Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-07T10:14:30.873Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE ROMAN KINGS IN OROSIUS’ HISTORIAE ADVERSVM PAGANOS *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

Mattias Gassman
Mattias Gassman*
Affiliation:
Queens’ College, Cambridge
*
mattias.gassman@gmail.com
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

We are ruled by judges whom we know, we enjoy the benefits | Of peace and war, as if the warrior Quirinus, | As if peaceful Numa were governing (Claud. IV Cons. Hon. 491–3).

With these words the poet Claudian lauds the Emperor Honorius on the occasion of his fourth consulship in 398 by comparing him to Rome's deified founder, Romulus-Quirinus, and to Numa Pompilius, its second king, who was proverbial for wisdom and piety. Claudian's panegyric stands in a long literary tradition in which the legendary Roman kings were depicted as models of statesmanship. This exemplary tradition left its mark on a broad array of late antique works, including historical compendia such as the pseudo-Aurelian De uiris illustribus, which narrates the kings’ deeds as soldiers and statesmen, and the writings of antiquarians such as Macrobius and Servius, who collected information on the kings’ invention of cults and calendars. Servius’ interest in the kings implies that they featured in the teaching provided by other late antique grammatici as well, and thus that most literate Latin-speakers would have had some knowledge of their deeds. Advanced education in rhetoric likewise drew on Virgil and other school texts for historical exempla including Romulus and Numa, who appear in panegyrics and in brief histories, such as Eutropius’ Breviary, that probably served as reference texts for the political elite. The kings thus loomed large in Roman perceptions of the founding of their empire, which began with the heroic Romulus, was strengthened by Numa's establishment of the Roman cultic system, and was secured by the later kings’ political and military successes.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , December 2017 , pp. 617 - 630
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

1. INTRODUCTION: THE ROMAN KINGS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND OROSIUS’ HISTORIAE Footnote 1

We are ruled by judges whom we know, we enjoy the benefits | Of peace and war, as if the warrior Quirinus, | As if peaceful Numa were governing (Claud. IV Cons. Hon. 491–3).Footnote 2

With these words the poet Claudian lauds the Emperor Honorius on the occasion of his fourth consulship in 398 by comparing him to Rome's deified founder, Romulus-Quirinus, and to Numa Pompilius, its second king, who was proverbial for wisdom and piety.Footnote 3 Claudian's panegyric stands in a long literary tradition in which the legendary Roman kings were depicted as models of statesmanship.Footnote 4 This exemplary tradition left its mark on a broad array of late antique works, including historical compendia such as the pseudo-Aurelian De uiris illustribus, which narrates the kings’ deeds as soldiers and statesmen, and the writings of antiquarians such as Macrobius and Servius, who collected information on the kings’ invention of cults and calendars.Footnote 5 Servius’ interest in the kings implies that they featured in the teaching provided by other late antique grammatici as well, and thus that most literate Latin-speakers would have had some knowledge of their deeds.Footnote 6 Advanced education in rhetoric likewise drew on Virgil and other school texts for historical exempla including Romulus and Numa, who appear in panegyrics and in brief histories, such as Eutropius’ Breviary, that probably served as reference texts for the political elite.Footnote 7 The kings thus loomed large in Roman perceptions of the founding of their empire, which began with the heroic Romulus, was strengthened by Numa's establishment of the Roman cultic system, and was secured by the later kings’ political and military successes.

However, as the unusually developed pre-Romulean history of the pseudo-Aurelian Origo gentis Romanae shows, there was no one standard version of Rome's foundational period in late Imperial literature.Footnote 8 Christian writers took full advantage of the continued malleability of the regal period, reinterpreting the kings in their attacks on the pagan Roman past. The apologists, inverting the tropes of panegyric, accused Romulus of violence and perfidy, and charged Numa, the father of Roman religion, with deception and superstition.Footnote 9 The swift rise of Christian power and prestige over the course of the fourth century opened up new approaches to the regal period. Emboldened by Christianity's apparent victory over pagan cult, the poet Prudentius imagined the martyr Lawrence predicting the (figurative) conversion of the two most exemplary kings in his dying prayer: ‘Grant, O Christ, to your Romans that their city be Christian … Let Romulus join the faith, and Numa himself now believe.’Footnote 10 This bold request has been fulfilled, Prudentius implies, in his own day, when even pontifices are converted ‘and the Vestal, Claudia, enters your shrine, O Lawrence’ (Perist. 2.525–8).Footnote 11

The sack of Rome in 410 subjected such triumphalist assessments of the trajectory of Roman history to enormous pressure.Footnote 12 Until this point, Latin Christian writers had only dealt with the regal period piecemeal. Now Augustine, stirred by the challenges of those who blamed Christ for the fall of the City, used an extensive reappraisal of regal and Republican history to show what evils Rome and its empire had ‘endured before the advent of Christ’, and so prove that traditional cult had not secured the temporal goods for the loss of which pagans blamed Christ and his followers.Footnote 13 Augustine's account, which shows none of his own prior confidence in the Christianization of the empire,Footnote 14 is far more thorough in its treatment of the regal period than the brief jabs of his apologetic predecessors.Footnote 15 In order to destabilize pagan confidence in the power and goodwill of their gods, Augustine paints a systematically negative picture of Rome's foundational period. He treats all seven of the kings, but pays particular attention to the parallels between Virgil's Troy and early Rome, to Romulus’ murder of Remus and rape of the Sabines, to Numa's religious innovations and to Tullus Hostilius’ wars with Rome's mother city, Alba Longa (De civ. D. 3.3–6, 3.9–15). However, despite its thoroughness, Augustine's discussion of the kings is both explicitly theological in intent and set in a narrative that is intentionally limited to the early pre-Imperial phases of Roman history. Augustine neither showed how the Roman kings fit into the grand sweep of world history nor traced the succession of events down to the contemporary disasters that had shaken his readers’ minds, and so Christian revision of Roman history remained incomplete.

Augustine left the writing of a more comprehensive historical apology to his associate, a Spanish priest named Orosius. In response to Augustine's request, Orosius penned seven volumes of Historiae aduersum paganos.Footnote 16 Introduced by a worldwide geographical survey, Orosius’ work is an ambitious bid to recast the grand sweep of human history in Christian terms, and so put the present troubles of the Roman empire into proper historical and theological perspective.Footnote 17 As Orosius declares at the opening of the first book, his intention is to trace the record of human suffering and misfortune ‘from the foundation of the world to the foundation of the City, and then to the Principate of Caesar and the nativity of Christ, after which the rule of the world remained under the power of the City, and even to our day’ (1.1.14).Footnote 18 For Orosius, Christ's birth and the founding of the Roman empire by Augustus are the turning points in a history of human woe that began with the fall of Adam (1 prol. 9–16, 1.3.1–2).Footnote 19 ‘Death had reigned, greedy for blood’, before the revelation of the ‘true religion’, but, when Christ was born, the gates of Janus were closed ‘by God's ordaining’ and peace, Christ's ‘servant’, was established in a world subjected by the will of God to Roman dominion (1 prol. 14, 6.1.5–9, 6.22.5). Thus, though human suffering still continues, ‘Christian times’ are ‘nevertheless distinguished on account of the more fully present grace of Christ from the confusion of unbelief’ that went before (7.43.19).Footnote 20 The rise of Christianity is not to be blamed for Rome's plight but thanked for the leniency of the judgement that God has, in his ‘manifest mercy’, brought on the City's sins (2.3.5–10).

