Early Rome, Part V: Introduction to Modern Scholarship

We have already examined what Greek and Roman writers living in the late Republic and early Empire had to say about early Rome. Our ancient authorities themselves admit that early Rome's history is unclear. Modern scholars of early Rome largely draw on texts such as the ones which we have already examined. They look at and critically analyze Livy, Dionysius, and other writers to glean as much as possible. However, there's only so much that one can do with the literary sources that we have. Fortunately, modern scholars can draw upon archaeology to see things that were unavailable to both scholars of previous generations and even to Roman researchers such as Livy. Here we will look at a selection of the questions and concerns which drive modern scholarly investigations into early Rome. We will by no means cover all of the arenas of investigation and debate, but merely take a sample. To conclude, I will recommend some further reading about early Rome, so that those of you who have not yet slaked your thirst for knowledge on this particular topic can continue to investigate on your own time. Modern scholars of early Rome often ask themselves not only what sources are available today for scholars working in the field, But what sources were available to the ancient Greeks and Romans who investigated early Rome? In other words, what sources did our sources have? We know that Greek and Roman historians in the time of Livy and Dionysius could draw upon pontifical records and also family histories, but the question is whether or not they made extensive use of these resources. Dionysius tells us proudly that he does use family histories, and that he does have access to the most eminent men in Rome. Livy, on the other hand, seems to be a little bit more cautious when employing family histories, and at one point says something to the effect that they are notoriously unreliable. So depending on which historian we're talking about, they have a different approach to the material One thing that scholars used to believe is that when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390, the Gallic tribe of the Senones, that the fire that they had set had destroyed a significant number of records, and that is the reason why our knowledge of the early Roman past is so sparse. There are still people who believe that, but for the most part, scholars today largely believe that there weren't that many records to be destroyed in the first place. And that the reason why the record of Roman history becomes so much richer after this point is not because of what was lost, but rather because of what was now being created for the first time. When we look at Livy, Dionysius, and Plutarch, what we're looking at, it is important to remember, is not the whole tradition of early Rome's history, but rather the mature versions of that tradition. What we're looking at is... The culminating product of a longer tradition and discussion and debate. The one new tool that modern scholars can add to this debate, aside from reinterpreting the older sources in light of comparative data or something of that nature, is to employ archaeological findings. And with these new tools, comparative history and archaeology, Scholars of early Rome can really gain new insights into the material that previous generations could not have possibly come up with. When investigating Roman origin, scholars of early Rome consider the historical geography of central Italy. Rome, the city, is located on the border of Latium, Etruria, and the homeland of the Sabines. It is technically a part of Latium, but because it is so exposed to these other two cultures, it is not purely Latin. And knowing that might explain a lot about both the Roman tradition and the ways in which the Romans tried to portray themselves later on. The Roman tradition of Rome having been a mixed culture is likely quite accurate, as Rome was indeed a frontier city. Although, this should not obscure the fundamentally Latin basis of Roman culture. Rome spoke Latin and seems to have worshipped the same gods and goddesses as the Latin people to their south rather than the Etruscans to the north or the Sabines to the east. Rome is also interesting because it is slightly inland and connected to the sea only by the by the river Tiber. Because of Rome's inland location, it was not an obvious site of interest for outside groups who might have access to the nearby sea, say the Greeks. So, most of the developments that the Romans might have made early in its history were probably developments that had very little to do with groups which couldn't easily reach Rome by land. So, when scholars engage with ancient sources who make grandiose claims about Roman origins, they consider first Rome's historical geography and tend to think that it suggests that most developments which affected early Rome's formation were actually quite local. Thanks to archaeological discoveries, we're now aware of many Italian civilizations dating back to the Bronze Age. The Villanovan people were in the same region as the Romans and no doubt had an indirect but important impact on later Roman culture. However, the people I would like to highlight here as being especially influential on the formation of Roman culture and on Rome's early history are the Etruscans. Etruria was a region just to the north of Rome. There were 12 major Etruscan cities, each one under its own king, and the Etruscans were the most powerful influence in all of Italy during their peak between the 8th and 5th centuries. The Etruscans also were fairly aggressive on their borders, and it appears that the Etruscans at several times in early Roman history overran Rome, or at least established something like hegemony there. Certainly, we know that there was quite a heavy influence that the Etruscans left on Rome. The biggest influence that the Etruscans had was on Roman religion. Contrary to the Roman tradition where all of their religious ideas stem from the genius of one Sabine man named Numa Pompilius, in fact, it looks like the Etruscans actually had the greatest influence. Liver here, which is a guide for translating the various regions of a liver during a sacrifice, comes to us from the Etruscans. And in fact, the Romans were so taken with the way that the Etruscans interpreted livers that for many years they hired actual Etruscan