Rome - The Biography of a City: Christopher Hibbert, Penguin 1987
- One -
MYTHS MONARCHS AND REPUBLICANS
Titus Livius was a young writer from Padova. It was during the days of Augustus, the first of the Roman emperors when Titus Livius finished the first part of his epic history of the city that he had come to live. His story began seven hundred years before. A time shrouded by romantic legend. The scene was a high ground overlooking the Tiber, some fifteen miles from the salt flats through which the Tiber flowed to the sea. Down the slopes of the hills ran streams which formed swamps and small lakes in the valleys below. And below the valleys was the expanse of the Roman Campagna, an undulating plain of woodlands and pasture that stretched as far as the eye could see, to the Alban hills in the south, the Apennines in the east and to the north lay the empire of the Etruscans. The story told by Titus Livius begins eight centuries before the birth of Christ on what would become known as the Palatine Hills.
He wrote of the by now well know legend of Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Rhea Silvia daughter of Numitor, King of Alba Longa and a descendent of Aeneas, the warrior of Troy. Rhea Silvia is raped by someone claiming to be Mars, god of war. She discards the babies when born by the waters of the Tiber. The babies are rescued by a she wolf who suckles them keeping them alive until a herdsman finds them.
When older, the twins argue about who should be the leader of a new settlement they want to establish near where they were saved. Romulus climbs the Palatine, Remus the Aventine to each ask the gods for a sign which would establish the eminence of one over the other. The signs are inconclusive but the fight is. Romulus kills Remus and becomes thereby the founder of the city that bears his name to this day: Roma or Rome as we call her in English.
Rome's first expansion was into the territory of the Sabine people. Lacking women in his settlement, he prepares a sumptious feast for the Livy festival in honour of the water god Neptune and invites the curious Sabines. At mid feast the Romans grab all the young Sabine girls and take them to their homes while their parents and friends flee. Romulus tells the girls to submit and promises them a decent life in exchange. Eventually they accept their fate but the Sabines are still angry and want revenge. The Sabine soliders trick the daughter of Spurius Tarpesius, the commander of the Roman Garrison to letting them in. They enter, the daughter is killed, and a horrifying battle ensues. It is only the brave interference of the Sabine women, outraged to see their fathers and brothers fighting their husbands, that the men see the error of their ways and stop. Romulus and the Sabine commander make peace and eventually the two peoples are united with Rome as the seat of power.
As the years passed, Rome's territory grew as other rival tribes were engaged in battle and defeated. The vanquished tribes became assimilated into already existing Roman settlements and the population became increasingly heterogeneous. Gradually the power of Rome spread far and wide, westwards to the sea, eastwards to the Apennines, south towards the lands of the Volsci and north towards the empire of the Etruscans.
Romulus disappeared in a whirl of wind one day. A mystery. Two theories persist: one he was taken by the gods claiming someone who was after all, one of them and the other theory was he was murdered by some of the hundred senators he had created and who became jealous of his power. After a year of interregnum during which the senators shared the government between them, another king was elected; and he in turn was followed by another six kings. The first of these was Numa Pompilius.
His reign was notable for the establishment of religious orders inspiring Romans to fear the gods. He appointed priests with specified religious duties and a high priest with authority over all the others, the Pontifex Maximus. He designated virgin acolytes to serve in the shrine of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and fireside, and to attend to her sacred flame; he introduced twelve Salii or Leaping Priests for the service of Mars. They wore a uniform of an embroidered tunic and bronze breastplate. They were provided with sacred shields which they carried through the city chanting hymns to the triple beat of a ritual dance.
Numa Pompilius divided the year into twelve lunar months and stipulated certain days on which public business could not be conducted. He built the temple of Janus, god of gates and doors which were to be left open when Rome was at war and closed in times of peace. He signed treaties of alliance with those neighbouring people who were not already under Roman rule and secured peace.
The peace only lasted as long as his reign, for his successor Tullus Hostilius, won glory mainly as a soldier during his thirty two year reign. The next king, Ancus Marcius was a grandson of Numa Pompilius whose noble record in the matter of religious observances he wanted to emulate. He was still determined to fight for Rome's honour and independence. However the wars and peace negotiations had to be conducted in accordance with those strict legal formalities and unvarying rites which were later to be supervised by the priestly representatives of the Roman people, the fetials.
During Ancus reign a clever ambitious and cunning young man from Etruria settled in Rome. He was the grandson of an exile from Corinth, he adopted the name of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and within a few years had established such a reputation of eminence that he became the next king after Ancus.
