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CHAPTER 1 The People and the State in Early Rome

I

Countries and states – that is, sovereign states under a single government – are today by and large synonymous, and they are also both generally taken for granted. This is still the case, even though the country, which is a relatively recent invention, is arguably starting to look out of date in some respects (think, for instance, of the exploitation by multinational companies of workers in countries with a low, or no legal minimum wage; think too of the moving of profits offshore, and of tax havens and what their use means; or, for a positive example, think of the European Union). In antiquity, there were no countries. The main political structure in the Classical world, or at least the one that is the most prevalent in modern discussion and in the modern imagination more generally, was the individual city-state. The most famous of those are of course Athens, Sparta and Rome, although there were a great many others. Each of these cities was a state in its own right, with its own laws and customs, its own citizen populace, its own territory and so on.

When it comes to the question of how cities came into existence, the Romans had really quite specific ideas, and since, in antiquity, cities were usually city-states, these Roman ideas were as much concerned with the establishment of states as they were with the actual cities themselves. First of all, cities were usually founded at a precise moment in time and usually by one individual, or so the Romans believed (and they were not alone in ←21 | 22→this). In the case of Rome, that individual was Romulus, and the moment in time was 21 April 753 bc.¹

In order to found his city (and founders were usually, although not always, men), the founder needed to perform a variety of rituals, the precise details of which differ somewhat from account to account. What appears to have been the most important of these rituals required the founder to plough a ditch around the site where the city was to be built, using a pair of oxen, one male and one female, and – at least, according to some – a plough fitted with a bronze ploughshare.² Since this ditch supposedly marked out the location of the walls of the city (and – again, according to some – it also marked out the city’s sacred boundary, the pomerium), the founder had to lift the ploughshare out of the ground wherever he wanted to have a gate in the city wall, and carry it over to where the wall was to begin again. This idea led to the questionable derivation of the word for a gate, porta, from the verb to carry, portare.³

According to M. Terentius Varro, who was writing in the first century bc, this ploughing ritual was, it would seem, absolutely fundamental to a city being a city. Varro’s argument, however, is scarcely persuasive. He ←22 | 23→supposed that cities (urbes) are so-called after the circle (orbis) formed by the furrow that the founder ploughed around the site of his city, and after the urvum, the curved part (the plough-beam) of the plough that he used to make this furrow.⁴

What this particular ritual presupposes, obviously enough, is a very clear idea from the outset, not only of where the city itself should be built and where its boundaries should be (and consequently how big it would be), but also where the gates, and so also the roads that went through them, should be located. All this requires a considerable amount of planning, as well as some awareness of the wider geographical, political and even economic landscape.⁵ More than that, it also requires a certain manner of thinking and a certain type of knowledge, that is, the sort of thinking and knowledge which can readily be expected of an urban dweller, but which are less easily expected of someone used only to life in some sort of pre-urban settlement, and which are hardly to be expected at all of someone who does not even lead a sedentary life.

After his furrow had been ploughed, the founder – since he was founding a city-state – would usually draw up a law-code, create a senate, perhaps establish a political assembly of some kind, create a citizen populace, enrol an army and so on.⁶ In the case of Rome, various developments of a constitutional nature took place during the course of the regal period and during republican times too, but the Roman state itself nonetheless clearly started with Romulus.⁷ Indeed, some ancient writers took for granted the ←23 | 24→existence of citizenship, elections and even magistracies during Romulus’ reign.⁸ Once again, all this presupposes a significant amount of planning, as well as the existence of a range of sometimes fully developed social and political ideas, including of course the very idea of a state and, along with it, the idea of citizenship.

If these Roman ideas about the formation of city-states are assessed in the context of much later times and of the founding by the Romans of something like an autonomous colony, there are no significant difficulties with them. But if they are assessed in the context of the origins of the earliest city-states of Italy, of which Rome was one, they are quite obviously problematic. How could the very first founders have come to possess all the knowledge and expertise that these ideas presupposed they had? Recently, A. Carandini – an archaeologist who has managed to convince himself that the foundation myth of Rome is actually historical – has hit upon a possible solution.⁹

According to Varro, the ploughing ritual was – despite Varro’s various Latin etymologies – actually Etruscan, and Plutarch, in his biography of Romulus, says that Romulus summoned people from Etruria to instruct him.¹⁰ Carandini says: ‘Romulus sent for priests from Etruria, from whom he learned how to found an urbs (which implies the prior foundation of urbes on the right bank of the Tiber).’¹¹ This, however, only really pushes the problem back in time: when and how did the Etruscans learn how to found an urbs? Moreover, since the ritual was believed – rightly or wrongly – to be Etruscan, it would be a very easy assumption to make that Romulus must have turned to the Etruscans for help (as the Romans in later times did on occasion for various issues). But it is in some ways an unnecessary assumption, since the city of Alba Longa, from whose kings Romulus was ←24 | 25→said to have been descended, was also an urbs.¹² It would, therefore, be comparable (certainly as far as the value of the evidence goes) to suppose that Romulus could have learnt how to found an urbs from his own family.¹³ Furthermore, the ruling house of Alba Longa was allegedly descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas and, according to Virgil, Aeneas certainly knew how to perform the ploughing ritual, as did – or so it is implied – even the settlers from Tyre who founded the north African city of Carthage.¹⁴ They, presumably, had not called on the Etruscans for help. It would seem that the details of this supposedly Etruscan ritual were very widely known, or so the Romans could imagine; clearly they just took the performance of the ritual for granted, no matter how improbable the results.

When it comes to the supposed foundation of Rome, none of this evidence, the story of the Etruscan priests included, is of any historical value whatsoever, not least because the very idea of a foundation, prior to which Rome did not exist and after which Rome did, is unhistorical. And, it hardly needs to be said, Romulus is himself an entirely mythical figure. He simply did not exist. What this evidence does show, however, is just how ingrained the idea of the city-state was in the Roman mindset (as the country perhaps is in the contemporary mindset), and this has quite significant implications for the nature of the evidence (see below).

It may come as no surprise that it has long been argued that these Roman ideas about the way cities were founded actually developed at a much later date. It appears that they developed out of Roman colonising activities (and note that, in the fully developed version of the story, Rome was a colony too, of Alba Longa). While the Romans may have come to believe that they founded their colonies in the same way that Romulus had supposedly founded Rome, it is much more likely that they simply ←25 | 26→assumed that the rituals they used to found their colonies had been performed when Rome was founded.¹⁵ Although, it must be said, not everyone agrees with that.¹⁶

In contrast to the idea that Rome was founded at a specific moment – indeed on a specific day – sometime in the mid-eighth century, the archaeological evidence shows that the site of Rome had actually been inhabited from a considerably earlier date and, more importantly, that the settlement and later city had developed over a long period.¹⁷ Even without such evidence, it is reasonable enough to expect that the city and state of Rome took some time to develop, although that expectation is obviously difficult to reconcile with the ancient idea of a precise and dateable act of foundation. Under these circumstances, the only way in which the cake can be had and eaten too is to reduce the act of founding a city to little more than a ritual and/or political undertaking, something that could even be carried out inside an existing settlement, thus potentially marking out some part of that settlement from the rest of the surrounding community.

