Questions about the origins of Roman epic are inseparable from a number of much larger problems. These include debates about the nature of all literary and artistic activity at Rome, and about the role of foreign and particularly Greek influence in the formation and development of Roman culture. Confronting these problems is made difficult not only by the complexity of the issues involved, but by a paucity of evidence for the early period. In such a situation, there is merit simply in asking the proper questions, in determining what answers might be at least possible, and in clearly distinguishing reasonable inference from willful speculation. In this essay, I shall sketch the main lines of discussion and indicate what I believe have been the most productive contributions. But I should like to stress at the outset that this is an area in which one deals, even when on more solid ground, in probabilities or possibilities rather than certainties.
According to one view, the Roman people had no literature to speak of until 240 bce (see Chapter 31, by Goldberg). In that year, as Cicero tells us (Brut. 72-3), the Senate commissioned Livius Andronicus, a Greek freedman originally from Tarentum, to compose a drama. Livius subsequently wrote other dramas that were, to judge from their titles and scanty remains, based on Greek originals; and, according to Livy (27.37.7), he was in 207 commissioned by the state a second time to compose a hymn in honor of Juno Regina. Other writers began to follow his lead, mainly producing tragedies and comedies modeled on Greek originals. For the purposes of this essay, however, Livius’ most important work was an epic poem in the form of a translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Unfortunately, we cannot say when he composed it, or indeed why: unlike his dramatic and choral works, the epic is linked to no state occasion, and it seems possible that it was conceived as a school text, which it was at least in Horace’s boyhood (Ep. 2.1.69-71). Gnaeus Naevius and then Quintus Ennius succeeded Livius, devoting the bulk of their effort to writing for the stage, but each of them also producing an epic, though these were as different from Livius’ epic as they were from each other.
Livius’ epic Odusia, as a translation of an original Greek text, resembles his dramatic compositions rather closely. Accordingly, those who stress Livius’ role as an innovator regard not only epic but poetry in general as a Greek import that arrived in Rome along with a rapidly expanding overseas empire. The idea that Livius introduced something quite new at Rome receives support from the fact that we have no earlier examples of poetry like his, nor can we name a single Roman poet before his time. In addition, this idea
Is one that the Romans themselves espoused. Around 100 bce, for instance, the poet Porcius Licinus declared that the Muse had arrived in Rome during the Second Punic War (fr. 1, Courtney 1993: 83-6). This is essentially the same attitude expressed years later by Horace that, when the Romans captured Greece, the captive turned the tables on her uncouth conqueror and taught him something about the fine arts (Ep. 2.1.156-63). Some version of this account appears in practically all histories of Latin literature. Its basic message is that Rome before the mid-third century bce was a rude and uncultured place, politically and militarily powerful but not yet Hellenized and so deficient in aesthetics. When diplomacy and warfare brought members of the Roman elite into contact with the Greek world (the story goes), some of these men became receptive to what this alien but sophisticated and highly attractive culture had to offer. The existence of such a potential audience enabled a few individual geniuses such as Livius to launch a cultural revolution that completely overwhelmed whatever native artistic traditions there had been. In what follows, I will refer to this line of argument as the protos heuretes (first discoverer) approach.
On a different view, Roman interest in literature begins much earlier. Again it is Livy (7.2) who mentions dramatic performances more than a century before Livius Androni-cus. And again, the occasion is a national emergency - a plague in 364 bce - and on this occasion as well plays ( ludi scaenici) are performed, this time by players summoned fTom Etruria. As for heroic narrative, Cicero (Brut. 75; cf. Tusc. 4.2.3) and Varro (apud Nonium s. v. assa voce, Lindsay 1913: 76) cite the testimony of Cato the Elder concerning an ancient custom of singing songs about the virtues of great men. Quintilian (Inst. 1.10.20) and Valerius Maximus (Mem. 2.1.10) make general statements in the same vein. The setting of these songs was the banquet, and the performers were, according to Cato, members of the aristocracy. We have no actual example of these carmina convivalia (as they have come to be called), but by invoking parallels from other cultures, some scholars have imagined this institution as analogous to an oral tradition of heroic poetry. This theory was developed by and has traditionally been more popular among historians and historiographers (some ofwhom also count among its most committed opponents) to explain how later Roman historians got their information about the earliest phases of Roman history - particularly before the sack of the city by the Gauls in 390, when it is presumed that any written records would have been destroyed. But if such a tradition did exist, it is reasonable to hypothesize that its influence was also felt by Livius and later epic poets, and that we might detect such influence in the scraps of archaic epic that do survive. The custom of singing at banquets might conceivably provide a performance context for some at least of the early epics, and one might even ask how long the custom of poetic performances at private or public banquets continued, and what the existence of such institutions could tell us about Roman cultural and social life. It is seldom imagined that these carmina would stand comparison by traditional literary criteria with the products of later periods, but by losing them we would also have lost access to evidence about the literary and cultural values that obtained in Rome before the mid-third century bce. The loss of this material might have caused scholars to misconstrue certain aspects of cultural life in the later Republican period as well. In what follows, I will refer to this line of argument as the ‘‘bardic culture’’ approach.
These are on the surface two very different views on the origins of Roman epic. It is worth noting, however, that they are actually incompatible only in an extreme form. When one says that there was ‘‘no literature to speak of’’ before Livius, this can hardly mean that there was none whatsoever, and few would take this position. The question rather is whether any trace of pre-Livian literary traditions survives in the literature that has come down to us. Specifically, if there was an archaic tradition of heroic song, is the character of this tradition reflected to any extent in the literary productions of Livius, Naevius, and later epic poets? It is on this point that scholars remain divided, both on methodological and ideological grounds and on more basic historical issues.
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