He was the only man in Rome who had ever been on a ship. Ever since their successful war against Veii the Romans had possessed the coast at the river’s mouth, where salt was made by evaporation of sea-water. A garrison guarded the precious saltworks; his patron Perperna had for a time been manager of the whole concern. The citizens ate a good deal of fish, and garrison and saltmakers passed their spare time in fishing from little boats. But no Roman had ever possessed the curosity and energy to set about building a real ship, the kind of thing that could sail to a foreign land. That was the Italian peasant in them. Some Etruscan cities were beginning timidly to take to the sea copying the ships of the Greeks as they copied every other Greek invention; but Italians were land-bound.
There were men in Rome who had seen every part of Italy; but Italy was not an interesting land. In the central hills spearmen grew barley and lived in villages; to the north were stone-built Etruscan towns, almost worthy to be called cities save that they were ruled by a small council of nobles; farther north, all the plain below the high mountains had been overrun by savages, Celts who decorated their helmets with the horns of oxen to prove that they themselves were no better than beasts. In the south things were even worse. Down there lived primitive savages whose only virtue was that they did not understand organised war. Among them metal was a rarity, and for lack of oxen they scratched their miserable garden-patches with hoes of stone.
The only genuine city in the whole land was Cumae, the first settlement of Greeks; and to Macro even his native place was a provincial backwater. For he had crossed the open sea to visit the Dorian homeland. There he had heard tell of wide realms far to the east, where mighty kings ruled from golden thrones and thousands of craftsmen laboured together to pile great buildings of hewn and polished stone. In Argos he had met a man who had visited Sardis.
Here in Rome they spoke with awe of the little house they had made for Jupiter Stator, considering it a great thing to offer a god four walls and a roof; instead of leaving him to squat in a square templum of open grass under the open sky.
But Rome was the best refuge open to him, and he must do what he could to make it comfortable. Privately he did not think much of the intelligence of his patron; Perperna was too wrapped up in his unimportant barbarian pedigree, and too busy placating the gods, to look after himself properly. But that was on the whole useful to a client who had brought down on himself such a grave measure of divine vengeance; and it was easy to flatter the Etruscan by listening with an air of eager interest to his gloomy views on the future.
Macro had resigned himself to a bachelor life. He had seen a few handsome boys, but he kept away from them. In Rome, as in most cities, that sort of thing was forbidden on pain of death; the difference was that in Rome the law was enforced. As for a wife, or even a slave concubine, that was out of the question. There were just not enough women in the city, and baby girls were betrothed in the cradle as the most valuable gift a father could make to his best friend. There was gossip among the celeres and other young ruffians that if you aproached a Roman husband in the right way he would lend you his wife for a few nights. The story was told of many other nations, and Macro had never heard of a concrete instance. He would need a great deal of silver before he could buy a concubine, and he would not get a wife until he was nearly ready for the grave.
One other thing still bothered him. In his dreams the face of his brother grew clearer instead of fading into indistinctness. He was not truly cleansed from the guilt of his crime, though King Romulus had thrown the pursuers off the trail.
Then one day in late spring the city nearly boiled over into civil war. At dawn there was a thunder of rushing feet, as all the three hundred celeres of the King ran through the streets in a body. They went fully armed, as though no one had ever ploughed a consecrated pomoerium round Rome.
The armed men seized fifty young Sabines straight out of their beds; they hustled their prisoners down from the Quirinal and up the steep path of the Capitol. At the summit King Romulus was waiting for them, by the altar on which he sacrificed to Jupiter Lord of the Sky. On that day the victim was a he-goat (even in her present prosperity Rome could not afford to offer 365 bulls in each year). The King completed the rite, as was proper; for such a thing, once begun, may not be interrupted. Then he gave orders that the prisoners be thrown down the steep rock which had been named after Tarpeia the traitress. In a few minutes it had been done and the King walked down at leisure to inspect the mangled corpses.
Sabines were pouring out of the Quirinal, all carrying swords and some in full armour. The men from the Palatine came unarmed, since the dead were not their kin; but they also were in a fever of excitement, either rejoicing in a Latin victory over Sabines, or ready to lament the destruction of liberty. All alike rushed down to the place of assembly, where they found the King waiting to speak to them.
Romulus was still clad in the vestments he had worn for the sacrifice; his hair was bound with the sacred fillet, one end of his long purple cloak had been draped over his head, and he was shod with his queer lucky boots. In his hand he carried the curved divining-rod of the augur, though he stood in a permanent templum where there was no need to mark out the quarters of the sky. From head to foot he was all priest; even though he trifled with the gods, as was his custom, by carrying a short iron sword in his girdle.
Round the King stood his armed celeres, lest the armed Sabines should murder him. The Sabines hesitated, in two minds whether to begin a battle in the holy place of assembly, the very place where more than thirty years ago their fathers had fought to avenge the stolen women. They could have started a civil war which would have ended in the destruction of Rome; and they very nearly did.
