Unkown - "Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and other Stories"

Unknown - "Sri Vishnu Sahasranaamam"

James Polk - "State of the Union Addresses of James Polk"

Mary H. Kingsley - "Travels in West Africa"

The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic

A >> Arthur Gilman >> The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic



Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



THE STORY OF ROME FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE END OF THE REPUBLIC

BY ARTHUR GILMAN, M.A.




PREFACE.



It is proposed to rehearse the lustrous story of Rome, from its
beginning in the mists of myth and fable down to the mischievous times
when the republic came to its end, just before the brilliant period of
the empire opened.

As one surveys this marvellous vista from the vantage-ground of the
present, attention is fixed first upon a long succession of well-
authenticated facts which are shaded off in the dim distance, and
finally lost in the obscurity of unlettered antiquity. The flesh and
blood heroes of the more modern times regularly and slowly pass from
view, and in their places the unsubstantial worthies of dreamy
tradition start up. The transition is so gradual, however, that it is
at times impossible to draw the line between history and legend.
Fortunately for the purposes of this volume it is not always necessary
to make the effort. The early traditions of the Eternal City have so
long been recounted as truth that the world is slow to give up even the
least jot or tittle of them, and when they are disproved as fact, they
must be told over and over again as story.

Roman history involves a narrative of social and political struggles,
the importance of which is as wide as modern civilization, and they
must not be passed over without some attention, though in the present
volume they cannot be treated with the thoroughness they deserve. The
story has the advantage of being to a great extent a narrative of the
exploits of heroes, and the attention can be held almost the whole time
to the deeds of particular actors who successively occupy the focus or
play the principal parts on the stage. In this way the element of
personal interest, which so greatly adds to the charm of a story, may
be infused into the narrative.

It is hoped to enter to some degree into the real life of the Roman
people, to catch the true spirit of their actions, and to indicate the
current of the national life, while avoiding the presentation of
particular episodes or periods with undue prominence. It is intended to
set down the facts in their proper relation to each other as well as to
the facts of general history, without attempting an incursion into the
domain of philosophy.

A.G.

CAMBRIDGE, _September_, 1885.




CONTENTS



I.

ONCE UPON A TIME

The old king at Troy--Paris, the wayward youth--Helen carried off--The
war of ten years--Æneas, son of Anchises, goes to Italy--His death--
Fact and fiction in early stories--How Milton wrote about early
England--How Æneas was connected with England--Virgil writes about
Æneas--How Livy wrote about Æneas--Was Æneas a son of Venus?--Italy, as
Æneas would have seen it--Greeks in Italy--How Evander came from
Arcadia--How Æneas died--Thirty cities rise--Twins and a she-wolf--
Trojan names in Italy--How the Romans named their children and
themselves.

II.

HOW THE SHEPHERDS BEGAN THE CITY

Augury resorted to--Romulus and Remus on two hills--Vultures determine
a question--Pales, god of the shepherds--Beginning the city--Celer
killed--An asylum--Bachelors want wives--A game of wife-snatching--
Sabines wish their daughters back--Tarpeia on the hill--A duel between
two hills--Two men named Curtius--Women interfere for peace--Where did
Romulus go?--Society divided by Romulus--Numa Pompilius chosen king--
Laws of religion given the people--Guilds established--The year divided
into months--Tullus Hostilius king--Six brothers fight--Horatia killed
--Ancus Martius king--The wooden bridge.

III.

HOW CORINTH GAVE ROME A NEW DYNASTY

Magna Græcia--Cypselus, the democratic politician--Demaratus goes to
Tarquinii--Etruscan relics--Lucomo's cap lifted--Lucomo changes his
name--A Greek king of Rome--A circus and other great public works--A
light around a boy's head--Servius Tullius king--How the kingdom passed
from the Etruscan dynasty.

IV.

THE RISE OF THE COMMONS

A king of the plebeians--A league with Latin cities--A census taken--
The Seven Hills--Classes formed among the people--Assemblies of the
people--How ace means one--Heads of the people--Armor of the different
classes--A Lustration or _Suovetaurilia_--What is a lustrum?--
Servius divides certain lands--A wicked husband and a naughty wife--
King Servius killed--Sprinkled with a father's blood.

