A History of the Roman World (66 page)

45
S
EXTUS TARQUINIUS
. For the suggestion that the
praenomen
of Gnaeus Tarquinius Romanus depicted on the tomb at Vulci (p. 452) is wrong and that the man being killed is Sextus rather than his father or brothers see Ogilvie,
Livy
, 230. If the Tarquin family did come from Caere (p. 452), this city would be a natural place for them to seek refuge.

46
H
ORATIUS, SCAEVOLA AND CLOFLIA
. According to Livy, Horatius after his heroic defence of the bridge swam to safety, but Polybius (vi, 55) says that he was drowned. Scaevola, after failing to kill Porsenna, showed his indifference to pain by holding his right hand in a fire: Porsenna was duly impressed. Cloelia was a Roman girl, given as a hostage to Porsenna; she escaped across the Tiber, either by swimming or on horseback, but was returned to Porsenna who admired her bravery and handed her back. For a discussion of the origin of these stories, which may well be linked with statues of Horatius and Cloelia in Rome, whose meaning was misunderstood, see Ogilvie,
Livy
, 258 ff.

47
P
ORSENNA
. For the view that he came from Veii, not Clusium, see E. Pais,
Storia di Roma
, II, 97 ff. Pliny,
NH
, ii, 140 derives him from Volsini. For his capture of Rome see Tacitus,
Hist.
, iii, 72. He is said to have tried to keep the Romans in subjection by forbidding the use of iron weapons (as the Philistines had dealt with the conquered Israelites). E. Gjerstad (
Opuce. Rom.
(1969), 149 ff.) believes that his main target was Cumae rather than Rome. Ogilvie, (
Early Rome
, 88 f.) suggests that Porsenna’s move south was activated by pressure upon Clusium by the hill tribes of central Italy (Gallic pressure from the north had scarcely started so early as this).

48
T
HE CUMAEAN CHRONICLE
. Whether Dionysius derived his information on Cumaean and Latin affairs from a local chronicle or from a writer, Hyperochus of Cumae, is uncertain. Only recently has the significance of this independent Greek tradition been emphasized. See A. Momigliano,
Terzo Contrib.
, 664 f.; E. Gabba,
Les Origines de la Rep. Rom.
, (
Entretiens Hardt
, xiii (1966), 144 ff.); A. Alföldi,
Early Rome and the Latins
(1964), 56 ff.

