Res Publica: A Quest of Ancient Rome

Before the empire or the Republic, there was Rome, a city on the banks of the Tiber ruled by the descendants of Mars himself. The myth of the founding of Rome is the core of Roman society, religion, warfare, and culture, and the tales of their ancient city are taught to every man, woman, and child. The tales of the founding of Rome are shrouded in mystery and legend, history so old that it was myth even in ancient times. This the story of the Founding of Rome, and the Seven Kings which followed after.

The tale of Rome, according to the Romans, begins in the hoary days of myth, when the Greeks of yore warred with the city of Troy, called Illum in ancient times. As is told in the Illiad, Troy fell at long last before the heroes of Hellas, and it's people were scattered to the wind. Greatest of these exiles, the Romans hold, was Aeneas, a prince of Troy and a son of the goddess Aphrodite, Venus to the Romans. He fled to Italy to escape the wrath of the vengeful Greeks, and there his descendants, the Aeneids, came to found a mighty city called Alba Longa in the heartlands of Italy.

However true this mythological connection to the ancient foes of the Greeks may be, it is true that in ancient times there stood a city called Alba Longa that in it's time was the mightiest of the cities of the Latin League, which controlled all the interior of Italy. The myths of Rome say that it came to pass that there ruled in Alba Longa on the throne of Aventine a king of the Sylvian dynasty named Numitor. Numitor, though fair and just, had a brother called Amulius, who desired his throne. Gathering those loyal to him, Amulius overthrew Numitor in vile treachery, and slew Numitor's son that his line might never rise again. His daughter, Rhea Silvia, he forced into servitude as one of the Vestal Virgins -- she would be sworn forever to the goddess, and bear no children to threaten his rule.

And yet, scarcely a year into Amulius' rule, news came to him that his niece was with child. The weeping Virgin claimed that she had been visited by Mars himself, the red-handed god of war, and he had lain with her. The children in her womb were of no mortal seed, but the heirs of a god. Legend holds that the cruel king ordered Rhea slain, and her children, twin boys, flung into the raging river Tiber. If they were truly the sons of a god, he snarled, their father would protect them.

And protect them he did, for the gods of the river Tiber calmed their mighty waves and instead washed the wailing twins ashore at the foot of a great hill. There, the oldest myths of the City claim, a great wolf found them, and, having no cubs of her own, gave them suckle from her own breasts, sheltering them in the cave known now as the Lupercal. Born of a god and nursed on the milk of wolves, the boys grew tall and hale and strong, and over the years gathered to them a mighty following of men. These boys were called Romulus and Remus, and on their blood hung the destiny of the world.

In time, the boys, men now, learned of their heritage and their true destinies. Together with their followers, they marched to Alba Longa and slew the tyrant king Amulius and his followers, ending his dynasty and reinstalling their grandfather on the throne of Alba Longa. They then gathered all men of strength and worth who would follow them, and left to found a mighty city. The greatest gens of Rome, among them the Quintici and the Julii, trace their beginning to this ancient exodus with Romulus and Remus.

What happened after is unclear in the myths. The twins came with their followers to the hills where they had been reared as children, and found there signs and portents signifying that they should found a city here, and name it by their name. A struggle erupted then between the twins -- some say over the city's walls, or over it's precise location, or even it's name -- but when it was over, Remus, the more thoughtful and clever of the two, most like their mother, lay dead. Romulus, who took in image and spirit after his warlike father, lived, and founded on those seven hills a city that would come to master all cities: Rome. Romulus, it's founder, was unanimously acclaimed by his people as the first King of Rome.

Many of Rome's oldest and greatest institutions descend from it's first king, or so it is claimed. Romulus divided the city into three tribes, and selected a hundred wise men of prominent families from each of the tribes. These men were called the patres, or the Fathers, and their descendants were called the patricians. The patricians formed a great body which would advise Romulus in peace and in war, guiding his hand and relating to him the will of the people -- the Senate of Rome.

