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.

1.-LTHE TUSCANS OR ETRUSCANS.

THE fears and attention of the Greeks were excited about the

time of the Persian war by the dominion of the Etruscans over the

Tyrrhenian sea; although Dionysius is mistaken in supposing it to

have been after them that the whole west of Italy was called Tyr­

rhenia by the Greeks: that name belongs to the age of the genuine

Tyrrhenians. When they were confined to Tuscany, and even

there were dependent upon Rome, their renown passed away; and

their former greatness was held to be fabulous by the contempora­

ries of Polybius 338 • In Roman history their importance is limited

to the period between the kings and the Gallic conquest; after

which they are extremely weak in comparison with the Sabellians.

By the Greeks they are mostly mentioned to their discredit, some­

times as pirates, sometimes as gluttons; by the Romans only as

diviners and artists: it is no traditional opinion which has taught

the moderns, that, independently of the extensive empire they once

held, they were one of the most remarkable nations of antiquity.

The ruins of their cities, the numerous works of art that have been

discovered, the national spirit of the Tuscans, who looked upon

them as ancestors to be proud of; even the tempting mystery of a

language utterly unknown; all this has made the moderns pay

more attention to them, than to any other of the Italian tribes; and

the Etruscans at this day are incomparably more renowned and

honoured, than they were in the time of Livy. Unhappily the

interest thus felt has not been combined with an equal degree of

judgment and impartiality: men have not chosen to be content with

knowing what their researches could discover: and no other part

of literature relating to ancient history contains so much that is

irrational and hasty, nay uncaudid, as may be found in what has

been written on the Etruscan language and history since Annius of

Viterbo.

338

II.

17.IIISTORY OF ROME.

83

I think I have sufficiently explained the origin of those erroneous

opinions on the extraction of the Etruscans, which deceived even

the Greeks, and have led the moderns much further astray, in' pro­

portion as they were anxious to get some key or other to the secrets

of a buried language. It is enough here to remind the reader, that,

from Tyrrhenia retaining its name after its conquest by the Etrus­

cans, two entirely different races were called Tyrrhenians by the

Greeks : the Pelasgians on the i:oast of Asia and on the islands in

the north of the JEgean, and the Etruscans. The latter had still

less title to the name, than the Sabellians in the south of Italy to

that of Oscans 33 9; nay exactly the same title as the English have to

that of Britons, or the Spanish Creoles to that of Mexicans or Peru­

vians: indeed the way they acquired it was precisely the same.

Now it being assumed that all the Pelasgians must have come ori­

ginally out of Greece, hence the story of the migration from Thes­

saly was invented: and since the l\:Ieonians were Tyrrhenians, and

it passed for certain at Athens and among the lonians, that these

Tyrrhenians, as well as those of Lemnos, were of the same stock

with the ancient inhabitants of Agylla and Tarquinii; since the

Meonians and Lydians moreover were confounded in the selfsame

manner as the Tyrrhenians and Etruscans 40 ; this gave birth to the

story concerning the emigration of the ancient Tyrrhenians from

J,ydia; which story Herodotus, in one of his less fortunate moments,

may perhaps have under8tood of the Etruscans.

Dionysius, though he had not detected the source of the error,

makes a stout stand against the two assumptions, which are equally

fallacious. That the story told by Herodotus had no Lydian tradi·

tion to rest upon, he proves by the unexceptionable authority of

Xanthus; that, even if there had been such a tradition, it would

deserve no credit, by the complete difference of the two nations in

language; usages, and religion. His assertion that the language

spoken by the Etruscans was a totally peculiar one, ::.nd bore no

affinity to any other, would deserve our full belief, even if we had

nothing beyond it; because the Etruscan was then, and indeed long

after, a living language, and books in it were reaclH. It is however

339 Above p. 51, note 206.

40 The Lydians, a branch of the same family with the Cariana and My­

sians, were foreign conquerors and barbarians.

41 The verses of Lucretius,

Non Tyrrhena retro volventum carmina frustra

Indicia occultro Divum percurrere mentis.

show that in his time the Etruscan books were still read in the original, from

right to left (retro). I will remark by the way that by indicia mentis Lucre­

tius means to explain indigitamenta.84

HISTORY OF ROME.

but too strongly confirmed by all our inscriptions, in the words of

which no analogy with the Greek language or with the kindred

branch of the Latin can be detected, even by the most violent ety­

mological artifices; so that nothing short of some wonderful dis­

covery will ever turn this dead treasure to account 349• In opposition

to the unanimous evidence of the ancients, who assert with equal

positiveness that the Tuscan language was distinct both from the

Sabine and from the Oscan, an opinion has arisen among the

Italian philologers, that all the nations of Italy, any remains of

whose languages occur in inscriptions, with the exception of a few

nameless races in the south, spoke only dialects of the same funda­

mental language. An unprejudiced investigation, such as there are

ample means of undertaking, will convince every one, as it has

convinced me, that the Tuscan bore just as little affinity to the

Oscan, as to Latin and Greek.·

It is in compliance with the evident usage of the ancients that I

here call the language of the Etruscans the Tuscan : nor shall I

scruple henceforward to call the people themselves Tuscans: not­

withstanding that Tuscus can be nothing but another form of Tur­

inus. In Cato's time the country was commonly styled Etruria,

the people Tusci: Etrusci in later times grew to be more usual in

books. The old name however must have continued the prevalent

one in the mouth of the people: hence under the later emperors the

name of Tuscia for the country, which till then had not been used

in writing4 8 ; and hence, since the middle ages, Toscana, and Tos­

cani for the people. Etruria and Etrusci presuppose the simple

form Etruri: and this we may hold to be the name originally given

by the Italians to the conquerors of the Tyrrhenians: although the

name both of Tuscans and Etruscans was no less foreign to the

people than that of Tyrrhenians: the one they gave themselves was

•

Rasena 44 •

342 Among all the Etruscan words said to have been made out, only two,

avil ril, vixit annos, seem to have been really explained: and it is in this very

instance that Lanzi flounders (T. u. p. 322.), because no shadow of an etymo­

logy can be found for ril meaning year. Turce is interpreted i:niu: I should

·

rather take it to be Tuscus.

43 Servius, on lEn. x. 164, censures the word as a novelty.

44 Dionysius 1. 30. The termination ena in Etruscan answers to the

Latin ius, as is shown by the gentile names (see note 922): so that the root is

Ras. This statement of Dionysius however should only be understood with

reference to the ruling people; their vassals might retain the old name of

Tyrrhenians {see note 342): even though they had exchanged their language

for that of the conquerors, like the Christians in Asia Minor.HISTORY OF ROME.

85

In the age of their greatness the Tuscans, having subdued the

more ancient Tyrrhenians and the Umbrians, dwelt in Etruria pro­

per and in the country about the Po. The Rretians too, and other

Alpine tribes were of the Tuscan race, as we are expressly assured

by Livy 845 : so, according to Strabo, were the Lepontians and Camu­

nians4&; perhaps the Euganeans also, who inhabited Venetia before

the founding of Patavium: and the language of the people of Groe­

den in the Tyrol, which, mixed as it has been with others, still

seems to stand alone in such roots as are peculiar to it, may not

unreasonably be consideted as a relic of the Etruscan 4 7, Mount

Brenner· formed the northern boundary of the Rretians, and cons·e­

quently of the Etruscan race. Ilut were these Rretians, as the

common opinion would make them••, Etruscans of the plain, who

had retired to the Alps on the invasion of the Gauls? \Ve must

suppose the vallies of the. Alps to have been almost uninhabited,

ere this can be conceivable: for a people who had not been able

to withstand the Gauls either in the field or behind their ramparts,

would have been much less able, when routed and flying, to wrest

the land of the mountaineer from its owner. But these regions were

far from being a desert: Polybius speaks of the inroads into Cis­

alpine Gaul made by the Alpine tribes immediately after the Gallic

invasion. And so long as there was still a home to receive the fugi­

tives on the other side of the Po or of the Apennines, they would

never have moved northward. It would be far easier to conceive

-and Livy's expressions are not adverse to such a supposition4 9 ­

that the mountains had been occupied by the Etruscans on the Po

as a bulwark· against irruptions from the north; as Theoderic

planted a colony of Goths in the land of the Breones. A rich peo­

ple may seize even upon barren mountains out of ambition; or may

occupy them as a precaution: but for it to send colonies sufficient

to keep down the old inhabitants, when more smiling Tegions are

inviting it50, implies the existence of an extensive and absolute au­

345 v. 33. The spelling Rlu'eti with an h is contrary to all good au­

thority.

46 He says they are of the Rretian race, 1v. p. 206. b.

47 Hormayr Geschichte von Tirol, p. 139. foll.

48 Mentioned by Pliny m. 24. and Justin xx. 5.

49 v. 33: after saying that the first abodes of the Etruscans were on the

coast of the lower sea, and that from thence they had founded twelve colonies

north of the Apennines, he proceed;i: Alpinis quoque ea gentibus haud duhie

origo est, maximeque Rretis.

· 50 Such as the plains and hills of the Venetians, which the Tuscans did

not take possession of, and the conquest of which could .not have been ren­86

IIISTORY OF ROME.

thority, such as seems quite out ·of the question in a state consist­

ing of cantons, like the Tuscan.

If Rretia on the other hand was one of the original homes of the

Etruscan people, from which it issued and spread, first in upper

Italy, and then to the south of the Apennines, it is very conceivable

that, when those migrations took place, a great part of the nation

would stay behind, because, as the Arragonese said in the introduc- ·

tion to their laws•; 1 , they were unwilling to exchange their rocky

soil for a fat hn<l, lest in leaving ~heir home they should leave their

freedom an<l their virtue: and to these, to the house of their fathers,

m~my of the lost sons may have returned, when the days of their

prosperity were gone. Even the harshness of the Etruscan lan­

guage, which seems to be still su~viving in· the Florentine dialect,

might be alleged as an argument for the people having come from

a mountainous country: for, unintelligible as are the contents of

the Etruscan inscriptions, still they bear unequivocal marks of such

a character: besides a nation in whose language consonants were

not the predominant sounds, would scarcely have adopted the orien­

tal custom of dropping the short vowels in writing. Moreover we

have historical statements, as authentic as can be required for those

times, which testify that the spreading of the Etruscans toward the

south was only by degrees.

'

In a very ancient history of the Umbrians it was related that the

Etruscans had conquered three hundred of their towns 52 : so that the

Umbrians must at one time have occupied the chief part pf the

countries which belonged to the Etruscans in the fulness of their

power. It may be said, this refers to the land between the .i\lps

and the Apennines; since, until the irruption of the Gauls, the

Umbrians retained some territory between the Apennines and the

Po. And this was certainly a part; but so likewise was Tuscany,

where we find the ancient towns of the Umbrians low down on the

left of the Tiber, and where they once dwelt as far as the Anio.

Even l\1icali 53 , though he would not part with the persuasion that his

country was the cradle of the Etruscan people, observes that the

river Umbro, at the mouth of which was a district called Umbria,

dered so difficult even by a large population and by fortified towns, as that of

Rretia was by nature and by its people.

351 Mirabeau, Essai sur le Despotisme, p. 238.

52 Pliny m. 19. Indisputably however none of the numbers in the Ita­

lian traditions will less admit of being taken literally than this: it merely

means that there were a great many of them.

53 T. 1. p. 58. comp. pp. 106, 107.IIISTORY OF ROME.

87

mentioned by Pliny 85 *, reminds him of the Umbrians. In the story

of the Lydian migration, Pisa and the whole country to the rocky

summits of the Alps are wrested by the Tyrrhenians from the Um­

hrians: and Pliny says the Umbrians were the oldest inhabitants

of Etruria, and were expelled by the Pelasgians 55 • Though it may

still be denied that Herodotus pronounces Cortona not to have been

an Etruscan city, or supposed that he is mistaken if he does; yet

Crere, Graviscre, Alsium, Saturnia, were occupied by the Etruscans

as conquerors, after driving out the people who in Italy bore the

name of Siculians, in Athens of Pelasgians and Tyrrhcnians 5_6•

Tarquinii too had belonged to the Thessalians, Perusia to the

Achreans; that is, both to the Pelasgians 57 : the founding of Clusium

is ascribed to Telemachus 5 •, and thus referred to Circe's Latins.

Populonia according to soma was a colony of the V olaterrans, who

had driven the Corsicans from this coast 59• Among the places the

Etruscans wrested from the Pelasgians; Dionysius mentions Pisa 60 :

that it was not originally an Etruscan city, lies at the bottom of the

statement of its being built by Greeks after the taking of Troy.

And allowing this story to be derived from its name seeming to be

a Greek one, yet Cato too held that the Tuscans were not its first

inhabitants 61 • From him or from Varro did Dionysius undoubtedly

borrow his accounts of the spreading of the Etruscans toward the

Tiber. But all statements, however probable in themselves and

well attested, were forced to give way to the tale of a Lydian ex­

traction. For by this the first settlement of the new-comers was

of necessity placed on the coast of the lower sea; which is also as­

sumed by Lycophron: and thus grew up the opinion, which in

Livy passes for certainty, that Tuscany was the original home of

the Etruscans, whence they moved northward across the Apen­

nines and toward the Alps. I will not dissemble, that two Latin '

writers of Etruscan history, Flaccus and Crecina, unquestionably

related, that Tarchon came from the south of the mountains and

built the twelve northern cities, among which was Mantua 62 • But

as we find Tarchon here, that is, Tyrrhenus and the l\Ieonian fable,

354

m. 8.

55 Lycophron v.1350--61. Ilerodot. 1. !)4. Pliny n1. R Even Cluver,

though his opinions in other respects are very different from mine, considera

Tuscany as only a later conquest of the Etruscans.

56 Dionysius 1. 20. 21. Strabo v. p. 225. d.

57 Justin xx. 1. See above p. 24. n. 69.

58 Servius on .lEn. x. 1G7.

59 Servius on .lEn. x. 167.

60 1. 20.

61 In Servius on .lEn. x. 179 .

. v2 Schol. Ver. on .lEn. x. 198: comparPd with Servius.88

HISTORY OF ROME.

this is not worth more than the Patavine story of Antenor in Livy.

What the native annals of the Etruscans related of their origin, we

know only negatively; so far as that they said nothing of the Lydian

legend. Among a priestridden people like the Etruscans, the an­

nals must have been in the hnnds of the priests, as even at Rome

they were in those of the pontiffs; and since they considered

Etruria as the favourite land of the Gods 868 , it was natural they

should boast to have been its primitive inhabitants.

At no time did the Etruscans possess the whole of Cisalpine Gaul.

\Vest ward their territory extended only to the Ticinus, where in

those days Ligurians were dwelling, having been driven back by

the Gauls. The land south of the Po too, nearly down to Parma,

belonged to the Ligurians, or was uninhabitable from its swamps.

Romagna was in the hands of the U mbrians, who kept it till the

Gauls broke in. But in tl~e country between the Venetians and

the Gauls, some Etruscan towns maintained themselves until they

yielded to the Romans: Verona is termed by Pliny a Rretian,

Mantua by him and by Virgil a Tuscan city 64 : thus it was in Etrus­

can cities that the most genial and the most elaborate of the Roman

poets were born. Both these may be classed among the twelve

Tuscan towns to the north of the Apennines; which number deci­

dedly included Hatria, Melpum, and Felsina. The first of these,

once eminent for its commerce, gave its name to the upper sea.

Melpum, a very rich town in the Milanese, to the north of the Po,

was destroyed by the Boii, Senones, and fasubres, on the day that

Camillus took Veii, in the year 358 65 • Bononia, under the name

of Felsina, was once the capital of EtruriallO: this too seems to argue

that the nation did not spread from the south of the Apennines.

The twelve cities south 'of the Apennines, which were united in

a confederacy as sovereigns of their respective districts, frequently

as their number is mentioned, are no where enumerated by name;

and it is doubtful, which, among several of those that seem to have

a claim to this pre-eminence, must yield to the others.

· When Livy is relating how the allies volunteered to forward

363 Vegoja, among· the fragments of the Agrimensores, Goes. p. 258.

Scias mare ex rethere remotum. Cum autem Juppiter terram Hetruriw sibi

vindicavit, &c.

·

64 Plin. m. 23. Virg. lEn. x. 199-203. So likewise by Flaccus and

Cmcina. As to Verona, we have certainly to choose between this state,ment,

and that which il.ssigns it and Brixia to the Cenomani. See the notes on

Livy v. 35.

65 Pliny 111. 21.

6G Pliny 111. 20.HISTORY OF ROME.

89

Scipio's armament, he says the Etruscan states promised to sup­

port him, each according to its means 36 7; that is to say, they all

did so: but he afterward only mentions eight cities, and what each

supplied. These were Crere, Tarquinii, Populonia, Volateme,

Arretium, Perusia, Clusium, Rusellm: that any would withdraw is

incredible; but a write11 so hasty may easily have omitted some.

Of the towns unquestionably belonging to the number of the sove­

reign twelve, Veii and Vulsinii had been destroyed: and Vetulonium

had disappeared, a city never mentioned in the historical age of

Rome, and but once in the legends; in the story, which Livy has

entirely overlooked, of a protracted war carried on by Etruria

against Tarquinius Priscus and the Romans 63 • Populonia, being a

colony from Yolateme, was not one of the original twelve cities;

it can only have come into the room of an extinct one: now if our

topography be correct in putting Vetulonium near it, then the place

of Vetulonium, which appears from report to have been powerful

of yore, supposing that its destruction was one of those early events

in Etruria which are totally forgotten, may have been taken by its

neighbour, Populonia, as that of Himera was by Thermre. Thus

the number of the twelve Achrean cities, whenever it fell short,

was made up: and. thus we find at different epochs that there were

always thirty Latin cities, and seven Frisian provinces; the whole

number being preserved; but with some new ones amongst them,

to replace such as were extinct or lost.

'

A century earlier Corton~ is called by 'l,ivy one of the chief

places of Etruria 69 : this makes us the more surprised to miss her

when he enumerates those eight. Now she may have had just as

little to do' with the Etruscans as Falerii had, and he may have'

been led into an error by her situation. But his statement may

also be well founded, and yet the one in Herodotus, which goes

120 years further back, may be no less so: if we conceive that

meanwhile, having long stood solitary and abandoned, she had at

length fallen, and been forced to receir3 an Etruscan colony;

which then, as was probably the case with Populonia, stepped into th'e

place. of some lost city, to wit of Veii. T:·.e omission of her .nam~/

h~wever in Livy cannot be a~counted for by merely supposing that

367 xxvm. 45. Etrurim populi pro suis quisque facultatibus consulem

adjuturos polliciti.

68 Dionysius m. 51.

69 1x• .37. A Perusia et Cortona et Arretio, quw ferme capita Etruriw

populorum e~ tempestate erant.

1.-M90

HISTORY OF ROME.'

he, or the historian he followed, was guilty of carelessness. The

last years of the Etruscan war, the narrative of which was contained

in Livy's eleventh book, are covered with an obscurity perfectly

impervious. If Cortona was forced at that time to submit to Rome

before the general peace, she would obtain no share in the terms

by which such places as still held out were recognized as states,

though under t~e supremacy of Rome. In that case her conditioa

must have been very different from. that of. those eight cities:

perhaps she was admitted to the inferior franchise, as the Etruscan

town of Saturnia undoubtedly was about the same time.

\Vhatever conjecture we may form on this point, two places seem

to be stiU wanting to complete the number of twelve; Whether

it was made up by Capena, or by Cossa, or by Frosulre, is a

question that cann~t be answered with certainty : it may even have

been a people different from all three, one of which in our scanty

sources of information about Etruria we find nothing but the name,

as is the case with the Salpenates 370 , or of which the very name

never occurs.

Capena certainly in the year 550 could no longer be counted

,among the Etruscan towns; since the Capenates, that is, assuredly

not merely some individuals who had gone over to the Romans,

had already been enjoying the full rights of Roman citizens for 180

years*. Previously they had waged war by themselves against

Rome; and though I think I make out in an extremely disfigured

and obscure statement derived from Cato, that their city was a

colony from Veii, and their ancestors a gencration"bound to emi­

grate by the vow of a sacred spring 71 , they might still be an inde­

pendent state: I have before mentioned the analogous case of Popu­

lonia.

But while in this instance every thing is uncertain, there is on ~he

contrary a taler.able probability for excluding the pretensions of

Cossa. Pliny calls it Cossa of the Volcicntes7~: this combined

with the mention of a people bearing almost the same name, the

Volcentes, who .are spoken of along with the Lucanians and Hirpi­

nianst, is a substantial ground for conjecturing that the original

370 Livy v. 31.

* Livy v. 4. .

71 In Servius on .lEn. vn. 6!)7. Hos dicit Cato Veientum condidisse

auxilio regis Propertii, qui eos Capenam cum adolevissent miserat. There

must be a gap after Veientum: the words dropt may have been juventutem

Juisse, oppidumque.

72 Cossa Volcientium, III. 8. In the Fasti Triumphales the name is

spelled Vulcientes.

t Livy xxvn. 15.HISTORY OF ROME.

'IH

inhabitants of Cossa were not Etruscans, but had kept their ground

against the Etruscans. It is true, that at all events this city could

not be mentioned by Livy o_n occasion of Scipio's expedition; for it

had long sinee been transformed into a Latin colony*. The ruins of

its walls, which are far beyond the dimensions of a colony, belong

to an earlier age; but they prove nothing as to the nation that raised

them; for the style of their architecture is not confined to the Etrus­

can towns.

·The walls of Fcesulce, its theatre, and other ruins that have come

to light there, display a greatness not inferior to that of any other

Etruscan city: moreover it is probable that here as elsewhere Sylla

settled his colony in the centre of a great territory, and not by the

side of a dependent town.: indeed the only ground for its being

doubtful whether the parent city of Florence was one of the twelve,

seems to me, that we must then suppose Livy overlooked her:

which in this case strikes us as more especially impossible. From

her remote situation it is quite incredible that her fall should have

been prior to the general peace.

The territory belonging to each of the sovereign cities contained

several provincial towns, some of them dependent colonies, others

inhabited by subjects, the descendants of the old subjugated popu­

lation. Now it was because the Etruscan state was founded on

conquest, that the nobles had such a multitude of clients, like the

Thessalian Penestce 373 : whom they employed in task work, and with­

out whom their colossal works could hardly have been achieved.

At Rome the relation between the patron and client was the feudal

system in its best form: but even supposing that there was a similar

law of conscience among the Etruscans, binding the patron and

protecting the client, still it was on her free plebeian estate that the

greatness of Rome rested; and none such, it is evident, existed in

any Etruscan city. We do indeed find a slight allusion, which

might be considered as indic~ting that there was a popular assembly

at Tarquinii, distinct from the general body of the ruling houses7 4 •

And this trace certainly is not to be overlooked: but who will war­

rant, that the Ro~an writer followed by Dionysius in a narrative

where all the details must be a late embellishment, did not merely

transfer to Tarquinii the relation between the Roman curies and

•

373

74

&«l J/

Livy xxvn. 10.

Dionysius IX. 5. oi Juvd.'l.,;Td.Tol To~' mv~O'T•H 1.,.,,,_6µ001.

