FROM LEGEND TO REPUBLIC

Fire awed the early Romans, as it did the Greeks and others. The Romans believed in a goddess of fire called Vesta, and they had a sacred temple of fire tended by four females -- the Vestal Virgins -- who were selected while they were children and were expected to serve thirty years. During their service they were expected to remain virgins, for the Romans believed that to please the gods, women who were unmarried and not trying to bear children should remain chaste.

A Vestal Virgin was part of the greatest legend among the Romans -- the legend about Rome's origins. The legend begins with a Vestal Virgin giving birth to twin boys and claiming that the boys had been fathered miraculously by the god Mars -- a god of fertility and later also of war. The Vestal Virgin was the sister of a king. The king believed his sister was lying and that she had violated a sacred law. To put things right with the gods the king had his sister imprisoned, and he had her twins put afloat in a basket on the Tiber River. The two boys, called Romulus and Remus, were expected to drown, but the river receded and the basket carrying the boys came to rest on the river's bank, where a shepherd found them.

Around the time of Jesus Christ, when this legend was still popular among Romans, a Roman historian named Livy tried looking back centuries to determine whether the legend was true. The earliest version that Livy found described the wife of the shepherd who rescued Romulus and Remus. It described her as a she-wolf (a bitch) because of her alleged loose morals. Legends evolve, and by Livy's time the legend held that the boys had been rescued by a real female wolf -- a notion that was put into the famous Roman sculpture a wolf nursing the two boys.

According to the legend that Livy studied, Romulus and Remus grew into manhood, and they killed their uncle, the king, in revenge for his having imprisoned their mother and for his having unjustly usurped power from their grandfather. The boys restored their grandfather to the throne, and they founded Rome where they had emerged from the river.

Then Romulus and Remus quarreled -- as had Cain and Abel. Romulus killed Remus, and he became Rome's first king. To populate his city, Romulus gathered people from other countries. And, to give his subjects wives, he abducted young unmarried women from a nearby tribe called the Sabines -- an incident to be known as "_HYPERLINK "sabine.html"__The Abduction of the Sabine Women_." The fathers of the women were outraged, and the Sabines retaliated by attacking the Romans. The abducted Sabine women, now apparently contented wives, intervened in the fighting and brought peace between their husbands and their fathers. The legend ends with Romulus, after a long reign, vanishing into a thunderstorm. He had become a god. Then he reappeared, descending from the sky, declaring to those listening that it was the will of heaven that Rome would be the capital of the world, that Romans would cherish the art of war, and that others should realize that they cannot resist the strength of Roman arms.

Rome's Worldly Beginnings

Among the various peoples who migrated southward across the Alps to the warmer climate and rich lands of Italy were Indo-Europeans whose language had evolved into Latin -- a language closely related to Celtic. These Latin speaking people settled along fifty miles or so of coastal plains and inland to the mountain range that runs down the Italian peninsula, and they settled among the hills that are now a part of Rome. These were hills whose gentler slopes would support wheat, whose steeper slopes would support olive trees, fruit trees and vineyards. Here, animals could be pastured. And in the marshy land along the coast and farther inland, the Romans drained the stagnant pools of water that they found, making the area more habitable by eliminating malarial mosquitoes.

The legend of Romulus and Remus dated the founding Rome at around 735 BCE, but from modern archeology comes evidence that Rome was already a collection of villages around the year 1000. These villages were fifteen miles inland from the sea, along the banks of the then navigable Tiber River. A search of historical records indicates that the Romans were organized around tribal clans. Like other Latins in Italy they tilled small plots of land, pastured cows, pigs and goats and tended flocks of sheep. Like other tribal peoples they had a council of elders, and their chiefs were chosen by clan elders and by the acclamation of their entire people.

