The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

by Unknown

Both in former and recent times many attempts have been made to give an historical character to the legend that the three different communities which composed the ancient Roman nation once dwelt within separate walls on the Seven Hills; but the scientific inquirer is obliged to banish it to the same regions as the battle of the Palatine and the graceful story of Tarpeia.

There exists, it is true, a real and very decided distinction between the fortification of the Capitol and the erection of the town walls. The Capitol is in name and fact the Acra of Rome, the town with one gate and a town fountain, the carefully fenced “spring house” (tullianum). That this fortification dates far back to a time when as yet there was no settlement at all in this neighbourhood, is shown by a custom which was scrupulously observed down to a late period, and according to which private houses did not and perhaps were not allowed to stand on the twin peaks of the Capitol.

On the other hand the town contained a treasure chamber with the archives, the prison, and the oldest place of assembly for the councillors as well as the citizens. The space between the two peaks of the Capitoline Hill, the sanctuary of the angry Jupiter (Vediovis) or as it was called in the later hellenising period, the Asylum, was covered with a wood and evidently originally intended to shelter the peasants and their flocks when flood or war drove them from the plain.

In Rome, as everywhere else, the urban settlement must have begun not within but below the citadel; when it was considerable enough to call for the protection of a wall and moat, the town proper first came into being outside the Capitol, and to this, again, suburbs were added, and as these also prospered and required to be defended, new walls were added and in the marshes a new dike, until a whole series of such separate circumvallations surrounded the citadel. It was the memory of this which was preserved in the “festival of the Seven Hills” (Septimontium), whose celebration was continued long after the ancient fortifications had ceased to exist.

The “seven circles” are the Palatine; the Cermalus, a branch of the Palatine extending towards the swamp (Velabrum) which in early days stretched between it and the Capitol; the Velia, the ridge which connected the Palatine with the Esquiline and afterwards almost completely disappeared owing to the constructions erected under the empire; the three summits of the Esquiline, Oppius, Cispius, and Fagutal; and finally the Secusa or Subura, an ingenious stronghold on the low ground between the Capitol, the Esquiline, and the Palatine. It is obvious that these walls did not spring up all at once. According to credible witnesses the oldest constructions only embrace the Palatine or the primitive Rome, called at a later period “the square” (Roma quadrata) from the shape of the Palatine Hill which was that of an irregular square. The gates and walls of this ancient urban circle remained visible down to the time of the empire; the position of two of them, namely the Porta Romana, near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta Mugionis at the arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the wall encircling the Palatine is even described by Tacitus from his own observation, at least on the side facing the Aventine and the Cælian. Although, of course, the earliest seat of the trade of the community was not here but at the citadel, still there are sufficient indications to show that this was the centre and the original seat of the urban settlers. On the Palatine was to be found its holy symbol, the so-called “outfit vault” (mundus) in which they had deposited all the requisites of a household and added a handful of their beloved native earth. Here too stood the building in which the curiæ assembled, each at its own altar, for religious and other purposes (curiæ veteres). Here too was the sanctuary of “the wolves” (lupercal), the house of assembly for “the leapers” (curia saliorum), and the dwelling of Jupiter’s priest. It was on and round this hill that the legend of the founding of the city was principally localised, and the believer was shown the straw-covered house of Romulus, the shepherd’s hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the holy fig tree on to which the coffer containing the twins was driven, and other similar relics.

The Palatine was, and remained, the most aristocratic quarter of the city and therefore subsequently gave its name to the first Servian district. The oldest offshoots may have been the settlement on the branch of the Cermalus and the Velian heights, both of which were immediately connected with the Palatine and, under the Servian division of the town, were apparently included in the Palatine quarter. The position of the suburb on the Cermalus, between the town wall and that of the citadel, as well as the designation of the principal street by the name of “the Tuscan,” seems to indicate that this settlement was not voluntary but reserved for the custody of colonists of foreign race.

Beyond this there was a settlement on the Carinæ, the farthest summit of the Esquiline, with the fortress for defence against the Sabines in the valley of the Subura; this afterwards became the second Servian quarter. At that time the Esquiliæ (which did not properly speaking include the Carinæ) formed, as the name signifies, a suburb (exquiliæ, the same as inquilinus). That the town should have extended itself in this direction is explained by the simple fact that the people remained on the heights, especially on the Palatine and the Velian, avoiding both the isolated hills and the swampy and wholly defenceless valleys which lay between. At a later time the suburb was included in the town, and under the Servian division it became the third quarter.

The “bridge of piles” (pons sublicius) thrown across that natural pier, the island in the Tiber, and the tête de pont on the Etruscan shore, the citadel of the Janiculum, remained outside the fortifications of the “Seven Hills.” And as, for military reasons, it was necessary to be able to break down or burn the bridge at the shortest notice, there arose a fixed rule which down to a very late period was observed as a traditional religious law, that no iron could be used in the construction of the bridge, but only wood. Thus a town came into being, but nevertheless the real and complete amalgamation of the various bodies which formed the settlement was not yet effected. As there was no common city altar, but the separate altars of the different curies merely stood side by side in the same neighbourhood, so not only did the distinction between citadel and town continue, but the seven circles themselves were rather a collection of urban settlements than a united town until the gigantic defensive works, ascribed to King Servius Tullius, surrounded the inner and outer city and the open suburbs with a single great wall. But before these strong works were set in hand, the position of Rome in relation to the surrounding district had doubtless entirely changed.

As the primitive uncommercial and inactive epoch of the Latin stock corresponds to the period in which the husbandman drove the plough on the Palatine as well as over the other hills of Latium, and the place of refuge on the Capitol, which in ordinary times stood empty, presented only the commencement of a fortified settlement; and as later the flourishing settlement on the Palatine and within the seven circles coincides with the occupation of the estuary of the Tiber by a Roman community and generally with the progress of the Latins to a free and active intercourse, and urban civilisation especially in Rome, and indeed to a firmer political consolidation both of the separate states and of the confederacy; so does the establishment of a single great city by means of the Servian rampart belong to that epoch in which the city of Rome was enabled to contend for the supremacy of the Latin confederacy and finally to get the upper hand.[c]