Founding Fathers

by Alfred Duggan

  Camerium had a long history, though it had never been important or powerful. The wall was made with great stone blocks, neatly fitted without mortar, and the houses inside were of brick, at least in the lower story; for many had an upper floor, built for lightness with beams and wicker. At the local brickyard they had just begun to make roofing-tiles, thin curved bricks which could be laid in ridges on the roof to carry off rainwater; as the old thatch decayed more and more of the houses were being roofed with baked clay. The narrow streets had long ago been paved with round cobbles, in which grass grew and puddles abounded. It was all quite unlike the raw newness of Rome.

  Vibenna kept the house which had been her late husband’s; though she was compelled to divide her possessions with another Roman who had brought a Roman wife with him. It was not the kind of house Perperna was used to, the kind they built in his ruined city far to the north. Here everything was cramped and a little flimsy, as though when the place was founded they had first laid out the walls and then found they had not left enough room for all the people; but it was more or less in the Etruscan style, and he could feel at home in it.

  That was just as well, for in other respects the new Camerium was not a homely place. The Roman colonists, though they were twice as numerous as the old citizens, felt awkward and guilty about being there, which made them boisterous and quicktempered. The citizens were not allowed to meet in their own assembly, though in theory they would be welcome in the assembly at Rome if they had the time to visit it. In everyday matters they were governed by a council of ten elders, who had been elected in the Roman assembly – or rather nominated by King Romulus. It seemed unnatural to live behind a wall and lack the privileges of self-government. The citizens were always quarrelling among themselves, especially now that their ploughlands had new boundaries; but they must take their disputes to Rome for settlement. Like citizens anywhere, they spent most of their free time lounging in the market-place; but since they were forbidden to hold a public meeting they gathered in hostile cliques. To Perperna the whole place seemed very like an encampment of bandits. But at least it was a sternly ruled encampment, where a man’s life was safe.

  Worst of all, to a trained Etruscan haruspex, was the absence of religious worship. The right to inspect sacrificial victims, and so to learn the sentiments of the gods towards the city of Camerium, had been transferred to King Romulus with all the other attributes of sovereignty. Perhaps he remembered to offer sacrifice on their behalf; but if so he did it in Rome where they could not see it being done. The templum was never used, and the storehouse of sacred things had been emptied. That marvellous chariot, made all of cast bronze, the pride of the town, now stood on the Capitol in Rome, and its treatment there was a subject for hushed and horrified comment. Men said that King Romulus had placed the clay image of a man in the car which had been dedicated for the use of Mars alone. Then, before all his people, he had breathed into the face of the image and proclaimed that henceforth it would represent himself, riding in the chariot of his father Mars. Such presumption must bring its own punishment, unless in truth King Romulus was something more than a man.

  Meanwhile the colonists of Camerium, as a community, paid no corporate worship to the gods. What must be done was done for them in Rome. Perperna knew that was not enough, and tried to fill the gap with private and unofficial offerings. But he saw, uneasily, that the new colony must survive without divine favour, by its own human resources.

  He had a good ploughland, with a team of oxen and an elderly slave to look after them. The land had been carefully cultivated and he stepped straight into the shoes of his predecessor, Vibenna’s first husband, without any of the bother of clearing unbroken land which usually went with the grant of a new farm. His home also was in running order, and housekeeping was easy; but his home brought him no comfort.

  He had enough to eat; the hearth blazed with a clear bright fire on cold mornings, and gave off clouds of smoke when the insects were troublesome; his bed was clean and soft, and Vibenna shared it without tiresome protestations of false modesty. But through all the shared intimacies of married life she treated him as a stranger.

  She never opened a conversation, though she answered his remarks briskly and intelligently. She still maintained that she did not understand Etruscan, and replied always in the common Italian dialect; though he suspected that knew more of her father’s language than she would admit. She possessed hardly anything of her own, and practically nothing that spoke of her past; all her property she kept in a wooden box whose lid was closed with a hook, and he did not wish to appear a bully by searching through it. She owned two woollen tunics and a cloak for cold weather, a bronze necklace, silver earrings, and a fine comb carved carefully from boxwood. These treasures appeared gradually, as they were needed, and he never saw them all at once.

