PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR.

VOL. XIV.

RICHMOND, MAY, 1848.

HISTORY AND CONSTITUTION

OF THE EARLY ROMAN COMMONWEALTH. The three great nations of antiquity, the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans, have, each in its peculiar sphere, exerted a powerful and controlling influence over the thoughts, the feelings, and the destinies of the human race.

The Hebrews have emphatically written upon the heart of the world their religion; the Greeks their poetry and philosophy; and the Romans their history. And all have written them in lines and characters that can never be effaced. So deeply have the effects and the principles of each sunk into the human mind; so thoroughly have they become interwoven with the very texture and framework of our nature, that their controlling influence will cease only when every trace of civilization and learning has faded from the world, and men have ceased to yearn after the knowledge of things of olden time.

NO. 5.

examine and critically compare the different parts of their knowledge. And hence it is, that when the public mind of Europe first stirred from its slumber of a thousand years, the spirit of investigation, of discovery and invention took the lead, while that of criticism followed far in the wake. The former was active in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the latter did not awaken until the middle of the seventeenth. Then it was that the great English critic, Bentley, appeared, who was so far before all the scholars of his age, that it was impossible for them to appreciate his attainments. He long remained without a rival in any part of Europe. It was not until the year 1685, that the spirit of historical criticisin may be said to have exhibited itself in any definite form.

About that time appeared the Animadversiones of Perizonius, Professor in the University of Leyden, in which was clearly pointed out many of the gross inconsistencies of the early Roman history. But the great claim he has to the thanks of the student of history, is, that he was first to discern beneath the stately rhetoric of Livy traces of the popular songs and legendary ballads of which so large a portion of his history is made up. Bayle styled the work of Perizonius, "the errata of historians and critics," and Niebuhr pronounces a high eulogium upon its merits.*

But though alike in this respect, they differ widely in another. The inspired records of the Jews, embodying their system of religion, have come down to us in a wonderfully complete and perfect state; the great works of Grecian genius containing their poetry and philosophy, their eloquence Next came Giambattista Vico, a Neapolitan hisand history, with few exceptions, still remain en-torian, who published his remarkable work† in 1725. tire; but with Roman history it is far otherwise. He seems to have been a man of singular and It has been well said, that for a long while, the Ro-wonderful genius, but his judgment was often so mans were so much occupied in making their his- perverted by whimsical eccentricities, that he was tory, they had no time to amuse themselves with sometimes thought to be partially deranged. He writing it. But at length the time came when they had an intuitive faculty of perceiving the truth, did write it, and they wrote it out, but not for us. though concealed beneath heaps of fiction and rubWith hardly an exception, all that remains of bish, and he divined, as it were, many of the great their great historical works, are mutilated frag- truths that Niebuhr afterwards discovered and dements. Had, however, these magnificent frag- monstrated. He it was who first called into life ments been properly understood and interpreted, the old Gentes and Curiae of the Roman constitumuch of the history of the early Romans might tion, and pointed out the true relative positions of still have been known to the world. But the spirit the patricians, the clients and plebeians in the early of historical criticism was never possessed by the organization of the State. He anticipated Wolf Ancients, even in their most enlightened days, but in his hypothesis respecting the origin and nature in a very moderate degree, and with the decline of of the Homeric poems, and pronounced them to learning was lost entirely. The consequence was, be the great work of a nation. His history conthat until modern times, even scholars knew not tains many sound general principles and profound that the whole of the early history of Rome, as observations, but so inseparably interwoven with commonly understood, was naught but a beautiful wild speculations and fanciful theories, that his real discoveries would probably have been of but little

and romantic fiction.

In emerging from barbarism and seeking after knowledge, the operations of the human mind must ever be the same. Men must enlarge the boundaries of their information before they can begin to

VOL. XIV-34

See Nieb. Hist. Rom, vol. i, pp. 251, 252.

