Negotiating Greek Identity: Dionysius and the Other Otherness of the Romans

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Negotiating Greek Identity: Dionysius and the Other Otherness of the Romans

This paper deals with the historiographical work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which is of great importance to every study concerned with the subject of Hellenism: written at the dawn of the Augustan age, it bears witness to and actively engages in the shaping and reshaping of Greek identity as it was confronted with Rome’s claim to power.

The explicit intention of Dionysius’ Roman Antiquities is to reconcile his homeland, Greece, with the newly established polity of imperial Rome. The rise of Rome, for the first time in history, incorporated the οἰκουμένη into a single consistent and unitary political structure. Far from condemning Roman rule over foreign peoples, Dionysius adopts a positive and hopeful attitude towards Roman hegemony. For him, Roman imperialism is more than one people’s dominance over others. Rather, it allows the Mediterranean peoples, unified in one polity, to establish a community based on common values.Such an empire would be sustained by the educated élite sharing ethical, moral, and aesthetic values [1] —irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, the Greek Dionysius believes that it is above all Romans and Greeks who should cooperate and unite.

Addressing a (predominantly) Greek audience, [2] he urges them to accept Rome’s political leadership. According to Emilio Gabba, this advocacy of a new political era is central to the Antiquities : Dionysius seeks to impart his knowledge of Rome’s early history to his fellow Greeks and thus to reveal the evolution Rome had to undergo before growing to political importance and, at last, to world supremacy. He thereby addresses the criticism of those Greeks who regard Rome’s predominance as due to “mere chance or even the injustice of Fortune” ( δι’ αὐτοματισμόν τινα καὶ τύχην ἄδικον , Roman Antiquities 1.4.2).

Dionysius himself legitimates the Roman hegemony by pointing to its worthy origins and the values underlying its rise to power: according to his account, it is moral superiority that has led the Romans to dominate the known world. A sense of nobility and high moral purpose pervades the history of the Roman people, as Dionysius portrays them. Discipline, justice, piety, prudence, moderation—virtues of all kinds define the deeds of the Romans. These are the mores maiorum , the customs of the ancestors, to which the Romans adhere on its path to power.

Interestingly, the ancestors who bequeathed their morality to the Romans were, in fact—Greeks. The Roman state and its preeminent cultural and religious institutions are based on the successive Greek immigrations to Italy: Thus, Romans are Greeks. Dionysius’ bold assertion of Rome’s Greek roots may seem an unduly simple attempt to reconcile the two cultures. In the following, however, I shall seek to demonstrate that this is merely the tip of the iceberg in a wider discourse of cultural identity.

The claim that both peoples share a common ancestry but have undergone different evolutions sheds light on the various similarities and differences between Rome and Greece; their shared genealogy makes both intelligible. Yet these differences and similarities in detail reveal how Dionysius shaped and modelled both Roman and Greek identities, as well as how he understood their int erdependence.

Romans, Greeks, and Barbarians

At various points in his narrative, Dionysius draws on the dichotomy of Hellenes and barbarians which has been crucial in shaping Greek ethnography, historiography, and indeed Greek discourse on the Other in general. To describe Roman culture, however, traditional Greek barbarology fails to provide an apt framework. This failure, to my mind, is instructive of Dionysius’ conception of Hellenism and Romanness. I will use a fragment of the fourteenth book of his Roman Antiquities (14.6) as a test case to show how complex a system of differences and similarities Dionysius sets up between Rome and Hellas, and how he thereby transcends traditional Greek conceptions of the Own and the Other.

The short text of 14.6 forms part of the last books of the Antiquities , which are extant only in late excerpts.[5] Consequently, it is difficult to reconstruct its precise context. The general outline of books 13 to 15 is as follows: Dionysius gives his account of the turmoils of the Latin Wars, the threat to the Romans posed by the Gallic invasion, and eventually their humiliation when Rome is sacked.

In the now-lost context leading up to chapter 14.6, Dionysius must have related that the fortunes of war have changed in favor of the Roman army. When the first battles are won, the Romans find Tusculan troops among their prisoners of war.[6] As Tusculum at the time was a Roman ally, the question arises of how the treachery of the Tusculans is to be avenged. At this point in the narrative, our text begins: Dionysius relates with amazement that the Roman Senate, in spite of the offense, not only decides to grant amnesty, but decrees that all Tusculans shall be given full Roman citizenship. He seeks to explain this remarkable conduct of Rome’s senate.

