Rome's gift of laws and public works

Empire established judicial rights for conquered territories and lower classes

Globalization wasn't born a decade ago, when the whole world opened itself to the free market following the collapse of market-denying Communism. Its birth goes back some 18 centuries, to 212 C.E., when Rome granted its citizenship to every free resident of the Empire.
That was no small event. Provincial boundaries were abolished (the Empire stretched from the tip of Spain to the Urals, from Britain to North Africa and the Middle East), and with them custom duties and excises. This created a great state where all free citizens (regardless of race, place of birth or mother tongue) had the same rights and obligations. Rome was not the ruthless capital ruling the Empire, but the patria communis, everybody's homeland.
The idea of globalization, free market, cosmopolitan society, shared culture - even though often mistaken for recent discoveries - are part of the inheritance that Rome left to Europe, and therefore the world.
It has been written that Rome took that initiative in order to rein in the restlessness and independent temptations of the peoples it had submitted. That is true, but Rome did so with laws, as it was keenly aware of the fact that weapons could not achieve the same effects in the long run. In order to prevent the possibility of losing the conquered territories, Rome offered to share a common project with their inhabitants. In short, it established a policy. Here is another aspect of our Roman heritage: making policies, i.e. passing laws that establish reasonable juridical rules.
The Romans were pragmatists. Unlike the Greeks, who liked to theorize on everything, they never lost sight of the reality surrounding them. They improved that reality by modifying it according to their needs. From this standpoint, laws are nothing but tools that the Romans used to improve their quality of social life.
The need for such adjustments was felt right from the start: during the first three centuries of Rome, the laws under which an individual was to be judged were secret. They were jealously guarded by the priests (who were also the judges), by virtue of their self-proclaimed direct relationship with the gods. People believed that only the gods could administer justice, speaking through their priests.
Clearly, this couldn't do; everything depended on - shall we say - the mood of the gods, and not on the rule of law, so on the right day a multiple murderer might well go free, while on a bad day the theft of a chicken might be punished with death.
Faced with growing unrest in the population - which might have been pious but not completely taken in by the priest-judges - the Roman Senate sent three members to Greece on a mission to study what Solon had done. They got the message loud and clear: upon their return, a 10-senator committee (the decemviri) prepared the Law of the Twelve Tablets. The year was 451 b.C.E. From then on, the Twelve Tablets supplied the basic principles to all subsequent laws passed in Rome. With that, the law became the real strength of Rome, as well as a model that in coming centuries was imitated, at least in part, by every lawmaking body of the Old World.
The first innovation of the Twelve Tablets was the separation of religious affairs from statal affairs, thus freeing the citizens from the capricious will of the gods, or of those who claimed to represent the gods. The second innovation was the establishment of two fundamental principles: the equality of all in front of the law, and the sovereignty of the people. The third innovation was the distinction between private and public law: the former comprised the rules governing relations among individuals, the latter included the regulations of the branches of the state. The fourth innovation was the decision to have the text of the law carved onto 12 bronze tablets (whence the name) and posted in the forum, so that rights and obligations were clearly visible to all. These are the basis of what is still called, at any latitude, the rule of law.
Thus established the fundamental criteria of its law, Rome did not take long in developing what amounted to an extraordinary body of laws, not just for its innovative character but especially for the epoch in which they were introduced. Within two centuries, laws abolished class privileges, granting Plebeians the right to accede to official posts and offices, up to the rank of consuls (the highest office of the state), allowing them to intermarry with the Patricians, abolishing enslavement of defaulting debtors. This eventually led to the Lex Ortensia, which established that the decisions of the assembly of the people (concilium plebis) had general force of law and did not require senatorial ratification to come in force.
In order to understand the scope of this law one must consider how the Roman society was divided. There were three main classes: the Patricians, descendants of the families of the founders of Rome; the knights (equites), the rich entrepreneurs and merchants; and the Plebeians, having neither nobility nor money, and forming the vast majority of the Romans. Initially, however, they had no say in public affairs, because the power was firmly in the grasp of patricians and knights.
