The Childhood of Rome Part 12

"You! An outcast!" the girl cried, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng in scorn.

"I am of good blood, and now I rule this city. You shall rule it with me when you will," said the chief coolly.

"I would rather be a slave and grind at the mill!"

Romulus smiled. What did this girl know of a slave's life?

"You had better not," he said. "But you need not do either. If after the Saturnalia you wish to go back to your father's house, you shall go. But you cannot know much about us until you have seen how we live." And he turned and went out.

Emilia did not know exactly what to make of this behavior. She had made up her mind that if they tried to make her the wife of one of these strangers, she would stab herself with the knife she carried in her bosom, or throw herself into the river. But as the days went on and she saw no more of Romulus, or any other youth, she was still more puzzled. She never connected him with the lad in the wolfskin tunic who had rescued her from the banditti many years before. Many stray shepherd boys had been fed in their village at one time or another. The Sabines themselves had never known that the strange rescuer of the child and the leader of the mountain patrol were one and the same. In fact, they had come to believe that the little Emilia had been saved by Mars himself, in human guise. Romulus had never told of the matter, even to his own men or to his brother.

The young girls who tended the sacred fire now formed a kind of society by themselves, like the fraternities of the men. Emilia was allowed to sit with them and spin and sew, and she lived in the house of Marcus Colonus, all of whose children were now married. She heard a great deal about Romulus from time to time, but he never came near her. Sometimes she saw him marching at the head of his men, or sitting with the elders of the people on some public occasion. But he never looked her way, or sent her any word beyond what he had already said.

At first she hoped fiercely that her people would gather an army and come against the insolent invaders and destroy them, but as time went on, she began to hope that they would not. A war with this race would be long and bitter, for they were not the kind to yield. This town would never be taken but by killing all the men who could fight, and burning the houses, and enslaving the women and children,-and the women were kind to her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Emilia was allowed to sit with them and spin and sew]

The settlement was now so large that it covered several of the hills, and the high steep hill that stood up like the head of a crouching animal, the Capitoline, had been strongly fortified. On one side it descended almost straight like a precipice, and from the brink one could see for miles across the plain.

The captain of the guard there was one of Romulus's old comrades, Tarpeius by name. He had a daughter who often spent some hours with the other maidens, on the Palatine, spinning and gossiping, and singing old songs.

She was very curious about Emilia's people and said that her mother had been a Sabine girl. She expressed great admiration for everything about Emilia-her bright abundant hair, her beautiful eyes, her clear white skin, her graceful hands and feet, and her clothes. Especially she admired the band of gold Emilia wore on her left wrist. She was like an inquisitive and rather impertinent child.

The bracelet was a gift from Emilia's father; he had ordered it from an Etruscan trader; it had been made especially for her. Whenever she looked at it, she felt as if it were a pledge that some day she should see him again and visit her old home.

One day late in the autumn there was a commotion in the town, and the sound of many marching feet. From the plain below came shouting, and the far-off sound of drums and pipes. Emilia's heart jumped. The Sabine army was on the way!

Villagers came flying from a distance, wild with fright, and begging to be protected within the walls. Some had taken time, scared as they were, to drive in their beasts and bring the grain they had just finished thres.h.i.+ng. Their men joined the defenders, and the women and children were sheltered among the townspeople, many of whom were relatives.

The Sabines spread their army all around the Roman settlement. They took possession of a hill near by, almost as great as the Palatine.

It began to seem after a time as if the siege might last indefinitely. The Roman fortifications were strong and well manned, and they had plenty of provision. Now that the marsh was drained, only a most unusual flood would drive away the enemy, and they did not seem inclined to storm the hills, even if they could. Matters might have gone on so much longer but for the thoughts in the head of a girl.

Tarpeia, the daughter of the captain of the guard, watched eagerly the Sabine captains, and saw the gleam of the ornaments they wore. One night she slipped out by a way she knew and crept past the Roman guards into the Sabine camp. She had learned something of their talk from Emilia and easily made herself understood. She told Tatius the Sabine general, when they brought her to him, that she would open the gates of the stronghold to his men for a reward. She would do it if they would give her _what they wore on their left arms_.

Tatius looked at the willowy figure and the common, rather pretty face with its greedy eyes and eager smile, and agreed, with a laugh. Tarpeia returned to the stronghold, and that night, when the darkness was thickest, she slid past the sleepy guard and unbarred the gates, and waited.