49
M
ONARCHY AND REPUBLIC
. The conventional view (as expressed, e.g., by Mommsen) is that when Tarquin was suddenly expelled two annually elected magistrates (consuls, though probably first called praetors) succeeded to his position: this dual office was designed to prevent a recurrence of monarchical rule. But many historians reject a sudden change and believe in evolution rather than revolution. Some argue that the power of the kings declined gradually, as at Athens. The title
rex
, like
basileus
survived in
the person of a priest-king (
rex sacrorum
), but his power was limited by the creation of three praetors who originally commanded the three military contingents of the Ramnes, Tities and Luceres. Their duties were gradually differentiated and the one left in Rome to administer justice sank to an inferior position; on this view, the traditional account of the creation of the praetorship in 366 arose from the fact that the names of the third ‘praetors’ were first recorded from then onwards. Such a theory, which cuts clean across all that the Romans themselves firmly believed about the fall of the monarchy, does not win a ready acceptance.
    Other historians turn to Etruria and Italy rather than to Greece to illuminate Rome’s constitutional development, but their contribution is not conclusive. On the analogy of the Etruscan magistrate called
zilath
(translated into Latin as
dictator
) and of the dictator who was the chief magistrate in such Latin cities as Aricia and Lanuvium, it has been suggested that the earliest magistrate at Rome was the dictator, whose original title was
magister populi
, together with his subordinate, the
magister equitum
. This view, although solving some difficulties, totally contradicts the tradition that the Roman dictatorship was an extraordinary non-annual magistracy. In Etruria a regular sequence of office (
cursus honorum
) may have been established when the monarchy gave place to the local aristocracy, while among the Italian peoples a magistracy was shared by more than one person. The Umbrians had two Marones, the Sabines eight Octovirs, and the Oscans two Meddices. But it is not certain whether any of these groups represent the principle of collegiality: possibly the first pair of Octovirs had equal authority, nothing is known of the Marones, while the Oscans definitely had a Meddix Tuticus and a Lesser Meddix. Thus it cannot be ascertained whether the Romans borrowed or invented the principle of two collegiate magistrates, and the comparative study of other institutions has hardly produced results sufficiently conclusive to justify the rejection of what the Romans believed concerning the nature of their earliest magistracy.
    K. Hanell (
Das altrömische eponyme Amt
(1946)) has advanced the view that the Romans were wrong in linking the establishment of the Republic with that of the eponymous magistracy; the latter might have existed under the monarchy, and in Hanell’s view it came into being at the same time as the adoption of the pre-Julian calendar which is to be associated with the foundation of the Capitoline temple. These eponymous magistrates will have been
praetores maximi
, since praetors and dictators are postulated in the regal period as helpers and deputies respectively of the king; such conditions prevailed until the Decemvirate, when the monarchy ended. This ingenious attempt to support the evolutionary theory (cf. De Sanctis, above) has not been widely accepted, even by other scholars who are dissatisfied with the traditional account. These, although ready to accept that the end of the monarchy was sudden and revolutionary, are not willing to believe that the dual consulship was devised suddenly in 509 as an anti-monarchical safeguard: it will have resulted from an evolutionary process, and prototypes of the consuls will have been, e.g. two auxiliaries of the king, legionary commanders called praetors (so A. Bernardi,
Athenaeum
, 1952, 24 ff.). Other scholars have assumed a period between the monarchy and the appearance of magistrates with
par potestas
, when one magistrate, or a college of magistrates in which one predominated, exercised control, e.g. a
praetor maximus
(on whom see A. Momigliano,
Quarto Contrib.
, 403 ff.). According to the antiquarian Cincius (Livy, vii, 3, 5) the
praetor maximus
every year drove a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, presumably to mark the passing of one year; this will have started in the first year of the Republic when the temple was dedicated. The nature and history of the office remain very obscure. It could be an alternative title to
maior consul
, the consul who held
the fasces
. Another view
is that of De Martino (
St. d. cos. rom
, edn 2, I, 234 ff.) who believes that until 451 the chief magistrate was a
dictator annuus
; he was replaced in the struggle of the orders by an annually elected board of ten, which two years later was followed by two unequal praetors, who thereafter were sometimes replaced by military tribunes, until the dual consulship was established in 367. This view is criticized by E. S. Staveley,
JRS
, 1960, 251 f. The main thesis of a massive work by R. Werner,
Der Beginn der römischen Republik
(1963), has not been readily accepted (for criticism see A. Momigliano,
Terzo Contrib.
, 669 ff. and R. M. Ogilvie,
Cl. Rev.
, 1965, 84 ff.). Werner’s conclusion is that Tarquin was expelled and the dual consulship established
c.
472: this is based on his view that time was first reckoned by the nail-ceremony in the temple of Jupiter and not by eponymous consuls, the latter system being adopted only in the third century when the pontiffs equated the Capitoline era with the era based on the expulsion of the kings; this involved a large-scale interpolation of names in the consular Fasti (which Werner regarded as unreliable) to fill the gap between 507 (dedication of Capitoline temple and start of the nail-ceremony) and
c.
472 (beginning of the Republic and consuls); Ogilvie (op. cit., 87) accepts that the Romans originally reckoned their years by nails rather than by magistrates, but does not accept Werner’s main thesis.
    These various theories have been mentioned in order to give some indication of the direction of recent enquiries, rather than to suggest their success. A most useful guide to some of this work, together with a sane and balanced assessment of it, is given by E. S. Staveley, ‘The Constitution of the Roman Republic, 1940–1954’,
Historia
, 1956, 74 ff, especially 90 ff.
    A major chronological problem which affects both the beginning and end of the monarchy remains to be mentioned. As we have seen, the distinguished Swedish archaeologist, E. Gjerstad, has established the main lines of the growth of the city: a pre-urban period (divided on the evidence of pottery into four periods, 800–750, 750–700, 700–625, 625–575), followed by the epoch of the Archaic city (Early, 575–530, Middle, 530–500, Late, 500–450). These results seem to many to support the traditional literary evidence to a remarkable degree: thus the pre-urban period corresponds with the Latin kings, the Early and Middle Archaic with the Etruscan kings, and the Late Archaic with the gradual decline of Etruscan influences after the explusion of the Tarquins. However (unfortunately, as it will seem to many) Gjerstad has accepted the view of Hanell in putting the end of the monarchy well into the fifth century, in fact to the mid-century and the time of the Decemvirate. In brief, Etruscan rule in Rome was
c.
530–450 rather than
c.
616–510. This theory, apart from the difficulties of correlating archaeological evidence with constitutional changes, involves transferring to the regal period many events which tradition assigned to the early Republic, e.g. the struggle of the orders and the treaty of Cassius. Dislocation and the telescoping of events on this scale seem unacceptable and indeed quite unnecessary, since the archaeological evidence does not appear to be at essential variance with the literary tradition.
    Gjerstad’s views are of course expounded at length in his great work,
Early Rome
; shorter statements in his
Legends and Facts of Early Roman History
(1962) and in ch. i of
Entretiens Hardt
, xiii (1966). For criticism see M. Pallottino,
St. Etr.
, 1963, 19 ff.; A. Momigliano,
Rivista Storica Italiana
, 1961, 802 ff.; 1963, 882 ff.,
JRS
, 1963, 95 ff. (
= Terzo Contrib.
, 661 ff., 545 ff.); R. M. Ogilvie,
Cl. Rev.
, 1964, 85 ff; F. de Martino,
Aufstieg NRW
, I ii, 1972, 217 ff.

