4, 1989. 1 Roman Papers IV, v (Birley, in language plainly assimilative). 334 K.R. BRADLEY and careers, the rise of aristocracies and their local origins " (604), much on "the constant renewal of the upper order in Rome of the Caesars" (158) . As always , scorn is poured on the inadequacies of biographically contrived history (45; 223; 703, etc.-[to the reader's enervation, it must be saidlj.? and as always it is prosopography, the "experimental science" (e.g. 52), the "indispensable science and art" (552), that Syme employs to pursue his central theme . Elitist history in consequence, the priority of which is explicitly avowed in the remarkable conclusion to the very first paper ("Greeks Invading the Roman Government"): The concept of elite, like the word itself, enjoys a certain disfavour in the modern time . Historical scholars hip takes to embracing the labouring poor with eager solicitude or with doctrinaire affection. Not to much profit or exhil aration, at lea st as concerns the study of antiquity. Peasants and slaves did not speak or write, their cond ition denied them freedom of actio n. By good fortune, the Hellenes, although not alw ays in pos session of the lib erty which they cherish even to exce ss, exhibit and avow a strong tendency to be active, visible, and vocal.' The sentiment there conveyed would appeal , no doubt , to Gertrud e Himmel farb , who in a recent book has sought to resist the dominance in the historical profession at large of the "new history" -a type of history often populist in stamp and inimical to political narrative of a traditional kind -with every weapon of rhetoric and polemic...