003a - The Seven Kings of Rome

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. Last time we finished with the death of Romulus, first and greatest king of Rome. Today we will cover his first three successors, who they were and what roles they played in the evolution of Roman law and society. I call this section the Seven Kings of Rome because common historical nomenclature always refers to the Seven Kings of Rome, so though we will only be talking about three kings, it seemed appropriate to use the phrase as a title, even if it isn't technically accurate. Just remember, there were seven kings of Rome. Oh, by the way, in reality, there were almost certainly more than seven kings of Rome. The idea that seven successive kings could reign for an average of thirty-five years each stretches credulity. Nowhere else in the history of mankind have seven monarchs in a row managed such continuous good luck. The stories handed down to us of Numa and Hostilius and Martius and the Tarquins are no doubt apocryphal, meant to cover the ground between Romulus and the founding of the Republic, while explaining the evolution of the city's culture at the same time. So just remember, even though there weren't really seven kings of Rome, there were seven kings of Rome.

After Romulus died or disappeared, there was a crisis. Who would lead the Romans now that their first and only king was gone? Trouble arose not just from the question of which particular man would reign, but also from the question of what tribe he would be from. The Sabines, who had suffered the sole rule of Romulus in silence, now wished to see one of their own placed upon the throne. The Romans found this idea preposterous, but the Sabines refused all Roman candidates, and the Romans, in turn, refused all Sabine candidates. To avoid a slip into anarchy, it was decided that each senator in succession would reign for a single day until an acceptable man was found to rule. This was the first instance in Roman history of an interregnum, or period between official sovereigns. A compromise was finally proposed that allowed the Romans to choose whomever they wished without Sabine veto as long as the man was a Sabine. The Romans agreed to this and picked a man of universal renown, Numa Pompulius. The Sabines, delighted by the choice, agreed at once, and messengers were sent to Numa to present him with the good news.

To the amazement of everyone, however, Numa refused the offer and it was only after much cajoling that he agreed to take the throne. You see, Numa was a bit of an odd bird. He disdained all luxury and had devoted his life to religious contemplation. He often took long walks alone and it was believed that on these strolls he conversed with the gods. Not that this concerned anyone, quite the opposite, it only enhanced his reputation that the gods spoke to him, but still, not exactly a man you usually find at the head of a growing military power. Numa did not even live in Rome. He resided in a nearby town and was, for the most part, put off by the violence and greed of the city.

This second king of Rome was the opposite of Romulus in almost every way. Where Romulus was brash, Numa was reserved. Where Romulus was a warrior, Numa was a pacifist. Where Romulus sought glory and fame, Numa sought peace and solitude. Overnight he changed the trajectory of Rome's march to greatness. When Numa arrived in Rome, he found a warmongering population of brutes who had known forty years of war, and when he died, he left Rome a population of farmers who had known forty years of peace.

The remarkable transformation was due entirely to Numa's introduction of religion to the city. He turned the people's attention away from the battlefield and towards the heavens. Desiring peace more than anything else, Numa devised complex religious rites to occupy the time of the now demobilized army so they would not grow restless and provoke unnecessary wars. He instilled in the Romans an everlasting fear and awe of the gods, which would last for the remainder of the empire.

Numa is credited with the foundation of the most important religious institutions in Rome. He imported the Vestal Virgins and established the laws governing their watch over the eternal flame. He created the office of Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Rome, who would be responsible for the maintenance of all religious services, and, in an act of remarkable foresight, declined to serve in that role himself, establishing a sovereign religious realm that could not be meddled with by future kings. He believed that later kings would be so caught up in war making that they would neglect their religious duties and bring the wrath of the gods upon the city. The office of Pontifex Maximus would remain an independent authority until the title was claimed for the emperors by Augustus at the dawn of the imperium. At the end of the empire, the title was passed to the popes, who hold it to this day, 2600 years after its inception.

Just as Romulus is the answer to all questions about the founding of the city, Numa is the answer to all questions about the origin of religious practices. Who divided regular days from holy days? Numa. Who created the priesthood of Mars? Numa did. The priesthood of Quirinius? Numa. Who built the altar to Jupiter? Numa, of course. In the development of Roman culture, Numa is second only to Romulus in importance, and to some he was even more important.

