Europe: A History (33 page)
Modern attitudes to Roman civilization range from the infinitely impressed to the thoroughly disgusted. As always, there are the power-worshippers, especially among historians, who are predisposed to admire whatever is strong, who feel more attracted to the might of Rome than to the subtlety of Greece. They admire the size and strength of the Colosseum with never a thought for the purposes to which it was put. The Colosseum, in fact, became the symbol of Roman civilization. It became a commonplace: ‘When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall; and when Rome falls—the World.’
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At the same time there is a solid body of opinion which dislikes Rome. For many, Rome is at best the imitator and the continuator of Greece on a larger scale. Greek civilization had quality, Rome mere quantity. Greece was original, Rome derivative. Greece had style, Rome had money. Greece was the inventor, Rome the Research and Development division. Such indeed was the opinion of some of the more intellectual Romans. ‘Had the Greeks held novelty in such disdain as we,’ asked Horace in his
Epistles
, ‘what work of ancient date would now exist?’ What is more, the Romans vulgarized many of the things which they copied. In architecture, for example, they borrowed the heavy and luxurious late Corinthian order, but not the Doric or the Ionian. ‘The whole fabric of Greek art goes to pieces’, writes one critic, ‘when it is brought into contact with a purely utilitarian nation like Rome.’
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Rome’s debt to Greece, however, was enormous. In religion, the Romans adopted the Olympians wholesale—turning Zeus into Jupiter, Hera into Juno, Ares into Mars, Aphrodite into Venus. They adopted Greek moral philosophy to the point where Stoicism was more typical of Rome than of Athens. In literature, Greek writers were consciously used as models by their Latin successors. It was absolutely accepted that an educated Roman should be fluent in Greek. In speculative philosophy and the sciences, the Romans made virtually no advance on earlier achievements.
Yet it would be wrong to suggest that Rome was somehow a junior partner in Graeco-Roman civilization. The Roman genius was projected into new spheres— especially into those of law, military organization, administration, and engineering. Moreover, the tensions which arose within the Roman state produced literary and artistic sensibilities of the highest order. It was no accident that many leading Roman soldiers and statesmen were writers of high calibre. Equally, the long list of Roman vices cannot be forgotten. Critics have pointed to a specially repulsive brand of slavery, to cruelty beyond measure, and, in time, to a degree of decadence that made hellenism look puritanical.
In its widest definition, from the founding of the ‘Eternal City’ in 753
BC
to the final destruction of the Roman Empire in
AD
1453, the political history of ancient Rome lasted for 2,206 years. In its more usual definition, from the founding of the city to the collapse of that western segment of the Roman Empire of which Rome was the capital, it lasted for barely half that time. It is customarily divided into three distinct periods: the Kingdom, the Republic, and the Empire.
[
AUC
]
The semi-legendary Roman Kingdom corresponds in many ways to the earlier ‘Heroic Age’ of Greece. It begins with the tale of Romulus and Remus, the orphaned twins, reputedly descendants of Aeneas, who were suckled by a she-wolf, and it ends with the expulsion of the last of the seven kings, Tarquin the Proud, in 510
BC.
Those two-and-a-half centuries lie long before the era of recorded history. Romulus, the founder of Rome, supposedly organized the Rape of the Sabine Women, who helped to populate the new city. Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, introduced the calendar and the official religious practices. He founded the Temple of Janus in the Forum, whose doors were opened in time of war and closed in times of peace. Tullius Hostilius, the third king, a Latin, razed the neighbouring city of Alba Longa and deported its population. Ancus Marcius created the order of
plebs
or ‘common people’ from imported captives. Servius Tullius, the sixth king, granted Rome its first constitution, giving the plebs independence from the patricians or ‘elders’, and created the Latin League. The fifth and seventh kings, Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus, were of Etruscan descent. The former undertook the first public works in Rome, including the vast sewer named after him. The latter was expelled, following the Rape of Lucretia organized by his son.
