Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World 0367193140, 9780367193140

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Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci’s theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci’s understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection. With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci’s works in particular. Emilio Zucchetti is Germanicus Scholar of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (London, UK) and Teaching Assistant at Newcastle University, UK. Anna Maria Cimino is a PhD student in Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy.

Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

Recent titles include: Religious Discourse in Attic Oratory and Politics Andreas Serafim Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire Charles Goldberg Exploring the Mid-Republican Origins of Roman Military Administration With Stylus and Spear Elizabeth H. Pearson Xenophon’s Socratic Works David M. Johnson Dionysus and Politics Constructing Authority in the Graeco-Roman World Edited by Filip Doroszewski and Dariusz Karłowicz Monsters in Greek Literature Aberrant Bodies in Ancient Greek Cosmogony, Ethnography, and Biology Fiona Mitchell Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World Edited by Emilio Zucchetti and Anna Maria Cimino Holders of Extraordinary imperium under Augustus and Tiberius A Study into the Beginnings of the Principate Paweł Sawiński Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity Crystal Addey For more information on this series, visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Monographs-in-Classical-Studies/book-series/RMCS

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World

Edited by Emilio Zucchetti and Anna Maria Cimino

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Emilio Zucchetti and Anna Maria Cimino; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Emilio Zucchetti and Anna Maria Cimino to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-19314-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-02131-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-20168-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Table of contents

List of figure and tableviii List of contributors ix Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xii Introduction: The reception of Gramsci’s thought in historical and classical studies

1

EMILIO ZUCCHETTI

1 Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry

44

LAURA SWIFT

2 Upside-down hegemony? Ideology and power in ancient Athens 

63

MIRKO CANEVARO

3 Gramsci and ancient philosophy: Prelude to a study

86

PHILLIP SIDNEY HORKY

4 A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery

101

KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS

5 The Etruscan question: An academic controversy in the Prison Notebook

124

MASSIMILIANO DI FAZIO

6 Polybios and the rise of Rome: Gramscian hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution EMMA NICHOLSON

141

vi  Table of contents 7 Antonio Gramsci between ancient and modern imperialism

165

MICHELE BELLOMO

8 Plebeian tribunes and cosmopolitan intellectuals: Gramsci’s approach to the late Roman Republic

183

MATTIA BALBO

9 Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism: Julius Caesar as an Historical Problem in Gramsci

201

FEDERICO SANTANGELO

10 Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution

222

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

11 Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan: An “Equilibrium with catastrophic prospects”

239

ELENA GIUSTI

12 Hegemony in the Roman Principate: Perceptions of power in Gramsci, Tacitus, and Luke

255

JEREMY PATERSON

13 Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity: Between longue durée and discontinuity

273

DARIO NAPPO

14 Cultural hegemonies, ‘NIE-orthodoxy’, and social-development models: Classicists’ ‘organic’ approaches to economic history in the early XXI century

301

CRISTIANO VIGLIETTI

Afterthoughts

327

1 The author as intellectual? Hints and thoughts towards a Gramscian ‘re-reading’ of the ancient literatures

329

ANNA MARIA CIMINO

Table of contents vii 2 Hegemony, coercion and consensus: A Gramscian approach to Greek cultural and political history

341

ALBERTO ESU

3 Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history: Notes towards the development of an intersectional framework

352

EMILIO ZUCCHETTI

General index Index of the ancient sources Index of Gramsci’s texts

365 376 384

Figure and table

Figure 14.1 The history of social development (c. 14,000 BCE–c. 2000 AD). 

309

Table 14.1 The differences between ideal-type moral values among foragers, farmers, and fossil fuel users. 

310

Contributors

Mattia Balbo is an Assistant Professor of Roman History at the University of Turin, Italy. Michele Bellomo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Roman History at the University of Milan, Italy. Mirko Canevaro is a Professor of Greek History at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Anna Maria Cimino is a PhD student in Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Massimiliano Di Fazio is an Assistant Professor of Etruscology at the University of Pavia, Italy. Alberto Esu is Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universität Mannheim, Germany. Elena Giusti is an Associate Professor in Latin Literature and Language at the University of Warwick, UK. Phillip Sidney Horky is an Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Durham University, UK, and Co-Director of the Durham Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Dario Nappo is an Assistant Professor of Roman History at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. Emma Nicholson is a Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK. Jeremy Paterson is a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University, UK, where he taught Ancient History from 1974 to 2009. Federico Santangelo is a Professor of Ancient History at Newcastle University, UK. Christopher Smith is a Professor of Ancient History at the University of St. Andrews, UK.

x  Contributors Laura Swift i s a Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University, UK. Cristiano Viglietti is an Associate Professor of Roman History at the University of Siena, Italy. Kostas Vlassopoulos is an Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete, Greece. Emilio Zucchetti is a Germanicus Scholar of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (London, UK) and Teaching Assistant at Newcastle University, UK.

Acknowledgements

This volume comes to light in the year of the centenary of the foundation of the Partito Comunista d’Italia (Livorno, 15–21 January 1921) and stems from the conference Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World held at Newcastle University on 7–8 December 2017, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Gramsci’s death (27 April 1937). It includes the revised versions of most of the papers delivered on that occasion and several especially commissioned pieces. We wish to thank the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology (HCA) at Newcastle University and the Institute of Classical Studies (London) for their financial support to the organisation of the event. The final stages of the editing work on this book have been crucially enabled by the generosity of HCA and the support of its Director of Postgraduate Studies, Athanassios Vergados. We should also like to thank Sara Borrello, Roberto Ciucciovè, and Luigi Di Iorio for their work on the Indexes; and Federico Santangelo and two reviewers, who read and commented with great care on the manuscript. Special thanks are due to the members of the Gramsci Research Network: our collective reflection has been invaluable to the development of this project. Emilio Zucchetti and Anna Maria Cimino Newcastle upon Tyne and Pisa, November 2020

Abbreviations

Abbreviations of the English Editions of Gramsci’s Writings FSPN

Boothman, D. (ed.) (1995) Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. MP Marks, L. (ed.) (1957) A. Gramsci. The Modern Prince and Other Writings. London: Lawrence & Wishart. PN1 Buttigieg, J. (ed.) (1992) Prison Notebooks. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Columbia UP. PN2 Buttigieg, J. (ed.) (1996) Prison Notebooks. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Columbia UP. PN3 Buttigieg, J. (ed.) (2007) Prison Notebooks. Vol. 3. New York, NY: Columbia UP. PPW Bellamy, R. (ed.) (1994) A. Gramsci, Pre-Prison Writings. Cambridge: CUP. SCW Forgacs, D. and G. Nowell-Smith (eds.) (1985) Selections from Cultural Writings. Eng. tr. by W. Boelhower. Cambridge: HUP. SPN Hoare, Q. and G. Nowell-Smith (eds.) (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. SPW-1 Hoare, Q. (ed.) (1977) A. Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings. Vol. 1: 1910-1920. Eng. tr. by. J. Mathews. London: Lawrence & Wishart. SPW-2 Hoare, Q. (ed.) (1978) A. Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings. Vol. 2: 1921-1926. London: Lawrence & Wishart. SQ Verdicchio, P. (ed.) (2005), A. Gramsci. The Southern Question. Toronto, Buffalo, Chicago and Lancaster: Guernica.

Abbreviations of the Italian Editions of Gramsci’s Writings CF CPC CT

Caprioglio, S. (ed.) (1982) Opere di Antonio Gramsci. Scritti 1913-1926. Vol. 2. La Città Futura 1917-1918. Turin: Einaudi. Gramsci, A. (1971) La costruzione del Partito comunista. 19231926. Turin: Einaudi. Caprioglio, S. (ed.) (1980), A. Gramsci, Cronache torinesi (1913-1917). Turin: Einaudi.

Abbreviations xiii EN-D1 Schirru, G. (ed.) (2016) A. Gramsci, Documenti 1. Appunti di Glottologia. 1912-1923. Un corso universitario di Matteo Bartoli redatto da Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-E1 Bidussa, D., F. Giasi, G. Luzzatto Voghera and M.L. Righi (eds.) (2009) A. Gramsci. Epistolario. Vol. 1. Gennaio 1906-dicembre 1922. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-E2 Bidussa, D., F. Giasi and M.L. Righi (eds.) (2011) A. Gramsci. Epistolario. Vol. 2. Gennaio - novembre 1923. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-Q1 Cospito, G. and G. Francioni (eds.) (2007) A. Gramsci. 1. Quaderni di traduzioni (1929-1932). Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. 2 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-Q2 Cospito, G., G. Francioni and F. Frosini (eds.) (2017) A. Gramsci. 2. Quaderni miscellanei (1929-1935). Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-S1 Guida, G. and M.L. Righi (eds.) (2019) A. Gramsci Scritti (1910-1926). 1910-1916. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. EN-S2 Rapone, L. (ed.) (2015) A. Gramsci, Scritti (1910-1926). 2 1917. Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. L Santucci, A.A. (ed.) (1992) Antonio Gramsci. Lettere. 19081926. Turin: Einaudi. LC Santucci, A.A. (ed.) (1996) Lettere dal carcere 1926-1937. Palermo: Sellerio. LCF Caprioglio, S. and E. Fubini (eds.) (1965) Lettere dal carcere. Turin: Einaudi. LGF Gallo, N. and G. Ferrata (eds.) (1964) 2000 pagine di Gramsci. Vol. 1: Nel tempo della lotta; Vol. 2: Lettere edite e inedite, 1912-1937. Milano: Il Saggiatore. LND Natoli, A. and C. Daniele (eds.) (1997) A. Gramsci and T. Schucht. Lettere 1926-1935. Turin: Einaudi. LS Spriano, P. (ed.) (1972) Lettere dal carcere. Turin: Einaudi. LTP Togliatti, P. and F. Platone (eds.) (1947) A. Gramsci. Lettere dal carcere. Turin: Einaudi. NL Santucci, A.A. (ed.) (1986) Nuove lettere di Antonio Gramsci con altre lettere di Piero Sraffa. Rome: Editori Riuniti. ON Gerratana, V. and A.A. Santucci (eds.) (1987), L’Ordine Nuovo 1919-1920. Turin: Einaudi. PI Platone, F. (ed.) (1949) Gli intellettuali e l’organizzazione della cultura. Turin: Einaudi.

xiv  Abbreviations PNM QC QM SM SP1

Platone, F. (ed.) (1949) Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica, e sullo Stato moderno. Turin: Einaudi. Gerratana, V. (ed.) (1975) Quaderni del Carcere. 4 vols. Turin: Einaudi. De Felice, F. and V. Parlato (eds.) (1974) La questione meridionale. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Gramsci, A. (1960) Sotto la mole (1916-1920). Turin: Einaudi. Spriano, P. (ed.) (1973) Antonio Gramsci. Scritti Politici. Vol. I. Rome: Editori Riuniti.

Other Abbreviations DBI

Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (1960-). Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. [Online] Available at: https://www. treccani.it/biografico/index.html (Accessed: 20 August 2020). LCW Lenin, V.I. (1960-1970) Lenin. Collected Works. 45 vols. London: Lawrence & Wishart. MECW Marx, K. and F. Engels (1975-2004) Collected Works. 50 vols. London: Lawrence & Wishart. MGR Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse [1857-1858]. Eng. tr. by M. Nicolaus. Harmondsworth: Penguin. MOA Susmel, E. and D. Susmel (eds.) (1951-1963) B. Mussolini, Opera Omnia. Florence: La Fenice. TG Liguori, G. (ed.) (2013) P. Togliatti. Scritti su Gramsci. Rome: Editori Riuniti. All abbreviated references to authors and texts from classical ­antiquity, contemporary works, and journals not listed here follow the OCD Abbreviations List.

Introduction The reception of Gramsci’s thought in historical and classical studies Emilio Zucchetti

Antonio Gramsci is an iconic figure. Book covers, posters, and artworks reproduce the same, canonical image over and over in c­ ountless variations. Particularly in Italian culture, Gramsci’s picture has achieved a hieratic dimension, giving his figure a certain mythical quality and inviting its symbolic use. Excerpts from his articles and from the Notebooks have been turned, suitably modified, into ­s ententiae, abused as social media quotes, and made into artworks.1 Between ­p olitical appropriation and popular appreciation, the Gramsci myth has grown over the years. This is perhaps why, after about seventy years of reception, the figure of Gramsci has become a point of contention, caught in a perpetual debate between different political agendas, particularly in Italy. 2 The trajectory of Gramsci’s international reception is, however, slightly different, despite his growing popularity since the 1970s. In the English-speaking world, interest in his work has grown particularly since the publication in the New Left Review (100, 1976) of a famous critical article titled The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, authored by Perry Anderson (1938). French culture, on the contrary, encountered the Sardinian theorist mainly thanks to the work of Louis Althusser (1918-1990), who embraced and expanded upon some of his most important reflections on ideology.3 The lenses through which we read Gramsci have (rather unsurprisingly) been heavily influenced by the authors and politicians who tried to appropriate his work in the last century. To find our way through this plethora of different readings, we shall first attempt to describe the history of the reception of Gramsci’s work. Only through a careful consideration of the intersections between political use and academic reflections can we attempt to go back to reading Gramsci’s text in a self-conscious fashion and, thus, proposing a respectful usage of his theories in the interpretation of a variety of aspects of the ancient world. One of the main aims of this volume is to return to Gramsci’s own writings in a field that has historically paid special attention to close reading and philology. While, as we will see, mediatedness is a defining feature of the relationship between Gramsci and classical scholars, the contributors

2  Emilio Zucchetti to this volume have tried to take a philological approach to the Prison Notebooks and the Letters, as well as to the pre-prison writings. In order to enable us to take a step back and directly confront Gramsci’s writings, this introduction will offer an historical sketch of the scholarship and editions of Gramsci’s work, and a reflection upon previous attempts to integrate Gramsci’s thought in the scholarly debates about Classics and Ancient History. The case-study chosen in this introductory essay is the concept for which Gramsci is better known: hegemony. Often thought to be Gramsci’s own development, hegemony is already part of Russian social democratic and, later, Bolshevik thought since the very beginning of the XX century.4 It is undeniable, however, that Gramsci’s contribution to the definition of the concept has occupied a substantial role in the following developments, especially on Althusser’s thought and on the theories proposed by scholars in cultural studies, such as Stuart Hall. Thus, an attempt at introducing the concept is in order, even though Gramsci himself never tried to propose a fully fledged definition. We shall start from one of his best-known passages, from Q12§1: The intellectuals are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These comprise: 1 The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. 2 The apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed.5 It seems clear from this text that achieving hegemony does not involve any top-down transmission of knowledge, but rather a ‘spontaneous’ consent, due to the penetration of some values and norms of the ruling group into common sense. This can be defined as a set of (at times) contradictory social norms that underscore the interactions among various social actors.6 Through this spontaneous and naïve ‘philosophy’, the ruled live their lives, strengthening the dominant position of the rulers’ ideology or resisting to it.7 The process of complying with the hegemonic ideology is an active process that involves a mutual exchange through the middle bodies, i.e. civil society (all that is excluded from the direct control of the state or ‘political society’).8

Introduction 3 The classic passage cited above makes clear that ‘social hegemony and political government’ comprise both consent and coercion and that the mechanism involves direct participation from the ruled, both in the sense of contributing to the construction of the hegemonic setup and of reproducing the social norms that are embedded in the system of dominance. In Gramsci’s account of hegemony, the masses contribute to the creation of any hegemonic setup, either through resistance or through accommodation. In the latter case, they become producers of the hegemonic ideology in their own right, both in the political society (the state apparatuses, which includes in this context parliamentary representatives) and in civil society. If, however, some groups decide not to comply, they are compelled to do so through coercion. This resource enables the rulers to force them to comply, or to turn the non-compliant groups into negative examples in the hegemonic narrative. In other words, any hegemonic construction includes all the actors, including the masses, either as cooperating with the construction, or as negative symbols, by applying social stigmas and labelling the non-compliant as outcasts. This means that we should be studying elite and so-called popular production at once, if we are to understand the hegemonic discourse in any given society. Hegemony is not just a matter of construction of consent, but rather a process involving a differentiated percentage of coercion and consent, according to the practical situations that power has to deal with. It is also crucial not to construct an overly schematic description of Gramsci’s theory of power, where hegemony corresponds to civil society and consent and force corresponds to political society and coercion, like Perry Anderson did, de facto creating Gramsci’s antinomies through his own selection of passages in the Notebooks.9 Francioni and Thomas have convincingly argued against Anderson’s methodology: hegemony is in itself a dialectical process, resolved in what Gramsci called the integral state.10 This means that civil and political societies are to be distinguished only on a methodological level, and not organically, because they both pertain to the state. The statements of Gramsci on which Thomas heavily concentrated his analysis are worth quoting in extenso: The state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules.11 And The general notion of the state includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that the State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony armoured with coercion).12

4  Emilio Zucchetti The integral state as synthesis of coercion and consent is the key element to remember not to transform hegemony into an idealistic explanation of power in any given society, forgetting about the coercive power of institutions, on the one hand, or about the socio-economic context, on the other. We will see how, throughout the seventy-five years of reception of Gramsci’s thought, the concept will be subject to lapses into one or the other of the issues mentioned above, according to the political and ideological objectives of the interpreter. We will begin by sketching Gramsci’s biography to situate his production in his history of political activism, moving then into the reception in Italy and in the English-speaking world and finishing with a few notes on the impact of Gramsci’s thought on classical studies.

Antonio Gramsci: a biographical sketch Antonio was born in Ales, a small rural town in Sardinia, on 27 January 1891.13 His father, Francesco Gramsci, was arrested in 1898 on corruption allegations and convicted in 1900 to five years in prison.14 This formed a fundamental conflict between Antonio and his father that was bound to last all their lives: because of his father’s conviction, Antonio had to leave school and start working at the age of 11. In 1903, he took the licenza elementare, two years later than his peers, and completed the next stage of his education, the licenza ginnasiale, in 1908 in Oristano. He then moved to Cagliari with his brother Gennaro in order to attend the local Liceo, where he chose to study ancient Greek.15 The Cagliari years proved hard to endure because of the financial conditions in which Antonio and Gennaro lived. The young Gramsci found an inspiring figure in his teacher of Italian language and literature, Raffa Garzìa, who was also the editor of the newspaper L’Unione Sarda. Antonio published his first article in this paper on 26 July 1910. Later, thanks to a scholarship won at the Collegio Carlo Alberto, in October 1911 he moved to Turin to read Modern Philology at the Facoltà di Lettere together with other deserving students, two of whom would become close friends and major figures in the history of the Italian Communist Party: Togliatti and Angelo Tasca (1892-1960). Living in constant financial struggle, the first two years in Turin felt to Gramsci like one of the toughest times in his life: the economic conditions greatly affected his trajectory as a student, and he gave up before earning a degree.16 However, as some of the chapters will tangentially discuss, his peers and teachers remembered Gramsci as a lively student, attending various courses that would have an impact on his thought.17 It seems reasonable to believe that the positivistic school of the University of Turin and its ‘metodo storico’ constituted the background for the development of his interpretation of historical materialism.18 Among these modules, it is worth citing the course of Linguistics taught by Matteo Bartoli (1873-1946), with whom Gramsci, after having scored

Introduction 5 a 30 cum laude on the exam, built a relationship on mutual esteem, to the point that he was asked to prepare the dispense (syllabus) for the 1912-1913 academic year.19 Despite his failure to obtain a degree, the years in Turin proved fundamental to his intellectual development. His first encounter with socialism and the working class happened there between 1913 and 1915, when still a student. After the Carlo Alberto College scholarship ended (1915), he began working as a journalist: his signature, A.G., appears in ‘Il Grido del Popolo’ (‘The Cry of the People’), a Socialist weekly newspaper, on 31 October 1915. Despite the low wage, he accepted a job as journalist with the Socialist newspaper ‘Avanti!’ and later took up the editorship of ‘Il Grido del Popolo’. Gramsci wrote about politics, theatre, culture, and intellectual debates. In February 1917, Gramsci attended to the publication of an individual issue of a magazine called ‘La Città Futura’, dedicated to the education of young socialists. This iconic issue contains the invective against indifference that would later acquire great fame.1 After the war, when unemployment and the cost-of-living increase inflamed social unrest, Turin became the spearhead of labour conflict, the experience of which played an important role in Gramsci’s political education. The foundation of ‘L’Ordine Nuovo’ in 1919, together with his old comrades Umberto Terracini (1895-1983), Tasca, and Togliatti, who had returned from the war, marked a fundamental moment of his intellectual and political development. The new review showed a strong attention to the cultural aspect of social struggle and became a reference point for the phase of self-organised workers’ councils in the factories, starting in the autumn of that year, that would be remembered as ‘biennio rosso’. Inspired by the Soviets and the pristine phase of the Russian revolution, the councils were deliberative organisms, composed of workers taking control of and organising production in factories. The libertarian communist strategy known as Council Communism (also called Councilism or conciliarismo in Italian) sees these factory councils as the fundamental form of workingclass organisation, through which the post-revolutionary polity will be implemented. The large strikes of those two years would end only in Spring 1920, with a heavy defeat, leaving Gramsci virtually alone in defending the strategy of workers’ councils. Between 15 and 21 January 1921, Gramsci was part of the foundational assembly of the PCd’I (Partito Comunista d’Italia) in Livorno, without playing a prominent role in the Congresso. In the meanwhile, many underestimated the danger presented by Fascism, which was seeking to exploit the social malaise spread by the economic recession and the difficulties experienced by the petty bourgeoisie after the war. In March 1922, in Rome, the Communist Party held its second congress: Amadeo Bordiga (1889-1970) and Terracini presented the so-called Tesi di Roma, published in Rassegna Comunista. 20 With those, the left-wing faction of the Party fostered the opposition between the Communist and the Socialist Party, standing against

6  Emilio Zucchetti the hypothesis, endorsed by the Comintern, of an anti-fascist united front. Bordiga’s line prevailed, leaving the party already fragmented, with its right-wing faction  – led by Tasca – openly favourable to a deal with the Socialist Party. Since he was favourable to the unitarist direction supported by the Comintern, but was still loyal to Bordiga, Gramsci was sent as a representative of the Italian Party to Moscow, leaving Turin in 1922. He arrived in the Soviet capital ill and depressed in June, and was soon afterwards hospitalised at the Serebryany Bor sanatorium, where he met the Schucht sisters. One of them, Julia, ‘Julka’, would become his wife and the mother of his two sons, Delio and Giuliano. 21 On 25 October 1922, he had the honour of meeting Lenin, with whom he discussed politics for two hours. The Russian leader invited Gramsci to support the unitarist position, already held by the Comintern, of an antifascist united front with the socialists, suggesting the détente with Bordiga’s men in the PCd’I. It is with this briefing that Gramsci left Russia for Vienna, in 1924.22 There he stayed until 24 May, when, elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he finally returned to Italy. It would be the foundation year of L’Unità, the official newspaper of the Party, as well as the beginning of the Fascist transformation of the state. Relying on the illusory safety granted by parliamentary immunity, Gramsci moved to Rome to act as member of the Parliament. He gave his only parliamentary speech on 16 May 1925, in the aftermath of the RoccoMussolini Bill: this was ostensibly a law against secret societies, but constituted a serious limitation of the constitutional freedom guaranteed by the Statuto Albertino. The transcript of the speech records a courageous intervention, continuously interrupted by Mussolini’s and the fascist MPs’ cries and objections: Gramsci remarked that theirs was “a consent obtained with the stick” and that Fascism was not a revolution because “it is not based upon any class that was not already in power”. He thus became a symbol of anti-fascist resistance: a delicate position, given the harsh repression conducted by the Fascists against the members of the Communist Party. However, his last year of freedom was marked by a happy, if brief, development: his wife Julia and his son Delio moved to Rome for a short period, until June 1926. It was the only experience of family life Gramsci would ever have. Meanwhile, a series of laws (the so-called leggi fascistissime) approved between 1925 and 1926 led to the establishment of the Fascist state. In this last year, Gramsci produced two important texts: the ‘Lyons Theses’, a preparatory document written with Togliatti for the clandestine Party Congress that took place in January 1926 in Lyons, and Note sul problema meridionale e sull’atteggiamento nei suoi confronti dei comunisti, dei socialisti e dei democratici, the only full-scale essay Gramsci ever completed. 23 During that autumn, however, the friendly relationship with Togliatti came to a sudden end: on behalf of the Political Office of the PCd’I, Gramsci sent a letter (dated 14 October) to the Central Committee

Introduction 7 of the Russian Party through Togliatti, who was at the time the representative of the PCd’I in the USSR. Since the letter showed concern for the internal conflicts of the RCP, inviting Stalin to avoid extreme measures against the internal minorities, Togliatti decided, together with Bucharin, not to deliver it. Instead, he replied personally to Gramsci, arguing that the letter would have been read as a statement in support of the internal opposition in the Russian party. He sent two letters (both on 18 October) to the political bureau of the party and to Gramsci himself: the first, the official one, explained the reasons that would have made delivering the letter inappropriate. The second, however, personally addressed to Gramsci, showed stern disappointment. Gramsci’s unofficial reply (26 October) was harsh and marked a turning point not only in the relationship with Togliatti, but also in his attitude towards the Party leadership. Notwithstanding his parliamentary immunity, Gramsci was arrested on 8 November 1926 in Rome. He was accused of crimes aiming to subvert the state institutions through the use of violence (“sovvertimento delle istituzioni statali con la violenza”). Between 8 and 25 November, Antonio was held at Regina Coeli, a prison in Rome; he was then transferred to the island of Ustica, where he remained for 44 days, sharing a house with his friend and rival Bordiga. The days in Ustica constituted the ‘happiest’ period of his detention: Gramsci and Bordiga organised a sort of ‘school’, providing general knowledge courses for the detainees and the inhabitants of the island, and managed to arrange a collective organisation for meals for the political detainees. In this short period, he received many books from his own personal library and from his friend Piero Sraffa. 24 The situation would change drastically after he was moved to San Vittore, in Milan, on 14 January 1927, where his physical and psychological conditions would begin to decline. Between September and October, the Italian and Russian Parties tried to have Gramsci and Terracini released. Mussolini, however, made clear that he would only accept a request for pardon coming from the prisoners, implying a repudiation of their beliefs, and to be made after sentencing. The attempt eventually failed for reasons that remain uncertain. 25 During these years, Gramsci did not have permission to write more than two letters a week. His correspondence with Tatiana ‘Tania’ Schucht, another of Julia’s sisters, constitutes the most important document of the reflections of this time. Gramsci was brought back at Regina Coeli on 12 May 1928: during the interrogation, he never denied having been a member of the Communist Party’s executive team. The sentence arrived on 4 June 1928: Gramsci was identified as the leader of the party and condemned to twenty years, four months, and five days of detention, plus a fine of £6,200 lire. Between 19 July 1928 and November 1933, Gramsci stayed at the prison of Turi, near Bari, where he started his work on the Notebooks: the first date marked on a Notebook is 8 February 1929. His intellectual work could now take the form of a proper programme:

8  Emilio Zucchetti he began by translating a German literary journal, Die Literarische Welt, then moved to Grimm’s fairy tales and linguistics essays.26 The translations were not limited to German, but included Russian and English, and soon, as well as purely linguistic interest, a thematic consonance with his reflections can be discerned. 27 The writing process of the thirty-three Notebooks is important to consider when we interpret these texts. As Francioni argued, the reader must seek to restore the rhythm of Gramsci’s thought.28 Gramsci did not fill one Notebook at a time, from the first to the last page. His reflection took a dynamic form, moving from one Notebook to another, and not all the thirty-three Notebooks are the same. Between the second half of 1929 and the first half of 1932, nine miscellaneous Notebooks (Quaderni Miscellanei) are used alongside the translation Notebooks. Some miscellaneous Notebooks contain also ‘thematic’ sections (the Appunti di filosofia I, II, and III, respectively in Notebooks 4, 7, and 8 and the notes on the Risorgimento in Notebook 9). After March/April 1932, he decided to change his working programme and began to write four other ‘special’ Notebooks (10, 11, 12, and 13), including the redrafting of many earlier notes, until the first half of 1933, while writing on the Miscellanei 14, 15, and 17 as well.29 This phase was interrupted by the severe health crisis of March 1933.30 Finally, a series of thirteen thematic Notebooks (16-29) was written between 1933 and the first half of 1935: these Notebooks are mostly incomplete. This complex labyrinth of notes requires particular attention from the reader: even if sometimes it is impossible to discern the precise date of a certain note, the interpreter must take into account the phases of his thought, the drafting and redrafting, in order to restore the diachronic dimension to the Notebooks. The physical condition of the detainee started to decline more decisively from 1932. If Pott disease affected him throughout his life, new serious conditions, like pulmonary tuberculosis, dropsy, gout, and migraines, seriously limited his capability to think and write. 31 After being transferred to the infirmary of Civitavecchia Prison for two weeks, Gramsci arrived in Formia on 7 December 1933: he would stay there until August 1935. The detention regime in Giuseppe Cusumano’s clinic seemed to the prisoner even stricter than it had been in the prison. Another major health crisis hit Gramsci in May 1935, caused by gout, and impacted his capability to work: the latest note seems to have been drafted in June 1935. During the last two years of his life, he only wrote letters of limited interest for the development of his thought.32 Antonio was by then a suffering man, stalled by his precarious physical condition. He was transferred to the Quisisana Clinic in Rome on 24 August 1935, and saw Sraffa for the last time on 5 March 1937, when he gave him the final provisions regarding the circulation of the Notebooks. A brain haemorrhage was the final blow on 25 April: that same day the Court of Rome gave him back his freedom. He died after two days of agony on 27 April 1937.

Introduction 9

From his death to 1975: the first long phase of Gramsci’s reception In the aftermath of the war, when the Italian Communist Party grew from a few hundred thousand to more than a million members, the ­figure of Gramsci was destined to play a central role in the development of the Party’s identity, even more than had been the case during his lifetime.33 The new scale of the Party brought its leader, Togliatti, to the conclusion that a nation-oriented political strategy should be pursued, and that the figure of Gramsci, already constructed as a martyr, could be the unifying symbol of the conflicting Italian Communist tradition. Gramsci’s transformation into a myth had started immediately after his death: already in May 1937, Togliatti gave a speech in Paris under the telling title Antonio Gramsci capo della classe operaia italiana.34 In this text, Togliatti associated Gramsci with a series of famous victims of Fascism (Gobetti, Matteotti, Amendola) on the one hand, and with a tradition of Italian great men (grandi uomini) like Dante, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi on the other. The national traits enriched the figure of Gramsci as a “modern revolutionary” to be included in the tradition of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Togliatti’s speech can be considered the foundation of the first phase in Gramscian reception: the phase of hagiography that would dominate the tradition roughly until 1956, a year whose importance in the history of (Italian) Communism can hardly be overestimated. In this early phase, Gramsci is represented as a good Party man, committed to unity and to a critical approach to Marxism. Togliatti used Gramsci’s figure already in 1944, as soon as he returned to Italy after his exile during the war, as the key to developing an anti-deterministic Marxism, aware of the intermediate bodies where the ideological struggle took place. This line would distinguish the Italian party from the orthodoxy of the International and of the USSR throughout its whole history. Stressing continuity with Gramsci’s thought, Togliatti sought to establish the credibility of his own political line and to make Italian post-war society accept the Party as a legitimate political force. It is not by chance that the interest in the first phase lies with Gramsci’s theory of intellectuals and the opposition to the Neapolitan idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce, a central figure in Italian cultural history: Togliatti wanted to expand the influence on the party on the Italian intellectuals, pursuing thereby a hegemonic strategy in Gramscian sense. 35 The first edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni appeared between 1948 and 1951 for the publisher Einaudi. The publication was organised in six thematic volumes: the arbitrary re-organisation of Gramsci’s prison writings aimed at stressing the alleged systematicity of his thought. 36 The volumes were edited by Felice Platone, a member of the anti-fascist National Liberation Committee, mayor of Asti after the Liberation and a deputy in

10  Emilio Zucchetti the Constituent Assembly of Italy (1946-1948). Produced under the supervision of Togliatti himself, the selective and partly censored publication sought to harmonise Gramsci’s original (or indeed heterodox) Marxism with the Soviet orthodoxy, by underlining the “specificità nazionale” of Gramsci’s theories. Gramsci’s thought was to constitute the foundation of that “via italiana al Socialismo” (the Italian way to Socialism) that dominated the early history of the party, up to 1956.

Gramsci’s early reception in the English-speaking context Platone’s outline would provide the framework for the first English translation of Gramsci’s Notebooks, authorised by the Istituto Gramsci itself: The Modern Prince (1956) by Louis Marks (1928-2010).37 The first Englishlanguage reception of Gramsci’s writing, in fact, was in the field of intellectual history: Marks was an historian himself. Gramsci’s writings are discussed as early as 1958 in the work of H. Stuart Hughes (1916-1999); his Consciousness and Society focuses on the role of language in shaping cultures.38 Two years later, an article by a British historian, Gwyn A. Williams (1925-1975), introduced Gramsci’s hegemony in the historical debate in English.39 The Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1971) also followed the thematic organisation of the first Italian edition as well, sometimes introducing editorial titles without marking them as such and ignoring the division in notes already printed in the Platone edition. Since an English critical edition is still lacking, these editorial decisions have had lasting consequences, giving the impression of a more polished and organic text than Gramsci ever produced.40 The Notebooks are sketches, reflections, and reactions to contemporary cultural debates and publications that Gramsci hoped to revise after being freed. Moreover, Gramsci’s reflections in prison extended over a period of six years and have a diachronic aspect that recent scholarship has tried to underline: Gramsci’s reflections changed over time to the point that internal chronology is sometimes determinant for the correct understanding of certain concepts.41 Following the publication of the Selections by Hoare and Nowell Smith (1971), but quite apart from the Italian debate, Gramsci’s thoughts began to appear in the work of several important authors, most notably, Raymond Williams (1921-1988), E. P. Thompson (1924-1993), Eugene Genovese (1930-2012), and Stuart Hall (1932-2014): they all used Gramsci’s insights in order to bring out the agency of non-elite subjects and the constructedness of culture in terms of hegemony.42 Before the publication of the Selections, both Williams and Thompson already had some acquaintance with Gramsci’s thought in the 1960s.43 His monumental The Making of the English Working Class (1963) narrates the history of a single class and shows a non-deterministic understanding of the interaction between economic structure and culture. An

Introduction 11 insistent usage of the category of hegemony can be seen, however, in his works from the 1970s, and particularly in his article Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture (1974), where the double aspects of the control exercised by the ruling class, in terms of coercion and cultural hegemony, are equally considered.44 Such a use respects Gramsci’s own dialectical understanding and seems likely to have stemmed from a reading of the Selections.45 Raymond Williams, probably the most influential anglophone Marxist literary critic, discussed Gramsci’s ideas in the 1970s: the first article to engage directly with Gramsci is Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory (1973), shortly followed by a more extensive work, Marxism and Literature (1977).46 Raymond Williams, whose work plays an important part in Canevaro’s contribution to this volume, set a standard reading of hegemony for Marxist and Post-Marxist cultural theory: culture should not be considered as superstructure, a metaphor that relegates it to a reflection of the “structure” of economy, but as a productive force itself.47 In order to achieve this result, Williams argued that the base/superstructure metaphor had to be left behind, turning to a concept of ‘totality’, or, in other words, enriching the structure itself with the productive force of culture. Williams used the concept of hegemony to include cultural as well as political and economic factors in the analysis of this totality, interpreting it against “extreme versions of economic determinism”.48 In the British context, the work of Thompson and Williams discussed how “culture provided a framework, an intellectual space, within which Gramsci […] could be made visible and readable”.49 Despite Thompson’s refusal to accept the label of ‘culturalism’, his work has opened the way to the approach known as cultural studies. The first step in this direction must be identified with the opening of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham under the direction of Richard Hoggart in 1964. His approach has often been considered romantic and nostalgic: in The Uses of Literacy (1957), he compares his personal experience of the working-class culture of the 1930s with the decline of popular culture in the 1950s.50 By addressing 1930s workingclass culture through recollection, and the popular culture of the 1950s through literary analysis, he looked for evidence of the cultural decline he expected to find and failed to acknowledge the active reception and re-use of mass entertainment performed by the working class and the so-called middle classes in the 1950s. In other words, he sought to oppose the ‘real’ lived working-class culture of yesterday with the imposed, shoddy mass culture of his present. However, the ‘Gramscian turn’ of the Centre is chiefly associated with an Anglo-Jamaican theorist who came to play a pivotal role in cultural studies: Stuart Hall. Hall was director of the Centre between 1969 and 1978 and operated a transition in the approaches “from Hoggart to Gramsci”. 51 As can clearly be seen in a collective work published in 1978, Policing

12  Emilio Zucchetti the Crisis: Mugging, The State, and Law and Order, the members of the Centre used a translation of Gramsci’s categories (particularly hegemony, common sense, and subalterns) in order to adapt them to 1970s Britain.52 This approach has proved foundational for the whole field, and its interactions with ancient history have recently been incredibly productive. 53 Moreover, Hall inaugurated a rather eccentric use of Gramsci’s thought, ‘translating’ it into different contexts, even beyond Marxist approaches.54 The categories are evoked directly in the analysis of the condition of existence of Thatcherism (The Great Moving Right Show, 1979), the concept of ‘people’ and the ‘popular’ (Notes on Deconstructing the Popular, 1981), and the study of the role of race in culture (Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 1986).55 In terms of methodology, the most relevant to this volume is probably Gramsci and Us (1988): Hall argues that “we must ‘think’ our problems in a Gramscian way” without using Gramsci “like an Old Testament prophet”.56 Hall, Williams, and Thompson were all key figures in the development of the major British cultural strand that became known as the New Left, whose homonymous review had a central role in popularising Gramsci’s thought for English-speaking readers.57 In this review appeared what is most likely the best-known text about Gramsci among English speakers: Perry Anderson’s The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci (1977). The essay was constructed around an analysis of the concept of hegemony, trying to show its origins in Russian left-wing theoretical debates in order to discern whether Gramsci’s thought could be inscribed in a revolutionary or reformist tradition. Anderson found the unsolvable antinomies of Gramsci’s thought in the relationship between state/civil society, war of position/war of movement, East/West, hegemony/coercion. The work sparked intense debate among Italian scholars after its translation one year later, and was destined to be heavily attacked by some of the finest Gramscian scholars of that generation: Gianni Francioni (1950), in particular, devoted about half of his L’officina gramsciana (1984) to arguing against Anderson’s Antinomies, questioning its synchronic approach to Gramsci’s texts.58 Anderson states that his aim is to recompose the systematicity of Gramsci’s thought through a philological analysis, which is, according to Francioni, precisely what he fails to do: as Francioni convincingly shows, Anderson overlooks the internal chronology of different drafts of Gramsci’s notes, generating a reconstruction that is in the end not grounded in Gramsci’s text. Francioni argued that it was the arbitrary selection of notes chosen by Anderson that brought him to formulate his reading of irresolvable antinomies and oscillations in Gramsci’s thought. In fact, the concepts of state, civil society, political society, domination, and hegemony underwent an organic evolution, consistent with the development of Gramsci’s thought in prison. Francioni concluded that the three phases of Gramsci’s thought in relation to state, civil society, and hegemony are Anderson’s creation, generated by an intrinsically faulted methodology of reading.

Introduction 13 Francioni’s line of reasoning has recently been picked up by an eminent British Gramscian scholar, Peter Thomas, in the watershed work The Gramscian Moment (which plays a central role in Smith’s understanding of hegemony in this volume).59 Meanwhile, even though the Gramscian scholarly community mostly holds Anderson’s Antinomies in little regard in relation to contemporary studies, it was reprinted by Verso in 2017 with a polemical preface by the author, together with a new work devoted to a historical study of the concept of hegemony, The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony.60 The debate on how to read this crucial aspect of Gramsci’s work is far from being exhausted. Across the Atlantic, the still widely read and discussed book by Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974) draws extensively from Gramsci’s conception of subalterns and hegemony.61 As we will see in Vlassopoulos’ chapter in this book, Genovese aimed to give back agency to the slaves, arguing against a unilateral master/slave relationship: the masters had to exercise a hegemonic worldview in order to defend their class interests, even though slaves would never accept their condition.62 Genovese insisted on the use of paternalism as a tool not only in relation to the slaves’ perspective, but for the masters as well, so that they could “force themselves to believe that they sought happiness for their slaves”.63 Gramsci’s influence on US historiography in the 1970s can be seen in the thoughtful article by Thomas J. Jackson Lears (1947) in The American Historical Review (1985), where he argues for a ‘rediscovery of Gramsci’ not only by Marxist or Leftist historians, but also more broadly for the insights his concept of hegemony offers into the ‘question of dominance and subordination in modern capitalist societies’.64 He engages more with contemporary English-speaking scholarship and readings of his theories in the first half of the article than with Gramsci’s own texts, nevertheless offering a balanced assessment of hegemony, stressing its components, coercion, and consent. However, he tends to depict a culturalist Gramsci, focusing on the overcoming of the ‘base/superstructure’ metaphor; in doing so, though, he obscures the more revolutionary traits of his philosophy.65 The second half of the article is dedicated to American historiography of slavery and plantations, stressing how the concept of hegemony has helped and could help even more American historians. The representation of Gramsci in this text is quite symbolic of a general tendency of considering him only in terms of a ‘generic theory of social power’, which we opposed since the first steps of this discussion.66

Gramsci and post-war Italian classical scholarship Virtually no influence, however, was yet to be seen on the field of Classics and Ancient History: in the monographic number of Arethusa dedicated to Marxist historiography (1975), Gramsci is mentioned only once in relation

14  Emilio Zucchetti to Mario Mazza’s Lotte sociali e restaurazione autoritaria nel 3 secolo d.C. (1970).67 Indeed, his early reception in classical scholarship was limited to the Italian context and belongs to the phase before the publication of the Gerratana edition (1975). Gramsci’s influence is apparent on the Latinists Concetto Marchesi (1878-1957) and Antonio La Penna (1925), on the art historian Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (1900-1975), and on the works on ancient agrarian history of the non-academic historian and Communist politician Emilio Sereni (1907-1977).68 In their works, Gramsci’s influence can be read between the lines in the use of categories such as subaltern groups, intellectuals, hegemony, even though Gramsci is hardly ever quoted. This does not come as a surprise, since the Party had attracted many intellectuals in the aftermath of Second World War and exercised a substantial influence over Italian academia.69 Bianchi Bandinelli and La Penna are probably the best-known scholars who tried to combine a traditional university training with the Gramscian version of Marxism.70 Despite having acted as a guide during Hitler’s visit in Rome under Mussolini in 1938, Bianchi Bandinelli embraced Marxism after the war and became a fundamental figure of the PCI intelligentsia.71 In 1947, ten years after Gramsci’s death, he gave a commemorative speech in Naples, in which he insisted the role of intellectuals in national life.72 Bianchi Bandinelli is celebrated as the founder and director of Dialoghi di Archeologia (1967), a journal that became the touchstone for methodological reflections in the field of archaeology in Italy.73 In its first ten years of publication, the journal pursued a strongly political agenda, commenting on cultural policies and contemporary politics. The Dialoghi aimed to construct an interdisciplinary scholarly community, overcoming the rigid divides underlying the Italian academic system.74 Every issue was organised in two sections. The first and more traditional section was comprised of papers from archaeology and other disciplines related to the ancient world. The second section, called Documenti e Discussioni, was dedicated to political discussion and was authored collectively by the Amici dei Dialoghi di Archeologia, a group of archaeologists composed of younger scholars and by Bianchi Bandinelli himself.75 The programmatic first article from the first issue, authored by Bianchi Bandinelli and titled Arte plebea, is an apt example of this subtle use of Gramscian categories.76 The article supports the replacement of the definition of popular art proposed by Bernhard Schweitzer with the definition of ‘plebeian art’.77 The definition of ‘popular’ recalls Gramsci’s own definition of ‘nazionalepopolare’: a true ‘popular’ strand of art is formed only when there is a complex adherence in terms of contents between artistic expression and the social group producing it.78 On the contrary, the strand ‘plebeian art’ is presented as “senza dubbio subalterno”, and the kindred ‘provincial art’, showing elements of plebeian arts, is produced by the members of the very same categories of subalterns, like soldiers, settlers, freedmen, and minor magistrates.79

Introduction 15 Antonio La Penna has probably been the most outspoken about Gramsci’s influence on his own work: a terse example might be found in the Prefazione to his Aspetti del pensiero storico latino (1978).80 This is a collection of earlier essays regarding the relation between culture and socio-political praxis in ancient Rome between the II century BCE and the II century CE and similar phenomena in the contemporary classical tradition. La Penna’s approach in all the writings tends towards cultural history more than literary analysis: he briefly discusses the notion of ideology and its relationship with socio-economic structure and the dynamic of social classes. His methodology is an admirable combination of empiricism and Marxism. He underlined that to place a work of art in its social context both a thorough theoretical framework and minute research work are needed. Finally, discussing hegemony, he associated it only with the quest for consensus, and admitted that the input for such a conceptualisation came many years before from reading Gramsci.81 It must be noted that his introduction does not show the unbalanced use of Gramsci’s categories that would become common outside Marxist circles: despite considering hegemony as linked to consensus and civil society, he stresses both coercion and consensus, and their link to the socio-economic structure.82

The Golden Age and the Gerratana edition (1975) The creation of the Fondazione Gramsci in 1950 contributed to the Party’s pursuit of hegemony: the mission of this institution was to promote Marxist studies and a more critical approach to Gramsci’s text. The Hungarian revolution and Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s purges and political repression deeply affected the Western Marxist parties, which were forced towards a ‘democratization’ leaving Stalin’s ‘Marxist-Leninist’ doctrine behind. This contributed to an unprecedented freedom of research for leftist and Marxist historians. It is in this context that the first conference of Gramscian Studies took place in Rome in January 1958, an occasion of contact between the Party and intellectuals outside its ranks. The main line of debate for at least a decade was focused on the historiographical problems surrounding Gramsci’s text, thanks to the new history of the Party produced by Paolo Spriano (1925-1988).83 This tendency limited the role of theoretical investigation in the 1960s and focused, starting from the contribution of Togliatti at the Rome conference, around Leninist or reformist interpretations of Gramsci.84 The Cagliari conference of 1967 must be flagged for the long-lasting importance of at least one contribution. Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), himself a liberal socialist, presented a seminal thesis of Gramsci as the ‘theoretician of superstructure’, arguing for an inversion (rovesciamento) of the relationship between base and superstructure and for the prominence of the latter in shaping the former.85 In order to enable this, a more simplified and deterministic version of this relationship than the one in

16  Emilio Zucchetti Marx and Gramsci had to be presented. Both these traits would come to be fairly common in non-Marxist uses of Gramsci and in the topical critiques of Marxism in liberal authors, and even in some post-Marxist ones, like Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014) and Chantal Mouffe (born 1943).86 After 1968, the French philosopher Louis Althusser began elaborating his re-reading of Gramsci’s hegemony, proposing a system focused on institutional indoctrination in a capitalist system, collapsing civil society back into political society through the identification of the School as the dominant Ideological State Apparatus (ISA).87 This hugely influential concept includes all the social institutions, not necessarily under the direct control of the State, that propagate the ideology of the ruling class. Despite their plurality, they are all unified by the ruling ideology, which controls them all in an indirect fashion, unlike their parallel in political society, the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA). These are all those institutions and bodies that are under the direct influence of the State, such as police, armed forces, government, tribunals, and their task is to be found in coercion, either through violent or non-violent means. Both the RSAs and the ISAs perform the functions of violence and ideology, coercion and consent. Despite their composite nature, locating the dominant ISA in the school system has the effect of dissolving the dialectical relationship between political society and civil society collapsing the latter into the former. In other words, thus, instead of a dialectical process, we are left with a directional process, all subsumed in the State institutions. 88 Even though Althusser is clear that the ISAs can become a site of class struggle, as Terry Eagleton has noted, the essay seems to be fraught with tensions ‘between two quite different versions of the topic’.89 On the one hand, Althusser stresses that all investigation of ideology must begin with class struggle but, on the other hand, he neglects the point for the best part of the essay: on the contrary, the reflection is mostly interested in a functionalist approach to ideology, as something that contributes to bind together a society.90 This reduces all those ‘institutions’ (school, family, church, media, etc.) as a fixed realm which operate in invariable way with the unique aim of equipping “subjects with the forms of consciousness necessary for them to assume their ‘posts’ or functions within material production”.91 Althusser’s reception of hegemony, transformed into his theory of ISAs, has been dominant in the global debate about Gramsci’s theories.92 The years between 1970 and 1975 marked the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Gramscian Studies, with an impressive number of contributions published in Italy and across the world.93 Besides the reception of the historians, already discussed above, the debate was focused, as a result of the research of the previous age, on Gramsci’s conception of the state and on his Leninism, but most importantly on the concepts of hegemony and historical bloc that marked the persistence of Gramsci’s theories in works in the social sciences and humanities. In Italy, the emphasis on Gramsci’s

Introduction 17 creative reworking of Lenin’s theories sought to position Gramsci as the founder of the ‘Italian tradition’ and describe Togliatti’s line as in perfect continuity with his views.94 This culminated in a primacy of politics and, in regard to theory, in the analysis of the state. This reading must be situated in the effort of the PCI to attract the young revolutionaries that took part to the movement born in 1968 by presenting the Party’s history as a revolutionary one. It is also linked to the directions European Marxist reflection had taken, as is shown, for instance, by the important book Gramsci et l’État by Christine Buci-Glucksmann.95 The turning point of Gramscian research must be set in the publication of the Gerratana edition (1975), which made clear once and for all that Gramsci wrote neither books nor aphorisms: his production must not be seen as a collection of mere fragments, but as in fact containing a coherent reflection. Produced by one of the finest Gramscian scholars of his generation, Valentino Gerratana, the edition is composed of four volumes, with philological apparatuses and notes all located in the last one. The aim was to avoid the burden of interpretation on the use of Gramsci’s Quaderni as much as possible. However, despite still being the most widely used edition – the present volume still refers to Gramsci’s text according to it – the Gerratana edition is not flawless: for instance, the Notebooks were ordered on the basis of the date when Gramsci first used a Notebook. Gramsci, though, did not write from the beginning to the end of each Notebook, but worked in parallel on several of them, as discussed above. This constitutes the basis of Francioni’s critique in the 1980s, and the reason why a team of Italian scholars started working on a new philological edition, the Edizione Nazionale, still to be completed.96

The Seminario di Antichistica Nevertheless, the Gerratana edition prompted new research paths and enhanced the ones already in place. An example extremely relevant for ancient historians is the Seminario di Antichistica, instituted in 1974 by young scholars such as Andrea Giardina (1949), Aldo Schiavone (1944) or slightly more senior ones, like Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi (1935), with the contribution of a few established figures, like the aforementioned Antonio La Penna (1925) and Ettore Lepore (1924-1990).97 The results of the theoretical effort of the group can be found in Analisi Marxista e Società Antiche (1978) and informed a rich discussion around the concept of the slave-owning mode of production. The largest part of the intellectual production of the Seminario, however, was published in three volumes, edited by Giardina and Schiavone in 1981.98 It is quite striking how, in fact, the role Gramsci’s thought played in these publications can look extremely limited. The point of view of a non-Marxist observer can help us reconstruct the context: the judgement expressed by Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987)

18  Emilio Zucchetti after the publication of the first two issues of the journal Quaderni di storia is a reflection upon Marxist approaches in Italian academia. In the years following the Second World War, he writes, Concetto Marchesi (1878-1957) was “one of the Communist intellectual leaders, but more on moral than on intellectual grounds. The younger students of Antiquity, who had found their gospel in Gramsci’s Lettere dal Carcere, had no obvious model to follow”.99 Momigliano is here referring to the generation of Ettore Lepore (1924-1990): among those, especially La Penna and Bianchi Bandinelli “tried to combine a conventional university training (such as one could have received at the school of Giorgio Pasquali in Florence and Pisa) with the Gramscian version of Marxism”.100 Even though Momigliano must have written this article in 1975, after the work of the Seminario di Antichistica had begun, he held that the “Dialoghi [viz. di Archeologia] will probably remain the most important document of what one could call the Gramscian stage of this revival of Marxism in Italy”. However, he thought that they were then “entering a new stage, of which the Quaderni di s­ toria, in their differences from the Dialoghi di Archeologia, are a symptom”. Momigliano’s observations were very perceptive: it was a new phase and there was little interest in Gramsci among the participants in the Seminario di Antichistica. Indeed, the focus of the Seminario’s research is more on Marxian approaches, and particularly on the ideas expressed in Marx’s Formen, die der kapitalischen Produktion vorhergehen (1857-1858), a section of the Grundrisse. In Analisi Marxista, Gramsci is evoked only in Massimo Brutti’s introduction and in La Penna’s intervento, a speech in response to the papers presented during the conference from which the book originated. Brutti first mentions and discusses Gramsci’s notes about Corrado Barbagallo and Ettore Ciccotti. Later, he engages directly with the Quaderni, by discussing his notes on historiography, notably the link between (Marxist) theory and historical practice.101 In the volume, however, there is no mention of Gramsci’s categories and no attempt to reflect upon them: the group set the program of an investigation of the slave-owning mode of production through Marx’s own categories. La Penna’s speech in response to Schiavone’s paper can be taken as further confirmation of the lack of interest shown by the members of the Seminario: he begins by thanking the “amici legati all’Istituto Gramsci” for inviting him to participate in their work.102 Even though he mentions Gramsci more than once and acknowledges his debt to his thought, he seems to recognise a strand in the work of the Seminario that is not acknowledged in these terms in any other contribution:103 If I am not mistaken, we shall now reconstruct the ancient mode of production, starting from Marxian concepts. We will then move from this reconstruction to rediscover the relations with the cultural superstructures (or the ideal forms, if you prefer).104

Introduction 19 His reflection then focuses on Marx’s presentation of the mode of production, after which he discusses at some length the image of the ancient proletariat (mainly slaves) as the “purely passed pedestal” of the ruling class.105 The analogy between ancient and modern proletariat, an approach which Marx strongly criticised in the exact passage La Penna was quoting, is implicit in the following section, where he reflects upon late republican social movements and their relevance in the political struggle. He acknowledges that the strictly political struggle was internal to the ruling class and originated from the demands of a group of the newly rich who aimed to conquer a share of political power. Notwithstanding, he stresses the influence of the social pressure exerted by subaltern groups. His perspective as a “historian of ancient culture” fixes him in a different position from the rest of the group: he admits to being forced to draw the socio-economic conditions from the very same philosophical and literary texts that he is analysing and praises the advancements that could come from studies of the ancient economy. However, his interest remains in the relationship between socio-economic system and culture, on which, he suggested, ‘Gramsci’s experience remains useful’.106 He then considers four Gramscian spaces of mediation: politics, whose protagonists often used social structure to boost their own programmes (e.g. agrarian laws); moral reflections; religion; and traditions, for instance rhetorical and ideological. This programme of research seems to be constructed around the same spheres of ideology recognised by Gramsci, namely common sense, religion, and folklore/tradition.107 The same programme informed the choice of topics for the papers that constituted the third volume of Società antica e produzione schiavistica, where, however, Gramsci is never explicitly discussed.108 While the first two volumes deal with the Marxian programme that the group set itself, the third volume contains seven papers, generally focused on the interactions between socio-economic bases and superstructure, and particularly on law and ethical models.109 The aim of such a programme seems to be a discussion of the social norms and models that organised what Gramsci called ‘common sense’. ‘Senso comune’ and ‘egemonia’ are explicitly evoked in two contributions (Lotito and Labate/Narducci), but they do not occupy centre stage in the volume, nor are they mentioned in every chapter.110 Despite its influence on the future programme of research of the Seminario, La Penna’s speech still represents the perspective of someone who was not himself part of the group, at least at first. There seems to have been a rather different point of view at work if we read Andrea Carandini’s L’anatomia della scimmia (1979). His reconstruction of the academic context of the 1960s is not significantly different from Momigliano’s interpretation mentioned above.111 Carandini takes issue with the so-called ‘gramscismo’, a tendency to stress Gramsci’s cultural debt towards the bourgeois tradition. The development of Italian studies of antiquity is seen in this tradition: the storicismo crocio-gramsciano prevented a re-reading of Marx himself and

20  Emilio Zucchetti limited the Italian historiographical tradition.112 The rediscovery of Marx and Gramsci himself is set by Carandini as a consequence of the social movements of 1968-1969, and, despite the fact that some of the international novelties were received and other repelled “in nome di un marxismo italiano «addomesticato», cioè dello storicismo crocio-gramsciano”, a new season in classical studies was about to begin.113 The Seminario di Antichistica was, then, the symbol of this new cultural tendency, more attached to Marxian theory than to the Italian ‘domesticated’ Marxism and marked by the opening or re-opening of a series of academic journals. In Carandini’s depiction of those years, the damage of ‘gramscismo’ seems to have disqualified Gramsci himself, as he plays virtually no role in the theoretical model proposed in the rest of the book. The approach shown by Carandini, but also in the volumes produced by the Seminario, reflects the political climate in the Party after the death of Togliatti (1964). Intellectuals from the left wing of the party, such as Rossana Rossanda (1924-2020) and Cesare Luporini (1909-1993), argued for a renewal of Marxism before the 11th Congress of the Party (January 1966). In a series of articles in Rinascita, Rossanda and Luporini tried to promote a direct reading of Marx’s writings in close dialogue with contemporary European cultural tendencies, such as, for instance, structuralism.114 If Gramsci’s reflection only marginally affected the research of the Seminario, a major influence can be found in the work of Moses Finley (1912-1986).115 He was the protagonist of a productive academic debate with the members of the Seminario about slavery and the slave-owning mode of production. During a conference in Perugia, in 1967, Momigliano had already suggested that Italian historians engage with the work of JeanPierre Vernant (1914-2007) and Finley, but a proper interaction between the American scholar and the groups of Italian researchers only took place later on.116 A meaningful record of such a debate is represented by the round table about Finley’s Ancient Slavery (1980) organised at the École Française in Rome on 5 June 1981, whose proceedings were published in the first issue of Opus (1982).117 The debate, however, does not have any single reference to Gramscian categories, nor is his name ever mentioned in the printed version. The members of the Seminario appear in this publication as a group of scholars reflecting upon the contribution that the recent publication of the Grundrisse could make to the study of Marx’s own positions: Gramsci’s thought seems to have had a relatively limited impact on their scholarship.118

A philological renaissance and a global re-use A certain interest in Gramsci’s thought kept growing around the world, through the new ‘Cultural Studies’ approach and the popularity of Althusser. At the same time, in Italy, the new Marxian phase prompted by the publication of the Grundrisse (1968-1970) caused the decline of the

Introduction 21 so-called ‘Gramscismo’ and a limited scholarly interest outside the field of Gramscian studies. The parallel emergence of extra-­parliamentary, revolutionary groups, such as Autonomia Operaia and Lotta Continua, on the left marked a complex political phase (1969-1979).119 These groups were at odds with the PCI, which was seen as a reformist bourgeois party that had betrayed the workers’ interest: it was the phase of the so-called Historic Compromise (1976). These developments, together with the so-called ‘crisis of Marxism’, pushed Gramsci to the side of the political debate.120 However, academic studies on Gramsci’s work continued and the figure of Gianni Francioni slowly became prominent, after a phase of intense disagreements with Gerratana. Francioni’s importance in Gramscian studies is seminal: it is thanks to his ­w riting from the  late  1970s onwards that scholars of Gramsci regained an interest in the philology of the text, which is one of the main focuses of contemporary Gramscian research. Francioni’s method constitutes the foundation of the new Edizione Nazionale and is based on a critical assessment of each of the Notebooks in order to reconstitute a diachronic edition of the single notes. The new edition, planned in the 90s, would be based on a solid philological assessment the notes, capable of taking various textual aspects, such as variants between different drafts, the internal subdivision of individual Notebooks, the chronology of the sources cited, into account.121 The long road towards the ‘Gramsci Renaissance’, after almost twenty years of relatively limited interest, was paved: its beginning can be placed in 1997, when, on the sixtieth anniversary of Gramsci’s death, the first world conference of the International Gramsci Society, still very active today, was organised.122 The global outlook of the conference informed the Italian academic community of the substantial engagement in international scholarship with Gramsci’s work: the Birmingham School in primis, but also the productive reception of an Indian school, whose use of Gramsci contributed vastly to his fortune in the field of subaltern studies.123 The most representative name of the Indian School is certainly Ranajit Guha (1922), whose research hinges upon the mode of dominance in colonial states. His thesis, mainly influenced by the work of Edward Said and Gramsci himself, has the colonial power exercising a form of domination strongly based on coercion without hegemonic efforts. Arguing for a new subaltern historiography in the colonial context, Guha stressed the need to focus on contestations and revolts of the subalterns in order to find them an active place in history. Through this school, Gramsci attained a central role in one of the most important shifts in global scholarly trends of our day, postcolonial studies, which has recently started to extend its theoretical influence on the field of Classics and Ancient History.124 The global usage of Gramsci’s categories that began in the 1980s is characterised by an asystematic translation of insights and theories into

22  Emilio Zucchetti different contexts, often accompanied by a post-structuralist quasirhizomatic theoretical framework. Examples of this tendency can be found in fields like Anthropology, International Relations, and Political Economy.125 This tendency starkly contrasts with those (especially Italian) scholars studying Gramsci as main research object: as we saw, in fact, after the beginning of the works on the Edizione Nazionale, lexicographic and philological studies have been the focus of their research.126 A generation of new scholars are attempting to create a dialogue between these two scholarly trends, as exemplified by the collection of essays Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks (2019), in which a large range of approaches is represented.127 This volume also aims to follow these recent scholarly trends by including attempts to adapt and re-use Gramsci’s categories outside their original contexts, as well as a more rigorous philological investigation of the categories in Gramsci’s own intellectual production. Indeed, our endeavour should be read together with the first book devoted to the reception of the Classical world in Gramsci’s thought appeared: Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci (2019) by Erminio Fonzo (1979). Fonzo asked himself whether and to what extent Gramsci’s knowledge of the Greco-Roman world influenced his political thought. He broached many themes that occupy a relevant role in our volume, too: Gramsci’s education; his approach to history; the role of Latin and Greek in the Italian scholarly system; the role of Italian intellectuals and the historical relationship with Roman and Imperial intellectual; Caesar and Caesarism; the ‘fall of the Roman Empire’; and the debate on the ancient economy. Fonzo concludes that the inconsistent presence of the Greco-Roman world in Gramsci’s thought depends on the different phases of his life and on the availability of texts during the prison years. While, in his youth, memories pertaining to culture in general are often used ironically, during the years in prison they become part of his historical, political, and philosophical reflections, albeit only collaterally. In fact, Gramsci never reflected upon the ancient world or Latin and Greek texts for their own sake, but rather he used to go back to antiquity to look for the origins of, or analogies for, contemporary phenomena.128 In the same way in which he investigates other historical contexts, Gramsci’s interest is always in political struggle: his interpretation of the past only aimed to find solutions for contemporary problems. Yet, being conducted from the perspective of a contemporary historian, Fonzo’s work still falls outside the field of Classical Studies, which remained only tangentially interested in Gramsci until now. As anticipated, most of the mentions of Gramsci in this field seem to have appeared in the last twenty-five years and are, more importantly, often mediated through the work of other authors, signalling a limited direct engagement. As we move to reconsider these intersections, we should not be surprised to find that ancient historians and classical scholars have been mostly interested by the notion of hegemony.

Introduction 23

Gramsci and the Classics: hegemony and ideology Gramsci appears in the fields of Classics and Ancient History especially in relation to the cognate concepts of hegemony and ideology. His name is only cursorily mentioned in a list of Marxist theoreticians of ideology in Dean Hammer’s What is Politics in the Ancient World? (2009), without any discussion.129 The influence is certainly patent in some cases, even though the engagement with Gramsci’s texts is often limited. Besides a tangential mention in Finley, the first appearances can be found in Josiah Ober’s Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989).130 He mentions ‘ideological hegemony’ in the text to describe “a situation which is – he specifies in a footnote – in some ways an inversion of the one Gramsci himself saw as pertaining in modern capitalist societies” (something comparable to this interpretation of the concept may be seen at work in Canevaro’s contribution to this volume).131 Despite using the concept of hegemony repeatedly, probably through the mediation of Althusser, Ober makes the same association Finley did with ‘false consciousness’. Moreover, without discussing or citing a single text, he refers to the Selections as a whole and to Joseph V. Femia’s (1946) discussion of hegemony.132 When reading Femia’s work, however, it is hard to get such an impression of Gramsci’s thought, thanks particularly to a rich and exhaustive history of the concept of power in Marxism that sets the stage for the discussion of consent, consensus, and hegemony, and stresses the psychological side of the relationship of dominance. The footnotes, however, refer to yet another book, a ‘post-liberal’ essay that sought to overcome Marxism and Liberalism in a new theory of democracy, Bowles and Gintis’ Capitalism and Democracy (1986). As is often the case, the authors lump together different Marxist strands, mentioning Gramsci only in a footnote and without ever attempting a reading of his texts. The image of Gramsci in these first references is no more than a blurred reflection. It is in the sub-field of Roman history that hegemony was to make a major appearance as an analytical category. Even though the name of Gramsci is never mentioned, the concept plays a distinctive role in Clifford Ando’s Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (2000).133 In a theoretical model that ostensibly rules out Marx and his followers, and instead draws from Bourdieu, Weber, and Habermas, Ando insists in his descriptions of ideology on an Althusserian understanding of ‘hegemony’ through the ISAs, as Peter Rose sought to demonstrate.134 Soon afterwards, though, ‘hegemony’ made it to centre stage, thanks to the work of Robert Morstein-Marx. The first brief mention is mediated by the article of Jackson Lears, on which we commented above.135 The discussion is situated in the methodological section about the “ideological effects of discourse”, where Morstein-Marx rejects “the traditional Marxist sense of the word [“false consciousness”]”.136 Then, after commending Althusser for touching upon “something important when he observed that ideology

24  Emilio Zucchetti ‘summons’ or ‘interpellates’ individuals to take up a position already defined through existing discourse and thus constate them as ideological subjects”, he endorsed a fairly rigid ‘top-down’ model of social power, describing the contio-goer as prisoner of the ideological discourse of the elite.137 However, this description does not mean that the people in attendance did not influence the speeches pronounced: the speaker had to construct his discourse taking the values and beliefs held by the audience into consideration, if he wanted to be successful. He clarifies that ‘in that limited sense […] one might say that the disposition of the audience calls forth his voice (although this disposition should then also be seen as to some significant degree the product of previous elite discourse)’.138. Finally, despite the mention of Lears’ balanced article, Morstein-Marx embraces an openly Althusserian understanding of hegemony: unlike in Gramsci, Althusser linked ideological domination to ISAs (here, the contio, which can be summoned only by a magistrate), and therefore subsumed it into political society.139 This would not be the only appearance of Gramsci and his ‘cultural hegemony’ in Morstein-Marx’s works on the Roman Republic. On the contrary, two major articles are explicitly dedicated to the concept, and a third one engages with James C. Scott’s model of “hidden transcripts”, and even defends the complexity of Gramsci’s argument against Scott’s readings.140 According to Scott, relationships of domination and resistance are always divided among ‘public transcripts’, representing all the official, ceremonial and convenient forms of subordination, and ‘hidden transcripts’, a series of acts of defiance that goes unnoticed by the superiors. In these publications, Morstein-Marx engages with Gramsci’s texts, developing a more nuanced understanding of ‘cultural hegemony’ and referring, even if not always in a thoroughly Marxist way, to the concept of ‘class’. While Scott inscribed Gramsci in the series of theorists of ‘false consciousness’ and preferred a model where domination is intended as coercion and sheer repression, Morstein-Marx correctly recalls Gramsci’s theory of ‘divided consciousness’.141 Moreover, he also stressed the fundamental Gramscian contribution towards a voice of the subalterns, whose Weltanschauung is generated by their own lived experience. Another example of the possible benefits of increased attention to the latest approaches in Gramscian studies when using the concept of hegemony in historical research can be now offered. As Morstein-Marx rightly notes, however, in a rich footnote, “the Sardinian revolutionary was perfectly aware of the kind of ‘hidden arts of resistance’ that Scott tends to glorify—and found them relatively trivial, in the absence of ideological enlightenment”.142 He refers here to a text drawn from an article appeared in August 1919 in L’Ordine Nuovo, right before the beginning of the biennio rosso, when Gramsci and the whole party, probably mistakenly, thought that Italy was going through a ‘revolutionary’ phase.143 Despite showing an early interest in a theory of hegemony, involving workers and peasants, the article shows positions pertaining to the Council

Introduction 25 Communism, never mentioning the Party and stressing the role of self-­ organisation instead. It is in this context that we find a note about what Scott would call a ‘hidden transcript’ as something detrimental to the cause of socialism. However, the position cannot be taken as the one Gramsci held until the end of his life. It is important to consider the diachronic aspect of Gramsci’s work and thus appreciate the prominent revolutionary aspects of his theories during the Councils phase (1919-1920), then modified by a Leninist approach to the party. A greater attention to the evolution of Gramsci’s thought could enhance a future treatment of the ‘hidden transcript’ in Roman politics in a Gramscian framework. In recent years, Joy Connolly followed Morstein-Marx’s lead, taking, however, a further step in the definition of hegemony by engaging directly with Gramsci’s text in her first book, The State of Speech (2007), in the context of a paragraph about ‘Ideology and Power’.144 However, despite a fine understanding of the social totality that follows Williams’ interpretation of Gramsci, she seems to favour a post-Marxist and rather neo-Gramscian interpretation of hegemony, nevertheless ascribing it to Gramsci.145 In her words: “in Gramsci’s view, there is no ‘class’ as such: the ruling class is the state. What makes a class hegemonic (as opposed to simply “ruling” or “dominant”) is its successful articulation of a critical mass of ideological elements characteristic of a given social formation”. The language tends to bend Gramsci’s approach towards the one pursued, for instance, by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, where discursive elements are preferred in a superstructural analysis.146 Connolly distinguishes Gramsci’s and Althusser’s views of ideology and shows a completely different understanding of Gramsci’s hegemony than Scott’s monolithic and unidirectional one. However, her Gramsci assumes the language and traits of neo-­Gramscians: ideology happens in the space of ‘articulation’, rather than civil society, common sense, religion, and folklore, and hegemony is described as a contested and ‘always fluctuating, incomplete’ social field.147 It is again from a (double) reception that Gramsci’s work is mediated in Connolly’s productive use of hegemony. The final work we have to mention before going into the discussion of the four ‘parts’ of ideology in Gramsci is Rose’s Class in Archaic Greece (2012), the result of a long period of research.148 In keeping with the Althusserian reading of Gramsci, he divided in a radical way between violent ‘domination’ exercised in the monopoly of violence and “ideological apparatuses, the various means of persuasion by which those in power seek to create ‘hegemony’”.149 Following Bourdieu, argued that assuring the subalterns’ compliance demanded a proportionately greater investment for the ruling class in societies ‘essentially lacking a state’.150 Despite briefly acknowledging that Althusser ‘has been criticised for projecting too pessimistic a picture of the inequality of the forces engaged in the struggle’, Rose did not consider the difference between Gramsci and Althusser, reading them in a substantial continuity.151

26  Emilio Zucchetti Setting Gramsci’s own reading of hegemony free from Althusser’s reception can yield valuable results and lead us to ask a different set of questions from those prompted by an Althusserian understanding of ideology, as we shall see in the contributions to this volume. Indeed, we saw at the beginning of this introductory essay that the model offered by Gramsci is a dialectical one: this opens the possibility of encompassing the two strategies of coercion and consent in a theory of power that find its synthesis in the state.152 The ruling class organically selects the most suitable form of maintaining political control according to different political phases: one may say that coercion and consent are always present at once, according to Gramsci’s theory of power, but are not necessarily (actually almost never) evenly balanced.153 Moreover, non-Marxist readings of Gramsci have often overlooked the fact that hegemony is not a generic theory of social power, but always describes the consolidation of the power of a class on (at least) another. Gramsci himself subscribed to a Marxian understanding of society, where only two fundamental classes, proletariat and bourgeoise, could hold the  reins of a hegemonic system. Nevertheless, these classes had to exercise their hegemony through the formation of a historical bloc, which is a “­historical congruence between material forces, institutions and ideologies, or broadly, an alliance of different class forces politically organised around a set of hegemonic ideas that gave strategic direction and coherence to its constituent elements”.154 The historical bloc is thus a particular moment of unity between structure and superstructure, an interpretation that conceptualises the social world as a ‘totality’, as Lukács had done, and Althusser and Balibar, and Williams will also do.155 In the first part of Notebook 10, devoted to Benedetto Croce, Gramsci discusses the historiographical model of Croce as ‘ethical-political history’ and recognises it as a reaction to ‘economism’ – i.e. the deterministic primacy of the structure over superstructural elements. He then appeals to Lenin, “the greatest modern theoretician of the philosophy of praxis [scil. Marxism]”, who “gave new weight—in opposition to the various ‘economist’ tendencies—to the front of cultural struggle, and constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the State-as-force, and as the present form of the Forty-Eightist doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’.156 In fact, according to Gramsci, Marxists should regard ethical-­ political history as “as an ‘empirical canon’ of historical research, to be kept continually in mind while studying and analysing historical development, if it is desired to arrive at an integral history”.157 The fifth of the ‘footnotes’ that concludes the first half of this Notebook makes clear that ethicalpolitical history is not history at all, since it is disconnected from the concept of historical bloc, in which “socio-economic content and ethical-political form are concretely identified in the reconstruction of a certain historical period”.158 The history that non-Marxist authors have often ­produced in Gramsci’s name would not have looked like history at all to him. By

Introduction 27 considering Gramsci’s own texts and interpreting them in their context, by acknowledging the role of class analysis and not reducing Gramsci to a theorist of the superstructure only, this book attempts to produce a form of historiography that may be in keeping with his own idea of history.

The structure of this volume The classical scholarship discussed above tends to stress the element of the construction of consent in civil society over coercion, most often relegating the class-element – central to Gramsci’s understanding – to the sidelines. A stronger engagement with Gramsci’s own text will prove fruitful in providing new questions to ask to the sources: sometimes, in the effort of applying Gramsci’s categories to a rather different context such as the ancient world, we will be required to do some further creative work. Many of the contribution to this volume explore some of these categories, both looking at their dimension in Gramsci’s own text and creatively adapting them to the study of ancient world. The remaining chapters are dedicated to the study of aspects of the ancient world cited or used by Gramsci in his political and theoretical reflections. The contributions range from archaic Greece to Late Antiquity. Laura Swift looks through Gramscian lenses at the role played by poetry in the construction of a ‘common sense’ in archaic Greek communities, reflecting on passages from Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochus. Mirko Canevaro’s chapter pursues the path of an upsidedown hegemony and the role of the masses in its construction in democratic Athens, particularly focusing on the honours bestowed on deserving citizens by the assembly. The Prelude to the study of the traces of ancient philosophy in Gramsci’s Quaderni proposed by Phillip Horky is a critique of Benedetto Fontana’s reading, beginning and ending with the longest ancient philosophical text cited by Gramsci, a passage from Plato’s Republic in Q8§22. Slavery is the focus of Kostas Vlassopoulos’ chapter, inspired by the work of Eugene Genovese: focusing on Artemidorus as case-study, the paper reflects on agency, bottom-up history, and alternative identities of the enslaved person. Moving towards the Roman age and Italy, Massimiliano Di Fazio’s contribution investigates Gramsci’s linguistic interests in the Etruscan language, placing it in its academic, political, and human milieu, with particular attention to the roles of Alfredo Trombetti and Pericle Durati. Rome’s domination over Greece is read by Emma Nicholson as a passive revolution through a close reading of several passages from Polybios, whose profile as intellectual is assessed through Gramsci’s reflection on the topic. Roman imperialism is also the topic of Michele Bellomo’s contribution, which studies Gramsci’s attitude towards ancient and modern imperialism through the analysis of relatively lesser known Gramscian texts. The focus turns back to the Italian, national character of Roman domination in Mattia Balbo’s reflection on Q19§1, a note that discusses Carlo Cipolla’s

28  Emilio Zucchetti speech on the ethnographic constitution of the Italian nation, delivered in 1900: Gramsci saw the turning point for the Roman elites in Caesar’s policy, which created a cosmopolitan class of intellectuals. Federico Santangelo discusses cosmopolitanism in relation to Caesarism and, more precisely, to the modern myths of Caesar. Sealing the transition between republican and imperial contributions to the volume, Christopher Smith attempts to rewrite some aspects of the Augustan political and cultural revolution through a creative use of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. In Elena Giusti’s chapter, the focus rests on the ‘Myth-Prince’, in a reading of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile that puts Gramsci’s own view of Caesarism in dialogue with Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism. Domination, resistance, and hegemony under autocracy are the subject of Jeremy Paterson’s contribution, which engages with Tacitus and Luke in a dialectical interpretation of the language of power. The task of scrutinising Gramsci’s views on late Antiquity and the transition between antiquity and feudalism has been taken up by Dario Nappo, arguing for an image of Gramsci as a methodological forerunner of the Annales and of Fernand Braudel. Finally, Cristiano Viglietti offers a critical reflection on historical tendencies and hegemony by revisiting contemporary debates about ancient economics. Maintaining the outlook of the conference from which this book originated, the Afterthoughts offer insights and proposals for future Gramscian research on the ancient world, written by Alberto Esu and the two editors of this volume. This tripartite section is not to be read as a conclusion, nor as a supplement to the preceding chapters. Its aim is to offer a ­forward-looking set of remarks and reflections, which, we hope, may be able to prompt a debate on the interpretative lines pursued in this volume.

Acknowledgements I should like to thank Newcastle University, the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership, and the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for their generous support to my research. I would also like to thank Federico Santangelo, Anna Maria Cimino, Juan García Gonzalez, and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments.

Notes 1 The most widespread excerpts are: “Vivo, sono partigiano. Perciò odio gli indifferenti, odio chi non parteggia”, from La Città Futura, the only issue of a review published in 1917 (= EN-S2: 93-4 = CF: 13-15); “Odio il capodanno” (1/01/1917), in his column Sotto la Mole, on the Socialist newspaper Avanti! (= SM: 3-4); and “Istruitevi, perché avremo bisogno di tutta la vostra intelligenza. Agitatevi, perché avremo bisogno di tutto il vostro entusiasmo. Organizzatevi, perché avremo bisogno di tutta la vostra forza”, from L’Ordine Nuovo, 1(1), 1/05/1919.

Introduction 29 2 Liguori (2012) is the fundamental work on the subject. 3 Anderson (2017a) is a reprint of Anderson (1976), except for a new preface; see infra. 4 See with some caution in regard to the selection, Anderson (2017b). 5 Q12§1 = QC: 1519 = SPN: 12, “Gli intellettuali sono i «commessi» del gruppo dominante per l’esercizio delle funzioni subalterne dell’egemonia sociale e del governo politico, cioè: 1) del consenso «spontaneo» dato dalle grandi masse della popolazione all’indirizzo impresso alla vita sociale dal gruppo fondamentale dominante, consenso che nasce «storicamente» dal prestigio (e quindi dalla fiducia) derivante al gruppo dominante dalla sua posizione e dalla sua funzione nel mondo della produzione; 2) dell’apparato di coercizione statale che assicura «legalmente» la disciplina di quei gruppi che non «consentono» né attivamente né passivamente, ma è costituito per tutta la società in previsione dei momenti di crisi nel comando e nella direzione in cui il consenso spontaneo viene meno”. 6 See e.g. Q24§4 with Liguori (2006: 69–88 and 2015: 85–112); cf. Swift’s chapter in this volume. 7 According to Gramsci, every man is a ‘philosopher’; see Q12§3. 8 Q6§24. The emphasis should be on ‘ethical content of the state’, cf. Thomas (2009: 173–5); on civil society, see also Texier (1988), Buttigieg (1995 and 2000), and Liguori (2006: 30–42). 9 Anderson (2017a). 10 See Francioni (1984: 146–228) and Thomas (2009: 40–83). 11 Q15§10 = QC: 1765 = SPN: 244, “Stato è tutto il complesso di attività pratiche e teoriche con cui la classe dirigente giustifica e mantiene il suo dominio non solo ma riesce a ottenere il consenso attivo dei governati”; see Thomas (2009: 138). 12 Q6§88 = QC: 763-4 = SPN: 263, “nella nozione generale di Stato entrano elementi che sono da riportare alla nozione di società civile (nel senso, si potrebbe dire, che Stato = società politica + società civile, cioè egemonia corazzata di coercizione)”. 13 This account is particularly indebted to Fiori (1966) [Eng. tr. Fiori (1970)] and d’Orsi (2018), passim. Although Gramsci’s biography has been a battlefield for interpretation as much as his thought [see Liguori (2012: 178–84 ) and cf. Tamburrano (1963) and Romano (1965)], Fiori’s work is still the current reference work in German, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Greek, Farsi, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and Turkish. In the English-speaking context, the introduction to Gramsci’s life and thought by Hoare and Sperber (2015) and the translation of Santucci (2005), appeared in 2010, deserve special attention. For more recent biographical research cf. Francioni and Giasi (2020). 14 Fiori (1966: 20–2) takes a sympathetic stance on this story, suggesting that it was due to a political hostility against Francesco Gramsci, but see d’Orsi (2018: 30–2). 15 See the letter to his father, 24/05/1910, in EN–E1: 38–9. 16 See d’Orsi (1999); for the courses chosen by Gramsci to compose his curriculum in Turin, see now Bianchi 2021: 57–8. 17 See Quaranta (1952). 18 See TG: 131–150; d’Orsi (2002); Bianchi 2021, an important contribution on the impact of philology and the historical method on Gramsci’s thought, has only been published in the final stages of this work and could not be discussed here. 19 Recently edited by Schirru in EN-D1. 20 See Rassegna Comunista, anno II, n. 17 (30/01/1922), also published in L’Ordine Nuovo, 03/01/1922.

30  Emilio Zucchetti 21 The wedding took place between 23 December 1922 and 1 January 1923; no certificate can be retrieved. 22 See Giasi (2009). 23 For the Lyons Theses, see CPC: 488–513; for the Note sul problema meridio­ nale, see QM or Biscione (1990); Eng. tr. in SQ. 24 On the relationship with Sraffa, see Vacca (2012: 49–66). 25 The debate about the letter sent by Ruggero Grieco that allegedly blocked the negotiations for Gramsci’s release is still open: see Canfora (2009, 2012a, and 2012b) and Vacca (2012: 245–61). 26 On Gramsci and fairy-tales, see Panichi (2019). 27 On Gramsci’s translations, see Cospito (2007) in EN-Q1. 28 Francioni (1984: 21–2). 29 See Francioni (1984: 15–146 and 2016) and Cospito (2011). 30 On the phases of composition, see also Frosini (2003: 23–76). 31 On Gramsci’s life in prison, see Rossi (2014 and 2017). 32 See, however, Cospito (2017) on the newspaper and magazine cuttings that Gramsci had kept for future notes he never managed to draft. 33 See Liguori (2012: 58). 34 Partially printed in Lo Stato Operaio (1937), nn. 5–6, then in Gramsci (Paris, 1938); now in TG: 65–98. For a discussion, see Liguori (2012: 39–48). 35 The Letters were first edited in LTP (1947); further editions, including more material, appeared as LGF (1964); LCF (1965); LS (1972); NL (1986); L (1992); LC (1996); LND (1997). 36 The six volumes were: Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce (1948), Gli intellettuali e l’organizzazione della cultura and Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sullo Stato moderno (1949), Il Risorgimento and Letteratura e vita nazionale (1950), and, finally, Passato e presente (1951). On this first phase, see Liguori (2012: 89–99) and especially 92 n. 11. 37 MP included two Editorials and the programme from L’Ordine Nuovo; The Southern Question; Q11§12; Q10ii§54; Q16§9; Q11§13 (only QC: 1396–8); Q11§26 (only QC: 1431–3); Q11§25 (only QC: 1428–30); Q11§33; Q11§22. II-III (only QC: 1422–4); Q11§33.IV (only QC: 1424–6); Q11§15 (only QC: 1403–6); a selection of Q11§17, merged with Q11§20 and Q11§34 Note I (only QC: 1449); Q11§28; Q11§16; Q11§27 (only QC: 1434–5); a selection of Q12§1 merged with a selection of Q12§3 and Q12§2(= PI: 3–17); a further selection of Q12§1 (only QC: 1530–8); the translation of the selection from Q13 published in Italian in PNM. 38 See Stuart Hughes (1958). 39 Williams (1960); see Hobsbawm (2011) and Buttigieg (2018) for overviews of Gramsci in English. 40 See for instance the SPN. The only critical edition in English (edited by Buttigieg; see PN1, PN2, and PN3) only concerns Notebooks 1–8. Following Buttigieg’s death in 2019, it is still uncertain whether the edition will be completed. 41 See Cospito (2016: esp. 49–90) (on hegemony). 42 See Grig (2016: 10), citing E. P. Thompson: “the working class made itself as much as it was made” [Thompson (1963: 164)]. 43 The only mention of Gramsci in Thompson’s writings from that decade is in Thompson (1978: 72–4) (originally published in 1965), where the definition of hegemony given by Williams (1960) is quoted. For an early assessment of the relationship between the ‘socialist-humanist history’ of Genovese, Thompson and Gramsci, see Johnson (1978). 44 See Thompson (1974), where the concept of paternalism also plays a major role, as in Genovese (1974). Only a passing mention of ancient Rome motivates the terminology (p. 395).

Introduction 31 45 See Thompson (1974: 387). 46 See Williams (1973 and 1977); for a reasoned assessment of Gramsci’s impact on Williams, see Filippini (2011: 57–73). 47 For Williams’ definition of productive forces, see Williams (1977: 90–4), where his attempt to introduce culture in the world of production appears particularly clear. 48 See Williams (1976: 144–6); this usage still lies at the foundation of postMarxist analysis such as the ones proposed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and, in a different way, by Hardt and Negri (2000 and 2004) (where the focus is shifted away from hegemony, but the authors use the concept of productive forces in Williams’ terms). 49 Forgacs (1989). 50 See Hoggart (1957). 51 See Green (1996). 52 See especially the chapters ‘Explanations and Ideologies of Crime’, ‘Crime, Law and the State’ and ‘The Law-and-Order society: the Exhaustion of ‘Consent’’, Hall et al. (1978: 139–272). 53 See Toner (1995 and 2009), Kurke (2010), Parker (2011), Forsdyke (2012), Courrier (2014), and Grig (2016). 54 Hall (1986: 5–6): “Gramsci’s work often appears almost too concrete: too historically specific, too delimited in its references, too “descriptively” analytic, too time and context-bound […]. To make more general use of them, they have to be delicately dis-interred from their concrete and specific historical embeddedness and transplanted to new soil with considerable care and patience”. 55 See Hall (1979, 1981 and 1986); these contributions are still highly respected in the field. However, ‘Notes on deconstructing the popular’ is probably the most cited and influential inside and outside the field of cultural studies; see, e.g., Hay (2011) offering an analysis of ‘new media’ and populism in the US and Harsin and Hayward (2013). For an assessment of Hall’s reception from a Gramscian perspective, see Filippini (2011: 74–93). 56 Hall (1988: 141–76). Contemporarily, developments in the field of political philosophy were moving beyond Gramsci in a Gramscian way, see, especially, Laclau and Mouffe (1985); cf. my afterthought in this volume. 57 The launch of the review was announced in a letter to the New Reasoner by Thompson in (1959) and Stuart Hall was the founding editor of the New Left Review in 1960. 58 See Francioni (1984: 147–228). 59 See Thomas (2009: 41–83). 60 See Anderson (2017a and 2017b); in the preface, Anderson, heavily criticizing the Edizione Nazionale—on which see infra—disregards Francioni’s critique by relating it with the post-Communist trend of the PCI in the 1980s and citing a statement by the Roman law scholar Aldo Schiavone in 1987, when he was director of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci: “Oggi non troviamo più una sola delle indicazioni politiche gramsciane alla base della politica com­plessiva del PCI” [see Schiavone (1987) and Liguori (2012: 310–1)]. However, Anderson was accused of the symmetrically opposite fault by Liguori (2012: 287–8). 61 See Genovese (1974). 62 See, for instance, the chapter “The Hegemonic Function of the Law”: Genovese (1974: 25–49). This perspective, together with Gramsci’s, was central to the formation of James C. Scott’s ideas of ‘weapons of the weak’ and ‘hidden transcripts’: see Scott (1977, 1985, and 1990). See infra for the relationship of these works with Robert Morstein-Marx’s. 63 See Genovese (1974: 148); on paternalism, see ibid. 3–7.

32  Emilio Zucchetti 64 See Jackson Lears (1985: 567). 65 In this respect, he goes further than the main source of his reading of Gramsci, Williams (1973). 66 Cf. Thomas (2009: 221), who rightly stresses the class-character of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. 67 See Frank (1975: 55) and Mazza (1970). 68 On Gramsci’s early influence on Italian Marxist scholarship on the ancient world, see Mazza (1976: esp. 111–6). 69 Giardina (2009). 70 Momigliano (1980) (1st edn. 1975). On Gramsci’s influence on the work of Bianchi Bandinelli, see now Avalli (2020: 533–40). 71 His memoir about Hitler in Rome is published as Bianchi Bandinelli (1995); a selection of diary entries useful to his anti-fascist self-fashioning are published as Bianchi Bandinelli (1962). 72 Bianchi Bandinelli (1962: 242). 73 La Penna and the historian of ancient philosophy Francesco Adorno were the only two non-archaeologists to be part of the editorial board: cf. Amici dei Dialoghi di Archeologia (1967: 5). 74 For an assessment of the methodological principles animating the reflection of the Dialoghi, see Iacono (2014). 75 Alongside matters of cultural policy, as for instance public funding to archaeology or the place of the discipline in universities’ curricula, the journal did not refrain from discussing pressing contemporary issues: volume 2 (1968) offers the point of view of the Amici on the emerging student movement, see Amici dei Dialoghi di Archeologia (1968). 76 Gramsci’s influence on Bianchi Bandinelli is also discussed in Grig (2016: 32), referring to Bianchi Bandinelli (1967). 77 Schweitzer (1950: 143–67). 78 Bianchi Bandinelli (1967: 18). 79 Bianchi Bandinelli (1967: 17). 80 See La Penna (1978a): vii-xii; also cf. La Penna (1974) (a discussion of the cultural hegemony exercised by the Roman senatorial elite); (1975) (a reading through the Gramscian lenses of Bianchi Bandinelli’s scholarship); and (1978b). 81 See La Penna (1978a: xi) On Gramsci’s influence on La Penna’s scholarship, see Cimino in this volume. 82 La Penna (1978a: xi). 83 See Spriano (1967-1975). 84 Togliatti’s contributions are now in TG: 224–75; see Liguori (2012: 148–65). 85 See Bobbio (1969) [= Bobbio (1979)]; see also Liguori (2012: 197–201) and Panichi (2019). 86 Laclau and Mouffe (1985) is a lengthy post-Marxist and neo-Gramscian critique of deterministic Marxism, which is attacked as ‘economism’ and ‘essentialism’. 87 Althusser (1970). 88 In Althusser (1970: n. 6), we can see at work a misunderstanding of Gramsci’s notion of the State: Althusser wrote that Gramsci had included ‘a certain number of institutions from civil society’ into the State. He must however have understood, as it has been common, the State as coextensive with ­political society. 89 See Eagleton (2007: 147). The discrepancy had already been noted by Rancière (1973). 90 Eagleton (2007: ibid). 91 Eagleton (2007: 148).

Introduction 33 92 See Thomas (2009: 1–39); on Althusser’s influence on the use of ‘ideology’ in Classical studies, see infra. 93 The definition is the title of a chapter in Liguori (2012: 215–50). 94 For this tendency see esp. Paggi (1970) and Vacca (1974); see also Liguori (2012: 216–9 and 229–31). 95 See Buci-Glucksmann (1975); see also Liguori (2012: 236–9). 96 See Francioni (1984: 15–146); the volumes appeared so far are listed in the Abbreviations, under the acronym EN. 97 A significant page underlining the importance of this institution for the future development of Italian classicists and ancient historians can be found in Giardina (2009: 72–3). Antonio La Penna was not technically a member, at least at first, as is implied in his contribution to Capogrossi Colognesi, Giardina and Schiavone (1978) [= La Penna (1978b)]. On the Istituto, see Lussana (2001); on the experience of the Seminario, see Duplá Ansuategui (2001) and Salvaterra and Cristofori (2016: 59–65). More generally, on Italian Marxist studies on the Ancient World, before and during those years, see Mazza (1976) and Di Benedetto (1978). 98 See Giardina and Schiavone (1981). In Società romana e Impero tardoantico, edited by Andrea Giardina in 1986, Gramscian categories do not appear in a significant way. 99 See Momigliano (1980). On Concetto Marchesi, see Canfora (2019). 100 See Momigliano (1980); it is rather clear that Momigliano did not have a great consideration of Gramsci, whose Marxism he deemed “domestic and domesticated”. 101 See Brutti (1978: 18–26). 102 See La Penna (1978b: 187); La Penna’s attendance is significant as he had not renewed his membership to the PCI since 1967, see La Penna 2019: 33. Schiavone (1978) focuses on Marx’s theory of history and function of ideology in the Formen. 103 La Penna (1978b: 189), “Io mi definirei più volentieri un empirio-­materialista; ma ci tengo a riconoscere che in Marx e in alcuni marxisti (in particolare Gramsci) ho trovato, ieri e oggi, una guida di pensiero critico senza cui non mi sarei orientato nella ricerca storica”. 104 La Penna (1978b: 189), “A noi si propone piuttosto, se non erro, di ricostruire, partendo da concetti marxiani, il modo di produzione antico e di partire da questa ricostruzione per riscoprire i rapporti con le sovrastrutture culturali (o le forme ideali, se si preferisce)”. 105 The citation is imprecise and the meaning slightly distorted: in the Preface to the Second Edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx hopes that his work “will contribute towards eliminating the school-taught phrase now current, particularly in Germany, of so-called Caesarism. In this superficial historical analogy, the main point is forgotten, namely, that in ancient Rome the class struggle took place only within a privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal for these combatants”. (= MECW: 21.57–8). 106 La Penna (1978b: 195). 107 On using Gramsci’s ideology, see the useful summary in Filippini (2011: 4–23); on the extension of the concept, see Liguori (2006: 54–68 and 2015: 65–85) and Francioni (2018). 108 See Giardina and Schiavone (1981), vol. 3. 109 Clemente (1981), Schiavone (1981), and Talamanca (1981) analyse specific laws and jurists as case studies, while Lotito (1981), Labate and Narducci (1981), and La Penna (1981) focus on ethical models.

34  Emilio Zucchetti 110 ‘Senso comune’: Lotito (1981: 79, 96 and 374); ‘egemonia’, Lotito (1981: 79, 110, 111, 118 and 385), Labate and Narducci (1981: 169), and Grelle (1981: 235). 111 See Momigliano (1980), cited in Carandini (1979: 4). 112 See Carandini (1979: 4) and Mazza (1976: 109–11), mentioned by Carandini, substantiates the claim. The rhetorical question implies that Momigliano’s comment on his book was caused by its being further apart from the ‘gramscismo’ (there mistakenly printed as «gramsciano», p. 15): “Che questo attacco sia dovuto alla mia lontananza dal «gramscismo» (la versione «domestica ed addomesticata» del marxismo in Italia, secondo Momigliano), cioè dall’ultima spiaggia della «scienza normale» negli studi classici, oltre la quale non v’è legittimazione possible?”. 113 One is left wondering whether Carandini agreed with Momigliano (1992) (1st edn. 1987): 712, who labels Gramsci “quel crociano di sinistra”. In that article, Momigliano also discusses Gramsci’s influence on Ernesto De M ­ artino (712–5). 114 Liguori (2012: 191–5). 115 Gramsci is only mentioned once, through a quote of Eugene Genovese: ­Finley mistakenly associates Gramsci with the Marxian theory of ‘false consciousness’; see Finley (1985: 78) (1st edn. 1973). On Finley and Marxism, see Nafissi (2005: 200–8), who associated his early positions and vocabulary to “Marxism and Marxian preoccupations”, and contra Harris (2013: 118–21) and Momigliano (1980: 756). 116 See Momigliano (1980) and Carandini (1979: 5); Momigliano also stresses “that Finley has recently irritated his Italian admirers by producing a model of Athenian democracy which runs counter to the elitist premises of all Italian political thought, if not from Machiavelli, at least from Mosca to Gramsci” (p. 756). 117 See Ampolo and Pucci (1982); Finley did not partake in the seminars about Società romana e produzione schiavistica; the only international scholars whose interventions are recorded in the volumes are Jean-Paul Morel, Mireille Corbier, and Michael Crawford. 118 The Grundrisse were published for the first time in 1939-1941 in German by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscow: the three thousand copies printed became soon very rare and mostly circulated inside the Soviet Union. A second edition of 500,000 copies was then produced in East Berlin in 1953. The first complete edition in English appears only in 1973 (MGR), even though sections were already published, as for instance the aforementioned Formen [see Hobsbawm (1964)]. The impact of the English translation on Stuart Hall’s and the Birmingham Centre’s work is assessed in Wise (2003). In Italy, the work was published for the first time in two volumes, between 1968 and 1970, during the workers’ and students’ struggles. Tronti (2008: 230) notes that “The cultural milieu of the time was heavily influenced by the national historicist and idealist legacy of Marxism that ran from Francesco De Sanctis and Antonio Labriola through to Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci. The publication of the Grundrisse in Italy involved a break with this cultural milieu”. On the interpretation, context, and editorial history of the work, see Musto (2008). 119 On this political phase, see Wright (2017). 120 The label ‘crisis of Marxism’ comes from Althusser (1978). 121 On the criteria of the Edizione Nazionale, see Cospito (2016); on Gramsci’s writing method, Francioni (2009). 122 The contributions of the conference are collected in Baratta and Liguori (1999).

Introduction 35 123 Subaltern Studies was the name of a series of historiographical edited volumes published between 1982 and 2001. For the mentioned contributions at the IGS conference, see Baratta (1999) and Buttigieg (1999). 124 For Gramscian approaches to postcolonial studies, see e.g. the rich collective volumes Chambers (2006), and Srivastava and Batthacharya (2012), and Pala (2010), and Green (2013a and 2013b). 125 Anthropology: Crehan (2011 and 2016). International Political Economy: Morton (2007); International Relations: Cox (1983); on this tendency in IR, see Germain and Kenny (1998) and Ayers (2008). A theorisation of this creative work prompted by Gramsci’s categories can be found in Prestipino (2000), who argued that every attempt to translate (tradurre) Gramsci into other contexts is also a betrayal (tradire). The tradurre/tradire dyad, however, has no negative connotations; cf. Liguori (2000). 126 See e.g. Frosini and Liguori (2004) and Liguori and Voza (2009) on Gramsci’s lexical choices. 127 See Antonini et al. (2019). 128 Fonzo (2019: 125). 129 See Hammer (2009: 26). See also Porter (2008: 480), citing the notion of ‘organic intellectuals’ in a list of the possible roles of classicists as public intellectuals in the XXI century. 130 See Finley (1985: 78), mentioned supra; and Ober (1989). 131 See Ober (1989: 380 and n. 65). 132 Femia (1981). 133 See Ando (2000), passim; the model of ‘ideology’ is described in ibid.: 19–48 see also Smith’s discussion of the book in this volume, 226, 228–9. 134 See Rose (2006); Gramsci is already discussed in Rose (1995), ch. 1 (esp. 27–31), and mentioned as original source in an abridged history of the concept of ideology in Rose (1997). 135 Morstein-Marx (2004: 156 n. 68) and on Jackson Lears (1985), see supra. 136 Morstein-Marx (2004: 15). 137 See Morstein-Marx (2004: 14–8). 138 Morstein-Marx (2004: 18). 139 The understanding of ‘cultural hegemony’ in Yakobson (2010) seems to depend on Morstein-Marx (2004). 140 The fundamental works are Morstein-Marx (2012, 2013, and 2015). 141 See Scott (1990: 70–107) and Gramsci’s defence in Morstein-Marx (2013: 45–6, and n. 77). 142 Morstein-Marx (2013: 46 n. 77). 143 ‘Operai e contadini’, L’Ordine Nuovo, 1(12), 2/08/1919 (= ON: 156–61). 144 Connolly (2007: 39–41). 145 Connolly (2007: 35 n. 58) mentions the ‘guidance’ of Williams (1977: 55–71). 146 For a definition of hegemony in a Neo-Gramscian milieu, see Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 91–101). 147 Connolly (2007: 40 and n. 59), citing the Prison Notebooks with no reference to any particular passage and adding “clarified by Mouffe, “Hegemony and Ideology”, 194” [= Mouffe (1979: 194)]. 148 See Rose [1995 (esp. 1–42), 1997, 2006, and 2012]. 149 Rose (2012: 45). 150 Rose (2012: 45–6). 151 Rose (2012: 46). 152 Thomas (2009: 159–95). In Afterthought Part 3, I try to reflect on the limits of applying Gramsci’s hegemony to the Ancient World, and to offer some potential solutions. 153 Q12§1.

36  Emilio Zucchetti 154 This clear synthesis is in Gill (2003: 58). 155 See Lukács (1971: 27–8), Althusser and Balibar (1970: e.g. 207), and Williams (1977: 55–71). 156 Q10i§12. 157 Q10i§12 = FSPN: 357–8. 158 Q10i§13.

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Introduction 39 Gill, S. (2003) Power and Resistance in the New World Order. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Green, M. (1996) ‘The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’, in Storey, J. (ed.) What Is Cultural Studies? A Reader. London: Edward Arnold, 49–60. Green, M.E. (2013a) ‘On the Postcolonial Image of Gramsci’, Postcolonial Studies, 16(1), 90–101. Green, M.E. (2013b) ‘Race, Class, and Religion: Gramsci’s Conception of Subalternity’, in Zene, C. (ed.) The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B.R. Ambedkar. New York, NY: Routledge, 138–50. Grelle, F. (1981) ‘Intervento’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 233–5. Grig, L. (ed.) (2016) Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: CUP. Hall, S. (1979) ‘The Great Moving Right Show’, Marxism Today, January 1979, 14–20. Hall, S. (1981) ‘Notes on Deconstructing the Popular’, in Samuel, R. (ed.) People’s History and Socialist Theory. London – Boston – Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 227–40. Hall, S. (1986) ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 5–27. Hall, S. (1988) The Hard Road to Renewal. Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. London: Verso. Hall, S. et al. (1978) Policing the Crisis. Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hammer, D. (2009) ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.) Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 1–7. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Harvard: HUP. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2004) Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York, NY: Penguin. Harris, W.V. (2013) ‘Politics in the Ancient World and Politics’ in id. (ed.) Moses Finley and Politics. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 107–22. Harsin, J. and M. Hayward (2013) ‘Stuart Hall’s “Deconstructing the Popular”. Reconsiderations 30 Years Later’, Communication, Culture and Critique, 6(2), 201–7. Hay, J. (2011) ‘‘Popular Culture’ in a Critique of the New Political Reason’, Cultural Studies, 25(4–5), 659–84. Hoare, G. and N. Sperber (2015) An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci. His Life, Thought and Legacy. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Hobsbawm, E. (ed.) (1964) K. Marx. Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Hobsbawm, E. (2011) ‘The Reception of Gramsci’ in id. How to Change the World. Tales of Marx and Marxism. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 334–43. Hoggart, R. (1957) The Uses of Literacy. New Brunswick and London: Transaction. Iacono, F. (2014) ‘A Pioneering Experiment: dialoghi di Archeologia between Marxism and Political Activism’, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 24, 1–10. Jackson Lears, T.J. (1985) ‘The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities’, The American Historical Review, 90(3), 567–93. Johnson, R. (1978) ‘Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist-Humanist History’, History Workshop, 6, 79–100.

40  Emilio Zucchetti Kurke, L. (2010) Aesopic Conversations. Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. La Penna, A. (1974) ‘Potere politico ed egemonia culturale in Roma antica dall’età delle guerre puniche all’età degli Antonini’, in Atti del convegno ‘Il latino nelle Facoltà umanistiche’, Perugia, 8-10 Novembre 1973. Rome: Elia, 39–72. Reprinted in id. (1978), Aspetti del pensiero storico latino, con due scritti sulla scuola classica, politica e cultura in Roma antica e nella tradizione classica moderna. Turin: Einaudi, 5-41. La Penna, A. (1975) ‘Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli dalla storicità dell’arte al marxismo’, Belfagor, 30(6), 617–49. La Penna, A. (1978a) Aspetti del pensiero storico latino, con due scritti sulla scuola classica, politica e cultura in Roma antica e nella tradizione classica moderna. Turin: Einaudi. La Penna, A. (1978b) ‘Intervento’, in Capogrossi, L., A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds.) Analisi marxista e società antiche. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 187–200. La Penna, A. (1981) ‘Mobilità dei modelli etici e relativismo dei valori: da Cornelio Nepote e Valerio Massimo e alla Laus Pisonis’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 183–206. La Penna, A. (2019) Io e l’antico. conversazione con Arnaldo Marcone. Pisa: Della Porta. Labate, M. and E. Narducci (1981) ‘Mobilità dei modelli etici e relativismo dei valori: il ‘personaggio’ di Attico’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 127–82. Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democracy. London and New York, NY: Verso. Liguori, G. (2000) ‘Tradurre Gramsci o tradire Gramsci?’, L’Unità, 16/07/2000, 17. Liguori, G. (2006) Sentieri gramsciani. Rome: Carocci. Liguori, G. (2012) Gramsci conteso. Interpretazioni, dibattiti e polemiche 1922-2012. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Liguori, G. (2015) Gramsci’s Pathways. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.) (2009) Dizionario Gramsciano 1926-1937. Rome: Carocci. Lotito, G. (1981) ‘Modelli etici e base economica nelle opere filosofiche di Cicerone’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 79–126. Lukács, G. (1971) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Eng. tr. R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lussana, F. (2001) ‘Politica e cultura negli anni Settanta: l’Istituto Gramsci, la Fondazione Basso, l’Istituto Sturzo’, Studi Storici, 42(4), 885–928. Mazza, M. (1970) Lotte sociali e restaurazione autoritaria nel 3° secolo d.C. Catania: Università di Catania. Mazza, M. (1976) ‘Marxismo e storia antica. Note sulla storiografia marxista in Italia’, Studi Storici, 17(2), 95–124. Momigliano, A. (1980) ‘Marxising in Antiquity (Quaderni di Storia, I-II)’ [1st edn. 1975] in id. Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 752–7.

Introduction 41 Momigliano, A. (1992) ‘Per la storia delle religioni nell’Italia contemporanea. Antonio Banfi ed Ernesto De Martino tra persona ed apocalissi’ [1st edn. 1987], in Di Donato, R. (ed.) Nono contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. Rome: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 701–21. Morstein-Marx, R. (2004) Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge and New York, NY: CUP. Morstein-Marx, R. (2012) ‘Political Graffiti in the Late Roman Republic: Hidden Transcripts and Common Knowledge’, in Kuhn, C. (ed.) Politische Kommunikation und öffentliche Meinung in der antiken Welt. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 191–217. Morstein-Marx, R. (2013) ‘«Cultural Hegemony» and the Communicative Power of the Roman Elite’, in Steel, C.W. and H. Van der Blom (eds.) Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome. Oxford: OUP, 29–47. Morstein-Marx, R. (2015) ‘Persuading the People in the Roman Participatory Context’, in Hammer, D. (ed.) A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 294–309. Morton, A. (2007) Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy. London: Pluto. Mouffe, C. (1979) ‘Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci’, in ead. (ed.) Gramsci and Marxist Theory. London – Boston – Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 168–204. Musto, M. (ed.) (2008) Karl Marx’s Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Nafissi, M. (2005) Ancient Athens & Modern Ideology: Value, Theory & Evidence in Historical Sciences: Max Weber, Karl Polanyi & Moses Finley. London: Institute of Classical Studies. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Paggi, L. (1970) Gramsci e il moderno principe. Vol. 1. Nella crisi del socialismo italiano. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Pala, M. (2010) ‘The empire writes back: Gramsci, dall’esegesi letteraria alla critica postcoloniale’, in Baldussi, A. and P. Manduchi (eds.) Gramsci in Asia e in Africa. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Cagliari, 12-13 febbraio 2009. Cagliari: Aipsa, 2010, 171–92. Panichi, A. (2019), ‘Between belonging and originality: Norberto Bobbio’s interpretation of Gramsci’ in Antonini, F. et al. (eds.) Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks, Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 391–411. Parker, H.N. (2011) ‘Toward a Definition of Popular Culture’, History and Theory, 50(2), 147–70. Porter, J.I. (2008) ‘Reception Studies: Future Prospects’, in Stray, C. and L. Hardwick (eds.) A Companion to Classical Receptions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 469–81. Prestipino, G. (2000) Tradire Gramsci. Milan: Teti. Quaranta, G. (1952) ‘Due professori ci parlano di Gramsci studente a Torino (A colloquio con Augusto Rostagni e Annibale Pastore)’, L’Unità, 27/04/1952: 3. Rancière, J. (1973) ‘Sur la théorie de l’idéologie politique d’Althusser’, L’Homme et la Société, 27, 31–61. Romano, S.F. (1965) Gramsci. Turin: Utet. Rose, P.W. (1995) Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth: Ideology and Literary Form in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP.

42  Emilio Zucchetti Rose, P.W. (1997) ‘Ideology in the Iliad: polis, basileus, theoi’, Arethusa, 30(2), 151–99. Rose, P.W. (2006) ‘Divorcing Ideology from Marxism and Marxism from Ideology: Some Problems’, Arethusa, 39(1), 101–36. Rose, P.W. (2012) Class in Archaic Greece. Cambridge: CUP. Rossi, A. (2014) Gramsci in carcere: l’itinerario dei Quaderni (1929-1933). Napoli: Guida. Rossi, A. (2017) Gramsci e la crisi europea negli anni Trenta. Napoli: Guida. Salvaterra, C. and A. Cristofori (2016) ‘Twentieth-century Italian scholarship on Roman craftsmen, traders, and their professional organizations’, in Wilson, A. and M. Flohr (eds.) Urban Craftsmen and Traders in the Roman World. Oxford: OUP, 55–76. Santucci, A.A. (2005) Antonio Gramsci, 1897-1937. Palermo: Sellerio. Santucci, A.A. (2010) Antonio Gramsci. Eng. tr. G. Di Mauro. New York, NY: Monthly Review. Schiavone, A. (1978) ‘Per una rilettura delle «Formen»: teoria della storia, dominio del valore d’uso e funzione dell’ideologia’, in Capogrossi, L., A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds.) Analisi marxista e società antiche. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 75–106. Schiavone, A. (1981) ‘Il caso e la natura. Un’indagine sul mondo di Servio’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 41–78. Schiavone, A. (1987) ‘Compagno Nino, addio’, intervista di L. Borgia, Il Mattino, 18/04/1987. Schweitzer, B. (1950) ‘Die europäisch Bedeutung der Römischen Kunst’, in Herbig, R. (ed.) Vermächtnis der antiken Kunst. Gastvorträge zur Jahrhundertfeier der Archäologischen Sammlungen der Universität Heidelberg. Heidelberg: Kerle, 143–67. Scott, J.C. (1977) The Moral Economy of the Peasants. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP. Scott, J.C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Resistance. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP. Scott, J.C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP. Spriano, P. (1967-1975) Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano. 5 vols. Turin: Einaudi. Srivastava, N. and B. Batthacharya (eds.) (2012) The Postcolonial Gramsci. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Stuart Hughes, H. (1958) Consciousness and Society. The Reorientation of European Social Thought. New York, NY: Knopf. Talamanca, M. (1981) ‘Costruzione giuridica e strutture sociali fino a Quinto Mucio’, in Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) Società romana e produzione schiavistica. Vol. 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Bari: Laterza, 15–40. Tamburrano, G. (1963) Antonio Gramsci. La vita. Il pensiero. L’azione. Manduria – Bari – Rome: Lacaita. Texier, J. (1988) ‘Significati di Società Civile in Gramsci’, Critica Marxista, 5, 5–36. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Thompson, E.P. (1959) ‘The New Left’, The New Reasoner, 9, 1–17. Thompson, E.P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class. London: V. Gollancz.

Introduction 43 Thompson, E.P. (1974) ‘Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture’, Journal of Social History, 7(4), 382–405. Thompson, E.P. (1978) ‘The Peculiarities of the English’ [1st edn. 1965], in id. The Poverty of Theory. And Other Essays. London: Merlin, 35–91. Toner, J.P. (1995) Leisure and Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Polity. Toner, J.P. (2009) Popular Culture in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Polity. Tronti, M. (2008) ‘Italy’, in Musto, M. (ed.) Karl Marx’s Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later. London: Routledge, 229–35. Vacca, G. (1974) Saggio su Togliatti e la tradizione comunista. Bari: De Donato. Vacca, G. (2012) Vita e pensieri di Antonio Gramsci (1926-1937). Turin: Einaudi. Williams, G.A. (1960) ‘The Concept of ‘Egemonia’ in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci. Some Notes on Interpretation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 21(4), 586–99. Williams, R. (1973) ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory’, New Left Review, 82(1), 3–16. Reprinted in id. (2005) Culture and Materialism. Selected EssaysSelected Essays Williams, R. (1976) Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana. Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: OUP. Wise, J.M. (2003) ‘Reading Hall, Reading Marx’, Cultural Studies, 17(2), 105–12. Wright, S. (2017) Storming Heaven. Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism. 2nd edn. London: Pluto. Yakobson, A. (2010) ‘Traditional Political Culture and People’s Role in the Roman Republic’, Historia, 59(3), 282–302.

1

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry Laura Swift

Gramsci’s ideas regard cultural production as inextricably bound up with the political and economic forces that influence a given period. In Gramscian discourse, this process of mutual exchange and interaction is a hegemonic process, and is central to understanding the relationship between culture and political power.1 The essential concept that texts and artists cannot be understood in isolation, but must be viewed in the context of wider social and political forces, is one with which scholars of early Greek literature are nowadays well familiar, though the terminology we use (‘Sitz im Leben’, ‘performance context’) differs from that used by Gramscian theorists. Thus, despite the obvious differences between the XX century state and its institutions, and the communities of the archaic Greek world, Gramsci’s approach to culture can shed light on the literature of that period. In fact, Gramsci’s writings place a great deal of emphasis on the role of ‘common sense’ and shared values in creating a cultural and social ideology which upholds the power of the ruling elite. 2 For Gramsci, ‘common sense’ is an aggregated set of beliefs, which is not systematic or coherent, but reflects the conglomeration of what most people believe. 3 ‘Common sense’ is intrinsically fragmentary and inconsistent, even within the mind of an individual, but it holds great power as a seat of popular morality, and it forms the backdrop to the decision-­ making processes and life choices of people born and socialised within that system. Engaging with it is thus the starting point for any attempt at social transformation. Far from seeing ideology as something externally imposed, Gramsci’s analysis perceives it as a shared and lived experience, rooted in ordinary people’s core assumptions.4 The importance of poetry in Greek culture as an educational and moral tool means that it can be well understood through this theoretical framework. Early Greek poetry often draws on a shared set of normative tropes and assumptions, which are not the invention of any particular thinker, nor do they represent a systematic philosophy. Nevertheless, they are presented by the poets (and by later Greek writers who quote them) as embodiments of wisdom and accepted belief within the community. Thus, the early Greek poets offer us, in Gramscian terms, a rich collective expression of their society’s

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 45 ‘common sense’, as well as highlighting the cultural power that such prescriptions can hold. This chapter will argue that Gramscian approaches can offer scholars of Greek literature an insightful way to investigate the political and socio-economic affiliations of the texts they study, and that reading them through this lens can help us to better understand the cultural values they propagate, and how and why they might do so. It will examine how early Greek poetry represents the relationship and tensions between dominant and subordinate social groups, and how the morality proffered by poetry can be understood as a battleground in that struggle. It will do so with particular reference to three authors: Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochus. The ideological weight attached to them in the Hellenic tradition invites such a selection: each of them is identified by later authors as possessing particular cultural authority and a claim to represent accepted morality. For example, Homer and Hesiod are ascribed authority (whether this is accepted or challenged) by several ancient authors on matters ranging from religion to how to lead a good life. 5 Similarly, ancient sources frequently liken Archilochus to Homer and Hesiod, establishing these three poets as particular exemplars of a moralising tradition.6 Their possession of authority is also attested by traditions that present this as contested between them, ranging from the story told in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, where Homer and Hesiod compete to be recognised as the wisest poet, to Dio Chrysostom’s remarks on the rival traditions of praise and blame represented by Homer and Archilochus (Or. 33.11–12), or Cratinus’ comedy Archilochoi (‘Archilochus and his followers’), which staged a competition between Archilochus and Homer and Hesiod.7 In these accounts, what is at stake is not merely the quality of the poetry, but also the social values represented by each poet. Thus, in the Contest, the prize is awarded to Hesiod, despite a recognition that Homer’s poetry is superior, because his poetry deals with peaceful rather than warlike activities. It is tempting to see this victory as reflecting not only on the superiority of peace to war, but also on the values of the humble and dikē-(or justice-)loving farmer over those of the quarrelsome aristocratic heroes. Similarly, it is likely that the contest between Archilochus and the other poets in Cratinus was not simply aesthetic but took account of the civic benefits of different types of poetry, a topic that Dio addresses in his comparison of Homer and Archilochus, where he argues that criticism fulfils a more useful social role than praise. From a Gramscian perspective, this makes their work valuable, since the texts were already in antiquity considered politically charged and linked to particular social structures and ideologies. The starting point for my analysis of these poets will be the interplay of consent and coercion in the maintenance of hegemonic power, which represents one of Gramsci’s most important contributions.8 In Gramsci’s thought, this is vividly expressed through his redeployment of Machiavelli’s image of the centaur, where the combination of beast and man in a single creature

46  Laura Swift represents “the levels of force and of consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilisation”.9 This concept is often discussed with reference to the mechanisms of the modern state: for example, the coercive elements of a modern democracy such as the police or army, which operate alongside the consensual power embedded in the electoral system. Yet the dialectic between consent and coercion is equally applicable to early Greek political thought and is an idea we find regularly in Greek poetry, which has much to say on how the power of elite groups is maintained.

