Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XVI.

SOURCES OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY.

§ 1. Destruction of all public Records by the Gauls. § 2. Meagre character of these Records: early History of Rome embodied in Legends. § 3. Legends of the Patrician period full of falsehood. § 4. Due to banquet-minstrelsy and funeral eulogies. § 5. Plebeian ballads also rife. § 6. How this mass of Legends was made into History. § 7. Tradition and documents. § 8. Minstrelsy lingered on after Burning by Gaul, but superseded by Annals.

§ 1. WHEN the Gaul departed and left Rome in ashes, it was not only the buildings of the city which perished. We are expressly told that all public Records shared in the general destruction, the Fasti, or list of yearly magistrates with their triumphs, the Annales Pontificum and the Linen Rolls (libri lintei), which were annual registers or chronicles of events kept by the Pontiffs and Augurs."

This took place, we know, about the year 390 B.C.

Now the first Roman annalists, Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, Cato the Censor, with the poets Naevius and Ennius, flourished about a century and a half after this date.

Whence, then, it is natural to ask, did these writers and their successors find materials for the History of Rome before the burning of the city? What is the authority for the events and actions which are stated to have taken place before the year 390 B.C.?

§ 2. The answer to these questions may partly be found in our fifth chapter. The early history of Rome was preserved in old heroic lays or legends, which lived in the memories of men, and were transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to another. The early history of all nations is, as we have said, the same; and even if we had the Fasti and the Annals complete, we should still have to refer to those legendary tales for the substance and colour of the early history. The Fasti,

Liv. vi. 1.

indeed, if they were so utterly destroyed as Livy states, must have been preserved in memory with tolerable accuracy, for we have several lists of the early magistrates, which only differ by a few omissions and transpositions. The Annals and Linen Rolls, if we had copies of them, would present little else than dry bones without flesh, mere names with a few naked incidents attached, much of the same character as the famous AngloSaxon Chronicle. For narrative we should still have been dependent upon the Legends. We might know the exact time at which Coriolanus appeared at the head of the Volscian host, but the story would remain untouched. The Annals would give us nothing of the Legends of Romulus and Numa, of the Horatii and Curiatii, of Mucius Scævola, Cocles and Cloelia, of the twin horsemen of Lake Regillus, of the fatal sufferings of Lucretia and Virginia, of the Veientine soothsayer and the draining of the Alban Lake, of the self-sacrifice of Curtius, of the deeds of Camillus, and the noble devotion of the aged Senators who fell beneath the Gallic sword. All these are as much matter of legendary story as the lays of King Arthur and his knights, of Charlemagne and his Paladins, of the Cid and Bernardo, which we read in the ballad poetry of England, France, and Spain.b

§ 3. We have already taken notice of the legendary character of the early history, and endeavoured very briefly to show how out of the Legends might be extracted portions of historic truth so far as regarded the condition of Rome under the Kings. But under the Patrician rule, of which we have now been speaking, the Legends rather lead us away from the truth; for they pass into positive romance. We have noticed that it was the glaring discrepancies and falsehoods pervading the whole Legend of Camillus that led Beaufort to attack the whole of early Roman history. The falsehood of the Legend of Porsenna has also been completely exposed. And if we had the materials, doubtless many other romantic fictions might be detected in this region of Roman History. The false state

b It is doubtful, indeed, whether the Annals even went so far back as the earlier of these legends. The fact of the year being marked by fixing a nail confirms Livy's statement that writing was little known in those times: "Parvæ et raræ per eadem tempora litteræ. ..; una custodia fidelis memoria rerum gestarum.”—-vi. 1.

ments of the Patrician period are quite different in kind from the greater part of the legendary fictions of Greece or of Regal Rome. There we discern no dishonesty of purpose, no intentional fraud; here much of this baser coin is current. In the Legends of Porsenna and Camillus the dishonour of Rome and the triumphs of the invaders are studiously kept out of sight, and glorious deeds are attributed to heroes who are proved to have no claim to such honour. It remains to state the cause of this altered character in the Legends.

