022: Children of Mars - The Roman Kingdom & Early Republic (753 - 390 BC)

And welcome to the history of... Hi there. You're listening to The Hellenistic Age Podcast, Episode 22, Children of Mars, The Roman Kingdom and Early Republic, 753-390 BC. Before we begin, I feel that I must admit something to you all. Despite producing a show called The Hellenistic Age Podcast, which focuses on the realms like the Seleucid Empire, the Bactrians, the Macedonians, and the like, my favorite topic of history to study about remains ancient Rome. I remember being transfixed as a kid by Ridley Scott's Gladiator, and I pored over countless books in the school library about the Colosseum, Pompeii, Roman warfare, and so on and so forth. As I've gotten older, I have expanded my palate to love and appreciate other aspects of history, especially the Hellenistic Age. Still, I remain a Roman fanboy at heart. But despite my love, there is a reason to focus on setting up the Romans across a couple of episodes. In my opinion, the Romans are perhaps the greatest inheritors of the Hellenistic world. Let me expound upon that. The Romans differed from the founded kingdoms in the wake of Alexander's conquests. Unlike the Seleucids and Ptolemies, they had no direct cultural or political links back to Greece. Ironically, they'd be viewed as barbarians by the Greeks, while the Romans themselves thought of the Greeks and Hellenistic powers as decadent Easterners. Yet, while the Romans would slowly absorb and conquer many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in a process of Romanization, they themselves would become culturally indebted to the Greek and Hellenistic intellectual and literary traditions, and thus thoroughly Hellenized themselves. Therefore, it is important that we look at the lead-up to Rome's introduction onto the stage of the Hellenistic world, via the invasion of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 280 BC. As from then on, the Romans would grow from a backwater to the premier power of the Mediterranean, and wreak havoc amongst their larger neighbors. Join me, as we begin the first of a two-part series on the rise of the Roman Republic. The origins of what would become the most powerful empire of the classical world are shrouded in mystery. It is unfortunate that we are at the mercy of authors who wrote their works in the age of Augustus Caesar, around the turn of the first century BC, given that it is their works that survive in the present, and yet, they don't survive completely. The most prominent of these authors would be the Roman Titus Livius, known to us as Livy. Livy managed to pen an enormous body of history, entitled Av Urbe Condita Libri, or From the Foundation of the City, allegedly numbering some 142 volumes. Tragically, we are missing roughly 75% of his work, but of all the complete and surviving volumes we have, books 1 through 10 cover the origins of Rome from Romulus and Remus down to the end of the Third Samnite War, ending just before the arrival of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 280. Livy, while having an undeniable talent for narrative flair, has often been questioned in regards to his accuracy and interpretation, especially in comparison to the other great historian of Republican Rome, Polybius. Livy relied heavily on the works composed by prior Roman historians, who can be classified as belonging to the annulus tradition, which is best understood as the recording of a year's events and deeds, often tying in omens and religious revelations. It's more a list of events, often selectively chosen and remembered, rather than a more nuanced understanding of cause and effect, the emphasis on the various motives besides the divine, etc. Many scholars tend to pooh-pooh whatever Livy wrote on the kingdom in early Republic, as being mythological fluff and propagandistic. But while there is a truth in being skeptical of what Livy provides us, it cannot be denied that his work is extremely valuable in piecing together the fragmented history of early Rome. Livy, in his own admission, notes the monumental task of trying to write a history of Rome up to his time, fully admitting that he is faced with sketchy evidence at best, thanks largely to the destruction of all city records from 390 BC and before. This is from the T.J. Luce translation of Livy's works, quote, Events before the city was founded or planned, which have been handed down more as pleasing poetic fictions than as reliable records of historical events, I intend neither to affirm nor refute. To antiquity, we grant the indulgence of making the origins of cities more impressive by commingling the human with the divine. End quote. Livy continues on further about his ultimate ends in making his history, quote, Yet I attach no great importance to how these and similar traditions will be criticized or valued. My wish is that each reader pay closest attention to the following, how men lived, what moral principles were, under what leaders and by what measures at home and abroad our empire was won and extended. End quote. Livy clearly is writing from the perspective of the troubling times of the transformation of the late republic to early empire, and thus we get a large amount of anachronistic issues being placed several hundred years before they actually begin to occur. Despite the obvious problems, Livy