Chapter XLV: Section 7 (2)

Romanus III., Emperor in the East
(Byzantine, or Greek), 1028-1034.

Romanus IV., Emperor in the East
(Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 1067-1071.

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A Logical Outline of Roman History

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

Physical or material. (orange) Social and political. (green) Intellectual, moral and religious. (brown)

Geographical position. (Orange)

Three Latin and Sabine tribes of an early day established
their settlements on neighboring hills, by the banks of the
Tiber, in the midland of Italy, which is the midland of the
Mediterranean or midland sea. They were throned, as it were,
at the center of the only wide dominion in which a virile and
energetic civilization could rise in ancient times.

Patricians and Plebeians. (Green)

The union of these three tribes formed the patrician nucleus
of Rome. Around them gathered another population of kindred
blood, which acquired a certain footing of association with
them, but not immediately on equal terms. The precedence and
superiority of the primal families, in rank and in rights, was
jealously maintained, and the later-coming plebs were received
into a pseudo-citizenship which carried more burdens than
privileges with it.

By what impulse of character, or through what favor of
circumstance, at the beginning, this infant city-state grew
masterful in war, over all its neighbors, none can tell. But
as it did so, the sturdy plebeian populace which fought its
battles resented more and more the greedy monopoly of offices
and of conquered lands to which the patricians clung, and a
struggle between classes occurred which shaped the domestic
politics of Rome for more than two centuries.

B. C. 509, Founding of the Republic. B. C. 492, Tribunes o£ the Plebs.

Before that contest came to the surface of history, the
oligarchy of the city had cast out the kings which were its
early chiefs, and had put two yearly-chosen consuls in their
place, thus founding the great Roman Republic, with a purely
aristocratic constitution. Then the battle of the plebs for
equality of rights and powers was promptly opened, and the
long, significant process of the democratizing of the state
began. By their first victory the commons seemed, for their
own leadership and defense, a remarkable magistracy, protected
by sanctities and armed with powers which never have been used
in government elsewhere, before or since. With that great
tribunician authority, invincible when capably and boldly
wielded, they won their way, step by step, to equality in the
high offices and sacred colleges of the state; to legislative
equality in their assembly; to legality of intermarriage with
the patrician class; and to participation in the public lands.

B. C. 480-275. Conquest of Italy. B. C. 264-202. Punic wars B. C. 214-146. Expanding Dominion.

But while plebs and patricians thus strove with each other at
home, they were united against their neighbors in many wars,
which seldom turned to their disadvantage. Æquians, Volscians,
Etruscans, Latin allies, Samnites, Gauls, Greeks of south
Italy, yielded in turn to their arms, until the whole Italian
peninsula had been brought under Roman rule. Then followed
intrusion in Sicily, collision with Carthage in that island,
and the half century of Punic wars, which tried the Republic
to the extremity of its powers, but which left it with no
rival in the Mediterranean world, From that time the career of
Roman conquest was rapidly pursued in widening fields. Sicily,
Spain, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Southern Gaul, Northern
Africa, submitted as provinces to the proconsuls of Rome.

Corruption. (brown)

But the health of the commonwealth waned as its greatness
waxed. It was corrupted by the spoils of conquest and the
streams of tribute money that flowed from three continents
into its hands. It was leprous in its whole system with the
infection of slavery.

Social and Political Degeneration. (green)

A middle class had practically disappeared. Freemen had been
driven from industrial callings by servile competition; the
small farms of rural Rome had been swallowed up in great slave
worked estates; public lands had been drawn by one trick of
law or another, into private hands. The greater mass of the
common people had degenerated to a worthless mob. The
democratic power which their ancestors won still belonged to
them, but they had lost the sense and the spirit to exercise
it, except fitfully and threateningly, for purposes that were
generally base. A new nobility had risen out of the plebeian
ranks; the senate, reinforced by it, and helped by the
exigencies of the long period of war, had recovered control of
government, keeping ascendancy over the mob by political arts
and bribes.

B. C. 133-121. The Gracchi. B. C. 90-88. The Social War, B. C. 88-45. Civil Wars.

Thus came the fatal time when demagogues played with the
passions of that fickle mob which bore the awful sovereignty
of Rome in its keeping; and when patriots were forced to be as
demagogues, if they sought to lift Roman citizenship from its
muddy degradation. In the undertakings of the Gracchi, perhaps
something of both demagogue and patriot was combined; but what
they did only shook the decaying political fabric and
unsettled it more. The extension of Roman citizenship to the
Italian allies, which Caius Gracchus contended for, and which
might have grounded the Republic on broad bases of
nationality, was yielded in the next generation, but too late,
and after a ruinous war. From the embers of that fiery Social
War broke the flames of civil strife in which the old
constitution was finally consumed. Marius, Sulla, Pompeius,
Cæsar, were distinguished among its destroyers; Cicero and
Cato earned their immortality in its defense.