Machiavelli writes, And for anyone who considers Roman history carefully, it is clear how much religion helped in the commanding of armies, in inspiring the plebeians, in keeping men good and in making the wicked feel shame. Thus, if one were to debate about the prince to whom Rome owed the most, I think Numa would sooner obtain the first place. For where there is religion, one can easily introduce arms, but where there are arms, but no religion, the former can only be introduced with difficulty.

Perhaps Numa's most famous addition to Rome was the temple of Janus. The gates of the temple were to remain open while Rome was at war, and be closed in times of peace. For the entirety of Numa's reign, the doors stayed shut, but after his passing, they remained open almost continuously. Numa's dream of peace, it would seem, died with him, and his reign would be an anomaly in Roman history.

Of Numa's Rome, Livy writes, Once Rome's neighbors had considered her no more than an armed camp in their midst, threatening the general peace. Now they came to revere her so profoundly as a community dedicated wholly to worship that the mere thought of offering her violence seemed to them like sacrilege.

Numa reigned forty-three years and died in 673 B.C. His successor to the throne, Tullus Hostilius, did his level best to banish forever this image of Rome as a city of docile farmer-priests. Just as Numa was the opposite of Romulus, Tullus was the opposite of Numa. He longed for a return to the martial virtues of Romulus. He believed Numa had left the Romans soft and dangerously unprepared for what Tullus saw as inevitable attack from eternally hostile neighbors. The peace of the previous decades could not hold forever, and if Rome was to live, it had to fight.

With this in mind, Tullus looked around for a clash that would reinvigorate the warrior spirit of his people, and found it in the place of Romulus's birth. A cattle-raiding dispute along the border between Rome and Alba led to mutual recriminations, and for Tullus this was enough of a pretext and war was declared. He even managed to arrange things so that the Romans looked like the aggrieved party who were being dragged against their will into battle. Armies from both sides advanced on one another, but before the order for full-scale engagement was given, Meteus, the leader of the Albans, approached Tullus with an unusual proposal.

There was nothing to be gained, the Albans said, in a bloody struggle between two familial people when the Etruscans sat at both their doorsteps, eagerly awaiting any opportunity to invade. A fight between Alba and Rome would deplete the strength of both Victor and Vanquished, leaving the door wide open for the Etruscans to make them all slaves. Meteus proposed that single combat should decide their quarrel, that way their respective armies could still keep the ambitious Etruscans in check. Tullus agreed reluctantly, seeing the logic of Meteus' argument, that it would not be single combat per se that would decide things. Each army's ranks held three brothers, triplets, who were chosen to fight for the fate of their people.

This fight between the Roman Haradi and the Alban Curiati is an episode, like the Rape of the Sabine Women, that has found its way into countless works of art and literature, most famously in the Oath of the Haradi by Jacques-Louis David, that great lover of antiquity. In front of the opposing armies, the two sets of brothers squared off. The fight was furious, and in quick succession two of the Romans lay dead. Horatius, the remaining brother, knowing he could not take all three of his enemies at once, ran up a nearby hill, forcing the three Curiati to chase him. As the first neared, Horatius turned abruptly and killed him. The second Alban brother arrived too late to help, and Horatius fought and killed him as well. The third Curiati, weary from the chase and from wounds sustained in the earlier fight, was no match at all upon arrival. He fell to his knees, and Horatius did not fight him so much as execute him, plunging his sword down the poor bastard's throat. The Romans cheered their victory, and the Albans, grumbling at Medius's deal, were forced to withdraw and supplicate themselves to Roman rule.

But Medius, aware of how precarious his authority was in the aftermath of this non-defeat to Rome, conspired to release his people from subjugation. He induced Vea, the nearest Etruscan city and, as we will later see, an important early rival of Rome, to attack the Romans. The Albans, Medius said, would be called upon to aid Rome, and he promised that at a decisive moment in the battle, the Albans would desert, leaving the Roman flank unguarded. Vea jumped at the opportunity to crush Rome and attacked immediately.

Just as Medius predicted, Tullus called upon the Albans to join the fight, and the armies gathered to do battle. Just as the fight was about to begin, Medius ordered the Albans to withdraw. The Roman soldiers were shocked to see their ally suddenly leaving, but Tullus, thinking quickly, addressed his troops, telling them that it was his plan for the Albans to sneak around behind the enemy. The Romans, heartened, marched into battle with confidence and defeated the Veites.

