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You can well imagine how proud all the Romans now were that they were Romans, for Rome was the champion fighter of the world. If a man could toss his head and say, “I am a Roman citizen,” people were always ready to do something for him, afraid to do him any harm, afraid what might happen to them if they did. Rome was ruler not only of Italy but of Spain and North Africa. Like other earlier nations, once Rome had started conquering, it kept on conquering, until by 100 B.C. Rome was ruler of almost all the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea—all except Egypt.
The New Champion of the World, who was to be champion for a great many years, was very businesslike and practical.
The Greeks loved beautiful things, beautiful buildings, beautiful sculpture, beautiful poems. The Romans copied the Greeks and learned from them how to make many beautiful things, but the Romans were most interested in practical and useful things. For example, now that the Romans ruled the world, they had to be able to send messengers and armies easily and quickly in every direction to the end of the empire and back again. It was necessary to have roads, for of course there were no railroads then. Now, an ordinary road made by simply clearing away the ground gets full of deep ruts and in rainy weather becomes so muddy that it can hardly be used at all.
Rome set to work and built roads. These roads were like paved streets. Large rocks were placed at the bottom for a foundation, smaller stones placed on top, and large, flat paving-stones laid over all. Thousands of miles of such roads were built to all parts of the empire. One could go from almost anywhere all the way to Rome on paved roads. We still have an expression, “All roads lead to Rome.” So well were these roads made that many of them still exist today, two thousand years after they were built.
The Romans also showed their practical minds by making two very important city improvements. If you live in a city, you turn on a spigot and you get plenty of pure water whenever you want it. The people in cities at that time, however, usually had to get their water both for drinking and for washing from wells or springs nearby. These springs and wells often became dirty and made the people very sick. Every once in a while because of such dirty water there were those terrible plagues, those terribly contagious diseases like the one I told you about in Athens when people died faster than they could be buried.
Roman aqueduct
The Romans wanted pure water, so they set to work to find lakes from which they could get pure water. As oftentimes these lakes were many miles away from the city, they then built big pipes to carry the water all the way to the city. Such a pipe was not made of iron or terra-cotta as nowadays, but of stone and concrete, and was called an aqueduct , which in Latin means water-carrier . If this aqueduct had to cross a river or a valley, they built a bridge to hold it up. Many of these Roman aqueducts are still standing and in use today.
Now, up to this time waste water, after it had been used, and also every other kind of dirt and refuse, was simply dumped into the street. This naturally made the city or town filthy and unhealthy and was another cause of plagues.
The Romans, however, built great underground sewers to carry off this dirt and waste water and empty it into the river or into some other place where they thought it would do no harm and cause no sickness. Now we know that it’s not good to dump sewage into rivers because they can become polluted. Then if people drink that water, they’ll get sick. The Romans knew that they had to get the sewage off the city streets, but they didn’t know how to avoid polluting their rivers. Nowadays, every large city has aqueducts and sewers as a matter of course, but the Romans were the first Europeans to build them on a large scale.
One of the most important things that Rome did was to make rules that everyone had to obey; laws, we call them. Many of these laws were so fair and just that some of our own laws today are copied from them.
All the cities and towns of the Roman Empire had to pay money or taxes to Rome. Rome therefore became a very wealthy city. Millions of this money, which was brought to her, was spent in putting up beautiful buildings in the city, temples to the gods, splendid palaces for the rulers, public baths, and huge open-air places called amphitheaters where the people could be amused.
The amphitheaters were something like our football and baseball fields or stadiums. They did not have football or baseball, however. They had chariot races, and deadly fights between men, or between men and animals. Chariots were small carts with large wheels drawn by two or by four horses and driven by a man standing up. Perhaps you have seen chariot races in the circus.
The sport that the Romans enjoyed most of all was a fight of gladiators. Gladiators were very strong and powerful men who had been captured in battle by the Romans. They were made to fight with one another or with wild animals for the amusement of the crowds. These gladiatorial fights were very cruel, but the Romans enjoyed seeing blood shed. They liked to see one man kill another or a wild animal. It was so amusing. The movies would not have interested them half as much. Usually the gladiators fought until one or the other was killed, for the people were not, as a rule, satisfied until this was done.
Sometimes, however, if a gladiator, who had been knocked out, had shown himself particularly brave and a good fighter or a good sport, the people seated all around the amphitheater would turn their thumbs up as a sign that his life was to be spared by the other gladiator. The winning gladiator, before killing his opponent whom he had down, would wait to see what the people wished. If they turned their thumbs down , it meant he was to finish the fight by killing his man.
Although Rome had become such a fine and beautiful and healthy city in which to live, the rich people were getting most of the money that came there from all over the empire. They were getting richer and richer all the time, while the poor people, who got nothing, were getting poorer and poorer all the time. The Romans brought the people they conquered in battle to Rome and made them work for them without pay. These were slaves and they did all the work. It is said that there were more than twice as many slaves as Romans—two slaves for every Roman citizen.
Now, Scipio, who had conquered Hannibal in the Punic War, had a daughter named Cornelia Graccha, and she had two sons. They were very fine boys, and Cornelia was naturally very proud of them.
One day a very rich Roman woman was visiting Cornelia and showing off all her rings and necklaces and other ornaments, of which she had a great many and was very proud.
When she had shown off all she had, she asked to see Cornelia’s jewels. Cornelia called to her two boys, who were playing outside, and when they came in to their mother she put her arms around them and said:
“ These are my jewels.”
But boys who are jewels when they are young do not always turn out to be jewels when they grow up. You may wonder how Cornelia’s jewels turned out.
When they grew up, the Gracchi, as they were called, saw such great extravagance among the rich and such great misery among the poor that they wanted to do something about it. They saw that the poor had hardly anything to eat and no place to live. This did not seem fair. They tried to lower the price of food, so that the poor might be able to buy enough to eat. They tried to find some way to give the poor at least a small piece of land where they might raise a few vegetables. They were partly successful in bringing this about. But the rich people didn’t like giving up anything to the poor, and they killed one of the Gracchus brothers, and later they killed the other one, also. These were Cornelia’s jewels.