is a complete treat to read. I went through the complete surviving works last summer, and I highly recommend anyone remotely interested to do the same. I personally recommend the Oxford World Classics edition, which also contains the Perioiki and excellent footnotes and essays. The other historians of the period include Dionysos of Halicarnassus, a Greek author of the first century BC. He penned the Roman Antiquities, designed primarily for Greek audiences to explain why the world came to be ruled by Rome, much in the vein of his predecessor Polybius. The value of Dionysos is his ability to include alternative accounts and information that Livy would have left out for a Roman audience who obviously would know such things. He's not as fun to read as Livy is, but he still is important. There are a number of others, including authors like Marcus Trentius Varro, Diodorus Siculus, and others, but for simplicity's sake I am going to rely mainly on the accounts of Livy for the standard narrative tradition. The traditional story traces all the way back to the climax of the Trojan War. Upon the city's destruction by the forces of Agamemnon, the Trojan hero Aeneas, the eponymous star of Virgil's epic The Aeneid, manages to escape with the aid of the gods, and through a series of adventures and misadventures, he finally manages to lead his family and the surviving Trojans to the Italian peninsula, whereupon he settles in Latinium. In the centuries following, the descendants of Aeneas would rule as kings in Latinium. King Numitor, ruler of Alba Longa, was ran out of the city by a treacherous younger brother, Amulius, in a bid for power. The daughter of Numitor, Rhea Silvia, was made a Vestal Virgin, condemning her to life of chastity lest any children would be born to challenge Amulius' legitimacy. Yet, in a short time afterwards, she was to give birth to a set of twins, Romulus and Remus. Whispers told of their divine parentage, formed between the union Mars, the Roman god of war, and Rhea Silvia. While Livy muses the grim possibility that the children were the product of a ravaging of Rhea Silvia by an unknown assailant, and that a tale of divine origin might cover the shame of such an attack. In either case, Amulius was not happy by this turn of events, and ordered the children to be killed by a servant, who, in his pity, decided to send the babies adrift in the basket along the Tiber River, hoping that someone would find the twins. Well, I mean, that doesn't really sound very sympathetic. I mean, you could just not throw them down the river, but anyways. Fate decreed that the twins would be delivered from harm's way upon the riverbank, some miles away, and found by a she-wolf, who nursed the children as if they were her own pups. In time, Romulus and Remus would be found and raised by a shepherd. But, when you have the blood of kings and gods running through your veins, it's hard not to appear as anything but special when it comes to warfare, athletics, and pure, unrivaled manliness. The pair naturally began to attract a band of followers, and it didn't take long before they got involved in a scuffle with some of the local rulers and lords of Latinium. The twins came in contact with their grandfather, Numidor, who managed to deduce their identity by their sheer manly virtues. Romulus and Remus then led a charge against Alba Longa, slaying Amulius, and restored their grandfather to the throne. Despite their resistance to Numidor, the twins' more kingly side yearned for a realm to call their own. Heading outside of Alba Longa, Romulus and Remus managed to find a cozy little spot alongside the Tiber River, nestled among the seven hills. Romulus thought that the Palatine Hill was the ideal spot to found the city, while Remus disagreed, believing that the Aventine was clearly the superior location. To settle things, the brothers decided to conduct a religious ceremony, an augury, to read the Flight of Birds. Above Remus' spot, six vultures were spotted, but above Romulus' were twelve. Now, Romulus is alleged to have lied about the twelve, or managed to supply hidden birds to give himself an advantage and cheat, which Remus found out about and wasn't very happy. In an effort to mock Romulus, Remus proceeded to leap over his brother's new walls to show how useless they were. Perhaps taking things a bit too far, Romulus then plunged his spear into Remus, claiming, so it is with anyone who leaps over my walls. Thus, the city, named Rome after her founder, would be inaugurated with the blood of Fratricide. According to Varro, the foundation of the city would be in the year 753 B.C. So that's what the legend tells us of the lead up to Rome's origin, and it almost certainly is a legend. The origins of what would be called Rome are certainly less fantastical than the story of Romulus and Remus, so let us give a picture of the general outlay of Italy in the early regal period. The Italian peninsula is as diverse as the number of peoples that lived in it. The land is split up into roughly two parts, the northern plain Alpine region where the fertile Po Valley lies, the site of modern Lombardy and Piedmont. The southern bulk of the peninsula is bisected by the Apennine Mountains, making much of central and southern Italy hilly and pockmarked. While it has been populated by humans for tens of thousands of years, the first