Crossing the Rubicon, and Other Dramas

Abstract

Two passages in historical texts – Suetonius Diuus Iulius 32, on Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, and Plutarch Gaius Gracchus 14.4-16.5, on Gracchus’ departure from home on the day of his death – are best understood as prose transcriptions of scenes performed on stage.   This article defends the hypothesis of Karl Meiser in 1887, that the plots of Roman historical dramas can sometimes be detected in such texts, and that the practice illuminates Thucydides’ observation (1.21.1) of how events ‘win over into the mythical’.