Comata into the Senate. ←31 | 32→As part of his case, he pointed out that Rome had always been open to outsiders, and he illustrated this with several examples, one of which is particularly important. According to Claudius,
If we follow our Roman sources, [Servius Tullius, Rome’s sixth king] was the son of Ocresia, a prisoner of war; if we follow Etruscan sources, he was once the most faithful companion (sodalis fidelissimus) of Caelius Vivenna and took part in all his adventures. Subsequently, driven out by a change of fortune, he left Etruria with all the remnants of Caelius’ army (Caelianus exercitus) and occupied the Caelian hill, naming it thus after his former leader. Servius changed his name (for in Etruscan his name was Mastarna), and was called by the name I have used, and he obtained the throne (regnum) to the greatest advantage of the state (res publica).36
In this story too there is a prominent individual, Caelius Vivenna (or Caeles Vibenna, as he is usually known), and his followers, at least one of whom, Mastarna, is called a sodalis. Like Lucumo, Mastarna allegedly became king at Rome after moving there from Etruria; in his case, he changed his name to Servius Tullius. Servius was Rome’s sixth king, so that makes Mastarna Lucumo’s successor. It has been argued that Caeles Vibenna may have ruled Rome too, for a time, although he is not included in the canonical list of kings. But that list unrealistically has a total of just seven kings, even though Rome’s regal period supposedly lasted for two and a half centuries, so there are good grounds for supposing that Rome had other, otherwise unknown rulers.37
←32 | 33→
Claudius also speaks of Caeles’ army, and it may be that the term sodales is applicable here too, to the soldiers in that army, or at least to some of them, those who were closest to their leader. The army, in any case, was Caeles’ army (Caelianus exercitus, says Claudius), and what was left of it following a setback of some kind and the death of Caeles – both of which are usually inferred from Claudius’ account – appears to have been passed on to Mastarna. This is quite clearly not the army of the city-state of Vulci, the ‘hometown’ of Caeles Vibenna; it is Caeles Vibenna’s own personal army. These are his men, and subsequently they become Mastarna’s.38
What Claudius has to say about Caeles Vibenna and his most faithful companion, by chance, gets some support from a fourth-century bc Etruscan tomb painting from Vulci, which depicts a naked and bound ‘Caile Vipinas’ being freed by ‘Macstrna’ (the figures are identified by inscriptions).39 This certainly fits perfectly well with the Etruscan context that Claudius mentions and seems to confirm the friendship between the two men, although it does not necessarily verify anything else, or even those details. The painting is still more than 200 years later than the purported events.40
As the city of Rome developed, another type of group appears to have emerged, if it did not already exist. These were the gentes. A gens was essentially a group of people who shared a common nomen; there was a notional idea that each gens ultimately originated from one individual, but these individuals are usually mythical and the extent to which individuals from different branches of the same gens were actually biologically related to one another is unclear. It is, however, unlikely that they were.41
It used to be believed that the gentes existed before the city-state, but the more prevalent view today is that they probably developed at about ←33 | 34→the same time.42 That does not mean, however, that they were necessarily all developing in the same direction.43 It may also be the case that clear distinctions should not be imposed, at least early on, between individuals and their sodales and the gentes.44 Gentes too, or some of them at any rate, may perhaps have once also had individual leaders. Attus Clausus, the man who took all his followers to Rome, changed his name once he got there to Appius Claudius. The story explains the origins of the gens Claudia at Rome. Having said all that, the evidence does generally suggest that the gentes were acephalous, certainly in historical times.
The gentes were powerful groups who appear to have long been able to pursue their own ambitions, and even behave in ways that may have been contrary to the idea of the state. The best example is found in the story of the private war that was said to have been waged by the gens Fabia with the Etruscan city of Veii (or, it may be, just with a rival group based in that city). The evidence for this war is, however, deeply problematic, and it has long been recognised that the story of the Fabii’s expedition has been modelled on the famous, and essentially contemporary, exploits of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae; like the Spartans, the Fabii were 300 or so in number and, like the Spartans, they were all killed, and the parallels do not stop there.
Whether or not it is possible to strip away all the parallels between these two episodes, and whether or not anything of value would be left, if they were removed, is anyone’s guess.45 Yet it may be that the story is not wholly fabricated, simply because it fits so poorly with all those assumptions about the Roman state and its army (namely that both had been created by Romulus, and so existed from his day onwards). It is telling that it is also possible to detect various attempts to harmonise the story of the Fabii’s campaign with those assumptions. In Diodorus’ account, for instance, the Romans fought a great battle with the people of Veii in which they were ←34 | 35→defeated; among the dead were the 300 Fabii.46 The private war of the Fabii is thus effectively made, in Diodorus’ version, into an affair of the state.
The power and influence of the gentes can be seen as well in the Roman tribal system. Rome’s territory came to be divided up into regions called tribus [tribes]. The earliest of these were named after gentes. One was called the tribus Fabia, the Fabian tribe, and it has been suggested that this tribe should be located in the direction of Veii, on the principle that the 300 Fabii were fighting to defend their own land. It is reasonable to infer that these early tribes were named after those who dominated the land in question, and that was clearly not the state.47 Later on, however, when Roman territory expanded and new tribes were created, they were instead named after geographical features.
The first of these new tribes seems to have been the tribus Clustumina, following the defeat of Crustumeria; it was perhaps created in 495 bc, if the literary evidence can be trusted.48 Whether or not it can, it is significant that no further tribes were said to have been added for over a century, which is a considerable period of time. Four were created in 387 bc, then two each in 358, 332, 318, 299 and 241, and these tribes were almost all given geographical names.49 Clearly, by this time, the state had become more powerful and so tribes ceased to be named after gentes.
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III
From this necessarily brief and patchy overview, it is possible to see that, alongside the developing city-state of Rome, there appears to have existed various other social groups, and it seems that these groups could, for some time, act entirely independently of the state, if they so chose, even when they were based at Rome. The most obvious conclusions to draw from this are that the Roman state was at first under-developed and comparatively weak, and also that not everyone subscribed
