Was Valerius Maxumus a Hack?

Abstract

Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia blends elements of Roman declamation and historiography. Scrutiny of this text’s intertextual practices sheds light on the relationship it creates between its contents and its readers. Whereas declamation’s textual re-use aims to draw attention to the declaimer’s skill at adapting material, and historiographers invoke prior texts to borrow the earlier author’s authority, Valerius Maximus includes prior texts in ways that obscure both his own skill and his source’s authority. The attention he draws to an authorless “tradition,” of which he is a part, makes the lessons his text contains available to an audience previously excluded from Roman literary culture.