joe a CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY
VII PART 2 THE RISE OF ROME
ROY 274 UM be
THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY
SECOND EDITION
VOLUME VII PART 2
The Rise of Rome to 220 B.C.
Edited by F.W. WALBANK F.s.a.
Emeritus Professor, formerly Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, University of Liverpool
A.E. ASTIN
Formerly Professor of Ancient History The Queen’s University, Belfast
M.W. FREDERIKSEN R.M. OGILVIE
Assistant Editor A. DRUMMOND
Lecturer in Classics, University of Nottingham
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pict Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cB2 2Ru, UK 40 West 2oth Street, New York, Ny 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcén 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
hetp://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1989
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1989 Fifth printing 2006
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge British Library Cataloguing in Publication data The Cambridge Ancient History. - 2nd ed. Vol. 7 Pt. 2: The Rise of Rome to 220 B.c.
1. Ancient world I. Walbank, F. W. (Frank William) 930
Library of Congress Card no. 75-85719
ISBN © §21 23446 8
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CONTENTS
List of Tables page xi List of Maps xii List of Text-Figures xiii Preface xv The sources for early Roman history I
by the late R.M. Ogilvie, formerly Professor of Humanity, University of St. Andrews and A. Drummond, Lecturer in Classics, University of Nottingham
1 The surviving evidence:
(a) Literary sources I (b) Antiquarian writers 9 (c) Inscriptions 1I (d) Archaeological and other evidence 15 11 The creation of early Roman history: (a) The available data 16 (b) Techniques of reconstruction 24 (c) Conclusion 28 Archaic Rome between Latium and Etruria 30
by M. Torelli, Professor of Archaeology and the History of Greek and Roman Art, Faculty of Letters, University of Perugia
1 Introduction 30
11 Archaeology, urban development and social history 31 i Sanctuaries and palaces 39 1v Emporia and shrines at emporia 48 v Conclusion 51 The origins of Rome 52
by the late A. Momigliano, formerly Professor of Ancient History, University College London
1 The problems of context 52
u The myths of foundation 56
ut Settlement, society and culture in Latium and at Rome 63 v
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
vi CONTENTS
1v The development and growth of Rome
v The Roman kings
v1 The social, political and religious structures of the regal period
4 Rome in the fifth century I: the social and economic framework by A. Drummond
1 The Twelve Tables 11 Economy: (a) Agriculture (b) Market development and trade (c) Economic changes in the fifth century 11 Social structures: (a) Introduction (b) Family, agnates and clan (c) Kinsmen, friends and neighbours (d) Comrades and dependants (e) Social stratification
5 Rome in the fifth century II: the citizen community by A. Drummond
1 Political and constitutional developments: (a) The ancient account (b) The consular fasti and the date of the Republic (c) The patriciate and the senate (d) The consulship (e) The dictatorship (f) The consular tribunate (g) The quaestors, guaestores parricidit and duoviri (perduellionis) (h) The censorship (i) The assemblies (j) Conclusion 1 The plebeian movement: (a) Introduction (b) The First Secession and the plebeian officers (c) The Decemvirate, Second Secession and Twelve Tables (d) The character and objectives of the plebeian movement
6 Rome and Latium to 390 B.c.
by T.J. Cornell, Senior Lecturer in History, University College London
1 The growth of Roman power under the kings 11 The fall of the monarchy and its consequences 11 The Latin League
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
82 87
96
113 113
118 124 130
143 146 154 157 163
172
172 173 178 186 190 192
195 197 198 204
212 212
227 235
243
243 257 264
CONTENTS Vil
tv Rome and her allies in the fifth century 274 v The incursions of the Sabines, Aequi and Volsci 281 v1 Veii and Rome’s offensive 294 vil The Gallic disaster 302 7 The recovery of Rome 309 by T. J. Cornell 1 Rome’s widening horizons 309 11 Economic and social problems in the fourth century: poverty, land hunger and debt 323 111 Constitutional reforms and the rise of the nobility 334 Appendix. The chronology of the fourth century B.c. 347 8 The conquest of Italy 351
by T. J. Cornell 1 Rome’s first struggle with the Samnites, the defeat of the
Latins and the formation of the Roman commonwealth 351 11 The Second Samnite War 368 m1 The Roman conquest of Central Italy 372
Iv The Third Samnite War and the completion of the conquest of peninsular Italy 377
v Rome in the age of the Italian wars:
(a) Politics and government 391 (b) Economic and cultural developments 403 9 Rome and Italy in the early third century 420
by E.S. Staveley, formerly Reader in Ancient History, Bedford College, University of London
1 The Roman commonwealth 420 11 The northern frontier: Rome and the Gauls 431 ut The constitution: magistracy and assemblies 436 1v Nobilitas and senate 443 v Policies and personalities 447 to Pyrrhus 456 by P.R. Franke, Professor of Ancient History, University of the Saarland 1 The conflict between Rome and Tarentum 456 11 Pyrrhus as king of the Molossians. His policy in Greece to 281 B.C. 458 11 Pyrrhus in Tarentum. The battle of Heraclea 280 B.c. 462 tv New negotiations with Rome. The battle at Ausculum 279 B.C. 469 v Syracuse calls for help. The Romano-Punic treaty against Pyrrhus 279/8 B.c. 473 vi Pyrrhus in Sicily 477
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
viii
II
12
CONTENTS
vir Pyrrhus returns to Italy. The battle of Beneventum 275 B.C. vu Return to Epirus. The death of Pyrrhus 272 B.c. 1x Epilogue
Carthage and Rome
by the late H.H. Scullard, formerly Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, University of London
1 Carthaginian public and private life:
(a) The Carthaginian state (b) City and empire (c) Economic and social life
11 The Romano-Carthaginian treaties: (a) The early treaties (b) The first treaty (c) The second treaty: (d) Later treaties
wi The First Punic War: (a) The Mamertines and war (b) War by land and sea (c) The invasion of Africa (d) Stalemate and checkmate (e) Revolt in Africa and Sardinia
Postscript. The emergence of the provincial system
by A.E. Astin, Professor of Ancient History, The Queen’s University, Belfast
Religion in republican Rome by J.A. North, Senior Lecturer in History, University College London
1 Sources and methods 11 The priests and religious authority ur The place of gods and goddesses in the life of Rome Iv Religion and action v Adjusting to the new Republic vr Innovation and change
Appendix by A. Drummond
1 Early Roman chronology 11 The consular fasti: 509-220 B.C.
Chronological table
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
481 483 484
486
486
499 506
S17 520 526
530
537 545 554
557 566
57°
573
$73 582 59° 598 610 616
625 625 627 645
CONTENTS ix BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations page 673 A General 678 B Sources and evidence 683 a. Literary and documentary sources 683
b. Epigraphic and numismatic evidence. The development of Roman coinage 691 c. Archaeological evidence 694 C Geography 700 D__ The chronology of early Rome. The fasti consulares JO E The ‘foundation’ of Rome 7O2 a. The foundation legends 702 b. The origins and development of the city 705
F The monarchy, the establishment of the Republic and the later aspirants to kingship 708 G_ Early Rome 71 a. Social, economic and cultural development 711 b. Law 718 c. Religion 725 d. Political and military institutions 733 H_ Early republican Rome: internal politics 742
a. Patriciate and plebs. The ‘Struggle of the Orders’ to the Lex
Hortensia 742 b. Aristocratic politics in the fourth and third centuries 747 I Latium, the Latins and Rome 748 J Rome: external relations to 264 B.c. 751 a. The peoples and cultures of pre-Roman Italy 751 b. Roman expansion in Italy 757 c. Pyrrhus 761 K Rome and Carthage 763 a. Carthage: history, institutions and culture 763 b. The early Romano-Carthaginian treaties 768 c. The First Punic War 770 Index 772
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
x CONTENTS NOTE ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography is arranged in sections dealing with specific topics, which sometimes correspond to individual chapters but more often combine the contents of several chapters. References in the footnotes are to these sections (which are distinguished by capital letters) and within these sections each book or article has assigned to it a number which is quoted in the footnotes. In these, so as to provide a quick indication of the nature of the work referred to, the author’s name and the date of publication are also included in each reference. Thus “Ogilvie 1965(B129], 232’ signifies ‘R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy Books 1-5. Oxford, 1965, p. 232, to be found in Section B of the bibliography as item 129’.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
_
OOD MIN AM AY DN
_
TABLES
Roman census figures to 234/3 B.C.
The centuriate organization according to Livy
The entry of gentes into office: 509-401 B.C.
The distribution of office: 509-445 and 444-367 B.c.
Early Roman/Latin colonies with attributed or probable dates Roman triumphs: 509-368 B.c.
Roman triumphs: 367-264 B.c.
The mass enslavement of prisoners in the Third Samnite War Latin colonies: 334-263 B.C.
Roman temple construction: 302-264 B.C.
xi
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
page 137
164 207 208 280 290 363 389 495 408
on Aum RY N
10 Il 12 13 14 15
MAPS
Central Italy in the archaic period
Archaic Latium
Central Italy in the fifth century B.c.
The Celts of North Italy: fourth and third centuries B.c. The peoples of Central-Southern Italy ¢. 350 B.c. The Roman conquest of peninsular Italy (North) The Roman conquest of peninsular Italy (South) Central Samnium
Northern Greece in the time of Pyrrhus
South Italy in the time of Pyrrhus
The western Mediterranean in the third century North Africa in the third century
Sicily in the First Punic War
Panormus and its hinterland
Drepana, Eryx and Lilybaeum
xii
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
page 32-3
244 283 304 352 354 355 358 460 464
488-9
§23 538 558 561
OD OH AM RY KN
eee vw ew NN
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
TEXT-FIGURES
Etruscan inscription from Tarquinii (¢. 700 B.C.)
Fresco from Esquiline tomb (third century?)
Fragment of the Capitoline Fasti
Fragment of the Acta Capitolina Triumphalia
Denarius depicting L. Iunius Brutus and C. Servilius Ahala Depiction of hoplite column on ostrich egg from Vulci ‘Palace’ at Murlo (early sixth century): plan
Murlo ‘palace’: architectural friezes
‘Palace’ at Acquarossa (550-525 B.C.): plan
‘Palace’ at Acquarossa: reconstruction
Acquarossa ‘palace’: architectural frieze
‘Minotaur’ architectural terracotta plaque from Roman Forum Phases of the Regia: archaic period
Terracotta plaque from Sant’ Omobono temple (¢. 540/30 B.C.) Friezes depicting Pharaoh Bocchoris from faience vase at Tarquinii
Bologna stele depicting wolf with child
Lavinium ‘heroon’: plan and reconstruction
Archaic Rome: location map
Palatine hut: plan and reconstruction
Bronze tripod from Castel di Decima (¢. 720-700 B.C.) Lavinium and its environs
Minerva accompanied by Triton: statue-group from Lavinium Manios fibula
Central Rome: location map
‘Rex’ inscription from Regia
Duenos vase
Archaic temple at Sant? Omobono: plan and reconstruction Ivory lion with Etruscan inscription from Sant? Omobono Terracotta plaque from Comitium
Denarius depicting Diana Nemorensis
Denarius depicting cult statue of Artemis at Massalia
Wall paintings from Tomba Frangois at Vulci
xiil
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
page 12 13 18 20 25 36 41
42-3 43 44 45 45
46-7 49
54 60
60-1 62 67-8 Jo 71 72 74 75 76 77 78-9 79 82 85 92 95
Xiv TEXT-FIGURES
33 ‘Publius Valerius’ inscription from Satricum 97 34 Inscription on jar from Osteria dell’Osa 101 35 Marble incinerary urn from Esquiline 127 36 Denarius depicting column statue of L. Minucius 133 37 The South Etruria survey: patterns and density of settlement 140-3 38 Terracotta frieze plaques from Rome 169 39 Engraved discus from Lanuvium tomb 170 40 Territories of the Latin city-states ¢. 500 B.C. 246 41 The size of cities in the archaic and classical periods 247 42 Capitoline temple: plan 252 43 The earliest rural tribes: location map 254 44 Pyrgi tablets: the longer Etruscan text 256 45 The Etruscan and Roman town of Veii 296 46 Tarquinian elogium 301 47 The growth of Roman power, 390—263 B.c. 382 48 Roman colonization in Italy to 263 B.c. 390 49 Development of the Roman tribes, 387-241 B.c. 404 so The city of Rome in the early third century B.c. 406-7 51 Early Roman silver coins 41§-7 52 Inscription on donarium from Sant’? Omobono sanctuary 425 53 Pyrrhus: coins 465 54 Inscription from Dodona commemorating Pyrrhus’ victory at
Heraclea 469 55 Cast bronze bar depicting elephant and sow 477 56 Carthage 498 57 Carthaginian coins $07 58 Carthaginian stele depicting priest with infant $16 59 Illustrative reconstruction of the corvus $51 60 Commemorative inscription of C. Duillius (cos. 260) §§2 61 Funerary inscription of L. Cornelius Scipio (cos. 259) $53 62 Reconstruction of pre-Julian calendar (Fasti Antiates Maiores) $75 63 Dedication to Castor and Pollux (Lavinium) 579 64 Fragment of Attic crater depicting Hephaestus (Lapis Niger
votive deposit) 80
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PREFACE
The subject-matter of this volume is the history of Rome from the earliest times until shortly before the Second Punic War. In the planning of a new edition of Volume VII it was recognized from the start that major changes were required in both the scale and the disposition of the material to be presented. The undivided volume of the first edition embraced both this period of Roman history and Hellenistic history from 301 tO 217 B.C.: two fields in which the scholars of the last half century have made exceptional advances, both of discovery and of interpretation. Accordingly, in this second edition Volume VII has been divided. Part 1, published in 1984, is given over entirely to the Hellenistic history, while the present volume contains a much expanded treatment of the Roman history.
The reconstruction of the early history of Rome presents special problems of its own. One of these is the rapid and continuing increase in the archaeological evidence for Rome and its immediate environs, and indeed for Central Italy as a whole. More fundamental, however, is the peculiar mix of archaeological evidence with literary evidence which was written centuries later. This gives rise not only to disputes about particular conclusions but to much diversity in methodology and princi- ples of interpretation. Consequently no single account may be taken as definitive, and the editors of this volume, far from seeking a uniform approach to the problems, have consciously embraced a variety of responses.
The volume begins, therefore, with an examination of the sources, undertaken by R. M. Ogilvie and A. Drummond. The earlier history of Rome is then discussed at length by four scholars who each bring distinctive insights to bear upon an aspect of ancient history which has generated more deep-rooted controversy than most. A. D. Momigliano and M. Torelli, adopting contrasting approaches, discuss the origins and early development of Rome, after which A. Drummond and T. J. Cornell explore the history of the Republic to the eve of the Pyrrhic War. Pyrrhus himself and his war with Rome are the subject of a chapter by P.R. Franke. E.S. Staveley writes on Rome and Italy in the third
XV
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
xvi PREFACE
century, while H.H. Scullard in his chapter on Rome and Carthage discusses the institutions of Carthage and the development of Rome’s extra-Italian interests, culminating in the First Punic War and its after- math. To the latter chapter A. E. Astin appends a short section on the emergence of the Roman provincial system. J. A. North examines early republican history with a different emphasis and from a different point of view in his chapter on society and religion. Broadly speaking the volume follows Roman history to the eve of the Second Punic War, but it was decided to reserve for Volume VIII the Illyrian wars and the involve- ment of the Carthaginians in Spain, both of which are advantageously considered in conjunction with later events. A full discussion of Roman provincial administration will appear in Volume IX. Another consider- ation which invites attention is the wider context within which Rome developed, embracing other peoples of Italy and the Western Mediterra- nean; and much of this material also is to be found in other volumes. Especially relevant are chapters 12-15 of Volume IV, but Volumes IIL.3, V and VI all contain pertinent sections.
This volume has been in the course of preparation for a considerable time, most of the contributions having been first submitted by 1985 and some as early as 1980. In many cases it has not been possible to take account of the most recent work in the field. The bibliography, however, has been updated (as far as possible) to 1986. The editors regret to have to record several deaths which occurred during that period. M.W. Frederiksen, who died in consequence of a road accident in 1980, was a member of the original editorial team which planned the second editions of Volumes VII and VIII. A. D. Momigliano and H. H. Scullard were contributors to this volume. R. M. Ogilvie, who died in 1981, was both contributor and the member of the team who initially took special responsibility for the volume. It is a cause for deep regret that he did not see the completion of a volume which already owed much to his work and his remarkable scholarship.
Following R. M. Ogilvie’s death the outstanding chapters were edited by F. W. Walbank and A. E. Astin, while A. Drummond undertook the considerable task of editorial co-ordination. The editors acknowledge with gratitude his invaluable assistance with such matters as biblio- graphy, maps, illustrations and proofs, and generally with the format of the volume and its preparation for the Press.
The editors wish to thank also several other persons for their assis- tance, as well as the contributors for their patience. Judith Landry translated M. Torelli’s contribution from the Italian, and Lyndall von Dewitz translated P.R. Franke’s from the German. A. Drummond acknowledges generous assistance received from the British Academy and the Shefheld University Research Fund towards the cost of research
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PREFACE Xvii
for Chapters 4 and 5; and also the painstaking and constructive com- ments made on those same chapters by Professor P. A. Brunt. David Cox of Cox Cartographic Ltd drew the maps. The index was compiled by Barbara Hird. Finally warm thanks are due to the staff of the Cambridge University Press for their constant encouragement, care and help. A.E.A. F.W.W.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 1
THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
R.M. OGILVIE AND A. DRUMMOND
The first section of this chapter deals with the main literary and archaeo- logical sources for early Roman history. The second considers the type of material which was at the disposal of the historians of Rome for the regal period and the fifth century and how they used it.!
I. THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE (a) Literary sources
There were three, possibly four, main historical strands - Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Carthaginian. The Carthaginian can be discounted, be- cause, although probably used at second-hand by the Greek historian Polybius, nothing survives or can be recovered independently. The Emperor Claudius in a famous speech preserved at Lyons (ILS 212) refers to “Tuscan authors’ (‘auctores . . Tuscos’) in connexion with the legend of Mastarna and the Vibennae (see p. 94f). There are a few other references to Etruscan historians and Claudius’ account is strikingly corroborated by frescoes from the Frangois tomb at the Etruscan city of Vulci. Nevertheless, there is no evidence for Etruscan writers who were active in the fifth or fourth century. Claudius’ ‘Tuscan authors’ were learned scholars with an Etruscan background, like A. Caecina, writing in the first century B.c. We cannot reconstruct their work or judge how reliable it was.
The Greeks, on the other hand, knew about Rome from an early date. Aristotle was aware of the capture of Rome by the Gauls in 390 B.c., and a series of minor historians interested themselves in the foundation legends of the city. One or two early Greek writers are of considerable importance even though their works do not survive. Imbedded in the history of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (At. Rom. v11.3ff) is an extensive excursus about Aristodemus, the tyrant of Cumae, and his defeat of the
' Professor Ogilvie was primarily responsible for Section 1, Dr Drummond for Section 1. The draft of Section 1 was edited by Dr Drummond after Professor Ogilvie’s death but its substance femains as originally written.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
Etruscan Porsenna near Ariciac. 504 B.c. The source is clearly Greek and probably originates from not long after the event. If he is not a local historian, he is likely to be Timaeus of Tauromenium (Taormina in Sicily) who wrote on the Western Greeks and on Pyrrhus. Timaeus was born in the mid-fourth century and, although he spent much of his working life, fifty years he said, in exile in Athens (Polyb. xu.25d.1: perhaps ¢. 315-264 B.c.), he always retained his interests and contacts in Magna Graecia. He knew much about the growing power of Rome.
Four other Greek historians are of fundamental importance for our knowledge of early Rome, although they were writing after Roman historiography had established itself. The first is Polybius (born in Megalopolis ¢. 210-200 B.c.), who was detained by the Romans in 167 B.C. as politically unreliable (xxvii1.13.9-13). Later he made many friends among the Roman nobility, particularly Scipio Aemilianus, and wrote a detailed history from the antecedents of the First Punic War to 146 B.c. For early Roman history and the Punic wars Polybius seems to have used as a main source the Roman Fabius Pictor and also (for Romano-Carthaginian affairs) the Greek Philinus (p. 486 n.1). It is probable, despite his sharp criticisms (x11.3—16), that he also consulted Timaeus regularly and in detail. Whether he used other Roman histori- ans, suchas L. Cincius Alimentus, C. Acilius, L. Cassius Hemina or Cato, is quite unknown, but he was familiar with and critical of the pragmatike historia ‘political (and military) history’ written in Greek by A. Postumius Albinus (cos. 151 B.c.). Only Thucydides rivals Polybius as a scientific and critical investigator. Unfortunately, of the forty books which he wrote, only six survive in substance and Book vt, in which he dealt with the affairs of early Rome, is itself fragmentary. We do not, therefore, have a full or continuous account of what Polybius thought of the first few centuries of Rome and even what we do have is clearly coloured by a philosophical view of history, ultimately derived from Plato, which thought of epochs as cyclically determined, but which is further compli- cated by an intricate and perhaps inconsistent attitude to the role which Fortune (Tyche) played in those events.
Nonetheless, Polybius’ ideas exercised some influence on later ac- counts of Rome’s development, most notably that in Cicero’s De Republica (11.1-63), written in 5 4-1 B.c. and itself preserved in a fragmen- tary condition. Here the discussion operates formally in terms of a constitution comprising elements of monarchy, aristocracy and demo- cracy which are all already present in the regal period but are only brought into a true balance in the early Republic. The overall theme owes much to the argument of Polybius’ sixth book, although Cicero is more positive in his evaluation of the contribution of the component elements in the constitution (which for Polybius functioned principally as checks
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 3
on each other) and stresses above all the moral qualities needed to maintain the proper constitutional balance. Unfortunately, however, for the details of his historical sketch Cicero may depend on later annalists alongside Polybius and he cannot, therefore, be used to fill the lacunae in Polybius’ text or be taken as a sure guide to the historical traditions already current in the mid-second century or beyond.?
Like Polybius, Diodorus Siculus (so named because he was born at Agyrium in Sicily) also was the author of a history in forty books (of which fifteen are extant) written in Greek, although he obviously spent much of the thirty or more years which he devoted to its composition in Rome (probably from ¢. 70 to at least 36 B.c.). It was a ‘universal history’ covering the affairs of all the known countries of the civilized world. As one would expect, it is derivative and for the sections on early Roman affairs (where the narrative is preserved in full only for the Varronian years 486-302 B.c.) Diodorus used an unidentified historian as his main or only source.3 Whether the brevity and character of his account indicate dependence on an early annalist* is uncertain: they may reflect his own comparative neglect of Roman history before the late fourth century (cf. p. 310).
