After the first scanty notices from the earlier times were for the most part destroyed in the Gallic devastation, they were restored from outlines taken from the songs of the Vates; the poems were changed in passing from mouth to mouth, and from these combined with the Laudationes history arose. These are the materials which Fabius found extant.
If we look at the tenth book of Livy, we find in it a disproportionate prolixity in the account of the campaigns of Fabius Maximus Rullianus. Now this is exactly an instance of a story taken from family records. In fact not a few statements may even be pointed out, which have no other source than family vanity. People even ventured to interpolate fictitious consulships and triumphs into the family annals, as Livy himself tells us.
Again, other falsifications have arisen from national pride. The forgeries of patriotism manifest themselves among the Romans whenever they suffered great disasters; and this is particularly the case with the momentous ones of the earlier time, with the war of Porsena, the Gallic calamity, and the disgrace at Caudium, in which the whole account is a lying one. Others have sprung from that spirit of caste, which in earlier times led to continual struggles. Both parties thus brought false accusations against each other, which afterwards found their way into history; or, on the other hand, palliation was also attempted in order to disguise political or moral crimes. The blame of the worst events is laid to the people’s charge; yet it is innocent, and the guilt belongs wholly to its antagonists. Not the people, but the Curies condemned Manlius to death; these also pronounced the disgraceful decision between the Ardeates and the people of Aricia;[39] nay, we may be sure that it was the Curies which compelled Camillus to go into exile.
Such falsifications accumulate, become involved in each other, and give rise to this strange confusion. The rich materials, widely scattered indeed, because the parties did not allow of their being brought together, we may gather in order to find out by critical research the organization and the nature of the Roman nation; and on the whole to carry on their history to that point at which contemporary accounts from the Greeks begin, to the war with Pyrrhus, and the first Punic war. Much will indeed remain undecided in these inquiries; but we may exactly discriminate where this must needs be the case, and where it is otherwise.
THE EARLIEST HISTORY.
The Roman history goes back to Latium, and through Latium to Troy. Since Dio Chrysostom has started the question, whether Troy ever existed at all, a vast deal has been written on the subject; and also upon this other point, whether Æneas came to Italy. The treatise of Theodore Ryckius[40] about it is particularly well known. He deems the arrival of Æneas to be historical, in opposition to Bochart, who is one of the last highly gifted French philologists,[41] and at all events is superior to him in discernment. Bochart’s hypothesis concerning the influence of the Phœnicians, is doubtless carried too far. No one, however, will now any more put the question thus; but one must ask, has the legend that the Trojans came to this coast any historical foundation? and, moreover, has the legend arisen among the Greeks, and passed over to Italy; or is it a native Italian tradition which cannot, at least by us, be traced back to Greek sources? If the latter be the case, some truth must surely be at the bottom of it, and the less one takes these ancient accounts in their literal meaning, the more are they found to partake of possibility.
There is no question but that in the earliest times there were in Greece two peoples who were very nearly akin, but still distinct from each other; so much so that they did not understand each other’s language, as Herodotus positively asserts. One of these languages as opposed to the other was considered as barbarous; and yet, when looked upon from a different point of view, they may be said to be both of them closely related. There are still several living languages which stand in a similar degree of affinity,—the Polish and the Bohemian, the Italian and the Spanish, and, although we may not find the relationship to be so close, the Polish and Lithuanian. The two last languages are as wide as heaven and earth asunder; yet for all that they have a characteristic similarity. The grammar of both has the same development, the same peculiarities; the numerals are nearly the same; a great many words are common to both. These languages are therefore branches of the same stock, and yet the Poles do not understand the Lithuanians. Now this is the manner in which we solve the question so often mooted concerning the difference or identity of the Greeks and the Pelasgians. When Herodotus says that they were different, we must after all believe him; yet, on the other hand, he places the Hellenes and Pelasgians again side by side. The two nations cannot therefore be of different race.
In the earliest times, when the Greek history is yet veiled to us in impenetrable mystery, the greater part of Italy, perhaps the whole eastern shore of the Adriatic sea, Epirus, Macedon,[42] the southern coast of Thrace, the Macedonian peninsulas, the islands of the Ægean, and also the coasts of Asia Minor to the Bosporus were inhabited by Pelasgians.[43] The Trojans also are to be looked upon as Pelasgians. That they were no barbarians is the opinion of all the Greeks, as we also see already from Homer; their abode is quite in the Pelasgian country; their names are Greek. They are in close conjunction at one time with the Arcadians, another essentially Pelasgian people, then with the Epirots, then also with the Thessalians; and Æneas, according to one tradition, goes to Arcadia and dies there, according to another into Epirus, where Helenus settles. Thus, in like manner, we find in Pindar, in the poem on Cyrene, Aristæus, a Pelasgian hero from Arcadia, together with the Antenorides. The connexion of the Pelasgians with the Trojans extends very far. Samothrace in particular is the metropolis of Ilium; Dardanus comes from Arcadia, but passes through Samothrace, and from thence, married to Chryse, goes to Troas. The Samothracians, according to one of the grammarians, are a Roman people, acknowledged to be of kindred race with the Romans; that is to say, with the Troio-Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. This connexion has no other source but the common relationship between the Tyrrhenians, Trojans, and Samothracians. According to some accounts, Dardanus comes from Tyrrhenia to Troas; according to others, the Trojans come to Tyrrhenia. In the temple, and in the mysteries of Samothrace, there was a gathering point of many men from all quarters;[44] and it was for a great part of the world at that time as the Caaba of Mecca, the grave of the prophet at Medina, or as the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. Samothrace and Dodona were for the Pelasgian races, what perhaps to the Hellenic world Delphi and Delos were. The distance of a considerable portion of those who are linked together by a common origin ought not to have much stress laid upon it in a case like this, as it is such as not to hinder the Mahometan from making the pilgrimage to the sacred spot.
This old stock of the Pelasgians which we may trace as far as Liguria, and which also dwelt on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, vanishes in the age of history as a component part of nations; but it consisted originally of a number of tribes which bore different names. A very wide spread name for that portion which was settled in Epirus, and in the southern part of modern Italy, as far as Latium and the coast of the Adriatic Sea, was that of Siculians (Siculi); also Vituli, Vitelli, Vitali, Itali, from the last of which Italy takes its name. Notwithstanding the wide spread of these Siculian or Italian names, Italia in the earliest times does not seem as at present to have designated the country to the foot of the Alps. It is indeed possible that the changes which followed upon the immigration of northern races severed the sea-coast from Etruria, and confined the name Italia to the country south of the Tiber, or rather, south of Latium. Yet this is only a supposition, though it is certain that Italy was once bounded on the north by a line from the Garganus on one side to Terracina on the other; and that the name, which had been restricted to within yet narrower limits in the times after Alexander the Great, before the sway of Rome had begun, was again extended to that wider range. It is probably of this earlier Italy that Pliny says, that it was querno folio similis,—a remarkable example of the manner in which Pliny wrote. He speaks at one time in his own name, and at another he gives excerpta. Yet his excerpta are unfortunately as little weighed by him in historical matters as in those of natural history. This statement he has without doubt taken from Timæus, with whom also the comparison of Sardinia to a sandal or a foot-print originates. That in his own time Italy could not by any means be so described, entirely escaped Pliny’s notice.
In the south of Italy, the earliest inhabitants were also called Œnotrians and Peucetians; in the north, without doubt they were likewise called Liburnians; and on the coasts of Latium, Tyrrhenians.