When we turn to a critique of the ‘‘bardic culture’’ approach, however, we find a comparable set of historical issues. Some of these are simply the converse of problems attached to the protos heuretes model. Thus, while our sources depict archaic Rome as a city of culture where Greek influence was very much a factor, the literary tradition, which is by far our most articulate record of political and social life in this period, consists of sources who wrote long after the events that they describe and that are obviously contaminated by Greek narrative traditions. It is certain that Roman historians from time to time assimilated their own accounts to those in their Greek models, both in unimportant details but perhaps in fundamental respects as well. It is therefore impossible to trust the literary tradition alone, since it may anachronistically project a late and more completely Hellen-ized perspective back on to the early period.
The material record, though less articulate than our literary sources and less focused on Rome itself, does tend to support the idea of early, decisively important Greek influence. Such evidence cuts in two directions, since it indicates on the one hand that Livius’ translation will not have found many Roman readers who were unacquainted with Greek culture or indeed with Homer, while on the other hand it greatly compromises the idea of a pristine tradition of heroic poetry in Latin. There are in addition very large gaps in what this record has to tell us. We know for instance, as I have just noted, that the Etruscans painted Homeric cycles on some of their more impressive tombs, and that the tombs themselves were equipped as banqueting spaces. We also know that essentially similar cycles of wall painting appear in (especially) the dining rooms of Roman houses centuries later than the Etruscan tombs (Andreae 1962). It seems reasonable and economical to assume that the Etruscan tombs and the Roman houses belong to a continuous tradition, but we cannot be sure that this is the case.
Finally, there is the material evidence concerning symposiums at Ficana, which creates a strong temptation to assume that if such things took place at a relatively small and unimportant town such as this, they would certainly have been found in Rome, the leading city of the area. But this assumption is far from secure. In the first place, the symposium itself is a malleable institution that the Greeks imported from the Near East before exporting it in turn to Italy (Murray 1990). In Etruria, it appears that well-born women reclined at table along with men, a custom that would have seemed barbarous to the Greeks. About any other adaptations that may have been made we know almost nothing. It is tempting to assume that the Homeric decorations of some rooms reflects the literary element of Italian symposia with some accuracy, but a similar assumption would have eighteenth-century Frenchmen reciting classical Chinese poetry in their drawing rooms. So caution is certainly needed. As for drawing inferences between Ficana and Rome, we know very well that in the late second and early first centuries some of the ‘‘hill towns’’ of Latium, celebrated by Roman writers as repositories of old-fashioned virtue, were more visibly and spectacularly Hellenized than the capital. One thinks in particular of the astonishing sanctuaries at places like Praeneste, Tibur, and Anxur, which eventually served as models for projects that only later began to be built at Rome (Hanson 1959). Evidence such as this suggests that the process of “Hellenization’’ in Rome was far from linear, and that we would be in error to assume that Rome was always in the vanguard rather than following the lead of other Italian towns.
In addition to these issues, there are more specific problems that bear on our subject but that cannot be solved with confidence. This is not the place to discuss them in full, but it is worthwhile at least to list them for the reader’s convenience:
Position of epic in the system of genres. Advocates of the protos heuretes approach tend to conflate two facts. One is that Livius is supposed to have founded Roman literature. The other is that he wrote a translation of the Odyssey. These are very different things. Livius’ first work was a play, and the bulk of his oeuvre is theatrical. He was later recognized for composing a hymn, which was performed, like his plays, in public on a state occasion. We do not know, as I have noted above, when he wrote his epic, or why. Naevius too was a prolific dramatist, and Ennius not only wrote plays but introduced several other genres to Latin literature. In other words, it is far from obvious that epic poetry was the most important genre in archaic Roman literature. It is only with Ennius that we begin to see the idea emerge that the composition of an epic might become the culmination of a poet’s career (Farrell 2002). Ennius in effect introduces a system of literary evaluation that places epic poetry at the top. He may have been anticipated in this regard by Livius and Naevius, but it is impossible to measure the contemporary impact of the Odusia and the Bellum Poenicum against that of Livius’ and Naevius’ dramas.
We do not know whether Livius composed his Odusia in a native Italic or in an adapted Greek meter. About this meter, which is called ‘‘Saturnian,’’ we fundamentally know very little. If it is Italic, then we could point to at least one native element of the earliest surviving Latin epics. There are, however, scholars who see the Saturnian as a pre-Livian adaptation of Greek metrical patterns to the very different conventions of the Latin language.
We have no evidence that the Saturnian was an epic meter before Livius. Ennius - who has a very big axe to grind - comments on the Saturnian as a medium for epic poetry as he boasts of his own accomplishment in Latinizing the hexameter, and explains his decision not to include the First Punic War in his universal Roman history. ‘‘Others,’’ he says with lordly disdain, ‘‘have written historical poetry, in the meter that fauns and satyrs used to sing’’ (Ann. 7.1, fr. 206-7, Skutsch 1985). The plural ‘‘others’’ masks the singular achievement of Naevius, the only poet we can name who wrote historical epic in Latin before Ennius. Naevius did indeed follow Livius in using Saturnians. But Ennius does not say that it had been traditional to write epic poetry in this verse. Rather, he observes that the form was more appropriate to the songs of‘‘fauns and satyrs.’’ Now, this is certainly an insult intended to suggest that the metrical form of the Bellum Poenicum is rough and unattractive compared to Ennius’ hexameters, but it may also imply that Saturnians were suited not to heroic narrative but to other genres altogether. If so, fauns and satyrs could indicate oracles, and it is possible that (Livius and) Naevius - unsuccessfully, in Ennius’ self-interested view - adapted a meter previously used for brief prophetic utterances to the more demanding requirements of epic narrative.
Class and professionalism. Most histories of Latin literature, in keeping with the protos heuretes approach, emphasize the fact that all archaic Roman poets were neither Roman nor well-born. Gaius Lucilius, who wrote satires during the late second century bce, is remembered as the first member of the upper orders of society (he was an equestrian, and his brother a senator) to devote himself to poetry as his principal occupation. It is thus a practically unchallenged article of faith that the old Roman elite would never have taken an interest in poetry for its own sake or composed any themselves, but that when a need for institutional poetry manifested itself in the mid-third century they did the usual thing and hired foreigners to produce it for them. The testimony of Cato instead looks back to a time when members of the aristocracy, and not hired professionals, sang their own songs at banquets. Zorzetti (1990, 1991) treats the evolution from amateur elite to hired professional performance as natural and unproblematic, but in fact Cato does not regard it in this light; and if we can trust his testimony that makes the carmina convivalia subjects of performance by the well-born, this would substantially alter our understanding of the cultural change that took place in the mid-third century.
Latin versus Greek. As I have already noted, the material culture of Italy in all periods attests a familiarity with Homer and the Epic Cycle as well as with representations of Greek mythology on stage. We do not have the evidence to match this visual material with the performance or recitation of Greek texts, or with the telling of stories related to the scenes represented, in prose or poetry, in Greek or in Italian languages, by aristocratic amateurs or by professionals. But what seems most impressive is that the Greek stories themselves circulated widely throughout Italy, in such a way that we hear of no competition at all fTom native Italian literary traditions. This is not to say that such traditions did not exist, but they may have failed to develop very significantly, not because these were uncouth societies that did not appreciate high literature, but rather because Greek literature itself circulated widely among the Italian aristocracy and was so well appreciated that it smothered whatever national literatures there were. If this is so, then what needs explaining is not the near-total absence of evidence about Roman literature before Livius, but rather the fact that so much literary activity in Latin suddenly comes into being.
World History
