This collection of essays offers a variety of approaches to what is in many respects the most complicated and least well understood period of Roman history, viz. the period from the end of the sixth century BC, which the ancient tradition associated with the fall of the monarchy, to the Licinio-Sextian legislation of the fourth century, which at least potentially represents the moment in which the Roman republican constitution, with two annual magistrates, became a stable feature of Roman history. Although the essays in this collection also cover earlier and later periods, I shall focus on the central problems of the first century and a half of the Republic.Footnote ¹

Modern authors have sometimes spoken of a fifth-century crisis,Footnote ² but I am using the term here to indicate not only the possibility of a genuine historical downturn but also the highly problematic nature of our engagement with this period. Paradoxically, whilst the sixth century BC is more distant in time, and arguably less well supported by the sources, it seems to some extent rather more comprehensible.Footnote ³ It is not that we have invented a crisis because the sources have let us down; rather, the problematic nature of the source material may itself be indicative of the problems faced by central Italy at this time.

Throughout this volume, the reliability of the sources is of course a (perhaps the) key problem,Footnote ⁴ and the approach I want to take is not to rehearse yet again that specific methodological challenge (for which see the introduction to this volume), but to argue that there are certain approaches which are required of us when dealing with this period. It is not impossible to construct a history of the fifth and early fourth centuries BC, even if we start from a position of considerable scepticism, but we need to be highly attentive to the leaps in reasoning we are making. I want therefore to offer a reconstruction of this period which I believe to be consistent with a fairly minimalist position. The end result is both informed by, but also a reaction to, the essays collected here. It is less a conclusion than an attempt to suggest some ways in which we might move forward from this welcome contribution on a poorly understood period.

After some methodological observations, I want to shape my thoughts around three main themes: first, the issue of continuity from the sixth century BC; second, an argument about military activity and how it may help us to create a model for what is happening at Rome in this period; and third, some comments on religion.

To start with our approach to the sources, one of the temptations offered by this period of Roman history is to read the sources against the grain and to believe that one can fashion a history which is entirely different from that which the sources offer, but nonetheless using (some of) the evidence they provide.Footnote ⁵

In other periods and places, this is a very plausible way of proceeding. It is not uncommon to wonder if one can write a very different history of the Athenian empire from the one we find in Thucydides, for instance, or to deconstruct Ciceronian rhetoric and Sallustian narrative. This is a key method for the ancient historian. We cannot and should not take our sources at face value; none, not even the inscriptions, are documentary in any value-neutral way (even assuming that such a concept exists). What is written down conceals and betrays at the same time the purpose of its production, which will always be to persuade and convince.

The critical difference between the sources just cited is that, for the most part, they refer to their own period, or one within living memory. Thus, when we read Thucydides against the grain, we do so knowing that he was aware of his own time and had living sources.Footnote ⁶ He was engaged in a dialogue or an argument. For this reason, we tend to privilege Thucydides over the much later Plutarch as a source. Plutarch is interesting in his own right and in his own times for the shape he gives to his material, but as a source he is of more significance for his testimony of traditions which have been otherwise submerged or lost.Footnote ⁷

The difference between this and the case of the early Republic is obvious, but the consequence needs spelling out. It is possible to believe that Thucydides persistently misrepresents the character of Athenian imperialism, or that Cicero traduces Catiline, and to unearth a consistent shadow account, because we make a fundamental assumption that the factual structure remains the same for either account and it is the interpretation which is different. It is not possible to make the same argument for the early Republic for two reasons: first, it is precisely the potential absence of a factual basis which is at stake; and second, but consequently, it is very difficult to argue that there is a consistent Tendenz which has distorted that factual basis.Footnote ⁸

This creates a problem for any account which tries to create an alternative picture of the early Republic, but using the same evidential base. Modern accounts do exist which claim to uncover a consistent but hidden pattern underlying the sources.Footnote ⁹ I find this unconvincing methodologically because it presupposes that the ancient writers had a clear knowledge of a coherent factual base, which is then not only consistently manipulated but whose manipulation remains consistently transmitted such that it can be ‘reversed’ by the modern scholar.

