CHAPTER XII.

THE KINGS OF ROME

I.

THE EARLY KINGS

IF the tradition of a regal period at Rome needs confirmation, confirmation is not difficult to find: various considerations unite to prove that beyond all doubt monarchy was one of the early phases in the constitutional development. But acceptance of the kingship does not imply belief in the vulgate version of the kings. Of Romulus enough has been said to show that his claims to consideration as an historical figure may be ignored. His successors, according to the received account, are six, to whom Titus Tatius may possibly be added as a seventh; and seven is the greatest number of kings that tradition can produce to cover the whole period of history which Rome may boast before the establishment of a republic at the end of the sixth century. Under an elective monarchy, where men have to win distinction before they can become king, reigns tend to be short, and in such circumstances half a dozen kings can scarcely be expected to account for the government for more than two hundred years. Thus the kings of traditional history will provide at best for less than half the period which elapsed between the first settlement of cremating Latins on the Palatine and the beginning of the Republic; and tradition confesses its consciousness of this hiatus by postponing the foundation of Rome and filling the four preceding centuries with the worthless tales of Alba. Towards those of the kings who have some claim to be regarded as historical two alternative attitudes are possible. It may be held that their number is arbitrary, and that, whether these names be those of actual kings or not, they are merely selected as lay figures on whom to father the more outstanding monuments, exploits and institutions of Rome from its origin to the end of the sixth century. Or again it is possible to maintain that the regal period with which tradition purports to deal is in actual fact what the accepted story implies—a short final section of Roman history before the foundation of the Republic— and that the section was one in which Rome was ruled by a series of six or seven kings, who may even have borne the names which are preserved.

Romulus stands apart and is wholly a construction, but a number of considerations combine to suggest that the figures of the remaining kings are built round a kernel of fact. If Romulus be set aside and with him Titus Tatius, who holds an equivocal position on the fringe of the king-list but outside it, the kings of Rome run in an ordered canon which knows no variation. From this it is a common and valid inference that the canon must have been established before the third century, when the speculations of Roman historiography began; but the fixing of the list can be carried back further still. Had it been a creation of the fifth and fourth centuries it is difficult to believe that no attempt would have been made to claim regal dignity for some of the great patrician houses which then were dominant in Rome. Yet in the nomenclature of the kings there is no hint of a connection with the Fabii, the Valerii and the rest. It must be admitted, however, that, if the regal names had to be invented, inventors were not bound to take their ideas from the names of families famous in their own time. Names might be significant, like that of Romulus himself, and this would probably have been the case if their owners were mere fictitious eponyms, created to be the authors of various features in early Roman history. But this is not so. To the kings’ achievements, to the parts they were made to play in the traditional history, their names bear no relation. They are names familiar in Etruria or Rome, though such distinction as was won by the republican namesakes of Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius and Servius Tullius was late and rare. It seems then that the list of kings was fixed as early as the fifth century and that the names which composed the list were neither invented nor chosen to dignify with regal ancestry men who bore them in later days. Under such circumstances the conclusion can hardly be escaped that the names at least are those of figures distinguished in regal times—and, if distinguished, in what capacity but as king?

The traditional chronology of the regal period is artificial. Details of the development by which the final version was produced are a subject which at best is one for speculation; but in outline what happened is perhaps simpler than some authorities would allow. To the seven canonical kings, though the first was not historical at all, theory assigned reigns which together made a period equal to as many generations; and, since thirty-five years in this case were reckoned as a generation, a date two hundred and forty-five years before the beginning of the Republic was chosen for the foundation of the city and the opening of the regal age. Materials from which to construct a less arbitrary and more accurate chronology are to seek. For chronological purposes the constitutional question about the government of the villages which formed the Septimontium is unimportant: but even if seven kings ruled over seven separate communities they would not belong to that regal period of Roman history as it is generally understood. If it is right to regard the Septimontium as a stage before the city of Rome came into existence, the regal period in the ordinary sense cannot have opened before the City of the Four Regions was formed; and the assignment of the kings to that city is confirmed by another fact. The peculiar position of the Regia, in which it is perverse to see anything but the palace of the kings, has often been noticed: it is not on the Palatine or any other hill but on the lowest slopes of the Velia. The choice of such a site points strongly to a date when settlements on several hills were coming under a single government—that is, to a date somewhere in the seventh century when it seems probable that the villages of Rome were first merged into a city.

Theories which would interpret the kings as in origin gods may be disregarded, if a regal period is accepted at all: even if it were possible, a demonstration that, though Rome had once been ruled by kings, the names ascribed to the monarchs of tradition are really those of deities would at best be unprofitable. In fact, however, the scrutiny to which the evidence has been subjected in recent years leads unmistakably to the conclusion that, so far from it being possible to regard the kings themselves as originally gods, the materials from Rome will not even justify the view that the primary functions of the kingship were priestly and that the king derived his authority from a connection with the gods closer than that of ordinary mortals. Save in the case of Romulus, who only attained to deity by identification with Quirinus, cults of the Roman kings are unknown, and such rare connections with gods as are ascribed to various kings must be put down to republican elaborations of tradition. Nor again is it a happy suggestion that the seven kings personify the seven hills. If Romulus is eponym of the city as a whole, only six kings are left for seven heights, and of the six no one has a significant name of the kind which a personification would naturally bear. By such considerations the suggestion might be refuted, even if De Sanctis had not proved to demonstration that no king is ever associated exclusively with a single hill.

With that small degree of confidence which is the greatest permissible in early Roman history, the six kings from Numa to the second Tarquin may be accepted as figures named after men who presided over the destinies of Rome from the time in the seventh century when Rome became a city down to the establishment of republican government. But so much by way of concession to the authority of tradition does not involve acceptance of tradition as a whole. In detail the recorded achievements of the kings call for close examination, and when the legendary dross has been rejected the residuum of possibly historical matter will be small.

Consideration of the list in detail may begin with Titus Tatius— so far as our evidence goes, the one unsuccessful candidate for inclusion in the accepted canon. He is in a different position from the six successors of Romulus: for though his statue stood on the Capitoline with those of the other kings, he was rejected by historical tradition, and the early scepticism which his rejection implies is confirmed. Unlike the others, Tatius has a name which may be significant. It seems to connect him with the Tities; and though he was familiar as early as the time of Ennius, the only part which we know Ennius to have made him play is that of eponym to the tribe. Moreover another of Tatius’ functions—to personify the Sabine element at Rome—is not assigned to him with any unanimity, or even by the dominant tradition. The story of the Sabine settlement which won widest acceptance—probably, it is true, less on its historical merits than through the influence of the Claudii—made Attius Clausus the leader of the newcomers and put their arrival at the end of the sixth century. And finally the ‘equal power’ of Romulus and Tatius, unlike the relation assumed between Romulus and his brother Remus, is suspiciously suggestive of an attempt to find early precedents for the collegiate magistracy. About Tatius, then, the conclusion must be that though his connection with the Sabine immigrants serves at least as a reminder of the undoubted presence in the early population of more elements than one, he cannot be accepted with any confidence as historical. His name and his constitutional position both have the appearance of late inductions made to account for one of the Romulian tribes and to lend the sanction of antiquity to the supreme magistracy of the Republic.

The traditional achievements of the seven Roman kings fall naturally into groups, of which the two largest concern the development of the constitution and the extension of the city’s territory. These two are subjects of an importance which justifies separate treatment : in connection with the individual kings only such matters need be mentioned as belong to neither but are still not without significance.

The character of the founder was appropriately bellicose. More pacific institutions, and especially those embodied in the religious system, were ascribed in general to his successor. Numa Pompilius may indeed be the name of a ruler in early Rome, but many of the activities assigned to him are the merest legend. His association with the religious side of public life made him a peculiarly fitting figure for insertion in tales which, however picturesque, bear only on the study of Roman religion. The story which tells how Numa made Picus and Faunus drunk and captured them in order to extract the secret of expiating a stroke of lightning, and how they, unable to give the answer, arranged an interview between Numa and Juppiter himself, in which Numa’s part is to protest the Roman horror of human sacrifice, is one which sheds light on the religious workings of the Roman mind; but for Numa, king of Rome, it is no evidence at all. That the story lacks even the slenderest foundation of fact need not be said: but what is not so generally agreed is that, though the story is wholly legend, its attachment to Numa does not prove that Numa himself is unhistorical. The same is true of the relationship between Numa and Egeria—in origin the nymph of a spring close by the sanctuary of Diana at Aricia, who later acquired other functions and also became adviser and even wife of Numa. His connection with this source of inspiration does nothing to authorize punning conjectures that Numa began his career as spirit of the river Numicus: but on the other hand, though Diana of Aricia almost certainly came to Rome before the end of the regal period and though, with Diana, Egeria probably came too, the evidence of the tale is not itself enough to prove that Numa was the king who presided over their introduction.