Embedded in Orosius’ Romanocentric world history are three distinct discussions of Rome's founding period, at 2.2, 2.4 and 6.1. These are briefer than Augustine's equally comprehensive narrative, yet Orosius’ treatment is no mere supplement to De ciuitate Dei: it is a distinctive and in some places highly original reconfiguration of the regal period. Whereas Augustine's narrative had hinged on the theological ramifications of the kings’ misdeeds, Orosius separates an explicit theological discussion of early Roman history (the focus of 2.2 and 6.1) from his main historical account in 2.4, where he focusses single-mindedly on the disastrous and immoral violence of Romulus and his successors. The kings, in Orosius’ hands, have become characters within an intentionally Christian reinterpretation of the history of the Roman world.

Despite the uniqueness of Orosius’ account of the regal period, it has, with much of his later narrative, been largely neglected.Footnote 21 Orosius’ Historiae, which survives in some 275 manuscripts from the sixth to the seventeenth centuries, exercised a profound influence over Latin late antique and mediaeval approaches to history.Footnote 22 In the fifth century he was praised by Quodvultdeus of Carthage for his historical learning, and was ranked by Sidonius Apollinaris among the ‘sacrosanct fathers’ whose literary authority could be invoked alongside the classical canon (Quodvultdeus, Liber promissionum 2.34.74, Sid. Apoll. Epist. 4.3.7). Modern judgements have not been so kind. To contemporary scholars, Orosius’ account has often seemed inadequate as history and theologically inferior to Augustine's magnum opus.Footnote 23 As Robert Markus put it, ‘Even [Augustine's] own disciple, Orosius, … had wholly failed to understand his master's mind.’Footnote 24 However, as Peter Van Nuffelen has recently demonstrated, Orosius should be viewed not as a failed imitator of Augustine but instead as an active contributor to the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition.Footnote 25 Van Nuffelen's monograph invites further attention to Orosius’ narrative, as well as his theology,Footnote 26 and has thus, in concert with other recent studies of Orosius as historian and Christian thinker, cleared the path for closer analysis of the Historiae in all its complexity and originality.Footnote 27

This paper will provide a case study in Orosius’ historical method through analysis of one particularly important classical theme: the Roman regal period. Van Nuffelen has emphasized the rhetorical quality of Orosius’ Historiae and shown, for several key passages, how his apologetic history adapts classical historiographical techniques to new Christian purposes.Footnote 28 As I aim to show, Orosius’ treatment of the kings reveals a particularly strong interplay between Christian literary aims and classicizing historical method. Each of Orosius’ three contrasting depictions of the regal period advances, in a different rhetorical and narrative context, his fundamental apologetic claim: that the predestining power of the one God is the cause both of Rome's rise and of its sack by the Goths. Orosius’ free adaptation of the myth of Romulus has a thoroughly classical precedent in Cicero's repeated revisions of regal history, yet his apologetic aims lead him to adapt his account of the kings in highly innovative unclassical directions. Thus, he not only highlights the evils of past times—his stated intention (1 prol. 9–16, 2.3.9–10)—but also brings unprecedented, apparently invented features into his account, deviating so far from classical norms that he omits Numa from his main narrative altogether. Even in his rethinking of the regal period, therefore, in which he fits into a recognizably classical mould, Orosius remains, first and foremost, a religious polemicist, whose apologetic aims determine not only the language but also the content of his history.

2. STATESMANSHIP AND PARRICIDE: THE REGAL PERIOD IN CLASSICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

Orosius’ narrative interacts with a long tradition of literary and historical depictions of the Roman kings.Footnote 29 Romulus was an especially important (and especially malleable) figure, but the other kings also had an important exemplary role. At least as early as Cicero's De re publica, Roman authors depicted the kings as models of military virtue and statesmanship, downplaying their more unsavoury deeds. The first two kings, Romulus and Numa, served as complementary exempla of warlike and peaceful rulership. Like Livy after him, Cicero's protagonist, the younger Scipio, praises Romulus for his exploits as general and statesman, and suggests (though only equivocally) that he became a god (Cic. Rep. 2.4–22, 6.28; Livy 1.4–16). In both Cicero and Livy, Numa's pacific reign contrasts sharply with the bellicosity of his predecessor, while his establishment of numerous religious cults continues the march toward a fully developed Roman polity (Cic. Rep. 2.25–7, Livy 1.18–21). Livy sums up well: ‘Thus the two kings in turn enlarged the body-politic … the first by war, the second by peace’ (Livy 1.21.6). Cicero's dialogue, true to its title, focusses largely on the later kings’ contributions to Rome's civic and military institutions, but acknowledges their successes in warfare as well, to which Livy's history gives greater scope.Footnote 30 Virgil's Aeneid and Florus’ Epitome, Orosius’ main sources for the regal period, take a similar approach.Footnote 31 Virgil, despite his frank recognition of the violence of the regal period, underscores the harmony between Romulus and Remus, omits Remus’ death just as Cicero's Scipio had, and, like Livy, depicts Rome's foundation and rise to universal power as divinely fated. Florus, in turn, calls Romulus rex sapientissimus and praises even Tarquinius Superbus’ tyranny because it led to the establishment of the Republic.Footnote 32

As I have already indicated, the kings continued to feature as cultural heroes in a broad array of late antique works, including antiquarian literature like Macrobius’ Saturnalia, philosophical texts like the same author's commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, and historical compendia aimed at the new political elite.Footnote 33 On all of these the influence of the Ciceronian vision of the kings as model statesmen is clearly visible. Thus, Macrobius narrates how the kings developed the Roman calendar and praises Numa for uniting philosophy with the practical virtue that Romulus had displayed, while panegyrists such as Claudian and Themistius compare emperors to Rome's founder.Footnote 34 Historians, too, emphasized the kings’ civilizing statesmanship: Eutropius, to name one prominent example, uses both Numa and Romulus as political exempla for his addressee, the Emperor Valens, comparing them to Antoninus Pius and Trajan respectively, and stressing Romulus’ cooperation with the Senate.Footnote 35 Many late Imperial historians, Eutropius among them, also omit Remus’ death, even as Cicero and Virgil did, or give accounts less embarrassing to Romulus.Footnote 36 Thus, the average literate late antique Roman, educated on Virgilian commentary and perhaps exposed to the exemplary tradition through panegyrics or historical compendia, would have learned to view the first six kings as paragons of civic virtue, whose state was founded and raised to supreme power by fate, the Romans’ own military prowess and the favour of the gods.Footnote 37