Τhe chapter is transmitted in the section “On vice and virtue” ( Περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ κακίας ) of a historiographical encyclopaedia assembled in tenth-century Byzantium.[7] The Byzantine editor introduces Dionysius’ text as a prime example of the Romans’ magnanimity ( Ὅτι οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι μεγαλοπρεπεῖς ). And indeed, for Dionysius it is their noble character that prevents the Romans from indulging in short-sighted anger and impulsive decisions. Rather, they pardon short-lived offenses by former friends and allies.

In his reflection Dionysius reworks a major topic of book 13: the attitude of the victorious party towards the defeated. When occupying the city of Rome, the Gauls offered to withdraw if a ransom was paid. When the Romans agreed to the payment, the Gauls manipulated the scales. When a Roman official complains, he is derided by the Gallic chieftain with the words “woe to the defeated!” ( Antiquitates 13.9.2: ὀδύνη τοῖς κεκρατημένοις ). This arrogance, of course, does not become the Gauls, who are soon to be crushed by the Romans.

The contrast between the Romans’ gallant behaviour and the crude arrogance of the Gauls adds to Dionysius’ negative depiction of the latter. His account of their nature is a proper barbarology.[8] In 14.8, for instance, Dionysius indulges in a veritable catalogue of barbaric chracteristics: the Celts munch greedily, drink unmixed wine, sleep unduly, lay out in the shadow, become chubby and languid, and eventually effeminate.[9] These long-established stereotypes of the “alien” and “barbarian” form the background against which Dionysius portrays the Roman behaviour. Unlike the self-assured Gauls, the Romans show mercy towards the defeated enemy.

It is, however, noteworthy that with the assertion of the Senate’s clemency in 14.6, Dionysius sets off a chain of comparisons. In a first step, he states that the Senate’s high morality is unparalleled: Nearly all other peoples, we are told, give way to their momentary rage, and thereby act exactly the opposite of the Romans.

In a second step, Dionysius compares Romans and Greeks. Here again, the difference between them is expressed:

Dionysius gives two examples to demonstrate what cruel measures the Greek hegemonial powers, Sparta and Athens, have taken against their enemies: the punitive expedition of Athens against the Samians and the suppression of the Messenian uprising by the Spartans. The massive violence and cruelty of these events prompts a third comparison: Athenians and Spartans are in no way superior even to barbarians. Furthermore, Dionysius emphatically states that these events were by no means exceptional. A thousand other examples ( μυρία τοιαῦτα ), he says, could be quoted.

Dionysius draws on the dichotomy between Hellenes and barbarians, whose topoi and clichés he employs in books 13 and 14, and—and then demolishes it: he abandons the opposition of Greeks and barbarians. What ought to be an exclusive disjunction (you are either Greek or barbarian) is now conceptualised as a spectrum with different degrees and nuances: This subtle reworking of the traditional dichotomy allows Dionysius to disassociate the notions of the “barbarian” and the “alien.” You are no longer a barbarian just because you are not a Greek. The “noble savage,” so to speak, has found his way into the ethnographical thought of Dionysius—an alien who is different but morally superior.

Still, Dionysius’ conceptual sophistry leaves us in doubt: if the notion of “barbarian” does not denote anything but inhumane behaviour—why, then, does Dionysius in his depiction of the Celts dwell on classical topoi of the barbaric, [10] and not refrain from mentioning, for instance, their inordinate height [11] or their repulsive body odour?[12] More importantly still, the singularity of the Roman behaviour Dionysius initially reports can hardly be reconciled with the thought that they owe their magnanimity to Hellenic civilization. Furthermore, it is remarkable that in the very moment that Dionysius attributes Greek values to Rome, he withdraws the same values from the Greeks themselves. Romans become Greeks, Greeks become barbarians.

Hybrid identities

In a recent study on Polybius, Craige Champion explores the Greek historiographer’s presentation of Roman identity and his attitude towards the Romans.[13] He finds that Polybius’ stance is not constant, but determined by friendliness and affirmation at some times, by distance and rejection at others. Champion challenges the view that this variation can be explained in terms of Polybius’ personal development in the course of his lifetime. On the contrary, Champion understands it as a phenomenon arising from the historical and political circumstances:

In Polybius’ case, Champion says, this tension leads to an attitude of “cultural indeterminacy” [14] towards Rome.On the one hand, Polybius embeds the Romans in Greek culture and depicts them as quasi-“honorary Greeks” [15] (“cultural assimilation”); on the other hand, he chastises them as alien and barbaric (“cultural alienation”).

Although the historical and political contexts of Dionysius’ work fundamentally differ from Polybius’, Champion’s notions of assimilation and alienation are apt for the portrayal of Rome in the Roman Antiquities . Dionysius, too, detects insurmountable differences between Rome and Hellas, but struggles to integrate Rome into a Greek set of values. The project of “refashioning the concept of Hellenism” is thus continued.

