HISTORY.
From our supposing that those things which affected our ancestors may affect us, and that those which affect us must affect posterity, we become fond of collecting memorials of prior events, and also of preserving the remembrance of incidents which have occurred in our own age. The historic passion, if it may be so termed, thus naturally divides itself into two desires—that of indulging our own curiosity, and of relating what has occurred to ourselves or our contemporaries.
Monuments accordingly have been raised, and rude hymns composed, for this purpose, by people who had scarcely acquired the use of letters. Among civilized nations, the passion grows in proportion to the means of gratifying it, and the force of example comes to be so strongly felt, that its power and influence are soon historically employed.
The Romans were, in all ages, particularly fond of giving instruction, by every sort of example. They placed the images of their ancestors in the Forum and the vestibules of their houses, so that these venerable forms everywhere met their eyes; and by recalling the glorious actions of the dead, excited the living to emulate their forefathers. The virtue of one generation was thus transfused, by the magic of example, into those by which it was succeeded, and the spirit of heroism was maintained through many ages of the republic—
“Has olim virtus crevit Romana per artes:
Namque foro in medio stabant spirantia signa
Magnanimûm heroum; hîc Decios, magnosque Camillos
Cernere erat: vivax heroum in imagine virtus,
Invidiamque ipsis factura nepotibus, acri
Urgebat stimulo Romanum in prælia robur[107].”
History, therefore, among the Romans, was not composed merely to gratify curiosity, or satiate the historic passion, but also to inflame, by the force of example, and urge on to emulation, in warlike prowess. An insatiable thirst of military fame—an unlimited ambition of extending their empire—an unbounded confidence in their own force and courage—an impetuous overbearing spirit, with which all their enterprises were pursued, composed, in the early days of the Republic, the characteristics of Romans. To foment, and give fresh [pg 57]vigour to these, was a chief object of history.—“I have recorded these things,” says an old Latin annalist, after giving an account of Regulus, “that they who read my commentaries may be rendered, by his example, greater and better.”
Accordingly, the Romans had journalists or annalists, from the earliest periods of the state. The Annals of the Pontiffs were of the same date, if we may believe Cicero, as the foundation of the city[108]; but others have placed their commencement in the reign of Numa[109], and Niebuhr not till after the battle of Regillus, which terminated the hopes of Tarquin[110]. In order to preserve the memory of public transactions, the Pontifex Maximus, who was the official historian of the Republic, annually committed to writing, on wooden tablets, the leading events of each year, and then set them up at his own house for the instruction of the people[111]. These Annals were continued down to the Pontificate of Mucius, in the year 629, and were called Annales Maximi, as being periodically compiled and kept by the Pontifex Maximus, or Publici, as recording public transactions. Having been inscribed on wooden tablets, they would necessarily be short, and destitute of all circumstantial detail; and being annually formed by successive Pontiffs, could have no appearance of a continued history. They would contain, as Lord Bolingbroke remarks, little more than short minutes or memoranda, hung up in the Pontiff’s house, like the rules of the game in a billiard room: their contents would resemble the epitome prefixed to the books of Livy, or the Register of Remarkable Occurrences in modern Almanacks.
But though short, jejune, and unadorned, still, as records of facts, these annals, if spared, would have formed an inestimable treasure of early history. The Roman territory, in the first ages of the state, was so confined, that every event may be considered as having passed under the immediate observation of the sacred annalist. Besides, the method which, as Cicero informs us, was observed in preparing these Annals, and the care that was taken to insert no fact, of which the truth had not been attested by as many witnesses as there were citizens at Rome, who were all entitled to judge and make their remarks on what ought either to be added or retrenched, must have formed the most authentic body of history that could be desired. The memory of transactions which were yet recent, and whose concomitant circumstances every one could remember, was therein transmitted to posterity. By these means, [pg 58]the Annals were proof against falsification, and their veracity was incontestibly fixed.
