The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire (65 page)

15
  
Aulus Cornelius Cossus
Livy 4 19. A vivid account.

16
  
a linen corselet
The inscription and corselet had probably been restored in 222, when the third winner of
spolia opima
made his dedication at the temple. See Ogilvie
Livy
1–5, pp. 558–65.

17
  
expanded from four thousand to six thousand men
Keppie, p. 18.

18
  
priestess straightforwardly suggested
According to Livy 5 16 9–11.

19
  
designed to prevent seepage
See Ogilvie 1, pp. 658–59.

20
  
This work was now begun
Livy 5 19 10–11.

21
  
archaic wooden statue
Dio of H 13.3. A
xoanon
, or carved wooden image. A contemporary sculpture would have been made of terra-cotta.

22
  
“leave this town where you now dwell”
Livy 5 21 3.

23
  
“too much like a romantic stage play”
Ibid., 5 21 8–9.

24
  
the only civic status available, Roman citizenship
For this plausible speculation, see CAH 7 2, pp. 312–13.

25
  
We are told, too, that words were uttered
Ibid., 5 22 6.

26
  
“How sad, ancient Veii!”
The poet was Sextus Propertius. See Carmina 4 10 27 30.

27
  
“Calamity of unprecedented magnitude”
Livy 5 37 1.

28
  
[They] had no knowledge of the refinements
Polyb 2 17 8–12.

29
  
were usually tall
This paragraph draws on Dio Sic 5 28 and 32.

30
  
A foolish story is told
If there is any truth in this, it could be that the Celts were invited to intervene in some internal quarrel in Clusium.

31
  
about ten thousand Romans faced thirty thousand Celts
Scullard, p. 103.

32
  
a rout with high casualties
Livy exaggerates the disaster for dramatic effect. From what followed, it seems clear that much of the army must have managed to escape.

33
  
Livy describes what happened next
Livy 5 39–49. He overdoes the damage caused by the Celts.

34
  
a strange ritual called
devotio For this interpretation see Ogilvie, p. 725. Also Livy 5 41.

35
  
Many public and private records
Livy 6 1.

36
  
It was the geese that saved them
Ibid., 5 47.

37
  
Juno’s sacred geese
Juno had no special interest in geese. The birds were probably those kept in the
auguraculum
, or space for augury, on the Capitol, where the mood of the gods was divined from the way the birds ate their food. See Ogilvie, p. 734; the story is “the authentic stuff of history.”
131
Insult was added
Livy 5 48 9.

38
  
barbarians may have gone, but not forever
See Oakley 1, pp. 360–65 for a discussion of “Gallic attacks on Rome between the Allia and Sentinum.” 132
king of the Visigoths, the fearsome Alaric
Alaric captured Rome in
A.D
. 410.

39
  
“at that moment an invasion”
Polyb 2 18 3.

40
  
All work was hurried
Livy 5 55. The story may be an ancient urban myth, invented to explain the haphazard layout of Rome’s drains.

41
  
work began in 378
Ibid., 6 32.

42
  
“giving the beholder the impression”
Dio of H 4 13 4.

9. Under the Yoke

Livy is the main source, with contributions by Cassius Dio, Cicero, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

  
1
  
the Caudine Forks
The opening section of this chapter discusses the
clades Caudiana
, the Caudine catastrophe, which is recounted in Livy 9 1.

  
2
  
The Consuls, pretty much half-naked
Ibid., 9 6 1–2.

  
3
  
“You are never without a reason”
Ibid., 9 11 6–7.

  
4
  
far from being grateful to the Samnites
Dio 8 36 21.

  
5
  
speaks of a
foedus Cic Invent 2 91–94.

  
6
  
in 319, a Roman general is recorded
CAH 7, pt. 2, p. 371.

  
7
  
“It is not inevitable”
Dio 8 36 21.

  
8
  
Some fifty-three patrician clans
Grant, p. 61.

  
9
  
“Very well,” shouted Sextius
Livy 6 35 8.

10
  
tribunes aborted the elections
Roman historians, including Livy, reported a five-year vacation of magistrates. This is most unlikely, and was probably proposed to correlate the disjunction between traditional dates in the early Republic and the accurate dates from the middle Republic onward.

11
  
reserved for patricians
The praetorship was opened to plebeians in 337.

12
  
“Camillus, conqueror of the Veian people”
Ovid 1 641–44.

13
  
“the liberty of the Roman People”
Livy 8 28 1. Livy claims that
nexum
was abolished, but he was probably overstating the case.

14
  
“Every man is the maker”
Sall
Epist ad Caesarem senem
, I.1.2. Napoleon famously made the same point when he was considering a candidate for the post of maréchal of France:
“A-t-il de la chance?”

15
  
his famous censorship of 312
See Livy 9 29 and Dio Sic 20 36.

16
  
In my opinion, the three most magnificent works
Dio of H 3 67 5.

