Alain M Gowing

University of Washington, Classics, Faculty Member

University of Washington, History, Faculty Member

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Address: Department of Classics
Box 353110
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195

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Bilal Orfali

American University of Beirut

Tallinn University

Ucla

Macquarie University

University of Toronto

Andrew Wilson

University of Oxford

Nihat Celik

San Diego State University

Francesca Gazzano

University of Genova

Andrea Brazzoduro

Università Degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"

José d'Encarnação

Universidade de Coimbra

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Books by Alain M Gowing

Empire and Memory. The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture. Cambridge Univ. Press 2005

The official blurb from Cambridge University Press: Despite the fact that the Roman Republic cam... more

The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1992

The Classical World, 1994

The fundamental purpose of this book is to compare the perspectives and methods of two Imperial R... more The fundamental purpose of this book is to compare the perspectives and methods of two Imperial Roman historians, Appian (ca. AD 92-165) and Cassius Dio (ca. AD 162-239), through a detailed comparison of their accounts of the triumviral period in Roman history (44-35 BC). As virtually the sole surviving historical sources for the period, the Histories of Appian and Dio are crucial to our understanding of the turbulent years between the assassination of Julius Caesar and the establishment of Augustus as the first Roman emperor. But as representatives of a long tradition of Greeks writing Roman history and, more significantly, as members of the Roman Imperial bureaucracy, Appian and Dio merit study in their own right. Indeed, comparison of the two reveals numerous dissimilarities that can only be adequately explained by considering the impact of their own particular circumstances on their comprehensive Roman histories. Most studies of these two historians, however, have concentrated on their reliability as historians. This study, by contrast, seeks to show how the differing triumviral narratives of Appian and Dio reflect the evolution of historical writing between the second and third centuries AD, when the Roman empire passed from the period of its greatest prosperity to that of irreversible decline.

Papers by Alain M Gowing

From the annalists to the Annales: Latin historiography before Tacitus

The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus

What, one wonders, was in the history section of Tacitus' library? At the core of the Greek s... more What, one wonders, was in the history section of Tacitus' library? At the core of the Greek section, we may safely assume, would reside Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, with Polybius close by. Interestingly enough, however, in his extant writings Tacitus finds no occasion to mention any of these authors (Xenophon is mentioned once, as a philosopher, at D . 31.6); and his debt to the Greek historiographical tradition has never been fully explored - largely because it is not at all clear how great that debt is (in distinct contrast to his predecessors Sallust and Livy, whose respective debt to Thucydides and Herodotus is mentioned explicitly by Quintilian, Inst . 10.1.101). Rather, the influences at work on Tacitus seem to lie more substantially and understandably on the Latin side. Yet even here the list of Roman historians actually named by Tacitus is markedly circumscribed: no early annalist receives mention. In fact, with the exception of Julius Caesar (and two references to the Sullan historian Cornelius Sisenna), he names no historian prior to Sallust and Livy. The historical work of Asinius Pollio receives cursory notice, most significantly in the great speech of the historian Cremutius Cordus at A. 4.34.4. With respect to those writing after Livy, in the Annals Tacitus identifies as sources for various pieces of information Pliny the Elder, Cluvius Rufus and Fabius Rusticus, as well as the memoirs of Agrippina the Younger and the Neronian general Domitius Corbulo.

