Chapter IV: Part 4

The general tendency of philology in Germany could not but lead to a critical treatment of Roman history, based on research. For the last forty years it has gained a settled character. The movement in it began on several quite distinct points, it lay in the very essence of the whole development of our literature. Men like Lessing, who, without any accurate philological learning, was endowed with a most philological spirit, and Winkelmann, are to be considered as the true fathers of modern improved philology. Thus also the attempts of Heyne and Ernesti, although very imperfect ones; the revival of historical jurisprudence;[32] as well as that of grammatical philology, by Reiz, Wolf, Hermann, the translations of Voss and others, have contributed much to Roman history. The spirit was awakened, the language moulded by Lessing and Goethe, and the age with its gigantic changes and revolutions filled every thing with life; and exertion was felt to be a necessity. All this must have reacted upon Roman history, and the more so as political affairs assimilated to those of the ancient Romans. By these circumstances especially, my attention was directed to the Roman state as it really was, and first turned to inquire into the question, why those violent struggles had taken place in Rome. Thus Roman history was now no more treated merely sceptically, but critically; results took the place of exploded inventions; it was shown what we are to believe, and what to reject as invention or interpolation; and, moreover, this advantage has been gained, that people know what they may receive as truth, with regard to ancient Roman history in general, without engaging in vain attempts to pursue it into all its details, with the dates accurately specified. In this immense labyrinth, these researches, as far as they regard the early times, could not succeed at once. He who entered into them was still fettered by many prejudices: he saw the goal, but got bewildered on his way. Thus it was imperatively demanded by good faith and conscientiousness, not to remain satisfied with what was already found, and to take courage to find the solution of enigmas. What could be gained for the early times, is now gained in all essential points; and it is time that these researches should not grow too much into fashion. Not that I am afraid, that the results obtained may be shaken; but since this work is limited by the extent of the sources, until fresh ones be discovered, nothing, on the one hand, can have been missed; and, on the other, nothing essential yet remains to be done. It is to be wished that men’s energies may now be directed to those points, from which important results are to be expected, especially within the range of the later periods. To know and to understand these, one should necessarily be acquainted with the ancient ages and forms; but one ought not to believe that the interest of the Roman history leaves off where contemporary accounts begin; as if those things only were interesting which are to be guessed. The Roman history is a whole. Emerging from the darkest ages, where it can be only restored by combinations, comparisons, and analogies, it reaches that stage in which it is borne out by the evidence of persons who are well informed. The remainder of Roman history, from the time when it becomes historical, must likewise be investigated, in order to gain settled results; or where they are already gained, calmly to examine them, and to make use of the materials which have been brought to light.

The study of ancient history requires for its basis a sound, able, philological, and grammatical spirit, which is proof against every temptation to indulge in fanciful etymologies; a well cultivated and practised taste, so as to distinguish possibilities or probabilities, and realities; a matured judgment; a knowledge of human and civil affairs, of those things which have happened in different ages, according to the same laws; and above all, _conscientiousness and uprightness, free from all feelings of display and vanity,--a blameless walk before God_. The adage of former times ought well to be laid to heart, that learning is the fruit of uprightness and piety.

When once we have a correct system of Roman antiquities, it will belong to scientific Roman history as an introduction to it. Now they are treated very differently from each other. The older works contain much that is excellent concerning those times for which Roman literature is coeval. In ancient geography also, a chorography of ancient Italy is still wanting; as to Mannert’s work, it can only receive a very qualified recommendation. Much better are Cluver’s _Italia Antiqua_ and _Sicilia_, colossal works, which are, however, so rare, and so costly, that one cannot refer the student to them. In the details little is to be added, almost every thing in the classical writers which happens to bear upon the settlement of chorographical points being incorporated in them. What is decidedly deficient is the survey of the ancient nations; all his general views are vague. Yet the description of the country is admirable for his times.

As to maps, that of d’Anville is unquestionably to be recommended. D’Anville was a genius: he possessed the acuteness to discriminate among conflicting statements those which were worthy of belief; he was like a great artist, who, with very simple instruments, does more than another with the most perfect ones. His works on the interior of Africa are extraordinary, considering the few notices which he had. Not to be excelled are his maps of Gaul, Spain, and Britain; unsurpassed is his map of Italy, although much might be improved in it. He is less perfect with regard to Greece. For Epirus and Macedon, he was of course unable to make use of the more correct information of modern times, the interior of these countries not being then explored by travellers; the Peloponnesus he worked out mostly from the Portulan maps. Barbié du Bocage, his pupil, was likewise highly to be esteemed; but with such a predecessor, he was in a disadvantageous position. He continued several of d’Anville’s works with little success. He found, for instance, that Patras in d’Anville’s map was placed 30 minutes too far north, and he accordingly changed the position; yet, although he was in the right, he twenty years afterwards restored it to d’Anville’s original position. D’Anville has in Italy one single mathematical error with regard to the south-eastern part of Naples, where the country of the Sallentines lies about 20 minutes too little to the east. For d’Anville had as yet no other maps at hand but the Venetian ones, in which the outlines are generally excellent, but the longitudes for the most part incorrect. The comparison of d’Anville’s maps with those of his predecessors, as those of Delisle and others, makes him still more admirable. His map of Egypt is an extraordinary performance, if we consider that he had only the rude outlines of the Arabian and Turkish maps to work from. An apparent defect in his map of Italy is this, that it represents a distinct period, about that of Augustus, and in consequence there is a discrepancy in the settlement of the confines which might make one inclined to censure him; and yet one ought to be very careful not to do so. Samnium, for instance, according to Livy, still included a very large tract which d’Anville draws into Apulia, because he follows the description of Italy by Pliny.

