surrounded when she first struggled forward into the light. Just across
the Tiber to the north of her were the Etruscans of whom we shall see
more in the next chapter. Their pirate ships scoured the sea while
their merchants did business with the Greeks of Sicily, Magna Græcia
and Massilia. It was perhaps her position at the _tête du pont_ that
led to Rome’s early prominence in war. Across the water on the coast
of Africa was the dreaded city of Carthage, which had for centuries
been striving to establish itself on the island of Sicily. All these
were seafaring, commercial peoples, but it was not by sea that Rome met
them. Behind Rome, among the valleys and on the spurs of the Apennines,
were a whole series of sturdy highland clans who like all highlanders
noticed the superior fatness of the valley sheep. It was against these
Umbrians, Marsians, Pelignians, Sabines, and Samnites that the cities
of the plain were constantly at feud, and it was mainly her struggles
with these that kept the Roman swords bright in early days.
As to the Romans themselves and their origin there is little that
we can say for certain. Ancient ethnology is not by any means yet
secure of its premises. One thing is clear enough, if we can place any
reliance whatever upon literary records--the national characteristics
of the ancient Roman were very unlike those of the modern Italian.
The one was bold, hardy, grave, orderly and inartistic: the other is
sensitive, vivacious, artistic, turbulent and quick-witted. There is
not a feature in common between them and yet the modern Italian is
surely the normal South European type. As you go southwards through
France you find the people approaching these characteristics more and
more. The Spaniard and the Greek share them. The Ancient Roman of
republican days, unless he is a literary invention, is assuredly no
southerner in temperament, though the southern qualities undoubtedly
begin to grow clear as Roman history progresses. And then the whole
of early Roman history is marked by a strife between the two orders
Patrician and Plebeian, which is certainly not simply a struggle
between two political parties, nor a mere conflict between rich and
poor. There is a division between the two of religion and custom in
such matters as burial, for example, and marriage-rites. The patricians
fear contamination of their blood if the plebeians are allowed to
intermarry with them. These considerations and others like them have
led Prof. Ridgeway to formulate for Rome, as he has already done with
success for Greece, a theory of northern invasion and conquest in
very early days. Probably it is a theory which can never be proved
nor disproved, so woefully scanty is our evidence for the earliest
centuries of Roman history. But it explains the great riddle of Roman
character as no other theory does.
The archæology of the spade does not help us much though it has made
some interesting discoveries on the soil of Italy. There is of course
at the base a Neolithic culture resembling that of the rest of Europe.
Then there is a phase of pile-dwellings widely spread among the marshes
of the Lombard plain called the “Terramare” civilisation. As this phase
belongs to the bronze age we may infer that civilisation developed
later in Italy than in Greece owing to the lack of fortified cities.
In this Terramare period the dead were carefully buried whole, often
folded up into a sitting posture to fit their contracted graves.
Then comes an Early Iron period, called “The Villanova,” where the
cremated ashes of the dead are collected in urns and deposited in
vaults generally walled with flat slabs of stone. Above these two
stages come Etruscan and Gallic remains and then those of the Rome
of history. It is probable enough that the Iron Age of the Villanova
culture represents a conquest from the north. It is likely that in
prehistoric times Italy experienced the same fate as throughout the
ages of history. The Alpine passes are easier from north to south than
in the reverse direction, and the smiling plains of North Italy have
always possessed an irresistible attraction for the barbarian who looks
down upon them from those barren snow-clad heights. Whether the invader
be an Umbrian or Gaulish or Gothic or Austrian warrior, Italia must pay
the price for her “fatal gift of beauty.”
I
THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME
arx æternæ dominationis.
TACITUS.
