THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
The land and environment
of Italy provided the Romans with a secure home from which to expand. Italy is
a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the sea and protected to the north by
the Alps mountain range. The climate is generally temperate, although summers
are hot in the south. Rome was part of a region near the Tiber River in central
Italy that was called Latium (now part of Lazio). Its Latin-speaking
inhabitants originally joined the waves of Indo-European peoples who crossed
the Adriatic Sea from the Balkan Peninsula and settled in central Italy about
1000 bc.
To the north, the Etruscans
had established a vigorous civilization (see Etruscan Civilization) in
the region called Etruria. These people probably originated in Asia Minor and
spoke an entirely different language than neighboring Indo-European peoples. In
southern Italy and on the large island of Sicily, colonists fleeing from famine
and political conflict in Greece founded new cities between 800 and 500 bc. The city of Naples derives its name
from the Greek words Nea Polis (New City).
Volcanoes like Mount Etna
and Mount Vesuvius dot the western coast of Italy and its offshore islands,
leaving sections of Latium, Campania near Naples, and Sicily fertile from the
residue of volcanic ash. The mountains were once rich in timber and had meadows
where sheep and goats grazed in the warmest months before they were driven to
the plains for the winter. There was salt along the Tiber River and large
deposits of iron were located in Etruria. North-south land routes allowed for
overland trade, and so commerce as well as agriculture, pasturage, and
metalwork drove the economy.
Romulus and Remus
The story of Rome’s founding survives
only in primitive myths and meager archaeological remains. An island in the
Tiber River afforded the easiest crossing point, and archaeology shows that
some Latins established a settlement on the nearby Palatine Hill; perhaps they
hoped to rob, or collect tolls, from traders crossing the river on their way
from Etruria to southern Italy.
Roman myth created a more
glorious tale of the city’s beginnings. These legends trace Rome’s origins to
Romulus, a son of the god Mars and also a descendent of the Trojan prince
Aeneas, who brought his people to Italy after the city of Troy burned. Romulus
and his twin brother Remus were grandsons of King Numitor of the ancient city
of Alba Longa in Latium. Numitor was deposed by his brother, who also tried to
kill the twins by having them thrown into the Tiber. Instead, the infants
washed ashore and were suckled by a she-wolf who became—and remains today—the
symbol of Rome. When the brothers grew up, they restored Numitor to his throne
and then founded a new city on the Palatine Hill above the river.
There are no contemporary
written records of the Roman monarchy, so the stories of the early kings are
primarily preserved in the works of historians Livy and Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, who wrote seven centuries after the time of Romulus. These
legends and even some of the kings themselves are probably mythical creations,
and the dates that they reigned are either inventions or rough approximations.
Nevertheless, such myths often contain bits of historical information that are
passed on and transformed through repeated telling.
The Romans believed that
Romulus and Remus founded Rome in 753 bc,
and that Romulus erected a wall around the site of the new city. When
Remus tried to assert his leadership by scornfully leaping over the inadequate
wall, Romulus killed him and became the city’s first king, giving it his name.
He then invited his neighbors east of the Tiber River, the Sabines, to a
festival and kidnapped the Sabine women—called the “rape of the Sabine
women”—to provide the wives necessary for the Roman population to grow. Other
legends about Romulus include his mysterious disappearance in a storm cloud, an
event that led the Romans to proclaim him a god.
The second king of Rome,
Numa Pompilius, was a Sabine who was regarded as especially just and devoted to
religion. Many of Rome’s religious traditions were later attributed to Numa,
including the selection of virgins to be priestesses of the goddess Vesta. He
also established a calendar to differentiate between normal working days and
those festival days sacred to the gods on which no state business was allowed.
His peaceful reign lasted from 715 to 673 bc.
Under Tullus Hostilius (672–641
bc) the Romans waged an aggressive
foreign policy and began to expand their lands by the conquest of nearby cities
like Alba Longa. When the warlike King Hostilius contracted the plague, the
people thought it was a punishment for the neglect of the gods so they named
Ancus Marcius, a highly religious grandson of Numa, as the fourth king (640–617
bc). Marcius founded the port of
Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber.
A wealthy man from the
Etruscan city of Tarquinii, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, came to live in
Rome and became such a favorite of King Ancus that he managed to succeed him
even though he was considered a foreigner. Tarquinius, who ruled between 616
and 579 bc, was said to have
drained the marshes between the hills and paved an area for the market place
that became known as the Roman Forum. His successor, Servius Tullius (578–535 bc), organized the Roman army into
groups of 100 men called centuries and was said to have built a new wall around
the city. The cruel seventh king, Lucius Tarquinus Superbus or Tarquin the
Proud (534–510 bc), was expelled
in 510 after his son cruelly raped Lucretia, a virtuous Roman matron and the
wife of his kinsman Collatinus.
Archaeology shows that
there is some truth to these legends. There were huts on the Palatine Hill
above the Tiber River by the 8th century bc,
and the evidence of both burials and cremations indicate that two different
cultures like the Romans and the Sabines had intermingled. The Forum was first
covered with a pebble pavement about 575 bc
and its draining dates to the period of Etruscan kings. On the other hand,
archaeologists believe that the earliest wall around the city was built in the
4th century bc—two centuries after
the reign of Servius Tullius. Even if the names, dates, and legends of early
Rome remain highly questionable, remnants of Roman material culture help to
document significant transformations in Roman life.
The Etruscans had enormous
cultural, social, and political influence on early Rome. The origins of this
seafaring people remain obscure, but most scholars now believe that the
Etruscans brought their language, their religion, and their love of music and
dance from the Near East to northern Italy.
Their distinctive culture was further shaped in the Italian region of Tuscany,
which bears their name.
Tomb paintings provide
a record of Etruscan civilization and illustrate their cultural sophistication,
intense religious beliefs, and artistic accomplishments. Their skill at urban
planning, engineering, and waterworks had a deep influence on the development
of Rome. In Rome itself, projects attributed to the Etruscan kings included the
building of city walls, the engineering of the Forum, and the construction of
the great drain to channel both rainfall and sewage into the Tiber. For
centuries the Romans also built and decorated their temples in the Etruscan
style. They were in awe of the extraordinary metalwork of Etruscan craftworkers
shown in products ranging from iron plows to bronze mirrors, silver bowls, and
fine gold jewelry. Elaborate aristocratic tombs in central Italian towns such as
Praeneste (now Palestrina) as well as rural drainage trenches cut into rock to
preserve topsoil show that Etruscan influences even spread to the countryside
around Rome.
