The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  We must not exaggerate. However much Rome learned from her neighbors, she remained, in all the basic features of life, distinctively herself. Nothing in Etruscan history quite suggests the Roman character, the grave self-discipline, the cruelty and courage, the patriotism and stoic devotion that patiently conquered, and then patiently ruled, the Mediterranean states. Now Rome was free, and the stage was cleared for the incomparable drama of the grandeur and decline of paganism in the ancient world.

  * * *

  I The names given are Roman; the Etruscan names are unknown.

  II The Greeks called the Etruscans Tyrrheni or Tyrseni; the Romans called them Etrusci or Tusci. Possibly, like tyrant, the Greek name came from Tyrrha, a fortress in Lydia. Tower is probably a kindred word.

  III They were used in Egyptian tombs and temples, and in the palaces of Nineveh. Some Roman arches are as old as any that remain in Etruria.26

  IV There were more than seven of these modest elevations in Rome, and the “seven” varied from time to time. In Cicero’s day they were the Palatine, Capitoline, Caelian, Esquiline, Aventine, Viminal, and Quirinal.

  V Perhaps also he cleansed it with sewers. Roman historians ascribed to him the Cloaca Maxima, or Supreme Sewer; but some scholars reserve this honor for the second century B.C.40

  VI As originally applied to cavalrymen, the term could bear the traditional English mistranslation into knights; but equites soon lost this early sense, and came to mean the upper middle, or business, class.

  VII Few students are inclined to follow the extreme skepticism of Ettore Pais, who rejects as legendary all Roman history before 443 B.C., and believes that the two Tarquins were one person, who never existed.43 A tentative and modified acceptance of the traditional story after Romulus appears to “account for the phenomena” better than any other hypothesis.

  VIII The traditional account of the Tarquins is probably darkened by aristocratic and anti-Etruscan propaganda. The history of early Rome was written chiefly by representatives or admirers of the patrician class, just as the history of the emperors was later written by senatorial partisans like Tacitus.

  IX Most students since Niebuhr consign Lucretia to legend and Shakespeare. We do not know where history retires and poetry enters. Some have thought even Brutus to be legend;46 but here, again, skepticism has probably gone too far.

  X Or, says another tradition, two praetors or generals.

  XI In an Etruscan tomb at Vetulonia, dated back to the eighth century B.C., a double-headed iron ax was found, with its shaft enclosed by eight iron rods.53 The double ax as a symbol of government is at least as old as Minoan Crete. The Romans gave to the bound rods and axes the name of fasces, bundles. The twelve lictors (ligare, to bind) owed their number to the twelve cities of the Etruscan Federation, each of which provided a lictor for the chief officer of the Federation.54

  BOOK I

  THE REPUBLIC

  508-30 B.C.

  CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

  B.C.

  813(?):

  Foundation of Carthage

  558:

  Carthage conquers western Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, etc.

  509:

  Establishment of Roman Republic

  508:

  War with Etruscans; Horatius Cocles

  500:

  Hanno explores west coast of Africa

  494:

  First secession of the plebs; institution of the tribunate

  492:

  Coriolanus (?)

  485:

  Condemnation of Spurius Cassius

  458,439:

  Cincinnatus, dictator

  451:

  First Decemvirate

  450:

  The Twelve Tables

  449:

  Second secession of the plebs

  445:

  Lex Canuleia on marriage

  443:

  Institution of the censorship

  432:

  First law to check electoral corruption

  396:

  Romans capture Veii

  390:

  Sack of Rome by the Gauls

  367:

  Lex Licinia alleviates law of debt

  343-341:

  First Samnite War

  340-338:

  War with the Latins; dissolution of the Latin League

  339:

  Leges Publiliae end veto power of Senate

  327-304:

  Second Samnite War

  326:

  Lex Poetelia alleviates law of debt

  321:

  Romans defeated at Caudine Forks

  312:

  Censorship of Appius Claudius; beginning of Appian Way

  300:

  Lex Valeria on right of appeal; lex Ogulnia on eligibility to priesthood

  298-290:

  Third Samnite War

  287:

  Final secession of the plebs; leges Hortensiae on powers of the Assembly

  283:

  Rome occupies most of Greek Italy

  280-275:

  Pyrrhus in Italy and Sicily

  280-279:

  “Pyrrhic victories” at Heraclea and Asculum

  272:

  Rome takes Tarentum

  264-241:

  First Punic War

  248:

  Hamilcar Barca invades Sicily

  241:

  Carthaginian fleet defeated off Aegadian Isles; Sicily a Roman province

  B.C.

