The Renaissance

We must begin with the man who saved for us almost all the text of Livy which we now have: Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) in his De viris illustribus focussed on Horatius Cocles, but in his letters ad familiares, he mentioned all three famous episodes.Footnote ¹ Besides, in his Italia illuminata, he told at some length of the attack of Arruns on Aricia and the story of the vicus Tuscus.Footnote ²

Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Decade of Livy (1531) made surprisingly brief allusions to Horatius and Mucius.Footnote ³ The man who knew most in this century about the Roman Republic, however, was Carlo Sigonio. In his famous edition of the fasti (1556), he gave only the most conventional summary: he noted under 508 BC that Porsenna made war at Tarquin’s request, and that, in the next year, overwhelmed by the bravery of the three heroes, he made peace.Footnote ⁴

The next century, the magnum opus of one of the founders of Etruscology, Thomas Dempster (d. 1625), was published posthumously (1723). Dempster’s work was based on the widest knowledge of sources, quoted at length. He realised that Porsenna imposed terms on Rome.Footnote ⁵ The earliest English historian of the Republic, Lawrence Echard, gave, however, a totally uncritical account.Footnote ⁶

The first critical milestone was marked by the greatest historian of the Republic in the eighteenth century, Louis de Beaufort. One of his earliest works (his Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire romaine of 1738) dealt with the uncertainty of the first five centuries (sic) of Roman history. The war with Porsenna was a perfect example: events ‘more worthy of a novel of chivalry than history’. He quoted Tac. Hist. 3.72, Plin. HN 34.139 for Porsenna’s capture of Rome, and added Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.35.1 (offering of royal paraphernalia). Porsenna’s rule was overthrown after his son’s defeat at Aricia. On Horatius he followed Polybius (6.55.3); on Mucius he followed Dionysius, who said nothing of his hand.Footnote ⁷ This must be accounted an extraordinarily acute contribution for its time, which ably laid the foundations for all later understanding. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, indeed, declared that his analysis of this war ‘is the most successful part of that remarkable little work’.Footnote ⁸

The Nineteenth Century

In the early nineteenth century a French historian of the Republic, Pierre Levesque, well described the stories of the heroes: ‘a series of marvels which one is not obliged to believe but which one must know because of their fame’. Pliny and Tacitus revealed the truth.Footnote ⁹ Another early Etruscologist, Karl Otfried Müller, found it significant that Tarquin fled to Cumae: Porsenna was no friend of the Greeks.Footnote ¹⁰

The scholar whom many regard as the founder of modern understanding of the history of the Republic is Niebuhr. His history of Rome began to appear in 1811. He regarded the whole account as based on oral sources, or ballads, and did so famously unaware of Jacob Perizonius’ espousal of this theory 140 years before.Footnote ¹¹ Niebuhr had strong words about Dionysius’ ‘stupidity’: ‘Livy keeps clear of such wretched absurdities’. Mucius’ cognomen Scaevola was misunderstood: it refers to an apotropaic amulet (Varro Ling. 7.97). Niebuhr boldly reconstructed the terms of Rome’s surrender by comparison with, for example, Collatia (Livy 1.38): usually one-third of the land with a tax of 10% on the remainder, and deprivation of the right to make a treaty (Pliny is inexact!), as well as the surrender of arms and offering symbols of royalty. Porsenna returned to Clusium. When Arruns was defeated at Aricia (Livy 2.14.5-7) and the fugitives were received in Rome, Porsenna returned the hostages and the land (2.15.8). Niebuhr very importantly noted features in common with the war against Veii in the 470s: the Veientines were on the Janiculum, the city suffered famine, and Rome was saved by a Horatius (Livy 2.51).Footnote ¹² Here were further significant advances in criticism.

Albert Schwegler’s important history in three substantial volumes reached down only to 366 BC, and he built on Niebuhr, adding much.Footnote ¹³ ‘Barely the slightest outline of the common tradition (sic) can be considered as historical’. He drew attention to a fundamental matter: Porsenna’s name, comparing Vibenna, Sisenna, Perpenna, and the fact that most sources made the penultimate vowel long. Schwegler offered many firsts: the importance of the hostages, a ‘heavy condition’: hence the emphasis on the three heroes to conceal or reverse the surrender. Mucius’ crime was perjury and parallels were sought: Schwegler adduced Cranmer in 1556. He saw the connection of Horatius with the three Horatii (Livy 1.24-25), and explained it: he fought on the frontier, it was a decisive battle, and two companions fell (back). Porsenna’s story was not connected to that of the Tarquins; the annalists therefore had to invent a rift (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.33, Plut. Popl. 18). That Porsenna acted as overlord of Etruria was proved by his control of the septem pagi (Livy 2.15.6). Perhaps his name meant ‘king’. He was, in sum, unlike the three heroes, an historical person.Footnote ¹⁴

De Beaufort’s English successor was George Cornewall Lewis. He was the first to attempt to set out a list of problems, such as: the reasons for Porsenna’s treaty (the contradiction between fear or admiration), the ambush (Livy 2.11, cf. Plut. Popl. 17), what Porsenna did with Mucius (was he freed or kept as a hostage?), Cloelia’s statue, the fate of the hostages, and, for the first time, the debate over the ‘goods of Porsenna’ (Livy 2.14.2-4, Plut. Popl. 19.6).Footnote ¹⁵

The greatest work of synthesis by a single ancient historian began to appear in 1884: Eduard Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums. He was the first to state that the details of the overthrow of the monarchy were unknown. It was ‘not unthinkable,’ he declared, that Porsenna defeated the Tarquins, so that he was responsible for the fall of the monarchy. How Porsenna’s rule ended we do not know, nor do we know the chronology (the late sixth century, or the first years of the Republic): perhaps it has to be pushed back some decades. Only one thing is certain: the combined forces of Cumae and the Latins at Aricia broke the Etruscan control of Latium. This was remembered in ‘the sale of Porsenna’s goods’. Meyer saw fundamental questions and offered bold answers: the story of Porsenna was ‘much older and more true’ than that of the Tarquins and the stories of the three heroes were early connected with Porsenna.Footnote ¹⁶

Wilhelm Ihne’s always provocative history declared that the story ‘betrays itself on the first glance as fictitious’. Everything was contradictory. Ihne was even suspicious of Pliny’s treaty as being preserved in any authentic form. The first of the major reinterpretations appeared: Porsenna is Mezentius. There was, Ihne claimed, originally no fixed chronology, and no connection with the Tarquins: in reality the story belongs to the late monarchy. Porsenna was, however, declared to be ‘an entirely mythical person’, and the narrative was ‘entirely incomprehensible and incredible’.Footnote ¹⁷ This was the most revolutionary analysis so far. The idea that the tradition was first assailed by wilful scepticism in the twentieth century is entirely mistaken.

