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Headword: *au)=los *posto/mios
Adler number: alpha,4446
Translated headword: Aulus Postumius
Vetting Status: high
Translation:
[Aulus Postumius][1] came from a prominent household and family,[2] but he was personally a chatterbox and prattler as well as a bore par excellence.[3] From childhood, he longed to acquire the culture and language of the Greeks and was so given to, and intense for, both that because of him even the study of Greek literature proved offensive to the elder and most distinguished of the Romans.[4] Finally, he put his hand to writing a poem and a political and military history in Greek.[5] In the proem of the latter, he implored his readers to pardon him if, being a Roman, he was not able to master[6] the Greek language and its method of the approaching the subject.[7] This is a mark of sheer folly and about the same thing as if a man, after entering the lists for the athletic contests, boxing or pankration, came into the stadium and, when he was required to fight, beseeched the spectators to pardon him if he was unable to endure the pain or the blows.[8] Clearly, such a man would make a laughing-stock of himself and receive his comeuppance in short order. The same should happen to writers of histories lest they presume beyond the proprieties. Aulus liked pleasure and fled toil.[9]
Greek Original:
*au)=los *posto/mios oi)ki/as me\n h)=n kai\ ge/nous prw/tou, kata\ th\n i)di/an fu/sin stwmu/los kai\ la/los kai\ pe/rperos diafero/ntws. e)piqumh/sas d' eu)qe/ws e)k pai/dwn th=s *(ellhnikh=s a)gwgh=s kai\ diale/ktou polu\s me\n h)=n e)n tou/tois kai\ katakorh/s, w(/ste di' e)kei=non kai\ th\n ai(/resin th\n *(ellhnikh\n prosko/yai toi=s presbute/rois kai\ toi=s a)ciologwta/tois tw=n *(rwmai/wn, te/los de\ kai\ poi/hma gra/fwn kai\ pragmatikh\n i(stori/an e)nexei/rhsen: e)n h(=| dia\ tou= prooimi/ou pareka/lei tou\s e)ntugxa/nontas suggnw/mhn e)/xein, ei) *(rwmai=os w)\n mh\ du/nhtai katakratei=n th=s *(ellhnikh=s diale/ktou kai\ th=s kata\ xeirismo\n oi)konomi/as: o(/per e)sti\ pa/shs a)topi/as shmei=on, kai\ paraplh/sion, w(s a)\n ei)/ tis e)s tou\s gumnikou\s a)gw=nas a)pograya/menos pugmh\n h)\ pagkra/tion, parelqw\n e)s to\ sta/dion, o(/te de/oi ma/xesqai, paraitoi=to tou\s qewme/nous suggnw/mhn e)/xein, e)a\n mh\ du/nhtai to\n po/non u(pome/nein mh/te ta\s plhga/s. dh=lon ga\r w(s ei)ko\s ge/lwta to\n toiou=ton o)flei=n kai\ th\n di/khn e)k xeiro\s lamba/nein: o(/per e)/dei kai\ tou\s toiou/tous i(storiogra/fous, i(/na mh\ kateto/lmwn tou= kalw=s e)/xontos. h)=n de\ kai\ filh/donos kai\ fugo/ponos.
Notes:
From Polybius 39.1. On this individual see generally OCD(4) p.1198 (by John Briscoe), and further bibliography at the end of the individual notes below.
[1] Aulus Postumius Albinus, son of Aulus, grandson of Aulus, enters history as tribune of the soldiers under Lucius Aemilius Paullus, consul 168 BCE. In 168 he was a member of an (unsuccessful) embassy of three that the consul Aemilius sent to Samothrace to negotiate the surrender of Perseus, king of Macedonia (Livy 45.4.7). The following year, Aulus assumed custody over the defeated Perseus and his elder son (Livy 45.28.11). As urban praetor in 155, he presided over the senatorial debate concerning the release of the Achaean detainees, i.e. the thousand men, among them Polybius, who had been deported to Rome under suspicions of fomenting rebellion (Scullard 214). The senators were entertaining three proposals, release, continued detention, and postponement, when Aulus put the question: "To whom does it seem best to release those who have been summoned [by Achaeans at home] and to whom does it not?" Since he omitted the third option, the forces against release and those in favor of postponement joined in defeating what would have been the majority for release (Polybius 33.1.5).