Coercion and consent among Hesiodic beasts and men Perhaps the most explicit engagement with the interplay between consent and coercion is found in Hesiod’s ainos (or fable) of the hawk and the nightingale in Works and Days. On the face of it, the story seems a troubling account of how the tyrannical coercion exerted by the powerful is used to suppress those weaker than them (202–12): νῦν δ’ αἶνον βασιλεῦσιν ἐϱέω φϱονέουσι καὶ αὐτοῖς· ὧδ’ ἴϱηξ πϱοσέειπεν ἀηδόνα ποικιλόδειϱον ὕψι μάλ’ ἐν νεφέεσσι φέϱων ὀνύχεσσι μεμαϱπώς· ἣ δ’ ἐλεόν, γναμπτοῖσι πεπαϱμένη ἀμφ’ ὀνύχεσσι, (205) μύϱετο· τὴν ὅ γ’ ἐπικϱατέως πϱὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν· “δαιμονίη, τί λέληκας; ἔχει νύ σε πολλὸν ἀϱείων· τῇ δ’ εἶς ᾗ σ’ ἂν ἐγώ πεϱ ἄγω καὶ ἀοιδὸν ἐοῦσαν· δεῖπνον δ’, αἴ κ’ ἐθέλω, ποιήσομαι ἠὲ μεθήσω. ἄφϱων δ’, ὅς κ’ ἐθέλῃ πϱὸς κϱείσσονας ἀντιφεϱίζειν· (210) νίκης τε στέϱεται πϱός τ’ αἴσχεσιν ἄλγεα πάσχει.” ὣς ἔφατ’ ὠκυπέτης ἴϱηξ, τανυσίπτεϱος ὄϱνις. And now I will tell a fable to kings who themselves too have understanding. This is how the hawk addressed the colorful-necked nightingale, carrying her high up among the clouds, grasping her with its claws, while she wept piteously, pierced by the curved claws; he said to her forcefully, ‘Silly bird, why are you crying out? One far superior to you is holding you. You are going wherever I shall carry you, even if you are a singer. I shall make you my dinner if I wish, or I shall let you go. Stupid he who would wish to contend against those stronger than he is: for he is deprived of the victory and suffers pains in addition to his humiliations.’ So spoke the swift-flying hawk, the long-winged bird.10 The fable opens by stressing the physical coercion applied by the hawk to control his social inferior: we are told twice in two lines that he grips her with his talons (ὀνύχεσσι, 204, 205), and the second occurrence heightens the sense of overweening force as we are told that the claws not only restrain but also pierce the flesh of the nightingale.11 The

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 47 hawk’s speech posits a model whereby the weak are powerless against their superiors, and he upbraids the nightingale even for crying over her fate (207). Whether she lives or dies is entirely at the hawk’s whim, and he warns her that any attempt to overthrow this order will simply lead to further physical punishment (211). The hawk frames resistance not merely as futile but as ‘stupid’ (ἄφϱων, 210), literally lacking mind or sanity, thus suggesting that the hierarchy from which he benefits is ‘common sense’, which it would be madness to rebel against. This parable is framed as a piece of advice to the kings (202), whose social status makes them the most likely analogues to the hawk. Yet this oppressive world-view is challenged by the poet’s warning to his addressee Perses that he must follow the path of dikē (justice) and not that of hybris (insolence): Ὦ Πέϱση, σὺ δ’ ἄκουε δίκης μηδ’ ὕβϱιν ὄφελλε· ὕβϱις γάϱ τε κακὴ δειλῷ βϱοτῷ, οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλὸς ῥηιδίως φεϱέμεν δύναται, βαϱύθει δέ θ’ ὑπ’ αὐτῆς (215) ἐγκύϱσας ἄτῃσιν· ὁδὸς δ’ ἑτέϱηφι παϱελθεῖν κϱείσσων ἐς τὰ δίκαια· δίκη δ’ ὑπὲϱ ὕβϱιος ἴσχει ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα· παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω. αὐτίκα γὰϱ τϱέχει Ὅϱκος ἅμα σκολιῇσι δίκῃσιν· τῆς δὲ Δίκης ῥόθος ἑλκομένης ᾗ κ’ ἄνδϱες ἄγωσι (220) δωϱοφάγοι, σκολιῇς δὲ δίκῃς κϱίνωσι θέμιστας· As for you, Perses, give heed to dikē and do not foster hybris. For hybris is evil in a worthless mortal; and even a fine man cannot bear her easily, but encounters calamities and then is weighed down under her. The better road is the one towards what is just, passing her by on the other side. dikē wins out over hybris when she arrives at the end; but the fool only knows this after he has suffered. For at once Oath starts to run along beside crooked judgements, and there is a clamor when dikē is dragged where men, gift-eaters, carry her off and pronounce verdicts with crooked judgements.12 If we look at it through Gramscian lenses, the hawk reinforces the presence of coercion in the system, whereby the dominant group can enforce their decisions on the lives of those below them. However, the poet undermines the hawk’s claim that power is based entirely on coercion, by offering an alternative model based on dikē, with the implication that dikē serves the interest of the subaltern as well as the dominant groups. Conversely, the coercive physical force of the hawk is identified as a form of hybris: a Greek term that can often have connotations of physical violence.13 Hybris is dangerous for the lowly, but is also problematic for the powerful, and the suggestion that ‘even a fine man cannot bear her easily’ hints that there will be consequences for the king who tries to behave like a hawk and treat his

48  Laura Swift power as absolute. Hesiod therefore implies that the hawk’s world-view must be replaced by a consensual dikē-driven model. The passage that follows presents a society based on dikē as a perfectly harmonious way of living, which operates to the benefit of all social groups (225–37). In this society, the elite group still control power, but their wielding of it is a benevolent hegemony which enables the rest of the population to live in health and prosperity, expressed through a metaphor of natural growth: “the city blooms, and the people in it flower” (τοῖσι τέθηλε πόλις, λαοὶ δ’ ἀνθέουσιν ἐν αὐτῇ, 227).14 The poet begins the description by noting that these are rulers who “give straight judgements to foreigners and to their fellow-citizens” (οἳ δὲ δίκας ξείνοισι καὶ ἐνδήμοισι διδοῦσιν / ἰθείας, 225–6). By doing this, they facilitate a good life for their subordinates, who in turn participate in the exchange of dikē by their labours and their fair sharing of what they produce (228–31). It later becomes apparent that this is a system overseen by Zeus, who punishes transgressions on both sides (238–69). Yet, just as the model of the hawk is simplistic in its insistence on the pure power of coercion, the model of dikē also turns out to be unrealistic. The society of dikē is described in utopian terms: its inhabitants are divinely blessed beyond what is imaginable, since they are free from war and natural disaster and can guarantee the perpetual fruits of the earth to a degree that they are entirely self-sufficient (230–7). Conversely, in the real world, Hesiod is concerned to show how the mechanisms of dikē can be corrupted, especially by the “crooked judgements” (σκολιῇσι δίκῃσιν, 219) of kings, who become “gift-eaters” (δωϱοφάγοι, 221) when they accept bribes. Despite Hesiod’s injunctions to follow the path of dikē, he also suggests that no such thing as a perfectly consensual society exists on earth. This is apparent in the conclusion to this section, where he muses on the frailty of dikē in the society in which he finds himself, claiming that the man who trusts in perfect dikē will be harmed by his belief (270–3): νῦν δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ’ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνθϱώποισι δίκαιος εἴην μήτ’ ἐμὸς υἱός, ἐπεὶ κακὸν ἄνδϱα δίκαιον ἔμμεναι, εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτεϱος ἕξει. ἀλλὰ τά γ’ οὔπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δία μητιόεντα. As things are, I would not want to be a just man among men, since it is dangerous for a man to be just if the unjust will gain more. But I do not expect that Zeus the consellor will allow things to end like this. Hesiod seems to conclude that the framework for conflict resolution in his own times is no more than the apparatus of state designed to uphold the hegemony of the kings and legitimise their power. It is moreover a system skewed in the kings’ interest, since they control the operation of justice and benefit from bribes. Thus, the ainos of the hawk and the nightingale turns out not to be a foil to the superior system of human justice, but a

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 49 warning of how it can fail, since the legal system turns out to be a way of masking, rather than removing, the coercive force of the kings’ power. Yet, despite his open disgruntlement here, it would be misguided to see Hesiod as advocating any resistance against the hegemony: instead, his solution is to reassure the listener that Zeus will one day punish these abuses. Indeed, the broader goal of Works and Days, a poem written from the perspective of the free subaltern class, is to guide its addressee towards the propagation of the hegemony through its insistence on the value of production. Nevertheless, Hesiod explicitly recognises that both consent and coercion are at stake in the relationship between ruling and ruled, and his analysis points both to the benefits of this system when realised perfectly, and to the ways in which it can be abused or break down.

Maintaining the Homeric hegemony If Hesiod purports to represent a mainly agrarian subaltern class, and their perspective on the benefits and limitations of the hegemonic system, the poetry of Homer represents a different end of the social scale. Though the Homeric poems present characters from a range of backgrounds, they are mainly focalised through the elite heroes who form the dominant bloc within their society. A Gramscian analysis of Homeric society would suggest to us that, like any hegemony, it relies on the support of its subaltern groups, who accept cultural values that maintain their place within the social order.15 Indeed, the relationship between the heroes and the subordinate laos (or people) is a central theme of Homeric poetry, and one upon which the heroes themselves regularly offer philosophical reflection. The clearest attempt to explain the relationship between the classes from the point of view of the dominant class is Sarpedon’s famous speech in Iliad 12, where he sets out how the heroes benefit from the system, and what in turn is expected of them (12.310–21): Γλαῦκε τί ἢ δὴ νῶϊ τετιμήμεσθα μάλιστα (310) ἕδϱῃ τε κϱέασίν τε ἰδὲ πλείοις δεπάεσσιν ἐν Λυκίῃ, πάντες δὲ θεοὺς ὣς εἰσοϱόωσι, καὶ τέμενος νεμόμεσθα μέγα Ξάνθοιο παϱ’ ὄχθας καλὸν φυταλιῆς καὶ ἀϱούϱης πυϱοφόϱοιο; τὼ νῦν χϱὴ Λυκίοισι μέτα πϱώτοισιν ἐόντας (315) στάμεν ἠδὲ μάχης καυστείϱης ἀντιβολῆσαι, ὄφϱά τις ὧδ’ εἴπῃ Λυκίων πύκα θωϱηκτάων· οὐ μὰν ἀκλεές Λυκίην κάτα κοιϱανέουσιν ἡμέτεϱοι βασιλῆες, ἔδουσί τε πίονα μῆλα οἶνόν τ’ ἔξαιτον μελιηδέα· ἀλλ’ ἄϱα καὶ ἲς (320) ἐσθλή, ἐπεὶ Λυκίοισι μέτα πϱώτοισι μάχονται. Glaucus, why are we two especially honoured in Lycia with the best seats and cuts of meat, and ever-full wine-cups,

50  Laura Swift and all men look upon us as if we were gods and we enjoy a huge estate, cut out beside Xanthus’ banks, fine land, of orchards and wheat-bearing ploughland? That is why we must now take our stand in the first rank of the Lycians, and confront the scorching heat of battle, so that among the close-armoured Lycians men may say, “Certainly those who rule us in Lycia are not without glory, these kings of ours, who eat fattened sheep and drink choice honey-sweet wine. There is also noble valour in them, it seems, because they fight in the first ranks of the Lycians.”16 Sarpedon acknowledges the economic dominance of the hero-class and represents it as arising through the consent of the subaltern class who produce the material wealth on which the heroes depend.17 In his account, this consent is dependent on the heroes’ ongoing willingness to fight on behalf of their community. Nevertheless, Sarpedon takes it for granted that if the heroes continue to fulfil their end of the bargain, their social position will be upheld, and that both heroes and laos benefit equally from the status quo. The same ethos is represented on the shield of Achilles, where one of the images depicts the peace-time functioning of a king’s estate, where the labourers work in an orderly fashion to gather in the wheat harvest (Il. 18.550–60). Here too, the relationship is depicted as mutually beneficial: the king watches his subordinates’ efforts and “rejoices in his heart” at seeing them (γηθόσυνος κῆϱ, 18.557), while in return his heralds prepare a feast of an ox (18.558–9) from which the workers will benefit.18 This passage too acknowledges the dominant class’ economic dependence, yet suggests that, at least in the idealised world represented by the images on the shield, everyone stands to gain from the system. Sarpedon’s speech also draws attention to the fragility of this ideology, which relies on the consent of the laos, and so acts as a form of economic pressure on the heroes. Other passages in the Iliad also show the anxiety heroes experience at the prospect of the laos withdrawing consent to their rule, from Hector’s shame before the Trojan people if he should fail to live up to his warrior ideals (Il. 6.441–3) to Agamemnon’s assumption that if Menelaus dies, he will no longer be able to control the army (Il. 4.169– 72). Yet the Iliad also depicts the coercion that the heroes themselves use to underpin the hegemony, as becomes apparent in the events of Book 2, where the laos do in fact withdraw consent to Agamemnon’s military action and his leadership over them.19 The context of the laos’ resistance is Agamemnon’s ill-advised attempt to test their resolve by suggesting that the war at Troy is doomed to failure. While Agamemnon hopes to reaffirm the laos’ ongoing commitment to the hegemony thus far established within the Achaean army, this backfires when they in fact prefer to return home, and dissent from their allocated role as subject to his military authority. In this moment of crisis, when consent can no longer be relied upon, the dominant group instead resorts to

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 51 coercion, exemplified by Odysseus’ intervention to re-establish the power balance. 20 The poet describes how Odysseus distinguishes between members of the dominant and subordinated classes, as, when a member of the former appears to be dissenting, he attempts to persuade them to re-establish their own authoritative place within the hierarchy (δαιμόνι’ οὔ σε ἔοικε κακὸν ὣς δειδίσσεσθαι, / ἀλλ’ αὐτός τε κάθησο καὶ ἄλλους ἵδϱυε λαούς, “You are possessed! It is not right to threaten you as if you were a coward; go, sit down again and make all your people sit as well”, Il. 2.190–1). Conversely, his behaviour with members of the laos is much harsher (Il. 2.198–204): ὃν δ’ αὖ δήμου τ’ ἄνδϱα ἴδοι βοόωντά τ’ ἐφεύϱοι, τὸν σκήπτϱῳ ἐλάσασκεν ὁμοκλήσασκέ τε μύθῳ· δαιμόνι’ ἀτϱέμας ἧσο καὶ ἄλλων μῦθον ἄκουε, οἳ σέο φέϱτεϱοί εἰσι, σὺ δ’ ἀπτόλεμος καὶ ἄναλκις οὔτέ ποτ’ ἐν πολέμῳ ἐναϱίθμιος οὔτ’ ἐνὶ βουλῇ· οὐ μέν πως πάντες βασιλεύσομεν ἐνθάδ’ Ἀχαιοί· οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιϱανίη· εἷς κοίϱανος ἔστω. But whenever he saw a man of the common people yelling out, he would belabour them with the staff and shout at him: “You are possessed! Sit down quietly and listen to the words of others who are better fighters than you; you are feeble and unwarlike, not someone to be reckoned with either in war or in counsel. There is no way that we Achaeans can all be kings here. Many rulers are an evil thing; let there be a single commander.”21 Odysseus’ attempt to coerce the laos into supporting the hegemony partly relies on literal violence, as he beats members of the dissident group (ἐλάσασκεν, Il. 2.199). The staff he uses to do this is Agamemnon’s sceptre of kingship, which Odysseus has taken in order to re-establish royal authority (Il. 2.186). The sceptre represents the authority granted Agamemnon by political and civil society, as the poet stresses at the start of this scene, where he tells us that the staff’s origins can be traced directly back to Zeus, the ultimate political arbiter, and lists the generations of kings who have held it before him (Il. 2.102–8). Yet, when the consensus that upholds the staff’s normal function in designating authority breaks down, it is used as a weapon of physical chastisement. Equally important, however, is the coercive element in Odysseus’ abusive words, whose aim is to delegitimise and exclude the offending parties, in a form of what Pierre Bourdieu termed ‘symbolic violence’. 22 Odysseus defines those of the laos who are actively protesting as “feeble and unwarlike” (ἀπτόλεμος καὶ ἄναλκις, Il.   2.201), and as such he reinforces their low status and denies them a voice by removing their stake in society. Although the assemblies of the Iliad regularly depict the role of the laos in ratifying the decisions of their leaders, Odysseus’ actions show that this authority is only granted when they

52  Laura Swift adhere to their place within the power structure. Despite the importance of consent to upholding the social structures, we see here how underpinning it is the threat of coercion, since the hero-class has control of violence, which is embedded in their roles both as the greatest warriors and also as the “speakers of words” (Il. 9.443). Yet the laos themselves must consent as a group to this coercive control, since if all of them rose up against the kings they would easily overpower them and prevent their violence. Odysseus’ actions re-establish the hegemony within the army, and regain the consent of the laos who return to their seats with an approving roar (Il. 2.207–10). The consent of the laos to their own position within the hierarchy is shown a little later in their response to the chastisement of Thersites, who voices further objections to Agamemnon’s leadership. Odysseus uses the same tactics as before: he beats Thersites and abuses him verbally (Il. 2.246–66). Here the poet highlights the response of the rest of the laos, who, far from being cowed into submission, welcome Odysseus’ behaviour and conduct their own symbolic violence against Thersites by excluding him from the social group (Il. 2.270–5): οἳ δὲ καὶ ἀχνύμενοί πεϱ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἡδὺ γέλασσαν· ὧδε δέ τις εἴπεσκεν ἰδὼν ἐς πλησίον ἄλλον· ὢ πόποι ἦ δὴ μυϱί’ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἐσθλὰ ἔοϱγε βουλάς τ’ ἐξάϱχων ἀγαθὰς πόλεμόν τε κοϱύσσων· νῦν δὲ τόδε μέγ’ ἄϱιστον ἐν Ἀϱγείοισιν ἔϱεξεν, ὃς τὸν λωβητῆϱα ἐπεσβόλον ἔσχ’ ἀγοϱάων. But the rest, vexed though they were, laughed happily to see it, and this is what they would say, each man looking at his neighbour: “Well, we know that Odysseus has done countless fine things, both leading us with good counsel and deploying us in battle, but this is by far the best thing he has done among the Argives, stopping this blustering and intemperate man speaking in the assembly.”23 The laos are described as distressed (ἀχνύμενοί, Il. 2.270), presumably because of their own recent experiences and chastisement, but the humiliation of Thersites offers them an opportunity to reintegrate into the power structures by uniting against him and so reclaiming their own authority as moral arbiters. Their remarks validate Odysseus’ actions, and re-­establish the status quo, by accepting the authority of the hero-class to provide political and military leadership. When viewed through a Gramscian lens, therefore, this interlude in the Iliad shows the interconnectedness of consent and coercion for maintaining power. By providing coercive leadership, Odysseus regains the consent of the subaltern class, whose complicity is crucial for the continued operation of Achaean society at Troy. Odysseus’ behaviour strips away, at least temporarily, the pretence elsewhere in the

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 53 poem, that the relationship between hero and laos is entirely benign and mutually beneficial, revealing the coercive elements that the dominant class are willing to use when consensual leadership breaks down.

Navigating hegemony in Archilochean abuse poetry The role of shame and abuse as forms of coercion brings us to the poetry of Archilochus, known above all in antiquity as a ferocious blame poet who could drive his victims to suicide with his poisonous verses. Archilochus’ poetic persona roots itself strongly in the struggle between dominant and dominated groups, and is fertile terrain for Gramscian analysis. In historical terms, Archilochus, like other early Greek lyric poets, is likely to have been a member of the aristocratic elite. Yet, within his poetry, he adopts a persona which is systematically marginalised, and which expresses discontent with the status quo of the socio-economic system. This is most clearly expressed by the Athenian oligarch Critias, who attacks Archilochus for perpetuating what he perceives as a shameful image of himself (88 B 44 DK = Archil. fr. 295 W). Critias tells us that Archilochus claimed to be the son of a slave woman, and that he had to leave his home island Paros because of poverty, as well as criticising the moral values espoused by his poetry, where the poetic persona engages in disreputable activities such as seducing freeborn women and jettisoning his shield in battle. Critias’ attack on Archilochus is no doubt ideologically charged, and may be a deliberate misreading of the poetry to suit his political agenda rather than a naïve assumption that everything in it must be biographically true. 24 Nevertheless, the surviving fragments corroborate the idea that Archilochus identified himself with the dominated rather than the elite class. Thus, for example, he describes life on Paros as suitable only for poor farming and seafaring, rejecting it with the line ἔα Πάϱον καὶ σῦκα κεῖνα καὶ θαλάσσιον βίον (“away with Paros and those figs and that life at sea”, fr. 116 W). Figs were a cheap food associated with the poor, and can grow in difficult conditions with poor and rocky soil: the implication is that farming on Paros is a harsh lifestyle, while seafaring is considered even more dangerous and undesirable. 25 Similarly, the new colony on Thasos is called “the misery of all Greece” (Πανελλήνων ὀϊζύς, fr. 102 W), while the island itself is presented as harsh and difficult to settle (frr. 21–2 W). The III century BCE Mnesiepes inscription (SEG XV 517), which preserves the legend of Archilochus’ life, depicts him as systematically unappreciated or excluded by his community. For example, when he is given the gift of poetry by the Muses as a young man, his father is only interested in trying to get back the cow that the Muses took in exchange for this blessing, while when he invents ribald iambic poetry, it is rejected by the citizens of Paros as inappropriate. 26 This oppressed persona is also apparent in Archilochus’ use of animal imagery and fables to describe himself, where he repeatedly chooses to identify with an animal which is weaker than or socially inferior to the

54  Laura Swift others in the story. Thus, in fr. 23 W, the speaker identifies himself with an ant; in the Fox and Eagle Epode (frr. 172–81 W), he is the fox, who is helpless in the face of the eagle’s violence; and in the Fox and Monkey Epode (frr. 185–7 W), the Archilochean fox appears to be the social inferior of the monkey, who in the Aesopic fable is elected to kingship. Nevertheless, all these animals turn out to be more powerful than they appear, and are able to turn the tables on their social superiors: the ant possesses a painful bite, whose power is reflected in the poet’s ability to harm his enemies (fr. 23.15), 27 the fox of the Fox and Eagle Epode is supported by Zeus, who ensures its wrongs are avenged, 28 while that of the Fox and Monkey Epode outwits the monkey by entrapping him in a humiliating position.29 In this light, we could interpret Archilochus’ poetry as representing a counterhegemonic view, most obviously exemplified by fr. 5 W, where the poet describes abandoning his shield on the battlefield, claiming not to care about the symbolic importance of such an act (τί μοι μέλει ἀσπὶς ἐκείνη;/ ἐϱϱέτω·, “What’s that shield to me? To hell with it!”, fr. 5.3–4 W). We know that this poem was considered shocking in antiquity: it forms a central plank of Critias’ case against Archilochus, while Plutarch claims that it led to Archilochus’ expulsion from Sparta (Instituta Laconica 34.239b). The ethical stance embodied in this poem, it could be said, represents a challenge to established values, since the success of the citizen army relies on the commitment of the individual hoplite to the battle line, and more abstractly to the ‘common sense’ code it symbolises of putting the group above individual safety. However, for a full account of how Archilochus engages with hegemonic values, we need also to look at who he abuses, and what they are attacked for. On analysis, Archilochus’ poetic persona usually aims to capture the moral centre ground to justify his attacks and win the audience’s sympathy. In so doing, he aligns himself with an accepted set of ‘common sense’ values, and presents his enemy as having breached these, an act which justifies the attack on their honour and renders them open to the mockery of the community.30 This is particularly clear in Archilochus’ most famous poem in antiquity, the Fox and Eagle Epode, where he attacks his enemy Lycambes. In what survives of this poem, we can see how Archilochus balances his persona as an outsider with an attempt to monopolise values from inside the hegemony. Thus, in the poem’s first section, he mobilises the audience against Lycambes, who is depicted as mocked and excluded (νῦν δὲ δὴ πολὺς / ἀστοῖσι φαίνεαι γέλως, “Now you’re a big laughing-stock for the citizens”, fr. 172.3–4 W). In a slightly later passage, Archilochus explains what is at stake, presenting the quarrel between them as a moral breach rather than a personal rift: Lycambes has broken an oath based on shared dining and hospitality (ὅϱκον δ’ ἐνοσφίσθης μέγαν / ἅλας τε καὶ τϱάπεζαν, “You turned your back on the great oath and on salt and table”, fr. 173 W). Thus, Lycambes has disrupted the unity of the sympotic hetaireia, an institution which exists to promote the interests of a socially

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 55 dominant group. He is presented as an enemy of the elite class, as well as an aggressor against ‘common sense’ morality such as the importance of oaths, which are ultimately overseen by the guardianship of Zeus. Archilochus’ audience are expected to unite around the poet, sharing the assumption that the hetaireia and the elite bonding it fosters are crucial to the values of their society.31 As the poem continues, Archilochus uses the fable to further explore the political and social relationship between himself (represented by the fox) and Lycambes (who is identified with the eagle). The eagle is powerful and a favourite of Zeus, 32 and can dominate the fox, whose children it takes away and devours, despite having made an oath of friendship (ξυνεωνίην/ ἔμειξαν, “they joined together in friendship”, fr. 174). In making the eagle an oath-breaker, Archilochus goes further than the Aesopic version of the fable, where the animals simply become friends, and reflects the version of the fable found in the Near Eastern tradition, where the animals make a formal pact and seal it with an oath.33 In response to the breaking of the oath, the fox prays to Zeus for justice, in a passage that reflects Hesiod’s ainos of the hawk and the nightingale (fr. 177 W): ὦ Ζεῦ, πάτεϱ Ζεῦ, σὸν μὲν οὐϱανοῦ κϱάτος, σὺ δ’ ἔϱγ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθϱώπων ὁϱᾶις λεωϱγὰ καὶ θεμιστά, σοὶ δὲ θηϱίων ὕβϱις τε καὶ δίκη μέλει. O Zeus, father Zeus, yours is the power in heaven, you see both the wicked and the lawful deeds of men, and the violence and justice of beasts is your concern. In contrast to Hesiod’s image of an animal world dominated by coercion, Archilochus presents one overseen by a further authority, since Zeus’ arbitration of morality extends over beasts as well as men. Moreover, whereas in Hesiod the discussion of dikē prompted by the ainos ends with the poet merely anticipating that Zeus will one day intervene to rectify the injustice perpetuated by the elite, Archilochus’ fable ends by depicting the eagle’s downfall, as its attempt to steal meat from a sacrifice causes the destruction of its own young. In other words, the dominant eagle transgresses against the core values shared by both the subordinated fox and the audience just as, by implication, Lycambes has also done. Though Lycambes, like the eagle, appears to have the social and economic power, Archilochus is able to mobilise ‘common sense’ values against him, and so turn the tables by transforming Lycambes into the ostracised party. However much it appears to identify with the ‘little man’, Archilochus’ poetry cannot straightforwardly be identified as a challenge to the hegemony. Rather, it is an attempt by the poet to have his cake and eat it, simultaneously presenting himself as the underdog, yet

56  Laura Swift utilising hegemonic values for his own purposes. He invites the audience to unite around a set of shared aspirations, directing anger or discontent felt by the dominated away from the in-group or the system itself, and on to those who transgress against it. In doing so, the counter-cultural elements of his poetry can be seen just as readily as a form of safety valve, a means of thinking through troubling realities in a safe space, rather than any serious protest against established culture.

Conclusion This brief overview of three very different archaic poets demonstrates that Gramscian ideas provide us with an enriching lens through which to view how social conflict is represented in early Greek texts, and how the poetry negotiates a set of socially agreed values. An analysis of these poets which presents them as simply ‘promoting’ or ‘challenging’ agreed values is insufficiently nuanced. Rather, all the poets engage with how the social norms uphold an expected set of behaviours, and also with how these benefit or marginalise different groupings. Thus, while Hesiod’s account of hybris versus dikē might initially seem like a straightforward dichotomy between a society based exclusively on coercion, and one based on reciprocity and consent, this opposition is shown to be unrealistic. In fact, the society of Hesiod’s own day is complex and, in many ways, unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, the existence of dikē highlights the importance of consent within the system, even if this can be in practice abused or ignored. Likewise, in Homeric society, the consent of the laos is required for the system to function, but if this consent is withdrawn (even as a result of the failings of the dominant class), the system is ultimately maintained by literal and symbolic coercion by the elite, and this violence appears to be the mechanism by which consent is restored. Within the framework of the poem, the presence of coercive strategies can be seen as a social good, as it ultimately restores order and safeguards the functioning of the community. Finally, Archilochus explores the mechanisms of hegemony from a purportedly subaltern perspective, adopting a persona who moves in elite circles but is marginalised compared to his more powerful companions. In fact, however, this persona is expert in co-opting the values of the hegemony for his own purposes, in order to enact symbolic violence against those who have wronged him. The poetry thus presents a clear example of how hegemonic values are presented as mainstream ‘common sense’, and how they are upheld and policed by those outside the dominant group as well as those within it. Gramsci’s approach foregrounds the fundamental role of culture in upholding and perpetuating hegemonic values. The ongoing authority granted to poets in Greek culture, and to these three poets in particular, shows an awareness of the role played by intellectuals and cultural agents in shaping as well as reflecting the values of their society. Indeed, in the poetry of Hesiod and Archilochus, the speakers’ identities as poets are presented

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 57 as integral to the ethical case they make: hence the oppressed nightingale in Hesiod’s fable is a singer (Op. 208), while it is implicit to Archilochus’ Fox and Eagle Epode that the poem itself functions as the punishment that will avenge the poet for Lycambes’ transgressions. Early Greek poets, then, perceive themselves as active agents in communicating and influencing social norms, just as they also show themselves to be sensitive to the delicacies of the power-balance on which their society is based. It would be naïve to see in early Greek poetry, however apparently counter-cultural a persona it adopts, a serious challenge to the ‘common sense’ values of the community. Nevertheless, a Gramscian analysis shows us how capable the poets are of exploring the hegemonic framework in which they operate in a satisfying and intellectually challenging way.

Notes 1 Q13§7; Q15§10; Q6§81; Q13§11; Q5§127; Q14§49; Q14§76; Q6§12; Q8§179; Q1§47; Q8§2; Q6§137; Q8§190; Q26§6; Q6§88; Q8§185; Q8§141; Q6§136; Q14§13; Q17§51; Q7§90; Q8§130; Q15§3; Q15§18; Q6§10; Q3§46; Q3§34 = SPN: 242–76. Said (1983: 169) argues for a Gramscian-influenced understanding of literature that emanates from a specific national cultural context. 2 Q11§12 = SPN: 323–33, and Q11§13 = SPN: 419–25. 3 On Gramscian ‘common sense’, see Crehan (2011, 2016: 43–58). 4 Q11§63 and Q7§19 = SPN: 3757; see further Williams (1980: 37) and Jones (2006: 4–5). 5 Religion: Hdt. 2.53.2–3. On Homer as teacher, see Xenoph. B 10 DK, Pl. Resp. 606–7 (the theme of Homer as educator also pervades Plato’s Ion and Hippias Major), Xen. Symp. 3.5, Isoc. Paneg. 159. On Hesiod as teacher see Heraclitus B 57 DK, Ar. Ran. 1030–6, Pl. Prt. 316d, [Arist.] Xen. 975a10, Plut. Thes. 3.2. See Koning (2010) and Graziosi (2016: 35–6). 6 E.g. Heraclitus 42 DK apud Diog. Laert. 9.1; [Longinus] Subl. 13.3; Philostr. VS 6.620, Imag. 1.3; Cic. Tusc. 1.3. 7 On the tradition of the Certamen, see West (1967), Richardson (1981), Heldmann (1982), and Graziosi (2001). On Archilochus and Homer/Hesiod, see Swift (2019: 18–20, 22–4, 40–3). For Cratinus’ use of these poets, see Bakola (2009: 73–4). 8 My reading of hegemony for the purposes of this chapter is one developed in the field of cultural studies, see e.g. Thomas (2009) and Jones (2016). The concept of hegemony need not be limited to the cultural sphere, and hegemony in Gramsci’s thinking includes other aspects, such as the economic and political: see Hoare and Sperber (2015: 117–38). For an overview of ideas about hegemony which may have influenced Gramsci’s development of the concept, see Boothman (2011). 9 Q13§14 = SPN: 170. For discussion of the centaur image, see Anderson (2017: 54–5 and 100–1), Cox (1983: 164), and Fontana (2008). On the relative power of consent and coercion, see Anderson (2017: esp. 85–105); Thomas (2009: 161–2). See Giusti in this volume. 10 Eng. tr. Most (2018). 11 The tradition of associating the hawk with the power of the kings goes back to antiquity: see Σ Op. 202a, 207–12 Pertusi, and for modern analysis see West (1978), Verdenius (1985 ad loc.), and Mordine (2006). On the power

58  Laura Swift













implied by the repetition of ὀνύχεσσι, see Canevaro (2015: 56). The main alternative reading (less widely accepted) is to identify the hawk as Zeus, who has the kings in his power: e.g. Jensen (1966: 20). 12 Eng. tr. Most (2018, adapted). 13 For hybris as an act of verbal or physical coercion or dishonour, see Arist. Rh. II 1378b23–30, and for the physical violence associated with the term see Poll. Onom. 8.76–7. For modern discussion of the term’s meaning, see Fisher (1992: 151–246) and Cairns (1996); on legal aspects, see Gagarin (1979) and van Wees (2011). 14 Cf. Q13§17 = SPN: 182, on the unstable equilibria between the interests of the dominant and subordinate groups, and how a dominant group may stop short of unbridled economic self-interest in order to maintain them. 15 Thus, a Gramscian analysis, which takes into account the subaltern class’ active role in maintaining the hegemony, may counter Hammer’s objection to existing Marxist readings of Homer that they “are curiously undialectical in presenting a view of society […] as governed by elite manipulation of an exploited people” (2002: 150). For readings of the type he criticises, see Tandy (1997) and Thalmann (1998). For an analysis of the role of the subaltern class in Gramsci’s thought, see Green (2011). 16 Eng. tr. Verity (2011). 17 The reciprocity between ruler and ruled in Homeric society has long been recognised: see e.g. Raaflaub (1997), Donlan (1998), and Hammer (2002: 150–5). See Q13§17 = SPN: 182 on the need for the dominant class to curb their own economic interests to maintain equilibrium. The identity of the hero-class and the derivation of its authority has been discussed in various terms, for example divine kingship (e.g. Bonner and Smith 1930; Köstler 1968; Mondi 1980), the possession of social goods (e.g. Nagler 1988 and Muellner 1996: 34;), or the ability to command deference (see Van Wees 1992: 61–125). Inclusion within the hero-class ultimately depends on achieving and maintaining an appropriate level of timē, which can be inherent according to position or ability, but also granted by the wider group: for a detailed discussion see Scodel (2008: 1–30). 18 I take it to be more likely that the barley prepared by the women (Il. 18.559–60) is to be sprinkled over the roast meat to make a communal dish (cf. Od. 14.77, 429) rather than that the labourers are to eat barley and the king meat: for a fuller explanation, see Edwards (1991: 224), and for a counterview, see Kirk (1976: 12). The latter tradition would be a starker reinforcement of the social hierarchy, though in both cases the king controls access to the meat. 19 Contra Donlan (1997), who sees the basileis as ultimately lacking coercive power. 20 A Gramscian position thus encourages us to take a less positive view of Odysseus’ intervention than that of Haubold (2000: 59), who regards it as showing “how to mobilise communal interest”. On the importance of force in Odysseus’ actions, see Hammer (2002: 88) and Barker (2009: 55). 21 Eng. tr. Verity (2011). 22 For Bourdieu’s collected writings on language and its use to control, see Bourdieu (1991). 23 Eng. tr. Verity (2011). 24 See Rotstein (2010: 301–17) and Swift (2019: 416). 25 See Treu (1958: 215), Pouilloux (1964: 10), Swift (2019: 301). On figs as poor man’s food see Wilkins and Hill (2006: 53–4), and Archil. fr. 250, where ‘fig-eating’ is used to refer to the lifestyle of a miser. On the wretchedness of a sailor’s life, cf. Hes. Op. 618–94; Eur. fr. 670 TrGF; Antiph. fr. 100 K-A.

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 59 26 See Swift (2019: 8). 27 On the ant’s bite, see Headlam-Knox on Her. 1.15, and for the associated moral ‘even unimportant creatures can cause harm’ cf. Aesop. 225 Perry, Σ Ar. Av. 82 (p. 19 Holwerda) = Suda σ 256. See further Brown (2018: 39–40). 28 This is made clear in the fable narrative at Aesop 1 Perry, to which Archilochus seems to adhere closely, and foreshadowed in the surviving Archilochean passage where the fox prays to Zeus for assistance (fr. 177 W). The vindication of the fox is necessary for the poem to function as an attack on the treacherous Lycambes: on the analogue see Carey (1986), Brown (1997: 65–6), Irwin (1998). 29 The idea of the monkey king became a proverbial way of referring to false pretensions which are easily exposed: see Diog. Laert. 6.98, 7.94; Apostol. 14.32; Suda π 1581. 30 For discussion see Carey (2018). 31 I take it as likely (along with most scholars) that early iambus was mostly performed in a sympotic setting, in which case the audience themselves would have also been members of the elite class. However, some iambic pieces could suggest a performance before wider group (e.g. Solon’s political elegies: frr. 36–7 W, or Archilochus’ celebration of battle victories: frr. 89, 94 W), and there is no good reason to insist on a single performance context for a genre as multi-faceted as iambus. For scholarly discussion, see West (1974: 26–7), Rösler (1980), Pellizer (1990), Vetta (1992), Kantzios (2005: 12–20). Stehle (1997: 215), and for a more detailed account of my position see Swift (2019: 13–4). 32 See Corrêa (2010: 65–7). 33 On the parallels between the Near Eastern and Greek myth, see Baldi (1961) and West (1997: 502–5).

Bibliography Anderson, P. (2017) The H-Word. The Peripeteia of Hegemony. London and New York, NY: Verso. Bakola, E. (2009) Cratinus and the Art of Comedy. Oxford: OUP. Baldi, A. (1961) ‘Tracce del mito di Etana in Archiloco ed Esopo’, Aevum, 35, 381–4. Barker, E.T.E. (2009) Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography, and Tragedy. Oxford: OUP. Bonner, R. and G. Smith (1930) The Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle. Chicago, IL: Chicago UP. Boothman, D. (2011) ‘The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony’, in Green, M. (ed.) Rethinking Gramsci. New York, NY: Routledge, 55–67. Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Transl. G. Raymond. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Brown, C.G. (1997) ‘Iambos’, in Gerber, D. (ed.) A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 13–88. Brown, C.G. (2018) ‘Picturing a Truth: Beast Fable, Early Iambos, and Semonides on the Creation of Women’, in Allan, W. and L. Swift (eds.) Moralising Strategies in Early Greek Poetry. Special Issue, Mouseion, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 15, 29–47. Cairns, D.L. (1996) ‘Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking Big’, JHS, 6, 1–32.

60  Laura Swift Canevaro, L.G. (2015) Hesiod’s Works and Days. How to Teach Self-Sufficiency. Oxford: OUP. Carey, C. (1986) ‘Archilochus and Lycambes’, CQ, 36, 60–7. Carey, C. (2018) ‘Narrative, Authority and Blame’, in Allan, W. and L. Swift (eds.) Moralising Strategies in Early Greek Poetry. Special Issue, Mouseion, 15, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 7–27. Corrêa, da Cunha P. (2010) Um bestiário arcaico: fábulas e imagens de animais na poesia de Arquíloco. São Paulo: Macaw. Cox, R. (1983) ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 12, 162–75. Crehan, K. (2011) ‘Gramsci’s Concept of Common Sense: A Useful Concept for Anthropologists?’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 16(2), 273–87. Crehan, K. (2016) Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Donlan, W. (1997) ‘The Relations of Power in the Pre-State and Early State Polities’, in Mitchell, L. and P.J. Rhodes (eds.) The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 39–48. Donlan, W. (1998) ‘Political Reciprocity in Dark Age Greece: Odysseus and His ‘Hetairoi’’, in Gill, C., N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (eds.) Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. Oxford: OUP, 151–71. Edwards, M.W. (1991) The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. 5. Cambridge: CUP, 17–20. Fisher, N.R.E. (1992) Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece. Warminster: Arris and Phillips. Fontana, B. (2008) ‘Hegemony and Power in Gramsci’, in Howson, R. and K. Smith (eds.) Hegemony. Studies in Consensus and Coercion. New York, NY: Routledge, 254–335. Gagarin, M. (1979) ‘The Athenian Law Against Hybris’, in Bowersock, G., W. Burkert and M. Putnam (eds.) Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M.W. Know on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Berlin: de Gruyter, 229–36. Graziosi, B. (2001) ‘Competition in Wisdom’, in Budelmann, F. and P. Michelakis (eds.) Homer, Tragedy and Beyond: Essays in Honour of P. E. Easterling. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 57–74. Graziosi, B. (2016) ‘Theologies of the Family in Homer and Hesiod’, in Eidinow, E., J. Kindt and R. Osborne (eds.) Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion. Cambridge: CUP, 35–61. Green, M. (2011) ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern’, in Green, M. (ed.) Rethinking Gramsci. New York, NY: Routledge, 68–89. Hammer, D. (2002) The Iliad as Politics. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Haubold, J. (2000) Homer’s People. Cambridge: CUP. Heldmann, K. (1982) Die Niederlage Homers im Dichterwettstreit mit Hesiod. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hoare, G. and N. Sperber (2015) An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy. London: Bloomsbury. Irwin, E. (1998) ‘Biography, Fiction, and the Archilochean ‘Ainos’’, JHS, 118, 177–83. Jensen, M.S. (1966) ‘Tradition and Individuality in Hesiod’s Works and Days’, C&M, 27, 1–27. Jones, S. (2006) Antonio Gramsci. London and New York, NY: Routledge.

Negotiating hegemony in early Greek poetry 61 Jones, S. (2016) ‘The Gramscian Turn in British Cultural Studies: From the Birmingham School to Cultural Populism’, in Bounds, P. and D. Berry (eds.) British Marxism and Cultural Studies: Essays on a Living Tradition. Abingdon: Routledge, 106–31. Kantzios, I. (2005) The Trajectory of Archaic Greek Trimeters. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Kirk, G.S. (1976) Homer and the Oral Tradition. Cambridge: CUP. Koning, H. (2010) Hesiod: The Other Poet. Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Köstler, R. (1968) ‘Die Homerische Rechts-und Staatsordnung’, in Berneker, E. (ed.) Zur Griechischen Rechtsgeschichte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 172–95. Mondi, R. (1980) ‘ΣΚΗΠΤΟΥΧΟΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΣ: An Argument for Divine Kingship in Early Greece’, Arethusa, 13, 203–16. Mordine, M. (2006) ‘Speaking to Kings: Hesiod’s AINOΣ and the Rhetoric of Allusion in the Works and Days’, CQ, 56, 363–73. Most, G. (2018) Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Harvard, MA: HUP. Muellner, L. (1996) The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Nagler, M.N. (1988), ‘Toward a Semantics of Ancient Conflict: Eris in the “Iliad”, CW, 82, 81–90. Pellizer, E. (1990) ‘Outlines of a Morphology of Sympotic Entertainment’, in Murray, O. (ed.) Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford: OUP, 177–84. Pouilloux, J. (1964) ‘Archiloque et Thasos. Histoire et poésie’, in Pouilloux, J., N.M. Kontoleon and A. Scherer (eds.) Archiloque: sept exposés et Discussions. Vandoeuvres and Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 3–36. Raaflaub, K. (1997) ‘Homeric Society’, in Morris, I. and B. Powell (eds.) A New Companion to Homer. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 624–48. Richardson, N.J. (1981) ‘The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and Alcidamas’ Mouseion’, CQ, 31, 1–10. Rösler, W. (1980) Dichter Und Gruppe: Eine Untersuchung zu den Bedingungen und zur historischen Funktion früher griechischer Lyrik am Beispiel Alkaios. Munich: Fink. Rotstein, A. (2010) The Idea of Iambos. Oxford: OUP. Said, E. (1983) The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Scodel, R. (2008) Epic Facework: Self-Presentation and Social Interaction in Homer. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Stehle, E.M. (1997) Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its Setting. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Swift, L.A. (2019) Archilochus: The Poems. Oxford: OUP. Tandy, D. (1997) Warriors into Traders: The Power of the Market in Early Greece. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Thalmann, W. (1998) The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the Odyssey. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Thomas, S. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Treu, M. (1958) Archilochus. Munich: Heimeran.

62  Laura Swift van Wees, H. (1992) Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Homer and History. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben. van Wees, H. (2011) ‘The Law of Hybris and Solon’s Reform of Justice’, in Lambert, S. (ed.) Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Sociable Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 117–44. Verdenius, W.J. (1985) A Commentary on Hesiod Works and Days vv.1-382. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Verity, A. (2011) Homer. The Iliad. Oxford: OUP. Vetta, M. (1992) ‘Il simposio: La monodia e il giambo’, in Cambiano, G., L. Canfora and D. Lanza (eds.) Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica. Vol. 1(1). Rome: Salerno, 177–218. West, M.L. (1967) ‘The Contest of Homer and Hesiod’, CQ, 17, 433–50. West, M.L. (1974) Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus. Berlin: de Gruyter. West, M.L. (1978) Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford: OUP. West, M.L. (1997) The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: OUP. Wilkins, J. and S. Hill (2006) Food in the Ancient World. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley. Williams, R. (1980) Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso.

2

Upside-down hegemony? Ideology and power in ancient Athens Mirko Canevaro

Introduction In this chapter, my aim is to revisit some of my recent and current research preoccupations through the lenses of the Gramscian concept of hegemony. In Raymond Williams’ words, Gramsci indicated with the term hegemony “a central system of practices, meanings and values saturating the consciousness of a society at a much deeper level than ordinary notions of ideology.”1 In much Marxist and Gramscian scholarship, hegemony is associated with the power of the ruling classes. While it does not imply a unified and monolithic system of values, but rather a complex of stratified social structures creating a ‘common sense’ (composed of beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values) of what is appropriate for each different class, hegemony is normally understood as what makes the power of the ruling class possible, and stable, by underpinning a (deceptively) harmonic ideal of society in which all the classes work, however differently, towards a common goal. Roughly speaking, hegemony turns the ruling-class worldview into the dominant normative system for the whole of society, favouring therefore the willing subjection of the ruled classes to the ruling class. 2 Within most (all?) of the historical examples to which hegemony is applied, the ruling class is identified with the socio-economic elite, or with a particular configuration of it. My goal in this chapter is to provide some examples of what happens – in terms of hegemony – when the ruling class, in a given society, is not straightforwardly the same as the socio-economic elite, but rather identifies to a considerable extent, and is identified, with the ‘lower’ classes. In line with what I have argued elsewhere (cf. Canevaro 2016b), I maintain that Classical Athenian democracy was such a society, and, in this chapter, I investigate some of the means – particularly the honour system – through which the lower classes (the dēmos) could wield a hegemony that turned its own needs, perspectives, and worldview into societal norm. Before analysing certain aspects of the Athenian honour system, I engage with Aristotle’s and Demosthenes’ notion of an ēthos of the polis as an emic notion that anticipates some of the features of hegemony, and then restate some of my argument for the dominance of the masses in Athenian institutions and in the ideology they fostered.

64  Mirko Canevaro

The ēthos of the politeia and Gramscian hegemony My starting point is a consideration made by Aristotle in Book 4 of Politics. Scholars have often observed that there are two meanings in the ancient sources to the word dēmokratia: government by the people (as a whole) and government by the lower classes. The first would be the interpretation of the term favoured by ancient democrats; the second the interpretation favoured by anti-democrats – oligarchs and aristocrats.3 Aristotle appears to choose the second meaning: he explicitly characterises political regimes on the basis of the dominant ‘part of the polis’, and in his first (and ultimately unchallenged) constitutional taxonomy of Book 4, he defines these ‘parts’ exclusively in socio-economic terms.4 Thus, oligarchy is the regime in which the wealthy dominate and run the constitution, and democracy the regime in which the poor – the kakoi, the ponēroi – do.5 Yet this is not an absolute rejection of the other definition of dēmokratia: he does acknowledge that many understand dēmokratia as the government of all, yet he ultimately appears to argue that the two definitions are interchangeable, because they describe the same thing. On simple numerical grounds, a constitution that gives full enfranchisement and political power to all, without excluding anyone on grounds of wealth, is bound to be run and dominated by the lower classes, because that particular socio-economic ‘part of the city’ is just more numerous.6 What does this involve, however, for the other parts of the city? Here, it is important to recognise that Aristotle’s concept of politeia is not a formal and legalistic one, but a comprehensive one that includes anything from the ethical, to the constitutional, to the legal, to the educational – from the individual to the communal. The ēthos (‘character’) of the citizens – all the citizens, individually and collectively – in a given politeia must be coherent with that of the politeia as a whole, as reflected and embodied in the nomoi (‘laws’).7 And thus education is tasked with making sure that ­citizens – all citizens, individually and collectively – develop an ēthos coherent with the politeia, and therefore behave in all circumstances coherently with the politeia.8 It should be stressed that this understanding of politeia as a ‘system’ is not just typical of Aristotle, and is not at all idiosyncratic within the context of IV century political thought and practice. On the contrary, Aristotle derives it from endoxa (‘widely shared views’) that are abundantly reflected in oratorical and epigraphical sources.9 The Athenians saw their laws as a coherent and rational whole, safeguarded by nomothesia procedures, and which reflected the ēthos of the original nomothetēs (Solon), to which not only the ēthos of the laws, but also the ēthos of the politeia as a whole, and of all citizens – individually and collectively – had to conform.10 It is no surprise that Demosthenes eloquently talks in the speech Against Leptines (probably delivered in 355/354 BCE) of the ἦθος τῆς πολιτείας, the “ēthos of the polity” (Dem. 20.11), and criticises Leptines for proposing laws and behaving in ways that are inconsistent with this ēthos – Dem. 20.13

Upside-down hegemony? 65 attacks Leptines because of τοῦ ἤθους τοῦ ὑμετέϱου (“your character”), which is incompatible with τὸ […] τῆς πόλεως ἦθος (“the character of the city”), and at Dem. 20.14 he states that “it would be more useful to you [the Athenians] and to him [Leptines] if the city were to persuade Leptines to conform to its ēthos, rather than the opposite. Because even if Leptines were an absolutely good person – and he may well be, as far as I am concerned – his ēthos would not be better than that of the city.”11 These statements, in Aristotle as in Demosthenes, are both normative and descriptive: they explain the relationship between citizens and democracy both as it should be, and as it is understood to be in a good working democracy. And they presuppose that the ēthos of the democratic politeia is meant to apply to all, not just to the dominant ‘part of the city’ – it should be all-encompassing, and everyone should conform to it, also those who belong to other ‘parts of the city’ – the wealthy, the aristocracy, the elite – who may theoretically feel more at home in other constitutions. Yet their character must also be fully aligned with that of the democratic constitution, which is in turn, according to Aristotle, modelled on the lower classes that dominate it. Likewise, incidentally, the key to the success of an ­oligarchic constitution, in Aristotle, is that all socio-economic ‘parts of the city’ – also those that are excluded from political power, not just the oligarchs themselves – buy into the ēthos of the oligarchic politeia, and conform to its standards and behavioural demands. What Aristotle observes and prescribes here, and Demosthenes takes as a given, is indeed something that Antonio Gramsci would have understood as a form of hegemony – a complex of stratified social structures creating a ‘common sense’ (composed of beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values) of what is appropriate, underpinning a (deceptively) harmonic ideal of society in which all the classes work, however differently, towards a common goal. For Gramsci, as we have seen, hegemony turns the ruling-class worldview into the dominant normative system for the whole of society, favouring therefore the willing subjection of the ruled classes to the ruling class – this is the same role that Aristotle attributes to the ēthos of each given politeia, aligned to the ēthos of the part of city that dominates it but ‘binding’ for all parts of the city. My point here is that the concept of hegemony is not just a heuristic tool we can choose to impose on the ancient evidence – an etic ­category – but rather something ancient authors seem to have also observed, although they may not have conceptualised it as we do – an emic category of sorts. It is also important to observe, at this point, that quite like in Gramsci (and unlike in his Russian predecessors of the early XX ­century),12 ‘hegemony’ works here both as a category explaining the stability of a political community – the hegemony of the dēmos underpins the stability of the democracy – and as a category explaining political revolution, since the key goal of stasis, to result in metabolē politeion, as explained by Aristotle in Politics 5.1–3 (1301a20–1304b19), is the establishment by a

66  Mirko Canevaro different socio-economic ‘part of the city’ of an ēthos (‘a central system of practices, meanings and values’) at odds with that of the existing politeia, which results in the end in the creation of a different politeia, coherent with the new dominant ēthos.13 In the rest of this chapter, I shall deal quickly with one preliminary concern – whether Aristotle and Demosthenes really had a point, and the dēmos (through the numerical and institutional prominence of the lower classes) actually did dominate the Athenian political system. After that, I will move to the level of practices – institutional practices – to get a sense of whether we can actually observe hegemonic processes in action in the evidence, and I shall focus on honorific practices.

Whose ‘hegemony’ in Athens? Much ink has been spilled on the topic of who actually ran Athens. Many scholars have simply assumed that Athenian culture and ideology, as we find them in the speeches of the orators, in the funeral speeches, in the epigraphic material, and so on is fundamentally elite culture and ideology, arranged in such a way as to give the masses an impression of control, while the institutions of the state were actually dominated by the elite.14 Such a culture and ideology, in the reading offered most prominently by Nicole Loraux, was just a form of ‘dissimulation’ and ‘false consciousness’.15 Others – Ober in particular, in his Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens of 1989 – have argued on the other hand that Athenian culture and ideology, as they manifested themselves in the institutions, served two interlocking purposes: to secure the prominence of the elites and provide them with an arena for competition, and to give the masses some level of control over the extent and results of this competition, setting them up as their arbiters.16 Both approaches have their merits yet are also based on some presuppositions that are called into question by the evidence. First, the demographic and institutional evidence shows very clearly that the institutions of the democracy were in fact dominated by the lower classes, and that members of the lower classes were perfectly at ease within them and acted extensively (and preponderantly) in most (if not all) political roles available – judge, councillor, magistrate, rhēitōr (general is probably the exception). Athens is in fact atypical among pre-modern societies in the extent to which the formal institutions of the state involved a large number of its citizens, overwhelmingly non-elite citizens, and for the level of concrete participation that was required of them.17 Second, I have also argued that this has significant consequences when we try to identify and study Athenian ‘popular culture’ and ‘ideology’. In particular, most discussions of popular culture tend to assume that the elite, however defined, has control of the formal institutions of the state, and therefore whatever form of culture these institutions may express could not be genuinely popular, although it could be addressed to the people, or could make creative use of

Upside-down hegemony? 67 popular cultural forms (normally for the purpose of ‘controlling’ the people). Another assumption usually follows: popular culture must be to some extent subversive, whether it is consciously and politically so, performing some sort of reversal of the social and political order, and it is by definition ‘unauthorised’ and unofficial.18 The Athenian case forces us to revise some of these assumptions as to the relations between institutions, popular culture (and therefore hegemony), and elite culture. Institutions evolve and change, mostly in accordance with their own structure, in a path-dependent fashion. What concerns, what culture they represent and foster, is determined in part by the individuals that concretely control them in a given moment, but perhaps to a greater extent by the ideas that have originally shaped them (which could in earlier contexts have an independent existence) and by their successive evolution, by the ideology and by the discursive practices that are embedded in their workings.19 Athenian institutions, at a close analysis, are revealed to be democratic not only because they provide the people with representation and give the masses an unparalleled level of institutional control, but also because they appear to have evolved to perform precisely this function and reflect to a large extent the substantive concerns of non-elite citizens. I have used comparisons with Sparta and Crete to show that while the institutions of oligarchies have formalised aristocratic cultural and social forms, the institutions of Athenian democracy have to a large extent formalised non-elite social and cultural forms, often leaving elite culture outside of the official space of the polis (and sometimes integrating it in the popular culture of the masses).20 In such a context, one cannot expect to find a popular culture that is as subversive, and unofficial cultural forms that are institutionally ‘unauthorised’, as in most pre-modern societies. In Athens popular culture seems to live rather inside the formal institutions of the state, fostered and validated by them, and the institutions are a comfortable place of cultural and social expression for the ordinary Athenian craftsmen and farmers. It is elite culture, rejected to a considerable extent by the institutional framework of the polis, that has to find different forms and venues of expression, which are unofficial and ‘unauthorised’, and therefore often become subversive.

Honorific practices as a locus of hegemony In what follows I want to use Athenian honorific practices as a test case for the existence, and the workings, of dēmos-hegemony in ancient Athens. Focusing on honorific practices has several advantages: first, it allows us to rely on an enormous amount of evidence – epinician poetry, historiographical works, Attic oratory, supplemented by the extraordinary data set of ca. 700 decrees epigraphically preserved from the IV century BCE only, most of which are honorific. Second, it allows us to concentrate on a type of moral language – that of honour, reciprocity, trust, charis, and of

68  Mirko Canevaro the virtues associated with these – which is not in itself typical of Athenian democracy, but is rather the basic language used by the Greeks to describe human interaction (social or political) from Homer onwards. The language of honour and reciprocity does not specifically describe vertical relations in preference to horizontal ones; it is not more typical of oligarchies or democracies; it is as central in Sparta and Thebes as it is in Athens. It can also perform a variety of functions, at the same time remaining distinctive and fully recognisable across contexts: it can be a language of social differentiation (we honour those who prove themselves to be superior, because of wealth or birth or merit) or a language of democratic egalitarianism (indicating those rights and prerogatives – timai – that pertain to free men, and Athenian citizens, 21 and the kind of behaviour that is expected of them – otherwise they become atimoi). 22 Thus, as we find this language in Homer or in the Archaic lyric poets, 23 it appears to mark aristocratic values, performance, and life: it is the elites (or the ‘leaders’) that are honoured by their peers (and by the people – dēmos or laos) for their merits and their qualities (intrinsic or otherwise), it is they that are seen to practice aretē and pursue philotimia (‘love of honour’). I am not convinced that this kind of language was exclusive to the aristocracy, but it was rather used at all levels already in the Archaic period. 24 Yet there is no denying that it was particularly (almost exclusively) associated with aristocratic lifestyle by the elite source material of the Archaic period (and well into the V century) – the elite lay an exclusive claim to it, and was, from what we can see, quite successful. Thus, following these sources, modern scholars have argued that aretē, kalokagathia, andragathia, dikaiosynē, and a variety of other ‘cardinal’ virtues (as Whitehead called them) were originally associated with an aristocratic value system, yet they were later appropriated by the democracy to mark and foster democratic behaviour, and to secure services to the dēmos. 25 The language of honour I have been delineating was indeed the basic form of expression of social and political interaction and stratification – describing social and political structures that underpinned a ‘common sense’ (composed of beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values) of what was appropriate, socially and politically. Control of the distribution of honour, and of the underlying normative system, was, that is, a key tool through which a given class (or group) could maintain a hegemonic hold on the politeia. Because of this, the appropriation of such language and dynamics was probably the most important ideological battlefield in the Greek polis. From it depended the very possibility for an elite individual (or group) to affirm his (or their) superiority, or for a member of the people to see his rights and prerogatives – his timai – recognised and protected. Timē, moreover, pace much scholarship, had to do as much with cooperative as with competitive behaviour (as Douglas Cairns has shown in many contributions, and as has been argued now for instance also by Kwame Anthony

Upside-down hegemony? 69 Appiah in The Honour Code and Alexander Welsh in What is Honor? A Question of Moral Imperatives), yet precisely because of this what community (with what boundaries) should benefit from ‘honourable behaviour’ depended on what community (what ‘part of the city’) could define – we might say hegemonise – the relevant ‘honour code’, as the normative system underpinning these honour mechanisms. 26 These dynamics are evident in the practice of the Athenian polis to honour its benefactors through public decrees, often inscribed on stone. 27 The sheer scale of these practices is evidence of its centrality, and of a conscious attempt by the democratic polis to monopolise honorific practices.28 By the late IV century and the third, this practice was widespread across all of the Greek world, but in the late V century it is found virtually only in Athens, as far as we know – Athens seems to have first spearheaded this development, which would later become one of the most distinctive features of the Hellenistic polis. 29 To get a sense of how the honorific system worked and was conceptualised in Classical Athens, there is no better text to start from than Demosthenes’ Against Leptines, an accusation speech against a law annulling honorific tax exemptions (ateleia), which in fact develops the most sophisticated and sustained theoretical reflection on the relation between honours and democracy.30 The core of Demosthenes’ argument is expressed already at Dem. 20.5–6, where Demosthenes admits (per absurdum) that sometimes the Athenians are deceived and grant honours to undeserving individuals, but then rhetorically asks the judges whether it is better for the Athenians to maintain the power to award such grants, even at the cost of giving them occasionally to undeserving individuals, or on the contrary they should give up this power and be incapable of rewarding even the deserving. The answer is that it is better to maintain the power, even at the cost of the occasional mistake. The justification he provides summarises in a powerful formulation the importance of this system of honours, and its relation to the power of the dēmos – it is through the honour system that the dēmos maintains its power. This, in Gramscian terms, could easily be understood as a form of hegemony exercised through the honour system: “Because if you grant honours to more people than you should, you encourage a large number of men to perform public service, whereas if you do not grant honours to anyone even if someone deserves it, you will discourage everyone from being ambitious (philotimeisthai).”31 What Demosthenes is defending (and advocating) is an institutional system that fosters behaviour aligned with the interests of the polis (and therefore of the dēmos), also from members of the elite – an honour system that rewards people precisely for their public displays of embracing the values, the priorities, the ēthos of the democratic polis. Through the consistent honouring of behaviour aligned with the ēthos of the politeia (to use Aristotle’s terminology, which we find in fact also in this very speech), the dēmos strengthens its control over the

70  Mirko Canevaro polis and ‘persuades’ all members of the polis – also the elite (and even foreigners interacting with the city) – to make a public display of embracing its ēthos. In the following paragraphs (and in the rest of the speech), Demosthenes makes the mechanism behind this process explicit in a way that is confirmed by the evidence of honorary decrees. The dēmos can attract services from its benefactors because it has the power to grant honours (timai) in exchange for these services, and because it has a reputation for generosity. Reciprocity is at the basis of the relationship: private as well as public favours create an obligation for the beneficiary, and the choice of each party to reciprocate, and to provide favours in view of reciprocation, when generalised, fosters social cohesion and, in this instance, strengthens the centrality of the dēmos as the key arbiter, beneficiary, and rewarder of honourable behaviour, therefore setting the standards for what honourable behaviour must in fact look like.32 Benefactors offer their services to Athens because of philotimia. This concept is fundamental to the economy of honour as the Athenians conceptualised it, 33 and it is significant that while in many other (aristocratic and oligarchic) contexts it has negative connotations connected with self-aggrandisement and agonistic behaviour, in Athens it comes to mean something very similar to ‘patriotism’, because the key way to behave honourably and be honoured is to serve the dēmos.34 The term (and cognates) is found in the speech multiple times.35 It describes both the psychological state of the individual that actively pursues timē, and the concrete actions that bring others to recognise such timē. Such recognition is functional to timē itself, because the timē of an individual is both his self-assessed value and the recognition by the community of this value.36 The concept of philotimia was developed in a civic ideology of the reward (dorea) as incentive for virtue. The Pericles of Thuc. 2.46, for instance, states that “where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens,” and Isocrates (9.5) describes the praise for the honorands as key to encouraging the young to show more philotimia towards aretē, knowing that this will secure them praise. The reward can be either just the praise, or material rewards as symbols of the timē achieved. This is, then, why philotimia came to mean ‘patriotism’, shown by providing services for the dēmos, and even to indicate directly these services. In exchange for such services, one received timai granted by the dēmos. A passage of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1361a 25–39) gives us a definition of this kind of timē, and a catalogue of typical timai granted by the polis. This analysis of the workings of timē is consistent with Demosthenes’. Aristotle’s definition of timē, σημεῖον εὐεϱγετικῆς εὐδοξίας (“a token of reputation for doing good”), makes clear that timē does not refer here to the value of an individual – to the abstract respect the community grants him – but rather to the tangible mark of his good reputation as a public benefactor. The use of εὐεϱγετικῆς shows that the honours here are public,

Upside-down hegemony? 71 offered by the community in recognition of benefactions to the polis, and as an encouragement for others to become benefactors of the dēmos (ὁ δυνάμενος εὐεϱγετεῖν, “he who is capable of making benefactions”), like in Demosthenes, Thucydides, and Isocrates. Aristotle provides then a summary list of possible honours, with plenty of overlap with those mentioned in the Against Leptines: sacrifices, memorials in verse or prose  (which include also honorary decrees, discussed later), gifts of land, the prohedria, honorary burials and funeral rites, free meals provided by the city (in Athens in the Prytaneion), and statues. The Against Leptines explicitly mentions statues (Dem. 20.70, 120), the sitēsis in the Prytaneion (Dem. 20.120), gifts of land (Dem. 20.115), and adds tax exemption – the main issue in the speech – which is not listed by Aristotle but is well attested in inscriptions (e.g. IG I3 182; IG II3 1.393). It is clear therefore that the foundations of Demosthenes’ critique of Leptines’ law are basic elements of a language (and ideology) of honour that was typical of Athens (and of other poleis). As Aristotle explains, honours are the material reward for euergetical behaviour, and at the same time the condition of such behaviour. And the preservation and encouragement of euergetical behaviour is the chief reason for which Demosthenes opposes the law of Leptines: whatever short-term financial advantage the abolition of exemptions may bring is offset by the damage that will come to the public system of honours, and therefore to the willingness of many people to serve the polis and make a show of embracing its values. The euergetai of Athens are in fact cited already at Dem. 20.11, and the long section at Dem. 20.29–87 is a long list and discussion of benefactors and services, to show what damage will come to the city if the Athenians will limit their ability to reward philotimia. This ideology was explicitly (if elliptically) affirmed in the honorary decrees themselves and was therefore a feature of any Assembly and Council meeting, given the sheer number of such decrees. We have, for the period 403-322, ca. 800 public decrees, and over two-thirds of these are honorific. 37 Citizens were mainly honoured for political (e.g. IG II3 1.306), military (Dem. 20.67–87), diplomatic (e.g. Dem. 19.31), and financial services (e.g. IG II3 1.338; 348; 360). Often the honours were for magistrates for fulfilling well their duties, and I shall get back to this. Other honours were for foreigners (and these are the majority in the evidence): sovereigns, private individuals, and even entire cities, who had helped Athens (e.g. many of those listed in Dem. 20.27–87). Liddel divides foreign benefactors into five categories (all reflected in the Against Leptines): foreigners who have been partisans of democracy after an oligarchic revolution (e.g. Dem. 20.48), who have offered financial contributions to Athens (e.g. Dem. 20.27–46), who have provided military services, who were exiled for their support for Athens (e.g. Dem. 20.51–55), who guarantee Athens’ grain supply (e.g. Dem. 20.27–50). Athenians were usually rewarded with crowns, sometimes with sacrifices,

72  Mirko Canevaro dedications to a god, ateleia, and exceptionally with megistai timai. 38 Foreigners received naturalisation, proxeny, ateleia, asylia, enktēsis, and the privilege of paying the eisphora with citizens. 39 The publication of a honorary decree was many things at once: a privilege for the honorand, a monument to the success of the proposer, the reciprocal response of the city to a benefactor, evidence of the services provided by the benefactor, an exhortation to others to serve the dēmos as the honorand did, with the same philotimia,40 knowing that the Athenians honour those that display philotimia, and, indeed, a statement by the dēmos that honourable behaviour can only be democratic behaviour, and only democratic behaviour can be honoured.41 The ‘hortatory motivation clauses’ in decrees declare, for instance, that the honours were awarded and the decree inscribed “so that the others also behave with philotimia, knowing that the Council honours and crowns those who behave with philotimia” (RO 95, ll. 64–66). Such hortatory motivation clauses encouraged competition and emulation in serving the democracy, showed that the city had reciprocated, and fostered the image of the dēmos as generous in rewarding such services, making a display of a successful reciprocal relation between parties (the democratic city and its benefactors) whose values and ēthē were fully aligned.42 Inscriptions of honorary decrees are therefore visible marks of the existence in Athens of an honour system founded on reciprocation of public services with public rewards, and their very wording stresses that this system is aligned with the ēthos of dēmos and is aimed at encouraging citizens and non-citizens alike to serve the dēmos on the dēmos’ own terms.43 What the honorific system effectively did was creating political and moral obligations towards the dēmos, founded on the examples of past benefactions and past rewards that exemplified ‘correct’ behaviour as aligned with the ethos of the dēmos itself.44 The effects extolled at Dem. 20.5 of the practice of awarding honours were then explicitly recognised by the city in its decrees. At Dem. 20.108 this concept is expressed even more forcefully: “for democracies the competition among good men to win prizes awarded by the people protects liberty.” The Athenian honour system was not just hegemonized by the dēmos; it was a key tool for fostering that hegemony and persuading all parts of the city (as well as those foreigners that interacted with the city) to adopt a shared ‘common sense’ aligned with that of the Athenian politeia, acting in its defence and according to its needs and priorities.

Egalitarianism and social differentiation through the honour system As I noted earlier, an honour system such as this can foster social differentiation – we can soon find a class of honorands distinguished from the dēmos itself by virtue of the honours they have been granted – and so it did

Upside-down hegemony? 73 in many Hellenistic poleis.45 But not in Classical Athens, where, at least to a considerable extent, the system was subjected to the hegemony of the demos.46 There are some key features of the Athenian system that need remarking upon in this respect: first, the fact that most honours awarded to foreign honorands did nothing more than extend to them part of the rights and prerogatives – timai – that were already part of the Athenian’s basic set of rights (e.g. the right to own land, exemption from the metic tax, the right to pay eisphora with the citizens, all the way to naturalisation itself). They did not, that is, set the honorand above the average citizen, but rather closer to him. Demosthenes in the Against Aristocrates (23.23–24) expresses this principle poignantly when he acknowledges that foreign mercenary and benefactor Charidemus of Oreus, as a naturalised citizen, is to be placed “in this rank in which he would obtain the most honor,” yet “I do not think that he should illegally receive privileges that not even those of us who are citizens by birth possess.” Second, of course, the fact that the behaviour rewarded was rigorously democratic behaviour, in the service of the dēmos, which therefore implicitly recognised its superiority. Third, when it comes to honours for Athenian citizens, mostly crowns, we should acknowledge that there is nothing in the honorific language of Athenian decrees that makes the status of the honorand exclusive. Not the cardinal virtues – they are normal terms for moral excellence, which mark qualities that all Athenians are required and understood to possess (and are in fact attributed repeatedly to all Athenians e.g. in funeral speeches and elsewhere), both in their private and in their public life.47 And the aim of these honours is explicitly spelled out as an intention to foster in everyone their natural and expected philotimia, by showing that the city is worthy of it and does reciprocate with the appropriate honour.48 These honours, that is, in particular when it comes to Athenian citizens, do not ­differentiate between those that are socially (and politically) superior and normal citizens – this is the Spartan way, according to Demosthenes (20.15–6, 106– 8), where deserving behaviour is rewarded with a place in the gerousia, and therefore with actual superiority over your fellow ­citizens – but rather constitute the public acknowledgement that one is a good and deserving Athenian, worthy of the honour of an Athenian citizen, to whom that honour has been duly acknowledged. And this is in fact precisely how the Euxitheos of Demosthenes’ Against Euboulides (57.62–4) and his enemies seem to understand the honorary decree enacted for him – for his ­service as demarch – by his fellow demesmen (and vandalised by his enemies): the decree ‘brought him’ philotimia, but this did not set him apart from his fellow citizens. Quite the opposite: it is evidence that he is a citizen, because that’s what citizens are – philotimoumenoi – and it can be used as evidence of this when his citizenship is challenged. Fourth, and perhaps more important, throughout the IV century (­particularly from the 340s, judging from the epigraphical evidence, but

74  Mirko Canevaro quite probably from much earlier), the Athenians enact consistently honorary decrees identical in everything to those for foreign and domestic super-benefactors who have performed special services for the dēmos, but they enact them instead for common citizens (or group of citizens) that have simply performed their roles as magistrates (selected by lot) correctly and honourably. They are given golden or olive crowns and are commended for the same qualities as the famous euergetai, and these decrees are inscribed on the Acropolis or in the Agora side by side with theirs.49 A system and a language of honour that can enable all conceptualisations of social and political life is then, in Athens, institutionally hegemonized by the dēmos – through ‘complex super-structures’.50 Belonging to the dēmos, as full-right and honourable citizens, and behaving accordingly, is set up as the benchmark against which all social and political behaviour is judged (and also as the key for social exclusion, of slaves in particular but also of atimoi and foreigners). Elsewhere – in Sparta, Crete, and many other cities – the same language of honour becomes instead the foundation of high levels of social differentiation, within and outwith the citizen body, at all levels.

Conclusion The Gramscian concept of hegemony can be a powerful heuristic tool for illuminating the actual institutional dynamics of Classical Athens, inasmuch as these countered social stratification within the citizen body by ways of an upside-down hegemony through which the dēmos (understood here as the lower classes) ‘saturat[ed] the consciousness of [Athenian] society’ to the point of normatively controlling large parts of the range of acceptable and worthy behaviours. Such an hegemony was exercised by the dēmos through its (practical and/or ideological) control of the entire institutional framework of the city, from the formal institutions of the state (the Council, the Assembly, the courts) all the way to the smaller subdivisions (demes, phratries) and even to private voluntary associations, which, as important recent research has shown, ran meetings with the same procedures as the Athenian Assembly, had offices identical to those of the polis, and enacted decrees also more or less identical to those of the polis, most of them, indeed, honorific. Their language, their aims, their value system, their very procedures and institutions were generally identical to those of the polis as a whole, and it is easy to see how this would allow the democratic ēthos, democratic practices and democratic cultural reference points to penetrate all levels of the community, also beyond the citizen group (the members of these associations were often not citizens: sometimes they were women, sometimes foreigners).51 At all these levels, one of the key mechanisms that fostered the dēmos’ hegemony was the honorific system – the practice of honouring public benefactors in such a way as to reaffirm, with each euergetical service and each reward, the alignment between the ēthos of the polis and that of the

Upside-down hegemony? 75 individual benefactors (as well as that of whatever body, subdivision and association was awarding the honour), 52 the coherence of the values and norms that underpinned their practices and interactions. Through this mechanism, the demos exercised its hegemony over all ‘parts’ of the city, effecting through persuasion and through fostering widespread philotimia that alignment of the ēthos of the politeia, of the laws and of the citizens (whatever their socio-economic background) that Aristotle theorised as essential to a well-functioning polis. What all these elements (institutional as well as ideological) amounted to was a complex of stratified social and political structures (Gramsci’s ‘complex super-structures’) creating a ‘common sense’ (composed of beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values) of what was appropriate for all classes – they turned the worldview of the dēmos, its values, needs, and priorities, into the dominant normative system for the whole of society, including the socio-economic elite.

Acknowledgements The research project of which this paper is part is generously funded by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant ID:741084).

Notes 1 Williams (1973: 9). I quote here Williams’ definition because it is both concise and fundamentally correct, but I do not mean to endorse his broader rather idiosyncratic understanding of Gramsci, which is partial at best. For more philological understandings of ‘hegemony’ see the next note. 2 My short description here of ‘Gramscian’ hegemony does not aspire to much theoretical sophistication, and does not attempt to come to grips either with the complexities of Gramsci’s own treatment [on which see particularly Anderson (1976’s) critique and Thomas (2009’s) philological defence and reconstruction, which at the same time makes it more nuanced and complex; see also e.g. Burgio (2014: 243–80), Cospito (2016)], nor with its later reception and re-elaboration [on which see at least Frosini (2017), an extremely rich issue of Materialismo Storico dealing in detail precisely with the reception of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony; Anderson (2017), where he comes back to his 1977 analysis and takes stock of later criticism and new approaches; and now briefly A. Williams (2019: 186–238), where we find a succinct and insightful summary of Gramscian and post-Gramscian approaches to hegemony, and passim, for an interesting attempt to set hegemony in dialogue with system theory]. I use here the concept in its basic, conventional meaning in much Marxist and post-Marxist work, of which the quote from Williams is a good exemplification – the quote is from Williams (1973) [reprinted in Williams (2005: 31–50)] and is discussed in Anderson (2017: 85–116). 3 The debate on the meaning of dēmos in dēmokratia is extensive: see at least Donlan (1970), Rhodes (2003: 18–19), Ober (2008), Osborne (2010: 42), Hansen (2010), Cammack (2019). 4 On the taxonomies of Politics, Book 4, and the centrality of the ‘parts of the city’ in Aristotle’s account, see particularly Canevaro and Esu (2018: 112–19), relying on Accattino (1986) and Besso, Canevaro and Pezzoli (2014: passim).

76  Mirko Canevaro 5 Arist. Pol. III 6.1278b; IV 4.1290a30–b20 (cf. [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.20; Plat. Resp. 565e). The bibliography on Aristotle’s conception(s) of democracy is immense but see e.g. Lintott (1992), Ober (2005), Skultety (2008), see also Poddighe (2014: 74–105) and Besso, Canevaro and Pezzoli et al. (2014): passim for extensive discussions of previous interpretations. 6 Arist. Pol. IV 4.1290a30–b20. 7 On the reciprocal relationship between laws and politeia, which are always aligned and share a common ēthos (also with the politai themselves) in a working constitution, see Arist. Pol. II 9.1271a 13–14; III 12.1282b 8–13; IV 1.1289a 11–25; see also Eth. Nic. X 9.1181b 22–23; Rh. I 8.1365b 31ff., with Pezzoli (2014) Besso, Canevaro and Pezzoli (2014: 283–284), Poddighe (2014: 55, 2018), De Luna and Zizza (2016: 422–3). On individual and collective ēthos, and on how this is instilled into citizens through the laws, see e.g. Dal Poz 2015; Hitz (2012). 8 See e.g. Arist. Pol. III 4 1276b 30–31 [with Accattino (2013, 160–2)]; V 8.1308b 20–24; V 9.1310a 14 [with De Luna and Zizza (2016: 407–8, 422–3)]; VIII 1.1337a 14–18 and passim. See more generally, for Aristotle’s account of education in book 8, e.g. Lord (1982) and Curren (2000) and now Bertelli and Canevaro (forthcoming). 9 See e.g. Pl. Grg. 513b 1–3; Leg. VII, 788b 3; Resp. IV 435e-6a, 549a 8. 10 See e.g. Johnstone (1999: 28–9), Sickinger (2008), Canevaro (2013: 158–60, 2018b). 11 See Canevaro (2016a: 71–6, 86–8, 207–15). 12 On whom see e.g. Anderson (2017: 13–24); on the history of the concept of hegemony before Gramsci see now Cospito (2016). 13 On the logic of these processes, in Aristotle’s conceptualisation of stasis and metabolē, see e.g. Polansky (1991), Kalimtzis (2000), Weed (2007), Skultety (2009), Poddighe (2014: 106–70), Bertelli (2017: 67–116), Bertelli (2018), De Luna and Zizza (2016: 263–300), and particularly Cairns, Canevaro and Mantzouranis (2021). 14 On popular culture as ‘unofficial’ culture, while official culture, the culture authorised by the formal institutions of the state, as ultimately a form of elite culture, see e.g. recently Forsdyke (2012). See Canevaro (2016b) for an extensive discussion of various approaches to popular culture in Athens, and for my own take on it – the next two paragraphs largely summarise the results of the analysis I have offered there. For an up-to-date and insightful account of modern applications of the concept of ideology to ancient Athens (in the context of the wider debate on ideology) see now Barbato (2020); see also the excellent discussion in Rose (2006), from a Marxist perspective. 15 Loraux (1981). 16 Ober (1989). 17 I make this case (with extensive discussion of the evidence and of previous scholarship) from two different angles, in Canevaro (2016b) (particularly on popular control of legal and theatrical institutions, and its effects on popular culture) and (2019b) (on popular control of political deliberation). 18 I discuss these issues (which here are just the background of my main case study) in Canevaro (2016b). 19 This brief account of how institutions work and evolve relies on work in the New Institutionalism(s). The foundational essay of New Institutionalism is March and Olsen (1984). See March and Olsen (2006), and now Lowndes and Roberts (2013), for surveys of the field, and syntheses of relevant research. 20 See e.g. Canevaro (2016b: 63). 21 For timē as the baseline honour of the citizen, see Blok (2017: 187–216).

Upside-down hegemony? 77 22 The understanding of honour which I summarise here is that pursued in the Edinburgh-based ERC Honour in Classical Greece research project (ID: 741084). The claims made here are backed in a number of publications by the project team, e.g. Cairns (1993, 1996, 2011, 2015, 2019), Canevaro (2016a, 2018a, 2019a, 2020), Rabbås (2015); as well as in previous scholarship e.g. by Fisher [see in particular Fisher (1992, 2000, 2001)]. On atimia understood in this sense see Fisher (2001: 21–3, 159–61, 335–7), van’t Wout (2011a, 2011b). On the development of atimia as a legal penalty see in particular Youni (2001), Joyce (2018), Canevaro and Harris (2018); and the ongoing work by Linda Rocchi. 23 See in particular, for Homer, van Wees (1992: 69–72), Cairns (1993: 48–146, 2011: 29–38), Scodel (2008: 1–32). Cf. Swift in this volume. 24 See in particular Fisher (2003: 197). 25 See e.g. Seaford (1994: 194–206), Wilson (2000: 191–2), Cook (2009: 49–50). For the cardinal virtues see Whitehead (1983, 1993), Veligianni-Terzi (1997), Canevaro (2016a: 217, 385, 404–5). 26 See Cairns (1993, 2011), and also van Wees (1992), Scodel (2008: 1–32), Canevaro (2018a, 2020). For comparable understandings in other societies see e.g. Appiah (2010), Baker (2013), Kane (2009), Pollock (2007), Welsh (2008). 27 For various perspectives on euergetism, in Athens and beyond, see e.g. Domingo Gygax (2016) (with extensive discussion of previous bibliography); Gauthier (1985), Ma (2013), Quass (1993), Veyne (1976), Zuiderhoek (2009). For surveys of scholarship on and approaches to euergetism, see in particular Brélaz (2009), Colpaert (2014). 28 For the honour system in Athens in particular, see most prominently Deene (2013), Engen (2010), Henry (1983), Lambert (2018a), Liddel (2007, 2016), Luraghi (2010), Miller (2016), Oliver (2007), Veligianni-Terzi (1997), Whitehead (1983, 1993). See also Canevaro (2016a: 77–96). 29 This is the argument forcefully made in Domingo Gygax (2016). 30 On this speech, read almost as a ‘treatise’ on honours and euergetism in a democratic context, see particularly Canevaro (2016a: 77–97) and passim. See also Kremmydas (2012). 31 Translations of Dem. 20 are, here and below, from Harris (2008) (occasionally modified). 32 On reciprocity in the Greek world see in particular the essays in Gill, Postlewaite and Seaford (1998). On reciprocity in Attic oratory see Millett (1998), Fisher (2003) (also showing that it was not intrinsically aristocratic). On reciprocity and euergetism see now Domingo Gygax (2003: 182–3, 2006: 271–2, 2009: 172, 2016: 3–5, 12, 26–7 and passim). 33 On the notion of an economy of honour in Athens see Keim (2016); in Homer, Scodel (2008: 1–32). Cf. Miller (1990: 29–34) and Baker (2013: 35–76) for this same concept in Nordic sagas and in Beowulf. Cf. also the ‘economy of esteem’ of Brennan and Pettit (2004). 34 On philotimia as the key factor in the relations between civic obligations, individual liberty and voluntarism see in particular Liddel (2007: 166–70) and passim. On the development of the meaning of philotimia towards publicspiritedness and patriotism see Whitehead (1983) [but see also Ferrucci (2013), which qualifies this evolution]; Lambert (2018a: 71–92), Keim (2018). See also Canevaro (2016a: 78–81 and n. 308; 83–7 and passim). 35 Dem. 20.5, 10, 41, 69, 82, 103, 155. 36 On the meaning of timē see the references above (see note 22), particularly Cairns (2011) and Canevaro (2020) [both read the concept as entailing both ‘demeanour’ and ‘deference’, using Goffman’s (1967: 47–6) model of social interaction ritual].

78  Mirko Canevaro 37 Lambert (2012: 57) n. 31 [in Lambert (2012: 3–47, 208–14, 401–6), Lambert studies the decrees from the period 352/1 – 322/1; see also Liddel (2020) for the IV-century decrees attested in the literary sources, and appendix II to vol.  1 for the honorary decrees]. Hansen (1987: 110) counted 488 decrees, 288 of which are honorary. 38 See Gauthier (1985: 24–8, 92–105), Kralli (1999). 39 See Osborne (1981, 1983) and Oliver (2007) for citizenship, and Engen (2010: 141–81,181–221) more generally for honours granted to foreigners. This account relies on Liddel (2016), which is now the essential port of call for IV century honorary decrees. See also Canevaro (2016a: 83–4). 40 Liddel (2007: 163–4). 41 Liddel (2007: 163–4, 2016), Lambert (2011: 193–5, 198, 2012: 96). 42 Liddel (2007: 165). On ‘hortatory motivation clauses’ cf. Larfeld (1902–7: II 763–7 and 835–6). Rhodes and Lewis (1997: 5) considers these clauses as the second part of the motivation clauses of these decrees. For comprehensive studies see Henry (1996) and now Miller (2016). 43 Honorary decrees for citizens start appearing on stone regularly from the 340s – the first is from 347/6 (IG II 3 1.301, for an unidentified magistrate. Earlier, inscribed honorary decrees are attested only for foreigners, although the practice of enacting honorary decrees for citizens, whether military leaders or magistrates, is attested from much earlier. See Dem. 20.67–87 for military commanders, and the dedications of Agora XV discussed in Lambert (2018b) for magistrates – their existence is confirmed for the earlier IV century by Dem. 22.8–10 and for the late fifth by Andoc. 2.16–19. 44 Liddel (2007: 160). 45 Particularly in the late-Hellenistic period, see Quass (1992, 1993). For an account that sees continuity in the control exercised by the dēmos in the Hellenistic period, see in particular Ma (2013) [building on Gauthier (1985)]. Chaniotis (2010), on the other hand, argues that Hellenistic dēmokratiai were democracies just in name, precisely because of the prominence of a class of euergetai. For the debate on Hellenistic democracies see in particular Carlsson (2010), Grieb (2008); with Hamon (2009) [cf. Hamon (2011)] and Mann (2011) for insightful critical reviews. 46 See now Domingo Gygax (2016: 180–250) for a synthesis of the development of euergetism in IV-century Athens. 47 See in particular Whitehead (1993) and Veligianni-Terzi (1997). 48 This is clear from the ‘hortatory intention clauses’, on which see above note 42. 49 On honours for magistrates see in particular Lambert (2012: 3–47, 2018b), Harris (2017). Harris deals also with the fact that magistrates were often honoured well before the end of their terms of office, which implies that these honours were standard, something that emerges clearly also from Dem. 22.8–10. 50 What Althusser called ‘ideological state apparatuses’. See Althusser (1971: 121–76), with e.g. Rehmann (2013: 147–78) for its relation to Gramsci’s theory of civil society and hegemonic apparatuses. 51 See e.g. Ismard (2010), Gabrielsen (2009, 2015, 2016), Gabrielsen and Thomsen (2015: 7–24). See now, on Rhodes, Thomsen (2020). The background of these studies is Habermas concept of ‘public sphere’ (Habermas 1989), rather than Gramsci’s ‘civil society’. A good synthesis of these trends is found in Taylor and Vlassopoulos (2015: 1–31). Gottesman (2014) looks explicitly for a public sphere (‘the street’) in Classical Athens (also with reference to the Habermasian framework) but see also Canevaro (2017: 438–40).

Upside-down hegemony? 79 52 Cf. e.g. IG II 2 1138; 1139; 1140; 1141; 1143; 1144; and later e.g. 1148; 1178. Cf. Jones 1999: 118–19; 184–91 and now e.g. Domingo Gygax (2016: 231–4) on honorific practices in smaller subdivisions of the city.

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Upside-down hegemony? 81 Deene, M. (2013) ‘Seeking for Honour(S)? The Exploitation of Philotimia and Citizen Benefactors in Classical Athens’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 91, 69–87. Domingo Gygax, M. (2003) ‘Euergetismus und Gabentausch’, Mètis, 1, 181–200. Domingo Gygax, M. (2006) ‘Les Origines de l’évergétisme. Échanges et identités sociales dans la cité grecque’, Mètis, 4, 269–95. Domingo Gygax, M. (2009) ‘Proleptic Honours in Greek Euergetism’, Chiron, 39, 163–91. Domingo Gygax, M. (2016) Benefaction and Rewards in the Ancient Greek City. The Origins of Euergetism. Cambridge: CUP. Donlan, W. (1970) ‘Changes and Shifts in the Meaning of Demos in the Literature of the Archaic Period’, La Parola del Passato, 25, 381–95. Engen, D.T. (2010) Honor and Profit. Athenian Trade Policy and the Economy and Society of Greece, 415-307 B.C.E. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Ferrucci, S. (2013) ‘L’ambigua virtù. Philotimia nell’Atene degli oratori’, Studi Ellenistici, 27, 123–35. Fisher, N.R.E. (1992) Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece. Warminster: Arris and Philips. Fisher, N.R.E. (2000) ‘Hybris, Revenge and Stasis in the Greek City-States’, in van Wees, H. (ed.) War and Violence in Ancient Greece. London: Classical Press of Wales, 83–123. Fisher, N.R.E. (2001) Aeschines. Against Timarchos. Oxford: OUP. Fisher, N.R.E. (2003) ‘“Let Envy Be Absent”: Envy, Liturgies and Reciprocity in Athens’, in Konstan, D. and N.K. Rutter (eds.) Envy, Spite and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh: EUP, 181–215. Forsdyke, S. (2012) Slaves Tell Tales, and Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton UP. Frosini, F. (ed.) (2017) L’egemonia dopo Gramsci: una riconsiderazione. Special Issue, Materialismo Storico, 1. Gabrielsen, V. (2009) ‘Brotherhoods of Faith and Provident Planning: The NonPublic Associations of the Greek World’, in Malkin, I., C. Constantakopoulou and K. Panagopoulou (eds.) Greek and Roman Networks in the Mediterranean. London – New York, NY: Routledge, 176–98. Gabrielsen, V. (2015) ‘Naval and Grain Networks and Associations in FourthCentury Athens’, in Taylor, C. and K. Vlassopoulos (eds.) Communities and Networks in the Ancient World. Cambridge: CUP, 177–212. Gabrielsen, V. (2016) ‘Associations, Modernization and the Return of the Private Network in Athens’, in Tiersch, C. (ed.) Athenische Demokratie im 4. Jh. – ­zwischen Modernisierung und Tradition. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 121–62. Gabrielsen, V. and C.A. Thomsen (eds.) (2015) Private Associations and the Public Sphere. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Gauthier, P. (1985) Les Cités et leurs bienfaiteurs. Paris: École Française d’Athènes. Gill, C., N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (eds.) (1998) Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. Oxford: OUP. Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. Chicago: Aldine. Gottesman, A. (2014) Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens. Cambridge: CUP. Grieb, V. (2008) Hellenistische Demokratie: politische Organisation und Struktur in freien griechischen Poleis nach Alexander dem Großen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

82  Mirko Canevaro Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity. Hamon, P. (2009) ‘Démocraties grecques après Alexandre: à propos de trois ouvrages récents’, Topoi, 16, 347–82. Hamon, P. (2011) ‘Gleichheit, Ungleichheit und Euergetismus: die isotes in den kleinasiatischen Poleis der hellenistischen Zeit’, in Mann, C. and P. Scholz (eds.) ‘Demokratie’ im Hellenismus: von der Herrschaft des Volkes zur Herrschaft der Honoratioren? Berlin: Antike, 56–73. Hansen, M.H. (1987) The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Blackwell. Hansen, M.H. (2010) ‘The Concepts of demos, ekklesia, and dikasterion in Classical Athens’, GRBS, 50, 499–536. Harris, E.M. (2008) Demosthenes, Speeches 20-22. Austin: University of Texas Press. Harris, E.M. (2017) ‘Applying the Law about the Award of Crowns to Magistrates (Aeschin. 3.9-31; Dem. 18.113-117): Epigraphic Evidence for the Legal Arguments at the Trial of Ctesiphon’, ZPE, 202, 105–18. Henry, A.S. (1983) Honours and Privileges in Athenian Decrees: the principal ­formulae of Athenian honorary decrees. Hildesheim – New York, NY: Olms. Henry, A.S. (1996) ‘The Hortatory Intention in Athenian State Decrees’, ZPE, 112, 105–19. Hitz, Z. (2012) ‘Aristotle on Law and Moral Education’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophies, 42, 263–306. Ismard, P. (2010) La cité des réseaux. Athènes et ses associations VIe-Ier siècle av. J.-C. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Johnstone, S. (1999) Disputes and Democracy: The Consequences of Litigation in Ancient Athens. Austin: University of Texas Press. Joyce, C. (2018) ‘Atimia and Outlawry in Archaic and Classical Greece’, Polis, 35, 33–60. Kalimtzis, K. (2000) Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease. An Inquiry into Stasis. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kane, B. (2009) The Politics and Culture of Honour in Britain and Ireland, 1541-1641. Cambridge: CUP. Keim, B. (2016) ‘Non-Material but Not Immaterial: Demosthenes’ Reassessment of the Wealth of Athens’, in Bissa, E.M.A. and F. Santangelo (eds.) Studies on Wealth in the Ancient World. London: School of Advanced Study, 7–20. Keim, B. (2018) ‘Xenophon’s Hipparchikos and the Athenian Embrace of Citizen Philotimia’, Polis, 35, 499–522. Kralli, I. (1999) ‘Athens and Her Leading Citizens in the Early Hellenistic Period (338-261 BC): The Evidence of the Decrees Awarding the Highest Honours’, Archaiognosia, 10, 133–61. Kremmydas, C. (2012) Commentary on Demosthenes’ “Against Leptines”. Oxford: OUP. Lambert, S.D. (2011) ‘What Was the Point of Inscribed Honorific Decrees in Classical Athens?’, in id. and D.L. Cairns (eds.) Sociable Man: Essays of Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, Swanse: Classical Press of Wales, 193–214. Lambert, S.D. (2012) Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1-322/1 BC. Epigraphical Essays. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Upside-down hegemony? 83 Lambert, S.D. (2018a) Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees in the Age of Demosthenes: Historical Essays. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Lambert, S.D. (2018b) ‘357/6 BC: A Significant Year in the Development of Athenian Honorific Practice’, Attic Inscriptions Online Papers, 9, 1–7. Larfeld, W. (1902-1907) Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik. 2 vols. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland. Liddel, P. (2007) Civic Obligation and Individual Liberty in Ancient Athens. Oxford: OUP. Liddel, P. (2016) ‘The Honorific Decree of Fourth-Century Athens: Trends, Perceptions, Controversies’, in Tiersch, C. (ed.) Die Athenische Demokratie Im 4. Jahrhundert. Zwischen Modernisierung Und Tradition. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 311–33. Liddel, P. (2020) Decrees of Fourth-Century Athens (403/2-322/1 BC). Vol. 1: The Literary Evidence; Vol. 2. Cambridge: CUP. Lintott, A. (1992) ‘Aristotle and Democracy’, CQ, 42, 114–28. Loraux, L. (1981) L’invention d’Athènes: histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la cité classique. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Lord, C. (1982) Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Lowndes, V. and M. Roberts (2013) Why Institutions Matter. The New Institutionalism in Political Science. Basingstoke: Red Globe. Luraghi, N. (2010) ‘The Demos as Narrator: Public Honors and the Construction of Future and Past’, in Foxhall, L., H.-J. Gehrke and N. Luraghi (eds.) Intentional History: Spinning Time. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 247–63. Ma, J. (2013) Statues and Cities. Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World. Oxford: OUP. Mann, C. (2011) ‘Gleichheiten und Ungleichheiten in der hellenistischen Polis: Überlegungen zum Stand der Forschung’, in Mann, C. and P. Scholz (eds.) ‘Demokratie’ im Hellenismus: von der Herrschaft des Volkes zur Herrschaft der Honoratioren? Berlin: Antike, 11–27. March, J.G. and J.P. Olsen (1984) ‘The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life’, American Political Science Review, 78, 734–49. March, J.G. and J.P. Olsen (2006) ‘Elaborating the ‘New Institutionalism’’, in Rhodes, R.A.W., S.A. Binder and B.A. Rockman (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Oxford: OUP, 3–20. Miller, J. (2016) ‘Euergetism, Agonism, and Democracy: The Hortatory Intention in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Athenian Honorific Decrees’, Hesperia, 85, 385–435. Miller, W.I. (1990) Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Millett, P. (1998) ‘The Rhetoric of Reciprocity in Classical Athens’, in Gill, C., N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (eds.) Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. Oxford: OUP, 227–53. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Rhetoric Ideology and the Power of the People. Princeton: Princeton UP. Ober, J. (2005) ‘Aristotle’s Natural Democracy’, in Kraut, R. and S. Skultety (eds.) Aristotle’s Politics: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 223–43. Ober, J. (2008) ‘The Original Meaning of ‘Democracy’: the Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule’, Constellations, 15, 3–9.

84  Mirko Canevaro Oliver, G.J. (2007) ‘Citizenship: Inscribed Honours for Individuals in Classical and Hellenistic Athens’, in Couvenhes, J.-C. and S. Milanezi (eds.) Individus, groupes et politique à Athènes de Solon à Mithridate. Tours: Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, 273–92. Osborne, M.J. (1981-83) Naturalization in Athens. 4 vols. Brussels: Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie. Osborne, R. (2010) Athens and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge: CUP. Pezzoli, F. (2014) ‘La figura del legislatore nella Politica di Aristotele’, Rivista di Diritto Ellenico, 4, 167–77. Poddighe, E. (2014) Aristotele, Atene e la metamorfosi dell’idea democratica. Rome: Carocci. Poddighe, E. (2018) ‘Arist. Ath. Pol. 9, 2 e la regola del giudizio globale sui politika. Considerazioni sul metodo storico aristotelico’, in Bearzot, C., M. Canevaro, T. Gargiulo and E. Poddighe (eds.) Athenaion Politeiai tra storia, politica e sociologia. Milan: Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia e Diritto, 147–74. Polansky, R. (1991) ‘Aristotle on Political Change’, in Keyt, D. and F.D. Miller (eds.) A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics. Oxford: Blackwell, 322–45. Pollock, L. (2007) ‘Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570-1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46, 3–29. Quass, F. (1992) ‘Bemerkungen zur « Honoratiorenherrschaft » in den griechischen Städten der hellenistischen Zeit’, Gymnasium, 99, 422–34. Quass, F. (1993) Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Städten des griechischen Ostens. Untersuchungen zur politischen und sozialen Entwicklung in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Rabbås, Ø (2015) ‘Virtue, Respect, and Morality in Aristotle’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 49, 619–43. Rehmann, J. (2013) Theories of Ideology. The Power of Alienation and Subjection. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Rhodes, P.J. (2003) Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology. London: Duckworth. Rhodes, P.J. with D.M. Lewis (1997) The Decrees of the Greek City States. Oxford: OUP. Rose, P.W. (2006) ‘Divorcing Ideology from Marxism and Marxism from Ideology: Some Problems’, Arethusa, 39, 101–36. Scodel, R. (2008) Epic Facework: Self-Presentation and Social Interaction in Homer. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Seaford, R. (1994) Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford: OUP. Sickinger, J.P. (2008) ‘Indeterminacy in Greek Law: Statutory Gaps and Conflicts’, in Harris, E. and G. Thür (eds.) Symposion 2007. Wien: Verlag D. Österreichische, 99–112. Skultety, S.C. (2008) ‘Aristotle’s Theory of Partisanship’, Polis, 25, 208–32. Skultety, S.C. (2009) ‘Delimiting Aristotle’s Conception of Stasis in the Politics’, Phronesis, 54, 346–70. Taylor, C. and K. Vlassopoulos (eds.) (2015) Communities and Networks in the Ancient World. Cambridge: CUP. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Upside-down hegemony? 85 Thomsen, C.A. (2020) The Politics of Association in Hellenistic Rhodes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. van Wees, H. (1992) Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Homer and History. Amsterdam: Gieben. van’t Wout, P.E. (2011a) ‘Neglected Evidence for the Nature of Atimia. Agora P 17615 and DIA 107’, ZPE, 176, 126–134. van’t Wout, P.E. (2011b) ‘From Oath-Swearing to Entrenchment Clause: The Introduction of Atimia-Terminology in Legal Inscriptions’, in Lardinois, A.P.M.H., J. Blok and M.G.M. van der Poel (eds.) Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 143–60. Veligianni-Terzi, C. (1997) Wertbegriffe in den attischen Ehrendekreten der ­klassischen Zeit. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Veyne, P. (1976) Le Pain et le Cirque: sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique. Paris: Éd du Seuil. Weed, R. (2007) Aristotle on Stasis: A Moral Psychology of Political Conflict. Berlin: Logos. Welsh, A. (2008) What Is Honor? A Question of Moral Imperatives. New Haven: Yale UP. Whitehead, D. (1983) ‘Competitive Outlay and Community Profit: ΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΙΑ in Democratic Athens’, C&M, 34, 55–74. Whitehead, D. (1993) ‘Cardinal Virtues: The Language of Public Approbation in Democratic Athens’, C&M, 44, 37–75. Williams, A. (2019) Political Hegemony and Social Complexity. Mechanisms of Power after Gramsci. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Williams, R. (1973) ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory’, New Left Review, 82(1), 3–16. Reprinted in Id. (2005) Culture and Materialism. Selected EssaysSelected Essays. Williams, R. (2005) Culture and Materialism. Selected Essays. London: Verso. Wilson, P. (2000) The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia. The Chorus, the City and the Stage. Cambridge: CUP. Youni, M.S. (2001) ‘The Different Categories of Unpunished Killing and the Term Atimos in Ancient Greek Law’, in Cantarella, E. and G. Thür (eds.) Symposion 1997. Wien: Verlag D. Österreichische, 117–37. Zuiderhoek, A. (2009) The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor. Cambridge: CUP.

3

Gramsci and ancient philosophy Prelude to a study Phillip Sidney Horky

Introduction In his longest and most sustained engagement with any ancient philosopher in the Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci selects that all-encompassing monolith of Plato, Republic, for interrogation. But Gramsci’s treatment of Plato’s magisterial ten-book magnum opus would appear to raise questions with each proposition it advances: When it is said that Plato dreamed up a ‘republic of philosophers’, we must understand the term philosophers, which today would be translated with ‘intellectuals’, ‘historically’. Naturally, Plato meant ‘the great intellectuals’ who, however, were the type of intellectual of his own time, besides affording importance to the specific content of the intellectuality – which could be concretely said to be of ‘religiosity’, i.e. the intellectuals of the government were those particular intellectuals closer to religion, i.e. whose activity had a religious character, conceived according to general meaning at that time, and according to the specific meaning of Plato. Hence, it is a ‘social’ activity in a certain sense, an activity of elevation and education (and intellectual direction – and therefore with the function of hegemony) of the polis. Hence, it could perhaps be argued that the ‘utopia’ of Plato is a precursor to medieval feudalism, whereby its function which is peculiar to the Church and to the ecclesiastics, an intellectual category of that phase of social-historical development. Plato’s disregard for the ‘artists’ is to be understood therefore as a disregard for ‘individualistic’ spiritual activities which are directed to the ‘particular’, and therefore to the ‘areligious’ and ‘asocial’.1 This is an obscure and difficult passage which should be front and centre for any analysis of Gramsci’s take on ancient philosophy; and yet it has tended to receive minimal treatment in the major studies on Gramsci and antiquity. 2 Perhaps this is due to the difficulty of interpreting the passage, of unpacking the complex dialectic Gramsci pursues here. Some aspects are

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 87 clear: Gramsci seeks to discuss Plato’s Republic ‘historically’, by translating its philosophers into ‘intellectuals’.3 What exactly is that supposed to that mean? Plato’s ‘intellectuals’ have their signature activity directed towards ‘religiosity’, but what exactly is meant by ‘religiosity’? Does this have something to do with what Gramsci means by ‘intellectuals’? Gramsci calls the activity of the philosopher-intellectuals ‘social’, which implies that it plays a role in ‘hegemony’; what is ‘hegemony’, and how did we get there from the ‘religiosity’ of the philosopher-intellectuals? And what, if anything, do feudalism and the middle ages have to do with Plato’s Republic? Does Gramsci have a didactic aim, e.g. to elucidate Plato’s Republic for our own understanding (he does refer to Plato’s ‘specific meaning’ of ‘religious character’, as contrasted with the ‘general meaning at that time’)? Or is the treatment chiefly appropriative, situating Plato’s Republic, like so many other works of important philosophers, in a historical dialectic that responds to the social-historical context of its production? Or is it something in between? And finally, is it necessary to draw on Plato’s Republic particularly in order to advance such claims as Gramsci asserts? These questions confront any scholar who wishes to determine, with any gram of confidence, Gramsci’s relationship not just to Plato, but more generally to philosophy in the ancient world. If anyone were to pursue this goal, she would find herself faced with a strikingly small number of citations, references, or oblique allusions in his surviving works.4 To give one such example, consider this passage, which cites Plato alongside Aristotle – the only such occurrence, to my knowledge, in Gramsci’s surviving works from the Prison Notebooks: It is worth noting, however, that if the Pope and the leading hierarchy of the Church consider themselves more linked to Christ and to the apostles than they are to senators Agnelli and Benni, the same does not hold for Gentile and Croce, for example: Croce, in particular, feels himself strongly linked to Aristotle and Plato, but he does not conceal, on the other hand, being linked to senators Agnelli and Benni, and it is precisely here that one can discern the most significant character of Croce’s philosophy.5 It would appear that Plato and Aristotle are chiefly being brought in here to elucidate a comparison being drawn between the Pope and the high ministers of the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and Croce, on the other.6 Beyond their obvious importance to Croce’s philosophy, it is not clear what special significance Plato and Aristotle, or any other ancient philosophers, held for Gramsci or the construction of his own philosophical views.7 And yet, if anyone were to examine two major articles devoted to investigating Gramsci’s debt to ancient philosophy by the celebrated Gramsci scholar and political theorist Benedetto Fontana, she would read that a plethora of key terms in Gramsci’s thought – including

88  Phillip Sidney Horky the principle of hegemony, the concept of the intellectual, the notion of the democratic philosopher, the correlative of the ethical and the educational, the dichotomy between state and civil society, and the crucial mechanism of consent – all have (at some level) their origins in the ancient world, and in ancient conceptual paradigms.8 Hence, the historian of ancient philosophy, who would also be a student of Antonio Gramsci, finds herself in an intellectual quandary: how could Gramsci have been so deeply influenced by ancient philosophy, as Fontana would have us believe, and to have written so little about it? As I will argue, in order to pursue a response to this question, one would need to examine carefully how Gramsci approaches the problem of historical dialectic with previous philosophical figures: that would include not only Plato and Aristotle, already mentioned, but also, and more importantly (to my mind), the figures through whom it would appear these ancient thinkers were translated to Gramsci, chiefly Benedetto Croce.9 A few hypotheses regarding the scattered references to the ancients, which are often programmatic or feature simply in quotations of other figures, could be advanced here: either Gramsci did not know ancient philosophical texts at any level of detail, or, while he was in prison, he only had access to them via intermediaries or through mere personal recollection.10 Or – and this is the alternative argument I wish to advance – Gramsci’s scanty treatment of ancient philosophy and ancient philosophers is best seen as a reflection of his own philosophical-historical commitments. The situation as it presents itself in Gramsci’s surviving works demands that we approach the surviving material with attentiveness to his own ideas about historiographical method and the place of the history of thought, conceived both universally and particularly, in his philosophical-political system. Hence, I will approach the aforementioned quandary in this way: first, I will seek to situate the role of the history of philosophy, generally understood, in Gramsci’s peculiar declension of historical materialism, and the correlative relationship between historical materialism and philosophy itself; and secondly, I will attempt to analyse the particular significance of ancient philosophy and philosophers to his universal approach to historical materialism. My goal will be to approach Gramsci’s relationship to ancient philosophy not, as Fontana would have it, as a series of parallel reflections that, when brought into proximity, suggest possibilities for Gramsci’s inheritance of ancient thought; instead, I aim to show that Gramsci’s reports about ancient philosophy reflect a more general or universal approach to historical dialectic, in which ancient philosophy does not play a special role.11

Gramsci on philosophy and history In order to first advance upon Gramsci’s approach to the history of philosophy, it is necessary first to grasp Gramsci’s unique formulation of the relationship between philosophy and history. He does this in a series of

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 89 reflections entitled ‘Introduction to the Study of Philosophy: Principles and Preliminaries’: What should be understood as philosophy, or as philosophy in a single historical epoch, and of what is the importance and the significance of the philosophy of the philosophers in each of these historical epochs. Accepting B. Croce’s definition of religion as a conception of the world which has become a norm of life (since the term norm of life is understood here not in a bookish sense but as being applied in practical life), it follows that the majority of mankind are philosophers because they engage in practical activity, and in their practical activity (in the guidelines of their conduct) there is implicitly contained a conception of the world, a philosophy. The history of philosophy as it is generally understood, that is as the history of philosophies of philosophers, is the history of attempts and ideological initiatives undertaken by a specific class of people to change, correct or perfect the conceptions of the world that exist in any particular epoch and thus to change the relative norms of conduct that go with them; in other words, to change practical activity as a whole.12 This programmatic passage, which owes both something to Croce and something to Marx/Engels, presents the problem of philosophy as a problem of history.13 To begin, Gramsci focuses our attention on the problem of defining philosophy, a universal or general concern, in particular historical terms. That is to say, the problem of philosophy as a whole is a problem of individual instantiations of philosophy throughout history, arranged continuously across various and variegated epochs. For each epoch there exists a single philosophy, best suited to that epoch as a fitting conception of the world; this philosophy is fundamentally practical, in the sense that it represents the application of the ‘norm of life’ that obtains during that epoch.14 Thus, each epoch’s philosophy reflects the activity of the majority of people who live in it, and not simply the philosophy of those leading individuals on whose life and thought a standard biographical approach to the history of philosophy would focus. Or, as Gramsci goes onto argue: From our perspective, studying the history and the logic of the various philosophies of the philosophers is insufficient. At least as a methodological guideline, attention should be drawn to the other parts of the history of philosophy, i.e. to the conceptions of the world of the great masses, to those of the more restricted leading (or intellectual) groups, and lastly to the relationships between these various cultural complexes and the philosophy of the philosophers. The philosophy of an epoch is not the philosophy of this or that philosopher, of one or another group of intellectuals, of one or another large portion of the popular masses. It is a combination of all these elements, culminating in a particular

90  Phillip Sidney Horky trend, in which the culmination becomes the norm of collective action, i.e. becomes ‘history’ both concrete and complete (integral). The philosophy of a single historical epoch is therefore nothing other than the history of that same epoch, nothing other than the mass of variations that the leading group has succeeded in imposing on the reality that came before. History and philosophy are indivisible in this sense: they form a ‘bloc’. But the philosophical elements proper can be ‘differentiated’, in all their various levels: as philosophy of the philosophers, as conceptions of the leading groups (philosophical culture), and as religions of the great masses. And it can be seen how, at every single level, we are dealing with different forms of ideological ‘combination’.15 This section helps explain why Gramsci established the various terms mentioned earlier. To begin, the study of philosophy as it is generally practiced, i.e. the study of the history of individual philosophers and of philosophical logic (what Gramsci calls the ‘philosophy of philosophers’), is rendered insufficient because it fails to convey a complete philosophy. Gramsci is not here clear about the history of individual philosophers or their logic – they would appear to play some role in pursuit of complete philosophy, but it is not clear on the basis of this passage alone what specific function they have. A complete philosophy would take into account not only these elements, but also their actualization of their concepts in the real world: not only  the conceptions of the so-called ‘leading’ or ‘intellectual groups’, but also the ‘religions of the great masses’, understood as woven together through cultural complexes which, when combined, culminate in a ­distinctive idiomatic trend that becomes the ‘norm of action’ and characterises the historical epoch.16 Thus conceptualised, ‘history’ and philosophy cannot be separated out, and Gramsci advocates what Croce would refer to as ‘absolute historicism’, although the versions of Croce and Gramsci are not exactly the same.17 For Gramsci, the philosophical elements that make up ‘history’ can be disambiguated according to ideological levels, each of which features its distinctive set of combinations that constitute it: (a) the ‘philosophy of the philosophers’, which would appear to be constituted of the history of exemplary individual philosophers and their actions, and of logic; (b) ‘philosophical culture’, or the conceptions of the so-called ‘leading’ or ‘intellectual groups’; and (c) the ‘religions of the masses’.

History of philosophy as a philosophy of praxis Gramsci’s approach to philosophy, then, assumes that philosophy, considered as the sum total of philosophical systems advanced by these three social groups in any particular epoch, is always ideologically embedded.18 In this way, Gramsci’s approach to the ‘philosophy of praxis’ reveals a significant inheritance from Marx and especially Engels.19 For Gramsci, the history of philosophy is a history of ideological statement, in the most

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 91 active and applied sense of that term: as he says later on, the history of philosophy, properly conceived, is not simply a series of ‘individual expressions’ whose historical content is ‘often minimal and drowned in a complex of abstractions whose origins are purely rational and abstract’. 20 Why approach the history of philosophy in such a way? According to Gramsci, this approach avoids the two dangers that are present to standard histories of philosophy: solipsism, which is the natural conclusion of transcendentalist philosophies such as those of Hegel;21 and deterministic/mechanistic conceptions, which, in Gramsci’s estimation, characterise all philosophy prior to classical German philosophy – perhaps including Greek philosophy (although he is not explicit about this).22 The philosophy of Hegel is valuable insofar as it reflects what Gramsci calls ‘creative’ philosophy, or the philosophy that is rooted in the active ‘will’ of the philosopher, rather than in the philosopher’s capacity to be merely ‘receptive’ to what the world presents mechanically – or, to put it another way, classical German philosophers demonstrate their ‘creativity’ by exercising their individual wills upon the masses, rather than being mere hermeneuts or investigators of the world around them. But while classical German philosophy was able to impress itself upon the many, and hence to present an individual society’s ‘expression’, it was not, in Gramsci’s estimation, sufficiently historical, in the special sense of reflecting the ‘practical efficacy’ that should typify its reaction to this expression. Or, as Gramsci says in a note entitled ‘When is it Possible to Say that a Philosophy has an Historical Importance?’: It is possible to say that the historical value of a philosophy can be ‘calculated’ from the ‘practical’ efficacity it has acquired for itself (‘practical’ is to be understood in a broad sense). If it is true that every philosophy is the expression of a society, it should motivate a reaction in that society and produce certain effects, both positive and negative. The extent to which precisely it motivates a reaction is the measure of its historical importance, of its not being individual ‘elucubration’ but ‘historical fact’. 23 Hence, we see that the value of individual philosophies, understood as expressions of a society at a particular moment in time and place, is to be judged based on the effects it has on that society: a philosophy which fails to motivate a reaction in that society is simply the expression of an individual’s ‘elucubration’ – merely metaphysical musings scribbled down in the personal diary, the consequence of late-night insomnia. It is by appeal to the ‘historical value’ of a philosophy that Gramsci advances not only a philosophy of praxis – the kind of applied philosophy that both reflects classical German ‘creativity’ and provokes visible reactions in society24 – but also a new conceptualisation of the philosopher himself. For Gramsci’s ‘technical’ philosopher is, as we will see, the ultimate historian of thought: he is someone who will understand, and be able

92  Phillip Sidney Horky to account for, how specific ideologies function as ‘organic’ superstructures in certain regimes, placed in certain locations and historical epochs. Gramsci’s ‘technical’ philosopher is able to think with greater precision than the lay ‘philosopher’, the every-man, as a consequence of his training in logic and its history. 25 Or, as he says in a note entitled ‘Introduction to the Study of Philosophy’: Accepting the principle that all men are ‘philosophers’, i.e. that between the professional or ‘technical’ philosophers and rest of mankind, the difference is not one of ‘quality’, but only of ‘quantity’ (in this case, the term ‘quantity’ is being used in a special sense, which is not to be confused with arithmetical sum, since what it indicates is greater or lesser degrees of ‘homogeneity’, ‘coherence’, ‘logicality’, etc., i.e. quantity of qualitative elements), it still remains to be seen exactly what the difference consists in. Thus, it will not be exact to call by the name of ‘philosophy’ every tendency of thought, every general orientation, etc., nor every ‘conception of the world and of life’. The philosopher can be called a ‘specialized worker’ by comparison with the labourer, but this isn’t exact either, since in industry, in addition to the labourer and the specialized worker there also exists the engineer, the one who not only knows the trade from the practical angle, but knows it theoretically and historically. The professional or technical philosopher does not only ‘think’ with greater logical rigour, with greater coherence, with more systematic sense than do other men, but he knows the entire history of thought. In other words, he knows how to account for the development of thought up to himself, and he is in a position to recover the problems from the point at which they are found, after having undergone every previous attempt at a solution, etc. In the field of thought, he has the same function that specialists have in their various scientific fields. 26 Gramsci’s professional or specialised philosopher is like all other men, who are also considered ‘philosophers’ in a special sense, because he, like they, practices what Gramsci elsewhere refers to as ‘spontaneous philosophy’. ‘Spontaneous philosophy’ implies that each man has the capacity to employ language (conceived of as the totality of notions and concepts determined within a grammatical structure) to individual and collective political action. 27 It is a crucial point of Gramsci’s philosophy that all men have a certain rational capacity, since the capacity to communicate rationally underlies political action that has been infused with reason. The difference between the lay-philosopher and the specialist philosopher is, as he says, one of ‘quantity of qualitative elements’, by which Gramsci would appear to mean the degrees to which individual humans show the inclination to understand the world around them and the past according to ‘homogeneity’, ‘coherence’, ‘logicality’, and other fundamental philosophical principles. 28 Gramsci’s commitment to a universal anthropomorphic notion

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 93 of ‘philosopher’ does not necessarily imply hostility to this professional or specialised philosopher: what Gramsci wants to do away with is our assumption that the history of philosophy is a catalogue of great thinkers thinking interesting, but ultimately politically insignificant, thoughts – that is, the pursuit and illustration of the genius of truth that is only responsive to the class of specialised philosophers, or ‘thinkers’.29 The specialised philosopher as conceived of by Gramsci would be someone who not only had the entirety of the history of thought present to his consciousness, but also had the philosophical tools to understand precisely where wholes and parts are to be differentiated, under what circumstances conceptual continuities and discontinuities obtain, and when propositions follow logically, and do not.30 As Gramsci says elsewhere, “what must next be explained is how it happens that in all periods there coexist many systems and currents of philosophical thought, how these currents are born, how they are diffused, and why in the process of diffusion they facture along certain lines and in certain directions”.31 These historical activities are prerequisites for his own applied labour, which involves at least at a preliminary level the identification of problems, the understanding of the many ways in which previous specialist philosophers attempted to solve them, and the way forward, given the conditions of social organisation that he faces in his own day. In these ways, the specialist philosopher is shown to be an historian of philosophy, and vice versa. Finally, there is the problem of identifying the purpose of this specialist philosopher’s labour: to what end is all of this intellectual activity, underpinned by the specialist philosopher’s will and abilities, and supported by his training and education, to be directed? Gramsci elaborates this purpose in another section that falls under his analysis of ‘Language, Languages, and Common Sense’: It is possible therefore to say that the historical personality of an individual philosopher is also rendered by the active relationship which exists between him and the cultural environment he would like to modify. The environment reacts back on the philosopher and imposes on him a continual process of self-criticism, in its function as ‘teacher’. This is why one of the most important claims that the modern intellectual classes have made in field of politics has been that of the so-called ‘freedom of thought and of the expression of thought (‘freedom of the press’, ‘freedom of association’)’. For it is only where this political condition exists that the relationship between master and disciple in the general sense referred to above is realized, and that a new type of philosopher is actually realized ‘historically’, one who could be called a ‘democratic philosopher’, i.e. a philosopher convinced that his personality is not limited to himself as a physical individual, but is an active social relationship constituted of modification of the cultural environment. When the ‘thinker’ is contented with his own thought,

94  Phillip Sidney Horky ‘subjectively’ free, i.e. abstractly free, he nowadays becomes a joke. The unity of science and life is precisely an active unity, in which alone liberty and thought are realized; it is a master-pupil relationship, one between the philosopher and the cultural environment in which he has to work, and from which he can draw the necessary problems for formulation and resolution. In other words, it is the relationship between philosophy and history.32 It becomes clear from this passage that the specialist philosopher’s duty is to continually challenge the very society that produced him and his thought – to realise that it is society that constantly makes the specialist philosopher to ‘know himself’ – notable here is the absence of reference to Socrates, surely in the back of Gramsci’s mind33 – and it is from society that he will discover the problems he should direct his intelligence towards in his labour.34 It also becomes clear from this passage that the specialist philosopher will only be in a position to complete these duties in a society that allows for freedom of thought and of expression. A specialist philosopher thus positioned in such a society would thereby become a ‘democratic philosopher’, one whose personality extends beyond the physical limitations of his body to a broader social consciousness, mediated by his philosophical activity.35

Conclusions, and a return to Plato From the earlier-mentioned analysis of some major sections of Gramsci’s treatment of the philosopher and his relationship to history, several conclusions can be drawn: 1 All humans are, in some general sense, ‘philosophers’, because they possess the basic tools of social reaction and the basic instruments for articulation and expression of this reaction (e.g. language, reason, grammar). It is not clear that these ‘lay-philosophers’, as I refer to them, are expected, or even capable, of pursuing the history of philosophy, conceived of as a history of philosophical problems related to society. 2 Some humans are fit to be specialist philosophers. They have higher capacities for the tools of philosophy, e.g. logic, metaphysics, etc., and should be properly trained in order to be able to apply their specialist skills to social problems. These specialist philosophers must not relegate their activities to theoretical philosophy, to mere metaphysics or logic-chopping, lest they become the subjects of comedy. 3 The philosophy practiced by these specialists must be pragmatic and applied, and chiefly constituted of responses to challenges faced by specific communities in specific circumstances. Hence, their philosophy must be relative in the main. Like Croce, who developed a comprehensive theory of ‘absolute historicism’ through a dialectic with Gramsci,

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 95 Gramsci imagines the relations to be chiefly historically and politically contingent, and it is one of the responsibilities of specialist philosophers to account for the history of thought as a history of the articulation of social problems. This will help them in their project of discovering solutions to those problems of society that remind him, as a teacher does a student, that he needs to ‘know himself’ critically. 4 The history of philosophy requires the specialist philosopher to assemble, in any given society at a particular historical moment, the ideological characters of the philosophy of the philosophers, the conceptions of the leading groups (philosophical culture), and the religions of the great masses. This assembly requires the skills of metaphysics and logic, in order to properly differentiate between the various levels. 5 The specialist philosopher can only perform his proper labour in a society which provides freedom of thought and freedom of expression. A specialist philosopher properly situated will eventually become a new kind of philosopher, the ‘democratic philosopher’, whose philosophy will be a philosophy of praxis. This philosophy of praxis will be manifested in politics, through the philosopher’s political action. This chapter has only been able to tap into a few aspects of Antonio Gramsci’s conception of philosophy and its relationship to history. There isn’t space here to discuss how Gramsci realises the aforementioned commitments in the practice of doing the history of philosophy dialectically, especially in relation to his ‘nearer’ contemporaries Croce, Hegel, Marx, Vico, and other more minor figures (like Missiroli, Lando, and Loria); similarly, much remains to be said about how the specialist philosopher’s labour constitutes a philosophy of praxis. After all, this is a contribution to a volume on Gramsci and antiquity. But in the light of our conclusions, we can now return to the enigmatic passage cited earlier, where Gramsci devotes more space to any ancient philosopher than anywhere else in the Prison Notebooks. We might now say that Gramsci seeks to evaluate Plato’s ‘republic of philosophers’ in an especially ‘historical’ way, i.e. according to the procedures of historical materialism. So understood, Plato’s philosophers are ‘great intellectuals’ whose intellectual activity is directed towards ‘religiosity’, by which Gramsci would appear to mean that it concerned itself with Croce’s notion of ‘religion’ as a ‘conception of the world which has become a norm of life’ – Gramsci is referring to the educational programme of Plato’s Republic as a programme of social change.36 Insofar as Plato’s philosophers act ‘religiously’, in the special ‘intellectual’ sense, their actions are not only ‘social’ (by raising citizens and educating them), but they are also directed towards the hegemony that informs the polis of Callipolis. Gramsci then connects this particular understanding of the ‘republic of philosophers’ to the social-historical development of the Church in the middle ages, a ‘utopianism’ that rejects the needs of the individual (including the individual ‘artist’) in favour of the social good. From the perspective of a XXI century

96  Phillip Sidney Horky historian of ancient philosophy, Gramsci’s reading of Plato’s Republic itself is not especially enlightening – there are all sorts of reasons to doubt that Plato’s Republic has any firm historical relationship to medieval feudalism, and it is not particularly insightful, or even unique to Gramsci’s distinctive communist thinking, to note that Plato’s Republic features an educational programme for the State that could be considered ‘hegemonic’.37 Indeed, it would appear that Gramsci is not really thinking about the text of Plato’s Republic at all; he would instead appear to be operating at quite some distance from the German translation of the Republic that he may have had in his possession, or engaging with someone else’s ideas about Plato’s political regime entirely, and perhaps reflecting upon ideas that circulated in his youth and/or education. However we might infer the intimacy of Gramsci with Plato, it emerges from this study that his engagement with Plato is not, as Fontana would have it, particularly sensitive to the nuances of ancient philosophy – or even to ancient history (conceived of as historical materialism). It would appear that there is more ‘absolute’ than ‘history’ in this example – which should not be a surprise, given Gramsci’s ideas about philosophy and its relationship to history.