Thoroughly bad is Reichardt’s map of Italy. Reichardt has no idea of ancient geography, and his map is a medley of ignorance and impudence. Places which never existed are described by him as towns of importance;--this he does in the case of Sublanuvium, Subaricia, stages for changing horses laid down in ancient itineraries beneath Lanuvium and Aricia, towns which were built on hills. A place of this kind happens to be called _ad bivium_, from which Reichardt makes a town _ad Birium_, of the size of Præneste and others in Latium. Aquila, founded during the middle ages, is described by him as an old Sabine town, merely because it bears a Roman name. Politorium, Medullia, and other towns in the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, the accurate position of which is no more by any means to be made out, are placed by him just as fancy leads him, and on sites besides where they certainly could not have stood. He brings the Volscians as far as the mouth of the Tiber, whilst no one makes them extend farther than to Antium. Could I have overcome my disgust, and looked over the map of this man yet more accurately, I might have found many other similar blunders. Its only recommendation is the beauty of the engraving. D’Anville as yet remains unsurpassed. My father, who was certainly a competent judge in this matter, never spoke of him but in the highest terms of acknowledgment.

IMPORTANCE OF ROMAN HISTORY.

The importance of Roman history is one of those points which have never perhaps been gainsayed. There may be persons who have their prejudices with regard to the value of ancient history in general, yet even they will not deny that of Roman history. In other branches of knowledge, it either appears as an introduction, or as an integral part of the preparatory discipline. As long as the Roman law continues to hold among us the position which it now has, an accurate knowledge of Roman antiquity will be indispensable. Such will it likewise be for the divine, to whom the results which follow from the connexion of ecclesiastical with profane history are quite lost, if he be deficient in the knowledge of Roman history and Roman antiquities. With regard to many another science, there are fewer relations in which Roman history becomes of any importance; yet even then points of contact will not be wanting. It has its importance, for the history of human life in general, for the history of diseases, &c. Yet if, taking a wider and scientific view, we look on history as an independent branch of knowledge, that of Rome is the most important of all. All the ancient histories merge into the Roman, all the modern spring from it. Not only the philologist who occupies himself from preference with Roman literature, ought to be so familiar with the history and the antiquities of that people, that he may read its authors as he would contemporaries; but he also ought to do this, who makes the Greek his principal task, otherwise he would remain one-sided in his views. At all events, he ought to be acquainted with the concluding period of the Greek people, and to know how it fared under the rule of the Romans. If we balance the two histories against each other, the Roman one has by far the better claim to the higher rank. A small population enlarges itself, rules at first over thousands, then over hundreds of thousands, then lords it over the world from the rising to the setting sun; the whole of the west adopts their language and institutions, and their laws are to this day still in force for millions,--such greatness has no parallel in history. Add to this, the individual greatness of the men; the spectacle of all the states waning before this star; the extraordinary character of the institutions by which this is partly brought about; all this imparts to Roman history its peculiar durability and importance. For these reasons, even in the middle ages, in those times when learning was most neglected, it was, although in an imperfect form, yet always held in honour as history. By the Roman literature, science and civilization were first restored; Dante and Petrarch felt as warmly for the men of the Roman era, as an old Roman himself would have done. Valerius Maximus was during the middle ages the mirror of virtue, which with the Holy Scriptures was read by every one. The tribune Rienzi is said to have read all the books of the ancients. The Teutonic Knights had a book, still extant at Königsberg, which was read during dinner, containing stories from the Old Testament, and from the heroic age of Rome.[33] Thus since the restoration of learning to the present day, although Roman history was not always very profitably studied, there has notwithstanding ever been in every one a certain vague feeling which told them that it was transcendently important and instructive.

MANNER IN WHICH THE EARLY HISTORY OF ROME ORIGINATED.

When Fabius began to write the Roman history, his materials consisted of the _Annales Pontificum_; the Fasti; the _Libri Pontificum_, and _Augurales_ for the time nearer his own; of the _Laudationes_, and of lays. Of the scantiness of these sources we have already convinced ourselves, but what were their contents? They cannot have been less worthy of belief than our Merovingian and other ancient annals. As the _Annales Pontificum_ commenced _ab initio rerum Romanarum_, or at least from Numa, they might have been very authentic. The pontiffs, as Dionysius informs us, had with the greatest accuracy recorded in them year by year from the era of the kings; in the _Fasti Triumphales_ it was even entered on what days the kings had triumphed over their foes. The consideration, however, that the ancient history, as it lies before us, is impossible, must lead us to the question of the credibility of the oldest annals. Our task therefore is that of now showing that the earliest history contains impossibilities; that it is poetical, and that every thing in it which does not bear the impress of a poetical character is a forgery; that thence it follows that the history must be reduced to ancient songs, and to a later invented chronology, which was adapted to those lays.

