TWO HISTORICAL THEMES IN ROMAN LITERATURE

A.

BY TENNEY FRANK

REGULUS AND HORACE iii 5

The Regulus Ode lost none of its power by the putative discovery that the story upon which it was based was fictitious, nor will the restoration of credence in the story improve a perfect ode. However, it is largely upon the accumulated incidental comments of textbooks that our students form their conceptions of things Roman, and for this reason if no other, it is well that the comments be accurate. The Regulus story became one of the favorite tales for children and for tellers of patriotic anecdotes. It therefore was frequently told from memory, and in the later romantic annals accumulated many attractive but legendary elements. We may, therefore, in searching for a solid foundation of facts disregard for the present the versions of Livy, Valerius Maximus, Cassius Dio, Appian, and the rest of the late writers, and confine ourselves to the earlier version. The story appears first among the fragments of Sempronius Tuditanus, who was consul in 129 B.C. and a man trained chiefly in jurisprudence, the most exacting of sciences in Roman days. He lived long before the period of the romancers. It next appears in Cicero,' who while writing the De Republica carefully worked through Roman history with sources that are generally very close to Fabius Pictor, and no one has yet proved that Fabius inserted fiction in the part of his history that treated of his own lifetime. From these two we learn that Regulus, who had been captured at the battle of Tunis in 254, later accompanied a Punic commission which was sent to Rome to request an exchange of prisoners, that instead of supporting the request as he was expected to do he argued against it, and that on his return to Carthage he was punished by refusal of food and sleep with the result that he died in prison. In the main this story remains intact in the later anecdotes though many versions of the manner of his death occur. On that point, in fact, there must have been uncertainty because Rome had no way of getting reliable news from Carthage in that day.

Now the story is generally rejected' simply because Polybius and Diodorus do not have it. The baselessness of the argumentum ex silentio in this instance has not been pointed out. We know now that for the period of 250-242, which concerns us here, Polybius followed Philinus, the Agrigentine writer.2 This historian is fully as good as Fabius, but he was interested in the Punic movements and knew little about events at Rome and cared nothing about individual Romans. Even Polybius omits almost all the names of the Roman consuls operating in Sicily during these nine years. Why should he mention the speech of a Roman prisoner? Furthermore, his story of the war is very sketchy, given, as he says, merely by way of introduction to his general history. So, for instance, he covers the two years, 252-251, in a few lines, and the years 245-244 are passed over without a word. The silence of Polybius therefore has no bearing upon the proof. The case with Diodorus is similar. This writer is a copyist whose value depends upon the source which he happens to use. In the First Punic War the source was good, in fact it was this same Philinus,3 but, as we have seen, Philinus did not concern himself about events at Rome, and it is not likely that he had a word about the incident. Furthermore, we have only excerpts of Diodorus and do not know what he had to say about the exchange of prisoners. The argument from silence therefore is futile.

We might add for good measure that the story is wholly reasonable. Romans exchanged prisoners with the Gauls, with Pyrrhus, and with Hannibal. The custom was prevalent. On the other hand, prisoners were usually held in contempt and seldom fully trusted again, so that Regulus would be understood when he asserted that the morale of the army would be lowered by the ransom of captives. It is also likely that even though the exchange was carried through, much time elapsed between the first request and the final act, since the lists of prisoners with their respective ranks had to be made and agreement be reached as to the ransom value of Rome's excess of prisoners. There was therefore time for the punishment of Regulus for his stubborn

1 See Klebs, Pauly-Wissowa, II, 2088; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, Vol. III, Part 1, p. 154.

2 De Sanctis, op. cit., p. 228, for a good statement of the argument.

Schwartz, Pauly-Wissowa, V, 688.

advice before the exchange was actually carried out. The date of the actual exchange was probably 248 or 247 B.c. if we may judge from the position of the Diodorus fragments (somewhat carelessly placed in Dindorf's edition). And finally it is wholly reasonable that Regulus should have been sent to Rome with the commission as a pledge that they were coming in good faith and not simply for the purpose of spying. It will be remembered that after Cannae, Hannibal also sent prisoners for the same purpose.

If a reasonable historical statement is made by authors like Tuditanus and Cicero regarding events of the historical period, it is not good procedure to reject it. In this case we have another strong point in its favor in that a later passage of Diodorus (= Philinus) incidentally reveals the fact that Regulus had died from neglect. In Diodorus xxiv.12 we find an explanation of how Bodostor, a Carthaginian officer, met his death at Rome. The statement is that the wife of Regulus, grieving at the news of her husband's death, thinking that he had lost his life through neglect (νομίσασα δι' ἀμέλειαν αὐτὸν ἐκλελοιπέναι τὸ ζῆν), determined to avenge his death by torturing the two Punic officers who had been given her as hostages for her husband. When the magistrates heard of her act they interfered, but not in time to save Bodostor. This passage, which records a story from the Punic narrative, proves that Regulus met his death in Carthage not by direct execution but by deprivation which induced his wife to mete out vengeance by similar methods. And since the Carthaginians would have no point in endangering the life of their most valuable prisoner unless he had incurred their anger recently, we may conclude not only that he was punished but also that the punishment was well motived. We must therefore accept the story as told by the reliable writers of the republican period.

