The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire by Anthony Everitt Read Free Book Online Page A

named Egeria, whom he consulted privately in her sacred grove (near where the Baths of Caracalla were built in the third century A.D .), but many of his innovations were drawn from Etruscan religious observance. Cicero wrote:
He wanted the proper performance of the rituals themselves to be difficult, but that the necessary equipment should be readily available, for he provided that much should be learned by heart and scrupulously observed, but made the expenditure of money unnecessary. In this way, he made the performance of religious duties laborious but not costly.
    “Laborious” is the word. Senior Romans holding public office spent much of their time on ceremonial business. If any error was made—misspoken or forgotten phrases or interruption of any kind, even the squeaking of a rat—the whole rigmarole had to be repeated until the performance was perfect. On one occasion,a sacrifice was conducted thirty times before the priest got it right.
    Numa was followed by a king, Tullus Hostilius, who was even more warlike than Romulus. His reign was marked by a long struggle with Alba Longa, the city built by Aeneas’s son and from which Romulus and Remus had emerged to found Rome. It was, in effect, Rome’s first civil war. The two sides agreed on a treaty according to which the loser of the conflict would consent to unconditional surrender. The Romans placed a high value on their collective word and, typically, devised an elaborate religious ritualfor treaty-making. The king swore that if the Roman People departed in any way from the terms of an agreement with a foreign power he would implore Jupiter, king of the gods, to smite its members, just as he smote a sacrificial pig. With these words, he struck down the pig with a flint.
    To avoid a full-scale battle with all the attendant casualties, a duel was agreed on between two sets of triplet brothers—the Curiatii for Alba and the Horatii for Rome. In the fight, all of the Curiatii were wounded, but two of the Horatii were killed. The surviving Horatius, Publius, then reversed the fortunes of battle by killing all his opponents. He was able to tackle them one by one, for they had become separated because of their wounds.
    Publius was the hero of the hour, and he marched back to Rome carrying his spoils, the three dead men’s armor. At the city gates, he was greeted by his sister. She happened be betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and when she noticed that Publius was carrying his cloak she let down her hair, burst into tears, and called out her lover’s name.
    In a fit of rage, Publius drew his sword and stabbed his sister to the heart. “Take your girl’s love and give it to your lover in hell,” he shouted. “So perish all women who grieve for an enemy!”
    He was condemned to death for the murder but reprieved by the People, which refused to countenance the execution of a national hero. However, something had to be done to mitigate the guilt of such a notorious crime. The Horatius family was obliged to conduct expiatory ceremonies. Once these had been performed, a wooden beam was slung across the roadway under which Publius walked, with his head covered as a sign of submission.
    Typically, two ancient memorials survived that were believed to mark the event. Livy, writing at the end of the first century, observed:
The timber is still to be seen—replaced from time to time at the state’s expense—and is known as the Sister’s Beam. The tomb ofthe murdered girl was built of hewn stone and stands on the spot where she was struck down.
    For men like Cicero and Varro, Rome was a stage on which great and terrible deeds had been done. People of the present were energized and uplifted by the invisible actors of a glorious past. Horatius did a very Roman thing: he committed a crime that illustrated not vice but virtue—in this case, the noble rage of valor.
    The war with Alba stimulated not only individual but also collective rage. After a resumption of hostilities,