eneas y la historia

8/14/2019 Eneas y La Historia

1/9

Aeneas and History

Author(s): W. F. J. KnightReviewed work(s):Source: Greece & Rome, Vol. 6, No. 17 (Feb., 1937), pp. 70-77Published by: Cambridge University Presson behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/640779.

Accessed: 28/10/2011 13:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Pressand The Classical Associationare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

and extend access to Greece & Rome.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=classicalhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/640779?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/640779?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=classicalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup


2/9

AENEAS AND HISTORYBy w. F. J. KNIGHT

THE legend of Aeneas grew up in the fifth century B.C.among Greeks. In the fourth it was adopted at Rome,and developed. Then it remained static for a century, untilthe Julii furtherdeveloped it in the interest of family policy.This is roughly the result to which the criticism of theItalian foundationlegends hasled. No single earlyand originalform of them can be defined. They are confused and self-contradictory. Archaeologygives little if any direct confirma-tion of them, as they stand. Before the end of the nineteenthcenturyfew believedthatthey representedanyhistoricalreality.They were supposed to be a poetic invention, by which Greeksin the west sought to adornthe history of their new homes byconnecting it with the poetry of their old.z At the end of thecenturya kind ofprinciplecouldbe stated:thatpeoplesnaturallytend to claim false origins in lands far from their historicalhome.3 Even now pre-historiansof Italy can almost disregardthe possibility that the legends may have truth in them; formuch of the early archaeologicalevidence is coherent withoutassuming infiltrationsby sea.4But several writers lately have shown by scattered remarks

I Cf. L. E. F. Cauer, Defabulis Graecis adRomam conditampertinentibus,pass.,and id.Jahrbuch fir classische Philologie, Supplementband, xv (1887), 95-182.The question how the legends, in their recorded forms, arose can be kept partly distinct fromthe question of their truth. Opinions were last collected and discussed by Gordon J. Laing,The Classical Journal, vi. 51-64. Laing s conclusion (64) is that the story of Aeneas wanderingswas invented by poets and annalists, that it was adopted by ambitious settlements in variousplaces, and that it became current independently of the diffusion of the cult of Aphrodite, whichonly served to localize it in certain districts-not, however, in Latium, where the legend existedin the fourth century, but where no cult of Aphrodite is known till 217 B.C. (61). He thus con-troverts the opinions of Niebuhr (57) that the stories represent an affinity between Pelasgicpopulations in Italy and near Troy; of K. O. Miller (57-8), who attributes the origin of thestory of Aeneas to the introduction of Sibylline oracles into Rome; of Bamberger, Hilde, andSchwegler (58-9), that Lavinium was the starting-point of the story; of Roscher (59-60), thatthe legend of Aeneas was a result of the diffusion of a cult of Aphrodite; and of Dtimmler,Farnell, and Rossbach (6o-i), who maintained modifications of this theory. I suggest thatscarcely any of these opinions can now safely be contradicted and that they are on the wholesurprisingly well conceived, if restatements, some suggested by Laing s criticism, are admitted.Malten has already partly modernized the older theories; and, if the evidence and probabilitiesconcerning Italy are added, the adjustment can be carried farther still (cf. p. go note I, infr.).

2 Cf. Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, Everyman edition, i. 459-63-3 Cf. A. W. Verrall in J.H.S. xiv. 12.4 Cf. especially D. Randall McIver, Greek Cities in Italy and Sicily.


3/9

AENEAS AND HISTORY 71that there is a certain dissatisfactionwith the condition of thequestion now. They often express an expectation that thestories will prove in the end to be partly true, apparentlyattachinglittle importanceto the successful criticismsof them;and indeed the criticisms can, at most, show that the storiescould have grown up without a foundation in reality, not thatthey in fact did. Mistrust of the legends has not depended onlyon the criticism; it has been supported by an excessive con-fidence in negative evidence and by an assumption, naturaltill recently but illicit now, that migrations by sea were im-possible in early times. Now, however,negative evidence hasfallen into discredit; and it would be safer to assume that seavoyages were so general at about I200 B.C.that they may haveaffected almost any Mediterraneanlocality.2I want in this paper to consider whether the situation hasrecently changed definitely, or at least to find the directionsin which it is changing. I risk one assumption: that somethingshould not be expected to come out of nothing-until it isproved to have done so. If this is right, a good deal of proof isneeded to show that Greeksand Romansdevelopedthe founda-tion legends without any historical grounds for them. Thearguments that have been given for that are not sufficient asproofs, unless they can be regardedas possible explanationsofa fact which is for other reasons beyond dispute.But that the legends of all early westward voyages are purefancyis nolongerbeyonddispute. Someof thevoyagesarealmostcertainties; I begin with them, leaving the doubtful till later.It can scarcely be doubted that at many times between1500 B.C. and 800 B.C. wanderers were sailing the seas, oftenfar to the west. The Mycenaean pottery in Sicily must havecome by sea transport; so, in Italy, must geometric, which atTarentum goes backto the tenth century.3 There is even EarlyHelladic ware in Apulia;4 and the Basket-ware culture musthave spread by sea.s It was possible to cross a large extent of