This positive view of the regal period was not, however, the only one available to late antique authors or the classical predecessors upon whom they drew.Footnote 38 Even in De re publica 2, Cicero portrays Romulus’ reign from two different angles, each of which is designed to highlight a different aspect of regal statesmanship. Romulus first appears as a model of political prudence, whose most dubious action, the rape of the Sabines, was occasioned by the same foresight and concern for his citizens that determined his locating of the city and governed his conduct in war (Rep. 2.4–20, especially 12). Soon afterward, however, Cicero emphasizes the warlike ardour of the Romulean Romans, whose potentially deleterious effects he had thus far overlooked, and so accentuates the advantages brought by Numa's peacefulness (Rep. 2.25–7). The readers of De re publica thus receive in quick succession two subtly different, though complementary, pictures of Romulus, the first of which emphasizes his excellence as a statesman, the second the partial superiority of his successor.Footnote 39 This slight shift in Cicero's portrayal of Romulus hints at the sharper transformations that Rome's first king could undergo, as he does, several years later, in Cicero's De officiis. Here, Romulus appears in starkly altered guise: not as a wise statesman but as a parricide, whose crime remains whether he is considered to have been a man or—as Cicero's Scipio had implied—a god (Off. 3.41 peccauit igitur, pace uel Quirini uel Romuli dixerim; Rep. 6.28).

Cicero's initial glorification of Romulus was bound up with his experiments in the deification of statesmen,Footnote 40 while his eventual condemnation of the legendary first king appears to have been driven by Caesar's attempts to claim Romulus for his own political project.Footnote 41 Yet, neither vision of Romulus died with Cicero. Even after the passing of the Republic, Romulus continued to be used not only by panegyrists of the Roman past but also by those who called into question the praiseworthiness of Rome's political or religious traditions. Horace, writing some years after Cicero's death, condemned Romulus’ murder of Remus as a precursor to the civil strife with which the contemporary Roman world was convulsed (Epod. 7.17–20). Historians put similar criticisms in the mouths of non-Romans: thus, Justin's Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, one of Orosius’ key sources, has Aetolian ambassadors accuse the Romans of theft, rape and fratricide, echoing the charge advanced by Sallust's Mithridates (Just. Epit. 28.2.8–10, Sall. Hist. 4.69.17).Footnote 42

Christian apologists from Tertullian onward gladly adapted these polemics to their own purposes, adding to them a religious note distinct from that evoked by Cicero: not only was Rome's founder a fratricidal rapist who was fraudulently made a god by the Senate after his murder, but, more importantly, Rome's blood-stained beginning proves that the Romans owe their empire to chance or divine providence, not pagan cults.Footnote 43 The apologists, mirroring the typical focus of other users of royal exempla, also included Numa in their religiously motivated critiques of early Rome. Augustine developed these arguments with characteristic incisiveness, attacking Romulus’ dubious conception (a deed morally indistinguishable, he says, from Paris’ adultery with Helen or Venus’ with Anchises), his fratricide and the rape of the Sabines, and demystifying the peacefulness of Numa's reign, which he credits to the favourable attitude of the Romans’ neighbours rather than to Numa's religious innovations (De civ. D. 3.3–6, 3.9–13). He also dwells at length on the violent deeds of Numa's successors, to which his predecessors had paid less attention: Tullus Hostilius’ overthrow of Alba Longa, with the battle of the Triplets and the murder of Horatia by her victorious brother, and the crimes of Tarquinius Superbus, which proved (so Augustine says) that the gods’ sole aim was not to help the Romans but rather to ‘seduce them with vain victories and grind them down in the most serious wars’ (De civ. D. 3.14–15). The ultimate target of Augustine's polemical subversion of Roman historical triumphalism is thus the worship of the gods, whom he casts as demonic agitators unable and unwilling to bring their worshippers true victory or peace.

3. OROSIUS’ THREE ACCOUNTS OF THE KINGS

Both pagan and Christian authors provided Orosius with fruitful models for polemical engagement with the regal period of Roman history. Nevertheless, Orosius’ discussions of the regal period follow a methodology which he self-consciously distinguishes from that of his predecessors. As he declares in the preface to his third book, he describes not simply the bella of previous histories but bellorum miseriae and other disasters, reporting the same res but pointing to different causae, namely the human wickedness and divine punishments that have marred world history.Footnote 44 Orosius’ history is thus apologetic in intent, yet, unlike earlier apologetic works, it aims not to refute pagan religion comprehensively but instead to prove from history that Christianity has helped, not harmed, the world.Footnote 45 In order to construct a pro-Christian account of regal Roman history, Orosius not only borrows elements from Virgil and pagan historians but also modifies both the events themselves and the historical framework in which they appear, in order to accentuate the miseries of Rome's founding. In the course of the Historiae, he, like Cicero long before him, repeatedly revisits the events of early Roman history, recasting them in noticeably different form each time, in order to demonstrate that Christianity has benefitted Rome. Orosius’ account is thus neither purely classical nor entirely a Christian polemical innovation, but combines new elements of his own with established tropes and techniques drawn from apologetic and classical literature.

Orosius begins his reshaping of Rome's past in Book 1, where he reports a few select incidents of Roman prehistory: the fall of Troy, to which he contrasts Alaric's sack of Rome; Aeneas’ wars in Italy, which he dismisses in a single sentence; and the impiety of the Latin king Aremulus, which he links, in an apologetic aside, to the cruelty of Phalaris of Agrigentum (1.17.1–18.1, 1.20.5–6). The events of Roman prehistory as enshrined in Livy and Virgil thus become additional disasters that struck ab orbe condito usque ad Vrbem conditam (1.1.14), rather than the first steps towards Rome's fated glory. Roman prehistory, rather than initiating a glorious and seemingly predetermined path leading to the foundation and rise of Rome, is simply another, even more vivid proof of the corruption and brutality of the pre-Christian world, in which God's protection of his people and vindication of their mistreatment were already manifest.Footnote 46

Orosius builds upon this attack on Roman historical pride at the beginning of Book 2, where he argues that the four great empires (Babylon, Macedon, Carthage and Rome) received their power from God (2.1–3). Similar lists of empires appear in other works, including Daniel and Justin's Epitome, but Orosius deploys the argument in a novel way, constructing a complex series of chronological coincidences among the four kingdoms.Footnote 47 He uses this scheme to foreground Christianity's role in the preservation of Rome, which was sacked, so he claims, exactly as many years after its founding as passed between Babylon's founding and its fall.Footnote 48

Orosius can only argue this, however, by measuring Rome's beginning from ‘Procas, father of Amulius and Numitor but grandfather of Rhea Silvia, who was Romulus’ mother’, with whom, he claims, ‘all Roman histories begin’ (2.2.3–4).Footnote 49 Although most of Orosius’ sources begin with Aeneas or Romulus, this assertion is exaggeration rather than sheer invention.Footnote 50 Orosius has already discussed Aeneas and Aremulus, using the fall of Troy and the evils of ancient Italian existence to highlight the benefits of contemporary life; here, he foregrounds Procas in order to show, with the help of his chronological calculus, that Rome came to power by God's providential ordaining, ‘not by human strength or chance accidents’ (2.2.4).

