Rome

by Matthew Kneale

  Here at least was something that had not changed. Looking up, an early republican would see the familiar profile of the temple to Jupiter Best and Greatest, dominating the city’s skyline just as it had done eight hundred years earlier. But it was not the same temple. The original one had burned down and been rebuilt three times since the Gallic sack. Compared to the wood and brick original the present version was gaudy: covered with marble and with golden roof tiles. And our early republican would be shocked when he came closer. Rome’s most famous temple was closed. It had not been used for more than a decade.

  But there was one tiny building that they would find wholly familiar. To reach it one had only to cross the main Forum and climb up to the Palatine Hill, which had changed completely over the centuries, even in its shape, as huge platforms had been built out from it, artificially extending its summit. The grand aristocratic houses that overlooked the Forum in 387 BC were long gone and the crown of the hill was now occupied by a vast single dwelling: the Imperial Palace. For the past four centuries the Roman state had been an autocracy ruled by emperors.

  Emperors? The word conjures up an image of a romantic, courtly world but the truth was rather different. In some ways, the Roman imperial state seems eerily familiar in our own times when dictatorships try to pass themselves off as democracies. After Rome’s first new autocrat Julius Caesar was assassinated for seeming too like a king, his successors kept up a pretence that the old Republic still existed.

  Emperors had spin doctors and propagandists, and leading poets extolled their rulers’ virtues. Free speech had been among the Empire’s earliest victims; even under the more benign emperors, writers who dared to criticize their ruler or mock him – and few did – could find themselves accused of treason and exiled, or worse. In AD 408, republican officials were still appointed though their titles were purely ornamental, rather like a modern British knighthood. Real power lay with imperial officials, including their secret police, the much-feared frumentarii. Occasionally, Romans found the courage to express resentment through sheer force of numbers, and unpopular emperors might be jeered by the crowd in one of the city’s large arenas. Yet even mass protest could be dangerous, and more visible complainers could find themselves dragged away by imperial agents.

  In 387 BC, Roman politics had been a public business, argued over in the Senate, the Forum and the city’s streets. Now it was private, secret and also curiously domestic. An ambitious politician needed to be able to flatter, bribe or scare those who mattered. Most of all he (in this age no females held high office) had to be able to swallow his pride. To win the era’s greatest political prize – a few moments alone to whisper in the emperor’s ear – he needed to charm those who were closest to him, whether this was his wife, his mistress, his steward, his food taster or his slave dresser.

  But no bribing or crawling was going on in the Imperial Palace when Alaric arrived outside the city walls in November AD 408. It was empty. The last time it had been used was a few months earlier, when the young Western Emperor Honorius paid a visit with his court: the occasion when the Senate met to agree to pay Alaric’s gold and when Senator Lampadius sealed Stilicho’s fate by denouncing the decision as servitude. Imperial visits were now rare and decades could pass without one, while no emperor had lived permanently on the Palatine for more than a century. Rome was no longer capital of her own empire. These days the emperors made their homes close to the frontier and to the soldiers who could make or destroy them: in Milan, in Trier on the Rhine, or in the new Rome of the east, Constantinople. As we saw, Emperor Honorius’ court was currently in Ravenna, where it was kept safe from roving barbarians by encircling marshes. The balcony of the Palatine Palace, from which emperors had once greeted crowds of morning visitors, would have looked forlorn these days, as would the vast throne room behind, the courtyard with its ornamental fountain and the great banqueting hall.

  Beyond these, in a small open space by the Temple to the Great Mother, was the building our republican Roman would have found familiar. After eight centuries the Hut of Romulus still survived. It is documented as standing just a decade or two before Alaric and his Visigoths appeared beneath the walls of Rome and so was almost certainly still to be found in AD 408. Several centuries earlier Dionysius of Halicarnassus described how it was carefully preserved by priests who, ‘add nothing to it to render it more stately, but if any part of it is injured either by storms or the lapse of time they restore the hut as nearly as possible to its former condition’.2 In AD 408 there had been no priests to look after it for at least ten years so it would have been in a poor state, and the thatched roof may have fallen in. Romans had not forgotten their ancient origins and they still loomed large in their thinking.

