The Rise of Rome

Typically, two ancient memorials survived that were believed to mark the event. Livy, writing at the end of the first century, observed:

The timber is still to be seen—replaced from time to time at the state’s expense—and is known as the Sister’s Beam. The tomb of the murdered girl was built of hewn stone and stands on the spot where she was struck down.

For men like Cicero and Varro, Rome was a stage on which great and terrible deeds had been done. People of the present were energized and uplifted by the invisible actors of a glorious past. Horatius did a very Roman thing: he committed a crime that illustrated not vice but virtue—in this case, the noble rage of valor.

The war with Alba stimulated not only individual but also collective rage. After a resumption of hostilities, the war eventually ended in a Roman victory. The enemy population was brought to Rome and, as usual with defeated foes, given Roman citizenship. But its city was destroyed. Livy wrote: “Every building, public and private, was leveled with the ground. In a single hour the work of four hundred years lay in utter ruin.” It was as if Alba Longa had never existed. This would not be the last time that Rome annihilated an enemy city, giving full rein to the hatred caused by fear.

THERE WERE TWO ways of crossing the Tiber. One could walk or drive a vehicle across a ford that led to a river island, the Insula Tiberina, and then another ford by which one reached the far bank. This was not very convenient, though, and the alternative was a ferry much used by traders in salt on their way to and from the salt flats at the river mouth.

One of the achievements of Ancus Marcius, Tullus’s successor, was to replace the ferry with Rome’s first bridge, the Pons Sublicius. It was made of wood and, for some forgotten ritual scruple, the use of metal in its construction was strictly forbidden. Its repair was the responsibility of Rome’s leading college of priests, the pontifices (the name means “bridge builders”). It was frequently destroyed by floods, and its rebuilding was a religious duty. The bridge survived for about a thousand years and was probably not removed until the fifth century A.D.

Religion also entered into the process of declaring war. The Romans believed that they would arouse divine anger if they went to war on a false prospectus. The cause had to be just. Ancus Marcius was credited with devising a ritual formula that kept Rome on the right side of the law.

When some offense, some casus belli, had been committed, the head of a delegation, or the pater patratus (“father in charge”), accompanied by three other colleagues (drawn from a college of priests called fetiales) traveled to the border of the state from whom satisfaction was sought. He covered his head in a woolen bonnet and announced, “Hear me, Jupiter! Hear me, land of So-and-So! I am the accredited spokesman of the Roman People. I come as their envoy in the name of justice and religion, and ask credence for my words.” He then spelled out the particulars of the alleged offense and, calling Jupiter as witness, concluded, “If my demand for the restitution of these men, or those goods, be contrary to religion and justice, then never let me be a citizen of my country.”

The embassy then crossed the frontier and the pater patratus repeated the formula to the first (presumably somewhat startled) person he met, and again at the state’s city gates, and one final time in the marketplace. If his demands were not conceded within thirty days, he proceeded to a formal declaration of war, calling on not only the leader of the gods but on the god of gates and doorways, of beginnings and endings: “Hear, Jupiter; hear, Janus Quirinus; hear, all you gods in heaven, on the earth and under the earth: I call you to witness that the people of So-and-So are unjust and refuse reparation. But concerning these things we will consult the elders of our country, how we may obtain our due.”

If their complaint was not accepted, the envoys returned home and discussed the position with the Senate. Each member was asked his view and, typically, replied, “I hold that these things be sought by means of just and righteous war. Thus I give my vote and my consent.” If a majority agreed, then one of the fetiales returned to the enemy frontier and formally declared war. He flung a spear across the frontier as a sign that hostilities had begun.

In later years, with the enlargement of Rome’s territory this procedure became increasingly difficult to apply. A piece of land was therefore acquired in the city which was symbolically designated as hostile soil and into which the spear could be thrown. A specially appointed senator replaced the fetiales. But the principle of ensuring that a war was just remained obligatory, at least in theory.

Ancus Marcius was also responsible for enlarging the city by bringing two hills inside its boundary, the Aventine and the Caelian. He founded the port of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, a clear sign that Rome was developing trade.

The tiny settlement on the Palatine Hill was beginning to find its feet.

3 Expulsion

NORTH OF ROME LIVED A MYSTERIOUS AND HIGHLY cultivated race. These were the Etruscans and their homeland, Etruria, occupied, roughly speaking, modern Tuscany. They first appeared on the scene between 900 and 800 B.C. Their language used a form of Greek script, but it was not an Indo-European tongue, as in most Mediterranean and Middle Eastern societies, and has not yet been fully deciphered. To this day, its origin is unknown.

In fact, it is still not altogether clear whence the Etruscans themselves originated. Some said they came from Lydia, a kingdom on the Turkish coast (where later, in the sixth century, Croesus ruled, a byword for enormous wealth), and were led by the king’s son, Tyrrhenus. The Greek for Etruscan is Tyrrhenian. This account is perfectly plausible; for hundreds of years, the Italian peninsula was an archaic America, a new world open to successive waves of colonists. Enterprising Phoenician and Greek traders patrolled the seas looking for business. Aristocrats saw themselves as an international class and networked with one another across state borders. There is no particular reason that a force of Lydians (or, more generally, Asiatics) should not have invaded Italy—in much the same way that Duke William and his handful of Norman knights expropriated Anglo-Saxon England.

It is tempting to envisage a melting pot in which the native population was enriched by Greek and Phoenician aesthetic styles, new techniques in metalworking, and a sophisticated knowledge of town planning. However, modern scholars have been more skeptical, supposing the slow indigenous development of a community of villages into a loose federation of small city-states. Others have thrown up their hands and walked away from the debate, seeing the question as being on a par with the name of Hecuba’s mother—“neither capable of being known nor worth knowing.”

One way or another, by the eighth century the Etruscans had graduated from being simple farmers into an urban society of merchants and craftspeople. They were organized as a federation and each of their city-states was ruled by a king, or lauchme, who governed with much pomp, donning a purple robe and a gold crown. He was attended by servants, who carried fasces, bundles of rods tied around a one-headed ax. The Etruscans were militarily active and built up a sizable empire in central and northern Italy that reached Bononia (today’s Bologna) in the north and parts of Campania in the south. Rome seems to have retained its independence, however, although much influenced by Etruscan art and architecture, and, above all, by its religious practices.

According to Livy, Etruscans, “deeply learned as they were in sacred lore of all kinds, were more concerned than any other nation with religious matters.” Their doctrines were set out in a series of books much used by their disciples at Rome, called Etrusca disciplina (The Etruscan System); these covered such topics as the scrutiny of the entrails of animals, the interpretation of thunder and lightning, and “rules concerning the founding of cities, the consecration of altars and temples, the inviolability of ramparts, the laws relating to city gates, the division into tribes, curiae and centuriae, and all other things of this nature concerning war and peace.”