Notice: This translation is the copyrighted property of the author and should not be reproduced without the author's permission.
NOTE: This translation is intentionally literal; violence is occasionally done to English syntax in the interests of preserving some of the original order of thoughts (especially in the preface).
[] - enclose words added for sense
{} - enclose remarks by the translator
Preface. Whether I shall have made anything worthwhile if from the first rising of the city I thoroughly write up the affairs of the People of Rome, I neither sufficiently know, nor if I did know, would I dare say it—for I am one who sees that this subject is both common and ancient, since new writers either exalt themselves because they are in these affairs more certain in some respect [than older ones] or because of their skill in writing they believe that they will overcome raw antiquity.
However it will be, it will help nevertheless that I have myself considered the memory of the public deeds accomplished by the first People of all the lands to the best of my ability; and if in such a great crowd of writers my fame becomes obscure, with the nobility and greatness of those who eclipse my name I should console myself.
The matter is, moreover, one of immense work, that over a seven hundred year period it be found out, and because having started from tiny beginnings it [the state] has grown to such an extent that now under its own greatness it labours. On the other hand, also, for most readers I do not doubt but that the first origins and the matters nearest to those origins will furnish less enjoyment as they hurry on to those new matters by which a long pre-eminent People's strength is itself destroying itself.
I myself, on the contrary, will seek this reward also for my labor: that from the contemplation of those evils which our age saw through so many years, for as long surely as I seek again those ancient times in my mind, I will avert myself, free from all care which in the mind of a writer, even if it does not turn him from the truth, nevertheless can cause him trouble.
What things were before the founding—or before even the intention of the founding—of the city, as decorated stories in poetic fables rather than in uncorrupted memorials of public deeds accomplished, have been handed down; but I have it in mind neither to confirm them nor to refute them. This pardon is given to antiquity, that by mixing human affairs and divine it makes the first risings of cities more august; and if to any People one ought to give the right to make sacred their own origins and to refer to their originators as gods, such a glory of war belongs to the People of Rome that when they report that their own parent and that of their founder was Mars the most powerful, then this too the races of men must allow with the equanimity with which they allow Rome's supreme power.
But those things and ones similar to those, however they are thought about and held in estimation, I would not indeed put to any great decision. To the following [ancient matters] rather, in my opinion, on his own behalf everyone should sharply apply his mind: what their life was, what their character, through what men and by what skills—at home and militarily—they both got and augmented their supreme power; then how, with discipline slipping little by little, as it were a degeneration of character followed upon their original cast of mind; then how more and more their character slipped, then began to rush down headlong, until to our times—in which we are able to bear neither our own vices nor their remedies—it came.
This very thing is especially, in thinking about public deeds, beneficial and fruit-bearing—that you upon records of every kind of example, placed in an illustrious memorial, gaze; thence for yourself and for the affairs of your People you choose what to imitate and what—shameful in inception, shameful in result—you should avoid.
Moreover, either love of the business undertaken deceives me or else no other Res Publica ever was greater or more sacred or richer in good examples, nor has there been one into which so late avarice and luxuriousness immigrated, nor ever one in which for such a long time and to such an extent honor consisted in poverty and frugality—by as much as there was less property, by so much was there less covetousness. Recently wealth has brought in a desire, through luxury and lust, that all things perish and be destroyed.
But let complaints—which will not be pleasing even when perhaps necessary—from the beginnings, surely, of such a great undertaking, be absent: with good omens rather and prayers and appeals to gods and goddesses (if like poets we also had this custom) let us more freely begin: that to such a great work begun they give a prosperous going forward.
Book 1. [1.1] Now first of all everyone agrees sufficiently that when Troy was captured there was savageness against the other Trojans but that from two of them, Aeneas and Antenor, both by the right of long-standing hospitality and because they had always been the authors of proposals of peace and of returning Helen, the Akhaians held off every rightful punishment gained by war....Aeneas...from home an exile, but with the fates leading him on to greater beginnings of public deeds, first came into Macedonia; then into Sicily seeking a place to settle he was carried; from Sicily his fleet held for the fields of Laurentum (and this place is named "Troy"). There the Trojans went out and, as they were men to whom, because of their almost marvelous wandering, nothing except their arms and ships remained, they were exacting plunder from the fields; then Latinus the king and the Aborigines who then held that place, to ward off forcefully the newcomers, ran up around from the city and the fields.
