A History of the Roman World (8 page)

About fifteen miles from its mouth the River Tiber winds through a group of hills which rise from the Latin plain. Here was the natural meeting-place of the Etruscans, Latins and Sabellians, and the objective of any ambitious people. Far enough from the sea to protect its inhabitants from the danger of piracy, the settlement which spread over these hills lay on the chief river of central Italy. It commanded both the Tiber valley, which gave access to Etruria and the central highlands, and a ford which lay south of an island in the Tiber; any traffic from north to south or from the eastern hills to the sea would pass through it. It was thus a natural centre and a point of distribution.
¹
The hills themselves were well wooded, fairly precipitous and defensible; some were isolated, others formed spurs of a surrounding plateau. Though the ground between them was marshy and subject to flooding by the Tiber, the hills afforded some protection against disease, as well as against man and beast. Some, though not all, of the potential natural advantages of the future site of Rome must have been obvious to the earliest settlers.

The chief hills of ancient Rome, except the Janiculum, all lay on the east bank of the Tiber. From a plateau there projected westwards towards the river (in order, from north to south) the Quirinal, Viminal, three spurs of the Esquiline called Cispius, Fagutal and Oppius, and the Caelius; between the Caelius and the river lay the Aventine. Within this semicircle were two nearly isolated hills, the Capitoline and Palatine, the former between the Quirinal and Tiber island, the latter connected by a ridge in the east, called the Velia, with the Oppius. The Palatine was spacious and had steep cliffs on three sides,
which overlooked the moat-like marshes that later were converted into the Forum, Velabrum and Circus Maximus; on the fourth side its isthmus, the Velia, ensured communication with the interior, and this was the hill nearest to the ford below the island. It is here that ancient tradition places the first settlement of the Latins. The isolation of some of the hills was increased by the streams which flowed in gullies between the Quirinal, the Viminal, the Cispius and the Oppius; these joined the main stream that flowed through what was later the Roman Forum to reach the Tiber.

Whatever geographical, commercial or military advantages of the site contributed to the future growth of Rome, in origin it was probably merely a shepherds’ village or group of villages lying midway between the plain and the hill country. Sporadic finds of flint implements, stone axes and a copper dagger, which were discovered in the 1870s, show that much of the Esquiline was inhabited at the end of the Neolithic period and at the beginning of the Chalcolithic, but the continuity or duration of this early settlement is uncertain. Then quite recently some Bronze Age ‘Apennine’ pottery was found in the Forum Boarium: it came from a soil filling made when a very early temple there had been rebuilt after a fire in 213
BC
. This indicates that the settlement from which the earth had originally been taken lay nearby, probably on the Capitoline, Palatine or Aventine; it should be dated around 1500
BC
, but continuity of habitation until the Iron Age settlements arrived cannot yet be confidently asserted.
²

Early in the eighth century Iron Age village settlements began to appear on the hilltops of the Palatine, Esquiline, Quirinal and probably the Caelian. These shepherds and farmers lived in wattle-and-daub huts and disposed of their dead on the slopes and valleys between the hilltops. The village on the Palatine was well placed: the hill commanded the Tiber and was easily defensible, but was also comparatively spacious and reasonably accessible from the landward side. It claimed to be the earliest settlement, founded by Romulus himself, whose Hut (
casa Romuli
) was preserved in historical times. In fact there were two heights on the Palatine, the Germalus and the Palatine itself; a cremation-grave has been found between them under the so-called House of Livia, so probably at first two separate communities existed, divided by a cemetery. That on the Germalus was probably slightly the older, since here lay the Hut of Romulus, and it is here that the foundations of three huts cut in the tufa rock were discovered in 1948. They are roughly rectangular (some 13½ × 11¾ feet), with drainage channels around. The disposition of the post-holes, together with the appearance of surviving clay hut-urns, enables the wooden superstructure to be reconstructed. A central wooden pillar held a ridge-piece, from which a gabled roof descended to, and extended beyond, the upright sides of the hut. In front of the door was a small porch or extension of the roof. The roof and walls consisted of wattle
and daub (branches and thatch laid on a coating of dry clay). Clusters of such huts thus formed the earliest villages of Rome. The settlers on the Esquiline hill, however, buried their dead
a fossa
, while on the Quirinal the earliest tombs are
a pozzo
cremations – which are followed by
a fossa
inhumations. A main burial-ground lay at the foot of the Palatine on the site of the later Forum: here again both cremation and inhumation burials have been found, but with cremation dominant in the earliest tombs. These cremations are almost certainly the burials of the Palatine village (the alternative of a Velian village is less likely), and the inhumations those of the occupants of other hills; they extend from the eighth to the early sixth century. No traces of early settlement have yet come to light on the Capitol, despite its dominant position, a steep and narrow bluff; it may have served as an
oppidum
or temporary refuge rather than attracting a permanent settlement. Although their pottery showed some individual characteristics, the inhabitants of these villages shared a common Latial culture, those on the Palatine being closer to the Villanovans of the Alban Hills, while finds on the Esquiline have their parallels at Tibur and in southern Latium. The Esquiline graves from about 700
BC
, however, contain many weapons; this points to the intrusion either of a wave of Fossa culture people or of the Sabines whom later Romans believed to have formed a substantial element in the early population, (p. 46). Thus the earliest settlers may have been joined by others from the area of the central Apennines; the Anio valley afforded easy access to the basin of the Tiber.