Evelyn Shuckburgh was one of the few willing to attempt to uphold the tradition: Porsenna may have originally supported the Tarquins, and the three heroes were ‘not without a certain consistency and reasonableness’ (whatever that meant). He rightly objected to a fundamental mistranslation: Porsenna did not capture Rome. Tacitus’ word is dedita. The terms, however, were humiliating.Footnote ¹⁸

The Twentieth Century

The twentieth century was introduced by the first of Friedrich Münzer’s articles on the three heroes in Pauly-Wissowa’s classical dictionary, although they were spread out over thirty-five years. First was Cloelia (1901).Footnote ¹⁹ Münzer was the first to note a telling, unique variant: Cloelia broke her confinement (Virg. Aen. 8.651). Of her escape he numbered two versions – but there were three by his count: that Cloelia escaped alone (Val. Max. 3.2.2), or all the women did (Livy 2.13.6), or (third) that everyone escaped (Livy 9.11.6: Gavius Pontius’ speech). Münzer suggested that it was the ‘younger’ annalists who introduced the Tarquins’ raid and Valeria (Plut. Popl. 19.3). That Porsenna gave her a horse is found only in Greek sources, he noted acutely.

The article on Horatius appeared in 1913.Footnote ²⁰ It is significant that in Polybius his deed is totally timeless, and Cicero dated it to the war with Porsenna only once (Parad. 12). What was history for Polybius’ contemporaries was fable for Livy’s age. Did the poetic elements in Livy come from Ennius? For the first time the fasti were brought into play: Münzer placed great emphasis on the fact that, unlike Larcius and Herminius (coss. 506 BC),Footnote ²¹ Horatius did not appear in them. He accepted that the statue that was allegedly of Horatius could be the origin of the whole story: but what has a lame man to do with defending a bridge? He has no praenomen, but his cognomen is sure: Cocles. Livy was the reliable source. Münzer’s conclusion is important: here was ‘an old and true legend’.

The longest analysis was reserved for Mucius (1935).Footnote ²² Here Münzer stressed the agreement of accounts, save in unimportant details, but this is not what the following analysis reveals. He upheld the claim that Mucius was patrician (against Niebuhr). The idea that he spoke Etruscan was ‘entirely credible’. Mucius’ story was not creditable to the Romans: compare their behaviour in the war with Pyrrhus (Plut. Pyrrh. 21). It is Dionysius who is most critical of Mucius’ deceit (5.29.3). Münzer minimised the variants on the identity of the man whom he killed and what Porsenna was doing. He claimed that the most detailed accounts (Livy 2.12.13, Plut. Popl. 17.3) do not explain his thrusting his hand into the fire – but Livy certainly does. Münzer followed Schwegler on Mucius’ perjury. He noted the interesting variant that Mucius was one of the envoys whom Porsenna sent to Rome (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.31.2: this was modelled, he suggested, on the story of Regulus, or the Romans after Cannae [Livy 22.58.5-9]). Münzer pointed to visual (Sil. Ital. 8.383-388) and perhaps dramatic sources (a play), and noted the Greek interest (Aristeides of Miletus ap. Plut. Mor. 305-306). His most ingenious contribution is the suggestion for the origin of the story: Pompeius burned his hand rather than betray Rome, and king Genthius of Illyricum (180-168) became a friend of Rome (Val. Max. 3.3.2). Pompey married a Mucia – and had to show that his ancestors also were brave. Münzer also adduced the example of Rudolf of Swabia (d. 1080).

In 1907 there began to appear what is still regarded as the classic account of the Republic, although it did not proceed past 146 BC: Gaetano De Sanctis’ history, an avowedly conservative account. Conservatism was abandoned, however, at the first breath, with the declaration that Porsenna was Macstarna – although the latter had succeeded a dead Tarquin, as De Sanctis admitted. He followed Niebuhr: the war with Porsenna was all part of an ‘epic’ or a ballad, drawing on monuments and topography. The statue of Horatius was in reality a statue of Vulcan, that of Cloelia was of Venus, and Mucius’ story derived from a misunderstood cognomen. De Sanctis’ crucial observation was that the legend was without chronology: figures from the fasti were inserted ‘by later annalistic elaborations’ (the only trouble is that none of the three heroes comes from this source). He then was the first to assert that there is a vital date: at the battle of Aricia (504 BC), the Romans were absent, because they were still under Etruscan control.Footnote ²³

Walter Otto, in his discussion of Roman sagas, took up the theme of fides. The female hostages were returned to Porsenna to maintain Rome’s attachment to this principle (Livy 2.13.9). He also tried to apply the concept to Mucius: he was inspired by fides to Rome and burned his hand to show that nothing would make him betray it. The term fides, however, appears nowhere in the sources for Mucius’ story.Footnote ²⁴

A famous turning-point in republican historiography was the ‘critical history’ (1913-1920) by Ettore Pais although his critical attitudes had already been long enough on display to incite De Sanctis to write his Storia. He declared Tarquin’s appeals for help to Caere, Veii, Tarquinia, Porsenna, and Mamilius ‘a tissue of contradictions, even historical falsifications’. He dated the war to year two or three (508-507 BC) of the Republic, and peace with Rome to year four (506 BC). He noted a number of kings called Porsenna: this one at Clusium, but also at Volsinii (Plin. HN 2.140) and Vulci (Pesna: TLE 298). The occupation of the Janiculum better suited an attack from Veii. He agreed with Niebuhr and Schwegler that much suggested the later Veientine war in 477 BC. That Porsenna occupied Rome, however, is also indicated by her help later given to Arruns. The three heroic tableaux were declared to have no historical value. Cocles=Cyclops. Cloelia=Venus Cloacina, although working out who the figure on the horse actually was proved difficult; the idea of a woman on a horse was more Spartan, and was, indeed, impossible for a Roman. Mucius was hardest to explain, but Pais stressed the unfavourable reaction to his un-Roman behaviour, a strange contrast with the highly moral behaviour of the Stoics, lawyers, and priests of the later Mucii. He ingeniously compared an early Mucius, a tribune who burned his colleagues (Val. Max. 6.3.2). He was most interested in the story of the right hand. He, like Otto, connected Mucius with Fides, to whom sacrifices were made while holding out the right hand (Livy 1.21, Hor. Carm. 1.35.21).Footnote ²⁵

