had lost than of the rights they had gained by coming under the
expanding wing of Rome. The latter part of the fourth century shows
the growing state embarked upon a terrific struggle which lasted on
and off from summer to summer for nearly fifty years. Her principal
foes were the warlike Samnites of the Southern Apennines, closely akin,
it seems, to the dominant race at Rome. This tremendous conflict is
clearly the turning-point of Roman history. At various stages nearly
all the peoples of Italy rose and enrolled themselves among the enemy,
the Latins, the Etruscans, the Umbrians, the Marsi, the Gauls (for they
too were brought in again by the Etruscans in their last efforts for
freedom) and the Samnites themselves, a race of born fighters under
competent generals. Once, in 321 B.C., both consuls and the entire army
of Rome were entrapped at the Caudine Pass, but Rome never thought
of surrender. Doggedly her Senate refused to know when it was beaten
and continued the struggle. Fortunately it was one purpose against
many, and Rome beat her enemies in detail until she was able to emerge
victorious.
The history of that great conflict has come down to us in an incomplete
state full of fairy-tales and omissions, but it is clear that the
Roman Senate showed extraordinary resolution and tenacity, as it did
in the next century against foreign enemies. Beaten to its knees again
and again it refused any terms of peace short of victory. That is a
marvellous thing, if Rome was really one among many towns of Latium. It
is to be noted that this was the war in which she learnt the new system
of fighting whereby she was fated to conquer the world. Hitherto in
ancient warfare a battle array had meant a solid line in which the men
stood shoulder to shoulder in several ranks, pressing on with spear and
shield against a similar line of the enemy. It was largely a question
of weight in the impact. You tried to make your line deep enough to
prevent yielding and long enough to envelop the enemy’s flank: once you
could turn or break the enemy’s line victory was yours. But the Romans,
either because they were often outnumbered on the field of battle, or,
as some say, in fighting the Gallic warriors with their long swords,
found it necessary to fight not shoulder to shoulder but in open
order--not in a solid phalanx but in open companies or “maniples.” This
had a far-reaching effect: it made every Roman soldier a self-reliant
unit, who could fence skilfully with his favourite weapon, the sword,
instead of merely pushing a long pike as his neighbours did. It is
clear that only an army of natural soldiers could have adopted such an
innovation successfully. Once established, it made the Roman soldier
invincible. The maniple of 200 men was not only far more mobile than
a solid phalanx, but it covered a length of ground equal to that
of three times its own numbers. Formerly only the front rank--the
_principes_--had required a full suit of armour and it was only the
richest who could afford it. Now the whole army had to be properly
equipped, and this reacted upon the social and political system of the
city.
THE CONSTITUTION
In ancient times a man’s rights as citizen depended entirely upon his
duties as a soldier. The _comitium_ was the army, and the preponderance
of voting power went to the rich who could afford a panoply. Now the
soldiers were equalised and therefore the citizens claimed equality.