V.

HOW A PROUD KING FELL

A tyrant king--The mysterious Sibyl of Cumæ comes to sell books--The
head found on the Capitoline--A serpent frightens a king--A serious
inquiry sent to Delphi--A hollow stick filled with gold helps a young
man--A good wife spinning--A terrible oath--The Tarquins banished--A
republic takes the place of the kingdom--The first of the long line of
consuls--The good Valerius--The god Silvanus cries out to some effect--
Lars Porsena of Clusium and what he tried to do--Horatius the brave--
Rome loses land--A dictator appointed--Castor and Pollux help the army
at Lake Regillus--Caius Marcius wins a crown--Appius Claudius comes to
town.

VI.

THE ROMAN RUNNYMEDE

The character of the Romans--Traits of the kings--Insignificance of
Latin territory--Occupations--Art backward--A narrow religion--Who were
the _populus Romanus?_--Patricians oppress the people--Wrongs of
Roman money-lending--How a debtor flaunted his rags to good purpose--
Appius Claudius defied--A secession to the Anio--Apologue of the body
and its members--Laws of Valerius re-affirmed--Tribunes of the people
appointed--Peace by the treaty of the Sacred Mount.

VII.

HOW THE HEROES FOUGHT FOR A HUNDRED YEARS

Coriolanus fights bravely--He enrages the plebeians--Women melt the
strong man's heart--Plebeians gain ground--Agrarian laws begin to be
made--Cassius, who makes the first, undermined--The family of the Fabii
support the commons--A black day on the Cremara--Cincinnatus called
from his plow--The Æquians subjugated--What a conquest meant in those
days--The Aventine Hill given to the commons--The ten men make ten laws
and afterwards twelve--The ten men become arrogant--How Virginia was
killed--Appius Claudius cursed--The second secession of the plebeians--
The third secession--The commons make gains--Censors chosen--The
wonderful siege of Veii--How a tunnel brings victory--Camillus the
second founder of Rome--How the territory was increased, but ill omens
threaten.

VIII.

A BLAST FROM BEYOND THE NORTH WIND

What the Greeks thought when they shivered--A warlike people come into
notice--Brennus leads the barbarians to victory--A voice from the
temple of Vesta--Tearful Allia--The city alarmed and Camillus called
for--How the sacred geese chattered to a purpose--Brennus successful,
but defeated at last--A historical game of scandal--Camillus sets to
work to make a new city--Camillus honored as the second founder of
Rome--Manlius less fortunate--Poor debtors protected by a law of Stolo
--A plague comes to Rome, and priests order stage-plays to be
performed--The floods of the Tiber come into the circus.

IX.

HOW THE REPUBLIC OVERCAME ITS NEIGHBORS

Alexander the Great strides over Persia--Suppose he had attacked Rome?
--The man with a chain, and the man helped by a crow--How the Samnites
came into Campania--The memorable battle of Mount Gaurus--How Carthage
thought best to congratulate Rome--Debts become heavy again--How Decius
Mus sacrificed himself for the army--Misfortune at the Caudine Forks--A
general muddle, in which another Mus sacrifices himself--Another
secession of the commons--An agrarian law and an abolition of debts--
What the wild waves washed up--Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, takes a lofty
model--How Cineas asked hard questions--Blind Appius Claudius stirs up
the people--Maleventum gets a better name--Ptolemy Philadelphus thinks
best to congratulate Rome--How the Romans made roads--The classes of
citizens.

X.

AN AFRICAN SIROCCO

How an old Bible city sent out a colony--Carthage attends strictly to
its own business--Sicily a convenient place for a great fight--The
Mamertines not far from Scylla and Charybdis--Ancient war-vessels and
how they were rowed--The prestige of Carthage on the water destroyed--
Xanthippus the Spartan helps the Carthaginians--The horrible fate of
noble Regulus--Hamilcar, the man of lightning, comes to view--Gates of
the temple of Janus closed the second time--A perfidious queen
overthrown--Two Gauls and two Greeks buried alive--Hannibal hates Rome
--Rome and Carthage fight the second time--Scipio and Fabius the
Delayer fight for Rome--Hannibal crosses the Alps--The terrible rout at
Lake Trasimenus--A business man beaten--Syracuse falls and Archimedes
dies--Fabius takes Tarentum--A great victory at the Metaurus--War
carried to Africa and closed at Zama--Hannibal a wanderer.

