c. j. smith - the origo gentis romanae. facts and fictions

8/12/2019 c. j. Smith - The Origo Gentis Romanae. Facts and Fictions

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THE ORIGO GENTIS ROMANAE:FACTS AND FICTIONS

C. J. SMITHAbstract Th e authenticity of the fragments of Roman historiography co ntained in the OrigoGentis Romanae, a fourth century account of the beginnings of Rome, have been frequ cntlycalled into question, notably by Peter, who excluded them from his collection of the Romanhistorical fragments, and by Jacoby in a famous article. Photius, Pscud o-Plutarch, andFulgentius, am ong others, have been brought into the argumen t. Thi s paper re-examines thenature of the citations in the Origo Gentis Romanae and, by looking at samples of the othe rworks, offers a re-evaluation of their historical and historiographical w orth.Introduction

Sometime in the fourth century BC, Heraclides of Pontus quarrelled with anotherphilosopher, Dionysius the Renegade. ... Dionysius forged a [new] tragedy, theParthenopaeus, and ascribed it to Sop hocles. H eraclides, who had done some forgeryof his own an d sho uld have know n better, duly quoted it as genuine. And Dionysius inturn proclaimed that the supposed tragedy [contained] an acrostic: the first letters ofthe lines spelled o ut the true message (in this case, the name of Dionysius bo yfriend,Pankalos). Heraclides replied that the appearance of the name could be accidental.Instructed to read on, he found that the acrostic continued with a coherent couplet:

An old monkey isnt caught by a trap.O h yes, hes cau ght a t last, but it takes time.

Further initial letters spelled ou t a crush ing verdict: Heraclides is ignorant of letters.When Heraclides had read this, we are told, he blushed.

Th is story is quoted by Antony Grafton at the beginning o f his book Forgers and critics, andindicates the pitfalls presented by the clever literary genre of literary forgery. From time totime, the Origo gentis Roma nae has been overshadow ed by the imputation of falsehood, withthe consequence that its most precious gift to us, several otherwise unknown authors andworks, a nd several unknown quotes from other known authors, has been refused acceptance,notably in Peters collection of the fragmen ts of the Rom an historians. In his recent book,I A . Grafton, Forgers and critics: crea/ivi/yand duplicily in Western scholarship (Princeton 1990) 3-4; the storycomes from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the philosophers 5 92-3.2 H . Peter, Hisloricorum Romanorum Fragmenra (Lcipzig 1906-14): cf. the BudC edition by M ChassignetL AnnalisfiqueRomaine (three volumes so far, Paris 1996, 1999 and 2004) and by the same author Ca/on. l e sOrigines (Paris 1986). and a German edition by H. Beck and U. Walter, Diefiuhen romrschen /fis/orik er IlarmstadtBICS-48 2005 91


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I00 BICS-48 - 2005Victor and the anonymous com piler of the corpus; on stylistic ground s; and on a suggestedrelevance o ft h e work in pagan argum ents against Christianity, a line strongly taken by Peterhimself. I

All this provides us only with a sharpened notion of the key problem, which is thereliability of the information contained in the Urigo as a true reflection o f late Republicanscholarship. I 2 In particular, for Peter, once he had established a polemical purpose, it was allthe m ore easy to assert that the work a lso deliberately falsified its apparatus of scholarship, toapp ear more impressive. Momigliano argues more convincingly that the polemical purpo semight rather be attributed to the compiler o fth e whole rather than the author ofthe Origo; theCaesares from a pagan point of view, was excellent, but could become even moreimpressive against the background of the origins of Rome and of the glorious Republicantimes. Th e comp iler discovered a pamphlet in which the origins of Rome were presented inan enlightened euhemeristic fashion with a wealth of references to the fashionable archaicwriters: the very thing to be enjoyed by a Macrobius. The n he chose another booklet in whichthe R oman Republic was nothing less than a gallery of great men. In the tripartite co rpusthe picture o f the true orbis Romanus was thus complete: there was no invidious Christianthought to disturb

It must however be admitted that the Origo unnerves one by reason of its citations, andeve n Mom igliano was tentative in his assessment; on the dishonesty o ft he author, he states Iconclud e with verdict o f non-proven.14 The direction of the attack comes from a comparisonwith oth er authors, whose guilt in the matter of faking citations has been widely assumed; theScriptores historiae Augustae, Ptolemaeus Chennus, Ps.-Plutarch Parallela minora and Defluviis, and Fulgentius. This question needs to be re-examined, and the main purpose ofth ispaper is to conduct that comparison.

I give in Table 1 a summary of all the citations in the Urigo. Some features areimmediately obvious. First, the work changes character notably around the end of Chapter 9.In Chapters 1-6 in particular, all the focus is on Virgil, and from 7 to 9, although Virgil isquoted less frequently, the concern is with the relationship between the traditions the auth orof the Origo reports, and Virgils own line. This changes when, from 1 1 on, Virgil iseffectively absent.

