History of Rome, books 1-10

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1.10.2.1
The people of Caenina, Crustumerium, and Antemnae were the greatest sufferers; they thought Tatius and his Sabines were too slow in moving, so these three cities prepared to make war conjointly.
1.10.3.1
Such, however, were the impatience and anger of the Caeninensians that even the Crustuminians and Antemnates did not display enough energy for them, so the men of Caenina made an attack upon Roman territory on their own account.
1.10.4.1
Whilst they were scattered far and wide, pillaging and destroying, Romulus came upon them with an army, and after a brief encounter taught them that anger is futile without strength. He put them to a hasty flight, and following them up, killed their king and despoiled his body; then after slaying their leader took their city at the first assault.
1.10.5.1
He was no less anxious to display his achievements than he had been great in performing them, so, after leading his victorious army home, he mounted to the Capitol with the spoils of his dead foe borne before him on a frame constructed for the purpose. He hung them there on an oak, which the shepherds looked upon as a sacred tree, and at the same time marked out the site for the temple of Jupiter, and addressing the god by a new title, uttered the following invocation: “Jupiter Feretrius!
1.10.6.1
these arms taken from a king, I, Romulus a king and conqueror, bring to thee, and on this domain, whose bounds I have in will and purpose traced, I dedicate a temple to receive the spolia opima which posterity following my example shall bear hither, taken from the kings and generals of our foes slain in battle.”
1.10.7.1
Such was the origin of the first temple dedicated in Rome. And the gods decreed that though its founder did not utter idle words in declaring that posterity would thither bear their spoils, still the splendour of that offering should not be dimmed by the number of those who have rivalled his achievement. For after so many years have elapsed and so many wars been waged, only twice have the spolia opima been offered. So seldom has Fortune granted that glory to men.
1.11.1.1
Whilst the Romans were thus occupied, the army of the Antemnates seized the opportunity of their territory being unoccupied and made a raid into it. Romulus hastily led his legion against this fresh foe and surprised them as they were scattered over the fields.
1.11.2.1
At the very first battle-shout and charge the enemy were routed and their city captured. Whilst Romulus was exulting over this double victory, his wife, Hersilia, moved by the entreaties of the abducted maidens, implored him to pardon their parents and receive them into citizenship, for so the State would increase in unity and strength.
1.11.3.1
He readily granted her request. He then advanced against the Crustuminians, who had commenced war, but their eagerness had been damped by the successive defeats of their neighbours, and they offered but slight resistance.
1.11.4.1
Colonies were planted in both places; owing to the fertility of the soil of the Crustumine district, the majority gave their names for that colony. On the other hand there were numerous migrations to Rome, mostly of the parents and relatives of the abducted maidens.
1.11.5.1
The last of these wars was commenced by the Sabines and proved the most serious of all, for nothing was done in passion or impatience; they masked their designs till war had actually commenced.
1.11.6.1
Strategy was aided by craft and deceit, as the following incident shows. Spurius Tarpeius was in command of the Roman citadel. Whilst his daughter had gone outside the fortifications to fetch water for some religious ceremonies, Tatius bribed her to admit his troops within the citadel.
1.11.7.1
Once admitted, they crushed her to death beneath their shields, either that the citadel might appear to have been taken by assault, or that her example might be left as a warning that no faith should be kept with traitors.
1.11.8.1
A further story runs that the Sabines were in the habit of wearing heavy gold armlets on their left arms and richly jeweled rings, and that the girl made them promise to give her “what they had on their left arms,” accordingly they piled their shields upon her instead of golden gifts.
1.11.9.1
Some say that in bargaining for what they had in their left hands, she expressly asked for their shields, and being suspected of wishing to betray them, fell a victim to her own bargain.
1.12.1.1
However this may be, the Sabines were in possession of the citadel. And they would not come down from it the next day, though the Roman army was drawn up in battle array over the whole of the ground between the Palatine and the Capitoline hill, until, exasperated at the loss of their citadel and determined to recover it, the Romans mounted to the attack.
1.12.2.1
Advancing before the rest, Mettius Curtius, on the side of the Sabines, and Hostius Hostilius, on the side of the Romans, engaged in single combat.