Lucius built the Circus Maximus. He brought entertainers from Etruria in splendid public games. He built new walls for the stronger enclosure for the city. He drained the low-lying land where the city's Forum stood, making grants of land around this traditional meeting place to builders of houses shops and porticoes; and he laid the foundations for a new temple dedicated to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill.
579 BC, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the first Etruscan king of Rome was murdered by assassins hired by the sons of Ancus who had hoped to attain the succession. This didn't happen because of the cunning of the widowed queen who had concealed her husbands murder. She somehow persuaded the populace to accept her son-in-law, Servius Tullius, as regent, and eventually as king. He was entitled to wear the white and purple robe of royalty and to be preceded by lictors, members of the now traditional royal escort each of whom bore before him an axe bound with rods, symbolic of the king's power to beat and behead recalcitrant citizens without trial.
Once he had established his power, Servius Tullius began the great work for which he was always to be remembered, the re-organisation of Roman society according to a fixed scale of rank and fortune. By this time Roman society was already divided into curiae for the purposes of voting but Tullius extended the divisions and assigned according to their means duties in wartime and privileges in peace. Just to contrast what this meant in real terms, the elite were given the cavalry, the equites, swords, spear and armour. The other classes made up the infantry and the poorer were given slings and stones while the destitute were exempt from military service but denied any political previleges whatsoever.
Having classified his population, he set about dividing Rome into administrative zones. He extended the city boundaries, taking in the hills of Quirinal and Viminal. To mark these he built a rampart. He distributed land captured in war among the ordinary citizens, an act which (for some reason) displeased the Senate. In manipulating this dicontent, the son of the murdered Priscus, Tarquin saw his opportunity to take power. With the help of his ambitious wife Tullia, Tarquin increased his influence in the Senate. He used bribery. At a certain moment he had Servius murdered. Legend has it that Tullius drove over the corpse in a chariot as blood spattered her dress. It was around 534BC when the tyranny of Tarquin the Proud began.
Tarquin declared that an idle people was a burden on the state. He started a massive program of public works. An example was how he lavished the spoils of a successful war against the Volscians on the enlargement and adornment of the magnificent Temple of Jupiter, began by his father. On the building site were craftsmen from all over Etruria and hundreds of labourers from the Roman proletariat. The other big projects were the improvements to the Circus and the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewers.
One day the appearance of a huge snake sliding out of a crack in the royal palace so alarmed Tarquin, he sent off as envoys two of his three sons Titus and Arruns and his nephew Brutus to Delphi in Greece to consult the oracle. After having asked about the snake, the young men couldn't resist asking who would be the next king. The answer: 'He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome supreme authority.' Titus and Arruns agreed to keep this a secret from their younger brother Sextus Tarquinius, then drew lots. As they did so, Brutus who was more astute, pretened to stumble to the ground, his lips touched the earth, mother of all living things.
Back in Italy, the three princes and their friends were drinking when the conversation turned to the merits of their women. Collatinus proudly maintained that his wife, Lucretia was the most faithful and to prove it brought his company to witness her busy with doing something useful while other ladies were cavorting at dinner parties. So impressed and pleased Collatinus invited his friends to stay for supper. During the evening, the youngest Prince, Sextus Tarquinius became infatuated with his charming hostess, then overcome with lust, determined to seduce her. Some days later, the cunning Sextus entered Lucretia's bedroom and blackmailed her. "I shall kill you then cut the throat of a slave, whose naked body he would place by her side. Will they not believe that you have been caught in adultery and paid the price?" Lucretia yielded and Sextus enjoyed her. The next day she told her father and husband in the company of her husband's friend, Brutus what had happened. She then drew a knife from her robe and plunged it in her heart. Brutus declared before the knife, "By this girl's blood and by the gods I swear that with sword and fire, and whatever else can lend strength to my arm, I will pursue Tarquin the Proud, his wicked wife and all his children, and never again will I let them or any other man be king in Rome!"
In time with Brutus's passionate bidding, the Roman populace revolted against the tyrant. Tarquin fled into Etruria with his two elder sons. Sextus was killed. The Kingdom of Rome thus ended. Brutus and Collatinus were appointed the first two Consuls in Rome. Around 507BC the days of the Republic began.
Roman Kings Romulus Numa Pompilius Tullus Hostilius Ancus Marcius Lucius Tarquinius Priscus Servius Tullius Tarquin the Proud