CHAPTER V. OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORY OF ROME UNDER THE KINGS. § 1. Nature of Legendary History. § 2. Among Greeks. §3. Among Romans. § 4. Religious and Historical Legends. § 5. Tendency to propagate Historical Legends in all times. § 6. Detection of incongruities in early Roman History: difficulties explained away by ancient critics. § 7. Modern critics, before and after Niebuhr. § 8. Relation of stories of Kings to actual history. § 9. Romulus and Numa. § 10. Tullus and Ancus. § 11. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius. § 12. Tarquinius Superbus. § 13. Character of next Book. § 1. FEW persons will now be found to dispute the position that the early history of Rome, like that of all nations, begins with legendary tales. Such Legends are not to be regarded as mere Romances, that is, fictions invented by persons of lively imagination for the purpose of giving pleasure and amusement to their hearers or readers. They are older and more genuine than such professed romances. Among all nations in a rude and simple state, tales will be found which pass current from mouth to mouth without suspicion that they are not absolutely true. They are not written, because they date from times when writing is unknown; and the mere fact of their being repeated by word of mouth causes a perpetual variation in the narratives. The same original story being handed down traditionally by two different tribes, which have been separated from each other, or which are animated by hostile feelings, will in a very short time assume extremely different forms. Names, circumstances, everything, except some dominant thought, may have been changed, and yet the origin may be the same. No fraud is intended or committed. The alterations arise naturally and spontaneously. a § 2. Among the Greeks such legendary lore is chiefly connected with religious ideas. The Legends or μl of that lively race may mostly be traced to that sort of awe or wonder with which simple and uneducated minds regard the changes and movements of the natural world. The direct and easy way in which the imagination of such persons accounts for marvellous phenomena is to refer them to the operation of Persons. When the attention is excited by the regular movements of sun and moon and stars, by the alternations of day and night, by the recurrence of the seasons, by the rising and falling of the seas, by the ceaseless flow of rivers, by the gathering of clouds, by the rolling of thunder, and the flashing of lightning, by the operation of life in the vegetable and animal worlds, in short by any exhibition of an active and motive power,-it is natural for uninstructed minds to consider such changes and movements as the work of divine Persons. In this manner the early Greek Legends associate themselves with personification of the Powers of Nature. All attempts to account for the marvels which surround us are foregone; everything is referred to the immediate operation of a god. "Cloud-compelling" Zeus is the author of the phenomena of the air; "Earth-shaking" Poseidon of all that happens in the water under the earth; Nymphs are attached to every spring and tree; Demeter, or Mother Earth, for six months rejoices in the presence of Proserpine, the green herb, her daughter, and for six months regrets her absence in dark abodes beneath the earth. This tendency to deify the Powers of Nature is due partly to a clear atmosphere and sunny climate, which inclines a people to live much in the open air in close communion with all that nature offers to charm the senses and excite the imagination, partly to the character of the people, and partly to the poets who in early times have wrought these legendary tales into works, which are read with increased delight in ages when science and method have banished the simple faith which procured acceptance for the Legends. Among the Greeks all these conditions were found existing. They lived, so to say, out of doors; their powers of observation were marvellously quick, and their imagination singularly vivid; and their ancient poems are the most noble specimens of the old legendary tales that have been preserved in any country.b b Compare the beautiful passage in the fourth book of the Excursion :— "The lively Grecian, in a land of hills, Rivers, and fertile plains, and sounding shores, We find few § 3. But among the Romans all is different. traces of the Religious Legend among them. What may have been the case in the earliest times we know not; but the Roman poets whose works we possess adopted the mythology of Greece, and transferred to the Sabine and Latin divinities the attributes and actions of the Hellenic gods, so that we are often presented with the strange anomaly of Italian divinities disporting themselves on the hills and in the valleys of Thessaly or Arcadia. But if there is not much of the native Religious Legend among the Romans, there is found another kind of Legend in greater fulness and beauty than perhaps among any other people. § 4. We are thus brought to a distinction which it is necessary to make in the Legends of all nations. One class may be called the Religious Legend, of which we have briefly spoken; the other is the Heroic or Historical, of which we have now to speak. The Religious Legend pretends to explain the nature of the universe and its history; the Heroic Legend seeks to determine the early history of the particular people among whom it is found existing. As the poetic fancy of the