Historia de Roma I

lj

iTHE HISTORY OF ROME.

1.-1Printed by

Jame• Kay, Jun. & Brother,.

l2'J Chestnut Street.THE

HISTORY OF ROME.

BY

G. B. NIEBUHR.

TRANSLATED BY

JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A.

AND

CONNOP THIRLW ALL, M.A.

FELLOWS OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

VOL. I.

HRS'f AMERICAN FROM THE LONDON EDITION.

PHILADELPHIA:

THOMAS WARDLE, 11 MINOR STREET.

,

MDCCCXXXV.;o,

'-1-03

Ceterwn, si, omisso optimo illo et perfectissimo genere eloquentim, eli­

gend11. sit forma dicendi, malim, hercule, C. ·Gracchi impetum 11.ut L. Crassi

maturitatem, quam cll.lamistros Mmcenatis aut tinnitus Gllllionis.

TACITUS,

Dial. de Ora«rrilru.s.TO HIS MAJESTY

FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD,

KING OF PRUSSIA,

THIS WORK·

IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

A

HISTORY

of Rome, set forth with truth and vividness,

in broad and clear outlirws, free from the incumbrance of

multifarious details, might be esteemed no less worthy to

engage the attention of a prince, than profound and compre­

hensive descriptions of the most important epochs of modern

times. Not so, critical investigations into the dark periods of

remote antiquity; not so, a work which, while it approaches

close to particular objects that it may examine them, is seldom

able to take its stand where rich and wide prospects expand

before the eye.

But gratitude inspires courag1.1 and in this feeling I ven­

tured to solicit your Majesty'sfgracious permission for the

dedication of this work.

Your Majesty's favour has affor<led me the happiest leisure:

it enabled me to become familiar with Rome : and the two

Universities-that of Berlin, the opening of which led to my

undertaking this work, 1lnd that of Bonn, to which it is myvi

pride to belong as a free associate-are your Majesty's noble

creations.

•

Thus this history owes its existence to the Gracious King,

to whom I devote it, with feelings faithful as those of a native

subject, and with a lively recollection of every favour with

which your Majesty has distinguished me.PREFACE.

History of Rome was treated, during the first two cen­

turies after the revival of letters, with the same pwstration of

the understanding and judgment to the written letter that had

been handed down, and with the same fearfulness of going

beyond it, which prevailed in all the other branches of know~

ledge. If any had pretended to.examine into the credibility of

the ancient writers and the value of their testimony, an outcry

would have been raised against such atrocious presumption.

The object aimed at was, in spite of everything like internal

evidence, to combine what was related by them : the utmost

that was done was to make one authority in some one parti­

cular instance give way to another, as mildly as possible, and

without leading.to any further results. Here and there indeed

an independent mind; like Glareanus, broke through this

fence; but inevitably a sentence of condemnation was forth­

with pronounced against him : besides the men who did so

were not the most learned ; and their bold attempts were not

carried with, consistency throughout. Jn this department, as

in others, men of splendid abilities and the most copious learn­

ing conformed to the narrow spirit of their age : their labours

extracted from a multitude of insulated details, what the

remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any single

work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities: what they

did in this respect is wonderful. And this is sufficient to earn

them imperishable fame : for he. that would blame their not

being more independent of their age, is blind to the common lot

·of mortals, from which none but the favourites of the gods are

THEviii

PREFACE.

exempt; and they mostly have to pay for this blessing by per­

secution. 'On the other hand in the way of history strictly so

called little was produced,-<lry compilations concerning the

times where the books of Livy were lost, and detatched obser­

vations which led to nothing beyond.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century Philology

entered upon a kind of middle state between the period of her

earlier greatness within her exclusive sphere,-where, having

accomplished whatever was to be accomplished in this manner,

she consequently fell into decay,-and that of a new, richer,

and more comprehensive greatness, for which she was to be

indebted to the developement of other sciences, although for a

while they overshadowed her : this like all middle states was

one of uneasiness and depression. Bentley, and a: few more,

who were in part the crea.tori:l of the new age, in part the pre­

servers of the knowledge the old one had left behind, stood as

giants amid a generation of dwarfs. Intellect and science

during that century were everywhere coming out of their

nonage: men were taught by great examples to look things

in the face, and to pursue their researches with freedom ; to

regard the books, which till then had made up the scholar's

whole world, as merely pictures of a part of the living universe

which could not be directly approached ; to exercise their own

understanding, their own reason, their own judgment in every­

thing. Nor was the field of Roman history left unvisited by

this youthful spirit of freedom : it is undoubtedly to the per­

vading activity which prevailed during the latter part of that

century, that we owe the first work which, while it discusses

an abundance of details, enters into a general examination of

what this history is and may be made : I mean the masterly

inquiries of Perizonius; a book which, like other products of

genius, is unsurpassed and classical in the kind wherein it was

the first.·· However though we here feel the breath of that

spirit which in those days was everywhere awakening, Perizo­

n1us had advanced far beyond his age; and Bayle, who twelve

year~ after poinred out the contradictions and impossibilitiesPREFACE.

ix

contained in a· few portions of the eatliest history of Rome,

makes no use and takes no notice of him: neitlrnr does Beau­

fort, although his sole attention was directed to that object

which Bayle merely fixed his eyes on for a few hours, among

a thousand others of the same kind.

Beaufort was ingenious, and had read much, though he was

not a philologer: one or two sections in his treatise are very

able and satisfactory, others on the contrary feeble and super­

ficial. Bayle is the master whom he implicitly follows through­

out : the soul of his book is scepticism : be does nothing but

deny and upset: or, if he ever tries to build, the edifice is frail

and untenable. Yet the influence and reputation of his book

spread extraordinarily : for Roman hist~ry had almost entirely

escaped the attentton and care of philologers; those who ch~efly

interested themselves about it, though not more so than about

that of other nations, were intelligent men of the world; and

for their use it was at that time handled by several authors,

without pretensio.ns or view to learning and research. Such of

these as did not wholly overlook the earlier ,centuries, under

the notion that they were of no importance, wer~ so satisfied

with Beaufort's inquiry as to give them up altogether. Gib­

bon's history, which even in a philological point of view is a

noble masterwork, left this region untouched.

The end of the last century was the opening of a new era

for Germany. Men were no longer satisfied with superficial

views in any field of knowledge; rngue empty words lost their

currency: but neither was the work of destruction, which had

given pleasure to the preceding age, in its anger against the

continuance of an authority founded only on usurpation, any

longer held to be sufficient: my countrymen strove after.defi­

nite and positive knowledge, like their forefathers; but it was

after true knowledge, in the room of that imagi.nary know­

ledge which had been overthrown. \Ve had now a literature,

worthy of our nation and our language : we had Lessing

and Goethe: and this literature comprised, what none had yet

done, a great part of the Greek and Roman authors, not iu mere

J.-2

'x

PREFACE.

copies, but as it were reproduced. For this advantage Ger­

many is indebted to Voss, whom our late posterity niust extol

as their benefactor: with whom a new age for the knowledge

of antiquity begins; since he succeeded in eliciting out of the

classical writers what they are wont to presuppose, their no­

tions of the earth, for instance and of the gods, their ways .of

life and their household habits: and understood and interpreted

Homer and Virgil, as if they were our contemporaries, only

separated from us by an interval of space. His example

wrought upon many : upon me, ever since my childhood, it

has been enforced by personal encouragement fi:om this old

friend of my father.

Previous ages had been content to look at the ancient histo­

riaos in the way many look at maps or landscapes, as if they

were all in all; without ever attempting to employ them as

the:only remaining means for producing an image of the objects

they represent: but now a work on such subjects could not .be

esteemed satisfactory, unless its clearness and distinctness

enabled it to take its stand beside the history of the present

age. And the time was one when we were witnessing many

unheard of and incredible events: when our attention was at­

tracted to many forgotten and decayed institutions by the sound

of their downfall; and our hearts were strengthened by danger,

as we became familiar with its threats, and by the passionate in­

tensity given to our attachment to our princes and our country.

At that time philology in Germany had already reached that

height, which is now the boast of our nation. It had recog-·

nized its calling, to. be'the mediator between the remotest ages,

to afford us the enjoyment of preserving through thousands of

years an unbroken identity with the noblest and greatest nations

of the ancient world; by familiarizing us, through the medium

of grammar and history, with the works of their minds and the

course of their destinies, as if there were no gulf that divided

us from them.

In this manner, although Greek literature long possessed an

almost exclusive preference, the ,criticnl treatment of RomanPREFACE.

xi

history, the discovery of the forms of the constitution which

had till then been misunderstood, was a fruit that time had been

maturing: and a multitude of fortunate circumstances com­

bined to foster its growth. It was a time full of hope, when

the university of Berlin opened: and the enthusiasm and de­

light in which months rolled away, while the contents of the

first volumes of this histor~ were digested for lectures, and

worked up for publication ;-to have enjoyed this, and to have

lived in 1813,-this of itself is enough to make a man's life,

. notwithstanding much sad experience, a happy one.

In this state of delight the meaning of many an ancient

mystery disclosed itself: but yet more were overlooked : in

much I erred : a still greater part was left in a disjointed con­

dition feebly supported by proofs. For my knowledge was the

unsatisfactory knowledge of one who had been !Oelf-taught, and

who as yet had only been able to devote such hours to study

as he could withdraw from business: and I had reached my

.mark like a man walking in his sleep along a battlement.

That these defects, and the overhasty composition of the first

volume, which had compelled me to introduce sundry correc­

tions in the sequel of the work itself, did not hinder its recep­

tion being on the whole very favourable, is a proof that the

revival of Roman history was in accord with the spirit of the

age : · nay our age may discern itself to be immediately called

io>y Providence to this inquiry, inasmuch as, within the eleven

years since it commenced, three new and rich sources . have

been opened to us by the publication of Lydus, Gaius, and

Cicero's Republic: whereas centuries had previously elapsed

without adding to om means of knowledge.

·To these defects of my work I was far from blind : the points

however attacked by those who criticised it, were by no means

the weak ones, but often the soundest and strongest. ;My be­

ing aware. of these faults, and desirous to make use of the new

discoveries, was the main reason which re.larded the continua­

tion: · for it was ncessary that, before I proceeded~ the first

volume should be written anew. Meanwhile I was living inxii

PREFACE.

Italy, and being at Rome was too much taken up in gazing

and receiving impressions to work with energy at books. Be­

sides I fancied I should never be able to proceed without the hap­

piness I had once enjoyed, when the point on which an inquiry

hinged would come forward into a clear light while I was con­

versing with Savigny, and I found. it so easy to ask many a

question, so cheering to complete an embryo thought and to

try its worth. On my return to Germany I. drew up the plan

of the third volume, preparing the way for it by remodelling the

first, and correcting the second.

This new edition, in which it has been my aim to make all

the proofs and solutions satisfactory, required very extensive

labours: but as all labour is lightened when new springs of

activity are imparted, so this was mainly promoted by my lec­

tures on Roman antiquities last winter. The words of Pyrrhus

to his Epirots-Ye are iny wings-express the feeling of a zeal­

ous teacher toward hearers whom he loves, and whose whole

souls take part in his discourse. Not only are his researches

promoted by the endeavour to make himself clear to them, and

to utter nothing as truth which can admit of a doubt: the

sight of them assembled before him, the personal relation in

which he stands to them, awaken.a thousand thoughts while

he is speaking: and how different a thing is it to write down

words which had previously· been poured forth as the fresh

thoughts prompted them!

The work I here lay before the public is, as the first glance

will show, an entirely new one, in which scarcely a few frag­

ments of the former have been incorporated. It would have

been far easier to preserve the groundwork of the first edition;

I resolved on the more difficult task, as the most expedient,

from its giving unity and harmony to the whole. That whole,

. made up of this and the next two volumes, is the work of a

man in his maturity; whose powers may decline, but whose

convictions are thoroughly settled, who1>e views cannot change:

and accordingly I wish that the former edition may be regarded

as a youthful work. · Our friends are ofteu more tender-heartedPREFACE.

Xlll

toward us than we are ourselves: and perhaps one or two may

regret some things that have been destroyed and cast away:

more than once it was with a lingering hand that I overthrew.

the old edifice: but what was built on suppositions ascertained

to be wrong, could not be permitted to remain; n~r was it al­

lowable to .preserve it by slipping some other prop under, so as

to efface the appearance of the original foundation.

The further continuation down to the term I have now set

before me, I may, if it please God and his blessing abide with

me, confidently promise; although the progress may be but

slow. It is the work of my life; which is to preserve me a

· name not unworthy of my father's: I will not lazily abandon it.

When a historian is reviving former times, his interest in

them and sympathy with them will be the deeper, the greater

the events he has witnessed with a bleeding or a rejoicing heart.

His feelings are moved by justice or injustice, by wisdom or folly,

by c'oming br departing greatness, as if all were going on be­

fore his eyes: and when he is thus moved his lips speak,

although Hecuba is nothing to the player. Would it were·

acknowledged that the perfect distinctness and clearness of

such a vision destroys the power of obscure ideas and indefinite

. words! that it precludes the silly desire of transferring. out of

ages, of a totally different character what would now be alto­

gether inapplicable: that, to retain the poet's simile, it precludes

fools fro~ coming forward as knight-errants, to avenge the sor­

rows of Hecuba. If any one, after being reminded of this,

'.

persists in misapprehending my meaning, he must be dishonest,

or at least very simple. Of the principles on which the politi­

cal opinions in my work are formed, there is not one that may

not be found in Montesquieu o~ Burke: and the proverb, quien

hace aplicaciones, con su pan se lo coma, is enough.

It is with a solemn feeling that I close this preface with the

words which fifteen years ago closed that of the first edition:

the repetition of them "brings back the images of joyous days,

and much-loved shades rise up before my son!."

There is an inspiration which proceeds from the pre;;;enceXIV

PREFACE.

and the converse of beloved friends; an immediate action upon·

our minds, whereby the Muses are revealed to ourview,awaken­

ing joy and strength in us, and purging our sight: to thi~ my

whole life long I have owed whatever was best in me. Thus

it is to the friends in the midst of whom I returned to studies

long resigned or faintly pursued, that I owe the result if it has

been auspicious. Therefore do I bless the beloved memory of

my departed Spalding: therefore too allow me openly to ex­

press my thanks to you, Savigny, Bultmann, and Heindor.f, ·

without whom and without our deceased friend I should cer­

tainly never have had the courage to t1ndertake this work,

without whose affectionate sympathy and eulivening presence

it would hardly have been accomplished.

BoNN, December 8, 1826.Xl'

I HAVE undertaken to relate the history of Rome: I shall begin

in the night of remote antiquity, where the most laborious researches

can scarcely discern a few of the chief members of ancient Italy by

the dim light of late and dubious traditions ; and I wish to come

down to those times when, all that we have seen spring up and

grow old in the long course of centuries being buried. in ruins or in

the grave, a second night envelopes it in almost equal obscurity.

. This history in its chief outlines is universally known, and by

very many, at least in part, immediately from the classical works

of Roman authors, so. far as their remains supply us with a repre- .

sentation of many of the most brilliant or memorable periods of re­

publican and imperial Rome. If the whole of these works were

extant, and we possessed a continuous narrative in the histories of

Livy and Tacitus, extending, with the exception of the last years

of Augustus, from the origin of the city down to N erva, it would be

presumptuous and idle to engage in relating the same eyents with

those historians: presumptuous, because the beauty of their style

must ever lie beyond our reach ; and idle, because, over and above

the historical instruction conveyed, it would be impossible to have

a companion through life better fitted to fashion the mind in youth,

and to preserve it in afterage from the ·manifold barbarizing influ·

ences of our circumstances and relations, than such a copious his­

tory of eight hundred and fifty years written by the Romans for

themselves. We should only 'want to correct the misrepresenta­

tions during the earlier ages, and to sever the poetical ingredients

from what is historically sure and well grounded: and without pre­

sumptuously appearing to vie with the old masters, we might draw

a simple sketch of the constitution, and of the changes it underwent

at particular times where Livy leaves us without information or

'misleads us. But as those works are only preserved in frairments ;,xvi

as they. are silent concerning periods in the importance of their

events perhaps still more prominent than thoi;ie which we see living

in their pages ; as the histories of those periods executed by mo­

derns are unsatisfactory and often full of error ; I have deemed it

expedient to promote the knowledge of Roman history by devoting

a course of lectures to it. A doubt might be entertained whether

it were better to give a connected narrative, or merely to treat of the

portions where we are left without those two historians. I have

determined in favour of the former plan; trusting that I shall not

lead any of my hearers to fancy he may dispense with studying

the classical historians of Rome, when he has gained a notion of

the events which they pourtray, and hoping that I may render the

study easier and more instructive.

Much of what the Roman historians set down in the annals of

their nation must be left out by ·a modern from that mass of events

wherein their history far surpasses that of every othe:r: people.

Under this necessity of passing over many things, and ·or laying

down a rule for my curtailments, I shall make no mention of such

persons and events as have left their names a dead letter behind

them without any intrinsic greatness or important external results;

although a complete knowledge of every particular is indispensable

to the scholar, and many a dry waste locks up sources which sooner

or later he may succeed in drawing forth. On the other hand I

. shall endeavour to . examine the history, especially during the first

:five centuries, not under the guidance of dim feelings but of search­

ing criticism: nor shall I merely deliver the results, which could

only give birth to blind opinions, but the researches themselves at

full length : I shall strive to lay open the groundworks of the an­

cient Roman people and state, which have been built over and

masked, and about which the old writers preserved t~ us are often

utterly mistaken; to execute justice in awarding praise and blame,

love and hatred, where party-spirit has given birth to misrepresen­

tations and thereby to false judgments after upward of two thou.

sand years ; to represent the spreading of the empire, the growth

of the constitution, the state of the administration, of manners, and

of civility, according as from time to time we are able to survey

them. I shall exhibit the characters of the men who were mighty

in their generation for goo<l or for evil, or who at leas't distinguished ·xvii

themselves above their fellows. I shall relate the history of the

wars with accuracy, wherever they .do not offer a mere recurring

uniformity, and, so far as our information will allow, shall draw a

faithful and distinct portrait of the nations that gradually came

within the widening sphere of the Roman power. Moreover I shall

consider the state of literature at its principal epochs, taking notice

of the lost as well as the extant writers.

When Sallust, after much bitter aflliction endured in the service

of the state, resolved to withdraw from public life, and returning

with a composed mind to his favourite pursuits undertook to relate

certain passages in the history of his country*, he found it neces­

sary to prove to his fellow-citizens-:-for only some few solitary

Greeks and a small number of western Europeans read Latin-that

the deeds of the Romans were not eclipsed by those of the Greeks.

A century earlier Polybius had endeavoured, but probably in vain,

to s.et before the eyes of his countrymen how far the greatness of

Rome went beyond everything that history had previously known,

and that too not merely nor chiefly from the extent of her empire.

That the Greeks, even if they had not been blinded by animosity

and hatred against their foreign conquerors, should. have thought

slightingly of a history devoid at that time of the grace and life of

eloquent narrative, which embellished the exploits of their own an­

cestors, and without which even the most eventful recorded story

can no more be fully felt than a lyrical poem without a musical ac-.

companiment,-this was the natural result of their lively, airy

character, and their entire devotion to beauty. It is remarkable

however that among the literary public of Rome, whose approbation

Sallust wished to gain, overbeai:ing as the Homan national pride

was, the same tone of feeling and complete ignorance of their fore­

fathers' greatness prevailed. Yet, strange as this may appear, it

may be explained without difficulty : and he himself has given us

the solution, under the silent conviction no doubt that with his his­

tory a new state of feeling would arise among the Romans. At

that time with the exception of Cato's Origins, which must have

had the same charm of raciness as the best of our old chronicles,

* Cati!. 1v.

I.-3X\'111

they found no historian in their own language readable"'. And

certainly the chief part of them may have been exceedingly mea­

gre and tame. But even the honest good faith of the ancient wri­

ters was incapable of affording enjoyment in those days, when the

readers at Rome had totally lost all relish for simplicity, being

trained solely in the study of Greek literature, and having their

minds formed not by its noble classical works, but by the glitter

and tinsel of a degenerate style, full of point and ingenuity, which

at that time was the fashion among the Greeks, the teachers and

living models .they were familiar with. As the poets rescued the

heroes of old from the night of oblivion, so did that great national '

l1istorian, whom Sallust preceded, rescue the deeds and the great

men of Rome. It is hardly too much to affirm that Livy first taught

the Romans what a history they had. Their great actions and vic­

tories were now encircled by the graces of his bewitching style with

the noblest ornaments of republican and civic virtues,-heightened

through his wish ofbcholdingiu the times of his ancestors the remains

of the brazen age coming down almost to his own days ;-with a gra­

vity and a dignity which surpassed the great men of Athens with

their unconcealed human failings and weaknesses, and threw them

into the shade, as much as the conquest of vast empires and fierce

nations did the passionate struggles between petty republics : for

the wonders of the Persian war soon passed with the Romans for

an impudent fablet. The middle ages and Italy on its regenera­

tion, being unacquainted with the attractions of the Greek histo­

rians, bestowed all their admiration on the history of Rome: as if

fate had meant to make amends to her ancient heroes for the indiffer­

ence of their posterity in the age which had been drawn away

from them by a foreign literature. There is little learning, but only

the more simplicity and sincerity, in the reverence with which the

Italians of the middle ages at the dawn of learning pronounced the .

great names of Rome: perhaps they only felt the more intimate

with them, because without refining, without regarding the differ­

ence of manners and times, they invested their noble spirits with

• Cicero de leg.

1.

2, 3: where even Cato is not exempted from the gene•

ral condemnation.

I Who dues not remember Juve1ial's jeer?xix

the relations and almost with the forms of their own contemporaries

and fellow-countrymen; just as they viewed the imperial power of

their own days as an unaltered continuation of the empire of the

Cresars. In Dante's eyes Virgil was a Lombard, as e\-en later the

painters pourtrayed the Romans in the dress of their own times~

the people honoured Virgil's tomb and his memory, as that of a

powerful and beneficent magician. Even Petrarch, and he no

doubt consciously, cherishes the delusion that the unity of the na­

tion was unbroken except by time: he looks on Stefano Colonna as

an old patrician, and on Rienzi as a tribune of the people. It was

not till the following century that antiquity was disentangled from

this confusion with the present time : and as every germ was then

expanding with prodigious vigour, a few of the learned speedily

gained the most distinct and liveliest view of the character of an­

cient Rome which we can hope on the whole to attain to, much as

has since been brought to light which may furnish us with more

accurate information. Since the time of Sigonius however the his­

tory of ancient Rome has owed but little to scholars : it escaped

from their hands, and fell, in a few fortunate cases, into those oC

great statesmen ; but mostly of ordinary historians.

One must not disguise from oneself that during the last two cen­

turies, instead of gaining in distinctness and completeness, it has

rather lost. The old Italian philologers, whose whole being was

impregnated with the spirit of ancient Rome, and who were inspired

with something like a faculty of divination even by the classica~

ground they trod on, had framed an idea of' the ruined building

from its fragments, and in clearing away the rubbish had restored

it in their minds. The want of this idea injured the works of those

who wrote on Roman history as politicians; and thus the history

itself was corrupted. Of this Machiavel's Discorsi, though so full

of subtile and profound remarks, are a signal instance; since he

talks, al ways indeed most ingeniously, but very often of things

which never existed. I mention him in this place, because, though

he lived in an age when philological learning was at its height, he

was always a stranger to its spirit. Montesquieu, with pretensions

to accurate historical infoimation, and tl1erefore likelier to do harm

by establishing erroneous opinions, is full of mistaken views, and

when he speaks of any facts very oft.en utterly misleads us : anXJC

opinion which I do not deliver for the sake of detracting from his

fame ; for it will rather augment it to find that a candid reader must

still admire him, even after he has acquired the strongest conviction

on these points from his own investigations. That we <lo not un·

derstand the ancients, unless we frame distinct notions of such ob­

jects· of their everyday life, as we have in common with them, under

the forms their eyes were accustomed to ; that we should go totally

astray, if (as the middle ages <lid, and, since so many things were

still unchanged, might do without being equally deceived) we too,

on reading of a Roman house, a Roman ship, Roman agriculture

and trade, Roman dress, or the interior of a household in ancient

Rome, conceived the same notions which answered to those words

in our own days,-this everybody must feel: but the paralogisms oc­

casioned by the use of equivocal terms go much further than the out­

ward form of things. The ideas on which the institutions of the

Roman state and its administration were founded, ideas which in

most cases are presupposed in the historical accounts, and are very

rarely, nor ever except in particular instances, explained, were no

less different from ours, than the Roman dwellings, clothing, and

food. And as there is nothing the Asiaticl3 find it harder to con­

ceive than the idea of a republican constitution, as the Hindoos are

utterly unable to look upon the India-Company as an association of

proprietors, or in any other light than as a princess, so it fares with

even the acutest of the moderns in the history of antiquity, unless

by critical and philological studies they have stripped themselves

of their habitual associations. Thus the condition of the Roman

provinces and of their governors was so remote from our usages,

that, although perhaps none but a statesman is capable of interro­

gating history on such matters, and of divining the meaning of

fragments which to the compiler would always be a mystery, yet,

unless he himself makes researches and is qualified for making

them, his notions on these points will either be false or vague and

incoherent. For instance the state of the law concerning landed

property and the public domains at ancient Rome differed to such

a degree in its peculiarities from the rights and institutions we are

used to, that the confounding our ordinary notions of property with

those of the ancients, a confusion from which Montesquieu did not

keep clear any more than Machiavel before him, gives rise to thexxi

most grossly erroneous opinions on the most important que.stions of

Roman legislation: opinions under which the voice of justice must

pronounce condemnation against actions and measures perfectly

blameless, or an indistinct feeling of enthusiasm for great and noble

characters must plead in behalf of the most dangerous projects and

undertakings.

When the Greeks had fallen under the dominion of Rome, the

question whether her greatness was a gift of fortune, or had been

achieved by her own efforts, by her virtue as it was termed, employed

the writers who regulated the opinions of readers and of society

in the un warlike anrl idle East. It was an idle question; not started

in the sense in which Mithridates in later times may probably

have meditated on ·it: whether all resistance must be unavailing?

whether an unalterable destiny had decreed that Rome should be

the mistress of the world? or, what was scarcely less fearful, whe­

ther the unmatchable excellence of her national spirit and of her

institutions assured the Roman armies of being victorious for ever?

The question merely busied such as, wishing to get rid of their

shame at the disgraceful manner in which they had sunk into their

present wretchedness, pretended that wan't of energy, of virtue, and

of understanding, ·was a mere secondary consideration in a case

determined by an irresistible fate : at the same time after the man­

ner of slaves, like Xanthias in the comic poet\ they sought their

highest gratification in eavesdropping, in telling tales of their mas­

ters, and in cheating them. Polybius, who had been in earnest,

who was true to his cause, but yielded to the overpowering force

on which the foolish rashness of his countrymen, stirred up as they

bad been by the thoughtless and the profligate, had wrecked, felt

his indignation excited by the chattering of such writers : and one

of the purposes of his history was to make it clear to the Greeks,

that the greatness of Rome was not founded on any fatality, but on

firmness of will, on sage institutions, and unwearied diligence. in

preserving, bettering, and applying them. In so doing however he

did not bestow any praise for actual virtue on the Romans of his

age : and if he now and then expresses himself with an enthusi­

asm that surprises us in a man placed as he was, we must reflect

that his whole character was thoroughly practical, altogether desti­

* Aristophanes Ran. 750 foll.xxii

tute of that fervour and that imaginative feeling with which the

Athenians contemplated even what was going on before their eyes,'

but still more what was removed from them a short distance into

the past. . This very deficiency caused those imperfections of his

work, which in the opinion of his countrymen made him only a

secondrate historian. He found everything ripe for destruction in

all the states which were afterward swallowed up in the Roman

empire; and as be was conscious that he himself along with but a

very few kindred souls had vainly resisted the stream, as he felt

bitter scorn for Callicrates, Direus, Critolaus, and the others by

whose various delinquencies the. calamity was brought on, while he

admired Scipio and Cato and Paulus lEmilius, his incorruptible

judgment on some occasions has more than the mere look of want

of feeling. The modems, Machiavel for instance and Montesquieu,

seemed to have revived that question, though in a somewhat differ·

ent sense, and carry their admiration of the Romans and their insti·

tutions to a pitch of the strongest partiality. The austere frugality ·

of the ancient republicans, their carelessness about the possession

and the pleasures of wealth, the strict regard for law among the

people, its universal steadfast loyalty during the happy centuries

when the constitution, after the pretensions of the aristocracy had

been curbed, was.flourishing in its full perfection,-the sound feel·

ing which never amid internal discord allowed of an appeal to

foreign interference,-the absolute empire of the laws and customs,

and the steadiness with which nevertheless whatever in them was

no longer expedient was amended,-the wisdom of the constitution

and of the laws,-the ideal perfection of fortitude realized in the

citizens and in the state,-all these qualities unquestionably excite

a feeling of reverence, which cannot be equally awakened by the

contemplation of any other people. Theirs was no state of unna­

tural constraint, such as under the laws of Sparta, where in the

opinion of other Greeks the contempt of death was natural, because

death burst an intolerable yoke: it was a system on the contrary

which fostered a rich growth of true individual happiness, of manly

enjoyment free from sensuality. Other constitutions, perhaps no

less perfect, produce a less imposing effect upon us from the ho­

nour they pay to wealth: nations of manifold capacities and buoy­

ant spirit cannot escape faults, from which singleness of aim is theXXlll

only pres~rvative: and in the events of times past we are more

·sensible of faults than of deficiencies. Thus it is quite natural that,

even setting aside the splendour 'Yherewith power and victories are

always surrounded, we should look up admiringly to the Romans

of the good times of the republic. They bear a great resemblance

in their virtues to the Arabs under the earfy caliphs: but the latter

had no constitution by which to maintain themselves. The Ro­

mans for centuries were compressed into a compact body: the

Arabs were never thus concentrated; they scattered themselves

abroad over half the w~rld, and degenerated rapidly. Yet after all

if we bring those times vividly before our minds, something of hor­

. ror will still mingle with our admiration : for those virtues from

the earliest times were leagued. and compromised with the most

fearful vices; insatiable ambition, unprincipled contempt for the

rights of foreigners, unfeeling indifference for their sufferings,

avarice, even while rapine was yet a stranger to them, and, as a

consequence of the severance of ranks, inhuman hardheartedness

not only towards slaves or foreigners, but even toward fellow-citi­

zens. Those ve~y virtues prepared the way for all these vices to

get ihe mastery, and so were themselves swallowed up.

