ORGANIZATION.
B.C. 754
Discussion in respect to ancient dates.--Difficulties.--Nature of
tradition.--Extreme youth of Romulus.--Varro's astrological
calculation.--Ingenuity of it.--Olympiads.--The race of
Coroebus.--The result of Varro's computation.--Probable character
of the first constructions at Rome.--Romulus convenes an assembly
of the people.--The speech of Romulus.--His proposals.--The three
forms of government.--Romulus himself made king.--Divine intimation
in his favor.--Commencement of his reign.--Probable origin of the
Roman institutions.--Republican character of the government.--Patricians
and plebians.--Patrons and clients.--Duration of the reign of
Romulus.--Usages.--Difficulty of immediately organizing such a
community.--Importance of the parental and family relation.--The father
a magistrate.--The marriage tie.--Religions ceremonies.--Auguries.--The
three augurs.--Various kinds of omens.--Station of the augurs.--Thunder
and lightning.--Birds.--Nature of the ancient superstition.--Results of
the arrangements made by Romulus.--The asylum on the Capitoline
hill.
There has been a great deal of philosophical discussion, and much
debate, among historians and chronologists, in attempting to fix the
precise year in which Romulus commenced the building of Rome. The
difficulty arises from the fact that no regular records of public
events were made in those ancient days. In modern times such records
are very systematically kept,--an express object of them being to
preserve and perpetuate a knowledge of the exact truth in respect to
the time, and the attendant circumstances, relating to all great
transactions. On the other hand, the memory of public events in early
periods of the world, was preserved only through tradition; and
tradition cares little for the exact and the true. She seeks only for
what is entertaining. Her function being simply to give pleasure to
successive generations of listeners, by exciting their curiosity and
wonder with tales,--which, the more strange and romantic they are,
the better they are suited to her purpose--she concerns herself very
little with such simple verities as dates and names. The exposure of
the twin infants of Rhea, supposing such an event to have actually
happened, she remembered well, and repeated the narrative of
it--adorning it, doubtless, with many embellishments--from age to age,
so that the whole story comes down to modern times in full detail; but
as to the time when the event took place, she gave herself no concern.
The date would have added nothing to the romance of the story, and
thus it was neglected and forgotten.
In subsequent times, however, when regular historical annals began to
be recorded, chronologists attempted to reason backward, from events
whose periods were known, through various data which they ingeniously
obtained from the preceding and less formal narratives, until they
obtained the dates of earlier events by a species of calculation. In
this way the time for the building of Rome was determined to be about
the year 754 before Christ. As to Romulus himself, the tradition is
that he was but eighteen or twenty years old when he commenced the
building of it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to
palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated--wrongs which would
have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate
purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses
and passions of eighteen.
A certain Roman philosopher, named Varro, who lived some centuries
after the building of the city, conceived of a very ingenious plan for
discovering the year in which Romulus was born. It was this. By means
of the science of astrology, as practiced in those days, certain
learned magicians used to predict what the life and fortunes of any
man would be, from the aspects and phases of the planets and other
heavenly bodies at the time of his birth. The idea of Varro was to
reverse this process in the case of Romulus; that is, to deduce from
the known facts of his history what must have been the relative
situations of the planets and stars when he came into the world! He
accordingly applied to a noted astrologer to work out the problem for
him. Given, a history of the incidents and events occurring to the man
in his progress through life; required, the exact condition of the
skies when the child was born. In other words, the astrologer was to
determine what must have been the relative positions of the sun, moon,
and stars, at the birth of Romulus, in order to produce a being whose
life should exhibit such transactions and events as those which
appeared in Romulus's subsequent history. When the astrologer had thus
ascertained the condition of the skies at the time in question, the
_astronomers_, as Varro concluded, could easily calculate the month
and the year when the combination must have occurred.
