Part 1 (2/2)
We will not delay on the right bank of the Tiber, which had probably long been the home of tradesmen in their gilds,[17] and where farther down the rich were buying land for gardens[18] and suburban villas; but cross by the Pons Aemilius, with the Tiber island on our left, and the opening of the Cloaca maxima, which drained the water from the Forum, facing us, as it still does, a little to our right. We find ourselves close to the Forum Boarium, an open cattle-market, with shops (tabernae) all around it, as we know from Livy's record of a fire here, which burnt many of these shops and much valuable merchandise.[19] Here by the river was in fact the market in the modern sense of the word; the Forum Romanum, which we are making for, was now the centre of political and judicial business, and of social life.
We might go direct to the great Forum, up the Velabrum, or valley (once a marsh), right in front of us between the Capitol on the left and the Palatine on the right. But as we look in the latter direction, we are attracted by a long low erection almost filling the s.p.a.ce between the Palatine and the Aventine, and turning in that direction we find ourselves at the lower end of the Circus Maximus, which as yet is the chief place of amus.e.m.e.nt of the Roman people. Two famous shrines, one at each end of it, remind us that we are on historic ground. At the end where we stand, and where are the _carceres_, the starting-point for the competing chariots, was the Ara maxima of Hercules, which prompted Evander to tell the tale of Cacus to his guest; at the other end was the subterranean altar of Consus the harvest-G.o.d, with which was connected another tale, that of the rape of the Sabines. All the a.s.sociations of this quarter point to the agricultural character of the early Romans; both cattle and harvesting have their appropriate myth. But nothing is visible here now, except the pretty little round temple of a later date, which is believed to have been that of Portunus, the G.o.d of the landing-place from the river.[20]
The Circus, some six hundred yards long, at the time of Cicero was still mainly a wooden erection in the form of a long parallelogram, with shops or booths sheltering under its sides; we shall visit it again when dealing with the public entertainments.[21] Above it on the right is the Aventine hill, a densely populated quarter of the lower cla.s.ses, crowned with the famous temple of Diana, a deity specially connected with the plebs.[22] The Clivus Patricius led up to this temple; down this slope, on the last day of his life, Gaius Gracchus had hurried, to cross the river and meet his murderers in the grove of Furrina, of which the site has lately been discovered. If we were to ascend it we should see, on the river-bank below and beyond it, the warehouses and granaries for storing the corn for the city's food-supply, which Gracchus had been the first to extend and organise.
But to ascend the Aventine would take us out of our course. Pus.h.i.+ng on to the farther end of the Circus, where the chariots turned at the _metae_, we may pause a moment, for in front of us is a gate in the city wall, the Porta Capena, by which most travellers from the south, using the via Appia or the via Latina, would enter the city.[23]
Outside the wall there was then a small temple of Mars, from which the procession of the Equites started each year on the Ides of Quinctilis (July) on its way to the Capitol, by the same route that we are about to take. We shall also be following the steps of Cicero on the happy day September 4, 57 B.C., when he returned from exile. ”On my arrival at the Porta Capena,” he writes to Atticus, ”the steps of the temples were already crowded from top to bottom by the populace; they showed their congratulations by the loudest applause, and similar crowds and applause followed me right up to the Capitol, and in the Forum and on the Capitol itself there was again a wonderful throng” (_ad Att._ iv.
1).
We are now, as the map will show, at the south-eastern angle of the Palatine, of which, in fact, we are making the circuit;[24] a and here we turn sharp to the left, by what is now the via di San Gregorio, along a narrow valley or dip between the Palatine and Caelian hills--the latter the first we have met of the ”hills” which are not isolated, but spurs of the plain of the Campagna. The Caelian need not detain us; it was thickly populated towards the end of the Republican period, but was not a very fas.h.i.+onable quarter, nor one of the chief haunts of social life. It held many of those large lodging-houses (insulae) of which we shall hear more in the next chapter; one of these stood so high that it interfered with the view of the augur taking the auspices on the Capitol, and was ordered to be pulled down.[25] Going straight on reach the north-eastern angle of the Palatine, where now stands the arch of Constantine, with the Colosseum beyond it, and turning once more to the left, we begin to ascend a gentle slope which will take us to a ridge between the Palatine and the Esquiline[26]--another of the spurs of the plain beyond--known by the name of the Velia. And now we are approaching the real heart of the city.
At this point starts the Sacra via,[27] so called because it is the way to the most sacred spots of the ancient Roman city,--the temples of Vesta and the Penates, and the Regia, once the dwelling of the Rex, now of the Pontifex Maximus; and it will lead us, in a walk of about eight hundred yards, through the Forum to the Capitol. It varied in breadth, and took by no means a straight course, and later on was crowded, cramped, and deflected by numerous temples and other buildings; but as yet, so far as we can guess, it was fairly free and open. We follow it and ascend the slope till we come to a point known as the _summa sacra via_, just where the arch of t.i.tus now stands, and where then was the temple of Jupiter Stator, and where also a shrine of the public Penates and another of the Lares (of which no trace is now left) warn us that we are close on the penetralia of the Roman State. Here a way to the left leads up to the Palatine the residence then of many of the leading men of Rome, Cicero being one of them.