XI.

THE NEW PUSHES THE OLD--WARS AND CONQUESTS

Tumultuous women stir up the city--What the Oppian Law forbade--Cato
the Stern opposes the women--The women find a valorous champion--How
did the matrons establish their high character?--Two parties look at
the growing influence of ideas from Greece--What were those
influences?--How Rome coveted Eastern conquests--How Flamininus fought
at the Dog-heads--How the Grecians cried for joy at the Isthmian games
--Great battles at Thermopylæ and Magnesia, and their results--
Philopoemen, Hannibal, and Scipio die--The battle of Pydna marks an
era--Greece despoiled of its works of art--Cato wishes Carthage
destroyed--Numantia destroyed--The slaves in Sicily give trouble.

XII.

A FUTILE EFFORT AT REFORM

Scipio gives away his daughter--Tiberius Gracchus serves the state--
Romans without family altars or tombs--Cornelia urges Gracchus to do
somewhat for the state--Gracchus misses an opportunity--Another son of
Cornelia comes to the front--The younger Gracchus builds roads and
makes good laws--Drusus undermines the reformer--Office looked upon as
a means of getting riches--Marius and Sulla appear--Jugurtha fights and
bribes--Metellus, the general of integrity--Marius captures Jugurtha--A
shadow falls upon Rome--A terrible battle at Vercellæ--The slaves rise
again--The Domitian law restricts the rights of the senate--The ill-
gotten gold of Toulouse.

XIII.

SOCIAL AND CIVIL WARS

The agrarian laws of Appuleius--Luxury increases and faith falls away--
Rome for the Romans--Another Drusus appears--The brave Marsians menace
Rome--Ten new tribes formed--A war with Mithridates of Pontus--Marius
and Sulla struggle and Marius goes to the wall--Sulla besieges Athens--
Sulla threatens the senate--The capitol burned--A battle at the Colline
Gate--Proscription and carnage--Sulla makes laws and retires to see the
effect--A _congiarium_--A grand funeral and a cremation.

XIV.

THE MASTER-SPIRITS OF THIS AGE

Tendency towards monarchy--Sertorius and his white fawn--Crassus and
his great house--Cicero, the eloquent orator--Verres, the great thief--
How Verres ran away--Catiline the Cruel--Cæsar, the man born to rule--
Looking for gain in confusion--Lepidus flees after the fight of the
Mulvian bridge--How the two young men caused gladiators to fight--What
Spartacus did--Six thousand crosses--Pompey overawes the senate.

XV.

PROGRESS OF THE GREAT POMPEY

Pompey the principal citizen--Crassus feeds the people at ten thousand
tables--How the pirates caught Cæsar, and how Cæsar caught the pirates
--Gabinius makes a move--The Manilian law sets Pompey further on--
Mithridates fights and flees--Times of treasons, stratagems, and
spoils--Catiline plots--The sacrilege of Clodius--Cæsar pushes himself
to the front--The last agrarian law--Cæsar's success in Gaul--
Vercingetorix appears--Cæsar's conquests.

XVI.

HOW THE TRIUMVIRS CAME TO UNTIMELY ENDS

Pompey builds a theatre--Crassus must make his mark--Cato against
Cæsar--Curio helps Cæsar--Solemn jugglery of the pontiffs--Curio warm
enough--At the Rubicon--Crossing the little river--Pompey stamps in
vain--Cato flees from Rome--Metellus stands aside--Pompey killed--
_Veni, vidi, vici_--Honors and plans of Cæsar--The calendar
reformed--Cæsar has too much ambition--'T was one of those coronets--
The Ides of March--Antony, the actor--Antony the chief man in Rome--
What next?.