These valuable records, however, were, for the most part, consumed in the conflagration of the city, consequent on its capture by the Gauls—an event which was to the early history of Rome what the English invasion by Edward I. proved to the history of Scotland. The practice of the Pontifex Maximus preserving such records was discontinued after that eventful period. A feeble attempt was made to revive it towards the end of the second Punic war; and, from that time, the custom was not entirely dropped till the Pontificate of Mucius, in the year 629. It is to this second series of Annals, or to some other late and ineffectual attempt to revive the ancient Roman history, that Cicero must allude, when he talks of the Great Annals, in his work De Legibus[112], since it is undoubted that the pontifical records of events previous to the capture of Rome by the Gauls, almost entirely perished in the conflagration of the city[113]. Accordingly, Livy never cites these records, and there is no appearance that he had any opportunity of consulting them; nor are they mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the long catalogue of records and memorials which he had employed in the composition of his Historical Antiquities. The books of the Pontiffs, some of which were recovered in the search made to find what the flames had spared, are, indeed, occasionally mentioned. But these were works explaining the mysteries of religion, with instructions as to the ceremonies to be observed in its practical exercise, and could have been of no more service to Roman, than a collection of breviaries or missals to modern history.
Statues, inscriptions, and other public monuments, which aid in perpetuating the memory of illustrious persons, and transmitting to posterity the services they have rendered their country, were accounted, among the Romans, as the most honourable rewards that could be bestowed on great actions; and virtue, in those ancient times, thought no recompense more worthy of her than the immortality which such monuments seemed to promise. Rome having produced so many examples of a disinterested patriotism and valour must have been filled with monuments of this description when taken by the Gauls. But these honorary memorials were thrown down along with the buildings, and buried in the ruins. If any escaped, it was but a small number; and the greatest part of [pg 59]those that were to be seen at Rome in the eighth century of the city, were founded on fabulous traditions which proved that the loss of the true monuments had occasioned the substitution of false ones. Had the genuine monuments been preserved at Rome, even till the period when the first regular annals began to be composed, though they would not have sufficed to restore the history entirely, they would have served at least to have perpetuated incontestably the memory of various important facts, to have fixed their dates, and transmitted the glory of great men to posterity.
On what then, it will be asked, was the Roman history founded, and what authentic records were preserved as materials for its composition? There were first the Leges Regiæ. These were diligently searched for, and were discovered along with the Twelve Tables, after the sack of the city: And all those royal laws which did not concern sacred matters, were publicly exposed to be seen and identified by the people[114], that no suspicion of forgery or falsification might descend to posterity. These precautions leave us little room to doubt that the Leges Regiæ, and Laws of the Tables, were preserved, and that they remained as they had been originally promulgated by the kings and decemvirs. Such laws, however, would be of no greater service to Roman history, than what the Regiam Majestatem has been to that of Scotland. They might be useful in tracing the early constitution of the state, the origin of several customs, ceremonies, public offices, and other points of antiquarian research, but they could be of little avail in fixing dates, ascertaining facts, and setting events in their true light, which form the peculiar objects of civil history.
Treaties of peace, which were the pledges of the public tranquillity from without, being next to the laws of the greatest importance to the state, much care was bestowed, after the expulsion of the Gauls, in recovering as many of them as the flames had spared. Some of them were the more easily restored, from having been kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which the fury of the enemy could not reach[115]. Those which had been saved, continued to be very carefully preserved, and there is no reason to suspect them of having been falsified. Among the treaties which were rescued from destruction, Horace mentions those of the Kings, with the Gabii and the Sabines (Fœdera Regum[116].) The former was that concluded by Tarquinius Superbus, and which, Dionysius [pg 60]of Halicarnassus informs us, was still preserved at Rome in his time, in the temple of Jupiter Fidius, on a buckler made of wood, and covered with an ox’s hide, on which the articles of the treaty were written in ancient characters[117]. Dionysius mentions two treaties with the Sabines—the first was between Romulus and their king Tatius[118]; and the other, the terms of which were inscribed on a column erected in a temple, was concluded with them by Tullus Hostilius, at the close of a Sabine war[119]. Livy likewise cites a treaty made with the Ardeates[120]; and Polybius has preserved entire another entered into with the Carthaginians, in the year of the expulsion of the kings[121]. Pliny has also alluded to one of the conditions of a treaty which Porsenna, the ally of Tarquin, granted to the Roman people[122]. Now these leagues with the Gabii, Sabines, Ardeates, and one or two with the Latins, are almost the only treaties we find anywhere referred to by the ancient Latin historians; who thus seem to have employed but little diligence in consulting those original documents, or drawing from them, in compiling their histories, such assistance as they could have afforded. The treaties quoted by Polybius and Pliny, completely contradict the relations of the Latin annalists; those cited by Polybius proving, in opposition to their assertions, that the Carthaginians had been in possession of a great part of Sicily about a century previous to the date which Livy has fixed to their first expedition to that island; and those quoted by Pliny, that Porsenna, instead of treating with the Romans on equal terms, as represented by their historians, had actually prohibited them from employing arms,—permitting them the use of iron only in tilling the ground[123].
