Livy: The History of Rome. Books I-V. Valerie M. Warrior translation. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006,
In retirement at his home in the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, Charles de Gaulle came upon his grandson studying an oration by Cicero. Seeing which one it was, he reached down and placed his large hand over the page, elevated his gaze to the middle distance, and recited the oration to the astonished boy. After completing its peroration, he looked down and said, “You should read Livy. He is much more grand.”
In what does the grandeur of Livy consist? Livy writes political history with political intent. He teaches his readers—most immediately Romans in the decades immediately before and after the birth of Christ—what amount to lessons in statesmanship. Philosophy can teach a student how to think logically; religious writings teach piety and right doctrine concerning divine and human conduct. Teaching statesmanship may seem impossible, an attempt to bring the student to a practical reasoning usually inculcated only by experience, that hardest of teachers. Political history enables its students to learn the lessons of experience with a minimum of injury to themselves. It second-handedness may be less vivid than experience but it is also less painful. When the historian recalls the history of one’s own country he additionally appeals to the love of one’s own, while spurring consideration of the lasting geopolitical interests and traditions that must enter into any serious consideration of Roman policy, moving forward. As Livy puts it in his Preface, “it will be a pleasure to have celebrated, to the best of my ability, the memory of the past achievements of the greatest people on earth,” a people now living in a vast empire, “laboring under its own size”—so much so that in “recent times [the Latin phrasing has the double meaning of “revolutionary times”] the might of a most powerful people has long been destroying itself.” Historical narration of Roman events with accompanying portraits of the Roman politicians who spoke and acted in the course of them will enable him, and his readers, “to turn away from the contemplation of the evils that our age has seen for so many years.” Under the watchful eye of the Emperor Augustus, it would not do to suggest that a reader might glean from his book any means to remedy those evils, but the thought does occur.
Livy is no ‘scientific historian,’ obsessed with separating fact from fiction. But he does want to get at the truth insofar as he can. “The intent is neither to affirm nor refute the traditions that belong to the period before the foundation of the city or the anticipation of its foundation, for these are embellished with poetic tales rather than based on uncorrupted records of historical events.” The ancients made “the beginning of cities more august by mingling human affairs with the divine,” sanctifying the foundings they recall by “reckon[ing] their founders as gods.” “These and similar things, however they will be regarded and judged, I shall not for my own part regard as of great importance.”
Five things are more important: the kind of lives men lived; what their moral principles were; by what individuals and with what skills Roman dominion was born and grew; how, as discipline collapsed, there was as it were a disintegration of morals; how Roman morals decline, until the present time in which “we can endure neither our own vices nor their remedies.” That is, Livy undertakes an account of the several Roman regimes, especially the way of life of each regime and its purpose, its principles, and the rulers. He omits mention only the form or institutional structures by which the Romans ruled, perhaps because these were the phenomena Romans struggled over in exhibiting their habits of heart and mind. The “particularly healthy and productive element of history [is] to behold object lessons of every kind of model as though they were displayed as a conspicuous monument.” From such examples “you should choose for yourself and for your state what to imitate and what to avoid as abominable in its origin or as abominable in its outcome,” inasmuch as “there has never been a state that is greater, or more righteous, or richer in good examples,” one in which “greed and luxury migrated so late into the citizens, nor where there has been such great respect for small means and thrift.” Grand indeed, as the founder of France’s Fifth Republic said.
Livy’s work extended to 142 books, most now lost. The first five books or “pentad” recount the city’s founding in the eighth century BC to its conquest (soon reversed) by the Gauls in 390 BC. The first two books discuss not only the founding but several important regime changes from kingship to aristocracy to tyranny to its overthrow. The third chapter, the central and pivotal chapter, shows the gradual ‘democratization’ of the regime, how the plebeian class gradually came to control some of the key institutions, with the patricians opposing them at every step; the result, a republic or ‘mixed’ regime, survives military challenges from neighboring city-states and continues to see further democratic encroachments on aristocratic authority.
Livy begins his story with the more-or-less legendary figures of Aeneas and Antenor, who were spared by the Greeks after the conquest of Troy because “they had always advocated peace and the return of Helen” (I.i.5). Antenor settled in the uppermost gulf of the Adriatic Sea, where the people had lost their king at Troy. As for Aeneas, “fate guided him to initiate greater achievements” (I.i.5). In Livy’s hand, even mythological history has value because he can produce lessons for statesmen out of it. Here, two heroes win very different degrees of fame not through virtue alone, not even through virtù alone, but because fate treated them differently. Statesmen must understand that; respect for circumstances is the first thing they need to learn.
Aeneas and his men went to Macedonia, then to Sicily and then to Laurentum, fifteen miles south of Rome. There they confronted King Latinus and the aborigines, made peace with the king, who gave his daughter in marriage to Aeneas, who became king. The basis of the polis is the family, which is also the basis of the regime of kings. The newly-strengthened polis fought the Rutulians and their king, Turnus, who allied with Etruscans—the rulers of both people worried by the increased power of Laurentum. “Confronted with such a formidable war and the need to win over the minds of the Aborigines, Aeneas called both peoples Latins so that everyone would not only be under the same law, but also the same name. From that time on, the Aborigines’ dedication and loyalty to King Aeneas was no less than those of the Trojans. Aeneas relied on the spirit of these two peoples, who daily became more united” (II.ii.7). Nomos means both ‘name’ and ‘law’; the new king was a statesman who understood that citizenship and law can unite disparate peoples. King Aeneas died after leading the successful defense of the city against the Rutulian-Etruscan alliance.
Aeneas’ line ruled the polis well for several generations, founding the polis of Alba Longa, until younger brother, Amulius, exiled his older brother, Numitor, the rightful inheritor of the throne. “Violence was more powerful than the father’s wishes or respect for age,” and Amulius used violence thoroughly, murdering his brother’s male children and, “under the pretext of honoring his brother’s daughter Rhea Silvia, selected her to be a priestess of Vesta,” thereby “condemning her to perpetual virginity” (I.iii.9). There would be no one from Numitor’s line to claim the throne Amulius had usurped.
But again the fates ruled otherwise. “To the fates, as I suppose, was owed the origin of this great city and the beginning of the mightiest empire that is second only to that of the gods” (I.iv.9). “The Vestal was raped and produced twins,” claiming “that Mars was the father of her doubtful offspring, either because she believed this or because it was more honorable to put the blame on a god” (I.iv.9) “But neither gods nor men protected her or her children from the king’s cruelty” (I.iv.9); he commanded that the infants be throne into the River Tiber. Fate or the gods—”some heaven-sent chance” (I.iv.9)—caused the Tiber to overflow, and the lazy executioners of the tyrant’s command left the children on the edge of the tidewater, where Faustulus, master of the royal flock, found them and took them home to his wife. Livy reports the rival stories that the infants were suckled by a she-wolf before their discovery or, perhaps, only by their adoptive mother, “who was called ‘she-wolf’ among the shepherd community, since she had been a prostitute” (I.iv.10). However that may have been, they became hunters as well as farmers and shepherds. “In this way the achieved strength of body and mind” (I.iv.10). Faustulus suspected that the boys were “of royal birth,” having heard that the Amulius had order the exposure of two mail infants just before he found them. Their exiled grandfather, Numitor, took custody of Remus and, observing the “temperament” of both twins,” which was not at all slavelike,” readily entered into a conspiracy with them, now grown, to overthrow the tyrant. Romulus and Remus led separate forces against Amulius; it was Remus who got to the tyrant first, killing him.
