Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities

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urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.13.4
§ 2.13.4 This custom Romulus borrowed, I believe, from the Lacedaemonians, having learned that among them, also, three hundred of the noblest youths attended the kings as their guards and also as their defenders in war, fighting both on horseback and on foot.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.14.1
§ 2.14.1 Having made these regulations, he distinguished the honours and powers which he wished each class to have. For the king he had reserved these prerogatives: in the first place, the supremacy in religious ceremonies and sacrifices and the conduct of everything relating to the worship of the gods; secondly, the guardianship of the laws and customs of the country and the general oversight of justice in all cases, whether founded on the law of nature or the civil law; he was also the judge in person the greatest crimes, leaving the lesser to the senators, but seeing to it that no error was made in their decisions; he was to summon the senate and call together the popular assembly, to deliver his opinion first and carry out the decision of the majority. These prerogatives he granted to the king and, in addition, the absolute command in war.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.14.2
§ 2.14.2 To the senate he assigned honour and authority as follows: to deliberate and give their votes concerning everything the king should refer to them, the decision of the majority to prevail. This also Romulus took over from the constitution of the Lacedaemonians; for their kings, too, did not have arbitrary power to do everything they wished, but the gerousia exercised complete control of public affairs.
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§ 2.14.3 To the populace he granted these three privileges: to choose magistrates, to ratify laws, and to decide concerning war whenever the king left the decision to them; yet even in these matters their authority was not unrestricted, since the concurrence of the senate was necessary to give effect to their decisions. The people did not give their votes all at the same time, but were summoned to meet by curiae, and whatever was resolved upon by the majority of the curiae was reported to the senate. But in our day this practice is reversed, since the senate does not deliberate upon the resolutions passed by the people, but the people have full power over the decrees of the senate; and which of the two customs is better I leave it open to others to determine.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.14.4
§ 2.14.4 By this division of authority not only were the civil affairs administered in a prudent and orderly manner, but the business of war also was carried on with dispatch and strict obedience. For whenever the king thought proper to lead out his army there was then no necessity for tribunes to be chosen by tribes, or centurions by centuries, or commanders of the horse appointed, nor was it necessary for the army to be numbered or to be divided into centuries or for every man to be assigned to his appropriate post. But the king gave his orders to the tribunes and these to the centurions and they in turn to the decurions, each of whom led out those who were under his command; and whether the whole army or part of it was called, at a single summons they presented themselves ready with arms in hand at the designated post.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.15.1
§ 2.15.1 By these institutions Romulus sufficiently regulated and suitably disposed the city both for peace and for war: and he made it large and populous by the following means.
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§ 2.15.2 In the first place, he obliged the inhabitants to bring up all their male children and the first-born of the females, and forbade them to destroy any children under three years of age unless they were maimed or monstrous from their very birth. These he did not forbid their parents to expose, provided they first showed them to their five nearest neighbours and these also approved. Against those who disobeyed this law he fixed various penalties, including the confiscation of half their property.
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§ 2.15.3 Secondly, finding that many of the cities in Italy were very badly governed, both by tyrannies and by oligarchies, he undertook to welcome and attract to himself the fugitives from these cities, who were very numerous, paying no regard either to their calamities or to their fortunes, provided only they were free men. His purpose was to increase the power of the Romans and to lessen that of their neighbours; but he invented a specious pretext for his course, making it appear that he was showing honour to a god.
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§ 2.15.4 For he consecrated the place between the Capitol and the citadel which is now called in the language of the Romans “the space between the two groves,”17 — a term that was really descriptive at that time of the actual conditions, as the place was shaded by thick woods on both sides where it joined the hills, — and made it an asylum for suppliants. And built a temple there, — but to what god or divinity he dedicated it I cannot say for certain, — he engaged, under the colour of religion, to protect those who fled to it from suffering any harm at the hands of their enemies; and if they chose to remain with him, he promised them citizenship and a share of the land he should take from the enemy. And people came flocking thither from all parts, fleeing from their calamities at home; nor had they afterwards any thought of removing to any other place, but were held there by daily instances of his sociability and kindness.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.16.1
§ 2.16.1 There was yet a third policy of Romulus, which the Greeks ought to have practised above all others, it being, in my opinion, the best of all political measures, as it laid the most solid foundation for the liberty of the Romans and was no slight factor in raising them to their position of supremacy. It was this: not to slay all the men of military age or to enslave the rest of the population of the cities captured in war or to allow their land to go back to pasturage for sheep, but rather to send settlers thither to possess some part of the country by lot and to make the conquered cities Roman colonies, and even to grant citizenship to some of them.
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§ 2.16.2 By these and other like measures he made the colony great from a small beginning, as the actual results showed; for the number of those who joined with him in founding Rome did not amount to more than three thousand foot nor quite to three hundred horse, whereas he left behind him when he disappeared from among men forty-six thousand foot and about a thousand horse.
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§ 2.16.3 Romulus having instituted these measures, not alone the kings who ruled the city after him but also the annual magistrates after them pursued the same policy, with occasional additions, so successfully that the Roman people became inferior in numbers to none of the nations that were accounted the most populous.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.17.1
§ 2.17.1 When I compare the customs of the Greeks with these, I can find no reason to extol either those of the Lacedaemonians or of the Thebans or of the Athenians, who pride themselves most on their wisdom; all of whom, jealous of their noble birth and granting citizenship to none or to very few (I say nothing of the fact that some even expelled foreigners), not only received no advantage from this haughty attitude, but actually suffered the greatest harm because of it.