The plebeians repeatedly revolted against the discriminations they suffered (e.g., when land was to be distributed, plebeians got the least fertile) despite their numbers. Plebeian hands powered agriculture, industry and crafts; in time of war, they wielded swords and shields. Nothing worked: patricians and knights did not share their power. Finally - in 493 b.C.E. - the plebeians crossed their arms and retreated on the Holy Mount, refusing to defend Rome from the latest threat of the Volsci and Equi. The Senate pleaded in vain. We shall return, the plebeians said, if the Senate will cancel our debts and free those of us who have been enslaved because they defaulted, and if we shall be allowed to elect representatives who will protect our interests.
In the end, the Senate was forced to accept, as it realized that Rome without the plebeians was just a handful of noble or moneyed families, numerically insignificant: debts were cancelled, defaulted slaves were freed, and five offices were created (two tribunes and three aediles), elected every year by the plebeians and representing them.
The Law of the Twelve Tablets, written some 40 years later, was also a fruit of the dignity conquered by the plebeians. After obtaining five representatives, they also obtained the right to meet in assembly. The Lex Ortensia of 286 b.C.E. gave such importance to that assembly that its decisions became law for every Roman citizen.
The dignified protest of the plebeians was also important for another reason: it marked the birth of the awareness of civil rights. The protesters showed their great maturity by respecting the rules, and avoiding recourse to violence. Not always, in later centuries, such awareness and maturity would be duplicated with the same lucid determination. However, the political culture of the West owes much gratitude to the Roman plebeians, who taught that rights are earned and not a gift, and that being of humble origins does not mean being subservient. Democracy is still founded on these premises.
We said that making policies means passing laws that set reasonable juridical rules. Roman policies, based on clear and reasonable laws, aimed to build a strong and authoritative state. The feat was accomplished: already in the 4th century b.C.E. Rome went beyond the idea of polis (the Greek city-state that had been its model up to then) to create the foedus latinus, an alliance among all the tribes of Latium. Subsequently the alliance expanded to include the whole Italian peninsula, whence it moved and colonized the Mediterranean. After that, Rome built the Empire, extending it beyond the Alps and the Channel and eastward to the Danube.
At the height of its power, Rome consolidated the Empire by granting citizenship to all its residents. All this in the name of the acronym that appeared on every law and on the insignia of its legions: SPQR (Senatus Popolusque Romanus, the Senate and the People of Rome), as a reminder that everything was being done upon orders from the sole owners of the sovereignty, the Senate and the People. The millenary success of Rome, and especially the influence it exerted on Europe's political culture, prove the validity of that formula.
It is often said that the Romans were lawmakers and engineers, and that's true. They applied the same diligence to building a strong, authoritative state destined to longevity and to building cities, buildings, aqueducts, and roads just as capable of defying the centuries. They can still be seen everywhere, not just in Rome but all over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East. The inspiration of the architects who built those works crossed the Atlantic when the young United States built their new capital; Washington took from the Romans its aura of solid authority.
There must be a reason if Roman technique (much like Roman law) survived the demise of the Roman Empire. This reason lies in the Roman genius, a practical, positive attitude, in the service of society, which went straight to the heart of the matter without dawdling. Buildings, aqueducts, roads, cities, all had a role to play, so they had to be built at the state of the art, in order to carry out their tasks in the best of ways.
This is the only explanation for the 300,000 kilometres of imperial roads, for the 10 aqueducts that carried to Rome a million cubic metres of water per day, the many buildings of surprising boldness that dotted the Eternal City, such as the dome of the Pantheon, with a diametre of almost 44 metres. The Romans learned of the importance of public works in the Athens of the age of Pericles, but their pragmatic approach meant that they never stopped at the aesthetics of the buildings (unlike, quite often, the Greeks); they did not begin any construction if its practical function was unclear.
They built the Coliseum, imposing and luxurious, but it was the place where the people were entertained; they built their baths, some of them just as imposing and luxurious (e.g. the Baths of Caracalla), but the baths had a sanitary role and were an important meeting point for people. The roads served not only to link cities with one another, but also to speed transit, so they had to be paved. Thanks to paving, something that only Rome used for its roads at the time, Caesar managed to march to Gaul, 1,500 kilometres away, in eight days.
Everything that we mentioned, however, could not contribute to forming the European culture without a formidable tool for penetration: Latin, for centuries the Empire's lingua franca. The Latin language carried out a vital function, allowing Roman policies, laws and public works to be understood and accepted by populations having different origins, languages and cultures.
