P. N. Ure

“All the historical labours bestowed on the early centuries of Rome will, in general, be wasted.”—Sir George Cornewall Lewis, On the Credibility of Early Roman History (1855), vol. II. p. 556.

I. The narrative as to how the Tarquins are said to have gained, held, and lost the throne.

At the time of the birth of Herodotus, which took place about the year 484 B.C., Polycrates, Peisistratus, and Croesus had been dead less than fifty years: in Corinth and Sicyon it was not more than a century since the tyranny had been suppressed. The historian had probably met people who remembered the tyrants of Samos and Athens: he may possibly have talked with old men from the cities of the Isthmus whose fathers had told them of personal experiences under Cleisthenes, or Periander.

The case with the Tarquins, the tyrant kings of Rome, is very different. There is nothing even approximating to contemporary literary evidence for their history, or even for their existence. In recent times their whole claim to be regarded as historical has been disputed. It may therefore seem something like begging the question to proceed at once to collect evidence for the narrative before clearing the ground by discussing its authenticity. There are however two reasons for following that course. The first is that the question of authenticity can be more easily discussed after the narrative has been called to mind. The other is that the value of the story for this enquiry does not altogether depend on the Tarquins’ historicity^[1112].

According to the extant narratives^[1113] king Tarquinius Priscus was the son of a Corinthian named Demaratus who had settled in the Etruscan city of Tarquinii, the modern Corneto, some fifty miles north of Rome. "Tarquinius Priscus, son of a rich Corinthian trader named Demaratus, settles at Rome and by means of his wealth secures the throne." The fullest of these narratives, that of Dionysius, makes Demaratus sail to Italy “intending to trade, in a private merchant vessel, and with a cargo of his own: having disposed of his cargo in the cities of the Etruscans... and acquired great gains,... he continued to ply the same sea, conveying Greek cargoes to the Etruscans and bringing Etruscan goods to Greece, and became the possessor of very great wealth... and when the tyranny of Cypselus was being established... he quitted Corinth and set up a house in Tarquinii, which was then a great and prosperous city.” All this property was left by Demaratus to his son Lucumo, the future Lucius Tarquinius, “who, receiving his father’s great wealth, resolved to engage in politics and take a part in public life and to be one of the foremost men of his city^[1114].” He is described as migrating to Rome for the specific reason that there seemed more prospect there of his wealth leading to high political power, and as finding there the opportunity he was looking for. “At Rome,” says Livy^[1115], “his wealth brought him into prominence.” So Dionysius^[1116]: “He very soon became friends with the king (Ancus Martius), making him presents and supplying him with funds for his military requirements... he also secured many of the patricians by his benevolences, and won the favour of the common people by his courteous greetings and the charm of his discourse and by contributions of money.” Similarly Aurelius Victor^[1117]: “by his money and his industry he secured high position.” So too Diodorus^[1118], speaking of Tarquin’s rise to prominence in Rome: “being very wealthy he helped many of the poor by giving them money.” Still more specifically our oldest authority, Polybius^[1119], says “Lucius, the son of Demaratus the Corinthian, set out for Rome trusting in himself and his money.”

These passages are enough to show that according to all our best extant authorities, and therefore presumably according to some earlier common source, Tarquinius Priscus owed his throne to his previous wealth. The writers just quoted apparently pictured Tarquin as a royal favourite who used his great wealth and ability to pave the way in the palace for his own succession^[1120], or possibly as merely a wealthy demagogue^[1121], but there are indications in the accounts that have come down to us that Tarquin’s power may have had a somewhat different basis.

Demaratus and Priscus were great employers.

When Demaratus was making^[1122] his fortune in Etruria, he was probably, if the story has any historical foundation, a great employer of labour. Strabo speaks of the “large number of skilled workmen” who accompanied him from Corinth^[1123]. Pliny speaks of the Corinthian as accompanied by the potters (fictores) Eucheir and Eugrammus^[1124]. As Tarquin is made by both Livy^[1125] and Dionysius^[1126] to succeed to all his father’s possessions, the received accounts may be taken as implying that he too was master of “a large number of skilled workmen.” That this is the intention of our narrative is borne out by Dionysius’ account of the migration of Lucumo, as the subsequent Tarquinius was then called, from Tarquinii to Rome. “He resolved to migrate thither collecting up all his money... and taking all who were willing of his friends and relations: and there were many eager to go with him^[1127].” On his arrival at Rome the king “assigned him and the Etruscans who had come with him to a tribe and curia (f???? te ?a? f?at??a?).”

Their employees were probably free men.

This whole description implies that Lucumo’s fellow-emigrants were free men: nothing is said as to their occupations. On the other hand the narratives of his father’s migration to Tarquinii make no statement as to whether the “skilled workmen” who accompanied him were free men or slaves. But the temptation to equate the two bodies is considerable. Later on, when on the throne, the Tarquins are represented as employing free skilled labour on a large scale. The object alleged by Livy for the first Tarquin’s numerous public works was “that the people might be as much employed at home as they had been in the army^[1128].” The Roman army did not include slaves.

About the Tarquins as large employers of free labour we shall find more precise and significant statements when the story of Superbus comes to be discussed. But in the accounts of Priscus there is one further statement that associates him closely with the trade of Rome. “The same king,” says Livy^[1129], speaking of Priscus, “apportioned sites round the forum for private individuals to build on, and erected arcades and shops.” So Dionysius^[1130]: “he adorned the forum by surrounding it with workshops and arcades (???ast?????? ?a? past?s?).” It is surely somewhat remarkable that King Tarquin should be thus associated with the building of shops.

Priscus is succeeded by Servius Tullius, who is said to have been the first at Rome to strike coins.

Between the first and the last of the Tarquins our accounts are unanimous in inserting Servius Tullius. Livy and Dionysius^[1131] make him the son-in-law of Priscus. Servius, who is thus assigned to both the period and the family of the Tarquins, is stated by several authors to have been the first to issue coins at Rome. Varro^[1132] for instance informs us that “they say that silver coinage was first struck (flatum) by Servius Tullius.” So Pliny^[1133]: “King Servius was the first to stamp (signauit) bronze”; and again Cassiodorus^[1134]: “King Servius is said to have been the first to strike a coinage (impressisse monetam) in bronze.”

Possible historical basis for this statement.