Despite his importance for Orosius’ chronological scheme, Procas plays no part in his narrative of Rome's founding. Orosius’ aim, now that he has demonstrated the supposed connection between Babylon's sack and Rome's founding—and thus between the rise of Christianity and Rome's survival in 410—is to prove to his pagan opponents that ‘their ancestors’ times’ were full of wars, misery and criminality (2.3.9). The traditional Livian version of the Romulus legend could have provided Orosius with material for polemic, but Orosius does no more, for now, than nod at this version in his genealogy of Romulus in 2.2. Instead, he chooses to focus on the evils of Romulus’ own reign. He therefore starts his account directly with the city's establishment ‘by Romulus and Remus, twin founders’, and further brackets his narrative off from what precedes by the introduction of a new chronological framework. In this scheme, Rome's foundation is tied not to the fall of Babylon, as in 2.1–3, but instead to the Greek system of dating by Olympiads and, more pointedly, to the fall of Troy (2.4.1).Footnote 51 Orosius thus adopts an obscure version of the Roman foundation myth in order to advance his argument for the providential ordering of Roman history; however, once that version has played its purpose, he abandons it so as to focus on the wickedness of Romulus, even eliminating material, such as the rape of Rhea Silvia, that Augustine, for example, had found suitable for polemic (De civ. D. 3.3–5).Footnote 52

Orosius’ revision of the events of Romulus’ reign goes deeper than simple selectivity, however. ‘Romulus immediately stained [Rome's] kingdom’, he asserts, ‘with parricide’ and ‘dowered “the Sabine women, snatched contrary to custom” … with the blood of their husbands and fathers’ (2.4.2).Footnote 53 Moreover, he ‘dedicated the kingdom with his grandfather's blood, its walls with his brother's, its temple with his father-in-law's’ (2.4.3).Footnote 54 Here Orosius does not limit himself to reinterpreting the facts of Roman history as found in Virgil and Florus, whom he quotes at 2.4.2 and 2.4.7, but introduces the unprecedented assertion that Romulus killed his grandfather, Numitor. Romulus is often said to have killed his great-uncle Amulius (whom Orosius will also term a ‘grandfather’ in 6.1.14) in restoring Numitor to the Alban throne, and some scholars have therefore suggested that Orosius simply made a clumsy mistake.Footnote 55 However, the alteration is unlikely to be an error, as it adds to Orosius’ case: by depriving Romulus of any praise for restoring Numitor, Orosius is able to reduce Romulus’ rise to power and founding of Rome, which was already subject to criticism because of Remus’ death and the rape of the Sabines, to an impious bloodbath.Footnote 56

Nor does that bloodbath stop with the deaths of Numitor and Remus. Augustine had accused the Romans of killing their fathers-in-law;Footnote 57 Orosius takes this one step further and accuses Romulus himself of that crime.Footnote 58 Furthermore, he omits from his account details Augustine had retained from Florus, including Romulus’ prayer to Jupiter and the women's intercession.Footnote 59 Instead, he states that Romulus fought his first battle in the forum, which presaged unending wars, both foreign and civil, to come (2.4.4). Orosius immediately begins to recount those wars, telling how Romulus killed the pious old Sabine leader, Titus Tatius, because he wanted no co-ruler; here he stands with Augustine against the rest of the Latin historiographical tradition in imputing Tatius’ death to Romulus himself.Footnote 60

Absent from Orosius’ account is any trace of the rex sapientissimus who, according to Florus, had organized the Sabines and the Romans into tribes and had conscripted the Senate (Flor. 1.1.1.15). Instead, Orosius focusses entirely on Romulus’ most violent and disreputable actions, adding a few incidents that he has apparently invented. Thus, he turns Romulus, a traditional exemplum of statesmanship, into a paradigm not only for Rome's bellicosity toward foreigners but also for her internecine struggles, which Florus had found so shameful (Flor. 1.47.1–3). His choice to omit Numa, whose closing of the gates of Janus he mentions at 3.8.2 and 4.12.4, and instead to describe the ‘endless strife’ of the later kings is, therefore, part of a broader pattern of omission, which parallels and inverts pagan authors’ frequent omission of Remus or of his murder (2.4.8).Footnote 61 Here comparison with Augustine is especially instructive. Both men attack contemporary nostalgia for the past, yet Augustine's account has an ulterior theological aim: to prove that the worship of the traditional Roman gods did not bring peace or prosperity to the Romans of the regal and Republican eras.Footnote 62 In order to prove his point, Augustine has to explain away the proverbial peacefulness of Numa's reign, which he does by contrasting it with the violence of later Roman history, in which the selfsame gods whose cults Numa had established were still being worshipped (De civ. D. 3.9).Footnote 63 Orosius’ focus is narrower: to show with clarity the unbroken misery of Rome's foundational period, and thus—but only indirectly—to encourage pagans, horrified by the sufferings of ‘their ancestors’ times’, to pray to God to avert such disasters ‘by his manifest mercy’ (2.3.9–10). Attacking the pagan gods head-on would only distract from his history of Roman suffering and iniquity, and so Orosius omits Numa's reign along with the civic and religious activities of the other kings. Instead, he summarizes the later kings’ dubious military exploits, devoting one sentence each in oratio obliqua to Tullus Hostilius, Hostilius’ enemy Mettus Fufetius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus (2.4.9–11).

