the one founder, there is further reason to be suspicious.
The idea that Rome was the work of many founders and was for that reason superior was inevitably strengthened by the Romans’ belief that they had – somewhat uniquely – elected their kings and so had been able to choose the best men for the job. It was an established view, on the other hand, that hereditary succession leads to bad rulers. It can hardly be a coincidence that only one of Rome’s kings was said to have been bad and that that king was also the only one said to have acquired his position on hereditary grounds. But, if the Romans always chose their kings, how else could such a man have ever come to power?
A bad king was needed, but only the one. That was enough to provide a plausible explanation for why the Romans had brought an end to the rule of kings and established the free Republic. It also allowed for Rome’s earlier kings to be assessed positively; after all, since they were Rome’s founders, it would not do to make them all into abusive tyrants. What sort of state would such men have established? The whole reconstruction is patently contrived, and the surprisingly widespread evidence for stories about Rome’s kings that presuppose hereditary succession suggests that it was probably a later development; even the story of the bad king whose abuses led to the end of the monarchy may well be unhistorical.31 Much of this reconstruction is nonetheless widely accepted today. These matters are considered in Chapter 2.
Although the Romans later believed that their kings had been immediately replaced with magistrates known as consuls, there is good evidence to show that that was not the case. The consulship may have actually been created as late as the fourth century bc (see Chapters 3, 5 and 6). That means that the anti-monarchic ideology that was associated with it must have developed at a later date and in a different context. The most obvious context in which the Romans might have found it useful to set their republican institutions in direct opposition specifically to the rule of kings is when they came into conflict with the kings of the Hellenistic world. The benefits of such a reinterpretation are obvious. When, for instance, ←13 | 14→the Romans later did away with the ancient and illustrious Macedonian monarchy, they established annually elected magistrates in its place and thus were able to present their actions as a benefaction. The Macedonian people, they claimed, were now free (see Chapter 5). That, of course, involved a definition of freedom no Hellenistic king could possibly entertain.
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For the Romans, the events of the past were always relevant and they were so in ways that they are simply not today.32 The final chapter explores how the descent – both asserted and denied – of M. Iunius Brutus from L. Iunius Brutus, the legendary founder of the Roman Republic, was an important and contentious issue in the first century bc. L. Brutus had led the conspiracy to oust Tarquinius Superbus, while M. Brutus was a prominent figure in the plot to assassinate Iulius Caesar. Marcus’ descent from Lucius evidently mattered; it helped to justify his involvement in Caesar’s murder, which is precisely why his opponents challenged it. The achievements of ancestors were important, whether they consisted of getting rid of a king or something a little more commonplace, such as reaching the consulship, the magistracy that was the ‘hallmark’ of Rome’s office-holding nobility (a topic explored in Chapters 6 and 7). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Livy should have complained precisely about problems in the lists of magistrates, the making of false claims in funeral speeches and Licinius Macer’s unreliability when he wrote about his own family. Similar charges have since been levelled against other Roman historians (see Chapter 7).
The events of the past could be contentious in other ways too. The Romans were not the only ones to write about Rome’s history. Others did so as well and not all were admirers. Some were opponents, and these circumstances no doubt also help to account for some of the different interpretations and reconstructions that can be found in the literary evidence. One notable detractor was Philinus of Agrigentum, whose account of the First Punic War was later used by the historian Polybius. Polybius knew that Philinus’ work was unfavourable to Rome and unreliable for ←14 | 15→that reason, just as he knew that his other main source for the war, Fabius Pictor’s history, was favourable and so unreliable too. Polybius himself had much higher standards, but the simple fact that he felt it necessary to insist that the writing of history requires impartiality is good evidence of what generally went on.33
Polybius had no difficulties at all showing up Philinus’ account of the start of the First Punic War.34 He went to greater lengths, however, to disprove Philinus’ claims about the terms of the treaty between Rome and Carthage that was in place at the time of its outbreak, terms that unsurprisingly and somewhat suspiciously put the Romans wholly and unambiguously in the wrong.35 Polybius’ efforts led to the discovery and publication of some extremely important evidence.
Rome and Carthage had long had dealings with one another and they had on several occasions made treaties with each other. Polybius got access to a number of these, which had evidently been inscribed on bronze, and he discussed the terms of them in his work. Given the considerable lengths of time involved (Polybius dated the earliest treaty he found to the first year of the republican period), as well as the partisan nature of some accounts, the fact that there are uncertainties, inconsistencies and even incompatible claims in the evidence for Rome’s early dealings with Carthage is perfectly understandable. The record may well be incomplete too, although gaps often do tend, by their very nature, to be undetectable.
Given these circumstances, the confidence with which so many have written on this topic in modern times may well come as a surprise. No less extraordinary is the method that is widely employed when dealing with this material. Despite the many and often obvious problems, the evidence is treated not only as reliable but also as complete. No one source preserves intact the whole record of Rome’s dealings with Carthage, but it is usually assumed that the several different sources have somehow managed to do this between them. All that needs to be done is for the different pieces of that record to be picked out of those different accounts and put back together. The fact that the pieces are often selected and reassembled to suit ←15 | 16→the desired reconstruction is neither here or there, apparently, nor is the fact that some of the pieces are incompatible with one another.
This method and the specific problem of Rome’s treaties with Carthage are the focus of Chapter 4, but the importance of the issue extends far beyond this specific body of evidence. This is because the use of this method – and the accompanying willingness to ignore not only the existence of divergent accounts but also the very implications of their existence – is not confined to this one topic. The evidence for Rome’s origins has likewise been handled in a highly selective manner in some recent work, although in this case the desired interpretation of the archaeological evidence has often provided the criterion for what is to be accepted and what ignored.36
It is worth repeating that the extant literary evidence for early Rome consists of a mix of material, some of which is older, but some newer, some of which is based on evidence, but a good part of which owes its existence to argumentation, reconstruction, interpretation and even invention. It needs to be handled accordingly.
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So where does this leave early Rome? Polybius’ research into Rome’s treaties with Carthage turned up some early material which he presented in his work (some of this was evidently newly discovered and the implications of that for the efforts or attitude of Rome’s first historians should not be overlooked, nor should the absence of this material from subsequent works). Some of what Polybius found is especially significant because it seems to be inconsistent