burgeoning signs of something resembling Italian civilization would occur in the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1200 to 1000 B.C., with the arrival of an ancient culture known as the Proto-Villanovans. These were the predecessors of the Italian peoples, an Indo-European culture sharing the same linguistic ancestry as the Celtic and Greek languages. This would give rise to a number of populations. Of particular interest would be the Latins, which would originate in Lazio, an area equating approximately 1800 square miles. The famed Seven Hills of Rome would first be occupied by a small number of wattle and dog houses, probably located on the Palatine Hill close to the Tiber River, which would be an excellent source of fresh water and act as a connector to the sea, also forming a commercial highway. The organizational complexity was probably nothing to speak of, with a head honcho acting as a chieftain who would organize raiding parties and defense against other raiders. Their other Latin-speaking neighbors, such as the settlements of Tibur and Tosculum, were probably quite similar, in contrast to the Etruscans stationed in the city of Veii to the north, and the more barbaric eastern cousins like the Volsci or Ernici. While the early progenitors of Rome and the surrounding area of Latium were beginning to gestate, there were a collection of other peoples that were also making their mark on the Italian peninsula. The most important of these would be the Etruscans, or, in their own language, Racena, a mysterious people who resided in the region of Etruria in modern Tuscany. Their origins have long been a source of debate, muddled by the claims of the ancient authors. Dionysius claims that they are native Italian peoples, but Herodotus, referring to them as the Terrenians, claims that they are from Lydia in Asia Minor. Their language is completely unique and unrelated to the linguistic families of the Latins and Italic-speaking tribes, leading some to postulate that they were of a non-Indo-European descent. Genetic testing is also inconclusive, though evidence suggests that they may indeed be of a Near Eastern or Anatolian origin, as Herodotus argues. Regardless of their background, they played an enormous role in the Italian political landscape from the 8th century down to the 4th century B.C. Though, as a people, they managed to survive long enough for the Emperor Claudius to write a lexicon of the Etruscan language and history in the 1st century A.D., which has sadly been lost. The Etruscans were a highly sophisticated society, heavily urbanized, with excellent artists and craftsmen, extensively influenced by the Greeks of the southern peninsula, in addition to the Phoenicians of the Levant and Carthage. The impact of the Etruscans on the cultural, political, and linguistic landscape on the early Romans is unquestionable. Practices such as gladiatorial combat, the borrowing of the Etruscan alphabet for Latin writing, religious beliefs, and the adoption of hoplite warfare are just some of the concrete examples that can be pointed to. The other important residents include the Greeks of Magna Graecia, literally translated as Great Greeks. These were the descendants of traders and colonists sent out by their mother cities of the Greek peninsula into southern Italy during the period of Archaic Greece and the Dark Ages. For instance, the city of Taras, known as Tarentum to the Romans and modern Tarento to us, was colonized by Spartan exiles in 706 B.C. The most successful of these was Syracuse, founded in 734 by Corinthian colonists, which would become the economic powerhouse of the region and later home to the famous tyrants who ruled there. The wealth of the region, in addition to excellent farmland, would attract the Romans' interest upon their unification of central Italy in the 4th century. Meanwhile, the Greeks managed to introduce several ideas into the peninsula, most notably planned cities, which would become a staple of Roman city development for the rest of her existence. For now, they mostly interacted with the Latins in the form of trade, providing ceramics and wine in exchange for slaves and other goods. With the landscape of Italy during the regal period covered, let us turn back to the overall narrative. According to tradition, the foundation of Rome by Romulus instituted a series of seven kings that would last from 753 to 509 B.C. Beginning with Romulus, then Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Triscus, Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus would all assume the throne. Each king seemed to provide some sort of purpose to explain how the formation of the Roman state came to be. Romulus established the senate, the military system, and the separation of the patrician and plebeian orders. While Numa Pompilius established the religious institutions, such as the Pontifex Maximus and the Vestal Virgins. Some of the kings feel like they fill an unexplainable gap in chronology, such as Ancus Marcius. If we also look at the lengths of their reigns, they surely are quite impressive. No king ruled for less than 24 years, and most ruled well above 30 to 35 years, almost unheard of in any ancient monarchical system. The question comes down to how much fabrication came into this list of kings. Nuggets of truth certainly exist as we come closer and closer to