Rome\'s \"original sin\"

[Epictetus]

I am reading Virgil’s Georgics and came across an interesting passage:

Gods of my country, Heroes of the land, you, Romulus, and you, mother Vesta, who guard the Tuscan Tiber and the Palatine of Rome, at least do not prevent this young prince [Octavian] from succouring a world in ruins! Long enough has our life-blood paid for Laomedon’s perjury at Troy…

Virgil, Georgics, 498+

The basic idea, I think, is that the civil strife caused by the death of Julius Caesar is punishment inflicted upon the Romans because of the sins of their (supposed) ancestors. The punishment has been enough, Virgil says, and Octavian is to stop the war.

Richard F. Thomas’ commentary says:

The notion that civil war was visited on Rome as part of the inherited guilt or sin goes back to the very beginnings of her history is traditional, but varies greatly in its details. Laomedon’s can be seen as the ‘primal sin’: king of Troy and father of Priam, he is held to have cheated Apollo and Poseidon of their payment after they helped to build the walls of Troy… Other instances of guilt to be expiated by civil war are Paris’ ‘cheating’ of Hera and Athena, and his violation (through the seduction of Helen) of the laws of hospitality (Horace Odes 3.3.23-6); possibly Aeneas’ desertion of Dido, resulting in the Punic, rather than the civil, wars (Aeneid 4.622-9); the murder of Rhea Silvia, or Ilia, mother of Romulus and Remus (Horace Odes 1.2.13-20); and, of course, the actual fratricide, which is played out by the metaphorical fratricide of civil war, the death of Remus… Horace Epodes 7.17-20; Odes 3.3.30-3.

The only authorities Thomas cites for this idea of collective Roman guilt are Virgil and Horace. They are weighty figures, certainly, but they are also literary figures. I’m unsure if this idea of collective guilt was real, or just a theme that these two writers used.

What do you think? Did some Romans truly believe they were paying for past sins, or was this simply a literary motif?