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§ 2.17.2 Thus, the Spartans after their defeat at Leuctra, where they lost seventeen hundred men, were no longer able to restore their city to its former position after that calamity, but shamefully abandoned their supremacy. And the Thebans and Athenians through the single disaster at Chaeronea were deprived by the Macedonians not only of the leadership of Greece but at the same time of the liberty they had inherited from their ancestors.
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§ 2.17.3 But Rome, while engaged in great wars both in Spain and Italy and employed in recovering Sicily and Sardinia, which had revolted, at a time when the situation in Macedonia and Greece had become hostile to her and Carthage was again contending for the supremacy, and when all but a small portion of Italy was not only in open rebellion but was also drawing upon her the Hannibalic war, as it was called, — though surrounded, I say, by so many dangers at one and the same time, Rome was so far from being overcome by these misfortunes that she derived from them a strength even greater than she had had before, being enabled to meet every danger, thanks to the number of her soldiers, and not, as some imagine, to the favour of Fortune;
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§ 2.17.4 since for all of Fortune's assistance the city might have been utterly submerged by the single disaster at Cannae, where of six thousand horse only three hundred and seventy survived, and of eighty thousand foot enrolled in the army of the commonwealth little more than three thousand escaped.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.18.1
§ 2.18.1 It is not only these institutions of Romulus that I admire, but also those which I am going to relate. He understood that the good government of cities was due to certain causes which all statesmen prate of but few succeed in making effective: first, the favour of the gods, the enjoyment of which gives success to men's every enterprise; next, moderation and justice, as a result of which the citizens, being less disposed to injure one another, are more harmonious, and make honour, rather than the most shameful pleasures, the measure of their happiness; and, lastly, bravery in war, which renders the other virtues also useful to their possessors.
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§ 2.18.2 And he thought that none of these advantages is the effect of chance, but recognized that good laws and the emulation of worthy pursuits render a State pious, temperate, devoted to justice, and brave in war. He took great care, therefore, to encourage these, beginning with the worship of the gods and genii. He established temples, sacred precincts and altars, arranged for the setting up of statues, determined the representations and symbols of the gods, and declared their powers, the beneficent gifts which they have made to mankind, the particular festivals that should be celebrated in honour of each god or genius, the sacrifices with which they delight to be honoured by men, as well as the holidays, festal assemblies, days of rest, and everything alike of that nature, in all of which he followed the best customs in use among the Greeks.
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§ 2.18.3 But he rejected all the traditional myths concerning the gods that contain blasphemies or calumnies against them, looking upon these as wicked, useless and indecent, and unworthy, not only of the gods, but even of good men; and he accustomed people both to think and to speak the best of the gods and to attribute to them no conduct unworthy of their blessed nature.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.19.1
§ 2.19.1 Indeed, there is no tradition among the Romans either of Caelus being castrated by his own sons or of Saturn destroying his own offspring to secure himself from their attempts or of Jupiter dethroning Saturn and confining his own father in the dungeon of Tartarus, or, indeed, of wars, wounds, or bonds of the gods, or of their servitude among men.
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§ 2.19.2 And no festival is observed among them as a day of mourning or by the wearing of black garments and the beating of breasts and the lamentations of women because of the disappearance of deities, such as the Greeks perform in commemorating the rape of Persephonê and the adventures of Dionysus and all the other things of like nature. And one will see among them, even though their manners are now corrupted, no ecstatic transports, no Corybantic frenzies, no begging under the colour of religion, no bacchanals or secret mysteries, no all-night vigils of men and women together in the temples, nor any other mummery of this kind; but alike in all their words and actions with respect to the gods a reverence is shown such as is seen among neither Greeks nor barbarians.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.19.3
§ 2.19.3 And, — the thing which I myself have marvelled at most, — notwithstanding the influx into Rome of innumerable nations which are under every necessity of worshipping their ancestral gods according to the customs of their respective countries, yet the city has never officially adopted any of those foreign practices, as has been the experience of many cities in the past; but, even though she has, in pursuance of oracles, introduced certain rites from abroad, she celebrates them in accordance with her own traditions, after banishing all fabulous clap-trap. The rites of the Idaean goddess are a case in point;
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§ 2.19.4 for the praetors perform sacrifices and celebrated games in her honour every year according to the Roman customs, but the priest and priestess of the goddess are Phrygians, and it is they who carry her image in procession through the city, begging alms in her name according to their custom, and wearing figures upon their breasts and striking their timbrels while their followers play tunes upon their flutes in honour of the Mother of the Gods.
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§ 2.19.5 But by a law and decree of the senate no native Roman walks in procession through the city arrayed in a parti-coloured robe, begging alms or escorted by flute-players, or worships the god with the Phrygian ceremonies. So cautious are they about admitting any foreign religious customs and so great is their aversion to all pompous display that is wanting in decorum.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.20.1
§ 2.20.1 Let no one imagine, however, that I am not sensible that some of the Greek myths are useful to mankind, part of them explaining, as they do, the works of Nature by allegories, others being designed as a consolation for human misfortunes, some freeing the mind of its agitations and terrors and clearing away unsound opinions, and others invented for some other useful purpose.