Tatius had no respect for traitors, though he was willing to make use of them when they came and offered him the chance. He reasoned that a girl clever and wicked enough for this would betray him and his own men just as quickly as she betrayed her father and his people. He told his men to give her exactly what he had promised her-what they wore on their left arms, and _all of it_! As they rushed past her and she drew back a little toward a hollow in the hill, Tatius first and the others after him flung at her not only their bracelets, but the heavy oval s.h.i.+elds they carried on their left arms, beating her down as if she had been struck by a shower of stones. The garrison, taken by surprise, had no chance. Brave old Tarpeius died fighting, without knowing what had become of his treacherous daughter. At dawn the stronghold was in Sabine hands. They had won the first move.

Now indeed the two armies must join battle, with the odds against the Romans. They met in a level place between the two hills but not so low as the plain, and the fighting was fierce enough. The Sabine and Roman women watched from the walls of the Palatine, and the Sabine girls, some of them with babies in their arms, were crying as if their hearts would break.

Whichever army won, they would mourn men who loved them, for their fathers and brothers were fighting against their husbands.

The line of fighting surged to and fro. A stone from a sling struck Romulus on the head, and stunned him. The Romans gave back, fighting every inch of the way. Romulus came to himself and tried to rally them, but in vain. He flung up his arms to heaven and uttered a desperate prayer to Jupiter, Father of the G.o.ds, to save Rome.

Emilia could not bear it any longer. She stood up among the other Sabine women, her eyes bright and her face as white as a lily, and spoke to them quickly.

"Come with me!" she called, moving swiftly toward the door of the temple of Vesta where they were gathered. "We will end this war-or die with our men! Come to the battle field!"

The women guessed what she meant to do, and with a soft rush like a flock of birds, they went past the guards and out of the gates, down over the hillside, between the armies, which had halted an instant for breath. With tears and soft little outcries they flung themselves into the arms of their fathers and brothers in the Sabine army, and some sought out their husbands begging them to stop the fighting, and not to make them twice captives by taking them away from their homes. A more astonished battle line was probably never seen than the Sabine front. The Romans on the other side of the field were nearly as much taken aback.

There is no denying that most of the men felt rather silly. There could be no more fighting without leading the women and babies back to the town, and they probably would not stay there. It dawned on the Sabines all at once that if the women who were now wives of the Romans were contented where they were, and loved their husbands, it would be cruel as well as senseless to force them back to their mountain villages. The war stopped as soon as the generals on both sides could frame words of some dignity to express their feelings. Emilia's father, when he found that his daughter was unharmed, and had been treated during the past year like an honored guest, declared that there should be peace without delay. The conclusion of the whole matter was an agreement to form an alliance. The Sabines and the Romans were to share the Seven Hills and rule together. All the customs common to both should be continued, and each settlement should have freedom to govern itself in the customs peculiar to itself.

Romulus came toward Emilia and her father about sunset, after the wounded had been made comfortable and the treaty agreed upon. They were in the doorway of the priest's tent. The Roman general looked very tall and handsome and full of authority. His s.h.i.+ning helmet and s.h.i.+eld, short sword, and light body armor of metal plates overlapping like plumage were as full of proud and warlike strength as the wings of an eagle. He bowed before the two; then he looked at the maiden.

"It is nearly a year. The time has not gone quickly."

"He told me," explained Emilia, "that if after the Saturnalia I wished to return, he would send me home."

"And do you wish to go home, my daughter?" asked the priest.

Emilia looked up at Romulus.

"I will go home," she said, "with my husband."

And the news ran through the camps that Romulus had taken a Sabine bride.

XIX

THE PRIEST OF THE BRIDGE

In the customs of the people who founded the town by the river, there was no act of life which did not have some ancient rule or tradition connected with it. There was a right way and a wrong way to do everything. In all the important work of life, such as the care of the sheep and cattle, the sowing of the fields and the making of wine, certain elders among the men were chosen to take charge of the management, decide on what day the work was to commence and take care that all was done as it ought to be. In this new life in a strange place the colonists found that some kinds of work that used not to be very important became so because things were changed.

This was the case with the priest who had charge of the public ways,-the gates, the roads and the walls. In their old home this was not a very important office, because the walls almost never needed anything done to them, and the roads were all made long ago. Tertius Calvo, who was the pontifex or roadmaker, was a quiet man and never had much to say, but in this place he had more to do than almost any other public officer in the city.

