User talk:Ifly6/Varronian chronology

Request for comments

@T8612, Avilich, and NebY: Do you have any comments on this draft article? Ifly6 (talk) 03:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

NebY

Nice work! I can't say much; my ignorance is far vaster than Cornell describes in one magnificent paragraph (p400). But on phrasing and suchlike, a few initial reactions:

1. The lead currently implies, unless carefully read, that Varro created a chronology that transformed Roman dating to BC years, which is a bit of a stumbling block for the reader. Similarly, in Construction, we go swiftly from "Livy and Dionysius used separate schemes" to "The specific years BC assigned by the various chronologies". That last could perhaps be rephrased "The specific years BC derived from the various chronolgies"; maybe tweaks rather than expositions would suffice.
2. Is it better to say (in lead and body) that Romans identified years according to the magistrates rather than named them? Livy's formulations vary so much (at random, VII 27[1]–28[2]: idem otium domi forisque mansit T. Manlio Torquato C. Plautio consulibus, but tertio anno post Satricum restitutum a Volscis M. Valerius Corvus iterum consul cum C. Poetelio factus and hos consules secuti sunt M. Fabius Dorsuo, Ser. Sulpicius Camerinus) that even "when Torquatus and Plautius were consuls" seems more like identification than naming.
3. The term "consular colleges" is unexplained and not linked; the reader might therefore imagine that all but occasional years of dictators or allegedly without magistrates were identified by the names of two consuls.
4. Would it be worth mentioning the (discredited?) excuse that the Gauls destroyed all records?
5. Cornell doesn't - I think - say the annales maximi were on bronze in eg "the three hundred years since the start of the republic", referring instead to the unlikely but widely held belief that the tabula dealbata were white noticeboards stored in the Regia, and preferring Mommsen's liber annalis. Do Wiseman and Bucher both assert they were on bronze, and are they exceptional in this? NebY (talk) 11:43, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

¶ In the lede I use Years were instead kept in reference to a certain year's consuls; I've made sure this characterisation is taken throughout instead of perhaps implying in one section that you needed the specific year's consuls (eg consulship of C Julius Caesar and M Calpurnius Bibulus vs four years after the consulship of M Tullius Cicero and C Antonius Hybrida). ¶ Substituted magisterial colleges for consular colleges; I used consular earlier because I wanted to account for "consular tribunes" but reminder of the dictator years exception are well taken. ¶ I think that, given the years are wrong even after the sack, the Livian and Plutarchian claim that the bar-bar-bar-barians™ destroyed the records can't explain the somewhat fundamental wrongness with the Varronian chronology. The claim of total destruction in Livy also does seem discredited when there is no destruction layer. ¶ Wiseman references bronze plates for the annales specifically; I can't say I'm think white noticeboards is more likely to survive: wood rots even if you paint it white. Ifly6 (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for slow response and even now I'll rush to the last point: that's Wiseman?! In 2007 (pb 2011) he was doubtful the annales predated 300 BC at all ("usually thought ... textually unreliable") but didn't mention the material; he's more interested in finding that history was passed down in plays. To my untutored eye, it's surprising Romans so prioritised record-keeping in that period that they'd inscribe annales on bronze. NebY (talk) 13:59, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, he thinks they melted in the various fires that engulfed the area and by the later republic were reconstructed. Ifly6 (talk) 05:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

At last I've read the Wiseman piece you cited, his 1996 review of Cornell's Beginnings of Rome (1995). C wrote "one firmly attested detail is that the chronicle was intimately connected with a white noticeboard (tabula dealbata).... The most likely interpretation of this fact is either that the contents of the tabula were transferred at the end of each year to a a permanent record (Mommsen called it a liber annalis), or that the pontifex maximus maintained a continuous record of events in book form ... Some such explanation is far more likely than the widely held belief that the pontifex maximus set up a new board each year, and stored the old ones in the Regia." Reviewing, Wiseman describes Bucher (1995) as "a careful recent investigation" and quotes "We ought, I think, to envisage the pontifical chronicle as a gigantic, poorly formatted, difficult to read, inscription on bronxe, probably consisting of severall individual bronze tabulae incised by a number of hands". W continues that the "chronicle was evidently displayed at the Regia" but was sceptical that they remained visible "throughout the 300 years between the fall of the Tarquins and Fabius Pictor's history".

But in Marincola's Companion in 2007 W says "it is thought that the annales began much earlier than [300 BCE] [Cornell]; but the main evidence for that position has been shown to be textually unreliable (Humm 2000: 106-109, On Cic. Rep 1.25)", Humm 2000 being in Bruun (ed) The Roman Middle Republic: Politics Religion and Historiography c. 400–133 BC. Hans Beck's piece in Marincola's Companion has a note "cf Forsythe 2000: 6-9 vs Bucher 1987 on the nature of the evidence", Forsythe 2000 being The Roman Historians of the second century BC, also in Bruun.