B. C. 45-A. D. 486, The Empire.

By the genius of Cæsar a new sovereignty—an imperial
autocracy—was founded, on the ruins of the shattered Republic.
By the shrewdness of his wise nephew, Octavius, its enduring
organization was shaped. The mighty fabric of the Roman Empire
which then arose, to dominate the world for centuries, and to
dominate the history of the world perhaps forever, owed its
greatness altogether to the effective organization of
government which it embodied. It inherited all the corruptions
and diseases in society which had sickened and destroyed the
Republic; but it extinguished factions at the seat of power,
established authority there, and perfected a radiating
mechanism of provincial administration such as had not been
known in human experience before. Hence, emperors might be
madmen or fiends or fools, as many among them were, and Rome
might be a sink of all vices and miseries, as it commonly was,
and the whole Empire might be grievously oppressed, as it
seldom failed to be; but the working of the administrative
system went on, with little disturbance or change,—so mighty
and irresistible in its machinery that it seemed to mankind
like a part of the natural world, and they lost the ability to
think of any different political state.

Christianity. (brown)

Christianity, springing up in Judæa within the first century
of the Empire, spread through and around it like an
interlacing vine,—sweet and wholesome in its early fruits,
strong as a bond, powerful as a regenerating influence. But
when the ecclesiasticism of a politically fashioned Church had
been grafted on the Christian vine, it bore then the evil
seeds of new corruption, new discord, new maladies for the
Roman world.

A. D. 476. Fall of the Empire in the West. (green)

So there came, at last, a time when the long-enduring frame of
Roman government could no longer bear the increasing
dead-weight of social paralysis within and the increasing
pressure of barbaric enemies from without. Of real vitality in
the Empire there had been little for half-a-century before its
fall in the West.

A. D. 476-1453. Survival of the Eastern Empire.

It survived in the East, because its Greek capital was more
impregnable, and more commandingly placed for the continued
centralization of a waning power; and because habit and
routine have more potency in the Eastern than in the Western
world.

A. D. 800. Revival of the Western Empire.

Even Western Europe obeyed again, after more than four
centuries, the obstinate habit of homage to Rome, when it
restored the Empire of the Cæsars, though less in fact than in
name.

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----------ROME: Start--------

ROME:
The beginning of the City-State and the origin of its name.
The three tribes of original Romans who formed
the Patrician order.-
The Plebs and their inferior citizenship.

"About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber,
hills of moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream,
higher on the right, lower on the left bank. With the latter
group there has been closely associated for at least two
thousand five hundred years the name of the Romans. We are
unable, of course, to tell how or when that name arose; this
much only is certain, that in the oldest form of it known to
us the inhabitants of the canton are called not Romans, but
(by a shifting of sound that frequently occurs in the earlier
period of a language, but fell very early in abeyance in
Latin) Ramnians (Ramnes), a fact which constitutes an
expressive testimony to the immemorial antiquity of the name.
Its derivation cannot be given with certainty; possibly Ramnes
may mean 'foresters,' or 'bushmen.' But they were not the only
dwellers on the hills by the bank of the Tiber. In the
earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a trace has been
preserved of the fact that that body arose out of the
amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the
Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth—in
other words, out of such a 'synoikismos' as that from which
Athens arose in Attica. The great antiquity of this threefold
division of the community is perhaps best evinced by the fact
that the Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law,
regularly used the forms tribuere ('to divide into three') and
tribus ('a third') in the general sense of 'to divide' and 'a
part,' and the latter expression (tribus) like our 'quarter,'
early lost its original signification of number. … That the
Ramnians were a Latin stock cannot be doubted, for they gave
their name to the new Roman commonwealth, and therefore must
have substantially determined the nationality of the united
community. Respecting the origin of the Luceres nothing can be
affirmed, except that there is no difficulty in the way of our
assigning them, like the Ramnians, to the Latin stock. The
second of these communities, on the other hand, is with one
consent derived from Sabina. … And, as in the older and more
credible traditions, without exception, the Tities take
precedence of the Ramnians, it is probable that the intruding
Tities compelled the older Ramnians to accept the
'synoikismos.' … Long, in all probability, before an urban
settlement arose on the Tiber, these Ramnians, Tities, and
Luceres, at first separate, afterwards united, had their
stronghold on the Roman hills, and tilled their fields from
the surrounding villages. The 'wolf festival' (Lupercalia),
which the gens of the Quinctii celebrated on the Palatine
hill, was probably a tradition from these primitive ages—a
festival of husbandmen and shepherds, which more than any
other preserved the homely pastimes of patriarchal simplicity,
and, singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the
other heathen festivals in Christian Rome. From these
settlements the later Rome arose."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 4._

"Rome did not seem to be a single city; it appeared like a
confederation of several cities, each one of which was
attached by its origin to another confederation. It was the
centre where the Latins, Etruscans, Sabellians, and Greeks
met. Its first king was a Latin; the second, a Sabine; the
fifth was, we are told, the son of a Greek; the sixth was an
Etruscan. Its language was composed of the most diverse
elements. The Latin predominated, but Sabellian roots were
numerous, and more Greek radicals were found in it than in any
other of the dialects of Central Italy. As to its name, no one
knew to what language that belonged. According to some, Rome
was a Trojan word; according to others, a Greek word. There
are reasons for believing it to be Latin, but some of the
ancients thought it to be Etruscan. The names of Roman
families also attest a great diversity of origin. … The effect
of this mixing of the most diverse nations was, that from the
beginning Rome was related to all the peoples that it knew. It
could call itself Latin with the Latins, Sabine with the
Sabines, Etruscan with the Etruscans, and Greek with the
Greeks. Its national worship was also an assemblage of several
quite different worships, each one of which attached it to one
of these nations."

