Part 10
In fact, the worst enemy the colonists had met thus far was water. They were used to mountain slopes with good drainage. They knew how to keep a field from being gutted by mountain freshets, and how to repair roadways and build drains that would carry off the water. They were strong and clever at fitting stones into the right place for walls, and they could dam up a stream for a fishpool or a bathing place. But this sort of country was all new to them. It was not exactly a marsh and not so swampy as it became in later centuries, but at any time it might become a marsh full of ponds and stagnant streams, and remain so for weeks at a time. This was bad for the grain and worse for sheep, and unhealthy for human beings. During the next rainy season after Toto’s visit, the farmers had a very unhappy time. They discovered that too much water is almost if not quite as much a nuisance as too little. In a dry time it is sometimes possible to carry water from a distance, but in a wet time there is nowhere to put the water that is not wanted, and many of their ditches were choked up with débris, and their grain was washed away.
Mastarna was full of patience. He let them toil and soak and chill and sweat until he thought they would welcome a suggestion from almost any quarter. Then he and a man he knew, a stone worker called Canial, took a boat and went across the river to a point where three or four of the colonists were prying an unhappy ox out of the mire. The strength, determination and skill with which they conducted the work were worthy of all admiration. But it would have been far better if the land could have been drained and protected by a solid dyke.
Canial looked the bank over with a shrewd, experienced eye, and said that if he had the work to do, he would dig a ditch there, and there, and there; here he would build a covered drain lined with tilework; and in a certain hollow under the hill he would have an arched waterway, so that flood water would run through instead of tearing at the foundation of the terrace below the vineyards. But he saw no signs that these men in their building made any use of arches. He jumped ashore and splashed through the pools, which were almost waist-deep in some places, up to where the ox was standing panting, wild-eyed and nearly exhausted with fright and struggle. Canial squatted down by a rivulet. He did not know the language of the colonists and they did not know his, but no words were needed for what he wanted to explain. He made a miniature drain rudely arched over with mud-plastered stones while they stood there watching. That could be done, as well with, a six-inch brook as with a river. It did not take the Romans ten minutes to see that he knew more about such matters than they did.
“Caius,” said Colonus to young Cossus, “go over to the camp and find Ruffo, and ask him to come and talk to this fellow.”
He knew that Ruffo understood several languages and dialects, and whatever it was that this man had come for, he wished to know it.
Ruffo knew enough of the language Canial spoke to be able to make out his meaning, and he told Colonus that the stone worker wished to come and live in Rome. He would show them how to drain their land and bridge their streams. Mastarna would tell them that he was a man of honesty and ability. His reason for leaving his own country was a personal one; he had had a quarrel with the head priest of his village because the priest wished to interfere in his family affairs and make Canial’s daughter the wife of his nephew, against her will. There was no safety or comfort in his part of the country when the priesthood had a grudge against a man.
There were others in the Roman settlement who had fled there for reasons of much the same kind as Canial’s—men who had been robbed of their inheritance, slaves escaped from cruel masters, homeless men, and men who for one reason or another had found themselves unsafe where they lived before. But this was the first family which had wished to come from beyond the river. The others all came from places where the public worship was not entirely unlike that of the Romans themselves and the people were of the same race in the beginning. This was a departure from that rule.
If it had not been for the dyke-building problem, Colonus would probably have said no at once. But that would have to be settled before the town grew much larger than it was, or they would have to change their way of life altogether. They were a people who hated to be crowded. They would need land, and land, and more land, if they continued to live on the Seven Hills. They must have grain for the cattle and themselves, and pasturage for the beasts, room for orchards and gardens, room for the villages of those who tilled their fields. Canial seemed to think that it would be quite possible to prevent the plain from being flooded, with proper stonework and drains, but it would need a man thoroughly used to the work to direct it. Colonus could see that Canial was probably that man. Every suggestion he made was practical and good, and he knew things about masonry that it had taken his ancestors generations to learn. Colonus finally said that he would talk it over with the other men of the city and give him an answer on a certain day.
Ruffo did not know anything of the gods the people of Canial worshiped, except that they were unlike the Roman gods and seemed to be very much feared. They had a god Turms, who was rather like the Roman Terminus, who protected traders and kept boundaries. They had a smith of the gods, called Sethlans, and a god of wine and drunkenness called Fuffluns.
