Timpe (1988, 275 – 81) mounts a very powerful case for Fabius’s use of Diocles for the
structure of the foundation story, arguing that the literary forms of historiography are
crucial, and that Fabius is not simply writing down what was somehow already “there”
in an oral tradition; cf. Gabba 2000, 31, 66 – 67; Beck and Walter 2001, 1:59; Dillery
2002, 18 – 21; Hillen 2003, 113. Gabba 2001, 591, memorably evokes the context for the
new historiography: “La
rispondeva ad esigenze politiche di fronte al mondo magnogreco e greco, che prima
non esistevano. Questo non è un preconcetto, è un dato di fatto.”
Finley 1975, 28 – 29, is devastating on the subject of the capacity of “tradition”
to preserve a chronology, or to be interested in one in the first place; cf. the important
discussions of von Ungern-Sternberg (1988, esp. 255 – 58) and Timpe (1988, 280).
So, rightly, Gabba 2001, 591, summing up much previous work.
Schröder (1971, 170) well demonstrates how this “coincidence” is meaning-
less; cf. De Cazanove 1992, 72 – 73. And it may well not be a coincidence at all, if Ridg-
way (2004, 19 – 22) is right to suggest that dendrochronology is going to force a
reassessment of accepted Iron Age dates for Italy and “turn the 8th century b.c.south
of the Alps into a kind of chronological black hole” (22). As he says, “it will be inter-
esting to see what happens when historians of early Rome realise this” (20). As
Forsythe (2005, 85) points out, modern focus on the Palatine, the result of following
ancient tradition, has meant that the other hills have received comparatively little
archaeological attention.
Burkert 1995; cf. Daffinà 1987, 17.
A century later, the opinion of Sanders (1908, 316) still holds: “The time of the
founding of Rome was, both to Greeks and Romans, a matter of pure guesswork.”
Cornell 1995, 72, for the 1000 date, and for skepticism about attempts to link
the eighth-century archaeological remains with the literary tradition.
So far as I discover, Jacoby first made this point explicitly: FGrH566, Komm.,
564, and it is stressed in Asheri 1991 – 92, 66 – 67, and visible between the lines in Cor-
nell 1975, 23 – 24; Vattuone 2002, 221, is characteristically acute: “Timeo è il primo a
distinguere nettamente tra la Romae quella , a fissare una data
precisa per la più recente.” But in general it is very surprising that so many discussions
of the various foundation stories do not seem to regard it as significant to ask who first
made this highly important shift.
Erich Gruen suggests to me Hieronymus of Cardia as a possible competitor
for the distinction offirst giving Rome a nonmythical foundation date, since he is men-
tioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus as “the first who touched on the early history
(ajrcaiologivan) of the Romans” (Ant. Rom.1.5.4). Certainly the possibility remains
open, although Dionysius does not mention Hieronymus in his later discussion of the
various foundation dates of Rome (1.74). Jacoby takes Hieronymus’s coverage to be an
ethnographic excursus in the context of the Pyrrhic wars: FGrH154, Komm., 547 (on
notes to pages 91 – 92