The idea that any serious ancient scholars could turn a blind eye to the obviously correct etymology that was staring them in the face in favour of a silly idea that derived Aborigines from ‘to wander’ via a tendentious alternative spelling is not a reflection of their obtuseness. It shows just how ingrained the idea was that ‘Rome’ had always been an ethnically fluid concept, that the ‘Romans’ had always been on the move.
Digging up early Rome
The many stories of Romulus and the other founders tell us a good deal about how the Romans saw their city, their values and their failings. They show too how Roman scholars debated the past and studied their history. But they tell us nothing, or at most very little indeed, about what they claim to: that is, what earliest Rome was like, the processes by which it became an urban community and when. One fact is obvious. Rome was already a very old city when Cicero was consul in 63 BCE. But, if there is no surviving literature from the founding period and we cannot rely on the legends, how can we access any information about the origins of Rome? Is there any way of throwing light on the early years of the little town by the Tiber that grew into a world empire?
However hard we try, it is impossible to construct a coherent narrative that could replace the legends of Romulus or Aeneas. It is also very hard, despite many confident assertions to the contrary, to pin precise dates onto the earliest phases of Roman history. But we can begin to get a much better idea of the general context in which the city developed and enjoy a few surprisingly vivid (and some even more tantalisingly elusive) glimpses into that world.
One way of doing this is by turning away from the foundation stories and seeking out clues lurking in the Latin language or in later Roman institutions that might point back to earliest Rome. The key here is what is often simply, and wrongly, termed the ‘conservatism’ of Roman culture. Rome was no more conservative than nineteenth-century Britain. In both places, radical innovation thrived in dialogue with all kinds of ostensibly conservative traditions and rhetoric. Yet Roman culture was marked by a reluctance ever entirely to discard its past practices, tending instead to preserve all kinds of ‘fossils’ – in religious rituals or politics, or whatever – even when their original significance had been lost. As one modern writer has nicely put it, the Romans were rather like people who acquire all kinds of brand-new kitchen equipment but can’t ever bear to throw away their old gadgets, which continue to clutter up the place even though they are never used. Scholars, both modern and ancient, have often suspected that some of these fossils, or old gadgets, may be important evidence for the conditions of earliest Rome.
One favourite example is a ritual that took place in the city in December each year, known as the Septimontium (‘Seven hills’). What happened at this celebration is not at all clear, but one learned Roman noted that ‘Septimontium’ was the name of Rome before it became ‘Rome’, and another gave a list of the ‘hills’ (montes) involved in the festivaclass="underline" Palatium, Velia, Fagutal, Subura, Cermalus, Oppius, Caelius and Cispius (Map 2). The fact that there are eight names suggests that something has got confused somewhere along the line. But more to the point, the oddity of this list (Palatium and Cermalus are both parts of the hill generally known as the Palatine), combined with the idea that ‘Septimontium’ was the predecessor of ‘Rome’, has raised the possibility that these names might reflect the sites of separate villages that preceded the fully fledged town. And the absence of a couple of obvious hills from the list, Quirinal and Viminal, has tempted some historians to go even further. Roman writers regularly referred to both of those hills as colles rather than the more usual Latin montes (the meaning of the two words is more or less identical). Does that distinction point to two separate linguistic communities somewhere in Rome’s early history? Could we possibly be dealing – to press the argument even further – with some version of the two groups reflected in the story of Romulus, the Sabines associated with the colles, the Romans with the montes?
Just possibly we could. There is little doubt that the Septimontium is related in some way to Rome’s distant past. But in exactly what way, and quite how distant, is very hard to know. The arguments are no firmer than I have made them seem, probably even less so. Why, after all, should we trust that learned Roman’s claim that Septimontium was the early name of the city? It was just as likely a desperate guess, to explain an archaic ceremony that baffled him almost as much as it does us. And the insistence on two communities seems suspiciously driven by a desire to rescue at least some part of the legend of Romulus for ‘history’.
Much more tangible is the evidence of archaeology. Dig down deep in the city of Rome, below the visible ancient monuments, and a few traces of a much earlier, primitive settlement, or settlements, remain. Beneath the Forum itself lie the remains of an early cemetery, which caused tremendous excitement when they were first unearthed, at the start of the twentieth century. Some of the dead had been cremated, their ashes placed in simple urns alongside jugs and vases which originally contained food and drink (one man had been given little quantities of fish, mutton and pork – and possibly some porridge). Others were buried, sometimes in simple oak coffins made by splitting a trunk and hollowing it out. One girl, about two years old, had been put in her grave wearing a beaded dress and an ivory bracelet. Similar finds have been made in other places all over the ancient city. Far below one of the later grand houses on the Palatine Hill, for example, lay the ashes of a young man, interred with a miniature spear, maybe a symbol of how he had spent his life.
The dead and buried are often much more prominent than the living in the archaeological record. But cemeteries imply the existence of a community, and traces of that are presumably to be found in the groups of huts whose faint outlines have been detected under various parts of the later city, including on the Palatine. We have little idea of their character (beyond their construction in wood, clay and thatch), still less of the lifestyle they supported. But we can fill in some of the gaps if we look just outside Rome. One of the best preserved, and most carefully excavated, of these early structures was found at Fidenae, a few miles north of the city, in the 1980s. It is a rectangular building, some 6 by 5 metres, made of wood (oak and elm) and rammed earth – so-called pisé de terre construction, still in use up to the present day – with a rough and ready portico around it, formed by the overhanging roof. Inside was a central hearth, some large pottery storage jars (plus a smaller one, which seems to have been a container for potting clay) and traces of some fairly predictable foodstuffs (cereals and beans) and domestic animals (sheep, goats, cows and pigs). The most surprising discovery amid the debris was the remains of a cat, which died (perhaps it was tethered) in a savage fire that eventually destroyed the building. Its claim to fame now is as the earliest known domestic cat in Italy.