Silva Rerum | 17.08.2015 The Grand Duchy of Lithuania started "creating" its history in the 16th century. Before that, it was impossible due to the political situation, lack of historiographic tradition caused by remoteness from the West (and a different language) and no need for the state's genealogy. In the 16th century, the state started integrating with the Kingdom of Poland, which was culminated by the Union in Lublin (1569). There were several reasons for the appearance on new concepts as to the roots of the Lithuanian state. Lithuanians desired to expose their early origins, also in comparison to the Kingdom of Poland and emphasise their national distinctiveness, especially in the context of the fights within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There were also conflicts with Rus and an own myth would help Lithuania to free from Russian religious and linguistic impact, by raising a historical awareness that would be completely different from Russian and would include Lithuania in the circle of the Western culture.
The alleged history of Lithuania in the Old Poland epoch begins with the story of five hundred Roman noblemen under the leadership of Duke Palemon (Publius Libon, coat of arms Colonna/Column) fleeing from Rome. It is difficult to identify the person who first introduced the myth in historiography. Jan Długosz, in the 10th book of his Annals claimed that the supporters of Pompey, beaten in the struggle for power by Julius Caesar, unwilling to engage in more civil wars, dismayed by the cruelty of fratricidal fights and fearing revenge for supporting Pompey, arrived at Lithuanian lands in 714 ab urbe condita, that is in 39 or 38 BC. In the part of his work devoted to the early origins of Lithuania, Długosz presents a story according to which a Roman nobleman Willa, together with his family and five hundred companions, arrived and populated the previously unoccupied Lithuanian lands. They even founded a town Romnove ("Roma nova" – new Rome). The new country was called Lithalia – only the letter "l" was added to the word "Italia". Lithuanian language was supposed to be corrupted Latin. This way, Lithuanians were included in the circle of the Western world and Latin civilisation.
Early 16th century was the golden time of literature in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At that time was created the Latopis Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego i Żmudzkiego, history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Samogitia. No information about the Roman descent of Lithuanians was mentioned in the first excerpts from codes. It was only one of the Medium Swods (codes) that reported the fact that Lithuanian progenitors set off on a trip to their new homeland, but they did so during the reign of Nero rather than Caesar. Inclusion of Lithuanians in the Christian community was attributed to Nero's reign as it was known that at his times, Christians were severely persecuted. The leader of the expedition to the North was not Willa, but Nero's relative Palemon (called Publius Libon). According to the author of the code, Palemon arrived in Lithuania (to the mouth of the Neman River) in the year 57, and he travelled by the sea. Next, he moved to the centre of the future state called Libonia (from the second part of Publius Libon's name), which was after some time changed to Liwonia.
In the third swod of the chronicle (Bychowiec Chronicle), the date of the journey and arrival of Palemon and his royal retinue was moved to Attila's times (the ruler of Huns between 445 and 453). The purpose of the change was to better adjust the myth to the Lithuanian reality.
The Rus latopis books have not survived and we know about them only from the information included in the books of the leading promoter of the idea of the Roman origin of Lithuanians, Maciej Stryjkowski. According to Stryjkowski, Palemon's times were characterised by harmony and concord, and the old and newly arrived people lived in unison. Palemon was compared to Odysseus (sea voyage), Aeneas fleeing from Troy and Jason who led the quest for the Golden Fleece.
Stryjkowski's Chronicle was the most popular chronicle in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He popularised the ancient history of Lithuania inscribed in the global history, also Christian (Lithuanians were also the descendants of Noe and Palemon – his imitator – he, too, had three sons).
Another writer important for Lithuania, apart from Stryjkowski, was Wojciech Wijuk Kojałowicz. He emphasised Lithuania's distinctiveness from the Crown – his books are devoted primarily to Lithuania. In the story about Palemon, he repeated some information after Stryjkowski, but he also changed the time of his arrival in Lithuania to the year 924. Although this would make Lithuanians's history shorter than the history of Poles who dated their beginnings to 550, Kojałowicz decided that such version was more probable historically.
The myth about Palemon penetrated both to heraldry books (Wojciech Wijuk Kojałowicz'a, Kasper Niesiecki's and Stanisław Duńczewski's) and encyclopaedias (especially Benedykt Chmielowski's). On the other hand, the story was criticised in Józef Andrzej Jabłonowski's Heraldyka (Heraldry book, 1752). The author claimed that if 500 Roman patricians had left the Eternal City at the same time, one of the Ancient writers would have mentioned it. Nonetheless, the Lithuanian noblemen referred to the Palemon myth, especially those whose ancestors traced their origin to Palemon's 500 companions. Great families of the coats of arms Kolumna, Róża, Centaur, Ursyn, namely the Radziwiłł family, the Czartoryski family, the Krasiński family and the Pac family stayed on the guard of the story about Palemon.
The story was thoroughly criticised by August Ludwig Schlözer, Adam Naruszewicz (who did not believe in the Palemon fantasy) and Joachim Lelewel. All the same, the myth survived: in the 19th century, Teodor Narbutt and Dionizy Paszkiewicz still mentioned the mythical founder of the Lithuanian state – a runaway from Rome.
Translation: Lingua Lab
