An Interim Report on the Origins of Rome

Ancient history begins and ends with the ancient evidence. The evidence represents not only the foundation of the discipline, but the material out of which any argument must be built, and it is not possible to go further than it allows. This is part of the reason why the nature and value of the evidence for early Rome have long been, and remain, matters of considerable and sometimes contentious debate. The best evidence, simply because it is contemporary, is arguably the archaeological, but the sorts of questions that archaeological evidence can answer are often of little help when it comes to matters such as the politics and political structures of early Rome, which are the focus of this collection. For such matters, it is still necessary to work with the literary evidence. However, since the historical value of the literary evidence is so hotly contested, the uses to which that evidence is put and the conclusions that are drawn from it inevitably vary considerably. Despite more than a century of research, there is still nothing even remotely resembling a consensus on how the literary sources should best be handled. This paper explores some of the problems with the evidence for early Rome, considers something of the limits and uses of that evidence, as well as introduces the contributions that make up this collection of studies on power and politics in early Rome.

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confidence: 99%

Authors, Archaeology, and Arguments: Evidence and Models for Early Roman Politics

Armstrong¹,

Richardson²

2017

“… 30 See, for instance, Momigliano (1963) 118; Linderski (1990); Hölkeskamp (1993) 21; Cornell (1995) 251-2 (252: ‘the patriciate was essentially a class defined by religious prerogatives’); Forsythe (2005) 167-70; Smith (2006) 258-74 (271: ‘The only stated reason for the patrician control of the magistracies lay in their argument that the auspicia could only properly be in the hands of patrician magistrates’). Note also the theories of Mitchell (2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Roman Nobility, the Early ConsularFasti, and the Consular Tribunate

Richardson

2017

While the general absence of Rome’s nobility from the traditions of the regal period has often been noted, the nobility’s prompt appearance at the beginning of the republican period has elicited little comment. This paper argues that the nobility’s appearance is more significant than its earlier absence, precisely on account of its very promptness and also because the nobility appears primarily with the consulship. Given the special importance that the consulship later came to have, following the emergence of Rome’s office-holding nobility, these circumstances inevitably raise questions about the value of the early consular fasti, and indeed even about the whole premise on which the early fasti are based, namely that the consulship was established immediately after the expulsion of the kings. It is argued here that this premise is anachronistic, and that the early consular fasti are unreliable and often tendentious; it is further argued that this premise is also responsible for some of the confusion surrounding the mysterious consular tribunate. The consular tribunate was a magistracy about which ancient writers quite clearly knew very little, and their ignorance and the inconsistencies in what they had to say about the tribunate inevitably undermine their claim to possess better and more detailed information about earlier times.

“… 50 Our knowledge of the curiae is obviously limited. As Momigliano once noted, ‘we would know how the archaic Roman institutions worked if we knew what the Curiae were’ (Momigliano [1963] 112). However, Dionysius hints at a geographic association (Dion.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Consulship of 367bcand the Evolution of Roman Military Authority

Armstrong¹

2017

A tension exists within the literary sources for early Rome, between the supposedly static nature of military authority, embodied by the grant of imperium which was allegedly shared both by archaic reges and republican magistrates, and the evidence for change within Rome’s military hierarchy, with the early republican army being commanded by a succession of different magistrates including the archaic praetores, the so-called ‘consular tribunes,’ and the finally the consuls and praetors of the mid-fourth century BC. The differences between the magistracies and the motivations driving the evolution of the system have caused confusion for both ancient and modern writers alike, with the usual debate being focused on the number of officials involved under each system and Rome’s expanding military and bureaucratic needs. The present study will argue that, far more than just varying in number, when viewed against the wider backdrop of Roman society during the period, the sources hint that the archaic praetores and consular tribunes might have exercised slightly different types of military authority – possibly distinguished by the designations imperium and potestas – which were unified under the office of the consulship of 367 BC.1 The changes in Rome’s military hierarchy during the fifth and fourth centuries BC may therefore not only indicate an expansion of Rome’s military command, as is usually argued, but also an evolution of military authority within Rome associated with the movement of power from the comitia curiata to the comitia centuriata.