The Childhood of Rome Part 10

Through long practice he knew just how to place them so that they would show most effectively, and many a customer wondered why the trinket did not look as well when he got it home as it had before he bought it. The colors in the painted cloth were combined in old, old patterns worked out according to laws as certain as the laws of music, and everywhere was the gilding that set off the colors and seemed to make them brighter and richer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Toto spread out his gay cloth upon the ground]

There were scarfs such as women wore on their heads, and fillets for the hair, and girdles and veils. There were necklaces and bracelets and rings and brooches and pins. There were boxes of sweetmeats, and metal cups and spoons, and curious little images of men and animals, and strings of beads, and charm strings, and hollow metal cases for charms, that could be hung around the neck, and pottery toys, and trinkets of all kinds. It seemed impossible that so much merchandise of so many different kinds could have been packed in that bag, or that a man could have carried it, after it was packed. If the things had been as heavy as they looked, it would have been too great a load even for Toto's broad shoulders.

The Roman boys had never seen anything like this before, but they did not show any great curiosity. One of the things that the people of Mars taught their children, without ever saying it in so many words, was not to be in a hurry to talk too much in strange company. They were brought up to feel that they were the equals of any one they were likely to meet and need not be in haste to make new friends. This feeling gave them a certain dignity not easily upset. In fact, dignity is merely the result of respecting yourself as a person quite worthy of respect, and not feeling obliged to insist on it from other people. The colonists had it.

Pollio picked up one of the sandals and smiled.

"My father would not think this leather fit to use," he said in a low tone to Bruno.

Marcus was looking at a pin of a rather pretty design and wondering how Flavia, his betrothed, would like it, when it bent in his fingers. That pin had not been made for the handling of young men with hands so muscular as his. Marcus paid for the pin and tossed it into the river. He had no intention of making a gift like that to any one.

When they handled the charm necklaces they saw from the lightness that what looked like gold was not gold. It was so with all the peddler's stock. The soldiers, seeing that the boys from the colony did not think the stuff worth buying, did not buy much themselves, nor did they drink much of his wine.

Ruffo said after Toto had gone that he did not always carry such a collection of trash as he had to-day. Sometimes he sold excellent fish-hooks and small tools. Marcus said that if he bought anything, he wanted a thing that was worth buying, and they began to throw quoits at a mark.

Marcus had seen traders before and dealt with them, but for some reason this peddler's pack set him thinking. In their way of living a farmer made most of his own tools, and wis.h.i.+ng them to last as long as possible, he made them well. It was the same with the baskets, the linen, the wool and the leather work, and the other things made at home. It was the same with the work done in the smithy of Muraena. He wished to have a reputation among his neighbors for making fine weapons. The men always put the greater part of their time on their farms, and since they had been in this new country, their planning and contriving how to make the soil produce more and more had been far more exciting than ever before. Each year a little more of the marsh or the waste land would be drained and cleared; each year the flocks and herds would be larger and more huts would be built. They were founding a new people.

In view of these great thoughts of the future, the glittering trinkets of the man with the trumpet looked small and worthless. Marcus began to see what was meant by the elders when they spoke of "gravity" as a virtue and "levity" as a rather foolish vice. Life depended very much on the way one took things; to take important things lightly, or give valuable time and thought to worthless objects left a man with the chaff on his hands instead of the good grain.

Something his father had told him a long time ago, when he was a little boy, came into Marcus's mind. It was when he wanted something very much, and being little, cried because he could not have it and made himself quite miserable. His father came in just then and watched him for a minute or two. Then he said,

"My son, do you wish to be a strong man, when you grow big?"

"Y-yes," sniffed the little fellow dolefully.

"You wish to be strong of soul and heart as you are in your body, so that no one can make you do anything you are not willing to do?"

"Yes, Father," said the boy, with his puzzled dark eyes searching his father's face.

"Then, my son, remember this: the strong man is the man who can go without what he wants. If you cannot do without a thing you want, without being unhappy, you are like a boy who cannot walk without a crutch. If you can give up, without making a ridiculous ado about it, whatever it is not wise for you to have-if you can be happy in yourself and by yourself and stand on your own feet-then you are strong. In the end you will be strong enough to get what you really want. The G.o.ds hate a coward."

Now in the long shadows of the fading day, as he heard the far sound of the peddler's trumpet down the river, Marcus found a new meaning in his father's words. He saw that those who wasted what they had earned by hard work on that rubbish would end by having nothing at all, because they were caught by the color and the s.h.i.+ne of things made to tempt them. What was there in all that collection that was half as beautiful as a golden wheat field? What ornament that could be worn out or broken was equal to the land itself, with its treasure of fleecy flocks and sleek cattle, and roof trees under which happy children slept? The treasure of the world was theirs already, in this plain that was theirs to make fruitful and beautiful, and people with prosperous villages. That was the real estate; the other was a shadow and a sham.

