Read Ebook: The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Gilman Arthur

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ONCE UPON A TIME

The old king at Troy--Paris, the wayward youth--Helen carried off--The war of ten years--AEneas, son of Anchises, goes to Italy--His death-- Fact and fiction in early stories--How Milton wrote about early England--How AEneas was connected with England--Virgil writes about AEneas--How Livy wrote about AEneas--Was AEneas a son of Venus?--Italy, as AEneas would have seen it--Greeks in Italy--How Evander came from Arcadia--How AEneas died--Thirty cities rise--Twins and a she-wolf-- Trojan names in Italy--How the Romans named their children and themselves.

HOW THE SHEPHERDS BEGAN THE CITY

Augury resorted to--Romulus and Remus on two hills--Vultures determine a question--Pales, god of the shepherds--Beginning the city--Celer killed--An asylum--Bachelors want wives--A game of wife-snatching-- Sabines wish their daughters back--Tarpeia on the hill--A duel between two hills--Two men named Curtius--Women interfere for peace--Where did Romulus go?--Society divided by Romulus--Numa Pompilius chosen king-- Laws of religion given the people--Guilds established--The year divided into months--Tullus Hostilius king--Six brothers fight--Horatia killed --Ancus Martius king--The wooden bridge.

HOW CORINTH GAVE ROME A NEW DYNASTY

Magna Graecia--Cypselus, the democratic politician--Demaratus goes to Tarquinii--Etruscan relics--Lucomo's cap lifted--Lucomo changes his name--A Greek king of Rome--A circus and other great public works--A light around a boy's head--Servius Tullius king--How the kingdom passed from the Etruscan dynasty.

THE RISE OF THE COMMONS

HOW A PROUD KING FELL

A tyrant king--The mysterious Sibyl of Cumae comes to sell books--The head found on the Capitoline--A serpent frightens a king--A serious inquiry sent to Delphi--A hollow stick filled with gold helps a young man--A good wife spinning--A terrible oath--The Tarquins banished--A republic takes the place of the kingdom--The first of the long line of consuls--The good Valerius--The god Silvanus cries out to some effect-- Lars Porsena of Clusium and what he tried to do--Horatius the brave-- Rome loses land--A dictator appointed--Castor and Pollux help the army at Lake Regillus--Caius Marcius wins a crown--Appius Claudius comes to town.

THE ROMAN RUNNYMEDE

HOW THE HEROES FOUGHT FOR A HUNDRED YEARS

Coriolanus fights bravely--He enrages the plebeians--Women melt the strong man's heart--Plebeians gain ground--Agrarian laws begin to be made--Cassius, who makes the first, undermined--The family of the Fabii support the commons--A black day on the Cremara--Cincinnatus called from his plow--The AEquians subjugated--What a conquest meant in those days--The Aventine Hill given to the commons--The ten men make ten laws and afterwards twelve--The ten men become arrogant--How Virginia was killed--Appius Claudius cursed--The second secession of the plebeians-- The third secession--The commons make gains--Censors chosen--The wonderful siege of Veii--How a tunnel brings victory--Camillus the second founder of Rome--How the territory was increased, but ill omens threaten.

A BLAST FROM BEYOND THE NORTH WIND

What the Greeks thought when they shivered--A warlike people come into notice--Brennus leads the barbarians to victory--A voice from the temple of Vesta--Tearful Allia--The city alarmed and Camillus called for--How the sacred geese chattered to a purpose--Brennus successful, but defeated at last--A historical game of scandal--Camillus sets to work to make a new city--Camillus honored as the second founder of Rome--Manlius less fortunate--Poor debtors protected by a law of Stolo --A plague comes to Rome, and priests order stage-plays to be performed--The floods of the Tiber come into the circus.

HOW THE REPUBLIC OVERCAME ITS NEIGHBORS

Alexander the Great strides over Persia--Suppose he had attacked Rome? --The man with a chain, and the man helped by a crow--How the Samnites came into Campania--The memorable battle of Mount Gaurus--How Carthage thought best to congratulate Rome--Debts become heavy again--How Decius Mus sacrificed himself for the army--Misfortune at the Caudine Forks--A general muddle, in which another Mus sacrifices himself--Another secession of the commons--An agrarian law and an abolition of debts-- What the wild waves washed up--Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, takes a lofty model--How Cineas asked hard questions--Blind Appius Claudius stirs up the people--Maleventum gets a better name--Ptolemy Philadelphus thinks best to congratulate Rome--How the Romans made roads--The classes of citizens.

