II. The Horatii and Curiatii

The Roman victory over the Albans was practically bloodless even for the losers. There was no siege, and in place of a formal battle, both sides had agreed to let the contest between them be decided by the outcome of a combat between two sets of triplets. Thus when the Roman troops come to destroy Alba itself, they are confronted with a paradox; technically, the city has already fallen, but its appearance is unchanged:

There was none of the uproar and terror that usually belongs to captured cities, when after the gates have been broken down, the walls laid low by battering rams, and the citadel taken by force, the cries of the enemy and the rush of armed men through the city throw all things into confusion with fire and sword, but a sad calm and silent sorrow so cast down the spirits of all that they kept asking one another what they should leave behind and what they should take with them, their own judgment failing out of fear, and now they stood in the doorways, now they wandered aimlessly to look upon their homes for this last time.

Aeneas left Troy when it was already burning, but the Albans are suddenly forced to abandon both their city and their homes intact in order to make the journey to Rome. Although the Albans’ plight in one sense is the opposite of that of the Ciceronian persona, for whom the native place of Arpinum will continue to be a lingering alternative, Livy’s treatment of the scene emphasizes the moment when local ties are surrendered and the Albans become members of a new state, which, unlike the city they must renounce, is invisible.

But as the outcry of the knights ordering them to leave pressed in upon them and the crash of the buildings that were being destroyed on the edges of the city was heard and the dust rising from distant places had filled everything as if with a cloud, snatching up whatever they could, they went out leaving behind their household gods and the buildings where they were born and raised.

These Albans had not been present at the loss of the duel that ended the autonomy of their city, nor when their dictator had been torn apart by chariots for violating the treaty. They experience the fall of their state as a ring of destruction, which gradually closes in on each individual spectator, advancing from “the farthest parts of the city,” until, like a cloud, it blocks out the sight of their homes.^[33]

Alba possesses a special relationship to Rome unlike any other enemy. Not only was it the “native patria”of the first Roman king, but many of Rome’s great families, including the Julii themselves, came to Rome only after its fall (1.30.1–2). By relating this detail just after the description of the sack of the city, Livy blurs the boundary between Roman and enemy. In becoming Romans, the Albans bind themselves to the imperium of the victorious city alone; Albans as a category cease to exist. But by the same token, it becomes impossible to demarcate the pathetic experiences that befall the Albans as something belonging to a distinct, enemy people.^[34] The Roman nation is as much a legacy of the destruction of Alba as of the victory of Rome. In fact, despite the destruction of its secular buildings, Alba continues to survive as a religious center, an eternally “absent” city.^[35] In this sense, Livy’s narrative of its destruction constitutes a challenge in perspective for his contemporary audience. If allegiance is strictly defined by citizenship, there is no question but that the audience will identify itself with the Romans; even the Albans themselves at the moment when their city is destroyed are technically Romans. But the claims of ancestry and heritage, the very factors that move the defeated Albans, resist a purely nationalist interpretation. The conflict between Rome and Alba, a quasi-legendary event, which on its own could not possibly inspire any strong feelings in the first century B.C.E., becomes a means of articulating and responding to one of the central crises of Livy’s day, the fault lines implicit in the construction of a Roman national identity.

However, the problem of distinguishing between Alba and Rome is not confined to Livy’s audience; it is explicitly addressed at the beginning of the historian’s account of the Alban war.^[36] Not only does Livy emphasize the similarities between the institutions and ancestry of the two peoples,^[37] but even the motives of the conflict are the same for both sides. “By chance it happened that Roman shepherds were plundering Alban land, and the Albans were plundering Roman land in turn.…Embassies were sent on each side at almost the same time” (1.22.3–4). And beyond the immediate causes of war, both sides are motivated by a similar desire for conflict. Tullus Hostilius, the new Roman king is eager for glory and also fears that the Romans have been debilitated by too long a period of peace. The Alban dictator emphasizes this point in his address to the Romans: “If the true cause of the war rather than its pretenses [speciosa dictu] must be declared, the desire for glory has driven two related and neighboring peoples to arms” (1.23.7). Such an admission, which the audience knows to be largely valid for the Roman side, seriously undercuts the logic of the “just war,” by which the Romans interpreted victories over their opponents as proof that their own claims for restitution were legitimate and their conduct of negotiations formally correct. Beyond that, as we saw in chapter 2, military success validates the society as a whole, from the physical prowess of its individual soldiers to the propriety of its political and religious practices, and ultimately to the historical tradition that gave rise to them. But since the Albans share the same institutions and history, the kinds of distinction that the Romans used to define a foreign enemy are rendered meaningless.^[38]

