The Decemvirate and the Second Secession of the Plebs (451-449 BC): a Historiographical fabula

Meunier, Nicolas [UCL]

The alto-republican period is probably the one in which the myth/history distinction arouses the most passionate debate among moderns. If the traditional account of this period is generally considered to be more historically reliable than that of the royal period, no one would deny that it is the result of a mythico-narrative reworking that took place over several centuries and whose outcome can be found in the works of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The theme of the patricio-pebeian conflict, in particular, perfectly illustrates the inextricable character of myth and history in Roman historiography of the high periods: if the reconstruction of its memory became an ideological weapon at the time of the opposition between optimates and populares, the latter having not hesitated to project late realities onto the history of origins for political purposes, can we deny any historicity for the high periods? This paper intends to reopen more precisely the file of plebeian secessions and their context in a comparative perspective, by focusing our attention on the differences in treatment between Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The focus will be on three aspects. The first concerns the exempla which are obvious "mythical" outgrowths of the narrative (the intervention of Menenius Agrippa and the story of Verginia): on which points did Livy and Dionysius respectively insist more and for what reason? The second aspect that we will approach (much less studied by the Moderns than the previous one) is that of the typology of the characters in the parts of the narrative considered more reliable on the historical level. Here myth and history are inextricably linked. Although based on a presumably authentic memory, the traditional narrative does not refrain from staging the characters and actors of the story (whether patricians or plebeians) by lending them very typical behaviors according to predefined positive or negative moral values (gravitas, superbia, moderatio, etc.). But there are strong differences in this respect between Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Finally, the third aspect that we plan to develop in the course of this paper concerns the alleged causes of the plebs' secessions. Livy and Dionysius do not insist on the same points in the same way, and this is perhaps indicative of a difference of intention and purpose in the mythico-narrative reworking of the history of the conflict of orders in these two historians.