That Rome was not built in a day is the only thing we really know about
the origin of Rome. There is, however, nothing to prevent us from
guessing. The modern historian of the Economic School would picture
to us a limited company of primeval men of business roaming about the
world until they found a spot in the centre of the Mediterranean, a
convenient depot alike for Spanish copper and Syrian frankincense,
handy for commerce with the Etruscans of the north, the Sicilian Greeks
of the south, and the Carthaginians of the African coast. They select a
piece of rising ground on the banks of the river Tiber, about fifteen
miles from its mouth, a spot safe and convenient for their cargo-boats,
and there they build an Exchange, found a Chamber of Commerce (which
they quaintly term _senatus_), and institute that form of public
insurance which is known as “an army.” Thus equipped they proceed by
force or fraud to acquire a number of markets, to which in due course
they give the name of “Empire.”
This picture, being modern, is naturally impressionistic and rather
vague in its details. From all accounts a good deal of engineering
would be required to make the natural Tiber suitable for navigation
on a large scale. Not only does its mouth silt up every year and its
channel constantly change, but just between the hills on the very
floor of Rome every spring made pools and swamps. Nor is there any
tide in the Mediterranean to help the rowers up to the city against
the stream. The Etruscans, who diversified their commercial operations
with systematic piracy, held almost the whole of this western coast
in subjection. The Greeks of the south, who have plenty to say about
Etruscan and Carthaginian seafarers, have forgotten to mention their
early Roman customers. But perhaps that is because the primeval trader
from Rome cannot have had anything much to sell, and certainly had
no money at all to buy with. In founding his Bourse he seems to have
forgotten to provide a Mint; at any rate, long after the Sicilian
Greeks had evolved a most exquisite coinage of silver and gold, the
Romans were still content with the huge and clumsy copper _as_. I think
we may confidently dismiss external trade from among the causes of the
early rise of Rome. The coinage is the surest evidence we possess, no
foreign trade could have passed in the Mediterranean on a basis of the
copper _as_, and in Latin the equivalent for “money” is a word denoting
“cattle.” Whoever the early Romans were, they were mainly, as all their
religion and traditions show, land-soldiers and farmers.
Livy takes a more sensible view. He admits that the current accounts
of the foundation of the city are involved in mystery and miracle, but
he asserts with justice that if any city deserved a miraculous origin
Rome did. Thereupon he proceeds to relate the pleasant tale of her
foundation in the year 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus.
It is surely unprofitable to search very deeply for grains of truth in
the sands of legend which cover the early traditions of Rome, but it
is sometimes interesting to conjecture how and why the legends were
invented. The story of Romulus and Remus, for example, may have taken
its rise in a
[Illustration: Roman _As_ (bronze, full size)]
“sacristan’s tale” about an ancient work of art representing a wolf
suckling two babes. A fairly ancient copy of this motive is preserved
in the famous Capitoline Wolf.[4] The wolf at least is ancient, and
the children have been added in modern times from representations of
the famous group on ancient coins. It is possible that the original
statue may go back to days of totemistic religion when the wolf was the
ancestor of a Roman clan.
The Seven Kings of Rome are for the most part mere names which have
been fitted by rationalising antiquarians, presumably Greek, with
inventions appropriate to them. Romulus is simply the patron hero of
Rome called by her name. Numa, the second, whose name suggests _numen_,
was the blameless Sabine who originated most of the old Roman cults,
and received a complete biography largely borrowed from that invented
for Solon. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martius were the _hostile_ and
_martial_ inventors of military systems. Servius Tullius was a man of
_servile_ origin, and on this foundation Freeman built his belief that
the Roman kingship was a career open to talent!
As for the two Tarquins, the latter of whom was turned by Greek
historians into a typical Greek tyrant and made the subject of an
edifying Greek story of tyrannicide closely modelled on the story of
Harmodius, their names are said to be Etruscan. There is a recent
theory that the saving of Rome by Horatius and his comrades is fable
designed to conceal the real conquest of Rome by the Etruscans. As
a matter of fact there is a good deal of other evidence for that
theory: reluctant admissions in history and literature, records of an
ancient treaty of submission, the fact that the ritual and ornament of
supreme authority at Rome seems to be of Etruscan origin, and above
all the evidence of the stones. There are traces of very early skill
and activity in building at Rome, and, unless the Romans afterwards
declined very remarkably in the arts and crafts, their early works,
such as the walls and some of the sewers, must have been built under
foreign influence. That some sort of early kingship at Rome is more
than a legend is certain; the whole fabric of the Roman constitution
and its fundamental theory of _imperium_ imply the existence of
primeval kingship. On the whole, then, we may well believe that at some
early period the city of Rome under Etruscan princes formed part of
an empire which embraced a number of ports and towns up and down the
Italian coast, though it did not necessarily concern itself with the
intervening and surrounding territories. During all the early centuries
of Rome it must have been a constant struggle between civilised walled
towns on or near the coast and warlike hill tribes, quite uncivilised,
from the mountainous interior.