A suggestion made en passant was to have a long-standing influence. In 1925 Soren Cortsen, in his study of Etruscan magistracy, admitted that ‘he could not withhold his supposition’ that the name Porsenna was a title, purthne, which therefore originally meant ‘king’.Footnote ²⁶ This was followed shortly by Léon Homo’s suggestion that Porsenna was the ‘lars’ of Clusium. In the footsteps of Pais, Homo declared that the three heroes must be banished to the ‘limbo of legend’. Livy and Dionysius were ‘nothing but a tissue of fictions, contradictions, and errors’. Rome, of course, succumbed. For the first time archaeological evidence was invoked: excavations on the Palatine (sic) in 1907 showed traces of a great fire on the Cermalus.Footnote ²⁷ Homo emphasised two facts: the Romans were absent from Aricia (504 BC) (following De Sanctis), and Porsenna had restored the septem pagi to Veii.Footnote ²⁸

In the volume on early Rome in the original edition of the Cambridge Ancient History of 1928, Porsenna fell to Hugh Last. There were two surprises: Last accepted Pais’ idea that Porsenna came from Veii, and moved the date of the battle of Aricia back before 510 BC (!). He noted, on the other hand, that the war did not feature leading figures in the fasti.Footnote ²⁹

Luigi Pareti, De Sanctis’ student, took up his master’s identification of Porsenna with Macstarna, but the only result was fantasy. If there were only one Tarquin – as many moderns claimed – then Macstarna=Porsenna=Servius Tullius! At the same time he accepted that Porsenna was a purthne, but Macstarna was a magister. Pareti claimed that there was a struggle for control of the Fanum Voltumnae, the shrine of the Etruscan league, between Clusium and Volsinii, and when the former lost, it attacked Rome and installed the above triple-named king. When he was ‘divided’ in two, the Tarquins had to be doubled.Footnote ³⁰

Erich Burck offered very original insights by analysing Livy’s narrative skills. With Horatius, while Dionysius emphasised his danger, Livy stressed his character: audacia, constantia, obstinatio, pietas, and virtus. Burck’s main attention, however, was devoted to Mucius. Livy and Dionysius narrate his deed and the consuls’ attack in opposite order, so that Mucius’ motivation is entirely different, as are his reasons for informing the senate.Footnote ³¹

In one of the classic histories of Rome, Max Cary stated simply that ‘it hardly admits of doubt that Rome fell back for a moment into servitude’. He also accepted Cortsen’s idea that Porsenna was a title.Footnote ³²

Emmanuele Ciaceri undertook another rare and spirited defence of the tradition. He accepted that Porsenna was connected with the fall of the monarchy (although the chronology does not fit): he was not called in by the Tarquins. Horatius was a real person: the Romans were not so stupid that they could not distinguish the statue of a one-eyed man from that of a Cyclops. ‘Nothing in his story is not worthy of belief’. Nor was Cloelia a deity. As for Mucius, he belonged to an early patrician branch of the family identified by the praenomen Gaius. His story was not flattering to the Romans. Ciaceri admitted that Porsenna brought Rome to terms, but claimed perversely that the symbols of kingship given to him (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.35.1) related not to Rome but to Clusium and the clause in Pliny’s treaty about iron related to the mines of Elba. He repeated Homo’s archaeological evidence. Ciaceri ended weakly: he was not sure of Porsenna’s aims, but he was not concerned either to restore the Tarquins or to take power himself.Footnote ³³

Massimo Pallottino began his magisterial contributions to Etruscology in 1942 with the first edition of his Etruscologia. The vital Etruscan context was provided. Following Vulci, in the sixth century Clusium became the dominant Etruscan city. Porsenna was the title purthne. Footnote ³⁴ Three years later another master put the early history of Rome on an entirely new footing. Santo Mazzarino for the first time established that there existed an Italian cultural koine in the sixth century. He also accepted that Porsenna was the title purthne. And for the first time real archaeological evidence was brought to bear. A cippus of c. 520 BC from Clusium showed the magistrates, one with sceptre (purthne), and two others with a lituus each: the old lucumo (king) had been succeeded by another office held for life (presumably elected). Rome came under the ‘protectorate’ of Porsenna; this was the time when the magister populi existed at Rome.Footnote ³⁵

It was not until 1953 that the article on Porsenna himself appeared in Pauly-Wissowa, by Walter Ehlers.Footnote ³⁶ It was a revisionist account. He was king of Clusium: the tradition is ‘unquestionable’. If he had greater power, it was not formal, but like that of Vibenna and Macstarna. He was a traditional Etruscan king, as shown by his magic powers (Plin. HN 2.140). The true chronology is 508 BC, not 507, with Valerius and Lucretius the soul of the defence. There is no doubt of the conquest: Cloelia was not a hostage but a captive (Virg. Aen. 8.651). Her escape was a furtum (Livy 9.11.6); Valeria was an intruder. The grant of triumphal ornaments (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.35.1) is a ‘grotesque anachronism’, but Porsenna may have held a triumph, and the games (Serv. ad Aen. 11.134) may be an ‘historical reminiscence’. The Roman explanations of the terms offered (his impotence and admiration for Mucius) are a ‘shocking correction of the true situation’. The Romans rejected the restoration, but appointed Porsenna as arbitrator (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.32.2). The story ends in reconciliation, with ‘Porsenna’s generosity and Roman gratitude’. Ehlers firmly rejected this. Porsenna began as an ‘arrogant despot’ and remained Rome’s ‘irreconcilable enemy’ (disregard Plutarch!).

In the same year there began to appear the mighty but ill-fated archaeological compendium on early Rome by Einar Gjerstad. He claimed that Porsenna captured Rome on his way to attack Cumae in 508 BC as ‘supreme military commander’. His domination lasted only one or two years before he was forced to retreat to Etruria after the defeat at Aricia. This, it must be understood, according to Gjerstad’s revised (shortened) chronology, was an interlude in the reign of Tarquin I.Footnote ³⁷ Sixteen years later, however, Gjerstad offered one of the best contributions on this subject. The stories about Porsenna were the product of the second century BC, reflecting the late third century walls of Rome, which did not circle it on the Tiber side, the Mucii consuls of 175 and 174 BC, and Cloelius who was rex sacrorum in 180 BC. Rome and Aricia ‘were only stages on the route to Cumae’, to avenge the defeat of 524 BC. The absurd idea of the Latins helping restore the Tarquins was modelled on Hippias being helped by Sparta (Hdt. 5.91-94) and the Persians (5.96). The original version of Mucius’ story was that of Dionysius, which knew nothing of the burning of his hand, and the arae Muciae should be arvae muciae (watery fields).Footnote ³⁸

The first serious commentary on Polybius, by Frank Walbank, began to appear in 1957. He stressed the paradox that the earliest extant version of the Horatius story has no historical context. His most important observation was that ‘since we know nothing of the appearance of the Volcanal statue, it seems very hazardous to use its features to explain the legend’ and ‘parallels with Norse or Indian mythology must remain arbitrary because of the gap in time and space.’Footnote ³⁹