Suppose instead that the material which the ancient historian had in front of him was a scattered muddle of conflicting legends, myths, lists, and untethered stories, and that the shape imposed on such material was to a large extent the product of stylistic choices, determined by the contemporary concerns of historians, reworked repeatedly. Recognise then that we have only two surviving sources which deal in detail with this period, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, both standing late in the tradition of historiography. It becomes less and less plausible to believe that they are a code which can be unlocked to reveal a consistent alternative reality, especially when we find scattered variants which cast a quite different light, as is often the case with Diodorus Siculus. Had we all the ancient sources, we would almost certainly find them frequently irreconcilable, implying that there was no single ‘truth’ for us to hope to attain.Footnote ¹⁰

Two areas where this kind of rewriting has been particularly common are the institutional history of Rome and the history of military events. When it comes to the first of these, the sceptic will lay much emphasis on the institution of the praetor maximus.Footnote ¹¹ This office, especially if it reflects a single lead magistrate, negates the concept of the paired magistracy of the consulship. If we accept the argument that in fact Rome did not have the idea of the consulship until the middle of the fourth century, we can write a very different history – or indeed we can decide not to write a history at all, taking the view that the evidence is so corrupt that no intelligent reconstruction is possible.Footnote ¹²

To a degree, the attraction of the praetor maximus thesis is that of the lectio difficilior. However, it is worth reflecting on just how unsubstantiated this version of Roman political history is. Why should we believe it? What problem did it solve when Varro, if it was he, unearthed it?Footnote ¹³ It has sometimes been suggested that the development of a multiple magistracy should be connected to the split of the legion from one into two units, but unfortunately we cannot date this move either, a move which depends on a brilliant but hypothetical reconstruction by Fraccaro. Justifying a rather unclear tradition on the leadership of the Roman political state by reference to a hypothesis regarding the development of the Roman army would be inherently and obviously dangerous.

Unfortunately, writing the history of the early Republic often proceeds by building hypothesis onto hypothesis. Similar processes are at work when we deconstruct the Roman story of military success. One way of doing this is to note doublets and apparently repeated episodes, and it may well be that such episodes are signs of a deeply suspect narrative.Footnote ¹⁴ They may also of course be signs of a style of warfare less decisive than the sources believed, so that, in the manner of the relatively frequent low-level warfare we associate with Greek poleis outside the cataclysm of the Peloponnesian War, there was a tendency for warfare to be repetitive. Critical to any progress here is the general recognition that the sources’ account of the development of the Roman army may be anachronistic, but there is no easy proof which can decide between an account which simply maintains the lineaments of the Roman version, but changes the dates, and another which offers a radically different evolution.Footnote ¹⁵ And to a degree we tend to write the story of Roman expansion on the basis of the assumptions made about these other matters. So a small, weak, or disorganised army encourages a view that the Romans overstated their military progress; whereas a more positive view permits a version closer to the Romans’ own account.Footnote ¹⁶

All early Roman history is a matter of hypothesis, and we all choose the building blocks which suit us.Footnote ¹⁷ Take for example the hypothesis of warfare organised around clans. This is built almost entirely on the exploits of the Fabii at Cremera.Footnote ¹⁸ But historiographers know that that account has been massively tampered with, to say the very least. On the face of it the Fabii are located in the right place to battle with Veii and there is a gap in the consular fasti which could be attributed to a wipe-out of the family. However there is also a tradition about a massacre of 307 Roman prisoners at Tarquinii in 353 BC (Livy 7.15.10) and the two accounts may have influenced each other. The modern assumption tends to be that it is the Cremera episode which influenced the later story.Footnote ¹⁹

Yet the argument that the Cremera story is secure depends on some awkward reasoning. Badian, in his review of Taylor’s Voting Districts of the Roman Republic in JRS 1962, noted the fragility of the argument that put the Fabii next to Veii. In his notes to the reissue of Taylor’s volume, Linderski dismissed this as ‘cavils’ and Rieger’s allocation of Lavinium to the tribus Fabia as ‘ingenious and erudite, but not necessarily convincing’; but his own positive argument depends on weak logic:

However, we know next to nothing about the context of the Satricum inscription and sodales are not gentiles.Footnote ²⁰

Another argument is that the Fabian event is rooted in Roman chronology. It is in some sources on the same day as the Battle of the Allia – but not in all; and Ovid claims to have better information on the Fabii.Footnote ²¹ Moreover a Fabius was already consul in 467 BC, so the argument that the gens was destroyed is belied by the fasti. Ironically, we could then have a family story disproved by a list which sceptics argue is the product of familial manipulation. Finally, there is no evidence, archaeological or otherwise, for a gens of some three hundred members.

