Chapter 6 - Varro and the Re-foundation of Roman Cultural Memory Through Genealogy and Humanitas

Summary

In the last two centuries BC, with the Republic limping towards its end, the cultivated ruling elite began to lose its moral and political authority.¹ Its members not only held themselves responsible for the so-called crisis of tradition, but at the same time also conveyed the impression of a loss of memory, as if all Romans were suffering from some kind of amnesia or identity crisis.² In particular, institutional figures such as pontiffs and augurs, who had preserved Rome’s memory throughout its history, were accused of neglecting their duties and, by extension, of allowing ancient practices and values to slowly disappear.³ Accordingly, Cicero and Varro, both perfect representatives of this elite, employed recurrent terms such as neglect (neglegentia/neglegere), involuntary abandon (amittere), oblivion (oblivio), vanishing of institutions (evanescere), and ignorance (ignoratio/ignorare) to describe this critical loss of information; they depicted the citizenry of Rome (civitas) as disoriented and estranged, incapable of sharing any common knowledge or values.