AN AFRICAN SIROCCO

How an old Bible city sent out a colony--Carthage attends strictly to its own business--Sicily a convenient place for a great fight--The Mamertines not far from Scylla and Charybdis--Ancient war-vessels and how they were rowed--The prestige of Carthage on the water destroyed-- Xanthippus the Spartan helps the Carthaginians--The horrible fate of noble Regulus--Hamilcar, the man of lightning, comes to view--Gates of the temple of Janus closed the second time--A perfidious queen overthrown--Two Gauls and two Greeks buried alive--Hannibal hates Rome --Rome and Carthage fight the second time--Scipio and Fabius the Delayer fight for Rome--Hannibal crosses the Alps--The terrible rout at Lake Trasimenus--A business man beaten--Syracuse falls and Archimedes dies--Fabius takes Tarentum--A great victory at the Metaurus--War carried to Africa and closed at Zama--Hannibal a wanderer.

THE NEW PUSHES THE OLD--WARS AND CONQUESTS

Tumultuous women stir up the city--What the Oppian Law forbade--Cato the Stern opposes the women--The women find a valorous champion--How did the matrons establish their high character?--Two parties look at the growing influence of ideas from Greece--What were those influences?--How Rome coveted Eastern conquests--How Flamininus fought at the Dog-heads--How the Grecians cried for joy at the Isthmian games --Great battles at Thermopylae and Magnesia, and their results-- Philopoemen, Hannibal, and Scipio die--The battle of Pydna marks an era--Greece despoiled of its works of art--Cato wishes Carthage destroyed--Numantia destroyed--The slaves in Sicily give trouble.

A FUTILE EFFORT AT REFORM

Scipio gives away his daughter--Tiberius Gracchus serves the state-- Romans without family altars or tombs--Cornelia urges Gracchus to do somewhat for the state--Gracchus misses an opportunity--Another son of Cornelia comes to the front--The younger Gracchus builds roads and makes good laws--Drusus undermines the reformer--Office looked upon as a means of getting riches--Marius and Sulla appear--Jugurtha fights and bribes--Metellus, the general of integrity--Marius captures Jugurtha--A shadow falls upon Rome--A terrible battle at Vercellae--The slaves rise again--The Domitian law restricts the rights of the senate--The ill- gotten gold of Toulouse.

SOCIAL AND CIVIL WARS

THE MASTER-SPIRITS OF THIS AGE

Tendency towards monarchy--Sertorius and his white fawn--Crassus and his great house--Cicero, the eloquent orator--Verres, the great thief-- How Verres ran away--Catiline the Cruel--Caesar, the man born to rule-- Looking for gain in confusion--Lepidus flees after the fight of the Mulvian bridge--How the two young men caused gladiators to fight--What Spartacus did--Six thousand crosses--Pompey overawes the senate.

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT POMPEY

Pompey the principal citizen--Crassus feeds the people at ten thousand tables--How the pirates caught Caesar, and how Caesar caught the pirates --Gabinius makes a move--The Manilian law sets Pompey further on-- Mithridates fights and flees--Times of treasons, stratagems, and spoils--Catiline plots--The sacrilege of Clodius--Caesar pushes himself to the front--The last agrarian law--Caesar's success in Gaul-- Vercingetorix appears--Caesar's conquests.

HOW THE TRIUMVIRS CAME TO UNTIMELY ENDS

HOW THE REPUBLIC BECAME AN EMPIRE

How Octavius became a Caesar--Agrippa and Cicero give him their help-- Octavius wins the soldiers, and Cicero launches his Philippics--Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius become Triumvirs--Their first work a bloody one-- Cicero falls--Brutus and Cassius defeated at Philippi--Antony forgets Fulvia--Antony and Octavius quarrel and meet for discussion at Tarentum--How Horace travelled to Brundusium--The duration of the Triumvirate extended five years--Cleopatra beguiles Antony a second time--The great battle off Actium--Octavius wins complete power, and a new era begins--The Republic ends.