  It was odd that there were no sacred things in the house, either her own or those of her late husband (whose name he never learned). Most housewives had at least a little clay image to guard the store-cupboard, and something lucky by the hearth to make the baking go right. When he questioned her she answered willingly that once there had been a Lar, and an object belonging to her husband which he kept covered with a cloth, which she supposed to be the skull either of an ancestor or of some great man killed in battle by an ancestor. Those things had been there, and sometimes her husband had poured wine before them; but in the confusion of the conquest they had disappeared. Someone must have stolen them. She herself was a simple woman, brought up by her Italian mother; she did not understand the complicated service of the high Etruscan gods.

  At first Perperna tried to make friends with her, but after a time he gave up the attempt in despair. If she had hated him there might have been a chance of changing her feelings, but she seemed to have no feelings at all. He was inclined to put down her lack of interest to sheer stupidity; until one day, almost without thinking, she told him her philosophy of life. He had come in from the fields to find her quietly weeping by the hearth, and he asked her whether anything special was the matter. He never forgot her reply.

  ‘No, there’s nothing the matter. I am a woman, so from time to time I weep. That is the life of a woman. First you are a child, and that’s all right. Then you grow up and some man does something to you and you cry. Then the same man, or another, does something else, and you cry again. In the end they stop doing things to you, and you die. But you yourself never do anything, you just wait for the next thing to be done to you. If you are sulky about it they beat you; if you let them do what they want no one bothers to hurt you. But in any case you cry quite often. If you command me to smile I shall try to obey you; but I wish you would allow me to do the only thing that a woman ever does of her own free will.’

  ‘Well, if that’s how you see life you do well to weep, and I shan’t command you to stop,’ he said brusquely. ‘Here, put my dinner in a bowl, and I’ll go out to the market-place and eat it. I used to wonder why men lounge there in the evening, when they have warm houses waiting for them. Now I wonder only how children get begotten, to continue the human race. Good-bye. I shall come in again when it’s too cold to stay outside any longer.’

  After that he did not try to win her affection. He was kind to her, as he was kind to his oxen; but he thought of her only as cook and bedwarmer, and did not pry into her thoughts.

  She had been unlucky. All the same, he reminded himself, King Romulus had undoubtedly shown great mercy to the surviving inhabitants of Camerium. Most of them were still free, and eating regularly, either in their own city or in Rome. They were poor, of course, and their daughters had been forcibly married to strangers. But then they had started a war and lost it. It was hard to imagine anything more terrible than defeat in war. He was lucky to have been accepted into a city which seemed likely to get the better of all its enemies.

  He himself was not happy, though at least he was secure. He worked hard all day, to harvest just enough barley to feed his family of two persons and a s
lave until next harvest. But no one would stab him in the back as he drove his plough, and on the hills trustworthy sentinels watched for hostile raiders; at night he might hang his sword on a peg and sleep by a blazing fire. For two years he had slept sword in hand, after smothering any embers that might betray his hiding-place.

  All the same, he wished he could find a friend. Even little Marcus Aemilius, or the rustic Publius Tatius, had been better companions than these ruffians who had chosen exile in Camerium. The men who surrounded him had failed even among failures; for only failures tried their chance in Rome, and these colonists had found Rome too difficult. They were surly and quarrelsome and not very honest in small things, though serious robbery was rare in face of the King’s bloody justice. They could not talk about anything except food and women, save when they boasted of their deeds in battle; and that was the most boring subject of all, for you could not believe a word they said. Not one of them knew anything about the gods, or about how a man should win their favour.