Second ly, the author is fond o f quoting two or even three sources for the same view oCaesar and Lutatius at 1 1.3; Caesar and Ca t0 at 15.5. This is in sharp con trast to the practiceof pseudo-Plutarch, or Ptolemaeus Chennus, who tend to cite one source only at a time. Th ework is profoundly doxographical, then, and as Horsfall notes (see n. 6 above, 193), it is11 H. Peter, Die Schrift Origo gentis Romanae, Berichte der Suc hsischen Gesellschafr:Phr/.-llrst.64 (1912) 71-166.12 Interestingly, the Origo seems not to have used scholarship much after the end of the Republic; all the knownauthors cited in the text are Republican, except Virgil; most of th e conjectured authors fall into the Repub lican period.Only the pontifical annals fall definitively into the imperial period, iftha t IS one believes Friers theory ofa n Augustanrecension w hich produc ed the pre-Republican ma terial (see below). Livy and Verrius Flaccus are only mentioned in thepreface, which as we have seen was not by the author of the Origo.13 Momigliano, Some observations (n. 5 above) 62-63.14 Momigliano, Some observations (n. 5 above) 69.15 This approach is essentially that of Jacoby; see below


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C. J . S M I T H : THE ORIGO GENTIS ROM ANAE 101after all our only piece of scholarly writing in Latin about this period of R oman history tosurvive in extenso. It is worth saying at this point that, if nothing else , the work may g ive usan insight into what works like Postumius de adventu Aeneae actually looked like; if it is aforgery, an imposture, shall we say a parody, then it needs in some sense to reflect theexpectations of the genre.Thirdly, there is much in the Origo which passes without a sour ce reference (C hapters 8and 14 have no citations at all). Moreover, the author misses the opportunity for somecitations which w ould have retrieved some credit for his scholarship; I th ink particularly of10.1 on Boia, where the Origo reads:

addunt pra etere a quidam Aeneam in eo litore Euxini cuiusdam com itis matrem ultimo aetatis affectam circa stagnum quod est inter Misenon Auernumque extulisse atqueinde nomen loco inditum [q ui etiam nunc Euxinius sinus dicitur]

and Servius Danielis Aen. 9.707 reads:Postumius de adventu Aeneae et Lutatius Communium Historiaruin Boiam Euximicomitis Aeneae nuticem, et ab eius nomine Boias uocatas dicunt. ueteres tamen portumBaiam dixisse. Varro a Baio, Ulixis comite, qui illuc sepultus est, Baias dictas tradit.

On e suspects here some sort of common sou rce, which both the Virgilian comm entator andthe author o r source of the Origo are reporting awkwardly.

Fourthly, it can be clearly seen from the notes taken from Richards excellentcomm entary hat the Origo is very close througho ut to the Virgilian comm entators. Sourcessuch as Lutatius, Postumius and Lucius Caesar are common to both; and though the Origoand the commentaries disagree (sharply in the case of L. Caesar on lulus name), they arerecognizably inhabiting the same mental world.

Fifthly, and following on, the Origo holds relatively few surprises. The oddities (that isitems which we find in no other extant source) are listed by Mom igliano (see n. 5 above, 68):

2. Th e connection between Ion and Janus: this is a particularly condensed chapter, but theetymology is undoubtedly innovative; cf. Plutarch Q R 22 for Janus brought from Greece.4.3 Picus allows the A borigines to stay in his land. This is unattested elsewhere, and maybe an inv ention by the author of the Origo; structurally, in Chapter 4, he is making a tran-sition from the A borigines to A eneas; Picus is passed o ver with this one sentence, whichleads on to Faunus; the next chap ter begins with a time-check; 60 years until Aeneas.9. Agam emnon allows Aeneas t o retreat to Mount Ida; we do not have this elsewhere, butthen Alexan der o f Ephesos (to whom we shall return) is not cited elsewhere, so this mayall be his unique con tribution.10.1Th e Euxinius Sinus; part oft he messy section quoted ab ove; alleged by Se pp to be amarginal gloss that has crep t into the text; by Peter to be a m isunderstanding.(12.4 The duo maria of Lavinium; presumably from some topographical feature, but it isvery unclear.

16 Peter ,Die Schrift Origo gentis Romanae t i . 1 I above) 91


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I02 BICS-48 - 200513.4 Introducing Turnus Herdonius (otherwise the name of a leading citizen of Aricia,ordered to be killed by Tarquinius Superbus, Livy 1.51.8-9) as the betrothed of Lavinia issurely simply an er ror, and is not attributed to any author.15.5 Th e etymology of Iulus name, which is not only od d ( love ortum) but out of stepwith Servius exp licit citation o f the sam e source.18.5 Aventinus dead in battle; possibly from Varro, since the same word ing is found inAugustine ( C D 18.2 ;Mom igliano, see n. 5 above, 72).19.2 The details of the arrangement between Amulius and Numitor are odd, but not farfrom the story that Amulius usurped power and Numitor chose a life of otium (Livy1.3.1 1; DH 1.71.4), or that there was a division of power (Plut. Rom. 3.2-3).21.4 Remus and remores - now satisfactorily explained by T. P. Wiseman, Remus(Cam bridge 1995 ) 8-9, 107- 17.22.2 Th e details o f Remus capture om it the Lupercalia or similar festival, but the ambushis traditional.23. 6 Re mu s outlives Rom ulus, attributed to the unknown Egnatius; of all the problems themost startling, a nd with the inaccurate reference to L. Caesars etymology of Iulus name,and the Delphic prophecy regarding Lavinium from Domitius, one of the few to bedirectly attributed to a source.

