cosmopolitan openness to the world and fidelity to the
AS ROMANS OF the first century—Cicero and his friends, for instance—looked at themselves in the mirror of a distant, royal past, what did they see? First and foremost, they were a chosen people. It was their destiny to found the world’s greatest empire. By their feats of arms, they would outdo the Mediterranean’s dominant power, the Greeks, whose arts and culture and military successes were unparalleled. As Trojans, they were not barbarians beyond the pale of civilization but guest Hellenes. And, as Trojans, they would at last make good the fall of Troy.
Rome was not built in a day. In many foundation myths, cities suddenly appear from nowhere, fully grown and ready to go. Not so with Rome: Romulus, the official founder, was merely a milestone in an immensely long process that began in the embers of Troy and ended in Lucretia’s bedroom. The story really gets going properly only with the expulsion of the Tarquins and the arrival of the Republic.
The Romans were deeply religious, but their religion, much influenced by the Etruscans, was little more than a complex web of superstitions. The gods were incalculable powers who had to be placated at every turn. Every aspect of life was governed by ritual procedures, whether it be the repair and maintenance of a bridge or the business of making a treaty.
This was a highly aggressive society, but one that understood a vital political truth: military victory can be secured only by reconciliation with the defeated. Although most empire-builders in the ancient world were cruel and unforgiving, this was not altogether an original insight. Thus, after his conquest of the Persian Empire in the fourth century, and much to the fury of his trusty Macedonians, Alexander the Great promoted leading Orientals to positions of power in his new administration and insisted on harmony between victor and vanquished. In a move that recalls the rape of the Sabine women, he even forced his soldiers to marry local women. What was remarkable about the Romans was the consistency, over many centuries, with which they pursued their policy. They could see that it enabled them not only to foster consent to their rule among their former enemies but also to constantly enlarge their population and, by the same token, the manpower available to their armies.
There was a difficulty, though. A war had to be just, a response to someone else’s aggression. That was what religion and the law said. Romans believed, self-righteously, in the sacredness of treaties. But it was obvious even to them that they did not always live up to expectations; the rape of the Sabine women was a clear example of bad behavior (albeit redeemed by the women themselves).
By the same token, Rome’s mixed constitution, a product of the collective wisdom of generations, was an achievement to be very proud of. It was a bitter paradox, then, that right from the outset great men undermined it. Romulus was the city’s founder, but he also set a precedent for tyrannical behavior. The Romans were very skilled at doing exactly what they wanted, while at the same time, and with the straightest possible face, convincing themselves of the propriety of their deeds.
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic quality of Roman life was the way that it brought together three very different functions that are, in most societies, kept apart. Political, legal, and religious activity was completely fused: there was no separate priestly class, for the priest and the politician were one and the same person. So were the politician and the general, and the politician and the advocate. Above all, political activity was inflected by, and embodied in, hallowed ceremony. The Romans took very great care to ensure divine endorsement.
II. STORY
5
The Land and Its People
A SIDE FROM TARQUIN’S HAT, WHAT ELSE DID THE eagle see, on its unceasing search for prey, as it swooped and climbed, floated and dived in the humid air above Latium?
It was a countryside that for many ages had been unfit for human habitation. Until as late as 1000, volcanoes had spewed copious ash and lava over a coastal plain that was also prone to a contrasting peril, frequent floods. More than fifty craters can be found within twenty-five miles of Rome. When at last the eruptions fell silent (a shower of stones in the Alban Hills was recorded as late as the reign of Tullus Hostilius), a layer of ash rich in potash and phosphates covered the land. Forests spread quickly over the hills, and a rich surface soil was formed that contained nitrogenous matter. Farming, a new technology, was now possible, and here former nomads could settle, till the loamy earth, and flourish.
Today, cereal crops are harvested in June and during the summer months the sun is pitiless, the air parched, and the deforested hills and fields arid. The landscape is a nude, bony skeleton. Our eagle flew over a very different countryside—lush, fertile, and overgrown. Harvesttime was a month later, in July. Latium was well watered. Laurel, myrtle, beech, and oak grew on the plain, and evergreen pine and fir on the mountain slopes. Everywhere, dotted among the forests, were ponds, lakes, lagoons, and streams. The valley between hills that became the Roman Forum was typical of Latium, with its marshy soil and its transformation into a temporary creek when the Tiber regularly broke its bounds.
During its flight across Latium, the eagle could see fifty or more villages, probably protected by palisades, some of which were approaching the scale of small towns. They stood on cleared land where wheat, millet, and barley were planted. Domesticated animals were widespread—oxen, goats, sheep, and pigs. The fig was cultivated, as was the olive; the vine was new, having been introduced by the Etruscans. Demand for timber hastened the gradual process of deforestation. The geographer Strabo, writing in the first century A.D., observed: “All Latium is blessed with fertility and produces everything.” Malarial marshes in southern Latium were the single black spot.
However, farmers were only too well aware that rainwater dripping down the hillsides would gradually sweep away the fertile volcanic soil, on which their livelihoods depended. They constructed tunnels and dams, partly to irrigate the fields but, of equal importance, to stabilize the thin layer of earth. The Tiber poured so much mud into the sea that the new port at Ostia, founded not long ago by the first Tarquin’s predecessor on the throne at Rome, would soon begin silting up.
If our eagle spread its wings and ventured farther afield, it could patrol the narrow Italian peninsula, seven hundred miles long. The icebound Alps blocked it off from the European landmass; at their feet stretched a wide, flat plain through which the vast river Padus (today’s Po) wended its leisurely way. Cut off from the rest of Italy by the mountain range of the Apennines, running almost due east and west, the Romans saw this plain as part of Celtic Gaul and nothing to do with Italy proper.
Then the mountains turned southward and became a long limestone spine, crossed and broken up by narrow gorges. Terraces, high valleys, and grassy uplands made these highlands eminently habitable, and easily defended, by hardy, pastoral hill folk, who specialized in breeding livestock and selling such by-products as wool, leather, and cheeses.
On the eastern seaboard, there was sometimes hardly space for a road to run between steep heights and the sea. There was little good land and few harbors. Finally, as our eagle approached Italy’s boot and high heel, the chain widened out into the dry, windy prairies of Apulia.
The western coastline was a friendlier place. The beautiful hill country of Etruria, intersected and circumscribed by mountain ranges, contained few but extremely productive plains. Along with Varro, another first- century B.C. polymath, Posidonius, the Greek philosopher, politician, geographer, and historian, noted that the Etruscans’ very high standard of living was due in large part to the fecundity of their land, which nourished all manner of fruits and vegetables: “In general, Etruria, being altogether abundant, consists of extended open fields
