NARRARE LA MORTE.STORIA POLITICA DEL LUTTO A ROMA DALLA REPUBBLICA AL PRINCIPATO AUGUSTEO.

Within a diachronic and synchronic analysis, this work explores the metamorphosis that the relationship between power and the funerary sphere underwent in Rome over time, from the early days of the Republic to the death of Augustus. The social context in which the funerary operations came to light, as well as their utilization in the service of political competition, are examined both in terms of performative outcomes (with particular reference to public or proto-public funerals) and literary outcomes (with particular reference to laudationes funebres and consolationes). Chronologically, the timeframe under consideration is divided into three periods, each presenting affinities that allow the definition of homogeneous modules and recurring trends. An introductory section is dedicated to the Early and Middle Republican Era and aims to provide a foundation for understanding the origins of phenomena that will emerge more fully from the 1st century BCE. Concerning the Late Republican Era, the analysis begins with the funeral of Sulla, conventionally considered the first funus publicum celebrated in Rome. Caesar plays a significant role in this section, both for the dynastic ambitions that he early incorporated into his funerary programs, and for the funeral held in his honor, the first of a series of seditiosa funera that increasingly occupied the rostra. Cicero deserves special mention in this phase, being the author of elaborate plans around the spectacularization of the ‘deaths of Modena’, as well as a vast literary production on the theme (Consolatio ad se ipsum and Laus Catonis, to which Caesar responded with the Anticato). These writings, though fragmentary, are examined to highlight both the (typically Ciceronian) dialectic between private-therapeutic and public-political function, and the choice of genre itself, which appears to be ‘a safe form to use for a political statement’ in the temporal upheaval of the years 46-45 BCE. The third and final section of the analysis focuses on the Augustan Era and aims to clarify the ways in which the Princeps gave rise not only to a monopoly of performative practices at the rostra, but also to a general resemanticization of occasions and places of traditional convergence, defining a ‘funerary protocol’ that, for the first time, transcended the boundaries of the Urbs and impacted the spaces and times of the empire as a whole. The analysis of Consolatio ad Liviam and Elegiae in Maecenatem, on the other hand, completes the outlined picture, showing the different attitudes with which different social, cultural, and generational groups experienced and interpreted the assertion and subsequent transmission of a new power.