The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (13 page)

According to legend, Tarquin the Proud enjoyed a brief tenure as king. His tyrannical rule angered the other Roman nobles until an act of outrage committed by his son, Sextus, brought about a rebellion.

Sextus and a group of young Roman nobles were out on the battlefront. One night the young bucks were comparing the virtues of their wives. Each one praised his own, so they decided to return to Rome and spy on their wives to see what each one was doing while her husband was away. Of them all, only Lucretia, the wife of Sextus's cousin Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, was hard at work taking care of her household rather than partying it up like the other wives. Sextus was filled with desire for Lucretia.

Later, Sextus returned to Collatinus's home where Lucretia entertained him properly as a guest. Late that night, he entered her room and tried to force himself on her at sword point. When she refused, he threatened to first rape her, kill a slave and lay them side by side and make it look like she had been sleeping with the servants while her husband was away. With that, Lucretia relented, but told her husband (when he returned) what had happened. Refusing to be comforted by the fact that she had been
forced, Lucretia displayed that good ol' Roman sensibility for setting the proper example by promptly killing herself so she would not provide an excuse for other women to act improperly.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Our word “republic” comes from the Romans' term for their new state, in which all had a share of power (instead of a kingdom, ruled by a king). They called it, in Latin, the
Res Publica.
It's hard to translate:
res
is a very broad word. You could translate it as “the public thingy,” but it means something like “the public concern” or “public affair(s).”

This outrage inspired Lucius Junius Brutus, another nephew of Tarquin the Proud, to start a rebellion against the Tarquins and drive them from power. Brutus was both brave and crafty. The Tarquins had been in a habit of killing off potential rivals, and Brutus's brother had been killed in this way. Brutus, however, had avoided suspicion by acting like an idiot. After the rebellion, Brutus became one of Rome's first consuls and carried on the example of stern discipline by putting his own sons to death for trying to restore the Tarquins to power.

“Great story,” I hear you saying. “But what
really
happened?” Well, to tell you the truth, the traditional stories appear to be roughly corroborated by archeological evidence, at least in outline.

 
Great Caesar's Ghost!
Authors no less than Chaucer and Shakespeare have retold the story of Lucretia, and the
Rape of the Sabines
is the basis for the musical
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!

The site of Rome, a marshy crossing along the Tibur River, was settled sometime between 1000–900
B
.
C
.
E
. by a people known to us by their archeological remains as Villanovan. They immigrated from the north bringing with them an ability to work iron and an Indo-European language. They lived in round huts, and it is probably from this kind of ancient dwelling that the temple of the goddess Vesta (as in the vestal virgins) got its circular shape.

Over the next couple hundred years, the growth of the Etruscan civilization, the immigration of Greeks into southern Italy, and the growth of Italic settlements in central Italy helped to create a variety of trade routes that intersected at Rome and made the site more important.

Villages began to spring up on the hills that rose out of the marshes at the point where the various routes crossed each other and the river. These villages were settled by various ethnic peoples: Latins, Oscans, Sabines, Greeks, and Etruscans. We can tell roughly how large the settlements were by the remains of ancient cemeteries from this time. Burials were always located
outside
of the village/city limits, and burials can be found along the base of the foothills and marshes between the settlements.

As population and commercial activity grew, the villages formed some kind of cooperative union. This is probably reflected in the names and stories of the Romans' traditional history, which show a mixture of Sabine and Latin (Roman) elements. Rome was by no means an important place at this time—other cities such as Alba Longa, which was a religious and political center of a federation of Latin towns, were more developed and more powerful. The “Romans” probably had a “king” (
rex
) who was elected and advised by a band of elders, the
patres.
The
patres
were the ancient precursor of the patrician class and the senate. But in order to evolve into a real city, Rome needed to become a geographically unified place, it needed public spaces for markets and businesses, and it needed to become politically significant in the region. But those annoying marshes kept Rome's villages isolated.

 
Roamin' the Romans
When roaming the Roman world, you'll notice that the temples of the goddess Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, are round. This shape probably goes back to the ancient round dwellings, such as we find with the Villanovan culture in Rome, which, quite literally, were centered on the hearth.

The Etruscans, whose commercial and cultural power was extending down past Rome into central Italy, probably brought Rome into being as a city and center of power. The growing trade between the federation of Etruscan cities, the Greeks, and Phoenicians was transforming Rome into a boom town. The story of entrepreneurial Etruscans moving in and becoming a governing class, as told about the Tarquins, may be mostly true.

About 600
B
.
C
.
E
., the Etruscans brought in the skills and knowledge to drain the marshes by means of a great sewer, or
Cloaca Maxima,
which means “really big sewer” (although a student once identified it on a test as the emperor Hadrian's wife). Over this newly created area, the kings erected royal buildings (such as the
regia
and house of the vestals) and places for public assembly (the
comitium
), and they began the construction of temples that were worthy of a regional center of power.

The
Cloaca Maxima
is tastefully (perhaps the wrong word here, all things considered) built into the Tibur's modern retaining wall.

 
When in Rome
The
Latin League
was a confederation of Latin cities neighboring Rome; each member held equal rights in the coalition. Rome conquered the Latins, broke up the League, and federated individual towns with itself.

Rome's expansion did not come without cost. The Romans fought constantly with their Latin neighbors to enlarge and protect their city's growing sphere of influence. In particular, Rome conquered the powerful cities of Veii and Alba Longa. Alba was the political and religious center of the
Latin League
(see Chapter 6, “On Golden Pond: Rome Conquers Italy and the Mediterranean,” for more on the Latin League). Rome's ambitions to take Alba's place led it to destroy the Alba and moved most of its important families to Rome. Some of these families, which included the ancestral family of Julius Caesar, became influential players in Roman history and culture.

By the beginning of the Republic (that is, by about 509
B
.
C
.
E
.), Rome was among the most powerful of the cities in the region, and it controlled roughly 350 square miles of territory.

Social organization was hierarchical. At the top of the social pyramid was the king, or
rex,
and his royal family, priests, and attendants. Next in line was the senate (
senatus
) made up of aristocratic representatives (
patres
) of the noble families. The senate advised the king on matters of law and state, mustered the army, and governed the clans. The senators and patricians enjoyed an enormous amount of social, economic, religious, and legal advantage over the common people (the
populus
).

The kings also organized the people into an assembly, the
comitia centuriata,
by property classes. Divisions in classes were made according to how much military equipment one could afford. Those who could afford a horse were at one end, and those who could afford only a stick or slingshot were at the other. This organization made a place for the growing importance of the foot soldier to the Roman army of the time.