A n e x c e p t i o n a l s i t e
B
efore being a town, Rome occupied an exceptional site. Recent research makes it possible to understand how the Roman terri-tory looked at the time when human communities, still small, began to visit it regularly and even live there temporarily. This happened in the mid-Bronze Age, roughly three and a half millennia ago. The Ancients sought the secret of the city’s predominance in its beginnings.Moderns, using a different temporal scale, do so with the help of earth sciences. Neither geography nor even geology explains history. Rather, they make it possible.1Without taking into account the natural factors at work within the space that would become that of the largest town in the ancient world, we could understand neither the emergence of Rome in this precise spot nor many of its future developments.
The site of the city was produced by the interaction between a very ancient and originally maritime sedimentary substratum and the deposits, between 600,000 and 300,000 years ago, of two neighbouring volcanic systems, the Sabatini mountains to the north-east and the Alban mountains to the south-east. Another determining factor was a river, the valley of which was the widest in the whole peninsula and which, with its 400 km-long course and its forty or so tributaries, came to form a natural axis of communications.
The famous Roman hills were grouped around the river at a point where, checked by the mass of volcanic deposits, it bent sharply towards the south-west. In the centre of its meandering course, an island, formed as early as the Pleistocene, made it easier to cross the water. Two lines of ridges came to a halt at the left bank; one ran from the Quirinal to the Capitol, the other from the Esquiline to the Palatine, while the Caelian and the Aventine stood further back. Between these lay a wide
1 For an analysis of the geology of the site of Rome, see Funiciello et al. 2006.
T h e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e c i t y
depression that used to be criss-crossed by watercourses and was liable to form marshland, as also happened around the Velabrum river. Further to the north, the alluvial plain within the river’s wide western curve, which was frequently flooded, presented a huge open space. The hills, many of which were linked, were divided into secondary promontories.
Thus the Capitol was made up of two peaks; the Palatine joined up with the Velia; the Quirinal had several peaks. We should imagine slopes many of which were steeper than they are today, the difference of altitude between the summits and the valley floor being c. 40 m.
After twenty-seven centuries of urban life producing earthworks and fill-ins of many kinds, that distance of 40 m has been diminished.
Another particular feature is the abundance of fresh water, due to the presence of many springs. In a climate rather colder than that of today, these springs favoured the development of dense vegetation, as is reflected in place-names such as Querquetulanus mons, the hill of oaks (formerly the name of the Caelius), the Viminal and the Fagutal, names that indicate the presence of willows and beech trees.
With its hills, springs, river and island, the site of Rome at the dawn of its human history was clearly exceptional. Elsewhere, most of the places destined to become the sites of cities constituted naturally unified structures. The Etruscan cities of Veii, Tarquinia, Volsinies and Vulci each developed on a large plateau, isolated from their surround-ings by a belt of waterways. In contrast, the hills alongside the Tiber presented a much more diverse framework.
Rome was by no means positioned at the centre of the region to which it belongs, namely Latium. Situated on the banks of the river that was to mark the boundary with Etruria, it was a frontier-town, an outpost facing foreign land. It was also to be the point at which the river could be bridged: a city that offered anyone arriving from the sea their first chance to cross the river. The coast was no more than c. 20 km away. Set behind the numerous coastal lagoons and thus protected against surprise incursions from the sea, Rome lay close enough to the shore to benefit from the civilizing inputs of Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans. As the Romans of the Republic liked to declare, geography itself showed that Rome, by virtue of its situation, was a town oriented towards the sea.
Nevertheless, the geological and geographical balance sheet remained mixed, for the advantages of the site were offset by obvi-ous disadvantages, in particular the compartmentalized nature of the various districts. A site of such a nature could only be transformed into a unified whole by dint of collective human efforts. Nor did primitive
Latium possess the metal-bearing and agricultural riches that abounded in neighbouring Etruria. On the other hand, the configuration of the site of Rome did enable it to open up to the world beyond. Two axes crossed here, the one running from north-east to south-west, along the Tiber valley, the other, thanks to the island and the natural ford down-stream from it, from north-west to south-east. Where these two axes intersected, the hills close to the river provided incomparable opportu-nities for defence and development.
