 Section 1 of Early Rome from the foundation of the city to its destruction by the Gauls. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Early Rome from the foundation of the city to its destruction by the Gauls by Wilhelm Ina. Section 1. Who Lists the Roman Greatness Forth to Figure? Who Lists the Roman Greatness Forth to Figure him needed not to seek for usage right of line or let or rule or square to measure, her length, her breadth, her deepness and her height. But him behooves to view in compass round all that the ocean grasps in his long arms. Be it where the yearly star doth scorch the ground or where cold Boreus blows his bitter storms. Rome was the whole world and all the world was Rome, and if things named their names do equalize, when land and sea you name, then name ye Rome, and naming Rome ye land and sea comprise. For the ancient plot of Rome displayed plain the map of all the wide world doth contain. All that which Egypt Wilhelm did devise, all that which greased their temples to embrace, after the Ionic, Attic, Doric, Gaes, or Corinth skilled in curious work to grave, all that Lysippus' practic art could form, Appelli's wit or Phidias' his skill, was won't this ancient city to adorn, and heaven itself with her wide wonders fill. All that which Athens ever brought forth wise, or that which Africa ever brought forth strange, all that which Asia ever had of prize was here to see, oh marvelous great change. Rome living was the world's sole ornament, and dead is now the world's sole monument. Spencer ruins of Rome. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Early Rome by Wilhelm Inna. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 1 The Causes of the Greatness of Rome. The Roman Empire in the early ages of our era embraced all the countries round the Mediterranean Sea, together with vast tracks north of the Alps, stretching in one direction as far as the Danube, and even beyond that river in its lower course, and in another, as far away as the Atlantic Ocean, St. George's Channel, the Solway Firth and the North Sea. In this great empire was gathered up the sum total that remained of the religions, laws, customs, languages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of antiquity which had successively held sway or predominance. It was the appointed task of the Romans to collect the product of all this massive varied national labor as a common treasure of mankind, and to deliver it over to the ages which were to follow. When after the lapse of centuries Europe gradually emerged from the flood of barbarism which had overwhelmed it, and new nations were formed out of the wreck of the Roman Empire, it was the treasure of ancient learning saved by Rome which guided the first steps of these nations toward new forms of civilized life. The language and literature of Rome had never been altogether lost and forgotten. By slow degrees the language of Latium was molded into the dialects of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. The Christian Church pertinaciously clung to the old language which was that of her ritual and of the Latin Fathers. The city of Rome had become the seat of the successors of St. Peter, and her language penetrated wherever Roman Catholic missionaries preached the Gospel of Christ. It became the vehicle of all the learning of the time, the language of diplomacy, of law and government, finally of education, and in the schools and universities of modern Europe the whole world of Latin literature was fostered into a second life and acquired an influence on the public mind of which every living man still in some way or other feels the effects. But the Latin literature, though great and admirable in many respects, is not the grandest product of the Roman mind. It was not original nor spontaneous and consequently not truly national. In poetry, philosophy, and history the Romans were the disciples and imitators of the Greeks. They added little of their own. Their strength and originality lay in another direction. They proved themselves masters in the art of civil law and government. The Roman law possesses an intrinsic excellence which has made it the foundation of all legal study in Europe and the model of almost all codes of civil law now in force. Every one of us is benefited directly or indirectly by this legacy of the Roman people, a legacy as valuable as the literary and artistic models which we owe to the great writers and sculptors of Greece. The stupendous growth of the Roman Empire and the solidity of its structure which enabled it to last so long are due not so much to the courage and endurance of the Roman soldiers nor to the genius of the Roman generals as to other causes and chiefly to the combination of a desire for improvement with a respect for established rights, in short to political wisdom which prefers reform to revolution which is not dazzled by speculation on impossible perfection and which never sacrifices what is good in order to attain what may appear to be best. The development of the Roman constitution differs in this respect from the usual course of Greek policy and reminds us of the spirit in which the English constitution was built up, in which whatever is new is an outgrowth and development of something old and in which mere speculation and theoretic enthusiasm have never been able to sever the link which connects the present with the past. The history of the Roman people then has surely many claims on our attention. It is to a certain extent the history of every modern nation in its earlier stages and it contains lessons of policy which even after so many centuries are instructive and may prove applicable in the political conflicts of the present day. No great state known to history can be traced to such a small beginning as Rome. When the kings of Persia and of Macedon built up their respective monarchies they worked with the national power which they found ready for them waiting only to be organized and directed. The Carthaginians started on their career of enterprise and conquest with the experience, the skill and the wealth of their Phoenician mother country. The Romans on the other hand when they emerged to power in Latium and Atria could boast neither of a numerous nor a civilized ancestry. They had found no accumulation of wealth ready for their use, no political experience which they might have applied. They had everything to make from the beginning. They had to form a nation and a national character to create national wealth to acquire political experience. They succeeded in all this and so vigorous was the spirit which animated the citizens of that single city that it infused itself into the population of all Italy and to a certain extent of the ancient world and thus the language, customs, thought and religion of numerous nations were Romanized and exhibit traces of their origin even at the present day. What was the cause we may well ask that gave such a superiority to Rome over other cities of Italy? Why did not Veii or Naples or Syracuse become the nucleus of a great empire? Had Rome an advantage over them with regard to soil, climate or geographical situation? This question must be answered in the negative. The soil in the neighborhood of Rome was comparatively sterile. The climate unhealthy. The situation unfavorable for commerce. The city had no good port nor was there a large fertile country behind it which might have supplied materials for export and markets for foreign goods. If Rome had no such advantages, was it to any advantages of race and descent that she owed her eminence? Again we must answer in the negative. The people of Rome were the same race as their neighbors. They could boast of no superiority on the score of descent. For a long time indeed the fable of the descent from Aeneas and his Trojan followers had currency. This fable is now exploded and if it were not we should hardly infer that for their political and military greatness the Romans were indebted to Oriental ancestors. More recently an admixture of Etruscans has been inferred from indications more or less significant. But this admixture has not yet been proved by any satisfactory evidence and moreover the political and religious systems as well as the language of the Etruscans were entirely different from those of the Latin or other neighboring tribes. The Sabines and Latins who combined to form the fundamental element of the Roman people were offshoots of the Sibelian stock to which all the native or aboriginal population of Italy belong from the Apennine south of the Po to the extreme end of the peninsula. It was therefore not superiority of race which gave the Romans predominance in Italy. We must look for another cause. Perhaps we may be led to surmise that it was a fortunate succession of great men which raised the Romans above the other Italian communities. We know that the Persian, the Macedonian, the Arab empires owed their rapid rise to the genius of individuals. In modern Europe the aggrandizement of Prussia is due to some considerable degree to the eminent political and military qualities of the whole and sovereign dynasty. But Rome was singularly sterile in great men. She was made powerful and predominant by the almost unheeded labor of a vast number of citizens of abrogability, not by men whose names have the ring of Solon, Pericles, and Epaminandus, or Alexander, or if we compare modern times of Charlemagne, Peter the Great, Frederick, or Washington. The kings and statesmen to whom the establishment of the state and the laws is ascribed, such as Romulus, Numus, Servius, and Brutus, belong not to authentic history, but to prehistoric fable, and when politicians arose who exerted an influence beyond that of private citizens in the service of the state, men like Sulla and Caesar, wielded in their hands the power of the whole community, the greatness of Republican Rome had passed away. If then the first cause of Roman greatness, the first impulse given to national development, is to be found neither in the advantages of soil and situation, nor in the superiority of race, nor in the genius of great men, shall we be driven to say that it was mere chance, or in more reverent language, divine providence, which selected Rome as the seat of empire over Italy and the world. Such a conclusion would not be a solution of the problem, but an evasion of the difficulty and a confession of weakness unworthy of the spirit of historical inquiry. Providence does not act contrary, but according to fixed laws, and it is for us to investigate these laws not to ignore them, nor is it utterly impossible to discover the cause to which Rome owed in her infancy such an accession of strength as secured to her the superiority over her neighbors, and thus laid the foundation of her future greatness. If we compare the sight of Rome with the sights of the numerous cities which simultaneously with the earliest settlements on the Seven Hills covered the plain of Latium and the adjoining hills, we find that each of the other towns was built on some steep or easily defended hill. Some of these hill towns such as Prineste were actually stronger than either the Roman capital or the Palatine hill. But nowhere do we find, as on the Tiber, a group of hills possessing each the advantage of defensibility, and yet lying so close to one another that the political isolation of each was impossible, and that some kind of combination or federation for the maintenance of internal peace became absolutely necessary. People who live at a distance from each other may indulge in occasional strife, but if by proximity of habitation they are compelled to have daily intercourse of one another, they are obliged to agree upon some terms of amicable life, if they do not prefer the miseries which internecine war must entail on all. This was the condition of the various settlements on the Seven Hills which lay so near together that nature itself seemed to have destined them to form a combined city. There are dim half fabulous traditions which speak of wars raged between the people of the Quirinal hill and that of the Palatine, but