L'"economia" di Publio Valerio Publicola. Condizione materiale e atteggiamenti etici, tra storia, letteratura e archeologia

The paper seeks to reconstruct the economic conditions and ethics characterizing the early republican consul P. Valerius Publicola. The oft-contradictory ancient literary sources on this topic are examined and put into perspective with some late 6th-early 5th century BC archaeological evidence - especially of aristocratic houses and funerary practices. Publicola's purported paupertas, emphasized by several ancient authors, turns out to be an ideological and literary construction of the Augustan age. At the same time, a very ancient oral - and later written - tradition, taken up especially by Valerius Antias, Cicero and Plutarch is singled out. This tradition portrays Publicola's economic status (and, possibly, his economic ethics) in a manner that is consistent and comparable with what we know of the political, social and material conditions of other early republican Roman aristocrats.