The Historians' History of the World 05

One word in conclusion on the Trojan families. The tradition of the settlement of Æneas gave the vanity of the Roman families the wished-for ground for glorifying their pedigree. Thus the Cæcilii, Clodii, Gerganii, Memmii, Sergii, Cluentii, Junii, and Nautii, all traced their line back to Æneas. Dionysius says that at the foundation of Rome about fifty Trojan families came from Alba Longa to settle there, a number which is evidently exaggerated, as it exceeds the sum total of Roman patrician families in the time of Augustus. But it is evident from the writings of Varro and Hyginus on The Trojan Families, that a great number of Roman families boasted of Trojan descent.

We cannot of course ascertain what led to this belief among these families, but with many it was only a similarity of name. This is seen in the case of the origin of the Nautii. The worship of Minerva was in vogue among them. From the etymology of the name the founder of the family must have been a seaman, and so we come to the well-known story of Nautius, the companion of Æneas, taking away the palladium from Troy, or, according to another tradition, being intrusted with it by Diomedes.

O. Müller supposes that there was a similar ground in the worship of Apollo for the descent of the Julii from Æneas. Augustus, at any rate, refers very explicitly to Apollo as the tutelary god of the Julian family. Julius Cæsar, on the contrary, always speaks of Venus as the foundress of his family. So that the worship of Venus or Aphrodite can be attributed to the Julii with equal reason.

The connection of the Julian family with Æneas could be very simply established by the fiction that the eponymous founder of the family Iulus was one and the same person as Ascanius, the son of Æneas, who consequently had two names. The advantage gained by the Julian race from this fiction was considerable. The descent from Æneas gave a certain appearance of legitimacy to the claims of Julius Cæsar upon the sovereignty. Therefore Cæsar used every opportunity of certifying this origin of his race. Virgil’s Æneid has also the subordinate political aim of investing the monarchy of Augustus with the halo of legitimacy by basing it to a certain extent on the idea of succession.

The Romulus Legend Examined

The deeds and institutions ascribed by the Romans to Romulus are the outcome of their conception of him. In the first two kings of the Roman state legend has personified the two fundamental elements of the Roman state—the warlike spirit of the nation, and its religious character.

Accordingly the first king was made to found the Roman state on the power of arms, imbuing it with the spirit of conquest and the ambition for ascendency in arms, whilst the second, founding it on religion and morality, was made to give it a second birth.

Warlike activity is the chief feature of the influence of Romulus, his last word to his Romans and his political testament was the call to a zealous following of the art of war. A truthful conception incontestably lay at the root of this tradition.

The conditions of every state are in accordance with its origin, nothing can alter its historical basis; and if it be true that a kingdom must be maintained by the means by which it was founded, the opposite conclusion—that the means by which a state is maintained are those upon which its foundation was based—seems no less to be a truth. Hence a state which is maintained by the sword must owe its origin to the sword. In the legends of their origin many nations exhibit a very just knowledge of their national character and their mission in history. The trade and artifice claimed as the foundation of Carthage were a happy emblem of the spirit of this commercial race.