All these details connected with dates, the list of which, down to the times of Camillus, might be vastly swelled, are so characterised by marks of inconsistency and historical impossibility, that it may safely be concluded that here we are entitled to the exercise of criticism. Let us now call to mind the twofold sources of the earliest Roman history,—the chronological ones, the Fasti, the Annales Pontificum; and the unchronological ones, the lays, Laudationes, the Libri Pontificum and Augurales. With regard to the chronological ones, we see that in the oldest accounts of Fabius, from the building of Rome to its destruction by the Gauls, 360 years are reckoned; precisely the number of the γένη in Attica, which number the Greeks already (especially Aristotle, from whom the grammarians Pollux, Harpocration, and others borrowed) declared to have been in imitation of the solar year. If we look more closely into it, 360 is the middle number between those of the days of the solar and lunar year, and the nearest to either of these capable of being conveniently divided. The time assigned for the kings, according to the older reckoning, was 240 years; that for the republic, 120. This number has the same mathematical character as those of the Indian ages of the world, the Babylonian, and other eastern numbers. The 120 years for the republic are received also by those who deem the whole period to have been 365 years. Whether these 120 years are correct, remains indeed to be decided according to one’s views with regard to the epoch of the dedication of the Capitol. That the annals of the pontiffs were destroyed when the city was burned by the Gauls, is strongly confirmed by Claudius (without doubt Claudius Quadrigarius) in Plutarch, and indirectly by Livy, who cannot state it in a direct manner, or else he would have declared his first books to be worthless. An additional proof of it is the fact, that the eclipse of the sun in the year 350 was the first one really observed which occurred in the annals; whereas all the earlier ones were calculated afterwards, and of course incorrectly, with the aid of the scientific means which then existed. For the first 240 years we have seven kings, who reigned for an immense time, most of them about forty years. Newton has already pointed out how improbable it was, that a succession of princes should have all ruled for so long a period, and he has assigned seventeen years as an average for each. The most exact parallel, however, is to be found among the doges of Venice, who also were elective princes like the Roman kings. There have been forty doges within the space of five centuries (800 to 1300), so that there were eight of these to a century. When we now look more closely at the numbers of the Roman kings, we find in them a play upon numbers, as among the eastern nations. To understand this, we must premise the following remarks.
The Etruscans had as the basis of their chronology two sorts of sæcula, physical and astronomical, of which the latter consisted of a hundred and ten years, as the received average number of the physical one. By a twofold intercalation, the calendar was rectified to within a wonderfully small fractional difference, a hundred and ten of these years very nearly corresponding to a hundred and thirty-two years of ten months; and thus an astronomical period was constituted. The length of the physical sæculum was thus fixed. The life of him who outlived all those who had been alive at the foundation of a state, marked the first sæculum; the second was determined by the longest life among those who were alive at the conclusion of the first, and so on. Now there is an old tradition in Plutarch and Dio Cassius, and in Dionysius at least an allusion to it, that Numa was born on the day of the foundation of Rome, and therefore the first sæculum at Rome probably ended with his death in the year 77.[35] If this was the case, we then see the reason why Romulus was made to reign thirty-eight years (the number of the weeks of the year of ten months), and Numa thirty-nine. For the last five kings one had historical traditions; yet they did not extend through the whole of the regal period. Rome has surely had by far more than five kings; but as a founder was wanted besides for the Ramnes, and another for the Tities, the number was chosen which had a sacred meaning, that of the planets, &c. The middle point in two hundred and forty years is the end of the hundred and twentieth, just the middle of the reign of the fourth king out of seven, evidently an artificial arrangement. Twenty-three years were given him, so that people might be able to begin to date them from the year 110, as they always wished for the beginning some distinguished number, and a hundred and ten was the sæcula number. The old year had ten months, and a hundred and thirty of those years are equal to a hundred and ten of the later ones. The reign of Ancus must therefore have been placed between 110 and 132. What is between 77 and 110, namely, thirty-two years, is now of course to be assigned to Tullus Hostilius. Tarquinius Priscus reigns until 170, half a century being added to the middle of the regal period; his reign therefore lasted thirty-eight years. The twenty-five years of the last king may be historical, or a quarter of a century may have been assigned to him in round numbers. For Servius Tullius there now remains the time from 170 to 215. But let us now suppose that the two reigns of Tarquinius Priscus and of Servius Tullius did not last so long, then every inconsistency vanishes, and the old unanimous account that Tarquinius Superbus was the son of Tarquinius Priscus reasserts its claims. We thus see how the greatest absurdities may arise from chronological restorations, as in this case there is a palpable forgery.