  But our early republican would be shaking his head. How had autocrats, whom the Romans had been so proud of having thrown out, crept back? For an answer one has only to step down the grand entrance ramp from the Palatine Palace and walk towards the river. Here, facing each other just a few hundred yards apart, were two vast structures, created to impress and awe the Roman population. The Theatre of Pompey was built by its namesake, one of the greatest generals and politicians of the last decades of the Republic. The Theatre of Marcellus was begun by the rival who defeated him: Julius Caesar. Pompey and Caesar were two of a number of military politicians who grew so wealthy and powerful that they could no longer be contained by the Republic’s constitutional rules. In many ways Rome’s aristocrats, whose ancestors created the Republic, were responsible for its fall. Eager to outdo one another they destroyed the class of small farmers that had been the pillar of the early Roman state, evicting them from their land to create highly profitable slave estates. The Republic was also a victim of its own success. Its victories led its armies ever further away, till soldiers lost their sense of loyalty to Rome and instead followed the general who led and fed them. Eventually they were willing to fight for him against other Romans, and to march against Rome itself, as Julius Caesar had them do.

  Caesar not only killed off the Republic, he and Pompey also inadvertently murdered Roman drama, which was long dead by AD 408. In their determination to impress Romans the theatres they built were absurdly large. The Theatre of Marcellus held over 20,000 people, most of whom could barely see the actors on the stage, let alone hear them. Plays were adapted, becoming simplified to key quotes that were recited by a chorus, while actors, whose masks and clothes made them easily recognizable, performed a kind of miming dance. Themes, too, became increasingly crude: a mother mourning her massacred children or incest between a father and daughter. Highly popular was the story of a wicked brigand named Laureolus, who was eventually caught and executed. Roman drama reached its lowest point in the late first century AD when the actor playing Laureolus would be switched shortly before the end of a production and replaced by a condemned criminal who was then killed live on stage.

  It is not hard to see where this idea had come from. Across the main Forum lay another of Rome’s great landmarks: the Colosseum, which in AD 408 was still known as the Flavian Amphitheatre. Its later name would come from a colossal golden statue 35 metres high that stood just beside it. The statue had been commissioned by Emperor Nero, whom it depicted, quite naked, until his successor Vespasian had the head removed and replaced by that of the sun god Helios. The towering Flavian Amphitheatre was by far the largest of its kind in the Empire: a dazzling feat of engineering that could be emptied of its 50,000 spectators in minutes and which had water fountains at every level. It was a source of immense pride to Romans, though it was less solidly designed than one might think. The highest seating levels were poorly supported and became strained when the huge awning over the stadium – which was suspended by a complex arrangement of masts and ropes – was buffeted by high winds. The awning was also susceptible to lightning strikes and in the early third century the whole north-east section of the building burned to the ground.

  In AD 408, though, the Colosseum was in full working order. Its s
ubterranean tunnels would have been filled with men and wild animals, ready to be raised through trapdoors into the arena. Killing as public entertainment was a phenomenon that was beginning to decline at this time, and thanks to Christian pressure gladiator fights had been banned just four years earlier. They were originally an Etruscan invention – a form of human sacrifice in which a pair of gladiators fought to the death at the funeral of an important figure – and appeared in Rome two centuries after the Gallic sack in 387 BC. They soon became hugely popular, so much so that attempts were made to rein in extravagant games financed by ambitious individuals. It was no use. Though sensitive Romans found killings in the arena abhorrent, most were hooked. For the best part of six hundred years they watched gladiators fighting and killing gladiators, gladiators fighting wild animals, wild animals fighting each other, and animals mauling condemned criminals to death. Though gladiatorial combat may have been abolished, fights between men and wild animals would continue in Rome’s arena for another century and more.