With Numitor restored as the legitimate king of Alba Longa with the support of Romulus, Remus, and the people (“a unanimous shout of assent” [I.vi.12)), the brothers were “seized by a desire to establish a city in the places where they had been exposed and raised,” gathering a group consisting of Albans, Latins, and the native shepherds, all of whom hoped that their new city would soon grow bigger and better than the poleis they had left behind (I.vi12). “But these thoughts were interrupted by the ancestral evil that had beset Numitor and Amulius—desire for the kingship,” that is, a struggle over control of a monarchic regime (I.vi.12). “From quite a harmless beginning, an abominable conflict arose” (I.vi.12); Livy means to impress his reader with the vulnerability of monarchy to tyranny, a lesson that might well be taken by anyone living under the rule of Augustus and the subsequent monarchs of the Roman Empire, many centuries later.
In this case, neither contender for the throne could claim legitimacy on the basis of prior birth. “They decided to ask the protecting gods of the area”—every place has a ‘genius’ or ‘genii,’ local deities—to “declare by augury who should give his name to the new city and who should rule over it after its foundation” (I.vi.12). [1] When the augury proved ambiguous, Remus was either killed in a brawl between his followers and those of Romulus or when Romulus himself killed his brother when Remus jumped over the wall separating his section of the polis, the Aventine, from Romulus’ section, the Palatine. However it happened, it happened in violence, and “Romulus became the sole ruler and the city, so founded, was given its founder’s name” (I.vii.13). Monarchic regimes originate, then, in one of three ways: alliance or consent (Aeneas) or violence (Romulus). They are perpetuated either by legitimate succession (the kings up until Amulius) or violence (Amulius). Either way, they may be decent kingships or indecent tyrannies and, either way, they may or may not win the consent of the few who are rich and/or the many who are poor.
Romulus solidified his rule by reassuring the people in two ways. He fortified the Palatine, looking after their physical safety, and he sacrificed to the gods and to Hercules, whose legend was associated with the area—attending to the religious concerns of his new subjects. Livy pauses to explain the significance of Hercules to the founding. It was “the only foreign rite undertaken by Romulus” (Hercules having been a Greek) (I.vii.13); according to the local legend, the hero had killed a cattle thief there—that is, someone who had seized Hercules’ property, as Remus had attempted to do to Romulus. Although Hercules was accused of “blatant murder” by the shepherds, Evander, an exile from the Peloponnese whose “wonderful skill with the alphabet, a novelty among men who were untutored in such arts” was “revered” by the shepherds as a consequence, intervened in his defense (I.vii.14). Citing a prediction handed down by his mother, “who was believed to be divine and was admired as a prophetess,” this Evander proclaimed that Hercules was a son of Jupiter and that an altar would be “dedicated to you” here, an altar to be called “the Greatest Altar” by “the race that was destined one day to be the most powerful on earth” (I.vii.14). Hercules shook hands with his new ally, said “he accepted the omen and would fulfill the prophecy by establishing and dedicated an altar” I.vii14) “A fine cow was taken from the herd, and the first sacrifice was made to Hercules,” punisher of cattle thieves (I.vii.14). By so associating Rome, and himself, with Hercules, “Romulus was already honoring the immortality won by valor, an honor to which his own destiny was leading him” (I.vii.15).
As his final act of establishing his legitimacy, Romulus “made himself venerable by adopting symbols of office,” including royal dress and a retinue of twelve lictors—symbolism backed by force, and the only way “by law that [the Romans] could become a unified community” (I.viii.15). He undertook a building campaign, “more in expectation of a future population than for the number of men they currently had” (I.viii.16). He also had recourse to the myth of autochthony, “long used by founders of cities, who gather a host of shady, low-born people and put out th story that children had been born to them from the earth” (I.viii.16). Rome became a city of asylum; “the entire rabble from the neighboring peoples fled their for refuge,” men and women “without distinction, slaves and freemen alike eager for a fresh start” (I.viii.16). “This was the first move toward beginning the increase of Rome’s might” (I.viii.16). The founder wisely saw that strength is not enough, “add[ing] deliberation to strength” by appointing one hundred men as senator, called patres or fathers, their descendants called patricians (I.viii.16).
With deliberation comes stratagem. The next move to enhance the population was the famous-notorious ‘rape’ of the Sabine women. “Already Rome was so strong that she was the equal of any of the neighboring states in war,” but this wouldn’t have lasted if the polis lacked a sufficiency of women to produce an equally populous next generation (I.ix.16). Romulus sent embassies to the neighboring tribes, seeking alliance and intermarriage. The envoys told their hosts that poleis, “like everything else, start from the most humble beginnings” (I.ix.16); the Romans were not to be despised. More, “great wealth and a great name are achieved by those cities that are helped by their own valor and the gods”; “the Romans were men like themselves, and so, as neighbors, they should not be reluctant to mingle their blood and stock with them” (I.ix.16). Neither the appeal to piety nor the appeal to common humanity swayed the neighboring peoples, who “fear[ed] for both themselves and their descendants, the great power that was growing in their midst”; to this geopolitical concern they added contempt for the low origins so many of the Romans, deeming them unworthy to wed their daughters. “The young Romans resented this attitude, and things were undoubtedly beginning to look violent” (I.ix.17).
Romulus himself had a smarter course to follow. He “hid his resentment” and instead announced a festival in honor of Neptune, patron of horses, inviting the neighbors to attend (I.ix.17). The grand new buildings he had constructed drew a large crowd, animated by their human curiosity; the rapidity of construction had been possible precisely because the Romans had no real household, no families to care for. These peoples included the Sabines, who brought their wives and children to enjoy the holiday. On signal, “the Roman youths rushed in every direction to seize the unmarried women,” with “some exceptionally beautiful girls” seized by plebeians at the command of the senators, for the senators (I.ix.17). The enraged parents could only call down the wrath of the god in whose honor the festival was ostensibly organized. Romulus stepped in, telling the maidens that their parents were to blame, having arrogantly refused intermarriage with Romans and assuring them that they would have all the rights of marriage, a share in the household properties, citizenship in Rome, “and the dearest possession that the human race has—children” (I.ix.18). “They should calm their anger and give their hearts to those to whom chance [!] had given their bodies. For, he said, often affection has eventually come from a sense of injustice. They would find their husbands kinder because each would try not only to fulfill his obligation, but also to make up for he longing for their parents and homeland. the men spoke sweet words to them trying to excuse their action of the grounds of passionate love a plea that is particularly effective where a woman’s heart is concerned.” (I.ix.18). Some time later, Romulus’ wife, Hersilia, would persuade the king to grant amnesty to the women’s parents and “grant them citizenship,” too, “saying that by this means the state would grow in strength and harmony” (I. xi.20). This policy worked because by then Rome had defeated those neighbors who were outraged at the theft of the women, leaving their parents’ spirit “collapsed as a result of the defeat of the others” (I.xi.20). At this point the Sabines themselves attacked but Romulus again led his soldiers effectively and, as the battle intensified, the Sabine women intervened, “their womanish fear overcome by the terrible situation” in which fathers and husbands were killing each other (I.xiii.22). Like so many Helens of the Troy from whose citizens the Roman founders descended, they cried, “We are the cause of war; we are the cause of wounds and deaths to our husbands and our fathers” (l.xiii.22). Unlike Helen, however, they said something effective to halt the war: “Better that we die than live as widows or orphans, without either of you” (I.xiii.22). Their appeal halted the fighting and led to a treaty merging the two peoples into one, with a shared kingship but with Rome as the capital. Romulus honored the women by naming each of the thirty wards he established in the city after the women.
