A Companion to the Punic Wars

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

John Serrati

Now I will set forth the glory that awaits the Trojan race, the illustrious souls of the Italian heirs to our name. I will teach you your destiny ... Under [Romulus'] auspices, my son, Rome's empire will encompass the Earth, its glory will rival Olympus ... This will be your destiny, Roman, to rule the world with your power. These will be your arts: to establish peace, to spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud.

By the time Vergil put these words into the mouth of Anchises as he showed his son Aeneas the glories that awaited his lineage, Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean and had already established itself as one of history's leading imperial states. In the last decades of the first century, though in all likelihood going back to Cicero, there was a belief among some Romans that it was their destiny to rule an empire, that they had not become so powerful simply by happenstance but because conquest was somehow part of their psyche, and that early on in their history they were marked out as different, even gifted, when it came to the art of war. It has recently been argued that at no point in its history was the Roman Republic ever markedly more aggressive or imperialistic than contemporary states, yet it is unlikely that Rome owed the empire of Cicero or Vergil's times merely to the might of its legions.

By the fourth century Rome was almost certainly militarized to a far greater extent than any of its neighbors, and within a short time a hypercompetitive, aggressive, and warlike nobility would emerge as leaders of the state, while the classes that made up the common soldiery themselves favored war due to the plunder which it provided. These elements fused with Latin manpower in 338 in a settlement that gave the Romans unmatched resources of human capital. It should therefore be seen as no coincidence that serious conquest and warfare began in the fourth century; this was the era that laid the foundations of the large-scale conquests that were to come post-264. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to say that by the dawn of the third century, warfare must be seen as a binding force in Roman society, and Rome itself had become a state socialized to make war.

Yet what is equally clear is that it was not always this way. The city that existed prior to the fourth century appears in no way extraordinary in comparison to many of its peers on the peninsula. It likely began around the forum Boarium area as an emporion for salt from the mouth of the Tiber. Several hilltop villages developed in the area (tenth to ninth centuries) and in the eighth century began to coalesce into one settlement that centered on the Palatine, Capitoline, and the new common area of the Forum. At some point the region fell under the dominance of a series of warlords or tyrants, whom the later Romans called kings, but these fell eventually to an aristocracy that had been gaining power for some time and established an oligarchy in the late sixth century. Even at this stage, there appears to have been nothing atypical about Rome, beyond the fact that it was by now the largest urban centre in Latium. Nevertheless within a little more than a hundred years Rome did emerge as a highly aggressive military state. The process by which the city went from village to the brink of empire forms the central theme of this chapter.

Pre-Republican Rome

The belief that Rome was predestined to rule an empire perhaps goes back even further than Cicero to Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century, who more than anyone else is responsible for the canonization of early Roman history. But he was not the first to look into Rome's distant past: the earliest writers to mention the city are, perhaps unsurprisingly, Greek. Hellanicus in the fifth century first seized upon the lines from the Iliad (20.302–305) that predicted the survival of Aeneas; he then had the Trojan hero go west and eventually found Rome. Other Greek writers, such as Damastes, repeated the story, while Alcimus in the fourth century first connected it with Romulus, the native eponymous founder of Rome, whom he made Aeneas' son. Timaeus, Antigonus, and finally the Roman historian Fabius Pictor expanded greatly on these themes in the third century; by the second century, Roman antiquarians were at pains to establish a legitimate connection between the Trojan Aeneas and the Roman Romulus. The former became the distant ancestor of the latter, who went on to found Rome—according to Varro, whose date became the most accepted—in 753.

Remus does not seem to have been part of the early narrative — indeed, amongst ancient cities Rome is quite unique in having two founders — and only makes an appearance in the late fourth or early third century when the Greek chronicler Diocles incorporated the twins into his work on the foundation of Rome, and when, in 296 specifically, the brothers Ogulnii as curule aediles set up the very first statue in Rome of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf. Various reasons have been speculated for his late arrival. For example, the philological: "Rumlnas" and "Remne" as the names of two Etruscan gentes who once dominated the area that was to become Rome and ruled over the Latins there. Their names were rendered into Latin as Romilius and Remmius (a fifth-century gens Romilia Vaticana does appear to have existed). The Romilii either defeated or absorbed the Remmii, hence Romulus killing Remus, and therefore gave their name to the entire area. The political: Romulus' murder of Remus illustrates the early Roman dominance of the Sabines. Or the imperial: Romulus and Remus symbolize Rome and Capua in their joint rule of Italy in the fourth and third centuries.