Rome under the Etruscans

The Etruscans lived north of the Tiber River, some in cities with paved streets and drainage. They used advanced techniques in mining and agriculture. They borrowed from and traded with cities in Italy that the Greeks had founded. And they traded with central Europe and with others along the coast of North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, importing a variety of goods in exchange for the iron and bronze items they made, such as helmets and pails. The Etruscans played music, danced, did acrobatics, and held foot and chariot races. And they were fierce warriors. Various Etruscan kings conquered parts of Italy and held it as empire. And sometime around 600 BCE, Etruscan chieftains led an army southward and conquered Rome and areas beyond.

By the time that Etruscans had conquered Rome, the Romans had already been divided between common folk called plebeians and aristocrats called patricians -- modern scholars estimating the patricians to be from ten to five percent of Rome's population. Whether the patricians were descendants of a people who had conquered the Romans before the Etruscans or were Romans who had become an elite is unknown. Most patricians were from the families of successful farmers, but a few were not very wealthy. Like other aristocracies, the patricians based their superiority on their family name, even if the family's success in farming and wealth had declined.

As happened in China and elsewhere, the aristocrats of Rome cooperated with their conquerors while maintaining their higher status and privileges over the plebeians. Some patrician families adopted Etruscan names. And patricians held onto priestly positions -- which were denied to plebeians.

Rome under the Etruscans resembled a Greek city. Like Greek cities, it had a senate: an advisory council of elders who were mainly patricians. Rome's most important temple and meeting place was a building like a Greek acropolis, called the capitol. The capitol had a Greek-like public assembly called the comitia -- where plebeians were a minority and outvoted.

Rome stood at crossroads of major trade routes and was a major center of trade. It had an urban center, approximately one mile wide and four miles long, with paved streets, impressive buildings, and sewers. Under the Etruscans, Roman crafts grew. From the Etruscans the Romans borrowed vase styles and the use of bronze. From the Etruscans they borrowed religious practices, including reading the future by examining the livers of sacrificed animals. From the Etruscans the Romans acquired a twelve-month calendar, and they acquired the use of a personal first name that through Rome was to become the first name and surname commonly used among Europeans. The Romans learned from the Etruscans what Etruscans had learned from the Greeks: the growing of grapes and olives. The Roman alphabet was perhaps an Etruscan adaptation of the Greek alphabet. And from the Etruscans, Rome's aristocracy acquired a familiarity with military organization that included a unit called a legion, which warred in phalanx positions like Greek hoplites.

Rome Becomes a Republic

In 509 BCE, a group of Roman nobles, who were fed up with their Etruscan king, Tarquin, drove him from Rome and into early retirement. Leading patrician families among the Romans took power and ruled as members of the Senate. Without a king, Rome had become a republic. The Senate, or council of elders, had long been accustomed to watching developments and advising the king at his request, and now the Senate was ready to serve as the supreme organ of government. What the Senate created would develop into a model in some regards for those founding the United States of America.

It was common among the nobility of Greek cities in southern Italy to choose one among them as an executive -- a president. And in place of a king, the Senate chose not one but two as executive administrators in order to avoid the unreliability of a single administrator. Each executive was a patrician, and each was called a consul. Each was to serve one-year -- as among the Greeks -- and each was given the power to veto a move by the other.

The selection of the consuls had to be ratified by an assembly of clan leaders (the Comitia Curiata). And, as leaders of the Senate, the consuls decided who would be promoted within the Senate. The consuls could declare an emergency and acquire absolute power for six months. But the consuls' powers were limited in that they could not declare war. War was thought too important to be left to two men. Declaring war would be a prerogative of the Senate. But the consuls would be commanders-in-chief of the military, including the power to have soldiers executed for lack of discipline. And during war, if it was time for elections and both consuls were away on military missions, the Senate could appoint a dictator to preside over the elections.

When there was no war the consuls were occupied with city administration, public finances, and civil and criminal justice. By now, apparently, the crime of murder was no longer dealt with by one's clan but by the state. The consuls could sentence citizens to death, but citizens had the right to appeal such sentences before a special assembly of plebeians.

