The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire Read Free Page A

citizens. You see how he despises everybody, how he considers no other human being to be his superior and believes that he alone is rich and powerful.
    Luckily, the authorities left Cicero alone, and it may be that the general had not been aware of the advantage men like Chrysogonus were taking of a confused situation.
    Sulla was not simply a mass murderer; he was also a thoughtfulpolitician. He introduced reforms designed to strengthen the powers of the ruling class and to ensure that nobody else would be able to copy his example and hijack the state at the head of an army. They failed, and the careers of politicians loyal to the constitution, such as Cicero and Varro, were thrown off course by a succession of would-be Sullas, the last of whom, Gaius Julius Caesar, launched the civil war that brought down the Roman Republic. Caesar’s victory meant there was no longer room for them on the public stage.
    How was a patriotic Roman to respond? As far as Varro and Cicero were concerned, there was no alternative but to withdraw into a life of scholarship. In particular, this meant writing histories of Rome, or composing political treatises, or becoming an antiquarian.
    “Only let us be firm on one point—to live together in our literary studies,” Cicero told Varro in April:
If anyone cares to call us in as architects or even as workmen to build a commonwealth, we shall not say no, rather we shall hasten cheerfully to the task. If our services are not required, we must still read and write books on the ideal republic.
    Varro certainly did pursue his researches. He is credited with writing a phenomenal 490 books, although only one complete work survives—a handbook on agriculture. He lived to a very great age, completing one of his most celebrated tomes, Country Matters ( De re rustica ), toward the end of his life. He told his wife, “If man is a bubble, all the more so is an old man. My eightieth year warns me to pack my bags before I set out on the journey from life.” In fact, he managed to survive for one more decade. Among other achievements, Varro established a chronology, which fixed the foundation date of Rome at 753 B.C .; although it contains errors, it remains the traditional time line to this day.
    Varro and Cicero continued to meet, sharing black views of thecurrent state of affairs and recalling Rome’s past glories. They visited each other in one or another of their rural or seaside villas. Cicero could be a persnickety and demanding guest. “If I have leisure to visit Tusculum,” he wrote, “I shall see you there. If not I shall follow you to Cumae, and let you know in advance, so that the bath be ready.” A little later, he jokingly threatened, “If you don’t come to me I shall run over to you.”
    His admiration for his learned friend shines through the correspondence: “These days you are now spending down at Tusculum are worth a lifetime by my reckoning. I would gladly leave all earthly wealth and power to others, and take in exchange a license to live like this, free from interruption by any outside force. I am following your example as best I can.”
    ROME’S HISTORIANS AND antiquarians did not regard themselves as professional scholars but, like Cicero and Varro, tended to be unemployed members of the ruling class. Their purpose was to educate the degenerate generations of their own day. They wanted to be truthful, but when they were handicapped by a lack of facts they accepted legends and were not beyond filling gaps with what they felt must, even should, have happened.
    They shaped the story of Rome’s early years as they, the despairing politicians of the Republic’s last gasp, wanted it to be. It was meant as an alternative to the ruinous present. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the nineteenth-century English poet, historian, and politician, imagined that the foundation myths of Rome were originated as folk ballads, and he re-created some of them in unforgettable verse.
    Better than anyone