haruspices to do sacrifices on behalf of Rome. So, years after Rome had conquered the Etruscans, there were still men from old Etruscan families in the north who would travel to Rome and serve as official Haruspices. Also, many of the great men of Rome during the regal and early republican periods have Etruscan names. Tarquin and Tarquinius Superbus both hailed from Etruria, and in fact, I think Livy even records that. However, when we look at even later periods, there are figures such as Lars Porsena, ...who are clearly Etruscan, and this might be a vague memory of a time when Rome was at the behest of the Etruscans due to the great power that the Etruscans had in which they could exert on the people on their borders, including the Romans, who were just across the Tiber from Etruria. As influential as the Etruscans undoubtedly were, the fact remains that Rome was a Latin city. And that the Romans and Latins shared all of the things which constituted identity, at least all of the most important things. They shared the same language, culture, and religion. For their part, the Romans never denied the kinship that they shared with the Latins, but they also sought to differentiate themselves as often and in as many ways as humanly possible. That, of course, will raise the question of why they sought to do this. After the conquest of Latium, which occurred Toward the end of the regal period, maybe early Republic, somewhere in there, Rome went on to create and grant a new set of rights to the Latins called Latin rights. This was a bundle of rights and privileges comparable to those of a Roman citizen, but inferior. The difference usually boiled down to superior access to the courts and preferred status for Romans, whereas the Latins had to be content with a lesser degree of the same things that the Romans had. To put it bluntly, if a Roman and a Latin person went to court, then barring extraordinary obvious and embarrassing guilt on the part of the Roman, the Roman would win the case. So it was a kind of institutionalized inequality between the Romans and their closest neighbors. Later on, as Rome expanded further, they created a third category of rights called Italian rights, which were inferior to Latin rights. But the question is why the Romans Decided to tell everyone as much as they could how different they actually were from the Latins. Well, in my estimation, and I'm sure in the estimation of many other people who have thought about this, a lot of this must be to try to explain why it was fine that their ancestors had treated the Latins as lesser than. By the time that Dionysius and Livy wrote, of course, Latin rights had been abolished and Roman citizenship had been granted throughout Italy following the Social War. But up to that point, up to about 90 BCE, the Romans treated the Latins as second-class citizens, even though the Latins had sacrificed greatly in Rome's Punic Wars and in the various wars that Rome had fought in Macedonia and Spain in the years after the Second Punic War. So, in many ways, what this is, at least in my opinion, is an attempt to try to justify inequality. And that's why the Romans had to give themselves a more elevated pedigree than their immediate neighbors. This is why, for instance, at least in my opinion, Livy and Virgil were instructed to work in Aeneas into Rome's ancestry, so that way the Romans could claim, well, we are very similar to the Latins, but we are superior because... There is this extra element in our heritage that the Latins lack. One thing that modern scholars of early Rome like to think about is the size and scale of Rome during the early period of its history. By the end of the 6th century, scholars estimate that Rome had a territory of approximately 300 square miles with around 35,000 people. This would make it, in Greek terms, a mid- to large-sized polis. So, respectable, but still not on the same scale as, say, Athens, which had at its peak anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people in all of Attica. Archaic Rome saw settlement spread to all seven of the hills before the time that the Republic was founded in 509 to 508. By about 650 or so, we can see that The thatch huts, which were the early buildings in Rome, are now being displaced, at least in part, by large stone homes. This indicates both growth in general, that the city is growing, and also the emergence of inequality as the city becomes more complex and as the economic activity in Rome becomes more diversified. At this time, around the end of the 6th century, i.e. when the Republic began, Rome did have a sphere of influence, but it was largely limited to Latium and then the very southern parts of Etruria. Etruria had just started to decline at this time, but was still fairly strong, so it would be a while before the Romans were able to fully defeat and absorb their northern neighbors. As something of a side note, you'll recall that in Livy and Dionysius' histories, they talk about when the ancient kings founded the first temples in Rome, especially temples such as Janus and Vesta, which were both created by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. What they don't tell you is that these temples, as originally constructed, were on a much smaller scale than what came later, and also that they were constructed out of wood. While Livy and Dionysius omit those details, we know them from the late Republic when many of these temples happened to burn down due to old age and lightning strikes and other factors. So when we think about the small scale of Rome at the time, it should come as no surprise that its temples were in proportion in terms of their smallness and their basic nature. Keeping that in mind, a lot of scholars have also figured that based on the known scale of Rome, there really isn't any compelling reason to suppose that Rome would need some of the more sophisticated institutional apparatuses that it had later in order to run a society on this scale. There are details in both Livy and Dionysius which suggest that they really see current day institutions at work in the distant past. They're kind of reading back the institutions of their own day into the past. So for instance Livy talks about the legions and both of them talk about the census as practiced by Servius Tullius as if this would be the same census that existed in their own time to keep track of all of the men of fighting