However, it is far likelier that the twins represent either patricians and plebeians or the joint consulship perhaps created in 367 (see below), or indeed both, for from 342 onwards plebeians began to hold at least one consulship regularly. Much evidence supports this: first, a tradition in some sources that Remus was a self-sacrificing hero whose blood, albeit spilt by his brother or on Romulus' order, purified the city walls to make Rome hallowed ground. Furthermore, fourth-century and early third-century objects depicting both being suckled by a she-wolf confirm that in some versions Remus survived and ruled with Romulus; some literary sources also imply this.

By Varro's time, the mid first century, the myth of Romulus and Remus and the latter's murder was believed to have happened in 753. It is unsurprising that Varro arrived at this date; as with the Olympic Games beginning in 776, oral history and memory only appear to have gone back to the mid eighth century by the time the first histories were being written. The Varronian date, however, is not borne out by archaeology, which has revealed activity from the fifteenth century and permanent occupation from the tenth. On a natural bend in the Tiber, the area featured well-irrigated agricultural lands and nearby salt flats, probably the main reason that people permanently settled the place at the outset. The easily fordable Tiber made the location also a way-station for trade between the Etruscan north and the Campanian south. Thus, at an early date the settlement came into contact with a host of foreign peoples and influences, from Phoenicians to Etruscans, Campanians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.

The site was supposedly chosen by Romulus because it featured seven hills, although the local topography has to be quite generously manipulated – and undoubtedly was by antiquarians – in order to arrive at this number. Nonetheless, earliest Rome perhaps did encompass seven villages, as remembered via the Septimontium (Festival of the seven mounts) that took place annually on 11 December in historical times when ceremonies were held not on each of the canonical seven hills, but at the sites of the seven prehistoric villages that existed on just three: Germalus and Palatium on the Palatine; Velia at the foot of the Palatine, near one entrance to the future forum Romanum; Querquetulanus on the Caelian; and Oppius, Fagutal, and Cispius on the Esquiline. This festival as a whole, and its recognition of the Palatine's two villages, likely originated in and represents a proto-urban phase in the development of Rome; a time before the eighth century. The existence of a wall between Germalus and Palatium may indicate that these places at times even fought one another.

As with the number seven, later Romans may also have been onto something with the date 753. While it certainly does not represent the city's foundation, in the eighth century the first hints of a synoecism are found and the villages apparently coalesce gradually into a single urban settlement. This period sees a greater amount of luxury goods, many of them Greek, coming into the area. Rome's first aristocracy are now displaying their wealth and beginning to utilize chamber tombs. In the decades to come, the first permanent houses, undoubtedly belonging to this same upper class, would be built. By the third quarter of the eighth century the settlement was probably united by the construction of an earthen wall, making it likely that the villages first came together for collective defence.

The existence of such a defensive work, however, has yet to be proven. The first site that we know with certainty to have been communal is the Forum, lying between the Velia, the Palatine and the Capitoline. Votive deposits on the latter indicate that it too came into communal religious use within a few decades of the Forum area being cleared in the mid seventh century, and within the same period was perhaps home to a wooden temple. The Forum itself probably first served as a central meeting place and market. Within a few decades it was expanded to create the first comitium, most likely for the comitia calata (called assembly) which, as the name suggests, was a gathering of all citizens to hear proclamations from the government as well as the announcement of the kalendae and the coming festival days.

Though it is impossible to say with certainty, early Roman society appears to have been organized on the basis of clans or gentes (singular gens); units comprising multiple families who were not necessarily related to the wealthier families in control at the top. All Romans seem to have belonged to this structure and, like Scottish clans, each gens member, whether related or not, took the name of the top family. Thus by the eighth century each Roman had two names, his own and that of his gens, and within a couple of hundred years, as the gentes grew in size, larger units began to break away forming new clans, until by the sixth century most aristocrats had three names. Moreover, high-ranking members of a gens would have large groups of retainers (sodales; singular sodalis; archaic suodalis, suodales); not only is this almost certainly the origin of the later patron-client system in Rome, but is also likely to have been that of several, if not all, of Rome's kings as many of these groups acted as war-bands. While some of these formed Rome's earliest armies, others appear to have aggressively engaged in raiding and at times even conquest. The phenomenon of war-bands was frequently found in Etruscan society as well. Therefore, the "monarchical" period, which later Romans believed lasted from the mid eighth until the late sixth century, in all likelihood represents a time of rule by a series of local and foreign leaders heading gens-based war-bands who had either taken the city by force or reached a concordat with the population where their rule was exchanged for protection.