the republic, but Romulus is certainly a mythological figure. Much of his story has the same themes and tropes that can be found in many other tales. The abandoned royal baby of divine birth, found and raised by a kind shepherd, but his kingly characteristics lead him to rise up and claim his birthright. The same story outline is almost verbatim the tale that Herodotus paints of Cyrus the Great of the Persian Empire, or the Athenian hero Theseus. Yet the later kings are probably based upon real ruling figures that the Roman historians had a difficult time writing the narrative of their reigns. And some scholars have attempted to mitigate this huge gap of time by moving the establishment of the kingdom down to instead 650 BC, reducing the kingship to only 140 years but giving a more realistic length of each of the kings' reigns, an average of 20 years at most, which is still very generous considering the type of landscape of the ancient world. In the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, a tyrant in every sense of the word, this would spell the end of the regal period. The tradition claims that the birth of the republic was due to the abuses of Tarquinius upon the populace, culminating in the sexual assault of the virtuous Roman woman Lucretia and her resulting suicide prompting the heroic Lucius Junius Brutus to instigate rebellion, and upon the flight of Tarquinius in 509 BC, the Roman Republic would officially be established. This story is itself rife with certain literary devices, some that will repeat itself again in the later Roman history of Livy. For instance, the virtuous woman ravaged by a tyrant or a relative of a tyrant out of jealousy and her resulting death or suicide, appears in the story of the Roman Virginia in the 4th century and earlier in the tales of the Spartan king Pausanias' abuse of the young women in the 5th century BC. This is not to say that it was fundamentally wrong, since it's not hard to believe that abusive rulers can incur the wrath of their subjects, but it makes it difficult to figure out how the fall of the kingdom actually took place. Tarquinius Superbus apparently fled to the Latin communities of Tyrrhenian Rome, and being of Etruscan descent, he appealed to a distant relative, the Etruscan king of Plutium, Lars Porsena. Theoretically, Lars was supposed to have attempted to conquer Rome to restore Tarquinius to the throne, and was defeated through the might of Roman virtue and arms. However, some scholars believe that Lars actually might have subjugated Rome, and the tales of Horatius Cocles at the bridge, and Mucius Scevola's attempted assassination of Lars, are just patriotic attempts to cover up the shame of a military defeat at Etruscan hands. Now that the threat of Lars Porsena had passed, the Romans formally had declared themselves a newly freed peoples. The rule of law was now no longer based upon kingship, but instead, they had established a republic. The term republic is derived from the Latin res publica. Res publica translates to something along the lines of public affairs, or things involving the public. This term is a bit deceptive, since it's very generic, and some scholars have attempted to draw a more accurate interpretation as something akin to a commonwealth, whereby the participants of a society elect members to govern. Similar to the majority of the Greek city-states, the politically active body of the population would be adult males, known as citizens. Like the Greeks, the Roman notion of citizenship was largely based upon the notion of military service. All male citizens were required to serve in the Roman army, and were thus allowed to take part in matters regarding the state when it came to declarations of war and other policies. The main difference between the Greeks and Romans is that while the Greeks saw citizenship as a matter of birth, an exclusive club, and rarely given out, the Romans saw citizenship as a legal definition granting political rights to its owner. They were more flexible and generous at doling out citizenship, offering it as a reward to allied nations for their services to the Roman state, and thereby encouraging loyalty and accelerating the process of quote-unquote Romanization. The magisterial body, those who would actually be elected to office to represent their constituency, would largely be comprised of wealthier citizens and or from the politician class, mainly because they were able to foot the bill on the matter of running for office. The path of the aspiring Roman politician, known as the cursus honorum, was a sequence of offices that theoretically dictated the natural progression of your career. To start with, you would serve in the army in some capacity for approximately 10 years, usually as an officer known as a military tribune, from roughly 20 to 30 years old. From then on, you would enter public office, starting out as a quaestor, an official who dealt with the finances of the state, though most saw it as an opportunity to enroll themselves into the Senate. From there, you could move in a number of directions, such as taking a detour as an aedile, which would manage the public works of the city, your sewers, aqueducts and roads, and the festivals and games. Or you could move directly up to praetor, which was essentially a consul in training, serving as a judge or as an assistant commander