Cato's Origines and Earlier Traditions of Self-Representation and Self-Commemoration at Rome

Abstract

Abstract:

This paper considers how Cato's status as a "new man" in the competitive social and political arena he entered at Rome shaped his self-representation in the sphere of his historical writing. At the heart of the argument is the question of how Cato's insertion of his own speeches into the fabric of the Origines modulated the tenor of his self-commemoration in that work. After briefly considering how previous historiography may have helped determine Cato's choices, the argument looks to Roman discursive practices that appear to have taken shape around the 4th- and early 3rd-century rise of the nobilitas. Especially in focus are the functions of the ancestor mask and the use of voice in honorific epigraphy.