There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade
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Ayelet Haimson Lushkov is Associate Professor of Classics at The University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Roman historiography, with a focus on Livy. She is the author ofMagistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic: Politics in Prose (CUP, 2015),You Win or You Die: The Ancient World of Game of Thrones (Bloomsbury, 2017) and co-editor ofReception and the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition (CUP, 2012), as well as a number of articles on Livy, historiography, political theory, classical reception, and Latin literature. She is currently finishing her second book on Livy, this time on his poetics of citation.
Abstract
This chapter argues that Hannibal’s march on Rome in book 26 serves as a microcosm of the Hannibalic war up to this point, with the confrontation before the walls of Rome both closing the narrative loop that began after Cannae and foreshadowing Hannibal’s departure from Italy and eventual Carthaginian defeat. More specifically, the march is an instance of repetition with change, or a sideshadowing: a version of the war that looks almost like the historical version, but which departs from it in small but crucial ways. Of these, the most important is the substitution of mountain crossings for river crossings. By doing do Livy is both able to marshal several allusions to the early days of the war, dismiss some of Hannibal’s more miraculous achievements, and more heavily foreshadow the ultimate Roman victory.
Abstract
This chapter argues that Hannibal’s march on Rome in book 26 serves as a microcosm of the Hannibalic war up to this point, with the confrontation before the walls of Rome both closing the narrative loop that began after Cannae and foreshadowing Hannibal’s departure from Italy and eventual Carthaginian defeat. More specifically, the march is an instance of repetition with change, or a sideshadowing: a version of the war that looks almost like the historical version, but which departs from it in small but crucial ways. Of these, the most important is the substitution of mountain crossings for river crossings. By doing do Livy is both able to marshal several allusions to the early days of the war, dismiss some of Hannibal’s more miraculous achievements, and more heavily foreshadow the ultimate Roman victory.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