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§ 2.20.2 But, though I am as well acquainted as anyone with these matters, nevertheless my attitude toward the myths is one of caution, and I am more inclined to accept the theology of the Romans, when I consider that the advantages from the Greek myths are slight and cannot be of profit to many, but only to those who have examined the end for which they are designed; and this philosophic attitude is shared by few. The great multitude, unacquainted with philosophy, are prone to take these stories about the gods in the worse sense and to fall into one of two errors: they either despise the gods as buffeted by many misfortunes, or else refrain from none of the most shameful and lawless deeds when they see them attributed to the gods.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.21.1
§ 2.21.1 But let the consideration of these matters be left to those who have set aside the theoretical part of philosophy exclusively for their contemplation. To return to the government established by Romulus, I have thought the following things also worthy the notice of history. In the first place, he appointed a great number of persons to carry on the worship of the gods. At any rate, no one could name any other newly-founded city in which so many priests and ministers of the gods were appointed from the beginning.
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§ 2.21.2 For, apart from those who held family priesthoods, sixty were appointed in his reign to perform by tribes and curiae the public sacrifices on behalf of the commonwealth; I am merely repeating what Terentius Varro, the most learned man of his age, his written in his Antiquities.
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§ 2.21.3 In the next place, whereas others generally choose in a careless and inconsiderate manner those who are to preside over religious matters, some thinking fit to make public sale of this honour and others disposing of it by lot, he would not allow the priesthoods to be either purchased for money or assigned by lot, but made a law that each curia should choose two men over fifty years of age, of distinguished birth and exceptional merit, of competent fortune, and without any bodily defects; and he ordered that these should enjoy their honours, not for any fixed period, but for life, freed from military service by their age and from civil burdens by the law.
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§ 2.22.1 And because some rites were to be performed by women, others by children whose fathers and mothers were living, to the end that these also might be administered in the best manner, he ordered that the wives of the priests should be associated with their husbands in the priesthood; and that in the case of any rites which men were forbidden by the law of the country to celebrate, their wives should perform them and their children should assist as their duties required; and that the priests who had no children should choose out of the other families of each curia the most beautiful boy and girl, the boy to assist in the rites till the age of manhood, and the girl so long as she remained unmarried. These arrangements also he borrowed, in my opinion, from the practices of the Greeks.
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§ 2.22.2 For all the duties that are performed in the Greek ceremonies by the maidens whom they call kanêphoroi and arrhêphoroi are performed by those whom the Romans call tutulatae, who wear on their heads the same kind of crowns with which the statues of the Ephesian Artemis are adorned among the Greeks. And all the functions which among the Tyrrhenians and still earlier among the Pelasgians were performed by those they called cadmili in the rites of the Curetes and in those of the Great Gods, were performed in the same manner by those attendants of the priests who are now called by the Romans camilli.
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§ 2.22.3 Furthermore, Romulus ordered one soothsayer out of each tribe to be present at the sacrifices. This soothsayer we call hieroskopos or “inspector of the vitals,” and the Romans, preserving something of the ancient name, aruspex. He also made a law that all the priests and ministers of the gods should be chosen by the curiae and that their election should be confirmed by those who interpret the will of the gods by the art of divination.
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§ 2.23.1 After he had made these regulations concerning the ministers of the gods, he again, as I have stated, assigned the sacrifices in an appropriate manner to the various curiae, appointing for each of them gods and genii whom they were always to worship, and determined the expenditures for the sacrifices, which were to be paid to them out of the public treasury.
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§ 2.23.2 The members of each curia performed their appointed sacrifices together with their own priests, and on holy days they feasted together at their common table. For a banqueting-hall had been built for each curia, and in it there was consecrated, just as in the Greek prytanea, a common table for all the members of the curia. These banqueting-halls had the same name as the curiae themselves, and are called so to our day.
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§ 2.23.3 This institution, it seems to me, Romulus took over from the practice of the Lacedaemonians in the case of their phiditia, which were then the vogue. It would seem that Lycurgus, who had learned the institution from the Cretans, introduced it at Sparta to the great advantage of his country; for he thereby in time of peace directed the citizens' lives toward frugality and temperance in their daily repasts, and in time of war inspired every man with a sense of shame and concern not to forsake his comrade with whom he had offered libations and sacrifices and shared in common rites.
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§ 2.23.4 And not alone for his wisdom in these matters does Romulus deserve praise, but also for the frugality of the sacrifices that he appointed for the honouring of the gods, the greatest part of which, if not all, remained to my day, being still performed in the ancient manner.
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§ 2.23.5 At any rate, I myself have seen in the sacred edifices repasts set before the gods upon ancient wooden tables, in baskets and small earthen plates, consisting of barley bread, cakes and spelt, with the first-offerings of some fruits, and other things of like nature, simple, cheap, and devoid of all vulgar display. I have seen also the libation wines that had been mixed, not in silver and gold vessels, but in little earthen cups and jugs, and I have greatly admired these men for adhering to the customs of their ancestors and not degenerating from their ancient rites into a boastful magnificence.
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§ 2.23.6 There are, it is true, other institutions, worthy to be both remembered and related, which were established by Numa Pompilius, who ruled the city after Romulus, a man of consummate wisdom and of rare sagacity in interpreting the will of the gods, and of them I shall speak later; and yet others were added by Tullus Hostilius, the second king after Romulus, and by all the kings who followed him. But the seeds of them were sown and the foundations laid by Romulus, who established the principal rites of their religion.
