Italy is a seven-hundred-mile-long boot, eternally poised to kick
Sicily out of the Mediterranean. Its 91,000 square miles is close
to four times the size of the Greek peninsula and it is far richer.
About half its area is in the huge and fertile valley of the Po
River. Though the Apennines dominate the rest of Italy, their
slopes and valleys were, in ancient times, thick with forests.
On the western coast, too, are the plains of Tuscany, Latium,
and Campania.
Wheat, barley, timber, orchards, the vine and the olive, herds
of cattle, sheep, goats and wine--all these, in terms of the ancient
economy, made the country rich. Its scenery offers the almost
impossible blues and greens of the coastline from Cumae and Naples
southward, the bare and rugged colors of the hill-top towns and
the turquoise of its Alpine lakes. Its climate varies from north
to south--and from lowland to upland.
Such, in brief outline, is the land in which Rome was to come
to power. Rome itself owed its beginnings to a river, a ford,
and the "seven Hills." For, in very early times, there
was a vigorous trade in salt from the mouth of the Tiber along
the river to the tribes of the interior. Some sixteen miles from
the Tiber's mouth, navigation ends. At this same point an island
makes a ford possible and low hills give shelter. This is where
Rome began. The Romans put the founding of their city in a year
which by modern dating is 753 BC. But excavations have demonstrated
that the first primitive settlements on the site of Rome go back
to before l,000 BC.
Those first settlers may have comprehended that the Seven Hills
controlled both the river traffic and the north-south trade by
way of the ford. For that matter, in Roman times the road from
Rome to the Sabine Hills was still called the Via Salaria, which
means ''the salt-road.''
But these first inhabitants of Rome could not have foreseen that
the site of Rome made it natural for her to become the mistress
first of Latium and then of Italy. For Rome on the Tiber is about
half-way between the sea and the hills, and the plain of Latium--which
is roughly forty miles wide and twice as long--is close to the
center of Italy.
In 753 BC Rome was a small community. Its people, the Romans,
were Latins mixed with Sabines. The Latins spoke an Indo-European
language, which they called the lingua Latina, the Latin tongue.
Down the center of Italy, through the Umbrian, Sabine, and Samnite
country, were other Indo European tribes.
All these peoples were blond intruders from the north, and were
cousins to the Greeks. In Venetia and in Parugia, on the east
coast, were Illyrian settlers. In Liguria, which is in the northwest
of Italy, and on the fringes elsewhere, were dark-skinned Mediterranean
stocks.
Indo-Europeans, Mediterraneans, Illyrians--all three were in a
primitive stage of culture. For civilization, as you know, began
in the Near East, and the harbors and plains of Italy are on the
west coast. Civilization came to Italy later than it did to Greece.
When it did appear, it was brought by Carthaginians, Greeks, and
Etruscans.
The Carthaginian influence was never very strong. But the Greeks
made a lasting, and in the end, the major imprint. Starting as
early as the eighth century BC they planted their colonies in
Sicily and fringed Italy with settlements from Brindisi around
the heel and toe of the country to as far northward as Naples
and Cumae. In Sicily the Carthaginians checked them. In Italy
the Etruscans blocked their expansion to the north.
The Etruscans are a mystery people. The usually accepted view
is that in the eighth century BC they landed on the west coast,
north of Rome, in that part of Italy which is still called Tuscany
after them. They were highly civilized. It is thought that they
came from the east. As the decades went by, they reached out northward
over Umbria and into the valley of the Po. Mantua is one of their
foundations. So is Milan. Later they were to be pushed out of
the Po valley by an onrushing surge of the yellow-haired and Celtic
Gauls.
Before that time, however, the Etruscans had also moved south
over Latium. Rome was for a while an Etruscan city. When, in 509
BC, it became a free republic, there was little hint of the splendor
that was to come. Rome had lost the hold on Latium which the Etruscans
had given her. Her total territory was about ten miles by twenty-five.
For roughly a century, Rome fought a savage struggle for mere
survival. Fortunately, she soon became once more the leader of
the Latin League of Latium. But there were the savage hill-tribes
to the east and south. To the north were the Etruscans. Then,
just after Rome had captured the Etruscan city of Veii, the Gauls
raided south. Before the fierce rush of these blond giants who
fought naked except for shields and swords and gold torques around
their necks, the Romans broke. Rome was sacked and burned.
But the Gauls withdrew and, luckily for Rome, they had weakened
the Etruscan power. Stubbornly, the Romans started again. In desperate
war after war they finally, by 272 BC, became the unchallenged
masters of all Italy south of the Po valley. But, no sooner was
this achieved than Rome was pitchforked into two climactic conflicts.
These were with Carthage. When in 202 BC Hannibal was beaten at
the battle of Zama, Rome emerged as the despot of the western
Mediterranean. Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were her possessions,
and she had moved northward to the Alps. The Roman empire had
begun.