Calvo was a good mason and understood something of what we should call now civil engineering. He had judgment about the best place to lay out a road and the proper stone to choose for masonry. As the town grew, and the farming lands about it were cleared, and more and more persons became interested in the town by the river, Calvo, in his quiet way, was one of the busiest of men.

He got on very well with the miscellaneous laboring force that he could command, and partly by signs, partly in a mixture of the two languages, he learned to talk with the stonemason Canial quite comfortably. Gradually, as they were needed, roads were made in different directions over the plain, and always in much the same way. They were as straight as they could be without taking altogether more time and labor than could be given, and they were usually carried across streams and bogs instead of going around. Calvo enjoyed working out ways to do this. If the plain had been really boggy he might not have been able to do as much as he did, but it was not really a marsh. It was a more or less level area lying so little above the bed of the river that the rise of a foot or two in the waters changed its aspect until the Romans began draining it. The people were astonished to see how much more quickly they could reach the river over one of Calvo's roads than they could over the old, winding, up-and-down paths. The road was built with a track in the middle higher than the edges, to let the water drain off, and this track was more solid than the edges and far more solid usually than the land on each side the road. There was no need for the highway to be very wide, for most of the travel was on foot. After a time people began to call the new roads the "laid" roads, because they were made by laying, or spreading, new material on the line of travel.

The new road was a "street" built up of _strata_.

There was never much trouble in getting men to work on these highways after they saw the convenience of them. They could not have built them for themselves, because they had not Calvo's eye for the right place or his knowledge of every kind of stone and other road material. The roads led out from Rome like the spokes of a wheel, but Calvo did not build any roads from town to town. He said it was better not to.

There came to be a proverb that all roads lead to Rome. Calvo's object in roadmaking was to make it easy for outsiders to reach the city and return.

He was not concerned about their visiting one another. The natural result was that Rome got all the trade of a growing country.

Another consequence of Calvo's road-making system was that it would have been very difficult for the outlying settlements to join in any attack against Rome itself, because they could not reach their neighbors half as easily as they could reach Rome. Calvo saw-what most generals have to see if they are to have any success in fighting-that wars are won by the feet as well as the weapons of an army. The quicker they march and the less strength they have to expend on getting from one place to another, the better the soldiers will fight. It came to be almost second nature for any Roman to look out that the roads were in good condition, and a general on the march took care that he did not go too far into an unknown country without leaving a good road over which to come back.

In the course of their wandering about, before they found a place for their home, the colonists had not only learned the importance of good water but had found out where some of the springs and wells were. Here and there, as he discovered a good place for a camp, Calvo caused a rude shelter to be built, where any Roman could find a place to sleep and make a fire. On some of the roads he and Romulus took counsel together and planned the erection of a kind of barrack, so that if they sent a company of troops out that way there would be a place which they could occupy as a shelter, and if necessary hold against an enemy. They were not exactly houses, or forts; they were known as _mansiones_,-places where one might remain for a night or two. The practical use of these places proved so great that the plan was never given up, and _mansiones_ were built at the end of each day's march, in later ages, wherever the Roman army went. But in the beginning there was only a rough shelter like the khans of Eastern countries,-walls and roofs, to which men brought their own provisions and bedding, if they had any. People had these places of refuge long before there was any such thing as a tavern or hotel known in the world.

It began to be seen in course of time that the Priesthood of the Highways, or the bridges-for about half Calvo's work here was bridge building-was one of the most necessary of all. Before he died he had four others to a.s.sist him, and was called the Pontifex Maximus, the high pontiff, and greatly revered for his wisdom. He had met and talked with and commanded so many different sorts of people, both intelligent and ignorant, and had solved so many different problems, for no two places where a highway is built are alike, that there were very few questions on which he did not have something worth saying. The standard he set was kept up. A road, when built, was built to last, and so was a bridge.

But the greatest work of Tertius Calvo, and the one which perhaps made more difference in the history of his people than any other, was an undertaking which he put through when he and most of the other fathers of the colony were quite old men. It was the bridge across the river.

At the point where the Seven Hills are situated, the river is about three hundred feet wide, but there is an island in it which makes a natural pier. Here Calvo suggested a bridge, to take the traffic from the other side of the river and bring it directly to Rome instead of letting it come across anywhere in boats. Such a bridge, moreover, would make it easier to hold the river, in case of war, against an enemy coming either up stream or down.