So it seems to me that Cornell indicates they were other than bronze, Bucher suggests but doesn't assert they were bronze, Wiseman doubts their existence, citing Humm, and Forsythe may differ from Bucher, so it would be at least WP:UNDUE for Wikipedia to state "The annales were displayed on bronze at the Regia". NebY (talk) 12:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

That's a reasonable position I think. Ifly6 (talk) 14:49, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Made some changes that just discuss them as records instead of as specifically bronze plates hung up in the atrium. Ifly6 (talk) 14:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

References

Avilich

The lead needs a bit reworking. The idea that Varro invented it is misleading, the second paragraph is unnecessary and the quoted sentence of Cornell at the end is confusing without context. The lead should certainly include the key dates (already there), a remark that it became canonical in ancient times, and a sentence along the lines of "Although the Varronian chronology is used for convenience by modern historians to establish a chronological framework for early Roman history, it is stressed that absolute dates derived from it are untrustworthy before c. 300 BC". A mention of its problems could then follow.

It should be made more clear and explicit that devices such as anarchy or dictator years were invented because Roman records were thought to be defective, and that the timeline derived from them needed lengthening. Also, we don't know for sure why the dictator years were invented; an alternative suggestion is that the date of 753 had been independently fixed for the founding of Rome (Drummond 1978, p. 567-8; Cambridge Ancient History vol. 7, part 2, p. 174).

You could also say that although Diodorus has an anarchy of only 1 year, he duplicates several consular tribunes to fill the resulting gap (A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus Book 15, p. 27-28). Avilich (talk) 18:07, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

The second paragraph being the one on AUC? Lots of Romaboos are obsessed with it even though Romans generally didn't use it. Learning that the Romans had basically no clue when the city was founded is why I got into writing this article: it's also very intuitive that AUC is nonsense when everyone disagrees when the city was founded.

Well taken on the Varro-didn't-make-it, which is in the article text. I've weakened the language to named for. Also well taken generally on the lede: I've included context that it became canonical during the Augustan age; I've also moved up the sentence on how dates prior to c. 300 BC are broken.

What kind of structure would you suggest re explaining the dictator years and construction? The current framework uses explanation of the dictator years as an introductory point for Cornell, Forsythe, and others' beliefs about how the chronology was constructed. Do you have an idea on how else that can be set up elegantly? Ifly6 (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

(Separately.) Could you clarify on the alternative suggestion? Re CAH² 7.2 p 174, I can't find a mention of a synchronism for Rome's founding date but did see mention of the synchronism of the Gallic sack with Greek history. I did find the suggestion that the dictator years were added to make Rome older (An alternative suggestions is that these years have bene inserted to reach a new earlier date for the state of the republic or the foundation of Rome; Drummond 1978 p 568) but nothing on it being independently fixed. Ifly6 (talk) 02:27, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Basically I meant that mentioning (in the Problems section) the dictator and anarchy years straightaway, while only actually explaining why they were invented much later (in the Sources and method section), is likely to confuse the general reader. This can be solved by simply adding a sentence under "Problems" saying that Roman records before c. 300 BC were thought to be unreliable and incomplete, so that ancient authors resorted to inserting bogus years in the fasti (the specific methodologies involved, such as the synchronisms with Greek history, can still be elaborated on in the next section, as they already are). Without this, the first mention of the anarchy and dictator years looks gratuitous and out of context, and doesn't help the reader understand it.

By "independently fixed" (I should have worded it better) I was just referring to that argument by Drummond about raising the date of Rome's foundation, not to any specific synchronism. I mentioned it because, although some of our sources suggest that both the anarchy and the dictator years were invented to link the Gallic sack with the Peace of Antalcidas, the dictator years (in combination with the anarchy years) in fact destroyed that synchronism by raising the date of the Gallic sack to 390 (as the sources also acknowledge: Drummond, 567-8; Cornell, 400). So, we don't 100% know which chronological conundrum the dictator years were meant to solve; Drummond's suggestion is thus one we can include in the text as well. Avilich (talk) 18:53, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some modifications based on the second suggestion. Avilich (talk) 19:45, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Ifly6 (talk) 14:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

T8612

• Thanks for tackling this difficult subject. I wouldn't be so assertive about the Annales Maximi, there are many disagreements among scholars about them. Bruce Frier's book Libri Annales Pontificum Maximorum: The Origins of the Annalistic Tradition says that they date from the time of Augustus. I wanted to write about these books, but there is so much literature that I gave up. You should read Stephen Oakley's Commentary on Livy, which deals a lot with these problems of chronology and the Annales Maximi.

As an aside, my opinion about these "missing years" is that they were the result of the messy calendar of early Rome. I've read mentions of consulships lasting more or less than 12 months in the 5th-4th centuries, which could have led to a gap of several years after two centuries. The problem is that ancient and modern historians, such as Varro, Dionysius and Degrassi, have assumed that 1 consulship=1 year. The consular tribunes also look very suspicious in this regard; they might not have served exactly for 1 year or been elected at the same time. T8612 (talk) 00:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Archaic Rome seems a land filled more with disagreements than agreements. Regardless, how do you think I should present the information (taking into account disagreements) on how the chronology was constructed? Also, if the list of consuls didn't come from the annales maximi where did they come from? And why do the lists agree in large portions? And if the answer is "some previous chronicle", then do you think it would be okay to say Chronicles, sometimes identified as the annales maximi, kept by Roman priests and families are the main source of the consular lists? Ifly6 (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)