ENNIUS’ ‘CUNCTATOR’ AND THE HISTORY OF A GERUND IN THE ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION

摘要

This paper explores the use, primarily in Book 22 of the Ab Urbe Condita, of one ofnEnnius’ best known formulations: unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem (Ann. 363).n2nThe line famously describes the tactics of Fabius Maximus ‘Cunctator’ againstnHannibal in 217/216 B.C.E. Livy’s reconfigured uses of it in Book 22 are so frequentnthat it almost appears to take on a life of its own in his hands. It functions as a meansnof articulating a central fault line in Roman military strategy and of expressing thencompetition both amongst Romans and between Romans and their enemies for thosencharacteristics that would guarantee Rome’s ultimate success.n3 Livy’s method fornnegotiating this contestation of identity has a history, on the one hand, in Sallust’snJugurtha; but it is rather in the fragments of Sallust’s Histories that we may discernnembryonic use of the Ennian trope. While precious little evidence of the infusion ofnEnnian language in texts of the prose historiographical tradition survives, the historynof Ann. 363 in Livy and in the interplay between Livy and Sallust gives us a glimpse ofnan active and complex engagement, one arguably on a level comparable to that ofnVirgil.n4 Here in Book 22, we see Ennius’ powerful formulation pressed into newnservice as a focus for the interrogation of the Roman ethic his work had come tonembody.