Romulus’ monarchic counterpart, Tatius, proved unfortunate. Some of his relatives assaulted a group of visiting Laurentine envoys, “who protested under the law of nations” (I.xiv.23). “More influenced by partiality for his relatives and their pleas,” he died at the hands of a mob that surrounded him in Lavinium (I.xiv.23). “Romulus took this less badly than was proper, whether because of the disloyalty that is inherent in shared rule or because he thought that Tatius’ murder was not unjustified” (I.xiv.23). He renewed the pact between Rome and Lavinium “in order to expiate the insults to the envoys and the murder of the king” (I.xiv.23). He went on to win subsequent battles with two attacking Etruscan poleis, Fidenae and Veii. “The strength that he gave to Rome enabled her to have untroubled peace for the next forty years” (I.xv.25). “More popular with the people than with the senators,” he as “above all…dearest to the hearts of the soldiers,” enjoying the protection of 300 armed bodyguards (I.xv.25).
These men were not unfailing in their vigilance, however. Presiding over an assembly of the people, Romulus disappeared when a thunderstorm “enveloped him in a cloud so dense that it hid him from the view of the people” (I.xvi.25). The people “readily believed the assertion of the senators who had been standing nearby that he had been snatched up on high by the storm”; “stricken with fear as if they had been orphaned,” they all decided that Romulus should be hailed as a god, son of a god, king, and father of the city of Rome” (I.xvi.25-26). Livy raises an eyebrow: “I suppose that there were some, even then, who privately claimed that the king had been torn into pieces by the hands of the senators” (I.xvi.26). This remained the minority view, although the people still longed for a king and disliked the senate. If they did indeed plot the king’s assassination, the senators navigated around that dilemma, as an outright murder would have sparked a popular uprising. A patrician appeased the people by claiming an epiphany: “Today at dawn, Romulus, the father of this city, city descended from the sky and appeared before me. Overcome with fear and awe, I stood there, beseeching him with prayers that it might be permissible for me to gaze on him. But he said, ‘Depart, and proclaim to the Romans that it is the gods’ will that my Rome be the capital of the world. So let them cultivate the art of war; let them know and teach their descendants that no human strength has the power to resist the arms of Rome.'” Livy comments, “It is astonishing what credence was given to this man’s story, and how the longing for Romulus felt by the people and army was alleviated by belief in his immortality” (I.xvi.26-27). By encouraging the people’s pious superstition, ‘the few’ maneuvered themselves into greater authority over ‘the many’ while never assuaging their distrust.
“An ambitious struggle for the kingship engaged the minds of the senators” (I.xvii.27); given the newness of Rome’s general population, no prominent men had yet arisen from it, so there could be no competitors for the position from that quarter. “All wanted to be ruled by a king, for they had not yet experienced the sweetness of liberty” (I.xvii.28). The senators split between the “original Romans” and the Sabines, each wanting a king from their group. Deadlock ensued, and for a time they established a power-sharing arrangement whereby the senators divided into groups of ten, with a representative from each group presiding over the government. This aristocracy or oligarchy caused popular “grumbling,” as it seemed that Romans’ servitude “had multiplied,” with rule by “a hundred masters instead of one” (I.xvii.28). If they could not offer a candidate for the monarchy from amongst themselves, surely they could elect one from among the senators. Alarmed, the senators “won the people’s favor by granting them supreme power on such terms that [the senators] gave away no more of their power than they retained”; the people could elect the king but “their choice would only be valid if it was ratified by the senators” (I.xvii.28). “This so pleased the people that they did not want to give the appearance of being outdone in goodwill, and so they merely resolved that the senate should decide who should be king in Rome” (I.xvii.28). Such popular deference to both monarchic and aristocratic rule would endure for a long time. Livy does not neglect to compare the electoral arrangements of early Rome to those of his own time, when the people are allowed to vote for laws and officials but only after the senators have “ratif[ied] the outcome of an election in advance, before the people can vote” (I.xvii.28).
Eventually, the Sabine Numa Pompilius attained the kingship, a ” great man” “famed for his justice and his sense of obligation to the gods” (I.xviii.28,29). Numa was learned in divine and human law but his virtues were natural; “I think that Numa’s mind and moral principles derived from his own native disposition (I.xviii.28). His elevation to office duly solemnized by an augur, Numa set about “giv[ing] the new city that had been founded by force of arms a new foundation in justice, law, and proper observances,” seeing that “the warlike spirit of his people must be softened by their giving up of arms” (I.xix.29). At the same time, he also saw that such softening, augmented by the peace treaties he signed, would “cause the spirit that had been held in check by military discipline and fear of the enemy [would] become soft from idleness” (I.xix.30). His remedy was “to instill in them a fear of the gods, on the assumption that it would be most effective with a populace that was unskilled and, for those days, primitive” (I.xix.30). “Since he could not get through to their minds without inventing some miraculous story, he pretended that he had nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria,” who instructed him on the establishment of divinely-approved rites (I.xix.30). He also established a calendar, the political benefit of which was that it marked out holy days when no public business could be done, “since it was desirable to have times when nothing could be brought before the people” (I.xix.30). Popular religious piety could thus be deployed to limit popular authority. Anticipating that “in a warlike nation there would be more kings like Romulus than like himself,” he also used piety to tame the Romans, establishing permanent priestly offices, including a pontiff to govern the practice of sacred rites, public and private, guarding against the introduction of the foreign religious practices to which frequent military expeditions would expose patricians and plebeians alike (I.xx.31-32). Perhaps as a guard against rapine, he also “chose virgins for the service of Vesta, a priesthood that originated in Alba and was thus associated with the race of Rome’s founder” (I.xx.31); the Vestal virgins, supported by public expense, would enjoy “revered and inviolable status” (I.xx.31).
Numa’s constitutional lawgiving worked. “Consideration and attention to these matters turned the thoughts of the entire people away from violence and arms. They had something to occupy their minds, and, since the heavenly powers seemed to have an interest in human affairs, the people’s constant preoccupation with the gods had imbued the hearts of all with such piety that the state was governed by regard for good faith and oaths, rather than by fear of punishment under the law” (I.xxi.32). Rome’s neighbors accordingly “came to feel such a respect for the Romans that they considered it sacrilege to do violence to a nation that had so entirely turned to the worship of the gods” (I.xxi.32). This was another reason why peace endured for decades after Romulus’ death. “Thus two successive kings, each in a different way, promoted the state: the one by war, the other by peace,” as “the state was not only strong but moderated by the arts of both war and peace” (I.xxi.33).
