Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Ab Urbe Condita
The history of Rome as the history of virtue: exempla of civic duty from Romulus to Augustus
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Ab Urbe Condita |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | not engaged |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Mediated |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Tradition |
| Observer · Theological Method | N/A |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Granularity | not engaged |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Ab Urbe Condita
Linear from the founding (753 BCE) to the present: the AUC dating system structures time as a single national sequence. Non-deterministic: the moral point of the exempla depends on the possibility of choosing differently.
Space
Ab Urbe Condita
Italy and the expanding Mediterranean: Latium, the Italian allies, the provinces. Moral geography: Rome at the centre, corruption arriving from the periphery.
Matter
Ab Urbe Condita
Conventional, untheorised: the stuff of war, agriculture, civic construction.
Observer
Ab Urbe Condita
Active, mediated through sources (annalists, Polybius). The reader is the intended observer: the exempla are addressed to a citizen who must choose.
Energy
Ab Urbe Condita
Finite and irreversible: civic energy is a resource being spent. The moral trajectory is entropic — from primitive virtue to contemporary decadence.
Information
Ab Urbe Condita
Conserved through the historian's labour: the exempla preserve the memory of virtuous action for posterity.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The tension between historical method and moral message: Livy presents himself as a historian but selects material for didactic value. Legendary stories are told as if they were history, and Livy acknowledges but does not resolve the problem: "these traditions I shall neither affirm nor deny" (Praefatio 6).