Tarpeia, Warrior and Hero

Jaclyn Neel, Carleton University

Tarpeia is best known as the eponym of the Tarpeian hill and rock, which is popularly understood as a place from which traitors were executed. This method of execution is explained by the identification of Tarpeia as an archetypal traitor. Looking beyond the ‘canonical’ narratives of Livy and Plutarch, however, we see glimpses of a different Tarpeia tradition: one in which Tarpeia did not betray Rome, but in fact tried to save it. This talk discusses the fragmentary history of this other Tarpeia, who may have fought in Rome’s earliest army and who appeared to receive cultic worship well into the Roman Republic.

Jaclyn Neel is an Assistant Professor in the Greek and Roman Studies program at Carleton. She received a BA in Classics from Columbia University in 2005 and a combined MA/PhD in Classics and Ancient History from the Collaborative Program in Ancient History at the University of Toronto in 2012. During that time, she also received a TESL-Canada diploma (2011). Her research centres on Roman mythology and political discourse, and she is also interested in the afterlife of antiquity.

300 Paterson Hall, Carleton University and online with Zoom: https://carleton-ca.zoom.us/j/92978185371