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CHAPTER 2 The King and the Constitution: Elections and Hereditary Succession in Regal Rome

I

At the end of the nineteenth century, scepticism in the historicity of the literary evidence for early Rome could hardly have been greater. This was a time when it could be claimed in all seriousness that Rome’s kings had never existed and that the kings the ancient authors wrote about were nothing other than river, solar or other such deities.¹ In an environment such as this, the discovery made by G. Boni of an archaic inscription on which the word rex appeared was inevitably revolutionary.² Scepticism in the historical value of the literary sources was now untenable, optimism justified and the optimists vindicated, or so it could be claimed. As so often happens, in all the exuberance, there was also a considerable amount of excess. The inscription and the complex in which it was located accorded with ancient accounts of what was said by some to be the tomb of Romulus,³ and so the discovery was even hailed as proof that ←47 | 48→Romulus himself had existed. Indicative of the enthusiastic mood are the somewhat self-satisfied comments of R. Lanciani:⁴

Since the discovery of the Heroon Romuli in the Comitium and of the archaic stele, – whatever the meaning of its legend may be, – the history of ancient Rome cannot longer be written in the distrustful spirit of the hypercritical school. The future rests with our conservative party, of which I was a convinced member even at a time when it required a certain amount of courage to be recognized as such and to meet the accusation of credulity, when a lecturer could not name the founder of the City as a man who had actually existed, without blushing before his audience.

The problem is, the ancient sources also said that the complex was the tomb of Faustulus and the tomb Hostus Hostilius too.⁵ Of course Boni’s discovery no more proved the existence of Romulus than do more recent discoveries, for which all the same problems with the literary evidence exist, including that most fundamental difficulty of its relationship (or better, lack thereof) with the archaeological evidence.

Ironically enough, even though the inscription does confirm the existence in the sixth century of a rex – whatever a rex may have actually been at that date – the fact that ancient writers could describe the inscription and its immediate physical context quite accurately while clearly having only a vague notion of what the complex was is good reason for scepticism.⁶ What is also remarkable is that no one knew either what the inscription itself was actually about, even though they could still see it, for a time, and certainly in better condition than it is in today (not least because a substantial part of it has been lost). Some said it was an account of Romulus’ deeds, others, Hostus Hostilius’, and he was not even a king.⁷ Clearly no one could even ←48 | 49→begin to read it, or was concerned to try.⁸ And that state of affairs doubtless applies to any other documents that may have survived from that same era and even more so in the case of anything older.⁹

So what, then, did later Romans really know about the regal period and their kings? And, if they did happen to know anything veracious, how did they, if documents from such early times were unintelligible in later and when no one wrote history at Rome until the end of the third century bc, that is, until some 300 years after the regal period had ended? Moreover, given the sorts of documents the sources claim had survived from that era – a few laws and treaties but not much else¹⁰ – how were Rome’s historians able to produce any sort of narrative of events, which is what ancient historiography was primarily concerned to produce, from such material, even if it was intelligible?

As for the appearance of the word rex on the inscription, all that that proves is that the title was in use at the time when the inscription was set up. It does not prove anything much more than that, although a religious role of some kind for the rex in question (who may conceivably have been a rex sacrorum in any case) can perhaps be inferred from the extant parts of the inscription without too much risk. It certainly does not follow that the literary evidence for Rome’s kings is in any way veracious, and, strictly speaking, does not even disprove the argument that the kings the ancient authors wrote about were in fact just euhemerised gods.¹¹ The extraordinary ←49 | 50→confidence of scholars like Lanciani was as premature as it was unwarranted. But, however unjustified it may have been, that confidence is nonetheless important evidence. It is evidence of the sheer will of some to believe in the historicity of the Romans’ accounts of even the earliest history of Rome despite all the evidence and arguments that show that such an approach is neither justified nor sustainable.¹²

Although there has of late been something of a resurgence of similar uncritical exuberance, as a result of more recent archaeological discoveries,¹³ it is fair to say that the overwhelming majority of scholars today would not want to claim that Romulus was an historical figure. Most would be unlikely to suppose either that there is anything truly historical in the evidence for Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius or Ancus Marcius, the three kings who were said to have come after him. The Tarquins and Servius Tullius may be another matter but, even in their case, comparatively little of what the Romans said about them would seriously be taken as reliable evidence for what those men actually did, even if there is reason to suspect that they probably did exist.¹⁴ And yet, despite these circumstances, it nonetheless remains the case that various parts of the evidence, even for the very early kings, are regularly accepted as genuinely historical, to some extent at least. It is what may be called the ‘constitutional’ aspects of the monarchy that are usually deemed the most trustworthy.¹⁵ In particular – and perhaps most importantly of all for understanding the regal period as a whole – it ←50 | 51→is the idea that Rome’s kings did not inherit the throne but were elected or somehow chosen by the Senate and people that is most often accepted as historical.¹⁶ It is in fact fair to say that this view represents the orthodoxy in scholarship on the period.