1

Dionysius v. 3 . .,.,;v"' <rd. ,,~v~ (so the Vatic. MS.) <tQ>r Tet.p•uYITD"•

i1uiv"'' i:irl <r~v ixxl\~O'l<tv ,,."f"-X,B,/,.92

HISTORY OF ROME.

commonalty ? This is far more probable than that he, knew and

paid regard to the c~stitution of Tarquinii 3 7 5 ,

It was not by popular assemblies, nor even by deliberations of a

numerous senate, but by meetings of the chiefs of the land, the

Magnates (principes Etrurire), that the general affairs -0f the nation

were decided upon7 6, We are not to imagine that the meetings at

the temple of Voltumna were of any other kind, or corresponded

with the institutions of nations r'.'ally free, such as the Latins and

Samnites. These Etrurian chie:'.'l were the persons from whom the

young Roman nobles received instruction in the sacred sciences of

divination77; a warlike sacerdotal caste, like the Chaldeans: these

were the Lucumones by whose ::ncestors the revel~tions of Tages

had been committed to writing78• If the conduct of the priests at

Tarquinii, in sacrificing capt'.-.es, dressing themselves up like infer­

nal spirits, and hurling snakes and burning torches at the enemy,

was common among them, it was natural the name of such fanatics

and jugglers should be transferred to lunatics and madmen 79 , They

were patricians, not kings.. Lucumo of Clusium, Lucumo who

brought succour to Romulus, Lucumo in fine who removed from

Tarquinii to Rome, were represented in the old traditions as only

leading men in their respective cities. The Cilnii, the Crecinre,

were Lucumones, as the Claudii and Valerii were patricians; they

were not less noble than the latter by birth, though as Romans ac­

counted only among the commonalty.

These ruling houses were exposed to those violent revolutions,

·by which an oligarchy is every where threatened, even from1the

midst of its own body, wherever it is not upheld by some powerful

protection from without, open or dissembled. About the middle

of the fifth century the house of the Cilnii were expelled from Ar­

retium by force of arms, as the factions of the noble houses in Tus­

cany banished each other by turns in the middle ages. · It was· also

in the spirit of these unhappy feuds, for the refugees to be restored

by the mediation of the public enemy, the Romans 80 : but when

375 The same applies, and still more strongly, to the mention of the plebs

at Arretium, in Livy x. 5.

76 Livy x. 16. Postulaverunt Samnites principum Etrurire conci!ium.

Q.uo coacto, &c. '

·

77 Cicero de Divin. 1. 41. de !egg. u. 9. Val. Maximus 1. 1, 2.

78 Censorinus 4, at the end.

79 Fest. Epit. v. Lucomones quidam homines ob insaniam dicti.

80 Livy x. 3. 5.HISTORY OF ROME.

93

these had exiled the whole house of the Tarquins, the rigour of

that sentence was not to be mitigated by any foreign intercession.

Even so late as in the second Punic war, we find the government

of the Etruscan cities vested exclusively in the senators, that is, in

the noblesse. In the south ofltaly, where the supreme power was

every where shared between the senate and the people, we know

what were the sentiments of both orders at that crisi:o :. in Etruria,

when a ferment began to show itself, it was entirely suppressed by

securing the submission of the senate at Arretium : the people are

quite out of the question 381 •

Now the want of a free and respectable commonalty,-which

the Etruscans, obstinately retaining and extending their old feudal

system, never allowed to grow up,-was the occasion of the re­

markable weakness displayed by the great Etruscan cities in their

wars with the Romans, where the victory was decided by the num­

ber and strength of the infantry. The same want led to the do­

minion of the serfs at Vulsinii; the story of which, as related by the

meagre writers of doubtful credit who are our historical sources for

the period' of this strange phenomenon, sounds no less incredible

than horrible*. 'Vere that account true, nothing worse can have

been exhibited either in the time of the Anabaptists or by a negro

i.nsurrect~on: but writers who could persuade themselves ·that the

citizP.ns of Vulsinii, in order to abandon themselves to voluptuous

indulgences without interruption, would commit their arms and the

government to their slaves, are not to be trusted implicitly as to the

horrors said to have ensued. · Some report about a very unusual

state of things in an Etruscan city had been fabulously exaggerated

by Greek writers 82 ; and their fictions were foolishly adopted by

the Roman: moreover it was necessary that those for whose exter­

mination Rome had taken up arms, should be represented as ex­

tremely criminal: and lastly the virulence of party spirit was not

without its -influence. The marvel disappears, as soon as we per.­

381 Livy xxvn. 24.

* Valer. Max. IX. 1•. Orosius IV. 5.

82 The De Mirabilibus,' inserted among the works of Aristotle, and writ­

ten about 01. 130, in which, as I have already observed, (p. 20.) a great deal

is borrowed from Timams, tells (p. 123, ed. Sylb.) of a Tyrrhenian city

O iv«pt<t., which submitted to be governed by its slaves: this must undoubtedly

mean Vulsinii, whether we suppose the author or, the transcribers distorted

the name. Had the supreme power fallen into the hands of domestic slaves

who had been emancipated,-arid a Greek could scarcely help regarding the

Italian clients as such; for the Thessalians did not write books-the matter

would ~ertainly belong to the class of marvellous stories. But it is historical.

and so requires a rational interpretation.94

HISTORY OF ROME.

ceive that the insurgents must have been serfs, not domestic slaves 383 •

They had been armed by the ruling class in the Roman war: their

aid enabled Vulsinii, when deserted· by mo~t of the other .towns, to

be the only one of all the Etruscan cities that carried on an honour­

able struggle year after year against Rome ; and in a fortun::.te mo­

ment she obtained respectable terms*. For the defenders of their

common home to become citizens, was a matter of course: for them

to extend their right of citizenship to a right of inheriting from and

intermarrying with the old citizens, and to a seat in thrl senate,

was no le,;s so: and the complaints against them do not in reality

amount to more, when stripped of the colouring originally laid on by

party hatred, and monstrously overcharged by silly declamation.

The serfs on becomipg masters may have been guilty of excesses:

but what credit for candour can we give to those, who called down

destruction on their native city, because they were unwilling to

allow their fellow-countrymen an equality of rights? who cho3e

rather that their country should cease to exist, than that they should

have to share the rule of it with others. The same national impo­

tence, the same compulsory precipitate liberation of the oppressed,

the same general ruin, were the Roman patricians bringing on,

without knowing in their folly what they were doing, when they

persisted in keeping the commonalty in servitude, and denying them

their equitable rights.

The part taken by the Etruscans in Sylla's war was the act of

the whole people: the Roman franchise was enjoyed by every free

man without distinction, however the old but now expiring consti­

tutions excluded or restricted him at home: and from this war we

may see how great Etruria would have become, if all the Etruscans

had had a country some centuries earlier.

The regal office, not hereditary iri a single heroic family as in

Greece, but elective for life like the Roman, continued at Veii until

383 Neither was it on their domestic slaves that the Argives conferred the

right of citizenship, after their city had been desolated py the disaster ·in the

Hebdoma (Herodot. VI. 83)': it was assuredly on the Gymnetes, the Argi\·e

serfs (see the Lexicographers quoted by Ruhnken on Timams v. ?rlVt<rT1io6,).

Aristotle instead of servants calls them ,,,.,pio1i.01: Polit. v. 3. 133. a. There

are numerous traces among the Greeks of an ancient separation between

those who afterward composed the demus, and the burghers, caused by the

bondage of the former in early times: for instance when the Samian demus,

after overpowering the aristocrats, deprived them of the right of intermarriage

(Thucyd. vm. 21); which must evidently have been an act of retaliation.

* Livy. x. 37.HISTORY OF ROME.

95

its fall 384 : at Arretium a king may have often been taken from the

house of the Cilnii 85 , A common high priest was appointed by the

twelve cities, and presided at the national festivals 86 : in enterprises

of the whole body the supreme command was committed to one of

the twelve kings, who received a lictor from each city•7, Even

Porsenna, highly as he is celebrated in the old poems, is nothing

in Roman history but king of Clusium. Yet the power of the

whole nation is set in action by him; and in earlier times a union

seems occasionally to have been effected by the power of a supreme

chief: thus all the twelve cities pay homage to Tarquin, considered

as a Lucumo; and the same is implie.d in the legends of Mezentius

and Cceles Vibenna. But from the time when Roman history as­

sumes the form of annals, the cities stand insulated; uniting only

casually and transiently. Yet loose as was the federal bond in

Etruria, it was by this that wars between the cities, of which we

do not find a single trace, were prevented.

Such being the nature of their association,, the islands of Ilva

and Corsica must have been under the dominion, not of the whole

nation, but only of the adjacent maritime cities 88 , Thus too the

Agyllceans had stood alone, when, about 220, while they were still

Tyrrhenians, they attacked the Phocceans of Alalia 89 , to dispute the

possession of Cyrnus. In order to punish the piracies of the mari­

time cities, the Syracusans overran both these islands in 2999°;

and the same must have been the cities to which Corsica is sai.d to

have paid tribute 91 • The Tuscan colony of Niccea in this island

384 Livy v. 1. Had he recollected that he had spoken of Lar Tolumnius

as king ot' Veii but 34 years before, he would not have looked upon this elec­

tion as a novelty.

'

85 Tyrrhena regum progenies.

87 Livy 1. 8. Dionysius m. 61.

86 Livy v. 1.

88 llva would belong to Populonia: and so the furnaces for its iron ore ,

must have lain within the territory of that city. The Greeks received the

story, that no ore could be smelted in that island (see Varro quoted by Servi us

on lEn. x. 174., Strabo v. p. 2"28. d.), as a marvel: even at this day it is never

~melted there; because there must be a transport of coal or of the ore, and the

latter is the more convenient: just as the copper ore is conveyed from Corn­

wall to Wales.

89 Herod. 1. 167. It is the Tyrrhenians, who stone their prisoners; the

Agyllreans, who are chastised by heaven: can Herodotus have supposed that

the sin of only one people was visited by the gods, and that others equally

guilty were left unpunished? That Agylla as then had not yet become Crere,

is clear from her consulting the Delphic oracle: the Etruscans would have

been content with their own aruspicy. The treasury of the Agyilreans at

Delphi must belong of necessity to the time when they were Pelasgians.

90 Diodorus xr. 88.

91 Diodorus v. 13.96

HISTORY OF ROME.

was perhaps an old one of the Tyrrhenians; and from th~m as­

suredly came the Greek name of Ilva, 1Eth11lia: the Tyrrhenians

mentioned among the ancient inhabitants of Sardinia, were unques­

tionably Pelasgians.

·

The same Tyrrhenians too, and not the Etruscans, must have

been the people by whose piracies the western seas were made im­

passsable for peaceful mariners, before the founding of the Greek

colonies in Sicily 8 99 , The same piracies assuredly were the prin­

cipal cause that compelled the Phocreans to employ galleys in their

voyages to Tartessus*. Subsequently all the corsairs of the lower

sea, even the Antiates, seem to have pr.ssed among the Greeks for

Tyrrhenians. But even if the Etruscans have had to ans.wer for

more than they were guilty of, still they fully .deserved to be stig­

matized and hated as pirates: Agylla (Crere) was alone exempted

from the general opprobium 93 • About 250 a station of armed ships

was established by Anaxilaus of Rhegium, near cape Scyllreum, to

blockade the straits against their corsairs 04 • As Etruria was then

at the summit of its greatness, the Tuscans had the command of

the whole Tyrrhenian sea, and sent out large fleets on naval expe­

ditions. In 278 the protection of Hiero king of Syracuse. was

invoked by Cuma against them 95 : by the great defeat that their

navy then sustained, their maritime power seems tq have been

broken, as Pindar prayed that it might .be 96 • For the naval arma­

ment of the Syracusans in the year 299, which conquered llva and

ravaged the Tuscan coast and Corsica, was not opposed by any

Tyrrhenian ships: it was by bribery that Etruria got rid of the

Greek fleet 0 7, Nor did.any naval force show itself in 368, when

Dionysius, under the pretext of punishing the corsairs, appeared

on the coast of Crere with only sixty triremes, and plundered

Pyrgi 98 • But in 448 a Tuscan squadron of eighteen ships came to

the assistance of Agathocles 99 ; probably corsairs. For about. that

time their piracies extended even into the lEgean, whe.re the naval

power of Athens had sunk, and that of Rhodes was.only beginning.

to rise. ·By destroying the Etruscan pirates' the Rhodians earned

the gratitude of the Greek nation 400 : this meritorious exploit seems

to have been achieved in the time between the death of Agathocles

Ephorus in Strabo VI. p.·267. c.

*

Strabo v. p. 220. c.

94

Diodorus XI. 51.

!j()

Diodorus VI. 88.

98

!l!l Diodorus xx. 61.

100 JEI. Aristides Rhod. 11. p. 312. a p. ;3~1'.). d. ed.

392

93

95

97

Herod. 1. 163.

Strabo v1. p. 257. a.

'f>yth. I. V. 137-141.

Diodorus xv. 14.

I

Cant.HISTORY OF ROME.

97

and the expedition of Pyrrhus: for from a prince like the former,

pirates were sure to find protection at the price of sharing their

booty; and their piracies assuredly were not tolerated by the

Romans, any more than those of the Antiates. Indeed it is proba­

ble that they were bound to deliver up all their ships of war by the

treaty; since it was from the Greek cities of southern Italy that

Rome obtained her few triremes and fifty-oar galleys at the beginning

of the first Punic wart.Di.

Treaties between the Etruscan maritime cities and Carthage were

subsisting so late as the time of Aristotle; whereby, as in that with

Rome preserved by Polybius, the right of commerce was regulated,

restricted, and secured. If they also contained stipulations about

giving assistance 2 , these can only have been valid against nations

not included in similar alliances; else Carthage could not have

continued for centuries on terms of friendship with Rome. Per­

haps however the assistance was confined to the allowing levies to

be raised: in the year 443 there were a thousand Etruscan mer­

cenaries8 in the Punic army in Sicily: so, when Pyrrhus was in

that island, levies were made in Italy for the Carthaginians; but

Rome did not send any auxiliaries.

Their fruitful land, rich in internal treasures, supplied abundant

materials for the commercial spirit of the Etruscans; and there

was a time when Tuscany must have been the staple of commerce

among the countries on the Mediterranean, the other nations of

Italy, and the remotest barbarian tribes; with which there was a

communication by a secured high-road across the Alps 4 •

The works of the Etruscans, the very ruins of which astonish

us, cannot, it is perfectly evident, have been executed in small

states without taskmasters and bondmen: but we must not overlook

the great superiority of the Etruscan rulers in this· point to the

Egyptian. , All their works that we are acquainted with, have a

great public object: they are not pyramids, obelisks, and temples,

multiplied without number: if the people suffered in its hard ser­

vice, it was not for idle purposes 5• So too and by means of like

401 Polybius 1. 20.

2 Aristotle Polit. m. 9.

3 Diodorus xix. 106.

4 As far as the Iberians. Pseud-Aristot. nep1 B<tuµ. ,;.,.w.,.µ. p. 102.

5 I grant, no expenditure was ever squandered so lavishly by the

Egyptians, as that which must have been laid out on the sepulchre of the

mythical hero Porsenna, if we might rely on the description of it taken by

Varro from native books. Pliny's expressions (xxxv1. 19. 3, 4.) show that no

trace of it can have been visible in his time: and yet so colossal an edifice

must have lasted undamaged down to this day: so that it can be nothing but

J,-N98

HISTORY OF RO.ME.

ta~kwork did Rome build, when governed by Etruscan kings: after

she became free, all great works were at a stand, until the republic

had grown rich by its victories and conquests: and when compared

with her oldest works and with those of the Etruscan cities, the

buildings of imperial R.ome make but an inconsiderable figure. The·

walls of Volterra and other capitals are constructed of huge blocks,

and, so far as they have not been studiously demolished by hostile

violence, still subsist in imperishable solidity. The thratre at Fie­

sole, and a colossal building near it, are on an equally grand scale:

yet this style is not peculiar to the Etruscans exclusively. It pre­

vails in all the monuments of Latium and ancient Rome, from the

cell of the temple at Gabii, to the wall round the forum of Augus­

tus: and the probability is rather that it was derived by the Etrus­

cans from the earlier inhabitants of Etruria.

The greatest part of Tuscany is mountainous: the rich valley

through which the Arno flows, was anciently a lake and swamp.

There was a lake from Segna to below Fiesole, and toward Prato:

the valley was blocked up by mount Gonfalina: this rock has been

cut through, and a passage opened for the stream toward Pisa 406 •

When the walls of Fiesole were built, this whole extent was still

filled with water; as is proved by the apertures for drains7, The

water covered the site where Florence now stands 8 : to refer that

city to the Etruscan age is a notion utterly untenable. But there

has also been a cut made near La Incisa, to redeem the rich fields of

the upper Val d' Arno from the water: unless it was into the Clanis

that the streams, which now form this part of the river, discharged

themselves of yore, and the purpose was to lessen the quantity

of water· in the Tiber. The swamps through which Hannibal

marched*, are those which liave now been drained on the right

bank of the lower Arno: in those days they may have served as a

barrier against the Gauls and Ligurians: perhaps they had been

drained in an earlier age, and afterward for that purpose abandoned

to the irruption of the waters. On the Po, in the neighbourhood of

Hadria, the art of turning off muddy rivers had been practised by

a dream. Indeed a building like the one described by Varro is absolutely im­

possible, and belongs to the Arabian Nights.

406 Of this even Giovanni Villani was aware: 1. 43.

7 The peasant who guides strangers there, has been led by his plain

srnse to find this out.

8 Hence the dreadful inundations the city experienced in the middle

~ges: the ground now baa been much raised.

* Livy xxu. 2.

•HISTORY OF ROME. ,

99

the Etruscans with success: which rivers, if kept shut up between

dams, are continually raising their beds, so that after the lapse of

centuries they stand on a level far above that of the adjoining coun­

try; and hence it becomes necessary to raise the dykes in the same

proportion, until the perseverance of man is at last exhausted in the

unequal contest with the powers of nature. Now one among the

useful arts carried on by the Tuscans in our days, is that of divert­

ing such waters into marshes, in order to draw them off again, when

the fertilizing deposit has been secreted: by this system the Chiana

has gradually been converted from barren pestilential swamp into

a rich plain. Where a delta however has begun to form, in the

Po, as in the Nile and the Mississippi, standing waters will collect

between the arms of the river, and its mouths are protruded into

the sea; and the further the mouths advance and diverge from each

other, the broader and deeper do the lakes and inland seas made

by these waters become. It is with reference to the overlaying of

swamps like the Chiana, a process which at the same time prevents

the bed of the river growing higher, that we must understand Pliny's

account of the stream of the Po being guided by the Tuscans into

the morasses of the Hadrians 40 9: similar works are needed there at

this day. The channels too by which the Po discharges itself,

were dug by the Tuscans or by their subjects; and their canals and

dams were the means by which its delta was constructed. An~­

ther method of gaining land in use amongst them, consisted in let­

ting off lakes that had formed in the craters of extinct volcanoes,

by tunnels cut through the sides of the hill. In the territory of

Perugia and in the Suburbicarian Tuscia there are traces of many

such lakes, which are completely dried up; the tunnels are un­

known and never cleared out, but still work.

The renown of the Etruscans, as a nation peculiarly excelling in

the arts, is so established, that I cannot expect a favourable reception

for the conjecture, that the works in bronze and clay and the bas­

reliefs attributed to them, were the produce, not of the ruling peo­

ple, but of their subject bondmen, and that the Etruscans properly

so called were no less alien from the .arts than the Romans. Yet I

believe that the striking difference we observe between the works

of Tarquinii and Arretium, is to be accounted for from the earlier

inhabitant& of northern and southern Tuscany being of different

origin. The works which are peculiar to V olaterrre were occa­

a

409 Pliny 111. 20. Omnia ea flumina fossasque primi-fecere Thusci;

egesto amnis impetu per transversum in Atrianorum paludes.100

IIISTORY OF ROME.

sioned by its stone-quarries. But the two former cities wrought

in clay: the produce of Arretium were red vases with very elegant

figures in relief, of a taste altogether peculiar 410 : those of Tarquinii

were painted, and in colour and drawing exactly like some dis­

covered near Corinth, and engraved in Dodwell*, while they dif­

fered from the Campanian in all the same particulars as the Greek.

These are only found in the district of Tarquinii; and, where they

occur, those of Arretium are never met with. Their striking re­

semblance to the Corinthian vases reminds us of the story of De­

maratus, and his companions, the potters Euchir and Eugrammus 11 ;

which is clearly meant to express that from Corinth did Tarquinii

derive her skill in handling clay, and the elegance of her drawing

on her vases. This implies the existence of a peculiar intercourse

with. Greece, such as was carried on by the ·neighbouring city of

Agylla.

The Etruscan statues in the earliest ages were of clay; like the

four-horsed chariot on the Capitoline temple, said to have been set

up at the time of its dedication. But the statues belonging to the

first ages of Rome, several of which were long preserved, were

probably uniformly of bronze 19 : and this is the material of all the

masterpieces that shed lustre on Etruscan art.

To deny that this art owed its refinement to the Greeks, is ex­

tremely idle. Its original rudeness is proved by works of a very

early date; and to the Greeks alone was that idea revealed, by

which the human body is fashioned into life and beauty. It was

from their genius that the spark proceeded, by which susceptible

natures have been kindled in every susceptible people. Hence the

subjects of the most beautiful Etruscan works of art often belong

to Greek mythology : but, having once been enlightened, the Tus­

cans were also able to treat their own conceptions in the spirit of

Greeks. One thing that strikes us, as though it were a national

characteristic, is that their drawing is often extremely correct, with­

out any regard to grace: indeed the style is exactly like that of the

Tuscan painters who lived at the revival of art in the middle agesis.

410 Works or this kind were still executed in the time or Augustus, when

the art of making the Cam,Panian vases was utterly lost.

* Tour through Greece n. 196.

11 Fictores. Pliny xxxv. 43.

12 The marble works in the oldest style, whether statues or bas-reliefs,

which are called Etruscan, are probably all Greek: for the quarry at Luna

was not worked till very late. So long as bronze was not too dear, casting

must have been preferred to the far more difficult process or sculpture.

13 On this point Micali's work is extremely valuable. The reader may

look in it at the engravings of Etruscan bas-reliefs, particularly at pl. 28, forHISTORY OF ROME.

101

Even supposing the artist who executed the she-wolf of the Capi­

tol, was not an Etruscan, still in this work, which has no coun­

terpart among those of the Greeks, we clearly see what Etruscan

art must have been about the middle of the fifth century. And this

must probably have been the age of their finest gems: every thing

that is tamer, more delicate, and softer, belongs to a later, in part

to a much later period. In the two centuries between the crisis

when the relation of Etruria to Rome was decided, and 'the time of

Sylla, the arts must have been very flourishing: the people were liv­

ing in profound peace and great wealth ; and the prosperity of the

country was only disturbed by two storms which passed rapidly

over ; in one campaign of the Cisalpine, and in the second of Han­

nibal's war.

Tuscan art had no national herioc story to work on: like that of

other countries, it sought for its subjects in the mythology of the

Greeks: so that the stories of Thebes and Ilium must have been

familiar to the people. That the circulation of Greek poems had

spread even into Etruria, is not to be questioned: the West and

Carthage itself were open to Greek literature ; Inycum, that ob­

scure town of the Sicanians, was not the only place where the

Greek sophists made money• 1•; and in earlier times a rhapsodist

must surely have been still more welcome. "When even the Romans

were reading Greek, the study would certainly be yet more preva­

lent amid the quiet of Etruria. But it was not in a foreign lan­

guage alone that the Greek stories were listened to : the works of

art are not unfrequently inscribed with the names of the heroes,

altered however to suit the forms of the Etruscan language; and

this is an unequivocal proof that they lived in the speech of the na­

tion, and in poems in the native tongue. Varro too mentions some

Tuscan tragedies by one Volnius, who, from his way of speaking

of him, seems to have lived not long before 15 : these tragedies might

have been an exercise of ingenuity with which the nation had no

concern : but on the other hand we have evidence in the theatre at

Fresulre that Greek dramas, either originals or translations, were

performed there, as they were in Latium at Tusculum and Bovillre :

the countenances. The idea of pl. 23, which is unlike any thing Greek, and

its execution, are exceedingly fine: the genius of death in pl. 44 is a perfect

cherub.

