2025/05/05 by Cristina Rosillo‐López · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Classical Antiquity Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/9783111705446-019
openalex publication_date 2025/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Building on the debate on the importance of hindsight in the study of the last decades of the Republic, this chapter discusses some methodological perspectives on how to analyse the past and the present and how to make justice to the experiences of those who lived through the period of the Late Republic and the transition to the Principate.Next, I offer a comparison on the strategies used by Cicero and by Victor Klemperer to cope with uncertainty in the turbulent times of the end of the Late Republic and the beginnings of the Nazi period.Their testimony is exceptional because both left a first-person account of the period (letters in the case of Cicero, and diaries for Klemperer) that was not rewritten afterwards.That analysis helps us to understand how to conceptualise and narrate moments of crisis and authoritarianism, and to incorporate uncertainty to historical narratives.After his victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, Caesar Octavian [the future emperor Augustus] returned to Rome.Among those who came forward to congratulate him, there was a man holding a raven that had been taught to say, "Ave Caesar, victor imperator!"Absolutely delighted, Octavian purchased the bird for a considerable sum.As was discovered later on, however, the owner of the raven had tried to cover all possible outcomes by training another bird.When the second raven was also presented to Octavian, it clearly uttered, "Ave, victor imperator Antoni!" 1This anecdote touches on a point central to this paper, namely, that uncertainty should be regarded as a relevant element in analyses of political transformations, and that we, as historians, ought to take into account its effects especially in moments of crisis.It is also necessary to consider the experience of uncertainty and the lack of hindsight of those who lived in the 40s and 30s BCE in order to gain a better understanding of their situation and subsequent answers and actions.After some theoretical and methodological considerations, the focus is placed here on the strategies developed by Cicero in the Late Republic and by Victor Klemperer in Nazi Germany, two people living in troubled times, for dealing with uncertainty, with the intention of identifying their coping mechanisms. Macr.Sat.2.4.29.