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the literary sources was now untenable, optimism justified and the optimists vindicated, or so it could be claimed. As so often happens, in all the exuberance, there was also a considerable amount of excess. The inscription and the complex in which it was located accorded with ancient accounts of what was said by some to be the tomb of Romulus,³ and so the discovery was even hailed as proof that ←47 | 48→Romulus himself had existed. Indicative of the enthusiastic mood are the somewhat self-satisfied comments of R. Lanciani:⁴

      Since the discovery of the Heroon Romuli in the Comitium and of the archaic stele, – whatever the meaning of its legend may be, – the history of ancient Rome cannot longer be written in the distrustful spirit of the hypercritical school. The future rests with our conservative party, of which I was a convinced member even at a time when it required a certain amount of courage to be recognized as such and to meet the accusation of credulity, when a lecturer could not name the founder of the City as a man who had actually existed, without blushing before his audience.

      The problem is, the ancient sources also said that the complex was the tomb of Faustulus and the tomb Hostus Hostilius too.⁵ Of course Boni’s discovery no more proved the existence of Romulus than do more recent discoveries, for which all the same problems with the literary evidence exist, including that most fundamental difficulty of its relationship (or better, lack thereof) with the archaeological evidence.

      Ironically enough, even though the inscription does confirm the existence in the sixth century of a rex – whatever a rex may have actually been at that date – the fact that ancient writers could describe the inscription and its immediate physical context quite accurately while clearly having only a vague notion of what the complex was is good reason for scepticism.⁶ What is also remarkable is that no one knew either what the inscription itself was actually about, even though they could still see it, for a time, and certainly in better condition than it is in today (not least because a substantial part of it has been lost). Some said it was an account of Romulus’ deeds, others, Hostus Hostilius’, and he was not even a king.⁷ Clearly no one could even ←48 | 49→begin to read it, or was concerned to try.⁸ And that state of affairs doubtless applies to any other documents that may have survived from that same era and even more so in the case of anything older.⁹

      So what, then, did later Romans really know about the regal period and their kings? And, if they did happen to know anything veracious, how did they, if documents from such early times were unintelligible in later and when no one wrote history at Rome until the end of the third century bc, that is, until some 300 years after the regal period had ended? Moreover, given the sorts of documents the sources claim had survived from that era – a few laws and treaties but not much else¹⁰ – how were Rome’s historians able to produce any sort of narrative of events, which is what ancient historiography was primarily concerned to produce, from such material, even if it was intelligible?

      As for the appearance of the word rex on the inscription, all that that proves is that the title was in use at the time when the inscription was set up. It does not prove anything much more than that, although a religious role of some kind for the rex in question (who may conceivably have been a rex sacrorum in any case) can perhaps be inferred from the extant parts of the inscription without too much risk. It certainly does not follow that the literary evidence for Rome’s kings is in any way veracious, and, strictly speaking, does not even disprove the argument that the kings the ancient authors wrote about were in fact just euhemerised gods.¹¹ The extraordinary ←49 | 50→confidence of scholars like Lanciani was as premature as it was unwarranted. But, however unjustified it may have been, that confidence is nonetheless important evidence. It is evidence of the sheer will of some to believe in the historicity of the Romans’ accounts of even the earliest history of Rome despite all the evidence and arguments that show that such an approach is neither justified nor sustainable.¹²

      Although there has of late been something of a resurgence of similar uncritical exuberance, as a result of more recent archaeological discoveries,¹³ it is fair to say that the overwhelming majority of scholars today would not want to claim that Romulus was an historical figure. Most would be unlikely to suppose either that there is anything truly historical in the evidence for Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius or Ancus Marcius, the three kings who were said to have come after him. The Tarquins and Servius Tullius may be another matter but, even in their case, comparatively little of what the Romans said about them would seriously be taken as reliable evidence for what those men actually did, even if there is reason to suspect that they probably did exist.¹⁴ And yet, despite these circumstances, it nonetheless remains the case that various parts of the evidence, even for the very early kings, are regularly accepted as genuinely historical, to some extent at least. It is what may be called the ‘constitutional’ aspects of the monarchy that are usually deemed the most trustworthy.¹⁵ In particular – and perhaps most importantly of all for understanding the regal period as a whole – it ←50 | 51→is the idea that Rome’s kings did not inherit the throne but were elected or somehow chosen by the Senate and people that is most often accepted as historical.¹⁶ It is in fact fair to say that this view represents the orthodoxy in scholarship on the period.

      The idea that Rome’s monarchy was not hereditary is almost universally accepted as a simple matter of fact. T. J. Cornell, for instance, says that ‘No king of Rome inherited the throne from his father.’ Tarquinius Superbus, the son of Tarquinius Priscus, was ‘a usurper who seized the throne illegally’ and so is the ‘exception that proves the rule’. B. Linke is equally emphatic. ‘A form of hereditary kingship’, he says, ‘did not exist’.¹⁷ It has even been claimed that hereditary succession was not even a feature of the Roman mentality.¹⁸ Some have, however, been a little more cautious, but only comparatively so.¹⁹

      As for the way in which Rome’s kings supposedly did come to power, modern reconstructions are many and varied, but they almost all have in common the fundamental belief that the kings were selected somehow and their position subsequently ratified. The only exceptions are those kings – usually the last two – who are supposed to have seized power by force or acquired it by some other illegal means, although even these men, some maintain, will still have got their position approved in some way.²⁰ Several ←51 | 52→accounts of the process by which the kings were supposedly appointed can be found in the ancient evidence, and they are variously handled. Some scholars follow the sources closely, others only generally, sometimes drawing on them selectively, picking out and emphasising (and sometimes modifying too) specific details and basing their reconstructions on those details alone.²¹ There is considerable variation, but there is nonetheless an underlying consensus: Rome’s kings did not inherit their position; they were elected, selected or approved in some way, or otherwise held power illegally.

      All this is, however, vastly more uncertain than is usually acknowledged. This is not just because there is good reason to suspect – as is in fact widely accepted – that ancient accounts of the way in which Rome’s kings were appointed are based on the anachronistic retrojection of later ideas and practices. It is also because – and this is something that does not receive the attention it deserves – the literary evidence is filled with stories that presuppose that the sons of kings could inherit the throne, or at least make a credible claim to it on hereditary grounds. The several extant accounts of the regal period regularly juxtapose stories based on ideas of hereditary succession with stories of the Senate and people choosing the next king. Modern scholarship has accepted the latter to varying degrees, but has failed to offer an adequate explanation for the existence of the former (which it has in fact generally ignored), even though both sets of stories can usually be found side by side in the very same accounts.

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      In the following section (II), the question of hereditary succession will be discussed and the numerous stories that presuppose it will be considered. In the section after that (III), the process by which Rome’s kings were said to have been appointed will be assessed. In the final section (IV), an entirely new explanation for the nature and shape of the account of the regal period in the extant sources will be offered.

II

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