The Names of Mythical And Legendary Roman Figures Interestingly Align With The Historical Advent Of Complex Family Names In Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome’s creation myth and the legends about its earliest kings are more often than not totally unreliable as historical sources except for as an insight into the Roman sense of self and national identity. T. J. Cornell, a leading authority on the history of ancient Rome, bluntly wrote “In general the narrative accounts of the origins of Rome, from Aeneas to Romulus, cannot be considered historical” and of the early legendary kings such as Numa Pompilius and Tullus Hostilius, he similarly claimed that “the traditional chronology is historically impossible” (The Beginnings of Rome, 1995, pg 80 and 121). Yet, there is one particular concept where traditional folklore and ancient reality seemed to have lined up intriguingly well—in names.

The myths and tales of ancient Rome begin with a long list of people with single-word names. Aeneas sails to Italy. Ascanius succeeded Aeneas and was, in turn, succeeded by Silvius. With the exception of a few anomalies, the folkloric ancestors of Rome’s founders were usually described with one name. A supposed distant ancestor of Silvius was Proca, who fathered two kings: Amulius and Numitor—and Numitor was traditionally the grandfather of the famous twins, Romulus and Remus.

According to tradition, Romulus’ mythical reign as the first king of Rome was dated to around 753-717 BCE. In terms of archaeologically-grounded history, the supposed reign of Romulus does correspond with a time of urbanization in the Roman region, as there are tangible signs that a powerful and wealthy Roman aristocracy had formed by the late 8th century BCE and especially in the 7th century BCE.

Around the same time that Rome and its Italian neighbors were undergoing urbanization, there was also a name revolution spreading in the region. Around the early 7th century BCE, the Etruscans of Etruria had begun labeling themselves with more complex names that had family and clan identifiers. The Romans were not far behind, adopting the practice of using longer, more complex, names by the end of the 7th century BCE. Interestingly, the names of the legendary kings after Romulus (whose mythical reign ended in 717 BCE), correlate to that name revolution. Romulus had a co-king named Titus Tatius. Romulus’ successor was Numa Pompilius (traditionally dated r. 716-674 BCE) and after him came Tullus Hostilius (r. 673-642 BCE), then Ancus Marcius (641-617 BCE). With the rise of the Tarquin family, the names became even more complex. First there was Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (r. 616-578 BCE), then Servius Tullius (r. 578-534 BCE), and finally Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (r. 534-509 BCE), who, according to tradition, was overthrown by Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus in 509 BCE. Although much of the ancient accounts of pre-Republic Rome cannot be reconciled with historical evidence, tradition and archaeology do align surprisingly well on the advent of more complex names in Italy.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Painting of the legendary Roman dictator, Cincinnatus, painted by Juan Antonio de Ribera (1779–1860), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Beginnings of Rome by T. J. Cornell. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Quintus Fabius Pictor, Rome’s First Historian, Wrote Centuries After The Greeks Pioneered The Field Of History

Tradition held that the kingdom of Rome was founded in the mid-8th century BCE. In fact, archaeologists believe permanent settlement in the region of Rome began as early as 1000 BCE. Yet, the 8th century was indeed a time when the primitive Roman town was becoming a wealthy city with growing power and influence. By the 7th century BCE, Rome had also become fairly literate and the city urbanized enough to officially be labeled as a city-state around 625 BCE. The combination of pride in the growing city, and the rise of literacy, undoubtedly led some Romans to start preserving stories of past events and people through spoken language (such as poetry, plays and eulogies) and these sorts of remembrances were later recorded in writing. During the 5th century BCE, after Rome had become a republic, even more useful documents about Roman events and people were being produced, such as the Fasti (Rome’s list of governing consuls) and the Annales maximi, a reported 80-book chronicle of Roman leaders and miscellaneous events. Yet, despite such vocal and tangible sources being available, it took a remarkably long time for Rome to produce a native historian who was willing to pull together the various sources into a narrative.

Greek scholarly pioneers of the 5th century BCE, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, ushered in the field of history. Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides specifically mentioned Rome, but they did, however, sometimes digress into commenting on events in Italy and they both mentioned the Etruscans. Yet, other less known 5th-century Greek writers did mention Rome—Hellanicus of Lesbos and Damastes of Sigeum interestingly wrote that Rome was where Aeneas built a new life after the Trojan War, a myth that Romans would full-heartedly endorse. Other than the link to Aeneas, however, Greeks of the 5th century BCE seemed uninterested in the history of Rome.

Things began to change in the 4th century BCE. The Gallic sack of Rome around 390 BCE and the subsequent Roman wars to regain power in the region caught the attention of Greek observers. The Gallic sack of Rome, alone, was mentioned by at least three 4th-century Greek scholars: Theopompus, Heraclides Ponticus, and the famous Aristotle. Yet, it was Rome’s actions in the 3rd century—featuring the Third Samnite War, the Pyrrhic War, and the beginning of the Punic Wars—when Greeks truly began craving information on those curious Romans in Italy. Greek historians such as Hieronymus of Cardia, Timaeus of Tauromenium, and (decades later) Polybius, answered that new historical demand.

Interestingly, even though Greek historians of the 3rd century BCE were beginning to delve into Roman topics, the city of Rome, itself, still had not reportedly produced a single historian. Nevertheless, a Roman senator living in the second half of the 3rd century was about to lead the way in making the topic of the past become a new scholarly passion in Rome. His name was Quintus Fabius Pictor and he reportedly published the first native Roman History around 200 BCE, just before or after Rome achieved victory in the Second Punic War.

