If we reject from our account every thing which is purely dramatic, we see after Tarquin’s downfall four Tribunes of the Celeres in possession of the government, consequently a magistracy of four persons, Sp. Lucretius being at the same time Princeps Senatus and Valerius Præfectus Urbi. In Livy all goes on as in a stage play; the necessary historical development of the events is mistaken: some important hints are, however, to be found in Dionysius. These four men had no authority whatever to bring any resolution of their own before the citizens; the patricians could not decree anything, unless there had previously been a Senatus-Consultum as a προβούλευμα, as in all the Greek states, which Dionysius points out in several instances. This was the case in the curies as well as in the centuries: the first branch of the legislature which had an initiative were the Comitia Tributa, and it was this which made the lex Publilia so exceedingly important. So long as the senate could not take anything in hand but what was laid before it by the consul, nor the popular assembly without a decree of the senate, so long might the consuls stifle almost everything; they merely needed to keep a stubborn silence. In the case in question, it appears that the proposal for the abolition of the kingly dignity was not in a legal manner brought by the Tribuni Celerum before the curies; Livy has, however, for the sake of the composition, suppressed the old account contained in the law books. The tribunes of the celeres assembled, and resolved upon moving the abolition; the motion was by the Princeps Senatus brought to the senate; and the senate and the curies decide upon it. This is the lex curiata. With the intention now to restore the constitution of Servius in its integrity, the decision of the curies was also laid before the centuries for their approval, the order being a matter of little consequence. The way in which this is represented, is that the army in the camp of Ardea had assented to the resolution.
It is by no means certain that the consulship was instituted immediately after the expulsion of the kings. Rome was perhaps at first under the rule of the four Tribunes of the Celeres; perhaps also the government was at once rid of its superfluous number of heads, and they were reduced to two. This was certainly a deterioration; yet it may have been so ordered in Servius’ constitution with the definite purpose of securing the equalization of the commonalty, so that there might be one consul from the patricians, and one from the plebeians. In this case, of the first consuls Collatinus is the patrician and Brutus the plebeian one, unless perhaps there should yet happen to be a prior consulate of Sp. Lucretius and Valerius Poplicola.
The taking of Rome by the Gauls has not been fraught with more serious consequences to the city itself than it has been to its history, of which indeed all the sources have been obliterated by it. The chronicles of many places in their early histories afford a parallel to this. In Dittmarsch they begin about a hundred and fifty years before the conquest of the country, after the great change when the clans and the peasantry were formed into one organized body; an event which they do not mention, but presuppose. In like manner the chronicle of Cologne commences its notices long after that city was already great and flourishing. There were every where in the middle ages earlier written accounts; yet they were laid on the shelf, as they had no more any positive interest, after the particulars of the tradition had been buried in oblivion. Thus it was also with Roman history. They had it from the times of the republic, not, however, from its beginning, but only from about the period of the Secessio, merely with detached notices of the earlier times; before it they had nothing besides the peace with the Sabines during Sp. Cassius’ first consulate, and the war with the Volscians. All those earlier histories were, as we have already shown, restored in accordance with a numerical scheme.
I have already remarked that, when there were consuls of the two orders, Brutus represented the plebeians, as Sextius Lateranus did afterwards. It is very remarkable, that with regard to all these old institutions, it must indeed be asserted that the Licinian laws were in all essential points nothing else than restoration and re-enactment of those of Servius. The consuls were first called Prætores, στρατηγοί in Dionysius, until the Decemvirate, when their power was curtailed; and then the title of consul seems to have been introduced as being a somewhat more humble one. The derivation of this word has greatly troubled the Roman etymologists; we class it with præsul and exsul. Præsul means, he who is before (above) others; exsul, he who is out of the town; consul, he who is with another, equal to collega, whence consulere to be together in order to consult;—it has nothing to do with salire. Yet the being together of a patrician with a plebeian was not of long duration. It is stated that the expulsion of the Tarquinii was at first not at all followed by an embittered hostility, although an oath had been taken not to suffer kings any more to reign in Rome; so that it might almost appear doubtful whether the outrage against Lucretia had been really perpetrated. The ancients were often inconceivably mild with regard to such matters. It is possible that the influence of the royal race and of the third tribe were still so great, that they were obliged to grant the Tarquins in lieu of the hereditary rule the eligibility for the consulship. In Greek history also the royal races are dissolved into γένη ἀρχικά: the Codrids become archons, even those elected for ten years and certainly also at first those for one year were Codrids. Yet this did not last long. Collatinus was obliged to resign, and the whole of the Gens Tarquinia to leave the city. It may be that there was at that time a Tribus Tarquinia also, the memory of which was now obliterated. It seems shocking that Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia, was banished; if there were children of Lucretia living and they had to leave the country together with Collatinus, this was a revolting cruelty. Yet Lucretia’s marriage with Collatinus belongs to poetry only; neque affirmare neque refellere in animo est. She is the daughter of Sp. Lucretius Tricipitinus, and this is dwelt upon with much greater emphasis than her marriage. The intention of this probably was, to palliate the fact that the Tarquins were not absolutely driven out, and to explain the reason for which after all a cousin of the king had been made consul; and this could not be effected more easily than by connecting him with the legend of Lucretia.