the same traditions also report an amicable settlement of the combats, an agreement to live in peace, a combined government of the respective chiefs. In fact, they describe a confederation of the two peoples and their combination into one political community. Nor are these facts traceable only in the traditions of the Roman people, they are equally so in their institutions. The Association of the Roman Gentes houses to form Curiei, wards, and of these to form the three tribes of Romnes, Titias, and Luceres, together with other indications of a gradual union of independent bodies to form the Roman people show clearly enough that the principle of association lay at the root of the early vigor of Rome and gave to the combined people of the Romans and the Sabines, Populus Romanus Quiritium, such a preponderance over each isolated Latin city that Rome alone became fit to be the head of Latium. Thus then arose a spirit of political association based upon calculations of interest but sanctioned by the sense of right, nor when it had accomplished its first task, the security of the Seven Hills did it die away, but continued to work on a larger scale when Rome had become great. City after city and tribe after tribe were invited, or compelled, to join the leading power as allies, Sochii, until the whole of Italy, though in fact subject to Rome, appeared to be only one vast confederacy. We have seen that the geographical position of Rome and the peculiarity of race cannot be deemed to have been the first causes of Roman greatness. Now, however, after we have discovered the first cause, we may and must admit that both these circumstances powerfully contributed as secondary causes to accelerate and consolidate the growth of Rome when it had taken root owing to the peculiar formation of the ground. The comparative sterility of the territory encouraged the warlike spirit of the early Romans, whose frequent wars seemed to have been undertaken oftener for the sake of booty than in just self-defense. It is possible, too, that the unhealthiness of the surrounding district at certain seasons of the year may have served as a barrier toward off-attacks when other resources failed. The remoteness of the sea and the want of a good port was a protection from the numerous pirates which infested the Turinian waters. But it was especially the situation of Rome in the middle of the peninsula, cutting off the northern from the southern half, which enabled her to divide her enemies and to subdue them separately. Lastly, the similarity of race which bound the Romans by the ties of blood and common customs to the Latins and the Samnites, the Campanians, Lucanians, and in fact to all the indigenous races of Italy, enabled them to repel the invasions of their non-Italian enemies, the Gauls and the Carthaginians, and to appear in the light of champions and protectors of Italy. When in the time of the first historical inroad of the Gauls, the onset of these barbarians had been broken by the brave defenders of the capital, Rome rose from her ashes as by a second birth, with the title to preeminence among all the peoples of Italy, and when the proud-enable Hannibal was foiled before the same walls, Rome in a still more signal and decisive manner fought at the head of the Italians against the common foe. End of Section 2. Section 3 of Early Rome by Wilhelm Ina. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Negami. Chapter 2. Sources of the History of Rome, Part 1. We propose in the present volume to trace the history of Rome through its earliest stages, from the foundation of the city to its destruction by the Gauls, or in the language of the old analysts, from Romulus its first founder to its second founder, Camillus. We shall have to review a period of nominally three centuries and a half, a period as long as that which separates us from the Protestant Reformation, from Luther and Charles V and Henry VIII. It is the period in which those institutions were formed, which proved the strength of the strongest Republic of all ages. It is therefore a period replete with interest for those students of history who desired to penetrate, as it were, into the workshop of the national mind and to watch its operations. And yet we can hardly speak of a history of this time, except in so far as we attach to the word history the original meaning which it bore in the Greek language and which is synonymous with investigation. History in its modern sense not only endeavors to ascertain events accurately, but also to show how each successive event was the product of what preceded and the cause of what followed. Such a concatenation of cause and effect is possible only where the facts can be ascertained, not only with certainty, but also with circumstantiality. Where these conditions do not exist inquiry may still be carried on with profit and with pleasure. Truth may be elicited and errors laid bare, but the full delight and the satisfaction produced by genuine history are wanting. The introductory chapters in the history of every country necessarily consists of such investigations. They are the dawn preceding the day. They contain truth mixed with fables in ever-varying proportions. They are often more perplexing and irritating than instructive and pleasing, and yet we must make our way through them, for as every succeeding event can only be understood if we know that which preceded and prepared it, we are impelled to ascend the stream of history as high as we can, even if the source itself should be hidden and inaccessible. The ancient historians and the modern ones too, until quite recently, were not disturbed by any doubts concerning the truth of the early chapters of the history of Rome. They related with implicit and childlike faith the foundation of the city, which took place, they say, on the 21st of April in a year calculated as identical with the second year of the Seventh Olympiad, or 754 years before the Christian era. They related the wars of Romulus, the legislation of Numa, the conquests of Tullus, and in short the deeds of all the kings with the same era of faith with which they described events reported by eye witnesses. It is true they were occasionally puzzled by contradictions in the narrative, or startled by some downright incredible statement. They were consequently forced to abandon as mere ornaments the reported miracles, but they never doubted that what remained of this narrative was substantially true. This simple faith was the delight of Cicero and Livy, of Dionysius and Plutarch, and of all the following ages down almost to our own. Neither the cautious and sober-minded Bacon, nor the learned Milton, doubted the truth of a story hallowed by the implicit faith of so many ages. And yet, the revival of learning in the 15th century had hardly taken place before some acute and bold inquirers began in a modest and tentative way to point out errors and improbabilities in some of the received accounts. Yet, a few isolated glimpses of light left the general darkness unbroken. Even the more comprehensive view of the unhistoric character of the early history of Rome, which was taken by the Italian philosopher G. Vico, died 1744, produced no effect upon the general convictions of historians. Vico's remarks were still unheeded when two Frenchmen, Puyi in 1729 and Beaufort in 1738, published treatises on the uncertainty of the first five centuries of Roman history, in which for the first time a series of doubts was not only expressed, but supported by sound arguments. Yet, even Puyi and Beaufort seemed to have found no followers, neither the philosophic jurist Montesquieu, who died in 1755, nor the skeptic historian's Hume, who died in 1776, and Gibbon, who died in 1794, seemed to have been shaken in their faith. At last, in 1811, B. G. Nibua published the first volume of a learned and searching criticism into the history of Rome, in which he showed how utterly untenable the stories are which had so long passed unchallenged as the history of the Roman kings and of the first ages of the Republic. Nibua's book was written at the right time. The minds of the literary world were prepared to receive the truth, and from that moment to the present, the critical, that is, the rational study of Roman history has gained ground more and more. Every year has added contributions to our knowledge of Roman institutions, laws, government, antiquities, and the languages of ancient Italy. The same method of critical investigation has since been applied to the histories of Greece and other nations, and though Nibua's views have, in many respects, been modified and rejected, the anti-Niburian mode of treating history, and especially the history of Rome, has been abandoned by the unanimous consent of modern historians. When Nibua's book first appeared, it caused amazement and not a little regret that such a number of stories, endeared like household words to our earliest recollections, should be rejected as useless and idle fancies. This feeling, however, which in sterner minds assumed even the character of indignation and stubborn conservatism, has almost subsided. The critical method has so far gained ground that on the whole Nibua is more blamed for retaining too much of the old faith than for overturning so many vain idols. The most advanced in this line of criticism is Sir George Cornwall Lewis, who in his able and comprehensive book on the credibility of early Roman history, published in 1855, discussed the question in all its bearings and came to the conclusion that a genuine and trustworthy history of Rome does not begin before the war with Pyrrhus, that is to say the second half of the fifth century after the foundation of the city. In this conclusion Sir G. C. Lewis seems to have gone too far. It is of course difficult to draw the exact line which divides darkness from light and error from truth, when one passes into the other by imperceptible gradations. Wherever we may draw the line some truth will always be found to be mixed up with error and some error to contain particles of truth, and in proportion as men are severe or lax in their canons of criticism they will be inclined to limit or extend the legitimate domain of history. After all sufficient data remained for sketching the outline of historical events from the beginning of the republic and to form a conception of the condition of the Roman people even in the age of the kings. The first question we have to answer if we would judge of the credibility of a statement claiming to be considered historical is not whether it is probable or likely, for the fictions of a novel or a poem may be extremely likely without having the least pretence to veracity. We must ask what is the evidence upon which the statement rests? Were the witnesses able and were they willing to tell the truth? All historical narratives must be derived from contemporary evidence, from persons who have heard or seen what they report, and who do not purposely corrupt, distort, or altogether falsify the facts. Inaccuracy in completeness, faulty apprehension, we must expect an excuse even in the best of witnesses, for experience shows that facts as they pass through the observing and reasoning mind of witnesses inevitably assume that particular form and color which the individuality of these witnesses gives to them. We may even expect contradictions as to detail, degree, and manner. In partial and passionate witnesses we may look for involuntary or even voluntary misrepresentations. All such divergencies in the statements of eyewitnesses it is the duty of the historian to weigh against each other and from their combination to work out the truth. This task becomes more difficult and the result more precarious if we obtain our evidence not from eyewitnesses but at second hand from persons who report not what they have seen and heard but what has been related to them by others. All the causes which tend to distort truth are now doubled or more than doubled. To the errors willful or involuntary of the original witnesses are added those of the secondary witnesses and the errors increase in