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ment, without having been ever restored to his throne, are facts deserving of credit; and these facts are irreconcilable with the supposition that Rome was subjugated by Porsena.

Niebuhr finds a confirmation of the reports as to the humiliation of Rome by Porsena, in a comparison of the statements respecting the number of the tribes. (141) Twenty-one tribes are mentioned by Livy in the year 495 B.C., shortly after the battle of Regillus, (142) and the same number is mentioned by Dionysius in the year 491 B.C.(143) The number thirty was named by some of the ancients for the tribes of Servius ;(144) whence Niebuhr infers that Porsena mulcted the Romans of a third part of their territory. Livy however only mentions the four city tribes in the time of Servius,(145) and we do not know what he supposed the entire number to have been. His words imply that the number of twenty-one for the tribes was voluntarily established in the year 495 B.C., after the battle of Regillus, and without any reference to the war of Pórsena. (146) Even if the number of twenty-one for the tribes in 495 B.C. rests on credible contemporary evidence (of which we have no warrant), we have nothing to assure us that the number of thirty for the tribes of Servius is authentic. But the emptiness of Niebuhr's explanation is conclusively proved by the fact that, according to Livy, the number of twenty-one tribes remained unchanged till 387 B.C., more than a century afterwards. (147) Now the effects of Porsena's war were, as Niebuhr himself supposes, speedily

(141) Hist. vol. i. p. 419, 598, n. 1324; Lect. vol. i. P. 118. (142) Livy, ii. 21. (143) Dion. Hal. vii. 64. (144) See Dion. Hal. iv. 15; and above, vol. i. p. 487. Becker, ii. 1. p. 167. This number is made up of four city tribes and twenty-six country tribes.

(145) i. 43.

Compare

(146) See Becker, ii. 1, p. 168, who rejects Niebuhr's explanation.

(147) Livy says that in this year, three years after the burning of the city, four tribes of new citizens were added: 'eæque viginti quinque tribuum numerum explevere;' vi. 5. Niebuhr supposes that the district of Septem pagi, which is stated to have been voluntarily restored by Porsena to the Romans, (above, p. 21,) was only in fact recovered by them at the conclusion of the forty years' truce with the Veientes, in 474 B.C. Hist. vol. ii. p. 206.

obliterated; and it is reasonable to suppose that if the number of tribes was diminished on acccount of the loss of territory, the number would have been increased to its former complement as soon as the territory was recovered. (148)

The war of Porsena, though its details are variously reported by Dionysius, Livy, and the other historians, is uniformly described by them as terminating in a manner advantageous and honourable to Rome. There is every reason for believing that this account was derived from Fabius Pictor and the other early historians out of what materials their narrative was constructed, we have no means of determining; but it probably stood on as firm a basis as the other accounts of the early period of the Republic. It seems unlikely that Tacitus (who cannot be supposed to have made any special researches into the primitive history) should have had access to information respecting the war of Porsena, which was unknown to Dionysius and Livy.(149) If the treaty cited by Pliny was an authentic monument, and if its

(148) Plutarch, in his Quæstiones Romanæ, c. 18, proposes the question: Why did many of the wealthy Romans pay a tithe of their property to Hercules?' Of this question he advances several conjectural solutions, in an interrogative form. First, he says, was it because Hercules, when he was at Rome, sacrificed a tenth part of the oxen of Geryones? (See above, vol. i. p. 289.) Next, he asks, was it because Hercules liberated the Romans from the tithe which they had paid to the Etruscans? Niebuhr, ib. p. 547, first assumes that the second solution rests on a positive fact, and he then proceeds to refer the tribute of the tenth to this period; the Hercules who emancipated the Romans, meaning, in this context, their own prowess. It seems far more probable however that Plutarch refers to some mythical story, like that of the oxen of Geryon ; and with regard to the proposed interpretation of Hercules, it is sufficient to refer to the sound canon, laid down by Niebuhr himself in his Lectures: It is a very dangerous thing to seek for allegories in historical statements, and then to presume to derive from them historical facts;' vol. i. p. 55. Even however if the allegorical interpretation is admitted, the reference of the alleged fact to the war of Porsena is wholly gratuitous.

