latrones - Get a Free Blog

IMPERIAL CHALLENGERS: BULLA FELIX AND MATERNUS
These correspondences are important indicators. They do not prove but
they harden suspicion that in many particulars what Herodian says about
Maternus follows his source, the text of Cassius Dio. It is striking that all
the points of contact between Herodian and Dio fall in the second part of
the description, i.e., in the part dealing with the failed attack on Commodus.
It would, of course, be going too far to speculate that the abortive attempt at
usurpation should be seen as an authentic historical phenomenon, not an
historian’s invention. However, it has to be said that modern historians
would be more prepared to trust a report of an attempted coup by Maternus
if this came from Cassius Dio rather than from Herodian. In any case, it has
to be conceded that the narratives about Maternus and Bulla are very closely
related in terms of their conception and in the manner of their expression.
Thus it has at least again been made clear that Cassius Dio was perfectly able
to tell, in Alföldy’s phrase, a ‘truly Herodianic’ story. What distinguishes
him from Herodian is that he does this deliberately and to a purpose.
9 Conclusion
As we have seen, the fil rouge in the story of the bandit Bulla, in all its detail,
is the constant putting down of state authority by the outlaw. 184 It is always
the emperor, as the supreme representative of this authority, whose legitimacy
is being called into doubt by the lawbreaker, who both challenges
him and represents his mirror image. Armed with deep understanding and a
high degree of moral legitimisation, Bulla himself incorporates the qualities
of the ideal ruler: just, generous, cultivated, at one with his ‘subjects’ and
unconquerable by rivals and enemies. His band is projected as the antithesis
of the realities of Roman society. Its members are not squeezed for everything
they have; on the contrary, they are properly paid for what they do,
the slaves among them treated like human beings and adequately fed.
Directly or indirectly, Cassius Dio conceives the story of Bulla Felix along
lines laid down by Tacitus in his narrative concerning the appearance of
the false Agrippa Postumus. Tacitus made the latter, a political adventurer
with lofty ambitions, an instrument of hidden, but unforgiving, criticism of
Tiberius. Dio copied this approach, down to specific details, in his treatment
of Bulla, with the same aim of criticising the imperial office. To this end, he
seized upon an oral tradition which contained a kernel of truth and filled it
out with carefully considered particulars. By comparing them with his habits
and preferences in respect of substance and style, much of this can be identified
as typical of Dio. In the context of the part of his history which dealt
with contemporary events, the story of Bulla Felix stands, alongside those of
other bandits, as a symptom of the crisis of legitimacy in the Roman system
of leadership at the time of the commencement of the imperial ‘Crisis’.
Maternus the daring rascal was led on by essentially egoistical motives such
as greed, ambition and a craving for fame. Among his men were disgraced
135