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was born about 60 B.c. He made his name as a rhetorician and came to Rome in 30 B.c. after the decisive battle of Actium. He seems to have won an entrée to distinguished critical circles at Rome but he also had a deep interest in Roman history and devoted twenty-two years of research to the writing of his twenty books of Roman Antiquities. Eleven books, taking the story down to 444 B.c., remain and there are excerpts from the other nine (concluding with the start of the First Punic War). Dionysius relied largely on the same sources as his contemporary Livy — namely the annalistic historians of the early part of the century (see below) — but he has some valuable and recondite versions of regal history and for pre-regal Rome even uses authors like the Greek historians Pherecydes and Antiochus of Syracuse. For that period espe- cially he was a serious researcher (cf. Ant. Rom. 1.32.2; 32.43 37-23 55-25 68.1—2, et al.) and quotes over fifty authorities.
He remains, however, the moralizing rhetorician as historian. His work is formally structured, with sharp divisions into ‘Domestic’ and ‘Foreign’ affairs, and is distinguished by the prolific elaboration of the speeches and the similarly detailed (and fictitious) reconstruction of events as both a guide to statesmen and a source of literary diversion. Episodic treatment rather than a coherent philosophy characterizes much of Dionysius’ approach to political developments but he remains
2 Cf. Rambaud 1953(B1r47], 75ff.
3 See Perl 1957[Dz5], 162ff for suggested identifications. ‘ As Stuart Jones in the first edition of CAH vm (Cambridge, 1928) 318f.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
4 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
heavily indebted to the traditions of Greek political theory and historio- graphy. These are reflected, for example, in the occasional employment of the notion (again influenced by Polybius) that Rome’s political structures developed into a combination of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, in his detailed discussion of constitutional innovations and their significance, in the attention paid to legal formalities. He is no less interested in the forms of economic and social dependence by which the aristocracy reinforced its position. Above all, he owes to Greek tradi- tions the strongly political character of his history and his robust, often cynical attitude to political conflict, which on occasions even transcends his fundamental aristocratic sympathies but seldom rises above the stereotyped and superficial.
Finally, Plutarch. Born at Chaeronea in central Greece c. a.D. 46, Plutarch studied at Athens and travelled widely as a young man — especially to Egypt and Italy. His most important contribution to history was the Parallel Lives which range from the mythical (e.g. Romulus) to the historical (e.g. Julius Caesar): their value can only be as good as that of his sources (and even so Plutarch recast his material to suit his own artistic and moral objectives), but although he relied on authors still extant, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he also had access to many works which no longer survive, and it is the unexpected details which crop up from time to time in his writings that make Plutarch such a vital authority. He also wrote a series of books on religious, philosophical and moral matters and his Roman Questions contains much previous informa- tion and speculation on early Roman religion.5
Roman historiography began at the end of the third century B.c. but the earliest historical work was almost certainly the epic poem on the First Punic War written in the later third century by one of the comba- tants, Cn. Naevius from Campania. This was as factual as it was dramatic and was followed by another epic, the Chronicle (Annales) of Q. Ennius (239-?169 B.C.) from Rudiae in Calabria. Ennius recounted Roman history to his own day in eighteen books, the first three covering the Aeneas legend and the monarchy, the next two the fifth and fourth centuries. The fragments from the regal period demonstrate the already detailed development of several major episodes. The early Republic is less well represented but Ennius’ primary interest here (as perhaps that of the older prose historians) was evidently military. How far his work was later used as a historical source is controversial, but the Asnales was widely read in the last two centuries B.c. and with its apparent emphasis on ancient traditions of conduct, on Rome’s religious institutions, on her
5 The much later account of Cassius Dio (early third century a.D.) is preserved for this period only
in fragments and in the twelfth-century epitomizing universal history of Zonaras (who also used Plutarch). It is derivative (not least from Livy) but occasionally preserves variants otherwise lost.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 5
military achievement and on individual heroism and renown it must have exercised an important influence on Roman attitudes to their past.
The Annales was probably begun c¢. 187 B.c.®° If so, Ennius almost certainly had available the first prose history, that of Q. Fabius Pictor. Fabius had served as an official delegate to Delphi in 216 B.c. (App. Hann. 27). His history has perished but an inscription from a library at Taormina’ gives a summary of the contents, and citations by Dionysius, Livy and other historians enable us to gain some insight into its scope, sources and purpose. Fabius wrote in Greek, the only available literary language at the time, with a view to establishing Rome in the eyes of the world, especially the Greek world, as a civilized and great nation. Whether he wrote in the dying days of the Second Punic War or, more probably, in the immediately succeeding years, his aim was chauvinistic. Attention was concentrated on the foundation legends of Rome and on events of Fabius’ own day, while there seems to have been little detailed account of events of the fifth and fourth centuries, presumably for lack of evidence. Fabius has been condemned for wide-spread falsification of early Roman history® but extant fragments only admit of a verdict of non-proven.
Fabius was followed by L. Cincius Alimentus, but of his work we know nothing, except that he also wrote in Greek, had been captured by Hannibal and was a senator. Only five fragments survive but again they reveal an interest in very early legend (fr. 3-GP) and contemporary Punic affairs (fr. 7P). The great hiatus of early republican history remains. Of C. Acilius, another senator who wrote res Romanas in Greek early in the first half of the second century, and A. Postumius Albinus (cos. 151 B.C.) who was devoted to Greek language and studies (Polyb. xxxrx.1) and also wrote a history of Rome (p. 2), nothing of significance is left.
The new start came with M. Porcius Cato, the elder (234-149 B.C., consul in 195 B.C., censor in 184 B.C.), who was the first historian to write in Latin. At least for history before his own day Cato abandoned the annalistic method, employed by historians before and after him, who recorded events year by year, in favour of a much broader outlook. The first three books dealt with the foundation of Rome and other Italian cities. Cato took advantage not only of the fable convenue but also made a serious effort to seek out original documents (cf. e.g. fr. 58P, which gives a list of Latin communities who made a dedication at Aricia (p. 272)). Books 4 and 5 dealt with the Carthaginian Wars and brought the story down to 167 B.c. The date of publication is not certain but the shape
6 See, e.g., Jocelyn 1972(B81), 997-9; cf. also Skutsch 1985(B169], 2ff (c. 184 B.C.). 7 Manganaro 1974[Brot], 389-409; 1976[B1o2], 83-96. 8 Most notably by Alfdldi 1965({I3]; see pp. 248ff.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
6 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
of the work raises an unanswerable question: how did Cato deal with the fifth and fourth centuries?
For a generation Roman historians do not seem to have added much. Acilius and Postumius are shadowy figures; a descendant of Q. Fabius Pictor (?N. Fabius Pictor) may have translated some or all of his predecessor’s work into Latin; L. Cassius Hemina (f. 146 B.c.: see fr. 39P) was quoted as an authority by the elder Pliny (e.g:, HN xviu.7) and later scholars, but we do not know the scale or originality of his work. Book 2 was still dealing with immediately post-regal figures such as Porsenna (fr. 16P); Book 4 is entitled ‘Bellum Punicum posterior’, ‘The later Punic War’ (fr. 31 P). Itcan, therefore, be assumed that Cassius also gave very little attention to the early years of the Republic.
It is this gap which raises such intriguing questions as the second century draws to an end. In or after 130 B.c. the chief pontifex (pontifex maximus), P. Mucius Scaevola, ended the practice by which every year a whitened board was put up outside his residence which probably re- corded calendaric events (e.g. the dates of festivals) and also, as they occurred, other events of a semi-religious significance (e.g. elections, triumphs, portents and prodigies). The evidence for Scaevola’s action is clearly given by Cicero (De Or. 11.52: ‘usque ad P. Mucium pontificem maximum res omnes singulorum annorum mandabat litteris pontifex maximus’). Quite separately the Vergilian scholar Servius records that the contents of these records were published in eighty books (ad Verg. Aen. 1.373), but Servius gives no date and does not mention Scaevola. Until recently it has been taken for granted that the material from these pontifical Annales Maximi was published by Scaevola and first used by L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi (cos. 133 B.C.) in his historical Annales, scathingly described by Cicero (Brut. 106) as ‘very meagrely written’ (‘sane exiliter scriptos’) but often quoted, for instance by Livy. There are, however, difficulties. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.74.3) claims that Polybius used the pontifical sabu/a,!° and that must have been many years before P. Mucius Scaevola. Secondly, we would expect a huge expansion of fifth- and fourth-century material in Piso’s history but, once again, he was already dealing with the affairs of 305 and 304 B.c. in his Book 3 (Livy 1x.44.2; Gell. NA vit). Therefore, the archival material which fills the first Decade of Livy cannot have been available to Piso or, if it was, was not exploited by him. Thirdly, ancient references to the Amnales, while containing a few curiosities (such as the eclipse of 400 B.c.: Cic. Rep. 1.25 (cf. p. 21)), also contain much fiction (especially in the quota- tions from the fourth-century A.D. Origo gentis Romanae). So it may be that
9 ‘Down to the time when P. Mucius was pontifex maximus, the pontifex maximus used to commit to writing every event of each year.’ 10 For a different interpretation see Walbank 1937—79[B182}, 1.665 (on Polyb. vi.11a.2).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 7
the annual notices were transferred by the pontifex maximus every year (perhaps from about 500 B.c. or asa result of the activities of Cn. Flavius ¢. 300 B.C. (p. 396)) into continuous commentaries which could be used for practical purposes, such as providing precedents for dealing with reli- gious emergencies. Historians like Q. Fabius Pictor or Polybius, because of their social position, could always have consulted such commentaries, if they had been interested. But the publication in eighty books looks much more like an antiquarian venture, typical of the first century B.c."! and it is hard to see Piso’s history as the turning point which it has so often been assumed to be.
There are other historians known from this period!? but we cannot appreciate their contribution. It is in the first half of the first century B.c. that a new impetus was given to Roman historiography and it was inspired by two important factors — a growing awareness of documents, inscriptions and other archival materials, on the one hand, and, on the other, a desire to understand history politically (and if necessary to rewrite it politically). In this period the names of four authors stand out although their works survive only in miserly fragments: Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, C. Licinius Macer, Valerius Antias and Q. Aelius Tubero. One thing is immediately apparent. Their works were much longer — Quadrigarius at least twenty-three books, Macer sixteen,!3 Antias no less than seventy-five. The sudden wealth of detail has arrived, although interestingly Quadrigarius seems to have begun his history in 390 B.c., presumably because he regarded fifth-century and earlier history as largely legendary.'4
C. Licinius Macer is the best known. Tribune of the plebs in 73 B.c. and father of the poet C. Licinius Calvus, Macer was a popularis in politics, a supporter of Marius in the troubles of the eighties. It cannot be doubted that this coloured his interpretation of history, especially in the desire to see antecedents of more recent political measures (e.g. the Gracchan proposals) in the remote past. This must have helped to swell the size of his account of early Roman history and can be traced in Livy. But Macer, as the fragments show, was also an antiquarian. He found inthe temple of Iuno Moneta some Linen Books (“bri lintet) which gave a list of magis-
Frier 1979[B57] makes out a case for the Augustan antiquarian Verrius Flaccus as the author.
12 Notably Cn. Gellius, who has sometimes been credited with at least ninety-seven books. In fact, however, in the relevant passage Charisius cites from Book 27 (Gramm. p. 68B).
13 Or even twenty-one. Priscian’s allusion (Inst. x11.12, GL m1 p. 8K) to Book Two as dealing with Pyrrhus must be a textual corruption.
14 Cf. p. 21, Quadrigarius’ first book probably covered most or all of the fourth century from 390; extensive consecutive treatment began only with the Samnite, Pyrrhic and Punic wars. For an assessment of his history and the question of his relationship to C. Acilius, whose Greek history he supposedly partly or wholly translated into Latin (Livy xxv.39.12; cf. xxxv.14.5), see Zimmerer 1937[B194]; Klotz 1942[B89], 268-85; Badian 1966[B6], 18-20 (emphasizing his patriotic distortion and devotion to entertaining narrative).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
trates!5 and he also unearthed a treaty between Romeand Ardea which he dated to 444 B.c. (fr. 13P). Cicero had a poor opinion of him (Bru. 238) and criticized his loquacity (Leg. 1.7), just as Livy criticized him for inventing stories for the greater glory of his own family (vu. 9.5: his son’s name Calvus is itself romantic).
Valerius Antias is more problematical. We do not know his praenomen or his family background. There was a L. Valerius Antias who com- manded some ships in 215 B.c. (Livy xx11I.34.9), which indicates that his family played a cadet role in the Roman political life of the Valerii. Nor can we be sure about his date. Velleius Paterculus (11.9.6) makes him a contemporary of Sisenna (praetor in 78 B.c.), P. Rutilius Rufus (praetor before 118 B.c.; exiled in 92) and Claudius Quadrigarius, which should place him in the eighties and seventies B.c., but he is not mentioned by Cicero in his judgement of historians before his day and this has led scholars, without adequate justification, to argue that he was writing as late as the time of Caesar. There are no certain allusions to mid-first- century events in the fragments. On the other hand, like Macer, he clearly publicized his own gens and many Valerian laws and actions from the early centuries have to be disregarded. He was censured even in antiquity for his reckless assertion of numbers (e.g. military casualties) which must have come from his fertile imagination rather than from newly discov- ered documents, although he does seem to have had a real interest in Roman institutions such as the triumph or the secular games. His political affiliations are not known: if he was writing in the early part of the century, perhaps an admiration for the Sullan restoration. But Antias was certainly prolific and provided much of the raw material for Livy’s own history.
Q. Aelius Tubero came from a literary family (L. Tubero, a legate of Q. Cicero in 6o B.c., was something of an historian (QO Fr. 1.1.10)) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus addressed a long essay On Thucydides to a Q. Aelius Tubero. There was also a notable jurist of the same name (Gell. NA 1.22.7). Livy quotes Q. Tubero as an annalistic source from time to time. It is probable that the jurist, the annalist and Dionysius’ patron were one and the same person, the father of the consul of 11 B.c.!6 Tubero’s history was at least fourteen books long (fr. 10P) and so designed on the same larger scale as his immediate predecessors, but the fragments give little or no idea of its character, except that he too had consulted documents (Livy t1v.23.1) and conducted independent re- search (fr. 9P). He would have been writing in the forties and thirties B.c.
'5 The Linen Books are cited four times in Livy for issues concerning the identity of magistrates between 444 and 428 B.c. (cf. p. 18). How far they went outside these chronological limits and whether they contained more than a list of magistrates is not known, although Livy rv.13.7 suggests that at most they included only brief notices.
16 See Ogilvie 1965(Brz9], 16-17; 570-1 (on Livy tv.23.1).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 9
It is ironic but perhaps not accidental that the only work which does survive is Books 1—x (75 3~—293 B.C.) and xxI-xLv (219-167 B.c.) of the massive 142-book history of T. Livius (Livy) from Padua (¢. 59 B.c.—A.D. 17). Unlike all his predecessors Livy did not belong to the Establish- ment. He held no public office; he did not even have the family back- ground of a Valerius Antias; he was criticized by Asinius Pollio for his ‘provincialness’ (‘Patavinitas’); although he was acquainted with Augus- tus (Tac. Asn. 1v.34) and acted as literary tutor to the young Claudius (Suet. Claud. 41.1), he never figured in the literary world of Augustan Rome and died at Padua, not Rome. His knowledge of Greek was competent but not more than competent; his interest in research mini- mal. Yet he in part survived and Quadrigarius, Macer, Antias and Tubero did not. Why? Obviously sheer literary genius accounted for much; obviously too the combination of freedom, moral earnestness and patriotic fervour, which is also the hall-mark of the Aeneid.
Livy’s History deals only briefly with the mythical events preceding the foundation of Rome and the regal period is also covered in a reduced compass by comparison with the early Republic. These appear to be innovations on Livy’s part and they signify his predominant concern with Rome’s historical achievement, above all in the military sphere, and its moral and political background. Livy lays less emphasis than Dionysius on constitutional developments for their own sake (the estab- lishment of both the quaestorship and plebeian aedileship, for example, is omitted) and conveys little sense of inherent institutional imbalance in the early Republic. What matters to him (even more than to Dionysius) are the moral qualities, of both leaders and led, which are essential to the preservation of internal harmony and thereby to external success. In this general preoccupation and its detailed elaboration Livy is, of course, reacting to the experiences of the late Republic and his approach to his material is strongly conditioned by his view of Rome’s contemporary failings. Nonetheless, he is basically retailing at second, third or fourth hand the evidence of earlier historians and doing so with prejudice and without a critical or scholarly intent. Since the works of these earlier historians do not survive, it is a nice judgement how far Livy has reproduced them accurately and how far they, for their part, were in any position to give an authoritative account of early Roman history. Every scrap has to be scrutinized.
(b) Antiquarian writers
Livy was an annalist, recording history year by year, however improb- able. So was Dionysius of Halicarnassus. But in the first century B.c. there was also a new development. Pure antiquarianism became fashion- able, again largely as a result of Hellenistic influences, especially the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
10 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
Museum at Alexandria, and there emerged a group of learned writers who devoted their energies simply to antiquarian scholarship for its own sake, who looked at records, however uncritically, because they saw them as the raw material of history, and who, above all, studied the enduring history of Roman religion and institutions.
Two scholars of major importance merit special consideration but from the late second century B.c. onwards there were many more — Iunius Gracchanus and Sempronius Tuditanus (both writing works on the Roman magistracies), Cincius, Q. Cornificius, Nigidius Figulus (‘On Thunderclaps’), Cornelius Nepos (¢. 99 B.C. to¢. 27 B.c.) and then Atticus (110 B.C. to 32 B.c.), who made the first serious attempts to utilize the principles set by Eratosthenes to establish Roman chronology, Tarquitius Priscus, A. Caecina and Fenestella (d. a.p. 19), to name only a few who investigated the byways of history. Of the greatest of them, M. Terentius Varro (116—278B.C.), only two works survive (partially) and neither of them is of fundamental relevance to Roman history (De Lingua Latina (‘On the Latin Language’) and De Re Rustica (‘On farming’)), but his output was phenomenal (620 volumes, so it is said). Much of this abstruse scholarship was passed on through various channels to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (the most important intermediaries were the Latin Fathers of the Church). Varro, following on the work of Nepos and Atticus, may have established the dating system for early Roman history which has become standard (ab urbe condita, ‘from the foundation of the city’: he probably placed the foundation of Rome in the year which by our practice is known as 753 B.c.).!7 It is presumed that this was set out in his work entitled Annales, the date of which is unknown. Varro also published forty-two volumes on Human and Divine Antiquities, probably in 42 B.c. (although the date is disputed and the publication may have been spread over a number of years). This work included the explanation of many religious cults and many legendary tales. From the De Lingua Latina we know that one of his main tools of research was the use of etymology, often erratic, if not eccentric (e.g. the role of one Cornelius (cf. cornu horn’) in the sacrifice of a miraculous cow by King Servius Tullius: Plut. Quaest. Rom. 4; cf. Livy 1.45.3ff). But Varro was thorough and systematic and if, as is probable, the digression in Livy vi1.2.3ff on the origins of Roman comedy is derived from him, then it reveals painstaking investigation of Etruscan and Roman institutions; and although he was concerned not with the philosophical panorama of history but with the idle tit-bits, any citation from his works must be treated as very serious evidence, even if only to be discarded.
In contrast to Varro, a man of position who had written a constitu-
17 On the ‘Varronian’ chronology (used throughout this volume) and other chronological systems for early Roman history see pp. 347ff; 625 ff.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE II
tional hand-book for the young Pompey, Verrius Flaccus was a freed- man. We do not know his antecedents but he was recognized by Augustus, who gave him a house, a pension and the over-sight of his grandsons’ education. Verrius was obviously inspired by Varro, to whom he often refers, and he wrote a wide miscellany of books on a variety of antiquarian topics. His longest work was a dictionary, On the Significance of Words (De Verborum Significatuz), which reflected Varro’s linguistic interests but which adopted, perhaps for the first time in Latin, the principle of listing words alphabetically rather than by subject- matter. It was so huge a work (the letter A took four books alone) that, as was increasingly the custom in the Empire, it was abridged by Pompeius Festus at the end of the second century and further abridged in the Carolingian age. It is these abridgements which survive, and they contain a rare collection of antiquarian oddities, which are invaluable to a modern historian. Verrius is also quoted by the Fathers and other later writers whose works survive, such as Servius and Macrobius.
There are other names to conjure with. The geographers contribute much and of them Strabo (Aelius Strabo, born ¢. 64 B.c.) has left a Geography of great erudition. Like Dionysius he had come to Rome after the Battle of Actium in 31 B.c. He was widely travelled and had also composed a History which has perished, but the Geography reveals an interest in early Etruria and Latium and contains some precious facts.
(c) Inscriptions
Although the alphabet was introduced into Central Italy from the Greek world c. 700 B.c. (Fig. 1) and inscriptions appear at Rome at the end of the seventh century,!8 it is surprising how little actual epigraphic material survives from the period 600-250 B.c. This may be a fact of chance; or it may be that writing was at first an aristocratic and hieratical phenomenon and not until Rome’s increasing contact with other powers such as Greece and Carthage was it employed ona major scale as an instrument of government and communication. Atall events the surviving inscriptions earlier than the tombs of the Scipios in the third century are meagre and often highly controversial,'® adding little to our knowledge of early Roman history.
Yet there was an alternative history of Rome. Probably not all that different, but it would be interesting to have it. There is a fresco from a
18 P. 81. On the introduction of writing to Central Italy cf. Cristofani 1972[G43], 466-89; 1978[G45}, 5-33; and in Ridgway and Ridgway 1979[Ari1], 373-412.
19 So, for example, the early sixth-century inscription ona stele from the Lapis Niger shrine in the Comitium which apparently prescribes penalties for sacral violations but has defied complete elucidation.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
12 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
wW Ray a\\ Ip,
2 : My & 3 = Te s
8 =
Fig. 1. Perhaps the earliest known Etruscan inscription on the foot of a proto-Corinthian kotyle from Tarquinii (¢. 700 B.c.). The iriscription (from right to left) reads:
mi velef§us kacriqu numesiesi putes kraitilesBis putes The full sense is uncertain but the text apparently records the making or giving of the vase by a Velthu for or to a Numerius. See M. Cristofani, ASNP ser. 111.1 (1971) 295-9 (drawing after ib. 296).
tomb of the Fabii on the Esquiline hill at Rome (Fig. 2), probably recording some unknown events of the Samnite wars; there are the much more famous frescoes from the Frangois tomb at Vulci which confirm a tradition, known otherwise only from an odd reference in Claudius’ speech (ILS 212) and a mutilated fragment in Festus (486L), that a condottiere called Mastarna (?= Lat. Magister) with other warriors from Vulci, notably the brothers Vibennae (also known independently: cf. Varro, Ling. v.46), was in fact the king known to history as Servius Tullius.” Perhaps the most dramatic instance of this alternative history is the recently discovered inscription from the second temple at Satricum which dates from ¢. 500 and records a dedication by the suodales (com- rades) of Publius Valerius to Mars (p.97). One Publius Valerius, surely this one, is well-known to history (see p. 174). But who are these suodales? Why to Mars?