The accounts of the earliest times are materially different in Livy and Dionysius. Livy wrote his first book without any division of years, and with extraordinary fairness; he also had evidently Ennius before his eyes, as one may see from a comparison of the fragments of that poet with Livy;--e. g. Lib. II, 10. with _Fragm. Ennii_, _Teque pater Tiberine tuo cum numine sancto_. Dionysius tries to make out a true history. He takes it for granted that the Roman history must be capable of being restored in its details; that a truly historical groundwork was built over with fabulous legends; and so he endeavours to reconstruct it according to his notions; in doing which he sometimes makes himself really ridiculous by his pragmatical speeches in the mythic ages. Livy, on the contrary, writes history, as he found it in the oldest books, and as it appeared to him most beautiful, giving what was the old narrative before it was spoiled by too much art; and for this reason his account is the most unadulterated source for those times.

The history of the wondrous birth of Romulus is an historical impossibility, although it was historicised by the school of Piso. This is also the case with the rape of the Sabine women, of whom, according to the original tale, there were thirty; with the removal of Romulus from the earth during an eclipse of the sun;[34] and likewise with the long reign of Numa in unbroken peace, and that marriage of his with the goddess Egeria, which in the belief of Scipio’s contemporaries was held to be quite as historical as the Punic wars. There is a poetical impress of hoar antiquity in the story of the combat between the Horatii and the Curiatii, who were born by two sisters in one day, the effect of which is already somewhat marred in Livy. We next arrive at Tarquinius Priscus, who, with Tanaquil his wife came to Rome in the eighth year of the reign of Ancus (which lasted twenty-three years), then reigned himself thirty-eight more, and being at his death upwards of eighty, left infants behind him, who were brought up during the forty-three years’ reign of Servius; so that Tarquin the Proud must have been at least fifty years old, when he killed his father-in-law. Tanaquil, who lives to see this, and exacts an oath from Servius not to resign the crown, must at that time have been a hundred and fifteen years old. One of the first things told us of Servius is this, that a flame burns round his head, for the natural explanation of which Dionysius wishes to give hints. Collatinus is stated to have been the son of a brother of Tarquinius Priscus; this brother, it is said, was born before the removal of Tarquinius Priscus to Rome, a hundred and thirty-five years previous to the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, and his son is now, more than a hundred and twenty years after his father’s birth, a young man of thirty. Brutus is described as a _tribunus celerum_, which was the highest office attainable by one of the equestrian body, by virtue of which he represents the king, assembles the senate, and is called upon to officiate at the highest sacrifices; and this office the king is declared to have given to a man whom he considered as half-witted and therefore deprived of the management of his own property, while Brutus, on the other hand, is said to have feigned imbecility that he might ward off the envy and covetousness of the king. He is stated to have been the son of a daughter of Tarquinius Priscus, and to have been afraid of rousing the anger of the king by taking upon himself the administration of his own possessions; yet Tarquin was not even of the same _gens_ as himself. In the beginning of Tarquin’s reign, Brutus was a child; but immediately after the king’s expulsion, he has sons who are grown up youths.

All these details connected with dates, the list of which, down to the times of Camillus, might be vastly swelled, are so characterised by marks of inconsistency and historical impossibility, that it may safely be concluded that here we are entitled to the exercise of criticism. Let us now call to mind the twofold sources of the earliest Roman history,--the chronological ones, the Fasti, the _Annales Pontificum_; and the unchronological ones, the lays, _Laudationes_, the _Libri Pontificum_ and _Augurales_. With regard to the chronological ones, we see that in the oldest accounts of Fabius, from the building of Rome to its destruction by the Gauls, 360 years are reckoned; precisely the number of the γένη in Attica, which number the Greeks already (especially Aristotle, from whom the grammarians Pollux, Harpocration, and others borrowed) declared to have been in imitation of the solar year. If we look more closely into it, 360 is the middle number between those of the days of the solar and lunar year, and the nearest to either of these capable of being conveniently divided. The time assigned for the kings, according to the older reckoning, was 240 years; that for the republic, 120. This number has the same mathematical character as those of the Indian ages of the world, the Babylonian, and other eastern numbers. The 120 years for the republic are received also by those who deem the whole period to have been 365 years. Whether these 120 years are correct, remains indeed to be decided according to one’s views with regard to the epoch of the dedication of the Capitol. That the annals of the pontiffs were destroyed when the city was burned by the Gauls, is strongly confirmed by Claudius (without doubt Claudius Quadrigarius) in Plutarch, and indirectly by Livy, who cannot state it in a direct manner, or else he would have declared his first books to be worthless. An additional proof of it is the fact, that the eclipse of the sun in the year 350 was the first one really observed which occurred in the annals; whereas all the earlier ones were calculated afterwards, and of course incorrectly, with the aid of the scientific means which then existed. For the first 240 years we have seven kings, who reigned for an immense time, most of them about forty years. Newton has already pointed out how improbable it was, that a succession of princes should have all ruled for so long a period, and he has assigned seventeen years as an average for each. The most exact parallel, however, is to be found among the doges of Venice, who also were elective princes like the Roman kings. There have been forty doges within the space of five centuries (800 to 1300), so that there were eight of these to a century. When we now look more closely at the numbers of the Roman kings, we find in them a play upon numbers, as among the eastern nations. To understand this, we must premise the following remarks.

