The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

Accordingly we find traces of this character in the very earliest traditions of Roman story. Even in Romulus, his institutions go hand in hand with his deeds in arms; and the wrath of the gods darkened the last years of the warlike Tullus, because he had neglected the rites and ordinances established by Numa. Numa and Servius, whose memory was cherished most fondly, were known only as lawgivers; Ancus, like Romulus, is the founder of institutions as well as the conqueror, and one particular branch of law is ascribed to him as its author, the ceremonial to be observed before going to war. The two Tarquinii are represented as of foreign origin, and the character of their reigns is foreign also. They are great warriors and great kings; they extend the dominion of Rome; they enlarge the city and embellish it with great and magnificent works; but they add nothing to its institutions; and it was the crime of the last Tarquinius to undo those good regulations which his predecessor had appointed.

THE FINE ARTS

It is allowed, on all hands, that the works of art executed in Rome under the later kings, whether architecture or sculpture, were of Etruscan origin; but what is meant by “Etruscan,” and how far Etruscan art was itself derived from Greece, are questions which have been warmly disputed. The statue of Jupiter in the Capitol, and the four-horsed chariot on the summit of the temple, together with most of the statues of the gods, were at this period wrought in clay; bronze was not generally employed till a later age. There is no mention of any paintings in Rome itself earlier than the time of the commonwealth; but Plinyg speaks of some frescoes at Ardea and at Cære, which he considered to be older than the very foundation of the city, and which in his own age preserved the freshness of their colouring, and in his judgment were works of remarkable merit. The Capitoline temple itself was built nearly in the form of a square, each side being about two hundred feet in length; its front faced southwards, towards the Forum and the Palatine, and had a triple row of pillars before it, while a double row enclosed the sides of the temple. These, it is probable, were not of marble, but made either of the stone of Rome itself, like the cloaca, or possibly from the quarries of Gabii or Alba.

Of the Roman mind under the kings, Cicero knew no more than we do. He had seen no works of that period, whether of historians or of poets; he had never heard the name of a single individual whose genius had made it famous, and had preserved its memory together with his own. A certain number of laws ascribed to the kings, and preserved, whether on tables of wood or brass in the Capitol, or in the collection of the jurist Papirius, were almost the sole monuments which could illustrate the spirit of the early ages of the Roman people. But even these, to judge from the few extracts with which we are acquainted, must have been modernised in their language; for the Latin of a law ascribed to Servius Tullius is perfectly intelligible, and not more ancient in its forms than that of the fifth century of Rome; whereas the few genuine monuments of the earliest times, the hymns of the Salii, and of the Brotherhood of Husbandry, Fratres Arvales, required to be interpreted to the Romans of Cicero’s time like a foreign language; and of the hymn of the Fratres Arvales we can ourselves judge, for it has been accidentally preserved to our days, and the meaning of nearly half of it is only to be guessed at. This agrees with what Polybius says of the language of the treaty between Rome and Carthage, concluded in the first year of the commonwealth; it was so unlike the Latin of his own time, the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century of Rome, that even those who understood it best found some things in it which with their best attention they could scarcely explain. Thus, although verses were undoubtedly made and sung in the times of the kings, at funerals and at feasts, in commemoration of the worthy deeds of the noblest of the Romans and although some of the actual stories of the kings may perhaps have come down from this source, yet it does not appear that they were ever written; and thus they were altered from one generation to another, nor can any one tell at what time they attained to their present shape. Traces of a period much later than that of the kings may be discerned in them; and we see no reason to differ from the opinion of Niebuhr,c who thinks that as we now have them they are not earlier than the restoration of the city after the invasion of the Gauls.