The Imperial Republic of Velleius Paterculus

A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, 2017

Appian, of Alexandria

Empire and Memory: Bibliography

Word-Order Transference Between

Forgetting Germanicus: Reading Valerius Maximus through Tacitus’ Tiberian Books

Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla, 2021

Valerius Maximus characterizes the times in which he lives as an aetas felix, and Tiberius, as op... more Valerius Maximus characterizes the times in which he lives as an aetas felix, and Tiberius, as optimus princeps (2.praef.). This contrasts markedly with the Tacitean view of a period of unrelieved misery, of the emperor as ‘savage’ (Ann. 1.74.1-2). What would Valerius have made of the later historian’s account of the emperor and the reign for which he expresses such admiration? This paper addresses this (admittedly fanciful) question by applying the moral and ethical standards promoted in the FDM to Tacitus’ account. Concentrating on a representative set of exempla from the FDM, I ‘map’ these onto various comparable events or individuals in Tacitus. The FDM of course often addresses concerns that surface in Tacitus, though two examples must suffice here. Tacitus devotes considerable space to mutiny among the Pannonian legions in AD 16, precipitated by the accession of Tiberius, whose authority (channeled through his son Drusus) fails to quell the disturbance (Ann. 1.16-30). While the instigators will ultimately be punished, it is only through the happenstance of an eclipse that the soldiers retreat (1.28). At FDM 2.7, Valerius raises the issue of militaris disciplina, the stabilimentum Romani imperii ad hoc tempus, offering several anecdotes about Republican generals who proved effective at exerting discipline. This stands in stark contrast to the largely mismanaged events of AD 16 described by Tacitus. A similarly comparable episode is Tiberius’ persecution of Aemilia Lepida in AD 20. Tacitus conjures a memorable tableau in which Lepida, brought up on a series of charges, including treason, makes a scene in the Theater of Pompey in order to protest her treatment by the emperor (3.23.1). Whereas Tacitus’ sympathies quite clearly lie with Lepida, Valerius has little patience for such displays by women. At FDM 8.3 he sharply criticizes, and provides examples of, women whose condicio naturae et uerecundia stolae did not discourage them from making a spectacle of themselves in legal matters (8.praef.). This project draws on, among others, studies by Andreas Weileder (Valerius Maximus: Spiegel kaiserlicher Selbstdarstellung, Munich 1998) and Isabella Wiegand’s important Neque libere neque vere (Tübingen 2013), both of which are concerned with Valerius’ place in the intellectual discourse of the Tiberian period. My particular aim, however, is to juxtapose the Tiberian period’s most significant author and moralist with the fullest and most problematic historical account of the period we possess. The distinctions laid bare are striking, and throw into relief two very different views of the Tiberian regime, held by authors of different generations and with what appear to be fundamentally dissimilar political and moral values.

Sextus Pompeius

Cassius Dio on the Reign of Nero

Sprache und Literatur. Einzelne Autoren seit der hadrianischen Zeit und Allgemeines zur Literatur des 2. und 3. Jahrhunderts (Forts.), 1997

Cassius Dio and the City of Rome

Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician, 2016

The presence of the physical city of Rome in Livy and Tacitus in particular has been discussed in... more The presence of the physical city of Rome in Livy and Tacitus in particular has been discussed in the scholarship (e.g., Jaeger 1997, Ash 2007, Rouveret 1991), but despite the fact that he references the monuments and buildings of Rome more frequently than his Latin predecessors, Dio’s interest in the city has not received similar attention. This paper argues that an appreciation of Dio’s perspective on Rome, and of how the city works itself into his narrative, deepens our understanding not only of Dio’s experience of Rome, but also of the ways in which this important historian draws on the Roman historiographical tradition in which he worked…and the ways in which he departed from it. The significance of Rome and its buildings for Dio is seen to lie chiefly in their function as both a symbol and theater of power; as a place where divine displeasure may be made manifest; and as a device for establishing Dio’s own authority, as he impresses on the reader that he is describing the city from personal experience of the place in which the action occurs, in narratives of both his own time and of the past (e.g., 55.8.4; 74[73].1.3–5; 74[73].4.3; 75[74].4.6–7; cf. 73[72].18.4). Because he lived in Rome under Septimius Severus and the greatest transformation of the city since the time of Augustus, whose building program Severus is believed to have consciously imitated (e.g., Cooley 2007, Barnes 2008), Dio’s experience of Rome must have had something in common with that of Livy (cf. 77[76].16.3) and yet the city does not imprint itself on his History in precisely the same way as Livy’s did on his.

Word-Order Transference between Latin and Greek: The Relative Position of the Accusative Direct Object and the Governing Verb in Cassius Dio and Other Greek and Roman Prose Authors

Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 1999

T HROUGH statistical analysis of a great number of ~entences, we confirm one major difference bet... more T HROUGH statistical analysis of a great number of ~entences, we confirm one major difference between Latin and Greek word order, and we explore the ramifications of this observation for some possible cases of word-order transference between Latin and Greek. The difference to which we refer concerns the positioning of the accusative direct object before or after the verb governing it. That there is a significant difference in the Greek and Latin distributions will come as no surprise to Classical linguists: it has long been observed that Latin has a greater tendency to place the verb at the end of the clause than does Greek. From this fact alone one might predict that the direct object in Latin is more likely to precede than to follow the verb on which it depends than is the case in Greekalthough, logically, this need not be the case. In our study we tested this prediction empirically by tabulating the direct object distributions in sixty passages written by fifteen Latin and ten Greek prose authors. Each passage was randomly selected in the text of an author. We analyzed the first one hundred direct objects in the accusative Bernard Frischer eta/.

Alain M Gowing

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