Part 95

"The whole history of the world has been determined by the geological fact that at a point a little below the junction of the Tiber and the Anio the isolated hills stand nearer to one another than most of the other hills of Latium. On a site marked out above all other sites for dominion, the centre of Italy, the centre of Europe, as Europe then was, a site at the junction of three of the great nations of Italy, and which had the great river as its highway to lands beyond the bounds of Italy, stood two low hills, the hill which bore the name of Latin Saturn, and the hill at the meaning of whose name of Palatine scholars will perhaps guess for ever. These two hills, occupied by men of two of the nations of Italy, stood so near to one another that a strait choice indeed was laid on those who dwelled on them. They must either join together on terms closer than those which commonly united Italian leagues, or they must live a life of border warfare more ceaseless, more bitter, than the ordinary warfare of Italian enemies. Legend, with all likelihood, tells us that warfare was tried; history, with all certainty, tells us that the final choice was union. The two hills were fenced with a single wall; the men who dwelled on them changed from wholly separate communities into tribes of a single city. Changes of the same kind took place on not a few spots of Greece and Italy; not a few of the most famous cities of both lands grew on this wise out of the union of earlier detached settlements. But no other union of the kind, not even that which called Sparta into being out of five villages of an older day, could compare in its effects on all later time with the union of those two small hill-fortresses into a single city. For that city was Rome; the hill of Saturn became the site of Rome's capitol. the scene of her triumphs, the home of her patron gods. The hill on the other side of the swampy dale became the dwelling-place of Rome's Cæsars, and handed on its name of Palatium as the name for the homes of all the kings of the earth. {2658} Around those hills as a centre, Latium, Italy, Mediterranean Europe, were gathered in, till the world was Roman, or rather till the world was Rome. … Three tribes, settlers on three hills, were the elements of which the original commonwealth was made. Whether there was anything like a nobility within the tribes themselves, whether certain houses had any precedence, any preferences in the disposal of offices, we have no means of judging. That certain houses are far more prominent in legend and history than others may suggest such a thought, but does not prove it. But one thing is certain; these three tribes, these older settlers, were the original Roman people, which for a while numbered no members but themselves. They were the patres, the fathers, a name which in its origin meant no more than such plain names as goodman, housefather, and the like. In the Roman polity the father only could be looked on as a citizen in the highest sense; his children, his grand-children, were in his power, from which, just like slaves, they could be released only by his own special act. Such was the origin of the name fathers, patres, patricians, a name round which such proud associations gathered, as the three tribes who had once been the whole Roman people shrank up into a special noble class in the midst of a new Roman people which grew up around them, but which they did not admit to the same rights as themselves. The incorporation of a third tribe marks the end of the first period of Roman history. These were the Luceres of the Cœlian, admitted perhaps at first with rights not quite on a level with those of the two earlier tribes, the Ramnes of the Palatine, the oldest Romans of all, and the Tities of the Capitoline or hill of Saturn. The oldest Roman people was now formed. No fourth tribe was ever admitted; the later tribes of Rome, it must be remembered, are a separate division which have nothing to do with these old patrician tribes. And it must have been a most rare favour for either individuals or whole houses to be received into any of the three original tribes. … Now, if the privileged body of citizens is small, and if circumstances tend to make the settlement of non-privileged residents large, here is one of the means by which a privileged order in the narrower sense, a nobility in the midst of a nation or people may arise. An order which takes in few or no new members tends to extinction; if it does not die out, it will at least sensibly lessen. But there is no limit to the growth of the non-privileged class outside. Thus the number of the old burghers will be daily getting smaller, the number of the new residents will be daily getting larger, till those who once formed the whole people put on step by step the character of an exclusive nobility in the midst of the extended nation which has grown up around them. By this time they have acquired all the attributes of nobility, smallness of numbers, antiquity, privilege. And their possession of the common land—a possession shared constantly by a smaller number—is likely to give them a fourth attribute which, vulgarly at least, goes to swell the conception of nobility, the attribute of wealth. … Thus around the original people of Rome, the populus, the patres, the three ancient tribes, the settlers on the three earliest hills of Rome, arose a second people, the plebs. The whole history of Rome is a history of incorporation. The first union between the Capitoline and Palatine hills was the first stage of the process which at last made Romans of all the nations round the Mediterranean sea. But the equal incorporation of which that union was the type had now ceased, not to begin again for ages. Whatever amount of belief we give to the legends of Roman wars and conquests under the kings, we can hardly doubt that the territory of several neighbouring towns was incorporated with the Roman state, and that their people, whether they removed to Rome or went on occupying their own lands elsewhere, became Romans, but not as yet full Romans. They were Romans in so far as they ceased to be members of any other state, in so far as they obeyed the laws of Rome, and served in the Roman armies. But they were not Romans in the sense of being admitted into the original Roman body; they had no votes in the original Roman assembly; they had no share in its public land; they were not admissible to the high offices of the state. They had an organization of their own; they had their own assemblies, their own magistrates, their own sacred rights, different in many things from those of the older Roman People. And we must remember that, throughout the Roman history, when any town or district was admitted to any stage, perfect or imperfect, of Roman citizenship, its people were admitted without regard to any distinctions which had existed among them in their elder homes. The patricians of a Latin town admitted to the Roman franchise became plebeians at Rome. Thus from the beginning, the Roman plebs contained families which, if the word 'noble' has any real meaning, were fully as noble as any house of the three elder tribes. Not a few too of the plebeians were rich; rich and poor, they were the more part land-owners; no mistake can be greater than that which looks on the Roman plebs as the low multitude of a town. As we first see them, the truest aspect of them is that of a second nation within the Roman state, an inferior, a subject, nation, shut out from all political power, subject in many things to practical oppression, but which, by its very organization as a subject nation, was the more stirred up to seek, and the better enabled to obtain, full equality with the elder nation to which it stood side by side as a subject neighbour."

