L’empreinte de Brennus : mémoire urbaine et résilience romaine

Abstract

According to the Greek and Roman historians of the Late Republic and early Imperial period, Rome’s urban disorder was a consequence of the hasty rebuilding of the City after the Gallic fire in 390 AD. Such an etiological narration conferred a prestigious origin to the Vrbs’ aesthetical inferiority, compared to the great Hellenistic capital cities. The form of the City can therefore be considered as an ambiguous “site of memory”. It reveals both the great scope of the disaster and the Roman ability to bounce back quickly after the defeat. The urban landscape is then an argument in the rewriting of Rome’s history, while the literary memory of the event can be used to justify some emperors’ urban policy (Augustus, Vespasian) or to criticize it (Nero).

Keywords

• Rome
• Latin historiography
• urban space
• Gallic sack of Rome
• fire
• collective memory