Cosmology, Place, and History in Varro’s De lingua Latina 5

Abstract

This article interprets Varro’s etymological discussion of locus in book 5 of De lingua Latina (1-56) as representative of a Varronian “place-based” history. It argues that Varro’s reconstruction of Rome’s loci as cosmically essential and structuring elements of both the city and Roman culture in his present day depended upon the author’s peculiar understanding of the past and of historical truth –namely, that fundamental principles of truth manifest both on different levels of reality, and at different points in time. Places –temples, hills, groves, or otherwise – therefore were particularly significant in providing access to the essential meaning of Rome’s institutions, religion, and people. Varro’s consideration of the Septimontium is then analyzed within this framework. The argument demonstrates how Rome’s natural environment, construed as part of an original cosmos, could explain the social and political facts of the present in Varro’s reconstruction of word-history. In particular, the religious importance of the Capitoline hill, and the separation of the Aventine from the rest of the city in the first century BCE, are both given etymological explanations that depend upon the long-lost natural topography of the city.