the most famous and largest library of the ancient world,
which held more than 200,000 books. Alexandria attracted
a Mediterranean melting pot of Greeks, Jews, Phoenicians,
Egyptians, Arabs, and many other nationalities. Textile, fur-
niture, pottery, glassware, and papyrus industries fl ourished;
Alexandria also served as Rome’s principal Mediterranean
grain port.
To handle the trading fl eets that called at Alexandria, the
city had two large sheltered harbors divided by the Heptasta-
dion, a dike that ran nearly a mile from the mainland to the
island of Pharos. At night the ships were guided by the tall
lighthouse known as the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the sev-
en wonders of the ancient world. Th e east harbor was known
as the War Harbor and the west harbor as the Merchant Har-
bor. A canal linked these harbors with Lake Mareotis, from
which another canal ran to the Nile River.
As a city, Alexandria was surpassed only by Rome in
its reputation as a center of trade, learning, and culture.
The city endured long after the fall of the Western Roman
Empire, though most Alexandrian monuments vanished
after Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, and the capital
moved to Cairo, the basic layout of the city survived and is
still in evidence. More important, the political institutions
of the Greek city had a lasting inf luence in Europe, where
citizenship is still prized and democratic government re-
mains the ideal.
ROME
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
Ancient Romans regarded their cities as essential statements
of what it meant to be a Roman. Th ey built their cities to be
centers of politics, commerce, and culture and, in newly con-
quered territories, to draw native peoples into the Roman
way of life to the point that their ways were indistinguishable
from those of Roman citizens. Indeed, where Roman cities
took hold, even outside Italy, aft er a few generations the lo-
cal people were oft en declared Roman citizens, with the same
rights and responsibilities as citizens born in Rome.
Th e fi rst Roman city was Rome itself. Ancient Roman
historians placed the founding of Rome in 753 b.c.e., but
modern archaeology has found graves in Rome dating at least
a century earlier. Rome began as a small village on Palatine
Hill, one of the famed “seven hills” of later Rome, overlooking
the Tiber River. Th e settlers were probably Latins, an ethnic
group that populated central Italy. Archaeological evidence
indicates that another village on a nearby hill merged with
the one on the Palatine, beginning an expansion that would
produce the greatest metropolis of its time.
According to Roman accounts the brothers Romulus
and Remus (probably Etruscans, the dominant military
and commercial power in the area) settled in what was to
become Rome, and Romulus founded the city. To the Ro-
mans, a city was not a true city unless it rested on sacred
ground. Romulus laid out the town’s dimensions by plow-
ing a square around Palatine Hill, leaving gaps for gates.
(Because of this legend, Romans considered the Palatine
the true Rome, the center of the city’s spirit.) Wherever
the ground was plowed, diabolical spirits from within the
earth supposedly could rise to the surface. Thus people
were forbidden to cross the ground Romulus had plowed;
they could enter Rome only through gates. For ancient Ro-
mans anyone who entered a city over the plowed ground
rather than through a proper gate had to be killed in order
to save the city from ill fortune brought by the diabolical
spirits. Romulus killed his brother Remus because Remus
jestingly jumped over the plowed ground.
In building new cities, Romans traditionally engaged in a
ceremony based on Romulus and his plow. Aft er fi rst checking
for signs from the gods that the site was acceptable to them,
the chief builder, while wearing a toga, used a bronze plow
pulled by two white cattle, one male and one female, to cut a
square or rectangular perimeter for the city, lift ing the plow
over the areas where the gates were to be. Walls were built
around the outside of the plowed ground. (Th e walls could be
serious structures for defense, but in secure areas they were
oft en more for show, forming a statement that within them
was a sacred Roman city.)
Every city that Romans built from scratch was oriented
north-south and east-west as marked by two main roads.
Th e north-south road was called the cardo and the east-west
road the decumanus, and they crossed in the center of the
city. It is not known why the cardo and decumanus were so
important—possibly they had religious signifi cance—but
they were among the fi rst things a city designer laid out,
even before plowing the sacred barrier. In Rome building
and rebuilding gradually covered over its original cardo and
decumanus roads, and as the city’s relations with the rest of
the world grew, several other major roads radiated out from
it into the countryside.
Th e Romans borrowed some of their rituals for founding
a city from the Etruscans, including the creation of a mundus,
a circular pit dug near the center of the city. Here again com-
munication with the earth’s diabolical spirits was possible.
Th e mundus was covered with a stone slab, on which off er-
ings such as food were left. Th ree times a year the slab was
removed, giving the spirits access to the city, and on those
days no business of any kind was conducted, because it would
be doomed to failure. In Rome the mundus was occasionally
paved over and seems to have been moved a few times to ac-
commodate the city’s growth.THE CAPITOL AND THE FORUM
Essential to any Roman city’s spirituality was its capitol,
usually located in the center of the city. The capitol—the
name comes from the Latin word for “head”—was not a
governmental complex in the modern sense but contained
temples dedicated to deities important to the city. Rome
had three temples in its capitol, one dedicated to the chief
god, Jupiter; one to his wife, Juno; and one to Minerva,226 cities: Rome