For Virginia Fabrizi, space or, more precisely, the use of spatial semantics in the narrative of Livy’s work are fundamental to understanding not only how the Roman state functioned and flourished, but also how it endured anxieties of violence and state failure. Fabrizi examines this through two approaches. The first two chapters deal with the internal space of the city of Rome, with the first chapter dedicated to the Forum Romanum and the second to space of the city as whole, examining the hills, the Campus Martius and the boundaries of the city. These chapters seek to define how locations within Rome are places of particular and reoccurring meaning within episodes of Roman history. For example, the first pentad gives a sense of why Rome is where it is, how clear boundaries were established physically and socially, and how later Roman conquest changed this. The second aspect of the book deals with broader semantics of space, both outside the city of Rome, with chapter three examining the space of battles and chapter four looking at the wider semantics of gender and space. Fabrizi is largely successful at highlighting and building on earlier works about the use of space as a narrative device in Livy. The recognition of Livy as a nuanced writer is important and a necessary corrective to some harsher criticisms. However, issues over the sources of Livy and to what extent ideas expressed by Livy about space, order and semantics are wholly his own need further clarification.
In Chapter One (Strife, Reconciliation and Change in the Forum Romanum), Fabrizi makes the case that the Forum was integral to how Rome as a community could grow, thrive and fall. The earliest Roman encounters in the Forum (within the first pentad) symbolised internal social struggles that took place outside in the open air of the Forum. By the second pentad, the Forum increasingly becomes a private and indoor space where events and speeches are made inside places like the Curia. Fabrizi observes how Livy believed the correct (i.e., ordered) use of space led to concord, and that the incorrect use of space led to violence and chaos. This is largely compelling, but in the case of the Senate itself Livy rarely mentions where the Senate actually meets. Sometimes Livy mentions the Curia Hostilia, but more often than not the physical space is not mentioned. Fabrizi accounts for this by calling the Curia an increasingly ‘idealised place’ in the spatial semantics of Livy’s narrative (p. 80). Accordingly, the Forum symbolised how Livy leveraged historical memory to create idealised spaces alongside simple topographical uses of space. The Forum remained a place for negotiation of concord between sides (plebs and patricians, optimates and populares) well into the late Republic. Fabrizi’s monograph builds on work from Mary Jaeger, who argued that Livy’s Rome was a memorial landscape where past events were repeatedly re-used to create connections between physical locations and memory.[1] But Fabrizi’s work is also informed by more recent work of narratologists, where space is seen alongside time as the basic units of narrative (p. 15). This analysis of narrative is largely informed by a discussion on spatial semantics, and it compliments earlier works on narrative causation.
The second chapter (The Space of the City) addresses the wider idea of how spatial semantics came to inform who and what was judged to be Roman by Livy. For Fabrizi, Livy understood Rome—at its core—to be the Capitol, Senate and its military fighting age men, everything else being superfluous or replaceable. To demonstrate this point, the chapter focuses on the Capitoline hill, as well as the other hills of Rome, the Campus Martius, and how verticality and boundaries created a core identity of what it meant to be Roman. Unsurprisingly, Fabrizi understands Livy’s annalistic structure to be fundamentally Romanocentric. The start of every consular year had the Capitol at the centre of Roman world (and later, under the Roman empire, the entire world itself); the Capitol was the area where Roman time and space converged. For example, when Servilius made a speech in 167 BCE to defend Lucius Aemilius Paullus receiving a triumph, Livy implies that the Capitol should be the beginning and end point of Roman ventures abroad. The Capitoline hill had a special connection with the gods, as a place where harmony with the gods had to be maintained year-to-year. It also symbolised resistance in Rome’s historical imagination, as both the place of last resistance during the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BCE as well as a being referenced in relation to one of Rome’s greatest defeats (after the Roman failure at Cannae in 216 BCE) when Livy has Maharbal remark to Hannibal that the Carthaginians will dine upon the Capitoline hill once they have conquered the city (22.51). While the other hills and locations in Livy receive far less attention than the Capitoline, Fabrizi does point out notable exceptions to this rule, such as with the episode where Juno Regina was taken from Veii and the Aventine hill became her eternal seat in Rome. Other places like the Campus Martius are rarely mentioned in the surviving books of Livy, but Fabrizi argues that this is a deliberate and thematic choice. The early history of Rome focused on the struggle of the plebs and patricians, but when the history of Rome moved to discuss elections (in particular pivotal elections) there are several mentions of the Campus Martius in the Periochae (p. 138). Of course, the later books of Livy are missing but Fabrizi argues that it seems likely the Campus Martius would have taken priority in the narrative. Fabrizi makes a convincing case that Livy made deliberate choices about the specific and special locations in which he chose to set events. The basic topography of Rome remained the same in the early and mid-Republic, but specific topographies changed constantly afterwards (temples, monuments and areas were rebuilt). Livy invites the reader to think diachronically about the narrated city, but there is an unchanged and immoveable core to Rome – locations like the Capitoline Hill and the Forum Romanum. If specific locations take on a semantic value and have inner hierarchies, it is important to also consider what other ideas, values and concerns impacted Livy to give special attention to places like the Capitoline. Fabrizi does acknowledge that locations do not always have semantic value (for example, descriptions of battle topographies in chapter three). But it remains unclear to what degree Livy operates within the confines of the annalistic tradition, and where Livy brings unique semantic value to places within Rome that were seen with ubiquitous political and religious reverence. For example, Fabrizi mentions that the Capitoline is referenced as a place people physically look up to thirty times in the first pentad (p. 104). She is correct that semantic meaning and space are vital for better understanding Livy, but exactly what the limitations are to this needs further clarification.