The account of the Fabii at Cremera is desperately problematic and has to be recognised as such. Yet the episode is used repeatedly to shore up theories on the gens, on Roman warfare, society, economy, settlement patterns, and even the transmission of information about the archaic period; and the equally obscure and potentially completely different story about the sodales of Valesius at Satricum is often used to shore up the validity of conclusions derived from the Fabian episode. Yet scarcely anyone I suspect believes that 300 Fabii marched against Veii with the permission of the Senate and were eventually caught by an ambush and killed down to the last boy.

Ultimately the most significant feature of the early Republic is how difficult it is to turn into a coherent historical narrative, and we have to focus on explaining that, and asking different kinds of questions of the evidence we do have. At the heart of this, of course, is the problem of the lists of magistrates and their reliability, and ultimately that cannot be solved in its own terms, since the evidence can point in any direction. One way forward is to acknowledge that the account has to be thinner and at a higher level of abstraction. The other, as is well illustrated by this volume and other recent work, is to look at this critical but difficult period within its wider context. And the third is to give greater weight to the least disputable aspects of the evidence, archaeology, the Twelve Tables, and the festival calendar.

If our focus is in part on why the fifth century is so problematic then we have to start with the sixth century and ask what continuities and discontinuities we can trace. Hopkins’ recent book on Roman architecture reminds us that the divide around 500 BC is a largely modern one and is unhelpful.Footnote ²² At the same time, Glinister (this volume) reminds us that the transitions at the end of the monarchical period were not neatly focused on the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus. In short, the period from the sixth to the mid-fifth century is a period of profound architectural activity and, insofar as we can tell, significant constitutional change.

Once we begin to think of building as a sign of a society under stress, this makes rather more sense. There are plenty of parallels which show that building can take off in a dramatic way when it is being used to reinforce a society which feels a sense of insecurity, rather than operating as a sign of successful stable growth. This insecurity may have been heightened by the brutality of the labour demands.Footnote ²³ Certainly the level of construction in the city of Rome, as attested by temples, is now far greater than we had thought, and this highly visible and powerful display was combined with major infrastructure projects and elite housing.Footnote ²⁴ Instead of an index of stability, we may be seeing the exploitation of resources within an increasingly competitive world. Internal competition and peer-polity interaction are both likely factors if we can extrapolate from a Mediterranean-wide model.Footnote ²⁵

The flattening out of a messy model of competition into the canonical story of seven kings, whenever that occurred, makes the narrative of the archaic period very difficult to recover. However, there are two critical elements which have to be factored in. First, the simple size of Rome is an indication that we are dealing with a complex and sophisticated society. Every indicator places Rome as a leading city in central Italy: fortifications, infrastructure, number and size of temples, area of city, apparent hinterland.Footnote ²⁶ Second, the quality and quantity of public spaces imply that there was some sort of civil society at work, however functional it may have actually been. This is perhaps the most controversial and difficult claim, but a condition of the utter subjugation of one’s own populace (as opposed to others, such as the helots of Messenia) is out of kilter with experience elsewhere in small scale polities at this time.

The challenge therefore is to explain what happened as we head in to the fifth century. Luxury display in private contexts which are archaeologically visible, already in decline from the sixth century, reduces even further and remains low.Footnote ²⁷ By 450 BC, the pace of building work seems to have slackened, according to the sources and in the visible archaeology. Survey evidence shows a slow-down in the growth of settlements in the countryside around Rome.Footnote ²⁸ At the same time we have in the middle of the fifth century, again according to the sources, the creation of the Twelve Tables, Rome’s law code.Footnote ²⁹

It would be possible to deny the veracity of the tradition of the Decemvirate; it is a story which has been patently subject to many inventions. The alleged link to the Athenian law codes is surely spurious. Arguments about the dating, which depend on assumptions about the sort of society represented, are weak, since Rome was a small scale, predominantly agricultural community long after the middle of the fifth century BC. Perhaps the strongest argument to be adduced is the idea that to be sold trans Tiberim put one outside Roman territory, which is much more difficult after the defeat of Veii.Footnote ³⁰ At the very least, the Twelve Tables should be, in their origin, the product of a phase before the Licinio-Sextian legislation. Unattached to individual magistrates in the way the Licinio-Sextian and Valerio-Horatian legislation was, and regarded as a collective product, they are consistently presumed to predate subsequent law-making.

