The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Arthur Gilman (story read aloud .txt) 📕

A year passed after the death of Romulus before another king was chosen, and the people complained that they had a hundred sovereigns instead of one, because the senate governed, and that not always with justness. It was finally agreed that the Romans should choose a king, but that he should be a Sabine. The choice fell upon Numa Pompilius, a man learned in all laws, human and divine, and two ambassadors were accordingly sent to him at his home at Cures, to offer the kingdom to him. The ambassadors were politely received by the good man, but he assured them that he did not wish to change his condition; that every alteration in life is dangerous to a man; that madness only could induce one who needed nothing to quit the life to which he was accustomed; that he, a man of peace, was not fitted to direct a people whose progress had been gained by war; and that he feared that he might prove a laughing-stock to the people if he were to go about teaching them the worship of the gods and the offices of peace when they wanted a king to lead them to war. The more he declined, the more the people wished him to accept, and at last his father argued with him that a martial people needed one who should teach them moderation and religion; that he ought to recognize the fact that the gods were calling him to a large sphere of usefulness. These arguments proved sufficient, and Numa accepted the crown. After making the appropriate offerings to the gods, he set out for Rome, and was met by the populace coming forth to receive him with joyful acclamations. Sacrifices were offered in the temples, and with impressive ceremonies the new authority was joyfully entrusted to him (715 B.C.).

As Romulus had given the Romans their warlike customs, so now Numa gave them the ceremonial laws of religion; but before entering upon this work, he divided among the people the public lands that Romulus had added to the property of the city by his conquests, by this movement showing that he was possessed of worldly as well as of heavenly wisdom.

He next instituted the worship of the god Terminus, who seems to have been simply Jupiter in the capacity of guardian of boundaries. Numa ordered all persons to mark the limits of their lands by consecrated stones, and at these, when they celebrated the feast of Terminalia, sacrifices were to be offered of cakes, meal, and fruits. Moses had done something like this hundreds of years before, in the land of Palestine, when he wrote in his laws: “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor’s landmark, which they of old time have set, in thine inheritance which thou shalt inherit, in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.” He had impressed it upon the people, repeating in a solemn religious service the words: “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor’s landmark,” to which all the people in those primitive times solemnly said “Amen!” You will find the same sentiment repeated in the Proverbs of Solomon. When Romulus had laid out the pomoerium, he made the outline something like a square, and called it Roma Quadrata, that is “Square Rome,” but he did not direct the landmarks of the public domain to be distinctly indicated. The consecration of the boundaries undoubtedly made the people consider themselves more secure in their possessions, and consequently made the state itself more stable.

In order to make the people feel more like one body and think less of the fact that they comprised persons belonging to different nations, Numa instituted nine guilds among which the workmen were distributed.

These were the pipers, carpenters, goldsmiths, tanners, leather-workers, dyers, potters, smiths, and one in which all other handicraftsmen were united. Thus these men spoke of each other as members of this or that guild, instead of as Etruscans, Romans, and Sabines.

[Illustration: A ROMAN ALTAR]

Human sacrifices were declared abolished at this time; the rites of prayer were established; the temple of Janus was founded (which was closed in time of peace and open in time of war); priests were ordained to conduct the public worship, the Pontifex Maximus [Footnote: Pontifex means bridge-builder (_pons_, a bridge, facere, to make), and the title is said to have been given to these magistrates because they built the wooden bridge over the Tiber, and kept it in repair, so that sacrifices might be made on both sides of the river. The building of this bridge is, however, ascribed to Ancus Martius at a later date, and so some think the name was originally pompifex (pompa, a solemn procession), and meant that the officers had charge of such celebrations.] being at the head of them, and the Flamens, Vestal Virgins, and Salii, being subordinate. Numa pretended that he met by night a nymph named Egeria, at a grotto under the Coelian Hill, not far from the present site of the Baths of Caracalla, and that from time to time she gave him directions as to what rites would be acceptable to the gods. Another nymph, whom Numa commended to the special veneration of the Romans, was named Tacita, or the silent. This was appropriate for one of such quiet and unobtrusive manners as this good king possessed.