_E. A. Freeman, The Practical Bearings of European History (Lectures to American Audiences), page 278-278, and 285-292._

See, also, ITALY, ANCIENT; LATIUM; ALBA; and SABINES.

ROME: Early character and civilization of the Romans. Opposing theories.

"That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow peninsula of Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, and that the situation of Italy was favourable to her dominion over the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, has been often pointed out. But we have yet to ask what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and, still more, what rendered that career so different from those of ordinary conquerors? … About the only answer that we get to these questions is race. The Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. 'They were the wolves of Italy,' says Mr. Merivale, who may be taken to represent fairly the state of opinion on this subject. … {2659} But the further we inquire, the more reason there appears to be for believing that peculiarities of race are themselves originally formed by the influence of external circumstances on the primitive tribe; that, however marked and ingrained they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps not indelible. … Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans to the special qualities of their race, we should not be solving the problem, but only stating it again in other terms. … What if the very opposite theory to that of the she-wolf and her foster-children should be true? What if the Romans should have owed their peculiar and unparalleled success to their having been at first not more warlike, but less warlike than their neighbours? It may seem a paradox, but we suspect that in their imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliest and not least important steps in that gradual triumph of intellect over force, even in war, which has been an essential part of the progress of civilization. The happy day may come when Science in the form of a benign old gentleman with a bald head and spectacles on nose, holding some beneficent compound in his hand, will confront a standing army, and the standing army will cease to exist. That will be the final victory of intellect. But in the meantime, our acknowledgements are due to the primitive inventors of military organization and military discipline. They shivered Goliath's spear. A mass of comparatively unwarlike burghers, unorganized and undisciplined, though they may be the hope of civilization from their mental and industrial qualities, have as little of collective as they have of individual strength in war; they only get in each other's way, and fall singly victims to the prowess of a gigantic barbarian. He who first thought of combining their force by organization, so as to make their numbers tell, and who taught them to obey officers, to form regularly for action, and to execute united movements at the word of command, was, perhaps, as great a benefactor of the species as he who grew the first corn, or built the first canoe. What is the special character of the Roman legends, so far as they relate to war? Their special character is that they are legends not of personal prowess but of discipline. Rome has no Achilles. The great national heroes, Camillus, Cincinnatus, Papirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, Manlius, are not prodigies of personal strength and valour, but commanders and disciplinarians. The most striking incidents are incidents of discipline. The most striking incident of all is the execution by a commander of his own son for having gained a victory against orders. 'Disciplinam militarem,' Manlius is made to say, 'qua stetit ad hanc diem Romana res.' Discipline was the great secret of Roman ascendency in war. … But how came military discipline to be so specially cultivated by the Romans? … Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race, we look for a rational explanation in the circumstances of the plain which was the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is evident that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works of the kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the Circus Maximus, the Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca Maxima. Historians have indeed undertaken to give us a very disparaging picture of the ancient Rome. … But the Cloaca Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a large population, of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree of civilization. Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing our vision entirely of Romulus and his asylum, we seem dimly to perceive the existence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is commonly supposed in the germs of civilization,—a remark which may in all likelihood be extended to the background of history in general. Nothing surely can be more grotesque than the idea of a set of wolves, like the Norse pirates before their conversion to Christianity, constructing in their den the Cloaca Maxima. That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain. We can hardly doubt that she was a seat of industry and commerce, and that the theory which represents her industry and commerce as having been developed subsequently to her conquests is the reverse of the fact. Whence, but from industry and commerce, could the population and the wealth have come? Peasant farmers do not live in cities, and plunderers do not accumulate. Rome had around her what was then a rich and peopled plain; she stood at a meeting-place of nationalities; she was on a navigable river, yet out of the reach of pirates; the sea near her was full of commerce, Etruscan, Greek, and Carthaginian. … Her patricians were financiers and money-lenders. … Even more decisive is the proof afforded by the early political history of Rome. … The institutions which we find existing in historic times must have been evolved by some such struggle between the orders of patricians and plebeians as that which Livy presents to us. And these politics, with their parties and sections of parties, their shades of political character, the sustained interest which they imply in political objects, their various devices and compromises, are not the politics of a community of peasant farmers, living apart each on his own farm and thinking of his own crops: they are the politics of the quick-witted and gregarious population of an industrial and commercial city. … Of course when Rome had once been drawn into the career of conquest, the ascendency of the military spirit would be complete; war, and the organization of territories acquired in war, would then become the great occupation of her leading citizens; industry and commerce would fall into disesteem, and be deemed unworthy of the members of the imperial race. … Even when the Roman nobles had become a caste of conquerors and pro-consuls, they retained certain mercantile habits; unlike the French aristocracy, and aristocracies generally, they were careful keepers of their accounts, and they showed a mercantile talent for business, as well as a more than mercantile hardness, in their financial exploitation of the conquered world. Brutus and his contemporaries were usurers like the patricians of the early times. No one, we venture to think, who has been accustomed to study national character, will believe that the Roman character was formed by war alone: it was manifestly formed by war combined with business."

