“I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy
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Christopher Pelling
Christopher Pelling was Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University from 2003 until his retirement in 2015, and before that was McConnell Laing Fellow and Praelector in Classics at University College, Oxford from 1975 to 2003. His books includeLiterary Texts and the Greek Historian (2000),Plutarch and History (2002),Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome (with Maria Wyke, 2014),Herodotus and the Question Why (2019), and commentaries on Plutarch,Antony (1988) andCaesar (2011), Herodotus 6 (with Simon Hornblower, 2017), Thucydides 6 and 7 (both 2022), and most recently Plutarch,Alexander (2025), a sister volume for the earlier commentary onCaesar. He is now working on a revision of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodotus, to appear in five volumes.
Abstract
Livy’s “digression” on Alexander (9.17–9) is placed when Rome is at its lowest ebb, soon after the Caudine Forks. Even so, Livy claims, Rome would have won had Alexander attacked, though Alexander had many advantages, without the restrictions facing Roman commanders — incompetent colleagues, rotating command, a lack of cohesion. There is an Augustan resonance here: those encumbrances of the republic had gone, and the cohesion of one-man rule could combine with embedded Roman values. But any suggestion of kingship was awkward, and Augustus himself was beginning to make less of Alexander. There is no direct association of the two men, only a stress on those Republican problems that were now things of the past, points about Rome rather than Alexander. Augustus allegedly commented that it was a greater thing to bring order to the world than to conquer it. Livy agrees: Rome will have nobody to fear, “provided that our current love of peace and concern for civic concord survive.”
Abstract
Livy’s “digression” on Alexander (9.17–9) is placed when Rome is at its lowest ebb, soon after the Caudine Forks. Even so, Livy claims, Rome would have won had Alexander attacked, though Alexander had many advantages, without the restrictions facing Roman commanders — incompetent colleagues, rotating command, a lack of cohesion. There is an Augustan resonance here: those encumbrances of the republic had gone, and the cohesion of one-man rule could combine with embedded Roman values. But any suggestion of kingship was awkward, and Augustus himself was beginning to make less of Alexander. There is no direct association of the two men, only a stress on those Republican problems that were now things of the past, points about Rome rather than Alexander. Augustus allegedly commented that it was a greater thing to bring order to the world than to conquer it. Livy agrees: Rome will have nobody to fear, “provided that our current love of peace and concern for civic concord survive.”
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