_Fustel de Coulanges,
The Ancient City,
book 5, chapter 2._

"The whole history of the world has been determined by the
geological fact that at a point a little below the junction of
the Tiber and the Anio the isolated hills stand nearer to one
another than most of the other hills of Latium. On a site
marked out above all other sites for dominion, the centre of
Italy, the centre of Europe, as Europe then was, a site at the
junction of three of the great nations of Italy, and which had
the great river as its highway to lands beyond the bounds of
Italy, stood two low hills, the hill which bore the name of
Latin Saturn, and the hill at the meaning of whose name of
Palatine scholars will perhaps guess for ever. These two
hills, occupied by men of two of the nations of Italy, stood
so near to one another that a strait choice indeed was laid on
those who dwelled on them. They must either join together on
terms closer than those which commonly united Italian leagues,
or they must live a life of border warfare more ceaseless,
more bitter, than the ordinary warfare of Italian enemies.
Legend, with all likelihood, tells us that warfare was tried;
history, with all certainty, tells us that the final choice
was union. The two hills were fenced with a single wall; the
men who dwelled on them changed from wholly separate
communities into tribes of a single city. Changes of the same
kind took place on not a few spots of Greece and Italy; not a
few of the most famous cities of both lands grew on this wise
out of the union of earlier detached settlements. But no other
union of the kind, not even that which called Sparta into
being out of five villages of an older day, could compare in
its effects on all later time with the union of those two
small hill-fortresses into a single city. For that city was
Rome; the hill of Saturn became the site of Rome's capitol.
the scene of her triumphs, the home of her patron gods. The
hill on the other side of the swampy dale became the
dwelling-place of Rome's Cæsars, and handed on its name of
Palatium as the name for the homes of all the kings of the
earth.
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Around those hills as a centre, Latium, Italy, Mediterranean
Europe, were gathered in, till the world was Roman, or rather
till the world was Rome. … Three tribes, settlers on three
hills, were the elements of which the original commonwealth
was made. Whether there was anything like a nobility within
the tribes themselves, whether certain houses had any
precedence, any preferences in the disposal of offices, we
have no means of judging. That certain houses are far more
prominent in legend and history than others may suggest such a
thought, but does not prove it. But one thing is certain;
these three tribes, these older settlers, were the original
Roman people, which for a while numbered no members but
themselves. They were the patres, the fathers, a name which in
its origin meant no more than such plain names as goodman,
housefather, and the like. In the Roman polity the father only
could be looked on as a citizen in the highest sense; his
children, his grand-children, were in his power, from which,
just like slaves, they could be released only by his own
special act. Such was the origin of the name fathers, patres,
patricians, a name round which such proud associations
gathered, as the three tribes who had once been the whole
Roman people shrank up into a special noble class in the midst
of a new Roman people which grew up around them, but which
they did not admit to the same rights as themselves. The
incorporation of a third tribe marks the end of the first
period of Roman history. These were the Luceres of the Cœlian,
admitted perhaps at first with rights not quite on a level
with those of the two earlier tribes, the Ramnes of the
Palatine, the oldest Romans of all, and the Tities of the
Capitoline or hill of Saturn. The oldest Roman people was now
formed. No fourth tribe was ever admitted; the later tribes of
Rome, it must be remembered, are a separate division which
have nothing to do with these old patrician tribes. And it
must have been a most rare favour for either individuals or
whole houses to be received into any of the three original
tribes. … Now, if the privileged body of citizens is small,
and if circumstances tend to make the settlement of
non-privileged residents large, here is one of the means by
which a privileged order in the narrower sense, a nobility in
the midst of a nation or people may arise. An order which
takes in few or no new members tends to extinction; if it does
not die out, it will at least sensibly lessen. But there is no
limit to the growth of the non-privileged class outside. Thus
the number of the old burghers will be daily getting smaller,
the number of the new residents will be daily getting larger,
till those who once formed the whole people put on step by
step the character of an exclusive nobility in the midst of
the extended nation which has grown up around them. By this
time they have acquired all the attributes of nobility,
smallness of numbers, antiquity, privilege. And their
possession of the common land—a possession shared constantly
by a smaller number—is likely to give them a fourth attribute
which, vulgarly at least, goes to swell the conception of
nobility, the attribute of wealth. … Thus around the original
people of Rome, the populus, the patres, the three ancient
tribes, the settlers on the three earliest hills of Rome,
arose a second people, the plebs. The whole history of Rome is
a history of incorporation. The first union between the
Capitoline and Palatine hills was the first stage of the
process which at last made Romans of all the nations round the
Mediterranean sea. But the equal incorporation of which that
union was the type had now ceased, not to begin again for
ages. Whatever amount of belief we give to the legends of
Roman wars and conquests under the kings, we can hardly doubt
that the territory of several neighbouring towns was
incorporated with the Roman state, and that their people,
whether they removed to Rome or went on occupying their own
lands elsewhere, became Romans, but not as yet full Romans.
They were Romans in so far as they ceased to be members of any
other state, in so far as they obeyed the laws of Rome, and
served in the Roman armies. But they were not Romans in the
sense of being admitted into the original Roman body; they had
no votes in the original Roman assembly; they had no share in
its public land; they were not admissible to the high offices
of the state. They had an organization of their own; they had
their own assemblies, their own magistrates, their own sacred
rights, different in many things from those of the older Roman
People. And we must remember that, throughout the Roman
history, when any town or district was admitted to any stage,
perfect or imperfect, of Roman citizenship, its people were
admitted without regard to any distinctions which had existed
among them in their elder homes. The patricians of a Latin
town admitted to the Roman franchise became plebeians at Rome.
Thus from the beginning, the Roman plebs contained families
which, if the word 'noble' has any real meaning, were fully as
noble as any house of the three elder tribes. Not a few too of
the plebeians were rich; rich and poor, they were the more
part land-owners; no mistake can be greater than that which
looks on the Roman plebs as the low multitude of a town. As we
first see them, the truest aspect of them is that of a second
nation within the Roman state, an inferior, a subject, nation,
shut out from all political power, subject in many things to
practical oppression, but which, by its very organization as a
subject nation, was the more stirred up to seek, and the
better enabled to obtain, full equality with the elder nation
to which it stood side by side as a subject neighbour."

