From withdrawal to return in the first decade of the Ab Vrbe condita: an example of Livian contradictory dialectic

It is no longer necessary to demonstrate to what extent Livy’s narrative, far from being a faithful and scrupulous account of historical facts, is first and foremost a literary work, a narration, a collection of exempla that should serve as models or anti-models for readers, as the Paduan himself says in his Praefatio (Liv. Praef. 10). Far from leaving the composition of his narrative to improvisation, Livy adopts a prior overall structure and follows guiding principles, the most important of which is contradictory dialectic, inspired by the art of oratory and rhetoric, in which Titus Livius was trained. This is particularly evident in the first decade, on which this paper will focus. Thus, withdrawals from the civic community, whether individual (in the form of imposed exiles or voluntary withdrawals, examples being numerous: Tarquin the Superb, Coriolanus, Cincinnatus, Kaeso Quinctius, etc.) or collective (in the form of a secessio of an entire ordo) are systematically followed by a return or an attempt at return. Now, both the withdrawal and the return happen to be narrative motifs already present in Greek literature and myths (the withdrawal in connection with the figures of the tyrant or the lawgiver, or as a consequence of the στάσις, the return developing as we know from the Homeric motif of the νόστοι), but without being associated in such a systematic way as in Livy. The aim of this paper will therefore be, on the basis of different examples from the first decade, to evaluate the influence of Greek motifs, but above all to highlight the originality of the Latin (and Livian in particular) tradition, notably in the contrasting of withdrawals and returns