Thence the story is two-fold: some say that when conquered in battle Latinus made peace with Aeneas, and then made him a relative; but others say that, when the battle-lines were drawn up, before the trumpets sounded, Latinus came forward among his principal men and called out the leader of the newcomers to a meeting. He asked them what mortals they were, from where and by what chance they had set out from home, or what they were seeking that they had come out against the Laurentian fields. After he heard that the multitude was Trojan, that the leader was Aeneas son of Anchises and Venus, that with their fatherland burnt they were exiles from home and that they were seeking a settling place and to found a city, he admired both the nobility of the race and the men and their spirit, for war or peace prepared; and with right hand offered he made sacred a pledge of future friendship.
Then a treaty was struck between the leaders, and between the armies greetings were made. Aeneas remained with Latinus as a guest; then Latinus in the presence of his household gods added a domestic treaty to the public one by giving his daughter to Aeneas in matrimony. This matter certainly confirmed the Trojans' hope for, at least, a stable settling place and for an end of their wanderings. They founded a town: Aeneas from the name of his wife called it Lavinium. And in a brief time a child, a male, was born from the new marriage, to whom the parents gave the name Ascanius.
[1.2] For war, after that, the Aborigines and Trojans were together sought out. Turnus, king of the Rutuli, to whom Lavinia had been promised before the arrival of Aeneas, taking it ill that the newcomer had been preferred to himself, at the same time against Aeneas and Latinus brought war. Neither battle-line went off rejoicing from that struggle: the Rutuli were conquered, the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader, Latinus. Then Turnus and the Rutuli, lacking confidence in things, fled to the flourishing resources of the Etruscans and to Mezentius their king, who over Caere—a flourishing town at that time—ruled. Since even at the outset he not at all rejoiced over the beginning of the new city, and then later thought that this Trojan business was growing far more than was sufficiently safe for its neighbors, without difficulty he joined his arms with the Rutuli.
Aeneas, in the face of such a great war's terror, in order to conciliate the spirits of the Aborigines to himself, and so that they not have the same law only but also the same name, called both races Latins; and afterwards the Aborigines did not yield to the Trojans in zeal and faith towards king Aeneas. Supported by this spirit, with which the two peoples were coalescing each day, Aeneas (although Etruria was so great in resources that at that time the fame of its name filled up not only the lands but also the sea through the whole length of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian strait) nevertheless—even though he could have fought defensively from his walls—led his forces to the battle-line. The battle was favorable for the Latins, but it was the last of Aeneas' mortal deeds. He is buried—whatever it is right and lawful to call him—on the Numicus river: Indigenous Jove, men call him.
[1.3] Not yet mature for supremacy was Ascanius, Aeneas' son; nevertheless that supremacy safely waited for him until he reached the age of adulthood: just so long, with a woman as protector—such a great innate quality was in Lavinia—the affairs of the Latins and the kingdom of his grandfather and father stood firm for the boy. I will not dispute—who indeed could affirm a matter so ancient as being certain?—whether this boy was Ascanius or an older boy than he, with Creusa for a mother born while Ilium was unharmed and a comrade then in his father's flight—that same Iulus whom the Julian clan pronounces to be the originator of their name.
This Ascanius, wherever from and from whatever mother born (certainly that he was a son of Aeneas is agreed upon)...himself founded a new city under the Alban mountain, which from its site, stretched out along a ridge, was called Alba Longa....
