Interpretation is an inescapably circular process, since interpreters always start from assumptions that may themselves be subject to interrogation and contestation. Where there is less evidence to work with, these unspoken assumptions tend to take on even greater importance than usual. This has certainly been true in the study of archaic Roman culture, particularly where the question of literature is concerned.
In general, the ‘‘bardic culture’’ approach has received more criticism on the grounds of its methodological and cultural assumptions than has the protos heuretesapproach. In some sense this is because those assumptions are rooted in Romantic attitudes towards the past from which Classical Studies as a discipline has been at pains to distance itself. The remarkable success achieved in the study of early Greek epic has played a role here as well. From both internal and comparative evidence, we have learned a enormous amount about the compositional techniques, the performance culture, the social role, and even the literary antecedents of early Greek epic and other genres. Both as an example of what can be done, and also as a specific comparandum, this Greek material stands as a challenge to students of early Roman epic. But of course the evidentiary situations are entirely different. Where students of Greek epic begin with the complete texts of two monumental epics, our earliest Roman examples survive only in fragments. These fragments are individually quite brief, collectively few in absolute terms, and in the case of Livius and Naevius insufficient even to give us a clear picture of how much has been lost. This scanty pattern of survival is bound up with the fact that the reception of these works in antiquity did not accord them a very high status - again in sharp contrast to Homer, who at all periods of Greek cultural history enjoys the highest possible prestige. Thus the wealth of ancillary material available to the student of early Greek epic in the form of textual studies, commentary, and other forms of criticism does not exist for pre-Virgilian epic except in a very attenuated form.
This disparity between the Greek and Roman contexts creates a second difficulty. Having so little evidence to illustrate early Roman epic, but an abundance for early Greek epic, the temptation is strong to fill in some of the gaps on the basis of what we know about Homer. The Romans, like the Greeks, were speakers of an Indo-European language. Comparative evidence suggests that the archaic poetry of several Indo-European languages inherited features from a common tradition, just as the languages themselves inherited features of the parent speech (see Chapter 2, by Katz). It is then at least possible that the Romans inherited such poetic institutions as well. If we know anything about early Roman culture, we know that it valued military prowess. So, when we hear of Cato describing a tradition of songs having to do with the deeds of bygone days, it becomes very tempting to see this as attesting a pre-Livian tradition of Roman heroic poetry.
Here the situation becomes very much more complex. Scholarly opinions about the value of Cato’s testimony vary widely. My summary to this point represents perhaps the most optimistic reception of Cato. Although Cato had previously been cited by others, it was B. G. Niebuhr (1776-1831) who effectively introduced these passages into modern historiographical discussion (Momigliano 1957). The context of this intervention is decisive. Niebuhr’s theory of archaic Roman Heldenlieder, which he directly compared to material such as the Nibelungenlied, was formulated within a culture inclined to think in terms of the nineteenth-century nation-state and to understand the essential character of such states from what were supposed to be the primitive characteristics of their ancestors.
It is obvious that in such a climate, Romanists were in difficulties since our evidence about the origins of Roman society is relatively poor (and it was much worse in Niebuhr’s time). Cato’s carmina convivalia thus answered both a perceived historical and a real historiographical problem: by explaining how later witnesses got access to the originary phase of Roman cultural history, it became possible to provide the modern historian with information about the character of the Roman people in the all-important primitive phase of their existence. Not only scholars, but the educated public provided a plentiful audience both for the theory itself and for new cultural productions based thereon. The citation in this context of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (1842) is so apposite that it has become de rigueur. But there was opposition as well: in fact, no less a personage than Mommsen dedicated a portion of his limitless energies to denouncing Niebuhr, and for many years the prevailing view on the fully-developed theory was one of skepticism (Momigliano 1957: 113).
World History
