Christopher Hibbert - Rome. The Biography of the City

Declaring that an idle people was a burden on the state, he inaugurated a massive programme of public works, lavishing the spoils of a successful campaign against the Volscians upon the enlargement and adornment of the magnificent Temple of Jupiter which his father had begun, and setting to work upon it not only builders and craftsmen from all over Etruria but also hundreds of labourers from the proletariat of Rome. Work also began on improvements to the Circus where new tiers of seats were constructed, and upon the excavation of the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of the city. 7

About this time, so Livy wrote, an alarming and ominous event occurred. A huge snake slid out of a narrow crack in a wooden pillar in the royal palace in the Forum. To interpret such omens it was customary to seek the advice of Etruscan soothsayers; but Tarquin felt that, since the portent had been observed in his own royal palace, he was justified in seeking enlightenment from Greece where, at Delphi, the most famous oracle in the world could be consulted. Unwilling to trust so important a mission to anyone else, he dispatched two of his three sons, Titus and Arruns, together with his nephew, Brutus.

At Delphi, having asked the oracle about the snake, the young princes could not resist making another inquiry: ‘Who is to be the next king of Rome?’ From the depths of the cavern came the answer: ‘He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome supreme authority.’ Agreeing to keep this secret from their youngest brother, Sextus Tarquinius, who had been left behind in Rome, Titus and Arruns then drew lots to decide which of them, on return, should kiss their mother first. But, as they did so, their cousin, Brutus, far more astute and ambitious than he liked to appear, pretended to stumble and, falling to the ground, his lips touched the earth, mother of all living things.

Back in Italy the two princes and their brother were drinking together with friends when the conversation turned to the relative merits and faithfulness of their wives. One of the party, Collatinus, strongly maintained that his wife, Lucretia, was without doubt incomparably superior to all other women in Rome, and he undertook to prove it. If they called upon her unexpectedly now, he said, they would be sure to find her, unlike his companions' wives, engaged in some innocent and useful pursuit. And so it proved to be. While the other wives were enjoying themselves in the greatest luxury at a dinner party, Lucretia, surrounded by her maidservants, was hard at work spinning by lamplight. She rose to greet her husband and his friends, the princes; Collatinus, delighted with his success, invited them all to have supper with him.

During the meal the youngest of the princes, Sextus Tarquinius, was much taken with the beauty and proven chastity of his charming hostess; and, as lust rose within him, he determined to debauch her. Some days later he returned to the house when Lucretia was alone and, finding his way to her bedroom, he awakened her by placing his hand on her breast and whispering in her ear, ‘Lucretia, not a sound! It is Sextus Tarquinius. I am armed. If you utter a sound, I will kill you.’ But Lucretia refused to submit to his threats and blandishments until he said that he would dishonour her for ever in the eyes of the world by killing her first, then cutting the throat of a slave whose naked body he would place by her side. ‘Will they not believe,’ he asked her, ‘that you have been caught in adultery and paid the price?’ So Lucretia yielded; Sextus enjoyed her, and rode away, proud of his success.

The next day she told her father and husband, in the company of her husband's friend, Brutus, what had happened. Then she drew a knife from her robe and stabbed herself through the heart. Drawing the knife from her body, Brutus held it before him as he declared, ‘By this girl's blood and by the gods I swear that with sword and fire, and whatever else can lend strength to my arm, I will pursue Tarquin the Proud, his wicked wife and all his children, and never again will I let them or any other man be king in Rome!’

At Brutus's passionate bidding the populace of Rome rose up in arms against the tyrant. Tarquin and his two elder sons fled into exile in Etruria; his youngest son, Sextus, was killed. The Kingdom of Rome was at an end. And, in about 507 B.C., with Brutus and Collatinus appointed the first two Consuls in Rome, the days of the Republic began.

