CONTINUITÀ LESSICALI, CONTINUITÀ E DI¬SCON¬TI¬NUITÀ SEMANTICHE E SIM¬BO¬LI¬CHE NELLE HISTORIAE ABBREVIATAE DI AURELIO VITTORE

Abstract

Lexical continuities, semantic and symbolic continui ties and discontinuities in the Historiae abbreuiatae of Aurelius Victor. The vocabulary of the writings of late Antiquity is a significant indicator of the semantic and symbolic adaptations and changes absorbed by certain lexemes in har mony with the changes that occurred in the sphere of the historical reality of referen ce. At the same time, it allows us to evaluate the way in which the authors perceived them and adapted them to their own political visions and moral conceptions or religious options. There are important contributions in this sense. Following this di rection of philological and historical analysis, we propose an original approach be low, that is, to examine a series of terms taken from the work Historiae abbreuiatae, or Caesares, by Aurelius Victor which, on the one hand, reveals both the persistence of some elements of classical political thought, and the emergence of a specific political culture of late Antiquity, expressed through a renewed semantics of traditional words, while, on the other hand, it reveals some elements of the historical conception and ideological orientation of the author. In this text we will analyze concepts from the sphere of Roman citizenship (civis, urbs, Vrbs Roma), the denomination of the state (res publica, res Romana, status Romanus, imperium, imperium Romanum), social orders (populus, Quirites, plebs, uulgus) and the ideological and spiritual foun dations of power (auctoritas, libertas).