The year 748 is two 33-year generations down from 814. Curti (2002) offers a
fascinating argument about the coincidence between the eighth-century foundation
dates for Rome and for the Greek colonies in Italy, although we differ over whether we
are dealing with a genuine memory or a third-century reconstruction, and over
whether the agency in defining this tradition is Greek or Roman.
Velleius Paterculus does the same, claiming that Cumae was founded at the
same epoch as the Ionian colonies (1.4.1 – 3). On the general ancient lack of distinction
between what we call the “Ionic migrations” and the later colonizing period, see Maz-
zarino 1966, 1:110.
Eusebius has Cumae founded in “1050,” 867 years after Abraham (Helm
(1956, 69b [b]); this is three years after his date for Magnesia in Asia, and eleven years
before Carthage. Aubet 2001, 195 – 97, has very similar conclusions regarding the
worthlessness of the traditional classical historical foundation dates for Cadiz and other
western Phoenician settlements, which are grounded in a prioriTrojan War time
frames and have no independent historical value.
Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover 1970, 206.
Jacoby 1902, 161 – 62. The dates of Antiochus look sacrosanct to modern
observers because they are in Thucydides book 6, and we have all read Thucydides
book 6, but in fact there were many variant dates even for the Sicilian colonies
(Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover 1970, 206 – 7), and it may be no more than coincidence
that these dates of Antiochus turn out to approximate to the dates modern archaeolo-
gists give; in addition, we face the circularity problem that the archaeologists have all
read Thucydides book 6 as well.
Strabo 6.1.12 = FGrH555 F 10.
Strabo 5.4.4; see the very helpful discussion and collection of evidence in
Oakley 1997 – 98, 2:631 – 32.
A. Barchiesi 2005a, 282; cf. Horsfall 1989a, an eye-opening discussion of the
importance of Greek colonization to Virgil’s framing of the Aeneid.
In an important forthcoming paper, John Dillery independently argues that
Cincius Alimentus’s eccentric-looking foundation date of “728 b.c.e.” should be put in
the context of colonization in Sicily, where he had served as praetor: this is the date of
the foundation of Megara Hyblaea.
Beck and Walter 2001, 92; cf. Rawson 1989, 425, on Fabius’s attempts to rep-
resent Rome as Hellenic.
On Rome ’s persistent barbarianization and rusticization of its non-Greek Ital-
ian neighbors, see Dench 1995; the Romans are reacting against the tendency of the
Greeks to label them as Opici, “assimilating them to rough Italic tribes of southern
Italy against which the Greek colonial cities had long struggled” (Rawson 1989, 423).
On the concept of “allochrony,” see Fabian 1983.
Aubet 2001, 198 – 99, sheds fascinating light on the persistence of such tactics,
notes to pages 97 – 98
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