Anthony Everitt - The Rise of Rome

The emphasis was on day-to-day exchanges between individuals, and there is little concerning the relation of the individual and the community. Thus: “A man might gather up fruit that was falling down onto another man’s farm,” and “Let them keep the road in order. If they have not paved it, a man may drive his team where he likes.”

The sheer strangeness of some of Rome’s early laws puzzles the mind. Here is the grisliest: “Where a party is delivered up to several persons, on account of a debt, after he has been exposed in the Forum on three market days, they shall be permitted to divide their debtor into different parts, if they want to do so; and if anyone of them should, by the sharing out, receive more or less than he is entitled to, he shall not be responsible.” This means, literally, what it says: if there was more than one creditor, they were entitled to cut a debtor’s body into different bits, the shares reflecting the amounts of debt owed.

Shylock would have felt vindicated, with Portia straining for the quality of mercy.

THESE WERE FAMOUS victories for the People, but it was soon obvious that the game was not yet over. Within a few years, there was another dramatic but mysterious upheaval. In 444, the consuls were swept away and replaced by military tribunes with consular powers ( tribuni militum consulari potestate ). In any given year, there were not fewer than three of these new officials, and often as many as six.

The purpose of this reform is hidden in fog. Some sources say it was a compromise by the patricians, who refused to accept that a consul could be a plebeian but would not object in the case of a governing committee; unfortunately for this theory, plebeians were seldom elected to the new posts, at least at the outset. Others claim that Rome needed more than two army commanders; so why, as sometimes happened, were tribunes elected in years when there was no campaigning to be done? And why did the Republic switch unexpectedly from year to year between tribunes and consuls? The second explanation is perhaps the more convincing, if we add a probable increase in official domestic duties. We should also remember that the decision whether or not tribunes were to be elected, and if so how many, had to be taken in the year preceding the period of office. So guesswork, well-informed, doubtless, but sometimes off the mark, would have been the order of the day.

The struggle between the rich and the poor, the nobility and the People, the patricians and the plebs, called the Conflict of the Orders, had a century and more yet to run. But despite setbacks for the popular cause, most Romans could see that the pendulum of power was swinging irreversibly toward the plebs.

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON OF THE FIFTEENTH OF JULY in the year 496 two tall, preternaturally handsome young men, just growing their first beards, were spotted in the Forum at Rome. They were washing their sweaty horses in the spring that rose just by the Temple of Vesta and formed a small but deep pool. They were dressed in armor, and it looked very much as if they had just come from a battlefield. People gathered around them and asked if there was any news, for Rome had dispatched an army against the city’s Latin neighbors.

The youths replied that, yes, there had been a great battle on this day at Lake Regillus and that Rome had been the winner. Then they left the Forum and, although a great search was made for them, they were never seen again.

On the following day, letters arrived from the army reporting on the victory. Old Tarquin Superbus had been present, fighting alongside the Latins, and was wounded in the side. The enemy camp was taken. Apparently, two young men on horseback had suddenly appeared at the head of the Roman cavalry, spearing down every Latin soldier they encountered and driving the enemy into headlong retreat. Clearly they were gods, and the same ones who had appeared a little later in the Forum. Everyone agreed that they must have been the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux, also known as the Dioscuri, or “sons of Zeus.” Helen of Troy was their sister, and they were among Jason’s Argonauts in the search for the Golden Fleece. They acted as helpers of mankind, typically intervening at times of crisis. They had an important shrine near Lake Regillus, so the battle had been fought on their doorstep.

The Roman commander vowed to found a temple in thanksgiving to the brothers and, although the story of their apparition is of course mythical, archaeologists have confirmed that it was built around this time in the Forum, near where they had been seen with their horses. The Romans revered the Heavenly Twins and the temple was twice rebuilt, each time more grandly. The massive ruins of the final version, commissioned by the emperor Tiberius in the first century A.D., can still be seen in the Forum today. The building stood on a high podium; the Senate frequently met inside it and its front steps were topped by a platform, much used for rabble-rousing open-air speeches during the riotous politics of the late Republic.

Every year on the date of the battle, a splendid ritual was conducted in honor of Castor and Pollux. Rome’s official cavalry processed into the city as if coming fresh from a battle and marched past the temple. They were crowned with olive branches and dressed in purple robes with scarlet stripes, along with their military decorations. “It made a fine sight,” wrote a witness of the ceremony in the first century, “and worthy of Roman power.”

TWO HUNDRED YEARS of class struggle at home did not deter the Romans from fighting an almost continuous series of military campaigns abroad. Described in the ancient histories as if they were the wars of a great nation, these campaigns were in fact for the most part raids and counter-raids, state-sponsored brigandage. This was why, to Livy’s “great astonishment,” seemingly decisive victories apparently had no effect, and the Aequi and the Volsci returned fresh to the fray with every new campaigning season. However, in the long run the fighting was destructive and exhausting, for year after year harvests were trashed and buildings burned.

Under the kings, Rome had dominated Latium, but the arrival of the Republic coincided with a debilitating economic crisis. With their victory over Lars Porsenna, the Latins had removed Etruscan influence in the region and they were determined to cut the inexperienced regime at Rome down to size, too. However, the Republic’s new rulers gave notice that they intended to maintain Superbus’s expansionist foreign policy.

The first consuls negotiated a treaty with Carthage. It was a considerable achievement to obtain the recognition of such a great Mediterranean power. The text of the treaty sets out Carthage’s sphere of influence, including Sicily, while also revealing Rome’s (much more modest) pretensions in Latium:

The Carthaginians shall do no injury to the peoples of Ardea, Antium, the Laurentes and the peoples of Circeii, Tarracina or any other city of those Latins who are subject to the Romans. As for those Latin peoples who are not subject to the Romans, the Carthaginians shall not interfere with any of these cities, and if they take any one of them, they shall deliver it up undamaged. They shall build no fort in Latin territory. If they enter the region carrying arms, they shall not spend a night there.

The Romans were exaggerating the extent of their influence. Antium, Circeii, and Tarracina were outside the boundaries of Latium at this epoch and fell squarely inside Volscian territory. But the treaty illustrated Rome’s aggressive intentions, and by implication its desire to regain the ascendancy lost during the upheavals attendant on the fall of the monarchy. Adventures abroad would be a welcome diversion from poverty and indebtedness at home.