1 T
HE FIRST CONSULS
. Tradition associates no less than five consuls with the first year of the Republic, fitting them all in by means of violent deaths or forced retirements. It is more probable that they were connected by popular legend with the birth of liberty and that subsequently their names were included in the Fasti, than that their names were originally in the early Fasti and that later legends were devised to connect them with the establishing of the Republic. It is difficult to assert, but arbitrary to deny their historicity. Three names perhaps may be removed: L. Tarquinius Collatinus as a ‘doublet’ of the king; Sp. Lucretius because of his connection with Lucretia; P. Valerius Publicola as a reduplication of another Valerius who also held office with a Horatius in 449
BC
(legends connected with Valerius were designed partly to explain the name Publicola and partly to glorify the Valerian
gens
which later numbered among its members a very unreliable annalist, Valerius Antias). Of the two remaining names M. Horatius Pulvillus, who consecrated the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus built by Tarquin, may be a ‘doublet’ of the consul of 449, invented in order that a Republican magistrate might share the glory with the hated tyrant. But since Polybius dates the first treaty between Rome and Carthage ‘in the consulship of Brutus and Horatius’, the magistracy of Horatius, if invented, was invented early. Similarly, attempts to dispose of Junius Brutus have not been totally successful: to turn him into some kind of divinity because of the similarity of his name with Juno is absurd, while the fact that the Junii were later a plebeian family does not preclude an original patrician stock. In addition to the reduction of the five consuls to two, another point in the traditional account needs correcting: their original title probably was
praetor
(
prae-itor
, a leader;
στϱατηγός
in Greek writers); since they called their colleagues together they were named
praetores consules
, and later, when another praetor was established to administer justice, the adjective
consules
was used as a noun to distinguish them from the new
praetor
. But though the traditional account is encrusted with legend and has been written in the light of later developments, it need not for that reason be completely rejected. An important archaic inscription from Satricum has just been published by C. de Simone,
Archelogia laziale
, i, 1978, 95 ff. It appears to date from
c.
500
BC
, and after eleven letters whose meaning is obscure, it runs ‘
Popliosio Valesiosio suodales Mamartei
’, and may mean something like ‘the
sodales
(i.e. the members of a priestly college) of Publius Valerius dedicated this to Mars’ (the god’s name being in the Oscan form). It must apply to a member of the Valerian
gens
: could it be Publius Valerius Poplicola, consul in the first years of the Republic (another was consul in 475)?