Orosius’ report is exceedingly brief. Although he describes the reign of Tullus Hostilius at greater length than the reigns of the next three kings, he omits from his account of the Alban War the destruction of Alba and the murder of Horatia, which Augustine had described in eloquent detail in De civ. D. 3.14. Instead, he withholds moral judgement until he arrives at Tarquinius Superbus, who ‘assumed the kingship’ by parricide, ‘retained it by his cruelty’, and ‘lost it’ because of the rape of Lucretia, ‘even amidst domestic vices and virtues that were conspicuous abroad’ (2.4.12).Footnote 64 The resemblance between Tarquinius, who gained, expanded and lost the kingdom because of his wickedness, and Romulus, who founded and strengthened it by parricide, is striking. So too is Orosius’ attribution of uirtutes to Tarquinius. He seems to be using the word ironically in its older sense of ‘acts of courage’;Footnote 65 nevertheless, Tarquinius is the only king Orosius so commends, and he has similar praise only for Titus Tatius, whose pietas he uses to highlight Romulus’ impiety. Only Rome's enemies, therefore, displayed pietas, that quintessential Roman virtue, at her founding, and the only king who displayed any sort of virtue became so hated that his subjects abolished the kingship itself (2.4.13–15).Footnote 66 Rome's sufferings did not end with the kings, however, for Brutus ‘the first consul … hastened … to outdo the first founder and king of Rome in parricide’, killing his own sons (2.5.1).Footnote 67 Thus, the consulship, rather than marking the beginning of new liberty for the Romans, only continued the criminality and bloodshed of the regal period.Footnote 68

Orosius’ aim in 2.4 is to convince his readers of the wickedness and misery of Rome's founding period; he thus attacks or omits traditional exempla such as Romulus, Numa and Brutus, and disparages the Romans by praising Tatius and Tarquinius. In so doing, he not only negates, omits or distorts the events of the narratives that he had received from Virgil, Florus and the Livian tradition but also departs from the account, centred on Procas, that he had used, immediately before, to tie Rome's founding into the providential order of history. In 6.1 he revisits Romulus’ reign yet again, reintroducing the events of the Livian birth story that he had acknowledged in 2.2 and suppressed in 2.4. His aim this time is more Augustinian: to refute the idea that pagan worship led to Rome's dominion. Who was it, he asks, whose worship won the gods’ favour for Romulus? ‘Was it his grandfather Amulius, who exposed him?’Footnote 69 ‘Was it his father, who was unknown?’ Was it his unchaste mother? What about the ‘Alban fathers’ and ‘all Italy’, who assailed his kingdom (6.1.13–14)? Perhaps it was the gods’ future, Roman worshippers on whose behalf they were acting, but, if so, they erred in failing to foresee the coming of Christ, who would dethrone them (6.1.15–27). God, who was preparing for the evangelization of the world, not the gods, elevated Rome to universal dominion (6.1.5–9).

Here, Romulus, far from being the horrible parricide of 2.4, is an illegitimate nobody, ‘a shepherd of the poorest estate’ who was beset by ‘evils even from birth’ (6.1.5, 6.1.13). Orosius does not even allude to Romulus’ personal wickedness, which he could have used to disqualify him from being a suitable worshipper of the gods. Instead, he reintroduces the traditional elements of the birth legend that he had omitted from 2.4, in order to attack not Romulus himself but rather the idea that he and his kingdom came to power through pagan piety. At the same time, however, he keeps the war-torn early history of Rome fresh in the reader's mind by referring to the wars between Rome and the Albans and the Italians. As in 2.4, Orosius’ aim is to tear down pagan perceptions of the Roman past; his target has shifted, however, from the Roman kings to Roman cult, and his narrative has changed accordingly. The book will end, fittingly, with the divinely ordained establishment of peace by Augustus Caesar and the birth of Christ as a citizen of Rome, a fact that proves that he, and no other, ‘advanced this city, which was enlarged and defended by his command, to the apex of human affairs’ (6.22.1–9).Footnote 70 The glory and peace of the Roman empire and the ‘Christian times’ that were then ‘beginning to bud’ stand in stark contrast to the ignominy and violence in which Romulus was born and his kingdom was founded, yet both display the providential control of God over the destiny of Rome and the world that it had come, by his ordaining, to rule.Footnote 71

Orosius, therefore, freely reshapes the stories of the kings, not only as they appear in his sources but even as he himself has developed them, in accordance with the apologetic demands of his history. His apologetic purpose remains paramount throughout and leads both, in 2.2 and 2.4, to his rapid and repeated reorientations of Roman history, and, in 6.1, to his inclusion of many traditional elements that he had previously suppressed. Thus Orosius, by selecting, modifying and occasionally inventing events from Roman prehistory, seeks to convince his readers not only that early Rome was more violent than the Roman empire of his own day but also that pagan cults had never benefitted the Romans. Only God, who by his providence elevated the ill-born insignificant Romulus to kingship and lifted Rome, which Romulus founded in wickedness and slaughter, to universal dominion, is therefore worthy of worship, and the neglect of his worship, not of pagan cults, has led to the city's sack (7.37.17, 7.38.6–7).

4. CONCLUSION: OROSIUS AS HISTORICAL APOLOGIST

Each of the three perspectives on the founding of Rome that Orosius depicts for his readers contributes to his comprehensive historical defence of Christianity. Each, moreover, is carefully shaped to fit into its precise context within his apologetic history. This approach has clear antecedents in earlier Roman literature. His repeated remoulding of Romulus, in particular, parallels Cicero's, while his selectiveness in presenting the events of the regal period is a negative mirror of the approach taken by historians such as Eutropius and Florus. However, Orosius engages in this reinvention precisely in order to subvert the triumphalist view of the Roman past and of Rome's place in the world that many of his predecessors—and, it would seem, many of his contemporaries—took for granted. His history of the kings is thus not simply an inverted reflection of more typical classical accounts but rather a substantial retelling of the events that he narrates, which he repeatedly alters in order to support his case for the corruption of the pre-Christian era and the divine control of history. Contrary to his programmatic claim at 3 praef. 1, his polemical aims, not the ‘facts’ of any prior historical tradition, are what finally determine the shape and content of his narrative of the kings. This recognition undercuts any straightforward characterization of Orosius as a classicizing historian, yet only highlights the literary independence and creativity of his pointedly polemical and deliberately Christian history. It is too simplistic, therefore, to characterize Orosius’ tendentious interpretation of the legends of the kings as falsification of an established ‘historical’ record:Footnote 72 Orosius, on the contrary, is making a novel contribution to a long tradition of polemical reinvention of Rome's early history.

Footnotes

*

My thanks to Neil McLynn, Christopher Kelly, Spencer Cole, Philip Booth, Oliver Nicholson and the anonymous CQ referee for their comments on drafts of this paper. Any remaining errors are my own.

References

1 The following works are cited by author's name and page number alone: Arnaud-Lindet, M.-P., Orose: Histoires (Contre les Païens), 3 vols. (Paris, 1990–1991)Google Scholar; Bessone, L., ‘Dalla polemica apologetica al falso storico’, ACD 36 (2000), 137–49Google Scholar; Goetz, H.-W., Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius (Darmstadt, 1980)Google Scholar; Nuffelen, P. Van, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 iudicibus notis regimur, fruimurque quietis | militiaeque bonis, ceu bellatore Quirino, | ceu placido moderante Numa. For a recent study that analyses Claudian's sustained interaction with the Roman mythological tradition, see Ware, C., Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition (Cambridge, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Amm. Marc. 16.7.4 mentions Numa together with Socrates.