1.12.3.1
Hostius, fighting on disadvantageous ground, upheld the fortunes of Rome by his intrepid bravery, but at last he fell; the Roman line broke and fled to what was then the gate of the Palatine.
1.12.4.1
Even Romulus was being swept away by the crowd of fugitives, and lifting up his hands to heaven he exclaimed: “ Jupiter, it was thy omen that I obeyed when I laid here on the Palatine the earliest foundations of the City. Now the Sabines hold its citadel, having bought it by a bribe, and coming thence have seized the valley and are pressing hitherwards in battle.
1.12.5.1
Do thou, Father of gods and men, drive hence our foes, banish terror from Roman hearts, and stay our shameful flight!
1.12.6.1
Here do I vow a temple to thee, “Jove the Stayer,” as a memorial for the generations to come that it is through thy present help that the City has been saved.”
1.12.7.1
Then, as though he had become aware that his prayer had been heard, he cried, “Back, Romans! Jupiter Optimus Maximus bids you stand and renew the battle.”
1.12.8.1
They stopped as though commanded by a voice from heaven-Romulus dashed up to the foremost line, just as Mettius Curtius had run down from the citadel in front of the Sabines and driven the Romans in headlong flight over the whole of the ground now occupied by the Forum. He was now not far from the gate of the Palatine, and was shouting: “We have conquered our faithless hosts, our cowardly foes; now they know that to carry off maidens is a very different thing from fighting with men.”
1.12.9.1
In the midst of these vaunts Romulus, with a compact body of valiant troops, charged down on him. Mettius happened to be on horseback, so he was the more easily driven back, the Romans followed in pursuit, and, inspired by the courage of their king, the rest of the Roman army routed the Sabines.
1.12.10.1
Mettius, unable to control his horse, maddened by the noise of his pursuers, plunged into a morass. The danger of their general drew off the attention of the Sabines for a moment from the battle; they called out and made signals to encourage him, so, animated to fresh efforts, he succeeded in extricating himself. Thereupon the Romans and Sabines renewed the fighting in the middle of the valley, but the fortune of Rome was in the ascendant.
1.13.1.1
Then it was that the Sabine women, whose wrongs had led to the war, throwing off all womanish fears in their distress, went boldly into the midst of the flying missiles with dishevelled hair and rent garments.
1.13.2.1
Running across the space between the two armies they tried to stop any further fighting and calm the excited passions by appealing to their fathers in the one army and their husbands in the other not to bring upon themselves a curse by staining their hands with the blood of a father-in-law or a son-in-law, nor upon their posterity the taint of parricide.
1.13.3.1
“If,” they cried, “you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans.”
1.13.4.1
The armies and their leaders were alike moved by this appeal. There was a sudden hush and silence. Then the generals advanced to arrange the terms of a treaty. It was not only peace that was made, the two nations were united into one State, the royal power was shared between them, and the seat of government for both nations was Rome.
1.13.5.1
After thus doubling the City, a concession was made to the Sabines in the new appellation of Quirites, from their old capital of Cures. As a memorial of the battle, the place where Curtius got his horse out of the deep marsh on to safer ground was called the Curtian lake.
1.13.6.1
The joyful peace, which put an abrupt close to such a deplorable war, made the Sabine women still dearer to their husbands and fathers, and most of all to Romulus himself.
1.13.7.1
Consequently when he effected the distribution of the people into the thirty curiae, he affixed their names to the curiae. No doubt there were many more than thirty women, and tradition is silent as to whether those whose names were given to the curiae were selected on the ground of age, or on that of personal distinction — either their own or their husbands' —or merely by lot.
1.13.8.1
The enrolment of the three centuries of knights took place at the same time; the Ramnenses were called after Romulus, the Titienses from T. Tatius. The origin of the Luceres and why they were so called is uncertain. Thenceforward the two kings exercised their joint sovereignty with perfect harmony.
1.14.1.1
Some years subsequently the kinsmen of King Tatius ill-treated the ambassadors of the Laurentines. They came to seek redress from him in accordance with international law, but the influence and importunities of his friends had more weight with Tatius than the remonstrances of the Laurentines.
