The Greeks come before the Romans, in this book as in all accounts of the ancient world. That priority is not a historical datum - on the contrary, the city-states of Athens and Rome came into being at much the same time - but in the discussion of ancient literature it is inevitable. Uniquely, and astonishingly, in the sixth century bce Greeks used the medium of alphabetic writing not just for lists or laws or epitaphs, but also to preserve the songs of epic bards and lyric poets; and so they created a literature. Neither Latins nor (so far as we know) Etruscans did that until three centuries later.
It is not that the Latins and Etruscans were backward, or peripheral. Horace’s famous lines on the rude farmers of the Roman republic, wholly innocent of Greek culture until ‘‘the peace that followed the Punic Wars’’ (Epist. 2.1.156-163), are demonstrable nonsense. Of course classicists want to believe what a classic author tells them; but a few archaeological glimpses of the archaic world of Latium and south Etruria may help us to overcome that mindset.
The earliest alphabetic Greek inscription known from anywhere was scratched on a pot about 800 bce in an Iron Age community in Latium, just 20 km east of Rome (Ridgway 1996); Euboean potters can be detected working at Veii in the eighth century bce (Ridgway 1992: 131-137); in the mid-seventh century, Kleiklos, ‘‘famed for fame,’’ is attested on a Corinthian vase in the Esquiline cemetery at Rome (SEG 31.875), and Aristonothos, ‘‘bastard noble,’’ painted the blinding ofPolyphemos on a mixing bowl made for an Etruscan magnate at Caere (Schneider 1955); other Greeks known as living and working in Etruria at that time include Larth Telikles and Rutile Hipukrates (Ridgway 1988: 664-665); in the sixth century, lonians and Samians were frequenting the trading post of Gravisca (SEG 27.671, 32.940-1017), at about the same time as a bronze plaque attests the cult of the Dioscuri at Lavinium (ILLRP 1271a), while at Rome an Attic black-figure krater showing Hephaestus appears at the Volcanal (Coarelli 1983: 176-177) and a terracotta statue group portrays the apotheosis of Heracles in the Forum Bovarium (Cristofani 1990: 115-118).
These are just the most striking examples of an archaeological record which led its most authoritative interpreter to the following conclusion (Pallottino 1981: 44, my translation): ‘‘The effect of the refined Ionian civilization on the cities of Tyrrhenian Italy is widespread and deeply felt in the second half of the sixth century bce. We could even say that there comes into being a genuine cultural and artistic koine consisting equally of the Greek colonies and the Campanian, Latin, and Etruscan centers.’’
So it should be no surprise that Hesiod (Theog. 1011-1016)- or a sixth-century pseudo-Hesiod (West 1966: 435-436) - makes Latinos, eponym of the Latins and ruler of ‘‘the famed Etruscans,’’ a son of Circe and Odysseus. Circe’s island was just off the coast of Latium, directly across the water from the north coast of Sicily, where in the early sixth century lived the greatest poet of the Greek West, Stesichorus of Himera. Though he wrote in lyric meters, Stesichorus’ grandeur and ambitious heroic narratives put him in almost the same category as Homer himself (Quint. 10.1.62). A late source, not necessarily untrustworthy (Horsfall 1979), says that Stesichorus related Aeneas’ voyage to the west, and recent discoveries have revealed much of his Geryoneis (Page 1973), the narrative of Heracles’ tenth labor which ultimately lies behind the Roman story of Hercules’ meeting with Evander.
Pallantion, Evander’s Arcadian home, was mentioned in the Geryoneis, and one of the versions of the poet’s own life ( Suda s. v. ‘‘Stesichoros’’) says that he was born in Pallantion but went into exile - just like Evander. If that reflects the characteristic biographical method of borrowing episodes from an author’s works as if they were evidence for his life (Harvey 2004: 298-300), perhaps we might even infer that the Roman story goes back to Stesichorus himself. Of course we do not know enough to assert that, but it is not inconceivable. Rome and early Greek poetry did not exist in separate worlds.
The same is true of early Greek prose. Those Ionian dedications at Gravisca were set up by people not unlike the pioneer logopoios Hecataeus of Miletus, whose ‘‘circuit of the earth’’ naturally included western Italy - not only the predictable islands (Elba, Capri, etc.) but also inland centers like Nola and Capua in Campania, the latter of which he derived from ‘‘Capys the Trojan’’ (FGrHist 1 FF 59-63). Rome would not have been beyond his scope. The early fifth century may be when Promathion of Samos wrote his Italica, which contained the earliest version of the Romulus legend (Wiseman 1995: 57-61); and the unknown author of the ‘‘Cymaean chronicle’’ (Alfoldi 1965: 56-72), which probably dealt with the descendants of Demaratus of Corinth who ruled in Rome (Zevi 1995), may also belong to that period. Towards the end of the fifth century Hellanicus of Lesbos reported a view of Rome’s origin - founded by Aeneas ‘‘with Odysseus’’ (FGrHist 4 F 84) - which looks like a combination of two separate traditions existing already. Hellanicus also seems to have known some Latin, since his account of Heracles’ return with the cattle of Geryon includes a derivation of‘‘Italia’’ from uitulus (FGrHist 4 F 111).
He may have regarded Latin as a Greek dialect (Gabba 2000: 159-165). Certainly in the fourth century bce Heracleides of Pontus (F 102 Wehrli) called Rome ‘‘a Hellenic polisf and Aristotle (F 609 Rose) believed it had been founded by Achaians blown off course by storms in the return from Troy. Theophrastus (HP 5.8.3) knew the Roman colony at Kirkaion, where the inhabitants pointed out the tomb of Elpenor, and his circumstantial report of a Roman attempt to found a city in Corsica (5.8.1-2) shows that he was well informed. At this point we have visual evidence again, with the engraved bronze mirrors and cistae which attest the thorough familiarity of Latin and Roman craftsmen with Greek artistic traditions; the inscribed names on some of the scenes depicted provide vivid evidence of their creative exploitation of the stories of Greek mythology (Wiseman 2004: 87-118).
In the third century bce, Eratosthenes of Cyrene found it natural to include Romulus, son of Ascanius and grandson of Aeneas, in his chronological researches (FGrHist241 F 45), and it is not at all paradoxical that his contemporary Callimachus used the story of ‘‘Gaius the Roman’’ to illustrate the virtues of Panhellas (Aitia 4.106).
World History