These statements cannot be accepted just as they stand. Silver coins were first struck in Rome in 268 B.C., and the first round copper coins, the large aes graue with a Janus head on one side and a ship’s prow on the other, are now unanimously assigned to the middle of the fourth century^[1135]. There is however nothing to preclude the possibility of important monetary innovations or reforms by a sixth century king of Rome. Copper has been found in Central Italy in various forms that point to a copper currency prior to the introduction of the round aes graue. There are the rough pieces known as aes rude, the objects of various simple shapes but entirely devoid of decoration known as aes formatum, and the pieces rectangular in shape and marked with a type known as aes signatum^[1136]. Though the extant examples of aes signatum are plainly on stylistic grounds to be assigned to long after the regal period, and though the objects discovered along with finds of aes rude do not point to a very early date^[1137], it would be rash to say that either aes rude or aes signatum or for that matter aes formatum was not as early in origin as the sixth century^[1138]. Willers^[1139] dates the use of aes rude from 1000 B.C. to the fourth century, and supposes some developments during the period, one of which, e.g. the kuchenfÖrmig (bun-shaped) variety of aes formatum or the “bars with various patterns,” may possibly be due to Servius. If Servius is to be associated with aes formatum the “bun-shaped” pieces have perhaps not quite so good a claim as those to which Haeberlin^[1140] gives the name tortenfÖrmig (something like the flat round weights with a flange that are made to fit into one another), since these latter appear from the full data that Haeberlin has collected to be characteristic of S. Etruria: they have been found mainly at Caere, Tarquinii, and Castelnuovo di Porto (between Rome and Falerii), i.e. in great part at places with which Rome had particularly close connexions.

But neither the “kuchenfÖrmig” nor the “tortenfÖrmig” aes formatum suits the literary evidence so well as Willers’ “bars with various patterns.” These appear to constitute the most primitive form of aes signatum. Pliny’s precise account^[1141] of Servius’ innovation is that he introduced aes signatum in place of the earlier aes rude. Pliny indeed goes on to say that Servius’ money “signatum est nota pecudum^[1142].” Among extant pieces this description is applicable only to certain fully developed examples of the quadrilateral aes signatum^[1143], that, as remarked already, have to be assigned to a later date: but whereas Pliny’s statement about Servius and aes signatum is based on Timaeus (Sicily, third century B.C.), it is quite uncertain whether the remark about “nota pecudum” is to be referred to the same respectable authority. Pliny’s own words are: “Seruius rex primus signauit aes. antea rudi usos Romae Timaeus tradit. signatum est nota pecudum.”

Fig. 32. Aes signatum.

Assume a historical basis for the accounts of Servius’ connexion with the Roman currency^[1144], and the motive for his activity in this direction is not far to seek. Just about the period to which his reign is dated Greek coins began to penetrate Etruria. They belong mainly to Phocaea and the Phocaean colonies^[1145]. Now “in the days of King Tarquinius,” so Justin^[1146] tells us, “Phocaeans from Asia put in at the mouth of the Tiber and formed a friendship with the Romans.” The Phocaean coinage may well have led to some reform or regulation of the home currency, though the statement of Aurelius Victor^[1147] that “he (i.e. Servius) established weights and measures” may perhaps come nearer to the truth than the more detailed assertions about striking a coinage that have been already quoted. Even if this was all that Servius did it is enough to make him stand out as a commercially minded statesman since he is represented as the first ruler in Rome to regulate units of exchange^[1148].

The chief positive objection to a sixth century date for even the most primitive form of metallic currency is the fact that down to the time of the XII tables (450 B.C.) all fines were paid in cows and sheep^[1149]. But evidence of this sort may be given too much weight. As pointed out by Ridgeway^[1150], “even in a great commercial Greek city like Syracuse, the cow formed the basis of assessment in the reign of Dionysius (405–367 B.C.).” Syracuse had minted masterpieces of silver coinage some time before Dionysius was born.

Enough has been said to indicate the possible significance of the accounts of king Servius and his copper coins. Too little is known about either the king himself or the sixth century currency to build much upon their reputed connexion. The matter is not one of first importance for our enquiry. There can be no question of a revolution in the currency, such as there are reasons for attributing to Gyges, Pheidon, Peisistratus, and probably others of the early Greek tyrants^[1151].

The census of Servius.

Reforms or innovations in the currency are quite in keeping with the other activities ascribed to Servius. The step most commonly associated with his name is the institution of a census, “ex quo belli pacisque munia non uiritim, ut antea, sed pro habitu pecuniarum fierent^[1152].”

Servius and the collegia opificum.

Another institution that has been attributed to Servius is that of the collegia opificum or unions of workmen^[1153]. The early history of these collegia is obscure: Plutarch attributes the eight earliest of them (carpenters, potters, tanners, leather-workers, dyers, coppersmiths, goldsmiths, flute-players) to Numa^[1154]. The two versions may both have a historic basis if we suppose that the collegia as private corporations go back into the early regal period and that later they passed under state control^[1155]. This view is of course incapable of proof. The evidence limits us to conjecture^[1156]. But one point seems fairly certain. The collegia must have lost importance when slave labour came to be much used^[1157].

Servius is constantly accused of having secured the support of the poor by gifts and benevolences^[1158], and special mention is made of his distributions of corn and land to the plebs^[1159]. "His methods of purchasing the support of the lower classes:" In short, king Servius, if he be regarded as a historical personage, appears to have inherited the policy as well as the position of his predecessor, and his violent accession and no less violent end to have been due mainly to feuds within the palace. "his relations with the Tarquins." The same conclusion is the most natural one to draw from his Etruscan name of Mastarna^[1160], quite apart from the etymological value of Gardthausen’s suggestion^[1161] that the name Mastarna is a prefixed form of Tarquin.

Tarquinius Superbus secures the throne by buying up the poor. When king he employs Etruscans and Roman citizens on a large scale as artizans and quarrymen.

Servius was eventually overthrown by Tarquinius Superbus, who is said to have secured the throne “by buying up the poorest of the common people^[1162].” It is in the account of his reign that we find the fullest statements as to the Tarquins’ relations to labour while they were kings of Rome. Nothing could be more explicit than Livy’s statement on that point:

He summoned smiths from every part of Etruria and employed upon it (i.e. on the building of the temple of Jove on the Tarpeian Mount) not only public funds, but also workmen from among the plebeians^[1163].

