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AVENGERS IN DYNASTIC CONFLICTS
material estate of the murdered dictator. 11 Octavian shared much the same
basic thought process and the same modus operandi as our avengers. By adopting
his new name he ensured that the dead dictator was reborn in him. At
the time, the fact that his testamentary adoption was (and remains) controversial
12 was of less importance than the fact that he was publicly accepted as
the new Caesar.
Octavian-Caesar might well also have been the model for our avengers
in respect of vengeance itself. He acted as Caesar’s avenger in his campaign
against the assassins. 13 He sated his vengeance in the defeat of Cassius and
Brutus at Philippi, as a token of which he laid the latter’s severed head
before Caesar’s statue in Rome. 14 The main difference between Octavian and
our avengers is that he was successful. If Mark Antony had won at Actium
there is no doubt that Roman histories would be telling us about Octavian
the latro, who quite illegitimately professed himself to be the son and avenger
of Caesar, formed a gang and shook the state with discord and civil strife.
In conclusion, reference to just one author who was aware of the type
confirms the plausibility of proposing that the assumption of a false identity
was typical of illegal political agitation in Roman Antiquity, and that this
was recognised by contemporary as much as by modern commentators.
Valerius Maximus published a section of his Memorabilia (9.15) under a
heading which establishes the two main characteristics of those concerned:
‘Of low-born people who falsely attempted to pass themselves off as members
of noble families’ (De iis qui infimo loco nati mendacio se clarissimis familiis
inserere conati sunt). By way of introduction he remarks that he finds bearable
‘normal’ cases which adversely affected only particular people. 15 He wants,
rather, to tell of those whose deception caused great danger to individuals
and to the state. Valerius was no objective observer, and his choice of five
Roman and two foreign examples seems only partially useful. 16 An effective
basis for discussion is to be had only by widening the set with other attested
cases.
Methodologically speaking it is very significant that the following episodes
were not recorded for their own sake but only because they could
illustrate a particular aspect in the historiographical thinking of the authors
concerned. 17 Valerius’ ‘normal’ cases of the theft of another’s identity, cases
which were not widely known and which had no political impact, were
therefore hardly likely to be set down.
One example of a case that lay on the threshold between ‘normal’ and
‘grievous’ but which fulfilled the minimum criteria of memorability by
possessing some historiographical function comes from ad 69, the ‘Year of
the Four Emperors’. It was then that a fugitive slave called Geta took on the
name of Scribonianus Camerinus, 18 a senator driven into hiding late in Nero’s
reign for political reasons. 19 Well informed, Geta was able to pass himself
off as Scribonianus entirely convincingly. According to Tacitus, he fled to
Istria where ‘his’ family, the Crassi, had estates and dependants and was well
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