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.