Gary
D. FARNEY (Re)inventing the Sabine: Cato the
Elder and Sabine Identity in Republican Rome
Writers
of the classical world agreed that the Sabines, central
Italian neighbors of the Latins, uniformly possessed a
peculiar personality and character. The stereotype was
very positive, considering the Sabines to be tough,
disciplined, and rustic&emdash;throw-backs to a simpler,
more virtuous time. One can see this image in words that
writers regularly use to describe the character of the
Sabines: severus,
ridigus,
durus,
tristis
and acer
(e.g. Cato the Elder, Cicero, Vergil, Horace). The
stereotype also included that the Sabines had large
families and a frugal lifestyle (Cato, Varro, Vergil), as
well as exceptional piety (Cato, Cn. Gellius, Cicero,
Verrius Flaccus).
Some
found a genealogical explanation for these admirable
qualities by attributing Sabine character to their
descent from the famously virtuous Spartans. In the
second century BC, Cato, Cn. Gellius and Sempronius
Tuditanus, claimed that a Spartan named Sabus was the
eponymous founder of the Sabines. By the late Republic,
most Romans had accepted both the positive Sabine image
as well as their Spartan genealogy. Accordingly, several
aristocratic families of Sabine origin, like the Claudii,
Valerii and Aurelii, even placed Spartan heroes in their
family trees.
According
to earlier writers, however, the Sabines used to be very
different. Specifically, both Fabius Pictor and Cincius
Alimentus allude to Sabine luxury in their accounts of
the Tarpeia myth. Tarpeia was a Roman matron who, during
the war between Romulus and Titus Tatius, betrayed the
Roman citadel to the Sabines out of her desire to obtain
Sabine gold. Both authors explain that at the time the
Sabines "wore ornaments of gold and were no less
luxurious than the Etruscans." Pictor added that the
Romans only realized true wealth once they had conquered
the Sabines in the third century BC. Both writers imply
that the Sabines of their own day were not wealthy, but
that this was by circumstance and not by choice.
Moreover, in the Annales of the early second
century poet Ennius, Titus Tatius seems to have been
portrayed as a tyrant&emdash;once again, a
characterization more in line with an Etruscan king than
a Sabine one.
These
wealthy, Etruscan-like Sabines are completely
inconsistent with the Sabines of later sources. In fact,
both the familiar "austere" Sabines and their Spartan
origin appear for the first time in our extant fragments
of Cato, who wrote about a generation after Pictor and
the others. I argue that Cato not only promoted the idea
of virtuous Sabines, but that he actually created this
image and their Spartan origin. I suggest that he did
this to advance the Sabines socially and politically,
since he was probably Sabine himself, and to urge the
Romans of his own day to emulate the Sabines as he
conceived of them. His historical work, the
Origines, was in part devoted to the origins of
various Italian peoples, and so was probably the primary
medium of his pro-Sabine propaganda. Cato's authority as
the first Latin historian established this image of the
austere Sabine, and anecdotes and stories from later
writers show they agreed with Cato. Cato's own
personality gave authority to this stereotype&emdash;as
did that of other Sabine Romans&emdash;and so his image
of the Sabine became canonical.