We cannot put much faith in Livy’s story of the struggle between the
two orders for political equality; the details, which include elaborate
reports of the speeches delivered, are clearly free compositions based
upon much later controversies between the republicans and democrats
of Livy’s own earlier days. There is a great deal of confusion and
contradiction in the accounts of the various legislative measures
by which the plebeians were gradually admitted to equality with the
patricians. But the story of the Secession of the Plebs--there are
two such stories, but probably that is the result of duplication--is
so distinctive and peculiarly Roman that it scarcely seems like an
invention. To put it shortly, the plebeians won their rights by means
of that very modern weapon--a strike. Being refused the rights for
which they were agitating, they refused to join the citizen levy, but
marched out under arms to the neighbouring Sacred Mount, and threatened
to set up a new Rome of their own there. The political instinct was
healthy and strong among them: the plebeians formed themselves into a
second corporation organised like the patricians. Where the patricians
had their two consuls with two prætors under them, the plebeians
had their two tribunes and two ædiles. Where the patrician army had
its _comitium_ meeting in groups called “curies,” the plebeians had
their assembly meeting in tribes. So the new magistracies and the new
meetings became part and parcel of the Roman republic. The tribunes
were protected not so much by laws as by an oath: their persons were
declared sacred, and they had the right to thrust their sacred persons
between the plebeian offender and the consul’s lictor who came to
arrest him, thus expressing the ultimate sovereignty of the army of
Roman citizens. That is, in broad outline, how the story of political
equality at Rome has come down to us. But it must not be supposed
that even now the Roman republic was in anything but externals like
the Greek democracy. The Roman _comitia_ never debated like the
Athenian _ecclesia_. They assembled to listen to such speeches as the
magistrates or their invited friends might choose to make upon topics
which had previously been selected, discussed and decreed by the
senate; they were there to ratify the senate’s decisions with “Yes” or
“No.” Even then they did not vote as individuals; each “century,” each
“cury,” or each “tribe,” according to the form of meeting summoned,
was a single voting unit. Everything in the system tended to put real
power into the hands of the executive. When you get the executive able
to control policy you get efficiency, but if you want liberty you
must adopt other means. The senate at Rome gradually came to consist
entirely of retired magistrates, and so to exhibit all the knowledge,
competence, experience, and bigoted self-confidence which we expect
from retired functionaries.
The republican constitution had invented two devices to save itself
from tyranny, and, according to tradition, had invented them at the
very beginning of republicanism. One was the collegial system by which
every magistracy was held in commission by two or more colleagues.
There were two consuls from the first, sharing between them most of
the royal prerogatives, heads of the executive in peace and supreme
generals in war, with power of life and death, or full _imperium_, at
any rate on the field of battle. There was at first only one prætor,
for he was then merely the consuls’ lieutenant in time of war; but
when, as soon happened, the prætor became a judge in time of peace,
that office, too, was given to a pair of colleagues. There were, it
is said, at first two tribunes of the plebs, principally charged with
the protection and leadership of their own order; but as the city
grew their numbers were increased to ten. So there were two ædiles,
who principally looked after affairs of police in the city. There
were two censors, ranking highest of all in the hierarchy of office
because their sphere was so largely connected with religion. Their duty
was to number the people and to expiate that insult to heaven with
a solemn rite of purification. In numbering they also had to assess
every man’s property for the purpose of fixing his rank in the army
and in the state. All these magistrates had powers of jurisdiction
in various spheres. All the priests and prophets, too, of whom there
were many varieties, were formed into colleges. Only the _pontifex
maximus_ stood alone without a colleague--and he had an official wife.
We are too familiar with the working of “boards” and “commissions” to
misunderstand the purpose of this system. Theory required unanimity in
each board, each member of it had power to stop action by the others,
one powerful weapon to that end being the religious system whereby
nothing could be attempted without favourable omens. You had only to
announce unpropitious auspices to stop any action whatever.
The other great check against official tyranny was the system of
annual tenure. All magistrates, except the censors, who had a lengthy
task before them and therefore held office for five years, were
annual. While this was some safeguard for liberty, it told heavily
against efficiency, especially in the case of military leadership by
the consuls. It also meant the gradual creation of a great number of
office-holders, past and present. It was not quite so effective as
the corresponding Athenian system of balloting for office in checking
personal eminence, but it certainly succeeded in putting a great number
of nonentities and failures into high office--even the supreme command
of the legions.
THE EARLY ROMAN
It is only very dimly that we can trace the outlines of public history
as Rome grew to be a power in Italy. We can scarcely hope to trace the
lineaments of the individual Roman even in outline. It is sometimes
said that even if the earliest history of the city is admitted to be
apocryphal, we can draw valuable deductions as to the Roman character
from the sort of actions which were regarded as praiseworthy in the
earliest times. There is some truth in that view, though it might
be objected that most of these stories took literary shape only in
the second and first centuries B.C. It might be added that men often
admire qualities just because they feel that they themselves cannot
claim them. But, on the whole, I think we can get from this period
of legendary history some insight into Roman character. There is a
remarkable difference between the Roman hero and the Greek. Greek
mythology busies itself very largely with stories of cleverness--how
Heracles outwitted his foes, smart _équivoques_ by the oracles,
ingenious devices of Themistocles, wise sayings of Thales and Solon.
