historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 7. The mistress of life
tory the attention it deserves. We will do that by looking at Boxhorn’s Dissertationes
politicae de regio Romanorum imperio (Political Dissertations on the Regal
Rule of the Romans), a corpus of sixteen dissertations that tell the history of
Rome from the founding of the city until the reign of Tiberius (42 BC-37), when
the ‘monarchy of the Caesars’ (monarchia Caesarum) was definitely secured.
As the title indicates, the sixteen dissertations that constitute this history
of Rome are not a formal work of history. The dissertations were originally
held by Boxhorn’s students between 1643 and 1645 or 1646. 125 The primary
goal of such political dissertations was to train students in rhetoric. Therefore,
style was of importance. The style in the dissertations is an attempt to imitate
Tacitus’s stylistic technique of ‘variation’: long, sometimes eloquent sentences
take turn with short sharp remarks that state an important point; symmetry
seems to be lacking, while the many negations, double negations, and counter-propositions
force the recipient to be constantly on his toes. 126
The adjective ‘political’ makes clear that these dissertations also had a second
goal, namely to draw political lessons from Rome’s glorious past, just as
Machiavelli had done in his Discorsi. 127 This was entirely in line with the ‘philological-historical
method’ that, as we have noted in chapter 3, was so dominant
at the University of Leiden in the first half of the seventeenth century.
In this chapter, however, attention not so such much goes out to the political
lessons Boxhorn thought a student could or should learn from Rome’s past. 128
Rather, we are more interested in Boxhorn’s version of Rome’s history. Which
themes do occur? On what sources does Boxhorn rely? And with what historical
explanations does Boxhorn come up to explain the vicissitudes that had
Augusta, Historia Augusta scriptorum latinorum minorum (Johannes Maire; Leiden, 1632); some works by
Pliny the Younger, C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi Epistolae et Panegyricus (Johan and Daniel Elzevier; Leiden, 1653);
and also probably the works of Sallust, C. Salustius Crispus cum veterum historicorum fragmentis (Elzevier;
Leiden, 1634). In 1637 Boxhorn published a work on Roman rituals and religion, based on the works of
Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, quibus sacri et profani ritus, plurima etiam antiquitatis monumenta explicantur
(David Lopez de Haro; Leiden, 1637). As will become clear in the next two chapters, Boxhorn’s works on
politics are heavily documented by examples, quotes, and sententiae drawn from Roman authors.
125 Several of these dissertations were published separately in 1643, 1644, and 1645 under the name
‘Disputationes politicae de regio Romanorum imperio’. The sixteen dissertations were first brought
together in 1651 in Boxhorn’s Emblemata politica: accedunt dissertationes politicae de Romanorum Imperio et
quaedamaliae, pp. 139-355. They were reprinted in Boxhorn, Varii Tractatus Politici, pp. 409-533, under the
name ‘Dissertationes politicae, de regio Romanorum imperio’. See Van de Klashorst, Blom and Haitsma
Mulier, Bibliography of Dutch Seventeenth Century Political Thought, pp. 42-43, 46, 65. See also Molhuysen,
Bronnen tot de geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, Vol. 2, p. 279.
126 See for this style A.J. Woodman’s introduction, xx-xxi, to Tacitus’s Annals. For its popularity in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially among Dutch authors, see the various contributions
by Jan Waszink on ‘Tacitism’ in the early modern period.
127 See the introduction by James Atkinson and David Sices to The Sweetness of Power, xxi-xxvii.
128 Some of them will be treated in the next two chapters, where they will be incorporated in the discussion
of Boxhorn’s two most important political works, the Institutiones politicae and the Disquisitiones
politicae.