The Etruscans had as the basis of their chronology two sorts of _sæcula_, physical and astronomical, of which the latter consisted of a hundred and ten years, as the received average number of the physical one. By a twofold intercalation, the calendar was rectified to within a wonderfully small fractional difference, a hundred and ten of these years very nearly corresponding to a hundred and thirty-two years of ten months; and thus an astronomical period was constituted. The length of the physical _sæculum_ was thus fixed. The life of him who outlived all those who had been alive at the foundation of a state, marked the first _sæculum_; the second was determined by the longest life among those who were alive at the conclusion of the first, and so on. Now there is an old tradition in Plutarch and Dio Cassius, and in Dionysius at least an allusion to it, that Numa was born on the day of the foundation of Rome, and therefore the first _sæculum_ at Rome probably ended with his death in the year 77.[35] If this was the case, we then see the reason why Romulus was made to reign thirty-eight years (the number of the weeks of the year of ten months), and Numa thirty-nine. For the last five kings one had historical traditions; yet they did not extend through the whole of the regal period. Rome has surely had by far more than five kings; but as a founder was wanted besides for the Ramnes, and another for the Tities, the number was chosen which had a sacred meaning, that of the planets, &c. The middle point in two hundred and forty years is the end of the hundred and twentieth, just the middle of the reign of the fourth king out of seven, evidently an artificial arrangement. Twenty-three years were given him, so that people might be able to begin to date them from the year 110, as they always wished for the beginning some distinguished number, and a hundred and ten was the sæcula number. The old year had ten months, and a hundred and thirty of those years are equal to a hundred and ten of the later ones. The reign of Ancus must therefore have been placed between 110 and 132. What is between 77 and 110, namely, thirty-two years, is now of course to be assigned to Tullus Hostilius. Tarquinius Priscus reigns until 170, half a century being added to the middle of the regal period; his reign therefore lasted thirty-eight years. The twenty-five years of the last king may be historical, or a quarter of a century may have been assigned to him in round numbers. For Servius Tullius there now remains the time from 170 to 215. But let us now suppose that the two reigns of Tarquinius Priscus and of Servius Tullius did not last so long, then every inconsistency vanishes, and the old unanimous account that Tarquinius Superbus was the son of Tarquinius Priscus reasserts its claims. We thus see how the greatest absurdities may arise from chronological restorations, as in this case there is a palpable forgery.