No person, of course, could be allowed to bring the worship of strange gods into the sacred city. The very reason of the founding of the city was to make a home for their own gods, and to let in strange ceremonies would be to defile that home.
It was finally decided that Canial and some of his countrymen who wished to come with him should have a place of their own, which was afterward known as the Street of the Tuscans. It was a place which no one had wished to occupy before, because it was so wet, but Canial and his friends had no difficulty in draining it. The only condition he made was that traders should be allowed to come and go and supply his family and friends with whatever they needed. Women, he said, did not like a strange place much as it was, and he should have no peace at home if his wife were obliged to learn new methods of housekeeping.
The only condition that Marcus Colonus and his friends made was that the strangers should do nothing against the law of the settlement, or against the Roman gods, and this they readily agreed to. Canial said that the priests in his country demanded so much in offerings that a man was no better than a slave, working for them.
All this happened while Romulus was away, but when he returned he said that the decision was a wise one. It privately rather amused him to see how in this new country the colonists were led to allow the beginning of new customs which they regarded with great horror when they first came.
Before another rainy season, the Etruscans and the Romans, working together, had made a very fair beginning on the dyking and draining of the worst of the marshes and the bridging of bad places. Canial understood how to mix burned lumps of clay containing lime and iron, and lime and sand, and water, in such a way that when the muddy paste hardened it was like stone itself. Tertius Calvo, who happened to be there when this was done, tried it by himself. Although what he made was not entirely a failure, it did not behave as it did under the hands of Canial. Without saying anything—indeed, he could say nothing, for he knew not a word of the strangers’ language—Tertius watched and measured and experimented with small quantities until he found out the exact proportions and methods Canial used. The bit of wall he built finally was very nearly as good as Canial’s own work. Calvo was good at laying stones, and had very little to learn in that line from any stranger. This mortar, as they found in course of time, would stand heat and cold and water and seemed to become harder with exposure. By using the best quality of material the work was improved. There was no secret about it; indeed, Canial did not object to teaching any man who wished to learn all he could.
The greatest debt they owed to their new settlers was the low round arch, built with stones set in mortar in such a way that the greater the weight, the firmer the arch would be. Another Etruscan trick was plastering over the side of a drain or a bank with a mixture of small stones stirred thickly into mortar like plums in a pudding. The best of this new way of working was that it could be done so quickly. A great deal of the work could be done by stupid and ignorant laborers under the direction of those who knew how to direct. Men whom they could not employ in any sort of skilled labor could help here. Such men were glad enough to come for an allowance of food and drink. A certain task was set them, and they had their living for that; if they did more, they had an extra allowance. The task was called _moenia_, and since it was the lowest and least skilled labor, work of that kind later came to be known as _menial_, the work of slaves and servants.
The change in the face of the plain in the following years was almost like magic. The colonists built dykes to keep the river from overflowing; they built drains to carry off the heavy rains; they built culverts; they built bridges resting on solid arches; and they made one great drain which carried off so much of the overflow water that it made the Square Hill and most of the land around it safe. In fact, a part of every year thereafter was given to the improvement and protection of newly cleared farmlands by stonework. People came from a great distance to see the dyke they built, for nothing like it had been done on that side of the river. The people in the lowlands villages, relieved from the fear of floods, were proud to call themselves the servants of the Romans. In those early years a beginning was made of the great engineering work that was to endure for centuries. The people of the Square Hill were doing on a very small scale what nobody had done before them in that part of the world. In their masonry and their farming they gave all their poorer neighbors reason to be glad they were located where they were. It was a peaceful conquering of village after village.
XVII
THE WAR DANCE
When the country had grown peaceful, and there was no more need, for the time, of sending out warlike expeditions, it began to be seen that the soldiers who had come in with Romulus or had joined the troops later must have something to do. Romulus talked the matter over seriously with the fathers of the colony. If these men were to settle down as citizens, taking part in the life of the city—and some of them wished to do so—they ought to have homes; they needed wives. The family life of this people was the very heart of their religion and their society. The father was high priest in his family. The public worship was only a greater family worship, in which all had a part, old and young, living and dead. The gods themselves were often present unseen to receive prayers and offerings,—so the people believed.
