In his book The Fall of the Roman Republic and related essays, published in 1988, Peter A. Brunt wrote:
CHAPTER 1
The Fall of the Roman Republic
[concluding paragraphs]
…The success of natural scientists in 'explaining' the infinite variety of the phenomena they study, by showing how their correlation can be expressed in relatively few and highly generalized hypotheses or 'laws', has encouraged the hope that political or social 'scientists' will be able to account for phenomena in a similar fashion. So far this hope does not seem to have been realized. Scientific laws command assent only in so far as they cover all the known phenomena; once it is seen that they fail to do so, they must be discarded or amended. No hypotheses have been formulated with a like combination of simplicity, exactitude, and exhaustiveness to make all the phenomena of human behaviour in society intelligible.
For example, suppose that Marxism fully elucidates the transitions from one 'mode of production' to another: it still appears to leave unexplained the great variety of 'superstructures', political, social, and cultural, supposedly erected on the economic basis of society, which can coexist and change with an identical 'mode of production'. In the Marxist view the 'slave mode of production' governed the economy both of democratic Athens and of the Roman world; how then do we account for the innumerable differences between them? The great political change at Rome from Republican to monarchic institutions is equally inexplicable by Marxist theory.
Such general theories, like the economic or social models, which some historians have learned to employ, presuppose a degree of uniformity in human behaviour and in the effects and development of institutions (themselves partly dependent on the physical features of the environment in which particular societies are moulded) which, though founded on empirical observations, they tend to exaggerate. Like the mere use of analogies between conditions in societies which resemble each other at certain points, analogies which models systematize, they may enable the historian to devise lines of inquiry which the simple inspection of the evidence at his disposal for the period he studies, and of the interpretations placed on it by writers within that period, might not have suggested; and closer scrutiny may uncover indications that factors were at work similar to those more amply documented for other ages or lands.
Still, conclusions that arise from this procedure must be tested by the whole body of relevant facts that his evidence discloses; they must at least be shown to be congruent with those facts, and they are susceptible, if congruence is lacking or incomplete, of refutation or modification; in the nature of things they can never be entirely verified, any more than scientific 'laws', which are no more than provisional hypotheses that account for the phenomena so far observed.
I am of course aware that the very concept of historical facts can be treated with scepticism, but then this scepticism must apply with equal force to all the general theories or models, since they too rest on the premises that there are facts that can be discovered about human behaviour which can also be systematically correlated.
In practice no systematic theory can explain without remainder the complex interweaving of human activities, especially if the course of events can be altered by the apparently contingent influence of individuals. And on this premiss the historian can never provide any complete explanation of the past. The origins of the personality of every individual are necessarily hidden from him. Moreover, he can seldom comprehend it as it was. His only direct evidence would be a man's own intimate revelations of his ideas and feelings, and even then doubts would arise whether any man truly understands himself. Such revelations are rarely available, and in the late Republic for none but Cicero, or rather for Cicero only in the last twenty years of his life.
In default of direct evidence, what can the historian make do with?
In our dealings with those around us, we may start by supposing that they act for much the same reasons as we think from introspection that we ourselves do; when it becomes manifest that their conduct cannot be so explained in all cases, we take account of what they and others say of the motives that inspire them, or of current views, derived from experience, about the general springs of action.
As we must allow that men in other ages and lands did not necessarily behave in exactly the same way as those in our own society, we must similarly consider how they interpreted their own conduct or that of their contemporaries and what kinds of desire they supposed to have decisive effects.
Thucydides makes Athenian spokesmen plead that the policy of their city was dictated by the three most powerful impulses, honour, fear, and material gain. In this analysis there is nothing 'desperately alien' from our own perceptions, though we might be less ready to accord so large a place in human motivation to 'honour'; certainly to Greeks, and also to Romans, the pursuit of power, status, prestige, fame among living men and in the recollections of posterity, seemed to be as dominant as the passion for economic gain, and just as rational; we must beware of thinking that Greeks or Romans conformed to models of human behaviour constructed by political economists; the value that Romans set both on dignitas and on libertas is significant in this regard.
Thucydides ignored here any influence of moral imperatives, which he probably thought irrelevant to inter-state relations, but which he could elsewhere recognize as capable of influencing men's treatment of their fellow-citizens; and we must always allow for the possibility that men felt themselves bound to fulfil traditional obligations both to the state and to those with whom they had private ties; this too, if they reflected on it, might be part of their honour. However, any such general identification of possible types of motive hardly enables us to determine which motive, or what mixture of motives, operated on a particular individual in a particular conjuncture, though it may be more helpful for an understanding of the objectives of states, or of whole classes or orders within states.
If we try to discover why Pompey, for instance, acted as he did, then in default of direct evidence, we have to resort to conjectures based on an estimate of his personality, which we construct, partly from what was said of him by contemporaries who knew more of him than we do… But contemporaries might be biased or insensitive … Cicero knew Pompey and Caesar well, but he often found Pompey inscrutable, and certainly misjudged Caesar …
… The difficulty in discerning the true personality of an individual and ascertaining the reasons for his actions at any given moment besets all historians. It is compounded for the historian of Rome by his frequent ignorance about the most important events. Their relative order, not to say their absolute dating, is sometimes uncertain; when the sequence of events is unknown, it is more than usually hazardous to trace causes and effects. Little may be recorded of the content of laws which we can none the less see to have been pregnant with grave consequences: how can we say what the legislator intended when we cannot be sure what he did? …
… Continually we have to draw on meagre excerpts and summaries of detailed histories now lost, whose identity and reliability cannot be established, made by late writers whose ignorance and carelessness distorted what they transmit; comparison with the contemporary evidence supplied by Cicero, especially in his letters, shows how prone to error they were, and they cannot be more trustworthy in those parts of their works which we cannot check in the same way. To a surprising extent, because of the gaps in Cicero's correspondence and its allusive character, these late 'authorities' still remain indispensable for Cicero's time … Eyewitness accounts are rare, documents few and fragmentary. The personality of a leading figure may not be the most dubious element in any modern reconstruction. …
The ideal history in my judgement would combine analysis of enduring physical and institutional factors with a narrative exhibiting the contingent effect of individual actions. For the historian of Rome the former task, to which this volume is largely devoted, is no less difficult than the latter. With the dearth of archival material and the lack of statistics accessible to modern and to a lesser degree to medieval historians, he has to draw his analyses of political, social, and economic conditions in large part from the same inadequate sources from which a narrative is constructed, supplemented by allusions and anecdotes; he can but seldom turn to contemporary descriptions, such as the Roman writers on agriculture supply; and these are far from being comprehensive and are notably deficient in the numerical data required for economic history.
It is easier to establish that the evidence does not justify some modern analyses than to see just where the truth lies. It may well be that I have asserted my own conclusions at times with undue confidence. It is irksome to present what it seems reasonable on the evidence to believe with reiterated provisos that some degree of probability is the most that can be justly claimed.
The historian of Rome can be likened to a man standing at the entrance of a cavern of vast and unmeasured dimensions, much of it impenetrably dark, but here and there illuminated by a few flickering candles. [END]
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The Source has been:
Peter Astbury Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and related essays, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1988
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