06d: A Farewell to Kings

As Roman legend has it, the Roman monarchy lasted from 753 to 509 BC. The traditional list of seven kings goes like this:

753-716:  Romulus (founder)
715-674:  Numa Pompilius (founder of Roman religion; married a nymph)
673-642:  Tullius Hostilius (destroyed neighboring  city of Alba Longa)
642-617:  Ancus Marcius (extended Roman power to the seacoast)
616-579:  L.Tarquinius Priscus (Etruscan; drained Forum swamp)
578-535:  Servius Tullius (made treaty with the Latins)
535-509:  L. Tarquinius Superbus (Etruscan, built Capitoline temple)

If you count the year 509 BC toward the monarchy, it lasted for 245 years, giving each king an average reign of 35 years. Nice, huh? There's also a cute pattern in which the odd-numbered kings are warlike and the even-numbered ones are peace-loving. Finally, the two Tarquin kings are Etruscan with a Roman, Servius Tullius, wedged in between them. Clearly, there is a lot of literary invention going on here. But despite that, there are also kernels of historical fact to be noted. Numa Pompilius, for example, is said to have recieved instructions for Roman religious practices by consulting with his wife, a nymph named Egeria. Numa's legend sets up the close relationship between Roman religion and the Roman state. Tullius the Hostile was a surly dude who earned  his name by wiping out neighboring towns. And then we have the Tarquins: Lucius Tarquinius the Old and his son Lucius Tarquinius the Proud. The story of their reigns offers little, if any, historical fact about Roman-Etruscan relations in the 500s BC. But it does paint the Etruscans as imperialist jerks compared with the simple and noble Romans.

Lucumo was an Etruscan refugee from the city of Tarquinii; he came to Rome with his wife Tanaquil and assumed the Roman name of Lucius Tarquinius (Lucius from Tarquinii). He got close to King Ancus Marcius and convinced the Roman People that he should become king after Ancus's death, and not Ancus's sons. During Tarquinius Priscus's reign (that is Tarquin the Old, to distinguish him from his son Tarquin the Proud), Rome fought many victorious wars, and was enriched by much land and plunder. His great public works included the Great Sewer which drained the Forum, and he began the great temple of Capitoline Jupiter. All of which, to the Romans, was pretty good. But Tarquin was assassinated after 38 years - a suspiciously long time to wait, clearly - by the sons of Ancus Marcius. Instead of the Marcius brothers succeeding to the throne, King Servius Tullius ruled for many years until he was displaced by Tarquin the Proud, son of Tarquin the Old and his wife Tanaquil. Keeping in mind that this account is almost completely fictional, the kernel of historical fact is clear -  the Etruscans were calling the shots and the native Romans didn't like it very much.

Tarquin the Proud was no sweetheart either. His first official act as king was to drive his chariot over the body of his predecessor Servius Tullius. He murdered the most influential members of the Senate, even though it was a merely advisory body, and turned the lower classes into a labor army for purposes of finishing his father's building projects. It looked as though Rome was descending from monarchy to downright tyranny. Then Tarquin's son Sextus raped a Roman woman by the name of Lucretia. Even though Lucretia's menfolk argued that she herself had done nothing wrong, she set what Roman women considered a precedent and killed herself. Roman men were tough, but Roman women had to be even tougher. To avenge Lucretia, some Roman men under the leadership of one Lucius Junius Brutus (or Junius the Dumb) effectively drove Tarquin the Proud and his supporters out of Rome for good. They also, supposedly, instituted a republic instead of the monarchy. The supposed year was 509 BC.

The Roman constitiution, as supposedly constructed in 509 BC, was never written down in so many words. But there is no doubt that it was intended to prevent any future Roman kings. One major principle of the Roman constitution was annuality. A new group of magistrates (the Romans' preferred term for officials) would be elected every year, for a term of exactly one year. If a magistrate was to hold an office two years in a row he would have to be elected to that office, and the Roman electorate was traditionally a tough sell given its unhappy memories of monarchy. Another major principle was collegiality, which meant that the imperium had to be shared at all times. The annual magistracies were always held by at least two men at the same time, with each man having equal powers. This again was a direct reaction to the excesses of the monarchy; no one annual magistrate could possibly gather enough power to become a king. In the very beginning, the highest elected magistrates were two praetors, but soon the praetors were superseded by two consuls, each of whom basically possessed the same imperium as the kings had once possessed. The one and only exception to the policy of collegiality was the office of dictator, awarded only in time of emergency to one man for a period not to exceed six months. The king's religious functions were also shuffled off to various priesthoods, overseen by an elected pontifex maximus, or chief priest.

Although the policies of annuality and collegiality staved off monarchy for centuries, they tended to work against achieving the consistent policies necessary for stable government. Instead, the Senate supplied this consistency. Previously a body of upper-class patricians who provided the king with advice, the Senate developed into ancient Rome's senior legislative body. While the Senate's opinions never officially held the force of law, the magistrates regarded them as binding anyway. This was because the magistrates themselves all belonged to the Senate, and would return to the Senate once their one-year terms were over. If they did not obey the Senate during their terms as magistrate, they would undoubtedly be ostracized - shut out, that is - for good upon their return to the Senate. However, since the patricians all tended to share the same values in these days, consistency was easily maintained from the very beginning. Whether this consistency was always a positive thing... well, that was something completely different.