of ill repute, for lupa was the name for both.' Romulus was not taken away from the earth by the gods, but the patricians being dissatisfied with him, killed him, cut him in pieces, and carried these pieces away under their clothes. In those parts of the legend which contained nothing supernatural these critics saw no difficulty, and so they flattered themselves that they had worked out a genuine history of Romulus. CHAP. historical credibility. Such a proceeding cannot satisfy us. The first question Laws of which historical criticism suggests is an inquiry into the evidence for an asserted fact, and the second is that of its internal probability. All evidence must in the end be traceable to contemporaries and eye-witnesses, and it must be such that the judgment and truthfulness of the witnesses cannot be called in question. It is clear that no evidence whatever can prove that which to our comprehension appears impossible. Writers, therefore, who relate historical miracles, though they may claim to have been eye-witnesses, must be supposed to have been deceived or to wish to deceive. Where trustworthy evidence of contemporaries is wanting, and where the second or third hand evidence is full of contradictions, improbabilities, chronological and other errors, it were vain to believe that the story has any historical foundation. clers. No written chronicles dating as far back as the regal Roman period ever existed in Rome. The date of the first histo- chronirical documents of the time of the republic is extremely doubtful. So much, however, is certain, that they referred to contemporary events, and not to times long past. The writing of History, properly so called, was begun in Rome at a comparatively late period. The Romans, with all their attachment to old forms, customs, and laws, were deficient in the real historical spirit, and especially in Livy, i. 4. Dionysius, i. 84. Plutarch, Rom., 4. Livy, i. 16. 2 27. Cicero, De Rep., ii. 10. Dionysius, ii. 56. Plutarch, Rom., * See Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. book i. Concerning two alleged inscriptions of the time of Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus, see below chaps. vii. and viii. BOOK I. critical investigation.' The oldest annalistic accounts of past events, i.e. accounts in the form of annual reports, did not go further back than the beginning of the republic. Into the origin of the state nobody thought it worth while to inquire before Rome had risen in power and dignity above the other towns of Latium. When this was first attempted, not only the events but the laws and institutions of the regal period, the old religion with its customs, its gods, and even its language, had been forgotten or had become for the most part unintelligible. The first connected history of the foundation of Rome of which we have any knowledge, that of Fabius Pictor, dates from the time of the second Punic war, and is therefore 500 years later than the alleged date for the founding of Rome. It is probable, however, that when Fabius wrote, the story of Romulus was commonly received; for in the year 458 after the foundation of Rome, i.e. 296 B.C., a bronze cast representing the suckling she-wolf and the twins was set up at the foot of the Palatine hill.2 For a period therefore of at least four centuries we can discover no trace of the legend of Romulus in any monuments or authentic records. There is, for the whole of this long period, nothing but oral tradition by which the memory of historical events of the time of Romulus could have been preserved and handed down, and to oral tradition alone we are therefore compelled to trust if we would make out a history' of the foundation of Rome. As the alleged written documents from the regal period are worthless, so, of course, the pretended historical relics of that time are of no value whatever. The old Romans were as fond collectors and worshippers of relics as their Roman Catholic descendants are at the present day. The ship in which Eneas sailed from Troy to Latium was preserved and shown, even down to the time of the Emperors (Procop, Bell. Goth. iv. 22); and the body of the sow which guided him to the spot where his city was to be built, was preserved in pickle at Lavinium (Varro, De R. R., ii. 4); there was the thatched cottage (Dionysius, i. 79), and the augural staff of Romulus (Cicero, De Divin., i. 17; Plutarch, Rom. 22), the Ruminal fig-tree which caught with its branches the basket with the twins (Livy, x. 23), the tree which had grown out of Romulus' spear, when he hurled it against the Palatine hill (Plutarch, Rom., 20; Servius, ad Virg. Æn. iii. 46), and similar relics. An interesting catalogue of such prehistoric relics might be made, but they contribute nothing to our knowledge of the prehistoric period. 2 Livy, x. 23. II. of Roman We shall not rashly venture on such an undertaking, if CHAP. we bear in mind how fast, and how easily, even in times of great literary activity, historical events fall into oblivion, or are strangely distorted by the uneducated, whose memory is not guided and corrected by written documents.' Now, it cannot be denied that poetry, in the absence of Character writing, is calculated to keep up tradition in a comparapopular tively pure and genuine form. Popular songs in praise of traditions. heroes of the past may live for centuries in the mouth of the people, and may save many an event from oblivion. It has been conjectured, therefore, that there existed in Rome at a very early period a great national epic poem, and that the oldest annalists drew some of their facts from poems of this sort, which recorded the exploits of Romulus and other great men, mixed up with fiction, but by no means entirely fictitious. This hypothesis was set up by Niebuhr, and it