Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero | Page 5

there was no such favourable position in Italy for a virile
people apt to fight and to conquer. Capua, in the rich volcanic plain of
Campania, had far greater advantages in the way of natural wealth; but
Capua was too far south, in a more enervating climate, and virility was
never one of her strong points. Corfinium, in the heart of the Apennines,
once seemed threatening to become a rival, and was for a time the

centre of a rebellious confederation; but this city was too near the east
coast--an impossible position for a pioneer of Italian dominion. Italy
looks west, not east; almost all her natural harbours are on her western
side; and though that at Ostia, owing to the amount of silt carried down
by the Tiber, has never been a good one, it is the only port which can
be said to command an entrance into the centre of the peninsula.
No one, however, would contend that the position of Rome is an ideal
one. Taken in and by itself, without reference to Italy and the
Mediterranean, that position has little to recommend it. It is too far
from the sea, nearly twenty miles up the valley of a river with an
inconveniently rapid current, to be a great commercial or industrial
centre; and such a centre Rome has never really been in the whole
course of her history. There are no great natural sources of wealth in
the neighbourhood--no mines like those at Laurium in Attica, no vast
expanse of corn-growing country like that of Carthage. The river too
was liable to flood, as it still is, and a familiar ode of Horace tells us
how in the time of Augustus the water reached even to the heart of the
city.[9] Lastly, the site has never really been a healthy one, especially
during the months of July and August,[10] which are the most deadly
throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. Pestilences were common at
Rome in her early history, and have left their mark in the calendar of
her religious festivals; for example, the Apolline games were instituted
during the Hannibalic war as the result of a pestilence, and fixed for the
unhealthy month of July. Foreigners from the north of Europe have
always been liable to fever at Rome; invaders from the north have
never been able to withstand the climate for long; in the Middle Ages
one German army after another melted away under her walls, and left
her mysteriously victorious.
There are some signs that the Romans themselves had occasional
misgivings about the excellence of their site. There was a tradition, that
after the burning of the city by the Gauls, it was proposed that the
people should desert the site and migrate to Veii, the conquered
Etruscan city to the north, and that it needed all the eloquence of
Camillus to dissuade them. It has given Livy[11] the opportunity of
putting into the orator's mouth a splendid encomium on the city and its

site; but no such story could well have found a place in Roman annals
if the Capitol had been as deeply set in the hearts of the people as was
the Acropolis in the hearts of the Athenians. At a later time of deep
depression Horace[12] could fancifully suggest that the Romans should
leave their ancient home like the Phocaeans of old, and seek a new one
in the islands of the blest. Some idea was abroad that Caesar had meant
to transfer the seat of government to Ilium, and after Actium the same
intention was ascribed to Augustus, probably without reason; but the
third ode of Horace's third book seems to express the popular rumour,
and in an interesting paper Mommsen[13] has stated his opinion that
the new master of the Roman world may really have thought of
changing the seat of government to Byzantium, the supreme
convenience and beauty of which were already beginning to be
appreciated.[14]
Virgil, on the other hand, though he came from the foot of the Alps and
did not love Rome as a place to dwell in, is absolutely true to the great
traditions of the site. For him "rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma"
(Georg. ii. 534); and in the Aeneid the destiny of Rome is so foretold
and expressed as to make it impossible for a Roman reader to think of it
except in connexion with the city. He who needs to be convinced of
this has but to turn once more to the eighth Aeneid, and to add to the
charming story of Aeneas' first visit to the seven hills, the splendid
picture of the origin and growth of Roman dominion engraved on the
shield which Venus gives her son. Cicero again, though he was no
Roman by birth, was passionately fond