414. Plato Hipp. p. 282. c.

15 Varro de l. L. 1v. 9. p. 17. Ut 'volnius dicebat qui tragredias Tuscas

scripsit. Volnius is the reading of the Florentine MS. Volumnius, as the

editions have it, is one of the corruptions introduced by Pomponi us Lretus.102

HISTORY OF ROME.

were it not so, the construction of such a building in the Greek

form would be unaccountable. Nor can it be doubted that this

theatre was built before the time of Sylla: its size and magnificence

are far beyond the scale of a Roman military colony: besides how

could such a colony have wished for any thing but an amphithea­

tre? There seems moreover to be very good ground for the Flo­

rentine tradition, that Florence was built by Sylla's colony, and

that it did not settle on the hill. However in :µo Etruscan inscrip­

tion do we find any thing bearing the slightest resemblance to the

rhythms of the Greeks, which could not have escaped us even in

a language totally unintelligible ; nor indeed any thing bearing the

least semblance of verse•. The town from which the Fescennine

musical dialogue took its name, belonged to the Faliscans, not to

.

the Etruscans 416 •

It was from Etruria that the music of the Romans was derived:

their stage-singers too came from thence. Like the minstrel in the

middle ages, the Etruscan !tister danced and sang to instrumental

music, in which the time served as an equivalent for verse, instead

of any regular measure. Stringed instruments are to be met with

here and there on the monuments; but the proper native instrument

· was the flute.

The Etruscan characters were formed, like the Greek, from the

same alphabet, among the various ones of different origin found in

Asia, whence all the modes of writing used in Europe are derived.

That the Etruscans received it immediately from the Phenicians,

would not be proved by their custom of proceeding from right to

left: but their omitting the short vowels, and their practice of noting

doubled consonants by a single letter, as is done in all the Aramaic

systems of writing, are purely Punic: so is the want of the vowel

0 ; though nothing can be determined from this as to the sound,

which the Semitic languages have.

But the Phenicians designated numbers by letters : not so the

Etruscans. The numerals we call Roman, are Etruscan; and they

occur frequently on their monuments: they are the remnants of a

hieroglyphical art of writing, which was in use before the age of

the alphabetical, and, like the numerals of the Aztecans, represent

some object that was associated with a particular number. They

are indigenous, and belong to the time when the West was sub­

sisting with all its original peculiarities, before it experienced any·

416 Virgil JEn. vu. 695.HISTORY OF ROME.

103

influence from Asia; to the time when the Turdetanians were form­

ing their alphabet ·and their literature 41 7,

The profane sciences of Etruria likewise, her medicine, physics

and astronomy, were not borrowed either from the Greeks or the

Carthaginians : perhaps they were brought by the nation from the

North, the seat of her Gods 18 • Here we meet with the same extra­

ordinary phenomenon, which strikes us with astonishment in the

new world, an extremely accurate method of determining time; and

this method, so far as regards the cyclical year, proceeded on the

very principles observed by the framers of the ol<l Mexican com­

putation: portions of time were measured, without regard to the

phenomena of the moon, out of very long periods determined with

accuracy on astronomical grounds: among the Etruscans however

there was also a civil lunar year, the cyclical serving only as a cor­

rection for it.'

Their history, like that of the Bramins and Chaldeans, was in­

serted in an astronomico-theological outline, which included the

whole course of time, and taught, that the human race of the pre­

sent creation has eight secular days assigned to it; each day to a

fresh people ; and that during the continuance of one people pro­

phecy is to be in honour, during that of another in abasement 1 9,

The Etruscan week was of eight days; and as it is highly probable

that each secular day, like that of the Etruscans themselves 90 , con­

tained ten secles or 1100 years, 8800 years made a secular week.

The next unit immediately above the week Wa3 the year, of 38

weeks or 304 days. Thus a secular year would number 334,400

years ; and it may be co.njecture<l that this was the period assumed

for the duration of the universe; unless they went o:i to secular

secles. According to their religion, a limit and end was fixed to

,the life even of the highest gods, 91 as in the theology of the Scan­

dinavians: such a secular year then was probably the term assigned

to the life of the gods, as the natural secle was to the life of man,

the secular day to that of nations, the secular week to that of one

human race. · They taught, as we know historically, that the expi­

ration of each secular day was announced by wonders and signs,

417 Strabo m. p. 139. c. Not however that this literature was six thou­

sand years old. Instead of rop.ou' ip.p.ITpou' i~a1<T;t,11'.fair i'l"rn, whlch would

not even be Greek, we must read r. i. i.

Beside these they had histo

ries and poems.

18 Festus v. sinistrm aves.

20 Varro in Censorinus, 17.

19 Plutarch Sylla c. 7.

21 Varro in Arnobius quoted by Micali n. p. 46.

i,,.,.,,.104

HISTORY OF ROME.

intelligible to them 4 ~ 9 : so was the close of every natural sec le, ten

of which, of unequal length, made up a great day: the signs by

which each of these epochs had been announced, were recorded in

their history. This, Varro says 23 , was written in the eighth secle

of the nation. A natural secle was. measured by the duration of

man's longest life: the first secle of a state ended with the death of

the longest liver among all the persons born on the day it was

founded; the second lasted until none was left of all who were

living at the close of the first; and so forth. The first seven secles

-0f the Etruscans amounted to 781 years: but the sum total of the

years in the ten variable secles was equal to that in the ten fixed,

each of which contained llO.

In the year of the city 666 it was announced by the aruspexes

that the secular day of the Etruscan people was drawing to a close 94 :

and if we assume, what must surely be granted, that in doing this

they acted in consonance with their writings, then the Etruscan

computation of time began 434 years before Rome, the eighth secle

in the year 347, and the annals mentioned by Varro were written

about the end of the fourth century of the.city. The epoch 666

answers with singular exactness to that at which the nation actually

ceased to exist: it had been incorporated by the. Romans a short

time before, and was almost exterminated by Sylla eight years

after.

A free expansion of the intellect in poetry and science could

never take place among a people whose pride and study lay in divi­

nation and ritual worship. It was from them that the Romans had

borrowed the most important part of that science which makes use

of signs in conjecturing the will of the gods: they alone could see

through the meaning of terrific prodigies, and knew how to appease

the wrath of the celestial powers. The pure and infallible source

of this learning was supposed to be the national property of the

Etruscans, ever since the time when it was taught them by Tages;

a wise dwarf, who rose out of the ground, such as occurs in the

ancient fables of the Germans.

By the East the decrees of desfiny were read in the stars, by

Etruria and Greece in the entrails of victims: in expounding the

422 Plutarch Sylla c. 7. It wa,s in this sense that the comet which ap­

·peared after the death of Julius Cresar was regarded by the aruspex Volcatius

as the sign that announced the end of the ninth secle (Servi us on Eel. ix. 47.

£ited by Voss on Eel. 1v. 5.); although this referred to Rome, not to Etruria.

23 In Censorinus, 17.

24 Plutarch Sylla c. 7.HISTORY OF IW;\IE.

105

flight of Lirds, if the Etruscans did not ·altogether neglect it, the

Sabellians were greater masters. Ilut the peculiar secret of the

Etruscans was the interpretation of lightning: this, and all the

branches of their aruspicy, were taught in their sacerdotal schools'" 5 :

they were also laid down however in the sacred books wherein

the oral instructions of Tages \vere recorded. '

In the east and in Italy the soothsayer was a tyrant, and the

abettor of the ruling powers; he alway3 tried to keep the people in

chains. Of this yoke the stirring spirit of the Greeks soon eased

itself; although they were willing to believe that the soul is pos­

sessed. of secret faculties by which it is often enabled to· catch a

glimpse of the future in its forebodings and dreams. Ily ·the nobler

hero of the Iliad omens are treated with contempt, at the call to

defend his country: at Rome the yoke of a degrading superstition,

which was abused as an instrument of tyranny by the aristocracy,

was not broken, until infidelity was introduced by the Calabrian

Greek, Ennius, and became naturalized as morals declined. Such

is the concatenation, of human affairs, that, as the best of things

have something bad growing to them and causing their inward

decay, the extirpation of this incidental evil may afford us some

consolation, when the ruins of what once was excellent are swept

away, with all their pleasing recollections and illusions: there is no

ill without some good at its side.

The contents of the ritual books were of a different kind: they

resembled the Mosaical in prescribing the laws of the state as the

law of the gods; they ordained the course to be observed in found­

ing and building a city, in establishing and consecrating such edi­

fices and places as were to be sacred and inviolable ; they settled

the constitution of the curies, tribes, and centuries 26 , and generally

all regulations relative to war and peace 2 7, . The same too were the

laws originally obeyed by the Romans; who relaxed their' ties,

without casting them aside; and whose anxiety never to abolish

them, but to leave the appearance subsisting when the reality had

lost its meaning, was a result of their original sanctity. Those

books must undoubtedly have been the fundamental text for the

425 See above, n. 377.

26 Such is the expression of Festus: whatever that writer, who is often

mistaken about ancient customs, may have meant by it, these books can only

have related to the primitive constitution, in which the centuries were com­

posed of the equestrian houses. This constitution could not be changed:. that

of Servius Tullius might, like any other, and was so.

27 Festus v. rituales.

1.-01OG

HlSTOllY OF ROME.

main part of tl1e pontificial law: the institutions however in which

the preliminary step was to draw the limits of a temple for augu­

ries, such as the law for measuring land and for marking out a

camp, were more probably grounded on the religious books of the

Sabin es.

In the account that remains of the Roman ritual books, they are

expressly called Etruscan: but as in the Roman writings which we

possess, no distinction is ever made between Tuscan and Etruscan,

it is by no means certain that those books were derived from the

same people by whom the doctrines of Tages were preserved.

The same. uncertainty hangs over the Capitoline temple, which is

said to bear marks of the Etruscans in the union of its three deities 1

as well as in its architecture. Indisputably however it was in the

language and literature of the Etruscans that Roman youths of rank

were instructed so late as about the middle of the fifth century, as

they were subsequeptly in those of the Greeks 428 : this veneration

shifted round afterward into contempt for the old-fashioned lore,

and forgetfulness of its existence. Undoubtedly too it was from

the genuine Etruscans that the badges of the highest magistracy

were adopted by the Roman kings.

Tuscany produces all the necessaries of life in abundance, and

the Etruscans were not unwilling to enjoy what nature gave them:

the northern custom of sitting down twice a day to well-loaded

boards, was matter of surprise and scandal to the Greeks, whose

bodies were satisfied with very little nourishment. ··we have a

· description by Posidonius of the way of living in Etruria, such as

it was before Sylla's war~ from the Asiatic luxury of embroidered

carpets, silver plate, and trains of beautiful slaves richly clad 29 , we

may see how the country had thrh·en under the relations in which

r~it stood to Rome: within a few years all this wealth became the

booty of soldiers, and the towns with their territories were par­

celled out among the legions.

As to what Theopompus says concerning the shamele3s pro­

fligacy of the Etruscans,* we may join the modern Italians in

altogether rejecting it: his credulity and his fondness for telling

scandalous stories were· well known to the ancients. Even if his

statement could be partially supported by the fact, that there were

some powerful lords, who, secure of impunity, had abandoned

themselves to horrible licentiousness, such as became the fashion at

· 428 Livy 1x. 36.

29 Diodorus v. 40.· Athenreus 1v'. 153. d.

Athenreus x11. p. 517.lIISTORY OF HOl\1E.

107

Rome under the emperors, still. the body of the nation cannot have

been liable to the charge. But that associations for orgies such as

Theopompus describes-such as have been found in the Society

islands-should have existed even among the most cormpt of the

nobles, is the more improbable, since, as has been observed by

others, no licentious representations are to be found on any Etrus­

can works of art.

Etruria was standing at the summit of its greatness about the end

of the third century of Rome. In the next she lost the whole coun­

try beyond the Apennines, with Veii, and Capena: a great part of

th~ fifth century was passed in an irresolute struggle, never carried on

with warlike perseverance by any state except Vulsinii, against the

prevailing star of Rome. After this the nation enjoyed two centu­

ries of inglorious repose: even during. the second Punic war her

prosperity was so far restored, that Arretium by itself was able to

support Scipio's African expedition with arms and corn for a

whole army, and with pay for the crew of a fleet: and in this state

of ease they felt no desire for the Roman franchise, by which such

as shared it were bound to the performance of hard duties. When

they had received it however, they displayed no less fortitude tlian

the Marsians and Samni.tes in maintaining its full honour: but they

were hardly treated by fortune; and her injustice was. increased by

her consigning to oblivion the story of their heroic resistance to

Sylla.THE Ul\1BRIANS.

AccoRDING to the practice of multiplying the forms of the Italian

national names, the Umbri must also have been called Umbrici:

this was pronounced Ombrici by the Greeks, who made out that it

contained an allusion to their great antiquity. The name was to

indicate that they had existed even before those rain-floods, by

which in many countries, as the Greek sages agreed with others

in believing, earlier ra!!es of men had been destroyed. This ety­

mological trifling, it is probable, was never meant seriously: it is

certain however that the Umbrians were a great nation, before the

time of the Etruscans, in that of the Sicelians, and that they have

a right to be called a most ancient and. genuine people of Italy 430•

Their city, Ameria, was built according to Cato 31 964 years before

the war with Perseus, or 381 before Rome. It is certain too that

the country they inhabited of old w.as very extensive; probably not

only what retained the name of Umbria, but also, as has been ob­

served already*, the south of Etruria; and, according to distinct·

Roman traditions, the district occupied by the Sabines between the

Apennines and the Tiber. On the north-east slope of the Apen·

nines toward the upper sea and the Po, they are said to have spread

as conquerors, to have expelled the Liburnians as well as the Sicu­

lians from the coast, and to have maintained an obstinate contest

with the Etruscans for the territory on the lower Po.

In history the Umbrians are found restricted to the left bank of

the Tiber; with some scattered towns on the coast and near the

Po, preserved to them partly, as Ravenna was, by her lagoons,

partly by paying tribute to the Gauls. The Ombrica of the

430 Antiquissima gens ltaliw: as the .iEquians too are called; by way of

contrast to the Etruscans who had immigrated, to the Latins who were a

mixed race, to the Samnites and Lucanians who owed their origin to emigra­

tion and conquest, and were likewise mixed races, and so on.

31 Pliny m. 19.

* Above p. 86.HISTORY OF ROME.

109

Greeks, bordering on the obscure regions at the top of the Adriatic,

is of a large and indefinite extent. In Herodotus it reaches to the

foot of the Alps: for it is from the country above the Ombricans.

that the rivers Carpis and Alpis, one of which may very probably

be the Inn, flow into the Ister4 3 ~. Scylax, who contracts its northern

boundary, reckons Picenum a part of it33 : in the earlier geography

of the poets it undoubtedly extended as far as mount Garganus or

Drion. For the Diomedian islands lie to the west of, that promon­

tory; and certainly Scylax had some poet before him, when he as­

cribed the worship of Tydides, which the later Greeks fancied

they found among the Daunians, to the Ombricans; although, ac­

cording to the correct chorography of his time, he assigns the coast

between the Umbrians and the Apulians to the Sabellians.

For us the name of the U mbrians is a great one that has died

away. At the time when their coast was occupied by a detach­

ment of the Gauls, the loss of these rich countries seems to have

been attended with that of their independence. Without any de­

fence toward the north, on which side Tuscany is sheltered by the

Apehnines, Umbria within its contracted limits is in all probability

one of those adjacent countries which the Gauls are said to have

reduced under their domini0~ 34 : it WaS their military road, SO long

as they made expeditions into Latium. In the first war of the

Umbrian tribes with the Romans they were subdued in a single

battle : and, though afterward hurried or compelled to take part in

the contests of more powerful nations against Rome, they did not

hold out long.

The Umbrian nation consisted of separate races 85 , some of which

dwelt in towns 86, others in rural cantons 8 7. The Camertes em­

braced the friendship of the Romans; before the latter crossed the

U mbrian borders, and they preserved it: the Sarsinates are even

mentioned as a distinct people by Polybius along with the Um­

brians38; and fighting singly against Rome they supplied her with

occasion for two triumphs.

In order to treat with the Umbrians, the Romans in the fifth

century employed an envoy acquainted with the Etruscan tongue 8 o:

yet on the Iguvine tables the language which passes, and probably

with good reason, for Umbrian, is totally different from the Etrus­

can. To us it is unintelligible, although it contains a number of

432

34

36

38

1v. 49.

33 p. 6. For he places Ancona in Ombrica.

Polybius u. 18.

35 Livy xxvm. 45. Umbrire populi.

Livy 1x. 41. Plaga. 37 Livy xxx1. 2. Tribus.

Polybius n. 24.

39 Livy IX. 36.110

HISTORY OF ROME.

words which, if not Latin, seem cognate to Latin; and if the con­

jecture I shall communicate further on as to the stock of the Um­

brians is well founded, it could not fail to contain such. The

purity with which the Sarsinate poet, Plautus, wrote Latin seems

also to suggest that the language of his countrymen, like the Oscan

spoken by Nrevius, bore an affinity to the Latin.

The characters on the coins are Etruscan; on the Iguvine tables

Latin.IAPYGIA.

lAPYGIA embraced the south-east of Italy; according to the more

ancient writers, from Metapontum, or, including that city, from the

Siris 440, to mount Garganus, or, as the Greeks call it, mount Drion;

immediately beyond which it is probable that Ombrica was placed

by their early geographers. By Polybius the Iapygian and l\Ies­

sapian troops are still classed under one head. That such an ex­

tent was ascribed to Apulia by the Romans, we do not find: else it

certainly seems evident that Iapyx and Apulus are the same name 4 J.

This extensive country is said by the Greeks to have been in­

habited by three distinct tribes, the Messapians, the Peucetians,

and the Daunians: the first on' the peninsula to the east of Taren­

tum; the Peucetians to the north of them, along the coast from

Brundusium to Barium; and, between· this and, mount Garganus,

the Daunians. The first about the beginning of the fourth century

were at enmity with the Tarentines, while the two latter tribes

were their allies. The Messapians however are divided, at least

by Strabo, into two tribes, the Sallentines and the Calabrians: the

former he places in Leuternia, on the eastern coast of the Taren­

tine gulf; the Calabrians to the north of the lapygian promontory,

on the Adriatic 49 • In the Fasti hen the Messapians and Sallen­

tines are spoken of as distinct tribes, over both of which a triumph

440 Scylax p. 5.

41 The Latin termination icus is contracted into ix in Oscan: thus

.Rpicus, the same with .Rpulus, becomes .Rpix. No good Roman writer will

ever say Iapygia instead of .!Jpulia: nor any good Greek writer the reverse.

Diodorus, who is no less careless in his use of words than in other respects,

speaks of 'A'll"W"A.U., XIX. IO, in relating the history of Rome for that year,

where he may have had Fabius before him: but it is remarkable that he should

commit the same offence against the Greek .usage in the history of the

younger Dionysius, xv1. 5. Are we justifiable in supposing that Timreus

wrote so?

42 VI. P· 277. d. 281. c. d.112

HISTORY OF ROME.

was celebrated in the year 487 : and the simplest way of explaining

this is to suppose. that, though the former name was common to

the whole nation, it is here used for the Calabrians; as that of Au·

sonians came to be confined to a single tribe, a part of the whole

people. An ancient and important statement, which, though ex­

tremely corrupt and disjointed, has been most satisfactorily re­

stored443, informs us that there were five tongues in Iapygia: two

of the tribes that spoke them are clear, the Opicans or Apulians,

and the Peucetians: two may be recognized after an easy emenda­

tion, the Leuternians and Brentesines, corresponding to Strabo's

Sallentines and Calabrians: the name of the people to whom the

fifth tongue is attributed, the Cramonians, may perhaps be written

correctly, and all trace of them may have perished: at all events

Scylax,. who extends Iapygia so far to the southwest, seems to

have meant a people between Heraclea and Tarentum, a remnant

of the Chonian Oenotrians.

The Messapians were supposed very generally, singular as the

opinion sounds, to have been Cretans. In the earlier tradition

their ancestors were Eteocretans, cast on this shore in the time of

Minos, after the unfortunate expedition to Sicania: whether they

had sailed thither with their king 44 ; or, as another tradition related,

he had gone alone in quest of D<edalus and had perished, and they

had set out in the vain intention of avenging his death on Coca­

lus45: according to other legends, they had been making an una­

vailing search after Glaucus48 : or they were a band composed of

Cretans and the offspring of the Athenian youths del,ivered up as an

expiatory offering to Minos•7: or lastly, in a story which perhaps

was confined to the Alexandrian poets, they were the adherents of

Illomeneus, led by him, and joined by some Locrians and Illyrians•s.

The last account makes express mention of the Sallentines : and to

443 By James Gronovius, who seldom made so successful a conjecture.

It has been shown above, note 293, that in Scylax, p. 5, ::i<1.uv'i'1'et1 must be

read instead of A<1.uv'i'l"ett. But the sentence £v J'i 'l"Oo'l""'-Il•u"tTli'i, must also

be removed from the place it has been thrust into, wh~re it destroys the sense

of the passage by separating J'iilx.on" .:,,.a ..-oii Tupp. ,,.,1>... 1 . .,.. AJ'p. from

the mention of the Samnites; and it must be inserted in the former section

about Iapygia, after > vu"T"''• and before iv J'f .,.~ 'Iet?T. Still /'I'.'"""""' is a

very strange word here, and yet more so the synonym ,,..,.6,,_,,,..,,,.

44 Strabo VI. p. 279. a. 282. b.

45 Herodot. vn. 170.

46 Athenreus xn. p. 522. f.

47 . Strabo vi. p. 282. b. Plutarch qurest. Grrec. 35, and Theseus c. 16.

48 Varro fragm. I. m. Antiq. rer. hum. p. 205: and Festus v. Salentini,

who has evidently copied from Varro. Compare lEn. 111. 400.HISTORY: OF ROME.

ll3

these, excluding the Calabrians and their capital Brundusium, do I

also refer the statement of Herodotus, that Hyria was the original

city of the Messapians, from which their other settlements pro­

ceeded. Varro says of the Salentines, that the nation was divided

into three parts and twelve cities 449 : parts here must mean tribes 50•

His etymology for the name of the Sallentines is after his fashion

and ridiculous·: the word clearly comes from a town Sallentum,

which in Greek must have been called Sallas or Sallus: and I have

· no doubt that it existed in ancient times; but it is no less certain

than singular, that no mention is any where made of it 51 • From

these Messapians were the Bottireans on the gulf of Thermre said

to have derived their origin: Strabo's opinion seems to be, that

Brundusium too had once been inhabited by Cretans, like the Sal­

lentines, and that this portion had migrated from thence to l\1ace­

donia59, This migration is one of those which nre totally incredible,

and which are only meant to indicate the conviction of a national

affinity: that the Calabrians however were foreign invaders, by

whom the Sallentines were expelled from Brundusium, we may·

easily believe.

·

So likewise there may be ground for the tradition, that the ear­

lier inhabitants of Tarentum, on being overpowered by Phalanthus

and his Laconians, had retired to Brundusiurn 58• It was from them

that what Tarentum acquired was wrested. After two centuries

and a half, when the Greek city had already grown very powerful,

in 279, it attempted to destroy the towns of the Messapians, and to

reduce the people to servitude. This was the war in which Car­

bina was taken, and such revolting atrocities perpetrated there by

the conquerors 54 : the vengeance of heaven by which so , many

houses in Tarentum are said to have been visited, was that fearful

overthrow whereby its power was ro; a long time broken; ,the most

449' Strabo too reckons thirteen cities in Iapygia, including Brundusium

in the number (v1. p. 281. a.): instead of 7rAnu Tip«-nH I read :irAnV TlfO'iinon

Tarentum cannot be right, since he is writing of the country which lies be­

·

.

yond it: ~ II ;;;;, 'TllfP 'I«7rUj-0>V :>c,,;,p« '" 'T. A,

50 As the Greeks use tBvor instead of <fp«-'Tpl«-, and indeed expressly

:iril.A«I (at Athens), eliir«.'Tpiltt.1 1

instead of 'fU;\.H: Pollux vm. 111. 'tpl«- ;,

j-uop.6po1, l'•p.1oupj-ol. Thus gens triplex at Mantua. Virg. lEn. x. 202.

