King of Rome
The king of Rome, known in Latin as the rex Romae, ruled the Roman Kingdom, a period that later Romans remembered as legend. According to that legend, Romulus founded the city in 753 BC on the Palatine Hill and became its first ruler. Seven kings are said to have followed one another until 509 BC, when the last of them was overthrown. Together they averaged 35 years on the throne. Yet the tradition raises hard questions. What did a Roman king wear, and what could he legally do? How did a man become king when the crown did not obviously pass from father to son? And what became of the title once the monarchy fell? Even the number seven comes with a warning, because nobody can be certain it is right.
Twelve lictors, each carrying the fasces, walked with the king of Rome. A curule chair served as his throne. On his body he wore a purple toga picta and red shoes, and on his head a white diadem. The purple toga belonged to him alone, and no other Roman was allowed to wear one. Behind all of this display stood a single legal power that the Romans called imperium.
Imperium, in the king's hands, lasted for life and shielded him from ever being put on trial for his actions. He was its only holder in Rome. That made him commander-in-chief of every Roman force and the source of ultimate executive power. His decrees carried the force of law. The protections that would later shield citizens from abusive magistrates did not yet exist, so nothing in the law restrained him.
The Senate of early Rome offered little counterweight. It was a weak oligarchy whose main task was to carry out the king's wishes, and no one could rule over him.
The tribunus celerum was the first officer a new king had to appoint. This man served as tribune of the Ramnes tribe and commanded the Celeres, the king's personal bodyguard. Ranked second to the king, he could convene the Curiate Assembly and put legislation before it. His term ended when the king died.
The custos urbis, the warden of the city, was another royal appointee. When the king was away, this prefect held all of the king's powers, even imperium inside the city. Only the king could appoint patricians to the Senate. His authority also reached into the courtroom, where two Latin titles, the Quaestores Parricidii and the Duumviri Perduellionis, name the officers he created.
Pontiffs could be assigned by the king to decide minor cases, but every civil and criminal matter ultimately came before him. That made him supreme in war and in peace. Ancient writers disagreed about appeals. Some held that no appeal from his decisions existed. Others believed that any patrician could propose one during a meeting of the Curiate Assembly.
Two officers called the Quaestores Parricidii served as criminal detectives, and the king appointed both. For cases of treason he named a two-man criminal court, the Duumviri Perduellionis. A council advised him during every trial, yet it had no power to control his decisions.
The Senate and the Curiate Assembly were not independent bodies with a right to meet and debate affairs of state. Only the king could summon them, and they could discuss only the matters he laid before them. The Assembly could pass laws that he submitted. The Senate was in effect an honorable council that could advise him but could never prevent him from acting.
One decision lay beyond the king alone. Declaring war on a foreign nation required the approval of both the Senate and the Curiate Assembly. On everything else he could more or less rule by decree. Still, the man who held this power did not simply inherit it.
Five days was the term of an interrex. When a king died, Rome entered an interregnum, and supreme power passed to the Senate, which had to find a successor. The Senate appointed one of its own members as interrex. After five days, with the Senate's consent, he could name another senator for another five days. This could repeat until a new king was chosen.
Once an interrex found a suitable nominee, he brought the man before the Senate for examination. If the Senate confirmed the nomination, the interrex convened the Curiate Assembly and presided over the election. Candidates could come from any background. Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, for example, was a citizen who had migrated from a neighboring Etruscan city-state. The people, sitting as the Assembly, could accept or reject the nominee.
Acceptance did not make the king-elect a king. Two further acts were needed. The first was to learn the will of the gods through the auspices, since the king would serve as high priest of Rome. An augur led the king-elect to the citadel and seated him on a stone while the people waited below. If the augur announced favourable tokens from the gods, the man's priestly character was confirmed.
The second act was conferring imperium. The Assembly's vote decided who would be king but gave him none of the royal powers. So the king himself proposed a bill granting him imperium, and the Assembly voted it into law. In theory the people elected their leader, but the Senate controlled most of the process. Romulus alone stands outside this procedure, because election applied only to the kings who came after him.
Romulus, born around 770 BC, took the throne after murdering his brother Remus, and he ruled until about 716 BC. Numa Pompilius, born around 753 BC, was elected by the Curiate Assembly after Romulus died and reigned from about 715 to 672 BC. Tullus Hostilius, elected after Numa, held power from about 672 to 640 BC. Ancus Marcius, a grandson of Numa Pompilius, was elected next and reigned from about 640 to 616 BC.
A rival figure complicates the list. Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, shared the rule of Rome with Romulus for five years, until his death. Tradition does not count him among the seven.
The fifth king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, reigned from about 616 to 578 BC. He first acted as regent because the sons of Ancus Marcius were too young, and he was soon elected. He was the first Etruscan king and had originally been known as Lucumo.