SOME MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

THE ROMAN READING AND WRITING

Grecian influence on Roman mental culture--Textbooks--Cato and Varro on education--Dictation and copy-books--The early writers--Fabius Pictor-- Plautus--Terence--Atellan plays--Cicero's works--Varro's works--Caesar and Catullus--Lucretius--Ovid and Tibullus--Sallust--Livy--Horace-- Cornelius Nepos--Virgil and his works--Life at the villa of Maecenas.

THE ROMAN REPUBLICANS SERIOUS AND GAY

The will of the gods sought for--The first temples--Festivals in the first month--Vinalia and Saturnalia--Fires of Vulcan and Vesta-- Matronly and family services--No mythology at first--Colleges of priests needed--An incursion of Greek philosophers--Games of childhood --Checkers and other games of chance--The people cry for games--Games in the circus--The amphitheatre invented--Men and beasts fight--Funeral ceremonies--Charon paid--The mourning procession--Inurning the ashes --The columbarium--The Roman May-day--Change from rustic simplicity to urban orgies.

THE STORY OF ROME.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

Once upon a time, there lived in a city of Asia Minor, not far from Mount Ida, as old Homer tells us in his grand and beautiful poem, a king who had fifty sons and many daughters. How large his family was, indeed, we cannot say, for the storytellers of the olden time were not very careful to set down the actual and exact truth, their chief object being to give the people something to interest them. That they succeeded well in this respect we know, because the story of this old king and his great family of sons and daughters has been told and retold thousands of times since it was first related, and that was so long ago that the bard himself has sometimes been said never to have lived at all. Still; somebody must have existed who told the wondrous story, and it has always been attributed to a blind poet, to whom the name Homer has been given.

The place in which the old king and his great family lived was Ilium, though it is better known as Troja or Troy, because that is the name that the Roman people used for it in later times. One of the sons of Priam, for that was the name of this king, was Paris, who, though very handsome, was a wayward and troublesome youth. He once journeyed to Greece to find a wife, and there fell in love with a beautiful daughter of Jupiter, named Helen. She was already married to Menelaus, the Prince of Lacedaemonia , who had most hospitably entertained young Paris, but this did not interfere with his carrying her off to Troy. The wedding journey was made by the roundabout way of Phoenicia and Egypt, but at last the couple reached home with a large amount of treasure taken from the hospitable Menelaus.

This wild adventure led to a war of ten years between the Greeks and King Priam, for the rescue of the beautiful Helen. Menelaus and some of his countrymen at last contrived to conceal themselves in a hollow wooden horse, in which they were taken into Troy. Once inside, it was an easy task to open the gates and let the whole army in also. The city was then taken and burned. Menelaus was naturally one of the first to hasten from the smoking ruins, though he was almost the last to reach his home. He lived afterwards for years in peace, health, and happiness with the beautiful wife who had cost him so much suffering and so many trials to regain.

Among the relatives of King Priam was one Anchises, a descendant of Jupiter, who was very old at the time of the war. He had a valiant son, however, who fought well in the struggle, and the story of his deeds was ever afterwards treasured up among the most precious narratives of all time. This son was named AEneas, and he was not only a descendant of Jupiter, but also a son of the beautiful goddess Venus. He did not take an active part in the war at its beginning, but in the course of time he and Hector, who was one of the sons of the king, became the most prominent among the defenders of Troy. After the destruction of the city, he went out of it, carrying on his shoulders his aged father, Anchises, and leading by the hand his young son, Ascanius, or Iulus, as he was also called. He bore in his hands his household gods, called the Penates, and began his now celebrated wanderings over the earth. He found a resting-place at last on the farther coast of the Italian peninsula, and there one day he marvellously disappeared in a battle on the banks of the little brook Numicius, where a monument was erected to his memory as "The Father and the Native God." According to the best accounts, the war of Troy took place nearly twelve hundred years before Christ, and that is some three thousand years ago now. It was before the time of the prophet Eli, of whom we read in the Bible, and long before the ancient days of Samuel and Saul and David and Solomon, who seem so very far removed from our times. There had been long lines of kings and princes in China and India before that time, however, and in the hoary land of Egypt as many as twenty dynasties of sovereigns had reigned and passed away, and a certain sort of civilization had flourished for two or three thousand years, so that the great world was not so young at that time as one might at first think If only there had been books and newspapers in those olden days, what revelations they would make to us now! They would tell us exactly where Troy was, which some of the learned think we do not know, and we might, by their help, separate fact from fiction in the immortal poems and stories that are now our only source of information. It is not for us to say that that would be any better for us than to know merely what we do, for poetry is elevating and entertaining, and stirs the heart; and who could make poetry out of the columns of a newspaper, even though it were as old as the times of the Pharaohs? Let us, then, be thankful for what we have, and take the beginnings of history in the mixed form of truth and fiction, following the lead of learned historians who are and long have been trying to trace the true clue of fact in the labyrinth of poetic story with which it is involved.