Other inscriptions fill out or reinforce the information derived from our literary sources. A Greek inscription of the late sixth century from Tarquinii (‘I belong to Apollo of Aegina, Sostratus made me’2!) adds a new dimension to our understanding of the intercourse between Etruscans and Greeks (p. 49). From Tarquinii also come some com- memorative inscriptions (e/ogia) recounting stirring deeds which have left no other trace in the annalistic record (p. 300). No doubt other discoveries will be made.
2 For further discussion see p. 94f (with a different view). 2! Torelli 1971[G499], 44ff-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 13
But what is tantalizing is the epigraphic evidence which is lost. Greek and Roman scholars often (although uncritically) cite inscriptions, but many of these must either be bogus or be renewals as the result either of the decay of the original or of the need to update them so that a modern generation could actually understand what was written. One clear case of such modernization is an inscription preserved in Festus (180L) and, therefore, certainly derived from Varro or Verrius Flaccus, commemo-
ih NG PAgic ! i
he cu
Fig. 2. Fresco from Esquiline tomb (third century>). The interpretation of the scenes is uncertain; they may depict actions involving Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus (cos. 322; 310; 308; 296; 295) during the Samnite wars (p. 412). After Roma medio-repubblicana 1973 (B4o1], fig. 15.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
14 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
rating nine ex-consuls killed in the Volscian Wars of the early fifth century. Festus’ version must be false (it contains cognomina),2 and yet Varro or Verrius cannot have invented it. Another is a censors’ docu- ment of 392 B.c. (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.5): it also anachronistically employs cognomina and uses a literary rather than a documentary form of dating (‘in the 119th year after the overthrow of the kings’); indeed, there may have been no census in that year (cf. Festus sooL).
There is, in fact, a large quantity of inscriptions (genuine or spurious) which were known to ancient scholars but which no longer survive. Obviously the most important of these for early republican history is a fifth-century law-code (the Twelve Tables), many of whose provisions can be recovered from later references. But also of international conse- quence are the treaties with Carthage reported by Polybius (111.22—5) and Livy (v11.27.2; Diod. xv1.69) which the Pyrgi inscriptions (p. 256) have to some extent corroborated. More disputable but not really in doubt is the dedication which Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1v.26) describes as ‘written in archaic Greek letters’ and which set out the rules for the cult of Diana on the Aventine (p. 267). It also must bear some relation to the cult inscription from Aricia (p. 272). There was the corslet of the Roman military hero Cossus (Livy 1v.z0.7: p. 298) and the Linen Books consulted by Macer, quite apart from the Amnales Maximi them- selves. There were ‘Commentaries of Servius Tullius’ (Livy 1.60.3) which alleged to give instructions on the election of consuls: in fact, they are probably the same document as that compiled between ¢. 213 and 179 B.c. which gives the orthodox Servian ‘Constitution’ (p. 164) with its five classes and consequent centuries. There was the law of the annual nail in the temple of Iuppiter (Livy v1.3.5 (p.187)). From the fifth century also there are mentions of surviving texts of Sp. Cassius’ treaty with the Latins (¢. 493 B.C.: Dion. Hal. Ant. Row. v1.95 (p. 274)); a law inscribed on a bronze column by L. Pinarius and Furius (coss. 472; Varro ap. Macrob. Sat. 1.13.21); the Ardea treaty (see p. 174 n.8). In the fourth century this list of inscriptions and documents increases, but the ques- tions surrounding -their authenticity are not greatly altered.
22 Roman nomenclature became progressively more elaborate: the original single name (the later ‘forename’ (praenomen)) was gradually supplemented by a lineage or clan name (nomen gentile: originally a patronymic (p. 98)). The date of the use of inherited additional names (cognomina), never obligatory or universal in the republican period, is uncertain: in Etruscan occasional additional names may appear as early as the sixth century (M. Pallottino, Gnomon 36 (1964), 804) but are not common on inscriptions before the third century. Their adoption as inherited names at Rome was probably largely conditioned by the desire to distinguish different branches of the same ‘clan’ (gens) and presumably therefore varied from one gens to another (some never employed them). It therefore seems unlikely that all fifth- and fourth-century magistrates had cognomina as our surviving lists pretend (p. 628), and as they are otherwise not cited on inscriptions of officia] documents until the second century, their alleged appearance in such a context three centuries earlier is highly suspect.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE SURVIVING EVIDENCE 15
(d) Archaeological and other evidence
The tombs, the buildings, the artefacts of a nation tell a great deal about their character and about their development (or decline) and about their relationships with their neighbours. This is particularly true of early Rome. Recent discoveries in Latium and Campania, as well as in Etruria, have shown that Rome was not peculiar or distinct in her development — except in the sense that eventually she, because of her geographical position and her tenacity, triumphed. In the sixth and fifth centuries there was almost a common culture throughout Central Italy. Etrus- can towns like Veii or Vulci had similar lifestyles to those that can be recognized at Rome, Lavinium (Pratica di Mare), Ficana, Gabii, Decima and elsewhere. This phenomenon extends right down to Campania, because the entire network of communities, however ethnically differ- ent, was bound together by commercial ties which were of far greater significance. This characteristic is seen in the very strong Etruscan and Greek influence on Rome and, more vitally, on other neighbourhood towns; it is to be seen in the Valerius inscription (however we should interpret it; p. 97); it is to be seen in the Latin influences on Campanian artefacts; it may be seen in the way in which Roman constitutional organs and social patterns evolved.?3 It is wrong to think that the Etruscans, Latins and Greeks in the sixth century were fundamentally different in their way of life.
Rome itself is an impossible place to excavate: too many layers of priceless heritage have covered it. Only a few holes at occasional places can be dug (in the Forum, or in the Forum Boarium at the present-day church of Sant? Omobono) but even from these trifling excavations enough has emerged to confirm, at least in general, the traditional accaunt of the growth of the city (e.g. traces of a primitive Palatine settlement have been found; the draining of the Forum area can be approximately dated; various structural phases of the Regia (in the, republican period the seat of the ‘priest-king’ (rex sacrorum) and perhaps used by his regal predecessors) have been identified; unearthed antefixes suggest a date c. 500 B.c. for the temple of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline hill2*). Conversely the excavations disclose no evidence for a Gallic conflagration in c. 390 B.C. (p. 308). They do, however, bear testimony to the cultural affinity of early Rome with its Etruscan and Latin neighbours. Any idea of a uniquely different style of ‘Latial pottery’, for example, must be abandoned and we should not think of an ‘Etruscan conquest’ of Rome but of a synoecism which resulted in
23 The exact extent to which similarity of material culture and ‘commercial’ ties implies uniform-
ity of social and political structure is, however, variously evaluated (cf., ¢.g., p. 187). % But see p. 22. 41.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
16 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
Etruscan families settling permanently in Rome (as at Ardea or Satricum), in Etruscan political and religious institutions being adopted and in Etruscan art being welcomed for all its aesthetic beauty.
By contrast, so far the fourth and early third centuries have produced little significant archaeological material, either inside Rome or outside. It might be expected, for instance, that some of the Roman campaigns in Samnium could be traced by forts and marching camps, but the discover- ies so far are negligible (although evidence has accumulated of the Samnites’ own hill-forts). Some evidence has emerged about the fate of Etruscan cities captured by Rome (e.g. Falerii or Bolsena) but less than might be expected. Various public buildings at Rome have been un- covered, such as the great double temple of Fortuna and Mater Matuta at Sant’ Omobono. However, in this phase, as indeed in the earlier period, detailed, historical information comes mainly from the annalists (particu- larly Livy), who viewed history from a different standpoint, and it is only from the time of Pyrrhus that more abundant archaeological material, together with more reliable historical accounts, provide a solid founda- tion for a full history of Rome.
Il. THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY (a) The available data
To the Greek historian Timaeus in the third century early Rome already represented a remote past and for most of the period covered by this volume an interval of centuries separated even the first Roman historians from the events they described. Historical reconstruction of events before the later fourth century? relied on a slender repertoire of docu- mentary and oral sources and even Livy (vt.1.1ff) concedes the defi- ciency of authentic records, assigning as a principal cause the Gallic Sack in 390 B.c. That is probably erroneous,”6 but a survey of the sources potentially available to Fabius Pictor and his successors confirms the essential fact: the surviving early documentation, at least before the mid- fourth century, was sparse and inadequate.
The existence of early Etruscan historical accounts is speculative and the use of Etruscan material by Roman sources seems in general to have been late and occasional (p. 89). Even the Etruscan legends associated with Mastarna and the Vibennae (p. 94f) found no place in the main- stream Roman historical tradition, to which Mastarna as such remained
25 From that period on, more extensive and reliable archival and oral material, coupled with the increasing interest of contemporary Greek historians, provided a more substantial basis for the historians’ accounts (p. 311).
% Castagnoli 1974[E8$3], 425—7; below, p. 308.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 17
largely or wholly unknown and the Vibennae merely the focus of aetiological legend.
Greek authors from the late fifth century B.c. gave various accounts of Rome’s foundation and a few events in the early history of the Western Greeks were also relevant to Rome, but it will have been from the late fourth century, as Roman history became increasingly entwined with that of Campania, Samnium, South Italy and Sicily, that Greek material will have become more plentiful; Pliny (HN 111.57) states firmly that Theophrastus (c. 370-288/5 B.C.) was the first Greek to treat Rome in any detail. Although we do not know what topics he covered, Greek interest is likely to have focused particularly on contemporary external affairs,?’ but that in turn presumably prompted some interest in Rome’s earlier internal and external history. According to Dionysius (Ant. Rom. 1.6.1) the first to ‘run over’ the early period of Rome was Hieronymus of Cardia in the late fourth—early third century B.c.,28 but the major contributor here was undoubtedly Timaeus. He treated early Rome twice, in the introduction to his history of the Western Greeks and in that to his supplementary books covering the emergent rivalry of Rome and Car- thage. The scope of these accounts, however, is problematic. Timaeus certainly included the foundation of the city, explained (in the supple- ment) at least one of its rituals thereby and, in a highly controversial fragment,”? referred to a ‘monetary’ reform of Servius Tullius. His own focus of interest may have led him to trace briefly Rome’s external development, at least in the late fourth and early third centuries, and he may well have outlined the growth of Roman political institutions in the common Greek manner.» For most such material, however, he would have been reliant ultimately on local traditions, presumably those sub- sequently available to Roman historians, and although Fabius Pictor and others probably knew and used his work, its ultimate basis would largely coincide with theirs.
Few documentary sources can have survived from the regal period (cf. Pp. 87) and even for the early Republic their significance was probably limited. One possible major exception, however, is a consecutive list of republican chief magistrates. These were the eponymous officials by which each year was distinguished and lists of them were apparently kept for chronological purposes since the term fasti, by which such records are later known, refers in origin to the calendar proper. Such lists of
27 Frederiksen 1968[J 47], 226—7. Duris of Samos (¢. 340-+. 260 B.C.) apparently recorded Rome’s victory over Etruscans, Gauls and Samnites at Sentinum in 295 (Jac. FGrH 76 P56); p. 379.
2% Cf. Hornblower 1981[B78], 140ff.
9 Jac. FGrH 566 r61; cf. De Martino 1977[H23], 51-3; below, p. 417.
% The allusion in Eratosthenes (Geog. 1c 24 Berger (= Strabo 1.4.9, p. 66c)) to the admirable government of Carthage and Rome confirms early Greek interest in the form of the Roman state and may well reflect some previous treatment of the topic.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
18 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
GIRINS CE Cs Cit BENET Gath QMS CNFEN eZ ASML CREPE Bee ee iawn FABIVS TMVGVRGES: TE GGENVEIVS EF. CREPSING: POCARUNSMA FAV NDEN TATE TE Econ BON , eed
{ CEROCFABRUCIVS-CEC DAPVSLP O0dm a N QchIMID NGL \ RAREVR INS MEERUN a toe CORNELIVSPESEUN *AWEVENDA FABIVS MF NIN — LICINY, CCLAVDIVS AE CNGCNINA Tl ePIRIVS ESPN + CVRSORTT —SMCAKVILIVS CFONMAXIM- ii DUAR TVS LEMINPRA ELESTINEMAGMENUCIRINS AY EMD ENTAT VS SECNN: CLAVDW «EGENNCINGLF LN CLEPSINA
CIEPSINATI © ENCORNELIVSRFCNN BLASIO SENS, EMER CE REN, ICTOR
ey
~SAP-ELANDINSARE CHRUSVSINAAME Siete 0 UIBO
Fig. 3. Fragment of the Capitoline Fasti recording the principal magistrates of the years 279~- 267. After Degrassi 1947 [D7], 40.
eponymous magistrates were frequently published alongside the calen- dar from the first century, and their function as a chronological key would clearly have made such a record desirable from the inception of the Republic. If a list was kept from that date, however, it has not survived; the sequence of magistrates has now to be reconstructed from the surviving historians (above all Diodorus, Livy and Dionysius), from inscribed lists of the late Republic and early Empire (particularly the so- called Capitoline Fasti, a learned reconstruction published on the Arch of Augustus in ¢. 30 or ¢. 17 B.c. (Fig. 3)), and from closely related late imperial compilations. These lists, however, show a high level of uni- formity, and this, together with indications of an original common order of names even within colleges of up to six officials, suggests that all derive ultimately from a single exemplar or at least acommon tradition.
Moreover, the surviving authorities do not indicate major discrepancies or omissions in their sources on a scale to suggest that they contained radically different consular lists or consequent major differ- ences in their overall republican chronology.2? This is true even of the Linen Books discovered by Licinius Macer (p. 7f). Within the period from which our citations of the Books come (444-428 B.c.) only two significant variants are attributed to them.*3 Under 444 B.c. the Books apparently gave as an additional consular college the alleged censors of
3) Beloch 1926[A12], 4ff. Uncertainties surrounding the praenomina and cognomina of many individual magistrates in the early part of the list do not weaken this conclusion, since it is the family names which are significant here; indeed, the cognomina probably represent later reconstruction. See further pp. 627ff. 32 See pp. 173ff.
33 Livy v.7.12 (cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. x1.62.1ff)=Licinius Macer fr. 13P; Livy 1v.23.1ff = Licinius Macer fr. 14P; Aclius Tubero fr. 6P. On the problem of the magistrates of 444 B.c. see further p. 174 n. 8.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 19
443, under 434 B.C. two consuls rather than three consular tribunes. In neither instance can the truth be established definitively, but even if the Linen Books were correct here, that need mean only that in these cases they contained elements deriving from a comparatively early stage in the transmission of the consular list, which was perhaps subsequently ma- nipulated to enhance reconstruction of the consular tribunate and cen- sorship. Moreover, although presumably Macer considered the Books of some independent value in relation to his principal sources, the ancient references do not prove that they were of great antiquity, and their inclusion of L. Minucius Augurinus in an unknown capacity under the years 440-439 B.C. (cf. p. 183) does not encourage confidence in their reliability.
The hypothesis, therefore, of a common source to the surviving consular lists remains unimpaired. Any estimate of that source’s an- tiquity must depend on a systematic analysis of its intrinsic reliability but if a case for its accuracy can be sustained (p. 173f), it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it must derive from an early documentary record. Even so, however, the evidence which it provided to the early historian was limited. At most it offered some guidance on republican chronology, the fortunes of aristocratic families, the form of the principal magistracy and the admission of plebeians to office, but of itself it could not yield even a skeleton outline of early republican history.
Some more specific evidence for external history might have been derived from lists of triumphs. In the late Republic an inventory of triumphal dedications appears to have been kept in the Capitoline temple of Iuppiter¥* but the antiquity of this practice is unknown. Equally uncertain are the basis and reliability of the principal surviving list, the so-called Acta Capitolina Triumphalia or Fasti (Capitolini) Triumphales, set up in parallel to the Fasti Capitolini on the Arch of Augustus (Fig. 4). The general accuracy of its data can be determined only in the context of a detailed consideration of the traditions for Rome’s territorial and military expansion, but a record which commences with the fiction of Romulus’ triumph over the Caeninenses has clearly undergone at least some re-working, as other manifest inventions and the genealogical details also show. There can, therefore, be no a4 priori confidence in most of its notices, at least before the third century,°5 and there is much uncertainty as to the sources on which it ultimately depends for those which are authentic. If, as is commonly assumed, it drew directly or indirectly on the annual pontifical records (rather than a temple inven- tory) for such material, the question becomes one further aspect of a much wider and more fundamental issue of early republican history: the
* CIL 1, 78 (Henzen). 35 For a defence of their reliability from the fifth century cf. p. 280f.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
20 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
aOR
fa PRISCVSREX: DE'LA ADIBROVINISDAMARS PRISCVSREXI] DEETR LAR ROMINI VSDAMARATIF ° PAISCVSRESUI DE-SABINELSIDIBSERT SEREVLLIVS: REXDEETRVSCISVHDECACKKCH SERTVLLIVSR EXUDE RVSCV IHS VNACKXCY We os REX: 1 se AW
Fig. 4. Fragment of the Acta Capitolina Triumphalia recording triumphs ascribed to Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius. After Degrassi 1947 [D7], 64.
scope of the pontifical records and the date from which they were authentically preserved.
That the pontifex maximus should have sought to keep a historical record of the Roman state centuries before the development of literary history at Rome is clearly implausible: presumably his primary interest lay in recording events of immediate concern to the pontifical college itself, perhaps on what was, in origin, principally a calendar, although that need not have restricted his purview to events which would now be classed as ‘religious’ (cf. p. 587). A slighting reference in the elder Cato (Orig. fr. 77P (= Gell. NA 11.28.6)) indicates that the annual whiteboard recorded eclipses and high corn prices, in contrast apparently to the material of ‘true history’. This obviously cannot be taken to exhaust the tablet’s contents (at least in Cato’s day) and other, admittedly vague references suggest that a wide range of public events was covered. However, that may be the result of a progressive increase in the tablet’s scope, and the character and range of the material originally recorded remain purely conjectural. All that can be said with confidence is that the tablet can have given no details of episodes noted.
If in origin the whiteboard served principally the pontifical college itself, preservation of its data may have been important from an early date but such material certainly did not survive from (or at least was not used for) the monarchy (p. 88) nor even necessarily the early Republic. In their accounts of the fifth and early fourth centuries the extant historians seldom include certain categories of occurrence (above all prodigies and portents) which might reasonably be expected to have been noted by the
% See especially Cic. De Or. 11.52 (above, p. 6); Serv. Aen. 1.373.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 21
priests, there are still in Livy’s account occasional years where nothing memorable was recorded (e.g. Iv.30.4 (429 B.C.)), and even in antiquity doubts were entertained about the reliability of material which allegedly derived from records kept before the Gallic Sack. Although Cicero (Rep. 1.25) cites the pontifical record for an early eclipse, probably that of 21 June 400 B.c.,37 a certain ‘Clodius’ (possibly Claudius Quadrigarius) denounced as forgeries the available genealogical records which pur- ported to date from before the Sack. They were, he declared, the work of individuals anxious to flatter those who claimed a spurious descent from distinguished figures of the past38 and while he does not specify the pontifical tablets, he might not have written so confidently if in his view they had survived intact from that period. Livy (vi.1.2) too presumably has them in mind when he more cautiously ascribes the unreliability of early Roman history to the loss of most of the pontifical records (commentarii) in 390. Even if the Sack was not in fact responsible for the scantiness of genuine earlier documentation, the existence and scope of such documentation from the fifth century were evidently controversial. Whilst, therefore, the survival of a pontifical record from that period cannot be excluded, it is too insecurely attested to justify confident acceptance of the relevant annalistic traditions. Since in any case it could have provided only rudimentary information, the scale of the later elaboration by the historians themselves would make it difficult to assign any individual item to this source with confidence, even presuming (what is controversial) that the early historians used these records to their fullest extent.3?
Equally problematic (as Livy’s evidence indicates) is the availability of other priestly documents (alongside ritual hymns). Perhaps lists of priests and accounts of priestly actions were kept from an early date, not least as a source of procedural examples (cf. p. 577), but whether, as Dionysius (Anat. Rom. viit.56.1) might suggest, they or other documents (e.g., dedicatory inscriptions or, again, the pontifical tablets) were regularly available to provide details even of such fundamental events as temple dedications must be uncertain in view of the character of many surviving traditions. Some early temple inscriptions survived but it is not certain that dedicants were recorded on the building at Rome in this period” and if they were, many were presumably erased in the course of later reconstruction. A number of temple foundations were spuriously attributed to the early monarchy and at a more general level the extant
% Skutsch 1974[B167]}, 78-9; 1985[B169], 311-13. 38 Plut. Nua. 1.
»® For a less sceptical account see above, p. 6f.
“ Dionysius’ statement (Ant. Rom. v.35.3) that M. Horatius Pulvillus ‘rv émeypagqy €AaBe’ in the case of the Capitoline temple may mean only that he received the credit for the dedication (K. Hanell in Les origines de la république romaine 1967[Ag98], 41).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
22 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
historical sources show little or no serious grasp of the introduction of temple building (or of the major transformation in the public appearance of Rome (p. 75f)) in the late seventh and early sixth centuries. Moreover, they apparently omit shrines now revealed by archaeology, whereas none of the temples they ascribe to the late sixth or early fifth centuries has been conclusively located in this period by archaeological evidence, except for that of Castor.4! Even the detailed literary evidence for the date or circumstances of individual dedications is often contradictory, anachronistic or otherwise unsatisfactory; the temple of Saturn, for example, was apparently dated to the late fifth or early fourth century by Cn. Gellius, to 501 or 498 B.c. by Varro and to 497 B.c. by Dionysius and Livy.42 Nonetheless, the archaeological data do suggest that the histori- ans are correct in implying a major phase of temple construction in the sixth and early fifth centuries, followed by a comparative lull until the late fourth century, and their assignation of particular shrines to this period is not implausible. Conceivably the names of dedicants or the dates of dedication alone were preserved in some form and the variant traditions in the case of some shrines are due to rebuilding (frequent in this period) or subsequent reworking of an authentic tradition. But in other cases the apparent (or inferred) antiquity of these shrines may have prompted their attribution to the monarchy or very early Republic. Even in late republican Rome the physical heritage of the early period re- mained a potent reminder of her past.