+ Principi di una Scienza Nuova d'intomo alla Natura della Nazioni.

value, had they not been re-discovered by other | false impressions which prevailed universally on the and sounder heads. subject; and its truth, like Newton's discoveries in Close in the wake of Vico's Scienza Nuova, fol-natural science, is not now to be proved, but to be lowed the treatise of Beaufort (De l'Incertitude, taken as the very corner-stone of all our research&c., in 1738.) He went into a critical examina-es into the internal state of the Roman people." tion of the early history of Rome, brought togeth- As another instance, we may take the important er and exposed its numberless inconsistencies and absurdities, and prostrated the whole system to the ground. But like Voltaire, he was the architect only of ruin. He knew how to destroy, but not how to reconstruct. He taught the world that Livy's history was a splendid romance, but told them not what they might believe, and if the subject had remained where he left it, we might question the benefits resulting from what Legarè calls his barren scepticism.

fact, which we believe he was the first to point out, that the term populus (People,) so constantly used and misused by Livy, when applied to the early history of the Roman State, is to be confined exclusively to the nobility. We shall speak of this more fully hereafter.

After Niebuhr had led the way and brushed aside the cobwebs of poetry and fiction that had for twen ty centuries clustered around and concealed the early history of Rome, he was succeeded by a host of eminent writers, who, with industry, learning and perseverance, following in the footsteps of their great leader, have continued to pour a flood of light upon this deeply interesting subject. Among them we may be permitted to mention, absque invidia, the names of Arnold, Malden and Michelet, and Bunseu and Gherard and that crowd of German scholars of whom it was quaintly said, that the great historian had left his city Rome to a German colony, who were carefully taking an inventory of all that belonged to them by right of conquest.

The story of the early Roman history is so familiarly known to every reader, so marvellous and poetic in its features, and so deeply impressed upon the recollections of our childhood, that it would be

At length, however, came forward the great historian, who was destined to revive and reanimate what time had almost effaced. Perizonius had suspected, Vico had divined, Beaufort had doubted, but it was reserved for Niebuhr to discover and to demonstrate the whole theory of the Roman constitution. He too pulled down and destroyed, but he rebuilt more than he pulled down; he reconstructed more than he destroyed. It is for his discoveries, and not for his doubts, that he is so much revered. In the language of Michelet, he knew Antiquity as Antiquity knew not itself. That the great truths put forth and demonstrated by him were nearly all his own independent discoveries, is shown by the fact, that the first edition of his history was published before his attention was called to the remarkable coincidence between several of a needless waste of time to give even a meagre the positions established by him and the previous sketch of it here. The miraculous preservation of conjectures of Perizonius, and particularly of Vico.* the twin brothers, the foundation of the infant city, But in all such cases, though the discovery may its struggles and treaty with the Sabines, the midhave been anticipated by another, the demonstra-night meetings of the good Numa and the nymph tion is all his own. It is almost needless to speci- Egeria, the pathetic story of Lucretia, the noble fy particular instances of his beautiful discoveries, heroism of Brutus, and the expulsion of the haughwhen nearly the whole theory of the old Roman ty Tarquins, are perhaps better known to every Commonwealth is his. school boy in the land than the most striking and important incidents in the history of our own country. It has been intimated above, that all this wellknown story is a beautiful and romantic fiction We cannot, of course, in the very limited space al lowed to us, go into the arguments at length to prove this proposition, but we shall endeavor in as brief and popular a manner as possible to give some of the evidences of its fabulous character, and the reasons that lead us to reject what was long believed, and believed even by most of the Romans themselves. And in thus summing of these evidences, we do not pretend ourselves to any great originality. We but follow at a distance these great names we have mentioned, and guided by the clear lights they have held up, have attempted ta thread our way through the complicated labyrinthe of historical criticism.

We will, however, mention as one, his definitions of an Agrarian Law, which it is hardly too much to say no one before him ever understood. We cannot now enter into a full explanation of its character, but will simply remark, that the odious sense that the term has acquired in our language was founded upon an entirely erroneous idea of the measure, and that so far from being a levelling of all the barriers of property, it was but an act of sheer justice. It meant only a fair and equal division of the public land conquered in war, between all the citizens of the State, instead of giving it all to the nobles. In speaking of the importance of this discovery, Dr. Arnold remarks, that "twentyfour years have not elapsed since he first published it, but it has already overthrown the deeply rooted

* Vid. Hist. Rome, by Malden, in Lib. U. K., c. iv, p. 137, note.

Vid. Hist. Rome, vol. i, ch. ix, p. 105.