51 Stephanus indeed has ~«-AAtnl«.: but probably the only ground for

this mention of the place was that some one formerly made the same guess as

I have done.

52 Strabo vi. p. 282. b.

53 Justin 111. 4.

54 Athenoous xn. p. 522. e. f.

;s,.

1.-P114

HISTORY OF ROME.

horrible carnage that befel any Grecian army down to that day 455•

It sounds incredible indeed, that the conquerors, in following at the

heels of the flying Rhegians who had fought against them as aux­

iliaries of the Tarentines, should ·have forced their way into Rhe­

gium: but the Messapians were evidently raised on that day from

extreme distress to a greatness they had never expected. Their

dominion must now have extended far into Oenotria; since they

contended with Tarentum for the possession of the Siritis, which

lies so far to the west of it: this must have been after the year 319,

if the mention of Heraclea is to be taken litera,lly*. The Peuce­

tians and Daunians were leagued with the Tarentines against them:

so that it was by the Messapians that the neighbouring tribes were

then filled with jealousy and alarm. By this war their power must

have been destroyed again: but they still continued long to be the

enemies of the Tarentines: which accounts for a prince of the Mes­

sapians being on friendly terms with the Athenians even before the

expedition to Sicily 5a. Thenceforward the Greek city continued

to rise, and the Messapians were no longer her rivals : indeed after

the middle of the fifth century they seem to have put themselves

under her protection by an alliance recognizing their inferiority.

Peucetius is called by the earliest Greek genealogers a brother

of Oenotrus, and his people a colony led· by him out of Arca­

dia57: that is, they adopted the form of a national pedigree, to repre­

sent the Peucetians as one of those old Pelasgian tribes, the pos­

terity of the first men, Pelasgus and Aizeus, which were said to

have issued from Arcadia. According to Pliny 58 the Pcediculians­

such was the Italian name of the Peucetians59-were descended

from nine Illyrian couples.

In.. a genealogy by the Pergamene poet Nicander 60 , as to which

however we cannot know whether he did not derive it from an ear­

lier and lost catalogue of the Lycaonids, the two brothers of Peu­

cetius, lapyx and Daunus, accompany him across the Ionian sea

with an army, chiefly of Illyrians 61 , Another story, which like

every thing of the same ki1id is from :i Greek source, brings Daunus

out of lllyria 6 ". Now if these views are borrowed from ancient

455 Herodotus V;ll. 170. Diodorus XI. 52.

* S~rabo v1..p; 281. a.

56 Thucydides vu. 33.

57 See p. 20, n. 54.

58 m. 16.

' 59 The simpler forms, Predi and Predici, do not occur in our books.

60 Who, I remark by the way, belongs to the first half of the sixth ce n­

tury of the city, not to the beginning of the next.

61 Antoninus Liberalis fab. 31.

62 Fest. Epit. v. Daunia.HISTORY OF ROME.

115

poets and traditions, it is more than probable that they did not

speak of Illyrians, but of Liburnians; who, as has been observed,

inhabited Picenum on the Italian coast, and Corcyra on the oppo­

site side*.

Further traces of the early settlers in the south-east of Italy are

afforded. by the names, Argyrippa and Sipontum: Argos, like La­

rissa, is undoubtedly a Pelasgic name. The legend of Diomedes

having landed there, was current at Arpi, as is proved beyond a

doubt by its coins: and although here again no historical inference

is to be drawn from such a legend, still in this as in all other cases

it is probable, that the places reported to have been Argive settle­

ments founded at the time of the return from Troy, were of Pelas­

gic or1gm. The kingdom of Diomedes is said to have r<iached to

Maluentum, where the head of the Calydonian boar was still shown

in the days of Procopinst; and Maluentum derived its name from

Greeks or Pelasgians 463 • No Hellenic people, so far as we know,

approached nearer to the Pelasgians than the .iEtolians did: and

the relics of the boar, the mention of Diomedes as an .iEtolian

prince 6-', are merely signs of an ..Etolian colony.

But we can by no means conclude from this, that the Opicans,

who are said to have preceded the Sabellians as masters of the

country about Beventum, were these Pelasgians : they were only

the only conquerors. The Daunians however, like Tyrrhenians

and Oenotrians, I account among the Pelasgians : it is a significant

trace in national genealogy to find that the father of Turnus was

called Daunus: their name answers to that of Danaans, and thus

Ardea is said to have been founded by Danaet. This..,.however

belongs to times antecedent to those when the Daunians appear in

history as a part of the Apulians, and when, as Strabo observes, no

difference in language and habits was discernible between them and

the genuine Apulians 65 • These genuine Apulians of Strabo dwelt

to the west of mount Garganus around the bay, in front of which

lie the Diomedean islands 66 • They are the Teanian Apulians of

Plinye1, who speaks of three distinct tribes of Apulians, the Tea­

niaus, the Daunians 68 , and the Lucanians. These last were pro­

De Bello Gothico 1. 15. p. 349.

* Above, pp. 38, 39.

· 463 Note 148.

64 This is the more evident, since the legend makes him disappear, and

so lays no stress on him individually. Strabo VI. p. 284. a.

t Note 126. ·

65 Strabo VI. p. 285. c.

66 Strabo v1. p. 285. c. and p. 283. c.

67 For here stood Teanum Apulum.

68 Pliny m. 16. Arnnis CerbalusDauniorurn finis: (if so, mount Garga­116

HISTORY OF ROME.

bably Sabellians who had occupied some towns in Apulia; either

Lucanians, or Samnites; to whom Luceria belonged there: for the

name of Lucanians, may have been a general one for the plantations

of the Samnites. Unless some boldness of divination be allowable,

all researches into the early history of nations must be abandoned:

if I am permitted to use it, liable though it be to grievous ·abuse,

I .will propose the conjecture, that the original Apulians were Opi­

cans by name and descent, who subjugated the Daunians ; and that

the legends about Diomedes, and whatever bore a Greek character

in the arts and manners of the country, continued to subsist under

their government, as similar relics did at Falerii and Ciere. As·

suming a circumstance we find related to be correct, we can hardly

avoid supposing that the Peucetians also had a mixture of Oscan

blood: for the names of the two Peucetians who designed to poison

Cleonymus, Gains and Paulus 469 , are completely Latin.

The Peucetians were divided into thirteen tribes' 0 • They were

governed by a king so late as the beginning of the Peloponnesian

war7 1, Afterward history is entirely silent concerning them, until

about 458, 01. 120. 4; when Agathocles entered into a league with

them and with the lapygians, and promoted their piracies on the

Adriatic' 9 • So thaf at that time they were independent of Rome.

Nevertheless the Roman armies had already entered the land of

the Sallentines : they had done so with hostile purposes in 447;

and in 452 to give protection against Cleonyrnus: in neither expe·

dition, any more than in the war against Pyrrhus, or afterward

when the Messapians and .Sallentines were subdued, is the name

of the Pcediculians mentioned; although the Roman generals must

needs have marched through their country.

Daunia too was under a kingly government, when it joined Ta~

renturn in the war against the Messapians. By the Romans it was

found divided under the sovereignty of a few great cities : and the

discord amongst these affords us an explanation for the otherwise

incomprehensible accounts of the relations between what is repre­

nus would have been situate wholly out of Daunia (lta Apulorum ge.nera

tria: Teani-Lucani-Dauniorum prreter supradicta, &c. .

469 See the treatise mpl Situµ. 0.K.ou~µ. p. 100. a. That these two name11

should occur together, would be a very singular hit of chance. Sylburgius

observes that in the old translation the name of Paulus is wanting: was it struck

out by a theologian? or has it been substituted by a lawyer from conjecture

for a different one?

70 Pliny m. 16.

71 Strabo v1. p. 281. a.

72. Diodorus Exe. u1. 4,HISTORY. OF ROME.

117

sented as the whole nation and the Romans. Its most powerful

city was Arpi, which must have possessed a considerable territory ;

since the district of Sipontum was forfeited to Rome as being pub­

lic land of Arpi 4 7 8 on account of the insurrection in the second Punic

war. But Canusium also had been great; and her greatness was

still attested by her walls, as that of Arpi was by hers, in the time

of Strabo~

The inscription which has beert published as Messapian, is no­

thing but an old Greek one74, carelessly copied by a person totally

ignorant of the language. That on all the coins throughout lapy­

gia is Greek: w ~ich was also spoken by the nation, the language of

its ancestors having given way for the most part, as it did in Sicily,

to the nobler one. The Canusines, like the Bruttians, spoke Greek,

together with the old dialect of the country7 5 , The Apulian works

of art, like all in this part of Italy, .have a Greek yet a peculiar

character: the earthen vessels are of a meaner sort both as to their

shape and their paintings : works in bronze have been found of

extraordinary beauty.

473 Livy uxrv. 45.

74 Lanzi, who gives it 11. p. 620, has remarked ,this

75 Horace, Sat. r. 10. 30.

..THE GREEKS IN ITALY.

. As Idomeneus and Diomedes were brought by one class of le·

gends to Italy, so were Philoctetes, Epeus, and some of the descend·

ants of Neleus, with Greek warriors and Trojan captives, by others,

which appropriated and devised applications for a variety of ·relics

and monuments. But from none of these pretended settlements did

any Grecian people arise; these Greeks must have been metamor·

phosed and have vanished, like the companions of Diomedes 476•

The most ancient Greek settlement in Italy of which history

takes note, is that of the Chalcidians at Cuma; originally planted

on Ischia and the adjacent small islands7 7, By the Alexandrian

chronologers it was assigned to times of vast antiquity; but assur·

edly this was merely owing to their connecting its founders with

the heroic genealogies. For where they were without any deter­

minate accounts, lilfo those as to the time when the Greek cities in

Sicily were founded, they had recourse to computing by genera­

tions, which pushed the earliest epochs a great deal too far back.

With regard to Cuma they did not find any era; for it had long

ceased to be a Greek city: and when this led them to calculate the

date of its foundation from the genealogies, it came out, contrary to

all credibility, long anterior to the founding of the earliest among

the colonies less remote from Greece. That the leaders of the

emigrants who settled there,· bent their course over unexplored

waters, is intimated by the legend that their ships were preceded

and guided in the daytime by a dove, and at night by the chime of

the mystic bronze: but ev.en from the eastern coast of Sicily, the

first settlement on Ischia would have been a bold adventure. The

476 Quotations, which to have any value should be extremely numerous,

seem to me out of place in this section, with a very few exceptions.

77 Thus Livy (vm. 22.) evidently made a distinction between the Pithe­

cusm and .lEnaria.HISTORY. OF ROME.

119

remote age attributed to Cuma is certainly a fiction; but the epoch

of its foundation we have no means of determining.

Dicrearchia, on the hill above Pozzuoli, was a fortified seaport

of the Cumans: if the Samians settled there in the first years of king

Dariusu•, they must have found the spot already inhabited; but

they might be very welcome to the Cumans under the pressure of

the Tyrrhenian war. Parthenope too was founded here by colo­

nists from Cuma.

·

A body of Eretrians established themselves on the islands of

Pithecusre which the Cumans had abandoned; and from them came

the settlers at N eapolis ; its name shows it was a far more recent

city than Parthenope; which was afterward called Palrepolis •. If

the Athenians did actually take a share in the founding of N eapo­

lis, we might have probable grounds for dating it about the time

of the settlement at Thurium79,

Rhegium was planted by the Cumans in common with the Chai-.

cidian colonies in. Sicily, for the sake of commanding the Faro.

It was from thence that Micythus proceeded to found the latest of

the Chalcidian towns, Pyxus, in the territory of Sybaris, which as

then was without a master.

Of the Greek cities in Oenotria the oldest· was Locri; at least

according to the tradition that the first settlers at Syracuse and

Locriaided each other" 0 , if Syracuse was really founded thirty years

before Croton 61 : so was it according to the indigenous story by

which the arrival of the founders was dated just after the first Mes­

senian war, 01; 14. 1. That is, it was related that the Locrians,

the descendants of those who followed their impious chief, Ajax,

had continued twenty years in the field against Messe.ne as allies

of the Spartans, and that when the boys they had left behind grew

up, they joined their fathers: meanwhile the wives and daughters

had been living in an unrestrained intimacy with their servants.

And when at length the men returned victorious to their homes,

478. In 01. 64. 4 : according to the. chronicle of Eusehius. Perhaps it was

somewhat later, after the death of Polycrates.

79 Their doing so however (Strabo v. 246. a.) seems to be very uncer­

tain. Tzetzes (on Lycophron v. 732.) quotes a story from Ti~reus, thatDio­

timus, the captain of an Athenian ship at the time of the Sicilian expedition,

(01. 91.) offered sacrifice at Neapolis to the Siren Parthenope by command of

an oracle, and established a torchrace there: this event may perhaps in some

way have furnished occasion for the above mentioned improbable statement.

80 Strabo v1. p. 259. b. 270. a.

,

81 Which: is contrary to the legend (Strabo v1. p. 269. c.) that the god

gave Archias and Myscellus their choice between health and riches.120

HISTORY

or ROME..

the women under the consciousness of guilt fled from their wrath

across the sea with their paramours 489 • Though sprung from an

origin so ignominious, that the malir,e of Timreus was raised even

to frenzy by Aristotle's simple account of the tradition, the Italian

Locrians by means of their lawgiver Zaleucus rose to great respect­

ability; and to such prosperity and power, as to found Hipponium

and Medma on th~ other coast; so that they were masters of the

whole country between the two seas, as far as the borders of Rhe­

gium.

The story about the origin of the founders of Locri, and of the

colony which Phalanthus is said to have settled at Tarentum in

01. 18. 1, as well as that about the followers of Theras, induce us

to suspect, that the sons of marriages contracted where no right of

intermarriage existed between the parties, were at that time dis­

turbing the peace of several of the aristocratical republics, and that

measures were taken to send them to a distance. No reflectin'g

person will believe any one of these stories in the literal sense 88 :

it would be equally inconsiderate to reject them as utterly ground­

less fabrications.

Tarentum possessed the same rights at Heraclea, which a mother

city would possess in its colonies, and she had at least an equal

share with Thurii in the joint settlement: in Messapia C~lipolis

was probably connected with her; and so was Hydrus, if it was

really a Hellenic town*•

The Achrean cities, Sybaris and Croton, are said to have been

built together, in 01. 19. 2 84• The former was mistress of the

482 That such was the story, has just been e11tablished by the Excerpt&

from Polybius xu. Tit. de sententiis p. 383. foll. ed. Maii.. Now at last we

·clearly see the meaning of those words in Dionysius Periegetes, v. 366:

"'t•'TEf~' µ1;J:_9on•' ~,..: ...,:,.,,. Eustathius in his commentary does not tell us

what war it was.

·

83 Aristotle assuredly was far from doing this: nor was Timams wrong

in refusing to believe the fact; but what he substituted for it was a scandalous

forgery, with regw:d to which he cannot have been free from guilt. An anti­

quarian indeed, like him, is more likely than others to have valuable insu­

lated pieces of information: such a piece-though subject to limitations, a.s

we learn from the Odyssey-in his remark that in ancient times ll.:Jre were

no slaves bought for money among 'the Greeks. (Athenreus VI. p. 264. c.)

Aristotle would have granted him this, but have answered that the persons

meant in his Locrian tradition were not domestie slaves, but peasants in a

* Scylax p. 5.

state of bondage.

84 According to Eusebius. But with regard to all these dates there are

contradictory statements, and we have rather to choose than to decide between

them.IIISTORY OF RO:\lE.

121

, country afterward called Lucania, and founded Posidonia and Laos:

the latter, possessing the north of Bruttium, founded Caulon on the

south toward Locri, and Terina on the western coast. Another

body of Achreans, being· invited by the Sybarites, built Metapon­

tum; which by the industrious cultivation of its luxuriantly fertile

territory attained to extraordinary wealth: these three great Achrean

cities, and probably their four colonies, were long united in a league

similar to the one which existed among the Achreans*.

Elea was built by the Phocreans who were flying from Cyrus,

when Sybaris was at the height of her power, on a coast where

they could not possibly have settled without the leave of the Syba­

rites. Elea is remarkable, not for any wars, but for its profound

thinkers, and for the peculiar good fortune which protected it when

the other Greek cities on this coast fell under the power of the

Lucanians. It was the only one that held out between Neapolis

and Rhegium,: the Romans respected it; and the last mention we

find of it is a pleasing one, as the birthplace of the ingenious Sta­

tius. Another earlier body of fugitives from, Ionia, the Colopho­

nians of Siris, seem to have lived in prosperity while under the

protection of Sybaris,,and to have been destroyed after the fall of

their protectress.

The latest Greek colony on this coast was Thurii, a common

settlement of the whole Greek nation, and a city which, though it

did not come up to what Sybaris had been, attained to great emi­

nence and power •. A couple of generations afterward Ancona was

founded further up the Adriatic, either by some Syracusans flying

from their tyrants, or by those tyrants themselves ; who planted

Greek colonies at Issa and Adria, and perhaps at Pisaurum.

The colonists sent out from Greece did not go forth, like the first

New Englanders, with their wives and children, for the sake of

dwelling in freedom amid forests which they had to clear before

them: they were mostly unmarried freebooters, who won them­

selves wives with their swords 485 : so that their posterity were a

mixed race, like the descendants of the crusaders in Palestine and

Cyprus, and those of the Spanish conquerors in America. After­

ward needy Greeks came flocking to countries where an abun­

dance of fertile ground was to be -Obtained; and they were gladly

admitted; but assuredly not to an equality-of rights. They received

allotments of land, but were forced to content themselves with what

lay at a distance: if these new citizens were distributed into tribes,

Polybius

1.-q

11.

3!).

485 Herod. r. 146.122

HISTORY OF ROME.

their franchise was certainly an inferior one: the pretensions set

up by the Sybarites at Thurii*, which were so absurd under their

circumstances, teach us how their forefathers, who had the power

in their hands, must have dealt with the citizens they received.

The constitution of the Greek cities in Italy as in Hellas was at

first aristocratical: and I think its form may be divined. The de­

scendants of the conquistadores being divided, perhaps into three

tribes, were alone eligible to any magistracy : the remaining Greek

citizens were incorporated into other tribes, and shared the right of

electing to offices, but without being eligible -themselves: in the

city there were a great number of foreign settlers, who were admit­

ted either partially or fully to the privileges of citizenst: the pea­

santry were serfs. That there was a connection between this aris­

tocracy and the Pythagorean religion is unquestionable, though its

nature is mysterious : the three hundred Pythagoreans at Croton

may be conjectured to have been the senate: the revolutions that

broke out in all these cities at the same time, were like those in Ger­

many, between the middle of the thirteenth and that of the four­

teenth c.entury, which spread from town to town, and by which the

government was transferred from the ancient houses to the guilds ;

the cause which led to them being the attempt to retain all the old

institutions unchanged, after they had lost their life and substance.

But the revolutions among the Italian Greeks were savage and full

of horrors and atrocities. Sybaris seems to have become a demo­

cracy .a short time before its fall. The destruction of this extraor­

dinary city, which has incurred o:riprobrium probably unmerited,

and at all events exaggerated, was the first irremediable wound of

Magna Grrecia. It was followed by the bloody revolutions in

which Croton wore itself out: the Lucanians made their appear­

ance and spread over Oenotria. But from the day when the elder

Dionysius entered Italy as a conqueror thirsting for vengeance,

calamities and miseries came upon the Italiots without measure, or

end, or' pause: from that time forth, to use the expression of a

Greek historian, the unfortunate towns of Magna Grrecia were

tossed to and fro by a current from the hands of the Lucanians or

Bruttians into those of the Syracu:;an tyrants, to be laid waste by

the former, or to suffer the ruinous protection of the latter. Which

of these cities were still subsisting, and what was their condition,

when the Romans, coming in the character of protectors, began to

meddle in the affairs of these countries, I shall relate when I reach

* Diodorus xn. 11.HISTORY OF 'ROME.

123

that part of my history. In this general survey of ancient Italy, it

seemed to me that a view of their origin ought to be given, and

that a few remarks. on their peculiar character would not be mis­

placed: else their story is partly an independent one, in part belongs

to .the general history of the Greek.nation.

These Greeks, at least in some vf the cities, learnt various things

from the native Italians, who were admitted to their franchise or

who dwelt amongst them; such as their system of weights and of

mensuration 4" 6 , many words of their languages, and even some

forms of their versification and poetry. They on the other hand

diffused their arts and their literature in the peninsula, far beyond

the· countries in their i11;mediate neighbourhood : by the Opicans

the use of their language was adopted even for civil purposes.

486 This was perceived by Mazocchi from the Heraclean tables. But

from the manner of assigning the _territory of Thurii (Diodorus XII. 11.) we

might conclude that the whole principle of the Italian agrarian law had been

adopted: indeed it looks very much as if the ferment at Croton had arisen

from the patricians taking possession of the Sybarite territory for themselves,

without allotting any part to the commonalty.

,. THE LIGURIANS AND VENETIANS.

I UNITE these two nations under one head, not to intimate any

affinity between them, but because both were alike unconnected, so

least as we know, with the history of Italy, until the later

far

times of the Roman republic, and, though they dwelt to.the south

of the Alps, did so only as branches ofnations widely diffused be­

yond the borders of Italy; in very early times too they seem to

have touched in the p~ain of the Po.

The Ligurians are one of those nations which the short span of

our history embraces only in their decline. When Philistus said

the Sicelians were Ligurians, who had been driven southward by

the Umbrians und Pelasgians~• 7 , he was not only blind to the iden­

tity of the Siculians with the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, but was no

doubt equally mistaken as to the extraction of the Ligurians : but

his mistake arose only from the very common source of c;:mfoun<l­

ing two irruptions experienced by the same country at different

times; as the nations that have inhabited Dacia in succession, the

Getes and Goths, the Huns and Hungarians, are taken one for the

other; and in obscure traditions the same people is presented at

one moment as invading, the next as driven out. During his ban­

ishment, which he spent in the countries on the Adriatic, Philistus

m3y have learnt among tlie U mbrians themselves, out of their an­

cient books, that their forefathers and the Siculians had .expelled

the Ligurians out of Tuscany ; nor should his having misunder­

stood what he heard make us treat it with. contempt. Now on this

ground we may build still further; and looking at Livy's account

of the Gauls settling on the Po, notwithstanding the indistinctness

of his conceptions, and the incurable corruptions in the text••, we

may discern thus much: that the Libuans, a Ligurian people, were

once dwelling near the lake of Garda, and that the Salvians, whom

at

487 Dionysius

1.

22.

88 v. JS: see the commentators.HISTORY OF ROME.

125

we know of in the neighbourhood of Massilia, were likewiae dwell­

ing to the North of the Po: whether we suppose they were still

living there as subjects of the Etruscans, when the Gauls made

their appearance; or 1hat here again a people which had long since

retired before the Etruscans, had transferred their name to their

conquerors. The whole of Piedmont in its present extent was in­

habited by the Ligurians : Pavia, under the name of Ticinum, was

founded by a I,igurian tribe, the Lrevians 499• When they pushed

forward their frontier among the Apennines into the Casentino 90 on

the decline of the Etruscans, they probably only recovered what

had before been wrested from them. Among the inhabitants of

of Corsica there were. Liguriansa 1•

Only half of.Ligystica was reckoned to be in Italy. The Sica­

nians, according to a Greek tradition about their origin, were an

Iberian people, who had been driven by the Ligurians from a river

called Sicanus9 9 , At all events the Ligurians and Iberians were

anciently contiguous; whereas in aftertimes they were parted by

the Gauls. We are told by Scylax, that from the borders of Ibe­

ria, that is, from the Pyrenees, to the Rhone the two nations were

dwelling interrnixedaa: and from this very region does Thucydides

seem to have supposed that the Sicanians had been driven. But it

is far more probable that the Iberians came from the south of the

Pyrenees into Lower Languedoc, as they did into Aquitaine, and

that the Ligurians were driven back by them. When the Celts

long after, moving in an opposite direction, reached the shore of

the Mediterranean, they too drove the Ligurians close down to the

coast, and dwelt as the ruling people amongst them in the country

about Avignon, as is implied by the name Celto-Ligurianso 4 , Which

of the tribes among the lower Alps were Ligurian.s, and whether

the V ocontians were so, I have no means of determining. But

from these traces it seems to be extremely probable, that this peo­

ple was dwelling of yore from "the Pyrenees to the Tiber, with the

Cevennes and the Helvetian Alps for its northern boundary.

