The Story of Greece and Rome by Tony Spawforth

Author:Tony Spawforth
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780300217117
Publisher: Yale University Press

PART II

THE ROMANS

CHAPTER 13

‘SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS’

Any society comprises a union, sometimes broadly consensual, sometimes far less so, of many different groups. A Hellenistic-period tomb in Rome, reopened in 2011 after restoration works, illuminates the values of one of the most powerful of these groups in Roman society during ancient Rome’s republican age. This lasted from the expulsion of the kings to the so-called ‘fall’ of the republic in 30 BC.

The tomb is an underground complex of corridors cut into the natural tufa of a hill on ancient Rome’s main street of tombs, the via Appia. Niches in the corridors once contained an accumulation over a period of two centuries or so of at least eight sarcophagi of dead members of a single lineage. At the entrance the visitor now sees a modern replica of the earliest of these sarcophagi (the original is in a museum). The deceased’s epitaph was inscribed on the lid: ‘[Lucius Corneli]us Scipio, son of Gnaeus.’ On one of the long sides a descendant some three generations later (around 200 BC) added a fulsome poem of praise for his ancestor:

Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, Gnaeus’ begotten son, a brave man and wise, whose fine form matched his manly virtue surpassing well, was aedile, consul and censor among you; he took Taurasia and Cisauna, in fact Samnium; he overcame all Lucana and brought hostages therefrom.

The form of the Roman names is revealing. An Athenian citizen had just the one name. In formal naming contexts, this was coupled with his father’s: ‘Pericles, son of Xanthippus’. The official style of a Roman citizen included not just his own personal name (‘Lucius’) and that of his father (‘Gnaeus’), but also a clan name (‘Cornelius’), and sometimes a hereditary surname (‘Scipio’). This system of naming must have helped Roman males to think of themselves as successive generations of a particular male line. Aristocrats could reinforce this sense of family identity by using the same burial ground over many generations, as the Cornelii Scipiones did.

Lucius’s epitaph addressed an imaginary readership of fellow Romans. These passers-by were meant to stop, read and value the quality of the deceased as announced here. This Scipio’s incarnation of a certain kind of masculine ethos of civic service is spelt out by some key Roman words.

Scipio was a fine specimen physically, he was ‘brave’ and possessed ‘manly virtue’ (virtus). He had served the state in three public offices, including those of consul and censor, which were particularly esteemed and fought over. Above all, his later family emphasized his services as a successful general, naming places in central Italy that he was supposed to have captured or subjected on behalf of the state.

The picture that emerges clearly enough from the remains of this family mausoleum is one of a society in which an aristocratic outlook counted for much. From generation to generation, families of men bearing the same hereditary name aspired to hold the highest magistracies of state, to command armies and to win wars. The males of these families were raised in a moral code familiar in other societies dominated by a warrior aristocracy.

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