The Romans didn’t have any history so they made one up.
And since they didn’t have enough imagination to come up with good stories, they copied them from their brighter neighbor, the Greeks. How could you do better than Homer’s pretty poems about the Trojan War and the struggle of Ulysses with that angry god Pluto? You couldn’t. The Greeks seemed to know more about the gods than anyone. They seemed to know more about everything. They were like a talented older brother who had invented everything before you came along. You weren’t jealous actually because he was such a funny and entertaining brother; how could you hate a boy who was so lively and funny and original? When it came time to do your own composition at school, or to imagine anything at all, you couldn’t get his stories out of your head. They were just too good. You couldn’t do half as well and you knew it. The best you could do was to write something similar and hope the teacher didn’t notice. And the truth is, those stories of your brother were so much a part of you that you didn’t know yourself when you borrowed.
In the beginning, when there weren’t Romans but only Latins and Italics and Etruscans, family stories were all anyone needed. But later on, when Rome became a city and then a local power and then a regional power and finally a world superpower, people looked back and wondered how that had come about. How the devil had they managed to do all that? What were they doing right? When had they started to do it? Who were they anyway? Some of their scholars and prophets said they had been founded by a half-god and that Rome was destined to be master of the world. They said this pretty late, of course; after Rome was master of the world.
Aeneas carries his father Anchises from Troy, as shown on a Greek vase
No one knows who first invented the Roman take-off on the Greek story. But it wasn’t written down until five-hundred years after Rome was founded. A man named Quintus Fabius Pictor wrote the first history—and he wrote it in Greek, not Latin. There was of course nothing good to read in Latin. There weren’t many readers either.
Why did Pictor write at all? What is a history for?
Rome had just managed to survive by the skin of her teeth—for the umpteenth time. She had just defeated Hannibal and driven the Carthaginian army out of Italy for good. He had been in Italy with his army for twelve years, defeating Roman armies wherever he met them. He was unbeatable, uncatchable, the old fox. Once or twice it looked like he would take Rome itself, and then that would have been the end. Finally, more because Hannibal’s army was worn out than because the Romans were superior, they had defeated him. There was a sigh of relief. Still panting and with her bloody sword in her hand, Rome looked around her and saw that she was—could it be?—the ruler of the whole Western Mediterranean. There were for once no dangerous enemies around. Soldiers and senators clapped each other on the back and cheered. We did it, by Jove! We beat them all!
Next came a wave of national pride. “You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on a Roman,” they told each other while they feasted and drank. “We are a tough people—how else could we have done what we did?” And they gloated. But to be truthful, they were a little surprised themselves. Who were they anyway? Can anyone find a historian to tell us about our brave and wise people?
Quintus Fabius Pictor came forward.
I bet you didn’t know that the founder of our dear city Rome was a hero from Troy, he said.
Troy?
Yes; he fought in the Trojan War. As you know, that was the Mother of All Wars and the one that produced genuine heroes.
You might remember a Trojan prince by the name of Aeneas. That’s him. He wasn’t Greek but he was as brave as the bravest of them.
A Trojan prince founded Rome? But how could he have founded Rome if he was from Troy?
Ah, the ways of Destiny! Remember what happened to the great Ulysses after that war? He couldn’t get home and had to wander around the Mediterranean because Pluto had a grudge against him and kept pushing his ship off course.
Well, something similar happened to Aeneas. After the war he was looking for a place to settle down but the goddess Juno had a grudge against him and made him wander all over the Mediterranean until he reached Italy.
Well, we’ll be darned. We hope the gods don’t think we’re being disrespectful if we say they can be terrible sometimes.
It took Aeneas years to make it here of course. Ulysses got hooked for awhile by a retired siren called Calypso and Aeneas got mixed up with a queen called Dido in Sicily. But they both wiggled out of those women’s arms. Aeneas headed for Italy and landed you know where: a little country called Latium, near Rome. It was just the right place to found an empire.
You better believe it was!
Since he was squatting, he got ready to fight with the people he was asking to move over. But he was so god-like (did we say his mother was Venus?) that the Latin king gave up without a fight and offered Aeneas his daughter in marriage. Aeneas’s lusty soldiers quickly followed suit and married the Latin girls, and the two clans, Trojans and Latins, became one.