Although the other sources of the earliest history, the old lays, may not also have been tampered with, they are nevertheless altogether insufficient. We have a parallel case to this in our own Nibelungenlied, the poets of which likewise did not wish to deceive, nor did they make any pretensions whatever to be annalists. Historical characters appear in it,--Theodoric, Attila, the Burgundians; and yet of the whole poem nothing belongs to history. Nor has history any part in Romulus and Numa. They belong to the cycle of the gods, Romulus as the son of Mars, and Numa as the husband of Egeria; Romulus is merely a personification of Rome. Other poems have more historical matter in them; for instance, the Spanish romances of the Cid. Here the outlines are undoubtedly historical; but they form as it were a line only, whilst the description as given in the poem is a plane. There is also much of this in Roman history. He who utterly rejects the whole of the early Roman history, does not know what he is saying. Romulus and Numa are included within the first sæculum, because they do not at all belong to history; and therefore they form a sæculum of their own, and as it were quite a different era. From thence whatever was discovered of old traditions concerning the kings and their time, much of which was in circulation, had now its place assigned to it in the chronological cycle. Those who think this criticism doubtful, would not do so if they were more familiar with what is nearer our own times. It is well known how the romances of the middle ages about Charlemagne and his Paladins, refer to Latin chronicles the authorship of which is ascribed to the Archbishop Turpin. These are now allowed to figure as romances by the side of history; but who would believe that not a hundred and fifty years after Charlemagne, in the reign of Otho the Great, at a time therefore when the crusades were not yet in the remotest manner thought of, there appears already in the Chronicle of Benedict of Soracte a most detailed account of an expedition of Charlemagne to Jerusalem, and that without any consciousness of its falsehood. Before the extinction of the Carlovingian race, utterly fictitious expeditions across the Alps, &c., taken from the history of Charlemagne, are related at large in the Chronicles as positive facts. We are now able to disprove them, because we have contemporary annals, and the history of Eginhard; and as for the expedition to Jerusalem, even without these we may also disprove it from eastern annals.--The same thing occurs in Ireland. There also, pretended annals exist in which a succession of kings are found, among whom Niall the Great, about the time of the emperor Theodosius, conquers Britain, Gaul, and Spain, crosses the Alps, and threatens the emperor in Rome. The most decisive proof can be brought against this completely fabulous tale, as the authentic history in this case is generally known.[36] Had we likewise older books of history to check the Roman legends with, we might just as easily get the proof of the want of authenticity of the early Roman history. In the meanwhile where shall we find them? The Greeks had no intercourse with Rome, and although they knew of the Romans at a much earlier period than is generally supposed, yet they did not trouble themselves about them, precisely because they never came into contact with them. The case would be quite different with the Greeks of Southern Italy, and the Siceliotes, of whom we have, however, no more authors left. Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides can mention the Romans. There nevertheless exists a notice which gives one a sample of Roman history as it was told among other nations, quite a detached fragment of Etruscan history. The case is as follows,--Claudius, afterwards emperor, who was so unfortunate in his youth, who was disowned by his mother, and whose feeble understanding, in spite of his other good qualities, was entirely spoiled by ill-treatment, seems to have excited Livy’s pity, who gave him instruction and encouragement for writing history. Thus he wrote several works, Καρχηδονιακά, in eight, and Tυῤῥηνικά, in twenty books, certainly in Greek, the loss of which we have very much to regret. Even Pliny does no more quote this latter work. But in the sixteenth century two tablets were discovered, on which fragments of an oration of the emperor Claudius are found, wherein he proposes in the senate to give the Lugdunensian Gauls the full citizenship, and to admit them into the senate, as had long been the case already in the _Provincia Romana_. The inhabitants of Gaul were Roman citizens, had Roman names, yet they had not the right of admission into the senate. With this right the emperor Claudius presented Lugdunensian Gaul. The two brazen tablets are still left, out of several which contained the speech mentioned by Tacitus; and they either do not immediately join each other, or a considerable piece must be wanting at the bottom. Before the French Revolution they were still in the town hall at Lyons; whether they be still there, I know not. Lipsius had them printed in his edition of Tacitus, Gruter in the Corpus Inscriptionum; but yet they have been little read. They give us an idea of the stupidity of Claudius, so that we feel assured that the ancients have not done him injustice. In this harangue he says at full length what Tacitus very summarily condensed, that we ought not to say that this was an innovation. Innovations had been made from the beginning of the state; foreigners had ever been received, as for instance the Sabines of Titus Tatius. Even foreigners had been made kings--Numa; Tarquin the Etruscan, a descendant of the Greeks; Servius Tullius, who, according to our annals, was a Corniculensian, but according to the Tuscan ones was a Tuscan of the name of Mastarna, a follower of Cæles Vibenna. He emigrated and settled on the Mons Cælius, which was so called by him after the name of his leader, and now called himself Servius Tullius. This is therefore a direct proof of how matters stood at that time with regard to the Roman annals; for there is nothing whatever in which we can make this Etruscan Mastarna and Servius Tullius, the son of a bondwoman, tally with each other.

Undoubtedly therefore the earliest Roman history has sprung from lays. Perizonius quotes examples from other nations; even in the historical books of the Old Testament, there are such lays. With regard to the Romans, he cites the testimony of Cato, to which Cicero refers in two passages. “Would that the lays were still in existence;” Cicero writes, “for as Cato says, they were sung at table by the guests in praise of deceased men!” A third mention we find in Nonius Marcellus from Varro, that at banquets _pueri honesti_ sang lays in praise of departed great men, either to the flute, or without any accompaniment. This evidence every one must acknowledge as authentic. Among all the nations of whose peculiar original early literature we can form any judgment, there are found either longer historical poems of the epic class, or else very short ones in praise of individual men. In order to pave the way for the assertion that we have still pieces left of both from the Romans, we must first premise some remarks on their most ancient metres.

The ancient Romans, before they adopted the Greek poetic system, made use of the Saturnian verse. Horace says of it,

Horridus ille
Defluxit numerus Saturnius

and several old grammarians have given accounts of it. Atilius Fortunatianus and others among them, who knew nothing about its structure, stuck to a couple of verses which had been preserved; particularly to the following, in which, according to the views which then prevailed, a hypercatalectical Senarius makes its appearance:

Malum dabunt Metelli Nævio Poëtæ.

Terentianus Maurus, who belongs to the end of the third century, speaks of it when treating of the Anacreontic verse, because the first division of the Saturnian bears some resemblance to it. But the real Saturnian verse is quite a different one, which I intend shortly to prove in a detailed treatise. It has many forms, and is altogether distinct from Greek metres. The Latin term for Rhythmus, which in later times only was applied to Greek metres, is _numeri_. But the Greek metre is based on music and quantity, while in theirs the Romans really _counted_, the syllables being little measured, or rather not at all: a certain degree of rhythm was, however, kept. Our ancestors, in the same way, had no idea of short and long syllables in the Greek manner; and in the old Latin church hymns likewise short syllables are made long, and _vice versa_. Plautus and Terence also, in their iambic and trochaic verses, really observed the ryhthmical measure only, and not the quantity. This is the case with all northern people. The pervading characteristic of the Saturnian verse is this, that it must consist of a fixed number of trisyllabic feet. Generally speaking there are four of them, in which either Bacchics or Cretics interchange with Spondees. Sometimes the Cretics and sometimes the Bacchics predominate. When kept distinct they have a very fine movement; but they are usually very much mingled together, so that it is difficult to make them out.