Now, while in forming a just estimate of the Romans we must

not lose sight of these dark shades in their character, and must

therefore limit our assent to their praises, we are also forced, though

in a different sense from the Greeks, to ascribe a large share in

producing their greatness to fate. Through the whole of their his-.

tory we shall see how often all the virtues of the 'state and of the

people would have been ineffectual, unless destiny had saved Rome

in her perils, and paved the way for her triumphs. The nations

and the men before whom Rome might have fallen appeared too

late: in the periods of her weakness she had only to fight with ad­

versaries no way above her: and while Rome staked everything on

the cast, and war was her natural state, other nations husbanded

their efforts, 'because they despaired of victory, or at the bottom of

their hearts loved nothing but effeminate sloth, whatever their ill­

judged enterprises might seem to imply. No one arriong them all

came against her with a like spirit and a like purpose; and this

alone was enough to make Rome subdue them all. Philip's inac­

tion at the beginning of the·war with Hannibal,-that of Mithri­xxiv

dates so loug as the Mar:sian war tlireatcncd Rome, and a slight

additional weight would have turned the scale,-these are events

in which we must recognize the finger of God. For that Rome

was not naturally unconquerable, was demonstrated by the resist­

ance of a few truly warlike nations, who were only overpowered

by superiority of numbers and force. As it was however, .even

these wars served in the intervals between the greater and more

decisive ones to keep discipline and the art of war from declining,

as during a long peaoe they naturally would in the Roman as well

as in other armies.

In the progress of events, when the Roman conquests are con­

solidated into one mass, the history entirely loses the moral and

poetical interest of the earlier centuries : indeed it had already been

disturbed for some time by convulsions and atrocities and the decay

of every national virtue. It seems to be the order of the histoty of

the world, that conquests and divers intermixtures are to fuse the

numberless original races together, and to exterminate such as can­

not be amalgamated: and this the Roman dominion has effected in

a greater extent and degree than any other mighty general revolu­

tion, even than the Arabian. Seldom will a particular people be a

gainer by such an intermixture: some sustain the irreparable loss

of a noble national civilization, science, and literature: and even a

less cultivated people will hardly find that the refinements thus im­

ported, which moreover if they are suited to its genius it might have

attained of itself~ will make amends for the forfeiture of its original

language, and hence of its original character, its national history,

and its hereditary laws. This loss was first felt by the Roman

provinces: but the population of Rome and of Italy being recruited

out of their inhabitants and out of freedmen, Rome suffered in an

equal degree: it became so estranged from its early times and their

history, that even in the third century of our era a humble pane­

gyrist without fear of giving offence could express a doubt whether

his master, whom he compared to the great Scipio, had ever heard

of the second Punic war*: and that Valens could employ Eutropius

in drawing up a meagre outline of Roman history, to supply his

ignorance of it. Nevertheless, though the Roman dominion crushed

* Panegyr. Maxim.i.ani, 8.xxv

much, we must gratefully acknowledge what it lias created and pre­

served. It founded or infused life into almost all the towns which

are standing at this day within its ancient limits. The languages

of western Europe, springing from the Latin, kept its literature ac­

cessible, and made its revival possible. Nay it was undoubtedly

the _Roman dominion that preserved Greece and the writings of the

Greeks : for if the East had not been protected by the forces of a

great empire, the barbarians would pi:obably have overrun these de-·

populated and enfeebled countries in very early times, or at all

events infallibly at the period of the great migrations, and then along

with the degenerate Greeks would have swept away the treasures

they were preserving for a reviving world. The Roman law was

a great advantage at least for the Romanized nations; nor will the

Germans ever be able to dispense with it, since they have not matured

that of their own ancestors, and have lost its spirit: and that the

union of the Roman world was necessary to the spreading of reli­

gion, that Rome as its centre enlightened and softened the whole

"\Vest, will scarcely be questioned or denied now by the impartial.

Thus we can look back on this great period of history with the

consoling thought, that the ensuing generations, whose ancestors

had suffered and perished, were the gainers by what was finally

established. It is idle to talk of possible events, which were stifled

in the germ: and so we will not deplore that all ha":e lost many an

unreplaced and irreplaceable treasure: we will not ask whether the

richest crop of good that aftcrages may have reaped can compen­

sate for the sufferings of down-trodden generations. At all events

we do not turn away our eyes from those times with so much of

gloom and doubt, as from the fate of devastated and desolated Asia,

whose fairest regions, abandoned even by the vital powers of

nature, and dying away year ..after year, are shut out from the very

possibility of more prosperous times-where history closes in the

grave.

Of the German nation however, with regard to such of its races

as did not forsake their home, or did not drop their character while

living among the Romanesque nations they had conquered, we may

assert that for the war which they waged during centuries against

Roine, they have in aftertimes been more than rewarded by the

UC'nefit~ accruing from the union of the world under Rome; and that

1.-4xxvi

without this an<l the fruits that ripened in it we should hardly have

ceased to be barbarians. It was not by the forms which our ances­

tors at the diffusion of letters imported from thence and from

classical ground, that the noble peculiarities of our national genius,

peculiarities for which nothing can compensate, were smothered;

those forms were not irreconcilable with them: but secondhand

artificial spiritless Frenchified forms and tastes and ideas, such as

even in earlier times had crept in amongst us and overlaid those

which were homesprung, these are the things that for a long time

have made us lukewarm and unnatural. And so, while other

nations look back on the Romans as holding a place among their

progenitors, .we too have no slight personal interest in their story.CON TEN TS.

INTRODUCTION

.ANCIENT ITALY

The Oenotrians and Pelasgians •

The Opicans and Ausonians

The Aborigines and Latins

The Sabines and Sabellians .

The Tuscans or Etruscans

The Umbrians

Iapygia .

. .

The Greeks in Italy •

The Ligurians and Venetians

The Three Islands .

Conclusion

THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME.

LEneas and the Trojans in Latium

Alba

ROME.

Various Traditions concerning the founding of the City

Romulus and Numa

Beginning and Nature of the earliest History

The Era from the Foundation of the City

On the Secular Cycle

The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes

The Patrician Houses and the Curies

The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings

Tullus Hostilius and Ancus

The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius

Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tul.

lius

The Completeing the City of Rome

The Six Equestrian Centuries

The Commonalty, and the Plebeian Tribes

The Centuries

L. Tarquinius the Tyrant, and the Banishment of the Tarquins

Commentary on the Story of the last Tarquinius

·

1

5

20

49

60

69

82

108

111

118

124

129

132

136

151

158

167

183

199

209

218

234

258

264

272

284

297

304

309

330

372

389xxviii

CONTENTS.

The Beginning of the Republic, and the Treaty with Carthage

The War with Porsenna

The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius •

The Dictatorship

The Cwnmonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi

The Secession of the Commonalty, and the Tribunes of the

&~

396

412

422

428

434

~THE HISTORY OF ROlVIE.

I HAVE undertaken to write the history of Rome; from the ear·

liest ages of the city, down to the time when the sovereignty of

Augustus over the Roman world was undisputedly acknowledged.

I begin, where the contiguous settlements formed by divers nations

were preparing the growth of a new people : my goal lies, where

this people had incorporated millions with itself, and had given

them its language and its laws; where it ruled from the rising unto

the setting sun, and the last of the ·kingdoms that arose out of Alex­

ander's conquests, was become one of its provinces. Long before

any historical record of particular individuals occurs in those ages, the

forms under which the commonwealth existed, may be recognized

with certainty: so firmly, and for centuries indelibly, were they

impressed upon every thing, and so entirely was the individual iden·

tified with the community. At the clo3e of the period I purpose to

embrace, the nation resolves into a fermenting mass, which, now

that its soul has abandoned it, is daily losing its form and moulder­

ing away.

Numberless are the events and the changes through which the

Romans pa.ssed from one of these limits unto the opposite : vast

destinies, mighty deeds, and men who were worthy to wield a

gigantic power, have preserved the memory of much in the story

of Rome, even during the most ignorant ages. But in the early

part of it poetry has flung her many..coloured veil over historical

truth: afterward a multitude of vain fictions, no less than of popu­

lar leget1ds under a variety of forms, are combined with the outlines

of dry chronicles, and with the scanty results drawn by one or two

genuine historiaus from authentic documents: often they are irre­

concilable and easily discerned; bui at times there is a deceitful

congruity: in no history is it later comparatively before we reach

what is actually certain. Yet this does not make it necessary to

giv~ up as hopeless the most important of all histories for the largest

J,-A2

HISTORY OF ROME.

part of its duration. Provided only that no pretension be set up

to such a thorough exactness in minute details, as in truth is of no

value to us, much may be ascertained in those periods, dark as they

are, on historical evidence no weaker than what we possess for

contemporary events in Greece: and this we are bound to attempt.

It is in making out the internal history and condition of the state,

that we may be the most successful ; even more so than in the

same inquiries as to the Greeks. Few nations have, like the Ro­

mans, brought their life to a close, without its being cut short by

the dominion of a stranger: among these few none has lived with

such fulness of strength. No other state has existed so long, pre­

serving all the elements of its being unextingnished: numerous and

manifold from the first, they live on till their natural decease ;

whatever has outlived itself is removed; and something similar is

planted where a place has been left empty, or where new ground

has been enclosed. Thus the state keeps up its youth, and con­

. tinues substantially the same, while evermore renewing itself; until

it comes to a stoppage and a stand-still; and now the indestructible

energy of life is followed first by languor, then by deadly sickness.

Yet during the very ages the story of which we can hardly <lo more

than guess at, there was such a proportion and correspondence

among the various parts of the statP-, that when a few traces and

remains of intelligible import have been brought to light, safe and

.certain conclusions may be drawn from them concerning other

things, from which it is not in ouqiowerto clear away the rubbish,

or of which the lowest foundationytones have been torn up: just

as in mathematics if but a few things are given, we may dispense

with an actual measurement.

·

As rivers are received into the sea, so the ·history of Rome re­

ceives into itself that of all the other nations known to have existed

before her in the regions around the Mediterranean. Many appear

there only to perish forthwith: others maintain their existence for

a while, mostli in a struggle ; but the contact sooner or later proves

fatal to them. A historian of Rome must not leave such as wish

for a representation which shall give meaning to the names of these

nations, and for a view of their condition and character, to seek for

it in other works, where perchance it may not be found: his busi­

ness is to exhibit the best image of them pro<lutible by research

and reflection ; that the reader may not content himself with an

,

empty name, or with notions caught up at random.

Livy had no such aims: what moved him to write, was that

nature. had gifted him ':ith a hJghly brilliant talent for seizing theHISTORY OF ROME.

3

characteristic features of humanity, and for narration; with the

imaginative power of a poet, though without the facility of versify­

ing, or the love of it. He wrote, with no feeling of doubt, yet

without conviction, bringing down the marvels of the heroic ages

into the sphere of history;. as was commonly done even by those

who in what belonged to their own times and experience were

any thing but credulous, at a period whe,n the careless belief of

childhood continued undisturbed throughout life. Even those prim­

itive ages when the gods walked among mankind, he would not

absolutely reject: all that was related of the more recent, provided

it was not inconsistent with man's earthly condition, he only held

to be less full and certain, but of the same kind with the records of

accredited history. The constitution he altogether neglected, save

when forced by the internal dissensions to turn his eyes upon it:

and on such occasions his view and judgment were biassed by the

prejudices of the party he had been attached to since the first recol­

lections of his youth, against the men who, from bearing the same

name, were regarded by him as in fact the same, with those he

justly deemed the worst among the conflicting bad in the times of

general corruption. Lastly, though in his later books he gave

descriptions of unknown countries, such as Britain, drawn from

oral accounts, during the remoter ages he took no pains to procure

.any distinct conception of the nations or states he had to speak of.

His wish was, to banish from his thoughts the degeneracy of his

own days, by reviving the recollection of what had been glorious

or excellent in the past; while the ease and security wherein the

weary world was beginning to breathe again, could not but comfort

him in his sadness as he was portraying the fearful events of the

civil wars: he was desirous of teaching his countrymen to know

and admire the deeds of their ancestors, which had been forgotten,

or were heard of only from lisping narratives: and he bestowed on

their literature a colossal masterwork, with which the Greeks have

nothing of the kind to compare; nor can any·modern people place

a similar work beside it. No lo~s that has befallen us in Roman

literature, is compara)Jle to that which has left his history imperfect.

Yet had the whole been preserved, we should still find induce­

ment to frame a Roman history suited to our needs. For in order

that the story of• an age which has wholly passed away, may be to

us like that of the age we live in, in order that the Roman heroes

and patriots may appear before us, not like l\lilton's angels, but as

beings of our flesh and blood, we now require something more and

something else, beside what we read in his inimitable narrative:4

HISTORY OF ROME.

and who can fail to perceive that in this narrative there is much

which now after eighteen hundred years will not dwell in the

memory of any reader, however interested in the subject? The

devising and fabricating for ourselves the wants of another age,

even though we rank it higher than our own; and the disclaiming

and refusing to satisfy the wants we actually have-such habits

make us helpless and joyless, and are childish. To vie with Livy

as a historian, to fancy that the lost portions of his work might be

replaced, if our materials were only richer, wot;1ld be ridiculous.

But there is no presumption in undertaking carefully and labor­

iously to examine, to combine, and thus to vivify our poor and

fragmentary notices; in order that by such means, during the .pe­

riods where we have nothing better, that image, which readily

arises where the material is plenteous and fine, may still come

forth living and complete in all its essential members.

How far I may ;;;ucceed, is at the disposal of a higher power.

But to these researches I owe the most animated days in the prime

of my life; and since the continuation of this work will fill up my

old age, as Livy's creation did his, it is a pledge that my latter

years will also be fresh and cheerful. He who calls departed ages

back again into being, enjoys a bliss like that of creating: it were

a great thing, if I could scatter the mist that lies upon this most

excellent portion of ancient story, and eould spread a clear light

over it; so that the Romaris shall stand before the eyes of my read­

ers, distinct, intelligible, familiar as contemporaries, with their

institutions and the vicissitudes of their destiny, living and moving.ANCIENT ITALY.

TnE Romans are not esteemed to belong to any of the Italian

nations: the writers who talk with credulous simplicity about the

people of Romulus as a colony from Alba, still <lo not on that

account ever reckon them among the Latins ; an<l in the traditions

of the oldest times they appear as equally strangers to all the three

nations in the midst of which their city lay. Hence their history,

if it merely aim at giving an epical tale of actions and events, may

certainly stand alone; and thus almost all the ancients who treated

on it, have severed it from that of the rest of Italy. But to no glory

had the Romans less claim, than to that of the Athenians, of being

an original and peculiar people: if they belonged to no nation, it

was only because, as even their fables and disfigured legends afford

us the means of perceiving, they arose from the coalition of several

that were wholly <listinct from one another 1 • Each of these left

· its peculiar inheritance of language, institutions, and religion, to

the new people; which in the complex of its national character

was assuredly always unlike any of its parent races. The previous

history of those nations would therefore be a fitting preparative for

that of Rome, even if the latter had never extended beyond the

city. But the tribes that peopled Italy were lost in the light of the

city, and the nation formed by its citizens spread itself abroad over

the whole peninsula; the Romans whose story we know from con·

1 This was the ground for the contemptuous assertion made by certain

spiteful Greeks, which Dionysius argues against, that the Romans were no

nation at all, but aconfiuxofoutcasts from all sorts ofpeople, o-6'),,tl\vJ'e,. (I. 89.)

It is the same taunt from which Jo~ephus defends his country against Apion,

who maintained with good reason that much the largest part of the Jews in

Palestine and· Egypt were not sprung from the small colony sent back into

Judea under the Persians, but from individual proselytes. A pion belonged

to a people who had kept themselves unmixed: and from him the contempt

for such as were without ancestry is intelligible; in Greeks it was sheer

malice.6

HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

temporaries, were de~cended with very few exceptions-among the

masters in oratory or ,poetry there is none but Cresar-from allies

who had been incorporated by the Romans: so that'we cannot

commend the historians of antiquity, for attending only to the

stream tJrnt gave its name to the river, and overlooking all the tribu·

taries, even when they were far mightier. \Ve may and we must

censure those, who, while they recorded tales having merely some

local connexion with Rome, left the story of the fall of the Umbri­

ans, and of the rise and greatness of the Sabellians and Etruscans,

to sink unheeded into' oblivion. Nor would the history of these

nations interest us solely from the importance of the events: Cicero,

himself a Volscian, was aware that his countrymen and the Sabines,

that Samnium and Etruria, had no less reason than Rome to boast

of th~ir wise and great men ; and it can~ot have been by the Pontii

alone that the Samnites were raised to a level with the Romans.

But saving an obscure recollection of them, all the heroes and sages

of the Italians and Tuscans have been forgotten; scarcely has a

dubious name been any where preserved. With regard to the dif·

ference of the races however, their migrations and conquests, no­

tices are to be found scattered over almost the whole field of ancient

literature, as well as on monuments. To collect these, and to

weigh them candidly, and thus in some measure to obtain a substi·

tute for the information we have the misfortune to want, is the

more needful, because these subjects have always been treated arbi­

trarily, injudiciously, nay but too often dishonestly: and these in­

quiries, and such accounts as can be drawn from them, form a

necessary introduetiou to a Roman history by a modern writer.

Cato the censor, the first apparently who wrote the history of

his country in the Latin tongue and in prose, interwove therein, on

the occasions, as it would seem, when the nations and cities of

Italy came forward in Roman story, what he had learnt concerning

the origin and movements of the former, and the foundation of the

latter 2 • To him we are indebted, even where he is not named, for

a considerable part of what has come down to us on these subjects.

2 Hence, with the exception of such as concerned the Ligurians and the

Alpine tribes, these notices found place partly in the first book, which con­

tained the history of the kings, partly in the next two, which related the Ita­

lian wars: This division is evidently the model copied by Appian in arrang­

ing the books of his history, the first three of which embrace the same subjects.

And thus we are to conceive that, if Cato's Orirrins followed the order of

time, it was only by accident: for instance the llly~ian war must have occur­

red in the sixth book, not in the fifth.IIISTORY OF ROME.

7

The time he lived in was very favourable to his undertaking: ·the

Etruscans, Oscans, and Sabellians were still existing as nations ;

and although to be a Roman citizen was esteemed the highest of all

privileges, yet the dignity of the other states had not yet disappeared,

nor had the recollections of their old times become matter of indif­

ference to the later generation. These nations, as well as Rome,

had their fasti and chronological registers : . mention is made of

their annals 3 : and in places which had not, like Rome, forgotten

their old language, and only preserved fragments from the general

wreck, these may have gone further back than the Roman. Now

if they merely grew up from year to year under the hands of the

magistrates or the priests, they must have been scanty, but, so far

.as they extended, the more authentic. There is however a very

high probability, that among nations like the Oscans, who were

familiar with Greek art, and like the southern Sa_bellians, whose

cultivating Greek philosophy even as authors must assuredly be

something more than· a mere groundless fable 4 , historians both in

Gr~ek and in their native language had arisen, long ere the com­

mencement of a literature at Rome. That literature was in the

prime of its youth before the l\Iarsic war; and yet learning and the

rhetorical arts are said to have been still more flourishing among

the Latins 5 ; a name including .at least all those Italians who had

adopted the use of the IJatin language. The wish of a leading

personage, like Cato, to have books communicated to him, and,

where he needed it, translated, was a command to the subjects of

Rome.

Original documents and inscriptions on brass and stone supplied

still richer and surer materials for history than books : many such

have come down to us in languages that we cannot understand, a

mere dead treasure ; and in those days little of this sort can have

perished, at least in the central parts of Italy, where most of the

towns had suffered but slightly either at the time of their c.:mquest

or during Hannibal's war. At· Athens attention had been turned

toward this source of strict. historical information for a century

3 Prrenestine books, though in the Latin language indeed, are cited by

Solinus p. 9. G.; a history of Cuma, by Festus v. Romam. The Etruscan

annals will be spoken of hereafter.

4 Not that I mean to answer for the individual Pythagoreans said to have

existed among the Lucanians.

5 Cicero de Orat. 111. 11. Nostri minus student literis quam latini. pro

Archia 3. Ferentinatis populus res Grrecas stu<let: says the comic poet

Titinnius in Priscian vu. 12. p. 762.8

HISTORY OF RO:\m:

and a half before, ever since the Athenian history had reached

its close : but the Romans were blind to their own documents ;

and those of Italy can scarcely be reckoned among Cato's materials.

Sixty years after he wrote, came the Marsic war; and that was

followed by the times of Sylla. Those terrible ravages, which

spreading from place to place visited every region of Italy, and by

which the citizens of the principal towns were entirely swept away,

must also have proved destructive to monuments of every kind,

especially to writings: in many districts the population was changed,

Such was the final vengeance on Samnium ; such the end of the

persevering resistance opposed by Etruria to Sy Ila's tyrannical and

shortsighted resolution to do away with every thing that in the

course of ages had been yielded to circumstances, of her struggle to

maintain the rights she had' been rewarded with for standing aloof

from the cause of Italy. The old Etruscan nation with her science

and her literature ceased to exist: the nobles, who had taken the

lead in the common cause, fell by the sword: military colonies

were established in the large towns, and the Latin language became

the only one prevalent: the greatest part of the nation was stript of

all landed property, and reduced to pine in poverty under foreign

masters, wJrnse oppression deadened every national recollection in

the degraded generation that followed, and left them no other wish

than that of becoming Romans altogether 6• .The Oscan language

indeed had not entirely disappeared at Pompeii and Ilerculanum

when they were destroyed : Gellius seems to mention the Tuscan

as a tongue still living in his days* ; but writings and monuments

in it were as unintelligible as those in Punic or .Iberian, and were

allowed to perish equally unlieeded: as to the theological books,

they could be read in Latin translations.

-·

The loss of Varro's writings, who was frequently led to speak

about the ancient times of Italy, and from whom we have many

extracts on these subjects, is not in this respect of any importanGe,

great as the value of his information is for a history of Homan man­

ners. He understood nothing of Tuscan, can hardly have known

6 The intentiQnal extirpation of the higher ~lasses among the Mexicans

the few survivors being either allowed to attach themselves to the conqueror~

or sinking into contempt, led in less than a century to the loss of the science

and learning of this remarkable people; and even of its arts, although they

had been cultivated by the lower orders which suffered less, and not by the

higher castes. Rome did not burn the ancient writings: but she slighted them.

• xr. 7.HISTORY OF ROME.

9

much of Oscan; nor does he seem to have made amends for these

deficiencies by applying to others for aid. His statements, so far

as we are acquainted with them, concerning the early history of

Italy, are for the most part utterly worthless, with the exception of

the account enumerating the primitive cities of the people whom he

called the Aborigine~: at times he is evidently following late Greek

writers of no value, and once even a manifest impostor7: it is a pity

that Dionysius and others have been led astray by his authority.

Julius Hyginus, the contemporary and friend of Ovid, wrote on

the origin of the Italian towns, without any critjcal discrimination,

and building on very late Greek authors who were undeserving of

regard. Yet he has been often quoted by the gramma~ians, and

even so early as by Pliny; in whose description of Italy there is

much that has flowed from this turbid source. The same Pliny,

as appears from the list of the works he had made use of, did not

think it worth while to study the Tyrrhenian histories in twenty

books by the emperor Claudius. Universal contempt seems to have

crushed that unfortunate work from its very first appearance, so

that not a line from it has anywhere been quoted: but the I~yons

tables show that Claudius was well acquainted with the Tuscan

annals; and, as we know him to have searched in the Roman ar­

chives8, it may be presumed that with a view of perfecting his

history he would cause similar researches to be made among the

Etruscan monuments. There is no loss more ·to be regretted for

the early history of Rome; and considering the advantages of the

imperial dilettante, we may be sure that neither the Etruscan his­

tory of Flaccus, nor the. work of Ca:!cina 0 , although in every other

respect they may have been far better, came near it .in historical

importance.

Cato's knowing nothing of the Oenotrians, is a proof that he had

never read even Timffius, much less Antiochus*. Least of all can

we suppose him to have made use of Aristotle's Polities, which not

only embraced Tarentum and other Greek cities in Italy, but must

also have t:eated of some of the Italian nations; nay, one might

7 Lucius Mallius; for this emendation instead of Mri.µ10, is self-evident:

his Dodomean oracle is such a palpable fraud, that Dionysius, who is usually

so wary, cannot be quit.e honest here. 1. 19.

8 Suetonius Claud. 25. He produces the letter of the Senat.e to Seleucus.

See below, note 923.

.

9 Both these works have been introduced to our acquaintance by the Vero­

nese scholia on the lEneid. x. 183. 198

* Di.?nysius 1. 11.

J.-1!10

HISTORY OF ROME.

suspect, even of Rome itself1°. That this account of the history

and constitution of above a hun<lred and fifty states possessed the

same excellencies which have ma<le Aristotle's writings on natural

history immortal, is clear from the fragments that have been pre•

served, especially those on the Athenian constitution: it may be

inferred too from the critical remarks on various governments which

occur in the Politics. To this master of the learned 11 the criminal

laws of Cuma, under the Oscans, and a mythical legend about the

foundation of a city, were no less attractive than speculations about

first causes and final aims, than investigations concerning animal

life or poetry: and this variety of pursuit was the peculiar endow­

ment of his school. ·

IT was not until late that the name of Italy was given to th~

whole region comprised within its natural boundaries, the Alps and

the sea. That name in very early times was a national one in the

south, and was not extended to the more northerly regions until the

Roman sway had united the peninsula into one state, and by colo­

nization and the spreading of the Latin language had moulded its

inhabitants into a single nation. With the exception of a few

islands, no country that was divided amongst a variety of nations,

however clearly its natural boundaries may have been marked out,

bore any general name in the early ages of antiquity, until some

one people became master of it. So it was for instance with Asia

Minor: had it continued one, united state, after Crcesus had subju­

gated all the country to the west of the Halys, the name of Lydia

might have come into use for the whole ; as that of Asia did subse­

quently for the countries which made up the kingdom of Pergamus,

and that of Asians for their inhabitants.

Names of coui1tries were always formed in antiquity, as they

were by the German nations afterward, from the name of the peo­

ple12; and Italian means nothing else than the land of the I tali. Nor

is ·it to be explained, except from that extreme spirit of absurdity

which always came over even the most sagacious of the Greeks and

10 . Plutarch Camill. c. 22. p. 140. a. Qurest. Rom. 6. p. 265. b. Dionysius

r. 72. At all events it is an unpardonable piece of negligence in Pliny, who

ought 'to have been familiar with the whole circle of Aristotle's writings, to

have omitted him in the list of the Greeks that spoke of Rome prior to Theo­

phrastus. m. 9.

11 Il maestro di color che sanno. Dante. See Polit. n. 8.

12 Egypt is perhaps the only exception: but its river, which was so called

by the lonians, furnished an occasion for this, such as did not exiat anywhere

else.

.lIISTORY OF ROME.

11

Romans the moment they meddled with etymology, how any one

could stumble on the notion of interpreting that name as if it had

belonged originally to the country, because in the Tyrrhenian or

the ancient Greek 18 italos or itulos meant an ox. This was con­

nected by the mythologers with the story of Hercules driving Ger­

yon's herd through the land 14 : Timreus, in whose days such things

were no longer thought satisfactory, fouud out an allusion to the

abundance of cattle in Italy' 5 •

· The name of the people was derived by the Greeks from !talus,

a king or lawgiver of the Oenotrians: in the Oscan name of the

country, Vitellium 16, there is an evident reference to Vitellius, the

son of Faunus and ofVitellia, a goddess worshipped in many parts of

ltaly 17• This Vitellius is probably no other than the !talus just

mentioned. If there is any thing to be divined with regard to the

oldest genealogies of those races which were purely Italian, it is

that they were traced up to Faunus ; that of the Oenotrians through

Vitellius, as that of the Latins was through Latinus.