The question of wives for these men was a serious one. Girls were growing up within the palisade on the Square Hill, but so were young men. There would be hardly enough brides for all the youths of their own generation, even if every girl found a husband. Aside from the fact that the parents would not like to see their daughters married to strangers of whom they knew nothing, the young folk themselves would be likely to object. Although theoretically, marriages were made by the elders without the girls having anything to say about it, human nature was much the same there as anywhere. In practice, the bride had some choice and the groom some independence. Any woman married against her will can make life so unpleasant for her husband and her husband’s relatives that common sense would lead a parent to avoid such a result. Care was taken to keep a young girl from knowing any men who would be unsuitable. A man did not ask any youth into his house to meet his daughters, on the spur of the moment. He met a great many men at the midday meal which the men ate together, whom he would not think of asking to a family supper. He knew a great many with whom he would not eat at all.
Here and there a soldier found a wife among the country people, but this did not usually turn out very well. The daughters of herdsmen and hut dwellers were not trained in the arts which made a woman dear to a civilized husband. Colonus and his friends wished the wives of the growing settlement to be women who would add to the wealth of their homes and not spoil it,—who would love their homes and their husbands, and bring up their children wisely, and live in peace and friendliness with the other women. The question which had come up was more important now than it might be later. A great deal depended on beginning with the right families. The men now coming in would be the fathers of the future Rome, and on the way in which their sons were brought up the prosperity and godliness of the people might rest.
Another possibility was in sight, and it was too nearly a probability to look very pleasant. The soldiers could get wives across the river among the Rasennae. But that would be a dangerous plan—dangerous perhaps to the men themselves and certainly to the colony. Women of a strange land, of a race so old and strong as the dark people seemed to be—a country where there was a secret council of priests who knew all sorts of things that the people did not—such women, married to settlers in the colony, would be a constant danger. They would learn from their husbands all that went on; they might persuade them to worship the strange gods; they might help to break down defences against the unknown power of the foreign priesthood. That was a plan not to be thought of for a minute.
Romulus sat listening and thinking, with his chin on his strong, brown hand, and his bright dark eyes gazing straight at the altar fire. When the others had said what they thought, he spoke. That was his way. He had perhaps begun in that way because he was not sure he knew all the proper forms of speech or all the matters that ought to be considered in ruling the affairs of this people. Now that he was well acquainted with all these, he still wanted to hear what every one else had to say, before speaking himself. This was becoming in a man still so young, and it was also wise.
“There is a plan, my fathers,” he said, “but I do not know whether you will think that it is the right one. Very long ago, I have heard, our people used to take their wives by capture. In those days a man never went openly to ask for his bride. He stole into the village by night with an armed guard, choosing his closest friends to go with him. Then suddenly seizing upon the maid he carried her off, and she became dead to her own family, and one of his people.
“Now this I do not commend, since it is not our wish to war with the people around us. To raid their towns as did the men of old time, and steal their maidens, would lead to never-ending war. The custom is an old one and long given up, and I do not like to return upon a road that I have traveled, or dig up old bones.
“In the villages on the heights—in the lower valleys of the mountain range that lies _there_—” he waved a brown arm toward the far blue hills, “the people who dwell there are worshippers of our gods, and their ways are as the ways of this colony, O my fathers. Their women spin, they weave, they grind grain, they tend bees, they keep the household fire alive and bright, they are fair and pure. These are fit wives for our soldiers—or for any man.
“In some of these villages were we known, for we were there in the old days. They are not walled villages, they are scattered among the valleys, and they have little to do with one another or with strangers. It is in my mind that if their women were married here, we and they might be one people. Then all the Seven Hills would be ours, and we and they together would be a strong nation. But well I know that they would never consent to give their daughters to strangers.
“This therefore is my thought. I have seen,” the young chief’s dark face was lighted by a fleeting smile, “that sometimes the will of a young maid is not wholly that of the old men and women of her people. Forgive me, O ye elders, if I speak foolishly, but I think that some of these Sabine girls might not themselves be unwilling to mate with my men. Would it be so great a crime to take wives from those villages despite the will of the priests and elders, if the maidens themselves became in time content? Suppose now that I send my men as messengers, to invite these people to a festival on the day when the Salii, the Leapers, have their games and their feast. They also have fraternities like ours; there is a fraternity of the Luperci, and the Salii, and others, among the Sabines. Let their young men contend with ours in the games, and their people join with ours for the day. They are not compelled to come. If they dislike and distrust us, they will stay in their villages. But if it is as I think, many will come.
“Then when all are gathered together, and weapons are laid for the games, let our young men, at a given signal, seize each his chosen maiden and bring her back within our walls to be his wife. In token that they are not to be slaves but honorable wives, whose work is to spin, let our young men shout as they go, ‘Talassa! Talassa!’