It is mainly the intellectual virtues that Greek history of the
borderland admires. But the Roman of the same historical area is not
clever. Most of the old Roman stories are in praise of courage--for
example, the contempt of pain shown by Scævola, who held his right
hand in the flames to demonstrate Roman fortitude; the courage of the
maiden Clœlia, who swam the river, or of Horatius, who held the bridge
against an army; the devotion to his country of Quintus Curtius, who
leapt in full armour into the chasm which had opened in the Forum.
Many of them celebrate the true Roman virtue of sternness and austere
devotion to law, as when the Roman fathers condemned their sons to
death for breaking the law under most excusable circumstances. The love
of liberty is extolled in Brutus, the love of equality in Valerius and
Cincinnatus, called from the plough-tail to supreme command. Austere
chastity in females and the strict demand for it in their proprietors
is praised in the stories of Lucretia and Virginia. All these we may
well set down as the virtues admired and, we hope, practised in early
Rome; they form a consistent and quite distinctive picture.
But the early Roman had few accomplishments to embellish his virtues.
Art and civilisation either did not exist or have perished without
leaving any traces. It is likely enough that all the city’s energies
were occupied with the one business of fighting. Some hints of
civilising reform hang about the name of Appius Claudius, who was
censor about 318-312 B.C. In his time we date some of the military
changes mentioned above, and they seem to have accompanied economic
changes which point to growing wealth at Rome. Copper gave place to
silver as the standard of exchange, and therewith the copper _as_
depreciated in value, so that the Roman unit of historical times, the
sestertius of 2½ _as_ value, was a coin worth about _2d._ Land was
no longer the sole basis of property; it became possible for a man
to become rich by trade, and accordingly landless citizens were now
drafted into the ancient tribes for the first time. To this great
censor also belongs the first of the famous Roman military roads, the
Appian Way, which led southwards to the Greek cities of Campania. Even
to-day the Via Appia, flanked with its ruined tombs--for the Romans
often buried their dead along the highways--running like a dart across
the barren Campagna, is one of the most striking spectacles which
modern Rome has to offer.[9]
Of anything which can be dignified with the name of literature we have
scarcely a relic. What there is seems ludicrously rustic and uncouth.
Consider, for an example, the ancient hymn of the Salii, the jumping
priests of Mars. There were twelve of them, all men of patrician
family; they dressed in embroidered tunics, with the striped toga, a
breastplate of bronze, a conical cap with a spike; they carried each a
sacred shield, and as they made their annual processions through the
city at the beginning of each campaigning year, they leaped into the
air and thumped their shields with sticks; trumpeters preceded them,
and they sang this ghostly chant:
ENOS LASES IVVATE (_ter_)
NEVE LVE RVE MARMAR SINS INCVRRERE IN PLEBES (_ter_)
SATVR FV FERE MARS. LIMEN SALI. STA. BERBER (_ter_)
SEMVNIS ALTERNEI ADVOCAPIT CONCTOS. (_ter_)
ENOS MARMOR IVVATO (_ter_)
TRIVMPE (_quinquies_)
which is probably to be translated:
Help us, O Lares (_thrice_)
And, O Mars, let not plague or ruin attack our people (_thrice_)
Be content, fierce Mars. Leap the threshold. Halt. Strike (_thrice_)
In alternate strain call upon all the heroes. (_thrice_)
Help us, Mars (_thrice_)
Leap (_five times_).
EARLY RELIGION
In our quest for the essential Roman we shall find nothing more
illuminating than religion. With some people culture takes the place of
religion, but it is far commoner to find religion taking the place of
culture: it did so with the Hebrews, and it does so to a great extent
among the English. The Romans were never a really religious people.
