Part 13 (1/2)

It seemed like a stupendous enterprise, and even those who had seen most of Calvo's work did not see how he was going to do it. The river was twenty feet deep, and that was too deep for any pier building in those days. It would be a timber bridge.

More or less all the city took part in building that bridge. There were large trees to be cut down and their logs hauled from distant places, and shaped to fit into one another. There was stonework to be done at each end of the span, and on each side of the island. By the time this work was planned, the people were using iron more or less, and found it very convenient for many things; but Calvo set his foot down; not a bit of iron was to be used in his bridge. It was to be all wood, resting on stone foundations. Some of those who had worked with him remembered then that he never did use iron in such work. The younger men thought he must have reason to suppose that the G.o.ds were not pleased with iron.

Romulus had known Calvo for a great many years, although they had never been exactly intimate. As they stood together, watching the work go on, Romulus said in a tone that no one but Calvo could hear.

”There is no iron in this work?”

”None,” said Calvo.

”The G.o.ds do not approve it?”

”Apparently not,” said Calvo. ”The fires of Jove burned two bridges for me before I found it out.

”Also I have found that iron and water are bad friends, and in a bridge, which hangs above water, the bolts would rust. Finally, a thing which is all timber, put together without the use of anything else, does not grow shaky with time, but settles together and is firmer. There are some things a man does not learn until he has watched the ways of building for fifty years, and I have done that.”

If Calvo had been like some men of his day, he would have thought, when his bridges were burned, that the G.o.ds were angry with him for omitting some ceremony. But he was a man who noticed all that he saw and put two and two together; and he noticed in the course of time that lightning was much more likely to strike where iron was. He observed the path of it once when it did strike, and saw that it ripped the wood all to splinters and set it on fire trying to get at the iron, which it melted.

It is of course true that iron expands and shrinks with heat and cold, and when iron bolts are used in wood, the iron and the wood do not fit as well together after a few seasons, on this account. So Calvo planned his bridges without iron, and they were all made of dovetailed wooden timbers, as many old wooden bridges were which remain to this day. Calvo's observations about his bridges tended to make others think as he did. No iron was ever used in any of the temples or sacred buildings of Rome, even long after it was in common use for weapons, tools and other things.

The way in which the bridge over the Tiber was built was much like the way in which Caesar built bridges, hundreds of years later. It was so constructed that if necessary it could be removed at short notice. It was never struck by lightning or burned, and it remained until-long after Calvo was dead-another pontiff built a new and greater bridge, using all his knowledge and all else that had been learned in five generations.

XX

THE THREE TRIBES

The hill on which the Sabines settled took its name from their word for themselves, Quirites, the People with the Spears. It came to be known as the Quirinal. The level place between this hill and the Palatine, where the treaty was made, was called the Comitium,-the place where they came together. Here in after years was the Forum, the place for public debate on all questions concerning the government of Rome. Any open place for public discussion was called a forum-there were nineteen in different parts of Rome at one time-but this one was the great Forum Romanum, where the finest temples and the most famous statues were. a.s.semblies of the people, or of the fraternities, to vote on public questions were also called by the name of Comitium.

Between these two great hills and a big bend in the river was a great level s.p.a.ce that was used for a sort of parade ground, and this was called the Campus Martius, the field of Mars.

Romulus himself lived with his wife Emilia in a house which he built on the slope of the Palatine near the river and not far from the bridge, at a point sometimes called the Fair Sh.o.r.e. Here he had a garden, fig trees and vines, and beehives; and here he used to sit at evening and watch the flight of the birds across the river. His little son, whom he called Aquila as a pet name, because an eagle perched upon the house on the night the boy was born, used to watch with wondering eyes his father's ways with live creatures of all kinds. A countryman who tended the garden, who had been a boy on the Square Hill when Romulus was a tall young man, said that they used to get Romulus to find honeycombs and take them out, because bees never stung him.

Aquila had a little plot of his own, where he planted blue flowers, which bees like, and raised snails of the big, fat kind found in vineyards. He was like his mother's people, a born gardener. The countryman, Peppo, made little wooden toys for him, and among them was a little two-wheeled cart with a string harness, which Aquila attached to a team of mice, but he had to play with that out of doors, because his mother would not have the mice in the house. He had also a set of knuckle-bones which the children played with as children now play with jackstones. His mother molded for him men and animals and even whole armies of clay, so that he could play at war with spears of reeds, and demolish mud forts with stones from his little sling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: His mother molded for him men and animals]

He heard many stories,-some from his father, some from his mother and some from Peppo. He liked best the story of his father's pet wolf, and always on the feast of Lupercal and the other feast days of Mars he and his mother went to put garlands on the little stone that was raised to the memory of Pincho, in one corner of the garden.

The city was now ruled by three different groups of elders, from the three different races of settlers. They were generally known as the three tribes, and the public seat of the three rulers was called the tribunal.

The oldest tribe, of course, was the Ramnian, the people who had come from the Mountain of Fire to Rome. The t.i.ties were the Hill Romans or the Sabines, and the Luceres, the People of the Grove, were the tribe that had collected where the soldiers settled and the outsiders who were neither Ramnians nor Sabines lived. There were three great fraternities-the Salii or men of Mars on the Palatine, the Salii on the Quirinal, a Sabine branch of the same wors.h.i.+p, and the new priesthood of the whole people, whose priest was called the Flamen Dialis, the Lighter of the Fire of Jove.

Besides these fraternities there were two important groups of men who were not exactly rulers, but were chosen because of their especial knowledge.

These were the six Augurs, who were skilled in watching and explaining omens, and the Bridge Builders, the Priesthood of the Bridge, who were skillful in measuring and constructing and building. There were five of these, the head priest being called the Pontifex Maximus or High Pontiff.

Instead of being a large and rather straggling town growing so fast that it was hard to know how to govern it, Rome was really taking on the look of an orderly and prosperous city.