“Have I spoken well, my father?” He looked straight at Colonus. “If ye have a better plan, let no more be said of this.”
But there was no better plan; in fact, there seemed to be no other plan at all. Romulus knew this very well. There was nothing in this idea that was offensive to the general opinion in those days. It was not so very long since marriage by capture was the usual way of getting wives. If the Sabine girls were brought into the colony the soldiers would be sure of having wives with the customs and the same gods of the other matrons. If they were brought in a company and lived in the same quarter of the town, they would form a little society of their own. It would not be a life entirely new and strange.
It was decided that the plan should be tried. If any of the messengers did a little courting in the villages, nothing was said of it.
The place chosen for the festival was a plain where there would be room for all the games and the feasting and the ceremonies. Romulus and some of the young men went out there a few days before the appointed date to level off the ground, arrange seats for the public men, and make ready. In removing a bowlder which would be in the way of racers, and smoothing the ground, Tertius Calvo found his pick striking on something strange. He dug down a little way and unearthed a flat stone which seemed to be the top of an altar. He called the others to look, and Romulus caught his breath with a queer gasp. He remembered something.
“Jove!” said Mamurius, a few minutes later, “Here’s something else!” There was a gleam of bright metal in the hole they were digging. The altar, a small square one of a whitish stone, was lifted out, and then something struck with a muffled clang against Mamurius’ spade. They were all excitedly gazing by that time, and when the round metal thing was lifted out, and the earth cleaned off it with grass, and it was rubbed with a piece of leather, it almost blinded them. It was a golden shield.
Where it had come from, no human creature knew. Nothing else like it was ever found in that neighborhood. It may have belonged to some Etruscan nobleman in far-off days, when a battle was fought on that plain; it may have been part of the plunder of some city; but there it was, and the decoration showed that it was made by a smith who worshiped Mars. Reverently the young men carried it back to Rome, after they had set up the altar on the field where they found it. It seemed like a sign that the gods approved what they were doing. It was hung up in the temple, and was considered the especial property of the Salii, or Leapers, the young men who danced the war dance, for it was they who had found it. But Romulus told none of them of the witch’s prophecy that he would find an altar and a shield in just this place.
The day appointed for the feast was fair, and early in the morning the mountain people could be seen coming across the plain or camped near the field.
The soldiers who were to take part in the festival in this unexpected and startling way were very far from being the same rude outlaws who had followed their young leader to the Long White Mountain. They had been living within the bounds of a civilized settlement, and the life had had its effect on them. They had seen men handle the spade and the plough as if they were weapons, and treat the earth as if it were the most interesting thing in the world to study. They had seen how interesting it was to change the face of the land, to make a wild and dreary waste into a rich farming country, to fight flood and fire and other mighty natural enemies,—and win. They had seen, though at a distance, the gracious manners and gentle ways of the matrons, the sweetness and dignity of the young girls. They had fought and worked side by side with the young men who were proud to be the sons of such fathers. Many of the outlaws had had ancestors who were strong and brave and intelligent. They had the sense to see that if they joined this new settlement they would have a place and a power. And last but not least there was a great deal of wholesome comfort in the life of this place. To men who had slept unsheltered in cold and rain, who had worn sheepskins and wolfskins, who had gone without food, often for days, and never had a really good meal unless they had unusual luck, the life of the colonists was a revelation. Good beds, fresh vegetables, well-cooked meats, cakes made with honey, were luxuries they appreciated. The dress of the people was simple enough; a tunic for working, and over that for warmth or holiday dignity the large square of undyed wool called a toga; a pair of sandals for the feet, a cap or helmet for the head, a leather girdle and pouch. But it was a long way better than rawhide. In short, these young fellows had discovered that they liked a civilized life. They were a very fine looking company as they marched down the hill from their barracks and went with their long, swinging stride over the plain to the place where the strange, little old altar stood.
The games went on, and at the height of the gayety and excitement there was a sudden trumpet call, and all was in confusion. Each soldier seized a Sabine maiden and carried her off as if she were a child. The men who were not so burdened formed a rear guard. The older people were already on their way home. Some of them did not know what had happened. Before anything could be done by the startled and angry Sabine men, the soldiers were inside the walls of the city and the shout of “Talassa! Talassa!” revealed that this was a revival of the ancient custom of marriage by capture.