I Cf. A. H. Sayce, Antiquity, i. 204.2 Cf. J. L. Myres, Who were the Greeks?z218.3 Cf. A. A. Blakeway, J.R.S. xxv. 129-49.4 H. Frankfort, Studies in the Early Pottery of the Near East, ii. Iz26-35.- Myres, ibid. 216-I9.


4/9

72 AENEAS AND HISTORYwater quite early in the Bronze Age. In any case the arrivalof the Etruscans on the west coast of Italy, by stages fromLydia, in the tenth century is now sufficientlyproved. TheItalian Iron Age can be said to start and develop under stronginfluence from the Aegean.zIt is therefore certain that voyages were made towards Italyfrom the east before and not long after iooo B.C. If this hadbeen known a hundred years ago, the arguments to disproveimmigrationby sea into Latium would not have been stated sodecisively, and they would not have had so strong an influencenow.There are othervoyageswhich areprobableornearlycertain.The Minoan debacleproducedmaritimesettlements in variousplaces, including, with little doubt, east Sicily. The Veneti ofthe Adriatic, represented in story by Antenor s men, appearto have come from eastern Europe or Western Asia.3 Uticaseems to have been founded by 1000 B.C.,before the Phoenicianswere generallyactive on the sea. Illyrianinfluence is found onthe east coast of Italy: and some patterns recall the cultures ofSesklo and Dinimi.4 Of the raidersrepelledfrom Egypt, somehave names which recur in the west, and there is a cumulativevalidity in the correspondences. The Shardanaare more likelythan not to have named Sardinia, and the Tursha Tuscany.The Mashwasha or Maxyes are especially interesting. Theyare said to have come actually from Troy, and to have settledin Libya.s This may well be true, because their peculiarwayof dressing their hair is likely to have been learnt near Troy.6The Taroisha, Filusha,and Dardanui of the Egyptian recordsmay be Trojans, Ilians, and Dardanians. All these identifica-tions are questioned, perhaps most for the Taroisha; but ofthe three there is a strong chance that one at least shows thatmen from Troy or near Troy were on the move. This con-firms the most interesting of all the probable voyages, especi-

Ibid. z28.2 Nils Aberg, BronzezeitlicheundFriiheisenzeitlicheChronologie, , Italien, pass.3 Cf. Ida Thallon Hill, Rome of the Kings, 34-51.4 T. E. Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, 396, 421, 511.s Hdt. iv. 191-3.6 S. Casson, C.R. xxvi. I53-6.


5/9

AENEAS AND HISTORY 73ally as it is almost a certain fact: the voyageof Elymi fromAsiaMinor to Sicily about 1200. This migration is attested byplace-names in Sicily and the spelling of legends on coins,which agreewell with linguistic forms of Asia Minor; and it iseasily credible that a Dardanian element accompanied theElymi, taking with them, whether or not as the name of ahuman leader, the characteristic Dardanian name of Aeneas.The legend survived at Segesta, and gave permanent form tothe later Roman legend. It is also the earliest known: it wasrecounted by Stesichorus, and therefore unless, quite un-necessarily, we identify this Stesichorus with the second orthird of the three poets who had that name, authority for thevoyage of Aeneas goes backto the seventh century.In the poem of Stesichorus Aeneas sailed to Sicily, but thereis no evidence that he went on to Latium, or to any other partof Italy. It is much more likely that he did not, because therewould have been less reason for Greek writers to call Rome aGreek city,2 if there had been for generations high literaryauthorityfor a Trojan origin. Rome is, however,called a Greekcity; and this is significant.If the memory of the voyage of Aeneas from Troy, or some-thing like it, was not clearly recorded in Latium during theDark Ages, the insistence, from the fifth century onwards, ona Greek or Trojan origin for elements at Lavinium and Romestrongly suggests some memory, however confused or mis-interpreted, of foreign contacts at an early date.. In Latiumand elsewhere, movements and intercourse, not belongingstrictly to Troy and Trojan times, may be expressed by thetypical conception of a Trojan dispersal.3Several circumstances in or near Latium that suggest con-tact with Greece on the east have been noticed, and some havebeen explicitly identified or connected with the facts under-lying the legend of Aeneas. The armour of the land raidersof Palestine is like the armourof Roman soldiers in the PunicWars,*and the Salii have shields of almost Mycenaeanshape.sI L. Malten, Archiv fir Religionswissenschaft,xxix. 33-59-Cauer, Defabulis graecis ad Romamconditampertinentibus, 17.

