Fama storica e fama poetica: Livio e Ovidio alle prese con il mito di Roma

The present article cross-references the treatment of the figures of Romulus and Numa in Liv. i and Ov. met. xiv-xv. The comparison aims to highlight how Ovid enters into a challenging dialogue with his model, selecting and dilating, among the episodes of the biography of Romulus and Numa treated by Livy, only those that the historian had explicitly judged as fanciful and unreliable. On the one hand, therefore, there will be further demonstration of the vital osmosis between poetry and historiography; on the other hand, however, it will be pointed out how fundamental the specificities of every literary genre are in identifying the value and function that the two authors attributed to their own work.