Of their place in the family ofnations we are ignorant: we only

489 Pliny III. 21.

90 Polybius II. 16.

91 Seneca Consol. ad Helviam, 8. Fragm. Sallust. Histor. II. p. 958. ed.

Cort.

92 Thucydides v1. 2. Philistus in Diodorus v. G. Servius, on JEn. vm.

328, says some take it for the Sicoris, a river in Catalonia: this seems to me

merely a guess.

93 Sey lax p. 2.

94 Strabo 1v. p. 203. a. Instead of Aou1plwroc we must read '11.ov1{.,,o,.126

HISTORY OF ROME.

0

know that they were neither lberians nor Celts. Dionysius says,

their extraction was unknown 4 D5 , Cato seems to have made inqui­

ries amongst them, but to have heard nothing beyond stories that

were evidently groundless and clumsily fabricated: hence he stig­

matized them as illiterate, lying, and deceitfol 96 • And illiterate a

people probably was, which had to eke outlife at the cost of such

hard toil, and could not so much as till its stony ground with a

plough. The rest of Cato's rancorous opinion is in no respect

confirmed by other ancient writers: on the contrary they speak

highly of the industry, the indefatigable patience, and the content­

edness of the Ligurians, no less than of their boldness and dex­

terity97. When Cato wrote, the Romans had only just completed

the task of subduing them, which, though the contest was seldom

carried on except by one tribe at a time, had taken forty years :

during this war the inroads of the· Ligurians, like those of their

enemies, had been very desolating and cruel; and he was probably

misled by the exasperation thus produced into pronouncing a sen­

tence so contrary to justice.

At the time when the Ligurians were subjugated or exterminated,

tribe after tribe, or carried away from their mountains to be settled

in far distant plains, the Venetians were as rich as the former were

poor, as un warlike as the Ligurians· were brave. They had resigned

themselves to the protection of Rome without a stri1ggle; and they

appear as her subjects in the Cisalpine war, without our :finding

any account how they became so. They had been led to wish for

foreign protection by the incursions of the Gauls. Their abodes

were in a small part of that region which was afterward called Ve­

netia, in the plain and on the hills, scarcely reaching to the foot of

the Alps, between the Cisalpine Gauls and the formidable Tauris­

cans of Noricum*. The commercial and trading spirit of Venice

is her inheritance from her. parent city, Patavium: which having

been founded, according to tradition, long before Rome by some

Trojan emigrants, escaped uninjured amid all the wars and disor~

495 I. 10.

96 Fragm. Origg. II. in Servius on .lEn. XI. 701. 715.

97 Cicero against Rull. II. 35. Virgil Georg. II. 167. Diodorus IV. 20.

v. 39. From the last but one of these passages it appears that they engaged

themselves for hire as free day-labourers in husbandry. Such freemen who

till the ground themselves, werP called by the Athenians ttv'TOUf)'of. Thucy­

dides J. 141.

Polybius n. 15. 30.HISTORY OF ROME.

127

ders of Italy, attained to extraordinary wealth, and in the age of

Tiberius was the first city of Italy next to Rome.

That tradition about Antenor had become nationalized among the

Patavines: at least the account which is connected with it, of the

war waged before the foundrng of the city with the Euganeans am!

their king Velesus• 0•, must be homesprung: else it is manifestly of

Greek origin, being derived from the cyclic poets, who told of

Antenor's treachery and indemnity, and from the name of the· Hene­

tians in Paphlagonia. Many stories, says Polybius, are related of

the Venetians, by the tragic poets 99 • The country about the Eri­

danus, the remotest shores of the Adriatic, were renowned in poet~

ical story: this part of that sea, being inaccessible on account of the

Liburnian pirates, was considered even by the later Greeks as very

distant and vast. Scylax, who enormously exaggerates the extent

of the Adriatic, puts the Venetians on its eastern shore, about the

mouth of the Eridanus; placing that mouth beyond the innermost

recess. of the. gulf, the coast of which, he says, was inhabited by

the Celts 500 • But although these regions were very rarely visited

by the Greeks, still the ·opinion of Herodotus, that the Enetians

were an lllyrian race 1 , well deserves to be weighed: and there is a

statement quite independent of it, which names an Illyrian king

..:Enetus as their prince~.

A difficulty indeed seems to be raised by-our ii.nding that Poly­

bius, who remarks that the Venetians differed but little in customs

and dress from the Celts, though he tells us their language was not

Celtic, does not say it was Illyrian : and yet his ear would un­

doubtedly have been perfectly able to distinguish the lllyrian

tongue. This however leads us to' conjecture, that the name of

lllyrians was erroneously applied to them, and that they may have

been Liburnians: such an inacc.uracy would be a very slight one

for Herodotus. They were only separated from the Liburnians in

Dalmatia by the lstrians, before N oricum was conquered by the

Gauls; and Noricum it is evident had previously been inhabited by

Liburnian tribes. For the Vindelicians were Liburnians 9 : and

Strabo makes a distinction between them and the Breunians and

Genaunians, whom he calls Illyrians". Vi~gil's words too 5 seem

9!) II. 17.

498 Servius on lEn. 1. 243.

1 1. 196.

500 Sey lax, p. 6.

2 In Srrvius on lEn. 1. 243.

3 Servius on lEn. 1. 243.

4 1v. p. 206. b.

5 lEn. 1. 2!3. foll.-Antenor potuit---Illyricos penetrare sinus atque in­

tima tutus Regna Liburnorum.128

IIISTORY OF ROME.

distinctly to term the Venetians Liburnians: for tlie innermost realm

of the Liburnians must surely be the goal at whieh Antenor is said

to have arrived.

Now the affinity between ·the name of the Ligurians and the

Liburnians is so close, that, although I have not intended to estab·

Iish any connexion between the two nations treated of in this sec­

tion, it might seduce one to make the attempt. I call to mind that

the Sigynnai were the only people on the banks of the lster, beyond

the Venetians and Liburnians, whom Herodotus could hear of,­

which information probably came from Venetian or Liburnian

mariners,-and that he knew this was the name for merchants in

Ligurian 506 : what. if those mariners meant to say that they were

acqu~inted with none but merchants from those parts? and what if

Herodotus designed to intimate this? But I fly from the rocks of

the Sirens.

In an inscription, which is taken for Venetian, the character is

an artificial variety of the Etruscan.

506 v. 9.THE THREE ISLANDS.

IN Corsica beside the Ligurians we find Iberians 507 : the Sica­

nians too in Sicily, who were driven back by the Sicelians into the

west and south of the island, are termed Iberians by every histo­

rian•. The only dispute was as to their original home. · They

themselves asserted that they were an aboriginal native race9 : and

Timreus who· sided with them, was deemed by Diodorus 10 to have

proved the point incontrovertibly. Thucydides on the other hand

assures us it was certain, that they had been expelled by the Ligu­

rians from Iberia: and Philistus concurred with him. The posi­

tiveness with which· Thucydides pronounces, " this is ascertained

as truth," hi._ the mouth of such a man, gives great weight to the

traditions of western Europe: it can only have been those of Ligu­

ria or Hispania, that he admitted as decisive. But he too might be

misled by the above mentioned prejudice about national affinities ;

and surely, where the supposed colony is without any similar tra­

dition, the opinion of the people that claim to have given birth to

it, can scarcely be taken as evidence: vanity in such matters is very

apt to give a bias.

On the other hand there is no doubt as to the Sicelians, that they

themselves related they were sprung from the Oenotrians, and had

emigrated from Italy. There were also some Morgetes in the

island 11 ; but the more important kindred people is the only one

spoken of in history.

507 Seneca ad Helviam c. 8,

8 Ephorus too wrote that the first inhabitants of Sicily were Iberians.

Strabo VI. p. 270. b. Were not these statements so perfectly trustworthy, it

would be difficult even for such as are cautious in drawing inferences from

the names of nations, not to count it clear that the name of the Sicanians is

one and the same with that of the Siculians,just as the same people were called

both .!Equani and .!Equuli; and that consequently they were of the same race.

9 vI. 2.

IO v. 6.

. 11 Strabo VI. p.

b.

:n-o.

I.-R130

HISTORY OF ROME.

That the Elymians were Trojans, was deemed indubitable; only

there was a tradition by which some Phocians were mixed up with

their progenitors. Hellanicus alone brought thPm from Italy 519•

By the intercouse of the natives with the Sicilian Greeks, and

by whole communities being forcibly transplanted, the Greek lan­

guage became so generally known and so current in Sicily, that

the barbarian tribes entirely forgot their hereditary tongues, and

the whole island grew into a Greek country, as it continued until

late in the middle ages.

In like manner the planting of colonies made Sardinia a Punic

country, in the parts under the dominion of the Carthaginians: after

it had been 180 years under the Romans, this character was still

unaltered, and the civilized Sardinians were considered as Preni 13 •

The ge::mine Sards, who dwelt in caves and clothed themselves in

skins, maintained their footing in the highlands, living in perpetual

feuds with the inhabitants of the cultivated regions. Of these there

were three tribes, the Iolaans or Ilians, the Balarians, and the Cor­

sicans. The name of the first .in the one form gave the Greeks

occasion to invent a stpry of Iolaus bringing his kinsmen the Thes­

piads thither; in the other, to seek here again for a Trojan colony:

the former of these fables was promoted by the Punic colony rever~

ing ~ardus, a son of the Tyrian Hercules, as its founder, and by

Iolaus being connected with Hercules in the Carthaginian mytho­

logy*. The other two names point to the Balearic isles and to

Corsica: and beside this mark of an Iberian population, either pure

or mixed, there was a tradition, among those ~elating to very an­

cient times, of an Iberian colony at N ora 1 •. This race may pos­

sibly have becnme extinct in Sardinia : that it should never have

settled on an island which was encircled by the Bale ares, Corsica,

512 Dionysius 1. 22.

13 Cicero pro Scauro 42. Peyr.

* Polybius vn. 9.

14 Solinus 13: Dioq. JV. 29: and P.ausanias Phocic. c. xvu: in a prolix

digression about the various settlements in Sardinia; it is the classical passage

for these traditions. His authority was certainly Timreus ; who was also that

of Diodorus, of the book De .Mirabilibus, and even of Sallust: the last was led

to describe this island by the war of Lepidus: he in his turn is followed by So­

linus. It is an instance of the vicissitudes books are subjected to by changes

of fashion and taste, that Timreus, who in the time of Cicero was still gene­

:rally read, was confined to the studies of the learned , when Pausanias wrote;

so that Pausanias could seek in him, as in the most forgotten Atthids, for un­

known narratives to embellish his work with. What lsidorus xv. 6. c. 1178.'

d-f. and Solinus say of Sardinia, with the passage on Corsica which follows

in the former, is now properly inserted among the fragments of Sallust.HISTORY OF ROME.

131

and Sicania, is incredible. The Iolaans, we are told by Pausanias,

resembled the Lybians.

The tale of a Greek settlement under Aristmus 515 is again an in­

dication of Pelasgians ; since it was in Arcadia that this son of

Cyrene ruled 18 : Those Tyrrhenians too 1 1, who are said to have

inhabited Sardinia before .the Iolaans, were Pelasgians.

I am told that there are Cyclopian walls of a peculiar structure

on this island, which undoubtedly can neither be ascribed to the

Carthaginians nor the the lolaans. Hence we must suppose there

is something more than mere fiction in the story that, toward the

end of the fifth century of the city, Sardinia contained the ruins of

. large buildings and vaults, which the Greeks called the works of

Iolaus and his companions, the Thespiadean Heraclids. 18

If the dialect of the Sardinian mountaineers were kriown, and did

really possess any roots of a peculiar character, it might possibly

throw light on the question whether they are connected with the

Iberians or with the Libyans. The specimens of the language

. spoken in the civilized districts exhibit peculiarities which are

more tqan varieties of dialect : they indicate a Romance language

of a distinct kind; but nothing more.

515 Pausanias, as above. Diodor,us 1v. 82. Auct. deMirabilib. p. 105. b.

Sallust in Servius on Georg. 1. 13. All these however do but repeat the ac·

count of Timreus.

16 The most important passages are collected in Bochart Geogr. Sacr.

ed. 1692. c. 573. d. foll.

17 Strabo v. p. 225. a.

.

18 Auctor de Mirabilib. p. 105. b. Diodorus 1v. 30.CONCLUSION.

No one can mount up to the fountain-head of those streams by

which the tribes of the present human race have been borne down:

still less can any eye pierce through the chasm, which there severs

that order of things wherein we and our history are comprised, from

an earlier one. That a prior race of mankind has passed away,

is a general popular belief; and it was shared and cheri~hed by the

Greek philosophers : but in one thing they dissented from the peo­

ple: it was supposed by Plato and Aristotle that a few had been

preserved; like embers, from the general ruin, and that from them

a new race of mankind had sprung and spread by degrees over the

desolated earth; while by the people the renewal of the life of man

was regarded as a new creation, as we see in the' Lai of Deucalion,

and.the Myrmidons of .J.Eacus; and the extinct race were, deemed

to have been rebels against the heavenly powers, led astray by the

consciousness of their enormous strength. Thus the later Jews

dreamt of giants before the deluge ; thus the Greeks dreamt of the

Titans of Phlegra, and of those who perished in the flood of Deu­

calion or of Ogyges: thus the savages of North America fable of the

mammoth, that the world having been laid waste by him invoked·

the lightnings of heaven, and not in vain, against the reason-gifted

monster, the man of the primitive age. Thus Italy in its popular

legends had the Campanian giants, who fled into the furthest cor­

ner of Messapia, and, being pursued by the inexorable conqueror,

hid 'themselves under the _earth; out of which. venomous ichor

gushes forth, commingling with the springs, from the never-heal­

ing wounds of the thunderbolt. Now far as we are from sharing

such a belief, I still cannot forbear regr..rding the view taken by the

people as sounder in one point than that of the philosophers : the

latter assume a period which has no beginning, and wherein act

follows act; while the people acknowledges the creation of man­

kind as the beginning of new laws of life : ·to set which revolution.HISTORY OF ROME.

133

before our eyes, seems to have been the purpose why the organic

remains of earlier periods have been buried in the earth. · There

is no proof that such a creation has occurred only once: it may

have taken place, for the different races of mankind, after the earth

had been more or less extensively desolated, at widely distant

epochs in the course of those many thousand years which have

been requisite to form the alluvial land of Egypt, of llabylonia, of

Lombardy, and of Louisiana : for God does not grow old, nor weary

of creating, of preserving, of remoulding and training.

The uniform notion however was, that the times of the giants

were not parted by a gulf from those of the present human race,

but that the latter gradually gained the upper hand, while the for­

mer expired as gradually. And in fact the supposing that a race

of giants must have been the architects of the walls composed of

enormous polygonal blocks, in what are called the Cyclopian cities,

from Prreneste, and even Ardea, to Alba in the land of the Marsians,

as well as of the walls of Tiryns-which are exactly similar-such

an opinion is an expression of the simple understanding; and in

like manner the peasants in J;riesland fancy they see the works of

giants in those colossal altars which occur on the high grounds in

greater or less preservation, wherever the Teutonic tribes were for­

merly settled, and granite boulders are found.

That these walls are not the works of those tribes which our

history meets with in Latium, inasmuch as they are greatly beyond

their powers, we are certainly forced to pronounce: but we must

cont~nt ourselves with confessing that our history does not reach

back far enough. For the only difficulty is, that the powers of

those tribes were inadequate. The Etruscan walls, and the build­

ings of the Roman kings, do not yield to those works, or even ex­

ceed them in magnitude : the raising and removing the rock-hewn

obelisks was a still more gigantic undertaking, one that mocks our

mechanical powers still more. The Peruvian walls and roads too

are no Jess vast than the Cyclopian buildings: but in these cases

there is nothing incredible; because we know that many thousands,

nay hundreds of thousands, laboured at task work, and that the sae­

-rifice of lives was never thought of. Those forgotten tribes in the

country of the Cascans and Latins 519 , compared with whose archi­

519 Our finding that the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians were employed to build

a fortress on, the Acropolis at Athens, might lead us to conjecture that the

nation enjoyed a peculiar celebrity for this kind of architecture. But no ill'­

ference can be drawn from this with regard to the origin of the walls in La·

ti um; since the people who were allowed to settle at the foot of Hymettus134

HISTORY OF ROME.

tecture that of Rome under the emperors was diminutive, belong

to or precede that period in which the Greek historian of the Au­

gustan age, agreeing in principle with the philosophical historians

of the last century, conceived that this very country of the Abori­

gines contained nothing but savages scarcely possessing the faculty

of speech, the offspring of the rude young earth. In like manner

the vaulted drains of the lake Copais, which are carried for thirty

stadia thr~ugh the solid rock, and the clearing of which surpassed

the power of Bceotia in the time of Alexander, are certainly the

work of a people prior to the Greeks.

Among the cities of very great antiquity Herculanum is unques­

tionably to be ranked. It was built on a bed of tufo, exactly like

that which has buried it : beneath the former is a soil containing

unequivocal traces of tillage 520 ; and this cultivation belongs to an

age anterior to the first Greek settlement in Italy; since the Greeks

had no traditions of any eruptions from Vesuvius, although they

collected by inference that the.mountain was volcanic.

If a detailed map be framed according to mere reports, calcula­

tions, and bearings, it may deviate in every particular from absolute

geographical correctness, and yet be substantially sufficient to give

a notion of a country, and enable us to follow the events of its

history: when contracted to a small scale, its variations from a

precisely accurate one may be scarcely perceptible.. The same is

the case with regard to many things handed down to us in the his­

tory of nations: if they are detached from their dates and whatever

else is most exposed to arbitrary and falsifying alteration ; and if

we do not suffer ourselves to be disturbed by partial incongruities,

where there is no contradiction in the main ; the limits of universal

history will be greatly enlarged.

Thus the legends and traditions collected in this introduction,

concerning the seyeral tribes that flourished in the earliest times of

Italy, furnish results which enable us to survey the most important

turns of their destinies, and which carry us so far forward, that,

even beyond the Alps, some of the national movements in the west

and north of Europe come within our widening horizon.

The Pelasgians, under which general name it seems that in Italy

the Oenotrians, the Morgetes, the Siculians, the· Tyrrhenians, the

Peucetians, the Daunians, the Liburnians, and the Venetians may

were Epirot Sicilians, and had no connexion with lt.aly, as has been shown

in p. 43.

520 Diss. Isagog. in Herc. \lolumina 1. p. 9.HISTORY OF ROME.

135

be comprehended, surrounded the Adriatic with their possessions no

less than the lEgean : that tribe of them which left its name to the

lower sea, having dwelt along its whole coast up a considerable way

into Tuscany, had also a settlement in Sardinia: and in Sicily the Ely­

mians, as well as the Sicelians, belonged to the same stock. In

the interior of Europe the Pelasgians were settled on the northern

side of the Tyrolese Alps; and under the name of Preonians and

Pannonians extended as far as the Danube: that is to say, if the

Teucrians and Dardanians were the same race.

'I:hey are standing in the very earliest traditions at the summit

of their greatness. The legends that tell of their fortunes, exhibit

only their decline and fall: Jupiter had weighed their destiny and

that of the Hellens ; and the scale of the Pelasgians had risen.

The fall of Troy was the symbol of their fate.

As on the east of the Adriatic the lllyrians press forward from

the north, until they are arrested by the mountains of Epirus; so

the Tuscans, being driven onward by the Celts or Germans, come

down from the same quarter out of the Alps into Italy: in the west

of Lombardy they find the Ligurians reaching as far as the lake of

Garda: these at that time were one of the great nations of Europe,

possessing the country from thence to the foot of the Pyrenees; be.

fore this they had also inhabited Tuscany. .They now retired from

the plains on the north of the Po, behind the Ticinus and into the

Apennines. The invaders, pursuing their conquests, expelled the

Umbrians, both out of Lombardy south of the Po, and from the

inland part of northern Tuscany: from the sea coast and the south

of Etruria as far as the Tiber, they drove the Tyrrhenian Pelas­

gians. This limit they reached about the time which we mark as

the first third of the second century of Rome. The impulse of the

Tuscan irruption set in motion all the nations then in possession of

the country from the Po to the summit of the Apennines ; and

forced the Cascans and Oscans, pressed onward by the Sabines,

upon the Sicelians. And as the Pelasgians on the Tyrrhenian sea

were expelled or subjugated, so· their other tribes experienced the

same fate, in Oenotria from the Greeks, in Daunia from the Oscans,

higher up along the Adriatic from the Sabellians and U mbrians :

and the continued progress of the Sabellians subsequently occa­

sioned the Ausonian Opicans to attack the Latins, a people sprung

from an earlier emigration of other tribes belonging to their own

race. The further changes do not require a summary.PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROlVlE.

£NEAS AND THE TROJANS IN LATIUl\L

I Now turn with pleasure toward my proper mark, from the

wearisome task of gleaning detached and mostly unimportant no­

tices concerning the Italian nations; and I retire from the seductive

impulse to divine the nature of what has perished, by continually

renewing the examination of these often uncertain fragments. Yet

l must still linger a while on ground of the same kind with the

most insecure part of what I have just quitted, but ground belong­

ing essentially to Rome, and over which our road must needs pass

to the mythical part of Roman story; a part that must be kept sep­

arate, but may not be excluded.

If the object of an investigation concerning the Trojan colony in

Latium were to decide with historical probability, by means of di­

rect and circumstantial evidence, whether such a colony 'actually

settled on that coast, a prudent inquirer would decline it. He

would deem it absurd to expect any testimonies as to an event five

hundred years antecedent to the time when all" is still fabulous and

poetical i)l the history of Rome: and what traces could have been

preserved, to supply the place of evidence which obviously cannot

possibly exist? when the Trojans with lEneas, even according to

the account which assigns them the greatest importance, were not

an immigrating tribe.such as would alter the people it united with,

and impress its character distinctly on the new formation. In the

earliest Roman narrative they are represented as the crew of merely

a single ship: and even in the later, which might lead us to look

for a somewhat larger number, they are still no more than a small

band, for whom the fields of one village were sufficient. ThereHISTORY. OF· ROME.

137

being no trace of such a settlement to be found in Latium a thou­

sand years afterward, would be no proof against the strangers hav­

ing come thither.

The real object of this investigation is, to determine whether the

Trojan legend is ancient and homesprung, or adopted by the Latins

from the Greeks; and whether there is any chance of explaining

how it originated. Besides it is worth the while to collect the pe·

culiar features of the earliest Roman accounts, which are very little

known.