in the army. The most prestigious elected position in the Republic would be the consulship, an office manned by two officials, the consuls, who would serve a year-long term after being elected by a body of representatives, the comitia centuriata. Since the consuls were in pairs, they could check one another using the power of veto to prevent abuses of their position. The consuls were marked for their power, known to the Romans as imperium, or right to rule, represented by the fascis, a bundle of rods containing an axe to symbolize the power of life and death and punishment over their subordinates. The fascis still remain a powerful image in the modern era, even if you may not recognize it. My American listeners need not look further than the arms of the chair that the Lincoln monument in Washington D.C. is seated upon to get an obvious example. They also were in the command of the armies, the ultimate judge in legal disputes, and even had religious duties to ensure the sanctity of the state was being upheld by the priests and sacrifices. This was not a position to be taken lightly and with inexperience, since you had to be at least 42 years of age to be even considered. It would also be the watermark of your political career as a Roman official, and for some time it was restricted only to the patrician class until 337 B.C., but even afterwards it was unusual for pobein to be elected. The consul was normally the most powerful position in the state, but during times of crises, usually in the form of a military threat, the state would store absolute power to one man, the dictator. Selected by the current consuls, the dictator's terms were limited to six months, but during that time period, they would hold supreme imperium and given complete control of the armies and legislation. All of the officials that made up the Roman magistracies, minus the dictator, were elected by voting bodies. The most prominent of these was the Comitia Centuriata. The Comitia Centuriata was a division of the male citizen body into approximately 193 individual voting tribes, known as Centuries, gathered in groups based upon their social and economic rank in society. This system was Timocratic, favoring those of the wealthier classes by providing them with greater voting power in comparison to their relative small size. For instance, to be in the top 80 Centuries, you need the property requirement of over 100,000 assens, a unit of Roman currency. This is an enormous amount of money compared to your average wage of your typical Roman pleb, and thus the concentration of power would be limited to a small amount of people. This was based upon the property system of the Roman army, which I shall go into more detail in the next episode, but in theory, each man was supposed to provide his own equipment. A wealthier man would be able to afford more armor and better weaponry, and even horses. These voting blocs would come together and internally discuss their thoughts on the lex curiata, known as the curiate laws, and to also elect consuls, praetors, and censors. The problem of this system lies in its Timocratic nature, since the upper class Centuries got to vote first, and tended to vote in their own interests. Many of the lower class Centuries, on the other hand, were unable to vote, since the majority vote needed would have already been met. Once they reached the majority vote, they just kind of stopped, they were being pragmatic. The other voting assembly was the Comitia Tributa. As the name implies, it was based around the tribal system, where your geographical location tied you to which tribe you belonged to. The number of tribes was fixed at 35, with 31 belonging to the rural population, and 4 to the urban. Theoretically, this was more fair than the Comitia Centuriata, since both rich and poor would be integrated into tribes, where the poor would outnumber the wealthy, and thus voting power would be more in their favor. At the same time, it was prone to manipulations by aristocrats, using their poorer clients to vote in their favor. The Tributa would vote for lower offices like the Quaestor and Aediles. Some of these voting bodies may be completely new to many of you listening. You probably are more familiar with the other great political authority of the Republic, the Senate. Traditionally originating to Romulus' reign, the so-called conscript fathers would form the crim of the Roman magisterial elite. The Senate itself was an exclusive body, dependent on an enormous barrier of entry in the form of personal wealth and property. A prospecting senator had to be of a solid reputation, whether in the form of family legacy or own personal deeds, and could be inducted or removed by the power of a censor. It was originally only open to patricians, but the plebs were gradually inducted over time, though with a degree of hesitation. While they technically did not vote on laws, it certainly had the power to propose them, and provide some influence on how they were voted upon, though it was useful in allowing for the continuity of Roman policies through multiple years of consuls, keeping a sense of stability to the system. The Senate had control of Rome's foreign policy, as it would be the ones to meet with foreign embassies and sign off decrees. Over time, the Senate would become more and more powerful, though this would only reach a