Although the other sources of the earliest history, the old lays, may not also have been tampered with, they are nevertheless altogether insufficient. We have a parallel case to this in our own Nibelungenlied, the poets of which likewise did not wish to deceive, nor did they make any pretensions whatever to be annalists. Historical characters appear in it,—Theodoric, Attila, the Burgundians; and yet of the whole poem nothing belongs to history. Nor has history any part in Romulus and Numa. They belong to the cycle of the gods, Romulus as the son of Mars, and Numa as the husband of Egeria; Romulus is merely a personification of Rome. Other poems have more historical matter in them; for instance, the Spanish romances of the Cid. Here the outlines are undoubtedly historical; but they form as it were a line only, whilst the description as given in the poem is a plane. There is also much of this in Roman history. He who utterly rejects the whole of the early Roman history, does not know what he is saying. Romulus and Numa are included within the first sæculum, because they do not at all belong to history; and therefore they form a sæculum of their own, and as it were quite a different era. From thence whatever was discovered of old traditions concerning the kings and their time, much of which was in circulation, had now its place assigned to it in the chronological cycle. Those who think this criticism doubtful, would not do so if they were more familiar with what is nearer our own times. It is well known how the romances of the middle ages about Charlemagne and his Paladins, refer to Latin chronicles the authorship of which is ascribed to the Archbishop Turpin. These are now allowed to figure as romances by the side of history; but who would believe that not a hundred and fifty years after Charlemagne, in the reign of Otho the Great, at a time therefore when the crusades were not yet in the remotest manner thought of, there appears already in the Chronicle of Benedict of Soracte a most detailed account of an expedition of Charlemagne to Jerusalem, and that without any consciousness of its falsehood. Before the extinction of the Carlovingian race, utterly fictitious expeditions across the Alps, &c., taken from the history of Charlemagne, are related at large in the Chronicles as positive facts. We are now able to disprove them, because we have contemporary annals, and the history of Eginhard; and as for the expedition to Jerusalem, even without these we may also disprove it from eastern annals.—The same thing occurs in Ireland. There also, pretended annals exist in which a succession of kings are found, among whom Niall the Great, about the time of the emperor Theodosius, conquers Britain, Gaul, and Spain, crosses the Alps, and threatens the emperor in Rome. The most decisive proof can be brought against this completely fabulous tale, as the authentic history in this case is generally known.[36] Had we likewise older books of history to check the Roman legends with, we might just as easily get the proof of the want of authenticity of the early Roman history. In the meanwhile where shall we find them? The Greeks had no intercourse with Rome, and although they knew of the Romans at a much earlier period than is generally supposed, yet they did not trouble themselves about them, precisely because they never came into contact with them. The case would be quite different with the Greeks of Southern Italy, and the Siceliotes, of whom we have, however, no more authors left. Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides can mention the Romans. There nevertheless exists a notice which gives one a sample of Roman history as it was told among other nations, quite a detached fragment of Etruscan history. The case is as follows,—Claudius, afterwards emperor, who was so unfortunate in his youth, who was disowned by his mother, and whose feeble understanding, in spite of his other good qualities, was entirely spoiled by ill-treatment, seems to have excited Livy’s pity, who gave him instruction and encouragement for writing history. Thus he wrote several works, Καρχηδονιακά, in eight, and Tυῤῥηνικά, in twenty books, certainly in Greek, the loss of which we have very much to regret. Even Pliny does no more quote this latter work. But in the sixteenth century two tablets were discovered, on which fragments of an oration of the emperor Claudius are found, wherein he proposes in the senate to give the Lugdunensian Gauls the full citizenship, and to admit them into the senate, as had long been the case already in the Provincia Romana. The inhabitants of Gaul were Roman