Now, it was the custom in those days to reckon by Olympiads, which
were periods of four years, the series commencing with a great victory
at a foot-race in Greece, won by a man named Coroebus, from which
event originated the Olympian games, which were afterward celebrated
every four years, and which in subsequent ages became so renowned. The
time when Coroebus ran his race, and thus furnished an era for all
the subsequent chronologists and historians of his country, is
generally regarded as about the year 776 before Christ; and the result
of the calculations of Varro's astrologer, and of the astronomers who
perfected it, was, that to lead such a life as Romulus led, a man must
have been born at a time corresponding with the first year of the
second Olympiad; that is, taking off from 776, four years, for the
first Olympiad, the first year of the second Olympiad would be 772;
this would make the time of his birth 772 before Christ; and then
deducting eighteen years more, for the age of Romulus when he began to
build his wall, we have 754 before Christ as the era of the foundation
of Rome. This method of determining a point in chronology seems so
absurd, according to the ideas of the present day, that we can hardly
resist the conclusion, that Varro, in making his investigation, was
really guided by other and more satisfactory modes of determining the
point, and that the horoscope was not what he actually relied upon.
However this may be, the era which he fixed upon has been very
generally received, though many others have been proposed by the
different learned men who have successively investigated the question.
According to the accounts given by the early writers, the
constructions which Romulus and his companions made were of a very
rude and simple character; such as might have been expected from a
company of boys: for boys we ought perhaps to consider them all, since
it is not to be presumed that the troop, in respect to age and
experience, would be much in advance of the leaders. The wall which
they built about the city was probably only a substantial stone fence,
and their houses were huts and hovels. Even the palace, for there was
a building erected for Romulus himself which was called the palace,
was made, it is said, of _rushes_. Perhaps the meaning is that it was
thatched with rushes,--or possibly the expression refers to a mode of
building sometimes adopted in the earlier stages of civilization, in
which straw, or rushes, or some similar material is mixed with mud or
clay to help bind the mass together, the whole being afterward dried
in the sun. Walls thus made have been found to possess much more
strength and durability than would be supposed possible for such a
material to attain.
However this may be, the hamlet of huts which Romulus and his wild
coadjutors built and walled in, must have appeared, at the time, to
all observers, a very rude and imperfect attempt at building a city;
in fact it must have seemed to them, if it is true that Romulus was at
that time only eighteen years old, more like a frolic of thoughtless
boys than a serious enterprise of men. Romulus, however, whatever
others may have thought of his work, was wholly in earnest. He felt
that he was a prince, and proud of his birth, and fully conscious of
his intellectual and personal power, he determined that he would have
a kingdom.
It seems, however, that thus far he had not been considered as
possessing any thing like regal authority over his company of
followers, but had been regarded only as a sort of chieftain
exercising an undefined and temporary power; for as soon as the huts
were built and the inclosures made, he is said to have convened an
assembly of the people, for consultation in respect to the plan of
government that they should form. Romulus introduced the business of
this meeting by a speech appropriate to the occasion, which speech is
reported by an ancient historian somewhat as follows. Whether Romulus
actually spoke the words thus attributed to him, or whether the
report contains only what the reporter himself imagined him to say,
there is now no means of knowing.
"We have now," said Romulus, according to this record, "completed the
building of our city, so far as at present we are able to do it; and
it must be confessed that if we were required to depend for protection
against a serious attack from an enemy, on the height of our walls, or
on their strength and solidity, our prospects would not be very
encouraging. But our walls we must remember are not what we rely upon.
No walls can be so high, that an enemy can not scale them. The
dependence must be after all on the men within the city, and not on
the ramparts and entrenchments which surround it, whatever those
ramparts and entrenchments may be. We must therefore rely upon
ourselves, for our safety--upon our valor, our discipline, our union
and harmony. It is courage and energy in the people, not strength in
outward defenses, on which the safety and prosperity of a State must
depend.
"The great work before us therefore is yet to be done. We have to
organize a government under which order and discipline may come in,
to control and direct our energies, and prepare us to meet whatever
future exigencies may arise, whether of peace or war. What form shall
be given to this government is the question that you have now to
consider. I have learned by inquiry that there are various modes of
government adopted among men, and between these we have now to decide.
Shall our commonwealth be governed by one man? Or shall we select a
certain number of the wisest and bravest of the citizens, and commit
the administration of public affairs to them? Or, in the third place,
shall we commit the management of the government to the control of the
people at large? Each of these three forms has its advantages, and
each is attended with its own peculiar dangers. You are to choose
between them. Only when the decision is once made, let us all unite in
maintaining the government which shall be established, whatever its
form may be."
