Locked-Livy - Rise of Rome
From The Inferno
1, 2.1-13, 2.23-40, 5
[edit] Author's Notes/Introduction
[edit] 1.1-21 Greeks spared Trojans: Aeneas/Antenor because both wanted Helen’s return
- Antenor: leads combined force of Eneti/Trojans to establish Troy in Adriatic
- Aeneas: goes to King Latinus in Laurentine territory (some say Latinus defeated, some say there was a truce). Daughter given to Aeneas
[edit] Civil War: Turnus and Retulis defeated by Aeneas
- Rutulis form alliance with Mezentius (Etruscan nation)
- Aeneas makes all people Latin, no distinction between Trojan and Aborigines
- Last battle: Aeneas leads unified Latins against Etrutrians (wins, Aeneas dies)
[edit] Lavinia guards city until Ascanius old enough to take over (Not sure if he’s from Creusa or Lavinia)
- Ascanius hands over city to Lavinia and founds Alba Longa (city), peaceful because of good resources
- After generations Numitor and Amulius (brothers), Amulius expels Numitor, and makes sister Rhea Silvia a vestal
- Livy believes fate ordained the founding of a great city because vestal has twin bbies (maybe they came from Mars?) King’s herdsman find the babies in a river and raises them
- Remus is captured and Romulus free, brought to Amulius but they violate
- Numitor’s lands so they are under his sovereignty in terms of punishment.
- With Numitor’s help Romulus kills Amulius; Numitor calls assembly and explains why Romulus kills Amulius. Crowd agrees
[edit] Romulus and Remus want to found new city where they were raised: but both desire kingly supremacy.
- Let heaven’s will choose for them: Remus augury comes first: 6 vultures fly over Aventine
- Double the number of vultures flies over Palantine.
- Doesn’t matter because Romulus kills Remus and becomes sole sovereign; names city after himself
- Fortifies Palatine, institutes religious rites
[edit] Romulus carries out religious observances:
- Potitii and Pinarii sacrifice a heifer to Hercules.
- Summons meeting of populace to promulgate laws
- Makes his own person more august by adopting insignias of power and has 12 lictors accompany him in public
- City’s protective walls continually extended as areas annexed
- Selected an area between the two groves that served as a site for asylum where neighboring people could flock without distinction about free or slave became the real strength of the city.
- He created one hundred senators, their descendants were called patricians
[edit] Rome at War
- Lack of women, dispatched envoys that would ask surrounding people for women.
- Envoys claimed that Rome’s neighbors should realize thast the gods had been present to bless * * Rome’s foundation and that the valor of the Romans would never fail
- Neighboring people said no, they said they should have opened asylum for women
- Romulus intentionally institutes games in honor of Neptune and Rome’s closest neighbors attend: Caeneia, Crustumerium, and Antemnae and the Sabines.
- All unmarried girls seized and hustled to homes
- Romulus goes to all other towns and says that abducted women would enjoy rights of proper marriage, Roman citizenship, and children
- Maidens mollified but not families
- Caenina invades Roman territory, Romulus routes the army and pursues it as it scatters.
- Romans engaged at Caenina, Antemnae invades too but Rome defeats them as well. Romulus’ wife convinces him to pardon their parents and grant them citizenship: state can grow in strength * Romulus agrees
- Crusumerium begins hostilities: Rome defeats them easily as well
- Sabines turn out to be the greatest war: use subterfuge as strategy. Spurius Tarpiue is in command of citadel: Tatius induced Spurius’ virgin daughter to takes bribe of gold to admit his armed men into a citadel. she dies
- Sabine get citadel, Romans route the Sabines.
- Abducted Sabine women stop battle, and the two sides make a treaty to share the sovereignty with a fixed seat of government at Rome.
- Peace during most of Romulus’ 40 year rule, on day during meeting to review troops at Campus * * Martius at the Great Swamp, storm envelopes king and never seen again.
- Proclaimed Romulus divinity.
[edit] Senators struggle for Royal power
- Eventually they divide themselves into groups of 1- and elect one to manage affairs of the state. Command limited to a period of five days and passed around to each in tern.
- Plebeians upset: 100 masters instead of one, so the senators gave Plebeians the ability to elect a man who would be ratified by the senate. The Plebeians were so happy with the privilege they said that the senate could choose
- Senate declares that kingship should be offered to Numa; famed for justice or piety. Lived in * Sabine town of Cures.
- Augured to be king, made the temple of Janus at the foot of Argiletum indicator of peace and war
- Numa wins treaty and alliances, but he was afraid that military discipline would be lacking if soldiers found that there was no enemy. So he made them fear the gods
- Made them believe that he saw goddess Egeria by night and by his prompting instituted religious rites that would please the gods most and was assigning a special priest to each of them.
