Veni, Vidi, Vici E-Book

Peter Jones

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The Romans left a long-lasting legacy and their influence can still be seen all around us - from our calendar and coins, to our language and laws - but how much do we really know about them? Help is at hand in the form of Veni, Vidi, Vici, which tells the remarkable, and often surprising, story of the Romans and the most enduring empire in history. Fusing a lively and entertaining narrative with rigorous research, Veni, Vidi, Vici breaks down each major period into a series of concise nuggets that provide a fascinating commentary on every aspect of the Roman world - from plebs to personalities, sauces to sexuality, games to gladiators, poets to punishments, mosaics to medicine and Catullus to Christianity. Through the twists and turns of his 1250-year itinerary, Peter Jones is a friendly and clear-thinking guide. In this book he has produced a beguiling and entertaining introduction to the Romans, one that vividly brings to life the people who helped create the world we live in today.

Leseprobe

VENI

VIDI VICI

Also by Peter Jones

Vote for Caesar

Classics in Translation

Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Peter Jones, 2013

The moral right of Peter Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84887-903-4 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78239-020-6

Designed by Carrdesignstudio.com Printed in Great Britain.

Atlantic Books An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZwww.atlantic-books.co.uk

CONTENTS

Maps

Introduction

I

Lost in the Myths of Time

From Aeneas to Romulus, Remus and RomeII753–509 BC

Not a Roman in Sight, but Rome in Our Sights

The Early KingsIII509–264 BC

What It Meant to be Roman (I)

From Rape to ConquestIV509–287 BC

What It Meant to be Roman (II)

The Rise of the RepublicV810–146 BC

Their Finest Hour

Carthaginians, Hannibal and EmpireVI146–78 BC

The Problem with No Solution

From the Gracchi to SullaVII81–44 BC

The End of a World

Pompey and CaesarVIII44 BC – AD 14

Rising from the Ashes

The First Emperor–AugustusIXAD 14–96

Bedding Down Together

Emperor and PeopleXAD 96–192

Bread and Circuses

Empire without End? 279XIAD 193–476

Germans, Huns and the Fall of the Roman West

XIIAD 1–430

The Growing Revolution

Church and StateBibliography

Index

MAPS

INTRODUCTION

This book is the 1,200-year story of Rome from its earliest foundation in 753 BC to the end of its empire in the West in AD 476. It is a story everyone should know because, like that of Ancient Greece, it has shaped our world and penetrated our imagination: from its language, literature, politics, architecture, philosophy, empire and legal system to the individuals that created its story; from Romulus and Remus to Scipio and Hannibal; from Lucretia to Lesbia and Boudicca; from Pompey and Julius Caesar to Cicero and Augustus; from Pontius Pilate to Constantine; from Nero and Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius and St Augustine; from Catullus to Virgil and Tacitus to St Jerome; from the unknown inhabitant of Pompeii who scratched on a wall: ‘I came here, had a shag, then went home’ – the last of the great romantics – to the equally unknown person who invented the book or produced concrete that would set under water.

Each chapter begins with a broad summary of the period it covers. The rest of the chapter is taken up with a sequence of 100–500-word ‘nuggets’. These reflect the same chronological sequence as the summary, and expand on the topics that the summary raises (this leads occasionally to small repetitions) or explore new, related ones. The nuggets aim to be self-contained, as far as possible; but occasionally there will be a sequence of nuggets on one topic (e.g., gladiators) where a degree of continuity will be observed. The overall purpose is to present sharp, focussed and stimulating information within the developing story of a crucial period of European history.

This is, unashamedly, a book for the general reader. It is designed for someone who wants to see something of the big picture, but also to be alerted to some of the detail that underpins it. Intense argument lies behind many of the assertions made here. Those who wish to find out more about these may care to consult the reading list at the back. A few passages have been adapted from my Vote for Caesar (Orion, 2008) and Classics in Translation (Bloomsbury, 1998).

The sources I have quoted are adapted from translations that are out of copyright, many of them from the first editions of the Loeb Classical Library. The poems have been adapted where necessary. I am most grateful to His Honour Colin Kolbert for permission to quote from his superb Justinian: The Digest of Roman Law (Allen Lane, 1979). I am also very grateful to Dr Federico Santangelo at Newcastle University for help with some difficult questions of chronology; and, as ever, to Andrew Morley for the maps.

