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Chapter Six - The Roman Republic

The Romans Were Fond Of Pork

A. The City On Seven Hills

Rome to-day is still the centre of an empire and the capital of a great country. It is still a crowded and most

interesting city; but though there are some impressive relics left of its ancient grandeur, we cannot expect a

town that has always had a large population to remain anything like it was two thousand years ago. Yet

there are some things that do not change. The natural boundary of the city on its western side is still the

yellow-green river Tiber, with the ridges of the Janiculum and the Vatican rising from its further bank. The

Romans of to-day, most evenings of the year, can enjoy, as much as their far-off ancestors did, the

glorious crimson sunsets over those ridges, when the whole city for a few moments seems to catch fire.

There is still an open, public space in the upper loop of the Tiber, the one that curves away from the city,

where the Field of Mars was in ancient times. The Pincian Hill, the northern outpost of Rome, and its

public gardens where "umbrella" pines and cypresses grow, is the rendezvous of the fashionable world out

for a stroll in the cool of the evening, as it was in the days of Cicero and Caesar. The hills on which Rome

was built have shrunk with time. But the Capitol, small yet steep, still dominates them.

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Chapter Six - The Roman Republic

Map - Rome

Looking south-east from its topmost height across a bare plain, the Roman Campagna, you see, twelve

miles away, the blue Alban hills, that lead up to the Apennines, the great central "spine" of Italy. If you

walk about the streets of Rome in July or August in the afternoon, especially if you are reckless enough to

stay on the sunny side, you will realise before very long why well-to-do Romans of the ancient world

deserted the capital at that time of the year and fled to their villas among the cool woods and waterfalls of

the Albans or on the cliffs of the lovely bay of Naples.

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Chapter Six - The Roman Republic

The Bay Of Naples - A View from the district fashionable in Roman times.

The history of Rome really begins about 500 B.C., i.e. when Athens was under the rule of "tyrants" and

the Greeks cities of the Asia Minor coast were restless under Persian overlords. It was about that time that

Rome became a republic. According to legends, which contain a certain amount of truth, for a hundred and

fifty years before that, Rome had been ruled by kings, the last of whom had been hated "foreigners,"

Etruscans from the large province immediately to the north of Rome.

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Chapter Six - The Roman Republic

Horatius Swimming To Shore

These Etruscans, a thick-set race with long, black hair, seem to have had an eastern origin. We do not yet

know much about them, as they have left no literature and we cannot yet understand their inscriptions.

They seem to have been descendants of Lydians or even Hittites who had emigrated to the far west. At any

rate they had a higher standard of civilisation than the native tribes of Italy, and we can assume that under

their rule early Rome made great progress.

The legends tell us how the last king of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, by his harshness and arrogance goaded

the Romans into rebellion, and they drove him out. Of course, he made determined efforts to get back,

helped by his friends and kinsmen among the Etruscan chiefs. You must have heard of at least one story

concerning that struggle, how Horatius and his two friends defended the wooden bridge over the Tiber, the

only one in those days, against the royalist invaders suddenly pouring down from the Janiculan hill. In

"Lays of Ancient Rome" (by Macaulay) the heroic spirit of those early days of the republic is wonderfully

revived. You remember how the bridge began to collapse with Horatius still on it, for the Romans had

feverishly cut through its supports at their end, and how with a prayer he jumped into the river and swam,

fully armed, to the bank, so that "even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer."

Before we go any further with the history of Rome, a problem must be stated, and in the rest of the chapter

you must look for different parts of the answer, which is not a simple one. The problem is this— why did

the Romans become first, masters of Italy, then lords of nearly the whole of the world known in their

days? They began as one of many Italian city-states, and not a specially well-situated or enterprising one at

that. At the period when our story begins, no one would have dreamt that the small town on the Tiber,

about fifteen miles from its mouth, was destined to be mistress of the world. The Etruscans in their strong

towns were masters of a large, rich province immediately to the north of them. The largest of these towns,

Veii, was only twelve miles from Rome. And to the south lay Capua, also founded by Etruscans, a large

and flourishing city in the fertile province of Campania.

In the early days, the Capuans, living their easy and luxurious lives, must have despised the Romans, who

were content with simple living and drudgery.

In the north of Italy, in what we to-day call Piedmont and Lombardy, lived large numbers of Gauls, tall,

mostly fair, and warlike people, an important branch of the Celtic race which in the Bronze and Early Iron

Age occupied a good deal of north-western Europe. Even to-day in north Italy you will frequently come

across fair, blue-eyed Italians. Fierce fighting took place between the Romans and the Gauls before the

war-loving northern hordes submitted. The Romans never regarded the northern plain as really Italian. To

them it was a continuation of the country we call France. Italy began officially not at the Alps but at the

first part of the Apennine range that slants across the peninsula from the Gulf of Genoa to the Adriatic.

The great river basin between the Alps and the Apennines they called "Gaul on our side of the Alps." On

the shores of what we call the French and Italian Rivieras and in the limestone hills behind, as well as in

Corsica, lived very fierce tribes known as Ligurians.

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Chapter Six - The Roman Republic

All along the south coast of Italy, from Naples to Tarentum (p.117), and in the east of Sicily, there were

Greek cities. They were mostly content to live as Hellenes and take little notice of Italian affairs. But we

shall hear of Tarentum and Syracuse again. In western Sicily, here and there in Sardinia, and on the nearest

parts of the African coast, were the cities of the Phoenicians, by far the most important being Carthage.

Returning to Rome after our tour round Italy, we must note that a long stretch of mountain country to the

southeast was occupied by the Samnites, a race as proud, hardy and well-disciplined as the Romans

themselves.

We have given this complete list of the neighbours of early Rome in order to state the first part of our

problem (p.192) in greater detail. In doing so, we have forecast a good deal of the earlier history of Rome,

because all these neighbours were in turn defeated and subdued.

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