Romulus is said to have made the year consist of but ten months, the first being March, named from Mars, the god whom he delighted to honor; but Numa saw that his division was faulty, and so he added two months, making the first one January, from Janus, the god who loved civil and social unity, whose temple he had built; and the second February, or the month of purification, from the Latin word februa. If he had put in his extra months at some other part of the year, he might have allowed it still to begin in the spring, as it naturally does, and we should not be obliged to explain to every generation why the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months are still called the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth. [Footnote: We shall find that in the course of time this arrangement of the year proved very faulty in its turn, and that Julius Cæsar made another effort to reform it. (See page 247.)]

The poets said in the peaceful days of Numa, Rust eats the pointed spear and double-edged sword.

No more is heard the trumpet’s brazen roar, Sweet sleep is banished from our eyes no more, and that over the iron shields the spiders hung their threads, for it was a sort of golden age, when there was neither plot, nor envy, nor sedition in the state, for the love of virtue and the serenity of spirit of the king flowed down upon all the happy subjects. In due time, after a long reign and a peaceful and useful life, Numa died, not by disease or war, but by the natural decline of his faculties. The people mourned for him heartily and honored him with a costly burial.

After the death of this king an interregnum followed, during which the senate ruled again, but it was not long before the Sabines chose as king a Roman, Tullus Hostilius, grandson of that Hostus Hostilius who had won distinction in the war with the Sabines. The new sovereign thought that the nation was losing its noble prestige through the quietness with which it lived among its neighbors, and therefore he embraced every opportunity to stir up war with the surrounding peoples, and success followed his campaigns. The peasants between Rome and Alba [Footnote: Alba became the chief of a league of thirty Latin cities, lying in the southern part of the great basin through which the Tiber finds its way to the sea, between Etruria and Campania.] afforded him the first pretext, by plundering each other’s lands. The Albans were ready to settle the difficulty in a peaceful manner, but Tullus, determined upon aggrandizement, refused all overtures. It was much like a civil war, for both nations were of Trojan origin, according to the traditions. The Albans pitched their tents within five miles of Rome, and built a trench about the city. The armies were drawn up ready for battle, when the Alban leader came out and made a speech, in which he said that as both Romans and Sabines were surrounded by strange nations who would like to see them weakened, as they would undoubtedly be by the war, he proposed that the question which should rule the other, ought to be decided in some less destructive way.

[Illustration: MONUMENT OF THE HORATII AND THE CURIATII]

It happened that there were in the army of the Romans three brothers known as the Horatii, of the same age as three others in the Alban army called the Curiatii, and it was agreed that these six should fight in the place of the two armies. At the first clash of arms two of the Romans fell lifeless, though every one of the Curiatii was wounded.

This caused the Sabines to exult, especially as they saw the remaining Roman apparently running away. The flight of Horatius was, however, merely feigned, in order to separate the opposing brothers, whom he met as they followed him, and killed in succession. As he struck his sword into the last of the Albans, he exclaimed: “Two have I offered to the shades of my brothers; the third will I offer to the cause of this war, that the Roman may rule over the Alban!” A triumph [Footnote: A “triumph” was a solemn rejoicing after a victory, and included a pompa, or procession of the general and soldiers on foot with their plunder. Triumphs seem to have been celebrated in some style in the earliest days of Rome. In later times they increased very much in splendor and costliness.] followed; but it appears that a sister of Horatius, named Horatia, [Footnote: The Romans seem in one respect to have had little ingenuity in the matter of names, though generally they had too many of them, and formed that of a woman from the name of a man by simply changing the end of it from the masculine form to the feminine.] was to have married one of the Curiatii, and when she met her victorious brother bearing as his plunder the military robe of her lover that she had wrought with her own hands, she tore her hair and uttered bitter exclamations. Horatius in his anger and impatience thrust her through with his sword, saying: “So perish every Roman woman who shall mourn an enemy?” For this act, the victorious young man was condemned to death, but he appealed to the people, and they mitigated his sentence in consequence of his services to the state.

Another war followed, with the Etruscans this time, and the Albans not behaving like true allies, their city was demolished and its inhabitants removed to Rome, where they were assigned to the Coelian Hill. Some of the more noble among them were enrolled among the Patricians, and the others were added to the Plebs, who then became for the first time an organic part of the social body, though not belonging to the Populus Romanus (or Roman People), so called. On another occasion Tullus made war upon the Sabines and conquered them, but finally he offended the gods, and in spite of the fact that he bethought himself of the good Numa and began to follow his example, Jupiter smote him with a thunder-bolt and destroyed him and his house.

Again an interregnum followed, and again a