The main work of Numa, the organization of the religious calendar and of the priestly colleges, is more difficult to interpret. The suggestion that the traditional account of Numa’s legislation finds support in the need for a powerful reformer to reduce the pristine authority of a great magician-king to the dignified impotence of the Flamen Dialis fails, unless the history of kingship in Italy is other than we believe. There is no good evidence that kings before Numa were afflicted with taboos so severe as those under which the Flamen Dialis laboured; but, unless a priest-king of this sort existed so late as the seventh century, Numa is not needed to confine him to his priestly functions. Again, it must be admitted that the several sacred colleges and the so-called Calendar of Numa are the results of a slow and natural growth. Of the calendar, which is known to us with certainty from the Fasti, this much is proved by the ease with which three distinct stages of cultural history may be detected in the festivals which compose it. But still there remains the fact that at a certain point—a point early in Roman history when city-life was something new and when deities of such consequence as the Capitoline Triad were still unknown at Rome—the growth was suddenly arrested, and the festivals existing at the time were embodied in a calendar which thenceforward was kept distinct from all later innovations. Here the hand of a legislator is visible, and though the institutions of Numa cannot be accepted as his invention, there is reason to think that during the regal period some individual —almost certainly a king—did concern himself with the religious side of public life in a way which marked a definite stage in its development.

Among the measures ascribed to Numa more often than to other kings two reforms are marked out by the need for executive action which alone could make them possible. The change in the secular calendar, by which two months were added to the recognized ten1, is assigned to him; and it is a change which must have needed an author if it were ever made. For long the calendar of ten months lay under grave suspicion, and it must be confessed that the earliest recorded evidence for its existence was a document inscribed in the Temple of Hercules Musarum2, dedicated in all probability by the father of Q. Fulvius Nobilior, who was one of the consuls in 153 BC when for the first time the consular year opened with the month of January. But though his view of its origin may be doubted, the value of Mommsen’s warning against its rejection is recalled by Nilsson’s demonstration8 that various primitive peoples used a cycle covering, not the whole year, but only that part of it between the beginning and end of agricultural operations. If the ancestors of the Romans had known something such as this, the introduction of a calendar designed to run continuously, without an annual gap, must have been a memorable reform; and tradition may not be wrong in connecting its memory with Numa.

The second institution which must have had an author and whose author Numa is said to have been is the Regia; and in this connection tradition needs special notice. According to the vulgate, Numa, like Titus Tatius whom he resembles in more ways than one, migrated to Rome from the Sabine town of Cures and settled on the Quirinal; but from the Quirinal in course of time he moved to a new home on the lowest slope of the Velia towards the Forum. If Romulus is a legend and Numa is the first historical king of Rome, it is wholly appropriate that he should have built the palace whose position shows it to have been the abode of kings who ruled a united city: in fact the foundation of the Regia is among the most plausible of the activities ascribed to Numa. But the story’s strongest claim to attention lies in another aspect. Numa is said to have been of Sabine origin, and the Sabine nature of his name Pompilius, of which Quinctilius is the nearest Latin form, is beyond dispute1. Then, again, at Rome his earliest connection is with the Quirinal, one of the outer hills where inhumations are most freely found, and of these burials it has been the work of von Duhn to show the Sabine affinities. Tradition here finds strong support in the evidence of language and of excavation. The question of the Sabine element in Rome will be mentioned more fully in connection with the fifth century; here it will be enough to say that the prominence of a Sabine like Numa Pompilius must not be thought to justify the view that Rome was a Sabine city. Sabine settlers there undoubtedly were; but when a Roman meant ‘ five ’ he said quinque and not pompe.

Thus, though much that is recorded of him must be rejected, it would be rash to assert that the figure of Numa Pompilius is without historical foundation. It is true that the function assigned to him by the developed tradition—to supply an author for those institutions whose religious and pacific character made them unsuitable for connection with the warlike Romulus—rendered Numa peculiarly liable to legendary associations. To treatment of this kind he was still subjected in times which are fully historical. The leges regiae ascribed to him were a work of which the final compilation was probably not achieved before the Punic wars, and his alleged dealings with Pythagoras led, so late as 181 BC, to the propagandist hoax which called for state intervention to destroy the Pythagorean ‘Books of Numa,’ said by some charlatan to have been discovered in the king’s tomb on the Janiculum. But in spite of such corruptions the nucleus of tradition about Numa must be retained. If nothing else, the connection of a king with the organization of the State religion is not without plausibility, nor is the assertion that the name of this king was Numa Pompilius.

Tullus Hostilius disputes with Numa the establishment of the fetiales, to which Ancus also lays a much weaker claim. This was perhaps inevitable. For the fetiales were a priestly college and therefore appropriate to Numa; but their business was with war, and for this reason they might be given to Tullus who was above all things a warrior—‘ferocior etiam quam Romulus.’ His main activities are provoked by an Alban invasion and end with the destruction of Alba itself. Such kernel of fact as the story may contain is so deeply encrusted with legend as often to escape the consideration it deserves. The details have to be ignored. The Alban king, C. Cluilius, is eponym of the fossa€ Cluilia(e). The fight of the three Horatii with the three Curiatii bears every sign of invention: the doubts under which our authorities labour about the side to which each family belonged are not enough to prove an early origin for the tale, nor do the many parallels from Greece—like the duel of Phrynon and Pittacus for Sigeum—strengthen its claim to a place in Roman history. The story of the surviving Horatius is an aetiological effort to explain the tigillum sororium and provocatio ad populum. And finally the fate of the treacherous Mettius Fufetius, appointed dictator by the Albans when Cluilius was killed, merely points a moral, as does the end of Tullus himself, who perished by a stroke of lightning through trying to meddle with the weather. But when all this is discounted, the Alban war remains; and it will be seen that such a war must be accepted somewhere in the regal period. Who led the Roman forces only tradition tells; but there is at least a possibility that here tradition tells the truth. Every parallel suggests that in the Curia Hostilia, the first meeting place of the Roman Senate, we have a monument raised by a man of wealth and influence belonging to the gens Hostilia. When, towards the end of the Second Punic War, a small revival in the fortunes of the clan, till then unnoticed in republican history, was begun by the Hostilii Catones, the Curia was already old and Tullus Hostilius had long held his place in the regal list. The name of the building is earlier than the earliest occasion on which its false ascription to a fictitious king would be in place; and since its name almost certainly preserves the record of a man famous in his day, even if Varro did not say that its author was Hostilius the king, the Curia might be accepted as evidence of a sort for his historical existence.

The traditions of Ancus Marcius are contaminated by the achievements of men who bore the name of Marcius in republican times. When Pliny says that the Aqua Marcia, which took its name from Q. Marcius Rex praetor in 144 BC, owed its inception to Ancus, the falsification is clear; but in other cases detection is more difficult. The activities of Ancus Marcius, begin with a war against various cities alleged to have been in conflict with Rome under Romulus and other kings, but in the end they are concentrated on the extension of Roman territory towards the Tiber mouth. The details of regal warfare round Rome can never be recovered, and in the wars of Ancus there is little that need be mentioned. Much may be rejected at once: the tale that the people of the conquered towns were settled in the Aventine is disproved by the absence of inhabitants on that hill in the middle of the fifth century and by its exclusion from the city down to the time of the Gallic invasion (p. 362). But one place, which Ancus alone is said to have taken, must be noticed. Ficana probably stood somewhere near the Monte Cugno, the last hill on the east bank of the Tiber before the salt marsh begins; and this according to tradition was captured by Ancus, who afterwards founded the colony of Ostia and extended his operations across the river to the Silva Maesia. On one point tradition here is wrong. Excavation has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that Ostia was not a regal foundation and had no history before the second half of the fourth century. The basis of the story is a matter of conjecture. Probably it is to be found neither in the fourth-century Etruscan attack on the lower Tiber to which the Roman resistance was led by C. Marcius Rutilus , nor in the bold assumption that on the site of Ostia there was a cult of Vulcan which had been among the great religious centres of early Latium. If, as will be suggested, there is evidence to show that before the establishment of the Republic Roman authority and even Roman territory extended to the sea, the war of Ancus with Ficana and his foundation of Ostia may more plausibly be regarded as the traditional account of Rome’s southward advance. That such an advance was made is as little doubtful as anything in the regal history, and in the operations of Ancus we have the authorized account of its conduct.

II.

ETRUSCAN ROME

Rome under the kings from Numa to Ancus Marcius is to be regarded as a Latin city. That in this period it was Latin and Italic is widely, though not universally, agreed; and to deny that it was a city, for the sake of making the city an Etruscan foundation, is to ignore the plainest evidence for the Italic origin of the kingship and the most central features of the urban constitution. The three remaining kings—L. Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and L. Tarquinius Superbus—belong to a phase which in some sense maybe called Etruscan.

Wherever the line of division may be drawn, there is every reason for breaking the history of regal Rome into Latin and Etruscan sections. There can be no doubt that for a time the city was under Etruscan control, and that connection with Etruria brought a rapid cultural advance. But the historical significance to be seen in the Etruscan age depends on the way in which the Etruscans are understood. In the present diversity of opinion, though Etruria in general is a subject not to be handled here, a discussion of the Etruscan influence on Rome must begin with a statement of the sense in which ‘Etruria’ and ‘Etruscan’ will be used.