Let none look on this inquiry with scorn, from thinkl.ng that

Ilion too was a fable, and a voyage into the unknown West was

impossible. It is true, the Trojan war belongs to the region of

fable, so that we cannot select a single point among its incidents as

more or less probable than the rest: yet undeniably it had a histo·

rical foundation. That the Atrida were kings of the Peloponnesus,

is unquestionable. Nor can the voyage to Latiurn be termed im·

possible; since the boldness of mariners is by no means checked

by the imperfect condition of their vessels: nor is their knowledge

of distant regions to be measured by the notions of their country·

men who remain at home, in an age without books, or maps, or

men of learning~

·

The story that the Trojans were not utterly destroyed at the fall

of Troy, but that a part of them survived, and that this remnant

had been governed by the house of .iEneas, is as old as the Home­

ric poems. True, it does not by any means follow from this, that

the legend which makes the descendants of .iEneas rule over emi­

grants at a distance from Trpy, wa~ equally old; we can only say,

there is no contradiction between the two. All that is expressed

in the well-known passage of the Iliad*, is that a Trojan people

would continue to exist: and it would certainly be more natural to

refer the prophecy to the independent Dardanians under .iEneas,

whose situation would enable them to occupy the desolated .terri­

tory of Ilium immediately after the departure of the Greeks, than

to a distant settlement in regions which, even if they were known

to the mariner, were altogether obscure to the poet; but that Troas

and the Hellespont in the Homeric age had long been full of .iEolian

colonies. Arctinus of Miletus too, a poet contemporary with the

building of Rome, only related, unless the abstracts in the Chres­

tomathia of Proclus are incorrect, that .iEneas and his followers,

being terrified by the portentous fate of Laocoon's children, aban·

. * xx. 307-308.

1.-s138

HISTORY OF ROME.

doned the city and withdrew from the general ruin to mount Ida.

It is ce.rtainly possible that his account of what afterward befel the

fugitives, might be overlooked in those abstracts. But Dionysius

was acquainted with the poems of Arctinus, and not merely with

his /Etliiopid, but also with. his IJestruction of Troy: for he gives

us his story of the stealing of the false Palladium 521 : and he does

not combine this story with the accounts which stated that the

image had been brought by the 'rrojans into Italy. Now if the

;\1ilesian poet, whose great antiquity Dionysius expressly urges,

had related any thing about a subsequent emigration of .lEneas, it is

inconceivable that Dionysius should have neglected his evidence

for the settling of the Trojans in Italy, when he was amassing all

he could muster out of Hellanicus, Cephalon, and other·writers so

much more recent.

,

In the Laocoon of Sophocles 92 lEneas was represented as retir­

ing before the taking of the city, and as having been followed by

great numbers to new abodes, the desire of many of the Phrygians.

But even if Sophocles took the fable of his tragedy in the main

from the ancient cyclic poet I have been speaking of, still it no way

follows, that he did not in this instance exercise his customary

license, of making a free selection out of the narratives contained

in other poems on the fall of Troy.

Dionysius seems neither to have been acquainted with Pisander,

nor with the lyrical poem of Stesichorus on the destruction of llion.

If credit is due to the account, that Virgil formed the second book

of the .lEneid entirely on the model of Pisander's epic poem 28 , we

then know that the latter sang, how .lEneas after the fall of the city

made his escape with a part of the Trojans, and emigrated; and

that too not as a traitor, rior through the clemency of the Argives:

but we are not warranted in drawing any conclusions· as to a fur­

ther coincider_ce between his story and Virgil's. The age of Pi­

sander, if he was the Camirrean, is quite indeterminate, lying be­

tween that of Hesiod and the thirty-third Olympiad.

Stesichorus however sang of the emigration of .lEneas, almost in

the same way as Virgil; for the representations on the Iliac Table

seem entitled to confidence. · In them we find the hei:o preserving

his father and the holy things,-with but slight variations from

521 1. 69.

22 Quoted by Dionysius 1. 48: ·

23 Macrobius Saturn. v. 2. It is inconceivable that Macrobius should,

as has been conjectured, have taken Pisander of Laranda for older than Virgil:

if here as elsewhere he was merely a compiler, the grammarian he copied

from lived still nearer to the age of Severus.HISTORY'OF ROME.

139

Virgil's description,-and embarking with his followers for Hes­

peria. Stesichorus, who died in the fifty-sixth Olympiad, lived in

the latter half of the second century: still from the vague account

of .iEneas leading some Trojans into Hesperia, to that of his found­

ing a colony in Latium, there is certainly a wide step: and it is

very doubtful whether Stesichorus tr.ached this extreme limit. In

Arctinus at least his chief exploit was his saving the Palladium:

among the holy things too mentioned by Stesichorns, this we may

be sure was the most precious treasure: but this Palladium, the

Greeks believed, was preserved 'in the Trojan colony at Siris in

Oenotria; on the same coast where they planted so many persons

connected with Troy, Philoctetes at Petelia, Epeus at Lagaria, the

Pylians at Metapontum. Siris too was within the compass of Hes·

peria; and the first Greeks at all events who sang ofa Trojan emi­

gration to Hesperia, can scarcely have assigned it a more distant

' goal.. But Misenus in Stesichorus, unless his name on the Iliac

Table be an addition inserted out of Virgil, decidedly points to the

lower sea.

The other Greek authorities quoted by Dionysius, we are either

totally unable to arrange according to their age; or we cannot do it

with -such certainty as to fix the time when the Latins were first.

spoken of by the Greeks as a Trojan colony. His trying to up­

hold the historical truth of the legend, by appealing to the Pythian

oracles and the responses of the Sibylline books, is a piece of that

superstitious trifling by which he so often provokes us; and the

authority is quite worthless, since the old Roman Sibylline books

had perished, and those which circulated among the Greeks were

·

wretched impostures.

Gergithes on mount Ida was the only Teucrian town that re·

mained after the .iEolian iiivasion 524 : a Gergithian named Cephalon

wrote the history of his nation. In this he related, that .iEneas had

only led the Trojans as far as Pallene on the coast of Thrace; that

he died there after founding the city of .iEnea; and that Romus,

one of his four sons, built Rome along with his father's followers

in the second generation after the taking of Troy 25 • As a Teucrian,

this writer's testimony is very interesting: it would be most im­

portant, if the expression of Dionysius, who calls him "a very an­

cient historian 16 ," could be taken literally; but he applies the same

terms to Antiochus, who was more recent than Herodotus. We

524 Herodotus v. 12-2.

~6 ITWVi'f"'P•~,

VII.

43.

''"ti'"'"' ,,... vv. I. 72.

25 Dionysius

1.

49. 72.140

HISTORY OF ROME.

have no right therefore to assume that Cephalon was older than

the former, that is, than the first half of the fourth century.

The existence of other Trojan colonies in those parts was re­

garded by the Greeks of that century as historically certain.

Hellanicus indeed had ma<le the Elymians go over to Cicily from

Italy, and precede the Sicelians as inhabitants of the island 52 7: but

Thucydides, no doubt following Antiochus, states that they were

Trojans, intermixed with some Phocians, who were cast ashore

there on their return from Troy 28 : so Scylax too calls them Trojans.

Hence there can be no question that if Thucydides and the Greeks

of his age had heard tell of a Trojan colony on. the Tiber, they

would not have seen any thing surprising in it.

Within a century of this time A pollodorus of Gela, the contem·

porary of Menander, termed Romus the son of lEneas and Lavinia 2 e:

after the mi<ldle of the fifth century Callias adopted the story ~f

the Trojans settling in Latium, and uniting with the Aborigines,

which he indicated by the marriage of Roma with king Latinus• 0 •

Soon afterward Pyrrhus crossed over into Italy, and the eyes of

all nations were turned toward Rome. The notion· entertained

by Pausanias, that Pyrrhus felt himself called upon as a descendant

of lEacus to wage war against the posterity of the Trojans•i, was

very probably borrowed from some contemporary writer: from

Hieronymus or Timreus. The latter, who wrote, that the people

of Lavinium had told him, the images of the Trojan gods were

preserved in the sanctuary of their, 'temple3 2 , mantained that the

Trojan origin of the Romans was positively certain: and in en­

deavouring to get evidence of it he was deluded by that fancifulness

which often visited him, into imagining that the sacrifice of the

October horse was a memorial of the destruction of Troy by the

wooden horse 88 • From that time ~orward the belief in the Trojan

527 Dionysius 1. 22. It seems also as if he had not conducted the Trojans

under JEneas beyond the country of the Crusreans in Pallene, that is, to the

town of lEnea. See Dionysius 1. 48.

28 Thucydides VI. 2. Scylax p. 4. The same singular story of an am­

icable settlement in which the fugitives unite with the conquerors humbled

by their destiny, occurs at Siris on the coast of Oenotria.

29 In Festus v. Romam: the words are sadly corrupt.

30 Dionysius 1. 72.

31 ;rausanias Attic. o. xu.

32 Dionysius 1. 67.

33 That this notion, which we' were acquainted with,through Plutarch,

Qurest. Rom. c. 97, and Festus, v. October equus, owes its origin to Timreus,is

clear now from the Excerpta de sententiis p. 381. ed. Maii, where Polybius's at­

tack upon him is published in a state very much fuller than in the old editions :HISTORY OF ROME.

141

col,ony was quite universal among the Greeks. In the first half of

the next century it was professed by Eratosthenes 53• : it is by mere

accident that we have no Greek work in which it is expressed,

more ancient than Lycophron'11 Cassandra, which was, written

about 560 35•

But along with this there was another legend current among the

Greeks : that the Latins were one of the ancient colonies founded

in various places by Greek castaways after the Trojan war; which

colonies they supposed to have afterwards lost their connexion with

their mother-country, and to have been estranged from it: to this

class, in the south of Italy, the first city of Metapontum, Petelia,

and Arpi, were supposed to belong. Circeii, which was uniformly

taken by the Greeks for the island of Circe, and hence a place of

interest even to mariners, who recognized the grave of Elpenor in

a place overgrown with dwarf myrtles (whereas the rest of Latium

was said to produce only standards 36) brought the name of Ulysses

into these parts. Hesiod terms Latinus and his brother Agrius,

the sons of Ulysses and Circe, and the sovereigns of the renowned

Tyrrhenians 37, He. makes no mention of Telegonus, who was

p.amed in the l'OOlll of those brothers in Other fables ; fables anterior

to Sophocles*, and adopted by the later Roman poets and by the

Tusculans. Wherever Latinus, or Romus, or Roma, are spoken

of as descended from Ulysses or Telemachus 38 , the meaning of the

· fable is the same: but this notion of a Greek origin is likewise

found without any mention of Ulysses, Aristotle related 39, that

some Achreans .on their return from Troy had been cast by tempests

on the coast of Latium, a district of Opica; that, when they landed

Ilvppw

&«l µh (read µnr) b 'Toi, 'll'<fl 'TOU

7rtb.H (perhaps 7TOA,µov) ~~<Tf

Tou' p.,µ11.fou, ;'T, (insert ,.11.l) riiv ri7roµ1nµ11. 'ITOIOvp.hov, 'Tii( &11.'Tcr. 'TO ~JA101

d.71'0tAef«, t1 Hµ.ipr- rr1v' &d.'f'ctJC.QVT;~"' i7l'11'01 7roA1µ17rrffv 7Tf.o fTi;t wOA'"'' ;, rr~

&d.µ7r'!' .1<1t.Mvµiv'f', J111. 'TO 'Tii' Tpof11.g 'TH1 ,tMl•<T" 1111. 'TDV i7r7ro1· )·tri<T811.1

"Tor lo6p101 7rfO<Ttt.')-op1uoµevov. Plutarch, when recording this ingenious ex­

planation as it was delivereg by its authors;writes that the Romans would do

this as Tpr.O.,v i'YA"" "'"'" µ1µ1/'µivcr. 1ftt1<Tl Att'Tfv.,,: so that he probably

found this line in Timreus, and it must then belong to a poet who, compara­

tiv~ly speaking, was of considerable antiquity.

.

534 Servius on lEn. I. 273.

'

35 v. 1232. foll. The author'has discussed the age of Lycophron in his

KleinB Schriften p. 438-451.

·

36 Theophrast. Hist. Plant. v.,9. Scyla.x, p. 3.

37 Theogon. v. 1011-15.

* See the passages quoted among the fragments of the Nl7r'Tf«.

38 See the latter part of the section on the founding of Rome.

39 In Dionys. 1. 72.142

HISTORY OF ROME.

to winter there, the captive Trojan women set fire to their ships ;

and that this compelled them to settle in those parts. The same story

was repeated by Heraclides Lembus so late as after the year 600;

and all who before the sixth century called Rome a Grecian city,

and the Romans Greeks, must have adopted views substantially the

same.

Now it seems clear to me, that the earliest Greek tradition, of

which we may certainly consider Hesiod as the representative, by

assigning Latium to Ulysses and his descendants, excludes the

Trojans from it: while a very ancient opinion, the histbrical value

of which I may leave to rest on its own merits, brought them along

with the sacred treasures they had saved, to the Siris. If so, there

is a very great probability, that, so long as the Palladium was be·

lieved to be preserved there, that is, until the taking of Siri.s ·.by

the Ionians, about the year 75, nothing was either said or sung

among the Greeks touching a more distant migration of those who

had escaped from the flames of Ilion. But irreplaceable sacred

treasures, such as the Palladium, if they are lost, are generally

given out to have returned to light somewhere else: and then it

often happens tha~ several are· set up as the true one. Thus a

favourable hearing might be won for the legend, that .£neas had

taken refuge with the gods of Troy' in parts far mdre remote than

the Siris, where they were still preserved: but to a Teucrian~ the

report was most acceptable, and he would feel a peculiar interest

in strengthening the opinion; that a germ of ·his race had taken

root in a distant region, and that a new people was springing up

from it.

In that distant region however must the report have had its rise :

for whatever use learned Romans in the age of Augustus ·might

make of Greek poets, to show that the tradition was early known·

to the Greeks, and thereby to establish its truth; still it would be

· extremely improbable that a belief which was adopted by the whole

nation concerning its own origin, should have been borrowed from

abroad; even if it could be traced from such poems as were gene­

rally known. This however is by no means the case here,' as it is

with the fable of Ulysses coming to Latium: the latter, it is very

easy to see, was fostered by the circumstance that the house of the

Mamilii, which was transplanted to Rome from Tusculum, where

they had been princes, deduced its lineage through Telegonus from

Circe. Above all is it improbable that a belief of this kind should

be of foreign origin, when it is re.cognlzed by the state; by, a state

too so proud, and so contemptuous toward every thing foreign, asHISTORY OF ROME.

143

Rome. Of its having been so recognized we find remarkable proofs,

in collecting the earliest traces of the Trojan legend among the

Romans; proofs drawn from times when Greek literature had cer­

tainly not found admission except with a few individuals.

To the opinion that this legend was generally pi:ernlent among

the Romans, it might be objected that of all the Roman festivals

not one related to lEneas and Ilion. For though a yearly sacrifice

was offered by the pontiffs and the consuls on the banks of the

Numicius to Jupiter lndiges 540 , this no way proves that the notion

of this god being, lEneas deffied, was of any high antiquity. But

ort the other hand the worship of the Penates at Lavinium is of the

greater importance, because, as has been more than once mentioned,

Timreus, who at all events writing for Sicelian readers could not

invent fables on Roman matters, as Megasthenes did concerning

India, related, about the year 490, that he had been told by certain

inhabitants of Lavinium, there were Trojan images of clay pre­

served in their temple.

The first transaction between the Romans and the states, of

Greece, that we have any account of, is the application of the

senate to the lEtolians for the freedom of the Acarnanians, grounded

on. the plea that the Romans were bound to protect those wh9se

ancestors, alone of all the Greeks, had. taken no share in the war

against their progenitors the Trojans 41 , Owing to Justin's super­

ficial inaccuracy our means for determining the time of this event

are in such confusion, that we canno't make out whether this em­

bassy was not sent even before 509; it must not be dated later than

515 or 516. It was about· the same time that the senate wrote a

letter to king Seleucus, demanding, as the condition of entering

into a treaty of friendship and alliance with him, that the llians,

the kinsmen of the Roman people, should be exempted from tri­

bute49. The llians were also included by the Romans in their first

treaty of peace with Macedonia, in the year 549 :' fifteen years

after, when the Scipios crossed the Hellespont, the Ilians boasted

540 The Veronese Scholiast on 1En. I. 260.

41 Justin xxvm. 1. 'When my history reache~ this point, I think I shall

be able to show that the circumstances related by Dionysius in 1. 51, which

refer still more specifically to the legend of lEneas, belong to this negociation,

not to a much later period.

42 Suetonius Claud. c. 25: where that excellent critic, Oudendorp, has

proved that Seleucus, who is there named without any specific epithet, must

have been Callinicus, who reigned after 509, OJ. 133. 3. The cause that led

him to seek the friendship of Rome, was his war with Ptolemy Euergetes, or

that with Antiochus Hierax. '144

~!STORY

OF ROME.

of their affinity with the Roman people, calling them their colony;

the Romans were delighted to see their mother country, and the

consul went up to the citadel to offer a sacrifice to Athene 548 , It

would be useless to collect later instances of the llians appealing

to this pretended affinity; an appeal made dishonestly, for, they

were originally au lEolian colony, and the Macedonian kings, who

at one time enlarged the city, at another changed its site, mixed up

a concourse of people from various nations with the old inhabitants'*.

The traces that remain of C. Nreviu!c', who had served in the first

Punic war, having given a circumstantial description in his poem

of the departure and voyage of ~neas and his father, will be found

collected a couple of pages further down.

By this combination of evidence I think I have established the

correctness of the view, that the Trojan· legend was not brought

into Latium by Greek literature, but must be considered as home·

sprung: and when I have added, that in spite of this it has not the

least historical truth,-any more than the descent of the Goths from

the Getes, or that of the Franks and Saxons from the Macedonians,

all which are .related with full faith by native w,riters,-nor even

the slightest historical importance, I should wish to quit the sub·

ject. But he who brings forward inquiries of this sort, is seldom

permitted to decline expressing his suspicion, if he has one, even

where no human sagacity can arrive at a decisive solution; as on

the question what after all can have been the origin of this tradition.

The following hypothes~s is with me' not a desperate attempt to

find some escape or other from a difficulty: it is my conviction:

yet without that necessity o( speaking, I should be silent on the

subject.

· Every thing we have to, build upon in the old mythological

stories, with a view to discovering the affinities of nations, indicates

that which existed between the Trojans and the Pelasgian tribes;

the Arcadians 44, the Bpirots 45 , the Oenotrians"' 6, but more e1.1peci­

ally the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. Dardanus comes from the city of

Corythus to Samothrace, and from thence to the Simois: Corythus

in Virgil is a Tyrrhenian, according to Hellanicus and Cephalon a

543 Livy XXIX. 12.. XXXVII, 37. XXXVIII. 39. Justin XXXI. 8. Polybius

3.

.

' · '

" i;!cylax, p. 35. Strabo xm. p. 593. foll.

.

44' Dardanus according to one tradition is sprung from Arcadia (Diony•

1ius 1. 68.): .lEneas arrives in Arcadia.

45 Helenus settles, and .lEneos stays in Epirus.

46 Polieum on the Siris is built by the Trojans.

XXIII.145

HISTORY OF ROME.

Trojan 547: this interchange, the expedition of the Trojans to J,atium

and Campania, and the wanderings of the Tyrrhenians to Lemnos,

Imbrus, and the Hellespont, may safely be interpreted as designat­

ing nothing more than national affinity. That the 'Penates at La­

vinium were the gods of Samothrace, was an opinion almost uni­

versally received: so much so, that Atticus, though he did not

controvert the story about the migration of ..iEneas, concluded that

the Penates had been brought from that island 48 : so much so, that

the- Samothracians, like the Ilians, are said to have been recognized

as the kinsmen of the 'Roman people 49 : which statement must refer,

not merely to a belief entertained by individuals, but one declared

by the government. From this community of religion as of lineage

it might ensue, that more than one branch of the nation should call

themselves Trojans, and boast of being a· colony possessing the

'frojan sacred treasures, rescued by them from destruction. For

many generations after they had bowed under the yoke of the bar­

barians, Tyrrhenians would still visit. the holy land of Samothrace;

and there Herodotus may have heard citizens of Cortona and Placia

converse; there Lavinians and Gergithians may have mutually

awakened and ~trengthened the conviction of their kindred through

their common ancestor ..iEneas. The superiority maintained by

the religion. of the Tyrrhenians and by the arms of the Cascans

when the two nations united, is implied in· the line

Sacra Deosque dabo,; socer arma Latin us habeto ~

only that Latinus himself is to be considered as a Tyrrhenian.

The Trojan descent of the Elymians is no less decided and ac­

knowledged 'than that of those in Latium: so is that of the ancient

· ·

·

Sirites of P.olieum. ·

A belief of this sort does not req~ire long to become a national

one, in spite of the most obvious facts and the clearest historical

proofs; and then thousands would· be ready to shed blood for it.

They that would introduce it, need but tell people roundly, that it

is what their forefathers knew and befo~ved, only the belief was

neglected and sank into oblivion.

The legend was altered in a v~riety of ways: even imperfect

traces of its earliest form, before, like others, it experienced the

fate of being adulterated into a tale of something historically possi­

ble, demand a place in a history of Rome.

547 Parthenius, 34.

4!) Servius on lEn. 1m 12.

J.-T

48 Schol. Veron.' on lEn.

11.

717.HISTORY OF ROME.

Nrevius had related it in an episode of his poem on the Punic

war, of which fragments and notices are preserved 550 • It is evident.

that here too, as in Arctinus and Sophocles, Anchises and JEneas

quitted the.city before it was taken: their wives passed through

the gate in the night, with their heads muffled, in tears: many fol­

lowed their example: yet JEneas found .room for his train in a

single vessel, which Mercury had built for him •. The mention of

Prochyta shows that the Campanian poet accompanied the emi­

grants to the term of their voyage: the vicissitudes which Virgil

makes them pass through before they reach it, seem in the main to

be borrowed from Nrevius. We know that the tempest, which

here too assuredly was raised by Juno, the complaint of Venus to

Jupiter, and the promises of the future with which he consoles. the

fond goddess, were imitations of Nrevius: I have no doubt that he

likew.ise brought JEneas to Carthage ; from him comes the name

of Dido's sister, Anna; it must certainly be the Punic princess, ~ho

in him too "gently and prudently inquires in what manner JEneas

left Troy:" and it is exceedingly probable that the origin of the

national enmity had already been deduced by him from her fate •

.The shield of JEneas is a fiction which might c_ertainly be readily

suggested by that of Achilles: still it is at least likely, that the

shield representing the war of the giants in the poem of Nrevius,

was an earlier similar apI>lication of the Homeric conception to the

same hero.

In Varro's story the different parts bore the mark of sources and

times totally different. Of a novel kind are the escape of JEneas to

the citadel, and his being allowed by the capitulation to depart with

as much as every man can carry 51 ; whereupon instead of his treasures

he bears off his father who had been paralysed. by lightning, and,

when the Greeks in .admiration of the deed grant him a second

choice, the clay and stone images of the gods; in honour of which

virtue they permit· him· to take away whom and what he will in

550 The fragments here referred to.m11.y be found in Hermann's E!~menta

doctr. metricm m. 9. 31. p. 629. foll. '

l

• 51

Amborum uxores noctu Troia. de (read Troia.d) exiba.nt

Capitibus opertis, flentes,

, .

Abeuntes ambm lacrimis cum multis.

2. Horum sectam sequuntur multi mortales.

3. -bla.nde et docte percontat,

lEneas quo pacto Troiam urbem liquerit.

Dionyeius mixes up thie story with that of Arctinua. ,HISTORY ·oF ROME.

