THE ANCIENT ROMANS

Opposite

The Colosseum seen from the Palatine Hill. The columns of the Temple of Venus and Roma are in the foreground.

Today, if you stand on the Palatine Hill, where the Roman emperors built their palaces, and look towards the Arch of Titus and the Colosseum, it is difficult to imagine how the area must have appeared at the dawn of history. What would it have looked like to Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome, in 753 BC? His view would have been partially obscured bytheVelian Hill, which has long since been flattened, but where the Colosseum now stands he would have seen an open area of marshland surrounded by a range of low hills.

In the area where the Colosseum now stands, in a region known as Latium, a small stream flowed westwards down the broad Labican valley, which was flanked on the north and south by two of Rome’s famous seven hills - the Esquiline and the Caelian respectively Finding its course blocked by the Palatine and its northern spur, the Velian Hill, the stream was diverted southwards between the Caelian and Palatine. It then joined another stream and flowed along the southern edge of the Palatine to reach the River Tiber. The broad, low-lying flood-plain, where the Labican Stream turned south, was the catchment area for several rivulets trickling down the hills, and it was on the hills overlooking this marsh that the city of Rome was established.

The urban development of Rome was a slow process that began in the late Bronze Age, in about 1000 BC. Archaeological evidence, including burial remains, suggests that there were a few small settlements of thatched huts on the Palatine and neighbouring hills at this time. By the early Iron Age there was a substantial population living there, with further development northwards in the Forum Valley and on the Quirinal Hill. These settlements occupied a strategic position in relation to the River Tiber, which formed a natural border on an important route between the regions of Etruria to the north and Campania to the south. The description pontifex maximus (chief bridge-builder), a post originally held by the head priest of the city of Rome and a title subsequently adopted first by the emperors and then, from the beginning of the Christian era, all the popes, underlines the point.

While the hilltop villages continued to grow, an urban population began to colonize the valleys, as the town planners and engineers decided to drain and reclaim the marshlands. Early inscriptions indicate Rome’s Latin origins but the Etruscan influence on the city, particularly in the religious sphere, was also substantial. There had been other incursions, too - from the Sabine hill tribes to the east (reflected in the legend of the rape of the Sabine women) and from Greek colonists to the south.

For about a hundred years, from around 616 BC, Rome came under Etruscan domination and the region was ruled by three elected kings. The first was an Etruscan, Tarquinius Priscus. He was succeeded by his son-in-law Servius Tullius, who was a Latin, and he was followed by Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), who was either the son or the grandson of Tarquinius Priscus - these rulers are semi-legendary and what little is known about them comes mainly from the Roman historian Livy (59 BC-AD 17).

In 510 BC Tarquinius Superbus was deposed and expelled from the city by a group of Roman aristocrats following a scandal involving his son Sextus, who raped a woman named Lucretia (an incident that has since stirred the imagination of many an artist looking for an ancient classical subject with erotic overtones). With his supporters, among them Lars Porsenna, Tarquinius Superbus tried to retake Rome several limes, and may have succeeded, briefly, but he was repelled for the last time after a Latin victory at Aricia in 506 BC.

Etruscan rule was over but a process of urban and civic development had begun that the Romans would continue for the next thousand years. By the time they were driven out of Rome the invaders had left behind the concept of the city-state and had built the following: stone houses with tiled roofs; a system of paved roads; a main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, which was fed by a network of underground drains coming down from the hills; the Pons Sublicus, which was the first bridge over the Tiber; the Forum Romanum, a city-centre market place devoted to commerce and politics; and several places of worship, including the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitol, which was the largest building in Italy at the time. They probably also left behind a race track of some kind for chariot-racing. Strangely, though they taught the Romans how to write, with a modified form of alphabet borrowed from the Greeks, they never passed on their language. Etruscan died out and is an intriguing linguistic anomaly for it seems not to be related to any other known language, while Latin flourished as the root of several dialects that eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and French.