A sequel to Cortsen’s study on Etruscan magistracy was provided by Roger Lambrechts. He accepted Mazzarino’s discovery of cippi showing the purthne and zilath. The former was the higher rank, because it appeared much less frequently in inscriptions. Porsenna was this title.Footnote ⁴⁰

Another famous Etruscologist, Jacques Heurgon, accepted the claims of many classical sources: Porsenna was king of Clusium, ‘whom the common peril had elevated to the rank of federal king of all the nation’. If the fasti are accepted, then the first consuls were probably ‘merely prefects of Porsenna’. The real source was Fabius Pictor, the earliest annalist. No fragments of his relate to Porsenna, but Heurgon overlooked strong supporting evidence: the interest of the Fabii in Etruria.Footnote ⁴¹ Heurgon returned briefly to the subject in his history of early Rome. ‘No one now doubts that Porsenna captured Rome’. Rome was to be the base for the Etruscan struggle against the Latins, led by Tusculum and Aricia. Porsenna was not king in Rome, but established a ‘protectorate’.Footnote ⁴²

A most revolutionary study of the early Republic was offered by Robert Werner. It was paradoxical then that he retold the ‘saga’, noting only the disagreement about peace (Livy 2.13.2, 4) or truce (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.32.4) when Porsenna offered terms. He pointed out that the city was defended not by the Servian army but the heroism of individuals, as at Lake Regillus in the 490s BC. Other points had already been made: Horatius and Alba Longa, and doublets with the war of 477-476 BC; Mucius and his family’s consulates in 220 or 175 BC; and that Cloelia had rendered the state no service. The chronology of the war, he claimed, did not suit the early Republic. The story was a memory of the establishment of the Etruscan monarchy in Rome in the early or mid-sixth century. Porsenna was the leader of the Etruscan ‘dodekarchy’. He played no part in the story of Arruns, but the date of the battle of Aricia (505/4 BC) is guaranteed, being given by Dionysius in two forms (5.36.1, 7.5.1). Rome was still under the Tarquins. The key to all this was Werner’s theory that the monarchy did not fall until c. 470 BC (a calculation based on his notorious manipulation of the fasti).Footnote ⁴³

Another Etruscan study by Emeline Richardson emphasised a positive view of the king: ‘a model of chivalry and generosity’ (following Plutarch). That Horatius perished with the bridge is suggested by his statue, usually in honour of a dead hero (she compared that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton).Footnote ⁴⁴

Andreas Alföldi’s Jerome lectures (1961) resulted in a classic. His fundamental contribution was his stress on the so-called ‘Cymean chronicle’ as a source independent of the annalists.Footnote ⁴⁵ This confirmed Porsenna’s victory, which those annalists tried to cloak with ‘romantic embellishments’. He roundly declared that Porsenna never supported the Tarquins: they belonged to opposing groups; he was allied to the Romans, and in fact sought help from them. Alföldi suggested that Larcius and Herminius were Etruscans, his ‘confidants’. Porsenna liberated Rome from the Tarquins, but the chronology had to be adjusted: the flight of the Tarquins was 505 BC, the battle of Aricia 504 BC.Footnote ⁴⁶

Robert Ogilvie provided the epoch-making commentary on the first five books of Livy. He acutely identified the trajectory of the historiography: Porsenna ‘from being a ruthless foe is turned into a sentimental king with an admiration for Roman virtues which passes into friendship’. He provided answers to many problems. The statue of Horatius cannot be him: such monuments to the living are later than 400 BC (Plin. HN 34.17). Scaevola was a Greek name if it was to mean ‘left-handed’. The first historical Scaevola was the praetor 215 BC. On his earlier cognomen, Dionysius gives Cordus, Athenodorus (ap. Plut. Popl. 17.5) Opsigonus (‘late born’). This is not Postumus (after the father’s death), but Cordus (Plin. HN 8.187), which Ogilvie agreed might be a corruption of Codrus. The burning of his hand was his punishment for perjury. The statue thought to be that of Cloelia was probably that of Venus. On the bona Porsennae, Livy was contradictory; Ogilvie preferred Plutarch. A new and fundamental question was raised: how long did the peace last? The first signs of independence came under Sp. Cassius (cos. 502, 493, and 486 BC): ‘For ten years or so [sic] Rome collaborated with Porsenna.’Footnote ⁴⁷ Ogilvie returned to the episode a decade later and described it rather differently as ‘a short-lived adventure – and so too discreditable to leave a permanent mark in Roman history’ (what of the bona Porsennae?). The facts, however, are ‘relatively secure’. Porsenna’s name may be the title purthne. His motives are best shown by Arruns’ ambitions. The three heroes are ‘the merest folktale’. Porsenna captured Rome and set up a puppet government.Footnote ⁴⁸

Michael Grant significantly included Porsenna in his study of Roman myth. The story went back to Fabius Pictor, he suggested, because of that family’s connection with Etruria. Pliny and Tacitus ‘learnt somewhere’ (!) of the conquest, which ‘should probably be accepted as historical’. In that case, Grant stated, for the first time a king has to be added to the Roman list. He may have helped overthrow the Tarquins: he obviously did not help them, since they took refuge at Cumae. Horatius he identified as Vulcan. Mucius burnt his hand as a punishment for his perjury. The idea that the king’s secretary could be mistaken for the king is Hellenistic, but there are also elements from king Codrus (Lyc. Isoc. 84-87), hence the cognomen Cordus. Grant accepted the story as fixed by the late third century – because of Scaevola, the praetor of 215 BC. As for Cloelia, Grant alone saw that her freeing of the young hostages was simply to score a moral point against the pederastic Etruscans.Footnote ⁴⁹

Jean Gagé offered a highly impressionistic and positive analysis of Porsenna, relying on a careful choice of sources. He began by positing a split amongst the Etruscans; that is among the dynasts relying on Veii and military force, Porsenna, who was more interested in commercial control of Campania, and the Etruscans in Rome in the vicus Tuscus since the time of the Vibennae. Much was made of the king’s modesty in the camp scene, when he was surrounded by his council, to the point where Mucius could not identify him. Gagé also emphasised his sending legates to negotiate, during which truce they competed in games at Rome (only Serv. ad Aen. 11.134). He suggested contamination with the four ambassadors to Fidenae in 438, because one was a Cloelius (Livy 4.17). Respect for Porsenna was shown by the hospitium to the wounded from Aricia, his statue (only Plutarch), and the sale of his property (not, contra Ehlers, a proof that he was an enemy, but the opposite). In sum, Porsenna observed the ius gentium.Footnote ⁵⁰ A further contribution appeared in Gagé’s account of the beginning of the Republic. He declared the alliance of the Tarquins and Porsenna one of the most ‘arbitrary’ in the Roman tradition. Gagé still mistranslated Mucius’ cognomen as Postumus and suggested that the family were Volscian (no evidence offered), but that contradicted the fact that the prata Mucia and arae Muciae were across the Tiber, which proved that the war ended in Rome’s favour! The story of the vicus Tuscus concealed an emigration from Aricia. Porsenna was indeed the ‘enigmatic monarch’.Footnote ⁵¹ Gagé returned to Porsenna’s hostages a decade later, and offered a metaphorical reading. There had been a ‘progressive transformation’ of privileges for trade granted to a neighbouring people, either residing in Rome or over the river, into an adventure story, which simply concerned crossing the river.Footnote ⁵² Porsenna had fallen victim to the postmodernists.