Romulus the King quelled them – Romulus the favourite son of Mars, Romulus the founder of the city, the heir of grand father Aeneas who had brought the sacred things of Samothrace and Troy over the sea to Italy. The divining-rod and the fillet on his head played a part; but what made the crowd take their places quietly in the assembly was the innate authority of Romulus the lucky, who knew the ways of the gods. Motionless he stood on his turf platform, praying with covered head for the welfare of Rome; until the last of the clamorous warriors put down his weapons and waited in silence.
Then Romulus spoke. He admitted that he had broken the law and custom of Rome. He had killed fifty citizens without the pretence of a trial. But he had done it to save Rome. That was the office of a King, who to save his city must shoulder the guilt even of grave crimes. Long ago he had taken on himself the appalling burden of fratricide; and because he had not shrunk from it the pomoerium now stood, never crossed by a foe in arms. He would never shrink from his duty. Now duty had commanded him to make an end of these highborn scoundrels. Once the fathers of these wicked men had murdered the sacrosanct envoys of Lavinium, bringing down a dangerous war, and a still more dangerous pollution, on the city which sheltered them. Now the sons wished to destroy the laws of the city with standing the honest celeres who enforced these laws. It had been necessary to make an example; and the King, out of mercy for his fellow-citizens, had taken all the bloodguilt on himself. Fifty wicked men were dead; yet no citizen need fear the blood-feud, for the deed had been done by the King alone. Now it was for the assembly to judge; he was glad to see that the law-abiding Romans, whenever a crisis struck them, took their places in the assembly to judge the issue calmly. Let them vote on it without delay. If they held that he had done right the matter would never be mentioned again. If they decided that he had done wrong he would go, leaving the Sabines supreme in Rome. They need not fear that he would resist the verdict of his faithful spearmen; rather than bring civil war to Rome he would go forth at once, taking nothing with him, and that night sleep under a bush alone.
It was a very fine speech, all the better because it was the first time for many years that the King had striven to convince his subjects. Latterly he had not bothered to persuade where he might command, and when he had spoken in the assembly
it had been only to tell them baldly what they must do; most of his hearers had forgotten what a fine speech King Romulus could make when he tried hard enough. When it ended there were shouts of approval, and the assembly endorsed his action without a vote.
At this emergency meeting there was no other business; as soon as the citizens had given their assent the King terminated the session with the usual ritual formula. The people drifted away. This terrible and striking event, the sudden death of fifty fellow-citizens, was not a matter to be discussed in public.
A throng of clients accompanied Perperna to his mansion on the Palatine; and then hung about uneasily in the hall, not knowing whether they should go away or whether their patron wished to speak to them. This assembly of the people in the early morning had upset established routine. Did it mean that today was a public holiday, or ought they to go out to the fields as though nothing had happened? But public business was not yet finished. A group of Senators called on the master of the house. Then Perperna came out from his private apartments and addressed his waiting clients.
‘There will be no work today; not because it is a feast but because we mourn. Fifty of our fellow-citizens lie unburied. At sunset there will be a great funeral. According to the custom of the Sabines these Romans will be buried in the earth, not burned. But even if the rite seems strange to you I should like all my clients to be present.’
Down in the valley Sabines laboured all day, digging a long row of graves. Fifty black pigs were purified for sacrifice, great jars of the best wine were carried down for the libation, the most valuable swords in the community were collected to be buried with the bodies. It was a united effort of all the Sabines on the Quirinal, united in defiance of King Romulus; and when the funeral feast was held more than half the Palatine attended also. Only the King and his celeres remained within the palisade, pretending that this was a day like any other.
13. The Senate And The King
It was a few days after midsummer, the beginning of the hottest season of the year. Macro spent most of his time in the smithy, because oddly enough he found it cooler than working in the fields. He kept well away from the glowing forge, where the slaves who pumped the bellows fainted regularly every noon. In the shade of the porch he wielded a little hammer, engraving designs on bronze corselets and sometimes embossing the frontal of a helmet. He had never worked in metal until he came to Rome; but he knew what a design ought to look like, and he could draw a human or divine figure with better proportions than these barbarous Italians and Etruscans could manage. There was always work waiting for him at the smithy, and no urgent time-limit by which it ought to be finished. He could sit in the shade through all these glowing midsummer days, and yet feel that he was earning the bread he would eat in his patron’s hall.
Nearly everyone who could afford the luxury wanted a wolf’s head on the frontal of his helmet, as was fitting for spearmen who fought in the army of the she-wolf. At first Macro grumbled at this boring repetition of one design which had taken the fancy of his fellow-citizens; then he found that every grinning mask turned out to be something unique, either fiercer or more supernatural or more protective than the last. The little hammer seemed to have a life of its own; he began to fancy that perhaps Mars guided his hand to make a badge appropriate to the fate of the warrior who would wear it.
It was a pleasant, idle fancy. That last head had come out positively doleful, which ought to indicate that its wearer would be killed in his next battle. Then Macro shook himself angrily, and muttered under his breath: ‘A spear kills, unless you put your shield in the way. If you ward off the thrust you are unhurt. No god kills you if you keep your guard up. No god saves you if you don’t. In battle one man kills another man. The gods do not intervene.’