met with much approval. But at present it is almos universally abandoned, and for very good reasons. There is in favour of it neither sufficient external evidence nor internal probability. The character of the narrative itself speaks against it, for, with few exceptions, it is destitute of all poetical elements; it is dry, bald, jejune, unimaginative-in one word, unpoetical. It is really nothing more than a string of tales, in which an attempt is made to explain old names, religious ceremonies and monuments, political institutions and antiquities, and to account for their origin. mous Thus even the name of the founder of Rome is evidently Eponyderived from the name of the town, not contrariwise, as heroes. the legend has it. In a similar manner, all the nations of antiquity invented a legendary ancestor for themselves; the Dorians claimed descent from Dorus, the Ionians from Ion, the Latins from Latinus, and the Sabines from Sabus. Of course the Romans had their own progenitor, who appropriately was called Romus or Romulus. The miraculous portion of the 1 See Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 42. VOL. I. legend of Romulus, of Super natural BOOK I. course, does not deserve serious consideration. It is connected with local sanctuaries and with the religious conceptions of the shepherds on the Tiber, and is not more historical than are the myths of Herakles, Theseus, Janus, Romulus. Saturnus, and Latinus. elements in the story of The asylum. The story of the asylum is of a different kind. There is nothing supernatural in it, and though it was not flattering to the Roman pride, it was never doubted by the Romans. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to perceive that it deserves no more credit than the legend of the suckling she-wolf. It is strange at the very outset that the legend of the asylum is at variance with the alleged descent of the Romans from Alba. How can one imagine that a colony founded by the heirs of the Alban kings could be so forsaken and estranged from the parent town, and so hostile to it, as the legend of the asylum would imply? Either the Alban origin is a mere fiction,' or the population of Rome could not to any large extent be made up of exiles from the neighbouring States. But independently of this consideration, the process of increasing the population of a town by means of such an asylum for the reception of fugitives and outcasts is in the highest degree improbable, and as it is not reported to have occurred in any second instance, it must have been uncongenial to the national sentiments and the practices of ancient Italy. The old Italian communities were by no means open to strangers. They were made up of tribes, houses and families firmly bound together, and admitting none but hereditary members to participation in the religious rites peculiar to each. It is not likely that crowds of vagrants infested the country, nor that an organisation 1 Rome was neither a colony of Alba, as Dionysius (i. 71) says, nor did it owe its origin to a secession, as has been recently supposed. (See Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 452.) The oldest legend of the foundation of Rome knew nothing of Alba. When Rome became the head of Latium, in place of Alba, and not before, the idea arose of representing the former as having issued from the latter. Later still, when the legend of Æneas found acceptance, and when it was discovered that Romulus could not be the son of Æneas, on account of the three hundred years which separated the two, the whole series of Alban kings was invented to fill up the gap. like that of the Roman patricians, with their tribes, curies, and gentes, could have grown out of such materials.' A still more forcible objection to the authenticity of the story of the asylum is the circumstance that the Romans, down to the time of the emperors, were practically unacquainted with the Greek custom of 'taking sanctuary,' as the word 'asylum' shows, which they had to borrow from the Greeks. It can therefore hardly be doubted that the story of the asylum first arose when Greeks were busy in importing into the history of Rome their notions and their fables, their gods and their myths. CHAP. II. Greek no tions of sanctuary. of the As according to the legend a part of the male popula- The rape tion came to Rome through the asylum, so the women Sabine were carried off by force four months after the foundation women. of Rome. The story of the rape of the Sabines is therefore in a certain degree a parallel to that of the asylum. It is without all doubt a pure invention of later times, without the least foundation in fact. The date for the rape of the Sabines in the fourth month of Rome might seem to point to something like a tradition; but it is in fact only the result of the calculation that the festival of the Palilia, which was considered the day of the foundation of Rome, fell on the 21st of April, whilst that of the Consualia, on which the games were celebrated and the women ravished, took place four months later, in the month of Sextilis. Cneius Gellius was the only annalist who gave the fourth year instead of the fourth month as the date of this rape. He wisely thought it somewhat improbable that, after a reign of four months, Romulus would have already ventured upon such an act of violence, and accordingly he corrected the date given by his predecessors. With so much freedom was the pretended history of that time handled. But, unfortunately, it is not always so easy to discover the reason for assertions which were so long looked upon as simple statements of well-recorded facts. 'Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., i. 465. * Niebuhr, Röm. Gesch., i., note 630. Dionysius (ii. 31) highly approves of this ingenious device. |