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THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
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Topic: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE (Read 4220 times)
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Bianca
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THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
on:
February 18, 2007, 03:06:07 pm »
THE LEGEND
Alba Longa was, according to tradition, the town stretching out along the base of
Mount Albano, the religious center of the Latin People, and near the town of Castel
Gandolfo, the Roman Popes' summer residence just south of Rome.It was founded in
the 12th century BCE.
In the 8th century BCE Numitor was the king of Alba Longa (aka Albalonga) whose
brother Amulius usurped his throne, killed his sons and placed his daughter Rhea
Silvia in the temple of the goddess Vesta. The Vestals were destined to remain
chaste and this would ensure that there would be no descendants of Numitor in
the future.
But Mars, the god of war, came to Rhea Silvia in the temple of Vesta and she bore
him twin sons, of remarkable size and beauty.
Amulius was enraged and had Rhea Silvia buried alive (the customary punishment
for a Vestal Virgin) and ordered the twins put to death.
However, the servant charged with killing the twins could not carry out the order
and placed the two babes in a trough and laid it on the banks of the Tiber river.
The Tiber was in flood and, as it rose, it gently carried the cradle and the twins
downstream.
When the waters fell, still containing the two boys, it came to rest upon the shore.
They were found by a she-wolf who, instead of killing them, suckled them
with her milk. The she-wolf was helped by a woodpecker who also brought them
food.
Both the Woodpecker and the Wolf are sacred animals of the God Mars.
To this day, throughout Rome, images and statues of of a shewold suckling two
baby boys are in great evidence.
Never to let the world forget its beginnings.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #1
on:
February 18, 2007, 03:20:31 pm »
The shepherd Faustulus then discovered Romulus and Remus and he and his
wife, Acca Larentia, raised the boys as their own.
Upon reaching manhood they killed Amulius and reinstated their grandfather
Numitor to his rightful place as king of Alba Longa.
Romulus and Remus then decided to found a town of their own, where the she-
wolf had nursed them, a spot surrounded by seven hills.
Romulus began to build walls on the Palatine Hill, but Remus jeered at them
because they were too low. He leaped over them to prove his point and Romulus,
in anger, killed him.
Romulus went on to complete his new city and called it
ROMA,
after his own name.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #2
on:
February 18, 2007, 03:39:05 pm »
THE **** OF THE SABINE WOMEN
The first citizens of ROMA were outlaws and fugitives.
There were not enough wives for these men, so Romulus decided to steal
women from a neighbouring tribe, the Sabines. He proclaimed a great festi-
val and these people were invited.
While the attention of the Sabine men was elsewhere, too drunk with wine to
notice, the Romans rushed in and carried their women off.
This is the famous **** OF THE SABINES that great painters of a later age so
enjoyed painting. The word **** comes comes from the Latin for
"carrying off or stealing."
The Sabine king Titus Tatius and his enraged tribesmen waged war on the Romans,
but in the thickest part of the battle, the Sabine women, who had grown fond of
their new "husbands", rushed between the two armies and begged both sides to
make peace.
Thereafter Romulus and Titus ruled jointly over their people, until the death of
Titus, in battle.
For the rest of his life Romulus ruled alone, proving himself a great leader, in war
and peace. He did not die as mere mortals do, but disappeared one day in a
violent storm.
The Romans, believing he had been taken up to heaven, revered him as a god
and worshipped him by the name of QUIRINUS.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #3
on:
February 19, 2007, 09:19:39 am »
PALATINE HILL
The hill where the mythological beginning of Rome began,
including the shewolf which is now the symbol of Rome.
FROM:
H. G. WELLS - "OUTLINE OF HISTORY"
ROME AND THE ROMANS
We write "Rome" and the "Romans", and we have still to explain what manner of
people these were who were playing a role of conquest that had hitherto been
played only by able and aggressive monarchs.