_E. A. Freeman,
The Practical Bearings of European History
(Lectures to American Audiences),
page 278-278, and 285-292._

See, also, ITALY, ANCIENT; LATIUM; ALBA; and SABINES.

ROME:
Early character and civilization of the Romans.
Opposing theories.

"That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow
peninsula of Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian
dominion, and that the situation of Italy was favourable to
her dominion over the countries surrounding the Mediterranean,
has been often pointed out. But we have yet to ask what
launched Rome in her career of conquest, and, still more, what
rendered that career so different from those of ordinary
conquerors? … About the only answer that we get to these
questions is race. The Romans, we are told, were by nature a
peculiarly warlike race. 'They were the wolves of Italy,' says
Mr. Merivale, who may be taken to represent fairly the state
of opinion on this subject. …
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But the further we inquire, the more reason there appears to
be for believing that peculiarities of race are themselves
originally formed by the influence of external circumstances
on the primitive tribe; that, however marked and ingrained
they may be, they are not congenital and perhaps not
indelible. … Thus, by ascribing the achievements of the Romans
to the special qualities of their race, we should not be
solving the problem, but only stating it again in other terms.
… What if the very opposite theory to that of the she-wolf and
her foster-children should be true? What if the Romans should
have owed their peculiar and unparalleled success to their
having been at first not more warlike, but less warlike than
their neighbours? It may seem a paradox, but we suspect that
in their imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliest and
not least important steps in that gradual triumph of intellect
over force, even in war, which has been an essential part of
the progress of civilization. The happy day may come when
Science in the form of a benign old gentleman with a bald head
and spectacles on nose, holding some beneficent compound in
his hand, will confront a standing army, and the standing army
will cease to exist. That will be the final victory of
intellect. But in the meantime, our acknowledgements are due
to the primitive inventors of military organization and
military discipline. They shivered Goliath's spear. A mass of
comparatively unwarlike burghers, unorganized and
undisciplined, though they may be the hope of civilization
from their mental and industrial qualities, have as little of
collective as they have of individual strength in war; they
only get in each other's way, and fall singly victims to the
prowess of a gigantic barbarian. He who first thought of
combining their force by organization, so as to make their
numbers tell, and who taught them to obey officers, to form
regularly for action, and to execute united movements at the
word of command, was, perhaps, as great a benefactor of the
species as he who grew the first corn, or built the first
canoe. What is the special character of the Roman legends, so
far as they relate to war? Their special character is that
they are legends not of personal prowess but of discipline.
Rome has no Achilles. The great national heroes, Camillus,
Cincinnatus, Papirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, Manlius, are not
prodigies of personal strength and valour, but commanders and
disciplinarians. The most striking incidents are incidents of
discipline. The most striking incident of all is the execution
by a commander of his own son for having gained a victory
against orders. 'Disciplinam militarem,' Manlius is made to
say, 'qua stetit ad hanc diem Romana res.' Discipline was the
great secret of Roman ascendency in war. … But how came
military discipline to be so specially cultivated by the
Romans? … Dismissing the notion of occult qualities of race,
we look for a rational explanation in the circumstances of the
plain which was the cradle of the Roman Empire. It is evident
that in the period designated as that of the kings, when Rome
commenced her career of conquest, she was, for that time and
country, a great and wealthy city. This is proved by the works
of the kings, the Capitoline Temple, the excavation for the
Circus Maximus, the Servian Wall, and above all the Cloaca
Maxima. Historians have indeed undertaken to give us a very
disparaging picture of the ancient Rome. … But the Cloaca
Maxima is in itself conclusive evidence of a large population,
of wealth, and of a not inconsiderable degree of civilization.
Taking our stand upon this monument, and clearing our vision
entirely of Romulus and his asylum, we seem dimly to perceive
the existence of a deep prehistoric background, richer than is
commonly supposed in the germs of civilization,—a remark which
may in all likelihood be extended to the background of history
in general. Nothing surely can be more grotesque than the idea
of a set of wolves, like the Norse pirates before their
conversion to Christianity, constructing in their den the
Cloaca Maxima. That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy
is certain. We can hardly doubt that she was a seat of
industry and commerce, and that the theory which represents
her industry and commerce as having been developed
subsequently to her conquests is the reverse of the fact.
Whence, but from industry and commerce, could the population
and the wealth have come? Peasant farmers do not live in
cities, and plunderers do not accumulate. Rome had around her
what was then a rich and peopled plain; she stood at a
meeting-place of nationalities; she was on a navigable river,
yet out of the reach of pirates; the sea near her was full of
commerce, Etruscan, Greek, and Carthaginian. … Her patricians
were financiers and money-lenders. … Even more decisive is the
proof afforded by the early political history of Rome. … The
institutions which we find existing in historic times must
have been evolved by some such struggle between the orders of
patricians and plebeians as that which Livy presents to us.
And these politics, with their parties and sections of
parties, their shades of political character, the sustained
interest which they imply in political objects, their various
devices and compromises, are not the politics of a community
of peasant farmers, living apart each on his own farm and
thinking of his own crops: they are the politics of the
quick-witted and gregarious population of an industrial and
commercial city. … Of course when Rome had once been drawn
into the career of conquest, the ascendency of the military
spirit would be complete; war, and the organization of
territories acquired in war, would then become the great
occupation of her leading citizens; industry and commerce
would fall into disesteem, and be deemed unworthy of the
members of the imperial race. … Even when the Roman nobles had
become a caste of conquerors and pro-consuls, they retained
certain mercantile habits; unlike the French aristocracy, and
aristocracies generally, they were careful keepers of their
accounts, and they showed a mercantile talent for business, as
well as a more than mercantile hardness, in their financial
exploitation of the conquered world. Brutus and his
contemporaries were usurers like the patricians of the early
times. No one, we venture to think, who has been accustomed to
study national character, will believe that the Roman
character was formed by war alone: it was manifestly formed by
war combined with business."

