The Aeneid. Virgil’s masterwork of political propaganda on behalf of Augustus’s imperial regime, in the form of epic poetry. Somehow the Romans got the idea they were descended from the Trojans via Aeneas who fled from the ruins of Troy to Italia.
What had given the Romans this idea in the first place? Could it have had some nugget of fact in the background?
I don’t know if the language spoken in Troy has ever been determined. I would guess Hittite as the most likely candidate. If not Hittite exactly, then most likely another of the Anatolian group of Indo-European languages. Latin, though distantly related to Hittite because both are Indo-European, belongs to the Italic group whose nearest relative seems to be Celtic. Not a close match linguistically, then.
As the Latins were beginning to expand and absorb their neighbors, could they have mingled with some people whose ancestors actually did migrate from Asia Minor to Italia?
The collapse of the Hittite Empire about 1200 BC is blamed on the incursions of the Sea Peoples, among whom were the Mycenean Greeks or Achaeans (Ahhiyawa in the Hittite records). Isn’t the fall of Troy to the Greeks dated around the same time? There had been Mycenean colonies in southwestern Anatolia even before then. One interpretation of the Trojan War is the Greeks seeing a chance to expand into the strategic location of northwestern Anatolia which could control valuable trade routes.
Seems entirely plausible to me that the marauding by the Sea Peoples would have displaced some groups from their homelands in the eastern Mediterranean who would then have to move to a new location. To get around their enemies the Greeks to their west, they would need to detour first to North Africa, before reaching Italy. As in the Aeneid. There was a theory in ancient times that the Elymians, a people of western Sicily, had originated in Asia Minor and first traveled to North Africa before reaching Sicily. The Elymians lived too far away from Rome, and anyway their country wasn’t brought under Roman rule until the Punic Wars (western Sicily had been occupied by Carthage in the meantime). But if the Elymians had made it to Sicily, might not some other displaced people from Asia Minor have traveled to central Italy? If not, are we to conclude that the Romans’ alleged descent from Troy is sheer fiction? I was just wondering how, even long before Virgil, it had come to be such a cherished belief of Roman origin.
I figure there’s as much truth in the Roman legend as there is in the old English one, that Brutus, another fugitive from Troy, founded Britain, conquering the native Giants who dwelt here and built on the banks of the Thames his capital, calling it Troynovaunt, or New Troy.
I think the Roman poet responsible for the popularity of the Trojan origin was Ennius , the Father of Roman epic.
Still, if the Greeks could colonize parts of Italy there’s no reason why an earlier group of migrants from the East couldn’t have done the same. Where did the Etruscans come from?
Some think that the Etruscans came from Asia Minor. According to one of my history books,
In my opinion, the Romans appropriated some “good” parts of Etruscan history for themselves, although there was a debate even then about the Etruscans’ origins.
People seem to think the Trojans may have spoken Luvian, a language related to Hittite. The name Luivan actually even comes from a Hittite word, Luiva, referring to part of the region. From here: http://www.bartleby.com/61/92/L0299275.html
And here’s a site that compares the Hittites and the Trojans. There are some interesting similarities. http://www.thetroyguide.com/id7.html
-Lil
The Sibylline cult at Cumae near Naples was thought to have originated in Asia Minor. In classical times the Sibyls in Italy were Etruscan. Is there any resemblance between Etruscans and Hittites or Luwians?
The Tyrrhenians/Etruscans have been identified with one of the bands of Sea Peoples mentioned in the Egyptian records, the trš (Tursha?). This would imply that rather than driving people out of Asia Minor and causing them to migrate to Italia, the marauders themselves moved to Italia.
Herodotus thought the Etruscans were of Lydian origin and migrated to Italia. In his version, there was a long drought in Lydia and the king sent his son Tyrrhenus away with half of the people to find a new home. The only thing this has in common with the Aeneid is the theme of a king’s son leaving Asia Minor to found a new kingdom in Italia. The circumstances are different, and the early Romans defined themselves ethnically in opposition to the Etruscans (even though they started as a province of Etruria). Probably because their languages were totally different. No similarities found between Etruscan (a language isolate) and Lydian (which is Indo-European of the Anatolian branch) for that matter.
Herodotus’s story doesn’t hold up on the linguistic basis. What we seem to have is two parallel legends of Bronze Age migration from Asia Minor to Italia, to explain the origins of the Romans and Etruscans in apparently two different migrations. Neither one adds up linguistically. The Italic languages are closer to Celtic, which would suggest their arrival in Italy from central Europe. Etruscan has no known relatives. Neither shows an Anatolian connection.
Was there any real event behind the Aeneas legend? Or did the Romans and Etruscans both hear about Anatolian migration to Italy and appropriate such stories to themselves?