Browsing by Subject "Roman Republic"
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Item Dating and duality : Plautus’ Amphitruo in the historical context(2016-05) Montgomery, Tiffany Noel; Haimson-Lushkov, Ayelet; Walthall, Denton AWithin the extant corpus of Plautus, Amphitruo is particularly unusual, and not comfortably situated within an established genre. Nestled in the liminal space between non- Roman and Roman, comedy and tragedy, oral and written, and religious and socio-political commentary, the complexity of Amphitruo falls well beyond the boundaries of the standard Plautine comedic plot. Although close intertextual readings of the Amphitruo have been essential for interpretation, situating it within its historical context would provide an additional resource for a richer understanding of it. Through evaluation of the astrological ekphrasis in the text, it appears that the performance of the Amphitruo can be dated to the dedication of the Magna Mater cult at the ludi Megalenses in 191 BCE. Keeping this in mind, we can better evaluate the dualities and socio-political references situated within the text as a commentary on the substantial religious and political changes that followed the end of the Second Punic War and adoption of a foreign cult as the Roman mother goddess.Item Language, nature, and the politics of Varro’s De lingua Latina(2013-08) Lundy, Steven James; Riggsby, Andrew M.This dissertation is a historical analysis of Varro’s De Lingua Latina, a linguistic treatise composed in the 40s BCE during Rome’s transition from oligarchic Republican government to the monarchic settlement of the Augustan Principate. I advance a reading which restores contemporary political and intellectual context to the treatise, complementing and revising previous scholarship which has traditionally focused on the Greek philosophical pedigree of Varro’s work. As such, I explore Varro’s thematic emphasis on natura (‘Nature’) in his linguistic programme, which, as a term with wide-ranging intertextual functions, embodies its complex philosophical, political, and literary character. This five-chapter dissertation is subdivided between the surviving books on etymology (Chapters 1-3) and inflection (Chapters 4-5). In Chapter 1 (“Organisation and Meaning in Varro’s Etymologies”), I explore Varro’s etymologies in De Lingua Latina, Books 5-7, and explain how his programmatic emphasis on natural philosophy conveys his unique etymological authority. In Chapter 2 (“Grammatical Discourse in De Lingua Latina”), I consider Varro’s reception of grammatical techniques of etymological exegesis, elucidating his preference for philosophical readings of poetry and the social value of literary sophistication in the late Republic. Chapter 3 (“Ethnography and Identity in Varro’s Etymologies”) develops Varro’s etymological project as a kind of ethnography of the Roman people, which contextualises Varro’s philosophical intervention in the changing circumstances of his era. Chapters 4-5 are devoted to an analysis of Books 8-10, in which Varro describes his theory of morphological inflection (declinatio naturalis) as a platform for Latin linguistic standardisation. In Chapter 4 (“Declinatio and Linguistic Standardisation in the late Republic”), I survey the politics of linguistic standardisation in the late Republic. Mediating in a debate between Cicero and Caesar, I describe Varro’s nuanced revision of existing models of analogical inflection, and characterise his use of natura to explain linguistic standards. In Chapter 5 (“Linguistic Analogy and Natural Ratio in De Lingua Latina, Books 8-10”), I relate Varro’s linguistic innovations to contemporary shifts in cultural authority, and demonstrate how his transference of linguistic standardisation to philosophy entails a radical reorganisation of the existing political status quo.