number and magnitude the further our witnesses are removed in time and place from the original actors of the events which they relate. It is indeed possible that even when accounts have been thus transmitted through a line of successive reporters they may still in the main bear some resemblance nay that they may give the substance or the main features of the original facts. In such a case we have before us a genuine tradition which is available for many purposes of historical study and which constitutes the chief portion of all true historical knowledge possessed by any people before history begins to be cultivated as a branch of literature. But it is evident that very little trust can be placed in the detail of such traditions and that perfect accuracy even in the essential parts can hardly be expected. Let us now see what degree of confidence the history of the regal period of Rome may claim on the score of external evidence. More than 500 years had passed since the alleged foundation of Rome in 754 before the first rude and feeble attempts were made by a Roman to write a continuous history of the people from the earliest ages. Fabius Pictor, a member of one of the noblest families himself actively engaged in the military and civil service of the state during the war with Hannibal, wrote a history of his time and prefixed to it by way of introduction a short narrative of the whole preceding period. A similar work was undertaken by Lucius Kinkius Alamentus, a contemporary of Fabius Pictor. Both these authors wrote not in Latin but in Greek, evidently because the Latin language in their time seemed not sufficiently cultivated for literary composition and because they had before their eyes as models the great historians of Greece. The first to apply the Latin language to historical composition was Marcus Porcheus Cato, the famous censor who as a young man had served in the war with Hannibal and died shortly before the final destruction of Carthage in 149 BC of which he was one of the chief instigators. Cato maybe looked upon as the originator of Latin prose writing for literary purposes and it is curious and instructive to notice that the Romans occupied this field nearly 300 years later than the Greeks. Cato wrote the history of his time giving a prominent place in it to his own exploits and even to his own speeches and he like his predecessors prefixed several chapters on the history of the earlier ages including their in accounts of the origin of other Italian cities besides Rome whence the title of the book Oregines was derived. From this time forward we find a considerable number of Roman writers engaged in the same task. The most prominent among them was Lucius Cassius Hamina, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Valerius Antius, Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius and Gaius Lucinius Macare reaching from the time of the Punic Wars to the age of Sulla. Their writings like those of their predecessors are lost but it appears from some notices and extant writers and from a few remaining fragments that the object of these men was more to compose striking and entertaining narratives and to flatter the national pride of their countrymen than to give plain and faithful accounts of the events. They endeavored to distinguish themselves as writers of the Latin tongue and to rival their Greek models. In this endeavor it must be admitted they signally failed. Though they preferred not only rhetorical flourishes to simple style but also fictitious and ornamental detail to truth gained by patient research they are looked down upon by Cicero and Tacitus as meager and frigid chroniclers. As their works followed one another they grew in bulk and pretensions but not in trustworthiness. Some of them in the time of civil commotions were influenced even by party spirit. This class of writers designated by the common name of analysts supplied the extant historians especially Livy and Dionysius with the materials for their works and it appears that unfortunately Livy followed chiefly the fuller and more elaborate but less truthful accounts of the younger analysts especially those of Valerius Antius the least conscientious of them all. Whilst the analysts set themselves the task of simply recording the history of their own or preceding times we find that contemporaneously with Fabius and Kinkius two poets Nivius and Aeneas molded the same materials into epic poems. Nivius who died in 204 BC wrote the history of the first Punic War in the old Saturnian verse the national meter of the Romans which was soon superseded by the hexameter imported from Greece. Aeneas a younger contemporary of Nivius died 169 BC composed a poem and hexameters on the second Punic War. Both poets prefixed to the account of their own time the legendary and traditional history of early times from Aeneas downwards. Of these poems a few scanty fragments are preserved from which we can gather that their authors adopted in the main the current notions of the early history of Rome and that they adorned the facts according to the exigencies of their poetical aims. But it seems unlikely that they had access to any other sources of information than the analysts and therefore their works could not have been more authentic and trustworthy as sources of the history of Rome nor does it appear that any either of the analysts or the extant historians looked upon them or cited them as historical witnesses. In so far as the analysts and analyst poets related the events which happened in their own time or in the age immediately before their own they may have been trustworthy witnesses but we may ask what they could possibly know of events preceding their birth by centuries. What for instance were the sources from which Fabius Pictor in the second century before Christ derived the details of the war with Pyrrhus in the third or of the wars with the Samnites in the fourth of the Volscian and Iquean wars in the fifth and the whole chronicle of the kings in the sixth seventh and even eighth centuries before the Christian era. Of one thing we may be quite certain the analysts did not simply invent the substance of their narrative certainly not the whole of it. The task would have been too much for the dry frigid and unproductive imagination of a Roman. If on the other hand a Greek had concocted the account it would have been far more lively than it is more interesting and full of startling occurrences and would shine in all the varied hues of the exuberant fancy with which that brilliant race was endowed. The stories were evidently not invented by Romans nor could they such as we know them have been invented by Greeks. Besides which on the whole the divergencies and contradictions which they contain affect only the detail of the narrative. A uniform character and spirit pervade all the legends making it probable that Fabius and Kinkyus as well as Nivius and Aeneas when they began to write found a ready made tradition with fixed popular notions about the principal events of the old period and moreover a vast number of names and dates round which the narrative was grouped in a generally accredited digest. How shall we account for the existence of such a popular unwritten history at the time of the first attempts at historical composition. It was one of Nibor's favorite theories that a great portion of the traditional history embodied in their works by the first analysts were derived from national epic poetry. Cato and Vero refer to a custom which they say prevailed among their ancestors of singing the praises of great men at festive banquets to an accompaniment of the flute. But we cannot form the slightest conception of the character of these songs. We do not even know whether they were epic or lyric. We are not informed that they were made use of by any of the analysts and what is a still more decisive objection the character of the writings of the analysts is eminently dry and unpoetical with very few exceptions. After all if Nibor's theory were true it would prove that no reliance could be placed on the alleged poetical stories for poetry though it may be based on fact contains so large an element of fiction and combines truth and fiction so intimately that no critical test will enable us to extract from it genuine historical truth. In the absence of epic poems which might explain the preservation of the facts of ancient Roman history we are thrown back upon ordinary oral tradition. This alone as we have seen unaided by some external and artificial mode of recording facts is sure to degenerate very soon. What for example would be our notions at the present day of the revolution of the 17th century if we had to derive our knowledge of it through oral traditions alone. But it may be objected we neglect oral tradition because we do not require it in our literary age. There is considerable weight in the subjection. The Romans in the ages before the application of the art of writing to literature were no doubt compelled to cultivate tradition if they wished to preserve the memory of the past and we may give them credit for this from what we know of their national pride. Moreover the constitution of Rome like that of England as we have pointed out already was never subverted entirely by revolutions which swept away the existing institutions and obliterated the memory of the past. All the laws that were in force at any particular time had their roots in previous phases of the commonwealth. Precedents were of much value in deciding questions of the day and it was necessary for public men to be familiar to a certain extent with the history of previous legislation and the events and conditions which brought it about. This familiarity with the deeds of their forefathers was greatly facilitated in Rome by the fixity of the Roman families, by the composition of the Senate and by the organization of the priestly bodies. Of the fostering care given to the memory of their ancestors by the great families of Rome we shall have to speak by and by. The Senate as we shall see consisted of men chosen for life. It was never wholly renewed. It never died. It contained all the men who had served the state from their youth upwards in peace and war, who were familiar with the laws and consequently with the history of their people. In their debates previous events must have been constantly referred to and though the past naturally slips by degrees into the background of memory yet such startling events as the Gallic invasion or the conquest of Veyi or the succession of the plebeians or the legislation of the decenviers could never be entirely forgotten. End of section 3 Section 4 of Early Rome by Wilhelm Ena This Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Negami. Chapter 2 Sources of the History of Rome Part 2 Still more preservative of the memories of the past were necessarily those collegia or corporations of priests who, like the augers, were intimately connected with every public transaction or who, like the pontiffs, were the keepers and expositors of all divine and human law. The pontiffs, as we shall presently see, were especially charged with keeping a public register of important passing events, and although these registers contained probably not so much political as sacerdotal information, respecting temples, omens, or other such matters, yet it is not unlikely that the College of Pontiffs was the first to work up and digest into a consecutive narrative the various isolated facts which had been transmitted from preceding times in one way or another, and that the men who took a leading part in public affairs were more or less familiar with a current narrative generally believed to be the history of the Roman people. Nevertheless, we cannot imagine that tradition alone could have sufficed to produce a continuous and connected narrative of the transactions of several centuries, however faithfully it might preserve the memory of great national events and eminent public men. The Roman analysts gave, year by year, the names of the consuls, often men of no great repute, and related many events which are anything