The question of Etruscan origins has been treated in a previous volume and it is impossible to discuss the problem a second time at length; here it must suffice to give a bald statement of the conclusions to which the evidence leads the present writer. At the outset it should be said that the necessity for briefness is alone responsible for the appearance of dogmatism on certain points where dogmatism is neither justified nor intended. The literary authorities are divided. Herodotus, whose account is often repeated in later antiquity, brings the Etruscans from an early home in Asia: Dionysius regards them as indigenous. To the view of Herodotus archaeology lends no support: the culture of Etruria is Villanovan and does not show the break which would mark the coming of immigrants at any point where, on the Herodotean theory, signs of immigration should be sought. Such external influences as Etruscan culture betrays in the centuries after 800 BC are to be explained by contacts developed in the normal course of trade, first with the Phoenicians and later with the Greeks. The linguistic evidence, again, does not offer convincing proof of affinities between Etruscan and any of the languages known to have been used in Asia Minor in the second and first millennia BC It is true that the Etruscan population contained a section—and a section of considerable magnitude—which is shown by the evidence both of language and of the burial practice which it revived to have been distinct from the Italic Villanovans; but this section, whose own language is what we call Etruscan, is probably to be regarded as descended from the neolithic inhabitants of Italy.

For the present study, which is primarily concerned with the influence of Etruria on Rome, a more important question than that of Etruscan origins is the question about the sources of Etruscan culture. It has to be asked whether the civilization of Etruria was, as has often been suggested, brought into Italy ready-made, or whether it was a native Italian growth. The view which insists most strongly on the cultural debt of Italy to the Etruscans is bound up, not only with the theory of Etruscan immigration, but with the account of Herodotus which traces the Etruscans to a region which was in the forefront of civilization at the supposed time of their departure for the west. To illustrate the weakness of such speculations one aspect of the case may be noticed, but an aspect which is typical of the rest. In spite of the arguments which have been based on the ivory tablet found at Marsiliana d’Albegna, it remains as clear as ever that the alphabet used in Etruscan monuments is western Greek, and that, though influences due to contact with Central Greece may be detected, it was learnt in Italy by the Etruscans, in all probability from the Chalcidic colonists of Cumae. The absence of any Etruscan document written in an earlier and different script points straight to the conclusion that the Etruscans did not write at all until they learnt the alphabet from Campania. But if Asia Minor was their home before they set sail for the west, they came to Italy from a region where writing was by no means unfamiliar. Indeed the much-quoted coincidence of the Etruscan ‘Tarchna’ (Tarquinius) with Anatolian names like ‘Tarchon’ would connect them, if it were evidence at all, with the Hattie power and its cultural subsidiaries, where the prevalence of writing by the middle of the second millennium is beyond doubt. And the Phaestus disk is reminder enough that cuneiform was not the only script known in Asia Minor. Either, then, the Etruscans did not come from Asia Minor at all, or their wanderings were so protracted that before the end was reached their scribes had died and writing was forgotten. And if this was the case, even were undeniable evidence for their Asiatic origin forthcoming, it would seem that so much of their culture had been shed during the voyage that to speak of these immigrants arriving with a knowledge of the arts which entitled them to guide a barbarous Italy into the way of civilization is wholly misleading.

It appears that when Tuscany became available for human habitation it received both descendants of the neolithic people and also Villanovans. These two elements blended to form the population of historical Etruria; and, though the material civilization was Villanovan, the other section, which may have been distantly related to the inhuming ‘Sabines’ of Rome, was responsible both for the language and for the practice of inhumation which finally came widely to prevail in the Etruscan region. In the eighth century, when commercial intercourse with the Phoenicians had begun, the Etruscans began to lead an advance in material progress. By the seventh they had far outstripped their neighbours, and at this time Etruria became the centre from which knowledge of the arts and crafts spread far and wide over the more backward parts of the peninsula. The reason for this development, which probably is also the reason for the attraction of a comparatively dense population to Etruria, is to be found in its natural wealth. The fertility of the country did not distinguish it from other parts of Italy, but in the iron of Elba and the copper of Volterra it had resources which were unique. For Etruria, commercial activities were made easy by the commodities she could supply; and the concentration of trade in this part of the western Italian coast, to the neglect of other regions such as the Latin plain, is adequately explained by the fact on which Plutarch makes Solon insist, ‘that those who sail the seas are not wont to take their wares to those who have nothing to give in exchange’ . Natural resources bred commerce, commerce made the trading population rich, and riches generated those tastes which grow with the means to satisfy them. Thus Etruria took the lead in culture; it became a centre from which culture was diffused, and it was to their more accomplished brethren across the Tiber that the Romans owed their introduction to some of the higher arts.

Any account of the Etruscans at present must be given with reserve, and the views adopted here are admittedly no more than those which, in the writer’s opinion, accord best with such evidence as is so far available. But, if on the main issue they are not wholly wrong, it follows that ‘Etruria’ and ‘Etruscans’ are both terms to be used in a geographical sense. ‘The Etruscans’ are the inhabitants of a certain area, and ‘Etruscan influence’ is merely the cultural influence of this area exercised on regions beyond its limits. For the present purposes at least the Etruscans are not to be understood as an ethnic unit; for, though non-Italic people were undoubtedly present in Etruria, if by Italic a branch of the Indo-European stock is understood, the Etruscan culture seems to have grown up in Italy and to owe little, if anything, to the fact that the population among whom it arose contained a non-Italic element.

Since attention was concentrated on the subject by the learned investigations of Wilhelm Schulze, it has been familiar that the personal nomenclatures of Rome and Etruria have much in common. In the monuments of Etruscan epigraphy—which, it must be remembered, stretch from the seventh century BC to the first— names freely occur of which the root appears again at Rome (e.g. rumlnas—Romilius); and at Rome there are names with terminations which with some reason may be connected with the nonAryan language of Etruria (e.g. Sisenna). But the day has gone when these two classes could be grouped together and explained by the simple supposition of a large Etruscan settlement at Rome. If men at Rome bear names ending in the Etruscan -enna and the like, their presence may indeed be the result of immigration: but the appearance of Etruscan names based on a definitely Italic radical is evidence enough that, when the same root appears in the nomenclatures of Etruria and Rome, the explanation is to be sought in the mixture of non-Italic Etruscans, not necessarily with the Romans themselves, but with some of their neighbouring kin. A bolder suggestion that the tria nomina of the Romans are borrowed from the practice of Etruria—a suggestion which would be important, if it were true—fails when the chronology of the Etruscan evidence is considered; and thus such indications of Etruscan influence in Rome as may be derived from the study of names point at most to nothing more than a certain infiltration from Etruria of newcomers who, in spite of their names, must not even be assumed to have belonged wholly to the non-Italic stratum of the population.

By the beginning of the seventh century the strength and prosperity of Etruria had their natural issue in political expansion. Veii was occupied. Fidenae seems to have supplied a crossing of the Tiber, and with the sudden capture of Praeneste a way was opened by which the Etruscans could reach the rich lands of Campania without encountering such obstacles as might be raised by Rome. By the middle of the century, or thereabouts, the Regolini-Galassi burial at Caere is answered from Praeneste by the Bernardini and Barberini tombs. Rome is straddled by the Etruscans; and though the rich lands of Campania may well have been their chief objective, it is easy to see that Rome was not likely to escape the effects of this envelopment. By their seizure of Praeneste and by their advance into Campania, which cannot be denied even if their numbers were small, the Etruscans enclosed the western section of the Latin plain in lines which made it an enclave in an Etruscan empire. Such seem to have been the circumstances in which Rome became a place of interest to the power across the Tiber.

The personal traditions which may be interpreted as records of Etruscan lords in Rome may for the present be ignored: to the question of Rome’s cultural debt to Etruria they are unessential. There is other evidence enough to show Etruscan influence of a kind. If the tale of an Etruscan settlement on the Caelian is a late deduction from the name of the Etruscan hero Caeles Vibenna, the strongest proof that Etruscans were actually present in Rome is to be found in the name of the street which ran beneath the western end of the Palatine—the Vicus Tuscus. To this may be added the names of the Porta Capena—a gate, which does not, however, lead to the Etruscan (or Faliscan) city of Capena, in the Servian wall at a point on the Caelian where it is probably following the trace of the sixth-century defences—and of the Porta Ratumena, the whereabouts of which is obscure. Both of these names are of interest not merely because they show formations which may be suspected of definitely Etruscan origin, but for their connection with building works, in which it is clear that Etruria gave much to Rome.

More important still is the testimony of religion. An accurate assessment of the whole Roman debt in religion cannot be attempted here, but sufficient illustration is provided by the Capitoline Triad and by the practices of divination. Even if Servius1 did not expressly say that it was the Etruscans who regarded temples of Juppiter, Juno and Minerva as necessary in every real city, independent evidence would show that the first Italian home of this triadic arrangement of deities was Etruria. For instance, the triple temple recently uncovered at Orvieto almost certainly goes back to a date at least a century before any influence can have been exerted there by Rome. Though the origin of the arrangement may be Greek, and though the deities to whom it was applied in Italy owed to Greece their anthropomorphic guise, it is clear that the arrangement itself was received by Rome from Etruria: and its reception confirms, though it does not compel, the view of tradition that it was Etruscans actually in Rome who were responsible for the building of the great temple on the Capitoline. The introduction of the Triad seems thus to be due, not to spontaneous borrowing, but to the presence in Rome of a powerful element to which this particular grouping of gods was familiar. If so, if the cults were to some extent an alien imposition, it might be expected that the Triad would be regarded with a certain coldness by the Romans themselves: and this is the case. Whatever the reason, whether it be that Juppiter retained the prestige of age which he derived from the time when he had been Juppiter Feretrius or not, it is notorious that the temple was always ‘templum Iovis Optimi Maximi’ and that in his presence the two goddesses faded into something like insignificance.

