XVIII.

Cominius, for one version' made them get into the Capitol CHAP. by a mine. In the second place, it is possible that the story of the geese was an ætiological legend, i.e., a legend invented to account for the origin of a custom or religious ceremony. It is reported that, in memory of the watchfulness of the geese and the negligence of the dogs, a procession took place every year in Rome, in which a dog fastened to a cross, and a goose decorated with gold and purple, were carried through the streets. Now it is hardly probable that an event like that reported of the geese should have given rise to such a religious ceremonial. Dogs were sacrificed on several occasions; the geese were sacred to Juno before the period in question, as the legend itself presumes. It is therefore more probable that the legend arose out of the religious custom, than the custom out of the alleged event.

4

in the war.

Our inquiry shows that the greatest part of the common Share of story does not belong to history but to fiction. On the other hand the narrative is defective. It does not say, for instance, what part the Latins took in the war with the Gauls. A very few faint traces indeed there are, which point to the fact that the Latins were not idle spectators during the Gallic invasion of Latium. In fact, as they were in the same danger as the Roman themselves, we cannot believe that they would on this occasion maintain a cowardly and foolish neutrality. It was not difficult for them, in their fortified towns, to defy the blind courage of the Gauls, as the Romans did on the Capitol, and to harass small detachments and troops of plunderers. Thus they

Cicero, Pro Cæc., 30, 88; Philipp., iii. 8, 20. Servius, En., viii. 652. 2 Sir G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 345.

Schwegler, Röm. Gesch., iii. 259, Anm. 4.

4 According to Polybius (ii. 18), the Gauls defeated the Romans and their allies. (Compare, however, Sir G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ii. 326, note 94, who rather fancies that these allies were the people of Clusium.) The people of Ardea, under the command of Camillus, surprised and defeated a troop of Gallic plunderers (Livy, v. 44. Plutarch, Camill., 23). This, it is true, looks like one of the stories inserted for the glorification of Camillus. More authentic appears to be the statement of Livy (v. 46) that in the Roman army at Veii there were also Latin volunteers.

BOOK
II.

Residuum

of historical fact.

Effects of

the Gallic inroads.

may have played an important part in the deliverance of Rome; but the Roman annalists, intent only on their own glorification, have been ungenerously silent about the deserts of their allies.1

After what has been said, it appears that the substance of historical facts to be drawn from the long descriptions of the Gallic conquest is very meagre. There is nothing certain but the general rough sketch of the picture. All the details are doubtful or deceptive. There remains only the bare fact, that the Gauls made an unexpected invasion, that the Roman army was overthrown, that the town was sacked and burnt, the Capitol besieged in vain, and that after some time the enemy retired with the spoils which had been taken. That this invasion of the Gauls was a great misfortune for Rome cannot be denied. Yet it appears that the panic, which was the chief cause of the disaster, also tended to increase the impression which it made on the public mind. The Gauls were not in a position to make a permanent conquest. After they had retired, the former state of things returned, as the old configuration of the soil remains after an inundation. The body politic had been paralysed, not killed; the organism was not destroyed, its action only had been arrested for a short time. Certainly it was necessary to rebuild the town, which had been burnt to the ground; but the state recovered its former vigour without difficulty. It may even be that the invasion of the Gauls was more destructive to neighbouring nations than to Rome itself, and that Rome indirectly gained more from it than it lost. At any rate we find Rome, immediately after the retreat of the Gauls, in such a commanding position with regard to the Latins, the Equians, and the Volscians, that its power seems in no way diminished.

If nothing was known of the battle of Waterloo except what is contained in some popular histories or in the traditions of the lower orders in England, how much would posterity learn of any important share of the Prussians in that decisive victory? The most popular military historians of the French hardly ever mention their allies, except for the purpose of casting on them the blame for a reverse.

CHAPTER XIX.

SOURCES OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY.

CHAP.
XIX.

Alleged

of histori

cal records.