4 For late antique examples, see Eutr. 8.8.1 and SHA Ant. Pius 2.1–2, 13.4; see further Brandt, H., ‘König Numa in der Spätantike: zur Bedeutung eines frührömischen exemplum in der spätrömischen Literatur’, MH 45 (1988), 98–110 Google Scholar, and Bruggisser, P., ‘City of the outcast and city of the elect: the Romulean asylum in Augustine's City of God and Servius's Commentaries on Virgil ’, AugStud 30 (1999), 75–104, at 76–80Google Scholar, who demonstrates the continued political relevance of Romulus in the late Empire.

5 [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 1–8; cf. [Aur. Vict.] Origo gentis Romanae 19–23, Eutr. 1.1–8, Macrob. Sat. 1.12–16, Serv. In Aen. e.g. 6.808, 7.763, 8.664; cf. Auson. Eclogae 3.3–4.

6 Cameron, Alan, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011), 609–10Google Scholar argues against Bruggisser, P., Romulus Servianus: la légende de Romulus dans les Commentaires à Virgile de Servius: mythographie et idéologie à l’époque de la dynastie théodosienne (Bonn, 1987)Google Scholar, that Servius’ depiction of Romulus and Remus is typical of late antique Virgilian scholarship (cf. N. Horsfall's review of Bruggisser, CR 41 [1991], 242–3). On Virgil in Latin education, see Marrou, H.-I., Histoire de l’éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1965 6), 404–6Google Scholar, and now Foster, F., ‘Reconstructing Virgil in the classroom in late antiquity’, History of Education 43 (2014), 285–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who explores the practicalities of late antique Virgilian instruction. Eigler, U., Lectiones vetustatis: römische Literatur und Geschichte in der lateinischen Literatur der Spätantike (Munich, 2003), 205 (cf. 94–5)Google Scholar calls Virgil ‘textueller Inbegriff der “römischen Geschichte”’ for late antique Latin readers.

7 Cf. nn. 4–5, above. On the readership of breviaries, see Sehlmeyer, M., Geschichtsbilder für Pagane und Christen: Res Romanae in den spätantiken Breviarien (Berlin, 2009), 121–8, 172–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Momigliano, A., ‘Pagan and Christian historiography in the fourth century a.d. ’, in id. (ed.), The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, 1963), 79–99, at 85–6Google Scholar. Eigler (n. 6), 58 stresses Virgil's role as a source of exempla.

8 See further Sehlmeyer (n. 7), 37–41.

9 Tert. Ad nat. 2.9.19, 17.11–12, Apol. 21.29–30, De praesc. haeret. 40.6, De spect. 5.5–8, Min. Fel. Oct. 25.1–5, 25.8, [Cyprian], De idol. vanit. 5, Arn. Adv. nat. 5.1–4 (cf. 1.41), Lactant. Div. inst. 1.22.1–8, 1.22.13, 2.6.12–16.

10 Perist. 2.433–4, 2.443–4 Da, Christe, Romanis tuis | sit Christiana ut ciuitas | … fiat fidelis Romulus | et ipse iam credat Numa; the death of Lawrence immediately follows the end of this lengthy prayer (413–84) on behalf of the urbem Romulam (412). On the literary and cultural background of this passage, see Trout, D.E., ‘Damasus and the invention of early Christian Rome’, in Martin, D.B. and Miller, P. Cox (edd.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC, 2005), 298–315, especially 302Google Scholar, and Buchheit, V., ‘Christliche Romideologie im Laurentius-Hymnus des Prudentius’, in Wirth, P. (ed.), Polychronion: Festschrift Franz Dölger zum 75. Geburtstag (Heidelberg, 1966), 121–44Google Scholar.

11 Vittatus olim pontifex | adscitur in signum crucis | aedemque, Laurenti, tuam | Vestalis intrat Claudia. As Markus, R.A., Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (Cambridge, 1970), 28 Google Scholar puts it, ‘For Prudentius a new era had begun in the history of the Empire.’

12 For an evocative discussion of the political, social and economic disruption caused by the decline of the western empire (in which Alaric's sack marks only one early phase), see Brown, P., Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 ad (Princeton, 2012), 385–407 Google Scholar.

13 De civ. D. 3.1 sed neque talia mala, quae isti sola formidant, dii eorum, quando ab eis libere colebantur, ne illis acciderent obstiterunt. … quod ad Romam pertinet Romanumque imperium tantum loquar, id est ad ipsam proprie ciuitatem et quaecumque illi terrarum uel societate coniunctae uel condicione subiectae sunt, quae sint perpessae ante aduentum Christi. Augustine challenges anti-Christian construals of the sack of Rome already in De civ. D. 1.1; cf. the famous objection of the senator Rufius Antonius Agrypnius Volusianus, relayed to Augustine by the imperial official Flavius Marcellinus, ut per Christianos principes Christianam religionem maxima ex parte seruantes tanta … rei publicae mala euenisse manifestum sit (August. Ep. 136.2). For detailed analysis of Augustine's rhetorical handling of his (Christian or ambivalent) audience and vehemently ‘pagane Gegner’ in De civ. D., see Tornau, C., Zwischen Rhetorik und Philosophie: Augustins Argumentationstechnik in De civitate Dei und ihr bildungsgeschichtlicher Hintergrund (Berlin, 2006), especially 112–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Markus (n. 11), 29–44.

15 For a recent discussion of some key themes of De civ. D. 3, see Tornau (n. 13), 226–51.

16 Oros. Historiae adversum paganos 1 prol. 9–10 (cited henceforth solely by book, chapter and section number); Van Nuffelen 40–1 defends Orosius’ claim that he is writing at Augustine's behest. For a lucid translation and introduction to Orosius’ life, thought and Historiae, see Fear, A.T., Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 On the role of the geographical section (1.2.1–106) within the Historiae, see Merrills, A.H., History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005), 35–99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Orosius’ theology, see now Van Nuffelen 186–206.

18 ab orbe condito usque ad Vrbem conditam, dehinc usque ad Caesaris principatum natuitatemque Christi ex quo sub potestate Vrbis orbis mansit imperium, uel etiam usque ad dies nostros.

19 On the Roman focus of the Historiae, cf. Fear (n. 16), 16–22, Van Nuffelen 170–6.

20 Christianis tamen temporibus propter praesentem magis Christi gratiam ab illa incredulitatis confusione discretis. On the expression Christiana tempora, see Madec, G., ‘“Tempora Christiana”: Expression du triomphalisme chrétien ou récrimination païenne?’, in Mayer, C.P. and Eckermann, W. (edd.), Scientia Augustiniana: Studien über Augustinus, den Augustinismus und den Augustinerorden. Festschrift: P. Dr. theol. Dr. phil. Adolar Zumkeller OSA zum 60. Geburtstag (Würzburg, 1975), 112–36Google Scholar.