The testimony of the Capitoline Triad is strengthened by the evidence of augury. The practice of extispicium—divination from the entrails of victims—is a late arrival at Rome, probably to be put in the third century; and the haruspices who professed it were never admitted to the public priesthood of the Roman people, even though the Emperor Claudius was so far interested in their art as to form them into an or do in A.D. 47. The Etruscan fondness for extispicium is undoubted, and the frequency with which haruspices had to be summoned from Etruria shows whence it came to Rome; but it cannot be admitted as a legacy of Etruscan occupation in regal times. With augury, however, the case is different. In all probability the Italic peoples, like most early men, had ways of their own by which they sought to gain knowledge of the prospects that the supernatural powers would favour or frown upon their undertakings; and in particular it would be rash to deny that divination at Rome from the flight of birds—the proper and original business of augury—was other than purely Italian. But the developments of the augural system—the magistrate’s demarcation of a templum in the sky, which in turn was subdivided into regiones, and the whole business of augury from lightning, to which alone the templum was appropriate —are connected with Etruria not only by the Romans themselves, who include the libri fulgurales—whatever their date—in the corpus containing the disciplina Etrusca, but also by the independent evidence of the Piacenza liver, which is divided into something like a templum., and the bilingual inscription from Pesaro.

It is to be noticed that the introduction of the Capitoline cult and the adoption of certain methods in magisterial auspicatio, together with the consequent augural interpretation, are matters connected with the public institutions, where in particular the influence of Etruscan domination in Rome might be expected. The same is true of a third debt which the Romans are said to have incurred. According to a tradition prevalent in classical times the trappings of office used as their insignia by Roman magistrates were almost wholly due to Etruria. In most cases the derivation cannot be proved, but in one there is evidence which lends colour to the tale. The fasces are included with the rest: in particular they are connected with Vetulonia: and at Vetulonia, in the late eighth-century burial called the Tomba del Littore, there was discovered a double headed axe whose shaft was surrounded by eight iron tubes.

Evidence such as this seems to show Etruscan influence on the public life of Rome, and such influence is wholly compatible with the suggestion that the later kings of Rome were Etruscans. But for the rest a distinction must be made. Thus far the story has been of Etruscan influence which conceivably may be ascribed to the presence of an Etruscan element. What remains may well be nothing more than the result of normal intercourse between Rome and her more progressive neighbours. At this point, but not before, mention must be made of Rome’s military debt to Etruria. If it were true, as has often been alleged both in ancient times and in modern, that virtually the whole of the so-called Servian equipment of the soldiers was Etruscan, such borrowing would be a powerful addition to the evidence for the political control of Etruscans at Rome. But the theory cannot be maintained. The metal helmet is not Etruscan but Greek, and the derivation of the metal-tipped hasta from Etruria is impossible. Propertius, indeed, may say that the early warriors of Rome

miscebant usta proelia nuda sude,

but his words find no support except in a mistaken explanation of the hasta pura, and their suggestion about the weapons of pre-Servian Rome are refuted by the steady development of spear-heads from stone to metal which excavation has revealed. Etruscan influence here is as much to seek as it is again in the clipeus and the pilum. The clypeus, like the metal helmet, is Greek. From Greece both of these articles may, indeed, have reached Rome through Etruria; but at most the Etruscans here transmitted isolated ideas, and there can be no question of the Romans at a stroke adopting the whole panoply of their neighbours. In these circumstances we may view with scepticism the suggestion2 that the Romans adopted from Etruria the solid formation in battle, which was characteristic of Greece.

It is in the arts that the influence of Etruria is most marked—and naturally so: for in the arts a backward stock can borrow freely from people more advanced without violence to those social institutions which men change only with reluctance. Vulca of Veii may well have been summoned to Rome, as Pliny records, to adorn the Capitoline temple with terra-cotta akroteria and to make the cult-statue of Juppiter himself. The frequent discoveries of terracotta works at Rome show that by the sixth century the city was familiar with a form of architectural decoration common in Etruria; but the origin of this form is clearly Greek, and its widespread popularity in Italy from Umbria to Campania casts doubts on the view that the Etruscans were in all cases even the intermediaries by whom it was communicated to the Italic peoples. Nevertheless in the terra-cottas of Rome there are suggestions both in the style and in the use of external friezes, which confirm the hints of literary authorities that Rome at least was here receiving from Etruria. Moreover, it is clear that some of the greatest public works in early Rome—the draining of the Forum and the walling of the city—belong to the period when Etruscan influence was at its height. Of the cappellaccio wall enough has been said already; and tradition is unanimous in ascribing the Cloaca maxima to the Tarquins. Though this does not mean that anything more was done so early than to confine the stream within artificial banks, the abandonment during the sixth century of the sepulcretum in the Forum for the burial of the dead shows that by then that area was coming to be of use to the living and so serves to confirm the traditional account.

Yet in architecture, as in religion and in military equipment, Etruscan influence on Rome is easy to exaggerate. The allegation that Rome learnt from Etruria to use the arch rests on no evidence at all, because in the covered side-drains connected with the Cloaca maxima Rome can boast true arches which are earlier than anything of the kind known in Etruria. And again, unless it can be proved of the lower chamber in the Career, not only that originally it was covered by a cupola, but also that it was built in the sixth century or the fifth, it must be confessed that Rome seems to have passed through the Etruscan period of her career without adopting that method of roofing a circular area which is one of the most notable features of the developed Etruscan tombs. The influence of Etruria is desultory: Rome seems to pick and choose in her borrowings. But there has still to be mentioned the central piece of evidence which must control every estimate of the part played by Etruria in the making of Rome. Burials on and round the site of Rome have been found in plenty; but, possibly with a single eighth-century exception on the Esquiline, there is none which can be recognized as Etruscan nearer than the Colle di S. Agata, which is on the Tuscan bank of the Tiber to the north-west of Monte Mario, and not less than four miles in a direct line from the Roman Forum. This is the fact which decides the main issue between those who, by calling Rome an Etruscan city, imply, if they do not assert, a large Etruscan settlement among the purely Italic population, and those who confine Etruscan influence to such borrowings as a backward people is always prone to make from more progressive neighbours. At Rome the borrowing was probably encouraged by a period of Etruscan government, which left its trace on the public works of the city and the public institutions of the State. But this occupation did not involve any noticeable shift of population from Etruria to Rome. As in architecture the Etruscan forms ignored by the Romans are no less remarkable than those which they adopted, so in religion and in language. The testimony of Latin carries weight by reason, not of the presence of a few odd words which it possibly received from Etruria, but of their fewness. In this connection the essential feature of the language is its immunity from any Etruscan contamination on a scale which would suggest the presence of Etruscans in the city and a long period of Etruscanization. So, too, in religion. Though the public cults give evidence of Etruscan control for a time, the beliefs of the Romans remain singularly unaffected by the gloomy brood of bogies which, to judge from the tomb-paintings which are preserved, bulked ever larger in Etruscan minds.

It would be idle to deny that Rome borrowed from Etruria, but no less idle to represent Roman culture as Etruscan. With the exception of those few cases which can be connected with the presence of Etruscan rulers in Rome, the Roman debt was incurred by casual loans from the more rapidly developed culture which lay across the river. From the seventh century onwards to the fourth, when, according to a tradition preserved by Livy, cadets of the great Roman houses were sometimes sent to Etruria for their education, Rome was picking up hints from her neighbours to the north. But, save for a period in the sixth century, and then only in a political sense, Rome was not an Etruscan city.

One subject connected with the Etruscan age at Rome remains. Etruscan occupation seems to have enlarged the city’s political outlook and to have brought Rome into contact with other powers in the western Mediterranean. The question of Roman relations with Carthage is of primary importance, but the appropriate place for its discussion is in the history of Rome’s territorial expansion.

III.

THE LATER KINGS

L. Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and L. Tarquinius Superbus present problems more difficult, because more detailed, than those raised by their predecessors. The later kings of Rome do not stand far from the full light of history, and the clearness with which their outlines can be discerned invites speculation about aspects which are more dimly visible. The tradition which associates the Tarquins with Rome is so strong that it might be accepted without hesitation even if it were not confirmed; and the painting from the Francois Tomb of Vulci, once in the Museo Torlonia at Rome, makes reasonable doubt impossible. Though it is not contemporary with the regal period this monument probably belongs to the fourth century and is earlier than the age of annalistic invention: so when it shows the fate of CneFe Tar fumes Ruma— or Gnaeus Tarquinius of Rome—its evidence for the presence of Tarquins in the city is good. But, if the Roman associations of the house are clear, agreement has not been complete since the time of Niebuhr on their Etruscan origin. Though tradition again is strong, the justifiable suspicion under which one feature of it lies has tended to bring the rest into unmerited disrepute. The choice of Tarquinii (Corneto) as the place from which the lucumo, known afterwards as Tarquinius Priscus, should migrate to Rome was rightly recognized as a mere inference from the identity of name; but to go further and reject the whole story on the ground that one detail is discredited implies a method which should have been buried with the nineteenth century.