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§ 2.24.1 Romulus also seems to have been the author of that good discipline in other matters by the observance of which the Romans have kept their commonwealth flourishing for many generations; for he established many good and useful laws, the greater part of them unwritten, but some committed to writing. There is no need for me to mention most of them, but I will give a short account of those which I have admired most of all and which I have regarded as suitable to illustrate the character of the rest of this man's legislation, showing how austere it was, how averse to vice, and how closely it resembled the life of the heroic age.
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§ 2.24.2 However, I will first observe that all who have established constitutions, barbarian as well as Greek, seem to me to have recognized correctly the general principle that every State, since it consists of many families, is most likely to enjoy tranquillity when the lives of the individual citizens are untroubled, and to have a very tempestuous time when the private affairs of the citizens are in a bad way, and that every prudent statesman, whether he be a lawgiver or a king, ought to introduce such laws as will make the citizens just and temperate in their lives.
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§ 2.24.3 Yet by what practices and by what laws this result may be accomplished they do not all seem to me to have understood equally well, but some of them seem to have gone widely and almost completely astray in the principal and fundamental parts of their legislation.
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§ 2.24.4 For example, in the matter of marriage and commerce with women, from which the lawgiver ought to begin (even as Nature has begun thence to form our lives), some, taking their example from the beasts, have allowed men to have intercourse with women freely and promiscuously, thinking thus to free their lives from the frenzies of love, of save them from murderous jealousy, and to deliver them from many other evils which come upon both private houses and whole States through women.
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§ 2.24.5 Others have banished this wanton and bestial intercourse from their States by joining a man to one woman; and yet for the preservation of the marriage ties and the chastity of women they have never attempted to make even the slightest regulation whatsoever, but have given up the idea as something impracticable. Others have neither permitted sexual intercourse without marriage, like some barbarians, nor neglected the guarding of their women, like the Lacedaemonians, but have established many laws to keep them within bounds. And some have even appointed a magistrate to look after the good conduct of women; this provision, however, for their guarding was found insufficient and too weak to accomplish its purpose, being incapable of bringing the woman of unvirtuous nature to the necessity of a modest behaviour.
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§ 2.25.1 But Romulus, without giving either to the husband an action against his wife for adultery or for leaving his home without cause, or to the wife an action against her husband on the ground of ill-usage or for leaving her without reason, and without making any laws for the returning or recovery of the dowry, or regulating anything of this nature, by a single law which effectually provides for all these things, as the results themselves have shown, led the women to behave themselves with modesty and great decorum.
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§ 2.25.2 The law was to this effect, that a woman joined to her husband by a holy marriage should share in all his possessions and sacred rites. The ancient Romans designated holy and lawful marriages by the term “farreate,” from the sharing of far, which we call zea; for this was the ancient and, for a long time, the ordinary food of all the Romans, and their country produces an abundance of excellent spelt. And as we Greeks regard barley as the most ancient grain, and for that reason begin our sacrifices with barley-corns which we call oulai, so the Romans, in the belief that spelt is both the most valuable and the most ancient of grains, in all burnt offerings begin the sacrifice with that. For this custom still remains, not having deteriorated into first-offerings of greater expense.
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§ 2.25.3 The participation of the wives with their husbands in this holiest and first food and their union with them founded on the sharing of all their fortunes took its name from this sharing of the spelt and forged the compelling bond of an indissoluble union, and there was nothing that could annul these marriages.
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§ 2.25.4 This law obliged both the married women, as having no other refuge, to conform themselves entirely to the temper of their husbands, and the husbands to rule their wives as necessary and inseparable possessions.
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§ 2.25.5 Accordingly, if a wife was virtuous and in all things obedient to her husband, she was mistress of the house to the same degree as her husband was master of it, and after the death of her husband she was heir to his property in the same manner as a daughter was to that of her father; that is, if he died without children and intestate, she was mistress of all that he left, and if he had children, she shared equally with them. But if she did any wrong, the injured party was her judge and determined the degree of her punishment.
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§ 2.25.6 Other offences, however, were judged by her relations together with her husband; among them was adultery, or where it was found she had drunk wine — a thing which the Greeks would look upon as the least of all faults. For Romulus permitted them to punish both these acts with death, as being the gravest offences women could be guilty of, since he looked upon adultery as the source of reckless folly, and drunkenness as the source of adultery.
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§ 2.25.7 And both these offences continued for a long time to be punished by the Romans with merciless severity. The wisdom of this law concerning wives is attested by the length of time it was in force; for it is agreed that during the space of five hundred and twenty years no marriage was ever dissolved at Rome. But it is said that in the one hundred and thirty-seventh Olympiad, in the consulship of Marcus Pomponius and Gaius Papirius [231 BCE], Spurius Carvilius, a man of distinction, was the first to divorce his wife, and that he was obliged by the censors to swear that he had married for the purpose of having children (his wife, it seems, was barren); yet because of his action, though it was based on necessity, he was ever afterwards hated by the people.
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§ 2.26.1 These, then, are the excellent laws which Romulus enacted concerning women, by which he rendered them more observant of propriety in relation to their husbands. But those he established with respect to reverence and dutifulness of children toward their parents, to the end that they should honour and obey them in all things, both in their words and actions, were still more august and of greater dignity and vastly superior to our laws.