The Libri Lintei (so called because written on linen) are cited by Livy after the old annalist Licinius Macer, by whom they appear to have been carefully studied. These books were kept in the temple of Juno Moneta, but were probably of less importance than the other public records, which were inscribed on rolls of lead. They were obviously a work of no great extent, since Livy, who appeals to them on four different occasions in the space of ten years, just after the degradation of the decemvirs, had not quoted them before, and never refers to them again. There also appear to have been different copies of them which did not exactly agree, and Livy seems [pg 61]far from considering their authority as decisive even on the points on which reference is made to them[124].
The Memoirs of the Censors were journals preserved by those persons who held the office of Censor. They were transmitted by them to their descendants as so many sacred pledges, and were preserved in the families which had been rendered illustrious by that dignity. They formed a series of eulogies on those who had thus exalted the glory of their house, and contained a relation of the memorable actions performed by them in discharge of the high censorial office with which they had been invested[125]. Hence they must be considered as part of the Family Memoirs, which were unfortunately the great and corrupt sources of early Roman history.
It was the custom of the ancient families of Rome to preserve with religious care everything that could contribute to perpetuate the glory of their ancestry, and confer honour on their lineage. Thus, besides the titles which were placed under the smoky images of their forefathers, there were likewise tables in their apartments on which lay books and memoirs recording, in a style of general panegyric, the services they had performed for the state during their exercise of the employments with which they had been dignified[126].
Had these Family Memoirs been faithfully composed, they would have been of infinite service to history; and although all other monuments had perished, they alone would have supplied the defect. They were a record, by those who had the best access to knowledge, of the high offices which their ancestors had filled, and of whatever memorable was transacted during the time they had held the exalted situations of Prætor or Consul: Even the dates of events, as may be seen by a fragment which Dionysius of Halicarnassus cites from them, were recorded with all the appearance of accuracy. Each set of family memoirs thus formed a series of biographies, which, by preserving the memory of the great actions of individuals, and omitting nothing that could tend to their illustration, comprehended also the principal affairs of state, in which they had borne a share. From the fragments of the genealogical book of the Porcian family, quoted by Aulus Gellius, and the abstract of the Memoirs of the Claudian and Livian families, preserved by Suetonius, in the first chapters of his Life of Tiberius, we may perceive how important such memoirs would have been, and what light they would have thrown on history, had they possessed the stamp of fidelity. But unfor[pg 62]tunately, in their composition more regard was paid to family reputation than to historical truth. Whatever tended to exalt its name was embellished and exaggerated. Whatever could dim its lustre was studiously withdrawn. Circumstances, meanwhile, became peculiarly favourable for these high family pretensions. The destruction of the public monuments and annals of the Pontiffs, gave ample scope for the vanity or fertile imagination of those who chose to fabricate titles and invent claims to distinction, the falsity of which could no longer be demonstrated. “All the monuments,” says Plutarch, “being destroyed at the taking of Rome, others were substituted, which were forged out of complaisance to private persons, who pretended to be of illustrious families, though in fact they had no relation to them[127].” So unmercifully had the great families availed themselves of this favourable opportunity, that Livy complains that these private memoirs were the chief cause of the uncertainty in which he was forced to fluctuate during the early periods of his history. “What has chiefly confounded the history,” says he, “is each family ascribing to itself the glory of great actions and honourable employments. Hence, doubtless, the exploits of individuals and public monuments have been falsified; nor have we so much as one writer of these times whose authority can be depended on[128].” Those funeral orations on the dead, which it was the custom to deliver at Rome, and which were preserved in families as carefully as the memoirs, also contributed to augment this evil. Cicero declares, that history had been completely falsified by these funeral panegyrics, many things being inserted in them which never were performed, or existed—False triumphs, supernumerary consulships, and forged pedigrees[129].