So it is that Carandini, who very much wants to have his cake as well as eat it (and in more ways than one, since his approach involves defending certain, selected ancient accounts of the foundation of Rome, while also effectively rewriting those accounts to solve all the problems that that initial defence creates), claims that the founding of Rome essentially amounted only to ‘the invention of a new form of organization and government.’¹⁸ Thus – contrary to what the ancient sources imagine – what Romulus did, Carandini claims, ‘involved not the realization of any plans for a city but a series of ceremonial acts and sacred prohibitions that instilled into ←26 | 27→the soil and the people a will to power expressed from the start in forms that we might term “modern” – that is, juridical, political, governmental, constitutional – masked but not negated by sacred and holy institutions.’¹⁹

But this approach just does not work. The story has Romulus found his city on essentially uninhabited land.²⁰ The literary evidence for the supposed foundation of Rome on the Palatine hill in the mid-eighth century bc cannot, therefore, be made to fit with the archaeological evidence for the much earlier and more extensive inhabitation of the site of Rome. Carandini’s response to this objection is, typically, to dismiss those details in the literary evidence that do not fit with his reconstruction; hence, in this instance, he claims that ‘Rome had to have arisen from nothingness [in the Roman accounts] so that Romulus’s achievement could appear to have happened without prior groundwork and constitute a miracle: the founding.’²¹ That, however, directly contradicts the ancient story (which Carandini, in this particular case, wants to retain) that Romulus had to call on the Etruscans to show him what to do. Why was that detail also not completely excised? There is after all nothing miraculous in following someone else’s instructions.²²

As for the political and, it could almost be said, ‘constitutional’ side of things, and the supposed establishment of the state, the details are quite clearly anachronistic. The very idea of a state – that is, of an organised political community under a single government – also had to develop, and there is similarly evidence that suggests that this too was something that took time and, moreover, that this was something that was variously asserted and contested in a number of different ways (see below).

←27 | 28→

What all this means is that, unfortunately, what the Romans have to say about the origins and early development of their city-state is largely unusable, simply because it takes for granted the existence of the city-state from the moment of Rome’s supposed foundation and, even more improbably, presupposes the existence of the very idea of the city-state even before the creation of the city or state itself (although these are not the only reasons why the use of the literary evidence is extremely difficult). Once Rome had been founded, as far as later Romans were concerned – at least, the ones who wrote and whose works have survived – Rome existed as a city-state, with a citizen body, various political structures and so on. There are further consequences of this approach too.

II

At the time when the first city-states of central Italy were starting to come into existence, other social groups and structures already existed in the region, and indeed continued to exist. The first city-states did not, after all, appear from nowhere and out of nothing, as the archaeological evidence shows. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some of these other groups and structures may have been directly threatened by the emergence of the city-state, and that some may have also even threatened the first, fledgling city-states.

In the Roman literary tradition, however, the city-state is not just taken for granted, it generally predominates (and this is something that has, in turn, cast a long shadow over modern scholarship, and continues to do so in some quarters even to this day). Not only does Rome simply come into existence when Romulus founds it but, as noted earlier, Romulus himself is connected with another, much older city-state, Alba Longa. Alba Longa was said to have been founded by Ascanius who, like his father Aeneas, had come from the city of Troy.²³ Furthermore, when it came to his education, ←28 | 29→the young Romulus supposedly went to school in the nearby city of Gabii (note, as well, that this presupposes that there was no school where he was raised, presumably because the site of Rome was, according to the story, essentially all pasture).²⁴ It is no wonder, then, that Romulus can so easily conceive of founding a city, and subsequently do so; he supposedly lived in a world where city-states had long existed and were the norm. This is obviously because later Romans just took the idea of the city-state for granted.

The almost inevitable result of all this is that, should the literary evidence happen to contain any material that may potentially shed some light on those various social groups and structures that predated and possibly even rivalled the earliest city-states (and it is an extremely difficult proposition: no one wrote history at Rome until the late third century bc), that material will undoubtedly have been reshaped in various ways on account of later assumptions and to conform with later expectations.²⁵ There is a further difficulty: any attempt to identify such material and to take that reshaping into account will usually and almost unavoidably result in a circular argument. Fortunately, however, there is some helpful archaeological evidence, and this evidence has the distinct advantage that it is contemporary.

In the late 1970s archaeologists working at the site of the temple of Mater Matuta in Satricum, a city that lay to the south of Rome, found a slab of stone on which an inscription had been written. The stone had been reused in the construction of the temple and that reuse provides a terminus ante quem for the inscription of about 500 bc.²⁶

The inscription records a dedication to the god Mamars by a group of individuals who identified themselves simply as the suodales of Poplios Valesios. The word sodales, ‘companions’, could be used in a number of contexts including, perhaps most significantly, a military. Whatever the ←29 | 30→precise context of the word’s use in the inscription (which does, note, record a dedication to Mars), the inscription provides evidence for a group of individuals who defined themselves with reference simply, and indeed entirely, to another person.²⁷

There is a small body of further evidence that seems to fit with this idea of an individual and his companions. The bulk of it is literary, and so from much later times, which means that its value and use are extremely difficult. Much of it consists of stories of prominent individuals who move from one city to another (usually their destination is Rome, but that is doubtless only because the literary evidence focuses on Rome), and who take with them large numbers of followers. If these followers thought of themselves in any way as belonging to, or even as citizens of, the city-state they were leaving behind, then presumably their ties to their leader were greater.

It is on account of this and other evidence for mobility that archaic Rome has been called an ‘open city’,²⁸ although it may be anachronistic to make anything much of this. When city-states were still comparatively new, and indeed still developing, and when urban lifestyles were new along with them, and when the concept of citizenship, of belonging to a city-state, was equally new, or only starting to emerge,²⁹ the idea that a city could be ‘closed’, in the sense of having a definite and fixed body of citizens or of simply refusing to admit immigrants, may conceivably have been more novel than the idea that one could be ‘open’.