Their state was, in the fifth century BC. a REPUBLIC of the Aryan type very similar
to a Greek "aristocratic republic". The earliest accounts of the social life of Rome
give us a picture of a very primitive Aryan community. In the second half of the
fifth century BC, Rome was still an aristocratic community of free peasants occupy-
ing an area of nearly 400 square miles, with a population certainly not exceeding
150,000 almost entirely dispersed over the countryside and divided into seventeen
districts of rural tribes.
Most of the families had a small holding and a cottage of their own, where father
and sons lived and worked together, growing corn for the most part, with here and
there a strip of vine or olive. Their few heads of cattle were kept at pasture on
the neighbouring common land; their clothes and simple implements of husbandry
they made for themselves at home.
Only at rare intervals and on special occasions would they make their way into the
fortified town, which was the centre at once of their religion and their government.
Here were the temples of the gods, the houses of the wealthy and the shops of
the artisans and traders, where corn, oil or wine could be bartered in small quanti-
ties for salt or rough tools and weapons of iron.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #4
on:
February 19, 2007, 09:35:14 am »
This community followed the usual traditions of a division into aristocratic and
common citizens, who were called in Rome PATRICIANS and PLEBEIANS.
These were the citizens; the slave or outlander had no more part in the state
than he had in Greece.
But the constitution differed from any Greek constitutionin the fact that a great
part of the ruling powere were gathered into the hands ofa body called the SENATE,
which was neither purely a body of hereditary members nor directly an elected and
representative one.
It was a nominated one, and in the earlier period, it was nominated solely from
among the patricians. It existedbefore the expulsiion of the kings, and in the time
of the kings it was the king who nominated the SENATORS. But after the expulsion
of the kings (510BC), the supreme government was vested in the hands of
TWO ELECTED RULERS, the CONSULS.
It was the consuls who took over the business of appointing senators.
In the early days of the Republic only patricians were eligible as consuls and senators,
and the share of the plebeians in the government consisted merely in a right to vote
for the consuls and other public officials.
Ever for that purpose, their votes did not have the same value as those of their patri-
cian fellow-citizens.
But their votes had, at any rate, sufficient weight to induce many of the patrician
candidates to profess a more or less sincere concern for plebeian grievances.
In the early phases of the Roman state, moreover, the plebeians were not only ex-
cluded from public office, but from intermarriage with the patrician class. The
administration was evidently primarily a patrician affair.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #5
on:
February 19, 2007, 09:54:24 am »
The early phase of Roman affairs was therefore an aristocracy of a very pro-
nounced type, and the internal history of Rome for the two centuries and a
half after the expulsion of the last Etruscan king, Tarquin the Proud, was very
largely a struggle for mastery between those two orders, the patricians and
the plebeians. It was in fact closely parallel with the struggle of aristocracy
and democracy in the city states of Greece and, as in the case of Greece,
there were whole classes in the community, slaves, freed slaves, unpropertied
free men, outlanders and the like, who were entirely outside and beneath the
struggle.
A misused word is the Roman term PROLETRIAT today, which in modern jargon
means all the unpropertied people in a modern state. In Rome the PROLETARII
were a voting division of fully qualified citizens whose property was less than
10,000 copper asses. They were an enrolled class; their value to the state con-
sisted in their raising families of citizens (PROLES=offspring) and from their
ranks were drawn the colonists who went to form new Latin cities or to garrison
important points. But the 'proletarii' were quite distinct in origin from slaves or
freedmen or the miscellaneous driftage of a town slum, and it is a great pity that
modern political discussion should be confused by an inaccurate use of a term
which has no exact modern equivalent and which expresses nothing real in modern
social classification.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #6
on:
February 19, 2007, 11:56:22 am »
The struggle between patricians and plebeians was a struggle which showed
the Romans to be a people of a curiously shrewd character, never forcing things
to a destructive crisis, but being within the limits of their discretion, grasping
hard dealers. The patricians made a mean use of their political advantages to
grow rich through the national conquests, at the expense not only of the defeat-
ed enemy, but of the poorer plebeian whose farm had been neglected and who
had fallen into debt during his military service. The plebeians were ousted from
any share in the conquered lands, which the patricians divided up among them-
selves. The introduction of money probably increased the facilities of the usurer
and the difficulties of the borrowing debtor.
