Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla by Matthew B. Roller (review)

In unreflective narratives of historical progress, exemplary thinking rarely receives fair treatment; it is too often misunderstood as outdated, insufficiently historicist, and crudely moralistic. Hence Roman exemplarity has sometimes been treated rather reductively, but Roller’s subtle and searching exploration of the topic sets a new standard. Observing how exemplarity sets in motion processes of community evaluation and commemoration, Roller demonstrates how deeply it is implicated in all aspects of Roman existence, from domestic relations to political competition. The opening chapter provides a theoretical and methodological overview, breaking down the process of exemplarity into four “operations” from witnessed action to the setting of a social norm which the action is taken to illustrate. Roller then considers how exemplarity is used and shaped by the discourses of rhetoric, ethics, and historiography, and what broader questions are raised by these contexts: the most immediately pressing of these is the presumption of timelessness on which exemplarity rests. This chapter is admirably clear, and provides an indispensable framework for the following chapters, which explicitly draw on its terms.

The first six of the eight chapters are organized around individual exempla (Horatius Cocles; Cloelia; Appius Claudius Caecus; Gaius Duilius; Fabius Cunctator; Cornelia mater Gracchorum) while the final two chapters consider, first, how exempla are deployed in a political debate, and secondly, how exemplarity is challenged but also adapted by Stoic ethical philosophy. In looking at the material for any given exemplum, Roller collates monumental forms of different kinds, from historical narratives and other literary texts, through the formal monuments of the civic landscape (usefully cross-referenced to a very clear map), to more ephemeral monuments such as scars, triumphal rituals, and moments of naming. The connotations of each detail in an exemplary representation are subjected to the most careful interpretation: why the focus on Horatius retaining his armor? Why is Appius in Livy represented as a sophistic speaker? What kind of honor is it for Duilius to be accompanied by a flute-player? A great strength of Roller’s analyses is that he takes absolutely nothing for granted. What emerges from the outset, therefore, is a strong sense of how exempla always negotiate difficult material in one way or another: there are, for instance, always elements of the exemplum which resist accommodation to norm-setting, or even threaten to reverse its moral character. Cloelia’s courage and daring in escaping from Porsenna also lay the Romans open to charges of perfidia. The application of the exemplum presents similar difficulties: Roller frequently turns to the idea of the “fit” between exemplum and moral, or exemplum and new situation, as when Cicero counters his assimilation to exempla of tyranny and attempts at kingship. The content as well as the use of exempla engages us with issues of the greatest complexity and significance: the nature and spheres of citizenship, and the relationship of virtue to the good of the state.

Roller uses in passing the phrase “good to think with” for an exemplum; as he discusses more extensively in the introduction, Roman exemplarity provides an alternative form of rigorous thinking to the abstractions of the philosophical schools. It is also almost entirely political both in its content and deployment, an aspect brought out particularly when Roller examines Augustus’ reshaping of Republican exempla. His focus on Cornelia’s assimilation to Octavia shows how both women are used not only to create a new sphere of the political—“public, not civic”—but also to deflect attention away from the very specific political agendas of their menfolk in favor of a vaguer ideological message of loyalty. For me, the most thought-provoking chapter was on Fabius Cunctator, as the exemplum of how exemplary thought might accommodate historical change. Cunctator’s presentation of a new, inglorious mode of action, justified as for the good of the commonwealth, seems to inaugurate an epistemic shift in political thinking, and here I...