New perspectives were provided in the 1970s. A fine volume on the Etruscan cities put Porsenna in context. The heyday of Clusium was 500-300 BC. The culture of the city contemporaneous with Porsenna was shown by the tombs at Poggio Rienzo (the ‘Tomb of the Monkey’ c. 500 BC). It also had a flourishing school of painting, and was famous for funerary urns decorated with relief.Footnote ⁵³ Further context was provided by another Etruscologist, Alain Hus, who described the tombs at Clusium (Etr. Clensin): a ziro, because the funerary urn was enclosed in a large terracotta jar (ziro) (seventh-early sixth century), then the chamber tombs (c. 600 BC). Clusium became the main producer of relief sculpture (cippi). There were large imports of Black Figure ware via Vulci 560-480 BC. Porsenna was perhaps a ‘tyrant’ of the well-known Greek type. He represented the last of the three Etruscan cities to dominate Rome, after Tarquinii and Vulci. The three heroes of the Roman resistance were summarily dismissed as ‘doubtless mythical’.Footnote ⁵⁴

In 1975 there finally appeared an article with a focus which one might have imagined would have been the subject of investigation long ago: the consequences of the surrender of Rome to Porsenna, by Maria Luisa Scevola (sic). The reader’s disappointment is palpable. It is a rambling treatment from the monarchy to 366 BC. Its main conclusions are that Porsenna is to be inserted into the overlong history of the monarchy, and after the deditio, his ‘hegemony’ lasted until between 496 and 493 BC! The treaty with him introduced the Republic.Footnote ⁵⁵

Another archaeological reference to the story was suggested by Giovanni Colonna, who drew attention to the Chiusi relief (c. 475 BC), now in Palermo, which showed two magistrates with a lituus each and a scribe. Some imagination, however, was needed. If, Colonna mused, we replace the magistrates with a king (!), we have precisely the scene described by Livy in the Mucius episode.Footnote ⁵⁶ Apart from the transpositions, there is a fatal flaw: the magistrates and scribe are dressed and posed totally differently, so that Mucius could not possibly have mistaken the scribe for the king (one with a staff of office, the other with a board). Another archaeological offering was made by German Hafner, who identified a marble head in the villa San Michele on Capri as Porsenna, rather than as Odysseus. He wears not a pilos helmet, but an Italian one with a concave rim, like the one dedicated by Hieron at Olympia from booty from Cumae (474). Hafner admitted that his view was ‘astounding’. He added two urns from Perugia,Footnote ⁵⁷ admittedly second century BC in date, showing Porsenna sacrificing a monster (Olta) (compare Plin. HN 2.140). Porsenna, he concluded, was ‘linked to Rome as no other Etruscan’.Footnote ⁵⁸

Mario Torelli, in his classic history of the Etruscans, showed the vast area controlled by Clusium in the sixth and fifth centuries. As well as importing Attic Black Figure ware, there was a flourishing local bucchero production. He emphasised the invasion of Campania (524 BC) and the attack on Aricia (504 BC), but barely mentioned Rome.Footnote ⁵⁹ Mario Cristofani in his indispensable dictionary identified the Etruscan form of Porsenna’s name as Pursiena; it could not, therefore, be purthne. He accepted that he also ruled over Volsinii (Plin. HN 2.140). He referred to ‘some moderns’ who thought that he ruled over Rome ‘for some years’. His story was part of the movement of Etruscan condottieri on Rome and Campania. The Romans remembered especially his wealth (the camp). The war ended in peace: he restored freedom to Rome, they ‘restored’ his insignia (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.35.1)Footnote ⁶⁰ – but how had they obtained them?

A detailed specialist study of Porsenna was offered by Elio Dovere. He first dismissed any connection of Porsenna with the Tarquins: his intervention was ‘absolutely autonomous’. And he came not to be integrated, as the other kings, but to control. Rome was the vital transit point between Etruria and Campania, and Porsenna had a ‘vast programme of central-southern Italian expansion’. The deditio depended on Etruscan groups in Rome – but Dovere is erratic in defining them. He also made much of Sp. Lucretius as praefectus urbi (Polyb. 3.22.1, Livy 1.59.12, Tac. Ann. 6.11) and then consul (509 BC) as a mediator between Porsenna and the Roman aristocracy. The end of the siege was a foedus iniquum, which perhaps included the cession of the vicus Tuscus. The first treaty with Carthage makes sense in this context. The turn to ‘unexpected kindness’ after Aricia is credible: Rome was in chaos, Porsenna was defeated. He returned the septem pagi and the hostages, and departed. Dovere put great stress on the Etruscan names in the early fasti. In total contradiction to the annalistic tradition, Rome’s internal history for the first time was under foreign control: Dovere suggested that Porsenna was vital in the revolution which replaced the king, who was approved by the curiae, with the magister, who was chosen by the centuries in the Campus.Footnote ⁶¹ He seems to date Porsenna’s rule 509-504 BC.