  241-236:

  War of Mercenaries vs. Carthage

  240:

  First play of Livius Andronicus

  239:

  Carthage yields Sardinia and Corsica to Rome

  237:

  Hamilcar in Spain

  235:

  Naevius’ first play

  230:

  War on the Illyrian pirates

  222:

  Rome takes Cisalpine Gaul

  221:

  Hannibal commander in Spain

  219-201:

  Second Punic War

  218:

  Hannibal crosses the Alps and defeats Romans at the Ticinus and the Trebia

  217:

  Hannibal defeats Romans at Lake Trasimene; Fabius Maximus dictator

  216:

  Hannibal victorious at Cannae

  215:

  Treaty between Hannibal and Philip V

  214:

  Fl. Plautus

  214-205:

  First Macedonian War

  212:

  Romans capture Syracuse

  210-209:

  Scipio Africanus Major in Spain

  207:

  Hasdrubal defeated at the Metaurus

  203:

  Hannibal recalled to Africa

  202:

  Scipio defeats Hannibal at Zama; Quintus Fabius Pictor publishes first history of Rome

  201:

  Spain a Roman province

  200-197:

  Second Macedonian War

  199:

  Fl. Ennius

  189:

  Battle of Magnesia

  186:

  Suppression of the worship of Bacchus

  184:

  Censorship of Cato the Elder

  171-168:

  Third Macedonian War

  168:

  Battle of Pydna

  167:

  Polybius in Rome

  160:

  The Adelphi of Terence

  155:

  Carneades lectures in Rome

  155-138:

  War with the Lusitanians

  150-146:

  Third Punic War

  147-140:

  Successes of Viriathus against Rome in Spain

  146:

  Scipio Africanus Minor destroys Carthage; Mummius sacks Corinth; extension of Roman rule over north Africa and Greece

  CHAPTER II

  The Struggle for Democracy

  508-264 B.C.

  I. PATRICIANS AND PLEBS
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br />   WHO were the patricians? Livy1 thought that Romulus had chosen a hundred clan heads of his tribe to help him establish Rome and be his council or senate. These men were later called patres—“fathers”—and their descendants patricii—“derived from the fathers.” Modem theory, which lives by nibbling at tradition, likes to explain the patricians as alien conquerors, perhaps Sabines, who invaded Latium and thereafter ruled the Latin plebs, or populace, as a lower caste. We may believe that they were composed of clans that through economic or military superiority had acquired the best lands, and had transformed their agricultural leadership into political mastery. These victorious clans—the Manlii, Valerii, Aemilii, Cornelii, Fabii, Horatii, Claudii, Julii, etc.—continued for five centuries to give Rome generals, consuls, and laws. When the three original tribes united, their clan heads made a senate of some three hundred members. They were not such lords of comfort and luxury as their descendants; often they put their own hands to the ax or the plow, lived vigorously on simple fare, and wore clothing spun in their homes. The plebs admired them even when it fought them, and applied to almost anything appertaining to them the term classicus, “classical”—i.e., of the highest rank or class.2

  Close to them in wealth, but far below them in political power, were the equites, or businessmen. Some were rich enough to win their way into the Senate, and formed there the second part of its constituent patres (et) conscripti—i.e., “patricians and coinscribed men.” These two classes were called the “orders,” and were termed bom, “the good”; for early civilizations thought of virtue in terms of rank, ability, and power; virtus to the Roman meant manliness, the qualities that make a man (vir). Populus, “people,” took in only these upper classes; and originally it was in this sense that those famous initials were used—S P Q R (Senatus Populusque Romanus)—which were to mark so proudly a hundred thousand monuments.3 Gradually, as democracy fought its way, the word populus came to include the plebs.

  This was the main body of Roman citizens. Some were artisans or tradesmen, some were freedmen, many were peasants; perhaps, in the beginning, they were the conquered natives of the city’s hills. Some were attached as clientes, or dependents, to an upper-class patronus; in return for land and protection they helped him in peace, served under him in war, and voted in the assemblies as he told them.

  Lowest of all were the slaves. Under the kings they had been costly and few, and therefore had been treated with consideration as valuable members of the family. In the sixth century B.C., when Rome began her career of conquest, war captives were sold in rising number to the aristocracy, the business classes, and even to plebeians; and the status of the slave sank. Legally he could be dealt with as any other piece of property; in theory, and according to the custom of the ancients, his life had been forfeited by defeat, and his enslavement was a merciful commutation of his death. Sometimes he managed his master’s property, business, or funds; sometimes he became a teacher, writer, actor, craftsman, laborer, tradesman, or artist, and paid his master part of his earnings. In this or other ways he might earn enough to buy his freedom and become a member of the plebs.