_Goldwin Smith, The Greatness of the Romans (Contemporary Review, May, 1878)._

A distinctly contrary theory of the primary character and early social state of the Romans is presented in the following: "The Italians were much more backward than the Greeks, for their land is turned to the west, to Spain, to Gaul, to Africa, which could teach them nothing, while Greece is turned to the east, to the coasts along which the civilisations of the Nile and the Tigris spread through so many channels. {2660} Besides, the country itself is far less stimulating to its inhabitants: compared to Greece, Italy is a continental country whose inhabitants communicate more easily by land than by sea, except in the two extreme southern peninsulas, which characteristically were occupied by Greek colonies whose earlier development was more brilliant than that of the mother country. … The equable fertility of the land was itself a hindrance. As far back as we can form any conjecture, the bulk of the people were shepherds or husbandmen; we cannot trace a time like that reflected in the Homeric poems, when high-born men of spirit went roving in their youth by land and sea, and settled down in their prime with a large stock of cattle and a fair stud of horses, to act as referees in peace and leaders in war to the cottars around. … Other differences less intelligible to us were not less weighty: the volcanic character of the western plain of central Italy, the want of a fall to the coast (which caused some of the watercourses to form marshes, and made the Tiber a terror to the Romans for its floods), told in ways as yet untraced ou the character of the inhabitants. For one thing the ancient worship of Febris and Mefitis indicates a constant liability to fever; then the air of Greece is lighter than the air of Italy, and this may be the reason that it was more inspiring. … Italian indigenous literature was of the very scantiest; its oldest element was to be found in hymns, barely metrical, and so full of repetitions as to dispense with metre. The hymns were more like spells than psalms, the singers had an object to gain rather than feelings to express. The public hymns were prayers for blessing: there were private chants to charm crops out of a neighbour's field, and bring other mischief to pass against him. Such 'evil songs' were a capital offence, though there was little, perhaps, in their form to suggest a distinction whether the victim was being bewitched or satirised. The deliberate articulate expression of spite seemed a guilt and power of itself. Besides these there were dirges at funerals, ranging between commemoration of the deceased and his ancestors, propitiation of the departed spirit, and simple lamentation. There were songs at banquets in praise of ancient worthies. … We find no trace of any poet who composed what free-born youths recited at feasts; probably they extemporised without training and attained no mastery. If a nation has strong military instincts, we find legendary or historical heroes in its very oldest traditions; if a nation has strong poetical instincts, we find the names of historical or legendary poets. In Italy we only meet with nameless fauns and prophets, whose inspired verses were perhaps on the level of Mother Shipton."

_G. A. Simcox, A History of Latin Literature, volume 1, introduction._

ROME: Struggle with the Etruscans.

See ETRUSCANS.

ROME: B. C. 753. Era of the foundation of the city.

"Great doubts have been entertained, as well by ancient historians as by modern chronologists, respecting this era. Polybius fixes it to the year B. C. 751; Cato, who has been followed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Solinus, and Eusebius, to B. C. 752; Fabius Pictor, to B. C. 747; Archbishop Usher, to B. C, 748; and Newton, to B. C. 627: Terentius Varro, however, refers it to B. C. 753; which computation was adopted by the Roman emperors, and by Plutarch, Tacitus, Dion, Aulus Gellius, Censorinus, Onuphrius, Baroius, bishop Beveridge, Stranchius, Dr. Playfair, and by most modern chronologists: Livy, Cicero, Pliny, and Velleius Paterculus occasionally adopted both the Varronian and Catonian computations. Dr. Hales has, however, determined, from history and astronomy, that the Varronian computation is correct, viz. B. C. 753."

_Sir H. Nicolas, Chronology of History, page 2._

ROME: B. C. 753-510. The legendary period of the kings. Credibility of the Roman annals. Probable Etruscan domination.