Principal Researchers:         Dr J. Lea Beness                                               Dr T.W. Hillard
                                                     Department of Ancient History                           Department of Ancient History
                                                     Macquarie University                                         Macquarie University
 

The Macquarie Roman Biographical Dictionary Project aims to provide a repertorium of biographical data based upon the painstaking work, learned insights and bold hypotheses of previous generations of prosopographers, in the belief that the time has come to take stock in this area of intellectual endeavour.  It owes a particular debt to the monumental work undertaken by Fr. Münzer for his biographical articles in Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft and that of T.R.S. Broughton in his Magistrates of the Roman Republic and its various supplements.  Broughton himself said of his work:

         "[The Magistrates of the Roman Republic] is not designed to serve as a complete prosopography of the Roman Republic, the necessary scale
          of which would take us too far afield, but may help to clear the way for one."

The last English language dictionary of this type and scale was that of William Smith, covering both Greek and Roman Biography, first published in 1844.   The present work is founded in the firm belief that the insight afforded into Roman republican culture by prosopography retains its validity to this day, as witnessed by the heavy use of prosopographical data (often, unfortunately, based upon dated manuals) in recent social historical studies.  At the same time the dictionary aims to cater for a wider range of interests by using a biographical entry, where appropriate, to illustrate a variety of aspects of Roman culture and history, information that will be readily accessible through cross references and a number of indices.

The preliminary volume is devoted to the years 168-111 B.C., that is, the age of Scipio Aemilianus and the Gracchi, an age of transition in which the twin themes of Rome’s impact on the Mediterranean and the impact of other Mediterranean cultures upon Rome, as well as the theme of Rome’s evolving self-definition, can be explored with profit.  The span of a period covering two generations allows the illumination of historical developments and dynastic successions.  The period opens with the battle of Pydna which marks the personal advent of Scipio Aemilianus upon the historical stage, the eclipse of Macedonian power and the establishment, in the view of the contemporary Polybius, of Rome as the leading Mediterranean world power.  It encompasses the destruction of Carthage, of Corinth, and of Numantia; and the eruption of civil strife in Rome on an unprecedented scale (the beginning of the so-called Roman Revolution).  In the same period the demography of the city of Rome was transformed; as was its image.  Of the architect Hermodorus, it can be said that he "changed the face of Rome in the space of less than a generation".  Hellenistic culture made inroads into the households of the Roman nobility, a Roman road was laid across the south of France and Roman travellers reached the cataracts of the Nile.  The period closes with the dismantling of the Gracchan agrarian reforms and the opening of Rome’s Numidian war which would usher in the age of the great warlords.

The body of the volume is comprised of a prosopographical repertory with currently over a thousand individuals registered.  (It is expected that this number will rise during the research still to be undertaken.)  The register is alphabetically arranged and the bulk of entries is comprised of profiles of Roman office-bearers.  All magistrates whose highest office falls within this period are included.  The register is also inclusive of all members of Roman households known by name; bearers of ambiguous names [e.g. traders in Delos, who might be Roman or Italian]; and forty-four non-Romans who spent an appreciable time in Rome and/or for whom the only surviving record of their existence relates to activities in the city.  (These last 45 do not include those sent as ambassadors, and whose only known role was ambassadorial, or those brought as 'victims' of a triumph.)  Those who held no office, such as equites, literary artists and architects, are included if their floruit falls within the period.  Entries are restricted to political and social profiles.  In the case of individuals significant in the literary, artistic and academic spheres, reference will be made to a fuller bibliography but discussion of their achievements in these spheres will be limited.  Non-Romans of significance to Roman history by virtue of ambassadorial exchange, military co-operation or confrontation etc., but not included as one of the forty-four mentioned above, will be registered in an alphabetically arranged appendix.

The volume will also contain twenty-one fasti (calendrical lists), such as a chronological table, ‘Collective and anonymous magisterial activity 168-111’, ‘Prodigies and Omens 168-111’, a list of known laws 168-111, and a list of known marriages 168-111.

These will be followed by 35 tables of Non-Roman Dynasts, Eponymous and Annual Magistrates for the period 168-111, an index of Geography, Ethnography and Topography, an index of Institutions and Deities, a subject index and appendices relating to the dating of essential documents.

In the majority of cases, the entries found in this collection expand in length on those to be found in Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertums- wissenschaft.  In part, this is to be explained by the target readership, which it is assumed will have enjoyed a far less specialist education than the readership that could be assumed by the contributors to that encyclopaedia.  The number of entries will also be expanded by virtue of new discoveries, and by the emphasis placed by modern scholarship on what can be learned from individuals previously considered less worthy of note.