The result of the deliberation which followed, after the delivery of
this address, was that the government of the state should be, like the
government of Alba, under which the followers of Romulus had been
born, a monarchy; and that Romulus himself should be king. He was a
prince by birth, an inheritor of regal rank and power, by regular
succession, from a line of kings. He had shown himself, too, by his
deeds, to be worthy of power. He was courageous, energetic, sagacious,
and universally esteemed. It was decided accordingly that he should be
king, and he was proclaimed such by all the assembled multitude, with
long and loud acclamations.
Notwithstanding the apparent unanimity and earnestness of the people,
however, in calling Romulus to the throne, he evinced, as the story
goes, the proper degree of that reluctance and hesitation which a
suitable regard to appearances seems in all ages to require of public
men when urged to accept of power. He was thankful to the people for
the marks of their confidence, but he could not consent to assume the
responsibilities and prerogatives of power until the choice made by
his countrymen had been confirmed by the divinities of the land. So he
resolved on instituting certain solemn religious ceremonies, during
the progress of which he hoped to receive some manifestation of the
divine will. These ceremonies consisted principally of sacrifices
which he caused to be offered on the plain near the city. While
Romulus was engaged in these services, the expected token of the
divine approval appeared in a supernatural light which shone upon his
hand. At least it was _said_ that such a light was seen, and the
appearing of it was considered as clearly confirming the right of
Romulus to the throne. He no longer made any objection to assuming the
government of the new city as its acknowledged king.
The first object to which he gave his attention was the organization
of the people, and the framing of the general constitution of society.
The community over which he was called to preside had consisted thus
far of very heterogeneous and discordant materials. Vast numbers of
the people were of the humblest and most degraded condition,
consisting of ignorant peasants, some stupid, others turbulent and
ungovernable; and of refugees from justice, such as thieves, robbers,
and outlaws of every degree. But then, on the other hand, there were
many persons of standing and respectability. The sons of families of
wealth and influence in Alba had, in many cases, joined the
expedition, and at last, when the building of the city had advanced
so far as to make it appear that the enterprise might succeed, more
men of age and character came to join it, so that Romulus found
himself, when he formally assumed the kingly power, at the head of a
community which contained the elements of a very respectable
commonwealth. These elements were, however, thus far all mingled
together in complete confusion, and the work that was first to be done
was to adopt some plan for classifying and arranging them.
It is most probable, as a matter of fact, that the organization and
the institutions which in subsequent times appeared in the Roman
state, were not deliberately planned and formally introduced by
Romulus at the outset, but that they gradually grew up in the progress
of time, and that afterward historians and philosophers, in
speculating upon them at their leisure, carried back the history of
them to the earliest times, in order, by so doing, to honor the
founder of the city, and also to exalt and aggrandize the institutions
themselves in public estimation, by celebrating the antiquity and
dignity of their origin.
The institutions which Romulus actually founded, were of a very
republican character, if the accounts of subsequent writers are to be
believed. He established, it is true, a gradation of ranks, but the
most important offices, civil and military, were filled, it is said,
by election on the part of the people. In the first place, the whole
population was divided into three portions, which were called
_tribes_, which word was formed from the Latin word _tres_, meaning
three. These tribes chose each three presiding officers, selecting for
the purpose the oldest and most distinguished of their number. It is
probable, in fact, that Romulus himself really made the selection, and
that the action of the people was confined to some sort of expression
of assent and concurrence, for it is difficult to imagine how any
other kind of election than this could be possible among so rude and
ignorant a multitude. The tribes were then subdivided each into thirty
_counts_ or _counties_, and each of these likewise elected its head.
Thus there was a large body of magistrates or chieftains appointed,
ninety-nine in number, namely, nine heads of tribes and ninety heads
of counties. Romulus himself added one to the number, of his own
independent selection, which made the hundredth. The men thus chosen,
constituted what was called the senate. They formed the great
legislative council of the nation. They and the families descending
from them became, in subsequent times, an aristocratic and privileged
class, called the Patricians. The remaining portion of the population
were called Plebeians.