Other epigraphic evidence was sporadic (p. 13f) and appears not to have been employed systematically by the historians. It is frequently adduced almost as an extraneous element, suggesting that it has often been incorporated into a narrative whose basic outline was already established. The manner in which Livy draws on the antiquarian Cincius for the regulations -governing the nail set every year in the wall of the Capitoline temple in order to develop a schematic history of the ritual (Livy vit.3.5ff) is typical. So is the incorporation of the alleged Latin treaty of 493 B.c. in Dionysius (Ant. Rom. vi.95.1ff). Some such docu- ments were in fact largely ignored, most notably the Twelve Tables; for ancient writers war and politics were the spheres in which the individual
4! That one phase of the sanctuary of Mater Matuta or Fortuna in the Forum Boarium may fall within the traditional but purely conventional chronology of its reputed founder, Servius Tullius (p. 76), offers no realistic basis for faith in the literary tradition. Similarly, although some sixth-century antefixes have been plausibly assigned to the Capitoline temple (509 B.c.), there is no clear proof. For the temple of Castor see I. Nielsen and J. Zahle, Acta Archaeologica $9 (1985) 1-29. The earliest phase of the temple of Saturn is currently being investigated.
42 Cn. Gellius fr. 24P (= Macrob. Sat. 1.8.1); Varro ap. Macrob. Sat. 1.8.1 (cf. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. v1.1.4); Livy 1.21.2; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. v1.1.4; Macrob. Sat. 1.8.1.
43 Cf. also the signatures of two Greek artists on the early fifth-century temple of Ceres (Pliny HN xxxv.154 (from Varro); Le Bonniec 1958[G 360], 25 7ff).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 23
demonstrated his qualities and won renown and those in which the historical development and achievements of the state were to be ob- served; legal or social history in themselves were of little account.
The possible contribution of oral traditions (chiefly Roman but also Latin and even perhaps Etruscan) to the formation of historical accounts of Rome’s past has yet to be evaluated thoroughly, particularly on a comparative basis. At Rome itself the existence of such traditions is most readily traced in the early development of the foundation myth (cf. p. 56f). It is also reflected in the information which percolated, albeit sometimes in garbled form, to late fourth- and early third-century Greek sources. Aristotle knew of a Lucius who had saved Rome after the Gallic Sack, while Callimachus applied a Greek motif to the story of a Gaius wounded in killing the enemy leader during an assault of the ‘Peucetii’ on Rome. So also Timaeus’ accounts of the historical Rome, whatever their scope, must have relied substantially on oral data (p. 89).
How reliable or extensive such data were is another matter. Much of what relates to the earlier period and may derive from popular belief is merely aetiological fiction (an abiding source of inspiration also in the later historical and antiquarian authors). Certain epochal events, such as the overthrow of the monarchy and the Gallic Sack, were presumably recalled and progressively elaborated, and the continuing need to defend the prerogatives of the plebeian officers may have fostered a lively oral tradition on their origins, although one continuously reworked to suit the contemporary situation. Some memory (also subject to constant recasting) may also have been retained of personalities, historical or legendary, and of episodes which were politically or morally edifying, although the famous heroic ‘lays’ to which the elder Cato referred contributed little to the historians, at least directly (p. 88). At a more general level it is an attractive conjecture that in a traditional, predomi- nantly oral society a broad consensus on the major phases or landmarks of Rome’s internal and external development had become established among the aristocracy*> but if so, this can have operated only in very general terms; it will have been highly (and unpredictably) selective and much will have been vague and malleable, subject to progressive reinter- pretation and modification as the perspectives and needs of society changed. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the earliest historians would have refrained from altering or (especially) supplementing such pre-existing traditions if (for whatever reason) that appeared justified; and such revisions might well have imposed them- selves on subsequent writers if they were sufficiently plausible, possessed a convenient patriotic or moral character or proved otherwise attractive;
“ Aristotle ap. Plut. Cam. 22.4; Callim. Aft. rv fr. 107 Pfeiffer; cf. Fraser 1972[As2], 1.763-9. 4 Cornell 1986[B35], 82ff.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
24 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
there can, after all, seldom have been specific evidence to refute such versions, even if they contained a generous quantity of invented material.
What is certain is the prevalence of family pretensions in early republi- can history, including probably such famous episodes as the migration to Rome of Att(i)us Clausus in 504 B.c. or the defeat of the Fabii by Veii at the Cremera in 477 B.c. (apart from a few legendary clan founders with regal connexions, such material is scarce under the monarchy (p. 89f)). Authentic information of this type must be oral in origin. Portrait masks of distinguished ancestors, perhaps with inscriptions recording their deeds, adorned the halls of late republican aristocratic houses, but there is no reliable evidence that any such had survived from the early Republic and comparable funerary inscriptions are found only for men of the late fourth century onwards (even then the most famous early example, the funerary inscription of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (cos. 298), is notori- ously at variance with Livy’s account (p. 377)). The preservation of funerary orations is not reliably attested before the third century and other documents attributed to family records, such as the census records of 393/2 B.c. cited by Dionysius (p. 14), are likely to be fiction. Roman aristocratic families, as perhaps their Tarquinian counterparts, will proudly have retailed their distinguished past, particularly in the military sphere, and such memories or claims may lie behind the early republican legends of Brutus, Coriolanus, Cincinnatus or Servilius Ahala (cf. Fig. 5); but many apparently notable figures of the fourth century and earlier remain shadowy in the surviving narratives, suggesting that detailed family information was not available, or if it was, it was not used. Moreover, such material as was known to be available was notoriously suspect (Cic. Brut. 62; Livy viii.40.2ff), particularly that deriving from later funeral eulogies (where the family past was lavishly paraded); and whilst some authentic achievements may have been recalled, the discern- ible family material in the historians more usually merits a healthy scepticism, at least in its detail.
(b) Techniques of reconstruction
Even on the most optimistic assumptions the first historians of early Rome faced a chronic shortage of reliable information: a few random epigraphic texts and (perhaps) other documents, a quantity of popular and family traditions (of highly uncertain reliability), perhaps some Greek (and even Etruscan) literary material, a consular list and, from some uncertain date, the notes of the pontifex maximus. They, as conceiv- ably Timaeus before them, may have filled out the regal period with the
% Torelli 1973{B266], 96-7; Cornell 1978[Bz09], 173.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 25
Fig. 5. Coin of M. Iunius Brutus (54 B.c.) depicting his reputed ancestors L. lunius Brutus and C. Servilius Ahala, perhaps as a gesture of opposition to Pompey’s supposed autocratic ambitions (RRC n. 433.2).
creation of several fundamental Roman institutions and they probably established or reiterated much of the broad pattern of Rome’s develop- ment, both internal and external, which thereafter becarhe accepted in the historical tradition. Nonetheless, their narrative of Roman history before the third century was inevitably restricted; according to Dionysius (At. Rom. 1.6.2) they dealt with events between the foundation of Rome and their own day ‘in summary fashion’.
It was from the late second or early first century that a more extensive narrative was created. This will reflect the desire to produce a readable and suitably informative history on the approved Hellenistic model and to make history serve more adequately the ends of ethical instruction in particular. History, it was felt, should not be a mere chronicle (a demand already voiced by Sempronius Asellio (fr. 1P (= Gell. NA v.18.7ff)) in the late second century); it should both improve and instruct the reader and engage his emotions. The historian must explain the events re- counted, especially in terms of human motivation; he must develop and emphasise the moral aspect and provide a wealth of detail that would not merely enhance the credibility of his narrative but also make it come alive for the listener or reader.” To achieve that, however, it was necessary to invent. However deplorable in theory, the absence of detailed sources made historical reconstruction on a large scale both unavoidable and possible.
The means employed for this purpose by the later annalists are most evident in the surviving accounts of early republican political history
“7 Although many of these objectives are first clearly articulated in extant Latin literature by Cicero, they were common coin in the Hellenistic period and the surviving fragments of early first- century historians, together with the character of the surviving narratives, suggest that some or all of them were already pursued in that period (cf. Badian 1966{B6}, 18-23; also 11-12 (Cn. Gellius)); indeed, individual episodes in the earliest historians may have been elaborated along lines popular among Hellenistic historians (Walbank 1945[{B181], 12f, but cf. also J. Poucet, Historia 25 (1976) 200ff; G. P. Verbrugghe, Historia 30 (1981) 236ff).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
26 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
(where the major expansion may have occurred*8). Theories about the nature of political conflict and its causes, moral preconceptions or implicit assumptions about human character and behaviour provided general guidelines, but for the reconstruction of individual events par- ticular models might be sought, consciously or not. Greek parallels were sometimes invoked for both historical and literary effect, as already in the earliest historians (cf. p. 214), but the historian looked above all to later Roman experience for colour, amplification and even entire episodes. Thus the numerous early tribunician prosecutions before the centuriate assembly appear to be a fictitious reconstruction from mid-republican practice (p. 222) and the whole treatment of the agrarian agitation of the early Republic, focusing on patrician occupation of public land, may be modelled largely on the tensions that developed progressively over the second century and the political conflicts to which they led (cf. p. 238).
Inevitably accounts of the distant past came to reflect the political views of their authors. Dionysius, for example, embraces a tradition (or traditions) openly hostile to Sulla, favourable or indulgent to Caesar and bitterly antagonistic towards his murderer Brutus, whose alleged plebe- ian forebears are constantly pilloried. The treatment of particularly contentious episodes may also have been conditioned by their use as precedents in contemporary political argument (cf. e.g. p. 183 n. 35). Since early Roman history was apparently comparatively little re- garded,‘° however, it cannot be assumed that it was chronicled purely for propagandist purposes. Where historians drew on contemporary or recent experience, that may merely reflect the search for plausible ex- planatory detail, the provision of which Dionysius (with others) re- garded as central to the historian’s task: it was recent history which offered the best guide to the probable course of events.
Literary effect also became of increasing importance,°° conditioning not only the organization, treatment and focus of the individual episode but also the structural unity of the overall narrative. In particular, the employment of certain recurrent themes offered one convenient ap- proach by which a pattern of events might be created or at least satisfactorily explained and both literary and historical coherence achieved. The notion that internal disunity results from the absence of external threat becomes in Livy especially a major thematic thread which enables him to weld his disparate raw material into an integrated whole
48 Even then the political background to certain major events (e.g. the sudden and temporary influx of plebeians inco the consular tribunate in the years 400-396 (p. 239)) remains inadequately explored or developed.
49 Cic. Leg. 1.5ff Livy Praef. 4.
50 Anexplicit concern with literary style is already attested in the late second-century historian of the Second Punic War, L. Coelius Antipater (fr. 1P).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 27
(above all in Book 11). So too the spurious interpretation of the consular tribunate as an office open to plebeians from the outset (cf. p. 193) became the basis for a series of invented conflicts between patricians and plebe- ians over the appointment of consular tribunes or (exclusively patrician) consuls, intended to explain the irregular alternation of the two offices.
Although events may indeed on occasion have taken a broadly similar course, such fictitious repetition of entire episodes is not infrequent in the early narrative, albeit often with the individual variation of detail which literary considerations demanded. The reasons for the duplication may be various: genuine uncertainty, rival chronologies (p. 349), the conflation of variants or simply the stereotyped repetition of a well-worn theme. Livy’s battle narratives, for example, are a familiar instance of carefully graduated variations on a restricted repertoire of stock situa- tions and, as their frequent anachronisms confirm, can only be the product of his or his predecessors’ imagination.
One particularly significant source of inspiration was again the claims of noble families, such as the Fabii, Postumii and Licinii, to a distin- guished role in the early Republic. Most notorious in this respect were the Valerii. Even before Valerius Antias further adorned their past, they seem to have secured recognition of their alleged services in the estab- lishment of liberty, the promotion of political concord and the provision of constitutional safeguards, especially through the actions of P. Valerius Poplicola (cos. 509; 508; 507; 504 B.c.) and L. Valerius Potitus (cos. 449 B.C.). In the case of Poplicola this was further aided by a general tendency to attribute fundamental institutions and popular rights to the first years of the Republic and his career was extensively elaborated with a series of popular innovations, above all a law of appeal against extreme magis- terial penalties (duplicating that of 300 B.c.) and a measure inflicting outlawry on those who sought monarchic power.
In notable contrast the Claudii are repeatedly disparaged. In the surviving accounts of Ap. Claudius the Decemvir (p. 227) and of Ap. Claudius Caecus (cos. 307; 296 B.c.: p. 395f) there are traces of a version which saw them as demagogues in the pursuit of personal power. These, however, have been largely overlaid by a portrait of the clan as arrogant, self-assertive patricians, brutally unremitting in their hostility to the plebs. The authorship of this tradition is unknown. The stereotyped arguments and attitudes involved, together with Cicero’s apparent ig- norance of it before 46 B.c., have suggested that it is largely the work of a single, comparatively late annalist but neither consideration is conclu- sive. What is more important is the light it sheds on annalistic procedures and its implication that the overall character of the surviving accounts is often a more significant consideration than the intrinsic credibility of individual details.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
28 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
(c) Conclusion
The deficiencies of the sources available in antiquity for the reconstruc- tion of early Roman history, together with the historians’ own lack of a systematic critical approach, their freedom in recreating the past and their accelerating attention to literary effect, render stringent criticism of the extant narratives a prerequisite of any historical enquiry. Not only does any assessment of their value depend on a scrutiny of their internal consistency and inherent plausibility, their wider preoccupations, as- sumptions and methods, their compatibility with other data, their poss- ible anachronisms and (to the limited extent usually attainable) the development of the individual traditions they embrace, but the severely limited quantity and scope of the authentic material which could have survived from early Rome make it imperative at least to demonstrate how a particular datum might have been preserved before it can be considered as potentially reliable. There can, for example, be no justifica- tion for accepting details for which no means of preservation can be plausibly conjectured whilst jettisoning other, more substantial elements in the extant accounts.
As the fictitious early census figures (p. 136) and other data show, Roman historians were aware that in the early days Rome was much smaller and weaker (although even so they grossly overestimated her population). It was not, after all, until the early third century that Rome achieved firm control over Central Italy and her experiences in that period and in the first two Punic wars hardly encouraged the belief that her history had been one of remorselessly successful advance. Indeed, the effects of one major calamity (the Gallic Sack) have been grossly exagger- ated in surviving accounts even if patriotic sentiment (half-) suppressed the actual capture of the city (cf. p. 307). Moreover, even if the annalists’ recreation of Rome’s early history often reflects a moralizing idealiza- tion, it may on occasions come near to the truth simply through the retrojection of factors which remained broadly unchanged, through the attribution of characteristics typical of comparatively modest agrarian communities or through plausible inference from surviving institutions or from general probability. Even unexceptional material, therefore, may be the historians’ own work; there is no known means by which the detail could have been reliably transmitted and the frequent discrepancies between individual versions themselves suggest (although they do not prove) that it merely reflects the annalists’ attempts to produce credible as well as readable history.
Inevitably even the proper and consistent employment of critical principles leaves considerable scope for diverse evaluation both of the literary tradition in general and of its individual data (as is exemplified by
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE CREATION OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY 29
the different approaches adopted in this volume). Of especial importance in this respect are the doubts surrounding the availability and use of records from the early Republic, above all the pontifical tablets. Given that uncertainty, however, the possible existence of such records cannot alone justify faith even in the general outline of early republican history in Livy and Dionysius. Rather, the availability of such records must itself depend to a considerable extent on the credibility of that outline as determined by other criteria.
The primary focus of the modern historian must, therefore, be the critical dissection of the literary tradition and, still more, those non- literary sources of evidence which both serve as a touchstone of the annalistic data and, in a number of areas, offer a more secure basis for reconstruction. The most important of these sources are constitutional, legal and religious institutions and practices which survived into a much later period as self-evident fossils from the distant past; the consular list (with some reservations); laws, formulae and other documents which are preserved in classical writers and whose date and authenticity can be credibly supported; modern philological investigation; the results of archaeological excavation and survey; and (yet to be exploited fully) comparative data from other societies. For many aspects of early Roman history all such material is sparse and inadequate. The picture drawn from it must inevitably be restricted, defective and, to varying degrees, conjectural. In consequence, a detailed narrative of political or military history can seldom be essayed at least before the later fourth century. The principal concern must be those general trends and developments which are of greater significance for an understanding of early Rome, even where the absolute chronology of the relevant phases is uncertain.
The scope of such an enquiry is not, however, to be determined, and therefore limited, by the preoccupations of the Roman annalists. Such issues as the development of settlement at Rome and throughout Central Italy, of demographic changes, of the emergence of the city-state, of its economic and social structures, of its religious and legal institutions and of its cultural life and influences were, to the ancient historian, at best of subsidiary interest. Modern research may regard them as both more central and more fruitful, for, though often deficient, the information available on such topics from non-annalistic sources frequently makes possible the framing of relevant questions and even the formulation of reasonable hypotheses. Above all, the history of Rome has to be under- stood in the context of the development of Central Italy as a whole, a subject no less important in its own right and one increasingly illumi- nated by archaeological discovery. The history of the period covered by this volume is as much the history of the peoples of Italy whom Rome brought under her hegemony as it is that of Rome herself.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 2
ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
M. TORELLI
I. INTRODUCTION
Rome’s geographical position makes her earliest history a very special and exemplary instance of ‘frontier history’: situated on the first ford and easiest landing-place on a large river, the Tiber, which itself formed the natural boundary between ethnic groups differing from one another in language and in their level of social and economic development (the Etruscans, Faliscans, Latins, Sabines and Umbrians), the settlement of Rome was able to benefit from exceptionally easy communications, both with the hinterland and in the direction of the sea, to an extent virtually unequalled in the whole peninsula. The historical traditions concerning the asylum of Romulus, the Latin-Sabine union and the emergence of the Etruscan monarchy (pp. 57f; 91f), whose first representative was said to have had Greek ancestry, are themselves excellent evidence for the effects of this open situation, which influenced the economy, society and culture of the emerging city.
All this has been stressed repeatedly in modern historical research but itis worth noting again here in the specific context of an assessment of the evidence contributed by the archaeological data. As has already been noted (p. 15), this is in fact as scarce for Rome, with her history of successive building over a period of nearly three thousand years, as it is relatively abundant in the neighbouring cities and areas of Etruria and Latium, where it constitutes a valuable tool for reconstructing the phases of social and cultural development between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Republic. However, sucha procedure! requires that particular caution which is integral to the very process of historical reconstruction from archaeological evidence; for, as A. Momigliano has pointed out in connexion with E. Gjerstad’s monuinen- tal work,? such evidence does not always automatically reflect social structures, ethico-political forms or their various modifications. More- over, still greater caution is needed in the specific approach which it is
' Torelli 1974-3[G148], 3-78; 1981[Jr2a]. 2 Momigliano 1963[A83], 101-8 (=id. Terzo Contributo 558-71).
30
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
ARCHAEOLOGY, URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL HISTORY 31
intended to adopt here because, at least in theory, the archaeological sequences of one area are not necessarily identical with those of another, even of one very close at hand, in terms either of the actual material or of its implications. Nonetheless, the contacts between southern Etruria (particularly Veii) on the one hand and the settlements of Latium Vetus (particularly Rome) on the other do in practice justify such a comparison, although here this will be strictly limited to major sequences and data and will ignore casual points of similarity and isolated phenomena. Further- more, as we shall see, an independent analysis of the archaeological data tends to confirm the picture which emerges from a non-reductive in- terpretation of the literary tradition, of the kind to be found in Chapter 3.
Il ARCHAEOLOGY, URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL HISTORY
The first and most important results of a parallel study of the archaeol- ogical data from southern Etruria and Latium concern not only the typology but the continuity or discontinuity of human settlement over the very long period which separates the Bronze Age from the sixth century B.c.> The Final Bronze Age in its Sub-Appennine form, which can be assigned in general terms to the eleventh century B.c., is only sporadically attested in Latium and, with the single exception of Ardea, makes no appearance in any of the later Iron Age centres. In contrast, Etruscan territory frequently yields evidence of this same Sub- Appennine culture in conjunction with the later Proto-Villanovan cul- ture, which also belongs to the Final Bronze Age; this is the case, for example, with the settlements of the Tolfa hills. Conversely, while in Latin territory the First Latial Period, parallel in chronology and cultural character to the Proto-Villanovan,* appears frequently in a continuous sequence with materials belonging to all or some of the later periods in Etruria, with the odd rare exception (for instance a Proto-Villanovan tomb in the very centre of the large Villanovan necropolis of Casale del Fosso at Veii),> there is a widely accepted sharp discontinuity between Proto-Villanovan and Villanovan: Proto-Villanovan settlements, often situated not far from Villanovan, vanish with the appearance of the latter at the start of the Iron Age.® It is quite clear that in this context the difference between the Etruscan and Latin environments is not without relevance to the mythical-historical traditions which record the origins and remoter history of the two peoples.
3 The principal cultural phases of this period, with approximate dates, are tabulated on p. 64. 4 R. Peroni in Ciilta del Lazio primitive 1976(B306}, 19-25. 5 Vianello Cordova 1967[B418}, 295-306. 6 Colonna 1977(B313}, 189-96.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8007 ‘ssezg AissoaTuE a8prquiey © oUTTUD sooIstE eSspyquie;
8007 ‘ssezg AtssoaTUE eSprquiey © SUTTUD sooIstE] eSspuqures;
‘porzad oreyose ays ul Ayes] pezzua 1 dey
33
saujew QOZ 4epun purty E=] Bas OO0'L ~ GO pe $8)10L G00'| Jane PURT =
34 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
The burials and settlements of the First and Second Latial Periods, between the tenth and the middle of the ninth centuries B.c., do not differ from those of the same period in Etruria, particularly southern Etruria, being smallish in size and not at all close-packed. Admittedly, the communities which they reveal sometimes turn out to have been fairly close together, as in the Alban Hills or at Rome (where traces of settlements occur near the Arch of Augustus and on the Palatine), and, lying only a few hundred metres apart, indicate economic and social formations based on kinship structures. If the production of utilitarian and ritual pottery undoubtedly took place within the domestic sphere, metallurgy seems to have been organized ona regional scale and thus not to have been centred on the family nucleus.? Though this did not affect social structure directly, it nonetheless suggests a rapid economic growth, with the mass production of work tools and weapons.
On the ideological level, synchronic and diachronic differences in funerary ritual offer additional material for profitable speculation on possible social structures.’ Throughout the ninth century B.c. such ritual appears coherent and consistent in southern Etruria and Latium, with the universal custom of cremation in biconical funerary urns in southern Etruria and in simple urns, sometimes hut urns, in Latium, accompanied by a funerary deposit comprising a small number of miniaturized objects (including panoplies of armour and weapons in Latium). In the second half of the ninth century B.c., however, the miniaturization of the funerary material was apparently superseded by the practice of placing objects of normal size in the tomb, while the ritual of cremation was gradually replaced by that of inhumation. The latter was virtually general by the middle of the eighth century B.c. and the only exceptions are some male burials in hut urns in Latium and in biconical funerary urns in southern Etruria (more rarely hut urns): in both regions the custom seems to have persisted fora long time, even if sporadically, throughout the orientalizing period? as is demonstrated by the very recent discovery of the princely tomb of Monte Michele at Veii!® or the well-known case of the Regolini-Galassi tomb at Caere, which is again a princely burial.!! The retention for particular members of society of the archaic crematory ritual with a tomb which had heroic overtones served to stress the eminence and prestige of the head of a specific lineage. The similarity of such tombs to the heroic tombs of Eretria has been noted by several scholars, and is an indication not only of the Hellenization — though ina very individual sense — of Etruscan and Latin funerary customs, but also of the importance which particular family groups had gradually assumed within society from the middle of the eighth century onwards, thus
7 La formazione della citta nel Lazio 1980[127]. 8 Colonna 1974[B311], 286-92. 9 Bietti Sestieri 1979[Bz95], 24-9. '° Boitani 1982[Bz99], 95-103. 1! Pareti 1947[B374].
