The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (11 page)

Romulus achieved all this in a very short time. He founded the city, which he decreed should be named Rome after him; then, to strengthen the new community, he followed a novel and somewhat crude plan
*
which nevertheless bore the stamp of a great and far-seeing man, in that it consolidated the resources of his kingdom and people. Well-born Sabine girls had come to Rome
on the festival of Consus to attend the yearly games which Romulus had inaugurated. On his orders they were seized and assigned in marriage to young men of the foremost families. The Sabines, consequently, attacked the Romans, and the outcome of the battle was confused and uncertain. Romulus, therefore, made a treaty with Titus Tatius in response to the appeals of the very wives who had been abducted. By the terms of this treaty he admitted the Sabines to Roman citizenship with shared religious observances, and he accepted their king as a partner in his kingship.

After Tatius’ death the entire sovereignty reverted to Romulus. Previous to that, he, together with Tatius, had chosen a royal council made up of leading citizens, who were called ‘Fathers’
*
on account of the affection in which they were held. He had also divided the populace into three tribes,
*
named after himself, Tatius, and Lucumo (a supporter of Romulus who had been killed in the struggle with the Sabines), and into thirty voting-districts which he named after the Sabine girls who, from among those abducted, had appealed for a peace treaty. But although these administrative divisions had been set up in Tatius’ lifetime, after his death Romulus relied still more on the authority and advice of the Fathers in discharging his royal duties.

In doing so he was the first to realize and accept something which Lycurgus had realized a little earlier in Sparta,
*
namely that states are better governed and controlled by the king’s sole power and authority when the influence of all the best men is allowed to act upon the absolute monarch. So, protected and supported by this council, which was a kind of senate, Romulus waged many highly successful wars against his neighbours; and, though he brought no plunder to his own house, he continually increased the wealth of the citizens. Moreover, Romulus was most scrupulous in observing the auspices, a habit which we still retain, much to the benefit of the state. He himself took the auspices when founding the city—an act which marked the beginning of our state; and at the beginning of every public event he appointed augurs, one from each tribe, to assist him in taking the auspices. He also arranged for the common people to be assigned to the leading citizens as clients (the great advantages of this scheme will be explained later
*
); and instead of controlling them by violent
punishments he imposed fines of sheep and cattle; for wealth at that time consisted of livestock
*
(pecus)
and land
(loci),
hence people were called ‘rich in livestock’
(pecuniosi)
and ‘wealthy in land’
(locupletes).

Romulus reigned for thirty-seven years and laid those two admirable foundation-stones of the state, namely the auspices and the Senate. So great were his achievements that when, after a sudden eclipse of the sun,
*
he failed to reappear, it was assumed that he had been admitted to the company of the gods, an idea which could never have gained currency for any human being who had not possessed an outstanding reputation for valour and integrity. This was the more astonishing in the case of Romulus, in that the other men who are supposed to have attained apotheosis lived in less educated periods of history, when the mind was prone to fabricate myths, and simple people were easily induced to believe them; whereas we know that the age of Romulus existed less than six hundred years ago, at a time when writing and learning had long been familiar, and when all those primitive superstitions that belong to an ignorant society had been swept away. If, as Greek chronology informs us, Rome was founded in the second year of the seventh Olympiad,
*
the age of Romulus came at a period when Greece was already full of poets and musicians, and less credence was given to fables, except in the case of remote events. The first Olympiad is dated a hundred and eight years after Lycurgus began to codify the law, though some people think it was inaugurated by that same Lycurgus, owing to a confusion over the name.
*
Now Homer, at a conservative estimate, lived about thirty years before the age of Lycurgus. Hence it may be inferred that Homer lived many years before Romulus. So by then, when men were educated and the times themselves were enlightened, there was hardly any scope for myth-making. Antiquity accepted fabulous stories even though they were sometimes clumsily conceived;
*
but that later age, which was by now sophisticated, made a point of deriding sheer impossibilities and rejecting them with scorn.

[There is a gap at this point, and the next lines are based on a fragmentary text. Scipio seems to have mentioned some Greek poets who lived at the time when Romulus’ apotheosis was accepted
.]

… his daughter’s son, as some people said. In the fifty-sixth Olympiad, the very year when (Stesichorus) died, Simonides was born. This helps us to appreciate that Romulus’ immortality was believed at a time when the nature of human life had long been a familiar subject, discussed and understood. There is no doubt that it was due to Romulus’ exceptional intelligence and force of character that people believed what the peasant Proculus Julius said about him—a thing which had not been believed about any other mortal for many generations. At the behest of the Senate, which was keen to dispel the ill-feeling and suspicion following Romulus’ death, Proculus is supposed to have declared at a public meeting that he had seen Romulus on the hill now called the Quirinal; Romulus had instructed him to ask the people to build him a shrine on that hill; he himself, he said, was a god and bore the name of Quirinus.

You appreciate, then, don’t you, that it was thanks to the good sense of one man not only that a new people came into being but that, when he departed, it was not a baby crying in its cradle, but rather a youth on the verge of manhood.

LAELIUS
: Yes, we are aware of that, and also of the fact that at the outset you are using a novel method of exposition which is not to be found in any Greek treatise. The doyen of writers
*
on this theme chose a stretch of virgin territory where he could build a state according to his own specifications. It was a remarkable state no doubt, but quite out of touch with men’s lives and habits. His successors have presented their opinions about types and systems of political organization without reference to any definite model or form of constitution. It looks to me as if you intend to do both. For in your opening remarks you prefer to attribute your discoveries to others rather than, like Plato’s Socrates, to claim them for yourself; in talking about the site of the city you discuss in theoretical terms what Romulus did by chance or necessity; and instead of wandering from one state to another you confine your discussion to a single example. So carry on as you have begun. As you work your way through the other kings I fancy I can foresee the emergence of a fully-fledged state.

