Did the Roman KINGS exist?

For regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations, please subscribe. You know, if you've ever walked in the Roman Forum, you've probably felt that strange tug of time. Just out of sight, you hear modern traffic, but there you're walking on imperial marble as so many ancient Romans did. And there are moments when you're no longer in the modern world. Have you ever wondered how far back this forum really goes? There are parts of that place that precede the time of the emperors by a long time. Underneath the tumbled columns lies an ancient shrine called the Lapis Nigar, built during the late republic. Peel the black pavement beneath it away and you reach an altar from around 570 years before the Christian era, the time of the Roman kings. Not too far away, the broken walls of the vulcanal shrine. Maybe even earlier, the tough foundations of the Reggia, traditional headquarters of Rome's kings, date to roughly the same archaic horizon. And archaeologists have traced beaten earth paving in the commitium that could nudge the record back into the mid7th century. Guides may tell you tales of seven kings who ruled during those shadowy centuries, beginning with Romulus, son of Mars, and ending with Tarquin Lraoud, whose fall supposedly birthed the Republic. But how much of the early history of Rome is factually correct? Did any of those kings actually exist? Or did the later Romans retcon them into history in order to fill the gaps? Well, right now we're going to make an effort to sift the myth from the masonry. Our oldest source on the Roman kings is Cicero who lived in the later republic the 1st century B.CE. In the times of the later republic, primary sources, records from the actual time of the kings were already largely non-existent. Cicero probably was drawing from Fabius Pictor, Rome's earliest historian, who lived during the late 3rd century B.C.E. His work no longer exists. Pictor had to align Rome's past events within Greek chronological frameworks as best as he could to estimate a date for Rome's birth. Now the traditional date for the founding of Rome by Romulus is the 21st of April 753 B.CE. The day comes from Libby a Roman historian writing in Emperor Augustus time. He says Ramulus began work during the Perilia a spring right when herders purified their flocks. The year comes from the scholar Marcus Torrentius Varro. In his calculations, Varro began with 509 or what we call 509, the year the Romans believe they expelled their last king. Added up the legendary reign lengths of the seven kings about 244 years and subtracted that arithmetic lands on 753. He placed the foundation in the third year of the sixth Greek Olympiad, a point which matched neatly with genealogical calculations, especially counting backward through generations of Roman kings. Later writers helped to popularize Varro's date. But the important thing to note here is that Rome's birthday is an estimate by later Roman writers. Careful, but hardly eyewitness. At the site of the Roman forum, pre- Roman Iron Age graves there vanish around 750. Almost overnight, a burial ground morphed into a meeting place. Communal hearths first, then pebble paving, then clay, signs of a space turning public. A century and a half later, Rome was tackling mega projects, a stonelined drainage canal we still call the cloaka maxima, and the colossal tough podium of the temple of Jupiter capital. Both anchor firmly in the late 6th century, precisely the era tradition assigns to the last kings. A fragmentaryary curse cut in archaic Latin under black marble beside the curia mentions a rex and forbids disturbance of a sacred spot. Rex means king. Letter forms date it to the end of the sixth century when kingship or at least recent memory of kingship was still alive. Here are the seven legendary kings. Romulus. Archaeologists like Andrea Carandini have done excavations on the Palatine, the hill on which, according to legend, Ramulus and his brother Remis founded the Roman city. Beneath the imperial palaces, they uncovered oval hut floors and hearth ash dated by pottery and radiocarbon to the middle of the 8th century B.C.E., right on time. Carandini even traced a stone-packed trench he cheekily named Ramulus's wall. Some call it a fortification, others a humble retaining line, but its age seems to be right. From the early 7th century, they found stone-faced terraces supporting what may be a princely residence on the Palatine Hill. Numa Pompilius, he is celebrated as Rome's lawgiving priest king who established the orders of the priesthood and founded the temple of Janus, Yanos. Immediately after Ramulus era, soil layers reveal uniform ritual pits filled with animal bones and tiny vote of cups, evidence of rules suddenly governing sacrifice. Were those rules Numa's handiwork or did later Romans imagine a pious monarch to explain the tidy debris? The ground stays silent on that point. Tulis Hostilius. As you can tell from his name, he was considered a great warrior who expanded Rome's territory. And Ankus Marius also was known for his conquest as well as for setting the legal precedents for war and diplomacy. Stories cast them as conquerors who pushed Rome down the Tyber and threw bridges across it. From the late 7th century, we indeed find earth ramparts and fortified river crossings at the city's edge. Tarquinius Prriscus and Servius Tullus. These are the first two Itruscan kings. In that sixth century window, the Roman skyline sprouted temples roofed in bright painted terracotta and at Truscan trademark. Now whether these roofs were commissioned by