During this same period, until 287 BC, there had been vicious
internal strife in Rome between plebeians and patricians. The
plebeians achieved political, economic, and social equality. Yet
one result of the Carthaginian wars was to place a new nobility
of wealth and office-holding in control of the Roman state. Thus
began what is called the rule of the Senate--which was a permanent
body of some three hundred magistrates and ex-magistrates. Meanwhile,
there was still a distinction between the Romans, the original
inhabitants of Rome, the Latins of the plain of Latium, and the
Italians. This distinction was later on to disappear.
It was in those three centuries of constant warfare that the character
of the early Roman was formed. A people struggling for survival
have little interest in philosophic speculation or in the search
for beauty. Harsh, unbending discipline, dogged endurance, narrow
bigotry, devotion to the practical--these were the qualities which
were needed. The ideal Roman virtues were simplicity, seriousness,
dignity, and piety--by piety they meant the proper performance
of one's duty to the gods, to the state, and to one's family.
Such people can only understand what they can grasp and hold.
Yet, when they came into contact with Greek culture they recognized
its superiority. It was in 272 BC that the Romans captured the
Greek city of Tarentum, which is now Taranto, on the instep of
Italy. The Greek prisoners became the tutors of the Roman children.
And thus was begun the process by which, to quote the famous cliche,
"captive Greece took her rude conquerors captive.'' That
trend was intensified by Rome's conquest of Greece and the Hellenistic
Near East.
After the desperate struggle against Hannibal, which dates from
218 to 202 BC the Roman people deserved a breathing space. Instead,
they were plunged into wars with Macedonia, and with Antiochus
the Great of Syria. There was a third Carthaginian War which ended
in the obliteration of Carthage. Spain revolted, but the rebellion
was crushed. By 133 BC the Romans were the unchallenged masters
of the Mediterranean. The empire was now established.
On the whole the conquest of the Near East was merely a training
exercise for the Roman legions which were, by this time, the most
efficient fighting-machine the ancient world ever devised. The
Romans discovered that war could be made to pay. It was in 168
BC that Aemilius Paullus crushed Perseus, King of Macedonia, at
the battle of Pydna in northern Greece. The celebration of the
triumph of Paullus in Rome occupied three days; and no less than
250 wagons were needed to carry the plunder: art, arms, silver,
and four hundred crowns of gold from the Greek cities. After Pydna,
the war-tax was not levied again in Italy until 43 BC, the year
after the assassination of Julius Caesar. Between 200 and 150
BC over a hundred tons of silver poured into Rome.
So, the loot of the Near East flooded into Italy--gold, silver,
paintings, statues, jewel-studded tables, golden thrones, and
the like. Above all, there was a host of war-captured slaves.
In that flood of wealth the old Roman character began to dissolve.
Banking and capitalism sprouted and flourished. The ruling class,
the senators, were either sleeping partners of the capitalists
or, like the Verres whom Cicero prosecuted, used the governorships
of the Roman provinces to plunder those provinces. Self-indulgence
became the rule.
In 62 BC Julius Caesar owed twenty-five million sesterces. A sesterce
is usually estimated conservatively as worth five cents in today's
money. On that basis Caesar owed $1,250,000. Later he is said
to have bought a single pearl at $300,000 for Sevilia, the mother
of that Marcus Brutus who, in 44 BC, helped to assassinate him.
Similarly, Cicero, who was only moderately well-to-do, could own
six villas and buy a house for $175,000. Cicero also paid $25,000
for a single table of citrus-wood. The villa of Scaurus at Baiae,
the pleasure-spot north of Naples, was valued at a million-and-a-half
dollars. The gardens and banquets of Lucullus became a proverb.
The Romans still paid lip-service to the old Roman virtues. In
practice, they who in the early days had taken even their pleasures
sadly became gross and greedy materialists.
But the enormous wealth was limited to a small class. The main
mass of the Romans and Italians were either starving peasants
or debt-ridden farmers or people on the dole. Italy had become,
as the historian Mommsen puts it, ''a society of beggars and millionaires.''
Meanwhile, Rome's republican constitution, which had been framed
to govern a small city-state creaked and groaned as it strove
to administer an empire.
The result was a century of internal struggle. When Julius Caesar,
defeated Pompey the Great, it seemed as if ravaged Italy might
have a rest. But Caesar's assassination in 44 BC set off a new
round of civil wars. When in 31 BC Octavianus, the adopted son
of Julius Caesar, defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the battle
Actium, the Romans gladly gave up political freedom for a dictatorship
which assured tranquility. Octavianus, as Caesar Augustus, became,
in effect, the first emperor of Rome.
And then for two centuries, from the battle of Actium until the
death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, the Roman empire experienced
a peace and prosperity such as the world has seldom seen since.
True, there were frontier wars. In the last century of the republic
Pompey had tightened Rome's hold on the Near East and Julius Caesar
had conquered Gaul. The battle Actium added Egypt. During the
first century AD there was rectification of the northern frontier
and Britain was conquered. The Emperor Trajan occupied Mesopotamia
and what is now Rumania. Mesopotamia was soon relinquished, but
Dacia, as Rumania was called, was held until Aurelian withdrew
from it in 270 AD.
