The Rise of Rome

not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men.” A well-informed Greek observer commented that the Romans arrived at their form of government “not by abstract reasoning, but rather through the lessons learned from many struggles and difficulties.” They were the complete pragmatists.

THE LATINS HAD jumped at the chance to free themselves from Roman dominance after the Celtic invasion. The Latin League was broken up. It took some time for its members to be brought to heel, but by 358 the Republic had reasserted its authority. The confederacy was reconvened, but with a difference. The post of commander-in- chief no longer alternated yearly between Rome and the Latins. Now it was controlled by two praetors who were accountable to the consuls in Rome.

The Latins deeply resented being treated as subjects rather than as partners, and in 341 their simmering feelings boiled over into open revolt. Four years of bitter campaigning followed. The consuls for 340 were remarkable men. The first of them, Titus Manlius, acquired the cognomen of Torquatus after having killed in battle an enormous Celt and stripped him of his torque. He sent some cavalry off to reconnoiter in all directions, but strictly enjoined them not to take part in any fighting. Among the squadron leaders was his son Titus. The young man managed to ride with his men beyond the enemy camp until he was hardly a spear’s throw from their nearest outpost. Here he was jeered at by some enemy horse from Tusculum and its commander challenged him to a duel. He shouted, “The outcome will show how much better a Latin cavalryman is than a Roman.”

Titus’s blood was up and, forgetting his father’s orders, he threw himself into a fight that had little tactical point. The rest of the cavalry were made to stand back as if to watch a riding display. The two men rode at each other, spears leveled. Manlius’s spear glanced off the helmet of his opponent, whose own missed the mark altogether. As they wheeled for a second encounter, Titus pricked with his spearpoint the forehead of the Tusculan’s horse, which reared up and threw its rider. As the man struggled to his feet, Titus ran through his throat, so that the spear came out between his ribs and pinned him to the ground. The brief fight was over.

Titus rode back to camp, surrounded by his cheering men. He proudly presented the dead man’s armor. The consul abruptly turned away from his son and gave orders for a trumpet to summon an assembly. “Titus Manlius, you have respected neither Consular authority nor your father’s dignity,” he said. “I believe that you yourself, if you have any drop of my blood in you, would agree that the military discipline you undermined by your error must be restored by your punishment. Go, lictor, bind him to the stake.”

The ax struck and blood gushed from the severed neck. The army was horror-struck, but it was noticed that from then on better attention was given everywhere to guard duties, night watches, and picket-stationing. The execution of Titus Manlius on his father’s orders was one of the most celebrated morality tales in Rome’s history, matching the examples set by Brutus and Verginius. It was a reminder that a father had the power of life and death over his children, and that virtus trumped parental love.

Soon afterward, another never-to-be-forgotten case of self-sacrifice took place. It so happened that both consuls, Manlius and his colleague Publius Decius Mus, dreamed that a man of superhuman size told them that, if either army’s general should “devote” to death the enemy’s army and himself, his side would win the coming battle. Shortly afterward, an engagement was fought near the foot of Mount Vesuvius. As usual, before the opening of a battle an animal was sacrificed in the name of each consul. An Etruscan diviner scrutinized their livers for any abnormality that might reveal the displeasure of the gods. He gave Manlius a clean bill of health; however, he pointed out that the head of Decius’s liver had been cut in the wrong place. Otherwise, the victim was acceptable to the gods.

Decius replied coolly, “If my colleague’s sacrifice went well, then that should be all right.” The army advanced, with Manlius on the right wing and Decius on the left. The lines clashed and the Romans were pushed back. In this moment of crisis, Decius called to a priest from the college of pontifices, who presided over the army’s religious rituals, “We need the gods’ help. Come on now, you are a state pontiff of the Roman People. Dictate to me the form of words by which I may ‘devote’ myself to the legions.”

The priest told him to put on his purple-edged toga, veil his head, and, with one hand protruding from the toga, touch his chin, stand on a spear laid under his feet, and repeat the following words:

Janus, Jupiter, father Mars, Quirinus [a name for the deified Romulus], Bellona [goddess of war], Lares [household gods], New Gods, Native Gods, divinities who have power over us and our enemies, and gods of the Underworld: I supplicate and revere you, I seek your favor and beseech you, that you prosper the might and victory of the Roman People, the Quirites, and afflict the enemies of the Roman People, the Quirites, with terror, dread and death. As I have pronounced the words, even so on behalf of the Republic of the Roman nation of Quirites, and of the army, legions and auxiliaries of the Roman nation of the Quirites, do I devote myself and with me the legions and auxiliaries of our enemies to the gods of the Underworld and to Earth.

Decius then sent a message to his colleague telling him what he had done. He reorganized his toga so that his arms were free, leaped on a horse, and rode directly into the enemy’s ranks. He fell under a hail of missiles.

In due course, the battle was won and the Latins fled. The spell had worked. Decius was found under a pile of corpses and given a hero’s funeral (if he had survived, the rules of devotio dictated that an effigy of him would have been buried instead, for the gods of the Underworld could not be cheated of their dead man). Did these episodes take place? We cannot be absolutely sure, but they probably have a basis in fact. The ancient accounts of events in the fourth century that have come down to us are on the cusp of genuine historical memory.

HARD FIGHTING CONTINUED, but by 338 the war was over and the Latins had definitively and permanently been defeated. The League was dissolved forever. The settlement that followed was of historic importance, for the Romans established a system of governance that gave them security but was also acceptable to the Latins. Rather than echo the Celtic leader Brennus’s vindictive cry of triumph, vae victis, they devised ways and means of binding conquered peoples to them. They invited their victims to join them in their enterprise of territorial expansion. The prudence of this policy is borne out by the fact that never again would the Latins rebel.

Just as in the distant mythical past Romulus granted citizenship to the Sabines, so now the Republic offered the Latins civic rights. In this way, it enlarged the pool of potential military recruits to the legions. A human reservoir was created that gave Rome a unique staying power in times of war. Defeat could follow defeat, if the Fates willed it, and still there would be new conscripts to replace lost armies.

In place of a federation in which each member was connected to one another, Rome set up bilateral relations with individual communities, which were forbidden to undertake treaties among themselves. They were also compelled to surrender substantial tracts of land. The Latins and some others were divided into three different constitutional and legal classes. First of all, some defeated statelets were incorporated as municipia, or free towns, in the Republic and their inhabitants given full Roman citizenship. One example was Antium (today’s Anzio), the onetime Volscian capital, but not before it was obliged to surrender its fleet after a sea battle. Some ships’ prows or “beaks” (rostra, in Latin) were displayed in the Roman Forum on the main speakers’ platform, thereafter known as the Rostra.

The second category consisted of communities that kept their independence—at least in theory, for they forfeited the power to conduct their own foreign policy. These “allies” had rights of connubium and commercium—that is, their citizens were allowed to marry Romans and enter into contracts with them, according to Roman law. When asked, they had to supply troops.

Finally, for those more distant communities in the new Roman “commonwealth” that lay beyond the borders of Latium, such as the Campanian cities of Capua and Cumae, partial enfranchisement was granted: civitas sine suffragio, or citizenship without the vote. This included the rights of connubium and commercium, and liability to the obligations of full Roman citizenship, especially military service. They were entitled to move to Rome, if they so wished, and in that case could acquire full Roman citizenship. The duty to fight alongside the legions sounds more punitive than it actually was, for, as when Rome won its wars, these compulsory comrades would have their share of the spoils of victory.