HOW THE GEOGRAPHY OF ROME INFLUENCED ITS HISTORY

The city of Rome was built on the left bank of the Tiber river during the iron age for a number of important reasons. First of all the left side of the Tiber was more developed than the right side, in that it contains two important roads: the Via Salaria, that allowed the transportation of the salt to the North of the Italian peninsula. As a matter of fact the salt was used to preserve food and, in the republican age to pay the soldiers, practice that gave birth to the word " salary" that is still used today in English.Furthermore,the left side was flanked by another important road, the Via Campana and allowed the Romans to be in contact with the Greeks of the south of Italy, long time before that the Appian way was built.
The geography of Rome was also influenced by its island, the Tiberinian Island that allowed the Romans to connect it to both sides of the Tiber by two bridges during the Republican age,the Cestius and the Fabricius bridge.On the other hand, a little bit at the south of the Island, the water bed of the Tiber was very low and people and animals could cross the other side of the river without the need of a bridge.
The first inhabitants of Rome settled on the left side of the river because from the Palatine and the Capitol hill they could control the traffic of goods and ships.the First city dwellers used these hills also to defend themselves from the attacks coming from other hills and from the river itself.For all this reasons in antiquity Rome's geographical position was better than the geographical position of Athens. In fact, Rome was not too exposed to the attacks from the sea, since it is far from the mouth of the Tiber 18 miles.Moreover, the major filter of Rome was the creation of its first colony, the castrum of Ostia, that was founded in the fourth century BCE to stop eventual attacks coming from the sea. Athens, instead, faces directly the sea; its port, the Piraeus, was connected by walls to the city, elements that instead of making Athens safer, made it more exposed to the attacks of the Persians first and of the Spartans later.

ROME SIGHTING: DO WE KNOW WHERE THE ENGLISH WORD MISTER COMES FROM?

Every language in the world has a number of such popular words that they are used several time a day. One of this word is the word "Mister".This word before belonging to the latin it was an Etruscan expression and is connected with Servius Tullius.Outside of Rome there is the tomb Francois of Vulci that belonged to an Etruscan aristocratic family:its frescoes, however, are preserved in Rome in the residence of the cardinal Albani, who detached the frescoes from the tomb in the 1700s and wanted to have them inside his mansion. The frescoes show the epic war between some Etruscan aristocrats. The panels show Caele and Aule Vibenna who murder a man called Tarchna (maybe identified as Tarquinius Priscus) and help Macstarna march to conquer Rome.The fresco episodes are confimed by Livy who in the first book describes the assassination of Lucumo, that is to say the first Etruscan king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus. Scholars have identified as Macstarna the figure of Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome. The name Macstarna is a very interesting one because it gave birth to the word Magister (whose root is the word Magis) and developed into the English word Master and Mister,and it means a "person who has authority". Another source that can confirm that Mastarna can be identified as Servius Tullius was the famous speech of the emperor Claudius who in the year 51 AD spoke in the Senate on the importance of the Etruscan traditions that Macstarna was a nickname of Servius. His speech is still preserved in the bronzed tablets of Lyon (Tabulae Lionensis).

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AUGURS IN ROME

The writer Livy, at the moment of introducing the second king of Rome Numa Pompilius in I. 18, describes the ceremony of appointment of Numa as new king after the ritual performed by an augur. The augurs were important in ancient Rome because they were an inheritance from the Etruscan civilization and had the role of interpreting the will of gods by studying the flight of birds. An episode in which the Romans used birdwatching to derive good or bad omens was when Romulus and Remus observed the flight of the vultures from the Palatine and from the Aventine.As it happened with the Pontifical college, at the beginning of the republican age the patricians held the office fo themselves only; by 300 BC the office of augur was open top the plebeians too. Augurs are often represented in the Etruscan tombs and in some Roman reliefs with their typical curved staff called lituus. With the lituus they used to delimit the area in which a temple could be built but also they could see if the omen was good or not. Taking auspices and asking the gods about good or bad signs was part of the broader idea of the Pax deorum, in which the ancient community asked the favors of the Gods for its daily activity, from sailing to trade in a foreign land to the choice of the right moment to begin a war.And again Livy describes the role of a famous augur who lived under Tarquinius Priscus: when Tarquinius wanted to increase the number of the equestrian centuries, Navius opposed him declaring that the king should have not taken this decision, because the omens were not propitious. As Tarquinius did not believe in Navius divination powers, he asked the augur, as a proof of his powers, to cut a stone with a razor. Navius did cut the stone with the razors and after this event the power of this priesthood dramatically raised in Rome.