For all the doubts that have been raised, there is very little in the work which takes usaba ck. As Richard shows in his commentary, there is scarcely a line of the text which c ann otbe paralleled elsewhere. I will return to this later, but for now, I simply quote Ps.-PlutarchPar. min. 38 (Mor. 3 1%): When H ercules was driving through Italy the cattle of Geryon, hewas entertained by king Faunus, the son of Mercury, who was wont to sacrifice his guests tothe god that was his father. But when he attacked H ercules, he was slain. So Dercyllus in thethird book of his Italian History. By comparison, the Origo is refreshingly sober.

Finally, the disputed authors, or Schwindelautoren in Jacobys phrase. Momiglianoidentified only six of the 27 cited as open to su ~ p ic io n ; ~suspect this was optimistic.

9.1 Alexander Ephesius: known to Cicero and to Strabo, and not to be co ndem ned forsubject matter, though there may still be a degree of co nh sio n in the citation.10.2 Vulcatius et Acilius Piso he text is undoubtedly corrupt here, although that do esnot mean that one should insert known authors here to make it better; nonetheless it ishard to co ndem n the author of the Origo on the basis of a faulty transmission.12.1, 12.3, 18.4 Domitius; the suggestion o f Domitius Calvinus, found in Plinys index asa writer on insects, animals and crops, is attractive, given that the subje ct ma tter includesa reference to parsley, though it does not help with the Delphic prophecy or AremulusSilvius death in an earthquake; given Plinys odd lists of authors, one cannot really besure about this individual.12.2, 19.5 M. Octavius; possibly the author of a work De sacris Saliaribus Tiburtium(Macr. Sat. 3.12.7); the first reference explains why Aeneas covered his head at thesacrifice, the second relates the rituals which Rhea Silvia was carrying out when she wasraped.

17 Momigliano, Some observations (n. 5 above) 67


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C. J. SMITH: THE ORlCO GENTIS KOMANAE I rn16.4 Sex tus Gelli us and Caius Caesar; Momigliano's solution that the test had C aesar etGellius and two wr ong pra eno mi na were introduced is the most econom ical.

Ho wev er, Mo mig liano is silent on some othe r problematic works and individuals.6.7 C assius. Cassius Hemina is assumed , but Servius Danielis only cites Verrius Fla cc~ tsfor this information.7. I , 22.2 Libri Pontificalium. Clearly not the same as the Annales M aximi; I shall returnto these two passages later.10.4 Sem pron ius. No t Sempronius A sellio, who wrote on his own times; perhapsSem pronius Tud itanus, though the shape of his work is disputab le. He ought to predateany of the possible Ca esars, and so appear through a tralatician citation.17.3, 17.5, 18.3, Annales Pontificum. The Oiigo , as is well known, is the only sou rce toimply that this work had a pre-Republican section: the work, also known as the AnnalesMaximi, appears to have had year by year entries listing magistrates. plagues. portentsand so forth. We cannot be sure that they went back even to the beginning of theRepublic, but the regal m aterial doe s not fit the evidence we have for the rest oft he work.Hen ce Frier suggested that Verrius Flaccus produced an edition with prefatory materialon the regal period, though this is by no m eans uncontroversial.18.3 Th e epitom e of Piso: elsewhere unknown and an od d thing to quote. given that Pisois straightforwardly quoted at 13.8. T o have only reached Aretnulus Silvius by Book 2 ofan epitom e doe s not suggest ruthless abbreviation.23.6 Egnatius. Possibly a poet who wrote a De iem/77 ~ ~ [ Z W L IMacr. S t i f . 6.5.2. I ? , orEgnatius Calvinus whom Pliny the Elder quotes for alpine birds ( , V l l I0.134): neithersounds plausible.

I t would be particularly dam ning if w e had independent evidence of mistakes which couldprove the falsity o fth e information in Origo, but this is not the case. ) A t 20. , the citation ofFabius is corroborated. but the story is extremely famous. There are problems over thecitation of Cat0 the Elder at 13.5 and 15.5; both are contradicted by Servius. but in bothinstances we cannot be wholly sure what Cato said. Similarly, Ol-igo 6-7 gives a differentversion of the Hercules and Cacus story from that found at Serv. i l e n . 8.203. but that onlydemonstrates that the Servian commentator did not have Hemina's version. not that theversion in Origo cann ot have been from H ernina. We cannot condemn the ri jp because at20.3 it attributed to Ennius a story about Acca Larentia which Mominsen believed to haveappeared first in the later Licinius Macer. ' When Aulus Gcllius (7 .7 .5 -6 )discusses AccaLarentia, he does not specifically say that Antias made her the nurse of the t\vins Romulusand Remus, but he is contrasting Antias' account with that of Sabinus Masurius not on thatpoint but on a different one. There is no instance therefore where O r i p can be clearlyconvicted by another source of error let alone falsehood.


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I04 BICS-48 - 2005Lastly, on sources, we must consider again the introduction to the work, which has been

assumed to be that of the compiler. The sources given are odd, because they follow norecognizable order, and include Verrius Flaccus, Veratius and Varro, none of whom appearsin the text. On Veratius, we could perhaps emend to Veranius (pace Horsfall who hasconfused himself here); Veranius is a distinguished authority cited for works on religiousmatters.2 The same error is seen at Macrobius Sat 3.5.6 and 3.6.14. Sepp emended tointroduce Veranius at 7.1 and 22.2; the text reads at uero in libris Pontificalium and at uerolibro secundo Pontijkalium; Macrobius 3.6 .14writes sed Veranius Pontificalium eo libro,quem fecit de supplicationibus, and goes on to discuss the Pinarii. Alternatively we mightread Veratius in all three places, though that creates an otherwise unknown auth or writing onsubjects identical to Veranius.

