009 - A Trojan War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. Last time, we left Rome on an upbeat, Fidene recovered, and their position in the region stabilized. The Volscians were still a persistent menace to the south, but by this time they were clearly on the decline militarily. In another few decades, Rome would finally put an end to the Volscian threat and conquer them once and for all, but for now, periodic clashes continued to be a mainstay of legion activity. The main threat to Rome though lay north with the city-state of Vie, long an economic, political, and military rival. When not clashing with Vie directly, the Etruscan city had bankrolled Rome's enemies and fought by proxy. After years of avoiding conflict because they were stretched too thin, the Romans finally felt secure enough to challenge their northern rival openly and committed themselves to a war that would determine who controlled central Italy.

As I mentioned earlier, Vie was the southernmost member of the Etruscan League, a loose confederation of twelve city-states that controlled Italy from the Tiber north to the Po Valley. Other members of the League included Tarquini, birthplace of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, and Colosseum, home of Lars Porsena, who either did or did not conquer Rome. Had there been any solidarity between the cities, it is doubtful Rome would have emerged triumphant from its war with Vie, but the League served an economic and cultural function rather than a political and military one. This failure to unite would ultimately spell the end for the Etruscans, who, in addition to pressure from Rome in the south, suddenly faced the threat of migrating Gauls, who were passing through the Alps into the Po Valley and squeezing the Etruscans out of land in the north. The third prong of the assault that would mark the end of Etruscan power was the ascendancy of Syracuse, the powerful Greek city in Sicily, who bottled up the Carthaginians, long an Etruscan economic and military ally, preventing any outside aid from reaching the besieged Etruscan cities. Syracuse had just put itself on the map by defeating an Athenian invasion force in 413 BC and now ambitiously sought to control all mainland Italy.

But getting back to the topic at hand, the war between Rome and Vie was inevitable. Vie lay a mere 12 miles north of Rome, far too close for the two powers to coexist peacefully forever. Eventually, economic necessity drove them both to the conclusion that the other had to be eliminated. The region was simply not big enough for the both of them. There were three basic points of economic conflict that could not be resolved peacefully. The first was control of the lucrative salt beds at the mouth of the Tiber. Almost all the inland communities relied on the Tiber beds as their source of salt and whoever controlled the source controlled a reliable cash cow. But the beds lay mostly on the north bank of the river and so were controlled by Vie. The Romans looked on with envy and for years sought to dislodge the Viets but were never in a position to do so. Now it seemed the time was ripe to make their move. The Romans wanted to control the beds but Vie was not going to give them up without a fight.

The salt trade was so important because of the economic conditions at the time, economic conditions that made the world too small for both powers. After the Etruscans had lost their foothold south of Rome to the Volscians, their direct connection to trade with Magna Graecia was severed. The archaeological record shows that the flood of trade Vie had once enjoyed as the gateway to Etruria now slowed to a trickle. Their overland trade routes closed, the Viets were forced to rely on seafaring traders, most importantly their Carthaginian allies, but after the rise of Syracuse those Carthaginian traders began to be squeezed out and Vie's economy suffered as a result. In better days northbound trade was ample enough to be split between Vie and Rome but now the limited supply was not enough to supply two economic centers. One had to be eliminated or both would die.

Finally there was the basic issue of territory. Rome's population was expanding but its territory was not. Vie controlled huge tracts of fertile land that all levels of Roman society coveted. The richest patrician and the poorest plebeian both saw the land north of the Tiber as the answer to their overpopulation crisis. The patricians wanted the land to relocate the landless plebes who were agitating with escalating fervor to redistribute patrician land in a more equitable manner and the plebes just wanted land, whatever the source. The need to control the salt markets, the need to control the sparse overland trade with Magna Graecia, and the need to control the land north of the Tiber finally drove the Romans to action and around 400 BC it was decided to take Vie out once and for all. The Vie equally in a bind were more than willing to take up the fight and the final conflict was joined.

The war with Vie was unlike any the Romans had undertaken thus far and the battle would change the nature and character of the Romans forever. If Livy dates the conflict as taking place between 402 and 392 BC then the archeological record tends to back up this chronology though not completely. The traditional length given for the war is 10 years but most historians agree that this number was lifted from the mythical Trojan war and that the actual conflict more likely lasted 6 or 7 years. Battles in the field were intermittent and inconclusive leading the Romans to change tactics and besiege Vie itself rather than try and beat its army in the field.

This forced the Romans to do something they had never before even contemplated, keeping an army in the field year round. Traditionally the campaign season lasted between April and October with soldiers returning home for the winter. It was completely unprecedented to keep an army enrolled past October but after the decision was made to lay siege to Vie this is exactly what happened. The soldiers suffered this outrage only because the Senate introduced an innovation that would mark a turning point in Roman history, soldier pay. It was not a great sum nor was it a permanent policy but it set a precedent and marked the first step on the long road toward the establishment of a fully professional army, a road that led directly to the death of the Republic. For now though it was an expedient to keep an army in the field at a time when the soldiers had to return home to look after their farms. The pay alleviated the economic burden the soldiers faced and kept them fighting.