We should also note the twofold centrality of the territory in which Rome would be founded and would develop: it was situated right in the middle of a peninsula that was itself at the centre of the world then constituted by the Mediterranean Sea.
A c h a l l e n g e f o r r e s e a r c h
Recent excavations have brought to light copious data, many still unpublished. Researchers compare these archaeological finds with the ancient texts. The exploration of Rome’s origins began with Gia-como Boni’s excavations in the Forum at the beginning of the twen-tieth century. Meanwhile, among the texts, apart from poetic works such as Virgil’s Aeneid, we have a historiographical tradition, sometimes described as annalistic, that was exemplified in the first century bc by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; and also a learned tradition some-times called ‘antiquarian’: here our principal representative is Varro.
The epistemological problem for researchers stems from the basic dis-parity, both in nature and dates, that separates the archaeological data and the literary sources.2 The archaeological evidence, contemporary with the past of which it constitutes a direct trace, is lacunose; and the literary sources go back no further than the third century bc and mostly date from the end of the first century bc. These texts recount a partly fabulous history, passed down through centuries in the city of Rome, in which authentic information concerning, for example, place-names and religious rites is intermingled with the myths and beliefs of the various generations through which the tradition passed. Among mod-ern specialists, there are two schools of thought as to how to solve the methodological difficulties that arise from this documentary duality. For one of those schools of thought, which we may call sceptical rather than
2 For a general presentation of questions of methodology and historiography, see Grandazzi 1997 and Grandazzi 2007.
T h e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e c i t y
hyper-critical, the ancient traditions on the origins of Rome contain no or very little historical truth. For the other school of thought (let us call it ‘trustful’), that tradition, over and above the obviously mythical features that themselves testify to its authenticity, does possess consid-erable informative value for an understanding of the beginnings of the city of Rome. By and large, the sceptical trend is uppermost in English-speaking countries, while the ‘trustful’ interpretation prevails mainly in Italy and France.
A t o w n b e f o r e t h e c i t y ?
The new discoveries presented hermeneutic challenges for both schools of thought. Recent excavations on the Capitol have revealed that the earliest stable occupation of the site of Rome can be dated back to seventeen or sixteen centuries bc, when an ‘Apennine’ village was perched at the top of the hill. Earthworks designed to extend the available surfaces and rough fortifications were now set in place. There were traces of the presence – not necessarily permanent – of groups, still semi-nomadic, that came to live there in the summer, so as to control the ford at the bottom of the hill. Later, the Capitol’s summit seems to have been reserved for activities linked with metalwork and also for a necropolis, where both inhumations and incinerations are attested.
Other discoveries had already shown that the zone to which these small Bronze Age communities were most attracted lay within the space that later came to be known as the Forum Boarium, ‘the cattle market’;
and it was to this spot, flanked by the river and the slopes of three hills – the Capitol, the Palatine and the Aventine – that a path led, a path that bore an equally telling name: the via Salaria. The flocks brought by shepherds from the mountains of the interior were bartered here for salt (sal) which, for pre-industrial societies, constituted a veritable white gold. Once over the Tiber, this path was known as the via Campana, which suggests that the salt came from the coastal salt marshes, the campus salinarum, and that these were controlled by people installed at the foot of the Tiberian hills, whose earliest successes were founded upon that trade.
In those days, however, the centre of the region was not the future site of Rome, but the Alban mountain range.3 This was to become the cradle of Latium culture, which began to spread in the eleventh
3 See Grandazzi 2008.
century bc, in the shelter of Monte Cavo (949 m), the religious centre of Latium. The Alban mountains and the territory that separated them from the Tiber were then inhabited by small communities gathered around leaders whose role may have been as much religious as military.