1.14.2.1
The consequence was that he brought upon himself the punishment due to them, for when he had gone to the annual sacrifice at Lavinium, a tumult arose in which he was killed.
1.14.3.1
Romulus is reported to have been less distressed at this incident than his position demanded, either because of the insincerity inherent in all joint sovereignty, or because he thought he had deserved his fate.
1.14.4.1
He refused, therefore, to go to war, but that the wrong done to the ambassadors and the murder of the king might be expiated, the treaty between Rome and Lavinium was renewed. Whilst in this direction an unhoped-for peace was secured, war broke out in a much nearer quarter, in fact almost at the very gates of Rome. The people of Fidenae considered that a power was growing up too close to them, so to prevent the anticipations of its future greatness from being realised, they took the initiative in making war.
1.14.5.1
Armed bands invaded and devastated the country lying between the City and Fidenae. Thence they turned to the left-the Tiber barred their advance on the right-and plundered and destroyed, to the great alarm of the country people.
1.14.6.1
A sudden rush from the fields into the City was the first intimation of what was happening.
1.14.7.1
A war so close to their gates admitted of no delay, and Romulus hurriedly led out his army and encamped about a mile from Fidenae. Leaving a small detachment to guard the camp, he went forward with his whole force, and whilst one part were ordered to lie in ambush in a place overgrown with dense brushwood, he advanced with the larger part and the whole of the cavalry towards the city, and by riding up to the very gates in a disorderly and provocative manner he succeeded in drawing the enemy.
1.14.8.1
The cavalry continued these tactics and so made the flight which they were to feign seem less suspicious, and when their apparent hesitation whether to fight or to flee was followed by the retirement of the infantry, the enemy suddenly poured out of the crowded gates, broke the Roman line and pressed on in eager pursuit till they were brought to where the ambush was set.
1.14.9.1
Then the Romans suddenly rose and attacked the enemy in flank; their panic was increased by the troops in the camp bearing down upon them. Terrified by the threatened attacks from all sides, the Fidenates turned and fled almost before Romulus and his men could wheel round from their simulated flight.
1.14.10.1
They made for their town much more quickly than they had just before pursued those who pretended to flee, for their flight was a genuine one.
1.14.11.1
They could not, however, shake off the pursuit; the Romans were on their heels, and before the gates could be closed against them, burst through pell-mell with the enemy.
1.15.1.1
The contagion of the war-spirit in Fidenae infected the Veientes. This people were connected by ties of blood with the Fidenates, who were also Etruscans, and an additional incentive was supplied by the mere proximity of the place, should the arms of Rome be turned against all her neighbours. They made an incursion into Roman territory, rather for the sake of plunder than as an act of regular war.
1.15.2.1
After securing their booty they returned with it to Veii, without entrenching a camp or waiting for the enemy. The Romans, on the other hand, not finding the enemy on their soil, crossed the Tiber, prepared and determined to fight a decisive battle.
1.15.3.1
On hearing that they had formed an entrenched camp and were preparing to advance on their city, the Veientes went out against them, preferring a combat in the open to being shut up and having to fight from houses and walls.
1.15.4.1
Romulus gained the victory, not through stratagem, but through the prowess of his veteran army. He drove the routed enemy up to their walls, but in view of the strong position and fortifications of the city, he abstained from assaulting it. On his march home-wards, he devastated their fields more out of revenge than for the sake of plunder.
1.15.5.1
The loss thus sustained, no less than the previous defeat, broke the spirit of the Veientes, and they sent envoys to Rome to sue for peace. On condition of a cession of territory a truce was granted to them for a hundred years.
1.15.6.1
These were the principal events at home and in the field that marked the reign of Romulus. Throughout-whether we consider the courage he showed in recovering his ancestral throne, or the wisdom he displayed in founding the City and adding to its strength through war and peace alike-we find nothing incompatible with the belief in his divine origin and his admission to divine immortality after death.
1.15.7.1
It was, in fact, through the strength given by him that the City was powerful enough to enjoy an assured peace for forty years after his departure.