The statement that Tarquin’s employees were largely plebeians (and not slaves) is repeated by Livy later in the same book. In this second passage Brutus, declaiming against the state of things that had existed under the Tarquins, is made to declare that “men of Rome had been changed from soldiers into artizans and quarrymen^[1164].”

Dionysius is as explicit and more detailed^[1165]:

He was not content to offend against the plebeians merely in this way. He enrolled all the plebeians who were loyal to him and suitable for military requirements, and the rest he compelled to find employment on the public works in the city, thinking it a very great danger for monarchs when the worst and poorest of the citizens are unemployed: at the same time he was anxious during his reign to complete the works left half-finished by his grandfather—the channels to drain away the water... and... the hippodrome amphitheatre.... On these works all the poor were employed, receiving from him a moderate provision, some quarrying^[1166], some hewing wood, some leading the waggons that conveyed this material, others bearing the burdens on their own shoulders; others again digging out the underground cellars and moulding the vaults in them and erecting the corridors: subordinated to the artizans thus engaged there were coppersmiths and carpenters and stonemasons, who were removed from their private shops and kept employed on the public requirements.

So in the same book^[1167]:

Tarquin after this achievement (Gabii) gave the people a rest from expeditions and wars, and occupied himself with the building of the temples.... He set all the artizans to work on the undertakings.

And a little later^[1168] Brutus is made to tell the Romans that Tarquin “compels them like bought slaves to toil at quarrying and woodcutting and carrying burdens^[1169].”

It is nowhere explicitly stated that it was to this control of the free labour of the city that the Tarquins owed their power. On the contrary, according to Livy the populares helped to turn Superbus out for the very reason that he had forced them into this banausic life. “They were indignant that they had been kept by the king so long employed as smiths and doing the work of slaves^[1170].” This by itself would certainly suggest that the Tarquins had used their kingly power to turn the free men of Rome into artizans and quarrymen, and not their army of employees to turn a capitalist into a king. But the smiths summoned from Etruria, who are associated with the Roman plebeians, recall the “large number of skilled workmen” mentioned by Strabo as working for Demaratus at Tarquinii, and suggest that we have here a continuation of the activities that had made the fortune of the Tarquin family while still in Etruria^[1171].

He loses the throne when he can no longer pay these employees.

There is a further statement in the same chapter of Livy that certainly harmonizes better with this latter alternative. At the time when the plebeians suddenly discovered the degrading nature of their occupations, not apparently without the help of the abler members of the nobility, Livy informs us that the king had run out of money, “exhausted by the magnificence of his public works.” Similarly Dionysius makes Brutus urge on his fellow-conspirators that now is the time to carry out their plot, when the armed citizens are “no longer controlled by (Tarquin’s) presents as formerly^[1172].” That Tarquin’s regime was one of sweat and wages but never of blood and iron is borne out by Cicero, who observes that “we never hear of Tarquin’s putting Roman citizens to death^[1173].”

Later writers speak of Superbus as employing penal labour and various forms of torture and intimidation on a large scale^[1174]. But these statements, which have plainly a common origin, are no less plainly embroideries upon the aristocratic misrepresentations of the Tarquins’ labour policy. The truth is expressed by Florus: “in senatum caedibus, in omnes superbia, quae crudelitate grauior est bonis, grassatus^[1175].” In other words Superbus was a harsh and unpopular employer^[1176]. This personal unpopularity must have contributed along with the exhaustion of the royal treasury to reconcile the common people to the republican regime, which for them was certainly the beginning of an era of oppression and misery, since they had lost in the king their natural protector^[1177].

Suspected attempts at restoring the kingship:

If the Tarquins’ power was really commercial in origin, and if the account of it in writers of the age of Livy is in the main outline historical, then the facts ought to be found influencing the history of the early republic and in particular the measures taken by the aristocrats to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. What is in fact the sort of situation represented as most alarming them from this point of view?

Collatinus and his wealth and “benevolences”;

The first indication of the direction of their fears is to be found in the account of Collatinus’ banishment, recorded by Livy as having taken place in the first year of the republic. According to Livy^[1178] it was simply the hated name of Tarquin that led to his banishment. Collatinus was reluctant to withdraw: he only did so from fear that later, when no longer consul, the same fate might overtake him with the loss of his property into the bargain—cum bonorum amissione. Livy does not always work over his material sufficiently to make it quite harmonize with his own interpretation of it. It looks as though it was the bona, the wealth of Collatinus, that led to his expulsion. Though plainly not the strongest influence in Rome at the time, it may have been sufficiently strong to be a perpetual menace to the aristocratic government. It is the “primores ciuitatis” who insist on his withdrawal. If in Dionysius^[1179] on another occasion Collatinus is made to argue “that it was not the tyrants’ money that had been harming the city, but their persons,” the protestation only shows that there were others who did not share this view, but thought rather, with Dionysius’ Marcus Valerius, that there was a danger lest the people, “beguiled by the tyrant’s benevolences,... should help to restore Tarquin to the throne^[1180].” The same view is implied in a speech put by Dionysius^[1181] into the mouth of one of the popular leaders at the time of the first secession. He reminds his hearers that “the people were never put to any disadvantage by the kings, and least of all by the last ones”: he recalls an occasion on which the king had “distributed five minae of silver to every man,” and reminds the patricians how the plebeians had rejected the great gifts that the banished Tarquins had offered them as an inducement to break faith with the patrician government.

It may well have been from similar fears that in the following year the remainder of the Tarquins’ property was distributed among the people: “(bona regia) deripienda plebi sunt data^[1182].” A few chapters later Livy states that so long as the banished Tarquin was still alive, the people received from the senate “multa blandimenta^[1183].” The nobles are described by Dionysius as “taking many measures friendly to the poor, that they might not go over to the tyrants and be won over by considerations of personal gain and betray the commonwealth^[1184].” The senate seems to have been fighting the Tarquins with their own weapons. The blandimenta that kept Superbus off the throne may well have been synonymous with the benignitas that got Priscus on to it.

After the death of Tarquin at the court of the Greek tyrant at Cumae there were three prominent Romans who rightly or wrongly were suspected of aiming at the kingly power. It may be worth while examining in each of the three cases the circumstances that are said to have given rise to these suspicions.