But our attention is not long arrested by these objects; it is soon riveted on the Forum below and in front of us, to which the Sacred Way leads by a downward slope, the Clivus sacer. At the north-western end it is closed in by the Capitoline hill, with its double summit, the arx to the right, and the great temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva facing south-east towards the Aventine. It is of this view that Virgil must have been thinking when he wrote of the happy lot of the countryman who
nec ferrea iura insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit.[28]
For the Forum is crowded with bustling human figures, intent on the business of politics, or of the law-courts (ferrea iura), or of money-making, and just beyond it, immediately under the Capitol, are the record-offices (tabularia) of the Roman Empire. The whole Sacra via from this point is crowded; here Horace a generation later was to meet his immortal ”bore,” from whom he only escaped when the ”ferrea iura” laid a strong hand on that terrible companion. Down below, at the entrance to the Forum by the arch of Fabius (fornix Fabiana), the jostling was great. ”If I am knocked about in the crowd at the arch,”
says Cicero, to ill.u.s.trate a point in a speech of this time, ”I do not accuse some one at the top of the via Sacra, but the man who jostles me.”[29]
The Forum--for from this point we can take it all in, geologically and historically--lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of which excavation has now at last reached. This hollow was formed by a stream which came down between the Esquiline and the Quirinal beyond it, and made its exit towards the river on the other side by way of the Velabrum. As the city extended itself, amalgamating with another community on the Quirinal, this hollow became a common meeting-place and market, and the stream was in due time drained by that Cloaca which we saw debouching into the Tiber near the bridge we crossed.
The upper course of this stream, between Esquiline and Quirinal, is a densely populated quarter known as the Argiletum, and higher up as the Subura,[30] where artisans and shops abounded. The lower part of its course, where it has become an invisible drain, is also a crowded street, the vicus Tuscus, leading to the Velabrum, and so to our starting-point at the Forum Boarium.
Let us now descend the Clivus sacer, crossing to the right-hand side of the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by the fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its guardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the Atrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose potestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to look at, const.i.tuted the religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A little farther again to the left is the temple of Castor and the spring of Juturna, lately excavated, where the Twins watered their steeds after the battle of the lake Regillus. In front of us we can see over the heads of the crowd the Rostra at the farther end of the Forum, where an orator is perhaps addressing a crowd (_contio_) on some political question of the moment, and giving some occupation to the idlers in the throng; and to the right of the Rostra is the Comitium or a.s.sembling-place of the people, with the Curia, the ancient meeting-hall of the senate. In Cicero's day the mere shopman had been got rid of from the Forum, and his place is taken by the banker and money-lender, who do their business in _tabernae_ stretching in rows along both sides of the open s.p.a.ce. Much public business, judicial and other, is done in the Basilicae,--roofed halls with colonnades, of which there are already five, and a new one is arising on the south side, of which the ground-plan, as it was extended soon afterwards by Julius Caesar, is now completely laid bare. But it is becoming evident that the business of the Empire cannot be much longer crowded into this narrow s.p.a.ce of the Forum, which is only about two hundred yards long by seventy; and the next two generations will see new Fora laid out larger and more commodious, by Julius and Augustus in the direction of the Quirinal.
Now making our way towards the Capitol, we pa.s.s the famous temple or rather gate of the double-headed Ja.n.u.s, standing at the entrance to the Forum from the Argiletum and the Porta Esquilina; then the Comitium and Curia (which last was burnt by the mob in 52 B.C., at the funeral of Clodius), and reach the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus, just where was (and is) the ancient underground prison, called Tullianum, from the old word for a spring (_tullus_), the scene of the deaths of Jugurtha and many n.o.ble captives, and of the Catilinarian conspirators on December 5, 63. Here the via Sacra turns, in front of the temple of Concordia, to ascend the Capitol. Behind this temple, extending farther under the slope, is the Tabularium, already mentioned, which is still much as it was then; and below us to the south is the temple of Saturnus, the treasury (_aerarium_) of the Roman people. Thus at this end of the Forum, under the Capitol, are the whole set of public offices, facing the ancient religious buildings around the Vesta temple at the other end.