Peter Jones Newcastle upon Tyne, November 2012www.friends-classics.demon.co.uk

NOTE ON FINANCIAL VALUES

It is impossible to fix the relative value of Roman money to today's prices. Here are some prices expressed in sesterces (ss), around AD 1: a 1lb (1.5 kg) loaf of bread, a plate, a lamp and a measure of wine cost less than 0.25 s; an unskilled labourer could earn three ss a day; it cost 500 ss a year to feed a peasant family; a soldier's pay was 900 ss a year; an unskilled slave cost 2,000 ss; you needed property worth 400,000 ss to qualify as among Rome's richest, and one million ss to become a senator; Pliny the Younger over a lifetime gave away 5 million ss in benefactions.

PAGANISM

When I talk of ‘pagans’ I do not mean Wicker men and such like. I mean those who engaged in the civic cults and rituals of the pre-Christian Roman world (see p. 359). Paganism in this sense, organized by state-sanctioned colleges of priests, died out in the fifth century AD. That said, Roman literary and political culture in the broadest sense – the sense of the tradition behind the ‘grandeur that was Rome’ – continued to shape Christian thought for centuries to come.

I

TIMELINE

1150 BC

Mythical Trojan War between Greeks and Trojans

1000 BC

Rome a small collection of hilltop huts in Latium

753 BC

Traditional Roman date for King Romulus’ founding of Rome

First record of early form of Latin

700 BC

Homer's account of Trojan War (Iliad and Odyssey)

400 BC

Greeks reckon Trojan Aeneas founded Rome after Trojan War

LOST IN THE MYTHS OF TIME

From Aeneas to Romulus, Remus and Rome

Romans came up with two stories about how they were founded. One (bewilderingly, we might think) was pure Greek. It was drawn from perhaps the most famous episode in what Greeks thought of as their very early, heroic history: the Trojan War, the story of the Greek siege of Troy (in western Turkey) to win back Helen. Ancients thought of it as occurring about 1200 BC.

This formed the subject of the West's first literature: the epic Iliad, composed by the Greek poet Homer c. 700 BC at a time when many Greeks were emigrating to Sicily and southern Italy. In Homer's story a minor Trojan hero, Aeneas, was fated to survive the war and later establish a dynasty that would rule over a resurrected Troy. But, Homer went on, Troy was burned to the ground by the Greeks and abandoned, and the surviving Trojans fled the country. So where did they and Aeneas go? How could Aeneas ‘resurrect’ Troy? From as early as the sixth century BC Greeks began to wonder about this too; and some said that Aeneas passed through Italy with other Greek and Trojan heroes of that war. In the late fifth century BC the Greek historian Hellanicus named Aeneas as the founder of Rome – whether prompted by Romans, we do not know.

Romans certainly wanted to make Aeneas’ story their own. Why? Because for Romans the Greeks were a ‘living legend’, and they wanted to be associated with them. So Romans told how, after the fall of Troy and many adventures across the Mediterranean, Aeneas and his followers reached Italian shores and, with the blessing of Jupiter (king of the gods) founded the Roman race (753 BC). Now they could boast that their place in history was on a par with that of the famous Greeks. The history of Britain was reconstructed in the same terms by the twelfth-century AD historian Geoffrey of Monmouth. He claimed its first king was a descendant of Aeneas: Brutus – Britain – Brutain! Everyone wanted to be linked with the Greeks and Romans.

So Aeneas was one legend told by Romans about their foundation. The other story is very different. Numitor, king of the very ancient Italian town of Alba, was deposed by his brother Amulius. But Numitor had a daughter, Rhea Silvia, and Amulius did not want her breeding vengeful successors. So he made her a Vestal Virgin (p. 22). But the war god Mars found her alone one day and did what ancient gods traditionally did: he raped her and Rhea bore twins. Amulius promptly had the twins thrown into the river Tiber, but the basket containing them was stranded ashore (one is reminded of the later story of Moses). There they were suckled by a wolf until they were found by a herdsman. He took them home to Alba, where he and his wife raised them. When the twins, named Romulus and Remus, grew up, they discovered the truth about their birth. So they gathered an army, threw out Amulius and restored Numitor to the Alban throne.

They then founded a new city near Alba and started to build its walls. Remus, mocking the size of Romulus’ walls, was killed by his furious brother. The new city was thus named Roma. Its traditional founding date was 753 BC , and Romulus became the first of the seven kings of Rome.

This Romulus legend was pretty brutal stuff – hardly noble, bold and true. But Romans loved it – they were children of Mars! War was in their blood. Meanwhile, the advantage of the Aeneas legend was that it highlighted another aspect of being Roman: for Aeneas came to be depicted as a man of pietas, not exactly ‘piety’ but rather ‘respect for and commitment to family, city and gods’. That's more like it! How could the world not benefit from being dominated (as it would be) by a people whose other founder was such a civilized man? But there was a problem. How could one square the story of Aeneas with that of Romulus? The Romans did so by making Aeneas the founder of the Roman people and 300 years later his descendant Romulus the founder of the city.

