Roma

by Steven Saylor

  But the elder Potitius was only beginning his tirade. “And you, my son—you go on these raids with them. You join in the looting!”

  “I travel with Romulus and Remus as their haruspex, father. At river crossings, I ask the numina for safe passage. Before each battle, I take the auspices, reading the entrails of birds to determine if the day is propitious for victory. During storms, I study the lightning for signs of the gods’ will. These are the things I was trained to do, during my schooling in Tarquinia.”

  “Before you became a haruspex, you were a priest of Hercules, my son. First and foremost, you are the keeper of the Ara Maxima.”

  “I know that, Father. But consider: Hercules was the son of a god, and a hero to the people. So are Romulus and Remus.”

  “No! The twins are nothing more than orphans raised by a pig farmer and his whore of a wife. They’re more like Cacus than like Hercules.”

  “Father!”

  “Think, my son. Hercules rescued the people and moved on, asking for nothing. Cacus killed and stole without remorse. Which of those two do your beloved twins more closely resemble?”

  Potitius gasped at the recklessness of his father’s words. If he himself had ever harbored such thoughts, he had banished them once he made the decision to stand by the twins and to bind his fortunes to theirs.

  “And now,” his father went on, “they plan to encircle a good portion of Roma with a wall, even higher and stronger than the pickets that surrounded the great house of Amulius at Alba.”

  “But surely, Father, a wall is a good thing. Roma will become a proper city. If we’re attacked, people can find safety inside the walls.”

  “And why should anyone wish to attack the good, honest people of Roma—except for the fact that the twins have wrought bloodshed and misery on others, and brought home more loot than they have any need for? There are two ways of making a way in the world, my son. One is the way that your ancestors pursued—trading with others peacefully and fairly, offering hospitality to strangers, accumulating no more wealth then is needed to live comfortably, and diligently seeking to offend neither men nor gods. People must barter for the things they need; Roma provided a safe, honest place to do so, and thus it was to everyone’s advantage to leave Roma unmolested. And because we did not pile up riches, we did not attract the envy of greedy, violent men.

  “But there is another way of living, the way of men like Amulius, and of Romulus and Remus—to take by force that which other men have accumulated by hard work. Yes, their way leads quickly to great wealth—and just as surely to bloodshed and ruin. It is all very well to bully and rob your neighbors, then use the treasure you’ve stolen to pay strangers to help you bully and rob yet more neighbors. But what will happen when those neighbors unite and come looking for vengeance, or a stronger bully appears on the scene and comes looking to steal the twins’ treasure?

  “Ah, but if that happens, you say, there will be a wall to keep us safe. What nonsense! Did the twins learn nothing from their victory over Amulius? Did walls keep Amulius safe? Did his mercenary warriors save him? Did all his treasure buy him even a single breath when Romulus cut his throat?”

  Potitius shook his head. “All you say would make perfect sense, Father, except for one great difference between Amulius and the twins. Amulius lost the favor of the gods; fortune turned against him. But the gods love Romulus and Remus.”

  “You mean to say that you love them, my son!”

  “No, father. I speak not as their friend, but as a priest and a haruspex. The gods love the twins. It is a manifest fact. In every battle, especially a battle to the death, there must be a winner and a loser. Romulus and Remus always win. That could not happen unless the gods willed it to be so. You speak with scorn of the path they’ve chosen, but I tell you that their path is blessed by the gods. How else can you account for their success? That is why I follow them, and why I use all the skills I possess to shed light on the way ahead of them.”

  His father, unable to refute these words, fell silent.

  The twins agreed that a wall should be built, but they did not agree about its location.

  Romulus favored a wall that would encircle the Palatine. Remus thought the wall should be built around the Aventine, further south. Day after day, Potitius listened to them argue.