Let us, then, examine for a moment the sources brought under the dominion of another branch of from which our knowledge of early Roman history the same stock of people. In following out this is obtained, and from the character of the fountain darling theory, he hesitates at no alterations it bejudge of the nature of the stream. comes necessary to make in the accounts given by the old annalists. He never, even in treating of times the most remote, honestly acknowledges, like Livy, the contradictory statements of his authorities and the uncertainty that hangs over the whole subject. His history moves on in one unbroken stream, giving in monotonous and wearying succession circumstances and anecdotes, that from their very nature, could never have been known, even if true. We often discover from Livy, that upon certain points the old annalists directly contradict each other-from the account of the same subject given by Dionysius, we would never suspect that he had met with the slightest discrepancy in his authorities.

Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus are the two principal authorities from whom has been drawn the common narrative. Now, Livy wrote during the reign of Augustus, and Dionysius a few years later, so that they were separated by an interval of about 750 years from the time of the events and transactions of which they give such minute and circumstantial accounts. It cannot be very unreasonable in us then, before giving full confidence to all their statements, to ask from what source did they derive their information, and what surety had they for the genuineness of the history of ages so distant from their own? They inform us that they have drawn from the old annalists who preceded them, and whose works, except a few scattered In short, if we are sometimes compelled to disfragments, have since been entirely lost. Before credit Livy's narrative, from his carelessness and we examine the character of these old writers, let passion for relating fine stories, in a much greatus cast a hasty glance at that of the two histori-er degree are we forced to question the credibility ans who stand between us and them.

Livy was a man of brilliant imagination and remarkably fond of telling, and telling too in an incomparable manner, the fine stories with which the early pages of his history abound. He forewarns us in the outset that it is not his intention, either to affirm or to refute accounts that partake more of the character of poetic fables than of stern history.* And again he afterwards remarks that he would not spare the caret of investigating, if by so doing it were possible to arrive at the truth; and that he shall rest satisfied if what we receive as true be like the truth. If Livy thus openly acknowledges the unsatisfactory nature of his materials, and sets up for himself so low a standard of historical truth, it cannot be considered very presumptuous in a modern historian to refuse credit (as Niebuhr has done) to his statements, when they conflict with the known current of events, and bear stamped apon them all the features of a romance.

of Dionysius from his want of candor and honesty. Such, then, being the character of the two historians, from whom we derive nearly all our immediate knowlege of Roman history, it may be well for us to look behind them, and discover, if we can, something of the character of those old annalists from whom they have drawn. We shall give the names of the principal of these and the periods at which they composed their works. The first was Q. Fabius Pictor, a Senator and Consul and cotemporaneous with the close of the second Punic war, so that his history must have been written about the year of the city 550. L. Cinius and M. Porcius Cato, also Senators, lived about the same period with Fabius, and compiled their works only a few years after his. Piso followed at an interval of sixty or seventy years, and was succeeded at about the same interval, by Val. Autias and Licinius Macer. Polybius, the Greek historian, also wrote upon the early history of Rome about the Dionysius was a writer of altogether a different same time with Piso, and although the part of his cast. He possessed more patience, more research, work that contains this digression has now been more investigation, but less candor and honesty. lost, it seems to have been the principal source He wrote for a special purpose, and that a dishon- from which Cicero drew the substance of the early He was a Greek, and commenced his Roman history contained in his treatise De Rehistory with the avowed object of proving that publica. Rome was founded by the Greeks, and consequently, that all the Roman glory belonged still to the Greeran race; and that Greece, instead of having been subdued by a barbarian power, had only been

est one.

It were a needless task to examine the character and credibility of each one of these in detail. We shall confine ourselves only to a few of the arguments that equally affect all. It appears from the dates we have given, that the earliest of these writers was separated by an interval of five hundred and fifty, and the latest by more than six hundred and fifty years from the foundation of the city.

