Altera Roma: Livy’s Variations on a Ciceronian Theme

In narrating Rome’s victory over Capua in the Hannibalic War, Livy engages substantially with Cicero’s three orations De Lege Agraria as an intertext, and in particular with Cicero’s argument that moral corruption caused political dysfunction in Capua. Livy makes this a central theme, not only of his narrative of the city’s fall in Book 26, but of earlier events in the city, as early as Book 4. Livy’s portrayal of popularis demagoguery in Capua also evokes Cicero’s arguments against popularis agrarian laws. Capua is thus set up, via intertextual engagement with Cicero, as an ominous precursor to Rome in Livy’s day.