La guerra nel Foro: analisi e implicazioni di un ricorrente tema liviano

The narrative construction of space in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita centres on the fundamental dichotomy between Rome’s urban space, which is the site of politics and civic life, and the external military space. In the First Pentad, however, this distinction is repeatedly put into question by the recurring narrative motif of war in the Forum, which is the focus of this essay. The Forum comes into existence, both physically and narratively, through the battle between the Romans and the Sabines in Livy 1.12–13. The narrative of the Struggle of the Orders in Books 2–5 often represents the Forum through war metaphors, military vocabulary and the occasional use of epic motifs and conventions. At the end of the Pentad, during the great crisis that precedes the re-foundation of the city, the Forum becomes once more a space of war as it falls prey to the Gallic invaders. The Forum thus emerges as the space par excellence of encounter and struggle—the space, moreover, where the inner destructive energies of the community constantly threaten to break out unless they are redirected onto the external world.