And Now for Something Completely Different …

Abstract

Given the preponderance of Roman <i>exempla</i> in the <i>Facta et dicta memorabilia</i>, it is natural that most scholarly attention has been focused on the internal material that makes up roughly two thirds of the total number of <i>exempla</i>. The external <i>exempla</i>, however, have not been entirely neglected and a num-ber of scholars have wondered about the function and themes of this mate-rial. Scholarship in this area has tended to fall into three main schools of thought: firstly, Valerius is if not actually “racist”, given the difficulties of using that term in a Roman context, then certainly bigoted, and that he includes the external material partly to air his views.