The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]

Statue of a Victorious Driver in the Games of the Circus

(In the Vatican)

This grand wisdom of the Etruscans, which looked beyond the limits of human life, made a profound impression on their pupils, the Romans, and was transferred to Rome with the rest of the augural discipline. The family of the Valerii is said to have been the one to introduce this cult into Rome, for themselves alone in the first instance, and not as yet in the name of the state. One of the ancestors of this family, it was said, had come to Rome from his home in the land of the Sabines to propitiate the evil omens which disturbed him there. He came down the Tiber with his sick children till he reached the vicinity of Rome, and there, where the Field of Mars is narrowest, near the bank of the Tiber, was formerly a spot noted for volcanic phenomena, hot springs, and subterranean fire—the so-called Tarentum. The sick children were cured by the water of the neighbouring spring, and twenty feet below the surface of the ground the father found a primitive altar to the infernal gods, to whom he gave thanks for the miraculous cure by sacrifices, games, and lectisternia. A descendant of his is said to have been one P. Valerius Publicola, who, as consul in the first year of the republic (509) repeated these games of his family cult in the name and for the welfare of the state of Rome. It was essential to the secular theory of later generations that so important an epoch as the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the republic should have been marked by public secular games.

The next secular games were also said to have been celebrated by another Valerius, who was consul in the year 449, after the fall of the decemvirs; and about a hundred years later the third secular games had to be celebrated, which, according to the records of the quindecemviri, was again done by a consul of the house of the Valerii in the year 346, though no one else knows anything about such a celebration and it was not counted in the series of republican secular games. For according to Valerius Antias, the third secular games were celebrated in the year 249, at the time of the First Punic War; and the fourth—whether they were held in the year 149 or 146—mark the end of that memorable period. For a theory had taken shape among Roman antiquaries and historical students, of whose number was even a man of the erudition of Varro, that the seculum must always be a hundred years long, and for the sake of this theory the games, which on contemporary authority were held in the year 146, were put three years earlier. A hundred years later Varro’s authority on all such matters was at its zenith, and it sufficed to fix the next celebration for the year 49. “But instead of the celebration came the end; for this was the year at the beginning of which Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, and with that began the mortal agony of the republic. What commenced was not a new seculum for the republic, but a new order of things.” (Mommsen in Die Nation, 1891.)

The civil wars which ensued and seemed to develop one out of another in endless sequence, might, perhaps, have stifled the hope of peace in Italy, but not the longing for it. An iron age had dawned instead of the golden.

The dictator did in truth seem to succeed in exorcising the demons of discord and discontent. But this hope proved illusory on the ides of March. Soon afterwards the star of the Julii was seen at Rome, and seemed, as was at first hoped, to be the long-desired divine token that was to inaugurate a better time. An Etruscan haruspex proclaimed to the assembled people that the ninth seculum (according to the Etruscans) was coming to an end and the tenth beginning.

But the augur died immediately after; a sign that his words were not indeed false but premature, according to the will of the gods. Nowhere did any likelihood of permanent amelioration present itself, but the yearning remained and hardly ever found stronger expression than in the wretched years that followed the murder of Cæsar. It was strengthened by Sibylline oracles, which were privately circulated and kept faith in the happy future alive. Since the oracle could not lie, it was, perhaps, nothing but miscalculations and vain hopes of men, in the year 49, which had anticipated too soon the dawn of a new age; and perhaps the seculum should be reckoned at 110 years and not 100—it takes but little to revive hope. In the year 43 no less a person than Varro announced to the anxious world of his day that this was the correct estimate; 440 years after the first celebration the fourth Roman seculum was declining to its close, and then a new birth would usher in the new age. But Rome still hoped in vain. Misery increased, and with it the excitement spread into the widest circles. In the year 40 Asinius Pollio was consul, a man of honourable character and highly educated, who endeavoured to avoid the arbitrary usurpations of other rulers. In the circumstances of the time, not the boldest imagination ventured to dream that he might bring back the golden age. But Asinius was at that time expecting the birth of a son; perhaps this son was destined by fate to do so; and a contemporary poet greets the coming deliverer with the most ardent longings. In later days Virgil, with better reasons, fixed his hopes and desires upon the emperor.

The opportunity of holding secular games in the latter half of the last century before Christ had thus passed by unused, and it was a very difficult matter to prove that Augustus was entitled to hold such a celebration. This hard and thankless task fell to the share of the famous jurist Ateius Capito, who acquitted himself skilfully enough to make the will of his master possible in theory. The chronology of Roman history has suffered violence at many hands before and after the time of Ateius Capito, but hardly ever more than at the time of the secular games of Augustus.

A comet, so readily connected by the popular imagination with the end of the world, appears to have decided the old question as to the turning-point of the longed-for cosmic period. It might indeed seem as though the gods themselves had declared their will; for at the beginning of the year 17 an extraordinarily bright comet was visible at Rome, with a long tail pointing from south to north. This was of course the star of the Julian gens, which Rome had not seen since the terrible year of 44. That which the youthful Cæsar had then undertaken with almost superhuman courage for the sake of avenging his father was now finished, and the age of strife was over. At that time the red glow of the comet had portended blood and civil wars; the second appearance of the Julian star, after the expiation of the crime, was a sign that the beginning of the new age was close at hand.

The memoirs of the emperor show what great stress he laid upon the appearance of the star of the year 44, and the coins of the empire struck soon after 17 testify to the impression made upon him and his contemporaries by the supposed return of the star of the Julian gens. It was greeted as the long-desired and manifest divine sign of the end of the iron age and the commencement of the golden.

Hence we see that the appearance of the star only gave the decision in the last resort. That which had long been in the air, that which was perhaps already beginning to evaporate, suddenly condensed into tangible shape under the influence of this divine manifestation; Augustus resolved not to let the moment pass unused, but to celebrate the long-expected fifth secular games, which were associated with the hope of a new birth for Rome.b

LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE

With the formation of the monarchy coincides a second revival of Roman literature, which can only be partly attributed to the new administration, as the leaders were born under the republic and grew up amidst the struggles for the monarchy. This period does not differ so much from the literature of the period of free government as might seem at first sight. For that peculiarly characteristic penetration by the Greek spirit which extended even to that manifestation of it which was least worthy of imitation, namely the Alexandrian, had been already in existence, and the refined elaboration of the language for poetical purposes, its charm and lightness, its beauty and merit, are already perceptible in the time of Terence, though in a very different fashion.