Three sorts of pressure won the plebeians a greater share in the government of
the country and the good things that were coming to Rome as she grew power-
ful. The first of these (1) was the general strike of plebeians. Twice they actually
marched right out of Rome threatening to make a new city higher up the Tiber, and
twice this threat proved conclusive.
The second method of pressure (2) was the threat of a tyranny.
Just as in Attica (the little state of which Athens was thecapital) Peisistratus
raised himself to power on the support of the poorer districts,so there was to
be found in most periods of plebeian discontent some ambitious man
ready to figure as a leader and wrest power from the Senate. For a long time
the Roman patricians were clever enough to beat every such potential tyrant by
giving in to a certain extent to the plebeians. And finally
(3) there were patricians
big-minded and far-seeing enough to insist upon the need of reconciliation with
the plebeians.
Thus, in 509BC, Valerius Poplicola (3), the Consul, enacted that whenever the life
or rights of any citizen were at stake, there should be an appeal from the magi-
strates to the general assembly. This LEX VALERIA was the
HABEAS CORPUS
of Rome, and it freed the Roman plebeians from the worst dangers of class vindicti-
veness in the law courts.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #7
on:
February 19, 2007, 12:23:49 pm »
In 494BC occurred a strike (1). After the Latin war the pressure of debt had be-
come excessive and the plebeians saw with indignation their friends, who had
often served the state bravely in the legions, thrown in chains and reduced to
slavery at the demand of patrician creditors. War was raging against the
Volscians; but the legionaries, on their victorious return, refused any longer to
obey the consuls and marched, though without any disorder, to the Sacred Mount
beyond the Anio (up the Tiber river). There they prepared to found a new city,
since the rights of citizens were denied to them in the old one. The patricians were
compelled to give way and the plebeians, returning to Rome from the "First
Secession", received the privilege of having officers of their own, Tribunes and Aediles.
In 486 arose Spurius Cassius (2), a consul who carried an Agrarian Law securing
public land for the plebeians. But the next year he was accused of aiming at royal
power and condemned to death. His law never came into operation.
There followed a long struggle on the part of the plebeians to have the laws of
Rome written down, so that they would no longer have to trust to patrician
memories. In 451-450BC the law of the Twelve Tables was published, the basis
of all ROMAN LAW.
But in order that the Twelve Tables should be formulated, a committee of ten -
the DECEMVIRATE - was appointed in the place of the ordinary magistrates.
A second decemvirate, appointed in succession to the first, attempted a sort of
aristocratic counter-revolution under Appius Claudius. The plebeians withdrew
again, a second time, to the Sacred Mount, and Appius Claudius committed
suicide in prison.
In 440 came a famine, and a second attempt to found a popular tyranny upon the
popular wrongs, by Spurius Maelius, a wealthy plebeian, which ended in his assass-
ination.
After the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390BC), Marcus Manlius, who had been in
command of the Capitol when the geese had saved it, came forward as a popu-
lar leader. The plebeians were suffering severily from the after-war usury and
profiteering of the patricians, and were incurrring heavy debts in rebuilding and
restocking their farms. Manlius spent his fortune in releasing debtors. He was
accused by the patricians of tyrranous intentions, condemned and suffered the
fate of condemned traitors in Rome, being flung from the Tarpeian Rock, the
precipitous edge of that same Capitoline Hill he had defended.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #8
on:
February 19, 2007, 12:59:10 pm »
In 376BC Licinius, who was one of the ten tribunes for the people, began a
long struggle with the patricians by making certain proposals called "The
Licinian Rogations", that there should be a limit to the amount of public land
taken by any single citizen, so leaving some for everybody, that outstanding
debts should be forgiven without interest upon the repayment of the principal and
that henceforth one at least of the two consuls should be a plebeian. This pre-
cipitated a ten-year struggle. The plebeian power to stop business by the veto
of their representatives, the tribunes, was fully exercised. In cases of national
extremity, it was the custom to set all other magistrates aside and appoint one
leader, the Dictator. Rome had done such a thing during times of military necessity
before, but now the patricians set up a Dictator in a time of profound peace, with
the idea of crushing Licinius altogether.
