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BC 753-BC 508 Monarchy

The origins of Rome are the stuff of myth, not history. It is probable that in the seventh century BC the Etruscans took the fortified Palatine Hill, overlooking a crossing on the Tiber River, and amalgamated the tiny scattered hamlets of Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans into a city-state ruled by the Tarquin family, the Etruscan royal house. Legend relates that the city's founder and first king was Romulus, descendant of Aeneas of Troy, and that he gave his name to the city. In about 500 BC the Romans overthrew the Etruscan monarchy and established a republic that lasted for four centuries.

It was not until the 6th Century and the foundation of the city that historical writing began in Rome. The father of Roman history, Q. Fabius Pictor, a patrician and a senator, can scarcely have published his annals before the close of the Second Punic War, but these annals covered the whole period from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy down at least to the battle by Lake Trasimene (217 BC).

Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor (Cato the Elder - 234–149 BC), in his Origines, the earliest work on the history of Rome in the Latin tongue, preserved some little of the history of the earliest times. In his days the Etruscans, Oscans, and Sabellians, had still a national existence; and as amongst these nations annals and registers were kept, the scantiness of which might be compensated by their authenticity, the wishes of Cato, backed by his magisterial authority, would find an easy access to them.

The plan of the Origines, which consisted of seven books, is known from Nepos; the first hook contained the history of the kings; the second and third carried the history down to the complete subjugation of Italy; the fourth contained the first Punic war; the fifth, the second; and the sixth and seventh, the subsequent wars down to his own time, that is, to the praetorship of Ser. Galba. Cato was a very great man in every respect, and rose far above his age.

Barthold Georg Niebuhr wrote "The memory of much in the story of Rome, even during the most ignorant ages, has been preserved to us, although in the early part of it poetry has flung her many-coloured veil over historical truth. It is indeed true, that the combination of vain fictions and popular legends with the outlines of dry chronicles and the scanty records of authentic documents, though generally the distinction may be easily discerned, presents still sometimes a congruity so deceitful as almost to render hopeless the task of the historian. If, however, no pretension be set up to a thorough exactness in minute details, much may be ascertained, even in the darkest periods, on historical evidence no weaker than that which we possess for contemporary events in Greece.

"Livy ... was moved to write by the highly brilliant talent with which nature had gifted him for seizing the characteristic features of humanity, and for narration; combined with the imaginative power of a poet, though without the facility of versifying or the love of it. He wrote, indeed, with no feeling of doubt, yet without conviction, bringing down the marvels of the heroic ages into the sphere of history."

The early history of Rome was told in many schoolbooks. There were seven kings of Rome — Romulus, Numa, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus; the reigns of these kings embraced a period of exactly 245 years; in each reign, there happened certain extraordinary incidents — as, in that of Romulus, the Rape of the Sabine virgins; in that of Tullus Hostilius, the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii; in that of Tarquinius Superbus, the dishonor of Lucretia, and the consequent revolt under Brutus.

Lucretia lived in the sixth century BC, when Rome was ruled by the tyrant Tarquinius Superbus. Her virtue, loyalty, and industry drew the attention of the tyrant’s son, Sextus Tarquinius. While Lucretia’s husband was away in battle, Sextus stole into Lucretia’s bedchamber and threatened to kill her if she did not submit to his advances. Rather than endure this violation and sacrifice her honor, she would happily have chosen death at that moment; however, Sextus devised an even more dishonorable and violent scenario. He threatened to kill his own slave and place the slave’s and Lucretia’s bodies together as if they had been lovers.

Lucretia therefore submitted to his assault, but the next day, she told her father and her husband about it. Despite their support of her innocence, she could not live with this mark on her family’s reputation or with the idea that adulterous women might use her as an example to escape deserved punishment. She pulled a dagger from her robe and plunged it into her heart. Grief-stricken, the men pledged to avenge her death. They began a revolt that would overthrow the tyranny and lead to the establishment of the Roman Republic. For Livy, Lucretia embodied the greatest virtues of Roman womanhood.

In the year of the city 245, the monarchy was abolished and a Commonwealth established; and through a long series of struggles, in which figured such men as Porsenna, Coriolanus, &c. this Commonwealth became a great Italian nation, the nucleus of the future Roman Empire.

With the overthrow of Tarquinius Superbus in 510 the Roman kingship came to an end. A critical study of this legendary period makes all these names and the events connected with them doubtful, but preserves the general outline of development. Rome, in the modern view, is regarded as having had its origin in the union of three tribes, the so-called Ramnes, Tides and Luceres, of whom the first were of Latin blood, the second of Sabine stock and the third of doubtful affinity. The situation of Rome on the hills near the mouth of the Tiber was favorable for its development, and in the course of time the city extended its authority over the neighboring country until with the destruction of Alba Longa, the ancient religious centre of the Latin peoples, it came to assume a predominant position in Latium. The Etruscan character ascribed to the last three kings points to an Etruscan conquest, and indeed throughout the early period of Rome the influence of the Etruscans to the north is marked, especially in religious customs and in architecture.

Such was the narrative that was universally repeated and believed by all compilers of ancient Roman history. Examining this pretended narrative, Niebuhr showed that it would not cohere at any one point; that, in fact, it was a tissue of absurdities and contradictions — Brutus, for example, appearing in it at one moment as a mere youth, and a year or two after as a full-grown man with two sons. He then showed how this pretended narrative had arisen, proving that it was, for the most part, history created backward; that is, a mass of ancient Roman myths or legends, strung by the Roman writers upon a chronological scheme prepared according to certain mystical numerical notions; rationalised, to a certain degree, by these writers.

Stripped of whatever appeared improbable to them; still further rationalised by modern writers (the personal existence of Romulus, for example, and his quarrel with Remus, being retained, while the story of the divine birth of the brothers, and their mysterious preservation in infancy, was of course rejected); and thus finally adapted to modern opinion. Expounding all this, and devoting his whole life to the labour of investigating into the real facts of Roman history, Niebuhr gave to the world a new view of the same — a view which, while it made known a mass of circumstances relating to the social and political condition of early Rome, of which even Livy himself had been ignorant, permitted the quaint old legends to resume their proper form as legends, instead of being docked and attenuated for the purposes of delusive history.