XVI

THE GREAT d.y.k.e

Although Toto did not find his first visit to the Seven Hills very profitable, he had much that was interesting to tell Mastarna when he returned. The two had a long talk in their strange rugged language with its few vowel sounds. Mastarna was most interested in the G.o.ds of these strangers. If he could find out what they did to bring good luck and ward off misfortune, he could have charms and lucky stones made to sell to them. If he knew what their G.o.ds were like, he could have images of these carved in wood or molded in clay or cast in metal. But Toto could tell him very little about these questions. The soldiers at the camp had no altars and no regular wors.h.i.+p at all, and they moved from place to place and did not keep any place sacred. But these people on the Square Hill seemed very religious. They behaved as if they had settled down there to stay forever.

"What are they like?" asked the old man.

"They are like no other townspeople in this valley," said Toto decidedly.

"They are not like the herdsmen who wander from place to place and sleep in tents, or the hunters who live alone in huts, or the fishermen by the river or the sailors by the seash.o.r.e. They are tall and straight and strong and very active, because they work all the time. They work mostly on their land. When they are not plowing, or digging, or cutting grain, or cutting wood, or making things, they are working to make themselves stronger. They run and leap and throw heavy weights; they hurl the spear and shoot arrows at a mark. They stand in rows and go through motions all together, and march to and fro, and play at ball. They do everything that is possible to make themselves good soldiers; even the boys begin when they are small to play at these games.

"And that is not all. The women work also, but not as slaves. The matrons go here and there as they choose, and see eye to eye with their husbands, and manage the household as the men manage the farm. The men sit in council, but each man speaks of his work in private to his wife, and she advises with him. They do not have slaves to wait on them; even their great men work with the others in the field. No one is ashamed to work with his hands. They build their own houses and their own walls; they breed their own cattle. If there should be a sheep gone from the flock, or a heifer strayed from the herd, they would know it and search until the thief was found."

"Hum," said the old man thoughtfully. He was thinking that this must be a strong and valiant people, and that if they increased in the valley of the yellow river they might become very powerful. "And what are their priests?"

"They have no priesthood dwelling in the temples," said Toto. "Their elders are their priests and pretend to no magical powers. They are chosen for their wisdom. Their G.o.ds are invisible."

"Hum," said Mastarna again.

The people to whom he and Toto belonged were called at one time and another Tuscans or Etruscans by others, but they called themselves the Ras, or Rasennae. They had some towns in the mountains beyond the plain where these strangers were. They held most of the country on their side of the rivers, as far north as the river Arno, and they had always lived there, so far as they knew themselves or any one else could say. They were different in almost every way from these strangers of the hills. He wondered if his people had anything whatever that the strangers wanted.

"You say that they build walls," he said to Toto. "Do they build good ones?"

Toto grinned. He was nothing of a builder himself, but even he could see the difference between the rude stone laying and fencing of the strangers, and the scientific, ma.s.sive masonry and arched drains of his own country.

"They will find out how good they are," he said, "after twenty years of flood and drought."

In fact, the worst enemy the colonists had met thus far was water. They were used to mountain slopes with good drainage. They knew how to keep a field from being gutted by mountain freshets, and how to repair roadways and build drains that would carry off the water. They were strong and clever at fitting stones into the right place for walls, and they could dam up a stream for a fishpool or a bathing place. But this sort of country was all new to them. It was not exactly a marsh and not so swampy as it became in later centuries, but at any time it might become a marsh full of ponds and stagnant streams, and remain so for weeks at a time.

This was bad for the grain and worse for sheep, and unhealthy for human beings. During the next rainy season after Toto's visit, the farmers had a very unhappy time. They discovered that too much water is almost if not quite as much a nuisance as too little. In a dry time it is sometimes possible to carry water from a distance, but in a wet time there is nowhere to put the water that is not wanted, and many of their ditches were choked up with debris, and their grain was washed away.

Mastarna was full of patience. He let them toil and soak and chill and sweat until he thought they would welcome a suggestion from almost any quarter. Then he and a man he knew, a stone worker called Canial, took a boat and went across the river to a point where three or four of the colonists were prying an unhappy ox out of the mire. The strength, determination and skill with which they conducted the work were worthy of all admiration. But it would have been far better if the land could have been drained and protected by a solid d.y.k.e.

Canial looked the bank over with a shrewd, experienced eye, and said that if he had the work to do, he would dig a ditch there, and there, and there; here he would build a covered drain lined with tilework; and in a certain hollow under the hill he would have an arched waterway, so that flood water would run through instead of tearing at the foundation of the terrace below the vineyards. But he saw no signs that these men in their building made any use of arches. He jumped ash.o.r.e and splashed through the pools, which were almost waist-deep in some places, up to where the ox was standing panting, wild-eyed and nearly exhausted with fright and struggle.

Canial squatted down by a rivulet. He did not know the language of the colonists and they did not know his, but no words were needed for what he wanted to explain. He made a miniature drain rudely arched over with mud-plastered stones while they stood there watching. That could be done, as well with, a six-inch brook as with a river. It did not take the Romans ten minutes to see that he knew more about such matters than they did.

