Civilization In Livy's The History Of Rome

The achievements of Roman civilization are numerous, both in the public life of Rome and for the individual. In the poems of Catullus, Catullus describes his personal achievement of starting a relationship with Lesbia and the subsequent degeneration of the relationship. In Livy’s The History of Rome, Livy lays out several public Roman achievements, such as the founding of the city and the establishment of the monarchy; Livy depicts the struggles of maintaining some form of stability associated with these great achievements. Although these Roman achievements have lasting impacts on the individual and on the state, these achievements do not have lasting existence, which shows their relative instability and fragility. The nature of Catullus’s relationship status with Lesbia is unstable. Their relationship undergoes constant change. Catullus finds himself full of “incandescent longing” for Lesbia, which leads him to pursue a

However, there was an immediate threat to the stability of the new Roman state: the secession of plebeians. When the plebs were upset about the debts of servitude they owed to the patricians, they had the idea of killing the consuls, but having been told that would not solve their problems, “without the order of the consuls and on the advice of one Sicinius, they withdrew to the sacred Mount” (Lucretius 2.32). Because of this secession, “the plebs, abandoned by their supporters, feared violence at the hands of the senators. The senators feared the plebs who were left in the city,” which showed the tension between the Roman people and the threat of further destabilization should violence have erupted. Menenius Agrippa was able to bring the plebeians back into the fold with his parable of the belly and limbs, which led to the creation of tribunes, plebeian magistrates who were sacrosanct and had the power to veto the consuls, and some