Connected with these prose legends, there were also the old heroic ballads formerly mentioned, on which the annals of Ennius were in a great measure built, and to which may be traced some of those wonderful incidents of Roman history, chiefly contrived for the purpose of exalting the military achievements of the country. Many things which of right belong to such ancient poems, still exist under the disguise of an historical clothing in the narratives of the Roman annalists. Niebuhr, the German historian of Rome, has recently analysed these legends, and taken much from the Roman history, by detecting what incidents rest on no other foundation than their chimerical or embellished pictures, and by shewing how [pg 63]incidents, in themselves unconnected, have by their aid been artificially combined. Such, according to him, were the stories of the birth of Romulus, of the treason of Tatia, the death of the Fabii, and the incidents of an almost complete Epopée, from the succession of Tarquinius Priscus to the battle of Regillus. These old ballads, being more attractive and of easier access than authentic records and monuments, were preferred to them as authorities; and even when converted into prose, retained much of their original and poetic spirit. For example, it was feigned in them that Tullus Hostilius was the son of Hostus Hostilius, who perished in the war with the Sabines, which, according to chronology, would make Tullus at least eighty years old when he mounted the throne; but it was thought a fine thing to represent him as the son of a genuine Roman hero, who had fallen in the service of his country. Niebuhr, probably, as I have already shown, has attributed too much to these old heroic ballads, and has assigned to them an extent and importance of which there are no adequate proofs. But I strongly suspect that the heroic or historical poems of Ennius had formed a principal document to the Roman annalists for the transactions during the Monarchy and earlier times of the Republic, and had been appealed to, like Ferdousi’s Shad-Nameh, for occurrences which were probably rather fictions of fancy than events of history.
The Greek writers, from whom several fables and traditions were derived concerning the infancy of Rome, lived not much higher than the age of Fabius Pictor, and only mention its affairs cursorily, while treating of Alexander or his successors. Polybius, indeed, considers their narratives as mere vulgar traditions[130], and Dionysius says they have written some few things concerning the Romans, which they have compiled from common reports, without accuracy or diligence. To them have been plausibly attributed those fables, concerning the exploits of Romans, which bear so remarkable an analogy to incidents in Grecian history[131]. Like to these in all respects are the histories which some Romans published in Greek concerning the ancient transactions of their own nation.
We thus see that the authentic materials for the early history of Rome were meagre and imperfect—that the annals of the Pontiffs and public monuments had perished—that the Leges Regiæ, Twelve Tables, and remains of the religious or ritual books of the Pontiffs, could throw no great light on history, and that the want of better materials was supplied by false, [pg 64]and sometimes incredible relations, drawn from the family traditions—“ad ostentationem scenæ gaudentis miraculis aptiora quàm ad fidem[132].” The mutilated inscriptions, too, the scanty treaties, and the family memoirs, became, from the variations in the language, in a great measure unintelligible to the generation which succeeded that in which they were composed. Polybius informs us, that the most learned Romans of his day could not read a treaty with the Carthaginians, concluded after the expulsion of the kings. Hence, the documents for history, such as they were, became useless to the historian, or, at least, were of such difficulty, that he would sometimes mistake their import, and be, at others, deterred from investigation.
When all this is considered, and also that Rome, in its commencement, was the dwelling of a rude and ignorant people, subsisting by rapine—that the art of writing, the only sure guardian of the remembrance of events, was little practised—that critical examination was utterly unknown; and that the writers of no other nation would think of accurately transmitting to posterity events, which have only become interesting from the subsequent conquests and extension of the Roman empire, it must be evident, that the materials provided for the work of the historian would necessarily be obscure and uncertain.