"Caius," said Colonus to young Cossus, "go over to the camp and find Ruffo, and ask him to come and talk to this fellow."

He knew that Ruffo understood several languages and dialects, and whatever it was that this man had come for, he wished to know it.

Ruffo knew enough of the language Canial spoke to be able to make out his meaning, and he told Colonus that the stone worker wished to come and live in Rome. He would show them how to drain their land and bridge their streams. Mastarna would tell them that he was a man of honesty and ability. His reason for leaving his own country was a personal one; he had had a quarrel with the head priest of his village because the priest wished to interfere in his family affairs and make Canial's daughter the wife of his nephew, against her will. There was no safety or comfort in his part of the country when the priesthood had a grudge against a man.

There were others in the Roman settlement who had fled there for reasons of much the same kind as Canial's-men who had been robbed of their inheritance, slaves escaped from cruel masters, homeless men, and men who for one reason or another had found themselves unsafe where they lived before. But this was the first family which had wished to come from beyond the river. The others all came from places where the public wors.h.i.+p was not entirely unlike that of the Romans themselves and the people were of the same race in the beginning. This was a departure from that rule.

If it had not been for the d.y.k.e-building problem, Colonus would probably have said no at once. But that would have to be settled before the town grew much larger than it was, or they would have to change their way of life altogether. They were a people who hated to be crowded. They would need land, and land, and more land, if they continued to live on the Seven Hills. They must have grain for the cattle and themselves, and pasturage for the beasts, room for orchards and gardens, room for the villages of those who tilled their fields. Canial seemed to think that it would be quite possible to prevent the plain from being flooded, with proper stonework and drains, but it would need a man thoroughly used to the work to direct it. Colonus could see that Canial was probably that man. Every suggestion he made was practical and good, and he knew things about masonry that it had taken his ancestors generations to learn. Colonus finally said that he would talk it over with the other men of the city and give him an answer on a certain day.

Ruffo did not know anything of the G.o.ds the people of Canial wors.h.i.+ped, except that they were unlike the Roman G.o.ds and seemed to be very much feared. They had a G.o.d Turms, who was rather like the Roman Terminus, who protected traders and kept boundaries. They had a smith of the G.o.ds, called Sethlans, and a G.o.d of wine and drunkenness called Fuffluns.

No person, of course, could be allowed to bring the wors.h.i.+p of strange G.o.ds into the sacred city. The very reason of the founding of the city was to make a home for their own G.o.ds, and to let in strange ceremonies would be to defile that home.

It was finally decided that Canial and some of his countrymen who wished to come with him should have a place of their own, which was afterward known as the Street of the Tuscans. It was a place which no one had wished to occupy before, because it was so wet, but Canial and his friends had no difficulty in draining it. The only condition he made was that traders should be allowed to come and go and supply his family and friends with whatever they needed. Women, he said, did not like a strange place much as it was, and he should have no peace at home if his wife were obliged to learn new methods of housekeeping.

The only condition that Marcus Colonus and his friends made was that the strangers should do nothing against the law of the settlement, or against the Roman G.o.ds, and this they readily agreed to. Canial said that the priests in his country demanded so much in offerings that a man was no better than a slave, working for them.

All this happened while Romulus was away, but when he returned he said that the decision was a wise one. It privately rather amused him to see how in this new country the colonists were led to allow the beginning of new customs which they regarded with great horror when they first came.

Before another rainy season, the Etruscans and the Romans, working together, had made a very fair beginning on the dyking and draining of the worst of the marshes and the bridging of bad places. Canial understood how to mix burned lumps of clay containing lime and iron, and lime and sand, and water, in such a way that when the muddy paste hardened it was like stone itself. Tertius Calvo, who happened to be there when this was done, tried it by himself. Although what he made was not entirely a failure, it did not behave as it did under the hands of Canial. Without saying anything-indeed, he could say nothing, for he knew not a word of the strangers' language-Tertius watched and measured and experimented with small quant.i.ties until he found out the exact proportions and methods Canial used. The bit of wall he built finally was very nearly as good as Canial's own work. Calvo was good at laying stones, and had very little to learn in that line from any stranger. This mortar, as they found in course of time, would stand heat and cold and water and seemed to become harder with exposure. By using the best quality of material the work was improved. There was no secret about it; indeed, Canial did not object to teaching any man who wished to learn all he could.

The greatest debt they owed to their new settlers was the low round arch, built with stones set in mortar in such a way that the greater the weight, the firmer the arch would be. Another Etruscan trick was plastering over the side of a drain or a bank with a mixture of small stones stirred thickly into mortar like plums in a pudding. The best of this new way of working was that it could be done so quickly. A great deal of the work could be done by stupid and ignorant laborers under the direction of those who knew how to direct. Men whom they could not employ in any sort of skilled labor could help here. Such men were glad enough to come for an allowance of food and drink. A certain task was set them, and they had their living for that; if they did more, they had an extra allowance. The task was called _moenia_, and since it was the lowest and least skilled labor, work of that kind later came to be known as _menial_, the work of slaves and servants.