Cosmology, Place, and History in Varros's De lingua latina 5

Abstract

This article interprets Varro’s etymological discussion of locus in book 5 of Delingua Latina (1-56) as representative of a Varronian “place-based” history. It argues thatVarro’s reconstruction of Rome’s loci as cosmically essential and structuring elementsof both the city and Roman culture in his present day depended upon the author’s peculiarunderstanding of the past and of historical truth – namely, that fundamental principlesof truth manifest both on different levels of reality, and at different points in time.Places – temples, hills, groves, or otherwise – therefore were particularly significant inproviding access to the essential meaning of Rome’s institutions, religion, and people.Varro’s consideration of the Septimontium is then analyzed within this framework. Theargument demonstrates how Rome’s natural environment, construed as part of an originalcosmos, could explain the social and political facts of the present in Varro’s reconstructionof word-history. In particular, the religious importance of the Capitoline hill,and the separation of the Aventine from the rest of the city in the first century BCE, areboth given etymological explanations that depend upon the long-lost natural topographyof the city.