XVII.

HOW THE REPUBLIC BECAME AN EMPIRE

How Octavius became a Cæsar--Agrippa and Cicero give him their help--
Octavius wins the soldiers, and Cicero launches his Philippics--Antony,
Lepidus, and Octavius become Triumvirs--Their first work a bloody one--
Cicero falls--Brutus and Cassius defeated at Philippi--Antony forgets
Fulvia--Antony and Octavius quarrel and meet for discussion at
Tarentum--How Horace travelled to Brundusium--The duration of the
Triumvirate extended five years--Cleopatra beguiles Antony a second
time--The great battle off Actium--Octavius wins complete power, and a
new era begins--The Republic ends.

XVIII.

SOME MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

How did these people live?--The first Roman house--The vestibule and
the dark room--The dining-room and the parlor--Rooms for pictures and
books--Cooking taken out of the atrium--How the houses were heated and
lighted--Life in a villa--The extravagance of the pleasure villa--When
a man and a woman had agreed to marry--How the bride dressed and what
the groom did--The wife's position and work--The _stola_ and the
_toga_--Foot-gear from _soccus_ to _cothurnus_--Breakfast, luncheon,
and dinner--The formal dinner--How the Romans travelled, and how they
sought office--The law and its penalties.

XIX.

THE ROMAN READING AND WRITING

Grecian influence on Roman mental culture--Textbooks--Cato and Varro on
education--Dictation and copy-books--The early writers--Fabius Pictor--
Plautus--Terence--Atellan plays--Cicero's works--Varro's works--Cæsar
and Catullus--Lucretius--Ovid and Tibullus--Sallust--Livy--Horace--
Cornelius Nepos--Virgil and his works--Life at the villa of Mæcenas.

XX.

THE ROMAN REPUBLICANS SERIOUS AND GAY

The will of the gods sought for--The first temples--Festivals in the
first month--Vinalia and Saturnalia--Fires of Vulcan and Vesta--
Matronly and family services--No mythology at first--Colleges of
priests needed--An incursion of Greek philosophers--Games of childhood
--Checkers and other games of chance--The people cry for games--Games
in the circus--The amphitheatre invented--Men and beasts fight--Funeral
ceremonies--Charon paid--The mourning procession--Inurning the ashes
--The columbarium--The Roman May-day--Change from rustic simplicity to
urban orgies.

INDEX.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


MAP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
MAP OF ANCIENT ROME
VIEW OF THE COLOSSEUM AND PORTION OF MODERN ROME
THE PLAIN OF TROY IN MODERN TIMES
ROMAN GIRLS WITH A STYLUS AND WRITING-TABLET
A ROMAN ALTAR MONUMENT OF THE HORATII AND THE CURIATII
MOUTH OF THE CLOACA MAXIMA AT THE TIBER, AND THE SO-CALLED
TEMPLE OF VESTA
ROMAN SOLDIERS, COSTUMES AND ARMOR
THE RAVINE OF DELPHI
THE CAPITOL RESTORED
ROMAN STREET PAVEMENT
A PHOENICIAN VESSEL (TRIREME)
A ROMAN WAR-VESSEL
HANNIBAL
TERENCE, THE LAST ROMAN COMIC POET
PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS
A ROMAN MATRON
ROMAN HEAD-DRESSES
GLADIATORS AT A FUNERAL
ACTORS' MASKS
A ROMAN MILE-STONE
IN A ROMAN STUDY
PLAN OF A ROMAN CAMP IN THE TIME OF THE REPUBLIC
POMPEY (CNEIUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS)
CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR
GLADIATORS
TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION OF A ROMAN GENERAL
INTERIOR OF A ROMAN HOUSE
A ROMAN POETESS
THE FORUM ROMANUM IN MODERN TIMES
AN ELEPHANT IN ARMOR
ITALIAN AND GERMAN ALLIES, COSTUMES AND ARMOR
INTERIOR OF THE FORUM ROMANUM
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
CLEOPATRA'S SHOW SHIP
ANCIENT STATUE OF AUGUSTUS
THE HOUSE-PHILOSOPHER
DINING-TABLE AND COUCHES
COVERINGS FOR THE FEET
ARTICLES OF THE ROMAN TOILET
RUINS OF THE COLOSSEUM, SEEN FROM THE PALATINE HILL
A COLUMBARIUM




THE STORY OF ROME.




