Ab Urbe Condita: When Viri Were Viri
CHAPTER FOUR AB URBE CONDITA: WHEN VIRI WERE VIRI Livy, like Thucydides, observed human nature and viewed history as a lesson for mankind in which great moral issues were at stake. 1 Toward this end, Livy went even further than did Thucydides, framing his history in "a series of moral episodes ... designed to bring out the character of the leading figures," thus reducing great events of the past to a level comprehensible to his reading public. 2 By endowing his characters with clear-cut virtues and vices, Livy was able to present his readers moral exempla with which they could readily identify. As P.G. Walsh writes, the real heroes of Ab Urbe Condita are pietas,fides, concordia, ratio, clementia, and so forth, who all wage continual war against the villains furor,ferocitas, temeritas, libido, luxuria and their like. 3 Because of this polarized framework, Livy's presentation of Roman history is a pano ramic chiaroscuro of dichotomies. His dualistic premise demands sim plistic characters so that the reader may know where a particular personage stands in the moral scheme. 4 An incidental component in the creation of what are, at best, two-dimensional characters, was the historian's use of vir and homo as capsule identifications. Livy's masculine terminology reflects that of Cicero in that he generally employs vir for the distinguished and homo for the humble, the foreigner (with an ethnic adjective), and as a term of abuse, sometimes in direct evocation of the Republican orator. The historiographical idiom, however, permits greater freedom and variation of usage than did the forensic speech.
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