Notes 1 Q8§22. All translations are my own, but they are informed where possible by SPN and GR. Citations are from QC. 2 Fonzo 2019: 19 connects the passage to observations made by Cornelio Di Marzio on Plato’s Republic concerning the status of the artist in Plato’s work and makes general points about Plato’s theory of the statesman. The passage is not mentioned in two important articles on Gramsci and ancient intellectuals by Benedetto Fontana (2000, 2005), about which I will have something to say later. 3 Note that Gramsci does not consider the contents of Plato’s Republic to refer to the views of Socrates, its authoritative interlocutor. 4 In Gramsci’s own writings, mentions of the most important ancient philosophers for his education, Plato and Aristotle, occur in these passages: Plato (Q3§75, quoting Lando; Q3§135, quoting Missiroli; Q8§22, a somewhat extended dialectic with Plato’s Republic, discussed later; Q11§26, on Platonic ideas and laws; Q12§1, on Croce, discussed above; Q17§18, quoting Jodl; Q25§7, quoting Doni); Aristotle (Q1§148, on Loria; Q4§49, on Croce and Aristotle; Q5§23, quoting Hu Shi’s history of Chinese philosophy; Q7§1, quoting Missiroli; Q8§186, on ‘popular wisdom’ as being Aristotelian; Q10ii§28.1, on the place of ‘Aristotelian-Thomistic’ philosophy in the Church; Q10ii§41, quoting Missiroli; Q10ii§46, on Greco-Christian realism and Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy; Q10ii§48.1, on the authority of the Bible and Aristotle in the XVI and XVII centuries; Q11§14, on ‘popular wisdom’ as being Aristotelian; Q11§20, on the marriage of Catholicism and Aristotle; Q11§22, on the expulsion of biblical and Aristotelian authority in the scientific revolution; Q12§1, discussed above; Q13§37, associating Thomistic with Aristotelian philosophy; Q14§15, associating Aristotelians with Catholics and Thomists; Q28§14, quoting Aristotle’s Pol. VII 11.1330b19–20, to criticise Loria). Only the very last reference mentioned shows conclusively

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 97 that Gramsci had access to any original text of Aristotle or Plato, but, as QC: 2536 notes, Gramsci probably found it in Ruta (1929). As Fonzo (2019: 120) notes, Socrates is only referred to once (Q6§172), as is Zeno of Citium (Q11§36). It is difficult to know whether Gramsci had access to any ancient philosophical texts beyond a German translation of Plato’s Republic, conserved in the ‘Fondo Gramsci’ [see Fonzo (2019: 121–2)]. 5 Q12§1 = QC: 1515, “Da notare però che se il papa e l’alta gerarchia della Chiesa si credono più legati a Cristo e agli apostoli di quanto non siano ai senatori Agnelli e Benni, lo stesso non è per Gentile e Croce, per esempio; il Croce, specialmente, si sente legato fortemente ad Aristotile e a Platone, ma egli non nasconde, anzi, di essere legato ai senatori Agnelli e Benni e in ciò appunto è da ricercare il carattere più rilevato della filosofia del Croce).” 6 Frosini (2003: 185–6) sees this passage as elucidating the relationship between intellettuali organici and intellettuali tradizionali. 7 Note that, in a major analysis of Gramsci’s own philosophy [Frosini (2003), a monograph of 198 pages], Plato and Aristotle only appear on three pages. 8 Especially in two articles: Fontana (2000, 2005). 9 One could add Hegel, Marx, and Engels to this list, although it is not typical of Gramsci to cite these figures in relation to the ancients. On Croce, Gramsci, and the relations between ‘absolute’ history and philosophy, see Thomas (2009: 278–94). 10 See the list of references to ancient philosophers collated at n. iv. Fonzo (2019: 121) notes that among the books from the library of Gramsci at the Fondazione, a German translation of Plato’s Republic is to be found. 11 Hence, with the exceptions of the passages quoted, I will not aim to produce a systematic analysis of all passages referring to Plato, Aristotle, or other ancient philosophers, since that project would be to focus too much on the particular cases that the ancient philosophers present to Gramsci. 12 Q10ii§17. 13 On Croce’s influence over Gramsci in conceiving of philosophy as history and vice versa, see especially Finocchiaro (1989: 18–25). 14 The status of ‘religion’ as such, formulated here in Croce’s terms, is not especially to the point here. On ‘religion’ and its role in Gramsci’s philosophy, see especially Frosini (2010). 15 Q10ii§17 = QC: 1255–6, “Dal punto di vista che a noi interessa, lo studio della storia e della logica delle diverse filosofie dei filosofi non è sufficiente. Almeno come indirizzo metodico, occorre attirare l’attenzione sulle altre parti della storia della filosofia: cioè sulle concezioni del mondo delle grandi masse, su quelle dei più ristretti gruppi dirigenti (o intellettuali) e infine sui legami tra questi vari complessi culturali e la filosofia dei filosofi. La filosofia di un’epoca non è la filosofia di uno o altro filosofo, di uno o altro gruppo di intellettuali, di una o altra grande partizione delle masse popolari: è una combinazione di tutti questi elementi che culmina in una determinata direzione, in cui il suo culminare diventa norma d’azione collettiva, cioè diventa «storia» concreta e completa (integrale). La filosofia di un’epoca storica non è dunque altro che la «storia» di quella stessa epoca, non è altro che la massa di variazioni che il gruppo dirigente è riuscito a determinare nella realtà precedente: storia e filosofia sono inscindibili in questo senso, formano «blocco». Possono però essere «distinti» gli elementi filosofici propriamente detti, e in tutti i loro diversi gradi: come filosofia dei filosofi, come concezione dei gruppi dirigenti (cultura filosofica) e come religioni delle grandi masse, e vedere come in ognuno di questi gradi si abbia a che fare con forme diverse di «combinazione» ideologica.”

98  Phillip Sidney Horky 16 Frosini (2010: 264–5) discusses the unity of theory and praxis in the context of Gramsci’s notion of ‘religion’. 17 Thomas (2009: 267–73) outlines their relative approaches to absolute historicism and describes Gramsci’s central objection to Croce: “Gramsci is here criticising Croce for exactly the same failing that Croce had argued fundamentally disabled both Hegel’s and Marx’s thought: the determination of the finite by an infinitude that precedes and stands over it. Croce’s frenetic flight from (Hegelian) metaphysics had been merely an exercise in rhetorical prodigality; unbeknownst to him (…), he had always already affirmed a fundamentally metaphysical structure of thought, even and especially while he thought to negate it.” For the relations between Gramsci and Marx on the topic of the philosophy of praxis, also see Vacca (2016: 362–5). 18 Also see Q11§62. 19 Cf. Thomas (2009: 18–22). 20 Q7§45. 21 Inter alia, see Q11§44. Cf. Morton (2005). 22 Q11§12. 23 Q7§45 = QC: 893–4, “Si può dire che il valore storico di una filosofia può essere «calcolato» dall’efficacia «pratica» che essa ha conquistato (e «pratica» deve essere intesa in senso largo). Se è vero che ogni filosofia è l’espressione di una società, dovrebbe reagire sulla società, determinare certi effetti, positivi e negativi: la misura in cui appunto reagisce è la misura della sua portata storica, del suo non essere «elucubrazione» individuale, ma «fatto storico».” 24 I take no position on whether by ‘philosophy of praxis’ Gramsci was referring specifically to Marxist philosophy (in any certain declension) or not; the identification of this relationship is effectively immaterial to my argument anyway. 25 Q11§44, on ‘The Technique of Thinking’. On Gramscian and related notions of ‘technical’, see Morera (2014: 58–63). 26 Q10ii§52 =QC: 1342, “Posto il principio che tutti gli uomini sono «filosofi», che cioè tra i filosofi professionali o «tecnici» e gli altri uomini non c’è differenza «qualitativa» ma solo «quantitativa» (e in questo caso «quantità» ha un significato suo particolare, che non può essere confuso con somma aritmetica, poiché indica maggiore o minore «omogeneità», «coerenza», «logicità» ecc., cioè quantità di elementi qualitativi), è tuttavia da vedere in che consista propriamente la differenza. Così non sarà esatto chiamare «filosofia» ogni tendenza di pensiero, ogni orientamento generale ecc. e neppure ogni «concezione del mondo e della vita». Il filosofo si potrà chiamare «un operaio qualificato» in confronto ai manovali, ma neanche questo è esatto, perché nell’industria, oltre al manovale e all’operaio qualificato c’è l’ingegnere, il quale non solo conosce il mestiere praticamente, ma lo conosce teoricamente e storicamente. Il filosofo professionale o tecnico non solo «pensa» con maggior rigore logico, con maggiore coerenza, con maggiore spirito di sistema degli altri uomini, ma conosce tutta la storia del pensiero, cioè sa rendersi ragione dello sviluppo che il pensiero ha avuto fino a lui ed è in grado di riprendere i problemi dal punto in cui essi si trovano dopo aver subito il massimo di tentativo di soluzione ecc. Hanno nel campo del pensiero la stessa funzione che nei diversi campi scientifici hanno gli specialisti.” 27 Q3§48; Q11§25. 28 On the tensions implicit in this binary between specialist and lay-­philosophers, see Wainwright (2010: 509–10). 29 Q10ii§52; Q9§64; Q11§44. 30 On the specialist philosopher and his logic in Q10 and Q11, see now Guzzone (2019).

Gramsci and ancient philosophy 99 31 Q11§12. 32 Q10ii§44 = QC: 1331–2, “Perciò si può dire che la personalità storica di un filosofo individuale è data anche dal rapporto attivo tra lui e l’ambiente culturale che egli vuole modificare, ambiente che reagisce sul filosofo e, costringendolo a una continua autocritica, funziona da «maestro». Così si è avuto che una delle maggiori rivendicazioni dei moderni ceti intellettuali nel campo politico è stata quella delle così dette «libertà di pensiero e di espressione del pensiero (stampa e associazione)» perché solo dove esiste questa condizione politica si realizza il rapporto di maestro-discepolo nei sensi più generali su ricordati e in realtà si realizza «storicamente» un nuovo tipo di filosofo che si può chiamare «filosofo democratico», cioè del filosofo convinto che la sua personalità non si limita al proprio individuo fisico, ma è un rapporto sociale attivo di modificazione dell’ambiente culturale. Quando il «pensatore» si accontenta del pensiero proprio, «soggettivamente» libero, cioè astrattamente libero, dà oggi luogo alla beffa: l’unità di scienza e vita è appunto una unità attiva, in cui solo si realizza la libertà di pensiero, è un rapporto maestro-scolaro, filosofo-ambiente culturale in cui operare, da cui trarre i problemi necessari da impostare e risolvere, cioè è il rapporto filosofia-storia.” 33 In Q6§172, Socrates appears, unremarkably, in a quotation from Schiavi’s anthology. 34 Also see Q11§12. 35 For the relationship between democracy and philosophy, also see Q10ii§41; Q10ii§35; Q6§82; and especially Q7§38, where Gramsci quotes an ‘aphorism’ in Latin: Omnis enim philosophia, cum ad communem hominum cogitandi facultatem revocet, per se democratica est; ideoque ab optimatibus non iniuria sibi existimatur perniciosa (“For all philosophy, since it recalls the faculty of thinking, which is common among humans, is per se democratic; and for that reason it is not wrongly considered by elites dangerous to them”). The aphorism originates in Croce (1914: 45), which he claims to have found “in an old German undergraduate dissertation.” 36 At Q11§26, Gramsci complains of Michels’ sociological theory that it ends up “a baroque form of Platonic idealism,” in which the laws of sociology “have a strange resemblance to Plato’s pure ideas that are the essence of real earthly facts” [Eng. tr. Thomas (2009: 331)]. 37 A most interesting comparison obtains when we look at Karl Popper’s summary of his scathing analysis of Plato’s political and educational theory (2013: 129): “Plato’s political programme was much more institutional than personalist; he hoped to arrest political change by the institutional control of succession in leadership. The control was to be educational, based upon an authoritarian view of learning – upon the authority of the learned expert, and the ‘man of proven probity.’”

Bibliography Croce, B. (1914) Cultura E Vita Morale: Intermezzi Polemici. Bari: G. Laterza. Finocchiaro, M.A. (1989) Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought. Cambridge: CUP. Fontana, B. (2000) ‘Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 61(2), 305–26. Fontana, B. (2005) ‘The Democratic Philosopher: Rhetoric as Hegemony in Gramsci’, Italian Culture, 23, 97–123.

100  Phillip Sidney Horky Fonzo, E. (2019) Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Mercato San Severino: Paguro. Frosini, F. (2003) Gramsci e la filosofia. Saggio sui Quaderni del carcere. Rome: Carocci. Frosini, F. (2010) La religione dell’uomo moderno. Politica e verità nei Quaderni del carcere di Antonio Gramsci. Roma: Carocci. Guzzone, G. (2019) ‘Gli strumenti logici del pensiero e la funzione del filosofo individuale nei Quaderni del carcere di Gramsci’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 74(1), 87–112. Morera, E. (2014) Gramsci, Materialism, and Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. Morton, A.D. (2005) ‘A Double Reading of Gramsci: Beyond the Logic of Contingency’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8(4), 439–53. Popper, K.R. (2013) The Open Society and Its Enemies. With a New Introduction by A. Ryan and an essay by E.H. Gombrich, Princeton: UP. Ruta, E. (1929) Politica e ideologia. 2 vols. Milan: Corbaccio. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden: Brill. Vacca, G. (2016) ‘Dal materialismo storico alla filosofia della praxis’, International Gramsci Journal, 2(1), 359–78. Wainwright, J. (2010) ‘On Gramsci’s ‘Conceptions of the World’’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(4), 507–21.

4

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery Kostas Vlassopoulos

Antonio Gramsci cut his political teeth in the period of wars and revolutions between 1914 and 1923. He devoted his life and work to the project of constructing a mass workers movement and the politics and organisation required to achieve the overthrow of capitalism. Despite his efforts, he spent the last years of his life in the fascist prisons; the legacy of these years is a rich corpus of writings devoted among other things to the understanding of subaltern groups as active agents in the making of history. At the centre of his attention were the processes through which subaltern classes are constituted as groups and the ways in which they develop (or should develop) their ideologies and communities. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as the shared but also contested ground over which ruling and subaltern groups battle about legitimacy constituted a crucial discovery: The active man-in-the-mass has a practical activity, but has no clear theoretical consciousness of his practical activity, which nonetheless involves understanding the world in so far as it transforms it. His theoretical consciousness can indeed be historically in opposition to his activity. One might almost say that he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or one contradictory consciousness): one which is implicit in his activity and which in reality unites him with all his fellow-workers in the practical transformation of the real world; and one, superficially explicit or verbal, which he has inherited from the past and uncritically absorbed. But this verbal conception is not without consequences. It holds together a specific social group, it influences moral conduct and the direction of will, with varying efficacity but often powerfully enough to produce a situation in which the contradictory state of consciousness does not permit of any action, any decision or any choice, and produces a condition of moral and political passivity. Critical understanding of self takes place therefore through a struggle of political ‘hegemonies’ and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality.1

102  Kostas Vlassopoulos The hegemony of the ruling class and the double consciousness of the subaltern classes that the passage above discusses were key concepts for anyone who wanted to understand the contradictory ways in which subaltern groups thought and acted and an essential requirement for transforming subaltern politics in a revolutionary direction. 2 But Gramsci’s theoretical work has enormous value not only for revolutionary politics, but also for social thought. Gramsci’s writings have had a deep impact on various intellectual fields, in particular cultural studies and history.3 Among the many examples of Gramscian impact on historians, I would like to single out E. P. Thompson’s work on the making of the English working class, the work of Eugene Genovese, the American Marxist historian of slavery and the antebellum South, as well as the Subaltern Studies tradition of South Asian history.4 At the forefront of these approaches was the effort to reconstruct the historical agency of subaltern groups and restore their active role in the making of their own histories, as well as the history of the societies in which they lived. It is this aspect of Gramsci’s influence that I want to explore in this chapter, and in particular the ways it relates to the historical agency of slaves in antiquity. It is regrettable that such approaches have had a very limited impact on the study of ancient history. The study of ancient social history has either focused on the elites, or, when exploring the subaltern classes, has been content until very recently to portray them as the passive victims of domination and exploitation.5 This has been the case especially in the study of ancient slavery. Traditional approaches have conceived slavery in a unilateral and top-down perspective. By conceiving of slavery as a form of property or as a form of social death, they have envisaged slavery as a given, determined solely and unilaterally by the masters and imposed on the slaves. The only roles envisaged for slaves in such approaches took two predetermined forms. The one consisted of slave disobedience to the institution of slavery; notwithstanding the heroic acts of individual slaves, these acts of disobedience were never conceived as having any wider historical effects. After all, the institution of slavery was considered to have remained largely unchanged for almost a millennium, from the emergence of slave societies in the Archaic period to their transformation in Late Antiquity. The other choice concerned the slave attempt to exit slavery, either individually or collectively, through flight, manumission, or rebellion. While this might have been significant for particular slaves, it again had no overall historical consequences on slavery as such.6 For these reasons, traditional approaches to the history of ancient slavery have no role for slave agency. In Finley’s account, which still dominates all existing narratives, slave societies emerged in the Archaic period as a result of struggles between elites and lower-class citizens. Then they remain essentially the same for a millennium, until the subordination of the free lower classes to the elites in Late Antiquity led to the gradual abandonment of large-scale dependence on slavery by the various early medieval societies.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 103 The slaves might have been the victims of all this, and ancient civilisations might have been based on their labour, but they played no active role in ancient history and the historical transformation of ancient societies.7 The study of Atlantic slavery was originally dominated by similar assumptions. But in the late 60s and 70s, scholars like Genovese attempted to create a history from below that would restore agency to the slaves. Genovese’s masterpiece, Roll Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, published in 1974, had a transformative effect on the study of New World slavery.8 The very title is of course telling: no longer only what the slaves suffered, but also the world they made. In order to restore slave agency, Genovese had to challenge the unilateral and top-down approach that had dominated the field until then. He offered a new conceptualisation of slavery as an asymmetrical negotiation of power: the power relationship between masters and slaves was not a predetermined given, but a historically changing negotiation in which both sides were engaged, even if in clearly asymmetrical ways. The history of American slavery was the outcome of that asymmetrical negotiation in space and time.9 Genovese’s book is of course most famous for developing the concept of paternalism for accounting for the history of slavery in the antebellum South.10 The political and ideological pressures of the American Republic forced Southern masters in the antebellum period to present themselves as benevolent managers who offered uncivilised Blacks the benefits of assured living and Christianity in exchange for their labour. As Genovese masterfully showed, paternalism exemplified Gramsci’s concept of hegemony.11 On the one hand, it set the terms through which both masters and slaves conceptualised their relationship. But on the other hand, the slaves interpreted paternalism in a significantly different way than their masters: the benefits of paternalism did not exemplify the generosity of the masters, but the rights that slaves were entitled to through their faithful service. Furthermore, Genovese argued that slavery could not be reduced to the relationship between masters and slaves. A number of other factors and agents intervened and fundamentally shaped slavery. The community of the free, the state institutions, the Church organisations, and the republican political framework were all factors that had a significant impact. These factors pushed in different directions. State intervention in the theoretically unmediated relationship between masters and slaves had deeply contradictory results. On the one hand, it subordinated the master-slave relationship to the interests of the free community. Masters were prohibited from teaching letters to their slaves or manumitting them, because these were considered as dangerous issues for the community as a whole. Other measures intended to subordinate the most connected and accomplished slave to the lowest free White person. The result was the attempt to create a hereditary slave caste. But at the same time the state intervened in order to limit what masters could inflict on their slaves, by stipulating conditions of living or punishment. The two contradictory tendencies played a significant role in

104  Kostas Vlassopoulos the explosive process that led to the Civil War.12 One of the best parts of Genovese’s account was the significance of the courts and the discourse of the law for the history of slavery in the South. It was another example, Genovese argued, of the contradictions inherent in the attempt of the ruling class to exercise its hegemony.13 Finally, Genovese tried to reconstruct the ways in which slave agency operated. The concept of ‘the slave community’ played a crucial role in exploring these issues. Genovese explored how working conditions, family, and religion constituted a slave community that at the same time allowed masters to exercise their authority and provided slaves with the means of contesting that authority changing its terms and running various aspects of their life on principles other than slavery: in other terms of building a world both beyond and below slavery.14 It is telling that although many historians of ancient slavery feel obliged to read or cite Genovese’s masterpiece, few historians until recently seem to have realised the conceptual implications of the work and its potential consequences for the study of ancient slavery.15 This contribution aims to utilise the subaltern-focused approach to slavery that Genovese constructed under the influence of Gramsci in order to re-examine slave agency in antiquity. We should start this exploration from a general proposition. As far as we can tell, nobody in antiquity disputed the legitimacy of slavery as an institution and called for its abolition. That does not deny the existence of very significant debates concerning slavery in antiquity; but we need to be clear about the nature of these debates and what was at stake. Perhaps the easiest way to frame this is by saying that ancient discourses on slavery took it as a fact of life. Think of death, another fact of life, as an analogy for how ancients talked about slavery: perhaps it is bad to those that it happens; perhaps we should struggle to keep it at arms’ length as much as we can; perhaps some people deserve it for what they have done or who they are; perhaps it is an accident of fortune; perhaps it is beside the point, an insignificant detail when other things are more important; perhaps inflicting it on some people is a legitimate means for other people to achieve desirable things (victory, glory, power, wealth); perhaps inflicting it on (certain) people is shameful and unjust. These debates were very significant; but by accepting slavery as a fact of life, it meant that no slave or group of slaves in antiquity ever conceived of or fought for the abolition of slavery as such. This is a point that is generally conceded by all scholars and tends to terminate discussion; but a Gramscian approach to slavery needs to move on from this proposition into examining the contradictory conglomeration of ideas and discourses about slavery as a form of subalternity and their historical impact. While the legitimacy of slavery was never an issue in antiquity, and the hegemony of the master class in this respect was largely unchallenged, there also existed diverse conceptions of slavery that offered slaves potential openings for pursuing their aims in ways which were contradictory, but at the same time highly significant.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 105

Modalities of slavery: Artemidorus as a case-study The reconstruction of slave agency requires the realisation that ancient societies did not have a single model through which to conceptualise slavery and shape relations between masters and slaves. In every society there existed a variety of such models, which we can call modalities of slavery; they had different implications, which were partly overlapping and partly contradicting each other, and they could be used for different purposes and in different ways. I shall start by trying to illustrate the range of such modalities that could coexist in the work of a single author. My case study is Artemidorus’ handbook on the interpretation of dreams (Oneirocritica). This handbook dates from the Roman imperial period, and is one of the most significant sources for understanding the social imaginary of ancient people, in particular of people outside the tiny elites of power and wealth that wrote most ancient texts.16 Slaves are present in Artemidorus’ handbook both as dreamers and as elements in the dream repertoire. But it is crucial that slaves do not appear as a single category with identifiable features; instead, the identity and the features of the slaves as a category can change significantly, depending on the point of view from which Artemidorus approaches them.17 I will now offer a few examples that illustrate this point and tease out their implications. My first example is a neat illustration of the instrumental view of slavery, in which slaves exist solely as means for fulfilling the wishes and needs of their masters: ἄμα τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀποτελέσμασιν οἱ δοῦλοι καὶ πϱὸς τὸ σῶμα τῶν δεσποτῶν τὴν ἀναφοϱὰν ἔχουσιν. ὁ γοῦν δόξας τὸν οἰκέτην πυϱέσσοντα ἰδεῖν εἰκότως αὐτὸς ἐνόσησεν· ὃν γὰϱ ἔχει λόγον ὁ οἰκέτης πϱὸς τὸν ὁϱῶντα, τὸν αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ σῶμα πϱὸς τὴν ψυχήν. Together with their other outcomes, the slaves also correspond to the body of their masters. One who imagines seeing his slave suffering from fever will probably fall ill himself. For the relationship between the slave and the dreamer is analogous to that between the body to the soul.18 In this case a slave’s illness does not even refer to the future of the slave; because the slave only exists for the sake of his master, the slave’s illness actually predicts something concerning the master. A rather different perspective emerges from the juxtaposition offered in the next passage: Λέοντα ἰδεῖν ἥμεϱον μὲν καὶ σαίνοντα καὶ πϱοσιόντα ἀβλαβῶς ἀγαθὸν ἂν εἴη καὶ φέϱον ὠφελείας στϱατιώτῃ μὲν ἀπὸ βασιλέως… δημότῃ δὲ ἀπὸ ἄϱχοντος καὶ δούλῳ ἀπὸ δεσπότου· τούτοις γὰϱ [καὶ] τὸ ζῷον ἔοικε διὰ τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ ἰσχυϱόν. Seeing a tame lion, wagging its tail and approaching harmlessly could be a good sign and bring benefits: to a soldier from his king…to a

106  Kostas Vlassopoulos citizen from a magistrate, to a slave from his master. For the lion resembles these in power and strength.19 In this case, the lion stands as a metaphor for relations of power: slaves are juxtaposed with soldiers and citizens, as people who have the subordinate position in relations of power with masters, kings, and magistrates. Slavery is conceptualised as a relationship of domination, in which two asymmetrical sides negotiate power. 20 The third example shifts from domination and power to adversity: ὄμβϱος δὲ καὶ λαίλαψ καὶ χειμὼν κινδύνους καὶ ζημίας ἐπάγουσι, μόνοις δὲ δούλοις καὶ πένησι καὶ τοῖς ἔν τινι πεϱιστάσει οὖσιν ἀπαλλαγὴν τῶν ἐν ποσὶ κακῶν πϱοαγοϱεύουσι· μετὰ γὰϱ τοὺς μεγάλους χειμῶνας εὐδία γίνεται. And a thunderstorm and hurricane and winter storm bring about dangers and losses. But alone for slaves and poor people and those who are in a difficult position they foretell a release from their present ills; for following great storms good weather arises. 21 Slaves are individuals who face difficult circumstances, and this brings them together with the poor; slavery is considered as an extreme form of bad luck, which with perseverance and good fortune one could eventually overcome.22 Our final passage moves in a very different direction: τὸ κεϱαυνοῦσθαι… δούλων μὲν τοὺς μὴ ἐν πίστει ὄντας ἐλευθεϱοῖ, τοὺς δὲ ἐν πίστει ὄντας ἢ τιμῇ παϱὰ τοῖς δεσπόταις ἢ πολλὰ κτήματα ἔχοντας ἀφαιϱεῖ τῆς πίστεως καὶ τῆς τιμῆς καὶ τῶν κτημάτων. Being struck by a thunderbolt …will result to the manumission of those slaves who are not in a position of trust; but slaves who are trusted and honoured by their masters or own many possessions will be deprived of those. 23 The thunderbolt is a symbol of radical reversals of circumstances for a number of groups of people. Having delineated various categories among free people, Artemidorus moves on to explore the differential meaning of the thunderbolt by distinguishing two categories among slaves: slaves without favour and trust, and slaves who are trusted and honoured by their masters and enjoy material benefits of property as a result. The latter have presumably earned these privileges as a result of their behaviour and actions. Given the form of slavery as a highly asymmetrical relationship, it is unsurprising that such honours and privileges can be taken away relatively easily; but this does not negate the fact that trust, honour, and property point towards an alternative conceptualisation of slavery. From this point of view, slavery is not an instrumental relationship in which slaves

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 107 merely exist in order to serve the needs of their masters; it is rather a reciprocal relationship of mutual benefaction and reward between masters and slaves, in which both benefit from it, even if in widely asymmetrical ways. This is clearly a conception of slavery very similar to the concept of paternalism that Genovese coined in order to study master-slave relationships in the antebellum South. Equally significant is the reference to honoured slaves: it is one example among many why the essentialist understanding of slavery as a state of dishonour proposed by scholars like Orlando Patterson can be quite misleading. 24 It is time to tease out the implications of the passages above. Slavery could be conceived as an instrumental relationship in which slaves existed for the purpose of serving the needs and wishes of their masters; but instrumentality was not the only means of conceiving and employing slavery. 25 Slavery could be seen as an asymmetrical negotiation of power between masters and slaves: a relationship not unilaterally defined from above, but the outcome of struggle, negotiation, compromise, and failure. 26 From this point of view, slave expectations would focus on limiting the power of masters and putting forward their own agenda of aims to the extent of the possible. 27 Slavery could also be envisaged as an asymmetrical relationship of benefaction and reward; masters could opt to see slave labour as loyal service and choose to reward deserving slaves with trust, honour, and material benefits; slaves could see their service as the foundation for claims to just rewards. From this point of view, slaves would focus on eliciting the master’s goodwill and the various advantages that came with it.28 Finally, slavery could be seen as an extreme form of bad luck; enslaved persons could be seen as free people in captivity, who could legitimately try to turn back the clock and eliminated the effects of the ‘day of slavery’. This modality went against the portrayal of enslaved persons as slaves by nature, and the various servile stereotypes that were often attributed to slaves as their innate features. 29 It offered an alternative way in which free people could approach slaves, and slaves could see themselves.

Modalities, hegemony, and slave agency We can now explore how the various modalities of slavery affected in practice the relationships between masters and slaves and the exercise of slave agency. The modality of slavery as service and reciprocal benefaction allowed slaves to conceive themselves not as instruments to satisfy the needs of their masters, but as people who had lived their lives in an exemplary manner that illustrated their virtues. This is impressively expressed in particular in sources relating to Roman freedmen.30 A particularly telling source is a late second/early III century CE funerary inscription from Brixia (modern Brescia) in Northern Italy: M(arcus) Hostilius Dicaeus veni in hanc civitat(em) ann(orum) XIIII in qua domu(!) [v]eni neq(ue) domum neq(ue) dominum mutavi nisi

108  Kostas Vlassopoulos hanc aeternal(em) vixi ann(os) LXX in ius me vocavit nemo ad iudicem nemo tu qui stas et legis si hoc optimum non est dic quid melius sit. Marcus Hostilius Dicaeus. ‘I came to this city when I was 14 years of age. The home into which I came – neither home nor master did I change, except for this, the eternal one. I lived 70 years. No-one summoned me to court, no-one before an arbiter. You who are standing and reading this, tell us: If this is not the best, what is better?’31 Having lived his whole life as a slave and freedman in a single household constitutes for this former slave indisputable evidence of his moral probity. The fact that he was never sold to another household recognised his value; the fact that he stayed in the same household after his manumission recognised his continued value and contribution.32 The same spirit is expressed by one of the freedmen in the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius’ Satyricon: ‘Quare ergo servivisti?’ Quia ipse me dedi in servitutem et malui civis Romanus esse quam tributarius. Et nunc spero me sic vivere, ut nemini iocus sim. Homo inter homines sum, capite aperto ambulo; assem aerarium nemini debeo; constitutum habui nunquam; nemo mihi in foro dixit, Redde quod debes. ‘Glebulas emi, lamellulas paravi; viginti ventres pasco et canem; contubernalem meam redemi, ne quis in illius manus tergeret; mille denarios pro capite solvi; sevir gratis factus sum; spero, sic moriar, ut mortuus non erubescam […]. Annis quadraginta servivi; nemo tamen sciit, utrum servus essem an liber. Et puer capillatus in hanc coloniam veni; adhuc basilica non erat facta. Dedi tamen operam, ut domino satis facerem, homini maiesto et dignitosso, cuius pluris erat unguis, quam tu totus es. Et habebam in domo, qui mihi pedem opponerent hac illac; tamen—genio illius gratias—enatavi. Haec sunt vera athla; nam [in] ingenuum nasci tam facile est quam ‘accede istoc.’ ‘Then why have you been a slave?’ Because I went into service to please myself, and preferred being a Roman citizen to going on paying taxes as a provincial.33 And now I hope I live such a life that no one can jeer at me. I am a man among men; I walk about bare-headed; I owe nobody a brass farthing; I have never been in the Courts; no one has ever said to me in public, ‘Pay me what you owe me.’ I have bought a few acres and collected a little capital; I have to feed twenty bellies and a dog: I ransomed my fellow slave to preserve her from indignities; I paid a thousand silver pennies for my own freedom; I was made a priest of Augustus and excused the fees; I hope to die so that I need not blush in my grave […]. I was a slave for forty years, and nobody knew whether I was a slave or free. I was a boy with long curls when I came to this place; they had not built the town-hall then. But I tried

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 109 to please my master, a fine dignified gentleman whose little finger was worth more than your whole body. And there were people in the house who put out a foot to trip me up here and there. But still—God bless my master! —I struggled through. These are real victories: being born free is as easy as saying, ‘Come here’.34 The pride of this freedman in having lived in slavery as a decent person is underlined by his argument that having made a success of his life under the conditions of slavery is a major achievement.35 Slavery is a form of extreme hardship and bad luck: but it is possible to face these adverse circumstances with dignity and in fact overcome them unscathed. It is particularly telling that he stresses the fact that he lived for forty years as a slave and nobody knew whether he was a slave or a free person, a point to which we shall return. Conceiving of slavery as a job that could be performed with success and pride obviously conceded the legitimacy of the system and the masters’ power, even if it allowed some slaves to maintain their dignity. The same combination is illustrated by another characteristic example that shows both the hegemony of masters over slaves, as well as the way slaves interpreted the power of their masters. It comes from a II century CE medical text by Galen, describing how people with different characters react to punishment: ταῦθ’ ὁσημέϱαι τὰ γιγνόμενα κἀπὶ τῶν οἰκετῶν ἐστι θεάσασθαι· ὅσοι μὲν γὰϱ ἂν αὐτῶν ἢ κλέπτοντες ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ἕτεϱον δϱῶντες ἁλῶσι, καὶ μαστιγούμενοι καὶ λιμαγχονούμενοι καὶ ἀτιμαζόμενοι πϱὸς τῶν δεσποτῶν οὐκ ὀϱγίζονται· ὅσοι δ’ ἂν οἰηθῶσιν ἀδίκως τι τούτων ἢ πάσχειν ἢ πεπονθέναι, ἀεὶ τούτων ἔνδον ὁ θυμὸς ἀγϱιούμενός ἐστι καὶ ποθῶν ἀντιτιμωϱήσασθαι τὸν ἀδικοῦντα. We can observe these things happening every day among our slaves too. Those who are caught thieving or doing things of that sort do not get angry when they are being whipped, or starved or dishonoured by their masters. But those who think that they suffer, or have suffered, such punishments wrongly, their spirit always turns savage inside them and craves vengeance on the one who wrongs them.36 Galen shows that (many) slaves conceded the legitimacy of their masters’ authority over them and accepted punishment for actions considered as theft. At the very same time, though, he describes how slaves reacted with anger to punishment that they considered unjust and undeserved. While masters thought their power to punish as absolute, slaves viewed that power as circumscribed by justice, in the same way that citizens considered the power of state authorities to punish them. The juxtaposition of slaves, citizens, and soldiers in Artemidorus’ work we examined above was not accidental: the modality of domination and its limits could be employed by slaves to conceptualise their relationship to their masters and the limits of that power.

110  Kostas Vlassopoulos The modality of reciprocal benefaction was employed by both masters and slaves for a variety of reasons and contexts. The extent to which this modality differed from the instrumental view of slavery is most telling when masters employ the language of honour in order to conceptualise the relationship with their slaves and express their utter disappointment that the slaves did not show proper gratitude for the honour, as seen in a III century CE petition from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt: ἔχουσα πϱότεϱον τοῦ πατϱός μου δοῦλον ὀνόματι Σαϱαπίωνα καὶ τοῦτον νομίσασα μηδὲν φαῦλόν τι διαπϱά[ξ]ασθαι τῷ εἶναί μου πατϱικὸν καὶ πεπιστεῦσθαι ὑ π̈ ’ ἐμοῦ τὰ ἡμέτεϱα, οὗτος οὐκ οἶθ’ ὅπως ἐξ ἐπιτϱιβῆς τινων ἀλλότϱια φϱονήσας τῆς παϱεχομένης αὐτῷ ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ τιμῆς τειμης καὶ χοϱηγίας τῶν ἀναγκαίων πϱὸς δίαιταν ὑφελόμενός τινα ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμετέϱων μεθ’ ὧν αὐτῷ κατεσκεύασα ἱ μ̈ ατίων καὶ ἄλλων καὶ ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ πεϱιεποιήσατο ἐκ τῶν ἡμετέϱων λάθϱᾳ ἀπέδϱα. I have a slave, formerly of my father’s, Sarapion by name, who I thought would commit nothing wrong, since he was my paternal slave and had been entrusted by me with our affairs. This man (I don’t know how – on the provocation of others) adopted an enemy’s attitude towards the honour and provision of the necessaries for life that I gave him. He stealthily took some of our things, together with some clothes I had prepared for him and some others and some other stuff, which he helped himself to from our belongings, and secretly ran away.37 Masters might consider benefactions to their slaves as a form of benevolent gratitude, as illustrated by a collection of jokes that probably dates from the IV century CE: Σχολαστικὸς διὰ χϱόνου εἰς τὸν ἀγϱὸν παϱαγενόμενος ἐθεάσατο τὰ θϱέμματα ἐξιόντα ἐπὶ βόσκησιν. καὶ ὡς εἴωθε βληχώμενα ἰδὼν ἠϱώτα τὴν αἰτίαν. τοῦ δὲ οἰκονόμου πϱοσπαίξαντος καὶ εἰπόντος·᾽ Ασπάζονταί σε–τὴν ἐμήν σοι σωτηϱίαν, φησίν, ἐμοῦ ἕνεκα ἀϱγίαν αὐτοῖς δὸς καὶ τϱεῖς ἡμέϱας μὴ ἐξαγάγῃς αὐτὰ εἰς νομήν. A pedant visited his farm after a long time and saw the livestock being put out to graze. When he saw them bleating in their usual way, he enquired why. The steward wanted to tease him and said: ‘They are greeting you’. And he responded: ‘In the name of my safety, give them a holiday for my sake and don’t take them out to pasture for three days.’38 The joke is obviously built on the misleading similarity between slaves and sheep: the idiotic pedant’s ludicrous offer of a holiday for his sheep would have made sense as a holiday gift from a master pleased to see his grateful

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 111 and obedient slaves greeting him respectfully. In other cases, masters could explicitly present gifts to their slaves as a reward for their loyal service, as shown by a I century BCE manumission inscription from Thessalian Azoros: Ἀϱιστοτέλης Δημοχάϱου καὶ Ἀδέα Φιλώτου ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ καὶ Δημοχάϱης Ἀϱιστοτέλους ὁ ὑὸς αὐτῶν Σεβάστηοι Ζωσίμην τὴν ἑαυτῶν οἰκέτιδα γεγονυῖαν εὐάϱεστον ἀφῆκαν ἐλευθέϱαν δωϱεὰν. Aristoteles, son of Demochares, and his wife Adea, daughter of Philotas, and their son Demochares, son of Aristoteles, citizens of Larisa, emancipated gratis Zosime, their slave, because she was well-pleasing.39 The slave’s good behaviour constituted in her masters’ eyes the reason for the gift of manumission gratis. But what to the master might appear as a magnanimous unilateral gift, to the slave might appear as a right earned for faithful service, as expressed in one of the Aesopic tales of Phaedrus: Seruus profugiens dominum naturae asperae Aesopo occurrit, notus e uicinia. ‘Quid tu confusus?’ ‘Dicam tibi clare, pater, hoc namque es dignus appellari nomine, tuto querela quia apud te deponitur. Plagae supersunt, desunt mihi cibaria. Subinde ad uillam mittor sine uiatico. Domi si cenat, totis persto noctibus; siue est uocatus, iaceo ad lucem in semita. Emerui libertatem, canus seruio. Vllius essem culpae mihi si conscius, aequo animo ferrem. Nunquam sum factus satur, et super infelix saeuum patior dominium. Has propter causas et quas longum est promere abire destinaui quo tulerint pedes.’40 A slave running away from his master’s harsh nature ran to Aesop, who was known to him and a neighbour. ‘Why are you upset?’ ‘I’ll tell you clearly, father (for you deserve to be called father), since I can trust you with my troubles. Beatings, I get more than I can take; food I get none. Time and again, I’m sent off to the farm, with no travel money. A dinner is offered in the house: I sit up all night. Master is a guest somewhere: I lie ill in some by-lane until dawn. I have earned my freedom; yet my hair is grey, and I still serve. If I knew that any of this was of my own fault, I’d endure it with a patient heart. But I’m never fed enough, and I suffer miserably my extremely harsh master. It’s for these reasons, and others that would demand much time, that I’ve decided to go away, wherever my feet take me.’ In this case, the slave describes his many travails and his faithful service as the grounds for which he had a right to earn his freedom; and the fact that he had grown old without being justly rewarded constitutes the reason for which he has decided to flee from his master. The potential of these two

112  Kostas Vlassopoulos related but distinct understandings to clash comes out in a famous example of slave retaliation described by Tacitus: haud multo post praefectum urbis Pedanium Secundum servus ipsius interfecit, seu negata libertate, cui pretium pepigerat, sive amore exoleti incensus et dominum aemulum non tolerans. Not long after, the prefect of the City, Pedanius Secundus, was killed by a slave of his – either on the denial of his freedom, for which he had struck a price, or being inflamed with love for a pathic and intolerant of his master’s being a rival.41 The promise of manumission was a unilateral act of the master, which he was under no obligation to honour; and yet Tacitus makes it quite clear that this is not how this particular slave conceived of it. The murder was instigated by the sense of betrayal felt by the slave for the dishonouring of the agreement he had negotiated with his master.

Beyond and below slavery: the alternative identities of enslaved persons and their historical consequences The existence of different modalities of slavery allowed masters and slaves to negotiate their respective positions and enabled slaves to conceive slavery and their relationship to their masters in their own ways. Slaves tried to modify slavery from a unilateral and instrumental form of power exercised by their masters into something more negotiable, even if in asymmetric ways; there were also various situations in which masters opted for or acquiesced to this form of asymmetric negotiation. This fundamental point opens up conceptual space for a second important aspect of slave agency: the identities of enslaved persons were not tantamount to slave identity. We have already encountered when discussing the modality of slavery as a form of bad luck the fact that many slaves had a prior life as free people before their life in slavery, or were the children of free parents who had been enslaved. This made it possible for enslaved persons to see themselves as free people in captivity, rather than as slaves. The consequences of this observation for the study of ancient slaves have not been sufficiently explored, despite the fact that ancient literature is full of examples of enslaved free people: the fate of noble people who end up enslaved, like the Trojan women, is a common theme of tragedy; the temporary enslavement of free persons is a major theme of the Greek novel; the slave protagonists who will be ultimately revealed to be free is a common subject of Greek and Roman comedy. Scholars have looked at such examples as illustrations of an ideology that distinguished between the temporary or unjust slavery of those who deserved to be free and the natural slavery of the ‘real’ slaves;42 what has not been sufficiently explored is the consequences of such ideas about how slaves saw themselves or were seen by others.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 113 I hope to explore this issue in detail in another context; for the time being, I want to focus here on another aspect of the identities of enslaved persons: the construction of alternative identities on the basis of gender, family, kinship, profession, ethnicity, and religion. Slaves created families and kinship groups, and were thus lovers and spouses, parents, children, and relatives;43 slaves had various skills and performed many tasks, and had accordingly a variety of professional roles: artisans, traders, bankers, sailors, builders, entertainers, and cultivators;44 slaves had ethnic identities from their life before slavery or acquired/constructed new ethnic identities in the course of their life in bondage;45 slaves participated in various cults and were thus worshippers and devotees of many deities.46 It was possible that the communities that slaves created on the basis of these alternative identities were slave-only: many slave families included only slaves as their members. But many of these alternative identities were not restricted to slaves; as a result, the communities that slaves created or participated in on the basis of these alternative identities could include both free and slave people. The importance of these alternative identities and communities concerned the fact that slaves tried to limit the effect of slavery in their lives, by trying to ensure that significant parts of their lives would run on principles other than slavery. The struggle to limit the effects of slavery on slaves’ lives was one of the most crucial elements in the historical trajectory of slavery in antiquity. This struggle consisted of many different factors and elements and was deeply contradictory. It obviously depended on the extent to which masters attempted to employ slavery in order to shape the full range of their slaves’ lives or preferred to use it for only limited purposes. The more masters were willing to accept the latter option, the more the slaves’ attempt to limit the effects of slavery were likely to succeed. The case of the slave family is a good example of the contradictory character of this process. The slave family was an important factor in building stability in slaveholding societies.47 It ensured the natural reproduction of the slave force; slaves with families were less likely to flee; and the threat of family separation was a potent weapon in masters’ hands. The issue is brought out well in one of the Aesopic fables: Πεϱιστεϱὰ ἔν τινι πεϱιστεϱεῶνι τϱεφομένη ἐν πολυτεκνογονείᾳ ἐφϱυάττετο. Κοϱώνη δὲ ἀκούσασα ταύτην ἔφη· Παῦσαι τοῦ ἀλαζομεύεσθαι· ὅσον γὰϱ πλέονα τέκνα ἔχεις, τοσοῦτον πεϱισσοτέϱους δούλους συνάξεις. Ὁ μῦθος δηλοῖ ὅτι τῶν οἰκετῶν δυστυχέστεϱοί εἰσιν ὅσοι ἐν δουλείᾳ τεκνοποιοῦσιν. A pigeon kept in a dovecote was speaking haughtily for her many offspring. A crow heard her and said to her: ‘Stop giving yourself airs. The more offspring you have, the more slaves you will be bringing together.’ The fable shows that slaves who bear children in slavery are more unfortunate.48

114  Kostas Vlassopoulos But at the same time family and kinship were major tools for creating slave communities of emotion, support, and solidarity. The slave family was both a tool in the hands of masters and a means through which slaves could organise their resistance. The significance of creating family and kinship for slaves comes out well in a number of inscriptions that provide a very different perspective from that of the Aesopic fable above. The first is an inscription of the imperial period from Lydia: Εὔτυχος Ἰουλίας Ταβίλλης δοῦλος πϱαγματευτὴς σὺν καὶ τῇ γυναικὶ Ἐπιγόνῃ εὐχὴν ὑπὲϱ υἱοῦ Νεική[τ]ου Μηνὶ Ἀξιεττηνῷ διὰ τὸ σθῆναι αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀσθενοῦντα. Eutuchos, slave agent of Ioulia Tabille, together with his wife Epigone, (offer this) to Men Axiettenos as fulfilment of a vow on behalf of their son Niketas, because, when ill, he was saved by the god.49 Eutychos and his wife Epigone express their gratitude, because divine intervention saved their son and allowed them to maintain their slave family. The complexity of slave families and the communities that could be built on their basis is clearly shown in another inscription from the same area: Ἑλικωνὶς ἐτείμησεν Ἀμέϱιμνον τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδϱα· Ἀμέϱιμνος τὸν πατέϱα· Τέϱπουσα τὸν ἴδιον υἱόν· Νεικόπολις ἡ μάμη· Ἀλέξανδϱος καὶ Δημητϱία καὶ Τέϱπουσα τὸν ἀδελφόν· Αἰγιαλὸς ὁ θϱέψας· Γάμος τὸν πενθεϱιδῆ· οἱ συνγενεῖς καὶ σύνδουλοι ἐτείμησαν Ἀμέϱιμνον. Χαῖϱε. Helikonis honoured Amerimnos, her husband; Amerimnos his father; Terpousa her own son; Neikopolis the grandmother; Alexandros and Demetria and Terpousa their brother; Aigialos the foster-father; Gamos his brother in law; the relatives and the fellow-slaves honoured Amerimnos. Farewell!50 The epitaph does not explicitly identify the deceased or the honourees as slaves; but the reference to Amerimnos’ fellow slaves makes it evident that he was a slave, and makes it very probable that the members of his family and extended kinship network were also slaves. We can see here how extensive this kinship network was: the inscription mentions the spouse and children of the deceased, his grandmother, mother and siblings, a foster child and a son-in-law, as well as other unspecified relatives. 51 A good example of how slaves employed these communities of kinship and their related networks is illustrated by a IV century lead letter from Athens: Λῆσις{ις} ἐπιστέλλει Ξενοκλεῖ καὶ τῆι μητϱὶ μηδαμῶς πεϱιιδε ν͂ αὐτὸν ἀπολόμενον ἐν τῶι χαλκείωι, ἀλλὰ πϱὸς τὸς δεσπότας αὐτοῦ ἐλθε ν͂ καὶ ἐνευϱέσθαι τι βέλτιον αὐτῶι. Ἀνθϱώπωι γὰϱ παϱαδέδομαι πάνυ πονηϱῶι μαστιγόμενος ἀπόλυμαι δέδεμαι πϱοπηλακίζομαι μᾶλλον μᾶ[λ]λον.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 115 Lesis sends to Xenokles and to his mother, to overlook by no means that he is perishing in the foundry, but to go to his masters and find something better for him. For I have been handed over to a very wicked man: I’m perishing from being whipped; I’m tied up; I’m treated like dirt – more and more…52 The most plausible interpretation of this text is that Lesis was a young slave, apprenticed by his masters to a smith and working in a foundry, where he was maltreated and faced terrible conditions. His hope for deliverance lay with Xenokles and his own mother, whom he requests to attend his masters and persuade them to take him out of the foundry and find another less oppressive placement for him. We can neither tell what exactly the relationship between Xenokles and Lesis is, nor what the relationship between Xenokles and Lesis’ mother might have been. But whatever the case, this is a clear illustration why we should not reduce slavery to a binary relationship between masters and slaves; Lesis hopes that employing his wider network of kinship and support will convince his masters to improve his lot.53 Another example of the same process is illustrated in a letter of Ignatius, the II century CE bishop of Antioch, to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna: Δούλους καὶ δούλας μὴ ὑπεϱηφάνει· ἀλλὰ μηδὲ αὐτοὶ φυσιούσθωσαν, ἀλλ’ εἰς δόξαν θεοῦ πλέον δουλευέτωσαν, ἵνα κϱείττονος ἐλευθεϱίας ἀπὸ θεοῦ τύχωσιν. Μὴ ἐϱάτωσαν ἀπὸ τοῦ κοινοῦ ἐλευθεϱοῦσθαι, ἵνα μὴ δοῦλοι εὑϱεθῶσιν ἐπιθυμίας. Don’t behave arrogantly towards slaves, whether male or female; nor should they puff themselves up, but be slaves more zealously for the glory of God, so that God may grant them a better freedom. They shouldn’t desire to get manumitted from the common budget, so that they might not be found slaves to desire.54 Christian communities were mixed associations, which included free people, freedmen, and slaves.55 It is obvious from Ignatius’ advice that the slave members of the Christian community of Smyrna were trying to convince their fellow members to use the common funds in order to buy their freedom, presumably from their non-Christian masters. This is a telling example of how participation in mixed associations could provide enslaved persons with resources and connections that could have significant impact on their lives.56 Examples like these, in which slaves made use of the communities and networks they created beyond their masters posed a clear threat for the masters’ authority, as is clearly expressed by the IV century CE orator Libanius in the following passage: οὐδὲ γὰϱ οἰκέτην ἄξιον δίκης ἐφ᾿οἷς ἔπαθεν ἀξιοῦντα τυχεῖν εἰς τὸν δεῖνα καὶ τὸν δεῖνα βλέπειν καὶ παϱαστάντα ἱκετεύειν τὸν οὐ κύϱιον ἀφέντα

116  Kostas Vlassopoulos τὸν δεσπότην. οὐδὲ γὰϱ ἅπας ἔτ᾿ ἂν εἴη τοῦ δεσπότου, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἂν μικϱὸν μέϱος τοῦ βεβοηθηκότος ποιοῖ μεϱίζων μὲν τὴν εὔνοιαν, μεϱίζων δὲ τὰ τοῦ σώματος. καὶ γὰϱ καὶ τοῦτον ἐχϱῆν λαμβάνειν μὲν δίκην, λαμβάνειν δὲ διὰ τοῦ δεσπότου· τὸ δὲ δι᾿ ἄλλου κἂν ἀποστεϱήσαι τοῦ δούλου πολλάκις τὸν δεσπότην καταπεφϱονημένον ἐκ τῆς παϱ᾿ ἄλλου βοηθείας. Nor again is it right for a slave, if he demands justice for wrongs suffered, to look to just anybody, and to present himself before anyone who is not his owner and implore his aid, while ignoring his master. For he would no longer belong entirely to his master, but he would present his protector with the lion’s share in any division of his loyalty and personal services. Certainly, it is right that he should secure justice, but he should secure it through his master. To do so through somebody else often means the master losing his slave altogether, since he is despised as a result of the assistance rendered by another.57 A telling example of the historical significance of slave communities is the incident narrated in the Life of Melania the Younger, a late-antique scion of one of the richest senatorial families, who, along with her husband Pinianus, decided to divest themselves from their riches and follow an ascetic mode of life. This involved selling their thousands of slaves, but the effort to sell them proved complicated: Καὶ ἅμα ταῦτα αὐτῶν βουλευομένων, μέγιστον αὐτοῖς πειϱασμὸν ἐξήγειϱεν ὁ ἐχθϱὸς τῆς ἀληθείας διάβολος. Φθονήσας γὰϱ τῇ τοσαύτῃ κατὰ Θεὸν πυϱώσει τῶν νέων, ὑπέβαλεν τῷ ἀδελφῷ τοῦ μακαϱίου Πινιανοῦ Σευήϱῳ καὶ ἀνέπεισεν τοὺς δούλους αὐτῶν εἰπεῖν ὅτι ‘Ὅλως οὐ πιπϱασκόμεθα· εἰ δὲ βιασθῶμεν ἐπὶ πλεῖον τοῦ πϱαθῆναι, ὁ ἀδελφός σου Σευῆϱος δεσπότης ἡμῶν ἐστιν καὶ αὐτὸς ἡμᾶς ἀγοϱάζει.’ Ἐθοϱυβήθησάν τε ἐκ τούτου σφοδϱῶς ὁϱῶντες τοὺς ἐν τοῖς πϱοαστείοις Ῥώμης δούλους αὐτῶν στασιάζοντας. And while [Melania and Pinianus] were making these plans, the enemy of truth, the devil, raised a most challenging trial for them. He felt envy at the young couple’s godly fervour and suborned Severus, the brother of the blessed Pinianus, and he convinced the slaves of Melania and Pinianus to say: ‘We won’t at all be put up for sale! If you force us to the point of being sold, your brother Severus is our master and he is buying us’. This disturbed them greatly, seeing their slaves in the suburbs of Rome revolting.58 The plan of Severus, Pinianus’ brother, was to acquire his brother’s property on the cheap; to achieve this aim, he incited the slaves in his brother’s landholdings to revolt, in order to put pressure on Pinianus to sell the whole portfolio to him at a bargain price, rather than opt for the higher price he would acquire, if the properties were sold piecemeal to the highest bidders on the market. But the crucial question for our purposes is what made the

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 117 slaves demand not to be sold, or if that were not possible, to be sold to a single master and the relative of their former owner. The answer is not explicitly provided in this particular passage but can be plausibly supplied: it was caused by the slaves’ wish to preserve the families and communities that they had managed to create and the mode of life with its customs and accommodations to which they were used. Whether Pinianus had made to the slaves some explicit promise about their future treatment or not, the fact that he counted on slave agency on behalf of their families and communities in order to achieve his own aims is an eloquent illustration of how strong slaves felt about the issue.

Conclusion The Gramscian concepts of hegemony and the contradictory consciousness of the subaltern classes are crucial for understanding the historical trajectory of ancient slavery and the historical agency of enslaved people in antiquity. The acceptance of slavery as a fact of life by all people in antiquity and the asymmetrical character of the master-slave relationships meant that the hegemony of the master class was never in dispute as such in antiquity. At the same time, the existence of multiple modalities of slavery and the alternative identities of enslaved people had also important consequences. Slaves might have accepted the legitimacy of slavery per se, but could employ the various modalities in order to make the relationship suit their own aims as much as was possible under the circumstances in each case. The existence of different modalities also allowed masters to tailor slavery to suit their own needs and find acceptable accommodations with their slaves. The existence of alternative slave identities and the communities that slaves created on their basis made it possible that significant parts of slaves’ lives could run on principles other than slavery (kinship, family, profession, ethnicity, and cult). The extent to which masters instrumentalized slavery to cover every aspect of slaves’ lives, or only employed it for certain aspects and purposes varied greatly in space and time and for different masters.59 Masters might attempt to enforce this instrument on the full range of slave life, or they might apply it to only certain facets; slaves could try to define aspects of their lives by means of other tools. Consequently, slaves did not merely react to a relationship which was unilaterally set by others. They also tried to change the rules of the game by creating a world of their own, next, below, and against the world of their masters. They constantly tried to turn slavery into something different than the instrumental modality it often claimed to be. Slaves attempted to create families, to belong, to achieve recognition and respect, and to dream. Their hopes to create families, to enhance their economic condition, to create community, to achieve recognition in the eyes of other people, even to become independent, continuously challenged and modified slavery as a relationship in any given society.60 Slaves were historical agents, because they constantly strove to make themselves other things apart from being solely slaves, and to redefine the relationship of slavery in their own terms

118  Kostas Vlassopoulos and for their own benefit. Of course, given the enormous asymmetry of power, slaves never achieved their aims completely or permanently; but the battles they won, or did not lose, are historically important. These observations have an important implication. If slaves possessed alternative identities and created and participated in communities which were not based on their status as slaves, it is possible that a significant part of slave agency was exercised on the basis of identities and roles that had little to do with slavery per se. Furthermore, this might mean that looking for the collective agency of slaves qua slaves might be a red herring. There were certainly occasions when slaves acted collectively as slaves; but it is telling that recent approaches to the slave revolts in Sicily, supposedly the clearest example of collective slave agency, have started to dispute whether they should be seen as exclusively slave movements rather than as movements with slave participation.61 Be that as it may, if slaves commonly acted as professionals, devotees, and members of ethnic communities, we should make those wider communities the object of our study of slave agency. This has serious implications for how to write the history of slave agency in antiquity. Instead of a straightforward narrative of a struggle between masters and slaves, we need to devise an alternative account which focuses on the various identities and communities that mediated how slaves exercised their agency. This would mean exploring the inflections created by slave participation in communities and practices that had little to do with slavery per se. Ancient slaves did not struggle in order to abolish slavery and could rarely confront their masters directly, as, e.g., modern subaltern classes can often attempt. They fought instead in order to create meaningful emotional lives, to gain recognition, to enhance their economic conditions, and to build a world that was affected by slavery as little as possible. The historical consequences of these struggles are still shrouded in mystery; but I hope readers will agree that this is the direction that the evidence points to. A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery entails rewriting its history in order to restore slaves as active agents in the making of their own history and the history of the societies in which they lived. This approach requires a reconstruction of the contradictory consciousness of masters and slaves, and the variety of strategies that slaves employed in the course of their daily and long-term struggles. Genovese’s approach to slavery, deeply influenced by Gramsci’s ideas on the history of subaltern classes, has much to offer to the study of ancient slavery and slaves. This cross-fertilisation between Gramscian Marxism and the study of ancient history is long overdue; this volume is an excellent opportunity to make some important moves in this direction.

Notes 1 Q11§12 = QC: 1385 = SPN: 333, “L’uomo attivo di massa opera praticamente, ma non ha una chiara coscienza teorica di questo suo operare che pure è un conoscere il mondo in quanto lo trasforma. La sua coscienza teorica anzi

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 119





può essere storicamente in contrasto col suo operare. Si può quasi dire che egli ha due coscienze teoriche (o una coscienza contraddittoria), una implicita nel suo operare e che realmente lo unisce a tutti i suoi collaboratori nella trasformazione pratica della realtà e una superficialmente esplicita o verbale che ha ereditato dal passato e ha accolto senza critica. Tuttavia questa concezione «verbale» non è senza conseguenze: essa riannoda a un gruppo sociale determinato, influisce nella condotta morale, nell’indirizzo della volontà, in modo più o meno energico, che può giungere fino a un punto in cui la contraddittorietà della coscienza non permette nessuna azione, nessuna decisione, nessuna scelta e produce uno stato di passività morale e politica. La comprensione critica di se stessi avviene quindi attraverso una lotta di «egemonie» politiche, di direzioni contrastanti, prima nel campo dell’etica, poi della politica, per giungere a una elaborazione superiore della propria concezione del reale.” 2 Anderson (1976). Cf. Smith in this volume. 3 Cf. Introduction. 4 Thompson (1980, 1993), Genovese (1974), and Guha (1997). For the impact of Gramsci on Thompson and Genovese, see Johnson (1978) and King (1979). For Subaltern Studies and their Gramscian influence, see Chaturvedi (2000) and Ludden (2002). 5 See the discussion in Vlassopoulos (2018). 6 For the problems of such approaches, see Vlassopoulos (2011b, 2016b). 7 Finley (1980). 8 Genovese (1974). 9 For slavery in space and time, see Berlin (1980). 10 For paternalism, see also Genovese and Fox-Genovese (2011). 11 Genovese (1974: 146–9). 12 Genovese (1974: 49–70). 13 Genovese (1974: 25–8). 14 For fruitful discussions of the insights and problems of the concept of slave community, see Kolchin (1983), Johnson (2003), and Ben-Ur (2018). 15 I have explored the relationship between Genovese and Finley, alongside an attempt to explain why Finley was unable or unwilling to recognise the consequences of Genovese’s approach in Vlassopoulos (2016a). 16 For Artemidorus, the best recent treatment is Thonemann (2020). For Artemidorus and ancient social history, see Pomeroy (1991), Chandezon (2018). 17 For slaves and slavery in Artemidorus, see Annequin (1987, 2005, and 2008); Klees (1990). 18 Artem. 4.30. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 19 Artem. 2.12. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 20 For slavery as domination, see Vlassopoulos (2011b). 21 Artem. 2.8. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 22 For ancient views of slavery as a form of bad luck, see Williams (1993: 116–24). 23 Artem. 2.9. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 24 Patterson (1982); for a cogent criticism of Patterson’s approach, see Brown (2009). 25 For the concept of the variable modalities of slavery, see Vlassopoulos (forthcoming). 26 For such an approach, see Genovese (1974); Glassman (1991); Berlin (1998). 27 For an impressive, if rare in its clarity and visibility, example from XVIII century Brazil, see Schwartz (1977). 28 Zelnick-Abramovitz (2005: 6–7). 29 For such stereotypes, see Wrenhaven (2012).

120  Kostas Vlassopoulos 30 For the values of Roman freedmen and how they conceptualised their life in slavery and their new life post-emancipation, see Vermote (2016); MacLean (2018). 31 AE 1980, no. 503. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 32 See the discussion in Kleijwegt (2006). 33 This probably refers to free provincials selling themselves into slavery to Roman citizens in order to ultimately become Roman freedmen and gain Roman citizenship; see Crook (1967: 59–61). 34 Petron., Sat. 57. Eng. tr. from the Loeb, revised. 35 Boyce (1991). 36 De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, 5.7.66–7. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 37 P. Turner 41. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 38 Philogelos, 47. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 39 IG IX 2.1296 A. Translation by the author. 40 Phaedrus, Appendix 20. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 41 Tac. Ann. 14.42. Eng. tr. Woodman (2004). 42 Thalmann (1996). 43 Mouritsen (2011), Schmitz (2012), and Simonis (2017). 44 Joshel (1992). 45 Hunt (2015). 46 Bömer (1981, 1990), North (2012). 47 Bradley (1984: 47–80). 48 Aesop. 202 Perry. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 49 TAM V.1 442. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 50 SEG XL 1044. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 51 Martin (2003), Zoumbaki (2005). 52 SEG L 276. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). For publication of this text and variant interpretations, see Jordan (2000); Harris (2004), whose interpretation I generally follow; Eidinow and Taylor (2010). 53 For the significance of such networks and communities for ancient slaves, see Vlassopoulos (2011a). 54 Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp, 4. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 55 Cf. Paterson in this volume. 56 Harrill (1995): 158–92; cf. Shaner (2018: 87–109). 57 Lib. 47.21. Eng. tr. from the Loeb. 58 Gerontius, Life of Melania the Younger, 10. Eng. tr. Vlassopoulos and Bathrellou (forthcoming). 59 Vlassopoulos (2016b). 60 Vlassopoulos (2011a). 61 Morton (2014).

Bibliography Anderson, P. (1976) ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’, New Left Review, 1(100), 5–78. Annequin, J. (1987) ‘Les Esclaves rêvent aussi… remarques sur La clé des songes d’Artémidore’, Dialogues d’histoire ancienne, 13, 71–113. Annequin, J. (2005) ‘L’autre corps du maître: Les représentations oniriques dans l’Onirocriticon d’Artémidore de Daldis’, in Anastasiadis, V.I. and P.N. Doukellis (eds.) Esclavage antique et discriminations socio-culturelles. Bern: Peter Lang, 305–13.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 121 Annequin, J. (2008) ‘Les esclaves et les signes oniriques de la liberté: l’Onirocriticon d’Artémidore’, in Gonzales, A. (ed.) La fin du statut servile? (affranchissement, libération, abolition). Hommage à Jacques Annequin. Vol. 1. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 89–93. Ben-Ur, A. (2018) ‘Bound Together? Reassessing the ‘Slave Community’ and ‘Resistance’ Paradigms’, Journal of Global Slavery, 3, 195–210. Berlin, I. (1980) ‘Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America’, American Historical Review, 85, 44–78. Berlin, I. (1998) Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap. Bömer, F. (1981) Untersuchungen über die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenland und Rom. Vol. I: Die wichtigsten Kulte und Religionen in Rom und im lateinischen Westen. 2nd edn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Bömer, F. (1990) Untersuchungen über die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenland und Rom. Vol. 3: Die wichtigsten Kulte der griechischen Welt. 2nd edn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Boyce, B. (1991) The Language of the Freedmen in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis. Leiden and New York, NY: Brill. Bradley, K.R. (1984) Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control. Oxford: OUP. Brown, V. (2009) ‘Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery’, American Historical Review, 114, 1231–49. Chandezon, C. (2018) ‘L’Individu en réseau: les Oneirokritika d’Artémidore comme source sur les modes d’inscription en société’, in Dana, M. and I. Savalli-Lestrade (eds.) La Cité interconnectée: transferts et réseaux institutionnels, religieux et culturels aux époques hellénistique et impérial. Bordeaux: Ausonius, 43–57. Chaturvedi, V. (ed.) (2000) Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. London: Verso. Crook, J. (1967) Law and Life of Rome. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Eidinow, E. and C. Taylor (2010) ‘Lead-Letter Days: Writing, Communication and Crisis in the Ancient Greek World’, CQ, 60, 30–62. Finley, M.I. (1980) Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. London: Penguin. Genovese, E.D. (1974) Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York, NY: Vintage. Genovese, E.D. and E. Fox-Genovese (2011) Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South. New York, NY: CUP. Glassman, J. (1991) ‘The Bondsman’s New Clothes: The Contradictory Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast’, Journal of African History, 32, 277–312. Guha, R. (1997) Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP. Harrill, J.A. (1995) The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Harris, E.M. (2004) ‘Notes on a Lead Letter from the Athenian Agora’, Harv. Stud, 102, 157–70. Hunt, P. (2015) ‘Trojan Slaves in Classical Athens: Ethnic Identity among Athenian Slaves’, in Taylor, C. and K. Vlassopoulos (eds.) Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World. Oxford: OUP, 129–54. Johnson, R. (1978) ‘Edward Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Socialist-Humanist History’, History Workshop, 6, 79–100.

122  Kostas Vlassopoulos Johnson, W. (2003) ‘On Agency’, Journal of Social History, 37, 113–24. Jordan, D. (2000) ‘A Personal Letter Found in the Athenian Agora’, Hesperia, 69, 91–103. Joshel, S.R. (1992) Work, Identity and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions. Norman, OK and London: University of Oklahoma Press. King, R.H. (1979) ‘On Eugene D. Genovese’s Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, and Other Works’, in Weinstein, A. and F. Gatell (eds.) American Negro Slavery. Oxford: OUP, 257–71. Klees, H. (1990) ‘Griechisches und Römisches in den Traumdeutungen Artemidors für Herrenund Sklaven’, in Boerker, C. and M. Donderer (eds.), Das antike Rom und der Osten: Festschrift für K. Parlasca, Erlangen: Universitäsbibliothek, 53–75. Kleijwegt, M. (2006) ‘Freed Slaves, Self-Presentation and Corporate Identity in the Roman World’, in id. (ed.) The Faces of Freedom: The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 89–116. Kolchin, P. (1983) ‘Re-Evaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective’, Journal of American History, 70, 579–601. Ludden, D. (ed.) (2002) Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia. London: Anthem. MacLean, R. (2018) Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture: Social Integration and the Transformation of Values. Cambridge: CUP. Martin, D.B. (2003) ‘Slave Families and Slaves in Families’, in Balch, D.L. and C. Osiek (eds.) Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 207–30. Morton, P. (2014) ‘The Geography of Rebellion: Strategy and Supply in the Two ‘Sicilian Slave Wars’’, BICS, 57, 20–38. Mouritsen, H. (2011) ‘The Families of Roman Slaves and Freedmen’, in Rawson, B. (ed.) A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 129–44. North, J. (2012) ‘The Ritual Activity of Roman Slaves’, in Hodkinson, S. and D. Geary (eds.) Slaves and Religions in Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Modern Brazil. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 67–93. Patterson, O. (1982) Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Pomeroy, A.J. (1991) ‘Status and Status-Concern in the Greco-Roman DreamBooks’, Anc. Soc, 22, 51–74. Schmitz, W. (2012) ‘Sklavenfamilien im archaischen und klassischen Griechenland’, in Heinen, H. (ed.) Kindersklaven-Sklavenkinder: Schicksale zwischen Zuneigung und Ausbeutung in der Antike und im interkulturellen Vergleich. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 63–102. Schwartz, S.B. (1977) ‘Resistance and Accommodation in Eighteenth-Century Brazil: The Slaves’ View of Slavery’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 57, 69–81. Shaner, K.A. (2018) Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity. Oxford: OUP. Simonis, M. (2017) Cum servis nullum est conubium: Untersuchungen zu den eheähnlichen Verbindungen von Sklaven im westlichen Mittelmeerraum des Römischen Reiches. Hildesheim – Zurich – New York, NY: Olms. Thalmann, W.G. (1996) ‘Versions of Slavery in the Captivi of Plautus’, Ramus, 25, 112–45.

A Gramscian approach to ancient slavery 123 Thompson, E.P. (1980) The Making of the English Working Class. 2nd edn. (1st edn. 1963). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Thompson, E.P. (1993) Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture. New York, NY: The New Press. Thonemann, P. (2020) An Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus’ The Interpretation of Dreams. Oxford: OUP. Vermote, K. (2016) Identity and Stigmatisation: A Qualitative Analysis of the Socialisation and Stratification of and the Interaction between Freed and Freeborn Romans. PhD Dissertation, Universiteit Gent. Vlassopoulos, K. (2011a) ‘Two Images of Ancient Slavery: The ‘Living Tool’ and the ‘koinônia’’, in Herrmann-Otto, E. (ed.) Sklaverei und Zwangsarbeit zwischen Akzeptanz und Widerstand. Hildesheim – Zurich – New York, NY: Olms, 467–77. Vlassopoulos, K. (2011b) ‘Greek Slavery: From Domination to Property and Back Again’, JHS, 131, 115–30. Vlassopoulos, K. (2016a) ‘Finley’s Slavery’, in Jew, D., R. Osborne and M. Scott (eds.) M.I. Finley: an Ancient Historian and His Impact. Cambridge: CUP, 76–99. Vlassopoulos, K. (2016b) ‘Does Slavery Have a History? The Consequences of a Global Approach’, Journal of Global Slavery, 1, 5–27. Vlassopoulos, K. (2018) ‘Marxism and Ancient History’, in Allen, D., P. Christesen and P. Millett (eds.) How to Do Things with History: New Approaches to Ancient Greece. Oxford: OUP, 209–35. Vlassopoulos, K. (forthcoming) ‘Introduction: An Agenda for Studying Greek and Roman Slaveries’, in Hodkinson, S., M. Kleijwegt and K. Vlassopoulos (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries. Oxford: OUP. Vlassopoulos, K. and E. Bathrellou (eds.) (forthcoming) The Blackwell Sourcebook of Ancient Slaveries. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Williams, B. (1993) Shame and Necessity. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. Woodman, A.J. (ed.) (2004) Tacitus. The Annals. Translated, with Introduction and Notes. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Wrenhaven, K.L. (2012) Reconstructing the Slave: The Image of the Slave in Ancient Greece. London: Bloomsbury. Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. (2005) Not Wholly Free: The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Zoumbaki, S. (2005) ‘The Collective Definition of Slaves and the Limits to Their Activities’, in Anastasiadis, V. and P.N. Doukellis (eds.) Esclavage antique et discriminations socioculturelles. Bern: Peter Lang, 217–31.

5

The Etruscan question An academic controversy in the Prison Notebook Massimiliano Di Fazio

Antonio Gramsci was a linguist.1 His first impact with the subject can be dated back to his high school years in Cagliari, where he happened to have among his teachers Francesco Ribezzo (1875–1952), a distinguished scholar in that field. 2 When he moved from Sardinia to Turin in 1911, he began a regular course of studies in Linguistics, following the lessons of Matteo Giulio Bartoli (1873–1946), who would later become his teacher. Bartoli was an important figure in Italian linguistic scholarship, a pupil, and to some extent heir of the ‘grandfather’ Graziadio Isaia Ascoli.3 When Gramsci began studying with him, Bartoli first saw in the young Sardinian pupil an aid for his research on the Sardinian language;4 later on, though, he entrusted him with the task to write a course.5 But in 1915, the passion for politics and economic constraints brought Gramsci away from the university classrooms,6 not without regret.7 Still he maintained a relevant interest towards the subject until his last days, as testified by several notes in the late Prison Notebooks. The extent of the influence of the linguistic approach on Gramsci’s political and social ideas and views remains a matter for discussion.8 This issue cannot of course be tackled here. Rather, we will focus on two notes in the Prison Notebooks that deal with linguistic debates and particularly with the Etruscan language. In 1930, Gramsci happened to read in Nuova Antologia9 the review by Pericle Ducati of the Primo Congresso Internazionale Etrusco (‘First International Conference of Etruscan Studies’) held in Firenze and Bologna in 1928. Gramsci’s interest is specifically directed towards the way in which Ducati reported one particular paper on Etruscan language delivered on that occasion by Alfredo Trombetti. Gramsci employs for Trombetti a very peculiar label he had forged, that of Lorianismo. Before we deal with Trombetti, then, we need to spend some words about this label. The word derives from Achille Loria (1857–1943): a very peculiar intellectual, he was professor of Economics at the Universities of Siena and Padua before moving to the University of Turin.10 As a rather naive expert in economics and Marxism, he had the honour of being criticised for his misinterpretation of Marx by Friedrich Engels in the preface of the third edition of Das Kapital. Gramsci devoted a long note in the first Notebook

The Etruscan question 125 (Q1§25) to collect the main bizarre contributions of Loria: papers on the social influence of airplane, on the connections between mysticism and syphilis, on the effect of altimetry on civilisation and speech, and so on. For Gramsci, “Loria’s work typified a strain of uncritical positivism and a bizarre mentality not uncommon among Italian intellectuals – a mentality he labeled Lorianismo.”11 Why then, according to Gramsci, Trombetti could be seen as in some ways representative of such a peculiar intellectual attitude? And who was Alfredo Trombetti? In order to understand, we need to move from Gramsci and linguistics to another field, that of Etruscology.

The debate on the Etruscan language at the beginning of XX century The 1920s and 1930s can be considered a real turning point in the history of the interest towards the Etruscans. In the span of few years several crucial steps were made. The key figure is the archaeologist Antonio Minto (1880–1954). In 1925, he became chairman of a committee aimed at promoting and coordinating the initiatives about the Etruscans. His role was crucial in founding a journal devoted to Etruscology, Studi Etruschi, whose publication began in 1927. In 1925, the first chair of Etruscology was created at the University of Rome,12 entrusted to Alessandro Della Seta (1879–1944);13 in 1926, the I Convegno nazionale etrusco was held in Florence, followed in 1928 by the Primo Congresso internazionale etrusco in Florence and Bologna. In 1932, the standing committee for Etruria was transformed into the Istituto di Studi Etruschi. Between 1935 and 1936, a Chair of Etruscology was established in Florence, and entrusted to Minto.14 In such a strong interest towards the Etruscans, two were the main aspects of debate: the origins of this people, and the attempts at understanding their unintelligible language. These two problems, whose interrelation was already clear, were the subject of strong controversies, as shown by the chronicles of the conferences of those years.15 All the most important scholars of the time were involved in such controversies: historians like Gaetano De Sanctis and Luigi Pareti, archaeologists like Pericle Ducati and Alessandro Della Seta, linguists like Giacomo Devoto, Francesco Ribezzo, and, not least, Alfredo Trombetti. Born of humble origins, Alfredo Trombetti (1866–1929) had become one of the most important scholars in Linguistics of his time.16 Appointed to a Professorship at the University of Bologna in 1904, he was one of the first thirty members of the Accademia d’Italia personally chosen by Mussolini in 1929: a distinction that shows how strongly implicated he was with the regime (as we shall see in greater detail later). Among his many contributions, we can recall works on general glottology and compared linguistics and on several languages of the world. In the 1920s, after some papers on the subject, Trombetti published a book on the Etruscan language.17 His

126  Massimiliano Di Fazio works had a great impact in those days, within and, even more, outside the academic world, where (also thanks to some articles with attractive titles he published on important newspapers) it seemed that the mystery of the Etruscan language had been finally and brilliantly solved.18 Sensational appeared his lectures in three special occasions. In the 1st International Conference of Linguists, held at The Hague (1928), he was one of the few Italian scholars to speak (the others were Matteo Bartoli, the liberi docenti Vittorio Bertoldi and Carlo Tagliavini, and the “signora Novaro-Ducati, studiosa di arabo e georgiano”).19 But he had the special opportunity to announce his discoveries in two meetings that can be considered at the foundation of the Etruscology: the I Convegno nazionale etrusco (Florence 1926) and then the Primo Congresso internazionale etrusco (FlorenceBologna 1928). His sudden and tragic death, while swimming in the lagoon of Venice, seemed to have cut short a brilliant career. Great expectations for his work on the Etruscan language were widespread not only in the academic environment, and even beyond Trombetti’s (at least stated) aims, as is clear in this passage from the long commemoration by his colleague Ambrogio Ballini: Bastò che si divulgasse in Italia la notizia che Alfredo Trombetti si occupava dell’Etrusco e che avrebbe pubblicamente discusso di esso e fatto apparire scritti in proposito, perché tutta l’Italia, la cui voce si ripeteva per mezzo della stampa quotidiana, mostrasse di nutrire una sicura speranza che finalmente l’enigma ormai secolare, tale non sarebbe più rimasto, poi che l’aveva affrontato il grande glottologo bolognese; e si parlò di interpretazione definitiva da lui data, di chiave da lui trovata e cosi via, e si attribuirono al Maestro dichiarazioni non solo mai da lui fatte, ma perfettamente contrarie al suo netto e preciso pensiero.20 It was enough that the news was spread in Italy that Alfredo Trombetti was dealing with Etruscan and that he would have publicly discussed it and published writings about it, that all of Italy, whose voice was repeated through the daily press, showed to have a sure hope that finally the secular conundrum would no longer remain such, since the great Bolognese glottologist had faced it; and people spoke of the definitive interpretation that he gave, of the key he found and so on, and the Master was not only attributed statements that he had never made, but were also the polar opposite of his clear and precise thought Such expectations are confirmed from a foreign standpoint by Albert Grenier on the eve of the International Conference: “L’événement sensationnel du prochain Congrès doit être, paraît-il, la révélation par M. Trombetti, de Bologne, du secret de la langue étrusque. Les journaux l’annoncent depuis un mois. Et les savants attendent. Il y aura foule certainement à la communication de M. Trombetti. La langue étrusque!”, with a witty conclusion:

The Etruscan question 127 “A-t-il vraiment réussi à arracher ce voile? Forse che sì forse che no, dirait d’Annunzio.”21 Even the New York Times, in a short obituary, wrote that he “Was About to Reveal Secrets”.22 Trombetti’s premature death did not interrupt the debate around his work. If today his attempts are discredited, 23 in those years they had to be discussed seriously given the relevant profile of the scholar. Among the reactions to his work, that of Massimo Pallottino deserves especially close attention. As is well known, Pallottino can be considered the ‘creator’ of Etruscology as an autonomous discipline. 24 In the 1920s he was taking the first academic steps of an absolutely brilliant career. His first published work was a review of Trombetti’s book, 25 where he speaks with great deference of the illustrious linguist, praising the positive aspects of his work (e.g., the quantity of materials collected, the effort to penetrate the morphological structure of the Etruscan language and not only the lexicon). However, he did not fail to notice that the results had been obtained not through a rigorous application of a method, but rather “con un processo innegabilmente intuitivo che sfugge ad ogni classificazione”. In Pallottino’s words, this does not seem a critique, but rather a simple photograph of Trombetti’s way of proceeding, whose acquisitions had to be considered far from definitive, as recognised by the same author. The review ends with a note of praise for the scholar that “per primo fra tutti ha rivelato le basi della lingua etrusca, finora avvolta in una nebbia che il metodo scientifico, disgiunto dalla geniale intuizione, non avrebbe mai diradato”. It is important to underline the relationship between the two scholars: Pallottino had the opportunity to follow Trombetti’s lectures and to deal with him personally; furthermore, after his death he wrote two obituaries. 26 It is not by chance that after Trombetti’s death, his family decided to entrust to Pallottino the materials on the Etruscan language left by the linguist. Pallottino published that material some years later in Studi Etruschi. 27 The younger scholar preserved a very good memory of his master through the years, 28 and in the last editions of his fundamental handbook, Etruscologia, Trombetti’s works were still recalled as fundamental, although not exempted by the time passed and, again, questionable on the methodological ground. 29 Other reactions to Trombetti’s work were far less favourable. The historian Luigi Pareti (1885–1962) in Atene&Roma (1928) replied to Trombetti’s criticism of his book on the origins of the Etruscans. At the end of a careful, polemical and ironical examination of Trombetti’s arguments, Pareti writes that the historian “compie non un’irriverenza, ma il dover suo, diffidando dell’affermazione e dell’autorità altrui non meno che della propria intuizione”.30 The keyword is intuizione: the same word used by Pallottino and then by other scholars, and that seem to touch directly a fundamental weakness of method, that is to say the use of personal intuition more than rigorous method. After all, Trombetti himself wrote: “Non basta dunque un metodo in apparenza rigoroso per la conquista del vero, ma occorre pure una felice intuizione.”31

128  Massimiliano Di Fazio The review by the linguist Gino Bottiglioni (1887–1963) in Athenaeum (1929) was careful, cautious but substantially critical. Bottiglioni had just arrived at Pavia on the Chair of History of Classical Languages, and was not a specialist in Etruscan language. He acknowledges at the beginning of the review that Trombetti’s method, as a result of the effort to combine the two traditional methods, can be useful. Nevertheless, the rest of the review is not really positive: “Who scrolls through the versions of T., in too many cases, does not find sufficient reasons to prefer them to those of his predecessors […] Those [results] which he seems to believe are safe, are only very probable to me”, concluding that “we have the impression that, despite his firm intentions, he is unable to dominate the anxiety that catches the researcher when he rummages in the unknown. It is a kind of scientific fever that takes away his serenity and often takes him away from his goal”.32 The same aspects of questionable methodological approach emerge from the short but even more critical review by the linguist Vittore Pisani (1899–1990) in Nuova Antologia (1929).33 In a subtly ironical style, Pisani pointed out the relevant deficiencies of Trombetti’s method: In order to be able to assent to the Bolognese professor […] it is necessary to have a strong faith in his etymological system, a faith that we candidly confess we do not possess […] …] This does not mean, however, that we have advanced even slightly towards the solution, since there is no demonstration of the interpretations proposed by T.34 Problems with Trombetti’s method were also pointed out by foreign scholars, as Archibald Henry Sayce (1845–1933), a renowned expert in Assyrian language who held a chair in Oxford: “the book will be indispensable in all future attempts at the decipherment of the language […] How far the Professor has succeeded in unravelling the mysteries of the Etruscan lexicon is another matter […] there is much that, to me at last, is unconvincing.”35 And then, the usual objections towards the ‘double method’ applied by Trombetti. This brief overview can finish with the famous survey of literature on Etruscan language by S.P. Cortsen (1878–1943) in Glotta (1935), that was a kind of tombstone of Trombetti’s work: Trombetti’s methods were not only drastically struck down, but almost taken as example of how not to work, to such an extent that Pallottino is described as “the young hope of Etruscology (who will surely free himself from Trombetti’s influence)”. Again, the matter of method is crucial in Cortsen’s vibrant critique: “die Methode kann für die richtige Deutung geradezu gefährlich warden.”36

The Etruscan language between academia and politics Given such panorama, the highly positive response to Trombetti’s work by Pericle Ducati is all the more striking. Under the Fascist regime, Ducati (1880–1944) was an absolute protagonist of the Italian academia in the field of Classical Archaeology, not least because of his strong proximity with the

The Etruscan question 129 regime, maintained up until the years of Salò.37 Professor at the University of Turin from 1916 (where he missed Gramsci by just one year) and then in Bologna from 1920 (where he became colleague of Trombetti), he was an acknowledged authority on Etruscans, and had thus many occasions to deal with Trombetti’s work: in the chronicles of the two first conferences of Etruscology, the national and the international, and a short article on the Corriere della Sera (6/8/1929). There are slight differences between the main papers. In the first, Trombetti’s work is praised, but Ducati cannot avoid a critical point: although from a linguistic point of view Trombetti’s proposal is considered valid, and to some extent ingenious, there are problems from an archaeological perspective.38 As a matter of fact, Ducati was a committed supporter of the thesis of the coming of the Etruscans from east, but the consequences of Trombetti’s hypothesis on a material ground would have led to different conclusions, not easily reconcilable with the idea of the eastern coming in historical times. Nevertheless, Trombetti’s speech is recorded with highly positive words. Just one year later, 39 such favour increased dramatically: in Ducati’s chronicles, Trombetti’s speech was simply the most brilliant of the conference. Ducati speaks of “conseguita decifrazione” (p. 199), and of significant results. Not satisfied, he stresses that beyond the positive reactions from the audience, there had been also a few critical positions: he takes care to point out that these came from “non stranieri”. Curiously enough, in Ducati’s reviews there is no space for a paper that was really outstanding and for certain aspects is still valid: that of Giulio Buonamici on Etruscan epigraphy.40 In his talk, in order to support his proposals, Buonamici quoted some sentences of the great maestro of Latin epigraphy, René Cagnat: “L’epigrafia non è affare d’intuizione, bensì di scienza e di pratica: non la si divina, la si apprende.” The use of the term intuizione suggests that Trombetti might have perceived this as a veiled criticism of his work. Not at all veiled were the criticism moved in the same context by a young and very promising scholar, Giacomo Devoto. The reader won’t be surprised to learn that Devoto’s remarks were about the method. Ducati did not ignore such criticism, but defended Trombetti in two ways, both questionable. First of all, he explains that he had listened to Devoto’s paper in the same conference, and found it not fully intelligible and clear, although the young colleague had followed “quel metodo glottologico che deve essere venerato come un’intangibile torre d’avorio” (!). Furthermore, Ducati recalls an anecdote: an expert and skilled chess player was once defeated by a beginner; this would demonstrate that sometimes following a method can be not only not decisive, but even misleading. The conclusion runs as follow: “guardiamo ai risultati del Trombetti e non sottilizziamo” (!); “certo è che le preoccupazioni del metodo violato sono una implicita confessione della impotenza di esso metodo, il quale è pertanto logico che non si debba seguire, poiché senza di esso assai più soddisfacenti che con esso sono stati i risultati.” Finally, Ducati comes back to the circumstance that Trombetti’s critics were “not foreigners”, that is to say Italians, as something comprehensible

130  Massimiliano Di Fazio in the light of local jealousies and xenophilia, and borrows Ugo Antonielli’s words: “se si fosse chiamato Von Trombetting ovvero Trombetty…” It is precisely here that Gramsci must have jumped on his uncomfortable seat in jail. The attempt by Ducati to undervalue the criticism received by Trombetti as an example of inadequate national (thus alluding to a political question behind the scientific controversy) prompted the reaction of Bartoli’s pupil. In two notes (Q3§86 and §156), he points out and criticises especially (although not only) one crucial aspect of Trombetti’s work: the method. Gramsci’s statement is extremely clear (Q3§86): “In the sciences in general, method is the most important thing; moreover, in certain sciences that must necessarily be based on a limited, nonhomogeneous supply of positive data, questions of method are even more important, if they are not actually everything”; and then “Has Trombetti discovered a new method? This is the question. Does this new method contribute more to the advancement of science than the old one does? Does it interpret better, etc.? It does none of this”.41 Finally, he observed that “Etruscan remains undeciphered as before and that it all boils down to another failed effort”.42 Here is where Gramsci detected the symptoms of ‘Lorianism’, in a “squilibrio tra la «logicità» e il contenuto concreto dei suoi studi”. Interestingly, Gramsci hints at the fact that dealing with the Etruscans, a mysterious and fascinating culture, implied more attention from the media, applause, popularity, financial support:43 a rather up-to-date remark, after all… As a matter of fact, Gramsci’s concerns for issues of method are very frequent in his notes on linguistics (and not only there):44 it seems that this aspect was what he appreciated about his “good professor” Bartoli.45 Of course, it is rather obvious that methodological questions had special relevance for a scholar that, because of contingent factors, had no chance to control in a library details and specific aspects of the discipline. Nevertheless, Gramsci’s notes show, at the very least, exceptional memory and specialist knowledge: Unsurprisingly, Gramsci always called for great care in assessing the validity of new methods, and the tenability of innovative discoveries such as those on Etruscan by the linguist Alfredo Trombetti […] Gramsci was, indeed, interested in this debate, and had accumulated sufficient specialist knowledge as to be able to appreciate and discuss this and other controversies. In his discussion, however, he followed the dominant methodological and theoretical models of historical linguistics.46 Sometime later, Gramsci (Q3§156) read a paper dealing with Trombetti published again in Nuova Antologia, the one by Pisani we have already mentioned. Gramsci summed up Pisani’s methodological objections, concluding that “Il metodo acritico del Trombetti applicato all’etrusco non poteva dare risultati certi, evidentemente”. Then, in another note (Q6§36), he will come back to the question praising three short contributions by Luigi Pareti in Marzocco (1928),47 where the historian claimed the necessity

The Etruscan question 131 to tackle the question of Etruscan language in a wider and more complete approach, through systematic collections of data, and with a historical contextualisation: an approach that of course sounded to Gramsci far more scientific and methodologically appropriate (and closer to Bartoli’s lesson),48 than that of Trombetti.49 This leads us to the second aspect that is a consequence of the first, and has more to do with the cultural atmosphere of that moment. Gramsci ends his note Q3§156 wondering why Trombetti had managed to obtain such success and fame. The reasons are pointed out quite clearly. First of all, of course, he had after all some qualities, being an exceptional polyglot. But two more important factors are emphasised. The name of the Bolognese linguist was strictly connected with the so-called ‘monogenetic’ theory, according to which all the languages in the world would derive from a single original language; such theory, much debated at the time (and, needless to say, completely discredited nowadays), 50 was highly appreciated in Catholic circles, and this would earn his author substantial favour.51 Furthermore, Gramsci detected in Ducati’s review a vein of nationalism (“la boria delle nazioni”, an expression drawn by Vico). This theme should be framed in the widespread sentiment of nationalism that characterised the time between the two wars, and that explains the relevant attention towards the topic of the origins of nations and cultures. 52 Language was of course a crucial aspect in this discourse: “Archaeology and linguistics were not neutral sciences in those years; even the results produced by the most honest scholar, wholly detached from the ideology of his time, could, by others, be used effectively in an ideological key.”53 The role played by the Etruscans was of course not secondary, and matched the infelicitous attempts of German scholars like Friedrich von Duhn to promote in the 1920s the theory of a descent towards south of ‘Indo-Germanic’ (!) groups that included the Etruscans.54 But it would perhaps be too simplistic to explain Ducati’s highly positive judgement with these reasons. While the favour of Christian circles can be relevant to the general consensus towards Trombetti’s figure, 55 it is not at all evident that it would have had any effect on Ducati. Nationalism is a weak argument too: it suffices to recall that Trombetti’s main opponents included Italian (Devoto, Pareti, Pisani) and foreign scholars (Cortsen) as well. Some have recently stressed that Ducati, who was overtly a committed fascist, 56 was one of the few archaeologists working in those years in whose writings are sometimes possible to detect attempts to insert the Etruscan history and culture in an ideological frame. 57 On the other side, more generally it seems that in those years, notwithstanding the cultural pressure of fascism, scientific debates in the area of ancient studies (of ancient linguistics at least) were less conditioned by politics than by personal quarrels.58 It is perhaps more useful to remember that in those same years Trombetti published a paper with harsh criticism towards Luigi Pareti. 59 Although politically on the same side, on the ‘Etruscan battlefield’, Pareti and Ducati were

132  Massimiliano Di Fazio decidedly at opposite ends. As a matter of fact, Ducati was in disagreement not only with an historian as Pareti, but with most of the linguists of those years, for their (mostly conjectural) reconstruction that pointed towards the autochthony of the Etruscans.60 Even supposing that his views about the Etruscans were conditioned by his ideological ideas, he would have had no advantage in defending Trombetti’s work, which had a relevant role in the ‘autochthonist’ reconstruction.61 Giving an excessive weight to these perspectives would thus probably be an over-interpretation. All this leaves Gramsci’s question about Trombetti’s success basically unanswered. The present discussion could stop here. But there is another part of the story that needs to be told, even if its assessment must be left to the reader.

Finale (with a surprise) As any scholar dealing with the history of scholarship knows, dedications of books are often very interesting and revealing. In the first pages of Trombetti’s book the following dedication can be read: “Alla mia eletta scolara/Gabriella Novaro Ducati/questo libro/da lei stessa auspicato/dedico.” Gabriella Novaro Ducati (1889–1940) was born in Bologna, the descendant of a distinguished family of Trentine origins.62 She reached a degree of notoriety as author of novels and poems of Franciscan inspiration, some of which were also put in music. She was member of a Theosophical society in Bologna. Née Ducati, she then married the lawyer Giacomo Novaro, son of Filippo Novaro, a famous academic, surgeon, and senator; but then he died in a mountain accident, leaving her with a young son, Sandro. Later on, she developed a strong interest in ancient linguistics, and started studying in Bologna with Trombetti,63 with whom she formed a strong friendly relationship, testified not only by the dedication of the book, for which she wrote a review, but also by some letters and mainly by two obituaries she wrote for him soon after his premature death.64 Both the review and the obituaries were published in journals with a prominent fascist connotation.65 The review offers several interesting clues. Novaro Ducati explains that Trombetti decided to tackle the Etruscan question only after pressures from some people and having ascertained that the methods used until then by most scholars, the ‘combinatory’ and the ‘etymological’, resulted fruitless. This is the reason why he decided for his own method, resumed in this sentence: “in terra incognita, la via buona è quella che conduce alla mèta.” After a series of specific examples from the book,66 Novaro Ducati concludes her enthusiastic review quoting again one of Trombetti’s statements: it is important that the final decipherer of the Etruscan language will be Italian by birth and sentiment.67 The obituaries are no less full of overt devotion towards Trombetti. He is depicted as a genius capable of merging intuition and intelligence. Some references to the crucial theme of the method are worth noting: starting from the big question, “Fu più grande la sua erudizione o il suo genio?”, following with the ascertainment that with his intuition and genius he was capable of

The Etruscan question 133 shattering the wall of traditional methods. On a more intimate ground, she can now proudly confess that she was the person who convinced the great scholar to deal with the Etruscan language, and that in the review was left anonymous. She confirms that Trombetti never proclaimed to have found a magical key to solve the Etruscan problem, and that he was not happy to read on the newspapers some excessively triumphalistic tones about. She also reveals that Mussolini was very attentive in his regards, assigning to him an award of 30.000 lire; the reader is left with the sense that she had played a relevant role in such recognition. She attended together with Trombetti the 1st International Conference of Linguists, held at The Hague in 1928 (as we have already remembered)68 and then the Primo Congresso internazionale etrusco, for which she remembers “un senso di commiserazione per le strane critiche balbettate da alcuni italiani”: words in which we can hear a consonance with Pericle Ducati’s chronicle. Then she accounts for the last day of Trombetti’s life, in a way that lets the reader think she was present with him. Trombetti’s death while swimming in the lagoon of Venice is described in tragic, almost heroic, terms: “He was a skilled swimmer. In the effort, easy for him, to cross the very high wave that almost overwhelmed my baby, death, without pain, without fear, stopped in a moment the beats of that generous heart, accustomed to sacrifice everything to the homeland, to science, to the family”,69 where Science takes the place of God in the classic three keywords of fascism. It would be untimely and useless to go on quoting the words of Novaro Ducati. But we cannot leave this story before we give an answer to the question that the reader will probably have in mind from the beginning of this paragraph: yes, Gabriella Novaro Ducati was a relative of Pericle Ducati. She was his much beloved sister.70 Gramsci probably ignored such personal circumstance and had to find other possible explanations for the excessive importance given to a ‘Lorianist’ scholar. But sometimes things can prove easier, and possibly less noble than expected.

Notes 1 There has been a significant growth of interest in the linguistic interests of Gramsci over the last few years: see Orlandi (2007), Ives and Lacorte (2010), Schirru (2011), and Carlucci (2014). 2 Even though Gramsci had not appreciated him. Cf. Q3§89: “Il Ribezzo non ha nessuna capacità scientifica: quando lo conobbi io, nel 1910–11 aveva dimenticato il greco e il latino quasi completamente ed era uno «specialista» di linguistica comparata arioeuropea. Questa sua ignoranza risaltava così manifesta che il Ribezzo ebbe frequenti conflitti violenti con gli allievi”. See Schirru (2011). 3 See De Mauro (1964) and Ives (2004: 45–7). 4 D’Orsi (1999: 67–68) and Ives (2004: 42). 5 D’Orsi (1999), Rosiello (2010: 30–1), Schirru (2011) and Carlucci (2014: 204–5). The transcript of the course is now published: Schirru (2016). 6 D’Orsi (1999).

134  Massimiliano Di Fazio 7 In a letter from prison (19/03/1927), Gramsci told his sister-in-law Tania: “Uno dei maggiori “rimorsi” intellettuali della mia vita è il dolore profondo che ho procurato al mio buon professor Bartoli dell’Università di Torino…”. See Schirru (2011). 8 In particular, the concept of ‘hegemony’ seems to have been elaborated starting from linguistic theories: Lo Piparo (1979), Orlandi (2007), Ives (2004), and Boothman (2011). 9 Nuova Antologia was (and still is) a literary journal founded in 1866 in Florence and was among Gramsci’s most read publications in his prison years. 10 See Faucci and Perri (2006). On Gramsci and Loria see Imbornone (2009) and Ragona (2011). 11 PN1: 390. In Gramsci’s words: “In general terms, then, Lorianism is a characteristic of a certain type of literary and scientific production in our country […] and is related to the poor organisation of culture and, hence, to the absence of restraint and criticism” (Q1§25 = PN1: 44). 12 Michetti (2015). 13 Della Seta, of Jewish origins, would then be removed in 1939 under the Racial Laws. See Manacorda (1989) and Harari (2012: 414–5). 14 See Haack (2013: 1141). See also the essays collected in Haack and Miller (2015) and Haack (2016), and the recent overview in Avalli (2019). 15 Recent overviews on these problems are: Bellelli (2012) and Bagnasco Gianni (2012). 16 See Ballini (1930) and Tagliavini (1937). 17 Trombetti (1927a), Trombetti (1927b), and Trombetti (1928). 18 ‘Luci nel mistero etrusco’ (II resto del Carlino, 23/03/1926); ‘Per l’interpretazi­ one dei testi etruschi’ (Corriere della Sera, 22/02/1928); ‘Decifriamo l’etrusco’ (II resto del Carlino, 24/02/1928); and the interview ‘Il deciframento della lingua etrusca’ (L’Avvenire d’Italia, 18/02/1928). See on this point also Haack (2012: 399), who stresses that “les journaux présentent A. Trombetti comme une gloire nationale”. 19 See the chronicle in Tagliavini (1928). Other scholars at the conference, including Giacomo Devoto, had no chance to intervene. 20 Ballini (1930: 216), “It was enough that the news was spread in Italy that Alfredo Trombetti was dealing with Etruscan and that he would have publicly discussed it and published writings about it, that all of Italy, whose voice was repeated through the daily press, showed to have a sure hope that finally the secular conundrum would no longer remain such, since the great Bolognese glottologist had faced it; and people spoke of the definitive interpretation that he gave, of the key he found and so on, and the Master was not only attributed statements that he had never made, but were also the polar opposite of his clear and precise thought”. 21 Grenier (1928: 141), “The sensational event of the next Congress must be, it seems, the revelation by Mr. Trombetti, of Bologna, of the secret of the Etruscan language. The newspapers have been announcing it for a month. And the scholars are waiting. There will certainly be a crowd at Mr. Trombetti’s communication”. 22 The New York Times (07/07/1929), 27: “A. Trombetti, Etruscan scholar Italian Linguist Succumbs to a Heart Attack While Bathing at the Lido. Knowledge lost with him. He Had Labored 30 Years on the Ancient Tongue of Etruria and Was About to Reveal Secrets.” 23 See Benelli (2015: 97). 24 See e.g. Michetti (2007). 25 Pallottino (1928).

The Etruscan question 135 26 On Il Messaggero (11/07/1929) and on Il Campanaccio, the newspaper of the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti of Pavia (12/07/1929), plus an overall assessment of his work (‘L’eredità scientifica di Alfredo Trombetti’) in Il Giornale d’Italia (10/12/1929). 27 Pallottino (1930). 28 See De Simone (2007: 52). 29 Pallottino (1984: 413): “L’episodio era destinato a restare in qualche modo isolato ed irripetibile: la sua impostazione di metodo, aperta ai più vari confronti esterni, poté anzi presentarsi come un pericoloso, anche se male interpretato, esempio per le divagazioni dei dilettanti.” (1st edn. 1942). 30 Pareti (1928a: 19). 31 Trombetti (1928: X). 32 Bottiglioni (1929: 262 and 269): “Chi scorre le versioni del T., in troppi casi, non trova ragioni sufficienti per preferirle a quelle dei suoi predecessori […] Que[i risultati] ch’egli sembra ritenere sicuri, sono per me soltanto molto probabili;” “si ha l’impressione ch’egli, nonostanti i suoi fermi propositi, non riesca a dominare quella trepida ansia che coglie il ricercatore quando fruga nell’ignoto. È una specie di febbre scientifica che gli toglie serenità e spesso lo allontana dalla meta.” 33 Pisani (1929). 34 Pisani (1929: 125), “Per potere assentire al professore bolognese […] occorre avere una fede robusta nel suo sistema etimologico, fede che confessiamo candidamente di non possedere […] Non voglio negare con ciò che il T. possa qua e là avere imbroccato il senso di qualche parola […] Ciò non significa però che siamo avanzati anche di poco verso la soluzione, poiché non esiste alcuna dimostrazione delle interpretazioni proposte dal T.” It is worth quoting another long, amusing passage: “Ma intanto, potrà dire qualcuno, visto che coi metodi scientifici poco si riesce a capire dell’etrusco, accontentiamoci di quel poco che ha ottenuto il Trombetti: sarà qualche cosa. Padrone […] Anche i geroglifici egiziani hanno occupato per varî secoli la mente degli studiosi prima che li si potesse comprendere; […] il nostro accomodabile lettore avrebbe potuto andare a letto colla coscienza tranquilla avendo appreso da Atanasio Kircher che una certa iscrizione significava, nientedimeno, ‘La vita delle cose dopo la sconfitta di Tifone, l’umidità della natura grazie alla sorveglianza di Anubis’ – solo che, una volta scoperto il deciframento dei geroglifici, si è potuto stabilire che il modesto significato di essa era in realtà ‘Osiride dice’” [Pisani (1929: 126)]. Later on, in his great work on ancient languages, Pisani was more sympathetic towards the former colleague, and assessed his work as “Arbitrario e in parte fantastico, ma qua e là con buone analisi” [Pisani (1964: 306)]. 35 Sayce (1928: 378). 36 Cortsen (1935: 166), “the method can be downright dangerous for the correct interpretation”; see also Cortsen (1932). 37 See Parise (1992), Harari (2012: 214), and Barbanera (2015: 132–8). 38 Ducati (1927). 39 Ducati (1928a, 1928b). 40 See Benelli (2015: 99–102). 41 QC: 366 = PN2: 85, “Nelle scienze in generale il metodo è la cosa più importante: in certe scienze poi, che necessariamente devono basarsi su un corredo ristretto di dati positivi, ristretto e non omogeneo, le quistioni di metodo sono ancor più importanti, se non sono addirittura tutto”; “Ha il Trombetti trovato un nuovo metodo? Questa è la quistione. Questo nuovo metodo fa proseguire la scienza più del vecchio, interpreta meglio ecc.? Niente di tutto ciò.”

136  Massimiliano Di Fazio 42 QC: 365 = PN2: 85, “l’Etrusco continui a essere indecifrato come prima e che tutto si riduca a un ennesimo tentativo fallito.” 43 “Il Bartoli ha trovato un nuovo metodo, ma esso non può far chiasso interpretando l’etrusco; il Trombetti invece afferma di aver decifrato l’etrusco, quindi risolto uno dei più grandi e appassionanti enigmi della storia: applausi, popolarità, aiuti economici ecc.” 44 See Rosiello (2010), Buey (2010: 232) (“Gramsci’s main lesson is a methodological one”). It has been rightly pointed out that Gramsci’s main note on Lorianism is supplemented by the short note on Cuvier’s bone (“From the little bone of a mouse sometimes a sea serpent was reconstructed”: Q1§26), which “suggests that the ‘scientific’ methods of ‘Lorians’ resemble those of some misguided paleontologist whose misuse of empirical evidence leads to erroneous, even bizarre conclusions” (PN1: 44). 45 De Mauro (2010: 262). 46 Carlucci (2014: 153–4). See also Schirru (2011: 950), and more recently Boothman (2019). 47 Pareti (1928b), Pareti (1928c), and Pareti (1928d). 48 Q3§74 = QC: 352, “L’innovazione del Bartoli è appunto questa, che della linguistica, concepita grettamente come scienza naturale, ha fatto una scienza storica, le cui radici sono da cercare «nello spazio e nel tempo» e non nell’apparato vocale fisiologicamente inteso”. See Borghese (2010: 144). 49 See Orlandi (2007: 74). 50 The stern review of Croce (1905) is an interesting reading because it seems that some of Trombetti’s features (for instance the extraordinary advertising in the newspapers) were already active in those years. 51 See already Croce (1905: 407): “La monogenesi fa pensare confusamente a padre Adamo; e si ha voglia ad essere miscredenti, certe cose fanno piacere. Di qui gran parte della curiosità che ha destato, e della popolarità che si è acquistata, sin dal primo annunzio, la cosiddetta scoperta del Trombetti.” 52 Haack (2016) offers an overview of Etruscan studies between the two wars. 53 Benelli (2015: 101), “L’archeologia e la linguistica non erano affatto, in quegli anni, scienze neutre; anche i risultati prodotti dallo studioso più onesto e distaccato dall’ideologia del suo tempo potevano essere, da altri, usati in modo efficace in chiave ideologica.” 54 Ulf (2017: 23). On the topic see especially Haack (2012). 55 Haack (2013: 399). 56 Harari (2012: 214); Barbanera (2015: 132–8). 57 Benelli (2016: 231–3); more balanced Harari (2012: 412). 58 Harari (2012); Benelli (2016: 231). But see for instance Giardina (2002), with a different view. In this perspective, it is interesting to read the entry ‘Etruschi’ in the Enciclopedia Italiana [see Neppi Modona et al. (1932)], a cultural enterprise notoriously controlled by the fascist regime [see Cagnetta (1990)]: the entry, written by Etruscologists such as Aldo Neppi Modona, Giacomo Devoto, Luigi Pareti, and Pericle Ducati, plus an historian of religions (Nicola Turchi) and a numismatist (Secondina Lorenzina Cesano), shows contradictions and lack of agreement among the authors. In the same entry, in two different paragraphs, Pareti wrote: “Di fronte alla vecchia tesi archeologica filo-erodotea (della migrazione dall’Oriente), dinnanzi all’evidenza dei fatti, si va, adagio adagio, facendo strada un’altra tesi, che pare assai più consona ai risultati degli scavi, tesi che diremo degli ‘autoctonisti’”; Ducati wrote: “Appaiono adunque qua e là innestati nel rude patrimonio culturale degli antichi Italici della civiltà villanoviana elementi nuovi di probabile provenienza orientale.” There was no apparent imposed theory or view, at least about the Etruscans.

The Etruscan question 137 59 Trombetti (1927), to which the historian reacted in a paper that we have already quoted [Pareti (1928a)]. 60 Benelli (2016: 232–3). 61 Pallottino (1984: 90) and Haack (2013: 398–9). But see Harari (2012: 412–3) for another contradiction in Ducati, between the orientalistic theory and his ‘patriotic’ view of Etruscan art as influential on Italian art of the Renaissance. 62 It is not easy to find information about her. Biographical notes were written by her brother in the introduction of a posthumous collection of poems [Ducati (1941)]. A short obituary is Crocioni (1941). 63 Ducati (1941: 9): “Tu, ormai mamma, volesti essere scolara nell’antico Studio bolognese di un glorioso Maestro, e ne diventasti la sua diletta allieva.” 64 Novaro Ducati (1929a), Novaro Ducati (1929b, 1929c). 65 Historia was born in connection with the journal Il Popolo d’Italia in 1927 as a continuation of the Studi storici per l’antichità classica founded by Ettore Pais, and was directed by Carolina Lanzani, a pupil of Pais [see Nelis (2006)]. Gerarchia was a monthly review founded (1922) by Mussolini himself, and edited first by him and later by Margherita Sarfatti, with a selected circle of collaborators chosen among loyal fascists [see Lucaroni (2015)]. 66 On one side of one of these examples, in the copy of the journal stored in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome, an anonymous left in pen, with a writing typical of several decades ago, this ironic comment: “Bella roba!”. 67 This matches the memory reported by Giulio Buonamici in his obituary in Studi Etruschi, according to which Trombetti in his inaugural lecture at the University of Bologna in 1914 proclaimed that he had among other purposes “quello nobilissimo di liberare la scienza italiana dal servaggio straniero” [Buonamici (1930: 337)]. 68 Although her paper seems not to have been epoch-making: there is no reference in the chronicles [see Actes (1930)], nor was it published in the proceedings. 69 “Era un abile nuotatore. Nello sforzo, per lui leggero, di attraversare l’ondata assai alta che quasi travolse il mio bimbo, la morte, senza dolore, senza spavento, fermò in un attimo i battiti di quel generoso cuore, abituato a sacrificare tutto alla Patria, alla Scienza, alla famiglia.” 70 It was of course Pericle who wrote her biography in the introduction to her posthumous collection of poems [Novaro Ducati (1941)].

Bibliography Actes (1930) Actes du premier Congrès international de linguistes à La Haye, du 10-15 Avril, 1928. Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. Avalli, A. (2019) ‘La Question étrusque dans l’Italie fasciste’, Anabases, 29, 360–5. Bagnasco Gianni, G. (2012) ‘Origine degli Etruschi’, in Bartoloni, G. (ed.) Introduzione all’Etruscologia. Milan: Hoepli, 47–81. Ballini, A. (1930) ‘Alfredo Trombetti’, Aevum, 4, 199–259. Barbanera, M. (2015) Storia dell’archeologia classica in Italia. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Bellelli, V. (ed.) (2012) Le origini degli Etruschi. Storia Archeologia Antropologia. Rome: L’«Erma» di Bretschneider. Benelli, E. (2015) ‘Epigrafia e lingua etrusca fra Pauli e Buonamici’, in Haack, M.-L. and M. Miller (eds.) La construction de l’étruscologie au début du XXème siècle. Bordeaux: Ausonius, 93–103.

138  Massimiliano Di Fazio Benelli, E. (2016) ‘La linguistica etrusca in Italia: 1928-1942’, in Haack, M.-L. (ed.) Les Étrusques au temps du fascisme et du nazisme. Bordeaux: Ausonius, 229–39. Boothman, D. (2011) ‘The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony’, in Green, M.E. (ed.) Rethinking Gramsci. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 55–67. Boothman, D. (2019) ‘Gramsci: Structure of Language, Structure of Ideology’, in Antonini F. et al. (eds.) Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks. Leiden and New York, NY: Brill, 65–81. Borghese, L. (2010) ‘Aunt Alene on Her Bicycle: Antonio Gramsci as Translator from German and as Translator Theorist’, in Ives, P. and R. Lacorte (eds.) Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 135–70. Bottiglioni, G. (1929) ‘Alfredo Trombetti, La lingua etrusca’, Athenaeum, 7, 253–70. Buey, F.F. (2010) ‘Language and Politics in Gramsci’, in Ives, P. and R. Lacorte (eds.) Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 227–42. Buonamici, G. (1930) ‘Alfredo Trombetti’, Studi Etruschi, 4, 337–9. Cagnetta, M. (1990) Antichità classiche nell’Enciclopedia Italiana. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Carlucci, A. (2014) Gramsci and Languages. Unification, Diversity, Hegemony. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Cortsen, S.P. (1932) ‘Zur etruskischen Sprachkunde’, in Symbolae philologicae O. A. Danielsson octogenario dicatae. Uppsala: A.B. Lundequist, 43–61. Cortsen, S.P. (1935) ‘Literaturbericht 1928-1934: Etruskisch’, Glotta, 23, 145–87. Croce, B. (1905) ‘Alfredo Trombetti – L’unità d’origine del linguaggio’, La Critica, 3, 406–8. Crocioni, G. (1941) ‘Commemorazione della socia Gabriella Novaro Ducati’, Atti e Memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Emilia e la Romagna, 4, 283. D’Orsi, A. (1999) ‘Lo studente che non divenne “Dottore”: Gramsci all’Università di Torino’, Studi Storici, 40, 39–75. De Mauro, T. (1964), ‘Bartoli, Matteo Giulio’, DBI, 6. [Online] Available at: https:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/matteo-giulio-bartoli_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). De Mauro, T. (2010) ‘Some Notes on Gramsci the Linguist’, in Ives, P. and R. Lacorte (eds.) Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 255–66. De Simone, C. (2007) ‘Pallottino e la lingua etrusca’, in Michetti, L. (ed.) Massimo Pallottino a dieci anni dalla scomparsa. Rome: Quasar, 51–8. Ducati, P. (1927) ‘Il convegno nazionale etrusco’, Historia, 5, 96–104. Ducati, P. (1928a) ‘Il primo congresso internazionale etrusco’, Nuova Antologia, 260, 196–205. Ducati, P. (1928b) ‘Il I Congresso Internazionale Etrusco’, Historia, 6, 450–60. Ducati, P. (1941) ‘Mia sorella’, in Novaro Ducati, G. (ed.) Chi mi ridesta? Florence: Marzocco, 5–17. Faucci, R. and S. Perri (2006) ‘ Loria, Achille ’, DBI, 66. [Online] Available at: https:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/achille-loria_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Giardina, A. (2002) ‘Archeologia’, in de Grazia, V. and S. Luzzatto (eds.) Dizionario del fascismo. Vol. 1. Turin: Einaudi, 86–90. Grenier, A. (1928) ‘Le Congrès International d’archéologie à Florence (27 Avril5 mai 1928)’, Revue Archéologique, 28, 138–41.