The main point in the consulship was the limitation of the royal power to one year, election supplying the place of hereditary right. It was separated from the priestly functions, and received no τέμενος, what Cicero calls the agri lati uberesque regii, large demesnes which were cultivated by the clients for the kings. These agri were now divided among the commonalty in order that the restoration of the regal dignity might become impossible, and also that the consuls might not have the absolute sway of the kings. The power of these, like that of the Frankish kings, lay in their retinue. Clovis was not allowed to appropriate to himself any exclusive share in the booty, and yet he ruled already as a despot, and still more so his successors. This power he had merely by means of the comitatus. In the middle ages the tenant of the king had less consequence than the common freeman who had carefully preserved his independence. This state of things was only changed in the thirteenth century. Such royal tenants were those clients who cultivated the fields of the kings.
Was the consulate such that two patricians were to be elected, and there was no further limitation; or was it confined to the two first tribes, the Ramnes and Tities, to the exclusion of the Luceres, as in some of the priestly colleges; or was it a representation of the patricians and plebeians? These three probabilities lie before us. No one, moreover, was allowed to stand for the consulship in the earliest times: the candidates were proposed by the senate. The first of these cases is out of the question: were it not that the two first tribes, or the two estates were represented, a triumvirate would have much rather been thought of. The idea of the triumvirate was first taken up at a later period of the Roman history, a fact which was quite overlooked until I discovered the trace of it in an insignificant author, Joannes Lydus, who made use of excellent materials.
Of a plebeian consulship we find no more traces, down to the times of Licinius. In the place of Collatinus Horatius was elected, as may be proved from the treaty with Carthage, and by a passage of Pliny: in the common tradition, Valerius Poplicola is named as the successor of Collatinus. Thus we have these two statements placed side by side, one of which gives the lie to the other, and therefore we may freely have recourse to criticism, just as in the era of the kings. The events which happened under the kings, inasmuch as they fall within larger periods of time, could be extended or compressed; it is therefore quite a natural illusion to consider as better authenticated the subsequent times in which year by year is counted, and private persons only appear as the actors. Yet the age of uncertainty reaches much lower down. The poem, with which we have now to do, goes as far as the battle at the Regillus; in the legend of Coriolanus there again begins a distinct poem. In the Fasti there are the greatest discrepancies. In the first thirty years, there are wanting in Livy three pairs of consuls given by Dionysius. With regard to one of these, Livy seems to have found a gap in the Fasti: those copies which have not these gaps are interpolated. The two other pairs, Lartius and Herminius, are nothing more than subordinate characters which are mentioned along with the heroes. Men felt the necessity of enlarging the Fasti, because they did not suffice for the number which had been calculated; and so they forged consulships, not, however, laying hold of names at pleasure, but taking them from extinct houses and from second-rate heroes, and these they put in between the consulships of the Valerii, in order to disguise the fact of their series being unbroken. We have therefore free room for much conjecture upon other subjects also. Of the Horatii, we know from Dionysius that they belonged to the gentes minores, so that we have again one of the Luceres to supply the place of Collatinus; it is therefore my conjecture that alternate pairs, first one of the Ramnes and Tities, and then one of the Luceres and a plebeian, were set to preside over the state. Yet we cannot investigate this any further. Now if Valerius was not the colleague of Brutus, all that is told of him falls to the ground. Valerius Poplicola, it is stated, did not after the death of Brutus choose any successor at first. He is said to have built a stone house on the Velia. The temple of the Penates, falsely called the temple of Romulus, lies at the foot of a steep hill, the Velia: on the top, where the temples of Venus and of Roma and the arch of Titus stand, is summa Velia; the temple of Romulus is infima Velia. The people, or rather, the sovereign citizens, murmured at the building of that house of stone; on which Valerius had it pulled down during the night, and summoning the people, that is to say, the concilium of the curies, made his appearance accompanied by the lictors without the axes, and likewise had their fasces lowered before the concio. Hence the name Poplicola. Here also the populus is undoubtedly the patricians, the commonalty of the old citizens, from whom the consular power was derived. Such an homage before the plebeian commonalty would have been demagogical, and had this been the case, he must have been called Plebicola. This fine story cannot now be of any historical value for us; because according to the documents we have, Valerius could not certainly have been the only consul, tradition always mentioning Sp. Lucretius as his first colleague. The reason why he did not at once fill up the consulship, is said to have been his dread of the opposition of those who had equal claims. Sp. Lucretius occurs in some Fasti in the third year as consul instead of Horatius; but then there follows that unfortunate accommodation by which, in order that the father of Lucretia might not be passed over, his consulship is transferred from the third year into the first.