One such story of mobility which, it has been very persuasively argued by F. Zevi, appears to have been recorded in an early source involves a man called Lucumo. Lucumo was said to have been the son of a Corinthian merchant called Demaratus who had settled in the Etruscan ←30 | 31→city of Tarquinii. After his father died, Lucumo left Tarquinii and moved to Rome, taking with him all his family’s wealth and all his followers.³⁰ Another equally famous but much more difficult story involves a man called Attus Clausus. He was also said to have migrated to Rome, in his case from Inregillus, a Sabine town, and he similarly took with him very large numbers of followers.³¹

The story of Lucumo has further significance because, after he moved to Rome and after the incumbent king of Rome, Ancus Marcius, had died, Lucumo managed to succeed him. He became Rome’s fifth king, Lucius Tarquinius. (‘Lucumo’ was Romanised as ‘Lucius’, and Lucumo took the name ‘Tarquinius’ from the city of his birth.)³² As far as the Romans certainly of later times were concerned, this was nothing extraordinary. Their monarchy, they believed, had never been hereditary, and most of their kings had supposedly come from elsewhere.³³ It may be that the model of powerful men (men like Poplios Valesios, Attus Clausus, as well as Demaratus and obviously Lucumo) and their followers provides an explanation for any number of Rome’s kings.³⁴

It is in this same context that the word sodalis reappears too, although it does so in a text from the first century ad, so extreme caution is needed.³⁵ The Emperor Claudius gave a speech, the text of which has been partially preserved in an inscription that was found in Lyon in 1528, in which he argued in favour of allowing Gauls from Gallia Comata into the Senate. ←31 | 32→As part of his case, he pointed out that Rome had always been open to outsiders, and he illustrated this with several examples, one of which is particularly important. According to Claudius,

If we follow our Roman sources, [Servius Tullius, Rome’s sixth king] was the son of Ocresia, a prisoner of war; if we follow Etruscan sources, he was once the most faithful companion (sodalis fidelissimus) of Caelius Vivenna and took part in all his adventures. Subsequently, driven out by a change of fortune, he left Etruria with all the remnants of Caelius’ army (Caelianus exercitus) and occupied the Caelian hill, naming it thus after his former leader. Servius changed his name (for in Etruscan his name was Mastarna), and was called by the name I have used, and he obtained the throne (regnum) to the greatest advantage of the state (res publica).³⁶

In this story too there is a prominent individual, Caelius Vivenna (or Caeles Vibenna, as he is usually known), and his followers, at least one of whom, Mastarna, is called a sodalis. Like Lucumo, Mastarna allegedly became king at Rome after moving there from Etruria; in his case, he changed his name to Servius Tullius. Servius was Rome’s sixth king, so that makes Mastarna Lucumo’s successor. It has been argued that Caeles Vibenna may have ruled Rome too, for a time, although he is not included in the canonical list of kings. But that list unrealistically has a total of just seven kings, even though Rome’s regal period supposedly lasted for two and a half centuries, so there are good grounds for supposing that Rome had other, otherwise unknown rulers.³⁷

←32 | 33→

Claudius also speaks of Caeles’ army, and it may be that the term sodales is applicable here too, to the soldiers in that army, or at least to some of them, those who were closest to their leader. The army, in any case, was Caeles’ army (Caelianus exercitus, says Claudius), and what was left of it following a setback of some kind and the death of Caeles – both of which are usually inferred from Claudius’ account – appears to have been passed on to Mastarna. This is quite clearly not the army of the city-state of Vulci, the ‘hometown’ of Caeles Vibenna; it is Caeles Vibenna’s own personal army. These are his men, and subsequently they become Mastarna’s.³⁸

What Claudius has to say about Caeles Vibenna and his most faithful companion, by chance, gets some support from a fourth-century bc Etruscan tomb painting from Vulci, which depicts a naked and bound ‘Caile Vipinas’ being freed by ‘Macstrna’ (the figures are identified by inscriptions).³⁹ This certainly fits perfectly well with the Etruscan context that Claudius mentions and seems to confirm the friendship between the two men, although it does not necessarily verify anything else, or even those details. The painting is still more than 200 years later than the purported events.⁴⁰

As the city of Rome developed, another type of group appears to have emerged, if it did not already exist. These were the gentes. A gens was essentially a group of people who shared a common nomen; there was a notional idea that each gens ultimately originated from one individual, but these individuals are usually mythical and the extent to which individuals from different branches of the same gens were actually biologically related to one another is unclear. It is, however, unlikely that they were.⁴¹

It used to be believed that the gentes existed before the city-state, but the more prevalent view today is that they probably developed at about ←33 | 34→the same time.⁴² That does not mean, however, that they were necessarily all developing in the same direction.⁴³ It may also be the case that clear distinctions should not be imposed, at least early on, between individuals and their sodales and the gentes.⁴⁴ Gentes too, or some of them at any rate, may perhaps have once also had individual leaders. Attus Clausus, the man who took all his followers to Rome, changed his name once he got there to Appius Claudius. The story explains the origins of the gens Claudia at Rome. Having said all that, the evidence does generally suggest that the gentes were acephalous, certainly in historical times.

The gentes were powerful groups who appear to have long been able to pursue their own ambitions, and even behave in ways that may have been contrary to the idea of the state. The best example is found in the story of the private war that was said to have been waged by the gens Fabia with the Etruscan city of Veii (or, it may be, just with a rival group based in that city). The evidence for this war is, however, deeply problematic, and it has long been recognised that the story of the Fabii’s expedition has been modelled on the famous, and essentially contemporary, exploits of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae; like the Spartans, the Fabii were 300 or so in number and, like the Spartans, they were all killed, and the parallels do not stop there.

Whether or not it is possible to strip away all the parallels between these two episodes, and whether or not anything of value would be left, if they were removed, is anyone’s guess.⁴⁵ Yet it may be that the story is not wholly fabricated, simply because it fits so poorly with all those assumptions about the Roman state and its army (namely that both had been created by Romulus, and so existed from his day onwards). It is telling that it is also possible to detect various attempts to harmonise the story of the Fabii’s campaign with those assumptions. In Diodorus’ account, for instance, the Romans fought a great battle with the people of Veii in which they were ←34 | 35→defeated; among the dead were the 300 Fabii.⁴⁶ The private war of the Fabii is thus effectively made, in Diodorus’ version, into an affair of the state.

The power and influence of the gentes can be seen as well in the Roman tribal system. Rome’s territory came to be divided up into regions called tribus [tribes]. The earliest of these were named after gentes. One was called the tribus Fabia, the Fabian tribe, and it has been suggested that this tribe should be located in the direction of Veii, on the principle that the 300 Fabii were fighting to defend their own land. It is reasonable to infer that these early tribes were named after those who dominated the land in question, and that was clearly not the state.⁴⁷ Later on, however, when Roman territory expanded and new tribes were created, they were instead named after geographical features.