Cassius and his exceptional financial position;

Spurius Cassius^[1185] is not described as having been personally very rich, and our authors introduce into their accounts of him nothing to support the charge that he was aiming at overthrowing the existing government. They leave it possible to conceive of him as a constitutional reformer who when consul sought to relieve a widespread distress by distributions of land^[1186] and perhaps corn^[1187] and by taking the state finances into his own hands^[1188]. The outcry against him is made to come mainly from the landed classes who fear that his proposals may touch their own pockets. As far as they are thinking about the constitution it is the financial position that the consul has created for himself that is the chief ground of their alarms. “By his distributions of money the consul was erecting a power perilous to liberty:... the way was being paved to monarchy.” Later on we find Cassius having money dealings with the people. He proposes that the sums that they have paid the government for corn brought from Sicily in time of famine should be refunded to them: “but this was looked on by the plebeians as a cash payment for the throne, and refused.” Though there is nothing to show that the Cassius of Livy and Dionysius had either the desire or the real equipment to repeat the career of Tarquinius Priscus, yet the narrative about him is none the less relevant. It depicts the early republican as deeply alarmed at any individual who secures any kind of financial predominance in the state. Very possibly this feeling may account for the ostentatious exhibition of poverty in which early republican nobles are so often depicted as indulging^[1189].

Maelius and his exceptional wealth and organized body of clients.

In the case of Spurius Maelius there are no such complications. If we accept Livy and Dionysius, Maelius’ policy did not threaten the property of any of the nobles. The fears that he would restore the kingship may have been mistaken, but they were almost certainly genuine. Is there any resemblance between extant accounts of Maelius’ career and the speculations that we have been engaged in as to the early history of the first Tarquin? There is not only a resemblance but a striking one. Maelius was extremely rich: not dives merely but praedives^[1190]. When he set about relieving Rome from famine, he was able to do so not only at his own expense but through his own clients and connexions: “buying up corn at his own expense through the agency of his friends (hospitum) and clients^[1191].”

Manlius.

Marcus Manlius, the third to be condemned to death for aiming at the throne, need not detain us. He is essentially a military character, like his contemporary Dionysius of Syracuse^[1192].

The republican government changes Tarquin’s artizans into soldiers and makes war a paying (and ultimately a paid) profession:

But the real bulwark of the republic of the fifth century as it appears in the pages of our authors is not the right arm of Servilius Ahala. It is a fundamental change that came over the lower classes of the free population. In a passage of Livy that has already been quoted, Brutus is made to charge the Tarquins with having converted the men of Rome from soldiers into artizans and quarrymen (opifices ac lapicidas). Brutus had just effected a revolution at Rome. To represent a revolution as a return to antiquity was as natural with the Roman as it is with us^[1193]. It is possible, though improbable, that the Tarquins had turned the plebeians from soldiers into artizans. The situation clearly indicated by Brutus is that he and his fellow-nobles are turning them from artizans into soldiers. It is not merely in the speeches put by Livy and Dionysius into the mouths of Brutus and his colleagues that we find the establishment of the republic associated with a reorganization of the state upon a military basis. The development of the comitia centuriata as the main organization of the citizens of Rome for political purposes is associated with the beginnings of the republic: the centuries were originally and fundamentally a military organization^[1194].

The agrarian measures that appear so early in the narratives of the historians need not deceive us. As far as they are authentic they must have been either insincere or idealist^[1195]. The republican nobility is painted from the first as teaching the distressed plebeians to look not for farms and allotments but for wars and prize money. The picture of the transfiguration of the plebeians into soldiers is completed in the narrative of the siege of Veii (406–396 B.C.), when pay for military service is introduced^[1196] and war becomes a leading means of earning a livelihood^[1197].

In short it would appear that the nobles ceased to dread a restoration of the monarchy otherwise than by armed force when and only when their government became the principal and most popular employer in the state.

cp. fifth century Athens.

The Alcmaeonidae at Athens put an end to the possibility of a revival of the tyranny (and incidentally to all respect for constructive manual labour) by instituting state payments for services as jurymen, sailors on warships, and the like. Conditions at Rome were in some ways very different from those at Athens. But the Roman nobles appear to have aimed at securing the same result as the Athenian by very similar means. How far this parallel holds, at least as between the extant narratives, may be illustrated from the history of the family that took the leading place in the early Roman republic.

The earlier Claudii and their anti-tyrannical policy.

The part played by Brutus in the narrative is politically as insignificant as that of Harmodius in the overthrow of the tyranny at Athens. The political geniuses of the early Roman republic are all to be found in the great house of the Claudii^[1198]. Our accounts make the family first come to Rome in the sixth year of the republic. The head of the family at that time is described by Dionysius as “of noble birth and influential through his wealth^[1199].” He arrives, “bringing with him a great establishment and numerous friends and retainers.” Mommsen^[1200] gives strong reasons for thinking that the family cannot have first come to Rome at so late a date. But the arrival may well have been a return from exile like that of the Alcmaeonidae to Athens after the fall of Hippias. The analogies between the Claudii and the Alcmaeonidae deserve consideration, the more so as they seem to be uninfluenced by any ancient recognition of their existence. It looks as though the wealthy Claudii, like the wealthy Alcmaeonidae, “took the commons into partnership^[1201].” Mommsen has pointed out^[1202] how many “well known traits of the ancient tyrannus” occur in the picture of the decemvir Appius. His contemporary Pericles was called the new Peisistratus. If there are such strong reasons for equating the early Claudii, whose historical existence can scarcely be seriously questioned, with the contemporary Alcmaeonidae, it becomes increasingly probable that the history of Rome and Athens in the sixth century ran on parallel lines.

One great difference between fifth century Rome and fifth century Athens was that Athens had had her own coinage from well back into the sixth century, whereas Rome, as already mentioned, struck her first pieces about 338 B.C. No famous name is associated with these earliest pieces. "Appius Claudius Caecus (censor 312 B.C.):" The most prominent man in Rome during the first generation after 338 was another Claudius, the censor Appius Claudius Caecus. His greatest achievement was the epoch-making Via Appia, the first of the great series of roads that knit together the Roman Empire. "his public works," The city owed to him also its first aqueduct. On these great public works he spent, without the previous sanction of the senate, the money accumulated in the treasury^[1203]. The sums thus spent must have represented the first large accumulation of the new Roman currency.