The vital evidence of the Clusium reliefs was finally addressed systematically by Jean-René Jannot. He asked whether the Romans’ calling Porsenna rex was simply a way of exciting odium, but the Roman and Greek sources called him both king of Clusium and of the Etruscans. Jannot dated the war 509-508 BC and suggested that Porsenna left the same year, but also claimed that nothing prevented his governing Rome through magistrates (but did not specify for how long). The basic question Jannot raised was whether the aristocracy of Clusium participated in this war. He noted the absence of military motifs in funerary reliefs 520-470 BC, but his most interesting contribution was that the famous scene of the secretary paying the soldiers suggests that Porsenna used mercenaries.Footnote ⁶² Four years later Jannot studied the history of inland Etruria to elucidate the power of Porsenna. He was king of Clusium and also of Volsinii (note TLE 233), but not Veii. He was head of a ‘symmachy’ of central Etruria. He was not a condottiere, unlike Servius Tullius. Jannot stressed that the annalists were ‘never fundamentally hostile’ to him: they told of his honours to Mucius and Cloelia. He stressed that Arruns took only part of the army with him to Aricia (Livy 2.14.5 [add Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.36.1: half the army]), so the defeat was not vital.Footnote ⁶³

The small but active group of Japanese classical scholars made a significant contribution in the person of Ryuichi Hirata. He began by listing no fewer than six modern identifications of Porsenna: the king of Clusium, the head of the Etruscan League, the king of Veii, Macstarna, a purthne, and a condottiere. He noted ironically that had Porsenna been king of all Etruria he would hardly have failed to capture Rome! He could not be king of Veii since he returned the septem pagi to Rome. The inscription mentioning epurthne macstreve (TLE 195) has nothing to do with personal names (Hirata misunderstood). He rejected the purthne connection: there is no ‘s’. The three heroic tableaux originally, he claimed, had nothing to do with Porsenna. Hirata dated the war after the dedication of the Capitoline temple (Sept. 507 BC). Porsenna had withdrawn after Rome’s surrender and now had to relinquish control after the defeat at Aricia (504 BC). In his view, however, his victory had meant the abolition of the Republic (Heurgon’s view of a kind of ‘protectorate’ was declared ‘incredible’): this is why his victory had to be concealed. As for the vicus Tuscus, it was for Hirata ‘unthinkable’ that Rome accepted refugees from Aricia (Livy 2.14.8): rather they were left over from Porsenna’s camp within the city. Porsenna was not a tyrant, because he had a council (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.30.1, 5.31.2) and the army formed an assembly (5.31.1, 5.34.1). Both Rome and Porsenna had suffered severely, so finally an agreement was reached and the Republic was restored.Footnote ⁶⁴

Aurelio Bernardi included Porsenna among the kings of Rome. He accepted that his name was the title purthne. He stressed that Rome was not present at the battle of Aricia, but that Porsenna was not heard of after that.Footnote ⁶⁵

The long-awaited second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History appeared for early Rome in 1989. Porsenna was mentioned in a number of chapters. This makes a coherent account impossible: no fewer than three writers discussed him. Arnaldo Momigliano stated that Porsenna did not rule for long. It is uncertain whether the first consuls were elected before he took control. He was ‘eliminated’ by an alliance of the Latins and Aristodemus, and the Romans tried to hide the shame of being liberated by the last two. Andrew Drummond rejected ‘the attractive modern conjecture that it was in fact Porsenna’s seizure and subsequent abandonment of Rome which opened the way to aristocratic government’ because it failed to illuminate the ‘more fundamental factors’. Timothy Cornell saw the tradition as a ‘romantic story’, but the expedition of Porsenna was ‘almost certainly authentic’, and his control of Rome is shown by the refuge given to his army in 504 BC. His sojourn in Rome ‘cannot have lasted long’, but it ‘was partly responsible’ for the fall of the Tarquins. The idea that the Etruscan wanted a land route to Campania is a ‘modern myth’.Footnote ⁶⁶ One is struck by the constant qualifications.

One of Pallottino’s last contributions was his study of early Rome. He explicitly detached the ‘episode’ of Porsenna from the institution of the Republic, which was a much more complex event; he dated the end of the monarchy to 509-485 BC. Porsenna’s name was not a title (contradicting his earlier view). The unanimous tradition made him king of Clusium, but also of Volsinii. There was a powerful organisation of Etruria from Valdichiana to the Tiber. The authenticity of the expedition could not be doubted. Rome’s economic and cultural development under the last kings made her very attractive. Other Etruscans, such as the Vibennae, had shown the way. The objectives of Porsenna and Tarquin were very different: the former sought to control the Latins (surely this was also true of the Tarquins?), who were supported by Cumae; perhaps this was part of the vast conflict between the Greek west and the Etruscans and Carthaginians. Pallottino accepted the large part played also by Valerius in this war. The victory at Aricia was not very important in Latium or Etruria (Pallottino followed Jannot in this evaluation), but restored Aristodemus to power and increased Greek influence in Rome. The latter was disarmed and did not take part in these wars, but provided a retreat for the Etruscan troops; Porsenna perhaps remained in Etruria. Valerius was perhaps the man who managed Rome’s submission. The myths and legends surrounding Porsenna, he asserted most importantly, were formed as early as the fifth and fourth centuries.Footnote ⁶⁷

Gary Forsythe began his important contributions with his edition of Piso. Forsythe dated Porsenna’s capture of Rome to 509 BC, Varr.=505/4 BC. He thus overthrew the monarchy, and the first consuls were appointed by him. The annalists moved the date of the siege down to 507 BC to fit in Lucretia and the three heroes. The notes in the annales maximi on the statue of Horatius he dated to c. 300 BC. On Mucius, he remarked wickedly that there were many one-handed men in Rome, citing the Valerii Laevinii and Sergius (Plin. HN 7.104-106). As for Cloelia, the earliest equestrian statue was that of Marcius Tremulus cos. 306 BC (Plin. HN 34.23). Her statue was really Vica Pota, a kind of Victory.Footnote ⁶⁸ Further comments are found in Forsythe’s later ‘critical history’ of Rome. Horatius and Mucius, ‘it is certain’, are not historical figures, but ‘historicized folktales in which a one-eyed, one-handed or one-legged man saves his people’. The story of Scaevola, like Ahala, was simply to explain his cognomen. Porsenna captured Rome and the first consuls, Brutus and Collatinus, were governors for him, but he withdrew after Aricia: his control is dated therefore 509-504 BC. The vicus Tuscus was so named because it ran down to the river facing Etruria!Footnote ⁶⁹

Timothy Cornell’s main discussion can be found in his substantial, avowedly traditionalist, volume on early Rome. He stressed possible oral sources. That Porsenna abolished the monarchy was ‘plausible’, following a power struggle within the royal family after the fall of Tarquin. Cornell accepted opposing alliances: Rome and Porsenna against the Tarquins, Mamilius, the Latins and Cumae.Footnote ⁷⁰

Marta Sordi asserted that Porsenna was head of the Etruscan league, in which Clusium was the most important member at the end of the sixth century. Like Pallottino, she described sources which have not come down to us. The oldest (sic) Roman tradition showed Porsenna as an oppressive enemy, but in the fourth century (sic) legends of the three heroes he becomes courteous, chivalrous and generous. Livy’s explanation of the bona Porsennae depends, indeed, on Rome’s relations with Clusium in the 380s BC.Footnote ⁷¹

Jacques Poucet in his study of the Roman kings emphasised one point: Porsenna acted on his own account; the Tarquins would never have taken refuge at Cumae had he been helping them (note the Cumaean chronicle). He also accepted the trio of Etruscan cities which dominated Rome in turn: Tarquinii, Vulci and Clusium.Footnote ⁷²