During his praetorship, Aulus was among those senators who welcomed the delegation of philosophers, Carneades, Diogenes, and Critolaus, on the Capitoline (Cicero, Academica 2.137; Gellius, Attic Nights 6.14.8-10; Plutarch, Cato the Elder 22). The philosophers had come to Rome to seek relief for the Athenians from the fine imposed by the Sikyonians after their plundering of Oropos (Pausanias 7.11.2-3).
As senatorial legate in 154, he joined two others in ending the war between Prusius of Bithynia and Attalus of Pergamum (Polybius 33.13.4-10).
During his consulship (in 151), Aulus and his colleague, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, conducted the levy for the war in Spain so strictly that they disallowed exemptions and the workings of favoritism. Their enthusiasm brought upon them the ire of the tribunes of the plebs who threw them into prison, a development that must have stirred the mix (Livy, Periocha 48).
In 146 Aulus was dispatched as a member of an embassy of ten to aid Lucius Mummius in reorganizing Greece (Die Inschriften von Olympia 322). An inscription written on an equestrian statue reads: "The polis of Delphi Po[stomion Al]beinon, its patron and benefactor on behalf of the Gre[eks free]dom for Apollo Py[thian] (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 1.152).
Sources: F.W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius. Vol. III: Commentary on Books XIX-XL (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 543-544 (and 726-8 on this passage).
T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic. Vol. I: 509 B.C.–100 B.C. (American Philological Association: New York, 1951), 448, 450-451, 454-455, and 467.
[2] The Postumii, a patrician clan, contended successfully for public office in the late 170s. Their elder, Spurius Postumius Albinus, held the consulship in 186. He aided his cousin Aulus Postumius Albinus Luscus in obtaining the praetorship in 185. Luscus became consul in 180. In spring of 176, he was sent to Macedonia by the senate as a member of a commission to look into disturbances developing between the Dardaniae and Perseus, king of Macedonia, and his allies, the roving tribesmen Bastarnae (Polybius 25.6.5-6; Livy 41.19.4). During his censorship in 174, Luscus appears to have dominated his colleague and rival, Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, expelling Quintus' younger brother from the senate (Livy 41.27.2) and asserting his right as patrician to found the purificatory rituals of the lustrum (Livy 42.10.1-4). Luscus' brother, Spurius Postumius Albinus Paullulus, reached the consulship in 174, and a third brother, Lucius Postumius Albinus (praetor 180), in 173.
Source: H.H. Scullard, Roman Politics 200-150 B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), 190-193.
Broughton, MRR, 370, 372, 387, 403, 403, 404, and 407.
[3] Polybius, who believed garrulity to be a feminine trait (31.26.10), describes the grammarian Isocrates with the same words (32.2.5).
[4] Polybius identifies in a corrupted line Markos Porki[os Kat]on as the offended party (39.15-7):
Marcus Porcius Cato replied to Aulus properly, I think, when he said that he wondered why he made such an apology. If perhaps the council of the Amphictionic League ordered him to write a history, this declaration and excuse perhaps were needed. But under no duress, to volunteer to write a history and then to ask for pardon, if he sounded like a foreigner, was a mark of sheer folly and just about as useless as a man. . . .
Walbank (727) suggests Cato's "remark may reflect disapproval of the senatorial tradition of writing Roman history in Greek, against which his own Origines was a counterblast."
[5] Nothing remains of the poem. Pragmatike historia indicates a political and military history. Its two fragments, both in Latin, are from a book entitled On the Arrival of Aeneas.
In words given to Lucius Licinius Lucullus, Cicero implies that he read Aulus' history and that it showed Aulus to be "a really learned man" (Academica 2.137). Elsewhere, he deemed Aulus "learned and eloquent" (Brutus 81) and considered him "a suitable character" for a political dialogue that he planned to write (Letters to Atticus 13.32).
Source: H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae 1.cxxiv-cxxvi and F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker iii C, 881 ff.
[6] Aulus who here evinces the superiority of Roman strength toward Greeks and yet humbles himself before their language appears to exemplify Horace's observation: "Captured Greece took her fierce victor captive" (Letters 2.1.156).