Fig. 33. Aes graue with wheel.

Appius’ connexion with the early coinage of Rome was probably not confined to spending it. The second series of Roman aes graue was coined in Campania and bears on the reverse a wheel (fig. 33). Numismatists have long associated the appearance of this wheel with the construction of the Appian way that led from Rome to the Campanian capital^[1204].

One detail only is wanted to complete the picture of a potential tyrant of the early Greek type, such as has been depicted in every section of this volume, and that feature appears in Valerius Maximus. According to that writer^[1205], who flourished early in the first century A.D., Appius possessed “plurimas clientelas.”

All this gives added significance, in the light of our enquiries, to a brilliant conjecture of Mommsen^[1206] that Appius actually attempted to make himself tyrant. Mommsen relies mainly on a sentence in Suetonius^[1207] which runs: “Claudius Drusus, after a crowned statue had been set up to him at Appi Forum, endeavoured by means of his clients (clientelas) to seize Italy.” The context dates the event between the decemvirate and the first Punic War. The possible period is further limited by the fact that Appi Forum was only founded by Appius Claudius Caecus. The name of the would-be tyrant as given by Suetonius is Claudius Drusus, but this, Mommsen shows, must be corrupt. The mention of Appi Forum points definitely to Appius Claudius Caecus, the only person whose name is associated with the place. In another passage of his history^[1208], Mommsen himself observes how Appius shows the spirit of the Tarquins.

If we look at the history of the early republic from the plebeian point of view, there is at least one important feature in the extant narratives that supports our main conclusions. The most notable weapon that the fifth century plebeians are represented as employing against the nobles is the “secession.” The first is recorded under the year of Spurius Cassius’ consulship, when the men whom Tarquin is accused of having made into “artizans and quarrymen” proceeded in a body to the “mons sacer” outside the city, and refused to come back and resume work until their grievances had been dealt with. The resemblance of the secession to the modern strike has already been recognized^[1209]. It may be an accident, but if so it is a remarkable one, that the chief weapon of the class on which Tarquin’s power appears to have rested should have been one that reappears in history with the organization of the industrial classes in modern times.

Before we proceed to discuss the value of the narratives that we have been quoting, there are a few further notices in them that have a place in this discussion, though they deal not with Rome but with other cities of Central Italy.

In 440 B.C. the plebeians of Ardea, a city about 20 miles S. of Rome, are described by Livy^[1210] as engaged in a struggle with the optimates, and as getting the worst of it. Thereupon the losing party “quite unlike the Roman plebs,... prepared to besiege the city (i.e. Ardea) with a crowd of workmen (opificum), attracted by the prospect of plunder.” The Latin leaves it possible that the crowd of workmen (opificum) with which the plebs of Ardea prepared to besiege their city should be understood as a separate body, conceivably metics or slaves. At Veii in 400 B.C. the artifices are said to have been slaves^[1211]. But though in Etruria in 400 B.C. this may have been normally the case, in Latin Ardea forty years earlier we may well have conditions not unlike those that have been inferred above for sixth century Rome. Even if the opifices of Ardea are to be understood as slaves, the united body of plebeians and opifices acting in opposition to the optimates comes nearer to Brutus’ description of the situation at Rome under the Tarquins than does anything that can be found in our historians’ pictures of Rome in the fifth century. Livy is thinking of the Roman plebeians of the early republican period, not of the opifices and lapicidae of the age of the Tarquins, when he says that the plebs of Ardea was quite unlike the Roman plebs^[1212].

In the year 400 B.C. according to Livy the people of Veii, “taedio annuae ambitionis, regem creauere^[1213].” Nothing is said by Livy about feelings and parties in Veii itself, except this statement that they were bored with annual elections. All that Livy mentions is the way in which the appointment was received elsewhere in Etruria. The event, he says, gave offence to the peoples of Etruria. Their hatred of kingly power was not greater than that which they felt against the king personally. He had previously made himself generally unpopular by his wealth and arrogance (opibus superbiaque). He had once brought a solemn celebration of the games to a violent conclusion: indignant at having been rejected by the votes of the twelve peoples in favour of another candidate for the priesthood, he had suddenly, in the middle of the performance, withdrawn the workmen (artifices), a great part of whom were his own slaves^[1214].

The result of the Veientine’s wealth had been, according to Livy, to make him unpopular. But it is a reasonable inference from Livy’s narrative that he was unpopular only with the aristocrats who continued to control the government in the other cities of Etruria. His accession can hardly have been disagreeable to the Veientines who made him king.

As noticed just above before he became king he had also been the employer and actually the owner of a great proportion of the “artifices” of the city. It is nowhere stated that the artifices helped to make him king in Veii as they had helped to make him unpopular in the rest of Etruria: but the important part played by the opifices at Ardea a generation previously suggests that this may well have been the case. If the events took place as recorded it is hard to believe that there was not some connexion between the Veientine’s royal power and his previous riches and control of the skilled labour of the city^[1215].

So far we have been assuming that the extant accounts of the Tarquins have a historical basis. That assumption, as remarked already, is by no means beyond dispute. Not a statement has been quoted so far in this chapter that has not within the last century been pronounced to be historically worthless. Recently however there has been a movement to treat the narrative with much more respect than it generally received a generation ago. The new attitude is not merely a reaction against the excessive scepticism of the nineteenth century. Largely it is based on fresh evidence, mainly archaeological. Inscriptions show that writing was no extraordinary accomplishment at Rome in those early days. Excavations of cities that have been sacked make it most unlikely that the sack of Rome in 390 B.C. meant the complete destruction of the city records. In the face of facts like these more weight is now given to passages where our authorities for the history of sixth and fifth century Rome allude to more or less contemporary records, whether Roman or Greek. The evidence for falsification and invention is indeed considerable, but it is now for the most part realized that the critics of the nineteenth century greatly overestimated its application. The credibility of early Roman history is too big a subject to deal with at all adequately in a work like this. It is necessary however to examine more in detail those parts of the narrative with which this enquiry is more particularly concerned.