actually Truscan kings or just by local elites copying a fashionable neighbor remains open. Recent mapping under the Via Sakra in the forum shows a monumental complex of the mid-ixth century. The Servian wall itself illustrates the caution required. Literary tradition linked it to King Servius. But tough typology and cut mark analysis show the main circuit dates to the early 4th century well into the republic though minor earth and ramp parts may underly it. Tarquinius Superbus the last king supposedly drained the valley with the cloaka Maxima and laid the first giant podium of the temple of Jupiter Capidolinus. Core drillings through the capital line podium confirm a massive tough foundation begun in the sixth century again in Tarquin territory and so vast that Republican builders simply rebuilt a top it after each fire. Running under modern traffic is a tunnel once open air, a channel lined in tough blocks no later than the late 6th century. Its profile and volcanic stone match other regal period engineering. Engineering studies date both the cloaka maxima and the temple of Jupiter to his reign. But early Republican repairs blur the boundary between royal project and post-royal renovation. So each monarch seems to step out of legend and plant a footprint in the actual soil, but there's still not a clear correlation between story and strata. This is where our mystery lies. Most scholars think that the final three kings have a greater claim to historicity than the earlier ones. Note that these seven kings are assumed to have reigned over a period of more than 200 years. This makes the length of their reigns unusually long. Now, couple that with the fact that seven was a number of symbolic significance to the Romans, and it makes one question if there were really only these seven kings. Enter the modern detectives and the disagreement. British historian Tim Cornell says the evidence stacks in lock step with the king list. 8th century huts, 7th century forum paving, sixth century mega structures. No coincidence, he argues. Tim Cornell reads the those trenches and temples as a noisy but coherent archaeological heartbeat that pulses exactly where the written timeline places the kings. The pattern he sees is gradual state formation anchored by real monarchs whose deeds were later embroidered. French archaeologist Alexandra Grandazi holds an opposing opinion saying that the earliest layers are fragmentaryary and could be seasonal shelters. a true city, he says, doesn't crystallize in the archaeological record until about 625 B.CE. He points out that the evidence for the 8th century is scant, that Karandini's wall may be terracing for later houses, and that genuine urban complexity only solidified in the seventh century. For him, early kings are narrative placeholders, not persons. Romulus as the classic founder, perhaps named for the city rather than the other way around. Numa Pompilius, Tullius Hostilius, and Ankus Marquus fitting the classic roles of priest, warrior, and lawgiver so suspiciously neatly seems like their legendary archetypes. Many Roman scholars split the difference and say that legends can fossilize civic memories. Romulus could be a shortorthhand for the messy fusion of shepherd clans. Numa, the personification of ritual standardization. Servious, a compressed echo of multiple reforming elites. They remind us that legends can carry genuine memories, but always filter it through politics. Where archaeology converges with legend, they keep an open mind as to the possibility. And where the soil goes silent, they let the silent speak. So, I think we can boil this down to three facts. First, the biographies of the first four kings glitter with fantasy. No doubt about that. Second, although there were settlements in the area of Rome prior to the 8th century B.C.E., a more centralized society did begin developing there around the date Varro's math predicts. If you were to visit Rome in the 8th century, you would find substantial settlements of wood and clay huts on several of its hills, which shared civic and ritual spaces. Third, two centuries later, royal scale construction unmistakably transforms the city, coinciding with the presumed reigns of the Atruscan kings. Does that confirm or refute the legends? Neither really. It leaves us staring into a gap of many possibilities. Perhaps Ramulus was a real war leader whose name we mispronounce today. Perhaps he's a patchwork of forgotten chiefs given one heroic face. Or perhaps he never existed at all and early Romans told a violent bedtime story to explain why they themselves were so fierce. We can scrape deeper using new scientific methods to analyze what we've got. But the trail still fades until and unless we find something else underneath the earth. An informative inscription, for example. It doesn't look like this is a mystery we can fully solve. And that, I think, is what makes Rome's first kings a perfect ancient mystery. It's unresolved. It's compelling. And it forever invites us back into the dirt to have another look. Thank you for exploring with me. I'm David Mo. Until next time, remember, the distant past rarely hands us definitive and incontrovertible answers, just better questions. You might like my little ebooklet, Why Ancient History Matters. It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important even in the modern world. You might also wish to use it to help spread the word. So, feel free to share it with someone you know. It's free for anyone who wants it. I've left a link in the description box below the video for you to grab a copy. Catch you later.