  “Your reasons are purely sentimental, brother” said Remus. “We were raised here on the Palatine, therefore you wish to make it the center of Roma. But no one lives on the Palatine except a few herders and their livestock. Why build a wall around a city of sheep? Or do you intend to drive away the herders and cover the Palatine with buildings? I say, leave this hill wild and open, as it was when we were boys, and build up the city elsewhere. South of the Spinon is the natural place to expand, close to the riverfront. The marketplace, the salt bins, and the slaughtering yards are already pushing against the foot of the Aventine. That is the hill we should encircle with a wall, upon which we should begin to build a proper city.”

  “How perfectly reasonable you sound, brother!” Romulus laughed. The two brothers, along with Potitius and Pinarius, were strolling across the Palatine. The sky was dazzling blue with white clouds heaped against the horizon. The hill was covered with green grass and spangled with spring flowers, but there was not a single grazing sheep to be seen; the sheep had all been gathered into their pens, which were adorned with juniper boughs and wreaths of laurel leaves. This was the day of the Palilia, the festival of the goddess Pales. Here and there, streamers of smoke trailed into the sky. Each family had set up its own altar to Pales, and upon these raised stones they were burning various substances: for purification, handfuls of sulfur, which emitted sky-blue smoke, followed by twigs of fragrant rosemary, laurel, and Sabine juniper, then an offering compounded of beanstalks mixed with the ashes of calves already burned, sprinkled with horse blood. With juniper branches, the shepherds wafted the smoke across the penned animals; the sacred smoke of Pales would keep the herd healthy and fertile. Afterward, the shepherds would feast on millet cakes and drink bowls of warm milk sprinkled with purple must.

  “Perfectly reasonable,” Romulus said again. “But this is not about reason, brother. It’s about creating a city fit for two kings. You say I favor the Palatine because I’m sentimental. Indeed, I am! How can you walk across this hill on the day of the Palilia and not feel the specialness of this place? There was a reason the gods left our cradle on the slope of the Palatine. Truly, this is the very heart of Roma! It’s around the Palatine that we must build a wall, to honor the home that nurtured us. The gods will bless our enterprise.”

  “Ridiculous!” snapped Remus, with a harshness that startled them all. “If you can’t listen to reason, how do you expect to rule a city?”

  Romulus strained to keep an even tone. “I’ve done a good enough job so far, brother, building an army and leading them in battle.”

  “Running a city will be a different matter. Are you such a fool you can’t see that?”

  “You dare to call me a fool, Remus? I wasn’t the fool who got himself captured by Amulius and needed rescuing—”

  “How dare you throw that in my face! Or do you enjoy reminding me of the hours I spent suffering, needlessly, because you wasted time here in Roma—”

  “Unfair, brother! Untrue!”

  “And because you strangled Amulius, you wear the crown every day, even though you promised it would be shared equally between us.”

  “Is that what this is about? Take it! Wear it!” Romulus lifted the iron crown from his head, cast it to the ground, and stalked away. Pinarius ran after him.

  When they were boys, the twins had never argued. Now they seemed to argue all the time, and their arguments grew more and more heated. From childhood, Romulus had been the more headstrong and impulsive, and Remus had been the one to restrain his brother. But the torture he had received at the hands of Amulius had wrought changes in Remus. His body had never fully recovered; he still walked with a slight limp. More than that, hi
s even temper had deserted him; he had become as quick to anger as his brother. Romulus had changed as well since Alba. He remained as high-spirited as before but was more disciplined and purposeful, and more self-assured and arrogant than ever.

  At Alba, Remus had suffered the tortures of Amulius; Romulus had enjoyed the glow of triumph and the satisfaction of rescuing his brother. One had been a victim and the other a hero. This disparity had created a rift between them, small at first but constantly growing. Potitius knew that the argument he had just witnessed was not about the wall, but about something that had gone terribly wrong between the twins, which neither could put a name to or knew how to set right.

  The castoff crown had landed at Potitius’s feet. He stooped to lift it from the grass, and was surprised at how heavy it was. He offered it to Remus, who took it but did not place it on his head.

  “This matter of the wall must be settled once and for all,” said Remus quietly, staring at the crown. “What do you think, Potitius?” He saw the troubled look on his friend’s face and laughed ruefully. “No, I’m not asking you to take sides. I’m asking your advice as a haruspex. How might we settle this matter by consulting the will of the gods?”