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(149) Niebuhr seems to assume that some ancient annals once existed, which contained an account of the war with Porsena different from that given by Dionysius and Livy. The narrative (he says, of this war) which since the loss of the ancient annals, has chanced to acquire the character of a traditional history, relates,' &c.; vol. i. p. 541. Lower down however he assumes that the annalists fabricated certain portions of the narrative.' To account for this, the annalists devised certain predatory expeditions on the left bank; and then, to supply the dearth of action and do honour to their ancestors, they further invented a stratagem of the consuls, by which the Etruscans are drawn into a snare, and suffer considerable loss;'

contents are correctly described to us, we can only say, that not only the received account of the war of Porsena, but the subsequent course of the history, is wholly irreconcilable with its provisions.

The attack of Aruns Porsena upon the Latin town of Aricia, and its defence by the Cumans, are closely connected with the history of Aristodemus Malacus, whose expedition to Aricia is described by Dionysius as affording the means by which he made himself despot of Cuma.(150) The expedition against Aricia is a link connecting Porsena's war against Rome with the adventures of Aristodemus: the Etruscans who escape from their defeat before Aricia, receive a hospitable asylum in the

ib. p. 544 Niebuhr's conception of 'annals' seems to be fluctuating. See above, vol. i. p. 92-4.

The tomb of Porsena described by Varro, in Plin. N. H. xxxvi. 19, appears to have been a real structure, the dimensions of which are greatly exaggerated in Varro's description. See Müller's Etrusker, vol. ii. p. 224: Abeken, Mittelitalien, p. 244; Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. ii. p. 385. Niebuhr, Hist. vol. i. p. 130, 551, Lect. vol. i. p. 115, considers the building as purely imaginary.

Niebuhr seems to treat the war of Porsena as historical in substance, as containing a nucleus of fact; but as fictitious and poetical in its incidents and details. Thus much we may assert (he says), that of this war, down to its end, not a single incident can pass for historical;' Hist. vol. i. p. 551. In his Lectures, he remarks: There may have been a historical Porsena, who became mythical, like the German Siegfried, who has been transferred to a period quite different from the true one; or, on the other hand, there may have been a mythical Porsena, who has been introduced into history; but we must deny the historical character of everything that is related about his war, which has an entirely poetical appearance;' vol. i. p. 116. He nevertheless regards the surrender of Rome to Porsena, the disarming of the people, the delivery of hostages, and the reduction in the number of tribes, as historical facts. In Hist. ib. p. 541, he says that it is a palpable forgery in Dionysius to make Octavius Mamilius and the Latins take part with him [Porsena]:' which assertion implies that Dionysius had before him some authentic narrative of true facts.

(150) See vii. 5-7. Dionysius says that the siege of Aricia took place twenty years after the archonship of Miltiades, in the 64th Olympiad : that is to say, twenty years after 524 B.C., which gives 504 B.c. as his date for this event. According to Fischer's tables, the consulship of Valerius and Lucretius, under,which Dionysius places the war of Porsena, falls in 508 B.C. Dionysius describes the expedition of Aristodemus to Aricia, with great detail, as if he relied on some authentic witness. Plutarch however says that he was sent to assist the Romans against the Etruscans, who were attempting to restore Tarquin to the throne; De Mul. virt. vol. ii. p. 232, ed. Tauchnitz. This statement occurs in a long narrative relating to the history of Aristodemus, and cannot be fairly ascribed to confusion, or error of memory.

Roman territory, on account of the friendly relations then subsisting between the Romans and Porsena. (151) To this event the name of the Vicus Tuscus was referred; which was also derived from the settlement of Cæles Vibenna under the kings (152) the topographical legend in this, as in other instances, fluctuating between different origins in events of remote history.