Such, then, were the legends of the early history of Rome, legends that clearly indicate the kinds of people and behaviour which later Romans found admirable; and if they were great enough to invent such legends, we at least, as Goethe said, should be great enough to believe them. In fact, behind the fanciful embellishment of the myths, many of them Greek in origin, there lies a basis of truth. There were, indeed, Iron Age settlements on several of the hills above the Tiber where Rome was to be built; and a hut of one of them, known as the House of Romulus, was still preserved as a showplace on the slopes of the Palatine in the days of the Empire. There are, in fact, grounds for believing that the people who lived in these settlements merged with the Sabines and that they were governed by a king and had the kind of class structure and military organization which Servius Tullius is said, on fairly strong evidence, to have imposed upon them. There is also evidence of Etruscan influence in Roman pottery and in the system of land drainage in the Roman Forum from about the time which the legends ascribe to the arrival in Rome of the exile from Etruria who was to become King Tarquinius Priscus.

These Etruscans were a mysterious people who seem to have arrived in Italy either by sea from the Balkans or overland from the north and to have established themselves in the Po Valley and along the western coast in what was to become Tuscany. They were experts in metal-work and in pottery as well as energetic merchants who carried on a thriving trade with the Greek cities of southern Italy. It was natural, therefore, that the Etruscans should be drawn towards Rome whose hills dominated the nearest place to the sea at which the river Tiber could be crossed, and towards the salt beds at the mouth of the Tiber whence the Via Salaria, the Salt Road, led towards Perugia and the other Etruscan towns in the north.

Once the Etruscans were established in Rome, their influence became pervasive and lasting. The kings adopted Etruscan clothes and regalia as well as the ceremonial chair, the sella curulis , later to become the symbol of authority of the Roman magistrate; the priests adopted Etruscan religious practices, their methods of divination and augury; the farmers learned Etruscan methods of tilling and draining land. Etruscan sacrifices of men and animals to propitiate the unquiet spirits of the dead were for long to be enacted in the Roman amphitheatre, while the Etruscan lictors’ axe and rods were to be revived as part of the trappings of Fascism.

The expulsion of the Etruscan kings and the warfare that soon broke out with rival states led to hard times for the Roman people. Trade was disrupted, agriculture depressed, plagues were persistent. In efforts to placate the gods, new temples were built in the city, temples to Apollo, a god of healing, to Ceres, goddess of corn, to Mercury, a god of trade, to Saturn, a god by whose favours crops were spared from blight. But the days continued dark and pestilential; and the poor grew ever more aware that under the Republic they had as little say in government and as few rights as they had had under the monarchy.

It seems that in 494 B.C. the discontent of the plebeians culminated in revolt against the patrician rule of magistrates and Senate. In the course of this revolt, when Rome was menaced by enemy armies, the plebeians marched out of the city on to the Aventine, threatening to found a separate community. Two Tribunes were consequently elected as representatives of the people, and later a Commission of Ten was established to compile a code of laws. The resultant Twelve Tables, the first landmark in the history of Roman law, were inscribed on bronze plaques and exhibited in the Forum; and for generations to come schoolboys were required to memorize and recite their provisions and to regard them as a cornerstone of the Republic whose greatness was symbolized in the device carried by the Republic's legions, S.P.Q.R. – Senatus Populusque Romanus , the Senate and People of Rome. The Tables, while instituting some reforms, were a codification into law of the customs prevailing in what was still essentially a pastoral and highly conservative community. Many of their provisions were harsh but they did combine to go some way towards acquiring equality before the law for all the people of Rome. Punishments were savage: ‘Any person who destroys by burning any building or heap of corn deposited beside a house shall be bound, scourged and put to death by burning at the stake… If any person has sung or composed against another person a song which is slanderous or insulting he shall be clubbed to death… If theft has been done by night, if the owner kill the thief, the thief shall be held lawfully killed… Slaves caught in the act should be flogged and thrown from the [Tarpeian] Rock 8… He who shall have roused up a public enemy, or handed over a citizen to a public enemy, must be executed.’ Yet ‘putting to death of any man who has not been convicted, whosoever he might be’ was forbidden; and there were many other clauses designed to protect the weak against the powerful.