For my part I do not hesitate to go a step farther and accept Livy's added statement that the envoys not only asked for an exchange of prisoners but also were empowered to open negotiations for peace. Unfortunately, the incident is not definitely dated. Zonaras gives it under the year 250, Appian brings it in after 242, while Diodorus, who in the Punic War is more accurate than either, has the sequel after 248. We know that Carthage made few further provisions for war after 248, and that in that year Hanno the Great, who usually here

after opposed the war party of the Barcids, was at the head of an army operating in Numidia. At that time the government of Carthage seems to be ready to give up its sea power which is so costly and turn its attention to a land empire in Africa. It is in that year that I should place the embassy which Regulus accompanied, and I should also include the statement from Livy that it offered to open negotiations for peace. I should therefore accept the Regulus incident as told by Tuditanus, Cicero, and Livy's epitome, and that is the story which Horace knew and used in his incomparable ode.

B.

PYRRHUS, APPIUS CLAUDIUS, AND ENNIUS

There is no episode of Roman history (if we omit the legendary period) which is so full of anecdotes and dramatic details as the story of the Pyrrhic War. In consequence, historians are prone to assume that the account is largely fictitious and that a rationalistic treatment of it, with liberal suppressions and shifting of details, is advisable. It is true that we have here to depend largely upon late sources, but we are not quite as helpless in the criticism of details as Niese, Beloch, and De Sanctis would have us believe. Our chief source is Plutarch's life of Pyrrhus. Plutarch has used Hieronymus of Kardia, a most trustworthy contemporary; Pyrrhus' own diary; Timaeus, a fairly reliable contemporary; and some Roman annalist. Besides this we have some valuable fragments from Ennius, Cicero, and Diodorus; the epitomes of Livy and Justinus, well worth considering; and the more dubious fragments of Cassius Dio, Dionysius, and Roman excerptors.

Now I think it can be shown that Ennius is largely accountable for the picturesqueness of the story. The proof of this is that Pyrrhus is the only enemy of Rome who is consistently treated with sympathy by the Roman annalists. When we remember that the Messapians were allies of Pyrrhus (only thirty-six years before the birth of Ennius), that Ennius was of noble Messapian parentage so that his grandfather in all likelihood served as an officer with him, that the most sublime lines of Ennius come from the portrayal of Pyrrhus, and finally that Ennius' Annals was the standard schoolbook for two centuries, we need go no farther. Plutarch's biography confirms this conjecture. The careful reader will notice that the character of Pyrrhus is not wholly consistent throughout the book. Strange as it may

seem, Pyrrhus stands out as a chivalrous hero in the central portion where Plutarch depends most upon Roman sources, while in the first and last parts (deeds in Greece and Sicily), where Plutarch follows the Greek sources, there is far less of the knight and many suggestions of treachery and faithlessness. It is a strange phenomenon in history when the foe writes with more sympathy than the friend. In this instance the influence of Ennius is unmistakable. He has by his powerful portrayal compelled the Romans to accept his estimate of the Messapian hero, though that hero very nearly shattered Rome's power. If Ennius was so influential it is also probable that the incidents which he narrated survived in the Roman annals in the order in which he told them.

Now the reliability of Ennius as a historian cannot be discussed here. There can be no doubt that he is too generous to his hero's character, for the reasons just noted. But it cannot be proved that Ennius in the portion that deals with the historical period foisted inventions into his Annals or confused the details. He versified the story, as was then usual among Greek writers, and he told his tale as effectively as he could, but he followed his sources (here probably Timaeus) and his memory of events for the details. Cicero, for instance, who knew the actual speech of Appius Claudius, refers to Ennius' summary of it without questioning its reliability. It is important for the evaluation of the Roman story to know that we have a source so nearly contemporaneous and that the author was here as nowhere else intensely interested in the subject; furthermore that the ubiquity of anecdote in the Pyrrhus story is to be attributed to Ennius' interest and close knowledge of the incidents rather than to late annalistic invention.

Aversion to the anecdotes has led most historians to reject the story of Appius Claudius Caecus and his speech in the senate. Cicero believed it, referring both to the speech, then in circulation, and to Ennius' summary of it. That ought to be convincing, especially as Cicero knew archaic Latin (see his De Legibus and Brutus) well enough to recognize a forgery of a speech of the third century. After rejecting this incident historians are prone to cancel the first peace negotiations (of 280) completely. Niese supported this procedure by pointing out that Diodorus and Justinus did not mention them, but Diodorus is