by Ronnais Lloyd

What does it mean to study the ancient world as an autistic person? What can early Roman myth-history teach us about ourselves? It seems to me that some autistic traits are not so different from the difficulties faced by later ancient historians writing about Early Rome.

Illustrations from Mrs Trimmer’s 1798 Roman Prints collection
  • Confusion

Much of our understanding of Early Rome comes from the literary tradition, surviving from mainly later ancient historians writing around 1st century BC – in particular Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch. They were writing hundreds of years after the Gallic Sack of Rome (c.390BC) – never mind the foundation of Rome by Romulus (c.753 BC)! They often confuse or conflate their myth-history because they are writing in a much later period with a lot of hindsight. For example, whilst there was stratification of different classes in Early Rome it is unlikely that an archetypal character such as Romulus created the Patricians and Plebeians himself; the titles are more likely to have been created gradually over time. Another example is confusion over the increase in territory under each king and the building of walls around Rome. From archaeology it seems more plausible that the agger (mound) was used as defence rather than a complete circuit of fortifications around Rome.

Yet, the confusions apparent in Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch are understandable because their perspective of Rome was completely different, and they were writing about a different time. There was a gap in perceptions that couldn’t be bridged.

Growing up without knowing I was autistic often left me feeling confused. I felt frustrated because I couldn’t understand ‘unwritten’ rules. I viewed the world differently – and that did not mean I was ignorant or stupid. It was just that there was a gap between my perceptions and those of other people.

No matter how hard autistic people try to fit in, we will never fully understand the world from a neurotypical perspective – like those later ancient historians could never fully understand what it was like to live in Early Rome. But autistic people try incredibly hard to understand, because our success and even our survival depend on it.

  • Identity issues

One issue with later ancient historians writing about earlier history is that Early Roman identity is often distorted. For example, the earlier Roman kings are often thought to have been edited in the oral tradition in order to have a didactic purpose – Romulus can be seen as a law maker, Numa as a devoted pious man and Hostilius as a bloodthirsty warrior. Contrary to Dionysius who believes the state couldn’t have been founded without a hearth, was Vesta a proto-urban primitive deity worshipped on an individual level before she became a state cult? Another example of distortion is the lack of archaeological evidence for the Gauls sacking Rome and burning the city to the ground.  Plausibly, the Gauls could have pillaged Rome, and ancient historians due to embarrassment could have covered this up with the heroic tales of Camillus.

It is extremely problematic to try to reconstruct Roman identity in Early Rome from the literary tradition alone, which is where archaeology is very useful. A lot of the myth-history has been distorted because ancient historians assume that Rome must have always been destined to be great.

After years of being bullied in primary school for being weird I learnt to mask my autistic traits whenever I left the house in order to fit in. I changed how people perceived me because I wanted to be ‘normal’ – whatever that means. Similarly, later Roman historians chose to idealise Rome as a powerful and great city since its foundation. Both Early Roman history and most autistic people have identity issues.

I am slowly learning to ‘unmask’ around my closest friends and stop pretending to be someone I am not, but this is incredibly difficult as it has been my automatic reaction for so many years. Inevitably that means re-evaluating myself and my own history. What makes me, me? Similarly, when studying Early Roman identity we should take a similar approach and re-evaluate what has been distorted on purpose to appear more appealing to others. What does this tell us about how Romans saw themselves?

  • Differences

The works of Livy, Dionysius or Plutarch are completely different in their stylistic composition. Livy and Plutarch enjoy focusing on morality and use embellished language, whereas Dionysius gets carried away (with around 300 pages just on the reign of the kings), cites more sources and uses his oratorical skills to engage people with his speeches. Moreover, there are so many different variations in the stories they record. Were Romulus and Remus nursed by a prostitute or a wolf? Did Romulus stab Remus when he jumped over the wall, did he push him off a cliff or did one of Romulus’ men kill him? Did Tarpeia betray Rome to the Sabines in order to quench her lust for gold bracelets or did she actually try to help the Romans? Did Tullia ask her husband to kill her father and run over his body with a chariot?

Those differences are what make the history of Early Rome mysterious and fascinating. Without the ancient historians recording differences in the stories, which more than likely originated from oral history and variant traditions, the myths would be much less interesting.

Similarly if everyone was the same, life would be boring too…

I’ll finish with the dedication from Julie Dachez’s Invisible Differences: A Story of Asperger’s, Adulting, And Living A Life in Full Color. I would definitely recommend this graphic novel to anyone wanting to understand what it is like to be an autistic woman diagnosed in adulthood.

Your role is not to fit into a mold, but rather, to help others – all others – out of the molds they’ve been trapped in.

Ronnais Lloyd


Cora Beth

Cora Beth Fraser is the founder and director of Asterion. You can find her full profile on the 'About' page.

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