EARLY RELIGION

Like others, Romans saw themselves as a people blessed by their gods and their gods as extending their benevolence only to them. And like others, they had numerous gods -- gods representing every force of nature that they perceived. The supreme god of the Romans was Jupiter, a god of sunshine and rain and most importantly Rome's protector. They had a fertility god called Mars, who stirred the plants back to life in spring. And the connection between Mars and land suited another of his occupations: wars were often about possession of land, and Mars was also a god of war.

The Romans had a god called Janus -- from which the word January derives. Janus was a god of doorways, including the gates at the walls of Rome. Rome's goddess of fire, Vesta, ranked high among the Roman gods, but the largest temple in Rome was for the goddess Venus, the daughter of Jupiter, who was a goddess of vegetation, a bringer of good fortune and victory and the protector of feminine chastity.

Like others, the Romans had acquired much in religion through cultural diffusion, and like others they remained largely unmindful of such origins. It seems that the Romans acquired the gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva from the Etruscans, and perhaps through the Etruscans the Romans acquired Greek gods. The Roman gods Mercury, Ceres and Diana resembled Greek gods, and the Roman god Hercules was a Greek god. With increased contact between Romans and Greeks, the Romans would identify their gods more with Greek gods. And not having much in mythology surrounding their gods, the Romans would adopt Greek mythology to support their gods.

Religion for the Romans was not about their love for gods or of gods who loved them, nor was it about withdrawing from the present and waiting for a happy life in the hereafter. Religion for the Romans was about the here and now and the terrors that the gods could devise. For the Romans, devotion to the gods and pleasing the gods was a duty, an act of patriotism, an act of service and protection for the community. And to serve the gods, the Roman government saw itself as the source of moral as well as legal standards. State priests attempted to appease the gods by carefully performed rituals and offerings. The welfare of the community was seen as affected by such virtues as discipline, soldierly courage, chastity among the women, and frugality, all of which were believed to please the gods. The Romans were afraid of displeasing the gods through some word or deed. And, to protect the community from the anger of the gods, soldiers took religious oaths against thievery. Olive growers took an oath against their conspiring with others to raise prices. Olive pickers took an oath against their stealing olives. And those who handled public money took oaths against stealing. It appeared that religion would keep Rome on the path of virtue.

At the head of Rome's religion was the Pontifex Maximus, who, when Rome became a republic, had replaced the Etruscan king in this role. Under the Pontifex Maximus was a college of priests, who were called pontiffs. They were officers of the government in charge of handling Rome's relations with the supernatural. It was their duty to keep the city on good terms with the gods by preserving religious traditions and by making sure that every important act of state was sanctioned by the gods, including relations with foreign communities. Priests were assigned to individual gods, and laws derived from myths governed their actions: the priest of Jupiter was forbidden to walk under an arbor of vines, touch a dead man, eat bread fermented with yeast or to go outside without his cap.

That the state's priests were exclusively patrician had its origins in earlier times -- when the aristocracy believed that its interests alone were served by the gods. But common Romans were not about to leave all religion to the state. They saw their relations with their gods as personal. The common Roman saw gods guiding them through all kinds of matters from births to deaths. Each Roman household had its divine protector. And to this god they prayed -- much as modern Christians pray while leaving ritual to their priests.

Rome Becomes a Republic

While Rome was expanding on the Italian mainland, it made an agreement with Carthage, acknowledging that Carthage was the dominant power in Sicily. Carthage, in turn, promised Rome that it would stay off the Italian mainland. Rome respected Carthage and abided by its treaty until it ended its war for the domination of Italy. Then an incident arose in Sicily at the small city of Messana just across the channel from the toe of the Italian peninsula.

The incident began with Messana feeling threatened by the Sicilian city of Syracuse. One faction in Messana requested help from Carthage. Another faction, apparently distrusting or disliking Carthage, requested help from Rome. Respecting its treaty with Carthage, Rome's Senate chose not to send help to Messana. But one of Rome's two consuls was eager for action that would give him distinction. He spoke of reluctance to send help to Messana as weakness. With his speech making he aroused the people of Rome, who had been filled with pride over Rome's success in dominating Italy. The Senate gave in to the aroused emotions of the public, and it sent a force to Messana. The world was turning -- as it would in the twentieth century -- on the ambitions of a rabble-rouser and the passions and vanity of common people.

