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Introduction

Book 5 in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita illustrates two pivotal events in the consolidation of early Rome's burgeoning identity on the Italian Peninsula: The Capture of Veii in 395 BCE and the Gallic occupation of Rome's capital in 390 BC. Together, these two stories of victory and defeat sketch a sweeping transformation of the Early Republic, a fitting external counterpart to the internal political and social renewal described in the Conflict of the Orders.

While the historical basis of these events is suspect, this only increases their versatility for Livy in defining his picture of the Early Republic, in which he chronicles both the dissolution of geographical boundaries via Roman expansion as well as the reinforcement of cultural boundaries retrojected from his own time. To reconcile these two themes in the early history of Rome—boundary-breaking and boundary-making—this essay will draw upon one anecdote fromBook 5, the speech of Appius Claudius in the final stages of the Veientine conflict. We will see how this constructed speech is emblematic of Livy's larger aims to design a smooth transition between the foundational myths of Roman society and its later sociocultural and imperialistic identity in the Mediterranean world.

Leaving the Comforts of Hearth and Home

Book 5 concludes the 10-year-long conquest of the Etruscan town Veii, a major initial stepping stone in Rome's expansionist path throughout the Mediterranean. Livy begins by discussing the siege planned by Roman commanders to break the stalemate. In Rome's capital, the tribunes of the plebs react poorly to this news, inflamed that the plebeian soldiers must stay in harsh conditions throughout the winter (Livy 5.2). To appease the angry tribunes, Appius Claudius, a recently-elected a military tribune with consular power (consular tribune; Livy 5.1), delivers a speech. Permeated with oratory ornamentation, it offers a glimpse at the underlying themes evident within the book as well as Livy's grander purpose for including (or constructing) Claudius' lengthy monologue.

Claudius begins with an appeal to guilt. He reprimands the tribunes for being "political agitators" (Livy 5.3), displeased that they were stirring up political unrest instead of substantiating the war effort: "Are you tribunes the champions or the enemies of the plebs? Are you the prosecutors or defenders of our soldiers?... If this harmony continues unimpaired, who would not venture to affirm that soon our realm will be greater than any of our neighbours?" (Livy 5.3). In doing so, Claudius is securing certain ideas passed down from the Conflict of theOrders—he is upholding the mutual cooperation between the elite plebeians and patricians, cognizant of the relationship’s importance to the stability and proper functioning of Rome. This argument is meant to ratify the conflict’s results, reigning-in the novel aristocratic landscape it has left to govern the city's politics and military. In our first example of boundary-formation and dissolution, Claudius foreshadows how Rome's balanced political machine became the cornerstone to the city's military strength, enabling the city to envelop its Italian neighbors.

Claudius then transitions to a multitude of logical points that argue why the prolonged siege against Veii is justified. In an evocation of soldiers’ novel compensation (Livy 5.4),Claudius points to an increasingly streamlined military structure in which soldiers not only served based on their commitment to the Roman establishment, but also reimbursed for their service from a central treasury. Claudius then employs the “sick-man” metaphor to dispute the tribunes’ belief that a retreat for the winter would be most productive. He advocates for a "strict regimen" (Livy 5.5), as it would allow the man to quickly regain his health instead of prolonging his illness—or in Rome's case, to minimize risk by swiftly crushing Veii, conserving their existing fortifications, manpower, and resources. This reasoning is especially evocative of conservative statesman Cato’s famous “Carthage must be destroyed” during the Third Punic War. There is no tolerance for protracted military engagements, for military foot-dragging. Cato echoes Claudius (or is it the other way around?) when he argues for severe, decisive action—obliterate Carthage from the Mediterranean he asserts, lest Rome be destroyed itself. Thus, in covering both Rome's military organization and its strict foreign policy, Claudius summarizes two elements vital to the success of the city’s campaigns in the coming century. Claudius hints at the centralized "Roman enterprise" beginning to take shape, an entrenched concept incorporating what Romans believed about themselves as well as their negotiated relationships with the outside world.

Finally, Claudius appeals to the sentiment of Roman dignity. He chides the tribunes for not believing in the fortitude of their soldiers, who should be easily able to last one winter in a foreign camp (Livy 5.6). In doing so, he reinforces Roman exceptionalism, inspired directly byLivy's retrospective stereotypes about Roman citizen-soldiers. Claudius disparages anyone who would dare compare a Roman soldier to a wimpy sailor, perhaps Livy’s direct reference to the preeminent navy and sea-going warfare of the Carthaginians. In enumerating the sources of Roman strength, he not only highlights the positives of the Roman character—hardy, upright, and honorable—but also contrasts it with the traits of Rome's enemies.

The most important line in this passage however, may be the final statement of departing from the “comforts of hearth and home.” This expression is bi-layered in meaning. It is a clear allusion to the earlier Succession of the Plebs, where the plebeian tribunate was said to be created on a Sacred Mount outside of the Roman capitol. However, it may also be taken as a portent to Rome's future expansion across the Mediterranean, a catalytic reaction that dissolved the boundaries between geographical territory and citizenship as Rome expanded its military strength by incorporating, rather than suppressing, its neighbors. In sum, Claudius’ last inspirational appeal to pathos is an encapsulation of the two themes in the consolidation of Roman identity foundational to Book 5: Roman identity and exceptionalism (boundary-making),as well as how this exceptionalism allowed the Roman enterprise to break the confines of geography in its nascent hegemony over the Italian Peninsula (boundary-breaking).

