Trogus

Vridar has been reviewing Giovanni Garbini's Scrivere. This passes to us a reference to Gnaeus Pompey Trogus Vocontian so I felt an urge to check out who this guy was.

The Vocontii were cisalpine Gauls. Trogus' family had sided with Pompey in antiquity, as you might be able to tell. Octavian for whatever reason allowed clemency so Trogus settled down to write some history. 44 scrolls, we're told; Garbini and Vridar care about volume 36 chapter 2. Brett "B2Bartle" Bartlett in 2014 offered an excellent summary of what Trogus was about (pdf).

Trogus figured Livy and other "Classicising" Latin historians as full of hot air. Trogus tried to tell a world-spanning history as a Mirror For Princes but without making up rhetoric. Latin historians of later generations, like Tacitus, hardly averse to rhetoric themselves, appreciated Trogus for his sober attitude, or at least for his pose as such.

Fortunately and unfortunately, a rhetor named Marcus Junian chose Trogus' history as a fun vehicle to "epitomise" - to which project he spiced up the prose. Junian then (somehow) got confused with Justin Martyr so, as the West became Latin and Christian, the West copied Junian but not Trogus. Bartlett has set himself to deciding what words in Junian are Trogus' and which be Junian's.

Back to Trogus: living under Augustus' rule, our man bore no illusions as to what that rule meant. Trogus accordingly termed the famous leaders of old by the old Latin word rex, even if - like Hannibal or indeed the Assyrians - they didn't claim that title. One can easily imagine Trogus applying rex to our own dux bellorum, Arthur. Garbini may or may not consider the dawîd of the Euphratean citystates.

What made a good rex, for Trogus, was moderation. Trogus saw a lack of moderation in Ptolemy IV Philopator - and, most controversally, in Alexander III whom he won't call "Magnus". Trogus was also constantly reporting on shifts in fortune. That rhetorical One-With-Imagination might see the shadow of the Varusschlacht although Trogus ostensibly won't report past 20ish BC.

Bartlett engages in some moderatio of his own inasmuch as he handles #36.2. All he'll note is that Trogus considered Abraham and his family as kings, which neither Trogus nor Junian should have done based on Torah alone. Bartlett further rules out Junian as interpolator. He concludes that this is Trogus being Trogus, placing his personal touch upon his sources.

Junian's heavy hand aside, I side with Bartlett. Garbini should be reading Bartlett too given how credulously he's reading Trogus.