The siege soon turned into a prolonged siege, the Romans wanted nothing more than a quick decisive victory but Vie was situated in a nearly impregnable position. Bounded on three sides by cliffs only a narrow strip of land north of the city offered a level entrance. The Romans managed to gain control of that strip and cut Vie off from the rest of the world but they were never able to do much more than that. The Vie's were able to concentrate their total defensive capabilities on that one accessible point and so the Romans were unable to make any headway. Though not far from home, again Vie was only 12 miles from Rome, the soldiers were forced to remain encamped through the winter and began to grumble at the injustice of remaining in arms. The tribunes railed against the policy claiming that the siege was a patrician policy dedicated more to getting influential plebes out of the city than actually winning the war. Look at Vie they said, what army could possibly take it by force, it was absurd. Soldiers were kept on year after year, their farms falling into disrepair and their families falling into poverty despite whatever pay was coming from the treasury, all in the name of a siege that showed no promise of being brought to a successful conclusion. A great many were sympathetic to this view and the will of the army began to waver.

Into this depressed state came one of the great heroes of Roman history, Marcus Furius Camillus. Of patrician descent, Camillus had been elected military tribune three times over the course of the war, distinguishing himself on the battlefield and running a notoriously disciplined ship. The senate and the people were both increasingly dissatisfied with the military leadership who seemed more willing to fight amongst themselves than unite behind a winning strategy. So sick of the inconclusive bickering they turned to Camillus whose record spoke for itself and elected him to the first of his unprecedented five dictatorships. Later crises would keep the Romans coming back to him again and again and it was the reputation he established for himself at Vie that kept them coming back. What looked like a never ending siege would be brought to completion within his six month term of office.

Camillus knew as well as anyone that a direct assault on the city was doomed to failure so he set his mind on devising some other way to gain access. It did not take long for him to notice the Vie's extensive sewer system and how easy it would be to breach the city from underneath. He set his army digging in shifts around the clock, making a tunnel from the Roman camp to one of the drainage pipes that ran under the city. He periodically ordered attacks on the walls to keep the Vie's busy and they never caught on to the plan. It was now only a matter of time before the legions would come pouring in. Finally the Romans reached the underground sewer system and followed it to the middle of the city. A raiding party was sent above, emerging from a temple and making straight away for the gates. Camillus ordered the bulk of his army in a frontal attack which must have seemed like madness to the Vie's until the company of Romans appeared in their midst and opened the gates from within. The Romans did indeed come pouring in and it was the end for Vie.

Camillus and the Romans were not interested in terms of surrender or indemnities. They wanted to destroy Vie completely. The men were slaughtered and the women and children sold into slavery. The city was sacked and pillaged with all its movable wealth finding a new home in the rucksack of some legionnaire. Prior to final victory Camillus had made a fateful promise that one tenth of the spoils of war would be dedicated to Apollo but in the commotion of victory his promise was forgotten and everything was piled into the baggage train undivided. The great Etruscan city of Vie had fallen never to rise again.

Upon returning to Rome the victorious Camillus was awarded a well earned triumph though the procession would mark the beginning of his famous undoing and would soon find him exiled from the city he had just led to victory. Riding at the head of his army Camillus was pulled on his chariot by four white horses traditionally an honor reserved only for kings. The inhabitants of the city whispered to one another that Camillus fancied himself a monarch and began to look at him not as a conquering hero but as a potential tyrant. His fate was sealed when after the soldiers had returned home with their booty Camillus began to worry about his unfulfilled promise to Apollo. Finally he issued an order that all soldiers had to produce one tenth of their treasure and hand it over to the state in order to appease the gods. The citizens were outraged but complied out of their well ingrained sense of religious obligation. They were further incensed when Camillus and the senate announced that one tenth of Vie's land would also be set aside for Apollo. The land starved masses could not believe their ears and it was really only a matter of time before they lashed out at their erstwhile hero.

A year or two passed and a tribune finally brought charges against Camillus for mishandling the wealth taken from Vie. Rather than face a hostile and humiliating trial Camillus decided to leave the ungrateful Romans to their fate and went into voluntary exile. Legend has it that as he left he offered a prayer that if he was innocent that the gods should cause his former countrymen to regret his departure. A pure fabrication but to the Romans the sight of a massive barbarian invasion did indeed make them soon regret the absence of their best military commander.

The victory over Vie marked a turning point for Roman history as well as Italian history as a whole. Vie was one of the richest cities of Etruria and its sack marked the beginning of the end of Etruscan dominance in northern Italy. In the north Gauls from central Europe began to cross en masse into the Po valley sweeping through Etruscan defenses and settling in Etruscan lands. The Etruscans thus found themselves squeezed between the Gallic migration and the Roman expansion. As I said earlier military and political solidarity might have helped them beat off the attacks but the independent minded Etruscans kept to themselves and so saw their cities fall one by one. It would not be a quick decline indeed we will find them continuing to fight Rome throughout the Samnite wars but they would never again have the power or prestige they had so recently enjoyed. In the end they would all fall under Rome's yoke and find themselves servants where they had once been masters.

While the push from the Gauls helped precipitate Etruscan decline it also prevented the end from coming too quickly. The Romans flush with victory may well have continued to push north and defeat all the Etruscan cities one by one. However a force of Gauls moved south through Etruria all the way to the gates of Rome where they would decisively beat the Romans handing them a defeat that would leave the city burned to the ground and its citizens debating not which Etruscan city they should attack next but whether or not to abandon their ruined city completely.

Next week we will cover the sack of Rome and the return of Camillus an event that would close a historical epoch marking the end of the beginning for Rome.