These mysterious Etruscans have formed the theme of an internecine war
of monographs. On the whole we may pronounce that those scholars who
maintain their Lydian origin have completely demolished the arguments
of those who aver that they sprang from the Rhætian Alps--and _vice
versâ_. It remains possible, therefore, that the Etruscans came from
nowhere in particular but were as aboriginal and autochthonous as any
European people. It is true that we cannot make out much of their
language, but that is also true of the aboriginal Cretans--and of
many other autochthonous peoples. Their earliest remains are of a
type familiar to us in the earliest strata of production all over the
Mediterranean coast-lands--prehistoric polygonal masonry, a beehive
tomb, incised _bucchero nero_ vases and so forth. Their later and finer
work shows a distinct cousinship with that of Greece though sometimes
curiously debased and uncouth in spirit. In bronze-working they were
very skilful.[5] They developed painting to a high pitch in early
times, and the British Museum possesses some interesting examples from
Cære. It was indeed believed by Pliny that Corinthian painters had
settled in Etruria, that being the usual account by which the ancients
explained resemblances. But we may believe that the art of painting is
indigenous on the soil of Tuscany. Their pottery is very similar to
that of Greece.[6] It appears that the flourishing period of Etruscan
art coincided with that of the greatest
[Illustration: Etruscan Fresco. Head of Hercules]
extent of their empire, namely, the sixth and early fifth centuries
B.C. Their plastic work was mostly in terra-cotta, for the native
marbles do not seem to have been quarried. Some of their terra-cotta
coffins, adorned with conventional portraits of the deceased and
finished off by the application of paint, show considerable technical
skill, but always that strange grotesque spirit.[7] From all accounts
these Etruscans were a superstitious and cruel race. It was from
them that the Romans learnt their bloody craft of divination by the
inspection of the entrails of newly slain victims, and there is little
doubt that the victims had not always been the lower animals. We are
told that the insignia of royalty at Rome--the toga with scarlet
[Illustration: Prehistoric Etruscan Pottery]
or purple stripes, the toga with purple border, the sceptre of ivory,
the curule chair, the twelve lictors with their axes in bundles of
rods--were borrowed from the Etruscans. Thus it seems that the ancient
garb of the Roman citizen, a tunic covered by a long mantle or toga, a
costume which is essentially the same as the _chiton_ and _himation_
of the Greeks, started as a fashion introduced by their more civilised
northern neighbours. It seems clear also that the earliest Roman art,
the decoration of temples with painted terra-cotta ornaments, was
Etruscan in origin. Some of the earliest statues of the gods seem to
have been painted, for we hear of a very ancient red Jupiter. Thus
there is some probability that Rome passed through a period, perhaps in
the sixth century, of alien rule and alien civilisation. Remembering
the cousinship between Greece and Etruria we shall find that Rome had
been prepared for the reception of Greek culture in very early times.
[Illustration: The Roman Toga]
The fifth century seems to have been a period of decline for the
Etruscan power. The Greek republics, with, as I hope we agreed, their
northern stiffening, had advanced far beyond their Etruscan kinsmen in
intelligence, and the tyrant Hiero of Syracuse defeated them in a great
sea-fight in 474 B.C. It is agreeable to the historian to have a fact
so certain and a date so well attested in all the wilderness of legend
that surrounds the early history of Italy. Then the warlike hill tribes
of the Southern Apennines began to press upon their southern colonies,
and finally the Gauls from the north swept down upon Etruria at the
beginning of the fourth century and broke up their declining empire for
ever. It was probably during this period that the Romans expelled their
Etruscan princes, and replaced royalty by a pair of equal colleagues
sharing most of the royal power and regal emblems except crown and
sceptre. So we get to the Rome of the earliest credible tradition--a
Rome governed by two consuls and a senate of nobles. It is a city
composed of farm-houses and in each house the head of the family rules
in patriarchal majesty.