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
35
destroying the original economic and social homogeneity which is reflected by the cemeteries of the previous phase.
The emergence of the Etruscan and Latin aristocracies between the eighth and seventh centuries B.c. finds its exact counterpart in the growth in size of some of the settlements in both areas. Lesser settlements were absorbed by larger neighbours, others disappeared to the obvious benefit of stronger and more powerful communities, while sites which had clearly been relatively more extensive from the early Iron Age onwards now grew out of all proportion. Modern interpretations of this phenomenon in terms either of synoecism or of nuclear expansion appear, in this rigidly polarized form, not to comprehend the true import of what was undoubtedly an extremely complex process. Recent research on various sites in Etruria and Latium, from Veii to Falerii, Tarquinii and Lavinium, has shown that the phenomenon was frequently the result of both tendencies, active over a period of time which is often of very long duration, running from the ninth to the sixth century B.c.:!2 some towns grew by the concentration within a single settlement of several villages scattered over quite a wide area, others developed by leaving outside their perimeter whole sections of the built-up area as ‘dead zones’. Synoecism and nuclear expansion are not therefore contradictory phenomena, but form part of a single drive towards concentrating the population, and this was no doubt set in motion by the economic and social developments which were dominated by the emergence of the aristocracies of southern Etruria and Latium.
Along with this expansion in settlements came the definitive establish- ment of the hoplite phalanx in the last years of the seventh century B.c. (reliably confirmed from archaeological material found in tombs, but above all from painted or relief representations of the phalanx itself (Fig. 6)) and the monumental organization of the sacred and public areas of the city during the same period. The first phenomenon, the diffusion over the whole area of Etruria and Latium of the technique of hoplite warfare, has implications both on the social level and in the sphere of urban organization. The need for closer co-operation (for increasingly pressing military reasons) appears both to foster and to hinder the gradual consolidation of the power of the aristocracies: in both Etruscan and Latin representations the hoplite phalanx appears consistently to be led and guided by heroic figures on chariots, who are quite clearly the dominant heads of the aristocratic clans.!3 These aristocratic groups had therefore to adapt their own social and economic system of clients and dependants to the new techniques of hoplite combat, broadening their own social base with some difficulty and supplying its members with the
12 Torelli 1982[Bqr3], 117-28. 3 Torelli 1981[J1z2z), 128-30.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
36 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
rervaey ory Cv @
SKA VAYAYAYRYAYRYAYAY
L.
—
Rao we
PAYA YR YAYAYAYAYAY AY)
Fig. 6. Hoplite column depicted with cavalryman and war-chariot on ostrich egg from Vulci (late seventh century). From P. Ducati, Storia del/Parte etrusca (Rome—Milan, 1927), pl. 74.222.
means of acquiring heavy bronze armour. Furthermore, the joint re- quirements for defence, which often went far beyond the invariably limited force fielded by the aristocratic groups, offered increasingly greater opportunities to social classes not restricted by the links of dependence imposed by the aristocracies. In archaeological terms a particularly telling example of this entry into the citizen hoplite phalanx of individuals who did not form part of the dominant aristocratic structure, is furnished by the Tomb of the Warrior at Vulci, a ‘chamber’ tomb a cassone (a typical individual tomb, that is, not a family one) of 530 B.C., with its complete hoplite armour and a rich set of Attic pottery." The final confirmation of this process must undoubtedly be seen in the centuriate organization of Servius Tullius’ c/assis, traditionally assigned to the middle years of the sixth century B.c. (p. 92; 103).
This new military reality, with its economic and social implications, which we see under way from the last thirty years of the seventh century B.C., naturally finds expression in an increasingly complex and effective system of urban defence. Though there are insufficient examples of urban excavation in Etruria, except at Rusellae in the north, we now have numerous cases of settlements in Latium — such as those at Lavinium, Castel di Decima and Ficana (Map 2: p. 244) — where the presence of primitive defence structures!5 from the eighth and seventh centuries has been revealed. These structures comprise banks (aggeres) of earth and tufo chips and their memory may possibly have survived at Rome in the ‘earth wall of the Carinae’ (wurus terreus Carinarum: Vatto, Ling. v.48; 143). They normally rest against, or are replaced by, a real wall consisting of
1% Dohrn 1964[B320], 491-2.
18 C.F. Giuliani in Enea nel Lazio 1981(E25}, 162-6 (Lavinium); Guaitoli 1981(B339], 117-50 (Castel di Decima); T. Fischer-Hansen in Ficana. Catalogo della Mostra 1981(B325}, 59-65 (Ficana).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
37
blocks of stone, usually built during the first half of the sixth century B.C. (this is the date traditionally given to the building of the walls of Servius Tullius) and equipped with gates and defensive devices consonant with the siege techniques generally employed in this period throughout the area of Greece and Magna Graecia.
If aggeres and walls represent the response, as far as urban organization was concerned, to the changed conditions of warfare and its techniques, itis significant that during the same period, between the penultimate and last quarter of the seventh century B.c., we see the first signs of religious ideology emerging. Up to this point archaeological traces of cult, other than specifically funerary cult, have been practically non-existent: hith- erto the sacral dimension, whether in a family or collective context, has not in fact appeared in forms distinct from those of everyday life. Now, between 630 and 600 B.c., the framework of political and religious life is created at Rome around the Forum (p. 75): the second and more complex paving of the area (625 B.c.), the construction, on the site of former huts, of the royal shrine-dwelling of the Regia (630 B.c.), the building of the Comitium (assembly area) and the Curia Hostilia (senate-house) (600 B.C.), the first tangible evidence, in the shape of material taken from a well, of the cult of Vesta (600 B.c.).!6 The phenomenon is echoed closely elsewhere in Latium, at Satricum!” and at Gabii,!® but above all in Etruria,!9 at Veii in the so-called ‘sanctuary of Apollo’ (in fact dedicated to Minerva) and at Rusellae with its unusual building of sun-dried brick discovered under the forum area of the Roman period.
The production and circulation of luxury goods, Hellenic in form and origin, which from the middle of the eighth century had been the exclusive prerogative of the emerging aristocracy, in whose tombs they were offered in remarkable quantities, now find a new focus of accumula- tion in the votive deposits of sanctuaries. And it is no coincidence that gradually, from this moment onwards, tombs prove increasingly bare of prestige objects both at Rome and also at nearby Veil. Status tends rather to find expression, not in the accumulation and exhibition of luxury objects, but in the particular attention paid to burial rites or in the deliberately austere grave apparatus, as with the marble urn from the Esquiline or the tomb of the horseman-athlete of Lanuvium.” At the same time this phenomenon reveals the diffusion, particularly in the Latin area (though not in Etruria), of customs which tended to restrict funerary luxury, unless one chooses rather to interpret it as the result of a different pattern of wealth circulation in which shrines and collective buildings occupy a central position.
16M. Torelli in Roma arcaica ¢ le recenti scoperte archeologiche 1980[ A113], 13~1$.
' Satricum ~ una citta latina 1982[B4os], esp. 53-4. 18 Zaccagni 1978[B423], 42-6. '9 Torelli 1981{J122], 164-74. ® Colonna 1977[B312], 131-65; below, Figs. 35 and 39.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
38 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
In this way, through archaeology, we can trace a long process of economic and social development which, in Latium and Etruria, moves from village-based structures in the final phase of the Bronze Age to the definite establishment of urban forms in the crucial last years of the seventh century B.c., with the parallel establishment of a dominant aristocratic class. Furthermore, the hard core of certain facts which can be recovered from a critical perusal of the data recorded in the literary tradition is considerably reinforced by the organic sequence of archaeo- logical data on the two banks of the lower reaches of the Tiber. In Latium between the tenth and the middle of the ninth centuries B.c. the Alban Hills occupy a position of great importance, thanks to the quality and quantity of the evidence which they offer; the society is defined as a village society, characterized by an extremely small number of settle- ments, probably linked among themselves by ties of kinship, with a social division of labour shared out according to sex and age groups, and a strictly subsistence economy, in which the production of poor quality cereals and some vegetables seems to have predominated. But the most valuable evidence is afforded by the stability of the settlements, com- pared with the relative impermanence and fluctuations of the Bronze Age; this stability is inseparable from the family ownership of what was, in the ancient world, the means of production par excellence, land. This form of ownership, which probably existed side by side with collective possessions of tribal origin, seems to have been the lynch-pin of later developments and a main source of that element of contradiction of which signs may already be visible in the ‘crisis’ in funerary ideology that can be observed in the course of the ninth century B.c.
Beginning in the second half of the ninth century B.c. and lasting until halfway through the following century, these signs of ‘crisis’ become increasingly pronounced, with a visible impoverishment of the hill centres of the Alban Hills, where the tombs diminish in quantity and richness, and a parallel blossoming of settlements on the plains, such as Rome, Lavinium, Ficana, Gabii. There are similar developments in the Etruscan area, where again the abandonment of the Proto-Villanovan hill centres and the sudden appearance of Villanovan settlements on modest heights surrounded by wide fertile plains implies the importance of the ownership and working of the land. For the Villanovan culture one may conjecture a genuine and positive colonizing movement, start- ing in the course of the ninth century B.c.; and in Latium likewise the appearance of new centres with similar characteristics, from the Quirinal in Rome to Castel di Decima, Laurentina and perhaps Tivoli, makes it possible to speak of parallel impulses towards colonization, an indication that the search for better land and more profitable agricultural produc- tion played a vital role in the development of the forces of production.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SANCTUARIES AND PALACES 39
And that a process of this kind could not occur peacefully is demon- strated by the progressive changes in military techniques, defensive structures and the size of settlements.
The most obvious social change is that which occurs in the middle of the eighth century B.c. and becomes fully established in the course of the seventh century. A rudimentary social stratification emerges and takes root, the outcome of the developments of the previous periods which had witnessed a complex interaction of such factors as the appropriation of the means of production (whose implicit and profound inequality of output should be stressed), the strong tendency to conflict between separate communities, and within the individual communities the need to integrate groups of varying origins. Without doubt it is at this point that we should see the emergence of relations of production based on client dependence, the pivot of aristocratic economic power: the enor- mous growth of some settlements (this is the time at which, in Rome, the necropolis is moved to the Esquiline) and the ‘disappearance’ of many others in this and the following century prove that the very conquest of further territory and the subjection of all or part of the settlements there (an event symbolized by the royal conquests of Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius) brought into play a mechanism for the accumulation of riches in the hands of an aristocratic class, an accumulation encouraged by improvements in cultivated crops and in technology, both agri- cultural and non-agricultural, and by the increasingly marked division of labour, factors once again revealed to us by archaeology. Nor should it be forgotten that the entrenchment of the aristocracies found basic support in the acquisition not only of objects imported from the East and from Greece, but also of cultural models, originating in the same areas, such as the symposium and the ceremonial ritual governing the display of wealth; and the acquisition of these in its turn generated greater local demand and for that very reason brought about the consolidation of specialized craft activities, which served as a further basis for more complex social stratification.
The conclusion of this economic and social process is therefore the ‘birth’ of the city as an organism with tangible monumental evidence, walls, sacred and communal buildings, and permanent and enduring dwellings which, from the last decades of the seventh century B.c., come to constitute the first real urban landscape in the history of Latium and Etruria.
Ill. SANCTUARIES AND PALACES
One of the most obvious and important signs of the economic and social development of the seventh century B.c. is the creation of dwelling
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
40 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
structures in material which is notentirely perishable.?! At the beginning of the seventh century, as the well-known case of hut vr at Satricum shows, the dwelling unit is still a hut of the type which had developed in the early Iron Age. About half-way through the century, however, both the great Caeretan aristocratic tombs of the Painted Lion type, and the appearance of clay tiles and of dwelling structures with stone founda- tions, articulated on complex bipartite or tripartite plans, attest a funda- mental change in the lifestyle of the ruling classes.
The discoveries at the settlement of Acquarossa near Viterbo, with houses on a rectangular plan embracing several rooms and a courtyard22 and decorated with painted architectural terracottas of the mid-seventh century B.C., and the excavation of the great palace building of Murlo near Siena,?3 which was originally built at the same time and then rebuilt at the beginning of the next century, have completely redefined our perspectives for the interpretation of monumental archaeological data of the seventh to sixth centuries B.c. While earlier evidence seemed to indicate that architectural terracottas were a feature of temples alone, the new data reveal that until the end of the sixth century B.c. these decorated clay revetments could be applied both to sacred edifices and to publicand private structures. It should, however, be emphasized that for this phase the distinction between private, public and sacred is anything but precise or workable, as the evidence from Murlo makes all too clear.
In its definitive version the palace of Murlo is an almost square structure, its sides some 60 m. long (Fig. 7). It is arranged around a huge central courtyard with wooden columns on three sides and with four identical corner rooms, and bears close comparison to eastern palace buildings such as the Cypriot palace of Vouni or the palace of the tyrannos of Larissa on the Hermos. The four wings of the building around the courtyard were planned with varying internal divisions; on the north- east and south-east sides long rooms may have functioned as service areas, ranging from storerooms to stables and servants’ quarters, while the banquet hall and women’s quarters were probably situated on the south-west side. The north-west side, divided exactly into three parts, open at the centre (in obvious relationship to the sablinum of Roman tradition) and without a colonnade, frames a small oikos which is dis- placed towards the centre of the courtyard and is to be identified as the building used for the family cult. The terracotta decoration is a true synthesis of aristocratic ideology: images of ancestors are proudly dis- played on the roof beams, amid a mythical bestiary of gryphons and gorgons; on the side porticoes, friezes on terracotta plaques with scenes of games, a wedding celebration, a banquet and a group of chthonic and
21 Torelli 1983[Jiz5], 471. 2 Ostenberg 1975[B368]. 2 Nielsen and Phillips 1976{B367], 113-47.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SANCTUARIES AND PALACES 41
ola eee - aE LES
0 10 20 30 40 50 60m
Fig. 7. Plan of early sixth-century ‘palace’ building at Murlo (Poggio Civitate). From Nielsen and Phillips 1976 [B367], fig. 1.
heavenly divinities (Fig. 8a—c) hint at the ceremonial use of the courtyard and the rooms opening off it, and give perfect expression to the aristocratic owners’ desire to make the building the political and ideo- logical centre of the world.
In the palace of Acquarossa (Fig. 9), dating from the third quarter of the sixth century 8.c. but likewise preceded by a building of the mid- seventh century, we can make out a central courtyard with only two colonnaded sides (Fig. 10);24 the east side houses the banquet hall and possibly the women’s quarters, while the north side is a tripartite space
% Ostenberg 1975{B368], 15-26.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
42 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
Fig. 8a. Reconstruction of (wedding) procession frieze from Murlo ‘palace’ (early sixth century). From T.N. Gantz, MDAI(R) 81 (1974), fig. 1.
ASN > FZ
Fig. 8b. Reconstruction of banquet frieze from Murlo ‘palace’ (early sixth century). From J. P. Small, Stud. Etr. 39 (1971), 28 Fig. 1.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SANCTUARIES AND PALACES 43
Z
{ (% “| on ING CLS SSISISS SSL LS SSSI SLD
Fig. 8c. Reconstruction of seated divinities frieze from Murlo ‘palace’ (early sixth century). From T.N. Gantz, Stud. Etr. 39 (1971), 5 fig. 1.
Fig. 9. Plan of ‘palace’ building at Acquarossa: phase 111 (¢. 550-525 B.c.). From Ostenberg 1975 [B368], 140.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
44 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
Fig. 10. Reconstruction of ‘palace’ building at Acquarossa: phase ut (¢. 550-525 B.C.). From Ostenberg 1975 [B368], 164.
with a large sacrificial hearth (eschara) in front of it, in a position not dissimilar from that of the oikos at Murlo and thus intended for the cult of the ancestors. The scenes depicted in the architectural decoration pro- claim the change that has taken place in the half century that has passed since the principal phase at Murlo:a frieze witha banquetand revel (Aomos) alludes to the use of one side of the building for symposia (games, wedding ceremonies, and divine assemblies have disappeared), while plaques showing hoplites along with Heracles and the Nemean lion or Cretan bull (Fig. 11) indicate the heroic, but no longer divine, nature of the family cult. Significantly, as at Larissa, the palace is on an axis with a sacellum (shrine), though this is outside the palace building and quite separate from it. The autonomy of the religious sphere therefore pro- ceeds pari passu with that of the political and social sphere: at Murlo the palace is at the centre of the social structure and contains within it the whole religious world, while at Acquarossa this sacred world is detached from it, leaving the palace with merely a heroic dimension and the ceremonial formalities of the banquet.
These discoveries make possible an entirely fresh evaluation of the Roman evidence — not only the decoration of the Regia and the Curia Hostilia, both adorned with architectural terracottas which are taken from the same mould and represent the Minotaur (Fig. 12), possibly an
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SANCTUARIES AND PALACES 45
Fig. 11. Reconstruction of architectural terracotta frieze from Acquarossa ‘palace’ depicting hoplites, Heracles and the Cretan bull, and chariot (¢. 550-525 B.c.). From Ostenberg 1975 [B368], 182.
Fig. 12. ‘Minotaur’ architectural terracotta frieze plaque from the temple of Caesar in the Roman Forum (ultimately probably from the Regia). First quarter of the sixth century.
archetypal image of the ‘city’, but even the actual plan of the Regia (Fig. 13a—d) which repeats the basic lines of the type of palace exemplified at Acquarossa and Murlo. No less significant for the identification of the form of social organization dominant in Latin society is the presence of a structure of the palace type, though of smaller proportions, at Ficana, while some very recent discoveries at Satricum25 seem to point to the
28 Pavolini and Rathje 1981[B376], 75-87; G. I. W. Dragt in Satricum — una citta latina 1982 {B4os], 41-2.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
46 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
a. The Regia in the late seventh century
b. The Regia ¢. 580 Fig. 13a—d. Phases of the Regia in the archaic period: after Brown 1974-5 [E79], figs. 10. 12. rgand 4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SANCTUARIES AND PALACES
d. The Regia ¢. 510-500
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
48 2. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
existence of a similar building in this other great Latin city. At the end of the sixth century, however, with the political movement towards institu- tions of a republican type, the Regia, now the seat of a rex reduced toa purely religious function, was to present — in a kind of frozen state — the typical form of the palace-shrine of the previous period, just as at Caere the shrine of Montetosto — in all probability a sacred place dedicated to the rite of enagismos, that is, the rendering of offerings to the shades of Phocaean prisoners impiously put to death after the battle of Alalia in ¢. §40 (Hdt. 1.167) — was to repeat yet again the plan of the palace building, perhaps to emphasize the expiation of a ‘religious crime’ perpetrated by some local ruler in accordance with the Homeric (and aristocratic Etruscan) model for the sacrifice of such prisoners.26
IV. EMPORIA AND SHRINES AT EMPORIA
The emergence of urban structures which take on monumental forms also marks an important change in the processes of trade. Since very ancient times the Etruscan and Latin world had been in contact with the eastern Mediterranean and with the protagonists of maritime trade, the Phoenicians and the Greeks.?” Materials from the East appear in tombs and archaeological contexts of the Etrusco-Latin coastal area from the early eighth century B.c.: from this period onwards Phoenicians and Greeks brought luxury goods with ever increasing frequency to the shores of Etruria, where they were destined to satisfy the similarly increasing needs of the emergent aristocracies. The Tiber, with its landing-places on both the Veientan and the Roman banks, was perhaps one of the earliest settings for the development of these contacts, attested by Euboean-Cycladic pottery found in tombs at Veii and in urban contexts at Rome. Until the late seventh century B.c. trade seems to have been controlléd by the emergent classes, to judge by the presence of oriental objects, or imitations of them, in aristocratic tombs. But from that date onwards we find emporium shrines appearing near the landing- places, where exchanges between Greek, Etruscan and Latin merchants took place under the apparent control of deities brought in from Greece or the East, even though these were soon assimilated to local divinities.
The fullest and clearest picture is that furnished by Gravisca,?8 the port of Tarquinii, where an emporium shrine was established around 590-5 80 B.c. to Aphrodite-Turan: to this the cults of Hera-Uni and Demeter-Vei were soon added, under the growing influence of the trade with Samos and also to some extent as a result of the social pressure produced by the massive influx into the port of agents of the great emporia of Ionia and,
% Torelli 1981{J124), 1-7. 27 Torelli 1981[J123}, 67-82. 4% Torelli 1977[Gs00], 398-458.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
EMPORIA AND SHRINES 49
VW Pray
fa,
Fig. 14. Reconstruction of terracotta frieze plaque from the second phase of the Sant’ Omobono temple (c. 530 8.c.?). From Sommella Mura 1977 [E135], fig. 7.
from the late sixth century B.c. onwards, of Aegina; at Gravisca we have evidence of the votive gift of an anchor given by the man whom Herodotus (I1v.152z) considered ‘the most fortunate of the merchants known to him’, Sostratus son of Laodamas of Aegina (see CAH tv, Fig. 39).