In chapter 14.6 the Romans are depicted as singular and, indeed, different from all others. Accordingly, they are alienated from Hellas. In the course of the chapter, however, they are drawn near an ideal Hellenism and are, ultimately, assimilated as a prime example of true Hellenic virtue.[16] The Romans are thereby given a position that cannot be described within the dichotomous framework of Hellenism and barbarism. The Romans differ from the Greeks just as much as they differ from the barbarians. Their special position in the discourse of the “Own” and the “Other” is already implicit in the proem of Antiquitates Romanae : in two instances, Dionysius highlights the uniqueness of the Romans by opposing them to the rest of the world. The rest of the world, according to the traditional dichotomy, consists of a Greek and a barbarian half.[17] Tertium datur : Rome is the Other in another way.[18]

To my mind, the indeterminacy at the core of Dionysius’ conceptualisation of Romanness and Hellenism finds an explanation in the specific historical and political context of his writing. This becomes evident if we rephrase our observations within the theoretical framework of postcolonial studies . These analyse the literature and culture of the former colonies of modern European empires, assuming that the colonial powers have not only exerted military and political power on the conquered indigenous peoples but have—far more efficiently and persistently—influenced indigenous culture. Even long after the end of colonial rule, the culture of the former colony is necessarily established and defined through an ongoing confrontation with the erstwhile imperial center. Adoption of and defense against the previously dominant culture conditions the way postcolonial culture and, ultimately, postcolonial identity are defined.[19] In consequence, syncretism and hybridity determine the discourse of identity.

Dionysius’ implicit conceptions of Greco-Roman relations bear similarities to the hybrid-identity discourse in postcolonial societies. However, it is open to dispute to what extent the rule of ancient Rome can be compared to modern-day imperialism.[20] In antiquity, political and military power are not accompanied by cultural supremacy: rather, the Roman state politically subdues a culturally superior adversary. As Horace puts it, both Greece and Rome emerge victorious from their conflict: Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit ( Epodes 2.1.157).[21] If, however, in antiquity power relations between Greece and Rome are not as clear cut as in the case of modern-day imperialism, postcolonial theory’s insistence on the negotiability of cultural identities is relevant to our understanding of Greek self-assertion. The notion of “hybridity,” central to postcolonial theory, describes the interaction of two cultural systems, and thus denotes the same challenge to binary oppositions which seems to be effective in Dionysius’ text:

Further negotiations

Returning to our point of departure, chapter 14.6, I would like to suggest that here Greek and Roman identities are negotiated on yet another level: significantly, the question of Romanness and Hellenism arises when Dionysius discusses leniency towards the vanquished enemy. In Augustan Rome, the concept of clemency came to be of major importance and was promoted as a central Roman virtue.[22] Julius Caesar’s clemency towards former enemies and adversaries was already proverbial. Coins bearing the words clementia Caesaris were minted, and a temple for Caesar and the personified Clementia was, if not actually built and dedicated, at the least planned and discussed.[23] His son and successor Octavian was given the honorary name of Augustus for his merits in putting an end to a century of civil wars. At the same time, Augustus was granted an honorary shield. As he says ex persona propria , his four main virtues were inscribed on it: valour, justice, piety, and clemency:

In Virgil’s Aeneid , arguably the most influential text advocating the new Augustan Romanness, clementia again takes center stage. Aeneas descends to the underworld, where his father Anchises prophesies to him the future of his people. At the same time, he puts into words the political mission of the Roman people (interestingly, he does so by differentiating it from the cultural achievements of Hellas): In Dionysius’ account of the Gallic invasion, the Romans do just that: the vanquished are spared, but the superb enemy is ardently fought, and ultimately defeated. Dionysius therefore picks up a central ideologeme of Augustan Rome and reformulates it as a Hellenic virtue.[26]

Dionysius’ depiction of Rome is more complex than one would expect from the seemingly simple assertion of Rome’s Greek origins. Rather, the Roman Antiquities can be read as a document revealing how both Roman and Greek culture engage in constant self-assertion and an ongoing struggle to redefine themselves and their mutual relations.[27] The Greek historiographer experiences Rome as “das nächste Fremde,” [28] an alien culture in which he recognises—and seeks to recognise—his own.

Bibliography

Bouffier, S. C. 2002. “Denys d’Halicarnasse et l’histoire du monde grec dans les excerpta des Antiquités Romaines (livres 14-20).” In Pittia 2002b:231–264.

Büttner-Wobst, T. 1906. “Die Anlage der historischen Encyklopädie des Konstantinos Porphyrogennetos.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 15:88–120.