{Ten Alban kings follow: Aeneas, Latinus, Alba, Atys, Capys, Capetus, Tiberinus ("who in crossing the Albula river was drowned and so gave the name frequently used for the river to later generations"), Agrippa, Romulus (who was "by a lightening bolt struck") and Aventinus (all of them after the first bearing the family name Silvius).}
Proca then reigned. He begat Numitor and Amulius; to Numitor, who was his oldest offspring, he handed on the ancient kingdom of the Silvian family. Force however was more strong than the will of the father or respect for seniority: driving out his brother, Amulius reigned. He added wickedness to wickedness: he killed off his brother's male offspring, and as for his brother's daughter Rhea Silvia—through an appearance of honoring her—since he chose her out as a Vestal, by perpetual virginity he took from her the hope of offspring.
[1.4] But these things were owed, as my opinion holds, to the Fates—both the origin of such a great city, and the very greatest (after the gods' resources) supremacy's beginning. When, having been by force pressed down, the Vestal produced twin offspring—whether she really thought it was thus or whether having a god as author of the crime made it more honorable—she pronounced Mars the uncertain offspring's father. But neither gods nor men claimed her or her offspring away from royal cruelty: the priestess, bound, was given into custody, and the king ordered the boys thrown into fast-flowing water. By some chance, divinely, above its banks the Tiber had poured out in stagnant pools, making it impossible to go right up to the current of the actual river and giving hope to those carrying the infants that they could submerge them even in the slow-moving water. Thus (as it were) finishing off the king's supreme command, in the nearest flood-pool, where now the Ruminal Fig is—they say it is called "the one pertaining to Romulus"—they put the boys out. At that time in that place there was empty wilderness. The story holds that when the floating vessel, in which the boys had been put out, was left on dry land by the receding water, a thirsting wolf from the mountains which are around about bent her course towards the childish crying; she offered to the infants her lowered teats so gently that with her tongue she was licking the boys when the master of the royal herd found her (they say his name was Faustulus); he took them from there to his hut and gave them to Larentia his wife to bring up.
There are those who think that Larentia, because she made her body common to all, was called "she-wolf" by the shepherds, and thence was a place given for the story and the miracle.
Such was their birth and such their bringing up; when they were reaching adulthood—though not inactive at the huts and towards the herds—they wandered through the glades hunting. By this having gained strength in body and mind, they not only stood firm against beasts but they also made attacks against robbers burdened with loot, and among the shepherds they divided up what they had taken; with these—the crowd of youths was increasing day by day—they frequently spent their time, seriously or in joking.
{The brothers soon discovered their origin, killed Amulius, and reinstated their grandfather Numitor as king of Alba Longa. Then they decided to found a city of their own.}
[1.6] ....There intervened then, in these cogitations, the same evil as in their grandfather's case: desire for a kingdom, and from that a foul struggle began from a sufficiently mild beginning. Since they were twins and no respect for seniority could make a distinction between them, in order that the gods under whose protection that place was might by auguries choose which one should give his name to the new city and which one should rule it supremely when it was founded, Romulus took the Palatine hill and Remus the Aventine as consecrated places for taking the augury.
[1.7] And first to Remus the augury is said to have come—six vultures; this augury had just been announced when double the number to Romulus showed themselves, and each of them as king by his own multitude was saluted; the one group from the precedence in time and the other from the number of birds drew its claim for its king. Then, when in an altercation they had come together, through the struggle of their angered passions they turned to slaughter, and there in the crowd, struck, Remus fell.
A more common story is that in a playful mockery of his brother Remus leapt across the new walls; and then by the angered Romulus—when in words also threatening he had added, "so then whoever else shall leap across my walls,"—he was killed. Thus Romulus got sole possession of supreme power; the founded city by its founder's name was called. ....
Book 2. [2.1] It is the free Roman People from now on whose accomplishments in peace and in war, whose annual magistrates, and whose laws (whose power was much stronger than that of men) I will now go through. That freedom was more pleasing because of the last king's arrogance. For the previous ones had so ruled that not undeservedly they can all successively be counted as founders of at least parts of the city, which new settlements of the multitude increased by them, they themselves had added.