The Italians according to the Greek accounts were the Oenotri­

ans; taken in a more general_ sense, the name assuredly compre­

hended all the tribes that belonged to the same race, the Tyrrhenians,

the Siculians, the Latins. From it came the surname Vitulus, bornt.

by a branch of the Mamilian house, as another bore that of Turinus

or Tyrrhenus : it was a custom, attested by the oldest Roman fasti,

for the great houses to take distinguishing surnames from a people

with whom they were connected by: blood or by the ties of public

hospitality.* All the country at one time inhabited by the same

great people, which at all events occupied the whole of the penin­

13 In the former, according to Apol!odorus Bihl. 11. 5.10.; in the latter,

according to Timreus quoted by Gellius XI. I. Hellanicus of Lesbos, cited by

Dionysius, I. 35, merely says, in the language of the country. Tyrrhenian

however does not here mean Etruscan, but Pelasgic, as in the Tyrrhenian

glosses in Hesychius.

14 Hellanicus and Apollodorus in the passages just referred to.

15 Gellius XI. 1, Piso, quoted by Varro de Re r. u. I, borrowed the expla­

nation from the Greeks.

16 See note 19.

17 Suetonius Vitell. I. This supplied an opportunity for a hieroglyphical

representation: the bull with a human face on the Campanian coins and on

others of southern Italy is Ital us or Vital us. No doubt too it is the name

Vitalus under various forms, that is expressed by the mysterious Oscan chaxac­

ters on the coins usually ascribed to Pwsturn (Eckhel Doctr. Num. I. p. 159.};

many as are the discrepancies that occur among them: for nothing can be

more flexible than the names of nations in the Italian languages.

* By 1tpo;nict.. See below, note 765,12

HISTORY OF ROME.

sula to the south of the Tiber and Cape Garganus, bore the name

of Italia, or Vitalia 1 "; and this might still be preserved, after the

ancient races had been destroyed, driven out, or incorporated, by

the Oscans and Sabellians. The Romans and Samnites could never

have borrowed the name of a foreign district, to give it to the land

they inhabited: had it not been in use within the country itself, the

trial of arms, that decided which of the two people was to rule in

the peninsula, would also have determined that it should be called

, Latium or Samnium.

From the name of the country, Italia, the people who settled

therein were ealled ltalicans; and this appellation was extended to

the other branches of the same stock who took no part in the mi­

gration; they were hereby distinguished as well from the foreign­

ers in the north of Italy as from the Romans. As to Italians, no

mention is made -0f such after the downfall of the ancient nation,

until very late times; and then all the inhabitants of the peninsula

are c;i}led so indiscriminately. The ltalicans were for the most

part SabeHians; and that union amongst them which was grounded

on a community of lineage, of language, and of laws, was consum­

mated, with regard to them and such other inhabitants of the south

as were not Greeks, by their civil relation to Rome. That they

looked upon themselves as one ltalican people, is evident from the

Marsic war. Even before, in that of Hannibal, they had acted

separately from the Etruscans and Umbrians, who took no part in

it: now however all the citizens of this Italy were under arms ;

they called the capital of their confederacy Italica ; and its coins

are inscribed with the name Italia or Vitellium 1 9.

The Greeks, who regarded the Oenotrians alone as Italians, were

for a long time strangers to the wider extent in which the name

was applied within the country itself; and this appears from their

usage. In proportion as legends or history represented the territory

of the Oenotrians to have been enlarged or narrowed, did they ·con­

ceive Italia to have increased or diminished. The region which

originally bore the name, was, according to them, the peninsula

bounded by the isthmus of only twenty miles~ 0 across, between the

18 Vitalia is mentioned by Servi us as one among the various names of the

,

country: on 1En. vm. 328.

19 Micali's explanation of the word Viteliu on the Samnite denary coined

during the Social War (I. p. 52.) may be regarded as established. The an­

alogy of Latium, Samnium, is followed in Italium, Vitalium, Vitellium: whence

Vitellio, like Samnw.

20 160 Stadia, says Strabo v1. p. 255. a. Aristotle calls it half a day's journey.HISTORY OF ROME.

13

Scylletic and the Napetine gulf 21 ; where there is a range of low

hills connecting the Apennines with that chain of mountains which,

running off from JEtna, is rent asunder near Hhegium: in other

words it was the southernmost part of what was afterward called

Brutium. Such was the statement of Antiochus of Syracuse, the

son of Xenophanes, who is quoted by Aristotle, though not by

name, where he brings forward the testimony of natives conversant

in traditionary history. This Antiochus was not indeed a very

ancient historian, as he is called by Dionysius 29 , but the contempo­

rary of Herodotus, and probably the younger of the two; for he

closed his Sicilian history with the year 329, 01. 89. 2 23 : he was

the oldest however among the natives of these countries. From

him without doubt did Dionysius also learn that in a wider sense

the country from Tarentum to Posi<lonia, when it belonged to the

Oer:iotrians, was called Italia 24 : a fact referred by him to those

private ages in the traditions of which the vicissitudes of nations

are related as the story of princes bearing their name. "\Vith re­

gard to his own days however Antioch us drew a narrower boundary

. for Italia, by a line to M:etapontum from the river Laos, which in

aftertimes sepi:rated Lucania from Brutium 25 : for the Lucanians

had already forced their way in here and made themselves maslers

of the western coast. Tarentum he places beyond the limits of

Italia, in Iapygia: in the same manner Thucydides, who wrote

about the year 350, makes. a distinction between Iapygia and

Italia 20 • Hence the Tarentines have no share in the name of Ita­

liots27: yet that name certainly reached to Posidonia, and did not

21

22

23

24 ·

25

Aristotle Polit. VII. 10. Dionysius 1. 35.

:l:U)''}'P"<!>'O' 'lfa:ru tip)C<t.io,. I. 12.

Strabo v1. p. 254. d. •

Diodor. xu. 7i.

..Hr J'~ 'l"OT• 'IT<t.1'.l<t,; ,;,,.;; Telp«v~•' "XP' rr~.-111..,,; ... , .,,.... p;.M.,.

Strabo v1. p. 254. d. •op1ov J'' ,,;,.,.;;, .;.,,.•<1><1.lw '7rpiic µb .,.'! Tupph""'!

'1/'tA~f'" trOv .Aeior ?rOT«µ6v• 11'p0, Jf rr~ ~1xo1.1a~ "t0 M1Tct?r6v'T'101· ''TH,. J~ 'I't.t.­

p<tr'l"lrhr iJLTO' Tli, 'IT<t.1'.l<tc oroµi.!;11, 'Id'?rU)'d.C "";\°"'' Hence Posidonia and

Elea were then beyond the borders of Italy. But as Lucania was not yet be­

come a usual name, the only way of describing these places was, as situate in

Oenotria: and this is the way Herodotus talks ofElea: 1.167.

26 'VII. 33. Of the great armament under Demosthenes and Eurymedon,

he says lf.<1.'l"l.-x_ouo-11 ;, T<t.' Xo1pC:.J<1., vil.-ou' 'l<t.'?ru)'["'• 1t<1.l-(i1tei80)-.i<1>11troiiv•

.,...., " M•Td.'7r0V'TIOP 'l"ff' 'IT<t.1'.i<t.,,

27 The seventh Platonic epistle, which unquestionably is of a•better cast

than almost all the others, speaks of Tarentum as in Italy: this is one of the

historical proofs from which I pronounce it without hesitation to be spurious.

The passage is p. 339. d. 'I""'' '" "X11tt;>,.[<1., 'l"t ""' 'IT<t.1'.l<t., i1'.1torT"OtJr-µI. The

former are Dionysius and Archedemus; the latter Archytas ""' oi iv Tip"-VTI.

1. 73.14

HISTORY OF ROME.

stop with Velia. No Greek however before the time of the Mace­

donian dynasty would call the Cha!cidian colony of Cuma a town

of Italy, but of Opica 29 : as J,atium is called a district of Opica by

Aristotle 29 •

·

• •

Still narrower were the limits assigned to Italy in the Tripto­

lemus of Sophocles, in which it was confined to the eastern coast:

unfortunately Dionysius has contented himself with quoting but

three lines from that play 30 • According to the custom of the Greek

tragedians, to bring in the gods instructing those who were doomed

to distant wanderings, with regard to their way, the hero of Eleusis

was directed by Ceres, how, following the seashore, he should con­

vey his blessings into the regions of the west; passing from the

promontory of lapygia, along the coast of Italy, then making the

round of Sicily, then returning to the continent and proceeding

through Oenotria, along the Tyrrhenian gulf, toward Ligystica.

The same eastern coast was the Italy "rich in white grain," cele­

brated by Sophocles in that plays 1 ; in which was the Siritis so re­

nowned among the Greeks, and the plains of Metapontum: it is

clear that the poet's praise cannot refer to the rich land of Cam·­

pania, as Pliny took it to do. A late writer, who, ignorant as to

the actual state of the world, compiled a treatise on chorography,

the most variable of all sciences, out of antiquated books 39 ,-whom

however we are glad to have, from his standing in their place,­

concurs with Sophocles in calling the whole coast from the Faro to

Posidonia by the name of Oenotria 38,

The ancient usage was still kept up long aftenrnrd, at least by

the writers at Athens. In the fragment of an account of the way

of boxing the compass, as we should call it, attributed to Aristotle,

it is said that the Thrakias in Italy and Sicily, is called Circas,

because it blows from the headland of Circeii" 4 • The local names

which are there adduced for the same wind, from Thrace, Lesbos,

and l\fegara, show that it must have been a northwestern: and,

looking from Calabria an<l Sicily, the bearing of Circeii may be

regarded as pretty nearly the same. Now this fragment, it is true,

has no right to Aristotle's name; for it contains passages that are

.at variance with works of unquestionable genuineness 85 : still it is

28

30

32

33

U

Thucyd. VI. 4.

29 Referred to by Dionysius

Dionysius 1. 12.

31 Pliny xvm. 12. 1.

As Raphael Volaterranus did from Pliny and Mela.

Scymnus: compare v. 243. ff. with 299. ff.

Opusc. min. p. 133. Sylb.

35 The Meteorologies 11. 6.

1.

72.HISTORY OF ROME.

15

certainly not older than his time 36 : perhaps, as at least one other

book that has found a place among his writings" 7, it was by Theo­

phrastus. The latter continues to make a distinction between

Latium and Italia 38 in his History of I'lants, in a passage which

seems to have been written no long time after the death of Cassan­

der in 01. 120. 3. 455 39 ,

About the same time however king Demetrius wrote to the Ro­

mans, that it did not become the people who ruled over Italy, to

send out pirates• 0 : and yet the country called Italia in the time of

Antiochus was still wholly independent of th~m ••That the Taren­

tines invited Pyrrhus expressly into Italy, as Pausanias says they

did 4 ', is a point whereon the words used by so late a writer, who

assuredly did not weigh their import, cannot be regarded as decisive:

yet it is hardly to be doubted. For nearly all Italy, in the extent

assigned to it by the Latin usage of those times, was already united

under the Romans; and the weaker the Greeks in the cities that

yet remained felt themselves as compared with the Italicans, the

36

Aristotle died in the year 430.

37 The Eeonomics, the first book as it is called: this is now established

from Philodemus.

38 Hist. Pl. v. 9. '1"t»V ir '1"~ Att.'1"lv~ &«>.1»1 >"aµlvt»v ri7rtp~•>.~, ""-j '?""''

iAetTlvm1 "~' 'tl»V 'Jl"IUX.iVr.tJY, µ•'~°' T«.V°T«. &r.tl Jl.d.f...h[DI 'Z"ll>V 'I'l"«.A.IX4H', oUJ'h ";'d.P

(f. t' «f"-) '''"',,.po> '1"« '1 '1"~ Kupv<f. ·

·

39 In the chapter just cited Theophrastus speaks of the undecireme built

by king Demetrius of Cyprian timber. That island was lost before the year

458. Pliny places the composition of the whole work about the year 440;

being misled by finding the mention of an archon by .whom he supposed this

year was designated. He overlooked the occurrence of several others and

later ones: these chronological notices do indeed show the length of time

during which the philosopher continued to incorporate such additions as sug­

gested themselves with his work, which had been composed, though not yet

made public: but even the .latest of them cannot be regarded as determining

the year of the publication. In the year 117.2, he wishe.d to state that Cyrene

had then existed for about 300 years; so he named the archon of the day

(vr. 3). Thus he was told of natural phenomena, that they had occurred a

certain number of years before: all these dates might have been accommodated

to the year of the publication; but it was quite superfluous. A multitude of

other additions must have been made. in the same way, which we are unable.

to detect: they were not appended externally, but immediately wrought into

the work itself. In like manner Aristotle has evidently enlarged. his Rhe~oric,

which in its first sketch was one of his earlier works, with additions till toward

the close of his life. Such books, which were kept to be continually worked

at, and were rommunicated to none but disciples, I hold to be those which

were ~alled esoteric: the letter attributed to Alexauder, which perhaps may

be genuine, agrees l'ery well with this view.

40 Strabo v. p. 232. b. :l:'1"ptt.'1"Hrtiv 'l'a; 'l-r«Xi"'·

41 Attic. c. 12.16

HISTORY OF ROME.

surer were they to follow them in giving a name to the country. , In

this manner that usage was also introduced into Greek books, at

least from the time of the expedition of Pyrrhus.

That the collection of marvellous stories which occurs among

the writings of Aristotle, cannot be his work, is demonstrated,

should there be any to whom the language and spirit of that book

do not speak intelligibly enough, at all events by the mention of

Cleonymus and Agathocles: yet it must have been composed before

the end of the first Punic war; for it talks of the Carthaginian pro­

vince in Sicily.· l\Iany of these stories, especially such as relate

to the west of Europe, are manifestly borrowed from 'fimreus,

whose history was full of wonderful tales: now Timreus wrote

about or after the year 490; and the other work may for the pur­

poses of the present inquiry be considered as of the same age. fo

this however Italy bas a far wider extent: the Sirenusre, Cuma,

and Circeii are expressly said to belong to it; Tyrrhenia on the

contrary and the land of the Ombricans are mentioned separately:

so that the boundaries of Italy seem at that time, though there was

not indeed any precise line of demarcation, to have stretched to the

Tiber and beyond Picenum 42 : a country large enough to be called

the broad Italy, in the epigram of Alcreus the Messenian on the

victory of Flamininus in 557. IIalf a century however before the

l\Iarsic war, about 615, the name of Italy was used by Polybius in

the widest extent, as reaching to the Alps; comprising Cisalpin~

Gaul and Venetia; only perhaps to the exclusion of the Italian half

of Ligurijl. That M. Cato in his Origins reckoned Etruria and

Umbria parts ofltaly, seems certain: his treating in the same work

concerning the descent of the Ligurians, the Euganeans, and the

Alpine tribes, is no proof that he included them within its limits:

for why should he lay down a iaw for himself, never to make in­

quiries touching the descent of a nation beyond the borders of Italy?

or, if he learnt anything about such a one, to give it no room in his'

work?

In the latter days of the Roman empire, when Maximian had

transferred the imperial residence to Milan, the name of Italy in the

official language was again confined to a narrower.compass; in the

north, as the extreme south was where it was said to have originated.

42 This is the view taken by Clemens of Alexandria, when he calls the

Tuscans l'l'etll.i«~ ;ti'l'oY<~: Strom. I. p. 306. Timreushimselftoowould scarcely

have given an etymology for the name of Italy in the history of Pyrrhus, un­

less it had already become generally prevalent for 11. considerable range of

country.HISTORY OF ROME.

17

Italy, properly so called in that age, comprised the five annonary

provinces, JEmilia, Liguria, Flaminia, Venetia, and Istria 48 : from

this usage did the kingdom of the Lombards receive its name: and

as its limits, if they <lid not include !stria, stretched a great deal

further southward, there was nothing of arrogant assumption in the

title.

Dionysius says, before the time of Hercules the whole peninsula

was by the Greeks called Hesperia or Ausonia, but by the natives

Saturnia 44 , I will not seriously censure the folly of attempting to

make out upon historical grounds what is earlier or what later in a

mythical age: nevertheless there was more of consistency in the

captiousne,ss of the Alexandrian critics who found fault with Apol·

lonius for speaking of Ausonia during the Argonautic expedition,

whereas that name was derived from a son of Ulysses and Calypso 45 •

Hesperia, being a name that had an air of antiquity, is frequently

used by Roman poets after Greek models who have been lost: in

the Greek writers that remain it is extremely rare: and in the more

ancient never._be!\rs a particular reference to Italy! From the in·

scriptions on the Iliac table, it seems probable that Stesichorus in

his 'H.tou nfp.-1r represented JEneas as setting forth for Hesperia 46 :

Agathyllus, as quoted by Dionysius, says .!Eneas lwstened to Hes­

peria47: Apollonius mentions the conveyance of Circe by the god

of the sun to the Tyrsenian coast in the Hesperian country 48 • This

name however embraced the whole ·west, as Hesperia ll:fagna, like

a fourth quarter of the world, to which Iberia belonged quite as much

as italy: thus we comprise the' Levant and Anatolia as parts in the

East. But as what the poets had to tell of Hesperia almost always

related to Italy, hardly ever to Iberia, this gave rise to the notion,

and to the subsequent usage, which identified -Hesperia with Italy.

Ausonia was a name extended by the Greeks, as was the case

43 Jae. Gothofredus ad]. 6. C. Th. XI. 1. de annona et tributis.

44 [. 35.

45 ,Schol. Apo]. iv. 553. This was the derivation commonly received: the .

poet however might have come off; for there was another whieh went back

to Aii?ilr, a name given to the country by the barbarians. See the Etym.

Magn. v. Au.-om.

·

46 •Amfctr (thus) a.7rctlpr.1 1ir 'T~r I'E.-?rtpl11.r. Tychsen Comm. de Q.

Smyrnmo m. §. 11. p. 74.

47 'Au'T~r ,f 'E.-?rtplhr i.-u'To ;t961.:t. r. 49. This Agathyllus seems to have

belonged to the Alexandrian age. As to the line of Ennius-Est. locus,

Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant (read perhibebunt)-it is quite as likely

to be taken from some Greek just before his time, as from a poet of a better

age. In the Anthology we find Hesperia for Italia, but not before Agathias.

48 Argon. m. 311. 312.

·

1.-c18

HISTORY OF ROME.

with Italia, from a single district to the country beyond it. At first

it was synonymous with Opica: and since the name ofOpicans was

given by the Greeks, as early as about the end of the fourth century

of the city, to all the tribes dwelling within the Italy of Timreus,

as above described, they began in their poetical language to apply

the name Ausoni:i no less wi<lely 49 • This must have been <lone by

writers now lost, and long before the time of Lycophron, by whom,

after the year 560, the whole of the peninsula to the south of

Tyrrhenia and Ombrica is called Ausonia 50 • With others this is an

appellation for the region between the Apennines and the lower

sea 51 : and in this latter enlarged sense the word is evidently used by

Apollonius (under Ptolemy Euergetes, between 505 and 531) for

the whole coast of Italy on the lower sea, even for that of EtruriaM.

Saturnia, a name said by Dionysius to. have been found in the

Sibylline oracies-of which however he can only have been ac­

quainted with the latter and forg13d collection-may perhaps have

been used by the ancient Latins to designate a part of central

Italy, wherein Latium was contained; but to what extent we cannot

define: hence the Saturnian verses, w hi eh were sung in a measure

peculiar to these nations. Th!'l traces of this name however ai:e so·

faint, that all we can say with confidence is, it certainly never came

into general use for the whole of the peninsula.·

Italia and Oenotria, Ausonia or Opica 53 , Tyrrhenia, lapygia, and

Ombrica, are appellations derived from the Greek names of the

tribes that inhabited the regions called after them on the coast of the

49 In this sense Circe's island, JErea, is accounted in Ausonia: Apollodorus

9. 24. And the oracle said to have been delivered to the Chalcidians, calls

the neighbourhood of Rhegium AiJrrov11. x..Jp11.v :-Diodorus in the Eclog. de

sententiis p. 11. ed. Maii-which is itself a proof how recent the forgery must

have been.

50 The Sicilian strait v. 44; Arpi and Apulia vv. 5!J2. 615; Opica, properly

so ealled, and the Apennines v. 702; Oenotria vv. 92'2.1047. That Lycophron

separated Tyrrhenia and Ombrica from Ausonia, is shown by vv. 1239. 1360.

It is true he calls Agylla. Ausonian; but this is before the Tyrrhenians took

possession of it: v.1355. As a general name for Italy, Ausonia is used by

Dionysius Periegetes, and frequently in the Anthology, but by no poet older

than Antipater of Thessalonica. In the worthless Orphic Argonautics the

.li.usonian islands must mean even Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica: v. 1255. In

the fifth and sixth centuries, to one of which that poem bel~ngs, such as

wished to write with elegance, sometimes called the Italians of their age Au­

sonians even in prose; and in Priscus (Excerpt. de Legat. p. 59. B.) Ausonian

seems to be equivalent to Volgare, as distinguished from Latin.

51 Fest. Epit. v. Ausonla.m.

52 Argon IV. 553.

53 Also Opir:ia: Thucydides vr. 4.

1.HISTORY OF ROME.

19

peninsula, during the age when Magna Grrecia was most flourish­

ing: and such was the number of the countries placed by their

chorographers to the south of the Po and to the east of the Macra.

The main part of what we know concerning Italy before the. time

of the Romans, has been handed down to us by the Greeks ; and

their divisions and views form the fittest guide for an inquiry which

undertakes to collect and throw light on .our information with re­

gard to the various tribes of its inhabitants. At the time however

that the Greek settlements grew up, neither the Etruscans nor the

Sabcllians had made their appearance within the sphere of their

knowledge: hence that ancient distribution of the country makes

no mention of them; nor has it any room for the powerful states

which the latter established in the land of the ancient Italians and

Opicans, under the name of Samnites, Lucanians and Campanians.

In the archeological account of the Italian nations, on which I am

now about ~o enter, they as well as the Etruscans will take the place

that belongs to them.THE OENOTRIANS AND

PEL~SGIANS.

WITH regard to the origin of the Oenotrians Pherecydes wrote 54 :

that Oenotrus was one of the twenty sons of Lycaon, and that the

Oenotrians were named after him, as the Peucetians on the Ionian

gulf were after his brother Peucetius. They migrated from Ar-.

cadia 55, seventeen generations before the Trojan war, with a multi­

tude of Arcadians and other Greeks, who were pressed for room at

home: and this, says Pausaniass 6 , is the earliest colony, whether

of Greeks or barbarians, whereof a recollection has been preserved.

Other genealogers have stated the number of the Lycaonids dif­

ferently: the names found in Pausanias amount to six and twenty,

and several have probably dropt out of his text. Apollodoruss7

reckons them at fifty, of which number his list falls short by one.

Very few in the two lists are the same : Pausanias has no Peuce­

tius, Apollodorus neither him nor Oenotrus: but the strangest thing

is, that, though their names mark them all out as founders of races

or of cities, still the latter mythol~ger makes them all perish in

Deucalion's flood. It is clear that he, or the author he followed,

must have absurdly mixed up a legend about certain impious sons

of Lycaon, who perhaps were nameless, with the tradition which

enumerated the towns of Arcadia and such as were of kindred

origin, under the names of their pretended founders.

Legends of this sort will not be looked upon by any as historical:

but in the light of national pedigrees, like the Mosaical, such

genealogies are deserving of attention; inasmuch as they present

views concerning the affinity of nations, which certainly were not

inventions of the genealogers, themselves early writers after the

scale of our literature, but were taken by them from poems of the

same class with the Theogony, or from ancient treatises, or prevalent

opinions. That portions indeed of these genealogies are grounded

54 Quoted by Dionysius 1. 13. Compare 1. 11.

55 Dionysius 1. 11.

56 Arcad. c. 3.

57 Biblioth. m. 8. 1.HISTORY OF ROME.

21

on very erroneous suppositions, or at least on accounts which in

parts have been misunderstood, is exemplified in the Mosaical:

· wherein races, which undeniably belong to entirely different fami·

lies, are represented as connected: and I am very willing to allow

that those of the Greek mythologers may contain still greater

errors. But if, we , find them mentioning the Pelasgian nation,

they at all events belong to an age when that name and people had

nothing of the mystery which they bore in the eyes of the later

Greeks; for instance of Strabo: and even. though the Arcadians

had been transformed into Hellens, still a very distinct recollection

might be retained of their affinity with the Thesprotians, whose

land contained the oracle of Dodona, as well as of that between

these Epirots and other races; which is implied in the common

descent of lVIrenalus and the other Arcadians "and of Thesprotus and

Oenotrus from Pelasgus. Nor does this genealogy stand alone in

calling the Oenotrians Pelasgians ; evidence tQ the same effect,

perfectly unexceptionable, and as strictly historical as the case will

admit of, is furnished by the fact, that the serfs of the Italian

Greeks, who must undoubtedly have been Oenotrians, were called

Pelasgians 58 • Moreover we have statements of less authenticity,

but of very various kinds, which exhibit the Pelasgians in many

·'

different quarters of Italy.

The name of this people, of whom the historical inquirers in the

age of Augustus could find no trace among any then subsisting, and

about whom so many opinions have been maintained with such

confidence of late, is irksome to the historian, hating as he does

that spurious philology which raises pretensions to knowledge

concerning races so completely buried in silence, and is revolting

on account of the scandalous abuse that has been made of imagi~

nary Pelasgic mysteries and lore. This disgust has hitherto kepi

me from speaking of the Pelasgians in general; especially as by

doing so I might only be opening a way for a new influx of writings

on this unfortunate subject. I was desirous of confining myself to

such tribes of this nation as are mentioned among the inhabitants of

Italy; but this would leave the investigation wholly unsatisfactory:

and the one I am now about to commence does not pretend to make

out any thing else than Strabo for instance, if he had set what he

knew distinctly before his own mind, might have given as the

result.

. . .

/

The Pelasgians were a different nation from the Hellens 5 9: thei:r-·

58 Stephanus Byz. v. xioc.

59 They are thus di.lltinguished by Herodotus,22

HISTORY OF ROME.

language was peculiar and not Greek 60 : this assertion however

must not be stretched to imply a difference like that between the

Greek and the lllyrian or· Thracian. Nations whose languages

were more nearly akin than the Latin and Greek, would still speak

so as not to be mutually understood; and this is what Herodotus

has in his eye: who, distinctly as he draws a line between the two

nations, yet deviates from all other Greek writers in ranking the

Epirots among the Hellens 61 • That there was an essential affinity,

notwithstanding the difference, is probable, from the ease with

which so many of the Pelasgian nations ripened into Hellens; as

well as from the Latin language containing an element which is

half Greek, and the Pelasgic origin of which seems unqurstionable.

Herodotus sayoi, that in proce~s of time they grew to be accounted

Greeks 62 • From the Pelasgians was the Greek. theology derived 63 ;

and the oracle of Dodona belonged to them. Their name was

most probably a national one 64 ; at least the Greek explanations of

it are absurd.

As there are creatures, of races which seem to have survived

from a period of other forms, standing like aliens left to pine away

in an altered world, so the Pelasgians, in the portion of history

within the reach of our monuments and legends, appear only in a.

state of ruin and decay: and it is this that makes them so mysteri­

ous. The old traditions spoke of them as a race. pursued by the

heavenly powers with never-ending calamities 65 ; and the traces of

their abode in very widely di&tant regions gave rise to the fancy;

that they had roamed about from land to land in the hope of escap­

ing from the~e afflictions. And whereas the best acquisition of na­

tions as well as individuals is the recollection they leave, surely no

people has been so hardly dealt with in this respect as the Pelas­

gians. Even Ephorus, early as he lived, seems to have refused

them the character of a nation, and to have imagined that the name

was one assumed. by a band. of marauders, who issued from Arcadia

and received accession.o from a variety of tribes: whereas he

()0 Herod. 1. 57. The Tyrrhenian and Siculian words found in the glossa­

ries are Pelasgic: but how few of them have escaped being corrupted by the

transcribers! The pame Larissa, borne by two ancient capitals of the nation,

in Thessaly and Asia, by the citadel of Argos, a town near the Liris (Dionys.

1. 21.), and many other places, may be regarded as a. Pelasgic word.

.

61 He speaks of Thresprotia as in Hellas, II. 56: and classes the Mo!ossians,

among the Hel!ens, vi. 127.

62 n. 51. 081v 7rSf 1<ct.l "E>.Anm ilp~cwro voµ1<r8'iivct.1.

63 Herod. 11. 51.

64 See notes 58 and 96.

65 Dionysius 1. 17. ixpi!O"ct.'1'o TUX.ct." Ju0"7ro'1'µ0H.HISTORY OF RO;\'fE.

23

that views the fable of their wanderings iu a different light, and

searches for traces of their diffusion, will on the contrary recognize

that they are one of the very greatest nations of ancient Europe;

who in the course of their migrationi; spread almost as, w_itlely as

the Celts.