_Goldwin Smith,
The Greatness of the Romans
(Contemporary Review, May, 1878)._

A distinctly contrary theory of the primary character and
early social state of the Romans is presented in the
following: "The Italians were much more backward than the
Greeks, for their land is turned to the west, to Spain, to
Gaul, to Africa, which could teach them nothing, while Greece
is turned to the east, to the coasts along which the
civilisations of the Nile and the Tigris spread through so
many channels.
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Besides, the country itself is far less stimulating to its
inhabitants: compared to Greece, Italy is a continental
country whose inhabitants communicate more easily by land than
by sea, except in the two extreme southern peninsulas, which
characteristically were occupied by Greek colonies whose
earlier development was more brilliant than that of the mother
country. … The equable fertility of the land was itself a
hindrance. As far back as we can form any conjecture, the bulk
of the people were shepherds or husbandmen; we cannot trace a
time like that reflected in the Homeric poems, when high-born
men of spirit went roving in their youth by land and sea, and
settled down in their prime with a large stock of cattle and a
fair stud of horses, to act as referees in peace and leaders
in war to the cottars around. … Other differences less
intelligible to us were not less weighty: the volcanic
character of the western plain of central Italy, the want of a
fall to the coast (which caused some of the watercourses to
form marshes, and made the Tiber a terror to the Romans for
its floods), told in ways as yet untraced ou the character of
the inhabitants. For one thing the ancient worship of Febris
and Mefitis indicates a constant liability to fever; then the
air of Greece is lighter than the air of Italy, and this may
be the reason that it was more inspiring. … Italian indigenous
literature was of the very scantiest; its oldest element was
to be found in hymns, barely metrical, and so full of
repetitions as to dispense with metre. The hymns were more
like spells than psalms, the singers had an object to gain
rather than feelings to express. The public hymns were prayers
for blessing: there were private chants to charm crops out of
a neighbour's field, and bring other mischief to pass against
him. Such 'evil songs' were a capital offence, though there
was little, perhaps, in their form to suggest a distinction
whether the victim was being bewitched or satirised. The
deliberate articulate expression of spite seemed a guilt and
power of itself. Besides these there were dirges at funerals,
ranging between commemoration of the deceased and his
ancestors, propitiation of the departed spirit, and simple
lamentation. There were songs at banquets in praise of ancient
worthies. … We find no trace of any poet who composed what
free-born youths recited at feasts; probably they extemporised
without training and attained no mastery. If a nation has
strong military instincts, we find legendary or historical
heroes in its very oldest traditions; if a nation has strong
poetical instincts, we find the names of historical or
legendary poets. In Italy we only meet with nameless fauns and
prophets, whose inspired verses were perhaps on the level of
Mother Shipton."

_G. A. Simcox,
A History of Latin Literature,
volume 1, introduction._

ROME:
Struggle with the Etruscans.

See ETRUSCANS.

ROME: B. C. 753.
Era of the foundation of the city.

"Great doubts have been entertained, as well by ancient
historians as by modern chronologists, respecting this era.
Polybius fixes it to the year B. C. 751; Cato, who has been
followed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Solinus, and Eusebius,
to B. C. 752; Fabius Pictor, to B. C. 747; Archbishop Usher,
to B. C, 748; and Newton, to B. C. 627: Terentius Varro,
however, refers it to B. C. 753; which computation was adopted
by the Roman emperors, and by Plutarch, Tacitus, Dion, Aulus
Gellius, Censorinus, Onuphrius, Baroius, bishop Beveridge,
Stranchius, Dr. Playfair, and by most modern chronologists:
Livy, Cicero, Pliny, and Velleius Paterculus occasionally
adopted both the Varronian and Catonian computations. Dr.
Hales has, however, determined, from history and astronomy,
that the Varronian computation is correct, viz. B. C. 753."