Probably they lacked the imagination to be really devout. They had
scarcely any native mythology. But they were ritualists and formalists
to the heart’s core. If those Salii had jumped only four times at the
word “Triumpe,” the whole value of the rite would have been lost: if
no worse thing befell them they would have had to begin again from
the beginning. Thus religion, always conservative, and generally the
richest hunting-ground for the antiquarian in search of prehistoric
history, is almost our only source of information as to the mind of
the early Roman. Of course, Roman religion is so deeply overlaid with
Greek mythology that it takes some digging to discover the real gods of
old Rome. But that is being done by the patience and insight of such
scholars as Mr. Warde Fowler and Dr. J. G. Frazer, so that we now have
a good deal of information about the original Roman religion.
Mr. Warde Fowler makes two important conclusions about the early Romans
from his study of the twofold character of Mars, who, in spite of the
later primacy of Jupiter, is undoubtedly the true Roman male god: “(1)
that their life and habits of thought were those of an agricultural
race, and (2) that they continually increased their cultivable land
by taking forcible possession in war of that of their neighbours.”
This was the Roman method of making agriculture pay. The spring of the
year and the month which still bears the name of Mars was not only
the season of returning life to nature, but it was also the time when
the god and his worshippers buckled on their armour to seek fresh
ploughlands, just as did the primitive Germans. It was Europe’s first
method of extensive farming, and the habit clung to the Romans long
after they had ceased to be farmers. In the spring it was time to look
about you and consider where and with whom you should begin to fight
this year.
Some of these old Roman festivals are worth a brief description, for
they and they alone are the authentic history of the early Romans.
For example, on the Ides of March the lower classes streamed out to
the Campus Martius on the banks of the river and spent the day in
rustic jollity with wine and song in honour of Anna Perenna--the
recurring year. On another day there was a ceremony like that of the
Hebrew scapegoat. Two dates in the calendar are marked for the king to
dissolve the _comitia_. The assembly had to be summoned by the blast of
special trumpets of peculiar un-Italian shape (some say Etruscan), and
the trumpets had to be purified by a special service on the previous
day. Although the Romans abolished their political kingship, religion
required the retention of the title for numerous ceremonial purposes.
Then there were the Parilia in honour of the old shepherd god Pales,
when sheepfolds were garlanded with green, the sheep were purified
at the dawn, and rustic sacrifices were paid to avert the wrath of
the deity in case you had unwittingly disturbed one of the mysterious
powers who dwell in the country--the nymphs and fauns of pool and
spring and tree. There was a prayer to this effect of which Ovid has
given us the substance, and “this prayer,” adds Mr. Warde Fowler, “must
be said four times over, the shepherd looking to the east, and wetting
his hands with the morning dew. The position, the holy water, and the
prayer in its substance, though now addressed to the Virgin, have all
descended to the Catholic shepherds of the Campagna.” There were other
primitive agricultural deities, such as Robigus (the red rust on the
corn), on whose festival you sacrificed red puppies; Terminus (the
boundary god), to whom you slaughtered a sucking-pig on the boundary
stone; or Ops Consiva, the deity who protected your buried store of
corn. Such names and their attributes indicate a certain poverty of
religious imagination. There were more abstract, or, rather, less
tangible powers, such as Lares, the spirits of the dead ancestors who
figured as guardian angels of the home; the Penates, the spirits who
watched over the store-cupboard; the Genius, a man’s luck; the Manes,
the kindly dead; or the Lemures, dangerous ghosts of the unburied. The
house, like the fields, was full of unseen presences to be appeased
with appropriate ritual, which had to be most punctiliously performed.
Every year at the Lemuria the master of the house would rise at
midnight and, with clean hands and bare feet, walk through the house,
making a special sign with his fingers and thumbs to keep off the
ghosts. He fills his mouth with black beans and spits them out as he
goes, carefully keeping his eyes averted, and saying, “With these I
redeem me and mine.” Nine times he speaks these words without looking
round, and the ghosts come behind him unseen to gather up the beans.
Then the father washes himself again, and clashes the pots together to
frighten the spirits away. When he has repeated the words “Depart, ye
kindly spirits of our ancestors” nine times, he looks round at last and
the ceremony is complete.