fever pitch during the late Republic. But what exactly did these elected officials contribute to? Well, one of the great legacies of the Romans is their legal system. In the early Republic, our earliest form of a codification of Roman law would occur in roughly 450 BC, with the production of the Twelve Tables, named for the fact that they were inscribed for the public on twelve bronze tablets. This is a tremendous step in the development of the Roman state, allowing for standardized and pre-established measures of laws to be implemented at all levels of society. Now, the laws themselves were quite the collection of measures and rules, ranging from punishments regarding murder and the hexing of a fellow farmer's crops, to matters of debt. It wasn't exactly the paragon of equality either, as punishments seemed to have been unevenly distributed, but it was a major first step. The Romans themselves believed, according to Lilly, that they had sent out an envoy to Athens to observe the Constitution of Solon, instituted around the 7th century BC, in order to get inspiration for the Twelve Tables, though this is questionable at best. In the eyes of Polybius, the Greek historian of the 2nd century BC, this system of government is exactly why the Romans were so effective, and how it began to subjugate much of the Greek world up to this time. Rome, in Polybius' opinion, had what is called a mixed constitution, emulating various aspects of the different styles of rule, democracy, ruled by the wealthy, oligarchy, ruled by the few, and democracy, the ruled by the many. The system had attempted to introduce a series of checks and balances to maintain the stability of the state, and this way, it did not suffer the internal chaos that Greek city-states or Hellenistic kingships were prone to when it came to the transfer of power. Having now covered the basic nature of Roman government, let us look at the institutions of Roman society. Class in Roman society was ultimately divided into two main categories, patrician and plebeian. The mythological foundation of the patrician order dates back to Romulus, who inducted a hundred Romans to form the first senate. The descendants who can trace their ancestry back to this original hundred would hold the exclusive privileges of patricianhood. The clans of the Fabii, Julii, Cornelii Scipiones, and the Claudii are all members of the patrician order. Everyone else would have been considered a plebeian. And given that the vast majority of Roman citizens formed the body of this class, there are different subcategories of the Greeks that a pleb could belong to. Many people subconsciously try to view the patricians and plebeians as being a simple division of wealth, the stereotype of the rich patricians oppressing the poor plebs. While wealth tended to be concentrated in the hands of the patricians, it wasn't always the case. For instance, the plebeian equites, the knights, were very wealthy, often taking part in commercial activities outside of the political sphere, and acquired personal fortunes that would outclass many families of the patricians. Most of the plebs, however, were agriculturalists, working on farms either as self-sufficient small plot owners or as seasonal laborers and peasants, working on the farms of the more wealthy landowners. The urban plebeians, also derisively known as the mobs, would be laborers living in the slums of Rome. The relationship between patrician and plebeian was complex, yet formed the heart of the social network in ancient Rome. This relationship, known as the clientela, or patron-client system, was often informal partnership between a lower class plebeian, the client, and their superior wealthier patrician. Generally, the idea is that the client would enter into the personal retinue of the patron, providing political support when the latter would run for office, or favor a particular candidate, or a policy to be passed, in addition to making morning visits into the household of the patron to pay the respects. In return, the patron is supposed to be the political and legal representative of his clients, often providing them opportunities for work, or to help pay off debts and to secure their favor. The relationship is not too dissimilar to the Greek tradition of xenia, guest friendship, which would be applied to maintain political alliances throughout the different polis, nor would it differ too much from the client system of the Celts. The number of clients would directly correlate with the prestige of the patron, and we have cases of patrons being the clients that are even more powerful than multi-patrons. In short, the social structure of Rome was very hierarchical and socially conservative, and the patron-client system was one way to both reinforce the division between the weak and powerful, while also soothing the resentment of the lower classes. In the retellings of Livy and Dionysius, the early republic was plagued by the struggle of the orders, where friction between the patricians and the plebeians would lead to a number of sit-down strikes, the so-called first and second secession of the plebs in 494 and 450 B.C. respectively. The plebs refused to take part in the affairs of the city, including military defense, and attempted to bargain for greater enfranchisement and protection against the abuses of the patricians, who held a monopoly