Many years had passed since the colonists first came to the Seven Hills,
and Rome was now the city from which a large extent of country on both
sides of the river was ruled. Romulus had inherited the land of his
ancestors on the Long White Mountain, and village after village, town
after town, had found it wise to come under his rule. The way in which he
managed these new possessions was rather curious and very like himself. He
let them rule themselves and settle their own affairs so far as their own
local customs and people were concerned, and so far as these did not
contradict the common law of Rome.
When the children of Mars first came to this part of the world, people
called them very often the “cattle-men,” because cattle were not at all
common there. Many of the customs both of the Romans and the Sabines came
about because they kept cattle and used them. This made it possible for
them to cultivate much more land than they could have farmed without the
oxen, and it also rather tied them down to one place, for after
cultivating land to the point where it would grow a good crop of grain,
nobody of course would wish to abandon it. They had a god called Pales who
protected the herds and was said to have taught the people in the
beginning how to yoke and use cattle, and the long-horned skulls were hung
up around the walls of the early temples and served to hang garlands from
on a feast day. When the “outfit vault” was filled at the founding of the
city, a yoke was one of the things put in.
In a certain way, all the scattered villages and peoples which gradually
joined the new colony, although keeping their own land and homes, were
rather like oxen. They were not equal to the colonists in wisdom or skill
or ability to direct affairs. They could work, and they could fight for
their wives and children;—but cattle can work and fight. Without some one
to govern and teach them, they would belong to any one who happened to be
strong enough to make himself their master.
The use of the yoke was the one great thing in which the Roman farmer
differed from these pagans and peasants, and he could teach them that. It
was the thing which would make the most difference in their lives, in
comfort and plenty and skill. A man must be more intelligent to work with
animals and control them than to dig up a plot of ground with his own
hands. It struck Romulus, therefore, that the yoke would be a good symbol
to use when Rome took possession of such a village. A great deal of the
ceremony used in the daily life of the ancient people was a sort of sign
language. When something important changed hands, the buyer and the seller
shook hands on it in public. When a man was not a slave nor exactly a
servant, but a member of the household who did something for which he was
paid, he was paid in salt, because he could be invited to eat salt with
his master, and this pay was called _salarium_,—salary. When Rome took
formal possession of a place, the men passed under a yoke, as a sign that
now they belonged to the men who used oxen, and worked as they did and for
them.
Whenever it was possible, some Roman families were sent to such places to
live among the people and show them Roman ways. There were always some who
were willing to do this, because they could have more land and better
houses in that way than in the older town, which was getting rather
crowded. In this way, the widely scattered towns and villages and farms
ruled by Rome became more or less Roman in a much shorter time than they
would if they had been left to themselves.
Life in such a growing country, made up of a great many different sorts
and conditions of people, is not by any means simple. The Romans
themselves were aware of this before the first settlers were old men. As
the sons of these colonists became men, they were proud to call themselves
“the sons of the fathers.” The word “father” was used in the old way,
which meant that every father of a family in a village was the head of
that family. The head of the house was a ruler simply because he was the
oldest representative of his race. In the same way the houses built by the
first families within the palisade, on the Square Hill, were called
palaces, and the hill itself the hill of the palaces, the Palatine. The
families of those first colonists were known, after a while, as the
“patricians.” After the Sabines came, there were two groups of settlers of
the same race, one on the Square Hill and the other on the hill called the
Quirinal, the Hill of the Spears. The Palatine settlers sometimes called
themselves the Mountain Romans, and the others the Hill Romans. The people
who had settled in the place Romulus called the Asylum lived among groves
of trees, and they were called the People of the Grove, the Luceres. But
all these citizens of Rome itself considered themselves superior to the
outsiders, who had sometimes been conquered and sometimes been glad to
join Rome for protection. The Romans were beginning to be very proud of
the town they had made.
The Tuscans beyond the river, however, did not all feel this pride in
belonging to Rome. The town of the Veientines, especially, objected to the
idea of Tuscans being “under the yoke” of these strangers. When the Romans
took the town of Fidenæ, the Veientines were very indignant, though they
did not come to the help of their neighbors, and presently they claimed
that Fidenæ was a town of their own and set out to make war against the
Romans. Romulus promptly took the field and won the war. Although he was
now growing old, and his hair was white as silver, he fought with all his
old fire and sagacity, and the Tuscans were glad to make terms. They
offered to make peace for a hundred years, but that was not quite enough
for Romulus. They had begun the war, and he meant to make them pay for it.
When the matter was finally settled, they agreed to give to Rome their
salt works on the river and a large tract of land. While the talk was
going on, fifty of their chief men were kept prisoners in the camp of
Romulus.
There was a great sensation in Rome when the news of the peace was made
known. The army paraded through the streets, with the prisoners and the
spoils of various kinds, and there was great rejoicing. It was the first
celebration of a victory by a “triumph”—called by that name because many
of those who took part in the parade were leaping and dancing to the sound
of music. Then Romulus proceeded to divide the land he had taken from the
Tuscans among the soldiers who had taken part in the war. He sent the
Tuscan hostages home to their people.
Without intending to do it, Romulus aroused a great deal of ill feeling by
these two things that he did. The patricians formed a sort of senate—a
body of elders—for the government of Rome, and it seemed to them that they
should have been consulted about the hostages and the division of land. No
one knew but the Tuscans might rise up again against Rome, and in that
case these men ought to be here to serve as a pledge. Moreover, the land
belonged not to Romulus personally but to the city, and the senate ought
to have had the dividing of it. It was time to settle whether Rome was to
be governed by one man, or by the elders of the people, as in the days of
old. It was not fit that men should hold land who were not descended from
land-holders.
Not all the elders, or senators, took this view. It really never had been
decided how far a general who took command in a war had a right to dictate
in the outcome of it. Generally speaking, in a war, the men who fought
took whatever they could lay their hands on. They plundered a city when
they took it, and each man had what he could carry away. In this case the
city of the Veientines had not been plundered, because the rulers
surrendered and asked for peace before Romulus had a chance to take it.
The land which had been given up was a kind of plunder, and the general
had a right to divide it. This was the view of Caius Cossus and Marcus
Colonus and his brother, and some of the others in the senate. But
Naso—who never had enough land—and some of his friends, who never were
satisfied unless they had their own way, had a great deal to say about the
high-handed methods of the veteran general, the founder of the city. They
said that he treated them all as if they were under the yoke, and that
this was insulting to free-born Romans. In short, the time had come when
all of the men who wished for more power than they had were ready to
declare that Romulus was a tyrant. It was quite true that he was the only
man strong enough to stand in their way if he chose. It was also true that
he was the only man who was disposed to consider the rights of the _plebs_
and the outsiders who were not citizens, and had according to ancient
custom no right to share in the governing of the city at all.