very much reduced in number by the destruction of public documents in the Gallic capture. We have to conclude generally, that for this period the ultimate authorities are a small number of public documents and untrustworthy inscriptions in private houses that may have escaped the Gauls, and beyond this nothing better than unwritten tradition.

Having ascertained that the earliest Roman history has in the main no better source than oral tradition, we are able at once to form a judgment upon certain parts of it. For example, Livy gives a description of the harrowing scenes which accompanied the removal of the population of Alba from their native city. The passage is very beautiful, but it is not difficult to satisfy oneself that particulars like these cannot be transmitted from mouth to mouth through four centuries. We may say the same of his animated description of the battle between Romulus and Tatius, which contains almost as many details as his account of the battle of Cannae. All detailed descriptions of this kind, it is at once evident, must be rejected. On the other hand, there are certain broad facts which we shall not hesitate to receive upon the naked testimony of tradition. For example, the fact that kings once ruled in Rome is allowed even by Lewis to be certain, and yet the testimony to it is perhaps entirely traditional.

But the greater part of the history lies between these two extremes. It is neither so minute and particular that it could not have been accurately preserved by tradition, nor so large and striking that it could not have been forgotten. Are we then to believe or to disbelieve it? Now, we have no right to affirm that the history actually rests upon oral tradition, but only that it rests on nothing better. It may rest on something worse, i. e. on invention. In these circumstances it becomes important to consider the history itself. There are characteristics which will throw suspicion even upon a well-attested narrative. To an ill-attested narrative these will necessarily be fatal. If, then, we find in the current history of Rome improbability, inconsistency with itself, inconsistency with other ascertained history, marvellousness, romance, national selfglorification, we shall be inclined to attribute it rather to fiction than tradition.

Now many of these marks of fiction are palpably visible in the history of the kings. In the first place it contains much of the supernatural, and, as will be shown more at length later, in its earlier form it contained still more, which writers living, like Livy, in a sceptical age either rejected or rationalized away. Examples of this are the whole story of Romulus, the intercourse of Numa with Egeria, the miraculous birth of Servius. In the second place it is extremely inconsistent with itself.

This is visible enough to the attentive reader of Livy only, though Livy generally contrives to avoid contradicting himself in express words. (See below on the Rape of the Sabines; also on c. 17; on c. 30, § 2; on c. 32, § 5; on c. 33, § 5; on c. 46, § 9.) But the full extent of the inconsistency is not generally perceived because most people know the regal history only as Livy has given it. It is when Livy's account is compared with the accounts of other writers that we become aware of the utter uncertainty which prevailed among the Romans themselves. We then discover that there was not a single generally-accepted traditional history, but a multitude of traditional histories entirely inconsistent with each other. For example, the famous story of the twins and of the foundation of Rome, existed side by side with at least twenty1 other stories of the foundation of Rome which are entirely different from it. Another example may be drawn from the history of Numa. This king is known principally as a founder of institutions. Scarcely anything would be left in his biography if we omitted from it the account of the institutions founded by him. Yet scarcely one institution is attributed to him which is not attributed by other writers to some one else. The introduction of the year of twelve months is attributed to him by Livy . 19, 6), but to Tarquinius Priscus by Censorinus (20, § 4). The introduction of the worship of Quirinus is attributed to him by Plutarch (Numa 7), but Varro (L. L. 5. 74) makes T. Tatius build an altar to Quirinus. He is called the institutor of the Vestal Virgins, and yet we are told that the mother of Romulus was a Vestal. Plutarch (Numa 12) makes him founder of the College of Fetiales, but Cicero (Rep. 2. 17, 31) gives the honour to Tullus Hostilius. It is exceedingly wearisome to read through the whole list of inconsistencies and discrepancies which may be collected from the history of the kings; and it is the less necessary in this place to inflict them on the reader, because Lewis has already exhausted the subject. To his work the reader must be referred. It contains little or nothing that was not already known when it appeared, yet it is very important from the completeness with which it treats the one question of the truth or falsehood of the traditional accounts, and the firmness with which it abstains from perplexing the question with speculation.

The traditional history, as a whole, must be rejected, because of the conflicting nature of the different accounts. Contradictory narratives, all possessing equal and all slight authority, overthrow each other. But the attempt has often been made to elicit a true history from them by applying the test of probability, and explaining 1 See Lewis, vol. 1. 401. C

conjecturally how the truth might have been corrupted. All such attempts rest upon the assumption that a true history has been corrupted by lapse of time, and by passing from mouth to mouth. But is this assumption justifiable? Does a fictitious history, such as that before us, necessarily pre-suppose a true history out of which it has grown by gradual deterioration; or may it have sprung up in quite a different way?

CHAPTER II.

HOW THE TRADITIONAL HISTORY MAY HAVE GROWN. It must be admitted that a certain substratum of truth, indistinguishable to us, probably exists, particularly in the latter part-that it is exceedingly probable that a house of Tarquins really reigned at Rome, and that the 'comitia centuriata' were really instituted by a king named Servius Tullius. For the most part, however, it seems very probable that the regal history is not truth corrupted by passing from mouth to mouth, but fiction from the beginning. In producing these fictions two principal influences seem to have operated. The one of these influences was almost entirely overlooked by Niebuhr and Arnold, in whose time the Roman religion had not been so thoroughly studied as it has been since the publication of Hartung's Religion der Römer. It may be called Euhemerism. Though the Romans preserved longer than the Greeks, as Polybius testifies, a feeling of reverence for the gods, yet many special beliefs and worships seem to have died out among them early and utterly. Their readiness to import foreign deities was not greater than the readiness with which they forgot their own. Accordingly, the first generation of Romans which turned its attention to the national antiquities-the generation of Fabius, Cincius and Cato-was quite prepared to take that view of many of the national deities which Euhemerus had taken of deities in general. The iepà 'Avaypapn of this Greek, in which he explained the gods to have been famous men worshipped out of gratitude after their death, was, we are told by Cicero (N. D. 1. 42. 119), translated into Latin and followed' by Ennius, who is to be regarded as one of the principal arrangers of the received early history of Rome. When Cicero says that Ennius not only translated Euhemerus, but followed him, it seems probable that he means that Ennius applied the same method to Roman mythology which Euhemerus had applied to Greek. It is probable enough that the same influence may have affected Fabius and others. 1 'Quem noster et interpretatus est et secutus praeter ceteros Ennius.'

