W hat did R omulus do for Rome?

1. Romulus started Rome and it was named after him. He set up defences on the Palatine hill, where he grew up. He started ceremonies for the gods in the same way as the Albans did them, but for Hercules he made everyone worship in the Greek way which had been started by Evander. Romulus gave the people laws. He made himself seem grander in his general appearance and so that the country folk would follow his laws he got himself twelve lictors. (Body guards who had the power to beat people with their sticks or kill them with their axes.) Some people said it was twelve because twelve vultures appeared to Romulus but Livy thinks it was because the idea of lictors came from the Etruscans who had twelve – one for each of their tribes. What did Romulus do for Rome? Romulus made his city bigger with big walls round it but not many people lived there so he invited lots of people to come and start new lives there. Once he had lots of men, Romulus started to organise the place. He created one hundred senators (wise old men to help rule the place), either because this number was enough, or because there were only one hundred who were fit for the job. They were called ‘Fathers’ as a result of their good reputation, and their descendents were called ‘Patricians’ (pater means father in Latin). Romulus increased Roman territories and power by defeating the Caeinenses, the Crustimini, and the Antemnates, (according to Livy these peoples had all attacked Rome after the Romans tricked them and abducted their daughters). Romulus made a treaty with TatusTatius, the king of the Sabines, (whose daughters the Romans had also abducted). They agreed to share power with Rome as capital of their joint populations. Romulus then divided the population into thirty groups and recruited three groups each of one hundred Knights were recruited: the Ramnenses, the Titienses, and the Luceres. Romulus became the only king again a few years later, when Tatius was killed in a riot in Lavinium, caused by his taking the side of his relatives after they attacked some Laurentine ambassadors. Romulus renewed the treaty between Rome and Lavinium at this point, in order to make up for the ambassadors being attacked and the king being killed. The Fidenates thought the Romans were getting too powerful so they attacked them but Romulus defeated them easily by tricking them into an ambush. The last thing we are told he did was defeated the Veii in battle then destroyed their farms but gave them a peace treaty when they asked for it in exchange for some of their land. Livy concludes that, ‘this was what Romulus achieved while he was king at home and at war and all of it shows that he was descended from a god and deserved to be a god after he died. He had the courage to get his grandfather’s kingdom back for him, he planned and built a city and he took care of it in peace and war. He made Rome so strong that it was safe and peaceful for the next forty years. But the ordinary people were more grateful than the senators, and the soldiers liked him more than everyone else. He had 300 of them as bodyguards, both in peace and in war, who he called ‘The Swift Ones’.’ – Livy 1.15 In typical Romulus fashion, he was looking at his army when he was whisked off in a cloud to become a god. Julius Proculus claimed that Romulus appeared to him to give his final message to the people of Rome: He said, “Citizens, at dawn today Romulus, the father of this city, suddenly came down from the sky and stood in front of me as clear as day. I stood still because of respect and fear, and prayed to him to ask if I could look up at him. He said to me, ‘Go and tell the Romans that the gods in the sky want my city, Rome to be the capital of the world: so they should become good soldiers, and tell them, and they should tell their children, that no one can stand up to the Roman army’. When he had said this, he went up into the sky”. Amazingly everyone believed him and they were all much happier then. And that was the end of Romulus but he had set Rome on a course to be ‘the capital of the world’ and laid the foundations for a no-nonsense city with a very warlike attitude.