The first of these new tribes seems to have been the tribus Clustumina, following the defeat of Crustumeria; it was perhaps created in 495 bc, if the literary evidence can be trusted.⁴⁸ Whether or not it can, it is significant that no further tribes were said to have been added for over a century, which is a considerable period of time. Four were created in 387 bc, then two each in 358, 332, 318, 299 and 241, and these tribes were almost all given geographical names.⁴⁹ Clearly, by this time, the state had become more powerful and so tribes ceased to be named after gentes.

←35 | 36→

III

From this necessarily brief and patchy overview, it is possible to see that, alongside the developing city-state of Rome, there appears to have existed various other social groups, and it seems that these groups could, for some time, act entirely independently of the state, if they so chose, even when they were based at Rome. The most obvious conclusions to draw from this are that the Roman state was at first under-developed and comparatively weak, and also that not everyone subscribed to the idea of it.

The difficulty then is working out why, how and when the state and the idea of being a part of it and belonging to it – so, essentially, citizenship – became firmly established and more influential than, say, adherence to a man like Poplios Valesios or Attus Clausus, and also why, how and when those men themselves came to commit to the idea of the state, and to the idea that they too were citizens of it.

These questions are, not surprisingly, unanswerable in any precise way, not just because the city and state of Rome were not founded at some particular moment in time, but also because the evidence is simply insufficient to answer questions of this kind in anything other than the most general of terms. The only contemporary evidence is the archaeological evidence, and archaeological evidence can only very rarely be used to answer questions about political ideas and practices. This is part of the reason why Carandini has ended up having to draw increasingly on the literary evidence for Romulus’ foundation of Rome, although he thinks that that evidence is reliable, or at least that some of it is. Not only do Carandini’s selective handling of the literary evidence and his need to reconcile it with the archaeological evidence (which points in a different direction) undermine his approach, but the basic assumption that the literary evidence for Romulus and the foundation of Rome sheds light on the origins of Rome is simply untenable.

Contemporary textual evidence is what is really needed, but barely a handful of inscriptions from archaic Rome have been discovered and only two of those are relevant to questions pertaining to the state, and even then only vaguely so. What makes those two inscriptions relevant is ←36 | 37→simply that some form of the word rex appears on them. Moreover, one of the inscriptions was carved on a stone stele that was set up in the Forum, and the very act of setting up such a monument is in itself highly significant, while the other inscription is on a fragment of a bucchero cup that was found at the site of the Regia (the regal connotations are clear from the building’s name).⁵⁰ Nonetheless, while this evidence confirms that Rome had in fact once been ruled by kings,⁵¹ and while it also helps to reveal something of the wider context, its value is somewhat more limited than it may seem at first sight.

The ideas associated with the word rex evidently changed over time,⁵² and this makes it very difficult to use any of the evidence for the king’s position in the state (viz. the writings of Rome’s historians, antiquarians and so on), simply because that evidence dates to the second and first centuries bc and, in many cases, even later still. That evidence was also written in the belief that the Roman state, of which the king was said to have been a central part, had existed from the time of the city’s foundation and that Rome’s first king was Romulus. The inscriptional evidence certainly proves that Rome had once been ruled or in some way led by individuals whose title was rex, but it does not prove that these kings had the powers, status or position in the state that later writers claimed they had, nor that the state itself existed to the extent or in the way that those writers assumed it did.

A further piece of evidence, which can to a certain extent be treated as contemporary, lends some support to this conclusion. Sometime supposedly in the late sixth century bc the Romans made a treaty with the city of Carthage. The treaty itself does not survive but, fortunately enough, ←37 | 38→Polybius saw the text of it on a bronze tablet and – with the help of some learned Romans who were able, for the most part, to decipher the archaic Latin in which it was written – included a translation of it in his work.⁵³ The treaty shows that, by this time, Roman influence spread over parts of Latium, the region to the south of Rome. More significantly, the oath that was sworn when this treaty was made was sworn by only one individual and the divine punishment envisaged in that oath, should the treaty be broken, was to be meted out only to that same individual. Polybius’ account of the oath has been rejected by modern scholars, precisely because it does not involve the state, but that is to beg the question. The account Polybius provides fits perfectly with the evidence discussed so far which suggests that individuals could dominate Rome and that the state was weak by comparison.⁵⁴

The difficulties involved in attempting to trace the emergence of the Roman city-state have also been made worse by problems of methodology. One common approach for identifying the moment when Rome qualifies as a city-state has been to begin with questions of definition and with establishing a set of criteria that will allow for that moment to be identified.⁵⁵ As these criteria are themselves a matter of debate, the date inevitably changes with the criteria. Under these circumstances, the value of any attempt to identify some point in time when Rome can be called a city-state is naturally limited. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to trying to identify the moment when some sense of allegiance to the state came to the fore, and when the idea of citizenship developed.

Despite all these difficulties (and equally, because of them), a good number of hypotheses about the formation of the Roman city and state have been entertained.⁵⁶ Outside influences, such as trade, warfare and ←38 | 39→the influence of the cities of the Greek world (which of course included southern Italy) on the development of the Italic city-states in general have been frequently discussed. The role of internal factors has also been included in the debate although the evidence for them is often especially difficult. Trade with outside peoples usually leaves traces in the archaeological record, the context of which often also reveals something of the distribution of wealth and of social stratification, while something like the construction of defensive works or the destruction of a settlement is also often visible archaeologically. Evidence for developments driven by internal social, political or economic factors, on the other hand, can be much more difficult to detect,⁵⁷ where such evidence even happens to exist, and more often than not, it is unlikely to do so. Again, contemporary textual evidence is what is needed, but there is none from those early times, while the much later literary evidence takes the existence of the city and state from the very outset for granted. Arguments about internal developments and processes are usually therefore of a considerably more theoretical and conjectural nature.

N. Terrenato, for instance, has recently argued that it was actually the gentes who were responsible for the creation of the Roman state, a proposition that inevitably requires him to address the very big question of why they, of all groups, should have been concerned to do such a thing. To answer this, Terrenato considers the various roles that a city-state could have played in diplomacy, politics, trade and religion, as well as in warfare and domestic conflict. In his view, the state was simply ‘one of many political tools that clans [gentes] had at their disposal’, although, for this argument to work, Terrenato inevitably has to depict Rome as long an extremely weak state. Indeed, he views it as ‘a weak and fragile entity’ that suffered from ‘congenital frailty’ and ‘inherent instability’; it was in fact nothing more than a puppet of the gentes. But this is a picture that may start to seem at odds with Rome’s growth and military success.