1.15.8.1
He was, however, more acceptable to the populace than to the patricians but most of all was he the idol of his soldiers. He kept a bodyguard of three hundred men round him in peace as well as in war These he called the “Celeres.”
1.16.1.1
After these immortal achievements, Romulus held a review of his army at the “Caprae Palus” in the Campus Martius. A violent thunder storm suddenly arose and enveloped the king in so dense a cloud that he was quite invisible to the assembly. From that hour Romulus was no longer seen on earth.
1.16.2.1
When the fears of the Roman youth were allayed by the return of bright, calm sun-shine after such fearful weather, they saw that the royal seat was vacant. Whilst they fully believed the assertion of the Senators, who had been standing close to him, that he had been snatched away to heaven by a whirlwind, still, like men suddenly bereaved, fear and grief kept them for some time speechless.
1.16.3.1
At length, after a few had taken the initiative, the whole of those present hailed Romulus as “a god, the son of a god, the King and Father of the City of Rome.” They put up supplications for his grace and favour, and prayed that he would be propitious to his children and save and protect them.
1.16.4.1
I believe, however, that even then there were some who secretly hinted that he had been torn limb from limb by the senators-a tradition to this effect, though certainly a very dim one, has filtered down to us.
1.16.5.1
The other, which I follow, has been the prevailing one, due, no doubt, to the admiration felt for the man and the apprehensions excited by his disappearance. This generally accepted belief was strengthened by one man's clever device. The tradition runs that Proculus Julius, a man whose authority had weight in matters of even the gravest importance, seeing how deeply the community felt the loss of the king, and how incensed they were against the senators, came forward into the assembly and said: “Quirites!
1.16.6.1
at break of dawn, to-day, the Father of this City suddenly descended from heaven and appeared to me.
1.16.7.1
Whilst, thrilled with awe, I stood rapt before him in deepest reverence, praying that I might be pardoned for gazing upon him, “Go,” said he, “tell the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand the arms of Rome.” ”
1.16.8.1
It is marvellous what credit was given to this man's story, and how the grief of the people and the army was soothed by the belief which had been created in the immortality of Romulus.
1.17.1.1
Disputes arose among the senators about the vacant throne. It was not the jealousies of individual citizens, for no one was sufficiently prominent in so young a State, but the rivalries of parties in the State that led to this strife.
1.17.2.1
The Sabine families were apprehensive of losing their fair share of the sovereign power, because after the death of Tatius they had had no representative on the throne; they were anxious, therefore, that the king should be elected from amongst them.
1.17.3.1
The ancient Romans could ill brook a foreign king; but amidst this diversity of political views, all were for a monarchy; they had not yet tasted the sweets of liberty.
1.17.4.1
The senators began to grow apprehensive of some aggressive act on the part of the surrounding states, now that the City was without a central authority and the army without a general. They decided that there must be some head of the State, but no one could make up his mind to concede the dignity to any one else.
1.17.5.1
The matter was settled by the hundred senators dividing them-selves into ten “decuries,” and one was chosen from each decury to exercise the supreme power.
1.17.6.1
Ten therefore were in office, but only one at a time had the insignia of authority and the lictors. Their individual authority was restricted to five days, and they exercised it in rotation. This break in the monarchy lasted for a year, and it was called by the name it still bears —that of “interregnum.”
1.17.7.1
After a time the plebs began to murmur that their bondage was multiplied, for they had a hundred masters instead of one. It was evident that they would insist upon a king being elected, and elected by them.
1.17.8.1
When the senators became aware of this growing determination, they thought it better to offer spontaneously what they were bound to part with, so, as an act of grace, they committed the supreme power into the hands of the people, but in such a way that they did not give away more privilege than they retained.
1.17.9.1
For they passed a decree that when the people had chosen a king, his election would only be valid after the senate had ratified it by their authority. The same procedure exists to-day in the passing of laws and the election of magistrates, but the power of rejection has been withdrawn; the senate give their ratification before the people proceed to vote, whilst the result of the election is still uncertain.
