“The Cloud that (…) Sat on the Mountaintops”: A Narratological Analysis of Space in Livy’s Account of Quintus Fabius Maximus’ Dictatorship

This article investigates the narrative construction of space in Livy’s account of Quintus Fabius Maximus’ military campaigns in Southern Italy in 217 b.c.e. (Livy 22.12–18; 23–30). Through close reading of the narrative, and comparison with the parallel account in Book 3 of Polybius, it shows that the settings of the narrated events, far from merely reproducing actual historical sites, are constructed so as to embody some of the main themes of Livy’s account. In particular, one can observe an ongoing semanticisation of the spatial opposition “high vs. low,” which is functional to Livy’s meditation upon the moral implications of strategy.