The Earliest Romans: A Character Sketch

1. Conservative

1 j CONSERVATIVE The Romans were a people distrustful of novelties, slow to adopt a change, grudging in their surrender to it. They liked the old ways. This trait appears, for example, in the fact of their being only twenty miles from the sea and yet never for a half-millennium bothering with it: building no ‹shing ›eet that’s ever mentioned, no port, no navy, or even a watchtower.1 For their own countri‹ed purposes they had a cattle and a produce market but no interest in market tolls. Their riverine location invited them to look beyond their immediate horizons, but there is no sign of their attempting this, themselves; at most they allowed others from elsewhere to conduct business among them in an assigned, convenient spot: notably the traders in salt from the ›ats at the mouth of the Tiber, coming upriver on the right bank, who found at Rome the ‹rst fording place and could so continue up the so-called Salt Road on the left bank to their inland markets. They passed through leaving no trace. To judge from the problems of interest to the Romans’ earliest laws, down to the mid-‹fth century, it was lands and family property that they were concerned with, not commerce or banking.2 We have in view, here, not just two or three generations but several hundred years of opportunities neglected. Another people would have behaved differently, with different historical consequences. Surely there would have been some such effect as Plato imagined, had the Romans chosen to engage themselves in the scenes beyond their own home at the invitation of the nearby waterways. We would have, or it would have produced , a different people; for “the sea”, as Plato said, “is pleasant enough as 3 a daily companion, but has indeed also a bitter and brackish quality, ‹lling the streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begetting in the souls of men uncertain and unfaithful ways” (Laws 705, trans. Jowett). The philosopher had in mind and detested the very Athenians whom Pericles described in his funeral oration, loving them: always ready for something new, always the active agents of it at the cost of everything ‹xed and trustworthy . Indeed the early Romans would have suited Plato much better than Pericles. Something can thus be inferred about the earliest Romans from what they chose to do or not do on a grand scale. Nature unfolds in behavior; “actions are proof of character” (Aristotle, Rhet. 1367b). If inferences are indeed fair, then we should be able to identify and similarly learn from further illustrations drawing on our familiar sources. We don’t lack for a good base of information. On the shelf, inviting our inquiry, the ancient writers seem ample enough. Their appearance, however, is itself a problem that I need to explain before I go any further. Among those that tell us about early Rome, one of the best known was Marcus Terentius Varro (born in 116). Though his work survives only in bits and pieces, he counts as ‹rst in a long line of scholars called antiquarians . He served as a prime source for most historians who came after him. For this authority and for his successors, whatever was very old and very odd was of interest. He collected absolutely everything, generally in lists, in volume after volume, some devoted to religious rites, others to city monuments and their origins, and so forth across a variety of subjects. A gigantically learned if often ridiculous hobbyist, he and his writings earned immense respect. In proof, it is enough to quote Cicero: “You unlocked for us the secrets of our country’s age, the divisions of time, sacral and priestly law, the learning of war and peace”, etc.3 Antiquarian method may be illustrated through the use made of etymologies : for example, in the tale of the Sabine chief Curtius. Though Rome’s enemy, he was generously remembered and his gallantry con‹rmed in the so-called Curtian Lake, a swampy section of the city. Varro indicates no less than three explanations for the name. One is as good as the other, all involve the invention of history. Or, for a second illustration, we have a certain Olus inserted into the historical record, a little-known king of Rome, whose remains were dug up by chance atop the city’s citadel with the inscription in Etruscan writing, “Head of Olus”, Caput Oli, to be interpreted as one Aulus in Latin spelling...