§ 4. The cause seems to have been, chiefly, the predominant power of certain great Houses. The Valerii, the Fabii, the Furii, the Horatii, the Mucii, appropriated to themselves and their ancestors deeds which were never performed; and family bards or minstrels made it their vocation to pandar to this idle and unreal love of honour. The occasion on which these poets were enabled to exalt the family of their patrons arose out of the custom common among all rude nations to enhance the pleasures of wine and wassail by music and heroic song. Of these practices we have direct and positive evidence. "Cato, in his Origines, tells us," says Cicero, "that it was an old custom at banquets for those who sate at table to sing to the flute the praiseworthy deeds of famous men.' But these lays had perished in Cicero's time. "Oh," he exclaims in another place, "Oh that we had left some of those old lays of which Cato speaks in his Origines!" Valerius Maximus bears testimony to the same fact. Varro adds that well-born boys used to sing these ballads to the company, like Phemios in the Odyssey, or Cadwallader in the halls of the kings of Powys. We may wish with Cicero that Cato had preserved some of these Reliques of early Latin poetry, and had thus done his country the same service that Percy and Scott have rendered to the minstrelsy of old England and of the Scottish border. We should then be able more clearly to distinguish between the poem and the chronicle, as they lie mixed in the pages of Livy.

Besides this practice of banquet minstrelsy, it was a custom much honoured at Rome, on occasion of the funerals of persons

Quæstiones Tuscul. iv. 2.

C ii. 1, 10.

d Brutus, 19.

Varro ap. Nonium, s. v. Assá voce.

of rank, to carry forth the images of their ancestors, when family bards rehearsed their laudatory songs, and family chroniclers poured forth panegyrics in praise of the illustrious dead. At such times truth is little regarded. The common saying, "de mortuis nil nisi bonum," is easily extended to the families and ancestors of the departed. The stories of Horatius and of Mucius may be traced to the desire of the Horatii and Mucii of later times to connect themselves with the early history of Rome. If we had an Etruscan account of the siege of Rome by Porsenna, we should probably hear little of these famous names; and if a Gallic bard had sung the lay of Brennus, the great Camillus would lose more than half his greatThis may be illustrated by Percy's remarks on the battle of Otterburn. The version which he gives "is related," he says, "with the allowable partiality of an English poet;" while "the Scottish writers have, with a partiality at least as allowable, related it no less in their own favour." The version adopted by the minstrel varied according as he touched his harp in the halls of the Percy or the Douglas.

ness.

§ 5. It may be observed that some of the Legends, as those of Virginia, show a manifest leaning to the side of the Plebeians. No doubt the lower Order had their minstrels as well as the higher, nor did the praises of the great Plebeian Houses remain unsung. So in our own country the Commons had their poets as well as the great feudal lords; nor were the deeds of Percy and Douglas, of the Childe of Elle, or of Fair Rosamond, more famous than the "Gestes of Robin Hood and Little John," the feats of Adam Bell and Clym of the Clough, and of other heroes in whose names the people delighted.

§ 6. There can be no doubt, then, that at the burning of Rome there was abundant store of these romantic lays or ballads, which were constantly called for and constantly adapted to the requirements of the hearers. Thus they lived, and thus they were propagated, till they were reduced into more regular form by Naevius and Ennius, and the prose chroniclers in the

Such songs and speeches were called naniæ, laudationes.-"Absint inani funere næniæ," says Horace; that is, "I am a poet, and shall not die: my funeral, therefore, will be an idle ceremony; funeral-songs will be wasted upon me."-Od. ii. 20, 21.

times before and after the great Hannibalic war, and at length were embalmed in the great work of Livy, who gave them, as he found them, in their true poetic form. But for him, perhaps, the mass of these legends might have been filtered off into rationalising narratives, like those of Piso. Thus not only should we have lost the life of the Roman Annals, but we should have regarded them as so dry and uninteresting, that they would have been studied no more than the early history of Scotland or Ireland; and we should have altogether lost the spirit-stirring story of these early times. We may therefore say, paradoxically, that it is to the fiction manifest in the legendary tales of Livy that we owe our knowledge of the realities of early Roman History.

§ 7. Besides these lays, it cannot be doubted that there was a mass of traditional history which preserved incidents in the struggle of the two Orders. Some documents were certainly preserved, as the Laws of the Twelve Tables, and the Treaty with Carthage which Polybius saw.i There were also, no doubt, archives preserved in Latin towns, from which careful inquirers might have gleaned information: but searching examination of this kind was little the fashion among Roman annalists.

§ 8. After the burning of the city the minstrels still continued to compose their romances. It is plain that the combats of Valerius Corvus and Manlius Torquatus with gigantic Gauls were borrowed from ballads in their honour; but few or none

appear in the pages of Livy after this date, and one reason for their somewhat sudden disappearance is the fact that after this time the Annals or Registers are preserved; so that henceforth Chroniclers, with their dry narratives, superseded the minstrels. The meagre and unintelligible Annals of the years that follow the Gallic irruption are a specimen of what would have remained to us, had all the Legendary History perished, and had the Annals been preserved entire from the first ages of the Republic.

b See Chapt. v. § 6.

Chapt. vi. § 1.

« PreviousContinue »