The idea that Rome’s monarchy was not hereditary is almost universally accepted as a simple matter of fact. T. J. Cornell, for instance, says that ‘No king of Rome inherited the throne from his father.’ Tarquinius Superbus, the son of Tarquinius Priscus, was ‘a usurper who seized the throne illegally’ and so is the ‘exception that proves the rule’. B. Linke is equally emphatic. ‘A form of hereditary kingship’, he says, ‘did not exist’.¹⁷ It has even been claimed that hereditary succession was not even a feature of the Roman mentality.¹⁸ Some have, however, been a little more cautious, but only comparatively so.¹⁹

As for the way in which Rome’s kings supposedly did come to power, modern reconstructions are many and varied, but they almost all have in common the fundamental belief that the kings were selected somehow and their position subsequently ratified. The only exceptions are those kings – usually the last two – who are supposed to have seized power by force or acquired it by some other illegal means, although even these men, some maintain, will still have got their position approved in some way.²⁰ Several ←51 | 52→accounts of the process by which the kings were supposedly appointed can be found in the ancient evidence, and they are variously handled. Some scholars follow the sources closely, others only generally, sometimes drawing on them selectively, picking out and emphasising (and sometimes modifying too) specific details and basing their reconstructions on those details alone.²¹ There is considerable variation, but there is nonetheless an underlying consensus: Rome’s kings did not inherit their position; they were elected, selected or approved in some way, or otherwise held power illegally.

All this is, however, vastly more uncertain than is usually acknowledged. This is not just because there is good reason to suspect – as is in fact widely accepted – that ancient accounts of the way in which Rome’s kings were appointed are based on the anachronistic retrojection of later ideas and practices. It is also because – and this is something that does not receive the attention it deserves – the literary evidence is filled with stories that presuppose that the sons of kings could inherit the throne, or at least make a credible claim to it on hereditary grounds. The several extant accounts of the regal period regularly juxtapose stories based on ideas of hereditary succession with stories of the Senate and people choosing the next king. Modern scholarship has accepted the latter to varying degrees, but has failed to offer an adequate explanation for the existence of the former (which it has in fact generally ignored), even though both sets of stories can usually be found side by side in the very same accounts.

←52 | 53→

In the following section (II), the question of hereditary succession will be discussed and the numerous stories that presuppose it will be considered. In the section after that (III), the process by which Rome’s kings were said to have been appointed will be assessed. In the final section (IV), an entirely new explanation for the nature and shape of the account of the regal period in the extant sources will be offered.

II

Rome was a colony of Alba Longa, or so the Romans believed, and the kings of Alba Longa (from whom Romulus, Rome’s founder and first king was descended) were said to have inherited their throne.²² No one today supposes that there is anything historical in any of this and it is accepted that the Alban kings were simply used as a chronological device to bridge the gap between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.²³ That does not mean, however, that the evidence for them is of no value. On the contrary, it is very important. Whoever invented the Alban dynasty clearly found it natural to think in terms of hereditary succession, even for Rome’s mother-city.²⁴

The Roman king-list, on the other hand, has usually been taken as evidence that things were different at Rome and that Rome’s monarchy was not hereditary in nature. Apart from Tarquinius Superbus, none of the kings is a direct, patrilineal descendant of any other. While it is often ←53 | 54→argued that their names (Romulus’ aside) may well be genuine, that does not really amount to anything much, especially when the chronology of the entire regal period is so extremely problematic.

There are simply too few kings – supposedly only seven in some two and a half centuries – and the inevitable result is that their reigns are all improbably long. There were, in contrast, nearly four times as many emperors during the first two and half centuries of the principate.²⁵ And there are other problems. Numa was supposed to have been a student of Pythagoras, but that is a chronological impossibility.²⁶ Equally impossible is the chronology of the last three kings. The ancient solution in this case was to insert an extra generation of Tarquins, so that Superbus was made into the grandson of Priscus,²⁷ but that is too easy. Although the idea has, somewhat surprisingly, found a few modern adherents,²⁸ it is only a means to fix a chronological problem; it is not based on any evidence and is historically worthless, beyond its value as evidence for the way ancient historians sought to address the problems they encountered in the material they inherited.