I.

ONCE UPON A TIME.



Once upon a time, there lived in a city of Asia Minor, not far from
Mount Ida, as old Homer tells us in his grand and beautiful poem, a
king who had fifty sons and many daughters. How large his family was,
indeed, we cannot say, for the storytellers of the olden time were not
very careful to set down the actual and exact truth, their chief object
being to give the people something to interest them. That they
succeeded well in this respect we know, because the story of this old
king and his great family of sons and daughters has been told and
retold thousands of times since it was first related, and that was so
long ago that the bard himself has sometimes been said never to have
lived at all. Still; somebody must have existed who told the wondrous
story, and it has always been attributed to a blind poet, to whom the
name Homer has been given.

The place in which the old king and his great family lived was Ilium,
though it is better known as Troja or Troy, because that is the name
that the Roman people used for it in later times. One of the sons of
Priam, for that was the name of this king, was Paris, who, though very
handsome, was a wayward and troublesome youth. He once journeyed to
Greece to find a wife, and there fell in love with a beautiful daughter
of Jupiter, named Helen. She was already married to Menelaus, the
Prince of Lacedæmonia (brother of another famous hero, Agamemnon), who
had most hospitably entertained young Paris, but this did not interfere
with his carrying her off to Troy. The wedding journey was made by the
roundabout way of Phoenicia and Egypt, but at last the couple reached
home with a large amount of treasure taken from the hospitable
Menelaus.

This wild adventure led to a war of ten years between the Greeks and
King Priam, for the rescue of the beautiful Helen. Menelaus and some of
his countrymen at last contrived to conceal themselves in a hollow
wooden horse, in which they were taken into Troy. Once inside, it was
an easy task to open the gates and let the whole army in also. The city
was then taken and burned. Menelaus was naturally one of the first to
hasten from the smoking ruins, though he was almost the last to reach
his home. He lived afterwards for years in peace, health, and happiness
with the beautiful wife who had cost him so much suffering and so many
trials to regain.

[Illustration: THE PLAINS OF TROY IN MODERN TIMES.]

Among the relatives of King Priam was one Anchises, a descendant of
Jupiter, who was very old at the time of the war. He had a valiant son,
however, who fought well in the struggle, and the story of his deeds
was ever afterwards treasured up among the most precious narratives of
all time. This son was named Æneas, and he was not only a descendant of
Jupiter, but also a son of the beautiful goddess Venus. He did not take
an active part in the war at its beginning, but in the course of time
he and Hector, who was one of the sons of the king, became the most
prominent among the defenders of Troy. After the destruction of the
city, he went out of it, carrying on his shoulders his aged father,
Anchises, and leading by the hand his young son, Ascanius, or Iulus, as
he was also called. He bore in his hands his household gods, called the
Penates, and began his now celebrated wanderings over the earth. He
found a resting-place at last on the farther coast of the Italian
peninsula, and there one day he marvellously disappeared in a battle on
the banks of the little brook Numicius, where a monument was erected to
his memory as "The Father and the Native God." According to the best
accounts, the war of Troy took place nearly twelve hundred years before
Christ, and that is some three thousand years ago now. It was before
the time of the prophet Eli, of whom we read in the Bible, and long
before the ancient days of Samuel and Saul and David and Solomon, who
seem so very far removed from our times. There had been long lines of
kings and princes in China and India before that time, however, and in
the hoary land of Egypt as many as twenty dynasties of sovereigns had
reigned and passed away, and a certain sort of civilization had
flourished for two or three thousand years, so that the great world was
not so young at that time as one might at first think If only there had
been books and newspapers in those olden days, what revelations they
would make to us now! They would tell us exactly where Troy was, which
some of the learned think we do not know, and we might, by their help,
separate fact from fiction in the immortal poems and stories that are
now our only source of information. It is not for us to say that that
would be any better for us than to know merely what we do, for poetry
is elevating and entertaining, and stirs the heart; and who could make
poetry out of the columns of a newspaper, even though it were as old as
the times of the Pharaohs? Let us, then, be thankful for what we have,
and take the beginnings of history in the mixed form of truth and
fiction, following the lead of learned historians who are and long have
been trying to trace the true clue of fact in the labyrinth of poetic
story with which it is involved.