Mom igliano suggested that the compiler, who certainly interfered with the beginning o f theDe viris illustribus, did the same with the Origo, and summarized a preface which may haveset out more extensively the rationale of the work, and indicated its debt to previousauthorities. However, that still leaves significant questions about why these au thor s are notfound in the text, though a s can be seen from the appendix, Varro and Verrius ga ve versionsof the tradition that match the Origo; see especially Origo 6.7 and 18.5.

Mom igliano admitted that he found signs of abbreviation in the text, and Richard pres sesthe case hrther 38-48), but neither is sure that there is a single work on which the Origodep end s. If we look again at the structure of the work, this may become clearer. At the outset,the au tho r is concerned w ith Virgils authority. Aeneas isprimus to reach Italy, even thoughAnteno r beat him to it, because Aeneas is more important than Antenor. Virgil is right aboutSaturn and Janus, and their different contributions to the civilizing of th e Aborigines. V irgilis right ab ou t the derivation of Palatine from P an. In 7, unless the autho r is horribly confused,Virgil is said to have rejected the idea found in the Pontifical books that Faunus soughtHercules friendship; and Virgil does indeed focus exclusively on Evander. At 9.7, Virgilgets Misenus right by implying that he was both helmsman and trumpet-player. This is astron g attempt to defend Virgil against his obtrectatores, but it then fades away, de spite thefact that we are still in Virgilian territory. For whatever reason, the work proceeds as adoxographical account of the foundation of Rome down to the death (or not) of Remus,without reference to Virgil. It would appear that the author did make an effort to shape hiswork in a particular direction, but did not carry it through, and it may be that one reason forthe various oddities we have seen is that he was working not from a single work, but fromseveral, and no t from the original texts, but from dictionaries like that of Festus.So me suppor t for this derives from Schmidts work.* He notes a variety of links betweenthe Origo and F estus, a text which derives from Verrius Flaccus. They are close on the Potitiiand Pinarii, on the etymology of Aborigines from Aberrigines and errare; on Misenus; onUlysses alm ost interrupting Aeneas sacrifice; on the surname Silvius (see Table 2 ) . This isnot to say that the author oft he Origo necessarily had Festus, or V errius, to hand; indeed, it is21 Horsfall, Review of Richard see n 6 above), 192-94, Veranius was cited by Macrobius and Festus,P H Huschke, Iurrsprudentrae anferustrnranae Leipzig 1880 ) SO-5222 Momigliano, Some observations n S above) 6623 P L Schmidt, RE Suppl XV 1978) s v Aur )Victor 1583-1634, at 1614-15


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C. J. S M I T H : THE ORIGO GENTIS ROMAN AE 10.5a moot question as to whether the author had very much to hand, or was cudgelling hismem ory; the point is that this work is a hotch-potch, and the possibilities for error an d mis-understanding, especially in a work w hose nature seems to have changed half-way through,are high. Nevertheless, looked at from another point of view, a brief account of early Romanhistory, which reinforced Virgils authority, was superficially learned, short, and relativelyreader-friendly, may have suited the compiler very well. Not just the best books survive.

O ne last point. Despite the title of Richards book , as far as we know there is no questionof pseudepigraphy in the Origo; it was the compiler who added it to a genuine work byAurelius Victor, and there is no evidence that the author of th e Origo did anything to concealhis identity or to pretend to anothers.

All this still doe s not definitively acquit the author of the Origo from the charge of havingmad e things up - he old student trick of inventing a reference and hoping no on e will check.Is Sempronius just another name thrown in to make weight? Did an Epitome of Piso everexis t? Did anyone, let alone the unknown Egnatius, believe that Remus outlived his brother,or is that the last laugh, the jok e at the end which makes us realize we have been dup ed, andblush like Heraclides? Wh enever this problem arises, as noted above, a handful ofre pro bate sare called as evidence that the crime exists, so that the author of the Origo may be thoughtcap able of it. Literary forgery however is a complex matter, and d eserves a little attention ofits own.LiteraryforgeriesForgery has become a rather topical academic subject lately, and the more it has beenstudied, the more varied have its forms become. Speyer in his exhaustive account of thesub ject devo tes a third of his book to methodological and definitional issues.24 t was clearlyrecognized in antiquity, as is shown by Q uintilian 1.8.18-21 :

In addition to this he will explain the various stories that occur: this must be done withcare , but should not be encumb ered with superfluous detail. For i t is sufficient to set forththe version which is generally received or at any rate rests upon good authority. But toferret out everything that has ever been said on the subject even by the most w orthless ofwriters is a sign of tiresome pedantry or empty ostentation, and results in delaying, andswamping the mind when it would be better employed on other themes. The man whopores over every page even though it be wholly unworthy of reading, is capable ofdev otin g his attention to the investigation of old wives tales. A nd yet the comm entariesof teach ers of literature are full of such encumbrances to learning and strangely unfamiliarto their own authors.