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§ 2.26.2 For those who established the Greek constitutions set a very short time for sons to be under the rule of their fathers, some till the expiration of the third year after they reached manhood, others as long as they continued unmarried, and some till their names were entered in the public registers, as I have learned from the laws of Solon, Pittacus and Charondas, men celebrated for their great wisdom.
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§ 2.26.3 The punishments, also, which they ordered for disobedience in children toward their parents were not grievous: for they permitted fathers to turn their sons out of doors and to disinherit them, but nothing further. But mild punishments are not sufficient to restrain the folly of youth and its stubborn ways or to give self-control to those who have been heedless of all that is honourable; and accordingly among the Greeks many unseemly deeds are committed by children against their parents.
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§ 2.26.4 But the lawgiver of the Romans gave virtually full power to the father over his son, even during his whole life, whether he thought proper to imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains and keep him at work in the fields, or to put him to death, and this even though the son were already engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among the highest magistrates, and though he were celebrated for his zeal for the commonwealth.
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§ 2.26.5 Indeed, in virtue of this law men of distinction, while delivering speeches from the rostra hostile to the senate and pleasing to the people, have been dragged down from thence and carried away by their fathers to undergo such punishment as these thought fit; and while they were being led away through the Forum, none present, neither consul, tribune, nor the very populace, which was flattered by them and thought all power inferior to its own, could rescue them.
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§ 2.26.6 I forbear to mention how many brave men, urged by their valour and zeal to proof some noble deed that their fathers had not ordered, have been put to death by those very fathers, as is related of Manlius Torquatus and many others. But concerning them I shall speak in the proper place.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.27.1
§ 2.27.1 And not even at this point did the Roman lawgiver stop in giving the father power over the son, but he even allowed him to sell his son, without concerning himself whether this permission might be regarded as cruel and harsher than was compatible with a natural affection. And, — a thing which anyone who has been educated in the lax manners of the Greeks may wonder at above all things and look upon as harsh and tyrannical, — he even gave leave to the father to make a profit by selling his son as often as three times, thereby giving greater power to the father over his son than to the master over his slaves.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.27.2
§ 2.27.2 For a slave who has once been sold and has later obtained his liberty is his own master ever after, but a son who had once been sold by his father, if he became free, came again under his father's power, and if he was a second time sold and a second time freed, he was still, as at first, his father's slave; but after the third sale he was freed from his father.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.27.3
§ 2.27.3 This law, whether written or unwritten, — I cannot say positively which, — the kings observed in the beginning, looking upon it as the best of all laws; and after the overthrow of the monarchy, when the Romans first decided to expose in the Forum for the consideration of the whole body of citizens all their ancestral customs and laws, together with those introduced from abroad, to the end that the rights of the people might not be changed as often as the powers of the magistrates, the decemvirs, who were authorized by the people to collect and transcribe the laws, recorded it among the rest, and it now stands on the fourth of the Twelve Tables, as they are called, which they then set up in the Forum.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.27.4
§ 2.27.4 And that the decemvirs, who were appointed after three hundred years to transcribe these laws, did not first introduce this law among the Romans, but that, finding it long before in use, they dared not repeal it, I infer from many other considerations and particularly from the laws of Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus, among which there is recorded the following: “If a father gives his son leave to marry a woman who by the laws is to be the sharer of his sacred rites and possessions, he shall no longer have the power of selling his son.” Now he would never have written this unless the father had by all former laws been allowed to sell his sons.
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§ 2.27.5 But enough has been said concerning these matters, and I desire also to give a summary account of the other measures by which Romulus regulated the lives of the private citizens.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.28.1
§ 2.28.1 Observing that the means by which the whole body of citizens, the greater part of whom are hard to guide, can be induced to lead a life of moderation, to prefer justice to gain, to cultivate perseverance in hardships, and to look upon nothing as more valuable than virtue, is not oral instruction, but the habitual practice of such employments as lead to each virtue, and knowing that the great mass of men come to practise them through necessity rather than choice, and hence, if there is nothing to restrain them, return to their natural disposition, he appointed slaves and foreigners to exercise those trades that are sedentary and mechanical and promote shameful passions, looking upon them as the destroyers and corruptors both of the bodies and souls of all who practise them; and such trades were for a very long time held in disgrace by the Romans and were carried on by none of the native-born citizens.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.28.2
§ 2.28.2 The only employments he left to free men were two, agriculture and warfare; for he observed that men so employed become masters of their appetite, are less entangled in illicit love affairs, and follow that kind of covetousness only which leads them, not to injure one another, but to enrich themselves at the expense of the enemy. But, as he regarded each of these occupations, when separate from the other, as incomplete and conducive to fault-finding, instead of appointing one part of the men to till the land and the other to lay waste the enemy's country, according to the practice of the Lacedaemonians, he ordered the same persons to exercise the employments both of husbandmen and soldiers.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.28.3
§ 2.28.3 In time of peace he accustomed them to remain at their tasks in the country, except when it was necessary for them to come to market, upon which occasions they were to meet in the city in order to traffic, and to that end he appointed every ninth day for the markets; and when war came he taught them to perform the duties of soldiers and not to yield to others either in the hardships or advantages that war brought. For he divided equally among them the lands, slaves and money that he took from the enemy, and thus caused them to take part cheerfully in his campaigns.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.29.1
§ 2.29.1 In the case of wrongs committed by the citizens against one another he did not permit the trials to be delayed, but caused them to be held promptly, sometimes deciding the suits himself and sometimes referring them to others; and he proportioned the punishment to the magnitude of the crime. Observing, also, that nothing restrains men from all evil actions so effectually as fear, he contrived many things to inspire it, such as the place where he sat in judgment in the most conspicuous part of the Forum, the very formidable appearance of the soldiers who attended him, three hundred in number, and the rods and axes borne by twelve men, who scourged in the Forum those whose offences deserved it and beheaded others in public who were guilty of the greatest crimes.