  To our eyes killing as entertainment seems only abhorrent. If any explanation for such a thing can be found, it is that this was a far more violent age than our own, not only in Rome but worldwide, and that a certain amount of brutality was part of everyday life. The Romans developed their own justifications, claiming that a visit to the games was their patriotic duty, and that having their children – and especially their sons – watch the gore of gladiator fights toughened them up, as befitted future defenders of the Empire.

  A first visit to the amphitheatre was an important rite of passage. It was also a day out and families would bring elaborate picnics. Finally, Romans went to the Colosseum in the hope of making a penny or two. They were addicted to gambling, whether on chariot races, dice or gladiators, and the crowd’s exultant shouts of, ‘Well washed!’ when one gladiator managed a lethal stab against another and blood gushed, was all the louder because they had just won some money. The Colosseum was often almost deserted during public executions because no bets could be made.

  The main reason Romans went to the amphitheatre, though, was neither patriotism nor to bet, but for thrills. A single visit could be enough to leave even the most reluctant visitor addicted. To this day the Colosseum remains the world’s most concentrated killing ground, and it is estimated that between a quarter and half a million people had their lives abruptly ended in its arena, along with several million animals large and small, common and rare. Species became extinct in its service. Perhaps its most disturbing legacy, though, is what it says about human nature. Humans, if they are reassured that their behaviour is socially acceptable, are quite capable of enjoying the sight of others enduring a gruesome death in front of them, and of enjoying it again and again.

  If Romans were proud of their amphitheatre, visitors to the city tended to be more impressed by the city’s public squares, the fora. At the time of the Gallic sack there had only been one, which was the city’s political heart, where crowds gathered, speeches were made and the Senate met. By AD 408 political power had long ago migrated and the main Forum was more like a modern Italian piazza: a place where you ran into friends, settled a few business matters and perhaps did a little shopping. In appearance it has been compared with the Piazza San Marco in Venice: faintly triangular in shape, lined with porticoes and shops, and with a series of tall flagpoles along one side. However, Rome’s main Forum would have been far more cluttered than the Piazza San Marco, with statues, shrines and monuments to past and present emperors. The cluttering may have been a deliberate ploy to extinguish ghosts of public politics and to crowd out popular gatherings.

  By AD 408 the only political activity that still went on in the main Forum took place inside the Senate House: a relatively new building, which, like everything else in the Forum, had been rebuilt following a bad fire in AD 283. Imposingly tall and square though it was, little of importance occurred inside at this time. Once the Senate had ruled the whole Mediterranean but after the fall of the Republic its power had steadily seeped away. Emperor Constantine tripled its membership to 2,000, making it bloated and ineffective. Three generations later, Emperor Valentian I, who, like many emperors before him had a strong fear of magic spells, made its powerlessness brutally apparent. In a McCarthy-like witch hunt, senators and their wives were tried for adultery, incest and, most of all, sorcery, and some of Rome’s leading citizens were tortured; something that would have been unimaginable in earlier times. In AD 408 the Senate was little more than a town council notable for its sycophancy. Senator Lampadius’ outburst against Stilicho was highly unusual and probably reflected higher political stirrings rather than his own independence of mind. When a new emperor rose to power Rome’s senators would chant their approval in unison.

  As the Senate lost its significance, so did the Forum. Fora, like theatres, offered emperors a chance to leave their mark and by AD 408 the original Forum was one of eleven. Of these, visitors to the city were particularly impressed by that of Emperor Trajan, which was part of a vast complex whose construction had required the removal of an entire hillside. It included a huge equestrian statue of Trajan; Trajan’s famous column that depicted his epic campaign to conquer Dacia, modern Romania (most of which had long ago been abandoned as imperial territory by AD 408) – as well as a huge basilica hall, two libraries, one for Latin texts and one for Greek, and also a kind of ancient Roman mall that contained shops on three elegant, curving levels. Like other great monuments of the Empire, the complex had been built using a substance that had not been dreamed of at the time of the Gallic sack: concrete. Made from lime and volcanic sand, it was poured into temporary wooden moulds till it set, and then faced with brick and stone. With concrete, Roman emperors could build gargantuan structures that perfectly reflected their own power and offered their subjects a suitable sense of their own insignificance.