With the collapse of the Empire, this linguistic unity was also broken. However, Latin gave rise to Italian dialects (one of which, the Florentinian dialect, would subsequently give rise to Italian) and other Neolatin (or Romance) languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian, etc.
Upon reflection, of course, these languages did not stop in Europe, because France, Spain and Portugal brought them wherever they created their colonial empires. Claiming that Latin - under the guise of French, Spanish and Portuguese - has conquered the world from Canada to Mexico, from Latin America to Africa to Indochina, is not unjustified.
Latin never died. Europe continued to study it even after writing and speaking its various national tongues for awhile. In the 16th century, speaking and writing "like Cicero" was compulsory for any educated person, not just for the clergy; as late as the 19th century, university lectures were given in Latin. Thanks to Latin, much more studied than the national languages, the latter would eventually acquire their common syntactic and lexical traits that make them so surprisingly similar to one another. The Catholic Church still uses Latin in its official documents.
Despite the spread of English, which seems to be intent on silencing any other tongue, Latin is so vital that it is being used for some modern mass publications. Since at least 20 years ago it is being used for some of the most famous cartoon characters, enjoying a constant, solid success. In Latin one can read about the Americans Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (Michael Musculus and Donaldus Anas), Snoopy and Woodstock (Snupius and Veudestocus); the wrathful Gaul Asterix (the name did not change, as it was Latin to begin with); the British Winnie the Pooh (Winnie ille Pooh). These are just examples of a growing production, possibly the most unusual aspect of Rome's legacy to Europe.
As we did for Greece, also for Rome we limited our examination to a few relevant aspects of its history. Our attempt to explain the cultural roots of Europe must reckon with the limited space in comparison with the enormous scope of the subject. We are aware that much was left untold, but the most significant legacy Rome left us are its laws, its policies, its public works, and its language: these are the ways an authoritative state expresses itself.
The remaining space will allow us to illustrate a few curiosities that might help our readers to better understand the Romans, who weren't just the lucid lawmakers, invincible strategists and bold architects that history taught us. They could smile, laugh, and even sneer. Famous lawyer Marcus Tullius, the consul who foiled Catilina's plot, had a lump on his nose shaped like a chick pea. He was nicknamed Cicero, and that's the name we know him best by.
If Romans invented law to make society more governable, and public works to make it more liveable, they clearly also liked comfort. This is shown in archaeological excavations that unearth luxurious homes enriched with marble, mosaics, statues, pools, and central heating. They had more than fireplaces, they had radiators! Those were clay pipes where hot water flowed, not unlike today's versions. But also lower class homes were far from miserable shacks. For instance, in big condos - that could tower to seven floors - running water was available in every unit.
The same attention was devoted to clothing. Precious fabrics, such as flax, brocade and silk, had the lion's share in the wardrobe of the rich, but even common folk were not ill dressed. There was also a lot of jewellery. Lollia Paolina, a Roman matron, used to go around wearing gem necklaces, rings, and earrings worth over a million Canadian dollars today.
Women cared for their bodies: there were creams, balsams, oils, soaps, and shaving razors. Empress Poppea used to bathe in milk, as she believed it to moisturize her skin. She was right: modern research confirmed this. Female lingerie was in silk and flax, and the bra had already been invented, as can be seen from a mosaic in Pompeii. The same mosaic also tells us that Roman women used bikinis when they went at the seaside or at the pool.
However, we should not believe that everything in Rome was luxurious. There were some pretty hard times; this happened to Emperor Vespasian, who managed to make do with a simple yet astute invention. He put for-fee public urinals all over Rome (ever since, those useful cabins were nicknamed "vespasians"). With this stratagem he killed two birds with one stone, raking in some fresh cash for the coffers of the state and avoiding that every corner of the city, especially at night, became an open-air outhouse. Scandalized that an emperor could turn his subjects' bodily needs into money, Titus, Vespasian's son, complained to his father. Vespasian listened to him with patience; then he took a coin and put it under Titus' nose, remarking, "Pecunia non olet," money does not stink. Another example of Roman practicality.
We hope that our readers have grasped, even through these glances to everyday life in ancient Rome, how big Rome's legacy to Europe is, and how ancient are the roots of some things we usually believe are very recent. We suppose that they will share our feeling that modern times can be far more barbaric than bygone days.

Publication Date: 2004-08-29
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4351