3 Casson, ibid. 4 A. R. Burn, Minoans, Philistines, and Greeks, 243-4.5 H. J. Rose, Primitive Culturein Italy, 95.


6/9

74 AENEAS AND HISTORYGreekdivinitiesappearvery earlyin Rome, though not demon-strably before contact with Greek colonies was possible. It iscredible that the RomanVolcanusIderived his name, not fromthe Etruscan fire god, but from the Cretan Felchanos. Vestais only known at Rome and Lavinium, the supposed Trojanfoundation.2 I would add that her nature is closely comparableto the nature of the Trojan Athena;3both are goddesses of thecity s defence. The Trojan sanctities preserved at Laviniumseem to have been anthropoid earthenwarevessels* of a kindfound in the Troad. An early stratum of Roman religiousthought seems to belong to a partlyMycenaeancycle of ideas.sThere is a close parallelismbetween legends of Rome and ofArcadia which suggests that a real contact may be representedby legends of Evander ssettlementon the Palatine.6 The tradi-tion that Samothraciandoctrines affected Roman cult is con-firmed by the orientation of temples, which is the same atRome and in Samothrace,but not elsewhere.7 The old argu-ment from the importance of sibylline prophecy, from theregal times onwards, deserves to be mentioned; sibyls cer-tainly have an un-Greekname, and areat home in Asia Minor.8Other circumstances are linguistic. Place-names nearLatium seem to belong to an Illyrian language.9 Latin is aQ-dialect, reaching to the coast and surroundedinland by P-dialects: this has been takento show that the Latins are intru-sive from the sea. The affinitybetweenLatin on the one handand Phrygian and Hittite on the other seems hard to settle;

x H. J. Rose, J.R.S. xxiii. 46-63.2 G. Wissowa, Religion und Cultus der Rimer,2 30.3 W. F. J. Knight, Folk-Lore, xlvi. 98-121; id., Cumaean Gates, I57-8.4 Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. I. lxvii. 3.s A. J. Evans, J.H.S. xxi. 126-9.6 H. Schmid and 0. Stiihlin, GriechischeMythologie und Religionsgeschichte,i. 193-203; cf. 360-2.7 H. Nissen, RheinischesMuseumfiirPhilologie, N.F., xlii (1887), 29-6i, especi-ally 31 and 61, where the religious influence of Samothrace on early Rome isasserted; cf. G. Vaccai, Le Feste di Roma Antica, especially i i, on Pelasgians ,27, on Aeneas and Dardanus, and 132, on Vesta, as possibly derived fromSamothrace. Cf. W. F. J. Knight, Antiquity, vi, 455.8 L. Malten, Archivfiir Religionswissenschaft, xix, 37.9 H. Krahe, Glotta, xx. 188-96.10 P. Giles, The CambridgeAncient History, ii. 36-7.


7/9

AENEAS AND HISTORY 75but apparentlythere is some affinity,and Hittite can even beused to solve uncertainties in Latin grammar. It has beensupposed that some letters of the Latin alphabet have formswhich cannot be explained by derivation from any Greekalphabet, but can be explained if they are deduced directlyfrom the Minoan linear script.2 The pertinacity of Greek ininland districts of South Italy has led to the belief that Greekinfluencepenetratedthere long before 1000 B.C.3 and probablybefore the earlierdates for western Greek colonization, whichare now, especially for Achaean settlements, sometimes ac-cepted. There are thought to be traces in Italian dialectsof pre-Indo-European words belonging to a still higher anti-quity. Among them are words from the root LA, stone ,which have been attributedto an expansionof stone-folk fromAsia Minor across the Mediterranean into Europe, and con-nected with the movements remembered in the legend ofAeneas.4 The proposed identification of these people with amegalithic raceis uncertain,since megalithicmonumentsmayimply only a spreadof culturalinfluence, and no movement ofpopulation; but the residual words have their significancenevertheless.Ancient accounts of Etruscan origins and the primitivepopulation of Italy, especially Pelasgian , may contain somerecollection of these very early influences. Not long ago anattempt was mades to reconcile the ancient theories, by sup-posing that they are in only apparent contradiction, and thatthe Etruscan population was composed of immigrants by seafrom Asia Minor, who in Italyjoined other immigrantsarrivedby land from the north-east, while the Pelasgians representan element which had spreadfrom Greece. The scheme lacksarchaeologicalsupport, but may yet have provisionalutility.Even without a detailed criticism of all these suggestions,

