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DIODORUS AND THE LENGTH OF THE SOLITVDO MAGISTRATVVM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2025

Adam Ziółkowski
Adam Ziółkowski*
Affiliation:
University of Warsaw
*
a.ziolkowski@uw.edu.pl
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Abstract

In this note I argue that the generally accepted view that Diodorus preserved a tradition which limited the fourth-century anarchy in Rome to one year is groundless, and that the author’s confused chronology of the Early and Middle Republic strongly suggests that in the source he followed the solitudo magistratuum lasted several years, as in other reports.

Keywords

anarchy in Romesolitudo magistratuumdictator yearschronologyRoman chronology in Diodorus
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 5
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 Diod. 15.75.1. Four years: Zonar. 7.24.5 (thus also Eutr. 2.3, Festus, Brev. 2, HA Tacitus 1.5, Cassiodorus and Fasti Hydatiani); five: Livy 6.35.10 (so too, in a peculiar way, the chronograph of 354: see below). See A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae: Fasti et Elogia 13.1 (Rome, 1947), 396–7.

2 S.P. Oakley, A Commentary on Livy, Books VI–X, Volume I: Introduction and Book VI (Oxford, 1997), 104–8, 645–51. The same, more concisely, in T.J. Cornell, ‘The recovery of Rome’, in CAH 7.2 (Cambridge, 19892), 309–50, at 347–9. For earlier discussion and bibliography, see G. Perl, Kritische Untersuchungen zu Diodors römischer Jahrzählung (Berlin, 1957), passim, especially 113 n. 3, 114 n. 1; A. Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1965), 1.559–62.

3 R. Werner, Der Beginn der römischen Republik. Historisch-chronologische Untersuchungen über die Anfangzeit der libera res publica (Munich and Vienna, 1963), 81–2, 119–29; see A. Drummond, ‘The dictator years’, Historia 27 (1978), 550–72, at 568; A. Drummond, ‘Appendix’, in CAH 7.2 (Cambridge, 19892), 625–44, at 627. E.H. Bispham and T.J. Cornell in T.J. Cornell (gen. ed.), The Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols. (Oxford, 2013), 3.47–8 (comment on Fabius Pictor 31 [Gell. 5.4.1–5]) remain undecided. O. Leuze, Die römische Jahrzählun. Ein Versuch, ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung zu ermitteln (Tübingen, 1909), 47–55 argued, mainly on the basis of this fragment, that Fabius was Diodorus’ source, but see Werner (this note), 123 n. 1.

4 ἐπ᾿ ἄρχοντος δ᾿ Ἀθήνησι Λυσιστράτου, παρὰ Ῥωμαίοις ἐγένϵτο στάσις, τῶν μὲν οἰομένων δϵῖν ὑπάτους, τῶν δὲ χιλιάρχους αἱρϵῖσθαι. ἐπὶ μὲν οὖν τινα χρόνον ἀναρχία τὴν στὰσιν ὑπέλαζϵ, μϵτὰ δὲ ταῦτα ἔδοξϵ χιλιάρχους αἱρϵῖσθαι ἓξ καὶ κατϵστάθησαν …

5 See Degrassi (n. 1), 386–9; T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, 3 vols. (New York, 1951–2), 1.90–4; Perl (n. 2), 79, 107, 113–14; Werner (n. 3), 174.

6 Diod. 15.76.1. ‘Almost’ because this time he is one year ahead of the Polybian synchronism. He gets fully back on track only with the omission of the last college of consular tribunes, that of 367. See Perl (n. 2), 107–8; Werner (n. 3), 173–7.

7 Drummond (n. 3 [19892]), 626; in Drummond (n. 3 [1978]), 568 n. 113 it was described as ‘perhaps an error of Diodorus himself’. Werner (n. 3), 174 limits himself to stating that ‘durch den sonst unüblichen diodorischen Ansatz der Anarchie kommen aber vier Jahre in Wegfall’; see also Werner (n. 3), 213–14.

8 Apart from listing colleges of magistrates, he sporadically refers to Roman matters in usually one-sentence mentions; even the capture of Veii is so treated, the somewhat greater length of the episode (14.93.2–5) resulting from a detailed description of the vicissitudes of a golden bowl which after the victory the Romans dedicated to Apollo and sent to Delphi. The only exception is the Gallic catastrophe, described at length in 14.113–17.

9 Perl (n. 2), passim (especially 151–61) shows that Diodorus’ fasti were compiled from a separate list of magistrates, not from his narrative source (or sources).

10 On the unique collection of chronological texts and lists compiled in Rome in a.d. 354 (hence the name Theodor Mommsen gave it: Chronographus anni CCCLIIII), see now R.W. Burgess, ‘The chronograph of 354: its manuscripts, contents, and history’, JLA 5 (2012), 345–96; J. Rüpke, ‘Roles and individuality in the chronograph of 354’, in É. Rebillard and J. Rüpke (edd.), Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity (Washington, DC, 2015), 247–69.