  As quick as a blink, a shadow passed over them. Potitius looked up to see a vulture high above. “I think I know a way,” he said.

  The contest was held the next day. It was not Potitius who called it a contest, but the twins, for clearly, that was how they thought of it. To Potitius, it was a very solemn rite, calling upon all the wisdom he had learned in Tarquinia.

  The rite was conducted simultaneously upon each of the contesting hills. Romulus stood at a high spot on the Palatine, looking north; beside him was Pinarius, in his role as a priest of Hercules. Remus, with Potitius, stood on the Aventine, looking south. At each site, an iron blade had been driven upright into the earth, so that by its shadow the exact moment of midday could be determined. A mark had been made in the ground a set distance from the blade, to mark by the blade’s moving shadow the passing of a precise measure of time. Within that span of time, each brother and his priest would watch the sky for vultures in flight. The priests would keep count of each vulture that was sighted by scraping a furrow in the dirt with a spear.

  Why vultures? Potitius had explained his reasoning to the brothers: “The vulture is sacred to Hercules, who was always joyful at the sight of one. Among all creatures, it is the least harmful; it damages neither crops, nor fruit trees, nor cattle. It never kills or hurts any living thing, but preys only upon carrion, and even then it will not prey upon other birds; whereas eagles, hawks, and owls will attack and kill their own kind. Of all birds, it is the most rarely seen, and few men claim ever to have seen its young. Because of this, the Etruscans believe that vultures come from some other world. Therefore, let it be the sighting of vultures that determines the will of heaven in situating the city of Roma.”

  Midday arrived. Upon the Aventine, Remus raised his arm and pointed. “There’s one!”

  Potitius suppressed a smile. His training as a haruspex had taught him to recognize every sort of bird at a great distance. “I believe that is a hawk, Remus.”

  Remus squinted. “So it is.”

  They continued to watch. The time seemed to pass very slowly.

  “I see one, over there,” said Potitius. Remus followed his gaze and nodded. Potitius pressed his spear to the ground and scraped a furrow.

  “And there’s another!” cried Remus. Potitius agreed, and scraped a second furrow.

  So it went, until the shadow of the blade reached the mark that signaled the end of the contest. There were six furrows in the ground, to mark the six vultures seen by Remus. He smiled and clapped his hands and seemed pleased. Potitius agreed that it was a considerable number and boded well.

  They descended from the Aventine. They were to meet Romulus and Pinarius at the footbridge over the Spinon, but after a long wait, Remus became impatient. He headed for the Stairs of Cacus, with Potitius following him. As Remus ascended, he tripped on some of the steps. Potitius noted that his friend’s limp was very bad that day.

  They found Romulus and Pinarius sitting on a fallen tree not far from the spot where they had kept watch on the Palatine. The two of them were laughing and conversing, obviously in high spirits.

  “We were to meet at the Spinon,” said Remus. “Why are you still here?”

  Romulus rose. He smiled broadly. “Why should the king of Roma leave the very center of his kingdom? I told you that the Palatine is the heart of Roma, and today the gods have made it clear that they agree.”

  “What are saying?”

  “Go see for yourself.” Romulus pointed to the place where Pinarius had marked furrows in the ground.

  When Potitius saw the number of furrows, he drew a sharp breath. “Impossible!” he whispered.

  There were so many furrows that they could not be numbered at a glance. Remus counted them aloud. “…ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve!” He turned to confront Romulus. “Are you saying that you saw twelve vultures, brother?”

  “Indeed, I did.”

  “Not sparrows, not eagles, not hawks?”

  “Vultures, my brother. The bird most sacred to Hercules, and most rare. Within the allotted measure of time, I saw and counted twelve vultures in the sky.”

  Remus opened his mouth to say something, then shut it, dumbfounded. Potitius stared at Pinarius. “Is this true, cousin? You verified the count with your own eyes? You made each of these furrows in the earth? You performed the ritual openly and honestly before the gods, as befits a priest of Hercules?”

