Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 21

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 citizenry. 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.

As modest, or even primitive, as the project would have appeared to a Greek tyrant or an Egyptian temple builder, the first fortifications of Roma were an undertaking on a scale never previously attempted in the region of the Seven Hills. For manpower, Romulus and Remus called upon the dwellers on Asylum Hill who had gone raiding with them, as well as the local youths with whom they had grown up. Few from either group had much experience at the tasks the twins set them. Frequent mistakes and a great deal of wasted effort led to much squabbling at the work site.