Did you say Aeneas’ mother was Venus? How could that be?
She seduced his dad Anchises when he was young and she had his baby: Baby Aeneas.
Yes, now I remember: Anchises was the old man Aeneas carried out of Troy on his back when the town was on fire.
…Hey: that means that the founder of our city had Venus to watch over him. That explains a lot of things. A lot of things.
History is the great teacher, said Pictor with his eyebrows high. And he who doesn’t know history is bound to relive it. Remember that.
..
greece didn’t copied egypt…and thaat’s the truth.
Hi Swallow !
No problem at all, take all the time you need.. obviously it’s your blog after all : )
Y por supuesto, muchas gracias por la explicacion del refran.. Pues si que es claro ahora, pero no por su dificultad en interpretarlo, sino por el echo de que (dada mi ingnorancia en el ingles, perdoname) equivoque palabra “elm” con “helm”
de echo la palabra ingles “elm” , es en italiano mucho mas parecida a “elmo” (helm ..in english)
Sorry about that
James: Thanks for your long and detailed reply. Once again I’m going to have to ask you to wait a little longer for one from me. En cuanto a la expresión “no hay que pedir peras al olmo” o “no se puede pedir peras al olmo”, es muy corriente y si es verdad que se suele usar en un sentido que menosprecia al olmo como un arbol que sólo aporta sombra , bien se puede considerar que simplemente quiere expresar que cada arbol tiene sus virtudes y sus usos. Yo más bien quería decir que “no se puede pedir higos al cerezo” o “almendras al peral”.
GOOD,.. SWALLOW, ….BECAUSE HISTORY IS IMPORTANT
I am happy you agree with me about that an above all when you state: “There is simply too much we don’t know and too much we take for granted”
This is more then enough for getting right to the point. If I often read between the lines an explicit intent of making appear Romans fool I am sorry for misunderstanding, but If you read at the posts, that’s what they sometime transmit.. But if you look at some foolish historians appearing in some BBC documentaries.. (in which they state that Romans where a bunch of weak moroons winning battles just by chances when Britons were like coming from another planet in term of individual strength ..) after having a laugh for such a neo-propagndism, you will, of course, understand what I mean.
Obviously we both know that regarding cruelty, courage, honesty and individual strength on the battlefield ..everybody was roughly “on the same boat “.. Everything always depended on training, leaders experiences and ,no less, technology. After all, the Allies put the trend of the WWII upside-down when they decrypted the German secret encrypting code Enigma.
the Roman Lady:
It would be impossible for me to recall any specific source reporting some maniacal habits these women had for self hygiene .. and I never cared much about such arguments.. but what it is well clear is that the role of personal hygiene were directly proportional to the “social status” .. A pretty Roman peasant were very less like to care about hygiene then a rich ugly Matrona living constantly in “high-level” environments..where in the morning you can sleep and watch yourself in the mirror and in the afternoon you can get easily get to the “calidarium”.. The pretty Roman peasant, as well as any other pretty peasant-lady in the world, didn’t even know what genital hygiene was important for.. because nobody would ever tell her.. Rich ladies from Egypt and Middle East were also in first line for personal-hygiene.. for the same reason.
you stated: “I saw no reason to state that hers was better than elsewhere”
I say: Nobody means that.
“Better” is not the right adjective, I only say the rich Romans, as well the rich Egyptian or Assyrian etc. were far more cultured then the poor folks, then more conscious about hygiene and wealthy habits. Nowadays is statistically the same.
Romans vs Greeks,
Art: Yes, conventionally is well accepted that Greek Art was in a certain way superior. They had centuries (since Mycenae and so on) of Artistic Experience that made them the best with no equals “in different fields” of Art and Culture across the whole known world. Greeks were living not only in the Greek Peninsula, but also in the Southern Italy (Magna Grecia) so when Rome started his expansions to the south found on his way this incredible civilisation from which, in term of art learned the most.