It is not an arbitrary fiction of the poet, when JEschylus makes

king Pelasgus, the son of Pal~clithon, boast, that he antl his people

are masters of the whole country to the west of the Strymon 66 •

At the time when the Cariaus were still inhabiting the Cyclades,

and were even settled with other barbarous nations in several quar­

ters on the continent of Bellas, while the Ilellen':l were confined to

the northern mountains; the Peloponncsus and the largest part of

Hellas belonged to the Pelasgians 67: but this was a very small por­

tion of the countries they occupied. It may here be remarked,_

that the way in which the Hellens spread, is lil~e that in which the

Romans and Latins spread in Italy: a detachment of them settled

amid a far more numerous ,community of a different, though not

wholly foreign, nature; and this community adopted the language

and laws of the colonists, in order to resemble them. For this is

the only meaning we can attach to the account vf Thucydides, how

Hellen and his family were called in and received 68 : the invaders

who gave a Dorian character to the inhabitants of the three districts

in the Peloponnesus, were much inferior to the old population in

number.

•

The Arcadians, the most ancient settlers at Argos, the Ionians,

were all Pelasgian races; and these it is probable originally formed

the only inhabitants of the Peloponnesus. The people of Attica

too are termed Pelasgian Cranai, even before the Ionian immigra­

tion: whereas the Bceotians and Locrians were not accounted Pelas·

gians. Thessaly was their second great seat in Hellas, or, as it

was then generally called, in Argos.· Hence Thessaly was termed

the Pelasgian Argos*, and a part of it retained the name of Pelas­

giotis: the hypothesis which supposes the Pelasgians in the middle

of Italy to have migra1ed thither from the East, brings them from

Thessaly, as if this were their proper home; and the words Thes­

66 Suppl. v. 248. That is, of Oldland.

67 na""""i'"'' ixov<Ta:r ,,.,,, vuv ·EH<iJ'<t. """'o,uhHr : Herod. vm. 44: which

says still more; and too much, since it excludes the Leleges, Caucones, an<l

others. Hellas was of old called PPla.sgia, says the ~ame author, n. 56. The

converse will not hold.

·

68 1. 8.

* Homer II. 11 €81.24

HISTORY OF ROME.

salian and Pelasgian are used as equivalent 69 • No change was

made in this by the migration of the Thessalians properly so called

fr'.)m Thesprotia into Aemonia·1': for the Thesprotians were Pelas­

gians: their progenitor is mentioned in Apollodorus among the

Lycaonids; according to others Pelasgus after the deluge came into

Epirus, and appointed one of his followers king of the Molossians

and Thesprotians7°: the Epirot tribes, says Strabo, are by many

called Pelasgians71: and Dodona is acknow !edged on all sides to

have been Pelasgian ground. The Epirots are distinguished in the

most positive manner by Thucydides and other writers from the

Greeks, and are expressly termed barbarians: nor is this to be

counterbalanced by the indulgence of Polybius in classing them

among the Hellens: although it is true we have here another in­

stance of the ease with which a Pelasgian people was transformed

into Greeks. To the Epirots there also belonged a variety of races

on tile northern skirts of the mountains which afterward composed

Upper Macedonia, the Orestians, the Pelagonians, the Elimiots7 9 :

as well as those on the opposite border who were subs.equently

inco'rporated as barbarian tribes with .lEtolia when it was enlarged,

the Amphilochians, Agrmans, and others. The land near the

mouth of the Achelous, which flows through the territories or along

the borders of the last-mentioned tribes, was occupied in the my­

thycal age by the Teleboans, who are named after one of the

Lycaonids, and must be considered as Pelasgians. So must the

Dolopians, among whose mountains that river takes its rise: for

the Pelasgians who dwelt in Scyrus and Sciathus, are in the former

of these islands called Dolopians 73 • The tribes on th!) Achelous

were indeed ,members of the Amphictyonic league; but this is no

proof of their Hellenic origin: for the Thessalians were among the

leading Amphictyons; and the main tie in that association was re­

ligion, in which the Pelasgians and Hellens agreed74,

'!""''

69 Strabo v. p. 220. d.

0•'T'T«M•' 'Tl~: he is speaking of the Pelas­

gians at Crere.. Cyzicus was said to have been inhabited in early times by

Thessalians, Pelasgians, and Tyrrhenians: instead of its being seen that these

were different names of the same nation, a story was fabricated, how the

Pelasgians were expelled by the Thessalians, and these by the Tyrrhenians.

Conon 41: compared with the Scholiast on Apollonius 1. 987 and 948. See

notes 114 and 255.

* Herod. vu. 176.

70 Plutarch Pyrrh. 1.

71. v. p. 221. b.

72 Strabo 1x. p. 434. d.

73 Scymnus. v. 582. Dicrearchus, p .. 26. rr.,,..,.,,;.. 'J:itupo,, Plutarch

Cim. c. 8.

74 Hence even Plato allows his Greek state to adopt religious rites fromHISTORY OF ROME.

25

On the north the boundary assigned by .tEschylus to the land of

the Pelasgians is the Strymon and the Algos; a description which

in him must be taken as geographically correct, whether the river

he calls the Algos be one in lllyria or in Macedonia: and thus

Macedonia is included by the poet in Pelasgia. When Macedonia

had become a great kingdom, the main part of the Macedonian peo­

ple was made up of Greeks, lllyrians, Pceonians, and Thracians;

but the core of the nation was still a peculiar race, which can

neither be considered as Greek nor as Illyrian. I hold that this too

'Yas Pelasgian, on the authority of .tEschylus, and on a variety of

grounds. Among the l,ycaonids there is a l\Iacednus: in a legendary

history, which was probably derived from Thcopompus, the sub­

jects of the first king are called Pelasgians 75 : and the Elimiots, who

according to Strabo were an Epirot, that is, a Pelasgian race, were

among the genuine l\1acedonians1s.

A people of whose descent we have no credible account, the

Bottireans, were dwelling intermixed with the Chalcidians at the

beginning of the Peloponnesian war: it is clear that they were not

Greeks ; nor were they barbarians altogether alien to them, like the

neighbouring Thracians. If such a character of itself induces us

to suppose that they must have been Pelasgians, this presumption

is heightened by our finding that llottia was the seat of the. most

ancient Macedonian Pelasgians77.

With regard to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians on mount Athos, it

may be true that tliey were merely fugitives from Lemnos*: but

Lemnos, lmbrus, and Samothrace, were celebrated as the abodes of

the Pela~gians, and such they continued down to the historical

period7 8 : the account that the Pelasgians had migrated thither from

Athens, does not rest.on suflicicntly valid auth.ority: or, s~pposing

we ought not to reject it, still it was probably a kindred race that

receiv~d them; for these regions were overrun by Pelasgian tribes.

the Tyrrhenians: (de Legib. v. p. 733, c.): not from the Etruscans, but such

as proceeded from Samothra~e.

75 Justin vn._ 1.

76 Thucydides II. 99.

77 In the passage of Justin before cited (vu. 1.) I read regio Bottia, in­

stead of Bccotia: no various readings are mentioned: Pmonia is an unwarrant­

able change. Bottia is the name of the country on the Axius.-This conjec­

ture is now fully confirmed by the Eclogm from Diodorus under the head De

Scntentiis where (p. 4.) the orade comman<ls Perdiccas, All.A.'

E:>TU)'Of<EVD'

Bou't~i'J'ot (read Bo'l'.,.,;;·J'ot) :>rpo, :>roll.rif<nll.Dv• .

* Thucyd. IV. IOD.

78 As to Lemnos and lmbrus no references are needed: of Samothracr this

is said by Herodotus, Ir. 51.

ra·

I.-D26

HISTORY OF ROME.

They were the inhabit~nts of Lesbos and Chios, before the Greeks

took possession of them7 9 ; and according to l\Ienecrates the El:Pan,

of the whole coast of Ionia beginning from l\fycale" 0 , and of lEolis:

in Caria of Tralles 81: on the Hellespont two of their towns were

still extant in the days of Herodotus 82 : Cyzicus was theirs, until

the Milesians made themselves masters of it 83 : and the Macrians, a

race of their stock, dwelt on the other side of the same island on the

coast facing the Bosphorus 84 ; No point in the history of the diffo­

sion ·of nations is to be maJe out with greater historical certainty,

than appertains to the statements whence this summary has been

drawn. I will therefore keep it apart from the opinion, which I

state merely as a conjecture, that the Teucrians and Dardanians,

Troy and Hector, ought perhaps to be considered as belonging to

the Pelasgian race. The seat of these tribes lay between the Pe·

lasgian settlements on the Hellespont and in lEolis: that they were

not Phrygians was very clearly perceived by the Greek philologers,

who had even a suspicion that they were not barbarians at all.

According to the earliest Gree!: account, Dardanus had come from

the Pelasgian country, Arcadia, and from Samothrace, the Pelas­

gian island: according to that which was adopted by Virgil-for he

certainly did not invent it-from the Tyrrhenian city of Corythus,

the capital of those Tyrrhenian Pelasgians whose wanderings came

to a close in the islands on the coast of Samothrace 85 •

The progress of my investigation will lead me back again Into

these regions: for the present I shape my course with lEneas

through the lEgean sea to\,\'ard Hesperia. The Macrians on thfl

Hellespont were held to have come from Eubrea, which was called

l\'.Iacris" 6 : and in the same island, as in Thessaly, we find the Hes­

ti:£ans*. Even among the Cyclades, the rest of which, with the

exception of some scattered Phenician settlements, were peopled

79 Strabo v. p. 2'2L h. XIII. p. 621. b.

80 Strabo XIII. p. 621, b.

81 Agathias n. p. 54. a. d. ed. Par. He must have learnt this from the

chronicle he quotes with regard to the restoration of the town after the earth­

quake, when from a Pelasgian it became a Roman settlement.

·

82 I. 57: · Placia and Scylace.

83 Schol. Apollon. 1. 987. Compare 1. 948. Conon 41.

84 Apollon. 1. 1024, comp. with 1112.

85 That Corythus or the city of Corythus must mean Cortona, is admitted:

the passages proving it are collected in Forcellini, and the one from Silius is

decisive. ·Only it must not he overlooked that Virgil, after the manner of the

later school of poetry, takes 'the liberty of using the name somewhat indefi­

nitely in a greater latitude. In the mythologers we find a Corythus, who is a.

Trojan, the son· of Paris: Hellanicus in Parthenius 34.

86 Schol. Apollon. 1. 1024.

* Strabo 1x. p. 437. c.HISTORY OF ROME.

27

by Carians, Andrus was a Pelasgian island 8 7 : the Dryopians of

Cythnus too 111ay be regarded as Pelasgians. The tradition of their

dwelling together with several other races in Crete, must probably,

as in the case of the Dorians named along with them, reter only to

a colony 98 •

With regard to Italy I begin by reminding the reader of those

Pelasgians who were serfs of the Italian Greeks, and that they can

only have been Oenotrians: so that the whole Oenotrian population

of southern Italy m'ust be admitted to be Pelasgian. Next it is

further witnessed by a crowd of authorities, that the Pelasgians

were at one time settled on the coast of Etruria: and we are even

assured by the testimony of Herodotus, that the same people, a race

wholly different from the Etruscans, were .in his days still occupy·

ing a city in the heart of the country; a city Dionysius is certainly

right in supposing t() be Cortona; that is, the Croton which, Hel·

lanicus says, was taken possession of by the Pelasgians, and from

which they sent out colonies. for the peopling of Tuscany 89 • CiEre

87 Conon 41.

88 See the well-known passage of the Odyssey,'!". 175-7 quoted for this

purpose by Strabo v. p. 221, a.

.

89 Hellanicus in his Phoronis, quoted by pionysius 1. 28. If the reading

in our editions of Herodotus was Croton, as it is quoted by Dionysius (1. 29),

instead of Creston, no one would fail to perceive that the two contemporane­

ous historians are speaking of the same city. Hellanicus derived these Pe­

lasgians from Thessaly: this is clear, if it were only from the alleged descent

of their kings from Pelasgus and a daughter of Peneus: compare Dionysius

1. 17. Herodotus says, they had formerly dwelt in Thessaliotis.

Every

thing makes against any suspicion of Dionysius having corrupted the read­

ing. It seems not to have been heeded, that there is a great chasm he.re in

that family of the Herodotean manuscripts which is incomparably the best

(see Wes·seling's Herodotus, p. 26. a.): if there is no various reading in the

manuscripts ofa bad cast, this proves nothing: they always concur in favour

of what is abs1,ud. Moreover, though there certainly"was a tribe of Cresto­

nmans in Thrace, far inland ·between the Axius and the Strymon, there was

no city of Creston in those parts: and this tribe -were Thracians, while the

Tyrrhenians on mount Athos, beyond whom they dwelt, were Pelasgians: in

Herodotus on the contrary the people of Creston are Pelasgians, and the

Tyrrhenians living to the south of them are a totally different race. On an

unbiassed consideration one cannot but perceive that Herodotus adopted the

account of Hellanicus about the Pelasgians passing out of Thessaly across

the Adriatic to Spina and .Cortona, and assumed that afterward, on being

overpowered by the Etruscans, they emigrated to Athens, himself relating

their further wanderings to Lemnos and along the Hellespont. The identity

of the language spoken by the Pelasgians on the Hellespont and by those

who staid behind in Etruria, was amply sufficient to prove this. Those of

Cortona. were the most westerly, those on the Hellespont the most easterly,28

HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

too, under the name of Agylla, before it fell into the hands of the

Etruscans, is uniformly represented as a Pelasgian city: and as the

Etruscans left the far great.er part of the old population remaining

in the countries they subdued, this would fully account for the con­

nexion maintained between that city, which with the Greeks did

not lay aside its ancient name, and the Delphic oracle*: even if its .

conqi.iest by the Etruscans was not subsequent to the settlement

of the Phocmans in Cyrnus. The names of Alsium and Pyrgi,

towns on the coast dependent on Agylla, bear the marks of a peo­

ple more than half Greek. I have already noticed that the Agyl­

lceans are termed Thessalianst:, the historian who pronounced Tar­

quinii a city: of Thessalian origin 90 , meant thereby to designate it

as Pelasgian. On the upper sea the same holds of Ravenna,

which is called a Thessalian settlement 9 1: this would be at variance

with all history, were it taken in the sa:ne sense in which Syracuse

and Corcyra were colonies of Corinth; for the Thessalians scarcely

touched the seacoast; and had any colonists gone out from Pagasre,

they would never h~ve sailed round Malea and sought out the re­

gions in the interior of the Adriatic. A writer that uses an expres­

sion of this soi:t, must follow Hellanicus, who derived all the Pelas­

gians between Spina and Agylla out of Thessaly; as Pherecydes

did those in the south of Italy from Arcadia. Spina, which as well

as Agylla had its treasury at Delphi 0•, a city of such antiquity that

the founding of it was ascribed to Diomedes 93 , and the predecessor

of Venice in the dominion over the Adriatic, is termed a Pelasgian

city by Dionysius 94 ; nor ought 'this statement to forfeit its credit,

from being associated with the migration which was dreamt of by

Hellanicus. But it is a still worse mistake of the later ages, when

the distinction between the Pelasgians and the Greel•s was lost

sight of, to call it a Hellenic city 95 : this is ever erroneous in the

..

of all the remaining Pelasgians; and this gave a reason for naming these and

no others (OO"ct d....,'Ji.AtL Ilod:tcr}'ix1 iovrrct 7roAlr:rfA-a.rra. .,..Q otfvof--tct. p.eTE~a.~e). It

has been thought incredible that the language of small places so far apart

should be compared by Herodotus. This difficulty appears to me of no mo­

ment: a writer who quotes Egyptian, Scythian, and Persian words, was no

more deficient in attention to languages, than we are: this very passage

plainly shows that he was anxious to make out what relation the dialects of

the East and 'Vest bore to each other :the Hellespont he had visited; and na­

tives of Cortona might be easily met with at Thurii.

*, Herodot. I. 1G7. Strabo v. p. 220. e.

t See note G9.

·

90 Justin xx. 1.

91 Strabo v. ·p. 214. b. Al)'t'I'~l n 'p, 0t'T''T'cthllov 1t'T'l1T/Mt.

!)2 Strabo ~. P· 214.

Pliny III. 20.

93 Pliny II.I. 20.

94 · 1. 18.

D5 Strabo v. p. 2'Jl. 'a.

aHISTORY OF ROME.

29

case of all towns in remote countries, founded before the return of

the Ileraclicls.

It is somewhat surprising to find the Roman poet& calling the

Greeks very often Pelasgians: and this, as we are all familiar with

ii from the <lays of our youth and of the JEneid, has <lone more than

any thing else to confirm the fancy that the Greeks and the Pelas­

gians were the same people. I will not determine what degree of

influence may here be due to a misconception of the language used

by the tragic poets, who in fact did not go beyond what they found

in the most ancient traditions about the Pelasgians at Argos and in

Thessaly : • the usage of the Greek epic poets, even of the Alexan­

drian school, no way justifies the Roman. Yet the latter begins

even with Ennius 96 : which leads me to conjecture that, when the

Epirots, the Oenotrians, and .the Siculians had amalgamated with

the Greeks, it grew the custom in Italy to include the Greeks un­

cler the name of the Pelasgians thus united with them.

Scymnus, who here as elsewhere is the representative of Ti­

mams and other ancient writers, says: next to Ligystica, beginning

therefore from the Arno, come the settlements of the Pelasgians 97.

The Greeks who are related to have been the founders of Pisa,

those Teutons 98 who spoke Greek and dwelt there before the Etrus­

cans, must needs have been Pelasgians; and the same is implied

when Pisa is said to have been founded by Tarchon, the Tyr­

rhenian.

Tyrrhenia, we are told by Dionysius, was a name applied of

yore by the Greeks to the whole of western Italy: he is probably

however mistaken in asserting that ·they embraced not only the

Latins, but the Umbrians, Ausonians, and many other tribes, under

the common appellation of Tyrrhenians 99 • In the historical age

the nation peculiarly so called by them, were the Etruscans, with

whom their colonies in Sicily and Italy were continually forming

refations of war and peace, and whose fame stood high even in

Hellas on account of their power, their art, and their wealth. And

even before the Macedonian age it may perhaps have been entirely

forgotten, that the Etruscans had only obtained the name of Tyrrhe­

96 Cum veter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pclasgo. In Callimachus

(Lavacr. Pall. vv. 4. 51.) TIO.<tO')-Ol and Il•ll.<tO')'la.d'f' are the citizens and

women of Argos.

97 Scymnus v. 216, and foll.

98 Servius on .lEneid. x. 179. It seems impossible that this should be the

right name. See the text to·note 362.

99 · Dionysius 1. 25. 29.30

HISTORY OF 'ROME.

nians, in consequence of having taken possession of Tyrrhenia and

become the rulers over those Tyrrhenians who had been left behind

in their homes; and that the ancient traditions about the Tyrrhenians

in no way concerned the Etruscans. In like manner it is imagined

by very many to this day, that the Dalmatians of the Sclavonic

race, as they bear the name of Illyrians, are descended from the an­

cient Illyrians who inhabited the same regions, and consequently

that the latter were a Scla\'Onic people; an error which, where it has

once gained a footing, it is useless to combat with the circumstan­

tial e,·idence afforded by the early history of nations.

This confusion gave rise to two opinions, alike untenable and

groundless, on the origin of the Etruscans ; and Dion"ysius with

sound judgment contends against them both. According to the

onc,-which was supported by the account of the, Tyrsenians

given by Herodotus just as he had heard it among the Ionians,

perhaps however without any notion of referring it to the Etrus­

cans,-they wen~ a Lydian race, led to Italy by Tyrrhenus, the

son of Atys: according to the other they were Pelasgians : and this

last has struck root so deep; it so well sorts with an uncritical

and ungrammatical mode of treating the Etruscan language, that

it will scarcely ever be entirely extirpated; unless the most brilliant

discovery of our days, the explanation of the hieroglyphics, should

be followrd by, what there is indeed much less ground to hope fo~,

that of the Etruscan language.

The illtlsion, by which the anrients themselves were misled, is

no every day one. It was evidently the custom at the beginning of

the Peloponnesian war, to call the Pelasgians who had inhabited

Lemnos and lmbrus, Tyrsenians 100 and Tyrnenian Pelasgians:

Thucydides does so, without the slightest intention of displaying

his learning. Now the Argives were also called Tyrsenian Pelas­

gians by Sophocles in the Inachus 1 : this was joined with the

account of Hellanicus 2 , how the Pelasgians, on being dri\'en out of

Thessaly 3 by the Hellens, crossed the Adriatic and landed in the

river of Spina, at the mouth of the Po, and from thence spread into

Tyrrhenia and settled there. , To this account and the conclusions

drawn from it, Dionysius in a spirit of intelligent criticism objects,

that the Etruscans had not the remotest resemblance in language

and laws to the Greeks or the Pelasgians, any more than to the

Lydians, aud that their national traditions described them as a prim­

100 Is there an .instance of the form Tvppnvo' instead of Tvp1Tnva~ in any

writer, whether prosaist or poet, anterior to Plato?

l Dionysius 1. 25.

2 Dionysius 1. 28.

3 Dionysius 1. 17.IllSTORY OF ROME.

31

1t1ve race: it is a pity that he did not go a step further, and avail

himself of the information he possessed; to explain the origin of the

mistake.·

·

For, as we know from Dionysius himself,' it was related by

Myrsilus of Lcsb~s, that the Tyrrhenians, in the hope of escaping

from the public calamities with which they were chastised by

heaven, because among other tithes they had not offered up that of

their children 10 4, quitted their home, and roamed about for a long

time before they again settled in a fixed abode; that, as they were

seen thus gomg forth and returning back, the name of Pelargi, or

storks, was given to them; that they dwelt for a while in Attica, and

that the Pelasgian wall rnund the Acropolis was built by them 5 • This

account, as Dionysius himself remarks, is the very reverse of the

one in Hellanicus: une thing however he could not be struck by,

as we are on surveying an infinitely greater number of traditions;

that this inversion of a story into its opposite is a characteristic of

legendary history 6 • The etymology, whether invented or repeated

by Myrsilus, sounds childish: yet it is easy to see. how it arose

out of the notion that these Pela.sgians, who came· into Greece from

a remote foreign land, must have been totally different from the

primitive Greek race, and that no circumstance could be too fortui­

·

tous to account for the identity of name7.

104 Dionysius 1. 23.

5 Dionysius 1. 28 .

. 6 Since a clear insight into the nature of these inversions removes a

number of stumbling-blocks in the field of legendary history, and turns state­

ments that seem to militate against what is evidently true, into testimonies

for it, I think it may be useful to promote such an insight by a few examples

of very different kinds. The floating rocks which separated the sea frequented

by the Greek mariners from that beyond the reach of their navigation, were

sailed between by the Argo according to one legend under the name of

Cyanere in tlie east, according to another under that of Planctre in the west

of the earth. Thera is the mother-city of Cyrene in Libya: and the island of

Thera is formed out of the clod given to Euphemus by the Libyan god Triton.

One story makes Gillus the Tarentine ransom some Persian captives in Italy

and send them to the Persian king: another makes them Samians who were

in captivity under the Persian king, and one of whom, Pythagoras, is sent by

Gillus into Italy. (See Bentley on the age of Pythagoras: where with a

glance he rebukes the absurdity of trying' to employ such materials as the

ground-work for a couple of stories.) The tradition in Wittekind of Corvey,

that the Saxons came into Germany across the sea, originated in like man­

ner out of their voyage to Britain. And in the sixteenth century we find the

novel of Shylock related as an actual fact; only it is a Christian whose dia­

bolical inexorableness toward a Jew is frustrated by the sentence of a saga­

cious judge, Sixtus V.

7 ThP same interpretation of the nam<> was also to be found in the Atthids:32

HISTORY OF ROME.

A wandering people, called Pelasgians, had obtained settlements

in Attica at the foot of Ilymettus, after the Dorian migration 108 , on

condition of performing taskwork fur the state 9 • They came

last out of Ilreotia, having some time before acted in concert with

the Thracians in wresting that country from the Caclmeans, who

had now returned from Arne 10 : but their first appearance had been

in Acarnania : and all Pausanias could learn about their extraction,

was that they were Sicelians 11 • That is, so runs the story, they

came from the south of Etruria, where their king J\1aleotes 12 had

resided in the neighbourhood of Graviscro: at all events they must

undoubtedly have called themselves Tyrrhenians 13 • This name re·

mained with their descendants, who abode for a long time in Lem­

nos and Imbrus, and are said to have driven out the Minyro'~ from

thence; afterward, being compelled· by the Athenians to emigrate

anew, they turned their course, aome to the Hellespont 15 , some to

the coast of Thrace and the peninsula of mount Athos. Hence

Thucydides says: Athos is inhabited by a Pelasgian race, the Tyr­

rhenians, who were formerly settled in Attica and Lemnos 16 • These

were the only people known at that time in southern Bellas as

Pelasgians, the Pelasgic extraction of the Epirots and all other·

neighbouring tribes having been forgotten; but as they went no

Strabo v. p. 2.21. d. Others made it allude to white linen clothes: Etymol­

M. v. TieMlp°)'t1<0Y; such explanations however were always with reference

to these Tyrrhenians: the name of the primitive Greek Pelasgians is univer­

sally derived from the ancestor of the race.

·

108 Velleius I. 3. Strabo 1x. p. 401. d. ·

9 Herodotus vi. 137. Pausanias Attic. c. 28.

10 Strabo 1x. p. 401. d.

11 Attic. c. 28.

12 Strabo v. p. 2-23. d. My object here is me~cly to make out the notion

which prevailed among the Greeks, when they had collected their legends in

order to get a history out of them, and which guided the writers followed by

Dionysius'. Else those Sicelians certainly did not come from so far. See

below, note 168.

13 Callimachus quoted by the Schol. on Aristoph. Av. v. 382. TuplThY/JilV

'.rtf}GllT/-"'· Tie>.ot1T°)'t1<or. Other passages are cited in Cluver's Italia Antiqua

p. 428, 42!J. The way in which traditions are confounded, is illustrated by

Polyrenus vu. 4!J: he relates of the Tyrrhenians who were driven from Lem­

nos by the Athenians, and of their wives, the very same story that Herodotus

tells of what had happened to the Minyre GOO years before. 1v. 146.

14 The Minyre likewise were Thessalians and Pelasgiail.s: no one can

seriously hold them to be the descendants of the :Argonauts and of llypsipyle's

subjects: and I suspect, as in the instance of Cyzicus mentioned in note G9,

their expulsion was a mere fabrication, arising out of the story, whethe.r true

or false, about the emigrating of the Tyrrhenians from Athens to these islands.

Ul Hnodotus 1. 57.

16 1v. 109.HISTORY OF HOME.

33

less generally by the name of Tyrrhenians, we cannot be surprised

that Sophocles, from whom none will look for historical precision,

applied the two names jointly, as the common propflrty of the

whole nation, to the primitive Pelasgians of Apia. It is just such

a mistake as if one were to call the Cimbrians and Gauls under

Brenn us and Acichorius Welsh Cymri and Irish Gaels.

In the tradition which Aristoxenus followed, Pythagoras was

termed a Tyrrhenian from one of tl1e islands whence that people had

been driven by the Athenians 11 1~ that is, from Lemnos or lmbrus.

These Tyrrhenians of the JEgean sea however were much more

widely spread: on the Hellespont as far as Cyzicus 18 : the pirates

too in the Bacchic fable are not Etruscans, nor are they Lemnians,

but Meonians or Lydians 10 : and that the l\'.Ieonians were Pelasgians

is pro.ved by the stronghold Larissa, which we fiuc.l amongst them,

as in every country inhabited by the Pelasgians 20 • And now the

~trange story of the Lydian colony is explained. Defore the Pelas­

gian and Etruscan Tyrrhenians were confounded, one among the

forms of legendary narrative, in which one pole is continually

shifting into its opposite, derived the Tyrrhenians on the Tiber

from those ill Meonia, as another did from Lemnos and Imbrus 21 ;

whereas the converse, as I have stated it above, was the opinion

commonly adopted. Finally there is an account which jumbles

every thing together; making the Pelasgians emigrate from Thes­

saly to Lydia, from thence to Tyrrhenia; and again leave Tyr­

rhenia22, and go to Athens and subsequently to Lemnos.

It is to the Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, not to the Etruscans, that we

must apply the lines of Hesiod co.ncerning Agrius and Latinus ruling

over all the renowned Tyrrhenians 23 : and if we keep this distinction

steadily in view, an entirely new light is shed over the history of the

countries on the coast of the Tyrrhenian sea: for from the Tiber to

the borders of Oenotria we find tlie settle~ents of the Tyrrhenian

nation, not of the Etruscans.

117 Diogenes Laertius VIII. 1.

18 Conon 41.

, 19 Acmtes is Tyrrhena gente, Ovid Metam. III. 576.; patria Mmonia est,

583: so the Tusca urbs of Lycabas, 624, is unquestionably to be understood

ofa Lydian city. ·

20 Strabo xm. p. 620. d.

21 Such was the account of Anticlides; nay he combined an emigration

fr~m Lydia under Tyrrhenus with one from Lemnos: Strabo v. p. 221. d.

22 Plutarch Romul. c. 2.

23 Hesiod Theogon. v. 1011-15. But what are the sacred i;lands in this

passage?

·

J.-E34

HISTORY OF HOME.