1.17.10.1
At that time the “interrex” convened the assembly and addressed it as follows: “Quirites! elect your king, and may heaven's blessing rest on your labours! If you elect one who shall be counted worthy to follow Romulus, the senate will ratify your choice.”
1.17.11.1
So gratified were the people at the proposal that, not to appear behindhand in generosity, they passed a resolution that it should be left to the senate to decree who should reign in Rome.
1.18.1.1
There was living, in those days, at Cures, a Sabine city, a man of renowned justice and piety-Numa Pompilius. He was as conversant as any one in that age could be with all divine and human law.
1.18.2.1
His master is given as Pythagoras of Samos, as tradition speaks of no other. But this is erroneous, for it is generally agreed that it was more than a century later, in the reign of Servius Tullius, that Pythagoras gathered round him crowds of eager students, in the most distant part of Italy, in the neighbourhood of Metapontum, Heraclea, and Crotona.
1.18.3.1
Now, even if he had been contemporary with Numa, how could his reputation have reached the Sabines? From what places, and in what common language could he have induced any one to become his disciple? Who could have guaranteed the safety of a solitary individual travelling through so many nations differing in speech and character?
1.18.4.1
I believe rather that Numa's virtues were the result of his native temperament and self-training, moulded not so much by foreign influences as by the rigorous and austere discipline of the ancient Sabines, which was the purest type of any that existed in the old days.
1.18.5.1
When Numa's name was mentioned, though the Roman senators saw that the balance of power would be on the side of the Sabines if the king were chosen from amongst them, still no one ventured to propose a partisan of his own, or any senator, or citizen in preference to him. Accordingly they all to a man decreed that the crown should be offered to Numa Pompilius.
1.18.6.1
He was invited to Rome, and following the precedent set by Romulus, when he obtained his crown through the augury which sanctioned the founding of the City, Numa ordered that in his case also the gods should be consulted. He was solemnly conducted by an augur, who was afterwards honoured by being made a State functionary for life, to the Citadel, and took his seat on a stone facing south.
1.18.7.1
The augur seated himself on his left hand, with his head covered, and holding in his right hand a curved staff without any knots, which they called a “ lituus.” After surveying the prospect over the City and surrounding country, he offered prayers and marked out the heavenly regions by an imaginary line from east to west; the southern he defined as “the right hand,” the northern as “the left hand.”
1.18.8.1
He then fixed upon an object, as far as he could see, as a corresponding mark, and then transferring the lituus to his left hand, he laid his right upon Numa's head and offered this prayer:
1.18.9.1
“Father Jupiter, if it be heaven's will that this Numa Pompilius, whose head I hold, should be king of Rome, do thou signify it to us by sure signs within those boundaries which I have traced.”
1.18.10.1
Then he described in the usual formula the augury which he desired should be sent. They were sent, and Numa being by them manifested to be king, came down from the “ templum.”
1.19.1.1
Having in this way obtained the crown, Numa prepared to found as it were anew by laws and customs that City which had so recently been founded by force of arms He saw that this was impossible whilst a state of war lasted, for war brutalised men.
1.19.2.1
Thinking that the ferocity of his subjects might be mitigated by the disuse of arms, he built the temple of Janus at the foot of the Aventine as an index of peace and war, to signify when it was open that the State was under arms, and when it was shut that all the surrounding nations were at peace.
1.19.3.1
Twice since Numa's reign has it been shut, once after the first Punic war in the consulship of T. Manlius, the second time, which heaven has allowed our generation to witness, after the battle of Actium, when peace on land and sea was secured by the emperor Caesar Augustus.
1.19.4.1
After forming treaties of alliance with all his neighbours and closing the temple of Janus, Numa turned his attention to domestic matters. The removal of all danger from without would induce his subjects to luxuriate in idleness, as they would be no longer restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military discipline. To prevent this, he strove to inculcate in their minds the fear of the gods, regarding this as the most powerful influence which could act upon an uncivilised and, in those ages, a barbarous people.
1.19.5.1
But, as this would fail to make a deep impression without some claim to supernatural wisdom, he pretended that he had nocturnal interviews with the nymph Egeria: that it was on her advice that he was instituting the ritual most acceptable to the gods and appointing for each deity his own special priests.