At Messana the force from Rome came face to face with a force from Carthage. Carthage saw Rome's move as a threat to its interests in Sicily, but it attempted conciliation. Carthage asked that Rome withdraw its troops, but proud Romans called on their city to stand up to Carthage. Some claimed that Carthage's control over the strait between Italy and Sicily was a danger to Rome's security. And, as with the Athenians at the outbreak of the Great Peloponnesian war, there was little reluctance and caution about going to war, including among the civilian farmer-soldiers who would fight the war. With this swagger and willingness to war, a new era was beginning that would lead to empire, and with empire eventually to Christianity.

The First Punic War

Rome took a number of its Italian allies into the war on its side. And shortly into the war, Rome chose goals beyond securing the strait between Italy and Sicily. The contest against Carthage became a war for plunder. Then it became a war for driving Carthage out of Sicily, then a war for all of Sicily. And Rome's enlarged goals would extend the war twenty-three years, to 241 BCE.

Across these years, many of those who fought for Carthage were Greek mercenaries, and the unreliability of these men led Carthage to wage war with minimum risks and half measures. Rome was more aggressive. During the war it built its first great navy, which won spectacular victories, first in 260 and then in 241. With Rome as master of the Mediterranean, Carthage decided that the price it had to pay for ending the war was better than the cost of continuing it. Carthage agreed to pay Rome a huge sum of money and to give to Rome the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.

Despite the heavy losses in treasure and life that they had suffered, Romans considered the war against Carthage a great victory. Many were pleased by the additional prestige their city had gained. And for many Romans victory confirmed that their city had been called on by the gods for a special destiny.

Rapacity and Rome's Search for Security

The First Punic War helped open the eyes of many Romans to the profits of empire. Also, the war created among the Romans a greater concern for national security, and Rome saw added security in its winning control over Corsica and Sardinia. Failing to see divine purpose in the coming of Roman soldiers, people in Corsica and Sardinia resisted their arrival. Some of the islanders retreated inland, but Roman soldiers with trained dogs hunted them down and carted great numbers of them to Italy for sale as slaves.

Romans were concerned too about security of their northern border. They had heard a prophecy that the Gauls would come south again and overrun their city. City authorities allayed the fears of the public by reviving an old religious ritual. In the city's Forum they publicly buried alive a Gallic man and woman. And Rome sent forces north to secure a barrier against the Gauls, and these forces extended Roman authority across Cisalpine Gaul as far as the Alps.

Next, Rome addressed its concern for security eastward. Italian traders had been calling on Rome to do something about pirates along the coast of Illyricum, on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea_. Rome launched a drive against these pirates, and as a part of this campaign they established friendly relations with numerous small, coastal powers. One of these powers, the island of Pharos, was attempting to expand against its neighbors. Rome made itself the protector of Pharos' neighbors and conquered Pharos -- the beginning of Roman intervention eastward across the Adriatic.

Origins and First Two Years of the Second Punic War

Carthage expanded its enterprises in Spain in compensation for its losses of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and Carthage's success in trade and mining operations in Spain prompted Rome to establish an embassy there. A prosperous Greek colony on the Mediterranean coast in Spain, Saguntum, quarreled with neighboring towns. Lacking friendship with Carthage and desperate for an ally, Saguntum sought help from Rome. Seeing Rome as becoming involved in the dispute, the leader of Carthage, Hannibal, welcomed the opportunity to launch a war of revenge against Rome. More than twenty years had passed since the war between Rome and Carthage, and Hannibal felt that Carthage could now challenge Rome.

