The republic of Cicero

BOOK II

I. Perceiving them all now eager to listen to him, Scipio thus began to speak. “It was old Cato, to whom as you know I was singularly attached, and whom I admired in the highest degree: to whom, either through the advice of both my parents, or from my own prepossession, I devoted myself entirely from my youth; whose conversation never could satiate me. Such was the experience of the man in public affairs, which he had for a long time successfully conducted in peace and war. His manner of speaking too, a facetiousness mixed with gravity: his constant desire also to improve himself and others; indeed his whole life in harmony with his maxims. He was wont to say, that the condition of our country was pre-eminent above all others for this cause. That among other people, individuals generally had respectively constituted the government by their laws and by their institutes, as Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedemon. At Athens, where the changes were frequent, at first Theseus, then Draco, then Solon, then Clisthenes; afterwards many others. Finally exhausted and prostrated, it had been upheld by that learned man Demetrius, of Phalera. But that the constitution of our republic was not the work of one, but of many; and had not been established in the life of one man, but during several generations and ages. For he said so powerful a mind had never existed; from which nothing had escaped; nor that all minds collected into one, could foresee so much at one time, as to comprehend all things without the aid of practice and time. For which reason, as he was wont, so shall my discourse now repeat the origin of the people; for I have a pleasure in using the very words of Cato. But I shall more easily follow up my proposition in describing our own republic to you, in its infancy, its growth, in its adult, and its present firm and robust state; than if I were to create an imaginary one, as Socrates is made to do in Plato.

II. When all had approved of this, he proceeded. “What beginning, therefore, have we of the establishment of a republic so illustrious and so known to you all, as the origin of the building of this city by Romulus, born of his father Mars? For let us concede to the common opinion of men, especially as it is not only well established, but also wisely recorded by our ancestors, that those who have deserved well of us on account of our common interest, be deemed not only to have possessed a divine genius, but also a divine origin. He therefore after his birth, with Remus his brother, is said to have been ordered to be exposed on the Tiber, by the Alban king, Amulius, apprehensive lest his kingdom should be shaken. In which place, having been sustained by the teats of a wild beast, the shepherds took him, and brought him up in the labour and cultivation of the fields. It is said, that when he had grown up, he was distinguished above the rest by his corporeal strength, and the daringness of his mind. So that all who then inhabited the fields, where at this day stands the city, obeyed him willingly and without dissent. And being constituted their leader, that we may now come from fables to facts, with a strong force he took Alba-longa, a powerful and well constructed city in those times, and put the king Amulius to death.

III. Having acquired which glory, he is said first to have auspiciously thought of building a city, and of establishing a government. In regard to the situation of the city, a circumstance which is most carefully to be considered by him, who endeavours to establish a permanent government; he chose it with incredible skill. For neither did he remove to the sea, although it was a very easy thing for him with his forces, to march through the territory of the Rutulians and Aborigines; neither would he build a city at the mouth of the Tiber, to which place the king Ancus led a colony many years after. For he perceived, with an admirable foresight, that maritime situations were not proper for those cities which were founded in the hope of continuance, or with a view to empire. First, because maritime towns were not only exposed to many dangers, but to unseen ones. For the ground over which an expected enemy moves, as well as an unexpected one, announces his approach beforehand by many indications: by sound itself of a peculiarly tumultuous kind. No enemy can make a march, however forced, without our not only knowing him to be there, but even who he is, and whence he comes. But a maritime enemy and a naval force may be before you, ere any one can suspect him to be come. Nor even when he does come, does he carry before him any indication of who he is, or from whence he comes, or even what he wants. Finally by no kind of sign can it be discerned or determined whether he is a friend or an enemy.

IV. In maritime cities, too, a sort of debasing and changeable manners prevail. New languages and new customs are mingled together, and not only productions but manners are imported from abroad; so that nothing remains entire of the pristine institutions. Even they who inhabit those cities are not faithful to their homes, but with capricious inclinations and longings are carried far from them; and although their persons remain, their minds are rambling and wandering abroad. Nor did Carthage or Corinth, long before shaken, owe their ruin to any thing more than to the unsettled scattering of the citizens, who abandoned the study of agriculture and arms through their cupidity of gain and love of roaming. Many pernicious excitements too to luxury, are brought over the sea to cities by commercial importation or by conquest. Even the very amenity of the situation suggests many costly and enervating allurements. What I have said of Corinth, I know not if I may as truly say of all Greece; for almost all Peloponnessus lies on the sea, and except the Phliuntians, there are none whose lands do not extend to the coast. Beyond Peloponnessus, the Enianes, the Dorians, and the Dolopians are the only people in the interior. What shall I say of the islands of Greece? which surrounded with billows, float about as it were with the institutions and manners of their cities. These things as I said before, relate to ancient Greece; but of the colonies brought by the Greeks into Asia, Thrace, Italy, Sicily, and Africa, except Magnesia alone, which of them is not washed by the ocean? Thus a part of the Grecian shores seemed to be joined to the lands of the barbarians. For among the barbarians themselves, none were a maritime people, except the Etruscans and the Carthagenians; the one for the sake of commerce, the other for the sake of piracy. A most obvious cause of the evils and revolutions of Greece, arising from the vices of these maritime cities, which awhile ago I slightly touched upon. Nevertheless among these evils there is a great convenience. The products of every distant nation can be wafted to the city you inhabit; and in return the productions of your own lands can be sent or carried into whatever countries you choose.