It is, for instance, recorded that Didymus, who was unsurpassed for the number ofbooks which he wrote, on one occasion objected to some story as being absurd, where-upon one of his own books was produced which contained the story in question. Such

24 W Speyer, Die lrterarrsche F alschung rm herdnrschen und Chi rsllrchen A / / e r / u m ern Iersuch r h r er Deuliing(Handbuch der Altertumswissenschafi I 2 [Munich 19711) 3-106, c f R Symc, Fraud and Imposturc, Pseud-eprgrupha J Pseudopythagorrca Lettres de Platon LrtIPrature pseu d~p igrup hrqu e u r v e (Entreticns FondationHardt IS, Geneva 1971) 3-17 at 13


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I06 BICS-48 - 2005abuses occur chiefly in connection with fabulous stories and are sometimes carried toludicrous or even scandalous extremes: for in such cases the more unscrupulous com-mentator has such ful l scop e for invention, that he can tell lies to his hearts content aboutwhole boo ks and authors without fear of detection: for what never existed can obviouslynev er be found, w hereas i fth e subject is familiar the careful investigator will often detectthe fraud. Consequently I shall count it a merit in a teacher of literature, that there shou ldbe som e things which he does not know (Loeb tran ~la tion ).~

Forgery o r pseudepigraphy, criminal act, or imposture, or literary game, all dep end upon theconscious attempt to deceive, or to give the impression of trying to deceive, an audience,which ca n be a dupe, o r knowing co-conspirators in the game. I wish to take in turn the threeauthors com mon ly accused of the particular form o f academic fraud of which the au thor ofthe Origo is accu sed he invention of sources to give an impression of scholarship. First,Ptolemaeus Chennus.Ptolemaeus ChennusPto lemaeus Chennus w ork is known through a few fragments, but most importantly througha summary of his seven volume Kaine Historie in Photius. He lived in Alexandria in thereigns of Trajan and Hadrian, according to the Suda, at a time when the eyewitnessacco unt s of the Troja n War by Dares and Dichtys were being written. Eustathius and Tzetzesused it extensively; but Photius seems to have had the measure of it. He says it was useful forthose wh o wanted historical polymathia; you could learn in short order from Chennus whatwould take a lifetime to gather from all the different sources. His work was f u l l of thepor tento us and the ill-conceived, and the author was boastful, and had to defend himself inhis own day for his method. Photius concludes that most of what he has to say, as much a s isnot completely incredible, is unusual and diverting.

The summary of the work is indeed out of the ordinary, and refers to sources who areunknow n, o r known sources whose cited works are unknown and sometimes im plausible. InBook 1 he corrects Herodotus 1.34 on the death of Atys son of Croesus; he was calledAgathon, and he died, not accidentally in a hunt, but in a quarrel over a quail. Antipater ofAcanthus tells us that Dares, who wrote the Iliad before Homer did, was H ectors teacher.Plesirrhoos the Thessalian was Herodotus lover and wrote his preface; the unknownAth eno dorus of Eretria cites the unknown Antiochus for a dispute between Thetis and Medeaas to who w as more beautiful; Idomeneus gave the palm t o Thetis, and M edea in her anger25 His a ccedet enarratio historiarum, diligens quidem illa, non tamen usque ad superuacuum laborem occupata: namreceptas aut certe claris auctoribus memoratas exposuisse satis est. Persequi quidem quid quis umquam uelcontemptissimorum hominum dixerit aut nimiae miseriae aut inanis iactantiae est, et detinet atque obruit ingeniarnelius aliis uacatura. N am qu i omnis etiam indignas lectione scidas excutit, anilibus quoque fabulis accomm odareoperam potest: atqui pleni sunt eius modi impedimentis gramm aticorum commentarii, uix ipsis qui composuerunt satisnoti. Nam Didymo, quo nemo plura scripsit, accidisse compertum est ut, cum historiae cuidam tamquam uanaerepugnaret, ipsius proferretur liber qui eam continebat. Quod euenit praecipue in fabulosis usque ad deridiculaquaed am, quaeda m etiam pudenda, unde impro bissimo cuique pleraque fingendi licentia est, adeo ut de libris totis etauctoribus, ut succurrit, mentiantur tuto, quia inueniri qui numquam fuere non possunt. nam in notioribusfrequentissime deprenduntur a curiosis. Ex quo mihi inter uirtutes grammatici habebitur aliqua nescire.


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C. J. S M I T H : T H E ORICO GENTIS ROM ANAE 107dec lared that all Cretans were liars. Ephialtes was implausibly reading an unknown com edyby Eupolis when he died mplausibly because Eupolis had not yet been bor n.2 aco by didnot believe that there existed a Hypermenes who wrote a History of Chios in which he told ofHomers slave, Skindapsos, who failed to cremate his master and was fined a thousanddrachmas.N o mo re need be said: this is a farrago of obvious invention, potentially fun to dip into, andapa rt from a few poetic tags, and a basic knowledge of enough history and mythology to beable to play gam es, wholly and patently untrustworthy. It is very funny to say that Heraclesimmolated himself when he got to the age of 50 because he could no longer string his ownbow, but one cannot believe it fooled anyone. Moreover, and this is most important, it issurely completely unreasonable t o set this work against the Origo. Their dat e, aim, audienceand scholarship are of a completely different mark.