over the consulship and over land. It must be said that the degree of infighting between the patricians and plebeians was probably not as intense as Livy makes it out to be, largely an anachronistic interpretation of the past from the struggles of the first century B.C., but there is no doubt that some internal turmoil had to have occurred. The first secession in 494 prompted the creation of the office of the Tribune of the Plebs, held sacred under the protection of the gods from having hands laid upon them by the patricians, and had the power to enact vetoes on the consulship or any other positions if they felt that the plebeians were being harmed by a particular policy or practice. The second secession of the plebs would also institute walled tables, which would result in laws being more fair to the plebeians overall. Roman society was deeply superstitious, much like the majority of ancient cultures. The structure of Roman mythology has largely been seen by the public as copycats of the Greek mythos, probably spread by the way of entrusted influence. Zeus was known as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or Jupiter Best and Greatest, Hera became Juno, and so on and so forth. This assertion is grossly overstated, though there is a degree of truth. Many of the original deities of Rome have evolved from simpler spirits and explanations to be applied to something greater. For instance, the Roman war god Mars, a parallel to the Greek Ares, is originally thought to have been an agricultural deity, since surviving texts of the Caprice College of the Arval Brothers indicate that Mars seemed to hold sway over the power of iron and rust, and could aid in the protection of iron farm equipment and plows, or through the elimination of the rust that grows on grain, probably referring to the funguses that create that red ergot look that would wipe out crops. This power over iron would easily translate to weapons of war, and thus the natural progression can be seen. Still, there were a number of unique deities to the Roman pantheon, such as the god Janus, symbolically representing the two heads, representing the beginning and end of all things, including gates and temples. In times of war, Janus' temple in Rome would have its doors open, only to be closed when all was at peace. Given the Romans' passion for warfare, the doors were rarely ever closed, and it was an important symbolic act by the later emperor Augustus to have closed the door three times during his reign, whereas in the Republic it is only known to have been closed twice prior. This act of Augustus characterizes the nature of the Roman religious notions. It was largely a matter of state, a civic religion if you will. The fortunes, and by extension the survival, of Rome was dependent upon veneration of the gods through ritual practice and belief, and many aspects of the political system were integrated into the religious practices. The highest position of Roman religion was the Pontifex Maximus, the leader of the college of priests who conducted the religious ceremonies of the state. The college would perform auguries, consultations of the divine, through the observation of the flight of birds, or reading the entrails of sacrificial animals. These rituals were extremely precise, and had to be repeated without any mistakes, lest the poor soul have to repeat the practice again and again and again. There were numerous other priestly organizations as well, including the famous Vestal Virgins, comprised of women who would enter into a life of chastity to tend the flaming hearth of Rome. The price for breaking the vows of chastity would result in the poor girl being buried alive. Brutal, but it reinforces on how important the Romans viewed themselves in relation to their gods. Now, as much as I would love to talk more about the other aspects of Roman life, such as slavery, family, and so on and so forth, I don't want to inundate you any further though. You can check out excellent discussions on these institutions on other shows specializing in Roman studies, such as the podcast The Partial Historian. For now, let us close the episode with a return to the narrative as a whole, starting after the Republic's foundation in 509, and Lars Porcenta's defeat. The chronology of the 5th century BC, much like the century's prime, is misty and hard to piece together. However, as the distance in time between the ancient authors and the events they recount shrinks, their reliability tends to inversely increase. That doesn't mean that it isn't full of narrative exaggerations, such as the dramatic tale of the Roman antihero Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, or the consulship of the Roman Geroge Washington, known as Cincinnatus. As far as we can gather though, there are a number of developments in the political landscape of Latium. The Latin neighbors of Rome had formed a league in the centuries prior to protect themselves against the Etruscan incursions. But after the establishment of the Roman Republic, the League had begun to fear the growing strength of Rome, or perhaps they saw an opportunity to strike at a vulnerable opponent. The Latin League reportedly allied with the exiled Tarquinius Superbus, and entered into a war with Rome. In 499, the Romans engaged in the battle with the League near Lake Regilius, 5 miles south of the city, and