Back in camp, however, Tullus ordered the arrest of Medius and had him brought before the Roman troops. Tullus then revealed the treachery of the Alban leader and, to the horror of his men, passed, without trial, a sentence of death by dismemberment. Their leader dead, Tullus then ordered the destruction of Alba Longa itself. He ordered the city destroyed and the citizens relocated to Rome, where they would become Romans, forever wiping Alba from the map.

Tullus ran thirty-two years and died in 642 BC. The return to arms was his lasting legacy and the incorporation of the Albans was his most important contribution to the growth of the city. Henceforth, Rome's neighbors returned to their view of the city as little more than an armed camp and worked tirelessly to defeat the Roman menace. Never again would Rome enjoy an extended period of uninterrupted peace, despite the efforts made by Tullus's successor, Ancus Martius, the grandson of Numa, to bring the population back to his grandfather's vision of peace.

Less is known, or told, about Ancus than any of his predecessors, but we do know that he attempted to follow in the footsteps of his grandfathers, but with far less success. Events conspired to force war upon him and, despite his natural proclivities, he accepted his fate and led the Romans into battle. A confederation of Latin communities who chafed under Roman dominance took Ancus's succession as the perfect opportunity to attack, believing they had another Numa on their hands who would be an easy mark, but Ancus accepted the challenge and the Roman forces, battle-tested by their years under Tullus, routed each in turn. The defeated inhabitants were forced, like the Albans, to abandon their homes and settle in Rome, while Romans were sent to settle the vacated towns. Through this policy, the population of the city swelled and the surrounding countryside was filled with subjects loyal to Rome.

At the outset of the fight with the Latins, Ancus made his most important contribution to Roman society. Dissatisfied with the haphazard way war began between Rome and her enemies, he decided to inject a sacred ritual, introducing something of Numa into the barbarism of armed conflict. A specific formula was proscribed as to how exactly the Romans would declare war on an enemy. Too tedious to spell out here, but it involved sending envoys into enemy territory, announcing the war to the first man met in an official pronouncement, making more official declarations at appointed times, waiting 33 days, and finally throwing a spear into enemy territory, signaling the beginning of hostilities. The entire process may seem a bit overwrought, but it demonstrates the Roman desire to infuse all aspects of life with the rule of law, even if the end result was savage bloodshed.

After the campaign against the Latins, Ancus won an important victory against the Veites, gaining control of the Macean forests and extending Roman territory all the way to the The consequences of this event cannot be overstated. Through Ostia, the port town founded by Ancus at the mouth of the Tiber, all initial Roman forays into the Mediterranean were launched and received.

Ancus reigned 24 years and died in 617 BC. At his death, Rome found itself immeasurably strengthened by the addition of countless new citizens, a neighborhood free of enemies, and a port to call its very own. We will leave the story here and pick up next time with the final three kings, the Tarquin dynasty, the last of which would show himself to be such a tyrant that the very idea of monarchy would be hateful to Romans forever after, even forcing the emperors to semantically cloak their activities so as not to be accused of monarchism.

As I said earlier, the lives of these kings are apocryphal biographies designed to explain the origin and development of Rome to later Romans. What is mostly being fleshed out in the story of these first kings is the relationship between the two most important pillars of Roman society, war and religion. The warlike Romulus is followed by the religious Numa, who is followed by the warlike Tullus, until finally the two pillars are joined in Ancus, the religious king who is dragged into battle by fate. This interplay is instructive and offers a neat encapsulization of their character. The Romans are a warlike people, tempered by religion, not a religious people forged into warriors. Ultimately, it is war, not prayer, that defines the Romans.

Imagine if it had been the opposite, a people founded by a religious pacifist and succeeded by a warrior who was then succeeded by a pacifist who was then succeeded by a warrior dragged by fate into a religious life. It paints a very different picture. The Romans are fighters through and through, though Machiavelli's point is well taken. Without religious tempering, it is doubtful the Romans could have sustained a republic based upon the rule of law and would have remained an unremarkable tribe of violent barbarians.

To sum up, the Romans were soldiers who took oaths seriously, not priests who took swordsmanship seriously. Join me next time as we discuss the last days of the Roman monarchy and what was so bad about Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, that led the city to transform itself into a republic that lasted for 500 years.