The Valerian laws are genuine; and it is on the whole a settled fact that the legislation of Servius was restored. The patricians, as Livy says, tried to gain over the plebeians; and Sallust also tells us, that as in the times immediately following the change the state had been governed by just laws and fairly, so it had afterwards been quite the reverse. The election of the consuls by the centuries is preserved from the ritual books, and therefore it is not absolutely certain. That the first law of the centuries was that Valerian one, by which to the Plebes was given the right of appeal to their commonalty, looks very authentic, but is not so. Perhaps it may be that the first elections were made by the Curies, as was unquestionably the case afterwards; yet the explicit tradition that the original condition of the Plebes was far more favourable than the later one, pleads against it.
Tarquin is said in the story to have betaken himself to Cære, and from thence to Tarquinii,—according to others, to Veii, to call upon the Veientines for aid. The emigration to Cære is nothing else but a personification of the “jus Cæritum exulandi,” this jus exulandi having always existed between Rome and those who were on terms of isopolity. The jus Cæritum is prominently mentioned in the old law-books, the reason for which seems to have been the flight of Tarquin. The version of the books is that he went to Cære; that of poetry that he went to Veii, and led the Veientines against Rome. The annalists finding both of these too mean, gave it out as most likely that he might have bent his steps to Tarquinii, where forsooth he must yet have had some relations. With regard to Cære, whither the royal family is said to have gone, there is no mention whatever of its having supported it in the war. Cicero, who had seen the genuine old Roman history, knows nothing of the participation of the people of Tarquinii in the Veientine war: he says in the Tusculan questions, that neither the Veientines nor the Latins had been able to bring back Tarquin. Purely mythical is the battle near the forest of Arsia, where Brutus and Aruns fall fighting, and the god Sylvanus loudly shouts forth the decision after 13,000 Etruscans, and one Roman less, had been stretched dead on the field of battle. Now that cannot be any thing but poetry.
Lars, or Lar[87] Porsena is an heroic name, as Heracles among the Greeks, Rustam among the Persians, Dietrich (Theodoric) of Berne, or Etzel (Attila) in the German epic lay. The principal characters of the heroic legends are blended with history, and their names are linked to events which have really happened. The war of Porsena belonged to those traditions which were most widely spread among the Romans, and it is represented as the second attempt of the Tarquinii to recover the throne: the Veientine war had not effected any thing, and after the death of Brutus it is no more spoken of. Cicero surely looked upon this war of Porsena in no other light than that of a Tuscan war of conquest. And undoubtedly the Romans were at that time engaged in a most destructive conflict with the Tuscans, in consequence of which they sank as low as any people can sink. From republican vanity this immediate result of an alteration in the constitution was thrown into the shade:—the Gallic conquest was just as dishonestly covered over. Of Porsena, the legend must have told a great deal. Thus a mausoleum of his at Clusium is mentioned, which Pliny quite innocently describes from Varro, who had it from Etruscan books. This account especially shakes my belief in the trustworthiness of the old Etruscan books, which to judge from this sample must have been tinged with an oriental colouring. It is a marvellous work, such as never has existed, and never could have existed,—like a fairy palace in the Arabian Nights. Pyramids stand in a circle, and are connected at the top by a brazen ring on which, of course in the intervals, other pyramids of huge base are standing; and so on in several stories, a pyramid of pyramids, which indeed could not have stood firm, but must needs have fallen to the ground, furnished too with bells, and other things of the same kind. It is inconceivable how Varro, and above all, how such a practical man as Pliny could have believed in day dreams like these: even a child may see that this is not possible. The impossibility is yet more confirmed by the fact that neither of them beheld any more traces of such a work, of which the ruins must have existed even to this day, as in Babylon those of the temple of Belus. Quatremere de Quincy has had the unfortunate idea of trying to restore this edifice in an architectural elevation. There may have been a historical Porsena who was made mythical, like our Siegfried, who was placed in quite a different time from the true one; or vice versa there was a mythical Porsena who was brought into history. We may safely deny the historical character of all that is told concerning this war: it has a thoroughly poetical appearance. How much this was the case, becomes evident when we view the tale in its simple form, stripped of the additions taken from the annalists. It is peculiar to all these poems, that they do not at all tally with other historical data.