Livy finds such dualities a core feature of Rome, eventuating in the longstanding tension between patricians and plebeians within the city, warfare with the peoples outside it. The next king, Tullus Hostilius, would confirm Numa’s expectation of Roman kings generally; “even more ferocious than Romulus,” Tullus thought “the state was enfeebled by inaction” and so “looked around for an excuse to stir up war” (I.xxii.33). He maneuvered ambassadors from the nearby Alban people to declare war on Rome. The Alban dictator, Mettius Fufetius, nonetheless offered some prudent advice. “If truth is to be spoken, rather than a show of words, it is a desire for dominion that is goading two related and neighboring peoples to take up arms” (I.xxiii.35). Without “discussing the rights and wrongs of the matter,” Mettius pointed out that both his people and the Romans were surrounded by the Etruscans, whose “strength on the sea is even greater than on land” (I.xxiii.35). If Alba and Rome go to war, the Etruscans will wait until the two nations exhaust themselves, then step in to conquer both. “Since we not content with the certainty of liberty but are casting dice for slavery or dominion, let us find a way whereby it can be determined which side will rule the other, without great loss of life or bloodshed on either side” (I.xxiii.35). They agreed to a solution involving a double duality: two sets of three brothers, the Horatii and the Curiatti, would meet in a combat of champions to settle the conflict. When the Romans won (the surviving Horatian then killing his sister, who dared to mourn her fiancé, a Curiatian he had killed in the fight), Tullus ordered the Alban dictator to keep his men under arms for a war against the Etruscan city of Veii. The Roman people themselves acquitted Horatius of murder when his father intervened, “implor[ing] them not to make him childless” (I.xxvi.40). “The people could not endure either the father’s tears or the courage of the young man who was steadfast in every peril. They acquitted him in admiration more for his valor than for the justness of his cause” in keeping with their warlike character. (I.xxvi.40).
Pressured by the Alban people, who were “resentful that the dictator had entrusted the fortune of the state to three soldiers” and evidently did not appreciate his larger geostrategic objective, Mettius betrayed Rome within “the guise of the alliance,” stirring up the peoples of the Roman colony Fidenae and the Veientines to attack the Romans and promising he would join them (I.xxvii.41). In fact he planned to hold his troops back, ready to attack whichever side was losing. After winning the battle, Tullus, who had uncovered Mettius’ treachery, punished Mettius but rewarded the Albans, bringing them into Rome and granting citizenship to the people, their leaders to positions in the senate, “mak[ing] one city and one state” (I.xxviii.43). Out of duality, oneness: Mettius, he said, “as you divided your mind between the Fidenates and the Romans, so now you will give your body to be torn apart,” a lesson for “the human race to hold sacred the bonds that have been violated by you” (I.xxxviii.43). This punishment, Livy remarks, itself “ignor[ed] the laws of humanity”; “in other cases, we can boast that no other nation has decreed more humane punishments” (I.xxviii.43). After the Albans were brought to Rome, their city, Alba Longa, was demolished; for the ancient peoples, such a loss was even more catastrophic than it would be for ‘we moderns,’ as every city, and every household within it, harbored the lar and the penates of the people. Tullus spared the public temples of the gods.
Rome’s population now doubled, Tullus turned his warlike attentions to the Sabines. Rome won again, but Tullus died, after a thirty-two-year reign, “his famed ferocious spirit broken along with his physical health” during a plague (I.xxxi.46). The Romans too had wearied of war, now “want[ing] to return to the situation under Numa, believing that the only help for their sick bodies was to seek favor and pardon from the gods” (I.xxxi.46). They elected, and the senate ratified, Ancus Marcius, grandson of Numa, as their next king. Although “both the citizens who yearned for peace and the neighboring states were led to hope that Ancus would adopt the character and institutions of his grandfather,” the Latins began a series of raids on what they took to be a weakened rival (I.xxxii.47). “Ancus’ disposition was midway between that of Romulus and that of Numa; he was mindful of both. He was convinced that, in his grandfather’s reign, a people that was both young and ferocious had a greater need of peace; but he also believed that the absence of war without being exposed to injustice would not fall as easily to him as it had to Numa. His strength was being tested and, having been tested, was the object of contempt.” (I.xxxii.47). At the same time, he did not want Roman war-making to ignore the gods. “Since Numa had set up religious practices in time of peace, he wanted to hand on a ceremony for war so that wars might not only be waged, but also declared with some kind of ritual,” whereby Rome would first ask restitution from a foreign state for a perceived injury before a formal declaration of war could be issued (I.xxxii.47).
The Latin aggressors wanted no peace, however, and got none. Rome conquered them and integrated their population into Rome. This demographic shock led to a regime crisis. “The enormous increase in the population of the city resulting in a blurring of the distinction between right and wrong,” the distinction both Numa and his grandson had striven to establish (I.xxxiii.50). The rule of law was undermined, presumably because the size and heterogeneity of the population weakened moral consensus by introducing new and contradictory ways of life to the city while making the old ways of life harder to enforce, given the sheer numbers of persons to govern—Livy himself does not explain. This moral and legal derangement afforded an opportunity to a dangerous foreign man.
Tarquinius Priscus was the son of an exile from Corinth who had settled in Tarquinii, an Etruscan town located 56 miles north of Rome. Despised as the son of a foreign exile, despite his wealth and the wealth of his wife, he set out for Rome, where Tanaquil “could see her husband in a position of honor,” given the Romans’ condition as “a new people, where nobility was quickly acquired and based on merit,” not birth, as seen in the lives of the Sabine Tatius and Numa the Curiatti (I.xxxiv.52). According to the story Livy relates, as they approached Rome an eagle “came gently down,” removed the cap from Tarquinius’ head, the “deftly replaced the cap on his head, sent, as it were, by the gods for this purpose” (I.xxxiv.52). “Tanaquil, a woman skilled in interpreting prodigies from the sky, as Etruscans generally are,” “embraced her husband” and “told him to expect a high and exalted position” in Rome, the eagle having “performed the auspice around the highest part of a man,” removing the cap “placed on a mortal’s head, only to put it back with divine approval” (I.xxxiv.52). He did indeed rise quickly in Rome, winning the confidence of King Ancus to such an extent that he was named guardian of the king’s children.
Upon the king’s death, with the sons conveniently dispatched on a hunting expedition, Tarquin seems to have become “the first to canvass votes for the kingship and make a speech that was designed to win over the hearts of the people,” citing the precedents of foreign kings in Rome, his apprenticeship with King Ancus, his familiarity with Roman laws and rites, and his goodwill toward the people—all “claims that were by no means false” (I.xxxv.52-53). Upon election, he took the precaution of adding a hundred members to the senate, effectively packing it with partisans; he then captured a Latin town and inaugurated the Great Games in honor of Jupiter, thus checking the boxes (as it were) of military prowess and piety. He also increased the number of the cavalry, which proved the decisive factor in a rout of the Sabines, who had launched an unprovoked attack on Roman territory. While Numa had counteracted the threat of peacetime softening of the Roman spirit with a spirit of piety, Tarquin preferred to put the people to work, directing the construction of defensive walls in unfortified parts of the city, draining swamps, and constructing sewers. He also built a temple to Jupiter that he had vowed during the Sabine war, far from neglecting respect for the gods even as he busied Romans with these tasks.