Greek inclined him to the former kind, so the practical and business-like character of the Roman mind cared little for the mysteries of Nature, but loved to dwell upon the origin and early fortunes of their own great City. § 5. This tendency to hero-worship, which is indicated by the prevalence of the Heroic Legend, generally exerts its influence to a very late period in a nation's life, or rather it may be said never to die away entirely. A correcter natural philosophy has banished from most minds this belief in particular divine beings Under a cope of variegated sky, Could find commodious place for every god," etc. And again: "The traveller slaked His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings, VOL. I. G exercising particular influence on streams, and skies, and trees. But no sooner does a man occupy any space in the public mind, than all kinds of tales concerning his sayings and doings pass current from mouth to mouth, and things are believed of him either for good or evil which have very slender foundation in truth. To children their parents, to young people their masters, to grown men their poets and philosophers, their statesmen and generals, or any one who raises himself above the crowd by extraordinary actions, good or bad, have an existence more or less mythical; that is, they are the heroes of many tales, which are unconsciously invented, transmitted, altered, magnified, and believed. Education and the press have done much to diminish this propensity to mythology; the more persons are brought into immediate contact with the great, the more are they disabused of imaginative fancies with regard to them. But the spirit can never wholly be eradicated, nor indeed is its eradication productive of unmixed good. It is impossible to conceive a society of men so penetrated by philosophical culture as to have become incapable of inventing and receiving legendary tales in some shape or other. § 6. It is well known that the Legends of Roman history were long repeated and regarded as sober historic truths. Some keen-sighted critics were excited to examine them, and they proved by a long and careful investigation that they had no claim to be so regarded. Impossibilities were pointed out, disSee Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, act ii. sc. 4: "The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths;-all these have vanish'd; They live no longer in the faith of reason!" a The first, and probably the ablest, of these sceptical critics was Perizonius, a German. But his work (Animadversiones Historica) was written in Latin, and addressed only to the learned. Vico, an Italian of extraordinary genius, anticipated many of Niebuhr's hypotheses. But he mixed up his historical speculations with so much of mysticism and obscurity, that they also produced but little effect. The person who next shook the credit of the old Roman history was the Frenchman Beaufort, who, with the clear and cool calculation of his nation, made the discrepancies and variations clear to the least attentive, in his essay, Sur l'Incertitude de l'Histoire Romaine. It is characteristic at crepancies of time and fact noted, variations of the same story, as told by different writers, brought forward. Even in ancient times the miraculous nature of many of these Legends was a stumbling-block to sober annalists. The course these writers took in ancient times was what we now know by the name of rationalism. They retained all the statements of the legends, but explained them so as to suit common prose. The Golden Fleece was a ship in which Medea and Jason escaped; the Bull was a ship in which Europa was carried off by Jove, and so forth. In Grecian literature the chief rationalist was named Euhemeros; in Roman L. Calpurnius Piso played the same part. § 7. But the modern critics who showed the discrepancies and variations of the ancient Legends took a different course. It was not the marvellous and supernatural incidents that attracted their notice; for after all there are not many of such kind in Roman annals. It was the manifest falsehood of many of the early stories, which attracted notice,-the exaltation of individual heroes, the concealment of defeats and losses on the part of Rome. The most striking among these inventions, as we shall show below, are the stories of Porsenna and Camillus. The immediate effect of these discoveries was, that for a time the annals of early Roman history were passed over in almost contemptuous silence. It was then that Niebuhr arose. acknowledged the sagacity of these critics, and conceded to them that the early history, if regarded as an actual narrative of facts, was wholly unreal; but he refused to throw it all aside as arbitrary fiction. He showed that the early history of Rome, like that of all nations, was mythical or legendary, containing a poetical account of the first ages of the City, and not a sober historical narrative; but the legendary traditions of the Roman people particularly are, he contended, so rich and so beautiful, that they give an insight into the early genius of the people which would never have been divined from the imitative liter He least, that he was first stimulated to his investigations by national pique. He was indignant at the tale that the brave Gauls of Brennus were defeated by Camillus, and his successful confutation of this legend led him on to more adventurous flights. The immediate results of his work may be seen in the histories of Hooke and Ferguson. |