Romans despised the Greeks because:
Greeks = Art,Poetry,Philosophy and sissy stuff like that
Romans = War, War and again War
But soon Romans were fascinated and deeply influenced from such far more civil fields of life
But talking about art: what’s better? what is more nice?
The Greek Parthenon has no equals in history.. but the Roman Colosseum too.. or the Egyptian Pyramids..the Greek Discobolus.. the Etruscan Chimera (Have a quick look to Etruscan Art, you will like it too), or all the Egyptian or Assyro-babionese Masterpieces..
Literature: this is not actually my specific field as I am more into the military one but, regardless the fact that yet is never easy to state that a writer is better then another, It is clear to me that Socrates/Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle “have still sold more books” then Cicero, Shakespeare and Kant together.
Greek philosophy is still ruling !
you state: “..Rome’s greatest contribution was her laws and legal culture and the unification of Europe, with the implantation there of Greek and her own culture. Is that it?..”
I would say that almost every military, as well the urbanism and other scientific fields as such as medicine were probably more remarkable then the law itself.. but this is such a “relative” point of view..
Obviously in 1200 year of ruling-life Rome brought contribution almost everywhere, but not for being cooler then Gauls, Germans or Mauritanians.. it’s always, ALL about RESOURCES.
you state: “..It was also a convention that Rome didn’t invent anything but used creatively what was already around.”
here is a quick and easy answer from Wikipedia: Roman Art.
“..While the traditional view of Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculpture known today is in the form of Roman marble copies), more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art. ..”
you state: “..Though many of her customs came through the Etruscans, the origin of the greatest ones was still Greece: I’m thinking of money, democracy, law..”
money: wrong (they kept using the Etruscan model)
democracy: right ..but did not last for long :)
law: 50% right: still based on the Etruscan legacy got closer and closer with the time to the Hellenic one
“..Actually, now I remember that our schoolbook history was by an Egyptologist, James Breasted, who traced nearly everything back to Egypt!)Of course we are all copy-cats: ..”
That’s why, look, this is the path (extremely approximated) of our civilisation all the way to Rome and so forth. It’s a geographical chain in which any “region/state” getting Technologically Advanced (Civilised) influenced the next ones near by.
Neolithic evolutions in:
V
Mesopotamia and Nil valley:
V V
Ur (Iraq) – PreDynastic Egypt
V V
Sumerian – Dynastic Egypt
V
Assyro-babilonese
V
Mediterranean Cultures / Middle East cultures
V
Mycenae / Nuragic Civiliz. / Egyptians
V
Greeks (Athens /Sparta/Sicily) / Etruscan
V
Rome
V
rest of Europe/Middle Asia/North Africa
Summing up:
the city of Rome ruled for 1200 years everything found on its way, learning from who at the time was more civilised such as Greeks and Egyptians, changing, adapting and evolving, and then teaching to those who didn’t get yet such innovative evolutions as for example the Europeans. But, still, in many field of art or literature Greek still rules, obviously, as almost any other culture/civilisation does..
Plato has no equals
Plato rules
“..One shouldn’t ask the elm to give pears, as we say in Spanish..”
por favor dimelo en espanol que soy curioso de saber que quiere decir ! siento, pero como ves mi ingles esta fatal y no he pillao el significado, gracias
: )
Please excuse my bad English, the way I am being such “long” at commenting and quite polemical at specific arguments, sorry If I misunderstood something about your aims and sorry If I left comments on almost the 90% of your posts.. but as you like history I am sure you understand me : )
James
James: I haven’t read any modern histories of Rome so I don’t know what is passed around in contemporary scholarship. These posts are my own reaction to re-reading the classics (in translation, I’m sorry to say) after many years: Caesar and Cicero, Tacitus, Livy and Dio Cassius, Polybius, the Plinys, Plutarch, and so on. Of course my own experience and languages (English and Spanish) determine the reaction. I’ve seen a dictatorship first-hand and I can’t help but make comparisons when I read about the emperors. Literature, philosophy, and art were the angle I came in from and, though I see the greatness of Virgil and Horace, in those areas I find the Roman contribution pretty meagre, which I know isn’t a fair way to judge. One shouldn’t ask the elm to give pears, as we say in Spanish. Or one shouldn’t require of Velazquez Goya’s liveliness or colors, for example.