_Sir H. Nicolas,
Chronology of History,
page 2._

ROME: B. C. 753-510.
The legendary period of the kings.
Credibility of the Roman annals.
Probable Etruscan domination.

"It may … be stated, as the result of this inquiry, that the
narrative of Roman affairs, from the foundation of the city to
the expulsion of the Tarquins, is formed out of traditionary
materials. At what time the oral traditions were reduced into
writing, and how much of the existing narrative was the
arbitrary supplement of the historians who first framed the
account which has descended to us, it is now impossible to
ascertain, … The records of them, which were made before the
burning of Rome, 300 B. C., were doubtless rare and meagre in
the extreme; and such as there were at this time chiefly
perished in the conflagration and ruin of the city. It was
probably not till after this period—that is to say, about 120
years after the expulsion of the kings—and above 350 years
after the era assigned for the foundation of the city, that
these oral reports—these hearsay stories of many
generations—began to be entered in the registers of the
pontifices. … The history of the entire regal period, as
respects both its external attestation and its internal
probability, is tolerably uniform in its character. … Niebuhr,
indeed, has drawn a broad line between the reigns of Romulus
and Numa on the one hand, and those of the five last kings on
the other. The former he considers to be purely fabulous and
poetical; the latter he regards as belonging to the
mythico-historical period, when there is a narrative resting
on a historical basis, and most of the persons mentioned are
real. But it is impossible to discover any ground, either in
the contents of the narrative; or in its external evidence, to
support this distinction. Romulus, indeed, from the form of
his name, appears to be a mere personification of the city of
Rome, and to have no better claim to a real existence than
Hellen, Danaus, Ægyptus, Tyrrhenus, or Italus. But Numa
Pompilius stands on the same ground as the remaining kings,
except that he is more ancient; and the narrative of all the
reigns, from the first to the last, seems to be constructed on
the same principles. That the names of the kings after Romulus
are real, is highly probable; during the latter reigns, much
of the history seems to be in the form of legendary
explanations of proper names. … Even with respect to the
Tarquinian family, it may be doubted whether the similarity of
their name to that of the city of Tarquinii was not the origin
of the story of Demaratus and the Etruscan origin. The
circumstance that the two king Tarquins were both named
Lucius, and that it was necessary to distinguish them by the
epithets of Priscus and Superbus, raises a presumption that
the names were real.
{2661}
Müller indeed regards the names of the two Tarquins as merely
representing the influence exercised by the Etruscan city of
Tarquinii in Rome at the periods known as their reigns. … The
leading feature of the government during this period is that
its chief was a king, who obtained his office by the election
of the people, and the confirmation of the Senate, in the same
manner in which consuls and other high magistrates were
appointed after the abolition of royalty; but that, when once
fully elected, he retained his power for life. In the mode of
succession, the Roman differed from the early Greek kings,
whose office was hereditary. The Alban kings, likewise, to
whom the Roman kings traced their origin, are described as
succeeding by inheritance and not by election. … The
predominant belief of the Romans concerning their regal
government was, that the power of the kings was limited by
constitutional checks; that the chief institutions of the
Republic, namely, the Senate and the Popular Assembly, existed
in combination with the royalty, and were only suspended by
the lawless despotism of the second Tarquin. Occasionally,
however, we meet with the idea that the kings were absolute."

_Sir G. C. Lewis,
Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History,
chapter 11, sections 39-40 (volume 1)._

"Of the kings of Rome we have no direct contemporary evidence;
we know them only from tradition, and from the traces they
left behind them in the Republican constitution which
followed. But the 'method of survivals' has here been applied
by a master-hand [Mommsen]; and we can be fairly sure, not
only of the fact that monarchy actually existed at Rome, but
even of some at least of its leading characteristics. Here we
have kingship no longer denoting, as in Homer, a social
position of chieftaincy which bears with it certain
vaguely-conceived prerogatives, but a clearly defined
magistracy within the fully realised State. The rights and
duties of the Rex are indeed defined by no documents, and the
spirit of the age still seems to be obedience and trust; but
we also find the marks of a formal customary procedure, which
is already hardening into constitutional practice, and will in
time further harden into constitutional law. The monarchy has
ceased to be hereditary, if it ever was so; and the method of
appointment, though we are uncertain as to its exact nature,
is beyond doubt regulated with precision, and expressed in
technical terms."

_W. W. Fowler,
The City-State of the Greeks and Romans,
pages 74-75._

"The analogy of other states, no less than the subsequent
constitution of Rome, which always retained the marks of its
first monarchical complexion, leaves us in no doubt that kings
once reigned in Rome, and that by a determined uprising of the
people they were expelled, leaving in the Roman mind an
ineradicable hatred of the very name. We have to be content
with these hard facts, extracted from those thrilling stories
with which Livy adorns the reign and the expulsion of
Tarquinius Superbus."

_R. F. Horton,
History of the Romans,
chapter 2._

The names of the kings, with the dates assigned to them, are
as follows:
Romulus, B. C. 753-717;
Numa Pompilius, B. C. 715-673;
Tullus Hostilius, B. C. 673-642;
Ancus Martius, B. C. 641-617;
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, B. C. 616-579;
Servius Tullius, B. C. 578-535;
Tarquinius Superbus, B. C. 534-510.