The Etruscan question 139 Haack, M.-L. (2012) ‘Le Problème des origines étrusques dans l’entre-deux-guerres’, in Bellelli, V. (ed.) Le origini degli Etruschi. Storia Archeologia Antropologia. Rome: L’«Erma» di Bretschneider, 397–410. Haack, M.-L. (2013) ‘Modern Approaches to Etruscan Culture’, in MacIntosh Turfa, J. (ed.) The Etruscan World. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1136–45. Haack, M.-L. (ed.) (2016) Les Étrusques au temps du fascisme et du nazisme. Bordeaux: Ausonius. Haack, M.-L. and M. Miller (eds.) (2015) La Construction de l’étruscologie au début du XXème siècle. Bordeaux: Ausonius. Harari, M. (2012) ‘Etruscologia e fascismo’, Athenaeum, 100, 405–18. Imbornone, J.S. (2009), ‘lorianismo, loriani’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.), Dizionario gramsciano 1926-1937. Rome: Carocci. [Online] Available at: http:// dizionario.gramsciproject.org/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Ives, P. (2004) Language and Hegemony in Gramsci. London: Pluto Press. Ives, P. and R. Lacorte (eds.) (2010) Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Lo Piparo, F. (1979) Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Lucaroni, G. (2015) ‘Appunti sulla “rivoluzione fascista”, «Gerarchia», 1922-1943’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 99(3), 923–43. Manacorda, D. (1989), ‘ Della Seta, Alessandro ’, DBI, 37. [Online] Available at: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alessandro-della-seta_%28DizionarioBiografico%29 (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Michetti, L.M. (ed.) (2007) Massimo Pallottino a dieci anni dalla scomparsa. Rome: Quasar. Michetti, L.M. (2015) ‘La première chaire d’Etruscologie à l’Université de Rome’, in Haack, M.L. and M. Miller (eds.) La construction de l’étruscologie au début du XXème siècle. Bordeaux: Ausonius, 39–63. Nelis, J. (2006) ‘Tra Pais e fascismo: Carolina Lanzani, la rivista Historia e il mito della romanità: Con fonti inedite’, Rivista Storica dell’Antichità, 36, 277–95. Neppi Modona, A. et al. (1932), “Etruschi”, in Enciclopedia Italiana, 14. [Online] Available at: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/etruschi_%28EnciclopediaItaliana%29/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Novaro Ducati, G. (1929a) ‘Alfredo Trombetti. La lingua etrusca’, Historia, 7(1), 143–8. Novaro Ducati, G. (1929b) ‘Alfredo Trombetti’, Historia, 7(3), 492–9. Novaro Ducati, G. (1929c) ‘Un grande glottologo. Alfredo Trombetti Accademico d’Italia’, Gerarchia, 9, 535–9. Novaro Ducati, G. (1941) Chi mi ridesta? Florence: Marzocco. Orlandi, C. (2007) ‘La riflessione linguistica nei Quaderni del carcere’, Lares, 73, 55–87. [Online] Available at: http://igsitalia.org/images/Allegati/Terzo_Convegno_ Internazione_IGS/orlandi.pdf (Accessed: 21 August 2020). Pallottino, M. (1928) ‘Alfredo Trombetti, La lingua etrusca’, Bull. Com. Arch, 66, 155–8. Pallottino, M. (1930) ‘Nuovi contributi alla soluzione del problema etrusco (dalle ultime note manoscritte di A. Trombetti’, Studi Etruschi, 4, 193–216. Pallottino, M. (1984) Etruscologia. 7th edn. [1st edn. 1942]. Milan: Hoepli. Pareti, L. (1928a) ‘Revisioni storiche e paletnologiche II’, Atene e Roma, 9, 3–19. Pareti, L. (1928b) ‘Alla vigilia del I Congresso Internazionale etrusco’, Il Marzocco, 33(18), 1.

140  Massimiliano Di Fazio Pareti, L. (1928c) ‘Dopo il Congresso etrusco’, Il Marzocco, 33(20), 1. Pareti, L. (1928d) ‘Consensi e dissensi storici archeologici al Congresso etrusco’, Il Marzocco, 33(21), 1–2. Parise, N. (1989) ‘Ducati, Pericle’, DBI, 41. [Online] Available at: https://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/pericle-ducati_(Dizionario-Biografico) (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Pisani, V. (1929) ‘Divagazioni etrusche’, Nuova Antologia, 264, 123–27. Pisani, V. (1964) Le lingue dell’Italia antica oltre il latino. 2nd edn. Milano: Rosenberg & Sellier. Ragona, G. (2011) ‘Achille Loria: pietà per la sua scienza’, in d’Orsi, A. (ed.) Il nostro Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci a colloquio con i protagonisti della storia d’Italia. Rome: Viella, 235–42. Rosiello, L. (2010) ‘Linguistics and Marxism in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci’, in Ives, P. and R. Lacorte (eds.) Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 29–50. Sayce, A.H. (1928) ‘La lingua etrusca. By A. Trombetti. Florence, 1928’, Antiquity, 2(7), 378–80. Schirru, G. (2011) ‘Antonio Gramsci studente di linguistica’, Studi Storici, 52, 925–73. Schirru, G. (2016) Appunti Di Glottologia 1912-1913. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Tagliavini, C. (1928) ‘Il I Congresso internazionale dei Linguisti all’Aja (10-14 Aprile 1928)’, Aevum, 2(4), 691–7. Tagliavini, C. (1937), “Trombetti, Alfredo”, in Enciclopedia Italiana, 37. [Online] Available at: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alfredo-trombetti_%28EnciclopediaItaliana%29/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Trombetti, A. (1927a) ‘La lingua etrusca e le lingue preindoeuropee del Mediterraneo’, Studi Etruschi, 1, 213–38. Trombetti, A. (1927b) ‘La lingua etrusca e gli studi storici’, Historia, 1, 58–76. Trombetti, A. (1928) La lingua etrusca. Rome: Rinascimento del Libro. Ulf, C. (2017) ‘An Ancient Question: The Origin of the Etruscans’, in Naso, A. (ed.) Etruscology. Boston and Berlin: de Gruyter, 11–34.

6

Polybios and the rise of Rome Gramscian hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution Emma Nicholson

Polybios’ Histories represent the work of a survivor of radical political upheaval. They comprise the first struggles of a member of a subaltern group to comprehend, negotiate, and define their position following the chaos brought about by a new configuration of power (the rise of Rome). This process of comprehension and negotiation sets out the parameters of a new discourse on imperial leadership and the position of the Greeks under Roman rule that would continue on long after Polybios in the Republican and Imperial periods (for instance, with Poseidonios, Dionysios of Halicarnassos, Josephos, and Appian).1 Some two millennia later, the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci personally experienced and investigated the political changes that brought about the ‘modern’ Italian state via the Risorgimento and the subsequent rise of Fascism in the XX century. This investigation resulted in new conceptualisations of hegemony, the relationship between dominant and subaltern groups, and the role of individuals in facilitating or hindering such relationships. Polybios and Gramsci were both, therefore, interested in political change and the mechanisms of state development, and this chapter aims to explore how they and their thoughts might relate to each other. It will focus on Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, intellectuals and passive revolution, and how these might be useful in thinking about the nature of Rome’s rise to power in the Greek East, the relationships the Romans developed with the Greek states, and Polybios’ own contribution to the settlement of a new world order. The results of this study will contribute to discussions of Greeks under Roman rule, the establishment and maintenance of empire, and the applicability of Gramscian concepts more universally to time-periods and states beyond early XX century Italy. Until now, Polybios and Gramsci have never been directly connected in scholarship. While they are sometimes mentioned in the same works, and even inhabit the same breath in discussions of Machiavelli’s influence on Gramsci – Polybios inspired the former’s notions about Fortune in The Prince and the nature of republics in Discourses on Livy – no study of how they might relate to each other has yet been made. This gap in the scholarship is not surprising since Gramsci does not openly engage with the

142  Emma Nicholson Hellenistic historian anywhere in his pre-prison or prison works: Polybios is mentioned only once, and in passing, in the Quaderni in reference to Charles V and his recommended reading list (Q5§95). 2 This need not indicate anything more than Gramsci’s limited access to basic scholarly resources and texts, yet it proves beneficial to this study. Their indirect connection reveals similarities of theme and lines of thought which allow us to posit comparisons without incurring the dangers of circular reasoning. Let us first consider Gramsci’s concepts and their applicability to the ancient world before turning to Polybios and the rise of Rome.

Gramsci’s concepts: hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution A detailed discussion of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is not appropriate here and has been outlined elsewhere in this volume.3 However, some contextualisation is needed to explore Rome’s rise to power in the II century BCE in Gramscian terms and to understand the role of intellectuals and passive revolution within a state system. The coherency of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony within his Quaderni was affected by prison life yet began from “certain constant connotations of the concept”:4 the progressive formation of alliances focused around a given social group, the transition of a state from the economic-corporative to the political (Q13§17), the particular to the universal. The achievement of hegemony, moreover, by a particular group requires two expressions of power: the political ‘domination’ (dominio) of the subaltern classes by the hegemonic class, but also its correct balancing with ‘intellectual and moral leadership’ (direzione) to garner goodwill and consent (Q19§24).5 The production of consent (usually through compromise) is crucial to hegemonic success and maintaining a stable and coherent state following the establishment of political and military control (Q10i§12).6 This ‘ethico-political’ aspect of hegemony is dependent on ‘intellectuals’ who develop alongside the ruling class and function for its benefit. These Gramsci defined as anyone whose role in society is primarily that of organising, administering, directing, educating, or leading others (Q12§1), for example managers, civil servants, the clergy, teachers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc.7 While Gramsci saw the production of intellectuals organic to the dominant group as the quickest and most effective way of establishing hegemonic security, assimilating and conquering ‘ideologically’ the intellectuals from the subaltern groups was the most important step in securing it.8 This ‘transforms’ leaders and organisers of men who might resist the dominant group into allies and they thereby become “‘deputies’ exercising the functions of social hegemony and political government” (Q12§1).9 Connected with intellectuals and hegemony is the concept of ‘passive revolution’. In its developed sense, Gramsci saw it as an analytical tool, a ‘criterion of interpretation’, rather than a practical programme for successful

Polybios and the rise of Rome 143 state development. It could describe any historical situation in which new political formations come to power without a fundamental reordering of social relations (Q15§62).10 Where hegemony is achieved through political and social reform, acclimatisation, integration, and ideological change rather than violence and open class warfare. Gramsci had adopted the concept of passive revolution from Vincenzo Cuoco (1770–1823), who had envisaged this mode of revolution only being successful in constructing a new state structure if it was led by the bourgeoisie and deliberately excluded the involvement of the masses.11 Gramsci disapproved of such a top-down approach, however, since he observed that the exclusion of the masses produced a ‘passive’ citizenry unengaged in leadership and policymaking. Policies are then accepted passively by the masses through the influence of the ‘transformed’ subaltern leaders/intellectuals rather than through direct engagement (Q10ii§44). This is evidenced, he thought, by the actions of the Italian Moderates, a loose grouping of bourgeois MPs in the late XIX century, who in the aftermath of the Italian unification gained power by allying themselves with the traditional Italian ruling groups (the Piedmont leaders, their armies, the northern industrialists, and southern landowners) and ruled without engaging with the working classes (Q10ii§61). Gramsci’s main critique of top-down ‘passive revolution’ is that it produces a fragile configuration of power and ‘incomplete hegemony’ since it excludes the will of certain groups of people under its umbrella; it does not eliminate the old power structures to create a new normative and inclusive language, ideology or politico-social context. It is more likely, therefore, to face pressures from the underlying local ideologies, economic situations, and worldviews of the subordinate groups that are not engaged with.12 While Gramsci thought hegemony based on top-down passive revolution could be effective in some cases, notably in the Jacobean revolution which incorporated the interests of the masses into the programme of reform, it has a tendency to be tenuous and is in danger of being consumed by the resistance of the subaltern groups, as the hegemony established by the Italian Moderates proved. In 2010, Callinicos argued that a tendency to over-extend the concept of passive revolution beyond its original setting of the Italian Risorgimento by both Gramsci and later scholars has led to a loss of analytical rigour and critical purpose. However, this assessment overlooks Gramsci’s own expansive use of it himself, which Voza and Thomas have fruitfully analysed.13 Scholars such as Morton, Hesketh and Thomas also do not see the adaptation of such a term to other periods and geographies as problematic, provided that a form of critical consciousness of the time and place from which the theory emerged is retained.14 While bearing in mind the problems of over-generalisation pointed out by Callinicos, this more expansive interpretation of passive revolution, based on Gramsci’s own formulation of it, is more convincing and this chapter subscribes to this more flexible approach. Removing the concept of passive revolution from its modern European setting, therefore, and applying it to the II century BCE Mediterranean

144  Emma Nicholson should not be overly problematic; it has already been transposed to other historical periods and places, for instance, to XVII century Scotland by Neil Davidson, to XIX century Canada by Ian G. MacKay, to XX century Mexico by Morton and Hesketh, to XXI century Germany by Ian Bruff, to new Russia by Rick Simon, and to contemporary China by Kevin Gray.15 On the other hand, while passive revolution has been taken up apace in the study of the more recent past, it has not yet been used to consider any time or part of the ancient world; this chapter, if only in a preliminary fashion, will be the first to test such an attempt. Moreover, while the application of Gramsci’s concepts to international political settings has been a point of contention among scholars, in more recent years it has been gaining support and currency. Morton’s ground-breaking work, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony, Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (2007) outlined how Gramsci’s theories can be successfully applied to a larger global scale, and Ives and Short have defended the use of Gramsci’s theories in international relations and challenged the presumption of a disjuncture between the domestic and international in political affairs.16 This chapter takes a similar stance since the distinction between domestic and international politics in the ancient world was blurred, and there is the same quest to establish and maintain hegemony for those acting in a national setting as for those acting in an international one. The differences primarily lie in the size, resources, and political independence of the politico-social structures involved, whether they be larger states or smaller social groupings within them.17 International and national structures both involve dominant and subaltern groups, as well as agents from each working between the two, primarily in the interest of their own social context. The most crucial and distinctive dimensions of hegemony and passive revolution will also prove useful in this ancient setting – their consideration of state formation and sustainability, and the nature and consequences of the relationships forged between dominant and subaltern groups.18 Regarding the concept of intellectuals, Gramsci says little about their nature and development in the ancient world. In a lone short passage at Q8§22, he first outlines how Plato’s philosopher kings might be translated as ‘intellectuals’ in a modern sense and that the philosopher’s utopia foreshadows mediaeval feudalism, and then attributes Caesar with creating the category of ‘imperial’ intellectuals (by conferring citizenship on doctors and teachers of the liberal arts; cf. Suet. Iul. 42.1).19 These ‘imperial’ intellectuals, he stresses, continue in the form of the Catholic clergy and leave many traces throughout the history of Italian intellectuals with their ‘cosmopolitan’ nature until the XVIII century. The classification of intellectuals was not, therefore, dependent on time-period, but on their function within society. They are a universal phenomenon across time and space. Later in the Quaderni, however, Gramsci openly states that the formation of intellectuals in feudal societies and the classical world is a question to be examined separately (Q12§1). Unfortunately, however, Gramsci never

Polybios and the rise of Rome 145 takes up the discussion himself. Yet, this is one area in which some headway has been made in recent years. In 2000, Benedetto Fontana saw such a figure in Cicero and considered Rome’s expansion into Italy and its spread of civitas among its Italian subjects to be a clear development of ‘civil society’ in ancient Italy.20 Rome had transitioned from the enforcement of her will on subjects to the creation of associations and consent with those who came under the umbrella of her influence. She had therefore moved, in Gramscian terms, from a narrowly economic and corporate interest to a hegemonic one.21 Cicero, as an Italian, but also a Roman whose family had acquired citizenship several generations earlier (Arpinum got the Roman franchise in 188 BCE and Cicero was born in 106), is pointed out as a clear example of a national-popular intellectual in this politico-social situation.22 He had also applied the Stoic idea of the universal fatherland, as opposed to individual fatherlands of each allied state, to the Roman and Italian political setting, and in doing so had created a new idea of what it meant to be a member of the Roman state.23 Therefore, Cicero had moved into the domain of the dominant, ruling group from his own subordinate social one, and thereby influenced the development of both his own class and Roman state by a dialectical discourse.24 Fontana’s categorisation of Cicero as an intellectual opens the field for further consideration of ancient figures as ‘intellectuals’ in Gramscian terms.

Polybios and the Greek world in the II century BCE The position of Polybios and the Greek world in the II century BCE was very different from that of Cicero and his I century BCE Italy. In the 150 years that separated these two individuals, the Mediterranean had changed considerably. By the I century BCE, Rome’s Italian allies had already experienced the political and cultural domination of Rome, but also her endeavours to sustain this dominance by the encouragement of ‘civil’ or ‘ethico-political’ hegemony (for instance, by the cultivation of an Italic identity and distribution of citizenship) and thereby to create a more stable and unified state. 25 The process had started in the IV century BCE and ended with the Social War of 91-88 BCE. 26 Later, of course, Rome would become very effective at integrating foreign states further afield, those in the eastern and western Mediterranean, into its governing structures following military conquest and a similar process of cultural integration and negotiation, and the distribution of citizenship. By the II century AD, much of the Mediterranean was incorporated into the Roman Empire and benefited from its rule. Yet, the Greeks of the II century BCE lived at the very beginning of Rome’s hegemonic rise in the East, when violence and cultural misunderstandings were still commonplace (mainland Greece would not become a Roman province until 27 BCE), 27 and the dust of conquest had not yet settled to allow for the cultivation of peaceful coexistence and the generation of goodwill and consent.

146  Emma Nicholson Our knowledge of Rome’s rise in the East is primarily supplied by Polybios who was contemporary with the latter part of it and by Livy (59 BCE-17 CE), who often relied on Polybius’ work in his account of Eastern affairs.28 Other contemporary writers and chroniclers of the period have been almost entirely lost, so we are constrained by the agenda and perspectives of these two men. The perspective of Polybios is particularly unusual, however, as it comes from the camp of the recently defeated rather than that of the victors and may give us a more realistic impression of how Rome’s rising supremacy affected certain parts and members of the Greek East. Moreover, Polybios occupied a privileged position by sitting between Greece and Rome as an ex-leading figure of the Achaian League, a detainee at Rome for 17 years, mentor to Scipio Aemilianus, and mediator in settling a number of Greek states to Roman rule (see below for more detail).29 His view of Rome’s encroachment in the East, while undoubtedly influenced by his own background and political perspective, is therefore reasonably well informed and his work has subsequently commanded the respect of many since antiquity for its relative commitment to truthfulness, rationality, and reliability. The Histories also represent the perspective of a subaltern group at the very beginning of its relationship with a dominant one. In this regard, Polybios’ experience of the Romans will prove to be something altogether different to Cicero’s relationship with the ruling group, since his Italian social grouping had already experienced centuries of integration and compromise. Further study of the two may offer new insights into how the role of ‘intellectuals’ changes with hegemonic development; however, this must be an investigation for another time. For now, let us turn to Polybios’ view of the process of Rome’s rise in the East and his thoughts on their leadership. According to Polybios, Roman preponderance in the Greek East was consolidated after a series of wars against the Antigonid and Seleucid kings in the early II century BCE (Polyb. 1.1.5; 3.1.9–10). Following the Roman victory over Perseus of Macedon in 168, the eastern Mediterranean would no longer be structured around a multipolar system of Hellenistic kingdoms, but around a unipolar one with states subordinate to Rome. While the Romans had stopped short of annexing the Greek East in the II century, however, Polybios makes it clear that genuine and long-lasting consent, or ‘goodwill’ (εὔνοια), had not been generated and that violence and resistance were still strong features of the Graeco-Roman relationship. This is evident when, in the preface of Book 3, he explains that he will be expanding his work beyond its original conclusion of the defeat of Macedon in 168 (Polyb. 3.4.8–12) to the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 so that he can document and assess the attitude and conduct of the winners after their victory, how they ruled over their subordinates, and how acceptable their subordinates found their domination. He states:

Polybios and the rise of Rome 147 In fact, educationally speaking, this will prove to be the most important aspect of my work, now and in the future. For neither rulers nor those who express opinions about them should think of victory and overall dominion as the goal of military action… No one gains expertise either, or learns a skill, just in order to master it; every action is only ever done for the sake of the future pleasure or good or profit it will bring the agent. So my work will be complete when it has clarified how all the various peoples felt from the time when the Romans’ victories had brought them worldwide dominion, up to the disturbed and troubled period that came afterwards.30 Frank Walbank once found the alleged purpose of this extension puzzling:31 in drawing attention to the elongation of the narrative beyond 168, Polybios, he states, would seem to imply that the defeat of Macedon had not proved final, but that “the Roman victory had somehow been reversed and the defeated powers… had turned their setback into success by their firm reaction to it. But that is manifestly untrue…” If we reconsider this passage through the lens of Gramsci’s dual concept of hegemony, however, something different is suggested about Polybios’ thoughts on successful imperial rule: there were two components to it.32 Victory and domination, he outlines, were not the ultimate goals of military action, but the first steps in consolidating an empire. Moral and upstanding leadership was also needed to create lasting and self-sustaining ‘goodwill’ (εὔνοια) among its subjects.33 For instance, Polybios praises Philip II for his military successes but also for his magnanimity and benevolence because these two sets of qualities allowed him to fight for and build the Macedonian Empire (5.10.1–5; cf. 8.9–11). His depiction of other ‘good’ leaders similarly focuses on these dual qualities in the same way, suggesting that this type of leader and leadership based on military supremacy and the subsequent generation of goodwill by magnanimous and conciliatory behaviour is the best way to build and maintain an empire.34 In contrast, the opposite is drawn out in the case of Philip V who is militarily very successful but behaves tyrannically and treacherously towards his associates and thereby generates ill-will and resistance towards his rule. This ill-will, according to Polybios, was one of the main reasons for the Macedonian Empire’s destruction (Polyb. 7.12–14; 15.20–24; 22.18; 23.10). Yet, while Rome had demonstrated aptitude in military leadership by its defeat of the Antigonid and Seleukid dynasties, Polybios considered the conduct of the Roman state, particularly after Pydna, to be falling short of the consensual component of successful imperial rule. The extension of his Histories draws attention to Rome’s increasing brutality, greed, and heavy-handedness.35 Polybios did not view Rome’s domination in the Greek East, therefore, to have been reversed after Pydna, as Walbank questioned, but rather her dominance to be unsupported by consent generated through

148  Emma Nicholson beneficent and moderate treatment. In Polybios’ eyes, this made Rome’s fate in the East uncertain and her dominance potentially reversible. As outlined in his cycle of constitutions in Book 6, Polybios believed that it was when a state turned to tyrannical and brutish behaviour that it was eventually forced to change its configuration through dissent and resistance (Polyb. 6.7–9).36 We will explore his response to this failing later in this chapter but must first turn back to passive revolution and how this concept may reframe the process of Rome’s rise to power in the East.

Roman dominance in the East: minimal hegemony and failed passive revolution The successive waves of conflict between Roman and Hellenic forces during the II century have been analysed by scholars in a variety of ways, but the nature of Roman imperialism during this period remains a complicated and contentious topic. Two main strands of thought have emerged to frame this debate: the view that Roman expansion was based on an aggressive and deliberate policy (headed by Harris) vs. the view that Roman expansion was based on a defensive and unintentional policy (headed by Gruen). Derow also emphasised Rome’s increasing insistence on obedience, and Eckstein, in sympathy with Gruen, moved the debate into the realm of Realist theory, viewing Rome’s conduct as unexceptional in the III and II century Mediterranean: it was merely one of many states competing in an anarchic system, and therefore naturally competitive, aggressive, fearful, and opportunistic.37 We might reconsider the successive waves of Rome’s progression eastwards in the II century BCE once again and assess how and to what extent Gramsci’s thoughts on hegemonic development and passive revolution might be useful in revisiting this discussion. Due to the constraints of space, we will focus on Rome’s relationship with the Greek states of the mainland. Rome’s dominance over the Greek East was built upon successive waves of military conflict: the Illyrian Wars (229-228; 219), the First Macedonian War (211-205 BCE), the Second Macedonian War (200-196 BCE), the Antiochean War (191-188 BCE), and the Third Macedonian War (171-168 BCE). The last of these violent encounters, Polybios claimed, established Rome as the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean (1.1.5; 3.1.9). These waves of conflict were, however, interspersed by periods of relative peace in which Rome’s preponderance over the Greek states grew, but crucially without a fundamental reordering of political and social relations (228-219; 217-211; 205-200; 194-191; 188-172; 167-150). The Roman military and diplomatic presence was completely withdrawn after each war conducted on Greek soil (228, 219, 204, 194, and 188 respectively) and the Greek states were allowed and even encouraged to maintain their politicosocial structures and govern themselves so long as they accepted Rome’s pre-eminence and agreed to preserve the political landscape that they had left behind.38 As Gruen and Eckstein have argued, Rome was reluctant

Polybios and the rise of Rome 149 to be heavily involved in Greek affairs and did not seek to fully commit to formal, long-term alliances that would convert multiple allied foreign policies into a singular purpose and direction, nor try to develop a new way of governance in the Greek world through the establishment of Roman garrisons, diplomats, or even governors.39 It is possible to see Rome’s relationship with the mainland Greek states during these intervening periods as phases of passive revolution. Yet, it was passive revolution that was not fully committed to and subsequently failed, giving way to the imposition of dominance by the larger power to an even greater degree. Rome’s initial influence in the Greek East was based on its appropriation of Greek slogans and interests. During the First Illyrian War (229-228) and particularly the Second Macedonian War (200-196 BCE), the Romans claimed that they were defenders of the Greeks and in the latter even directly consulted their Greek allies before and after the battle of Kynoskephalai in arranging a settlement with Philip V (Polyb. 18.1–12; 34, 36–39). After this victory, the Roman commander T. Quinctius Flamininus also succeeded in persuading his Roman colleagues to leave Greece free of a Roman presence. To the Greeks at the time, Polybios notes, this policy seemed an incredible act which hinted at the makings of a benevolent new hegemon who would develop a new kind of relationship with its subordinate associates and listen to and promote Greek culture and interests (Polyb. 18.45–6).40 Later in 194, Flamininus also reorganised the politico-social structure of Thessaly so that power came into the hands of the wealthy (Livy 34.5), a class of individuals who would have likely therein sided with Roman rule and been transformed into Roman partisans. Having established dominance, therefore, the Romans appeared to be balancing out their position by offering compromises to their newly acquired associates and working with their language, customs, and interests. Yet, by the end of the 190s, there was deep disaffection among many of the Greek states towards the Italian power. In 191, right before the war erupted between Antiochos and Rome, many of the Greeks (except the Achaian League) were, Livy reports, alienated from the Romans and likely to join Antiochos should he arrive on the mainland with a sufficient force to confront the western power (Livy 39.6). Although the details are unclear, it seems that the Greek idea of freedom did not match up to the Roman concept of it, and there was little attempt by the Romans to ameliorate this difference. Flamininus, despite his earlier promise of freedom and autonomy, was connected with the assassination of a pro-Macedonian boiotarch, Brachylles (Polyb. 18.43), and his mission to round up support in Greece against Antiochos in 192 failed as it was believed that the city of Demetrias, one of ‘fetters of Greece’ freed in 196 BCE, would be returned to Philip V for his assistance in the war against Antiochos. The brutality and laxity of Gnaeus Manlius Vulso’s command in Asia while fighting Antiochos also generated disillusionment with Roman power (Livy 39.6). While the Greeks and Romans had begun to learn the nuances of the other’s

150  Emma Nicholson culture, ideology, and character,41 therefore, it became clear early on that Rome was not as benevolent as originally believed and not so interested in pursuing policies that would accommodate Greek concerns beyond serving their own self-interest. Yet, the Greeks still thought that they could develop a relationship with Rome on terms of equality, dialogue, and reason (cf. the Philopoimen grouping in the Achaian League) and Polybios rightly notes that they were deceived in this belief (Polyb. 23.17). Such an assumption was based on previous interactions with larger powers, and particularly their euergetic relationship with Hellenistic kings (the mechanisms of which had been in place for centuries), as well as encouraged by Rome’s original use of this old language, the slogans of freedom and autonomy, and its initial policy of non-interference.42 Many city-states continued, therefore, to pursue their own interests as before with only limited concern for the warnings of the Romans: the Achaian League’s persistent and status-quo threatening pursuit of Sparta and Messene in the 180s and 170s only elicited cautions from the Italian power without real action and is the best documented example of Greek independence; Aitolia, Epeiros, Akarnania, and Boiotia also followed their own domestic and foreign interests.43 These policies did not align, however, with the attitude and interests of Roman power, which demanded obedience, acknowledgement of hierarchy, and maintenance of the status quo.44 This imbalance in the relationship produced disaffection, and resistance to the formulation of such a new ruler-ruled dynamic is clear in the Greeks’ support of Perseus of Macedon before the Third Macedonian War in 171. The Greeks saw Macedon as a representative of the old ways of the Greek East and hoped that if Perseus succeeded that they would be able to go back to the previous manner of dealing with higher-level states via negotiation. Perseus’ defeat in 168 BCE, however, put a decisive dent in this confidence and woke the Greeks up to the reality of Rome rule. Following the Greeks’ resistance, the Romans implemented a more hands-on approach to revolutionise their attitude by massacring or deporting to Italy thousands of Greeks considered resistant or hostile to Roman orders. In their place, a class of Greek leaders who followed the wants of the dominant group rose to power: Polybios points out Kallikrates of the Achaian League (Polyb. 30.29), Lykiskos of the Aitolians (32.4) and Charops of Epeiros (30.12; 32.5) as three examples. These Greek leaders were ‘transformed’ into partisans of Rome, brought into (if loosely) the governing nexus of the Roman Empire and helped to perpetuate the domination of the Romans in the East for the next decade (for their deaths, see Polyb. 32.4–5). These leaders would temporarily shift the relationship between Greece and Rome into the more obedient and hierarchical one that Rome desired.45 Following the failure of its earlier policy of limited intervention – the result of a difference in views on the appropriate relationship of rulers and ruled – Rome reverted to a policy of domination rather than hegemony.

Polybios and the rise of Rome 151 Rome was not interested in creating a new politico-social framework in the Greek East, a new language between rulers and ruled, and this meant that in the mid-II century it had not fulfilled the requirements of successful hegemony in this part of its empire. It depended more on domination than consent. Underlying pressures from yet unchanged or unintegrated Greek ideologies and policies regarding relationships between dominant and subordinate states, therefore, came to the surface and presented resistance to Roman rule. This resistance finally manifested in military conflict nearly twenty years later in mainland Greece and Macedonia. A generation after the defeat of the last Antigonid king and the imposition of four separate republican governments, opposition to Roman rule sprang up in Macedon once more: the Fourth Macedonian War or the Andriskos Revolt erupted in 150 and lasted two years before it was finally suppressed at a second battle of Pydna (Polyb. 36.10, 17; cf. Vell. Pat. 1.11; Diod. Sic. 32.9; Zon. 9.28). The Achaian War, instigated by the new leaders of the Achaian League, Diaios and Kritolaos, and supported by the masses and “the worst men in each of the cities”, quickly followed on its heels (Polyb. 38.9–18, 39.2–6; Paus. 7.14–16; Vell. Pat. 1.12; Flor. 2.16).46 The long-running disregard for Roman warnings about Sparta and Messene by the League and their increasing disrespect of legates in recent years had finally gone too far.47 In 146 BCE, following his defeat of Andriskos, Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus was ordered to turn south and quash Achaian disobedience; the Greeks were crushed, and Corinth was subsequently sacked. This war had also been supported by the Thebans and Chalkidians who thought, as the League had, that Rome would not intervene (Paus. 7.14.6–7, 7.15.9; Livy Per. 52; cf. Polyb. 39.6.5). The defeat would effectively stop indifference and resistance to Roman orders on the Greek mainland. It was after the violence of this conflict that Polybios, following years of exile in Rome, came to play his most significant role in reconciling and integrating the Greeks (or at least the cities of the now disbanded Achaian League) into the Roman imperial apparatus. Before we move on, we may observe from this analysis that a Gramscian understanding of hegemony is a useful lens to demonstrate that Rome’s yoyoing strategy of making war and making peace in Greece was, among other things, a result of their failure to consolidate the new political order with a strong hegemony, a true blend of coercion and consent. Following military success, Rome did not generally attempt or want to put the effort into revolutionising the politico-social machinery of the smaller Greek states, and tended to let the Greeks rule themselves provided they kept to the status quo. Yet, while it seems that some effort went into transitioning to a new system through less disruptive means, through passive revolution, at the earliest stages of this relationship, particularly in Flamininus’ initial use of the slogan of freedom and autonomy and the transformation of Greek leaders into partisans of Rome, this ultimately failed. Greek culture and thought had highly valued freedom, autonomy, and competition

152  Emma Nicholson for centuries and had specific ideas surrounding the relationship between themselves and larger powers that were difficult to change. The Hellenistic kings had developed the system and language of euergetism to work with rather than against this difficult Greek temperament; the Romans, however, were not interested in playing the game and required a very different relationship based on obedience and hierarchy. They were not willing to reconcile these attitudes through gradual reform or open to compromise in a consistent way. From this we can see that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony with its stress on superstructures was not what the Romans were after. Theirs was an imposition of power and will, a form of domination rather than a process of integration, and they therefore demanded supremacy, hierarchy, obedience, and as little trouble as possible. They had the power and means to quash resistance should it arise, which they did on a number of occasions. In Gramscian terms, therefore, Polybios’ II century BCE Rome had not yet learnt how to govern, or perhaps more realistically was not yet interested in governing, the East in a way that would create a coherent self-maintaining politico-social state. We have seen that Polybios’ concept of empire is dependent on political and military domination as well as moral leadership and goodwill, and that he observed the Romans not to have met the demands of the second element in their interactions with the Greeks up until the middle of the II century BCE, when he was released from his detainment in Rome. Let us now turn to his own role in establishing and shaping Roman hegemony as an intellectual, therefore, and his intention to right the balance between domination and consent.

Polybios: a ‘Gramscian’ intellectual in the II century BCE Polybios’ intellectual activity had a number of levels which changed as his own position and role in Greek and Roman society changed. In the first instance, he was a political and military leader and organiser of men in ​his original Greek context. His social class was that of the Greek ruling elite, but specifically that of Megalopolis and the circle in the Achaian League which sought to preserve as much freedom and autonomy from outside interference as possible and took a more distant and even resistant approach to Roman power, refusing to follow commanders that contravened Achaian laws (this group included the famous Philopoimen, Polybios’ father Lykortas, Polybios, Arkesilaos and Ariston of Megalopolis, Stratios of Triteia, Xenon of Patrai, and Apollonidas of Sikyon; cf. 24.8–10; 28.3.4–10, 6.1–9; 29.24.1–25.5). Polybios rose to the second highest position within the League, hipparchos, and although he participated in the Third Macedonian War on the side of the Romans, was reluctant to expend Achaian resources and offer them military support, delaying meeting up with the Roman army in Perrhaebia in 169/8 long enough that Achaian forces were no longer needed and sent away (28.13.1–5; cf. 29.24.7).

Polybios and the rise of Rome 153 Polybios’ interests, therefore, were closely bound to those of the elite group in the Achaian League who preferred to check the dominance of the Romans rather than submit to it blindly, and he could be seen in this respect as an organic intellectual of this class. Following Rome’s ascendancy in the East, Polybios’ life would change considerably as he and other Achaians more resistant to Roman power were detained in Italy after the defeat of Perseus.48 While this could have been the end of Polybios’ story, here we see an example of an intellectual from a subaltern group being ‘transformed’ (or ‘transforming’ himself) into an agent working for the dominant group. During his time in Rome, Polybios developed close connections with members of the dominant group, notably the Scipiones, even mentoring one of their number, the young Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (31.23–24.1; he is described as “our guest Polybios”, noster hospes, by Scipio in Cic. Rep. 4.3.3). Upon his return to Greece, the connections Polybios had fostered with the dominant group were not severed but continued to flourish as he was called upon on a number of occasions to advise the Romans in matters of war, even witnessing the destruction of Carthage alongside Scipio Aemilianus (Polyb. 38.19, 21–22). Later he became directly involved in the settlement of Greek cities under Roman rule following the Achaian War and the resulting destruction of Corinth in 146: Departing, they [the ten Roman commissioners] commanded Polybios to travel to the cities and to make clear any matters about which the people were in doubt until they grew accustomed to the constitution and laws. And indeed, after a certain time, he made the people accept the constitution given to them and saw to it that no difficulty on any subject arose either in public or in private from the laws… had he not worked this out carefully and drawn up the laws on the subject of common jurisdiction, all would have remained undecided and full of much confusion.49 Unfortunately, the exact nature of this settlement and Polybios’ role in it does not survive. It is clear, however, that while Polybios had been ‘transformed’ into an agent working for the establishment of Roman dominance, he was also still working for the interests of his own Greek elite class, and he even states as much at the end of his Histories: For in times of danger it is the duty of those who are Greek to help the Greeks in every way, by defending them, by cloaking faults, and by appeasing the anger of those in power, just as I myself truly did at the time of these matters [after the Achaian War]…50 Prior to this settlement, Polybios also urged the Senate (through the influence of Scipio and Cato) to review the status of the Greek detainees in Italy after 17 years and release them in c. 150 BCE (Polyb. 35.6). Following

154  Emma Nicholson the sack of Corinth in 146, it was also Polybios who placated the Romans and persuaded them not to destroy the precious works of art, statues, and honorific decrees found in the city and to return the portraits of Achaios, Aratos, and Philopoimen which had already been carried off (Polyb. 39.2– 3; Strabo 8.6.23; Plut. Phil. 21). After this activity and his settlement of Greek affairs, he was applauded throughout the Peloponnese for being an ally of the Romans and having stayed their hand against the Greeks (Paus. 8.30.8). He was conferred the highest honours in life and death for his actions (Polyb. 39.5.4–6) and had statues erected to him at Megalopolis, Tegea, Pallantion, Lykosura, Mantineia, and Olympia (dedicated by the Eleians; SIG3 686) and a relief at Cleitor.51 In this mediatory role, he initiated a dialectical discourse between ruler and ruled and urged the Romans to move towards true hegemony rather than dominance. “The fact of hegemony”, Gramsci explains, “undoubtedly presupposes that the interests and tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is being exercised are taken into account, that there is a certain equilibrium of compromise” (Q13§18).52 Polybios’ aim to mediate between Greece and Rome was assisted by another of his intellectual activities – the writing of history. This medium and venture allowed him to be involved in settling a new order through less direct means, through education which Gramsci saw as one of the primary ways of creating consent and new ways of thinking. In the very first passage of his Histories, Polybios openly expresses his view that “the soundest education and training for active politics is the study of history, and that the surest and indeed the only teacher of how to bear bravely the changes of fortune is to recall the reversals of others” (Polyb. 1.1.2). 53 In writing his Histories, therefore, Polybios intended to create awareness of the past and historical causality in his readers so that they might understand what possibilities of political action were available to them at any particular point. This correlates with Gramsci’s belief that historical awareness was an important component in arousing and ordering the political consciousness of the subaltern classes. That only once the past and historical causality has been thoroughly understood can a person realise their potential in shaping the present day and future and play an active part in modifying the world (Il Grido del Popolo, 4/05/1918; SP1: 170–3 = GR 36–39). 54 The intellectual was all-important in Gramsci’s theory of revolutionary change as it was through these individuals that the attainment of historical awareness was possible and society given a direction. Polybios’ aim to educate and bring awareness to the Greeks and Romans of their history, their present condition, and the best ways for them to move forward from crisis, therefore, clearly adheres to that of a Gramscian intellectual. The activity of writing history, however, also allowed Polybios to (at least seem to) act and speak more autonomously and independently of the Roman ruling class than he would have been able to in his intermediary

Polybios and the rise of Rome 155 function outlined above. Following his earlier statement about protecting the Greeks and cloaking faults, he states that: … on the other hand, the literary record of the events handed down to posterity should be kept free from all falsehood, so that instead of pleasing the ears of readers for the present, their minds may be reformed so that they do not frequently fall into the same errors.55 This statement is only one of many instances in the Histories where Polybios outlines the importance of truthfulness in historical accounts. 56 While such a principle was helpful for education, it crucially also allowed him the freedom to speak more openly about both sides, and in some cases even offer resistance to the dominant group. It allowed him to continue in a more comprehensive and explicit way the dialectical discourse between ruler and ruled. While Polybios appears to be writing primarily for Greeks in his description and explanation of Rome’s rise at the beginning of his work (cf. 1.3.7–8) – which may suggest that he was working more in this respect for Roman hegemony – he is also aware that Romans will read his Histories (6.11.3–9) and does not hold back from speaking to power and questioning their leadership and conduct. While the Scipiones are generally described in glowing terms (see 10.2–20 for P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus and above for Scipio Aemilianus), 57 Polybios criticises other Romans for their failures and disreputable conduct throughout his work (note, for instance, Gaius Atilius Regulus at 1.35, Tiberius Sempronius Longus at 3.70, Gaius Flaminius at 3.81). The Romans are also complicit in causing the Second Punic War (3.8–10), domineering towards the Aitolian strategos in 191 concerning the Aitolian deditio in fidem (20.9.1–10.17), deceitful in their policies towards the Achaians’ attempt on Messene (23.17.3–4), wrong to keep Demetrios Seleukos from his throne in Rome (31.2.6–11, 11.7–12), and ambivalently viewed for their destruction of Carthage in 146 (36.9). Moreover, Polybios asserts that the Romans’ social and moral institutions, the very components of their society which he saw as so crucial to their rise (1.1.5; 6.2.3, 11.1–2, 18) were being corroded by power, wealth, and luxury as they adapted to imperial rule and were influenced by the peoples they conquered (cf. 18.35; 31.25.3–7).58 And the purpose of his extension from 168 to 146 was to offer his readers a chance to assess Roman conduct post-conquest and question the longevity of such a leadership model. The Histories aimed to throw a light on the deficiencies of Roman rule, exhort its readers to be aware of the negative effects of domination on imperial/state stability, illustrated clearly, for instance by the demise of the Macedonian Empire, and take up reconciliatory measures to counteract and correct this imbalance.59 His intention to modify Roman behaviour is also exemplified in his celebration of Scipio Aemilianus for his practical and moral excellence (Polyb. 31.23.5–25.1; Diod. Sic. 31.26–27), by which he encouraged the Romans to exhibit more magnanimity, generosity,

156  Emma Nicholson clemency, and fairness in their dealings with their subordinates, rather than the brutality, greed, and arrogance that had appeared in recent years. As an intellectual invested in the concerns of the Greek elite, Polybios hoped through the more truthful medium of history to modify the harsh conduct of the dominant power towards its subjects by getting the Romans to think about their ruling style and its limitations. What becomes increasingly clear is that Polybios’ work is not just, or even primarily, a historiographical and didactic piece, but a political and diplomatic one.60 Gramsci’s concept of the intellectual helps to push this view of Polybios and his intentions further, offering a more nuanced portrait of the author and his work. He recognised that Roman hegemony, in a stable form supported by both domination and consent/goodwill, had not been achieved following Macedon’s destruction in 168, nor by the Achaian War in 146 BCE. Alongside his role as mediator, therefore, Polybios hoped to set up a discourse between ruler and ruled as a historian and teacher to both Greeks and Romans that would reform this dynamic and create a more coherent and unified imperial system and with new mechanisms of interaction based on coercion and consent.

Conclusion We are so used to thinking about Polybios as a historian that at times we forget that, to himself and his contemporary audience, he was primarily an active political agent working and fighting for the elite Greek group he came from. Evaluating him in line with Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and the intellectual reminds us of this fact, and exhorts us to see his work not just as a theoretical piece, but as a practical one, aiming to produce political and global awareness and politically effective and adaptable individuals. As a Greek statesman and historian who had accepted and been integrated into the Roman imperial structure, Polybios was, in Gramscian terms, ‘transformed’ into a partisan of Rome to aid in the advancement of their dominance in the East. Yet, while tied to the dominant power, Polybios’ political aims were still based around obtaining the best possible outcome for his fellow Greeks. He therefore acted, directly and indirectly, not only to instil awareness of the historical situation and where both peoples fit into the new world order but also to begin a dialogue that would gradually change the relationship between the Romans and Greeks into a politico-ethical one. In his work, the Romans were redefined in Greek terms by Polybios’ construction of a wider time and space within the Mediterranean, but at the same time urged to treat their new Greek subjects fairly, reminding them of their original statements and promises of leniency, moderation, and liberation.61 Only by moderating their behaviour could they create consent and sustain their hegemonic status. That Polybios thought the Romans uninterested in developing a relationship based on consensus and goodwill in the first half of the II century is clear as they are depicted as showing little desire for commitment to the

Polybios and the rise of Rome 157 Greek East in a formal way. They are unconcerned about restructuring the Greek world once dominance has been established and transform subaltern leaders to perpetuate their will and maintain the status quo, only compromising or reordering relations when trouble arises on an ad hoc basis. Yet, this strategy of domination caused problems, as Gramsci saw, producing only limited hegemony and generating goodwill in only a limited group (the Greek leaders more willing to accept Roman orders). Internal pressures from those not integrated (the groups in Greek cities more resistant to Roman domination; note the three classes of anti-Rome statesmen outlined by Polybios at 30.6–9) remained unresolved and cultural differences surrounding freedom, autonomy and hegemon-subordinate relationships were not reconciled into a new politico-ethical state. Roman hegemony, therefore, experienced resistance and dissent as a result. We find that Polybios’ view on what was necessary for successful imperial leadership correlates with Gramsci’s view on successful hegemony: coercion must be balanced out by consent. Any state aiming for supremacy that dominates others without the reinforcement of goodwill tends to fail, as the example of one of Rome’s main rivals, Macedon, showed. As Gramsci warned against such state development, therefore, so did Polybios. His Histories are a warning about what happens to states/empires if they do not generate and maintain enough goodwill among their subjects and what will happen to the Romans as the present dominant group if they do not correct their conduct: increasing dissent and the early collapse of their empire. The results of this study support the use of Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, intellectuals, and passive revolution in the investigation of the rise of Rome and offer new insights into the progression of Roman power over the Greek East and Polybios’ life and work. In Gramscian terms, Polybios’ account of the process of Rome’s rise in the East may be seen in two ways: (1) as an account of a dominant group that has up until this point only achieved minimal hegemony because of the lack of balance between coercive and consensual policies, and whose attempt to achieve consent via passive revolution failed due to a lack of commitment and an uncompromising demand for obedience; but also (2) as a tool used by an intellectual to reinforce and moderate Rome’s hegemony. Having reached this conclusion, extending the study beyond Polybios and II century BCE would be fruitful and, it is suggested, demonstrate that Rome did in fact eventually establish ‘integral hegemony’ in the Greek East in the centuries to come via the establishment of permanent administrative and military structures, the policy of citizenship distribution, and the assimilation and creation of more Greek intellectuals (e.g. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo of Amasia, Plutarch, Appian, and many authors of the Second Sophistic). Moreover, alongside Cicero, these Greeks living under Rome represent Gramscian intellectuals at different stages of hegemonic development to Polybios and a diachronic study of them may offer further insights into how the role of Gramscian intellectuals in the ancient world functioned and changed over time.

158  Emma Nicholson

Notes 1 The scholarship for the evolution of Greek identity and culture under Rome is vast: the introduction of Schmitz and Wiater (2011) supplies a good summary. 2 Translations come from SPN and GR. 3 See Canevaro and Smith in this volume. 4 See Cospito (2016: 49–90) and Anderson (2017: 52–83) for Gramsci’s development of the term hegemony. 5 Anderson (2017: 54). Initially, Gramsci only thought that hegemony applied to the perspective of the working class in a bourgeois revolution against a feudal system, but later extended its remit to include the mechanisms of bourgeois rule over the working class in a stable capitalist society. By this extension, Gramsci produced ‘a set of generic maxims’ which could be applied universally to the investigation of state power. 6 On Gramsci’s reflection on intellectuals, see Showstack Sassoon (1987: 109–18, 134–45), Fontana (2000, 2002), Hier (2005), Anderson (2017: 55–6). 7 Intellectuals are divided into two types by Gramsci: ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ (Q12§1). The organic type emerges naturally with a particular class or group, is closely bound to its interests and development. Traditional intellectuals, on the other hand, regard themselves and are regarded as autonomous and independent from the dominant social group, forming a class in themselves. The clergy of the Middle Ages, Gramsci asserted, were originally organic intellectuals connected to the landed aristocracy but later became traditional after detaching themselves from this base (Q12§2), for instance, and modern traditional intellectuals include doctors, lawyers, businessmen, scholars, scientists, philosophers, preachers, and the media. 8 Q12§2 = QC: 1517 = SPN: 10. 9 Cf. Ives (2004: 104). 10 As with hegemony, Gramsci’s definition of it is multifaceted and it has been interpreted in a variety of ways in subsequent scholarship. Originally, Gramsci saw passive revolution as only applicable to the conditions of the Risorgimento but later expanded it into a universal concept which could describe ‘an entire historical period’; Thomas (2006: 71–4). For discussion of the different modes of passive revolution, see Morton (2010) and Thomas (2018: 1). 11 De Francesco (1998: 325–6); for the differences between Cuoco’s and Gramsci’s formulations of the term, see Ives (2004: 102–6) and di Meo (2014). 12 Ives (2004: 103–5). 13 Voza (2004) and Thomas (2006). 14 Morton subscribes to Edward Said’s notion of ‘travelling theory’ (1983) in his discussion of the application of passive revolution to the global economy (2007) and introduction to the (2010) “Approaching Passive Revolution” special issue of Capital & Class, 330–1. See also Hesketh (2017) and Callinicos (2010: 492–3). Thomas (2018) questions the generally accepted historical interpretation and singularity of passive revolution as a concept in Gramsci’s work through an important heuristic reading of the Prison Notebooks and supports the more flexible readings and applications of passive revolution in illustrating how Gramsci’s own use of the term was a biproduct of his “search for a political strategy that could be the ‘actual’ form of ‘the revolution in permanence’.” 15 We refer here to the articles that appeared in the 2010 “Approaching Passive Revolutions” special issue of the journal Capital & Class (vol. 34.3). For a survey of all recent applications of passive revolution to different geographical areas and political transformations, see Morton (2010: 320–26). 16 Morton (2003, 2007b, Ives and Short (2013). 17 Fontana (2000: 317).

Polybios and the rise of Rome 159 18 Morton (2010: 330–1). 19 On Q8§22, see Horky in this volume. 20 While not approaching Cicero from the perspective of a ‘Gramscian’ intellectual, his contribution to the political and cultural milieu as an intellectual of the later Republican period is recognised and drawn out in Part 1 of Steel (2013). 21 Cf. Fontana (2000: 321–2). 22 For Cicero’s life and career, see Steel (2013: 1–6). 23 Cf. Fontana (2000: 324–6) and Dench (2013) for Cicero and Roman identity. 24 This assessment by Fontana is fundamentally different from Gramsci’s own understanding of Cicero as the champion of an ‘Italian’ point of view, in contrast to Julius Caesar as the maker of a ‘cosmopolitan’ one. See Santangelo’s chapters in the present volume. 25 Cf. Arendt (1982: 187–8) and Fontana (2000: 320–6). 26 The scholarship relating to Rome’s unification of Italy between the fourth and first centuries BCE is vast and multifaceted. A good reassessment of the period, process of unification, and scholarship is provided by Carlà-Uhink (2017). 27 For the dating and creation of the province of Achaea, see Dio 53.13–5; Gruen (1984: 524), McGing (2003: 80), and Eilers (2003: 98). 28 For Polybios’ life and work, see Walbank (1972) and McGing (2010). For Livy and his work, see Chaplin and Kraus (2009) and Mineo (2014). For Livy and Polybios, see Halfmann (2013). 29 For Polybios’ position between Greece and Rome, see Walbank (1974), Henderson (2001), Millar (2006), and Erskine (2012, 2013a). 30 Polyb. 3.4.8–12: τὸ γὰϱ ὠφέλιμον τῆς ἡμετέϱας ἱστοϱίας πϱός τε τὸ παϱὸν καὶ πϱὸς τὸ μέλλον ἐν τούτῳ πλεῖστον κείσεται τῷ μέϱει. οὐ γὰϱ δὴ τοῦτ᾽ εἶναι τέλος ὑποληπτέον ἐν πϱάγμασιν οὔτε τοῖς ἡγουμένοις οὔτε τοῖς ἀποφαινομένοις ὑπὲϱ τούτων, τὸ νικῆσαι καὶ ποιήσασθαι πάντας ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτούς… καὶ μὴν οὐδὲ τὰς ἐμπειϱίας καὶ τέχνας αὐτῆς ἕνεκα τῆς ἐπιστήμης ἀναλαμβάνει: πάντες δὲ πϱάττουσι πάντα χάϱιν τῶν ἐπιγινομένων τοῖς ἔϱγοις ἡδέων ἢ καλῶν ἢ συμφεϱόντων. διὸ καὶ τῆς πϱαγματείας ταύτης τοῦτ᾽ ἔσται τελεσιούϱγημα, τὸ γνῶναι τὴν κατάστασιν παϱ᾽ ἑκάστοις, ποία τις ἦν μετὰ τὸ καταγωνισθῆναι τὰ ὅλα καὶ πεσεῖν εἰς τὴν τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐξουσίαν ἕως τῆς μετὰ ταῦτα πάλιν ἐπιγενομένης ταϱαχῆς καὶ κινήσεως. 31 Walbank (1977: 146) (= 1985: 330). 32 Baronowski (2011: 87–90) claims that Polybios divided imperial rule into three stages – acquisition, expansion and preservation. This is based on a passage by Diodoros which some have believed to derive from Polybios (32.2): “Those who wish to attain hegemony over others employ courage and intelligence to gain it, moderation and acts of kindness to extend it widely, and paralysing terror to secure it.” However, Touloumakos (1971: 28) n. 28, Walbank (1974: 18–21) (= 1985: 289–91), and Eckstein (1995: 225–33) reject the attribution of this view to Polybios since in other passages (notably his discussions of Philip V at 7.11–14, the Carthaginians in Spain at 9.11 and 10.35–6) he considered a change in the benevolent and magnanimous conduct of a hegemonic power after the acquisition of empire to be detrimental to imperial stability. Polybios never makes a distinction between the three stages himself but notes that imperial success depended on the presence of the qualities of beneficence and moderation in the dominant partner. 33 On Polybios and moral leadership see Eckstein (1995) and Hau (2016), esp. 56–71. 34 Antigonos Doson: 2.47.5; 5.9.8–10; Alexander: 5.10.6–8; T. Quinctius Flamininus: 18.1–2.1; 5.1–12.3–5; 33.8–39; Scipio Africanus: 10.2–5; and Scipio Aemilianus: 31.23.5–30.3; 38.19–22.

160  Emma Nicholson 35 For the decline in Roman conduct cf. Polyb. 18.35 and 31.25.3–7; for the ill treatment of Demetrios of Seleukos and Carthage in the Third Punic War see respectively 31.2, 11–12 and 36.1–10. This contrasts with certain individual Romans who continued to demonstrate military prowess and moral conduct. Note especially Scipio Africanus (see Polyb. 10.2.8–12, 11.7–8, 14.12, 18.7–15, 19.3–7; 11.20.1–23.9; 14.5.15; 15.5–6) and Scipio Aemilianus (31.22–30). Cf. Champion (2004: 146–51) and Baronowski (2011): 91–113 for the decline of generosity and moderation in Rome’s dealing with Greece from 168 BCE. 36 For Polybios and the anacyclosis (cycle of constitutions), see Alonso-Núñez (1986) and Erskine (2013b). 37 See Derow (1979), Harris (1979), Gruen (1984), and Eckstein (2008). 38 See Eckstein (2008: 115, 289, 298–9, 336–9) for these withdrawals. 39 For Rome’s reluctance to establish permanent ties in Greece, see Gruen (1984: 437–528) and Eckstein (2008: 285–91, 297–305, 316–8, 335–41, 348–56). 40 For the Romans’ increasing use of the theme of liberty in the Greek East, see Ferrary (1988: 45–132) and Dmitriev (2011: 145–200). 41 For instance, the Aitolians finally came to understand the meaning of Roman deditio in fidem in 191 BCE (Polyb. 20.9–10, 36.4.1–3; Livy 36.27–28). On this episode also see Moreno Leoni (2014). 42 For euergetism and the Greeks’ relationships with the Hellenistic kings, see Gauthier (1985) and Ma (2003: 179–83). See also Erskine (1994) for the title of euergetes and its application to the Romans. 43 For the Achaian League’s pursuit of Sparta and Messene, see Polyb. 22.3.1–3, 22.7.1–6, 22.10.5–8, 22.11.6–12.9; 23.4.8–14, 23.9.8–14, 23.16.1–18.1; 24.2.3, 24.9.9–14, 24.10.13–15; Livy 36.31; 39.48–50, 40.20. For the policies of the Greek states during this period, see Gruen (1984: 467–514), and Eckstein (2008: 348–56). 44 For this misalignment, see Eckstein (2008: 350–1, 365–6). 45 Cf. Eckstein (2008: 367–72). 46 For the Andriskos Uprising, the Achaian War and their aftermaths, see Fuks (1970), Gruen (1976, 1984: 431–3, 520–8), Harris (1979: 240–4), and McGing (2003: 77–84). 47 For the Achaian League’s dismissive treatment of Roman ambassadors, see for instance their treatment of Q. Marcius Philippus in 183 (Polyb. 23.9.8; 24.9.12–3) and L. Aurelius Orestes in 147 (Polyb. 38.9.1–2, 6–8; Paus. 7.14.2–3). Cf. Gruen (1984: 491, 494–5, 521). 48 For Polybios’ detention in Rome, see Erskine (2012). 49 Polyb. 39.5.2–5: ἐνετείλαντο δὲ τῷ Πολυβίῳ χωϱιζόμενοι τὰς πόλεις ἐπιποϱευθῆναι καὶ πεϱὶ ὧν οἱ ἄνθϱωποι ἀμφιβάλλουσι διευκϱινῆσαι, μέχϱις οὗ συνήθειαν ἔχωσι τῇ πολιτείᾳ καὶ τοῖς νόμοις. ὃ δὴ καὶ μετά τινα χϱόνον ἐποίησε πϱὸς λόγον τοὺς ἀνθϱώπους στέϱξαι τὴν δεδομένην πολιτείαν καὶ μηδὲν ἀπόϱημα μήτε κατ᾽ ἰδίαν μήτε κατὰ κοινὸν ἐκ τῶν νόμων γενέσθαι πεϱὶ μηδενός… μὴ γὰϱ ἐξεϱγασαμένου τούτου καὶ γϱάψαντος τοὺς πεϱὶ τῆς κοινῆς δικαιοδοσίας νόμους ἄκϱιτα πάντα ἦν καὶ πολλῆς γέμοντα ταϱαχῆς. 50 Polyb. 38.4.7: κατὰ μὲν γὰϱ τοὺς τῶν πεϱιστάσεων καιϱοὺς καθήκει βοηθεῖν τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὄντας τοῖς Ἕλλησι κατὰ πάντα τϱόπον, τὰ μὲν ἀμύνοντας, τὰ δὲ πεϱιστέλλοντας, τὰ δὲ παϱαιτουμένους τὴν τῶν κϱατούντων ὀϱγήν: ὅπεϱ ἡμεῖς ἐπ᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν πϱαγμάτων ἐποιήσαμεν ἀληθινῶς. 51 For Polybios’ involvement in the settlement of Greece, see Henderson (2001: 37–49). 52 Q13§18 = QC: 1591 = SPN: 161: “Il fatto dell’egemonia presuppone indubbiamente che sia tenuto conto degli interessi e delle tendenze dei gruppi sui quali l’egemonia verrà esercitata, che si formi un certo equilibrio di compromesso…”

Polybios and the rise of Rome 161 53 Polyb. 1.1.2: […] φάσκοντες ἀληθινωτάτην μὲν εἶναι παιδείαν καὶ γυμνασίαν πϱὸς τὰς πολιτικὰς πϱάξεις τὴν ἐκ τῆς ἱστοϱίας μάθησιν, ἐναϱγεστάτην δὲ καὶ μόνην διδάσκαλον τοῦ δύνασθαι τὰς τῆς τύχης μεταβολὰς γενναίως ὑποφέϱειν τὴν τῶν ἀλλοτϱίων πεϱιπετειῶν ὑπόμνησιν […]. 54 Joll (1977: 89–90). 55 Polyb. 38.4.8: … τὴν δ᾽ ὑπὲϱ τῶν γεγονότων τοῖς ἐπιγινομένοις διὰ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων παϱάδοσιν ἀμιγῆ παντὸς ψεύδους ἀπολείπεσθαι χάϱιν τοῦ μὴ ταῖς ἀκοαῖς τέϱπεσθαι κατὰ τὸ παϱὸν τοὺς ἀναγινώσκοντας, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ψυχαῖς διοϱθοῦσθαι πϱὸς τὸ μὴ πλεονάκις ἐν τοῖς αὐτοῖς διασφάλλεσθαι. 56 For Polybios and the importance of truth in historiography, see Nicholson (2018). 57 For the relationship between intellectuals and patrons in Republican Rome, see for instance White (1993: 3–64) and the response by La Penna (1998: 527–38). 58 See Champion (2004: 144–69) and Baronowski (2011: 87–113) for the decline in Roman behaviour. 59 Polybios only hints at this outcome [cf. Baronowski (2011: 153–62)], but other sources produced in that period were not so circumspect about Rome’s future downfall. Note the II/I century BCE Third Sibylline Oracle, which states (Sib. Orac. 3.350–5) that Rome will one day suffer what it imposed on others. For this oracle see Gruen (1998: 15–36) and Erskine (2013a: 128–29). 60 Cf. Thornton (2013); see also Wiater (2018) for Polybios’ engagement with contemporary political discourse in his work. 61 Cf. Champion (2004) and Erskine (2013a) for Polybios’ redefinition of the Romans, Crawley Quinn (2013) for his expansion of a global consciousness by his syncretism of time and universal-spatial construction, and Thornton (2013) for Polybios’ Histories as an example of a dual-facing diplomatic document.

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162  Emma Nicholson Derow, P.S. (1979) ‘Polybius, Rome, and the East’, JRS, 69, 1–15. Di Meo, A. (2014) ‘La ‘rivoluzione passiva’ da Cuoco a Gramsci: Appunti per un’interpretazione’, Filosofia Italiana, 11(2), 1–32. [Online] Available at: http:// www.filosofiaitaliana.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Di-Meo_La-rivoluzionepassiva-da-Cuoco-a-Gramsci.pdf (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Dmitriev, S. (2011) The Greek Slogan of Freedom and Early Roman Politics in Greece. Oxford: OUP. Eckstein, A. (1995) Moral Vision in the Histories of Polybius. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. Eckstein, A. (2008) Rome Enters the Greek East. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. Eilers, C.F. (2003) ‘A Roman East: Pompey’s Settlement to the Death of Augustus’, in Erskine, A. (ed.) A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Blackwell, 90–102. Erskine, A. (1994) ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, Historia, 43, 70–87. Erskine, A. (2012) ‘Polybius among the Romans: Life in the Cyclops’ Cave’, in Smith, C. and L.M. Yarrow (eds.) Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius. Oxford: OUP, 17–32. Erskine, A. (2013a) ‘Making Sense of the Romans: Polybius and the Greek Perspective’, DHA, Suppl. 9, 115–29. Erskine, A. (2013b) ‘How to Rule the World: Polybius Book 6 Reconsidered’, in Gibson, B. and T. Harrison (eds.) Polybius & His World: Essays in Memory of F. W. Walbank. Oxford: OUP, 231–46. Ferrary, J.-L. (1988) Philhellénisme et impérialisme: Aspects idéologiques de la conquête romaine du monde hellénistique, de la seconde guerre de Macédoine à la guerre contre Mithridate. Rome: École Française de Rome. Fontana, B. (2000) ‘Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancient on Hegemony’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 61, 305–26. Fontana, B. (2002) ‘Hegemony and Rhetoric: Political Education in Gramsci’, in Borg, C. et.al. (eds.) Gramsci and Education. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 25–40. Fuks, A. (1970) ‘The Bellum Achaicum and Its Social Aspect’, JHS, 90, 78–89. Gauthier, P. (1985) Les Cités grecques et leurs bienfaiteurs. Athens: École française d’Athènes. Gruen, E.S. (1976) ‘The Origins of the Achaean War’, JHS, 96, 46–69. Gruen, E.S. (1984) The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. Gruen, E.S. (1998) ‘Jews, Greeks and Romans in the Third Sibylline Oracle’, in Goodman, M. (ed.) Jews in the Graeco-Roman World. Oxford: OUP, 15–36. Halfmann, H. (2013) ‘Livius Und Polybios’, in Grieb, V. and C. Koehn (eds.) Polybios Und Seine Historien. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 49–57. Harris, W.V. (1979) War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 BC. Oxford: Clarendon. Hau, L. (2016) Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus. Edinburgh: EUP. Henderson, J. (2001) ‘From Megalopolis to Cosmopolis: Polybius, or There and Back Again’, in Goldhill, S. (ed.) Being Greek under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire. Cambridge: CUP, 29–49. Hesketh, C. (2017) ‘Passive Revolution: A Universal Concept with Geographical Seats’, Review of International Studies, 43, 389–408.

Polybios and the rise of Rome 163 Hier, S.P. (2005) Contemporary Sociological Thought: Themes and Theories. Toronto: Canadian Scholars. Ives, P. (2004) Language and Hegemony in Gramsci. London: Pluto. Ives, P. and N. Short (2013) ‘On Gramsci and the International: A Textual Analysis’, Review of International Studies, 39(3), 621–42. Joll, J. (1977) Gramsci. Glasgow and London: Fontana. La Penna, A. (1998) ‘Review of White, P. (1993) Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome’, Maia, 50, 527–38. Ma, J. (2003) ‘Kings’, in Erskine, A. (ed.) A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 177–95. McGing, B. (2003) ‘Subjection and Resistance: To the Death of Mithradates’, in Erskine, A. (ed.) A Companion to the Hellenistic World. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 71–89. McGing, B. (2010) Polybius’ Histories. Oxford: OUP. Millar, F. (2006) ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in id. (ed.) Rome, the Greek World and the East. Vol. 3: The Greek World, the Jews, and the East. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 91–105. Mineo, B. (ed.) (2014) A Companion to Livy. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Moreno Leoni, A.M. (2014) ‘The Failure of the Aetolian Deditio as a Didactic Cultural Clash in the Histories of Polybius (20.9-10)’, Histos, 8, 146–79. Morton, A. (2003) ‘Historicizing Gramsci: Situating Ideas in and Beyond Their Contexts’, Review of International Political Economy, 10(1), 118–46. Morton, A. (2007) ‘Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the International’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 35(3), 597–621. Morton, A. (2010) ‘The Continuum of Passive Revolution’, Capital & Class, 34, 315–42. Nicholson, E. (2018) ‘Assessing and Assembling True Historiography: Polybios on Probability and Patterns’, in Blank, T. and F.K. Maier (eds.) Die symphonischen Schwestern: Narrative Konstruktion von, Wahrheiten’ in der nachklassischen Geschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 187–207. T. Schmitz and N. Wiater (eds.) (2011) The Struggle for Identity: Greeks and their Past in the First Century BCE. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Showstack Sassoon, A.S. (1987) Gramsci’s Politics. 2nd edn. London: Hutchinson. Steel, C. (ed.) (2013) The Cambridge Companion to Cicero. Cambridge: CUP. Thomas, P.D. (2006) ‘Modernity as ‘Passive Revolution’: Gramsci and the Fundamental Concepts of Historical Materialism’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 17, 61–78. Thomas, P.D. (2018) ‘Gramsci’s Revolutions: Passive and Permanent’, Modern Intellectual History, 15, 1–30. Thornton, J. (2013) ‘Polybius in Context: The Political Dimension of the Histories’, in Gibson, B. and T. Harrison (eds.) Polybius and His World: Essays in Memory of F. W. Walbank. Oxford: OUP, 213–29. Touloumakos, J. (1971) Zum Geschichtsbewusstsein der Griechen in der Zeit der römischen Herrschaft. Göttingen: O. V. Voza, P. (2004) ‘Rivoluzione passiva’, in Frosini, F. and G. Liguori (eds.) Le parole di Gramsci: per un lessico dei ‘Quaderni del carcere’. Rome: Carocci, 189–207. Walbank, F.W. (1972) Polybius. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.

164  Emma Nicholson Walbank, F.W. (1974) ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in Gabba, E. (ed.) Polybe. Vandœuvres and Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 3–38. Reprinted in Id. (1985) Selected Papers. Cambridge: CUP, 280-97. Walbank, F.W. (1977) ‘Polybius’ Last Ten Books’, in Historiographia antiqua. Commentationes Lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans septuagenarii editae. Leuven: Leuven UP, 139–62. Reprinted in Id. (1985) Selected Papers. Cambridge: CUP, 325-43. Wiater, N. (2018) ‘Documents and Narrative: Reading the Roman-Carthaginian Treaties in Polybius’ Histories’, in Miltsios, N. and M. Tamiolaki (eds.) Polybius and His Legacy. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 131–65. White, P. (1993) Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: CUP.

7

Antonio Gramsci between ancient and modern imperialism Michele Bellomo

Between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century, ‘imperialism’ became one of the most relevant phenomena in international politics, debated by both ancient and modern historians (and intellectuals).1 If, on the one hand, Rome stood as the model of a successful empire, whereby a comparison with the great modern powers was inevitable (both from a positive and/or from a negative point of view), on the other hand, the new forms of imperialism prompted ancient historians to globally rethink the expansion of mid- to late-republican Rome. 2 Even though, in his writings, Gramsci seldom spoke plainly about imperialism (and there is no comprehensive theory or treatment of the subject), he was well aware of the main features of the phenomenon, of its militaristic character, and of its economic causes rooted in the capitalist mode of production. He also knew that the Roman tradition had played a part in the growth of the new forms of imperialism and that, in his own country, the myth of the Roman Empire was being used to justify the rebirth of aggressive imperialist wars. In this chapter I will deal with three main aspects of Gramsci’s reflection on the problem: (1) his evaluation of colonialism and the claim advanced by some intellectuals that Italy’s new imperial expansion was justified by its need to acquire more land for its surplus population – something that resembled Rome’s republican colonisation; (2) his refusal of any possible comparison between modern and ancient forms of imperialism and his denial that the modern great powers were pursuing within their domains an integration policy that could be compared with the Roman extension of citizenship; and (3) his own view on the heritage of the Roman Empire for Italian society.

Modern and ancient imperialism I will start with a general overview of Gramsci’s position on imperialism. Marxist thinkers traditionally saw imperialism as the “highest (and latest) stage of capitalism”, if we use Lenin’s famous expression. In their view, the new expansionist policy pursued by the great European powers was

166  Michele Bellomo dictated by the economic necessities of capitalism, and especially by its need to find new markets in which the productive surplus could be invested with profit – something which had become impossible in the internal market.3 The specific economic reasons that stood behind the new forms of imperialism made any comparison with other – ancient – forms of imperialism almost impossible. So, Lenin could say that “‘general’ disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between social-economic systems, inevitably degenerate into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: ‘Greater Rome and Greater Britain’”;4 and a very similar position was assumed by Bukharin, for whom the theory that defined imperialism “as the policy of conquest in general” was fallacious because “it explains everything, i.e., it explains absolutely nothing”: in fact, “every policy of the ruling classes (‘pure’ policy, military policy, economic policy) has a perfectly definite functional significance.”5 Gramsci’s position on the new forms of imperialism was in line with this stream of Marxist theory. The term recurs rather frequently in his political articles, and especially in those that he wrote after the end of the First World War, which was typically defined as the ‘imperialistic war’, i.e., the war that had been determined by growing tensions between the imperialistic great powers.6 In these writings, Gramsci particularly insisted on the economic exploitation of the colonies by the capitalistic forces, which were now – after the end of the war – bringing all the autochthonous populations to rebellion.7 If Gramsci’s position on modern imperialism is not that exceptional, his criticisms of the comparison between the new and ancient (especially Roman) forms of imperialism are, on the other hand, worthy of a lengthy discussion.

Gramsci on colonialism I will begin with Gramsci’s position on colonialism. From the time of the very first transmarine expedition – the Eritrean War in 1882 – Italian intellectuals were deeply concerned with the effort to draw a firm line of distinction between new forms of imperialism and their own colonialism. Italy was not a capitalistic state, and the new expansionist policy was mainly – if not exclusively – dictated by the need to find new lands to colonise. Italy was then suffering from a stark emigration movement, and so the acquisition of new territories was perceived as the better solution to the problem. Moreover, the colonisation of these new territories was also seen as a response to the ‘historical’ need to civilise the underdeveloped African populations.8 A clear example of this position can be found in a parliamentary speech that the Minister of the Foreign Affairs, Stanislao Mancini, delivered on 25 January 1885. Mancini repeatedly insisted upon the need to channel

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 167 migration movements into a productive direction, and colonies were seen as the natural remedy for these problems: […] D’altronde, dovunque l’uomo incivilito porta con sé in mezzo a popoli di civiltà inferiore capacità intellettuali, cognizioni tecniche, capitali, e lavoro, è impossibile economicamente, che non produca e non accresca valori e ricchezze.9 In order to enforce their position, the Italian intellectuals who were in favour of colonial expansion were ready to demand that the government follow the example of the Roman Empire, to which Italy was the natural heir.10 There would be many examples to mention. Two passages of Giovanni Pascoli and Gaetano De Sanctis are suitable instances of how this ‘colonial sentiment’ was also shared and sustained by figures whom we can hardly define as ‘imperialists’. Pascoli, one of Italy’s most eminent poets at the turning point between the XIX and XX centuries, was mainly worried about what he perceived as Italy’s national interests. The unification process, which in Italy had come later than in other European countries, had left the new state weak, and so a colonial policy was viewed as advantageous both on a practical level – finding new land to stop or contain the emigration process – and on an ideological one. In this last sense, harking back to the Roman tradition was particularly useful.11 This tool was applied by Pascoli in his famous speech La grande proletaria si è mossa, which he gave at a theatre in Barga on 26 November 1911 to commemorate the soldiers who had lost their lives in the first 2 months of Italy’s colonial war in Libya. Here is an extract: But the great Proletarian found a place for them: a vast region bathed by our sea and that our small islands watch over, like advanced sentinels. Our great island impatiently reaches out toward this vast region, where once, by the work of our forefathers, water was abundant as were the crops. It was covered with trees and gardens. […] There, too, is Rome. And they will be called Rumi. May this be a good omen and a sure promise. Yes, Romans. Yes, to do and to suffer as the strong. And above all, on those peoples who know only rule of force we will use war, but only to impose peace. […].12 De Sanctis, Professor of Ancient History in Turin (1900–1929) and later in Rome (1929–1931), was in no way a defender of the new imperialist policy, that he saw as a useless clash for supremacy between civilised nations.13 However, he strongly vindicated the existence of a clear distinction between the most recent forms of imperialism and (Italian) colonialism, where this latter process was seen as a necessary tool to give more land to the Italian peasants and a way to proceed with the civilisation of the underdeveloped populations:

168  Michele Bellomo History shows that civilization is necessarily expansive. There is no right to barbarism, but expansion implements the union between force and law. Denying the right to colonial expansion of civilized peoples in barbaric countries denies and condemns all history. Without Greek colonization in the Mediterranean, Roman civilization would not have arisen. Without the Roman expansion in the barbarian West, European civilization would not have arisen. That same city in which you live enjoying the advantages of the most advanced civilization was and would remain without the Roman conquest a village in swamps and barbarian forests like Adua or Macallè. For these reasons he had approved Crispi’s expedition in Libya, and in 1936 he endorsed Mussolini’s war in Ethiopia with these words: Nothing similar, even remotely, either to the conquest of Gaul on the part of Caesar or to the conquest of Ethiopia on our part, which, if we want an ancient comparison, for the grandeur of the means, and the work of civilization started together with the conquest it is only comparable with the Dacian wars of Trajan. However, it surpasses them because it is accomplished not with the forces of the largest empire in the world, but with those of Italy alone, despite the stolid and impotent opposition of all of Europe.14 This distinction also affected (and originated from) De Sanctis’ view on Rome’s expansionist policy, that was seen as ‘colonialist’ and positive in the barbarian West and ‘imperialist’ and negative in the civilised East.15 Clearly this ‘proletarian’ or ‘colonial’ interpretation of Italy’s renewed expansionist policy was later appropriated by the fascist regime and again set within the tradition of Roman colonisation (as we shall see).16 This difference between imperialism and (Italian) colonialism was completely refuted by Gramsci, not only in its modern application, but also with respect to ancient examples. We can find a very clear example of this in one of Gramsci’s first political writings. In fact, we are not talking about a ‘political’ text as such, but an essay he wrote in 1910 (or 1911) when he was in his last year of high school at the Liceo Dettori in Cagliari. The title of the essay is Oppressi e oppressori, from which a long quotation is needed: One day the rumor spread: a student killed the English governor of the Indies, or: the Italians were beaten at Dogali, or: the boxers exterminated the European missionaries; and then the horrified old Europe curses the barbarians, the uncivilized, and a new crusade is banned against those unhappy peoples […] Wars are made for trade, not for civilization: the British have bombed who knows how many cities in China for the Chinese who did not want to know about their opium.

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 169 Other than civilization! And Russians and Japanese were slaughtered for trading in Korea and Manchuria. Indeed, once a people feel themselves to be strong and hardened, they think of nothing but of attacking their neighbours, of hunting and oppressing them. For it is clear that every victor desires to destroy the vanquished. But men, who by their very nature are hypocritical and false, do not say outright: ‘I wish to conquer in order to destroy’, but say instead: ‘I wish to conquer in order to civilize’. And the rest of mankind, who envy the victor, but await their turn to do the same, make a show of believing in it and offer their praises. Yes, it is true that we have gone off to carry civilization overseas, and now you know those peoples have come to like us and thank heaven for their good fortune. But it is well known: sic vos non nobis. The Romans were content with binding their vanquished opponents to their triumphal chariots – then they made the defeated land into a province. But now the victors would like all the inhabitants of the colonies to disappear, to make room for the new arrivals.17 As we can see, even at this very early stage of his life, Gramsci’s positions on modern colonialism were rather clear: the civilising mission was nothing more than a slogan behind which the modern powers hid their intrinsic desire for violent conquest. No comparison could be made with the Romans, who were ready, after their triumphs, to convert the conquered land into a province, while modern powers just sought “to make room for their own settlers.” Wars were pursued for profit, as was made clear by Britain’s several attacks on China and by the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. The year of the essay is revealing because, just few months later, Italy became committed to a major colonial war in Libya, which was defended by eminent figures (think of Pascoli) as a war for land. Gramsci’s insistence on the willingness showed by the ancient Romans in provincialising the newly conquered territories and in pushing an integration policy with the local populations was to become a milestone of his rejection of any possible comparison between ancient Rome and the modern great powers (as we shall see). However, he was fully aware of the brutal aspects of Roman imperialism, and in his view its integration policy could not remove the violence and the unfairness of the conquest. This became clear when, a few years later (1916), in the article Intellettualismo, he once more made a comparison with the ancient world. Debating with Ernesto Bettarelli, a physician who had organised a conference in Turin entitled L’ammaestramento dell’ora presente, where he had attacked the Germans for their treacherous attack on Belgium and praised the ancient Romans because “Roma legava il vinto così da farlo solidale nel mese e fratello nell’anno”, Gramsci replied: But, by God, Arminius defended a country that the Romans wanted to crush, and Vercingetorix, who followed in chains the triumphal

170  Michele Bellomo chariot, is way greater than Caesar, red from the blood of thousands of Gauls, arsonist of cities and destroyer of entire regions, my gentlemen defenders of Belgium […] It took decades of battles, sieges, and slaughters to deprive the Belgians of their freedom, even when the Romans were the invaders!18 Gramsci’s position on modern colonialism was strengthened in the aftermath of the First World War, when Mussolini started to take the first steps for the renewal of an aggressive expansionist policy.19 This is revealed by the first and only speech that Gramsci delivered in the Italian Parliament in 1925. In the spring of that year, after the Matteotti crisis, the fascist regime proposed a law on the Regolarizzazione dell’attività delle Associazioni, Enti ed Istituti e dell’appartenenza ai medesimi del personale dipendente dallo Stato. The law was formally directed against the Masonry, but many suspected (among them, Gramsci) that its real purpose was to legalise the persecution of every form of political opposition. In turn, Gramsci delivered a long speech against the law, returning to the theme of colonialism. Here again, he strongly criticised “the most childish statements of an alleged demographic superiority of Italy over other countries”, which in the fascist view created the premise for colonial expansion. Referring to statistical data, Gramsci tried to show how Italy was in a demographic crisis due to the emigration of Italian workers who went to work “for the profit of the capitalists of other countries.”20 There was no hunger for land. 21 This reflection on modern Italian colonialism finally matured in the years of detention. 22 In Notebook 1, Gramsci presented a picture of Francesco Crispi – who in the 1880s had been one of the main advocates of a colonial expansionist policy – with these words: Even his policy of colonial expansion was connected to his united obsession. In this, he was able to understand the political innocence of the South: the Southern peasant wanted land; Crispi did not want to give it to him within Italy itself, he did not want to practice ‘economic Jacobinism’; he presented him with the mirage of exploitable colonial lands. Crispi’s imperialism was a passionate rhetorical imperialism without a financial-economic base. Capitalist Europe, rich in capital, exported it to the colonial empires it was then creating. But Italy not only had no capital to export, it had to resort to foreign capital for its own most urgent needs. Italian imperialism lacked a [real] base, and ‘passion’ was substituted for the real base: castle-in-the-air imperialism, opposed by the very capitalists who would have more willingly seen the huge sums spent in Africa used in Italy. But in the South Crispi was popular because of the mirage of land. 23 Then, in Notebook 8, we find Gramsci’s proposal to “examine whether and to what extent colonization had served the purpose of populating the

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 171 colonies, bearing in mind that colonialism had been linked to overpopulation in the colonising nations.”24 His conclusion here was that “emigration follows its own laws of an economic nature, in other words, waves of migration head to various countries according to the different labour and technical needs of those same countries. A state does not become a colonizer because of its high fertility rate but because it is rich in capital that can be invested abroad.”25 This problem, which we have seen applied (mainly) to modern imperialisms, did in fact also affect modern reflections on Roman imperialism. If, on the one hand, Roman expansion in Italy, in Cisalpine Gaul and partly in the West could be explained by emphasising the necessity of the Roman state to accommodate the surplus population (hence, the foundation of many colonies), then on the other hand, this system could not be applied to the Greek East, where there had been no foundation of new settlements in the Republic and where it was also difficult to call for the ‘civilizing’ mission of Rome. The response of modern Roman historians to such a contraposition was twofold: either to deny that Roman policy in the East had been aggressive, or to postpone the rising-up of imperialist motives until the emergence of the equestrian order (the ancient capitalists) at the end of the II century BCE.26 Unfortunately, we have no reference (as far as I am aware) in Gramsci’s writings about this particular side of Roman imperialism.

Gramsci on imperial government A second aspect that is worthy of discussion is Gramsci’s position on another weakness in the comparison between the modern imperial powers and the Roman Empire, i.e., the ‘integration’ of local elites in the imperial government. The rhetoric of the new imperialism was full of references to the integration policy pursued by the great powers in their colonies, and examples were continuously made of the Romans, who, after their conquest, had always been ready to incorporate the defeated into their society. In this respect, theorists and advocates of the new forms of imperialism were also ready to assert their superiority over the Roman example: the Romans had spread slavery, while modern, more ‘humane’ societies had stamped it out; torture, which had been another feature of the Roman dominion, had been banished by the new imperial governments, and so on. 27 However, there was one point where the modern governments were not ready to follow the Roman example: the integration of local elites in the central parliament. Such a policy had been mildly suggested by Benjamin Disraeli in the ‘Crystal Palace Speech’ (also known as ‘On the Maintenance of the Empire’), which he delivered in 1872. 28 Here, Disraeli explained how self-government in the colonies had to be accompanied, for example, by “the institution of some representative council in the metropolis, which would have brought the colonies into constant and continuous relations with the home government.”

172  Michele Bellomo This speech was directly referenced by Gramsci in a very thoughtful passage of Notebook 17, where he ‘praised’ Disraeli for having understood, better than anyone else, imperial needs, which he saw in the “fusion into a single unified imperial class of the national groups that of necessity were being formed throughout the Empire.” In this respect, Disraeli could be compared to Julius Caesar. 29 But Disraeli had failed because of the inglesismo of the English people, who could not conceive of living under the rule of laws promoted by a mixed parliament, i.e., a parliament comprising members coming from the colonies.30

Gramsci’s cosmopolitanism and Rome’s legacy I will now turn to the third and final section of my chapter, which deals with Gramsci’s reaction to the slogan that Italy was the natural heir of the Roman imperial tradition. This feeling was somewhat widespread throughout Italy, especially due to the efforts of the fascist regime;31 and it is not surprising that, during the 1930s, many works on the comparison between the two historical moments also flourished outside of Italy.32 The example of Rome was cited not only to justify the colonial ambitions of the new regime (which had led to the refoundation of the empire after the Ethiopian War in 1936), but also in preparation for the ‘second’ phase of the fascist revolution: the exportation of the fascist regime beyond Italian borders. As the Romans had exported their culture and their civilisation through their armies, so would the fascists through the new Italian legionaries. The ‘universality of Rome’ was then appropriated by the regime in its militaristic and aggressive character.33 The regime’s cultural politics were embraced and sustained by many scholars of the ancient world, and numerous works were published in the second half of the 1930s in order to push forward the idea of the birth of a new Roman Empire.34 It is upon these two aspects, the militaristic and expansionist outcome of the Italian state and the harking-back to the example of the Roman tradition, which Gramsci reflected in his Notebooks, especially in the Notebook 19. This Notebook was mainly devoted to the study of the history of the Italian Risorgimento, which represented one of Gramsci’s main projects and, in his mind, had to be preceded by “research on the previous history that had taken place in the Italian peninsula, as it created the cultural elements that had an impact in the Age of the Risorgimento (positive and negative repercussions) and that continued to operate (albeit as data of ideological propaganda) even in Italian national life as it was formed by the Risorgimento.”35 One of the main sections of this second piece of research had to be devoted to “the period of Roman history that marked the transition from the Republic to the Empire, as it created the general framework of some ideological tendencies of the future Italian nation.”36 What were these

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 173 ideological tendencies, according to Gramsci? First and foremost, the ‘de-nationalization’ of Rome and of the peninsula and its transformation into a ‘cosmopolitan terrain’. ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is a word that recurs frequently in the Notebooks. It represented the tendency towards universalism which characterised Italian intellectuals and that, during previous centuries, had prevented the formation of a national-popular feeling among the Italian masses.37 The origins of this tradition were found by Gramsci in Julius Caesar’s work. Caesar was the one who had favoured the transition of Rome from “an aristocratic-​ corporative government to a democratic-bureaucratic one.” Caesar had convinced many intellectuals from all across the empire to settle in Rome with the promise of Roman citizenship, and the work of these intellectuals, which continued under the government of Augustus, had finally made Rome and Italy a cosmopolitan terrain.38 The cosmopolitanism of Roman imperial society was harshly debated by Roman historians as well during the 1930s. It was praised by some, such as Pareti, and fiercely deplored by others, such as De Francisci, who identified above all in the constitutio Antoniniana the moment when the Augustan imperial framework, founded on the predominance of the Italic race over other peoples of the empire, had collapsed. The judgement on Caesar was ambivalent too: on the one hand, he was considered as one of the forerunners of the fascist regime (Ferrabino and Levi); on the other, he was accused of having pursued a cosmopolitan policy tending towards the destruction of the Roman-Italic race and civilisation (all to the advantage of the ‘Orientals’). It was undeniable, however, that, in the long run, new philosophical, artistic, and cultural concepts had come to emanate from the Roman ruling class. They could be judged in an extremely negative way by some (such as De Francisci), but positively by others (like Ferrero).39 For Gramsci, these cosmopolitan tendencies represented the most significant impact of the Roman past on the development of Italian history, as well as determining the roots of future expansion. In the fifth paragraph of Notebook 19, Gramsci wondered whether “the political movement that led to the national unification and the formation of the Italian state must necessarily lead to nationalism and militaristic imperialism.”40 His response was that “this outcome is anachronistic and anti-historical (i.e., artificial and not long-term); it is really against all Italian traditions, first Roman, then Catholic, because traditions are cosmopolitan.”41 He continues: “The conditions of military expansion in the present and in the future do not exist and do not seem to be in the process of formation. Modern expansion is of a capitalist-financial order.”42 Finally: Traditional Italian cosmopolitanism has to become a modern type of cosmopolitanism such, that is, as to ensure the best conditions for the development of Italian humanity-as-labour in whatever part of the world it is to be found. Not the citizen of the world in as much as civis

174  Michele Bellomo romanus [a citizen of Rome] or a Catholic, but as a producer of civilization. […] The “mission” of the Italian people lies in taking up once again Roman and medieval cosmopolitanism, but in its more modern and advanced form. Let it even be a proletarian nation, as Pascoli wanted: proletarian as a nation since it has constituted the reserve army for foreign capital, since it, together with the Slavonic peoples, has given the rest of the world a labour force. Exactly on this account must it take its place in the modern front of the fight to reorganize the world, including the non-Italian world, which through its labour it has contributed to create.43 Thus, Gramsci’s rejection of the fascist renewal of an Italian expansionist policy, pursued in the tradition of Rome’s universalism, went far beyond traditional Marxist ideology. It was not only connected with specific economic and capitalistic factors, but also justified by the true meaning of Rome’s cultural heritage and its future appropriation by contemporary Italian society. The expansion of modern Italy had to be a cultural one: the exportation of a new civilisation founded on a new understanding of all the social connections between the different productive strata of the population. Meanwhile, if we consider all of Gramsci’s arguments about colonisation, the emigration of the Italian proletariat, and the role that man-work had to play in the renewal of the Italian (and Roman) cosmopolitanism, we may argue that he was in fact calling for his own form of imperialism, seen as the expansion of the new man-work in all capitalistic societies.44

Conclusion To sum up, Gramsci’s view on the new forms of imperialism was deeply connected with Marxist theories. He saw imperialism as a product of capitalistic societies and, alongside (almost) all the other Marxist thinkers, denied every comparison between new and ancient forms of imperialism. The reasons for his refusal, however, were more far-reaching: they not only referred to economic-capitalistic factors but were also and mainly concerned with the cultural tradition of Italian society. In his critique of colonialism vs. imperialism and on the comparison between ancient Rome and modern Italy, he dealt with the same problems that were affecting historians of the ancient world. The heritage of Rome, the difference between Roman imperialism in the western and eastern part of the Mediterranean world, and the role of Caesar in the transformation of the (Roman) Republic into an Empire, were all topical issues in the first decades of the XX century. However, during his reclusion, Gramsci had no access to all the bibliographical material that he wanted to consult, and the list of books on the ancient world that could be found in his personal library was extremely short.45 Most of his thoughts were based on recollections of his academic studies.

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 175 Gramsci’s idea that the Roman tradition had to be recovered in order to design the routes for a new cultural expansion, where the old and negative aspects of Italian cosmopolitanism could be transformed in positive terms, was both original and brilliant. Thus, even in this field, he proved himself to be an incisive intellectual, who could engage in a dialogue with all the historical, sociological, and intellectual currents of his time.

Acknowledgements I should like to thank Emilio Zucchetti and the Labour and Society: Social Theory Reading Group, which I attended in the autumn of 2017 while I was a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University, for their thoughtful advice, as well as Samuel Agbamu, who read an earlier version of this chapter and offered helpful suggestions, and the anonymous reviewers for their bibliographical pointers. All translations are my own, except where otherwise stated.

Notes 1 For a general introduction on the problem and further bibliographical references, see Hobson (1902), LCW: 22.185–304, Winslow (1931: 713–58), Schumpeter (1951), Koebner and Schmidt (1964), Thornton (1965), Kemp (1967), Stokes (1969: 285–301), Fieldhouse (1961:187–209), Fieldhouse (1973), and Etherington (1982: 1–36). 2 The classic works here are those of Mommsen (1854–1856), Frank (1914), and Holleaux (1921). On their views on Roman imperial expansion and the influences of modern imperialisms, see Linderski (1984); cf. Hammond (1948), Brunt (1965), Strayer (1966), Betts (1971), Miles (1990), and Adler (2008). 3 The pioneering study in this field is Hobson (1902). For Lenin’s definition see LCW: 22.185–304 (1st edn. 1916). For Marx’s last impressions on the future development of capitalism, see his correspondence with Nikolai Daniellson in MECW: 46.60–4 and 46.160–1. 4 LCW: 22.260. Even if Lenin’s definition became the classical one, it was not universally accepted by all Marxist thinkers. E.g., Kautsky’s concept of ultra-imperialism stayed at odds with it, especially regarding the ‘peaceful’ future outcome of imperialistic monopolies and the relationships between the great powers. For a general discussion on Marxists’ theories on imperialism see Germain (1967). 5 Bukharin (1972: 112). 6 See, for example, the three articles published in the newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo on 7/06/1919, 28/02/1920 – 6/03/1920, 5/06/1920. On Gramsci’s position on the First World War, see especially Rapone (2011a) and D’Orsi (2017: 93–118). 7 See esp. L’Ordine Nuovo, 14/06/1919 (= ON 70–1 = SPW-1: 61): “In Europa, in Asia, in America, in Africa giganteggia la sollevazione popolare contro il mercantilismo e l’imperialismo del capitale che continua a generare antagonismo, conflitti, distruzioni di vite e di beni, non sazio del sangue e dei disastri di cinque anni di Guerra. La lotta è su un piano mondiale: la rivoluzione non può essere più esorcizzata dai democratici truffaldini né soffocata da mercenari senza coscienza”. 8 On Italy’s colonial expansion, see Miège (1968), Mola (1980), and Labanca (2002).

176  Michele Bellomo 9 “After all, wherever civilized man carries intellectual abilities, technical knowledge, capital, and work with him in the midst of peoples of inferior civilization, it is impossible economically that he does not produce and does not increase values and riches”. The quotation is taken from Mancini (1885) (the English translation is mine). 10 For the ‘Myth of Rome’ at the end of the XIX century, see especially Cagnetta (1979, 1980, and 1991–1992), Gentile (2009), and Pellizzari (2011). Criticisms on this kind of comparison were expressed by Michels (1914). 11 On Pascoli’s political position, see Baranello (2011). 12 Eng. tr. Baranello (2011), “Ma la grande Proletaria ha trovato luogo per loro: una vasta regione bagnata dal nostro mare, verso la quale guardano, come sentinelle avanzate, piccole isole nostre; verso la quale si protende impaziente la nostra isola grande; una vasta regione che già per opera dei nostri progenitori fu abbondevole d’acque e di messi, e verdeggiante d’alberi e giardini […]. Anche là è Roma. E Rumi saranno chiamati. Il che sia augurio buono e promessa certa. Sì: Romani. Sì: fare e soffrire da forti. E sopra tutto ai popoli che non usano se non la forza, imporre, come non si può fare altrimenti, mediante la guerra, la pace”. 13 Gramsci was a student at the University of Turin between 1912 and 1915, but we have no indications that he attended any of De Sanctis’ classes. On Gramsci’s period at the university, see d’Orsi (1999: 39–75). 14 “La storia mostra che la civiltà è necessariamente espansiva. Non c’è diritto di barbarie, e però quella espansione attua il connubio tra la forza e il diritto. Negando il diritto alla espansione coloniale dei popoli civili nei paesi barbari si nega e condanna tutta la storia. Senza la colonizzazione greca nel Mediterraneo non sarebbe sorta la civiltà romana. Senza l’espansione romana nell’Occidente barbaro non sarebbe sorta la civiltà europea. Quella stessa città in cui Tu vivi godendo i vantaggi della più progredita civiltà era e sarebbe rimasta senza la conquista romana un villaggio tra paludi e foreste barbaro come Adua o come Macallè. […] Nulla dunque di simile neppure lontanamente sia alla conquista della Gallia per parte di Cesare sia alla conquista d’Etiopia per parte nostra, la quale ultima, se si vuole un paragone antico, per la grandiosità dei mezzi, e l’opera di civiltà iniziata insieme con la conquista ha solo riscontro con le guerre daciche di Traiano. Ma le supera perché compiuta non con le forze del più vasto impero del mondo, sì con quelle della sola Italia, nonostante la stolida quanto impotente opposizione di tutta l’Europa”. Both the texts are taken from a letter written by De Sanctis in Rome on 19 May 1936 and published by Accame (1990: 1358–60). 15 See, for example, De Sanctis (1923: 409), but cf. also De Sanctis (1920) and De Sanctis (1932) for the application of modern terms such as ‘capitalism’, or ‘proletariat’ to the political and social struggles of the II and I centuries BC. On De Sanctis’ view on imperialism see Cagnetta (1979: 27–8), Bandelli (1980), and Pani (1981). 16 For an overview on fascism’s different and changeable views on colonialism during the 1920s and 1930s see Steffek-Antonini (2015) and Pasetti (2016). 17 SPW-1: 3–5 = EN-S2: 824, “Poi un giorno si sparge la voce: uno studente ha ammazzato il governatore inglese delle Indie, oppure: gli italiani sono stati battuti a Dogali, oppure: i boxers hanno sterminato i missionari europei; e allora la vecchia Europa inorridita impreca contro i barbari, contro gli incivili, e una nuova crociata viene bandita contro quei popoli infelici. E badate: i popoli europei hanno avuto i loro oppressori e hanno combattuto lotte sanguinose per liberarsene, ed ora innalzano statue e ricordi marmorei ai loro liberatori, ai loro eroi, e innalzano a religione nazionale il culto dei morti per la patria. Ma non andate a dire agli italiani, che gli austriaci erano

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 177











venuti per portarci la civiltà: anche le colonne marmoree protesterebbero. Noi, sì, siamo andati per portare la civiltà ed infatti ora quei popoli ci sono affezionati e ringraziano il cielo della loro fortuna. Ma si sa; sic vos non vobis. La verità invece consiste in una brama insaziabile che tutti hanno di smungere i loro simili, di strappare loro quel po’ che hanno potuto risparmiare con privazioni. Le guerre sono fatte per il commercio, non per la civiltà: gli inglesi hanno bombardato non so quante città della Cina perché i cinesi non volevano sapere del loro oppio. Altro che civiltà! E russi e giapponesi si sono massacrati per avere il commercio della Corea e della Manciuria. Si delapidano le sostanze dei soggetti, si toglie loro ogni personalità; non basta però ai moderni civilissimi: i romani si accontentavano di legare i vinti al loro carro trionfale, ma poi riducevano a provincia la terra conquistata: ora invece si vorrebbe che tutti gli abitanti delle colonie sparissero per lasciar largo ai nuovi venuti.” 18 “Ma, per Iddio, Arminio difendeva la sua patria che il tallone romano voleva schiacciare, e Vercingetorige, seguente incatenato il carro del trionfatore, è più grande, o signori avvocati del Belgio, di Cesare rosso del sangue di migliaia di Galli, incendiatore di città, devastatore di intiere regioni […]. Occorsero decine di anni e battaglie ed assedi e carneficine per togliere ai Belgi la loro libertà anche quando gli invasori furono i Romani!” The article was published on 11/01/1916 in the “Cronache Torinesi” section of the newspaper Avanti! For the full text, see CT: 62–64. For context, see the collective volumes edited by Giasi (2008), and especially the articles by Natoli, Panaccione and d’Orsi. See also Rapone (2011b) and Fonzo (2019: 16). 19 Mussolini’s plans were quite clear from the beginning, as can be seen, for example, in a speech he delivered in Fiume on 22 May 1919: “L’Italia di Vittorio Veneto sente l’irresistibile attrazione verso il Mediterraneo che apre la via all’Africa. Una tradizione due volte millenaria chiama l’Italia sui lidi del continente nero che nelle reliquie venerande ostenta l’impero di Roma. […] La guerra libica non fu che una premessa per la nostra affermazione mediterranea; la partecipazione italiana alla guerra europea è la certezza del nostro ritorno in Africa”; see Susmel and Susmel (1954: 142–6). For the expansionist policy of the regime, see especially Rumi (1974) and Carocci (1967). 20 The whole speech (in Italian) can be found in Atti Parlamentari – Legislatura XXVII – Discussioni – Tornata del 16/05/1925 (the passages quoted in the text have been translated into English by me). Gramsci reaffirmed his position in an article published few days later and named ‘La conquista fascista dello Stato’, Lo Stato Operaio, 21/05/1925 (PV, 303–4), on which see Martinelli (1974). 21 Gramsci defined his view on imperialism in this way: “Noi abbiamo una nostra concezione dell’imperialismo e del fenomeno coloniale, secondo la quale essi sono prima di tutto una esportazione di capitale finanziario. Finora 1’‘imperialismo’ italiano è consistito solo in questo che l’operaio italiano emigrato lavora per il profitto dei capitalisti degli altri paesi, cioè finora l’Italia è solo stata un mezzo dell’espansione del capitale finanziario non italiano.” 22 In the index of Notebook 1, which was written on 8 February 1929, we find, at Point 10, “Observations on the Italian population: its composition, the function of emigration.” 23 Q1§44 = QC: 45–6 = PN1: 142–3: “Anche la sua politica d’espansione coloniale è legata alla sua ossessione unitaria. In questo seppe comprendere l’innocenza politica del Mezzogiorno; il contadino meridionale voleva la terra; Crispi non gliela voleva dare in Italia stessa, non voleva fare del «giacobinismo economico»; gli prospettò il miraggio delle terre coloniali da sfruttare. L’imperialismo di Crispi è un imperialismo rettorico passionale, senza base

178  Michele Bellomo











economico-finanziaria. L’Europa capitalistica, ricca di capitali, li esportava negli imperi coloniali che andò allora creando. Ma l’Italia non solo non aveva capitali da esportare, ma doveva ricorrere al capitale straniero per i suoi stessi strettissimi bisogni. Mancava una base [reale] all’imperialismo italiano, e alla base reale fu sostituita la «passionalità»: imperialismo-castello in aria, avversato dagli stessi capitalisti che avrebbero più volentieri visto impiegate in Italia le somme ingenti spese in Africa. Ma nel Mezzogiorno Crispi fu popolare per il miraggio della terra.” 24 Q8§80 = QC: 986 = PN3: 279: “Studiare se e in che misura le colonie hanno servito per il popolamento, nel senso che il colonialismo sia legato all’esuberanza demografica delle nazioni colonizzatrici.” 25 Q8§80 = QC: 986 = PN3: 279: “L’emigrazione segue leggi proprie, di carattere economico, cioè si avviano correnti migratorie nei vari paesi secondo i bisogni di varie specie di mano d’opera o di elementi tecnici dei paesi stessi. Uno Stato è colonizzatore non in quanto prolifico, ma in quanto ricco di capitale da collocare fuori dei propri confini.” Gramsci’s insistence on the economic nature of emigration and the need to make a clear distinction between the social needs of the Italian proletariat and the colonial expansionist policy pursued by the government was also induced by a polemic which had influenced the socialist movement since 1904, when Antonio Labriola, in a famous interview, had legitimated the Italian expansion in Africa for its ‘social’ outcome [see Germana (1970: 491–9) and cf. Biscione (2010: 140–1)]. 26 Think, for example, at the works of Mommsen (1854–1856), Frank (1914), and Holleaux (1921). 27 For further references, see the works cited at n. 2. 28 Gramsci considered Disraeli a ‘popular Tory’ (Q5§119 = PN2: 360). His knowledge was probably derived from André Maurois’ book, La vie de Disraëli (1927). 29 Q17§53 = FS: 400: “Perché Disraeli comprese, meglio di ogni altro capo di governo inglese, le necessità imperiali? Si può fare un paragone tra Disraeli e Cesare. Ma Disraeli non riuscì a impostare il problema della trasformazione dell’impero britannico e non ebbe continuatori.” 30 Q17§53 = FS: 400: “L’inglesismo ha impedito la fusione in una sola classe imperiale unificata dei gruppi nazionali che necessariamente si andavano formando in tutte le terre dell’impero. È evidente che l’impero inglese non poteva fondarsi sotto un’impalcatura burocratico-militare come avvenne per quello romano: fecondità del programma di un «parlamento imperiale» pensato da Disraeli. Ma questo parlamento imperiale avrebbe dovuto legiferare anche per l’Inghilterra, cosa assurda per un inglese: solo un semita spregiudicato come Disraeli poteva essere l’espressione dell’imperialismo organico inglese.” 31 On this, see Bodrero (1939: 45–53). 32 See, for example, Scott (1932) or Garratt (1938). It is interesting to note that these two authors expressed very different views on the successfulness of Mussolini’s claim. On fascism colonialism see the works cited above (nt. 16) and also Cagnetta (1977), ead. (1980), ead. (1991–1992), and Munzi (2001). 33 On these problems, see Giardina and Vauchez (2000) and Nelis (2012: 1–11). 34 We can simply recall Mario Attilio Levi’s La politica imperiale di Roma (1936), Ettore Pais’ Roma dall’antico al nuovo impero (1938) and Luigi Pareti’s I due imperi di Roma (1938). Further references can be found in Cagnetta (1979). 35 Q19§1: “Una doppia serie di ricerche. Una sull’Età del Risorgimento e una seconda sulla precedente storia che ha avuto luogo nella penisola italiana, in quanto ha creato elementi culturali che hanno avuto una ripercussione nell’Età del Risorgimento (ripercussione positiva e negativa) e continuano a operare (sia pure come dati ideologici di propaganda) anche nella vita nazionale italiana così come è stata formata dal Risorgimento.”

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 179 36 Q19§1: “Il periodo di storia romana che segna il passaggio dalla Repubblica all’Impero, in quanto crea la cornice generale di alcune tendenze ideologiche della futura nazione italiana.” On this note, cf. Balbo in this volume. 37 On Gramsci’s cosmopolitanism, see esp. Ciliberto (1999) (= 2001: 325–43), Izzo (2009, 2019), and Fonzo (2019: 51–62), and Balbo and Santangelo in this volume. 38 Gramsci’s insistence on the cosmopolitan turn imposed by Caesar on Roman society probably derived from Guglielmo Ferrero’s Grandezza e decadenza di Roma. See Ciglioni and Mecella: 825 (= Ferrero 1904: 567), “Giulio Cesare aveva infatti tentato negli ultimi tempi di fondare un principio di burocrazia cosmopolita mettendo in molte cariche servi e liberti suoi”. Gramsci’s conclusions on the importance of this turn and its historical consequences for modern Italy, however, were very different from (and went far beyond) the ones of Ferrero, a writer that he did not particularly appreciate. I would like to thank Federico Santangelo for having drawn my attention on this connection. 39 References are to Pareti (1938), De Francisci (1939), Ferrabino (1934), Levi (1936), and Ferrero (1910: 20–3). Cf. Cagnetta (1979: 63–78). 40 Q19§5 = FS: 390–391: “Il moto politico che condusse all’unificazione nazionale e alla formazione dello Stato italiano deve necessariamente sboccare nel nazionalismo e nell’imperialismo militaristico?”. On the Notebook 19, which readapted and re-elaborated notes from the preceding books, and its special position within the Prison Notebooks, see the introduction by Claudio Vivanti in the Einaudi’s single edition of 1977 (= A. Gramsci, Quaderno 19. Risorgimento italiano, Torino: Einaudi). 41 Q19§5 = FS: 390–391: “Si può sostenere che questo sbocco è anacronistico e antistorico (cioè artificioso e di non lungo respiro); esso è realmente contro tutte le tradizioni italiane, romane prima, cattoliche poi. Le tradizioni sono cosmopolitiche.” The emphasis in the quotation is mine. A very different position was taken by F. Battaglia in the entry ‘Imperialismo’ in Enciclopedia Italiana 18 (1933), p. 914: “Poiché il nazionalismo considera la nazione […] come potenza, ne viene affermata ‘la necessità della lotta internazionale perché la nazione possa prendere il suo posto, economico e morale, nel mondo’. L’imperialismo è la naturale conseguenza del nazionalismo.” Battaglia was here following the principle set out by Corradini (1914: 14–8). 42 Q19§5 = FS: 390–391: “Le condizioni di una espansione militare nel presente e nell’avvenire non esistono e non pare siano in processo di formazione. L’espansione moderna è di ordine finanziario-capitalistico.” Gramsci had foreseen the dramatic consequences of a new expansionist policy as early as in 1926 in his famous Lyons Theses. Cf. SPW-2: 352: “All the ideological propaganda and the political and activity of fascism is crowned by its tendency to ‘imperialism’. This tendency expresses the need felt by the industrial/ landowning ruling classes of Italy to find outside the national domain the elements to resolve the crisis of Italian society. It contains the germs of a war which in appearance will be fought for Italian expansion, but in which fascist Italy will in reality be an instrument in the hands of one of the imperialist groups which are striving for world domination.” 43 Q19§5 = FS: 390–1, “L’espansione italiana può essere solo dell’uomo-lavoro e l’intellettuale che rappresenta l’uomo-lavoro non è quello tradizionale, gonfio di retorica e di ricordi cartacei del passato. Il cosmopolitismo tradizionale italiano dovrebbe diventare un cosmopolitismo di tipo moderno, cioè tale da assicurare le condizioni migliori di sviluppo all’uomo-lavoro italiano, in qualsiasi parte del mondo egli si trovi. Non il cittadino del mondo in quanto civis romanus o in quanto cattolico, ma in quanto produttore di civiltà. […] La «missione» del popolo italiano è nella ripresa del cosmopolitismo romano e medioevale, ma nella sua forma più moderna e avanzata. Sia pure nazione

180  Michele Bellomo proletaria, come voleva il Pascoli; proletaria come nazione perché è stata l’esercito di riserva dei capitalismi stranieri, perché ha dato maestranze a tutto il mondo insieme ai popoli slavi. Appunto perciò deve inserirsi nel fronte moderno di lotta per riorganizzare il mondo anche non italiano, che ha contribuito a creare col suo lavoro.” (The emphasis in the text is mine). 44 For this new vision of cosmopolitism see Izzo (2019: 574–6). The manwork (l’uomo-lavoro) represented the Italian worker who had been forced to migrate and had become “the reserve army for foreign capital”. 45 On Gramsci’s personal library, see Fonzo (2019: 121–2). A complete inventory can be found at https://www.fondazionegramsci.org/categoria/ agmono/?ap=a and https://www.fondazionegramsci.org/categoria/agperiodici/?ap=a (Accessed 12 November 2020).

Bibliography Accame, S. (ed.) (1990) Gaetano De Sanctis. Scritti minori. Vol. 3. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Adler, E. (2008) ‘Late Victorian and Edwardian Views of Rome and the Nature of ‘Defensive Imperialism’’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 15, 187–216. Bandelli, G. (1980) ‘Imperialismo, colonialismo e questione sociale in Gaetano De Sanctis (1887-1921)’, Quaderni di Storia, 12, 83–126. Baranello, A. (2011), ‘Giovanni Pascoli’s ‘La grande proletaria si è mossa’: A Translation and Critical Introduction”, California Italian Studies, 2. [Online] Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jh07474 (Accessed: 11 August 2020). Betts, R.F. (1971) ‘The Allusion to Rome in British Imperialist Thought of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, Victorian Studies, 15, 149–59. Biscione, F.M. (ed.) (2010) P. Togliatti, Corso sugli avversari. Le lezioni sul fascismo. Turin: Einaudi. Bodrero, E. (1939) ‘Politica romana del fascismo’, in id., Roma e il fascismo. Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 45–53. Brunt, P.A. (1965) ‘Reflections on British and Roman Imperialism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 7, 267–88. Bukharin, N.I. (1972) Imperialism and World Economy. London: Martin Lawrence Limited. Cagnetta, M. (1977) ‘Appunti su guerra coloniale e ideologia imperiale «romana»’, in Semerari, G. et al. (eds.) Matrici culturali del fascismo. Seminari promossi dall’Ateneo Barese nel Trentennale della Liberazione. Bari: Università di Bari, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 185–207. Cagnetta, M. (1979) Antichisti e impero fascista. Bari: Dedalo. Cagnetta, M. (1980) ‘Idea di Roma, colonialismo e nazionalismo nell’opera di D’Annunzio’, Quaderni del Vittoriale, 23, 199–211. Cagnetta, M. (1991–1992) ‘L’impronta classica dell’ideologia coloniale italiana’, Materiali di Lavoro, 2–3, 199–211. Carocci, G. (1967) ‘Appunti sull’imperialismo fascista negli anni '20’, Studi Storici, 8, 113–37. Ciglioni, L. and L. Mecella (eds.) (2017) G. Ferrero, Grandezza e decadenza di Roma. Rome: Castelvecchi. (1st ed. = Ferrero, G. [1904] Grandezza e decadenza di Roma. Volume terzo: da Cesare ad Augusto. Milan: Treves). Ciliberto, M. (1999) ‘Cosmopolitismo e Stato nazionale nei Quaderni del carcere’, in Vacca, G. (ed.) Gramsci e il Novecento. Vol. 1. Rome: Carocci, 157–73.

Gramsci: ancient and modern imperialism 181 Ciliberto, M. (2001) Figure in chiaroscuro: filosofia e storiografia nel Novecento. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Corradini, E. (1914) Il nazionalismo italiano. Milan: Treves. d’Orsi, A. (1999) ‘Lo studente che non divenne “Dottore”. Gramsci all’Università di Torino’, Studi Storici, 40, 39–75. d’Orsi, A. (2017) Gramsci. Una nuova biografia. Milan: Feltrinelli. De Francisci, P. (1939) Civiltà romana. Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista. De Sanctis, G. (1920) ‘Dopoguerra antico’, Atene e Roma, 1, 3–14, 73–89. De Sanctis, G. (1923) Storia dei Romani, vol. 4. Turin: Fratelli Bocca. De Sanctis, G. (1932) ‘Essenza e caratteri della storia antica’, in Id. Problemi di storia antica. Bari: Laterza, 29–62. Etherington, N. (1982) ‘Reconsidering Theories of Imperialism’, History and Theory, 21, 1–36. Ferrabino, A. (1934) L’Italia romana. Milan: Mondadori. Ferrero, G. (1910) Roma nella cultura moderna. Milan: Treves. Fieldhouse, D.K. (1961) ‘‘Imperialism’: A Historiographical Revision’, Economic History Review, 14, 187–209. Fieldhouse, D.K. (1973) Economics and Empire 1830-1914. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan. Fonzo, E. (2019) Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Mercato San Severino: Paguro. Frank, T. (1914) Roman Imperialism. New York, NY: Macmillan. Garratt, G.T. (1938) Mussolini’s Roman Empire. London: Penguin. Gentile, E. (2009) La grande Italia. Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Germain, E. (1967) Two Essays on Imperialism. New York, NY: Young Socialist Alliance. Germana, V. (ed.) (1970) A. Labriola, Scritti politici (1886–1904). Bari: CUP. Giardina, A. and A. Vauchez (2000) Il mito di Roma: da Carlo Magno a Mussolini. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Giasi, F. (2008) Gramsci nel suo tempo. 2 vols. Rome: Carocci. Hammond, M. (1948) ‘Ancient Imperialism: Contemporary Justifications’, Harv. Stud, 58/59, 105–61. Hobson, J.A. (1902) Imperialism: A Study. New York, NY: James Pott & Co. Holleaux, M. (1921) Rome, la Grèce et les monarchies hellénistiques au IIIe siècle avant J.-C. (273-205). Paris: De Boccard. Izzo, F. (2009) Democrazia e cosmopolitismo in Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Carocci. Izzo, F. (2019) ‘Dall’internazionalismo al «cosmopolitismo di tipo nuovo» nei Quaderni del carcere’, in Frosini, F. and F. Giasi (eds.) egemonia e modernità: Gramsci in Italia e nella cultura internazionale. Rome: Viella, 545–79. Kemp, T. (1967) Theories of Imperialism. London: Dobson. Koebner, R. and H. Schmidt (1964) Imperialism: the Story and Significance of a Political Word. Cambridge: CUP. Labanca, N. (2002) Oltremare. Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana. Bologna: il Mulino. Levi, M.A. (1936) La politica imperiale di Roma. Turin: Paravia. Linderski, J. (1984) ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum: Concepts of Defensive Imperialism’, in Harris, W.V. (ed.) The Imperialism of Mid-Republican Rome. Rome: American Academy, 133–64.

182  Michele Bellomo Mancini, S. (1885) ‘Discorso alla Camera del 25 gennaio 1885’, Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, Legislatura XV, Discussioni, tornata del 27 Gennaio 1885. Martinelli, R. (1974) ‘Gramsci e la conquista fascista dello Stato’, Studi Storici, 15, 400–12. Michels, R. (1914) L’imperialismo italiano. Studi politico-demografici. Milan: Società Editrice Libraria. Miège, J.-L. (1968) L’impérialism italien de 1870 à nos jours. Paris: Sedes. Miles, G.B. (1990) ‘Roman and Modern Imperialism: a Reassessment’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32, 629–59. Mola, A.A. (1980) L’imperialismo italiano. La politica estera dall’Unità al fascismo. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Mommsen, T. (1854–1856) Römische Geschichte. 3 vols. Leipzig: Reimer & Hirzel. Munzi, M. (2001) L’epica del ritorno: archeologia e politica nella Tripolitania italiana. Rome: L’«Erma» di Bretschneider. Nelis, J. (2012) ‘Imperialismo e mito della romanità nella Terza Roma Mussoliniana’, Forum Romanum Belgicum, 2, 1–11. Pani, M. (1981) ‘Gaetano De Sanctis e l’imperialismo antico’, in Gasperini, L. (ed.) Scritti sul mondo antico in memoria di Fulvio Grosso. Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 475–91. Pareti, L. (1938) I due imperi di Roma. Catania: Miglio. Pasetti, M. (2016) ‘Un “colonialismo corporativo”? L’imperialismo fascista tra progetti e realtà’, Storicamente, 12, 1–30. Pellizzari, A. (2011) ‘La ‘Francia africana’ e i fantasmi delle guerre puniche nel dibattito parlamentare italiano sulla questione tunisina (1881–1896)’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 123, 792–823. Rapone, L. (2011a) Cinque anni che paiono secoli. Antonio Gramsci dal socialismo al comunismo (1914–1919). Rome: Carocci. Rapone, L. (2011b) ‘Gramsci giovane: la critica e le interpretazioni’, Studi Storici, 52, 975–91. Rumi, G. (1974) L’imperialismo fascista. Milan: Mursia. Schumpeter, J. (1951) The Sociology of Imperialisms. New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelley. Scott, K. (1932) ‘Mussolini and the Roman Empire’, CJ, 27, 645–57. Steffek, J. and F. Antonini (2015) ‘Toward Eurafrica! Fascism, Corporativism, and Italy’s Colonial Expansion’, in Hall, I. (ed.) Radicals and Reactionaries in Twentieth-Century International Thought. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 145–69. Stokes, E. (1969) ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Expansion and the Attack on the Theory of Economic Imperialism: A Case of Mistaken Identity?, Historical Journal, 12, 285–301. Strayer, J.R. (1966) ‘Some Reflections on Roman and Modern Imperialism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 9, 101–4. Susmel, E. and D. Susmel (eds.) (1954) B. Mussolini, Opera omnia. Vol. 13. Florence: La Fenice. Thornton, A.P. (1965) Doctrines of Imperialism. New York, NY: Wiley. Winslow, E.M. (1931) ‘Marxian, Liberal, and Sociological Theories of Imperialism’, Journal of Political Economy, 39, 713–58.

8

Plebeian tribunes and cosmopolitan intellectuals Gramsci’s approach to the late Roman Republic Mattia Balbo

When did intellectuals become cosmopolitan? The question appears to be Antonio Gramsci’s main concern when he considers Italian history in a long-term perspective. Gramsci traces back to Antiquity the origins of a sharp divide between intellectuals and people in Italian society: in his view, this split is one of the main causes that prevented the Risorgimento from becoming a real popular movement. In this chapter, I will consider Gramsci’s approach to the specific role of the plebeian tribunes in the Late Republic and his argument that in the I century BCE Rome produced a cosmopolitan elite of intellectuals, which, in a number of ways, shaped Italian history over the following centuries. Gramsci’s writings contain few references to the main characters of Roman history, and these references are very short, allusive, and somewhat cryptic, since they tend to reflect the common opinion of the early XX century about historical figures. This opinion is different from our current perception of Roman history. However, his references to the protagonists of the Civil Wars, specifically to the Gracchi, stand out for their originality, since they show a distinctive perspective on the so-called Roman Revolution, which differs greatly from the historiographical mainstream of the 1930s, and deserves close attention. My discussion starts from two passages in which Gramsci briefly mentions the role of the Gracchi in the transformation of the Roman Republic. Since he uses the plebeian tribunes, among other characters, as historical examples for a wider argument on Italian history, I will set these passages in their cultural and political context, and I will consider the related aspects of Gramsci’s approach to Roman history. Following his own stated aims, I shall focus on the concept of State in Antiquity and on the debate about the formation of an Italian identity in Antiquity. Indeed, Gramsci mentions the Gracchi at least twice, which is rather significant in itself, if we consider the limited influence of ancient history in the development of his political thought. As Erminio Fonzo has recently pointed out, most of Gramsci’s references to the ancient world are to be found in writings dating between 1910 and 1918, and mainly reflect his school studies, in which (as was common in the early XX century) classical authors played an important role.1 However, his interest in Antiquity

184  Mattia Balbo gradually decreased when he became more absorbed by politics. The first mention of the Gracchi that I shall consider here comes from a 1919 short article devoted to the notion of revolutionary State. The second one is more complex and is included in a renowned passage of the Prison Notebooks, in which Gramsci describes the transformation of Roman Italy into a cosmopolitan empire. Both passages contain original considerations on specific, heavily debated problems in Roman history, which are worth discussing.