but striking or picturesque. Tradition alone would not be able to preserve such a string of names unbroken and unentangled for a great number of years. It would, however, be pushing doubt too far if we were to look upon all those names and stories as fictitious. Moreover, the chronological order in which they are related, though sometimes interrupted and sometimes confused, is, after all, not so hopelessly irregular or contradictory as to be irreconcilable with the natural and probable development of Roman affairs. Its very irregularities, the blanks and contradictions it contains are in its favor. Were it a deliberate fabrication, it would be much more smooth and plausible. It produces on the whole the impression of a genuine, though very imperfect record. To strengthen this confidence we must inquire whether any such genuine records existed at the time when the analysts began to write, and what is their character and trustworthiness. It was an ancient custom at Rome continued down to the time of the grocchi, 131 B.C., for the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Pontifical College or Corporation, to write down every year the most remarkable events and to publish them on wooden tablets for the information of the people. These tablets were preserved in the regia, the official dwelling of the chief pontiff near the Temple of Vesta on the Roman Forum. The attention of the sacrodotal chroniclers, it is true, was directed not so much to political transactions as to occurrences which were looked upon as manifestations of the divine will, such as dirth, famine, pestilence, inundations, earthquakes, and eclipses of the sun and moon. The anger of the gods on such occasions was averted by expiatory sacrifices which the Pontifs prescribed. It is not unlikely that foreign wars and civil disturbances may likewise have been noticed in these annual registers, and at any rate it would seem that to fix the date of any entries the names of the chief magistrates must have been given as the Romans marked the successive years not by numbering them from a fixed era, but by the names of the magistrates of each year. Thus a meager but at any rate a trustworthy abstract of the most striking events must have been compiled from the time when these pontifical annals, called also Anales Moximi after the Pontifex Maximus, were first kept, and if we could trust a statement of Cicero, the custom of keeping such annals would date from the very foundation of Rome. This, however, we cannot accept is true. For not to speak of the regal period, the annals of the Republic during the first two centuries exhibit so many discrepancies and contradictions in the names of the annual magistrates, so many repetitions, so many gaps and palpable errors that the idea of their being based on contemporary evidences altogether inadmissible. We are driven to the conclusion that the pontifical annals are not of the antiquity assigned to them by Cicero, or that the older ones had been lost when the analysts began to write. Now this inference is borne out by external evidence. Livy relates that in the Gallic Conflagration most of the public and private records were consumed by the flames. That the pontifical annals were included in this general calamity there can be no doubt, for they were written on wooden tablets, and the hurry of the Romans in their flight was so great that they had difficulty even in saving the sacred fire of Vesta. What could have induced them to burden themselves with these clumsy historical archives when they could hardly save their bare lives? No room, therefore, is left for doubt that all the contemporaneous records which may have existed before the Gallic War perished at that time, and that the books given out at a later period as copied from the pontifical annals must have been compiled afterwards from memory or from other sources. Other materials for the oldest annals existed in the shape of various official documents, books of law based on precedents, books containing rules and regulations for different public functionaries, census lists, and above all official lists of the annual magistrates. Some of these books may have been kept in the capital which resisted the onset of the Gauls, but the greater part of them must have been renewed after the war, and therefore they cannot claim to be considered unimpeachable contemporary evidence. Another kind of documents which may have helped to preserve the memory of bygone times consists of laws and treaties cut in stone or engraved on metal tablets. Among the most important of these were the laws of the twelve tables, which are said to have been exhibited in the Forum. Copper at that time had the value of money. It is therefore not likely that these tablets escaped the rapacity of the Gauls, who whilst they besieged the capital ransacked all Rome for hidden treasures. We may be sure that the twelve tables of the Deccan fears did not escape, but as they contained the fundamental laws of the Republic, we may be equally sure that they were speedily restored and moreover that they were restored faithfully. The same authenticity cannot be attributed to the so-called laws of the kings, legace regii, which are often mentioned by later writers and unhesitatingly assigned to one or another of the seven kings as their author. They are all of a more or less religious character, are no doubt of great antiquity and refer to those rights and religious customs which precede all secular legislation. As the Roman kings were not only civil magistrates but more emphatically the high priests of the nation, these laws were supposed to have been enacted by them. But they appear never to have been committed to writing in any authoritative form by order of the State, and if any collection existed in the Gallic War, its testimony would have no value as to events of the Regal period. Several ancient writers have left us descriptions of monuments of the primeval age of Rome, including statues of kings and heroes and relics of various kinds, such as the augural staff of Romulus, his straw-thatched hut, the fig tree at the roots of which Faustulus found the basket which contained Romulus and Remus. The value of such pretended documents of antiquity will not be rated high even in an age in which relics, not less wonderful abound and are venerated by thousands. The Romans were as childlike in their craving for the wonderful as our superstitious classes and this craving was amply satisfied by priestly and antiquarian craft. Hence, though genuine monuments may preserve the memory of historical events, it is clear that not much of trustworthy history can have been elicited from the objects just enumerated. Of a very different value, no doubt, are public monuments which contain inscriptions provided that the age of the monuments and the genuineness of the inscriptions are beyond doubt. But the statues of the Roman kings on the capital contained no inscriptions and the inscriptions on columns and shields which writers like Livia and Dionysius refer to as genuine can be shown to be fabrications of comparatively recent times. We have now reviewed in succession the different sources from which the materials employed by the first analysts of Rome may be supposed to have been drawn. We have found them all very scanty and it will go hard for the credibility of the early annals if we cannot discover any other sources more copious and clear. Reference has already been made to the solid structure of the Roman families. The Romans are the only people of antiquity where all families are regularly designated by and propagated under a permanent family name. Whereas in Greece names as a rule were simply designations of individuals and a man would show that he belonged to a particular family only by adding his father's name to his own seldom using a patronymic the Romans had but a very small number of individual personal names but everyone bore the name of that particular family to which he belonged such as Horatius Valerius Fabius and the like. The families not the individual citizens formed the units of which the Roman people was made up. Each family was a small community in itself organized for economic and social purposes under the government of the Patrfamilius who had the power of life and death and was the sole owner of the family property as long as he lived. The family dwelt under the same roof often long after the sons were married its members cultivated in common the family estate and they were bound to each other by the strongest ties of mutual duty and interest. The aristocratic spirit which pervades all Roman history is derived from the position and influence which the great families so firmly and permanently organized exercised in public affairs. They had existed in isolation and independence before they combined to form a federal community and they retained a great portion of their original spirit ever afterwards. Religion lent her aid to strengthen this spirit adhering strictly in this respect to the earliest form of Aryan civilization every family had its own peculiar deity its family altar and its family grave. No stranger was allowed to share in the worship of the family or to be laid in the family tomb. The strictness with which strangers were excluded from the inner communion of a family was proportioned to the strength of the attachment which bound the members together and the veneration felt by all for the head of the family was transferred to his memory after his death. His grave was a sacred spot and annual offerings were made to his spirit nor was his memory allowed to fall into oblivion. Not only was it the practice for the son to add the father's name to his own and to call himself for instance Lucius Manlius the son of Marcus but he added the grandfather's name as well and those families which could boast of a distinguished progenitor who had served the state in one of the higher places of trust preserved a bust or rather mask of the departed in the atrium or great hall of the house and registered his name in the titles of the offices he had filled. Thus the walls of the atrium were filled by degrees with a gallery of family portraits which formed a kind of pedigree and were the boast and pride of the survivors. When a member of the family died the niches in which the masks were kept were opened. Persons dressed in the official robes of the departed placed the masks before their faces and thus representing the members of the former generations of the family accompanied the body of the recently deceased to the marketplace. There the eldest son or some other member of the family ascended the pulpit and delivered a funeral oration in which he set forth the dead man's virtues and services. Nor did he limit himself to the deeds of one ancestor but ascending the stream of history he traced the great men of his house to the earlier days of the Republic and dwelt upon their exploits. Such speeches technically called laudations kept alive the memory not only of the doings of one family but of the whole people. They were a kind of popular history viewed from the standpoint of a single family. And as each noble house contributed its share the smaller streams of family histories naturally united and formed a broad channel of national traditions. The frequent occurrence of such solemnities would naturally suggest the advisability of putting down and writing the leading features of these laudations for the purpose of assisting the memory and enabling successive speakers to do full justice to those whom they were called upon to honor. Thus arose family chronicles which as we are distinctly informed were kept in some noble houses but which we may safely infer were common in all. They were preserved in the Tiblinum the place for the family archives and they most likely formed the chief written materials from which Fabius and Kinkius composed the first national annals. We do not know the precise age when these family chronicles were first composed nor can we speak with more certainty of the time of the first written laudations. Even the antiquity of the solemn