According to the legend of early Rome, Romulus attracted
inhabitants to the city he had founded by establishing within
its walls a sanctuary or refuge, for escaped slaves, outlaws
and the like. But he could not in a fair way procure wives for
these rough settlers, because marriage with them was disdained
by the reputable people of neighboring cities. Therefore he
arranged for an imposing celebration of games at Rome, in
honor of the god Consus, and invited his neighbors, the
Sabines, to witness them. These came unsuspectingly with their
wives and daughters, and, when they were absorbed in the show,
the Romans, at a given signal, rushed on them and carried off
such women as they chose to make captive. A long and obstinate
war ensued, which was ended by the interposition of the women
concerned, who had become reconciled to their Roman husbands
and satisfied to remain with them.

_Livy,
History,
chapter 9._

"We cannot … agree with Niebuhr, who thinks he can discover
some historical facts through this legendary mist. As he
supposes, the inhabitants of the Palatine had not the right of
intermarriage ('connubium') with their Sabine neighbours on
the Capitoline and the Quirinal. This inferiority of the
Palatine Romans to the Sabines of the Capitoline and Quirinal
hills caused discontent and war. The right of intermarriage
was obtained by force of arms, and this historical fact lies
at the bottom of the tale of the rape of the Sabines. Such a
method of changing legends into history is of very doubtful
utility. It seems more natural to explain the legend from the
customs at the Roman marriage ceremonies"—in which the
pretence of forcible abduction was enacted.

_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 1, chapter 2._

"With the reign of the fifth king, Tarquinius Priscus, a
marked change takes place. The traditional accounts of the
last three kings not only wear a more historical air than
those of the first four, but they describe something like a
transformation of the Roman city and state. Under the rule of
these latter kings the separate settlements were for the first
time enclosed with a rampart of colossal size and extent. The
low grounds were drained, and a forum and circus elaborately
laid out; on the Capitoline Mount a temple was erected, the
massive foundations of which were an object of wonder even to
Pliny. … The kings increase in power and surround themselves
with new splendour. Abroad, Rome suddenly appears as a
powerful state ruling far and wide over southern Etruria and
Latium. These startling changes are, moreover, ascribed to
kings of alien descent, who one and all ascend the throne in
the teeth of established constitutional forms. Finally, with
the expulsion of the last of them—the younger Tarquin—comes a
sudden shrinkage of power. At the commencement of the republic
Rome is once more a comparatively small state, with hostile
and independent neighbours at her very doors. It is difficult
to avoid the conviction that the true explanation of this
phenomenon is to be found in the supposition that Rome during
this period passed under the rule of powerful Etruscan lords.
Who the people were whom the Romans knew as Etruscans and the
Greeks as Tyrrhenians is a question, which, after centuries of
discussion, still remains unanswered; nor in all probability
will the answer be found until the lost key to their language
has been discovered. That they were regarded by the Italic
tribes, by Umbrians, Sabellians, and Latins, as intruders is
certain. Entering Italy, as they probably did from the north
or northeast, they seem to have first of all made themselves
masters of the rich valley of the Po and of the Umbrians who
dwelt there.
{2662}
Then crossing the Apennines, they overran Etruria proper as
far south as the banks of the Tiber, here too reducing to
subjection the Umbrian owners of the soil. In Etruria they
made themselves dreaded, like the Northmen of a later time, by
sea as well as by land. … We find the Etruscan power
encircling Rome on all sides, and in Rome itself a tradition
of the rule of princes of Etruscan origin. The Tarquinii come
from South Etruria; their name can hardly be anything else
than the Latin equivalent of the Etruscan Tarchon, and is
therefore possibly a title (='lord' or 'prince') rather than a
proper name. … That Etruria had, under the sway of Etruscan
lords, forged ahead of the country south of the Tiber in
wealth and civilisation is a fact which the evidence of
remains has placed beyond doubt. It is therefore significant
that the rule of the Tarquins in Rome is marked by an outward
splendour which stands in strong contrast to the primitive
simplicity of the native kings. … These Etruscan princes are
represented, not only as having raised Rome for the time to a
commanding position in Latium, and lavished upon the city
itself the resources of Etruscan civilisation, but also the
authors of important internal changes. They are represented as
favouring new men at the expense of the old patrician
families, and as reorganising the Roman army on a new footing,
a policy natural enough in military princes of alien birth."

_H. F. Pelham,
Outlines of Roman History,
book 1, chapter 3._

ALSO IN:
_F. W. Newman,
Regal Rome._

_T. H. Dyer,
History of the Kings of Rome._

ROME: B. C. 510.
Expulsion of Tarquin the Proud.
The story from Livy.

