Download The Founding of Rome GEOGRAPHY: Italy is a peninsula jutting out

The Founding of Rome
GEOGRAPHY:
Italy is a peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean west of Greece. Unlike Greece, Italy is
poor in mineral resources and surprisingly devoid of useful harbors. However, the most stunning
difference between Greece and Italy is the larger amount of fertile land. While Greece is poor in
fertile land, Italy is wealthy in both land and precipitation. So the two peoples developed very
differently; the Italians began and remained largely an agrarian people. Even in its latest stages,
Roman culture would identify its values and ideals as agrarian.
Italy had one other significant difference from Greece: it was easily accessible from Europe to
the north. The Greeks lived behind a formidable mountain range; the Alps to the north of Italy
were not quite as invulnerable. The Greeks also had a warlike Greek population to the north, the
Macedonians, to serve as a buffer between themselves and other Europeans. The Romans had no
such buffer civilization. As a result, conflict was a fairly constant affair on the Italian peninsula
and the Romans, along with other peoples on the Italian peninsula, developed a military society
fairly early in their history.
According to Roman legend, the city was founded in 753 BCE by Romulus and Remus, twin
sons of the god Mars and a Latin princess. The twins were abandoned on the Tiber River as
infants and raised by a she-wolf. They decided to build a city near the spot. In reality, Rome
developed because of its strategic location and its fertile soil. Rome was built on seven
rolling hills at a curve on the Tiber River, near the center of the Italian peninsula. It was midway
between the Alps and Italy’s southern tip. Rome also was near the midpoint of the
Mediterranean Sea. The historian Livy, in his work, The Early History of Rome, wrote about the
city’s site:
Not without reason did gods and men choose this spot for the cite of our city—the
healthy hills, the river to bring us produce from the inland regions and sea-borne
commerce from abroad, the sea itself, near enough for convenience yet not so near
as to bring danger from foreign fleets, our situation in the very heart of Italy—all these
advantages make it of all places in the world the best for a city destined to grow great.
We know almost nothing about the earliest peoples in Italy, who were Cro-Magnons, but by the
Neolithic stage, they seemed to have been displaced by waves of migrations from Africa, Spain,
and France. These peoples were themselves displaced by a new set of migrations in the Bronze
Age, which began in Italy around 1500 BC, which violently displaced many of the populations
already there. These new peoples came from across the Alps and across the Adriatic Sea to the
east of the Italian peninsula. They were a nomadic people who were primarily herdsmen; they
were also technologically superior. They worked bronze, used horses, and had wheeled carts.
They were a war-like people and began to settle the mountainous areas of the Italian peninsula.
We call these people Italic, and they include several ethnic groups: the Sabines, the Umbrians,
and the Latins, with an assortment of others.
The Latins were farmers and shepherds who wandered into Italy across the Alps around 1000
BCE. They settled on either side of the Tiber River in a region they called Latium. They built the
original settlement at Rome, a cluster of wooden huts atop one of its seven hills, the Palatine
Hill. These settlers were the first Romans.
Between 750 and 600 BCE, Greek settlers established about 50 colonies on the coasts of
southern Italy and Sicily. The cities became prosperous and commercially active. They brought
all of Italy, including Rome, into closer contact with Greek civilization. The Greeks also taught
the Romans how to grow grapes and olives.
The Etruscans were native to northern Italy. They were skilled metalworkers and engineers.
The Etruscans strongly influenced the development of Roman civilization. They had a system of
writing, and the Romans adopted their alphabet. They also influenced Rome’s architecture,
especially the use of the arch.
Romans borrowed religious ideas from both the Greeks and the Etruscans. The Romans
adopted Etruscan rituals that they believed helped them to win the favor of the gods. Roman
gods even took on the personalities and legends of the Greek gods. Romans, however, gave
their gods different names. Thus Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, became Jupiter in Rome,
and Hera, the queen of the gods, became Juno.
THE EARLY REPUBLIC:
Around 600 BCE, an Etruscan became king. However, Rome was not controlled by the
Etruscan cities. Under its Etruscan kings, Rome grew from a collection of hilltop villages to a
city that covered nearly 500 square miles. Much of Rome was rich agricultural land. Various
kings ordered the construction of Rome’s first temples and public buildings. By royal order, the
swampy valley below the Palatine Hill was drained, making a public meeting place. Later it
became the Forum, the heart of Roman political life.
The last king of Rome was Tarquin the Proud. A harsh tyrant, he was driven from power in 509
BCE. Roman aristocrats, wealthy landowners who resented the Etruscan kings, overthrew him.
The Romans declared they would never again be ruled by a king. They swore to put to death
anyone who plotted to make himself king.