They appointed Camillus, who had besieged and taken Veii from the Etruscans.
But Camillus was a wiser man than his supporters; he brought about a compromise
between the two orders in which most of the demands of the plebeians were con
ceded (367BC), dedicated a temple to Concordia, and resigned his power.
Concordia, standing with a patera and two cornucopiae,
on the reverse of this coin of Aquilia Severa.
Thereafter the struggle between the orders abated. It abated because, among
other influences, the social differences between patricians and plebeians were
diminishing. Trade was coming to Rome with increasing political power, and many
plebeians were growing rich and many patricians becoming relatively poor. Inter-
marriage had been rendered possible by a change in the law, and social inter-
mixture was going on. While the rich plebeians were becoming, if not aristocratic,
at least oligarchic in habits and sympathy, new classes were springing up in Rome
with fresh interests and no political standing. Particularly abundant were the
freedmen, slaves set free, for the most part artisans, but some of them traders,
who were growing wealthy, able, energetic and influencial men in the state.
The Roman power was expanding, and as it expanded these old class oppositions
of the early Latin community were becomin unmeaning.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #9
on:
February 19, 2007, 01:18:44 pm »
In 390BC Rome was a miserable little city on the borders of Etruria, being sacked by
the Gauls; in 275BC she was ruling and unifiying all Italy, from the Arno River
to the Straits of Messina. The compromise of Camillus (367BC) had put an end to
internal dissensions, and left her energies free for expansion. And the same
queer combination of sagacity and aggressive selfishness that had distinguished the
war of orders at home and enabled her population to worry out a balance of power
without any catastrophe, marks her policy abroad.
She understood thevalue of allies; she could assimilate; abroad as at home she could
in those days, at least, "give and take" with a certain fairness and sanity. There lay
the peculiar POWER of ROME. By that, it was SHE who succeeded where ATHENS had
conspicuously failed.
The Athenian Democracy suffered much from that narrowness of PATRIOTISM,
which is the ruin of all nations. Athens was disliked and envied by her own empire be-
cause she dominated it in a spirit of "civic egotism"; her disasters were not felt and
shared as disasters by her subject-cities. The shrewder, nobler Roman
Senators of the great years of Rome were not only willing, in the last resort, to
share their privileges with the mass of their own people, but eager to incorporate
their sturdiest antagonists upon terms of equality with themselves.
THIS EXTRAORDINARY POLITICAL GROWTH WAS MANIFESTLY THE PRECURSOR OF
ALL MODERN STATES OF THE WESTERN TYPE.
FROM:
H.G. WELLS - THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
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rockessence
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Using rocks and minerals to heal the earth and us.
Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #10
on:
February 19, 2007, 01:39:39 pm »
RE: Romulus & Remus being raised by a "she-wolf" (Lupa)
The twins were set adrift on the river in a reed basket and they floated downstream until the basket was caught in the branches of a fig tree. The basket was found by a she-wolf who suckled them (wolves were sacred to Mars) until a shepherd found them. [ Another version of the same story tells of the shepherd finding them and taking them to his wife, who had just lost a stillborn child and who breast fed them. The tale says the shepherd's wife was a former prostitute.] Which one of the two versions was the original was hard to tell as in Latin lupa means both she-wolf and prostitute.
~~~Both she-wolf and prostitute in Latin is "Lupa".
~~~Another version says that the wife's name was "Lupa".