As the population increased in the seventh century the villagers began to spread down the hillsides and finally built some huts on the top of earlier tombs in the Forum valley. These seem to have been destroyed by flooding, but after more successful attempts were made to drain the Forum brook, by works which pre-dated the later Cloaca Maxima, settlement was renewed after
c.
625, and two or three decades later was extended to the Velabrum valley and site of the Forum Boarium. By this time the various villages were merging, but it is too early to think in terms of an urbanized unit. Such unity was achieved in various stages.

The earliest phase, when each village was an independent community, is reflected in two later festivals. During the Lupercalia the Luperci used to run round the Palatine in a ceremony of purification: this suggests an originally isolated settlement there. Further, the procession that annually visited the twenty-four shrines of the Argei proceeded later not around the continuous circuit of the whole city but in four separate circuits around four areas; this reflects conditions when Rome had reached a stage of development where it was known as the City of the Four Regions (see below), but it seems also to point to an even earlier time when each of these four areas was an independent unit and had its own chapels (which in fact, so far as their positions have been identified, were on top of hills and not in the valleys, i.e. they were
grouped according to the hills rather than as common sacred places).
³
The first move to unity is reflected in the festival of the Septimontium, which probably means of seven hills (
septem montes
) rather than, as more recently suggested, palisaded hills (
saepti montes
). The hills involved were not the later Seven Hills of Rome, but the original components of three groups, namely the Palatine (comprising the Germalus, Palatinus and Velia), the Esquiline (i.e. the Oppius, Cispius and Fagutal) and the Caelius: the Quirinal and Viminal were excluded, and the frontier between the two communities was the Forum brook.
⁴
Provision had to be made for peaceful passage across this sacred running water, and so inaugurated bridges, Jani, were built at places where tracks reached the brook: the Ianus Summus, Medius and Imus (the last in the Velabrum).
⁵
Thus even if the Septimontium was little more than a grouping of villages for religious worship, it paved the way for wider cooperation. We do not know where the initiative for this movement arose, but the tradition of the priority of the Palatine may point in that direction.

The next stage was the union of the enlarged Palatine community with its neighbours on the Quirinal. This too was reflected in the organization of the Luperci, who were divided into two groups which appear to represent the Palatine and the Quirinal, as also were the Salii, two colleges of dancing warrior priests made up of the Salii Palatini and the Salii Collini (= of the Quirinal); the antiquity of the Salii is confirmed by their Bronze Age type of armour. This new ‘twin city’ was organized into four regions, namely Palatine, Caelius, Esquiline and Quirinal, which as we have seen are indicated in the ritual of the Argei. This area, which excluded the Capitoline and Aventine, corresponded roughly both with the four ‘urban’ tribes or city wards of the later Republican period and also with the district within the
pomerium
, a ritual furrow made by a yoked bull and cow to mark off the area of an augurally constituted city, as among the Etruscans. This spiritual boundary was not necessarily strengthened at this time by a surrounding defensive rampart, and the separate villages may have had no fortifications other than their own steep hillsides, although these may have been reinforced with wooden palisades; there may possibly have been some earth walls across the Oppius, Cispius and Quirinal.