The plebeian State In the June-July 1919 issue of L’Ordine Nuovo, the anarchist Corrado Quaglino, whose pen name was For Ever (in English in the original), published a polemical article in which he harshly criticised the socialist movement’s idea of State.2 For Ever employed various arguments to accuse the socialists of ‘Statolatry’ (State idolatry), among which he included several examples intended to demonstrate that the State, with its repressive power, exists in each turning point of the history of political ideas. According to him, every new political system in the history of mankind had only reproduced different forms of the same thing, namely the State, whose coercive power remained unchanged, since it always involved a ruling elite: Overthrowing a State is useless if it is replaced by another. In this manner the social issues, namely the emancipation of all serfs and the establishment of an egalitarian regime of absolute freedom, will never be solved. Neither the Christian State solved this problem, nor did the plebeian State of Gaius Gracchus and followers, nor the medieval State, nor the Girondist, or Jacobin, or Brissotist State, nor the Ebertist State, nor the Kerenskist, Kadetist, democratic and labour State. And even the ‘proletarian State’ will not solve it. 3 Among these examples, the reference to a ‘plebeian State’ created by Gaius Gracchus and his followers is very fascinating. According to Quaglino, even the more revolutionary of the two brothers did not touch upon the root of all social problems, that is, the political and economic emancipation of the subordinate classes. Gracchus’ failure came about because he only replaced the former institutions with others. Although these were probably more democratic, they were always affected by the original fault of representing a State system. Quaglino’s view that the continuous presence of the State was the fundamental problem in ancient societies is of course a fundamental trait of anarchist thought, as was defined by Bakunin; however, his words also seem reminiscent, with only a few differences, of Rousseau’s theory that social inequality is intrinsic in some human institutions, notably in private property.4 Gramsci replies with a critical argumentation, completely refuting Quaglino’s ideas point by point.5 Relevant to our current study is that he

Plebeian tribunes 185 reproduces, without any further discussion, the expression “a plebeian State of Gaius Gracchus” employed by Quaglino. Gramsci only repeats Quaglino’s expression before refuting his thesis about the continuous presence of the State in every political system, ancient and modern. We cannot infer that he accepts this concept of a plebeian State, although the general tone of his reply leaves in no doubt that he considers every definition provided by Quaglino theoretical nonsense. In any case, he does not go into detail about it. However, we may compare this reply with a passage of the Notebooks in which Gramsci defines ancient Rome as a sort of federative state. According to this idea, the res publica was the sum of different social groups, which were provided with their own institutions, except for proletarians and slaves, which were the real subordinate class: In a certain sense, the State was a mechanic system of social groups and often of different races: within the ambit of the political and military coercion, that was strongly exerted only at certain times, the subordinate groups had their own life, separately, and their own institutions, etc. And these institutions sometimes had state functions, making the State a federation of social groups with different and not subordinate functions. So, during the crises the phenomenon of the ‘double government’ became very relevant. The only group that was excluded from any kind of organized and autonomous collective life were the slaves (and the non-slave proletarians) in Antiquity, as well as the proletarians, the serfs, and the tenant farmers in the Middle Ages.6 Therefore, according to Gramsci’s theory, a supposed plebeian ‘State’ – namely the whole set of republican institutions achieved by the plebeians, such as the tribunate or the plebeian assembly, together with the individuals that they represented – actually were not a ‘full’ State in the proper sense, but coexisted together with others inside the federation. The plebeian institutions only occasionally performed state functions for the whole body of citizens. The last point contains a specific view on the institutional role of the plebeian tribunes, whose origins can be traced back to Rousseau’s body of thought. In the Social Contract (1762), the Genevan philosopher was probably the first to reappraise the positive importance of the tribunate, by assigning to this institution a fundamental role within the constitutional praxis. For Rousseau, the popular tribune was a crucial mediator between different powers, elemental in maintaining the institutional balance.7 This perspective is antithetical to the traditional interpretation, based on Cicero’s renowned opinion, that the tribunes served revolutionary purposes, acting as a foreign body in the State, and provoking the fall of the Roman Republic.8 Gramsci’s view is not a mere rhetorical appraisal of the tribunes as the champions of the people, but also implies a strong definition of their institutional and legal roles: the tribunes were not a State within the State; rather, they were part of the State, with specific, if extemporary, functions.

186  Mattia Balbo Gramsci seems to disregard the Gracchi in dealing with the agrarian question: in that case his main focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.9 Of course this lack of an explicit reference to Roman history could be accidental, and might depend on the fragmentary structure of the Notebooks, but Gramsci’s approach to this issue is always consistent.10 However, we may suggest that his understanding of the tribunate of the plebs, which I have outlined above, could contribute to explain why he did not consider the Gracchi as a relevant example to a discussion of land reform. Indeed, the lex Sempronia agraria – the centrepiece of the Gracchan reform programme – was directed at smallholders, rather than at proletarians: such a distinction was clearly asserted in the early twentieth-century historiography, although there was some confusion around the notion of proletarians. As an example, in the famous 1921 article by Gaetano De Sanctis (Professor of Ancient History at Turin) on the comparison between the Gracchan and the French Revolutions, the author defines Tiberius Gracchus as a reformer who was concerned with the proletariat (intending the ancient proletarii).11 But this is not the case. Gramsci distinguishes between plebeians, as a political group, and people without property (proletarii), as a social class. From a political standpoint, the Roman proletarii belong to the plebs (though not all members of the plebs were proletarii), and the plebs are part of the State. He assimilates the economic condition of the proletarii to that of the slaves, and for him only the slaves were fully subordinate. Ancient sources attest that the Gracchan programme disregarded, or even criticised, slave labour.12 It can thus be suggested that the Gracchan land reform could not provide a valuable historical precedent, because it was mainly directed to smallholders, who, according to Gramsci’s definition, should not be considered a subordinate class.

Debating Roman Italy We have so far been focusing on Gramsci’s understanding of the political role of the plebeian tribunes within the Roman institutions. We shall now consider his attitude to the ancient attempts to change these institutions. A striking passage in the Prison Notebooks refers to the leaders of the age of the Civil Wars and to the end of the Roman Republic: it is much fuller than any of those that we have considered so far and shows a critical and personal assessment of Roman history. In late 1934, he sketches a project for a new history of the origins of the term ‘Italy’, with the intent to (in his own words) “destroy [many] notions that are obsolete, scholastic, rhetorical and passively accepted” by the general public.13 His historiographical reassessment starts with the fall of the Roman Republic, and includes the main characters that, according to him, need a full reappraisal: the Gracchi, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar. It can be pointed out that they were all understood to be exponents of the so-called popularis party, in Gramsci’s time.

Plebeian tribunes 187 A double series of researches. One on the Italian Risorgimento and the other on the previous history of the Italian Peninsula, because this earlier history has influenced (in a positive or negative manner) the Risorgimento through cultural elements and still impacts (in the form of ideology and propaganda) the Italian national life, which is an aftermath of the Risorgimento. The latter should be a collection of essays on those periods of European and World history that had an impact on the Peninsula. For instance: 1) the various meanings of the term ‘Italy’ throughout the different periods, inspired by Carlo Cipolla’s well-known essay (which should be completed and updated). 2) The period in Roman history that marks the shift from the Republic to the Empire: it creates the general framework of some ideological trends of the future Italian nation. It does not seem to be understood that Caesar and Augustus actually changed the relative position of Rome and of the Peninsula in the balance of the classical world: they took ‘territorial’ hegemony away from Italy and transferred the hegemonic function to an ‘imperial’, namely a supranational, class. If it is true that Caesar continued and completed the democratic movement of the Gracchi, Marius and Catiline, it is also true that Caesar won because the problem that for the Gracchi, for Marius and for Catiline was posed as one to be solved in the Peninsula, in Rome, is posed again by Caesar in the frame of the whole empire, of which the Peninsula is a part and Rome the ‘bureaucratic’ capital; and even this only up to a certain point. This historical passage is very relevant for the history of Italy and Rome, because it stands at the beginning of the process of the ‘denationalisation’ of Rome and Italy, which becomes a ‘cosmopolitan field’. Roman aristocracy, which had unified the Italian Peninsula with modes and means adequate to the times, and had set the grounds for a national development, is crushed by imperial forces and by the issues that it has created. Caesar cuts the historical-political knot with his sword and a new era begins, in which the East gains so much importance that it overpowers the West and causes a rift between the two parts of the Empire.14 The main purpose of these writings is to explain the deep-rooted division between the intellectuals and the people during the Risorgimento, as well as the historical reasons that prevented the transformation of the Risorgimento from an elite movement into a popular movement, because it failed to achieve mass-participation. His focus on the Risorgimento seeks to explore the background of many political and cultural features of XX century Italy. Gramsci holds that the strong divide between intellectuals and popular masses in Italy has deep roots: it stems from the denationalisation of the intellectuals which started in Roman history, when Caesar adopted a supranational cultural and ideological perspective.15 The starting point of this process corresponded with his innovative colonial policy and

188  Mattia Balbo with the extension of Roman citizenship to Transpadane elites and foreign intellectuals (49-46 BCE). Thus, a new cosmopolitan group of intellectuals was born. Originating from every part of the empire, they produced works and ideas addressed only to the supranational elites, and the Italian popular masses were no longer involved. The same opinion indeed emerges in other passages of the Notebooks, to which the above lines are strongly connected. A first one concerns the role of intellectuals in the Roman Empire, and quotes (in Latin) a famous sentence of Suetonius about the granting of citizenship to physicians and to “all teachers of the liberal arts” working in Rome, promoted by Caesar: according to Gramsci, such a provision attracted the best intellectuals of the whole empire to Rome.16 In his opinion, Caesar’s policy created a new class of imperial intellectuals who fully replaced the prior Italian elite, and this cosmopolitan role was held by the Catholic clergy and by the Italian humanists until the XVIII century, as they had no national intent. Furthermore, in another passage devoted to Caesar, he affirms that Caesar realised this fundamental change in Roman history because his perspective was much less Italian and much more cosmopolitan than that of his direct forerunner Catiline.17 It follows that Gramsci’s project depends on providing a new history of the Risorgimento, as he clearly states at the start of his writings. We must be cognisant of the fact that his true interest is the Risorgimento, which he considers to be the real turning point of Italian history.18 Therefore, he treats ancient and medieval history as being of secondary importance, and his historiographical thought always aims to identify in these periods the premonitory signs of the Risorgimento and its features. Here, Gramsci also includes some negative features, such as the ideological vacuum that exists between intellectuals and the masses. Against this backdrop, we can infer, at least partly, Gramsci’s view on the involvement of the Gracchi in the end of the Roman Republic and in the process of denationalising of the Roman elite. As an aside, we can also observe that in this passage the Gracchi are defined as ‘democrats’, according to a definition which was very common at the beginning of the XX century, but is now less used in historiography, or only between inverted commas.19 Both the periodisation of the Civil Wars and the Italic perspective on the Gracchan programme that Gramsci follows here come from the famous account of the fall of the Roman Republic by the Greek historian Appian of Alexandria. Among the ancient sources, Appian is the author who better emphasises the Gracchan ‘revolution’ as the first Civil War that occurred in the Late Republic, and interprets the year 133 BCE as the rupture of the general agreement between Senate and People which was achieved at the beginning of the III century BCE. 20 Appian’s periodisation has been almost unanimously accepted in historiography from the XVI century onwards, when the humanist Carlo Sigonio bolstered it with additional arguments. 21 However, Appian’s interpretation of the causes of the Gracchan crisis, notably the idea that there was a conflict between poor Italians and rich

Plebeian tribunes 189 Romans, had a dubious fortune before the XIX century.22 Some thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Montesquieu and Louis de Beaufort, used Appian’s ideas extensively, but in the antiquarian tradition there were many divergent opinions about the reliability of the Greek author. 23 Later, Karl Marx contributed to the reappraisal of Appian’s ideas by stating that he thought Appian’s passage on the Italian crisis was a well-defined piece of social history.24 Marx also studied Niebuhr’s Roman History, where Appian plays a fundamental role in the reconstruction of the juridical landscape of Roman Italy.25 However, as Andrew Bonnell has pointed out, Marx greatly appreciated Appian because of his attention to economic issues, but his historiographical concern went no further than a personal sympathy for the way in which the Greek author described the social conditions of the poor in the Roman Republic.26 Marx never aimed to provide a full reconsideration of Republican history through Appian, in contrast to Niebuhr and other nineteenth-century historians. The inclusion of Appian in Marxist historiography depends on several factors, among which Marx’s sympathy for him is probably dominant. Incidentally, we may briefly note the essay on The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla by Augustus Beesly, written at the end of the XIX century, which provided a relevant contribution to the Marxist historiography of the Roman Republic, specifically in Anglophone culture.27 In recent times, several aspects of Appian’s reconstruction have been challenged, notably the statement that Tiberius Gracchus was the first tribune to break down the constitutional order. The famous article on the Forerunners of the Gracchi by Lily Ross Taylor (1962) was influential in this reconsideration.28 Historians also sometimes challenge the idea that the Gracchan programme concerned the Italians and their demands for a political and economic emancipation from the start (133 BCE), not to mention the long debate on the demography of ancient Italy, which compares this source with archaeological data and landscape surveys.29 However, the core of Gramsci’s proposal consists of a full-scale reconsideration of the origins of a ‘national’ identity of the Italians. The idea that modern Italy directly derives from Roman Italy was sometimes asserted in the nineteenth-century historiography, and is refuted by Gramsci, who does not think that the Roman unification of Italy is the basis of the modern notion of an Italian State.30 During the Risorgimento, and just after the Italian unification, many thinkers were looking at the ancient origins of Italy and trying to define the historical features of a national identity. However, this focus on Roman history was not universal. There were in fact many patterns of supposed Italian identity. The Lombards that invaded the Peninsula in the sixth-century, the Medieval Communes, and the Florentine Renaissance were often regarded as the roots of modern Italy. Even the pre-Roman peoples were invoked as the real keepers of an Italian identity. Here we can recall the long debate that took place from the XVIII century onwards on the origins of the Etruscans, whether they were autochthons or Pelasgians (see for instance some passages of the Notebooks in which Gramsci

190  Mattia Balbo criticises Vincenzo Gioberti among those who sought a national unity in the Etruscan world).31 Sometimes the Etruscan cities were also evoked as a political model of freedom: this notion dates back to Machiavelli, who praises Etruscan liberty in an anti-Roman and anti-imperialist perspective, and can be traced through the European literature into the XX century when David Herbert Lawrence wrote his Etruscan Places (1932) with the explicit intent to contrast the lively ‘Etruscan’ past with Mussolini’s ‘Roman’ fascism. The debate on the influences of Etruscans on Italian identity sometimes also involved linguistics, since the supposed Etruscan substratum was believed to be the origin of the Tuscan gorgia.32 In the XIX century, Roman Italy was considered among the precedents of modern Italy, but it was not the only one.33 This might in part be because the French Empire was already using the Roman model as an identity precedent (under Napoleon I, and even Napoleon III). Gramsci often criticises the French uses of Roman history when he reflects on the modern debate about the origins of nations and nation-states: in doing so, he endorses a judgement put forward by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.34 After 1861, the Roman model became more and more important for Italian thinkers: after the unification of Italy many politicians felt the need to build a cultural identity in order to prevent the centrifugal forces that could break the new state into regional identities. Thus, Roman unification of Italy became an appealing model. At the same time, colonialism acted as the veritable turning point in the rediscovery of the Roman imperial model. When Italy enacted a colonial policy in Africa, many politicians referred to the importance of restoring Roman supremacy over the Mediterranean: in their opinion, the Italians had to occupy the same pre-eminent role that was held by their Roman ancestors.35 Therefore, the idea that Italy and the Italians directly descended from ancient Rome was (re-)asserted at the beginning of the XX century. Fascism was the driving force in this direction: Mussolini’s use of the Roman model is well known and does not need to be detailed here.36 In the fascist representation, the Roman Empire was an Italian Empire and it was the direct forerunner of Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. The myth of Rome became an essential aspect of the political ritual. For instance, the grand celebrations of the two-thousand-year anniversary of Virgil and Augustus’ births (1930 and 1937), not to mention the extensive restorations of many archaeological sites in Rome that effaced the medieval scape of the town. From the second half of the 1920s, there was a proliferation of publications that extolled Rome and its imperial mission. In 1926, Mussolini himself delivered a speech at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, in which he celebrated Rome’s victory over Carthage.37 Ettore Romagnoli and Ettore Pais attended the event, and their contribution to the formation of a fascist historiography of antiquity is well known.38 The fascist representation of Rome was not only employed to influence popular culture, it also involved and influenced scientific research. Scholars

Plebeian tribunes 191 were compelled to consider the idea of Rome that fascism was proposing, and gave a ‘scientific’ contribution to the development of several aspects of the model. Sometimes, especially in the 1930s, the same process also involved intellectuals who did not support fascism, or who were theoretically far from its cultural premises. For example, in the same period in which Gramsci was writing the above passage, the anti-fascist Luigi Salvatorelli conceived a theory about the unity of Italian history starting from ancient Italy, which appeared (not by chance) in the fascist journal Pan.39 Salvatorelli identified the Hannibalic War and, even more so, the Social War as the main contexts in which a real Italian identity came to the fore. Benedetto Croce opposed his thesis, and started a long-term debate that involved the notion of Roman Italy and its relationship with the subsequent history of the Peninsula.40 In prison, Gramsci was able to become informed about the main cultural events of his times, thanks to books and journals he received, but his information was fragmentary and delayed, so it was difficult for him to stay up to date.41 He was usually familiar with the recent writings of Croce and Salvatorelli; indeed, the Notebooks contain several references to both of them. However, when he was reflecting on Italian identity he probably was not aware of their debate, because it took place just after 1934.42 Although Salvatorelli had made similar suggestions in his studies on the history of Christianity published in the late 1920s, the full genesis of his thesis dates to a few years later.43 Nevertheless, Gramsci was fully aware of the spirit of the times. For instance, he had some information from an older booklet by the fascist jurist and politician Arrigo Solmi, which proposed a similar thesis on the unity of Italian history from Antiquity, and to which Croce also replied.44 Gramsci responds to the fascist idea of the continuity between ancient Rome and contemporary Italy: he discusses the grounds of this model, which he considers to be based on rotten categories. He stresses the same idea in another passage of the Notebooks as well, in which he criticises the claim of having found a national unity in the past.45 According to him, the Roman Empire was not a national state stricto sensu: on the contrary, it was a supranational or cosmopolitan empire. Therefore, Italian unification under Roman rule was not the creation of a national Italy, but just the opposite: a process in which Italy was dissolved in a cosmopolitan empire. His reaction is best understood by considering the educational mission of fascist propaganda, which aimed to instil the idea of historical continuity at every level, from primary schools to universities. So, Gramsci proposes a veritable counter-history, that is, a proposal of a new history of Italy, based on the notion of discontinuity. Among his sources, he quotes an earlier theory put forward by Carlo Cipolla, professor of Modern History at the University of Turin. Gramsci refers to the inaugural speech of the academic year 1900 devoted to the Italian identity, in which Cipolla reflected on the various meanings of the term ‘Italy’ (Italia) in the past, and rejected the idea that the origins of Italy should be searched for in the Roman Empire.46

192  Mattia Balbo On the contrary, he looked at Late Antiquity and at the Middle Ages. As mentioned above, this solution was one of the possibilities evoked until the end of the XIX century, which was, however, overwhelmed by fascist classicising propaganda in the 1930s. The Notebooks contain other mentions of Cipolla, all referring to the need to reassess the notion of Italy, a matter close to Gramsci’s heart.47 Although some minor aspects of Gramsci’s reconstruction should be reconsidered, the main content is, in my opinion, topical, since he clearly outlines the differences between ancient and modern political systems, and places the Roman Empire in a historical context. As Italian speakers know, in current historiography there are two different words to define ancient and modern Italians, which cannot be confused: Italici and Italiani. Even ‘nation’ is a concept that cannot be applied to an ancient state, as Andrea Giardina has effectively argued.48 According to Gramsci, if there ever existed an Italian Rome, that was the case before the rise of Caesar. However, the Roman elite did unify the Peninsula, but this unification produced so many issues that they could be solved only with a ‘process of denationalisation’, that is, a cosmopolitan empire. Even taken out of context, this passage – namely the goal of denationalising the story of Roman Italy – shows a complete awareness of the main stages of Roman imperial history: the Republic is overcome by the new geopolitical situation held by Rome across the Mediterranean, and a supranational institution comes to the fore. However, from a long-term perspective, the wealthy provinces start a successful competition with Italy that leads to the splitting of the empire in Late Antiquity.

Conclusion Antonio Gramsci offers an original interpretation of the fall of the Roman Republic, and he ascribes the most relevant turning point in the history of ancient Italy, namely the creation of a cosmopolitan group of hegemonic intellectuals, to Caesar. As a reaction to the political and cultural context of the 1930s, he refutes the unity of Italian history, and is fully involved in the debate around the meaning of Roman Italy, taking a stand against the fascist depiction of the ancient Roman man.49 When Gramsci considers the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire, he discredits the legitimacy of Mussolini’s imperial ambitions, which are built on the basis of a supposed (and absurd) continuity with Roman history. However, Gramsci’s ideas are more extensive than this anti-fascist stance. The historical examples he chooses, above all his interpretation of the turning point instigated by Caesar, are strictly connected to a fundamental pillar of his body of thought, namely the problem of defining the features and role of intellectuals in history. 50 According to Gramsci’s theory, there are two kinds of intellectuals: on the one side, there are the traditional intellectuals, heirs of liberalism, who do not share a national

Plebeian tribunes 193 perspective; on the other side, there are the ‘organic’ intellectuals, who identify themselves within a specific social class and a particular nation. In his opinion, the traditional intellectuals were born in Caesar’s time, and they transmitted their cosmopolitan perspective to the cultural elite of the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. The Middle Roman Republic (300-133 BCE), on the other hand, provided an environment in which something closer to a national movement could arise with an Italian class of intellectuals, if only they had produced influential literature. 51 The unification of Roman Italy caused so many political and social problems that Caesar was only able to solve them by turning Italy into a cosmopolitan empire. The gap between intellectuals and the rest of the population is the unavoidable consequence of the Roman Empire and has had a long-term impact on Italian history. This opinion descends from Gramsci’s notion of cosmopolitanism, which originally was opposed to both the idea of nation and to the Marxist concept of internationalism. Gramsci also employs cosmopolitanism to define the imperial intellectuals, and the meaning of this word in his writings is much debated.52 For him, cosmopolitanism mostly has a pejorative connotation, notably when it is employed to define the role of intellectuals in Italian history. Gramsci analyses the weakness and the delay that affected the creation of an Italian nation, compared to other European countries, by assuming that in medieval and modern Italy intellectuals had no national perspective, since they were a separate and cosmopolitan class. As discussed above, the roots of this situation can be traced back to the Roman Empire. Therefore, in the passages quoted in this chapter, cosmopolitanism has an unequivocally negative meaning when it refers to the gap between intellectuals and popular masses. 53 The Italian cultural elites from Antiquity to the Modern Age are fully composed of traditional intellectuals, according to the Gramscian categories. In this sense, the “cosmopolitanism of Italian intellectuals” becomes a veritable historical category, and Gramsci employs it to trace a longue durée in the history of Italy.54 In this manner, he tries to reconstruct the precise role of traditional intellectuals in Italian society. It is very likely that this understanding of history is essential in Gramsci’s new history of Italy, as it is sketched in the Notebooks: These essays are to be intended for a specific audience, with the purpose to destroy notions that are obsolete, scholastic, rhetorical and passively accepted because of the widespread ideas in a given milieu within popular culture. Then, they have to excite scientific interest for the treated subjects: these will be presented as living and still working in current times, as forces which are on the move and always topical.55 In conclusion, the “cosmopolitanism of Italian intellectuals” is among the fundamental notions created to replace the untenable categories of fascist representation.

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Notes 1 Fonzo (2019: 15–22). 2 For Ever (1919); cf. Spriano (1963: 48), n. 3. The identity of For Ever was at times debated, and in some editions of Gramsci’s writings he is still identified as Massimo Fovel (PPW: 101). 3 For Ever (1919: 61): “È inutile far capitombolare uno Stato per sovrapporgliene un altro. La questione sociale, cioè l’emancipazione di tutti i servi e l’instaurazione di un regime equalitario e di libertà assoluta, così, non sarà mai risoluta. Non l’ha risolta né lo Stato cristiano, né lo Stato plebeo di Caio Gracco e seguaci, né lo Stato medievalesco, né lo Stato girondino, o giacobino, o brissotiano, né lo Stato ebertista, né lo Stato kerenskiano e cadetto e democratico e labourista, e non la risolverà neppure lo «Stato proletario».” All translations from Italian are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 4 Rousseau, Discours, II.1 = Gourevitch (1997: 161): “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors Mankind would have been spared by him who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had cried out to his kind: Beware of listening to this impostor; You are lost if you forget that the fruits are everyone’s and the Earth no one’s.” Compare with Quaglino’s words in a prior paragraph: “Twenty long centuries of History tell us that the existence of the State is the result of the ‘blindness’ and the ‘servility’ of the subjects, that the existence of the State provokes war, barbarity, poverty, struggles and social disorders [...].” [For Ever (1919: 61)]. 5 L’Ordine Nuovo (28/06/1919-05/07/1919) = ON: 114–9, “We are publishing this article by For Ever, even though it is a motley collection of extraordinary mistakes and phraseological nonsenses. According to For Ever, the Weimar State is a Marxist State; at the ‘New Order’ we are statolaters [...] and the Socialist State is the same thing as State Socialism; there was a Christian State and a plebeian State of Gaius Gracchus [...]. So many assertions, so many nonsenses are presented in defence of anarchy.” However, ‘Statolatry’ is also a relevant concept for Gramsci, who uses it as the cornerstone of a critique of Soviet socialism: Q8§130 = QC: 1020; see Liguori (2009). 6 Q25§4 = QC: 2287: “Lo Stato era, in un certo senso, un blocco meccanico di gruppi sociali e spesso di razze diverse: entro la cerchia della compressione politicomilitare, che si esercitava in forma acuta solo in certi momenti, i gruppi subalterni avevano una vita propria, a sé, istituzioni proprie ecc. e talvolta queste istituzioni avevano funzioni statali, che facevano dello Stato una federazione di gruppi sociali con funzioni diverse non subordinate, ciò che nei periodi di crisi dava un’evidenza estrema al fenomeno del «doppio governo». L’unico gruppo escluso da ogni vita propria collettiva organizzata era quello degli schiavi (e dei proletari non schiavi) nel mondo classico, e quello dei proletari e dei servi della gleba e dei coloni nel mondo medievale.” An earlier version of this note is contained in Q3§18 = QC: 302–3. It stems from an essay by Ettore Ciccotti on the Roman historical tradition, containing a discussion of the development of popular classes in ancient and medieval history: Ciccotti (1927) = Ciccotti (1929: 1–64). Cf. Q25§6 = QC: 2290 on slaves, in which popular assemblies and plebiscites are mentioned. See also Fonzo (2019: 108–10). 7 Rousseau, Social Contract, IV.5 = Betts (1999: 151–3). 8 Cic. Leg. 3.19: “[the tribunician power] seems to me pernicious; for it came into being at a time of sedition, and its effect is to promote sedition” (Engl. transl. by N. Rudd). See also Polyb. 6.57.5–9. A good summary of the modern perspectives can be found in Lanfranchi (2015: 1–30).

Plebeian tribunes 195 9 E.g. Q2§55 = QC: 212 (emphyteusis); Q2§79 = QC: 242 (Italian peasants); Q7§108 = QC: 931–2 (agrarian reform and communism); Q16§28 = QC: 1900–1 (agrarian issues); Q19§24 = QC: 2024 (peasants and intellectuals); Q19§26 = QC: 2035–46 (urban-rural relationships), in which the examples come from modern and contemporary history, with only a few references to the Middle Ages. Compare with Q12§1 = QC: 1514, and Q16§21 = QC: 1889–90, where he stresses the separation between intellectuals and peasants even in Antiquity. 10 The internal coherence of the Prison Notebooks has been intensely debated from the 1970s onwards, starting with Anderson (1976) [see contra Thomas (2009: 41–83)]. However, the few references to the Roman Republic do not show contradiction. 11 De Sanctis (1921) = Ferrabino and Accame (1976: 39–70). 12 Tiberius Gracchus’ speech: App. B. Civ. 1.9.36; 11.44; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 9.4 (= ORF4 149–50, frr. 13–15). 13 Q19§1 = QC: 1960. An earlier version (year 1932) in Q9§89 = QC: 1152. See the dates in Cospito (2011: 896–904). 14 Q19§1 = QC: 1959–60: “Una doppia serie di ricerche. Una sull’Età del Risorgimento e una seconda sulla precedente storia che ha avuto luogo nella penisola italiana, in quanto ha creato elementi culturali che hanno avuto una ripercussione nell’Età del Risorgimento (ripercussione positiva e negativa) e continuano a operare (sia pure come dati ideologici di propaganda) anche nella vita nazionale italiana così come è stata formata dal Risorgimento. Questa seconda serie dovrebbe essere una raccolta di saggi su quelle epoche della storia europea e mondiale che hanno avuto un riflesso nella penisola. Per esempio: 1) I diversi significati che ha avuto la parola «Italia» nei diversi tempi, prendendo lo spunto dal noto saggio del prof. Carlo Cipolla (che dovrebbe essere completato e aggiornato). 2) Il periodo di storia romana che segna il passaggio dalla Repubblica all’Impero, in quanto crea la cornice generale di alcune tendenze ideologiche della futura nazione italiana. Non pare sia compreso che proprio Cesare ed Augusto in realtà modificano radicalmente la posizione relativa di Roma e della penisola nell’equilibrio del mondo classico, togliendo all’Italia l’egemonia «territoriale» e trasferendo la funzione egemonica a una classe «imperiale» cioè supernazionale. Se è vero che Cesare continua e conclude il movimento democratico dei Gracchi, di Mario, di Catilina, è anche vero che Cesare vince in quanto il problema, che per i Gracchi, per Mario, per Catilina si poneva come problema da risolversi nella penisola, a Roma, per Cesare si pone nella cornice di tutto l’impero, di cui la penisola è una parte e Roma la capitale «burocratica»; e ciò anche solo fino a un certo punto. Questo nesso storico è della massima importanza per la storia della penisola e di Roma, poiché è l’inizio del processo di «snazionalizzazione» di Roma e della penisola e del suo diventare un «terreno cosmopolitico». L’aristocrazia romana, che aveva, nei modi e coi mezzi adeguati ai tempi, unificato la penisola e creato una base di sviluppo nazionale, è soverchiata dalle forze imperiali e dai problemi che essa stessa ha suscitato: il nodo storico-politico viene sciolto da Cesare con la spada e si inizia un’epoca nuova, in cui l’Oriente ha un peso talmente grande che finisce per soverchiare l’Occidente e portare a una frattura tra le due parti dell’Impero.” 15 See Santangelo in this volume. 16 Q8§22 = QC: 954; cf. Suet. Iul. 42: omnisque medicinam Romae professos et liberalium artium doctores, quo libentius et ipsi urbem incolerent et ceteri adpeterent, civitate donavit. See also Imbornone (2009). 17 Q17§21 = QC: 1924 = : “[…] We shall compare Catiline and Caesar: Catiline was more ‘Italian’ than Caesar, and his revolution, with a different ruling class, might have let Italy maintain its hegemonic function as it existed during

196  Mattia Balbo







the Republic. With Caesar the revolution is not just the solution for the struggle between Italian classes, but between classes from the whole Empire, or at least classes holding mainly imperial functions (soldiers, bureaucrats, bankers, contractors etc.) […]”. Cf. Fonzo (2019: 63–73), esp. 64. See also F. Santangelo’s contribution in this volume. 18 Galasso (1969: 102–4). 19 See the terms of the debate in Polverini (2005). 20 App. B. Civ. 1.1–3; cf. Vell. Pat. 2.2.2–3. For more discussion of the supposed agreement between tribunes and senate before the Gracchi see Williams (2004). 21 For Sigonio’s use of Appian see McCuaig (1989: 9, 144, 151–2) and Rich (2020). 22 App. B. Civ. 1.7–8; cf. Gargola (2008: 488–93). 23 See discussion in Rich (2008). 24 In a letter to F. Engels (27/02/1861), Marx wrote: “However, for recreation in the evenings I have been reading Appian’s Roman Civil Wars of Rome in the original Greek. A most valuable book. The fellow comes of Egyptian stock. Schlosser says he is ‘soulless’, probably because he probes the material basis of the said civil wars” (MECW: 41.265). Furthermore, the Capital contains a lengthy quotation of the aforesaid passage about the conditions of the poor Italians (App. B. Civ. 1.7–8), which are compared to the proletarianization of rural labourers in modern Britain (MECW 35.716–7). See also Canfora (2015: 10–44). 25 Niebuhr’s account of the Roman ager publicus can be traced in Marx’s writings, as e.g. MECW 28.399–407, 414, 417; cf. Cook (2013: 319). For the importance of Appian in Niebuhr’s theory see Rich (2008: 539–40). 26 Bonnell (2015: 20). 27 Beesly (1886); cf. Wiseman (1998: 121–34). 28 Taylor (1962). 29 On the Italians see references in Richardson (1980), Balbo (2013: 90–4), and Carlà-Uhink (2017). A well-grounded discussion of the evidence from archaeological surveys is provided by Launaro (2011). 30 Giardina and Vauchez (2000: 177–85) and Fonzo (2019: 64). 31 Q14§72 = QC: 1740; Q19§5 = QC: 1979. 32 See e.g. Merlo (1950). Contra Rohlfs (1949–1954), vol. 1 §196. For an account of the scholarly debate about the Etruscan language at the time, see Di Fazio in this volume. 33 See De Francesco (2013). 34 Cf. Q5§110 = QC: 636; Q14§16 = QC: 1674–5; MECW: 11.104–5. 35 Pellizzari (2011). 36 See Giardina and Vauchez (2000: 212–302). 37 Its title was ‘Ancient Rome over the Sea’ (Roma antica sul mare) and it was published several times from 1926 onwards; Mussolini 1951–1963, vol. 22: 213–27; cf. the judgment expressed by Momigliano (1955: 296). On Mussolini’s approach to ancient history see also Nelis (2011) and Salvatori (2016). 38 On Pais see esp. Polverini (2014a, 2014b). 39 Salvatorelli (1934); cf. d’Orsi (2008: 208–9) (on fascist conditioning). 40 See esp. Croce (1934, 1936); for the background of their debate see Salvatorelli (1961: 30–5). 41 He was allowed to keep no more than five papers in his cell, everything else was kept in the prison depository (with limited access); see Francioni (2009: 39–45) and Frosini (2011: 905–10). 42 Salvatorelli’s article appeared in February of 1934, Croce’s first reply was published at the end of that year in La Critica, a journal that Gramsci sometimes received (see the list in Gerratana’s edition of the Notebooks, vol. 4). The debate went on in the following years: esp. Salvatorelli (1938) [on which see Turi (2008)].

Plebeian tribunes 197 43 E.g. Salvatorelli (1928, 1929), quoted in Q5§74 = QC: 607–8, and Q5§143 = QC: 674. Cf. Salvatorelli (1948: 45). 44 Solmi (1927), reprinted in Solmi (1934: 1–46), and included in Croce’s review to Salvatorelli. Gramsci mentions the prior edition in Q2§100 = QC: 252: “[…] Arrigo Solmi’s booklet on the fundamental unity of Italian history (Zanichelli) is of interest for my researches, as it aims to trace and outline an unbroken national continuity from Roman times onwards in the history of the Peninsula. This is an interesting idea, but it cannot be proven. It clearly reflects the propagandistic needs of the time (Croce and Volpe countered this hypothesis)”; see also Q6§103 = QC: 776. Gramsci had indirect knowledge of this text [from Silva (1928)] until 1935. 45 Q19§5 = QC: 1979: “The efforts to interpret the Italian past, which have produced a long series of ideological constructions and historical novels, is almost linked to the claim to find a national unity, at least de facto, in the entire period from ancient Rome up to the present day (and sometimes even before Rome, as in the ‘Pelasgi’ by Gobetti and, more recently, by others).” On this passage see Giardina and Vauchez (2000: 181–3). 46 Cipolla (1900-1901). 47 Q3§46 = QC: 325; Q8§126 = QC: 1017. 48 Giardina (1997: ix-x, 38–9). 49 Cascione (2019: 132–4). 50 See the long discussion in Q12§1 = QC: 1513–40, and Q12§3 = QC: 1550–1. Cf. Frosini (2011). 51 Q17§32 = QC: 1935–6: “[…] Even if we accept as valid that during the first Punic Wars something changed in the relations between Rome and Italy, that more territorial unity emerged, this period is still very short and has limited literary significance: Latin literature flourishes after Caesar, under the Empire, when the function of Italy becomes cosmopolitan, when the question is no longer the relationship between Rome and Italy, but between Rome-Italy and the Empire [...].” This comment is part of Gramsci’s discussion of Augusto Rostagni’s essay on the autonomy of Latin literature [Rostagni (1933)]. 52 See Izzo (2009) and Frosini (2017) (with references). Cf. Santangelo in this volume. 53 Ciliberto (1999: 159) (= 2001: 327–8); Izzo (2009: 162). Francesca Izzo has recently argued that Gramsci’s thoughts on cosmopolitanism evolved in the mid-1930s, leading to a new definition of the term: just after the discussion of ancient intellectuals, he starts to reconsider the concept of cosmopolitanism, which later seems to become, in some cases, almost a synonym of internationalism [Izzo (2017a,b)]. 54 Cf. Nappo’s contribution to this volume. 55 Q19§1 = QC: 1960: “Questi saggi devono essere concepiti per un pubblico determinato, col fine di distruggere concezioni antiquate, scolastiche, retoriche, assorbite passivamente per le idee diffuse in un dato ambiente di cultura popolaresca, per suscitare quindi un interesse scientifico per le quistioni trattate, che perciò saranno presentate come viventi e operanti anche nel presente, come forze in movimento, sempre attuali.” Q9§89 = QC: 1152 contains an earlier version of this note.

Bibliography Anderson, P. (1976) ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’, New Left Review, 1(100), 5–78.

198  Mattia Balbo Balbo, M. (2013) Riformare la res publica. Retroterra sociale e significato politico del tribunato di Tiberio Gracco. Bari: Edipuglia. Beesly, A.H. (1886) The Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla. New York, NY: Scribner’s. Betts, C. (ed.) (1999) J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract. Oxford: OUP. Bonnell, A.G. (2015) ‘A ‘Very Valuable Book’: Karl Marx and Appian’, in Welch, K. (ed.) Appian’s Roman History. Empire and Civil War. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 15–21. Canfora, L. (2015) Augusto figlio di dio. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Carlà-Uhink, F. (2017) The Birth of Italy. The Institutionalization of Italy as a Region, 3rd-1st Century BCE. Berlin and Boston, MA: de Gruyter. Cascione, C. (2019) ‘The Idea of Rome: Political Fascism and Fascist (Roman) Law’, in Tuori, K. and H. Björklund (eds.) Roman Law and the Idea of Europe. London: Bloomsbury, 127–43. Ciccotti, E. (1927) ‘elementi di «verità» e di «certezza» nella tradizione storica romana’, Rivista d’Italia, 30, 414–51, 585–616. Ciccotti, E. (1929) Confronti storici. Rome: Società Dante Alighieri. Ciliberto, M. (1999) ‘Cosmopolitismo e Stato nazionale nei «Quaderni del carcere»’, in Vacca, G. (ed.) Gramsci e il Novecento. Vol. 1. Rome: Carocci, 157–73. Ciliberto, M. (2001) Figure in chiaroscuro: filosofia e storiografia nel Novecento. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Cipolla, C. (1900-1901) ‘Intorno alla costituzione etnografica della Nazione Italiana. discorso letto il 19 novembre 1900 in occasione dell’Apertura degli Studi nella Regia Università di Torino’, Annuario della Regia Università di Torino, 25, 11–40. Cook, S.J. (2013) ‘From Ancients and Moderns to Geography and Anthropology: The Meaning of History in the Thought of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Alfred Marshall’, History of Political Economy, 45, 311–43. Cospito, G. (2011) ‘Verso l’edizione critica integrale dei «Quaderni del Carcere»’, Studi Storici, 52, 881–904. Croce, B. (1934) ‘Review of Salvatorelli, L. (1934) ‘L’unità della storia italiana’, Pan, 2, 357–72, and Solmi, A. (1934) Discorsi sulla storia d’Italia’, La CriticaLa Critica Croce, B. (1936) ‘Recenti controversie intorno all’unità della storia d’Italia’, PBSA, 22, 57–68. d’Orsi, A. (2008) ‘Salvatorelli, “torinese” ma non troppo’, in id. (ed.), Luigi Salvatorelli (1886-1974). Storico, giornalista, testimone. Turin: Nino Aragno, 171–210. De Francesco, A. (2013) The Antiquity of the Italian Nation. The Cultural Origins of a Political Myth in Modern Italy, 1796-1943. Oxford: OUP. De Sanctis, G. (1921) ‘Rivoluzione e reazione nell’età dei Gracchi’, Atene e Roma, 2, 209–37. Ferrabino, A. and S. Accame (eds.) (1976) De Sanctis, G. Scritti minori. Vol. 4. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Fonzo, E. (2019) Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Mercato San Severino: Paguro. For Ever [= Quaglino, C.] (1919) ‘In difesa dell’Anarchia’, L’Ordine Nuovo, 1(8), 61–2. Francioni, G. (2009) ‘Come lavorava Gramsci’, in Gramsci, A. (ed.) Quaderni del carcere. Edizione anastatica dei manoscritti. Rome and Cagliari: Treccani – L’Unione sarda, 21–60. Frosini, F. (2011) ‘Note sul programma di lavoro sugli «intellettuali italiani» alla luce della nuova edizione critica’, Studi Storici, 52, 905–24.

Plebeian tribunes 199 Frosini, F. (2017) ‘Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Hegemony: Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and the European Crisis’, International Critical Thought, 7, 190–204. Galasso, G. (1969) ‘Gramsci e i problemi della storia italiana’, in id., Croce, Gramsci e altri storici. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 94–150. Gargola, D.J. (2008) ‘The Gracchan Reform and Appian’s Representation of an Agrarian Crisis’, in de Ligt, L. and S. Northwood (eds.) People, Land and Politics. Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy, 300 BC – AD 14. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 487–518. Giardina, A. (1997) L’Italia romana. Storie di un’identità incompiuta. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Giardina, A. and A. Vauchez (2000) Il mito di Roma. Da Carlo Magno a Mussolini. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Gourevitch, D. (ed.) and J. Rousseau (1997) The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings. Cambridge: CUP. Imbornone, J.S. (2009) ‘Cesare, Caio Giulio’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.) Dizionario Gramsciano 1926-1937. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario. gramsciproject.org (Accessed: 9 June 2020). Izzo, F. (2009) Democrazia e cosmopolitismo in Antonio Gramsci. Rome: Carocci. Izzo, F. (2017a) ‘«Il cosmopolitismo di tipo nuovo» nei Quaderni del Carcere’, in Novello, N. (ed.) Envoi Gramsci. Cultura, filosofia, umanismo. Pasian di Prato: Campanotto, 133–41. Izzo, F. (2017b) ‘Dall’internazionalismo al «cosmopolitismo di tipo nuovo» nei Quaderni del carcere’, Studi Storici, 58, 929–62. Lanfranchi, T. (2015) Les tribuns de la plèbe et la formation de la République romaine, 494-287 avant J.-C. Rome: École française de Rome. Launaro, A. (2011) Peasants and Slaves. The Rural Population of Roman Italy (200 BC to AD 100). Cambridge: CUP. Liguori, G. (2009) ‘Statolatria’, in id. and P. Voza (eds.) Dizionario gramsciano 19261937. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario.gramsciproject.org (Accessed: 9 June 2020). McCuaig, W. (1989) Carlo Sigonio. The Changing World of the Late Renaissance. Princeton, NJ: PUP. Merlo, C. (1950) ‘Gorgia toscana e sostrato etrusco’, Italica, 27, 253–5. Momigliano, A. (1955) ‘Gli studi italiani di storia greca e romana dal 1895 al 1939’, in id. (ed.) Contributo alla storia degli studi classici. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura: 275–97. Nelis, J. (2011) From Ancient to Modern. The Myth of Romanità during the Ventennio Fascista. The Written Imprint of Mussolini’s Cult of the ‘Third Rome’. Brussels and Rome: Institut Historique Belge de Rome. Pellizzari, A. (2011) ‘La «Francia africana» e i fantasmi delle guerre puniche nel dibattito parlamentare italiano sulla questione tunisina (1881-1896)’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 123, 792–823. Polverini, L. (2005) ‘Democrazia a Roma? La costituzione repubblicana secondo Polibio’, in Urso, G. (ed.) Popolo e potere nel mondo antico. Pisa: ETS, 85–96. Polverini, L. (2014a) ‘La storia antica nella storia dell’Italia unita. Il caso di Ettore Pais (1856-1939)’, in Cerasuolo, S. et al. (eds.) La tradizione classica e l’Unità d’Italia. Naples: Satura, 261–76. Polverini, L. (2014b), “Pais, Ettore”, in DBI, 80. [Online] Available at: https://www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/ettore-pais_(Dizionario-Biografico) (Accessed: 9 June 2020).

200  Mattia Balbo Rich, J. (2008) ‘Lex Licinia, Lex Sempronia: B.G. Niebuhr and the Limitation of Landholding in the Roman Republic’, in de Ligt, L. and S. Northwood (eds.) People, Land and Politics. Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy, 300 BC – AD 14. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 519–72. Rich, J. (2020) ‘The Mommsen of the Renaissance: Sigonio, the De antiquo iure populi Romani, and Roman Republican Colonization’, in Pelgrom, J. and A. Weststeijn (eds.) The Renaissance of Roman Colonization. Carlo Sigonio and the Making of Legal Colonial Discourse. Oxford: OUP, 48–94. Richardson, J.S. (1980) ‘The Ownership of Roman Land: Tiberius Gracchus and the Italians’, JRS, 70, 1–11. Rohlfs, G. (1949-1954) Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten. Bern: Francke. Rostagni, A. (1933) ‘Autonomia della letteratura latina I-IV’, L’Italia Letteraria Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, 123, 37–55. Salvatorelli, L. (1928) Costantino il Grande. Rome: Formiggini. Salvatorelli, L. (1929) San Benedetto e l’Italia del suo tempo. Bari: G. Laterza. Salvatorelli, L. (1934) ‘L’unità della storia italiana’, Pan, 2, 357–72. Salvatorelli, L. (1938) Sommario della storia d’Italia. Dai tempi preistorici ai nostri giorni. Turin: Einaudi. Salvatorelli, L. (1948) La Chiesa e il mondo. Rome: Faro. Salvatorelli, L. (1961) Spiriti e figure del Risorgimento. Florence: Le Monnier. Salvatori, P.S. (2016) Mussolini e la storia. Dal socialismo al fascismo (1900-1922). Rome: Viella. Silva, P. (1928) ‘Bilanci consuntivi. La Storiografia’, L’Italia che scrive, 9, 226–28. Solmi, A. (1927) L’unità fondamentale della storia italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli. Solmi, A. (1934) Discorsi sulla storia d’Italia. Florence: La Nuova Italia. Spriano, P. (ed.) (1963) La cultura italiana del ‘900 attraverso le riviste. Vol. 4: L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920. Turin: Einaudi. Taylor, L.R. (1962) ‘Forerunners of the Gracchi’, JRS, 52, 19–27. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Turi, G. (2008) ‘Luigi Salvatorelli, un intellettuale attraverso il fascismo’, in d’Orsi, A. (ed.) Luigi Salvatorelli (1886-1974). Storico, giornalista, testimone. Turin: Nino Aragno, 141–70. Williams, P. (2004) ‘The Roman Tribunate in the ‘Era of Quiescence’ 287-133 BC’, Latomus, 63, 281–94. Wiseman, T.P. (1998) Roman Drama and Roman History. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

9

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism Julius Caesar as an H ­ istorical Problem in Gramsci Federico Santangelo

Gramsci was one of the finest theatre critics of his generation. The reviews he published in the Socialist newspaper Avanti! between 1916 and 1920 are invaluable evidence for the social history of Turin and for the history of theatre in Italy in the first quarter of the XX century. They offer, more broadly, perceptive insights into the taste and mentality of ­middle-class theatre audiences in early XX century Italy, and are impressive pieces of journalistic prose. In June 1919, Gramsci attended a performance of the production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra by the company of Emma Gramatica, and duly published a brief, if typically substantial review. He was not as much interested in the quality of the production of the play as he was in its plot and in the way in which characters were constructed. Shaw’s Caesar is a ‘simple and plain’ figure, who could not be further apart from the portrayal of Caesar sketched by Shakespeare: that is, in Gramsci’s view, the most noteworthy aspect of the play, and one that is likely to be lost on most of its Italian audience. Shaw’s Caesar is stripped of any tragic features, and is a great man and a great statesman alike. A striking historical judgement ensues: he is great in all of his pursuits, as the historical Caesar “truly was, as he was depicted by the ancient historians, as he reveals himself from his candid books of memoirs, which are among the masterpieces of Roman literature for their candour and simple frankness.”1 For someone who was so alert to the language of power and its manipulative force, this assessment is nothing short of surprising. Quite apart from the fact that Caesar did not write political memoirs, nor an autobiography, and that the Commentarii are not being judged on their own terms, Gramsci seems to be taking them at face value as an historical source. There is no willingness to read and understand Caesar as an ‘artful reporter’, nor to probe his work as a classic example of historical deformation.2 The favourable judgement of Caesar’s truthfulness as a writer is matched by a more widely positive verdict on his political strategy and his impact on Roman history. On the one hand, then, this view is fundamentally uncritical; on the other, it issues a fundamental methodological warning to those who study Caesar: rather than indulging in any idealising, rhetorical reading,

202  Federico Santangelo or confining Caesar into a tragic mask or a classicising trope, they should focus on his humanity, and go back to the serious reading of the ancient sources. Caesar is best understood, and appreciated, outside any existing historiographical and ideological tradition. That contention may be, in turn, the source of some potential surprise. In one of the most intensely debated sections of the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci made, as is well known, a major contribution to a long-standing strand of modern political culture, which is inextricably, and problematically, linked with Caesar: the debate on Caesarism. On one reading, he was also inserting the historical Caesar in a tradition that somewhat deformed his achievement and importance. This chapter will seek to explore further the terms of Caesar’s role in Gramsci’s reflection on Caesarism; its working assumption is that it will yield wider insights into the relevance of the modern notion of Caesarism to the study of the late Roman Republic. A summary of Gramsci’s discussion of Caesarism is the necessary preliminary step.

Defining Caesarism In Q13 (§27; QC: 1619-1622), in a note entitled “Il cesarismo”, written between May 1932 and November 1933, Gramsci sketches the brief of a comprehensive study of the historical events that “culminates in a great ‘heroic’ personality”: the list is opened by Caesar, and includes the two Napoleons and Cromwell.3 The working definition of Caesarism with which he operates is that of a balance in which two poles of equal strength are facing each other, and no mediation is possible: the victory of one party  and the destruction of both parties are both possible in principle, until an arbitral force intervenes and decisively shifts the balance of power.4 That model, however, must be further problematised, and Gramsci’s contribution is especially original on that count: Caesarism may take a progressive or a regressive form, depending on which sectors of society it backs and promotes. Caesar is the prime example of progressive Caesarism, along with Napoleon I; Napoleon III and Bismarck are specimens of regressive Caesarism. So far the basic outline of the core argument.5 The few examples that Gramsci lists reflect a specific concern over periodisation: the workings of Caesarism significantly change with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and from Napoleon III onwards the role of the army no longer proves decisive in determining a Caesarist development.6 However, no formal definition is given of the terms that make Julius Caesar’s Caesarism progressive. One consideration appears crucial: Caesar and Napoleon I embarked on a form of Caesarist project that was both “quantitative and qualitative”, and led to a comprehensive change of the shape itself of the State: a “complete upheaval” (completo rivolgimento).7 The action of Napoleon III, on the contrary, involved a power shift, but no significant change in the structure of the State, and no broadening of

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 203 the political and social constituency that supported and benefited from the new setup. The distinction between progressive and regressive Caesarism, which is not a straightforward dichotomy, since intermediate and short-term versions of Caesarism are also possible, is an innovation brought into the debate by Gramsci. The discussion on that concept, however, had a complex and distinguished history when Gramsci conceived the idea of a project on Caesarism and its historical trajectory. The idea of Caesar as an arbiter that singlehandedly devised a new political settlement, in fact, predates the emergence of the notion of Caesarism. It is memorably stated in G. W. F. Hegel’s assessment of Julius Caesar in the Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, delivered in Berlin between 1822 and 1830, and published posthumously in 1837, where the pivotal historical significance of the victor of Pharsalus receives a highly sympathetic discussion: “Caesar had, from the standpoint of the history of world, done the right thing, since he furnished a mediating element, and the kind of political bond that was ­necessary.”8 The term ‘Caesarism’, though, is a product of the season of the great revolutionary season of 1848.9 It appears to have first been used as a discernible analytical category in a book by Auguste Romieu, L’ère des Césars, written in the Summer of 1850 and published later that year, which quickly had a major international impact. From its earliest appearance in the debate, Caesarism is defined as a pattern of political behaviour, enabled and supported by a set of political principles, but fundamentally rooted in empirical reality: Romieu defines it as “la forme générale de l’avenir ­très-prochain” (“the general shape of the imminent future”) and constructs it as the principle that will inevitably shape the political life of the decades to come, in France and elsewhere. Its historical necessity means that it can in fact do away with any ideological or spiritual underpinning. It is a practice, rather than an ideology: significantly, Romieu prefers to speak of ‘césars’ rather than of ‘Césars’. He envisages a sequence of regimes predicated on the use of force, in violent competition with one another, but capable to curtail the insurrectionary movements that would otherwise bring about complete instability. Rather than being based on faith and principles, Caesarism is an intrinsically rational and practical horizon.10 Romieu was neither a deep thinker nor a writer with established academic credentials; his familiarity with the ancient sources was as thorough as one could expect of a gentleman educated in Napoleonic France. Ancient Rome was only of relative significance to him, and he appears in fact to be more interested in the contribution of Augustus to the development of Caesarism than in the ‘violent essai’ of Caesar to bring about a regime change. At any rate, his work made a considerable impact, and within a few years the notion of Cäsarismus (or its variant Cäsarianismus) became a matter of debate in German-speaking historiography. It featured prominently in Theodor Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte (18572), where a link between the historical experience of Caesar and modern Caesarism was

204  Federico Santangelo strongly denied, and in the opening pages of Jacob Burckhardt’s great work on Constantine the Great (1853), where it is discussed as a useful descriptive category.11 The impact of the notion of Caesarism, however, went far beyond the controversies among professional historians: it played a central role in much of the political debate of the second half of the XIX century. It involved some of the liveliest and most original political minds of the time, from Giuseppe Mazzini to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, from Karl Marx to Carlo Cattaneo, commanding varying degrees of assent, dissent, and engagement. It acquired even greater significance in the new age of revolutions of the first quarter of the XX century. Closer in time to Gramsci, it had a prominent role in the work of Max Weber.12 One of the factors that determined its success was the degree of productive ambiguity that it allowed. On the one hand, Caesarism is an issue of political culture, an ideological vista that redraws the boundaries between politics, governance, and violence. On the other, it is a phenomenon that is squarely fixed on political practice, a process that leads to the advent of sole rulership through a traumatic set of developments. Gramsci is of course strongly interested in exploring the integration between those two levels: that is a defining focus of his work. In his treatment of Caesarism he does not discuss how regime change works in practice and monarchic arrangements are put in place, nor is he chiefly concerned with exploring its ideological dimension. What interests him most strongly is the change in the political and intellectual horizon that leads to the emergence of a new state of affairs.

Caesarism in Italian History Gramsci’s discussion of Caesarism does not openly refer to contemporary political developments and to the obvious implications of the theme in the context of Fascist Italy. There is one partial exception: a note in Q17 (§21; QC: 1924–5), in which Gramsci gives a briefer discussion of Caesarism and its relationship with the historical Caesar. The immediate prompt for it was “Umanità di Cesare”, a speech by Emilio Bodrero (1874-1949), then Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies and a Philosophy professor at the University of Padua, published in Nuova Antologia in September 1933.13 It is quite likely, in fact, and rather unsurprising, that the increasing attention to the idea of Caesarism in the Italian political debate of the early 1930s played a decisive role in steering Gramsci’s interest, and in identifying it as a potential focus of long-term investigation. One should not disregard, though, the relevance that the theme had to anyone who sought to make sense of the victory of Fascism in Italy, on the one hand, and of the transition from Tsarism to Leninism, and from Leninism to Stalinism in the USSR, on the other.14 Whatever the case may be, the focus of this note is to set the place of Caesar in the history of Caesarism, and Gramsci points out that Caesar’s historical impact is not best understood through the prism of Caesarism – not only and not mainly through it.

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 205 While it is true that in late Republican Rome and Italy a Caesarist trend steered the main political developments, the fundamental driver of change played out on the larger imperial scale: it was the integration of Italy within the Empire, and its subordination to the interests of the Empire. In Caesar’s time, Italy becomes the centre of a ‘cosmopolis’, and Rome a cosmopolitan city, and the ‘revolution’ that leads to the emergence of Caesar’s regime is not merely the clash of Italian classes, but of social groups that are variously implicated within the fabric of the Empire: the army, moneylenders, public contractors, and bureaucrats. Moreover, the conquest of Gaul fundamentally alters the balance of the Empire, and paves the way for a long-standing tension between West and East that continues until the Schism of 1054.15 Gramsci makes two related points on the back of this synthetic assessment. The pace of history changed very significantly within the space of a generation. In Catiline’s time the terms of the situation were rather different, and the horizon of the conspiracy foiled in 63 BCE was unmistakably Italian; the elite that would have emerged had the conspiracy prevailed would have been Italian. The context of Caesar’s victory, in the mid-40s of first century BCE, was different. Moreover, Gramsci notes that the ‘present’ myth of Caesar has no historical basis whatsoever: while Caesarism clearly is a category that carries some analytical value, and is relevant to the understanding of Caesar’s time too, the historical study of Caesar must be based on different premises to the current focus on the greatness of the individual. In one important respect, this assessment is closely, if implicitly aligned with the scathing view of the myth of Caesar that Marx puts forward in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where the analytical validity of the whole myth of Caesar as it had emerged from the debates of the mid-XIX century is dismissed without reservations.16 For Gramsci the early historical manifestation of Caesarism is an aspect of a wider process in the making of the Roman Empire. Within that wider context, the historical transformation of Italy in Antiquity plays a central role, and the transition from Republic to Empire comes into sharp focus as a major step in a long-term research project on the history of the Italian peninsula before the Risorgimento, in which the impact of major themes of European and world history on the historical trajectory of Italy comes into focus: its brief is set out right at the start of Q19, dating to 1934-1935 (§1; QC: 1959-1960).17 Gramsci contends that the transition to the Empire was a moment that had far-reaching consequences to the history of the Italian peninsula, and indeed of the Italian nation. In this later note, the point sketched in Q17 on the end of the centrality of Italy in the Empire receives further attention and some crucial qualifications. The emergence of an imperial elite is the main focus of interest: Augustus is mentioned just after Caesar as the individual that oversaw it. Gramsci accepts the view – widely established at the time – that identified Caesar as a member of the ‘democratic movement’ initiated by the

206  Federico Santangelo Gracchi.18 While securing the victory of that coalition, he redefines the focus of the political agenda, and shifts it beyond Italy and onto the imperial stage. Within a generation or so, Rome is effectively ‘denationalised’, and the Empire acquires a firmly cosmopolitan dimension.19 Gramsci is probably not conversant with the developments of the studies of the political and administrative elite of the Empire over the previous half century or so, but his main point is especially pertinent:20 with the regime change the Roman nobility is effectively sidelined, and is replaced by new political forces that have a strong base beyond the confines of Italy. In a closing paragraph of Q19§1 (QC: 1960) Gramsci spells out the fundamental ambition of the envisaged history of Italy before the Risorgimento and of the studies that would stem from it: these are intended to spur a scientific interest in the problems they discuss, and in bringing out their connections with the problems and challenges of the present; moreover, they are intended to bring about an overhaul of “outdated, scholastic, rhetorical, passively absorbed views” (concezioni antiquate, scolastiche, retoriche, assorbite passivamente) of crucial aspects of the past. Gramsci’s outlined project on the late Republic shows the potential to fulfil that initial brief in two crucial respects: first, it runs against the grain of the idealising portrait of Julius Caesar that was dominant in Italy at the time, and was not just a product of Fascism; secondly, it seeks to frame the understanding of Caesar’s work in a wider process of change of the Empire as a whole, and in the development of the ‘original characters’ of Italian history – a fundamental, long-standing focus of Gramsci’s thinking and of the wider project of the Notebooks. 21

Cosmopolitanism and Italian History ‘Cosmopolitanism’ continues to play a central role in that connection.22 At the end of his lengthy discussion of the competing interpretations of the Risorgimento in modern historiography, Gramsci draws attention to an important strand of nationalist thought in Italy, which has long set out to frame the movement for independence and self-determination into a cosmopolitan tradition: Mazzini and Gioberti sought to do just that, from very different angles. The ‘mission’ of the Italian nation is to further a tradition that sets out to contribute to what may be defined, in Gramscian terms, as a unitary reconstruction of the world, rather than as a hegemonic strategy. Here lies a major difference with ancient and medieval cosmopolitan endeavours: yet, in Gramsci’s view, Caesar is demonstrably at the origin of that political tradition. 23 It is hard to predict how Gramsci would have developed his account had he been able to embark on that project. While the overall outlook of his research agenda was undoubtedly original and highly productive, there was certainly scope for more careful framing of the discussion. A  passing remark is revealing in this respect. In his discussion of the historical

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 207 and methodological perspective of the Italian Humanists, Gramsci cites approvingly the view of Giuseppe Toffanin, who labelled Machiavelli a ‘Ciceronian’ – a curious definition, which is explained by Machiavelli’s decision to focus his analysis on the Republican period. 24 He then adds a rejoinder about Cicero himself: he was a consistent opponent of the ‘antiItalic forces’ that pushed for the greater integration of the Empire, and his clashes with Catiline and Caesar should be understood in that light. That comment is at odds with the point from Q17 discussed above, in which a clear contrast is drawn between the outlooks of Catiline and Caesar on the integration of the Empire and the role of Italy in that setup. In that passage, Catiline is firmly rooted in an Italian context. 25 The question of how Gramsci would have taken further his project on the place of Roman Italy in the long-term historical development of Italy is closely related to the wider issue of the availability of the resources on which Gramsci could rely during his imprisonment. That brief would have required access to a library, of course, or at least to a decent range of primary sources. It is quite apparent that Gramsci was chiefly relying on what he had read before being incarcerated: his assessment of Caesar’s Commentarii, for example, must be based on a working knowledge of the text dating back to his school years.26 This question applies more broadly to the wider project of the Notebooks. Much of what Gramsci writes stems from his close engagement with a handful of titles to which he had immediate access. 27 It is not infrequent for him to discuss the arguments of books and essays of which he had no direct knowledge, but of which he read reasonably detailed reviews in the magazines and journals to which he subscribed. It is inevitable that the highly confined set of resources to which he had access steered his reflection and his writing, and it is a function both of Gramsci’s intellectual power and deep cultural background that he was so often able to draw such powerful insights from what was a very modest pool of reading material, both from a quantitative and a qualitative standpoint. There is also a further issue to consider: only occasionally does Gramsci refer to the texts from which he drew his prior knowledge. The Notebooks, of course, are not academic papers, and cannot be expected to include anything even resembling a full set of notes. To give one example: a reference in the opening statement on the envisaged study on Italy includes a ­reference to the “well-known essay by Professor Carlo Cipolla”:28 the main point of that allusion to a text to which Gramsci had no direct access is to stress that it should be comprehensively expanded and updated.

Gramsci and the Modern Historiography on the Roman Empire Against this distinctive background, in which the interplay between Caesarism and cosmopolitanism emerges as a major historical problem, it is

208  Federico Santangelo crucial to get a sense of which scholarly works on the late Roman Republic Gramsci had access to. This exercise will at first take our discussion away from Caesarism, and towards debates on the ancient economy; yet the lines of overlap will prove instructive, as Gramsci’s exploration of both problems show an overarching interest in the transmission of knowledge and its dynamics. A potential approach – looking out for references or allusions to specific pieces of scholarship – proves disappointing, at least at first. There is not a single reference in the Notebooks to Karl Julius Beloch, Gaetano De Sanctis, or Ettore Pais, the leading (and often clashing) lights of Ancient History in Italy at the time. Theodor Mommsen receives two mentions, both fairly neutral: one to his exchange with Quintino Sella on the need for the newly unified Italian State to have a long-term plan for Rome, and one to his disagreement with Joachim Marquardt on the status and purpose of Roman professional associations (on which see more below).29 The concept of cosmopolitanism, which Gramsci develops in such an original and wide-ranging fashion, has a prominent role in Grandezza e decadenza di Roma by Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942), a five-volume work that appeared between 1902 and 1907, and had a major impact among the general public, in Italy as well as internationally. Ferrero singles it out as a leading theme of late Republican history: he sees a “­demagogia cosmopolita” as early as in the early 160s BCE (I, 36 and 53); in the first century BCE, he claims, Rome was inhabited by a “feccia cosmopolita” (“cosmopolitan dregs”: I, 221); Clodius recruited his followers among the “popolino cosmopolita” just as Tammany Hall found its members “nella plebe cosmopolita di New York” in the early XX century (I, 407–8). More importantly for our purposes, Ferrero credited Caesar with the attempt to establish a “cosmopolitan bureaucracy” (III, 567–8) towards the end of his life by entrusting many of his slaves and freedmen with important public duties, while Augustus is regarded as a committed opponent of Caesar’s cosmopolitism in the name of a loyalty to the Italian tradition (III, 588: “combattendo… il cosmopolitismo e gli influssi orientali a favore dell’idea strettamente nazionale”). Yet that was an interlude: an envisaged volume on imperial history, which Ferrero eventually did not write, was to be entitled L’impero cosmopolita.30 Gramsci had ostensibly little time for Ferrero and his project: he stated his contempt in print well before his imprisonment, in a rather memorable piece published in Avanti! in March 1916.31 Yet it is tempting to see an influence of Grandezza e decadenza on his assessment of Caesar, with a crucial qualification: unlike Ferrero, he did not regard cosmopolitanism as a factor of decline. Gramsci also engaged with Ferrero’s work in the Quaderni, albeit in a different respect. His critical assessment is restated, in a rather cursory fashion, in a discussion of recent debates on ancient capitalism, in which he directly engages with the work of Ettore Ciccotti (1863-1939) and, especially, of Corrado Barbagallo (1877-1952), whose contributions to the debate he could access in Nuova Rivista Storica, the journal founded and

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 209 edited by Barbagallo himself.32 His assessment of a discussion on the nature of the ancient economy, in which Barbagallo, Giovanni Sanna (1877-1950), who would soon publish an Italian translation of Rostovtzeff’s Economic and Social History of the Roman Empire, and the philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo (1877-1976) had taken part, is harsh, and yet may have a prophetic ring to those who are familiar with the controversy between primitivists and modernists in the following decades: in his view, it is a grotesque sequel to the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. In this respect, as in so many others, Gramsci’s ability to make connections among sets of fragmentary material that at first might seem completely disparate is staggering. A piece published by Gian Carlo Speziale in the November 1930 issue of the Nuova Antologia on the recent discovery of the wrecks of two ships at the bottom of Lake Nemi readily appears to him as a valuable supplement to the debate on ancient capitalism that he had recently come across in the Nuova Rivista Storica, and is especially important to the understanding of the different functions of technology in the ancient and modern worlds.33 In that connection, Vitruvius’ text plays an especially important role, and Gramsci includes a reminder to self to go and see “con esattezza” how the author of De Architectura defines machines as a combination of materials capable of moving great weight.34 Again, the Notebooks come across as starting point of an exploration that would have to be continued under less vexing material conditions. The limits of the resources to which Gramsci had access meant that he had to make the most of whatever material he had access to, even when he found it objectionable. It is quite clear that Gramsci found very little value in Barbagallo’s work, but was willing and able to make use of his arguments, no matter how misguided he might have found them. A note from Q11 (§11; QC: 1373–4, dating to 1932-1933) singles out Barbagallo’s book L’oro e il fuoco. Capitale e lavoro attraverso i secoli (Milan 1927) as a work worthy of further scrutiny, although its fundamental argument is as clear as it is flawed.35 Gramsci, who acquired that book during his detention in Milan, is thoroughly unpersuaded by the strong analogy that it draws between the ancient economy and modern capitalism. Yet he finds Barbagallo’s discussion of professional associations in the ancient world of special interest.36 He readily recognises that its links to an earlier debate on the nature of the ties between professional associations and the State, in which Mommsen and Marquardt had taken different sides.37 Again, Gramsci draws the gist of this disagreement from a second-hand discussion, the summary provided in a review by Mariano Pierro in Nuova Antologia in November 1928, which was a discussion of a recent book on employment law by Giovanni Balella.38 He is of course especially interested in how organised bodies of members of the lower classes are structured, and draws a contrast between the ancient world, where, in Gramsci’s view, slaves are not allowed to join an organised formation, and the modern times, where the proletarians are at the lower end of the social ladder.

210  Federico Santangelo The modernising approach to the ancient economy is denounced by Gramsci as a speculative and unrewarding exercise. The main factor that invalidates it, however, is a fundamental misapprehension of how historical development operates. Documents are not the only relic of the past; the future is also a source of information, and something as significant as ancient capitalism would have undoubtedly left a strong mark in the following centuries.39 The denunciation of that ‘philologico-critical’ error presupposes a fundamental, and not unproblematic, methodological assumption, which effectively brings out the fundamental assumptions through which Gramsci understands history. The leading trend of his analysis is to identify some long-term problems and establish meaningful connections among vastly different historical contexts. In their own different ways, both Barbagallo and Gramsci are interested in what would later come to be termed longue durée: Gramsci criticises the professional historian Barbagallo for not handling his evidence properly. The problem is crucial to the understanding and good use of historical analogies. By rushing to identify signs of capitalistic practice in antiquity, Barbagallo loses sight of the distinctive aspects of the historical periods under discussion, and ends up in a superficial “plus ça change plus c’est égale” that does not contribute to historical understanding, and is also fruitless from a political standpoint. The only scholarly work on Roman history stricto sensu that Gramsci appears to have used in prison is also a work of economic history.40 A note from Q25 (§6; QC: 2290), written in 1934, takes its cue from a passage of Tenney Frank’s An Economic History of Rome to the End of the Republic, published in 1920, which Gramsci read in the Italian translation published by Vallecchi in 1924.41 Gramsci accepts Frank’s interpretation of a reference to Cimbrian slaves in a passage of Caesar’s Gallic War (1.40.5), establishing a connection with the Spartacus revolt: a rather far-fetched reading, which Gramsci no doubt found of interest because it corroborated his vision of a cosmopolitan Italy, in which the indigenous elements were overridden by the arrival of newcomers to the peninsula. It is unsurprising that Gramsci would take a keen interest in a recent work on the economic history of the Roman world: the title of Notebook 25 is “Ai margini della storia (Storia dei gruppi sociali subalterni)”. It is equally unsurprising that he would find that area of enquiry much more congenial than the political or constitutional treatments that tended to dominate the historiography on the transition from late Republic to early Principate at the time; the fact that Frank’s political outlook could not have been further away from Gramsci’s did not prevent him from making use of that text with profit.42 The note continues with another piece of information on Roman slaves, which is also reported by Frank, although Gramsci does not append a reference: the story of the Senate preventing slaves from wearing the same attire so that they do not develop a sense of their number and potential strength.43 The use that Gramsci makes of this specific detail,

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 211 however, is entirely original, and takes a clear departure from Frank’s argument. He is interested in what the episode reveals about the same political and psychological dynamics that underpin a number of public events in which large crowds are involved: a prominent theme in the political reflection of the previous decades, notably since the appearance of Gustave Le Bon’s Psychologie des foules (1895). Frank’s book is far less replete with references to the ancient sources than the volumes of An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome that were published under his editorship between 1933 and 1940, but provides Gramsci with some suggestions on sources that he earmarks for further consultation and analysis. In other cases, however, he apparently accessed the ancient evidence without the intermediation of a modern academic study. His treatment of the history of the intellectuals is firmly oriented towards the modern period, but at the outset confronts the problem of the formation of ‘traditional intellectuals’, and acknowledges its connections with the history of ancient slavery. Again, Caesar and his time emerge as a turning point, and even more emphatically than in the notes on the cosmopolitanism of Italy. In a note to the main text, Gramsci draws attention to a passage of Suetonius’ Life of the Deified Julius, which mentions the decision of Caesar to grant the Roman citizenship to the physicians and the practitioners of liberal arts that were based at Rome, with the intent to persuade them to inhabit the city ‘more happily’ (42.2: libentius). As Valentino Gerratana readily saw, Gramsci was alerted to this passage by an unlikely source if there was one: a pretentious piece published by Cornelio Di Marzio (1896-1944) in the journal Gerarchia in December 1931, where the case for the continuing centrality of the liberal arts to the Fascist Revolution was opened by a reference to the anecdote reported by Suetonius and a rambling discussion of Plato’s assessment of art.44 From that clumsy display of erudition in a piece of dubious intellectual originality Gramsci manages to draw further evidence for his overall argument. Caesar’s act, in his view, marks the emergence of a new category of “imperial intellectuals”, based in the city of Rome, which eventually developed into the Catholic clergy. Its short and medium-term aims, however, were to stabilise the presence of a robust constituency of intellectuals in Rome, and to enhance a process of centralisation by attracting more intellectuals to the political centre of the Empire. On the one hand, this assessment is consistent with the view of a ‘denationalisation’ (snaziona­ lizzazione) of Italy under the Principate; the intellectuals that reside in Imperial Rome are mostly of Greek and Eastern origin, and are therefore an ethnic minority to which the cosmopolitan outlook of Italian intellectuals may be traced back in the longue durée. On the other hand, it presupposes a central role of the city of Rome that in other sections of the Notebooks is considerably qualified, if not openly undermined: the centre of the Empire tends to be identified with wherever the emperor happens to be in residence.45

212  Federico Santangelo The cluster of problems that occupy Gramsci as he develops his notion of progressive Caesarism are by no means an isolated set of concerns in the historiography on the early Roman Empire at the time. Gramsci, however, seems able to recognise and formulate them with a remarkable degree of clarity. A couple of years after the drafting of this note of the Notebooks, Arnaldo Momigliano (whose 1933 review of Cecil Roth’s book on the history of the Jewish community in Venice was known to Gramsci) published an extensive entry on Imperial Rome in the Enciclopedia Italiana:46 a firstrate contribution of lasting interpretative value, which, in spite of the reservations of some of Momigliano’s later critics, reflects only marginally the stifling political climate in which it was written. The problem of the political position of Italy in the Roman Empire emerges as an historical issue of major significance: like Gramsci, Momigliano also sees a trajectory in which Italy loses its central role in the Empire. The key moment of his periodisation is the civil war of 69 CE, and the fundamental shift that Momigliano identifies is the swift replacement of an imperial elite of Italian ancestry with a provincial one under the Flavians: although the end point of the process is broadly the same as that identified by Gramsci, cosmopolitanism is not the main aspect of Momigliano’s reconstruction, as the emphasis falls on the inadequacy of Italy to serve as the centre of a thriving Empire. Such a contention was far from unproblematic or uncontested: Mikhail I. Rostovtzeff, for instance, still credited the Italian elites with a central role in the imperial ‘aristocracy of service’ that emerged from the Flavian resettlement.47 But that is a relatively secondary facet of the problem for the purposes of this discussion. What appears most prominently is the link between the rise of a new monarchic regime and the redefinition of the place of Italy on the wider Mediterranean scale.

*** Gramsci’s Caesarism is a powerful intellectual construction, which should be first and foremost assessed on the plain of political thought.48 Yet dismissing its ability to set major historical problems into focus and to point towards productive avenues of explanation and enquiry would be a rash choice. Its fundamental contention is worth spelling out, and still has much to offer to the debate: Caesar’s progressive Caesarism is a defining phase in the history of the Roman Empire and of Roman imperialism; it recasts the role of Rome, and reshapes the ways in which Italy comes to reap the rewards of an Empire in which it is central. The position of Italy within the Empire and the impact of the creation of the Empire on the Italian peninsula remain a major focus of the study of the Roman world to this day: exciting new work on the Roman imperial economy, on material culture, and on mobility within the Empire and beyond, is seeking to explore these very problems.49 Other subsets of the questions posed by Gramsci remain open. The Italian diaspora in the Mediterranean is now being studied as

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 213 a development that did not just affect the Eastern part of the Empire, but was just as significant in the Western provinces.50 The role of a­ ssociations – professional and otherwise – in late Republican Rome has come into ­ increasingly strong focus, and is now widely regarded as a significant feature of the process that led to the end of the Roman Republic.51 A full-scale study of Cicero and Italy still awaits to be written. A central question of that project would have to focus on the extent to which it makes sense to think of Cicero as a Hellenistic intellectual: the extent and quality of his Italianness, to put it in terms closer to Gramsci’s argument. And then there are the gaps – the stones that Gramsci left unturned. His construction of Caesar’s Caesarism has hardly anything to say about Roman ­politics, about the political forces that made it possible – nothing on the army, nothing on the role of political debate in Rome, the contiones, the economic factors that underpinned it – whether land, debt, or food supply; religion is overlooked. Its focus is on the impact of the power of Caesar, of the Caesars, and on its limitations. Gramsci’s assessment of the impact of Caesarism on late Republican Rome invites us to look away from Caesar, and to focus our attention on the ties and the tensions between monarchic power and i­ mperial integration: to think harder about the Empire and, most notably, about the role of Italy within it. Arguably the version of Caesarism sketched by Gramsci does not make a substantial contribution to an historical reading of Caesar. But it is a distinctive and effective chart of problems and perspectives towards an historical reading of the Roman Republic, and early XXI century students of this period will do well not to overlook it.52

Notes 1 Avanti! (14/06/1919) = ON: 814: “come fu veramente, come è stato presentato dagli storici antichi, come si rivela dai suoi candidi libri di ricordi che sono tra i capolavori della letteratura romana per il candore e la schiettezza semplice.” On Shaw’s play and its place in the modern reception of Caesar see Slater (2006) and Wyke (2021). 2 Cf. respectively Welch and Powell (1998) and Rambaud (1953). Gramsci takes the same view on this work in a later discussion in Q19 (§28 = QC: 2052), dating between 1934 and the early months of 1935, in a brief aside of the discussion of the problem of political leadership, where the Commentarii are unproblematically mentioned as evidence for the deep relationship between Caesar and his soldiers, who viewed him as a political leader (“il capo della democrazia”), rather than as mere military commander (in this instance, the example of Caesar is significantly mentioned right after Napoleon I): see Fonzo (2019: 79). 3 The list might have a provisional ring to it, but, as Fonzo (2019: 79) notes, Caesar is consistently included among the examples of Caesarism mentioned in the Notebooks; Fonzo’s discussion of the passage as a whole (75–9) is ­substantial. This note is a redraft of Q9§133, p. 1194–5, entitled “­Machiavelli. Il cesarismo”, dating to November 1932; see Canfora (2019: 287 n. 9), 300 n. 47. For another close reading of the Q13 passage from a different standpoint cf. E. Giusti’s contribution to this volume.

214  Federico Santangelo 4 Q13§27 = QC: 1619, “Ma il cesarismo, se esprime sempre la soluzione ‘arbitrale’, affidata a una grande personalità, di una situazione storico-politica caratterizzata da un equilibrio di forze a prospettiva catastrofica, non ha sempre lo stesso significato storico.” Canfora (2019: 287–91) argues that this understanding of Caesarism is directly indebted to the assessment of the crisis of the late Republic put forward in Mommsen’s Roman History. 5 See Antonini (2016: 175–7) and (2020b: 120–5) on the limitations of the dichotomy between progressive and regressive Caesarism. 6 On the original characteristics of modern Caesarism cf. Mangoni (1976: 59–60). Jones (2006: 100–1) singles out (in apparent seriousness) Diana, Princess of Wales as an example of modern Caesarism. 7 “Il cesarismo di Cesare e di Napoleone I è stato, per così dire, di carattere quantitativo-qualitativo, ha cioè rappresentato la fase storica di passaggio da un tipo di Stato a un altro tipo, un passaggio in cui le innovazioni furono tante e tali da rappresentare un completo rivolgimento. Il cesarismo di Napoleone III fu solo e limitatamente quantitativo, non ci fu passaggio da un tipo di Stato ad un altro tipo, ma solo «evoluzione» dello stesso tipo, secondo una linea ininterrotta.” On the ‘progressive/regressive’ and ‘qualitative/­ quantitative’ dyads see Fontana (2004: 179–80), Cospito (2016: 136–45), Antonini (2020a: 170–2), and (2020b: 124–5). 8 Hegel in Moldenhauer and Michel (1989: 379) (“Cäsar hat weltgeschichtlich das Rechte getan, indem er die Vermittlung und die Art und Weise des Zusammenhalts, der notwendig war, hervorbrachte”). Gramsci had minimal access to Hegel’s works during his prison years, but the significance of Hegel’s thought to the whole project of the Quaderni can hardly be underestimated: Mustè (2018). 9 Cervelli (2003) is the reference discussion on the development of Caesarism in the XIX century; Antonini (2020b) explores the XX-century ramifications of the problem in Gramsci and beyond. Nicolet (2003: 138–207) is a masterful discussion of the place of Caesarism in French political culture. Momigliano (1956) (= 1960: 273–82) remains essential reading even for those who are less pessimistic about the value of Caesarism as an analytical category in the study of Ancient History; it makes no reference to Gramsci. Yavetz (1971) and Baehr (1998: esp. 271–86) on neo-Gramscian approaches are informative and thought-provoking overviews. 10 See Baehr (2008: 32–6). 11 On Mommsen see Yavetz (1971: 187–92); Polverini (2011: 178–81). On Burckhardt see Momigliano (1962) (= 1966: 211–4); Ghelardi (1997: 7–12). 12 On Weber and Caesarism see Baehr (2004) and (2008: 11–114). Levy (1987: 388–90) charts the evidence for Weber’s presence in the Notebooks and suggests (390) that his reflection on ‘Caesars’ and charisma did have an impact on Gramsci’s thinking. 13 Bodrero (1933). For a brief and effective profile of Bodrero see Canfora (2019: 143). 14 Cf. esp. the explicit reference to the “different gradations of Caesarism” at work in Italy between October 1922 and November 1926 in Q13§27 (= QC: 1620). On this contemporary dimension to Gramsci’s reflection on Caesarism see Vacca (1999: 182–3), Canfora (2009: 433, 439–40) and (2019: 288–9, 307), Schwarzmantel (2015: 184–9), Antonini (2020a: 172–3), and (2020b: 167–200). 15 For valuable readings of this passage see Izzo (2009: 135–6, 162–3), Cospito (2016: 216), Fonzo (2019: 63–6), and Antonini (2020b: 129–30). The analysis in Fontana (2004: 187–8) rests on a misconstruction of the concepts of imperium domi and imperium militiae.

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 215 16 See Eighteenth Brumaire, ch. 1 (“Die neue Gesellschaftsformation einmal hergestellt, verschwanden die vorsündflutlichen Kolosse und mit ihnen das wieder auferstandene Römertum - die Brutusse, Gracchusse, Publicolas, die Tribunen, die Senatoren und Cäsar selbst”); the final paragraph of the introduction to the second edition (June 1869) is more direct: “Schließlich hoffe ich, daß meine Schrift zur Beseitigung der jetzt namentlich in Deutschland landläufigen Schulphrase vom sogenannten Cäsarismus beitragen wird. Bei dieser oberflächlichen geschichtlichen Analogie vergißt man die Hauptsache, daß nämlich im alten Rom der Klassenkampf nur innerhalb einer privi­ legierten Minorität spielte, zwischen den freien Reichen und den freien Armen, während die große produktive Masse der Bevölkerung, die Sklaven, das bloß passive Piedestal für jene Kämpfer bildete. Man vergißt Sismondis bedeutenden Ausspruch: Das römische Proletariat lebte auf Kosten der Gesellschaft, während die moderne Gesellschaft auf Kosten des Proletariats lebt. Bei so gänzlicher Verschiedenheit zwischen den materiellen, ökonomischen Bedingungen des antiken und des modernen Klassenkampfs können auch seine politischen Ausgeburten nicht mehr miteinander gemein haben als der Erzbischof von Canterbury mit dem Hohenpriester Samuel.” (= MECW: 11.131). On Gramsci’s engagement with and debt to this aspect of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire see Antonini (2013: esp. 223–4), (2020a: 169, 173–4), (2020b: 73–5), and Canfora (2019: 289). Marx’s admiration for Caesar’s military skills is quite a different matter, of course [see Canfora (2009: 433–4)]. 17 Cf. the early draft in Q9 (§89 = QC: 1152), dating to 1932. Mangoni (1976: 58) aptly stresses that in Gramsci’s work the category of Caesarism is “utile a definire una caratteristica generale della storia d’Italia.” 18 Cf. Mattia Balbo’s chapter in this volume. 19 See Fonzo (2019: 69–71) on the weight of this concept in Gramsci’s work. Canfora (2019: 288) traces back its origin to Mommsen. 20 To mention the most distinguished example: the first edition of the Prosopographia Imperii Romani appeared between 1897 and 1898; the first two volumes of the second edition appeared in 1933 and 1936. See Horster (2007: 231–6) on this major scholarly undertaking and its intellectual background. 21 As is well known, Gramsci had a keen interest in the hegemonic dimension of religion [see the recent discussion in Grelle (2017)]; yet he did not discuss the religious dimension of Caesar’s rise to power, nor is he interested in exploring the religious resonances of Caesarism. He made one cursory and tentative reference to the need to explore the potential ties between the imperial cult and the position of the Pope as Vicar of Christ, prompted by an article of the Jesuit Giuseppe Messina in two issues of Civiltà Cattolica in August and September 1929 (Q5§138 = QC: 668–9, dating between 1930 and 1932). He added the rejoinder that, if that connection had any historical credibility, it would further corroborate a familiar historical pattern: revolutions are followed by periods of restauration, in which the principles they repudiated are newly taken up under a different guise. 22 Izzo (2017: 931–47) provides invaluable orientation on the role of this concept in Gramsci. The view that Italian history has a quintessentially cosmopolitan outlook already makes a fleeting appearance in an article that Gramsci published in March 1917, where a brief, but significant reference is made to the composition of the army of Gaius Marius in the context of a polemic against the anti-German rhetoric of an Italian nationalist group: see EN-S2: 183–4, with Fonzo (2019: 19–20).

216  Federico Santangelo 23 Q19§5 (= QC: 1988–9), dating to 1934–1935. The key passage is on p. 1989: “Collaborare a ricostruire il mondo economicamente in modo unitario è nella tradizione del popolo italiano e della storia italiana, non per dominarlo egemonicamente e appropriarsi il frutto del lavoro altrui, ma per esistere e svilupparsi appunto come popolo italiano: si può dimostrare che Cesare è all’origine di questa tradizione.” Ciliberto (1999: 172–3 n. 35) (= 2001: 342–3 n. 35 = 2020: 231 n. 35) points out that Caesar is not mentioned in the first draft of this note (Q9§127 = QC: 1190–1, dating to 1932). 24 Q7§33 (= QC: 1936), dating between 1933 and 1935. Gramsci is quoting Toffanin 1929, which he requested from his sister-in-law Tania Schucht in November 1931. See Fonzo (2019: 67). 25 Fonzo (2019: 66–7) spots the contradiction. Cf. Schiavone (1996: 189–92) (=  2000: 181–4) for a reading of Cicero as the theorist of a “democrazia moderata romano-italica” (191 = 183): a short-lived, if compelling alternative to the cosmopolitan project pursued by Augustus (198 = 190): “geometrie pluralistiche e multicentriche di un governo del mondo”); in this model, however, Caesar is also a champion of the pro-Italian approach. 26 There is a passing reference to the De bello ciuili in the first Notebook, where Gramsci sketches a preliminary reflection on the interplay between political and military leadership, and argues that Caesar achieved a fine combination of the two, unlike Bismarck and more effectively than Napoleon I (Q1§117 = QC: 110–11, written in February-March 1930). On Gramsci’s high school years, first at Santu Lussurgiu, then at Cagliari, see Fiori (1966: 43–79). There is no explicit evidence that Gramsci read Caesar then [some authors are listed in Fonzo (2019: 15 n. 1)], but the prominent place of Caesar’s Commentarii in the school Latin syllabus safely warrants the assumption that he did. On Gramsci’s familiarity with classical authors cf. P.S. Horky’s contribution to this volume. 27 On the books about the ancient world available to Gramsci in prison, see Fonzo: (2019: 121–2); for a complete list, see https://www.fondazionegramci. org/biblioteca/fondi (Accessed 22 March 2021). 28 The reference is to Cipolla (1900); cf. the note by V. Gerratana (QC: 2594, n. 2). 29 See respectively Q2§42 (= QC: 197–8; cf. Q8§49 = QC: 971); Q11§11 (= QC: 1374). On the exchange between Mommsen and Sella see Salvatori (2016: 67–8), who helpfully summarises the key evidence and the stakes of the debate. 30 I, x. The cosmopolitan dimension of the Empire is also stressed in La ruine de la civilisation antique (1921: 11–12, 50–52), where it is identified as a hidden, but deep-seated factor of decline. 31 Avanti! (24/03/1916) = CT: 213–5. 32 Q16§6 (= QC: 1848–9). Cf. esp. 1849: “il Barbagallo è legato da forti vincoli intellettuali a Guglielmo Ferrero (ed è un po’ loriano)”. 33 On this note see Fonzo (2019: 98–9). The influence of Giuseppe Salvioli may be detected here: in his account, the key distinction between ancient and modern economies was the rise of machinery [see esp. Giardina (1985: 191)]. Gramsci had access to Il capitalismo antico in December 1929, and the book made a deep impression on him [see Fonzo (2019: 102–5)]. On the tension between the history of science and the history of technology in Gramsci’s thought see Antonini (2014). 34 Vitr. 10.1.1–2 must have been the most relevant passage to Gramsci’s purposes, esp. 1: machina est continens e materia coniunctio maximas ad onerum motus habens uirtutes. 35 For a preliminary version of this text see Q3§112 (= QC: 382), dating to 1930. Fonzo (2019: 104–5) has a valuable discussion of the evidence for Gramsci’s engagement with L’oro e il fuoco beyond the Notebooks; it is likely that Salvioli’s book (see note 33) prompted Gramsci to reflect further on Barbagallo’s work.

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 217 36 Barbagallo discusses the late Republican period only in passing (41); his treatment of professional associations (which he calls “associazioni artigiane”) is focused on the Imperial period, and views the reign of Marcus Aurelius as a watershed, as it marks the end of a long-standing pattern of repression of professional associations that had started with Julius Caesar (Barbagallo 1927: 41, 49–55). He posits a direct link between the increase of free labour and technological development within the context of what he terms the “statalismo industriale” of the Roman Empire. 37 Cf. Mommsen (1843) and Marquardt (1878 and 1882), briefly and not entirely accurately summarised by Pierro. 38 Q11§11 (= QC: 1373–4). See Pierro (1928: 537); cf. Balella (1927). 39 The study of the traces of lead pollution in the Greenland ice cap and their significance to a reconstruction of the Roman economy was a quite a long way to go: McConnell et al. (2018) is a recent major contribution to the debate. 40 He also had access to Ciccotti (1929), where he found an important essay on the reliability of the Roman historical tradition (1–65): “Elementi di ‘verità’ e di ‘certezza’ nella tradizione storica romana”; his comments on that piece would require a separate treatment. However, the main aspect under discussion was Ciccotti’s discussion of the history of medieval Italian communes [see Fonzo (2019: 106–10)]. Cf. also the earlier discussion of that collection on the basis of the reviews by Guido De Ruggiero and Mario De Bernardi; by then Gramsci had already accessed the paper on the Roman historical tradition, which had appeared in 1927 in the Rivista d’Italia. He also discussed the problem of the historical tradition on early Rome in a letter to his brother Carlo of September 1931 [LC: 471; see Fonzo (2019: 30–1)]. 41 For an earlier draft cf. Q3§98–9, p. 376–7, dating to 1930. Gramsci acquired Frank’s book at Turi between March 1929 and November 1930. 42 See Linderski (1999) (= 2007: 578–80) for an excellent overview of Frank’s life and work. 43 See Fonzo (2019: 110–12), who draws attention (111) to the references to Sen. Clem. 1.24 and Tac. Ann. 4.27, which Gramsci derived from Frank and did not have the chance to check himself: only Seneca’s passage is relevant to this problem. 44 Q8§22 (= QC: 954). See Di Marzio (1931). On this passage see QC: 2781 and Fonzo (2019: 53–5). Di Marzio was a journalist who rose to some prominence in the Fascist National Party and became president of the Confe­ derazione dei professionisti e degli artisti in 1939: see Vittoria (1991); cf. also Canfora (2019: 341–6, 361–2, 402–9). 45 Di Marzio (1931: esp. 970–1). 46 Momigliano (1936: esp. 632) (= 1980: 604–5). Gramsci commented on Momigliano’s review of C. Roth’s History of the Jews in Venice in Q15§41, p. 1800–1. 47 Rostovtzeff (1926: 175– 6); (cf. 1957: 197). Gramsci had some knowledge of Rostovtzeff’s work, albeit probably indirectly: see the passing reference in a letter of February 1930 to his wife Julia, where he is aligned with Mommsen and Barbagallo: “la tendenza creata da Mommsen, di trovare «capitalistica» ogni economia «monetaria» (rimprovero rivolto da Marx al Mommsen e che il Salvioli svolge e dimostra criticamente), tendenza che oggi ha assunto proporzioni morbose per opera del professor Rostovtzev, uno storico russo che insegna in Inghilterra [sic], e in Italia per opera del professor Barbagallo, un discepolo di Guglielmo Ferrero” (LC: 310–1).

218  Federico Santangelo 48 Ciliberto (1999: 160) (= 2001: 329 = 2020: 210): “senza togliere alcunché… agli spunti di carattere storiografico che scaturiscono dalle sue note… altrove si situa il centro archimedeo di tutta la sua riflessione.” 49 Launaro (2017). 50 Purcell (2005), Crawford (2008), Eberle (2016), Eberle and Le Quéré (2017). 51 Courrier (2014: 128–297), Russell (2016), and Knopf (2019). 52 I have greatly benefited from the reactions to earlier versions of this paper of the participants in the Newcastle conference on Gramsci and the ancient world, and of audiences at the Laboratorio SAET of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and at the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in London; I am most grateful to Andrea Giardina and Tim Cornell for the warmth of their hospitality. I should also like to thank the editors of this volume and a reviewer for their comments. I have a special debt of gratitude towards Francesca Antonini, who generously shared unpublished work, offered thorough and perceptive feedback on a previous draft, and showed comradely tolerance towards my Gramscian interlopings.

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220  Federico Santangelo Levy, C. (1987) ‘Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci’, in Mommsen, W.J. and J. Österhammel (eds.) Max Weber and His Contemporaries. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 382–402. Linderski, J. (1999) ‘Tenney Frank’, American National Biography, 8, 367–8. Linderski, J. (2007) Roman Questions II. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. McConnell, J.R. et al. (2018) ‘Lead Pollution Recorded in Greenland Ice Indicates European Emissions Tracked Plagues, Wars, and Imperial Expansion during Antiquity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 22, 5726–31. Mangoni, L. (1976) ‘Cesarismo, bonapartismo, fascismo’, Studi storici, 17, 41–61. Marquardt, J. (1878) Römische Staatsverwaltung. Vol. III. Leipzig: Hirzel. Marquardt, J. (1882) Das Privatleben der Römer. Vol. II. Leipzig: Hirzel. Moldenhauer, E. and K.M. Michel (eds.) (1989) G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Werke 12. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Momigliano, A. (1936) ‘Roma in età imperiale’, in Enciclopedia italiana. Vol. 29, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 628–54. Momigliano, A. (1956) ‘Per un riesame dell’idea di Cesarismo’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 68, 220–29. Momigliano, A. (1960) Secondo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Momigliano, A. (1962) ‘J. Burckhardt e la parola «cesarismo»’, Rivista Storica Italiana, 74, 369–71. Momigliano, A. (1966) Terzo Contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. Vol. I. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Momigliano, A. (1980) Sesto Contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico. Vol. 2. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Mommsen, T. (1843) De collegiis et sodaliciis Romanorum. Kiel: Schwers’sche Buchhandlung. Mustè, M. (2018) ‘Dialettica e società civile. Gramsci come «interprete» di Hegel’, Pòlemos. Materiali di filosofia e critica sociale, 1, 30–46. Nicolet, C. (2003) La Fabrique d’une nation. La France entre Rome et les Germains. Paris: Perrin. Pierro, M. (1928) ‘I problemi del lavoro’, Nuova Antologia, 257, 537–9. Polverini, L. (2011) ‘Mommsen, Cesare e il cesarismo’, Anabases, 14, 173–84. Purcell, N. (2005) ‘Romans in the Roman World’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus. Cambridge: CUP, 85–105. Rambaud, M. (1953) L’Art de la déformation historique dans les Commentaires de César. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Rostovtzeff, M. I. (1926) The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon. Rostovtzeff, M. (1957) The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon. Russell, A. (2016) ‘Why Did Clodius Shut the Shops? The Rhetoric of Mobilizing a Crowd in the Late Republic’, Historia, 65, 186–210. Salvatori, P.S. (2016) Mussolini e la storia. Rome: Viella. Schiavone, A. (1996) La storia spezzata. Roma antica e Occidente moderno. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Schiavone, A. (2000) The End of the Past. Ancient Rome and the Modern West. Eng. tr. M. J. Schneider. Cambridge and London: Harvard UP.

Between Caesarism and Cosmopolitanism 221 Schwarzmantel, J. (2015) The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Slater, N. (2006) ‘Shaw’s Caesars’, in Wyke, M. (ed.) Julius Caesar in Western Culture. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 228–42. Vacca, G. (1999) Appuntamenti con Gramsci: introduzione allo studio dei Quaderni del carcere. Rome: Carocci. Vittoria, A. (1991) ‘Di Marzio, Cornelio’, in DBI, 40, 86–9. Welch, K. and A. Powell (eds.) (1998) Caesar as an Artful Reporter. The War Commentaries as Political Instruments. London and Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales. Wyke, M. (2021) ‘Lessons in History: Bernard Shaw’s Discomforting Caesar’, in Hass, T. A. and R. Raja (eds.), Caesar’s Past and Posterity’s Caesar. Turnhout: Brepols. Yavetz, Z. (1971) ‘Caesar, Caesarism, and the Historians’, Journal of Contemporary History, 6, 184–201.

10 Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution Christopher Smith

Although Gramsci has long been a venerated figure, his thought has been relatively little used in ancient history. Yet, as this volume shows, despite the scattered and non-synthetic nature of his surviving writings, produced in desperately unfavourable circumstances, and the highly contemporary nature of his own concerns, he has much to offer. Born in Sardinia, Gramsci began his consciously political life in Turin in the turbulent aftermath of the First World War, and the currency of his thought was struck between the dies of the October Revolution and the rise of Fascism.1 Whatever came thereafter was still a reflection on those events. In beginning to draft a ­distinctive theory of hegemony and revolution, however, Gramsci offers, in a way that many his contemporaries did not, a model of wider applicability. This chapter will argue that there are ways of thinking about the end of the Roman Republic which are illuminated by Gramsci’s ideas, and indeed which exemplify their relevance.

Rome’s Cultural Revolution One of the great historical accounts produced by our discipline, Syme’s The Roman Revolution, constructed the dominant narrative of the late Republic and early Principate through the iron law of oligarchy. 2 This is a concept which can be traced directly to Robert Michels, a German-Italian sociologist whose political path traversed German social democracy, Italian revolutionary syndicalism and eventually Italian fascism; Gramsci tried to read his works when in prison. 3 Syme’s work showed profound similarities with Namier’s prosopographic method of historical research, which he had applied to a much later period, that is to say, the study of familial and personal connections as underpinning and revealing political alliances and actions.4 The end result, as Momigliano famously noted, is a brilliant account of how the Roman Republic was replaced by the Augustan Principate, but not necessarily of the ‘why’; “the study of the leaders is necessary, but by itself is not enough.”5 Many subsequent works have addressed elements of this gap, and particularly through the introduction of material culture, which Syme scarcely

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 223 considered. Perhaps the most influential was Paul Zanker’s study of the power of images, which addressed the formation of opinion through visual representations.6 However, the fullest and most challenging account is that by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution which is far and away the most significant recent work in the area. This book responds directly to Syme, and its richness defies summary, so what follows is inevitably a reduction of the subtlety of the argument. Wallace-Hadrill begins with a watershed moment; the Social War destroyed “the basis of the dialectic, between Roman and non-Roman that had characterised Italy for at least two centuries, a dialectic which presupposed, and thereby promoted, a separation of identities.”7 What followed was a slide into cultural homogeneity. The capacity of Italians to maintain several different identities was explained as a kind of intellectual bilingualism, more or less instantaneous and highly individual code-switching, where an individual can move across identities at will and according to ability. However, the book argues that this diversity and flexibility diminishes under the impact of the post-Social War settlement and the Civil Wars. The last chapter of Rome’s Cultural Revolution turns from agents to waves of fashion brought in by the trickle-down effect of conquest on the cities of Italy. History re-enacted not as farce but as fashion strikes an intriguing postmodern note.

On Gramsci Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (which was shaped by others into the notion of ‘cultural hegemony’) might have offered an explanatory model which would have rendered the last chapter more forceful, I believe. In another version of this argument, I looked at some of the evidence which was highlighted in the local and regional exhibitions connected to the bimillennium of Augustus, and which focused on the Italian municipia.8 Unsurprisingly, there is a degree of sameness about the story – the same statues, the same architecture, the same sorts of finds. Second, there is a strong focus on the imperial family, wherever one looks. Third, local initiative seems to be significant, but within those overall themes, and my reading is that even if we work hard to identify the local component, the overarching similarity is still striking. And this seems to me exactly what Wallace-Hadrill was pointing to. In a review of the volume Osborne and Vout criticised the turn to waves of fashion and other metaphors in the last chapter as a failure to identify agency, but it is perhaps rather a recognition that something overwhelming is happening.9 Now what can Gramsci give us that makes this picture more convincing, more rounded? We start with the famous definition of hegemony: The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and

224  Christopher Smith consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.10 I think this has the capacity to help us explain what we see, but I also think we have to do a bit of work as historians to decide how we want to use Gramsci.11 Importantly, whatever one thinks of Gramsci, the flaws and inconcinnities in his thought are not going to be ironed out by reading him against the Augustan period. Gramsci was not directly very interested in antiquity. He was clearly interested in Machiavelli, and of course Croce, and thereby, as well as simply because of being a good Italian, he was knowledgeable about the ancient world. Benedetto Fontana attempted to trace the influence of Plato and Aristotle, and there is the passage, discussed elsewhere in this volume, where Gramsci sets the Italian Cicero against despotic Catiline and Caesar, which suggests to me two things: that this is more or less all that Gramsci had to say about the Augustan revolution, that it was a movement from societas and hegemony to despotism and military autocracy;12 and that Gramsci got Cicero badly wrong.13 Second, in one of the axes of debate, which is around the ways in which Gramsci was insufficiently radical, antiquity will not recuperate or convict Gramsci.14 It is possible that we might locate the roots of our contemporary problems in the historical conundra of 1848, or 1917, or 1989, and see the resolution of those questions as telling for our own time. The problem of 31 BCE is fascinating, but it cannot be as telling. Others have argued that Gramsci should be thought of as a more radical thinker; and Gramscian thought has given rise to a more sophisticated version of political action.15 The first position is a rejection of Anderson’s criticisms that Gramsci was caught up in his own contradictory positions, too obsessed with the cultural, and the second is represented by Laclau and Mouffe’s argument that we need to move to a more sophisticated view of the groups whose attention needs to be caught in order to launch the revolution.16 On the first, Peter Thomas has written a huge book, principally arguing that Gramsci was not as inconsistent as Anderson thought. Rather, taken his work in context, one can see that he was working towards a notion that civil society, political society, and the state are distinct e­ lements of the superstructure but that they are mutually ­reinforcing.17 For our own purposes, as we shall see in a moment, it is precisely Gramsci’s elevation of culture from infrastructure to superstructure that is so important. On the second, I think it is fair to say that Gramsci has to be understood within his own time, and the variegated world of the later twentieth and early XXI century is far different from 1920s and 1930s Italy. The emphasis on moving past simple dichotomies to more complex formulations is useful, and I suspect Gramsci might have thought so too; after all, he took the time to make a special argument about intellectuals, which we will say more about below.

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 225 Lastly, there is a surprising reluctance to read Gramsci as a text which preserves rather than overcomes its oppositions. In the context of the production, it would hardly be surprising if Gramsci was lost in the labyrinth of the Notebooks as Anderson has it, and that passages can be taken out of context, to prove Gramsci contradicted himself. My own view, consonant with more recent treatments of Gramsci’s complex and incomplete thinking, is that we might let the spaces between opposing views do some creative work.

Coercion and consent This clearing away of just some of the open arguments about Gramsci is prefatory to my actual argument about how one might use Gramsci to open up conversations about the Augustan period. My way into this is through the coercion versus consent debate which has been key to arguments over Gramsci. Anderson said “Machiavelli had effectively collapsed consent into coercion, in Gramsci coercion was progressively eclipsed by consent.”18 Now that might be disputed but I think it is clear where Anderson is coming from; there is the sense that Gramsci was too thoughtful about the mechanisms for asserting power to launch an effective manifesto for taking power. Even if we can defend Gramsci to some extent, at the very least on the basis that he was writing from prison, part of the Gramscian argument is precisely to explain where consent comes from, and how it is generated. That seems to me to be applicable both in cases where one wishes consent was not happening, and in the cases where one might hope it would, i.e. both in radically unequal situations, and in occasions when populism of the right kind is harnessed to good effect, the sort of situation Laclau and Mouffe hope for. At this stage I want to cite an interesting if difficult comment by Thomas on Gramsci’s thought: Civil society’s primary role was to act as a mediating instance or moment of ‘organic passage’ for the subaltern classes towards the state of the ruling classes: a school of modern ‘statehood’. As a field of hegemonic relations, civil society gave the non-leading social groups a real and substantial image of this distinctive ‘freedom of moderns’, to use Domenico Losurdo’s suggestive phrase, such as had not occurred in previous ‘castal’ conceptions of social and political relations. In ­principle, (bourgeois) freedom and its consummation in the state is open to all, and it is precisely this that constitutes the immense revolution of the ‘political’ brought about by the bourgeoisie. Hegemony, then, emerges as a new ‘consensual’ political practice distinct from mere coercion (a dominant means of previous ruling classes) on this new terrain of civil society; but, like civil society, integrally linked to the state, hegemony’s full meaning only becomes apparent when it is

226  Christopher Smith related to its dialectical distinction of coercion. Hegemony in civil society functions as the social basis of the dominant class’s political power in the state apparatus, which in turn reinforces its initiatives in civil society. The integral state, understood in this broader sense, is the process of the condensation and transformation of these class relations into institutional form.19 This kind of civil society was for Gramsci the product of the period between 1789 and 1870; what happens if we push this analysis towards the Augustan period? The risk it seems to me is a very Gramscian one. When Clifford Ando wrote his book on provincial loyalty, he emphasised the construction of consent against the presence of coercion. 20 It is possible to counter that this understates the impact of the Roman army, and similarly we could worry that we might underplay the symbolic violence of the Augustan machine. In other words, taking an Andersonian approach, we might worry that those who follow Ando’s line have allowed the mechanisms of creating consent to eclipse the processes of coercion. However, returning to my contention that we should let Gramsci’s antinomies be productive, not a cause for criticism, one might try to get a bit further with the tension between consent and coercion, and use Thomas’s notion that hegemony should be distinguished from ‘mere coercion’. So we might think that there were different parts of society which at different times came closer to an alignment with the hegemonic position, and that the Augustan period was perhaps surprisingly successful at constructing consent. Gramsci was not a particular fan of a false consciousness model. He recognised it inevitably, and one cannot get away from the hegemonic control of the instruments of consciousness, or to come a bit closer to contemporary theory, Foucauldian ideas of the inscription of power in the very body and being of its subjects. 21 Yet Gramsci too perhaps had the notion that there can be sites of resistance in the multiplicity of cultural institutions. Underlying all this is the question of persuasion, and in the next section we will look at persuasion and its proselytising cousin propaganda.

Propaganda and ideology Jason Stanley’s recent book on How Propaganda Works looks at a problem cognate to and inseparable from cultural hegemony. Propaganda poses an epistemological problem for democracy, Stanley claims, since propaganda is the vehicle by which false beliefs are disseminated and opportunities for knowledge are closed. “The essence of political propaganda is that it is a kind of speech that fundamentally involves political, economic, aesthetic, or rational ideals, mobilized for a political purpose.”22 Specifically, what distinguishes propaganda in its worst sense is its tendency to undermine the very ideals that its disseminators invoke as they craft it, that is to say

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 227 the claim for democracy turns out often to consolidate power. Crucially for Stanley and our argument, propaganda, which he sees as political rhetoric and as part of epistemic systems, can be positive neutral or negative, but its effectiveness in the negative sense will depend on ideologies which inhibit democracy. This necessarily raises the problem of whether propaganda existed in antiquity. The debate over ancient propaganda is to a degree coterminous with the debate over the sophistication of the state. The less sophisticated or modern one’s conception of the ancient state, the less capable it is of topdown propaganda, especially if the ideal type is taken to be, say, modern Fascist regimes, and the defining characteristic is of a centralised and co-ordinated drive. Using those limits, propaganda could not exist in antiquity. There is a risk however that we define the term in such a way as to render it unusable outside limit cases. From one point of view that makes sense, but from another it makes it difficult to see the effects of communication which is intentionally persuasive but in different kinds of societies and with looser degrees of co-ordination. We can do without the notion of propaganda of course, but unless we wish to deny the existence of more or less systematic attempts to persuade, convince and impress, we arrive at circumlocutions. 23 It might seem preferable to work with a looser definition and a sharper focus on the conditions which limit or foster persuasion across society, which is why this bears on our larger theme. Although Stanley’s account is predominantly concerned with the contemporary period, his more inclusive account opens up in principle the possibility to think of using the term constructively for antiquity, as Enenkel and Pfeijffer have argued it should be. 24 Stanley’s broad definition permits us to focus on how propaganda qua political rhetoric worked in antiquity, and has potential to help think through issues of language and the nature of democratic institutions. 25 However Stanley’s account is not without problems, and because of its focus on liberal democracies, cannot be applied without some care to an earlier period. As Swanson noted in a valuable review, there is crux point about ideology. ‘Flawed ideologies’ writes Stanley “are […] epistemologically disabling; this is why they are flawed. Flawed ideologies prevent us from gaining knowledge about features of reality, including social reality. Some flawed ideologies specifically are about features of reality that are the characteristic domain of democratic policy. Such ideologies are epistemologically disabling about the domain of democratic decision-making.”26 However, as Swanson states, Stanley’s account demands a great deal of each individual, and assumes the worst of every flaw. It might be ideally true that no part of social reality is occluded for me by my ideology, but (and especially depending on one’s definition of democracy) even if it is, that may not necessarily be democratically problematic. Swanson adds the useful Gramscian caveat that ideological uniformity, in the form of

228  Christopher Smith a hegemonic ideology, might in some but not all cases create democratic problems. There is behind this a problem of the standpoint for judgement; for all its sophistication, Stanley’s account allows too little room for being genuinely persuaded to take positions others find uncomfortable. The sense is that we know better and others are fooled has had some unfortunate consequences in recent times, with unexpected reverses for weakly argued liberal positions, and reverts again to a sort of false consciousness argument. We can from the outside as it were (a position which in itself has to be deconstructed) identify the power structures which are reinforced by propaganda, but it is a more dangerous assumption that these must of necessity be unsupported by dominator and dominated, even if unequally. This is where the Gramscian perspective may be helpful; we can identify class domination with consent as the starting point for analysis and resistance. This also helps us to avoid the argument that Stanley’s account only works in liberal democracies; the operation of propaganda in negating alternate points of view is at least applicable to crisis moments, and perhaps more widely still. As an example, and only sketched in here in the lightest of fashions, we could look at slavery. 27 The hegemonic cultural position that slavery, at least of people who were conceived as outside the Roman citizenry, was largely unproblematic disabled other kinds of decision-making and self-­ realisation. This was widely disseminated through a whole range of cultural and aesthetic norms and positions, including the politicised ethnographic rhetoric. The debate regarding the possibility of alternatives did not get off the ground, and propaganda in the sense of self-reinforcing justifications or occlusions (including the exaltation of citizen virtues) made sure of that. 28 Thus, propaganda and ideology reinforce each other, but the theory is here applied outside a liberal democracy norm. Perhaps even more tellingly we can look at the relationship between the imperial centre and the provincial civitates as characterised propaganda which sustained hierarchies and concealed to a degree the realities of power through the operation of hegemonic ideologies. Thus, somewhere between Stanley and Gramsci we can find a way to recuperate propagandas a functional category in a broad sense for a society which was neither a liberal democracy nor a modern state.

Augustan antinomies Here we loop back again to Clifford Ando and his account of provincial loyalty, which I want to resituate in the Augustan context. Ando argues that the relationship between the Roman centre and the provinces is more complex than coercion; at some level, the Roman construction of society “­adequately mapped the collective value systems of its residents. […] Its official discourse and the apparatus it imposed satisfied and, indeed,

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 229 deliberately responded to the needs of those it governed.”29 Communication, in a Habermasian sense, required its auditors to assent to its essential validity claim. Ando’s procedure is to show that the mass of legal communication with the provinces is actually doing the work of constructing the consensus, of building a communicative arena in which provincial loyalty can develop. The most significant review of Ando’s book, by the eminent Marxist classicist Peter Rose, offers an interesting riposte – it shows that Ando may not have picked his theoretical enemies wisely, but it does not fundamentally weaken the case.30 There is something effective going on in the establishment of a discourse of Roman power. However, Ando plays up Weberian charisma, and plays down Marx, plays up Habermas and dismisses Bourdieu. This leads him to veer towards a celebration of the success of the Roman Empire, without engaging in a more dialectical conversation about the cost or the underlying threat of force, the power of dominant spectacle, the sheer mobilisation of coercive capacity which is represented by the Roman Empire, which nevertheless is built on a consensual commitment to the Romans’ way of doing things.31 Ando’s false dichotomy is to introduce cynicism as the alternative to this commitment. The point, surely, is that the Roman system, the Roman cultural hegemony, successfully squeezes out the alternative. For a provincial, one may find that the system worked or did not work in one’s particular case, and for the system to hold it must have worked sufficiently in enough cases, but it was not open or not readily open to imagine an alternative on the grand scale. At the same time, a Gramscian reading, or one which laid emphasis on local particularity, might find levels of resistance and invention at a lower level, within the dominant discourse, but in conversation with it. In short, we can have a greyer world in which the changes entailed by the collapse of Republican government were regarded as persuasive, without necessarily being wholly welcome. Now to bring this to bear on Augustan Italy. Following Ando, I think we do have to allow for a consensus that is not wholly coerced; in other words, on that spectrum from coercion to consent there is evidence of buy-in, even bearing in mind the fact that a proportion of the population of Italy backed losers in the sequence of Civil Wars. The success of the Augustan moment is that it created a notion of rightness; that it did embody at some level the Gramscian notion of cultural hegemony, which, to repeat, can be summed up as “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.”32 It seems to me that we can draw out three key points from Thomas’ wonderfully dense passage. First the overall sense that Rome was the overwhelming power; second the development of a ‘general direction’ which

230  Christopher Smith could garner assent, an assent which played up and down the levels of power, that is local elites interacting with the centre and with their own populations through multiple complex discourses; and third a world of production which emerges as profoundly integrated with this ‘general direction’. Hence, the cultural hegemony of the Roman centre has to be understood not or rather not only as a top down initiative from the emperor, but also and perhaps predominantly as a co-produced discourse, a world of knowledges, which describe and recursively reinforce the world as it is perceived. In Stanley’s terms, adapted to a Gramscian context, hegemonically sustained ideologies created the conditions in which even the languages of cosmopolitanism or equality or appearances of communication operated potentially as propaganda which undermined genuine autonomy and perpetuated inequalities without the use of overwhelming force. Gramsci’s fundamental move, to elevate aspects of the Marxist infrastructure into the superstructure, is therefore fundamental both in terms of theory but also in terms of consequence. Here is Thomas’ careful working out of Gramsci’s position: Gramsci thus comprehends ‘the superstructures’ or ‘ideologies’ in a nonreductive sense—that is, he views the superstructures not as mechanically derived from an originary ‘base’, but as constituting a dialectical unity or ‘historical bloc’ with the dominant relations of production, the means by which they were organised, guaranteed, and made to endure (or, just as importantly, challenged and transformed). The superstructures are the terrains on which, or the forms in which, members of a social group come to ‘know’ in a particular, ‘practical’ way the determining conditions of their lives within a particular historical situation. This is to say that they are necessary (or organic), rather than adventitious, to any social formation constituted by contradictions between classes; and that they have an extensive social efficacy, rather than being individually idiosyncratic, or dependent upon an individual knowing subject (or group conceived as subject) fallen into error. In a strict sense, for Gramsci, there is no knowledge outside the superstructures—or, what is the same thing, the ideologies—for the simple reason that such an outside does not exist: ‘ideas do not fall from the sky’, in Labriola’s memorable phrase, but are historically produced as a social relation.33 Let us now return to the Augustan period. Earlier in this chapter I described how Wallace-Hadrill identified the manufacture of consent and at the same time the creation of consistent material culture in I century BCE. On a theoretical level, I would suggest that what WallaceHadrill describes as a wave of fashion needs to be more fully integrated into the other aspects of his work on intellectual history, which are similar to and influenced by Moatti’s work on La Raison de Rome.