147

r;afety 551 • A feature belonging to the ancient legend, -and reminding

us of those of Asia, is, that the morning star continued visible to

the Trojans all day long during the voyage, and disappeared when

they had reached their destination on the Laurentine shore 53• It is

not known who was the author that assigned four years for the

duration of this voyage 54• By the sign just mentioned, and by the

fulfilment of the Dodonrean oracle 55, when his hungry band were

devouring the herbs on which they had spread their scanty meal,

...Eneas recognized the land allotted to him by fate 56 • According to

Cato, ...Eneas and Anchises (~or he also reached the promised

land), gave the name of Troy 5 7 to the first settlement, which did

not stand where Lavinium was afterward built. Henceforward

we may discover traces of the account such as it stood in the Ori~

gins. Latinus granted 700 jugers to the Trojans: here the measure

of a plebeian hide of land is traced back io the very first origin of

the Latin nation; and it is intimated that there were but a hundred

Trojans. The harmony between the natives and the strangers was

disturbed by the wounding of a favourite stag belonging to king

Latinus. Turnus 58 , prince of the Rutulians of Ardea, united his

arms with him against the hated foreigners. But the natives were

defeated, Lauren tum was taken, Latin us fell at the· storming of the

cita<lel5 9, and Lavinia became the prize of the conqueror.· As the

552

where

53

55

56

57

Servius on lEn. II. 636: and the Veronese· Scholiast on lEn. II. 717,

we should read humarw.rum for historiarum, and aurum for arma.

Servius on lEn. 1. 381. and II. 801.

54 Servius on lEn. 1. 259.

Servius on lEn. m. 256.

This oracle is known to Lycophron: v. 1250. foll.

Servius on lEn. 1. 6. VII. 158. ·

5~ His name is nothing else than a. La.tin form of Tyrrhenus : see above

p. 43: and the readings of the V~tican manuscript show that Dionysius, 1. 64,

called him TuppHvoc, as in 1. 70 he did the shepherd Tyrrhus. Here again we

have the same duplicity introduced into the notion of the mythical ages, the

Tyrrhenians and Trojans combating each other, as the Tyrrhenians and Pe­

lasgians, the Pelasgians and Sicelians did in different legends. That Turnus

in the name of Turnus Herdonius is a. Latin promome:n, is any thing but cer­

tain : the practice of placing an uncommon cogrnnne:n before the 7Wmen ob­

tained early; and Turnus would be like Sicu)us, or Auruncus, by the side of

very old Roman names in the Fasti.

59 This story must sound so strange to the reader of the lEneid, and it

must seem so incredible that Virgil should thus have altered the old tradition,

that I transcribe the passages quoted from Cato; they are all preserved by

Servius; on lEn. iv. 620. Cato <licit juxta Laurolavinium cum lEnem socii

prmdas agerent, prrelium commissum, in quo Latinus occisus est, fugit Tur.

nus.-on I. 267. Secundum Catonem-lEneam cum patre ad Italiam venisse,

f't propter inva.soa agros contra Latinum Turnumque pugnasse, in quo prmlio148

HISTORY OF ROME.

picture was drawn in gentler ages, we find nothing of these un­

happr nuptials with the man by whose arms her father fell, and

the marriage is combined with festivities fo honour of the peace:

although Virgil does not allow himself, like Dionysius and Livy,

to make the threatened battle go off in an alliance .and union. And

certainly Lavinia in other traditions also is the mediatress of an

alliance :with foreigners; being married to Hercules, under the name

of Launa, the daughter of Evander; to Locrus, as Laurina, the

daughter of the Oenotrian king, Latinus; nay £neas himself mar­

ries her, under the name of L::gma, the daughter of Anius king of

Delos*.

The coast· of Latium is a sandbank, where nothing grows hut

wood of t~e fir kind; and. £neas might well be grieved that his

fate had orought him to so poor a country 560• But he was reminded

of the oracle, that his colony; should be guided, like the Sabellian, by

an animal to its promised seat, when the pregnant s.ow that had been

designed for a sacrifice, broke loose, and escaped. to the bushes on

a more fruitful eminence. There it farrowed. thirty young ones;

and thus not only signified the site on which. Lavinium was to be

built, but also the number of years that was to elapse before Alba

should become the capital in its ste,ad, as well as the number of the

Latin townshipse•,

At the founding of Lavinium the Gods gave signs of their pre­

sence. The forest which occupied the site of the future city,

caught fire of itself: a wolf was seen 'bringing d:i-y pieces of wood

in his mouth to feed the flame; an eagle (anned .it with his wings.

But there came also a fox, that had dipped his tail in" water, and

tried to extinguish the fire: and it was .with difficulty that the two

former, after driving him several times away, were able to get rid

of him. This implied that the people whose mother city was

building, would have hard work to establish their power against its

obstiQ.ate adversaries. Bronze images of the three fated ani1X1als

were set up in the market place of Lavinium 61 •

·

·

·The poetical story now passes over centuries .to the epoch of the

Etruscan dominion in Latium: and it was not so careless ·as we

'

periit Latinus.-on rx. 745. Si veritatem historire requiras, primo prcelio in-·

teremtus est Latinus in arce.

* Dionysius 1. 59,

560 In agrum macerrimum littorosissimumque. Fabius Maximus in Ser­

vius on lEn. 1. 3.

61 The latter in Lycophron also 1253-1260.

62 Dionysius 1. 59.HISTORY OF ROME.

149

might 'be inclined to think it, when, knowing nothing of the Greek

chronology, it brought the building of Rome very near the time of

JEneas.

·

_Turnus on his defeat fled for succour to l\Iezentius, the Etrus­

can .king of Coore, being ent,itled to require it from him, as from his

superior lord, to whom the Rutulians paid the first-fruits due to the,

gods: others say this was the price they gave. for his assistance• 0•.

With this overpowering enemy JEneas, as king of the whole Latin

. nation, fought on the N umicius; Turnus fell, but the Latins fled;

1Eneas plunged into the stream, and was never. seen more: his

spirit, being purified from.earthly cares and exalted to divinity, was

adored as Jupiter Indiges: and so long as a recollection of the an­

cient rites was preserved, · the Roman consuls went every year

with the pontiffs and offered sacrifice to him on the banks of this

river 114• After this battle Lavinium was closely besieged and re­

duced to despair; until Jupiter accepted a vow of dedicating the

produce of the next vintage 65 to him: for the whole produre of, the

vineyards was demanded by the tyranny of Mezentius, or their

first-fruits by his impiety, as the indispensable condition of peace.

He fell by thE! hand.of lulus-Ascanius was not introduced till late

and out of Greek books-and the descendants of lEneas became'

lords of Latium.· ,

These wars .are described by Virgil, who softens .whatever is

harsh in them, and alters and accelerates the succession of events,

in the latter half of the 1Eneid, Its contents were certainly na­

tional; yet it is scarcely credible that even a Roman, if impartial,

should have received any genuin~ enjoyment from• his story. To

us it is unfortunately but too apparent how little the poet has suc­

ceeded in rais.ing these shadowy names, for which .he was forced

to invent characters', into living beings, ,like the heroes o( Hom~r.

·Perhaps )t is a :problem that defies solution, to form an !!pie poem

out of an argument whjch has not lived for centuries in popular

songs and .tales as the common. property of a nation, so. that. the

"

5G3 Here again there is a great fluctuation in. the story, According to

Verrius Flaccus (Fasti Prrenestini a. d. 1x. Kai. Mai.) Mezentius took all

the wine for ever as the price of his aid: in Ovid (Fast. 1v. 879. foll.) the

ground for the tax is the same, but he limits it to half the produce: Cato in

Macrobius, m. 5, says it was an act of impiety, not of rapacity: to the lattel'

the first-fruits offered to the gods would have been an insignificant object.

G4 Schol. Veron, on JEn. 1. 2GO.

I

I

65 The variations in Macrobius and Ovid, and the atf.f'mpts of Dionysius

to give a historical colouring to the affair, it would be idle to repeat.150

HISTORY OF ROME.

cycle of stories which comprises it, and· all the persons who act

a part in it, are familiar to every one. Assuredly the problem was

beyond the ability of Virgil, whose genius wanted fertility for crea­

ting, great as was his talent for embellishing. That he himself

was conscious of this, and was content to be great in the way

adapted to his endowments, is proved by his practice of imitating

and borrowing, and by the touches he introduces of his exquisite

and extensive erudition, so much admired by the Romans, and now

so little appreciated. He who puts his materials together elabo­

rately and by piecemeal, is aware of the chinks and crevices, which

varnishing and pvlishing conceal only from the unpractised eye,

and from which the work of the master, when .it issues at once

from the mould, is free. ' Accordingly Virgil, we may be sure, felt

a misgiving, that all the foreign ornaments with which he was

decking his work, though they might enrich· the poem, were. not

his own wealth, and that this would at last be perceived by pos­

terity. When we find that, notwithstanding this fretting conscious­

ness, he strove, in the way that lay open to him, to give a poem,

which he did not write of his own free choice, the highest degree

of beauty it could receive from his hands ; . that he did not, like

Lucan, vainly and blindly affect an inspiration which nature had

denied him; that he did not allow himself to be infatuated, when: he

was idolized by all around him, and when.Propertius sang:

Yield, Roma.D. poets, bards of Greece, give way,

The Iliad soon shall own a greater lay ;

that, when the approach of death w~s releasing him f~om the fetters of

civil observances, he wished to destroy what in those solemn moments

he could not but view with melancholy, as the 'groundwork of a

false repu~tion; we feel that this' renders him worthy of our esteem,

and ought to make Ui! indulgent to all the weak points of his poem.

The merit of a first attempt does not always furnish a'. measure of

a writer's talents: but Virgil's first youthful poem shows that he

cultivated his powers w'ith incredible industry, and that no faculty

expired in him through neglect. But it is wherever he speaks

from the heart, that we perceive how amiable and generous he was:

not only in the Georgics, and in all his pictures of pure still life; in

the epigram on Syron's villa: the same is no less visible in his way

of introducing those great spirits that shine in Roman story..

'

ALBA.

WHEN Jupiter in the lEneid is consoling the weeping godde1Ss,

.the mother of the hero, by revealing the future to her; and telling her

how the empire of her.son and. his posterity was to mount from

step to step, increasing in glory and greatness, up to Rome, to

which no limit and no term was assigned 588 ; the three years which

he promises for lEneas, refer, not to the interval between his land­

ing and his death, but to the duration of the little Troy on the La­

tian shore, until the two nations united and built Lavinium: though

the former period was also reckoned at the same number of years.

Thirty years afterward his successor led the. Latins from the

unhealthy low grounds on the coast to the side of Monte Cavo,

from the summit of which the eye commands a view more ample

than the dominion of Rome before the Samnite wars: in the light

of the setting sun it can reach Corsica and Sardinia, and the hill

which is still illustrated by the name of Circe, looks like an island

beneath the first rays of her heavenly sire. The site where Alba

stretched its long street between the mountain and the lake, is still dis­

tinctly marked: along this whole. extent the rock is cut away under

it right dowJ;J. to the lake. These traces of man's regulative hand

are more ancient than Rome. The surface of the lake, as it has

been reduced by the tunnel, now lies Car below the ancient city:

when Alba was standing, and before the waters swelled to a ruin·

ous height in consequence of some obstructions in the outlets, it

must have lain yet lower; for in the age of Diodorus and Diony·

'566 · JEn. 1. 261_:_279, It seems however as if three thousand years were

allotted to Rome: which, according to Servius on JEn. in. 284, was one of

the many periods assigned for the length of a great year : from a rough calcu­

lation about the periodical revolutions of' the heavenly bodies this was sup·

posed equal to a hundred times that of Satnrn. This statement has certainly

some foundation, though the reference to Cicero'• books de natura Deor>Lm

rests on an oversight.152

HISTORY OF ROME.

sius*, during extraordinary droughts, the remains of some spacious

buildings might be seen at the bottom, and the common people took

them for the palace of an impious king which had been swallowed

upt. Above the steep rock there was no need of a wall: the ap­

proaches on both sides might easily be barred. Monte Cavo was

the Capitoline hill of Alba; its summits required to be fortified, to

secure the town from above: and there is great probability in the

conjecture, that, as the citadel at Rome was distinct from the Capi­

toline temple, so the Rocca di Papa was the citadel of Alba.

This account concerning the origin of Alba stands and falls with

the Trojan legend: another tradition, according to which Lavinium

was founded by the Albans, in union with the Latin n11tion, has

been obscured by it, but may still ·be recognised. A recollection

was preserved among the ·Lavinians, that their city had been built

under the sovereignty of Alba by siX hundred families sent out for

that purpose 56 7, • The legend which tries to combine the two sto­

ries, is by no means ·an innocent poetical fiction; but was fabricated

with the express view of making out that Lavinium was the earlier

seat of the Penates. It states, that :Ascanius carried away these

gods with him, when he and all ·his people left Lavininm: but as

the images departed twice over from their new temple after its

doors had been closed, and returned to the forsaken 'one in the

desolate city, the Alban king yielded, and sent the settlers to take

up their dwelling round the sacred place.

I am not offering a hypothesis, but the plain result of unpreju­

diced observation, when I remark that Lavinium, as its name im­

plies, was the seat of congress for the Latins, who were also called

J,avines: .just as Panionium was that for the lonians ,in Asia.

When a legend contains names supposed to have belonged to indi­

viduals, this goes far toward giving it the look of being something

more than a fiction': hence mariy who othef'wise might still insist

. * . Dionysius 1 •. 71. .

t A similar legend is still current in the neighbourhood of Albano : its

outlines, 8s it was related to one of the translators by a peasant boy ~ho

guided him to Frascati, are as follows. Where the lake now lies, there once

stood a great city. Here,. when Jesus Christ eame into Italy, he begged

alms. None took compassion on him b~t an old woman, who gave him two

handfuls of meal. He bade her leave the city: she obeyed: the city instantly

sank, and the lake rose in its place. To set the truth of the story bey<md dis­

pute, the narrator added, Sta scr itto nei libri.

5G7 Dionysius 1. G7. · 'EZ"'''"''' f<l~eJ',,,..J ""'' itf"'' d.uToi; P,n«.r11.vT,;.n1;

·~ltr'fiOl,.111$TORY OF

R0~1E.

153

that the Trojan legend ought not to be absolutely rejected, may

perhaps change their views when it becomes clear to them that

Lavinia and Turnus are only personifications of two nations, and

that Lavinium is a more recent city than Alba. The same unpre·

ju<liced observation convinces me, from the number of the six hun­

dred families, that each of the thirty Alban hamlets, and each of

the thirty Latin towns sent wn: or rather that a connexion sub­

sisted, in consequence of which this was supposed to have been the

case 568 •

I have here spoken of two distinct unions, each consisting of

thirty places, the whole body of which might be called Latin: from

not making the same distinction, our historians have been led into

glaring contradictions with what they elsewhere assume to be true.

They cherish the opinion, that all the Latins proceeded from Alba;

as colonies the founding of which is ascribed to I,atinus Sylvius :

that these were the Prisci Latini, whose submission was demanded

by the Rom~n kings, on the plea of having succeeded to the su pre­

macy of Alba, and was enforced by Tarquinius .: and these Prisci La­

tini are designated as consisting like the others of thirty townscg.

And yet it is not to be mistaken that Laurentum and Ardea accord­

ing to the legend of lEneas existed long before Alba, even allow­

ing that Lavinium after its pretended restoration was regarded

as a colony: in like manner Tibur, as we see from similar legends,

was held to be older than Alba: and yet nobody would have

_doubted that all these belonged to the Prisci Latini, and to their

thirty cities. But though Livy and Dionysius contradict thcm­

sel ves, it was not so with the writers .they copied. Pliny, after

enumerating above twenty Latin towns whereof no trace remains,

subjoins to them a list of the Albian townships, consisting of the

Albans and thirty others whose names are alphabetically arranged:

5C8 That the word sexcenti should have been used to signify the greatest

possible,-or at least a very great number, is no longer surprising, when we re­

flect on the frequent occurrence of twice thirty, first among the Albans and

Latin$, and then among the Romans and Latins, where each unit contained

t<>n decuries. What completely fixed the usage, was, that for a long time a

Roman cohort consisted of six hundred men.

C9 Ab eo (Latino Sylvio) colonire aliquot deductw, Prisci Latini appellati.

Livy 1. 3. Tarquinius demands their submission as a right: quod, cum omnes

Latini ab Alba oriundi sint, in eo fredere teneantur quo res omnis Alban&

cum colonis suis in Romanum cesserit imperium. I. 52. Dionysius, m. 34,

speaking of Tullus Hostilius: '!rpllT~'" ei.11"01Tn'1..<1., ti' <rofl' .;..,,..;,.,u, <rt &<t.l

,;,,.~&ow, <1.v<rli, (,,.;;, A>..~<1.,) <rp1a'.&on<1. .,,.0>..'"· That the ;,,,.~,. ••,here a.re

the same as the ,.",,.0111.01 is proved by the particle "''·

1.-u

0154

. HISTORY OF ROME.

all these, he says, had of yore partaken along with the Latins in

the flesh of the victim on the Alban mount, and like them had pe­

rished570, Here again the name he gives them ofpopuli .(Jlbenses,

and their number, speak for themselves; and leave no doubt that

these, and not the important cities, were the thirty places said to

have been colonies from Alba. Many among them may have ac­

tually received Alban colonists, as Roman colonists were sent to

the places reduced by the first kings in the neighbourhood of Rome:

but on the whole it is evident that there was a division like that of

the thirty plebeian tribes under the legislation of Servius: they were .

the boroughs of a free commonalty.

Their partaking in the flesh of the victim along with the other

Latin states on the Alban mount, shows that the latter stood in the

same relation to Alba as they subsequently did to Rome. Most

assuredly they were depenclent neighbours, and thirty in number,

not however the very same which afterward el}tered into a confed­

eracy with Rome, but only some of these; and the number was

made up by several of the towns,· which, having fallen into the

power of the Romans, had become colonies or been destroyed, such

as l\fodullia and Cameria.

Thus the present investigation has gained the same cheering re­

sult, as has rewarded the labour spent on many out of which this

work has been composed : that which seems to be absurd, is so

only when we look at it superficially; and it covers a groundwork

of uncorrupted truth, which may be brought to light; so that a

critical treatment of history becomes much richer in facts, than the

credulous repetition of the stories that have been handed down.

No building erected by the ancient Albans has left any visible

ruins: of the temple of Jupiter Latiaris the very foundation-walls

have been destroyed, which probably must have belonged to the

earliest ages. But among the works executed by Alba one is still

the source of blessings at this day, as it was five-and-twenty-.hundrcd

years ago, and it will endure imperishably: but the present gene­

570 Pliny III. 9. Cum his camem in monte Albano soliti accipere populi

Albenses: Albani-.lEsulani, Acienses, Abolani, Bubetani, Boiani (perhaps

Bovillani), Cusuetani, Coriolani, Fidenates, Foretii, Hortenses, Latinienses,

Longulani, Manates, · Macrales, Mutucumenses, Munienses, Numinienses,

Ol!iculani, Octulani, Pedani, Polluscini, Querquetulani, Sicani, Sisolenses,

Tolerienses, Tutienses, Vimitellarii, Velienses, Venetulani, Vitellenses. I

have only altered the punctuation before and after .11.lbani, which in the edi­

tions makes nonsense of the passage, and amended JEsulani and Polluscini.

Of the whole thirty names only six or seven, which are here printed in italics,

occur in the list of the thirty towns given by Dionysius v. 61, even after

adopting ~he corrections of the Vatican manuscript and those of Lapus.HISTORY OF HOME.

155

ration have no suspicion that they are indebted for their most fruit­

ful fields to the prince of a city which, lying in remote obscurity,

even beyond the fabulous ages of Rome, has almost left its existence

a matter of doubt. The acknowledgement and gratitude due on

this account I challenge in behalf of the Cluilius, whose name ap­

pears in Roman history, but has been foisted into an extremely

unsuitable place.

The valley of Grottaferrata is, as our eyes. tell us, the site of a

marsh that has been drained, or rather of a lake that has been let

off, like the vallis Jl.ricina. Now we read of a vallis .fllbana under

the Tusculan hills 5 7 1 : and thi•s can be no other than that valley ;

which consequently belonged to the immediate territory of Alba. ·

The water from it is carried off by two channels: the one is a ·canal

which runs into the Teverone: the other a tunnel hewn through

the rock, half a mile long, in the grand style of very early ages,

leading to the Campagna7 9 , Here, where none but bad water is to

be got, and that too out of very deep wells, the water brought by

this dyke, though muddy, was at least very serviceable for the cat­

tle and the soil: its course at first ~as probably directed towards

the sea; but even in the time of the Roman kings it was turned into

the city, where it now flows through the valley of the Circus into

the Tiber, being called la JJ:larrana all the way from its origin.

The portion of this dyke known to the spot where the Romans

turned it off, is the Fossa Cluilia, so called after the Alban dictator

by whom this great work was executed: five miles from the Porta

Capena, on the Latin 'road and the Cluilian dyke, is the place

where Coriolanus encamped : and in this very spot, by the ruinous

hamlet of Settebassi, does the Latin road cross the Marrana.

The list of the Alban kings is a very late and clumsy fabrication;

a medley of names, some of them not even Italian ones, some of

them repetitions out of earlier or later times, others coined out of

geographical names; and with scarcely any thing of a story belong­

ing to them. We are told that Livy took this list from L. Corne­

lius Alexander the Polyhistor7 8 : hence it was probably this client

571 Livy m. 7. In Tusculanos colles transeunt-descendentibus ab Tus­

culano in Albanam vallem.

·

·

72 This is stated by Fabretti, an extremely trustworthy witness, De

aquis et aqureductibus n. 270: who however does not recognize the Cluilian

dyke any more than all his brother topographers. On the hill through which

the tunnel is carried, lies Centroni, an extensive ruin. Unfortunately I did

not read Fabretti's work till after my return from Rome; and I never heard

of that tunnel while I was there.

73 Servius.-on .IEn. vm. 330.156

HISTORY OF ROME.

of Sylla that introduced the imposture into history: the variations

between Livy's lists and others are not very material, and are no

proof at all of their having been more than one ancient source.

Some of the names may have been derived from older traditions:

some of the kings of the Aborigines also had names assigned

to them 5 7 4 ; and these were entirely different from those of the

Alban. Even the yel!rs that each of the Alban kings reigned,

were numbered: and the number so exactly fills up the interval

between the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome according to

the canon of Eratosthenes, as of itself to show the late age of the

imposture.

For in earlier times the Romans reckoned three hundred years

from the building of Alba to that of Rome7 5 : even if this number

occurred only in Virgil, still it would be perfectly clear that it was

a statement of much higher antiquity, and that he .did not invent

the arithmctical progression three, thirty, three hundred. He

might think himself justified in retaini~g what an earlier poet had

said: but he would never have been seduced by numerical symmetry

to assign dates, the inaccuracy of which he must have perceived

just as well as every schoolboy from the tables of Apollodorus or

Cornelius Nepos. But it is gratifying, and more than we could

have expected, to find that ingenious writer Trogus Pompeius, who

treated the origin of Rome, as he did the earliest history of other

nations, with discriminatihg freedom, reckoning in like manner no

more than three hundred years for Alba7 6 ; as did Livy himself,

when he assumed four hundred years for its duration until its de­

struction about the year 100 of Rome77, This however was not

the. only ancient chronological statement at variance with that of

the Greeks. According to one which Servius has recorded, 360

years elapsed between the fall of Troy and the building of Rome7s,

574 Stercenius for instance, unless the name be mispelt. Servius on lEn.

850.

75 lEn. I. 272.

76 Justin XLIII. 1. Alba qure trecentis annis caput regni fuit.

77 Livy I. 29. Quadringentorum annorum opus, quibus Alba steterat.

The same thing occurs iii Servius on lEn. 1. 272, as a difficulty : cum earn

quadringentis annis regnasse constet sub Albania regibus: and he solves it as

I have done in the text. Tanaquil Faber in a note on the passage of Livy

has observed its connexion with the line of Virgil ; and Duker on the same

passage refers to Dodwell de Cyclis, diss. x. p. 678, who has noticed almost

all the passages I have cited, and has perceived the nullity of the Alban line

of kings.

78 Servius on lEn. I. 267. I hope I shall not be promoting rnysticism

XI.HISTORY OF R0;\1E.