[edit] Numa’s religiosity
- Institutes priesthoods, one for Mars and Vesta
- Paid them from public funds to ensure they would always be at temple, enrolls 12 Salian priests of Mars Gradivus, keeps track of sacrifices
- Population diverts their aggression from warfare into religious matters
- Rome’s neighbors who thought it was just a military camp began to respect the community believing it was sacrilege to attack a state wholly devoted to worship.
- Rome’s first two kings: Romulus who rules through war and Numa who rules through peace.
[edit] Servius is king but young Tariquin has contention with Servius ruling without people’s consent
- King won goodwill of plebeians by dividing up land captured from enemy and giving it to them in individual allotments, and then he asked for people for consent to rule and they gave it to him
- Tarquin even more determined, his wife Tullia had ambition killed their un-ambitious spouses to marry each other
- Tarquin wins younger senators with gifts and Tarquin attacks the king in the senate house, Tullia drives carriage over his body
- Servius known as good and ruler, standard was high
[edit] Tarquin = terrible ruler
- Refuses to bury his own father-in=law
- Kills off prominent senators
- Surrounds himself with powerful armed guard to prevent usurpation
- Cows citizens into submission, spreads fear further by trying people on capital charges in a court where only he was the judge
- Didn’t seek advice from the senate
- Won support of the Latin peoples through marriage alliances.
- Turnus = rebel troublemaker from Africa, attacks absent Tarquin in an assembly looking out for the Latin people. Killed.
- Tarquin pretty good leader in war, first to fight the Volsci and took Suessa Pometia from them by force. War with Gabii, used deceit and treachery
- Sextus his son befriends the Gabii and they make him powerful in their army, invite him to be council of state and then he killed off cities leaders and the city passes into the hands of Rome without a fight.
- Tarquin wants to build a temple but sees a snake, sends sons to Oracle at Delphi
- Titus and Arruns set out accompanied by Brutus (who pretends to be a dullard to protect himself)
- The Oracle says that whoever kisses their mother first will be king, and Brutus kisses the earth.
- When all the princes are feasting Collatinus brags about wife and they all go to see who has the best looking wife. Sextus Tarquinius falls in love with Collatinus’ Lucretia and rapes her.
- Lucretia summons her father/husband to avenge the wrong and kills herself because she doesn’t absolve herself from punishment.
- Lucretia’s death serves as impetus for Brutus to expel Tarquin, and found the Republic.
[edit] Brutus brings back senate strength to former 300
- Brutus reads that rule under one man is a threat to liberty
- Tarquins try to take over the land again but they fail.
- Conflict between the tribunes and plebs begins
[edit] Consuls in 445 BC: Gaius Curiatius and Marcus Genucius
- Introduces a bill allowing intermarriage between patricians and plebeians
- Senators thing this will adulterate bloodlines and subvert privileges clan enjoyed
- Another bill allowing election of plebeians or patricians to the consulship.
- Plebeians angered because of senate language of their inferiority, but senate believes that rule of country will be really bad if plebeians allowed to marry patricians and govern.
- Canuleius declares a speech about the flexibility of political institutions, how Rome has been founded on the idea of trying new things. He talks about equal liberties, how marriages will not be coerced, how past rulers have not been of high birth.
- Senate torn: they were about to go to war, it seemed as if they were going to have to grant victory to the enemy or the citizens.
- Compromise: election of military tribunes with consular power could be elected form the patricians or the plebs.
- Every tribune elected was a patrician anyway
[edit] Plebs demand military reform
- War with the Veii and Volsci
- Plebs thought that they were being deliberately exposed to military service and slaughter because senate acting irrationally
- They brought up complaints about years of service, public land, and free exercise of votes.
- Senate declares that soldiers should be paid from public funds, and they were really happy.
- Tribunes of the plebs thought this was really bad, where would the funds come from? Senators just using other people’s money.
[edit] Rome faces war with Veii
- Increases number of military tribunes with consular power: eight chosen
- People of Veii elect a king and people of Etruria offended personally, so won’t ally with Veii
- Rome decides that a siege more effective than an assault so they decide to keep soldiers there over the winter
- Plebeians really upset, tribunes stir up political conflict, this is why they offered to pay the soldiers
- Claudius steps forward and makes a speech about why this is the right thing to do:
- Efficacy of war
- Pragmatically just compared to status quo
- Abandoning fortifications would be bad
- Justified cause
- Etruria might enter
- Builds soldiers character
- Institutions more important than war
- They (Veii) want us to have discord
- Unity defined by military strength
- Commanders Verginius and Sergius mess up, commanders need to be selected in the middle of a term which causes huge discord between the senators and the military tribunes
- They name a dictator in times of need