Our main literary source for this early period is the Roman historian Livy (59 BC–AD 17). He was writing his history a thousand years after the beginning of the story he wanted to tell. So where did he get his information from? And how reliable was it? No Romans were writing history at the time of Romulus, let alone of Aeneas.

Even the intensely patriotic Livy doubts the strict accuracy of his account of this early period. But what he does affirm is that, in the case of Rome, it simply has to be accepted: ‘it is poetic legend rather than solid historical evidence . . . but if any city ought to be allowed to refer its origins to the gods, that surely is Rome. For such is its military glory that when they say that Mars himself was their Father, and the Father of their founder, the tribes of this world may as well accept it as patiently as they do Rome's domination over them.’

That's tough talk. There could be no compromise in Romans’ unwavering conviction that their dominion over the world was justified because the gods had decreed it.

Livy relied almost entirely on earlier Greek and Roman historians. The third-century BC Greek historian Timaeus wrote extensively about the Romans. The first Roman historian of Rome was Fabius Pictor (c. 200 BC). The Roman Varro (116–27 BC) wrote huge encyclopedias filled with information gathered from all over the place. We have little idea where they got their information from either. Oral tradition must have played an important part; but Romans also kept documentary records, some going back a long way – lists of consuls, treaties, citizenship grants, legislation etc.; annual records of events such as famines, wars, triumphs, etc.; and lists of official post-holders.

So Livy selected what he wanted out of these historians and then ‘spun’ their stories to suit his vision of Rome's history. Since he is one of the greatest ever storytellers, the results are sensational. There is no doubt that it all makes for a wonderful read – but how accurate it is, is quite another question.

Can we check any of Livy's material? The encyclopedist Pliny the Elder (killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, p. 267), the historical essayist Plutarch (AD 46–120) and historians of Rome, such as Dionysius from Halicarnassus (writing c. 10 BC) and Cassius Dio (c. AD 165–230), all offer their ‘spin’ on these stories. But why trust them any more than Livy? True, we also have archaeology, with digs going back to 1000 BC and beyond. In a perfect world, such excavations could conceivably tell us whether the accounts of historians were accurate. But all archaeology unearths is material remains. It does not give us the stories (unless we dig up texts). The best it can do is provide a series of snapshots of material trends and developments. These can, for example, tell us whether people were becoming richer or poorer, or urbanized, or whether they came into contact with other cultures. The Romans knew nothing of this discipline.

So, a warning here: any account of Rome up to c. 300 BC needs to be taken cum grano salis (with a grain of salt).

WHEN ROME WAS JUST ANOTHER TOWN

We are accustomed to associate Rome with world domination – the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church and so on. So it is easy to forget that c. 1000 BC Rome was just a smattering of settlements made up of a few thatched huts, scattered round the tops of hills, including the Palatine Hill. These would, in time, make up the famous Seven Hills of Rome. Rome's hilltop defensibility was its strength, as well as its position in the middle of a very fertile plain of volcanic soil and its location on the Tiber. This river gave it easy access not only to the sea, but also to the Tiber Valley inland and across the Tiber to the north, because the river could be forded at this point.

Rome was, in other words, a frontier town. No one at that time could conceivably have imagined that this hill people would one day dominate and unify the whole Italian peninsula – let alone the known world. It is as if the world were now being ruled by the local council of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, or Buffalo, USA.

THE SEVEN ‘HILLS’ OF ROME

Rome was built on volcanic soil and its Seven Hills were steep and craggy. Most of them were not really hills but rather ridges cut out by streams flowing from high ground into the Tiber Valley. Traditionally, the Seven Hills were the Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian and Aventine. But there were so many of them that even Romans had difficulty deciding which to include. There were also smaller hills and ridges leading off from these, such as the Oppian, Fagutal, Cispian and Velian. Janiculum Hill was across the river, and the hill beyond that was the Vaticanus. Livy says these hills were settled by local people who were later conquered by the Romans and subsequently welcomed as Roman citizens. This whole complex was eventually walled in c. 386 BC.

THE NAME OF ITALY

Italy was at this time a hotchpotch of different, strongly independent tribes, all with their own identities, language and levels of culture. About 40 mostly Indo-European languages have been identified there. Rome was in Latium; it was flanked by Etruscans (from Etruria) to the north, and Sabines and Samnites (from Samnium) to the east. So how did the whole peninsula come to be called Italy? Italia originally referred only to the Greek-colonized bottom quarter of Italy. So Romans reckoned the name was invented by the Greeks. There was in fact an early dialect word vitelia (‘young bull’, Latin vitulus); Romans thought Greeks turned that into Italia, probably to reflect the south's rich fertility. Slowly the name caught on. By the third century BCItalia covered all modern Italy except for the far north; under the Roman emperor Augustus (first century BC) it finally included all territory up to the Alps.