THE GROWING REPUBLIC
Thus it is necessary to throw overboard a great mass of edifying and
famous history in the interest of youth. There were no contemporary
records, the annals and _fasti_ upon which Livy’s immediate
predecessors relied in the first century B.C. are demonstrably of
late concoction. Everywhere we can see the influence of Greek artists
importing fragments of Greek history, rationalising names and customs,
antedating and reduplicating later constitutional struggles, writing
appropriate speeches for early parliamentarians who never existed, and
generally demonstrating the power of Greek invention to flatter Roman
credulity. The great families of 200 B.C. and onwards found themselves
as rich and powerful as nabobs; they had great historic names, and when
there was a funeral in the family they sent out a long procession of
waxen images to represent the noble ancestors of the deceased. At such
times there would be funeral orations recounting the deeds of those
heroic ancestors. Every family had its traditions, as glorious and as
authentic as those of the descendants of Brian Boru. When literature
came into fashion and needy Greek scribes offered a plausible _stilus_
to any rich patron, Roman history began to exist, sometimes bearing
respectable Roman names but always written in Greek. It is thus that
we get the series of heroic actions attributed to Fabii and Horatii
and deeds of wicked pride ascribed to ancestral Claudii. Whatever it
may cost us in pangs for the fate of pretty tales I fear we must not
scruple to use the knife freely in this region of literary history. A
glance at the following coincidences will help to allay our scruples:
Tarquin the Roman tyrant was driven out in the same year as Hippias the
Athenian tyrant (510 B.C.); the Twelve Tables at Rome were drawn up
in the same year as the code of Protagoras at Thurii (451 B.C.); 300
Fabii died to a man in the battle of Cremera just about the same time
as 300 Spartans died to a man with Leonidas at Thermopylæ in 480 B.C.
To put it briefly: Nothing anterior to the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C.
and very little for nearly another century can be accepted on literary
evidence alone.
So far as we can read the stones, the earliest Rome consisted of a
settlement on the Palatine Hill, with a citadel and a temple on the
Capitol, and with a forum or market on the low ground between them. On
the Esquiline Hill was a plebeian settlement. It was a pastoral and
agricultural community, expressing wealth in terms of cattle, ploughing
and reaping so much of the Campagna as their farmers could reach in a
day or their armies protect. From the very earliest times the community
consisted of a few great houses of patrician blood with numerous
clients and slaves. In every house the father was king absolute, with
power of life and death over his sons, daughters, and slaves. Daughters
passed from the hand of the father to the hand of the husband, like
any other property, by a form of sale. Out of remote antiquity comes a
piece of genuine Latin:
SI PARENTEM PVER VERBERIT AST OLE PLORASIT PVER
DIVIS PARENTVM SACER ESTO
--“If a boy beats his father and the father complains let the boy be
devoted to the gods of parents,” _i.e._ slain as a sacrifice. It was
a commonwealth of such parents--no republican lovers of liberty, be
sure--whose chiefs met to discuss policy in the temple, as the Senate,
and who themselves assembled in a body, fully armed, as the _comitium_,
to vote upon the Senate’s decrees conveyed by the consuls.
Grim and despotic in peace these Roman aristocrats were fierce and
tenacious in war. As soon as she was free, if not earlier, Rome
appeared as a member of the Latin League which ruled over the Plain of
Latium under the presidency of Alba Longa. This piece of tradition is
attested by many survivals in ritual. Her earliest wars were against
neighbours like Gabii, whose very name made the later Romans smile,
so insignificant a village it was. It was in these little contests
that the early Romans learnt their trade as warriors, and if any
one seeks to know the causes of Rome’s victorious career the answer
is, I suppose, that she fought very bravely and obeyed her generals
better than her enemies obeyed theirs. Discipline was her secret, and
discipline came, no doubt, from the strict patriarchal system in her
homes, a system assuredly not of Mediterranean birth.