  That was really the worst thing, to live in a city where the gods were ignored. Something unpleasant would happen very soon, if nobody offered sacrifice or even thanked the gods for allowing men to go on existing. It is the nature of the gods to plague mankind, and unless skilled priests devote a great deal of time to placating them they bring down famine or pestilence or armed invasion just to remind mortals that there are beings in earth and sky more powerful than any man. Perperna hoped that his private devotions would save his life when disaster struck; but he expected disaster to strike Camerium.

  Therefore when the colonists were summoned to war he put on his armour with a heavy heart. It was a just war, in defence of their own territory; but all the same he expected no good of it.

  The gods would not be gods if they did not seize this chance of revenge on mortals who ignored them.

  Out here in Camerium it was impossible to learn the rights of the quarrel; but it seemed that the Etruscans of Veii had suddenly remembered that Fidenae had been entitled to protection by the Etruscan League. Since it was too late to save the liberties of Fidenae, by now an obedient colony of Rome, the Etruscans demanded that it become a colony of Veii. That was obviously an unscrupulous and selfish demand, which made the Veientines little better than pirates. Perhaps it was not really what their envoys had suggested to the Roman assembly; but it was the version of the negotiations given out by King Romulus, and there was no way of learning the exact truth. All that anybody knew was that the main army of Veii was marching against Rome, while a subsidiary Etruscan force prepared to attack the disputed prize, the Roman colony of Fidenae.

  The colonists of Camerium were directed to march on Fidenae, as reinforcements for the garrison. That was a little depressing, as though all colonists were reckoned to be second class citizens, not quite worthy to fight in the main Roman army. But orders must be obeyed, and it took them far away from the decisive battle.

  Fidenae was another of those stone-walled Etruscan towns, perched on a steep hilltop, which Perperna knew to be a deathtrap if once the foe got over the wall. It looked strong, from the outside; but there was no way of retreat open to beaten defenders. In addition, it was not a pleasant station for a large garrison; there were not enough stores for a long siege, and the only spring within the walls sometimes ran dry. Luckily King Romulus recognised these disadvantages, and may also have feared that a close investment might tempt the garrison to change sides (for the detachment contained many of the original Etruscan citizens of Camerium and Fidenae). To the relief of every thoughtful Roman he gave orders that the colonists should march out and engage the invaders in the open field.

  On a cool and pleasant autumn morning the levy of colonists marched to a gentle ridge, over the stubble of the harvested ploughlands, and at leisure prepared for the encounter. To Perperna it seemed very like the only other battle in which he had taken part, the overthrow of Camerium; he felt much braver than when he had been shut in the town. On a fair field in the open they would be sharing the luck of Rome with the main body of the Roman army; they would not bear the burden of divine disfavour which must cling to the neglected altars of Fidenae as of Camerium. If the worst came to the worst he could run away as fast as any fully armed man could pursue. Best of all, the last battle in which he had fought had been an easy victory, and everyone expects the next battle to be like the last one.

  The Roman force had no single commander; in the absence of King Romulus it was led by a council of Senators. But that was not a handicap, for in an affair of this kind there was no room for manoeuvre or tactical finesse. Every man on the field was a heavy-armed spearman, there were no cavalry or light troops, and the only method of fighting possible was to form a thick line of overlapping shields and keep on pushing until the other side ran away. The Romans had leisure to array their line, they held the higher ground, and they stood on the defensive, These were all reckoned to be advantages. They might expect to win.

  Such a set battle as this was a rare and hazardous adventure, and no one was in a hurry to begin it. When the Romans had taken up their ground the foe were not yet in sight, and they had time for an ample breakfast; each man had a good share of stronge wine, besides the usual bacon and barley-porridge. Then they carefully and comfortably adjusted their armour, and shuffled into their close-packed ranks. Perperna, well armed and in the prime of his strength, was placed in the front rank. But on each side of him were competent and trustworthy veterans, and his rear-rank man was another dependable Roman; it might have been very much worse.

