The paper interprets the nobility of the Roman Republic as a transmedial world. In each generation, potential additions to this world emerged, which had to be tested for their conformity with the standards established by the world up to that point. Through this process, the world underwent continual expansion, while simultaneously maintaining the perception of steadfastness and immutability: as soon as additions were accepted, they immediately became an integral part of the norm-defining world. Consequently, there is no clear linear “Zeitpfeil”: ancestors were not always the archetypes, and descendants not always the copies—it could just as easily be the reverse. I will illustrate this using the examples of Scipio Aemilianus and his father, Aemilius Paullus.
Jan-Markus Kötter (Wed,) studied this question.