Chapter Three (The Space of Battle) argues that the tension of internal conflict is often solved by transferring violence of war to outside the city and into conquest. In the actual narratives of battle, the topography is often very basic. At Cannae the only topographical feature described is the Aufidius river. Many battle accounts by Livy contain no direct topographical information and instead rely on something called standard military space (p. 155). Fabrizi argues that this space takes the form of military camps that recreate Roman space in an otherwise disordered foreign landscape. The Roman camp is a Rome away from home. Additionally, the vocabulary of battle narratives often has the Romans with virtus and arma, whereas enemies have locus. Enemies had to rely on deceit and ambush, whereas the Romans had martial and moral superiority. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this (for example Hannibal had excellent mastery of both locus and arma) but broadly the Romans’ virtue can overcome any foe if they face them in open battle. Roman armies impose Roman spaces upon the rest of the world. But at the same time, failure to control natural landscapes was dangerous, and this anxiety reflects a central Livian anxiety about the consequences of Roman conquest over the world. The idea that Livy viewed military space as a fundamentally moral issue is unsurprising but nonetheless compelling. And indeed for Livy, Rome entering the east was the start of Roman problems with luxuria (beginning with Manlius in Asia Minor).
The last chapter (The Semantics of Gender and Space) looks beyond the geography of the city of Rome and its conquests, to examine how spatial boundaries existed within Livy to separate community members based on gender and class. This is informed by discussions of how women behaved in public spaces as well as the importance of having a clear divide between public, private and communal spaces. Fabrizi builds on work from scholars like Fenster (2005) who argued that space is ‘not a neutral entity’ but rather is something that is culturally and socially constructed (p. 197). Women could be a part of well-ordered public religious ceremonies, such as rituals in honour of Juno Regina 207 BCE. However, when women appeared spontaneously in public, Livy viewed this as a reflection of the disordered or transgressive nature of women. Women invading public spaces is transgressive, as the public sphere is reserved for the adult, free male citizens as they constituted the body politic and therefore the central Roman identity for Livy. But women could have agency within the private spaces of their homes (e.g., Tanaquil or Verginia). Fabrizi’s most compelling argument in this chapter makes the case that in situations where public, private and communal spaces break down, the future of Rome is put into peril as ordered public spaces become chaotic, unstable and transgressive.
Overall, Fabrizi is largely successful at persuading the reader that spatial semantics are central to understanding Livy’s narrative (and by extension historical imagination). This manifests in how the structures of space itself are a physical and topographical thing which overlap with the social and hierarchical structures of the Roman state. Space is therefore a problem to be controlled. This control is subject to inherent instability, but as long as the Roman elite can maintain control over space (in all its forms) Rome is secure from internal violence. The instability (or more accurately anxieties about internal violence) of Roman political life is a theme throughout Livy’s work, and Livy is aware of the impermanence of control over space. However, Fabrizi’s emphasis on space and narrative is open to some criticism. In particular, Livy’s sources are not interrogated enough to understand their impact on this topic. Sources like Fabius Pictor or Coelius Antipater have their limitations, due to the fragmentary nature, but are vital to help us understand decisions made by Livy. To what extent Livy uses space independent of a written tradition, and to what extent it is already a constituent part of an ongoing tradition in the sources of Livy is an important question that needs further interrogation.
Notes
[1] See both Livy’s Written Rome (1998) and Urban Landscape, Monuments, and the Building of Memory in Livy (2014).