Home > Catalogue > Lexis > Num. 39 (n.s.) – Giugno 2021 – Fasc. 1 > Sidonius Apollinaris and the ‘Senate in Exile’: On a ‘Republican’ Poetic Metaphor

Lexis | Num. 39 (n.s.) – Giugno 2021 – Fasc. 1

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Research Article

Sidonius Apollinaris and the ‘Senate in Exile’: On a ‘Republican’ Poetic Metaphor

Massimo Gusso    Independent Scholar    

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abstract

The Gallo-Roman imperial accession of Avitus, following the Vandal plunder, is presented by Sidonius Apollinaris (Carm. 7) as an effective opportunity for the revival of the Western empire in a utopian and mythical-historical perspective, which uses repertoires of Roman Republican History. An neglected tradition of that same history is thus revived, incidentally, with precedents ranging from the Gallic siege to civil wars and beyond. In this context, some senatorial ateliers where communications functional to the idea of a senate “free from the emperor” were experimented, could have made use of a certain “republican” modality of the use of prodigies in the most unscrupulous way, with recourse to even very complex propaganda paradigms.

Published
June 30, 2021
Accepted
Dec. 21, 2020
Submitted
Nov. 20, 2020
Language
IT

Keywords: Imperial propaganda • Interregnum • Political prodigies • Republican aspirations • Senates in exile

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Lexis/2724-1564/2021/01/008

Copyright: © 2021 Massimo Gusso. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.