[7] Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights 11.8.1) preserves another reaction by Cato that appeared in book 12 of Cornelius Nepos' On Illustrious Men:
Marcus Cato is said to have rebuked Aulus Albinius justly and with finesse. Albinius, consul with Lucius Lucullus, wrote about Roman affairs in Greek. In the beginning of his History, he said something to this effect:
no one should be indignant at him if something in his book was written too little polish or elegance. "I am a Roman," he said, "and Greek is most foreign to me." For that reason, he demanded to be forgiven and excused for what errors remain. When Marcus Cato had read this, he commented, "Without a doubt, Aulus, you're half-baked. You'd rather say you're sorry for doing something culpable than not being culpable in the first place. We usually seek pardon when we have either unwittingly made a mistake or have given offense under compulsion. Tell me, I beg you, who forced you to do something that, before doing it, you're asking to be forgiven?"
Also: Macrobius, Saturnalia, preface 14; Plutarch, Cato the Elder 12.6l; Moralia 199E-F.
[8] For the contest of pankration see generally pi 11; and for this passage again, pi 509.
"Striking with hand and foot was a main part of the sport [namely, pankration]—sometimes the only one" (Poliakoff 56). Unlike wrestlers who were barred from hitting, and boxers who could strike only with their fists, pankratiasts were free to land blows with their hands and feet (Quintilian, Education of an Orator 2.8.13). Plato stresses the need for the pankratiast to be ambidextrous, capable of landing blows from both sides:
The man who is trained to perfection in the pankration or boxing or wrestling is not incapable of fighting from his left side. He does not go lame or shuffle his foot gracelessly whenever someone shifts him and forces him to work from the other side (Laws 795B).
Kicking distinguishes pankration from the other heavy events, and consequently, winning athletes were praised for their big feet:
Glukon, renown of Asian Pergamum,
thunderbolt of the pankration, he of the broad foot,
the new Atlas, and those unconquered hands of his
are gone (Greek Anthology 7.692).
Reliance on kicking, however, exposed pankratiasts to effortless ridicule: "Should you tell me, I kick a great kick, I will say to you, You boast of an accomplishment that belongs to a jackass " (Epictetus, Discourses 3.14.14).
Hitting with fists separated the pankratiast from the wrestler both in competition and in vase painting. A father lectures his son on the value of a good punch:
Now, say, listen to me.
When I was a spectator at Olympia,
Ephoudion fought with Askondas nobly,
although he was an old man. Then the older guy
popped the younger one with his fist and knocked him down.
And so watch it, buster, that you don't get a black eye
(Aristophanes, Wasps 1381-1386).
Occasionally, a competitor wore boxing strips. Such support for his wrist and fingers curtailed flexibility in grabbing an opponent. The advantage gained by hitting an opponent apparently outweighed that of the wrestler's skills (Poliakoff 56).
Source: Jüthner, Julius, "Pankration." In Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Begun by Georg Wissowa and continued by Wilhelm Kroll and Karl Mittelhaus, Vol. 36, 2nd third, cols. 619-625. Württ.: Albert Druckenmüller, 1949).
Michael B. Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), 54-63.
[9] Polybius goes on to explain (39.1.10):
In the rest of his way of life, he was eager for the worst parts of Greek behavior, for he loved pleasure and shunned toil. This is clear from what happened itself. When he was present in Greece for the first time, about the time of the battle in Phocis, he feigned sickness and retreated to Thebes in order not to take part in the danger. After the battle was over, he was first to write the senate about the success, elaborating on each detail as if he had taken part in the contests himself.
For this battle in which Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus defeated the union of Patrae, see Polybius 38.16.4 and Walbank 712-71.
Keywords: athletics; biography; children; ethics; historiography; military affairs; poetry; politics
Translated by: Wm. Blake Tyrrell on 22 February 2002@01:15:39.
Vetted by:
Wm. Blake Tyrrell on 27 February 2002@21:30:30.
David Whitehead (cosmetics) on 9 June 2002@08:47:08.
David Whitehead (augmented note) on 28 August 2002@03:12:03.
Elizabeth Vandiver (Added italics; cosmetics) on 14 October 2005@20:37:39.
Elizabeth Vandiver (Added keyword) on 14 October 2005@20:39:06.
David Whitehead (another keyword; cosmetics) on 30 April 2012@08:20:48.
Catharine Roth (coding) on 19 December 2014@00:46:05.
David Whitehead (corrected some dates, at the prompting of Prof John D Morgan; other tweaks and cosmetics) on 30 May 2015@03:56:06.

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