When the poet Milton sat down to write the history of that part of
Britain now called England, as he expressed it, he said: "The beginning
of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this
day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many
succeeding ages, yes, periods of ages, either wholly unknown or
obscured or blemished with fables." Why this is so the great poet did
not pretend to tell, but he thought that it might be because people did
not know how to write in the first ages, or because their records had
been lost in wars and by the sloth and ignorance that followed them.
Perhaps men did not think that the records of their own times were
worth preserving when they reflected how base and corrupt, how petty
and perverse such deeds would appear to those who should come after
them. For whatever reason, Milton said that it had come about that some
of the stories that seemed to be the oldest were in his day regarded as
fables; but that he did not intend to pass them over, because that
which one antiquary admitted as true history, another exploded as mere
fiction, and narratives that had been once called fables were afterward
found to "contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something
true," as what might be read in poets "of the flood and giants, little
believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned."
For such reasons Milton determined to tell over the old stories, if for
no other purpose than that they might be of service to the poets and
romancers who knew how to use them judiciously. He said that he did not
intend even to stop to argue and debate disputed questions, but,
"imploring divine assistance," to relate, "with plain and lightsome
brevity," those things worth noting.

After all this preparation Milton began his history of England at the
Flood, hastily recounted the facts to the time of the great Trojan war,
and then said that he had arrived at a period when the narrative could
not be so hurriedly dispatched. He showed how the old historians had
gone back to Troy for the beginnings of the English race, and had
chosen a great-grandson of Æneas, named Brutus, as the one by whom it
should be attached to the right royal heroes of Homer's poem. Thus we
see how firm a hold upon the imagination of the world the tale of Troy
had after twenty-seven hundred years.

Twenty-five or thirty years before the birth of Christ there was in
Rome another poet, named Virgil, writing about the wanderings of Æneas.
He began his beautiful story with these words: "Arms I sing, and the
hero, who first, exiled by fate, came from the coast of Troy to Italy
and the Lavinian shore." He then went on to tell in beautiful words the
story of the wanderings of his hero,--a tale that has now been read and
re-read for nearly two thousand years, by all who have wished to call
themselves educated; generations of school-boys, and schoolgirls too,
have slowly made their way through the Latin of its twelve books. This
was another evidence of the strong hold that the story of Troy had upon
men, as well as of the honor in which the heroes, and descent from
them, were held.

In the generation after Virgil there arose a graphic writer named Livy,
who wrote a long history of Rome, a large portion of which has been
preserved to our own day. Like Virgil, Livy traced the origin of the
Latin people to Æneas, and like Milton, he re-told the ancient stories,
saying that he had no intention of affirming or refuting the traditions
that had come down to his time of what had occurred before the building
of the city, though he thought them rather suitable for the fictions of
poetry than for the genuine records of the historian. He added, that it
was an indulgence conceded to antiquity to blend human things with
things divine, in such a way as to make the origin of cities appear
more venerable. This principle is much the same as that on which Milton
wrote his history, and it seems a very good one. Let us, therefore,
follow it.

In the narrative of events for several hundred years after the city of
Rome was founded, according to the early traditions, it is difficult to
distinguish truth from fiction, though a skilful historian (and many
such there have been) is able, by reading history backwards, to make up
his mind as to what is probable and what seems to belong only to the
realm of myth. It does not, for example, seem probable that Æneas was
the son of the goddess Venus; and it seems clear that a great many of
the stories that are mixed with the early history of Rome were written
long after the events they pretend to record, in order to account for
customs and observances of the later days. Some of these we shall
notice as we go on with our pleasant story.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.