In dealing with the early period, all Roman historians worked under an overwhelming handicap. Even the pioneers in the late third century wrote centuries after most of the events they described. As a basic rule, living memory reaches back over about three generations or a century (whatever grandchildren hear from their grandparents). Memories about sensational events or eminent personalities may survive longer (what grandparents had heard from their grandparents or what family tradition ‘‘remembers’’), but these are usually anecdotal and reliable at most in their basic core. They project like islands out of a sea of oblivion that scholars call the ‘‘floating gap’’ because it moves in time, keeping the same chronological distance from each new generation (see also Chapter 23). Ancient scholars tried to bridge this gap and connect the remembered with the ‘‘heroic’’ past (above). Across the floating gap, indeed, lies the mythical past with events and persons (like the Trojan War and Aeneas’ arrival in Italy) that mythical memory often organizes in three generations (such as those of the Trojan War heroes, their fathers, and their sons: Anchises, Aeneas, and Ascanius). Such myths may well contain a historical core. Yet, because of an ongoing process of transformation and adaptation that is typical of oral traditions, this core cannot be identified reliably without confirmation by independent evidence that is at least near contemporaneous. Where such evidence survives (as in the case of medieval epics such as the Chanson de Roland or the Nibelungenlied), we
Witness a rapid and profound distortion and reorganization of traditions about events, persons, and social conditions, even in tales encapsulated in metrical song.
All this is easily demonstrable with Greek examples but no less true for Rome. In writing about events at the very end of the fourth century and later, the earliest historians could probably rely on living memories of their contemporaries and their immediate ancestors. Only anecdotal memories survived from the previous two centuries. The period of the kings (structured in twice three generations, separated by a transitional one) was essentially mythical. Of this the Romans were unaware, although Livy realizes it for the period before Rome’s foundation (praef. 6-8). The fifth century and large parts of the fourth were a dark period. Logically, the early historians dwelled on the legendary tales of foundation and kings, rushed through the early Republic, and expanded their narrative once they reached the Samnite and later Italian wars. The late fourth century, like a screen or curtain, barred their view into the more distant past: holes and tears offered tantalizing glimpses; obviously much lay behind it but precise information was unavailable. Naturally, then, to the earliest historians issues and developments known from the late fourth and early third centuries (both in Rome’s domestic politics and its relations to the outside world in peace and war) offered patterns and suggestions that they generalized and applied as templates to the entire history of the early Republic. Nor do we need to wonder that they (and their successors) used all kinds of extraneous evidence and all available means to fill the pervasive gaps and construct at least a somewhat continuous, interesting, and accessible narrative, and that later experiences so deeply shaped their interpretation of the early periods.19
Yet there were items that proved helpful in historical reconstruction. Songs and early plays were mentioned before; although heroicizing, they often focused on historical events and persons. Family traditions did not consist only of exaggerated accomplishments and fictitious consulships and triumphs. Writing was used from at least the sixth century, even if not for historical purposes. Polybius (3.22) and other historians refer to texts of early treaties and other documents one could still find and read (although with difficulty). Some temples and monuments dated as far back as the sixth century. The calendar and events with religious significance (such as the foundation of sanctuaries, famines, triumphs, omens, prodigies, and the consultation of oracles and the Sibylline books) were recorded by the pontiffs (although it is unclear when such records began), apparently preserved over centuries, and eventually integrated into the ‘‘greatest annals’’ (annales maximi); the latter’s form, date, publication, and use by historians, however, are shrouded in uncertainty. These records listed also the supreme (eponymous) magistrates who served to date years and records. Although the authenticity of the lists of such magistrates (fasti), assembled in the late Republic and Augustus’ time, is much debated especially for the early Republic, these types of information provided at least a rough framework of facts and events. Even Livy’s report shows that there were still some years in which these basic elements constituted all that could be said.2
The modern historian is thus faced with the difficult task of sorting out authentic components from the wild growth of legends and elaboration that evolved over centuries, and of assembling reliable information that survived outside the annalistic tradition. Scholars have suggested a distinction between (authentic) ‘‘basic facts’’ and (unreliable) ‘‘narrative superstructure,’’ but the distortions described above unfortunately are no less frequent on the level of basic facts. All we can do, therefore, is to decide from case to case, whenever possible using criteria and testimonia that are independent of the Roman vulgate. Some scholars deride this principle as ‘‘hypercritical,’’ insisting that the Roman historians, despite all their shortcomings, were better informed than we are, having at their disposal much information that now is irretrievably lost, and were able to judge from an inside perspective that we cannot possibly acquire. This may be true to some extent, but they were also much less critical, captives of a tradition that in its outlines was considered largely unchangeable, and unable to use methods of modern disciplines (such as archaeology, anthropology, and comparative history) that permit us to deal with the same problems they faced in more sophisticated ways and to gain insights barred to them. Not least, we now understand their methods, preferences, and limitations much better than earlier generations of scholars did. Persistent criticism based on serious skepticism has to remain our principle until we can demonstrate that ancient information is credible. All else would be irresponsible. We thereby sacrifice the possibility of writing a continuous narrative of Rome’s early history, but we gain rough outlines of a reliable reconstruction; we can still get from the little village on the Palatine to the city that began to rule an empire, but to do so we have to cross the river, so to speak, not on a broad and elegant bridge but by jumping from stone to stone.21
World History