E. Adelaide Hahn, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philo-logical Assocation, lxiv. 28-40.2 F. Melian Stawell, A Clue to the Cretan Scripts, 12, 24, 25, 46, 91.3 Gertrude Robinson, J.H.S. 1. 186-7.4 Herman Giintert, Labyrinth , in Sitzungsberichte der HeidelbergerAkademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, I932-3, I, pass.s Hans MiAhlestein,Uber die Herkunft der Etrusker,pass.


8/9

76 AENEAS AND HISTORYit is clear that we are left with a change of outlook. Grantingthat folk-memory is generally confused, especially in chrono-logy, but also generally long, we have no need to suppose thateither Greeks or Italians invented their legends of arrivalsfrom the east out of nothing. There was in Italy and Sicily aconsciousness of affinity with populations to the eastward,sometimes but perhapsnot alwaysconnectedwith an indefinitememory of arrivals from that direction. This consciousnessand this memory Greeksinterpretedandexpressedfor Italians.There were many cycles of partly forgotten history, extendingpossibly for two thousandyears,which might furnishelementsfor the systematization. The results may be forcible and arbi-trary, and the variants contradictory. That, however, is aproof, not of the groundlessness of the compilations, but oftheir necessity, in spite of intractableelements,which conflictedprincipallybecause they had lost their chronologicalsequence.The Greeksapplieddesperatemethods, andforced the materialinto availablemorphologies, startingof course with the TrojanWar, and counting forwards and backwardsfrom it. The re-sults look like purely Greek myth and legend. The reason isimportant. It is not that the stories are pure fancy, but thaton all occasions the human mind can only deal with thoughtsthat fit into certainmoulds-just aswe areinsensibleto colourswhich have not the right wave-length for our eyes. EvenThucydides was compelled to record history according to apartly rigid moral scheme; and even he, like the rest of us,only not so seriously, was compelled, not by unfairness, butby the laws of his own mind, to miss altogether,or to suppress,all that would not fit the template of his habitual thought.Three morphologieswere tried to express the connexion ofItaly with the eastern area. One was very obvious: to startwith the Odyssey,and with Greek or Trojan women who, re-fusing to sail farther on the voyage, burnt some of the ships.But the most detailed story came from Sicily, and that provedsurprisinglyuseful, partly because it preserveda large amountof almost true material, and was already connected or nearlyconnected with the Trojan war. The legend of Aeneas fitted

I F. M. Comford, ThucydidesMythistoricus,pass.


9/9

AENEASAND HISTORY 77straight into the Greek mental mould; it is the second of thethree, and it rapidly assimilatedthe third, if indeed the thirdis not alreadyassimilatedwhen we first hear of it. This thirdmorphology is a simply expressed folk memory of a drift ofpopulation from the direction of Greece or Illyria. The mythmakers remembered Aeneia, obviously founded by Aeneas,the occurrence of Dardanian names including Aeneas in thePeloponnese, and perhaps the surviving Dardanians beyondMacedonia.z Apparently Dardanian wanderers had foundtheir way separately to all these areas at some early time. Themythological solution was of course to plot routes for Aeneaswhich would bring him to as many of the right places as pos-sible, and partly to express, and partlyto disguise by personalsymbols, dimlyrememberedbut noweasilycrediblemovementsof populations. These movements cannot yet be safely de-fined. Some are proved; but the individual legends generallyexpress them very vaguely. It might be said that the totalityof the traditions comes much nearer to comprehending thetotality of the facts; and this is what should be expected fromlegendary traditions.

Malten, 35-42, 56-7. 2 Malten, 57-8.

eneas y la historia

Documents