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§ 2.29.2 Such then, was the general character of the government established by Romulus; the details I have mentioned are sufficient to enable one to form a judgment of the rest.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.30.1
§ 2.30.1 The other deeds reported of this man, both in his wars and at home, which may be thought deserving of mention in a history are as follows.
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§ 2.30.2 Inasmuch as many nations that were both numerous and brave in war dwelt round about Rome and none of them was friendly to the Romans, he desired to conciliate them by intermarriages, which, in the opinion of the ancients, was the surest method of cementing friendships; but considering that the cities in question would not of their own accord unite with the Romans, who were just getting settled together in one city, and who neither were powerful by reason of their wealth nor had performed any brilliant exploit, but that they would yield to force if no insolence accompanied such compulsion, he determined, with the approval of Numitor, his grandfather, to bring about the desired intermarriages by a wholesale seizure of virgins.
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§ 2.30.3 After he had taken this resolution, he first made a vow to the god who presides over secret counsels to celebrate sacrifices and festivals every year if his enterprise should succeed. Then, having laid his plan before the senate and gaining their approval, he announced that he would hold a festival and general assemblage in honour of Neptune, and he sent word round about to the nearest cities, inviting all who wished to do so to be present at the assemblage and to take part in the increases; for he was going to hold contests of all sorts, both between horses and between men.
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§ 2.30.4 And when many strangers came with their wives and children to the festival, he first offered the sacrifices to Neptune and held the contests: then, on the last day, on which he was to dismiss the assemblage, he ordered the young men, when he himself should raise the signal, to seize all the virgins who had come to the spectacle, each group taking those they should first encounter, to keep them that night without violating their chastity and bring them to him the next day.
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§ 2.30.5 So the young men divided themselves into several groups, and as soon as they saw the signal raised, fell to seizing the virgins; and straightway the strangers were in an uproar and fled, suspecting some greater mischief. The next day, when the virgins were brought before Romulus, he comforted them in their despair with the assurance that they had been seized, not out of wantonness, but for the purpose of marriage; for he pointed out that this was an ancient Greek custom and that of all methods of contracting marriages for women it was the most illustrious, and he asked them to cherish those whom Fortune had given them for their husbands.
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§ 2.30.6 Then counting them and finding their number to be six hundred and eighty-three, he chose an equal number of unmarried men to whom he united them according to the customs of each woman's country, basing the marriages on a communion of fire and water, in the same manner as marriages are performed even down to our times.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.31.1
§ 2.31.1 Some state that these things happened in the first year of Romulus' reign, but Gnaeus Gellius says it was in the fourth, which is more probable. For it is not likely that the head of a newly-built city would undertake such an enterprise before establishing its government. As regards the reason for the seizing of the virgins, some ascribe it to a scarcity of women, others to the seeking of pretext for war; but those who give the most plausible account — and with them I agree — attribute it to the design of contracting an alliance with the neighbouring cities, founded on affinity.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.31.2
§ 2.31.2 And the Romans even to my day continued to celebrate the festival then instituted by Romulus, calling it the Consualia, in the course of which a subterranean altar, erected near the Circus Maximus, is uncovered by the removal of the soil round about it and honoured with sacrifices and burnt-offerings of first-fruits and a course is run both by horses yoked to chariots and by single horses. The god to whom these honours are paid is called Consus by the Romans, being the same, according to some who render the name into our tongue, as Poseidon Seisichthon or the “Earth-shaker”; and they say that this god was honoured with a subterranean altar because he holds the earth.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.31.3
§ 2.31.3 I know also from hearsay another tradition, to the effect that the festival is indeed celebrated in honour of Neptune and the horse-race s are held in his honour, but that the subterranean altar was erected later to a certain divinity whose name may not be uttered, who presides over and is the guardian of hidden counsels; for a secret altar has never been erected to Neptune, they say, in any part of the world by either Greeks or barbarians. But it is hard to say what the truth of the matter is.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.32.1
§ 2.32.1 When, now, the report of the seizure of the virgins and of their marriage was spread among the neighbouring cities, some of these were incensed at the proceeding itself, though others, considering the motive from which it sprang and the outcome to which it led, bore it with moderation; but, at any rate, in the course of time it occasioned several wars, of which the rest were of small consequence, but that against the Sabines was a great and difficult one. All these wars ended happily, as the oracles had foretold to Romulus before he undertook the task, indicating as they did that the difficulties and dangers would be great but that their outcome would be prosperous.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.32.2
§ 2.32.2 The first cities that made war upon him were Caenina, Antemnae and Crustumerium. They put forward as a pretext the seizure of the virgins and their failure to receive satisfaction on their account; but the truth was that they were displeased at the founding of Rome and at its great and rapid increase and felt that they ought not to permit this city to grow up as a common menace to all its neighbours.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.32.3
§ 2.32.3 For the time being, then, these cities were sending ambassadors to the Sabines, asking them to take command of the war, since they possessed the greatest military strength and were most powerful by reason of their wealth and were laying claim to the rule over their neighbours and inasmuch as they had suffered from the Romans' insolence quite as much as any of the rest; for the greater part of the virgins who had been seized belonged to them.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.33.1