While Rome was negotiating with Carthage, Hannibal sent an army against Saguntum, with orders to spare no male of military age. Saguntum fell, leaving Rome's Senate and the public enraged and regretting that they had not responded in time to help Saguntum. The Romans saw Carthage's attack on Saguntum as a challenge to their prestige, and they matched Hannibal's willingness for war.

The war against Hannibal would be a new kind of war for Rome. Previously, Romans fought only summer campaigns. Against Hannibal, the number of Romans fighting would increase ten fold and they would fight through the entire year.

Hannibal sent armies to Sicily and Italy by sea. He and a force with cavalry and elephants moved north from Saguntum, across the coast of France, through the Alps and down into the Po valley in northern Italy. For some two and a half years in Italy, Hannibal produced victory after victory, as he and his troops lived off the lands they conquered. But rather than try to win allies among the Italians, he burned and destroyed as he went, and not one Italian city joined him against Rome.

Saturnalia

Hannibal tried to keep himself informed about the Roman leaders sent against him, and occasionally he found weaknesses in these Romans. He took advantage of the untalented consul, Flaminius, who wanted to prove himself to his fellow Romans. Flaminius allowed Hannibal to choose where the battle between them would be fought, and he marched his army into a trap at Lake Trasimenus_, where all but the few who were captured were cut down. In the wake of this disaster, Rome introduced a festival to lift the morale of its citizens, a festival for the god of agriculture, Saturn. It began on December 17th. During the festival the courts and schools closed and military operations were suspended so that soldiers could celebrate. It was a time of goodwill and jollity that included visiting people, banquets and the exchanging of gifts. It would become an annual event, called Saturnalia, an official Roman holiday that was the precursor of Christmas.

Defeat at Cannae and Appeals to the Gods

Ever mindful of the importance of morality, some Romans found the reason for their defeats in the anger of the gods over misconduct by the Vestal Virgins. Rome discovered that two of its Vestal Virgins had had sexual relations with a male temple official. Roman authorities had one of the accused Vestal Virgins buried alive, and the other killed herself. Authorities had the accused male official beaten to death. Then Rome sent a representative to the famous oracle inDelphi, in Greece, to inquire what prayers and supplications might atone for the failure among the Vestal Virgins.

Apparently the gods remained dissatisfied. Next came Hannibal's greatest and most brilliant success -- at Cannae. Here, in 216 BCE, Rome lost five out of every six soldiers it sent to battle. It seemed that Rome was on the verge of defeat, and now some Italian cities, wishing to be on the winning side, opened their gates to Hannibal. In Sicily, Syracuse went over to the side of Carthage. Macedonia's king, Philip V, offered Carthage an alliance.

It was Rome's darkest hour. To counter the gloom, Roman authorities ordered all wailing women indoors and forbade the word peace to be spoken. In another attempt to appease the gods, Rome resorted again to the ancient custom of human sacrifice. Again they buried alive a Gallic man and woman, and a Greek man and woman. In 211, with Hannibal thirty miles from Rome, Roman women appealed to the gods by sweeping the floors of their temples with their hair. It appeared that the gods responded. Hannibal did not attack Rome. Rather than confront the two armies that Rome had placed before him, Hannibal decided to burn the nearby countryside and withdraw to fight elsewhere.

An Appeal to Mother Nature

Six more years of war passed by, and Rome's priesthood added to its concern about the role of the gods by giving attention to the Sibylline Books, a work of legend believed to have been written by a woman called Sibyl. It was believed that Apollo had given Sibyl the power of prophesy and that she had prophesied that Rome's enemy would be expelled. Rome's priesthood chose to interpret this as Rome expelling Hannibal if Rome acquired the help of the Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Cybele was a goddess from Asia Minor who had been adopted by the Greeks and worshiped widely as Mother Nature. Rome's Senate invited the Great Mother goddess to Rome in the form of a stone reputed to have fallen from the heavens -- the Black Stone of Pessinus. In 205 BCE, with great solemnity and pomp, the stone was transported from Pessinus (a town in central Asia Minor) to Rome, and it was installed in a temple on Rome's Palatine hill.

