The Sources for Early Roman History

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 1 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, because, 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 Francois 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 (Ant. Rom. vn.3ff) is an extensive excursus about Aristodemus, the tyrant of Cumae, and his defeat of the 1 Professor Ogilvie was primarily responsible for Section i, Dr Drummond for Section 11. The draft of Section I was edited by Dr Drummond after Professor Ogilvie's death but its substance remains as originally written. Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 2 I. THE SOURCES FOR EARLY ROMAN HISTORY Etruscan Porsenna near Aricia c. 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. xii.2jd.i: perhaps c. 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 c. 210-200 B.C), who was detained by the Romans in 167 B.C. as politically unreliable (xxvin.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.i). It is probable, despite his sharp criticisms (xn.3-16), that he also consulted Timaeus regularly and in detail. Whether he used other Roman historians, such as 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 vi, 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 Kepublica (11.1—63), written in 54—1 B.C. and itself preserved in a fragmentary condition. Here the discussion operates formally in terms of a constitution comprising elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy 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.2 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 c. 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 annalist4 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 entree 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 especially he was a serious researcher (cf. Ant. Rom. i.$z.z; 32.4; 37.2; 55.2; 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 i953[Bi47], 7Jff. 3 See Perl 1957(025], i62fffor suggested identifications. 4 As Stuart Jones in the first edition of CAH vn (Cambridge, 1928) ) 18f. 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 historiography. 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 traditions 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.

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