These verses, found from the very earliest times, are quite analogous to the Persian, Arabian, and to our own old German and northern ones, and also to those of the Anglo-Saxon, and to all in which alliteration prevails. The old German verse is divided into two halves, in the first of which two words begin with the same consonant, which once more occurs again in the second, and it has four beats. In the old Saxon Harmony of the Gospels there is this quadruple measure, and likewise in Otfrid and others; but five or six measures may also be found. In Persian poetry there are uniformly four feet of three syllables each; in Arabic this is often the case, but not unseldom there are quadrisyllabic ones also. Exactly agreeing with these are the Spanish _coplas de arte major_, which were in use before the introduction of the Alexandrine, and have also passed into the Flemish. In all probability this metre was also used in the longer poems of the Provençal. This old Roman syllabic measure is universal in the Roman poems down to the seventh century. I have found a long string of them, and a chapter of an old grammarian with fragments of wonderful beauty, principally from Nævius. This important treatise on the Saturnian verse I shall publish. For this grammarian has really understood that metre,[37] which in Plautus is worked up to a high degree of beauty.

There are also shorter old poems in this measure. At the funerals of the Romans, _Neniæ_, as they were called, were sung to the flute, which were not doleful sentimental songs, but must have been of the same character as the _Laudationes_. The dead had now passed over to their illustrious ancestors; their glory was made the theme of pride and exultation; and therefore in these Neniæ praise was simply given them. When Horace says, _absint inani funere neniæ_, &c. this refers, if there was any singing at all at funerals, to the dirges of the later age. The Romans were not originally tender-hearted. They made even the dead man of use to the State, and from the grave itself he exhorted others to follow him in his deeds. Neniæ and Laudationes were therefore quite plain and simple, in that old style which did not yet know of any construction of periods, and they are no way to be compared to the λόγοι ἐπιτάφιοι in Thucydides and the later Greeks. Two such poems are evidently still preserved to us, in the tombs of the Scipios, which were discovered in 1780, by the Appian road. The upper story, where the sarcophagus of the younger Africanus and the statue of Ennius were, is wanting; but the lower one, which was scooped out of the hill side, was found choked up with rubbish. Here was the sarcophagus of L. Scipio Barbatus, who had been a consul in the fifth century (454). At an earlier period,[38] this tomb had been already entered from the top, and a tablet taken out, which is now built into the wall of the Barberini palace; yet this had fallen into oblivion. The bodies of the Cornelii down to Sylla were not burned in the Pelasgian, or Greek manner, but buried in coffins. On these noble sarcophagi there are verses, written indeed like prose, but divided by dashes; and on the sarcophagus of the son the verses are even arranged in lines. That they are verses is to be seen from their unequal length, as otherwise the Romans always wrote every line to its full length. These are quite plain and simple verses, yet there is still some metre in them.

_Cornéliu’ Lúciu’ Scípio Barbátus,_
_Gnáivo prognátu’, fortis vír sapiénsque--_
_Consúl, censor, aédilis, quí fuit apúd vos, etc._

These are surely the _Neniæ_ which were sung at the time, and then inscribed on the tomb. The old songs at the banquets, were for the most part quite as simple.

Now these _Neniæ_, together with the _Laudationes_ kept in the Atrium, are sources for the earliest history. There were besides some longer epic poems among the Romans, as well as among other people; for instance, the Servians, &c. The modern Greek songs are only of a lyrical description, but those of the Servians are a combination of the epic with the lyric. A fragment of an heroic poem of this kind on the combat of the Horatii and Curatii, I think I have discovered in Livy. Now it is not by any means to be supposed that Livy had still seen these old heroic poems, and written from them; but he wrote, either directly or indirectly, through Varro, from the books of the pontiffs and augurs, in which very many fragments of such ancient epic lays were preserved; many of them dating even from the time of the taking of the city. In the passage of Livy alluded to, wherein the appeal to the people is related, which he had taken from these books, he speaks of _lex horrendi carminis_. The formulas of that time were, however, called _carmina_, and were written in the old measure. That Livy has indirectly or directly borrowed from these books is so much the more certain, as Cicero asserts, that the formula of the _provocatio ad populum_ was contained in the _libri augurales_. The formula is

Duúmviri pérduelliónem júdicent, &c.

in which the old metre is still to be recognised.

That Cicero’s assertion, _laudationibus historia nostra facta est mendosior_, is acknowledged also by Livy, has been already remarked. For as every thing good may easily be turned to evil, that lofty feeling of family pride which the Romans had was also liable to be perverted, and we may well believe that saying.