In a history of the origin of Florence 12 4, compiled, perhaps even

before the time of Charlemagne, from strange popular legends and

poetical sources, the subjects of Turnus, the Ardeates, are called

Turini; that is, Tyrrheni: the same name presents itself in that of

Turnus, and of the shepherd Tyrrhus 25 ; and was borne without

any change . by a family of the Mamilian house. Ardea is desig­

nated as a Pelasgian city, by the poet who styles it an Argive one

founded by Danae 26 • Now if Ardea is admitted to be a Tyrrhenian

city, the legend which represents Saguntum as a colony of the

Ardeates•7, extends the spreading of the Pelasgians as far as Spain:

where moreover the ancient capital Tarraco has been considered as

a Tyrrhenian city 28 , perhaps indeed only from its name, yet it may

be not erroneously.

·

Virgil, whose catalogue of the army is a work of great judgment

and learning, makes the kingdom of Turnus reach from the Tiber

to Terracina. On this coast we find Antium, the founder of which,

after the Greek manner of personifying, was a son of Circe, and

brother to the founder of Ardea and Rome 29 : and Circeii must be

considered to have been originally a town of the Tyrrhenians, over

the whole of which nation the son of the goddess ruled. Terracina

is said to be the Latin transformation of Trachina 30 ; and lower

down the coast, on the Liris and about it, stood several cities,. such

as Amynche, Hormire, Sinuessa 31 ; the names of which, as there

. are many probabilities against their origin being purely Grecian,

lead us to infer that they were Pelasgian; off the coast were the

124 It is preserved in manuscript in Latin, and an Itaiian version of it is

inserted in the chronicle which bears the name of Malespini, where the Tu­

rini occur, c. 9. One of the most perplexing points is the evident reference

of Fresula to the fragment of Hesiod LX.

·

25 The old Latin form of the name must have been Turrus or Turus ~ in

Greek he is also called Tuppn16,.

26 .i'En. vn. 410. comp. 371.

27 Livy xx1. 7. Thus much seems certain, that the Saguntines were not

an unmixed Iberian race.

28 Anton. Augustinus De numis dial. 7. p. 94. b.

.

30 Strabo v. p. 233. a.

29 Dionysius r. 72.

31 The authority for Sinope will not stand against that for ~1vot'1'0'1t.

Amyclre may have been identical with Amynclre, (Salmasius ad Solin. p. GO.

b.); and the site at the foot of Taygetus and of l\fassicus, being similar, may

have been designated by the same name. This however has had a remarka­

ble influence on the notions about the settlements on this coast. It was

thought Amynclre must have been founded by the Lacedemonians; hence

their pretended colony near Anxur; and next, when the Sabines and Pelas­

gians were once confounded, the assertion that the former were Lacedemo­

nians.HISTORY OF ROME.

35

islands called Pontice; and inland there was the Pelasgian fort, La­

rissa. Ofllerculanum and Pompeii we are told by Strabo, that they

were founded by Pelasgians and Tyrrhenians 132 : of Marcina, near

Salernum, that it was a Tyrrhenian city, which had been occupied

by the Samnites 38 • ·The Tyrrhenians mentioned in these passages

have always been taken to be Etruscans: but that they were Italian

Pelasgians is further indicated by the temple of the Argive Juno in

the neighbourhood of Salernum; a sanctuary of such antiquity that

it was referred to Jason 34• This is a mark of Pelasgic religion,

not of Etruscan: in like manner at Falerii the worship of the same·

Juno was retained under the sovereignty of its Equian citizens,

from the time of the Siculians, as the Tyrrhenians were called by

the Romans" 5 •.

Caprere, it is said, was inbabited by the Teleboans 36, who are

classed by the genealogy among the Lycaonids and the Pelas­

gians37; and the Sarrastians of N uceria were called by Con on Pe­

lasgians from the Peloponnesus and from other quarters 38• This

derivation is not worth more than all the others which aim at ac­

counting· for the presence of that nation in parts so far off from

(;\reece.

·

Thus we find a line of Tyrrh1tnian settlements along the whole

coast of the sea, which for this reason bore their name 39 , from Pisa

down to the borders of the Oenotrians, whose Pelasgic origin needs

no further proof, I now return to the Tiber, to the ground that pe­

culiarly belongs to the history of Rome; and there likewise we may

make out that the Pelasgians were the earliest inhabitants.

The Roman historians related that the first people who settled

on the banks of the lower Tiber, were the Siculians, who dwelt at

Tibur, Falerii, and a number of little towns about Rome: the same

people are also called Argives by them, as Argos was termed Pe­

lasgian; and hence it is that Tibur and Falerii are represented as

Argive colonies. Moreover the original inhabitants of Latium, as

such, weI)t by the name of Aborigines: of whom Cato and C. Sem­

pronius wrote, that they were Achreans, and had already been set­

tled here many generations before the Trojan war: so that they as­

sumed this tri~e to have emigrated thus early from the Pelopon­

132 v. p. 247. a.

33 v. p. 251. b.

34 Pliny 1u. 9.

35 Dionysius 1. 21.

36 Virgil .iEn. vu. 735.

37 Seep~ 25.

38 Servius on .iEn. vn. 738.

39 In conformity with this usage, Sophocles in the passage quot.ed above

(p. 14, nste 30) called the Gulf the Tyrrhcnian; and the sea kept the name.HISTORY OF ROME.

nesus 140•• But JJ.clueans was another among the Pelasgic names for

the inhabitants of the country afterward called Ilellas. These Si­

culians, Argives, Tyrrhenians, whichever one chooses to call them,

were overpowered by a strange people that came down from the

mountains of the Abruzzo: the name of the conquerors, who became

one people with the conquered, and were called Latins, was for­

gotten: Varro by an enormous over;;;ight transferred to them that of

Aborigines: and Dionysius in following him lost himself in a laby­

rinth. He pieced together the most heterogeneous statements, the

accounts of Roman chronicles with those of Hellanicus and Myr­

silus, so as to make the Sicelians* barbarians, and the foes of the

Pelasgians and Aborigines: whereas he ought to have seen that the

people denoted by all these three names was the same ; . and, the

very thing he wished, a people akin to the Greeks.

This subjugation of the Sicelians in Latium and in the countries

more to the south, which made a portion of them leave their homes,

is what was regarded as the cause of their emigrating under the

name of Tyrrhenians to the eastern parts of Greece, and of their

crossing over into Sicily: this is the flight of Sicelus from Rome to

the Italian king l\1orges 41 • The date of this event I shall not dream

of fixing chronologically: it is no matter to us, that Philistus placed

it eighty years before the Trojan war, and Thucydides, probably

following Antiochus, two centuries later•~: I shall return hereafter

to this earliest authenticatea event in Italian story*. This however

is the place to notice that Sikelus and !talus, according to manifold

analogy, are the same name 43 • 1Vhen the Locrians first settled in

Italy, they found Sicelians by mount Zepliyrium 44 : the same peo­

ple were still there, in the southernmost part of Calabria, during the

Peloponnesian war: Thucy<lides gives the name of Sicelians to the

ltalietes of Antiochus, and that of I talus to their king's: Morges,

140 . Dionysius 1. 11.

* The name of the selfsame people is spelt Siculian or Sicelian, according

as the authority referred to is a Latin writer ot a Greek: for the :l:ixti..oi were

by the Romans called Siculi.

41 Dionysius 1. 73.

, 42 That is, 300 years before the first Greek settlement in Sicily: vi. 2.

The statement of Philistus ia in Dionysius 1. 2'2.

* In the section on the Aborigines and the Latins.

43 · Vitalus and Sitalus would be like :l:eHo, and "EHnv (Aristot. Meteorol.

1. 14. p. 33. Sy lb.): T and Kare interchanged as in Latinus and Lakinius.

44 Polyb. xn. 5.

45 T~ucy~.

2. Duker's text retained the reading 'Apvl,J 0, , : which

mu11t owe its ongm to the notion that the Oenotria11s had come out of Arcadia.

:1.HISTORY OF ROME.

37

whom Antiochus calls king of the Oenotrians, is, in a legend evi.

tlently of very great antiquity, termed King of Sicilia' 46 ; and, to

make it clear that this name embraced the whole of the Italy inhab­

ited by the Oenotrians in its widest range, Siris is represented as

his daughter. In a statement preserved by Servins 47 , Italus king

of the Siculians is said to have led that people from Sicily to Latium:

an inversion in a traditional narrative, which I may henceforth deem

it superfluous to notice particularly: it is enough, this story is a

new proof of the Oenotrians and the Sicilian Tyrrhenians forming

one nation; that of the Italians, in the widest extent given to the

name by the natives of the peninsula.

Of the Pelasgian tribes on the coast it was natural that the

Greeks should often be led to make mention: but their poets and

geneaologers had seldom occasion to say any thing about the inte­

rior of the country. Still, as the existence of a people akin to the

Greeks has been established by_ the names of places on the coast

of the lower sea about the Liris, so we are convinced by like traces

in the interior, that the territory between the two seas was also in­

habited by the same nation, until that nation was overpowered or

driven out by the foreign tribes of the Opicans and Sabellians.

Such traces are furnished by the names Acherontia; Telesia, Ar­

gyrippa, Sipontum, Maleventum, Grumentum 48 : and the whole

country from sea to sea, over which these places are scattered, is

what the natives called Italia.

Hellanicus, we must suppose, knew of no other Pelasgians on

the Adriatic than those of Spina; or he surely would not have

brought them into Tuscany by so circuitous a road. But in ac­

counts of the very highest authority we meet with Pelasgians along

the whole coast from the A tern us to the Po. Picenum, goes the

146 Etymolog. M. v. ~ip": probably after Timreus: Athenreus XII. p.

523. e.

47 On .lEn. 1. 2. 533.

48 In the south of Italy and Sicily the Greek names of the third declen­

sion in"' and ovc, of the masculine gender, were usually changed in Latin

into neuters of the second declension -in entum, formed from. the genitive.

This is said to have been a form in the JF.tolian di_alect; only here the termi­

nation was tnor, and therefore masculine (Salmas. ad Solin. p. 46. b. E.);

and tl/.e change is analogous to that which the modern Greek has made in the

nominative. So Acragas, Taras, Pyxus, became Agrigentum, Tarentum,

Buxentum, and so on. That Maleventum or 1\1a.Ioentum, in the country

afterward called Samnium, would in pure Greek have been Maloeis or Mal us,

was perceived by Salmasius: and I believe I am not mistaken in supposing

Grumentum, a place on the highest part of the cold Lucanian hills, to be

KpvfA-6m. The ~ame character is discernible in Laurentum.38

HISTORY OF ROME.

tradition, was in the hands of the Pelasgians, before it was occupied

by the Sabellian colony 149 ; and Pliny informs us, we may be pretty

sure from Cato, that, prior to the U mbrians, the Siculians were

masters of that coast on which the Senones settled in the fifth cen­

tury of Rome; where stood Ravenna, which is called a Thessalian

city*; and that they likewise possessed the districts of Prretutium,

Palma, and Adria 50 , It is therefore most probably this Hadria,

and not the very recent colony of the Syracusan tyrant, that was

classed by Trogus among the towns in Italy of Greek origin 51 • In

its neighbourhood stood Cypra, called by Strabo a Tyrrhenian

city 59 ; which must also refer, not to the Etruscans, but the ancient

Tyrrhenians. On the coast of the Gallic part of Picenum was Pi­

saurum, the Greek coins of which show· that its inhabitants were

not U mbrians or Sabellians: they may have been a Greek settle­

ment from Ancona, or on the other hand Tyrrhenians and Siculians

who had maintained their independence.

Pliny further says, that together with the Siculians the· Libur­

nians had inhabited the. coast of Picenum, and that .a Liburnian

city called Truentum had continued in existence amid all the changes

of the population 53 : not however assuredly that it retained a dis­

tinct character down to the time of Pliny; this can only have been.

visible to Cato, whom Pliny inconsiderately transcribed from.

Hence it looks as if both sides of the Adriatic had been inhabited

by the Illyrians: and this is no way surp;ising; whether we sup­

pose them to have crossed the gulf and thus spread from one coast to

the opposite, or to have been settled in this manner from a much

earlier time·. But that eitremely accurate and trustworthy writer,

Scylax, draws a very positive and express line of distiilction be­

tween. the Liburnians on the eastern coast and the lllyrians 54, as a

totally different race: and the name Truentum has the Pelasgic

form to which I have before called the reader's attention 55 , At the

time when our historical accounts of these coasts begin, the Libur­

nians were very extensively diffused. Corcyra, before the Greeks

took possession of it, was peopled by them 56 ; so was Issa and the

149 Ante, ut fama docet, tellus possessa Pelasgis: Silius vm. 445.

* Above note 91.

50 Pliny m. 19.

51 Justin xx. I.

52 v. p. 241. b.

53 m. 18. 19.

, 54 Peri pl. p.' 7. M•'Ttt

A1~upvo?J, &lcrlv 'IA7'.up101 Wvo,, 1<.:tl 1rctp011<oucr11

oi 'IMup101 '7l"ttptt B.t>.tt'T'T~r p.1)(,pl Xttovltt, 'TH' l<tJ.'Ti Kip&Uf<J,V.

55 n.148.

56 Strabo vi. p. 20!:1. d.

t•HISTORY OF ROME.

39

neighbouring islands 157: and thus they form a link between the Pe­

lasgians of Epirus and those in Italy on the coast of the upper

sea •• themselves~! venture the conjecture-a Pelasgian race. In

fact, long before the time when our history happens t'o commence,

the face of Europe had been changed by migrations not inferior in

power or in the multitudes that took part in them, to those which

gave rise to the later revolutions in the destiny of nations; and such

a movement of countless hosts, no recollection of which would have

remained but for a merely incidental mention without any indica­

tion of the date, was the expedition of the Illyrian Encheleans, who

seem to have penetrated into the heart of Greece, and even to

have sacked Delphi 58 • I conceive this must have been a migra­

tion of the whole Illyrian people from far-off northern countries;

and I believe that the earlier Pelasgian population in Dalmatia,

which was overpowered by them, was not quite exterminated.

'Ve read of Pelagonians on this coast*; an Epir~t race of the same

name occurs on the confines· of Macedonia and Thessaly: and

when -it is said that tl).e Hylli were· Greeks who had been bar­

barizedt, the correct presumption is, that they were a branch of the

Pelasgians, not of the remote Hellens, who did not became power­

ful and numerous till late.

Herodotus, whose statement concerning the Teucrian origin of

the Preonians 59 on the Strymon is not more vague than others of

his on similar points, must certainly have conceived that they re­

mained behind there during the march of the Teucrians and My­

sians, prior to the Trojan war, when these nations were overrun­

ning the countries down to the Ionian sea. Unquestionably they

were neither Thracians nor Illyrians; and so there is no family

with which we have better grounds for connecting these Pa:onians

on the Strymon, than with that of the Macedonians and Bottireans.

On the other hand it continues a matter of doubt whether the later

Greeks were justified in considering the Pannonians as Preonians.

It is worthy of remark however with regard to this point, that the

Pannonians must have had a very great facility for acquiring the

Latin language; since under Augustus, a very short time after they

157 Schol. Apollon. IV. 564. Of their extension toward the north I shall

speak lower down: see notes 503-505.

58 Herodot. IX. 43. Comp. Eurip. Bacch. 1333, and Musgrave's note.

* Strabo. vu. p. 326. c.

·

t Scymnus. vv. 407-410.

59 v. 13. vu. 20. 75. From the catalogue in the Iliad it certainly appears

that the supremacy of Troy extended over Thrace and beyond the Strymon

even down to mount Olympus.

'40

HISTORY OF ROME.

became dependent upon Rome, the use of it was generally diffused

among them 160 : in the same manner it is in Pmonia and upper

Macedonia, and in the territory of the Epirot tribes on the borders

of Thessaly, that the Walachian tongue arose; .while the lllyrians

retained the Schypian.

I am anxious to close my stq.tement of these researches; for in

proporti.on as the extent they assign to the Pelasgians increases, so,

I am aware, do the scruples they are likelito raise: I take leave to

reserve notices concerning lapygia of the same kind with those

hitherto produced, until I collect the acrounts left of that country:

where the Pcucetians, no less than the Oenotrians in the south west,

were derived by Pherecydes from Pelasgus; and where what is re­

lated of lllyrian immigrations, ought perhaps to be referred to the

Liburnian inhabitants. I am standing at the goal, and from it a

survey may be taken of the circle in which I have found and proved

the existence of Pelasgian tribes, not as vagrant gypsies, but firmly

settled, as powerful, respectable nations, in a period for t~ie greater

part anterior to our Grecian history. Nor is it as a hypothesis,

but with full historical conviction, that I say, there was a time when

the country from the Po and the Arno to the R,hyndacus was in­

habited by the Pelasgians, then perhaps more widely spread than

any other people in Europe; only the line of their possessions was

broken in Thrace, so that the chain between the Tyrrhenians of Asia

and the Pelasgia:i. city of Argos was kept up by the isles in the

north of the lEgean.

· But when the genealogers and Ilellanicus wrote, all that was left

of this immense race, were solitary, detached, widely scattered

remnants, such as those of the Celtic tribes in' Spain; like moun­

tain-peaks that tower as islands, where the plains have been turned

by floods into a sea. Like those Celts, they were conceived to be,

not fragments of a great people, but settlements formed by colo­

nizing or emigration, after the manner of the Grecian which lay

similarly dispersed. This being once assumed· as necessary,-and,

so soon as the vast original magnitude and extent of the nation were

lost sight of, this notion naturally suggested itself-it seemed to be

at all events deducible from all the circumstances and consistent

with all the relations of the case, that the Tyrrhenians at. Cortona

shoul:l have come from Spina at the mouth of the Po: this how­

ever does not make the account given by Hellanicus of the slightest

value in a historical point of view; any more so than those which

160 Velleius 11. 110. In omnibus Pannoniis non disciplime tantummodo

zed linguw quoque notitia Romanw.IIISTORY OF ROME.

41

<lescribe the pretended expeditions of Odin and the Asai from the

Tanais into Scandinavia.

Pherecydes had not the same grounds, which justified Hellanicus

in the c~se of the insulated Pelasgians at Spina and' Cortona, for

assuming that the Oenotrian's and Peucetians, to whom he should

also have added the Sicelians in the island, had migrated from

Ilellas. What imposed upon him, was the fallacy, which is still

so general, that tribes of a common stock must have sprung genea­

logically by ever-widening i:amifications from a single root. This

fallacy escaped detection among the ancients, owing perhaps to their

admitting a number of originally different races of men. They

who deny such a plurality, and mount up to a single pair of ances­

tors, mast devise a miracle to account for the diversities in the

bodily structure of the different races; ~bile they cling to that of

the confusion of tongues, as a solution for the diversities in such

languages as are 'essentially and radically distinct. The assumption

of such miracles is not an offence against reason: for, since the

ruins of a former world manifestly show that, before the present

order of things, another must have existed, it is certainly conceiv­

able that the present order should at one time have undergone a

material change, and yet not have been totally interrupted, The

offender against reason is he who distorts the laws of experience,

that without regard to truth he may maintain the conceivableness of

what directly contradicts them. In matters of history reason de­

mands our acknowledging that the origin of things lies in every case

beyond the sphere of our notions, which comprehend only their de­

velopment and progress; and accordingly the historical inquirer

will confine himself to going backward from one step of time to

another. In doing so he will frequently find tribes of the same

stock, that is, having the same peculiar features of character and

language, on the opposite coasts of the same sea; for instance the

Pelasgians in Greece, in Epirus, and in the south of Italy: without

being any way justified in assuming that one of these separate re­

gions was the original home whence a part of the inhabitants emi­

grated to the other. · In like manner we find the Iberians on the

islands of the Mediterranean; the Celts in Gaul and in Britain: an·d

this is analogous to the geography of the animal and vegetable

kingdoms; the great circles of which are separated by mountains,

'

·

and inclose narrow seas 16 1.

161 The author of a remark by which prejudices are irritated, must guard

it against misconstructions. I am far from meaning to assert that those ex-

1.-F42

HISTORY OF ROME.

The further we go back into antiquity, the richer, the more dis­

tinct, and the more broadly marked, do we find the dialects of great

languages: they subsist one beside the other, with the same origi­

nality and in the s~me manner as if they were totally different

tongues. The existence of a universal German or Greek language

from the beginning is a mere idea: it is when the dialects, after be­

ing impoverished and enfeebled, become extinct, and when reading

grows to be general, that a common language arises. Nor do

languages ever intermix, except where whole tribes, or large masses

<>f people, such as slaves that have been imported in swarms, are

forced to adopt a strange one. In like manner do we find new

forms arising in the corporeal world: and these may deviate further

from the type whence they sprang, than other kinds which are

essentially different.

In a rich family oflanguages one dialect will diverge from another,

until it rather deserves the name of a sister tongue; without however

having any thing yet in it essentially foreign. Bu~ as we find tran­

sitions in nature with 'regard to other things, so do we find them in

the human race with regard to languages: in many we see marks

of an affinity to two others, which, especially in their roots, are

entirely strangers: and when this is the case without our discove~­

ing any certain traces of violent alteration in the forms of the words,

it is illogical to presume that such a language must be a new one

produced by the intermixture of th~ other two. Sometimes too we

may look i.n vain for a language, to which the foreign element

whence it receives its peculiar .character, can belong.

Thus two languages may in some respects be nearly akin, in

others altogether alien. Such is the relation between the Sclavonic

and Lithuanian, perhaps also between the Gaelic and Welsh: in this

manner the Persian is connected with the Sclavonic in many of its

forms. and roots. In Latin there are two elements mixed up to­

gether; one ,connected with the Greek, the other entirely foreign to

it. But even in the former the distinction is no le.ss evident than

the affinity: and it was just the same with the Pelasgians and

Greeks as races: hence it came that the latter, notwithstanding

tensive seats of the Pelasgians were their original country from the beginning

of the human race: however high we may rise toward that epoch, still the an­

nals of the Egyptians and Babylonians would not fill up more than a small

part of the inscrutable period during which nations must have been in no less

active collision than in after times. I only protest against the building on an

as1umption which is utterly unfounded.IIISTORY OF ROME.

43

their affinity, could look on the former as foreigners, and call their

language a barbarous one 16•.

The Oenotrians, as the Greeks, and possibly the Greeks alone,

called them, dwelt in Bruttium and Lucania: for, befo're the irrup­

tion of the Sabellians, the west coast also as far as Posidonia belonged

to Oenotria 63 ; it was he~e that Elea was founded by the PhocceansB 4 ;

her€) too lay the Oenotrid islands'*. Two distinct tribes of Oeno­

trians are spoken of: the Italietes, in the southernmost peninsula; the

Choni::ins to the north, without the isthmus, stretching up to lapygia.

The former are said to have led a pastoral life, until, long before

the age of Minos, they were induced by I talus, a powerful, wise, and

heroic man, partly by persuasion and partly by constraint, to betake

themselves to tillage, and to submit to laws: being thus moulded

into a new people by him, they named themselves and their terri­

tory after him. His laws established syssitia or public meals for

the men," to which each fumished his prescribed share~ This cus­

tom, with some other laws attributed to !talus, was preserved down

to a very late period, as long as any remains of the nation were to

•

be found 65 •

The story in which the ltalietes are represented as splitting into

two hostile tribes, the Sicelians and the Morgetes, can only be

considered as a mythical way of recording that the former, a people

powerful in their own island, were descended and had separated

from the Oenotrians. ~lse the name of the Sicelians, .as I have

ah:eady remarked 66, was equivalent to that of the Italians; it com­

1_62 Aristotle says (Meteorolog. 1. 14.) the Hellens were called rp,,,'ix.01 at

the time they were inhabiting the highest mountain land of Epirus; and, as

is well known, that name was used by Callimachus and by Alexander the

lEtolian. The'Se poets belonged to a school fond of hunting out for every

rare word to ornament their diction: in Latin however the name of Gr<Eci was

not imported out of books, but was in use from time immemorial together with

Graii; the latter being in early times the prevalent form. It will be found to

· be a 'general rule· in the old Latin, that nations had several names; a simple

one and derivatives from it: such as Graii and Graici. Aristotle's account

was most probably derived from the Epirot 1.0')'101, a~d the name was a Pe­

lasgic one; in this way it c~me to the RomanS'; and we can easily explain

how an lEtolian happened to use it.

63 Dionysius 1. 73. Scymnus Chiils v. 243. 244.

G4 'EvrH<T<tV'To 7ro/\lv iii> 'l''ii> '01vtJ1'l'fln; 'l'<t.UTnv li-1'1; vu• Tihn Z<<tAtl'l'<U.

Herodot. 1. 167.

* Pliny m. 7.

65 Aristot. Polit. vu. 10. p. 198. Sylb. Dionysius 1. 35: both after Antio­

clms. Aristotle's ildding, these laws are even now still in force (Z<<t.l vuv 1'1'1),

is certainly surprising: it is scarcely possible that there 'should have been any

Oenotriana in the fifth century living according to their own laws.

66 See above 'p. 36, note 143.

·

·

044.

llISTORY OF RO.ME.

prehends the Chonians also 167, and thus corresponds entirely with

that of the Oenotrians: nay it extends across the Ionian sea amongst

the Epirots, where Echetus, who ruled at Bucheta 6 ~, is called king of

the Sicelians. In the Odyssey, when this name occurs, the people

meant seem to be the Epirots 69 : and thus we get a solution for the

origin of those Tyrrhenians who migrated to Athens, in the mention

of their having come out of Acarnania. Not that they had sailed

from the Tiber and halted there : but they were P~lasgians of Epi­

rus; at the time represented in the catalogue of the Greek army

before Troy, that people were still masters of this country, whicb,

like Thesprotia, did not yet form a part of Greece.

That the Epirots and Oenotrians were branches of the same

nation, is a fact of which yet further indications are supp lied by the

geographical names, and those surer than such arguments are usu­

ally. In Aristotle's account of the Oenotrians, the reading, before

it was altered by Victorius, was not Clwnes, but Chaones7°: and

in whatever way the name of that.extinct race was spelt by Aris­

totl!), it is no less certain that it was the same on both coasts of the

Ionian sea, than that the l\folossian king Alexander found to his

ruin, there was a Pandosia and a river Acheron in Oenotria as well

as in Thesprotia*.

This Pandosia had been the seat of the Qenotrian kings71 : the

town 'of Chone, in the territory of Crotona 7 ~, is a proof that at all

events the whole of Oenotria to the north of the isthmus belonged

to the land of Chonia or Chone 7 3. But there were also Chonians

in the Siritis and at Polieum, found there by the Ionians who were

driven from Colophon by the Lydians; and these fugitives, being

perhaps rendered ferocious by their misfortunes, inhumanly slaugh­

tered them7 4 • The taking of Colophon may be dated about the

25th Olympiad, the year of Rome 75 75 : and soon after comes the

167 According to an ancient fable, which calls Siris the daughter of Mor­

ges, and her husband Scindus: Etymol. M. v. "J:.ip".

68 Schol. on the Odyssey "Ji.. 85.

· 69 I have proved this in .the Rhenish Museum 1. p. 256.

70 It is owing only to the learning of Demetrius Chalcocondylas, that his

manuscript anticipates this emendation. In Strabo also, xiv. p. 654. d, we

find Chaonia instead of Clwne or Chonia.

* Livy VIII. 24.

71 Strabo VI. p. 256. b.

72 Strabo VI. p. 254. b.

73 Casaubon on Strabo, p. 255. •

74 Strabo VI. p. 264. b. compared with Athenreus XII. p. 523: c. (where

i1t/2t.~9iv•m should be inserted after KoAO~"'vi,.v) and Aristotle Polit. VII. 10.

75 Under Gyges: who according to Herodotus, supposing the date of the

fall of Sardis to be determinate, reigned from 01. 15. 3 to 25. 1: according toHISTORY OF ROl\lE.

45

ongm of the Ionian city of Siris. The dominion over its rich

plains was for years the subject of a feud between Tarentum and

Sybaris ; these states at the height of their greatness continuing to

keep up the hereditary hatred which prevailed between the Dorians

and Achieans. To exclude Tarentum from the Siritis, the Syba­

rites procured the founding of l\Ietapontum. As to the date of this

we are unfortunately without any information; it is therefore only

by conjecture, but without risk of going very far wrong, that we

can place the wars of the Metapontines against Tarentum and the

Oenotrians of the interior 1 7 6 , which were terminated by a cession

of territory on the part of the former, about the middle of the se­

cond century. So at that tillle there were still independent Oen­

o.trians. Subsequently however far the g~eater part of the count~y

afterward called Lucania must have been subject to Sybaris. The

statement indeed that her citizens amounted to three hundred thou­

sand,. is at the least uncertain-although, supposing that number to

embrace all who had the rights of isopolity, it is not to be rejected

as utterly jmpossible-and so is that which assigns the same num­

b~r~to the army she sent against the Crotoniats: there is no ground

however for entertaining any doubt touching the four nations and

five and twenty cities said to have been subject to her77: and her

founding Posidonia and Laos on the lower sea shows that the do­

minion of Sybaris reached from coast to coast; these colonies being

evidently designed to protect her frontiers. In like manner Terina

was founded by Croton on the lower sea; as were Hipponium

and Medma by Locri. To this period, under the dominion of all

the Italian Greeks, and not of the Sybarites alone, are we to look

for the general bondage of the .Pelasgians7 8 ; that is, of t11e Oeno­

trians in the immediate territory of the cities ; although in several

districts it certainly lasted much longer. Many thousands however

had a happier lot; fol' immense numbers were admitted to the rights

Eusebius, froni 01. 20. 2 to 29. 1. The latter statement seems to ·rest on the

authority of Apollodorus: as I conclude more especially because Eusebius

names Archilochus, the contemporary of Gyges, under the last mentioned.