←39 | 40→

Terrenato’s model is, moreover, entirely top-down, so much so in fact that the state can be described as the gentes’ ‘toy’ which ‘they felt fully entitled to tear … apart whenever they grew tired of it.’⁵⁸ It may reasonably be asked, however, why the Roman people should have gone along with this, and why they should have tolerated the idea that the nascent city-state where they lived and with which they may have identified, and of which they were or were becoming citizens, was little or nothing more than a plaything of the powerful, and potentially a transitory plaything at that, one that could be cast aside at any moment.

The views of the Roman people are, of course, unknown, since there is hardly any evidence for them and certainly none that is anywhere near contemporary. Even apart from the question of what they may have been prepared to put up with, it would nonetheless be rash simply to deny them any role in the formation of the Roman state, and to suppose that the state’s formation was due entirely, or even largely, to the activities of the powerful few, and even more so when the powerful few were the ones who stood to lose the most (even if there were also some potential gains to be made).

As it happens, it may just about be possible to detect something of the role that the people may have played in the formation of the Roman state. The argument does require that all ideas of a foundation moment are dismissed entirely,⁵⁹ and that much greater prominence is given to the evidence that suggests that the formation of the Roman state was the result of a very lengthy process, one that saw advances as well as steps backwards (or even sideways) and one that was affected in various ways by conflicting needs and ideas. If the case that has been made so far has been at all persuasive, such an approach should not seem problematic in the least.

←40 | 41→

IV

The main theme, according to the Romans’ own accounts, of Rome’s social and political history during the fifth and fourth centuries bc is the so-called ‘conflict (or struggle) of the orders’. The Roman citizen body was, or so the Romans believed, neatly divided into two orders, the patricians and the plebeians; the division is, however, over-schematic and quite probably unhistorical, at least for early times.⁶⁰ From the beginning of the republican period (that is, after the kings had been expelled and replaced with elected annual magistrates), the patrician families allegedly dominated the state, as only patricians could hold the magistracies and priesthoods of the state. The phrase ‘the conflict of the orders’ refers to the struggles of the plebs to gain protection from abuse at the hands of the rich and powerful, to gain representation in the state and subsequently to gain access to the state’s magistracies and priesthoods.

According to the ancient accounts, the plebs – who made up at least some part of the Roman army and the bulk of the labour force more generally – organised several secessions, in which they simply withdrew from the city, in order to force concessions from the patricians. The result of the first of these secessions (in the mid-490s bc) was the creation of a new magistracy, the plebeian tribunate, whose role seems to have been to protect the plebeians and represent their interests.⁶¹ This magistracy was one to which people were elected, and so its creation required the organising of a suitable electoral assembly, one for plebeians only. The plebs supposedly also began to keep official records, although that claim may be anachronistic, for the fifth century at least, but probably for much of the fourth too. It was the plebeian movement as well that was said to have been responsible ←41 | 42→for getting Rome’s first ever law-code drafted and set up in public. That was in the mid-fifth century bc.⁶²

As far as later writers were concerned, the activities of the plebs looked like they amounted to a state and, since these writers took the existence of the Roman state for granted (they believed, after all, that it had been created centuries earlier by Romulus), they conceived of the plebeian movement as leading to the formation of a state within the state. This idea has been carried over into modern scholarship, most notably by Th. Mommsen in the nineteenth century, although it has more recently been defended by T. J. Cornell.⁶³

Cornell’s defence of the idea focuses on the question of whether or not the plebeian movement can be viewed as something that can reasonably be called a state. He takes the existence of the wider Roman state for granted.⁶⁴ On the one hand, he is absolutely right to do so – it would be extremely difficult, if not even perverse, to argue that the Roman state simply did not exist at all by the early fifth century bc – but, on the other, ←42 | 43→it may be premature to think that it existed in an uncontested or straightforward manner, or that it was an idea to which everyone fully subscribed.

The private war of the gens Fabia was supposedly fought in the early 470s bc, some thirty years after the expulsion of the kings (that was in 510/509 on traditional chronology, with the first elected magistrates supposedly holding office in 509). Cornell has argued that the campaign of the Fabii ‘represents one of the last vestiges of an archaic form of social organisation which was probably already in an advanced state of obsolescence.’⁶⁵ That may very well be so, although the phrase ‘advanced state of obsolescence’ is perhaps something of an overstatement.⁶⁶ When it comes to the question of private wars of this kind, the argument is based on very little evidence indeed; but the lack of evidence pertains to earlier times just as much as it does to later, thanks no doubt in part to Roman assumptions about the establishment by Romulus of the Roman army. All this inevitably makes the demise of such practices extremely difficult to date; the absence of evidence is clearly not necessarily evidence of absence. There is, however, some evidence for behaviour that is not entirely unrelated.

When it comes to those powerful individuals and their followers, they did not just disappear along with the Roman monarchy. Attus Clausus was said to have migrated to Rome in the early years of the republican period.⁶⁷ There are also various stories of individuals who allegedly sought to establish themselves as kings of Rome, even in republican times. The evidence is, as always, extremely difficult, and it is clear that many of these stories have been heavily modified (if not, in some instances, perhaps even invented outright) at a later date and in light of later events. As with the expedition of the 300 Fabii, it is impossible to know what, if anything, lies behind the evidence as it currently stands, or whether or not it is possible to try to put aside that subsequent manipulation and shaping. Nonetheless, the evidence does have a certain cumulative force and, more significantly, not ←43 | 44→all of what it suggests fits quite so neatly with the expectations that the literary evidence may otherwise engender.⁶⁸

The most famous of the would-be kings were Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius and M. Manlius Capitolinus, each of whom was in the end killed for his activities and alleged aspirations, but there were others.⁶⁹ Also relevant in this context is the story of Ap. Herdonius. Herdonius was a Sabine, like Attus Clausus; like Clausus, he too was said to have gone to Rome although, in his case, he was said to have seized the Capitoline hill in a bid to take over the city (this was in 460 bc).⁷⁰ He supposedly had with him 2,500 followers (or perhaps more), according to Livy, and it may be tempting to think of Caeles Vibenna, his faithful sodalis Mastarna, and his army, or of Poplios Valesios and his sodales. By 460, however, Rome had been a Republic for half a century and the rule of kings was a thing of the past. Herdonius, the aspiring monarch, was out of date; he was automatically bad, and his followers are all cast by Livy as exiles and slaves.⁷¹

←44 | 45→

It is also possible to think of someone like Cn. Marcius Coriolanus. Cornell has argued that Coriolanus’ career should perhaps be understood in the same general context of powerful, independent individuals who do their own thing, look out only for their own interests and do not think of themselves as under the authority of any government, or indeed of anyone. Consequently, when Coriolanus’ activities in Rome did not work out, he simply left and went to join the Volsci.⁷² This too was supposedly in the early fifth century.