WHY ‘LATIN?

‘Latin’ comes from Latini, ‘Latins’. This was the name of the people who occupied the area known as Latium, in which Rome was situated. But why is it called Latium? Romans had a story that the ancient Roman god Saturnus was driven from power by his young son Jupiter. He fled to Latium and hid there – and the Latin for ‘hid’ is latebat. So Romans thought Latium was connected with hiding. This derivation is complete drivel – like nearly all the derivations the Romans dreamed up – but is also historical in the sense that they believed it.

THE SPREAD OF LATIN

The earliest Latin inscription is on a pot and dates from the eighth century BC. It says: Manios med vhevhaked Numasioi; or in classical Latin: Manius me fecit Numerio – ‘Manius made me for Numerius’. The number of early surviving Latin inscriptions suggests that Romans had become literate by about the seventh century BC (pp. 25, 79); and as Rome spread its power the Latin language went with them, slowly driving out local languages. As a result, Latin would become the lingua franca of all Italy by about the first century BC , and eventually the Western half of the known world, as the Romans slowly conquered it. French, Spanish and Italian are all dialects of Latin. The Romans also conquered Greece, but it was never going to shift that ancient and revered tongue.

LATIN PRONUNCIATION

We have good evidence for the individual sounds of Latin letters. For example, Greek historians transcribed Latin names into Greek. Assuming we know how Greek was pronounced, we can expect their transcriptions to tell us something about Latin. Thus Cicero was transcribed as Kikerôn, not Siserôn (the -ôn being a Greek ending), i.e., the Latin ‘c’ was pronounced hard. Greeks also transcribed Valerius as Oualêrios, again suggesting that ‘v’ was pronounced as a semi-vowel, more ‘w’ than ‘v’. So Julius Caesar's veni, vidi, vici would have come out ‘ouaynee, oueedee, oueekee’. But when it comes to treatment in English, we follow our own conventions of pronunciation and spelling.

21 APRIL 753 BC

It was important for Romans to determine as exactly as they could everything about Rome's foundation, especially its date. The first person known to have proposed a date is the Greek historian Timaeus (p. 6). He used Greek dating methods to put it at 814 BC. This seems to have got contemporary Romans thinking about an actual date, and 748, 728 and 751 were all proposed. The traditional date is one that the Roman antiquarian Varro espoused: 21 April 753 BC. How he arrived at it we do not know. Nor does it bear any relation to what the archaeology reveals about Rome's development. This makes it clear that the Palatine was inhabited from 1000 BC.

LUPINE SOLUTIONS

According to tradition, Romulus and Remus, adrift on the Tiber, were cast ashore at the point where the Romans subsequently celebrated a festival called the Lupercal. Lupa is the Latin for ‘she-wolf’. So perhaps lupa was inserted into the story of the twins’ rearing in order to explain the festival's name. But some Romans were sceptical of the idea that the twins were the children of the god of war and Rhea Silvia. So they toyed with the idea that they were rather the offspring of a prostitute – because that is what lupa also means in Latin. We are right to be doubtful about any of the historical accuracy of this. The Romans were making it up as they went along.

ROMULUS AND REMUS

We have no idea what the real derivation of the word Roma is. Ancient Greeks called Roma ‘Rhômê’, which in Greek meant ‘strength’ or ‘might’; so one can see why Romans jumped at that derivation. Romulus means ‘little Roman’; and because ‘e's and ‘o's are often linguistically associated (e.g., ‘foot’ and ‘feet’), Remus may just be another form of the Rom- stem as well. They are both obviously invented names for mythical characters, designed to make a strong connection with Roma.

OPEN DOORS IN ROME

Romulus, Romans were told, found the site of Rome completely deserted. He therefore turned the Capitoline Hill into an asylum and invited immigrants or asylum seekers to come in: runaway slaves, exiles, paupers, debtors, all were welcome. Now it may be that something like this did in fact happen at some time in Rome's early history. Near the Capitol, votive offerings (thanks to the gods for prayers fulfilled) have been found dated to a time before that area was ever settled. Was it, then, an asylum area? If so, it might have become part of the Romulus myth, because it would ‘explain’ the origins of one of Rome's most unique features: its ‘open-door’ policy to non-Romans. Indeed, later Rome so swarmed with ‘foreigners’ that the most common language heard there would not have been Latin but Greek, the universal Mediterranean language. Rome, indeed, would in time become the world's first global city, where as many foreigners lived as Romans. So while the story of Romulus and Remus is clearly invented, it may still refer to incidents that Romans at the time, or later, felt were significant.