Giovannangelo Camporeale asserted flatly that Porsenna was a tyrant – but this was not proved by his simply listing the names of many others. He would grant him power, however, over only Clusium and Volsinii – unless this was a duplication. He noted the Etruscan names in the fasti during the time of the war. Since Lucumo (the future L. Tarquinius Priscus) changed his title (lucumo) into a name (Lucius), why should Porsenna’s name also not be a title?Footnote ⁷³

M. Di Fazio tried to put Porsenna into context: changing political, military, economic, and social conditions. The Greek and Roman sources naturally called him ‘king’, but he was a tyrannos, challenging the old aristocracy, and relying on the people and mercenary troops; it is not, however, convincing to use three words of a Livian speech (2.10.8) to uphold this! The key to the expedition was commercial links with Campania. Di Fazio devotes much attention to explaining Mucius’ mistake, forgetting the requirements of the legend: Mucius must kill someone to gain his cognomen, but Porsenna is required to survive for subsequent episodes!Footnote ⁷⁴

Luciana Aigner-Foresti suggested that Rome and Campania were of special interest to inland Clusium. That Rome accepted Etruscan refugees (Livy 2.14.9, Dion. Hal. Ant Rom. 5.36.3) was a demonstration of Roman kindness. Porsenna returned to Clusium after Aricia.Footnote ⁷⁵

Guido Migliorati placed Porsenna in the context of Etruscan control of Rome. He boldly declared that Porsenna was zilath purthne of Chiusi, and head of the Etruscan league. It was ‘not improbable’ that he had reason to help the Tarquins, but he acted essentially for the league to preserve the connection between Etruria and Campania – which lasted until 474 BC. On the vital question of the transition to the Republic, Porsenna favoured it, ‘even involuntarily’, as shown by the ‘Romanized Etruscans’ in the ruling class at the time.Footnote ⁷⁶

The long-awaited new edition of Pauly-Wissowa contains an article on Porsenna by Walter Eder. He quoted eight ancient sources and two modern: Alföldi and Cornell. He characterised Porsenna as a condottiere who drove out Tarquin, perhaps in agreement with the Roman upper class, but who then turned the success to his own purposes. He was thus an eighth king, and was succeeded by Arruns (but obviously not for long).Footnote ⁷⁷

Jorge Martínez-Pinna has more recently attempted to assert exaggeration in Etruscan sources, which may have misled Pliny and Tacitus. He has downgraded Clusium to a ‘small ruralised city of inland Etruria’. Into the power vacuum at Rome on the fall of the Tarquins stepped Porsenna, the ‘chief of an armed band’ made up of mercenaries, conducting ‘a private enterprise’, aimed only at booty and glory, but which was supported by a Roman faction. He was indeed repulsed. The evidence: the bona Porsennae!Footnote ⁷⁸ History is not reconstructed by simply choosing the source which suits you.

Drawing the Threads Together

The recognition that Rome surrendered to Porsenna goes back to Dempster (1723) and de Beaufort (1738), and has been accepted by almost every modern commentator ever since. It was already de Beaufort who asked the crucial question: where did Tacitus find that Rome surrendered? Pliny already had the treaty.Footnote ⁷⁹ De Beaufort also knew that alternative versions dropped clues pointing in the same direction (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.35.1: symbols of rule; Plut. Popl. 19.10: a statue). Schwegler rightly added the giving of hostages.

Who was Porsenna? The ancient sources oscillate between king of Clusium (Clevsin) (Livy 2.9.1, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.21.1) and king of the Etruscans (Flor. 1.4, Plut. Mor. 305E). Some moderns join Volsinii with Clusium (Pallottino, Jannot, Camporeale). Modern research has resolved this apparent contradiction. Clusium was the leading city of Etruria by the late sixth century BC (Pallottino, Hus, Torelli), a flourishing centre of art, especially for the cippus with relief and bucchero ware, and a leading importer of Greek vases. Others have gone further: he was overlord of Etruria (Schwegler), king of an Etruscan league (Heurgon, Sordi, Migliorati), or head of a ‘symmachy’ of central Etruria (Jannot), ‘the most powerful king in all Italy at that time’ (Dempster). How ironic that those who reject this view state that if that were the case he would have captured Rome!

Was his name a misunderstanding of an Etruscan office: Schwegler suggested it meant ‘king’. More recently, many have thought that it concealed the office of purthne (Cortsen, Pallottino – although he later changed his mind – Lambrechts, Camporeale, Cary, Mazzarino, Ogilvie, Bernardi); Cristofani and Hirata denied it. Di Fazio defined him as a tyrannos.

Is Porsenna another name for someone else? Ihne suggested Mezentius, De Sanctis and Pareti identified him with Macstarna. These theories are unnecessary and not convincing and have not been accepted. Suffice it to say, Porsenna has almost universally been accepted as an historical figure. A notable exception is Ihne: utterly mythical (!) or the whole episode is a metaphor for trade with Etruria (Gagé).

Some have made much of details in the legend. Gagé stressed Porsenna’s ‘modesty’, as shown by Mucius’ mistaking his secretary for him, and his upholding of the ius gentium. Hirata laid great emphasis on Dionysius showing a king’s council and his army meeting in assembly. He was anything but an ‘arrogant despot’ (Ehlers) or a tyrant (Camporeale). Jannot saw another significant point: the secretary was paying the troops, suggesting that they were mercenaries (followed by Di Fazio).

Motives: there is no modern commentator who accepts the traditional view that Porsenna was called in to restore the Tarquins (Livy 2.9.1-4, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.21.1): one of the ‘most arbitrary’ alliances in the Roman tradition (Gagé). Were there any alternative motives? Dionysius offered another: his own ambition, long dreamed of, to overthrow Rome (5.21.2). This was preferred by Dempster, de Beaufort and Poucet. A more modern deduction is access to Campania (Schwegler, Mommsen,Footnote ⁸⁰ Gjerstad, Ogilvie, Gagé, Buzzi, Dovere, Di Fazio, Migliorati – emphatically rejected by Cornell), or more modestly only central Italy (Shuckburgh), or control of the Latins (Pallottino).

The greatest modern controversy rages over the chronology of Porsenna, He is dated to c. 575-550 BC (Werner), to the time of Tarquin I (Gjerstad), to the late monarchy (Ihne), before 510 BC (Last), 509-508 BC (Jannot), 509(?)-504 BC (Dovere, Forsythe), 508-507 BC (Sigonio, Dempster), 508/7-506 BC (Pais), 507-504 BC (Hirata), 505-504 BC (Alföldi), 504 BC (De Sanctis, Homo). The battle of Aricia (504 BC), from the Cumaean chronicle, ‘discovered’ by Alföldi, has usually been seen as the terminus. The crucial point is that the Romans were absent (De Sanctis). The importance of this battle (going back to de Beaufort) has, however, by some been much downplayed, because Livy and Dionysius specify that only part of Porsenna’s army was involved (Jannot, Pallottino). Porsenna’s son Arruns (totally disassociated from him by Werner) was defeated and killed. Porsenna is heard of no more.