Cults like those of Gravisca are known or can be surmised throughout the whole coastal area of western central Italy. A grandiose temple of the late sixth century at Pyrgi, the port of Caere, has revealed the name of a local tyrannos, Thefarie Velianas, the author of an inscribed bilingual dedication in Etruscan and Phoenician, set up to commemorate the help received in his ascent to power from the goddess Ishtar, assimilated to the Etruscan Uni. This dedication and the grandiose character of the temple buildings at Pyrgi, colossal in comparison with the far more modest fabric of the emporium at Gravisca, reveal clearly the importance which the emporia and the classes directly connected to them assumed in this Etruscan metropolis.29
At Rome, the oriental Aphrodite brought by the merchants was installed at the gates of the city at the edge of the Portus Tiberinus and took on the name of Fortuna, modelled on that of the Greek Moirai, of whom Aphrodite Urania was the presbytate, the eldest (Paus. 1.19.2). Her temple has been identified with that of the sacred area of Sant? Omobono
2 Die Gottin von Pyrgi 1981[G3 38); Verzar 1980[G 307), 35~86. For a different dating of Thefarie Velianas see below, p. 256.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
jo z. ARCHAIC ROME BETWEEN LATIUM AND ETRURIA
and, like the numerous other sanctuaries of Fortuna once scattered throughout the surburbanarea of the archaic city, it was closely linked by tradition with the ‘tyrannical’ figure of Servius Tullius. Its Etruscan and Latin inscriptions, rich votive offerings from the beginning of the sixth century B.c. and sumptuous decoration are evidence of the splendours of the regal period and confirm the importance which the cult — and those who brought it to Rome — had for the royal power during the years of the Etruscan monarchy. Even more significant perhaps is the fact that the popularity of the shrine and its prosperity seem to follow the fortunes of the Etruscan kings of Rome. The last votive offerings belong to the late sixth century B.c., and it may be no coincidence that, in the very years which saw the birth of the republican state, the temple was abandoned, not to be rebuilt until over a century later.3°
Nonetheless, the Aphrodite of the emporia appears not only in the great cities of southern Etruria, but also in others along the Latin coastline. From the mouth of the Liris, where the goddess Marica was explicitly identified with Aphrodite of the Sea (Pontia), to the beaches of Antium, which venerated the Fortunae in the two guises of the goddess, as virgin and as matron, to Satricum, where the aspect of Mater Matuta predominated (at Rome, in the shrine of Sant’ Omobono, she was associated with Fortuna the Maid (Virgo)), to Ardea with its Aphrodisium, and indeed to the great pan-Latin Aphrodisium of Lavinium, the guardian goddess of the emporia secured trade and navigation by her presence. The evidence from Lavinium (p. 59f; Fig. 21) illustrates the importance the goddess had assumed: the shrine ‘of the thirteen altars’, almost certainly identifiable with the pan-Latin Aphrodisium, which was inaugurated in its monumental form around $70 B.C. with an altar and with the ‘consecration’ of a princely tomb of a century earlier for the divine cult of Pater Indiges-Aeneas,?! is the most eloquent demonstration of the impact on local religious traditions of those who thronged the emporia. It is therefore logical that around this Aphrodisium there should have grown up the complex ritual of the Vinalia Rustica, the sacred celebration of the grape harvest and the ‘mystery’ of the fermentation of the wine, of a cultural inheritance, that is, which the Etruscan—Latin world had taken over during the eighth century from ancient Greek and oriental technology. No less part of the same picture is the appearance in this same context of the cult of the Dioscuri, a Greek borrowing openly acknowledged as such epigraphically by the well-known inscribed bronze plaque from Lavinium (Fig. 63: p. 579), which may be dated to the first phase of the monumental shrine.*2
* For another discussion of the history of this temple see below, pp. 76ff. 3! For an alternative, later, dating of this shrine see below, p. 69. _* Torelli 1984[I7o].
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CONCLUSION 51
It was through the agency of those who frequented the emporia that Etruscan and Latin culture acquired the whole of its vast ideological and technological Greek heritage and adapted it to its own needs, reshaping rites and remoulding divine images to serve the whole complex social stratification which had gradually been created over the three centuries that saw the slow formation of urban structures.
Vv. CONCLUSION
The ‘archaeological’ history which has been briefly outlined above does not claim to be in any way exhaustive. Rather, our aim has been to draw attention to the considerable potential of this evidence, which should not be understood either as supporting a particular interpretation of the literary tradition, itself shrouded with ancient and modern uncertainties and misunderstandings, or asa self-sufficient reality, devoid of links with the real dynamics of historical events. Limitations on the space available for this exposition have made it necessary to stress only certain aspects of the whole range of evidence. Nevertheless, it may confidently be hoped that the historian’s attention has been drawn at least to the main lines of an economic, social and cultural complex which can at once be integrated with the broad picture that emerges from a critical and non-reductive interpretation of the literary tradition.
The reader will be able to co-ordinate for himself this sequence of major archaeological events with the historical data which emerge from the following chapter by A. Momigliano, and it is therefore unnecessary to attempt that task here. A single uniform approach to the world of southern Etruria and Latium (while making proper allowance for differ- ences due to diversity in the social and cultural rather than in the ethnic background) is undoubtedly fruitful; it helps to restore to the long-term historical process the basic unity which existed between these two worlds, and also enhances our understanding of the diverse destinies which the passage of time allotted to Etruria, Latium and Rome. But the relatively provisional character of an ‘archaeological history’ should always be borne in mind, since by its very nature it is destined to undergo progressive modification in the course of time. Hence in integrating the one type of history with the other an even greater degree of caution must be exercised than that indicated in the opening paragraphs of this chapter — yet without abandoning completely such an attempt in the manner which has unfortunately become an increasingly dangerous and regret- table habit amongst both historians and archaeologists.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHAPTER 3
THE ORIGINS OF ROME
A. MOMIGLIANO
I. THE PROBLEMS OF CONTEXT
The question whether Rome wasa Greek polis was asked in Greece in the fourth century B.c. by scholars like Heraclides Ponticus who at least in theoretical terms were well qualified to answer (Plut. Cam. 22). An alternative question was suggested by other Greek scholars whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus leaves unidentified (Amt. Rom. 1.29.2): whether Rome was or had been an Etruscan polis. The definition of Rome as a Greek polis evidently still appealed to philhellenic historians such as the senator C. Acilius (?) in the second century B.c., when Rome was turning into an empire of unprecedented structure (Jac. FGrH 813 F1). On the other hand the question of Etruscan influence on Roman institutions and customs was still very much in the mind of historians like Strabo (v.2.2, pp. 219~20C). These alternative interpretations — of Rome as a Greek city or as an Etruscan city — remain significant for us too. But we are now more aware of one of the difficulties inherent in the opposition: the Etruscans themselves developed their cities with an eye to Greek models.
As we know, between approximately 850 B.c. and 700 B.c. a profound social transformation started in Greece and spread to Italy, the outcome of which was the creation of the classical city-state. Initially this trans- formation involved the displacement of groups which either went to remote places, often overseas, in what we call colonization or simply created a new town in the neighbourhood where they used to live. Forcible removal of inhabitants from one place to another was not excluded. The technological conditions of these developments are not always evident. However, improvements in the control of waters — either through irrigation or by navigation; better metallurgy with increased and more skilful use of iron and with wider exchange of tin and copper; availability of surpluses of wheat, oil and wine in certain places and in certain years with consequently a wider range of trade; and finally, most elusive of all, the military superiority of certain groups seem to be the main factors. The creation of colonial establishments such as Al-Mina in
§2
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PROBLEMS OF CONTEXT 53
Syria and Pithecusae on the island of Ischia during the eighth century gives some measure of the range of Greek trade and of the countries involved. By importing iron and copper from Etruria Pithecusae estab- lished direct contact between Greeks and Etruscans and initiated a migration of Greek artisans, traders and aristocrats into Etruscan towns which led to widespread assimilation of Greek cultural patterns by the Etruscans and their neighbours, among whom were the Latins and more specifically the recent settlers of the new town of Rome.
The formation of city-states in Italy under the influence of Greek models is therefore indisputable. But several factors complicate our understanding of it. First of all we are not yet in a position to account for the authority, skill and rapidity with which the Etruscans turned the Villanovan culture of Central Italy (whether it was native or alien ground to them) into one of the most enduring networks of cities history has ever known. It is only too obvious that the Etruscans remained different from the Greeks, however much they learned from them; and it will become apparent from what follows that what the Romans learned from the Greeks does not coincide with what the Etruscans learned from them. In particular we are still in the dark about what the near-Etruscan popula- tion of Lemnos contributed both to the contacts between the Etruscans and the East and to their peculiar interpretation of Greek social and cultural models: the presence of Greeks at Lemnos prior to the conquest by Miltiades seems now to have been established.!
Furthermore we cannot forget the parallel phenomenon of urbaniza- tion, trade and colonization among the Phoenicians who competed with the Greeks in the western Mediterranean and shared with them many basic attitudes to social life. The co-operation between the Etruscans and the Phoenicians of Carthage became close, and was extended to Rome only in the sixth century B.c., but it had developed from old contacts with the Phoenicians in general since at least the eighth century (cf. Fig. 15). Though it now seems probable that both the Etruscans and the Latins got their alphabetic writing from the Greeks rather than from the Phoenicians, Phoenician imports appear in tombs, and one in Praeneste has a Phoenician inscription.2 There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of a Phoenician (Tyrian) quarter in Rome in the seventh century, as suggested by R. Rebuffat, but D. van Berchem has made out a strong case for the Phoenician origin of the cult of Hercules (= Melgart) in Rome. Phoenician contributions to the development of urban life in Central Italy must at least be treated as a serious possibility.
Going beyond the events — or the traditions — of the eighth to the sixth
' Heurgon 1980{J65], 578-600. 2 Amadasi 1967[K1], 157. 3 Rebuffat 1966{K 162], 7-48; van Berchem 1967[G304], 73-109, 307-38.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
54 3- THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 15. Figured friezes from a faience vase depicting the Egyptian pharaoh Bocchoris. In the upper frieze he stands by a table between the deities Neith and Horus and is then seen conducted by the gods Horus (I.) and Thot (r.). The lower frieze shows negro prisoners sitting among palms. The vase is either Phoenician or Egyptian work and was made before Bocchoris’ death in 715. It was found in a female grave at Tarquinii, probably of the first quarter of the seventh century. After A. Rathje in Ridgway and Ridgway 1979 [Arrt], 151, fig. m1.
centuries B.C., recent research has been considering Mycenaean influ- ences and Indo-European survivals in Latium. They undeniably exist, but their extent is still very controversial. Evidence is increasing for Mycenaean imports into Italy. Greek-speaking people traded and prob- ably even settled in Sicily and southern Italy at given moments between 1500 and 1100 B.c. No Mycenaean sherd has, however, been securely identified on the site of Rome; and altogether Latium remains poorly represented on the 1981 map of Mycenaean finds in Italy. Believers in a strong Mycenaean influence on early Rome, among whom the most authoritative is E. Peruzzi,‘ therefore have to rely on linguistic data and Greek myths for the hypothesis that there was a Mycenaean settlement on the Palatine. The evidence so far adduced fails to persuade, being made up of doubtful etymologies and of an unorthodox use of the legend of Euander (p. 58f).
In comparison, the case for the Indo-European heritage in Rome is far stronger. In a general sense it is in fact indisputable. The Latins, and therefore the Romans, spoke an Indo-European language and wor- shipped some unmistakably Indo-European gods (though not many). The point in dispute is more specific. It has been the life-work of an exceptionally able and influential scholar, Georges Dumeézil, to try to demonstrate that the institutional and intellectual patrimony of the
4 Peruzzi 1980[I so}.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PROBLEMS OF CONTEXT 55
Romans was organized according to a coherent Indo-European pattern.5 In his earliest works Dumézil identified this pattern in a division of archaic Roman society into three ‘functional’ tribes, one of rulers and priests (Ramnes), one of producers (Tities) and one of warriors (Luceres). A tripartite religion, culminating in the triad Iuppiter, Mars and Quirinus (where Mars is the god of war and Quirinus of peace and production), would have corresponded to the three ‘functional’ tribes or castes. Later, however, Dumézil changed his mind. He admitted that the three Romulean tribes were no castes and explicitly stated that no Indo- European institution was recognizable in Rome except at the level of terminological continuity (e.g. rex (‘king’) compared with Indian raj(an) and Celtic rig). Consequently, in this second phase Dumézil confined himself to seeking the tripartite ideology in religion and myth. He has suggested that the stories about the origins of Rome from Romulus to Ancus Marcius are Indo-European myths turned into history by a peculiar twist of the Roman mind. It is generally admitted that Dumézil has succeeded in showing various degrees of similarity between Roman myths (or legends) and myths (or legends) circulating among other Indo- European groups. The story of the contest between three Latin and three Alban brothers, the Horatii and Curiatii (Livy 1.24.1ff; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 111.13—22; etc.), isan example. But it is less certain that Dumézil and his followers have been able to re-interpret the history of the Roman monarchy persuasively as the projection of a collective mentality ob- sessed by tripartition. There is of course an element of truth both in the earlier and in the later Dumézil. Any society has to operate with priests, warriors and producers, and has to place its leaders somewhere between priests, warriors and producers. It is not surprising that Dumézil’s tripartition could easily be applied in the study of the western Middle Ages. What Dumézil cannot do, because it is contradictory in terms, is to postulate an invariable Indo-European pattern as the explanation of the continuously changing relations between the social groups of Rome. Nothing is gained, however, by replacing Dumézil’s Indo-European model with A. Alfdldi’s ‘nomadic’ model.6 Taking his cue from descrip- tions of Iranian and Turkish nomads, Alfoldi postulated two stages in archaic Roman society, one matriarchal based on tripartite institutions (such as three tribes and 30 curiae) and the other patriarchal with binary institutions (such as double monarchy). This is no more demonstrable than the existence of a rule of exogamy in the patriarchal society of the second stage. But Alfdldi’s researches have raised problems which cannot be disregarded, such as the importance of the cavalry and of youth-groups in archaic Roman society.
5 See Dumézil 1941-3[G395]; 1944[A41]; 1958[A4q3]; 1968—73[G396]; 1969[G 397]; 1974 [G 398]. 6 See AlfOldi 1974f{Ar].
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
56 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
At present the traditional alternative, of interpreting archaic Romeasa society similar either to a Greek or to an Etruscan city-state, is compli- cated by the emergence of other, often more remote, factors, which have not yet been defined with sufficient clarity. It must be added that even some fundamental features of Roman society of the seventh to the sixth centuries B.c. are in themselves obscure. It is enough to remind ourselves that the regime of land-ownership is an unsolved problem, because of the uncertainties surrounding the key-term heredium (p. 100), and that the structure of Roman monarchy is obfuscated by our ignorance of the original meaning and function of the /ex curiata de imperio which may (or may not) have given legitimacy to a new king (p. 105). In these circum- stances it has seemed prudent to give separate accounts of the archaeo- logical and of the literary evidence and to refrain from more tentative hypotheses which would be justified and welcome in a personal mono- graph. In the past centuries, even down to the time of B. G. Niebuhr and Th. Mommsen, any study of archaic Rome was an examination of the traditional account transmitted to us by the surviving ancient texts, the most important of which belong to the late first century B.c. (Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy): the Dutchman J. Perizonius (1685) and the Frenchman L. De Beaufort (1738) are usually considered the pioneers of this critical examination of the literary sources, but narnes could easily be multiplied. What is new in our century is the accumula- tion of new archaeological (including epigraphic) evidence. It is now ample enough to provide a story of its own which can be used to check the literary evidence and vice versa can be checked against the literary evidence. As archaeological research can, to a certain extent, be planned with specific problems in mind, it has increasingly been directed towards obtaining answers to questions (especially about material conditions of life and social stratification) for which the literary evidence is insufficient or unreliable, being much later than the events themselves.
Il. THE MYTHS OF FOUNDATION
Before we turn to archaeology, it is, however, wise to give some attention to the foundation legend of Rome as it appears in our literary sources. The peculiar Roman synthesis of the legend of Romulus with the legend of Aeneas no doubt developed slowly through the centuries with materials which are partly indigenous, partly Greek and perhaps partly Etruscan. It is important as an indication of what the Romans thought about themselves at least from the end of the fourth century B.c. onwards. When the Romans decided that they were ultimately Trojans, they were in effect saying that they were neither Greeks nor Etruscans — an answer in anticipation to the question put by the Greeks whether Rome was a Greek or an Etruscan polis.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MYTHS OF FOUNDATION 57
The notion that Aeneas founded Rome either with Odysseus or after Odysseus (the text is uncertain) is attributed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. Rom. 1.72.2) to Hellanicus. When Hellanicus wrote in the late fifth century B.c., the text of Hesiod’s Theogony had been circulating for a long time with lines, perhaps interpolated, announcing that Circe bore Odysseus two sons, Agrius and Latinus ‘who was faultless and strong . . . they ruled over the famous Tyrrhenians in a distant recess of the holy islands’ (1010-1016). These passages, of course, belong to Greek speculations about the peregrinations of the heroes of the Trojan War. We owe also to a Greek writer — the Sicilian Alkimos — the earliest reference which associates Romulus with Aeneas, if it is true that Alkimos lived about 350 B.c. (Jac. FGrH 560 F4). He stated that Romulus was the only son of Aeneas by Tyrrhenia and the father of Alba whose son Rhomos (an obvious emendation of the ‘Rhodios’ of the MSS) became the founder of Rome. Though Romulus makes his first appearance in this Greek text, it can hardly be doubted that his connexion with Aeneas was artificial and imposed by the existence of a native, Roman legend which the Greeks had to take into account.
As it appears in our main sources of the Caesarean and Augustan age, the Roman version of the foundation legend preserves the connexion of Romulus with Aeneas through a series of kings of Alba Longa who were the descendants of Aeneas. A daughter of one of these kings was raped by the god Mars (though there were other versions of the story) and gave birth to the twins Romulus and Remus. The subsequent events can be divided into four sections. In the first the twins, who had miraculously survived by being fed by a wolf, start a career as youth leaders, decide to found a new city and quarrel between themselves at the moment of the ritual foundation, so that the foundation of the city was also an act of fratricide. In the second sequence Romulus, by now alone, pursues the policy of a robber chief, collects male citizens for Rome indiscriminately and gives them wives by a collective act of rape of Sabine women. In the third scene Romans and Sabines become united under the joint leader- ship of Romulus and Titus Tatius (the only dual kingship in the Roman tradition) and are organized into three tribes and thirty curiae. In the fourth section the episodes, mainly of military conquest, are less neatly characterized, except for the final disappearance of Romulus which. represents the model for the Roman divinization of sovereigns. Though it is easy to produce parallels to individual episodes or even to individual sections of this foundation story (and of course Cain and Abel, Moses, Cyrus, the twin Indian Nasatya and the wars between Asi and Vani in the Icelandic saga have all been invoked in turn) there is no obvious general model for the story. The substance of the legend must already have been elaborated long before 296 B.c. when a statue of the wolf with the twins was solemnly set up (Livy x.23.1). The conventional account was to be
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
58 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
found in the first of the Roman historians Fabius Pictor (writing in Greek) about the end of the third century B.c. Plutarch (Row. 3.1; 8.7) says that Fabius Pictor’s account corresponded to that given previously by the Greek Diocles of Peparethus. This basically confirms that the compromise between a Greek and a Latin version of the origins of Rome had already become canonical in the second half of the third century. The compromise was increasingly easy because it became evident that if the foundation of Rome had to be put about 250 years before the beginning of the Republic, it could not be attributed either to Aeneas or to his immediate descendants. Hence the creation of a series of intermediate Alban kings, which the poet Naevius had not yet considered necessary, but which his contemporary Fabius Pictor admitted. Thus Aeneas and Romulus became perfectly compatible.
The sum total of the legend represented in itself an ideological orientation. The first characteristic of the myth about the foundation of Rome is precisely that it is a myth about a city, not about a tribe or a nation. The citizens of Rome were always conscious of belonging to the comparatively small nation of the Latins which in its turn was identifi- able by its specific language, its specific sanctuaries and (at least for a long time) federal institutions. The Roman story recognizes the existence of the Latins and of their centres Lavinium and Alba Longa, but does not explain the origins of the Latins as a whole. Secondly, the Roman legend emphasized in its most authoritative versions that both Aeneas and Romulus had one divine parent (but on the opposite side, Aeneas having a divine mother and Romulus a divine father: Venus and Mars were not unknown to each other in Greek myths). Both were leaders of migrant bands which in turn absorbed alien elements. The ultimate impression the Romans wanted to give of themselves was of a society with divine, but by no means pure, origins in which political order was created by the fusion of heterogeneous and often raffish elements, after a fratricide had marked the city’s foundation. No doubt, as we shall see, the legend transmitted some awareness of the part played by juvenile bands of adventurers under aristocratic leaders in the archaic societies of Central Italy. In the ritual of the ver sacrum (the ‘sacred spring’), as a consequence of a previous vow, a band of young people was sent away to seek new land under a leader who in his turn was supposed to follow a sacred animal (p. 284). But the ver sacrum was only the most sacralized version of these juvenile migrations. Significantly, Romulus did not lead a ver sacrum. The Romans, while giving notice that they did not consider themselves either Greek or Etruscan, also displayed considerable sophis- tication in defining the mixed origins of their citizen body.
Having made their point in the main story, they acknowledged an early relationship with the Greeks in its later developments, by allowing
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MYTHS OF FOUNDATION 39
the Palatine hill to be occupied by the Arcadian Euander before Aeneas reached Latium. We do not know who first invented this story. The Romans also came to recognize an Etruscan contribution to the original population of the city by various devices, including the artificial connex- ion of one of the three Romulean tribes, the Luceres, with the Etruscans. There is more than a premonition of the future attitudes of the Romans to empire in their stubborn defence of their own identity against the Greeks and Etruscans, while declaring themselves a nation ready to assimilate foreigners without racial prejudices or even moral pretensions.
Strikingly enough in this context, the Romans at an early period gave signs that they were ready to identify themselves with the Sabines. Showing another element of guilt about their origins which superimposed itself on that of fratricide, they believed that Romulus had achieved fusion with the Sabines by raping their women. His successor Numa Pompilius, a model religious leader, was a Sabine. It is no less puzzling that the Sabine Titus Tatius should appear as a joint king with Romulus. Why should Rome have had first a potential joint king, Remus, and then a temporary joint king, Titus Tatius? The possible connexion with the double consulate of the Roman Republic adds to the obscurity rather than detracting from it. We should have to know more about the early contacts between the Latins and the neighbouring Sabines, who, with their forays into the plains and hills of Latium (such as Rome still experienced in the middle of the fifth century B.c. when Appius Herdonius occupied the Capitol (p. 286)) and, probably, with attempts to secure land for themselves among the Latins, must have created anxiety among the Romans.
What we have said is not, however, intended to explain the myth of the Roman foundation — only to indicate the direction which the Romans gave to their future by the political ideology implicit in this myth. We would understand it better if we knew whether the Etruscans had used similar ingredients for their myths. A wolf feeding a human child appears on an Etruscan stele from the Certosa of Bologna attributable to the fifth or fourth century B.c. (Fig. 16). An Etruscan scarab of about 500 B.c. (Luyne Collection in Paris) represents Aeneas carrying his father. Statu- ettes of Aeneas in the same posture were found at Veii. But we are far from knowing what the Etruscans made of children fed by wolves or of Aeneas carrying his father, the more so because the Veii figurines may well belong to the time when Veii was Roman. We cannot be certain that the Attic vases with representations of Aeneas found in Etruria express the taste of Etruscan customers, rather than that of the Athenian paint- ers. Another factor about which we should like to know more is the role of the Latin city of Lavinium in shaping the legend of Aeneas. Dionysius of Halicarnassus saw a heroon of Aeneas in the town (Ant. Rom. 1.64.5).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
60 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
-1 0 1 2 3 475 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20m a rn
Fig. 17a. Lavinium ‘heroon’: plan. From Roma medio-repubblicana 1973 (Baor), 514 fig. 24.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
MYTHS OF FOUNDATION 61
Fig. 17b. Lavinium ‘heroon’: reconstruction. From C.F. Giuliani and P. Sommella, PP 32 (1977), 368 fig. 8.
