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Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo

  • Mary Jaeger

    Mary Jaeger is a professor of Classics at the University of Oregon, where she has taught since 1990. Her main interests are in Latin literature, Roman historiography, with a focus on Livy, and Augustan Rome. In recent years she has turned to studying food and food production in classical antiquity. She is the author of Livy's Written Rome and Archimedes and the Roman Imagination, as well as articles on Livy, Cicero, Vergil, and Horace.
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Commenting on the Past
This chapter is in the book Commenting on the Past

Abstract

Early in book 2, Livy reports the disposal of property confiscated from the Tarquins. The regal cropland was transformed into the Campus Martius, its grain cut, and the Tiber Island formed from the dumped wheat and straw. The account of the island, although brief, tells — in general terms — the entire history of the place from its beginning to the narrator’s present, offering in miniature the entire project of the AUC. The story of the island’s bottom layer relies on hearsay and, via the trope of harvest as slaughter and the topos of glutting a river with the enemy dead, taps into the epic tradition; the story of the island’s visible upper layer suggests eyewitness knowledge. Over time it accrues the notices of vowed and dedicated monuments that help shape the annalistic tradition. In this story physical place and narrative commonplace work together to commemorate the transition from monarchy to republic.

Abstract

Early in book 2, Livy reports the disposal of property confiscated from the Tarquins. The regal cropland was transformed into the Campus Martius, its grain cut, and the Tiber Island formed from the dumped wheat and straw. The account of the island, although brief, tells — in general terms — the entire history of the place from its beginning to the narrator’s present, offering in miniature the entire project of the AUC. The story of the island’s bottom layer relies on hearsay and, via the trope of harvest as slaughter and the topos of glutting a river with the enemy dead, taps into the epic tradition; the story of the island’s visible upper layer suggests eyewitness knowledge. Over time it accrues the notices of vowed and dedicated monuments that help shape the annalistic tradition. In this story physical place and narrative commonplace work together to commemorate the transition from monarchy to republic.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Dedication V
  3. Preface V
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. Contents XV
  6. Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
  7. Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
  8. Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
  9. “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
  10. There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
  11. Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
  12. Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
  13. Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
  14. On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
  15. Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
  16. Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
  17. Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
  18. Camilla and the Guys 197
  19. How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
  20. The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
  21. The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
  22. Tacitus for courtiers 265
  23. Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
  24. The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
  25. List of Contributors 293
  26. General Index
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110777925-005

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Dedication V
  3. Preface V
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. Contents XV
  6. Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
  7. Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
  8. Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
  9. “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
  10. There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
  11. Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
  12. Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
  13. Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
  14. On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
  15. Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
  16. Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
  17. Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
  18. Camilla and the Guys 197
  19. How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
  20. The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
  21. The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
  22. Tacitus for courtiers 265
  23. Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
  24. The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
  25. List of Contributors 293
  26. General Index
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