Some scholars are still to be found who dispute in toto the Tarquins’ historical existence. Of this ultra-sceptical school the most recent and voluminous exponent is Professor Pais of Naples^[1216]. Pais accepts nearly all the views of nearly all the sceptics in so far as they are purely destructive. But the main inspiration of his unbelief is not this destructive criticism but the ease with which he finds that he can explain the growth of our narratives on the assumption that they are false^[1217]. In the case of the Tarquins Pais first points out in the usual way the inconsistencies and impossibilities and reduplications^[1218] in the narrative, and the uncertainties that hang over it as a whole. Then, after rejecting it as history, he accounts for it as myth. He equates Tarquinius philologically with Tarpeius^[1219]. The Tarpeian rock was the slope of the Roman Capitol over which condemned criminals were hurled to meet their doom. There are passages in Varro and elsewhere that make it possible that the whole Capitol was once called the Tarpeian Mount^[1220]. On the strength of them Tarquinius is explained as Tarpeius, the original guardian deity of the Roman citadel. All the stories told about Tarquin are, according to Pais, attempts to explain customs and buildings and natural features connected with the Tarpeian Mount. Hence his association with the temple on the top of the Capitol and with the quarries on its sides. Hence the stories of his cruelty and of his own violent death. Hence too we hear of Tarquinian laws: they are merely laws passed on the Mons Tarpeius or sanctioned by the god Tarpeius^[1221].

I do not propose to deal in detail with these criticisms. They do not seem to me to need it. So many unquestionably historical characters would succumb to Pais’ treatment.

Imagine for a moment that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had never circulated, and that the original had perished in a Danish raid. Imagine further that Asser’s life of Alfred had met with a similar fate. Both calamities might easily have happened, and if they had, king Alfred would be as easily disposed of as king Tarquin himself.

Alfred did none of the things that tradition ascribes to him. He did not institute trial by jury or the division of England into shires. He was not the founder either of University College, Oxford, or of the British navy. The stories of his victories over the Danes are extremely doubtful on the face of them^[1222]. Alfred does not conquer his enemies: he merely converts them. The legend admits that he had his headquarters in an impassable swamp, and that the conquered Danes ruled the country. Twice in two centuries the Danish invaders sweep over England after the death of a king Aethelred. Both times there is a campaign on the Berkshire Downs. The decisive battle is fought in the first case at Ashdown, in the second at Essendune, which is palpably a mere variation of the same name. In each case the conquest is succeeded by the reign of a Saxon Edward. The second Edward is admitted by tradition to have been less concerned with royalty than with religion^[1223]. The first will be shown in a moment to have been the son of a god. Elder as applied to the first Edward is neither more nor less suspicious than Priscus as applied to Tarquin. This simple device of duplication probably explains the story of Alfred in Athelney. It is a reflexion backwards of the story, possibly historical, of Hereward’s exploits in the similar swampy fastness of Ely.

The one legend that remains inextricably associated with Alfred is that of the cakes. Alfred the fugitive in his Arician grove^[1224] at Athelney is made known to his followers only after the burning of the cakes. The inference is obvious. Alfred is a vegetation deity of the same order as Demeter, the wandering goddess who was found by the mistress of the house where she sought refuge burning not cakes but Triptolemus the corn god himself^[1225]. The mistress of the house appears also in the Alfred myth. But in other ways, and especially in the recognition scene, the story has been obviously contaminated by Christian influence^[1226].

So far therefore from dismissing the cake story from Alfred’s history, we find that it is the very essence of the legend. In fact, when we recall such divinities as Dionysus Botrys, Dionysus the Grape, we must be tempted to wonder whether king Alfred and his cakes are not one and the same divinity.

The introduction of the Greek Demaratus into the Tarquin story has sometimes been regarded with extreme suspicion. For the late Professor Pelham it seems to have been a proof that Tarquin was merely Herodotus translated into Latin. He uses it as such in a handbook on Roman history^[1227]. Even if only the literary records are considered Pelham’s inference if not unreasonable is certainly rash. The story of the voyage of Demaratus stands on quite a different footing from the long speech put by Dionysius into the mouth of Brutus, in which the founder of the Roman republic is made to quote the double kingship at Sparta as a precedent for the double consulship^[1228]. "but there is nothing improbable about the narrative," Brutus’ speech is palpable fiction. The Demaratus story on the other hand may indeed have been borrowed from that of Philip the son of Butacides, who in the last quarter of the sixth century fled from Croton “with his own trireme and a crew of his own employees^[1229]” and sailed first to Cyrene and then with Dorieus the Spartan to Sicily, where they tried to establish a settlement but were killed by the Phoenicians and Egestaeans. But if on other and independent grounds we find reason for thinking that the story of Demaratus’ voyage in the seventh century^[1230] is in the main outline historical, then we may reasonably find a confirmation of it in the well attested facts of Philip’s adventures in the century following, in the statement^[1231] that Caere, the Southern neighbour of Tarquinii, contained a Greek element at the time of the Tarquins^[1232], and further in the fact that Demaratus is made to quit Corinth at a time when we have the authority of Herodotus^[1233] for believing that many prominent Corinthians were being driven to quit their city. The migration of the Tarquins from Tarquinii to Rome corresponds with the Etrusco-Carthaginian alliance against the Greeks of which the best remembered fact is the subsequent disaster that overtook the Phocaeans in Corsica in 536 B.C. When the Tarquins are banished from Rome they flee to the Greek city of Cumae, while the Romans who have banished them proceed to make an alliance with Carthage^[1234]. All through the Tarquin narrative we may discern a strictly historical background that fully explains their comings and goings. The same may of course be said of countless heroes of modern historical romances. But in these historical romances the fictitious characters seldom play the leading political part that is played by the tyrant kings of the Tarquin dynasty.

The evidence of institutions also tends rather against the sceptics. Cicero notes that the organization which Tarquinius Priscus was said to have introduced for maintaining the Roman cavalry was the same in principle as that which had once prevailed in Corinth^[1235]. The sceptics may indeed argue that the Corinthian character of the Roman practice was the reason why it was attributed to the son of Demaratus. But this line of argument rests on pure assumption, and leaves with its advocate the onus of explaining this similarity between the institutions of Corinth and Rome.

There is in fact another source of evidence now available which greatly alters the balance of probabilities. Cicero may after all be right when he says "which is confirmed" “influxit non tenuis quidam e Graecia riuulus in hanc urbem, sed abundantissimus amnis illarum disciplinarum et artium^[1236],” and proceeds at once to illustrate his statement from the career of Demaratus.