§ 2.33.1 But when they found they were accomplishing nothing, since the embassies from Romulus opposed them and courted the Sabine people both by their words and by their actions, they were vexed at the waste of time — for the Sabines were forever affecting delays and putting off to distant dates the deliberation concerning the war — and resolved to make war upon the Romans by themselves alone, believing that their own strength, if the three cities joined forces, was sufficient to conquer one inconsiderable city. This was their plan: but they did not all assemble together promptly enough in one camp, since the Caeninenses, who seemed to be most eager in promoting the war, rashly set out ahead of the others.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.33.2
§ 2.33.2 When these men, then, had taken the field and were wasting the country that bordered on their own, Romulus led out his army, and unexpectedly falling upon the enemy while they were as yet off their guard, he made himself master of their camp, which was but just completed. Then following close upon the heels of those who fled into the city, where the inhabitants had not as yet learned of the defeat of their forces, and finding the walls unguarded and the gates unbarred, he took the town by storm; and when the king of the Caeninenses met him with a strong body of men, he fought with him, and slaying him with his own hands, stripped him of his arms.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.34.1
§ 2.34.1 The town being taken in this manner, he ordered the prisoners to deliver up their arms, and taking such of their children for hostages as he thought fit, he marched against the Antemnates. And having conquered their army also, in the same manner as the other, by falling upon them unexpectedly while they were still dispersed in foraging, and having accorded the same treatment to the prisoners, he led his army home, carrying with him the spoils of those who had been slain in battle and the choicest part of the booty as an offering to the gods; and he offered many sacrifices besides.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.34.2
§ 2.34.2 Romulus himself came last in the procession, clad in a purple robe and wearing a crown of laurel upon his head, and, that he might maintain the royal dignity, he rode in a chariot drawn by four horses. The rest of the army, both foot and horse, followed, ranged in their several divisions, praising the gods in songs of their country and extolling their general in improvised verses. They were met by the citizens with their wives and children, who, ranging themselves on each side of the road, congratulated them upon their victory and expressed their welcome in every other way. When the army entered the city, they found mixing bowls filled to the brim with wine and tables loaded down with all sorts of viands, which were placed before the most distinguished houses in order that all who pleased might take their fill.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.34.3
§ 2.34.3 Such was the victorious procession, marked by the carrying of trophies and concluding with a sacrifice, which the Romans call a triumph, as it was first instituted by Romulus. But in our day the triumph had become a very costly and ostentatious pageant, being attended with a theatrical pomp that is designed rather as a display of wealth than as approbation of valour, and it has departed in every respect from its ancient simplicity.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.34.4
§ 2.34.4 After the procession and the sacrifice Romulus built a small temple on the summit of the Capitoline hill to Jupiter whom the Romans call Feretrius; indeed, the ancient traces of it still remain, of which the longest sides are less than fifteen feet. In this temple he consecrated the spoils of the king of the Caeninenses, whom he had slain with his own hand. As for Jupiter Feretrius, to whom Romulus dedicated these arms, one will not err from the truth whether one wishes to call him Tropaiouchos, or Skylophoros, as some will have it, or, since he excels all things and comprehends universal nature and motion, Hyperpheretês.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.35.1
§ 2.35.1 After the king had offered to the gods the sacrifices of thanksgiving and the first-fruits of victory, before entering upon any other business, he assembled the senate to deliberate with them in what manner the conquered cities should be treated, and he himself first delivered the opinion he thought the best.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.35.2
§ 2.35.2 When all the senators who were present had approved of the counsels of their chief as both safe and brilliant and had praised all the other advantages that were likely to accrue from them to the commonwealth, not only for the moment but for all future time, he gave command for the assembling of all the women belonging to the race of the Antemnates and of the Caeninenses who had been seized with the rest. And when they had assembled, lamenting, throwing themselves at his feet and bewailing the calamities of their native cities, he commanded them to cease their lamentations and be silent, then spoke to them as follows:
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.35.3
§ 2.35.3 “Your fathers and brothers and your entire cities deserve to suffer every severity for having preferred to our friendship a war that was neither necessary nor honourable. We, however, have resolved for many reasons to treat them with moderation; for we not only fear the vengeance of the gods, which ever threatens the arrogant, and dread the ill-will of men, but we are also persuaded that mercy contributes not a little to alleviate the common ills of mankind, and we realize that we ourselves may one day stand in need of that of others. And we believe that to you, whose behaviour towards your husbands has thus far been blameless, this will be no small honour and favour.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.35.4
§ 2.35.4 We suffer this offence of theirs, therefore, to go unpunished and take from your fellow citizens neither their liberty nor their possessions nor any other advantages they enjoy; and both to those who desire to remain there and to those who wish to change their abode we grant full liberty to make their choice, not only without danger but without fear of repenting. But, to prevent their ever repeating their fault or the finding of any occasion to induce their cities to break off their alliance with us, the best means, we consider, and that which will at the same time conduce to the reputation and security of both, is for us to make those cities colonies of Rome and to send a sufficient number of our own people from here to inhabit them jointly with your fellow citizens. Depart, therefore, with good courage; and redouble your love and regard for your husbands, to whom your parents and brothers owe their preservation and your countries their liberty.”