Here archaeology has identified a funerary rite quite distinct from those practised on the other side of the Tiber: its most manifest signs are miniature pieces of funerary furniture and the use of urns formed in the shape of huts. On the Roman site, a scattering of tombs testifies to the presence of hamlets composed of huts: they were found on the Capitol, on what was to become the Forum, close to the Arch of Augustus, on the Forum of Augustus and, most recently, at the lower level of the Forum of Caesar. These two groups of tombs may have served villages situated on the Quirinal. On the other side of the valley, the Palatine was occupied, in sporadic fashion at least, and possessed a necropolis datable to the Latian phase II A, that is to say the ninth or even the tenth century bc, traceable to the south-west side of the hill, just above the Forum Boarium. There, at the foot of the hill, stood the Lupercal, the sanctuary linked with purification and fertility, which was to be taken over by the legend of Romulus. The principal necropolis was the one said to belong to the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, on the Forum, which contained twenty or so tombs dating from this phase. Later it spread westward and seems to have served a village on the neighbouring Velia hill. Not far from this, the republican Regia was built on top of a few tombs of the same period. A very ancient document transmitted by ancient scholarship (Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, 3.69) testifies to this scattered human presence all over the future site of Rome. It contains a list of the populi Albenses, whose name suggests that they would go to perform sacrifices in a place known as Alba, the modern Monte Cavo. Several of the groups included in this list can be traced within this space that did not yet bear the name Rome:
the Uelienses are the best known, but mention should also be made of the Latinienses on the Parioli hills, the Querquetulani and possibly also the Sacranes and even the Uiminitellarii.
The potentialities of the terrain continued to be exploited. For the little Bronze Age villages that sought security above all else, the Capitol, with its steep slopes, was the most suitable spot. Now though, with its surface area of no more than 3 hectares, it was no longer large enough for communities that were more numerous and more self-confident. The Palatine, which likewise formed an autonomous hill, stood alongside the river and was easy to defend; and this was much larger. So this was where, from phase II B onward (the ninth
T h e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e c i t y
century), a larger village, or possibly several, developed, mostly on the south-western side of the hill, for the northern slopes, above the valley separating the Palatine from the Velia, were reserved for craft activities.4 Other hamlets were also growing, so much so that the necropolis of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina seems to have been abandoned in favour of a new area for tombs, on the Esquiline. On the other side, on the Quirinal, several dozen tombs have been identified alongside the Via Salaria, a fact that suggests the existence of at least one village here or even several.
By the ninth century bc, throughout the site of Rome we find evidence of hamlets perched on the hilltops and across the slopes. But archaeology is unable to tell us any more than that. Was this a dispersed habitat or a unified one? In other words, did Rome already exist or not?
Modern specialists are divided on this question. Some are impressed by the chronological uniformity of the archaeological remains; others are more conscious of their spatial dispersal. The example of the large Etr-uscan villages, which were certainly unified by this period, suggests to some researchers that a similar evolution took place on the Roman site.
They thus picture a large ‘proto-Rome’, covering over 150 hectares, within which several hundreds of huts were already gathered, the inhab-itants of which might have been called, for example, Uelienses.5But that is an uncertain or even improbable reconstruction. The Roman geo-morphology is different from that of the Etruscan sites: the depression that was to be occupied by the Forum constituted a break in the hills surrounding it and it seems unlikely that this plain, at that time fre-quently flooded by the waters of the adjacent Tiber, would have been inhabited. Furthermore, the necropolises had not yet been relegated to beyond the site. Besides, a document transmitted by Roman scholarship suggests widely dispersed habitats concentrated on the hilltops and their slopes. On the occasion of an annual festival called the septimontium, the inhabitants of eight hilltops or montes each celebrated a sacrifice. On the list of these habitats what is striking is first that the Palatine and the Velia occupy the first two places, but also that the Quirinal is not mentioned at all. Later, at the hands of Varro, the list was reduced to seven toponyms. So it would appear that Rome did not yet exist as a unit, but the villages scattered throughout its site had – at least in the central area – already established stable relations with one another and, with the sanction of religion, the glimmerings of a common identity.
