Beliefs in the Afterlife, Aeneas, Romulus and Remus

Two people telling one story

This component has taught you three ways of handling a source, and you have met all of them. A source is reliable FOR something, and the mark is in saying what. A figure carved on a stone is still a figure somebody chose. And a story that reports the impossible is still evidence, because it had to be believable to the people it was written for. Here is the fourth situation, and it is the one that unsettles people most. You have two sources about the same subject and they do not match. A poet and a historian both tell how Rome began. A stone cut for one family and a poem about a public festival both concern the Roman dead. The instinct is to work out which one is right. That instinct will cost you marks. Ask what each was made FOR, and the difference stops being a problem to solve and becomes the answer to the question.

Words for the Roman dead

Six terms this half of the topic runs on. The first three are about what the living did, which is the part the sources actually show.

A poet and a historian, one founding

Both are Roman, both are writing long after anything they describe, and neither is a report. What separates them is purpose, and that is the useful thing about them.

When two accounts do not match

The instinct is to decide which one is right. Resist it, because it is almost never the question being asked. Ask what each account was made FOR. Who was going to hear or read it, and what did the person making it want from them? Then say what each is good evidence for. Two accounts of one subject that differ are usually not one liar and one honest witness. They are two purposes. A weak answer picks a winner and stops. A strong answer names both purposes and says what each can and cannot settle. ⚠️ And do not waste the other half of this. Where two accounts of quite different kinds agree, that agreement is stronger than either on its own. Be careful what you claim from it, though: it shows the account was well established and widely held, which is not the same as showing the thing happened.

Match each source to what it was made for

Two accounts, one founding

A student notices that the poet and the historian give different emphases in telling how Rome began, and asks which of them to believe. What is the better response?

• Name what each was made for and say what each is good evidence for, since they differ in purpose rather than in honesty
• Prefer the historian, because history is always more reliable than poetry
• Prefer the poet, because he wrote closer to the events
• Use neither, because two sources that disagree cancel each other out

What a tomb inscription can show

Select the TWO statements that are fair about using a Roman tomb inscription as evidence.

• It preserves one real named person who would otherwise be lost to us entirely
• It records what the living chose to have said, so it shows what was thought worth recording
• It gives a reliable picture of how most Roman families lived and died
• It was composed by the person it commemorates

How a family kept a name alive

Put these stages in the order they happened.

• A member of the family dies and is buried outside the walls of the town
• A tomb is set up beside one of the roads leading out, where people pass
• An inscription is cut on it, naming the person and those who mourned them
• Each year at the Parentalia the family returns with offerings for their own dead
• Long after the family itself is gone, passers-by still read the name

Names and customs at speed

Five in a row, three lives. Answer from memory.

Complete the afterlife and founding paragraph

Roman burial took place _____ a town, so tombs stood along the roads leading out of it. The inscription cut on a tomb is called _____, and its wording was settled by the living rather than by the person it names. Each year at the festival called _____, families returned to honour their own dead. Roman tradition traced the city back to a Trojan exile named _____, and placed the founding of the city itself in the hands of _____.

One name, kept

Your specification names a funerary epitaph for a young girl. It is a real stone for a real child, and the historically serious way to treat it is also the humane one: it restores one person to a record that otherwise counts only crowds. A weak answer: "It shows that Romans were sad when children died." True, thin, and it turns a person into a general fact. A strong answer: "It is evidence that this family chose to spend money on a lasting record, and it shows what they thought worth saying. It is first-hand in a way no poem is, because nobody was composing it for an audience to admire. What it cannot do is stand for Roman families in general - one stone is not a sample, and the families who could not pay for a stone left no trace at all." ⚠️ Now the move worth carrying out of this module. An inscription is the strongest evidence there is for the particular and the weakest for the general. The poem about the annual festival is the exact reverse: it describes the custom in general and names nobody at all. They are not rivals. Each one is strong precisely where the other is weak, and an answer that uses the poem for the custom and the stone for a real case has used both properly.

Spot the true Roman burial facts

Tap the TWO statements that are true.

• Roman burial took place outside the walls of a town, so tombs lined the roads leading out
• A tomb inscription records what the living chose to have said
• A single tomb inscription gives a reliable picture of how most Romans lived and died
• The Parentalia was a single ceremony held once, at the time of a death

Put the pairs to work

Three questions, each one about two sources rather than one. Choose the answer you could defend.

• A student writes that the poet must be wrong about the founding, because the historian tells it differently. What should they say instead?
• A question asks what can be known about how ordinary Roman families treated their dead. How should the two sources be used?
• The poet and the historian, writing for quite different purposes, both trace Rome back to a Trojan exile. What follows from that agreement?

Write about two sources that disagree

A friend has decided that when two Roman sources about the same subject differ, one of them must simply be wrong. Write the answer that changes their mind.

• Explain where Romans buried their dead and what the Parentalia was for
• Explain what a tomb inscription is strong evidence for, and what one stone cannot show
• Explain what a poet and a historian telling the same founding story are each good evidence for
• Explain why two accounts that differ are not simply one right and one wrong
• Finish by saying what does follow when two sources of very different kinds agree, and what does not