Roman Elite Ethnicity 457from the first centuryBCEonward, but draws upon a much older tradition (Horsfall
1987; Wiseman 1995: 50–5).
This fusion is expressed in typical aristocratic fashion by the dynastic marriage of the
Trojan prince, Aeneas, and the Latin princess, Lavinia. As with other ethnic groups
that contribute to the Roman people in subsequent centuries, Trojan origins carried
significant ethnic capital for those aristocrats who claimed them. Culturally similar
but ethnically distinct from the Greeks, the Trojans offered potent associations that
wrote Romans into a broadly shared Greco-Roman mythohistorical narrative (Erskine
2001). Although some first centuryBCErepresentations of the marriage of Latin and
Trojan would downplay the ethnocultural contribution of Troy, the Trojans could be
evoked as the source of supposedly innate Roman characteristics. Around 14BCE,the
poet Propertius could evoke thepietasand resilience of Aeneas to suggest that elite
self-sacrifice (exemplified by Decius Mus),libertasand moral stringency (exemplified
by Lucius Iunius Brutus), and military achievement (exemplified by Caesar) descended
directly from the Trojan contribution (Propertius 4.1.39–47; for discussion, see
Lee-Stecum 2008: 75):
It is good, Troy, that you sent your fugitive Penates here....Eventhentheomenspromised
well...when the father hung trembling on the back of his son, and the flame feared to burn
those pious shoulders. Then came the spirit of Decius and the axes of Brutus. Venus herself
carried forth the arms of her Caesar, bearing the victorious arms of a resurgent Troy.The identity of the inhabitants of Latium with whom the Trojans ally and inter-marry
is variously represented in ancient sources. Virgil describes the people of King Latinus
as the “people [gens] of Saturn” (Aeneid7.203). Latinus himself descends from the line
of Saturn via a series of minor divinities closely identified with the land and peoples of
Latium and its surroundings: “He was the son, we are told, of Faunus and the Laurentian
nymph, Marica: Faunus was the son of Picus, who called Saturn his father” (Aeneid
7.47–8). In an evocation of theatriaof later aristocratic homes,imaginesof Latinus’
ancestors (including Italus, Sabinus, and Janus) line his audience hall. As the Arcadian,
Evander, will explain to Aeneas in Book 8, the people whom Saturn discovered and
came to rule in primordial Latium were indigenous: “men who had sprung from hard
wood-oak [durus robor]” (Aeneid8.315). While the surviving tradition is sketchy, these
early inhabitants of Latium can be identified with theaboriginesof other accounts (see
Sallust,Catilinian Conspiracy6; Servius auctor, sv.Aeneid1.6). It is this people whom
Saturn “unites” (composuit:Aeneid8.322) and who are the ancestors of the people ruled
by Saturn’s heir, Latinus.
In contrast to these autochthonous (or autodruous) origins, Dionysius of Halicarnassus
represents theaboriginesas descendents of Arcadian settlers (Dionysius of Halicarnassus
1.9–11; Hall 2005: 257–8). As with the Trojans, Sabines (see the following text), and
other ethnic groups who composed the Roman people, the Arcadians could be associated
with qualities valued by the Roman aristocracy. Hall (2005: 270) notes, “the Arkadians
were thought to embody those very virtues of rustic simplicity and rugged virtue that
Augustan propaganda was keen to associate with the populations of Italy” (see also Scheer