What of an heir to the throne? King Ancus’ sons had by now attained their majority and were “outraged that they had been driven from their father’s throne by their tutor’s deceit and that Rome was ruled by a stranger who was not of neighboring stock, still less Italian” (I.xl.58). Tarquin and Tanaquil had already designated another successor, a child Livy suspects to have been the child of the wife of the king of Corniculum, a Sabine city; Tanaquil had rescued the woman after the city’s capture, befriended her, and raised her son as “a safeguard to our royal house when it is stricken,” attributing a reported miracle attributed to the child as a glimpse into “the will of the gods” (I.xxxix.57). The disinherited sons of Ancus hired two “ferocious shepherds” to assassinate Tarquin, and they succeeded (I.xl.58). Unintimidated, Tanaquil concealed her husband’s death and elevated her now-adopted son, Servius, to the throne, the partisan senate concurring in this without the consent of the people.
Servius secured popular support and reinforced senatorial approval of his rule by routing the Veientines and other Etruscans. More important in terms of the regime, he formalized the class distinctions in Rome, first instituting the census, then decreeing that “a man’s duties in war and in peace would be determined, not indiscriminately on an individual basis as before, but in proportion to a man’s wealth” (I.xlv.60); that is, the new Roman class system would consist of political distinctions based upon ‘economic’ distinctions. There were six classes in all, with the poorest exempt from the military service that can serve as a pathway to honor. What is more, “now suffrage was no longer given indiscriminately to all,” with the upper classes voting first; since votes were weighted to favor those classes, voting on laws “almost never…descend[ed] as far as the lowest citizens” before a law was enacted (I.xlv.62). Servius further divided the city into four territorial divisions, their inhabitants called “tribes,” probably a derivative of “tribute” because tributes were collected according to one’s place of residence, not class. “The king had promoted the state by enlarging the city and arranging domestic affairs to meet the needs of both war and peace” (I.xlv.64). “Now undoubtedly king de facto, Servius was formally so declared, having “won over the goodwill of the people by dividing the territory captured from the enemy among all the citizens” (I.lvi.65).
The senate was another matter. Servius had married his two daughters to the sons of his predecessor, Tarquinius Priscus. “It was the women who began all the trouble” (I.xlvi.66), trouble that resulted in “a crime worthy of a Greek tragedy, in order that hatred of kings might hasten the coming of liberty and the last kingship be one that was obtained by a criminal act” (I.xlvi.65). Lucius Tarquinius was spirited and ambitious, Arruns Tarquinius “a young man of a gentle nature” (I.xlvi.65). The women they married were similarly “very different in their characters” (I.xlvi.65), but the gentle wife was married to the ambitious man, the ambitious wife married to the gentle one. The wife of Arruns “turned completely from him to his brother; he was the one she admired, calling him a man and one of true royal blood. She despised her sister, because, as she said, now that the other woman had a real man as a husband, she had lost the boldness that a woman should have. similarity quickly brought the two together, as usually happens since evil is most drawn to evil.” (I.xlvi.65). They murdered their spouses and married; unable to prove that crimes had been committed, “Servius did not prevent the marriage but hardly gave his approval” (I.xlvi.66). Further goaded by his wife, Lucius denounced his father before the senate, pretending that Servius, a man of low origins, hated nobles and had divided Roman land “among the rabble” (I.xlvii.67). Lucius then threw Servius down the steps of the Senate, where the king was murdered by Lucius’ partisans. To complete the enormity, his wife drove her carriage “over her father’s body” (I.xlviii.68). Thus the regime changed from kingship to tyranny.
Lucius Tarquinius earned the name “Superbus,” for his arrogance. He forbade the burial of his father-in-law, killed the leading supporters of Servius in the senate, surrounded himself with bodyguards to prevent his own assassination, and ruled with neither popular support nor senate approval. “His rule had to be protected by fear, since he had no hope of the citizens’ affections” (I.xlix.69). (Centuries later, that profound student of ancient Rome, Montesquieu, generalized this point, identifying fear as the principle of despotism.) Tarquinius Superbus went on to murder more senators in order to seize their wealth and to “bring more contempt on the senate” (I.xlix.69). “The first of the monarchs to break with the custom of consulting the senate on all matters, a custom handed down by his predecessors,” he sought support instead from the Latin peoples, “in order that assistance from them might give him greater safety among the citizens at home” (I.xlix.69,70). Thus, like many monarchs and especially tyrants, he appealed to ‘the many’ against ‘the few’—in this instance, a people only recently added to the Roman population, thus less tied to the customs and traditions of the original stock.
Some of the Latins regarded the tyrant’s overtures with suspicion. Turnus of Aricia warned that Tarquinius “would press them into servitude” if they followed him, treating you as he has treated his own people, with murder and theft (I.l.70). A “rebel and troublemaker” himself, Turnus soon attracted the tyrant’s unfavorable attention. “He began to plot Turnus’ death, so that he might inspire in the Latins the same fear that he had used to oppress the spirit of the citizens back home” (I.l.71). “He trumped up a false charge and so destroyed an innocent man” (I.li.71). This had the desired effect. Out of fear, the Latins acceded in renewing their association with Rome while relinquishing the right to have their own military commanders.
“Unjust as the monarch was in peacetime, he was not a bad general in war,” Livy concedes (I.liii.73). He waged a successful campaign against the Volsci, initiating a series of conflicts between the two peoples that would continue for the next 200 years. He also took the city of Gabii with “guile and trickery, a thoroughly un-Roman stratagem,” then had his son, Sextus, execute the city’s leaders, some in public and others secretly (I.liv.75). In a show of piety at Rome, he built the temple of Capitoline Jupiter as “a memorial of his reign and of his family” while deconsecrating several sanctuaries and shrines established by the ill-fated Sabine co-king, Tatius (I.lv.75). Portents were interpreted to predict the future greatness of the Roman empire. As for the Roman people themselves, he imitated King Ancus by putting them to work, this time on the sewer system and the seats for the Circus Maximus.
Conspiracies to overthrow Tarquinius Superbus’ tyranny began to emerge. His two younger sons hoped to exploit an oracle they had been granted at Delphi to eliminate Sextus from the succession. At the same time, Lucius Junius Brutus, the son of their aunt, Tarquinia, bided his time, playing the fool and concealing “the great spirit that was to free the Roman people” (I.lviii.79). Lucius Tarquinius had initiated a war against the Rutulian city of Ardea; it was a wealthy place, and he needed the money to pay for his vast public works and to pay off the increasingly disgruntled people of Rome. “Seized by an evil desire to debauch” Lucretia, the wife of the son of the Ardean king—her beauty and her chastity equally inflamed him—he blackmailed him into committing adultery with him by threatening to kill her and her slave, then laying them together and thereby ruining her reputation (I.lvii.80). After reporting the crime to her father and grandfather, she committed suicide so that no unchaste woman could ever use her example as a precedent.
