According to legend, Rome was founded on a
murder. The dispute arose between two twin brothers,
Romulus and Remus, when they lead an expedition to found a new city next to the Tiber river. The brothers agreed that the ideal location
for this new city would be somewhere on this set of hills, but they couldn't exactly agree
on where begin construction. One brother, Romulus, was primarily interested
in the military defense of the city, and therefore favoured a centrally located hill called the
Palatine. The other brother, Remus, was thinking of
trade and commerce, and so favoured a hill that enjoyed easy access to the river called
the Aventine. This disagreement set off a full scale, 10/10
argument. The group accompanying the brothers split
right down the middle, until there was a Palatine faction under Romulus, and an Aventine faction
under Remus. There was no possibility of reaching a consensus,
so each side agreed to go to their preferred hill, make some animal sacrifices, and await
a sign from the gods. Remus and friends on the Aventine Hill soon
saw 6 vultures flying overhead. The brothers claimed to be descended from
Mars, the god of war, and for obvious reasons the vulture was his bird, so this made a lot
of sense. Clearly, this was the sign they were waiting
for. Remus marched over and informed his brother
that the his hill had received a favourable sign from the gods. Romulus responded by saying that just now,
12 vultures had landed on his hill. Remus was like you're a damn liar, and insisted
on seeing the vultures for himself. Remus was not satisfied by this. Sure, he argued, the gods had shown each brother
a sign, but Remus's sign had appeared first, which must mean that the gods slightly favoured
his plan. Romulus was not having this. He argued that twelve vultures was obviously
better than six vultures, and besides, they had actually landed on his hill, which must
mean that this was where they were meant to set down roots. The argument escalated until each brother
gave up and went back to their own camp. Romulus was like "to hell with this," and
began construction on the Palatine Hill. Job number one was digging a trench, which
would later serve as the base for the city's walls. When Remus saw this, he and his supporters
marched right over to the Palatine Hill. They may have brought weapons. Remus and company angrily crossed Romulus's
little trench, and words were exchanged. Before too long, and fight broke out. When the dust settled, Remus was dead. According to tradition, Romulus struck the
killing blow. Romulus would go on to build his city on the
Palatine Hill naming it "Roma" or "Rome" after himself. How much of this actually happened? Maybe some of it, maybe none of it, but the
important thing is that later generations of Romans fully integrated this story into
their own mythology. But this is all is only kinda tangentially
related to what I really want to talk about today. It may seem like a minor detail, but that
trench dug by Romulus would go on to become one of the cornerstones of the Roman legal
system. That trench is known as the pomerium. The Latin word for city is "urbe," or "urbis,"
which itself is an offshoot of the word "orbis," meaning circle. So why was the word "city" related to the
word "circle?" In a legal sense, anything inside of a city's
pomerium was the actual city, and anything outside the pomerium was something else. To be clear, most cities on the Italian peninsula
would have had something resembling a pomerium, but for obvious reasons Rome's was the most
important by far. Over the centuries, Rome grew beyond the Palatine
Hill and would go on to occupy all Seven Hills of Rome and then some. A few early rulers tried to accommodate this
by expanding the pomerium, but it was impossible to keep up with the city's growth. Eventually, reality set in, and people just
accepted that in a legal sense, Rome's city limits were somewhere in the middle of a much
larger "unofficial" city. As this happened, the original walls of the
pomerium became less and less important, and over the centuries they gradually faded away. The pomerium eventually came to look like
an open gap in between the buildings, with some ceremonial stone pillars to mark its
place. More or less an invisible line, well known
to the locals, easy for the untrained eye to miss. Entering the pomerium was highly ritualized
experience, all tied up in the law, and in Roman religious belief. The hyper-legalistic Romans felt that it was
important to invent a legal justification for Remus's murder by arguing that any breach
of the pomerium, including literally just walking across the invisible line, represented
a symbolic breach in Rome's defenses. As such, crossing the pomerium was a death
penalty offense. If this is true, how did people get into the
pomerium? If you want to get super technical, the pomerium
stopped and then started again at a series of designated gates. According to Roman religious thinking, these