1.19.6.1
First of all he divided the year into twelve months, corresponding to the moon's revolutions. But as the moon does not complete thirty days in each month, and so there are fewer days in the lunar year than in that measured by the course of the sun, he interpolated intercalary months and so arranged them that every twentieth year the days should coincide with the same position of the sun as when they started, the whole twenty years being thus complete.
1.19.7.1
He also established a distinction between the days on which legal business could be transacted and those on which it could not, because it would sometimes be advisable that there should be no business transacted with the people.
1.20.1.1
Next he turned his attention to the appointment of priests. He himself, however, conducted a great many religious services, especially those which belong to the Flamen of Jupiter.
1.20.2.1
But he thought that in a warlike state there would be more kings of the type of Romulus than of Numa who would take the field in person. To guard, therefore, against the sacrificial rites which the king performed being interrupted, he appointed a Flamen as perpetual priest to Jupiter, and ordered that he should wear a distinctive dress and sit in the royal curule chair. He appointed two additional Flamens, one for Mars, the other for Quirinus, and also chose virgins as priestesses to
1.20.3.1
Vesta. This order of priestesses came into existence originally in Alba and was connected with the race of the founder. He assigned them a public stipend that they might give their whole time to the temple, and made their persons sacred and inviolable by a vow of chastity and other religious
1.20.4.1
sanctions. Similarly he chose twelve “Salii” for Mars Gradivus, and assigned to them the distinctive dress of an embroidered tunic and over it a brazen cuirass. They were instructed to march in solemn procession through the City, carrying the twelve shields called the “ Ancilia,” and singing hymns accompanied by a solemn dance in triple time. The next office to be filled was that of the Pontifex
1.20.5.1
Maximus. Numa appointed the son of Marcus, one of the senators —Numa Marcius —and all the regulations bearing on religion, written out and sealed, were placed in his charge. Here was laid down with what victims, on what days, and at what temples the various sacrifices were to be offered, and from what sources the expenses connected with them were to be
1.20.6.1
defrayed. He placed all other sacred functions, both public and private, under the supervision of the Pontifex, in order that there might be an authority for the people to consult, and so all trouble and confusion arising through foreign rites being adopted and their ancestral ones neglected might be
1.20.7.1
avoided. Nor were his functions confined to directing the worship of the celestial gods; he was to instruct the people how to conduct funerals and appease the spirits of the departed, and what prodigies sent by lightning or in any other way were to be attended to and expiated. To elicit these signs of the divine will, he dedicated an altar to Jupiter Elicius on the Aventine, and consulted the god through auguries, as to which prodigies were to receive attention.
1.21.1.1
The deliberations and arrangements which these matters involved diverted the people from all thoughts of war and provided them with ample occupation. The watchful care of the gods, manifesting itself in the providential guidance of human affairs, had kindled in all hearts such a feeling of piety that the sacredness of promises and the sanctity of oaths were a controlling force for the community scarcely less effective than the fear inspired by laws and penalties.
1.21.2.1
And whilst his subjects were moulding their characters upon the unique example of their king, the neighbouring nations, who had hitherto believed that it was a fortified camp and not a city that was placed amongst them to vex the peace of all, were now induced to respect them so highly that they thought it sinful to injure a State so entirely devoted to the service of the gods.
1.21.3.1
There was a grove through the midst of which a perennial stream flowed, issuing from a dark cave. Here Numa frequently retired unattended as if to meet the goddess, and he consecrated the grove to the Camaenae, because it was there that their meetings with his wife Egeria took place.
1.21.4.1
He also instituted a yearly sacrifice to the goddess Fides and ordered that the Flamens should ride to her temple in a hooded chariot, and should perform the service with their hands covered as far as the fingers, to signify that Faith must be sheltered and that her seat is holy even when it is in men's right hands.
1.21.5.1
There were many other sacrifices appointed by him and places dedicated for their performance which the pontiffs call the Argei. The greatest of all his works was the preservation of peace and the security of his realm throughout the whole of his reign.

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