funerals is not attested by any external evidence but there is nothing to prevent us from supposing that the practice of the solemn funerals including the laudations were as old as the Republic and that the first written memorials of the family worthy were made as soon as the art of writing was applied to practical use in public and private life that is in the earliest ages of the Republic. It is true we must admit that all such memorials which existed at the time of the Gallic War perished in the flames except those which may have been preserved in the houses of the Capitoline Hill but after the restoration of the city we may be quite sure that most of what had been lost was restored and restored from a memory which had been constantly refreshed by the periodical recurrence of the occasions for delivering laudatory speeches. Perfect accuracy of course was out of the question. Errors of various kinds would creep in and would be perpetuated. Apart from such involuntary errors the family traditions would be corrupted by willful falsifications by concealing disasters by exaggerating successes by repetitions and omissions of various kinds. It is admitted by Cicero that the history of Rome has suffered in veracity from such private documents and this defect is indeed palpable on the very face of it. But what we contend is this that the substratum of all these tales is real and not simply fictitious that many of the errors can be detected and corrected and that even where the detail is lost the general character of the events and the leading features stand out with sufficient distinctness. A patient examination of the early annals of Rome shows clearly that their origin from family chronicles is undeniable. The number of noble families sharing among themselves the high offices of state was so small that sometimes for years together the same names occur in the lists of consuls and so the history of these men is identical with the history of the Republic. Thus the Valeri and the Fabii at one time the Furiii and Manliii at another practically ruled the state and filled the annals with their names. If we assume that the lists of magistrates imperfectly kept or preserved but still preserved in some way enabled the first compilers to reduce the varied and often conflicting statements of the family chronicles to some sort of order that the memorials in the hands of the pontiffs and other priests and magistrates supplied materials of another kind that the oral tradition enlivened and diversified the dry outline giving flesh and blood to the skeleton of names and figures and that a little imagination and editorial skill smoothed down the rough parts of this heterogeneous mass we can perfectly understand the genesis of the history of primeval Rome. We can account for every peculiar feature which marks it and we shall wonder no longer at its defects nor doubt the possibility of its trustworthiness in the general outlines. What we have just said with regard to the origin of the early annals applies strictly only to those of the republic and not to the so-called history of the Roman kings. This follows as a natural consequence from the fact that hardly one of the names of families which occur in the republican annals is found in the stories of the regal period. It is clear that the family traditions do not go further back than the establishment of annual chief magistrates. The yearly registers too, whatever may have been their value, did not include the period anterior to the establishment of the republic. The narrative of the kings passes over long periods of years in total silence, whereas the republican annals give in every year at least the names of the consuls and generally make mention of some political or war-like transaction. There is moreover another fundamental difference. The republican annals, it is true, contain many improbabilities and some statements which are altogether incredible, but on the whole they are sober and keep within the bounds of what is possible and credible. The story of the kings on the other hand is unreal and improbable from beginning to end. Its whole plan, composition and arrangement bear the stamp of bold and clumsy fiction. We have said above that internal probability is not in itself a proof of the historical truth of a narrative, for fiction may be made to resemble truth very closely. But if fiction is so childish and silly that it cannot be reconciled with what we all recognize as being in accordance with physical or moral laws, no amount of external attestation could make us accepted as truth. Hence in the absence of external evidence we must apply the test of internal probability and possibility to the narrative of the kings of Rome. We must therefore make ourselves acquainted with so much of it as will supply us with materials for our criticism. We shall do this the more willingly as apart from any historical value the story of Romulus and his successors as a certain degree of literary importance for us. It was believed almost implicitly by the Romans themselves. It furnished their poets and orators with materials for declamation and ornament. It forms part of the knowledge considered essential even now for a good education and it will serve us as a background for the picture which we shall afterwards draw of the events more justly entitled to our attention and study. End of Section 4 Section 5 of Early Rome by Vilhelmina This Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami Chapter 3 The Legends of the Seven Kings of Rome Part 1 At the time when the capitaline and the surrounding hills were covered with wood or pasture all the country round about and all the cities of Latium were governed by the kings of the mighty city of Alba Longa which stood on the banks of the Albin Lake high on a hill overlooking the whole plain as far as the sea. The city of Alba was built by Ascanius the son of Aeneas the Trojan who had escaped from the burning of Troy and after many wanderings and adventures had settled on the coast of Latium and there had built the town of Lavinium. After the death of Aeneas his son had transferred the seat of his kingdom to Alba and there his descendants ruled for 300 years in prosperity and peace. Now when the time was fulfilled in which according to the decree of the gods Rome should be built it came to pass that after the death of Procus the king of Alba a coral rose between his two sons for the throne. Amulius the Younger took the government from his elder brother Numitor killed his son and made his daughter Ray Silvia a priestess of Vesta to the end that she should remain a virgin all her life engaged in the service of the goddess who presides over the city hearth and loves purity and chastity and those who serve her. But the wicked king was not able to oppose the will of the gods for Mars the god of war loved the virgin and she bore twins. When Amulius heard this he ordered the mother to be killed and the twins to be thrown into the river Tiber but the gods watched over the children and the basket in which they were laid floated to the foot of the Palatine hill near the cave of the god Lupercus and was caught by the branches of a fig tree. The waters of the river now fell rapidly and the twins were left upon the land. Attracted by their cry a she-wolf came out from the cave of Lupercus and suckled them with her own milk and licked them with her tongue. When Faustulus a shepherd who tended his flocks hard by saw this he scared away the animal and brought the children to his wife Florentia and called them Romulus and Remus and brought them up as his own children. Thus the boys grew up among the shepherds and they distinguished themselves by their strength and courage and protected the weak against the lawless men who went forth to pillage and plunder. Then it came to pass that their enemies fell upon them while they were celebrating the festival of the god Pan. Remus was taken prisoner and brought before his grandfather Numitor and accused of having injured his cattle but Romulus escaped. Now Faustulus delayed no longer but told Romulus of his mother and how he was destined to death by Emulius and miraculously saved. So Romulus and his followers forged their way into the town of Alba and set his brother free and the two brothers having slain the unjust and cruel Emulius placed their grandfather Numitor again upon the throne. But the brothers would not remain in Alba and determined to build a new city on one of the seven hills of the Tiber near the spot where they had grown up among the shepherds and they were joined by many from Alba and from the whole country of the Latins. Now as Romulus and Remus were twins and as neither would yield to the other in honor and power a quarrel arose between them and their followers which of them should give his name to the new town and govern it and they determined to let the gods decide by a sign from the sacred birds. Then Romulus with his followers observed the heavens from the Palatine hill and Remus took his station on the Aventine and thus they both waited for a sign from heaven from midnight until morning. Then there appeared to Remus six vultures and he rejoiced and sent messengers to his brother announcing that the gods had decided in his favor. But at the same moment Romulus saw twelve vultures and it was plain that the gods gave the preference to Romulus. Therefore he built the town on the Palatine hill and called it Rome after his own name and drew a furrow round it with the sacred plow and along by the furrow he built a wall and dug a trench. But when Remus saw the doings of his brother he mocked him and leaped over the wall and the trench to show him how easily the town might be taken. Then Romulus was wroth and slew his brother saying thus perish everyone who may attempt to cross these walls and this remained a warning word for all future times that no enemy should venture to attack Rome unpunished. After this Romulus to increase the number of his people opened a place of refuge on the Capitoline hill and there came a great many robbers and fugitives of all kinds from the surrounding nations and Romulus received them all and protected them and made them citizens of his town. But there was a lack of women in the new community. Therefore Romulus sent messengers to the towns around about asking the neighbors to give their daughters in marriage to the Romans. But the messengers were sent back with scorn and charged to say that there could be no union and no friendship with a band of robbers and outcasts. When Romulus heard this answer hit his anger and invited the dwellers round about to come to Rome with their wives and children to see the games which the Romans wished to celebrate in honor of the God Consus. And there came a great number of Sabines who lived in the city of Curus among the mountains. Now when all eyes were fixed on the games suddenly a number of armed Romans rushed forward and carried away the young women of the Sabines. After this the parents of the women hurried away from Rome cursing the faithless town and vowing that they would take vengeance on Romulus and his people. When they returned home they gathered a great army and placed Titus Tashius their king at its head and marched down the valley of the Tiber until they reached the Quirinal Hill. There they pitched their camp and laid siege to the capitaline hill which was held by the Romans. Now one day when Tarpeia the daughter of the Roman captain had gone out to draw water the Sabines begged her to open a gate and to let them into the citadel. Tarpeia promised to do this and made them swear to give her what they wore on their left arms meaning thereby their gold armlets and rings whereupon when the Sabines had penetrated into the citadel they threw their heavy shields which they wore on their left arms on Tarpeia and killed her with the weight so the traitorous met with her reward. Now when the Sabines had won the capital they fought with the Romans who lived on the Palatine and the battle raged up and down in the valley which separates the two hills. One day when Hastis Hastilius a foremost