Strife, Reconciliation, and Change in the Forum Romanum

What is it about?

This chapter is part of my book, Space, Narrative, and Historical Imagination in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, in which I examine how Livy's historical work represents the settings of the historical events it narrates and construes the relationship between the city of Rome and the territories it dominated. In this chapter, I analyse Livy's representation of the Forum Romanum, a space that often serves as a setting for political events. I argue that Livy's representation of it is selective and focus on a limited number of semantically charged locations. Thus, the Forum functions as a profoundly symbolic space in the narrative: it is where conflcts within the citizen community explode and are dealt with, and the ideal standpoint whence events are observed and discussed.

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Photo by Holger Woizick on Unsplash

Photo by Holger Woizick on Unsplash