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This dissertation presents a critical analysis of literary texts that recount fully or briefly the life and legend of King Numa Pompilius. Focusing on the 'Golden Age', it comprises the Numan accounts of Cicero, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Ovid. These authors lived at a time when Rome was trying to reconcile for herself and for her subjects the price of her military world domination with the belief in her foreordained supremacy. This reconciliation was to be achieved by a reacquaintance with the Roman ancestral values whose observance had merited Rome her dominion and whose neglect had driven the state to civil war. The question of Roman national identity is at the heart of the Numan accounts of the chosen prose-writers. In his portrayal of Numa, who combines the civilizing virtues of classical Athens with native Roman virtue, Cicero offers a rebuttal for Greek critics who questioned Rome's supremacy because of her lack of civilizing virtues. Livy investigates the leading causes of Rome's world domination and identifies the national values and institutions that many generations of leaders forged. Numa is one such leader, having established laws, religious rite and a peaceful way of life. Dionysius represents Numa as the Greek ideal of kingship in order to establish for the Greek world the excellence of the Roman national identity founded on Greek virtue. The Numan accounts of Livy and Dionysius, composed in Augustus' principate, do not draw direct parallels between Numa and Augustus, although the narration sometimes suggests a special relevance to Augustan rule. Finally, Ovid, the only poet, recounting traditional Numan tales, offers analogies and allegories of certain Augustan ideas and measures that may be seen to flatter the ruler.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study is to explore Marcus Tullius Cicero's awareness and interpretation of contemporary political events as reflected in his private correspondence during the last years of both the Roman republic and his own life. Cicero's correspondence gives a detailed view of current political events in Rome and constitutes, with Caesar's own narrative, our major contemporary evidence for the circumstances of the civil war of 49 BC. The dissertation takes as Leitmotiv Cicero's own judgement of the state as 'sacrificial victim' to the ambitions of individual politicians, with as metaphor his examination of a 'dying' body politic in the manner of a haruspex inspecting the entrails of a sacrificial animal. It poses the question whether Cicero understood the message of political decline signalled by the 'entrails' of the 'carcass' of the res publica, and whether this ability in its turn enabled him to anticipate future political development in Rome. In what follows, the theoretical input of Cicero's predecessors, their perceptions of constitutional development, and of Roman politics in particular, as well as Cicero's own perception of their political theories will be considered in order to determine the extent of Cicero's awareness of a larger pattern of political events, and how consistent he was in his analyses of such patterns, that is, to what extent Cicero may be considered seriously as a political analyst. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die oogmerk van die verhandeling is om vas te stel of Marcus Tullius Cicero met reg daaop kan aanspraak maak dat hy eietydse politieke gebeure sinvol kon interpreteer as die manifestering van 'n nuwe politieke stroming wat die voorkoms van die toekomstige Romeinse politieke toneel sou bepaal. Cicero se waarneming en begrip van eietydse politieke gebeure in die laaste paar jaar van die Romeinse Republiek en sy eie lewe word tekenend weerspieël in sy persoonlike briefwisseling uit die tydperk 51 tot 43 v.C. As historiese dokument bied hierdie korrespondensie, as primêre bronmateriaal, naas die behoue kontemporêre beriggewing van Julius Caesar, die enigste ander kontemporêre getuienis vir die uitbreek en nadraai van die burgeroorlog van 49 v.C. Die sentrale tema van die verhandeling is Cicero se persepsie van die Romeinse staat as die 'slagoffer' van magsugtige politieke rolspelers. Cicero se rol as waarnemer en politieke analis word uitgebeeld deur die metafoor van 'n haruspex (profeet) wat die 'ingewande' van die 'karkas' van die gestorwe Romeinse Republiek ondersoek. Die kernvraag wat gestel word is, of Cicero inderdaad daartoe in staat was om die boodskap van politieke verandering raak te lees, die implikasies daarvan te begryp en daarvolgens 'n beredeneerde toekomsprojeksie van die Romeinse politieke toneel te maak. Om te bepaal of Cicero meriete verdien as 'n politieke analis, word die volgende kriteria as toetsstene gebruik: die teoretiese insette van Cicero se voorgangers en sy beheersing van sodanige politieke teoretisering, die mate waarin hy konsekwent en objektief kon oordeel, en die mate waarin hy teorie en die praktiese werklikheid van die Romeinse politieke situasie kon integreer.

Seneca's Apocolocyntosis is a sat.ire on the deceased emperor Claudius. probably written in the early months after his death in AD54. Although the authorship and title of the work have been called into question. scholars have now reached a consensus that the sat.ire was written by Seneca and is titled "Apocolocyntosis." Its purpose, characteristic of the Menippean genre, was didactic.