Publisher’s Preface.
The second edition of Nothing New Press’ reprint of The Story of the Romans has not
seen any changes in the text or illustrations from the 1896 edition of Guerber’s fine history,
other than correcting a few typographical errors. I have, however, included a timeline
of dates of the events encountered in the story, as an aid for teachers, and have
added a map of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent to the maps section. I have also
included a bibliography listing the references used to construct this timeline and the historical
information that follows.
Modern archaeological and historical research was unavailable to Miss Guerber in
1896, when she wrote this history. The first chapter of The Story of the Romans, “The
First Settlers,” discusses the origin of the Italian tribes. In it Miss Guerber took the
view that man developed slowly, through long ages of civilization, from a savage to a rational
human being. Although, as we now know, the historical record supporting this
view is non-existent, it was the common one of her day.
I have left Guerber’s history as she wrote it, but here include a summary of what research
into this question has shown, for those teachers who wish to relate Rome’s very
early history to their students as Rome herself and the ancient world have recorded it.
Charlotte Yonge’s explanation of the first people living in Italy in Young Folks’ History
of Rome is a bit different than Guerber’s: “Round the streams that flowed down
from these hills [the Apennine Mountains], valleys of fertile soil formed themselves, and
a great many different tribes and people took up their abode there, before there was any
history to explain their coming. Putting together what can be proved about them, it is
plain, however, that most of them came from that old stock from which the Greeks descended,
and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a language which had the
same root as ours and as the Greek” (pp. 13-14).
The “old stock from which the Greeks descended” were the sons of Javan, the son of
Japheth, the son of Noah. The families of Japheth, i.e. those that became the Indo-European
family of nations, including Javan and his sons, had their start around the
Black Sea in Central Asia after the dispersion from Babel (After the Flood, p. 205). The
primitive inhabitants of Greece, however, were the Pelasgi, or Pelasgians, according to Herodotus. Herodotus is unclear whether the Greeks themselves sprang from the Pelasgians,
or whether they were two separate nations; and it could be that no one in his day
really knew. Careful reading of Book One of The History can lead to either conclusion.
For a discussion of the origin of the Greek and Pelasgian tribes, please see the Publisher’s
Preface of The Story of the Greeks.
There were three major emigrations of Pelasgians from Greece into Italy before the
arrival of Aeneas (Wall Chart, p. 7). The first was under Oenotrus from the city of Argos
in Greece. In 1710 BC, he led a colony from Arcadia and settled in southern Italy. These
settlers gave the name of Oenotria to the country. Afterward this area was called Magna
Graecia (Great Greece), which comprised the independent states founded by the Greek
colonists. The second emigration was a colony from Thessaly in Greece around 1540 BC.
The third was under Evander, also from Arcadia, in 1253 BC. Evander encouraged the
settlers to earn their subsistence through agriculture rather than hunting or warfare
only, and also introduced letters. Letters from Phoenicia had been in use in Greece since
1493 BC.
The Pelasgians were not the first settlers of the Italian peninsula. When they arrived,
they found a tribe known as the Etruscans already living there, but where did the
Etruscans come from? Bill Cooper relates that “Tiras himself was worshiped by his descendants
as Thuras (i.e. Thor), the god of war. The river Athyras was named after him,
and it is not at all unlikely that the Etruscans, a nation of hitherto mysterious prove-nance,
owe to him both their name and their descent” (After the Flood, p. 204).
Tiras was the seventh son of Japheth, the son of Noah. The city of Troy (Troas) was
also likely named after him, and Roman legend states that Aeneas, the founder of the
Roman race, was a prince of Troy who was forced to flee that city at the close of the Trojan
War against Greece. Could it be possible that the Etruscans and Trojans both had
Tiras as their ancestor?
Charlotte Yonge further describes the early tribes of Italy: “There were several nations
living round these hills – the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The
homes of these nations seem to have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines,
where they had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill
which they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge if their
enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls, and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many of their works remain to this day, and, in
especial, their monuments have been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found,
adorned with figures of himself, … also curious pottery in red and black, from which
something of their lives and ways is to be made out. … The Romans called them Tusci,
and Tuscany still keeps its name.
“The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the Greeks. There
were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern parts of Italy, and they learnt
something from them. They had a great many gods. Every house had its own guardian;
these were called Lares … Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by
pouring out wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept figures;
for these natives thought much of their families. All one family had the same name, like
our surname, such as Tullius or Appius, the daughters only changing it by making it end
in a instead of us [Tullia or Appia], and the men having separate names standing first,
such as Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish them.
“Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its faun; also
there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were dedicated. There was a
goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of fruits named Vertumnus. In their names
the fields and the crops were solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according
to the old legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
was a golden age, when everyone had his own field, lived by his own handiwork, and
kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time every year called the Saturnalia,
when for a few days the slaves were all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all
kinds of wild sports and merriment.
“The old Greek tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only afterward
learned from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their gods as graver,
higher beings, further off, and less capricious and fanciful than the legends … had made
them seem to the Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever, thoughtful, or poetical,
but with more of what we should now call sterling stuff in them. At least it was so
with that great nation which spoke their language [the Romans], and seems to have
been an offshoot from them” (Young Folks’ History of Rome, pp. 15-19).
It was the union of the Pelasgians with the native Italian tribes, i.e., the Etruscans of
northern Italy, which formed the renowned Latin race (Wall Chart, p. 6). The Latin
tribes established little city-states throughout central Italy, just as the Greeks did in
Greece. The Latin states, of which Rome was one, coexisted with the Greek colonies of
Magna Graecia in southern Italy for many centuries until the Romans grew powerful
enough to overcome and integrate the Latins and the Greeks into their expanding empire.
It was with these Latin tribes that Aeneas and his people intermarried when they
first arrived in Italy in 1182 BC.
Throughout, it can be seen that nothing in the legendary or archaeological history of
Rome or the ancient world denies the biblical account of the creation of the world, the
entrance of sin and death, the judgment of Noah’s Flood, and the rise of the peoples
from his descendants after their dispersal from Babel. Furthermore, the dates that coin-cide
with the legendary immigrations of the Pelasgians and Trojans, and founding of the
Italians’ most important cities, beginning with the immigration of Oenotrus in 1710 BC,
the founding of Troy in 1546 BC, Latium in 1345 BC, the immigration of the Trojans in
1182 BC, the founding of Alba Longa in 1132 BC, Cumae in 1034 BC, and Rome in 753 BC,
do not in any way conflict with the Genesis account, but are well within the approximate
dates for the creation of the world and mankind at 4000 BC, the flood of Noah at 2350
BC, and the dispersal from Babel at 2250 BC.
Christine Miller
Nothing New Press