SCIPIO
: So then, after Romulus’ death, his Senate, which comprised the best men
*
—men whom the king held in such high regard that he wished them to be called ‘Fathers’ and their
children ‘Patricians’
*
—tried to rule the state by itself, without a king. But the people would not have it, and in their grief at the loss of Romulus they persisted in calling for a king. Therefore the leading citizens astutely devised a new procedure unknown to any other nation, namely the introduction of an interregnum.
*
This practice ensured that, pending the appointment of a permanent monarch, the state should not be without a king, nor yet have a long-reigning substitute. It thus guarded against a situation in which a person, having grown used to power, should be too slow in laying down the sovereignty or too well placed for usurping it. Even at that stage, you see, that newly established people perceived something that escaped the Spartan Lycurgus. He thought that a king should not be chosen (if indeed that lay within Lycurgus’ power), but should be accepted, whatever he was like, provided he was a descendant of Hercules. But our peasant ancestors perceived even then that one should look for valour and good sense in a king rather than noble lineage.

As Numa Pompilius was reputedly outstanding in these respects, the people passed over its own citizens, and on the Senate’s recommendation brought in a king from outside, inviting a Sabine from Cures to reign at Rome. When he arrived here, although the people had already held an Assembly of Voting Districts
*
to appoint him king, he still had a law passed by that same body to confirm his regal powers. Then, as he saw that the Romans, following the precedent set by Romulus, were intensely keen on military pursuits, he thought they should be diverted a little from that way of life.

First, he divided among the citizens, man by man, the territory
*
which Romulus had conquered, pointing out that if they gave up pillage and plunder they could obtain all the commodities they needed by working the land. At the same time he instilled a love of peace and relaxation, which provide the most favourable conditions for the growth of justice and good faith, and the best kind of security for cultivating the fields and enjoying their produce.

Pompilius also extended the scope of the auspices, adding two augurs to the original number; and he appointed five priests
*
from among the leading citizens to take charge of the various religious rituals. He introduced the laws
*
which we still have in our records,
and by turning their attention to religious ceremonies he tempered those ardent spirits which were accustomed to, and eager for, continual warfare. In addition, he created flamens, Salii,
*
and vestal virgins, and organized most scrupulously every aspect of religious life. It was Numa’s wish that, while religious observances themselves should be minute and complicated, the equipment should be very simple. He devised many rituals
*
which had to be learned by heart and adhered to, but they did not involve any expense. In this way he directed more attention to religious duties but removed the cost.

27

Numa also instituted fairs and games and all kinds of other occasions for crowded gatherings. By organizing these activities he won over to mild and civilized behaviour characters who were fierce and brutalized by their enthusiasm for warfare. After reigning in unbroken peace and harmony for thirty-nine years (and here let us take as our principal guide our friend Polybius, a man of unrivalled accuracy in problems of chronology), Numa died. By then he had established on a firm basis those two factors which, above all others, ensure that states will last, namely religion and humane behaviour.

When Scipio had reached this point, Manilius asked: Is it an authentic tradition, Africanus, that King Numa, whom you have just been talking about, was a pupil of Pythagoras, or at least a Pythagorean? This assertion has often been made by our elders, and one gathers that the opinion is widely held. Yet an inspection of the public records shows that it is not properly documented.

SCIPIO
: No, Manilius. The whole thing is quite wrong. It is not only a fabrication, but a clumsy and absurd fabrication too (it is particularly hard to tolerate the kind of falsehood which is not just untrue but patently impossible). Research has established that it was only when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus had been on the throne for over three years that Pythagoras came to Sybaris, Croton, and that part of Italy. The sixty-second Olympiad witnessed both the beginning of Superbus’ reign and the arrival of Pythagoras. So when the years of the kings have been added up it follows that Pythagoras first reached Italy about a hundred and forty years after Numa’s death. No doubt has ever been cast on this conclusion by the experts in chronological research.

MANILIUS
: Good Lord! What a gigantic howler! And to think that people have accepted it for so long! Still, I’m happy to learn that we got our culture, not by importing foreign expertise but through our own native qualities.

SCIPIO:
Indeed. But you’ll appreciate the point more easily if you think of our country developing and moving by a kind of natural process along the road to the best constitution. And you will judge that our ancestors’ wisdom was the more praiseworthy in that, as you will find, even the features borrowed from elsewhere have been made much better here than they were in the places where they originated and from which we derived them. You will also find that the Roman people became strong, not by chance, but through their own good sense and their firm system of values—though, granted, fortune has not been against them.

On the death of King Pompilius the people made Tullus Hostilius king at a meeting of the Assembly of Voting Districts chaired by the interrex. And Tullus, following Pompilius’ example, had his position officially ratified by each district in turn. He was a man with a brilliant military reputation, earned by his great feats on the battlefield. From the sale of his plunder he built and enclosed a senate house
*
and a place for the people’s assembly.
*
He also drew up a legal procedure for declaring war. To be more precise, he formulated the procedure himself in very fair terms, and then, by incorporating it in the fetials’
*
ceremonies, he enacted that every war which had not been declared and proclaimed should be deemed unjust and unholy. Note how firmly our kings already grasped the point that certain rights should be granted to the people (I shall have a lot to say on this matter later on). Tullus did not even venture to assume the symbols of kingship without the people’s permission. To make it lawful for twelve lictors
*
with their rods to walk in front of him …