Objections to the ‘‘bardic culture’’ approach are based in part on the perceived desire of its proponents to assimilate archaic Roman culture to other cultures, especially Greek culture, about which we are better informed. These objections are perhaps more readily visible to critics than are comparable objections to the protos heuretes approach, which appears to involve a more modest interpretation of the available evidence and, as I have said, is endorsed in very clear terms by several ancient authorities as well. But the protos heuretes approach is not without its hidden biases. In the first place, we know that the ancients tended to posit the existence of a protos heuretes even in areas where modern scholars are absolutely sure that there was none, and to exaggerate the importance of the earliest known practitioners in any given field. It is perfectly possible that Livius Andro-nicus did play a crucially important role in the development of Latin literature (hardly a daring proposition), but that he did not start everything in motion by bringing the very first literature to what had been a cultural wasteland. More specifically, if we ask why a witness such as Horace might prefer a narrative that stresses the role of an individual genius in bringing Latin versions of Greek poetry to a public needing to be convinced of the value of literature, two reasons come immediately to mind. First, since Horace too was a purveyor of Latinate versions of Greek poetic genres to Roman audiences (as he boasts at Carm. 3.30.10-14, Ep. 1.19.23-34), he will have regarded Livius as establishing a pattern of behavior in which he himself was much involved. If Livius in Horace’s judgment was not much of a poet, then he at least inaugurated a process that would be brought to perfection in Horace’s own time, in part by Horace himself. The second reason why this model may have appealed to Horace is that in Rome literature never achieved the status that it had traditionally enjoyed in Greek culture. There is thus a sense in which Livius’ battle to make a case for literature within the Roman system of values was never finished, but had to be waged continuously by all those who succeeded him, Horace included.
Thus at least Horace’s interest in the protos heuretes approach is not utterly innocent or transparent. If we turn to modern scholars, the situation is much the same. As Alessandro Barchiesi has well noted, the great German Latinist Friedrich Leo began his Geschichte der romischen Literatur with the statement that ‘‘Western civilization depends on GraecoRoman culture, and so does the spread of Christianity through Roman and German peoples. . . Roman culture is the spiritual link between the ancient and the modern worlds... The dynamics of civilization was from East to West’’ (Leo 1913: 1). On this view, the crucial fact about Roman literature is that it is ‘‘the first literature dependent on the Greeks, the first secondary, non home-grown literature’’ (p. 3). Accordingly, Leo emphasized Livius’ role precisely as that of a translator and thus as ‘‘the beginner of the first derivative literature of our cultural universe’’ (p. 59). Leo’s approach is so familiar from constant repetition in literary histories down to the present day that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that he, like Horace, uses this conception of Livius to support an effort of self-justification. But, as Barchiesi shrewdly observes, ‘‘One could argue that Latin studies have been focusing on translation and transference, not on appropriation and reuse, because the discipline was trying to (re)establish itself (through many an inferiority complex) as the missing link between German Hellenophilia and European national identities’’ (Barchiesi 2002b). One might extend this argument, mutatis mutandis, to the United States, where a sense that ‘‘the dynamics of civilization moves from East to West’’ is taken as an article of faith in American national mythology, but where the measurement of cultural attainments against Old World standards is always fraught with anxiety. And while I have not yet seen a history of Latin literature that takes this line, one can imagine without too much trouble how a version of the protos heuretes approach might be updated in terms of postcolonial theory.
It is clear then that neither of our two approaches offers access to evidence that is unmediated by ancient or modern desires and ambitions. Of course, congruency with one or another set of transcultural agendas does not in itself undermine a particular line of interpretation. Neverheless anyone who approaches this material would do well to bear these issues in mind.
World History