champion of the Romans had fallen his countrymen were seized with fear and turned to flight but at the gate of the town Romulus stopped raised his hands to heaven and vowed to build on this spot a temple dedicated to Jupiter Stator that is the stayer of flight if he would be helpful to the Romans in this need then as if a voice from heaven had commanded them the Romans stayed their flight turned round upon the Sabines and drove them back and it came to pass that Metius Cirtius the leader of the Sabine sank with his horse into the marsh which covered the lower part of the valley and almost perished in the marsh and the place where this happened was called forever after the Lake of Cirtius. When the battle had come to a stand still and Romans and Sabines were facing each other ready to begin the fight afresh the Sabine women rushed between the combatants praying their fathers and brothers on the one side and their husbands on the other to end the bloody strife or to turn their arms against them who were the cause of the slaughter then the men listened to the voice of the women and the chiefs on each side came forward and consulted together and made peace and to put an end to all disputes forever they agreed to make one people of the Romans and Sabines and to live peaceably together as citizens of one town thus the Sabines remained in Rome and the city was doubled in size and in the number of inhabitants and Tidus Taceus the Sabine King reigned jointly with Romulus but as Taceus and his people came from Cares the city of the Sabines high up among the mountains the united people were called the Roman people and the Quiritace and the name remained in use for all times after a time Taceus had a quarrel with the men of Larentum who slew him when he was bringing offerings to the sanctuary of the Panates at Livinium thenceforth Romulus reigned alone over the two peoples and he made laws to govern them in peace and war and first of all he divided them into nobles and commons the nobles he called patricians and the commons plebeians then he divided the patricians into three tribes the Romnace the Ttace and the Lucerace and in each of these tribes he made ten divisions which he called Curriace and the 30 Curriace together formed the assembly of the people and met to administer justice and to make laws but all the patricians were equal among themselves and every father of a family governed those of his house his wife his children and his slaves with absolute power over life and death and several families united together and formed houses and the houses had their own sanctuaries customs and laws but the plebeians Romulus portioned out his tenants and dependents among the patricians and called them clients and commanded them to serve their masters faithfully and to help them in peace and in war and the patricians he recommended to protect their clients against injustice and on that account he called them patrons that is protectors from among the patricians again he chose a hundred of the oldest and wisest men whom he called fathers and made them his council to advise him on all great matters of state and to help him to govern the city in time of peace but out of the young men he chose a legion or army of three thousand foot soldiers and three hundred horse according to the number of the three tribes and the thirty couriers out of every courier one hundred foot soldiers and ten horsemen and for the captain of the horsemen he chose a tribune of the chelorace for this was the name of the horsemen after the city had been so ordered and made strong to defend her freedom romulus governed wisely and justly for many years and was beloved by his people as a father he overcame his enemies in many wars and conquered Fidenai and a trust in town on the left bank of the Tiber not far from Rome now when all that Romulus had to carry out was fulfilled according to the will of the gods it came to pass that he assembled the people to a festival of atonement at the goat pool on the field of Mars which extends from the town toward the north even to the Tiber then there arose suddenly a fearful storm and the sun was darkened and out of the clouds came lightning and the earth quaked with the thunder and the people were frightened and waited anxiously till the storm should clear away but when daylight returned Romulus had disappeared and was nowhere to be found and his people mourned for him then proculus Julius an honourable man came forward and said that Romulus had appeared to him as a god bidding him tell his people to worship him as Quirainus and to practice valor and all war-like virtues that they might please him and might gain for themselves the power over all other nations then the Romans rejoiced and erected on the Quirinal hill and altered to the god Quirainus and worshipped him as their national hero and their protector forever when Romulus had left the earth and had become a god the fathers met together and appointed intermediate kings from the senate to reign in turn each for five days in the place of the king till a new king should be chosen this temporary government or interregnum lasted a whole year for the Romans were at variance with the Sabines and quarreled about the choice of the new king at last they agreed that a Sabine should be taken but that the Romans should choose him there lived at that time in the land of the Sabines a righteous man called Numa Pompilius who was honored and beloved by everyone on account of his wisdom and piety this man the Romans chose to be king over Rome and when Numa was assured of the consent of the gods by the flight of the sacred birds he called together an assembly of the 30 Koreans and asked them whether they would willingly obey all his commands then the people consented and Numa reigned in Rome 43 years until his death now the Romans were a rude people their thoughts were intent on war and plunder and with them might went before right therefore Numa was grieved for he wished to accustomed the people to milder habits and the fear of the gods and to curb their spirit by the sacred laws of religion but the people would not believe him and mocked him then he prepared a simple meal and invited guests to his house and placed before them plain food on earthen plates and water and stone bottles and when they sat down to eat suddenly all the dishes were changed into silver and gold and the plain food into choice vions and the water into wine then everyone knew that a divine power dwelt in Numa and they were willing to receive his statutes and Numa was wise from his youth upwards as a sign of which his hair was gray from his birth and he was trained in all the wisdom of the Greeks for Pythagoras the wisest of the Greeks had instructed him and Egeria a Kamina that is a muse taught him the worship of the gods and the duties of a pious life and once he deceived Faunus and Pekas the prophesying gods of the wood by wine which he poured into the spring from which they drank and he intoxicated them and bound them till they told him the secret charms by which they compelled Jupiter to reveal his will thus Numa was full of all wisdom and taught the people which gods they should worship and what sacred rites they should perform to obtain their favor and all bloody offerings he forbade permitting only simple cakes and milk and other like offerings to be presented to the gods nor would he allow any images to be made of the gods for he taught the people to believe that the gods had no bodies and that as pure spirits they pervaded all nature and watched over the destiny of men moreover he taught the people what prayers and solemn words and ceremonies they should employ in all transactions of public and private life and he ordained that they should not undertake anything important without first calling on the gods and seeking their favor then Numa instituted priests to Jupiter, Mars and Chlorinus and for the service of Vesta he chose pure virgins who should feed the sacred flame on her altar the common hearth of the city also in order to discover the will of the gods he instituted the office of augurs and instructed them in the science of the flight of the sacred birds and he appointed many more priests and servants of the altars and prescribed to each what he should do and that they might all know what was right in the service of the gods and not from ignorance employ the wrong prayers or leave out or neglect any right whereby they might incur the anger of the gods and suffer great punishment Numa wrote all his statutes in a book and handed it over to Numa Martius whom he made chief pontifex that is overseer and watcher over the service of the gods moreover Numa encouraged the peaceful arts that the people might live by the produce of their labor and not think of robbing others for this purpose he divided among the citizens the land which Romulus had conquered and bade them cultivated and he consecrated the stones which marked the boundaries of the fields and directed an altar on the capital line hill to terminus the god of boundaries in the same manner he took care of all artisans in the town who possessed no land he divided them into guilds and set masters over them according to each kind of trade and in order that truth and good faith might be practiced in common intercourse and that promises might be kept as sacred as oaths he founded the service of the goddess fides that is faith and built a temple to her on the capital while Numa was thus occupied with works of peace the weapons of war lay idle and the neighboring people were afraid of disturbing the tranquility of this righteous king so the gates of the temple of janus remain closed for it was the custom among the romans to open them only in time of war thus the reign of Numa was a time of peace and happiness and the gods testified their pleasure in the pious king and his people for they guarded the country from sickness and dearth and blessed and prospered all that the people undertook now when Numa had become old and weak he died without illness and pain and the romans mourned for him as for a father and buried him on the hill janiculus beyond the tiber on that side which lies toward the west after Numa's death the roman chose for their king Tullus Hustilius the grandson of Hastis Hustilius who fought in the battle with the Savine Medius Curius the time of peace was now at an end for Tullus was not like Numa but like Romulus and he loved war and the glory of war beyond everything therefore he sought causes of dispute among the neighbors for he thought that in a long peace the romans would grow effeminate and lose their ancient courage just then it happened that some roman and albin countrymen quarreled and charged each other with robbery therefore Tullus sent Fetealis or heralds to Alba to demand compensation for the plunder the albans likewise sent messengers to Rome to complain and to insist on justice then Tullus employed a stratagem he received the albin messengers with great kindness and treated them with such hospitality that they delayed the execution of their disagreeable commission but the roman Fetealis who were sent to Alba demanded without delay satisfaction from the albans and when this was refused they declared war in the name of the roman people when Tullus heard this he asked the albin ambassadors to deliver their message and sent them home without giving satisfaction because the albans had first refused it and had thus provoked an unjust war now the romans and albans met in the field the albans led by their king Clulius encamped with their army on the frontier of the roman territory and made a deep trench round their camp and the trench was called for ever after the trench of Clulius but in the following night the king of the albans died and they chose in his place a dictator whose name was Meteis Fufetius now when Tullus advanced and the two armies stood arrayed against one another and the bloody fight between the kindred nations was about to begin the leaders came forward and consulted together and determined to decide the war by a single combat of albans and romans lest too much blood