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1 janvier 2012
- handle: 10670/1.cby8fn
- doi: 10.54563/eugesta.1069
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Mots-clés
Livy Tarpeia Horatia Rhea Silvia exogamy pluralism exemplum historiographySujets proches
Legends and stories Novels Stories Novels Novellas (Short novels) Fiction--Philosophy Metafiction StoriesCiter ce document
Tara Welch, « Perspectives On and Of Livy’s Tarpeia », Eugesta - Revue sur le genre dans l'Antiquité, ID : 10.54563/eugesta.1069
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This essay examines the exemplary force of the women in Livy’s first book. A close reading of the Tarpeia and Horatia episodes reveals that Livy does not permit his reader to come to any firm conclusion about the moral lesson these stories offer. On the contrary: the historian emphasizes the indeterminacy of these episodes in two ways. First, Livy positions Tarpeia and Horatia both as Roman daughters and as potential allies to the foreign men who claim their allegiance; they thus are simultaneously insiders and outsiders and assist Rome’s assimilation of others while also threatening Rome’s integrity. Second, Livy mentions multiple and conflicting versions of the stories themselves, leaving it to the reader to choose and construct a narrative. Like Tarpeia and Horatia, Livy’s readers are faced with a fragmented and fragmentary picture that resists exemplary categorization as good/imitable or bad/inimitable.