There was, too, more than one savage revolt of the Jews.
In Rome itself, in the first century AD, several emperors met
violent deaths. But all of these happenings scarcely affected
the security of the empire as a whole; and from 96 to 160 AD there
was an era of almost uninterrupted peace. The ancient world lay
cradled in the Pax Romana.
Let us take a look at that empire. From north to south, it stretched
from the Great Wall in Britain, and from the Rhine, the Danube,
and the Black Sea, to the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara Desert,
and into the Sudan. On the west it was bounded by the Atlantic,
on the east by the Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia. What is now
France, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of Germany belonged to
it. So did Spain, North Africa, Macedonia. Greece, and the Near
East. The empire was about 2,000 miles from north to south and
3,000 miles from east to west. Its area was roughly two-and-a-half
million square miles and its peak population is estimated at a
hundred million. Thus, it was a sizeable empire for any age.
That empire was protected by the Roman fleet and the Roman army.
The maximum force in the army was around 400,000 men. Under Domitian,
legionaries received l,200 sesterces a year or $60, plus a grain
allowance. In the meantime the term of service had been increased
from twenty to twenty-five years. It might be pointed out here
that until Marius, just before the first century BC, the Roman
army had been a citizen army. Marius and Julius Caesar between
them made it into a long-service professional army of volunteers.
At discharge a veteran received a bonus of 12,000 sesterces ($600).
Though the army was paid so poorly, it was the iron ring of the
legions which kept the Roman world secure. Inside the empire there
were great cities and prosperous municipalities with a large measure
of local self-government. There were many Roman citizens. By the
Social War of 90-88 BC the Romans had been forced to give the
franchise to the Italians. By the end of the century all free
men south of the Alps were Roman citizens. Julius Caesar granted
citizenship to whole towns and tribes outside of Italy and to
those who had served in the army, whatever their nationality.
They also planted colonies of citizens all over the empire. He
even admitted provincials to the Roman Senate. Augustus was more
conservative but there was an increase of 900,000 on the citizen
roll during his reign. In this way Roman citizenship was widely
extended. Thus, St. Paul, though a Jew, was proud of his Roman
citizenship. Under later emperors, such as Trajan and Hadrian,
the citizen franchise included the upper class of every city in
the empire except in Egypt. Finally, in 212 AD, every free man
in the empire was made a citizen.
Citizenship helped to romanize the empire, particularly in the
west. So did the network of roads and the trade which flowed along
them. The total mileage of those roads is estimated at 47,000.
The oldest of them was the Appian Way, built from Rome to Capua
in 312 BC. As the Roman power reached out, so did the roads. Along
them the legions marched. And along them flowed the never-ending
traffic, travellers on foot, carriages, wagons transporting goods,
post-horses, and the like. The Roman roads were the arteries of
the empire. They were built to endure. Today, for example, you
can still walk on patches of the Appian Way where St. Paul once
trod. Those roads were all marked at intervals with the distance
from the golden milestone which stood in the Roman Forum. Quite
literally, all roads led to Rome.
Under the empire a passenger, freight, and express system was
organized. For the imperial couriers, there were post-stations
for the changing of horses. For the transport of good, there were
mansions, which in English means waiting-places. These mansions
maintained riders, drivers, conductors, doctors, blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, and about forty beast and the appropriate amount
of rolling stock. In this way the trade of the empire could be
kept moving.
To the great roads must be added the seaways. To the Romans, the
Mediterranean was Mare Nostrum, which means "our sea."
It was furrowed by countless round-bellied merchantmen, carrying
passengers and freight. The empire was, in fact, a paradise for
businessmen. In foreign traffic, traders found their way to Denmark
or up the old amber route from the Danube to the Baltic and across
it to Sweden. Furs and slaves poured through the Brenner Pass
into Italy. In the Near East Greek merchantmen worked their way
to Somaliland and beyond and Roman traders pushed by land into
Abyssinia. The most exotic trade was to Arabia Felix, India, and
China. The most popular route to India and the far East, was from
Alexandria via the Red Sea and the India Ocean. Each year as many
as 120 ships set out for India.
When in 154 AD the rhetorician, Aelius Aristides, declared "the
whole inhabited world is one city-state," he was expressing
the way in which the Romans had managed to weld their whole empire
into one unit. But the colossus had feet of clay. The loss of
freedom under the dictatorship brought inevitable spiritual and
political repercussions. The growth of a top-heavy bureaucracy
and of a benevolent paternalism went unnoticed. Most of the inhabitants
of the empire did not care. The extension of Roman citizenship,
the levelling influence of a world-wide trade and prosperity,
and the excellent government of the provinces under the imperial
administration, left them contented so long as they could make
money.
There was slavery, but slavery was an accepted fact. There was
an idle and unemployed proletariat which had to be kept quiet
by doses of "bread and games." But the empire was an
Eden for the banker, the capitalist, and the ordinary businessman.
Consequently, only a comparative few cried warnings of the dangers
to come.