Roman Kingdom

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Roman Kingdom was built on a river crossing. Around 753 BC, a small cluster of settlements appeared on the Palatine Hill above a ford across the Tiber in central Italy. The hills surrounding that spot were naturally defensible; the fertile plain below was rich. From that combination of geography and ambition, the city of Rome took shape under a line of kings that lasted roughly two and a half centuries. Seven monarchs would rule in succession before a single act of violence in 509 BC ended the monarchy forever. What kind of institution was this kingdom? How did the kings hold power? Who were the men who sat on that throne, and what did any of them actually build? The story of Rome before the Republic is a story of disputed records, legendary deeds, and a political system unlike any that came after it.

• 2. Lost to Fire and Time

  ›

  Almost nothing written from the period of the kings has survived. The Gauls sacked Rome after the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC, according to the scholar Varro, and destroyed most of the city's historical records. What remained was eventually lost to time or stolen. Because of this destruction, all accounts of the Roman kings rest on oral tradition filtered through writers who lived centuries later. Livy, born in 59 BC, Plutarch, writing before 50 AD, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, active around 60 BC, are the main sources. Varro and Fabius Pictor codified the traditional chronology, calculating that the seven kings together reigned for 243 years, an average of nearly 35 years each. Since the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, scholars have largely rejected this schema as improbable. The question of when exactly the battle that triggered the record loss occurred is itself uncertain: Polybius placed it in 387 or 386 BC, not Varro's 390. Every account of Rome's first kings must therefore be treated with care.

• 3. The King's Many Powers

  ›

  A Roman king held a form of authority called imperium, formally granted by the Curiate Assembly through a law known as the Lex curiata de imperio at the start of each reign. Imperium lasted for life and shielded the king from prosecution for any of his actions. He was the commander-in-chief of all Roman legions, the supreme judge in both civil and criminal cases, and the head of the state religion. He alone could appoint senators, declare the calendar, and perform augury on behalf of Rome. The Latin word pontifex, meaning bridge-builder, captured how the people understood his religious role: a mediator standing between humanity and the gods. When the king left the city, a prefect called the praefectus urbi assumed all of his powers, including imperium. A second officer, the tribunus celerum, commanded the king's personal bodyguard and was the only person besides the king who could convene the Curiate Assembly. The king also appointed two criminal detectives known as quaestores parricidi and a two-man treason court called the duumviri perduellionis. The sole act the king could not perform alone was declaring war on a foreign nation; that required approval from both the Senate and the Curiate Assembly.

• 4. Choosing a King

  ›

  When a king died, Rome entered a formal period called the interregnum. Power passed temporarily to the Senate, which would appoint one of its members as interrex to serve for five days with a single task: nominating the next king. If no suitable candidate emerged within five days, the interrex appointed a successor to serve another five-day term. The cycle continued until a nominee was found. Once a candidate was brought before the Senate and approved, the interrex convened the Curiate Assembly to hold the formal vote. A yes vote from the assembly was not enough on its own. Two further acts had to follow. First, an augur had to conduct the king-elect to the citadel, seat him on a stone, and read divine signs confirming that the gods approved. Only then did the augur announce favorable tokens. Second, the king himself had to propose a law granting him imperium, which the Curiate Assembly would then vote into effect. In theory, the people of Rome chose their ruler; in practice, the Senate controlled most of the process. The historian Arnaldo Momigliano observed that many of the kings appear to have been leaders of armed bands who won the support of Rome's aristocracy through persuasion or force.

• 5. Seven Reigns

  ›

  Romulus, the city's founder, reigned for 37 years. According to legend, he vanished at age fifty-four while reviewing his troops on the Campus Martius, carried to Mount Olympus in a whirlwind. Suspicion that the patricians had murdered and dismembered him was only quieted after an esteemed nobleman reported that Romulus had appeared to him in a vision as the god Quirinus. A replica of Romulus's hut was kept at the center of Rome until the end of the Empire. His successor Numa Pompilius, a Sabine known for justice and piety, reigned for 43 years and reformed the Roman calendar by adding January and February, bringing the total to twelve months. He also established the Vestal Virgins, the Salii, and the office of pontifex maximus. Tullus Hostilius, who followed Numa, was combative rather than pious and, according to Livy, was struck by a bolt of lightning at the end of a 32-year reign after calling on Jupiter in desperation. Ancus Marcius, Numa's grandson, founded the port of Ostia Antica on the Tyrrhenian Sea, built the first prison on the Capitoline Hill, and constructed the first bridge across the Tiber, before dying naturally after 25 years. The fifth king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, was the first of Etruscan birth. He expanded the Senate from 100 to 200 members, drained the swampy ground between the hills to build the Roman Forum, founded the Circus Maximus, and began construction on the temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. He was killed after 38 years by a son of Ancus Marcius. Servius Tullius, his son-in-law and Rome's second Etruscan king, instituted Rome's first census, dividing the population into five economic classes; he reigned for 44 years before being killed in a conspiracy organized by his own daughter Tullia and her husband. That husband was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, who became the seventh and final king.

• 6. The Tyrant and the Fall

  ›

  Lucius Tarquinius Superbus seized the throne through violence and ruled for 25 years by intimidation. Livy records that he was the only king to judge capital criminal cases without advisers, a deliberate act of terror. He completed the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and continued work on the Cloaca Maxima and Circus Maximus, but his public works could not offset the resentment his methods generated. The crisis that ended his reign came when his son Sextus Tarquinius raped Lucretia, wife and daughter of powerful Roman nobles. Lucretia told her family what had happened and took her own life. Four men, led by Lucius Junius Brutus and including Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Publius Valerius Poplicola, and Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, used the outrage to incite a revolution. Tarquinius and his family were expelled from Rome in 509 BC. Brutus and Collatinus became the first consuls of the Roman Republic. The aftermath was complicated. The Etruscan ruler Lars Porsena moved on Rome, and the ancient historians Tacitus and Pliny recorded a tradition that Porsena actually captured the city and imposed harsh terms. The scholar Tim Cornell has argued that Porsena may have abolished the monarchy entirely, with the Republic forming only after Porsena's army was defeated at Aricia by the Latins and their allies from Cumae. Momigliano held open the possibility that an Etruscan ruler installed by Porsena sat briefly in Rome before the first consuls were ever elected.