4 See the Bollettino di Archeologia, 31–4, 1995 (2000) and Pensabene and Falzone 2001.
5 This is the position of Carandini 1997.
T h e f o u n d a t i o n o f R o m e
Was Rome just formed or was it founded? Around 1950, a lively debate arose around these alternatives. The theory of a formation, a progressive urban development of the entity that was Rome (called a Stadtwerdung, after the works of H. M ¨uller-Karpe6) was widely accepted. The idea of a foundation, locatable in both time and space, seemed to stem from ancient ideology, not from historically and archaeologically verifiable facts. Furthermore, scholarship had modernized the idea, replacing it with the concept of a synoecism, taken over from Greek studies. Grad-ually, researchers reached a compromise between the two models. By the 1970s many of them assumed that a long, indeed very long, phase of proto-urban formation had eventually, in the sixth century bc, resulted in the emergence of the city of Rome. The archaeological signs indi-cating this included an early level of paving for the comitium and the beginning of the construction of the Sanctuary of Vesta. While not excluding the possibility of an interruption in this development, this modern theory shifted the chronology to a relatively recent period. It was generally thought that the Tarquins were responsible for crossing this decisive threshold (in the past, the old concept of positivist histo-riography had attributed Rome’s transformation into a town, urbs, to the Etruscans). This phase was now considered to be the outcome of a lengthy process, as it were a formation that had speeded up in its final phase, rather than a foundation in the ancient sense of the term. In these circumstances, a discovery made in the late 1980s came like a clap of thunder in a relatively serene sky.7Archaeologists found the remains of a wall at the foot of the northern slope of the Palatine. It was about 10 m long and, in its original state, was dateable to the mid-eighth century bc.
These findings strengthen the rehabilitation of the legend of Romulus and the ancient tradition of the foundation of Rome on the Palatine.
After all, a wall constitutes a relic far more significant than a mere shard.
For the very first time, archaeology had revealed the tangible result of a public initiative, which, through its dating and location, corresponded exactly to what the ancient tradition confirmed. Even if that tradition, mistakenly described as ‘literary’, is set aside, the sacred nature of the boundary constituted by this wall – identifiable with the pomerium – is confirmed by the four restorations that were effected before its destruc-tion in the sixth century. Others indicadestruc-tions too, not all of them of an
6 M ¨uller-Karpe 1956 and M ¨uller-Karpe 1962. 7 See Carandini 2006a.
T h e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e c i t y
archaeological nature, have more recently come to light: toponomy, for example, such as the old name for the Palatine Gate, which was known as Romanula or Romana, evokes a Rome still limited to this one hill, on which a sanctuary positioned on the north-eastern edge is identified with the curiae ueteres: a fact that suggests that unification took place at an early date. Furthermore, comparative linguistics now indicates an Indo-European, rather than an Etruscan, origin for the word urbs. Nor should we regard as Etruscan the names of the three tribes – the Tities, the Ramnes and the Luceres – into which Romulus is believed to have divided the Roman population. This was an act of distribution that certainly took place prior to the sixth century, as did the introduction of the system, both territorial and civic, of the thirty curiae. Elsewhere
archaeological nature, have more recently come to light: toponomy, for example, such as the old name for the Palatine Gate, which was known as Romanula or Romana, evokes a Rome still limited to this one hill, on which a sanctuary positioned on the north-eastern edge is identified with the curiae ueteres: a fact that suggests that unification took place at an early date. Furthermore, comparative linguistics now indicates an Indo-European, rather than an Etruscan, origin for the word urbs. Nor should we regard as Etruscan the names of the three tribes – the Tities, the Ramnes and the Luceres – into which Romulus is believed to have divided the Roman population. This was an act of distribution that certainly took place prior to the sixth century, as did the introduction of the system, both territorial and civic, of the thirty curiae. Elsewhere