specific gates were extremely important since they had been sanctioned by the gods way back
in the time of Romulus. This fact became kind of absurd after the
actual walls of the pomerium faded away. Plutarch recounts the story of Pompey trying
and failing to fit a group of elephants through one of these disconnected gates, even though
the land to either side of the gate was completely open. It never even occurred to anybody to take
two steps to the left and walk across the invisible line. That's how seriously the Romans took the pomerium. In fact, in every meaningful sense, the pomerium
dominated political life. Rome's highest elected officials, namely consuls
and praetors, were basically expected to carry out the day-to-day governance of Rome from
within the pomerium. 'Ya know, legislation, administration, court
cases, religious rites, all that exciting stuff. Here, just as you would expect, elected officials
were constrained by the laws of Rome just like any other citizen. However, once consuls or praetors left the
pomerium, they were technically considered on military campaign, and as such wielded
absolute power over life and death. Therefore, you can think of the pomerium as
the invisible line that separated the military world from the civic world. This role switching of Rome's elected officials
was embodied in the behaviour of their lictors, which were groups of 6 or 12 bodyguards that
followed consuls and praetors around for the duration of their term. Inside the pomerium, lictors carried a ceremonial
bundle of sticks. Once they left the pomerium, they added an
axe to the mix, which advertised to the world the consul or praetor's expanded powers. In fact, there was probably an elaborate religious
ceremony each time an elected official crossed the pomerium, but the details of this are
lost to us. You would think that this whole thing would
lead to an abuse of power, but it really didn't. The Senate was usually within the pomerium,
most government buildings were within the pomerium, and most rich people lived and worked
within the pomerium. Plus, any decision was subject to a court
challenge once they were out of office. In this context, the power available to consuls
and praetors outside the pomerium was pretty useful during a crisis, but didn't factor
into normal domestic politics very much. When it came to governors and generals, which
the Romans called proconsuls or propraetors, the effect of the pomerium became even more
pronounced. When proconsuls or propraetors crossed the
pomerium, all of their legal command authority evaporated, instantly transforming them back
into private citizens. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the Senate
would need an active general to be present at one of their meetings, which presented
a bit of a problem. When this happened, the Senate would sometimes
agree to make the trek out of the pomerium and hold an ad-hoc meeting in some kind of
public building like a temple. This became a big issue in the late 50s B.C.E.
during the lead up to the Roman Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, at which time Pompey
was technically an active general. This resulted in a remarkable amount of ping
ponging around to different temples and theatres outside the pomerium, which I'm sure was annoying
to a bunch of grumpy old Senators. Another problem related to this was that in
order to stand for office, people were required to enter the pomerium and declare their candidacy
in person. If a prospective candidate was an active general,
or even worse an active general posted to the other side of the continent, their only
option was to leave their post early and cross the pomerium, relinquishing up their command. This tension between standing for election
and retaining one's command should be a familiar story to anybody watching this. Again, going back to the Roman Civil War,
one of the central questions was leading up to it was "what will happen to Caesar when
he crosses the pomerium?" When it became clear that the likely result
of giving up his command would be banishment or death, he... didn't, which resulted in
a Civil War. However - and here comes the dumbest sentence
I've ever written - Civil Wars were the exception, and not the rule. This same rule stripping generals of their
command when they crossed the pomerium also applied to regular soldiers. Strictly speaking there were not supposed
to be soldiers on the Italian peninsula at all, but sometimes this was unavoidable, and
in cases like this it was useful for everybody to know that entering the pomerium for any
reason would mean the end of their military career. Taken as a whole, this law basically made
it impossible for any army to enter the pomerium. Or, to put it another way, no individual crossing
the pomerium could claim to be acting on behalf of the Roman state. As we know, violating the pomerium was considered