This gave Brutus the opening he needed. Swearing vengeance on the Tarquins and the overthrow of the monarchic regime in Rome, he entered into a conspiracy with Lucretius’ widower, Collatinus, and her aggrieved father and grandfather. They gathered an army and moved against Rome, under Brutus’ command. “There he gave a speech that was quite inconsistent with the spirit and disposition that he had feigned up to that day,” he denounced Lucius for his crime and his arrogance in rule, including his policy of near-enslavement of the people for the purpose of building and cleaning sewers and ditches (I.l.ix.82). The tyrant, still in the camp at Ardea, returned to Rome but found the gates closed; he had been exiled by a vote of the people. For his part, Brutus had made the opposite journey, from Rome to Ardea, where he received the enthusiastic support of the army.
“The rule of the kings at Rome, from the foundation of the city to its liberation, lasted 244 years” (I.lx.83). It was replaced by the rule of two consuls, the hero-liberators Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus—yet another duality, this one ending Tarquinius Superbus’ malign rule of one. Livy ends Book I here. He has provided his readers with a guide to monarchic statesmanship, both its advantages and its defects. His Book I thus serves as an ‘ancient’ equivalent of Machiavelli’s The Prince, in term of its theme. It stands in strong contrast to Machiavelli’s treatment of monarchy in two ways; although it shares some of the Florentine’s inclination to recommend the use of piety for purposes of ruling unruly peoples, it never departs from the classical virtues; what Machiavelli would term virtù enters in strictly as subordinate to those virtues. More, Livy never suggests that Fortuna can be mastered by human beings. Fortuna, and behind it Fate, put limits on human action in ways Machiavelli denies they need to do.
In Livy’s presentation, the monarchic regime presents a problem of ‘one versus two.’ As the story of Romulus and Remus demonstrates, a dual regime may lead to fatal inconveniences. However, no one monarch is usually good enough. A people needs two things, not one for good government; it needs both rule by force and rule by law. Yet no one man is likely to be good at both modes of rule; early Rome itself oscillates between forceful and lawful monarchs—Romulus types and Numa types. The attempt to combine the two in one person can as easily result in a tyrant, who combines the two modes malignly—saying in effect, ‘I am the law’—as it does in a wise and just monarch who uses force in accordance with the law. It was exactly this tyrannical eventuality that ruined the monarchic regime in Rome and led to the installation of ‘republicanism’—initially rule of ‘the few.’
Hence Livy’s opening sentence of Book II. “The libertas of the Roman people, their achievements in peace and war, government by annually elected magistrates, and the rule of laws that overrides the rule of men will be my theme from now on” (II.i.84). Livy carefully counsels his readers that Brutus “would have acted in the worst interests of the state if, in a premature desire for liberty, he had wrested the kingship of any of the earlier kings” (II.i.84). A people consisting of shepherds and refugees would not yet have been prepared for governing themselves. “Released from fear of a king’s power, they would have been buffeted by the storms of tribunician demagogues, creating quarrels with the senators of a city that was not their own, before pledges of a wife and children and love of the very soil—a characteristic that develops over a long period—had created a sense of community” (II.i.84). Factionalism would have destroyed Rome “before it reached maturity.” before it could “bear the good fruits of liberty” (II.i.85).
The Romans replaced the one king with two consuls. Crucially, the limited the term of the consulship to one year, rather than reducing the power wielded by the new ‘kingly’ offices. Also, only one consul at a time could hold the fasces, the symbol of the power to flog or execute wrongdoers. Quite sensibly, the liberator Brutus was chosen to hold the fasces at first, and he “prov[ed] as keen a guardian of liberty as he had been its champion” (II.i.85). Brutus brought the Senate back up to strength, enrolling leaders of the equestrian class to replace those murdered by the tyrant. If anything, the liberated Romans “went too far in protecting their freedom,” forcing one consul, Tarquinius Collatinus, to abdicate simply because he was a member of the hated Tarquin family, all of whom were then exiled, their lands either distributed to the plebs or consecrated to Mars (II.ii.86). The senators intended this to persuade the plebs to “dismiss forever any hope of peace with the Tarquins” (II.v.89).
The first threat to the regime came not from them, however, but from young aristocrats, “sons of families of some importance whose pleasures had been less restricted under the monarchy,” having been the “companions” of the Tarquins and “accustomed to living like princes” (II.iii.87). They preferred “license” under tyranny to liberty under republicanism (II.iii.87). Under tyranny, “there was scope for receiving and doing favors,” as monarchs know “the difference between a friend and an enemy” (II.iii.87). “The law, however, was deaf and inexorable, more helpful and better for the weak than for the powerful; it was inflexible and lacking indulgence, if one exceeded the limit” (II,iii.87). For the young aristocrats, “it was dangerous to rely on innocence alone” (II.iii.87). They plotted to restore the monarchy, and two sons of Brutus himself joined in the conspiracy. But a slave overheard their conversation and reported the matter to the consuls, who “crushed the whole plot without any disturbance” (II.iv.88). The traitors were “stripped, scourged, and beheaded”; although the Romans were grieved by the betrayal of Brutus, Romans generally, and the gods by Brutus’ sons, as was Brutus himself (his “face revealed his natural feelings as a father as the state’s retribution was administered”), the informer was rewarded with money, liberation from slavery, and citizenship in Rome, “to provide in all respects an outstanding deterrent to further crimes” (II.v.89-90).
“When news of what had happened was reported to Tarquin, he was enraged with not only disappointment at the collapse of his great hopes” (II.vi.90). Conspiracy having failed, “he realized that he had to prepare openly for war” (II.vi.90). He found allies in the Etruscan cities of Veii and Tarquinii—his people, who had suffered defeats at the hands of Rome. “Two armies from the two states followed Tarquin to restore the monarchy and make war on the Romans” (II.vi.91). In the battle, Brutus and Arruns Tarquinius, a son of the former tyrant, rushed at one another, each then mortally wounded. The victorious consul, Publius Valerius, returned to Rome in triumph, but his “popularity turned to hatred and suspicion,” “so fickle are the minds of the mob,” frightened that he secretly aimed at kingship (II.vii.92). It took his resignation from the consulship and a conciliatory speech to the people to assuage their fears; these actions, along with new laws granting the people the right to appeal the decisions of magistrates and “pronouncing a curse on the life and property of a man who plotted to seize the throne,” brought him back into public favor, and he was granted the title “Publicola,” “the People’s Friend” (II.viii.93). This was among the earliest steps of bringing an aristocratic ‘republic’ closer to a mixed-regime republic.
Tarquin was dead, but the Tarquins still lived. The fled to the city of Clusium, asking the king, Lars Porsenna, to rally to the standard of monarchy against republicanism. “The end was at hand for monarchy, the finest institution known to gods and man,” they argued (II.ix.95). The panicky Roman senators, still unsure that the people would stand firm in defense of the new regime, freed them from taxes and customs duties while assuring them a ready supply of grain and salt. The people, they saw, might incline to either rule by ‘the few’ or rule by ‘the one,’ and their actions secured popular allegiance to themselves against the monarchists. “This liberality on the part of the senators so maintained the harmony of the state in the harsh times of siege and famine that were to come, that the name of ‘king’ was abhorrent to high and low alike. Nor was there any individual in later years whose demagogic skills made him as popular as the senate was at that time because of its good governance.” (II.ix.95).