At the time when the story makes Demaratus leave Corinth for Etruria Corinth was probably the chief industrial state in Greece. Her chief industry was pottery. Corinthian pottery of this period has been found in many parts of the Greek world, including the chief cities of Etruria^[1237]. At Corneto (Tarquinii), the town from which Tarquinius Priscus is said to have migrated to Rome, many specimens from the necropolis of the ancient city are to be seen in the museum. An example is shown in fig. 34^[1238]. Unless the Corinthian pottery found in such distant regions as Etruria has distinct local peculiarities, it is generally assumed to have been imported from Greece. Corinth did unquestionably export pottery. A Corinthian terra cotta tablet has come down to us (see fig. 35)^[1239] that depicts a ship surmounted by a row of vases that can only represent the cargo. The wide area of its distribution and the very numerous sites on which it has been found point to export from a single centre. On the other hand a large export trade from one main centre is quite consistent with branch establishments. If Corinthian potters went to Etruria, it is hard to see how we are to distinguish the vases they made before leaving home from those that they produced afterwards. The question whether the characteristic pale clay of the Corinthian pottery is to be found in Central Italy does not arise. The raw material would be imported quite as easily as the finished product. But there is other archaeological evidence that takes us further, and makes it not only possible but probable that Greek potters as well as Greek pottery found their way to Etruria at the period to which the Demaratus story, if historical, must be assigned, i.e. about the middle of the seventh century^[1240]. I refrain purposely at this point from drawing my own conclusions, and shall confine myself to the views and statements of archaeologists who have devoted special attention to the material in question.

In the seventh century graves that have been found in so many cities of Etruria there occur, besides objects that may well be imported from Greece, many others that are essentially Greek in character, but show local peculiarities. For instance at Caere, which was so closely connected with Tarquinii and Rome, in the famous tomb excavated in 1836 by General Galassi and the arch-priest Regulini, a quantity of metal work of this description was found. The tomb has been recently reopened and the contents discussed at length by G. Pinza^[1241]. On some of the vases of a very familiar Greek type found in the same grave Pinza remarks that “the coarse clay allows us to imagine that they are of local fabric^[1242].”

When we come to Central Italian finds that date from the sixth century Greek objects that there is good reason for regarding as locally produced become positively plentiful. They include vases and bronzes, architectural terra cottas and sepulchral frescoes^[1243]. Such a mass of material points again to a large number of Greek or Greektrained workmen in Central Italy at the time of its production, and though that time is rather later than Demaratus and the objects are Ionic, not Corinthian, yet it increases the plausibility of the Demaratus story, the more so as the change from Corinthian to Ionic reflects the policy ascribed in our ancient literary authorities to Servius Tullius^[1244].

Those who deny the historical existence of Demaratus naturally deny also that of his Greek workmen Eucheir and Eugrammus. Even Rizzo, who admits a historical basis for the Demaratus story, declares that these names are “obviously fictitious^[1245].”

The taint of the ultra-sceptical school still lingers. Else why should a countryman of Tintoretto say that Eucheir and Eugrammus are “obviously fictitious” names? In spite of its obvious fictitiousness the name Eucheiros was actually borne by a Greek potter, several of whose vases have come down to us signed “Eucheiros made me the son of Ergotimos^[1246].” This Eucheiros the son of Ergotimos (itself a good industrial name) lived not in the seventh century but in the sixth: also, he was not a Corinthian but an Athenian. But even if we refrain from emphasizing the pride of family which his signature shows as compared with that of most potters, who sign with only their own names, and refrain too from recalling the facts that Greeks so very frequently bore the names of their grandfathers and that potters like Amasis almost certainly migrated to Athens about the middle of the sixth century, when Athens was supplanting the rest of Greece and more particularly Corinth in the pottery industry, still the sixth century Athenian Eucheiros completely disposes of the “obvious fictitiousness” of one detail of the Demaratus story. So far from being obviously fictitious the Corinthian Eucheir has every appearance of historical reality. So too has his alleged relationship to the founder of the Tarquin dynasty at Rome. If the first tyrant of Corinth got his name from a pot and very possibly owed his tyranny to the Corinthian potteries, it is not surprising if a Corinthian emigrant to Italy took potters with him and used them to build up the position which enabled him to make himself tyrant in the city of his adoption^[1247]. In both cases we are dealing with conjectures, but it may be fairly claimed that the two conjectures lend one another mutual support.

There are no traditions connecting Servius with Corinth: such notices as we have of his relations with the Greeks connect him with Ionia. Both Livy^[1248] and Dionysius^[1249] and also Aurelius Victor^[1250] state that Servius built a temple of Artemis and made it the centre of a Latin league, in imitation of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which was the meeting-place of the Ionian league. It has already been suggested that Servius’ monetary reforms may have a historical basis, and be due to intercourse with the Phocaeans, who had founded Marseilles in 600 B.C. The city of Phocaea, though in Aeolian territory, was reckoned Ionian^[1251].

The Ionizing Servius is said to have reigned from 578 to 534 B.C. In the middle of the sixth century, or in other words at just the same period, a corresponding change occurs in the archaeological finds, in which experts are agreed in recognizing Ionian influence if not Ionian workmanship. Among the objects which display the new style are the vases known as Caeretan hydriae^[1252] and Pontic amphorae^[1253] and a group that has been classified as among the latest products of Clazomenae^[1254], and a group of bronzes from Perugia^[1255]. Of the sixth century examples of the famous frescoes that adorn or disfigure the chamber tombs of Etruria some have been attributed to Ionian artists^[1256], as have also architectural terra cottas of the same period found in Latium at Conca (the ancient Satricum)^[1257] and Velletri^[1258].

In dealing with the architectural terra cottas from Conca Rizzo suggests^[1259] that the potters who worked there came from Cumae or some other Greek city in Campania. In this connexion he remarks^[1260] that so far the traces of intercourse between Rome and Campania during the first two centuries of the city (i.e. 750–550 B.C.) seem rather scanty. He attributes this to gaps in excavation. Once more he seems not to notice that the negative archaeological evidence harmonizes with the literary tradition. Cumae must have been powerfully influencing Rome in the very early days when the Romans borrowed the Cumaean alphabet. But then comes a period when Cumae is eclipsed by Corinth^[1261]. Cumae only begins to recover her influence Romewards when Corinthian influence is on the wane. The Tarquins’ story begins at Corinth: it ends at Cumae, where Superbus, when banished from Rome, is said to have sought refuge^[1262] with Aristodemus who was perhaps the last Greek tyrant of the old commercial type^[1263].