The defeat of the Etruscans before Aricia is considered by Niebuhr to be a historical event;(153) and he conjectures that their discomfiture by the Cuman power afforded the Romans, though disarmed, an opportunity of throwing off their Etruscan yoke, and to the hostages, with Cloelia at their head, the means of escape.(154) This hypothesis however is a mere guess; it is inconsistent with the accounts of the war which have been preserved from antiquity, and it cannot be received as historical.

The numerous and wide discrepancies between Dionysius and Livy in this part of the history have been already pointed out, and need not be here enlarged upon. The Sabine war, which Dionysius spreads over four years, and describes with minuteness, is in Livy contracted within very narrow dimensions. Both historians refer the arrival of Attus Clausus, the Sabine progenitor of the Claudian family, to this period. (155) But the accounts of the origin of this distinguished stock varied; some indeed traced it to a Clausus who fought against Eneas, (156) or to a

(151) Dionysius says that the Latin league sent ambassadors to Rome to complain that the Romans had assisted the Etruscans, the enemies of the Aricines, not only by giving a safe passage to their army through the Roman territory, but by furnishing them with supplies for war, and by harbouring the fugitives after their defeat; v. 61.

(152) Above, vol. i. p. 508.

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(153) The defeat of the Etruscans before Aricia is unquestionably historical. The victory of the Cumans, which led Aristodemus to the sove reignty, was related in Greek annals;' Hist. ib p. 550. To those who are not familiar with Niebuhr's historical style, it may be right to remark, that the latter assertion is merely a hypothesis.

(154) Hist. ib.; Lect. vol. i. p. 119.

(155) Above, § 6.

(156) Ecce, Sabinorum prisco de sanguine, magnum
Agmen agens Clausus, magnique ipse agminis instar.
Claudia nunc a quo diffunditur et tribus et gens
Per Latium, postquam in partem data Roma Sabinis.
En. vii. 706-9.

Silius, viii. 412, has 'Therapnæo a sanguine Clausi,' alluding to the supposed Lacedæmonian origin of the Sabines. Above, vol. i. p.

435.

Clausus who came to Rome at the suggestion of Titus Tatius, the colleague of Romulus ;(157) variations which prove that there was no certain knowledge on the subject. The first ovation is likewise referred to the Sabine war, but the origin of it is not consistently narrated. (158)

The long and detailed account of the creation of the office of dictator, and the appointment to it of T. Larcius, appears to belong to a class of fictions, of which we meet with many examples in the early Roman history, and which we may call institutional legends. The whole narrative of Dionysius is plainly a political drama, invented to explain the very peculiar institution of the Roman dictatorship: the officer being supreme and absolute, though for a limited time, the Senate being judges of the necessity of the appointment, and the appointment being by one of the consuls. The circumstance for which this narrative is chiefly intended to account, is the appointment of so important an officer by a single consul. (159) We learn however from Livy that there was no uniform or well-authenticated report of the origin of the dictatorship in the early historians; and that the causes which led to the creation of the office, the name of the first dictator, and the grounds for his selection, were variously related, and therefore uncertain.(160)

The office of dictator, as it existed in the first three centuries of the Republic, is a peculiarity of the Roman state, and probably contributed greatly to reconcile its military and aggressive character with the maintenance of its free institutions. Rome,

(157) Patricia gens Claudia orta est ex Regillis, oppido Sabinorum. Inde Romam, recens conditam, cum magnâ clientum manu commigravit, auctore Tito Tatio, consorte Romuli; vel, quod magis constat, Attâ Claudio, gentis principe, post reges exactos sexto fere anno, a patribus in patricias cooptata; Suet. Tib. i.

(158) Above, p. 22.

(159) See Becker, ii. 2, p. 155-60. Becker, ib. p. 153, n., considers the senatus-consultum mentioned by Dionysius as entirely his own fabrication. Niebuhr's account of the mode of appointing the dictator is more than usually conjectural, and departs quite arbitrarily from the ancient testimonies, in favour of a hypothesis devised by himself; Hist. vol. i. p. 566-9. See Dr. Smith's article in the Classical Museum, vol. i. P. 379; and Becker, ib. p. 155, n. 345.

(160) See above, p. 27, n. 93.

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