Myth and History I: The Gallic Invasion of Italy

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

J H C Williams

Published:

2001

Publisher:

Oxford University PressOxford

Abstract Both Polybius and Cato believed the Keltoi or Galli to be an invasive presence south of the Alps, whose origins lay elsewhere in the more or less ill-defined world of northern Europe. But it was not this in and of itself that distinguished them from the other peoples of Italy. Origin myths or foundation stories involving migration or colonization were also ascribed to various groups inhabiting peninsular Italy, and they were not without their problems of moral justification, even when the Romans themselves were concerned. That even, or especially, in their case there was considerable potential for tension bet, Yeen the moral primacy of authochthony as opposed to the legitimacy of rule by conquest is vividly suggested by Vergil ‘s Turnus and his violent, unrecon ciled, and unsettling death at the hands of Aeneas with which the Aeneid closes. Nevertheless, the poem as a whole is clear on the point that, though there may sometimes be unfortunate and even regrettable consequences for those who get in the way, Roman power is, and from the beginning always has been, divinely authorized. The presence or absence of divine sanction is the point that, whatever the attendant uncertainties, allowed a good invasion or colonial venture to be differentiated from a bad one; and it was to the latter category that the Gallic invasion of Italy belonged according to most extant narratives, but not all. For the accounts of Livy and Justin have a somewhat different angle on the problem…

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