Part 18 (2/2)

[111] In Rome, as in Greece, the temple was called a house.

[112] The remark is Cicero's.

[113] Pliny, Epistles, vii, 27. See another story in Plautus's Mostellaria.

[114] The letters D.M. found on Roman tombs are the initials of Dei Manes.

[115] They were called the Penates, that is to say, the G.o.ds of the interior.

[116] In the language of the Roman law the wife, children, and slaves ”are not their own masters.”

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROMAN CITY

FORMATION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

=The Kings.=--Tradition relates that Rome for two centuries and a half was governed by kings. They told not only the names of these kings and the date of their death, but the life of each.

They said there were seven kings. Romulus, the first king, came from the Latin city of Alba, founded the hamlet on the Palatine, and killed his brother who committed the sacrilege of leaping over the sacred furrow encircling the settlement; he then allied himself with Tatius, a Sabine king. (A legend of later origin added that he had founded at the foot of the hill-city a quarter surrounded with a palisade where he received all the adventurers who wished to come to him.)

Numa Pompilius, the second king, was a Sabine. It was he who organized the Roman religion, taking counsel with a G.o.ddess, the nymph Egeria who dwelt in a wood.

The third king, Tullus Hostilius, was a warrior. He made war on Alba, the capital of the Latin confederation, took and destroyed it.

Ancus Martius, the fourth king, was the grandson of Numa and built the wooden bridge over the Tiber and founded the port of Ostia through which commerce pa.s.sed up the river to Rome.

The last three kings were Etruscans. Tarquin the Elder enlarged the territory of Rome and introduced religious ceremonies from Etruria.

Servius Tullius organized the Roman army, admitting all the citizens without distinction of birth and separating them into centuries (companies) according to wealth. The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, oppressed the great families of Rome; some of the n.o.bles conspired against him and succeeded in expelling him. Since this time there were no longer any kings. The Roman state, or as they said, the commonwealth (res publica) was governed by the consuls, two magistrates elected each year.

It is impossible to know how much truth there is in this tradition, for it took shape a long time after the Romans began to write their history, and it includes so many legends that we cannot accept it in its entirety.

Attempt has been made to explain these names of kings as symbols of a race or cla.s.s. The early history of Rome has been reconstructed in a variety of ways, but the greater the labor applied to it, the less the agreement among students with regard to it.

=The Roman People.=--About the fifth century before Christ there were in Rome two cla.s.ses of people, the patricians and the plebeians. The patricians were the descendants of the old families who had lived from remote antiquity on the little territory in the vicinity of the city; they alone had the right to appear in the a.s.sembly of the people, to a.s.sist in religious ceremonies, and to hold office. Their ancestors had founded the Roman state, or as they called it, the Roman city (Civitas), and these had bequeathed it to them. And so they were the true people of Rome.

=The Plebs.=--The plebeians were descended from the foreigners[117]

established in the city, and especially from the conquered peoples of the neighboring cities; for Rome had gradually subjected all the Latin cities and had forcibly annexed their inhabitants. Subjects and yet aliens, they obeyed the government of Rome, but they could have no part in it. They did not possess the Roman religion and could not partic.i.p.ate in its ceremonies. They had not even the right of intermarrying with the patrician families. They were called the plebs (the mult.i.tude) and were not considered a part of the Roman people. In the old prayers we still find this formula: ”For the welfare of the people and the plebs of Rome.”

=Strife between Patricians and Plebeians.=--The people and the plebs were like two distinct peoples, one of masters, the other of subjects.

And yet the plebeians were much like the patricians. Soldiers, like them, they served in the army at their own cost and suffered death in the service of the Roman people; peasants like them, they lived on their domains. Many of the plebeians were rich and of ancient family.

The only difference was that they were descended from a great family of some conquered Latin city, while the patricians were the scions of an old family in the conquering city.

=Tribunes of the Plebs.=--One day, says the legend, the plebeians, finding themselves mistreated, withdrew under arms to a mountain, determined to break with the Roman people. The patricians in consternation sent to them Menenius Agrippa who told them the fable of the members and the stomach. The plebs consented to return but they made a treaty with the people. It was agreed that their chiefs (they called them tribunes of the plebs) should have the right of protecting the plebeians against the magistrates of the people and of prohibiting any measure against them. All that was necessary was to p.r.o.nounce the word ”Veto” (I forbid); this single word stopped everything; for religion prevented attacks on a tribune under penalty of being devoted to the infernal G.o.ds.

=Triumph of the Plebs.=--The strife between the two orders beginning at the end of the fifth century continued for two centuries (494 B.C.

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