In the last section it was suggested that for a hundred years or more before the foundation of the Republic Rome was included in the cultural system of Etruria, and that the signs of Etruscan inspiration which can be detected both in the public works and in the political institutions of Rome point to a period of Etruscan government. In tradition this government is represented by the Tarquins. On their Etruscan origin the authorities are clear, and independent evidence supports them. Though Niebuhr was right in saying that Tarquinius, Tarquitius and the like are Latin names, it is also true that Tarchus and its cognates are found in Etruria; and there they appear at a place from which Etruscan influence on Rome might be expected. Caere is less than half as far from Rome as Tarquinii. Unless Veii was one of the twelve Etruscan cities, Caere was nearest of all to the lower reaches of the Tiber: to Caere, according to one version, the last Tarquin retired; and it is at Caere that a tomb of the Tarquinii still survives. It has been seen already that the isolation of the Latins ended when, in the middle of the seventh century, Etruria suddenly stretched southwards from Caere to Praeneste, and it is in every way probable that this advance of Etruscan culture had as its political consequence what is recorded as the arrival of the Tarquins in Rome.

The lucumo and his wife Tanaquil drive to Rome in a cart, not at the head of a great band of settlers but with their own household at most. Here again tradition calls for respect. The peaceful character of the arrival might possibly be doubted; but if that feature is due to the patriotism of Roman annalists, the insignificant number of newcomers is not. On this point the lack of Etruscan elements in Latin, and still more the absence of Etruscan graves in Rome, leave no room for question that the Etruscans in the city were a mere handful. The nature—and especially the continuity—of their occupation is less certain. Between the two Tarquins stands Servius Tullius; and Servius, who was generally regarded as a Latin, was held in high respect by a Rome which certainly was not Etruscan itself and which showed its dislike for Etruria by a thorough-going hatred of the second Tarquin and at best a mild tolerance of the first. The Etruscan affinities of Servius rest on no surer foundation than the antiquarian guesses of the Emperor Claudius and the tale—of a kind which demands no credence because it is designed to explain his succession to the kingship—that he married a daughter of the elder Tarquin. Even if this were true, Servius might still be of Roman birth; but the cogent proof that he was no foreigner is the veneration in which his memory was held. These considerations, however, are not alone. The Etruscan tale of Mastarna and the story of Porsenna, which was admitted even in Rome, suggest that the city was an object of dispute not only between the Latins and their neighbours across the Tiber but between various powers in Etruria itself. In the light of such evidence as this, it would be rash to conclude that throughout the sixth century Rome was under constant Etruscan control. It may be admitted that Etruscan culture stayed when once it had come; but if the political government was really in Etruscan hands for more than the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, it may well have been for briefer periods, broken by incidents of which only the faintest traces remain.

The figure of the elder Tarquin is not wholly clear, and in some cases the details of his career are duplications of tales told about his more infamous namesake. It has been pointed out by Pais that the capture of Apiolae, with the spoils of which he is alleged to have begun the building of the Capitoline temple, is an anticipation of the second Tarquin’s capture of Suessa Pometia, the booty of which he is said to have devoted to the same purpose; and to this it may be added that the personal relations of the two Tarquins, especially with their somewhat enterprising womenfolk, show a marked resemblance. These, however, are no grounds for regarding the first Tarquin as a mere double of the second, nor are they strengthened by such arguments as are often supposed to reinforce them. Both are connected with building operations, with the cloacae and the great temple: and Tarquinius Priscus is said to have proposed the walls whose erection is ascribed to Servius. But if it is right to see in the Tar quins the bringers-of Etruscan arts to Rome, these tales may be accepted as tradition’s indication that the works of public utility which Etruria gave Rome began with the earliest Etruscan influence. They add no cogency to the case for banishing the first Tarquin from the pages of history. The details of his career may often be unsound, but the figure to which they are attached is one that history cannot surrender. Since the Etruscan advance southwards across the Tiber to the Monti Lepini can be fixed at the middle of the seventh century, probability demands what tradition provides—a representative of Etruria in Rome before the latter part of the sixth. Whatever truth may be behind the stories of Tarquinius Priscus and his activities either in war or in constitutional reform—about which little of value can be said—the figure to which this name is attached may be reckoned without hesitation among the rulers of early Rome.

There follows Servius Tullius. Though the sceptics are ready with various theories of his invention, a less daring criticism must admit that the evidence for his existence is stronger than that for any other king’s. Here again, as always, various accretions must be removed from the figure presented by tradition before the historical core is revealed. For instance, his servile birth is almost certainly a punning explanation of his name; and the marriage arrangements by which he is made son-in-law of the elder Tarquin are due to speculation which assumed that the Roman monarchy was hereditary. But when such elaborations have been set aside, there remains a king who may be accepted, though not for the reason which often has been found most cogent. On Servius Tullius the Etruscan evidence for Mastarna has no bearing. In A.D. 48 when the Emperor Claudius was concerned to win approval for his intended adlection of various Gallic notables to the Senate, he took the opportunity of airing his knowledge of antiquity in the speech preserved both by Tacitus and by the bronze tables now in Lyons. According to the inscription, which contains what is certainly the more faithful of the two extant versions, among other pieces of information the princeps announced that Servius Tullius, whose name in Etruscan was Mastarna, originally came to Rome as comrade of a certain Caelus Vivenna, who settled on the Caelian and gave the hill his name. If the identity of Servius with Mastarna could be accepted, fourth-century evidence for his life would be provided by the paintings of the Francois tomb mentioned above. In one panel ‘Marce Camitlnas’ is seen killing ‘CneFe Tar Junies Ruma,’ in another ‘Mastarna’ rescues ‘Caile Lipinas’ from some kind of captivity and cuts through the cords by which his hands are tied; and in a third ‘Aule Lipinas’ does to death a victim whose name is illegible.

If the paintings in the register to which these belong are not wholly unrelated but tell a single tale—as may be inferred from the presence in different groups of the brothers Caeles and Aulus Vibenna—the tale would seem to be that Cnefe Tarunies of Rome had won some success against an Etruscan community and had taken Caeles Vibenna prisoner, but that Caeles was rescued by his friends after a struggle in which Cnefe Tarunies was killed. If Mastarna was leader of the rescue party, it would be easy, as De Sanctis has observed, for the intelligent antiquarian to guess that Mastarna was the next king of Rome; and in that case Cnefe Tarunies must be the elder Tarquin—the only one who had a regal successor—and Mastarna the king who followed him—i.e. Servius Tullius. The possibility of such an origin would not by itself discredit the identification, if the evidence for seeing a single figure in Servius and Mastarna were good. But it is not. The only authority for this version is the speech of Claudius; and whether Claudius himself is responsible for the suggestion or not, the theory must be regarded as a late invention which does nothing to justify conclusions from the evidence for Mastarna to the existence of Servius Tullius.

The case for the historical character of Servius rests on other foundations. In the first place it must be remembered that his name, like that of all the other kings after Romulus, is not significant and does not proclaim an eponym: rather its use in regal Rome is suggested by the possible appearance of M’. Tullius in the Fasti at 500 BC. And secondly that the king is not an invented author either of political institutions or of public works is indicated by the variety of achievements which he is assigned. Servius is not connected with the centuriae alone, but also with the city wall and with what is even more important—the Aventine temple of Diana and the-treaty with the Latins which it contained. The attribution of such diverse activities to a figure whose name betrays no sign of invention is hard to explain unless the figure itself is that of a king who actually ruled in Rome. And the conclusion that Servius belongs not to a myth but to history is strengthened by the liveliness with which his memory was preserved. The contrast between the vague and unconvincing references made by Romans of classical times to the legendary Romulus and their matter-of-fact treatment of Servius is testimony of weight for Servius’ claims to be something more than a figment.

To this might be added evidence provided by the Temple of Diana on the Aventine. The early origin of this building, which is always ascribed to Servius Tullius and which boasted a statue said to represent the king, is almost beyond question. Its primacy among Roman sanctuaries of Diana is proved by the way in which the lex arae Dianae in Aventino was used as a model for all such establishments; and its high antiquity is suggested by the account which Dionysius gives of one of the archives it contained. The treaty with the Latins may be assigned to the sixth century; and though this fact alone will not fix the age of the temple itself, yet when the antiquity of the building is strongly suggested by other evidence, it adds precision by indicating its connection with sixth-century history. Thus the ascription of the Aventine temple to Servius seems so far right that its appearance belongs to the period in which Servius himself is placed. But the value of the treaty as proof that Servius Tullius once was king of Rome is more difficult to estimate. That the stele was forged is unlikely. It is beyond doubt that documents of the sixth century survived in Rome, and it is not easy to see at what later period or for what reason it would have been in Roman interests to invent an agreement with the Latins and foist it upon Servius. If it was genuine, since it seems to have contained no mention of a magistrate’s name, it can scarcely have been of republican date; and in that case a regal origin remains. But though it is probable that the name of Servius was mentioned in the treaty, our ignorance of regal documents makes its presence no more than a matter of conjecture. The Aventine temple does not then provide the demonstrative proof that Servius was king which would have been forthcoming if his name had been known to appear in the compact with the Latins; but it does confirm the powerful evidence of tradition by yielding reasons for belief that tradition about the temple was not wrong, as has often been asserted, in the important matter of its age. Precisely the same must be said about the Servian enceinte, which in its original form belongs to the sixth century, and the same again about some, at least, of the constitutional innovations of which Servius is made the author. In the last connection more than in any other the king’s achievements have been elaborated: but such elaborations do not affect the historical character of the figure to whom they are attached. The conclusion remains unaltered that Servius Tullius was king of Rome during the sixth century, that he was not a foreign conqueror but a kinsman of the Latins over whom he ruled, and that his reign was memorable for constitutional advance, for the fortification of the city and for various developments in external politics of which the most notable concerned Rome’s position in the Latin League.

