Communities and Collectives

Abstract This chapter analyses the depiction of large groups of people in the Roman History. Starting with Civil Wars book 1, it argues that the wide range of different oppositions which Appian uses in explaining the political crises of the late Republic (people (demos) vs. senate; rich vs. poor; country dwellers vs. city dwellers) is deliberate; Appian sees these different oppositions as potentially feeding into each other; he is not merely lazily compiling or misunderstanding different sources, as earlier scholarship has sometimes assumed. The chapter observes that some characteristics of how Appian delineates group behaviour (especially an emphasis on searching out pretexts, calculation of self-interest, and a tendency to adopt individual champions) remain constant across the books of the Civil Wars (group behaviour at Rome in the earlier books being generally less often in focus). At the same time, however, Appian employs a technique of ‘repetition with variation’: some troubling behaviours in manipulating collectives get demonstrably worse as the Civil Wars progress (such as the use of donatives); his presentation of motive before Philippi recalls, but, in so doing, indicates a deterioration from, how people were thinking before Pharsalus. In addition, different collectives do not remain equally prominent at different points in the narrative. The Roman people, much to the fore at points in Civil Wars book 1, are almost impotent by book 5, in sharp contrast to the depiction of the army.