To be fair, Chennus is known largely though a summary, so any sort of objectivecomparison is perhaps impossible. W e can do rather more with Ps.-Plutarch and Fulgentius.Ps. -PlutarchIn 1940, Jacoby wrote a devastating attack on the Ps.-Plutarchan Parallela minora, whichjustified his decision to omit all authors solely mentioned there from his collection of theGr eek historians, in contrast to Mullers approach. In his last footnote, he cites PtolemaeusChennus, Fulgentius and the Origo gentis Romanae as parallels (Jacoby thought that theOrigo was an epitome). Although the work (or its original) fooled Stobaeus, and the De

fluviis took in Stephanos of Byzantium, Jacoby saw no merit in their inventions.In Appendix 2 1 give the authors cited in the Parallela minora, and in Appendix 3 the

Roman stories quoted there. The majority of the Roman stories are indefensible, thoughinterestingly the Greek ones are sound enough; perhaps that is the point? In Appendix 4 Igive the sources for Defluviis 1-5; there is a considerable overlap between the sou rces citedin the two works, and a sample is enough to reveal that they are recognisably similar innature. In both cases, whilst some of the sources can be defended, many cannot. Is thesimilarity between this and the Origo, then, the clear indication that the Origo is itself full ofSchwindelautoren?

Th e Ps.-Plutarchan works sha re a sufficient number o f authors and a similar style, and havetherefore frequently been linked; it has even been suggested that they were written byPtolemaeus Chennus . B ut interestingly, there are some slight indications emerging that maychange the way we think about these works.* The De,fluviis is preserved in the same

26 See P. J . Bicknell, Ephialtesdeath in bed, L C M 13.8 (1988) 114-1527 F. Jacoby, Die [Jberlieferung zu Ps Plutarchs Parallela minora und die Schwindelautoren. Alnemosyne 8 1940)73-144. Jaco bys attack was direc ted towards J . Schlereth, De Plutarchr quae.feruniurparal/e/rsmrnorrhus (Frciburg1931), which received more fa vourable treatment from W . Schmid in his review of Schlereth in Phrlolog.Wochenschrifr 52.2314 (1932) 626-34. A judicious comm entary, with fiill trcatment oft he sources, i s now provided byA de Lazzer, Plutarco, Parallelr min or/ (Naples 2000). Jac obys vicw that the surviving works may wcll be epitomesis borne out by the truncated versions of some of the stories.28 See J . L . Lightfoot, Parrhenrus of vrcaeu. /hepoe/rca/,frugmen/s nd /he EPO TIK B rra0lipnra (Oxford 1999) forwhat follows.


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108 BICS-48 - 2005Heidelberg manuscript that gives us Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses and PartheniusErotika pathema ta. Ps.-Plutarchs Parallela minora 2 1 quotes Parthenius for the story ofLeucone, at Erotikapathemata 10. Stobaeus, so close to Ps.-Plutarch, attributes the story toSostratus Book 2 On hunting. Jacoby thought that Plutarch had rationalised Parthenius, andStobaeus had invented Sostratus; but Lightfoot preserves Sostratus, pointing out that hisbrother A ristodemus had contributed to other parts of Parthenius work.29 n the story of theincestuous Byblis, there is a parallel with an o dd story in De,fluviis 1 1.3 on a brother an dsister who call each other Zeus and Hera, which also app ears in Ovid; an ano malou s versionappears in Nonnus Dionysiaka 13.546-61, and in Conon.

Lightfoot notes that the mythographers have much in common; stories are created by thejuxtaposition of elements from various places; of the Parallela minora she writes most ofthe stories ... are generated in this very way, some none too competently, and the authorsjigsaw-p iece ap proach to the construction of a narrative shows itself in the way he th rowsstory-motifs injudiciously together, resulting in sequences that are badly determined, or over-determ ined, or both and for the Roman stories, we may add, fabrications b ecause o f theapplication of this approach to history and not solely to myth. Many are slightly reworkedcalques of well-known Greek myths (Hippolytus, Meleager, the Oresteia). Many end with aromantically tragic death. Lightfoot goes on, the adaptation of myth to a new context, thelifting of motifs from one story and recasting them elsewhere, are clearly not confined t o theHellenistic period: but this is a particular type of borrowing and rewriting which ischaracteristic of that time, and reflects the copying of motifs between specifically literarysou rces; mass-production of pleasantly familiar goods by literary assembly-line, as Horsfallwell puts it.

In this con text it is worth briefly no ting Parthenius younger contemporary Conon , whomwe know from the summary in Photius, and also from P.0xy. 3648.32 art of the preservedtext (fragments 1 and 2) tell the story of Aeneas and the foundation of Lavinium, Alba andRome, befo re going on to deal with Althaemenes and the colonization of Crete. W e have theeating o f the tables story, but not the sow; and notice that Lavinium is 6 d p rqq Bahaooqqon the sea-coast perhaps, rather than, as in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 24 stades inland;might this help with the duo maria in the OGR? Aeneas may also here found Alba Longa andRome. We are reminded o f the vast range of sources available for early Roman history, mostlost, and the fine line between scholarly disagreements and the free rein of imagination.

