Virginia Fabrizi (Napoli L’Orientale), Ancient Roman Memoryscapes

In my seminar, I shall investigate the role of historical narratives in constructing and (re)semanticising Roman memoryscapes. I shall look, in particular, at the Ab Urbe Condita Libri written by the Roman historian Livy (ca. 59 BCE – 17 CE). As is well known, some sites of Late Republican and Augustan Rome (e.g. the Forum Romanum, the Capitol, or the Palatine) were rich in memorial connotations, since they hosted monuments connected with past events. Moreover, scholars have shown that Livy lays special emphasis on the memorial dimension of sites and monuments within the city. Starting from these premises, I shall ask the following questions: How does Livy’s historical narrative activate or reactivate a site’s memorial implications? Are there cases in which the narrative reinterprets – or even subverts – current spatial semantics? And how central is narrative in constructing a memoryscape?

Virginia Fabrizi is an Associate Professor in Latin Language and Literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Her main research interests include Roman epic and historiography. She is the author of two monographs (Mores veteresque novosque: rappresentazioni del passato e del presente di Roma negli Annales di Ennio, Pisa, ETS, 2012; Space, Narrative, and Historical Imagination in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, Leiden, Brill, 2025).