Abstract EN:

Using the figure of a. C. C. As a point of departure, this study revises the social, institutional and cultural history of republican rome from the end of the ivth century to the beginning of the iiird century bc. The first part analyses the sources and historiographical traditions at the root of the image of this very controversial character, who became an exemplum for generations of claudii and romans. So the traditions concerning a. C. Go back to an epoque much earlier than that of the end of the republic. The second part attempts to explain the institutional reforms introduced by the censor (pertaining to the senate, the equites and the tribes) placing them in their wider context : the end of the patrician/plebeian conflict, the extension of the roman state after the conquest of campania and the integration of the equites campani, the samnite wars and the introduction of the maniple system in the army, the beginnings of a bronze currency and a reorganisation of the census. This ensemble led to a division of the civic charges which lay at the base of the tribute system, the reform/creation of the comitia tributa, the publication by cn. Flavius of a civil code and probably to the introduction of the pre-julian calendar. The third part attempts to explain the roll played in these reforms by hellenistic influences, and in particular those of pythagorism. It would appear that the reform of the tribes was at the base of an architectural transformation of the comitium, which adopted a circular form on the model of certain ecclesiasteria of magna graecia; the latter received a statue of pythagoras and a chapel dedicated to concordia, roman translation of the pythagorean homonoia from magna graecia, which aimed to justify the redistribution of rights and services, based upon the principle of geometric equality. The comitium, associated with the mundus, henceforth becomes the image of the organisation of the cosmos and the symbolic centre of the space and time of the city.