age who were Roman citizens. What modern scholars tend to think is that these institutions did not exist because they weren't really necessary. The Romans at this period did not have the resources to engage in this kind of record keeping and they also did not have a large enough scale society or a large enough territory to really justify that kind of record keeping. It was small enough and localized enough that There just wouldn't be the need for this kind of Institutional development. Typically, institutions are reactions to changes in scale and society, and Rome had not really hit the threshold of that at this point. Thinking along similar lines, scholars have also come to question whether Rome actually did have a unified state at an early date. Without getting into the weeds of the state debate, especially as it pertains to the ancient world, It's worth noting that while Livy does portray Rome as a centralized state under Romulus and his successors from the outset, there are a lot of details which seem to contradict that narrative. And modern scholars tend to think that the sort of political makeup of early Rome and the area around it is actually a lot more complex, that there were plenty of non-state actors involved, and that there were very few state actors who actually exercised any degree of power. So the Heratii, to provide one example, in the war with Alba Longa, seem to have operated beyond the authority of the king and the rest of When the surviving Horatius brother came home and murdered his sister, the king famously decided not to get involved. Now in Livy's telling of the event, this is because he thinks that he owes a debt of gratitude to Horatius and doesn't want to seem ungrateful or waste a military asset. However, it's also possible to interpret the story as the king didn't go after Horatius for this horrific crime because he wasn't powerful enough to do so. He really didn't have enough authority to prosecute Horatius, one of his own citizens. We also see that the reigning king Servius Tullius later would be successfully challenged While still in office by Tarquinius Superbus. And he would be challenged, not through an open war, but rather by Tarquinius going before the Senate and making his claim to the throne, gathering his supporters, and basically starting a brawl. So, there are a lot of details that don't really fit the idea that Rome had a functioning state, or that the kings had full control over Rome, or even more than token control. And it would appear possible that many of the great families of Roman history were actually independent tribes. In the early Republic, the Fabii supposedly numbered in the hundreds in terms of just able-bodied men. And they alone undertook a war against Veii so that the rest of the Romans could concentrate on a second front. In that particular battle, all of the Fabii died and the only male left was a teenager who had stayed behind in Rome, and then he went on to be the progenitor of the rest of the men named Fabius in later Roman history. Livy shoehorns them into the narrative as if they are just a great patrician family, but it's also possible that the Fabii were actually an entire tribe or group. And, as a Roman ally, they suffered grievously in a war, and then the survivors were taken in and given patrician status in recognition of their great deeds. So there are lots of little details here and there which hint that things were not so cut and dried as Livy makes them out. That the state did not have the full reach that we would assume. And even more talking about the reach of an ancient state, which is by no means as dramatic As the reach of a modern state. Even still, it doesn't look like early Rome came up to that level of sophistication and centralized power. One of the other areas where we see sort of a disconnect between the narrative of the literary sources and then some of the details is when it comes to warfare during the regal or pre-Republican period. While Livy and others speak of these armies as if they are legions, The accounts themselves tend to suggest otherwise, as it describes the deeds of individual warriors in detail. When we then look at graves from the period, this does seem to support the details rather than the narrative. Roman and contemporary Latin graves from the Archaic period show that the elite tended to be buried with weapons and armor more geared toward personal combat than, say, formation fighting. Hoplites and legionaries tended to have much thinner armor in the back because they wouldn't have their back to the enemy as their back would be covered by their comrades to the left instead of right. If you're fighting in more of a melee style, Where individuals are featured more prominently, you also need equally thick armor in the back because in such a situation, you can take a hit in the back without being a coward. Part of the reason for keeping armor thin in the back in a formation is so that way the men have something of an incentive to keep facing the enemy. And we know that in ancient warfare, most casualties occurred when an army broke and when their backs were exposed. So, just based on the way that the armor is configured, we can see that they must have been geared up to fight individually rather than in formations. And in this sense, the archaeology kind of refutes Livy's narrative while supporting some of his details. In Livy, a lot of the battles and campaigns seem to be on a fairly small scale, but he describes them as if they are important battles, but ultimately he doesn't really give us details about what the Romans got out of these wars. And also, he spends a lot more time talking about, say, the personal valor of Romulus in a battle, rather than the tactics that he might have employed, or where the legions won the battle, or something of that nature. So, a lot of these battles sound much more like border skirmishes, family feuds, cattle raids, or something else, rather than, say, state-scale warfare. Livy doesn't really give any numbers in book one that I'm aware of. So... This is probably the reason, because so far as he can tell, or so far as he can gather, these battles are on such a small scale that it perhaps is a bit hard to discuss them as battles, assuming that he does have some numbers for reference, which, again, I actually have no idea if he would have had access to any kind of information of that sort. All