The second Tarquin stands apart from his predecessor. He is a tyrant, not set up like the majority of Greek tyrannoi by a section of the people whom he governed, but imposed from outside like the tyrants thrust by the Persian king on the cities of Ionia. Though it is to some extent concealed by the patriotic Roman tradition, the army which he had behind him seems to have played as large a part in the rise of Tarquinius Superbus to power as it did in the subsequent achievements of his career. The wars, however, are another story; but there is one document connected with external affairs which is relevant to the problem of the king’s historical character. In the temple of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius on the Quirinal a treaty between Rome and Gabii, written on the ox-hide covering of a wooden shield, was still to be seen in Augustan times 2. The forgery of this record would be even harder to explain than that of Servius’ treaty with the Latins: at the earliest time remote enough from the event for falsification to be possible, the position of Rome was such that tinkering with the history of her relations with what was then only an unimportant city of the Campagna would be pointless. The inscription was probably genuine, and the suggestion of the authorities that it contained the terms of a treaty is confirmed by the place of its preservation. Its assignment to the second Tarquin shows that it mentioned the name of no republican magistrate; and if it were an anonymous relic of the regal age it would not be easy to see why so unpopular a figure as that of Tarquinius Superbus should have been made the author of an arrangement which established ‘isopolity’ between Rome and another city whose friendship undoubtedly was of very early origin. To general probability constitutional considerations may be added in support of the conclusion that in this monument the name of a Tarquinius appeared; and probability again is so far on the side of tradition in identifying him with a king later than Tarquinius Priscus, that the late sixth century is more plausible than any earlier date for an instrument establishing relations so highly developed as those of isopolity. But though the treaty with Gabii goes some way towards confirming the presence of a Tarquin at the head of the Roman state during the latter part of the sixth century, it is on the strength of tradition that his acceptance must ultimately depend.

On two points tradition is so strong that it cannot be set aside. One is that a Tarquin was the last king of Rome: and here tradition is generally believed even by those who regard the two Tarquins as duplications of a single figure. The other is that the last king was forcibly deposed by a revolution which brought the monarchy itself to an end. The story of Sextus Tarquinius and Lucretia and the various other personal details with which the fall of the kingship is embellished may be dismissed at once. In any event they are unimportant, and it is scarcely to be doubted that they are as worthless as the tales transferred to Sextus and his father from the Zopyrus and Thrasybulus of Herodotus. Nor need much attention be paid to the Vulci painting of Cnefe Tarunies being done to death by Marce Camitlnas. Since the praenomen Lucius given by tradition to both the Tarquins may well have been suggested by their Etruscan title lucumo, the fact that the Tarunies of Vulci is ‘Cnefe’ would not be an insuperable obstacle to his identification with L. Tarquinius Superbus. But though Cnefe Tarunies was a Roman, it is not certain that he was a king: and if he were a king, there is nothing to prove that he is not the elder Tarquin and that Marce Camitlnas is not performing the function attributed in the Roman version to the shepherds employed by the sons of Ancus Marcius. For a criticism which accepts two Tarquins as kings of Rome it is by no means necessary to see in the Vulci painting an alternative Etruscan version which discredits the Roman story of the monarchy’s collapse. Even if this were so, Etruria and Rome would agree that the rule of a Roman Tarquin came to a violent end; and it may be doubted whether the painting necessarily implies that Mastarna succeeded to the kingship in his stead. Another institution, once accepted as evidence for the expulsion of a king from Rome, may be dismissed at once. The view, which finds fullest expression in the Fasti of Ovid, that the Regifugium of 24 February commemorated the departure of Tarquinius Superbus is wholly untenable. The Poplifugia of 5 July, which is clearly a counterpart, cannot be an expulsion of the people; and such slight evidence as is available shows that both festivals alike had a ritual significance, which is enough to refute the commemorative interpretation even though the significance cannot confidently be defined.

For the catastrophic end of the monarchy the cogent evidence is to be found in the strength of a unanimous tradition, confirmed by various pieces of independent testimony. At Athens the name basileus moved no emotions; and at Athens the kingship had sunk into insignificance through a gradual devolution of its powers. At Rome the name rex, at least in any political sense, was held in detestation. Of that there can be no doubt, nor is it possible to believe that the authorities are wholly wrong in recording the early provision of penalties against crimes such as ‘regnum occupare, adfectare.’ No importance need be attached to the lex Valeria on this subject assigned to the first year of the republic; but the cases of Sp. Cassius and M. Manlius Capitolinus rest on a sufficient basis of fact to justify the conclusion that some rule existed in the fourth century, and even in the fifth, by which the capital penalty was imposed for this offence. The testimony of Diodorus is here important, because it can be carried back at least to the middle of the second century, when the Gracchi and the succeeding principes of republican Rome had not yet arisen to generate fanatical dislike of monarchy. Marius, Sulla, Caesar and the like undoubtedly stirred up latent horror of a king; but the feeling itself was not their creation. It existed before: and its existence is evidence that the history of kingship in Rome had taken a different course from that which it followed at Athens. Hatred of an institution which has disappeared is not apt to grow stronger with the lapse of time: rather the reverse is true, and the later bitterness against monarchy in Rome suggests feeling so violent at the time of its fall as to be incompatible with any kind of orderly devolution.

Moreover, unless it is wholly wrong to see in the last phase of the Roman monarchy a period of direct Etruscan control, a violent end of regal government is made probable by the general course of events in western Italy. The Etruscan advance into Campania, which had begun before the end of the seventh century, was checked and perhaps even repulsed by Aristodemus, tyrant of Cumae, in the last quarter of the sixth. According to the Greek tradition, in 524 BC Aristodemus defeated an Etruscan attack on his city. The power of the Etruscans in Campania was not yet broken: it seems indeed to have survived until maritime communications between Etruria  and the south were destroyed by Hiero of Syracuse in 474. But some success had been achieved, and it was followed up by an assault on the Etruscan position in Latium. At a date about which our authorities are vague, but which probably was rather before the fall of the Roman monarchy than after it, the Etruscan hold on the hill-country to the south of Latium was weakened, if not destroyed, by the battle of Aricia. The authority for this episode is good. It appears in both Greek and Roman tradition1; and though Greek tradition alone asserts that Aristodemus took part in the operations, the view that it was the continuation of a thrust against the Etruscans from the south is confirmed by the failure of even the Roman version to claim that Rome had any share in the achievement. It seems then that the last quarter of the sixth century was a period in which the Etruscans south of the Tiber were being forced back on their base: the age is one in which the Italic peoples were throwing off the political domination of their neighbours across the river, and in such circumstances the catastrophic end of the Tarquins’ rule as recorded by tradition is wholly appropriate.

The violent ejection of Tarquinius Superbus cannot seriously be questioned; and this is not the place to discuss, further than has been necessary already, the social and constitutional problems raised by this upheaval. However unconvincing may be the arguments advanced to show that the creation of the consulship was, not a result, but the cause of the monarchy’s disappearance, the question of the last Tarquin’s fate is distinct from that about the circumstances in which the republican government was established. The various narratives are so diverse that details cannot be determined. According to the most prevalent account, Tarquinius was outside the city when the monarchy fell, and of the powers and places from which he is said to have sought help some have a certain interest. His connection with Aristodemus of Cumae is improbable in view of Cumaean policy, and the protection he is made to receive from Octavius (or Octavus) Mamilius of Tusculum is a tale almost certainly generated by the assumption that the name of Tusculum implies an Etruscan population. Again, though the battle of the Silva Arsia is mentioned so often as to deserve some credence, the part played by Tarquinii in the campaign cannot be treated seriously in the absence of evidence that its introduction is due to more than an obvious conjecture. Most worthy of notice, since the discovery of the Tarchnas tomb at Caere, is the fact that Caere is the place for which the exiles set out in the account of Livy; but in this period of confusion the most important feature of all is the expedition of Porsenna.

On the appearance of Porsenna in Latin history of the years round 500 BC tradition is confused. He himself descends on Rome at the invitation of Tarquinius after the coup d’état, but it is his son who leads the Etruscans in the battle of Aricia which, if the absence of Rome is evidence that Rome was still under Etruscan control, may be put before the end of the monarchy. The suspicion, to which this vagueness gives rise, that tradition is here unsound is strengthened by the fact that though the attack of Porsenna is placed in the first years of the Republic, the great figures of the earliest Fasti are absent from the Roman side until the days of late elaboration. Instead of men like Publicola and his associates, the mysterious Horatius Codes, of whom nothing else is recorded, has been cast for the leading part. And, furthermore, since it was only in the fourth century that Rome came into contact with the world beyond the Monti Cimini, not even the peculiar cultural affinities of Chiusi will give plausibility to tradition when it represents Porsenna as lars of Clusium. The episode is one on which nothing more is possible than speculation; but of the speculations which have been made the theory of Pais1 has an attractiveness which entitles it to mention. Porsenna is a name which appears on more Etruscan sites than one: it is connected by Pliny2 with Volsinii, and possibly by epigraphic evidence with Vulci as well, so that its association with any Etruscan city is not incredible. The narrative of Porsenna’s operations points in the direction of Veii: Veii is one of the cities which is said by a less isolated tradition—less isolated because it admits L. Junius Brutus—to have helped in an attempt to restore the Roman monarchy: Veientane activity in the first quarter of the fifth century is assumed by the stories which have their climax in the disaster to the Fabii: and finally Veii, in virtue of its position, is the natural place to be chosen as the head-quarters of Etruscan operations against the Latin plain when Rome itself was no longer in Etruscan hands. The details of the history in which Porsenna appears may be ignored: at the outline it is only possible to guess: but of the guesses so far made none is more attractive than that which makes Porsenna stand for an Etruscan attempt, based on Veii, to save so much Etruscan authority east of the Tiber as had not been lost for ever in the Roman wreck.