V. Who then more inspiredly than Romulus could secure all the maritime conveniences, and avoid all the defects? placing the city on the banks of a perennial river, broadly flowing with an equal course to the sea. By which the city might receive what it wanted from the ocean, and return whatever was superfluous. Receiving by the same channel all things essential to the wants and the refinements of life, not only from the sea, but likewise from the interior. So that it appears to me, he had foreseen this city, at some period, would be the seat and capital of a mighty empire: for a city placed in any other part of Italy would not easily have been able to acquire such a powerful influence.

VI. As to the native defences of the city, who is so unobservant as not to have them marked and fixed in his mind? Such is the alignment and direction of the wall, which by the wisdom of Romulus, as well of succeeding kings, was bounded on every part by lofty and craggy hills: so that the only entrance, which was between the Esquiline and the Quirinal hills, was defended by a huge mound, and a very wide ditch. The citadel, surrounded by this craggy and seemingly hewn rock, had such a gallant position, that in that furious invasion of the terrible Gauls, it remained safe and intact. He choose also a place abounding in springs, and salubrious even in a pestilent region. For there are hills which while they enjoy the breezes, at the same time throw a cool shade upon the vallies.

VII. These things were done too with great celerity. For he not only founded a city, which he ordered to be called Rome, from his own name; but to establish it, and strengthen the power of the people and his kingdom, he adopted a strange and somewhat clownish plan, but worthy of a great man, whose providence extended far into futurity. When the Sabine virgins, descended from respectable families, were come to Rome to see the games, whose first anniversary he had then ordered to be celebrated in the circus, he ordered them to be seized during the sports, and gave them in marriage to the most honourable families. For which cause, when the Sabines had made war upon the Romans, and when the success of the battle was various and doubtful, he struck a league with Tatius, king of the Sabines, at the entreaty of the very matrons who had been seized: in consequence of which he admitted the Sabines into the city: and mutually having embraced each others sacred rites, he associated their king with him in the government.

VIII. After the death however of Tatius, all the power came back into his hands: although he had admitted some chiefs into the royal council with Tatius, who were called fathers, on account of the affection borne to them. He also divided the people into three tribes, named after himself, after Tatius, and after Lucumon, a companion of Romulus, who had been slain in the Sabine war: and into thirty curia, which curia he called by the names of those from among the Sabine virgins seized, at whose entreaties the peace and league had been formed. But although these things were done before the death of Tatius, yet after that event, his government became much better established, aided by the authority and counsel of the fathers.

IX. In the which he saw and judged as Lycurgus at Sparta had done, a little while before him: that states were better governed by individual command and royal power, if the authority of some of the better class were added to the energy of that kind of government. Thus sustained, and as it were propped up by the senatorial authority, he carried on many wars very successfully with his neighbours; and appropriating to himself no part of the spoil, he never ceased to enrich the citizens. At that time Romulus paid in most things attention to auspices, a custom we still retain, and greatly advantageous to the republic. For he built the city under the observance of auspices at the very beginning of the republic; and in the establishment of all public affairs, he chose an augur from each of the tribes to assist him in the auspices. He also had the common people assigned as clients to the principal men, the utility of which measure I will afterwards consider. Fines were paid in sheep and cattle: for then all property consisted in flocks, and in possessions of lands, whence the terms pecuniary12 and landholders13 were derived. He did not attempt to govern by severity or the infliction of punishments.

X. When Romulus had reigned thirty-seven years, and had established those two excellent foundations of the state, the auspices and the senate, he obtained this great meed: for when he had disappeared upon a sudden obscuration of the sun, he was deemed to have been placed among the number of the gods. A belief which no mortal had ever inspired without the greatest pre-eminence in virtue. And this is most to be admired in Romulus, that others who are said to have been deified out of the mortal state, lived in the less civilized ages of man, when the proneness to fiction was great, and the unenlightened were easily led to believe in it. But during the period of Romulus, not quite six hundred years ago, we know that learning and literature existed, and that the ancient errors peculiar to the uncultivated ages of mankind were removed. For if Rome, according to an investigation of the annals of the Greeks, was built in the second year of the seventh olympiad; the reign of Romulus occurred at that period when Greece was full of poets and musicians; and when but little faith would be given to fabulous stories, unless they were concerning very ancient things. For one hundred and eight years after Lycurgus ordained laws to be written, the first olympiad was established: which through a mistake in the name, some have thought to be founded by Lycurgus. Homer, however, by those who take the lowest period, is made to precede Lycurgus about thirty years. From which it may be gathered that Homer flourished many years before Romulus. So that there was scarce room in so intelligent an age, and amid so many learned men, for any one to establish fictions. Antiquity sometimes has received fables crudely devised, but that age already refined, and especially deriding improbable events, has rejected * * *