citizens, had Roman names, yet they had not the right of admission into the senate. With this right the emperor Claudius presented Lugdunensian Gaul. The two brazen tablets are still left, out of several which contained the speech mentioned by Tacitus; and they either do not immediately join each other, or a considerable piece must be wanting at the bottom. Before the French Revolution they were still in the town hall at Lyons; whether they be still there, I know not. Lipsius had them printed in his edition of Tacitus, Gruter in the Corpus Inscriptionum; but yet they have been little read. They give us an idea of the stupidity of Claudius, so that we feel assured that the ancients have not done him injustice. In this harangue he says at full length what Tacitus very summarily condensed, that we ought not to say that this was an innovation. Innovations had been made from the beginning of the state; foreigners had ever been received, as for instance the Sabines of Titus Tatius. Even foreigners had been made kings—Numa; Tarquin the Etruscan, a descendant of the Greeks; Servius Tullius, who, according to our annals, was a Corniculensian, but according to the Tuscan ones was a Tuscan of the name of Mastarna, a follower of Cæles Vibenna. He emigrated and settled on the Mons Cælius, which was so called by him after the name of his leader, and now called himself Servius Tullius. This is therefore a direct proof of how matters stood at that time with regard to the Roman annals; for there is nothing whatever in which we can make this Etruscan Mastarna and Servius Tullius, the son of a bondwoman, tally with each other.
Undoubtedly therefore the earliest Roman history has sprung from lays. Perizonius quotes examples from other nations; even in the historical books of the Old Testament, there are such lays. With regard to the Romans, he cites the testimony of Cato, to which Cicero refers in two passages. “Would that the lays were still in existence;” Cicero writes, “for as Cato says, they were sung at table by the guests in praise of deceased men!” A third mention we find in Nonius Marcellus from Varro, that at banquets pueri honesti sang lays in praise of departed great men, either to the flute, or without any accompaniment. This evidence every one must acknowledge as authentic. Among all the nations of whose peculiar original early literature we can form any judgment, there are found either longer historical poems of the epic class, or else very short ones in praise of individual men. In order to pave the way for the assertion that we have still pieces left of both from the Romans, we must first premise some remarks on their most ancient metres.
The ancient Romans, before they adopted the Greek poetic system, made use of the Saturnian verse. Horace says of it,
Horridus ille
Defluxit numerus Saturnius
and several old grammarians have given accounts of it. Atilius Fortunatianus and others among them, who knew nothing about its structure, stuck to a couple of verses which had been preserved; particularly to the following, in which, according to the views which then prevailed, a hypercatalectical Senarius makes its appearance:
Malum dabunt Metelli Nævio Poëtæ.
Terentianus Maurus, who belongs to the end of the third century, speaks of it when treating of the Anacreontic verse, because the first division of the Saturnian bears some resemblance to it. But the real Saturnian verse is quite a different one, which I intend shortly to prove in a detailed treatise. It has many forms, and is altogether distinct from Greek metres. The Latin term for Rhythmus, which in later times only was applied to Greek metres, is numeri. But the Greek metre is based on music and quantity, while in theirs the Romans really counted, the syllables being little measured, or rather not at all: a certain degree of rhythm was, however, kept. Our ancestors, in the same way, had no idea of short and long syllables in the Greek manner; and in the old Latin church hymns likewise short syllables are made long, and vice versa. Plautus and Terence also, in their iambic and trochaic verses, really observed the ryhthmical measure only, and not the quantity. This is the case with all northern people. The pervading characteristic of the Saturnian verse is this, that it must consist of a fixed number of trisyllabic feet. Generally speaking there are four of them, in which either Bacchics or Cretics interchange with Spondees. Sometimes the Cretics and sometimes the Bacchics predominate. When kept distinct they have a very fine movement; but they are usually very much mingled together, so that it is difficult to make them out.