History of Rome | Page 7

destroyed B.C. 1184, and Rome was not founded until B.C. 753. To remedy this incongruity, a list of Latin kings intervening between ?ne'as and Rom'ulus, was invented; but the forgery was so clumsily executed, that its falsehood is apparent on the slightest inspection. It may also be remarked, that the actions attributed to ?neas are, in other traditions of the same age and country, ascribed to other adventurers; to Evander, a Pelasgic leader from Arcadia, who is said to have founded a city on the site afterwards occupied by Rome; or to Uly'sses, whose son Tele'gonus is reported to have built Tus'culum.
If then we deny the historical truth of a legend which seems to have been universally credited by the Romans, how are we to account for the origin of the tale? Was the tradition of native growth, or was it imported from Greece when the literature of that country was introduced into Latium? These are questions that can only be answered by guess; but perhaps the following theory may in some degree be found satisfactory. We have shown that tradition, from the earliest age, invariably asserted that Pelasgic colonies had formed settlements in central Italy; nothing is more notorious than the custom of the Pelasgic tribes to take the name of their general, or of some town in which they had taken up their temporary residence; now ?ne'a and ?'nus were common names of the Pelasgic towns; the city of Thessaloni'ca was erected on the site of the ancient ?ne'a; there was an ?'nus in Thrace,[A] another in Thessaly,[A] another among the Locrians, and another in Epi'rus:[1] hence it is not very improbable but that some of the Pelasgic tribes which entered Latium may have been called the ?ne'ad?; and the name, as in a thousand instances, preserved after the cause was forgotten. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact, that temples traditionally said to have been erected by a people called the ?ne'ad?, are found in the Macedonian peninsula of Pall'ene,[2] in the islands of De'los, Cythe'ra, Zacy'nthus, Leuca'dia, and Sicily, on the western coasts of Ambra'cia and Epi'rus, and on the southern coast of Sicily.
The account of several Trojans, and especially ?ne'as, having survived the destruction of the city, is as old as the earliest narrative of that famous siege; Homer distinctly asserts it when he makes Neptune declare,
--Nor thus can Jove resign The future father of the Dardan line: The first great ancestor obtain'd his grace, And still his love descends on all the race. For Priam now, and Priam's faithless kind, At length are odious, to the all-seeing mind; On great ?neas shall devolve the reign, And sons succeeding sons the lasting line sustain. ILIAD, xx.
But long before the historic age, Phrygia and the greater part of the western shores of Asia Minor were occupied by Grecian colonies, and all remembrance of ?ne'as and his followers lost. When the narrative of the Trojan war, with other Greek legends, began to be circulated in Lati'um, it was natural that the identity of name should have led to the confounding of the ?ne'ad? who had survived the destruction of Troy, with those who had come to La'tium from the Pelasgic ?'nus. The cities which were said to be founded by the ?ne'ad? were, Latin Troy, which possessed empire for three years; Lavinium, whose sway lasted thirty; Alba, which was supreme for three hundred years; and Rome, whose dominion was to be interminable, though some assign a limit of three thousand years. These numbers bear evident traces of superstitious invention; and the legends by which these cities are successively deduced from the first encampment of ?ne'as, are at variance with these fanciful periods. The account that Alba was built by a son of ?ne'as, who had been guided to the spot by a white sow, which had farrowed thirty young, is clearly a story framed from the similarity of the name to Albus (white,) and the circumstance of the city having been the capital of the thirty Latin tribes. The city derived its name from its position on the Alban mountain; for Alb, or Alp, signifies lofty in the ancient language of Italy, and the emblem of a sow with thirty young, may have been a significant emblem of the dominion which it unquestionably possessed over the other Latin states. The only thing that we can establish as certain in the early history of La'tium is, that its inhabitants were of a mixed race, and the sources from whence they sprung Pelasgic and Oscan; that is, one connected with the Greeks, and the other with some ancient Italian tribe. We have seen that this fact is the basis of all their traditions, that it is confirmed by the structure of their language, and, we may add, that it