Italian archaeologists believe that they have identified it in a sacred building of the fourth century 8.c. which includes a tomb of the seventh century (Fig. 17; cf. p. 50). In the early third century B.c. Timaeus learned from natives of Latium that Aeneas brought sacred objects of his own to Lavinium (Jac. FGrH 566 F59). These objects must be identified with the Penates Populi Romani which the Roman consuls and praetors were required to visit in Lavinium each year (Varro, Ling. v.144; Macrob. Saf. 111.4.11). Furthermore, the Greek poet Lycophron in the Alexandra (third or second century B.c.) seems to be the first to state that Aeneas founded Lavinium (implied in l. 1259). Livy and other writers knew that Aeneas had died by drowning in the river Numicus not far from Lavinium and was worshipped under the name of luppiter Indiges. An inscription from Tor Tignosa, near Lavinium, with its mention of “Lar Aeneas” has been taken by many as a reference to this cult of Aeneas. Cumulatively the evidence suggests an old concern in Lavinium with Aeneas which may have preceded and inspired Rome’s interest in him. In any case when the Romans decided to be Trojans they knew they could count on the sympathy of other Latin towns.
7 ELLRP 1271. On the problems of the reading cf. Kolbe 1970[E37], 1-9; Guarducci 1971[E34], 74-89.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Tombs
Habitation sites Huts Houses Other Religious sites Votive deposits Shrines/temples Other Defences Reconstructed line of ‘Servian’ wall
Conjectural agger and fossa defences of Esquiline and Quirinal
100 200 300metres nl
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 63
Ill. SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN LATIUM AND AT ROME
We can now turn to the archaeological evidence (Maps 1 and 2; Fig. 18). Rome has been a city for the living for about three thousand years. The living inevitably destroy the past in order to live. What is left for archaeologists in the best of cases raises the problem of how typical and representative the finds are of the period to which they belong. In recent years modern technology has increased the danger of total destruction of the traces of the past. Any new building in Rome or any new road — especially any new motorway — in Latium is likely to erase ancient remains. Many of the recent archaeological discoveries (for instance at Castel di Decima) are the result of emergency rescue work. What has been achieved remains exceptional both in quality and in quantity. We shall try here to summarize the main historical results, and we shall obviously give special attention to the more recent, and only partly published, excavations.
At the beginning of the first millennium B.c. there were many more forests in Latium than we might imagine. Even the Roman hills looked considerably different, with the Oppian still united with the Palatine and the Quirinal with the Capitoline. A little lake stood on the site of the present Colosseum, and the Campus Martius included a lake of its own, Lacus Caprae. Wheat (triticum turgidum, L., as distinct from emmer, spelt, barley and oats), wine, olive oil and even apples were apparently relative novelties in the early eighth century B.c. With the harbour of Ostia still in the future — tradition puts it in the late seventh century B.c., archaeology seems to scale it down to the fourth century — only the place we call Antium was a safe coastal harbour. The seasonal movement of livestock — transhumance — being then as now an essential feature of Italian pastoral life, the internal roads of Latium along the rivers Tiber and Anio
Fig. 18. The archaeology of early Rome: location map. After Gjerstad 1933-73 [A356], figs.
I-2.
1. Sacra Via necropolis 13. Sant?’ Omobono
z. Temple of Caesar 14. ‘Scalae Caci’
3. House of Livia 15. Atrium of Domus Augustana 4. Forum Augusti 16. Aula Regia of Domus Augustana §. Quirinal 17. Lararium of Domus Augustana 6. Velia 18. Palatine (near House of Livia) 7. Cispian 19. S. Maria della Vittoria
8. Esquiline necropolis 20. Villino Hiffer
9. Regia 21. Capitol (SE)
10. Capitoline habitation strata? 22. Lapis Niger 11. Sacra Via 23. Capitoline temple 12. Equus Domitiani 24. Temple of Vesta
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
64 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
maintained contacts with the outside world of Etruria, Campania and Umbria, each with its peculiar mixture of languages, religious rituals and political institutions. Groups of huts formed the villages which in the seventh century were slowly replaced by wider settlements both of unbaked and baked bricks. The earlier fortifications of the villages were earthworks. Varro still saw some of them inside Rome (p. 36). The place where Rome ultimately developed was attractive to those who wanted to cross the Tiber on their way from Etruria to Campania or, more urgently, needed the salt to be found abundantly in the salt beds at the mouth of the Tiber.
The thin population, which to present-day archaeologists seems to be indistinguishable from other groups of the Appenninic bronze culture, begins to thicken and to acquire characteristics of its own in the tenth century. Though there are competitive systems of classification, the following scheme which basically goes back to H. Miiller-Karpe’ has become a sort of internationally recognized code:
Latial Culture
Phase I (Final Bronze Age) 1000-900 B.C,
IIA (Early Iron Age) 900-830 B.C.
IIB 830-770 B.C.
Ul 770-730 B.C.
IVA (Early and Middle 730-630 B.C. Orientalizing Style)
IVB Late Orientalizing 630-580 B.C.
Continuity with preceding sites can (as far as present data tell us) seldom be proved. Traces of preceding occupation have, however, been found — among others — on the site of the later Rome not far from the Forum Boarium (going back to the fifteenth century B.c.), in Pratica di Mare (that is, Lavinium) and towards the coast at Ardea. One must add immediately that our knowledge of cemeteries is far better than that of residential settlements. The fact that in Phases I and IIA cremation prevailed, almost exclusively, on certain sites does not further reduce our chances of understanding how people lived, because the ashes were often put into urns representing the huts of the dead, while miniature (and even normal-size) reproductions of the dead person’s belongings were ’ strewn about. The urn was in its turn inserted into a large jar with a wide mouth, the do/ivm. Negatively, Phase I is characterized by the absence of the typical bi-conical Proto-Villanovan urns which are present at Allumiere, La Tolfa, etc. Allumiere and Phase I of Latium, however, share the custom of the double container for the ashes. Valley bottom
§ Miller-Karpe 195 9[E114].
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 65
settlements may be replaced by sites on the west slopes of the Alban hills. The Alban hills — where Alba Longa was situated (more or less modern Castelgandolfo) — have been described as the cradle of Iron Age culture in Latium, but so far the evidence about Alba Longa itself has been most disappointing (p. 265), to the extent that some scholars have asked whether it ever existed. In Phase IIA inhumation begins to compete with cremation. It is unnecessary to say that the theories which explained the co-existence of inhumation and incineration as the sign of co-existence of two different ethnic groups are now discredited. But it is as well to remember that fifty years ago it was the right thing to believe that cremators spoke an Oscan—Umbrian dialect, when they did not speak Etruscan, whereas inhumation was a sign of competent Latinity. F, von Duhn’s archaeology and G. Devoto’s linguistics were both, alas, marred by this mythology.° It is true that Lavinium seems to lead in inhumation practices (though incineration has been located there too), and Lavinium was supposed to have been founded by Aeneas and to preserve the gods (Penates) brought by him from Troy. But what can we deduce from that?
In the ninth and early eighth centuries the villages were often in clusters. No central power seems apparent, at least in archaeological terms. One would like to see the state of Latium in those centuries reflected in the list of the thirty peoples of Latium which Pliny gives in his Natural History (111.69). Pliny certainly preserves the memory of an old ritual: the title of his list is ‘triginta carnem in monte Albano soliti accipere populi Albenses’.!° But the names of the thirty peoples given by Pliny are dubious for various reasons (p. 267f), and even their number creates difficulties.!! We have no way of deciding whether the list is due to conjectures by antiquarians or reflects authentic data and, if authentic, to which century it belongs. What we learn from excavations is that in Phases ITA and IIB, that is, from roughly 900 to 770 B.c., there was an enlargement and reorganization both of the several cemeteries and of the very few villages we happen to know. In the place which was to be known in classical times as Tibur (present-day Tivoli), on the hill where the Rocca of Pius II now stands, the reshaping of the burial area is evident: individual tombs are surrounded by circular enclosures. At the same time a tendency to enlarge the occupation of the plains became manifest: we ultimately owe to it the rise of Rome. A most impressive necropolis began to be excavated in 1971 on the modern Via Prenestina
9 von Duhn 1924-39[B323}; G. Devoto, Gli antichi Italici (Ed.1, Florence, 1931); cf. id. Stud. Efr. 6 (1932) 243-Go; Athenaeum N.S. 31 (1953) 335-43; Stud. Etr. 26 (1958) 17-25.
10 ‘The thirty Alban peoples who regularly received (sacrificial) meat on the Alban Mount.’
11 Lycoph. Alex. 125 3ff; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 111.31.4; cf. Diod. vit.5.9; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. v.61. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.49 gives the members as forty-seven.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
66 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
on the western edge of the now dried-up Lake of Castiglione. It has become known as the necropolis of the Osteria dell’Osa. It was perhaps one of the cemeteries of the city of Gabii, a mysterious little place where Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been educated (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.84.5). Gabii was absorbed into the Roman state during the sixth century B.c. The treaty between Gabii and Rome inscribed on a leather shield was preserved in the sanctuary of Semo Sancus on the Quirinal and was one of the antiquarian oddities dear to the writers of the Augustan age.'2 About two hundred tombs were found in the cemetery of the Osteria dell’Osa where the teachers of Romulus, if any, must be supposed to have found their final rest. Cremation tombs a pozzo (in the form of a pit) and inhumation tombs a fossa (trench) were mixed, the latter being in the majority. From the tomb furniture it would appear that cremation was reserved to adult males, though some of the deceased were inhumed like the women and children. The other peculiarity is that only cremation graves contain weapons. Here cremation clearly implies status, and the ashes are placed in urns representing dwellings — presum- ably emphasizing that the man was a pater familias (household head). In the process of time (IIB) inhumation seems to become the absolute rule. We may add here that Gabii itself seems to have been identified, and a seventh-century sanctuary and a sixth-century building have been ex- plored. The seventh-century sanctuary yielded Italo-Geometric and Corinthian pottery and votive statuettes.
Phase III (about 770-730) presents throughout more precise signs of social differentiation. Iron is by now in general use, and bronze has a prestige value. In Phase III of the Osteria dell’Osa (which is still largely unpublished) wheel-made pottery makes its appearance, and some tombs stand out as particularly wealthy ones. Weapons abound everywhere in men’s tombs; chariots appear both for men and for women, and are therefore signs of status. Some of the painted pottery appears to be inspired by Greek Geometric models. We are reminded that the island of Ischia was colonized by Euboean Greeks about 775 B.c. and that Greek imports surround Latium, at Veii in Etruria and Pontecagnano, Capua, and Cumae in Campania. Taking the area as a whole, artisan production seems to go beyond local needs and to be due, at least partly, to itinerant or immigrant smiths and potters. A rich deposit of bronze objects belonging to this Phase III was discovered by chance at Ardea in 1952.
This is in chronological terms the age of Romulus according to the conventional date. But so far archaeology has not yet revealed any inscription or any other sign pertaining to the foundation act, if there was one (as tradition states), a point of some relevance. There are on the
12 Dion. Hal. Ast. Rom. 1v.38; Hor. Epist. 11.1.5; ef. Paul. Fest. 48L.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 67
contrary signs that the Palatine and the Forum had been occupied earlier, at least since the tenth century, to which some tombs discovered in the Forum belong (Fig. 24). As already mentioned, on other neighbouring sites the occupation may be even more ancient. The excavations of the area of Sant? Omobono have revealed materials going back to the fifteenth century B.c., though mixed with later strata. There is no archaeological confirmation of, and some evidence against, the tra- ditional date of the foundation of Rome in the eighth century. True enough, three hut floors belonging to the eighth century were discov- ered on the Palatine, more precisely on the Germalus side of it, in 1948. They include holes for the wooden posts which must have formed the solid framework for the walls (Fig. 19a). With the help of the dwellings represented by funerary urns it is possible to reconstruct one of these huts (Fig. 19b) and to give oneself the pleasure of imagining that it is the casa or tugurium Romuli, Romulus’ hut, which was preserved on that spot to the end of antiquity. But there would be no substance behind these fancies. The Forum, which has yielded numerous tombs (both inhumation and cremation) for the ninth and possibly early eighth century B.C., ceased to be used for burials in the early eighth century. The Esquiline cemetery seems to have acted as the main substitute. Only children were still buried in the Forum, under huts, in the eighth and
> Bz F Pe SIS ? ©
‘ ~*~
2 ve,'!
Fig. 19a. Palatine hut: plan. From Gjerstad 1953-73 [A356], 1v.46 fig. 4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
68 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 19b. Palatine hut: reconstruction. From Gjerstad 195 3-73 [A56], 1v.46 fig. 5.
seventh centuries. The Forum was certainly a residential area in the seventh century, and there are signs of occupation on the Capitoline hill. The archaeological data we have do notallow us to decide whether Rome resulted from the association of pre-existing villages or from the creation of a central organization, say, on the Palatine — apart from the possibility that the two phenomena were concurrent (cf. p. 35). Marks of wealth appear in some of the tombs on the Esquiline, at least one of which hada chariot among its furniture. The Esquiline cemetery must have lasted, to judge from some Greek vases found there, until at least 630 B.c.: in fact, it was probably used much later. Outside Rome, the discovery at La Rustica on the Via Collatina in 1975 of a previously unknown proto- historic site has added to our knowledge of Phase III and of its wealth in bronze objects.
We are approaching a stage (Phase IV) which we can appreciate better because it reminds us immediately of things we have seen elsewhere in civilizations which have long been familiar. The orientalizing style in Italy is in fact a mixture of techniques and objects coming from Greece and the East. No doubt Greek and eastern artisans could have been on the spot to work for the new wealthy aristocrats and tyrants; but after all the Greeks were appearing in strength on the Tyrrhenian coast (Cumae) and in Sicily, and the Phoenicians were both in Sardinia and in Sicily. As for the Etruscans, they may or may not have come from the East in the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 69
ninth and eighth centuries. To the sites which we have so far mentioned one at least must be added, with due emphasis on its importance. On the ancient road to Lavinium, 18 km. south of Rome, the place of Castel di Decima has been famous since 1971 when it became obvious that an archaic necropolis was in danger of destruction because of the work for the new Via Pontina. Though there are tombs of earlier periods, Castel di Decima is essentially a document of the orientalizing phase of Latium with its new display of wealth, sometimes of exotic origin. One interest- ing feature of this necropolis is that some of the tombs (all inhumation) have swords only among their furniture, others spears only, while there are some with both spears and swords. The known tombs of the new necropolis are said to be more than 350. The element of chance in the finds of tombs containing swords and spears makes it hard to explain the distribution pattern. It may have something to do with rank and age. In the Roman archaic army the ‘hastati hasta pugnabant’, as Varro says (Ling. v.89), ‘principes gladiis’. That is, the younger soldiers (Aastati) had spears, the senior ones swords. The tombs offer intimation of family groups, and of continuity through a few generations. Chariots are again found both for men and women. Two tombs deserve special mention: tomb xv, which must have belonged to a very powerful man to whom hunting and fighting were both familiar. He had accumulated much bronze wealth (Fig. 20), some Greek vases (such as a Proto-Corinthian aryballos of the end of the eighth century) and at least one Phoenician amphora. The other tomb, c1, was occupied by a woman who could afford not only a chariot, but refined silver and gold jewellery. A gold and amber pectoral, a silver robe sewn with carved amber and glass beads and gold spiral hair-rings suggested the title of “Tomb of the Princess’ for this burial. One would like to be able to name the place where the princess lived. Politorium, a place said to have been conquered by Ancus Marcius on his way to Ostia (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rov. 111.38; Livy 1.33.3), has been proposed. The town corresponding to the necropolis of Ponte Decima has been probably identified not far from it on Monte Cicoriaro. If its defence work in cappellaccio belongs to the sixth century the identification with Politorium would not be affected, but the destruction of Politorium by Ancus Marcius before 600 B.c. would become hard to believe.
Nothing so spectacular has been found from this phase either in Rome orat Lavinium. As we have already mentioned, a remarkable multi-period monument has been discovered at Lavinium (Fig. 21). The monument has in its earliest stratum a tomb with seventh-century orientalizing material to which a sixth-century bucchero oinochoe was later added. The tomb was renewed and turned into a shrine in the fourth century, for which identification with the seroon of Aeneas has been suggested (p. sof;
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
yo 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 20. Reconstruction of bronze tripod from Castel di Decima tomb xv (¢. 720-700 B.C.). From Civilta del Lazio primitive 1976 (B306}, tav. Lxt1.
Fig. 17 a-b). Another sanctuary (ib.) goes back to the late sixth century and may have been connected with both the cult of Aeneas and the Latin League: in its final stage in the fourth century it had thirteen altars, one of which was no longer in use. These sanctuaries are extra-urban, like another where about sixty large statues were found dating from the sixth to the fourth centuries. Four statues represent Minerva. The largest, of the sixth century, shows Minerva accompanied by a Triton (Fig. 22), the Tritonia virgo (‘Tritonian maiden’) of Virgil (Aen.11.171; v.615). A sanctu- ary of Minerva in Lavinium was known to Lycophron (A/ex. 1281). Let us add some details for the orientalizing period from other recent explorations. At the so-called ‘Laurentina’ site, at a place called Acqua Acetosa on the Via Laurentina, a necropolis was discovered in 1976 which may well rival Castel di Decima in importance; it is so far
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 71
Fig. 21. Lavinium and environs (after Castagnoli et al. 1972 [116]).
represented by about 50 tombs. They are rich, with gold and silver ornaments for women. The later tombs are organized in distinct groups forming a circle, with one or two more important tombs at the centre. These central tombs contain chariots (also for women) and prestige goods with large amounts of pottery, some of Greek and Phoenician origin. The interest of the place is increased by the identification of the residential area. Attic black figure pottery of the last quarter of the sixth
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
72 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 22. Fifth-century statue of Minerva accompanied by Triton from the eastern sanctuary at Lavinium. From F. Castagnoli, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, anno 376. Problemi attuali di scienza e cultura, Quad. 246 (1979).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 73
century was found nearby. Two sherds incribed ‘Manias’ and ‘Karkafaios’ are apparently among the oldest personal names found in Latium. Finally, another settlement of the orientalizing period has been identified as the ancient Ficana on the hill of Monte Cugno overlooking the plain of the Tiber (between Rome and Acilia). The fortification (agger) seems to belong to the late eighth century. From the middle of the seventh century B.c. huts give place in some cases to two-roomed buildings. One sanctuary or public building was decorated with terra- cotta revetments representing a procession of chariots and warriors (late sixth century). A necropolis of about sixty tombs shows a steady decline in funeral furniture. Towards the end of the seventh century all display of wealth ends, though the cemetery goes on. From this point of view Ficana raises with particular clarity the general problem of what caused the change from prestige tombs to austerity tombs which is observable throughout Latium at the end of the orientalizing period between 600 and 580 B.c. (cf. p. 37). The same problem is posed by the chamber tombs of Torrino near the Via Laurentina.'3 People ceased displaying or rather concealing prestige, and therefore fruitless, wealth in their tombs. Earlier archaeological discoveries, in the last century, first revealed what the wealth of the upper class in the seventh century could be at its peak. Praeneste (modern Palestrina), in a splendid (but not yet exactly identified) fortified position on Mount Ginestro, began to attract the interest of archaeologists and looters in 1738 when one of the master- pieces of archaic art — the Ficoroni Cista (p. 412) — was discovered. It wasa reminder that Praeneste had been famous in antiquity for its fine bronzes. The first great tomb in the orientalizing style to be properly recognized was the Tomba Barberini of Praeneste. Discovered in 1855, it is now in the Museo di Villa Giulia in Rome. The Tomba Castellani was discov- ered in 1861-2; the Tomba Bernardini appeared in 1876. These tombs are characterized by the almost unbelievable wealth and beauty of their metal and ivory objects. The most obvious comparison is with the Tomba Regolini-Galassi of Caere (now Cerveteri) which is preserved in the Vatican Museum. Some of the objects are certainly of Eastern origin (Assyria, Urartu, Phoenicia, Cyprus), but some oriental artists may have been at work in Latium or at Ischia. Not all the objects were kept together by the discoverers. One, the gold fibula (Fig. 23) inscribed ‘Manios me vhevhaked Numasioi’ (“Manios (Manius) made me (or ‘had me made’?) for Numasios (Numerius)’) — perhaps the most famous inscribed object from the whole of Latium — raises two doubts, one about its origin and the other about its authenticity. It was published in 1887 by an eminent archaeologist, W. Helbig,!* without indication of its origin.
13 Bedini 1981(B288], 5 7ff. ‘4 Helbig 1887[B232], 37-9.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
74 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 23. Manios fibula with retrograde inscription. From Civilta del Lazio primitivo 1976 {B306], tav. c.
Later Georg Karo declared that he had been told by Helbig that the fibula, being of gold and obviously valuable, had been stolen from the Tomba Bernardini.'5 However, doubts have repeatedly been expressed about the authenticity of the fibula and therefore of its inscription, which if genuine would be the oldest known Latin text, perhaps of the late eighth century B.c. While Professor A. E. Gordon of Berkeley,'¢ after careful examination of all the elements involved, inclined to take the fibula as authentic, M. Guarducci has not only concluded that it is a forgery but has identified the forger as the first editor, Helbig; she is supported on linguistic grounds by E. P. Hamp.'7
With or without the Manios fibula Praeneste offered such a wealth of archaic objects as to overshadow any other place in Latium. But Tibur provided something less precious yet in a different way remarkable, in a tomb with several ivory objects of the orientalizing style; and Satricum (between Anzio and Cisterna) brought to light an extremely remarkable collection of artistic objects in the stsps (offerings) of the temple of Mater Matuta in its orientalizing phase. The stips also contained a vase, a bucchero kylix of about 620-600 B.c., with an Etruscan inscription by a man of Caere:!8
mi mulu larisale velyainasi I given by Laris Velchaina
It remains an open question whether Rome had anything to offer of comparable wealth, especially in the matter of tombs, in the eighth and seventh centuries B.c. The Esquiline tombs, as far as our knowledge goes, do not provide anything so opulent. It is possible, of course, that this is misleading. The richest tombs may have been looted long ago, or may still await discovery. But we must also consider the other two possibilities, that Rome never had an aristocracy possessing wealth comparable with that of Praeneste or that in Rome law or custom
'S See Zevi 1976[Bz74], o—2; cf. Karo 1904[B351], 24. 16 Gordon 1975[Bz24]- 17 Guarducci 1980{[B226], 413-574; 1984[Bz28], 127-77; Hamp 1981[Bzz9], 151-4. '8 M. Cristofani Martelli, Stud. Etr. 44 (1974) 263f (n. 217).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 75
intervened earlier than in surrounding places to discourage the accumu- lation (or elimination) of wealth in tombs. In the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Rome clearly shared the ideals of aristocratic austerity of her Latin (but not Etruscan) neighbours.
