History of Rome

[Foxy]

Well, the Italian section couldn't lack it.
Source: "Storia di Roma", by Indro Montanelli (for the moment only this).

Ab urbe condita: legends, history, Latins, Sabins and Etruscans

Romans, aware to descend mostly from shepherds, invented a complete legend that bears a prestigious name: Virgilius. He wrote that Romans descended from a Troian warrior, Enea, and his Latin wife, Lavinia. Their son founded Alba Longa and, some generation later, one of the two twins, Romolo, once killed Remo, founded Rome. Enea, according to the legend, descended from the goddess Aphrodites (Venus in Latin). Something true is in this legend: the idea that Rome had divine roots and was founded for will of gods (Rome is, after all, still a holy city).
But Virgilius' book was mostly a political bill: his work was commissioned by the emperor Augusto, descendent of the Dinasty Iulia that, so it was thaught, descended from Venus, like Enea. The same Augusto was a strong supporter of the Greek culture.
Virgilius' Eneide legitimated this way Augustus' authority and divinized his family.

Facts went differently, of course.
Around 1000 b.C. the capital of Latium was Alba Longa and his inhabitants were the first to move to the area where Rome lays today and to build a colony. Here an other legend darkens the truth: Romans used to tale that the colons from Alba Longa were only about 100 and all males and, well, they needed women, so choosed to kidnappen the women of their Sabinic neighbours. Maybe this legend hiddens a conquest made by Sabines or simply indicates that the two peoples, very similar anyway, mixed very soon.

In the same period, Etruscans were expanding. Etruscans were a merry people, differently from Romans, more tragic. Etruscan women were free and emancipated compared to Romans and, overall, Etruscans were mostly merchants while Romans mostly shepherds. Etruscans were expanding in Southern Italy, creating colonies in the Northern Campania, but, to arrive there, they had to make stops in Latium and the Tevere mouth was ideal.
Roma is from an Etruscan word, rumon (river).
In Rome endly also Etruscans arrived. They were less in number but richer.
Latins and Sabins - now mixed in the Roman type - must have not liked them. Etruscans avoided to mix with Romans, becouse they felt superior, for almost 100 years.

Probably this discrimination is at the basis of the officiousness with which Romans destroyed Etruria, deleting everything of their culture, including also the language.
Rome was now evolving towards the monarchy.

[Tyrrhenoi]

Virgilius. He wrote that Romans descended from a Troian warrior, Enea, and his Latin wife, Lavinia. Their son founded Alba Longa and, some generation later, one of the two twins, Romolo, once killed Remo, founded Rome.

Livius tells a different myth on the foundation of Rome - that Romolo e Remo were Ares (Mars) childgren -

[San Galgano]

Probably this discrimination is at the basis of the officiousness with which Romans destroyed Etruria, deleting everything of their culture..


Well done thread but these etruscan tools don't agree with this last sentence:D

http://utenti.multimania.it/tusciautonoma/LWF00051.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kEQInldkmG4/SNLE4gJsftI/AAAAAAAAATE/lpZtyc0Qhlw/s320/Biga+Etrusca.jpg

[Foxy]

Livius tells a different myth on the foundation of Rome - that Romolo e Remo were Ares (Mars) childgren -

Well, Ares' sons really not becouse Ares is a Greek god. :D Marte's sons is exact. If I remember well, Marte saw Rea Silva (Romolo and Remo's mum) passing and felt in love with her, who descended from Enea, so from Venus.
So Romans descended from Mars according to Livio, and the gens Iulia from Venus, according to Virgilius.

[Foxy]

The problems for the Roman started the day he born. If he was handicapped, the father had the right to leave the newborn die leaving him outside, but the same destiny could happen to a female, if the father didn't want a daughter, and often Roman fathers really did.
If the newborn was accepted, when he was 8 he entered, with a magnificent ceremony, the gens: a group of more families descending from a same ancestor. A Roman male had 3 names: "prenome" (like Marius, Antonius, Marcus,etc.), "nome" (the name of the gens, like Iulia) and the "cognome" or "family name" (equivalent of the modern surname).
You will understand that a person whose name was Publio Giulio Antonio, Caio Giulio Cesare or Marco Tullio Emilio had already to feel some uneasiness and a lot of dues on their shoulders.
Females, on the contrary, took only one name: the female versione of their "nome". So, if she was a member of the gens Iulia, her name was Giulia, or Cornelia or Tullia.
You will also understand that Rome was therefore full of Giulias, Cornelias, Tullias, becouse the families who founded Rome were more or less 100 (!).
The centre of the family was the paterfamilias: he was not only the father but a sort of priest too. He had the right to kill the wife if she betryaled him or stole his wine even without a trial and could sell his sons as slaves. This harshness is partially alleviated by the pietas: the summit of the familiar tender feelings.
Mother was called "domina" , that means "lady/mistress" and was not left in the gyneceum like the Greek women.

