The Historians' History of the World 05

The second prodigy is the birth of the thirty pigs. It is evident that these thirty pigs symbolise the thirty cities of the confederation of which Lavinium was the religious capital. By ancient writers they are generally held to refer to the thirty years, which, according to tradition, elapsed between the foundation of Lavinium and Alba. But this secondary meaning does not affect the original significance of the symbolical miracle. Timæus (as we see in Lycophron) rightly associates the thirty pigs with the thirty states of Latium; and according to another version, the sow did not give birth to the thirty pigs on the site of the future Lavinium but on the site of the future Alba Longa. A bronze statue of the Lavinian sow and pigs existed in the time of Varro, and no doubt in the time of Timæus also, in a public place at Lavinium. It symbolised the position of Lavinium as the mother of the thirty states of which Latium was composed, and which had their Lares represented as their guardian spirits there. According to Cassius Hemina, a Roman annalist, the prodigy of the thirty pigs was adopted by Rome. “When the shepherds,” he says, “appointed Romulus and Remus as kings, a miracle took place: a sow gave birth to thirty pigs and a sanctuary was erected to the grunting Lares.” These thirty pigs refer apparently to the political division of the thirty curiæ into which the newly built city was divided.

The prodigy of the spread table is an outcome of worship of the Penates, to whom the table was sacred. At every meal it was the custom to leave some food, doubtless as an offering to the Penates. In their honour a salt-cellar and a plate of food were always left standing. Dry bread and cakes were given to the Penates; they were called mensæ panicæ (“tables of bread”). These no Roman would eat unless in great straits; it was in the eyes of the Romans a sign of the greatest need or poverty. Therefore the most ancient and authentic form of the story of Æneas seems to be that in which the eating of “the tables” (mensæ) was prophesied with ominous meaning. In Virgil, the harpy Calæno tells the voyagers that it is decreed that they are not to find a home before they have suffered the extremest misery, and that their utter homelessness is to be the turning-point of their fate.

Explanation of the Æneas Legend

We will return now to the starting-point of our inquiry, the question of why the origin of Lavinium is referred to Æneas. The answer must take us back to the previously mentioned fact that a large number of Italian or Latin states ascribed their origin to heroes of the Greek and particularly of the Trojan collection of stories.

This fact cannot be fully explained; psychologically it is nothing really incomprehensible, and is not without analogy. We can well understand how the Italian cities and races, as they came into nearer communication with the Grecian colonies of lower Italy and thus became acquainted with the heroic legends and the epic cycle of the Greeks, thought it an honour to connect their remote origin with the brilliant, much-lauded names of Greek heroes. The epic poems of the Greeks exercised a far greater influence in ancient Italy than is generally thought. When they were looking for the founder of the Penates city of the land of Latium, no other hero seemed so fit as Æneas. The chief deed which shed such glory on his name was the rescue of the holy images of Troy. The most ancient poets who sang of the fall of Troy relate it, so does Stesichorus, as one may see on the Ilian tablet where Anchises carries in his hands or on his shoulders a little chapel-shaped ædicula. In short nobody seemed better qualified to be the founder of the city of the Penates than the honoured saviour of the Trojan Penates.

Virgil’s Æneid shows clearly that this is the leading reason for the introduction of Æneas into the Latin legend and his position as founder of Lavinium and father of Latin glory. His greatest achievement consists in bringing the gods and sacred treasures to Latium. As the reputed founder of Lavinium, he could also be credited with bringing to honour its Latin name, for Latium as a political community only existed after the establishment of the Latin league and the founding of Lavinium as the sanctuary of the league.