The conclusion I wish to draw here is that the Ps.-Plutarchan works can only be pro perl yunderstood in the context of Hellenistic and later poetry. They were not passing themselvesoff as historical works with an apparatus of false scholarship. Whether anyone ever believed,or cared, at the time of composition that their sources were, it appears, a mixture of thegenuine, the recondite, and the invented seems to me to be moot; it may well have been parto f th e pleasant familiarity. What is more, unlike the Origo, he Virgilian commentators, and29 Lightfoot, Parthenrus (n 28 ab ove) 428-2930 Lightfoot, Parthenrus (n 28 ab ove) 433-363 1 Lightfoot, Parthenrus (n 28 ab ove) 234, the quote IS rom N Horsfall in J Bremmer and Horsfall, Roman mythand mythography London 1987) 5-632 H Cockle et al , The Oxyrhynch uspapyrr, vol 52 London 1984) 3648


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C. J. SMITH: THE OKlGO GENTIS K OMA NA E I 0 9Ma crob ius, but like Ptolemaeus C henn us, the Ps.-Plutarchan works do not offer us controv-ersy or alte rnativ es. Th is was never m eant to be scholarship, and nothing w as at stake exceptthe presentation of a goo d story, to which the named sour ces added a frisson of learning andperhaps exotic appeal that was a s much a part of the exp erienc e as the myth itself. This was aworld w hich may well have seemed strangely unserious to Virgils readers in later antiquity.Fi i lgent i i isWe turn now to F ulgentius. Mom igliano is dismissive of Fulgentius; a glance ... can showthe differ ence . Actually, more than a glance is quite instructive, as Baldwin and Whitbreadhave show ed. We cann ot definitively identify Fabius Planciades Fulgentius: bishopFulgentius of R uspe may be a different person ; both belong to the late fifth century and ourautho r may have com e from A frica. Since Baldwin has done much o fth e work, I have merelysam pled the first twelve definitions of his exposit io se~nioniitii ntiqirotwni. and Book of hisMifologiae. Five main types of citation have been identified in Fulgentius:

1 . correct and surviving2. incorrect but surviving, for instance inisattributions3. prob ably co rrect but not surviving, fo r instance where F ulgentius is citing a non-extantwo rk by an author whom he has quoted verifiably correctly elsewhere4. known authors but unknown works5. unknown authors, unknown works.

The authors we find in exposit io scrmoniini antiqzrorwn I - 12 1 I 1 1 5 I lelm) are given inAppendix 5 . Rutilius Geminus is completely unknown; we have a S osicra tes but not aSolic rates. Stesiinbrotus of Th asos and Mnaseas are unlikely to have explained a Latin word,Diophontus of Sparta wrote a Pontica, Cincius Alimentits is not known to have written onGorgias, and Fulgentius has got the wrong play for Pacuvius. For the work as a whole, hecites the wron g Plautus comedy correctly three times, and incorrectly six times. Th e rest arenot wholly im plaus ible; Labeos fifteen books on Etruscan lore may be excessive, thoughPliny the Elder claims to have read similar material, but n?analcJ.s trpidelcs do appearelsew here , traced back to Va rro. Valerius Maxitnus at 3.2.2 4 tells the story of1,ucius SicciitsDentatus and cites Varro; Fulgentius attributes it directly to an unknown work of Varro.Baebius Macer is found in Servius; there a re a number of plausible suggestions for theManilius (or Manlius) who wrote on iniuges hoves;6and Apuleius is always cited m ore orless correctly.For the Mitologiae, in Appendix 6 , the pattern is the same: some spot-on. some plausible.some muddled, some wrong. I cannot pass o ver .just one m ore source li-om the e\-lw.sifio. semonirni untiqiionitn, the book of jo k es by Cornelius Tacitus, which not even Macrobius


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I10 BICS-48 2005knew. There is a spirit of invention in Fulgentius, and some of these may well be his owndoing. At the same time, we know nothing of this mans resources at the time of writing,bishop or no bishop. H ow much came ffom a faulty memory? Finally, we must allo w that ifFulgentius se ts out to deceive, he also sometimes tells the truth; T imp ana ro and Jocelyn bothaccept a line of Ennius comed y Telestis,not least because it is in a metre which Fulgentius ishighly unlikely to have known or been able to re p r~ d u ce .~ MacrobiusFinally, I wish to co nsider Macrobius Saturnalia, a work which seems not to have co meunder the same sort of criticism as the Origo, yet is of much the same period (takingMomiglianos preferred fourth-century date for the Origo) , and, as can be seen fromAppendices 1 and 7, shares similar interests and authors. In Appendix 7, I have given anacco unt of the Roman historical and antiquarian sources quoted by Macrobius, using Willissindex. This is jus t a sample of the 250 authors in all cited by Macrobius.

Th is list is intended t o be illustrative of the ways in which Ma crob ius cites authors, and thepresence o f the autho rs he cites in other works of a scholarly nature. Macrobius Saturnalia isan extremely important, but very odd, work. Modern accounts have concentrated on themisrepresentation it makes both of the cultural milieu in which it is set, and indeed of theviews of participant^.^ Consideration of the citations is itself very interesting. There isconsiderable bunching of citations around particularly disputed topics; intercalation, thenundinae, sacrifices to the gods, the names of the gods. A great deal o f this material is put inthe mouth of Praetextatus; and one o f the othe r characters, the rude Evangelus, com plainsabout his pedantic parad e of learning (Sat. 1 .1 1 . I ) .