While the isolation of the villages was breaking down during the seventh century, domestic industry was being complemented by more professional craftsmen who began to peddle their wares beyond the confines of Rome itself. The distribution of wealth was widening, as shown by a warrior’s chariot and armour of
c.
650
BC
found in a
fossa
tomb on the Esquiline. External influences also increased: from
c.
625
BC
Etruscan
bucchero
and metal-work from Veii and Caere begin to appear, together with Etruscan imitations of Greek pro to-Corinthian and Corinthian pottery, and before long some of the inhabitants were beginning to leave their huts for houses with tiled
roofs. The archaeological evidence agrees in a remarkable manner with the Roman literary tradition that the first Etruscan king, Tarquinius Priscus, gained the throne of Rome in 616
BC
: this is the very time when the material remains show Rome entering the ambit of Etruscan civilization and the scattered villages becoming an Etruscan
urbs
. The literary traditions about early Rome must now be considered.

Legends about the foundation of Rome, and variants of them, abound in Greek and Roman writers. A brief account of what became the standard story, as given for instance by Livy at the beginning of the Roman Empire, runs something like this: when King Latinus ruled over the aborigines in Laurentum, some Trojans arrived under the leadership of Aeneas after the fall of their city. Aeneas married Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, and after the King’s death he ruled over the Trojans and aborigines, now called Latins. After founding a city, Lavinium, in honour of his wife, Aeneas died and was succeeded by his son Ascanius, known to the Romans as Iulus, who founded Alba Longa. After him twelve kings reigned in Alba, until a prince Amulius wrongfully seized the throne in place of his elder brother Numitor, whose daughter, Rhea Silvia, he forced to become a Vestal Virgin. But she bore to Mars the twins Romulus and Remus, who were miraculously saved from the death by drowning which Amulius had planned; they were washed up under a fig-tree, Ruminalis, near the Palatine where they were suckled by a wolf and nurtured by the shepherd Faustulus. Later they slew Amulius and set Numitor in his place and set forth to found a city on the spot where they had been saved. But while Romulus wished to build on the Palatine, Remus preferred the Aventine. The omens favoured the choice of Romulus, but Remus in scorn leapt over his brother’s rising wall and was slain by him. Thus on 21 April, 753
BC
, tradition records, Rome was founded even if it was not built in a day.

Such a story resulted from the intermingling of two traditions which in some respects were mutually exclusive: Roman accounts which attributed the founding of Rome to Romulus, and Greek accounts which made Aeneas the chief character.
⁶
Greek writers frequently invented stories about the adventures of various heroes, not least Odysseus, who after the fall of Troy sailed off to the west and founded cities, and as early as the fifth century at least two historians, Hellanicus and Damastes of Sigeum, had attributed the founding of Rome to Aeneas. Further, the story of Aeneas’ flight from Troy reached Etruria by the sixth century: at least seventeen vase paintings (525–470
BC
) found there depict the scene, and nearly as many show Aeneas in battle.
⁷
The possible early popularity of Aeneas in Etruria is reinforced by
votive statuettes of Aeneas carrying his father Anchises in flight from Troy found at Veii: they have usually been dated to the sixth century, although some scholars now argue that they are not earlier than the fall of Veii at the beginning of the fourth century. Complications, however, would arise when Greek writers who regarded Aeneas as Rome’s founder came across the Roman tradition of Romulus and Remus: one way out was to make them sons or grandsons of Aeneas. But a further difficulty arose when soon after 300
BC
the historian Timaeus brought the date of the foundation of Rome down to 814
BC
(in order to synchronize it with that of Carthage), i.e. 370 years later than the reported date of the fall of Troy, which was fixed at 1184
BC
by the scholar Eratosthenes in the second half of the third century. Further, Latin tradition knew only seven kings at Rome before the establishment of the Republic in 510
BC
. Thus if a reasonable reign was allowed to each king, the foundation of Rome could not have been earlier than the middle of the eighth century. So an ingenious solution was found: to fill the gap the Romans invented thirteen kings at Alba Longa, interpolating them between Aeneas and Romulus. Thus this line of Alban kings made possible a reconciliation between Romulus and a Latin origin, and Aeneas and a Trojan origin of Rome.