It is said Rome's legacy of infamy began young. Romulus' new city had many men and soldiers, but few women. The cities around them feared the warlike Romans, and would not enter into marriage pacts with them. To fix this, Romulus called a great autumn festival and invited all the neighboring cities. The people who came in greatest numbers were the Sabines, a neighboring people from the hills of Italia. At a pre-arranged point during the festival, the Roman men drew arms, abducted as many of the Sabine women as they could, and fled back to Rome. This event, immortalized in history as the Rape of the Sabine Women, was the inciting event for Rome's first war, the Sabine War. It was a bloody and protracted affair that only ended, the stories say, when the Sabine women threw themselves between their new husbands and their fathers and pleaded for an end to the strife. The Sabines and the Romans made peace -- the Sabines settled on the Capitoline Hill of Rome, and their King Titius became co-king with Romulus.

Legend says that after nearly forty years of long, prosperous rule over his new people, the King Romulus vanished in a storm while giving a speech to his troops on the Campus Martius. No corpse was ever found, and the priests hold that the gods themselves had taken him and made him a god -- Quirinus, the god of Rome herself and the eternal protector of the eternal city. The people and the Senate elected from among them a new king, a Sabine named Numa. Numa, called also Pompilius, was a fair and just king, given to worship of the gods and fervent faith. He established a great peace between Rome and all her natural foes, and built many mighty temples in Rome. It was Numa who created the office of the Pontifex Maximus, and the colleges of the priests which ruled faith in Rome even into Atellus' time.

Numa reigned forty-three years, and after his death came Tullus Hostilius, the opposite of his predecessor in every way. His ancestors had followed Romulus from Alba Longa, and he was a warlike and brutal man. He waged war upon many of Rome's foes, including the city of Alba Longa. He defeated the mother-city of Rome and razed it to the ground, forcing it's people into servitude. This murderous act against his own forebears, coupled with his lack of love for the gods and disrespect for the traditions of Rome, angered Jupiter himself. It is said that prophecy and plague hounded his last days, that nothing grew in Roman fields, and fathers slew sons -- and yet Tullus did not repent. Finally, a bolt of lightning from the heavens struck Tullus' palace, slaying the king and all his sons. The King of Rome, slain by the king of the gods.

Numa's grandson, Ancus Marcius, followed him as king, and was the last of the Sabine kings of Rome. Ancus was a godly king like his forefather, and mended the ties that Tullus had broken. New temples were raised, the Tiber was bridged, and the King founded many great public works, such as Rome's first baths, her first saltworks, and her first aqueduct. Seeing well the prosperity and might of Rome under her king, many of the city-states that had so violently resisted Tullus' expansionism came over to Rome willingly. Once these city-states, collectively known as the Latins, had surrendered themselves to Rome and become Roman citizens, Ancus settled them at the foot of the Aventine Hill. Their descendants would become the plebians, while the descendants of the initial diaspora from Alba Longa would become the patricians, the fathers of the city.

Ancus had a son-in-law, an Etruscan called Lucius Tarquinius Priscus who hailed from the north of Italy. The Romans called him Tarquin, and after Ancus' death in his sleep, they elected him king. He took the throne in place of Ancus' natural sons, who had been hunting when their father died, and could not submit themselves for the crown. In his time, Tarquin made war with the last of the free Latins and with the Sabine tribes, cousins of those who had come over to Rome all those years ago. Both the Latins and the Sabines were defeated in their turn, and their bested peoples were settled upon the Aventine Hill. Tarquin's greatest war, however, was against his native people, the Etruscans, from whom he took wealth and women in great measure. The women, he settled on the Caelian Hill, and the wealth he used to celebrate Rome's first triumph. Tarquin was a warrior and a conqueror, the best since Romulus, and much of Rome's military traditions spring from him, including the tradition of the triumph and the military regalia worn by generals.

Tarquin was murdered after some thirty-eight years of rule by the sons of Ancus Marcius, the very same from whom he had stolen the crown. Yet the conspirators would never taste of their victory -- Tarquin's son-in-law, Servius Tullius, seized the Roman throne in the aftermath of his death and declared himself King without the acclamation of the Senate, but instead the support of the people.