The Plebeians comprised, of course, the industrial and useful classes,
and were in rank and station inferior to the Patricians. They were,
however, not all upon a level with each other, for they were divided
into two great classes, called _patrons_ and _clients_. The patrons
were the employers, the proprietors, the men of influence and capital.
The clients were the employed, the dependent, the poor. The clients
were to perform services of various kinds for the patrons, and the
patrons were to reward, to protect, and to defend the clients. All
these arrangements Romulus is said to have ordained by his enactments,
and thus introduced as elements in the social constitution of the
state. It is more probable, however, that instead of being thus
expressly established, by the authority of Romulus as a lawgiver, they
gradually grew up of themselves, perhaps with some fostering
attention and care on his part, and possibly under some positive
regulation of law. For such important and complicated relations as
these are not of a nature to be easily called into existence and
action, in an extended and unorganized community, by the mere fiat of
a military chieftain.
Perhaps, however, it is not intended by the ancient historians, in
referring all these complicated arrangements of the Roman civil polity
to the enactments of Romulus, to convey the idea that he introduced
them at once in all their completeness, at the outset of his reign.
Romulus continued king of Rome for nearly forty years, and instead of
making formal and positive enactments, he may have gradually
introduced the arrangements ascribed to him, as _usages_ which he
fostered and encouraged,--confirming and sanctioning them from time to
time, when occasion required, by edicts and laws.
However this may have been, it is certain that Romulus, in the course
of his reign, laid the foundation of the future greatness and glory of
Rome, by the energy with which he acted in introducing order, system,
and discipline into the community which he found gathered around him.
He seems to have had the sagacity to perceive from the outset that the
great evil and danger which he had to fear was the prevalence of the
spirit of disorder and misrule among his followers. In fact, nothing
but tumult and confusion was to have been expected from such a lawless
horde as his, and even after the city was built, the presumption must
have been very strong in the mind of any considerate and prudent man,
against the possibility of ever regulating and controlling such a mass
of heterogeneous and discordant materials, by any human means. Romulus
saw, however, that in effecting this purpose lay the only hope of the
success of his enterprise, and he devoted himself with great assiduity
and care, and at the same time with great energy and success, to the
work of organizing it. The great leading objects of his life, from the
time that he commenced the government of the new city, were to arrange
and regulate social institutions, to establish laws, to introduce
discipline, to teach and accustom men to submit to authority, and to
bring in the requirements of law, and the authority of the various
recognized relations of social life, to control and restrain the
wayward impulses of the natural heart.
As a part of this system of policy, he laid great stress upon the
parental and family relation. He saw in the tie which binds the father
to the child and the child to the father, a natural bond which he
foresaw would greatly aid him in keeping the turbulent and boisterous
propensities of human nature under some proper control. He accordingly
magnified and confirmed the natural force of parental authority by
adding the sanctions of law to it. He defined and established the
power of the father to govern and control the son, rightly considering
that the father is the natural ally of the state in restraining young
men from violence, and enforcing habits of industry and order upon
them, at an age when they most need control. He clothed parents,
therefore, with authority to fulfill this function, considering that
what he thus aided them to do, was so much saved for the civil
magistrate and the state. In fact, he carried this so far that it is
said that the dependence of the child upon the father, under the
institutions of Romulus, was more complete, and was protracted to a
later period than was the case under the laws of any other nation.
The power of the father over his household was supreme. He was a
magistrate, so far as his children were concerned, and could thus not
only require their services, and inflict light punishments for
disobedience upon them, as with us, but he could sentence them to the
severest penalties of the law, if guilty of crime.
The laws were equally stringent in respect to the marriage tie. Death
was the penalty for the violation of the marriage vows. All property
belonging to the husband and to the wife was held by them in common,
and the wife, if she survived the husband, and if the husband died
without a will, became his sole heir. In a word, the laws of Romulus
evince a very strong desire on the part of the legislator to sustain
the sacredness and to magnify the importance of the family tie; and to
avail himself of those instinctive principles of obligation and duty
which so readily arise in the human mind out of the various relations
of the family state, in the plans which he formed for subduing the
impulses and regulating the action of his rude community.