  Pinarius stared back at him coldly. “Of course, cousin. All was done in a proper manner. Romulus saw twelve vultures, and I made twelve marks. How many vultures did Remus see?”

  If Pinarius was lying, then Romulus was lying as well, deceiving his own brother and smiling as he did so. Potitius looked at Remus; his friend’s jaw quivered and he blinked rapidly. Since his torture by Amulius, Remus’s face was sometimes subject to a violent twitching, but this was something else. Remus was fighting back tears. Shaking his head, unable to speak, he hurriedly walked away, limping badly.

  “How many did Remus see?” Pinarius asked again.

  “Six,” whispered Potitius.

  Pinarius nodded. “Then the will of the gods is clear. Do you not agree, cousin?”

  When Romulus later took him aside and asked for his counsel, as a haruspex, regarding the making of the city boundaries, Potitius resisted him. He stopped short of accusing Romulus of lying, but Romulus read his thought. Never admitting deceit, he dismissed Potitius’s doubts about the counting of the vultures. There had been a disagreement, the disagreement had to be settled somehow, it had been settled, and now they must all move on.

  By subtle flattery, Romulus convinced Potitius that his participation was essential to the establishment of the city. There was a right way and a wrong way to do such a thing, and surely, for the sake of the people of Roma and their descendents, all should be done in accordance with the will of the gods—and who but Potitius could reliably divine their will? Romulus stated his earnest desire that Remus should perform an equal share of the ritual, and persuaded Potitius to play peacemaker between them.

  Thanks to Potitius, when the day arrived to establish the pomerium—the sacred boundary of the new city—all was done properly, and both twins took part.

  The ritual was performed in accordance with ancient traditions handed down from the Etruscans. At the place which Potitius determined to be the exact center of the Palatine, and thus the center of the new city, Romulus and Remus broke ground and dug a deep pit, using a spade they passed back and forth. All those who wished to be citizens came forward one by one and cast a handful of dirt into the pit, saying, “Here is a handful of dirt from…” and speaking the name of the place they came from. Those who had lived in Roma for generations performed the ritual as well as those who were newcomers, and the mixing of the soil symbolized the melding of the citiz
enry. Even the father of Potitius, despite his reservations about the twins, took part in the ceremony, casting into the pit a handful of dirt he had scooped from the ground before the threshold of his family’s hut.

  When the pit was filled, a stone altar was placed in the soil. Potitius called upon the sky-god Jupiter, father of Hercules, to look down upon the foundation of the city. Romulus and Remus invited Mavors and Vesta to pay witness—the war god rumored to be their father and the hearth goddess to whom their reputed mother, Rhea Silvia, had been consecrated.

  Ahead of time, the twins had circled the Palatine and decided upon the best course for an encircling network of fortifications. Now they descended to the foot of the hill, where a bronze plough had been hitched to a yoke drawn by a white bull and a white cow. Taking turns, the brothers ploughed a continuous furrow to mark the boundary of the new city. While one plowed, the other walked beside him and wore the iron crown. Romulus began the furrow; Remus took the last turn and joined the furrow’s end to its beginning.

  The throng that had followed every step of their progress cheered, laughed, and wept with joy. The brothers lifted their weary arms to heaven, then turned to each other and embraced. At that moment, it seemed to Potitius that the twins were truly beloved by the gods, and that no power on earth could lay them low.

  On that day, in the month that would later be named Aprilis, in the year that would later be known as 753 B.C., the city of Roma was born.

  The building of fortifications commenced at once. Compared to the great walls that had been built elsewhere in the world, such as those of ancient Troy, it was a very modest project. The plan was not to build a wall of stone blocks; that would have been impossible, as there were no quarries to supply the stone, no skilled masons to shape and set the blocks, and no one with the engineering skills to design such a wall. Instead, the new city would be defended by a network of ditches, earthen ramparts, and wooden pickets. In some places, the steep slope of the hillside itself would supply an adequate defense.