The question then again recurs with still greater force, from what sources did they draw the materials for the early history of Rome; and were those sources reliable? In seeking from them the an

swer to these questions, we find that their real ma-ings of every individual. It is the natural outpourterials were very scanty indeed. The Priests, it ing of exuberant feelings and a heated fancy, when is said, had been accustomed at the close of each those feelings and that fancy are subjected to no year, since the foundation of the city, to record conventional rules of criticism. And hence it is upon tablets some of the great events that had oc- that the earliest productions of almost all nations are curred during that year, and that these tablets, their old national ballads. They sometimes become called Annales Maximi, or great Annals, were pre- lost and leave scarcely a trace behind; sometimes served and handed down from year to year. If they are woven into the later poetry and thus prethis had been so, and they had been diligently stud-served; but oftener still they are transferred to the ied, they would have afforded at least a safe, though pages of the earliest chroniclers, and copied from narrow basis, for the historians to build upon. But them by succeeding historians. That such has when we examine into it, we find upon the express been the case in some countries, we have positive testimony of Livy, that nearly, if not quite all of proof, and that it has happened in many more, these records, were destroyed when the city was where the evidences of the transformation can hardtaken and burnt to the ground by the Gauls. And ly be perceived, we have as little doubt. To illusthis is rendered still more probable, when we re- trate this farther, we will take a few examples. member that they were in the city plundering and We have evidences that there were such songs burning for seven months, and that the Capitol was amongst the Amorites, who were expelled from the only building that did not fall into their hands. the land of Canaan by the Israelites; and that the This capture and destruction of Rome by the Gauls Israelites themselves had old ballads in which were took place in the year of the city 350, more than a sung "the wars of the Lord." Such beyond all hundred years after the time allotted to the banish- doubt were the triumphal songs of Miriam‡ and ment of the kings and the organization of the Re-Deborah. Again the Homeric poems fornish a public. Now, if we are willing to suppose that noble specimen of the old ballad poetry of the most these Pontifical records were continued regularly poetical race of people that ever breathed forth their from this time downward-a supposition by the feelings and passions in rich and flowing melody, way very difficult to establish-here at least is a and it does not materially affect the force of the ilpoint at which we are compelled to halt, a gap lustration whether they are regarded, as we believe which we cannot overleap; and be it remembered they undoubtedly are, as the great work of the naalso, that this point at which we are thus brought tion, or as the production of one man. They repto a stand, is full 350 years from the foundation of resent, in a state of great preservation, the Nathe city. Notwithstanding, however, this obsti- tional songs of the early Greeks, and contain, morenate fact, we find the history of this long period over, distinct allusions to songs and lays of still related by Livy and Dionysius and by the writers more ancient date. Thus, when the mediators befrom whom they drew, with all the circumstantial tween Agamemnon and the offended Achilles came minuteness of a full account written by a cotempo-to the tent of the latter, they found him playing rary. Whence, then, come these glowing accounts upon the "sweet toned lyre and singing the illasof the early days of the Roman Commonwealth? trious deeds of Heroes." Both the Iliad and the What is their origin? It cannot be that they are Odyssey are full of allusions to such songs. Whilst entirely the fabrications of the historians who have other nations have in many instances permitted transmitted them to us. It cannot be that those rich their noble old heroic lays to sink into oblivion, the and noble romances ever came from the dull pro- Greeks have ever loved with enthusiasm, and presaic brain of Dionysius. The answer is simple. served almost with veneration, the songs of their We believe that the greater part of these stories old national bards. In fact, the whole circle of the was taken from the old legendary ballads of the Cyclic poets belong to this class, and we know that people. And we shall give a few of the reasons they were valued highly by the Ancient Greeks why we think so. because they afforded something like a connected In attempting to form some idea of the general history of great events, and were afterwards transcharacter and origin of ballad poetry amongst a ferred almost entirely to the pages of the earliest rude and uncultivated people, we must carefully prose writers. The poem of the Cid will afford exclude from our minds all thoughts of that refined another splendid instance of a great national heroic and elaborate species of composition with which poem, second perhaps only to the Iliad. It had we are familiar under the name of poetry. In a sung in rude, but lofty strains, the "illustrious cultivated age like the present, poetical is the most elaborate and complicated of all species of composition; in the rude age of an uncivilized people, it is the most simple and unadorned. In a cultivated age, it is a pure intellectual enjoyment offered to few enlightened minds; amongst a rude and barbarous people, it is addressed to the passions and feel

a

* Numb. xxi, 27, 30.

↑ Numb. xxi, 14, 18.
Exod. xv, 20.