a symbolic attack on the city itself, whether it came from a foreign invader or from a Roman
soldier. Along these same lines, it may not surprise
you to learn that weapons were forbidden within the pomerium. This was taken quite seriously when it came
to swords, but it wasn't that unusual for people to show up with clubs and daggers during
riots or whatever, which I assume is just because those things are easier to hide. There were exceptions to this rule, though. During a national emergency, the Senate could
appoint a Dictator for a 6 months term. Unlike every other Roman official, a dictator's
decisions could not be vetoed, and more importantly for our purposes today, a dictator's command
authority did not evaporate when they crossed the invisible line, giving them unchecked
power to order soldiers into the pomerium. As a symbol of this power, a dictator's lictors
were allowed to keep their axes and behave as if they were on military campaign at all
times. Citizens knew what this meant, and it was
a shocking sight to see. Obviously the Dictatorship was a dangerous
tool, and so it was sparingly used throughout Rome's history. A similar mechanism that was much more commonly
used was the Senatus Consultum Ultumum, or the Final Act. With the Final Act, the Senate empowered the
consuls to defend the Republic by any means necessary. "Any means" meant that they could ignore laws,
including the laws of the pomerium. This may seem like a subtle difference, but
it's important in terms of the legal system. Under the Dictatorship, Rome put the law in
the hands of one individual with absolutely no oversight. Under the Final Act, everything remained the
same, but the consuls could ignore certain laws if they need to, with the Senate providing
oversight. Although the results may have looked similar,
the Final Act was much less disruptive to the Roman legal system. The most famous usage of the Final Act came
in 63 B.C.E., when the Senate empowered the consuls to put down a conspiracy to overthrow
the government by any means necessary. The consul Cicero captured 5 of the conspirators,
and then, without a trial, condemned them to death and had them executed right there
in the middle of the pomerium. Under the Final Act, Cicero was allowed to
break the law like this, but the entire incident was highly offensive to the Roman people,
and he paid a high political price for it. Finally, let's talk about elections. This may be counter-intuitive, but certain
kind of voting were actually forbidden within pomerium. This rule had to do with the Assembly of the
Centuries, the body that was responsible for empowering generals through the election of
consuls and praetors. During these elections, citizens were divided
into metaphorical military units, and these units voted together as a bloc. By now it should be clear why this was a problem. We know that soldiers became private citizens
when they crossed the pomerium, but how did that work for metaphorical soldiers? It was unclear. What about the consuls overseeing the election? Holding an election with a bunch of metaphorical
military units was a little bit like commanding one big metaphorical army, right? If so, was that allowed inside the pomerium? Legally, this was a big grey area. In order to avoid these tough questions, on
every election day a big chunk of Rome's population stopped what they were doing and exited the
pomerium, making their way to the Campus Martius, or the Field of Mars, which was a relatively
empty piece of land outside the pomerium that was deliberately set aside for military activities,
both real and metaphorical. But remember, the only way to cross the pomerium
was through one of the designated gates, and on election day this turned a 20 minute walk
into an all day ordeal. Rich people could get around this by exiting
the pomerium early and staying in one of their villas near the Campus Martius, but for everybody
else this was a real disincentive to vote. So broadly speaking, we can say that the pomerium
was the legal mechanism that separated Rome's military from Rome's government. For centuries, this law kept the peace, and
stopped ambitious generals from entering the city at the head of an army. That is, save for one enormous exception. The Roman Triumph.
Damn cliffhangers in my educational videos!
These are so good. It's always a good day when he posts new content.
This guy here is my favorite YouTuber, I make hot chocolate with marshmallows just in anticipation of watching his videos. The only one I support on patreon.
I’m disappointed we didn’t get to find out what happens next with Ceaser?!?!?!
What happens to him? Does he go on to take the iron throne? Does he defeat the night king???
Rejoice my fellow brethren for a new Historia Civilis is out and about.
The sacred border of the Urbs Aeterna...greetings from Mediolanum!
I like this guy's videos I just don't understand why he breaks - up - his - speech pattern. It's super distracting.