After so much about the later kings, it remains to consider in what way the evidence makes it proper to regard the government of Rome during the period which they represent. Though the existence of the Vicus Tuscus seems to show the presence of an Etruscan settlement at Rome, the absence of Etruscan influence on Latin and the absence of Etruscan burials in or near the city show that the settlers were extremely few. The Roman population was a blend of cremating and inhuming peoples, but there is no ground whatever for the view that ethnically Rome was an Etruscan city. Culturally, on the other hand, Rome had fallen under the influence of Etruria before the end of the seventh century, and throughout the three generations covered by Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus the borrowings from across the Tiber are wholly intelligible, whether the government was in Etruscan hands or not. If Servius Tullius built walls in the Etruscan style, he need be none the less of a Roman for that. Such a view makes it impossible to use the public works associated with a king as conclusive evidence to show on which side of the river he had his origin. To these questions the answers must be sought in tradition. If the elder Tarquin is to be accepted as a separate figure, distinct from his more tangible namesake, it is hard to decide about the circumstances in which he won his position at Rome. All that can be said is that tradition lends no support to the view that he was king by right of conquest, and that the possibility must not be ignored that in him is to be seen no more than a native king belonging to a house which either by marriage or by occupation had come into more than usually close connection with Etruria. Servius Tullius, who is much more definitely historical than his predecessor, is shown by the popularity he enjoyed in the tradition of a Latin city to have been no alien. Nevertheless he lived at a time when the cultural influence of Etruria was being strongly felt, and his most famous memorial—if such the cappellaccio wall may be called— is as good an example as any of the way in which sixth-century Rome was falling into the debt of her neighbours farther north. Finally comes the chief, if not the only, period of foreign government—the reign of the second Tarquin, of which the most significant feature is the wholly different tone whereby tradition distinguishes it from what had gone before. Though Roman patriotism did its best to dissemble the conquest, the hint of Livy about the Tarquin’s accession and the activities of Etruscan cities after his fall combine to suggest that he imposed himself on Rome and made it an outpost of Etruscan power in Latium.

The foreign domination was not without its advantages. Though the city seems not to have advanced far before the beginning of the Republic towards the use of stone for the general purposes of  building, the Romans now had access to all the architectural resources of Etruria, whether in the employment of masonry for foundations or in the decoration of a brick or wooden superstructure with terra-cotta. On government too the Etruscan left his mark; but it was above all in the extension of Roman authority beyond its previous limits that the second Tarquin seems to have laid Rome under a serious obligation. In this period Rome had become a political centre of importance, and when the Etruscan had been expelled the Romans found themselves heirs to a political position which was at least an ideal to regain if not a legacy of value at the time. So much may be ascribed to the Etruscans in Rome without it being necessary to group the three final kings together as an Etruscan dynasty. The last Tarquin alone seems to have been Etruscan in a political sense, and with his two predecessors he has no more in common than that all three alike belong to times when the culture of Etruria was rapidly penetrating Rome.

IV.

THE SPREAD OF ROMAN AUTHORITY DURING THE REGAL PERIOD

The earliest limits of Roman territory which can still be fixed have been briefly mentioned already. On the right bank of the Tiber, where the ancient Via Campana led close along the river bank towards the coast, the precinct of the deity to whom the title ‘Dea Dia’ was applied lay at the fifth milestone; and here, during the first three centuries of the Empire, the Arvai Brotherhood held celebrations which undoubtedly preserved a part of the primitive Ambarvalia1. The inference which may be drawn from this is uncertain: but if, as is probable and as Strabo seems to have thought, the point whereat the Arvai rites took place was one which had been visited by the processions of early days, the fifth milestone is fixed as the boundary of Roman territory on the right bank of the river towards the sea. The depth to which this bridgehead extended into the Etruscan country cannot be determined. Probably it included Janiculum and some of the neighbouring heights, and, unless it refers to a later time, it is possible, as Ashby has suggested, that a fragment of evidence is preserved for its dimensions towards the north-west. Though the institution is ascribed by Pliny (to Numa, the offering of the Robigalia may well be almost coeval with Latin agriculture, and from Verrius Flaccus know that on 25 April sacrifice to Robigo was made at the fifth milestone on what later was called the Via Claudia. In this direction, too, Roman authority seems at an early stage, if not at the earliest of all, to have reached as far as the fifth milestone and perhaps beyond.

On the opposite bank three points may be fixed. To the north, along the line of the Via Salaria, since Antemnae stood less than four miles from the Forum as the crow flies, Roman territory must have ended only a mile or two outside the pomerium. Towards Alba and the east the prominence of the fossa(e) Cluilia(e) in the narratives of wars1 suggests that this channel, again five miles from Rome, was another frontier. And finally, on the Via Lauren-tina towards the south-east it was still true in Augustan times that to the god Terminus, on 23 February,

sacra videt fieri sextus ab urbe lapis.

Such is the scanty evidence for the dominions of the youngest Rome. So far as the clues will serve, they seem to indicate an area of not more than fifty or sixty square miles. In this section it remains to trace, in what detail is possible, the steps by which Roman territory was increased during the regal period to something perhaps seven times as great.

In general the view of tradition about the military operations undertaken by the earlier Roman kings against neighbouring Latin towns is that after conquest the inhabitants of these places became Roman citizens, if they were not actually transported to Rome, and that their lands were added to Roman territory. Beneath this there lies a certain solid foundation, but the details are often suspect and the general tone of the tales as they are told is sometimes misleading. Piecemeal criticism would be un-remunerative. Most of the military achievements ascribed to Romulus and the earlier kings, if not mere inventions, seem to be no more than garbled versions of incidents, only vaguely recorded, in the period when the many townships of Latium were slowly coalescing into larger units and when a raid upon neighbouring territory was almost a normal Latin way of occupying the idle months between harvest and the time for sowing. To trace the growth of Roman power it is more profitable to examine such few episodes as can claim some kind of evidence in their support than to consider in succession the long list of razzias accepted by annalists of the first century.

The first, and in some ways the most important, of the military operations which calls for notice is the alleged destruction of Alba Longa by Tullus Hostilius. The existence of Alba cannot be doubted, and it is no less certain that the city disappeared early, leaving no more trace behind it than the region known as the ager Albanus and the name, not indeed known before imperial times, of the Albani Longani Bovillenses. The explanation of this offered by tradition is that Alba ceased to be as the result of a war with Rome which is memorable for its association with the names of Gaius Cluilius, Mettius Fufetius, King Tullus and the Horatii and Curiatii. This account, divested of its personal embellishments, may be accepted, and it is in accord with such independent evidence as survives. Since Aricia seems to have been the head-quarters of the Latin League whose hegemony Servius Tullius essayed to claim for Rome, it appears that Alban leadership had ceased before the middle of the sixth century. Chronologically, therefore, tradition is credible when it places the destruction in the time of the early kings. Again, tradition is confirmed in ascribing the fall of Alba to defeat in war by the failure of the only alternative attempt to explain its desolation in later centuries —the hypothesis that the city was overwhelmed by an eruption: of this the impossibility is now beyond question. And finally, the truth of tradition in making Rome the other party to the fatal conflict is suggested both by the undoubted tendency of Rome to intrude into the affairs of this region and by the strong claims made by several Roman houses to connection with Alba and with its dependency Bovillae. But though Rome seems to have acquired the ager Albanus, the fate of the Alban population is uncertain. Part of it may have moved to Rome, but in a wholesale transportation it is not easy to believe. It would be misleading to maintain that in these early years Rome had devised as a regular method of dealing with troublesome peoples the policy which in the third century she applied to Volsinii and Falerii—the method of compelling them to abandon a strongly-posted city on a hill and live in some less defensible position lower down: yet there are indications that Bovillae, which stood by the Via Appia just at the point where it begins to mount the slope up to Albano, was in some way the successor of Alba Longa. With both, for instance, the Julii claim to be associated, and at Bovillae there were cults in later times which purported to maintain some kind of Alban tradition. Of the status given to Bovillae nothing can be proved. Its inclusion by Dionysius in his list of Latin allies is not enough to show its independence at the end of the sixth century, and more probably it was a village standing on what had now become Roman territory. The remaining question which arises from the fall of Alba—the question of its effect on Rome’s relation with the Latin League—must be postponed.