In this war, such ardor led to the famed battlefield prodigy of Horatius Cocles, who faced off against the invaders in defense of the bridge across the Tiber River with only two companions at his side. He held out long enough for the bridge to be destroyed, preventing the monarchist army from overrunning Rome. Another hero, Mucius Scaevola, infiltrated the enemy camp in an attempt to assassinate Lars Porsenna; captured and threatened with death by fire, he thrust his own hand into the fire, saying “Look and see how cheaply the body is regarded by those who look to great glory,” and averring that there were hundreds more young Romans just like him (II.xii.99). The intimidated king offered peace, which was accepted. He later persisted in requesting that the Tarquin monarchy be restored, but the Roman envoys explained that “what the king was seeking was contrary to the liberty of the Roman people” and that “they were united in this vow that the end of liberty in the city would be the end of the city” (II.xv.102).
To Livy, then, the maintenance of republicanism requires citizen virtue, virtue based on the superiority of the soul, and particularly the spirited aspect of the soul, thumos, over the body and its appetites. A soft people—and not only the men, as he recounts the stories of courageous women, as well—must unhesitatingly risk and even sacrifice their bodies in defense of political liberty.
Next to plot against Rome were the Sabines. Although the war faction among its rulers prevailed, there was a substantial peace faction, including one Artus Claudius, who fled the country with his “large band of clients” (II.xvi.102); admitted to Rome, they were granted citizenship there, and Claudius became known as Appius Claudius. The Sabine threat soon induced the senate to appoint a new office, the dictator, selected from the ex-consuls to meet military emergency with a unified command. This quasi-monarchic office struck fear into the plebs and the Sabines alike. Temporarily stripped of the right to appeal from one consul to the other, the plebs saw no other recourse for themselves but the path of “scrupulous obedience” (II.xviii.105). The Sabines took the precaution of forming an alliance with the Latins, who broke their peace treaty with Rome. The indignant and well-disciplined Romans won the war, and the practice of appointing a dictator as the leader in major wars was affirmed.
The great republican, Publius Valerius died, and his son also died in battle against Latin forces allied with the Tarquins. Tarquinius Superbus himself died in exile in 495 BC. “The senators were cheered by this news, as were the plebs. But the senators indulged too much in their joy. The nobles began to mistreat the plebs, whose interests up to that time they had most diligently served.” (II.xxi.108). Removal of the regime threat and perhaps the increased commerce made possible in peace (the senate dedicated a temple to Mercury, god of commerce, at this time) as it were elevated care for the body. The citizens of ancient Carthage, a commercial republic, were accustomed to prosperity; the citizens of the military republic, and especially its ruling class, may have been corrupted by it, and were in any event made arrogant when fear of losing their regime to rival monarchists abated. A peace treaty with the Latins reinforced this. Roman duality recurred, this time in the form of class struggle.
From then on, the Roman republic saw “hatred between the senators and plebeians, especially on the question of those who were ‘bound over’ to their creditors for debt (II.xxiii110)—that is, forced into servitude to their creditor until the debt was paid. “The freedom of plebeians,” the plebeians complained, “was safer in war than in peace, amid enemies rather than amid fellow citizens” (II.xxiii.110). Indeed, the threat of war was often the only thing that cut short the periodic plebeian rebellions. And even then, on many occasions, the plebs would simply refuse to enlist when the consuls attempted to raise an army, holding out for concessions even in the face of serious foreign threats.
Unfortunately for the plebs, what has been conceded can be taken away, once the threat has been removed. It was the former Etruscan Appius Claudius who sided with senate oligarchs, opposing his milder consul counterpart, Publius Servilius, who, in “steering a middle course… neither avoided the hatred of the plebs nor won the goodwill of the senators” (II.xxvii.115). “The latter considered that he was soft and courting popularity, whereas the plebs deemed him equally hateful” (II.xxvii.115). “At last, these consuls who were hated so hated by the plebs went out of office. Servilius had the goodwill of neither side, but Appius was amazingly popular with the senators.” (II.xxvii.116). Out of office, Appius Claudius, “harsh by nature and brutal because of his hatred of the plebs on the one hand and the senators’ adulation on the other, said that such a great uproar had arisen, not because of the plebs’ miserable lives, but because of license: the plebs were more out of control than enraged” (II.xxix.118). He diagnosed the problem as insolence stemming from their right to appeal the decision of one consul before his counterpart, and urged the appointment of a dictator to put a stop to that. He nearly got himself appointed to the office—”a move that would have alienated the plebs at a most dangerous time, since the Volsci, Aequi, and Sabines all happened to take up arms at once” against Rome (II.xxx.119). The senate prudently chose Manlius Valerius, whose brother had proposed the law that gave them the right to appeal; “they had no fear of harsh or arrogant action from that family,” and they went along with the military call-up (II.xxx.119). The resulting army went on to defeat the enemies.
Victory merely returned the senators to their arrogance. They rejected Valerius’ call for a fair policy respecting credit and debt. “You don’t like it when I urge harmony,” he told them; “you will soon wish, I guarantee, that the Roman plebs had patrons like me”—a moderate, not some demagogue to inflame them against the patricians (II.xxxi.121). Sure enough, the plebs withdrew from the city, fortifying a camp, which caused “great panic” among the oligarchs (II.xxxii.122).
The senators sent Menenius Agrippa as an emissary to the plebs. “An eloquent man who was dear to the people because he was one of their own by birth,” he brought them back into the city by telling them a parable “in an old-fashioned, rough style of speech” (II.xxxii.122). This was the famous parable of the belly, which recalls a mythical time when the parts of the human body were poorly coordinated, with each having “its own way of thinking and its own voice” (II.xxxii.122). All were angry at the belly, which alone among them appeared to consume without producing. They decided “starve the belly into submission,” but soon learned that the belly had a function after all, which was to supply “all parts of the body the source of our life and strength—our blood, which it apportions to the veins after it is enriched with the food it has digested” (II.xxxii.123). This showed the plebs “the similarity between the internal revolt of the body and the anger of the plebs toward the senators, and so won over men’s minds” (II.xxxii.123).
The plebs nonetheless exacted a major concession from the senators. The plebeians were given magistrates “who would be sacrosanct”; the “tribunes” would “have the right to give help to the plebeians in actions against the consuls” (II.xxxiii.123). The tribunate would endure as an important institution in the republic from then on.
The next threat to plebeian rights came from a young soldier, Gnaeus Marcius, later given the cognomen Coriolanus. His rise, based on his military prowess, began at the same time as the death of Menenius Agrippa, the lifelong “promoter and mediator of civic harmony” between patricians and plebeians. Due to the plebs’ temporary secession, Rome suffered a grain shortage. Coriolanus was “foremost” among those who “thought that the time had come to repress the plebeians and recover the rights that had id been forcibly wrested from the senators as a result of the secession,” describing this as a “humiliation” comparable to that experienced by defeated soldiers forced to pass under the yoke by their triumphant enemies (II.xxxiv.125). The senate, he contended, should “annul the tribunician power” by withholding grain just as the plebs had withheld themselves (II.xxxiv.126). This infuriated the plebs, who intimidated the senators, who then exiled Coriolanus.
