Although yesterday was H.M. the Queen’s 84th birthday (celebrated on Victoria Day in Canada and in June in the U.K.) and tomorrow is William Shakespeare’s (b.1564), take note that today, 22 April, is the 2763rd anniversary of the founding of the city of Rome in 753 B.C. The Eternal City is still very much the heart, if not always the inspiration, of the world’s dominant culture.

According to the ancient Roman calendar, today begins the year 2763 A.U.C. (ab urbe condita = from the city founded). As one has told many history classes, Italia antiqua is the mother of Europe and the Americas, the source of, or a powerful influence upon, our major languages, our institutions and our arts.

Wherever our schools have not become mere business colleges, even youngsters know the stories of the bothers Romulus and Remus, of the elephants that crossed the Alps to attack a Roman army and of Julius Caesar who was murdered in the Senate. Those who do not know them suffer an historical amnesia that is already undermining our sense of who we are.

The ancient Athenians made an early experiment in democracy but it never took root elsewhere even in Greece. The long struggle of the people of Rome to establish at least a broad system of justice (a different thing from righteousness, for which classical Latin has no word) prepared them to rule the then-known world and to establish Pax Romana, Roman peace, throughout it until the pursuit of wealth and power undermined familial, personal and political virtue. Neither wealth nor armed force can create or maintain peace on earth.

It is difficult to distinguish ancient history from legend and to disentangle varying accounts of the same long ago event. As in the more recent case of George Washington who is pictorially apotheosised in the dome of the U.S. Capitol but for whom our early Governor John Graves Simcoe said he had less respect than for any man he had ever met, the Romans idealised their heroes and the times in which they had lived.

Lord Macaulay’s 1842 verses, Lays of Ancient Rome, express that adulation:

“Then Romans in Rome’s quarrel / Spared neither land nor gold / Nor son nor wife nor limb nor life / In the brave days of old. // Then none was for a party / Then all were for the state, / Then the great man helped the poor / And the poor man loved the great. // Then lands were fairly portioned, / Then spoils were fairly sold, / The Romans were like brothers / In the brave days of old”.

Well, not really, but there is in every tribe and nation the romantic memory of a time when everybody was freer and more virtuous. It has recurring popularity and political influence.

Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil, born 70 B.C.) and Titus Livius (Livy, b. 59 B.C.) tell us in poetry and prose respectively that after the legendary fall of Troy (circa 1200 B.C.) the hero Aeneas who was destined to found a new home for Trojans in Italy made his way there and began a settlement which he called Lavinium. His settlers came to share the regional name of ‘Latins’ with Sabines, Volscians, Rutulians, Aequians and others. Their tribal struggles and interpersonal encounters provide many of the tales later told by poets.

The rape of Lucretia (Lucrece), the expulsion of the Etruscan Tarquin king, the bravery of Horatius, the exploits of Coriolanus and Cincinnatus have been stories known and told for a hundred generations and are available to anyone who knows the word ‘Wikipedia’.

Returning to Aeneas without detailing his problems with Dido, the amorous queen of Carthage, suffice it to say here that after several generations of fighting, tragedy and dysfunctional families the twin boys Romulus and Remus arrived on the scene. Remus is killed.

Tradition offers different options as to the method. Romulus becomes founder of the city that takes its name from him. He ploughs a trench to outline the course of its first walls and takes up residence on the Palatine hill within that perimeter.

After expelling the Tarquin royal house in 509 B.C. Rome became a republic ruled by the heads of its leading families who composed the Senate. Eventually the plebeians, some of them wealthy merchants, gained influence and the right to elect their representative ‘tribunes’ who could propose legislation to the Senate.

As has happened elsewhere, imperialistic expansion took place led by commercial and military interests. In time, after civil war, dictatorships and party warfare Octavius (Octavian), great nephew of Julius Caesar, was given the title ‘Augustus’ by the Senate and became the first of the emperors who ruled in the West until 476 A.D. In Constantinople, founded in 330 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine, the Eastern emperors continued to reign until 1453 when the Muslim conquest of the Byzantine part of the empire ended the succession.

Most who read this will be familiar with at least the title of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. To note the 2763rd anniversary of the city does not require an assessment of what caused that failure. We are beginning to experience, if not to understand, some of those factors.

At the end of his 100 page book The Lessons of History Will Durant says, “Nations die. Regions grow arid or suffer other change. Resilient man picks up his tools and his arts and moves on, taking his memories with him. If education preserves those memories, civilisation migrates with him and builds somewhere another home. In the new land he need not begin entirely anew”.

But each generation of parents and teachers must do the work of historical, cultural and technical transmission. By biological reproduction and educational institutions life overcomes death and older cultures hand on their patrimony to their heirs across years, continents and, perhaps some day, planets.

Is human progress real? Only if home and school, parents and teachers, philosophers, scientists and legislators respect one another and work together for the welfare of those who are yet to be born.