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, son of
Tarquinius Priscus and son-in-law of Servius Tullius, brought
about the assassination of the latter, and mounted the throne.
"Lucius Tarquin, having thus seized the kingdom (for he had
not the consent either of the Senators or of the Commons to
his deed), bare himself very haughtily, so that men called him
Tarquin the Proud. First, lest some other, taking example by
him, should deal with him as he had dealt with Tullius, he had
about him a company of armed men for guards. And because he
knew that none loved him, he would have them fear him. To this
end he caused men to be accused before him. And when they were
so accused, he judged them by himself, none sitting with him
to see that right was done. Some he slew unjustly, and some he
banished, and some he spoiled of their goods. And when the
number of the Senators was greatly diminished by these means
(for he laid his plots mostly against the Senators, as being
rich men and the chief of the State), he would not choose any
into their place, thinking that the people would lightly
esteem them if there were but a few of them. Nor did he call
them together to ask their counsel, but ruled according to his
own pleasure, making peace and war, and binding treaties or
unbinding, with none to gainsay him. Nevertheless, for a while
he increased greatly in power and glory. He made alliance with
Octavius Mamilius, prince of Tusculum, giving him his daughter
in marriage; nor was there any man greater than Mamilius in
all the cities of the Latins; and Suessa Pometia, that was a
city of the Volsei, he took by force, and finding that the
spoil was very rich (for there were in it forty talents of
gold and silver), he built with the money a temple to Jupiter
on the Capitol, very great and splendid, and worthy not only
of his present kingdom but also of that great Empire that
should be thereafter. Also he took the city of Gabii by fraud.
… By such means did King Tarquin increase his power. Now there
was at Rome in the days of Tarquin a noble youth, by name
Lucius Junius, who was akin to the house of Tarquin, seeing
that his mother was sister to the King. This man, seeing how
the King sought to destroy all the chief men in the State
(and, indeed, the brother of Lucius had been so slain), judged
it well so to bear himself that there should be nothing in him
which the King should either covet or desire. Wherefore he
feigned foolishness, suffering all that he had to be made a
prey; for which reason men gave him the name of Brutus, or the
Foolish. Then he bided his time, waiting till the occasion
should come when he might win freedom for the people." In a
little time "there came to Brutus an occasion of showing what
manner of man he was. Sextus, the King's son, did so grievous
a wrong to Lucretia, that was the wife of Collatinus, that the
woman could not endure to live, but slew herself with her own
hand. But before she died she called to her her husband and
her father and Brutus, and bade them avenge her upon the evil
house of Tarquin. And when her father and her husband sat
silent for grief and fear, Brutus drew the knife wherewith she
slew herself from the wound, and held it before him dripping
with blood, and cried aloud, 'By this blood I swear, calling
the Gods to witness, that I will pursue with fire and sword
and with all other means of destruction Tarquin the Proud,
with his accursed wife and all his race; and that I will
suffer no man hereafter to be king in this city of Rome.' And
when he had ended he bade the others swear after the same form
of words. This they did and, forgetting their grief, thought
only how they might best avenge this great wrong that had been
done. First they carried the body of Lucretia, all covered
with blood, into the marketplace of Collatia (for these things
happened at Collatia), and roused all the people that saw a
thing so shameful and pitiful, till all that were of an age
for war assembled themselves carrying arms. Some of them
stayed behind to keep the gates of Collatia, that no one
should carry tidings of the matter to the King, and the rest
Brutus took with him with all the speed that he might to Rome.
There also was stirred up a like commotion, Brutus calling the
people together and telling them what a shameful wrong the
young Tarquin had done. Also he spake to them of the labours
with which the King wore them out in the building of temples
and palaces and the like, so that they who had been in time
past the conquerors of all the nations round about were now
come to be but his hewers of wood and drawers of water. Also
he set before them in what shameful sort King Tullius had been
slain, and how his daughter had driven her chariot over the
dead body of her father. With suchlike words he stirred up the
people to great wrath, so that they passed a decree that there
should be no more kings in Rome, and that Lucius Tarquin with
his wife and his children should be banished.
{2663}
After this Brutus made haste to the camp and stirred up the
army against the King. And in the meanwhile Queen Tullia fled
from her palace, all that saw her cursing her as she went. As
for King Tarquin, when he came to the city he found the gates
shut against him; thereupon he returned and dwelt at Cære that
is in the land of Etruria, and two of his sons with him; but
Sextus going to Gabii, as to a city which he had made his own,
was slain by the inhabitants. The King and his house being
thus driven out, Brutus was made consul with one Collatinus
for his colleague."

_A. J. Church,
Stories from Livy;
chapter 5._

ALSO IN:
_B. G. Niebuhr,
Lectures on the History of Rome,
lectures 8-9 (volume 1)._

_T. H. Dyer,
History of the Kings of Rome,
chapter 10._

ROME: B. C. 509.
The establishment of the Republic.
The Valerian Laws.

"However much the history of the expulsion of the last
Tarquinius, 'the proud,' may have been interwoven with
anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its
leading outlines to be called in question. … The royal power
was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when
a vacancy occurred, a 'temporary king' (interrex) was
nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by
two year-kings, who called themselves generals (prætores), or
judges (iudices), or merely colleagues (consules) [consules
are those who 'leap or dance together.' Foot-note]. The
collegiate principle, from which this last—and subsequently
most current—name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in
their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was
not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each
consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and
wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king;
and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place
from the first—the one consul for instance undertaking the
command of the army, and the other the administration of
justice—that partition was by no means binding, and each of
the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time
in the province of the other.

See CONSUL, ROMAN.

… This peculiarly Latin, if not peculiarly Roman, institution
of co-ordinate supreme authorities … manifestly sprang out of
the endeavour to retain the regal power in legally
undiminished fulness. … A similar course was followed in
reference to the termination of their tenure of office. … They
ceased to be magistrates, not upon the expiry of the set term,
but only upon their publicly and solemnly demitting their
office: so that, in the event of their daring to disregard the
term and to continue their magistracy beyond the year, their
official acts were nevertheless valid, and in the earlier
times they scarcely even incurred any other than a moral
responsibility."

_T. Mommsen,
History of Rome,
book 2, chapter 1._