He settled at Volsci, where his host, Attius Tullius, shared his animosity toward the Roman people. Since the Volscians generally had lost interest in fighting Rome, “they would have to employ devious means in order to provoke the Volscians’ hearts with some fresh anger” (II.xxv.127). At the next session of the Great Games in Rome, Attius warned the Romans of a likely disturbance by Volscian youths; they were expelled, giving him the opportunity to complain, upon their return to Volsci, that the city had been humiliated, its youths treated as if unclean. “War has been declared on you—but those who made the declaration will greatly regret it, if you prove your valor” (II.xxxviii.130). Coriolanus led the march on Rome.
This led to the dramatic story Shakespeare presented, as the women of Rome, including Coriolanus’ wife and mother, came out of the city to beg for mercy. At first “intransigent,” Coriolanus was intent on attack, but “the weeping of the entire crowd of women and their lament for themselves and their country finally broke the man” (II.xxxix.132). “The men of Rome did not envy the praise won by the women—people at that time did not disparage another’s glory” (II.xxxix.132); Livy marks the magnanimity of early republican Rome, glancing at small-souled contemporaries in passing. Coriolanus lived to an old age. The Volsci and their Aequian allies retreated, then fell to fighting one another after dumping Attius Tullius as their leader. “The good fortune of the Roman people destroyed two armies in a struggle that was as ruinous as it was stubborn” for their enemies (II.xxxix.132).
Domestic faction re-ignited when the consul Spurius Cassius proposed to divide land gained by treaty from the Hernici between the Latins and the plebeians. The senators were “concerned for the state, thinking by his largesse the consul was building up an influence that endangered freedom”; he might be favoring the people in order to install himself as a king (II.xli.133). “This was the first time that a land bill was proposed, a measure that, from that day to within present memory, has never been brought up without causing great upheavals” (II.xli.133). The other consul, Proculus Verginius, sided with the senators and vetoed the bill. When Cassius then order that money received from the sale of Sicilian grain be allocated to the plebs, they “rejected this as an obvious bribe to get the kingship” (II.xli.134), despite the continued economic depression. Cassius was prosecuted for treason and convicted; his house was demolished.
During a war with the Aequi and the Veientines, the plebeians, led by the tribune Spurius Licinius, withheld military service, this time “to force a land bill upon the patricians” (II.xliii.136). This caused the consul Quintus Fabius to suffer “considerably more trouble with his fellow citizens than with the enemy” (II.xliii.136). His foot soldiers did report for duty and defeated the enemy but then refused to pursue the fleeing Aequians. “The commander found no remedy for this ruinous and unprecedented behavior”; Livy observes that “men of talent are more often deficient in the skill of governing their fellow citizens than in that of defeating the enemy” (II.xliii.136).
The accounts of Coriolanus, Cassius, and Fabius illustrate a weakness of a military republican regime. Powerful in war, its way of life does not foster the kind of souls which readily master the arts of peace—souls inclined to civility, souls that do not carry the passions of war into civil life. In battle-ready Rome, factions inclined to militancy not compromise.
And so, in 480 BC, when another tribune, Tiberius Pontificus, sponsored another land bill, the plebs again obstructed a troop levy and the senators again “were thrown into confusion” (II.xliv.137). And again, Appius Claudius was unbending, confident that the senator “would never lack a tribune “who would be willing not only to seek for himself a victory over a colleague but also to ingratiate himself with the better element for the good of the state” by opposing any such proposal by an ambitious tribune who attempted to curry popular favor (II.xliv.137). The same policy of divide-and-conquer that works in foreign policy and war could be applied to domestic policy and faction.
Rome’s enemies saw the city’s factionalism and attempted to exploit it. Rearming, the Etruscans were “spurred on… by their hope that Rome would be destroyed by her internal strife” (II.xliv.137). “This was the only poison; this was the decay that had been found to work on wealthy states, making great empires subject to mortality,” namely, that “two states had been created from one, each with its own magistrates and its own laws,” making “military discipline” shaky (II.xliv.138). “Under such pressure, Rome could be defeated through her own soldiers. Indeed, all [the Etruscans] had to do was to make a declaration and a show of war. The fates and the gods would automatically do the rest.” (II.xliv.138). Or so the Etruscans hoped, clearly not without reason. The Roman consuls themselves “dreaded nothing except their own forces and military might,” given “this new kind of mutiny when armed men were silent and inactive,” not loud and openly rebellious (II.xv.138).
On the battlefield, the Etruscans insulted the Roman soldiers, dividing plebeian hatred between the Etruscan and Roman aristocrats. That is, the attempt to divide and conquer the Romans only succeeded in dividing their outrage, refocusing part of it on the leaders of the enemy troops. Meanwhile, “the consuls put their heads together, as if they were deliberating, and conferred for a long time” (II.xlv.138), effectively employing what we would now call ‘reverse psychology’: “The more [the soldiers] believed the consuls did not want battle, the more their ardor increased” (II.xlv.138). For their part, the Etruscan officers, assuming that the Roman consuls feared engagement, redoubled their insults, thereby redoubling the fury in the ranks of the Romans, who finally “rushed to the consults,” clamoring for battle (II.xlv.138). The consuls still demurred, but finally Fabius demanded that “they swear” not merely to the consuls but to the gods “that they will return victorious from this battle” (II.xlv.138). So they swore, and so they returned, and when the soldiers returned to Rome he put the wounded soldiers under the care of his family, bringing his family to enjoy popularity for the first time, “a favor won by a skill that promoted the health of the state” (II.xlvii.142). The following year, the Fabii volunteered not only to lead the army against the Veientines but to pay for the expedition themselves. “People praised the Fabii to the skies. One family had shouldered the burden of the state.” (II.xlix.143). But success made the Fabii restless; all but one was killed in battle, the survivor “hardly more than a boy” (II.l.146). A year later, however, the arrogance lodged in the other set of heads, and the Veientines fell victim to a disastrous ambush.
Once again, in the characteristic pattern, peace abroad brought strife at home, as “abundance and idleness again made the Romans irresponsible,” with tribunes “stir[ring] up the plebs with the usual poison, a land bill” (II.lii.148). Between 476 BC and 468, this kind of oscillation continued, with the plebeians winning the right to elect the tribunes through the Tribal Assembly, a move that “deprived the patricians of all their power of using their clients’ votes to elect the tribunes they wanted” (II.lvi.152). “While consuls and tribunes were each pulling in their own direction, there was no strength left in the middle. The state was torn and mangled. The question was in whose hands the state belonged, rather than how it might be safe.” (II.lvii.154). (At one point the Volsci won a rare victory over Rome in battle.) Rome now had a mixed-regime republic of sorts, but without the feature Aristotle regards as indispensable to that regime: a strong middle class to act as a balance-wheel between the many poor and the few rich.
Note
- See Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges: The Ancient City. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
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