Origines gentium: The origins of Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, and others

Johnston, Patricia A. and Mastrocinque, Attilio and Stern, Gaius (2025) Origines gentium: The origins of Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, and others. ACTA ANTIQUA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARUM HUNGARICAE, 65 (3-4). pp. 261-264. ISSN 0044-5975

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Abstract

The Topic of the 2023 Symposium Peregrinum, held June 23–25, 2023, at Soriano nel Cimino (Viterbo), Italy, was “Origines gentium: The Origins of Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, and Others.” Some ancient peoples and cities knew about their origin, others had only vague memories. Questions about origins goes back at least to Hesiod’s Theogony, and the search for our remote prehistory continues to this day with the rediscovery of lost family histories and the aid of DNA testing. To explore this issue, 35 scholars met in person with an additional 15 zoom participants to discuss how Greeks, Romans, and others compiled and fabricated accounts of their own people’s origin. We thank our hostess, Francesca Ceci, for organizing a very enjoyable setting in the lovely town of Soriano nel Cimino. We are also grateful to the municipality of this city. Greeks and Romans often chose to represent their own origins very differently from what archaeology or common sense tells us about the creation of a new city or land. In some cases, we have very clear descriptions and dates for the founding of a city, especially the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia, but in other cases, especially Rome and Thebes, fantastic creatures and events enter the story as integral parts of the foundation myth that either enhance or disguise the true events of the city’s birth. The traditional date of the founding of Rome, 753 BC, was not agreed upon by Roman sources before the research of Varro (formalized by Livy), and today we know this date to be far too late, just as the foundation of Carthage, officially dated to 814 BC, is also much disputed and just one of a series of dates proposed by different ancient sources.

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