As for Rome as a copy of Greek culture, that was a standard way of presenting it in my school days, and I merely echoed the convention. It was also a convention that Rome didn’t invent anything but used creatively what was already around. Though many of her customs came through the Etruscans, the origin of the greatest ones was still Greece: I’m thinking of money, democracy, law—even history. (Actually, now I remember that our schoolbook history was by an Egyptologist, James Breasted, who traced nearly everything back to Egypt!). Of course we are all copy-cats: everyone is born into a world with a lot of things already invented and he uses them and improves them and maybe comes up with a new one. Yet I think you will admit that those Greek inventions I listed above seem almost miraculous in their “sudden” appearance. And her art and literature gave Roman intellectuals an inferiority complex until the Empire (and, as for most of her painting and sculpture, should have given her one especially afterwards too).
And you are right about Roman gods: there I went too far, largely through my ignorance. I put my own little two and two together (as the ignorant do) and got a resounding four.
As far as I can see, Rome’s greatest contribution was her laws and legal culture and the unification of Europe, with the implantation there of Greek and her own culture. Is that it?
In most of my posts my aim wasn’t really to evaluate Rome as such but to bring home to readers what it was like to live in those times and surprise them as I was surprised (or shocked) when reading the classics. My ridicule or cartoonishness wasn’t meant as a smile at Rome but at men and women in general. I know I should often have explained that the past is only a kind of Rorschach blot and one’s remarks tell more about him than ever they could about the time under scrutiny. There is simply too much we don’t know and too much we take for granted. Still, Roman history is so rich in contemporary writing that it gives a feeling of knowledge and closeness that no other ancient culture gives. Next that good is the Renaissance (another glory of Italy).
James: Yes, I agree with you about my use of copy-cat. Sorry I’ve taken so long to reply. And now I need a little longer still. As for the Roman Lady’s hygiene, since I wasn’t there comparing Rome with any other place or time (except implicitly our own) I saw no reason to state that hers was better than elsewhere. I have nothing against Rome–you misunderstand. Hold on.
Hi Swallows, I didn’t mean to be polemical actually, but you might easily understand the meaning of saying “copy-cats” ..when everybody who studied italic history knows :
- Latin Gods weren’t born by “copying them from Greeks”
- Romans loved a lot the Grecian style of making statues and often represented their Gods in a very similar way to the Grecian but what about all those Gods of Etruscan Legacy ?
- Before Rome was born, many Italic tribes had a extremely similar religion.
- People from those tribes build-up Rome.
- And then a long time of Etruscan domination of the city..
- and then all the inter-cultural exchanges with the Greeks, from whom Romans actually learned a lot in terms of juridical and scientific stuff ..
- by the time, many of the Gods become more similar and so on.. a long process of reciprocal integration.. but obviously more was what we learned.. They still were the brightest civilisation at the time!
- Rome was nothing but a culture born from the Etruscan, Middle-Italic and Greek cultures. It was an assimilation of the Etruscan legacy at the first stage, Grecian later on and so forth.. learning and teaching at the same time depending on the specific case.. ,as for any other culture of this world..
Talking of “copy-cats” has nothing to do with history.. I mean, I guess you must recognise it’s misleading for those who has no confidence with such arguments..
I’m sure you agreed with me
regards
Thanks, James, for all your enthusiastic comments. I will reply in a general way soon.
within the I meant:
“hey, look at that Goddess !!! she’s so cool !! I want a temple for in my city right now!! “
Romans were copycats only for people who didn’t study ancient history.
Romans took Gods from Etruscans, Sabins and Sannits !… whose Gods were anyway similar to the Greeks Gods.. as well as almost everywhere across the Mediterranean
the :
<>
just didn’t exist.
so, stop being superficial in order to spit on the Romans
LoL Greeks are the main sons. THey were in earth before the romans. Romans justlearned from greeks mistakes. So yes romans are copycats
To chump:
I thought that the Romans sent delegations to Greece to obtain copies of the law of Solon. That could be legendary, but still it is hard to believe that the Romans lapped up Greek thinking and mythology but avoided getting Greek legal concepts at the same time.
