dence for a Carthaginian connection to mythic time, I find it more attractive to hypoth-
esize that Timaeus made a distinction between Rome and Carthage, maintaining the by
now traditional Greek view of the Trojan dimension to Rome ’s past, with nothing com-
parable for Carthage. Rome, then, would be more “like us,” with a purchase in “our”
mythical maps, while by comparison Carthage ’s otherness would be stressed.
- Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom.1.74.1. If he had not used an Olympiad date then Diony-
sius would certainly have told us, because in the next section he remarks on the fact that
Cato does not. - So much is clear from Plutarch, our source on this point both for Fabius and
for hissource, Diocles of Peparethus (Rom.3.1 – 2). The whole problem of Alba Longa
as a bridge between the epochs of myth and history is a very important one, but not
one I can treat here. I find much to agree with in Poucet 1985 and 1986. Schröder 1971,
87 – 88, 170 – 71, remains a valuable resource; cf. Schultze 1995, 197 – 99. Schröder 1971,
87, rightly stresses that Alba is important in the tradition from early on and was not
foisted onto the founding myths just to allow the chronological gap to be plugged: cf.
Cornell 1975, 15; Gruen 1992, 25. Indeed, in Ennius’s version Alba is already in exis-
tence when Aeneas arrives: Skutsch 1985, 190. The beauty of Alba was that the main
thing it was known for was its destruction by Tullus Hostilius: it was no longer there
(if it ever had been), and provided malleable material as a result. - For Diocles as Fabius’s source here, see von Holzinger 1912; Timpe 1972,
942 – 44; Frier 1999, 260 – 62, 265 – 68; Momigliano 1990, 101 – 2; Dillery 2002, 18 – 21.
On the Alban list in particular as Diocles’ contribution, see Gruen 1992, 20; Hillen
2003, 12, 114. As Nicholas Horsfall points out to me, Schwegler 1867, 345, already
showed that the Alban list must have been the work of a Greek, not a Roman. - We do not know the date of the publication of the Chronographiaeof Eratos-
thenes, but since he was born around 285 – 280 (Fraser 1972, 2:490), it is entirely pos-
sible that the book was available to Diocles as a precursor of Fabius, who was writing
at the end of the century. - Brown 1958, 31.
- Beck and Walter 2001, 92; cf. 59; Dillery 2002, 8.
- How important such generational number-crunching may have been for these
writers, and for others who followed them in coming up with variations on eighth-
century foundation dates, I do not know. Cornell (1995, 73) is no doubt right to sug-
gest that “some kind of mechanical calculation” was employed in fixing the foundation
dates. Asheri (1991 – 92, 69 – 70) suggests that Timaeus’s date is thirteen 40-year gen-
erations from his Troy date of “1334/3”; and he points out that thirteen generations of
33.3 years ( = 433 years) cover the span between Eratosthenes’ Troy date of “1184/3”
and a foundation date of “751/0.” If such generational counting was so important, it is
curious that so little explicit discussion of it survives, after the initial exposition of
Herodotus (2.142.2).
notes to page 96. 253