Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
Therefore, thus supported, and, as it were, propped up by this council
or senate, Romulus conducted many wars with the neighboring nations in
a most successful manner; and while he refused to take any portion of
the booty to his own palace, he did not cease to enrich the citizens.
He also cherished the greatest respect for that institution of
hierarchical and ecclesiastical ordinances which we still retain to the
great benefit of the Commonwealth; for in the very commencement of his
government he founded the city with religious rites, and in the
institution of all public establishments he was equally careful in
attending to these sacred ceremonials, and associated with himself on
these occasions priests that were selected from each of the tribes. He
also enacted that the nobles should act as patrons and protectors to
the inferior citizens, their natural clients and dependants, in their
respective districts, a measure the utility of which I shall afterward
notice.--The judicial punishments were mostly fines of sheep and oxen;
for the property of the people at that time consisted in their fields
and cattle, and this circumstance has given rise to the expressions
which still designate real and personal wealth. Thus the people were
kept in order rather by mulctations than by bodily inflictions.
X. After Romulus had thus reigned thirty-seven years, and established
these two great supports of government, the hierarchy and the senate,
having disappeared in a sudden eclipse of the sun, he was thought
worthy of being added to the number of the Gods--an honor which no
mortal man ever was able to attain to but by a glorious pre-eminence of
virtue. And this circumstance was the more to be admired in the case of
Romulus because most of the great men that have been deified were so
exalted to celestial dignities by the people, in periods very little
enlightened, when fiction was easy and ignorance went hand-in-hand with
credulity. But with respect to Romulus we know that he lived less than
six centuries ago, at a time when science and literature were already
advanced, and had got rid of many of the ancient errors that had
prevailed among less civilized peoples. For if, as we consider proved
by the Grecian annals, Rome was founded in the seventh Olympiad, the
life of Romulus was contemporary with that period in which Greece
already abounded in poets and musicians--an age when fables, except
those concerning ancient matters, received little credit.
For, one hundred and eight years after the promulgation of the laws of
Lycurgus, the first Olympiad was established, which indeed, through a
mistake of names, some authors have supposed constituted, by Lycurgus
likewise. And Homer himself, according to the best computation, lived
about thirty years before the time of Lycurgus. We must conclude,
therefore, that Homer flourished very many years before the date of
Romulus. So that, as men had now become learned, and as the times
themselves were not destitute of knowledge, there was not much room
left for the success of mere fictions. Antiquity indeed has received
fables that have at times been sufficiently improbable: but this epoch,
which was already so cultivated, disdaining every fiction that was
impossible, rejected[314] * * * We may therefore, perhaps, attach some
credit to this story of Romulus's immortality, since human life was at
that time experienced, cultivated, and instructed. And doubtless there
was in him such energy of genius and virtue that it is not altogether
impossible to believe the report of Proculus Julius, the husbandman, of
that glorification having befallen Romulus which for many ages we have
denied to less illustrious men. At all events, Proculus is reported to
have stated in the council, at the instigation of the senators, who
wished to free themselves from all suspicion of having been accessaries
to the death of Romulus, that he had seen him on that hill which is now
called the Quirinal, and that he had commanded him to inform the people
that they should build him a temple on that same hill, and offer him
sacrifices under the name of Quirinus.
XI. You see, therefore, that the genius of this great man did not
merely establish the constitution of a new people, and then leave them,
as it were, crying in their cradle; but he still continued to
superintend their education till they had arrived at an adult and
wellnigh a mature age.
Then Laelius said: We now see, my Scipio, what you meant when you said
that you would adopt a new method of discussing the science of
government, different from any found in the writings of the Greeks. For
that prime master of philosophy, whom none ever surpassed in eloquence,
I mean Plato, chose an open plain on which to build an imaginary city
after his own taste--a city admirably conceived, as none can deny, but
remote enough from the real life and manners of men. Others, without
proposing to themselves any model or type of government whatever, have
argued on the constitutions and forms of states. You, on the contrary,
appear to be about to unite these two methods; for, as far as you have
gone, you seem to prefer attributing to others your discoveries, rather
than start new theories under your own name and authority, as Socrates
has done in the writings of Plato. Thus, in speaking of the site of
Rome, you refer to a systematic policy, to the acts of Romulus, which
were many of them the result of necessity or chance; and you do not
allow your discourse to run riot over many states, but you fix and
concentrate it on our own Commonwealth. Proceed, then, in the course
you have adopted; for I see that you intend to examine our other kings,
in your pursuit of a perfect republic, as it were.
