History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Vol. II

by John Colin Dunlop

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.