The Romans also have a lot to teach us. I do not mean that in terms of direct relevance or comparability. Intriguing comparison though it is, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is much more different from Tiberius Gracchus than he could ever possibly be like him. But we share with the Romans many fundamental political dilemmas, and can usefully watch them wrestling with solutions. They, after all, were among the very first to wonder how to adapt models of citizenship and political rights and responsibilities to vast communities that transcended the boundaries of a small, ‘face-to-face’ town. By the first century BC the population of the city of Rome alone, excluding Italy and the more remote territories of the empire, was in the order of a million.
One-man rule, in the shape of emperors good or bad, was only one of their solutions – but the best known and to us the least palatable. More crucially, they reformulated the idea of citizenship in the context of the nearest thing to a global state the ancient world ever knew. Unlike the exclusivity of, for example, ancient Athens, which restricted citizenship to Athenians born and bred, Rome came to unite its huge empire through sharing its political rights. Slaves who were freed by their masters, as many were, became citizens with political rights. Citizenship was gradually extended throughout the empire, until in 212 the emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to all free populations within the Roman empire. Rome, in other words, was the first multicultural megastate.
It was also the inspiration of those men and women who are more directly responsible for shaping the political world in which we live today. The founding fathers of the United States saw a model in the republican politics of Rome before the advent of one-man rule. Hence American ‘senators’ and the ‘Capitol’ (after the Roman Capitoline Hill) as seat of government. In Britain the Labour movement saw resonances of its own conflicts with a land-owning and industrial aristocracy in the struggle of the Roman people against aristocratic conservatism. Hence the left-wing Tribune newspaper (called after the office of tribune held by Tiberius Gracchus and other radical politicians), and the ‘Tribune Group’ of Labour MPs. To understand our world we need to understand how it is rooted in Rome.
In many ways we are still living with the legacy of Romulus’s murder of Remus.
MARY BEARD
June 2006
Seven Hills of Rome
In about 350 BC the Romans developed a story about how their ancient city was first founded. It was a story that would seek to trace their ultimate origins back to a remote past beyond even the age of Romulus and Remus. At the time the Romans were a people from a powerful city-state in Italy, but they were also beginning to strut on the international stage of the Mediterranean. There was one civilization in particular with which they came into greater and greater contact – that of the Greeks in the east. This was an enticing, older world, rich in myth, history, sophistication, wealth and influence. It was one the Romans wanted to connect with, to be part of, to measure up to. One of the ways they achieved that was to adopt a foundation story they could share with that more ancient civilization whenever Greeks and Romans met. It was the story of the Trojan Aeneas. Later, at the height of the Roman empire, it would come to be seen by some as the moment when the ancient Greek world began its transformation into the new Roman order.
Aeneas was a hero of the Trojan War fought against the Greeks. Leaving behind his desolate, burning city of Troy (on the northwest coast of modern Turkey), Aeneas made his escape. But he was not alone. He carried his frail father on his back, held his son by the hand and was accompanied by a band of Trojan survivors. One night, after years of travelling the seas of the Mediterranean, Aeneas was woken up with a shock. The god Mercury appeared before him and delivered a stern message from the god Jupiter. Aeneas’s destiny, he said, was to found the city that would become Rome. His old home destroyed, Aeneas was set on a mission to found a new one. It was no less than a heaven-sent task. Continuing their travels, he and his followers eventually reached Italy. Sailing upriver, the greased pine timbers of their ships gliding gently over the water, they laid eyes on the future site of the city. Here they found an idyllic rural land called Latium, its quiet green woods standing in contrast to the bright colours of their boats and the shine of their armour. But in this Eden-like land events quickly spiralled out of control. The Trojan settlers who came in piety and peace quickly turned invaders, began a bloody war and found themselves murdering local countrymen.
Although the story is a myth anchored in the very ancient past, its theme gets to the heart of early Roman history: conflict and the Italian countryside. It would not be the first and only time that war and the rural ‘quiet land’ of Italy bled into each other. Indeed, in 350 BC, at the time of the myth’s creation, those two spheres of Roman life were fast becoming stitched into a single fabric. Early Roman citizens were both farmers and part-time soldiers. In both war and agriculture Romans humbly and piously called upon the traditional gods to sanction their endeavours and bring success to them and their families. The cycles of the agricultural year and the season of military campaigning were the same too: March (the month of Mars, the god of war) heralded the period of greatest activity. By the time October came around, the tools of the farmer and the weapons of the soldier were put away for the winter.
Above all, however, it was the characteristics of soldier and peasant that had become fused in the Roman. The virtues that made a good farmer also made a good fighter. Patriotism, self-lessness, industriousness and a hardy ability to persevere in the face of adversity would not only make a farm or a plot of land productive. These were the same virtues that would build the greatest empire of the ancient world. This, at least, is how the Romans liked to see themselves. It was a comforting view. The poet Virgil, who composed the epic story of Aeneas’s foundation of Rome, neatly summed this up. The Roman peasant-soldiers, he said, were like bees. They were not individuals, but a highly organized community striving together. Like Aeneas, these ‘little Romans’ worked hard, were dutiful and patriotically repressed their private desires to the greater good of the group. Yes, some died from their exertions along the way, but the race as a whole flourished. And the glowing, lucent honey they produced? This was pure gold, the product of a golden age, the riches of an entire empire.1
However, as in the story of Aeneas’s violent struggle to found Rome, the rural ideal of the bees clashed with the reality. Away from the hive, observed Virgil, the bees were also capable of waging venomous war on outsiders. But outsiders were not their only enemy. With their wings flashing, their stings whetted and their arms ready for battle, they reserved their most vicious attacks for inside the hive, for an internecine war on themselves.2 Lurking behind the rustic virtues of the hardy peasant, behind his honour and his steadfastness, said Virgil, was something quite opposite: the chaos of passion, the irrationality of war and, worse, the messy brutality of civil war. This was the true theme of Rome’s foundation. It was one that would reverberate throughout the history of the empire that the city-state would create. It would characterize the eventual fall of Rome as much as its earliest foundation and its incredible rise.