Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Classics

First Advisor

Kraus, Christina

Abstract

Many early modern and enlightenment readers of Livy’s Ab urbe condita approached that work as a trove of local, colonial histories rather than an account of Rome’s rise to power— the interpretation favored by modern scholars of Livy as well as, on occasion, by Livy himself (e.g., in Praef. 1). This dissertation recuperates the localized mode of reading employed by pre-modern readers of Livy by treating his notices concerning colonies as self-contained nuggets of Italian history embedded within the imperial edifice of the Ab urbe condita. It explores how Livy worked to accommodate the colonial history they contain to the main thread of his narrative and asks why he often elected to emphasize the clash between colonial history and narrative theme. After a brief introduction outlining pre-modern approaches to the Ab urbe condita as local history, four chapters describe the difficulties that Livy faced in reconciling his colony notices to four particular narrative elements: citizenship, kingship, ethnic and social blending, and religion. Chapter One addresses the tension between the loyalty to Rome Livy suggests all colonists should harbor on account of their legal ties to that city and the fragility of the juridical bonds linking Rome to her subject towns, which his colony notices frequently expose. In the early books of Livy’s history, this fragility emerges from a sense of colonial identity that is rooted in place rather than law, in the later ones from external pressures placed upon those bonds from without. Chapter Two considers how Livy reconciled the close association between colonization and Hellenistic kingship with the decidedly anti-monarchical slant of his narrative. In the early books of his history, Livy suggests that Roman aristocrats replaced the figure of the king as the driving force of colonization, which they used to abate civil unrest. Livy diminishes our sense of the kingliness of their colonizing activities by juxtaposing his colony notices with conspicuously fictive episodes that anachronistically proclaim the Romans’ antipathy to kingship, which they had not yet acquired. By the time of the Hannibalic War, the Romans certainly had acquired odium regni (“hatred of kingship”), but they had done so, quite paradoxically, as they began to imitate the style of city interaction employed by the Hellenistic kings, their new allies and rivals. Livy’s arrangement of his colony notices and narrative episodes in the later books of his history reveals his efforts to portray colonization as a regal yet non-monarchical process in the light of this political context. Chapter Three examines the relationship between the contents of Livy’s colony notices and his ambivalent portrayal of ethnic and social mixing as at once a mechanism for civic growth and a threat to social cohesion. It argues that Livy’s colony notices throw into relief the seeming incompatibility of these two aspects of ethnic and social mixing: the loss of civic distinctiveness brought about by the blending of local and colonial populations frequently issues in colonial defection. This state of affairs, in turn, called into question the multiculturalism of the Augustan regime, including especially the cosmopolitan character of colonization under the early Principate, when Romans and non-Romans alike cohabitated in colonial settlements across the Mediterranean. Chapter Four describes Livy’s efforts to portray Roman religion as the world’s religion despite the evidence supplied by his colony notices, which belies as much. Livy’s prodigy lists, which frequently mention supernatural phenomena reported at colonies, are adduced as an example of the religious ideology that the historian seems to promote: the process of prodigy reporting and expiation they record instilled a sense of religious unity among Rome and her colonists and allies by involving all parties in the same set of religious procedures. The colony notices with which Livy’s prodigy lists are frequently paired, however, recording colonial defection, Rome’s failure to defend her colonies, and their refusal to furnish her with troops, expose the Romans’ failure to attain anything remotely resembling religious and political cohesion.

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