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 231 Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (IIe -Ier siècles avant Jésus-Christ). 34 This wave of fashion should be seen both as a shift in production/consumption and as a shift in cultural norms. The entire artistic and intellectual production of the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus is implicated in the social relations that exist, which are fundamentally unequal, but are also in a state of transformation towards, in the ‘general direction’ of, a hegemonic discourse which over a surprisingly short period of time creates Rome and its emperor as a source of certainty, and stability. The extensive efficacy of that homogeneity which Wallace-Hadrill brilliantly identifies is therefore comprehensible within the co-production of a cultural hegemony by dominant groups within Italy and beyond. Here one would naturally look at the special place which Gramsci gave to intellectual thought and leadership. Clearly Gramsci’s intellectuals emerged very much from an argument about capitalist modes of production, and we might struggle to map precisely his vertical – horizontal/traditional – organic/political – civil dichotomies onto a Rome where the categories are less sharply defined. Arguably, one might level the same criticism at Gramsci on his own times. Inevitably one is tempted to look at Syme’s notion of the organisation of opinion, 35 and the world of literary production, which can be read to offer examples of traditional intellectuals who operate alongside organisers of culture, such as Maecenas is sometimes thought to be. 36 However, it is also worth thinking about the role of workshop owners, and those involved in villa agriculture, the whole range of economic activity which is revealed in abundance in the archaeological record, from candelabra to casseroles, to pick just two examples from the last chapter of Rome’s Cultural Revolution. The group responsible for this activity has recently been called Rome’s middle class, and I completely concur with Wallace-Hadrill’s rejection of the terminology.37 Wallace-Hadrill must be right to point out the massive distortion of traditional modern analytical terms by the existence of slavery and widespread manumission. In fact, the potential classlessness of the Gramscian term intellectual, given that theoretically if infrequently in practice organic intellectuals can appear at every level of society, usefully transcends a class-based analysis of society. To pick just two very famous examples, what we might make of M. Vergilius Eurysaces the baker, who constructed a funerary monument in the shape of a baker’s oven near Porta Maggiore, or C. Iulius Helius, the shoemaker from the Porta Fontinalis, who decorated his funerary monument with images of shoe lasts, is not only that they imitate upper class behaviour in terms of funeral display and self-representation, but that they did so to influence others, in a process of habituation which solidified Roman values.38 They were the organic intellectuals of their milieu. What I find exciting about this approach is that it gives significance to all aspects of the productive economy. At the very least, Gramsci’s enriched

232  Christopher Smith superstructure gives a way out of a bind which has tended to create a divide between those of us who study texts and those of us who study things. Wringing ever more complex signification from the texts has moved further away from counting pots, leaving a sense of a unified cultural field to languish. Wallace-Hadrill has recreated exactly that sense, but we need a theory to animate it, otherwise, as we have seen, the more mundane cultural production is not integrated into the broader trend, and therefore within the context of an overall description of social reality, there is a gap. Gramsci helps us past that, and animates the whole to reflect a unified picture of the world of production. Moreover, taking seriously the sense of a communication across this world does allow for the potentially transformational input of different layers, albeit within an overall hegemonic discourse, which is how one can join the Arretine dish on someone’s table in small town Italy to the palace of Augustus on the Palatine without falling into a theory that this is the product of overt coercion from the centre. To paraphrase a contemporary writer much influenced by Gramsci, Marc Angenot, culture is a social discourse that legitimates and publicises certain views, tastes, opinions, and themes. It represses others into the chimerical, the extravagant. In the social discourse one finds all the soft forms of social domination of classes, sexes, privileges, and statutory powers in coexistence. These cohabitating elements of societies are in a constant tension and sometimes antagonism with each other, albeit contained within a hegemony that marks out the boundaries of the sayable and thinkable through the normative imposition of the legitimating language.39 It is of course our duty to be self-critical and there are some challenges which arise. One is that this unification will inevitably tend towards a sort of social discourse theory in which everything has equal significance, and that is unhelpful. I do think that one can argue that certain aspects of cultural production have more valence or effect; they are more significant producers of hegemony, more effective blocks to imagining a world as other. But differential value does not necessarily mean that they are not sharing the same field of cultural production. A second objection might be that, as Anderson said of Gramsci, we have collapsed coercion into consent. Here I would draw in my comment on the fact that how a Gramscian theory of cultural hegemony worked in antiquity is related to how it might work now only in the very specific sense that we can test its validity in past periods, without expecting the past to engage in the same struggle for emancipation. I fully accept Rose’s concern about Ando’s occlusion of the ‘political’ and note his well-judged quotation of Benjamin: “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.”40 Yes, we can analyse the Augustan cultural revolution for what it made impossible – the Republic. Yes, we must acknowledge that one of the outcomes of the hegemonic discourses of antiquity was to create a

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 233 highly limited group of people who were able to engage in the communicative discourse. This is where antiquity is deeply non-­H abermasian – Habermasian communication requires a broad public sphere.41 In antiquity voice is given or permitted much more sparingly. But our job is not to make classical antiquity a potential model of the future (rather the opposite perhaps!), but to understand it in its own time and terms insofar as that is possible, acknowledging and working through the inevitable situatedness of our analysis. Only then can a dialectic of comparison be developed across time. How precisely does it help us to speak of the Augustan cultural revolution as an instantiation of a process of cultural hegemony, of the dialectical relationship between a highly unequal material base and a superstructure of ideologies and knowledges by which members of a social group come to ‘know’ in a particular, ‘practical’ way the determining conditions of their lives? A Gramscian re-reading of some of the more promising areas of recent research, for instance the culture of freedmen and freedwomen, and specifically related to notions of spatial distribution and religious practice as we see in, for example, Harriet Flower’s discussion of the compital or crossroads festivals,42 together with a more theoretically sophisticated account of the complex nexus between hegemony and consent, opinion and propaganda (as described above) might provide the sorts of rich descriptions necessary to drive these theoretical reflections into new and paradigmatic formulations of ancient society.43 Finally, it might be interesting to think about persuasive epistemic systems located within the context of cultural hegemonic ideologies, which erode the very values which they claim to reinforce, and see where such an exercise might take us. An example might be the way the notion of the restored or repaired Republic, as a political system, played into the reinforcement of the power of the emperor.44 One potential outcome might be models which are politically engaged, but nevertheless successfully differentiate between emic explanations of social reality and etic observations and valuations, and thereby construct the dialectic between past and present just mentioned. Here, and in closing, I return to my point about the unification of the cultural field. I think the opportunity to see the world of the freedman as contiguous with the world of the elite and reacting in different but implicated ways in the co-production of culturally hegemonic discourses, whilst not losing discrete capacities to influence, transform, and locally resist them, is the sort of theoretical underpinning for the kind of history we have been trying to do for the past 20 years or so. One can productively read Gramsci as sustaining a vital set of dialectics between base and superstructure, between hegemonic and resistant discourses, between the coming to know our conditions and the capacity to imagine them as other. It is for this reason that, I think, we should continue to try to rewrite the Augustan cultural and political revolution

234  Christopher Smith through a generous and creative use of Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony.

Acknowledgements This chapter is more or less as it was presented at the conference. I am very grateful to the organizers for the kind invitation, for the helpful comments at the event itself, to Federico Santangelo for an acute and generous conversation; the reviewers and editors for generous comments and helpful suggestions and the Leverhulme Trust for a Major Research Fellowship of which this research formed a part. I have addressed some of the same issues from a different angle in a paper to be published in the third volume of the project E pluribus unum? L’Italie, de la diversité préromaine à l’unité augustéenne, edited by Michel Aberson, Maria Cristina Biella, Massimiliano Di Fazio, and Manuela Wullschleger; my own interest has been stimulated by many years living on Via Antonio Gramsci in Rome.

Notes 1 Davidson (2018). 2 Syme (1939); see among the many reflections on this seminal work Raaflaub and Toher (1990), and Millar and Giovannini (2000). 3 Davidson (2018: 263). On Michels and Syme see Ober (1996: 182). Gramsci read some works by Michels in the 1910s–1920s. He owned, in particular, a French edition of Michels’ Political Parties (first published in German in 1911). In the Prison Notebooks some important notes discuss Michels’ thought – on the basis of this previous knowledge of Michels’ thought but also of some further reading made in prison in early 1928. Among these notes, the most relevant is probably Q2§75 (a reference I owe to the editors). 4 However, Syme had not read Namier [Bowersock (1991)]. More generally, see Smith (2012). 5 Momigliano (1940: 78 = 1960: 413). Gramsci commented on Momigliano’s reference to the position of Italian Jews, see Harrowitz (2011); a more general account in Ferrara degli Uberti (2016). Momigliano reflected on Gramsci in his account of Benedetto Croce, their key point of intellectual content; Momigliano (1994: 80–96). 6 Zanker (1988). 7 Wallace-Hadrill (2008: 81). For this and what follows, see now Carlà-Uhink (2017) for an important account of the ideological and institutional development of Italy before and after the Social War. 8 See fn 1. 9 Osborne and Vout (2010); “It is as if the canny individuals who worked so hard to control the material culture others are allowed to use, have given up, taken to the couch and resigned themselves to a decadent life of passivity.” 10 Q12§1 = QC: 1519 = SPN: 12: ‘Del consenso «spontaneo» dato dalle grandi masse della popolazione all’indirizzo impresso alla vita sociale dal gruppo fondamentale dominante, consenso che nasce «storicamente» dal prestigio (e quindi dalla fiducia) derivante al gruppo dominante dalla sua posizione e dalla sua funzione nel mondo della produzione.’

Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 235 11 Anderson (2017b) is an important account of amongst other things how Gramsci has been used and interpreted, specifically with relation to the term hegemony. 12 Fontana (2000: 324); but see now Horky in this volume. 13 Cf. Santangelo in this volume. 14 Anderson (2017a), arguing that Gramsci offered conflicting descriptions of the relations between civil and political society and the ‘state’ and was unclear about the extent of coercion exercised by the state. 15 Femia (1987). 16 Laclau and Mouffe (2014). 17 Thomas (2009). Thomas uses Francioni (1984), who had already pushed back against Anderson’s charge of inconsistency. 18 Anderson (2017a: 100). On this see Martin (1997: 53): “Gramsci’s argument that bourgeois dominance is achieved by consent was less a statement of the universal prerequisites of any capitalist society than a reference mark to establish the points of struggle in a context in which authority had been insufficiently secured.” 19 Thomas (2009: 144). 20 Ando (2000). 21 See now Woolf (2020), who gestures towards a Foucauldian model and deploys also the work of Lukes and Mann. For the relationship between Gramsci and Foucault see Kreps (2015), with a review by Tarascio (2018). 22 Stanley (2015: 52–3). 23 See Hekster (2007: 340): “to erase the notion from our theoretical framework entirely would result in losing all theories and explanations connected to the notion with it – an entire set of possibly useful tools. It is also questionable to what extent using alternative words is substantially different from using the term ‘propaganda’ as such, when what is essentially meant is dissemination of ideas by people in power in a certain period, or whether side-stepping the question ‘by referring simply to the undoubted ‘political themes’ … rather than to ‘propaganda’…’ solves the problem.” 24 Enenkel and Pfeijffer (2005); cf. Weber and Zimmerman (2003) who argue that the limiting conditions for propaganda are that it have a clear message which reveals the intentions of those who produce, that it was demonstrably understood and that the effect of its message is measurable. Their preference is for the term representation, which does not seem to me to resolve the issues. 25 See for instance Hesk (2000) on deception; van der Blom, Gray and Steel (2018) on Roman ideology and rhetoric; and Ober (2017) for experiments in democratic theory, all of which touch on successful or unsuccessful interactions between language, ideology, and institutions. 26 Stanley (2015: 198) and Swanson (2017). 27 See Vlassopoulos in this volume. 28 Garnsey (1996), de Ste Croix (1981), and Lavan (2013). For sites of resistance, see e.g. Richlin (2017) with a rich and theoretically informed bibliography. 29 Ando (2000: 5). 30 Rose (2006). 31 Ando (2000: 75). 32 Q12§1 = QC: 1519 = SPN: 12, and see above. 33 Thomas (2009: 100–1). 34 Moatti (1997). See now Moatti (2015). 35 On opinion see Wetters (2008) and Benjamin (1979: 45): “Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.”

236  Christopher Smith 36 Maecenas’ role as curator urbis in 36 BCE (Vell. Pat. 2.88.2–3) and of Italy (perhaps from 31 BCE, see Tac. Ann. 6.11 and Plin. HN 37.4.10) offer the possibility of understanding his cultural significance. See Le Doze (2014) and Chillet (2016). 37 Mayer (2012), see review by Wallace-Hadrill (2013). 38 See Hackworth Petersen (2006) generally and specifically 84–120 on Eurysaces; on Helius, CIL VI.33914 with Hackworth Petersen (2009). 39 Angenot (2004); see also Molden (2015). 40 Rose (2006: 131); citing Benjamin (1969: 255). 41 Habermas (1984/1987); on Habermas and Antiquity see e.g. McCarthy (1997). 42 Flower (2017). 43 See e.g. Hackworth Petersen (2006), Maclean (2018), Russell (2016), Flower (2017), and Bassani (2017). 44 Raaflaub and Toher (1990) and Strunk (2017).

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Gramsci and the Roman Cultural Revolution 237 Francioni, G. (1984) L’officina gramsciana: Ipotesi sulla struttura dei “Quaderni del carcere”. Naples: Bibliopolis. Garnsey, P.D.A. (1996) Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine. Cambridge and New York, NY: CUP. Habermas, J. (1984/1987) Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Hackworth Petersen, L. (2006) The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History. Cambridge: CUP. Hackworth Petersen, L. (2009) ‘‘Clothes Make the Man’: Dressing the Roman Freedmen Body’, in Fögen, T. and M.M. Lee (eds.) Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Berlin and Boston, MA: de Gruyter, 181–214. Harrowitz, N. (2011) ‘The Itinerary of an Identity: Primo Levi’s ‘Parallel Nationalization’’, in Sodi, R. and M. Marcus (eds.) New Reflections on Primo Levi before and after Auschwitz. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 31–43. Hekster, O. (2007) ‘The Army and Imperial Propaganda’, in Erdkamp, P. (ed.) A Companion to the Roman Army. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 339–58. Hesk, J.P. (2000) Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens. Cambridge: CUP. Kreps, D. (2015) Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment. Farnham: Ashgate. Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe (2014) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. Lavan, M. (2013) Slaves to Rome: Paradigms of Empire in Roman Culture. Cambridge: CUP. Le Doze, P. (2014) Mécène: ombres et flamboyances. Études anciennes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Maclean, R. (2018) Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture: Social Integration and the Transformation of Values. Cambridge: CUP. Martin, J. (1997) ‘Hegemony and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Gramsci’, History of the Human Sciences, 10(1), 37–56. Mayer, E. (2012) The Ancient Middle Classes. Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. McCarthy, G.E. (1997) Romancing Antiquity: German Critique of the Enlightenment from Weber to Habermas. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Millar, F. and A. Giovannini (eds.) (2000) La révolution romaine après Ronald Syme: bilans et perspectives. Geneva and Vandoeuvres: Fondation Hardt. Moatti, C. (1997) La Raison de Rome. Naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République. Paris: Éd. du Seuil. Moatti, C. (2015) The Birth of Critical Thinking in Republican Rome. Cambridge: CUP. Molden, B. (2015) ‘Resistant Pasts versus Mnemonic Hegemony: On the Power Relations of Collective Memory’, Memory Studies, 9(2), 125–42. Momigliano, A. (1940) ‘Review. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution’, JRS, 30, 75–80. Momigliano, A. (1960) Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Momigliano, A. (1994) Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. by Cornell, T. and G.W. Bowersock, Berkeley, CA – Los Angeles, LA – London: University of California Press. Ober, J. (1996) The Athenian Revolution. Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Ober, J. (2017) Demopolis: Democracy before Liberalism in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: CUP.

238  Christopher Smith Osborne, R. and C. Vout (2010) ‘A Revolution in Roman History?’, JRS, 100, 233–45. Raaflaub, K. and M. Toher (eds.) (1990) Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate. Berkeley, CA – Los Angeles, LA – London: University of California Press. Richlin, A. (2017) Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy. Cambridge: CUP. Rose, P. (2006) ‘Divorcing Ideology from Marxism and Marxism from Ideology: Some Problems’, Arethusa, 39, 101–36. Russell, A. (2016) The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome. Cambridge: CUP. Smith, C. (2012) ‘A Hundred Years of Roman History: Historiography and Intellectual Culture’, PBSR, 80, 295–323. Stanley, J. (2015) How Propaganda Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Strunk, T.E. (2017) History after Liberty. Tacitus on Tyrants, Sycophants, and Republicans. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Swanson, E. (2017) ‘Critical Notice of Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works’, Mind, 126, 937–47. Syme, R. (1939) The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon. Tarascio, G. (2018) ‘The Complex Convergence: Gramsci and Foucault’, International Gramsci Journal, 3(1), 94–103. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. van der Blom, H., C. Gray and C. Steel (eds.) (2018) Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision. Cambridge: CUP. Wallace-Hadrill, A. (2008) Rome’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: CUP. Wallace-Hadrill, A. (2013) ‘Trying to Define and Identify the Roman ‘Middle Classes’’, Review of E. Mayer, The Ancient Middle Classes. Urban Life and Aesthetic in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE. JRA, 26, 605–9. Weber, G. and M. Zimmermann (eds.) (2003) Propaganda, Selbstdarstellung, Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreich des 1. Jhs. n. Chr. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Wetters, K. (2008) The Opinion System. Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas. New York, NY: Fordham UP. Woolf, G. (2020) ‘The Rulers Ruled’, in Berthelot, K. (ed.) Reconsidering Roman Power: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perceptions and Reactions. Rome: École française de Rome, 85–100. Zanker, P. (1988) The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Michigan, MI: Michigan UP.

11 Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan An “Equilibrium with catastrophic prospects” Elena Giusti It is often noted how Antonio Gramsci’s concept of Caesarism, like much of his thought and logic, is ultimately dyadic, predicated upon a number of clear-cut and carefully identified antinomies. Some have considered such antinomies as liable to be ‘resolved’ in a sort of Hegelian synthesis, but for others they are instead more often than not ground for philosophical contradiction and resistance: they open up the hermeneutic challenges of the Prison Notebooks as a philosophical text, and at the same time allow its legacy to be re-discussed and contested through the theoretical and political activities of its readers.1 Antinomies are an inherent feature of the historical concept of Caesarism. It suffices to look at the Prince of Machiavelli, possibly one of the main interlocutors for Gramsci’s thoughts on Caesarism and hegemony, as well as on resistance and political alternatives to them, 2 in order to find a model for the ruler as a duplicitous hybrid. For Machiavelli, the Prince should aspire to be like, and learn from, the figure of the Centaur Chiron, half beast and half man (Il Principe 18.2–6).3 The shape of the Centaur exemplifies, under the ‘figura’ and ‘cover’ (copertamente) of the symbolic hybrid, that it is by law and by force that men fight, compete, and engage in politics. In order for the Prince to last and succeed, he must be half man and half beast, a hybrid of persuasion and violence, of the brutal force of domination and of the subtle, consent-seeking persuasion of hegemony. The Centaur-Prince is not, strictly speaking, the model for Gramsci’s Caesar. Nor is it a flat allegory for the modern political party.4 It is, however, the model for the ‘dual perspective’ of any kind of political and ultimately human action. It is in Q13§14 that Gramsci discusses the “dual perspective” (doppia prospettiva) in “political action and in the life of the State” (nell’azione politica e nella vita statale): The dual perspective can present itself on various levels, from the most elementary to the most complex; but these can all theoretically be reduced to two fundamental levels – correspondent to the dual nature of the Machiavellian Centaur, bestial and human – of force and

240  Elena Giusti consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilisation, individual and universal moment (‘Church’ and ‘State’), agitation and propaganda, tactics and strategy etc.5 The two natures of Machiavelli’s Prince-Centaur, the bestial and the human, correspond in Gramsci to, on the one hand, the ‘immediate’, individual, almost ‘accidental’ moment (force, authority, violence, individuality, Church, agitation, tactics) and, on the other, the more subtle, long-term and universal structures that underpin the whole of human society (consent, hegemony, civilisation, universality, State, propaganda, strategy).6 This ‘dual perspective’, in other words, encompasses the whole of the human social and political experience, both the violence and persuasion of the prince and the agitation and propaganda of revolution. The Machiavellian “Myth-Prince” (Mito-Principe), as Gramsci calls it in Q13§1,7 and its antinomies have become a given feature of society as a whole. They are the starting point, rather than the conclusion, of any political action and analysis. What is now open to discuss is not the existence, nor the importance, of such dyads, but rather the different ways in which they interact, or may interact, in ancient and contemporary structures of rule and power. In this chapter I expose and analyse how Gramsci’s dyadic logic underpins his conceptions of both Caesarism and the ‘Myth-Prince’, while leaving open an apparent contradiction, which prevents us from ‘solving’ these dichotomies into what would be a Hegelian synthesis. The presence of such a contradiction, I would argue, ends up strengthening, rather than undermining, Caesarism as a totalitarian entity and force. The idea of the Myth-Prince as the unifying symbol of dichotomies such as we find him in Machiavelli’s text can be traced back to antiquity, and especially to the figure of Caesar Augustus. But antiquity, I would like to suggest, does not limit itself to providing Machiavelli with the Prince-Centaur model. It also crucially anticipates Gramsci’s insight into the contradictions of Caesarism by suggesting that the leader lasts longer when he not merely makes use of both sides of the Centaur, but also builds an ideological system that allows the simultaneous existence and validity of contradictory statements. Both Machiavelli’s ‘Myth-Prince’ and Gramsci’s Caesarism open up new perspectives for analysing the interaction and juxtaposition between the historical Julius Caesar and his nephew, the first ‘Prince’ who turned his uncle into both a concept and a titular nomenclature, precisely as he was turning himself into a myth – or rather, as Gramsci would say (Q13§1), into an organismo, that is “a complex element of society into which a collective will, which has already been recognised and has to some extent assented itself in action, begins to take concrete form.”8 A number of authors writing on totalitarian regimes, from Hannah Arendt to George Orwell, have drawn attention to the fact that the ways in which this organismo functions and thrives is by allowing contradictory discourses to exist simultaneously and yet distinctively within its own supporting ideology. It is from this

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 241 point of view that the contradictions also inherent in Gramsci’s Caesarism may allow us to gain a better understanding of what we could anachronistically call the ‘doublethink’ already present in the Augustan Caesarian ideology, an ideology that I suggest allowed Octavian to succeed precisely where his great-uncle had failed. The poetic texts that accompany and follow the advent of the first of the ‘Caesars’, and that are reflections and products, while and at the same time active creators, of the Augustan ideological discourse, provide us with a privileged lens to investigate the contradictions of Augustan and post-Augustan ideology. The texts of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid, whose partisanship to the regime has often been put under scrutiny, best exemplify the ways in which Augustan ideology allowed contradictory interpretations of Caesar, the Principate, and proto-Caesarism to coexist in such a way as to make antagonistic forces coalesce with little disagreement around the new leader.9 In these texts, Caesar is either absent or used as a foil for the imagery of Octavian-Augustus.10 There appears to be no other Caesar except the one that his adopted son has crafted for the purposes of his self-promotion. But if Augustus as a more perfected Caesar makes his historical great-uncle disappear from the poetic archives, it is under the emperor Nero, the Caesar who embodies the very degeneration of (Augustan) Caesarism, that Caesar finally appears in the poetic domain, translated from his prosaic Bellum ciuile into the epic Bellum ciuile of Lucan. This poem, I argue, marks an important turning point into the broader history of Caesarism and the transformation of Julius Caesar into a myth and an ideal.11 In addition to the famous controversies surrounding it (as regards Lucan’s political allegiance to Nero, or the degree of his Stoic convictions vs. his abysmal cosmic nihilism),12 the Bellum ciuile also leaves open a number of questions about the nature and characteristics of Caesarism. In the last section of this chapter, I shall attempt to show how the contradictions present in Gramsci’s definition resurface in a poem that may spell three interpretations for the victory of Caesar: (a) Caesar triumphs as one of two antagonistic forces; (b) Caesar triumphs as a third alternative to Pompey and Cato; (c) what triumphs is not Caesar, but ‘Caesar’ the ideal, created and embodied by Caesar Augustus, as the sum of those antagonistic forces that led to the very transformation of the immanent structures of society.

Caesarism in Gramsci: A + B = AB or C? The three possible interpretations proposed above for Caesar’s triumph in Lucan are based upon Gramsci’s definition of Caesarism.13 Difficult aspects of this definition, given in full at Q13§27, emerge across Notebook 13, especially when comparing it with the causes and consequences of crises of hegemony (Q13§1, Q13§17 or Q13§23). As Benedetto Fontana notes, there appears to be a striking contradiction between the possible outcome of crises contemplated in the definition of Caesarism as given at Q13§27 and the

242  Elena Giusti resolutions of hegemonic crises through the emergence of a ‘Myth-Prince’ given at Q13§1.14 It is worth quoting extensively both texts: Caesarism can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. When the progressive force A struggles with the reactionary force B, not only may A defeat B or B defeat A, but it may happen that neither A nor B defeats the other, that they bleed each other mutually and then a third force C intervenes from outside, subjugating what is left of both A and B […] but Caesarism – although it always expresses the particular solution in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation characterised by an equilibrium of forces heading towards catastrophe – does not in all cases have the same historical significance. There can be both progressive and reactionary forms of Caesarism […] Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism […] the problem is to see whether in the dialectic ‘revolution/ restauration’ it is revolution or restauration which predominates.15 The modern Prince, the Myth-Prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society into which a collective will, which has already been recognised and has to some extent assented itself in action, begins to take concrete form. History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party […]. […] an improvised action of such a kind […] will in almost all cases be appropriate to restoration and reorganisation […] its underlying assumption will be that a collective will, already in existence, has become nerveless and dispersed, has suffered a collapse which is dangerous and threatening but not definitive, and that it is necessary to reconcentrate and reinforce it – rather than a new collective will must be created from scratch, to be directed towards goals which are concrete and rational, but whose concreteness and rationality have not yet been put to the critical test by a real and universally known historical experience.16 Arguably, the two texts deal with ‘Caesarism’ and the ‘Myth-Prince’ as different phenomena, and it is probable that Gramsci had in mind respectively the ‘Caesarism’ of Mussolini and the ‘Modern Prince’ as the Communist party when drawing up these concepts.17 And yet, there seem to be subtle similarities between the two phenomena and the two contextual crises.18 In its definition, Caesarism emerges as a “third force C” from a situation in which two antagonistic forces A and B balance each other in such a way that conflict can only lead to reciprocal destruction. In Q13§1, instead, the ‘Myth-Prince’ emerges from a crisis of hegemony in such a way that transforms and innovates, rather than destroys, the pre-existing society. And

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 243 yet, while this seems to underscore a fundamental difference between the two scenarios, the very same incongruence that we have noticed between these two passages can be seen as embodied in the definition, and I would argue in the very essence, of Caesarism itself. In Q13§27, the balanced forces in opposition cannot but destroy each other, they “bleed each other to death” (si svenano reciprocamente), although the “Caesar” both “subjugates” (assoggetta) the “remains” or disiecta membra of A and B, and at the same time functions as the arbiter (esprime la soluzione arbitrale) between the two. What is paradoxical already in this definition is that the Caesar both allows and does not allow A and B to continue to exist through him and at the same time below him. But there is a second, and even more intriguing, ‘inconsistency’. Caesarism ‘expresses’ both the situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner and the arbitral solution entrusted to a charismatic personality. When we think of the historical Julius Caesar, whom Gramsci himself identifies as the primary example of (progressive) Caesarism, then we not only encounter the problem of whether Caesar is or isn’t one of the two forces in the conflict, but we are also invited to ask: how is it possible for Caesar to be both an expression himself of the conflict and an expression of the mediality and arbitration between the two forces in conflict? One solution may be suggested by Gramsci’s linguistic choices. In both definitions the verb used to define Caesarism is esprimere, “to express”, which highlights the fallacy of conceiving of Caesarism in terms of its ontology. Caesarism cannot be or not be something else, it can only ‘express’ an historico-political condition.19 Caesarism is itself an ‘expression’ of both stasis and of the arbitration that brings that stasis to an end. If Caesarism is always already an expression, it is also always already an idea, just like the ‘Myth-Prince’ of Q13§1. Despite Gramsci referring to the historical Julius Caesar, together with Napoleon I, as expression of progressive Caesarism, I believe that what he is interested in is rather the idea of ‘Caesar’ as it was later developed by Octavian Augustus. This Caesar is also the ancient predecessor of Gramsci’s ‘Myth-Prince’: not a real person, but an organism. He thus is the ancient predecessor of what is a political and ideological formula, and a totalitarian element. At the end of Q13§1, Gramsci explicitly discusses what we could call the totalitarian nature of the ‘modern Prince’, or – what he is interested in – the political party.20 Here the Prince emerges as a distinctly totalitarian element, he becomes a “reference point” (punto di riferimento) for a whole, complex network of moral, social, and political relationships. He becomes, in Gramsci’s words, a ‘religion’ and a “categorical imperative” (imperativo categorico): The modern Prince, as it develops, revolutionises the whole system of intellectual and moral relations, in that its development means precisely that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or wicked, only in so far as it has as its point of reference the modern

244  Elena Giusti Prince itself, and helps to strengthen or to oppose it. In men’s consciences, the Prince takes the place of the divinity or the categorical imperative, and becomes the basis for a modern laicism […]. 21

The doublethink of Caesarism This kind of language used to describe the modern Prince resonates strongly with Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarian ideologies, an analysis that I have already employed elsewhere to shed light on some contradictory aspects of Augustan ideology, and on the ambivalence of the political allegiance expressed by the Augustan poetic texts. 22 For Arendt, too, totalitarian governments “possess an aura of holiness”23 and are based on ideologies that differ from simple opinions in so far as they “claim to possess… the key to history, or the solution for all the ‘riddles of the universe’.”24 Totalitarian governments are also illogical: they destroy that Gramscian ‘dual perspective’ inherent to any aspect of society by abolishing the difference between individual and public interests. 25 Like in Gramsci, they are based upon ‘personality cults’26 or the charismatic individual, but they are at the same time predicated upon the lack of individuality of that leader, upon his existence as a non-entity. 27 The leader becomes Gramsci’s organismo: an idea, an expression. He becomes also one and the same with his masses – he acts through them and above them at the very same time. As Hitler says in a speech quoted by Arendt to express this doublethink of the system: “all that you are, you are through me; all that I am, I am through you alone.”28 For Arendt, this transformation of the leader into a non-entity and an idea, which enables him and his will to become one and the same with his masses, is what is distinctive about totalitarian ideologies in comparison to authoritarian and tyrannical rules. This makes up what she calls the ‘onion structure’ of totalitarianism: the leader does not act from the top, but from within the structure; he is located in its centre, ‘in a kind of empty space’. This sort of system allows the leader to provide movement for each of the structure’s layers alongside “the fiction of a normal world along with a consciousness of being different from and more radical than it.”29 In this way, hierarchy is abolished in favour of a direct relationship between all strata of the structure and the leader, whose will can be embodied by anyone, “everywhere and at all times.”30 It clearly is anachronistic to apply Arendt’s analysis, which is predicated upon the necessity for the leader to use modern media, to the time of Caesar Augustus. Gramsci, too, would not approve of the experiment, given that he considered the ‘ancient state’ too heterogeneous and decentralised to provide fertile terrain for ‘totalitarianism’ – a term which he furthermore never uses.31 And yet I believe that both Arendt and Gramsci help us understand the peculiar characteristics of a system which was based upon a contradiction in terms, being both a continuation with and a rupture from the Republic, and directed by a leader who was simultaneously above and equal to his people – a primus inter pares.32 The doublethink inherent in Augustan ‘propaganda’

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 245 also helps us explain, I think, why the discourses of Augustanism and anti-Augustanism, as Duncan Kennedy noted in an influential paper, appear simultaneously available in the Augustan texts.33 By representing himself as only one – but the one – of his subjects, the totalitarian leader manages to permeate all strata of the population in an ultimately repressive way, but by temporarily maintaining, in Arendt’s words, the ‘fiction of a normal world’ in which oppositional voices are never explicitly silenced, but only recomposed in order to make them adhere to the new system. This reminds us closely of the totalising nature of Augustanism as expressed by Kennedy in his chapter: the notion that the ultimate reason why it is impossible to track down dissent in terms of anti-Augustanism in the Augustan texts is that the regime is successful “in so far as it manages not so much to silence or suppress as to determine the consumption of the oppositional voice within its discourse.”34 In my analysis, I posited that Virgil’s use of ambiguity, or his echoes of civil war in the Aeneid, are notorious stumbling blocks in the debate over whether the poet expresses Augustan or anti-Augustan sentiments.35 Without forgetting, of course, that ambiguity is a defining feature of language and poetry, I argued that the context of the Augustan Principate allows us to take the open-endedness of their interpretation in the Aeneid as a sign not of the ‘doublespeak’ of the author, but of the ‘doublethink’ of the system, that is, to quote from Orwell, of the “power [of the Augustan literary language] of holding two mutually contradictory beliefs […] simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”36 Doublethink implies no danger of subverting the current political order, because there exists no conceivable realistic alternative to that order, and thus no correspondent language for conveying a desire for it. Indeed, the Augustan regime had anticipated its opponents in co-opting for itself the political and religious context that predated the crisis: it had done so by presenting itself as a restitution of the (middle) Republic and thus leaving its opponents as supporters of the morally corrupt late Republic of the civil wars. The Principate was not the best option, but the only option, the Republican option: what could an anti-Augustan Republican support if not Augustus himself? To return to Gramsci’s Caesarism, the ability of Augustan ideology to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously also allows Caesar Augustus to embody both a conciliation of the two opposing forces A and B, and something new altogether, an alternative force C. Moreover, if we apply to the crisis of the late Republic Gramsci’s analysis of what happens during a hegemonic crisis (Q13§17), we can see Julius Caesar’s progressive actions take place on the ‘terrain of the occasional’ or ‘conjunctural’ (‘which appears as immediate, almost accidental’), a terrain that is created within what Gramsci calls the ‘organic movements’ (the relatively permanent structures). Progressive action happens, in a crisis, within the occasion that has presented itself when the conservative forces that operate in support and defence of the structure attempt to heal and resolve the structure’s contradictions. It is on this ‘occasional terrain’, writes Gramsci, that progressive antagonistic forces “seek to demonstrate that the necessary and

246  Elena Giusti sufficient conditions already exist to make possible, and hence imperative, the accomplishment of certain historical tasks” (Q13§17: che esistono le condizioni necessarie e sufficienti perché determinati compiti possano e quindi debbano essere risolti storicamente). In order to demonstrate this, the progressive forces must triumph, and thus make possible changes that are structural, and become organic. It is difficult to pin down precisely, in a given historical situation, the dialectic relationship between organic and occasional movements. Mistakes made about this dialectic, says Gramsci, “are serious in historiography […] and still more serious in the art of politics.” It can happen that a politician is taken into error by his desires and passions, mistaking the degree in which what is occasional and immediate can be harmonised with what is instead organic; this type of ideological politician may claim that “immediate causes are the only efficient causes”, emphasising voluntary and individual action beyond its worth. In this way, he becomes delusional through self-deception (autoinganno): “the snake bites the snake-charmer – in other words the demagogue is the first victim of his own demagogy” (“la biscia… morde il ciarlatano ossia il demagogo è la prima vittima della sua demagogia”). Are we allowed, I would ask, to imagine Julius Caesar as this snakecharmer, to identify him with the political ideologue who does not manage to get the balance right between tradition and innovation, republic and monarchy, destruction, and reconstruction? Caesar destroys but, as Gramsci writes in Q6§30, to destroy is anything but easy (“to destroy is very difficult, as difficult as to create”). What the progressive politician needs to destroy is not something concrete, but something “invisible, impalpable relationships, albeit hidden in material objects” (“«rapporti» invisibili, impalpabili, anche se si nascondono nelle cose materiali”). The good “destroyer-creator is able to destroy the old in order to bring to the surface the new that has become ‘necessary’ and that is inexorably urging at the threshold of history” (“il nuovo che è divenuto «necessario» e urge implacabilmente al limitare della storia”). Could it be that Caesar’s mistake was, following Gramsci’s analysis, precisely the mistake of those “self-appointed destroyers” (“sedicenti distruttori”) who are nothing less than “procurers of failed abortions” (“procuratori di mancati aborti”), “liable to be charged under the criminal code of history”? Caesar Augustus, on the other hand, the destroyer of the city of bricks and founder of the city of marble, was able to get the balance right between old and new, organic and immanent, acceptable and not acceptable. He mediated between the organic and occasional movements in such a way as to install a veritable ‘Permanent Revolution’, which is, in Gramsci’s definition (Q13§17), “the dialectic mediation between the two methodological principles” of Economism and Ideologism, a perfectly balanced interpretation of the efficiency of both structural and immediate causes. And since Augustus was able to understand when and where the organic structure may resist those innovations that he nonetheless intended to put forward, he fought not only his

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 247 uncle’s ‘wars of movement’, but more cleverly a ‘war of position’,37 proposing not a dictatorship but a hegemony, fighting not only with domination but with moral and intellectual leadership. And yet he still remains, even under his disguise, Machiavelli’s Centaur-Prince, with the political dimension of consent and persuasion being just the other side of the coin of what is always liable to flip around and show itself as a more violent form of domination.

Caesarism as stasis in Lucan’s Bellum ciuile Just as Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism helps us in conceptualising the seemingly contradictory double allegiance of the Augustan texts, Gramsci’s Caesarism suggests intriguing ways to interpret what is possibly the first text to present us with Caesar as a ‘myth’, an epic rather than historical figure. As has often been noted, Lucan’s Bellum ciuile thrives on its contradictions and paradoxes.38 It is perhaps unsurprising for such paradoxes to abound, since ciuile bellum (where bellum normally spells war against external enemies) is paradoxical by definition. But a brief reading of Lucan via Gramsci exposes the paradoxes not just of civil war, but of Caesarism itself. The two phenomena, civil war and Caesarism, are also not as distinct: they are one an expression of the other, and at times even resulting in a veritable identification. From the very beginning of the poem, standards against standards (Luc. 1.6–7: infestisque obuia signis/signa), eagles matching eagles (1.7 pares aquilas), javelins threatening javelins (1.7 et pila minantia pilis), Bellum ciuile is an ‘equilibrium with catastrophic prospects’. As Shadi Bartsch notes, just like stasis originates from Greek histemi, ‘to stand’, seditio is also connected to Latin sedeo, ‘to sit’, ‘to stand still’. The condition of stasis, as she argues building on the work of Nicole Loraux, thus reflects the condition of “standing upright in immobility… caught between agitation and immobility.”39 Images of the world being held at the edge of collapse pullulate the poem,40 with the cosmic precariousness of this balance matching, on the political sphere, the perilous equilibrium between the two leaders, who both appear as embodiments of Civil War from the first book of the poem. The famous pair of similes with Pompey as the oak tree (Luc. 1.136–44) and Caesar as the thunderbolt (Luc. 1.151–7)41 recalls Gramsci’s interpretation of the dynamic between conservative and progressive actions during a crisis of hegemony (Q13§17). Like Gramsci’s conservatives, Pompey the oak-tree strives in vain to defend the old structure, an ‘organic’ structure, whose roots extend deep in the earth but have become so weak that they are threatening to give in (Luc. 1.138: nec iam ualidis radicibus haerens), just like the top is threatening to collapse (Luc. 1.141: primo nutet casura sub Euro). Opposite to Pompey, and comparable to Gramsci’s progressive forces, Caesar is pure dynamic power, vis against robur, ‘virtue that does not know how to stand still’ (Luc. 1.144–5: nescia uirtus/stare loco);42 he is a flash of lightning (Luc. 1.151: fulmen) whose main impulse is to destroy (Luc. 1.153: rupuit… diem).

248  Elena Giusti Lucan’s Caesar is this concrete individual caused by the necessity of the lightning-quick immediacy of historico-political action. He seizes the opportunity on the terrain of immediate action with the ‘lightning rapidity’ (Q13§1: rapidità, fulmineità) of the failed and immature ‘Caesarism’ that contrasts in Gramsci the structural success of the ‘Myth-Prince’: In the modern world, only those historico-political actions which are immediate and imminent, characterised by the necessity for lightning speed, can be incarnated mythically by a concrete individual. Such speed can only be made necessary by a great and imminent danger, a great danger which precisely fans passion and fanaticism suddenly to a white heat […].43 This individual is the Caesar created by, and at the same time identifiable with, the situation itself of conflict and civil war, but he is not, as it were, the ‘Myth-Prince’ organismo, the third force C or AB, that will emerge successful from the contest. Both in Lucan and in history, Caesar destroys (as for instance at Massilia, Luc. 3.298–762) but, just like one of Gramsci’s ‘self-appointed destroyers’, he does not destroy successfully, and hence he does not rebuild successfully either. His main mistake may lie in his inability to take into account the remaining roots of Pompey’s oak tree, an inability to analyse efficiently the remains of the organic structure. Deluded by his pure ideology, he sees ‘immediate causes as the only efficient causes’, (Q13§17) a snake-charmer bit by the very snake of his own demagogy. Furthermore, Caesar is no more force C than Pompey is. The two are opposite in terms of the organic or immediate movements on which they base their historical and political actions: Pompey’s mistake is to insist on the little remains of the ancient roots, underestimating the immediate changes of history. Pompey thus looks like the specular opposite of Caesar’s, but the two are also strikingly similar, as Cato realises, in their ambitions to become ‘Caesars’. The Pompey portrayed in Cato’s speech in book 2 is the same proto-Caesarian Pompey whose thirst for absolute power we can also envisage behind his praises in Cicero’s De Imperio, and reconstruct from the plausible objections to the lex Manilia.44 As Cato puts it in Book 2, “it is not a secret that he too promises himself, if Fortune should favour him, control of the entire world” (Luc. 2.320–2: nec, si fortuna fauebit,/ hunc quoque totius sibi ius promittere mundi/non bene conpertum est).45 In conclusion, neither of these two leaders, whose conflict is holding the world at the edge of disaster, is able to become a genuine force C in Lucan. But both are an expression of Caesarism in its potential – a potential originated in the stasis itself, the equilibrium that calls for a new force to be created outside the temporal constraints of the poem’s narrative. In the history of Caesarism, as well as in the memory of Lucan’s readers, I believe that this force C, or AB, is the organismo, the Prince-machine created by Caesar Augustus, whose sign was none other than the Libra itself.46 But

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 249 closer to Lucan’s worries is another Caesar whom the poet urges to embody that very equilibrium handed down to him by the first Princeps: at 1.57–8, Lucan begs the emperor Nero to “hold the weights of a balanced heaven in the middle of the sphere” (librati pondera caeli/orbe tene medio), for if he leans “on only one part of the boundless pace, the axle of the sphere will feel the weight” (Luc. 1.56–7 aetheris inmensi partem si presseris unam,/ sentiet axis onus). While some trust that this apostrophe is candid, others have emphasised instead the degree of irony involved in the request.47 This ties in more broadly with the question of whether or not Lucan may recognise his own Caesar as a degeneration in the history of Caesarism, and his own time as the turning point of another crisis of hegemony, namely the time when, in Gramsci’s words, “the dominant class has exhausted its function, the ideological block tends to crumble, and constraint takes the place of ‘spontaneity’ […]” (Q1§44).48 This is not the place to assess Lucan’s judgement of the morality of Caesarism, whose red thread we follow in the Bellum ciuile in its threefold-expression: from its origin in stasis, and its first instantiation in the figures of Pompey and Caesar, through the Augustan ideology that permeates a poem that many have seen as presenting itself as a capsized image of Virgil’s Aeneid,49 up to the reality of Caesarism in its most repressive guise in Lucan’s own days. We will never be able to prove Lucan’s sympathy for the defeated cause, nor Shadi Bartsch’s suggestion that Lucan and his Cato may identify with the cold blood ideologist, the cynical idealist who is aware of the limitations of his idea, and yet cannot let go of his will to believe.50 We are, however, allowed to notice how the Bellum ciuile has spoken and continues to speak resistance to Caesarism and the necessity of political humanism in its XX century reception. This is the case of a quotation from Lucan’s Book 1 (1.128), which is known to be one of Hannah Arendt’s favourites, not as an expression of sympathy for the defeated cause but rather as an acknowledgement of the manifest importance of historical thought and political reflection of the kind that Antonio Gramsci has left to us, of the feeling of political urgency for historical and political action, and of the potential agency of ‘thinking’ in its future reception.51 Here we shall have to concern ourselves, not for the first time, with the concept of history, but we may be able to reflect on the oldest meaning of this word, which, like so many other terms in our political and philosophical language, is Greek in origin and derived from historein, to inquire in order to tell how it was – legein ta eonta in Herodotus. But the origin of this verb is again Homer (Il. 18.501) where the noun histor occurs, and that Homeric historian is the judge. If judgement is our faculty for dealing with the past, the historian is the inquiring man who by relating it sits in judgement over it. If that is so, we may reclaim our human dignity, win it back, as it were, from the pseudo-divinity named History of the modern age, without denying

250  Elena Giusti history’s importance but denying its right to being the ultimate judge. Old Cato, with whom I started these reflections – “never am I less alone than when I am by myself, never am I more active than when I do nothing” (Cic. Rep. 1.27 numquam se plus agere quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset) – has left us a curious phrase, which aptly sums up the political principle implied in the enterprise of reclamation. He said: Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni (Luc. 1.128, “the victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleases Cato”). (H. Arendt 1971: 216, Postscriptum to Vol.III)

Notes 1 On Gramsci’s dyads see Fontana (2004: 177) and Thomas (2009); in response to Anderson (1976). Thomas (2009: 45) invites reading of the Prison Notebooks like a series of plateaus, in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). 2 See Fontana (1993); on the contrary, Thomas (2017, 2018) analyses the ways in which Gramsci’s ‘modern Prince’ becomes a label under which to explore the possibility of (anti-Fascist) political action. 3 On this figure, see also Swift in this volume. 4 Although it does help Gramsci to theorise it: see Thomas (2017, 2018). 5 Q13§14 = QC: 1576 (‘Vari gradi in cui può presentarsi la doppia prospettiva, dai più elementari ai più complessi, ma che possono ridursi teoricamente a due gradi fondamentali, corrispondenti alla doppia natura del Centauro machiavellico, ferina ed umana, della forza e del consenso, dell’autorità e dell’egemonia, della violenza e della civiltà, del momento individuale e di quello universale (della «Chiesa» e dello «Stato»), dell’agitazione e della propaganda, della tattica e della strategia ecc.’); all translations are mine. 6 See Q13§14: “it often happens that the more the first ‘perspective’ is ‘immediate’ and elementary, the more the second has to be ‘distant’ (not in time, but as a dialectical relation), complex and ambitious. In other words, it may happen as in human life, that the more an individual is compelled to defend his own immediate physical existence, the more will he uphold and identify with the highest values of civilisation and of humanity, in all their complexity.” Note that in Q13§17 he distinguishes between what he calls “organic movements”, which he describes as “relatively permanent” in the structure of society, and “conjunctural movements”, that are instead “occasional, immediate, almost accidental.” 7 See below. 8 This organism is, in Q13§1, the “political party” (see below). 9 Note that the category of proto-Caesarism, which is a XIX-XX century construction [with Groh (1972)], is necessarily anachronistic when applied to the ancient world. 10 See Syme (2016) on Virgil. 11 See Johnson (1987: 103): “Lucan’s Caesar is less a representation of a historical figure than a symbol for certain inscrutable forces that operate behind and beneath what is called history. He is an evocation of a mysterious process out of which certain events in Roman history (and in other histories as well) gather their energies and burst forth into the world.” On the polyvalence of Caesar/‘Caesar’ in Lucan’s Bellum ciuile see also Roller (2001: 37–8). 12 See a review of the literature in Bartsch (1997: 1–9). 13 Cf. Santangelo in this volume.

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 251 14 Fontana (2004: 191). 15 Q13§27 = QC: 1619, “Si può dire che il cesarismo esprime una situazione in cui le forze in lotta si equilibrano in modo catastrofico, cioè si equilibrano in modo che la continuazione della lotta non può concludersi che con la distruzione reciproca. Quando la forza progressiva A lotta con la forza regressiva B, può avvenire non solo che A vinca B o B vinca A, può avvenire anche che non vinca né A né B, ma si svenino reciprocamente e una terza forza C intervenga dall’esterno assoggettando ciò che resta di A e di B. […] Ma il cesarismo, se esprime sempre la soluzione «arbitrale», affidata a una grande personalità, di una situazione storico-politica caratterizzata da un equilibrio di forze a prospettiva catastrofica, non ha sempre lo stesso significato storico. Ci può essere un cesarismo progressivo e uno regressivo […]. Cesare e Napoleone I sono esempi di cesarismo progressivo. […] Si tratta di vedere se nella dialettica «rivoluzione-restaurazione» è l’elemento rivoluzione o quello restaurazione che prevale.” 16 Q13§1 = QC: 1558, “Il moderno principe, il mito-principe non può essere una persona reale, un individuo concreto, può essere solo un organismo; un elemento di società complesso nel quale già abbia inizio il concretarsi di una volontà collettiva riconosciuta e affermatasi parzialmente nell’azione. Questo organismo è già dato dallo sviluppo storico ed è il partito politico […]. […] Ma un’azione immediata di tal genere […] sarà quasi sempre del tipo restaurazione e riorganizzazione […] in cui, cioè, si suppone che una volontà collettiva, già esistente, si sia snervata, dispersa, abbia subito un collasso pericoloso e minaccioso ma non decisivo e catastrofico e occorra riconcentrarla e irrobustirla, e non già che una volontà collettiva sia da creare ex novo, originalmente e da indirizzare verso mete concrete sì e razionali, ma di una concretezza e razionalità non ancora verificate e criticate da una esperienza storica effettuale e universalmente conosciuta.” 17 See Thomas (2017) on Gramsci’s Modern Prince, and p. 533 with further bibliography on its totalitarian undertones. 18 On the totalitarian aspects of the modern party in Gramsci, see Antonini (2016b: 179–81). 19 Gramsci himself reminds us that these definitions and observations “must not be conceived of as rigid schemata, but merely as practical criteria of historical and political interpretation” (Q13§23). See especially Antonini (2019). 20 Note that Gramsci uses the adjective ‘totalitarian’ in a more general sense of ‘holistic’, ‘absolute’, ‘permeating the whole of society’, disjoined from our understanding of the term from Hannah Arendt onwards: see Antonini (2016a: 46–8) and (2016b: 177–8). 21 Q13§1 = QC: 1561, “Il moderno Principe, sviluppandosi, sconvolge tutto il sistema di rapporti intellettuali e morali in quanto il suo svilupparsi significa appunto che ogni atto viene concepito come utile o dannoso, come virtuoso o scellerato, solo in quanto ha come punto di riferimento il moderno Principe stesso e serve a incrementare il suo potere o a contrastarlo. Il Principe prende il posto, nelle coscienze, della divinità o dell’imperativo categorico, diventa la base di un laicismo moderno […].” 22 Giusti (2016). 23 Arendt (2004: 291–2). 24 Arendt (2004: 211). 25 Arendt (2004: 186). 26 Arendt (2004: 397). 27 Arendt (2004: 431). 28 Arendt (2004: 431). 29 Arendt (1961: 99). 30 Arendt (2004: 525).

252  Elena Giusti 31 See Q25§4 = QC: 2287 with Frosini (2016: 135–8). On Gramsci’s use of the adjective ‘totalitarian’ see n. 20. 32 The phrase was not coined in antiquity but is often used to explain the paradox of the Augustan Principate: see Eder (2007: 31). 33 See Kennedy (1992). For a fuller reflection on the concept of ‘propaganda’, see Smith’s contribution in this volume. 34 Kennedy (1992: 40). 35 Giusti (2016: 22). 36 Orwell (2000), ch. 9. 37 On the two concepts see Ciccarelli (2009a, 2009b). 38 See especially Martindale (1976), Roller (1996), Bartsch (1997), but also Henderson (1987) and Masters (1992). 39 Bartsch (1997: 59), referring to Loraux (1987: 108). 40 See Luc.1.72–80, 2.289–92, 7.132–8 with Myers (2011: 402–6) and Chomse (2015). 41 See Ahl (1976: 198–9), Feeney (1986), Day (2013: 107–16, 211–7), and Chaudhuri (2014: 161). 42 He is “energy incarnate” [Ahl (1976: 198)]: “a larger-than-life, hyper-kinetic, awe-inspiring source of destruction” [Day (2013: 106)]. 43 QC: 1558, “Nel mondo moderno solo un’azione storico-politica immediata e imminente, caratterizzata dalla necessità di un procedimento rapido e fulmineo, può incarnarsi miticamente in un individuo concreto: la rapidità non può essere resa necessaria che da un grande pericolo imminente, grande pericolo che appunto crea fulmineamente l’arroventarsi delle passioni e del fanatismo […].” (My emphasis). 44 See Leigh (1997: 143–8) on Pompey as king; Steel (2001: 131–60) on De Imperio. 45 See Stover (2008: 574); also cf. recently Burden-Strevens (2016) on “habituation to authority” (imperii consuetudo) as what turns Caesar into ‘Caesar’ [on which see also Eckstein (2004)] and on Cassius Dio’s remarks on the similar dangers of Pompey and Caesar [Burden-Strevens (2016: 202)]. 46 See Volk (2009: 146–61) on the significance of the Libra for Augustus, through the lens of Manilius. 47 See (among many) Narducci (2002: 22–6) and Grimal (1960). 48 See QC: 42, “Quando la classe dominante ha esaurito la sua funzione, il blocco ideologico tende a sgretolarsi e allora alla «spontaneità» succede la «costrizione» in forme sempre meno larvate e indirette, fino alle misure vere e proprie di polizia e ai colpi di Stato.” 49 See Casali (2011). 50 Bartsch (1997). 51 On the quotation as a recognition of the political meaning of revolutionary action despite the lost cause see Tassin (2007).

Bibliography Ahl, F. (1976) Lucan: An Introduction. Ithaca: Cornell UP. Anderson, P. (1976) ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’, New Left Review, 1(100), 5–78. Antonini, F. (2016a) ‘Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: Gramsci’s Political Thought in the Last Miscellaneous Notebooks’, Rethinking Marxism, 31(1), 42–57. Antonini, F. (2016b) ‘‘il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere’: cesarismo ed egemonia nel contesto della crisi organica’, International Gramsci Journal, 2(1), 167–84.

Caesarism as stasis from Gramsci to Lucan 253 Antonini, F. (2019) ‘Interpreting the Present from the Past: Gramsci, Marx and the Historical Analogy’, in Ead. et al. (eds.) Revisiting Gramsci’s Notebooks. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 160–74. Arendt, H. (1961) Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought. London: Faber and Faber. Arendt, H. (1971) The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think. San Diego, New York, NY and London: Harcourt. Arendt, H. (2004) The Origins of Totalitarianism, with a new introduction by Power, S. [1st. ed. 1951] New York, NY: Schocken. Bartsch, S. (1997) Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan’s Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Burden-Strevens, C.W. (2016) ‘Fictitious Speeches, Envy, and the Habituation to Authority: Writing the Collapse of the Roman Republic’, in Lange, C.H. and J.M. Madsen (eds.) Cassius Dio: Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 193–216. Casali, S. (2011) ‘The Bellum Ciuile as an Anti-Aeneid’, in Asso, P. (ed.) Brill’s Companion to Lucan. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 81–110. Chaudhuri, P. (2014) The War With God: Theomachy in Roman Imperial Poetry. Oxford: OUP. Chomse, S. (2015) Lucan, Tacitus, and the Sublime in Rome’s Traumatic History. Diss. Cambridge. Ciccarelli, R. (2009a), ‘Guerra di Movimento’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.), Dizionario gramsciano 1926-1937. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario. gramsciproject.org/ (Accessed: 24 August 2020). Ciccarelli, R. (2009b), ‘Guerra di Posizione’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.), Dizionario gramsciano 1926-1937, [Online] Available at: http://dizionario. gramsciproject.org/ (Accessed: 24 August 2020). Day, H.J.M. (2013) Lucan and the Sublime: Power, Representation and Aesthetic Experience. Cambridge: CUP. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. London: Bloomsbury. Eckstein, A.M. (2004) ‘From the Historical Caesar to the Spectre of Caesarism: The Imperial Administrator as Internal Threat’, in Baehr, P. and M. Richter (eds.) Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism. Cambridge: CUP, 279–98. Eder, W. (2007) ‘Augustus and the Power of Tradition’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus. Cambridge: CUP, 13–32. Feeney, D. (1986) ‘Stat Magni Nominis Umbra: Lucan on the Greatness of Pompeius Magnus’, CQ, 36, 239–43. Fontana, B. (1993) Hegemony and Power: On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis, MN: UMP. Fontana, B. (2004) ‘The Concept of Caesarism in Gramsci’, in Baehr, P. and M. Richter (eds.) Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism. Cambridge: CUP, 175–96. Frosini, F. (2016) ‘L’egemonia e i ‘subalterni’. Utopia, religione, democrazia’, International Gramsci Journal, 2(1), 126–66. Giusti, E. (2016) ‘Did Somebody Say Augustan Totalitarianism? Duncan Kennedy’s ‘Reflections’, Hannah Arendt’s Origins, and the Continental Divide over Virgil’s Aeneid’, in Dictynna 13 [Online] Available at: http://dictynna.revues.org/1282 (Accessed: 24 August 2020).

254  Elena Giusti Grimal, P. (1960) ‘L’Éloge de Néro au Pharsale Est-il ironique?’, REL, 38, 296–305. Reprinted as id. (2010) ‘Is the Eulogy of Nero at the Beginning of the Pharsalia Ironic?”, Eng. tr. L. Holford-Strevens, in Tesoriero, C., F. Muecke and T. Neal (eds.) Lucan. Oxford: OUP, 59–68. Groh, D. (1972) ‘Cäsarismus, Napoleonismus, Bonapartismus, Führer, Chef, Imperialismus’, in Brunner, O., W. Conze and R. Koselleck (eds.) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 726–71. Henderson, J. (1987) ‘Lucan/The Word at War’, Ramus, 16, 122–64. Johnson, W.R. (1987) Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes. Ithaca and London: CUP. Kennedy, D.F. (1992) ‘Augustan’ and ‘Anti-Augustan’: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.) Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus. London: Bristol Classical Press, 26–58. Leigh, M. (1997) Spectacle and Engagement. Oxford: OUP. Loraux, N. (1987) ‘Le Lien de la division’, Le cahier du Collège international de philosophie, 4, 101–24. Martindale, C. (1976) ‘Paradox, Hyperbole and Literary Novelty in Lucan’s de Bello Ciuili’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 23, 45–54. Masters, J. (1992) Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile. Cambridge: CUP. Myers, M.H. (2011) ‘Lucan’s Poetic Geographies: Center and Periphery in Civil War Epic’, in Asso, P. (ed.) Brill’s Companion to Lucan. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 399–415. Narducci, E. (2002) Lucano: Un’epica contro l’impero: Interpretazione della “Pharsalia”. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Orwell, G. (2000) Nineteen Eighty-Four. Introduction by Pimlott, B. [1st ed. 1949] London: Penguin. Roller, M. (1996) ‘Ethical Contradiction and the Fractured Community in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile’, Cl. Ant, 15, 319–47. Roller, M. (2001) Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in JulioClaudian Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Steel, C. (2001) Cicero, Rhetoric, and Empire. Oxford and New York, NY: Clarendon. Stover, T. (2008) ‘Cato and the Intended Scope of Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile’, CQ, 58, 571–80. Syme, R. (2016) ‘Caesar and Augustus in Virgil’, in Santangelo F. (ed.) Approaching the Roman Revolution: Papers on Republican History. Oxford: OUP, 230–54. Tassin, E. (2007) ‘‘…sed victa Catoni’: The Defeated Cause of Revolutions’, Social Research, 74(4), 1109–26. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Thomas, P.D. (2017) ‘The Modern Prince: Gramsci’s Reading of Machiavelli’, History of Political Thought, 38(3), 523–44. Thomas, P.D. (2018) ‘Reverberations of the Prince: From ‘Heroic Fury’ to ‘Living Philology’’, Thesis Eleven, 147(1), 76–88. Volk, K. (2009) Manilius and His Intellectual Background. Oxford: OUP.

12 Hegemony in the Roman Principate Perceptions of power in Gramsci, Tacitus, and Luke Jeremy Paterson Even if they were of no other significance Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks will continue to stand as abiding and powerful testimony to the freedom of the human mind and spirit. However, since publication, and particularly since publication in English, Gramsci’s ideas have also entered the mainstream thought of the social sciences. The study of history, particularly of ancient history, has been much slower to engage directly with the possibilities for applying his ideas to enhance our understanding of the past. For example, one of the most important recent works on the change from the Roman Republic to the Principate, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution, makes no mention of Gramsci despite the fact that Gramsci Notebook 19§1 (1934-1935) adumbrates one of Wallace-Hadrill’s key themes:1 […] Caesar and Augustus in fact radically change the relative position of Rome and the Peninsula in the equilibrium of the classical world, taking from Italy the ‘territorial’ hegemony and transferring the hegemonic function to an ‘imperial’ class i.e. supranational. 2 Gramsci’s concern for the history of the Greek and Roman world was not deep, although he was often perceptive and suggestive when he did mention such material. His ideas about ‘Caesarism’ cannot be taken as evidence of a direct interest with the Roman world. 3 Gramsci’s failure to exploit fully the evidence from Roman history may be turned to advantage. In what follows there is an attempt to demonstrate the power of Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ as an analytical tool for understanding the development of the Roman Principate. The analytical power of the concept of ‘hegemony’ gains in significance and also avoids accusations of circularity, when applied to Roman history, because Gramsci’s creation of that concept was not based primarily on examples taken from the Roman world. The change from Republic to the autocracy of the Principate is one of the key developments in the history of the Western world. It introduced a system for governing a large empire which was to prove very long-lasting (continuing in the Eastern Empire at least until 1453 CE and the Ottoman

256  Jeremy Paterson capture of Constantinople). The emergence later of Holy Roman Emperors, Tsars, and Kaisers is testimony to the continued influence of the system of autocracy developed in the Roman world from the end of the first century BCE.4 The nature of that change is made even more startling and requires more urgent explanation, if you believe, as I do (but there are historians who do not), that the role of the people (the citizen body) was a key component of the SPQR, and that the Roman Republic had a strong functioning democratic element in it (as argued by Fergus Millar and others over the past four decades), which was to be fundamentally reduced under the Principate.5 In the first century BCE the Roman Republic underwent a crisis, which saw the system which had done so well for Rome in the period of the expansion of the empire come to be questioned by those, both citizens and subjects of the empire, who increasingly demanded a share of the benefits which flowed to Rome from the empire. Gramsci was fascinated by the dynamics of such crises (Q13§23):6 At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisation form, with the particular men who constitute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic ‘men of destiny’.7 A breakdown of consensus is what Gramsci calls an ‘organic crisis’, a crisis of hegemony, in which there is no longer a consensus across society about economics, society, politics, or ideology. There is often an ‘interregnum’, as Gramsci called it, in which ‘the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born.’ However, such a time is also an opportunity for one prevailing description of, and justification for, one system to be replaced by another, which better describes the world people find themselves in and creates a new dynamic orthodoxy, a new way of looking at government and power.8 It is here that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (egemonia) proves so useful. In Gramsci’s work ‘hegemony’ is a complex and highly productive idea. Aspects of it evolve over time in his thinking and he produces no final definitive discussion. By ‘hegemony’ he means the ideology, the description of the world, which is also a justification of the dominant class, which comes to be the norm in any civil society.9 What centrally interested Gramsci was the way in which a view of the world comes to dominate debate. By understanding this, it is possible to see how a new interpretative narrative of politics and of society can be brought into being and can come to be the new consensus. It should always be remembered that Gramsci was not just an analyst; he was an activist,

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 257 who sought to discover how hegemonial narrative comes into being and succeeds in order to facilitate the success of a new socialist narrative. In imposing a new view of political society coercion, of course, has a role to play in Gramsci’s mind (how could it not given his own suffering?). However, coercion and repression have their limits for autocrats and can easily become counterproductive.10 For Gramsci the manufacturing of consensus is a far more important element. Hence, his development of his concept of social hegemony: the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.11 Here Gramsci was tackling the problem of the relationship of the economic base of society which he saw as primary, and its ideological superstructure, which was secondary and dependent on, or even ‘determined by’ the economic structure of society. It is here that Gramsci provides two major steps forward in Marxist thought. He offers much more dynamic alternatives to the two ‘dead ends’ in Marxist thinking: ‘economic determinism’ and ‘false consciousness’. Gramsci, of course, accepts that basic economic relations are fundamental to shaping society. But they do not ‘determine’ the social structure in his view or the dominant ideology. Rather, they shape developments by both opening up possibilities and also limiting them. In any historical situation there are lots of potential possible developments, but not an infinite number (some are excluded by the economic realities). What turns a possibility into a reality depends on the choices of the population as a whole.12 For Gramsci (Q10ii§48): Possibility is not reality; but it is in itself a reality. Whether a man can or cannot do a thing has its importance in evaluating what is done in reality. Possibility means ‘freedom’. The measure of freedom enters into the concept of man. That the objective possibilities exist for people not to die of hunger and that people do die of hunger, has its importance, or so one would have thought. But the existence of objective conditions, of possibilities or of freedom is not yet enough: it is necessary to ‘know’ them, and to know how to use them. And to want to use them.13 In the XIX century Marxists thinkers came to suggest that in the real world the attitudes held by the proletariat often did not reflect their actual position within the economy. Hence arose the concept of ‘false consciousness’. This was not a concept really used by Marx himself, though it can indeed

258  Jeremy Paterson be found in Engels’ works; it came to prominence in the thought of Lukacs and later XX century thought.14 However, for Gramsci: For me, everyone is already cultured because everybody thinks, everybody connects causes and effects. But they are empirically, primordially cultured, not organically. They therefore waver, disband, soften, or become violent, intolerant, quarrelsome, according to the occasion and the circumstance.15 The important point about this view is that a hegemonic narrative is not solely, or even primarily, created by the autocrat. Every citizen has views, which contribute to the prevailing consensus and ultimately cannot be totally ignored by the ruling elite; but these views are often temporary, liable to change, and with no reinforcing underlying logical argument. Gramsci offers a much more nuanced account (Q13§18): The fact of hegemony undoubtedly presupposes that the interests and tendencies over which hegemony is to be exercised are taken into account, that there is a certain equilibrium of compromise, that, that is, the ruling group makes sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind, but it is also indubitable that such sacrifices and such compromises cannot affect what is essential.16 The issue for Gramsci, then, was how the individual thoughts, feelings, and ideas of people, which are potentially transitory, can be transformed into a coherent counternarrative to the prevailing hegemonial account. In this Gramsci sought to give an important role to ‘intellectuals’ in evolving the hegemonial narrative or an alternative narrative. Now, talk of ‘Intellectuals’ in the Anglophone world has normally led to Englishmen reaching for their shotguns. Gramsci’s thoughts on this topic evolved over time and need further development. He used ‘intellectual’ in a very individual way. In addition to the use of the term to mean the intelligentsia in society, he also argues that to a greater or lesser extent everyone is an ‘intellectual’ in that they think through for themselves their position in society. The important point is that Gramsci recognised that traditional intellectuals are not ‘above society’ but are within society and affected by society. There is no such thing as truly independent thought.17 For historians the central point is that any successful hegemonial narrative is not simply the creation of the ruler imposed on society as a whole by coercion and propaganda but is the creation of all in society. The prevailing hegemonial narrative is the result of interchange and debate between the ruler, the ruling class, and other groups in society.18 It is the fact that the hegemonial narrative emerges from a dialogue between ruler and ruled that gives it its potency. It has the ability to close down debate and inhibit the development of counter-narratives. The truth or falsehood of an ideology

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 259 has little meaning – it is its effectiveness in history which is so important. A new narrative usually gains influence when the economic and social base of society is facing crisis, such that the ideology which had previously prevailed no longer can explain and justify the present situation or support the interest of all social groups. It is from just such a crisis in the first century BCE that a new hegemonial narrative justifying autocracy as the solution emerges with Augustus. It is frequently argued that the trajectory of the history of the Roman Principate was a steady decline from Augustus’ paternalism, cloaked in the traditional language and values of the Republic, towards blatant autocracy later in the first century CE. In reality Augustus was just as capable of arbitrary and autocratic behaviour as any of his successors, while later emperors continued to use the traditional language of the Republic as part of the hegemonial narrative. A big question then is: why over many hundreds of years did no alternative narrative or understanding emerge to challenge the consensus about autocratic rule? Why did people support, or at least tolerate, autocratic emperors?19 As I have argued elsewhere, Mancur Olsen’s ‘stationary bandit’ theory offers a way ahead.20 Olson first asks the tantalising question of why anarchy has been so unusual in the history of large populous societies. He offers a solution by considering the state of China under the warlords of the 1920s. Roving bandit groups seize territory and cruelly exploit the population. In such a situation people came to prefer and support warlords who sought to settle down and established long-term control over an area. In effect they become ‘stationary bandits’. They continue to exploit the people through regular taxation, but the rational bandit will seek to take only a share of the income of his subjects, leaving them an incentive to generate more income which in turn can be taxed.21 It is also in the interests of the subject to want to see this situation continue beyond simply the life of the current ruler. Hence, the concern in the Roman world to identify a legitimate successor and to transfer allegiance to him on the death of his predecessor. The failure to facilitate such transfers opens the way for the breakdown in the system which was not in the interests of the population as a whole. Further, Roman emperors should be seen less as revenue-maximisers and more as revenue-redistributors.22 Our sources tend to emphasise the lavish consumption by emperors; but Augustus in his will (Suet. Aug. 101.3; RG Appendix 1) emphasised that he retained no more than c.10% of the 1400 million sesterces that came to him from friends’ wills. The remaining 90% was used for the benefit of the state (in rem publicam). In addition, of course, the emperor came to control directly or indirectly nearly all the other revenues from the empire. The Emperor’s ability to respond to requests both by individuals and whole communities was a vital element in the development of the new hegemony. There were, however, limits. The emperor had little choice but to pay the army and that may account for perhaps 70% of his expenditure. 23

260  Jeremy Paterson The economic development of the Mediterranean, the peace dividend which came with the imposition of the Principate, is undoubtedly the key factor in the long-term continuity of the Roman Principate. While Gramsci’s development of the concept of social hegemony is his key contribution, he never denies the primacy of the structure of the economy in creating a social system. While the reasons for the growth of the ancient economy are complex, what should not be missed is that the Emperors were, and were seen as, major agents of that development. 24 During the last days of his life Augustus was being taken on a cruise round the Bay of Naples when he encountered at the port of Puteoli a newly arrived ship from Alexandria. Learning of the presence of the emperor, the Alexandrian crew appeared on deck and cried, “It was thanks to him that they still had their lives; thanks to him they sailed the seas; thanks to him that they enjoyed their freedom and their fortunes” (Suet. Aug. 98). It is easy to be cynical and say, “well, they would do that, wouldn’t they?” However, there is little reason to dismiss the genuineness of the sentiments expressed by the sailors or, for that matter, the thousands of similar statements in inscriptions recording loyalty to and praise for emperors. Part of the hegemonial narrative of the Principate is created by just such expressions of loyalty from subjects. 25 To illustrate the extent to which the hegemonial narrative of the Principate becomes embedded in the century after Augustus I will look at two sources. The first is Tacitus, who is often presented as a critic of the Principate. The second is Luke, the author of the gospel in his name and of the Acts of the Apostles, because early Christian literature is frequently represented as anti-imperial and as formulating an alternative narrative to hegemonial one of I century of the Principate. 26 Tacitus is the sceptical historian par-excellence. His trademark is not accepting surface meanings. If anyone could be likely to be ready to undermine the hegemonial account of the Principate, you might expect him to. Indeed, many interpreters would agree with Benario that “The beginning of the work sets the tone. There is dissatisfaction with, if not enmity toward, the principate”. 27 Syme, on the other hand, says “Tacitus gives little away” and Goodyear in his commentary concedes that the reader is left to do the work of interpretation.28 However, it is possible to interpret the opening of the Annals without having to assume there is subtle subtext to be discovered. The Annals starts with a brilliant analysis of the change from Republic to Principate, which accepts the reality of the Principate’s existence and the justification for it (Ann. 1.2): Ubi militem donis, populum annona, cunctos dulcedine otii pellexit, insurgere paulatim, munia senatus magistratuum legum in se trahere, nullo adversante, cum ferocissimi per acies aut proscriptione cecidissent, ceteri nobilium, quanto quis servitio promptior, opibus et honoribus extollerentur ac novis ex rebus aucti tuta ei praesentia quam

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 261 vetera et periculosa mallent. Neque provinciae illum rerum statum abnuebant. When he had enticed the soldiery with gifts, the people with food, and everyone with the sweetness of inactivity, he rose up gradually and drew to himself the responsibilities of senate, magistrates, and laws—without a single adversary, since the most defiant had fallen in the battle line or by proscription and the rest of the nobles, each in proportion to his readiness for servitude, were being exalted by wealth and honors and, enhanced by the revolution, preferred the protection of the present to the perils of old. Nor did the provinces reject that state of affairs […].29 As a piece of analytical history this can scarcely be beaten; all modern historical accounts can be said to be largely riffs on the themes Tacitus set out in this passage. With good reason, because what Tacitus argues is borne out by the mass of other evidence. The systematisation of settlements and donatives to soldiers was essential to the ending of the civil wars. The provision of corn to the city of Rome was vital to the livelihood of its citizens (as Augustus himself recognised, according to Suet. Aug. 42, where he claimed that he would have abolished the corn dole, if it not been such an important contributor to stability in the city). The creation of a career structure for the elite within the political system was essential to bringing them into the system. Then the recognition of the benefits of the empire (brilliantly set out in the speech which Tacitus Hist. 4.74 put in the mouth of Q. Petilius Cerealis) by its provincial subjects was key to the imperial peace which helped to promote increased economic activity, which directly and indirectly benefited many in the empire, not just the local elites. There is little or nothing to suggest that Tacitus in this passage is being ironic or cynical. The term pellexit (‘seduced’, or even ‘bewitched’) might perhaps be seen as implying criticism; on the other hand, it is more likely simply to have been used by Tacitus to add colour. Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that Tacitus was simply repeating imperial propaganda, which he did not believe. As Syme recognised long ago, the essential arguments in favour of the Principate were the creation not of emperors, but of those new elites who in Tacitus’ words “preferred the securities of the new certainties to the inherent uncertainties of the past”; they sought to justify their participation in the new regime by arguing that it was inevitable and even desirable.30 This is precisely the way in which Gramsci envisaged a new hegemonial narrative emerging. Later in his introduction to the Annals (1.9) Tacitus stated there was much discussion about Augustus immediately after his death. He offers a favourable assessment and then an unfavourable one. Because the unfavourable one is longer and provides at the end a prejudicial lead into Tacitus’ main narrative on Tiberius, it is often thought that the negative account was the one favoured by Tacitus. However, this would be to ignore

262  Jeremy Paterson the introduction to the two assessments. Tacitus (Ann. 1.9) starts with the sort of coincidences in Augustus’ life, which many wondered at, despite the fact that they were utterly trivial. In contrast to the views of the many, Tacitus turns to the views of people of judgement (prudentes), which he admits were varied. So, the ensuing cases set out in favour of and critical of Augustus were both held by men of thoughtful judgement. Tacitus does not reveal which side of the argument he is on. In this what he is interested in doing is fulfilling the key promise of his introduction that he was writing sine ira et studio (“without anger or favour”: Ann. 1.1). Nothing in his introduction justifies the idea that Tacitus did not accept the hegemonial narrative of the Principate. The same goes for the rest of his work. Tacitus accepts the necessity of the rule of emperors. He has no tolerance for what might be called ‘Sentimental Republicanism’ (the cults of Cato and Brutus, for example); he castigates pointless acts of ostentatious defiance (see the end of the Agricola). He himself played his full part in the imperial administration and praises men, like himself, who were loyal to the system without endangering their personal integrity, such as M. Aemilius Lepidus (Ann. 4.20). So, it should come as no surprise that Tacitus, far from providing an alternative to it, demonstrates the power of the hegemonial narrative of the Principate. This is true of the greater mass of the other sources. No new alternative hegemonial narrative emerges in Tacitus or, indeed, in other sources during the Principate. Philosophy has sometimes been seen as the basis of an alternative hegemonial narrative in the Principate. However, Stoicism develops into a system to sustain people’s participation and acceptance of the Principate. It concentrates not on whether there should be one ruler, but on what constitutes a good ruler (cf. Seneca’s De Clementia). Cynicism might be thought to provide an alternative narrative, but in reality Cynicism is not a political philosophy at all (a fact demonstrated by John Moles’ work). Its emphasis is entirely on the autarcheia and parrhesia of the individual and sees any social or political system as a potential impediment to them. These philosophical approaches can, and did, provide critiques of individual emperors, but did not produce an alternative to the hegemonial narrative which justified the system of the Principate. 31 However, a major contribution to the hegemonial narrative of the I century came from those who argued that while there was no alternative to one-man rule, there were limits to the acceptable behaviour of the ruler. What made a ‘good’ emperor was the creation of the emperors’ subjects not of the emperor. Tacitus gives the actual words of Subrius Flavus (Ann. 15.67), a conspirator against Nero, who asked by the emperor why he had broken his military oath of loyalty to Nero, replied, “Because I detested you I was as loyal as any of your soldiers as long as you deserved affection. I began hating you when you murdered your mother and wife and became a charioteer, actor, and arsonist.” Here was a subject setting limits to the

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 263 behaviour of an autocrat and thus contributing to the current hegemonial justification of the Principate. The writings of the first few generations of Christians provide vivid views of the Roman Empire from those who were outside the ruling elite and have the potential to give an insight into how the subjects of Roman rule assessed the Principate. Many New Testament scholars have been eager to see in statements ascribed to Christ and to other early Christians about the coming of the Kingdom of God a new hegemonial narrative which directly challenged the legitimacy of the Principate.32 Superficially there seems to be evidence to support this claim, such as talk of Christ as ‘king’ (e.g. Matt. 2.2 and John 1.49). In particular the claim of kingship plays a central role in the narratives of the trials and crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. 27.11, Mark 15.2, Luke 23.3, John 18.33: “Are you the King of the Jews?”). Jesus’ accusers sought to argue that his claim to kingship was a direct challenge to the Roman Emperor’s authority. So, John 19.12 has the crowd shout at Pilate, “If you release this man, you are no friend to Caesar; everyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.” Much later, according to Acts 17.7, one of the accusations brought against Paul was that by claiming that there is another king, Jesus, he was acting against the decrees of Caesar. However, it must equally be emphasised that the Gospel narratives and Acts of the Apostles have the Roman authorities, such as Pilate, specifically refusing to acknowledge the validity of the charge. Jesus, equally, is repeatedly made to reject any such claims (e.g. John 18.36: “My Kingdom is not of this world”). Luke and Acts, who use the term basileia (‘kingdom’) nearly fifty times, have the proclamation of the ‘Kingdom of God’ as central to the purpose both of Jesus (e.g. Luke 4.43) and of Paul (Acts 28.31). But ‘The Kingdom of God’ clearly belongs to the end of time and is represented as such in apocalyptic literature. What is truly striking about Early Christian texts, however, is how little in them is concerned with Christian responses to the political system under which they lived. One of the earliest statements is Paul in Romans 13.1–2: πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἐξουσίαις ὑπεϱεχούσαις ὑποτασσέσθω. οὐ γὰϱ ἔστιν ἐξουσία εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ θεοῦ, αἱ δὲ οὗσαι ὑπὸ θεοῦ τεταγμέναι εἰσίν. ὥστε ὁ ἀντιτασσόμενος τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ διαταγῇ ἀνθέστηκεν. Everyone must submit to the supreme authorities. There is no authority but by act of God, and the existing authorities are instituted by him; consequently, anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine institution. For all that this is unique statement in the genuine Epistles of Paul that is no reason to reject the passage as an interpolation. Indeed, Paul as a Roman citizen, used and exploited the imperial system by appealing to the emperor to obtain justice when faced with what he saw as a court prejudiced against

264  Jeremy Paterson him. Indeed, he was ready whenever necessary to use his status as a Roman citizen to seek protection from the arbitrary punishments threatened by local officials. Of all the early Christian writings the author of the two-part work, the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles, which are widely accepted as the works of a single writer, probably composed in the last decades of the first century CE, are the ones which are most deeply embedded by their author in the context of the Roman Empire (see, for example: ‘In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea…’: Luke 3.1). Above all, there is the notoriously unhistorical attempt to date the birth of Christ: ‘In those days a decree was issued by the Emperor Augustus for a registration to be made throughout the world. This was the first registration of its kind; it took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria’: Luke 2.1. The importance of the passage is not that it is inaccurate and must be wrong, it is that Luke goes out of his way to attempt to locate the event within a Roman time-frame.33 Luke-Acts contains the largest number of references to the Imperial power of any of the Early Christian texts. There is a wide array of officials and administrators who make an appearance. All this suggests that Luke has a broad Roman audience in mind for his writings, rather than just Christian communities. Luke shows a considerable knowledge of legal matters and procedures and, it can be argued, of classical literature. Yet there have been arguments since the XVIII century about just what his attitude was to the Principate and the Roman Empire. In the XXI century what was a steady stream of arguments has turned into a flood.34 One of the most influential contributions was made by S. Walton.35 However, his emphasis on the alleged ambivalence of the attitudes displayed in Luke-Acts may be a classic case of trying ‘to have one’s cake and eat it.’ This emphasis on ‘ambivalence’ owes much to postcolonial readings, which have been influenced by the powerful arguments of James C. Scott about ‘hidden transcripts’ as covert resistance.36 So, for example, Medina explicitly sets out to provide ‘A Postcolonial Reading of Luke’s Ideological Stance of Duplicity, Resistance and Survival’, which argues that Luke’s “rhetoric of congeniality” towards Rome was really “an ideological manoeuvre to ultimately undermine Rome from within.”37 It will become clear from the argument which follows that I have little sympathy for such juggling in the interpretation of Luke-Acts and that once the purposes of Luke-Acts become clear, any supposed ambivalence in the writer’s attitude disappears. The first point to make is that it is wrong to suppose that Luke-Acts has primarily a Christian audience in mind. Both Luke and Acts of the Apostles are addressed to Theophilus (Luke 1.3–4 and Acts 1.1). The name, which means ‘lover of god’ in Greek, invites justifiable scepticism as to whether he was a real person. Real or not, Theophilus is represented as being aware of Christianity and Luke claims to write ‘so that you may know the reliability of things you have been told’ (Luke 1.4), but this does not necessarily mean

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 265 that he is a Christian. Most importantly, he is addressed by Luke as kratiste (‘most powerful’), a Greek term used regularly to translate the Latin title egregius for someone of equestrian status. So Luke-Acts is very likely addressed to a Roman official. If Luke-Acts is aimed at officialdom in the Greek and Roman world rather than just the Christian community, then his arguments become clear. Further, John Moles has brilliantly demonstrated that Luke’s preface here is an imitation of an official decree.38 So, Luke’s competence in Greek prose and rhetorical techniques, his allusions to classical literature, and detailed knowledge of the Roman imperial system all confirm that Luke is addressing a wide Roman audience including officialdom. His message is clear that Christianity is no threat to Roman rule and that by accepting the prevailing hegemonial narrative Christians are entitled to the same access to the justice system and its protections as others. The detail in Luke-Acts confirms that Luke is deliberately seeking to present a positive view of Roman authority. He goes out of his way not to challenge the hegemonial narrative of the Roman Empire. It is clear that Luke’s account (Luke 22.66–23.25) of Jesus’ appearance before Pilate is an adaptation of the narrative in Mark’s gospel. But it seems that Luke has softened the whole hearing, removing any implication that Jesus showed a lack of respect for Pilate and his tribunal. This culminates in Pilate’s famous declaration (Luke 23.14), “You brought this man before me on a charge of stirring up the people. But, as you see, I have myself examined him in your presence and found nothing in him to support your charges.” In the same way Paul’s appearance before the tribunal of the governor L. Junius Annaeus Gallio in Corinth (Acts 18.12–7) culminates in the refusal of the governor even to accept that there was even a case to be answered (“I will not be a judge of such things”). Luke could be seen to be more ambivalent in his treatment of the judgements about Paul of the two procurators of Judaea, Antonius Felix, and his successor, Porcius Festus. In Acts 24.24–7, it is suggested that Felix’s failure to bring the case of Paul to a close was down to the fact that he had a Jewish wife that he hoped for a bribe from Paul, and he sought to find favour with the Jews. Similarly, in Acts 25.9 Luke claims that Festus also sought to ingratiate himself with the Jews. However, in his dealing with the case, Festus was punctilious in following normal procedure and he accepted Paul’s appeal for his case to go to the emperor for judgement. Yoder neatly points out that Luke in his treatment of Felix and Festus “seems to speak to an audience that values the opinion of the Roman court and thus needs to ascribe the governors’ failure to acquit Paul to their personal moral failings.”39 It is clear that Luke-Acts seeks to detail at every possible point the favourable judgements of Roman officials about Christians and to emphasise that Christians were no threat to the prevailing order. I argued elsewhere that there was an important and illuminating parallel to the approach of LukeActs in the collection by the historian Josephus of Roman decrees in favour

266  Jeremy Paterson of Jews. He explains that: “It seems to me to be necessary here to give an account of all the honours that the Romans and their emperor paid to our nation, and of the alliances they have made with it, that all the rest of mankind may know what regard the kings of Asia and Europe have had to us, and that they have been abundantly satisfied of our courage and loyalty.”40 The same motivation can be seen in epigraphy in the collection of decrees and letters inscribed on the so-called Archive Wall of the Theatre at Aphrodisias in Caria, which was a public display designed to advertise the favours shown by Roman officials and government towards the people of Aphrodisias.41 In Luke-Acts and in all these collections of evidence, there is an acceptance of the prevailing hegemonial narrative and an attempt to exploit that narrative to ensure justice and respect for subjects of the system. Luke’s case is a persuasive argument that Christians should not be treated exceptionally and should have access to the rights and respect afforded to other Subjects of the Empire; he achieves this by citing the precedents already set by Roman officials in their dealings with Christians. This argument also explains the odd ending to Acts which simply has Paul staying in Rome for 2 years and continuing to preach. There is no mention of his martyrdom, perhaps by order of the emperor. This must be because Luke does not want to undermine his central argument. A clear indication of the continuing acceptance by Christians of the hegemonial narrative about the Principate is the fact that they themselves come to use the language and imagery of the Roman Imperial system to describe the rule of God and Christ. So, for example, in the apse mosaic in Santa Pudenziana in Rome at the end of the IV century Christ is depicted as an emperor with his Apostles standing in his consistory, dressed in togas. In the late empire Popes, like Siricius (384–99), in order to assert their authority, modelled their responses to letters on imperial rescripts. Some will wish to point to the condemnation of the Roman world in Revelation. Such views existed (cf. some of the collection of the Sibylline Oracles); but their influence and importance are exaggerated. The overemphasis on signs of individual protest and rebellion can sometimes obscure the fact that we see that writers, philosophers, subjects in the Principate accepted the prevailing hegemonial narrative that one-man rule was inevitable and, indeed desirable. There is little surprise in this since it is also clear that the subjects actively contributed to the creation of that very narrative and by seeking exploit the principles of that narrative to their own benefit. Against this background it is difficult to see how an effective alternative hegemonial narrative could evolve. The power of Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony lie in the recognition that the dominance of a hegemonial narrative is based on the fact that it is created by interactions and dialogues between ruler and ruled. This gives such a narrative its strength and ensures its widespread acceptance. I have tried in a rather summary way to apply this approach to two major sources for the Roman Principate, one source who was part of the ruling elite and

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 267 the other which was not. It could and, in my view, should be applied more widely to the ancient world. The results could be that ancient historians could come to be in the debt of the splendid team who organised the original conference and then went on to edit this volume.

Notes 1 Wallace-Hadrill (2008). Cf. Smith’s contribution to this volume. 2 Q19§1= QC: 1958, “[…] Cesare e Augusto in realtà modificano radicalmente la posizione relativa di Roma e della penisola nell’equilibrio del mondo classico, togliendo dall’Italia l’egemonia «territoriale» e trasferendo la funzione egemonica a una classe «imperiale» cioè supernazionale.” Translations are my own, except where otherwise stated. Cf. Balbo in this volume. 3 On Gramsci’s thoughts on Caesar and Caesarism, see Santangelo in this volume and the bibliography cited there. 4 For various interpretations of the change to autocracy in Rome see: Syme (1939), which remains seminal, Garnsey and Saller (1987) (particularly ch. 2 ‘Government without bureaucracy’), Millar (1977), Lendon (1997), Ando (2000), Roller (2000), Rowe (2002), Sumi (2005), Paterson (2007), Flaig (2011), Lavan (2013). Meier (1990) illustrates how without a deep conceptual framework, such as ‘hegemony’, even a good scholar can fail fully to make sense of a period of major change. 5 Millar (1998) is a summing up of a series of important articles: Millar (1984), Millar (1986), and Millar (1989) [reprinted in Millar (2002)]. See also: Yacobson (1992, 1999). 6 Cf. Santangelo and Giusti in this volume. 7 Q13§23 = QC: 1602–3 = SPN 210, “A un certo punto della loro vita storica i gruppi sociali si staccano dai loro partiti tradizionali, cioè i partiti tradizionali in quella data forma organizzativa, con quei determinati uomini che li costituiscono, li rappresentano e li dirigono non sono più riconosciuti come loro espressione dalla loro classe o frazione di classe. Quando queste crisi si verificano, la situazione immediata diventa delicata e pericola, perché il campo è aperto alle soluzioni di forza, all’attività di potenze oscure rappresentate dagli uomini provvidenziali e carismatici.” 8 Q3§34: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” On organic crisis see Q13§23. See La Porta (2009), Antonini (2016), Frosini (2017), and Filippini (2016, 87–104). Cf. Nappo in this volume. 9 On the definition of hegemony, see Introduction and Canevaro’s contribution to this volume. See also Cospito (2018), Fontana (2008), and the other essays in Howson and Smith (2008), Boothman (2008), and Thomas (2009). For a history of the term see Anderson (2017). 10 Wintrobe (1998: 43–76). 11 Q12§1 = QC: 1519 = SPN: 12, “Del consenso «spontaneo» dato dalle grandi masse della popolazione all’indirizzo impresso alla vita sociale dal gruppo fondamentale dominante, consenso che nasce «storicamente» dal prestigio (e quindi dalla fiducia) derivante al gruppo dominante dalla sua posizione e dalla sua funzione nel mondo della produzione.” 12 Crehan (2002). 13 Q10ii§48.2 = QC: 1337–8 = SPN: 360, “La possibilità non è la realtà, ma è anch’essa una realtà: che l’uomo possa fare una cosa o non possa farla, ha la sua importanza per valutare ciò che realmente si fa. Possibilità vuol dire

268  Jeremy Paterson











«libertà». La misura delle libertà entra nel concetto d’uomo. Che ci siano le possibilità obbiettive di morire di fame, e che si muoia di fame ha la sua importanza, a quanto pare. Ma l’esistenza delle condizioni obbiettive, o possibilità o libertà non è ancora sufficiente: occorre «conoscerle» e sapersene servire. Volersene servire.” 14 For the history of the concept of ideology and its relationship with false consciousness, see McLellan (19952) and Eagleton (2007) passim. The first occurrence of ‘false consciousness’ is in Engels’ letter to Franz Mehring, dated 14th July 1893 (see MECW: 50.163–8); Marx’s preliminary reflections on ideology are mostly to be found in The German Ideology (MECW: 5.19583), but he never produced a complete theory. See also Lukács (1971) (originally published in 1923). On the subject and the classics, see most recently Rose (2012, 1–55). 15 From the article “Filantropia, buona volontà e organizzazione”, L’Avanti, 24/12/1917 (EN-S2: 673–6 = CF: 518–21 = SCW: 2), “Per me tutti sono già colti, perché tutti pensano, tutti connettono causa ed effetti. Ma lo sono empiricamente, primordialmente, non organicamente, pertanto ondeggiano, si sbandano, si ammorbidiscono o diventano violenti, intolleranti, rissosi, a seconda dei casi e delle contingenze.” 16 QC: 1591, “Il fatto dell’egemonia presuppone indubbiamente che sia tenuto conto degli interessi e delle tendenze dei gruppi sui quali l’egemonia verrà esercitata, che si formi un certo equilibrio di compromesso, che cioè il gruppo dirigente faccia dei sacrifizi di ordine economico-corporativo, ma è anche indubbio che tali sacrifizi e tale compromesso non possono riguardare l’essenziale.” 17 See Fontana (2015). 18 See the recent concentration of scholars on the role of what Gramsci called ‘subalterns’: Green (2002), Spivak (2010), Crehan (2016), and Buttigieg (2018). 19 For a range of modern attempts to explain the imperial system see the works cited in note 4. 20 Olson (1993), discussed in Paterson (2004: 587f.). See also North (1981), ch. 3, ‘A Neoclassical theory of the state’. 21 See Keith Hopkins’ influential studies of taxes and trade in the Roman Empire: Hopkins (1980, 1996). 22 For the argument that autocrats tend to redistribute income more than democratic governments see Wintrobe (1998: 149–62). 23 On the imperial budget see Lo Cascio (2007) and Duncan-Jones (1994: 33–46). 24 As I have argued in Paterson (2004). 25 Cf. Smith’s discussion of Ando (2000) in his contribution to this volume, 226, 228–9. 26 A view propounded by many New Testament scholars: see e.g. the essays in Horsley (1997), Crossan (1991), Georgi (1991), Elliott (1994), Oakes (2002). A key issue is the language throughout the Gospels and Paul’s epistles of ‘kingship’ and ‘lordship’ ascribed to Jesus. But such language is used frequently of gods in many of the religions of the ancient world without the suggestion that there was some sort of challenging rivalry between the kingdom of heaven and the kings of this world. See the brilliant analysis of the Greek term κύϱιος (kyrios: Lord) in Dunn (1998: 244–52). 27 Benario (2012: 105). 28 Syme (1958: 520); Goodyear (1972: 88). 29 Eng. tr. by Woodman (2004). 30 Syme (1986). 31 Brunt (2013). 32 Horsley (1997).

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 269 33 Luke follows Matthew 2.1 in dating Jesus’ birth to the reign of Herod the Great who died in 4 BC. However, the census under P. Sulpicius Quirinius took place in AD 6 and it was not world-wide, as Luke says. Further, Luke gets the details of the census system wrong; Roman censuses were based on residence. There was no requirement to travel to their ancestral family residence, as Luke makes Joseph and Mary do; in this case Luke has devised a way of reconciling the clear evidence that associates Jesus with Nazareth with the need to associate him with Bethlehem, which Micah 5.2 prophesies will be the birthplace of the Messiah. See Vermes (2010: 90–7). 34 I have cited many of the recent contributions in Paterson (2015) and for a useful review of the recent work see Kockenash (2015). From a vast bibliography the following are ways into the subject: Oakes (2005), Seyoon (2008), Moles (2014), and particularly Seo (2015). 35 Walton (2002). 36 Scott (1990). 37 Medina (2005). 38 Moles (2011, 2014). 39 Yoder (2014: 332). 40 Joseph. AJ 14.186: ἔ δοξε δ᾿ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναί μοι πάσας ἐκθέσθαι τὰς γεγενημένας Ῥωμαίοις καὶ τοῖς αὐτοκϱάτοϱσιν αὐτῶν τιμὰς καὶ συμμαχίας πϱὸς τὸ ἔθνος ἡμῶν, ἵνα μὴ λανθάνῃ τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας, ὅτι καὶ οἱ τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ οἱ τῆς Εὐϱώπης βασιλεῖς διὰ σπουδῆς ἔσχον ἡμᾶς, τήν τε ἀνδϱείαν ἡμῶν καὶ τὴν πίστιν ἀγαπήσαντες. See Paterson (2015). 41 Reynolds and Erim (1982).

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270  Jeremy Paterson Duncan-Jones, R. (1994) Money and Government in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: CUP. Dunn, J.D.G. (1998) The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark. Eagleton, T. (2007) Ideology. An Introduction. 2nd edn. London: Verso. Elliott, N. (1994) Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle. New York, NY: Orbis. Filippini, M. (2016) Using Gramsci. A New Approach. London: Pluto. Flaig, E. (2011) ‘The Transition from Republic to Principate: Loss of Legitimacy, Revolution and Acceptance’, in Arnason, J. and K. Raaflaub (eds.) The Roman Emperor in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 67–84. Fontana, B. (2008) ‘Hegemony and Power in Gramsci’, in Howson, R. and K. Smith (eds.) Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 80–106. Fontana, B. (2015) ‘Intellectuals and Masses: Agency and Knowledge in Gramsci’, in McNally, M. (ed.) Antonio Gramsci. Basingstoke and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 55–75. Frosini, F. (2017) ‘What Is a Hegemonic Crisis? Some Notes on History, Revolution and Visibility in Gramsci’, Las Torres de Lucca: Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política, 6(11), 45–71. Garnsey, P. and R. Saller (1987) The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture. London: Duckworth. Georgi, D. (1991) Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Goodyear, F.R.D. (1972) The Annals of Tacitus. Books 1-6. Cambridge: CUP. Green, M. (2002) ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern’, Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), 1–24. Hopkins, K. (1980) ‘Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire 200 BC-AD 400’, JRS, 70, 101–25. Hopkins, K. (1996) ‘Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade’, Kodai: Journal of Ancient History, 6–7, 41–75. Reprinted in Scheidel, W. and S. von Reden, eds. (2002), The Ancient Economy. Edinburgh: EUP, 190-230. Horsley, R.A. (ed.) (1997) Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Howson, R. and K. Smith (eds.) (2008) Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion. London: Routledge. Kockenash, M. (2015) ‘Taking the Bad with the Good: Reconciling Images of Rome in Luke-Acts’, Religious Studies Review, 41, 43–51. La Porta, L. (2009) ‘Crisi Organica’ in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.) Dizionario Gramsciano 1926-1937. Rome: Carocci. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario. gramsciproject.org/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Lavan, M. (2013) Slaves to Rome: Paradigms of Empire in Roman Culture. Cambridge: CUP. Lendon, J.E. (1997) Empire of Honour. Oxford: OUP. Lo Cascio, E. (2007) ‘The Early Roman Empire: The State and the Economy’, in Scheidel, W., I. Morris and R. Saller (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge: CUP, 619–47. Lukács, G. (1971) History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Eng. tr. R. Livingstone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hegemony in the Roman Principate 271 McLellan, D. (1995) Ideology. 2nd edn. Milton Keynes: Open UP. Medina, G. (2005) The Lukan Writings as Colonial Counter-Discourse: A Postcolonial Reading of Luke’s Ideological Stance of Duplicity, Resistance and Survival. Unpublished Dissertation. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Meier, C. (1990) ‘C. Caesar Divi filius and the Formation of the Alternative in Rome’, in Raaflaub, K.A. and M. Toher (eds.) Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 54–70. Millar, F. (1977) The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC – AD337). London: Duckworth. Millar, F. (1984) ‘The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200-151 B.C’, JRS, 74, 1–19. Millar, F. (1986) ‘Politics, Persuasion, and the People before the Social War (150-89 B.C.)’, JRS, 76, 1–11. Millar, F. (1989) ‘Political Power in Mid-Republican Rome: Curia or Comitium?’, JRS, 79, 138–50. Millar, F. (1998) The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Millar, F. (2002) Rome, Greek, and the East. Volume 1: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press. Moles, J. (2011) ‘Luke’s Preface: The Greek Decree, Classical Historiography and Christian Redefinitions’, New Testament Studies, 57, 1–22. Moles, J. (2014) ‘Accommodation, Opposition or Other? Luke-Acts’ Stance towards Rome’, in Madsen, J.M. and R. Rees (eds.) Roman Rule in Greek and Latin Writing. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 79–104. North, D.C. (1981) Structure and Change in Economic History. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. Oakes, P. (2002) ‘God’s Sovereignty over Roman Authorities: A Theme in Philippians’, in Oakes, P. (ed.) Rome in the Bible and the Early Church. Carlisle: Paternoster, 126–41. Oakes, P. (2005) ‘A State of Tension: Rome in the New Testament’, in Riches, J. and D.C. Sim (eds.) The Gospel of Matthew in Its Roman Imperial Context. London: T and T Clark, 75–90. Olson, M. (1993) ‘Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development’, American Political Science Review, 87, 567–75. Paterson, J. (2004) ‘Autocracy and Political Economy’, Mediterraneo Antico, 7(2), 571–89. Paterson, J. (2007) ‘Friends in High Places; the Creation of the Court of the Roman Emperor’, in Spawforth, A.J. (ed.) The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies. Cambridge: CUP, 121–56. Paterson, J. (2015) ‘Responses to Roman Power in Luke-Act (Review-Discussion of Yoder, J. Representatives of Roman Rule: Roman Provincial Governors in LukeActs)’, Histos, 9, LXI–LXIX. Reynolds, J.M. and K.T. Erim (1982) Aphrodisias and Rome. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Roller, M.B. (2000) Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in JulioClaudian Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Rose, P.W. (2012) Class in Archaic Greece. Cambridge: CUP.

272  Jeremy Paterson Rowe, G. (2002) Princes and Political Cultures: The New Tiberian Senatorial Decrees. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Scott, J.C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. Seyoon, K. (2008) Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul and Luke. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Seo, P.S. (2015) Luke’s Jesus in the Roman Empire and the Emperor in the Gospel of Luke. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock. Spivak, G.C. (2010) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Morris, R.C. (ed.) Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York, NY: Columbia UP, 237–91. Sumi, G.S. (2005) Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Syme, R. (1939) The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Syme, R. (1958) Tacitus. 2 vols. Oxford: OUP. Syme, R. (1986) ‘The Apologia for the Principate’, in id., The Augustan Aristocracy. Oxford: OUP, 439–54. Thomas, P. (2009) The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Vermes, G. (2010) Jesus: Nativity – Passion – Resurrection. London: Penguin. Wallace-Hadrill, A. (2008) Rome’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: CUP. Walton, S. (2002) ‘The State They Were in: Luke’s View of the Roman Empire’, in Oakes, P. (ed.) Rome in the Bible and the Early Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster, 1–41. Wintrobe, R. (1998) The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge: CUP. Woodman, A.J. (2004) Tacitus. The Annals. Translated with Introduction and Notes. Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett. Yakobson, A. (1992) ‘Petitio Et Largitio: Popular Participation in the Centuriate Assembly of the Late Republic’, JRS, 82, 32–52. Yakobson, A. (1999) Elections and Electioneering in Rome: A Study in the Political System of the Late Republic. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Yoder, J. (2014) Representatives of Roman Rule: Roman Provincial Governors in Luke-Acts. Berlin and Boston, MA: de Gruyter.

13 Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity Between longue durée and discontinuity Dario Nappo

The peculiar history of the editions of Gramsci’s works determined their peculiar tradition of study: while produced in the first four decades of the XX century, most of his writings came to be published and studied only several years after his death. The most obvious case is the Prison Notebooks: composed during his imprisonment under the Fascist regime in Italy, they were first published in the 1950s in a thematical version. It was only in 1975 that the first philological edition of the Notebooks appeared, some 40 years after the author’s death, in a World that was then completely different from the one in which Gramsci lived and carried out his political actions.1 This is a crucial element to keep in mind when one approaches Gramsci’s work. One more necessary preliminary remark is that Gramsci’s writings have to be correctly understood as an act of political struggle. Despite some contrary minimalistic interpretations, every single text of his was intended as a practical act of political agitation, so everything he wrote has to be interpreted in such a way. 2 This is an important point also in approaching every reference to ancient history in his works. Gramsci never treated antiquity as a separate subject of investigation; nevertheless, he had a solid education in the disciplines we today ascribe to the field of ‘Classical Studies’. A professional linguist by training, his knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin, as well as ancient history, was not only remarkable: it was embedded in his cultural background, a model and a basis for schemes and ideas through which he attained a clearer comprehension of his own contemporary times, but also a metaphor to describe his contemporary political context.3 For this reason, references to ancient history are not a rare occurrence in his works, and if carefully examined they can shed some light on his Weltanschauung. This chapter will analyse Gramsci’s view of the transition between ancient and medieval ages, revolving around the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the eclipse of Rome as the dominant military and political power in the Mediterranean: not an easy task, because of the peculiar status of much of Gramsci’s work.4 In order to do so, a preliminary elucidation is in order, because Late Antiquity itself is a very problematic concept. It would require a separate chapter to outline it in general terms, and this is

274  Dario Nappo not the place to do so. I will give only a cursory overview of the pertinent scholarship on the matter, selecting what are, in my opinion, the works more relevant to understanding the evolution of the concept through time. The resulting selection will necessarily be arbitrary, but hopefully effective.

Late Antiquity: a controversial concept The “Birth” of Late Antiquity In the debate over Late Antiquity, it has long been discussed whether or not it was a period of regression of civilisation when compared to the previous, classical age. At the very beginning of modern historiography, the dominant view was Edward Gibbon’s, who not by chance titled his book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 5 Gibbon viewed the end of the Empire in terms of catastrophe and decadence: he argued that Roman history after II century CE entered first a dramatic period of crisis, followed by a long and painful decline, slowly but inevitably leading to the final demise of the classical world and the beginning of a new (and lesser) age: “a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the Earth.”6 Obviously, there was a moral judgement embedded in this view of the ‘decline’ of the Empire, evolving from a strong and vital phase into a weaker and chaotic one. The first scholar to recognise that Late Antiquity was indeed a period of the history of mankind with its own features was Jacob Burckhardt in 1853, in his work on Constantine I.7 Although the German word for Late Antiquity (Spätantike) is only used as an adjective to qualify other concepts (i.e. Spätantike Religion, or spätere römische Zeit, etc.), the idea of a different era of history, deserving its own analysis is already present in nuce.8 A more decisive step forward in defining the subject of Late Antiquity arrived only at the very beginning of the XX century. Austrian art historian Alois Riegl is credited as having introduced the term Spätantike into historical scholarship in the year 1901, with his book Spätrömische Kunstindustrie. It is worth to stress out that he used this concept in the field of art history, not ancient history. Riegl argued that the art of the late Roman Empire had features that were completely different from both the earlier Imperial period, and the subsequent medieval age, and was therefore to be studied as a separate subject of research, stripped of moralistic prejudices. He suggested relinquishing the use of the concept of decline in favour of what he called Kunstwollen.9 Despite these pioneering works, historical scholarship did not immediately consider their implications. ‘Decline and fall’ was still the dominant paradigm in Michail Rostovtzeff’s hugely influential work on Roman social and economic history, published for the first time in 1926.10 To some extent, Rostovtzeff returned once more to the old view of Gibbon, identifying in the great political turmoil of the III century the trigger of the decline of the Empire. It is not by chance that Rostovzteff’s work on the economy

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 275 of the Roman Empire did not consider its evolution after the III century CE.11 For him, continuity in Roman history came to an abrupt end after the II century, and the reason was mainly a social one: Roman elites failed to fully integrate the provincial masses (not just the elites) into the superior civilisation they had spread across the Mediterranean Sea; the consequent social struggle between the periphery and the centre led to the collapse of the Empire. After that, civilisation had somehow to start over again from the Medieval Age, later to evolve into the modern world. Rostovtzeff’s conclusions were deeply affected by his own experience of the Russian revolution of 1917, and they are in many ways similar to Gibbon’s. In both authors there is a strongly judgemental and moralistic assessment of the later Roman Empire, although Rostovtzeff’s view was based on a social and economic analysis of the documentary evidence that was completely absent in Gibbon. In 1932, the Finnish scholar Gunnar Mickwitz published his masterpiece Geld und Wirtschaft im römischen Reich des vierten Jahrhunderts n. Chr.12 Mickwitz was the first historian to clearly identify the IV century as the real crucible of a new world, different from the Roman Imperial one, and from the medieval age as well. Mickwitz’ point of view was purely economic: according to him, the economy of the Empire in the IV century was still vital, and in particular the monetary system was solid and functional.13 Instead, he saw in the social and economic conflict between the bureaucracy and the landowners the origin of the collapse of the Empire. Because of the high and unpredictable rate of inflation experienced in the III and early IV century, landowners were inclined to pay their taxes in money, while government employees were paid salaries in kind. Mickwitz held that Geldwirtschaft and Naturalwirtschaft were both typical of the economy of the IV century, mirroring a contrast between private and public economic actors that would ultimately characterise the society of the Roman Empire from the IV century onwards. Such a contrast would be one of the factors that would ultimately prompt the collapse of the Roman economy and, consequently, of political unity in the Western Empire. Mickwitz’ view was later reprised and inverted by the Italian scholar Santo Mazzarino in his book Aspetti sociali del IV secolo.14 Mazzarino confirmed Mickwitz was right in identifying the economic and fiscal struggles of the IV century as the foundation of the society of Late Antiquity, but he also absorbed and integrated Mickwitz’ theory “into a more complex and creative vision of Late Antiquity than Mickwitz himself had.”15 Mazzarino himself was to become one of the most prominent figures in the context of Late Roman history, and to have a huge impact on the relevant scholarship, most notably in Italy.16 It would be impossible to synthesise the many aspects of his eclectic contributions to the history of Late Antiquity, but here I would like to stress one important point: Mazzarino established the category of ‘positive’ Late Antiquity, as opposed to ‘negative’. In his view, positive and negative are not to be intended as a moral

276  Dario Nappo nor a qualitative judgement: what he meant is that it is possible to write a history of Late Antiquity on the grounds of its positive, existing features, not on the grounds of what was lacking from the previous age.17 In those years, the still unsettled status of Late Antiquity as a sub-discipline emerged from the variety of names that were used in different languages to define it. While, as we have just seen, German had already devised the definition of Spätantike, in Italian and in French the most-used definitions were still Basso Impero and Bas-Empire, respectively, with a subtle derogatory hint. In Anglo-Saxon academia, the more neutral Later Roman Empire was still preferred, which was indeed the title chosen by A.H.M. Jones for his vast monograph, spanning the period from 284 to 604 CE.18 Jones’ work focussed mostly on the economic, social, and administrative features, paying little attention to religious matters. He suggested that the reason for the longer life of the Eastern Empire compared to the Western was the former’s structurally different economy, which allowed the East more wealth and a more urbanised structure, resting on a fabric of smallholding peasantry. The ‘Optimistic’ turn A new switch in the focus on Late Antiquity was to come with the work of Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, published in 1971. For the first time the definition ‘late antiquity’ appeared in an English scholarly text. According to Brown, this period started around 200 CE and lasted until the VIII century, the time of the Arab conquest of the eastern and African provinces of the Byzantine Empire.19 Instead of investigating the causes of the fall of the Roman society, Brown rather focussed on the vibrant religious and cultural debate that characterised that epoch. In Brown’s own words, he managed to write his history of Late Antiquity “without invoking an intervening catastrophe and without pausing, for a moment, to pay lip service to the widespread notion of decay.”20 The geographical framework was greatly opened eastwards: instead of the traditional Rome-centric view, Brown focussed on the East, encompassing not just the Eastern Roman Empire, but also the Persian Empire and the Arab world. 21 The fall of Rome itself, in 476 CE, played a minor role in Brown’s narrative. 22 He stressed the modernity of Late Antiquity, an idea that had been already expressed by Riegl. 23 The impact of Brown’s monograph on scholarship was deep: it can safely be said that since his work was published, the age between the III and the VIII/IX century started to be viewed as distinctive period of history that stands on its own, rather than just the passage from a glorious ancient society to the decadent medieval one.24 Especially in the Anglo-Saxon World, words like decline, crisis, and fall started to progressively disappear, replaced by more neutral terms like change, transformation, and transition.25 Transition especially is used in a weak sense, although it has been pointed out that “as a concept of Marxist political economy, transition refers to the decline and

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 277 rise of socio-economic systems. […] Transition is a strong concept, and not simply a synonym for transformation. Even in its most generic and limited sense, it implies the comparing of different forms.”26 The tendency to use transition in a weak sense still very much exists in recent scholarship.27 It has to be noted, anyway, that some scholars, even in the Anglo-Saxon world, have subsequently argued against it.28 The importance of Brown’s point is in the emphasis put upon a new paradigm for understanding the changes in Western culture, focussing more on the processes of cultural and religious continuity between the late Roman and early medieval times. During the 1980s, an important cultural endeavour took place in Italy. Scholars connected to the Istituto Gramsci launched two collections of essays on the social history of the Roman Empire. The first one, published in 1981, focussed on the slave mode of production, and the second was published 5 years later as an even broader collection of studies on Late Antiquity: Società romana e Impero tardoantico. 29 Despite the publication of several scholarly works on the subject in the second half of the XX century, it was only towards the end of it, and precisely in 1993, that Late Antiquity was finally granted an academic journal entirely devoted to its study. It was in that year, in fact, that the first issue of the French journal Antiquité Tardive appeared.30 Recent developments The discipline was ready for a reassessment of the scholarship on Late Antiquity, which was done, not by chance, by a scholar from the circle of Mazzarino, and a prominent figure of the Istituto Gramsci as well: Andrea Giardina. In 1999, he published an article entitled ‘Esplosione di Tardoantico’ (later republished in English as ‘Explosion of Late Antiquity’).31 In this work, Giardina reviewed the evolution of the concept of Late Antiquity from the time of Riegl to his own, highlighting some peculiar characteristics of the studies on the matter. Giardina complained about two theoretical failures of the category of Late Antiquity: its vague chronological framework, and the tendency, begun by Brown, to emphasise continuity over rupture.32 As for the first point, as noted by Giardina himself, the chronological issue dates back to the early stages of the scholarly debate on this period. While the start of Late Antiquity has always been almost unanimously placed by scholars in the age of Diocletian (284 CE), the major debate is on when it ended.33 Over the years, a tendency to stretch Late Antiquity well past the Roman Imperial period and into the early medieval one has emerged, as is clearly attested by the introduction to one of the major works that appeared on the subject at the end of the XX century: The time has come for scholars, students, and the educated public in general to treat the period between around 250 and 800 as a distinctive

278  Dario Nappo and quite decisive period of history that stands on its own. It is not, as it once was for Edward Gibbon, a subject of obsessive fascination only as the story of the unravelling of a once glorious and ‘higher’ state of civilization. It was not a period of irrevocable Decline and Fall; nor was it merely a violent and hurried prelude to better things. It cannot be treated as a corpse to be dragged quickly offstage so that the next great act of the drama of the Middle Ages should begin.34 In these sentences we find encompassed also the second issue raised by Giardina, the inclination to dissolve the crisis into a ‘weak’ transition. On this phenomenon, the Italian scholar expresses his disappointment very clearly: Unfortunately, most of the scholars who resort to the category of ‘transition’ have done so in an inappropriate fashion. To begin with, they do not always seem aware of the fact that the idea of the autonomy of a period is not reconcilable with that category; it is therefore a contradiction in terms to claim the intrinsic unity of Late Antiquity on the one hand, and to characterize it as a period of transition on the other. Second, they use transition in opposition to the idea of ‘collapse’ or ‘crisis’, betraying thereby the influence of popular usage.35 Even in recent times, it has been rightly argued that the chronological and cultural limits of Late Antiquity are blurry, and to some extent this seems now to be an unavoidable feature of the subject. In the introduction to his A Greek Roman Empire, the late Fergus Millar explained very well the arbitrariness of most of the methodological choices associated with it: It is a matter of pure choice, convention, or convenience to what periods we apply the terms ‘Late Empire,’ ‘Byzantium,’ or ‘Late Antiquity’. We can, for instance, quite reasonably choose to use ‘Byzantine’ only for the period after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Libya to Islam. But we could also choose to see the long and stable reign of Theodosius II as the beginning of ‘Byzantium’: the first extended reign by an Emperor born in Constantinople; […] and the one for which our evidence allows us to see, far more fully and clearly than any other, the intimate relations between the Emperor and the Greek-speaking Church.36 In the last few years, the debate about conceptualising Late Antiquity has somehow died down, following the recent tendency in scholarship to focus more on the analysis of single case studies, instead of engaging with general synthesis.37 It is worth to mention that, among the most recent works on Late Antiquity, only one acknowledges the theoretical contribution of Gramsci to the understanding of the ancient world, and it is, not by chance, a monograph by Chris Wickham.38

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 279 In conclusion of this first part, we can say that, in spite of all its methodological and interpretative issues, Late Antiquity has finally gained its undisputed status of autonomous subject of study, although its precise limits and features are still ill-defined.39

Gramsci on Late Antiquity Crisis Gramsci’s concepts in general resist ready definition. Tending always to examine and interrogate phenomena from multiple points of view, from divergent angles and different sites, and in general in slow motion, his concepts, designed to grasp some of the complexities present in social processes, are as manysided and multiple as ways of seeing.40 Having made the important preliminary caveat that the concept itself of Late Antiquity had not been properly delimited at the time of Gramsci, what we find in his works are two different but intertwined historical issues. 1 On one hand, Gramsci deals with the problem of the fall of the Rome, looking for the factors that ultimately led to the final collapse and demise of the Western Roman Empire. 2 On the other hand, there are several parts of Gramsci’s works where he speculates on the structural differences between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Although they do not explicitly address the problem of the end of the classical world, these discussions are extremely interesting to understanding the opinion of Gramsci on the social, economic, political, even cultural dynamics that determined the transition between Antiquity and Middle Ages. This arises from the analysis of Italian society in Gramsci’s time, whose origins are seen as deeply rooted in the past of the peninsula. It is therefore a proxy to understand the political morphology of contemporary Italy. The fall of Rome is often associated in Gramsci with the concept of crisis, which in turn is another uneasy notion.41 It appears in Marx’s theory of history, although without a proper systematical definition.42 Marx expressed more clearly his ideas of the different types of crisis connected to the capitalistic mode of production, usually associated with the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a capitalistic economy.43 Very briefly put, Marx argued that crisis is an embedded characteristic of the capitalistic mode of production, and that it originates from capitalism’s tendency to produce more commodities than buyers can possibly consume, leading to a drop in their exchange value. According to Marx, in precapitalistic modes of production, the crisis originates from the opposite

280  Dario Nappo problem, namely the impossibility of ancient modes of production to fully meet the needs of the society, which ultimately prompts the creation of a new and more mature mode of production. Since for Marx each epoch of human history is characterised by its own dominant (but not exclusive) mode of production, it follows that each crisis of the history of humankind is also a crisis of a mode of production.44 This would be true, for instance, for the ancient world, associated with the slave mode of production that would collapse at the end of antiquity, prompting the beginning of the feudal mode of production.45 Marx’s theory of crisis is clearly the general framework within which Gramsci elaborates his own, but with some crucial differences. First of all, Gramsci himself lived in the period of the direst crisis that Liberal Italy had ever endured, starting from the end of WWI and lasting into the Fascist era. This condition had a major influence over his own perception of the crisis: while in his more juvenile scripts he calls it a “catastrophic crisis besetting European civilization”, different from any crisis that the capitalistic system had previously experienced and whose outcome was not predictable, his assessment changes in the later years.46 In fact, in more mature writings he clearly considers the contemporary crisis as just one of the many crises characterising the capitalistic society.47 Finally, in his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci comes to conceive of crisis as “a process rather than an event, more as a contradictory development of the system than as an aspect of that system’s breakdown.”48 The reason for such a change is, at least partially, the peculiar status of the Fascist regime in Italy: originated by the postWWI crisis, Fascism had evolved into a stabilised regime, with an apparently steady control over the country. This determines a further difference from the orthodox Marxist concept of crisis, although Gramsci builds on the two principles that Marx set out in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: 1 No society sets itself tasks for the accomplishment of which the necessary and sufficient conditions do not already exist or are not in the course of emerging and developing. 2 No society perishes until it has first developed all the forms of life implicit in its internal relations.49 Gramsci therefore develops a dynamic theory of crisis, adapting according to the different forms that crises take in the different situations in which they originate and evolve. This is the framework for understanding the most famous definition of crisis given by Gramsci in Notebook 3: The aspect of the modern crisis that is deplored as a ‘wave of materialism’ is related to the so-called ‘crisis of authority.’ If the ruling class has lost consensus, that is, if it no longer ‘leads’ but only ‘rules’ – it possesses sheer coercive power – this actually means that the great masses have

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 281 become detached from traditional ideologies, they no longer believe what they previously used to believe, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.50 While Marx had a mainly economic view of the crisis, Gramsci allows other elements to be taken into consideration. The result is a more flexible framework, which enables Gramsci to consider a wider spectrum of phenomena.51 It is Gramsci himself who makes it clear that in his own view the concept of crisis is associated with the fall of Rome. In a rather long note in Notebook 15, Gramsci makes more considerations about the theoretical inferences of the crisis: the starting point is the famous great crisis of 1929, but then the discussion evolves into a wider comment on crisis as a category. First of all, Gramsci declares that the crisis of 1929 is not a simple phenomenon; therefore, a single reason or origin cannot be found to explain it.52 Secondly, he states that the crisis is a process, not an event, and consequently it is very difficult but very important to identify how and when it originated.53 He goes on complaining that normally instead of the origin of the crisis, commentators are only able to identify the first manifestations of it, which are, in fact, already consequences of the conditions that triggered the crisis in the first place. Subsequently, Gramsci also makes it clear that the crisis originates from within the society that experiences it, and that it is initiated by economic problems, like class struggle, or changes in the modes of production, rather than political or juridical issues. Then he adds: Crisis is none other than the quantitative intensification of certain elements, neither new nor original, but in particular the intensification of certain elements, while others that were there before and operated simultaneously with the first, sterilizing them, have now become inoperative or have completely disappeared. In brief, the development of capitalism has been a ‘continual crisis’, if one can say that, i.e. an extremely rapid movement of elements that mutually balanced and sterilized one another. At a certain point in this movement, some elements have gained predominance and others have disappeared or have become irrelevant within the general framework.54 It is worth to point out that here, for the only time in the whole Prison Notebooks, Gramsci makes a statement in which capitalism and crisis are dealt together as two aspects of one phenomenon, when he declares that capitalism, rather than being characterised by regular and cyclical crises, is indeed a ‘continual crisis’ in itself.55 When one has a clear understanding of the general context of the paragraph, it is possible to move on to analyse the reference to the Roman Empire, which is openly made at the end of the note. Gramsci states that

282  Dario Nappo when a country is invaded by a foreign tribe, the social struggle happening within the tribe becomes one with the crisis happening in the invaded country: an example of this phenomenon would be the Roman Empire losing to the Germanic peoples coming from northern Europe. Then he also polemises very strongly against contemporary Italian scholars who claimed that the real reasons for the fall of Rome were still unknown. In Gramsci’s view, this was a demonstration that the Fascist Italian academia was not willing to accept the idea that the end of Rome was ultimately determined by an external force, rather than an internal problem. This view would downplay the role of the barbaric tribes in history, an Italocentric interpretation, functional to the fascist propaganda. The role of the barbarian invasions is again the object of a swift, apparently marginal comment in a famous paragraph of Notebook 13. Here Gramsci further develops some concepts already exposed in Notebook 9.56 Both the paragraphs contain a lengthy explanation of the well-known concept of ‘Caesarism’. Gramsci states that Caesarism rises when there is a struggle between Force A (progressive) and Force B (regressive). The two forces aim at the complete destruction one of the other. Sometimes, as an outcome of this struggle, it happens that both Force A and Force B perish, and a third, Force C, arises from outside, finally subjugating what is left of both Force A and Force B. Gramsci makes it very clear that for him the main example of Caesarism is Napoleon III, but he also points out that such a scenario happened in Italy after the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and in the ancient world with the barbarian invasions: Caesar, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Cromwell, etc. Compile a catalogue of the historical events which have culminated in a great ‘heroic’ personality. Caesarism can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. When the progressive force A struggles with the reactionary force B, not only may A defeat B or B defeat A, but it may happen that neither A nor B defeats to other – that they bleed each other mutually and then a third force C intervenes from outside, subjugating what is left of both A and B. In Italy, this is precisely what occurred after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, as it had already happened in antiquity, with the barbaric invasions.57 There are a few elements that can be marked out from these first texts. First of all, coherently with the general framework we have described above, a crisis is defined as a phenomenon that originates within a society when an internal equilibrium is broken. This equilibrium is normally associated with economic and social matters, rather than political ones. In this regard, the stability of the currency and a pause in class struggle are crucial to avoiding or postponing crisis. Finally, internal social struggle in a society

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 283 between two antithetical forces can be resolved by the uprising of an external third force that can restore an equilibrium, imposing its own power on the two defeated ones. We have also seen how this last point is connected to the concept of Caesarism, into whose theoretical definition I will not delve, since it is the object of a more detailed analysis in other chapters of this book.58 It is also worth pointing out that the phenomenon of Caesarism is associated with the word catastrophic, a link which does not appear for the first time, and that will be further developed in Notebook 14.59 East and West The historical character of Caesar is connected with the end of the Empire in a number of paragraphs, and it introduces a new meaningful element in Gramsci’s opinion on the collapse of the Roman Empire. In fact, in Notebook 17, Gramsci returns to Caesar. He first makes it clear that for him Caesar was not mostly or mainly characterised by Caesarism, but rather by a different historical phenomenon. Caesar would be the agent of the de-nationalisation of Italy and its consequent subordination to the interests of the Empire. In Gramsci’s assessment, under Caesar the equilibrium of the Empire was broken forever.60 Accordingly, a long-standing struggle between West and East began, which was to have dire consequences over the history of the Euro-Mediterranean World. In order to make his point, Gramsci quotes a number of relevant historical events: the fight of the West alongside Octavian, while the East chose to support Marcus Antonius, during the civil wars; and the emergence of an oriental capital of the Empire, Constantinople, opposed to Milan, rather than Rome. This fracture between West and East would continue until the complete deflagration at the time of the schism between Roman Catholic and Constantinopolitan Orthodox churches, which was triggered, in Gramsci’s opinion, by the attempt made by Charlemagne to restore the unity of the Empire, and by the foundation of the temporal power of the catholic Pope, both phenomena that aimed to overcome the division between West and East and to restore the unity of the ‘Roman’ world. Also, Caesar is credited to have extended the Italic social struggle to an Imperial scale, therefore transforming completely the very fabric of the Empire.61 The idea of an opposition between East and West is again explored later in Notebook 17, where Gramsci claims that the antagonism between Athens and Rome is perpetuated by the hostility between Orthodox and Catholic churches, and finally, in his own time, by the rivalry between tsarist Russia and France, rather than Italy.62 Also, in Notebook 9 and 19 we find a reiteration of some of the main concepts just examined. Here Gramsci focuses on the transition between the Republican and the Imperial ages: again, he states that with Caesar (and Augustus, too), Italy loses its prominent role within the Empire, and that the social struggle scales up to an Imperial level. Then we find the

284  Dario Nappo expected consequences: the de-nationalisation of Italy, its cosmopolitan status, and the fracture between East and West that ultimately leads to the East overpowering the West.63 The opposition between East and West is a central element of Gramsci’s thought, a key to understand his contemporary world. It relates to the opposition between war of manoeuvre and war of position, another pivotal element to understand Gramsci’s philosophy.64 As for ancient history, the opposition East vs. West is declined in a number of notes. In Notebook 6, the difference between Roman and Byzantine codes of Laws is analysed twice: the first time, the evolution from the Roman to the Byzantine code of Laws is seen as a passage between an ever-developing phase of history into stagnation;65 the second, there is a comparison between the Byzantine and the Napoleonic codes of law on one side, and the Roman and the British ones on the other side.66 The opposition between East and West appears, to some extent, also to be behind some comments on the role of Christianity in shaping the society of the Late Roman Empire. In Notebook 6, Gramsci compares the British Empire and the Roman Empire: in the same way in which the British Empire was defeated by Gandhism, the Roman Empire was defeated by Christianity, defined as a ‘Hellenistic Christianity’, once more stressing the opposition between East and West.67 It should be clear by now that the divergence between East and West played a major role, in Gramsci’s opinion, in shaping the different paths of the two halves of the Empire after the V century. In this process, it was Caesar who broke the Imperial equilibrium forever, originating an opposition between East and West, which would evolve over time and would last until the contemporary time, although Caesar is not the only historical phenomenon that plays a role in it. This implies a series of considerations. First of all, from the general framework that Gramsci used to define crisis, we may suggest that Caesar is seen as one of the elements that contributed to the crisis that characterised Europe.68 Second, Caesar’s actions are purely political; therefore, they do not have an impact on the economic structure of the Empire. Third, Caesar is also responsible for Italy losing its privileged status within the Empire, for what Gramsci calls the internationalisation of Italy, and for the consequent escalation of the social struggle from an Italian to an international, Imperial level. Fourth and finally, these features introduced by Caesar are seen as an element of continuity in the history of Europe. This attention to historical components rather than just economics is a feature of Gramsci’s thoughts about the transition between the classical and the medieval ages. The beginning of the Middle Ages In Notebook 3, in a lengthy note, Gramsci deals with the formation of Italian intellectuals in the early medieval age, taking into account two separate and intertwined subjects: law and Latin.69 He first notes that

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 285 after the barbarian invasions there was “the collapse of Roman law (…) and its reduction to private and consuetudinary law in comparison with Longobard law; the emergence of canon law, which started as the special legal system of a group and rose to become state law”;70 finally, Roman law comes back to life through the university. These different phases of the law in medieval Europe after the fall of Rome are characterised by great institutional, cultural, and juridical discontinuity, but Gramsci also observes the medium through which all the codes of law are written and communicated: Latin. In Gramsci’s own words: il legame tra il vecchio e il nuovo rimane quasi unicamente la lingua (“the bond between the old and the new (age) is only the language”). Further on, Gramsci acknowledges that the continuity of the language cannot masquerade the disruption (interruzione in the original) of the transmission of the code of Law. He also polemises with intellectuals (such as Alessandro Manzoni), who tried to use the linguistic argument to argue that the Italian cultural fabric is the direct continuation of the Roman one. In the second part of the note, Gramsci explains why, after the renovatio imperii of Charlemagne and the consequent recovery of Roman law, the latter did not recover its original status: the medieval society was structurally different from the Roman one, and the role of Christianity and more specifically of the ius canonicum did not allow the full restoration of Roman law. Even more, after the struggle between the Imperial power and the Catholic popes that runs across the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, the full supremacy of religious authority over the Imperial one was established, something that was to inform the centuries to come.71 In the following paragraph, Gramsci partially returns to the subject just examined, saying that the cosmopolitan nature of Italian intellectuals depends on the cosmopolitan status of Italy under the Roman rule, something that, as we have seen, he dates back to the age of Caesar. Therefore, Gramsci claims that there is a linea unitaria nello sviluppo delle classi intellettuali italiane, ma questa linea di sviluppo è tutt’altro che nazionale (“a unitary line in the development of the Italian intellectual classes, but this line of development is not national at all”).72 In Notebook 8, he also addresses the issue of political change from antiquity to the Middle Ages: while the Roman Empire experienced a sort of democratic system (i.e. the concession of citizenship to all its inhabitants), feudal society is formed of locked social groups and therefore democracy is not possible.73 The ancient economic structure Where Gramsci finds the real discontinuity between antiquity and modernity is in the economic structure underpinning the two ages, and this element is crucial, in my opinion, to understanding the meaning of Late Antiquity in the context of his political thinking.

