“FOUNDATION TALES” AS THE LITERARY FORM OF HISTORICAL WRITINGS AND THE FOUNDATION OF ROME BY FABIUS PICTOR

Abstract

. “Foundation of cities” as the case of historical writings was widely spread in Greek speaking area. Based on foundation tales in Herodotus and Thucydides we can realize the composition of such works. Historical models of this kind affected Roman historiography since Fabius Pictor, who took the foundation of Rome as the starting point of native history. The article deals with a problem what did Fabius Pictor understand as “the foundation of Rome”. Based on the analysis of the sources we came to a conclusion that Fabius Pictor incorporated in Rome’s foundation tale all the legends that reflected the events before and after the foundation itself up to the beginning of the Republic. In this respect the way Fabius understood the concept “the foundation of Rome” differed from that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus who used Fabius’s work as one of his sources.