The Last Five Years of War

The religions of the Romans and the Carthaginians had done little if anything to abate the ferocity of the war. Chivalry and restraint had vanished from both sides. Hannibal continued to destroy Italian lands and to destroy villages that his forces could not hold. To starve Hannibal's forces the Romans scorched the earth in front of Hannibal's advancing army, and they moved people from the countryside to towns. The Romans plundered those towns they believed had befriended Hannibal and beheaded those men they believed had fought on the side of Carthage.

Rome avoided a direct clash with Hannibal in Italy, and it moved its soldiers to Sicily. There, the Roman general Marcellus beheaded two thousand of his troops whom he claimed had been deserters. Other soldiers under his command pillaged Syracuse and destroyed and plundered treasures that had accumulated there for centuries. A soldier in Syracuse came upon the philosopher Archimedes and ran a sword through him.

The contest between Carthage and Rome had become a war of attrition, with Rome gaining the upper hand. Rome benefited from fighting closer to home and having access to more manpower, and it benefited from the egocentricity and short-sightedness of Carthage's oligarchs. For a while at least, the oligarch's concern over the security of their positions of power made them fear success by Hannibal. They were reluctant to send him reinforcements. Instead, Hannibal recruited Gauls into his army, which offended the Italians, who remembered that Rome had been a bulwark against the Gauls. Carthage finally sent reinforcements to Hannibal from Spain, but the Romans intercepted them at the Metaurus River in northeastern Italy.

Rome managed to reconquer Sicily. And Rome's navy defeated Carthage's forces in Spain and North Africa, and it cut Hannibal from his supplies. Rome moved the war to North Africa, near Carthage, and Hannibal left Italy to defend home territory. Carthage sued for peace. A council of twenty Roman priests -- which governed treaties with foreigners -- went to Carthage to present Rome's demands. The priests called on Jupiter to witness that the demands were just. Carthage agreed to reduce its territory to an area that approximates what is now Tunisia, to withdraw from participation in the affairs of Spain, to pay Rome a huge indemnity, and to surrender to Rome all but twenty of its warships. Hannibal's attempt at revenge had failed. In the year 201, after sixteen years of fighting, the war ended, and Hannibal fled, finding refuge with the Seleucid king, Antiochus III.

THE END OF OLD ROME

Rome's second war against Carthage reduced the number of people in the Italian countryside. Men had gone off to war. People had died and people had moved to the cities to escape war. Some people had left the countryside to work in the arms industry, and some went looking for subsistence. In Rome, the migrants enjoyed the festivals and other public entertainment that was created to maintain public morale during the dark days of the war. Newcomers developed a preference for the city over the life of drudgery they had known working on farms. And after the war ended, many veterans from farming families preferred settling in cities, especially Rome, rather than return to the countryside. Cities in Italy became overcrowded, and Rome became the most populous city in Europe and West Asia.

As a result of the war, much farmland in Italy could be bought cheaply. Those with wealth began buying this farmland, some landowners expanding their holdings and some businessmen from the cities looking for a secure investment and a source of social respectability. With the accelerated trend toward larger farms came a greater use of slaves. More lands in the countryside were transformed into pasture, vineyard, and olive orchards -- more suited to Italian soil and climate than was the growing of grain. The richest lands were converted to vineyards and the poorer tracts to olive groves, while ranching was the most profitable for capitalist landowners. Holdings that were a mix of ranching and farming grew to more than three hundred acres, found mostly in southern and central Italy, the area most heavily devastated by the Second Punic War.

Many small farmers found themselves unable to compete with the larger farms and their more numerous slaves. Moreover, a greater importation of grain from Sicily and North Africa brought a drop in grain prices, and many small farmers gave up, sold their farms to the wealthy and joined the migration to the cities. The wars that began with the minor incident at Messana had brought unintended consequences -- as wars often do. Many of Rome's small farmers, who had been the backbone of the Roman Republic, had become city-dwellers living off welfare -- free bread and circuses.