THE PONTIFICAL COLLEGE IN ANCIENT ROME

Like Livy, I am fascinated by the etymology of some Latin words and by their semantic development. I have chosen to analyze the term " Pontifex" to have an idea of the most important religious priest in ancient Rome. In the kings' age the King was at the same time Pontifex Maximus but in the republican age this religious component of the Roman civilization was mostly assigned to the Patricians.The Pontifex maximus lived in the Domus Publica and was the main expert of the Religious rituals.At the beginning of the Roman empire Augustus merged within his attributes this function and the famous statue called " Augustus of Via Labicana" located in the Vatican museum, shows him with a long toga and with the veiled head performing religious duties. What is however interesting is that the name pontifex is connected with the Sublican bridge, that was the oldest bridge built in early Rome to connect the Etruscan and the Roman territories. The etymology of Pontifex really means " Bridge maker " and probably stands as an original duty of the Pontifex to be the guardian of the bridge.One of the religious functions of the Sublican bridge (whose etymology is Oscan and means "bridge made of beams") was the throwing into the the Tiber of puppets called "Argei" who were the memory of the human sacrifices made at the beginning of the iron age. In addition, the name "Pontifex" is today one of the nine attributes of the Pope of the Roman Catholic church and this testifies the desire of the Church to be considered the heir of the Roman civilization.

DO WE HAVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF ROMULEAN ROME?

Livy in the first book of his History (I,7) writes that Romulus, after having killed Remus "fortified the Palatine Hill". The act of securing a hill was provided in the ancient world through the construction of a wall. Until the 1990s all the scholars knew that Rome had originally two walls: the so called " Servian Walls", that were built after the sack of the Gauls in the year 384 BC using the Tufa from the already conquered Veii, and the Aurelian walls built in the year 270 AD, almost at the end of the Roman civilization. Excavations carried out by the Professor Andrea Carandini ( Who was also my Professor at the University of Rome) revealed that also the Romulean Rome had a wall. As a matter of fact Carandini discovered remains of a wall between the Roman tabernae located in the Via Nova of the Roman Forum, and the Arch of Titus.The wall was built in ashlar masonry and was composed of Cappellaccio tufa blocks,which is a stone that comes from the quarries of the Alban Hills.
Moreover, as common in Livy though,the Patavinian author describes two versions of the death of Romulus: the first king of Rome may have been taken away up to heaven by a cloud while parading his troops in the Campus Martius or he may have been killed by the Roman senators.Ancient writers such as Festus and Dionisius of Halicarnassus used to refer to the Lapis Niger as the place where Romulus may have been executed by the Senators he had just created. The Lapis Niger is indeed a fascinating monument shrouded by mystery.It is located in front of the steps of the Curia Julia in the Forum and is marked by a fenced area that has a grayer and darker colored pavement. It is also composed by an underground section with a three sided altar; a stone is part of the Lapis and contains the earliest know inscription in Rome. The inscription is carved with a zig zag path recalling the way in which the oxen plows the land and it is called a bustrofedic inscription.The inscription is a lex sacra and warns everybody to not violate that place,under penalty of being sacrificed to the Gods. During the excavation of the Forum in the early 1900s by Giacomo Boni, also a fragment of a cup with the name "rex" inscribed was found. But all this does not tell us much about Romulus at all and in this second piece of evidence, the literary tradition can not be confirmed by the archaeological discoveries.

Latin Writers in Ancient Rome

In early Rome, noble family members felt themselves committed to working to enhance the prestige of their families and did not dislike to write historical accounts when they retired. The problem with this kind of texts is that the author's opinion is greatly influenced by the events in which he was involved.
An example of writers involved in the politics of their times is Tacitus, who lived under Vespasian. He entered political life, as quaestor. He advanced steadily through the cursus honorum, becoming praetor in 88. He served in the provinces from ca. 89 to ca. 93 either in command of a legion or in a civilian post.Nothing of this happened to Livy, who did not cover any public magistracy and was not involved in any public career.Therefore, what makes original Livy's personality is his lack of influence from a public role he never really had. If we assume that Livy wrote his histories because he met with Augustus, we make a big mistake. His main aim was at finding examples of moral characters that could be recalled again to fight against the moral decay of his time.Yet, this idea presumes that the period in which he was living had two faces like Janus: the Augustan age contained the germs of the decay but it was considered at the same time the peak of the Roman civilization per se. And in the preface of his Histories he writes that the study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind, because in history the characters exemplify - using a greek word- topoi, that is to say examples of human behavior, good and bad. Livy was not writing history as modern historians do, that is writing a philological and detailed account of the events. He is aware that he may use the etiological accounts of the origins of Rome to illustrate the features of the Roman characters.

Where did the Romans live?

When we walk across the Roman ruins, we always see the glory that was Rome, that is to say, temples, Basilicas, statues and reliefs. But, when we come to describe the private life of the Romans , we may feel in discomfort, because we do not know so much of the domestic architecture.
Only Pompeii and Ostia in part supply the information we need: Pompeii will always be popular for its aristocratic domus, and Ostia for its condos and apartments. Rome was similar to Ostia in terms of private architecture, since it had the big domus only on the Palatine Hill or outside of Rome, in the consular roads. A well example of private multi storey house is preserved in the Insula of the Aracoeli, located at the bottom of the Capitol hill. This insula can be seen from one corner of Venice square and shows the practical way in which the Romans lived. At the bottom there was a store and on the first and second floor the apartment where the owner of the store lived with his family.