286  Dario Nappo Preliminarily, we could say that Gramsci here de facto enters the famous debate between primitivists and modernists on the ancient economy, but it is also true that his view is more articulated.74 Gramsci had no doubt about the fact that the ancient economy was essentially different from modern one, and his ideas on the matter are again in keeping with his political beliefs, descending directly from Marx himself.75 It is possible to reconstruct his overview, following his polemics against Ciccotti, Salvioli, Ferrero, and (especially) Barbagallo, in the Notebooks. A telling example of this point of view is effectively illustrated by Gramsci’s critical remarks on Corrado Barbagallo’s book on ancient capitalism, L’oro e il fuoco.76 Gramsci comments on this book in a number of paragraphs of his Prison Notebooks, so I will not report all of them, to avoid unnecessary repetition.77 As a good example of the criticism against Barbagallo’s book, we can read a note in Notebook 4, later reprised in Q16§6: What is the significance of the current (modern) debate on ancient capitalism? It is undoubtedly reactionary, and it tends to propagate skepticism and to strip economic phenomena of anything that might be indicative of development and progress. The debate, however, concerns only small, and not very important, circles of professional scholars; it is not an element of culture, unlike the eighteenth-century controversy. Barbagallo’s position is typical of Italian so-called historical materialism— for Barbagallo still declares himself a ‘historical materialist’.78 Gramsci returns to the subject of Barbagallo’s flawed theories a few more times.79 He groups together Barbagallo, Ciccotti, Salvioli, and Ferrero as examples of flawed Italian Marxists, an assessment later shared by many other scholars.80 The core of his criticism is the contrast between their declared Marxism and the fact that they betray a rather reactionary attitude when studying the ancient economy. Their analysis of the ancient economy aims at sustaining a certain view of the world that implies that the capitalistic mode of production is a neutral, even natural one: capitalism has always existed, and it is therefore a natural attitude that humankind has always had towards economics. In many ways, this can be regarded as a modernist view of antiquity, especially evident in the methodology of Ciccotti, mostly based on an over-casual use of analogies and historical comparisons,81 and regarded by Gramsci as the model for the subsequent works of the other three historians. Underneath this vision there is a theoretical issue. Ciccotti, Salvioli, Barbagallo, and Ferrero pretended to use the ‘Marxist analysis’ of history, its methodology, without sharing Marx’s political stance.82 Therefore, Gramsci had to reject such an interpretation not simply for scientific reasons, but also out of political disagreement.83 Gramsci held that the ancient economy ought to be approached based on its own mode of production, different from the modern one: this substantial

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 287 difference would not leave space for any comparison, no matter the superficial similarities between the two economic periods. The most telling example of such a view is in Notebook 6, where he makes an interesting comment on the difference between the machines in the ancient world and the machines in capitalistic society: In my view, Speziale does not have a clear understanding of what the ‘machine’ was in the classical world and what it is today (the same is especially true of Barbagallo and co.). The ‘innovations’ that Speziale dwells on were not yet even implied in Vitruvius’ definition of ‘machine’ – that is, a device suitable for facilitating the movement and transportation of heavy objects (check Vitruvius’ exact definition) and thus they are innovations only in a relative sense. The modern machine is an altogether different thing: it does not just ‘help’ the worker, it ‘replaces’ him. It may well be the case, not surprisingly, that Vitruvius’ machines continue to exist alongside ‘modern’ ones and that, in this sphere, the Romans might have attained a previously unknown level of perfection. But in all this there is nothing ‘modern’ in the proper sense of the term that has been established by the industrial revolution – that is, by the invention and widespread use of machines that ‘replace’ human labour.84 This lucid interpretation of the machines in the ancient world obviously rests on a solid understanding of Marx’s theories of the modes of production. Unlike “Barbagallo and co.”, Gramsci had learned Marx’s lesson that the existence of Capital in antiquity did not guarantee ipso facto the existence of Capitalism in antiquity, because the latter never become a dominant mode of production.85 The key to understanding the distance between antiquity and modernity lays in their economic structure. Gramsci’s view on the collapse of the Roman Empire encompasses a number of important issues. First of all, he understands very clearly that the complexity of that development cannot be explained by a single reason. It was evident to him that the end of Rome is a multi-layered process, rather than a punctual event, as is the case with every crisis.86 In fact, as always on these occasions, there are internal causes and external forces that can contribute to the escalation. The collapse of the Roman Empire does not just represent an historical occurrence, but acts as a mirror in which the contemporary world can look at its own image. Thus, for Gramsci, making sense of the demise of the Roman Empire means making sense of his own contemporary political context.

Concluding remarks I will try to summarise what we have seen so far and to assess the purview of Gramsci on Late Antiquity. As we saw briefly in the first section

288  Dario Nappo of this chapter, we can very broadly identify two apparently irreconcilable and opposing tendencies in the scholarship on Late Antiquity. On one side, economic historians have mostly stressed the discontinuity between the Roman Imperial phase and the late Roman one (and, for what it matters, also between the latter and the medieval/feudal age). On the other side, historians of the arts, religion, and culture have certainly stressed the autonomous status of Late Antiquity in the scholarship, considerably softening the concepts of crisis and rupture between the Imperial, late, and medieval phases. In Gramsci we can find both these tendencies, and they are not in contradiction between them. The reason lays in his strong methodological background: Gramsci has learned Marx’s lesson on structure and superstructure but he has also absorbed the further contributions by Lenin on the topic, and finally greatly expanded the possibilities deriving from this methodological approach to interpreting the historical flow.87 There is no space here to analyse in detail the complexity of these central tenets of Marxian theory, but I shall try to briefly summarise the main points. According to Marx, the economic structure of a society is the whole set of its production relations, i.e. the relations of effective power over persons and productive forces.88 It is harder to define what superstructure was for Marx, since he did not provide a clear-cut definition for it. In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he gave some hints that may be summarised as follows: superstructure is a set of non-economic institutions, notably the legal system and the State, whose character is largely explained by the nature of the economic structure.89 In the same work, Marx also describes both structure and superstructure as concurrent in creating an ökonomische Gesellschaftformation (‘economic formation of the society’).90 This concept was later reprised by Lenin, who in 1894 strongly criticised some Marxist interpretations, especially popular in the context of the Second International, which tended to reduce the role played by the superstructure in Marx’s model.91 Lenin restated that Marx’s ökonomische Gesellschaftformation was a blend of superstructure and structure, and that it was key to understanding every moment of continuity and discontinuity in the historical process.92 Marx’s and Lenin’s theoretical endeavours are the ground on which Gramsci’s reflection rests. Gramsci clearly states that Marxism cannot exclude the superstructure from its view of history; if that occurs, the comprehension of the historical process is fatally incomplete.93 There has been a rich debate on Gramsci as the ‘theoretician of superstructures’, to which scholars like Norberto Bobbio gave a major, if controversial, contribution.94 The subject itself is addressed by Gramsci in a number of notes.95 In contrast with the deterministic interpretations of Marx’s thought, Gramsci makes it very clear that superstructures are not mere appearances, and history can only be understood by analysing the ‘intertwining’ between structure and superstructure.96 This concept is most clearly expressed in Notebook 8:

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 289 The structure and the superstructures form a ‘historical bloc’. In other words, the complex and discordant ensemble of the superstructures reflects the ensemble of the social relations of production. From this, one can conclude that only a comprehensive system of ideologies rationally reflects the contradictions of the structure and represents the existence of the objective conditions for revolutionizing praxis.97 Here we have the introduction of a fundamental concept, the ‘historical bloc’, which sheds light on Gramsci’s theory of history and philosophy of praxis. It has been noted that “the concept of the historical bloc (enables) to reach an understanding of the dialectical unity of infrastructure and superstructures, the passage from the economic to the political moment and therefore, the birth of the historical movement.”98 It derives that we can keep separated the two moments for analytical reasons, as a practical canon of research, but once we want to reconstruct the full spectrum of history, we must find a way to bring them together again. This remark goes against the excess of economicism displayed by some Marxist scholars.99 Among the commentators of Gramsci, an obvious example would be Perry Anderson, author of the famous article The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, published on the New Left Review in 1976, but also of an analysis of the transition between antiquity and feudalism,100 which pushes the economic element of its reconstruction too far.101 The theory of historical bloc allows Gramsci to merge infrastructure and superstructure into a single body, but as components that can be analysed separately. Having said that, it is also true that Gramsci emphasises the infrastructural element.102 In this way, he can mediate between two apparently opposite and irreconcilable tendencies. On one side, he can take into account the discontinuity represented by the economic structure of the EuroMediterranean society in its passage from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Apart from the Marxist background, it is noteworthy that in the same years during which Gramsci was developing his own view of history, the so-called École des Annales realised its ‘Copernican revolution’ in the study of history, switching the focus from histoire événementielle to social and structural history.103 On the other hand, the attention to the superstructural moment allows Gramsci to widen the analysis of the society, avoiding the shortcomings of the economicist interpretations of Marx.104 Focussing on politics, culture, and ideology, he can clearly see that there are indeed some elements of continuity in the long history of antiquity. This is a highly original contribution, which anticipates some ideas of Fernand Braudel and his famous pursuit for longue durée, and is an otherwise almost unnoticed contribution of Gramsci’s thought in the context of European culture.105 This achievement is all the more remarkable if one recalls that Gramsci was neither a professional historian nor a classicist: it originates from his overall view on history, not just ancient history.

290  Dario Nappo One example will suffice to demonstrate how this scheme was embedded in Gramsci’s Weltanschauung. Many years before his imprisonment, in 1916, Gramsci was reached by the news that neutral Belgium had been just invaded by Germany. Sympathy for Belgium spread immediately among Italian socialists, and the possibility to join forces with the Triple Entente against the Central Empires was discussed.106 Despite being sympathetic with Belgium, Gramsci wrote a number of newspaper articles to dissuade his comrades to join the military effort of the Entente, explaining that, even though feelings were in favour of Belgium, the character of real socialists had to prevail, and any involvement in the military effort had to be rejected.107 The character opposed to the feelings as the longue durée is opposed to the histoire événementielle: their deep-seated character enables the socialists to view historical events in their wider context and to judge them accordingly, while their feelings tend to be shaken by specific events. This is yet another example of how politics and the study of history were never separate activities for Gramsci.108 In conclusion, the methodology of analysing separately structural and superstructural moments proves to be very effective in bringing out some of the specific features of Late Antiquity. A complex historical period, not less than the beginning of the XX century, where many competing elements contributed, not always harmoniously, to shape a new world and a new society. Gramsci was perfectly aware of this complexity, and his thoughts on Late Antiquity are still mostly effective and can usefully be applied to gain a better comprehension of that peculiar age. I will stress yet again the inextricable bond between Gramsci’s political project and his cultural endeavour. Therefore, I would conclude returning to a famous sentence of Gibbon, the author from whom this discussion has somehow started: “Un historien est toujours, jusqu’à un certain point, un politique”.109 We could neatly adapt the saying to Gramsci, inverting the terms: “Un politique est toujours, jusqu’à un certain point, un historien”: this is probably the best synthesis for understanding the role of the study of (ancient) history for Gramsci: not just as a cultural endeavour, but as an aspect of his political efforts, which he carried on until his final days.

Notes 1 See Chiarotto (2011) and Vacca (2012: 323–59) for a detailed reconstruction of the fate of the Notebooks after Gramsci’s death. Instead, a pioneering study on the issue of properly collocating Gramsci’s works in their own political and chronological context is Paggi (1970). 2 See the defining opinion of Togliatti (1973: 15–7), and in TG: 213–4; see also Ekers and Loftus (2013: 28–30) and Vacca (2017: 56–7). 3 The importance of Ancient History and Classics in Gramsci’s cultural background, as well as the role that such disciplines were to play in the society, are well explained in an early article of Gramsci, published in Avanti! (27/11/1917). See also Viansino (2001), Rapone (2011: 209), and Fonzo (2019).

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 291 4 As noted by Stipčević (1981: 183): “The great danger in isolating only one aspect of the activity of those thinkers who have not had the chance, or better yet, to whom the chance has not been granted, to properly organise their work, to symmetrically align all its facets and analyse it from the point of view of a scientific or humanistic discipline. An isolation of this kind can, and must, lead to a lessening of the value of that which is isolated; or at least to an insufficiently broad understanding and interpretation of it.” 5 Gibbon (1776–1789). On its impact on scholarship, see also Momigliano (1978). 6 Gibbon (1776: 1). 7 Burckhardt (1853). 8 Mazza (2020: 13). 9 Riegl (1901). 10 Rostovtzeff (1957), a new and revised edition, including on the additions published in the German (1931) and Italian (1933) editions. 11 Rostovtzeff (1957: 374–92; 530): “The catastrophe of the third century dealt a severe blow to the prosperity of the Empire and weakened the creative energies of the better part of the population.” 12 Mickwitz (1932). The importance of the Finnish scholar in the field of the economic history of preindustrial societies can hardly be downplayed. Nevertheless, due to his premature death in 1940, his impact on scholarship has probably been lesser than he would deserve. See now the interesting collection of essays in Kajava (2007). 13 As rightly pointed out by Mazza (2007: 64–8) and (2020: 20–1), this fundamental point of Mickwitz’ view of the late Roman economy was in open contrast with the opinion previously expressed by Weber (1891, 1924) that the late Roman economy from the third century CE onwards was mainly agrarian. A similar opinion was already expressed by Banaji (2001: 24); contra, see Mazzarino (1951: 17), Mazzarino (1988: 154): “(Mickwitz) forse potrebbe definirsi un weberiano a oltranza.” 14 Mazzarino (1951). 15 Banaji (2007: 30). See also (Mazza 2007: 79–80) and Lo Cascio (2007: 85–7). 16 See esp. Mazzarino (1942, 1951, 1988). 17 Mazzarino (1942: 327–8). See Giardina (1999), for a detailed explanation of this concept. 18 Jones (1964). It could be argued, en passant, that such title gives a sense of a historical period still connected to the Roman age, rather than an autonomous era. 19 Brown (1971: 7). 20 Brown (1997: 14–5). 21 A good example of the reception of this insight in the scholarship is Bernheimer and Silverstein (2012). 22 Momigliano (1978: 444) expressed the interesting opinion that the downplaying of the importance of the fall of Rome was strictly connected to the fact that the western world, after WWII, was experiencing problems which were “incommensurable in quality and quantity with those of Rome in decline.” 23 Brown (1971: 7) and Riegl (1901: 12). See also the critical remarks of Giardina (1999: 158–62). 24 Bowersock, Brown and Grabar (1999: ix). 25 See e.g. Bowersock (1996). It has been rightly pointed out that the concept of transition itself is in open contrast to the concept of an autonomous period, with its own peculiar features [(see Giardina (1999: 171)]. 26 Giardina (2007: 29); see also Cosentino (2020: 51).

292  Dario Nappo 27 See e.g. the definition of transition provided by Halsall (1995): “slow process from one pre-defined state of affairs to another, [useful to describe] a single line of development.” 28 Most notably Ward-Perkins (2005), who polemically entitled the first chapter of his monograph “Did Rome Ever Fall?”. 29 Giardina and Schiavone (1981) and Giardina (1986), respectively. 30 In the same year, also Cameron (1993) has to be recorded, who opts again for the denomination Later Roman Empire. 31 Giardina (1999), available in an English translation in Giardina (2016). 32 See also Schiavone (1996: 27–9). 33 See e.g. Cameron (1993). For an alternative chronology, see e.g. Bowersock, Brown and Grabar (1999), who date the beginning of the Late Antiquity at the age of Severus Alexander. 34 Bowersock, Brown and Grabar (1999: 2). 35 Giardina (2016: 14) [= Giardina (1999: 171)]. 36 Millar (2006: 4). 37 Among the notable exceptions, McCormick (2002), Wickham (2005, 2009), and Laval (2013). See also the remarks of Schiavone (1996: vii) and Mazza (2020). 38 Wickham (2005: 440–1). 39 For an analysis of recent developments of the scholarship on Late Antiquity, see Zecchini (2020); for the chronological limits of Late Antiquity, see now Roberto (2020) and Cosentino (2020). 40 Holub (1992: 5). 41 See the classic study of Koselleck (2006). 42 Giardina (2007: 16). 43 See e.g. Perelman (1987) and Clarke (1994). 44 Examples of the ideas of Marx on the crisis can be found in many places of his works, for instance MECW: 29.340 and 32.140–1. 45 For the ancient world and its mode of production, see Musti (1978). See also Cohen (2001: 28–45), Perelman (1987), and Clarke (1994). 46 Quotation from L’Ordine Nuovo, 2/08/1919. See the interpretation of Rapone (2011: 228–9) for the evolution of the concept. 47 See Filippini (2011: 86–90) for a detailed account of the evolution of the concept in Gramsci’s earlier works. See also Cospito (2016a: 42–4). 48 Filippini (2011: 88); See also Vacca (2012: 134–5). See also below the last paragraph of this section. 49 Q4§38. Gramsci here quotes from memory a passage from Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. For the problems connected to this quotation, see Gerratana (1997: 99–109). 50 Q3§34 = QC: 311 = PN2: 32–3, “L’aspetto della crisi moderna che viene lamentato come «ondata di materialismo» è collegato con ciò che si chiama «crisi di autorità». Se la classe dominante ha perduto il consenso, cioè non è più «dirigente», ma unicamente «dominante», detentrice della pura forza coercitiva, ciò appunto significa che le grandi masse si sono staccate dalle ideologie tradizionali, non credono più a ciò in cui prima credevano ecc. La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati.” See also Burgio (2014: 338–66); Antonini (2016: 167–84). 51 See Frosini (2009). A further complication derives from the fact that crisis is a concept also regularly used by historians to describe some troublesome periods, but also in this case there is no theoretical framework to define exactly what crisis means. For a general overview on this complex matter, see Hekster, de Kleijn and Slootjes (2007).

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 293 52 Vacca (2017: 76): “Mi pare evidente l’intento di sciogliere le crisi economiche nella nozione più ampia di ‘crisi storiche’, evitando i rischi del determinismo causalistico.” 53 In the Italian original: svolgimento and evento, respectively. See Gruppi (1972: 71). Again, this view of the crisis as a movement, not a static phenomenon, derives from Marx’s view of the Ökonomische Gesellschaftformation (“economic formation of the society”) expressed in his 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 54 Q15§5 = QC: 1756–7 = FSPN: 220, “la «crisi» non è altro che l’intensificazione quantitativa di certi elementi, non nuovi e originali, ma specialmente l’intensificazione di certi fenomeni, mentre altri che prima apparivano e operavano simultaneamente ai primi, immunizzandoli, sono divenuti inoperosi o sono scomparsi del tutto. Insomma lo sviluppo del capitalismo è stata una «continua crisi», se così si può dire, cioè un rapidissimo movimento di elementi che si equilibravano ed immunizzavano. Ad un certo punto, in questo movimento, alcuni elementi hanno avuto il sopravvento, altri sono spariti o sono divenuti inetti nel quadro generale.” Compare also what Gramsci says in Q1§76 and §158, on the ‘crisis of the West’: although the word here is not used rigorously in Marxian sense, again the concept of struggle between opposite forces within a society emerges, along with the concept of hegemony (on which, see the contributions of Canevaro, Smith, and Paterson in this volume). 55 For the crucial importance of this concept in understanding the whole structure of the Prison Notebooks, see Filippini (2016: 89–90). See also Voza (2008). 56 Q9§136. 57 Q13§27 = QC: 1619 = SPN: 219, revised, “Cesare, Napoleone I, Napoleone III, Cromwell, ecc. Compilare un catalogo degli eventi storici che hanno culminato in una grande personalità «eroica». Si può dire che il cesarismo esprime una situazione in cui le forze in lotta si equilibrano in modo catastrofico, cioè si equilibrano in modo che la continuazione della lotta non può concludersi che con la distruzione reciproca. Quando la forza progressiva A lotta contro la forza regressiva B, può avvenire non solo che A vinca B o B vinca A, può avvenire anche che non vinca né A né B, ma si svenino reciprocamente e una terza forza C intervenga dall’esterno assoggettando ciò che resta di A e di B. Nell’Italia dopo la morte del Magnifico è appunto successo questo, come era successo nel mondo antico con le invasioni barbariche.” 58 See Santangelo and Giusti in this volume. It is worth pointing out that Caesarism was a subject already introduced by Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, where it is more clearly stated that the main example of Caesarism is indeed Napoleon III. 59 Q14§23. See also Mustè (2018: 319–20). 60 Cf. Santangelo in this volume. 61 Q17§21; see Balbo in this volume. 62 Q17§33. 63 Q9§68; Q19§1. 64 On the categories of East and West, see Fontana (2010). On the military metaphor of war of position vs. war of maneuver, see Egan (2014). On the connection between them, see Gruppi (1972: 169–75) and Vacca (2012: 126–33). 65 Q6§63. 66 Q6§84. 67 Q6§78. 68 See Wyke (2007: 180–1) for the complex symbology of Caesar for both Gramsci and Mussolini; see also Wyke (2006) for an assessment of Caesar impact in Western culture.

294  Dario Nappo 69 On the general subject of the Italian Roman identity, see also Giardina (1997). On Gramsci and the Medieval age, see Montanari (1999). 70 Q3§87. 71 Q3§87. See also Q5§74 for more remarks on the role of Latin in medieval culture. 72 Q3§88; see again Balbo in this volume. 73 Q8§191. 74 There is a huge bibliography on the debate between primitivists and modernists, and there is no space here to go through all of it. I have tried to briefly summarise the main points of this debate in Nappo (2019). 75 The most obvious example is the Formen, die der kapitalistichen Produktion vorehergehen (1857-1858). See the comment of Schiavone (1978: 75–106). 76 Barbagallo 1938. 77 Q3§112 (reprised in Q11§11); Q5§60 (reprised in Q16§6); Q7§15. 78 Q4§60 = QC: 505 = PN2: 233, “Che significato ha la polemica attuale (moderna) sul capitalismo antico? Essa è indubbiamente reazionaria, tende a diffondere lo scetticismo, a togliere ai fatti economici ogni valore di sviluppo e di progresso; la polemica è però rivolta a piccole cerchie di studiosi professionali e neanche molto significative, non è un elemento di cultura come è stata la polemica settecentesca. La posizione del Barbagallo è tipica per il così detto «materialismo storico» italiano, poiché il Barbagallo si afferma ancora «materialista storico»”. 79 Q3§15, 16 and 18 (along with Ciccotti and Salvioli); Q3§112 (reprised in Q11§11); Q7§15. Cf. Santangelo and Viglietti in this volume. 80 Q11§9. Momigliano (1966: 804) defined Ciccotti’s and Barbagallo’s Marxism as attenuato (‘diminished’). Brutti (1978: 17) also claims that in these scholars there is a mixture of Marxist and liberal instances: a common feature of Italian intellectuals between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries. See also Mazza (1976: 100–6). 81 Schiavone (1996: 54). See, for instance, Ciccotti (1899: 119), where the Roman slave market is compared to the contemporary stock market. 82 Fonzo (2019: 99–103) seems to argue that Gramsci’s view of the ancient economy can be rightly defined as primitivist, but as I hope will be clear in the next few lines, Gramsci’s view derived from his strong comprehension of Marxian methodology. 83 Strong criticisms to this view of the ancient economy came from many scholars. See for instance the stern comments of Sanna (1929: 246) in response to Barbagallo (1929: 27–44). See also Salvioli (1985: 7). 84 Q6§156 = QC: 811 = PN3: 117, “Manca, mi pare, allo Speziale la nozione esatta di ciò che era la «macchina» nel mondo classico e quello che è oggi (questa osservazione vale specialmente per Barbagallo e C.). Le «novità» su cui insiste lo Speziale non escono ancora dalla definizione che della macchina dava Vitruvio, cioè di ordigni atti a facilitare il movimento e il trasporto di corpi pesanti (vedere con esattezza la definizione di Vitruvio) e perciò non sono che novità relative: la macchina moderna è ben altra cosa: essa non solo «aiuta» il lavoratore ma lo «sostituisce»: che anche le «macchine» di Vitruvio continuino ad esistere accanto alle «moderne» e che in quella direzione i romani potessero essere giunti a una certa perfezione, ancora ignota, può darsi e non maraviglia, ma in ciò non c’è nulla di «moderno» nel senso proprio della parola, che è stato stabilito dalla «rivoluzione» industriale, cioè dall’invenzione e diffusione di macchine che «sostituiscono» il lavoro umano precedente.” Similarly, Q8§90. See also Morley (2009: 44) for an interesting comparison with Marx’s thoughts on machines in the capitalistic society. 85 Schiavone (1978: 76).

Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 295 86 Cf. above, nn. 48 and 53. 87 On the impact of Lenin on Gramsci’s thought, see Gruppi (1972), Di Biagio (2008), and Cospito (2016b). 88 See Cohen (2001: 63–70); Blackledge (2006: 153–99). 89 MECW: 29.263; see also Cohen (2001: 216–20). 90 On this concept, see the classic La Grassa (1975) and Sereni (1970). See also the recent assessment of Sereni’s impact on the scholarship made by Redolfi Riva (2009). 91 LCW: 1.129-332. In the same years, the Italian Antonio Labriola (1964: 55, 59–65) carried on a very similar analysis. 92 Sereni (1970: 50). Lenin further explored the implication of the ökonomische Gesellschaftformation in more of his works. For a detailed analysis, see Gruppi (1971), Paggi (1984: 3–38), and Blackledge (2006: 53–94). 93 Q10i§7. The concept had been already anticipated in Il Grido del Popolo, 20/07/1918. See the comments of Gruppi (1972: 133–7) and Rapone (2011: 273–9). 94 See Bobbio (1979). The most detailed analysis on the evolution over time of Gramsci’s thought on the matter is in Cospito (2016a). 95 Q4§38; Q7§24; Q12§1. See Spriano (1977: 74) and Cospito (2016a: 3–48). 96 Q8§234. See Sereni (1970: 46–50); Silva (1973); it is also important to emphasise the role played by LCW: 1.129–332 in changing the paradigm of the Second International and in restoring the importance of the economic social formation as a product of both structure and superstructure. 97 Q8§182 = QC: 1051 = PN3: 340, “La struttura e le superstrutture formano un «blocco storico», cioè l’insieme complesso e discorde delle soprastrutture sono il riflesso dell’insieme dei rapporti sociali di produzione. Se ne trae: che solo un sistema di ideologie totalitario riflette razionalmente la contraddizione della struttura e rappresenta l’esistenza delle condizioni oggettive per il rovesciamento della praxis.” See Portelli (1972) and Liguori (2012: 225–6). 98 Texier (1979: 50). See also Gruppi (1972: 99–101) and Vacca (1974), commenting on Gramsci’s ‘theory of transition’. 99 Such vulgar economicism had been a target of Croce’s critique, and that was one more reason for Gramsci to polemise against it [see Gruppi (1972: 139– 40)]. On the general subject of the economic determinism that characterised some Marxist thinkers, see for instance the brilliant remarks of Sofri (1969: 51–60, 71–80, 93–4); see also Buci-Glucksmann (1976: 281–340), Timpanaro (1997: 1–28), and Rigby (1998). 100 Anderson (1976) and Anderson (1974) respectively. 101 See Banaji (2010: 184), who, commenting on Anderson (1974), calls it “abstractionism, depleted of historical content.” 102 On the concept of ‘historical bloc’ and its implication for the political purview of Gramsci, see Portelli (1972). 103 See Fonzo (2019: 31). 104 Gruppi (1972: 96–9). 105 It is worth noting how the concept of ‘economic structure’, although not formulated exactly as in Marx, is at the basis of Braudel’s vision of the historical process. See Braudel (1958); see also the comment of Stoianovich (1976). 106 Rapone (2011: 190). 107 Avanti!, 26/02/1917; Il Grido del Popolo, 03/03/1917. 108 Cf. also Q4§38 = PN2: 177–8: “A frequent error in historical analysis consists in the inability to find the relation between the ‘permanent’ and the ‘occasional’; as a result, remote causes are presented as if they were the direct causes, or else direct causes are said to be the only efficient causes. On the one hand there is an excess of ‘economism’, and on the other an excess of

296  Dario Nappo ‘ideologism’; one side overrates mechanical causes, and the other overrates the ‘voluntary’ and individual element. The dialectical nexus between the two types of inquiry is not established precisely.” 109 Norton (1956: 107).

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Gramsci’s view of Late Antiquity 299 Nappo, D. (2019) ‘Primitivistic Quantification: An Infantile Disorder’, in Maiuro, M. et al. (eds.) Uomini, Istituzioni, Mercati. Studi di Storia per Elio Lo Cascio. Bari: Edipuglia, 525–32. Norton, J.E. (ed.) (1956) The Letters of Edward Gibbon. 2 vols. London: Cassell and Co. Paggi, L. (1970) Gramsci e il moderno Principe. Vol. I: Nella crisi del socialismo italiano. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Paggi, L. (1984) Le strategie del potere in Gramsci: tra fascismo e socialismo in un solo paese, 1923-1926. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Perelman, M. (1987) Marx’s Crises Theory. New York, NY and London: Praeger. Portelli, H. (1972) Gramsci et le bloc historique. Paris: PUF. Rapone, L. (2011) Cinque anni che paiono secoli. Antonio Gramsci dal socialismo al comunismo (1914-1919). Rome: Carocci. Redolfi Riva, T. (2009) ‘La nozione di formazione economico-sociale nel marxismo di Emilio Sereni’, Il pensiero economico italiano, 17, 111–24. Riegl, A. (1901) Die spätrömische Kunst-Industrie nach den Funden in ÖsterreichUngarn im Zusammenhange mit der Gesamtentwicklung der Bildenden Künste bei den mittelmeervölkern. Vienna: Druck und Verlag der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei. Rigby, S.H. (1998) Marxism and History: A Critical Introduction. 2nd edn. Manchester: MUP. Roberto, U. (2020) ‘Tra periodizzazione e storia culturale: formazione e riflessione politica della burocrazia imperiale in età tardoantica’, Occidente/Oriente, 1, 27–43. Rostovtzeff, M. (1957) The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon. Salvioli, G. (1985) Il capitalismo antico (storia dell’economia romana). 2nd edn, ed. by Giardina, A. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Sanna, G. (1929) ‘Intorno all’economia antica e moderna e alla razionalità della storia’, Nuova Rivista Storica, 13, 245–54. Schiavone, A. (1978) ‘Per una rilettura delle ‘Formen’: Teoria della storia, dominio del valore d’uso e funzione dell’ideologia’, in Capogrossi, L., A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds.) Analisi Marxista E Società Antiche. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 75–106. Schiavone, A. (1996) La Storia spezzata. Roma antica e Occidente moderno. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Sereni, E. (1970) ‘Da Marx a Lenin: la categoria di «formazione economico-sociale»’, Quaderni di Critica Marxista, 4, 29–79. Silva, L. (1973) Lo stile letterario di Marx, transl. A. Pescetto. Milan: Bompiani. Sofri, G. (1969) Il modo di produzione asiatico: Storia di una controversia marxista. Turin: Einaudi. Spriano, P. (1977) Gramsci e Gobetti. Introduzione alla vita e alle opere. Turin: Einaudi. Stipčević, N. (1981) Gramsci e i problemi letterari. 2nd edn. Milan: Mursia. Stoianovich, T. (1976) French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Texier, J. (1979) ‘Gramsci, Theoretician of the Superstructures’, in Mouffe, C. (ed.) Gramsci and the Marxist Theory. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 48–79.

300  Dario Nappo Timpanaro, S. (1997) Sul Materialismo. Pisa: Unicopli. Togliatti, P. (1973) ‘Il Leninismo nel pensiero e nell’azione di A. Gramsci’, in Cessi, R. et al. (eds.) Studi Gramsciani. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Vacca, G. (1974) Saggio su Togliatti e la tradizione comunista. Bari: De Donato. Vacca, G. (2012) Vita e pensieri di Antonio Gramsci (1926-1937). Turin: Einaudi. Vacca, G. (2017) Modernità alternative. Il Novecento di Antonio Gramsci. Turin: Einaudi. Viansino, G. (2001) ‘Gramsci e il mondo antico’, Critica Marxista, 6, 52–6. Voza, P. (2008) Gramsci e la “continua crisi”. Rome: Carocci. Ward-Perkins, B. (2005) The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford: OUP. Weber, M. (1891) Die römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für das Staatsund Privatrecht. Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke. Weber, M. (1924) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Tübingen: Mohr. Wickham, C. (2005) Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: OUP. Wickham, C. (2009) The Inheritance of Rome. A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. London: Penguin. Wyke, M. (ed.) (2006) Julius Caesar in Western Culture. London: Blackwell. Wyke, M. (2007) Caesar: A Life in Western Culture. London: Granta. Zecchini, G. (2020) ‘Alcune riflessioni sul Tardoantico oggi’, Occidente/Oriente, 1, 45–50.

14 Cultural hegemonies, ‘NIEorthodoxy’, and socialdevelopment models Classicists’ ‘organic’ approaches to economic history in the early XXI century Cristiano Viglietti

In this chapter I shall address the theme of the remarkable transformation that occurred in research on ancient economies in the 2000s, focussing especially on some directions it took in the 2010s. After outlining the relationship between late XIX and late XX century controversies in the study of the ancient economy and contemporaneous ideological and political ‘struggles for hegemony’ in the Western world, I will argue that after the financial crisis of 2008 it is possible to appreciate the positioning of some prominent mainstream scholars of the ancient economy – notably Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel – as ‘organic intellectuals’, who explicitly take sides on the current dominating political agenda. Finally, I will venture to outline some cues for criticising the current hegemonic approaches, taking inspiration from thoughts and methodological reflections by Gramsci himself.

A short history of the first century of cultural hegemonies in the scholarship on the ancient economy In an important passage of the Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci addresses the theme of the ‘struggle for hegemony’ as a recurring trait in the history of human societies. When this struggle is in process: Previously germinated ideologies come into contact and confrontation with one another, until only one of them […] tends to prevail, dominate, to spread across the entire field, bringing about, in addition to economic and political unity, intellectual and moral unity […]: the hegemony of a fundamental social group over the subordinate groups.1 It is chiefly in moments of struggle that the role of intellectuals who are ‘organic’ to a certain burgeoning ideology comes forth. ‘Organic

302  Cristiano Viglietti intellectuals’ operate as ‘deputies’ (commessi: cf. Q12§1) of the emerging group, contributing to the success, and continuity over time, of the ideology itself through their active work in the political and social organisation of the group itself, and/or through their persuasive, narrative role in the hegemonic system or apparatus of consensus. They deal with “everything that directly or indirectly influences or could influence public opinion”2 like the press, associations of various kinds, arts and architecture, schools and other educational institutions, in order to change the current economic and social context in the direction they advocate for.3 In 1983 Keith Hopkins noted that within Classical Studies, the subfield of the ancient economy has been, since its beginnings in the late XIX century, an “academic battleground”, more deeply connected than, say, epigraphy or papyrology to the political and cultural debates of its time.4 In recent decades, scholars have further observed that, in fact, the century-long controversy on the ancient economy – conventionally labelled ‘modernism vs. primitivism’5 – can be understood in many respects as an intellectual struggle, albeit implicit, between scholars of different political and ideological orientations.6 In Karl Bücher’s Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (1893), the economic history of the Western world is seen as a linear sequence of three progressive economic stages characterised by a gradual expansion of the scope of exchanges and of the complexity of industry and trade: domestic, city, and national.7 Unlike the English laissez-faire school that saw economic action in history as determined by individual choice, Bücher underscored that economic history should be understood in terms of the progress of communal actions that unfold in increasingly progressive, and thus improving, stages.8 Within this general framework, the ancient economy was placed by Bücher in the most ‘primitive’ first phase, characterised by economic processes and attitudes very different from those of the modern West. The idea of transformative progress combined with the centrality of social action in Bücher’s theory is in a sense revealing of his deep commitment – as Mario Mazza has noted – to the Verein für Sozialpolitik, an intellectual movement that aimed to find a middle path between liberal economics and socialism, and which caused several Marxist intellectuals – including Gramsci – to become interested in, and very often advocate for, a primitivist interpretation of the ancient economy, stressing the idea of a substantial, ‘morphologic’ difference between economies of the past and the modern capitalistic one.9 Reacting to Bücher’s model, Eduard Meyer underscored that the classical economy “was in essence entirely modern”,10 characterised by interstate maritime trade, by the circulation of money, and by the presence of free labour compared to slavery, all contributing to the emergence of “capitalistic viewpoints”11 held by the thriving bourgeoisie, whose attitudes would be basically identical to those of modern capitalists – and therefore comparable with those of the homo oeconomicus devised by neoclassical

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 303 economic sciences.12 Instead of a linear evolution, Meyer – and later the other prominent modernist Mikhail Rostovtzeff – observed a cyclical trajectory in the ancient economy,13 which allowed for tracing in some periods of antiquity the presence of economically advanced capitalist phases, comparable to Bücher’s ‘modern’ national economy,14 and differing from modern economies only in terms of quantity of output, not of ‘qualitative’ institutional or attitudinal respects.15 For Meyer, as for Rostovtzeff, it is neither the individual nor the society that orients trends in economic life, but the State and its political choices,16 which help promote and organise a ‘healthy’ capitalism based on the employ of a free workforce and the development of industry and commerce meant to increase the prosperity of the nation, and repress backward behaviour. Scholarship has not failed to note that Meyer and Rostovtzeff’s reading of the ancient economy is strongly connected to their political orientations. While Meyer was a supporter of the conservative, national-Prussian side,17 Rostovtzeff was a member of the liberal-conservative Russian Democrat Constitutional Party,18 and it is no surprise if in their works the capitalismfriendly institutions of the Hellenistic monarchies, in particular of Ptolemaic Egypt, strongly oriented by the State, are especially praised in terms of their modernity – and therefore superiority.19 In spite of the efforts of Bücher and other scholars, modernism prevailed until the 1950s. 20 Beside the merits of its prominent advocates, 21 it is interesting to note that the prevalence of modernism overlaps chronologically with an expansive phase of the Western nation-states and empires, whose laissez-faire policies supported uninterrupted economic growth boosted by the second industrial revolution until the First World War, 22 followed by a less steady phase characterised by stronger State intervention in economic matters and by conservative trends towards economic nationalism. 23 In that same expansive and globalising phase – as Marcel Detienne has noted 24 – the political elites of the dominating Western states, often soaked in classical culture, were in need of an historical vision that underscored the continuity and rootedness of the ancient city-nations and empires, as well as of some significant aspects of modern nation-states and empires, including institutions and the economy. In this respect, modernists have undoubtedly been more capable than their opponents of devising and applying to antiquity a set of models – and of promoting a narrative – that better fit the Zeitgeist and current political hegemonies. From the 1950s a second hegemonic position flourished in scholarship on the ancient economy: a “new orthodoxy” – as Hopkins baptised it25 – that found its most distinguished advocate in Moses I. Finley. In The Ancient Economy (1973) Finley innovated upon the old primitivistic pattern by combining some of its assumptions, like its stress on the stasis and technological backwardness of the whole ancient world and therefore its evident difference with the modern Western economy, with the conviction that social status, hierarchy, and traditional beliefs play a decisive role in

304  Cristiano Viglietti moulding an economic system. Finley drew this strongly sociological idea from the teaching of Max Weber and, to a minor extent, from one of Finley’s teachers, the (socialist) economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. 26 Given his sociologically oriented perspective, 27 for Finley it is precisely because the social and institutional organisation of ancient societies is dramatically different from – and less developed than 28 – the modern Western one that the economy must also be intrinsically different. 29 Therefore, any projection of modern concepts and attitudes upon it is incorrect. The Finleyan ‘new orthodoxy’ found general, but not comprehensive, 30 success among neo-Marxist scholars in the UK and in continental Europe, 31 who were trying to transcend ‘dialectically’32 the age-old Marxist interpretations of ancient economic history by combining them with insights from sociological and anthropological studies.33 Finley himself was a sophisticated reader of Marx, and in his youth had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America.34 Though he was, according to Ian Morris, a ‘radical’35 yet, not unlike his predecessors, in his work explicit political positions are hardly traceable. The reason for the success of Finley’s amalgam again likely has to do with its capacity to fit, and in a sense express and reproduce, a period in which Western countries’ socialist, or even communist, parties, ideas, and intellectuals were strong, 36 and laissez-faire economies scaled down while expenditure policies emerged, favouring economic and social levelling.37 It runs parallel to decolonisation, with the emergence of postcolonial and cultural studies, 38 and with the unfolding in classical studies of trends that, underscoring the cultural peculiarity of antiquity, ended up highlighting its discontinuity vis-à-vis modern times.39 A child of its own age, it is probably not by chance that the Finleyan orthodoxy turned out to be quite ephemeral, winding up largely dismissed in the 1990s.40 Its waning interestingly paralleled not only the death of Finley himself in 1986, but also the fall of the socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and the crisis of communist parties and ideas in the West.41

“NIE orthodoxy” and the tropes of modernity The history of scholarship on the ancient economy bloomed in the XXI century into a third orthodoxy which, although it incorporates a few of Finley’s premises, mostly distances itself from his model. The emergence of a new outlook on the ancient economy was made possible by the development, between the 1980s and 1990s, of a solid methodology in the study of economic history. In scholarship on the ancient economy, this methodology managed to unify and make sense of the major criticisms of Finley’s pattern, especially its excessive stress on the stasis and backwardness of the ancient economy, which had brought Finley himself to underestimate changes over time in the economic, fiscal, demographic, and technological arenas.42 This new methodology was developed in particular by economic historian Douglass North, an adherent of the so-called ‘New Institutional

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 305 Economics’ (NIE), a branch of neoclassical economics that tried to broaden the traditional approach in economic history by stressing the role played by institutions in a given economy (including diachronically), especially vis-à-vis their capacity to reduce the costs of transaction.43 North clearly defined the objectives of NIE economic history in Structure and Change in Economic History (1981): The task of economic history [is] to explain the structure and performance of economies through time. By performance I have in mind […] how much is produced, the distribution of costs and benefits […]. The primary emphasis in explaining performance is on total output, output per capita, and the distribution of income of the society. By structure I mean those characteristics of a society which we believe to be the basic determinants of performance. Here I include the political and economic institutions, technology, demography, and ideology of a society. Through time means that economic history should explain temporal changes in structure and performance.44 While, like Finley, he acknowledges that ideology and institutions are the main determinants of economic performance, North stresses the role, and therefore the reconstruction, of economic performance/total output over time, which were practically unaddressed in Finley’s works. The NIE’s outlook was extensively adopted among specialists of the ancient economy during the 2000s,45 and has created a radical change in this part of classical scholarship. Indeed, the NIE approach has brought about a shift from a long-established predominantly philological approach to the ancient economy to a boom of quantitative studies,46 which, on the basis of proxy-data derived from archaeology, have sought to reconstruct the basic elements of economic performance: in particular, the GDP of ancient cities and empires, demography, real wage levels, and even average height as an indicator of economic improvement and well-being.47 Consistently with previous trends, by adopting this new methodology and conceptual framework the followers of NIE among classicists welcomed an approach that fits, and confirms, the cultural and economic hegemonies successfully emerging in the late XX and early XXI century, based on neoliberal premises.48 As Neville Morley has noted, the NIE mainstream of the 2000s “assume[s] without question two of the basic tropes of modernity, [1] that more is always better, and [2] that the resemblance to modern economic and social structures is always good.”49 Actually, other previous trends in the economic history of antiquity, and especially modernism, share the idea that any resemblance between the ancient and the modern Western economy is a positive factor, 50 but unlike them NIE aims to rank any society and institutional system in economic history through the cliometrically measured calculation of economic output.51 Measuring is fundamental because, as North explains, what the NIE analytical framework retains of neoclassical economic theory is “the

306  Cristiano Viglietti fundamental assumption of scarcity and hence competition.”52 Accordingly, for NIE’s advocates the more an economy is capable of satisfying wants through (intensive) economic growth, the better, 53 and, North adds, the more the men that are part of that society approximate the ideal model of the rational homo oeconomicus.54 In this urge to cliometrically rank past economies, NIE is perfectly coextensive with current mainstream economics aiming to classify contemporary national economies through the yearly calculation of the absolute figure of GDP.55 The commitment of NIE proponents, also among classicists, to late XX century mainstream ideologies can be summarised by a passage of Willem Jongman’s chapter in the strongly NIE-oriented56 Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (2007): The purpose of all economic activity is to satisfy as many of our wants as possible. […] The success of an economy, therefore, is measured by the extent to which the scarcity problem is overcome. Modern economies have become quite good at this. They are not only prosperous, but also increasingly prosperous. Thus, over a lifetime, many people have witnessed a tremendous rise in their prosperity. […] Technical advances introduced not only better made goods, but even goods that did not exist a generation before.57 Ironically enough, Jongman’s explicit and very optimistic opinion of economic progress and prosperity in the modern West appeared just a few months before the financial crisis of 2008, which triggered a dramatic economic downturn, massive recession, and gigantic debt deadlock. As François de Callataÿ noted, at the turn of the 2010s the ideological underpinnings of mainstream NIE were proving “to be inadequate in a world seriously shaken by the present global crisis”, 58 – and perhaps even more inadequate to describe the ancient economy – revealing again how strictly the history of scholarship on the ancient economy has been linked to the events and the hegemonic ideologies that followed one another in time.

“Be careful what you wish for”: Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel as organic intellectuals Thirteen years after 2008, mainstream scholarship on the ancient economy is still in the hands of NIE-oriented approaches. However, in recent times, criticisms of NIE have flourished more than in the pre-2008 era, perhaps giving a glimpse of the beginning of a new intellectual struggle for hegemony:59 “room is open for reaction”, observes de Callataÿ.60 The urgency for NIE-oriented classicists to modify or update their approach can be seen as one of the possible triggering factors of an interesting, meaningful shift in the recent scientific production of possibly their two most prominent members. Between 2010 and 2017 Stanford-based

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 307 Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (the main editors, with Richard Saller, of the aforementioned Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World) have broken a long-standing tendency of classicists specialising in the ancient economy not to investigate explicitly and systematically the modern economy,61 embracing the trend in global, and long-term, economic history through the publication of books aimed not only at specialists – as books on the ancient economy have usually been – but at a relatively wide public audience.62 Among Morris’ books, the seminal and likely most important one is Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future (2010), while the other three volumes – The Measure of Civilization (2013); War. What is it Good For? (2014); and Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels (2015) – integrate, elaborate, and defend the method and outcomes of Why the West Rules. In 2017 Scheidel’s The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century appeared.63 Ian Morris’ books maintain, not unlike the NIE teachings, that human societies through time can be classified based on objective, ‘positivistically’ quantifiable,64 and therefore universal and comparable criteria,65 except that these criteria are not reduced only to economic performance or GDP, but are articulated in four elements, namely (1) Energy capture per person; (2) Organisational capacity/urbanisation; (3) Information processing and communication; (4) Capacity to make war. These criteria, once measured or reconstructed through proxies and guesstimates,66 and combined can allow for establishing the level of what Morris calls the “social development”67 of a given society in a given moment. Interestingly, already this methodological choice to shift from measuring GDP and its growth to social development reveals a certain ideological slant, because it is devised in a moment in which – as Morris himself acknowledges – Western economies grow, in terms of yearly GDP, less than, for instance, India and China, whose GDP is likely to soon outstrip the US’s.68 The stress in Morris’ model on, say, the capacity to make war and on the information processes brings out two aspects on which the West is still undoubtedly superior, and might continue to be in the future.69 In spite of the introduction of this change in the factors useful for assessing an economy, Morris’ model takes over the two hegemonic ‘tropes of modernity’, so important in the NIE’s perspective. The ‘the more the better’ principle is still relevant to Morris’ approach in the sense that the more a given society is capable of satisfying the four requirements of social development, the higher its level of economic development, of civilisation, and of capacity to ‘rule’ will be assessed.70 The Stanford scholar points out that among the four factors that make up social development by far the most important one is energy capture: “energy capture is the backbone of history.”71 This assumption, which implies that societies that have been more capable of increasing their accumulation and consumption of energy

308  Cristiano Viglietti in food and non-food forms are better, not only shows a sympathy for high-consumption economic models,72 and practices, but in a sense is an answer to a pressing contemporary issue, namely the consequences of the extraction of metals, fossil fuels, and other materials from the environment driven by ‘consumerist’ economies.73 For Morris, the environmental problems will be solved not in spite of, but thanks to the strengths of the most socially developed economies, and mentalities (which, as we’ll see later, are for Morris determined by the social development itself): at a meeting of investors in Boston in 2014, Michael Liebreich, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, explained that “increasingly […] people are understanding that [the] cost of solar has come way down and the cost of wind is coming way down. If we get to where people see all of this as a business opportunity we have a chance.”74 The presence of the second hegemonic trope of modernity (“resemblance to modern economic and social structures is always good”) is likewise evident in Morris. According to his reconstruction of the history of social development, the societies of the Western world today not only have (and are likely to have in the near future) the highest social development scores, but have dominated the world in this respect for most time in history since the end of the last Ice Age (c. 12,900 BCE) [Figure 14.1].75 This superiority of the West has, for Morris, a fundamentally geographic cause,76 because the climatic conditions that occurred in the Hilly Flanks surrounding the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia after the last Ice Age made domesticable plants and animals available to the inhabitants of that area more, and earlier, than anywhere in the world.77 Thus, it boosted the Neolithic revolution c. 9,500 BCE, as well as the evolution from the first stage of foraging societies to the second of farming societies, where human groups captured far bigger amounts of energy through the exploitation of domesticated plants and animals.78 From the Hilly Flanks, farming practices would spread Westwards, contributing to the rise of social development and the civilisation of Western societies, while the Eastern part of Eurasia would achieve domestication c. 2,000 years later, however well before the Americas (c. 6,500 BCE), and Africa (c. 5,500).79 According to Morris, this early domestication process would have given the West an almost 2,000year lead on the rest of the world which, except China for short phases in the Middle Ages, in fact never succeeded in catching up and challenging Western superiority in social development.80 The 2,000-year lead also explains, in Morris’ view, why the West has been the originator of the third fundamental passage in the history of social development and civilisation, namely from farming societies to societies whose economies are based on the increasing capture and exploitation of energy in the form of fossil fuels.81 Furthermore, Morris underscores in his geographically determined model that being twice as close to East Asia than the Americas would have

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 309 14,000 West East

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0

1700

1750

1800

1850

1900 1950 DATE CE

2000

2050

2100

Figure 14.1  The history of social development (c. 14,000 BCE–c. 2000 AD). Source:  According to Morris (2010: Figure. 12.1).

made it easier for the Europeans to discover and colonise the ‘New World’, and for Britain to gain the biggest economic advantage from the exploitation of the resources of the Americas and later of the other colonised areas thanks to the trade-oriented use of modern fossil fuel-based implements and machines.82 In this all-encompassing framework, the economies of classical antiquity are only marginally discussed, with the partial exception of classical Athens, and basically are described as more or less advanced expressions of the farming phase in the history of social development.83 Accordingly, Morris devises a clearly evolutionary pattern (1. foragers -> 2. farmers -> 3. fossil fuel users) in the history of humankind that reminds us of primitivism84 and that, in contrast to both Finley and NIE, rules out cultural and social factors as determinants of the economic life and of the evolution, but considers them aspects of human life which are determined by the level of social development of the society: “energy capture determines values.”85 And because energy capture determines just three basic types of economies (foragers, farmers, fossil fuel users), consequently in history it is possible to trace only three fundamental sets of cultural values [Table 14.1] that generate three basic “kinds of history”.86 Still, Morris is aware that in given geographic and historical contexts not all societies evolve in the same direction, but only some of them shift to higher levels of social development, succeeding in competitive adaptation.87 According to Morris, successful mutations and changes have been fulfilled

310  Cristiano Viglietti Table 14.1  The differences between ideal-type moral values among foragers, farmers, and fossil fuel users.

Political Inequality Wealth Inequality Gender Inequality Violence

Foragers

Farmers

Fossil fuel users

Bad Bad Middling Middling

Good Good Good Middling/bad

Bad Middling Bad Bad

Source: Morris (2015), Author’s adaptation of Table 4.1.

only by some peoples in history, whose different attitude is framed by what the Stanford scholar proudly calls ‘The Morris Theorem’: Change is caused by […] greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things.88 Greedy people who worked hard to capture more energy and eat more would, on average, be bigger and healthier than their lazy neighbors who chose not to. They would – again, on average – produce bigger, healthier babies, and if they were loving as well as greedy […], their well-fed offsprings would on average be likelier to survive than the scions of parents who took a lot of days off. […] The overall pattern has been that the greedy have largely, but not completely, inherited the earth, nudging humanity toward the optimal level of selfishness.89 With this encompassing anthropological formulation – where again the hegemonic ‘the bigger the better’ trope emerges – Morris interestingly redeems to many extents the concept of homo oeconomicus (greedy, selfish, looking for easier and more profitable ways to do things), considered a distinctive trait not only of the most advanced modern societies, as NIE maintains, but ‘cyclically’ – as in the modernists’ pattern – traceable in the historical societies more capable of seizing the fruits of social development.90 Consequently (again, the second hegemonic trope of modernity), the only way for a society at a lower stage of social development to close the gap on higher-ranking ones is to be dragged down the path of the most competitive and prosperous ones,91 primarily the modern West, in order to be incorporated into human groups that are larger, richer, better organised, better educated, and healthier.92 In the long run, they would enjoy “an age of prosperity”,93 whether this change happens peacefully or, as it is more often the case, violently.94 Violence is at the core of Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler. In a far less encompassing scope than Morris’ works, the Austrian historian wants to depict a history of economic inequalities in the very long run, focusing only on the principal cities- and nation-states or empires of the West and, to a minor extent, of the East.95 Scheidel maintains, like Morris, that after the Neolithic revolution social evolution was boosted by the domestication of plants and animals, which

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 311 led from foraging societies, where the level of economic inequality was low, to (increasingly larger-scale) farming societies, and then industrial societies where inequalities took off and grew over time, thanks to scaled accumulation and use of resources.96 The historical growth of economic differences is not considered negatively by Scheidel, but rather as a progressive factor97 – in accordance with the first hegemonic trope of modernity. For Scheidel, who largely takes up and in this respect integrates Morris’ model, the growth of economic inequalities positively boosted the four factors of social development by triggering the birth of more complex political organisations, with the relevant more complex forms of energy capture, information, and warfare.98 These more developed constitutional systems “established steep hierarchies of power and coercive force that skewed access to income and wealth.”99 Not unlike in Morris’ works, the history of antiquity is seen by Scheidel as a phase of the history of inequality in the characteristic guise of the agrarian states,100 with only marginal and partial levelling exceptions, especially in classical Greece.101 And with regard to economic levelling, Scheidel points out that the most remarkable cases in human history are found in modern history. Still, all cases of levelling, including the ancient ones, should be seen as the consequences of phases of instability characterised by a dreadful common denominator, violence,102 which would typically manifest in at least one of these four aspects: “1. mass mobilization warfare, 2. transformative revolution, 3. state failure, 4. lethal pandemics. The four horsemen of levelling.”103 Scheidel stresses that levelling phenomena have all been unsuccessful in the long run, and if this has been the case it is basically for reasons of human biological evolution. Comparison with the (current) behaviour of apes would allow for making sense of some stable and recurring traits of human history, like the ‘natural’ existence of hierarchy and inequalities:104 Power inequality and hierarchy emerged with the African Apes many millions of years ago and was gradually attenuated during the evolution of the Homo over the last 2 million years or so. Holocene domestication produced an upswing in inequality of both power and wealth that peaked with the formation of the large predatory states.105 The failure of equalising land reforms like, say, those that occurred in republican Rome,106 or of more massive levelling revolutions, primarily communism,107 would show, and confirm, that from the remotest times Homo has taken a path in a direction where economic inequality was considered the best possible choice. Accordingly, levelling would be against history, and against human nature: The forces that used to shape inequality have not in fact changed beyond recognition. If we seek to rebalance the current distribution of

312  Cristiano Viglietti income and wealth in favor of greater equality, we cannot simply close our eyes to what it took to accomplish this goal in the past. We need to ask whether great inequality has ever been alleviated without great violence […] and whether the future is likely to be very different.108 Here Scheidel, like the historians of old, stresses that history is magistra vitae: because of what levelling has meant in the past, namely violence, it could return with the same traits in the future, unless we use the knowledge we have learned from the history to avoid any future levelling-cum-violence. At this point in Scheidel’s reasoning, a clear political, and totally contemporary, conclusion emerges – which is in a sense a critical answer to the research that has underscored the current problems of inequality109 –: nothing is better for removing levelling-cum-violence in our times than the political and economic system that is most structurally opposite to levelling, namely the neoliberal system based on economic growth that currently characterises especially the USA and the UK:110 Thanks to modern economic growth and fiscal expansion, state institutions in high-income countries have generally become too powerful and too deeply entrenched in society for a wholesale collapse of governmental structures and concurrent leveling to occur.111 The corollary to this praise of current Western economies is a caveat that history itself would teach everybody aiming to introduce various forms of levelling, including social protection – i.e., one of those branches of public expenditure that neoliberal policies like to reduce as much as possible:112 There was always one Big Reason behind every known episode of substantial levelling. […] There was one Big Reason why the Britain of Downton Abbey gave way to a society known for universal free health care and powerful labor unions: […] massive and violent disruption of the established order. […] All […] who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what you wish for.113 Not unlike in Scheidel’s book, explicit statements in favour of the current dominant political and economic model can also be read in Ian Morris’ works. Morris for instance commends the ongoing pattern based on the alliance of free market and neoliberal state policies in Western countries, stressing that “the great discovery of twentieth-century new liberalism was that government intervention was not necessarily the enemy of free markets; it could, in fact, improve markets by setting rules that reduced distortion.”114 Plus, paraphrasing an auspice of the former Republican American president George H.W. Bush, Morris underscores: “we are living a kinder, gentler age”,115 and on a planet that is “more peaceful and prosperous than

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 313 ever before”,116 and close to not seeing wars anymore,117 thanks to the US’s military policies, considered to be “the last best hope for earth.”118 It is no surprise that some readers have labelled especially Morris’ ideas as those of a “party intellectual”119 who “peddles subjective neoconservative belief in the guise of objective scholarly theory”,120 while for Richard Seaford Morris’ thoughts are “much closer to the ideas of our ruling class than to the thought that our age needs.”121 On the other side, conservative thinkers like Niall Ferguson or his Western-centric mentor David Landes simply “loved” or found “astonishing” Morris’ thesis.122 Scheidel has been instead labelled as “the anti-Piketty”,123 and his approach as patently “Darwinian”.124 It is sure that the works of Morris and Scheidel reveal a meaningful landmark in the history of approaches and attitudes of scholars of ancient economies. Indeed, not only have these classicists turned to the global, long-term historical trend – introducing partly new criteria and perspectives in the study, and the judgement, of antiquity. They also wrote their recent works acting like “expert[s] in legitimation”,125 like intellectuals who – unlike their classicist predecessors did in their works126 – take sides in the current hegemonic political, economic, and ideological discourse, taking on understandings that are hugely compatible with the neoliberal ideology. By stressing that economic inequalities and economy-determined hierarchies are after all a good thing, embedded in our biological evolution; that the West is still the best at developing technologies and at waging war;127 that colonialism, though sometimes brutal, has in fact allowed “savage”128 peoples to enjoy some aspects of more developed Western civilisation; that competition and efficiency is all that counts in human evolution; that only few peoples endowed with an attitude of homo oeconomicus have triggered change and progress;129 that cultural differences are not that important (and can be reduced to very few types) and that human history can be read through a limited number of general, familiar concepts; that environmental issues will be solved thanks the workings of markets, the ideological (meta-)narrative of these scholars aims to reassure and educate130 their readers about the past, and (especially) the present and the near future. However, it is also true that Morris’ and Scheidel’s positive attitude towards neoliberal policies does not correspond to their membership, or explicit endorsement, of any political party or movement, and much less to a clear positioning on the right wing: while Scheidel includes himself among those who “prize greater economic equality”131 (and reaffirms the point in the leftist The New Statesman),132 Morris appears very annoyed by the accusation of being a conservative.133 Indeed, on close inspection in his books he seems to frame (and butter up) his target, for instance when he uses the biblical paraphrase “the WEIRD shall inherit the earth”134 (where WEIRD stands for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic”). Accordingly, the two Stanford scholars seem to target a public that, though unsurprisingly elitist, can recognise itself in different traditional

314  Cristiano Viglietti party positions, from neo-conservativism to the democratic left:135 a circumstance that significantly resonates with the capacity of current neoliberalism to embrace, and transcend, several old political affiliations – and lay the foundations of a pensée unique.136 In sum, we could say that the intellectual revolution brought about by Morris and, to a minor extent, by Scheidel corresponds to a significant historical moment of passage where some scholars of the ancient economy appear to be what Gramsci would call “organic intellectuals” who – in substantial discontinuity with their classicist–predecessors – explicitly take the side of a given contemporary politically and economically hegemonic position (though not corresponding to any specific political party) not so much as an extra-academic choice,137 but as an explicit standpoint in their scholarly works.

The social development model through Gramsci’s eyes Having observed this meaningful recent shift in the history of classicists’ approaches to the relationship between ancient (and non-ancient) economies and contemporary hegemonic ideologies, it may be interesting to conclude by trying to sketch some possible criticisms to the ideas devised by Morris and Scheidel from a Gramscian perspective. A first, and main, criticism to the approach of the two Stanford scholars would involve the combination in their works of cliometric (Gramsci would have used the word ‘positivistic’), economistic materialism with an anti-historicist, determinist mechanism.138 As Gramsci underscored, “one cannot reconstruct history through mathematic calculations”,139 anticipating more recent criticisms to the approaches to the ancient economy where “quantification itself seems to be regarded as unproblematic, as a solid, empirical response to the stale, flat and unprofitable speculations of the theoreticians.”140 Because in the social-development model “energy capture determines values”141 and “moral systems conform to the requirements of energy capture”,142 the numerical reconstruction of the level of social development allows per se for understanding also the essential traits of a community, without any need to delve too much into its specific social, ideological, and cultural traits.143 Accordingly, we may say in a Gramscian perspective that the social-development model unfolds like a state-of-the-art way to (re)advocate the ‘vulgar materialistic’ idea according to which structure determines superstructure, like in the positivistic scheme devised by Bukharin144 and harshly criticised by Gramsci inasmuch as it aimed to “describe and schematically rank historical and political facts […] attempt[ing] to draw ‘experimentally’ the laws of human society’s evolution so as to ‘foresee’ the future.”145 The idea that the geography-based social-development – as well as the levelling-cum-violence – model implies in order to make sense is that human nature is fundamentally uniform and has not changed much in the last few million years.146 Indeed, as Morris explains, if the West and East (and then

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 315 the rest of the World) have gone exactly “through the same stages of social development” (even if at different times), it is due to the uniform nature of the human species, which is subjected to “biological and sociological laws [that] are constants, applying everywhere, in all times and places […] which by definition tell us about humanity as a whole”147 – and which, in turn, has to do with human evolution from apes, whose ‘natural’ behaviour is supposed as static and uniform.148 This naturalistic, mechanical vision is interestingly the opposite of Gramsci’s thinking, in which “man in general is negated and all dogmatically unitary concepts are spurned and destroyed.”149 In Gramsci’s humanist and historicist view men are, rather, seen as the principal actors of history. While being affected by the social and material relationships that historically tie them to the rest of the community,150 men are also potentially the makers of history inasmuch as they decide to not be passive observers of events, but active protagonists of the historical process, in the first place through the means of social struggle.151 From this perspective, it is interesting to note that Scheidel’s warning (“Be careful what you wish for”) that any struggle aiming to change the dominant economically hierarchic model into a more equal one is bound to generate violence, and eventually to fail, can be assessed as a typically hegemonic caveat from an organic intellectual to the masses to be afraid of anything different from the status quo,152 and therefore to remain passive, avoiding the possibility for a substantial different way of thinking and behaving. Plus, within this fundamentally deterministic model, Morris adds as a corollary the idea that only the greedy people(s) in history have triggered, or quickly adapted to, changes and taken advantage of their geographic fortunes. The psychic superiority of these peoples is described by Morris in terms of their ‘common sense’, defined as “a powerful tool for revealing what will work best in the material conditions in which we find ourselves.”153 It is precisely common sense that would allow the greedy, and not others, to maximise utility and successfully adapt to the circumstances. For instance, Morris stresses, postcolonial Kenyans ‘commonsensically’, and rightly, took the path of capitalism rather than that of socialism, which instead the Tanzanians took – to their disadvantage.154 This way of reading history conflicts with Gramsci’s thought in two further ways. On one hand Morris treats ‘common sense’ as a stable, universal, and positive concept, which can emerge in any time and place, whereas Gramsci’s vision is very different. The expression senso comune has in his works (and in Italian) a more neutral meaning than in English, and Gramsci – especially from 1932155 – describes it as a divided, incoherent, and shifting conception of the world which changes in different societies and times. Kate Crehan has recently shown how Gramsci’s idea of senso comune can be a helpful general heuristic tool to understand how ‘common sense’ in a given society can be also seen as a shared worldview that in fact stems from the narrative of the hegemonic groups aiming to reinforce their position.156 Thus, common

316  Cristiano Viglietti sense/senso comune is absorbed acritically by subaltern groups,157 by which it tends to be erroneously perceived as more consistent, true, and therefore positive, than it really is158 – i.e. as a ‘good sense’ (buon senso) in Gramsci’s words.159 Crehan’s finding can perhaps be applied to understand the ideological manoeuvre that Morris carries out, positively defining as ‘common sense’ what is actually his own conception of the world,160 for instance when he emphasises that common sense “nudg[ed] humanity toward the optimal level of selfishness”161 – that is towards a kind of attitude that makes sense in his model and view. On the other hand, Morris conflicts also with Gramsci inasmuch as he de-historicizes homo oeconomicus, treating it as a figure traceable in all positive phases of change in human history. Gramsci, like Marx (followed, perhaps surprisingly, by North) considered homo oeconomicus instead a peculiar historical product “that emanates from the very foundations of bourgeois society”,162 and which evidently cannot be applied to other realities.163 Finally, in its economistic way of approaching human history, the social-development model conflicts with another fundamental concept in Gramsci, namely ‘philology’, which consists also of the inductive, empiric, study of historical texts as a “methodological expression of the importance that the particular facts are ascertained and specified in their unmistakeable ‘individuality’.”164 Contrary to this idiographic conviction, both Morris and Scheidel prefer the use of very general concepts and ideas taken from the English language and form modern Western conceptualisation as heuristic tools, hardly discussing them in detail, in specific contexts and vis-à-vis native sources, and projecting those same concepts and ideas to very different societies and historical moments, like social and historical universals.165 An example drawn from one very rare case in these works where an ancient written source is quoted directly and discussed can be instructive in this respect. While reflecting on the importance in the early Roman Empire of the (likely) increase of per capita consumption in connection with the increase of ship size and of the enhancement of the connections among markets, Morris cites a passage of Pliny the Elder which seems to confirm that the Romans of the time were conscious and very happy vis-à-vis the current economic expansion: Who does now recognize that thanks to the majesty of the Roman Empire, communications have been opened between all parts of the world (communicato orbe terrarum)? Or that standards of living have made great strides (profecisse vitam)? Or that all this is owed to trade, and the common enjoyment of the blessing of peace (commercio rerum ac societate festae pacis omniaque … in promiscuo usu facta)?166 The philological, and historical, problem here is that Pliny describes the increase in circulation of goods, connected to the imperial peace, in order

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 317 to explain in the following paragraph that in recent times the Romans had lost interest in the names and in the techniques of growing (cultura) several trees because “the minds of men are occupied about other matters: the only arts cultivated are the arts of greed (alia mentes hominum detinentur et avaritiae tantum artes coluntur)”,167 as the current increase in the struggle for wealth (census), sycophancy (servitus) to the powerful, and material pleasures (voluptas) would show. The point here is not to wonder whether Morris or Pliny is wrong, or whether greed – assuming (but not granting) that greed is and has always been the same thing – is good or not, but why Morris makes Pliny say quite the opposite than what he actually meant, ending up oversimplifying and historically decontextualising a reflection that, if we adopt a philological and historical perspective, can allow us to reflect on the cultural and practical issues and contradictions that characterised a specific social moment in human history. The answer why Morris did so probably rests in what Gramsci invites us to reflect upon, showing how intellectuals that are ‘organic’ to a certain hegemonic thought attempt to describe and convey the underpinnings of their methods as not only correct but also endowed with eternal, metaphysical traits. More ‘relativistically’, Gramsci said of his interpretation of Marxism: the philosophy of praxis affirms theoretically that every ‘truth’ believed to be eternal and absolute has had practical origins and has represented a ‘provisional’ value (historicity of every conception of the world and of life) […] such an interpretation is valid also for the philosophy of praxis itself […].168

Acknowledgements I wish to thank the volume editors for inviting me to be part of this thought-provoking endeavour; the anonymous readers for their precious observations and suggestions; Neville Morley and Christopher Smith for their patience in reading the first draft of this chapter, providing brilliant insights and comments, and for their friendship.

Notes 1 Q4§38 = QC: 457–8 = PN2: 180, “le ideologie germinate precedentemente vengono a contatto ed entrano in contrasto fino a che una sola di esse […] tende a prevalere, a imporsi, a diffondersi su tutta l’area, determinando oltre che l’unità economica e politica anche l’unità intellettuale e morale […] egemonia di un raggruppamento sociale fondamentale su i raggruppamenti subordinati.” See Liguori (2015: 78–80), Cospito (2009: 267–9), and Thomas (2009: 412). 2 Q3§49; cf. Liguori (2015: 79).

318  Cristiano Viglietti 3 Cf. Crehan (2002: 131–41), Thomas (2009: 161, 225–7), Voza (2009: 426), and Mayo (2015: 14, 39). 4 Hopkins (1983: ix). 5 This definition dates back to Hasebroek (1928); cf. Mazza (2013: 85–7). 6 Morley (2004: 36–48) and Mazza (2013: 228). 7 Bücher (1893: 90–8). 8 Mazza (2013: 15–6). 9 Mazza (2013: 16–7). Yet, a critical socialist intellectual like Ettore Ciccotti was a modernist; Fonzo (2019: 99–100). On Gramsci’s opinion of Salvioli’s Il Capitalismo antico, see LC 310–1; Fonzo (2019: 97–103, 125–6). On Marx’s stress on the historically-determined distinctiveness of bourgeois forms of production, e.g. MGR: 105–6, 459. On the differences between the ancient and the modern economy, MGR: 102–3; cf. Calabi (1978: 57–71). Though stressing, not unlike Bücher, the existence of different stages in the development of the Western economy (e.g. MECW: 29:262–3 [1st ed. 1859]; 24.365–6 [1st ed. 1881]; MGR: 85–7, 158), Marx’s understanding of economic evolution is hardly as mechanistic (and optimistic) as Bücher’s; e.g MGR: 488; cf. Schiavone 1978: 80–5, 96–7, 103. 10 Meyer (1924: 89). 11 Meyer (1924: 109). 12 Caruso (2012: 4–25). 13 Morley (2006: 41) and Mazza (2013: 21–2). 14 Meyer (1924: 118–9); cf. (Mazza 2013: 68 n. 39). 15 Rostovtzeff (1931: 335 n. 1) and Morley (2004: 37–9). 16 Mazza (2013: 83). 17 Canfora (1980: 204–12) and Mazza (2013: 82). 18 Boyd (1990: 62) and Mazza (2013: 287). 19 Rostovtzeff (2002: 11–2, 28) [1st edn. 1900] and (1941: 267–321, 381–414). 20 Morris (1999: x) and Launaro (2016: 230–1). 21 Cf. Morley (2004: 37). 22 Carreras and Josephson (2010). 23 Buyst and Franaszek (2010). 24 Detienne (2005, 2010). 25 Hopkins (1983: xi). 26 Morris (1999: xxv) and Tompkins (2016: 17–8). 27 E.g. Finley (1985: 34). 28 Morley (2006: 43–4). 29 Finley (1985: 60–1). 30 Cf. discussion in Launaro (2016: 235). 31 Morris (1999: xviii). The Istituto Gramsci in Rome promoted in the 1970s and early 1980s important neo-Marxist publications on the ancient economy and society; e.g. Capogrossi, Giardina and Schiavone (1978), Giardina and Schiavone (1981); cf. Fonzo (2019: 103–4 n. 11). 32 Tompkins (2016: 18). 33 Mazza (2013: 254–5). 34 Naiden (2017: 739); cf. Tompkins (2016: 15–16, 27–9). On Finley’s emigration to the UK to avoid conviction by the US Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, cf. Walbank (1996). 35 Morris (1999: xxvi). 36 Bull (1995) and Hoare and Sperber (2015: 179–89). 37 Morris (2015: 113–4) and Scheidel (2017: 103–12). 38 On the role of Gramsci in those trends, cf. Hoare and Sperber (2015: 218–27). 39 Cf. Manning and Morris (2005: 27–9). 40 Cf. Andreau (1995), Morris (1999: xxvi), and Mazza (2013: 254). 41 E.g. Steger and Roy (2010) and Hoare and Sperber (2015: 172–5).

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 319





42 Hopkins (1980, 1983). 43 Cf. Coase (1960). 44 North (1981: 3). 45 E.g. Scheidel and von Reden (2002: 1), Manning and Morris (2005: 34), Scheidel, Morris and Saller (2007: 1 and 12), and Scheidel (2010a: 594), (2012: 2). 46 Also quantitative studies on the ancient economy until the late XX century were primarily based on the literary evidence: e.g. Duncan-Jones (1982). 47 E.g. Bowman and Wilson (2009), Scheidel and Friesen (2009), Scheidel (2010b), Jongman, Jacobs and Goldewijk (2019); cf. de Callataÿ (2014a) and Terpstra (2018: 235). 48 E.g. Mayo (2015: 1–8). 49 Morley (2014: 38). 50 Viglietti (2018: 218–28). 51 North (1990: 117–22). 52 North (1994: 359). 53 North (1990: 120–2); cf. Jongman (2007: 594). 54 North (1994: 364). 55 For the current GDP ranking, imf.org. On the burgeoning Human Development Index (hdr.undp.org); cf. Morris (2013: 3, 27) and Verboven (2015: 49). 56 E.g. Launaro (2016: 239). 57 Jongman (2007: 594). 58 De Callataÿ (2014b: 22). 59 E.g. Maucourant (2012), Morley (2014), Viglietti (2018); self-criticism, though soft, in Verboven (2015); cf. Hoyer (2018a: 8–10). 60 De Callataÿ (2014b: 22). 61 A possible exception, albeit hardly focussed on economic matters, is Meyer (1915). Bücher (1893) and Barbagallo (1938) are the works of two professional economists, albeit interested in the ancient world. 62 As Pomeranz (2011: 304) notes, on September 15, 2011, Morris’ Why the West Rules “ranked #1 in the subcategory of “History/Civilization and Culture” on amazon.com. 63 Unfortunately I cannot discuss here Walter Scheidel’s, Escape from Rome: the Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, Princeton: Princeton UP, released at the end of 2019. 64 Morris (2013: 4–11). 65 Morris (2013: 4, 25). 66 As Morris (2013: e.g. 83, 180, 222) candidly admits, many of the data he uses for the pre-modern era are nothing but “impressionistic guess[es]”, “guesswork, constrained only by general impression”; criticisms of this major methodological issue in Campbell (2013: 537) and Ashley (2016: 1598–9). 67 Social development is “a community’s ability to get things done”; Morris (2010: 144) (= 2013: 5). This concept, borrowed from neo-evolutionist anthropologist Raoul Naroll, has been recently accepted by some classicists; e.g. Verboven (2015: 49–52), Scheidel (2017: 62); Hoyer (2018a: 12, 82). 68 Morris (2015: 161–2). 69 Morris (2010: 597) and (2013: 177). 70 Morris (2013: 39–44, 50–2). 71 Morris (2013: 142). 72 Morris (2013: 10–11, 39–42). 73 Seaford (2015: 179). 74 Morris (2015: 260). The fact that between 1910 and 2010 average temperature raised 1,5F° would show for Morris (2014: 368) that the effects of industrialization on climate change “have been fairly small.” 75 Morris (2013: 3–5). 76 Morris (2010: 29) and (2015: 157).

320  Cristiano Viglietti

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Morris (2014: 75–7). Morris (2015: 83). Morris (2013: 133–7, 253–5) and (2015:153 fig. 5.5). Morris (2010, 2013). Morris (2013: 70–108). Morris (2014: 158–9, 177–92, 217, 337), (2014: 216), and (2015: 158). Morris (2015: 67–74); cf. (2013: 171). Morris (2013: 254–5), (2014: 381–2), and (2015: 4–11, 139–40). This evolutionary model in fact also recalls Adam Smith’s [hunters-> shepherds-> farmers-> manufacturers; Smith (1937: 653–6)], as noted by Ashley (2016: 1597). 85 Morris (2015: 5, cf. 10, 92). 86 Morris (2010: 29, cf. 27). 87 Morris (2014: 314), (2015: 4, 11–14, 29, 50, 85, 160–7, 223); cf. Shephard (2014), and Scheidel (2017: 44–5). 88 Morris (2010: 28); cf. Duchesne (2011). 89 Morris (2015: 225–7), cf. 150. 90 On Rome, see Morris (2014: 47). 91 Morris (2013: 260). 92 Morris (2014: 11) and (2015: 94–106, 160, 228). 93 Morris (2014: 226). Cf., critically, Hoare and Sperber (2015: 172). 94 Morris (2014: 232–4) uses the euphemism “creative destruction.” 95 The rest of the world is addressed only briefly due to the dearth of evidence; Scheidel (2017: 86–7, 101–3), cf. 13. 96 Scheidel (2017: 29–36). 97 Scheidel (2017: 7). Some book reviewers have considered this vision “depressing” or “grim”, but nonetheless correct: Comegna (2017: 580–1) and Hoyer (2018b). 98 Cf. Scheidel (2017: 62). 99 Scheidel (2017: 5). 100 Scheidel (2017: 4, 206). 101 Scheidel (2017: 192–205). 102 Scheidel (2017: 345). 103 Scheidel (2017: 8). 104 Cf. Betzig (2017: 363). For a framing, and historical relativisation of theories searching ‘human nature’ stressing the essential ‘animality’ of human beings by comparing the dominant and hierarchic traits of animal (especially apes) behaviour with those traceable in human societies, see Milam (2019) (e.g. 7–14, 87–88, 99, 116–7). 105 Scheidel (2017: 86). 106 Scheidel (2017: 347–57). 107 Scheidel (2017: 7, 213). 108 Scheidel (2017: 22). 109 E.g. Stiglitz (2012) and Piketty (2013). The point is noted by Avy-Yonah and Avi-Yonah (2018: 1001–3). 110 Scheidel (2017: 425) criticizes the current effort in the Eurozone and Scandinavia to maintain high levels of equality. This effort is for him destined to fail, because it depends “on the maintenance of an expansive and expensive system of powerfully equalizing state interventions.” 111 Scheidel (2017: 440, cf. 9). 112 On the relationship between neoliberalism and low levels of social protection see Mayo (2015: 1); criticisms of this point of Scheidel’s theory in Mingardi (2017: 338). 113 Scheidel (2017: 443–4). 114 Morris (2015: 117). 115 Morris (2014: 319–20).

Cultural hegemonies and social-development 321 116 Morris (2015: 260); cf. (2014: 287). 117 Morris (2014: 9, 26, 339–45). 118 Morris (2014: 332). 119 Duchesne (2011); cf. also Ashley (2016: 1598–9); cf., on Scheidel, Eaton (2017: 16). 120 DeGroot (2014). 121 Seaford (2015: 178). 122 Ferguson on the front cover of Morris (2010); Landes in inside-the-book endorsements of Morris (2010). 123 Avy-Yonah and Avi-Yonah (2018: 1001–2). 124 Betzig (2017: 363). 125 Mayo (2015: 39). 126 Cf. note 61. 127 Morris (2014: 332). 128 Morris (2014: 8). 129 As noted by Seaford (2015: 178). 130 Mayo (2015: 14, 39); cf. Morley (2006). 131 Scheidel (2017: 444). 132 Eaton (2017). 133 Morris (2015: 256). 134 Morris (2015: 138). 135 E.g. Lee Mudge (2011) and Nakano (2015). 136 E.g. Geuens (2010) and Hagège (2012: 11, 136–7). 137 On ‘organic’ classicists who expressed their (right-wing) political opinions in conferences and newspapers, but hardly in scientific works, see Canfora (1980: 77–99, 133–43). 138 Self-defence, or rather admission, of the presence in his works of some of these traits in Morris (2015: 9–11); criticisms of Morris’ mechanism, determinism and materialism in Vries (2012: 145–6), Mulligan (2014: 184); on Scheidel’s mechanism, see Offer (2017). 139 Q10ii§41. 140 Morley (2014: 31). 141 Morris (2015: 5), cf. 10, 92. 142 Morris (2015: 83); cf. Scheidel (2017: 30). 143 Cf. also Terpstra (2018): 239. Criticisms of this methodological attitude in Vries (2012: 144–5). 144 Q7§29; Liguori (2015: 92–3). 145 Q11§18. See Liguori (2015: 74) and Thomas (2009: 330). 146 Morris (2015: 11) and Scheidel (2017: 86). 147 Morris (2010: 29). 148 For criticisms of this approach, see note 106. 149 Thomas (2009: 393); cf. Q4§45; 11§62. See Morera (1990: 60–1); Crehan (2002: 27). In Q8§175 (written in 1931) Gramsci harshly criticises Giovanni Gentile’s (the most prominent fascist intellectual of the time) tendency – rooted in neo-idealism – to speak of an “ahistorical ‘human nature’ […] eternal and immutable”; cf. Liguori (2015: 96–7) and Crehan (2016: 50–1). 150 Morera (1990: 63) and Hoare and Sperber (2015: 82). 151 Morera (1990: 63), Liguori (2015: 88, 101, 110); cf. Crehan (2002: 74–5). 152 Q11§25. See Thomas (2009: 331–2). On traditional intellectuals, Q12§1. See Thomas (2009: 417) and Hoare and Sperber (2015: 33–6). 153 Morris (2015: 252). 154 Morris (2015: 250–1). 155 On the complex history of Gramsci’s uses of the concept of senso comune, see Cospito (2018: esp. 88–95).

322  Cristiano Viglietti 156 Crehan (2016: x-xii, 44–8); see also Swift’s chapter in this volume. 157 Q8§173, Q11§12 and Q13; cfr. Q8§213.III; see Liguori (2015: 95–9), Crehan (2016: 43–52), Hoare and Sperber (2015: 86), and Cospito (2018: 85–90). 158 Crehan (2016: 47, 56). For this reason, “a philosophy of praxis initially cannot but introduce itself […] as a criticism on common sense” (Q8§22) – of course of the current hegemonic common sense, which in Gramsci’s vision should be surmounted by a new, and better, common sense allowing the subaltern classes a new awareness. Cf. Q8§173; Liguori (2015: 99–112), Crehan (2016: 51–5), and Cospito (2018: 91–2). 159 Q8§29; Liguori (2015: 106–8), Crehan (2016: 46–8), and Cospito (2018: 92–3). 160 As Seaford (2015: 172) notes. 161 Morris (2015: 227). 162 Hoare and Sperber (2015: 100). 163 Q10ii§27; cf. MGR: 83–8. 164 Thomas (2009: 333); cf. Q11§25. 165 On the vagueness of the use of concepts such ‘West’, ‘power’, ‘development’ in Morris, see Pomeranz (2011: 308–9), Vries (2012: 145); for criticisms of the use of the concept of ‘inequality’ (and of ‘violence’) by Scheidel (2017), see esp. Mingardi (2017: 338); cf. Bessel (2017: 402). An opposite stress on the importance of native concepts for studying ancient cultural history emically can be found in Bettini and Short (2018: esp. 11–17). 166 Plin., HN 14.1.2–3. See Morris (2014: 42–3). 167 Plin., HN 14.1.4. 168 Q11§62 = QC: 1469 = SPN: 406, “Se la filosofia della prassi afferma teoricamente che ogni «verità» creduta eterna e assoluta ha avuto origini pratiche e ha rappresentato un valore «provvisorio» (storicità di ogni concezione del mondo e della vita) […] una tale interpretazione è valida anche per la stessa filosofia della prassi […].”

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326  Cristiano Viglietti Scheidel, W. (2012) ‘Approaching the Roman Economy’, in id. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, Cambridge: CUP, 1–21. Scheidel, W. (2017) The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Scheidel, W. and S.J. Friesen (2009) ‘The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire’, JRS, 99, 61–91. Scheidel, W., I. Morris and R. Saller (2007) ‘Introduction’, in idd. (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge: CUP, 1–12. Scheidel, W. and S. von Reden (2002) ‘Introduction’, in idd. (eds.) The Ancient Economy. Edinburgh: EUP, 1–8. Schiavone, A. (1978) ‘Per una rilettura delle ‘Formen’: teoria della storia, dominio del valore d’uso e funzione dell’ideologia’, in Capogrossi, L., A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds.) Analisi marxista e società antiche. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 75–106. Seaford, R. (2015) ‘On the Ideology of Imagining That “Each Age Gets the Thought It Needs”’, in Morris, I. (ed.) Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels. How Human Values Evolve. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 172–9. Shephard, B. (2014) ‘War. What Is It Good for? review – the productive role of military conquest’, The Guardian 20/04/2014.[Online] Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/war-what-is-it-good-for-ian-morris/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Smith, A. (1937) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1st ed. 1776. New York, NY: Random House. Steger, M.B. and R.K. Roy (2010) Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP. Stiglitz, J. (2012) The Price of Inequality. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. Terpstra, T. (2018) ‘Neo-institutionalism in Ancient Economic History: the Road Ahead’, in Ménard, C. and M.M. Shirley (eds.), A Research Agenda for the New Institutional Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 233–40. Thomas, P.D. (2009) The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Tompkins, D.P. (2016) ‘The Making of Moses Finley’, in Jew, D., R. Osborne and M. Scott (eds.) M.I. Finley. An Ancient Historian and His Impact. Cambridge: CUP, 13–30. Verboven, K. (2015) ‘The Knights Who Say NIE: Can Neo-Institutional Economics Live up Its Expectation in Ancient History Research?’, in Erdkamp, P. and K. Verboven (eds.) Structure and Performance in the Roman Economy: Models, Methods and Case Studies. Brussels: Latomus, 33–57. Viglietti, C. (2018) ‘Economy’, in Bettini, M. and W.M. Short (eds.) The World Through Roman Eyes. Anthropological Approaches to Ancient Culture. Cambridge: CUP, 216–48. Voza, P. (2009) ‘Intellettuali’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.) Dizionario Gramsciano 1926-1937, Rome: Carocci. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario.gramsciproject. org/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Vries, P. (2012) ‘Review Article: Why the West Rules – for Now’, Journal of Global History, 7, 143–7. Walbank, F.W. (1996) ‘Sir Moses Finley’, in Nicholls, C.S. (ed.) Dictionary of National Biography 1986–1990. Oxford: OUP, 134–36. [Online] Available at: doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39807 (Accessed: 20 August 2020).

Afterthoughts

1

The author as intellectual? Hints and thoughts towards a Gramscian ‘re-reading’ of the ancient literatures Anna Maria Cimino

Gramscian categories in Antonio La Penna’s work: a starting point Building on the insights and the models put forward in several chapters of this volume, these few pages aim to provide some reflections and further perspectives on the application of Gramscian categories to the study of classical literatures. Antonio La Penna’s Aspetti del pensiero storico latino (1978) provides a valid precedent, useful to reflect on the methodology adopted by some of the contributions, and assess, at the same time, their innovative aspects. Indeed, La Penna has been one of the few to explicitly acknowledge Gramsci’s influence on his own scientific approach.1 In ‘Potere politico ed egemonia culturale in Roma antica dall’età delle guerre puniche all’età degli Antonini’ – the opening essay of Aspetti del pensiero storico latino – La Penna analysed the links and the political implications of the Latin literary tradition. He paid special attention to the way Roman ­ruling classes employed both art and culture to reinforce and legitimise their ­status. 2 In the Introduction to that volume, La Penna himself acknowledged that Gramsci’s theory of hegemony inspired him in deciding the focus of his own work, noting that this category could prove to be extremely useful to investigate the relationship between economic control, political power, and cultural production: The richness and modernity of ancient culture owed much to the fact that the ruling class used not only coercion to keep its domain, but also – and widely – the search for consensus. That means that the ruling class has usually been able to create its own cultural hegemony. The investigation about the ways in which the Roman ruling class – one or the other of its groups – establishes its own cultural hegemony is the main argument of these essays, even if the development of this analysis remains just partial, sporadic, with respect to the extent of the issue. Many years ago, I was stimulated in this direction by reading Gramsci and, even today, almost thirty years later, I acknowledge this debt, without either overestimating or underestimating it.

330  Anna Maria Cimino Gramsci was effective even in order to keep the attention focused on the complex and complicated mechanism of mediation, the multiple moments (relatively or apparently independent) through which it is possible to switch from the economic dominion to the elaboration of culture; especially for the history of ancient civilization, such attention is strictly necessary, since in this case, more than in others, the contrasts between classes generally manifest themselves in the political sphere and in moral quest.3 The contributions of Laura Swift, Emma Nicholson, Elena Giusti, and Jeremy Paterson to this volume seem to share many features with La Penna’s approach.4 On the one hand, they open the possibility of detecting the significant role of literature in the reinforcement of the elites’ status. On the other, they bring into the debate a further Gramscian category, that of intellectuals, which could prove fruitful to the understanding of the historical figures of the authors, and the social and political contexts of their activity.5 Before discussing each of these chapters, I will briefly clarify what Gramsci meant as ‘intellectuals’, and which functions he bestowed upon them in the construction of a political discourse of the ruling classes.6

The Gramscian category of ‘intellectuals’ and the literary production in the Greek and Roman world In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci wrote that “[e]very social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.”7 The role of these individuals is thus connected to both the “function of ‘hegemony’ which the dominant group exercises throughout society”, and the “‘direct domination’ or command exercised through the State and ‘juridical’ government.” Such functions are defined respectively ‘organizational’ and ‘connective’, and through these Gramsci established a formal definition of ‘intellectuals’: The intellectuals are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’ (commessi) exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These comprise: 1) the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. 2) The apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of

The author as intellectual? 331 society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed.8 The agency of these strata is in turn oriented by the ‘entrepreneur’ (as Gramsci calls him): he holds “a certain directive (dirigente) and technical (i.e. intellectual) capacity”, so he “must be an organizer of masses of men.”9 By insisting on the political implications of the literary works, Swift, Nicholson, Giusti, and Paterson have shown an interrelation between the works they have analysed, and the historical contexts of composition and fruition. Moreover, they have argued that at the core of the function of ancient authors it is possible to locate their role as educators, as mediators between the ruling classes and the subalterns, or indeed as interpreters of the social and political phenomena. In Swift’s chapter, the application of Gramscian categories to the ­analysis of Hesiod, Homer, and Archilochus illustrates that the literary space is suitable to investigate the mechanisms of power of the society in which these works were produced. It could also shed light on the techniques of power through which the ruling classes of Archaic Greece imposed their hegemony on the subaltern groups, both through coercion and consent.10 Notably, through the narrative tools of ainos (a genre of the popular literature), speeches, and invective, the author ‘normalized’ the practices of coercion employed by hegemonic classes, and thereby persuaded his audience of the legitimacy of the system. The plots of these works can be read in a ‘Gramscian’ way as a space to dramatise the renegotiation of power relations, and the establishment of hegemony by the ruling classes. Thanks to both the canonical structures of the genre and the choice of the contents, the author could display the social dynamics, as well as mirroring the political context in which the literary work was conceived and designed. Thus, he could convince his audience of the social values that would support the hegemonic power, and affect what Gramsci labelled ‘common sense’ through the fruition of the literature. Swift’s contribution insists on the idea that literature was an instrument through which the intellectuals were able to act as mediators in the dialogue between ruling classes and civil society. For this reason, her analysis may be productively juxtaposed to Gramsci’s reflections on the ‘nationalpopular’ (nazionale-popolare) features of French literary production, a key argument of his theory of hegemony:11 ‘Common sense’ has been treated more extensively in French philosophical culture than in other cultures. This is due to the ‘popularnational’ character of French culture. In France, more than elsewhere and because of specific historical conditions, the intellectuals tend to approach the people in order to guide it ideologically and keep it linked with the leading group. One should therefore be able to find in French literature a lot of useful material on common sense. The attitude of

332  Anna Maria Cimino French philosophical culture toward ‘common sense’ might even provide a model of hegemonic cultural construction.12 What Swift pointed out for Archaic Greece seems to have a parallel in the context of modern France: the authors-intellectuals could intercept the grievances and the needs of the people, identifying themselves with their desiderata and, at the same time, educating them in the values of the ruling class. This connection between authors and audiences makes literature an effective tool to understand the hegemonic implications of ‘common sense’, and how this could contribute to prompt the subaltern groups to embrace the ideology of the ruling class. Adopting a different perspective, Emma Nicholson’s chapter focuses on the historical figure of Polybios, and his capacity to play an important role in the definition of power relations, both through his diplomatic and literary activities. The use of the Gramscian categories of ‘hegemony’, ‘passive revolution’, and ‘intellectuals’ enhances a pragmatic interpretation of the Histories, through which the author-intellectual acted as a cultural mediator between Roman dominators and the subjugated Greeks. Through Polybios’ words, the Greek audience could sharpen its awareness of the political situation, and thereby find reasons to understand and consent to the new ruling system.13 Polybios’ biography offers further evidence for this reading. Born in Greece from an aristocratic family, he held the role of hipparchos for the Achaean League until the battle of Pydna, after which he was taken to Rome as a hostage.14 There, his close relationship with the Scipiones is linked to the phenomenon of literary patronage, but it could also be related with due caution to the Gramscian category of ‘intellectuals’.15 Although Gramsci’s theories were grounded in the observation of capitalistic society and its mode of production, he himself stated in the Prison Notebooks: Certainly, the philosophy of praxis is realised through the concrete study of past history and through present activity to construct new history. But a theory of history and politics can be made, for even if the facts are always unique and changeable in the flux of movement of history, the concepts can be theorised. Otherwise one would not even be able to tell what movement is, or the dialectic, and one would fall back into a new form of nominalism.16 Polybios’ economic dependence from the Scipiones, who hosted him during his deportation to the Urbs, and the political function of his work made him a sort of ‘deputy’ (commesso, in Gramscian terms) of the ruling class: in providing a narrative construction for the recent Roman domination, Polybios’ work could contribute to the consent “‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence)” that the Romans enjoyed because of their position and imperialist function.17

The author as intellectual? 333 Polybios’ status as an intellectual can be read in different ways, depending on whether we look at it from a Roman or Greek perspective. In regard to the Greek communities, for instance, Polybios was a political actor of primary importance and organised social and military life because of his role as hipparchos. His prestige was based on his familiar origins and on his military and diplomatic activity. The deportation to Rome transformed Polybios’ social and political status. In Gramscian terms, we can read this event in Polybios’ life as an example of ‘assimilation’: One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals, but this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and more efficacious the more the group in question succeeds in simultaneously elaborating its own organic intellectuals.18 Although Gramsci did not have in mind the more complex cases of territorial conquests, the application of his theories to the analysis of Polybios’ works and biography do reveal the multifaceted effects of the Roman imperialism onto the Greek world. In fact, the Romans had been able to accomplish the military occupation of Greece and won the “struggle to assimilate and conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals” of the enemy.19 The example of Polybios is thus emblematic: transported to Rome as a hostis, he was later transformed into a hospes and integrated within the Roman ideology by means of his amicitia with the Scipiones. In keeping with the Scipiones’ political agenda, he conceived an historical work that not only mediated between the subjugated Greeks and the Roman dominators, but was also capable of legitimising Roman power and bringing advantages to his hosts on the Roman political scene. Indeed, on the one hand, the Histories endorsed the Philhellenic and expansionistic agendas of the Scipiones, and thereby strengthened their political influence as well as their image as patrons of the arts and culture. On the other hand, by examining the reasons for Rome’s success, Polybios contributed to justifying Roman hegemony. 20 Taking a different viewpoint, Elena Giusti’s chapter employs the Gramscian category of ‘Caesarism’ as an interpretative tool for the reading of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile.21 Although her analysis does not focus on the compositional context of the poem, she provides a number of hints to reflect on both the role and the function of the author within Roman ­politics. The plot of the Bellum ciuile appears expressly conceived to challenge the readers, and prompt questions about the (admittedly elusive) interpretation of Lucan’s own reading of the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. By narrating a hegemonic crisis that led to the establishment of a new hegemony, the author acts in keeping with the function of the

334  Anna Maria Cimino intellectual discussed so far. Lucan dramatised the struggle for the conquest of power, thus performing, at the same time, as a poet and an interpreter of history. 22 Giusti’s contribution shows that ‘Caesarism’ can stimulate a wider and thought-provoking discussion on the forms of representations of power, if applied lato sensu to the interpretation of literary works. In particular in the specific case of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile, this Gramscian category effectively contributes to explain how the poem invented the ‘myth of Caesar’, making his character an icon of the system of power that Caesar himself had started to build. 23 Finally, through an analysis of both Tacitus’ and Luke’s works, Jeremy Paterson problematises the ways in which literature represents the dynamics of the political power and gives space to the evolution of the hegemonic world-view as well as to the development of alternative narratives of ­resistance. 24 The reflection on the lexicon and all the aspects through which the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles openly refer to GraecoRoman culture makes evident the assimilation of Christian communities. By attempting to adapt his style to the language of the official documents, the author-intellectual becomes a mediator between the subalterns and the Empire. In this interchange, it is possible to take a glimpse into the process of renegotiation of hegemony and into its acceptance by the subalterns on the basis of prestige. 25 Nevertheless, the narratives of resistance originated among the Christians would have become a hegemonic tool capable, in the longue durée, to contribute to the formation of a Christian alternative discourse based on an act of ‘reclamation’ from the Empire, and of a chasm between Christianity itself and the Roman Empire. These narratives, in fact, were based on a process of reclaiming of the dominators’ vocabulary. The talent of the Christian authors in employing the dominators’ discourse to their own ends would transpire to be the secret of their success. Luke himself underlined the close connection between language and communication skills and the effectiveness of evangelisation in the Acts of Apostles (Acts 2.2–41): And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. […]. So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 26 In this episode, the Holy Spirit provides the Apostles with the gift of speaking many languages so that they could address the crowd and

The author as intellectual? 335 convert about three thousand people on a single day. Also, thanks to these linguistic strategies, the belief of a few Eastern communities, marginalised and persecuted by both Jews and Pagans, was to become a mass religion, albeit Luke and the Christians did not originally aim to build an alternative system of secular power to fight the Roman Empire. 27

Reading Virgil through Gramsci: new questions for a long-standing debate The perspective and the framework provided by the contributions discussed above could also prove useful for the study of the Aeneid and the historical figure of Virgil. Most significantly, Gramsci’s thought could be useful in reflecting upon the vexata quaestio that still divides the Augustan and the anti-Augustan readings of this poet and his literary masterpiece. In his 1992 essay, ‘‘Augustan’ and ‘anti-Augustan’: Reflections on terms of reference’, Duncan Kennedy showed that in the literary production of the late first century BCE potential expressions of dissent towards Octavian/Augustus could be subsumed into the narrative construction of the Principate. Poetic ambiguities were encompassed in the political communication system of Octavian/Augustus’ hegemony as much as in the celebration of his power, and contributed, together with these, to the stability of his ideology. 28 Insisting on these aspects in particular, Elena Giusti argued that the very act of interpreting the Aeneid is a process that “forces us to create and imagine links, and this practice is inextricable from a simultaneous understanding, or reconstruction, of the ‘world of consistency’ that the Augustan ideology attempted to conjure up.”29 According to this reading, the poem can be understood as a metaphor of Octavian/Augustus power: the double-thinking of the Aeneid mirrors that of the Principate and its artificial and ideological character. For this reason, the audience of readers and listeners would find a space of resistance paradoxically internal to the Augustan communication system itself. 30 Through the use of Gramsci’s reflections, we can formulate new questions that could make the debate on Augustan/anti-Augustan interpretations more nuanced, and adopt a new focus to better evaluate the role of Virgil in the social structure and culture of first-century BCE, without aligning his profile with the ideology of the Principate. 31 Notably, Gramscian categories of ‘hegemony’ and ‘intellectuals’ can offer hints to investigate how Virgil put himself in dialogue with Augustan discourse, being influenced by it or inspiring its very elaboration. A fresh reconsideration of Virgil’s ties to Augustan ideology and the role of the Aeneid in the construction of the new hegemonic discourse under a Gramscian lens prove useful and shed light on the material grounds

336  Anna Maria Cimino upon which allegiance and conflict were based. Gramsci’s interpretation of the reciprocal bonds between material and ideological aspects of the hegemonic power could help us better understand the role of the poem, and reassess our conclusions on whether the Aeneid can be considered an instrument to maintain and extend Augustus’ h ­ egemony. After all, as Christopher Smith stresses in this volume, the world of l iterary production offers examples of traditional intellectuals who ­ operate alongside cultural organisers: 32 for instance, Maecenas pursued his interests in the development of Roman literature while h ­ olding the cura of Italy, an appointment he received in 36 BCE. 33 In light of  the  multifaceted role played by cultural organisers, we could formulate the question of how the ties with Maecenas influenced Virgil in shaping his representation of Italy and its people in the Aeneid in a completely revitalised heuristic framework. This is a different story that deserves to be explored in full elsewhere, if only to see whether a Gramscian perspective may be worth pursuing even further, as the contributions to this volume suggest is possible to do from a range of different standpoints.

Acknowledgements All translations are mine, except where otherwise stated. I wish to thank Julene Abad del Vecchio, Nicolò Benzi, Mario Citroni, Federico Santangelo, Alessandro Schiesaro, and Emilio Zucchetti for their valuable comments. I am also very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this volume for their enriching and stimulating suggestions. Any errors or inaccuracies that remain are my own responsibility.

Notes 1 For an overall account of the activity and the life of Antonio La Penna, see the biographical profiles by Coccia (1987: 119–21), Gamberale (1993), and Narducci (1996-1998: 310–3). 2 La Penna (1978: 5–41) [= La Penna (1974: 39–72)]. 3 La Penna (1978: xi), “La ricchezza e la modernità della cultura antica devono però molto al fatto che la classe dominante per mantenere il suo dominio ha fatto uso non solo della forza, ma anche, e largamente, della ricerca del consenso, è stata cioè spesso capace di creare una sua egemonia culturale. La ricerca dei modi in cui la classe dominante romana, o questo o quel gruppo politico di essa, elabora una sua egemonia culturale, è tema dominante in questi scritti, anche se lo svolgimento resta solo parziale, sporadico rispetto all’ampiezza del tema. In anni ormai lontani ricevetti uno stimolo in questa direzione dalla lettura di Gramsci, e ancora oggi, dopo quasi trent’anni, riconosco questo debito, senza né sottovalutarlo né sopravvalutarlo. Gramsci fu efficace anche per tener desta l’attenzione verso i complessi e complicati meccanismi di mediazione, i molteplici momenti relativamente, o apparentemente, autonomi, attraverso cui dal dominio economico si passa all’elaborazione della

The author as intellectual? 337 cultura; proprio per la storia della civiltà antica tale attenzione è particolarmente necessaria, giacché lì più che altrove i contrasti di classi si manifestano mediamente nello spazio politico e nella problematica morale.” The emphasis is mine. 4 See Swift, Nicholson, Giusti and Paterson in this volume. 5 Some hints have been already brought into the discussion about Cicero by Fontana (2000: 324–6). 6 For further discussion about the political function of intellectuals according to Gramsci, see Showstack Sassoon (1986: 137–68) and (19872: 134–50); more recently, Voza (2009). 7 Q12§1 = QC: 1513 = SPN: 145, “Ogni gruppo sociale, nascendo sul terreno originario di una funzione essenziale nel mondo della produzione economica, si crea insieme, organicamente, uno o più ceti di intellettuali che gli danno omogeneità e consapevolezza della propria funzione non solo nel campo economico, ma anche in quello sociale e politico.” 8 Q12§1 = QC: 1519 = SPN: 145, “Gli intellettuali sono i «commessi» del gruppo dominante per l’esercizio delle funzioni subalterne dell’egemonia sociale e del governo politico, cioè: 1) del consenso «spontaneo» dato dalle grandi masse della popolazione all’indirizzo impresso alla vita sociale dal gruppo fondamentale dominante, consenso che nasce «storicamente» dal prestigio (e quindi dalla fiducia) derivante al gruppo dominante dalla sua posizione e dalla sua funzione nel mondo della produzione; 2) dell’apparato di coercizione statale che assicura «legalmente» la disciplina di quei gruppi che non «consentono» né attivamente né passivamente, ma è costituito per tutta la società in previsione dei momenti di crisi nel comando e nella direzione in cui il consenso spontaneo vien meno.” 9 Q12§1 = QC: 1513 = SPN: 135, “Occorre notare il fatto che l’imprenditore rappresenta una elaborazione sociale superiore, già caratterizzata da una certa capacità dirigente e tecnica (cioè intellettuale). […] deve essere un organizzatore di masse d’uomini.” 10 See Swift in this volume. 11 Cf. Durante (2004: 150–69) about the Gramscian category of n ­ azionalepopolare. On this issue, see also Thomas (2014: 98–9), even if he focuses on language rather than literature language rather than literature. 12 Q8§173 = QC 1045 = PN3: 334, “Nella cultura filosofica francese esistono trattazioni sul «senso comune» più che in altre culture: ciò è dovuto al carattere «popolare-nazionale» della cultura francese, cioè al fatto che gli intellettuali tendono, più che altrove, per determinate condizioni storiche, ad avvicinarsi al popolo per guidarlo ideologicamente e tenerlo legato al gruppo dirigente. Si potrà trovare quindi nella letteratura francese molto materiale sul senso comune utilizzabile: anzi l’atteggiamento della cultura filosofica francese verso il «senso comune» può offrire un modello di costruzione culturale egemonica.” Cf. Voza (2009). 13 See Nicholson in this volume. 14 Champion (2004: 17). 15 On the social phenomenon of literary patronage in Republican Rome, cf. Gold (1987: 39–67). 16 Q11§26 = QC: 1433 = SPN 427, “Certo la filosofia della praxis si realizza nello studio concreto della storia passata e nell’attività attuale di creazione di nuova storia. Ma si può fare la teoria della storia, e della politica, poiché se i fatti sono sempre individuati e mutevoli nel flusso del movimento storico, i  concetti possono essere teorizzati; altrimenti non si potrebbe neanche sapere cosa è il movimento o la dialettica e si cadrebbe in una nuova forma di

338  Anna Maria Cimino nominalismo”. For further discussion about this passage see Morton (2003: 129–34), instead for a general overview about the theory of praxis see Mustè (2018: 175–6). 17 See n. 8 18 Q12§1 = QC: 1517 = SPN 135, “Una delle caratteristiche più rilevanti di ogni gruppo che si sviluppa verso il dominio è la sua lotta per l’assimilazione e la conquista «ideologica» degli intellettuali tradizionali, assimilazione e conquista che è tanto più rapida ed efficace quanto più il gruppo dato elabora simultaneamente i propri intellettuali organici.” 19 Cf. Q12§1 = QC: 1517 = SPN 135, “Una delle caratteristiche più rilevanti di ogni gruppo che si sviluppa verso il dominio è la sua lotta per l’assimilazione e la conquista «ideologica» degli intellettuali tradizionali, assimilazione e conquista che è tanto più rapida ed efficace quanto più il gruppo dato elabora simultaneamente i propri intellettuali organici.” See also Bellomo in this volume. 20 See n. 8. 21 See Giusti in this volume. 22 See Giusti in this volume (p. 249): “We are, however, allowed to notice how the Bellum ciuile has spoken and continues to speak resistance to Caesarism and the necessity of political humanism in its twentieth century reception.” About the relationship between Caesarism and hegemonic crisis in Gramsci, see Antonini (2016: 167–84). 23 On the difference in Gramsci’s view between the historical Caesar and the myth of Caesar, see Santangelo in this volume. 24 See Paterson in this volume. 25 See n. 8. 26 Eng. tr. by Nestle and Aland (2012). For the Greek text see the New Revised Standard Version Bible (1989): καὶ ἐγένετο ἄφνω ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἦχος ὥσπερ φερομένης πνοῆς βιαίας καὶ ἐπλήρωσεν ὅλον τὸν οἶκον οὗ ἦσαν καθήμενοι καὶ ὤφθησαν αὐτοῖς διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρὸς καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐφ’ ἕνα ἕκαστον αὐτῶν, καὶ ἐπλήσθησαν πάντες πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ ἤρξαντο λαλεῖν ἑτέραις γλώσσαις καθὼς τὸ πνεῦμα ἐδίδου ἀποφθέγγεσθαι αὐτοῖς. Ἦσαν δὲ εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ κατοικοῦντες Ἰουδαῖοι, ἄνδρες εὐλαβεῖς ἀπὸ παντὸς ἔθνους τῶν ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανόν. γενομένης δὲ τῆς φωνῆς ταύτης συνῆλθεν τὸ πλῆθος καὶ συνεχύθη, ὅτι ἤκουον εἷς ἕκαστος τῇ ἰδίᾳ διαλέκτῳ λαλούντων αὐτῶν. […] οἱ μὲν οὖν ἀποδεξάμενοι τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθησαν καὶ προσετέθησαν ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ψυχαὶ ὡσεὶ τρισχίλιαι. 27 Seyoon (2008: 192). 28 Kennedy (1992: 26–58). 29 Giusti (2016: 12). 30 Giusti (2016: 12–3). 31 On this issue see White (1993) with La Penna (1998). 32 See Smith in this volume. 33 Le Doze (2014: 58–9) and Chillet (2016: 206–23).

