Kings and Consuls. James Richardson

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