As is well known, Greek writers imposed a Hellenic genealogy upon Rome. Stories circulated in diverse and entangled forms, connecting Rome’s ancestry with celebrated legends of the Trojan War and its aftermath. Various versions traced Roman origins to Achaeans returning after the fall of Troy, to Odysseus or his sons (see also
Chapter 25), to descendants of Heracles, to the Arcadian hero Evander, son of Hermes, or to a fictitious Trojan captive named Rhome who gave her name to the city. As early as the 4th century, some writers labeled Rome simply as a Greek city (Plut. Cam. 22.2). The stories became enmeshed in comparable tales that made Aeneas, the Trojan prince who survived the destruction of his city, become the founder of Rome or, at least, of Alba Longa, Rome’s putative mother city. Permutations and combinations multiplied. Ingenious Greek writers blended or mixed traditions, including even a version that had both Odysseus and Aeneas, once great antagonists, collaborate in bringing the legacy of Greece’s most illustrious era to the founding of Rome. Of course, indigenous traditions also existed, most notably that of the twins Romulus and Remus who were adjudged responsible for the creation of the city. Hellenic intellectuals, however, managed to weave the web of their tales to encompass and appropriate those stories, rendering the twins, in diverse tales, as distant descendants of Aeneas (see also Chapter 6).
Most or all of this stemmed from the Greek imagination. Greeks were especially inventive and adroit at linking the origins of great cities and peoples to Hellenic forebears.3 That will raise no eyebrows. Far more interesting is the Roman reaction. The stories came in many varieties. But no hint surfaces of a Roman effort to spurn foreign roots and insist on indigenous beginnings. Quite the contrary. Historians and poets welcomed that association with the eastern Mediterranean, reshaped and perpetuated it (see also Chapter 25).
The first Roman historian wrote in Greek. Fabius Pictor composed his work near the end of the third century. He embraced the tale of Aeneas as forefather of Rome, or at least a version of that tale that has Aeneas’ son Ascanius found Alba Longa, the mother city of Rome (Diod. Sic.7.5.4-5; Dion. Hal. 1.74.1; Plut. Rom. 3.1-3). Even more interesting, Pictor conveyed stories of still earlier migrations from the Greek world: Heracles himself landed in Italy, and the Arcadian hero Evander who planted a colony on the Palatine Hill introduced the alphabet, an invention that the Greeks had actually borrowed from the Phoenicians (Pictor, F 1-2, Beck and Walter). The Roman historian, in short, did not hesitate to endorse legends that linked Roman origins to Hellenic ancestors, indeed to acknowledge that cultural underpinnings went back to the Phoenicians. Far from shunning alien associations, he proudly proclaimed them.
Cato the Elder gained the reputation of a nativist spokesman. Numerous accounts have him inveigh against Hellenic influence in Roman society. Among other things, he made a point of composing his history in Latin, breaking with the traditions of Greek historiography. The significance of his posturing can be debated.4 But the myths of Hellenic figures at the dawn of Roman history found their way into Cato’s work as well. The surviving fragments of his Origines report an intricate tangle of legends involving Aeneas, Ascanius, Alba Longa, and a link between Trojans and Latins cemented by the wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia, daughter of the indigenous king Latinus (Cato, F 1.4-15, Beck and Walter). And Cato, like Fabius, traces Roman roots back further still into Hellenic mists. He accepted the notion that Aborigines in Italy from whom the Romans descended, were, in fact, Greek (Dion. Hal. 1.11.1, 1.13.2). And he perpetuated a tradition in which Arcadians under
Evander disseminated the Aeolic dialect among Italians, a tongue adopted by none other than Romulus himself (Cato, F 1.19; cf. 2.26, Beck and Walter).
Early Roman poets followed suit. Naevius in the late third century and Ennius not long thereafter accepted the lore and even telescoped the tradition. They discarded intermediaries and the long generations between Aeneas and Romulus, making Romulus a grandson of Aeneas on his mother’s side (Serv. Ad Aen. 1.273). The Trojan origins of Rome were firmly established in the middle Republic, but variants in detail abounded. Roman writers felt no allegiance to a putative canonical story later associated with Virgil. They felt free to fiddle with the fictions.
A noteworthy fact needs to be underscored. Although Troy as ultimate progenitor of Rome prevailed in the tradition, this was a Troy enmeshed with Greece. One version at least gave Aeneas’ ancestors a foothold in Arcadia. The tale had Atlas as first king of the land, his illustrious descendants including the Arcadian Dardanus, son of Zeus. Dardanus then moved his family and followers to the Troad to escape the devastation of a flood. In this narrative, Aeneas, the quintessential Trojan, actually possessed Arcadian lineage (Dion. Hal. 1.60-1). Greek intellectuals, particularly Arcadians, had responsibility for the tale and proceeded to embellish it (Dion. Hal. 1.49.1-2; Strabo 13.1.53).5 More striking, however, Roman intellectuals bought it. The most erudite man of the late Republic, Varro, subscribed to the tradition that Aeneas stemmed from Arcadia (Serv. Ad Aen. 3.167, 7.207).
Cato further acknowledged foreign origins for other cities and peoples of Italy. Multiple legends lurk behind the fragments of that author. In a telling example, Cato - followed by a later second-century Roman historian Cn. Gellius - reported that the Sabines stemmed from a Spartan founder named, naturally, Sabus. And there is more to this than mere etymological fiction. Sabines came to embody the austerity and moral virtue Romans held dear.6 The Romans, according to Cato, developed their hardy traits from imitation of the Sabines, and the latter derived that admirable toughness from the toughest of peoples, the Spartans (Cato F 2.22, Beck and Walter 2001-4; cf. Ov. Fast. 1.260-1). Hence, Cato, the apostle of Roman ruggedness, traced its genesis to the Lacedaemonians as embodiment of Hellenic hardiness. Cato found foreign connections elsewhere among Italian communities. And he was not shy about incorporating those traditions in his Origines. So, Argos was the mother city of Falerii in southern Etruria; Greek-speaking peoples founded Pisa; the community of Politorium, just south of Rome, took its name from Polites, son of the Trojan king Priam; a town called Thebes existed among the Lucanians; and Tibur (Tivoli) was planted by an Arcadian who headed the fleet of Evander (Cato F 2.15, 2.24, 2.26, 3.2; Beck and Walter 2001-4). Just how these stories were fleshed out eludes our grasp. But the acceptance of legends that linked Italian cities to forebears from abroad held sway even with Cato the Censor, the self-professed champion of Roman chauvinism.
All of this affords a valuable window on Roman mentality. The fashioning of a national image did not require disassociation or distance from others. Quite the contrary. The emperor Claudius looked back on the early history of the city and observed that Roman kings came from elsewhere than Rome. Tarquinius Priscus in fact, so Claudius declared in a public inscription, was born of an Etruscan mother and a Corinthian father (ILS 212). Greek blood therefore flowed in the veins of Roman monarchs. And the lineage was openly embraced by the emperor. The idea of autochthony or indigenous origins never made much headway in Rome. Legends and fables, bewildering in their variety though they be, consistently portrayed the nation as deriving from the cultures of the east. The concocted Trojans held pride of place, but Roman writers did not eradicate Hellenic beginnings and even paid homage to Phoenician contributions. Roman identity was from the start deeply entangled with others. The sense of a composite people who belonged intimately to the broader Mediterranean world held a central place in Roman self-perception (see also Chapter 25).
World History