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ILLIGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM
Thus ye may find in thy mental and spiritual self, ye can make thyself just as happy or just as miserable as ye like. How miserable do ye want to be?......For you GROW to heaven, you don't GO to heaven. It is within thine own conscience that ye grow there.
Edgar Cayce
Bianca
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Posts: 41646
Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
«
Reply #11
on:
February 19, 2007, 10:40:29 pm »
I'm well aware that there are other versions, Rockessence.
I've chosen the one I was taught in school, in Italy. When I was a little girl.
It must be our 'romantic' streak, but that's the one we seem to like the best.
****************************************************************************
I think all myths have a purpose in mind.
In this particular one, I am sure it is the lineage of the supposed founder that
is important:
The Royal heritage from the mother and the godly one from the father.
Not just any god, but Mars/Ares - the God of War.
What more appropriate than that for a miserable little village on the banks of
the Tiber River that was destined to fight all the other tribes around it, let
alone the powerful Etruscans next door?
Propaganda was not invented in our times. It's been around for millennia.
Let's recap:
Romulus was the son of Mars, God of War.
A She-wolf saved his and his brother's lives by rescuing them from the River
and nursing them. The wolf is the animal sacred to Mars.
The wolf was brought food by a Woodpecker, the sacred bird of the god Mars.
Mars was definitely the god that Rome needed to accomplish its Destiny.
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
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Reply #12
on:
March 24, 2008, 12:47:02 pm »
Plutarch, The Parallel Lives
p95
The Life of Camillus
M A R C U S F U R I U S C A M I L L U S
1 Turning now to Furius Camillus, among the many notable things that are told of him, this seems the most singular and strange, namely, that although in other offices of command he won many and great successes, and although he was five times chosen dictator, four times celebrated a triumph, and was styled a Second Founder of Rome, not even once was he consul. 2 The reason for this lay in the political conditions of his time. The common people, being at variance with the Senate, strove against the appointment of consuls, and elected military tribunes to the command instead. These, although they had always acted with consular authority and power, were less obnoxious in their sway because of their number. For the fact that six men instead two stood at the head of affairs, was some comfort to those who were bitterly set against the rule of the few.
3 Now it was at this period that Camillus came to the height of his achievements and fame, and he would not consent to become consul over a reluctant people, although during his career the city tolerated consular elections many times. But in the many other and varied offices which he held, he so conducted himself that even when the authority rightly p97belonged to him alone, it was exercised in common with others; while the glory that followed such exercise was his alone, even when he shared the command. In the first case, it was his moderation that kept his rule from exciting envy; in the second, it was his ability that gave him the first place with none to dispute it.
2 At a time when the house of the Furii was not yet very conspicuous, he, by his own efforts, was the first of his clan to achieve fame. This he did in the great battle with the Aequians and Volscians, serving under Postumius Tubertus the dictator. Dashing out on his horse in front of the army, he did not abate his speed when he got a wound in the thigh, but dragging the missile along with him in its wound, he engaged the bravest of the enemy and put them to flight. 2 For this exploit, among other honours bestowed upon him, he was appointed censor, in those days an office of great dignity. There is on record a noble achievement of his censorship, that of bringing the unmarried men, partly by persuasion and partly by threatening them with fines, to join in wedlock with the women who were living in widowhood, and these were many because of the wars; likewise a necessary achievement, that of making the orphans, who before this had contributed nothing to the support of the state, subject to taxation. 3 The continuous campaigns, demanding great outlays of money, really required this. Especially burdensome was the siege of Veii (some call the people Veientani).