He devoted great attention too to the institutions of religion. He
knew well that such lawless and impetuous spirits as his could never
be fully subdued and held in proper subordination to the rules of
social order and moral duty, without the influence of motives drawn
from the spiritual world; and he accordingly adopted vigorous measures
for confirming and perpetuating such religious observances as were at
that time observed, and in introducing others. Every public act which
he performed was always accompanied and sanctioned by religious
solemnities. The rites and ceremonies which he instituted seem puerile
to us, but they were full of meaning and of efficacy in the view of
those who performed them. There was, for example, a class of religious
functionaries called _augurs_, whose office it was to interpret the
divine will by means of certain curious indications which it was their
special profession to understand. There were three of these augurs,
and they were employed on all public occasions, both in peace and war,
to ascertain from the omens whether the enterprise or the work in
regard to which they were consulted was or was not favored by the
councils of heaven. If the augury was propitious the work was entered
upon with vigor and confidence. If otherwise, it was postponed or
abandoned.
The omens which the augurs observed were of various kinds, being drawn
sometimes from certain peculiarities in the form and structure of the
internal organs of animals offered in sacrifice, sometimes from the
appearance of birds in the sky, their numbers or the direction of
their flight, and sometimes from the forms of clouds, the appearance
of the lightning, and the sound of the thunder. Whenever the augurs
were to take the auspices from any of the signs of the sky, the
process was this. They would go with solemn ceremony to some high
place--in Rome there was a station expressly consecrated to this
purpose on the Capitoline hill,--and there, with a sort of magical
wand which they had for the purpose, one of the number would determine
and indicate the four quarters of the heaven, pointing out in a solemn
manner the directions of east, west, north and south. The augur would
then take his stand with his back to the west and his face of course
to the east. The north would then be on his left hand and the south at
his right. He would then, in this position watch for the signs. If it
was from the thunder that the auspices were to be taken, the augur
would listen to hear from what quarter of the heavens it came. If the
lightning appeared in the east and the sound of the thunder seemed to
come from the northward, the presage was favorable. So it was if the
chain of lightning seen in the sky appeared to pass from cloud to
cloud above, instead of descending to the ground. On the other hand,
thunder sounding as if it came from the southward, and lightning
striking down to the earth, were both unpropitious omens. As to birds,
some were of good omen, as vultures, eagles and woodpeckers. Others
were evil, as ravens and owls. Various inferences were drawn too from
the manner in which the birds that appeared in the air, were seen to
fly, and from the sound of their note at the time when the observation
was made.
By these and many similar means the government of Romulus vainly
endeavored to ascertain the will of heaven in respect to the plans and
enterprises in which they were called upon from time to time to
engage. There was perhaps in these observances much imposture, and
much folly; still they could only have been sustained, in their
influence and ascendency over the minds of the people, by a sincere
veneration on their part for some unseen and spiritual power, and a
reverent desire to conform the public measures of their government to
what they supposed to be the divine will.
By such measures as we have thus described Romulus soon produced order
out of confusion within his little commonwealth. The enterprise which
he had undertaken and the great success which had thus far followed
it, attracted great attention, and he soon found that great numbers
began to come in from all the surrounding country to join him. Many of
these were persons of still worse character than those who had adhered
to him at first, and he soon found that to admit them indiscriminately
into the city would be to endanger the process of organization which
was now so well begun. He accordingly set apart a hill near to his
city called the Capitoline hill, as an asylum for them, where they
could remain in safety under regulations suitable to their condition,
and without interfering with the arrangements which he had made for
the rest. This asylum soon became a very attractive place for all the
vagabonds, outlaws, thieves and robbers of the country. Romulus
welcomed them all, and as fast as they came he busied himself with
plans to furnish them with employment and subsistence. He enlisted
some of them in his army. Some he employed to cultivate the ground in
the territory belonging to the city. Others were engaged as servants
for the people within the walls--being taken into the city, in small
numbers, from time to time, as fast as they could be safely received.
In process of time, however, the walls of the city were extended so as
to include the Capitoline hill, and thus at last the whole mass was
brought into Rome together.