It has been argued that nobody could have built shops in the Forum in the time of the Tarquins because recent excavations have shown that till a comparatively late date the Forum was used as a cemetery: that, apart from this, arcades and shops must have been impossible in the Forum until it had been drained: and that the building of the main drain, the cloaca maxima, ascribed to Tarquin by Livy, has been shown by excavation to belong to a very much later age.

As regards the main drain, archaeology has indeed shown that it was bricked and vaulted at a late date; but there is no reason for thinking that it began its existence with the masonry that now encloses it. The London Fleet and Tyburn suggest the opposite. The most recent volume on the subject is emphatic on this point. “The earliest Roman sewer consisted undoubtedly of a natural watercourse, the channel of which was widened and deepened^[1264].” “There is no doubt that the first attempts at artificial drainage date from the regal period. The first part of the city to be drained was the Forum valley^[1265].”

Those who maintain a post-regal date for the building of the Forum base their arguments on the finds of pottery in the Forum graves. The finds have been numerous and their evidence is valuable, and it is necessary briefly to review it. The latest style of pottery found in these graves is the Proto-Corinthian. This very distinctive and widely distributed pottery^[1266] has been the subject of much controversy as regards its place of origin, but its chronology is well established. It flourished in the seventh century: during the sixth it persisted in a few stereotyped forms, of which at least two^[1267] lived on in a degraded form into the fifth. Vases of this style quoted by Boni^[1268] as coming from two of the latest graves in the Forum are illustrated in the Notizie degli Scavi^[1269] (fig. 36). Both the vases illustrated might well be seventh century. At Rhitsona in Boeotia the types were completely obsolete by the middle of the sixth century, not one example occurring among some 2500 vases excavated from graves of the latter half of the century. This mass of pottery included about 150 Proto-Corinthian vases, but the number is divided about equally between kothons like J.H.S. XXXI. p. 75, fig. 4, and small skyphoi such as J.H.S. XXIX. p. 319, fig. 7, no. 9, with just two or three pyxides like J.H.S. XXIX. p. 312, fig. 2, no. 8.

In the Forum graves there are a certain number of vases of other styles that cannot be dated so accurately as the Proto-Corinthian but suggest on stylistic grounds a somewhat later date. None of them however would naturally be put later than towards the end of the sixth century, and very few so late as that^[1270]. Occasional burials of a later date would be evidence for a later conversion from cemetery to Forum only if intramural burials were unknown in Rome. As a matter of fact there is explicit evidence that they took place^[1271].

After what has been said about the Tarquins and sixth century Rome generally it is scarcely necessary to discuss in detail the historicity of Servius Tullius. For representative modern views on him see Mueller-Deecke^[1272] (Servius symbolizes the supremacy of Volsinii, the Tarquins that of Tarquinii); De Sanctis^[1273] (Servius is the Etruscan invader who drove out the Tarquins); Gardthausen^[1274] (Servius is the Roman counterpart of the Greek tyrant, the Tarquins the legitimate kings, leaders of the rich and noble). This whole chapter is a refutation of Gardthausen’s view about the Tarquins: the other suggestions are compatible with my own. Etruria may well have exercised as strong an influence on a sixth century tyranny at Rome as did Persia on those of sixth century Ionia.

Pais^[1275] fancifully explains Servius as the priest god, the seruus rex, of Aricia, who was imported to Rome in 338 B.C., well known to English readers as

Mastarna is differentiated from Servius^[1276] and said to have a historical prototype in Mezentius, the enemy of Aeneas. My criticisms of Pais in reference to the Tarquins are equally applicable here.

In the early period of the Roman republic the chief Greek influence to judge from the narratives was that of Athens and the Alcmaeonidae^[1277]. Once more we find the written documents and the archaeological evidence in agreement. During the second half of the sixth century Attic imports had been gaining a great preponderance in Central Italy^[1278].

Thus from the time when the Greek Demaratus is said to have settled in Tarquinii to that at which the last Roman Tarquin is said to have sought shelter in the Greek Cumae the series of Greek connexions implied in our narrative is found reflected in the results of excavations. We have based our conclusions on a mass of material from various sites scattered all over Central Italy. "The finds from Rome itself confirm the narratives by showing first Corinthian influence, then Ionian, and then Attic." The evidence from Rome itself could not have been made the basis of the discussion. It is not sufficiently abundant. Its scantiness however need cause no misgivings. It is sufficiently accounted for by the unbroken ages of crowded occupation that differentiate Rome from the surrounding cities. The finds from Rome, as far as they go, confirm the other evidence by showing that first Corinth, then Ionia and finally Athens did actually influence Rome during the period of the last royal dynasty. Corinthian vases have been found in the city from time to time^[1279], though not, it should be noticed, in the Forum cemetery^[1280]. The influence of Ionia in the sixth century is seen in such objects as a series of cups^[1281] closely resembling the “later Ionic vases” of the Munich catalogue^[1282], or again in a bearded antefix (fig. 37) found near the church of S. Antonia and compared by Pinza^[1283] with examples published by Boehlau in his Aus ionischen Nekropolen^[1284] (fig. 38), or yet again in the archaic terra cotta head (fig. 39) found in 1876 near the church of the Aracoeli on the Capitol^[1285], which much resembles the stone head (fig. 40) from the Athenian Acropolis described by Dickens as “an undoubtedly early example of imported Chiot art^[1286].” An amphora in the Attic black figure style (fig. 41) has been found on the Quirinal^[1287]. “The most exquisite early Attic” is reported by Boni from the Palatine^[1288]. Attic Ionic influence has been seen in the Capitoline she-wolf (fig. 42), which is held by Petersen to commemorate the expulsion of the kings, and may be compared with the statue of a lioness put up at Athens to commemorate Leaina, the mistress of the tyrannicide Aristogeiton^[1289].

Fig. 39. Terra cotta head found on the Roman Capitol.