Voice, Silence, and Authority: Two Debates over the Integration of Latins in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita

This article investigates the narrative roles of voice and silence as signifiers of political authority in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita. I focus on two episodes in which the theme of voice is a pervasive presence: the mission of the Latin praetor Titus Annius Setinus to the Roman Senate (8.3.8–6.7) and the suppression of a proposal concerning the admission of Latins into the Senate in 216 BCE (23.22). The historian sets the two accounts – both concerning the integration of the Latins into the Roman state – in an explicit relationship with one another. I argue that a central thread of both is their representation of the debates over the extension of political rights to foreigners as contests in authoritative speech.