Variations of the chief legends proliferated: between twenty-five and thirty distinct versions can be derived from Greek writers, all differing from the later official Roman account as given, for instance, by the annalist Fabius Pictor. These ramifications cannot be pursued here in any detail, yet some consideration must be given to the stories of Romulus and Remus, and of Aeneas, since both had a profound effect on later Roman sentiment. The legend of Romulus and Remus, which seems an essential part of Rome’s story, has been assessed in varied ways: to some it appears to be a very old native myth, while others regard it as a comparatively late literary invention, partly because it is not mentioned by Greek writers before the third century. It had, however, clearly developed by the end of the fourth century; in 296
BC
two aediles, the Ogulnii, set up a statue of the she-wolf and the two children at Rome, and some thirty years later the wolf and twins were depicted on early Roman coins (p. 319). It is, however, improbable that the much earlier statue of the Capitoline wolf (
c.
500
BC
) was connected with Romulus and Remus; the figures of the twins were added in Renaissance times. Neither has an Etruscan
stele
in the Bologna museum which depicts a wolf suckling a child anything to do with Rome (though it does testify to the spread of such legends).

The names of the twins have caused difficulty: whereas the Romans called them Romulus and Remus, Greek writers gave Romulus and Romus. One line of argument is to believe that the Greeks invented Romus as the eponymous founder of Rome and that when the Romans, who called their founder Romulus, heard of Romus, they combined the two as twins, changing the
name Romus to Remus. A more complicated explanation suggests that Romulus was only the Latin form of the Greek Romus and that the later Greeks, not realizing this, thought that they had to deal with two men and so invented the twins; when this version reached Rome, the Romans accepted it, only changing Romus to Remus. Other theories, such as that Remus was a later invention designed to account for the collegiate magistracy, need not be pursued here. On the contrary, it is not unreasonable to accept an old Roman origin, since both words are authentic Roman names: in historical times both a
gens
Romilia and a
gens
Remmia existed. And since the archaeological evidence suggests the merging of two communities at an early stage in Rome’s development (p. 40), the tradition might well have derived from the existence of two early village chiefs. This would then be developed by later writers in the light of the numerous folk legends about twins and their miraculous upbringings.

Aeneas was regarded as the founder of Rome only by some Greek authors, and by no Roman writers except Sallust. The Romans, therefore, may have based the idea of their Trojan descent on Aeneas as the ancestor of the Latins rather than as the founder of their city. His story may have reached Rome from southern Etruria and Veii where he was popular at least in the fourth if not the sixth century, as shown by the statuettes, but this need not have involved the belief that he was the founder of Rome. He was, in fact, more closely linked with Lavinium which he had founded. Here the historian Timaeus learned from the inhabitants that among holy objects kept in the city was a Trojan earthenware jar which presumably contained the Penates which Aeneas had brought from Troy; these were the gods of the store cupboard (
penes
), which later were identified with Castor and Pollux. The tradition that the Trojan Penates came to Rome from Lavinium is strengthened by the discovery there of the inscription to the Dioscuri (p. 36). Further, there is said to have been a cult of Aeneas Indiges, i.e. Aeneas the divine ancestor, near Lavinium. If
LARE AINEIA D(ONUM)
is the correct reading of a fourth-century inscription found nearby, this would be additional confirmation, but unfortunately both
AINEIA
and therefore a connexion with Aeneas are uncertain. But in contrast to Lavinium there was no public cult of Aeneas at Rome itself. Further, Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that the Latins erected a hero-shrine (Heroon) to Aeneas. Again a recent archaeological discovery may or may not provide direct confirmation. A small fourth-century shrine at Lavinium had been built within the circle of an earlier seventh-century tomb, suggesting that a famous person was venerated there, but slight caution is required since it does not correspond completely with Dionysius’ description of Aeneas’ shrine. However that may be, close links existed between Rome and Lavinium from very early days and continued into historical times; after 338
BC
all Rome’s major magistrates had to go to Lavinium each year to
sacrifice to the Penates and Vesta at the beginning and end of their periods of office.
⁸

Varied views were also held about the precise date of the foundation of the city. The poet Ennius appears to have gone back beyond Timaeus’ date of 814
BC
to about 900, while at the end of the third century the annalists Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus advanced it respectively to 748 and 728. Cato and Polybius followed Fabius, but a century later 753
BC
, proposed by the scholar Varro, became the official date. Soon afterwards under Augustus the legends received their greatest literary enshrinement in Livy’s History and Virgil’s
Aeneid
. Although Timaeus and Naevius mentioned Aeneas’ visit to Carthage
en route
for Italy, the story of Aeneas and Dido was Virgil’s great contribution.