The first attempt to establish a distinction between Roman and Alban consists of a trick involving the diplomatic procedures leading up to the declaration of war. Both sides had sent embassies demanding restitution simultaneously, but Tullus Hostilius puts off the Alban ambassadors with excessive hospitality until he is informed that the Roman claims have already been rejected by the Alban king. Therefore the Romans can legitimately (pie [1.22.4]) declare war. “Announce to your king,” Tullus tells the Albans, “that the Roman king calls upon the gods as witnesses of which people first rejected the embassy, so that they might exact all the losses of war against them” (1.22.7). This trickery may seem dubious or even impious, but the Romans expected their leaders to be clever manipulators in the dealings between men and gods.^[39] Not only will the king’s claim be confirmed by the eventual Roman victory, but his use of appearances to trick the Albans, particularly his sudden revelation to the ambassadors that they are being watched by the gods, foreshadows the other decisive moments in the conflict.

Mettius Fufetius, who has become leader of the Albans after the death of their king, explicitly poses the question of discrimination between the two peoples just as the two armies are on the verge of battle (1.23.7–9). He dismisses both sides’ claims about the responsibility for the conflict as mere pretenses (speciosa dictu) and exposes the true causes of the war as a mutual desire for power (cupido imperii). Given this shared ambition, the task, he says, is to “find a way to decide which people will rule the other without a great slaughter of either” (1.23.9). For the empire of the Etruscans, their common enemies, surrounds both peoples. In making this appeal to fear of a common enemy, Mettius employs the same argument that will be frequently used in resolving internal disunity at Rome, the exposure of an encircling Other whose presence defines the warring factions as allies.^[40] Mettius goes on to describe the relationship among the three peoples through the metaphor of a spectacle: “Be mindful…these two armies in battle will be a spectacle [for the Etruscans], so that they will attack conqueror and conquered together, weary and depleted” (Memor esto, iam cum signo pugnae dabis, has duas acies spectaculo [sc. Etruscis] fore ut fessos confectosque simul victorem ac victum adgrediantur [1.23.9]). The Etruscans will be able to watch unconcerned as the two armies weaken themselves to the point of being able to offer no resistance. The spectator, this model implies, detached from the action he observes, occupies a position of superiority and is able to gain from the conflict of those he watches without risk. This view of spectacle is of a piece with Mettius’s earlier dismissal of the demands of the ambassadors as “specious.” The Roman king, as we have seen, far from dismissing appearances as irrelevant, is eager to win his competition with the Albans even on the level of the speciosa. Thus the Romans’ belief in the efficacy and validity of appearances already appears as a crucial difference between the two peoples, and in fact the manipulation of appearances will play an ever-larger role in the subsequent contest.

The result of Mettius’s speech is that both sides agree to solve their dispute through a duel between two sets of triplets, the Horatii and Curiatii, whose outcome will decide “which people will rule which.” Initially, the Albans seem likely to prevail, as they kill the first two Romans and face the last with a three to one advantage. But finally the survivor manages to overcome all three of his opponents. The actions of the Horatii exemplify the conceptions of patriotism just analyzed. Like Mucius Scaevola and other exemplary figures, such as Torquatus and Corvus, the triplets agree to risk their own lives in the interest of their patria. Furthermore, the progressive isolation of the surviving Horatius, first from the state as a whole and then from his slaughtered brothers, draws attention precisely to the concentric levels of social affiliation out of which, according to the Ciceronian model, patriotism is built.^[41]

But the Roman’s victory depends on drawing together the interests of family and state as well as placing them in the correct hierarchy. Thus when he kills the last Curiatius, Horatius cries that he “has given two [Albans] to the shades of his brothers, and now slays the third in order that the Romans shall rule the Albans.” In contrast, for the last Alban, the family loss keeps him from fighting effectively; he is “already defeated by the slaughter of his brothers.”^[42] Moreover Horatius’s very body takes on an important quality of the state as a whole, its indivisibility. Although his two brothers have been killed, Horatius is integer and is later described as intactum.^[43] This “wholeness” contrasts with the Albans’ disintegration at every level. The climax of the fight comes after the first two Romans have been killed and the Albans surround the survivor.^[44] Here Horatius makes the crucial decision to separate them by fleeing, a device that leaves an indelible visual trace in the three monuments of the dead Albans, “separated by intervals,” which Livy describes at the end of the battle (1.25.14). By separating his opponents, Horatius has moved from a contest between groups to one between individuals, where the integrity of his body can prevail over the wounded Albans.^[45]

By agreeing to have their conflict settled by a duel while the rest of the armies simply look on, the Romans and Albans have effectively set up a spectacle very similar to that imagined by Mettius Fufetius. Both armies avoid mutual destruction by choosing surrogates to fight for them and participate only as spectators, free from danger. But unlike the hypothetical Etruscan spectators, the two armies are not disconnected from the fate of those they watch. As Livy describes the duel, he emphasizes the same set of reciprocal links between spectators and spectacle, crowd and individual, that we saw in the episode of the old soldier. Thus rather than distancing the watcher from the event, spectacle forms a bridge between the spectators and their champions by which the larger and smaller groups are brought into contact with one another. The crowds encourage and inspire their champions and in turn respond to their defeats and victories with an excitement or despair that makes them collectively mirror the attributes of the individual.