The idea that there were just seven kings has been called a ‘patent fiction’ and with good reason.²⁹ With good reason, too, the king-list itself has been labelled ‘a pseudo-historical construct’.³⁰ Scholars even of a conservative nature have regularly been prepared to shoehorn other figures into the list. The best example is undoubtedly the Vibenna brothers, one or both of whom are often supposed to have ruled Rome.³¹ So, while some ←54 | 55→of the names of the seven kings may be genuine, it is most unlikely that the sequence of them is complete and reliable. The king-list does not, on its own, provide compelling evidence against hereditary succession, not when there are so many problems with it, when it is itself almost certainly a later construct, and above all when hereditary succession is taken for granted in so very many of the stories the Romans told about their kings.

It will be useful to look at these various stories more closely, not only because they are usually just ignored in this context, but also because there are different versions of some of them. In one or two instances, it is possible to make inferences about the relative chronology of the different accounts. For all that there is evidence of disagreement among the sources, and variation in some of the details, the basic point nonetheless remains unaffected: the Romans told numerous stories about their kings that anticipated hereditary succession. These stories are most unlikely to reflect anything at all of the historical realities of regal Rome, about which Rome’s historians knew probably nothing, but they certainly do reflect what later Romans said about their kings. And what they said is often entirely incompatible with modern views of the Roman monarchy.

When Romulus’ reign came to an end (however that was supposed to have happened), he departed leaving no designed heir. In almost every account, Romulus did not have children,³² which means that no argument either way can be made about hereditary succession. The only author, it seems, who claimed Romulus had children is the little known and poorly attested Zenodotus of Troezen, who wrote probably in the mid- to late second century bc, or possibly the early first.³³ According to him, Romulus married the Sabine Hersilia, with whom he had two offspring, but Plutarch, who relates Zenodotus’ story, notes that others said Hersilia had married Hostus Hostilius.³⁴ As for the children, one was a daughter named Prima, the other a son called Aollius, but later Avillius, says Plutarch. Neither appears anywhere else, and T. P. Wiseman has plausibly suggested that ←55 | 56→Avillius was invented to create a suitably prestigious ancestor for the Avillii.³⁵ Whatever the motive for the invention of the story, Prima’s and Aollius’ credentials are such that they are of no significance when it comes to the question of hereditary succession.

Several sources evidently claimed that Numa Pompilius, Romulus’ successor, had children, but the nature of much of the evidence is clear from the children’s names. Some said that Numa had four sons, Pompon, Pinus, Calpus and Mamercus, from whom were descended the Pomponii, the Pinarii, the Calpurnii and the Mamercii.³⁶ It is reasonable to assume that the story of these children is a secondary development; it is usually discussed in the context of legendary genealogies and also, in the case of Calpus, with reference to the work of the late second-century historian L. Calpurnius Piso.³⁷ Like the story of Avillius, the story of these children clearly exists only for the sake of creating eponymous ancestors and it does not go beyond that immediate concern. Moreover, not everyone agreed, and some, according to Plutarch, said that Numa had only one child, a daughter called Pompilia.³⁸ This was evidently the earlier version of the story. It is hardly significant that there is no suggestion that Numa’s daughter was ever a candidate to succeed her father.

Pompilia was said to have been married to Marcius,³⁹ the son of the man who had persuaded Numa to accept the Romans’ invitation to become ←56 | 57→their king. After Numa’s death, Plutarch says, the elder Marcius, Pompilia’s father-in-law, had competed with Tullus Hostilius for the throne. He was unsuccessful and subsequently starved himself to death. His son stayed on in Rome, however, and he and Pompilia had a child of their own, Ancus Marcius. When Numa died, Ancus was just 5 years old, says Plutarch. Plutarch is not explicit, but he hardly needed to be: Ancus cannot have been a contender to succeed his grandfather and become king, if he was only a small child.⁴⁰ He did, however, become king in the end.

Tullus Hostilius died in suspicious circumstances. His house burnt down while he, his wife and his children were all inside. According to one version of the story, Tullus had been struck by lightning following a botched attempt to perform certain rites that Numa had carried out. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, some said the lightning was sent as punishment for the neglect of certain rites and the importation of others.⁴¹ Why Tullus’ entire family should have been killed as well is not explained, but it may be that these versions are later. The majority, says Dionysius, gave a different account (one that, significantly, does explain why Tullus’ family was also killed). According to the majority, Ancus Marcius and some supporters murdered the king and his children and then set fire to their house. It seems that Ancus was not happy; he was Numa’s grandson, he was of royal descent and yet he was not king. To make matters worse, Tullus had children, and Ancus was worried the throne would go to one of them after Tullus had died.⁴²