These two threads are continually, and purposefully, interwoven throughout the rest of the book (see Livy 5.29-5.30 and Livy 5.49 for selected parallels in the Gallic story arc). It is only fitting that after Camillus was said to triumph over the Gauls, his soldiers named himRomulus, "parent of his country and the city's second founder" (Livy 5.49). Indeed, one could say Rome was re-founded in Book 5 as a rudimentary "empire," of budding external relationships and a dawning patriotic identity. In a world of growing Roman influence, Livy perfectly foreshadows the tension in coming centuries between increasing cultural fluidity as a result of military expansion and the fierce attempts of Cato and other political conservatives to partition what is "Roman" from what is not. These historical sensibilities that have influencedLivy's writings are what we will turn to in the following section.

Livy and the Embellishment of History

If there is one thing to remember about Rome's pre-literary history, is that it is established on exceptionally fragile grounds. As this essay explored anecdotes from Livy, it is quite apt to remember that Livy was also working with anecdotal information himself—there would be very little written information about the Early Republic that would have been transmitted to him.Consequently, his work is a piecemeal of different sources, an attempt to string together discordant plot points in order to reveal an unbroken chronology underneath. If he must turn to theatricalities and inventions to accomplish this purpose, so be it.

We know that the late 5th and early 4th centuries BCE for Rome were marked by endemic violence—small-scale, continuous warfare against its immediate neighbors in CentralItaly. There is no reason to believe the conflict with Veii is substantially different. But in order to provide a solid point of departure for the catalytic wars that would take place in the following 2centuries, Livy conflagrated what was likely a small skirmish to a 10-year stand-off betweenRome and Etruria, both major superpowers. Moreover, as it is unlikely a speech during this“war” would be recorded at all, Appius Claudius' monologue may be fully fabricated, riddled with rhetorical techniques from Livy’s own period. Thus, ascribing it to Claudius is rather misleading—instead, one could imagine returning to the previous section and imagine substituting every mention of Claudius with Livy's own name. This is a fruitful exercise, as it allows to immediately understand how Livy's own historical footing enables him to conveniently inject Claudius’ speech in order to connect the fluctuating boundaries in Rome’s pre-literary past with those defined in his observed present. In short, Livy is engaging in manipulation, placing words in the mouth of consular tribune Appius Claudius in order to shape his own narrative.

But what exactly, were Livy’s aims? There could have been many: the bolstering of theRoman stereotype as a battle-hardened citizen-soldier, the enforcement of the broader Roman enterprise above personal comfort, the othering of the Gauls, the prevention of future Romans from abandoning or ransoming their city, and even an explanation for Rome's haphazard urban planning (Livy 5.55). Critically, all these conceptions thrived in Livy's day—which means he most likely operated under the assumption that his audience would have the sufficient cultural awareness to appreciate his artistry.

For example, in-between the obvious echoes of Greek Homeric Epic in the siege against Veii (A 10-year stake-out between two major powers culminating in Roman forces appearing from a tunnel in the Temple of Juno to overwhelm the Veientines [Livy 5.19-5.21]), Claudius’ inserted speech reads very "Roman" in contrast. Its primary purpose is to affirm the distinct political structure formed in the Conflict of the Orders as well as the embedded image of the stereotypical Roman that Livy is projecting back onto the past. In doing so, Livy insinuates that it is these strengths that make Roman triumph in the next two centuries possible. The future stereotype of the severe, upstanding, and robust Roman citizen, in contrast in perhaps to the

softness of Greek culture, is an evident reference to the efforts of conservatives like Cato to resistHellenistic influence as Greece falls under Roman dominion. Whether Claudius actually made his speech at all, much less foreshadowed Cato's struggle to define what it meant to be "Roman,"is unclear.

Livy's account offers utility rather than anything else—while one might not agree with his exuberant style of writing, he nevertheless manages to lay down useful ideological premises for the later Samnite wars and beyond. Rome is, as Livy recognizes, political creature. With his histories, he intends to satiate not only a personal desire to fashion an unbroken history of "the greatest nation on earth" to be used for moral instruction in his indulgent political present, but also the desires of his audience, who seek a logical blueprint for Rome's political identity as a centralized republic—complete with a set of cultural concerns deriving from its ancient past.

Conclusion

In the centuries leading up to the first century BCE, Roman elites likely spent a significant amount of time deliberating these two themes from Book 5: expansionism, or what this paper referred to as boundary-breaking, and identity-delineation, or what this paper referred to as boundary-making. It is important to remember that the two are not separate, but are inconstant conflict with one another, a tension that would have been familiar to Livy in his own period. As Roman citizenship became unbridled by the limits of geography and ethnicity as it expanded across the Italian Peninsula, it became an unescapable necessity for the Romans to negotiate their own evolving status in the Mediterranean.

Thus, while Claudius is not a major character in Book 5 nor is the siege of Veii the paramount focus, we can confidently say that his words aptly summarize the most important consequences of this chapter of Roman history. Depicting a story of the triumph (Veii's defeat),demolition (The Gallic occupation), and reconstruction of the Roman enterprise (Camillus' rebuilding of Rome), we can almost view Book 5 as Livy's intended bookend for Rome’s early history, marking the beginning of the catalytic growth of Roman influence throughout Italy as well as establishing certain cultural connotations about the kind of people Romans were as compared to the "foreigners" they increasingly interacted with. In writing his stories, we might imagine Livy to be a craftsman, making ample use of his historical tools in order to derive meaning from fundamentally disjointed pieces in Rome's early history.