17
  
resolutions of the Plebeian Council
Livy 8 12 15–17 writes that Quintus Publilius Philo passed such a law about the
concilium plebis
, but it seems more likely that Publilius recognized the validity of
concilium
resolutions, provided they received
patrum auctoritas
—that is, senatorial approval—and that the full measure was taken in 287. See Oakley 2, pp. 524–27.

18
  
“Our own commonwealth was based”
Cic Rep 2 1 2.

19
  
“not by abstract reasoning”
Polyb 6 10 13.

20
  
Titus Manlius
Livy 8 7 tells the story.

21
  
Janus, Jupiter, father Mars, Quirinus
Livy 8 9 6–8. It is uncertain whether this is an accurate citation of the ritual text, or invented by Livy. However, it would certainly have looked convincing to his readers, familiar as they were with the many ceremonies that framed their lives.

22
  
Did these episodes take place?
See CAH 7 2, p. 362.

23
  
the borders of Latium
“Old” Latium, smaller than today’s Lazio.

24
  
the extent of territory
CAH 7 2, p. 367.

25
  
According to a modern calculation
, CAH 7 2 353. Apparent precision masks clever guesswork.

26
  
If ever a landscape made its people
See Salmon pp. 14–27 for a fuller description of Samnium.

27
  
about 450,000 persons
Ibid.

28
  
They had their pubic hair shaved
Ath 12 518b.

29
  
The Samnites have a splendid law
Strabo 5 4 12.

30
  
the first-century poet Horace
Hor Car 3 6 39–41.

31
  
invented by Oscans
For the origins of gladiatorial contests, see Grant,
Gladiators
, pp. 19 and 55.

32
  
A short first war
Some modern authorities have argued that this war never took place, but see Oakley vol. 2 pp. 307–11.

33
  
“Let us pitch camp facing each other”
Livy 8 23 8–9.

34
  
greater number of troops contributed by the allies and the Latins
Ibid., 10 26 14.

35
  
A female deer
Livy 10 27 8–9.

36
  
“nearest run thing”
Thomas Creevey, Creevey Papers, p. 236 (London: John Murray, 1903).

37
  
followed his father’s example
Some modern opinion challenges the historicity of this
devotio;
however, there is abundant testimony for both of the Decius Mus
devotiones
, and it is beyond doubt that the younger Decius Mus fell at Sentinum. See Oakley 4, pp. 290–91.

38
  
They could carry on no longer
Livy 10 31 15.

39
  
For an individual Roman soldier
The paragraphs about the experience of battle are indebted to Randall Collins’s
Violence
, which summarizes much research about modern warfare. With caution, I have assumed that some basic findings can plausibly be applied to the emotions of a Roman legionary.

40
  
von Clausewitz’s fog of war
Carl von Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 2, chap. 2, paragraph 24.

41
  
Battles often have a rhythm
Collins, p. 40.

42
  
only a quarter of them actually attack
Ibid., pp. 44ff., regarding fighting in the Second World War. 166
A paralysis of terror
Ibid., p. 47.

43
  
about one-third of combatant soldiers
Ibid., p. 69. The percentages are based on a review of photographic evidence of Second World War fighting.

44
  
“in ancient and mediaeval warfare”
Ibid., p. 79.

45
  
The Romans look not so much
Polyb 6 24 8–9. 167
its territory had grown
See Oakley 4, p. 3.

46
  
twenty-five percent of all adult male citizens
CAH 7 pt. 2, pp. 383ff.

10. The Adventurer

Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius wrote lives of Alexander. Embedded inside the fanciful Greek Alexander Romance are quotations from the court day book covering the king’s last days. Plutarch is the main literary source for Pyrrhus.

  
1
  
What, exactly, was the matter is unknown
Some time after his death, it was alleged that Alexander had been poisoned. This is unlikely, because he survived for nearly a fortnight after being taken ill, and the ancient world almost certainly did not have access to very slow poisons. Unexpected deaths from disease were often wrongly put down to foul play.

  
2
  
“There will be funeral ‘games’ ”
Arr 7 26 3.

  
3
  
He would never have remained idle
Arr 7 1 4.

  
4
  
“to strive, to seek, to find”
The final line of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem
Ulysses
.

  
5
  
“The same wickedness”
Cic Rep 3 14 24.

  
6
  
killed its aged king, Priam
Readers will recall the Player’s speech in Hamlet act 2, scene 2, which describes the deed.

  
7
  
Alexander called to him in a dream
Plut Pyr 11 2.

  
8
  
his appearance “conveyed terror”
Ibid., 3 4–5.

  
9
  
sufferers from depression
Ibid., 3 4–5.

10
  
the king wore a bone or ivory denture
An alternative suggestion (see
Champion, p. 19) is that Pyrrhus had fused teeth, but these usually come only in pairs and not as a complete row of teeth.

11
  
naturally brilliant
Dio 9 40 3–4.

12
  
ate his heart away
Hom Il 1 491f.

13
  
The city was “leafy”
Hor Epist 1 16 11.

14
  
“mild winters”
Hor Car 2 6 17–18.