  Contentment is as rare among men as it is natural among animals, and no form of government has ever satisfied its subjects. In this system the businessmen were piqued by their exclusion from the Senate, the richer plebeians by their exclusion from the equites; and the poorer plebeians resented their poverty, their political disabilities, and their liability to enslavement for debt. The law of the early Republic allowed a creditor to imprison a persistently defaulting debtor in a private dungeon, to sell him into slavery, even to kill him. Joint creditors might, said the law, cut up the corpse of the defaulting debtor and divide it among them—a provision apparently never enforced.4 The plebs demanded that these laws should be repealed and the burden of accrued debt reduced; that the lands won in war and owned by the state should be distributed among the poor instead of being given, or sold at nominal prices, to the rich; that plebeians should be eligible to the magistracies and the priesthoods, be permitted to intermarry with the “orders,” and have a representative of their class among the highest officials of the government. The Senate sought to frustrate the agitation by fomenting wars, but it was shocked to find its calls to the colors ignored. In 494 B.C. large masses of the plebs “seceded” to the Sacred Mount on the river Anio, three miles from the city, and declared that they would neither fight nor work for Rome until their demands had been met. The Senate used every diplomatic or religious device to lure the rebels back; then, fearing that invasion from without might soon be added to revolt within, it agreed to a cancellation or reduction of debts, and the establishment of two tribunes and three aediles as the elected defenders of the plebs. The plebs returned, but only after taking a solemn oath to kill any man who should ever lay violent hands upon their representatives in the government.5

  This was the opening battle in a class war that ended only with the Republic that it destroyed. In 486 the consul Spurius Cassius proposed an allotment of captured lands among the poor; the patricians accused him of currying popular favor with a view to making himself king, and had him killed; this was probably not the first in a long line of agrarian proposals and Senatorial assassinations, culminating in the Gracchi and Caesar. In 439 Spurius Maelius, who during a famine had distributed wheat to the poor at a low price or free, was slain in his home by an emissary of the Senate, again on the charge of plotting to be king.6 In 384 Marcus Manlius, who had heroically defended Rome against the Gauls, was put to death on the same charge after he had spent his fortune relieving insolvent debtors.

  The next step in the climb of the plebs was a demand for definite, written, and secular laws. Heretofore the patrician priests had been the recorders and interpreters of the statutes, had kept their records secret, and had used their monopoly, and the ritual requirements of the law, as weapons against social change. After a long resistance to the new demands, the Senate (454) sent a commission of three patricians to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon and other lawmakers. When they returned, the Assembly (451) chose ten men—decemviri—to formulate a new code, and gave them supreme governmental power in Rome for two years. This commission, under the presidency of a resolute reactionary, Appius Claudius, transformed the old customary law of Rome into the famous Twelve Tables, submitted them to the Assembly (which passed them with some changes), and displayed them in the Forum for all who would—and could—to read. This seemingly trivial event was epochal in Roman history and in the history of mankind; it was the first written form of that legal structure which was to be Rome’s most signal achievement and her greatest contribution to civilization.

  When the second year of the commission’s tenure’ ended, it refused to restore the government to the consuls and tribunes, and continued to exercise supreme—and ever more irresponsible—authority. Appius Claudius, says a story suspiciously like Lucretia’s, was stirred with a passion for the beautiful plebeian Virginia, and, to secure her for his pleasure, had her declared a slave. Her father, Lucius Virginius, protested; and when Claudius refused to hear him he slew his daughter, rushed out to his legion, and asked its aid in overthrowing the new despot. The enraged plebs once more “seceded” to the Sacred Mount, “imitating,” says Livy, “the moderation of their fathers by abstaining from all injury.”7 Learning that the army was supporting the plebs, the patricians gathered in the senate house, deposed the Decemvirs, banished Claudius, restored the consulate, enlarged the tribunate, recognized the inviolability of the people’s tribunes, and confirmed to the plebs the right of appealing to the Assembly of the Centuries from the decision of any magistrate.8 Four years later (445) the tribune Caius Canuleius moved that the plebs should have the right of intermarriage with patricians, and that plebeians should be eligible to the consulate. The Senate, again faced by threats of war from vengeful neighbors, yielded the first point, and averted the second by agreeing that thereafter six of the tribunes chosen by the Centurial Assembly should hav
e the authority of consuls. The plebs responded handsomely by choosing all these tribuni militum consulari potestate from the patrician class.