Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

182 RECEPTION OF FATHER AND SON
In Valerius’ handbook, Hannibal features about forty times, and this
sense of his omnipresence among the alieni is enhanced by the frequent
appearance of terms relating to Carthage. 24 Hannibal’s connection
with Rome is obvious: in directly menacing the city of Rome he
became embedded in Roman consciousness like no other threat-fi gure
before. 25 The ubiquity of Hannibal, of course, offers yet another approach
to Alexander. Very often, Roman historiography and cultural
memory produce a Hannibal designed to explore the counterfactual:
“what if . . . ” Alexander had turned his attention west? 26
Looked at yet another way, another possible Roman point of view
even transforms Valerius’ Hannibal into Alexander’s heir: our passage
makes Hannibal’s entrapment by the luxuries of Campania clearly
comparable to treatments of Alexander’s “degeneracy” in the fl eshpots
of the east—Babylon in particular. 27 This reading presents
Alexander as a strongly negative exemplum—Rome’s black sheep—
and a warning from history of what might happen when a people very
like the Romans (the Macedonians), who began to fl ex their imperial
muscles at exactly the same time, come to be led by a larger-than-life
but fl awed individual. Hannibal, unlike Alexander, posed a real threat
to Rome. His last bow in Valerius’ scheme exemplifi es and undercuts
his persistence as a bogeyman (9.8 ext.1): his mistaken execution of
his steersman was given a retrospective gloss by the erection of a
statue-topped mound which continues, in Valerius’ account, to confront
the eyes of those sailing north or south through the strait between
Italy and Sicily. Hannibal’s concluding memorial in Valerius, then,
connotes his poor judgment, despite which (as the monument continues
to remind passing Romans) he almost triumphed. Alexander,
by contrast, is always more useful than Hannibal for exploring the
nature of Roman imperialism. Roman use of Alexander is always on
Roman terms: Alexander never actually set foot in Italy or tilted at
Rome’s sphere of infl uence, despite the semiotic contortions of so
many authors and texts. Romans control how (or if) to remember him
and to decide what he means.
Valerius’ anecdotal Alexander weaves through the compendium of
sayings and deeds worthy of memorialization in a way that highlights
some issues hugely pertinent to this volume’s concerns with dynasty.
Valerius focalizes a Roman rhetorical education (that is, the transmission
of Roman identity from one generation to the next, and its ongoing
performance) through the fi gure of Alexander (and Alexander/
Hannibal); 28 he tells a story of Alexander that confi gures him specifi -
cally in the terms most relevant to all who sign up to a Roman episteme;
and as a result of these two processes Valerius is also showing
how self-fashioned and genealogically transmitted models of Roman