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Conspiracy Narratives in Latin Literature
Spencer, Walter Elliott
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87453
Description
Title
Conspiracy Narratives in Latin Literature
Author(s)
Spencer, Walter Elliott
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Maryline Parca
Department/Program
Classical Philology
Discipline
Classical Philology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree
Ph.D.
Dissertation or Thesis
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Classical
Abstract
"In the second chapter I compare the structural similarities of three narratives of coniuratio by three very different authors: Livy's account of the Bacchic conspiracy (39.8--19), the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso in Tacitus' Annales (15.48--74), and Cicero's Catilinarians. All three stories have a similar pattern to their telling, and I argue that these similarities are in part the result of structural similarities in a broader ""conspiracy"" narrative. In the third chapter I investigate the diction of conspiracy in Cicero, Livy and Tacitus, as well as the use of particular words and locutions in Caesar, Sallust and Suetonius to establish the existence of a common vocabulary that provides the ideological basis for structuring the Roman conspiracy narrative. The fourth chapter summarizes what has been discovered about the narration of conspiracy and concludes with some thoughts on areas of conspiracy narration that require further investigation. An appendix supplements the thesis proper in which I address what appears to be a continuity in the presentation of conspiracy in western thought, comparing Cicero's First Catilinarian with what is generally considered a modern mode of discourse, the conspiracy theory."