Chump: Thanks—right you are. THAT was the real greatness of Rome, wasn’t it? Snubbing the Romans because they lacked the vivid imagination of the Greeks is like putting down John for not being Joe. As it turned out John made an equally great contribution to world culture—it took just his sober, calculating make-up. The sixth-century farmer probably had no stories about the gods in his head; but he had a unique sense of duty and law. He even understood his religion as a sort of contract with the gods. I should already have posted on the Twelve Tablets—an idea that you gave me long ago.
I doubt if one could find any culture, any religion, any social tradition that was not heavily indebted to a predecessor. To push an analogy, we take the DNA we are dealt, recombine it in different ways and pass it on. But one arena where the Romans are generally credited with new habits of thought and action is law. They professed great admiration for Greek models but when it came to selling corn they took their own counsel–even while developing institutional structures for consciously incorporating desirable “foreign” elements into their legal thinking. And they certainly passed it on: every modern expression of the western legal tradition employs concepts, vocabulary and habits of mind that are demonstrably Roman in origin.
Felix: Thank you. Your tantalizing remarks each deserve a reply. But now I can’t be long.
That is good about the stories being not popular traditions but the productions of Roman artists and poets.
J. H. Breasted, an old historian I knew from school, said this: “As Rome gained control of Greece the mingling of Greek and Roman life was increasingly intimate…Familiarity with the only literature known to the Romans…aroused the impulse toward literary expression among the Romans themselves. To be sure, the Latins, like all peasant peoples, had had their folk songs and their simple forms of verse, but these natural products of the soil of Latium soon disappeared as the men of Latin speech felt the influence of an already highly finished literature. Latin literature, therefore, did not develop along its own lines from native beginnings, as did Greek literature, but grew up on the basis of a great inheritance from abroad. Indeed, as the Roman poet Horace said, Rome, the conqueror, was herself conquered by the civilization of the Greeks.” Ancient Times: a History of the Early World, p. 637
God knows what that sixth-century farmer you mentioned had in his head, but in time he picked up what the artists and poets invented. They gave shape to superstition and created tradition, as they always do. And they did it, they modeled, with Greek clay.
The Americans inherited a long culture tradition too, of course. Men like James and Eliot and Pound even felt more comfortable over here. So you are right, we shouldn’t dog the poor Romans.
Etruscan influence seem to have been the strongest in the beginning. All their kings were Etruscan. Breasted says this: “We possess no written documents of Rome for this early period. Our conclusions are based on a study of archaeological remains. If these remains had formed our only evidence, no one could ever have reached any other conclusion than that the kings of Rome were Etruscan. The later Romans themselves, however, with evident disinclination to believe that their early kings had been outsiders, cherished a tradition that their kings were native Romans. This tradition, with many picturesque and pleasing incidents, has found a place in literature and is still widely believed.” (op. cit., p.571)
As to whether the modern Greeks deserve to think of themselves as descendants of Homer et al., I’ll let you and Pavlo slug it out.
The first ancient history book I got hold of was by Breasted, the American archaeologist I quoted above. He dug at the end of the nineteenth century, mainly in Egypt. He believed and showed everywhere in his book that Egypt invented about everything except great literature. I know almost nothing about non-Western history and always wonder what my Far East readers think of all this.
It’s too easy to dog on the Romans for incorporating Greek myth into their history and religion. One problem here is the misunderstanding of ancient religion. The stories about the gods we study in mythology classes are almost entirely LITERARY productions. These were written by artists who were trying to be inspiring and poetic (same thing with vase-painting). It is, I think, ridiculous to think that if you asked a Greek farmer in 500BC where the seasons come from he would tell you the story about Demeter’s sadness at Persephone’s being confined to the underworld a few months out of the year. Ancient religion was NOT a matter of BELIEVING that certain stories are true. But when you say “Oh the Romans just took over the Greek stories for their religion, how pathetic” you fail to understand that, again, what they took over was a literary tradition. They worshiped their own Gods: Jupiter, Juno, Venus, etc; however in the tolerant views of their time they came to believe the Greeks called Jupiter Zeus, Juno Hera, Venus Aphrodite, etc. It’s not as if the Romans had no religion and were ‘converted’ to Greek religion. As ‘Westerners’ how can we fault them for incorporating another group’s religion into their own sense of identity? We have incorporated the ancient Jewish God as ‘our own’.