When did Porsenna return to Clusium? After the ‘peace’ with Rome (Niebuhr, Jannot); after the battle of Aricia (de Beaufort, Cary, Gjerstad, Aigner-Foresti, and Forsythe). As for his ultimate fate, no one hazards a guess.

Most modern accounts go so far, demonstrating their critical faculties by accepting that Rome surrendered to Porsenna. The fundamental question is obvious, but mostly neglected: what were the repercussions of that?

The obvious attraction of linking him with other Etruscan leaders in Rome such as the Vibennae and Macstarna suggests that he also was a condottiere (Cristofani, Eder), but his position is obviously not that (Jannot). He was king of Rome: the eighth (Eder, Grant). In this case, how do we fit in the fasti? He exercised a ‘protectorate’ (Mazzarino, Heurgon, in effect Jannot); the first consuls were his ‘prefects’ (Heurgon), the Etruscans Larcius and Herminius (cos. 506 BC) were his ‘confidants’ (Alföldi), the magistrates of these years were a puppet government and his control lasted for ten years, until Sp. Cassius (Ogilvie); even Brutus and Collatinus were governors for Porsenna (Forsythe). This meant the end of the Republic for three years, Hirata protested. We have, however, a neat parallel: the archons continued under the tyrant Peisistratus in Athens, but were chosen by him (Thuc. 6.54). It is Dovere who went furthest: he stressed the fragility of the new regime following 510 BC, with jockeying among the Tarquins (Collatinus), dangerous individuals like Valerius, and leaders with Etruscan connections (Lucretii, Cominii, Larcii, Verginii, Herminii), and the turn to the timocratic Servian army under its magister (this is the meaning of Livy 1.60.3), which had been eclipsed under Tarquin II.

Was Porsenna, indeed, responsible for the overthrow of the monarchy? This has been suggested or accepted by Meyer, Ciaceri, Forsythe, Eder and Dovere, but explicitly rejected by Pallottino. Migliorati would admit only an ‘involuntary’ favouring of the transition.

A clue seized upon by many modern scholars is the Etruscan names in the early fasti.Footnote ⁸¹ The families commonly accepted as Etruscan are the Aquilii, Cominii, Herminii, Larcii, Lucretii, Manlii, Verginii, and Volumnii.Footnote ⁸² Using this ‘Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth’, we find such names in 509 BC (Lucretius), 508 BC (Lucretius), 506 BC (Larcius and Herminius), 504 BC (Lucretius), 502 BC (Verginius) and 501 BC (Larcius and Cominius). There is, if we have identified Etruscan names accurately, a striking number of them, but there does not seem to be any pattern here.

Livy was puzzled about the meaning of the bona Porsennae (cf. Plut. Popl. 19.6, a memory of his kindness). The doubt has continued: he was always an enemy (Ehlers); this was a sign of respect (Gagé). Disagreement over the vicus Tuscus has similarly followed the ancient debate: it was established after the treaty (Hirata), or after Aricia (Gagé, Pallottino).

It is, of course, the three heroes who have attracted the greatest criticism from moderns. They have rarely been upheld (exceptions are Shuckburgh, Ciaceri; even Münzer for Horatius). The temptation to see them as springing from etymological and topographical needs – grossly misunderstood at that – is obvious: statues (Horatius and Cloelia) – about which, cautioned Walbank and Gagé, we know little – and cognomina (for Horatius and Mucius). Polybius declared roundly that Horatius drowned (6.55.3), and that is what would be expected, given his armour and wounds (de Beaufort, Niebuhr). Some noted the anomaly of the extent of the land grant: all the land one could plough around in a day, rather than the land one could plough in a day (Varro Rust. 1.10.1) (Niebuhr, Schwegler), and the statue for a living man (Richardson, Ogilvie). The doublets with the war with Alba and a war in 477 BC were noted by Niebuhr, Schwegler, and Pais. Desperate attempts were made to get Cloelia the swimmer onto a horse: so Porsenna gave her one (Lewis)! If Virgil’s unique account (Aen. 8.651, noted by Münzer) is correct, she was a captive, not a hostage (Ehlers). The statue does not, in any case, make sense: she had done no service for the state (Schwegler): the statue was Venus Cluilia/Cloacina. The fate of the hostages is quite contradictory (Lewis): were all restored (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.33.3), or all, save Valeria, killed (Plin. HN 34.29)? The most interesting case is Mucius: his original cognomen (Cordus), rarely recorded, his social status (de Beaufort already saw that the Cordi were patrician, the Scaevolae plebeian), and his cognomen Scaevola: left-handed in Greek – bizarre that this is omitted by Dionysius – but really an amulet (Varro Ling. 7.97), as Niebuhr, Schwegler and De Sanctis saw. He was originally a patrician called simply Gaius (Niebuhr). Only Dionysius affirmed that he spoke Etruscan (5.28.1), something which is assumed by all the sources.

As with the dates for Porsenna, when, however, we seek guidance on how early these stories originated, there is chaotic guesswork: epics and ballads (Niebuhr, De Sanctis, naturally); oral sources (Cornell); fifth-fourth century BC sources (Pallottino); third century BC (Ogilvie, Forsythe), for example, Fabius Pictor (Heurgon, Alföldi, Grant); Ennius (Münzer, Alföldi, Grant); second century BC for Mucius (Münzer, Werner); even late annalists (De Sanctis, Münzer)!

The stories themselves may be early: the defence of Rome centres not on the Servian army, but on three individuals (compare the single combat at Lake Regillus) (Werner). The more intriguing question is when Horatius, Mucius and Cloelia were connected with Porsenna. The surviving evidence of the republican sources shows how initially they could be disconnected, as independent examples of bravery. An important point is that none of the heroes is connected with the fasti (Last) – unless we accept Horatius as nephew of the consul of 509 and 507 BC. We must, indeed, go further: none of the three heroes has any existence outside the Porsenna story. The most important observation remains Schwegler’s: that the three tableaux have taken over the whole story of the siege, to conceal Rome’s submission.

In sum, recent scholarship has increasingly demonstrated the importance of Clusium, but debate rages over the position of Porsenna. A consensus seems ever firmer on the aims of his ‘expedition’. This ironically increasingly sidelines Rome, while at the same time, the most fascinating recent line of research is the repercussions for the infant Republic.