The history of Rome, as Mr. Warde Fowler discerns it in religion,
begins with an extremely simple rustic worship of natural forms,
meteoric stones, sacred trees and animals such as the Mother Wolf or
Mars’ woodpeckers; to this stage belong many of the curious spells
and charms against ghosts. This sort of worship is not distinctively
Roman, but common to the greater part of Central Europe. From these
savage local cults we pass to the more centralised worship which
belongs to the household, and that household an agricultural one.
The father is the priest, and his principal deity is Janus, the god
of the doorway; his sons are the subordinate _flamines_; and his
daughters have special charge of Vesta, who presides over the family
hearth-fire. Their agricultural activities are reflected in the
more orderly rural ceremonies in honour of Saturn, Ops, and Vesta.
Thirdly, we have a series of cults which indicate the beginnings of a
community with the king for chief priest, supported by State Vestals
and _flamines_. The Latin Festival marks the participation of Rome in
the Latin League, whose presiding deity was Jupiter. In these three
stages it is mainly an affair of formless powers or “numina,” deities
very scantily realised, with little or no personality, scarcely to be
termed anthropomorphic at all. Instead of temples there was nothing but
altars, chapels, groves.
If we view these changes in the light of ethnology we shall probably
agree that the first of them is the common ground of prehistoric
Mediterranean worship. It is what we find in Crete at the earliest
period. But we have come to regard the strict monogamous patriarchal
family as especially the contribution of the north to the civilisation
of Europe. Unfortunately those deities who are most certainly plebeian,
such as Ceres, Flora, and Diana, do not seem to belong to the earlier
strata of religion.
However that may be, it seems that we can trace in the next succeeding
stage a period of public worship connected with clearly anthropomorphic
deities who have temples, priests, and probably images of their own.
Towards the end of the monarchic period we find those distinctly
Etruscan characteristics of which I have already spoken. Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva are an Etruscan trinity. Now begins the pre-eminence
of greater gods more or less personified and closely resembling
those of the Greeks--such as Mercury, Ceres, and Diana. It is now
that the important priestly colleges, pontifices, and augurs are
founded, largely replacing, as being more important politically, the
old agricultural brotherhood of the Fratres Arvales and the martial
fraternity of the Salii.
Thus in religion as in art the Romans were prepared by their Etruscan
connections for their subsequent capture by Greek civilisation. It was
inevitable that a Greek should recognise Diana as Artemis, Minerva as
Pallas, Mercury as Hermes, and Juno as Hera. It was equally inevitable
that the Romans should be willing to clothe these bare and chilly
abstractions with the charming fabric of Greek mythology. That process,
and the simultaneous reception at Rome of Oriental cults, form still
later stages in the progress of that strange medley which passed in the
Rome of literature for religion.
There is little to elevate or inspire in Roman religion. The only
virtue belonging to it was reverence and the strict sense of duty which
a Roman called _pietas_, explaining it as “justice towards the gods.”
“Religion” meant “binding obligation” to the Romans; its source was
fear of the unseen, its issue was mainly punctilious formalism. No
doubt the gods would punish disrespect to a parent or rebellion against
the state, no doubt a fugitive or a slave had altars and sanctuaries
where he might claim mercy; but there is little more than that to
connect virtue with religion at Rome. On the other hand, we are not to
suppose that when the lascivious rites of Isis and Ashtaroth or the
Paphian Venus came to Rome in later days they came to corrupt a race
of pious puritans. True Roman deities like Flora, Fortuna Virilis, and
Anna Perenna had a native bestiality of their own. The simple rustic
is seldom a natural puritan, and we must beware of idealising our Early
Roman as a Scottish Covenanter. There was savage cruelty in many of
the early rites, such as the Ver Sacrum when all the offspring of men
and cattle within a specified period was devoted to the gods, or the
Fordicidia when unborn calves were burnt. Human sacrifice looms large
in the early religion, and it was probably only a later refinement
which limited it to criminals or volunteers.