Los estereotipos étnicos en Ab urbe condita: un estado de la cuestión

This paper proposes a state of the matter on the scholarship about ethnic stereotypes in Ab urbe condita from the classic work by Walsh written in 1961 to nowadays. With this goal in mind, the paper is divided in five parts. The first part shows how the analyses of the subject matter became more complex as the ethnographic tradition with which Livy dealt, as well as the Roman identity and the notion itself of stereotype became an issue. In the second part, this article criticizes binary conceptions of otherness and suggests a wider gradation of it. The third part deals with some interesting observations made by Moore in 1989 that were later disregarded. In the fourth, it reviews Levene’s suggestion based on ethnic identity studies that we should look for a non-Romancentric view within Livy’s work. Finally, it studies the relevance of considering three kinds of contexts —the genre of the work, episodic and temporal frameworks— while analyzing the ethnic stereotypes in Ab urbe condita.

Livy's Witch-hunts: A Study of Investigations into Veneficium found in Livy

<p>This thesis is an exploration of large scale incidents of veneficium as they are depicted in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita. Livy’s earlier books include references to four quaestiones de veneficiis, investigations into poisoning, which resulted in the executions of thousands of people. This study attempts to understand what happened while hypothesising why they occurred. Veneficium and its associated words have often been declared ambiguous, referring to poisons, potions, and, eventually, magic. However, this interpretation developed significantly later than the events seen in Livy and is anachronistic. This thesis explores this language and so we can understand what veneficium meant during the quaestiones de veneficiis of the fourth and second centuries BC and in Livy’s own time, and how it evolved to become magical and thus colour modern scholarships. Using this knowledge, we can review and reconsider Livy’s reports to gain a fresh understanding of what actually happened during the quaestiones and how the motifs and themes of these investigations reveal that they were in fact social responses to a period of rapid change to Roman life in the second century BC. This final point is reaffirmed when we engage with interdisciplinary theories from anthropology and sociology. By considering theories and models from these schools we can confidently say that, while venefici were not witches, their persecution was a type of witch-hunt.</p>

Livy's Witch-hunts: A Study of Investigations into Veneficium found in Livy

<p>This thesis is an exploration of large scale incidents of veneficium as they are depicted in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita. Livy’s earlier books include references to four quaestiones de veneficiis, investigations into poisoning, which resulted in the executions of thousands of people. This study attempts to understand what happened while hypothesising why they occurred. Veneficium and its associated words have often been declared ambiguous, referring to poisons, potions, and, eventually, magic. However, this interpretation developed significantly later than the events seen in Livy and is anachronistic. This thesis explores this language and so we can understand what veneficium meant during the quaestiones de veneficiis of the fourth and second centuries BC and in Livy’s own time, and how it evolved to become magical and thus colour modern scholarships. Using this knowledge, we can review and reconsider Livy’s reports to gain a fresh understanding of what actually happened during the quaestiones and how the motifs and themes of these investigations reveal that they were in fact social responses to a period of rapid change to Roman life in the second century BC. This final point is reaffirmed when we engage with interdisciplinary theories from anthropology and sociology. By considering theories and models from these schools we can confidently say that, while venefici were not witches, their persecution was a type of witch-hunt.</p>

THE LATE ANTIQUE AFTERLIFE OF ROMAN EXEMPLARITY: THE CASE OF SCIPIO NASICA IN LIVY, AB VRBE CONDITA BOOK 29 AND AUGUSTINE, DE CIVITATE DEI 1.30–2.5

This article calls for a new understanding of the relationship between classicizing and Christian discourses of exemplarity through a close reading of the figure of Scipio Nasica in Livy, Ab urbe condita Book 29 and Augustine, De ciuitate Dei Books 1–2. Nasica, whose selection as a uir optimus by the Senate in 204 b.c.e. has puzzled modern scholars, was a source of historiographical difficulty for Livy that prompted him to reflect upon exemplarity, mythmaking and the tenuous relationship between past and present. For Augustine, on the other hand, Nasica was a pagan, and thus imperfect, realization of Christian pietas and restraint from luxurious behaviour. Although differing in their interpretations of the Republican exemplum, both Livy and Augustine point to the complexities inherent in invocations of paradigmatic Roman maiores. The close study of Scipio Nasica thus reveals the classicizing precedent lingering behind the supposedly ‘Christian’ rejections of pre-Christian Roman culture in the De ciuitate Dei.

An Exemplary Defense: Livy's Illustrative Exemplum in Thomas More's Apology

In this article, I intend to show how Thomas More's use of a seemingly obscure episode from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita in his Apology provides important insights into the major themes of the polemical project that was to consume his final years. More's adaptation of the episode situates him among other Renaissance luminaries who saw in it a means to explore how group dynamics affect individual judgement and shape common opinion. The adaptation also serves to provide thematic cohesion in a polemic long considered excessively excursive and without merit, literary or otherwise. This exploration will further shed light upon the ways in which Renaissance authors appropriated classical histories to address contemporary concerns.

LAS CONSTRUCCIONES AB URBE CONDITA EN GRIEGO, CON ESPECIAL ATENCIÓN A LOS USOS HOMÉRICOS

El presente artículo se propone estudiar las construcciones ab urbe condita en Homero (un ejemplo típico: ἐς ἠέλιον καταδύντα, “hasta la puesta del sol”) y, subsidiariamente, en otros autores griegos. Su fin es demostrar que estas construcciones se distinguen de otras análogas por cuatro características, a saber: a) el participio es imprescindible, salvo en un limitado grupo de verbos (de “ser”, “llegar a ser” y análogos); b) el participio siempre modifica al núcleo de un término preposicional; c) el participio es predicativo, no atributivo; d) el participio tiene una posición relativamente fija.

Augustan aetia

Livy, in his ab urbe condita, makes it clear that origins are subject to change: to growth and development, or to decay and decline. This temporal framework is closely connected with the circularity of exemplarity, of deeds that can be re-enacted again and again. This draws attention to the fact that Livy himself, by writing this aetiological account, also acts in an exemplary way, exhorting his readers to do something similar for the city they see preserved ‘even now’. In Vergil’s Aeneid, the aetion of the Game of Troy in Book 5 brings home the message that what had been spoken as fatum in the remote past is now being fulfilled in the Augustan present. Yet with the so-called reconciliation of Juno, the aetion of the lusus Troiae appears in a new light: it becomes an act of naming that is not to be repeated—a thing of the past. The aetion, ultimately, signals both a strong sense of arrival, while also pointing to the fact that, eventually, time will have to move on. In Ovid’s Fasti, time becomes even more dynamic. In the constant sequence of the days of the Roman calendar, each new ‘now’ constructed by the poet is soon supplanted by a new day and a new ‘now’. However, another axis of time comes into play here as well: the eternity of the city of Rome, which is guaranteed by its closeness to the gods. Aetia form the points at which the passage of days, the time of history, and the eternal power of the gods are brought into contact.