Like his father-in-law, the second of the Tarquins was a warrior and a conqueror, laying waste to many Etruscan armies and taking their cities and their people for the glory of Rome. In his day, Rome swelled with the wealth of Italia, and the city grew sprawling and wide, so Servius had a mighty wall built to mark the borders of the city proper. This wall became the pomerium, the point at which no soldier could enter Rome armed. Tullius extended the voting rights to the descendants of the Latins and the Sabines who lived in the slums at the foot of the hills, called the commoners or the plebs. His Servian reforms were immensely popular, and were credited with establishing Rome's first system of coinage.

Servius Tullius, though well-loved by the common folk, was murdered by the son of Tarquin, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, called Tarquin the Proud. Loved by neither the people or the Senate, he seized the throne on claim of blood alone, claiming to have slain Servius for disgracing Roman tradition and extending the vote to the poor and the un-Roman. Tarquin and his wife brutalized the corpse of the slain king in the streets of Rome and instituted a tyranny, a rule-by-one.

Those senators who had supported Servius were taken and killed, and during Tarquin's reign, the power of the Senate was greatly reduced. The king was the first and only vote on all matters of importance. Tarquin was the first to press the remaining cities of the Latins into vassalage -- they would not be Roman or vote as Romans did, but they would give coin and men to Rome in exchange for her protection. City after city fell before the proud king of Rome, and he celebrated many triumphs. To please the gods for his murder of Servius, he built the mighty temple of Jupiter Maximus atop the Capitoline Hill, above the graves of the past kings of Rome. His bones would not lie with theirs, for he was to be the last of the Tarquins -- and the last of the kings.

The fall of the kings of Rome begins not with proud Tarquin, but with his son, Tarquinius Sextus, a cruel and violent man. Sextus, it is said, desired his cousin Colliatinus' wife, Lucretia. He came to her in the night and lay with her by force, threatening her life should she repeat the tale. In horror and fear, she revealed the tale to her husband, who, together with his father-in-law Lucretius and his friend Lucius Junius Brutus, swore an oath on all the gods to drive the murderous king and his sons from Rome.

Brutus, head of the king's own guard, gathered an assembly of the people and related to them the crimes of the Tarquin dynasty: rape, usurpation, murder, vanity, impiety, and tyranny. Better to have no kings in Rome, than to have kings such as these. His violent words swayed the people and the Senate, who turned against the King and his family. The Tarquins were expelled from Rome, and Brutus, the first consul, rallied an army to defend against the overthrown king, who himself rallied an army of Etruscans and Latins to take back his throne. At the head of this army was Lars Porsena, the king of the powerful Etruscan city of Clusium and the mightiest man in Italy.

The legendary defense of Rome which followed is immortalized in history, and gave rise to the bravest names of the Republican era, including Brutus, who fell in battle against his cousin Arruns Tarquinius and was lionized in death. Greatest of these was Gaius Mucius Scaevola, one of three hundred men of Rome sent to assassinate Lars Porsena and save the city. He was captured in his attempt, and when brought before the Etruscan king and questioned on why he would risk his life so, thrust his left hand into a burning brazier and held it there, to show that his body and life were nothing before his love for Rome. Scaevola became a hero of Rome, and his descendants were forever honored to bear the name Scaevola, 'left-handed'.

The armies of Lars Porsena were turned back, and though Tarquin and his sons would try twice more to claim the city on the banks of the Tiber, the age of the kings in Rome was done. Now was come the time of the Senate and the People of Rome, the time of a city ruled by no one man, but by all the people working in concert for greater good. So was born the res publica -- the "public thing". In time, the days of the seven kings on the seven hills would pass into history and then into legend and further on into myth. In this distant mythical era were born all the oldest institutions of Rome, her divisions, her classes, her magistracies, and her founding principles.

There were kings in Rome once.

May there never be again.