It was absurd. He was a Greek. He knew that two and two made four, that what goes up must come down, that in the end every man will die. Yet here he was playing with these whimsies like a blind harper telling fortunes at a wedding. There must be something in the air of this place, this Italian barbarous place, which existed only because its citizens believed it was lucky. No wonder they were always talking about good and bad luck, they who guided their whole lives by an omen, sitting here in the bend of the river just because someone said he had dug up a bleeding head on the hill of the Capitol.
There was indeed something religious in the air of Rome. The citizens were deeply divided, and almost on the brink of civil war. Yet no blow was struck, no threat was voiced, even in the assembly no one spoke as though he belonged to a faction. Everyone was waiting for some mighty portent, some pronouncement from heaven that would relieve the tension.
Little Marcus Aemilius was no seer. There was no more practical, down-to-earth farmer than Marcus, with his tired wrinkled face and his ankles clumsy from stumbling after the plough. But when he came into the smithy with a damaged sickle, one breathless noon, he spoke to his friend Macro as though both were hardened omen-fanciers.
‘It’s a bad time, the worst time I remember in Rome,’ he said in an unhappy voice. ‘The storm gathers every hour, and soon something terrible will flash from a black sky. I don’t mean the real sky up there,’ as Macro glanced with surprise at the sun flaming from a field of intense blue, ‘I mean the sky that is the home of Skyfather, our Jupiter and your Zeus. That lowers blacker every day. I’m told that at the sacrifice today the livers were not shaped like livers at all. I heard a heron squeaking most oddly down by the river.’
‘Do herons squeak? More likely it was a water-rat. It would be ominous if the water-rats stopped squeaking. The saddle of mutton we had for dinner yesterday must have come from one of your ill-omened sheep. The poor beast had probably suffered from a hobnailed liver for the last five years of her long life. Seriously, Marcus, you don’t suppose that something awful is going to happen just because the south wind and the heat wave have made everyone nervous? Anyway, if there are omens about why should they foretell trouble for Rome? Why not for Veii, or Alba, which share the same weather? Are we so important, in this little corner, that Skyfather must summon all his storm-clouds to warn us?’
‘Of course we are important. When the city was founded omens promised that one day our children should rule all Italy; and we are governed by the favourite son of Mars. When Skyfather changes the weather he is thinking of us, the most important of his worshippers.’ Marcus seized his mended sickle and walked out of the smithy in a huff.
That was what all these Romans believed in their hearts, even the most matter-of-fact of them. They pictured the gods as thinking about nothing but the fate of Rome; the corollary was that Romans should think about nothing but divine affairs. A sensible Greek, who offered occasional sacrifice so that the gods should leave him in peace, could not keep up with their fancies.
Perperna adopted a slightly different attitude. He was more occupied than a sensible man should be with trying to find out the future, and especially the will of the gods; but he was not particularly concerned with the fate of the city of Rome. It seemed almost as he were trying to contract out of some misfortune which he expected to fall on the community. In the apartments at the back of his great house he conducted his Etruscan rites in private.
As a consultant on religious affairs he was in great demand. The King himself sought his advice on the troublesome matter of his hearth. The King’s fire had been consecrated to Vesta, the goddess who looks after the rising and setting of the sun; and word had got about among the superstitious that if the fire went out in the night there would never be another dawn. To keep it going endless precautions were necessary, and the unfortunate lady Prima, the King’s only daughter, had very little leisure.
Macro told himself that these barbarians were inventing their troubles because they had nothing better with which to occupy their amazing prosperity. He suspected that the King agreed with him, and that half his ceremonies were carried out only to soothe the vulgar. How much of the rigmarole seemed true to Perperna Macro could not make out.
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p; All the same, if they went on expecting some remarkable interposition by the gods, something striking would actually happen. The stretched nerves of the Romans would see to that, even if heaven remained indifferent. In any case the political situation could not remain as it was, with so many of the King’s subjects discontented by his summary punishment of the young Sabines. Macro inquired cautiously about living conditions in the Etruscan cities beyond the river; it might be wise to move a little farther. What he heard made him decide that there was no refuge better than Rome. The Etruscan nobility would not offer full citizenship to a Greek, and they already had so many skilled craftsmen that his amateur tinkering as a bronze-smith would not earn him a living even as a voteless foreigner.
Besides, there was still the matter of his bloodguilt; the pursuers might yet be on his trail. In Rome he felt safe; but he was safe only under the protection of King Romulus. The King’s close friendship with Mars could keep vengeance at bay, but a King who had himself slain his brother could not wipe out the stain of fratricide. That led to another, and disturbing, question: what would happen when the King was dead?
He had no home of his own, and not much chance of ever being prosperous enough to build one; no wife, and little chance of finding one in a community where men so outnumbered women; no prospect of ever rising above his undignified employment as a mere hired retainer of a rather sinister foreigner. Therefore he thought as little as he could about the future, trying to squeeze what happiness he could find from the little events of each day.
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