Having deposed the monarch, the Romans established a new government. They called it a
republic, from the Latin phrase res publica, which means “public affairs.” A republic is a form
of government in which power rests with citizens who have the right to vote to select their
leaders. In Rome, citizenship with voting rights was granted only to free-born male citizens.
There is more…keep going!
Question:
What virtues does this story put forth for Roman society through the example of Lucretia? Why
would this story have mattered to Romans?
LVII. One day when the young men were drinking at the house of Sextus Tarquinius, after a
supper where they had dined with the son of Egerius, Tarquinius Conlatinus, they fell to talking
about their wives, and each man fell to praising his wife to excess. Finally Tarquinius Conlatinus
declared that there was no need to argue; they might all be sure that no one was more worthy
than his Lucretia. "Young and vigorous as we are, why don't we go get out horses and go and see
for ourselves what our wives are doing? And we will base our judgement on whatever we see
them doing when their husbands arrive unannounced." Encouraged by the wine, "Yes, let's go!"
they all cried, and they went on horseback to the city. Darkness was beginning to fall when they
arrived and they went to the house of Conlatinus. There, they found Lucretia behaving quite
differently from the daughters-in-law of the King, whom they had found with their friends before
a grand feast, preparing to have a night of fun. Lucretia, even though it was night, was still
working on her spinning, with her servants, in the middle of her house. They were all impressed
by Lucretia's chaste honor. When her husband and the Tarquins arrived, she received them, and
her husband, the winner, was obliged to invite the king's sons in. It was then that Sextus
Tarquinius was seized by the desire to violate Lucretia's chastity, seduced both by her beauty and
by her exemplary virtue. Finally, after a night of youthful games, they returned to the camp.
LVIII. Several days passed. Sextus Tarquinius returned to the house of Conlatinus, with one of
his companions. He was well received and given the hospitality of the house, and maddened with
love, he waited until he was sure everyone else was asleep. Then he took up his sword and went
to Lucretia's bedroom, and placing his sword against her left breast, he said, "Quiet, Lucretia; I
am Sextus Tarquinius, and I have a sword in my hand. If you speak, you will die." Awakening
from sleep, the poor woman realized that she was without help and very close to death. Sextus
Tarquinius declared his love for her, begging and threatening her alternately, and attacked her
soul in every way. Finally, before her steadfastness, which was not affected by the fear of death
even after his intimidation, he added another menace. "When I have killed you, I will put next to
you the body of a nude servant, and everyone will say that you were killed during a dishonorable
act of adultery." With this menace, Sextus Tarquinius triumphed over her virtue, and when he
had raped her he left, having taken away her honor. Lucretia, overcome with sorrow and shame,
sent messengers both to her husband at Ardea and her father at Rome, asking them each to come
"at once, with a good friend, because a very terrible thing had happened." Spurius Lucretius, her
father, came with Publius Valerius, the son of Volesus, and Conlatinus came with Lucius Junius
Brutus; they had just returned to Rome when they met Lucretia's messenger. They found
Lucretia in her chamber, overpowered by grief. When she saw them she began to cry. "How are
you?" her husband asked. "Very bad," she replied, "how can anything go well for a woman who
has lost her honor? There are the marks of another man in your bed, Conlatinus. My body is
greatly soiled, though my heart is still pure, as my death will prove. But give me your right hand
in faith that you will not allow the guilty to escape. It was Sextus Tarquinius who returned our
hospitality with enmity last night. With his sword in his hand, he came to take his pleasure for
my unhappiness, but it will also be his sorrow if you are real men." They promised her that they
would pursue him, and they tried to appease her sorrow, saying that it was the soul that did
wrong, and not the body, and because she had had no bad intention, she did no wrong. "It is your
responsibility to see that he gets what he deserves," she said, "I will absolve myself of blame,
and I will not free myself from punishment. No woman shall use Lucretia as her example in
dishonor." Then she took up a knife which she had hidden beneath her robe, and plunged it into
her heart, collapsing from her wound; she died there amid the cries of her husband and father.
LIX. Brutus, leaving them in their grief, took the knife from Lucretia's wound, and holding it all
covered with blood up in the aid, cried, "By this blood, which was so pure before the crime of
the prince, I swear before you, O gods, to chase the King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, with his
criminal wife and all their offspring, by fire, iron, and all the methods I have at my disposal, and
never to tolerate Kings in Rome evermore, whether of that family of any other."
Source:
Translated from the original in Jean Bayet, ed., Tite-Live: Histoire Romaine, Tome I, livre I.
Paris: Societé d'Édition "les belles-lettres," 1954, pp. 92-95.