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Bianca
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
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Reply #13
on:
March 24, 2008, 12:48:09 pm »
This city was the barrier and bulwark of Tuscany, in quantity of arms and multitude of soldiery no whit inferior to Rome. Indeed, pluming herself on her wealth, and on the refinement, luxury, p99and sumptuousness in which her citizens lived, she had waged many noble contests for glory and power in her wars with the Romans. 4 At this time, however, she had been crushed in great battles, and had given up her former ambitious pretensions. But her people built their walls high and strong, filed the city full of armour, missiles, grain, and every possible provision, and confidently endured their siege, which, though long, was no less laborious and difficult for the besiegers. 5 These had been accustomed to short campaigns abroad as the summer season opened, and to winters at home; but then for the first time they had been compelled by their tribunes to build forts and fortify their camp and spend both summer and winter in the enemy's country, the seventh year of the war being now nearly at an end. For this their rulers were held to blame, and finally deprived of their rule, because they were thought to conduct the siege without energy. Others were chosen to carry on the war, and one of these was Camillus, now tribune for the second time. 6 But for the present he had nothing to do with the siege, since it fell to his lot to wage war with the Falerians and the Capenates, who, while the Romans had their hands full, had often harried their territory, and during all the Tuscan war had given them annoyance and trouble. These were overwhelmed by Camillus in battle and shut up in their fastnesses with great loss of life.
3 And now, when the war was at its climax, the calamity of the Alban lake added its terrors. It seemed a most incredible prodigy, without familiar cause or natural explanation. For the season was autumn, and the summer just ended had, to all p101observation, been neither rainy nor vexed by south winds. 2 Of the lakes, rivers, and streams of all sizes with which Italy abounds, some had failed utterly, others barely managed to hold out, and all the rivers ran low, between high banks, as was always the case in summer. But the Alban lake, which had its source and outlet within itself, and was girt about with fertile mountains, for no reason, except it be that heaven willed it, was observed to increase and swell until it reached the skirts of the mountains and gradually touched their highest ridges. All this rise was without surge or billow. 3 At first it was a prodigy for neighbouring shepherds and herdsmen. But when the volume and weight of water broke away the barrier which, like an isthmus, had kept the lake from the country lying below it, and a huge torrent poured down through the fields and vineyards and made its way to the sea, then not only were the Romans themselves dismayed, but all the inhabitants of Italy thought it a sign of no small evil to come. There was much talk about it in the army that was besieging Veii, so that even the besieged themselves heard of the calamity.
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Re: THE REPUBLIC - April 21/753 BCE to the Ides of March 44 BCE
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Reply #14
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March 24, 2008, 12:49:14 pm »
4 As was to be expected in a long siege requiring many meetings for conference with the enemy, it fell out that a certain Roman became intimate and confidential with one of the citizens of Veii, a man versed in ancient oracles, and reputed wiser than the rest from his being a diviner. The Roman saw that this man, on hearing the story of the lake, was overjoyed and made mock of the siege. He therefore told p103him this was not the only wonder which the passing days had brought, but that other and stranger signs than this had been given to the Romans, of which he was minded to tell him, in order that, if possible, he might better his own private case in the midst of the public distresses. 2 The man gave eager hearing to all this, and consented to a conference, supposing that he was going to hear some deep secrets. But the Roman led him along little by little, conversing as he went, until they were some way beyond the city gate, when he seized him boldly, being a sturdier man than he, and with the help of comrades who came running up from the camp, mastered him completely and handed him over to the generals. 3 Thus constrained, and perceiving that fate's decrees were not to be evaded, the man revealed secret oracles regarding his native city, to the effect that it could not be captured until the Alban lake, after leaving its bed and making new channels for itself, should be driven back by the enemy, deflected from its course, and prevented from mingling with the sea.
4 The Senate, on hearing this, was at great loss what to do, and thought it well to send an embassy to Delphi to consult the god. The envoys were men of great repute and influence, Cossus Licinius, Valerius Potitus, and Fabius Ambustus, who made their voyage and came back with the responses of the god. One of these told them that certain ancestral rites connected with the so‑called Latin festivals had been unduly neglected; 5 another bade them by all means to keep the water of the Alban lake away from the sea and force it back into its ancient bed, or, if they could not effect this, by means of canals and trenches to divert it into the p105plain and dissipate it. On receipt of these responses the priests performed the neglected sacrifices, and the people sallied out into the fields and diverted the course of the water.
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