Servius Tullius, the son in law of Priscus, seized the kingship after the sons of Ancus had Priscus assassinated. He presented himself as merely filling in while the king recovered. His reign ran from about 578 to 534 BC. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, a son or grandson of Priscus, then took power from about 534 BC until the monarchy ended. He seized the throne after the assassination of Servius Tullius, a plot he and his wife, the daughter of Servius, helped orchestrate.
No reference to the hereditary principle appears until after Priscus, the fifth king. For that reason some have assumed that the Tarquins tried to turn an earlier elective monarchy into a hereditary one. On this view, that attempt led to the formation of the Republic.
Rome's records were destroyed in 390 BC, when the city was sacked. As a result, no one can say for certain how many kings really ruled, or whether later writers described their deeds accurately. The title itself, however, outlived the monarchy in the hands of a priest.
The rex sacrorum, or king of sacrifices, kept the royal title after the monarchy fell. He formally remained Rome's first priest. He was forbidden any political or military career, though he could hold a seat in the Senate. The public did not elect him. The pontifical college chose him.
The Romans were determined to keep the kingship unimportant, even in religion. The king of sacrifices was formally placed beneath the pontifex maximus. At some point the Regia, the royal palace at the Forum Romanum where the king of sacrifices had lived, was ceded to the pontifex maximus.
The festival of Regifugium gave him one of his major public appearances. There he impersonated a king being thrown out of the city.
Some religious rites remained his alone, and he acted as a quasi-flamen to Janus. The position seems to have continued until the official adoption of the Christian religion. Patrician ancestry was required to hold it. Once, though, a member of the Marcii, a family otherwise known as plebeian, performed the role, and he and his descendants earned the cognomen Rex. Meanwhile, the king's practical powers had gone to officers called consuls.
The consuls took over most of the imperium, and the etymology of the word suggests they began as the king's chief counsellors. Tradition always entrusted the consulship to two people at once, to prevent autocracy, though historians dispute this for the first decades. The praetors, whose name means leaders, received a share of imperium after their office was created, about 367 BC according to Livy. That roughly separated the judiciary from the executive. For emergencies, Rome introduced the power to appoint a dictator for a six-month term.
The censors inherited the king's old role of choosing senators and dismissing them. That role shrank over time, because all magistrates down to the rank of quaestor eventually gained admission to the Senate once their term ended.
In lawmaking, the Centuriate Assembly and the Tribal Assembly took over from the Curiate Assembly. What remained of the old body was a formality, the lex curiata de imperio, which ratified the elections of the Centuriate Assembly. The consuls kept the power to rule by ordinance.
Traces of the old kingship lingered in odd places. The office of interrex survived to give the opening prayer at electional assemblies if both consuls died in office. The ritual of driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter sometimes even brought about a dictatorship.
Later, the Senate could grant imperium to proconsuls and propraetors. Whoever used imperium to lead an army to victory could earn the title of imperator. That word would eventually become the chief title of the emperors.
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Common questions
Who was the first king of Rome?
According to legend, the first king of Rome was Romulus, who founded the city in 753 BC upon the Palatine Hill. He took the throne after murdering his brother Remus and ruled until about 716 BC.
How many kings of Rome were there, and when did the Roman Kingdom end?
Seven legendary kings are said to have ruled Rome until 509 BC, when the last king was overthrown. They ruled for an average of 35 years. Titus Tatius, who shared rule with Romulus for five years, is not counted among the seven.
How was a king of Rome chosen?
A senator serving as interrex nominated a candidate, the Senate examined him, and the Curiate Assembly voted to accept or reject him. The new king then needed favourable auspices from an augur and a bill granting him imperium.
What powers did the king of Rome have?
The king held imperium for life, which made him supreme in military, executive and judicial matters, and it protected him from being tried. He could issue decrees with the force of law. Only a declaration of war required approval from the Senate and Curiate Assembly.
What did the king of Rome wear?
The king of Rome wore a purple toga picta, red shoes and a white diadem. He sat on a curule chair and was accompanied by twelve lictors carrying fasces. Only the king could wear a purple toga.
What happened to the title of king of Rome after the monarchy ended?
The title was kept for the rex sacrorum, or king of sacrifices, who remained Rome's first priest but was barred from political or military careers. Most of the king's other powers passed to the consuls and later the praetors.
All sources
9 references cited across the entry
- 3Livy, ab urbe condita libri, I
- 5Married his daughter, Hostilia
- 7Livy, Ab urbe condita, 1.39.
- 9It is well known that Julius Caesar inhabited it.
- 10Before the formal establishment of the office of praetor below the consulate, this was at least another generic name, and quite possibly another title, of the consuls, cf. the names "praetorium" for t