Champion, C. B. 2004. Cultural Politics in Polybius’s Histories. Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Flusin, B. 2002. “Les Excerpta constantiniens. Logique d’une anti-histoire.” In Pittia 2002b:537–559.

Fromentin, V. 2002. “La tradition des fragments des Antiquités romaines de Denys d’Halicarnasse (livres 12-20), ou de la fiabilité des éditions modernes.” In Pittia 2002b:11–26.

Gabba, E. 1991. Dionysius and The History of Archaic Rome. Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Hartog, F. 1991. “Rome et la Grèce: les choix de Denys d’Halicarnasse.” In Said 1991:149–167.

Hidber, T. 1996. Das klassizistische Manifest des Dionys von Halikarnass. Die Praefatio zu De oratoribus veteribus. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 70. Stuttgart.

Hölscher, U. 1994. “Selbstgespräch über den Humanismus.” In Latacz and Kraus 1994:257–281.

Hose, M. 1999. “Post-Colonial Theory and Greek Literature in Rome.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 40:299–326.

Lafon, X. 2002. “Denys d’Halicarnasse et les gaulois à travers les fragments des Antiquités Romaines (livres 14-20).” In Pittia 2002b:265–283.

Latacz, J., and M. Kraus, eds. 1994. Das nächste Fremde. Von Texten der griechischen Frühzeit und ihrem Reflex in der Moderne. Munich.

Lazarus, N. 2004a. “Introducing postcolonial studies.” In Lazarus 2004b:1–16.

Lazarus, N., ed. 2004b. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Cambridge.

Mossman, J. 2005. “Taxis ou barbaros. Greek and Roman in Plutarch’s Pyrrhus.” Classical Quarterly 55.2:498–517.

Moxon, I. S., J. D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman, eds. 1986. Past perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing. Cambridge.

Pittia, S. 2002a. Denys d’Halicarnasse. Rome et la conquête de l’Italie aux IVe et IIIe s. avant J.-C. Textes traduits et commentés. Paris.

Pittia, S., ed. 2002b. Fragments d’historiens grecs. Autour de Denys d’Halicarnasse. Rome.

Said, S., ed. 1991. ΕΛΛΗΝΙΣΜΟΣ. Quelques jalons pour une histoire de l’identité grecque. Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg, 25-27 octobre 1989. Leiden.

Schultze, C. 1986. “Dionysius of Halicarnassus and his audience.” In Moxon et al. 1986:121–141.

Smith, A. 2004. “Migrancy, Hybridity, and Postcolonial Literary Studies.” In Lazarus 2004b:241–261.

Swain, S. 1998. Hellenism and Empire. Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50-250. New York.

Weinstock, S. 1971. Divus Iulius. Oxford.

Footnotes

Note 1
It is noteworthy that Dionysius insistently draws connections between his critical literary works and the Roman Antiquities (Gabba 1991:4). In his tripartite history of Greek culture and literature, for instance—classical age/age of decline/eventual renaissance—the starting points of both new epochs are marked by an event in political history: the death of Alexander the Great leads to the decline of Greek rhetoric, the rise to power of Augustus marks its renaissance ( On the Ancient Orators , preface 1–3); cf. Hidber 1996:16.

Note 2
On Dionysius’ different audiences (including Romans), see Schultze 1986:138–141.

Note 5
On the transmission of books 14–20 see Pittia 2002a:16–23, 27–48) and Fromentin 2002.

Note 6
For the historical background cf. Livy 6.25.

Note 7
On the nature of the so-called Constantinian excerpts see Büttner-Wobst 1906, Flusin 2002, and Fromentin 2002:11–17.

Note 8
Lafon 2002:267: “Dans la pensée de D.H., le Celte est présenté comme le prototype du Barbare.”

Note 9
“There, as all gorged themselves with much food, drank much unmixed wine (the wine produced there is the sweetest of all wines after the Falernian and is the most honey-wine), took more sleep than was their custom, and spent most of their time in the shade, they gained so rapidly in corpulence and flabbiness and became so womanish in physical strength… ” ( Antiquitates Romanae 14.8).

Note 10
The clichés appear almost worn out: “Là encore, les clichés qui paraissent totalement éculés sont nombreux et, à première vue, D.H. se montre peu original” (Lafon 2002:270; emphasis added).

Note 11
Antiquitates Romanae 14.12.

Note 12
Antiquitates Romanae 13.11.1.

Note 13
Champion 2004.

Note 14
Champion 2004.

Note 15
Champion 2004:3.

Note 16
“ … the Romans are not only Greeks but are better than actual Hellenes, more truly Greek in their customs and behaviour generally, and above all in their politeia ” (Schultze 1986:133).

