Michèle Lowrie

Horace's Narrative Odes

Narrative has not traditionally been a subject in the analysis of lyric poetry. This book deconstructs the polarity that divides and binds lyric and narrative means of representation in Horaces Odes. While myth is a canonical feature of Pindaric epinician, Horace cannot adopt the Pindaric mode for aesthetic and political reasons. Roman Callimacheanisms privileging of the small and elegant offers a pretext for Horace to shrink from the difficulty of writing praise poetry in the wake of civil war. But Horace by no means excludes story-telling from his enacted lyric. On the formal level, numerous odes contain narration. Together they constitute a larger narrative told over the course of Horaces two lyric collections. Horace tells the story of his development as a lyricist and of the competing aesthetic and political demands on his lyric poetry. At issue is whether he can ever truly become a poet of praise.

Sovereignty before the Law: Agamben and the Roman Republic

The stories of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus are narrative doublets; whether the former serves as legal precedent for the latter depends on how the law intervenes in the two cases. Each is killed in an act of state violence as a result of his agitation as tribune, the representative of the common people, in favour of the Roman plebs. Tiberius was attacked at the instigation of the pontifex maximus in 133 BCE in a metaphorical sacrifice that plays out many aspects of the term sacer, which can mean either ‘sacred’ or ‘accursed’. Gaius became vulnerable in 121 BCE after the Senate passed the ‘ultimate decree’ (senatus consultum ultimum), which removed him from the protection of the law. In Rome, foundation stories often revolve around brothers, violence, or both. Our sources postdate the events by a considerable time-span and agree in making the disturbance around the Gracchi the starting point for the subsequent century of civil war, which only ended— at least provisionally—when Augustus established the principate after the battle of Actium in 31 BCE. The Gracchi are used repeatedly as examples justifying killing citizens to establish order in the state. I will argue that the deaths of these brothers allows for a foundation narrative of state violence that explores the interplay between the sacred and the law.2 These two terms are (2007) 1 Law and Humanities 31–55