Brutus and the Roman Republic
For liberty and Rome demand their blood And he who pardons guilt like theirs takes part in it.
VOLTAIRE, Brutus
Delphi: c. 540 BC
Titus and Arruns Tarquinius shared a self-satisfied smile as they passed the rows of triumphal monuments lining the road to the ancient shrine at Delphi in central Greece. The beautiful marble and bronze faces of generations of athletes stared impassively at the travelers, secure in their timeless perfection. The aristocratic brothers felt a certain kinship with them, which they did not think extended to their cousin who was traveling with them.
Appearing stupid can be a remarkably smart disguise, and Lucius Junius had it down to a science. His rough face with its heavy beard was a far cry from the polished features of the Tarquin family, let alone the superhuman Greek athletes. His cousins had nicknamed him “Brutus,” or idiot. He plodded quietly behind Titus and Arruns, keeping his eyes on the ground.11
Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 11.10.
The three young Romans had made the long journey to Greece to find out which of them should be the next king of their city. Rome may not have seemed much to rule in those days, with about 35,000 inhabitants and a territory of some 350 square miles. The capital was a cluster of simple clay and wood structures that clung to a group of hills near the Tiber River. While strategic, the location couldn’t function as a port since the river was too shallow to allow the passage of seafaring vessels. At the same time, the proximity to the river meant that floods were a constant menace, and the flatlands were a swamp where disease bred easily. Rome’s neighbors, the Etruscans, considered Rome a rather crude minor power. They preferred to build their cities directly on the coast to facilitate the sea trade, or on more salubrious inland hilltops.
But the Romans were determined. A recent king had drained the swamp by constructing a great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, to create the dry land for a proper city center. The Romans were so proud of this feat of engineering, the world’s first covered sewage system, that they appointed a dedicated deity, Venus Cloacina, to protect it and built a temple in her honor. They insisted that all number of divine portents foretold a mighty future for their city, which would require a suitably strong ruler.
The obvious candidates were Titus and Arruns Tarquinius, sons of the current king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, or “Tarquin the Proud.” He had assumed the throne after murdering his predecessor (who happened to be his father-in-law), and he wanted to institute a more orderly succession plan.22 Tarquin was a powerful autocrat who expanded Rome’s influence throughout central Italy, but he was not uniformly popular at home. His habit of ignoring the traditional cabinet of advisers to the king, known as the Senate, had provoked the most criticism. Consultation with the Senate, which included men from the most prominent clans, was not a point of law, but the Romans had become accustomed to having a say in how their monarchs governed. Tarquin responded to their grumbling by summarily executing some of the senators.
Livy’s Ab urbe condita libri (History of Rome) records that Tarquin had been attracted to his predecessor’s daughter Tullia, who was inconveniently married to his brother, while Tarquin was married to her sister. Tarquin and Tullia murdered their spouses so they could marry each other, then plotted to overthrow Tullia’s father. When this was achieved, Tullia personally drove her chariot to the place where her father had fallen and ran over his body for good measure. Ab urbe condita 1.47.
As he grew older, Tarquin had come up with a scheme to put the succession in the hands of the gods. He would send his two most promising sons to Delphi to ask Apollo’s oracle which one should be king. To offset charges that the Tarquins were being too presumptuous by assuming that one of their own would be the successor, he sent along his sister’s dullard son Brutus as a token outsider.33 Apollo would know at a glance that this young man was no king.
Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.56.
The cousins had an arduous trip across the Italian peninsula through the lands of hostile tribes on uncertain tracks; the famous roads that would unite a vast empire were centuries in the future. But once they had sailed away from the Adriatic coast and finally reached Delphi, they received a warm welcome. They were wealthy enough to pay the tribute that would allow them to jump to the front of the long line of poor pilgrims who waited for days to consult the oracle and were mostly turned away without gaining an audience.
According to legend, in the mists of time long before the Trojan War, Delphi had been guarded by a monstrous reptile – a dragon known as the Python, with the head of a woman and a habit of eating men alive. Apollo had slain it with his arrows and taken the sanctuary as his own. His priestess, Pythia, was installed in a rocky cave where she could inhale the gases that came up out of the earth from a crack in the floor. In a hallucinogenic trance she would mutter cryptic words that, when correctly interpreted (for another fee), foretold the future.
Modern remains of the theater at Delphi, originally constructed in the 4th century BC.
Titus and Arruns were unnerved by the unblinking glare of the old woman who swayed precariously on a three-legged stool. The cave reeked with the smell of subterranean gas and incense. A priest whispered their query over and over in her ear: Who would next rule Rome?
Pythia stared at the brothers for a long time, then glanced at Brutus, who as usual stood a little behind. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she emitted a stream of gibberish in which only the words “kiss” and “mother” could be understood. Finally she fell silent and slid from her stool to lie still on the floor of the cave. The priest guided the three Romans out to the antechamber, which was richly furnished thanks to the generosity of those whose questions had been answered favorably.
“She chose me!” Arruns and Titus declared simultaneously.
The priest shook his head. Once the requisite tribute had been produced, he informed them that the choice had not yet been made. They should return to their city and the first one to kiss his mother would be the next to rule over Rome.
The young men pondered the oracle’s prediction on their long trip home. Arruns and Titus were focused on how to get to their mother first. As queen, she would be at the front of the party coming out from the city to greet them. They didn’t worry about Brutus, whose mother – a mere younger sister of Tarquin – would be well behind the royal couple.
The brothers raced their horses back to Rome, then sprinted to their mother, knocking her over in the process. Both brothers claimed to have reached her first.
Brutus brought up the rear. When he caught up with them, Arruns and Titus stopped arguing with each other and started laughing at him. His face was covered with mud.
“Don’t tell me,” Arruns jeered. “In your hurry to reach your mother, you fell off your horse! As if you were ever going to get there first.”
Brutus looked down, as if ashamed. But he had not fallen. He had deliberately slipped off his mount the moment it crossed into Roman territory, and pressed his lips to the earth of his motherland long before Arruns and Titus came anywhere near the queen.44
Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.56; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 11.11.
