Anne VIAL-LOGEAY (Université de Rouen, E.R.I.A.C. (Equipe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Aires Culturelles), EA 4705)
PLINE L’ANCIEN ET LA PERCEPTION DES CRISES POLITIQUES À ROME
Keywords: Roman empire, imperialism, decadence, luxuria, moralism, decline in knowledge.
Abstract: Pliny the Elder and the perception of political crises in Rome. The scope of Natural History makes it a primary testimony on the perception of crises in Rome in the first century CE, during a period when the empire enjoyed the stability brought by the rise of the Flavian dynasty and the establishment of the Roman peace (pax Romana). However, an examination of the treatment given to Rome’s more turbulent history, even recent events (for example, the Mithridatic Wars or the civil war between Caesar and Pompey), reveals a systematic softening of the dramatic nature of these events, in favor of a moralizing discourse. From this perspective, luxuria, a traditional object of moralist disdain, represents the greatest danger: the loss of collective identity and, above all, the loss of knowledge and memory of the world. This observation, repeated several times, prevents Pliny from reflecting on the contradiction between the pacification of the world and the resulting decline of knowledge. On the other hand, Natural History offers original solutions to this “crisis of culture,” asserting the importance of nature as a means of rethinking authority and humanity’s place in the world.