Livy’s account of the spectators’ anxiety as they watch the duel goes back to a very famous literary model, Thucydides’ description of the battle in the harbor of Syracuse, where the land armies can only look on as the naval combat decides their fate.^[46] But one crucial difference between the two narratives reveals Livy’s particular emphasis. Thucydides’ account focuses on the inability of each spectator to gain a clear understanding of the course of the battle as a whole because of the limited perspective from which he views it. Those who happen to see the Athenians winning are encouraged; those who see them being defeated are despondent. As a result, the experiences of the spectators, described in highly physical language, depend entirely on the emotions generated by their limited perceptions of events, rather than the influence of the complete events themselves. Even though Livy’s narrative of the duel has the combatants chase each other for great distances over uneven terrain, there is never a moment when they are out of sight of either army or where either side is in any doubt about who is who.^[47] Thus Livy has sacrificed strict verisimilitude in order to keep the link between spectators and spectacle unbroken.

The exchange between the spectator armies and the individual combatants, like that between the crowd and the soldier, impacts equally upon watcher and watched. At the simplest level, the armies inspire their champions by shouting encouragement, and conversely the successes or failures of the individuals inspire or distress the larger groups. But Livy’s vivid description lends these effects an air of physicality that suggests a more radical sympathy between crowd and individual: the responses of the spectator armies mimic the very combat that the duel was designed to prevent. The watching armies are “raised up, held suspended, in their mind they are stretched out^[48] toward the unpleasant spectacle.” When the battle begins, “mighty terror binds the spectators, and while hope is inclined on neither side, their voice and spiritus grow dull” (1.25.4). This sentence gives the effect of their anxiety not only an air of uniformity but also an almost anatomical specificity. The experiences of the group are thus described in terms applicable to a single individual.^[49] Moreover the dulling of the spectators’ spiritus mirrors precisely the experience of the dying Horatii, who are described with the cognate word exspirantes (1.25.5).^[50] Correspondingly, Livy describes the combatants as like a battle line (acies) bearing the courage (animi) of great armies (1.25.3). The few actors lose their individual identities and an awareness of their individual fates in assuming responsibility for the destiny of their cities. Conversely, each of the spectators must individually experience the physical effects suffered by the bodies that represent them.^[51]

Livy also correlates the process of watching with the fulfillment of the purpose for which the duel was designed, to allow for a distinction to be made between the two peoples, “to decide which will rule [imperent] which” (1.23.9). The first five sentences of his description contain no proper nouns or adjectives, referring only to “each side” or simply “they.”^[52] At the beginning of the combat, not only do Albans and Romans share the same experiences, but the narrative makes it literally impossible for the audience to distinguish one side from the other. Correspondingly, Livy has already remarked that although he follows those who say that it was the Horatii who fought for Rome, there are other versions that call the Curiatii the Roman champions, an admission that further blurs the distinction between the two sides almost at the expense of the authority of his own narrative.^[53] The indifferentiability of the two sides persists until the instant when an action on the battlefield inclines the advantage toward one side. Two of the Horatii are quickly killed by the Albans. Thus an inequality is established, which is immediately registered both among the spectators, who necessarily respond differently, and in the narrative itself, where the terms Albani and Romani allow the reader to tell the two sides apart for the first time (1.25.5).

But the spectators’ responses do not just provide an index of difference recording the progress of the combat. After the Roman champion has won the victory by dispatching all three Albans himself, the two armies are described as burying their dead “with not at all the same spirits [nequaquam paribus animis], since one side has been enriched with authority [aucti imperio] and the other has lost its independence” (1.25.13). This description reflects the final exultation and despair that the two sides have respectively experienced as spectators and simultaneously shows that the larger purpose of the duel, the apportionment of imperium, has been accomplished. In other words, the duel has not just resolved the dispute in favor of the Romans; it has imposed a difference distinguishing them from the Albans.^[54] Just as the champions were inspired by them, the spectators have been empowered by visual contact with their champions. This is revealed by the phrase aucti imperio used of the Romans. As we have seen, Wagenvoort interprets imperium as the strengthening force communicated by a leader to his troops,^[55] and augeo is the proper verb for its transference.^[56] As in the case of Torquatus and Corvus, so too the champions here become the means for a reciprocal exchange of imperium. The Horatii and Curiatii are summoned to fight by their commanders (1.24.2) and receive the encouragement of their respective armies (1.25.1); in return the sight of Horatius’s victory in combat has increased the imperium of his entire people.