After the first scanty notices from the earlier times were for the most part destroyed in the Gallic devastation, they were restored from outlines taken from the songs of the _Vates_; the poems were changed in passing from mouth to mouth, and from these combined with the _Laudationes_ history arose. These are the materials which Fabius found extant.

If we look at the tenth book of Livy, we find in it a disproportionate prolixity in the account of the campaigns of Fabius Maximus Rullianus. Now this is exactly an instance of a story taken from family records. In fact not a few statements may even be pointed out, which have no other source than family vanity. People even ventured to interpolate fictitious consulships and triumphs into the family annals, as Livy himself tells us.

Again, other falsifications have arisen from national pride. The forgeries of patriotism manifest themselves among the Romans whenever they suffered great disasters; and this is particularly the case with the momentous ones of the earlier time, with the war of Porsena, the Gallic calamity, and the disgrace at Caudium, in which the whole account is a lying one. Others have sprung from that spirit of caste, which in earlier times led to continual struggles. Both parties thus brought false accusations against each other, which afterwards found their way into history; or, on the other hand, palliation was also attempted in order to disguise political or moral crimes. The blame of the worst events is laid to the people’s charge; yet it is innocent, and the guilt belongs wholly to its antagonists. Not the people, but the Curies condemned Manlius to death; these also pronounced the disgraceful decision between the Ardeates and the people of Aricia;[39] nay, we may be sure that it was the Curies which compelled Camillus to go into exile.

Such falsifications accumulate, become involved in each other, and give rise to this strange confusion. The rich materials, widely scattered indeed, because the parties did not allow of their being brought together, we may gather in order to find out by critical research the organization and the nature of the Roman nation; and on the whole to carry on their history to that point at which contemporary accounts from the Greeks begin, to the war with Pyrrhus, and the first Punic war. Much will indeed remain undecided in these inquiries; but we may exactly discriminate where this must needs be the case, and where it is otherwise.

THE EARLIEST HISTORY.

The Roman history goes back to Latium, and through Latium to Troy. Since Dio Chrysostom has started the question, whether Troy ever existed at all, a vast deal has been written on the subject; and also upon this other point, whether Æneas came to Italy. The treatise of Theodore Ryckius[40] about it is particularly well known. He deems the arrival of Æneas to be historical, in opposition to Bochart, who is one of the last highly gifted French philologists,[41] and at all events is superior to him in discernment. Bochart’s hypothesis concerning the influence of the Phœnicians, is doubtless carried too far. No one, however, will now any more put the question thus; but one must ask, has the legend that the Trojans came to this coast any historical foundation? and, moreover, has the legend arisen among the Greeks, and passed over to Italy; or is it a native Italian tradition which cannot, at least by us, be traced back to Greek sources? If the latter be the case, some truth must surely be at the bottom of it, and the less one takes these ancient accounts in their literal meaning, the more are they found to partake of possibility.

There is no question but that in the earliest times there were in Greece two peoples who were very nearly akin, but still distinct from each other; so much so that they did not understand each other’s language, as Herodotus positively asserts. One of these languages as opposed to the other was considered as barbarous; and yet, when looked upon from a different point of view, they may be said to be both of them closely related. There are still several living languages which stand in a similar degree of affinity,--the Polish and the Bohemian, the Italian and the Spanish, and, although we may not find the relationship to be so close, the Polish and Lithuanian. The two last languages are as wide as heaven and earth asunder; yet for all that they have a characteristic similarity. The grammar of both has the same development, the same peculiarities; the numerals are nearly the same; a great many words are common to both. These languages are therefore branches of the same stock, and yet the Poles do not understand the Lithuanians. Now this is the manner in which we solve the question so often mooted concerning the difference or identity of the Greeks and the Pelasgians. When Herodotus says that they were different, we must after all believe him; yet, on the other hand, he places the Hellenes and Pelasgians again side by side. The two nations cannot therefore be of different race.

In the earliest times, when the Greek history is yet veiled to us in impenetrable mystery, the greater part of Italy, perhaps the whole eastern shore of the Adriatic sea, Epirus, Macedon,[42] the southern coast of Thrace, the Macedonian peninsulas, the islands of the Ægean, and also the coasts of Asia Minor to the Bosporus were inhabited by Pelasgians.[43] The Trojans also are to be looked upon as Pelasgians. That they were no barbarians is the opinion of all the Greeks, as we also see already from Homer; their abode is quite in the Pelasgian country; their names are Greek. They are in close conjunction at one time with the Arcadians, another essentially Pelasgian people, then with the Epirots, then also with the Thessalians; and Æneas, according to one tradition, goes to Arcadia and dies there, according to another into Epirus, where Helenus settles. Thus, in like manner, we find in Pindar, in the poem on Cyrene, Aristæus, a Pelasgian hero from Arcadia, together with the Antenorides. The connexion of the Pelasgians with the Trojans extends very far. Samothrace in particular is the metropolis of Ilium; Dardanus comes from Arcadia, but passes through Samothrace, and from thence, married to Chryse, goes to Troas. The Samothracians, according to one of the grammarians, are a Roman people, acknowledged to be of kindred race with the Romans; that is to say, with the Troio-Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. This connexion has no other source but the common relationship between the Tyrrhenians, Trojans, and Samothracians. According to some accounts, Dardanus comes from Tyrrhenia to Troas; according to others, the Trojans come to Tyrrhenia. In the temple, and in the mysteries of Samothrace, there was a gathering point of many men from all quarters;[44] and it was for a great part of the world at that time as the Caaba of Mecca, the grave of the prophet at Medina, or as the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. Samothrace and Dodona were for the Pelasgian races, what perhaps to the Hellenic world Delphi and Delos were. The distance of a considerable portion of those who are linked together by a common origin ought not to have much stress laid upon it in a case like this, as it is such as not to hinder the Mahometan from making the pilgrimage to the sacred spot.

