In his interpretation of the archaeological evidence about the date of the beginning of the Roman Republic, Gjerstad is just as iconoclastic as about the dating of the kings. His argument, more ingenious than convincing, is that an event as important politically as a change from a monarchy to a republic should be reflected in the artifacts, changing from richer to poorer, whereas no such objective evidence of a cultural break is visible in the levels dated by him (perhaps more closely than the facts warrant) at 509 B.C. Such a cultural break does not come until some fifty years later, when Etruscan imports cease. There are grave difficulties in pushing the date of the Roman Republic’s beginning down so far, of which the chief is a list (the Fasti) of pairs of consuls 509–450 B.C. where many names are too obscure to have been invented. Gjerstad’s excavation, in sum, is important as confirming the accuracy of Boni’s methods, and as telling us much about the village stage of Rome, but the absolute chronology cannot be said to be as yet firmly fixed, nor the traditional one definitely upset.
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Apart from absolute chronology, what unequivocal evidence can archaeology provide that early Rome was ruled by kings? The ideal evidence would be an inscription, and one was discovered in 1899 in the Forum near the Comitium, where, in the open air in front of the Senate House, the popular assembly met. The inscription is called the lapis niger stele, because it lies under a later pavement of black marble (lapis niger), now preserved under a deplorable corrugated iron roof. But the stone on which it is carved is not marble but tufa, identified as having come from the quarries of Grotta Oscura in the territory of Veii, some nine miles north of Rome.
On the various kinds of tufa or volcanic stone in use in early Rome there hangs a tale. In 1924 an American, Tenney Frank, published an epoch-making study of Roman building materials in which he put the dating of Roman monuments on a firmer basis by distinguishing several different kinds of tufa used by Roman builders at successive dates. Subsequent studies have blurred the dividing lines and shown the possibility of overlap, but Frank’s nice eye for discriminating tufas has revolutionized the architectural history of the Roman Republic. The following table illustrates Frank’s methods:
| Type | Characteristics | Quarries | Where used |
| Cappellaccio | flaky dark grey ash | Rome | Capitoline temple (509 B.C.) |
| Grotta Oscura | friable greyish yellow | 2½ mi. N. of Prima Porta | Forum stele, “Servian” Wall, Tullianum (prison) |
| Fidenae | flecked black fragments (scoriae) | Castel Giubileo, 5 mi. N. of Rome | Castrum, Ostia (338 B.C.) Argentina Temple A (ca. 200 B.C.) |
| peperino | peppered; can be carved | Marino (Alban Hills 11 mi. SE) | Tomb of Scipios (early 3rd cent.) Altar, Argentina C (ca. 186 B.C.) |
| sperone | coarse-grained brown | Gabii (12 mi. E) | Milvian Bridge (109 B.C.) |
| Monteverde | reddish, olive streaks | Across Tiber | Sullan pavement nr. Lapis niger |
| Anio | brown | Cervara (35 mi. ENE) | Tomb of Bibulus (before 50 B.C.) |
Fig. 3.5 Rome, Forum: lapis niger stele. Note the word RECEI, which may be evidence for the historicity of Rome’s kings. (P. Goidanich, Mem. Acc. It. 7.3 [1943], Pl. 9)
Fig. 3.6 Rome, Forum. Rostra, third phase (fourth-third century B.C.). (E. Gjerstad, Skrifter 5 [1944], p. 142)
The lapis niger stele, inscribed on tufa of the second type in this series, could be of the very late sixth century B.C., and this date is borne out by the very archaic letter-styles ([Fig. 3.5]), which resemble those on the Aules Feluskes stele from Etruscan Vetulonia. Interpreting what the stone says is not made easier by the fact that the top is cut off and the lines are inscribed boustrophedon (like the Lemnian stele among other examples), so that in successive lines the beginning and the end are alternately missing. In the left-hand column below is printed the latest text of the letters as they appear on the stele; in the right-hand column, a translation into classical Latin, filling the blanks; below, a translation of this oldest of all Latin inscriptions: