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with the Sabine Dæmon, Sancus, whom the Roman philologists refer to Hercules"; and whose worship necessarily prevailed amongst all the Sabelline nations throughout the whole of southern Italy. It certainly was not until a very late period, transferred by the Romans to the Grecian Hero. It is recorded, that Appius Claudius the Blind, when Censor, persuaded the Potitii to instruct slaves in the ceremonies of this worship, which had been celebrated with Grecian rites on the high altar, since the divine apparition on the Tiber. But it is much more probable, according to an oracle in the Sybilline books, that this Grecian worship then for the first time commenced at Rome, as did that of Asclepius soon after. To the same period belongs the consecration of a colossal statue of the God, in the year 449, during the censorship of Appius.

Closely connected with this Heraclean fable, is that of the settlement of Evander and his Arcadians on the Tiber; upon the hill where, at some future period, was to be laid the foundation of the Eternal City. For Evander gave his daughter Launa in marriage to the Hero, to whom she bore Pallas 50. In support of this fable, no ancient Greek poet is adduced; but that it should have been purely Latin, is highly improbable, for this reason, that it certainly refers to the Arcadian genealogies, which, previous to the Augustan age of literature at Rome, must have been absolutely unknown to the poets;

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19 Or, Dius Fidius. Ælius Gallus in Varro de Ling. Lat. Polybius in Dionysius, I. c. 22.

50

and moreover, while the mother of Evander was called, in the Roman style, Carmentis, he himself is designated by a Greek name in the ancient poetry. Evander seems to be only Latinus in another form. In one place he is the son of the prophetess Carmentis, in another, of the prophet Faunus; one marries the daughter Lavinia to Hercules, another to Æneas, both foreign heroes. So diversified and sportive is fable, that at one time Pallas (who, according to others, is the son of Evander), another time Latinus, is one of the Heraclidæ; and the latter the son of an Hyperborean Palanto 51.

These fables seem to me the productions of late Greek poets, when Rome was already in the ascendant; and about the sixth century, when the bloom of the Alexandrine poetry had faded. Italy may have had a few Greek mythographers; but the age of the poet Euxenus is not ascertained, beyond a doubt, even in the passage of Dionysius 52. Symilus, Butas, and, (if they have written of Rome in verse,) Diocles of Peparethus and Antigonus, are certainly not earlier than that century. In the time of Polybius, a mighty change had already taken place in the Roman traditions. Greeks had written Latin poetry, and thus the intermixture may have appeared to him as native tales.

51 Festus in voce Palatium.

52 The words Evževos & Ointis dpxaïos, in Dionysius I. c. 34. are probably vitiated.

CHAPTER XIII.

ENEAS AND THE TROJANS IN LATIUM.

THE Trojan colony in Latium is represented, even in the old tradition, as a small body; the crew of a single bark, to whom the limits of an insignificant village were sufficient; not as the immigration of a people whose numbers were adequate to alter the population amongst whom they were admitted. If, therefore, their arrival were credibly attested, yet we ought not to be led astray by the circumstance that the whole Latin nation remained unaltered, and Italian, though the throne may have devolved upon strangers.

The story in itself is intimately and inseparably interwoven with the fabulous portion of the Roman history; which we must discriminate, but ought not to pass over unnoticed. To reject it without examination, because of its presumed internal untenability, were this ever so apparent, would be a careless and indolent disregard of criticism. It would be equally unworthy the historian to imagine, that the certainty of fact, or even mere probability, can be attained upon these subjects; since more than five centuries

intervene between that period and the first glimmerings of light in Roman history. The object then of our research is this: whether the Trojan story be of ancient and native origin, or derived from the Greeks and adopted by the Latins.

Let no man absolutely reject it, as if Ilium existed but in fable, and a voyage to the unknown West was an impossibility. The Trojan war is certainly mythic; so much so, that no single point can be selected from the remainder, as of greater or less probability. Yet we cannot deny it an historical foundation, which is less deeply hidden than in many other poetical traditions. It is not to be doubted that the Atridæ existed, as kings of Peloponnesus. Neither can the naval expedition to Latium be pronounced impossible; as Cuma was afterwards founded in the second century; and the daring spirit of navigators is by no means cramped by the imperfection of their ships; nor is their knowledge of distant regions to be measured by the representations of those who remained at home, previous to the existence of books, maps, or men of learning.

The story, that the Trojans had not totally perished in the destruction of Ilium, that a part of them survived, and that the family of Æneas governed the survivors, is as old as the poems which celebrated the Trojan war. It by no means follows, that the tradition was equally ancient, of the Eneades having ruled over emigrants at some distance from Troy; it can only be said, that these traditions are not contradictory to each other. The well-known passage in the Iliad, affirms nothing

more than the continuation of a Trojan race; and had not Troas and the Hellespont in Homer's time been long occupied by Eolian colonies, we should more probably understand it of the independent Dardanians of Æneas, who by their situation might have taken possession of the deserted territory of Ilium after the departure of the Greeks, rather than as referring to a remote settlement in districts which were altogether unknown to the poet, though not to the mariner. Arctinus of Miletus, who wrote about the time of the building of Rome, has also, (if the extract in the Chrestomathia of Proclus does not deceive us,) only mentioned, that Æneas, with his followers, horror-stricken by the prodigy of the Laocoontidæ, forsook the city, and fled to Ida, escaping the general overthrow. In these extracts an account of the further destiny of these fugitives may certainly have been overlooked. In the Laocoon of Sophocles", the wandering of Æneas is told, as before the taking of the city, and how, being followed by a large body of Phrygians, he went in quest of new settlements agreeably to their wishes. Even if the poet had taken the fable of his tragedy altogether from the ancient Cyclici, it by no means follows, that he did not also, with the licence usual amongst poets, borrow freely from other poetical accounts of the fall of Ilium. Dionysius was acquainted with the poem of Arctinus, not only his Æthiopis, but the destruction of Troy; for he relates his account of the theft of the counterfeit

53 In Dionysius, I. c. 48.

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