ABSTRACT
In their physical surroundings, as in their politics and morality, the Romans showed great concern with maintaining the best of the past. It has already been noted that politicians were at least as concerned to be seen doing restoration work as new building projects. There was, indeed, a constant need for repair. Buildings were frequently struck by lightning, something which is often recorded in our sources, especially Dio, because it was regarded as an omen; the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol was repeatedly hit. There were other dangers too, particularly fire and flooding (see below). Great trouble was taken to preserve traditions, some very ancient. Sacred
geese continued to be kept at the Temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitol, in memory of the geese that were said to have woken up the Romans when the Gauls attempted to capture the hill in 390. The Romans kept repairing the small thatched hut on the Palatine said to have been Romulus’ first home. One of the oldest structures in Rome, the Pons Sublicius, which crossed the Tiber near the Circus Maximus, was made entirely of wood; it did not even have iron pins. As a result, it was repeatedly swept away by the flooding of the Tiber, but the Romans refused to modernise it, and replaced it every time with another all-wooden structure. Religious buildings were everywhere. There were shrines and temples in
every public space in the city. What we would think of, in a distinction alien to the Roman way of thinking, as the sacred and the secular existed side by side. The state treasury was kept in the Temple of Saturn in the Forum, which was therefore surrounded by armed guards; the state records were kept there too, until the Tabularium was built in 78. A statue of Cloacina, goddess of the sewers, stood in the Forum, showing both that for the Romans, as for other ancient peoples, there was divinity in everything and that the Romans took justified pride in things that more sensitive cultures might have been inclined to hide away.