157

just as many as between the building of Rome and its capture by

the Gauls. Now we find two other 'statements, the combination of

which leads us to this second number, and at the same time recon­

ciles it with the former: the first is, that .LEneas lived seven years

after the fall of Troy, engaged in his wanderings or in war579; the

second, that Silvius could not obtain possession of the throne before

his fifty-third year 80 • · I would not pledge myself for the historical

truth of the story that a Silvian house reigned at Alba: but the fact

was assumed in the Alban records. The existence of such a house

presupposes that of a hero Silvius or Siluus. N O\V if the Latin tra­

dition, such as it was independent of the Trojan legend, maue Sil­

vius the founder of Alba, and three hundred years the interval

between the beginning of his reign and the building of .Rome; then

in order to introduce him into the Trojan legend, and to fill up the

interval of three hundred and sixty years between Troy and Rome,

it became necessary to take fifty-three years from the death of

.LEneas as the time during which Silvius, his posthumous son, was

unjustly excluded from the throne. And it is for the sake of recon­

ciling these native Alban Silvii with the Trojan legeHd, that the

posterity of Ascanius are removed out of the way by the abdication

of lulus.

From Silvius, their maternal ancestor, the Roman tradition de­

. rived the founders of the city; but it did not call the Romans a

colony from Alba.

and a childish love of trifling with numbers, when I remark the singular play

of chance, that there were just 360 years from the destruction of Rome by the

Gauls to the conquest of Alexandria, the foundation of the monarchy; and

the same number from the latter event to the dedication of Constantinople.

579 Dionysius 1. 65 : and Servius on ..!En. 1. 259; since he assumes four

years for the wandering of lEneas; to which must be added the three more

spent in the Latian town of Troy. In the ..!Eneid indeed the Trojans do not

reach Carthage till the seventh year of their voyage.

80 I am aware that Servius, on ..!En. vr. 770, relates this of Silvius

..!Eneas : but it seems quite evident that what was invented for the one Silvius,

has been transferred here to the other; who is wholly wanting in Ovid. The

same thing has happened in numberless instances.ROME.

VARIOUS TRADITIONS CONCERNING THE

FOUNDING OF THE CITY.

AMONG all the Greek cities built after the return of the Heraclids,

there was none so insignificant, that Ephorus, and the writers after

him who introduced accounts of the origin of cities into their gene­

ral histories, would have been unable to state specifically and with

sufficient certainty, from what people the colony had issued, and

who were the founders that led and gave laws to it; in far the most

cases they also fixed the epoch of the foundation. With regard to

Rome, the story ·of her foundation, though she is supposed to be

more recent than perhaps the greater part of those towns, and the

people from whom the eternal city originally sprang, are the very

points we are most ignorant of. But while it was suited to the

eternal city, that its roots should lose themselves in infinity, the

story told by the poets of the infancy and deification of Romulus

was no less in accord with the majesty of Rome. Its founder

could have been no other than a god.

Now while I acknowledge this with a feeling, the sincerity of

which none but a bigot, himself insincere, could seek to call in

question; and while I allow the heart and the imagination their

full claims; I at the same time assert the right of the reason, to

refuse to admit any thing as historical, which cannot possibly be

so; and, without excluding that noble tradition from its place at

the threshold of the history, to inquire whether it be in any degree

possible to ascertain what people the first Romans belonged to, andHISTORY OF ROME.

159

what were the changes attending the rise of that state, which, when

the light of historical truth begins to dawn, is Rome.

When the inhabitants of Roma, as their town began to emerge

from insignificance, so that they could. feel a pride in the Roman

name, looked back upon their dark period, and retraced the growth

of their community; it was natural for them to call the founder

of their nation Romus, or, with the inflexion so usual in their

language, Romulus. Supposing that there was in their neighbour­

hood a town called Remuria, inhabited by a kindred race, which

had been sometimes in alliance, sometimes ai war with them, and

which had fallen before tl1eir arms, they might consider its founder,

Remus, as the twin brother of Romulus, and as slain by him in a

fit of passionate irritation: and in proportion as their state estab­

lished itself under the peculiar character of a double state, the

more firmly fixed would be the notion which represented the city

as founded by twins. The story of Romulus might in other

respects have been the invention of foreigners, as well as of the

Romans themselves; but it is not so with this latter notion, which

does not occur in any other state, and is so peculiarly adapted to

Rome. And the story is proved to have sprung up on the very

site of the city, by the den of the shewolf, the fig tree at the roots

of which the sucklings were saved, by all the relics of Romulus,

and by that rich poem so much of which is connected with local

circumstance~ whereof foreigners knew not_hing. In what manner

all this gained a shape in the mind and on the lips of poets and

storytellers ; and how many generations passed away, during

which the traditions of other nations, and such perhaps as had long

been current, were applied to the origin of Rome, before that which

began as po,etry, became popular belief; these are points that we

must and may be satisfied to remain ignorant of. If the annals

were restored, ~nd received the chronological outline in wJ1ich we

find them, soon after the taking of the city by the Gauls, it is clear,

and indeed in other respects it does not admit of doubt, that even

thus early they represented Romulus as the first king.

Considering how few monuments have been preserved to us from

the early ages of Rome, we may regard it as an ancient testimony

of a belief living among the people and recognized by the state,

that in the year 458 bronze figures of the shewolf and the babe3

were set up near the Ficus Ruminalis ; the oldest and the finest

work of Roman art; which has reached us like the Homeric poems,

thoug:h so much that was more recent has been lost.

.

The story which settled as an article of popular belief, was, thatIGO

HISTORY OF ROME.

Rome had been built by twin brothers, who were the sons of a

princess deflowered by Mars, and who had been delivered by divine

protection from a watery death, and fostered anJ suckled by a she­

. wolf, the animal sacred to their sire. It was impossible that the

outlines of this tradition should not in course of time receive very

different modifications ; and there probably were still more than

the two main forms under which it appears to us, according as it is

connected with Alba and the Silvii, or with lEneas.

I defer yet awhile relating the former of these legends, which

every body knows, and which, if it were not in some degree inter­

esting to restore such features as· have been altered in the later re­

presentations, it would be sufficient to allude to : in the second,

which was adopted by N mvius and Ennius, the unfortunate princess

was called Ilia, the daughter of 1Eneas 581 , It may be conjectured

that in 'this also she was represented as a Vestal; else it seems·

there would have been no pretext f?r condemning her to death.

She was thrown into the Anio; ·out of which stream her fortune

rose again"~: the river god made her his bride 83 • Virgil's descrip­

tion of the generous brute, feeding and caressing the babes in her

den, was framed after Ennius 84 • This poet like other writers

called the tyrant Amulius; and that he bore the same name in

N mvius, seems hardly to be questioned; for there is a very corrupt

fragment which may readily be corrected by introducing this name,

but scarcely in any oth!)r manner 85 ; I cannot however discover the

slightest indication, whether the old poets supposed any affinity

between this Amulius and the house of lEneas; or how they ac­

counted for Ilia being his subject; or whether they made mention

of Ascanius or Silvius. In the fragment of Ennius Ilia is an or­

phan; for her father appears to her in a dream; her sister, to who~

in her disquietude she relates the nocturnal vision, is the daughter

of a Eurydice.

That. ingenious critic, Perizonius, whose subtile observations

were lost on his contemporaries, has shown that the mother of

Romulus, when she is called Ilia, is always the daughter of 1E11eas;

when Rea Silvia, an Alban princess; and that Ilia is never called

581

82

83

Od. I.

84

85

Hence came the story of lEmylia and Ares. Plutarch Romul. c. 2.

Post ex fluvio fortuna resistet: Ennius p. 124.

Servius on JE·n. 1. 274, and v1. 778. Acron and Porphyrius on Horace

3.

Servius on lEn. vm. G31.

See in Hermann Elem. doctr. metr. p. 631.HISTORY OF ROME.

161

Reasso: I add, that the reading Rhea is a corruption introduced by

the editors, who at a very unseasonable time bethought themselves

of the goddess: rea seems to have signified nothing more than the

culprit 8 7, The semblance of a proper name may indeed have arisen

early : at least it was certainly from some tradition that Virgil took

the priestess Rea, who bare Aventinus to Hercules 88 ; ·a duplicate

of the Alban Silvia, with a happier destiny ; and perhaps the daugh­

ter of Evander.

Rea Silvia has no necessary connexion with ..iEneas. That the

tradition concerning her is more ancient than the one concerning

Ilia, I conjecture, because the computation which makes 333 or 360

years intervene between Troy and Rome, is to all appearance at

least a. century and a half older than Naivius. The inexplicable

point is, how they who reckoned the years of Rome in thi~ way,

could adopt Ilia: when the Grecian computations, which extended

that interval to between 430 and 440 years, became generally

known, she necessarily disappeared. I look upon it as almost cer­

tain, that some unknown Greek poem, one of those which brought

Romulus close to the time of ..iEn,eas, was the means whereby Ilia

was imported into Latium.

A careless expression used by Plutarch, which in fact merely

asserts that one Diocles of Peparethus first made the story of Silvia

known to the Greeks*, has, from his simply adding that Diocles

was the writer mostly followed by Fabius, unaccountably given rise

to the notion that the story was the invention of this unknown

Greek, a person so insignificant that Dionysius has not even admitted

him into his host of Greek authorities. Nothing but Plutarch's

expressly asserting that Fabius, who was a senator, and whose

narrative coincided with the sacred songs 89 , had copied a Greek.,

and had himself avowed it, could compel us to yield to the evi­

dence of a fact so incredible: as no such evidence. exists, there is

nothing to prevent our supposing, that Plutarch only inferred what

he says from the agreement between the two writers, because

Diocles was perhaps a little the elder: nevertheless it was from

Romans that he heard, what the Greeks read for the first time in

his work.

Of the other Roman accounts, Dionysius mentions one, where

586

87

which

88

80

Excursus ~n lElian. V. H. VII. p. 510. ff.

Or the guilty woman: it reminds us of the expression, reafemina,

often occurs in Boccacio.

·

lEn. VII. 659.

* Romul. 3.

Dionysius 1. 79. See below note 616

1.-v162

HISTORY OF ROME.

Romulus and Remus are the grandsons of JEneas, and are delivered

up as hostages to Latinus, who leaves them a part of his king­

dom5e0: he also cites another which is copied from Cephalon 91 •

Among the Roman writers preserved to us, Sallust alone unequivo­

cally and expressly adopts the opinion which carries Rome back to

the Trojan times; undoubtedly his purpose was only to get rid of Ro·

mulus and the marveUous fable: it is a feature characteristic of such

writers, that in order to do this he admits the settlement of JEneas,

though no way more historical. If V elleius had spoken of the

armies of Latinus supporting his grandson Romulus at the found·

ing of the city, at the same time that he assumed the common era·

for the building, he would have confounded the two opinions in a

manner so thoughtless and so contrary to his custom, that we must

needs adopt the emendation proposed by Lipsius 99 ,

If the native legend however is simple in the main, the statements

of the Greeks as to the founder of Rome and the person after

whom it was named, present greater varieties than occur in the

case of any other city. It is clear that the Greeks were early

aware of the power and importance of Rome, and that too before

intercourse had made them acquainted with the Romans; so they

introducetl this people into their genealogies: but as nothing was

related of it in any poem of general 11otoriety, and it was not till

very late that the native legend crossed the sea, several writers

invented such stories as served to express their views. These

accounts do not indeed properly deserve to be called traditions;

and they might be passed over without any material loss to the

history: but as the reports of them_ are so utterly confused that no

slight pains are necessary to arrange them foi: a general view, and

as I have attempted to do so, I will allow him the inconsiderable

room which they require when reduced to order. Others will thus

be spared a troublesome task ; and unless a complete survey be

taken of them, they may seem to promise what they do not at all

afford 93 •

Among these fictions however we are by no means to class the

mention made of Rome by Antiochus, who related that Sicelus was

590 Dionysius r. 73.

91 Dionysius 1. 73. See below notes 600 and 610.

,

[)2 Adjutus legionibus Latinis avi sui; not Latini. VeiJeius 1. 8..

93 They are preserved by Dionysius 1. 72, 73; Plutarch Romul. 2. 3;

S ervius on lEn. 1. 274; and Festus v. Roma. Solinus has only made ex­

tracts, like Festus, but far more scantily, from Verrius Flaccus, who himself

i;eems chiefly to have drawn from Dionysius.HISTORY OF ROME.

163

flying from \hence when he came to the ltalian king Morges 594 •

Hereby he designates Roma to have been one of the chief cities of

the Tyrrhenian Siculians; so that he contradicts the opinion of its

Trojan origin; yet he is not on that account to be reckoned among

those who denied the settlement of the Trojans in Latium. Con­

nected with this view is the statement that Rome was founded by

the Pelasgians. They who held this people to be Greeks, said,

that being a warlike race they gave their city a name expressive of

their vigour: while such as looked upon them as an Italian tribe,

fabled that the first name was Valencia, and that afterward, when

Evander and ...:Eneas took possession of the country with their fol·

lowers who spoke Greek, it was exchanged for the corresponding

Greek word 95 • And according to that quality in traditions which

has been so often remarked, we must perceive that the Pelasgic

origin of Rome is implied in the legend that the author of the name

was Romus, a Latin tyrant, who had driven the Lydian Tyrrhe­

nians out of this regions 0• Many writers, says Dionysius, call

Rome a Tyrrhenian city 97: by this most of them, like Scylax,

probably understood an Etruscan; the earlier however may have

meant a Pelasgian.

With these exceptions, the Greeks who mentioned the founding

of Rome before Timams, were unanimous in opinion, that the city

was built immediately, or within a very few generations, after the

fall of Troy. But on one point they were divided: while most of

them considered the Trojans as the founders, either alone, or in

conjunction with the Aborigines; some on the contrary contended

for Greeks ; others for a mixed band of the two nations.

Among the advocates of the first @pinion but few named ...:Eneas

himself as the founder; a far greater number Romulus, whom they

described sometimes as his son (coming according to some writers

from foreign parts into Italy, according to others, born of an Italian

mother), sometimes as his grandson, or more remote descendant 98 •

594 Dionysius 1. 73.

95 Some anonymous writers in Plutarch: a Cuman chronicle in Festus:

Adeius (whose name apparently is mispelt) in Servius. The chronicle of

Cuma makes the Pelasgians proceed from Athens through Thespiw (in Breo­

tia) to the Tiber; while the Greeks gave their emigration precisely the oppo­

site direction. In the very corrupt passage of Festus .I venture, instead of

subjecti qui fuerint Caeximparum 'l!iri, unicarumque 'l!irium, to read subj. q. f.

Caci, improbi 'I!. un. 'I!.

96 Plutarch. This is another instance of an inverted fable.

97 Dionysius 1. 2~. Sey lax makes Tyrrhenia reach p.t)(.f' 'p.,p_~, ?rOAfoa,.

98 lEneas is supposed to be the founder by those who derived the name164

HISTORY OF ROME.

Callias, the historian of Agathocles, spoke of Romulus and Romus

as the founders of the city, calling them the sons of king Latinus

by a Trojan heroine, Roma, who had persuaded the women to put

an end to their wanderings by setting fire to the ships: the same

fable is alluded to by Lycophron 59 9• Even Cephalon of Gergithes,

the most ancient of the writers quoted, mentioned the names both.

of Romulus and Romus, as the two younger of the four sons of

iEneas, who is said by him to have died on the peninsula of Pal­

lene. Ascanius shares his inheritance with them ; whereupon they

emigrate, and found Rome, Capua, and two fabulous cities, Anchise

and 1Enea 600 • This was copied by a Roman whose name Diony­

sius does not mention; and who absurdly added, that this most

ancient Rome was afterwards destroyed, and was rebuilt by a second

Romulus and a second Remus.

Motley as are the changes that all the other circumstances under­

go in the Greek stories, they speak of the two brothers very early:

and hence, even when they wrote their Roman history according to

native accounts, the Remus of the Latins always goes with them by

the name of Romus.

With regard to the second opinion, which makes Rome a Gre­

cian city founded at the time of the return from Troy, I have already

of the city from his wife Roma j the daughter of Telemachus (Clinias in Ser­

vi us), of !talus, or of Telephus {Plutarch): Romulus, or Romus, or both of

them, the sons of .iEneas, and of Creusa, Priam's daughter (the old scholia

on Lycophron in Tzetzes on v. 122G ; probably also Cephalon, Agathyllus,

and Demagoras;in Dionysius) of Dexithea (Plutarch), of Lavinia (Apollodo­

rus in Festus) ; the grandsons of .iEneas, and sons of Ascanius (Eratosthenes

in Servius, Dionysius of Chalcis in Dionysius). To this account also belongs

Roma, the daughter of Ascanius: (Agathocles of Cyzicus in Festus). Ac­

cording to another account of the same Agathocles, Romulus is a still more

remote descendant of .iEneas: and one Alcimus (in Festus) called Romulus

the son of lEneas, but Rom us the grandson ofRomulus by Alba, and the founder

of the city. There is a connexion between the Trojan legend and that which

terms Rom us the son of Emathion, sent by Diomedes from Troy. Plutarch.

5[)9 v. 1252, 53: where we are clearly not at liberty to read i~o;tor pr.iµ~

'}tvo,, with some manuscripts, instead of '&~. 'Pr.iµ~' '}ivo,. Roma plays a

part in these fables under the most various forms. She sets fire to the ships

of the Trojans, or of the Greeks ; is the daughter of the virago who did so, of

Ital us, of Telephus, of Ulysses, of Telemachus, of Ascanius, of Evander (and

thus the same with Launa who married Hercules); a priestess who prophe­

sied to Evander (that is, Carmentis): and she is represented as wedded to

.iEneas, to Ascanius, and to Latin us.

600 Dionysius 1. 73. The name Anchise may perhaps have been formed

from Anxur.HISTORY OF ROME.

165

mentioned that it was related by Aristotle 601 • It is also implied in

the tale that a son of Ulysses and Circe was the founder of Rome 1 •

And this must have been the notion of Heraclides Ponticus 3 at the

beginning, and of king Demetrius Poliorcetes 4 soon after the middle

of the fifth century;. who cannot possibly have supposed that the

Romans were in any other respect of Greek origin, or a colony of

the latter strictly Greek tribes: besides according to the Greek way

of thinking, it was a politic method of acquiring influence over

powerful barbarians, who would not submit to be commanded, to

treat them as of Greek extraction: this was the last refinement of

flattery. By these accounts the Trojan legend is excluded: it was

only at a very late period that the Trojans, after they had entirely

disappeared, began to be reckoned among the Greeks : Scylax

terms the Elymians of Sicily Trojans and barbarians 5 • From this

Greek legend Roma and the burning the ships was introduced by

Callias into the Trojan one.

A similar medley prevails in Lycophron 6 , who introduces a band

of Mysians under the sons of Telephus, Tarchon and Tyrrhenus,

that is, of Tyrrhenians: Telephu3 himself was of Arcadian descent,

and the Ceteians were proba~ly a different people from the Mysians,

as the Meonians were from the Lydians. It also occurred, as

Dionysius informs us, in the chronicle which followed the succes­

sion of the Argive priestesses. In this legend the fouuders of the

colony are Trojans; in Lycophron. the brothers, the offspring of

lEneas; in the Argive chronicle lEneas himself: the Greeks are

companions of Ulysses. The latter hero continues to make his

appearance here, even in the poems of a later age : and he too was

made out to be connected with Romulus and Remus; since Latinus,

who in this shape of the story again is said to have been their father

by the Trojan heroine Roma, is termed the ,grandson of Ulysses

through Telemachus7, ·

601 Seep. 141. A writer, who related peculiarities of manners so insig­

nificant as the custon of greeting relativ~s with a kiss (Plutarch Qurest. Rom.

6. p. 2G5. b.), must have had more than a superficial knowledge of Rome,

though he ado 1 ;ted the legends of the Italian Greeks on its antiquities.

2 Romus (Xenagoras in Dionysius); Roman us (Plutarch). That Romus

is a national name here, is proved by those of his brothers Ardeas and Antias:

so that Xenagoras belongs to the number of those who asserted the Tyrrhe­

nian character of the city.

3 Plutarch Camill. 22.

4 Strabo v. p. 232. b: where we must read, 'l'ou' i<Aon<tc ""·A.

5 p. 3.

6 v. 1242. foll.

7 There are so'me other statements concerning the foundation of Rome,166

HISTORY OF ROME.

Apart from all these writers stand Syclax,-who applies the enno­

bling epithet i;.;..,l, to every city of Greek origin, even when de­

graded by barbarian conquest, and who calls the Elymians Trojans

-and others, who according to Dionysius. ascribed Rome to the

Tyrrhenians 608 : that is, if, like Scylax, they meant the Etruscans.

I have said that Tima:ms of Sicily seems to have been the first

historian among the Greeks who introduced Romulus and Remus

into history as remote descendants of JEneas. Ile wrote not many

years after Callias, but cannot have adopted his opinion; for Timmus

supposed the building of Rome contemporaneous with that of Car­

thage ; and he dated the latter nearly 380 years after the destruction

of Troy. Perhaps however· the same account was also given by

Hieronymus of Cardia, who in his history of Alexander's succes­

sors, written about the time of Timmus, gave a short relation of the

early history of Rome: Dionysius censures its meagreness, as well

as that of Timmus and Polybius, in whom the narrative was already

become more eopious 9• For himself he warns the readers of

those three writers not to suspect him of fabricating, should they

find more in him than what those three contained, but his warning

does not extend to the case of their refating what was totally differ­

ent. Yet even after their time the older Grecian legend was pre­

served among the philologers and readers of antique curiosities

who sprang up at Alexandria; among those who refused to draw

from any source but the early literature of Greece. Heraclides

Lembus, about the year 600, repeated Aristotle's account of the

Achmans and the captive Trojan women: the old scholia on Lyco­

phron, which perhaps, even in their original form, were of a still

later date, called Romulus and Ramus the sons of Creusa, the

daughter of Priam: nay, even Orus of Thebes, who cites Cepha­

lon, describes them as the sons of JEneas and founders of Rome 10.

which cannot be adapted to this arrangement: Romus is called by Antigonus

in Festus the son of Jupiter; by an anonymous author in Dionysius the son

of !talus and of Electra, the daughter of Latinus: that is to say Rome is a

primeval Italian and a Trojan city.

8 Peripl. p. 2. See above note 5!)7.

9 1. 7.

10 Etymolog. Magn. v. K«?Tu• and 'p,;p.•. Compare Sylburg's note.

A remarkable instance of the way in which the fables received from Italy

were confounded with each other, is afforded by the account taken from one

Promathion in Plutarch; where the legends concerning the birth of Romulus

and that of Servius are mixed up together in the strangest manner.ROM ULUS AND NUMA.

THE old Roman legend ran as follows : Procas king of Alba left

two sons : Numitor,, the elder, being weak and spiritless, suffered

Amulius to wrest the government from hirn, and reduce him to his

father's private estates. In the possession of these he lived rich,

and, as he desired nothing more, secure : but the usurper dreaded

the claims that might be set up by heirs of a different character.

He therefore caused Numitor's son to be murdered, and appointed

Silvia, his daughter, one of the vestal virgins.

Amulius had no children, or at least only one daughter; so that

the race of Anchises and Aphrodite seemed on the point of expiring,

when the love of a god prolonged it, in opposition to the ordinances

of man, and gave it a lustre worthy of its origin. Silvia had gone

into the sacred grove, to draw water from the spring for the ser­

vice of the temple: the sun quenched its rays ; the sight of a wolf

made her fly into a cave 61 i; there Mars overpowered the timid vir­

gin; and then consoled her with the promise of noble children, as Po­

sidon did Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus. But he did not protect

her against the tyrant, nor did her protestations of her innocence save

her : the condemnation of the unfortunate priestess seemed to be

exacted by Vesta herself; for at the moment of the childbirth her