Bibliography Antonini, F. (2016) ‘“Il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere”: cesarismo ed egemonia nel contesto della crisi organica’, International Gramsci Journal, 2, 167–84. Champion, C.B. (2004) Cultural Politics in Polybius’s Histories. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

The author as intellectual? 339 Chillet, C. (2016) De l’Étrurie à Rome: Mécène et la fondation de l’Empire. Rome: École Française de Rome. Coccia, M. (1987) ‘La Penna, Antonio’, in Della Corte, F. (ed.) Enciclopedia virgiliana. Vol. 3. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 119–21. Durante, L. (2004) ‘Nazionale-popolare’, in Frosini, F. and G. Liguori (eds.) Le parole di Gramsci. Per un lessico dei Quaderni del carcere. Rome: Carocci, 150–69. Fontana, B. (2000) ‘Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 61, 305–26. Gamberale, L. (1993) ‘La Penna, Antonio’, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze lettere e arti, Appendix 5 (IT – O). [Online] Available at: https://www.treccani.it/­ enciclopedia/antonio-la-penna_%28Enciclopedia-Italiana%29/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Giusti, E. (2016) ‘Did Somebody Say Augustan Totalitarianism? Duncan Kennedy’s ‘Reflections,’ Hannah Arendt’s Origins, and the Continental Divide over Virgil’s Aeneid’, Dictynna 13. [Online] Available at: http://dictynna.revues.org/1282 (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Gold, B.K. (1987) Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press. Kennedy, D.F. (1992) “Augustan’ and ‘Anti-Augustan’: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.) Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus. London: Bristol Classical Press, 26–58. La Penna, A. (1974) ‘Potere politico ed egemonia culturale in Roma antica dall’età delle guerre puniche all’età degli Antonini’, in Atti del convegno ‘Il latino nelle Facoltà umanistiche’, Perugia, 8-10 Novembre 1973. Rome: Elia, 39–72. Reprinted in id. (1978), Aspetti del pensiero storico latino, con due scritti sulla scuola classica, politica e cultura in Roma antica e nella tradizione classica moderna. Turin: Einaudi, 5-41. La Penna, A. (1978) Aspetti del pensiero storico latino, con due scritti sulla scuola classica. Politica e cultura in Roma antica e nella tradizione classica moderna. Turin: Einaudi. La Penna, A. (1998) ‘Review of White, P. (1993) Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome’, Maia, 50, 527–38. Le Doze, P. (2014) Mécène: ombres et flamboyances. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Morton, A.D. (2003) ‘Historicizing Gramsci: Situating Ideas in and Beyond Their Context’, Review of International Political Economy, 10(1), 118–46. Mustè, M. (2018) Marxismo e filosofia della praxis. Da Labriola a Gramsci. Rome: Viella. Narducci, E. (1996-1998) ‘La Penna, Antonio’, in Della Corte, F. and S. Mariotti (eds.) Enciclopedia Oraziana. Vol. 3. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia italiana, 310–13. Nestle, E. and K. Aland (eds.) (2012) Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th edn. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Seyoon, K. (2008) Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul and Luke. Grand Rapids, Mich. MI: Eerdmans. Showstack Sassoon, A. (1986) ‘The People, Intellectuals and Specialized Knowledge’, boundary 2, 14(3), 137–68. Showstack Sassoon, A. (1987) Gramsci’s Politics. 2nd edn. London: Hutchinson. Thomas, P.D. (2014) ‘Intellettuali ed egemonia: narrazioni di nazione-popolo’, in Pala, M. (ed.) Narrazioni egemoniche: Gramsci, letteratura e società civile. Bologna: Il Mulino, 71–106.

340  Anna Maria Cimino Voza, P. (2009), ‘Intellettuali’, ‘Intellettuali italiani’, ‘Intellettuali organici’, ‘Intellettuali tradizionali’, in Liguori, G. and P. Voza (eds.) Dizionario gramsciano 1926-1937. Rome: Carocci. [Online] Available at: http://dizionario.­gramsciproject. org/ (Accessed: 20 August 2020). White, P. (1993) Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: CUP.

2

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus A Gramscian approach to Greek cultural and political history Alberto Esu

Introduction Ancient Greece emerges less prominently in Gramsci’s reflections upon antiquity than ancient Rome does. Such mentions have, however, meaningful implications in his historical and philosophical thought. For example, in Notebook 17, written in 1933, Gramsci engages in a critical analysis of Augusto Rostagni’s theory on the origins of Latin literature, which downplayed the Greek contribution to the initial development of the Roman literary tradition.1 Rostagni’s view was clearly against the German philological tradition, and was influenced by the contemporary Italian debate about the legacy of ancient Rome promoted by the fascist government. Gramsci rejects Rostagni’s understanding of the origins of Latin literature as a product of the unification of Italy after the Punic Wars and denies any national character to Roman literature. In Gramsci’s view, this unitary character was prevented by the dichotomy between popular culture and Roman elite culture. This separation originated in the role of Greek freedmen (liberti), such as Livius Andronicus, playing the role of intellectuals for the Roman ruling class – and later by Greek political prisoners such as Polybius, a topic explored in this volume in Emma Nicholson’s chapter and Anna Maria Cimino’s section in the afterthoughts. According to Gramsci, Greek-speaking intellectuals favoured a national and cultural demarcation between the Hellenized elites in Rome and the popular masses (Q1§12). Gramsci, as a result, identifies the origin of ancient (and modern) intellectual cosmopolitanism in the influence of Greek culture upon the Roman elites. Here, Gramsci’s engagement with the Greek-Roman relationship emerges as a starting point for a broader theorisation on the role of organic intellectuals – a dialectic use of antiquity, which is also found, for example, in Gramsci’s references to ancient philosophers as discussed in Phillip Horky’s chapter. Thus, Classical Greece plays a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, role in Gramsci’s historical analysis of elite culture vis-à-vis nationalpopular culture in antiquity; yet it makes a discernible contribution to his seminal theorisations of ideology and hegemony. It is indeed with

342  Alberto Esu regard to cultural hegemony and political society that Classical Greece seems to be most often mentioned in Gramsci’s work. 2 If the study of Ancient Greek culture and language did not play a marginal role in Antonio Gramsci’s early intellectual formation, his innovative concept of hegemony offers to classicists a productive analytical tool for the interpretation of the socio-economic, cultural, and political history of the Greek world, as well as for reconciling different methodological frameworks in current scholarship.3 Influential works on Greek history, such as those by Moses Finley, Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, Josiah Ober, and Peter Rose, have used Gramscian analytical notions in various ways, with an emphasis on ideology.4 Many essays in this volume have especially engaged with the closely related notion of hegemony and discussed its mechanisms in action. The introduction to this volume does an excellent job of presenting Gramsci’s hegemony not as dogmatic concept. Gramscian hegemony is a dynamic process through which institutions, practices, and discourses allowed the ruling class to control the other social classes in a two-way system of domination and consent, both in civil society and in the State. Coercion and consent work together and at the same time in shaping the rulers’ hegemony. In these short remarks, I shall not repeat, nor shall I discuss in detail, Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony and other relevant theoretical concepts. By building on the stimulating findings of some of the essays in this volume, I rather intend to suggest some future directions for the study of ancient Greek culture and history. I will focus on some wider themes emerging from the volume: a Gramscian approach could offer an apt theoretical framework to introduce further questions into the scholarly debate. I will primarily focus on how the key concept of timē (usually translated as ‘honour’, ‘dignity’, ‘prerogative’) can inform a better understanding of power dynamics of coercion and consent in Greek society and politics. I will start with a discussion of timē terminology within a Gramscian perspective (Section 2) and will then move to discussing how such a framework can inform potential developments in the study of Greek politics and society (Sections 3 and 4).

Greek timē and Gramsci: prerogatives and hegemony in ancient Greece How did hegemony work in the ancient Greek world? Some papers in this collection have analysed the actual representation of hegemony with different focuses, and in a variety of ancient Greek pieces of evidence, ranging from Archaic poetry to Imperial medical texts. Through the variety of sources and the wide chronological span, what clearly emerges is that, without us imposing our own categories, the Greeks were perfectly capable of conceptualising the mechanisms of hegemony through the ethical and moral language revolving around the concept

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus 343 of timē, which was a key notion in all aspects of political, social, and everyday life, as is suggested in Mirko Canevaro’s chapter. Because of the reciprocal and mutual mechanism of recognition it presupposes, timē is a concept particularly suitable to conceptualising and expressing phenomena akin to those theorised by Gramsci under the rubric of hegemony. Far from being a product of an aristocratic society or of Classical Athenian democracy, the language of honour, as well as concepts that are conceptually built on timē such as hybris (outrage) and aischynē (shame) resonate in the accounts of power dynamics of Archaic and Classical Greece, whether these are about Homeric heroes vis-à-vis the laos, Archilochus’ hetaireia, or honorary decrees discussed and approved by the Assembly in Classical Athens. 5 The examples from early Greek poetry presented by Laura Swift show that in Archaic society reflected in early hexametric poetry and in Archilochus there were different hegemonic mechanisms based on coercion and consent, and predicated on the language of timē. A key term to the understanding of timē mechanisms in Greek culture is hybris. It is, nonetheless, important to avoid any conceptual confusion between ancient and modern categories. Although hybris is construed in terms of timē and implies an act of coercion, it cannot be properly identified with the Gramscian category of coercion, which is the ‘legitimate’ use of force by the authority – operating hand-in-hand with the mechanism of consent – to force social groups to abide by the dictates of ideological hegemony (Q12). On the other hand, the Greeks understood hybris as a dispositional tendency to claim, illegitimately, excessive timē for oneself, in the process encroaching on the timē of others: as Swift points out in her analysis of the Hesiodic episode of the Nightingale and the Hawk, hybris is opposed to dikē (justice) and is a negative state for both the powerful and the weak.6 Even if hybris, as a moral and behavioural category, does not correspond to Gramscian coercion, the relevant mechanism of timē underpinning hybris is key to explaining the power dynamics between ruling class and the different subordinated groups of the Greek poleis (e.g. women, foreigners, slaves).7 Because timē is grounded in social interaction between individuals and the community, timē terminology can express both the prerogatives and rights of those in power (including the power of coercion) as well as the consent mechanism of the subalterns. An excellent example of such a dynamic is provided in Swift’s discussion of the role of laos in Iliad 2. 8 I would like to focus on how timē is central to understanding the power and class dynamics in this Homeric passage. After the goddess Athena orders Odysseus not to leave Troy, the hero approaches both the Achaean basileis and the demotivated soldiers to encourage them not to desert. Odysseus reminds the other Achaean chiefs about the role and power of Agamemnon as their leader (Il. 2.190–7):

344  Alberto Esu δαιμόνι᾽ οὔ σε ἔοικε κακὸν ὣς δειδίσσεσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτός τε κάθησο καὶ ἄλλους ἵδϱυε λαούς: οὐ γάϱ πω σάφα οἶσθ᾽ οἷος νόος Ἀτϱεΐωνος: νῦν μὲν πειϱᾶται, τάχα δ᾽ ἴψεται υἷας Ἀχαιῶν. ἐν βουλῇ δ᾽ οὐ πάντες ἀκούσαμεν οἷον ἔειπε. μή τι χολωσάμενος ῥέξῃ κακὸν υἷας Ἀχαιῶν: θυμὸς δὲ μέγας ἐστὶ διοτϱεφέων βασιλήων, τιμὴ δ᾽ ἐκ Διός ἐστι, φιλεῖ δέ ἑ μητίετα Ζεύς You are possessed! It is not right to threaten you as if you were a coward; go, sit down again and make all your people sit as well. You do not yet know clearly what the son of Atreus intends; He is testing the Achaeans’ son now, but soon he will hit them hard. Did we not all hear what he said in the council? I am afraid that in his bitterness he may punish the sons of Achaeans. Great is the temper of kings who are nurtured by Zeus; their honour comes from Zeus, and Zeus the counsellor loves them.9 The word timē prominently conveys Agamemnon’s higher status, prerogatives, and right as the Achaeans’ legitimate ruler chosen by Zeus, and his status is also contextually acknowledged by everyone in the council of leaders (ἐν βουλῇ δ᾽ οὐ πάντες ἀκούσαμεν οἷον ἔειπε). The word timē regularly occurs in reference to the exercise of power in a specific domain. In Hesiod’s Theogony, after winning over his father Kronos, Zeus allocates different timai to the gods and goddesses.10 Similarly, in Iliad 1.277–9, Nestor reminds Achilles not to fight with Agamemnon because “a sceptreholding king to whom Zeus grants glory enjoys a greater portion of honour than other men do (ἐπεὶ οὔ ποθ᾽ ὁμοίης ἔμμοϱε τιμῆς)”. Thus, timē is not only the word for indicating a role or office, but it also indicates the relevant dignity that such a role attracts from the community and the prerogatives that one can rightly claim. Agamemnon has a higher timē than the other Achaean leaders because he is their king, and he demands, to use Darwall’s terminology, ‘recognition respect’ (i.e. dignity bestowed in recognition of one’s status per se).11 His timē gives him coercive power vis-à-vis the mass of the soldiers. Homer describes what prerogatives the king’s timē involves when Odysseus tells a soldier (Il. 2.205–6): “there must be only one lord, one king to whom the son of crooked-counselled Kronos gave the sceptre and customs so that he may take advice for you (σκῆπτϱόν τ᾽ ἠδὲ θέμιστας ἵνά σφισι βουλεύῃσι).” Odysseus’ speech provides an insight into the foundational aspects of the cultural hegemony underpinning Homeric society. As rightly noted in Swift’s chapter, the sceptre is the material marker of Agamemnon’s royal timē, but his authority is also enshrined in customary laws (themis), the hegemonical practices and values accepted by the community.12 Agamemnon’s prerogatives are

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus 345 famously challenged by Thersites, who blames him for having dishonoured/disrespected (ἠτίμησεν) Achilles and lists all the (underserved, from Thersites’ perspective) material goods enjoyed by Agamemnon in his tent, markers of his higher status (2.225–42). By the violent, yet legitimate, use of the sceptre Odysseus punishes Thersites for his insolent words, and imposes the authority of the heroic leaders over the laos. But the hegemonic mechanism is more complex that the mere use of physical and verbal abuse by a prominent hero. The comment of the laos shows that the mass of soldiers had internalised the hegemonic values and its relevant language. This was a shared morality and there was no gulf between the leaders’ values and the soldiers. The mass complies with the hegemony by defining the speech of Thersites against Agamemnon as “dishonourable words” (ὀνειδείοις ἐπέεσσιν), and relying once again on the terminology of timē and its rules that regulate the allocation of power and status. In Gramscian terms, the bidirectional nature of timē encompasses the category of consent granted by the masses to their rulers because of their economic and political prestige through internalised acquisition of the dominant moral values and beliefs as well as the right of the rulers to exercise coercive power over the subalterns. Such a dynamic was not only fundamental in the Homeric world, but is key to the understanding of the social and political interactions in Greek society from the Archaic period onwards.

Greek political systems and Gramsci: hegemony and inequalities within the Greek polis The Homeric examples provide a picture of elites who control political power. On the other hand, the evidence from Classical Athens discussed in Canevaro’s chapter shows a very different picture. The Athenian dēmos held a hegemonic role in both the ‘political society’ – i.e. the formal institutions of Athens, such as the Assembly, the Council, the lawcourts, the magistracies – and in what Gramsci called ‘civil society’. Once again, honorary practice sheds light in the hegemonic mechanisms of a political community. Under the constant hegemony of the dēmos’ honorific practices in the form of decrees and public acknowledgements, citizens (politai) as well as metics and people with a subordinated legal status interacted in the agora, in the gymnasia, and in the private associations where even slaves could find agency, as Vlassopoulos stressed in his chapter.13 Yet, a separation between the two domains should not be overestimated. The honorific practice used by the polis institutions in fact were not different from those used in private associations for praising its members and shows that the discursive practice shaped in the polis institutions, hegemonised by the dēmos, were pervasive outside those official arenas of social and political life.14 Moreover, one should not underestimate the social norms and the constraints that the ‘complex superstructures’, to use Gramsci’s

346  Alberto Esu terminology (the institutions, the formal legal status, and the institutionalised spaces in which people lived and acted), imposed upon slave agency in perpetuating the masters’ hegemony and in shaping slave ideology. As Canevaro duly notes, the separation between the two spheres in which hegemony is forged should be nuanced when it comes to the world of the Greek poleis.15 This was the case even with master-slave relationships in Classical Athens, the most asymmetrical type of domination.16 For example, the graphē hybreōs, the public action against hybris, could also be brought against masters who committed hybris against their own slaves. This, however, did not imply any legal recognition of the slaves’ rights. It was rather the sanction of the polis institutions – the political society, in Gramscian terms – to the master’s hubristic disposition that was in itself considered dishonourable, and at the same time an instrumental mechanism to enforce domination over the slaves.17 Domination systems based on pure coercion (based in turn on physical and psychological domination) did exist in Classical Greece, as exemplified by the Spartan institution of the annual hunt of the Helots (krypteia), which, far from being a ritual, had the purpose of controlling a vast slave population by spreading fear and paranoia.18 While the legal and cultural status of the free (whether citizens or not) and of slaves in the Greek world have already produced a large body of scholarship, the inequalities within the civic body and the relationship between such inequalities and the relevant political systems can be further explored within a Gramscian framework. On the one hand, a Gramscian and intersectional approach can help complement some of the most recent studies on Athenian citizenship in the Classical period; this can especially be adopted for the study of Greek oligarchic systems, a topic which has attracted more interest in recent scholarship.19 Building on seminal studies on social, political, and economic institutions, such as Hodkinson’s study of wealth in Classical Sparta and Seelentag’s work on the Archaic Cretan poleis, and expanding the approach of the recent volume by Simonton, it is possible to understand how the ruling elites forged their hegemony in political regimes other than Athenian democracy. 20 The presence of elite institutions in oligarchic constitutions, such as the Cretan andreion and the Spartan syssition, provided the institutional venues for the consensual perpetuation of ruling-class hegemony within a civic body that was in itself hierarchically diversified. 21 Indeed, as shown by Hodkinson, beyond the Spartan ideology of the homoioi, the relationships between members of the Spartan common masses were highly hierarchical and unequal in terms of display of wealth through voluntary extra-donation (epaiklon) to the meals, which created bonds of patronage between the well-off and the (usually younger) poor members. 22 This asymmetry within the same body of the Spartiates was also reflected in the political institutions of the city. The Gerousia was manned by twenty-eight elite members in addition

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus 347 to the two kings, who held the power to draft proposals for ratification in the Assembly and to stop proposals against the traditional nomos (nomophylakia). 23 Similarly to Athens, Classical Sparta formalised the cultural hegemony in its institutions as well as in the relevant honorific practices which enforced the socio-economic inequalities within the civic body, and promoted the dominant ideology. Election to the Gerousia was the highest honour that a Spartiate could obtain for his excellency and performance in line with the hegemonic ideals of the community. Yet such honours, which Xenophon compared for their exceptional features to the honours bestowed upon athletes, placed the gerontes above the other fellow citizens in terms of prestige and political authority through which they could preserve and further perpetuate the cultural hegemony of the elite. Similar approaches could be extended to other non-democratic regimes, such as Classical Thebes during its oligarchic period, which did not conform to the Spartan mode. It can also help in refining our understanding of the nature of the dēmos (or other ways to identify the institutionalised manifestation of the people such as polis, hoi polloi, plēthos) as a collective political agent, and to problematise the relationship between consensus-building in the political decision-making and legitimacy of the decisions in the Greek world. 24

Conclusion Finally, for the third purpose of my remarks, I shall briefly discuss how these and other analytical tools of Gramsci’s thought can complement current methodological trends in the field of Hellenic studies. As is showcased in this volume, a Gramscian perspective combines the analysis of the political, social, and cultural superstructures (among which the institutions) with the relevant hegemonic discourse produced within it. Such an approach can bridge the gap between two important and complementary approaches in the field of Greek history and culture. On the one hand, there is the approach of scholars working on macro-­structures, just to provide some instances: the relationship between mass and elite, democratic vs. aristocratic ideology, and social interaction between citizens and non-citizens, which have emphasised the need to reconstruct broad pictures of cultural and social life in the Greek world. On the other hand, there is the strand of Greek scholars working on more philological, historiographical, and epigraphical reconstructions, and on political and legal institutions of the Greek world, focusing on more detailed aspects of Greek culture and society. Of course, there is not always a clear-cut divide between the two approaches, but at the same time there has been a certain degree of separation, especially in Anglophone scholarship. A Gramscian approach can offer a remedy by focusing on what Gramsci called the ‘complex superstructures’. By stressing the role

348  Alberto Esu of complex superstructures, a Gramscian approach can reconcile the analysis of the polis institutions with the interaction of social groups. Institutions indeed do not only include political institutions, but also all formalised social phenomena that respond to a set of shared values and norms, through which not only ruling-class hegemony was ­d ialectically shaped with the contribution of the subaltern agency. These are the set of institutional, legal, and cultural apparatuses that provided the ­ideological structure in which the dominant ideology was fabricated and then spread in civil society. These apparatuses were combined and  mixed with the formal state institutions in practice, and together shaped the ideology of a social class. 25 The category of hegemony is therefore an important analytical tool to show the negotiation between rulers and masses as well as the fluid relationship between cultural values and formal institutions in shaping social and political behaviour.

Notes 1 See the discussion and relevant texts in Fonzo (2019: 55). Cf. also M. Balbo’s contribution in this volume. 2 For example, Gramsci believed that Athens (i.e. the Greek-speaking cultural tradition) was continued by the Greek Orthodox Church, and later by Tsarist Russia, in the same way that the Roman state tradition was preserved by the Catholic Church and then by the French centralist state cf. Q17§33. 3 For Gramsci’s educational milieu, see Introduction. During his university years, Gramsci read especially Archaic and Classical Greek texts such as Homer’s Iliad, Thucydides, Euripides and Isocrates, see Fonzo (2019: 15), n. 1. See Fonzo (2019: 49) for the evolution of Gramsci’s views about the role of Latin and Greek for the making of ‘organic intellectuals’. 4 De Ste. Croix (1981: esp. 409–52) (within a more ‘orthodox’ Marxist framework); Finley (1985: 102–5). A Gramscian influence is declared in Ober (1989) and Rose (2012: 41–7) (for a fuller discussion of this problem cf. Introduction, pp. 23–7). Ober’s definition of ideology is also followed by Steinbock (2013). For a detailed discussion see Barbato (2017, 2020). For another Marxist approach to Athenian history see Loraux (1981). For a review of Marxist and anti-Marxist works in Classics see Rose (2006: 101–36). 5 For the different nature between ancient and medieval and modern aristocracies see the essays in van Wees and Fisher (2015). 6 MacDowell (1976) and Fisher (1992); MacDowell stressed the disposition of the agent of hybris. Fisher sees the act of hybris as construed in terms of timē but focuses on the victim’s timē. Cairns (1993, 1996) show that hybris was understood in terms of honour and prioritizing the agent’s disposition. This position is followed by Canevaro (2018) to explain the rationale of the graphē hybreos against slaves. It is not unremarkable that, among other vices, hybris is often associated with tyranny, which was conceptualized as an illegitimate type of political regime in opposition to democracies and oligarchies of the Classical period. See Luraghi (2012: 135–6) and (2015: 67–84). 7 On male domination in Athens and the timē of women in the public sphere see Loraux (1981). 8 For the laos in Homer see Haubold (2000). 9 Eng. tr. Verity (2011).

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus 349 10 For timē as office see Cairns (2019). 11 For the definition of ‘recognition respect’ as opposed to ‘appraisal respect’, based on performance and excellency, see Darwall (1977, 2013). 12 For Homeric society see van Wees (1992). For the sceptre as symbol of political power in Homer cf. Il. 2.86; Od. 8.41 with Carlier (1984: 190), Ruzé (1997: 50–2), and Schulz (2011: 72–3). 13 People with other status than citizens could interact in public spaces with other subordinates even in non-democratic poleis. This is the case with the plot of Kinadon in early fourth-century Sparta, where Kinadon approached another Inferior (hypomeiōn) in the Spartan agora (Xen. Hell. 3.3.5–11). 14 See e.g. IG II 2 .1252; IG II 2 .1253; IG II 2 .1261; IG II 2 .1264. 15 For a clear-cut approach to institutional and extra-institutional spaces in Classical Athens see Gottesman (2014), with a review in Canevaro (2017) for criticism of the narrow concept of institution used by Gottesman. 16 For a recent in-depth study of the Greek slave system within its wider Eastern Mediterranean context see Lewis (2018), showing the centrality of ownership for Greek slavery. 17 This is extensively discussed in Canevaro (2018) and (forthcoming). 18 See Lewis (2018: 132–9) with a detailed discussion of the manumission of helots in Sparta as a way to prevent potential rebellion and mark masters’ domination. 19 On intersectionality, cf. Zucchetti in this volume. See Blok (2017). 20 Hodkinson (2000), Seelentag (2015), and Simonton (2017). 21 For the Spartan archaic syssition see Nafissi (1991). 22 Hodkinson (2000: 356–7). 23 Probouleutic power and power of control over the people’s Assembly was shared with the ephors: see Esu (2017: 353–73). 24 A good analytical tool for understanding this dynamic is provided by the Gramscian category of ‘blocco storico’ (‘historic bloc’), which includes the sociological alliance between urban proletariat and farmers in establishing the hegemony in a political system. For a detailed analysis of this concept see Mustè: (2018: 186–99). 25 This approach is compatible with the theoretical models from Historical Institutionalism and Discursive Institutionalism. In a Gramscian perspective the concept of ‘Institutionalization of Advantage’ of those in power is particularly important: see Pierson (2016: 131–5). For these approaches see Schimdt (2008) and Fioretos, Falleti and Sheingate (2016: 4–22).

Bibliography Barbato, M. (2017) ‘Using the Past to Shape the Future: Ancestors, Institutions and Ideology in Aeschin. 2.74-8?, in Franchi, E. and G. Proietti (eds.) Conflict in Communities. Forward-Looking Memories in Classical Athens. Trento: Università di Trento. Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, 213–53. Barbato, M. (2020) The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past. Edinburgh: EUP. Blok, J. (2017) Citizenship in Classical Athens. Cambridge: CUP. Cairns, D.L. (1993) Aidōs: the Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford: OUP. Cairns, D.L. (1996) ‘Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking Big’, JHS, 116, 1–32. Cairns, D.L. (2019) ‘Honour and Kinship in Herodotus: Status, Role and the Limits of Self-Assertion’, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 14, 75–93.

350  Alberto Esu Canevaro, M. (2017) ‘The Popular Culture of Athenian Institutions. ‘Authorized’ Popular Culture and ‘Unauthorized’ Elite Culture in Classical Athens’, in Grig, L. (ed.) Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: CUP, 39–65. Canevaro, M. (2017) ‘Review of A. Gottesman, The Politics and the Street in Democratic Athens, Cambridge.’, Classical Review, 67.2: 1–3. Canevaro, M. (2018) ‘The Public Charge for Hubris against Slaves: The Honour of the Victim and the Honour of the hubristēs’, JHS, 138, 100–26. Canevaro, M. (forthcoming) ‘Recognition, Imbalance of Power and Agency: Honour Relations and Slaves’ Claims Vis-à-Vis Their Masters’, in Canevaro, D.L. Cairns, and D. Lewis (eds.) Slavery and Honour in the Ancient Greek World. Edinburgh: EUP. Carlier, P. (1984) La Royauté en Grèce avant Alexandre. Strasbourg: AECR. Darwall, S. (1977) ‘Two Kinds of Respect’, Ethics, 88, 36–49. Darwall, S. (2013) Honor, History and Relationship. Essays in the Second-Personal Ethics II. Oxford: OUP. de Ste. Croix, G.E.M. (1981) The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. London: Duckworth. Esu, A. (2017) ‘Divided power and εὐνομία: deliberative procedures in ancient Sparta’, CQ, 67, 353–73.  Finley, M. (1985) Democracy Ancient and Modern. 2nd edn. London: Hogarth. Fioretos, O., T. Falleti and A. Sheingate (2016) ‘Historical Institutionalism in Political Science’, in idd. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism. Oxford: OUP, 4–22. Fisher, N.R.E. (1992) Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece. Warminster: Arris and Philips. Fonzo, E. (2019) Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Mercato San Severino: Paguro. Gottesman, A. (2014) Politics and the Street of Democratic Athens. Cambridge: CUP. Haubold, J. (2000) Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation. Cambridge and New York: CUP. Hodkinson, S. (2000) Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London: Duckworth. Lewis, D. (2018) Greek Slaves Systems in Their Eastern Mediterrean Context, C.800-146 BC. Oxford: OUP. Loraux, N. (1981) Les enfants d’Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division de sexes. Paris: Maspero. Luraghi, N. (2012) ‘One-Man Government: The Greeks and Monarchy’, in Beck, H. (ed.) A Companion to Ancient Greek Government. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 131–45. Luraghi, N. (2015) ‘Anatomy of the Monster: The Discourse of Tyranny in Ancient Greece’, in Börm, H. (ed.) Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 67–84. MacDowell, D.M. (1976) ‘Hybris in Athens’, G&R, 23, 14–31. Mustè, D. (2018) Marxismo e filosofia della praxis. Da Labriola a Gramsci. Rome: Viella. Nafissi, M. (1991) La nascita del kosmos: studi sulla storia e La società di Sparta. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. Ober, J. (1989) Mass and Elites in Democratic Athens. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

Hegemony, coercion, and consensus 351 Pierson, P. (2016) ‘Power in Historical Institutionalism’, in O. Fioretos, T. Falleti and A. Sheingate (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism. Oxford: OUP, 125–42. Rose, P.W. (2006) ‘Divorcing Ideology from Marxism and Marxism from Ideology: Some Problems’, Arethusa, 39, 101–36. Rose, P.W. (2012) Class in Archaic Greece. Cambridge: CUP. Ruzé, F. (1997) Déliberation et pouvoir dans la cité grecque de Nestor à Socrate. Paris: Sorbonne. Schimdt, V. (2008) ‘Discursive Institutionalism. The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 303–26. Schulz, F. (2011) Die Homerische Räte und die spartanische Gerusie. Düsseldorf: Wellem. Seelentag, G. (2015) Das archaische Kreta. Institutionalisierung im frühen Griechenland. Berlin and Boston, MA: de Gruyter. Simonton, M. (2017) Classical Greek Oligarchy. A Political History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP. Steinbock, B. (2013) ‘Contesting the Lessons from the Past. Aeschines’ Use of Social Memory’, TAPA, 143, 65–103. van Wees, H. (1992) Status Warriors: War, Violence, and Society in Homer and History. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben. van Wees, H. and N.R.E. Fisher (eds.) (2015) Aristocracy in Antiquity: Redefining Greek and Roman Elites. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales. Verity, A. (2011) Homer. The Iliad. Oxford: OUP.

3

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history Notes towards the development of an intersectional framework Emilio Zucchetti

By using the concept of hegemony in their chapters, some of the contributors to this volume have shown the potential benefits of bringing Gramsci’s hegemony as macro-category into ancient historical debates. However, it is even clearer that in order to exploit such potential, ancient historians and classicists must make a conscious effort to adapt it to their needs. It is a challenge of creativity: we must reshape a category to make it work as an analytical tool in a very different context from the one Gramsci was working in, which is in turn dissimilar from the one in which we operate. There are possible missteps at every turn, of which we have to be aware. Breaking down the concepts and the categories into their theoretical components and forging an adapted version of them can prove a viable way forward. Within the limited scope of these final comments, my only aim is to propose some possible theoretical articulations that could inform empirical investigations in the future. In the first half of this reflective piece, I will try to highlight two potential issues in seeing hegemony in the ancient world. I will then suggest some possible inspiration from other theorists to adapt hegemony to our needs, whilst retaining its heuristic value.

Two contextual issues: coercion and class First, I would like to focus on how the concept of hegemony can inform our understanding of power and, thus, our interpretation of political systems. As we have seen elsewhere, the Gramscian concept of hegemony has intersected with classical scholarship, even though it has often appeared through the mediation of some other works.1 The contributors to this volume have tried to recover Gramsci’s version of hegemony and remove any other theoretical mediations. The most striking difference from other conceptions of ideology lies in the fact that the mechanism involves the direct participation of the ruled, both in the sense of contributing to the construction of the hegemonic setup and of reproducing the social norms that are embedded in the system of dominance.

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 353 The models of ideology employed in classical studies often relies implicitly on other Marxist paradigms, such as that of ‘false consciousness’ or Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses: the debate on Homeric ‘ideology’ analysed by Peter Rose in ‘Ideology in the Iliad: Polis, Basileus, Theoi’ can stand as an example of an Althusserian view.2 In G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), the chapter dedicated to the ‘Class Struggle on the Ideological Plane’ (7.1) focuses mostly on slavery, property, and Christianity, and no space is given to a model of ideology, reduced to “the simplest form of psychological propaganda, which merely teaches the governed that they have no real option anyway but to submit’ and understood through a dichotomic base-superstructure model of ‘false consciousness’”.3 Unlike these models of cultural development, Gramsci’s account of hegemony envisages a process whereby the masses contribute to the creation of any hegemonic setup through either resistance or accommodation, as Jeremy Paterson stresses in his contribution to this volume. In the latter scenario, they become in their own right producers of the hegemonic ideology, both in political society strictly defined (the state apparatuses, which include in this context parliamentary representatives) and in civil society. If, however, some groups decide not to comply, they are compelled to do so through coercion. This resource enables the rulers to force them to comply or turn the non-compliant groups into negative examples in the hegemonic narrative. In other words, any hegemonic construction interests all the actors, including the masses, either as cooperating with the construction, or as negative symbols, by applying social stigmas and labelling the non-compliant as outcasts. It is important to acknowledge that hegemony is not just a matter of construction of consent, but is rather a process involving a varying percentage of coercion and consent, according to the practical situations the powerful must deal with. As we saw in the Introduction, Francioni and Thomas have convincingly argued against Anderson’s reading of Gramsci’s thought in form of antinomies.4 Hegemony is not just enacted in the space of civil society, but is in itself a dialectical process, resolved in what Gramsci called the integral state, as Christopher Smith reminded us in his contribution.5 This means that civil and political society are to be distinguished only on a methodological level, and not organically, because they both pertain to the state. Resolving the process in the state might sound problematic to ancient historians, as the debate, albeit still unresolved, is critical of the possibility of reading ancient polities as a ‘state’.6 However, despite not having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force as modern states do, various means of coercion can be found in ancient institutions. As examples, we could mention the suppression of moments of social conflict or political instability using the so-called senatus consultum ultimum or the intervention of an army in an urban setting during the late Roman Republic.7

354  Emilio Zucchetti What might prove more problematic is adapting a concept that is well grounded in the socio-economic context of its own time to a very different reality. We must not forget that hegemony is an attempt to explain the system of domination in a nation-state and in the capitalistic mode of production. Smith’s chapter stressed that hegemony spreads directly from the positions in the relations of production. This is precisely the reason why in Gramsci only the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can extend their hegemony over other social groups and create an historical bloc.8 When cultural hegemony is discussed as if it were only a matter of ideology detached from the world of production (or indeed directly produced by it), as if it were an idealistic universal concept, we misunderstand Gramsci’s hegemony, which has always been grounded in historical materialism. By remaining true to its Gramscian conception, we are preparing for the creative phase: being aware of the class nature of hegemony will help us in the process of translating his thought that was in Stuart Hall’s desiderata.9 Hegemony exists first in a Marxist framework: we must thus begin by interrogating the class composition and the mode of production of the society we set out to investigate. This process constitutes a precondition to the possibility of translating Gramsci’s hegemony and adapting it to a different historical context. We must be aware that forcing hegemony upon the context of Classical Athens or Republican Rome is not a viable option: Gramsci would have been very critical of such a method, as is clear from his evaluation of Corrado Barbagallo’s work.10 There are, I would argue, two ways of solving this conundrum: either we adapt hegemony by finding what the fundamental classes were in the ancient economy (but that can prove difficult, as the perpetual scholarly debate on the subject clearly shows), or we push the argument further, along the lines of post-Marxist approaches to hegemony, moving away from what has been termed ‘class essentialism’.11 This latter option, I suggest, could offer interesting possibilities for future research. I will now try to suggest two main reasons why I believe it could be beneficial to our understanding of the ancient world.

Overcoming class binarism: subject-position and anti-essentialism The two fundamental classes of the Marxist model do not exhaust the roles available in the ancient mode of production: describing the ancient economy as a process of capitalistic accumulation still presents a strong ideological bias, as Cristiano Viglietti argued in this volume.12 Without going into detail, if there are more than two fundamental classes, any ‘essentialism’ must be avoided. There would be no reason to limit the hegemonic principle, which is basically the possibility of extending the ruling class’ interests to other classes, to the original Marxist fundamental classes (bourgeoisie and proletariat).13 That is to say, we can understand the hegemonic process

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 355 as centred around any possible group that organises a social formation, even if its identity is not based upon the position of its members in the relations of production. ‘Hegemony’, according to Laclau and Mouffe, is an articulation constructed in the field of discourse. In other words, they have moved Gramsci’s concept into a framework shaped by Foucault’s interpretation of power that is diffused, rather than concentrated.14 This necessarily opens up a series of new questions, which I will soon address. For the moment, there is a set of conditions to be laid down: first, because we are now in the field of discourse, our reasoning will have to move further into the field of linguistics, something that was central also to Gramsci’s interests. Laclau and Mouffe draw their metaphors from structural linguistics and construct their theory on a linguistic level. They build on the assumption that every object is articulated through discourse: The fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with whether there is a world external to thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition. An earthquake or the falling of a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and now, independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of ‘natural phenomena’ or ‘expressions of the wrath of God’, depends upon the structuring of a discursive field.15 For Laclau and Mouffe, the aim of any discourse is to separate ‘elements’ into ‘moments’, which means transforming objects separated from each other into a series of interrelated objects. Discourse is thus the articulation of a series of signifiers around a central signifier. The ‘moments’ have their meaning temporarily fixed in a relatively stable articulation, which is hegemony. I am using the word ‘temporarily’ because the transformation is never completed or fully stabilised; it depends on the contingent nature of the discourse articulating it. For this reason, there is always scope for hegemony – which means there is always the theoretical possibility of a recombination of discourse in order to create a new setup of power.16 For instance, the idea that the Augustan ‘revolution’ constituted a transition between two hegemonic setups is implied in the chapters of Smith and Paterson; resolving the class tension implied in Gramsci’s hegemony, we could propose the idea of a transition in hegemonic discourses organised around a factio, a group of influential men temporarily tied together by the same political goals.17 This, however, implies that their subject position in the articulation of hegemony does not depend upon any fundamental role in the processes of production, i.e. they are not one of the fundamental classes. Once we no longer accept the position in the relations of production as an a priori, the ‘subject position’ is open to any social group, who can then attempt to extend their hegemony over other segments of society,

356  Emilio Zucchetti that is to say convincing other groups that their particular interests are identical to each other.18 The group occupying the subject position, i.e. the one initiating the hegemonic process, must have an unmet demand, something that the system as it does not fulfil: in our Augustan example, it is an unsatisfying share of power inside the ruling class. It is easier to see how, in other contexts, the examples of unfulfilled claims could be rooted in socio-economic, civil, or political grounds: in our contemporary society, these issues are redistribution of wealth, LGBT demands, or the right to political representatives.19 The group occupying the subject position aims to extend its particular agenda as constitutive of the common good, of a general interest. The group-subject stands in open conflict with the group in power (the centre of the system) and aims to organise an opposition to institutions or rulers through the support of other groups with other unfulfilled demands: in the Augustan example, these would be the veterans, the Italians, or the plebs urbana. 20 The various social groups develop a sort of alliance, a ‘historical bloc’ in Gramscian terms: this is based on the temporary organisation of the discourse by the group that occupies the subject position; their particular material interests could be different (note that Gramsci’s hegemony also takes the form of the interests of a particular class extended over other groups in society) but are temporarily subsumed in the group-subject’s interests. The centre, the existing ruling class, is likely to adopt tactics to cope differentially with the differential demands: when it does so, the problem is confronted on an institutional level, and there is no space for hegemonic construction. When it does not, or the differential response is not considered good enough by the social groups involved, there is scope for constituting a new historical bloc, which is the conjunction of superstructure and infrastructure into a concrete social formation. If this is formed, as in Augustus’ case, there is a chance of subverting the existent political setup. Laclau and Mouffe’s hegemony is the extension of the particular interest of any social group (and not necessarily a class in Marxist terms) acting as a subject over the rest of society, that is the transformation of a particular will into a universal will. It does so by constituting through discourse the underlying common sense (mores, social norms of all kind) that fills individual concepts with a coherent conception of the world. To give a few examples: it is because of the hegemonic discourse that the auspicia had an important role in military matters, or whether it was legitimate to own slaves or to free them; even the prestige of senators and their families relied on it. The hegemonic discourse is what made possible a common sense, a concept that we saw discussed in Laura Swift’s chapter in this volume. ‘Common sense’ is what articulated the meaning of different situations and actions into a unitarian, if at times contradictory, response. However, a hegemonic discourse lives with the same controversies as hegemony does: it can be affected from within by

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 357 groups modifying their differential positions, or it can lose its position of dominance. The late Republican political crisis takes place in a specific conjunction of this kind, as Paterson suggests in his paper: a transition between different hegemonic setups changed the meaning of some signifiers, which remained constant in their form, but were transformed in terms of what they referred to. 21 This transition occurred in mutated infrastructural conditions too, although there was no transition between two modes of production in Marxian terms. The examples I just put forward, debatable as they may be, show that hegemony – both in Gramsci’s version and in Laclau and Mouffe – deserves, at the very least, further scrutiny. Hegemony can be employed as a heuristic tool to shed light on subjectivities formed around a common ground (not necessarily an economical one), or a discourse: the idea of plebs itself could be an example of such a construction. In fact, even if not in regard to the relations of production, the distinction between patres and plebs constitutes a functional class, a trait of distinction at work in the context of the struggle of the orders.22 It only underwent a semantic transformation at a later time. Indeed, this inclusive use would be a respectful way for Marxist tradition to put hegemony to work in a different context: Laclau and Mouffe wanted to include other subjectivities united not by their positions in the relations of production, but by their position in power relations on other differential axes, such as gender, race, or sexual orientation. Their attempt was to extend the possibilities for critical masses by taking into account new emerging subjectivities not defined exclusively by their class status. As is often the case, the pre-modern and the post-modern conditions show some parallel features. In the context of these reflections, I suggest that the class character of Gramsci’s hegemony can be problematic when looking to the ancient world. I also propose that ancient historians should consider the validity of a less context-specific theory of power as, for example, the one included in Laclau and Mouffe’s interpretation of hegemony. This spreads from the interaction between a generic Gramscian structure and elements drawn from Foucault’s work. In his assessment of ‘New Theories of Discourse’, Jacob Torfing clarified the fundamental shift applied to hegemony by the Foucauldian twists: hegemony has lost the a priori subject around which the political actors gather. Instead of being linked to class conflict in the traditional Marxist sense, “hegemony involves the articulation of social identities in the context of social antagonism”. 23 In this sense, hegemony becomes a way to investigate certain social formations that Gramsci would have called ‘historical blocs’ without relying on a single-factor explanation; it can help us in analysing different, and sometimes contradictory, interests and demands in historical events, as for instance the social formation that supported Catiline, or Clodius, or even Caesar in their political endeavours. It could give us a tool to look into the complexity that brought a certain social formation to act together, and could

358  Emilio Zucchetti transform our own questions about the sources, despite them being invariably written in a largely male upper-class milieu. For instance, a comparative study of Cicero’s Catilinarians and Catiline’s two speeches in Sallust focusing on the constructedness of the two historical blocs can reveal how their rhetorical strategies brought together diverse social groups with different material interests.

Constructing hegemony in a Foucauldian power structure In this final section I would like to focus on some theoretical issues: are the two systems of power devised by Gramsci and Foucault entirely incompatible? Is there any possibility of keeping a Gramscian layout when moving into Foucauldian territory? Laclau and Mouffe did not discuss the interactions between the two thinkers’ conceptions of power, nor did they develop a strategy to integrate the two systems. However, some attempts to achieve a fuller reflection on the subject have recently been made and have shown some interesting results: the volume edited by David Kreps showed that an approach considering the work of both Foucault and Gramsci without simply adding them to one another could be fruitful, and could allow us to fill some gaps that either of the two leaves when taken alone. 24 In fact, despite looking sometimes incompatible or even contradictory, their conceptions of domination and resistance can indeed interact. 25 One exciting example can be found in the points of contact in their methodologies. Their work can be perhaps situated in the interaction of history and philosophy, where empirical issues stimulate systematic reflections and vice versa: Gramsci’s projected study of the Risorgimento, which has been recalled many times in this volume, can be  somehow paired with Foucault’s working method, in which almost every book is constructed around a historical problem. 26 We said more than once that in Gramsci’s thought individuals and social groups have a chance of affecting hegemony in a given society, either through resistance (for example, in the dialectics between party and militants that organise and support the proletarians’ concurrent hegemony) or through accommodation to the hegemonic system in place. In Foucault’s theory of power, for instance, individuals and collective bodies seem to be deprived of their agency: power is ubiquitous and infuses every form of discourse. It shapes one’s understanding of reality through the production and determination of the forms and the possible domains of knowledge, limiting the possibility of critique. It is exercised through social control, oppression, institutions, and mutual surveillance. And yet, it is not that different from Gramsci’s hegemony in how it affects common sense, the spontaneous philosophies through which people act in their daily life. However, both theorists allow space for resistance in the internal coherence and contradictions embedded in the very structures they are analysing.

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 359 These different theories of power can complement each other and offer us a further set of questions to interrogate our sources and reflect upon them. In the end, if Foucault’s work can be considered a long critique of Marxist economistic orthodoxy, the same can be said of Gramsci’s, which addressed the issues more thoroughly than Laclau and Mouffe wanted to concede. 27 What they call ‘essentialism’ is the description of fundamental power relations in a mature capitalistic society, where the roles in relations of production can be grossly divided among the two fundamental classes, not a final economistic determination as they seem to think. The concept of relations of forces/power relations is central for both authors and constitutes, I believe, the most productive element for this discussion.28 Looking at the intersections between the various power axes on which identities are articulated, we could produce a far more detailed description of the processes that construct/generate common sense, that set of often contradictory social norms that implicitly regulate human interactions. By adding Foucault’s pervasive conception of power to Gramsci’s system, we could explore internal developments in different social groups. Keeping in mind that power can be represented as a chain and not something that can be appropriated like a commodity or wealth, we could investigate axes of power relations representing different groups.29 We might also want to consider the position, held by the Italian Operaisti in the late 1960s and 1970s, according to whom class is not a given but is determined by class struggle, or, in other words, that class is a characteristic that becomes functional as classification of individuals and groups in a society through conflict.30 ‘Classes’ would then be different in every society, and not limited to relations of production. If we want to tie these points together, we could investigate what made a class in Rome or in a Greek polis, what traits generated conflictual relationships and, then, where individuals and social groups stood reciprocally in the power relations. It is more about bringing together different sorts of power relations that have been investigated in previous decades, such as, for instance, gender, centre-periphery (for example, studies on the relationship between Roman power and provinces), race, ­working conditions (also on the moral profile, cf. Cic. Off. 1.150–1), sexuality, religion, and citizenship status. All these different fields and examples can alert us to the mechanisms of power supporting forms of domination other than violence. In other words, I suggest here that the interactions of hegemony and discourse theory can help us investigate forms of organisation of power inscribed in a society based on a different class structure, like Classical Athens or Republican Rome. Finally, advocating a wider notion of power through the concept of axes of power relations means envisaging an intersectional approach to power in the ancient world. ‘Intersectionality’ has become an important concept in many fields of the social sciences as well as in the world of radical political activism since its introduction by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw in 1989. 31 Even though theoretical debates about the concept have not yet

360  Emilio Zucchetti achieved a consensus, most social scientists would agree on defining it as “a way of understanding and analysing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways”. 32 An intersectional approach aims to give a complex depiction of the relations between the different axes of power, mutually affecting each other, and the features of an individual, a group, or a society. Social inequality, individual experiences, and cultural or political movements in a given society can be better understood as being shaped by many axes that work together and influence each other. If every axis of power relation must also be investigated in its own right in order to find the coordinates for a wider approach to power, the historian will have to consider them and their reciprocal interaction in order to describe the structure of a given society. 33 In other words, intersectionality is an invitation to researchers to consider multiple relations of power and multiple historical determinants influencing each other. If we agree that the division base and superstructure are only methodologically and not organically distinct, then it would not be hard to accept that a single effect could be caused by multiple interrelated factors, even though any one of them would be enough to explain the phenomenon (what Althusser would have called overdetermination). 34 Historical explanation looked into the stories and behaviour of leaders for centuries, before turning its attention towards the masses. Intersectionality as an analytical tool can help us to stop treating people as a homogenous, undifferentiated mass, as they are seen by the greatest part of the ancient sources. 35 It could thus help us vindicate the dynamic contribution of the ruled to historical development, just as Gramsci’s hegemony reminds us that the creation of a form of domination is always a dialectical process.

Notes 1 See my Introduction to this volume, esp. 23–27. 2 See Rose (1997, 2006); and Smith in this volume. ‘Ideology’ in Gramsci’s thought is discussed (within the scope of inviting creative uses in humanities and social sciences) in Filippini (2017: 4–23) and, in a different perspective, in Francioni (2018). In this context, I focused on the concept of hegemony, which is one of the terms that “gravitate around the concept of ideology”, in Filippini’s words. 3 De Ste. Croix (1981: 409) 4 Anderson 20172 with Francion 1984 and Thomas 2009; cf. my Introduction in this volume. 5 See Francioni (1984: 146–228), Thomas (2009, esp. 40–83), and Smith in this volume. 6 See Lundgreen (2014), reflecting on ‘statehood’ (Staatlichkeit) in ancient Rome.

Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 361 7 The SCU is the modern definition of a much-discussed decree of the Senate that gives political support to the open repression of subversive tribunes or other magistrates, to make sure that the res publica suffered no harm. Buongiorno (2020) presents a set of useful contributions on many aspects of the debate on the topic: see Scevola (2020) and Schettino (2020) for the most recent mise-au-point on the subject. For the army, see, for instance, Mark Antony attacking the people involved in the occupation of the Forum led by P. Cornelius Dolabella in 47 BCE: Cass. Dio 42.29–32. 8 See Mouffe (1977). 9 See Hall (1986) and Prestipino (2000). 10 Q11§11; see also Fonzo (2019: 104–5). See the chapters by Santangelo and Nappo in this volume. 11 ‘Class essentialism’ refers to the idea that every social group is finally defined by the position occupied in the relations of production. According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 101–8), it is a reductionist stance defining all Marxist models, including Gramsci’s, which is, however, precisely devised against some economic reductionist conceptions in Marxism. They argue that even in Gramsci’s hegemony, the ‘subject position’ is necessarily occupied by one of the two fundamental classes, i.e. bourgeoisie and proletariat. 12 See Capogrossi Colognesi, Giardina and Schiavone (1978) and Giardina and Schiavone (1981); see Hobsbawm (1964). 13 See Mouffe (1979) for the functioning of the ‘fundamental principle’ in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. 14 Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 91–101). 15 Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 92). 16 Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 120–31) conceive subjectivity in terms of ‘differential subject positions’ formed during the process; in other words, the subject is constituted in the process and not because of some pre-existing qualities. 17 The very interpretation put forward by Seager (1972) of factio as positioned between the verbal meaning (‘concerted actions’) and a nominal aspect (‘a group’) seems to me consistent with the model of hegemony proposed here; see also Taylor (1949: 8–9), Brunt (1988: 443–502), and Tatum (2013). 18 Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 101–8). 19 Laclau (2005: 72–7). 20 In Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 108–13) and Laclau (2005: 77–93), this is described as an antagonistic relationship with the centre of the system. 21 The concept of an empty or floating signifier is defined as “a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable, or non-existent signified. Such signifiers mean different things to different people: they may stand for many or even any signifieds; they may mean whatever their interpreters want them to mean. Those who posit the existence of such signifiers argue that there is a radical disconnection between signifier and signified” in Chandlar and Munday (2011: 124–5). For the discussion in the context of hegemony, see Laclau (2005: 129–38). 22 This conception builds on the idea of class implicit in the famous opener of the first Section of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, MECW: 6.482. 23 Torfing (1999: 14). 24 Kreps (2015a). 25 See e.g. Schulzke (2015). 26 On Gramsci’s project of a study of the Risorgimento, see, in this volume, Balbo, Bellomo, Nicholson and Santangelo. On Foucault as historian, see Poster (1982), Windschuttle (1998), and Han-Pile (2005). 27 See, e.g. Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 59–60). 28 Cf. part. Q13§17.

362  Emilio Zucchetti 29 For instance, Foucault (2003: 29): “Do not regard power as a phenomenon of mass and homogenous domination – the domination of one individual over other, of one group over others, or of one class over others; keep it clearly in mind that […]power is not something that is divided between those who have it and hold it exclusively, and those who do not have it and are subject to it. Power must, I think, be analysed as something that circulates […].” 30 See, for instance, Hardt and Negri (2004: 104), “Classes are determined by class struggle. There are, of course, an infinite number of ways that humans can be grouped into classes – hair color, blood type, and so forth – but the classes that matter are those defined by the lines of collective struggle”. This conception originates in the re-definition of class formation offered by Tronti (2013: 229–35) [originally published in 1960, now translated as Tronti (2019: 233–40)]. 31 Crenshaw (1989); on the history of the category, see Hancock (2016). 32 Hill Collis and Bilge (2016: 2). On complexity theory, see Urry (2005) and Kreps (2015b), who argues for an integration of Gramsci and Foucault’s approach to power in the “purview of the sociology of complexity” (180). A recent attempt of theorisation of complex hegemony in Williams (2019, esp. 135–60). 33 Intersectionality has rarely been used in academic debate in classical studies, and only in relation to gender and family studies [see e.g. Sjöberg (2012), Eisen, Gerber and Standhartiger 2013; and Bolle and Llewelyn (2017)] and pedagogy [Mackin, Cook and Fallas (2017)]. I am not aware of any study of political history reflecting upon the concept. It is more common to find attempts to implement intersectionality in the inclusive practices of Classics and Ancient History Departments than in theoretical and methodological dimension of the scholarly debates. 34 See Althusser (2005: 87–128) (1st edn. 1965). 35 See now the discussion in Knopf (2018: 23–53). Some straightforward examples can be found in Cic. Dom. 5; 6; 48; 53; 89 or in Sall. Cat. 14.

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Hegemony, ideology, and ancient history 363 de Ste. Croix, G. E. M. (1981) The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquest, London: Duckworth. Eisen, U.E., C. Gerber and A. Standhartinger (eds.) (2013) Doing Gender – Doing Religion Fallstudien zur Intersektionalität im frühen Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Filippini, M. (2017) Using Gramsci. A New Approach, London: Pluto. Fonzo, E. (2019) Il mondo antico negli scritti di Antonio Gramsci. Mercato San Severino: Paguro. Foucault, M. (1977) “Il faut deféndre la société”. Cours au Collège de France 1975-76. Paris: Gallimard, Seuil. Foucault, M. (2003) “Society Must Be Defended”. Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-76. Eng. tr. D. Macey, London: Penguin. Francioni, G. (1984) L’officina gramsciana. Ipotesi sulla struttura dei Quaderni del Carcere. Naples: Bibliopolis. Francioni, G. (2018) ‘L’estensione del concetto di ideologia in Gramsci e la genesi delle sue articolazioni’, Materialismo Storico, 5, 130–49. Giardina, A. and A. Schiavone (eds.) (1981) Società romana e produzione schiavistica, Vol. 1. L’Italia: insediamenti e forme economiche, Vol. 2. Merci, mercati e scambi nel Mediterraneo, Vol 3. Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Hall, S. (1986) ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 5–27. Han-Pile, B. (2005) ‘Is Early Foucault a Historian? History, History and the Analytic of Finitude’, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31(5–6), 585–608. Hancock, A.-M. (2016) Intersectionality. An Intellectual History. Oxford: OUP. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2004) Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York, NY: Penguin. Hill Collis, P. and S. Bilge (2016) Intersectionality. Malden: Polity. Hobsbawm, E. (ed.) (1964) K. Marx. Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Knopf, F. (2018) Die Partizipationsmotive der plebs urbana im spätrepublikanischen Rom. Münster: LIT. Kreps, D. (ed.) (2015a) Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment. London: Routledge. Kreps, D. (2015b) ‘The Complexity of Social Systems: Could Hegemony Emerge from the Micro-Poiltics of the Individual?, in Kreps, D. (ed.) Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment. London: Routledge, 171–81. Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason. London and New York, NY: Verso. Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democracy. London and New York, NY: Verso. Lundgreen, C. (ed.) (2014) Staatlichkeit im Rom? Diskurse und Praxis (in) der römischen Republik. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Mackin, E., K. Cook and R. Fallas (2017) ‘Classics and Feminist Pedagogy: Practical Tips for Teaching’, Council of University Classics Departments Bulletin 46. [Online] Available at: https://cucd.blogs.sas.ac.uk/files/2015/01/MACKINCOOK-FALLAS-Feminist-pedagogy.pdf (Accessed: 20 August 2020). Mouffe, C. (1979) ‘Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci’, in ead., ed. (1977), Gramsci and Marxist Theory, London: Routledge, 168–204. Poster, M. (1982) ‘Foucault and History’, Social Research, 49(1), 116–42. Prestipino, G. (2000) Tradire Gramsci. Milan: Teti.

364  Emilio Zucchetti Rose, P.W. (1997) ‘Ideology in the Iliad. Polis, Basileus, Theoi’, Arethusa, 30(2), 151–99. Rose, P.W. (2006) ‘Divorcing Ideology from Marxism and Marxism from Ideology: Some Problems’, Arethusa, 39(1), 101–36. Scevola, R. (2020) ‘Senatus consultum ultimum. Orientamenti interpretativi e questioni aperte’, in Buongiorno, P. (ed.), Senatus consultum ultimum e stato di eccezione. Fenomeni in prospettiva, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 11–66. Schettino, M. T. (2020) ‘Riflessioni in forma di bilancio sul senatus consultum servandae rei publicae causa’, in Buongiorno, P. (ed.), Senatus consultum ultimum e stato di eccezione. Fenomeni in prospettiva, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 161–182. Schulzke, M. (2015) ‘Power and Resistance: Linking Gramsci and Foucault’, in Kreps, D. (ed.) Gramsci and Foucault: A Reassessment, London: Routledge, 57–74. Seager, R. (1972) ‘Factio: Some Observations’, JRS, 62, 53–8. Sjöberg, B.L. (2012) ‘More than Just Gender: the Classical « Oikos » as a Site of Intersectionality’, in, eds. (2012) Laurence, R. and A. Strömberg (eds.) Families in the Greco-Roman World. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 48–59. Tatum, J. (2013) ‘Factio’, in Bagnall, R.S. et al. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. [Online] Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/ 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah30247 (Accessed: 20 August 2020) Taylor, L.R. (1949) Party Politics in the Age of Caesar, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Thomas, P. (2009) The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. Torfing, J. (1999) New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek. Oxford: OUP. Tronti, M. (2013) Operai e Capitale. 2nd edn. Rome: DeriveApprodi. Tronti, M. (2019) Workers and Capital. Eng. tr. D. Broder, London and New York, NY: Verso. Urry, J. (2005) ‘The Complexity Turn’, Theory, Culture and Society, 22(5), 1–14. Williams, A. (2019) Political Hegemony and Social Complexity. Mechanisms of Power After Gramsci. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Windschuttle, K. (1998) ‘Foucault as Historian’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1(2), 5–35.

General index

A Achaian League 146, 149–53 Achaian War 151, 153, 156 Achaios 154 Achilles 50, 344–5 Aesopic fables 54–5, 111, 113–4 Agamemnon 50–2, 343–5 Agriculture: history 12; laws 19; question 186, 195 n9; class 49; lex Sempronia agraria: 186; relevance in the economy 311; villa 231 Aigialos 114 Aitolia 150, 155, 160 n41 Akarnania 150 Alexander the Great 159 Alighieri, Dante 9 Althusser, Louis 1, 2, 16, 20, 23–4, 25–6, 32 n88, 34 n120, 353, 360, 362 Amerimnos 114 anarchism 184 Anderson, Perry 1, 3, 12, 13, 29 n3, 31 n60, 75 n2, 158 n5, 195 m10, 224–6, 232, 235 n11 and n14, 289, 353 Ando, Clifford 23, 226, 228–9, 232 Andriskos 151 Angenot, Marc 232 Antigonos Doson 159 Antinomies 1, 3, 12–3, 226, 239, 240, 289, 353 see also Anderson, Perry Antiochos 149; Antiochean War 148 Antonius Felix 265 Antonius, Marcus 283, 361 n7 Apollonidas of Sikyon 152 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 69 Appian of Alexandria 141, 157, 188–9, 196 n24

Aratos 154 Archilochus 27, 45, 53–6, 57, 59 n28 and n31, 331, 343 Arendt, Hannah 28, 240, 244–5, 250, 251 n20 Arethusa (journal) 13 Ariston 152 Aristotle 63–6, 69, 70–1, 75 n4, 87–8, 96–7 n4, 97 n7 and n11, 224 Arkesilaos 152 army 46, 50, 52, 54, 202, 205, 213, 353; Achaen army 50, 52; Roman army 152, 205, 215 n22, 226, 259, 353, 361 n7 Arpinum 145 Artemidorus 27, 105–6, 109 Athens 23, 27, 63–75, 76 n14, 114, 283, 309, 343, 345–7, 348 n2, 354, 359; assembly 74 see also democracy Augustus 108, 173, 187, 190, 203, 205, 208, 215 n25, 223, 231–2, 240, 241, 243–6, 248, 255, 259–62, 264, 283, 335–6, 356; antinomies 228–34; ideology 241, 244–6, 249, 335; imperial framework 173; Principate/period 222, 224–6, 245; propaganda 244; Augustanism and anti-Augustanism 245, 335 see also revolution authority 45–6, 51–2, 55–6, 58 n17, 96 n3 and n4, 99 n37, 104, 109, 115, 129, 235 n18, 240, 263, 265–6, 280, 285, 343–5, 347; authoritarianism 99 n37, 244; military 50; religious 285; royal 51 Autonomia Operaia 21 Avanti! (newspaper) 5, 28 n1, 177 n18, 201, 208, 213 n1, 290 n3 Azoros (Thessalian city) 111

366  General index B Bakunin, Mikhail 184 Balella, Giovanni 209 Barbagallo, Corrado 18, 208–10, 216 n32, 217 n36 and n47, 286–7, 294 n78 and n84, 319 n61 barbarians (ancient) 168; (modern, common name) 168, 176 n14 and n17; barbarian invasions 282, 285 Bartoli, Matteo Giulio 4, 124, 126, 130, 131, 136 n43 and n48 Bartsch-Zimmer, Shadi 247, 249 base see structure Beesly, Augustus 189 Beloch, Karl Julius 208, Benjamin, Walter 232, 235 n35 Bettarelli, Ernesto 169 Bianchi Bandinelli, Ranuccio 14, 18 Bismarck, Otto von 202, 216 n26 Bobbio, Norberto 15, 288 Bodrero, Emilio 204, 214 n13 Boiotia 150 Bonnell, Andrew 189 Bordiga, Amadeo 5–7 Bourdieu, Pierre 23, 25, 51, 229 Brachylles (boiotarch) 149 Braudel, Fernand 28, 289, 295 n105 Brixia (Brescia) 107 Brown, Peter 276–7 Bruff, Ian 144 Bruno, Giordano 9 Brutti, Massimo 18, 294 n80 Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovič 166, 314 Burckhardt, Jacob 204, 274 C Caesar (in a broad sense) 22, 239, 240, 241, 243–9, 250 n1, 252 n45, 263, 334 Caesar, C. Julius 22, 28, 144, 159 n24, 168, 172–4, 179 n38, 186–8, 192–3, 195–6 n17, 197 n51, 201–13, 213 n2 and n3, 216 n23, n25 and n36, 217 n36, 224, 240–9, 252 n45, 255, 282–5, 333–4, 357 Caesarism 22, 28, 33 n105, 201–13, 213 n3, 214 n4, n9 and n14, 215 n17 and n21, 239–50, 255, 282–3, 293 n58, 333–4; proto– 241, 248, 250 n9 Cairns, Douglas 68, 348 n6 Callinicos, Alex 143, 158 n14 capitalism 101, 165–6, 173, 176 n15, 208–10, 231, 281, 286–7, 303, 315; ancient 171, 208–10, 286;

Bowles and Gintis’ Capitalism and Democracy 23; accumulation 354; economy 279, 302; Europe 170; forces 166; mode of production 279, 286, 332, 354; society 13, 16, 23, 158 n5, 174, 235 n18, 280, 287, 294 n84, 332, 359; state 166 Capogrossi Colognesi, Luigi 17, 33 n97 Carandini, Andrea 19–20, 34 n112 and n113 Carthage 146, 153, 155, 160 n35, 190 Catholic clergy 144, 188, 211, Catilina, L. Sergius 186, 187, 188, 195 n14 and n17, 205, 207, 224, 357, 358 Cato, M. Porcius 153 Cato Uticensis, M. Porcius 241, 248, 249, 250, 262 Cattaneo, Carlo 204 Centaur 45, 57 n9, 239–40, 247, 250 n5 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham 11 Charidemus of Oreus 73 Charlemagne 283, 285 Charops 150 Chiron see Centaur Christianity 103, 191, 264–5, 284–5, 334, 353; Christians 263, 265–6, 334–5; community 115, 131, 264–5, 334; literature/texts 260, 263, 264, 334; state 184, 194 n5 Ciccotti, Ettore 18, 194 n6, 208, 217 n40, 286, 318 n9 Cicero, M. Tullius 145, 146, 157, 159 n20 and n24, 185, 207, 213, 216 n25, 224, 248, 358 Cipolla, Carlo 27, 187, 191, 192, 195 n14, 207 Città Futura, la 5, 28 n1 civil society see society civil war(s) 104, 183, 186 188, 196 n24, 212, 223, 229, 245, 247–8, 261, 283, 333 civilisation 46, 125, 167, 172–4, 240, 250 n6, 274–5, 307–8, 313 class 6, 10, 13, 15, 24–7, 49–51, 63–6, 72, 74–5, 78 n45, 89, 145, 150, 152–3, 157, 172, 186, 188, 193, 226, 228, 230–2, 256, 330, 342–3, 348, 361, 362 n29 and n30; essentialism 361 n11; conflict 357; of intellectuals 28, 93, 158 n7, 178 n30, 188, 193, 231, 255, 285; 353–9; middle-11, 201, 231;

General index ruling/dominant 3, 11, 16, 19, 26, 29 n11, 49–51, 53, 55–6, 58 n17, 59 n31, 63–6, 102, 104, 142, 154, 166, 173, 179 n42, 195 n17, 249, 258, 280, 292 n50, 313, 329–32, 336–7 n3, 341–3; 346, 348, 354, 356; de Ste. Croix’s Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World 353; struggle 16, 33 n105, 143, 281–2, 353, 356, 362 n30; subaltern 49, 52, 58 n15, 101–2, 117–8, 142, 154, 322; subordinate 50–1, 184–6; working 5, 9–11, 102, 143, 158 n5, 164 n30 see also hegemony; hero and subaltern Clodius Pulcher, P. 208, 357 coercion 3–4, 12, 15–6, 21, 24, 26, 27, 45–53, 56, 151, 156–7, 185, 225–6, 228–9, 232, 235 n14, 257–8, 329, 331, 341–3, 346, 352–3; capacity 229; force 49, 311; power 2, 4, 184, 280, 311, 330, 344–5 colonialism 21, 165, 166–71, 174, 178 n25, 190, 313 colonization 168, 170 common sense 2, 12, 19, 25, 27, 44–5, 47, 54, 56, 57, 63, 65, 68, 72, 75, 93, 315, 316, 322 n158, 331–2, 356, 359 Communes (Medieval) 189, 217 n40, Communist Party 242, 304; Italian 4–6, 9; of the USA 304 community 44, 50, 53–4, 56–7, 69–71, 74, 103, 104, 117, 314, 315, 343–5, 347; academic 13–4, 21; Jewish 212; political 65, 345; slave 104 see also Christian conflict 4, 5, 7, 48, 148, 151, 188, 242–3, 248, 275, 282, 315, 336, 356, 359; social 56, 353 see also class Connolly, Joy 25, 35 n147 consent 2–4, 6, 13, 16, 23, 26, 27, 45–6, 49–50, 52, 56, 88, 142, 145–7, 151–2, 154, 156–7, 223, 225–8, 229, 230, 232, 233, 235 n18, 239, 240, 247, 257, 330–2, 242–3, 345, 353 Constantine the Great 204, 274 Constantinople 256, 278, 283 constitutio Antoniniana 173 constitution 28, 64–5, 76 n7, 148, 153, 185, 189, 311, 346

367

Contest of Homer and Hesiod 45 Corinth 146, 151, 153, 154, 265 Corriere della Sera (newspaper) 129 cosmopolitanism 28, 172–5, 193, 197 n53, 206–7, 208, 211, 212, 230, 341 Cratinus 45 Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 359 Crete 67, 74 crisis 2, 8, 12, 50, 154, 170, 179 n42, 188, 189, 214 n4, 228, 242, 245, 247, 249, 256, 259, 267 n8, 276, 278, 279–83, 284, 287, 288, 292 n51, 293 n53 and n54, 304, 331, 333, 357; financial c. of 2008 301, 306; of Marxism 21; organic 256; political 357 Crispi, Francesco 168, 170, 177 n23 Critias 53–4 Croce, Benedetto 9, 26, 34, n118, 87–90, 94k, 95, 97 n5, 98 n17, 136 n50 and n51, 191, 196 n42, 197 n44, 224, 295 n99 Cromwell, Oliver 202, 282, 293, n57 crowd 211, 263, 334 culture 1, 5, 10–2, 15, 19, 22, 44, 56, 66, 90, 95, 130, 131, 134 n11, 149, 150, 151, 172, 189, 224, 231, 232–3, 286, 288–9, 303, 330–1, 332, 334, 335, 337 n12, 341, 342, 343, 347; elite 66–7, 76 n14, 341; material 212, 222, 230, 234 n9; plebeian 11; political 202, 204, 214 n9; popular 11, 66–7, 76 n14, 190, 193, 341; Western 277, 293 n68 Cuoco, Vincenzo 143 D Davidson, Nicholas 144 de Beaufort, Louis 189 De Francisci, Pietro 173 De Sanctis, Gaetano 34 n118, 125, 167–8, 176 n14 and n15, 186, 208 Demetrias (city) 149 Demetrios of Seleukos 155, 160 n35 democracy 23, 46, 64, 68, 72, 78 n45, 99 n35, 226–8, 285, 348 n6; Athenian 27, 34 n116, 63, 65–9, 71–2, 343, 346; ideology 347; social 2, 222 demokratia 64, 78 n45 demos 63, 65–75, 78 n45, 345–7 Demosthenes 63, 64–6, 69–71, 73 denationalisation 187, 192, 211

368  General Index Derow, Peter 148 Di Marzio, Cornelio 96 n2, 211, 217 n44 Diaios 151 Dialoghi di Archeologia (journal) dike (justice) 47–8, 55, 56, 343 Dio Chrysostom 45 Diocletian 277 Dionysios of Halicarnassos 141 discontinuity 191, 285, 288, 289, 304, 314 Disraeli, Benjamin 171–2, 178 n29 and n30 dissent 50–1, 148, 157, 204, 207, 245, 335 domination 12, 21, 24–5, 27–8, 102, 106, 109, 142, 145–7, 150–2, 155–7, 179 n42, 228, 232, 239, 247, 330, 332, 342, 346, 354, 358–60, 362 n29 doublethink 241, 244–5 dual perspective (‘doppia prospettiva’) 239–40, 244 Ducati, Pericle 124–6, 129–32, 133, 136 n58, 137 n61, 238 Duhn, Friedrich von 131

187–8, 190–3, 195–6 n17, 197 n51, 205–7, 209, 211–3, 216 n30, 217 n36, 229, 231, 255–6, 259, 261, 263–6, 274–8, 281–5, 287, 291 n11, 316, 334–5; Western Roman 273, 275, 278 Enenkel, Karl 227 Engels, Friedrich 89, 90, 124, 196 n 24, 258, 268 n14 Enlightenment 189 Epeiros 150 Eritrean War 166 Ethiopian War 168, 172 ēthos 63–6, 69–70, 72, 74–5 Etruscans/Etruscan language 27, 124–33, 189–90, Etruscology 125–8, 129 Europe 168, 170, 266, 282, 284, 285, 304, 309; European culture 20, 168, 190, 289; European countries 165, 167, 193; European history 187, 205 Eurysaces, M. Vergilius 231 Expansionism 165–6, 168, 170, 174, 178 n25, 179 n41

E Eagleton, Terry 16 East vs. West 283–4 Eckstein, Arthur 148, 159 n32 economic emancipation 184, 189 economism 26, 32 n86, 246, 295 n108 Edizione Nazionale 17, 21, 22, 31 n60 education 4–5, 22, 64, 86, 93, 96, 96–7 n4, 154–5, 191, 273; ­institutions 302 Egypt 110, 278, 303 elite 3, 10, 24, 28, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 55, 56, 58 n15, 59 n31, 63, 65–70, 75, 99 n35, 102, 105, 152–3, 136, 171, 183, 184, 187–8, 192–3, 205–6, 212, 230, 233, 258, 261, 263, 266, 275, 303, 330, 341, 345–7 see also culture and Rome emigration 166–7, 170–1, 174, 178 n25 Emperor (Roman) 211, 230, 231, 233, 241, 249, 256, 259–66, 278 Empire 147, 152, 157, 159 n32, 165, 168, 171–2; British 284; French 190; Eastern Roman (Byzantine) 255, 276; Italian 172, 190; Macedonian 147, 155; Persian 276; Roman 22–3, 141, 145, 147, 150–1, 165, 167, 171–4, 184,

F fable (ainos) 46, 53, 55, 57, 113 see also Aesopic fables false consciousness 23–4, 66, 226, 228, 257, 268 n14, 353 Fascism 5, 6, 9, 131–3, 141, 179 n42, 190–1, 204, 206, 222, 280; historiography of antiquity 132–3, 190; propaganda 174, 191–2, 282; regime(s) 6, 128, 136 n58, 168, 170, 172–3, 227, 273, 280, 341; revolution 6, 172, 211; representation of Rome (romanità) 190–3, 282 see also Italy; Pan (fascist journal); revolution and state Fatherland 145 Femia, Joseph V. 23 Ferrabino, Aldo 173 Ferrero, Guglielmo 173, 170 n38, 208, 217 n47, 286 Finley, Moses Israel 20, 23, 43 n115, 102, 119 n15, 303–4, 305, 309, 342 First World War 166, 170, 222, 303 Flamininus, T. Quinctius 149, 151 Flower, Harriet 233 Fontana, Benedetto 27, 87–8, 96, 145, 159 n24, 214 n15, 224, 241 Fonzo, Erminio 22, 96 n2, 183, 294 n82

General Index 369 For Ever see Quaglino, Corrado force 3, 9, 11, 46, 49, 113, 149, 167–8, 174, 190, 201, 202, 203, 229, 230, 239–40, 242, 245, 248, 282, 283, 311, 343, 353 Foucault, Michel 226, 355, 357–9 Francioni, Gianni 3, 8, 12, 13, 21 353 Frank, Tenney 210–1 French revolution see revolution G Galen 109 Galilei, Galileo 9 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 9 Garzìa, Raffa 4 Genovese, Eugene 10, 13, 27, 34 n115, 102–4, 107, 118, 119 n15, German philosophy 91 Gerratana, Valentino 14, 16–7, 21, 211 Giardina, Andrea 17, 33 n97, 192, 277 Gibbon, Edward 274–5, 278, 290 Gioberti, Vincenzo 190, 206 goodwill (εὔνοια) 107, 142, 146, 147, 152, 156–7 Gracchan reforms 186, 188–9 Gracchi 183–4, 186, 187–9, 195 n14, 206; C. Sempronius 184–5, 194 n5; T. Sempronius 186, 189 Gramatica, Emma 201 Gray, Kevin 144 Great Schism (1054 CE) 205, 283 Greece 25, 27 53, 145, 146, 14951, 153–4, 311, 331–3, 341–3, 346 Greek East 147–51, 157, 171 Grenier, Albert 126 Grido del Popolo, il (newspaper) 5, 154 Gruen, Erich 148 Guha, Ranajit 21 H Habermas, Jürgen 23, 229, 233 Hall, Stuart 2, 10, 11–2, 34 n118, 354 Hall, Tammany 208 Hammer, Dean 23 Hannibalic War 191 Harris, William Vernon 146 Hector 50 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 91, 98 n17, 203, 214 n8, 239, 240 hegemony 46,48–57, 65–75, 86–8, 95, 101–4, 107, 109, 117, 141, 145, 147, 150–2, 154–7, 158 n4, 187, 223–6, 232–4, 239–42, 247, 249, 255–60, 266, 301, 306, 330–6, 341–8,

352–60; in Althusser 16–7; class(es) 142, 331; in classical studies 23–7, 329; construction 3, 353, 356; ­crisis 242, 245, 333; cultural 11, 24, 223, 226, 229–34, 329, 342, 344, 347, 354; definition 2–4, 57 n8, 63, 75 n2, 142–4, 223–6, 257–8; discourse 5, 231–3, 335, 347, 355–6; function 187, 195 n17, 255; groups 315; in historical debate 10–3; ideology 2, 3, 228, 233, 306, 314, 353; in Laclau/Mouffe 355–8, 361 n11; mechanism 343, 345; narrative 3, 258, 353; power 45, 159 n32, 331, 336; principle 354; process 44,354, 356; setup 3, 352, 353, 355, 357; system 26, 49, 302, 358; values 54, 56, 345 Helius, C. Iulius 231 hero 45, 49–50, 53, 343, 345; hero-class 50, 52, 58 n17 Herodotus 249 Hesiod 27, 45–9, 55–7, 331, 343–4 Hesketh, Chris 143–4 hierarchy 47, 51, 52, 58 n18, 87, 150, 152, 244, 303, 311 Hitler, Adolf 14, 244 historical bloc Hoggart, Richard Hoare, Quentin 10 Homer 27, 45, 49–53, 56, 58 n15, 68, 249, 331, 343–4, 353 honour 6, 54, 63, 67–75, 106, 107, 110, 112, 124, 342–4, 347; honorific practices 66, 67–72, 345, 347; system 63, 69, 72–4 Horace 241 Humanists 188, 207 hybris 47, 56, 343, 346, 348 n6 I ideology 1–3, 15, 19, 23, 25–6, 44, 45, 50, 63, 66–7, 71, 92, 101, 112, 131, 143, 150, 151, 187, 203, 226–8, 230, 233, 240–1, 248, 256–9, 281, 289, 301–2, 305–6, 313–4, 333, 335. 341–2, 346–8, 352–4; in Althusser 16, 353; Augustan 241, 244–5, 249, 335; apparatuses 25; block 249; change 143; character 95, 335; discourse 24, 241, 313; manoeuvre 264, 316; propaganda 172, 170 n42; structure 348; vacuum 188; ideologism

370  General Index 246, 295 n108; Marxist 174; of the ruling class 16, 332, 348; totalitarian 244 see also Augustus; democracy and hegemony Ignatius of Antioch 115 Illyrian Wars 148 imperialism 27, 165–75, 175 n4 and n7, 177 n21, 177–8 n23, 178 n30, 179 n40, n41 and n42; Roman 27, 148, 169, 171, 174, 212, 333 Industrial Revolution see revolution institutions 4, 7, 16, 26, 32 n88, 44, 63, 66–7, 74, 76 n14 and n19, 103, 155, 184–6, 226–7, 288, 302, 303, 305, 312, 342, 345–8 353, 356, 358; new institutionalism 76n19; NIE 104–6, 307, 309, 310 intellectuals 2, 9, 14–5, 20, 28, 56, 86–7, 89, 95, 140–5, 146, 157, 165–6, 172, 183, 187–8, 191–3, 197 n53, 211, 224, 231, 258, 284–5, 301–2, 304, 313, 317, 330–6, 341; imperial 144, 188, 193, 211; Italian 9, 22, 125, 144, 166–7, 173, 193, 211, 284–5, 294 n80; organic 35 n129, 142, 158 n7, 193, 231, 301, 306, 314, 333, 341; traditional 158 n7, 192–3, 211, 231, 258, 333, 336 internationalism 193, 197 n5; (Communist) International 9; International Gramsci Society (IGS) 21; International Relations (IR) 22, 144; internationalisation 284; Second International 288, 295 n96 Isocrates 70–1 Istituto Gramsci 10, 18, 277; Seminario di Antichistica 17–20 Italy 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 14, 18, 20, 24, 27, 34 n118, 107, 126, 134 n20, 141, 145, 150, 153, 165–74, 179 n38 and n42, 187, 189, 190–3, 197 n51, 201, 204–6, 208, 210–3, 214 n14, 223, 224, 231, 255, 273, 277, 279, 280, 282–4, 341; ancient 145, 171, 189–92, 205, 207, 212. 229, 232, 336; Fascist 179 n42, 204; history of 173, 183, 188, 191–3, 197 n44, 204–7, 215 n22; identity 183, 189–91; Italians (ancient) 188–9, 196 n24, 223, 356; Italians (modern) 129, 168, 189–90, 192; Roman 184, 186, 189–90, 192–3,

207; national identity 183, 189–91, 282; unification 143, 189, 191 see also Communist Party; Empire; intellectuals; power and state Ives, Peter 144 J Jackson Lears, Thomas J. 13, 23 Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin 276 Josephus, Flavius 265 justice 45, 47–8, 55, 109, 116, 263, 265, 266, 343 K Kallikrates 150 Kennedy, Duncan 245, 335 Kingdom of God 263 Kreps, David 358 Kritolaos 151 Kynoskephalai 149 L La Penna, Antonio 14–5, 17–9, 33 n97, n102, n103 and n104, 329–30 labour 93–5, 103, 186, 196 n24, 217 n36, 287, 302; labour conflict 5; slave labour 107, 186 Labriola, Antonio 34 n118, 178 n25, 230 Laclau, Ernesto 16, 25, 31 n48, 32 n80, 224–5, 355–9, 361 n11 land reform 186, 311 laos 49–53, 56, 68, 343, 345 Late Antiquity 27, 102, 192, 273–90 law(s) 6, 12, 19, 31 n60, 64, 69, 75, 96 n4, 99 n36, 152, 153, 168, 170–2, 209, 239, 261, 284–6, 314–5, 344; canon 285; Longobard 285; Napoleonic codes 284 see also Rome Lawrence, David Herbert 190 Le Bon, Gustave 211 leader 6, 7, 9, 18, 51, 68, 78 n43, 142–3, 147, 150–1, 152, 157, 186, 213, 222, 240–1, 244–4, 247–8, 343, 344–5, 360 leadership 50, 52–3, 99 n37, 141–2, 143, 146–7, 152, 155, 157, 213 n2, 216 n26, 231, 247; (Communist) Party leadership 6, 7, 9 legal system 49, 285, 288 legitimacy 101, 104, 109, 117, 192, 263, 331, 347 legitimisation 48, 329, 333

General Index 371 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 6, 9, 17, 26, 165, 166, 175 n4, 288 Leninism 15, 16, 25, 204 Lepore, Ettore Leptines 64–5, 69, 71 Levi, Mario Attilio 173 lex Manilia 248 lex Sempronia agraria 186 Libanius 115 liberal arts 144, 188, 211 liberalism 15, 16, 23, 192, 227, 228, 280, 294 n80, 302, 303, 312; neoliberalism 305, 312–4 Libya 167–9, 278 Liddel, Peter 71 Linguistics 4, 8, 124–5, 130–2, 190, 355 Literarische Welt, die (journal) 8 Lombards 189 Loraux, Nicole 66, 247 Lorenzo de’ Medici 282 Loria, Achille 95, 124–5 Lorianismo 124–5, 130, 133, 134 n11, 136 n44 Lotta Continua Losurdo, Domenico 225 Lucan Lukács, György 16, 258 Luporini, Cesare 20 Lycambes 54–5, 57, 59 n28 Lykiskos 150 Lykortas 152 M Macedonian Wars 148–52 Machiavelli, Niccolò 190, 207, 224, 225, 239–40 Machines 209, 287, 294 n84, 309 MacKay, Ian G. 144 Maecenas, C. Cilnius 231, 236 n36, 336 Mancini, Stanislao 166 Manzoni, Alessandro 285 Marchesi, Concetto 14, 18 Marius, Gaius 186–7, 189, 215 n22 Marks, Louis 10 Marquardt, Joachim 208, 209 Marx, Karl 9, 16, 18–20, 23, 33 n103 and n 105, 89, 90, 95, 98 n17,124, 189, 190, 196 n24, 204–5, 215 n16, 217 n47, 229, 268 n14, 279–81, 286–9, 293 n58, 295 n105, 304, 316, 318 n9 Marxism 9–11, 14–6, 18, 20–1, 23, 32 n86, 33 n100, 34 n118, 118, 124, 286, 288, 294 n80, 317, 361, n11;

historiography 13, 15, 63, 189; intellectuals 165, 175 n4, 257, 302; theory/approach/thought 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 166, 174, 193, 257, 276, 353–4, 356–7, 359, 361 n11; post–M. 11, 16, 25, 31 n48, 32 n86, 75 n2, 354 see also crisis of Massilia 248 Matteotti, Giacomo 9, 170 Mazza, Mario 14, 302 Mazzarino, Santo 275, 277 Mazzini, Giuseppe 9, 204, 206 Medieval Age see Middle Ages Megalopolis 152, 154 Melania and Pinianus 116–7 Menelaus 50 Messene 150, 151, 155 Metellus Macedonicus, Q. Caecilius 151 Michels, Robert 99 n36, 222, 234 n3 Mickwitz, Gunnar 275, 291 n12 and n13 Middle Ages 87, 95, 158 n7, 185, 192, 193, 195 n9, 273–5, 278–9, 284–5, 288–9; cosmopolitanism 174, 206; feudalism 86, 96; history 188; societies 102, 276, 285; State 184 Millar, Fergus 256, 278 Minto, Antonio 125 Mnesiepes 53 Moatti, Claudia 230 mode of production 17–9, 20, 165, 277, 279–80, 286–7, 332, 354 Momigliano, Arnaldo 17–20, 33 n100, 34 n112 and n116, 212, 214 n9, 222, 234 n55, 291 n22, 294 n80 Mommsen, Theodor 203, 208, 209, 214 n4, 217 n47 Mondolfo, Rodolfo 209 Montesquieu, Charles de 189 morality 44–5, 55, 249, 345 Morris, Ian 301, 304, 306–17, 319 n66 and n74, 320 n84, 321 n138, 322 n165 Morstein-Marx, Robert 23–5 Morton, Adam David 143–4, 158 n14 Mouffe, Chantal 16, 25, 31 n48, 32 n86, 35 n147, 224, 225, 355–9, 361 n11 and n16 Muses 48, 53 Mussolini, Benito 7, 14 125, 133, 137 n65, 168, 170, 177 n19, 178 n32, 190, 192, 242; Rocco-Mussolini bill 6

372  General Index N Namier, Lewis Bernstein 222 Napoleon I 190, 202, 213 n2, 214 n7, 216 n7, 242, 243, 282; Napoleonic France 203 see also law(s) Napoleon III 190, 202, 282, 293 n58 nationalism 131, 173, 193, 206, 215 n22; national-popular 145, 173 Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus 241, 249, 262 New Institutionalism see institutions New Institutional Economics (NIE) see institutions New Statesman, The (magazine) 313 New Testament 263, 268 n26 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 189, 196 n25 norm 2, 63, 75, 89–90, 95, 228, 256, 348; cultural norms 228, 231; normative system 63, 65, 68, 69, 75; social norms 2, 3, 19, 56 345, 352, 356, 359 Novaro Ducati, Gabriella 126, 132–3 Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey 10 O Ober, Josiah 23, 66, 235 n25, 342 Octavian see Augustus Odysseus 51–2, 58 n20, 343–5 oligarchy 64, 67–8, 222, 346–7, 348 n6; constitution 65, 346; oligarchs 64–5 see also revolution Opium Wars 168 Opus (journal) 20 Ordine Nuovo (newspaper) 5, 24, 184 Organismo 240, 244, 248, 251 n16 Orwell, George 240, 245 Osborne, Robin 223, 234 n9 Oxyrhynchus 110 P Pais, Ettore 137 n65, 190, 208 Pallottino, Massimo 127–8, 135 n29 Pan (fascist journal) 191 Pareti, Luigi 125, 130, 131–2, 136 n58, 173 parliament 171; Italian 6, 170; mixed 172; speech 6, 166 Paros 53 Pascoli, Giovanni 167, 169, 174, 179–80 n43 Pasquali, Giorgio 18 passive revolution see revolution Patterson, Orlando 107 Paul the Apostle 263, 265, 266, 268 n26

Pedanius Secundus 112 Pelasgians 189 people, the 64, 66–8, 72, 153, 169, 183, 185, 187, 256, 259, 261, 265, 266, 331–2, 347; art 14; literature 331; masses 89, 187–8, 193, 341; morality 44; movement 183, 187 performance context 44, 59 n31 Pericles 70 permanent revolution see revolution Perses 47 Perseus of Macedon 146, 150, 153 personality cult 244 Petronius 108 Pfeijffer, Ilja 227 Phaedrus 111 Philip II of Macedon 147 Philip V of Macedon 147, 149, 159 n32 Philopoimen 150, 152, 154 philosophy 44, 88–95, 96–7 n4; ancient 27, 86–96, 262; culture 90, 95, 331; elements 90; history of 88–95; of praxis 26, 95, 98 n24, 289, 317, 322 n158, 332; spontaneous 2, 92; technical philosopher 91; theoretical 94 see also Croce, Benedetto Pierro, Mariano 209 Pisani, Vittore 128, 130, 131, 135 n34 Plato 27, 57 n5, 86–8, 94–6, 96 n2, n3 and n4, 97 n5, n7 and n10, 99 n36 and n37, 144, 211, 224 Platone, Felice 9–10 plebs 186, 356–7; plebeian art 14; plebeian assembly 185; plebeian state 184–6; tribunes of the plebs 183, 185, 186 see also culture Plutarch 54, 157 Police 16, 46 polis 63, 64, 67–71, 74–5, 86, 95 345–8, 359 politeia 64–6, 68, 69, 72, 75, 76 n7 political society see society Polybios 141–2, 145–57, 159 n32, 59 n161, 332–3 Polycarp of Smyrna 115 Pompey (Pompeius Magnus, Cn.) 241, 247, 248, 249, 333 Pope 87, 215 n21, 266, 283, 285 populares 186 Poseidonios of Apamea 141 power 3, 4, 23, 26, 46–9, 52, 54, 63, 69, 104, 105–7, 109, 112, 118, 141–3, 148, 151–3, 158 n5, 159, 184, 202, 207, 213, 215 n21,

General Index 373 225–8, 229–30, 232–3, 235 n23, 240, 245, 247–8, 256, 264, 283, 285, 288, 311, 331, 334–6, 343–5, 352, 355–60; axes 359; balance 51, 202; colonial 21; cultural 44–5; dynamics 342–3; dominant 148, 156; economic 55; inequality 311; Italian 149–50; language of 28, 201; negotiation of 103, 106–7, 331; relations 103, 331, 332, 357, 359–60; political 19, 44, 64–5, 226, 273, 329, 334, 345; social 13, 24, 26; structure 52, 143, 228, 358; theory of 3, 26, 357–8; tribunician 194 n8 see also coercion; hegemony and Rome Prince, the (Machiavelli) 141, 241–7; the Modern Prince 10, 242–4, 250 n2; ‘Myth-Prince’ 28, 240, 242, 243, 248 Principate 210, 211, 222, 241, 245, 255–6, 260–7, 335 Proletariat 19, 26, 174, 176 n15, 178 n25, 186, 215 n16, 256, 349 n24, 354, 362 n11; La grande proletaria si è mossa 167; proletarians 185–6, 209, 358 see also state Proletarii 186 property 102, 106, 116, 184, 186, 353 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 204 Punishment 47, 57, 103, 109, 264 Pydna 147, 151, 332 Q Quaderni di storia (journal) 18 Quaglino, Corrado 184–5, 194 n3 and n4 R regional identities 190 Renaissance: Florentine 189; ‘Gramsci Renaissance’ 21–2 republic: American 103, 312; government 151; nature of 141; Plato’s 95–6, 96–7 n4, 97 n10; of philosophers 86, 95; Republicanism 262; Roman 19, 174, 183–93, 202, 208, 213, 222, 255–6, 311, 353–4, 357, 359 resistance 3, 6, 24, 28, 47, 490, 50, 114, 143, 146–52, 155, 157, 226, 228–9, 239, 249, 264, 334–5, 353, 358 revolution 6, 65, 71, 96 n4, 158 n5, 224, 225, 240, 242 261, 274,

289, 311, 314; Augustan 28, 224, 232–3, 355; French 143, 186; cultural 28, 222–3, 231–3; fascist 172, 211; Hungarian 15; industrial 202, 287, 303; Neolithic 308, 310; oligarchic 71; passive 27, 141–4, 148, 151, 157, 158 n10 and n14, 332; permanent 26, 246; political 65, 233; Roman 183; Syme’s The Roman Revolution 222; WallaceHadrill’s Rome’s Cultural Revolution 222–3, 231, 255; Russian 5, 217, 222 Ribezzo, Francesco 124, 125, 133 n2 Riegl, Alois 274, 276, 277 Risorgimento 8, 14, 143, 158 n10, 172, 178 n35, 183, 187, 188, 189, 195 n14, 205, 206 Romagnoli, Ettore 190 Rome (ancient) 15, 116, 145–57, 165–9, 171–4, 183, 185, 187–8, 191–2, 196 n24, 196 n37, 197 n45 and n51, 203, 205–6, 208, 210–3, 222–3, 230–1, 255–6, 261, 264, 266, 273, 282, 283, 287, 332–3, 341, 354, 359; (modern) 5–8, 14, 15, 20, 318 n31; audience 264–5; behaviour 155; citizenship 173, 188, 211, 228; domination 27, 148, 153, 157, 171, 331; economy 275, 291 n13; elite 28, 188, 192, 275, 341; expansion 145, 148, 168, 171; fall of 276, 279, 281–2, 285, 291 n22; history 23, 172, 183–4, 186–90, 192, 201, 210, 250 n11, 255, 274–5; imperial model 190; law 31 n60, 285; literature 201, 336, 341; myth of 190; nobility 206; politics 25, 213, 333; power 149, 150, 152–3, 157, 229, 333, 359; rise of 141–2, 145–6, 155, 157; rule 140–1, 146, 149, 151, 153, 155, 191, 263, 285, society 152, 179 n38, 276; supremacy 190; University of 125, 167; values 231 see also army; Empire; Principate; republic and revolution Romieu, Auguste 203 Rose, Peter 23, 25, 229, 342, 353 Rossanda, Rossana 20 Rostovtzeff, Mikhail I. 209, 212, 217 n47, 274–5, 303 Roth, Cecil 212

374  General Index Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 184–5, 194 n4 Russia 6, 144, 283, 348 n2; RussoJapanese War 169 see also revolution S Salvatorelli, Luigi 191 Salvioli, Giuseppe 216 n33 and n35, 217 n47, 286 Sanna, Giovanni 209 Sardinia 4, 124, 22 Sarpedon 49–50 Sayce, Archibald Henry 128 Scheidel, Walter 301, 306–16 Schiavone, Aldo 17–8, 31 n60, 216 n25 Schucht, Julia 6–7 Schucht, Tatiana ‘Tania’ 6–7 Scipiones 153, 155, 332–3; Scipio Aemilianus, P. Cornelius 146, 153, 155; Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius 155 Scott, James C. 24–5, 264 Sella, Quintino 208 Sereni, Emilio 14 Shakespeare, William 201 Shaw, George Bernard 201 Short, Nicola 144 Sicily 118 Sigonio, Carlo 188 Sitz im Leben see performance context slavery: American 13, 102, 103–4; ancient 20, 27, 101–18, 211, 228, 231, 302, 353; Finley’s Ancient Slavery 20; slave labour 107, 186 smallholders 186, 276 Social Contract (Rousseau) 185 Social War 145, 191, 223 Socialism 5, 6, 10, 25, 184, 194 n5, 257, 302, 304, 315 society: civil 2–3, 12, 15, 16, 25, 27, 32 n88, 51, 88, 145, 194 n4, 224–6, 235 n14, 256, 331, 342, 345, 348, 353; political 2–3, 12, 16, 24, 32 n88, 224, 235 n14, 257, 342, 345–6, 353; social inequality 186, 369 Socrates 94, 96 n3 and n4 Solmi, Arrigo 191 Solon 64 Sparta 54, 67, 68, 73, 74, 150, 151, 346, 347, 349 n13 Spartacus 210 Speziale, Gian Carlo 209, 287 Sraffa, Piero 7–8 Stalin, Iosif 7, 9, 15

Stanley, Jason 226–8 state 2, 3, 6, 12, 16, 17, 25, 26, 32 n88, 44, 46, 48, 67, 88, 96, 103, 141–5, 146, 148, 151, 155, 157, 158 n5, 166–7, 171, 183–6, 190, 202, 209, 225–8, 235 n14, 239–40, 259, 285, 288, 303, 311–2, 320 n110, 330, 342, 348 n2, 353; agrarian 311; ancient 109, 145, 192, 194 n4 and n5, 227, 244; city- 150; fascist 6; formation 144; functions 185; Greek 141, 146, 148–9; institutions 7, 16, 66, 74, 76 n14, 103, 312, 348; integral 3, 4, 226, 353; Italian 141, 172–3, 189, 208; nation- 190, 303, 310, 354; plebeian 184–6, 194 n5; revolutionary 184; Roman 145, 147, 171, 348 n2; state-as-force 26; statesmen 96 n2, 156–6, 201; statolatry 184, 194 n5; system 142 Ste. Croix, G.E.M. de 342, 353 Stratios of Triteia 152 structure 10–1, 13, 15, 19, 26, 144, 170, 230, 233, 257, 259, 295 n96, 305, 314, 335, 353, 359–60; social 19, 45, 52, 63, 65, 68, 75, 144, 148–9, 257, 305, 308, 335 see also power Stuart Hughes, Henry 10 subalterns 12–4, 21, 24–5, 331, 334, 343, 345; agency 348; class(es) 49 50, 52, 58 n15, 101–2, 117–8, 142, 154, 225, 322 n158; group(s) 14, 19, 49, 101–2, 141–4, 146, 153, 316, 331–2; leaders 143, 157; politics 102; studies 21, 102; subalternity 104 superstructure 11, 13, 15, 18–9, 26–7, 92, 152, 224, 230, 232–3, 257, 288–9, 314 347, 353, 356, 360; complex 345, 347–8 Suetonius 188, 211 Swanson, Eric 227 Syme, Ronald 222–3, 231, 260, 261 T Tagliavini, Carlo 126 Tasca, Angelo 4–6 Taylor, Lily Ross 189 Terracini, Umberto 5, 7 Thasos 53 Thebes 68, 347

General Index 375 Thersites 52, 345 Thessaly 149 Thomas, Peter D. 3, 13, 75 n2, 98 n17, 143, 158 n14, 224–5, 229, 230, 250 n2, 337 n11, 353 Thompson, Edward Palmer 10–2, 30 n43 and n44 Thucydides 71 Tiberius Caesar Augustus 261, 264 Toffanin, Giuseppe 207, 216 n24 Togliatti, Palmiro 4–7, 9–10, 15, 17, 20 Totalitarianism 28, 240, 243, 244, 247, 251 n20 transition 11, 28, 142, 145, 151, 172–3, 204, 205, 210, 273, 276–9, 284, 289, 355, 357 Trombetti, Alfredo 27, 124–33, 134 n21 and n22, 135 n34 and n41, 136 n43 and n51, 137 n67 Troy 50, 52, 343 U USSR 7, 9, 204 Utopia 86, 144; utopianism 95 V value(s) 2, 24, 44–5, 49, 54–7, 63, 65–6, 68–72, 74–5, 108, 231–3, 259, 265, 309, 317, 332, 344–5, 348; cultural 45, 49, 309, 348; exchange 279; historical 91; moral 53, 310, 345; social 45, 331; system 63, 68, 74, 228 Vico, Giovanni Battista 95, 131 violence 7, 16, 25, 46–7, 51–2, 54–6, 143, 145–6, 151, 169, 204,

239–40, 307, 310, 310–5, 359; symbolic 51–2, 56, 226 Virgil 190, 241, 245, 249, 335–6 Virtues 68, 73, 107, 228 Vitruvius 209, 287 Vout, Caroline 223 Voza, Pasquale 143 Vulso, Cn. Manlius 149 W Walbank, Frank 147, 159 n32 Wallace–Hadrill, Andrew 223, 230–2, 255 War: of manoeuvre 12, 284, 293 n64; of position 12, 247, 284, 293 n64 wealth 50, 64, 68, 104, 105, 155, 261, 276, 310, 311–2, 317, 346, 356, 359 Weber, Max 23, 204, 214 n12, 291 n13, 304; charisma 229 Welsh, Alexander 69 Weltanschauung 24, 273, 290 Whitehead, David 68 Wickham, Chris 278 Williams, Gwyn A. 10, 30 n43 Williams, Raymond 10–2, 25, 26, 31 n48, 63, 75 n1 X Xenophon 347 Xenon of Patrai 152 Z Zanker, Paul 223 Zeus 48–9, 51, 54, 55, 57–8 n11, 59 n28, 344

Index of the ancient sources

A. Inscription and Papyri AE

RO 95, ll. 64-6, 72

1980: 503, 107-8, 120 n31

SEG

CIL

XV: 517, 53 XL: 1044, 114, 120 n50 L: 276, 114-5, 120 n52

VI: 33914, 231, 236 n38

IG I3: 182, 71 II 2: 1138, 79 n52 1139, 79 n52 1140, 79 n52 1141, 79 n52 1143, 79 n52 1144, 79 n52 1148, 79 n52 1178, 79 n52 1252, 349 n14 1253, 349 n14 1261, 349 n14 1264, 349 n14 II3: 1.301, 78 n43 1.306, 71 1.338, 71 1.348, 71 1.360, 71 1.393, 71 IX: 2.1296 A, 111, 120 n39

SIG3 686, 154

TAM V: 1.442, 114, 120 n49

B. Literature Aesop. (Perry) 1, 59 n28 202, 113, 120 n48 225, 59 n27

Andocides 2.16-9, 78 n43

Antiphanes fr. 100 K-A, 58 n25

P. Turner

Apostolius

41, 110, 120 n37

14: 32, 59 n29

Index of the ancient sources 377

Appian B Civ 1: 1-3, 196 n20 7-8, 196 n22 9.36, 195 n12 11.44, 195 n12

4: 1.1289a 11-25, 76 n7 4.1290a30-b20, 64, 76 n5 5: 1-3 (1301a20-1304b19), 65 8.1308b 20-24, 76 n8 9.1310a 14, 76 n8 7: 11.1330b19-20, 96-7 n4 8: 1.1337a 14-7, 76 n8

Rh. Archilochus fr. 5 W, 54 frr. 21-2 W, 53 fr. 23 W, 54 fr. 89 W, 59 n31 fr. 94 W, 59 n31 fr. 102 W, 53 fr. 116 W, 53 frr. 172-81 W, 54 fr. 172 W, 54 fr. 173 W, 55 fr. 174 W, 55 fr. 177 W, 55 frr. 185-7 W, 54 fr. 250, 58 n25 fr. 295 W (= 88 B 44 D-K), 53

1: 5.1361a 25-39, 70 8.1365b 31ff., 76 n7 2: 2.1378b23-30, 58 n13

[Aristoteles] Xen. 975a10, 57 n5

Artemidorus Daldianus 2: 8, 106, 119 n21 9, 106, 119 n23 12, 105-6, 119 n19 4: 30, 105, 119 n18

Aristophanes

Augustus

Av.

Res Gestae

82, 59 n27

Appendix 1, 259

Ran.

Cicero

1030-6, 57 n5

Aristoteles Eth. Nic. 10: 9.1181b 22-3, 76 n7

Dom. 5, 362 n35 6, 362 n35 48, 362 n35 53, 362 n35 89, 362 n35

Leg. Pol.

3: 19, 185, 194 n8

2: 9.1271a 13-4, 76 n7 3: 4.1276b 30-1, 64, 76 n8 6.1278b, 64, 76 n5 12.1282b 8-13, 76 n7

Off. 1: 150-1, 359

378  Index of the ancient sources Rep.

Dio Chrysostomus,

1: 27, 250 4: 3.3, 153

Or. 33: 11-2, 45

Tusc. 1: 3, 57 n6

Diodorus Siculus

Cass. Dio

31: 26-7, 155 32: 2, 159 n32 9, 151

42: 29-32, 361 n7

Demosthenes Against Aristocrates

Diogenes Laertius 6: 98, 59 n29 7: 94, 59 n29 9: 1, 57 n6

23.23-4, 73

Euripides Against Euboulides

fr. 670 (TrGF), 58 n25

57.62-4, 73

Florus Against Leptines 19.31, 71 20.5, 72, 77 n35 20.5-6, 69 20.10, 77 n35 20.11, 64, 71 20.13, 64-5 20.14, 65 20.15-6, 73 20.27-46, 71 20.27-50, 71 20.27-87, 71 20.29-87, 71 20.41, 77 n35 20.48, 71 20.51-5, 71 20.67-87, 71, 78 n43 20.69, 77 n35 20.70, 71 20.82, 77 n35 20.103, 77 n35 20.106-8, 73 20.108, 72 20.115, 71 20.120, 71 20.155, 77 n35 22.8-10, 78 n43

2: 16, 151

Galenus De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 5: 7.66-7, 109, 120 n36

Gerontius Life of Melania the Younger 10, 116, 120 n58

Hesiod Op. Σ 202a, 57-8 n11 202, 47 202-12, 46 204, 46 205, 46

Index of the Ancient Sources 379 207, 47 Σ 207-12, 57-8 n11 208, 57 210, 47 211, 47 213-221, 47 219, 48 221, 48 225-6, 48 225-37, 48 227, 48 228-31, 48 230-7, 48 238-69, 48 270-3, 48 618-94, 58-9 n25

558-9, 50 559-60, 58 n18

Heraclitus

Isocrates

D 42 D-K, 57 n6 D 57 D-K, 57 n5

Paneg.

Herodotus 2: 53.2-3, 57 n5

Homer Il. 1: 277-9, 344 2: 86, 349 n12 102-8, 51 186, 51 190-1, 51 190-7, 343-4 198-204, 51 199, 51 201, 51 205-6, 344 207-210, 52 225-42, 345 246-66, 52 270, 52 270-5, 52 4: 169-72, 50 6: 441-3, 50 9: 443, 52 12: 310-21, 49–50 18: 501, 250 550-60, 50 557, 50

Od. 8: 41, 349 n12 14: 77, 58 n18 429, 58 n18

Ignatius Letter to Polycarp 4, 115, 120 n54

9.5, 70 159, 57 n5

Josephus AJ 14: 186, 265-6, 269 n40

Libanius 47.21, 115-6, 120 n57

Solon frr. 36-7 W, 59 n31

Livy 34: 5, 149 36: 27-8, 160 n41 31, 160 n43 39: 6, 149 48-50, 160 n43 40: 20, 160 n43

Per. 52, 151

380  Index of the Ancient Sources [Longinus] Subl.

Acts

13.3, 57 n6

1.1, 264 2.2-41, 334, 338 n26 17.7, 263 18.12-17, 265 24.24-7, 265 25.9, 265 28.31, 263

Lucan 1: 6-7, 247 7, 247 56-7, 249 57-8, 249 72-80, 252 n40 128, 249 136-44, 247 138, 247 141, 247 144-5, 247 151, 247 151-7, 247 153, 247 2 289-92, 252 n40 320-2, 248 3: 298-762, 248 7: 132-8, 252 n40

NT Mark 15.2, 263

Matthew

Ep. Rom. 13.1-2, 263

OT Micah 5.2, 269 n33

Pausanias 7: 14-6, 151 14.2-3, 160 n47 14.6-7, 151 15.9, 151 8: 30.8, 154

Petronius

2.1, 269 n33 2.2, 263 27.11, 263

Sat.

Luke

Phaedrus

1.3-4, 264 1.4, 264 2.1, 264 3.1, 264 4.43, 263 22.66-23.25, 265 23.3, 263 23.14, 265

Appendix 20, 111, 120 n40

John 1.49, 263 18.33, 263 18.36, 263 19.12, 263

57, 108-9, 120 n34

Philogelos Facetiae 47, 110-1, 120 n38

Philostratus Imag. 1: 3, 57 n6

Index of the Ancient Sources 381 VS 6: 620, 57 n6

Pollux Onom.

Pliny the Elder

8.76-7, 58 n13

HN

Polybius

14: 1.2-3, 316, 322 n166 1.4, 317, 322 n167 37: 4.10, 236 n36

1: 1.2, 154, 161 n53 1.5, 146, 148, 155 3.7-8, 155 35, 155 2: 47.5, 159 n34 3: 1.9, 148 1.9-10, 146 4.8-12, 146-7, 159 n30 8-10, 155 70, 155 81, 155 5: 1-12.3-5, 159 n35 9.8-10, 159 n34 10.1-5, 147 10.6-8, 159 n34 6: 2.3, 155 7-9, 148 11.1-2, 155 11.3-9, 155 18, 155 57.5-9, 194 n8 7: 11-4, 159 n32 12-4, 147 8: 9-11, 147 9 11, 159 n32 10: 2.8-12, 160 n35 2-5, 159 n34 2-20, 155 11.7-8, 160 n35 14.12, 160 n35 18.7-15, 160 n35 19.3-7, 160 n35 35-6, 159 n32 11: 20.1-23.9, 160 n34 14: 5.15, 160 n34 15 5-6, 160 n34 20-4, 147 18 1-2.1, 159 n34 1-12, 149 34, 149 35, 155, 160 n35 36-9, 149 43, 149 45-6, 149 20: 9-10, 160 n41 9.1-10.17, 155

Plato Grg. 513b 1-3, 76 n9

Prt. 316d, 57n5

Leg. 7: 788b 3, 76 n9

Resp. 4: 435e-6a, 76 n9 549a 8, 76 n9 565e, 76 n5 606-7, 57 n5

Plutarch Instituta Laconica 34.239b, 54

Phil. 21, 154

Ti. Gracch. 9.4 (= ORF4 149-50 fr. 13-15), 195 n12

Thes. 3.2, 57 n5

382  Index of the Ancient Sources 22: 3.1-3, 160 n43 7.1-6, 160 n43 10.5-8, 160 n43 11.6-12.9, 160 n43 18, 147 23: 4.8-14, 160 n43 9.8, 160 n47 9.8-14, 160 n43 10, 147 16.1-18.1, 160 n43 17, 150 17.3-4, 155 24: 2.3, 160 n43 8-10, 153 9.9-14, 160 n43 9.12-3, 160 n47 10.13-5, 160 n43 28: 3.4-10, 152 6.1-9, 152 13.1-5, 152 29: 24.1-25.5, 152 24.7, 152 30: 6-9, 157 12, 150 29, 150 31: 2, 160 n35 2.6-11, 155 11-2, 160 n35 11.7-12, 155 22-30, 160 n35 23.5-25.1, 155 23-24.1, 153 23.5-30.3, 159 n34 25.3-7, 155 32: 4, 150 5, 150 33: 8-39, 159 n34 35 6, 153 36: 1-10, 160 n35 4.1-3, 160 n41 9, 155 10, 151 17, 151 38: 4.7, 153, 160 n50 4.8, 155, 161 n55 9.1-2, 160 n47 9.6-8, 160 n47 9-18, 151 19, 153 19-22, 153, 159 n34 21-2, 153 39: 2-6, 151 2-31, 154

5.2-5, 153, 160 n49 5.4-6, 154 6.5, 151

Sallust Cat. 14, 362 n35

Seneca Clem. 1: 24, 217 n43

Strabo 8: 6.23, 154

Suda π 1581, 59 n29 σ 256, 59 n27

Suetonius Iul. 42, 144, 188, 195 n16, 211

Aug. 42, 261 98, 260 101.3, 259

Tacitus Ann. 1: 1, 262 2, 260-1 9, 261, 262 4: 20, 262 27, 217 n43

Index of the Ancient Sources 383 6: 11, 236 n36 14: 42, 111-2, 120 n41 15: 67, 262

Hist. 4: 74, 261

Xenophanes B 10 DK, 57 n5

Xenophon Hell. 3: 3.5-11, 349 n13

Thucydides 2: 46, 70

Symp. 3.5, 57 n5

Velleius Paterculus 1: 11, 151 12, 151 2: 2.2-3, 196 n20 88.2-3, 236 n36

[Xenophon] Ath. Pol. 2.20, 76 n5

Vitruvius

Zonaras

10: 1.1-2, 209, 216 n34

9: 28, 151

Index of Gramsci’s texts

Letters

Ordine Nuovo

1910 to Francesco Gramsci, 24/05, 29 n14 1927 to Tania Schucht, 19/03, 134 n7 1930 to Julia Schucht, 10/02, 217 n47 1931 to Carlo Gramsci, 28/09, 217 n40

1919 01/05, 28 n1 07/06, 175 n6 14/06, 175 n7 28/06–05/07, 194 02/08, 24, 35 1920 28/02–06/03, 175 n6 05/06, 175 n6 Parliamentary Speech (16/05/1925) 170, 177 n20 Stato Operaio, lo 1925 21/05, 177 n20 Tema: Oppressi e Oppressori 168–9, 176–7 n17

Pre–Prison Writings Avanti! 1916 11/01, 169–70, 177 n18 24/03, 208 1917 1/01, 28 26/02, 290 14/03, 215 n22 27/11, 290 n3 24/12, 257–8, 268 n15 1919 14/06, 201, 213 n1

Città Futura, la 5, 28 n1 Grido del Popolo, il 1917 03/03, 290 1918 04/05, 154 20/07, 295 n93

Prison Notebooks Q1 §12, 341 §25, 124–5, 134 n11 §26, 136 n44 §44, 170, 177–8 n23 §47, 57 n1 §76, 293 n54 §117, 216 n26 §148, 96 n4 §158, 293 n54

Q2 §42, 216 n29 §55, 195 n9 §75, 234 n3

Index of Gramsci’s texts §79, 195 n9 §100, 197 n44

Q3 §15, 294 n79 §16, 294 n79 §18, 294 n79 §34, 57 n1, 267, 280–1, 292 n50 §46, 57 n1, 197 n47 §48, 92, 98 n27 §49, 302, 317 n2 §74, 136 n48 §75, 96 n4 §86, 130 §87, 284–5, 294 n70 §88, 285, 294 n72 §89, 133 n2 §98–9, 217 n41 §112, 216 n35, 294 n77 §135, 96 n4 §156, 130, 131

Q4 §38, 280, 292 n49, 295 n95, 295 n108, 301, 317n1 §45, 315, 321 n149 §49, 96 n4 §60, 286, 294 n77

Q5 §23, 96 n4 §60, 294 n78 §74, 197 n43, 294 n71 §95, 142 §110, 196 n34 §119, 178 n28 §127, 57 n1 §138, 215 n21 §143, 197 n43

Q6 §10, 57 n1 §12, 57 n1 §24, 29 n8 §30, 246 §36, 130–1 §63, 284, 293 n65

385

§78, 284, 293 n67 §81, 57 n1 §82, 99 n35 §84, 284 §88, 29 n12, 294 §103, 197 n44 §136, 57 n1 §137, 57 n1 §156, 130 §172, 96–7 n4, 99 n33

Q7 §1, 96 n4 §15, 294 n79 §19, 57 n4 §24, 295 n95 §29, 321 n144 §33, 206–7, 216 §38, 99 n35 §45, 91, 98 n23 §90, 57 n1 §108, 195 n9

Q8 §2, 57 n1 §22, 27, 86, 96 n1, 144, 159 n19, 188, 195 n16, 211, 217 n44, 322 n158 §29, 316, 322 n159 §49, 216 n29 §80, 170–1, 178 nn. 24–5 §90, 294 n84 §126, 197 §130, 57 n1, 194 §141, 57 n1 §173, 322 n157, 337 n12 §175, 321 n149 §179, 57 n1 §182, 288–9, 295 n97 §185, 57 n1 §186, 96 n4 §190, 57 n1 §191, 285, 294 n73 §213, 322 n157 §234, 295 n96

Q9 §64, 98 n29 §68, 283–4, 294 n63 §89, 195 n13, 197 n55, 215 n17

386  Index of Gramsci’s Texts §127, 216 n23 §133, 213 n3 §136, 282, 293 n56

Q10 i§7, 295 n93 i§12, 26, 36 nn.156–7, 142 i§13, 26, 36 n13 ii§17, 88–90, 97 nn. 12–7 ii§27, 322 n163 ii§28, 96 n4 ii§35, 99 n35 ii§41, 96 n4, 99 n35, 314, 321 n139 ii§44, 93–4, 99 n32, 143 ii§46, 96 n4 ii§48, 96 n4, 257, 267–8 n132 ii§52, 92, 98 n26 ii§54, 30 n37 ii§61, 143

197 n50, 223–4, 229, 234 n10, 235 n32, 257, 267 n11, 295 n95, 302, 321 n152, 330–1, 333, 337 nn. 7–9, 338 n18 §2, 30 n37, 142, 158 n8 §3, 29 n7, 30 n37, 197 n50

Q13 §1, 240, 241, 242, 243, 248, 250 n8, 251 n16 §7, 57 n1 §11, 57 n1 §14, 45–6, 57 n9, 239–40, 250 nn5–6 §17, 58 n17, 142, 241, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250 n6 §18, 154, 160 n52, 258, 268 n16 §23, 241, 251 n19, 256, 267 n7 §27, 202, 214 n4, 241, 242, 243, 251 n15, 282, 293 n57

Q11

Q14

§9, 294 n80 §11, 209, 216 n29, 217 n38, 294 n79, 361 n10 §12, 30 n37, 57 n2, 91, 93, 98 n22, 99 n31, 101, 118 n1, 322 n157 §13, 30 n37, 57 n2 §14, 96 n4 §15, 30 n37 §16, 30 n37 §17, 30 n37 §18, 314, 321 n145 §20, 30 n37, 96 n4 §22, 30 n37, 96 n4 §25, 30 n37, 92, 98 n27, 321 n152, 322 n164 §26, 30 n37, 95, 96 n4, 99 n36, 332, 337 n16 §27, 30 n37 §28, 30 n37 §33, 30 n37 §34, 30 n37 §44, 98 n29 §62, 98 n18, 317, 321 n149, 322 n168 §63, 57 n4

§13, 57 n1 §15, 96 n4 §16, 196 n34 §23, 283, 293 n59 §49, 57 n1 §72, 196 n31 §76, 57 n1

Q12

Q17

§1, 2, 29 n5, 30 n37, 35 n153, 96 n4, 97 n5, 142, 144, 158 n7, 195 n9,

§18, 96 n4 §21, 188, 195–6 n17, 204, 283, 293 n61

Q15 §3, 57 n1 §5, 281, 293 n54 §10, 3, 29 n11, 57 n1 §18, 57 n1 §41, 217 n46 §62, 143

Q16 §6, 216 n32, 286 §9, 30 n37 §21, 195 n9 §28, 195 n9

Index of Gramsci’s Texts 387 §32, 197 n51 §33, 283, 293 n62, 348 n2 §51, 57 n1 §53, 172, 178 nn. 29–30

Q19 §1, 172, 178 n35, 179 n36, 187, 193, 195 nn.13–4, 197 n55 §5, 173–4, 179–80 n43, 196 n31, 197 n45, 216 n23 §24, 142, 195 n9 §26, 195 n9 §28, 213 n2

Q24 §4, 29 n6

Q25 §4, 185, 194 n6, 252 n31 §6, 194 n6, 210 §7, 96 n4

Q26 §6, 57 n1

Q28 §14, 96 n4