This theory is buttressed by several points. Firstly, the kingship in Rome was not in any way hereditary, and, even if we are generous and add the other leaders of whom we know from this period — Titus Tatius, the brothers Vibenna, Mastarna, and Lars Porsenna — to the canonical list of seven Roman kings, 250 years is far too long a period for 12 men to have ruled in unbroken succession, and thus large gaps are likely to have existed between reigns. Moreover, Mastarna is not an actual name but an Etruscan title meaning magister or leader, in all likelihood in a military context: perhaps merely the title of either Caeles or Aulus Vibenna, brothers who certainly headed war-bands and probably conquered and ruled Rome at some point in the sixth century, or of the Roman king Servius Tullius, who one tradition claims was a suodalis of Caeles. Finally, these roving war-bands continued to exist well into the fifth century, fighting private wars and attempting to conquer small settlements, including Rome.

Therefore, while later Romans pictured their early kings more along the lines of Hellenistic rulers, and while the deeds of certain monarchs are doubtless mythological, there does appear to have been a significant period in Rome's early history where the city was under the rule of a succession of individuals at the head of powerful war-bands. Some of these certainly, as the legends state, did build up the settlement to the point where it might be described as a city, and were probably responsible for many of Rome's earliest permanent structures. This situation would last until the local aristocracy, following a well-established pattern that had long ago played itself out in Greece and other parts of Italy, felt strong enough to seize power and found what came to be called the Res Publica.

The Sixth Century and the Fall of the Monarchy

War-bands are also likely to have been responsible for the early Romans' reputation as raiders and cattle rustlers, reflected both in the legend of Romulus and Remus and in stories of how the former populated early Rome with criminals and brigands. The raiding and pillaging of neighbors is ubiquitous in Livy's and Dionysius' accounts of early Roman warfare. The rape of the Sabine women fits this context: as in many Indo-European traditions cattle and women are both seen as movable property. Indeed, the oldest version, from Fabius Pictor (fr. 9 (Beck and Walter)) and repeated by Cicero (Rep. 2.12–14), sees the women as wholly passive; only Livy (1.9.6–10.1, 11.5–13.5), Ovid (Fasti 3.167–258), and Dionysius (2.30–47) later inject them with a personality. Dionysius, in fact, has the Romans carry off women from several different Italian peoples, as they had been doing for some time with neighbors' livestock. The incident may equally reflect early conubium between the Romans and the Sabines of the nearby Quirinal hill, which may have ushered in a period of Sabine dominance as our next three kings, Titus Tatius, Numa Pompilius, and Ancus Marcius, are all Sabine. This time also saw the Sabine god Quirinus amalgamated into a divine triad with the Roman Jupiter and Mars, and from pre-literate times all Roman citizens were equally referred to as Romani or Quirites. Therefore it would appear as though some form of synoecism did take place in the eighth century between the Romans and their Sabine neighbors, perhaps brought about via the conquest of Rome by a series of Sabine warlords and their suodales.

Although on the surface the early leaders of Rome might have been clan warriors, some of them nevertheless must have come to act as kings in some way, embodying military, civil, judiciary, and religious authority, for the city did move beyond its belligerent gens-based roots. The archaic Latin inscription found under the Lapis Niger in the Forum, and to a lesser extent the fourth-century Etruscan tomb at Vulci (often known as the François Tomb), illustrate that Rome was indeed ruled by individuals exercising some sort of legitimate authority. While the tomb features a painting of Mastarna and the brothers Vibenna, proving only that people in the early Republican period believed the kings to have existed, the Lapis Niger inscription is more conclusive as it is possibly as early as 600 and clearly mentions a recs, archaic for rex (king). This is highly significant: the Lapis Niger is a small sacred area in the Forum that at one point served as a shrine for a king. It contained an altar and the columnar inscription — much of which is lost — and very likely a statue. Votive objects found in and around the site date from 575–550, confirming a slightly earlier construction date. This coincides with the building of the Regia as the king's residence just east of the Forum (a cup from 625–600, inscribed with the word rex, has been found nearby). In the Republican period, this building served as the home of the pontifex maxumus.

(Continues...)

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