FROM SLAVE TO CITIZEN

Romulus’ invitation to expand Rome's population ‘explained’ another uniquely Roman phenomenon: its liberal attitude towards citizenship. From early times, Romans regularly extended citizenship to peoples they had subdued. Further, slaves, once freed, automatically became citizens (p. 34); and in the centuries to come, aristocrats from slave stock, and freed slaves (freedmen) who made good, would be commonplace in Rome (p. 149). Extraordinarily, more than half the ancient funerary monuments ever found in Rome commemorate ex-slaves, rather than freeborn Romans: they were proud of what they had achieved and of what this meant for their families (who always feature large on these monuments). This willingness to make people citizens stands in strong contrast to the Greeks, who jealously guarded that privilege, and in time it resulted in the concept of the ‘citizen of the world’.

ROMULUS AND THE ‘RAPE’ OF THE SABINES

Male immigrants were all very well, but they needed women to breed Romans and there was a desperate shortage. Romulus’ appeals to local villages met with a cold response: who would want to marry that riff-raff? So he decided to tempt in some of the local Sabine people (inhabiting the Quirinal Hill, p. 8) by putting on a religious festival featuring horse races. They flocked to the show and at the same time were drawn to admire the fine new town that was growing in their midst. At a given signal, however, the Romans seized the young Sabine women – note that the word used, raptus, means ‘seizure’ or ‘abduction’, not ‘rape’ – and promised to make honourable women of them. The Romans managed to hold off revenge attacks; and in the final battle against the Sabines, the women themselves intervened successfully to plead with their former families to desist, saying that they had been well treated and were happy in their new homes. The result was a peace agreement, and the Sabines were made welcome as Romans. That, at any rate, is Livy's wonderful version, which caught the imagination of later artists such as Poussin and David.

FIGHTING IN SEASON

Romans always did a lot of fighting. In the early years this probably consisted of brief raids or revenge attacks carried out by clans under their leaders. After a campaign of a day or so, they returned to work their farms. They were, in other words, an irregular farmer-citizen army. Further, since one cannot live by fighting, only by eating, they fought between March and October, i.e., when food was more likely to be easily available. The result was that most fit Roman males had military experience – a tradition that did not change for hundreds of years.

TARPEIA THE TRAITOR

The Romans punished traitors by flinging them from the Tarpeian rock, a cliff on the Capitoline Hill (p. 8). This was named after Tarpeia. She was a Vestal Virgin and the daughter of the Roman commander. During the Sabine siege of Rome she was bribed by the Sabines ‘with what they had on their left arm’ (their gold armbands) to give them access to the citadel. But they also had shields on their left arms, and once they were in, they crushed her to death with them. She was buried near the Tarpeian rock, which was named after her. That's the story, anyway.

PATRES, PLEBS AND SENATE

Romulus, Livy tells us, created 100 patres (‘fathers’ or ‘patricians’), a circle of advisers consisting of wealthy members from the clans (gentes). Each king of Rome subsequently chose the patres he wished to advise him. Eventually, this body would transmute into a full-blown Senate (Latin, senex, ‘old man’, but see p. 179), Rome's venerable advisory body. Members of gentes that had not produced patres were called ‘plebeians’, from plebs, ‘people’. At this time, however, ‘plebeian’ carried no class connotations; the term simply distinguished the clans that had not won royal favours from the rest. In time even that distinction would disappear (Pompey, Crassus and Cicero were all, technically, plebs). Here, then, is an important Roman institution, the Senate, which the Romans assumed Romulus had invented. Useful things, myths.

DEATH OF ROMULUS

While one story had it that Romulus parted from this life by being taken up in a cloud to heaven, the other had it that he was assassinated, torn to pieces by patres. The tabloids or their equivalents were at work even then. But minds were put at rest, Livy tells us: one Julius Proculus, a man known for his wisdom, announced that Romulus had appeared to him and told him it was heaven's will that Rome should rule the world. From the very start, the gods had marked out Rome for world domination.

II

753– 509 BC

TIMELINE

753–509 BC

Part-legendary rule of (six) kings of Rome

Rome developing into a large town

Power spreads over local Latins

Hills of Rome populated

Salt works developed

Bridge built over the Tiber into Etruscan territory

Forum area drained (start of the Cloaca Maxima)

Story of the Sibylline books

509 BC

Building of temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus