From Romulus to Camillus: anachronism, civil war, and the Senate in Livy's First Pentad

This thesis considers Livy’s representation of the Senate and the curia in Livy’s First Pentad, exploring the general contemporary relevance of Livy’s narrative to the lives of Livy and his first set of readers. I do this through analysing the way Livy uses the curia or the Senate in key episodes from the First Pentad (the death of Romulus, the overthrow of Servius Tullius, and the Gallic sack) and by demonstrating Livy’s deliberate efforts to collapse and telescope recent realities into Rome’s quasi-mythical past. Put another way, this thesis asks what parallels a first reader of Livy’s First Pentad may have drawn when they heard Livy’s account of the death of Romulus or the overthrow of Servius Tullius for the first time in the early 20s – having just lived through the civil wars of the Late Republic and the Triumvirate. It argues that Livy’s First Pentad was in constant dialogue with the recent past in various ways and sought to realise a new past in light of the new future with Imperator Caesar at the helm. In this thesis I employ close readings of the Livian text and draw upon a variety of ancient writers to bring into focus what is distinctive about Livy’s narrative. I also employ a number of approaches from sociology (for example, I have utilised Foucault’s concepts of space and power and heterotopia to understand Livian representations of how civil war encroaches on Roman public space) to illuminate what Livy’s narrative is doing with the Senate and its space in the Forum Romanum. In addition, the concepts of cultural trauma and cultural memory have influenced my understanding of the Triumviral proscriptions and the notion of ‘history as therapy’ has informed my overall approach to the First Pentad. This thesis is split into two parts along thematic lines, the first focuses on the legacy of civil war in Livy’s writing and the second focuses on Livy’s representation of civil war spatialities and the curia. Chapter 1 explores how Livy redeployed the regal period in Book One, through the example of the overthrow and assassination of Servius Tullius as an exploration of civil war and the Triumviral proscriptions. Chapter 2 analyses a key moment of Book Five (the Gallic invasion of Rome in 390) and explores the dialogue Livy creates with the recent civil war(s) and how this dialogue is part of an effort to ameliorate both the sack itself and the recent internecine turmoil. Chapter 3 concentrates on the Curia Hostilia itself and returns to the overthrow of Servius as a means through which to explore Livian perspectives on the intrusion of civil war into public political space. Chapter 4 continues to focus on the curia and looks to the very end of the Pentad and the speech of Camillus to demonstrate that the curia was a key building for Livy’s written urbs.