The literary evidence for all these individuals and events is extremely problematic. The point does need to be stressed. Nonetheless this evidence does fit very well with the circumstances implied by the inscription from Satricum, and also with the evidence (likewise problematic) for powerful individuals from the regal period and for gentes that appear to have once been more powerful than the state. The evidence certainly suggests some element of continuity with those times.

While the difficulties involved in basing an argument on textual evidence written centuries after the events in question need always to be kept in mind, it is worth giving careful consideration to the plebeian movement in the context of state formation. To what extent did the activities of that movement – restricting the actions of the powerful, creating magistracies and an assembly, keeping records, campaigning to get a law-code drafted and published,⁷³ and so on – play a role in the formation of the Roman state? Developments of this kind are just the sort of thing that ought to be expected when a state comes into existence. And, although it is the view of later writers who were drawing on an anachronistic literary tradition, the idea that the plebeian movement itself amounted to a state (albeit within a state) is nevertheless suggestive.

The nature of the evidence, unfortunately, may not allow for the argument to go much further than this, that is, beyond simply suggesting that ‘the conflict of the orders’ was not just about securing and advancing plebeian rights, but that it may well have also played a role in the formation of the Roman state, in its early stages at least. This possibility is certainly ←45 | 46→significant, not only in itself and for what it may reveal about the origins of at least one state, and, on its own terms at least, one extremely successful state. It is also significant for contemporary discussion, about states in the twenty-first century, about the roles that they should play and about their duties and responsibilities, as well as the duties and responsibilities of their citizens. For, in the case of Rome, it may be possible to see something of how the state was created – to some extent – by the people, and for the people, for their protection, to rein in those wealthy and powerful individuals who were concerned only with their own agenda and interests, to get them to adhere to the idea of the state and to behave responsibly towards it and their fellow citizens, as well as to try to address at least some of the inequalities in Roman society.

←46 | 47→

1 According to some; Timaeus put the foundation of Rome in 814 bc, while Fabius Pictor put it in 747 bc, Cincius Alimentus in 728 and Cato the Elder in 751 (see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.1–2). Naevius and Ennius made Romulus the grandson of Aeneas (Serv. Dan. Aen. 1.273), while Sallust claimed that Rome was founded by Trojans under the leadership of Aeneas (Cat. 6.1); on that sort of chronology Rome would have been founded in the twelfth century bc (although that does of course depend on how the fall of Troy gets dated). See Wiseman 1995, 160–8 for sixty-one different versions of the foundation myth of Rome. All these dates, the more familiar one of 753 included, are unhistorical; they are not based on evidence, but instead on various calculations and synchronisms; see Feeney 2007, 86–100. Bickerman’s classic paper (1952) is also relevant in this context.

2 See Cato FRHist 5 F66 (= Serv. Aen. 5.755; Isid. Orig. 15.2.3); Varro Ling. 5.143. For the performance of this ritual by Romulus, see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.88.2; Plut. Rom. 11.2–3. Further evidence can be found in Carandini 2006, 183–219, and also 433–4 on the ritual itself.

3 Isid. Orig. 15.2.5: ubi portam vult esse, aratrum sustollat et portet, et portam vocet. [Where [the founder] wants there to be a gate, let him lift the plough and carry [portet] it, and call it a gate [portam].] Varro, however, thought that gates were named from the carrying of goods through them (Ling. 5.142). See further Maltby 1991, 486.

4 Varro Ling. 5.143. For further ideas along these and other lines, see the evidence collected in Maltby 1991, 655.

5 See the entirely anachronistic discussion in Cic. Rep. 2.5–11 of Romulus’ choice of site. But Cicero’s Romulus lived in a literate and enlightened age, see Rep. 2.18–19; cf. Wiseman 2008, 125–6.

6 See, for instance, Virgil’s imaginative depiction of the founding of Carthage in book one of the Aeneid; at 1.425 there is an allusion to the ploughing ritual; the very next line reads: iura magistratusque legunt sanctumque senatum. [They choose laws and magistrates and a venerable senate.]

7 Note especially Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.3–29 (on which, see Wiseman 2009, 81–98); also Plut. Rom. 13; Livy 1.8.1 on Romulus’ establishment of law, 1.8.4–5 on the big, and consequently empty, city that Romulus supposedly built. The literary evidence is collected in Carandini 2011a; see also Franciosi 2003, 3–57.

8 According to Serv. Aen. 7.709, after Romulus and Titus Tatius made their treaty, the Sabines received Roman citizenship, although they were not given the right to vote and so could not elect magistrates; for the election of magistrates in Romulus’ day, see also Iunius Gracchanus ap. Ulp. Dig. 1.13.1.pr.

9 An overview of Carandini’s ideas about the origins of Rome can be found in his book, Rome: Day One (2011b). The significance of the title is obvious.

10 Varro Ling. 5.143; Plut. Rom. 11.1.

11 Carandini 2011b, 50.

12 For Alba Longa as an urbs, see, for example, Cic. Rep. 2.4; Livy 1.3.3, 1.29.4–6; Virg. Aen. 8.47–8.

13 Dionysius (Ant. Rom. 1.86.1, 1.87.1, 2.3.1, 2.4.1 and 2.30.2) in fact has Romulus seek and follow the advice of his grandfather Numitor, the king of Alba Longa, when founding Rome. See Livy 1.7.3 for Romulus performing rituals ‘in the Alban manner’ (Albano ritu).

14 See, for example, Aen. 5.755: interea Aeneas urbem designat aratro [meanwhile Aeneas marks out the city [urbem] with a plough]; for the Tyrians and Carthage, see n. 6 above.

15 Some time ago, Castagnoli 1958, 9; more recently, Wiseman 2004, 141; Rüpke 2007, 181–2; Wiseman 2013, 248. For another example of the Roman tendency to imagine that rituals performed in much later times had been performed from a very early date, see Richardson 2017.

16 Carandini aside, see for instance Grandazzi 2010 on the ritual itself.

17 See, for example, Fulminante 2014, 66–104, although the influence of the work of Carandini and his followers is palpable; on Rome’s earliest walls, see Bernard 2012; the reconstruction and identification of several of the buildings Fulminante discusses are optimistic to say the least; see, for instance, Moormann 2001; Wiseman 2008, 271–92. See n. 56 below as well.

