Reference edition:

Grani Liciniani Reliquiae, edidit N. Criniti, Leipzig 1981 (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana).

The fragments of Granius Licinianus’ vast Roman history in compendio (which may in fact represent an epitome of his text) are ordered annalistically; they are also defined Annales in the 1857 by Pertz — that first, clumsy editor — and others, although without any palaeographic proof. They do not currently have a name. Later editors prudently described them as Quae supersunt (Heptas 1858, the seven more experienced students of Fr. W. Ritschl; Camozzi 1900; Flemisch 1904), and today’s most recent scholars identify them as Reliquiae (vd. Criniti 1981, 1993: and ss.). There is a hypothesis, which also remains uncertain, that the title was Historiae, since this could be inferred from the palaeographically difficult Reliquiae XXVIII, 22, ‘in his hi[st]oriis’.

The history extended in the middle of the Antonine age through almost 40 books, from the foundation of Rome until the death of Caesar, and preserves also some author’s contemporary insertions (vd. the 131-132 Hadrianic dedication of the Olympieion in Athens [Reliquiae XXVIII, 4-5]). Theodore Mommsen called the work ‘der neue Schatz’, and it created great enthusiasm and hope for 19th-century scholars: these fragments preserve precious, occasionally unique frustuli of five books that very fragmentarily cover the last two centuries of the republic (on the palaeographical structure for the five surviving quaternioni, Criniti 1981, IX-XI: and vd. Criniti 1993, 123ss, 157ss). The Reliquiae can be interpreted with difficulty, if not understood, and can no longer be compared with the codex that Pertz irremediably carbonised in the 18th century [vd. Granius Licinianus card], but only with Pertz’s apograph, which is not always reliable.

Book XXVI: contains mentions of the history of the Roman military structure in the 6th/5th century BCE (the reorganisation of the equites by Tarquinius Priscus) and scholarly references to the introduction of the cult of the Dioscuri into Italy (484 BCE); Book XXVIII: on Asian and Roman events between 175-163 BCE (a polemical “biography” of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria; the coemptio of the ager Campanus: 165 BCE); Book XXIII: on events in Italy during 106-105 BCE (the second stage of the Cimbrian Wars); Book XXXV: on Roman and Hellenistic events during the age of Marius and Sulla (87-84 and 94-91 BCE) (e.g. Mithridates VI, king of Pontus); Book XXXVI: on the political instability and the civil wars of 87, 86-85, 81-77 BCE (M. Emilius Lepidus). The usual programmatic praefatio must have been located in Liber I: vd. ‘ut instituimus’ (Reliquiae XXXVI, 30); ‘existimavi’ (Reliquiae XXVIII, 22).  

Up to the age of L. Cornelius Sulla, the primary source of the Reliquiae seems to be Livy (Madvig 1857, and ss.), or perhaps the lost Livian epitome from the Tiberian era. However, Granius Licinianus certainly cannot be defined as an epitomator of the famous Patavian. Sallust is an evident influence after 78 BCE: after all, Granius Licinianus dedicates to him the too-famous judgement ‘Sallustium non ut historicum aiunt, sed ut oratorem legendum’ (Reliquiae XXXVI, 31-32); this easily links him to Frontonian historiography of the mid-2nd-century (La Penna 1970), although stylistically his narrative lacks the rhetorical refinement. Regardless, Granius Licinianus enriches and intersperses his two main sources — not always with critical sense — with antiquarian, religious and profane, authors who show an interest in the Italian and Eastern Hellenistic world. They are of the Polybian mould (through Livian mediation?), but they are not easily identifiable: we have some clues only for P. Rutilius Rufus, from the beginning of the 1st century BCE (Cornell 2013).

Granius Licinianus’ simple Latin is sometimes stylistically and phraseologically meagre and awkward, but his knowledge of Greek is not insignificant. His narrative procedure is dry and measured, in short and continuous sentences; his writing is plain and pedantically archaising. His historiography offers many original points, and it is peppered with anecdotes and mirabilia, despite its stated attention to synthesis and brevitas (‘nos, ut instituimus, moras et non urgentia omittemus’ [Reliquiae XXXVI, 30]). This raises suspicions that the work’s goal, if not its function, was more specifically didactic or educational, and aimed at an audience of curiosi which seems to have shown interest in him until the late empire.

All things considered, the work of Granius Licinianus aligns well — even chronologically — with the historiographical and epitomatory tradition of the 2nd century BCE, offering in some cases a valuable and stimulating unicum: as Gaetano de Sanctis wrote, not without justification, ‘it is the only major attempt after Livy to write a history of Rome from its known origins that survives…’ (N. Criniti, tr. C. Belanger)