The way now turns again to the right, and reaches the depression between the two summits of the Capitoline hill. Leaving the arx on the left, we reach by a long flight of steps the greatest of all Roman temples, placed on a long platform with solid substructures of Etruscan workmans.h.i.+p, part of which is still to be seen in the garden of the German Emba.s.sy. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, with his companions Juno and Minerva, was in a special sense the religious centre of the State and its dominion. Whatever view he might take of the G.o.ds and their cults, every Roman instinctively believed that this great Jupiter, above all other deities, watched over the welfare of Rome, and when a generation later Virgil placed the destiny of Rome's mythical hero in the hands of Jupiter, every Roman recognised in this his own inherited conviction. Here, on the first day of their office, the higher magistrates offered sacrifice in fulfilment of the vows of their predecessors, and renewed the same vows themselves. The consul about to leave the city for a foreign war made it his last duty to sacrifice here, and on his return he deposited here his booty. Here came the triumphal procession along the Sacred Way, the conquering general attired and painted like the statue of the G.o.d within the temple; and upon the knees of the statue he placed his wreath of laurel, rendering up to the deity what he had himself deigned to bestow. Here too, from a pedestal on the platform, a statue of Jupiter looked straight over the Forum,[32] the Curia, and the Comitium; and Cicero could declare from the Rostra, and know that in so declaring he was touching the hearts of his hearers, that on that same day on which it had first been so placed, the machinations of Catiline and his conspirators had been detected.[33] ”Ille, ille Iupiter rest.i.tit; ille Capitolium, ille haec templa, ille cunctam urbem, ille vos omnes salvos esse voluit.”
The temple had been destroyed by fire in the time of Sulla, and its restoration was not as yet finally completed at the time of our imaginary walk.[34] It faced towards the river and the Aventine, i.e.
south-east, according to the rules of augural lore, like all Roman public buildings of the Republican period. From the platform on which it stands we look down on the Forum Boarium, from which we started, connected with the Forum by the Velabrum and the vicus Tuscus; and more to the right below us is the Campus Martius, with access to the city by that Porta Carmentalis which Evander showed to Aeneas. This s.p.a.cious exercise-ground of Roman armies is already beginning to be built upon; in fact the Circus Flaminius has been there for more than a century and a half, and now the new theatre of Pompeius, the first stone theatre in Rome, rises beyond it towards the Vatican hill. But there is ample s.p.a.ce left; for it is nearly a mile from the Capitol to that curve of the Tiber above which the Church of St. Peter now stands; and on this large expanse, at the present day, the greater part of a population of nearly half a million is housed. I do not propose to take the reader farther. We have been through the heart of the city, as it was at the close of the Republican period, and from the platform of the great temple we can see all else that we need to keep in mind in these chapters.
CHAPTER II
THE LOWER POPULATION (PLEBS URBANA)
The walk we have been taking has led us only through the heart of the city, in which were the public buildings, temples, basilicas, porticos, etc., of which we hear so much in Latin literature. It was on the hills which are spurs of the plain beyond, and which look down over the Forum and the Campus Martius, the Caelian, Esquiline, and Quirinal, with the hollows lying between them, and also on the Aventine by the river, that the ma.s.s of the population lived. The most ancient fortification of completed Rome, the so-called Servian wall and _agger_, enclosed a singularly large s.p.a.ce, larger, we are told, than the walls of any old city in Italy;[35] it is likely that a good part of this s.p.a.ce was long unoccupied by houses, and served to shelter the cattle of the farmers living outside, when an enemy was threatening attack. But in Cicero's time, as to-day, all this s.p.a.ce was covered with dwellings; and as the centre of the city came to be occupied with public buildings, erected on sites often bought from private owners, the houses were gradually pushed out along the roads beyond the walls. Exactly the same process has been going on for centuries in the University city of Oxford where the erection of colleges gradually absorbed the best sites within the old walls, so that many of the dwelling-houses are now quite two miles from the centre of the city. The fact is attested for Rome by the famous munic.i.p.al law of Julius Caesar, which directs that for a mile outside the gates every resident is to look after the repair of the road in front of his own house.[36]
As a general rule, the heights in Rome were occupied by the better cla.s.s of residents, and the hollows by the lower stratum of population. This was not indeed entirely so, for poor people no doubt lived on the Aventine, the Caelian, and parts of the Esquiline. But the Palatine was certainly an aristocratic quarter; the Carinae, the height looking down on the hollow where the Colosseum now stands, had many good houses, e.g. those of Pompeius and of Quintus Cicero, and we know of one man of great wealth, Atticus, who lived on the Quirinal.[37] It was in the narrow hollows leading down from these heights to the Forum, such as the Subura between Esquiline and Quirinal, and the Argiletum farther down near the Forum, that we meet in literature what we may call the working cla.s.ses; the Argiletum, for example, was famous both for its booksellers and its shoemakers,[38]
and the Subura is the typical street of tradesmen. And no doubt the big lodging-houses in which the lower cla.s.ses dwelt were to be found in all parts of Rome, except the strictly aristocratic districts like the Palatine.
The whole free population may roughly be divided into three cla.s.ses, of which the first two, const.i.tuting together the social aristocracy, were a mere handful in number compared with the third. At the top of the social order was the governing cla.s.s, or _ordo senatorius_: then came the _ordo equester_, comprising all the men of business, bankers, money-lenders, and merchants (_negotiatores_) or contractors for the raising of taxes and many other purposes (_publicani_). Of these two upper cla.s.ses and their social life we shall see something in later chapters; at present we are concerned with the ”ma.s.ses,” at least 320,000 in number,[39] and the social problems which their existence presented, or ought to have presented, to an intelligent Roman statesman of Cicero's time.
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