XII. Therefore, said Scipio, when that senate of Romulus which was
composed of the nobles, whom the king himself respected so highly that
he designated them _patres_, or fathers, and their children patricians,
attempted after the death of Romulus to conduct the government without
a king, the people would not suffer it, but, amidst their regret for
Romulus, desisted not from demanding a fresh monarch. The nobles then
prudently resolved to establish an interregnum--a new political form,
unknown to other nations. It was not without its use, however, since,
during the interval which elapsed before the definitive nomination of
the new king, the State was not left without a ruler, nor subjected too
long to the same governor, nor exposed to the fear lest some one, in
consequence of the prolonged enjoyment of power, should become more
unwilling to lay it aside, or more powerful if he wished to secure it
permanently for himself. At which time this new nation discovered a
political provision which had escaped the Spartan Lycurgus, who
conceived that the monarch ought not to be elective--if indeed it is
true that this depended on Lycurgus--but that it was better for the
Lacedaemonians to acknowledge as their sovereign the next heir of the
race of Hercules, whoever he might be: but our Romans, rude as they
were, saw the importance of appointing a king, not for his family, but
for his virtue and experience.
XIII. And fame having recognized these eminent qualities in Numa
Pompilius, the Roman people, without partiality for their own citizens,
committed itself, by the counsel of the senators, to a king of foreign
origin, and summoned this Sabine from the city of Cures to Rome, that
he might reign over them. Numa, although the people had proclaimed him
king in their Comitia Curiata, did nevertheless himself pass a Lex
Curiata respecting his own authority; and observing that the
institutions of Romulus had too much excited the military propensities
of the people, he judged it expedient to recall them from this habit of
warfare by other employments.
XIV. And, in the first place, he divided severally among the citizens
the lands which Romulus had conquered, and taught them that even
without the aid of pillage and devastation they could, by the
cultivation of their own territories, procure themselves all kinds of
commodities. And he inspired them with the love of peace and
tranquillity, in which faith and justice are likeliest to flourish, and
extended the most powerful protection to the people in the cultivation
of their fields and the enjoyment of their produce. Pompilius likewise
having created hierarchical institutions of the highest class, added
two augurs to the old number. He intrusted the superintendence of the
sacred rites to five pontiffs, selected from the body of the nobles;
and by those laws which we still preserve on our monuments he
mitigated, by religious ceremonials, the minds that had been too long
inflamed by military enthusiasm and enterprise.
He also established the Flamines and the Salian priests and the Vestal
Virgins, and regulated all departments of our ecclesiastical policy
with the most pious care. In the ordinance of sacrifices, he wished
that the ceremonial should be very arduous and the expenditure very
light. He thus appointed many observances, whose knowledge is extremely
important, and whose expense far from burdensome. Thus in religious
worship he added devotion and removed costliness. He was also the first
to introduce markets, games, and the other usual methods of assembling
and uniting men. By these establishments, he inclined to benevolence
and amiability spirits whom the passion for war had rendered savage and
ferocious. Having thus reigned in the greatest peace and concord
thirty-nine years--for in dates we mainly follow our Polybius, than
whom no one ever gave more attention to the investigation of the
history of the times--he departed this life, having corroborated the
two grand principles of political stability, religion and clemency.
XV. When Scipio had concluded these remarks, Is it not, said Manilius,
a true tradition which is current, that our king Numa was a disciple of
Pythagoras himself, or that at least he was a Pythagorean in his
doctrines? For I have often heard this from my elders, and we know that
it is the popular opinion; but it does not seem to be clearly proved by
the testimony of our public annals.
Then Scipio replied: The supposition is false, my Manilius; it is not
merely a fiction, but a ridiculous and bungling one too; and we should
not tolerate those statements, even in fiction, relating to facts which
not only did not happen, but which never could have happened. For it
was not till the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus that
Pythagoras is ascertained to have come to Sybaris, Crotona, and this
part of Italy. And the sixty-second Olympiad is the common date of the
elevation of Tarquin to the throne, and of the arrival of Pythagoras.
From which it appears, when we calculate the duration of the reigns of
the kings, that about one hundred and forty years must have elapsed
after the death of Numa before Pythagoras first arrived in Italy. And
this fact, in the minds of men who have carefully studied the annals of
time, has never been at all doubted.
O ye immortal Gods! said Manilius, how deep and how inveterate is this
error in the minds of men! However, it costs me no effort to concede
that our Roman sciences were not imported from beyond the seas, but
that they sprung from our own indigenous and domestic virtues.
XVI. You will become still more convinced of this fact, said Africanus,
when tracing the progress of our Commonwealth as it became gradually
developed to its best and maturest condition. And you will find yet
further occasion to admire the wisdom of our ancestors on this very
account, since you will perceive, that even those things which they
borrowed from foreigners received a much higher improvement among us
than they possessed in the countries from whence they were imported