Whether the geese who cackled were authentic or merely ætiological
fowls I know not, but it is certain that Rome did not suffer so
severely from the Gallic invasion as did her neighbours across the
Tiber. Probably it was only the last wave of a great invasion which
reached as far as Rome, burnt the Palatine settlement and the humble
wattled dwellings of the poor on the Esquiline, and failed to storm
the Capitol. At any rate the Gallic invasion of 390 B.C. seems to
have started the Romans on their career of conquest, mainly at the
expense of the Etruscans. But there were incessant wars with all her
neighbours; every summer the army marched out as a matter of course. If
it was not a decaying Etruscan town to be taken by siege it was a Latin
neighbour, or failing them a Volscian or Sabine community from the
hills. Summer, while the corn could be left to do its own growing, was
the time for battle. To have been at peace in summer would have been
slackness, to wage war in winter a grave solecism. So in short space
Rome became an important little town, head of the Latin League and
probably the strongest unit in Central Italy. It appears that she began
about now to emerge into international notice by the great powers, for
we have a treaty of 348 B.C., which may probably be accepted as genuine
though the actual date is not so certain, between Rome and Carthage,
wherein the Romans, in consideration of promising not to trade in
Carthaginian waters, are permitted to do business with the Carthaginian
ports in Sicily and acknowledged as suzerains of the Latin League. Thus
Rome has apparently by this time some overseas traffic.
If no other art, diplomacy seems always to have been at home on Roman
soil, and in all her works Rome shows a genius for statecraft. It must
have been at some very early date that she discovered her great secret
of _divide et impera_. She had already become so far the greatest
power in the Latin League, that she had equal rights with all the
others combined. The allies, it seems, claimed to supply the general
of the allied army on alternate days and to have a half-share of the
plunder. Against these very modest demands Rome was firm. She fought
the League and beat it in 338; then she divided and ruled the cities.
With each she made a separate treaty, granting to each two of the
rights of citizenship--the right to trade and the right to marry with
her citizens. But she allowed no such rights between the other members
of the League, however close neighbours they might be. In this way Rome
became the staple market of all Latium; all traffic passed through her
hands and her wealth and population increased.
These city-states had no means of ruling otherwise than tyrannically.
Their whole constitution forbade it. We have seen elsewhere[8] that
citizenship in a city-state implied membership of a corporate body,
a close partnership in a company of unlimited liability with very
definite privileges and responsibilities. Full citizenship at Rome
meant a vote in electing the city magistrates and a vote in the
_comitium_, which decided matters like peace and war. It was obvious
that you had to be very jealous about extending these rights to
outsiders. But Rome went part of the way, granted parts of the citizen
rights, and thereby showed finer imperial statecraft than any Greek
state had yet discovered. Her first offshoot was Ostia, the town she
planted at the mouth of her river only fifteen miles off, her first
_Colonia_. The men of Ostia remained citizens of Rome, and might vote
in the elections if they thought it worth while, but were exempt
from the duty of serving in the army because their own town formed a
standing garrison in the Roman service. Then when the Romans made
conquests in Etruria or Campania or any region where the natives spoke
a foreign language and therefore could not fight in the legions under
Roman officers, they would receive the “citizenship without vote,”
which enabled them simply to trade and marry like Romans. Thirdly, some
of the Latin towns became merely _municipia_, that is, country towns
enjoying full Roman citizenship if they came to the city, but at home
a local constitution with considerable powers of self-government and a
magistracy modelled on that of Rome, namely, senators and consuls under
other names. All this granting of rights--without any tribute--was,
according to the ways of ancient city-states, surprising generosity or
the deepest statesmanship. Already Rome begins to show the genius of
empire-building: she was relentless and unscrupulous in conquering,
but generous and broad-minded in governing. Such was the wisdom of her
council of despots--the Senate.