Olympiad, and Nepos, who followed Apollodorus, :r:µakes him flourish in the

reign of Tullus Hostilius. (See Gellius xvu. 21.) The praise bestowed by

Archilochus on the Siritis (in Athenreus xu. p. 523. d.) was occasioned by

the success of that Ionian settlement at a distance from the barbarian con-.

querors.

176 TI0>.1µount1.'

TttptJ.nirou' ,.,.; <rou, V7r<pu1µbw, Oir,.<rpo6,.

Strabo vr. p. 265. a.

77 Strabo vr. p. 2G3. b.

78 Above, p. 21. and n. 58.

wpo, .,.,u,46

HISTORY OF ROME.

of citizenship 1 10: this is the only way of explaining how Sybaris and

Croton had inhabitants to fill a range of walls, a very small portion

of which would have sufficed for the descendants of the first set­

tlers ; and of this plebeian population the main part must have been

natives of the country, chiefly Pelasgians.

Whether the whole of the Sybarite territory fell under the power

of Croton, is not known; nor how long that city maintained the

predominance she had a;quired. The period of her most flourishing

condition does not seem to have been long; and when she too had

fallen from her eminence, a part of her subjects may have recovered

their freedom. When Antiochus however drew the boundary of

Italy from the Laos to Metapontum, in 32!), the Oenotrians to the

west of that line had already been subjugated by the Lucanians;

not expelled 80 : hence this coast, though no longer accounted a part

of Italy, is still called Oenotria 81 • The time of migrations was

gone by; it was more profitable to the conqueror to have tributary

subjects than herds of slaves that he was to buy: and that the. main

part of the inhabitants in Lucania did not belong to the ruling Sa­

bellian race, is proved by the fewness of the Lucanians in the

census taken in the Cisalpine war 8 ~. It may be conjectured that

even by Antiochus the Chonians had been spoken of as an extinct

race, as they are by Aristotle 83 : not that they had been extirpated

by the inhumanity of the sovereign Greek cities on the west coast

of the Tarentine gulf; the cause of their disappearance was, that

they did not ev\O!n form dependent townships, but were degraded to

a state of villanage, and adopted the language and habits of the

Greeks 84 ; as was done, under circumstances far less oppressive, by

iheir kinsmen, the Sicelians of the .island 85 ; and by the Epiiots;

who by Polybius are not distinguished from the Greeks, although

the wild tribes of the JEtolian mountains are so.

The facility with which they were thus moulded into Greeks, is

a characteristic of the Pelasgian tribes, and a main cause of the

breaking up and extinction of the nation. It is natural to view it as

a result of .the original affinity between the two races, which yet

179 Diodor. xn. 9.

80 As Strabo erroneously words it: 'l'OOV :Ectm'l'1»V ctu~~BivT1»1 awl ?ro;..u, Jtttl

-rour Olv,.,Tpour 01<,'9ct;..6vTwv. vi. p. 253. b.

·

81 Above p. 14, note 33.

82 30,000 foot and 3000 horse: Polybius 11. 24.

83 Polit. vn. 10. ~O'tt1 i<ctl oi Xoom Oiv,.,Tpol TO "'vor.

84 Pandosia, the ancient residence of the Oenotrian kings, is called in the

time of Philip a Greek city: Scylax p. 4.'

85 Diodorus v. 6.IIISTORY OF ROME.

47

were not on that account the less essentially different; and such I

believe to have been the case: yet we may observe a magical power

exercised by the Greek language and national character over foreign

races that came in contact with them, even ''vhere no S'Uch affinity

can be supposed. The inhabitants of Asia i\linor began to be

hellenized from the time of the Macedonian conquest, though very

few genuine Greeks settled amongst them: Antioch, though· the

language of the common people was a barbarous one, became al­

together a Greek city; and the entire transformation of the Syrians

was averted only by their Oriental inflexibility. Nay the Albanians,

who have settled as colonies in modern Greece, have adopted the

Romaic language by the side of th~ir own, and in several places

have forgotten the latter: it was in this way alone that the immortal

Suliotes were Greeks; and even the noble Ilydriotes, whose de­

struction we shall perhaps have to deplore before the publication

of this volume, are Alpanian settlers,

In the growth of so numerous a Greek population in Oenotria,

we find a justification for the name of Magna Grrecia. That the

change 'vas complete, appears from the language of the Bruttians

being Greek, though the Oscan had also been introduced'*; and by

the Romans they we.re considered so much in the light of foreigners,

that, in the enumeration of the Italian forces for. the Cisalpine war,

their fighting men, like those of the Greek cities, are omitted.

Calabria, as well as Sicily, continued to be a Grecian land, though

the Romans planted colonies on the coasts: the Greek languaga

did not begin to give way there till the fourteenth century; and it

is known to have prevailed not three hundred years since at Ros­

sano, and no doubt much more extensively; for our knowledge of

the fact as to that little town is merely accidental: indeed even at

this day there is a population that speaks Greek remaining in the

·

district of Locri 1 • 6•

At the time of the Peloponnesian war there were Sicelians still

* See note 310.

186 For the assurance of this fact, which is stated doubtfully in several

books of travels, I am indebted to the Neapolitan minister, Count Zurlo;

whose learning precludes the possibility of his having confounded the natives

with the Albanian coloni_es. I seize this opportunity of adorning my descrip­

tion of the nations belonging to the golden age of Italy, with the name of a

man, whom the shades of the ancient Samnites would rejoice in as their worthy

descendant, the last survivor of that intellectual prime of Naples, which after

blooming for a century was extinguished in blood in 179!): may he accept

this offering of veneration.48

IIISTORY OF ROME.

existing in the southernmost parts of lt:ily 1 •7; and they must have

formed distinct communities, even though they may have been de­

pendent on more powerful states; since they still preserved their

Nyssitia and other hereditary institutions'"· I refer this to the time

of Antioch us: ninety years later, when Aristotle wrote, it seems

quite out of the question. It is true, some twenty years before, the

southern half of Lueania, which as then extended to Rhegium 89 ,

had separated itself and formed an independont people; and their

name of revolted slaves 90 , which the insurgents accepted as a term

of defiance, authorizes us in rejecting the silly tale that they were

J,ucanian youths exasperated by hard treatment, and in looking for

their origin to the ancient serf);• in supposing that such Oenotrians

as remained, being strengthened by the accession of Oscan free­

booters, after the power of the Greek cities was broken by the Lu­

canians, had in this manner rcovered their freedom. But this was

a new epoch; and ,;hen the Bruttians arose,. they were a new

people, little likely to retain any primitive institutions. .

·when the Roman arms reached these parts, there was no people

in Magna Grrecia except Lucanians, Bruttians, and Greeks: the

Oenotrians were known solely to the learned, and m the writings

of the Italian Greeks.

2:

.

187 Thucydides v1.

88 Aristotle Polit.. vn. 10.

89 This extent is ascribed ta it by Scylax.

90 Bruttians: Strabo v1. p. 255. b. Dio~orus xvi. 15.THE OPICANS AND AUSONIANS.

THE country between Oenotria and Tyrrhenia was by the Greeks

called Opica or Ausonia. Aristotle says: on the borders of the

Oenotrians, toward Tyrrhenia, dwelt the Opicans, formerly and

to this day known by the additional name of Ausonians 1 0 1 : he does

not confine' their country to Campania; for he terms Latium also

a district of Opica9 9 , Cuma in Opica was distinguished by that

adjunct from the one in .l.Eolis: Nola was called by Ilecatreus an

Ausonian city 03 ; by others it would be called an Opican one.

The south-east boundary may be regarded as indeterminate, and

may have been enlarged with the conquests of the Samnites in

Oenotria: there is also an indeterminateness in the Roman account,

that Ausonia was once the name of the country between the Apen­

nines and the lower sea 94 • The notion that Temesa, which lay

far to the south, and from which the Greeks of the Homeric age

drew their, copper 95 , was founded by the Ausonians 96 , seems to

rest only on a misunderstanding of the expression used by an Al­

exandrian poet97.

It is an erroneous notion, occasioned by an inaccuracy of language,

that the territory occupied by the Alisonians in the earliest time is

extended by Aristotle at least as far south as the Silarus. If we

suppose a line carried along mount Garganus and the ridge of hills

which form the northern border to the valley of Beneventum, and

prolong it to the Vulturnus somewhere between Telesia and Allifai,

the whole coast and country to the south of it still belonged to the

191 Polit. vn. 10.

92 'E>-.B'i'iv ('TtoV 'A;t.«lll" 'TIV«' f-U'T<t. >Tilv 'H.fou ,,_•,._"'rnv) eh 'TO,' 'TO?Tot

'Toii>Tov .,.;;, 'O?T11til, 6, """'i'T<tl Arlmov, t?l'l 'T'f TvppHVll<lf m>-.a'.j>u "'lf<tVO'.

Dionysius 1. 72.

94 Fest. Epit. v. Ausoniam.

93 Stephanus Byz. v. Nr.f""·

95 Odyss. it.. 184.

96 Strabo. v1. p. 255. c.

97 See above, p. 18, note 49.

1.-G50

HISTORY OF ROME.

Tyrrhenians and Italians, long after the establishment of the Greek

settlements in Italy. Hence the land of the Opicans contained

only the northern districts of Samnium 198 : and there remained a

recollection that the land about Cales and Beneventum was the

country first called Ausonia 99 •

Aristotle tell tts that Opican was the general name of the nation,

.flusonian the particular name for a branch of it 200 : in this passage

again he unquestionably had Antiochus before him ; which renders

it clear in what sense we are to understand the statement quoted

from the latter, that the Ausonians and Opicans were the same

people 1 • It is a common source of the most perplexing confusion

with regard to the ages of legendary history, that many nations

consisted of several tribes, which are sometimes spoken of under

their own name, sometimes under the common one : and thus,

when one story talked of Pelasgians, another of Sicelians or Tyr­

rhenians, as the inhabitants of a country, it was commonly sup­

posed even among the ancients that they were two races which had

dwelt there either together or successively. So Polybius has spoken

of the Opicans and Ausonians as two different nations inhabiting the

coast around the bay of N aples 2 : for no ·one is endowed with every

gift ; and that excellent historian of the period which lay immedi­

ately before his view, as he felt no interest in investigating primitive

history, is of no authority on such points. In like manner Strabo

distinguishes the Ausonians from the Oscans, making the former

the earlier inhabitants of Campania, the latter a tribe that occupied

the country after them 3 • A writer, whom he quotes without naming

him, carries the erroneous subdivision still further, speaking of

Opicans, Ausonians and Oscans, as having inhabited Campania in

succession; then came the Cumans, after them the Tyrrhenians,

and finally these were subdued by the Samnites 4 • The Oscans

Strabo considers as extinct, and accounts the Sidicines a branch of

198 Strabo v. p. 250 b.

99 Fest. Epit. v. Ausoniam. •

200 'O?T1i<ol, 'tnv t?TuvuµEe1.v "Aucrov" 1tll.H9in6'. Polit. vu. 10.

1 Strabo v. p. 242. c. 'Anloxoc <p•crl 'tHr X,oipct.r Tct.U't•r 'O?T11tou&

oix.'Mut.tt, -roUTou, cf'& xt.tl "AurTOVt:tl' xr.o.. . ti(J'Bt1.1.

2 Strabo proceeding in the passage just cited: Iloll.u{fac J' eµ<pe1.iru Juo

~9r> voµftfJ/Jv 'tct.u'tct.. 'Om11.ouc -yef.p <p•cr1 11.ct.l "Avcrovct.c olxeir 'tHP X,oipctv

'l"ctU'THV ?T1pl 'T"OV Kpct'l">ip<t.

3 v. p. 232. d. p. 233. a.

4 Strabo, v. p, 242. c, goes on thus: "All.ll.01 J~ ll.e-youcrt1, oixour<T".. r

'O?TJX.tllV 'll"p6Tepov, xctl 'Au0"6V•V oi I' iuc.elvouc (trUv ix1Ivo1,), x«ircia-x_iir iJO"'Ttpo•

·oo-xr.or 'l'I ~9voc, 'ttoU.,.ouc I' ,;71'o Kuµr:1.f0Jv, Ex,fvi;uc J' ii7Z'O iufP>1V(A}V f1t~,a-1iv­

('TOU'Tou, JI Kot?TUH<) ?Tctpot ;t ~p>icrct1 J:otrvf'Ta ".HISTORY OF ROME.

51

them 205 : so that he seems to apply that name, as far as he has any

clear view touching the matter,. to those Ausonians who continued

unmixed with the Samnites. He may have been led to do so, from

finding the Samnites and other Sabellians called Opicans by Greek

authors 6 • It might seem to this able writer convenient to get rid

of an ambiguity by borrowing the Latin form, giving it a definite

meaning, and allowing the Greek form to preserve that which had

crept into it. For surely he rnn scarcely have been ignorant that

Opicus, Opscus, and Oscus, are, the same name, as is expressly re­

marked by Roman grammarians 7 : the first form was the only one

adopted by the Greeks, and the last became the prevalent one in

Latin. It is true he ought then to have called the people who

dwelt in Samnium before the Sabellians, the Oscans, not the Opi­

cans8: but this is a piece of forgetfulness that even the most accu­

rate may fall into.

·

The name of Opicans was associated by the Gre'eks, from its

being borne by their ferocious mercenaries, with the notion of

barbarians. Even the Romans, as the kinsmen of the l\'Iamertines,

were designated by them with this name of dishonour, and that too

so late as in the time of Cato:· ;i.lthough they were zealous, when

seeking for favour or protection, to maintain that the Samnites were

sprung from the Lacedemonians, the ,Romans from the Arcadians.

But if those Opicans who were driven out by the Samnites, were

Oscans, it is singular at the least that the language of the conquerors

and of the tribes that issued from them, is called Oscan°. · How­

ever supposing the Oscans who remained in their country, to have

far outnumbered their conquerors, theirs might become the prevail­

ing language, in .a mixed, if not in a pure state; even if they were

205 v. p. 237. c.

"ocrxt»v fxi\o.,011T6Trm1.

"Oer1<01, K<Lf<'71'<ivoor

rnvo,

01'Alh0l7l'O''

and P· 233. a.

'TOOV

"'

6 After the authority of the younger Dionysius was subverted, the

whole island was in danger of falling into the power of the Phenicians or of

the Opicans. Epist. Plat. vrn. p. 353. d. · These Opicans can be no other

than. the Sabellian mercenaries, who somewhat later were called Mamertines

and Campanians: the military forces of the Greek states in Sicily consisted

chiefly of these troops.

7 Festus .v. Oscum. In omnibus fere antiquis commentariis scribitur

Opiens pro Osco.

8 v. 250. b. ;, 'f~ 'Toor ·o,,.,,.,,,,_9,.,.g,.,_6nte i1<alvov,.

9 Livy x. 20. To spy out the movements ,of the Samnite army, men

gnari OscOJ linguOJ are sent. To bring proof that the language of the Cam­

panians was Oscan, would be superfluous: the Oscan spoken by the Bruttians

(Fest. Epit. v. bilingues Brutates) can have come to them only from the Sa.­

bellians.

p.52

HISTORY OF ROME.

a race entirely different from the Sabellians in stock and •speech:

thus the Italian was very soon adopted by the descendants of the

Lombard><: history for centuries speaks only 'of the Lombards in

Italy, though they were merely a small part of the population; but

we never hear of a Lombard language. That a mixture had taken

place, is expressly asserted by Varro, at the very time he is speak­

ing of the languages as completely distinct2 10 : he .however is not a

witness whose words will justify us in concluding that there was

no affinity between the two 11 •

The Oscan was spread over the whole south ofltaly, even down

to Bruttium and Messapia; the country of Ennius, who spoke both

Oscan and Greek as his mother-tongues. Its dialects must have

differed greatly; since those who spoke it, were partly the old Au­

sonians, partly nations in whom not only the. Sabellians but the

Oenotrians also were grafted on the Oscan stock: and such dialects

must be exhibited by the inscriptions in this language which have

been preserved in various parts.

The Oscau language however is by no means an inexplicable

mystery lik.e the Etruscan: had but one single book in it been pre­

served, we should be perfectly able to decipher it out of itself. Of

the inscriptions, some may be made out word for word, others in

part at least, with complete certainty, and without any violence.

We discover therein that other element which is mixed ,up with the

Greek part of the Latin language; and the forms are such as in

Latin have lost some of their syllables and their terminations, after

the custom of languages when they intermix and grow old: gram­

matical forms too and inflexions are common, which in Latin ap­

pear but rarely and as exceptions. Since this language is not

unintelligible to us, it is not surprising that dramas in it were per­

fectly intelligible to the Romans; nothing but a little practice was

requisite 12•

I now return to the Ausonians, whom on the testimony of Antio­

chus we must consider as a branch of the Oscan nation. Their.

name has a sound which is quite foreign to Italy, and which it ac­

210 Sabina usque radices in Oscam linguam egit: De L. L. v1. 3. p. 86.

11 . Hirpus meant a wolf in the Samnite (Festus v. Irpini); and so it did

in the lEquian. Pliny v11. 2; Solinus p. 11. b. comp. note 231.

12 In investigations so multifarious and extensive as this history requires,

it is cheering to find persons qualified for doing so ready to relieve us by car­

rying on some of those which do not immediately concern the main object of

the work. I am very glad to forego the intention I before. announced, of

giving a view of the Oscan language from its remains, since that task hall

been undertaken by Professor KlenzE'.

·HISTORY OF ROME.

53

quired in the mouth of the Greeks. The native form must have

been /luruni; for from this, it is plain, is /lurunci 218 derived; and

we do n"ot in truth require the opinion of Dion Cassius and Servius,

to establish that the Ausonians and Aurunci:ms were one people 14•

The district inhabited by the latter was that mentioned by Livy as

the seat of the last Ausonians: their town of Cales' was taken in

419, and three others belonging to them on the lower Liris were

destroyed in 440 in an unprovoked war of extermination*. Livy's

calling them Ausonians in these passages, and not Auruncians, may

be explained thus: it is almost certain that in this part he had the

books of Dionysius before him, and he copied from them without.

consideration: hence too about the same period he has been led to

talk of the Messapianst, when according to Latin usage he should

have called them the Sallentines.

Among the cities of the Auruncians Suessa is known to us ; it

lay in the very heart of the country possessed by the Ausonians. As

to the mention made of them long before, soon after the expulsion

of the Tarquins, it is plain that in the old annals the Volscians

were also called Auruncians, and that it w'as only the later historians

who fancied they were two different nations 15 •

This agrees with our finding Scylax including the inhabitants of

the whole coast for a day's journey to the south of Circeii 16, that is,

as far as the Vulturnus, where in history'we meet with Volscians,

Ausonians and Auruncians, under the name of the first. For Olsi,

as it stands in the Periplus 17 , is no error of the transcriber; it is

Volsi, dropping the digamma; hence Volsici was derived, and then

contracted into Volsci. The Volscentes or Volcentes, a people of

whom we know nothing else, but who make their appearance along

with the Lucanians 18 , are probably the same nation; that is, ancient

Opicans driven southward by the Sabellian immigration, but who

213 .!luruncus is .!lurunicus: see below note 244.

14 Dion Cassius fr. IV. p. 4, ed. Reim. Servius on lEn. vn. 7Z7. Fes­

tus, v. Ausoniam, calls the mythical hero, Auson, the founder of Suessa. Au­

runca: tha.t is to say, the Auruncia.ns were Ausonia.ns.

* VIII. 16. IX. 25.

f VIII. 24.

15 The war in which Pometia. and Cora. suffered such terrible punish­

ment for their revolt, is told by Livy twice over; under the year 251 of the

Auruncia.ns, and of the Volscia.ns under the year 259. 'Apj<upourrxfJl>v, in

Strabo v. p. 231. a, in the list of the ancient inhabitants of La.tium, is an error

of the copiers for 'Aupo6p...v.

·

16 Which he states at 500 stadia, p. 30: unless~ ought to be changed

into{.

·

17 '0110-ol. PeripL 3.

18 Livy xxvn. 15.54

HISTORY OF ROME.

had maintained their independence among the Lucanians : their

name is a remarkable instance of the almost endless variations to

which those of the Italians are subject~ 19 • Thus came the form

Volusci, which the Greeks took to designate the Volscians :. and I

have no doubt that the Elisyci or Helisyci, mentioned by Herodotus

as one of the tribes among which the Carthaginians levied their

army to attack Sicily in the time of Gelon 20 , are no other peopl~

than the Volscians. Hecatams indeed had called the Helisyci a

Ligurian tribe 21 ; but this can only be taken in a very vague sense;

thus, as Dionysius says, by some Greeks the Romans, and by Phi­

listus the Sicelians, were ranked among the Ligurians ; for in He­

rodotus the Helisyci are named, like the Iberians and Celts, along­

side of the Ligurians.

, ,

219 It is a peculiarity of the Latin language, that the simple form of the

name of a nation, which often seems to have been one with the name of its

tipX,•)'h"'• gives rise to derivatives, and these again by composition or con­

traction to new ones, which arc all used without any additional meaning in

the same sense as the simple one. The latter seldom continued current, and

in the case of no one people do we meet with all the derivative forms: but by

collecting the different ones that occur we may obtain a complete view of

their analogy. The simple forms were .!Equus, Volsus, !talus, Umber. The

first class of derivatives end in icus (sicus is shortened into scus), ulus, anus

or inus and unus: Hernicus,· Opicus, Italicus, 'Oµ{dp1"0', Grmcus instead of

Graicus-Volscus, Tuscus, Etruscus-Siculus, Jlpulus,.,. AJ&AO¢, Rutulus, Romu­

lus as a national name,Poenulus-Romanus, Lucanus, Campanus, 'Alx<tvoc, Sabi­

nus, Latinus, Aurunus. The compound inflexions end in iculus: JEquiculus,

Volsculus, Poediculus, Saticulus, Grmculus :-Sabdlus comes fromSabulus, like

ocellus from oculus :-in icinus: Sidicinus :-in unicus·: Auruncus. Tuscanicus

is at least used as an adjective. The termirtations anus, inus, enus, are con­

tracted into ans, ins, ens, or as, is, es, and then follow the inflexions of the

third declension: from Romanus, comes Romas, from Lucanus Lucas, (the

genitive plurals Romanom and Lucanom are found on coins, and the elephant

was called bos Lucas) from Cmnpanus Campas (Plautus Trinum. u. 4. 143.) 1

from Bruttanus Bruttas, from Picenus Picens. Samnis in the same way

comes from Samninus,-which is derived from Samnium,-like Antias, and

like Tiburs from Tiburnus. Ulus in these adjectives is never a diminutive

syllable, no more so in Grmculus than in Hispallus, from Ilispanulus: that

secondary meaning was not affixed to it till late. Now as no change was

made in the name by these terminations, the Siculi in Latium might also be

'called Sicani: a form which must unquestionably have been found by Virgil,

and which he made use of with a view of restricting the other name to the

islanders. To the class of terminations in as belongs IT<t1'iH'l'9' (Dionysius 1.

12); and even "E"""' from ~'"""~· The form of proper names in MC with the

lengthened genitive in •noc is ascribed by Herodian to the ancient language

of the Sicilians: Bekher Anecdot. p. 1390: this would give l'l'et.1'1Mv'l'~C, like

.!lntiatis, Bnuatis, Samnitis.

20 vu. 165.

21

Stephan. Byz. v. 'E"'"r/"01.IllSTURY OF Hoi\m.

55

The language of the V olscians is spoken of as distinct from the

Oscan 222 ; that is, from the dialect so called in the districts under the

Sabellians; and the language on the plate in which the name of

Velitrre seems to occur, is different from that on other monuments :

but the origin of that plate is far too uncertain, for us to pronounce

with positiveness that the inscription is V olsci&.n.

Bordering on the Auruncians of Cales, and of the same race, we

find the Sidicines of Teanum, whom Strabo expressly calls Os­

cans23, and somewhat further the Saticulians on the Vulturnus 94•

Both names are forms derived from the simpler ones Sidici and

Satici, which, having thus traced them back, we perceive to be

cognate words.

The V olscians in Roman story are almost insrparable from the

.lEquians 25 , who are described as a very ancient people, great and

formidable to Rome 26 : they were mountaineers hardened by the

chace, used to make predatory incursions on their neighbours 27 •

When their power was at its highest their territory extended as far

as mount Algidus, between Tusculum, Velitrre, and the towns of

the Hernicans; and as far as the Fucine lake: the fortress on that

lake taken by the Romans in the year 347, which is called a Vol­

scian one 28 , must undoubtedly have belonged tQ the .lEquians.

The Faliscans too by mount Soracte, in whose name that of the

Volscians is clearly dis.cernible, were 1Equians 29 • The Ausonians

however did not make up the whole population of Falerii and .its

subject towns: it was by the descendants of the Pelasgians that the

worship of the Argive Juno with her peculiar rites was preserved

there 30 , although it may perhaps have been completely' adopted by

the conquerors. A word from the Faliscan dialect is preserved,

and this word it had in common with the Samnite 31 •

222 By the comic poet Titinius in Festus v. Oscum; Osce et Volsce fabu­

lantur, nam Latine nesciunt.

23 v. p. 237. c.

24 Virgil .lEneid. vu. 729. Saticulus asper. In history we hear only of

their town Saticulum.

25 The by..forms .JEquanus and .JEquulus are preserved in the Greek

'A111.uo' and "A '"AO': of .!Equiculus we find instances in Latin. .JEquicula, as

a masculine nominative, is an erroneous form, and ought to be expunged

from the dictionaries: in Virg. vu. 747, .!Equicula agrees with

No less

erroneous is the form .JEq11,icola.

26 Livy I.·37. Cicero de Rep. 11. 20. Magnam gentem et ferocem et

rebus populi Romani imminentem.

28 Livy 1v. 57.

27 Virg. .lEn. VII. 747-749.

29 lEquosque Faliscos, Virgil vu. 695, and Servius.

30 Dionysius 1. 21. .

31 Hiryms; sf'e abovP, n. 211.

gms.56

llISTORY OF ROME.

In such words as the Oscan shares with the Latin, we often find

p substituted for qu; pid for quid, and the like : hence it may be

regarded as certain that the name .!Equi contains the radical syllable

of the names Opici and .flpuli, according to the Latin way of ex:

pressing it. For the Apulians properly so called were Opicans,

whose name, after their conquest of the Daunians, passed to the

country they occupied.

For, after the manner of all national migrations, the Opicans in

the whole country between the Tiber and the Adriatic, being them­

selves pressed forward by the Sabellians; threw themselves upon the

Italians, who throughout this whole extent were their neighbours,

and overpowered them. Many of these submitted; others left their

homes: and thus in the oldest traditions of the Italian Greeks it was

related that the Sicelians who crossed over to the island, had been

driven from their abodes by the Opicans 93 ~. Here again the Sice­

lians are the same people with the Italians; and it was only from

the Sicelians on the Tiber being known to be still extant, that the

notion originated which ascribed this migration to them. This

remotest branch of the nation is the very one with regard to which

it is the most improbable that they took part, at least in any con­

siderable numbers, in such an expedition. Rather must it have

come out of Campani:i, of which it is no less certain that in earlier

times it was peopled by the Pelasgians, than that afterward it be­

came so entirely Oscan, as to show the previous population must

have abandoned it.

It was an opinion univ!lrsii.lly received in the age of Augustus,

that Campania, until it was conquered by the Samnites, had been

subject to the Etruscans; and that Capua under the name of Vul­

turnum was the earliest city, and Nola one founded somewhat later,

in this southern Etruria 33• Now I think I have shown that the Tyr­

rhenians from Surrentum to the Silarus were certainly not Etrus­

cans; and here again it may be that whatever was found by Roman

writers in Neapolitan or Cuman chroniCles about Tyrrhenians who

had of yore been in possession of Campania, was referred by them

to the Etruscans. In fact that Capua, as well as Rome, passed with

the earlier Greeks for a Pelasgo-Tyrrhenian city, may be inferred

from Cephalon, who mentions it together with Rome among the

cities built by the Trojans: and the same notion lies at the bottom

of those representations, the traces of which are preserved by the

232 Dionysius I. 22.

33 Livy 1v. 37. Velleius 1. 7. Strabo v. p. 242. d.HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

57

grammarians, when they tell us in one place that Capua was

founded by Campus; in another that a prince of this name had

ruled in Epirus, over the Chaonians, and that Epirus had also borne

the name of Campania 234 • Again by means of an emendation as to

which no doubt can be entertained, we are supplied with an express

testimony for Nola being of Tyrrhenian origin 35 : the statement too

of the anonymous chronologers referred to by V elleius, that Capua

and Nola were built by the Tuscans about eight and forty years

before Uome, can only be defended by interpreting it of the Tyr­

rhenians. And in spite of the express reference to Cato, it is ex­

tremely doubtful whether a distinction was not made by him between

the Tuscans and the Etruscans. Polybius however speaks in so

many words of the Etruscans as the possessors of the Phlegrman

plains 36 : and slight as his authority is in such matters, I would not

reject an opinion in favour of which he declares himself so posi­

tively, until every attempt to maintain it has been found futile.