  It was already mid-morning when the Veientine army came into sight. They also were a detachment from the main force, with few ensigns and no important battle standard. But they were unmistakably an Etruscan army; the shape of their helmets and the bellowing of their trumpets identified them, even though most of the lesser men in their ranks were probably Italian. For the first time Perperna realised that he would be fighting against his own people, perhaps against his own kin. Well, that was not his fault. If Etruscans treated homeless fugitives with greater generosity he would not have been driven to seek refuge in alien Rome.

  The Romans rammed down their helmets and took a fresh grip of their spears. There could be no mistake about the moment when they must advance to meet the Etruscan charge with all the impetus of a counter-charge downhill. The leaders had thoughtfully placed sticks in the turf about fifty yards ahead; when the enemy reached them, and not before, all the defenders must run down in a close-packed line. This sensible device gave them courage; they were in competent hands.

  But no one had offered sacrifice, for that was the privilege of King Romulus. As usual they would call on Mars as they charged, reminding the wargod that his favourite son was their ruler; but they had not done their part, and there was no reason why he should help them. The Veientines were not the children of Mars, but surely today they would not have neglected the service of the gods?

  Then the warcry was raised, and they stamped their feet to its rhythm, so that when the time came they would all charge together. Perperna felt himself caught up in the surge of common excitement. Here were the children of Mars about to fall on their foes; stout warriors, who for twenty years had defended their pirate-city against an encircling sea of enemies – undaunted veterans, who time and again had clashed head-on in just such a charge as this – proved comrades; who had willingly made room in their ranks for a homeless fugitive with no kin to guard his back. They were a fine dependable band of ruffians, and he could prove himself worthy of their fellowship.

  As the Etruscans passed the line of sticks the Roman warcry ended in the high wailling hunting-call of the she-wolf. There was one final thud as greaved legs beat the ground in unison, and they charged.

  Perperna pounded down the gentle slope, keeping as straight a course as the jostling of his neighbours would permit. The enemy also had broken into a run. He braced himself to keep on his feet when they met, for in the scrimmage that was coming a fallen man would be a dead man. Ev
en when the lines were only ten yards apart he could not be certain which Etruscan would meet his spear; on both sides close-packed shields forced the warriors to lurch and stagger. But even more important than keeping on his feet was to make sure that he was not forced out in advance of the line; anyone who reached the enemy before his comrades would be spitted on a row of Etruscan spears.

  That was why the shock, when it came, was much less fierce than Perperna had been expecting. In the last few yards every man on both sides checked his stride and hung back to keep in line; the lines themselves hesitated, until the leaders must shout again the command to charge. When the two armies collided it was at a gingerly shuffle, not in a fierce and reckless swoop.

  Perperna found himself opposed to a tall and splendid warrior, whose short black beard and arched eyebrows marked him as a Rasenna of pure blood. He tried to ram his spear into the grinning mouth, because that was the thrust which came naturally to his inexperienced mind. Of course he did not reach his goal; the shield came up as the head went down, and he felt his point glance off bronze and lodge itself in stout leather. His opponent had not attempted such a clumsy thrust, which any active man must parry instinctively; the Veientine spear had been aimed at his guts, but just because he was holding his shield rather too low the point caught in its bronze rim.

  For half a minute they all stood still, pushing with the stout ash spears. Perperna saw no blood and heard no cries of pain; it seemed that the initial meeting of two armies had not harmed anyone at all. Then he felt the shield of the Roman behind him placed flat against his back, and the five rear ranks of the array began to shove. He was borne forward unwillingly, right among the Etruscan spear-points. In terror, he doubled up behind his broad shield. He could see nothing, but with relief he felt his unseen spear-point plough free of the enemy shield. Now it was darting harmlessly in the air; but he dared not expose his face to aim it properly, for he was jammed against his adversary shield to shield. All round him was a forest of interlaced spear-shafts, stretching at every angle so that he could not distinguish Etruscan from Roman. He crouched even lower, and felt the pressure on his shoulders as the men behind him pushed their spears forward on either side of his helmet. He was wedged in the press, unable to see, unable to strike an effective blow.