21 The only extensive discussion is that of Bessone, much of whose analysis is devoted to the parallel Augustinian account; others, such as Inglebert, H., Les Romains chrétiens face à l'histoire de Rome: Histoire, christianisme et romanités en Occident dans l'Antiquité tardive (IIIe–Ve siècles) (Paris, 1996), 531 Google Scholar, have commented briefly.

22 Merrills (n. 17), 35 names Orosius with Sallust, Eusebius, Jerome and the Bible ‘as a cornerstone of medieval Christian historiography’. An overview of Orosian reception down to the Carolingian period can be found in Hillgarth, J.N., ‘The Historiae of Orosius in the early Middle Ages’, in Holtz, L. and Fredouille, J.-C. (edd.), De Tertullien aux Mozarabes: Mélanges offerts à Jacques Fontaine Membre de l'Institut à l'occasion de son 70e anniversaire, par ses élèves, amis et collègues (Paris, 1992), 2.157–70Google Scholar. On the manuscripts, see Bately, J.M. and Ross, D.J.A., ‘A check list of manuscripts of Orosius’ Historiarum aduersum paganos libri septem’, Scriptorium 15 (1961), 329–34Google Scholar, and Arnaud-Lindet 1.lxvii–lxix.

23 E.g. Paschoud, F., Roma Aeterna: études sur le patriotisme romain dans l'Occident latin a l’époque des grandes invasions (Rome, 1967), 276–8, 291–2Google Scholar, whose assessment of Orosius’ intellect and theological acumen is especially scathing. For further citations, see the succinct survey of Orosian scholarship in Van Nuffelen 1–18.

24 Markus (n. 11), 161.

25 Van Nuffelen, especially 63–144.

26 Van Nuffelen 186–206.

27 E.g. Merrills (n. 17), Inglebert (n. 21), 507–89, who sets Orosius’ depiction of Roman history in a broad historiographical and theological context, and the studies of Orosius’ conception of historical progress by Fear, A., ‘Orosius and escaping from the dance of doom’, in Liddel, P. and Fear, A. (edd.), Historiae Mundi: Studies in Universal History (London, 2010), 176–88Google Scholar, and Herzog, R., ‘Orosius oder die Formulierung eines Fortschrittskonzepts aus der Erfahrung des Niedergangs’, in id. (ed. Habermehl, P.), Spätantike: Studien zur römischen und lateinisch-christlichen Literatur: Mit einem Beitrag von Manfred Fuhrmann (Göttingen, 2002), 293–320 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (previously published in Koselleck, R. and Widmer, P. [edd.], Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema [Stuttgart, 1980], 79–102 Google Scholar).

28 See especially the discussion of Orosius’ usage of exempla and of enargeia in Van Nuffelen 66–76, 122–32. As Van Nuffelen 58 says regarding Orosius’ treatment of the ‘inevitable’ fall of Rome in Book 2, ‘Not only does [Orosius] question the pagan master narrative [sc. “Vergil's imperium sine fine”], he also provides a Christian alternative: only Christian faith and morality can lead God to postpone the inevitable. This twin argument underpins the narrative of the Historiae.’

29 I limit this survey largely to Latin writers, since Orosius did not use any Greek accounts of the kings. On the early development of the Romulus legend, see Cornell, T.J., ‘Aeneas and the twins: the development of the Roman foundation legend’, PCPhS 21 (1975), 1–32 Google Scholar, and Wiseman, T.P., Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge, 1995), especially 103–50Google Scholar.

30 Cic. Rep. 2.31–52. As Cornell, T.J., ‘Cicero on the origins of Rome’, in Powell, J.G.F. and North, J.A. (edd.), Cicero's Republic (London, 2001), 41–56, at 55–6Google Scholar stresses, Rep. Book 2 ‘is essentially a theoretical discussion’ of government set ‘within a historical framework’. See also Livy, Book 1, especially 22–30, 32–3, 35–8, 42–5; Livy's account of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus (1.49–60) focusses, of course, on the injustices and collapse of his regime, but includes some notable military victories.

31 Orosius quotes Verg. Aen. 8.635 and Flor. 1.1.1.11 at 2.4.2, 2.4.7; cf. Arnaud-Lindet 1.269–70, who tabulates a number of parallels with Livy and Florus.

32 Aen. 1.292–3, 6.756–823, 8.630–51, Cic. Rep. 2.4–11, Livy 1.4.1; cf. MacCormack, S., The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley, 1998), 6–10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Flor. 1.1.1.15, 1.2.8.7.

33 Cf. nn. 2–5 above.

34 See nn. 2, 5 above, Macrob. In Somn. 2.17.4–8 and Them. Or. 3.43c.

35 Eutr. 1.2.1 centum ex senioribus legit, quorum consilio omnia ageret, quos senatores nominauit propter senectutem, 8.8 T. Antoninus Fuluius Boionius … uir insignis et qui merito Numae Pompilio conferatur, ita ut Romulo Traianus aequetur. Bird, H.W., ‘Eutropius on Numa Pompilius and the Senate’, CJ 81 (1986), 243–8Google Scholar.

36 See MacCormack (n. 32), 181 n. 20, who lists several relevant passages; cf. Serv. In Aen. 6.779, 11.603, with the commentary of Bruggisser (n. 6), 103–6.

37 Cf. especially Verg. Aen. e.g. 1.272–83, Flor. 1 praef. 2, 1.1.1.18, 1.1.7.9, [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 2.13, 7.9–14, 8.4.

38 Cf. Classen, C.J., ‘Romulus in der römischen Republik’, Philologus 106 (1962), 174–204 (at 183–91)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Romulus’ probable role as a negative exemplum in some late Republican contexts.

39 Cf. Ver Eecke, M., La République et le roi: le mythe de Romulus à la fin de la République romaine (Paris, 2008), 315–16, 319–20Google Scholar.

40 See now Cole, S., Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome (Cambridge, 2013), 85–110 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Dyck, A.R., A Commentary on Cicero, De Officiis (Ann Arbor, 1996), 544–5Google Scholar; on Romulus in Caesar's political propaganda, see Ver Eecke (n. 39), 355–423.

42 On Orosius’ use of Justin, see Arnaud-Lindet 1.xxvi–vii.

43 Cf. n. 9 above.

44 3 praef. 1 scriptores autem etsi non easdem causas, easdem tamen res habuere propositas: quippe cum illi bella, nos bellorum miserias euoluamus; 1.1.12 mala autem huiusmodi … sine dubio aut manifesta peccata sunt aut occultae punitiones peccatorum. Cf. Goetz 49: ‘Im Geschichtsablauf fließen göttliches Heilswirken und menschliches Sündenwirken zusammen.’