[
ETRUSCHERIA
]
Rome, with its seven hills commanding the strategic crossing-point of the River Tiber, was but one of several cities of Latium that spoke the ‘Latin’ tongue. In those early years it was dominated by more powerful neighbours, especially by the Etruscans to the north, whose fortified city of Veii lay only 16 km from the Forum. The remains of the ‘Etruscan Places’ at Vulci, Tarquinia, and Perugia attest to an advanced but mysterious civilization. Rome borrowed much from them. According to Livy, the city only survived the Etruscan attempt to storm it and to reinstate the Tarquins after the one-eyed Horatius Codes had held the Sublician Bridge:
Then out spake brave Horatius
The Captain of the Gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his Gods?
Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may:
AUC
R
OMAN
chronology was based on the conventional date for the founding of the city. Zero year was long taken to be equivalent to 750
BC.
All subsequent dates were calculated
AUC,
ab urbe condita
, ‘from the founding of the city’. A modified scheme came into being in the first century BC, when the computations of M. Terentius Varro (636–725
AUC),
‘the most learned of the Romans’, made the city’s foundation equivalent to 753
BC.
By Varro’s time, however, most Romans had also become accustomed to an alternative system, which referred not to the date of the year but to the names of the annual consuls. Both in official records and in everyday conversations, they talked of ‘the year of C. Terentius Varro and L. Aemilius Paulus’ (216 BC), or of ‘the seven consulships of C. Marius’ (107, 104,103,102,101, 100, and 86
BC).
One needed a detailed grasp of Roman history to follow the references. Few educated people would not have known that the elder Varro and Aemilius Paulus had commanded the Roman army at the disaster of Cannae.
Fortunately, the two systems were compatible. Each of them could be invoked to support the other. For example, the rise and fall of G. lulius Caesar could be calculated with reference to the following:
| AUC | Consulship | BC |
| 695 | M. Calpurnius Bibulus and C. lulius Caesar (I) | 59 |
| 705 | C. Claudius Marcellus and L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus | 49 |
| 706 | C. lulius Caesar (II) and P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus | 48 |
| 707 | Q. Rufius Calenus and P. Vatinius | 47 |
| 708 | C. lulius Caesar (III) and M. Aemilius Lepidus | 46 |
| 709 | C. lulius Caesar (IV) Sole Consul | 45 |
| 710 | C. lulius Caesar (V) and M. Antonius | 44 |
| 711 | C. Vibius Pansa and A. Hirtius, both killed; replaced by the Triumvirate of M. Antonius, G. Octavianus, and M. Aemilius Lepidus. | 43 |
It was Caesar who realized that the existing calendar was becoming inoperable. The old Roman year contained only 304 days divided into 10 months, beginning on xi Kal. Maius or 21 April. The extra months of
lanuarius
and
Februarius
had been invented as stop-gaps. In 708
AUC,
therefore, during Caesar’s third consulship, drastic reforms were introduced. The current year was prolonged by 151 days so that the New Year could begin on 1 January 707
AUC/45 BC
and run over twelve months of 365 days until 31 December. Further adjustments were made under Augustus in 737
AUC/AD
4, when the old fifth and sixth months,
Quintilis
and
Sextilis
, were renamed
Julius
(after Caesar) and
Augustus
, and the four-yearly
bissextile
or ‘leap-day’ was introduced. The resultant Julian Year of 365 1/4 days was misaligned with the earth only by the tiny margin of 11 minutes 12 seconds, and remained in universal use until
AD
1582.
None the less, consuls continued to be appointed throughout the Principate; and the custom of counting years by consulships was preserved with them. The regnal years of the emperors were not usually invoked. In the later Empire, when consulships were abolished, the
AUC
system was supported by references to the fifteen-year tax cycle of ‘Indictions’. When the Christian era finally came into use in the mid-sixth century
AD,
the Roman era had been in operation for thirteen centuries.
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[
ANNO DOMINI
]
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon straight path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand
And keep the bridge with me?’