Nor is there any doubt but that Brutus—the same one who deserved so much glory by driving out the arrogant king—would have done so in the worst interest of the People if because of a desire for a freedom for which it was not ripe he had from any of the previous kings wrenched away the kingdom. For what would have happened, if that plebeian mob of shepherds and chance comers—exiles from their own peoples—when they had obtained the safety of the Inviolate Temple [the Asylum] or freedom (at least freedom from punishment, since fear of kings would have been resolved), had begun to be agitated by tribunician storms, or—in a city not their own—had begun to sow struggles against the Patricians, before they had joined their spirits together by means of the pledges of wives and children and by means of the dearness of the soil itself, to which only over a long time one becomes accustomed? The Res Publica, being not yet adult, would have dissipated itself because of that discord—the Res Publica which the tranquil moderation of a supreme power had nourished until by that same nourishing it [the monarchy] produced the good fruit of freedom, which men are able to bring forth only when their strengths are mature.
Moreover, you may count the origin of that freedom as being more that the power of being consul was made annual than that there was any diminution of kingly power. All the legal powers, all the insignia [of kings], the first consuls held; this one only was excepted—they did not both have the fasces, lest the terror [of these] appear two-fold.
Brutus first, by his colleague's consent, held the fasces, and he had not been sharper as a claimant of freedom than he was then as its guardian. For first of all—lest afterward they be bent by bribes or kingly gifts—he compelled the People, while they were avid for their new freedom, to swear an oath that they would suffer no one to be king at Rome....
[2.2] ....And I do not know whether they did not exceed the limit in defending [freedom] too much, even in the smallest matters. For the other consul [Tarquinius Collatinus]—although in no other respect had he offended—bore a name hateful to the citizenry: too much were the Tarquins accustomed to be kings.... [Finally, Collatinus—the husband of Lucretia—was forced to go into exile; afterwards] Brutus, by decree of the Senate, put it to the People that all of the Tarquin clan be exiled....
[2.3] Although there was no doubt that war with the Tarquins threatened, it was later than everyone expected; moreover—a thing which they had not even feared—through deceit and treachery freedom was almost lost.
There were among the Roman youth some young men—not ignobly born—whose appetites had been more unrestricted under the kings, for being equals and companions of the young Tarquins, they were accustomed to living in a kingly manner. Then, when the law for all men became equal, they missed their [unrestricted] appetites and complained amongst themselves that what was freedom for others had been turned into slavery in their own case: they said that a king was a man, from whom you might obtain what you needed, whether rightly or wrongly; that [under a king] there was a place for favor and for benefits; that [a king] was able both to be angry and to forgive, to know the distinction between friend and enemy; the laws [on the other hand] were a deaf thing, inexorable, more useful and better for a pauper than for a powerful man, since they held no relaxation nor pardon if you exceeded their limit; it was dangerous, given so many human failings, to live by innocence [= trusting in the laws] alone. .... {Among these young men were the two sons of Brutus; the group conspired to recall the Tarquins, but the conspiracy was discovered and the traitors arrested.}
[2.5] ....The traitors were condemned and capital punishment was exacted. It was the more worthy of watching for this reason, that the consulship imposed upon the father the duty of exacting the penalty from his children; the one who even as spectator should have been removed was himself the one whom Fortune made the enforcer of capital punishment.
They stood tied to stakes—the highest born young men. But from the others, as though from unrecognized heads, the consul's children turned all men's eyes away and onto themselves; and people pitied the men not for their punishment more than for the crime by which they deserved the punishment: that these men—above all in that year when the fatherland had been freed, and their own father the freer, and the consulship created out of their very own family—should bring it into their minds to betray the Patricians, the Plebs—whatever of Roman gods and men there were—to the once arrogant king who was now a threatening exile!
....When they were stripped naked [the executioners] cut them with whips and then struck off their heads with the axe, while through the whole time the father—his face and countenance—was watched, a fatherly spirit showing through during the administration of a public punishment.
Top of Page : Translations of Classical Authors Menu : Home Page
Copyright Lewis Stiles, University of Saskatchewan, 1995.