29 See Wiseman 1995, 160–8 for the evidence.
30 See pp. 121–4 on Romulus, Numa and Servius Tullius. Note Flor. 1.8.
31 See p. 99, n. 50 for the evidence and arguments that Lars Porsenna, the king of Clusium, may have been responsible for ending Tarquinius Superbus’ reign.
32 See Richardson 2012, 17–55; the bibliography on the role of the past in Roman society is considerable; see for instance Gallia 2012; Galinksy 2014; Roller 2018, all with various references to further work.
33 Polyb. 1.14, 1.15.12, cf. also 3.8–3.9.5.
34 Polyb. 1.15.1–11.
35 Polyb. 3.21.9–26.7.
36 As Ridley 2017, 50 says, ‘History is not reconstructed by simply choosing the source which suits you.’
37 See Cristofani 1990, 58–9.
38 Hence the various etymologies for, and uncertainties about, their names (Cic. Rep. 2.14; Varro Ling. 5.55; Livy 1.13.8; Plut. Rom. 20.1; Ps.-Asc. in Cic. Verr. 2.1.14; Paul. Fest. 106L, etc.), and the alternative view that they were equestrian centuries (see, in particular, Livy 1.13.8; De vir. ill. 2.11; Fugmann 1990, 135–8); on their names, see Rix 2006. But the Romulean tribes may not have actually ever even existed as such, see Bormann 1893 and the comprehensive discussion in Poucet 1967, 333–410.
39 Cf. Vaahtera 1993 for the clashing of weapons as a means to signal approval; Richardson 2019, 286–7.
40 Cornell 1995, 114. And hence Carandini (see n. 28). The basic point was made long ago, see Thuc. 1.10.2 (although his concern is power).
CHAPTER 1 The People and the State in Early Rome
I
Countries and states – that is, sovereign states under a single government – are today by and large synonymous, and they are also both generally taken for granted. This is still the case, even though the country, which is a relatively recent invention, is arguably starting to look out of date in some respects (think, for instance, of the exploitation by multinational companies of workers in countries with a low, or no legal minimum wage; think too of the moving of profits offshore, and of tax havens and what their use means; or, for a positive example, think of the European Union). In antiquity, there were no countries. The main political structure in the Classical world, or at least the one that is the most prevalent in modern discussion and in the modern imagination more generally, was the individual city-state. The most famous of those are of course Athens, Sparta and Rome, although there were a great many others. Each of these cities was a state in its own right, with its own laws and customs, its own citizen populace, its own territory and so on.
When it comes to the question of how cities came into existence, the Romans had really quite specific ideas, and since, in antiquity, cities were usually city-states, these Roman ideas were as much concerned with the establishment of states as they were with the actual cities themselves. First of all, cities were usually founded at a precise moment in time and usually by one individual, or so the Romans believed (and they were not alone in ←21 | 22→this). In the case of Rome, that individual was Romulus, and the moment in time was 21 April 753 bc.1
In order to found his city (and founders were usually, although not always, men), the founder needed to perform a variety of rituals, the precise details of which differ somewhat from account to account. What appears to have been the most important of these rituals required the founder to plough a ditch around the site where the city was to be built, using a pair of oxen, one male and one female, and – at least, according to some – a plough fitted with a bronze ploughshare.2 Since this ditch supposedly marked out the location of the walls of the city (and – again, according to some – it also marked out the city’s sacred boundary, the pomerium), the founder had to lift the ploughshare out of the ground wherever he wanted to have a gate in the city wall, and carry it over to where the wall was to begin again. This idea led to the questionable derivation of the word for a gate, porta, from the verb to carry, portare.3
According to M. Terentius Varro, who was writing in the first century bc, this ploughing ritual was, it would seem, absolutely fundamental to a city being a city. Varro’s argument, however, is scarcely persuasive. He ←22 | 23→supposed that cities (urbes) are so-called after the circle (orbis) formed by the furrow that the founder ploughed around the site of his city, and after the urvum, the curved part (the plough-beam) of the plough that he used to make this furrow.4
What this particular ritual presupposes, obviously enough, is a very clear idea from the outset, not only of where the city itself should be built and where its boundaries should be (and consequently how big it would be), but also where the gates, and so also the roads that went through them, should be located. All this requires a considerable amount of planning, as well as some awareness of the wider geographical, political and even economic landscape.5 More than that, it also requires a certain manner of thinking and a certain type of knowledge, that is, the sort of thinking and knowledge which can readily be expected of an urban dweller, but which are less easily expected of someone used only to life in some sort of pre-urban settlement, and which are hardly to be expected at all of someone who does not even lead a sedentary life.
After his furrow had been ploughed, the founder – since he was founding a city-state – would usually draw up a law-code, create a senate, perhaps establish a political assembly of some kind, create a citizen populace, enrol an army and so on.6 In the case of Rome, various developments of a constitutional nature took place during the course of the regal period and during republican times too, but the Roman state itself nonetheless clearly started with Romulus.7 Indeed, some ancient writers took for granted the ←23 | 24→existence of citizenship, elections and even magistracies during Romulus’ reign.8 Once again, all this presupposes a significant amount of planning, as well as the existence of a range of sometimes fully developed social and political ideas, including of course the very idea of a state and, along with it, the idea of citizenship.
If these Roman ideas about the formation of city-states are assessed in the context of much later times and of the founding by the Romans of something like an autonomous colony, there are no significant difficulties with them. But if they are