--The House--

The Roman house was in this epoque a little fort. Little statues of Lares and Penates (little spirit of the house) protected it. The family members were looked by the Manes, the spirits of the dead ancestors: they were the guardians of the house.
Youngs were educated at home, but Romans didn't like very much the high culture, preferring the discipline. They taught to write, to read, something of mathes and something of history. No poems and no romances: who wanted to read them had to learn Greek.
Romans cared very much about the physical strenght but there were not gyms. Indeed, why to go to gym, considered by them a Greek frivolity? Roman dads preferred to put their sons to dig the family homestead, making muscles with the hoe.
In the freetime, dads used to bring their sons in the squares, where children could grow up listening adults speaking about the problems of the State. But children had to shut up and listen.


--The Army--

Endly, when the Roman guy was 16, he had to serve in the army. The ones who wanted to follow the cursus honorum had to serve in the army for no less than 10 years. Roman army was not rigid, it was terrible. The coward was lashed until the death, the deserters were cut the right hand and meals were just bread and vegetables. Life was so harsh there that soldiers preferred to go to fight than to stay in the camp. Death, for those guys, was not a sacrifice.

Ps: the weapons were not payed by the State. :rolleyes:

[SaxonCeorl]

From Wikipedia


Bulla (amulet)
Bulla, an amulet worn like a locket, was given to male children in Ancient Rome nine days after birth. They were enigmatic objects of lead covered in gold foil. A bulla was worn around the neck as a locket to protect against evil spirits and forces. A bulla was made of differing substances depending upon the wealth of the family. Before the age of manhood, Roman boys wore a bulla, a neckchain and round pouch containing protective amulets (usually phallic symbols), and the bulla of an upper-class boy would be made of gold. Other materials included leather and cloth.

A girl child did not wear a bulla, but another kind of amulet, like lunula until the eve of her marriage, when it was removed and burned along with her childhood toys and other things. She would then stop wearing child's clothes and start wearing women's Roman Dress. A boy used to wear a bulla until he became a Roman citizen at the age of 16. His bulla was carefully saved, and on some important occasions, like his becoming a general and commanding a parade, the bulla was taken out. He would wear the bulla during the ceremony to safeguard againstevil forces like the jealousy of men.

[Foxy]

From Wikipedia

I knew also - so teachers told me at school - that female Romans, reached the adulthood, used to donate their toys and amulet to the temple of Venus. The amulet was a sort of doll.

I dunno if it has some relation with this practise, but here where I live - but I suppose in the whole Italy - it is a habit to donate a little bracelet to the newborn in occasion of the baptism. The bracelet is very small, made expressly for children wrist. Usually it is made of yellow or white gold. The alternative is to donate a little necklace (with a little cross or the date of the baptism), always in gold.

Does this practise exist also abroad?

I had my bracelet but I lost it :(

[Foxy]

The period of Middle December was holy in many cultures: in Northern Europe and in the germanic world in general it was the period in which Yule was celebrated; from Yule modern Christmas takes the use of mistletoe and of the holly, now common also in Southern Europe, and the more famous Christmas Tree.
In the same period and for the same cause - the winter solstice - a long celabration happened also in Rome: Saturnalia. The celebration in honour of god Saturnus started with a sacrifice, like in Yule, and there was the use to exchange symbolic presents, called strenne. The celebration had often an orgiastic character.
But an other cult, this time from Persia, arrived during the Emperial Age in Rome: the cult of Mitra and, with him, of the Undefeated Sun (Sol Invictus). Aureliano consecrated his Temple on December 25th, including it in the celebration of Saturnalia, that until that moment finished on December 23th.
After the conversion to the Christianism, christians associated the figure of Christ with the one of the Sun; they also used in thousand ways previous pagan iconographies to rapresent Jesus.
The most common association in the paleochristian age was to identify Christ with Apollo-Helios, so with the Roman-Greek god of the Sun, or, in the symbology, with the symbol of the Sol- Invictus.
In the Roman world, the rebirth of the Sun was rapresented also under a female goddess: Persefone, the girl that, desired by Pluto in the Underworld and by his mother in the world, used to spend 6 months in the world of the dead (from midsummer to midwinter) and 6 months in the world (spring and summer).
The word "Natale" (The Day of the Birth, Christmas in English) was first used in 330 a.D., when the emperor used the expression "Natalis Invictus" to refer to the nativity of Jesus, insted the expression "Sol Invictus".
Christmas is, therefore, probably the biggest exemple of religious syncretism ever realized in Europe, including Roman, Persian, Germanic, Jewish and Greek symbols, cults and traditions.

[Wulfhere]

I've recently been watching I, Claudius for the umpteenth time. Brilliant stuff.

[Pallantides]

Sono pazzi questi romani!
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~nitina/photos/images/intro-obelix.gif

[Cato]

I believe Livy himself commented that, in writing his history of Rome, he was neither confirming nor denying the legends that he was using, especially for the earlier periods of the city's history.

[Foxy]

The Emperial Forum now and how it should be before (virtual 3d reconstruction) - Italy

q-yUaLqsbuw

City of Conimbriga- Portugal

qEt-imnHJJ4

Roman theatre in Baelo Claudia - Spain

TDx3z17a8WY

City of Baelo Claudia- Spain

8K8OfJN-qrw

Roman camp in Saalburg - Germany

fLb-MaJmV9I

Forum of Ulpia Traiana - Romania

ycP1dxYur3A

[Cato]

^
Impressive, the monumental scale of Roman architecture and engineering still boggles the mind.