The éthos of Hannibal in Livy and Cornelius Nepos: imagines

Abstract

This work seeks to reflect about Hannibal's éthos construed by Cornelius Nepos in his Lives and by Livy in Ab Urbe Condita. Both auctors, the first, scriptor vitae, and the second, scriptor historiae, use rhetorical procedures to create, with words, visual imagines of the frightful Carthaginian general. Thus, it's necessary to study the application of ekphrasis, euidentia and description, rhetorical procedures connected to ornatus and elocutio, able to arouse in the reader the phantasia. The development of this research also allow the reflection about the limits between History and res ficta in Antiquity, between the res explicare and the enarrare vitam, between the Credibile and the Truthful in Ancient Historiography, and finally between verbum and pictura. (AU)