◊ Judg. v, 1, 31. If reference will be made to a para. graph Bible, the evidences of these songs will be still more clearly seen.

|| Vid. Iliad, 1. ix, v. 184, 189, and again same, v. 524.

deeds" of Don Rodrigo, and had almost passed from the sight of the world, though the traces it had left upon the national mind of Castile, were too deep and lasting ever to be effaced. The name and memory of the old bard had been forgotten the poem itself had faded from view, but its spirit, Phoenix-like, sprang forth under a new and different form. Its romantic incidents were all copied into an old chronicle, and many years afterwards were again transferred from the old chronicle to the classic pages of Mariana. A century and a half after the death of the great historian, a single tattered copy of this remarkable poem was found, | The heroic deeds of the early crusaders, and the more than four hundred years old, and given to the chivalrous gallantry of the knights errant, afforded world. And there was seen the origin of all those inexhaustible themes for the beautiful and melobeautiful romances that had for so many years thrown a delightful charm over the pages of Spanish history.

are not only themselves specimens of national poetry, but also contain numberless allusions to still more ancient bards. The day has not been long by when the mountain glens of Scotland reëchoed to the sound of her glorious old national songs, and the precious relics of the Minstrelsy of the Border can be forgotten only when the name of Scott has faded from English literature. Long before the liquid verse of Campbell had endeared them to our memories, the generous-hearted sons of the Emerald Isle had struck to the numbers of Erin go Bragh."

In the days of Tacitus, the barbarians of Germany celebrated in ancient songs the origin and founders of their nations, and it was, says he, the only kind of history they possessed.

The exploits of Attila and the heroes of the warlike Huns were sung in the poems of the Niebelungen, in strains of which Germany is still justly proud. The Goths, the Vandals, all the nations of Scandinavia, had their war songs, in which were recounted the valorous deeds of their ancestors. These were sung by regular bards at all their great feasts, and were handed down from generation to generation. Charlemagne had heard and learned some of them, and had them, for the first time, committed to writing. The revolting cruelty of the English monarch, in putting to death all the old Welsh bards, in order to break down the patriotic spirit of the people and make them forget the unconquerable freedom of their ancestors, has thrown a halo of undying glory around the old national songs of Wales, and forever consecrated their memory to the sympathies of freemen.

dious lays of the Troubadours. The Persians, the Hindoos, and the Arabians all had their legendary songs. The North American Indians, the ancient inhabitants of Iceland, and the natives of the Sandwich Islands, alike celebrated the memorable deeds of their heroes in their rude but spirited national lays. Mungo Park found in the heart of Africa tribes of negroes who celebrated in triumphal songs the victories of their heroes in ancient times.

But it were needless to prolong this list of illustrations. We hope we have given sufficient evidences to warrant the assumption, that, as a general rule, the earliest productions of all nations are legendary and traditionary songs, and that these songs often, nay usually, become the basis of their first attempts at history.

Had Rome then none of these fine old ballads reciting in glowing strains the noble deeds of her early heroes? Analogy would lead us to suppose that she had, even if we could now find no traces of them existing. But fortunately we are not left to rely upon the force of analogy alone. We have positive evidences from various sources of the existence of such traditionary lays. Cicero states upon the authority of the old annalist, Cato, that in It surely cannot be necessary to remind the Eng- ancient times it was the custom at great feasts for lish reader of the noble fragments of ballad-poetry the guests at the table to sing in turn to the sound that we still possess in our own native tongue. of the pipe the praises and virtues of their illusChevy Chase and Childe Waters would themselves trious men.† And he fully laments the loss of immortalize the memory of old England's bards. those old songs. The circumstance that they were Lear and Cymbeline-the stories of King Arthur sung promiscuously by all the guests, would argue and the Knights of the Round Table, are all founded that they were very generally known and truly napon old English ballads, and Shakspeare has given tional in their character. Varro, the great antiquary evidence of his appreciation of their high merit, of his country, and Dionysius, the historian, both by drawing largely from them in many of his finest mention the existence of these songs and their leplays. gendary character.

Scotland is still richer in this respect than England. The lofty beanties that shine even through the prose translation of Ossian, stamp those poems 28 specimens of the highest poetic excellence. The poems of Ossian, too, like the Iliad and Odyssey,

* "Celebrant carminibus antiqius, quod unum apud illos memoriae et annalium genus est, originem gentis conditoresque." And again see Tac. Ann., 1.2, last chapter. Tac. De. Ger., c. 2.