Cato's statement, which is so displeasing to that ingenious but hasty

writer, Velleius, that Capua had existed only 260 years before its

taking in the second Punic war, and accordingly was founded about

the year 283, seems to,admit of being very well reconciled with

what can· be collected of Etruscan history. The greatness of the

Etruscans belongs to the third century of Rome: it displays itself

in the wars of Porsenna against Rome and Aricia: in the Veientine

war after the disaster on the Cremera, in 276; and it was about

the same time, 01. 76. 3. 278, that Cuma was saved by Iliero from

the Etruscan fleet. But· the subjugation of Rome to Porsenna

seems to have been of brief duration ; and soon after the middle of

the third century the Roman history becomes so determinate, that

we know the people on the left bank of the Tiber cannot have been

in such a state of dependence as must be presupposed before Etruria

234 Etymolog. l\fagn. v. Kd.p.7roc. Servius on l"En. m. 334. The Cam­

py lids, the house of king Campus, must assuredly have been the d.p:x_1,.iv

}EV•c among the Chaonians, mentioned in Thucydides, u. 80. In the line of

Virgil the old commentators were no doubt right in interpreting Chaonii

Campi not the Chaonian fields but the Chaonian Campi. It was no over­

refinement that determined them: a Roman who had voyaged from Brundu­

sium to Greece, had seen Chaonia with its Acroceraunia, and could no more

write about Chaonian plains, than an Englishman about Alps between Calais

and Paris.

35 The text of Solinus, p. 10. d, has Nol~ a Tyriis. I read with Lipsius,

though il'l a different sense, a Tyrrlienis: a Thuriis, which Salmasius conjec­

tures, is certainly wrong.

36 II. 17.

J.-HliB

HISTORY OF ROME.

could send out colonies beyond the Vulturnus. Nor are there less

difficulties against their having crossed the sea; since the three har­

bours on the Phlegrrean plains, Cuma, Dicrearchia, and Parthenope,

had continued invariably in the hands of the Chalcidian Greeks:

and without possessing one at least of these, the Etruscans, even

if they had landed at Liternum, could never have thought of form·

ing a permanent settlement.

In Dionysius we find it recorded how Cuma was besieged by an

enormous host composed of Tyrrheni:ms from the Ionian sea, to­

gether with U mbrians, Daunians, and many other barbarians.

This war is not to be rejected on account of the fabulous exaggera­

tion in the numbers, any more than the expedition of Xerxes: and

the prodigy of the rivers flowing' backward, is only a proof that the

fearful exigency through which the Cumans were carried by the

aid of the gods, was transmitted in song through the mouths of

their children and grandchildren. Even the chronological state­

ment which dates this war in the 64th Olympiad, that is, about

228, may be deemed correct on the whole, though it may go a few

years too far back: indeed to adjust the native chronological regis­

ters with perfect accuracy to the years of the Athenian archons was

not a feasible matter. One is naturally disposed to conceive that

the settlement of the Etruscans at Capua was contemporaneous

with this expedition: an earlier date is incompatible with that story

itself, which expressly represents the Cumans as in possession of

the Campanian plains 237 • And I believe that there was a connexion

between these events; but here again that the Tyrrhenians were

not Etruscans. Those nations who are said to have marched

against Cuma, must unquestionably, it seems to me, have been the

Italians and Opicans thrust for~vard by the advance of the Sabel­

lians; and moving onward in one mass, in which the drivers were

mixed up with the fugitives, as in the great migration of the Ger­

mans and Huns. Now this appears to be the epoch at which the

Opicans settled in the Phlegrrean plains: and years enough may

have elapsed after this, before they became masters of Capua, to

allow of this city reckoning her origin according to the era men­

tioned by Cato., The statement that in this country, as in Etruria,

there were twelve Tuscan cities, rests only on Strabo, who delivers

it without confidence'"; and it is extremely doubtful. Not the

f'lightest trace of the Etruscans is to be found in Campania. ,The

letters it is true might be deceptive; but all the written monuments

237 Dionysius vn. 3.

* v. p. 242. d.IIISTORY OF ROME.

59

without exception are in Oscan. Nor are the works of art less re­

mote from every thing Etruscan.

Nola is called a Chalcidian city 238 : probably the Tyrrhenians,

with a view to strengthen themselves, admitted Greeks to fellow­

citizenship, and these N olans maintained their ground against the

Oscans. They were subsequently attached to the Samnites, who

everywhere appear on friendly terms with the Greeks. How en­

tirely the civilization of Greece had been adopted by Nola, is

evinced by the workmanship and language on her coins: but from

being situate in the midst of the Oscans, whom even N eapolis was

not able to exclude from the rights of citizenship, she had already

lost her character in the second Punic war, and become substan­

tially an Oscan city; and we may find what to us is a melancholy

parallel to her fate, in that which is impending over the German

towns on foreign coasts.

238 By Justin xx. 1: that is, by Trogus. Also by Silius xu. 161: and

Silius lived among the Neapolitans.THE ABORIGINES AND LATINS.

THERE was a tradition, of the class most deserving of credit, that

in very early times a people, who dwelt about mount Velino and

the lake of Celano as far as Carseoli and Reati, had been driven

from thence by the Sabines who came from Aquila. Such was

Cato's. account 239 : and if Varro, who enumerated the towns they

had possessed in those parts 40 , was not imposed upon, not only were

the sites of those towns distinctly preserved, as well as their

names 4 1, but other information also concerning them, such as can­

not be transmitted through so many centuries by any thing but

wntmgs. Their capital, Lista, was taken by surprise; and the ex­

peditions they sent out during many years from Reate to recover

it; proved fruitless. Withdrawing from that district, they came

down the Anio; and at Tibur, Antemnoo, Ficulea, Tellena 4 ~, and

further on at Crustumerium and Aricia, they found the Siculians ;

and subdued or expelled them in a number of places. That Proo­

neste too was a town of the Siculians, seems to be implied in the

statement, that it once bore the Greek name of Stephane 43 • The

name of Tusculum shows that it belonged to the same people, since

Tusci and Turini can only be different forms of one word 44 :

moreover the ruling house there designated itself to be Italian and

I

239 Dionysius 11. 49.

40 Dionysius 1. 14.

41 The greater part seem not to have been destroyed till the JEquian war

about 450. Of the traces seen by Varro we may form a clear notion from the

. quadrangular substructions in the district of Tibur, beyond the river, a couple

of miles to the west of the city, which mark the sites of some of. the little

towns subject to Tibur.

42 Dionysius 1. 16.

43 Pliny IIJ. 9.

44 See note 219. In Tuscus, as in all similar names, sicus has been con­

tracted into scus; and Tusicus is Turicus: for r and s in the old Latin are

perpetually interchanged, as in Furius derived from Fusus, and .!lunmcus

which on the other hand stands for .!lusunicus.HISTORY OF IWME.

61

Tyrrhenian by its surnames, and traced its descent from Circe. that

is. from Circeii 245 • Fidenm too was a Tuscan town.

These conquerors in the Latin legends were called Sacrani 46 :

either because it was related from the very first that they had len

their homes to fulfil the vow of a sacred spring; or it was a heredi­

tary name, the apparent meaning of which led to the invention of

such a story. Another name. and unquestionably an old anu

genuine one, was Casci•7: which afterward cam~ to be used as an

adjective, in the sense in which Gothic and altfriinkisch are now

used. That however in addition to this they were properly called.

Prisci, a word the meaning of which underwent the same fate, will

be shown when I reach the history of Rome*.

The predominant legend, which makes the Trojan followers of

JEneas and the native subjects of Latinus assume the new and com­

mon name of Latins, retains traces of the tradition that this people

was formed by the intermixture of different tribes. Still more

clearly is this attested by the name Prisci Latini. in its genuine

signification of Prisci and Latinit: this however itself shows that

the name of the Latins is older than the conquest by the Priscans,

and consequently belonged to the Siculians of these parts. Still

the advantage of having a clear distinctive name is enough to justify

my following that legend and the usage it gave birth to, and giving

the name of Latins to the nation which arose out of that conquest,

and that of Aborigines to the earlier inhabitants of Latium.

This name is said to mean ancestors 48 : but it i~ surely simpler to

interpret it of those who were the inhabitants of the country from

the beginning, answering to the Greek .fl.utochthones. 'Vhat kept

this from being admitted, seems to have been, that the Umbrians

were supposed by some, perhaps for no other reason than that

they were called the most ancient people in Italy. to have been

driven by the Aborigines out of Latium; while others ascribed this

245 The Mamilii, Vituli and Turini. See above p. 12. Ulyxes may have

belonged to the legend in very early times, even granting that the name of

Telegonus, as the founder. of Tusculum, was foisted in out of the poets.

46 Servius on .l:En. vn. 796. on the words et Sacraru:e acics-compared

with Diod. 1. 16. See below note 279.

'

47 Saufeius in Servius on'. .l:En. 1. 6. qui-Cassei (read Casci) vocati sunt,

quos posteri Aborigines nominaverunt. Ennius has Casci populi Latini:

compare the other passages in Columna.'s note p. 14.

* See note 914, and the text to it.

t See notes 752, and 915. .

48 Dionysius, 1. IO, explains it by ,_av1'p;>:.tt1: compare Saufeius in Ser­

vius on .l:En. 1. 6. quoniam aliis (read ab illis se) ortos esse recognoscebant.

The nominative singular, after tJ1e analogy of the old languagP, was probably

_'Jboriginu.s.62

IllSTORY OF ROME.

expulsion to the Sacrani; others again, influenced partly by the

Greek tales about the rovings of the Pelasgians, took the Aborigines

for a conflux of wandering tribes, and supposed their name to be a

corruption of .!Jberrigines.

·

It might seem as if this name, being snch an abstract designation,

had been an invention of the later Roman historians: but, though

manifestly it never was the real name of any people, it is yet far

older than the time when the history of Rome began to grow out

of the wrappers of scantly-worded chronicles. For so early as

about 470 Callias, the historian of Agathocles, spoke of Latinus

king of the Aborigines 249 : and in Lycophron, all whose information

about Rome was derived from Timreus and other Greek writers,

Cassandra predicts that lEneas will build thirty castles in the land

of the Borigoni 50 •

The inconsistency that prevails in giving the name of Aborigines

not only to the Tyrrhenians but to the invaders also, is in the char­

acter of legendary history : but it is clear that the latter cannot have

obtained the name of Autochthona except by an abuse of language.

Cato, who wrote that the chief part of the plain in the country of

the Volscians had formerly belonged to the Aborigines 51, evidently

·marks them out thereby as the inhabitants of the Maremma: for

in the interior of the Volscian country there are no plains. Nor is

it less unquestionably to Pelasgians that he and C. Sempronius must

have applied this name; since they pronounced the Aborigines to be

Achreans 5 ~. So ltlat Dionysius must be under a misunderstanding,

when he represents what Cato had related concerning the spreading

of the Sabines, as if he had called the pe~ple whom they drove

before them, the Aboriginess 3 , Varro indeed has palpably been

guilty of this error, and perhaps also preceded Dionysius even in

representing the Pelasgians as the allies of the Aborigines, who join

them in driving out the Sicelians; after which however the Pelas­

gians are made to withdraw and disperse.

But the Sicelians are very far from disappearing out of Latium ~

nay many of their places seem to have maintained their freedom,

in the neighbourhood of the Tiber, and round about Rome. Indeed

the change produced in the population of a country by national

migrations is seldom entire, unless the conquerors are exterminating

savages : in other cases the lovers of freedom leave their homes ;

but a part, and commonly the majority, submit to the victor. Such

was the case then also: in the places that were subdued, a part

249 Dionysius 1. 72.

51 Fragm. Origg. I. in Priscian v. p. 608.

52 Dion ysi us 1. 11.

50 v.1253.

53 Above note 239.HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

63

united with the Cascans; another quitted the country: and this was

connected with the legends touching the expeditions of the Sicelians

across the sea to Trinacria, and of the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians to

Greece.

According to the traditions of the Italian Greeks, the people by

whom the Sicelians were driven over' into Sicily, were the Opi­

cans254. Now it certainly is extremely questionable whether this

migration be more authentic than other pretended traditions of the

same kind; or not rather, like them, a mere inference and presump­

tion: and as the name of Sicelians was common to all the Italians, it

is, to say the least, highly improbable, that the tribe which went

over to Sicily, should have been the one which dwelt the furthest

off: still the evident affinity between that clement of the I.atin lan­

guage which is not Greek, and the Oscan, puts it beyond a doubt

that the Cascans belonged to the Oscan stock. The Oscan words

that appear in Latin are contracted and curtailed, as the Zend words

are in Persian; and such must always be the case, when a difficult

and harsh language abounding in polysyllables is adopted by a na­

tion whose tongue has a different character. Now since the Um­

brians during their early greatness reached as far as those most ancient

seats of the Cascans, we may further regard the tradition followed

by Philistus, that the Sicelians had been expelle<l by the U mbrians and

Pelasgi:ms, as one and the same with that which le<l Thucydides to

write that it was by the Opicans and Oenotrians: so that the Um­

brians and Opicans, whose names come so near each other, would

be branches of the same nation 55,

The Aborigines are pourtrayed by Sallust and Virgil as hordes of

savages, without manners, without laws, without agriculture, living

on the pro<luce of the chase and on wild fruits. This probably is

nothing else than an ancient speculation about the progress of rnan­

kin<l from animal rudeness to civilization; after the manner of those

philosophical histories, as they were called, which were repeated

even to surfeiting <luring the latter half of the last century, more so

however in other countries than in Germany, and in which even

the state of brute speechlessness was not forgotten. The pages of

these observing philosophers swarm with quotations from books of

travels: this however they have overlooked, that not a single in­

stance can be shown of a really savage people passing spontaneously

254 Thucydides VI. 2. Antiochus in Dionysius 1. 22.

55 Dionysius 1. 22. Both the historians, in regarding the Sicelians as

distinct from and as driven out by the Oenotrians and Pelasgians, made the

same mistake which occurred in the legend about Cyzicus, Note 69: com­

pare note 114 and p, 50.64

HISTORY OF ROME.

into civilization, and that, where it has been forced upon them from

without, the physical decay of the race has ensued; as in the case

of the Natticks, the Guaranis, the missions in New California, and

those at the Cape. For every race of men has received its des­

tination assigned to it by God, with the character which is suited to

it and stamps it: the social state too, as Aristotle wisely says, is

prior to the individual who is called to it*; the whole prior to the

part: those. speculators do not perceive that the savage has either

<legenerated, or was but half human from the first. The account of

the Aborigines however may also have been a tradition of the serfs

conccr~ing the rude character of their lords, who lay on their bear­

skin couch, and for whom they were forced to till the ground. It

cannot be mere chance, that the words for a house, a field, a plough,

ploughing, wine, oil, milk, kine, swine, sheep, apples, and others

relating to agriculture and gentler ways of life, should agree in Latin

and Greek 256 ; while the Latin words for all objects pertaining to

war or the chase are utterly alien from the Greek. If the agreem~nt

in the former class does not run throughout, this was to be expected

in languages which, like the Hellenic and Pelasgic, notwithstanding

their complete affinity, are, perhaps for the greater part, essentially

distinct.

,Janus is said to have been venerated by the Aborigines as the

founder of a better way of life; together with Saturn, who taught

them husbandry and induced them to settle in fixed habitations.

Janus or Dianus, as Scaliger has shown, is the god of the suns7;

Saturn and his wife Ops ar.e most probably the god and goddess of

the earth, the power of the earth which vivifies, and that which

conceives and brings forth: its depths are his kingdom. The inter­

pretation which turns these gods into kings, is a more modern one.

Between Saturn and the Trojan settlement there were only three

kings of the Aborigines in the legend; Picus, Faunus, and Latinus,

son after son; who, when removed from the earth, were raised to

the rank of gods, and adored as lndigetes. It is only in a very late

account that Latinus falls in the battle with Turnus or Mezentius:

in the genuine legend he disappeared, and was worshipped as J upi­

ter Latialis 58 •

* Polit. 1. 1. npo,,.1pov J~ ,,.;; <1>uuai .,,.6;o,.ic ~ olx.l<L x.,.l 1..,.,,.,,.,, 1l1u»v 9,,.,,.,_

256 Several words might have been added, had not their identity required

a detailed proof: for instance equus is l71'71'•'·

57 Hence he may help us to explain the story of. Circe, who in Greek

mythology is the daughter of the Sun: that story was without doubt indi­

genous in the neighbourhood of the mountain named after her and not an

importation from Greece.

'

58 Festus v. Oseillum. Compare Schol. J\!Pdiol. ad or. pro. Plane. !J.HISTORY OF ROME.

65

Latinus in a different dialect was called Lavinus; whence igno­

rant expounders have given him a brother, the founder of Lavi­

nium259. So the' Latins were likewise called Lavicans 60 , and Lavi­

nium was the seat of their common sanctuary and of their national

assembly, like the Panionium 61 , King Lacinius too in Oenotriae~

is another phase of Latinus; and here we plainly see that the Oeno­

trians were also c·alled I,acinians, and belonged to the same nation

with, the Latins. For Lacinium too with its temple of Juno was a

common sanctuary of those tribes, of great antiquity and indigenous

'origin: as is denoted by the expression, that it was founded before

the Trojan war 63 : and the name of the Lacinian promontory came

from the people who dwelt by it, like that of the lapygian on the

opposite coast. Nay this Lacinius is expressly called Latinus,

king of the Italians, and marries his daughter, J,aurina, to a foreigner

named Lo<'.rus 64 • 'Vhat historian however can feel any interest in

tracing the fantastic shapes assumed by the clouds of mythology, as

they vary at the whim of capricious narrators? Who would tarry

among such things, when investigations of great importance are

awaiting him? Still I cannot omit remarking, what throws so much

light on the notions of 'the Greeks touching the nature of the Latin

nation, that Latinus, whom Hesiod calls sovereign of all the re­

nowned Tyrrhenians, that is, those of the Pelasgian race 65 , is ac­

cording to him the son of Ulysses and Circe; while another story­

in which Telemachus and Penelope fly to Latium with the guiltless

murderer Telegonus, to avoid the impending vengeance of the suitors

after the death of Ulysses-makes him the son of Circe and Tele­

machus60. In a different class of legends Hercules is his father, and

a daughter of Faunus 67, or the Hyperborean Palanto, his mother 68 • _

There was an obscure conception that Rome itself was in the neigh­

25!) Servius on lEn. 1. 2.

60 Picti scuta Lavici (not Labici), JEn. vn. 7!J6, are a people, not the

town near the Via Latina.

61 This is the way we are to explain Lavinia littora, anJa: lEn. I. 2. 1v.

236; and not by a prolepsis. The name of the Latins is made by Virgil to

originate, as it was supposed to have done, from the union of the Trojans with

the Aborigines: the meaning of the other form had not become equally fixed.

62 Servius on JEn. 111. 552. Diodorus 1v. 24.

63 Servius on lEn. 111. 552. quod ante Troicum bcllnm collatitia pecunia.

reges populique fecerunt.

64 Conon narr. 3.

65 Theogon. 1011-15-.

66 Hyginus Fab. 127, and one Galitas in Festus v. Roma.

67 Justin XLIII. 1.

68 Dionysius 1. 43, Festus v. Palatium.

1.-1IIISTORY OF RO.ME.

bourhood of the Hyperboreans 209; and the llyperborean TarkynreF 0

seem to be no other than the people of Tarqui11ii. Now if we are

not afraid of looking for the mysterious Hyperboreans in Italy, we

here· see how the gifts they sent to Delos might be handed round

the Adriatic from people to people, until they came to Do<lona; a

custom preserved from those ancient times when the whole coast

of that sea was inhabited by Pelasgian nations: ;nd thus, the reli­

gion being the same, it is no longer extraordinary that offerings

should have been sent from so far. And if it he but allowed that

the people called Hyperboreans may have been a Pelasgian tribe in

Italy, the possibility will perhaps be nearly turned into certainty

when it appears that the title of the carriers is almost a Latin

word 71 •

The voyage of Evander to Latium with a train of Arcadians would

not deserve the slightest notice, being an evident fiction, were it

not homesprung antl ancient, so that it is likely we may find an

explanation to clear it of its absurdity. The slightest tradition is

enough to justify our believing that, there being so many small Sicu­

lian towns scattered around, another such stood on the hill near the

Tiber, where the foundations of the eternal city were one day to be

laid; and that it bore the name Palatium, which reminded the Greeks

of Pallantion in l\fanalia. · Moreover with the Greek genealogers

Arcadian and Pelasgian are equivalent terms. Nor have we any

right to question the statement of Dionysius, that sacrifices were

offered in memory of Evander, as well as of his mother Carmen ta;

and that the native histories related he had introduced a knowledge

of the arts and more civilized ways of life7 2 , and had entertained

Hercules, and given him his daughter Launa in marriage, by whom

the hero became father of Pallas: it is from Pallas however that .the

town and hill now appear first to receive their name ; for no tradition

can be fixed. These tales are demonstrably older than the time of

Polybius: they cannot indeed be of Italian origin in the strictest

sense; but who is capable of measuring the operation of the Pe­

lasgic element in the Latin character, by means whereof the my­

thology and religion, the oracles and prophecies of Greece, gained

an entrance among the Romans, the Latins, and the Etruscans?

and where is there a trace of the ,epic and lyric poets of the Greek

269 Heraclides in Plutarch Camill. c. 22.

70 Stephanus v. T"-p1tovl<t..

71 Il•pq>•pier,-Herod. 1v. 33,-seems.akin to pcrfcrre.

72 The Latin alphabetical characters too, as distinguished from the

Etruscan. Tacitus Ann. x1. 14.HISTORY OF JW.\IE.

67

cities on the coasts of Italy, whether more or less remote from l?.ome,

to whom she became of importance long before she excited any

attention in the Ir.other country? It is true, the Grmco-Italian my­

thographers whose names have been preGerved, cannot well be

earlier at the utmost than the first Alexanclrian poets. The epithet

old, applied in the text ofDionysius to the poet Euxenus 273, rests on

a doubtful reacling: Simylus, Butas, Diocles of Peparethus, ancl

Antigonus, (the two latter of whom perhaps wrote on Rome in verse

also) are certainly not of an earlier age. But though the battle

fought by Hercules in Liguria, and his expeclition across the Alps

and through the peninsula, belolig to the old Hellenic IIeracleids;

it must have been by. Greek poets in Italy that his return from

Erythea was embellished with the ad venture of Cacus, the battle

on the Phlegrman fields in Campania against the giants who fled

to Leuternia, and the founding of Herculanum ancl Pompeii: in

like manner the Greeks on the Pontus told of his exploits in Scythia.

I am far from fancying it possible to detect in what way the

worship of the Sabine Semo Sancus was transferred to the son of

Alcmena: nor will I employ myself in conjecturing whether the

Ara Maxima of Hercules existed before the censorship of Appius

Claudius the blind. Still surely the most natural m,ode of explain­

ing the story of the Potitii and Pinarii, is to suppose that the

worship of Hercules was a sacrum gentilitium belonging to those

houses; that the Romans in the Samnite war were commanded by

the Sibylline books, or by the answer of an oracle, such as in the

same war enjoined the erection of statues to the bravest and the

wisest of the Greeks, to adopt the worship of Hercules, among all

the Greek heroes elevated to Olympus the most heroic, and to raise

a statue to him, with a pro;nise of blessings to those who should

consecrate to him the tithe of their substance; nay perhaps this act

was prescribed to all, as a way of bringing the in terminable con test

to a prosperous conclusion. A colossal statue was erected to him

in the year 449, in the same censorship of Appius, who bribed the

Potitii to teach the rites of their worship: this was justly deemed a

base act; and when their house bec~me extinct, not indeed within

a year, much less within thirty days, but in the great pestilence

which desolated Rome ten years after, men looked upon it as a

mark of the finger of God~. It was during this pestilence that the

worship of JEsculapius was introduce<l 74 •

"Eo,,.o,

273 The words

ti 7ro1~.,.n~ dpx,a.io,, in Dionysius, 1. 34, can hardly

be genuine: at least .¥vnp is wanting after them.

* Livy 1x. 29. Festus v. Potitium. Servius on lEn. vm. 269.

'i4 The den of Cacus is said to have heen in the Avf'ntine; bnt the •tep~GS

HISTORY OF ROME.

I return to Evander, and remark that he seems to be only another

form of Latinus: this legend makes him the son of the prophetic

Carmen tis, as that does of the prophetic Faunus; and he marries

his daughter Lavinia in the one to Hercules, in the other to .lEneas,

both of them foreign heroes. So in a different legend Latinus takes

the place of Cacus, and steals the oxen'"·

Incomparably more brilliant and celebrated than this legend, is

that of the coming of the Trojans to Latium: but it is immediately

connected with those concerning the building of Rome; and its only

importance would be with regard to the pedigrees of the Roman

houses, even if it could be shown to be historical. JEneas and his

scanty train had not the power of transforming the Latin people.

I therefore sever this investigation from the present subject, and re­

serve it for the preliminary history of Rome.

It was considered in later ages as certain, that the Roman con­

quests were the means by which the frontier of Latium was pushed

forward from Circeii to the Liris 275• But in the first treaty with

Carthage all the· towns on the coast from Ostia to Terracina are

called Latin, and are subject to the Romans; and the Carthaginians

bind themselves, if they take any Latin town not subject· to the

Romans, to deliver it up to them 76 • Conquests in the interior are

out of the question: so that Latium must then have stretched further

along the coast toward Cuma: and the name of Latins is synony­

mous with that of Tyrrhenians.

of Cacus were on the Palatine; Diodorus was acquainted with them (iv. 21.);

and in his story the latter hill is the residence of Cacius, who joins with Pi­

narius in entertaining and paying honour to the Tirynthian hero, and thus

takes the place of Potitius; nay ofEvand.cr: no mention is made of the latter,

nor of any Arcadians; nor of any but natives. A sister of Cacus too, Caca,

like Vesta, had a perpetual fire kPpt up in honour of her. (Servius on .lEn.

vm. 190.) It seems beyond doubt that the whole story of this expedition of

Hercules in Diodorus is borrowed from Timmus: his opening a permanent

and secure road through the barbarous tribes of Liguria reminds us of the

Herculean road in the treatise De Mirabilibus p. 102. a. The account in the

work bearing the name of Victor, de origine P.R. which professes to be taken

from old annalists, is of no value: for that book was written toward the end of

"the fifteenth century, like the pretended writings of Messalla, Fenestella,and

Modestus, or in the sixteenth, by an evident impostor.

* Servius on .lEn. m. 552.

275 Strabo v. p. 231. Pliny m. 9. Scylax had already given it the same

limits.

76 Polybius rn. 22. l(«pxnJ6vm p.ii d.J11tei'l'aJrrav •.. p.nJ' t/:Mov p.~J!y,,_

7

Aa<riv,,.v ~ ..., iiv ~?Ti/1<001• iav Ji Tm~ µii r» rr1v ~?Tii1too11<. T. 1'., See the text to

note 1184...

THE SABINES AND SABELLIANS.

Tm; Romans had no general name comprehending the Sabines

along with the tribes supposed to have issued from them: the latter,

whether Marsians and Pelignians, or Samnites and Lueanians, they

termed Sabellians. .That these tribes among themselves were

called Savini or Sabini, is certain from the inscription on the Sam­

nite denary coined in the Social war: at least it is certain as to the

Samnites, whose name is in every form manifestly, and in the

Greek :!«uvl-r<t1 immediately, derived from Savini: but the usage of

a people whose writings have perished, like every thing that is

totally extinct in fact, has lost its rights. I shall venture to employ

the term Sabellians for the whole race; since the tribes so named

by the Romans are very far more important than the Sabines; and

it would clearly have offencled a Latin ear, had any one called the

Samnites Sabines: for investigati'ons like those in this history a

general name is inclispensable.

The Sabellians, when Rome advanced beyond the frontiers of

Latium, were the most widely extencled and the greatest people in

Italy: the Etruscans had already fallen, as they had seen the fall

of the nations that flourished before them, the Tyrrhenians, the

Umbrians, and the· Ausonians. As the Dorians were great in their

colonies, while the mother-country contin11ed to be small; and as

it lived in peace, while the tribes it had sent forth were spreacling

themselves abroad by conquests and plantations; thus, says Cato,

was it with the olcl Sabine people. Their original home is placed

by him 277 about Amiternum, in the highest Apennines of the Abruzzi,

where the snow on mount l\Iajella is saicl never to disappear entirely,

and where the mountain pastures are visited in summer by the

Apulian hercls. From hence they issued in very remote times, long

before the Trojan war; and driving the Cascans before them in one

277 Dionysius

1.

14.

11.