18 Carandini 2011b, 22.

19 Carandini 2011b, 28.

20 See, for example, Livy 1.4.5–9 and 1.6.3, 1.7.3; Tib. 2.5.55–6: carpite nunc, tauri, de septem montibus herbas/ dum licet: hic magnae iam locus urbis erit. [Graze now, bulls, on the grass from the seven hills/ while it is permitted: this will be the site of a great city.]

21 Carandini 2011b, 27.

22 Carandini’s views are, unsurprisingly, extremely controversial and have been widely criticised on a variety of grounds; see, for instance, Poucet 2000, 160–81; Wiseman 2001; Moormann 2001; Wiseman 2004–6; Feeney 2007, 88–92; Wiseman 2008, 271–92; Testa 2012; Ampolo 2013; Hall 2014, 119–43. Carandini’s basic approach and general argument are nothing new, see pp. 47–50.

23 See Livy 1.3.3; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.66.1–2. Romulus’ grandfather was Numitor, the rightful heir to the throne of Alba Longa; Numitor’s position as king of Alba Longa was secured by Romulus and his brother, Remus (for a succinct account, see Livy 1.3.10–6.2). As noted above (see n. 14), Virgil has Aeneas found cities using the appropriate ritual.

24 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.84.5; Plut. Rom. 6.1. For Gabii as an urbs, see Livy 1.53.4.

25 On the tendency for Roman writings about the past to be anachronistic, see, for example, Wiseman 1979b, 41–53; Cornell 1986, 83–4; Gabba 1991, 80–5, 159–66; Poucet 2000, 285–328; Cornell 2005, 59–60, 62; Raaflaub 2005, esp. 187–8; Drogula 2015, 2–4; see n. 15 above.

26 For the inscription, see Stibbe 1980.

27 The inscription reads: ‘[…]IEI STETERAI POPLIOSIO VALESIOSIO SVODALES MAMARTEI’ [The companions of Poplios Valesios set this up[?]; to Mars]; on sodales, see Versnel 1980, 108–27; Versnel 1997, esp. 181–2.

28 See the classic study of Ampolo 1976–7; also, for example, Cornell 1995, 157–9; Cornell 2003, 86–7; Bradley 2015, 102–5. Rome’s nobility actually long remained open to outsiders; much of the evidence was assembled long ago by Münzer 1920, 46–97; this openness may have been more extensive than the evidence suggests: most people are usually not visible; see pp. 135–45.

29 As Cornell 1995, 158 says, ‘such concepts as nationality and citizenship are anachronistic in the context of the seventh and sixth centuries bc.’

30 Livy 1.34; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3.46.3–48.2. See Zevi 2014, also for further references to the ancient evidence and, for the early source, see Alföldi 1965, 56–72 as well; Gallia’s objections to this argument (2007) are not convincing.

31 Livy 2.16.4–5; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.40.3–5; Suet. Tib. 1.1. For references to further evidence and an analysis of the various differences in the several accounts, see Wiseman 1979b, 59–64.

32 Livy 1.34.10, 1.35.1–6; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3.48.2, 3.49.1.

33 Succinctly stated by Claudius, ILS 212: quondam reges hanc tenuere urbem, nec tamen domesticis successoribus eam tradere contigit. supervenere alieni et quidam externi. [Kings once held this city, yet they were not able to pass it on to successors of their own line. Strangers intervened, and even some foreigners.] On these matters, see Chapter 2.

34 See, for example, Momigliano 1989a, 97–8; Cornell 1995, 141–50.

35 See Versnel 1980, 120–1 and Maras 2010 for optimistic assessments.

36 Claud. ILS 212: Servius Tullius, si nostros sequimur, captiva natus Ocresia, si Tuscos, Caeli quondam Vivennae sodalis fidelissimus omnisque eius casus comes, post quam varia fortuna exactus cum omnibus reliquis Caeliani exercitus Etruria excessit, montem Caelium occupavit et a duce suo Caelio ita appellita[vit], mutatoque nomine (nam Tusce Mastarna ei nomen erat) ita appellatus est, ut dixi, et regnum summa cum rei p(ublicae) utilitate optinuit. The translation is Cornell’s (1995, 133–4).

37 For Caeles as a possible king, see Alföldi 1965, 212–31 (Claudius’ story implies that Caeles had died, but there were other versions); a slightly stronger case can be made in favour of Caeles’ brother, Aulus Vibenna; again, see Alföldi’s discussion; Cornell 1995, 144–5. On the problems in the king-list and the chronology of the regal period, see De Cazanove 1988; De Cazanove 1992; Cornell 1995, 121–6; Forsythe 2005, 98–9; Feeney 2007, 88–91; various problems were already observed in antiquity, see Cic. Rep. 2.28–9 and Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.6–7. See further Chapter 2.

38 Cf., for example, Cornell 1995, 144; Cornell 2003, 88; Torelli 2011, 230.

39 For the frescoes, see for instance, Moretti Sgubini 2004, and especially the chapter in the same volume by Andreae (2004, 52–4); further bibliography can be found in Richardson 2015.

40 On the handling of the evidence for Caeles Vibenna, see Richardson 2015.

41 See Smith 2006b on the gentes in general, and 32–44 on mythical ancestors; see also Kvium 2008 for a different approach.

42 Momigliano 1989a, 99; Cornell 1995, 84–5; Smith 2006b; and see below for the approach of Terrenato.

43 Cf., for instance, Torelli 2011, 226–7, and below for the hypotheses of Terrenato.

44 See Momigliano 1989a, 98–9; Versnel 1997, 182; and the hypotheses of Kvium 2008. See the next note as well.

45 For the various issues, see, for example, Richard 1990a (note 255–6 on the Fabii and their sodales); Richardson 2012, 81–3, 106–7, 119–20, 139–42, 150–1.

46 Diod. 11.53.6. Cf. Richard 1990a, 248–51.

47 On the location of the tribus Fabia, see Taylor 2013, 40–1 and Linderski’s defence of her argument (p. 363 of the same volume). On the tribes named after gentes, see Cornell 1995, 173–9; Wiseman 2004, 56; Taylor 2013, 4–6, 35–7.

48 See Livy 2.19.2 for the capture of Crustumeria; at 2.21.7, Livy says only that twenty-one tribes were created (tribus una et viginti factae), which is an ambiguous phrase. Among Livy’s twenty-one tribes was presumably the tribus Clustumina.

49 Livy 6.5.8, 7.15.11, 8.17.11, 9.20.6, 10.9.14, Per. 19; Taylor 2013, 47–68. The tribus Poblilia appears to have been named after the Publilii; this may be the result of political circumstances, see Taylor 2013, 50–2.

