LIVY, FOLKLORE, AND MAGIC: A REAPPRAISAL OF ROME'S FOUNDATIONAL MYTHOLOGY Jeremy Leonard Albrecht A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2020 Committee: Casey Stark, Advisor Amilcar Challu James Pfundstein © 2020 Jeremy Albrecht All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Casey Stark, Advisor This paper argues for an additional manner in which the social and cultural history of Rome can be both examined and understand through the implementation of folkloric practices. While folklore and history are two distinct academic traditions, there exists a certain amount of overlap between the fields and this overlap is worth exploring in more detail. In the course of this paper, it is argued that many aspects of Roman social and cultural history can be understood and examined through folkloric means. In chapter one, a working definition of folklore is established and shown to apply to the foundational mythology of Rome as portrayed by Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita. Chapter two continues to examine Livy and provides an argument that, in the process of his writing, Livy himself was more concerned with a folkloric interpretation of Rome’s history than he was in staying firmly within the bounds of historical accuracy. Finally, chapter three branches off from Livy and focuses on the arcane and magical traditions which were prevalent in Rome to show that not only were folkloric traditions present in Rome’s traditional mythology, but can also be seen throughout the Republic and even into the early Empire. iv For my parents: You always believed I could do whatever I set my mind to. Even when I didn’t. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Stark, without whose knowledge, patience, and prodding this thesis would likely never have happened. Thank you for putting up with all my crazy ideas and seeing me through this process. You were the best advisor I could have asked for. Next, I would like to thank Dr. Pfundstein and Dr. Challu, who were gracious enough to agree to sit on the committee for a strange, interdisciplinary thesis. Both of you provided ideas and insights without which this final project would be the lesser. I would also like to thank Dr. Greene. While you did not have a direct hand in the content of this manuscript, I would surely have missed numerous deadlines throughout the process if not for your requests for updates and your reminders. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to thank my family for their contributions. Mom and Dad, thanks for pushing me to stick with the plan of writing a thesis when I was thinking of switching to exams. You were right, as always. Ryan and Brianna, thanks for reading drafts of this when it was quite nearly illegible and taking an interest (or, at the least, doing an excellent job feigning one) in the subject matter of this manuscript, even as divergent as it is from your own interests. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER I: ROME AND FOLKLORE: FOUNDATIONAL MYTHOLOGY AS FOLKLORE ........................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER II: LIVY AND FOLKLORE: WHY HISTORICAL ACCURACY WAS LESS IMPORTANT THAN CULTURAL BELIEF ....................................................................... 31 CHAPTER III: MAGIC, CULTURE, AND FOLKLORE IN ROMAN SOCIETY ............. 52 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 74 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 77 1 INTRODUCTION All roads, as the saying goes, eventually lead to Rome. Though this was originally meant in a geographic sense (if a somewhat pithy one), if one studies history to any great extent it tends to hold true in an intellectual and research-centric sense as well. The fingerprints of Roman ideals and traditions permeate most western societies in some form, regardless of whether the adoption was intentional. Similarly, most academic traditions have, at some point, interacted with the legacy of Rome, whether through the physical culture it left behind, the literature and language it produced, its economic impact, or its contributions to philosophical thought. Given this, it is often challenging to provide a fresh voice when discussing matters related to Rome, both in terms of content and approach to the material. Nevertheless, this is precisely what will be attempted in the following pages. Specifically, this project will be looking at social and cultural understanding of Roman foundational mythology and folklore, as well as the folkloric implications inherent in the writings of Titus Livius, who is more commonly known simply as Livy. His work, Ab Urbe Condita, is an attempt to trace the entire history of Rome from the foundation of the city, as the title of his work implies. Since the establishment of the city is distinctly tied to many of the more popular myths and pseudo-historical traditions of Rome, Livy’s work is the most beneficial primary source upon which to base a folkloric reinterpretation. In doing so, it will be shown that the foundational mythology of Rome and, consequently, the writings of Livy on the subject, are better understood as folklore than an attempt at a historically accurate narrative. Due to the at times arbitrary divides between scholarly traditions, avenues and aspects which ought to be considered distinctly as folkloric are often overlooked because they have tended for the past century and a half to be viewed as the domain of a different branch of scholarship. This is, as 2 will become evident, the case with the foundational mythology of Rome, both as a city and later as a true international power in both its form as a Republic and finally as the Empire it eventually became. As Graham Anderson notes, “Classicists, in particular, tend to classify folkloric materials in so many other ways and tend to avoid folklore as a subject in its own right.”1 While the recent cultural turn in the historical profession has moved them further towards the sort of social considerations often seen in folklore studies, there is still a distinct divide between the fields. It is this divide which I seek here to remedy. While there is a dearth of academic inquiry upon the precise themes which this examination will explore, the same cannot be said for topics which border it and thus have both relation and relevance to the current inquiry. This scholarship tends to be divided into a few relatively distinct threads depending upon which academic discipline produced the work. For instance, when looking at the most complete and applicable primary source for this topic, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, it is common practice for historians to focus on the events portrayed therein and, since large portions of what Livy portrays either cannot be externally verified or seem to be at odds with what we see from other sources, treat the work as a poor example of the historian’s craft. The most prominent example of this is Ogilvie’s A Commentary On Livy Books 1-52 which is perhaps the most widely known and well-regarded commentary on Livy and, as a result, tends to be considered the defining work in the field. In fact, many of the other secondary sources which deal with the first five books of Livy are responses to Ogilvie or draw heavily on his work. While Ogilvie’s analysis is quite good and accurate from a perspective where historical accuracy is the only thing which truly matters, he overlooks Livy’s true intent to which historical 1 Graham Anderson, Greek and Roman Folklore: A Handbook, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006), IX. 2 R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1-5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). 3 accuracy must take a backseat. This true intent, the driving purpose behind the work, is much more in line with folklore than a focus on strict historical accuracy. Thus, Ogilvie and the various historical works which find themselves sharing a like mind will be used both to establish an understanding of the traditional historiographic thought on the primary source and as a way to strengthen the argument of this paper via refutation of that traditional historiography. The second academic discipline which has contributed to the historiography relating to these topics is classics. Unlike historians, classicists tend to focus on the quality of the work as a piece of literature, considering historical accuracy as being of secondary importance. This is, in many ways, a more accurate representation of what Livy was trying to accomplish, though their focus on his prose as a piece of literature tends to omit the more socially and culturally inclined aspects of Livy’s work which are of at least equal, if not greater, importance than either the historical accuracy or the overall literary worth. Such is the case in works like Conte’s Latin Literature: A History3, which places a great deal of emphasis on the annalistic structure Livy employs. Conte also focuses on comparing Livy to other Roman authors in such ways as how they write historical speeches, how they were influenced by the prominent figures of their day, and in how successful their work was, both commercially and throughout subsequent Roman history. This is not to say that his analysis does not provide useful insight or that he focuses on such comparisons to the exclusion of questions regarding the social implications of the work and the catalyst behind the book itself. However, questions of this nature are given considerably less thought than the comparisons which comprise a considerable portion of his manuscript. There is a third branch of secondary literature worth mentioning: scholarship on Roman folklore. Little work has been done specifically on this subject as scholars tend to focus on the 3 Conte, Gian Biagio, Latin Literature: A History, trans.