Unfortunately, little is known about Pictor and his text, which is now lost to us. We do know that he was a senator and that he considered himself a statesman first and a historian second. As he was a member of Rome’s governing body, it is unsurprising to learn that his text was largely designed to inspire patriotism and nationalistic fervor in his Roman readers. Yet, his work was not all bad. He reportedly formatted his history like the works of historians from Greece, and Pictor even chose Greek as the language for his book. Even though Pictor’s history was by no means a masterpiece, it was the icebreaker that got Romans writing about their past. Not long after Pictor, Quintus Ennius (c. 239-169 BCE) published a curious Latin poem, called the Annales, which traced Roman history down to the Punic Wars in verse. After Ennius, came Cato the Elder (c. 234-148 BCE), whose 7-book Origines was the first Roman history in Latin prose.

Unfortunately, by the age of Pictor, Ennius and Cato, the Roman Republic was already centuries old, not to mention the pre-Republic period of kings in Rome. Although oral history, monuments, and old records from government archives and temples could provide information such as leader names, military conquests, natural disasters and diplomatic agreements, the late-arriving Roman historians had little historical context with which to weave the bullet points of miscellaneous information together. Yet, weave it together they did, narrating the story of the birth of Rome and the founding of the Republic through an intriguing patchwork of history, folklore and myth.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (King Numa and the Nymph Egeria, painted by    Felice Giani  (1758–1823), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Beginnings of Rome by T. J. Cornell. New York: Routledge, 1995.
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Roman-Republic 

The Frankish Scholar, Einhard, Saved The Genre Of Secular Biographies

Even though biographies of secular figures, such as state leaders, had been a common genre of texts in the classical period, the practice had fallen out of favor during the early Middle Ages. By the time the Frankish scholar, Einhard, was born around the year 770, the Christian church had all but reserved the biographical format for the purpose of documenting the lives of saints. Comments on un-sainted kings could still be found in historical annals, recording events year-by-year, or in other forms, such as poetry inspired by heroic deeds. A few decades before the birth of Einhard, Bede gave admirable attention to secular affairs in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731), but it was too broad in scope, and too shallow in intimate detail, for the secular sections to fit the bill of a biographical account.

Einhard joined the court of Charlemagne sometime during the early 790s, and by 796, he had become a highly respected member of Charlemagne’s scholarly circle. Sometime during his time with Charlemagne and the royal heirs, Einhard was inspired to write down a detailed account of the great king’s life and death. While today this idea seems natural, in his own time, Einhard’s determination to write solely about a secular king would have seemed almost revolutionary. There were very few, if any, contemporary biographies about state rulers that Einhard could use as a model for his own work. Instead, he had to reach back to ancient 1st-and 2nd-century Rome in order to study the formulas used by the famous biographers, Plutarch and Suetonius. Einhard latched onto Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, in particular, using the ancient series of biographies as a rubric for his own account of Charlemagne.

When Einhard composed his Life of Charlemagne sometime between 817-827, he jolted life back into the genre of secular biographies. Despite criticism from contemporary saint biographers, Einhard’s small text quickly became one of the most popular written works of the Middle Ages. Before the end of the 9th century, Einhard’s work prompted new biographical works to emerge. Notker the Stammerer produced his own biography of Charlemagne (written between 883-887) in response to Einhard and, across the English Channel, a Welshman named Asser wrote a biography (c. 893) about the famous Anglo-Saxon ruler, King Alfred the Great.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Portait of Jean Mielot, by Jean Le Tavernier (–1462), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.

Dating The Timeline In Classical History

In ancient Greece and Rome, the different events of the past were not dated by individual years, but by the reigns of world leaders, set in a chronological order. For example, an ancient Athenian would likely have said that the Peloponnesian War began during the tenure of the archon, Pythodorus. Similarly, ancient Romans would probably date the death of Augustus’ able admiral, Agrippa, to the consulship of Valerius and Publius Sulpicius. Thankfully, some of these leaders had set periods of rule, or calculable events such as solar eclipses, during their reign. As a result, modern scholars can date the start of the Peloponnesian War to around 431BCE/BC and the death of Agrippa to 12 BCE/BC.

The use of reigns for dating, instead of a list of years, does not mean that the ancients had no concept of seasons and months—in fact, the months used in the modern Western world are descended from ancient Rome. Yet, calendars often varied from region to region; for example, over 300 different month names were used in ancient Greece. Furthermore, the regions did not agree on when the New Year began and put their selection of months in different orders. As a result, it was simply easier for ancient historians to date their topics by the reigns in which the events occurred.

Yet, some historians from the distant past did want to make their system of dating more precise. The Athenian historian, Thucydides, was probably the first to do this, and it took some creativity on his part to make his ambition come true. To increase the accuracy of the dating that he included in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides divided his timeline of the war into solar years, and narrowed it further by dividing the solar years into summer and winter seasons. As a result, he could write that a certain event occurred in the summer of the third solar year after the start of the Peloponnesian War.

Thankfully for modern readers from the West, Dionysius Exiguus (c. 470-544 CE/AD) and Bede (673-735 CE/AD) standardized and simplified the yearly timeline by scaling the dating of years from the approximate time of Jesus’ birth. Due to Bede, especially, the use of “A.D.” and “B.C.”, or more recently, “CE” and “BCE” has become the common method in the West for dating historical events.

Written by C. Keith Hansely.

Top picture attribution: (The Acropolis at Athens, by Leo von Klenze (1784–1864), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner and introduced by M. I. Finley. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972.  
• The Roman History by Cassius Dio, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Penguin Classics, 1987.