Modern Greece, Pavlo, is quite a paradox. It is an Orthodox nation. To be Greek is to be Orthodox, not necessarily in belief of course, but in identity. But “Oh the Romans are so unoriginal, borrowing another country’s religion.” Wake up. Also, I’d hate to shatter your self-image, but the idea that the (modern) Greeks are the sons of the Greeks is laughable. Greece did not even really exist as a country 400 years ago. The Byzantine intellectuals and priests who travel to Athens to tread the earth their heroes walked express their disappointment that it is just a bunch of illiterate shepherds living in ruins of a once great civilization. Ethnically you are probably just as much Turkish as ‘Greek’. It was only religious differences that caused any distinction to be made at all. Also, the western Renaissance gave modern Greece the impetus to claim ownership of its own classical past. “Yes! Those people you’re reading about and respect: that’s us! descendants of Homer, Themistocles, Sophocles, Plato. It’s in our blood.”
All history is constructed. Yours, mine, and the Romans’. Were the Romans stupid enough to believe that their founder was a half-God (Romulus) descendant of the Trojan Aeneas son of a goddess? Well, some probably were; just as you are silly enough to believe in the authenticity of your ‘history’.
Virgil had reasons for writing the Aeneid the way he did. Fabius Pictor had reasons for writing his history the way he did (and everything we say about it is almost guess work because we have none of it left and only impressions of what it was about from other authors. The author of this page, you’ll note, cites nothing) And the connection of Aeneas and Rome may even have dated back to a Hellenistic (Greek) historian Timaeus. He might have had reasons for assuring the Romans they were related to Greek/Trojan heroes, and they weren’t shallow patriotism because he wasn’t Roman.
The Romans got a lot from the Greeks. Sure. Why is that a bad thing? You reach too far, LOL, when you say the Greeks copied everything from Egypt. (though Herodotus does suggest this about some things (EVEN RELIGION) in book 2 of his histories) But the Greeks got plenty from other cultures. Sometimes the birth of philosophy is dated to 585 BC because this Ionian Greek was able to show that there was a rational order to the cosmos (and not just the whim of arbitrary, anthropomorphic divinities) when he predicted the coming of an eclipse. However, Herodotus even says he predicted not the day, but the year, in which it would happen (not as accurate as always claimed). And more importantly the Egyptians and Babylonians were already ahead in astronomy – THAT’S WHERE HE LEARNED IT. A great many aspects of Homer and Hesdiod’s poems have precursors in Eastern cultures (Hittite, Babylonian)
Were the Greeks original? Sure. But I bet if we had more remains of other ancient cultures they’d be shown to be less so.
Greeks copied Egytians?
thats funny… The greeks crafted their gods after men, not men whith birds heads, I dont see any Pyrimids in Hellas. and i dont see any Dorian Collums or parthenons in Egypt.
Truth be told If it wasnt for Greece Rome wouldnt exist.
Julius Ceaser Recognised this, He himself made all of Rome speak Greek, Romans worshiped Greek gods, Greek Heroes, some even thought they were Desendant from Spartans.
…but of all you said the part that was the most interesting : “We are all the sons of Greece”
I’ve read that before, Its not true.
Some Historians believe that when Alexander conquerd he left Greeks all over the lands he swept throug (which he did) but Alexander only took over the east…not the west.
If anything you may be a son of Rome, but as a Greek myself I laugh when i hear that.
Buddy Greeks are the son of Greece,
lol
Romans were copycat?
LOL
Greek gods came from Egypt and Phoeniacians,greek alphabet was phoenician too.
Of course greeks were great anyway but romans created arch,coliseum,they brought engineering to a level never seen before.
We are all the sons of Greece and Rome is the main son.
Nordics anyway never created anything in all their history if not hiajacked from Rome.