This old stock of the Pelasgians which we may trace as far as Liguria, and which also dwelt on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, vanishes in the age of history as a component part of nations; but it consisted originally of a number of tribes which bore different names. A very wide spread name for that portion which was settled in Epirus, and in the southern part of modern Italy, as far as Latium and the coast of the Adriatic Sea, was that of Siculians (_Siculi_); also Vituli, Vitelli, Vitali, Itali, from the last of which Italy takes its name. Notwithstanding the wide spread of these Siculian or Italian names, _Italia_ in the earliest times does not seem as at present to have designated the country to the foot of the Alps. It is indeed possible that the changes which followed upon the immigration of northern races severed the sea-coast from Etruria, and confined the name _Italia_ to the country south of the Tiber, or rather, south of Latium. Yet this is only a supposition, though it is certain that Italy was once bounded on the north by a line from the Garganus on one side to Terracina on the other; and that the name, which had been restricted to within yet narrower limits in the times after Alexander the Great, before the sway of Rome had begun, was again extended to that wider range. It is probably of this earlier Italy that Pliny says, that it was _querno folio similis_,--a remarkable example of the manner in which Pliny wrote. He speaks at one time in his own name, and at another he gives excerpta. Yet his excerpta are unfortunately as little weighed by him in historical matters as in those of natural history. This statement he has without doubt taken from Timæus, with whom also the comparison of Sardinia to a sandal or a foot-print originates. That in his own time Italy could not by any means be so described, entirely escaped Pliny’s notice.

In the south of Italy, the earliest inhabitants were also called Œnotrians and Peucetians; in the north, without doubt they were likewise called Liburnians; and on the coasts of Latium, Tyrrhenians.

Whether the settlements on the coast north of the Tiber were the remnants of an expelled people, or perhaps mere colonies, can no longer now be ascertained; yet there appear in the middle of Italy, besides those people which were akin to the Greeks, some of a different kind by whom the former indeed were crushed. It seems that those migrations of the different races came about in the same manner as those in modern history. The people which directly precipitates itself upon the Siculians in Latium, and the Italians in Southern Italy proper, partly expelling, and partly absorbing and assimilating them, are the Opicans (_Opici_), a mixed race, which in fact as Opicans exists only in a few places, but is again absorbed by another people, and produces new tribes. They are the same whom we meet with under the name of Apulians; for the terminations, _-icus_ and _-ulus_ are equivalent. The Italian population therefore ends in Apulia; though it reaches in appearance as far as into Messapia, where part only of the Italians maintained themselves in an isolated settlement. Moreover they were in Samnium, Campania, and on the borders of Latium as Volscians and Æquians.

These Opicans were in their turn pushed forward by the Sabines (Sabellians), who called themselves aborigines, and traced their source from the highest Alps of Abruzzo near Majella and Gran Sasso d’Italia. Cato in a somewhat extraordinary manner makes them come from Little Amiternum. Whether the Sabellians and Opicans were about as distinct from each other as the Gauls and Ligurians; or in a less degree, like the Celts and Cymri; or whether they belonged to the same stock, and were only politically separated; are questions which we cannot solve. The ancients knew not, nor did they care much about it. When we want to see at any rate where no historical light is to be had, the mind’s eye is dimmed like that of the body when it is violently strained in the dark. Varro indeed distinguishes the Sabine from the Oscan language; but as he was very little of a judge of the earlier languages, in the sense in which we should apply the term to W. von Humboldt, we have also very little reason to rely upon any of his statements concerning the relationship of languages. From a general analogy, I conceive that the tide of emigration must have set in in several streams, and that thus the Sabines also may have been carried down from the higher north by its first rush. Yet this is mere conjecture.

The Umbrians may have belonged to the same stock as the Opicans. I would not lay too great a stress on the resemblance of names; the races which are nearest akin to each other have very often the most dissimilar names, and those which are the most remote quite similar ones. Thus the Getæ and the Goths were for a long time mistaken for the same people. Fifty years ago, it was the general belief in Ireland and Scotland that the Fir-Bolgs[45] were the old Belgians; yet this is false, and they are a Danish colony, as a very well-informed Englishman wrote to me. If I had no other reasons but the names, I should hesitate to pronounce for the identity of the Opicans and Umbrians. But Philistus called the people which overcame the Siculians in Latium, Ombricans, and the affinity of the languages may also be clearly made out from what remains of them.