2. Dionysius of Halycarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 1.5.1, 1.89, 1.89.1, 1.90.1, 2.17, 3.47 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE)
| 1.5.1. In order, therefore, to remove these erroneous impressions, as I have called them, from the minds of many and to substitute true ones in their room, I shall in this Book show who the founders of the city were, at what periods the various groups came together and through what turns of fortune they left their native countries. 1.89. 1. Such, then, are the facts concerning the origin of the Romans which I have been able to discover a reading very diligently many works written by both Greek and Roman authors. Hence, from now on let the reader forever renounce the views of those who make Rome a retreat of barbarians, fugitives and vagabonds, and let him confidently affirm it to be a Greek city, â which will be easy when he shows that it is at once the most hospitable and friendly of all cities, and when he bears in mind that the Aborigines were Oenotrians, and these in turn Arcadians,,2. and remembers those who joined with them in their settlement, the Pelasgians who were Argives by descent and came into Italy from Thessaly; and recalls, moreover, the arrival of Evander and the Arcadians, who settled round the Palatine hill, after the Aborigines had granted the place to them; and also the Peloponnesians, who, coming along with Hercules, settled upon the Saturnian hill; and, last of all, those who left the Troad and were intermixed with the earlier settlers. For one will find no nation that is more ancient or more Greek than these.,3. But the admixtures of the barbarians with the Romans, by which the city forgot many of its ancient institutions, happened at a later time. And it may well seem a cause of wonder to many who reflect on the natural course of events that Rome did not become entirely barbarized after receiving the Opicans, the Marsians, the Samnites, the Tyrrhenians, the Bruttians and many thousands of Umbrians, Ligurians, Iberians and Gauls, besides innumerable other nations, some of whom came from Italy itself and some from other regions and differed from one another both in their language and habits; for their very ways of life, diverse as they were and thrown into turmoil by such dissoce, might have been expected to cause many innovations in the ancient order of the city.,4. For many others by living among barbarians have in a short time forgotten all their Greek heritage, so that they neither speak the Greek language nor observe the customs of the Greeks nor acknowledge the same gods nor have the same equitable laws (by which most of all the spirit of the Greeks differs from that of the barbarians) nor agree with them in anything else whatever that relates to the ordinary intercourse of life. Those Achaeans who are settled near the Euxine sea are a sufficient proof of my contention; for, though originally Eleans, of a nation the most Greek of any, they are now the most savage of all barbarians. 1.89.1. Such, then, are the facts concerning the origin of the Romans which I have been able to discover a reading very diligently many works written by both Greek and Roman authors. Hence, from now on let the reader forever renounce the views of those who make Rome a retreat of barbarians, fugitives and vagabonds, and let him confidently affirm it to be a Greek city, â which will be easy when he shows that it is at once the most hospitable and friendly of all cities, and when he bears in mind that the Aborigines were Oenotrians, and these in turn Arcadians 1.90.1. The language spoken by the Romans is neither utterly barbarous nor absolutely Greek, but a mixture, as it were, of both, the greater part of which is Aeolic; and the only disadvantage they have experienced from their intermingling with these various nations is that they do not pronounce all their sounds properly. But all other indications of a Greek origin they preserve beyond any other colonists. For it is not merely recently, since they have enjoyed the full tide of good fortune to instruct them in the amenities of life, that they have begun to live humanely; nor is it merely since they first aimed at the conquest of countries lying beyond the sea, after overthrowing the Carthaginian and Macedonian empires, but rather from the time when they first joined in founding the city, that they have lived like Greeks; and they do not attempt anything more illustrious in the pursuit of virtue now than formerly. 2.17. 1. When I compare the customs of the Greeks with these, I can find no reason to extol either those of the Lacedaemonians or of the Thebans or of the Athenians, who pride themselves most on their wisdom; all of whom, jealous of their noble birth and granting citizenship to none or to very few (I say nothing of the fact that some even expelled foreigners), not only received no advantage from this haughty attitude, but actually suffered the greatest harm because of it.,2. Thus, the Spartans after their defeat at Leuctra, where they lost seventeen hundred men, were no longer able to restore their city to its former position after that calamity, but shamefully abandoned their supremacy. And the Thebans and Athenians through the single disaster at Chaeronea were deprived by the Macedonians not only of the leadership of Greece but at the same time of the liberty they had inherited from their ancestors.,3. But Rome, while engaged in great wars both in Spain and Italy and employed in recovering Sicily and Sardinia, which had revolted, at a time when the situation in Macedonia and Greece had become hostile to her and Carthage was again contending for the supremacy, and when all but a small portion of Italy was not only in open rebellion but was also drawing upon her the Hannibalic war, as it was called, â though surrounded, I say, by so many dangers at one and the same time, Rome was so far from being overcome by these misfortunes that she derived from them a strength even greater than she had had before, being enabled to meet every danger, thanks to the number of her soldiers, and not, as some imagine, to the favour of Fortune;,4. since for all of Fortune's assistance the city might have been utterly submerged by the single disaster at Cannae, where of six thousand horse only three hundred and seventy survived, and of eighty thousand foot enrolled in the army of the commonwealth little more than three thousand escaped. 3.47. 1. Not long afterward the elder of his sons died without acknowledged issue, and a few days later Demaratus himself died of grief, leaving his surviving son Lucumo heir to his entire fortune. Lucumo, having thus inherited the great wealth of his father, had aspired to public life and a part in the administration of the commonwealth and to be one of its foremost citizens.,2. But being repulsed on every side by the native-born citizens and excluded, not only from the first, but even from the middle rank, he resented his disfranchisement. And hearing that the Romans gladly received all strangers and made them citizens, he resolved to get together all his riches and remove thither, taking with him his wife and such of his friends and household as wished to go along; and those who were eager to depart with him were many.,3. When they were come to the hill called Janiculum, from which Rome is first discerned by those who come from Tyrrhenia, an eagle, descending on a sudden, snatched his cap from his head and flew up again with it, and rising in a circular flight, hid himself in the depths of the circumambient air, then of a sudden replaced the cap on his head, fitting it on as it had been before.,4. This prodigy appearing wonderful and extraordinary to them all, the wife of Lucumo, Tanaquil by name, who had a good understanding standing, through her ancestors, of the Tyrrhenians' augural science, took him aside from the others and, embracing him, filled him with great hopes of rising from his private station to the royal power. She advised him, however, to consider by what means he might render himself worthy to receive the sovereignty by the free choice of the Romans. |
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