The great general results recorded in Roman history, during the first five centuries, cannot, indeed, be denied. It cannot be doubted that Rome ultimately triumphed over the neighbouring nations, and obtained possession of their territories; for Rome would not have been what we know it was in the sixth century, without these successes. But there exists, in the particular events recorded in the Roman history, sufficient internal evidence of its uncertainty, or rather falsehood; and here I do not refer to the lying fables, and absurd prodigies, which the annalists may have inserted in deference to the prejudices of the people, nor to the almost incredible daring and endurance of Scævola, Cocles, or Curtius, which may be accounted for from the wild spirit of a half-civilized nation, and are not unlike the acts we hear of among Indian tribes; but I allude to the total improbability of the historic details concerning transactions with surrounding tribes, and the origin of domestic institutions. How, for example, after so long a series of defeats, with few intervals of prosperity interposed, could the Italian states have possessed resources sufficient incessantly to renew hostilities, in which they were [pg 65]always the aggressors? And how, on the other hand, should the Romans, with their constant preponderance of force and fortune, (if the repetition and magnitude of their victories can be depended on,) have been so long employed in completely subjugating them? The numbers slain, according to Livy’s account, are so prodigious, that it is difficult to conceive how the population of such moderate territories, as belonged to the independent Italian communities, could have supplied such losses. We, therefore, cannot avoid concluding, that the frequency and importance of these campaigns were magnified by the consular families indulging in the vanity of exaggerating the achievements of their ancestors[133]. Sometimes these campaigns are represented as carried on against the whole nation of Volsci, Samnites, or Etruscans, when, in fact, only a part was engaged; and, at other times, battles, which never were fought, have been extracted from the family memoirs, where they were drawn up to illustrate each consulate; for what would a consul have been without a triumph or a victory? It would exceed my limits were I to point out the various improbabilities and evident inconsistencies of this sort recorded in the early periods of Roman history. With regard, again, to the domestic institutions of Rome, everything (doubtless for the sake of effect and dignity) is represented as having at once originated in the refined policy and foresight of the early kings. The division of the people into tribes and curiæ—the relations of patron and client—the election of senators—in short, the whole fabric of the constitution, is exhibited as a preconcerted plan of political wisdom, and not (as a constitution has been in every other state, and must have been in Rome) the gradual result of contingencies and progressive improvements, of assertions of rights, and struggles for power.
The opinion entertained by Polybius of the uncertainty of the Roman history, is sufficiently manifest from a passage in the fourth book of his admirable work, which is written with all the philosophy and profound inquiry of Tacitus, without any of his apparent affectation.—“The things which I have undertaken to describe,” says he, “are those which I myself have seen, or such as I have received from men who were eye-witnesses of them. For, had I gone back to a more early period, and borrowed my accounts from the report of persons who themselves had only heard them before from others, as it would scarcely have been possible that I should myself be able to discern the true state of the matters that were then transacted, so neither could I have written anything concerning [pg 66]them with confidence.” What, indeed, can we expect to know with regard to the Kings of Rome, when we find so much uncertainty with regard to the most memorable events of the republic, as the period of the first creation of a dictator and tribunes of the people? The same doubt exists in the biography of illustrious characters. Cicero says, that Coriolanus, having gone over to the Volsci, repressed the struggles of his resentment by a voluntary death; “for, though you, my Atticus,” he continues, “have represented his death in a different manner, you must pardon me if I do not subscribe to the justness of your representations[134].” Atticus, I presume, gave the account as we now have it, that he was killed in a tumult of the Volsci, and Fabius Pictor had written that he lived till old age[135]. Of the reliance to be placed on the events between the death of Coriolanus and the termination of the second Punic war, we may judge from the uncertainty which prevailed with regard to Scipio Africanus, a hero, of all others, the most distinguished, and who flourished, comparatively, at a recent period. Yet some of the most important events of his life are involved in contradiction and almost hopeless obscurity.—“Cicero,” says Berwick, in his Memoirs of Scipio, “speaks with great confidence of the year in which he died, yet Livy found so great a difference of opinion among historians on the subject, that he declares himself unable to ascertain it. From a fragment in Polybius, we learn, that, in his time, the authors who had written of Scipio were ignorant of some circumstances of his life, and mistaken in others; and, from Livy, it appears, that the accounts respecting his life, trial, death, funeral, and sepulchre, were so contradictory, that he was not able to determine what tradition, or whose writings, he ought to credit.”
But, although the early events of Roman history were of such a description, that Cicero and Atticus were not agreed concerning them—that Polybius could write nothing about them with confidence; and that Livy would neither undertake to affirm nor refute them, every vestige of Roman antiquity had not perished. Though the annals of the Pontiffs were destroyed,—those who wrote, who kept, and had read them, could not have lost all recollection of the facts they recorded. Even from the family memoirs, full of falsehoods as they were, much truth might have been extracted by a judicious and acute historian. The journals of different rival families must often have served as historical checks on each other, and much real information might have been gathered, by compar[pg 67]ing and contrasting the vain-glorious lies of those family-legends[136].
Such was the state of the materials for Roman history, in the middle of the sixth century, from the building of the city, at which time regular annals first began to be composed; and notwithstanding all unfavourable circumstances, much might have been done, even at that period, towards fixing and ascertaining the dates and circumstances of previous events, had the earliest annalist of Rome been in any degree fitted for this difficult and important task; but, unfortunately,