should be spilled there were by chance in the roman army three brothers born at one birth and likewise in the alban army three brothers born at one birth these were the sons of twin sisters and equal in age and strength therefore they were chosen as the combatants and the romans and albans bound themselves by an oath that the nation whose champions should be victorious should rule over the other then began the fight between the three Horatii the champions of the romans and the three Coriatii the champions of the albans on the first onset two of the Horatii fell and the three Coriatii were wounded then the surviving Horatius took to flight and the Coriatii pursued him but he turned suddenly round and killed the one of the three who was the most slightly wounded and had hurried on before the others then he ran toward the second and conquered him also and at last he killed the third who on account of his wounds was able to pursue him but very slowly then the romans rejoiced and welcomed Horatius as conqueror and they collected the spoils of the slain Coriatii and carried them before Horatius and let him in triumph to Rome when the procession came near the gate of the city the sister of Horatius went forth to meet it she was betrothed to one of the Coriatii who had been killed and when she saw the bloody coat of her lover which she herself had embroidered she sobbed and moaned and cursed her brother at this Horatius fell into a violent rage and drew his sword and stabbed his sister to the heart because she had wept over a fallen enemy but the blood of the slain sister called for vengeance and Horatius was accused before the criminal judges who sentenced him to death the people however rejected the sentence of the judges out of compassion for the aged father of Horatius who had lost three of his children in one day and because they would not see the man led to death who adventured his life for the greatness of his country and had gained the victory over Alba with his own hand but to atone for this crime Horatius had to do public penance to pass under a yoke and to offer up expiatory sacrifices to the spirit of his murdered sister the beam of the yoke under which Horatius passed remained as a token to the latest times and was called the sister beam but the memory of the heroism of Horatius was also preserved and the arms of the Curiatii were hung up on a pillar in the forum and the pillar was called the pillar of Horatius for all time end of section five section six of early Rome by Vilhelmina this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami chapter three the legends of the seven kings of Rome part two thus Alba became subject to Rome and the Albans were obliged to help the Romans in their wars but Medius Fufetius the dictator of the Albans meditated treason and hoped to overthrow the power of Rome therefore when war had broken out between the Romans and the Etruscans of Fidani and Vae and when the Romans and Albans were drawn up against the enemy and the battle was raging fiercely Medius kept his army back from the fight and hoped that the Romans would be subdued but Tullus perceiving the treason bade his soldiers be of good courage and conquered the Etruscans and when Medius came to him after the battle to wish him joy on account of the victory thinking that Tullus had not discovered his treachery Tullus ordered him to be seized and torn to pieces by horses as a punishment for wavering infidelity between the Romans and their enemies then the Albans were disarmed and Tullus sent horsemen to Alba who burned the whole town with the exception of the temples and led the inhabitants away to Rome from that time Alba Longa was desolate but the Albans became Roman citizens and their nobles were received among the patricians so that Albans and Romans became one people as the Romans and the Sabines had become in the reign of Romulus after this Tullus waged many wars with his neighbors the Etruscans and the Sabines and he became proud and haughty neglecting the gods and their service and regarding not justice and the laws of Numa therefore the gods sent a plague among the people and at last they smote him also with a sore disease then he became aware that he had sinned and he sought to find out the will of Jupiter according to the spells of Numa but Jupiter was wroth and struck him with lightning and destroyed his house so that no trace was left behind thus ended Tullus Hustilius after he had been king for thirty two years and Ancus Marchus the grandson of Numa Pompilius was chosen king in his stead Ancus was a just and peaceful man who made it his first care to restore in its purity the service of the gods for this reason he caused the sacred laws of Numa to be written on wooden tablets and to be exhibited before the people and he endeavored to preserve peace and the peaceful arts as Numa had done whose example he wished to follow in all things but it was not foul safe to him always to avoid war for when the Latins heard that Tullus was dead and that in his dead reigned a peace-loving king who passed his time quietly at home in prayer and sacrifice they made a raid into the country of the Romans and thought to plunder it with impunity then Ancus left the management of the public worship to the priests and took up arms and fought with his enemies and conquered their towns and destroyed them and many of the inhabitants he brought to Rome and gave them dwellings on the Aventine hill therefore Ancus enlarged the town and dug a deep trench in that part where the slope of the hills was not steep enough to protect Rome from her enemies after this he fortified the hill Geniculus on the right bank of the Tiber and built a wooden bridge over the river and he conquered all the land between Rome and the sea and planted a colony at the mouth of the Tiber which he called Ostia and made there a harbor for seagoing ships and when Ancus had been king for four and twenty years he died calmly and happily like Numa and the Romans honored his memory for he was just in time of peace and vigorous and victorious in war at the time when Ancus Marchus was king there lived in the town of Tarquinii in the land of the Etruscans a rich and prudent man called Lucumo the son of Demaratos a noble of the race of the Bacchiods of Corinth who had been driven by the tyrant Cipsulos out of his native town and had fled to Etruria now because Lucumo was the son of a stranger the people of Tarquinii disliked him and refused him a place of honor in their town his wife Tanaquil therefore advised him to leave Tarquinii and to emigrate to Rome where strangers were kindly received there upon Lucumo set out for Rome when he had come to the hill Geniculus near the town an eagle shot down from the air took his hat from his head and flew away with it and after wheeling about for a time over the carriage in which Lucumo and his wife Tanaquil sat the bird flew down again and replaced the hat on the head of Lucumo then Tanaquil who knew the heavenly signs foresaw that her husband was destined to attain high honors in Rome now in Rome Lucumo altered his name and called himself Lucius Tarquinius after his native town and he was soon highly regarded for he was wise and counsel stout in war and kind to his inferiors for this reason King Ancus took him for his counselor confided to him the most weighty matters and before he died made him the guardian of his sons then Tarquinius contrived that the people should choose him and not one of the sons of Ancus for their king and thus the divine omen which Tanaquil his wife had explained to him was fulfilled when Tarquinius had become king he carried on war with the latins and conquered many of the towns he made war also on the Sabines who had invaded the Roman country with a large and powerful army and had penetrated even to the walls of the city and when Tarquinius was at war with them and was in great danger he vowed a temple to Jupiter and so he overcame his enemies then he waged war against the Etruscans and subdued the whole land of Etruria so that the Etruscans acknowledged him as their king and sent him a golden crown a scepter an ivory chair an embroidered tunic a purple toga and 12 axes tied up in bundles of rods thus the emblems of royal power were brought to Rome and were displayed by the Roman kings as a sign of their dominion over the people when all enemies were conquered and Rome had increased in power in size and in the number of its citizens Tarquinius determined to make a new division of the people and to appoint other tribes in the place of the Romnace the TTAs and the Lucaries which Romulus had ordained but the gods sent unfavorable signs and the augur Adesnauius opposed the king and forbade any alteration of the old division of the people against the will of the gods then Tarquinius thought to mock and to humble the augur and bade him consult the sacred birds whether what he then proposed in his mind could come to pass and when Adesnauius had consulted the birds and had obtained an answer that the king's wish should be done Tarquinius gave him a wet stone and a razor and said this is what I purposed in my mind you shall cut through the stone with this knife then Ades cut the stone through with the knife and compelled Tarquinius to give up his intentions but the knife and stone were buried in the forum and hard by the spot the statue of Adesnauius was set up to commemorate the miracle which he wrought as Tarquinius could not alter the name of the old tribes nor increase their number he doubled the number of the noble houses in each tribe and called those which he now admitted the younger houses of the Romnace the TTAs and the Lucaries he doubled also the number of the knights and of the senate so that the division of the people which Romulus had made and the old names remained unaltered except that in each division the number of the houses was doubled now to fulfill the vow that he had made in the war with the Sabines Tarquinius began to build a temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline hill for this he leveled a place on the hill to lay the foundation of the temple and as they were digging they found a human head this was interpreted as a sign that that place should be the head of all the earth and the old sanctuaries which stood in the place where the temple of Jupiter was to be built were transferred to other places according to sacred rites which the pontifices proscribed but the altars of the god of youth and of the god of boundaries could not be transferred so they had to be left in their places and were enclosed in the temple of Jupiter and this was a sign that the boundary line of the Roman Commonwealth should never recede and that its youth would be everlasting moreover Tarquinius built large sewers underground and drained the lower valleys of the city which lay between the hills and which till then were marshy and uninhabitable and in the valley between the Capitoline and the Palatine hills he laid out the forum for a marketplace and surrounded it with covered walks and booths he drained also the valley of Mercia between the Aventine and the Palatine and there he leveled a race course and introduced games like those of the Etruscans which he celebrated every year and called the Roman games thus Tarquinius reigned for 37 years and gained great renown in peace and in war among the servants of King Tarquinius was a virgin called Ocrisia who watched the holy fire sacred to the household god once as she sat by the hearth the god appeared to her in the flame after a while she bore him a son who grew up in the house of the king and they called him Servius because he was the son of a slave one day when the boy had fallen asleep in a chamber in the king's house a flame played about his head till he woke and Tanaquil the king's wife saw from this that Servius was destined for great things therefore when he was grown up to manhood Tarquinius gave him his daughter in marriage and entrusted to him the most important business of the state so that Servius was in the highest repute among the elders as well as among the people when this became