CLA233H1 Lecture : The Mythical Foundations of Rome.docx
Document Summary
Yet his work offers an interesting view into what romans believed happened at the start of their civilization: not the multiple versions of events he offers. I work from the theory that these origin stories remain popular because people found them relevant to issues/anxieties relating what it meant to be roman. Based some histories on pictor: about 200 bce. What historians thought as necessities for their writing: necessity to patch over chronological gaps. Some sort of continuity: a need to make ancient history interesting. Didn"t questions sources but would rather use them to make their own history more artistic: to make it didactic, that is make it so that a lesson(s) can be learned from it. Livy states that the point of history was to be didactic: linked to the idea of rome declining from their roman age and what they can do to return to it.
