Valerius Antias

Not much is known about the life of Valerius Antias.

His family were the Valerii Antiates, a branch of the Valeria gens residing at least from early republican times in the vicinity of Antium. He may have been descended from Lucius Valerius Antias.^[3]

He was probably a younger contemporary of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius and lived in the times of Sulla, although some scholars believe that he was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and wrote his work after 50 BC, because he seems to have been unknown to Cicero, who does not mention him in his enumeration of famous historians.^[4] He was the most important of the so-called “younger annalists”.

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Antium

Antium

Antium was an ancient coastal town in Latium, south of Rome. An oppidum was founded by people of Latial culture, then it was the main stronghold of the Volsci people until it was conquered by the Romans.

Lucius Valerius Antias

Lucius Valerius Antias

Lucius Valerias Antias was a commander of ancient Rome. He was sent by Publius Valerius Flaccus with five ships in 215 BCE to convey to Rome the Carthaginian ambassadors, who had been captured by the Romans on their way to Philip V of Macedon.

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius was a Roman historian. Little is known of Q. Claudius Quadrigarius's life, but he probably lived in the 1st century BC.

Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar, was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.

The nearly completely lost work of Antias – cited as annales or as historiae – began its account of the Roman history with the foundation of Rome and extended at least to the year 91 BC. The second book told about the legendary Roman king Numa Pompilius, the twenty-second book about the capitulation of Gaius Hostilius Mancinus in 136 BC (this event Livy only reports in book 55 of his history). Therefore, the earlier times were reported much shorter than the contemporary history of the author.

The work of Antias was not very reliable. Livy criticizes his exaggerated numbers of killed and captured enemies in the Roman wars. Sometimes he seems to have even invented battles.^[5] But sometimes he also delivered correct values, which fact can be concluded from a comparison with some values given by Polybius.

Antias’ account of each year included the allocation of troops and provinces, important omen, battles, foundation of new colonies etc. At the end of the description of each year he reported about plays, temple inaugurations, and other news, in particular about events in the city of Rome. Under the influence of Hellenistic historiography Antias related his stories very long-winded and filled with sensationalism to entertain his readers. He embroidered the mostly short accounts of older historians with dramatic details and also recounted legends and miracles. He falsified the report about the trials of the Scipio brothers (compare Livy 38.50-60) and seems to have invented high offices and deeds of members of his house, the gens Valeria, who lived in the early Roman republic because there were no reliable sources about these early times, which could have disproved his assertions. Antias gave a rationalistic account about the discovery of the coffins with the books of king Numa, because he had the coffins uncovered by rain and not by excavation like in the older tradition.

The style of Antias was simple, but not archaic, and Marcus Cornelius Fronto (epistel ad Verus 1, 1, p. 134, 2 ed. Van den Hout) judged his language and style to be unattractive (invenuste). Therefore, he was rarely cited literally by later grammarians.^[6]

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Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy. It is also the capital of the Lazio region, the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, and a special comune named Comune di Roma Capitale. With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), Rome is the country's most populated comune and the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome, with a population of 4,355,725 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geographic location, and also as the "Eternal City". Rome is generally considered to be the "cradle of Western civilization and Christian culture", and the centre of the Catholic Church.

Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius

Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus after a one-year interregnum. He was of Sabine origin, and many of Rome's most important religious and political institutions are attributed to him, such as the Roman calendar, Vestal Virgins, the cult of Mars, the cult of Jupiter, the cult of Romulus, and the office of pontifex maximus.

Gaius Hostilius Mancinus

Gaius Hostilius Mancinus

Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was a Roman consul in 137 BC. Due to his campaign against Numantia in northern Spain, Plutarch called him "not bad as a man, but most unfortunate of the Romans as a general." During this campaign in the Numantine War, Mancinus was defeated, showing some cowardice, allegedly putting out his fires and trying to flee by night before being surrounded and forced to make peace. According to Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus was instrumental in bringing about the peace and saving 20,000 Roman soldiers. He returned home something of a hero, but Mancinus was put on trial by the senate, which refused to accept the treaty. While Gracchus and other lieutenants were saved by Scipio Aemilianus, the senate decreed that Mancinus be handed over to the Numantines, as some 20 Roman commanders were handed over to the Samnites after the defeat at the Caudine Forks in 321 BC. Plutarch does not relate Mancinus' further fate, but Appian noted that he was taken to Spain and handed over naked to the Numantines, but that they refused to accept him. He seems to have returned to Rome, where he took his seat in the senate, but in the following year, Publius Rutilius, one of the tribunes of the plebs, ordered him to vacate it, on the ground that when he had been surrendered to the Numantines, he had lost his Roman citizenship.

Polybius

Polybius

Polybius was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work The Histories, which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail.

Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Marcus Cornelius Fronto, best known as Fronto, was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician, and advocate. Of Berber origin, he was born at Cirta in Numidia. He was suffect consul for the nundinium of July-August 142 with Gaius Laberius Priscus as his colleague. Emperor Antoninus Pius appointed him tutor to his adopted sons and future emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

In one long-standing view of Antias' influence on Livy, the latter relied mainly on the former in Books 1-10 of Ab Urbe Condita Libri, the legendary history of Rome.^[5] To elucidate this possible influence, A.A. Howard compared each of Antias' fragments with the equivalent story in Livy. He deduced that there is no evidence of such influence in the first ten books. Of twenty fragments falling within the period Livy does not use any, either omitting the information, or explicitly disagreeing with it. Howard says:^[7]

"The argument that Livy made free use of Antias and mentioned him only in case of disagreement is absolutely without foundation, for we have seen fourteen specific instances in which, although Livy does not mention him, he nevertheless disagrees with his statements as known to us from other sources, or absolutely disregards them...."

For example, in Fragment 1 Acca Larentia willed her property to Romulus. Livy does not mention it. Fragment 3 mentions that exactly 527 Sabine Women were kidnapped.^[5] Livy says the number is greater than 30, and so on. For the entire period covered by Livy, 33 fragments of Antias come from Livy.^[8] He disagrees with six of these, criticizes eleven more, quotes Antias in disagreement on ten, and agrees with, but later disproves, two. Howard concludes disparagingly that

"It is on such evidence as this that we are asked to believe that Antias was the source of considerable portions of Livy's history and that Livy followed blindly, at least in the earlier part of his work. "

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Livy

Livy

Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City'', covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history.

Acca Larentia

Acca Larentia

Acca Larentia or Acca Larentina was a mythical woman, later goddess of fertility, in Roman mythology whose festival, the Larentalia, was celebrated on December 23.

Romulus

Romulus

Romulus was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of these traditions incorporate elements of folklore, and it is not clear to what extent a historical figure underlies the God-like Romulus, the events and institutions ascribed to him were central to the myths surrounding Rome's origins and cultural traditions.