45 On Orosius as apologetic historian, see Goetz 20–2; on Orosius’ conception of the action of divine providence in history, see e.g. Herzog (n. 27), 306–10.

46 Cf. 1.8, 1.10.1–18, on Joseph and Moses.

47 See Merrills (n. 17), 50–64, Alonso-Núñez, J.M., ‘Die Auslegung der Geschichte bei Paulus Orosius: die Abfolge der Weltreiche, die Idee der Roma Aeterna und die Goten’, WS 106 (1993), 197–213 Google Scholar, and Arnaud-Lindet 1.xlv–lviii.

48 See the insightful discussion in Van Nuffelen 46–53.

49 ita Nini et Babylonis regnum eo anno in Medos deriuatum est, quo anno apud Latinos Procas, Amulii et Numitoris pater, auus autem Rheae Siluiae quae mater Romuli fuit, regnare coepit … omnes historiae antiquae a Nino incipiunt, omnes historiae Romanae a Proca exoriuntur.

50 [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 1 begins with Procas, and, although [Aur. Vict.] Origo gentis Romanae 19 and Livy 1.3.9–11 begin their accounts with earlier figures, both of them put Procas’ bequest of Alba to Numitor (in the Origo and De vir. ill., a co-heir with Amulius) at the start of the internecine struggle that culminates in Rome's founding. Other Roman histories begin unambiguously with Romulus, e.g. Eutr. 1.1.1 and Flor. 1 praef. 1, 1.1.1.1. Cf. Van Nuffelen 48 n. 11, who asserts that Orosius’ ‘statement is obviously exaggerated’, then notes the parallel with De vir. ill.; contrast Arnaud-Lindet 1.li–ii n. 92, ‘L'affirmation d'Orose … est fausse mais nécessaire à l’établissement de son parallélisme’.

51 anno post euersionem Troiae ccccxiiii Olympiade autem sexta … urbs Roma in Italia a Romulo et Remo geminis auctoribus condita est.

52 Cf. Van Nuffelen 46–61, on Orosius’ swift abandonment of the four-kingdoms theory and allusions to the fall of Troy.

53 cuius regnum continuo Romulus parricidio imbuit, parique successu crudelitatis ‘sine more raptas Sabinas’, inprobis nuptiis confoederatas maritorum et parentum cruore dotauit; see Van Nuffelen 53–6, on Orosius’ (slightly paraphrased) quotation of Verg. Aen. 8.635.

54 itaque Romulus, interfecto primum auo Numitore dehinc Remo fratre, arripuit imperium Vrbemque constituit; regnum aui, muros fratris, templum soceri sanguine dedicauit.

55 Fear (n. 16), 78 n. 31 and Arnaud-Lindet 1.208 n. 5. On Amulius’ death, see Bessone 145 n. 26 and Fugmann, J., Königszeit und frühe Republik in der Schrift “De Viris Illustribus Vrbis Romae”: Quellenkritisch-historische Untersuchungen (Frankfurt, 1990–2004), 1.83–4 n. 37Google Scholar.

56 Bessone 145, who believes this to be an intentional falsification (a problematic characterization—cf. n. 72 below), states that it ‘serve manifestamente per tracciare un quadro a fosche tinte del regno di Romolo, grondante sangue dell'intero parentado’.

57 De civ. D. 3.13; cf. [Cyprian], De idol. vanit. 5.

58 Cf. Bessone 146–7.

59 De civ. D. 3.13 adapts Flor. 1.1.1.13; cf. Bessone 145–6.

60 2.4.6 ducem eorum Titum Tatium, senem honestis pietatis causis insistentem, diu armis propulsatum, mox ut in societatem regni adsumpsit, occidit; cf. August. De civ. D. 3.13 deinde Tatium regem Sabinorum socium regni Romulus ferre compulsus est … sed quando et istum diu toleraret, qui fratrem geminumque non pertulit? unde et ipso interfecto, ut maior deus esset, regnum solus obtinuit. See Sehlmeyer (n. 7), 43 n. 41 and S. Angus, ‘The sources of the first ten books of Augustine's De Civitate Dei’ (Diss., Princeton, 1906), 117–18.

61 iam hinc [i.e. from Romulus’ reign onwards] incessabilia certamina et iuxta quantitatem uirium semper grauia quam breuissime strinxerim. Orosius similarly eliminates important Roman exempla from his account of the Punic Wars (Van Nuffelen 73–4).

62 Cf. n. 13 above.

63 For the peacefulness of Numa, cf. the comments of Amm. Marc. 14.6.6 on the present security of the city of Rome: et olim licet otiosae sint tribus pacataeque centuriae et nulla suffragiorum certamina, sed Pompiliani redierit securitas temporis.

64 Tarquinii Superbi regnum occisi soceri scelere adsumptum, habita in ciues crudelitate detentum, flagitio adulteratae Lucretiae amissum, et inter domestica uitia uirtutesque forinsecus emicantes, id est oppida ualida in Latio per eum capta.

65 McDonnell, M., Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2006), 39–40 Google Scholar calls ‘“deeds of valor”’ the ‘regular meaning [of uirtutes] in pre-Classical Latin’; see, however, the criticisms of R. Kaster in BMCR 2007.02.08.

66 Inglebert (n. 21), 535–40 surveys Orosius’ attitude toward Roman uirtutes.

67 anno post Vrbem conditam ccxliiii Brutus primus apud Romanos consul primum conditorem regemque Romae non solum exaequare parricidio sed et uincere studuit; cf. August. De civ. D. 3.16.

68 Contrast Flor. 1.2.8.7–1.3.9.8 (cf. Bessone 148–9). As Van Nuffelen 118 n. 13 observes, ‘parricide … is a recurring theme in the Historiae’ (for later Roman examples, see 2.13.6, 3.9.1–4, 4.13.17–18, 5.16.8, 5.16.23, 5.19.13–16, 7.7.9).

69 As noted above, Amulius is normally Romulus’ great-uncle; this seems to be a modification of Romulus’ ancestry to make his family appear yet more parricidal.

70 Quotation from 6.22.8 pateat quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus hanc urbem nutu suo auctam defensamque in hunc rerum apicem prouexerit.

71 Quotation from 6.22.10 germinantia temporum Christiana.

72 Thus Bessone 144–5: ‘Pur di infangare Romolo, non esita a ricorrere al falso, imputandogli pure l'uccisione di Numitore e del suocero … Se ne dovrà inferire che Orosio abbia mentito consapevolmente.’ Goetz 28 veers toward the opposite extreme: ‘Orosius dramatisiert sicherlich, er wählt aus, aber er ändert nicht die Fakten.’ Cf. Van Nuffelen 140–4, who discusses some aspects of Orosius’ rhetorical embellishments (including apparent ‘fiction’) in light of modern scholarship on the rhetoric of ancient historiography.