50 See Cristofani 1990, 22–3, 58–9 for the evidence. On the symbolic value that an inscription could have, see the discussion in Williamson 1987.

51 It is telling that even this could have once been doubted, as it famously was by Pais, who argued in the first volume of his Storia di Roma (1898) that Rome’s kings were in origin gods; unfortunately for Pais the inscription from the Forum was discovered in 1899, so just after his book had appeared. That Pais could have even argued what he did at all is nonetheless a reflection of the immense difficulties that exist in the literary evidence. It is worth noting as well that ancient authors who mention the stele from the Forum had absolutely no idea what it was and offered all manner of explanations for it. On these matters, see pp. 47–50.

52 See Chapter 2.

53 Polyb. 3.22, 3.25.6–9.

54 For an attempt to put aside assumptions about the state and to take Polybius’ evidence seriously, see Chapter 3. In the same context of treaty-making, assumptions about the existence and nature of the Roman state have also led to various anachronistic retrojections being accepted as historical, see Richardson 2017.

55 See the discussion in Ampolo 1983b and Cornell 1995, 97–103.

56 See the various discussions (some of which are now out of date in some respects) on the formation of the Roman city and state (the two need not go together and may, in fact, have not) in, for example, Ampolo 1980; Drews 1981; Ampolo 1983b; Cornell 1988; Cornell 1995, 81–118; Forsythe 2005, 82–93; Hall 2014, 138–41; Fulminante 2014, especially Chapter 1 for a discussion of various approaches to urbanisation and state formation (but cf. n. 17 above).

57 Does some indication of increasing specialisation in the production of pottery, for instance, reflect internal developments or external influences?

58 Terrenato 2011 (see 236, 237 and 243 for the several quotes).

59 The influence of such ideas is still detectable in recent work; even apart from Carandini’s own work (where the influence is obviously predictable), note for instance Terrenato 2011, 235, who talks of ‘the time when the decision to create a city-state was taken’; 241, ‘cities were the result of conscious decisions made by individuals.’ But it is most unlikely that, at least as far as the earliest city-states are concerned, individuals did indeed make conscious decisions at some particular moment in time to create a city-state: this is the ancient model, which is entirely unsatisfactory.

60 The division was, predictably enough, said to have gone back to Romulus’ time: Cic. Rep. 2.14 and 2.23; Livy 1.8.7; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.8; Plut. Rom. 13.1–3. The reality may very well have been much more complex; see, for instance, Cornell 1983; Cornell 1995, 242–58.

61 Livy 2.32.2–33.3; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.45–89. On the tribunate, see, for example, Smith 2012, with references to earlier work; in this context, note Drogula 2017.

62 Assembly: the evidence is difficult; Livy says that a law was passed in 471 bc to allow plebeian tribunes to be elected in the tribal assembly (2.56.2–58.2; also Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 9.41–9), but Livy does not say how they had been chosen previously; some sources say that they had been elected in the curiate assembly (Asc. 76C; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.89.1, 9.41.2); for different assessments, see, for example, Ogilvie 1965, 380–1; Cornell 1995, 260–1; Forsythe 2005, 177–9. For the keeping of records, see Livy 3.55.13; Pompon. Dig. 1.2.2.21; Zonar. 7.15. For the plebeians’ efforts to get a law-code drafted, see Livy 3.9.2–32.7 passim; there are various difficulties in the evidence, see Ogilvie 1965, 411–13, 449–54; Cornell 1995, 272–6; Forsythe 2005, 202.

63 Livy 2.44.9: duas civitates ex una factas, suos cuique parti magistratus, suas leges esse [two states had been created out of one; each faction had its own magistrates, it own laws], also, for example, 2.24.1, 3.19.9; see Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.88.1 for the concern that two states might be formed in one (μή ποτε δύο πόλεις ποιήσωμεν ἐν μιᾷ); Mommsen 1887b, 145; Cornell 1995, 258–65; see also Momigliano 2005, 178–80. For arguments against this idea, see Forsythe 2005, 176.

64 Note Cornell 1995, 265: ‘The later vestiges of the [plebeian] movement … were gradually recognised and integrated with the institutions of the state. … What is remarkable is not only the way in which plebeian institutions matched those of the state, but the fact that their organisation was in many ways more advanced and sophisticated. In the period down to 367 bc the plebeian institutions were either integrated into the constitution, or were themselves imitated by the “patrician state”.’

65 Cornell 1995, 311; see also Richard 1990a.

66 Compare Cornell’s comments in 1988, 94: ‘Si può, però, facilmente sospettare che guerre gentilizie di questo genere fossero un fenomeno comune e forse caratteristico dell’epoca.’

67 See n. 31 above. There was another version, which put his migration in Romulus’ time; but on this, see Wiseman 1979b, 59–61.

68 As Badian 1990a, 215 notes, ‘the inscription [from Satricum] calls into question the whole interpretation of the Roman social and political structure that we get in Livy: the suodales cannot be plausibly matched, or fitted into the background we are given. They point to a social organization plausible in itself, but irreconcilable with the late Republican version of the “Struggle of the Orders” that we have come to take for granted.’ This is perhaps something of a slight exaggeration, since there is other evidence that seems to fit with the circumstances implied by the inscription, but it certainly is true that such evidence only rarely accords, and never easily, with what is implied and assumed by Livy.

69 See, for example, Smith 2006a; and also Forsythe 2005, 193–5, 239–41, 259–62 for a sceptical assessment of the evidence.

70 Livy 3.15.5–18.10; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.14–16.

71 Livy 3.15.5: exsules servique, ad duo milia [Ogilvie, OCT: quattuor milia] hominum et quingenti [exiles and slaves to the number of 2,500 [Ogilvie: 4,500] men]; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 10.14.1, in contrast, has Herdonius gather together his clients and the most courageous of his attendants (συνήθροιζε τοὺς πελάτας καὶ τῶν θεραπόντων οὓς εἶχε τοὺς εὐτολμοτάτους; on θεράποντες, see Versnel 1980, 117); Herdonius’ plan, however, Dionysius says (10.14.3), nonetheless involved calling on exiles, slaves, those in debt and the like. Cf. Torelli 2011, 232. Livy’s choice of words is, however, likely to be due to first-century influences, see Ogilvie 1965, 423–5, also Forsythe 2005, 205.

72 Cornell 2003, 84–91.

73 Note Maras 2010, 189, 195 for the evidence that the Twelve Tables contained legislation aimed at restricting the actions of sodalitates with respect to public law.