PRIMUS ROMANORUM: ORIGIN STORIES, FICTIONS OF PRIMACY, AND THE FIRST PUNIC WAR

The First Punic War (264-241 BCE) is often lost in the shadows of its Hannibalic successor. Nevertheless, the experience and collective memory of Rome's first conflict with Carthage exerted what is arguably the greatest influence on some key aspects of Roman culture, including the emergence of a literature in Latin. Although this era of Roman expansion and exposure to new facets of foreign culture, especially Greek culture, played an integral role in accelerating changes in sociopolitical practice, the present article will focus on the imaginary by exploring the cultural and literary legacies of the First Punic War through the motif of "primacy," largely construed as fictions of primacy. Although my focus is primarily on the view from the Capitoline, a secondary goal of this contribution is to take in the view from the Byrsa, to show what might be the Carthaginian side of things in this late-third-century cultural dialogue.