THE destruction of Rome by the Gauls is so marked a point in the history of the Romans, that the plan of those writers who (like Claudius Quadrigarius among the ancients) begin their narrative at this point, has much in destruction its favour. The history of the regal period, and of the first 120 years of the republic, is not derived from contemporary witnesses, but was composed after the Gallic conflagration. Whatever historical monuments existed were almost entirely destroyed in the burning of the town, and the distress of the time which immediately succeeded left no leisure for restoring historical documents. We must not deceive ourselves by thinking that the time before the Gallic invasion belongs, strictly speaking, to the domain of history, inasmuch as history is intended to exhibit successive events in their connexion of cause and effect, and to trace a certain law of development, to make us understand and appreciate the character of individuals and of political bodies. It seems, therefore, advisable to pause here for a moment, and to review the sources of information possessed by the oldest annalists. We are the more called upon to do so as we require a justification for tarrying so long in the labyrinth of legends and of traditions more perplexing than instructive.

Roman

Before the second Punic war, the Romans possessed The no connected general account of their own history. An annalists. annalistic literature first grew up with the Greek work of Fabius Pictor, and continued to be cultivated until the

BOOK
II.

Roman gentes.

Their

chronicles.

end of the republic. It is from these annalists, whose works have all perished, that our authorities, such as Livy and Dionysius, have derived their information. But even Fabius Pictor and his imitators had predecessors, and it is important for us to know these predecessors, and to judge of the materials from which they gathered the knowledge of things which happened before their time.

The Roman nation was formed by the union of tribes and houses, which had been originally almost or entirely independent, whose recollections extended much further back than those of the united community, and whose peculiarities were lost only by degrees in the general character of the Roman people. Every family had its own domestic duties and religious rites, sanctuaries, and festivals, the preservation of which was considered a most sacred duty. Each peculiar custom gave rise to certain historical traditions, which were the common property of all the members of the family, and were preserved the more scrupulously as the happiness and prosperity of the family were supposed to depend upon the due observance of their religious duties. Thus there were formed distinct groups of families, closely connected together, and distinguished from the rest of the community by the common name of the house (nomen gentile). No ancient people possessed such a strongly developed and exclusive organisation of families and houses as subdivisions of the community at large as the Roman, and nowhere was family pride carried to such an extent.1

The history of Rome grew up in a manner analogous to the Roman people. As families, houses, and tribes were combined to make up the body of the citizens, so the private traditions, chronicles, and monuments of the dis

Indications of this family pride are to be found in every direction. We will notice in this place only the practice of designating the laws by the names of those men who had introduced them into the legislature. This is to some extent, but not officially, the practice in England, a country more under the influence of hereditary legislators and a small number of noble families than any other in modern Europe.

tinguished families of the Roman nobility were the ma-
terials out of which Fabius Pictor and his successors
formed the history of the Roman commonwealth. Even
though we had no authentic evidence of the existence of
such family chronicles, we still could infer, from what we
know of the patrician pride, that in every family traditions
of the noble deeds of their forefathers must have been most
carefully preserved. Even in the oldest period of the
republic, and within the body of the patricians, there was
a select nobility, founded on the distinction which certain
ancestors had won in the service of the state.
It was
accordingly of great importance to preserve the evidence
of the exploits of the great men belonging to each noble
family, and to record the offices which they had filled,' in
such a manner as would serve, before the whole nation, as
a public proof of nobility. Hence the care bestowed on
the images of ancestors, which were preserved in the hall
of each house; and hence the solemn pomp of the funerals,
in which a noble Roman was accompanied to the grave
not only by his living friends and relatives, but by the
whole series of his ancestors, clothed in the robes of their
offices. Hence, also, the solemn funeral orations and
laudations, which to a certain extent took the place of a
national epic poem or a popular history, and which pre-
served the memory of the most important transactions.
Out of these funeral orations and family traditions arose
the domestic chronicles, which, as we are told on good

It is highly characteristic of the administration of the Roman republic, that the houses of the nobility served as public archives. Pliny, Hist. Nat., xxxv. 2: 'Tablina codicibus implebantur et monumentis rerum in magistratu gestarum.' See Festus, s. v. Tablinum, p. 356, ed. Müller. These records of public acts constituted in themselves a species of history; at least they were the groundwork on which portions of the history of Rome could be based; but of course they were liable to be tampered with through the vanity of those who had the keeping of them. Sir G. C. Lewis (Credibility of Early Roman History, i. 137) remarks: That such should have been the ordinary practice at Rome is not to be wondered at, when it is remembered that, even in England, up to a comparatively late date, it was the practice of the Secretaries of State and other high officers to carry away all their official correspondence on going out of office.'

CHAP.

XIX.