But whether the work of Euhemerus himself affected these early historians, or the Roman mind independently hit upon the same theory, it is certain that a Euhemeristic explanation of the old Italian mythology runs through the Latin literature. A striking example is contained in Virg. Aen. 7. 177, where, in the palace of Latinus, there are said to stand statues of his ancestors, and among them are enumerated some of the leading names in the old Italian pantheon, names corresponding to Zeus and Kronos in the Greek, who are classed with other primitive kings who have suffered wounds in battle for their country.

'Quin etiam veterum effigie ex ordine avorum
Antiqua e cedro, Italusque paterque Sabinus
Vitisator, curvam servans sub imagine falcem
Saturnusque senex, Janique bifrontis imago,
Vestibulo adstabant; aliique ab origine reges

Martia qui ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi.'

In the same way Faunus and Picus, who were among the greatest deities of the old Italians, are spoken of constantly in Virgil as primitive Italian kings. The same theory which led the historians to turn deities into human beings, led them to explain purely mythological stories into historical occurrences, and also to suppose the localities dedicated to particular worships to be the scenes of the historical occurrences so obtained. Examples of this manufacturing of history out of mythology are probably Evander, Cacus, Rea Silvia, Acca Larentia, Quirinus, Hersilia, Mettius Fuffetius, Tarpeia. The details will be given below.

The other leading influence may be called the aetiological influence. It is the desire to account for or explain anything that seemed singular in manners or usages, to find an origin for every remarkable institution, and to find a founder for every conspicuous building. As a typical example of this, may be quoted the story of the Rape of the Sabines. In the Roman marriage ceremonies there were many indications that the bride was supposed to be carried off forcibly from her parents. Modern inquiries have shown that in this there was nothing peculiar to the Romans. Similar traces appear in the marriage ceremonies of many nations most widely separated from each other. To us they are indications of a primitive condition of society, when men got their wives as they got their food, by hunting. But the Romans explained them by a story. They held them to be memorials of a particular and very ancient rape of Sabine women. For further examples of this see below. These two are the principal influences which have probably been at work. In particular parts more special influences may be traced. The 1 I am disposed, with Forbiger and Jahn, to prefer this reading to Martiaque.

earliest legends are evidently connected with the Iliad, and perhaps are also coloured by the traditions of Cumae. In other parts we find stories borrowed from Herodotus. There remains a certain proportion of the history which can be explained by none of these methods. Here, if anywhere, must lie the substratum of truth. Whether it is possible anywhere to recognize this substratum will come to be considered in due time. At present we proceed to examine the legends in order.

THE LEGENDS.
I. Aeneas.

Aeneas is presented to us in three aspects: (1) as the founder of a dynasty which ruled in Ida over the remnant of the Trojans after the destruction of Troy; (2) As the founder of several cities in Greece; (3) As the founder of a colony in Latium.

Homer regards him as the future Trojan king (Il. 20. 307); and Strabo (13. 1, 53) testifies that the same tradition of him remained in the town of Scepsis in Troas. So too Conon, 41: ó d'Aoκávios viòs μὲν ἦν Αἰνείου μετὰ δὲ Τροίας ἅλωσιν ἐβασίλευσεν Ιδης. It is probably true that a family of Aeneadae existed in Troas who regarded Aeneas as their founder. Who then is the Aeneas who is said to have founded Aenus in Thrace (Virg. Aen. 3. 18), Aenea in Chalcidice (Livy 40. 4, 9), Capyae in Arcadia (Dion. 1. 49), Etis and Aphrodisias in Laconia (Paus. 3. 22, 2), Egesta and Eryx in Sicily (Cic. Verr. 4. 33; Thuc. 6. 2), and of whom there were traces in many other places, particularly at Buthrotum in Epirus, and at Cumae in Italy (Virg. Aen. 3 293, and 6. 235)? Two suggestions have been offered for this: (1) As in antiquity towns were generally supposed to have received the names of their founders, Aenus and Aenea in Thrace, and the island Aenaria, near Cumae, would all alike suggest a founder bearing a name like Aeneas, and after the diffusion of the Iliad all these founders would be at once identified with the Aeneas there mentioned. Similarly, the town Anchiasmos, near Buthrotum, would point to Anchises, his father, and Capyae in Arcadia to Capys, his grandfather (Il. 20. 239). (2) At the places where Aeneas is said to have landed, we generally find a temple of Aphrodite. Now the name Aeneas seems closely connected with this worship; perhaps it was an epithet of the goddess. Temples of 'Appodirn Alveids are twice mentioned in Dion. 1. 50.

But we are more concerned here with Aeneas as colonizer of Latium. It is important to remember that this legend is only the most celebrated of a vast number of similar legends connecting Italy with the heroes of