OUT OF ROMAN TIME: TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT IN CICERO’S LETTERS AND VERGIL’S ECLOGUES AND AENEID

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the representation of displacement in the Letters of Cicero and the Eclogues and Aeneid of Vergil. I argue that Vergil’s fictional portrayal of displacement in Eclogues 1 and 9 and in the first half of the Aeneid can profitably be read alongside the documentation of real Roman displacement that Vergil’s near contemporary Cicero provides in his Letters. My reading of Cicero’s displacement shifts the focus away from scholarly treatments of space to emphasize what I call temporal dislocation—the displaced person’s experience of time away from Rome. Cicero’s separation from Rome reveals the ways in which time plays a key role in the orator’s connections to Rome. In the Eclogues Vergil shows a similar dynamic at play with his displaced herdsmen, only now under the emerging time of the Julian calendar. The Aeneid further explores these dynamics with Vergil’s representation of the displaced Aeneas’ “return” to Italy and the ways in which Augustan time informs Aeneas’ shift from displaced person to Roman/Augustan ancestor. A brief epilogue at the end of the dissertation argues that inserting Vergil within the more normal pairing of Cicero and Ovid (real exiles) highlights the ways in which Ovid constructs his persona as a displaced person under the reign of Augustus and Augustan time.