49.70

HISTORY OF ROME.

quarter, the Umbrians in another, took possession of the territory

which has borne their name for three thousand years. As the

population multiplied here and overflowed, it migrated to different

parts. It was an Italian religious usage in times of severe pressure

from war or pestilence, to make a vow of a sacred spring ( ver sa­

crum); that is, to consecrate all the creatures born in the next

spring: when twenty years had elapsed 0 7 8 , the cattle was sacrificed

. or redeemed, the youth were sent forth79, A vow of this kind was

made by the Romans in the second year of the second Punic war;

but it extended only to their flocks and herds 80 • Such vows, the

tradition runs, lPd to the sending out of the Sabine colonies: sacred

animals were charged by the gods to w horn any of them was dedi­

cated"\ to guide them on their way. One colony was led by a

woodpecker, the bird of Mamer~, into Picennrn 82 , then peopled by

Pelasgians or Liburnians: another by an ox into the land of the

Opicans; this became the great Samnite people; the Birpinians

were guided by a wolfs 3 • That colonies were sent out from Sam­

nium, we know historically. The 'Frentanians on the Adriatic

were Samnites 84 , who stood apart from the rest of the nation in the

second Roman war: a band of Samnites conquered Campania and

the country as far as the Silarus: another host, calling themselves

Lucanians after their leader Lucius 85 , subdued and gave their name

to Lucania 88 •

Capua, then called Vulturnum, origin~lly a Tuscan, and at that

time probably an Oscan town, purchased peace of the Samnites by

receiving a colony of them to share both in her city and territory•7,

This is the origin of the Campanian people, an event memorable to

the Sicilian Greeks:·. these garn the name of Campanians to all the

races mixed up of Sabellians and Oscans, and therefore to the mer­

cenaries who spoke Osean, under whose violence they pined*. It

278 Livy xxxm. 44. Festus v. l\Iamertini.

79 Dionysius 1. 16. Strabo v. p. 2,)0. :i. Festus v. Ver sacrum and l\Ia­

mertini.

80 Livy XX!!. 9.

81 Strabo and Dionysius in the passages last quoted.

82 Strabo v. p. 240. d .. Pliny m. 18.

83 Strabo v. p. 250. b. d.

84 Strabo v. p. 241. b. Scyl:ix, p. 5. Seen. 293.

85 Pliny m. 10. Etymol. l\I. v. Am"tvol. l\Iore probably after an

•p;i:.n,.<Tn' named Lucas.

86 In the epitaph on L. Cornelius Scipio Barb:itus it is written Lucanaa.

The doubling the vowel belongs to the Oscan and the old Latin: in the Julian

inscription at Bovillre we find leege.

87 Livy 1v. 37.

• See above 11ote 206.lllSTORY OF RmdE.

71

is by placed Diodorus in 01. 85. 3, in the year of Rome 314 288 ; nor

is there any contradiction between this statement and Livy's, that

the olcl citizens were overpowered and massacred by the s~ttlers in.

the year 331. Three years after the old citizens of Capua had been

exterminated, in 334 80 , the Campanians took Cuma by storm, sub­

jected the ill-fated inhabitants to all the atrocities of war 90 , and sent

a colony thither: nevertheless the Greek population was not alto­

gether extirpated. Half a century later it was still called a Greek

city by Scylax; and traces of Greek manners and customs were

subsisting four hundred years after, when the Oscan language, which

had supplanted the Greek, had long since given way to the Latin9 1 ,

The Oscan city of Cuma at the beginning of the fifth century was

already independent of Capua; which in other cases clearly exer­

cised a supremacy over the places round about it. Nola however

has no connexion with the Campanians, nor has Nuceria: the former~

as has been mentioned already, 9 ~ there is good ground to regard as.

a Greek city.

About the year 390 the Campanians and Samnites were the only

people known to Scylax of Caryanda* between the Vulturnus and

the Silarus. They possessed the whole country here from the Tyr­

rhenian across to the upper sea: on the latter he assigns them the

coast from mount Garganus to Picenum, which he includes in Um­

bria93. The same period \Vas that when Lucania had attained its

greatest extent, so that all the seaports from Posidonia to Thurii

are mentioned by him under this head. The union between the

Lucanians and the Samnites from whom they sprang, had soon been

br~ken by distance and the magnitude of their conquests.

Their first territory was on the lower sea: they did not yet touch

the gulf of Tarentum, the coast of which was in the possession of

Diodorus XII. 31. .,.;, t9vo~ .,.,.,,, K.:tµ?T.:tv1»• O"UVEO''l'".

Livy 1v. 44. According to Diodorus, XII. 76, in 01. 80. 4. 331.

Strabo v. p. 243. c. Diodorus XII. 76.

Scylax, p. 3. Strabo v. p, 243. c. Velleius 1. 4. Livy XL. 42.

Above p. 50, note 238.

The age of this geographer has been discussed by the author in his

Kleine liistorische Scliriftcn vol. I. p. 106.

93 The name of the people he places between the Iapygians and Um­

brians, is written both in the title and text t!.a.uvi'l'<t.l. Now I will not deny

that the Daunians may also have been called Daunitre, though the instances

cited to prove it arc not worth much. But I deny that the Daunians d~lt

to the west of their 01cn country; I deny that Scylax could say of them that

they extended from sea to sea; whereas this might be said with perfect accu­

racy of the Samnites, whom he has named as occupying the coast between

Carnpania and Lucania: hence I am confident the right reading is :l::<uri-r.:tt.

288

80

00

01

!)272

IIISTORY OF ROME.

the Greek cities. ·when the Greeks first colonized that coa~t,

there were no Lucanians; the country belonged to the Chonians and

Oenotrians: with the wide spreading of the Samnitcs and the set­

tling of the Lucanians in Oenotria came the wars between the

Greek cities and the barbarians, which ended in the ruin of the

former. This is what Strabo says 294 : his expressions may seem to

imply that the invasion of the Lucanians occurred in very early

times, soon after the founding of the Greek cities; but this is not

his meaning.

When Sybaris was ruling over the country between the two seas,

there can have been no Lucanians in it yet: the fall of that city

took place in 01. 67. 3, 242. Nor could any powerful barbarians

be masters of the coasts between Posidonia and Laos about 280,

when l\Iicythus built Pyxus there 05 : although it is possible they

may already have established themselves in the interior, in the parts

too distant for Croton to subdue or to protect. Before the Luca­

nians came into hostile collision with the great citi~s on the bay of

Tarentum, they had established themselves, as has been observed

above, on this western coast 96 , evidently Ly the conquest of Posidonia

and its confederate towns. Now were we bound to assume that the

dominion of the Lucanians at Posidonia put an end to the use of the.

Greek language there, at least on public monuments, it would .be

necessary to postpone the date of that cbnquest till after the Pelo­

ponnesian war; since, while many of the coins are exactly like the

most ancient coins of Sybaris, not a few from the letters on them

cannot-be earlier than that epoch. But from the Jf!elancholy custom

which by the account of Aristoxenus 97 was still prevalent about the

middle of the fifth century, we see there was a subjugated Greek

community then dwelling in the Lucanian city of P!I!stum, con­

sciously verging to its extinction, but still subsisting under foreign

dominion: that is, the Lucanians were settled there as a sovereig11:

colony, having reduced the previous inhabitants to subjection. Po­

sidonia is stiil regarded as a Greek city by Seylax: and as the Greek

character was always used on the coins of N'.lla, and even on those

of Capua occasionally, nothing can be proved from such a ci;cum­

stance as to the time when Posidoniawas taken.. The probability

2()4 Strabo v1. p. 253. b. '1""- ,..,.v A•u&<tv"'v x_r,op1«, ,.· (I. o'l) ... ~, J'wrip«c

01

oUx, )i7rrrovrro Bei.>..ci<Tcrn, 'ltpOrrtpov, ~>..A' oi EA1'.JtV!" i~utpirrovv, oi 1T0v Tei.pt.t.V·

1

lflvov lx,ovTe' x.6>..7rov· 'lt'plv JI Tori, t E>..>..nva., h.Bclv, o~rf' :cra.v W-4> .A1v¥etvol·

X(t}YH' J'S x.t.t.; Oht.tnpol 1TaU, T01f'o"

hEµ.ovrro. x.. rr. x.

95 Eckhel. Doctr. num. 1. p. 152.

()6 Strabo v1. p. 254. c.

97 · Athenreus xiv .. p. 632.HISTORY OF ROl\IE.

73

is, the Samnites did not spread into these more remote and incom­

parably less tempting regions, till after they conquered Campania,

where the gates of Vulturnum opened to them in 314. Thurium

was built in 306 (01. 83. 3), without any hindrance from hostile

barbarians: and her rapid growth is a proof that none were standing

in her way. Her only quarrel was with Tarentum; and this was

settled at the peace concluded by her general, the Spartan exile

Clean<lridas, by virtiie of which Heraclea was founded in the year

319, 01. 86. 4 298 , Thirteen years before, Cleandridas was enjoying

such influence and dignity in his native country, that at the time of

this treaty we must suppose him to have at least reached the ex­

treme height of manhood; nor can his powers have continued

adequate to the functions of a general a great many years longer.

But the very earliest mention of the I~ucanians is on occasion of

the skill and courage he displayed in leading the Thurians against

them, as well as against Terina9 9 : which last circumstance proves

that the country between the two cities had not then been occupied

by the Sabellians. Antiochus closed his Sicilian history with Ol.

89. 1, 328; three years before the Samnite colony gained exclusive

possession of Capua: so that this is about the point of time to

which we must refer the boundaries he assigns to Italy; and ac­

cording to these the Lucanians had advanced. as far as the Laos.

Thirty years later, Ol. 96. 4, 359; the Italiots 300 concluded the first

general defensive league entered into by the Greek settlements on

these coasts; and it was directed agaiost the Lucanial(S and against

Dionysius1. ·The capital punishment denounced against the general

of any city, if its troops failed to come forward on an irruption of

those barbarians, shows the greatness of the danger that threatened,

\vhen so much alarm was confessed: yet the Lucanians <lid not

number at that time more than thirty-four thousand fighting men 2 •

In the year 362, Ol. 97. 3, the Thurians were completely defeated

and almost exterminated near Laos 3 , of which the Lucanians had

then made themselves masters. After this battle their conquests

spread like a torrent, being promoted by the ruin that the Syracusan

Strabo v1. p. 264. c.

D9 J'olyrenus n. 10. 2. 4. and I.

The Greeks of the Oenotrian Italy.

Diodorus XIV. 91.

2 Diodorus XIV. 101. foll.

The text of Diodorus has: /2;u1>.0µ001 (oi 0o~pm) 1'.«ov x«l ?ro>.1v

eul«lµov<l. ?ro1>.1opxn1T<l.I" who ever used the phrase, £Bvo; or 1>.<l.ov ?ro1>.1op1t'ii1T<1.1?

The true reading is: ~ou>.6µ001 A;;:ov 7TO.\IV eul:1.lµotr1. ?ro>..: and we are led

to do it by Strabo VI. p. 253. a. b. where likewise instead of t7rl T<1.uT~P >-"-•'

we must read,•·"· Ai:ov.

•

298

300

1

3

1.-K'74

IIISTORY OF ROME.

tyrants brought on the Greek cities. Dionysius the younger, who

concluded a peace with them before 01. 105. 2, 393 30 4, had begun

during the war to fortify a line on the peninsula between the Scyl·

letic and the Ilipponian gulfs for the protection of his Italian pro­

vince5.

This was the time when the Lucanian state had reached its

greatest extent. Only three years after, 01. 106. 1, 396 6, the

Bruttian people makes its appearance: it arose out of such bands

as flock together in a time of utter confusion, when wars are carried

on unceasingly with mercenaries; and out of revolted bondmen,

who either assumed the name of runaway slaves in mockery, or

adopted it when cast at them as a reproach7. But when they took

rank among nations, they too were to have a heroic pedigree; and

they paid honour to Ilruttus, the son of Hercules and Valentia, as

the father of their race": so far were the ancients from taking such

genealogies literally; in the one just mentioned the right of being a

nation is evidently deduced from courage and strength. It must

not be overlooked that this was certainly not the first time the Brut­

tian name was heard in Magna Griccia: about perhaps eighty years

before, the City built on the Traeis- by the descendants of the Sy.

barites after escaping from the carnage at Thurii, had been destroyed

by Ilruttians 9 • Wherever a whole population is reduced to bondage,

general insurrections will always ensue; like those of the Helots

and Penestre in Greece: thus there must always have been Bruttians

in Italy. That the people so called in later times, who at last

were completely successful in an attempt often ineffectually re­

newed, drew their origin from a mixture of races, and in part from

those Oenotrians who had been moulded into Greeks, is proved by

their speaking Greek along with Oscan 10 , To the Greek cities

they were still more formidable neighbours than the Lucanians

themselves: they were avenging the servit~de of ages: the times

too kept on growing more disorderly. Before they make their

appearance in Roman history, Terina, Hipponium, and even Thurii

304 Diodorus xvi. 5.

5 Strabo. vi. p. 261. c.

6 Diodorus xvi. 15.

7 By the.Romanslthey were also called Brutates, Fest. Epit. y. Brutates

bilingues.

.

8 Steph. v. Bph'l"o,.

9 This is the way Wesseling ought to have solved the doubt which oc­

cupied him in his note on Diodorus xu. 22. Diod 0 rus does not give the name

of the town: it must have been Sy bar is: and in Strabo v1. p. 264. c. we should

read t11"l Tpd.tno' ~u~"P'' instead oft. TeuBpe.t.v<ro,.

10 Fest. Epit. v. bilingucs Brutates; and Scaliger's note.llISTORY OF ROME.

75

had been .laid waste by them: the last city sprang up again like a

weakly shoot from the root of a tree that has been felled; as Olbia

did after its destruction by the Sarmatians'*. Lucania, after being

abridged of the larger and fairer half of her territory, was prudent

enough to make a timely resignation of her hopeless pretensions,

and to join in au alliance with her former subje~ts, for the sake of

indemnifying herself by conquests on the Tarentine gulf: and she

pushed forward her frontier almost to Tarentum: whereas in Scy­

lax the Lucanian coast does not extend beyond Thurii; and

Heraclea, the ancient Italy being out of the question, is assigned to

Iapygia. By this enterprise however three Greek princes, Archi­

damus, Alexander the l\Iolossian, and Cleonymus, were drawn over

to Italy; ai;id at last by the attack on Thurii the arms of Rome

were turned against the Lucanians. 'Vhen they come forward in

Roman history, they are torn by internal dissensions, feeble, and

spent, like a state where the citizens choose rather to rule ov~r a

multitude of bondmen and subjects that far outnumber tliem, ihan

to unite with them and form a great and powerful nation: that they

were rich, is proved by the spoil the Romans took from them; and

that the owners of such wealth should be unable to defend it, is

what might be looked for in a state where the commonalty was in

servitude. What Strabo can mean by terming Petelia their metro­

polis, and Consentia that of the Bruttianst, is a mystery.

Between the Sabines and Samnites lies the country of the Mar­

sians, l\'.Iarrucinians, Pelignians, and Vestinians: which of itself

would form a ground for conjecturing them to have been of the

same race. It is true, we find a statement that the Pelignians were

of lllyrian origin 311 : but it is opposed by evidence of incomparably

greater weight; that of Ovid, who, himself a Pelignian, terms the

Sabines the ancestors of his countrymen 12• Other Roman poets

are almost equally expres3 in accounting the Marsians among the

Sabellians : in Horace the same incantations are called l\'.Iarsian and

Sabelliants; and Juvenal speaks of the Marsians and their Sabellian

fare14. The word lternx, which Servius calls Sabine, is said by

an older Scholiast to be 1Vlarsic 15• But if the l\farsians were Sabel·

* Dion Chrysost. Orat. Borysthenit. near the beginning.

t .Strabo v1. p. 244. a. p. 25G. a.

12 Past. 111. 95.

311 Festus v. Peligni.

13 Epod. xvn. 28, 29. Sabella pectus increpare carmimi., Caputque

Marsa dissilire nrenia.

14 111. 169. Translatus subito ad Marsos mensamque Sabellam. ·Virgil

too might mean to intimate this, when he wrote Georg. 11. 167.

15 Servius and the Veronese Scholiast on lEn. vu. 684.76

HISTORY OF ROME.

lians, so were the Marrucinians, whose affinity to the Marsians WafJ

recognized by Cato, and expressed by one of the strange etymol­

ogies so common among the ancients 318 • Their name was formed,

after the usual Italian practice of heaping one derivative termination

on another, from .lllarruvii, which was .a variety of the name

llfarsi 1 7; ·and it might just as well have been .Marsicini. Another

passage in Juvenal, whose language is very remote from that indefi­

niteness which in fact is only ascribed to poets by the superficial,

couples the Vestinians with the l\larsians in a way which, when

fairly considered, implies the identity of their national character,

and that it was the same with that of the Sabellian race, so famed

above ~11 others for the severity of its morals 18 • Moreover those

four tribes were united in a federal league; which is a ·ground for

inferring their common origin, though certainly not a proof of it.

When the Vestinians joined the Samnites in 429, a general war

with the other ·three tribes appeared to be inevitable, if Rome haz­

arded the attempt to disable her new enemy by a sudden attack 19 •

In the list of the militias which the nations of Italy were able to

bring into the field in case of need at the time of the Cisalpine war,

the number of the troops belonging to these four tribes is given by

Polybius in one sum 20 • Ennius too mentions them together 21 , all

but the Marrucinians; whose name however may have begun the

next verse, the quality of the second syllable allowing it: if the poet

did not speak of them specifically, he may have satisfied himself

with reflecting that they were Marsians.

The Hernicans are remarkable in history for standing in a sin­

gularly favourable relation to the Romans, as their allies on a footing

of equality; and their common hostility to the Ausonian tribes, by

which the hills of the Ilernicans were almost surrounded, was evi­

dently the bond of this union. This gives a show of probability to

316 Origg. II. in Priscian 1x. p. 871. Marsus hostem occidit prius quam

Pelignus: inde 1\Iarrucini dicti, de Marso detorsum nomen.

17 Virgil .lEn. VII. 750. 1\Iarruvia de gente. A poet's worth is not de­

termined by his learning: but to do justice to Virgil, we ought to acknowledge

his great erudition in history and antiquities of every sort, on which the

scholiasts bestow well-deserved praises. From Marruii (like Pacuius instead

of Pacuvius) came .Marruici, .Marruicini.

18 xiv. 180. 181. 0 pueri, Marsus dice bat et Hernicus olim, Vestinusque

pater.

19 Livy vm. 29. Marsi Pelignique et Marrucini; quos, si Vestinus at­

tingeretur, omnes habendos hostes.

20 II. 24.

21 Fragm. Ennii ed. Hesselii, p. 150. Marsa man us, Peligna cohors, fe11­

tina (!. Vestina) virum vis.

'HISTORY OF ROME.

77

the statement of Julius Hyginus, that they were Pelasgians 82 ~; wl10

must in that case have maintained themselves on the advance of the

Opicans in their impregnable strongholds. His testimony however

is of no value; and the contrary statement, which ranks them among

the Sabellians, is strongly supported by their name being said to

come from the Sabine and l\farsic word liernm, rocks, a derivation

which is well attested and seems exceedingly credible. According

to Servi us they were sprung from the Sabines: according to an

older scholiast they were a Marsian colony 23 : so that their settle­

ment must be referred to the period when the Sabines were pushing

forward to the sea along the Tiber as well as in the south.

· The course of the Italian national migrations as of others was

downward from the north; and the only natural meaning of Cato's

opinion, that the neigbourhood of Amiternum .was the original

source of all the Sabellians, is, that this district was fixed upon by the

oldest traditions, whether they may have been those of the Sabines

'or of the ancient Umbrians, as the abode of the people who took

Reate. Dionysius indeed seems to have conceived that Cato de­

rived all the Sabines, and consequently all their colonies also, from

the village of Testrina near Amiternum, as from a single germ: but

surely so extravagant an abuse of the genealogical notions ~bove cen­

sured ought not to be imputed to a man of Cato's sound under­

standing. He must have known and remembered how numerou·s

the nation was in the time of its greatness; when it counted perhaps

millions of freemen. Three hundred and sixty thousand Picentines

submitted in the fifth century to the dominion of Rome 24 : now it

is probable indeed that this number included, not the able-bodied

citizens alone, but, like Cresar's account of the Helvetians, all who

were free; the Picentines however were among the less consider­

able of the Sabellian tribes: and, though they and others of their

race may have.incorporated the people they subdued, the opinion,

which Dionysius fancied he found in Cato, is not the less absurd.

At Reate, in the Sabina, in the country of the Marsians, the

people tliey found, and subjugated or expelled, were Cascans: in

the district of the Pentrians they were Opicans; who probably had

also taken the place of the Italians about Beneventu'm, and in the

land of the Hirpinians. On the left bank of the Tiber their settle·

ments in the time of the Roman kings reached low down, inter·

322 Macrobius v. 18.

23 Servius and the Veronese Scholiast on lEn. vu. 684.

24 Pliny 111. J 8.78

HISTORY OF ROME.

mingled with those of the Latins, even to the south of the Anio;

and were not confined to Collatia and Regillum 825 , and to two of

the hills of Rome. The wars with the Sabines form a main part

of what is contained in the earliest annals of Rome: but with the

year 306 they cease entirely: which evidently coincides with their

diffusion in the south of Italy. The tide of overflowing population

from all the Sabellian tribes now turned toward this quarter; and the

old Sabines on the Tiber became quite insignificant.

Strabo calls the Sabines Autochthons 29 : this, applied to a people

whose spreading falls so clearly within the range of history, can

only mean that they are not a colony from any foreign nation.

What induced him to make this remark, might be the fiction of the

Tarentines, which was still extant in books, that the Samnites con­

tained a mixture of Laconians: Strabo's sound sense however re­

jected this as a frivolous compliment to a powerful neighbour 2 1.

Others had devised the same. admixture for their parent race, the

Sabines: Amynche or Amyclre on the Liris, it seemed, must needs

be a colony from Sparta; and so the poets, though perhaps none

prior to the Alexandrians, sang that it was founded by the Dioscuri

along with Glaucus 28 • Further traces of Sparta were now sought

for and presumed to exist in the vicinity: Caieta was derived from

K1:t1a'.·'"" : the goddess Feronia was referred to the Laconian Pharre;

some Lacedemonians were said to have landed on the Pomptine

coast, not however in the heroic age, but in that of Lycurgus, and

from thence to have proceeded into the interior and joined the

Sabines 29 : an absurdity I should not allow a place to in this work,

unless it exemplified and illustrated the origin of much that pro­

fesses to be traditional.

As I have already observed, it is by no means improbable,­

though it is a point we are not at liberty to assume in a historical

investigation which earnestly seeks after the truth, and which be­

lieves in historical truth,-that the Sabellians and Opicans were

only branches of one stock. The language of the Sabines must

have been altered in the conquered countries, by intermixture with

those of such nations as they subdued but.did not exterminate; yet

325 Livy 1. 38. n. 16.

26 v. p. 228. c.

27 v. p. 250. b. c.

28 Servius on lEn. x. 564.

2£1 Dionysius II. 49. The native books in whiCh this story occurred,

were not Sabine ones, but those of Gellius, whom Dionysius mentions in his

introduction among his authorities. This is clear from Servius on lEn. vm.

638: where the only reason for mixing up Cato's name with the rambling

discussion, is, that he too derived the name of the people from Sabus. ·HISTORY OF ROME.

79

all the Sabellians spoke a common one. To prove the Sabine

origin of the word multa, Varro says it was still found in the Sam­

nite language 330 ; and to show that Cascus was a Sabine word, he

adduces the meaning of the name Cassinum, a place inhabited by

the Samnites, the offspring of the Sabines 31 • This leads us to con­

jecture that the original Sabines, who had been Roman citizens so

long, had ceased to speak their own language: seventy or eighty

years later it is remarked by Strabo, that the language of the Sam­

nites and Lucanians was also extinct 39 • I have already observed

that liernre, rocks, was a Sabine and a Marsic word. The Campa­

nian Oscan must have been the dialect the furthest removed from

the Sabi'ne 38 , and must have subsisted the longest: it had not become

quite obsolete at Herculanum and Pompeii wl1en they perished.

The l\Iarsic inscription given by Lanzi is not to be made out in

the present state of our information on the Italian langauges; although

a close approach to Latin is strikingly evident. The characters

used by the Marsians and their confederates, together with the

Frentanians, and assuredly by the ancient Sabines too, were the

Latin; which ·are also found on the table at Bantia: of the Samnites

we have no written monuments save coins, which, like all the Cam­

panian, except those with Greek inscriptions, have Etruscan letters:

this however is no ground for imagining even the remotest 'affinity

between the languages. The coins of the Lucanians have the name

Lucanorn in Greek letters; so that they probably used these instead

of the Etruscan. Nor was this alphabet all they adopted: heredi­

tary enemies .as they were to the· Greek cities, they nevertheless

acquired such a familiarity with their language, that their embassa­

dor astonished and won the hearts of. the popular assembly at

Syracuse by the pure Doric he spoke 34 : nor would the authors of

Pythagorean treatises have taken the mask of imaginary Lucanians,

had it not been notorious that this philosophy found re.ception

among them, or had it been unusual for Lucanians to write Greek 35 •

The strictness of their morals, and their cheerful contentedness,

were the peculiar glory of the Sabellian mountaineers, but especially

of the Sabi~es and the four northern cantons: and they preserved it

330 Gellius XI. I.

31 de. L. L. vI. 3. p. 86. Bip.

32 vr. p. 254. a.

33 Sabina usque radices in Oscam linguam egit, says Varro, VI. 3 .

. 34 Or. Corinth. among the orations of Dion Chrysostom u. II· 113. ed.

Reisk.

35 However that the notion of Lucanian philosophers in the time of Py­

thagoras, or even long after, must be a fiction of a late age, is proved by the

.

history of that people.80

HISTORY OF ROME.

long after the virtues of ancient times had disappeared at Rome

from the hearts and the demeanour of men. Else the several tribes

of a nation have seldom been so different, as those of this great

people: the Samnites, Marsians, and Pelignians, were fond of war,

and clung to liberty even unto death; the Picentines were sluggish

and cowardly; the Sabines simple-hearted and honest; the Luca­

nians ferocious freebooters. As to the Campanian knights, they

were so estranged from their ancestors, that they are quite out of

the question here. All the Sabellians, but especially the Marsians,

practised divination; principally from the flight of birds. The

Marsians also boasted of being able to charm serpents, and of hav­

ing magical cures for their bites: and to this day the jugglers, who

are wont to handle these reptiles familiarly, as one of the chief

tricks they exhibit to the populace of Rome and Naples, come out

of the same country, from the Lago di Celano in the Abruzzo.

Most of these tribes, and among the rest the Sabines, lived in open

hamlets ; the Samnites and the members of the northern confederacy,

like the Epirots, fortified and dwelt. around the summits of their

hills; where a brave people could defend the approaches even

without walls : not that they had no regular towns, but the number

was small. Not a ruin is found in Samnium of the time anterior

to the Romans: which does not arise solely from the ravages of

war. The free shepherd and peasant will build himself a dwelling

on his hills, to suit his wants,. not to hold out against time and war.

Nor are works of art in clay or brass, or sepulchres containing vases,

found any where in the districts purely Sabellian; but only in those

which they occupied as rulers, iri Campania and Lucania.

The Sabellians. would have made themselves masters of all Italy,

had they been united in one state, or even firmly knit in a confed­

eracy, so as to appropriate their conquests permanently and to hold

them in dependence, securing them by colonies. But they differed

from the Romans, in valuing the enjoyment of the highest degree

of freedom above all things; more than greatness and pow€r, more

than the lasting preservation of the state. · Hence the tribes they

planted were not bound to the mother-country; but forthwith became

alien and often hostile to the state they had issued from; whereas

Rome, whose colonies were of small numbers, was secure of their

fidelity; while by their means, and by imparting subordinate civil

rights to her conquered enemies, she converted them into a body

of loyal subjects far superior to her colonists in number. Owing

to this, Campania was let slip from the power of the Samnites.

Without reckoning the cities there, in which the elements of theIIISTORY OF ROME.

81

Oscan population regained the preponderance, or the Bruttians,

who were properly foreigners, the Sabellian cantons, at the break­

ing out of the war between Rome and Samnium, were about twelve

in number. Of these the Marsians were joined with the other

three middle states in a federal league, having a community of na·

tional laws, but not under a common government; in the way that

Rome was united with Latium and the Hernicans. The tie by

which, 'as it would appear, at first five tribes, and at a later period

four 336, were united to form the Samnite republic, seems to have been

firmer, but still insufficient. In time of war the Samnites elected

a supreme general, whose Sabellic title Embratur, when moulded

into a Latin word, was used to designate a commander-in-chief.

We find it on the Samnite denary of the Social war, applied to

C. Papius l\:lutilus: by Livy the Samnite commander-in-chief is

termed Imperator, as a Latin one is Dictator or Prtetor. Strabo

says 3 7 that the Lucanians during war elected a king; this was the

election of an lmperator.

The Samnites and the Marsian confederacy, the Sarnnites and

the Lucanians, were hostile to each other: the ancient Sabines and

the Picentines were regardless of the rest. But the Samnites, even

standing alone, would never .have fallen before the Romans, if they

had enjoyed a similar constitution, and that unity to which the

nations of antiquity never attained save by means of a predominant

capital.

336 The Pentrians, the Caudines, the Hirpinians, and the people on the

coast from Surrentum to the Silarus: at an earlier period the Frentllnians also.

But there may h11.ve been a still greater number of Samnite cantons, though

no mention of them has been preserved: with regard to the Caracenians the

matter is very doubtful.

37 vx. p. 254. c.