were victorious. The war would end in roughly 493 or so, and the Romans now had the League at their mercy. Despite the normal rules of ancient warfare being pretty brutal, with the Romans fully in their rights to subjugate the Latin population into slavery or brutally sack their cities, they instead sought to establish a treaty with them, the Fetus Cassianum. This may sound surprising, given that the Romans are notorious for punishing their own men for disobedience, but this was actually a brilliant move. The terms of the treaty made Rome the leading head of the Latin League, and the other Latin tribes and cities, now on known as Socii, would provide their military support. This was a huge pool of manpower, and this system of open inclusion and forgiveness would be practiced down to the Empire's collapse in the 5th century AD, strengthening their armies and making them more flexible to personal threats. At the same time, it granted a level of autonomy to the members of the League, but they were often rewarded with the prospects of Roman citizenship if they were loyal to the Roman cause. The rest of the century would be marked by small scale warfare and raiding. The majority of events in between would be developments of the state and are still relatively mysterious. The succession of the plebs, both in 494 and 450 BC, would be major events in terms of amendments to the Roman constitution, though the degree to which it can be seen as class warfare is probably overstated. The introduction of the Twelve Tables, the incorporation of the Latin League, and the eventual capture of the powerful Etruscan city of Veii by the Roman general Camillus in 396 BC, showed the signs of a prodigal city-state, a force to be reckoned with. It seemed as if Rome's rise to power in the Mediterranean was inevitable. Well, that really is not the case. Perhaps the most cataclysmic event in the history of the early Republic would take place on July 18, 390 BC. In the northern Po Valley, there had been a series of migrations of the peoples north beyond the Etruscans, the Celts. I talked extensively about the Celtic migrations in episodes 19 and 20, but in a nutshell, the wealth and fertility of the Po Valley had attracted both settlers and raiders from the Celtic populations over the Alps. Conflicts with the Etruscans must have been occurring, but a particularly vicious raiding party of the Senones, led by a Gallic chieftain named Brennus, had appeared in Italy. Envoys of Brennus were supposed to have approached the Roman diplomatic party, demanding that they be allowed to settle on the lands of Clusium, an ally of Rome. The exchange quickly became heated, and one of the Roman envoys attacked the Celtic party, infuriating Brennus. At the river Aulia, about 11 miles from the city of Rome, the Roman forces met the Senones in open battle. They completely underestimated the martial prowess of the Celts, and were soundly beaten, with the survivors fleeing to the city to alert the populace. In Livy's opinion, this defeat was due to the violation of the sacred nature of the envoys, and the gods wrath was still not satisfied. Despite their valiant efforts, the Romans were overwhelmed, and the city was brutally sacked, the first and only time to happen until Alaric and the Goths nearly 800 years later. One of the great losses in the sack was the destruction of the records kept up to this point, consumed by the flames spread throughout the city. This is why everything up to this date is so sketchy in the historical record, as the historian who came afterwards had to rely on obscure surviving pieces of information and oral tradition. The sack would be a terrible blow to the Roman psyche, perennially causing them to panic at the thought of a roaming band of Celts even coming near the peninsula, and many massacres and mass enslavements would be inflicted upon the Celtic populations. In addition, the sack had left the Romans unconquered, but terribly vulnerable to attack from outside forces. They had to worry about the loyalty of their Latin allies, and with further predatory acts to be expected, the Romans had to act quickly to recover their former prestige. At the lowest point in Roman history up to now, it is here that I end my narrative. In the next episode, we will begin with the rebuilding of Rome, and her subsequent unification of central Italy, along with a look at the creation of the army that would conquer the Hellenistic world, the Roman Manipular Legion. First off, I'd like to thank you all for listening, and I apologize for the delay in the episode's release. We will return back to our bi-weekly schedule with the next episode, so no worries. If you liked this episode and wish to support the show, please consider subscribing on iTunes, Soundcloud, or whatever podcast platform you use. Also consider leaving a 5-star review if you are listening through iTunes in order to help the show grow. If you want to follow show updates, hear my ramblings, or just to get in contact with me, follow me on Twitter at Twitter handle HellenisticPOD. That's all in words. I also have a website where I will post my show notes, which include maps, diagrams, timelines, and booklets for each episode. All of these links are provided in the podcast description. So, until next time, I hope to see you all in the next episode of the Hellenistic Age Podcast.