Roman aggression under Tullus Hostilius towards the southeast and the Alban hills is followed by a new advance under Ancus Marcius towards the south-west and the Tiber mouth. The only value of the tale that it was Romulus who won for Rome the saltpans near the site of Ostia is its suggestion that Roman progress towards the sea was made early. The suggestion is easy to accept. The importance which Rome attained before the end of the regal period, her position on the track later known as the Via Salaria and, lastly, the state of affairs revealed by the first treaty with Carthage combine to make probable an account which puts an advance to the coast in the opening phases of Roman expansion and to prove that this advance had been made before the end of the sixth century. Though the foundation of Ostia by Ancus Marcius cannot be maintained, in the tale of his campaign against Ficana may be seen a record of the second memorable annexation of territory by Rome.

Of the incidents recorded by tradition in connection with the right bank of the Tiber none calls for serious notice except the acquisition of the salt-pans, which in part at least were north of the estuary. The winning of the region by Romulus is represented as a gain made at the expense of Veii; and, however far short of the coast Veientane authority may have stopped, the tale is plausible to the extent that it agrees with the clear indication of many incidents in suggesting that throughout the regal period Veii was disputing the Roman foothold on the Etruscan bank. In this direction, however, Roman success was small; and, apart from the annexation of a district called the septem pagi—the position and size of which are uncertain—and the capture of the Silva Maesia by Ancus Marcius, nothing is recorded except fruitless frontier wars until the time when the three latest Roman kings are made to win something like supremacy in Etruria. The story that Servius Tullius and the two Tarquins imposed their authority on the twelve great cities of Etruria cannot be accepted in the absence of any cogent evidence for Roman interest north of the Ciminian range. Such tales are probably due to exaggeration of Roman success in that outlying region which may be called Etruria Minor—the region which lies between the Monti Cimini and the Tiber, whose isolation from the rest of Tuscany made its acquisition a possible object of Roman aspiration. That Rome won some victories here before the monarchy fell may be believed. The Etruscan affinities of the second Tarquin are not an objection to such a view. The fate of Etruria in the fourth century is enough to show that the Etruscan cities did not always love one another, and the Etruscan connections of Tarquinius Superbus need not have prevented his policy from being wholly Roman. But Veii stood for the Republic to destroy: and the survival of Veii is enough to show that the tangible results of regal activities on the right bank cannot claim much space in the history of Roman expansion.

The remaining military operations ascribed to the age before Rome began to win hegemony in Latium need only brief consideration. Up stream on the left bank of the Tiber a number of cities are said to have engaged the attentions of Romulus and the elder Tarquin. Romulus himself is made to deal with Antemnae, Fidenae and Crustumerium, as well as with places like Caenina and Medullia of which the sites are uncertain. Tarquinius Priscus goes farther afield: besides doing most of Romulus’ work again, he extends his range to Ficulea and Nomentum and even up to the Monti Corniculani, if these are the hills south of Palombara and if that is the district in which Corniculum should be sought. Of all this, however, little can be accepted as evidence for the growth of the ager Romanus. That Antemnae was soon annexed is probable, because it lay on the Roman side of Rome’s nearest natural boundary to the north—the channel of the Anio. But across the Anio uncertainty begins. Crustumerium and Fidenae lose their independence at the end of the fifth century or the beginning of the fourth, and Nomentum becomes Roman even later. Either then any permanent conquest of these places in the regal period must be denied, or it must be assumed that Rome won them under the kings but lost them for a time during the dark days which followed the foundation of the Republic. Silence of Roman tradition on such a theme would indeed have an intelligible motive: but the silence is complete, and in such circumstances it is perhaps more prudent to see in these achievements of the kings exaggerations of unimportant wars, if not mere retrojections of later history, than to postulate an episode in the fifth century for which direct authority is wholly lacking. Thus north of the Anio the limits of Roman control at this time cannot be discerned; but it is unlikely that they ran at their farthest more than ten miles beyond the river.

South of the Anio towards the east the evidence is better. Ten miles in a direct line from the centre of Rome, and close by the southern bank, stood the city of Collatia; and when tradition says that the conquest of Collatia by Rome was due to the elder Tarquin there is no reason for doubt. Nothing suggests that the city retained its independence after the sixth century, and the name of Tarquinius Collatinus adds some degree of confirmation to the assertion that it was Roman before the collapse of the monarchy. Collatia lies close to the ager Tiburtinus, and it seems that in this region the frontiers of Rome and Tibur marched together. The gap between Tibur and the Roman territory round Alba Longa was filled by Gabii and Tusculum. Both of these remained beyond the pale of regal Rome, but with the. former Rome had a close alliance embodied in the treaty ascribed to the second Tarquin, the authenticity of which may be believed. Gabii and Tusculum are followed by the Roman possessions on the slopes of Monte Cavo, where Rome must have reached the north-western frontier of Aricia. Between Aricia and Rome the country was continuously in Roman hands, but except in the neighbourhood of the Tiber Rome did not touch the sea. Along the coast her land was flanked by the ager Rutulus and the ager Laurens, where Ardea and Lavinium led lives of their own.

Such, so far as it can be discerned, was the territory of Rome at the end of the regal period—a territory covering about three hundred and fifty square miles, or more than twice as much as any other Latin state could boast. It remains to consider Rome’s efforts to extend her authority over peoples beyond her borders— that is, to examine the history of Rome’s intrusion into the affairs of the Latin Leagues.

Of the two schools into which opinion on the history of federal movements in Latium is divided, one holds it possible to trace the steady development of a single league, while the other sees a variety of incipient movements towards unity, about which, except in one or two cases, nothing but their variety can be asserted. If, as is probable, the latter view comes nearer to the truth, schematic histories of the federal development are misleading, and it will be enough to mention the more outstanding organizations of which some record is preserved. It has been seen already that a league had existed with its religious centre on the Monte Cavo, in which Alba Longa may have enjoyed some pretensions to political control, though this control, if it existed, did not pass to Rome on the destruction of that city. Next, according at least to the grammarian Cincius and Dionysius, there sprang up, immediately on the fall of Alba, a federation which had its meeting-place at the caput (aquae) Ferentinae: this was the league with which Rome concluded the foedus Cassianum early in the fifth century. Thirdly, there is the league of Aricia, which late in the sixth century contained eight powerful members and which Rome in the time of Servius Tullius sought to control, imitating if not supplanting the Arician cult of Diana by a temple on the Aventine. Besides the religious worships round which these leagues were centred, various other cults were maintained, if not by the whole Latin people, at least by groups of cities more or less considerable. We may detect a tendency among these federations and groups to become more political and military and less exclusively concerned with cult. The Arician League, at least, had advanced far enough in the direction of political federation for the rights and privileges of citizens in its various states to be set down in writing. More than this the evidence does not permit us to say, and even the existence of any considerable and independent group, meeting ad caput Ferentinae, in the sixth century is highly uncertain.

Finally, it falls to consider the Roman advance in this environment during the period of the Etruscan control. The outward sign of Rome’s supremacy is to be seen in the building on Roman territory of a temple to Juppiter Latiaris at the spot where the oldest cult common to the Latins had been celebrated in the past. At length the greatness of the Alban League was to be restored; and, though Dionysius may be inaccurate when he says that forty-seven cities joined this organization, independent evidence shows that at this time Rome was exercising a wide hegemony in Latium. The most important document is the first treaty between Rome and Carthage. Here Rome is revealed claiming some sort of supremacy over the whole Latin coast from the Tiber to Tarracina. Carthage is to refrain from attacks on Ardea, Antium, the Laurentes, Circeii, Tarracina, and other associated with Rome’. If this implies, not merely membership of the Latin League, but a separate treaty of alliance with Rome, a well-authenticated parallel is supplied by the case of Gabii, and another —for which the evidence is far less sound—by independent mention of an agreement between Rome and one of the coastal cities here in question—Lavinium. In the present place, however, the Carthaginian Treaty is to be noticed, not for the issues which it opens on questions of international law, but for its testimony to the scope of Roman power at the end of the regal period. Though the treaty itself reveals that there were still places in Latium less closely connected with Rome than the cities enumerated in its text, her domination of the sea-board implies that wide control of the Campagna outside Roman territory itself which tradition describes as leadership of the Latin League.

Whether Rome was already in contact with the Aequi and Hernici or not, from the Monte Cavo she looked south-east across the Pomptine Marshes, and her horizon lay far enough away for Circeii and Tarracina, to the former of which a colony is said to have been sent by the second Tarquin, to be within her ken. Nearer to the Alban hills stood Pometia, a town which fell early into Volscian hands, if it was not a Volscian foundation. Tradition is wrong in ascribing the destruction of Pometia to Tarquinius Superbus; but it is plausible in suggesting warlike operations during the last years of the monarchy in the region where Pometia lay, and the suggestion of military operations in this region by Etruscans, if not by Etruscan Rome, is confirmed by Cato’s mention of fighting between Volscians and Etruscan invaders. It is a region in which Roman interest is implied by the treaty with Carthage, and it is the first region to demand attention after a hold on the Campagna had been made secure. The consolidation of such a hold was the external work of the Etruscan government in Rome. The next step brought Rome face to face with the Volsci; and in the history of Roman expansion the Volsci are the link between the regal period and the Republic. The Volscian problem was raised before the monarchy collapsed, and its solution was delayed for nearly two hundred years; but it was in the early decades of the fifth century that the Volscian danger loomed largest in the affairs of Rome.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PRIMITIVE INSTITUTIONS OF ROME