The finds from Rome are disappointing in the sense that they tell us very little about what was happening outside the zone of the Forum and Palatine. It would be very interesting to know something about the Quirinal, which our historical tradition connects with a Sabine popula- tion. But the few tombs of the eighth century found there do not give us any exact information about the date, extent and ethnic features of the site. A deposit in a pit near the church of S. Maria della Vittoria with pottery, bronzes and other objects discovered in 1875 may come froma sanctuary of the Quirinal belonging to the eighth to the seventh century, but is no more revealing. Even less is known about the other hills, such as Mons Caelius and the Aventine. These are quarters of modern Rome where one cannot choose to dig ad /ib. It is, however, symptomatic that the Palatine-Forum zone (Fig. 24) remains central for modern archaeo- logists, as it was for the Roman historians of the Augustan age. The centre of power does indeed seem to have been there — and to have been expressed, not in terms of rich tombs, but rather of progressive urban organization. There are clear signs that in about 635-575 B.c. the Forum was paved and transformed from a residential to a public place with ceremonial buildings. The area of the Comitium seems to have been ready to receive assemblies from 600 B.c.: a building in it has been
PALATINE HILL
Fig. 24. Central Rome: Location map.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
76 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 25. Fragment of bucchero bowl from the Regia with inscription ‘rex’ (‘king’). ¢. 530-510 B.C.?
hypothetically identified with the first Curia Hostilia, a place for the senate. Ata slightly later stage (5 75—5 50 B.C.) the place included the Lapis Niger (‘Black Stone’) — the so-called tomb of Romulus discovered in 1899. Whether a fragment of an Attic black figure vase with a representa- tion of Hephaestus helps to prove that the place was the Volcanal (p. 5 79) remains to be confirmed. Frank Brown, the excavator of the Regia, had at first thought that, notwithstanding the name, it had been built for the priest called rex sacrorum, that is the priest who took over some of the sacred functions of the kings after the end of the monarchy. But in his more recent pronouncements Brown has indicated the existence of earlier strata of the Regia going back at least to the end of the seventh century.!? The identification of the place is confirmed by a bucchero bow! of disputed date within the sixth century with the word rex (Fig. 25).20 If this was the place where the kings performed some of their duties, it was a modest one. Temple buildings begin to appear in and around the Forum: terracotta ornamental reliefs of such temples have been discovered. We have no idea when the temple of the goddess Vesta was first built; its circular structure has suggested a dubious link with the huts of primitive Rome. There are also signs of religious activities on the Capitol from the late seventh century (votive offerings) before the building of the great temple (Fig. 42).
A zone which has proved of the highest interest is that of the present- day church of Sant’ Omobono in the Forum Boarium. Exploration which started about 1938 revealed an open-air cult-place of the late seventh century, followed by a temple with terracotta decorations of about 575 B.c. (Fig. 27). About 525 the temple was reconstructed on a
19 Brown 1974~5[E79}, 15-36; cf. above, p. 45f with Fig. 13a-d. 2 Guarducci 1972(B225}, 381~-4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 77
S » c/o S wusayy palo
Zorn
Ooi Lg \ er
aie ©
clED Lu. e/
*
dodbo en srl
Fig. 26. The ‘Duenos vase’ (first half of the sixth century) from the Villino Hiffer votive deposit on the Quirinal. The inscription seems to begin (in the extreme upper left) ‘Duenos med feced’ (‘Duenos made me (or had me made)’) but has not been fully elucidated. From
Gjerstad 1953-73 [A56}, 111.163, figs. 102 and 104.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
78 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
VICVS IVGARIVS
0 10m eae eee
Fig. 27a. Plan of the republican temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta at Sant’Omobono in the Forum Boarium, with outline of the archaic temple. After G. loppolo, RPAA 44 (1971), 6, fig. 2.
larger scale and on a new podium. After destruction at the end of the fifth century a new higher podium supported wo temples which are certainly to be identified with those of Fortuna and Mater Matuta, attributed by tradition to Servius Tullius. The cult of these two goddesses may, of course, be earlier?! and therefore due to Servius’ initiative; but the archaeological evidence offers no support. Greek and Etruscan influ- ences — indeed Greek myths — are evident in the decoration of these temples and also in the offerings of the s#ips votiva (votive donation) with their varieties of imported and local pottery (including Attic ware). One significant item is an ivory lion bearing an Etruscan inscription with a personal name (Fig. 28). By turning to such public buildings we get a flavour of the organized social life and of the cultural contacts of sixth- century Rome.
21 For the view that the original temple was dedicated to Fortuna see p. 4of.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 79
Fig. 27b. Reconstruction of the archaic temple at Sant’ Omobono (second half of the sixth century). From Enea nel Lazio 1981 [E25], 117.
Fig. 28. Inscription on ivory lion from Sant’Omobono (first half of sixth century). From M. Pallottino, Stud. Etr. 47 (1979), 320.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
80 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Curiously enough, we are not yet quite certain how this city was protected against attack. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the oldest defences of Rome are represented by an earth wall (agger), five to six metres high, accompanied by a ditch which one can follow for a stretch round the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline. The earth wall would have preceded the stone one, the murus lapideus, dated after the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C., which is in the typical Grotta Oscura tufa (p. 332). But there are three questions about the earth wall — one of date, another of extent and the third of its relation to strange pieces of a different stone wall (in the stone locally called cappellaccio). In the foundations of the earth wall, the agger, one piece of an Attic vase has been found which can be dated about 490-470 B.c. Some scholars — including E. Gjerstad?? — are convinced that one piece of Greek pottery is enough to date the whole of the earthwork. This would mean that the agger should be dated slightly later than 470 B.c. But can we really date an earth wall on the basis of one piece of Greek pottery? Secondly, even if we accept the earth wall as the oldest type of fortification we are not yet certain that it crossed the valleys and embraced the Caelius, the Palatine and the Capitol. In its turn the suggestion that the sections of cappel/laccio wall might also be archaic and meant to supplement the earth ramparts is based on dubious chronological premises.
With or without a wall, the citizens of Rome seem to have been less able or ready to display wealth in their tombs than some of the citizens of Praeneste and even of Satricum, Tibur and the unknown little place concealed under the modern name of Castel di Decima. Let us put the question from the opposite angle. What could have provided some members of the community of Praeneste with so much useless wealth to display or to conceal in tombs? We can imagine robber barons of some kind who terrorized their neighbours, controlled roads of communica- tion and therefore trade, and extracted tributes or gifts from their victims. It is not easy to explain why Praeneste should have been a favoured place for such robber barons to live and die in, but after all Praeneste was a natural fortress where booty could be safely preserved. The possibility that this display of wealth was the result of a mixture of band warfare and of monopolistic trade could be confirmed only by literary evidence.
The archaeological evidence about Latium which we have briefly considered gives us some idea of how individual places developed in the direction of greater social differentiation, more solid housing, perma- nent temples (in contrast to open-air sanctuaries), fortified defences, drainage for agricultural and urban purposes and finally local and long- range exchange of goods. The formation of military and economic élites
2 Gjerstad 1931[E1o4], 413-22; 1954[E105], 50-65; 1953—73[A56], 11.3 7fF; IV.35 2ff.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SETTLEMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE 81
goes together with the acquisition of goods either by gift exchange or by straight commercial transactions. Foreign influences are at work in the style of objects — principally from Etruria and from Greek centres and less commonly from Phoenicia and, perhaps through Phoenicia, from other Near-Eastern countries (including Urartu). The presence of foreign traders and artisans is a priori probable and in a few cases epigraphically confirmed. Latin, Greek and Etruscan appear in Rome and no doubt were spoken there. But the only official text (the Lapis Niger (p. 11 n. 19)) is in Latin. So far there is no evidence that Etruscan was ever the language of government in Rome. Writing appears in Rome about 600 B.c. The existence of inscriptions is in itself an index of the rise of self-conscious individuals and groups who are concerned to advertise themselves in sanctuaries. Some of them are certainly foreigners like Laris Velchaina of Caere who makes an offering to Mater Matuta of Satricum and, probably, the companions of Publius Valerius in the same place, to whom we shall return later. Mobility from place to place is, indeed, generally suggested by the inscriptions: thus there is a Tite Latine at Veii23 and a Kalaturus Phapenas at Caere (TLE 65), the Latin origins of whom seem evident. A Rutile Hipukrates at Tarquinii (TLE 155) has a name which is half Latin and half Greek (see below, p. 91). A member of the gens Veturia, later to be found in Rome, is mentioned in a tomb of Praeneste.”4
Even the epigraphical evidence is sufficient to reveal the existence of a revolutionary development in the onomastic system of Central Italy which happened between the eighth and the sixth centuries B.c. Latin, Etruscan, Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian dialects slowly replaced the com- bination of the personal name with the patronymic by a combination ofa personal name (later often abbreviated and called praenomen in Latin) with a name indicating membership of a clan, that is descent from a common ancestor (the nomen gentile of the Romans). The implications of this change for social life can of course be worked out only with reference to the literary evidence. Once again the archaeological evidence, whether accompanied or not by epigraphic evidence, refers us back to the literary tradition. The same applies to the other big question raised by the archaeological evidence. Weapons and armour found in tombs or exhib- ited on reliefs indicate that Greek tactics in cavalry and infantry fighting penetrated into Latium (and Etruria) in the seventh century B.c. (p. 35), though double axes and chariots survived for ceremonial purposes if not for actual fighting (Fig. 29). But archaeology alone cannot clarify the modes, the limits and the social consequences of the hellenization of warfare in Central Italy.
23 Palm 1952(B373], 57- 2 Torelli 1967[B265], 38-45; below, p. 285.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
82 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
Fig. 29. Reconstruction of architectural frieze plaque (late sixth century?) from the Comitium depicting pairs of riders; the left hand rider of the first two pairs each wear a helmet, carry a round shield and brandish a double-axe or sword respectively. After Gjerstad 1953-73 [A56], Iv.2, 483 fig. 147.1.
IV. THE DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF ROME
On three points the literary tradition can be immediately compared with the archaeological evidence. The first is the date of the foundation of Rome. Those who took Aeneas either as the founder or one of the near ancestors of the founders of Rome were bound to date Rome not much after the Trojan war. Such was apparently the choice of Ennius who considered Ilia, Romulus’ mother, to be the daughter of Aeneas. He said somewhere in the Aznals (154 Skutsch) ‘septingenti sunt paulo plus aut minus anni, augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est’.25 The question, of course, is from where he started to count his 700 years. If, as seems probable, he attributed these words to Camillus, he placed the origins of Rome in the early eleventh century B.c. If so, it becomes still more remarkable that Roman historians and antiquarians gave dates for the foundation of Rome in the eighth century s.c.: Fabius Pictor in 748 B.c., Polybius apparently in 751, Atticus (Cicero’s friend), followed by Varro, in 753, while the antiquarians who put together the Fasti Capitolini chose 752. The most aberrant date among historians of Rome is 728 B.C., preferred by Fabius’ contemporary Cincius Alimentus. The date given by Timaeus, 814 8.C., was apparently dictated by the desire to date the foundations of Carthage and Rome in the same year, that is, it was determined by the dateattributed to the foundation of Carthage: it is, however, in broad agreement with Roman dates. The Roman historians were obviously starting from the date of the foundation of the Republic, which was fixed by the list of the consuls (fast#) about 509-506 B.c. But why did they attribute a period of 250 years to the monarchy? The length
28 ‘Seven hundred — a little fewer or a little more ~ are the years since far-famed Rome was founded with august augury.’
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF ROME 83
of the individual reigns of the seven canonical kings of Rome is not plausible (an average of 35 years for each king) and seems rather artificially concocted. But we simply do not know why Roman tradition chose to fix the date of the birth of Rome in the eighth century. It is easier to explain why Rome was supposed to have a precise foundation date. Though undoubtedly many cities were never founded and simply evolved from one or more previous villages, ritual foundations of cities were known to Etruscans, Greeks and Latins. The Romans, being themselves founders of cities, considered themselves to have been rit- ually founded. They may even not have been entirely wrong in their surmise. The character of some of the basic Roman institutions (three tribes, thirty curiae) presupposes the intervention of some organizing mind at a very early stage. The man who organized Rome into three tribes and thirty curiae may be called the founder of Rome. The trouble is that we do not know who he was or when he lived.
Secondly, the literary tradition helps to determine at least certain stages of the gradual extension of the Roman territory in its various aspects. The Romans always made a distinction between the sacred boundary of the city (wrbs) and the boundary of the ager Romanus (territory of Rome). There is no reason to doubt that the distinction goes back to the origins of the city. The oldest sacred boundary (pomerium) of the urbs seems to have defined a settlement on the Palatine. Tacitus (Amn. XII.24) gives some details about it, we do not know on what authority. The Palatine pomerium may have coincided with the itinerary of the Luperci who ran round the foot of the hill at their festival in February — or it may have been deduced from it by some speculative antiquarian of the late Republic. Tacitus also states that Forum and Capitol were incorporated in the pomerium by Titus Tatius, in Romulus’ time, while Livy 1.44.3 states that Quirinal, Viminal and perhaps Esquiline were added by Servius Tullius. The tradition on the Mons Caelius is particu- larly confusing: the first six kings are involved. There is no further mention in our sources of later extensions of the pomerium until Sulla. The pomerium came (gradually, one would think) to signify the zone within which the head or heads of the state had civil, not military, power. The centuriate assembly (comitia centuriata), which was a military assem- bly, had to be summoned outside the pomerium in the Campus Martius.
It is very difficult to grasp the nature of the relation between the pomerium and the Septimontium. In itself the Septimontium was a festival, almost certainly including a procession, which involved sections of the Palatine (Germalus, Palatium) and the Velia, the three sections of the Esquiline (Oppius, Cispius and Fagutal), the Caelian and apparently also the Subura valley betwen Cispius, Oppius and Velia (Festus 458; 476 L). The Septem Montes (‘Seven Hills’ — plus a valley!) are evidently
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
84 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
not the seven traditional hills of Rome (Palatine, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelius, Aventine, Capitol). The Septimontium implies a special bond between three of the seven hills. The bond may have developed before Rome extended to the seven traditional hills, but there is no certainty that it did not develop ata later date inside the larger city. Another ceremony which may or may not point to an otherwise unattested stage in the development of Rome is that mysterious festival of the Argei, the topography of which is accurately described by Varro (Ling. v.45). Puppets called Argei were collected from 27 chapels scat- tered throughout Rome with the exclusion of the Aventine and the Capitol: they were thrown into the Tiber by the Vestal Virgins.
The dimensions of Rome inside the pomerium at the end of the Republic have been calculated as 285 ha. Outside the pomerium there was the ager Romanus which in its turn required yearly purifications. Some information about these allows us to define what is for us the oldest territory of the Roman state. The ceremony of the Ambarvalia (‘Around the fields’) was carried out between the fifth and the sixth mile from the Forum (Strabo v.3.2, p. 230c) and that of the Terminalia (“Boundary rites’) at the sixth mile on the Via Laurentina (Ovid, Fast. 11.679). The Fossae Cluiliae, which appear in various traditions as the border of Rome on the Via Latina, were at five miles from the Forum (cf. Livy 1.23). An approximate calculation gives about 150 km.? to the oldest known ager Romanus. Naturally there were gains and losses: we know that the so- called ‘septem pagi’ (‘seven cantons’) were a bone of contention with the Etruscans. But at the end of the monarchy, when Rome had absorbed more or less finally many neighbouring communities, such as Alba Longa, Crustumerium, Nomentum, Collatia, Corniculum, Ficulea, Cameria, etc., the Roman territory amounted to something like 800 km.? It was either then or later distributed among sixteen ‘rustic’ tribes (as opposed to four ‘urban’ tribes) which received their individual names mainly from the leading clan (gens) owning land in the territory of each (p- 179).
Thirdly, and finally, the literary evidence allows us to say something more (but not much) about the ties which connected Rome with the other Latin-speaking communities.26 From time immemorial Rome had belonged to a Latin League. When this League was entirely under Roman control, say in the late fourth century B.C., its centre was in the temple of Iuppiter Latiaris on the Mons Albanus. The priests for the annual festival of the League were called Cabenses Sacerdotes, Cabum being reputed to be a village in the neighbourhood of Alba Longa, the city of the ancestors of Romulus allegedly destroyed by the Romans
2 For a further discussion (with some differences of view) see Chap. 6.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH OF ROME 85
Fig. 30. Denarixs of P. Accoleius Lariscolus (43 8.c.) with bust of Diana Nemorensis on the obverse, triple cult statue of Diana Nemorensis on the reverse (RRC 486.1).
under Tullus Hostilius (Pliny, HN 111.64). As we mentioned (p. 65), the membership of the League consisted traditionally of 30 populi or commu- nities that were entitled to share the meat of the sacrifices and refrained from fighting each other during the festival (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.49; Macrob. Sat. 1.16.16). In addition to the temple of Iuppiter Latiaris, the city of Lavinium played a special role in this League. ‘Sacra principia’ (the ‘sacred origins’) of the Romans, the gods Penates, were kept there (ILS 5004; Varro, Ling. v.144). It is obvious that this later situation preserved elements of earlier times when Rome was not yet the ruling power in Latium. But we do not know whether in those earlier times the League centred on the Mons Albanus pursued definite political aims; nor do we know what was the exact relation between the sanctuary of the Mons Albanus and other Latin sanctuaries, such as the one ‘ad caput aquae Ferentinae’ (‘at the source of the Ferentine water’), apparently not far away (Festus 276 L), or the other of Diana in a wood near Aricia (Fig. 30). The latter may have become an anti-Roman centre at the beginning of the fifth century B.c. (this is at least what one can infer from an inscription quoted by Cato Orig. fr. 58 P (p. 272f)). We have, however, definite indications that under the two Tarquinii and Servius Tullius the Romans succeeded for a time in controlling a large portion of Latium. Servius Tullius was legitimately credited on the basis of a surviving document with having established a Latin sanctuary of Diana just outside the pomerium of Rome on the Aventine (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. v.26; Varro, Ling. v.43; ILS 4907), which was meant to attract the Latins to Rome and perhaps represented a ‘zona franca’ where they could trade under divine protection. Even at the time of the beginning of the Republic, in their first treaty with Carthage (if Polybius 111.22 is correct in his dating of it), the Romans claimed a hegemonic position in Latium (p. 253f). More precisely, the Romans divided the peoples of Latium into three groups: those directly incorporated in the Roman state (not mentioned as such); those who were ‘subject’ (Ardea, Antium, Circeii, Tarracinaand perhaps Laviniumare singled out); and those who were not
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
86 3. THE ORIGINS OF ROME
subject, but from whom the Carthaginians had to keep away all the same (no names given). The young Republic was evidently not capable of maintaining such claims for long. Not much later it had to makea treaty of alliance with the Latins, the ‘Cassian treaty’ (foedus Cassianum), on a different basis (p. 274). The text reported by Cato on the league centred in the sanctuary of Diana near Aricia may well represent a stage between the Roman claims in the treaty with Carthage and the more modest settlement of the foedus Cassianum. In relation to individual Latin cities a variety of settlements (with a corresponding variety of legal formulae) must have developed during the expansion of Rome in Latium. Only a few traces remain. The special position maintained by the small city of Gabii in sacred law may go back to the monarchic period: the ager Gabinus (‘Gabine territory’) held a middle position between the ager Romanus and the ager peregrinus (‘alien territory’) (Varro, Ling. v.33). The Twelve Tables imply pre-existing privileges for the mysterious communities of Forctes and Sanates (about whom the later Romans remembered almost nothing; cf. Festus 474 L).
We may end this section by saying that so far no archaeological support has been found for the self-assured Roman tradition that the Latins of Romulus soon combined with the Sabines of Titus Tatius. Tradition also suggests, though not very consistently, that the Sabine settlement was on the Quirinal, that Quirinus was a Sabine god (Varro, Ling. v.74; but cf. Livy 1.33) and that ‘Quirites’ was a second name of the Romans because of their Sabine component. The notion that Quirinus was Sabine was so deep-rooted that in the third century B.c. the Roman magistrates decided to call Quirina the tribe which was created to incorporate the Sabine inhabitants of Reate, Amiternum and Nursia (p. 431). A few details of Roman religious institutions may support the notion of a Sabine Quirinal hill. Those archaic priests, the Salii (p. 109), were divided into two groups, one called Salii Palatini, the other Salii Collini (where co//is (‘hill’) seems to stand for Quirinalis). There are traces of an ‘Old Capitol’ (Capitolium Vetus) on the Quirinal as opposed to the true Capitolium (Varro, Ling. v.158; Mart. v.22 and vi1.73). One can go further. The Luperci were divided into two groups, Fabiani and Quinctiales. The division, unlike that of the Salii, is according to clans (gentes), not places. But the gens Fabia is known to have had cultic connexions with the Quirinal (Livy v.46.2; 52.3) and may therefore be assumed to have represented the Sabines in the Lupercalia. The case, however, for a Sabine settlement on the Quirinal is not very strong. It cannot be reinforced by linguistic arguments. The Sabines spoke a dialect of the Umbro-Oscan group which was clearly distinguished from Latin. They came, no doubt, to influence Latin (as they themselves were influenced in their speech by Latin). It is probable that such common
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE ROMAN KINGS 87
words in Latin as /upus (‘wolf’), bos (‘bull/cow’), scrofa (‘sow’), rufus (‘red’) (instead of the undocumented /ucus, vos, scroba and of the existing alternative ruber) are a sign of Sabine infiltration. But Titus Tatius is not needed to explain all this. In fact, if Quirinus and Quirinal had been authentic Sabine words we would have them in the form Pirinus, Pirinal. It is also very uncertain whether the terminological distinction between montes and colles for the hills of Rome (Mons Palatinus but Collis Quirinalis) should be treated as evidence for the co-existence of Latins and Sabines on the hills of Rome. At the moment the primeval fusion of Sabines and Latins must be considered a respectable traditional datum for which there is no strong support (if it is a fact) nor obvious explanation (if it is a legend).
Vv. THE ROMAN KINGS
Beyond this point we are left more or less alone with the literary tradition, the only one which gives us a story of the Roman kings. This tradition, which is for us chiefly represented by writers of the Caesarean and Augustan period, Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, is remarkably consistent. It seems to go back in its essentials to the first historians of Rome who wrote in Greek at the end of the third century B.C., Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus (p. 5). The vital question is from where these early annalists (as they were called) derived their information about the monarchic period of Rome. Roman historians consulted, or at least knew of, some documents for early Rome (p. 13). We can add the treaty with the neighbouring Gabii written on a shield (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.58.4; Festus 48 L) to the /ex sacra concerning the temple of Diana on the Aventine (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.26.5) and the treaty between Rome and Carthage (Polyb. m1.22) already mentioned. But such texts were not numerous enough to repre- sent an essential element of the tradition. Some may in fact have been rediscovered (like the text of