known to the sons of King Ancus who were wroth with Tarquinius because he had deprived them of their paternal heritage they were afraid that Tarquinius would make Servius his successor therefore they resolved to have their revenge and they hired two murderers who came to the king disguised as shepherds and said that they had a dispute and that the king should judge between them now as they were wrangling with one another and Tarquinius was attending to what one of them was saying the others struck him with an axe and they both took to flight while the king lay in his blood a noise and tumult arose in the town and Tanaquil ordered the gates of the royal house to be shut to keep out the people and she spoke to them out of an upper window and said that the king was not dead but only wounded and had ordered that Servius should reign in his stead until he had recovered therefore Servius filled the king's place and sat his judge on the royal throne conducting all affairs as the king himself was wont to do but when it became known after some days that Tarquinius had died Servius did not resign the royal power but continued to rule for a time without being appointed by the people and without the consent of the senate then after he had won over a large number of the people by all kinds of promises and by grants of land he held an assembly and persuaded the people to choose him for their king thus Servius Tullius became king of Rome and he ruled with clemency and justice he loved peace like his predecessors Numa and Ancus and waged no wars except with the Etruscans these he compelled to be subject to him as they had been to king Tarquinius before him but with the latincy made a treaty that the romans and the latins should live always in friendship with one another and as a sign of this union the romans and the latins built a temple to Diana on the aventine where they celebrated their common festivals and offered up sacrifices every year for Rome and for the whole of latinium then Servius built a strong wall from the Quirinal to the Esquiline and made a deep trench and added the Esquiline to the town so that all the seven hills were united and formed one city this city he divided into four parts which he called tribes after the old division of the people and he divided the land round about the city into 26 districts and ordered common sanctuaries and holy days and appointed chief men over the inhabitants of the districts which he had made now as Servius was the son of Abon made he was a friend of the poor and of the lower classes and he established equitable laws and ordinances to protect the common people against the powerful therefore the commons honored him and called him the good king Servius and they celebrated the day of his birth as an annual festival but the greatest work that Servius did was to make a new division of the people according to the order of the fighting men as they were arranged in the field of battle and as they voted in the assembly of citizens when the king consulted them concerning peace or war or laws or elections or other weighty matters for this purpose Servius divided the whole people of the patricians and the plebeians into five classes according to their property without regard to blood or descent so that from that time forward the three tribes of Romulus the Romnes the Titias and the Luceris and their 30 curiace formed no longer the principal assembly of citizens but lost their power in most matters that affected the government the first class Servius made to consist of 40 centuries of the younger men who were under 46 years of age and of 40 centuries of the older the latter for the defense of the town the former for service in the field the second third and fourth classes he divided each into 20 centuries 10 of older men and 10 of the younger but he made the fifth class stronger for he gave it 30 centuries 15 of the older men and 15 of the younger and the arming of the centuries was not the same in all the five classes for only the men of the first class wore complete armor composed of breastplate helmet shield and greaves with javelin lance and sword the second class fought without the breastplate and with a lighter shield the third without the greaves and so on so that the men of the fifth class were but lightly armed now as the citizens had to procure their own equipment for war and as the complete armor was very costly Servius chose for the first class only the richest citizens whose property was estimated at more than 100,000 asses that is pounds of copper the assessment of each of the following classes was 25,000 asses less so that in the fifth class were those citizens who were assessed at less than 25,000 asses and those who had less than 11,000 asses Servius arranged in no class at all but made of them a separate century the century of the proletarians and these he exempted from all military service thus Servius arranged the infantry in 170 centuries and for the horse he took the six double centuries of horsemen which Tarquinius had established and to them he added 12 new centuries chosen out of the richest families the horsemen consisted all of younger men for they had to fight only in the field moreover as it was necessary to have trumpeters, armors, and carpenters in the army Servius made four centuries of them so that all together 193 centuries were formed such was the military order of the people when they assembled for making laws or for elections they observed the same order each century having a vote and the chief influence was in the hands of the wealthiest who formed the 80 centuries of the first class and the 18 centuries of knights but the poorer people although much more numerous had but few votes thus their influence in the assembly was small and the greatest number had not the greatest power nor was this arrangement unjust for the rich provided themselves with heavy armor and fought in the foremost rank and when a war tax was laid on they contributed in proportion to their property and Servius showed his wisdom especially in this that in the assembly of citizens he placed the older men and the younger on an equality in the number of their votes although there were fewer of the older according to the nature of things for he wished that the experience and moderation of the older citizens should restrain the rashness of the younger in this manner the people were arranged as an army for the protection of their country and at the same time as an assembly of citizens to decide all matters which concerned the well-being of the city and no man was entirely shut out from the Commonwealth but to each were assigned such burdens and services as he might be able to bear and such a measure of rights and privileges as was just the order of centuries which Servius Tullius had made remained for many ages the foundation of the Roman Commonwealth and although in the course of time it was altered in many ways it was never entirely abolished so long as the people of Rome retained their freedom Servius Tullius had two daughters of whom one was good and gentle and the other haughty imperious and heartless in like manner Aaron's and Lucius the two sons of the elder Tarquinius were of different character the one was good tempered the other was vicious and violent these sons of Tarquin Servius Tullius married to his own daughters and thinking to soften the hearts of the wicked by the gentleness of the good he gave to the wicked Lucius the sweet Tullia to wife and the proud Tullia he married to the good-natured Aaron's but matters turned out differently from what Servius had expected the wicked ones longed for each other's company and they despised their amiable consorts as weak and mean spirited therefore the bad Lucius murdered his wife and his brother and he took to wife the daughter of Servius who had a like disposition to his own so the two evil ones were married and excited one another to new enormities for they desired to possess power and by practicing deceit and cunning they made for themselves a party among the nobles and those of the people who were the enemies of Servius on account of his new laws now when everything was prepared Lucius Tarquinius entered the marketplace clothed in the royal robes and surrounded by a band of armed men summoned the senators to appear before him and harangued them as king at the report of this usurpation Servius was alarmed and hurried to the spot and there arose a quarrel in the senate house between him and his son-in-law then Tarquinius seized the old man and cast him down the steps of the senate house and sent after him men who overtook him on his way to his own house and slew him in the street but the wicked Tullia the daughter of Servius full of joy at what had happened hurried to the marketplace in her carriage and welcomed her husband as king and as she was returning through the street where her father lay dead she ordered the driver not to turn the horses aside but to drive on over the corpse of her father so that the carriage and her dress were spattered with his blood thus Tarquinius gained the royal power without the consent of the senate and without the choice of the people and as he had acquired it so he exercised it so that the people called him the haughty and hated him as long as he lived for he regarded not the laws and ordinances of good king Servius nor did he summon the senate for counsel but reigned according to his own will and oppressed the people high and low moreover he surrounded himself with a bodyguard after the custom of the Greek tyrants and those among the citizens who were against him or whose wealth provoked his avarice he punished upon false accusation either inflicting heavy fines or driving them into exile or putting them to death but the poor he compelled to work at his buildings and made them serve like slaves beyond their strength so that many killed themselves out of despair after Tarquinius had established his power in Rome he turned against the latins and on those who would not willingly submit he waged war and made them subject to himself but the people of Gabyi resisted manfully and he could not prevail against them then his son Sextus devised this stratagem he went to Gabyi as if he were flying from his father and showed his back covered with bloody stripes and begged the people of Gabyi with supplications and tears to protect him from his father and to receive him into their town thus the people of Gabyi were deceived and they trusted his words and befriended him and made him the commander of a company of soldiers but the Romans fled when Sextus led the men of Gabyi for this had been agreed upon between Sextus and his father so when Sextus had thus gained the confidence of the Gabyin people and had been entrusted with the chief command he sent a messenger to his father to ask what he should do the king was walking in his pleasure grounds when the messenger came and instead of giving him an answer in words he struck off with his stick the tallest poppies and sent the man back Sextus understood the meaning of his father's reply and began to bring false charges against the first and noblest of the men of Gabyi and so caused them to be put to death and when he had done this he surrendered the helpless town to his father now in order to strengthen his power Tarquinius united himself to Octavius Mamilius who reigned in Tuscalum and gave him his daughter to wife and he established the festival of the latin games which were solemnized every year on the albin hill at the temple of Jupiter Latiarus for all the latin cities after this he waged war on the vultures a powerful people who lived in the south of latium and conquered Suesta Pametia their greatest and richest town with the spoils thus obtained he finished the temple of jupiter on the capital which his father had begun and the great sewers and the forum or marketplace he also adorned the town with many other buildings for he loved pomp and splendor and he thought by his great extravagance and by compulsory labor to make the people poor and helpless that he might govern them more easily end of section six