  But Romans’ skill with concrete could also produce great beauty. The Pantheon temple, built by Emperor Hadrian three centuries before Alaric’s Visigoths marched on Rome, used the substance masterfully. Its dome, with a huge circular hole at its centre, was ingeniously constructed from different mixes of concrete that grew lighter as the dome became higher and thinner. The Pantheon showed how far the Romans had come in developing their own architectural style and if the city’s early temples were Greek imitations the Pantheon was purely Roman. In place of Greek straight lines, the Pantheon – aside from the portico fixed awkwardly to its front – was all curves, inside and out. It was an exquisite building, whose interior was proportioned precisely to contain a vast sphere. The floor sloped imperceptibly towards tiny holes in the paving, through which rainwater from the hole in the ceiling drained away. Yet something appears to have gone badly wrong with its portico. The decoration on the main part of the building does not align with its roof, and is far higher. Likewise, the supports beside the doorway do not match the portico’s columns and are much wider. It seems something went awry with the granite columns, which came from Egypt. They may have arrived too small or the right ones may have sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean and had to be replaced in a hurry.

  The Pantheon was not Rome’s only place of wonder. Although classical Rome did not yet have the beauty it would one day achieve – it was a chaotic, crowded, functional city – it did have oases of beauty. There were delightful parks, both private and public, such as the Portico of Octavia, which contained a whole posse of equestrian statues looted from Greece that depicted Alexander the Great and his generals charging into battle. Alongside the vast buildings one could also find others that were small and delicate. At the northern end of the Campus Martius was an instance of Roman art at its best: Augustus’ Temple to Peace, whose exquisite reliefs included a portrait of Augustus, his family and the Roman elite attending a sacrifice.

  Then Rome in AD 408 was crammed with art. There were numerous famous Greek statues, some looted from Greece and others that were Roman copies of Greek originals. To our eyes these would seem rather gaudy as they were not pla
in marble – as their survivors have now become – but had every detail, from their faces to their clothes, brightly painted. Alongside Greek masterpieces Rome’s open spaces were crowded with drearier statues that depicted emperors, city prefects and other high officials who had achieved the great Roman dream and been immortalized in stone. Though many had been immortalized less than they hoped, and a good few had already had their heads changed.

  Yet this was not the only odd thing one might notice about them. To modern eyes, a careful look at Rome’s statues could give the impression that time had somehow gone into reverse. The older ones were delicate and realistic in a way we associate with the classical world. By comparison the newer ones seemed more primitive: heavier in style with emotionless faces and large staring eyes. The same was true of the inscriptions on the plinths. Those carved two centuries ago or more had perfectly squared letters, while the new ones were rounder, less upright and more crowded together. This artistic change occurred during the Third Century Crisis when the Roman Empire struggled to stay afloat. It may have resulted simply from a lack of skilled craftsmen, or, in an era of high inflation and low tax revenues, from a lack of money to pay them. Or the new style may have reflected a deeper change. As their empire wobbled and life became increasingly a matter of survival, people ceased to be so interested in perfection.

  Another great change had been going on in the decades before AD 408 and for signs of it one needed only to look down almost any street. Rome was a city crowded with religious buildings. Alongside temples to the traditional Greek and Roman gods were temples to gods that our early republican would have found entirely unfamiliar. The cults of most of these reached Rome during the late Republic and early Empire and though at first they had been regarded with some suspicion, they eventually became accepted as fully Roman. They also tolerated one another. Some cults permitted images of rival gods to be kept in their temples, though naturally their own gods always held pride of place.