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.35.5
§ 2.35.5 The women, hearing this, were greatly pleased, and shedding many tears of joy, left the Forum; but Romulus sent a colony of three hundred men into each city, to whom these cities gave a third part of their lands to be divided among them by lot.
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§ 2.35.6 And those of the Caeninenses and Antemnates who desired to remove to Rome they brought thither together with their wives and children, permitting them to retain their allotments of land and to take with them all their possessions; and the king immediately enrolled them, numbering not less than three thousand, in the tribes and the curiae, so that the Romans had then for the first time six thousand foot in all upon the register.
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§ 2.35.7 Thus Caenina and Antemnae, no inconsiderable cities, whose inhabitants were of Greek origin (for the Aborigines had taken the cities from the Sicels and occupied them, these Aborigines being, as I said before, part of those Oenotrians who had come out of Arcadia ),52 after this war became Roman colonies.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.36.1
§ 2.36.1 Romulus, having attended to these matters, led out his army against the Crustumerians, who were better prepared than the armies of the other cities had been. And after he had reduced them both in a pitched battle and in an assault upon their city, although they had shown great bravery in the struggle, he did not think fit to punish them any further, but made this city also a Roman colony like the two former.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.36.2
§ 2.36.2 Crustumerium was a colony of the Albans sent out many years before the founding of Rome. The fame of the general's valour in war and of his clemency to the conquered being spread through many cities, many brave men joined him, bringing with them considerable bodies of troops, who migrated with their whole families. From one of these leaders, who came from Tyrrhenia and whose name was Caelius, one of the hills, on which he settled, is to this day called the Caelian. Whole cities also submitted to him, beginning with Medullia, and became Roman colonies.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.36.3
§ 2.36.3 But the Sabines, seeing these things, were displeased and blamed one another for not having crushed the power of the Romans while it was in its infancy, instead of which they were now to contend with it when it was greatly increased. They determined, therefore, to make amends for their former mistake by sending out an army of respectable size. And soon afterwards, assembling a general council in the greatest and most famous city in the nation, called Cures,a they voted for the war and appointed Titus, surnamed Tatius, the king of that city, to be their general. After the Sabines had come to this decision, the assembly broke up and all returned home to their several cities, where they busied themselves with their preparations for the war, planning to advance on Rome with a great army the following year.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.37.1
§ 2.37.1 In the meantime Romulus also was making the best preparations he could in his turn, realizing that he was to defend himself against a warlike people. With this in view, he raised the wall of the Palatine hill by building higher ramparts upon it as a further security to the inhabitants, and fortified the adjacent hills — the Aventine and the one now called the Capitoline — with ditches and strong palisades, and upon these hills he ordered the husbandmen with their flocks to pass the nights, securing each of them by a sufficient garrison; and likewise any other place that promised to afford them security he fortified with ditches and palisades and kept under guard.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.37.2
§ 2.37.2 In the meantime there came to him a man of action and reputation for military achievements, named Lucumo, lately become his friend, who brought with him from the city of Solonium a considerable body of Tyrrhenian mercenaries. There came to him also from the Albans, sent by his grandfather, a goodly number of soldiers with their attendants, and with them artificers for making engines of war; these men were adequately supplied with provisions, arms, and all necessary equipment.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.37.3
§ 2.37.3 When everything was ready for the war on both sides, the Sabines, who planned to take the field at the beginning of spring, resolved first to send an embassy to the enemy both to ask for the return of the women and to demand satisfaction for their seizure, just so that they might seem to have undertaken the war from necessity when they failed to get justice, and they were sending the heralds for this purpose.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.37.4
§ 2.37.4 Romulus, however, asked that the women, since they themselves were not unwilling to live with their husbands, should be permitted to remain with them; but he offered to grant the Sabines anything else they desired, provided they asked it as from friends and did not begin war. Thereupon the others, agreeing to none of his proposals, led out their army, which consisted of twenty-five thousand foot and almost a thousand horse.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.37.5
§ 2.37.5 And the Roman army was not much smaller than that of the Sabines, the foot amounting to twenty thousand and the horse to eight hundred; it was encamped before the city in two divisions, one of them, under Romulus himself, being posted on the Esquiline hill, and the other, commanded by Lucumo, the Tyrrhenian, on the Quirinal, which did not as yet have that name.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0081.tlg001:2.38.1
§ 2.38.1 Tatius, the king of the Sabines, being informed of their preparations, broke camp in the night and led his army through the country, without doing any damage to the property in the fields, and before sunrise encamped on the plain that lies between the Quirinal and Capitoline hills. But observing all the posts to be securely guarded by the enemy and no strong position left for his army, he fell into great perplexity, not knowing what use to make of the enforced delay.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by Earnest Cary (1879-19??) and Edward Spelman (d. 1767). Composed ca. 7 BCE. Licence: public domain. Source.