‘Horatius’, quoth the Consul,
‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
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The Roman Republic presided over the city’s growth from provincial obscurity to mastery of the whole Mediterranean. The process began in 509
BC
with the first election of the ruling consuls, and ended 478 years later, when Octavian established the first imperial dynasty. It was an epoch of incessant conquest. In the fifth century, Rome gained a hold over its immediate neighbours and a territory of 822 km
2
(314 square miles). In one famous episode, in 491
BC,
the Roman exile G. Marcius Coriolanus, who had led an all-conquering Volscian army to the gates of Rome, was persuaded to desist by the tearful entreaties of his mother. In the fourth century Rome recovered from its sack by the Gauls in 390
BC,
and in the three fierce Samnite Wars established its supremacy over central Italy. In the third century Rome undertook the conquest of the Greek south, first in the war against Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (282–272
BC),
who came to the aid of his compatriots, and later in successive campaigns ending with the annexation of Sicily (see pp. 138–47, above). These campaigns provoked extended conflict with Carthage, and the three Punic Wars.
Of all Rome’s wars it was the hundred years’ conflict with Carthage that best demonstrated that famous Roman combination of stamina and ruthlessness. Older than Rome, African Carthage had been founded by migrants from Phoenicia, in Latin
Punka
(see pp. 104–6). Relations between them had traditionally been pacific, protected by a treaty contained in the oldest known document of Roman history. Dated in the first year of Republic, the treaty enjoined each side to respect the other’s sphere of influence. The peace was kept for nearly three centuries before Roman forces crossed the Straits of Messina.
ETRUSCHERIA
A
T Santa Severa, ancient Pyrgi, near Rome, archaeologists have uncovered two Etruscan temples overlooking the sea. The find, made in 1957–64, was exceptional. It was the first Etruscan site that offered something other than tombs. Dated c.500
BC,
it yielded three wafer-thin gold tablets, with inscriptions in Punic and Etruscan:
To the lady Astarte. This is the sacred place made and given by Thefarie Velianas, king of Cisra, in the month of the Sacrifice of the Sun … in the third year of his reign, in the month of Kir, of the Day of the Burial of the Divinity. And the years of the statue of the goddess [are as many] as these stars.
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Pyrgi served as harbour to the nearby town of Cisra (modern Cerveteri); and King Thefarie or ‘Tiberius’ had chosen to worship a Carthaginian Goddess, [
TAMMUZ
] The temples must have been dedicated some time after the abortive Etruscan raid on Greek Cumae on the Bay of Naples, perhaps within a decade of the revolt of Rome against Etruscan overlordship.
The Etruscans flourished in Tuscany and Umbria from 700 to 100 BC. They claimed to be immigrants from Asia Minor. Their alphabet, derived from the Greek, is easily read, but their language has not been fully deciphered. After the initial era of princes, they passed in the sixth century into the era of mercantile city-states on the Greek model. Their grave-chambers are covered in fine, stylized, pictorial murals often depicting banquets of the dead (see Plate 5). The little that is known about them derives either from archaeology or from hostile Roman accounts of a later age, when they are painted as gluttons, lechers, and religious devotees. From the first Etruscan exhibition in London in 1837 to its most recent successor in Paris in 1992,
2
many attempts have been made to interest the European public in Etruscology. The greatest stimulus came in 1828–36, from the opening of tombs at Vulci, Caere, and Tarquinia, then in the Papal States.
But the dominant mode has been one of Romantic speculation. The Medici, who organized the first investigations, claimed to be of Etruscan descent. In the eighteenth century, Josiah Wedgwood named his pottery ‘Etruria’ unaware that the fashionable ‘Etruscan Style’ was of Greek, not Etruscan, origin. Prosper Mérimée was beguiled by the mystery of the Etruscans, as was the Victorian pioneer George Dennis. And so was D. H. Lawrence:
The things [the Etruscans] did in their easy centuries were as natural as breathing. And that is the true Etruscan quality: ease, naturalness, and an abundance of life … And death was just a natural continuance of the fullness of life.
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This is not Etruscology; it is
Etruscheria
, or, as the French would say,
étruscomanie
.