When the poet Milton sat down to write the history of that part of Britain now called England, as he expressed it, he said: "The beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yes, periods of ages, either wholly unknown or obscured or blemished with fables." Why this is so the great poet did not pretend to tell, but he thought that it might be because people did not know how to write in the first ages, or because their records had been lost in wars and by the sloth and ignorance that followed them. Perhaps men did not think that the records of their own times were worth preserving when they reflected how base and corrupt, how petty and perverse such deeds would appear to those who should come after them. For whatever reason, Milton said that it had come about that some of the stories that seemed to be the oldest were in his day regarded as fables; but that he did not intend to pass them over, because that which one antiquary admitted as true history, another exploded as mere fiction, and narratives that had been once called fables were afterward found to "contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true," as what might be read in poets "of the flood and giants, little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned." For such reasons Milton determined to tell over the old stories, if for no other purpose than that they might be of service to the poets and romancers who knew how to use them judiciously. He said that he did not intend even to stop to argue and debate disputed questions, but, "imploring divine assistance," to relate, "with plain and lightsome brevity," those things worth noting.

After all this preparation Milton began his history of England at the Flood, hastily recounted the facts to the time of the great Trojan war, and then said that he had arrived at a period when the narrative could not be so hurriedly dispatched. He showed how the old historians had gone back to Troy for the beginnings of the English race, and had chosen a great-grandson of AEneas, named Brutus, as the one by whom it should be attached to the right royal heroes of Homer's poem. Thus we see how firm a hold upon the imagination of the world the tale of Troy had after twenty-seven hundred years.

Twenty-five or thirty years before the birth of Christ there was in Rome another poet, named Virgil, writing about the wanderings of AEneas. He began his beautiful story with these words: "Arms I sing, and the hero, who first, exiled by fate, came from the coast of Troy to Italy and the Lavinian shore." He then went on to tell in beautiful words the story of the wanderings of his hero,--a tale that has now been read and re-read for nearly two thousand years, by all who have wished to call themselves educated; generations of school-boys, and schoolgirls too, have slowly made their way through the Latin of its twelve books. This was another evidence of the strong hold that the story of Troy had upon men, as well as of the honor in which the heroes, and descent from them, were held.

In the generation after Virgil there arose a graphic writer named Livy, who wrote a long history of Rome, a large portion of which has been preserved to our own day. Like Virgil, Livy traced the origin of the Latin people to AEneas, and like Milton, he re-told the ancient stories, saying that he had no intention of affirming or refuting the traditions that had come down to his time of what had occurred before the building of the city, though he thought them rather suitable for the fictions of poetry than for the genuine records of the historian. He added, that it was an indulgence conceded to antiquity to blend human things with things divine, in such a way as to make the origin of cities appear more venerable. This principle is much the same as that on which Milton wrote his history, and it seems a very good one. Let us, therefore, follow it.

In the narrative of events for several hundred years after the city of Rome was founded, according to the early traditions, it is difficult to distinguish truth from fiction, though a skilful historian is able, by reading history backwards, to make up his mind as to what is probable and what seems to belong only to the realm of myth. It does not, for example, seem probable that AEneas was the son of the goddess Venus; and it seems clear that a great many of the stories that are mixed with the early history of Rome were written long after the events they pretend to record, in order to account for customs and observances of the later days. Some of these we shall notice as we go on with our pleasant story.

We must now return to AEneas. After long wanderings and many marvellous adventures, he arrived, as has been said, on the shores of Italy. He was not able to go rapidly about the whole country, as we are in these days by means of our good roads and other modes of communication, but if he could have done this, he would have found that he had fallen upon a land in which the inhabitants had come, as he had, from foreign shores. Some of them were of Greek origin, and others had emigrated from countries just north of Italy, though, as we now know that Asia was the cradle of our race, and especially of that portion of it that has peopled Europe, we suppose that all the dwellers on the boot-shaped peninsula had their origin on that mysterious continent at some early period.