Note 17
“From the time that she mastered the whole of Italy she was emboldened to aspire to govern all mankind, and after driving from off the sea the Carthaginians, whose maritime strength was superior to that of all others, and subduing Macedonia, which until then was reputed to be the most powerful nation on land, she no longer had as rival any nation either barbarian or Greek ( οὐδὲν ἔτι ἀντίπαλον ἔχουσα οὔτε βάρβαρον φῦλον οὔτε Ἑλληνικὸν ); and it is now in my day already the seventh generation that she has continued to hold sway over every region of the world, and there is no nation, as I may say, that disputes her universal dominion or protests against being ruled by her” ( Antiquitates Romanae 1.3.5). “They shall have learned from my history that Rome from the very beginning, immediately after its founding, produced infinite examples of virtue in men whose superiors, whether for piety or for justice or for life-long self-control or for warlike valour, no city, either Greek or barbarian ( οὐδεμία πόλις ἤνεγκεν οὔτε Ἑλλὰς οὔτε βάρβαρος ), has ever produced” ( Antiquitates Romanae 1.5.3). In all its other occurrences, the pairing of “Hellenes and barbarians” denotes the “world in its entirety” ( Antiquitates Romanae 1.16.1, 1.29.1, 2.24.2, 2.31.3, 2.63.2, 3.11.10, 3.23.19, 4.23.2, 4.31.1, 6.8.2, 6.80.1, 8.10.2, 8.17.2, 8.27.4, 8.83.2, 11.1.2), and yet here, Rome is very rarely equated with Greece (only 4.26.2), but rather opposed to both Hellenes and barbarians. Thus Rome seems to take its stance outside of the common ethnographical framework.

Note 18
In his work on the second sophistic, Simon Swain makes a similar point which seems to corroborate my observations in Dionysius’s text: “… the Greeks continued to be fully conscious in our period of an essential shared cultural identity, mediated through a common language, that was defined not simply by its own coherence but at all times by differentiation from the barbaroi who lacked Greek culture and speech. In the authors I shall be examining later the Hellene/barbarian opposition, which had been developed long before in the classical period, is alive and kicking. Romans were apparently conceived of as a tertium quid , an unstable position that was neither one nor the other” (Swain 1998:68).

Note 19
“Nevertheless, what marks a specifically post-colonial inflection of it [sc. postcolonial literature] is the awareness that the subalternizing and silencing propensities of the colonialist representations are often—and symptomatically—evident, too, in élite representations issuing from within the colonized—and then, after decolonisation, the postcolonized (nominally independent)—society: in the language and thought of members of the political classes, national and local leaders and spokespeople, men and women of substance, the rich, the landed, the propertied, the educated” (Lazarus 2004:8).

Note 20
On the applicability of postcolonial theory to the ancient world see Mossman 2005:498–502 and the insightful article of Hose (1999). Note the slight irony that Hose’s paper dealing with cultural hegemony is, in fact, an English translation of an article originally published in German.

Note 21
At any rate, it is remarkable that one of the key metaphors of imperialism, the “ mother land” and her colonies, fails to describe Dionysius’ account of Rome. Undoubtedly, here Rome stems from Hellas, not vice versa.

Note 22
A similar parallel is drawn by Bouffier (2002:236) and by Pittia (2002a:15).

Note 23
Plutarch Life of Caesar 57.4; Appian Civil Wars 2.106; Cassius Dio 44.6.4. Cf. Weinstock 1971:228–243, Griffin 2003:159–167.

Note 26
Cf. also Pittia 2002a:124.

Note 27
“Pour nous aujourd’hui, Denys, qui apparaît comme un témoin des rapports entre la Grèce et Rome, est aussi partie prenante dans la construction d’une représentation nouvelle de ces rapports“ (Hartog 1991:156).

Note 28
This seemingly paradoxical expression was coined by the German scholar Uvo Hölscher in a discussion of the relationship between modern society and classical antiquity. This relationship, Hölscher states, is determined by the interplay of classicising appropriation of antiquity as the predecessor of modern culture, on the one hand, and the experience of its insurmountable difference on the other: “Rom und Griechenland sind uns das nächste Fremde, und das vorzüglich Bildende an ihnen ist nicht sowohl ihre Klassizität und ‘Normalität,’ sondern daß uns das Eigene dort in einer andern Möglichkeit, ja überhaupt im Stande der Möglichkeiten begegnet” (Hölscher 1994a:278). This ambiguity, to my mind, aptly describes the Greek perspective on Rome as expressed in Dionysius’ historical oeuvre.