The table shows that the majority of Macrobius citations are from authors known togrammarians and Virgilian commentators. There are relatively few oddities, and at least someof these can be explained as textual corruption, though to emend becomes dangerous. T hereare instances of known authors and unknown works, but there is nothing particularlystartling.39Th e nature o f the material transmitted is also of a kind which w e meet elsewherereadily enough; strange etymologies are particularly common, against the backdrop ofcalendrical speculation and Virgilian exegesis. It is easy to be seduced however byMa crob ius parade o f learning into regarding the information as the key value of the work,not least because it is so often simply plundered for fragments. Although, on the on e hand,Praetextatus extraordinary learning is a reflection of what Kaster calls the belief that the37 H. D. Jocelyn, The tragedies of Ennius Cambridge 1967) 412 with references.38 A Cameron, The date and identity of Macrobius,JRS 56 1966 ) 25-38, concluding that it is a tendentious andidealized portrayal o f the saeculum Praetextati;R. Kaster, Guardians oflanguuge: fhegrammarian andsociety inlate antiquity California 1988) 60- 62 and 171-72 on the misleading idealization ofth e figure o f Servius, the Virgiliancommentator.39 There are problems over the identity ofc in giu s, Geminus, Hyllus, Tertius, Titus and Titius, some ofw hich may bedue to the text; Octavius Hersennius might be M . Octavius at Origo 12. 2, but is oth erwise u nknown; Julius Festus andC. Julius Caesar on auspicia may be mistakes or faulty transmission; we cannot identify with confid ence Laelius,Mallius or Messala; Cloatius Verus ordinutorum graecorum; Fabius Maximus Servilianus iuris pont cii libri andMasurius Sabinus Fasti are works unknown outside Macrob ius; Tuditanus on intercalation and Rutilius on nundinaeare not easy to f i t into our percept ions of their work, but that may simply highlight our ignorance.


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C. J. SMITH: THE ORlGO GENTIS ROMANAE I l lcultural tradition continues as a living presence, influencing and validating every aspect of amature and learned mans life, it is also evident that the piling up of alternatives graduallyleaches away the concept of

On e of the characteristics of the Saturnalia is the tension between the ludic nature of thediscourse, and the serious intent of the author, in showing the significance of pagan learningand the authority of the grammarian. The preface and dedication to Macrobius soncharacterize the work as bringing together many sources to form one whole (pr. 8 , exomnibus colligamus unde unumfiat, Let us gather from all sources and from them formone), and appropriately eno ugh uses three metaphors for this one process, num bers, scents,and voices in a choir. In concluding this metaphor, Macrobius writes, ita .singulorum illiclatent voces omnium apparent, et fit concentus ex dissonis (pr. 9 and so the voices ofa ll arehidden, but the voices of all are heard, and there is harmony from d isso nan ce) . Th econcentus is the sense of the value of knowing about past discourse.

One interesting aspect of Macrobius Saturnalia, which emerges very clearly from thetable, is that even in its central claim of being a carefully wrought gathering of facts andinformation into one coherent whole, Macrobius has been economical with the scholarlytruth. Sev eral times, a s the table shows, Macro bius has sim ply lifted his information straightfrom Aulus Gellius; yet he nowhere cites or mentions Gellius. The debt is profound - eventhe preface as a dedication to his son is a copy of Gellius own d ed i~ a ti o n .~ he differencesbetween Macrobius and the Origo begin to lessen the more one looks at them. They bothpurvey out-of-the-way know ledge; they both present an appearance o f scholarship; they bothuse sources largely only known to the community of grammarians and Virgilian scholars;they sha re a number o f sources; the names of th ei r sources, or the books they cite, where notconfused by textual transmission, are so metimes abbreviated or not absolutely accurate; andit is by no means clear that either of th em go t all their learning at first hand. Whilst bearinglittle if any relationship to Ptolemaeus Chennus, the author of the Origo appears to be asomewhat inferior cousin of Macrobius.ConclusionMy conclusion is brief. The Origo is a genuine and unique work of fourth-century paganscholarship. It displays little if any genius or inspiration. It has probably lost its preface. Itdo es not really cohere, having started off as one thing and then become ano thcr without any.justification. It does not have much in common with the works it is bound with, exceptperhaps in terms of length. It may well be that not all of the sources it cites are rcal, but it in

40 Kaster, Guurdrmr qflunguuge (n. 38 above) 172.4 I For Gellius and Macrobius, se e L. Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellrus (London 1988),esp. 84-85. 117, 12 11. 38, 210n. 86, and a trenchant remark drawn from Wissowa at 53, in regard to arguments that Gelliiis had himself usedintermediaries to gain his information; Wissowa denied the source-critics assumption that Gellitis, who wrote whenauthors w ere still read, should be reduced to the level of a Nonius, a Macrobius, or an lsidore My point here is notconcerned with Macroh ius use o f intermediaries, but his denial of the existence of one of the most important.4 2 R . B. Lloyd, Republican authors in Servius and the Scholia Danielis. HSCP 65 1 961 ) 29 1-34 , argued thatServius tried to produce a pared-down version of Aelius Donatus fourth-century commentary on Virgil, and the Dscholia tried to reinstate the original with limited success. Cameron, Greek niyhogruphj~ 11 above) 198-99,dem onstr ates the likely similarity between Donatus and Macrobius.


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c. j. smith - the origo gentis romanae. facts and fictions

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