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K.R. Walters: Time and Paradigm in the Roman Republic69 Time and Paradigm in the Roman Republic1 Kenneth R. Walters "Measure, time, and number are nothing but modes ofthought."—Spinoza The Romans of the libera respublica dated the events of their history by die annual tenure of their chief magistrates, consuls or military tribunes with consular power. An epochal system of dating ab urbe condita was used by some, beginning by the second century, but it proved unserviceable, as diose who adopted it could not agree on a common date for the foundation of Rome (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.74). The consular fasti proved therefore to be the basis of Roman dating diroughout the RepubUc, and the recording of history was accordingly annaUstic in nature for many hundreds of years. How the Romans viewed history was in important ways influenced by this method of dating and recording events. The chief magistracies were closely held by a narrow oligarchy whose membership changed only slowly and slightly over the course of the Republic, and the families of this oUgarchy used a nomenclature marked by a striking homonymy which often made it difficult, for some impossible, to distinguish events or deeds carried out under the tenure of like named eponymous magistrates. Further, dating by names rather than numbers inhibited historical analysis based on die calculation of ranges and extents. It also made it difficult to gain a sense of 'before and after' and therefore of 'cause and effect' as we conceive of it. As a consequence, the Romans of the Republic lacked a sense of distance from the past or a notion that the past was different from die present, unrepeatable, or irretrievable. Instead, they could see the events of the past and the present as models, as paradigms, or even as copies of each other, as 1 All dates in this paper are B.C. unless otherwise indicated. Thanks are due to Professors M. Giordano, J. Langlois, and D. Mulroy for their advice and suggestions and especially to Ms. D. Kelly for her help as graduate research assistant. The paper also benefited from the remarks of this journal's anonymous referees. Translations of the Latin or Greek are mine, except where attributed to others. 70Syllecta Classica 7 (1996) close rather than distant, as equatable and easily transposed, even substitutable, sometimes as identical and indistinguishable. In sum, their view of time and history was radically different from that of the modem age, which measures and quantifies time witii exquisite precision and ruthlessly enumerates events on an ordered timeline for which sequence is paramount, uniqueness necessary, and therefore identity impossible. This paper endeavors to investigate in some detail the origin and nature ofthis 'paradigmatic' view of time and history for the Romans ofthe Republic and to delineate its differences from our own 'syntagmatic' chronology and mode of historical analysis. Probably right from the beginning of the Republic the Roman chief pontiffs kept public records of important events as they occurred (tabulae pontificum): dedications, eclipses, famines, festivals, prodigies, triumphs. The pontifex maximus kept a running list for each year on a whitened board (tabula dealbata) set up at the pontifical domus publica.1 Its purpose may have been sacral; more probably, it functioned when current as a public gazette; subsequently, as a source ofprecedents. When die annual records were retired and preserved, they were dated by reference to the chief magistrates of the year, consuls or miUtary tribunes with consular power. It is generally agreed these early archives were not very systematic or accurate. In any case, the records for early years of the Republic, if incomplete or lost, were assiduously fabricated (e.g., Plutarch, Numa 1.1-3). In 130 P. Mucius Scaevola became pontifex maximus and brought the tabula to an end (Cicero, Orator 2.52). It has been commonly assumed that Scaevola then produced an edition of this early record, called the annales maximi, in eighty books, listing the principal military, political and sacral events of each year from the beginning of Rome's history (ab initio rerum Romanarum) down to his own day. This chronicle is lost to us, but the material it embodied found its way into various later writers...

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