Tarda antichità anacronica. Tra storiografia e panegirico

Abstract

This article explores late antique literarycultureb ym aking use of at heoretical paradigm recentlyf ormulated by the arth istorians A. Nagel and C. Wood in their book Anachronic Renaissance (NewY ork 2010). Though the period treated in the book, the Renaissance, is very different from late antiquity and though it concentratesonartistic productions, in my view the concept of anachronicity (whichisnot the samea sa nachronism) mayb ea pplied with profit to the studyo fl ate antique texts.I np articular, certain keyc oncepts such as the replaceability of the artistic or literaryw ork, imitation of works by themselves, and belatedness,w hich every work and text inevitablyb earsi ni tself,c an illuminates ome of the aspectso fl ate antiqueliterary production that are most interesting,but which are generallyneglected or treated in as uperficial wayp reciselyb ecause they are regarded as either secondary or not at all original. Thesec oncepts can offer al ens through which to read virtuallya ny late antique text,b ut here we concentrate on just two works,t he Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus and the corpus of the Panegyrici Latini,for one reason abovea ll: both belong to literaryg enres,h istoriographya nd panegyric, which maintain ar elation with the past thatcan be defined as structural. While this is obvious in historiography, in the Panegyrici the sacred value of the past is actualized and projected onto the present time, of which the laudandus,t hati s, the emperor, is the perfect expression. At the samet ime, the past itself, vetustas,i sp resented in the guise of myth, thus undergoing aprocess of fictionalization which bears elements that destabilize the historiographic discourse, with which the genre of panegyric enters into open competition. In the work of Ammianus, which occupies aunique position within Latin historiography, traces of this samediscourse can be identified, indicating ac risis in historiographical representation. The paradigmo fa nachronicity throws new light on the close relation of the late antique text to the literary tradition of the past,which, it is true, has alreadybeen widelyinvestigated, but anachronicity makes it one of its most original and surprising traits. Anachronicity reestablishes the value of belatedness in such aw ay that the very definition of 'late antiquity' takes on an ew meaning,p reciselyb ecause 'late' is not limited to defining its chronology, but rather assigns it av alue thati sf undamentally aesthetic. PremessaParlare del concettod ia ntichità ed elle sue rappresentazioni in età tardoantica implica discuterel ' essenza stessa di quell'età che noi, impropriamente, chiamiamo 'tarda' antichità (Spätantike, antiquité tardive, late antiquity). La denominazione data