The near extinction of the Roman state by the Gauls under Brennus in about 390 b. c. was so dramatic an episode that the stories of the terrible defeat at the Allia, the heroic defense of the Capitol by Marcus Manlius, and the help the defenders received from the Capitoline geese would be reported over and over again in Roman history. Even Theopompus and Aristotle were fascinated, and their narrations were the first to place a Roman historical event in a Greek context. But the linkage between Greek and Roman historiographies came later and only gradually. With the exception of Timaeus of Tauromenium, Greek historians paid no attention to the subsequent Roman drive for dominance over the Latin League and the Roman subjugation of the Hernici, Volsci, Aequii, Sabines, and the city of Veii. However, Rome’s war against the Greek Tarentum (282-275 B. c.) changed things. In it the ally of Tarentum, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, even used Greek epic history to give the struggle a higher meaning. Claiming ancestry from Achilles, Pyrrhus saw himself as an avenger of the Achaeans on Rome, a city supposedly founded by the Trojan Aeneas. After Rome won and became master of Magna Graecia, Greek historians became somewhat more interested in Rome. Timaeus of Tauromenium had already for some time inquired more closely into the past of that newcomer to the
Mediterranean system of powers and in doing so permanently linked Greek and Roman historiographies. Now in 273 B. c. Ptolemy sent an embassy to Rome to assess the new power, and one of the Alexandrian librarians and historians, Lycophron, spoke of the steady rise of Rome to hegemony over the Western Mediterranean.
Synchronizing the oldest Roman traditions. The meeting of Roman and Greek historiographical traditions initiated a process as inevitable as it was slow. No scientific urge for compatibility worked toward properly combining the traditions; nevertheless the need for a reconciliation grew from generation to generation as the fates of the two cultures and peoples intertwined. At issue was the fact that the various accounts of the Roman origin soon betrayed grave inconsistencies in chronology. Aeneas, a survivor of the Trojan War, obviously lived during and shortly after it. When Timaeus placed the fall of Troy at about 1193 B. c. (Eratosthenes thought 1184/83 B. c. to be proper) and then insisted that Rome was founded only in 814/13 b. c., a gap of nearly four hundred years opened up. The Romans, who by 300 B. c. had come to regard their own Romulus story at least as highly as the story that told about Aeneas, eventually needed to reconcile the two traditions. Clearly, the relationship between Aeneas and Romulus could not forever remain the widely accepted one of father and son or grandfather and grandson, although even some early Roman historians still maintained the latter relationship. In the end, other Latin traditions, particularly those of Lavinium and Alba Longa, helped out. Alba Longa won its long-standing competition for prestige with Lavinium when a series of Alba Longa kings was used to fill the gap between Aeneas and Romulus.
Two early Roman histories-in Greek. The second historiographical consequence of Rome’s encounter with the Greek world was the emergence of narrative histories done by Romans. It took the Romans incredibly long to look reflectively at their past and celebrate the dramatic success of so small a group of people who conquered and subjugated so many in so short a time. By 272 b. c., Rome had become the mistress of central and southern Italy. Then she collided with powerful Carthage in the monumental First and Second Punic Wars. These jarring collective experiences finally produced some Roman historians: a poet from Campania, Gnaeus Naevius, and two Roman senators, Quintus Fabius Pictor and Lucius Cincius Ahmentus.
They wrote their works, of which little remains, on behalf of Rome. Naevius called his work the Bellum Poenicum. Although the title indicated a Roman version of the First Punic War, the work was really a Roman national epic with a lengthy account of Rome’s mythological past and a deliberate preference for the old Roman Saturnian verse pattern over a Greek one.
Both Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus participated in what later on would be considered the greatest Roman war, the Second Punic War. The catastrophic defeat at Cannae in 216 b. c. made Cincius a prisoner of war and sent Fabius Pictor, on behalf of the senate, to the oracle of Delphi for advice on what Rome should do. On that trip Fabius undoubtedly experienced the crosscurrents in Greek public opinion on Rome and Carthage and also the role of historiography in shaping that opinion. The Carthaginians had found historians defending their case, such as Philinus of Acragas, who had pointed out the general lack of justice in the Roman cause. Had the Romans not broken a treaty with Carthage when they had crossed over to Sicily in the first place? On the other hand the highly respected and widely known Tlmaeus of Tauromenium had been more sympathetic to the Roman side. The wish to gain sympathy for Rome in the Hellenistic world certainly was onei of the motives that led Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus to write their FLoman histories in Greek. That Roman prose lingered at too undeveloped a stage—as some have argued—may have made the decision to write in Greek easier but could hardly have been the main motive. Enough samples of old Roman oratory survive to show that Roman prose was not altogether that primitive.
Only fragments, not even the title, remain of Fabius Pictor’s work, which by all indications was superior to that of his fellow senator. He wrote about the past in a year-by-year account—annalistically—which explains Cicero’s reference to it as the Greek Annals (Graeci Annales). They, it may be safely stated, gave a continuous account from mythological time to the present. The work also seems to have carried other marks of future Roman historiography. Reflection on the past was linked to moral judgments, a keen interest in the early Roman past, an emphasis on the senate as the central institution for the destiny of Rome, and the tendency to enhance the status of one’s family. Most important, by the early second century b. c. Romans had available, albeit only in Greek, a unified view of their past.
World History
