Forme di intensificazione e identità degeneri. Strategie identitarie ed esempi di alterità nel De reditu suo di Rutilio Namaziano

This paper focuses on Rutilius Namatianus, praefectus Urbi, who around 417 AD. is forced from Rome to return to his native Gaul, to take care of his possessions. He tells of this journey in De reditu suo, after years of political commitment at the highest levels in the city: during the stops of the journey the author provides large portraits of friends and associates, which he praises virtutes and cursus honorum of. The constant reference to the office of the urban prefecture (or other high government offices) suggests the concern of Rutilius for what makes Rome an excellent place of civilization: temples, roads, aque-ducts, ports, infrastructures that were under direct responsibility of praefectus Urbi. These elements are very significant in the very moment of serious identity crisis in the senatorial class. Rutilius through the portraits of his associates builds the image of a so-cial structure that wants to present itself as the true custodian of the values of the senato-rial class, but not really compact and therefore in need of a renewed identity model. On the other side the invectives and the merciless portraits are served for the "others", the anti-models, who counterbalance this model to be renewed; perhaps the most insidious forms of otherness are the degenerate forms of identical, who - contrary to expectations - deny or subvert the identity model of the senatorial class. Finally, examples of perma-nent liminality are the iuvenis of Gorgona and the shameful lineage of Lepidi, real dys-functional models of identity.