If AEneas could have gone to the southern part of Italy,--to that part from which travellers now take the steamships for the East at Brindisi, he would have found some of the emigrants from the North. If he had gone to the north of the river Tiber, he would have seen a mixed population enjoying a greater civilization than the others, the aristocracy of which had come also from the northern mountains, though the common people were from Greece or its colonies. These people of Greek descent were called Etruscans, and it has been discovered that they had advanced so far in civilization, that they afterwards gave many of their customs to the city of Rome when it came to power. A confederacy known as the "Twelve Cities of Etruria" became famous afterwards, though no one knows exactly which the twelve were. Probably they changed from time to time; some that belonged to the union at one period, being out of it at another. It will be enough for us to remember that Veii, Clusium, Fidenae, Volsinii, and Tarquinii were of the group of Etruscan cities at a later date.

The central portion of the country to which AEneas came is that known as Italia, the inhabitants of which were of the same origin as the Greeks. It is said that about sixty years before the Trojan war, King Evander brought a company from the land of Arcadia, where the people were supposed to live in a state of ideal innocence and virtue, to Italia, and began a city on the banks of the Tiber, at the foot of the Palatine Hill. Evander was a son of Mercury, and he found that the king of the country he had come to was Turnus, who was also a relative of the immortal gods. Turnus and Evander became fast friends, and it is said that Turnus taught his neighbors the art of writing, which he had himself learned from Hercules, but this is one of the transparent fictions of the story. It may be that he taught them music and the arts of social life, and gave them good laws. What ever became of good Evander we do not know.

The king of the people among whom AEneas landed was one Latinus, who became a friend of his noble visitor, giving him his daughter Lavinia to wife, though he had previously promised her to Turnus. AEneas named the town in which he lived Lavinium, in honor of his wife. Turnus was naturally enraged at the loss of his expected bride, and made war upon both AEneas and Latinus. The Trojan came off victorious, both the other warriors being killed in the struggle. Thus for a short time, AEneas was left sole king of all those regions, with no one to dispute his title to the throne or his right to his wife; but the pleasure of ruling was not long to be his, for a short time after his accession to power, he was killed in battle on the banks of the Numicius, as has already been related. His son Ascanius left the low and unhealthy site of Lavinium, and founded a city on higher ground, which was called Alba Longa , and the mountain on the side of which it was, the Alban mountain. The new capital of Ascanius became the centre and principal one of thirty cities that arose in the plain, over all of which it seemed to have authority. Among these were Tusculum, Praeneste, Lavinium, and Ardea, places of which subsequent history has much to say.

Ascanius was successful in founding a long line of sovereigns, who reigned in Alba for three hundred years, until there arose one Numitor who was dispossessed of his throne by a younger brother named Amulius. One bad act usually leads to another, and this case was no exception to the rule, for when Amulius had taken his brother's throne, he still feared that the rightful children might interfere with the enjoyment of his power. Though he supported Numitor in comfort, he cruelly killed his son and shut his daughter up in a temple. This daughter was called Silvia, or, sometimes, Rhea Silvia. Wicked men are not able generally to enjoy the fruits of their evil doings long, and, in the course of time, the daughter of the dethroned Numitor became the mother of a beautiful pair of twin boys, who proved the avengers of their grandfather. Not immediately, however. The detestable usurper determined to throw the mother and her babes into the river Tiber, and thus make an end of them, as well as of all danger to him from them. It happened that the river was at the time overflowing its banks, and though the poor mother was drowned, the cradle of the twins was caught on the shallow ground at the foot of the Palatine Hill, at the very place where the good Evander had begun his city so long before. There the waifs were found by one of the king's shepherds, after they had been, strangely enough, taken care of for a while by a she-wolf, which gave them milk, and a woodpecker, which supplied them with other food. Faustulus was the name of this shepherd, and he took them to his wife Laurentia, though she already had twelve others to care for. The brothers, who were named Romulus and Remus, grew up on the sides of the Palatine Hill to be strong and handsome men, and showed themselves born leaders among the other shepherds, as they attended to their daily duties or fought the wild animals that troubled the flocks.

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