annalist

annalist, in general, an ancient Roman historian. The term is used in several ways by ancient and modern scholars. The earliest sources for historians were the annual “pontiff’s tables” (tabulae pontificum), or annales, which after about 300 bc listed the names of magistrates and public events of religious significance. The first work called Annales was the epic poem of Quintus Ennius (239–169 bc); in contrast to subsequent annalistic works, Ennius’s was composed in dactylic hexameter verse rather than prose, and it did not follow a year-by-year narrative. Later authors refer to the histories of Quintus Fabius Pictor and Cato as annales, although Cato’s Origines, at least, was not a year-by-year narrative. In the 2nd century and early 1st century bc, a number of historians, later used as sources by Livy, did follow a year-by-year presentation: Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, Gnaeus Gellius, Valerius Antias, Gaius Licinius Macer, Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius, and Quintus Aelius Tubero.

Aulus Gellius, writing in the 2nd century ad, preserved in his Noctes Atticae (“Attic Nights”) a further ancient distinction, which had arisen in the late 2nd century bc: Sempronius Asellio, influenced by the contemporary Greek historian Polybius, distinguished between annals, which recount the past in a straightforward narrative, and histories, which tell of contemporary events and include serious critical analysis of events and motives. Historians in the 2nd and 1st centuries bc who followed Asellio include Gaius Fannius, Lucius Cornelius Sisenna, Sallust, and Gaius Asinius Pollio. From this distinction arose the habit in the 19th century ad of using the term annalist to refer to Livy’s sources, such as Valerius Antias and Claudius Quadrigarius, whom modern historians often despised as uncritical and even dishonest retailers of folktales and legends. Thus, annalist in this last sense is an unflattering term.

In 123 bc the Roman pontifex Publius Mucius Scaevola published his annales maximi, completing 80 books of systematic year-by-year accounts of important events in the history of the Roman state that would remain fundamental for later historians. Both Livy and Tacitus composed their historical accounts of Rome in a year-by-year format, but neither used the title Annals for the histories. The convention of calling one of Tacitus’s works Annals and the other Histories is a modern convention and does not reflect the writer’s title or philosophy of history.