ancient historians, and especially historians who cover periods which are less well-documented, I have to really consider the sources that they have and to look at them as critically as possible. One way to do that is to consider the agenda or agendas that these sources have. What is it that they were trying to accomplish? And this is something that I have tried to do throughout this series when looking at Livy, Dionysius, and Plutarch. I have tried to figure out exactly what the authors were trying to accomplish so that way we can figure out exactly what was going on in the text. Or what the author was thinking, perhaps, when they wrote it. So far as I can tell, some, but not all, of the Roman agendas that went into writing early Roman history are as follows. There is a need to explain how the Romans are different than the Latins, and how this status differential is justified. We see this in Livy, because he tries to talk about the Trojan heritage of the Romans, which makes them different than the Sabines and the Latins. We also see a need to explain Roman uniqueness without sacrificing its relationship to, which is effectively the same as its claim to, its neighbors. And this, again, can be easily accomplished by making the Romans secret Trojans. The Trojans no longer exist, so this is not a people group with whom the Romans would have to share anything. Whereas if the Romans were to adopt Dionysius' solution that they were secretly Greek, there were plenty of Greeks around who wanted a piece of the pie, and the Romans didn't want to give it to them. If the Greeks had been much less successful over time, then perhaps the claim that they might have advanced if they had one scholar left to go to Rome to represent them might have been received more favorably. But the basic point was, so far as I can tell, for the Romans to explain why they were unique, but also why they were related to the people around them. So the Romans are Latins, but they're special Latins. So because they're more special, they get more privileges. The Latins are fairly special, but not as special as they could be. So they're somewhere in the middle with Latin rights. And then the rest of the Italians are not all that special, so they just get Italian rights. And, so the Romans need to find examples from history which support such decisions. They also want to demonstrate that Roman culture operated in the distant past. One thing that the Romans liked to do when they were having debates over political authority and over the nature of the Constitution is to find precedents that were as old as humanly possible. In Rome, unlike in Greece, what mattered was received tradition rather than the logic of of one's point. Making a good argument to a Roman is not necessarily all that virtuous or interesting. What they cared about was something which had the weight of time and authority. They also wished to systematize the handful of Things they had inherited from Roman mythology, such as the story of Romulus and the Oath of the Horatii and the story about the Sabine women, and then systematize that and supplement it with other material based on probability or other factors and try to create a solid history for themselves, which established who they were, why they were special, why they mattered, and ultimately, why they succeeded. Although... That is something that they didn't really have to explain until a little later in the narrative because, of course, in the early years as we saw, Rome was not that big and, frankly, not all that successful. And even the Romans themselves knew that. They wanted to give the impression that in the early years they had the seeds of greatness, but they didn't necessarily want to try to make claims that were bigger than what the results that they achieved in the real world justified. They didn't have to get too desperate and claim to have a grand empire in a distant past, because let's face it, they were rocking out in the present, so why bother making stuff up about the past that people would laugh at? As I said, this lecture really only covers the basic level of the modern discussions of early Rome, and I do not purport to be an expert on this topic myself. So, if you are interested in reading more about this topic, here are some books that I recommend for you. As your first book, I would actually recommend going with Jeremy Armstrong's Early Roman Warfare from the Regal Period to the First Punic War. This one is recent, so the scholarship is up to date, and he gets into a number of debates beyond just the warfare of the period. So, it is a good primer for the other books, it is less complicated, and it gives you a pretty good indication of what's going on in the field as a whole. Armstrong has also written other books, so perhaps if you enjoy this one, you would also enjoy some of his other works. One of the more standard works in this field is T.J. Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome, Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars. This is a book which you would be assigned if you were to take, say, a seminar on early Rome It is still one of the kind of landmarks in the field. The great rival of Cornell's work is Gary Forsythe's A Critical History of Early Rome from Prehistory to the First Punic War from 2006. Effectively, what I understand from my friends who know a lot more about early Rome than I do is that scholars who like Cornell hate Forsythe and vice versa. So, these two works present very different views of early Rome's history. Another work that pretty much everyone consults is by Ross Holloway, I didn't include it here, but that would be the Archaeology of early Roman Latium, which goes into some of the modern findings in these regions. Those findings also come up in these other books, but the Holloway book is more dedicated to archaeology than Forsyth or Cornell. And finally we have a new book by By Catherine Lomas. The Rise of Rome from the Iron Age to the Punic Wars from 2018. This one I'm actually less familiar with but it does look pretty good and so far as I can tell this is the newest and most up-to-date work which kind of covers the whole field. So those would be the places that I would look at if you are looking to do any further reading about early Rome on your own. So until next time. Remember to do your readings and Investigate the past in a deep and meaningful way. The end.