The Childhood of Rome

by Louise Lamprey

He knew that Ruffo understood several languages and dialects, and whatever it was that this man had come for, he wished to know it.

Ruffo knew enough of the language Canial spoke to be able to make out his meaning, and he told Colonus that the stone worker wished to come and live in Rome. He would show them how to drain their land and bridge their streams. Mastarna would tell them that he was a man of [pg 190]honesty and ability. His reason for leaving his own country was a personal one; he had had a quarrel with the head priest of his village because the priest wished to interfere in his family affairs and make Canial’s daughter the wife of his nephew, against her will. There was no safety or comfort in his part of the country when the priesthood had a grudge against a man.

There were others in the Roman settlement who had fled there for reasons of much the same kind as Canial’s—men who had been robbed of their inheritance, slaves escaped from cruel masters, homeless men, and men who for one reason or another had found themselves unsafe where they lived before. But this was the first family which had wished to come from beyond the river. The others all came from places where the public worship was not entirely unlike that of the Romans themselves and the people were of the same race in the beginning. This was a departure from that rule.

If it had not been for the dyke-building problem, Colonus would probably have said no at once. But that would have to be settled before the town grew much larger than it was, or they would have to change their way of life altogether. They were a people who hated to be crowded. They would need land, and land, and more land, [pg 191]if they continued to live on the Seven Hills. They must have grain for the cattle and themselves, and pasturage for the beasts, room for orchards and gardens, room for the villages of those who tilled their fields. Canial seemed to think that it would be quite possible to prevent the plain from being flooded, with proper stonework and drains, but it would need a man thoroughly used to the work to direct it. Colonus could see that Canial was probably that man. Every suggestion he made was practical and good, and he knew things about masonry that it had taken his ancestors generations to learn. Colonus finally said that he would talk it over with the other men of the city and give him an answer on a certain day.

Ruffo did not know anything of the gods the people of Canial worshiped, except that they were unlike the Roman gods and seemed to be very much feared. They had a god Turms, who was rather like the Roman Terminus, who protected traders and kept boundaries. They had a smith of the gods, called Sethlans, and a god of wine and drunkenness called Fuffluns.

No person, of course, could be allowed to bring the worship of strange gods into the sacred city. The very reason of the founding of the city was to make a home for their own gods, and [pg 192]to let in strange ceremonies would be to defile that home.

It was finally decided that Canial and some of his countrymen who wished to come with him should have a place of their own, which was afterward known as the Street of the Tuscans. It was a place which no one had wished to occupy before, because it was so wet, but Canial and his friends had no difficulty in draining it. The only condition he made was that traders should be allowed to come and go and supply his family and friends with whatever they needed. Women, he said, did not like a strange place much as it was, and he should have no peace at home if his wife were obliged to learn new methods of housekeeping.

The only condition that Marcus Colonus and his friends made was that the strangers should do nothing against the law of the settlement, or against the Roman gods, and this they readily agreed to. Canial said that the priests in his country demanded so much in offerings that a man was no better than a slave, working for them.

All this happened while Romulus was away, but when he returned he said that the decision was a wise one. It privately rather amused him to see how in this new country the colonists were led to allow the beginning of new customs which [pg 193]they regarded with great horror when they first came.

Before another rainy season, the Etruscans and the Romans, working together, had made a very fair beginning on the dyking and draining of the worst of the marshes and the bridging of bad places. Canial understood how to mix burned lumps of clay containing lime and iron, and lime and sand, and water, in such a way that when the muddy paste hardened it was like stone itself. Tertius Calvo, who happened to be there when this was done, tried it by himself. Although what he made was not entirely a failure, it did not behave as it did under the hands of Canial. Without saying anything—indeed, he could say nothing, for he knew not a word of the strangers’ language—Tertius watched and measured and experimented with small quantities until he found out the exact proportions and methods Canial used. The bit of wall he built finally was very nearly as good as Canial’s own work. Calvo was good at laying stones, and had very little to learn in that line from any stranger. This mortar, as they found in course of time, would stand heat and cold and water and seemed to become harder with exposure. By using the best quality of material the work was improved. There was no secret about it; indeed, Canial did [pg 194]not object to teaching any man who wished to learn all he could.