Raffael Schmidt
PhD candidate - 1st cohort
Ancient History

Research project
"The Livian Tradition"
After Titus Livius began work on his life's work, the Ab urbe condita, at the beginning of the Augustan period, his account quickly replaced the Roman annalists' historical works as the standard work on the Republican period. However, the immense size of his opus (142 libri) made it necessary to make abridged forms of his work available to the public. From the Tiberian period deep into late antiquity, therefore, the tendency of a programmatic abridgement of the Ab urbe condita developed. Some of the works of these so-called post-Livian authors are available to us in their entirety, in contrast to the Livian original (here only libri 1-10 as well as 21-45 have survived).
The main goal of the dissertation project is now to develop a theoretical foundation for reconstruction attempts of significant aspects of Livius' libri amissi (e.g. personal portraits of middle and late republican actors). To this end, the renarrative methodology of the authors in the "narrower circle" of the Livian tradition must be subjected to a precise analysis in order to enable conclusions to be drawn about their respective autonomous handling of Livy's historical information samples. Taking the results into account, it will then be demonstrated by means of selected examples to what extent it is possible to access lost material of the Livian opus magnum via the works of post-Livian authors. Authors and works that will be evaluated in their direct comparative possibilities to the Ab urbe condita are (in the presumed chronological order) Florus, the Periochae, the Oxyrhynchia, Eutrop, Rufius Festus, Iulius Obsequens and Orosius.
For the common field of research, the study of the authors of the Livian tradition is of interest because the autonomy of heteronomous texts is revealed here from an entirely historigraphical perspective: The historical information of Livy is reproduced, but also instrumentalized and thus transformed. The dissertation will therefore attempt to reconstruct lost material of the pre-text via the preserved metatexts.
Curriculum Vitae
Since 01/2023 - Doctoral Research Associate in the DFG Research Training Group 2792 "Autonomy of Heteronomous Texts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages", Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
04/2021-03/2023 - Scientific Research assistant at the Institute for Classical Philology at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
10/2020 – 07/2022 - M. A. in Ancient History at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
04/2018 – 03/2020 - Student Assistant at the Institutes of Classical Philology and Ancient History at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
10/2015 – 09/2019 - B. A. in History and Ancient Culture at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Publications
Mehner, A./ Schmidt, R./ Viola, D., Tagungsbericht: (Re)Create: Towards a Theory of Heteronomous Texts, in: Hsozkult, 23.01.2025
Schmidt, R., Ein bellum iustum gegen Rom? Zur diskursiven (Re-)Konstruktion des Galliersturms (390/387 vC) in der Livius-Tradition, in: Diez, G./ Steilmann, E. (Hgg.), Gerechter Krieg in der Antike (eingereicht).
Presentations
27.01.2025 (Marburg) - Livius rekonstruieren? Das Portrait des Scipio Aemilianus in den livianischen libri amissi
16.12.2024 (Jena) - Die Livius-Tradition als historischer Diskurs: Überlegungen zur (Re-)Konstruktion der Römischen Republik in der Kaiserzeit
30.11.2024 (Jena) - Das Portrait des Tib. Gracchus in den libri amissi des Livius
21.06.2024 (Göttingen) - Die Livius-Tradition: Rezeption und Rekonstruktion
16.11.2023 (Graz) - Livius rekonstruieren? Das Personenportrait des Marius im Spiegel der Livius-Tradition
13.11..2023 (Jena) - Epitoma oder Breviarium? Terminologische Klärungen am Beispiel postlivianischer Werke
23.5.2023 (Jena) - Die Livius-Tradition zwischen informationeller Heteronomie und autonomer Identität
13.12.2021 (Düsseldorf) - Römische Militärdesaster von Cannae bis Arausio. Erklärungsansätze und Konsequenzen