Even if the contents have been horribly garbled by their transmission and the date is less secure than we might hope, the importance of the Twelve Tables cannot be overstated.Footnote ³¹ If we accept at least a fifth-century date, two things seem to me to follow. First, we have to acknowledge that Rome was operating according to the rule of law and that implies also the pressure of a civil society; Forsythe makes the good point that there is surprisingly little religion in these laws.Footnote ³² Second, legal codifications do not come from nowhere. The pressures and changes of the previous century will have led to the solutions which appear in the context of the Twelve Tables.Footnote ³³

This implies that in the hundred years or so prior to the Licinio-Sextian legislation, experiments in power will have taken place. Catching sight of this degree of change and transformation is difficult; it is one of the reasons why this volume and future studies will continue to focus so much on the transformation of imperium, which may trace an institutional development independent of the problematic evidence of the fasti. Yet even here, much of the traditional account is problematic and there are suggestions that elements of the later settlement of 367 BC are retrojected to an earlier stage. However, there is perhaps enough to acknowledge how much more complicated Rome was than the simple patrician-plebeian dichotomy permits.Footnote ³⁴

At the same time the sources are unanimous on the fact of a substantial degree of military pressure on Rome between the sixth and fourth centuries BC.Footnote ³⁵ There are signs of these pressures elsewhere, with the expulsion of the Etruscans from Campania in the first half of the fifth century. Successive challenges from central southern Italy seem clear and we catch glimpses of the realignments which were later mapped onto peoples such as the Latins, Volscians, Hernicans, Aequians, and Aurunci.Footnote ³⁶ This consistent ancient account of the geopolitics of the mobile peoples of central Italy is the sort of material we are told does survive on lists, such as the fasti triumphales, and even if we find them problematic in detail, one might accept the overall sense of military pressure (at least in the early fifth and early fourth centuries BC) as a genuine survival.Footnote ³⁷ Indeed this is perhaps part of the reason why the notion of imperium was itself under such strain.Footnote ³⁸

This leads me to a suggestion as to how we might imagine what happens between the sixth and fourth centuries BC. The critical factors we have observed, which depend very little on the ancient narrative as opposed to evidence which might be found in the core material, such as laws, lists, and institutions, are a reduction in visible private expenditure; a rise in large-scale public monuments and infrastructure, which again reduces through the fifth century; evidence of the use of law to constrain and order society; and indications of military pressure on Rome, which are taken to have encouraged a shift in the organisation of the army at least by the earlier fourth century.Footnote ³⁹ Sadly, the evidence we have cannot be used to determine the nature of that change or its date.Footnote ⁴⁰ The reform of the army and the reform of the assemblies will have been connected, but both are equally uncertain.

A comparison with Spartan history in the seventh and sixth centuries offers some similarities and contrasts.Footnote ⁴¹ As far as we can tell, on account of the confusion created by the ‘Spartan mirage’, Sparta went through a remarkable social change as a result of its difficulties with the Messenians.Footnote ⁴² Whilst its own account of itself emphasises stability and an unchanging constitution, other evidence implies shifts of power balances between competing groups within a society which regarded itself as a group of equals, but was actually rather fragmented.

Three aspects of this development are heightened militarism, a corresponding reduction in artistic activity, and the introduction of the Great Rhetra (and its rider) which laid out the necessary divisions of society for the purposes of governance.Footnote ⁴³ The increasing significance of the ephorate as an oversight body inevitably reminds one of the development of the tribunate at Rome, even if Sparta kept its kings, as Rome clearly did not.Footnote ⁴⁴

Critically, a model of militarism within the context of political control makes sense for a period of intense military pressure and, as Rich stresses, warfare was a civic activity.Footnote ⁴⁵ If we are right to believe that the fifth and early fourth centuries BC saw a ramping up of pressures across central Italian society, then a response which turned away from individual display toward communal action makes sense. But critically, that turning away was part of a social choice, a collective decision which rebooted Roman society as something distinctly different from what had gone before.Footnote ⁴⁶

The reorganisation of the Roman tribes may be precisely the trigger for the kind of new social order which was later evident in the fully worked-through centuriate order.Footnote ⁴⁷ The one piece of solid evidence which we have about the early Republic, which is the overlapping of some clans with most of the early tribal names, is helpful to this reconstruction. This overlap gives a critical clue to the nature of the gentes at Rome, that they had a strong territorial base. Even that however shows something critical about their relationship to the centre – they were tribus, divisions of a whole, and it is on the survival of the whole that Rome’s strength depended during the unrest which characterised most of the fifth century.

Insofar as we can understand the later fifth century, it must, to a degree, be understood as the backdrop to the dramatic intervention at Veii. Whilst Rome may not have destroyed the city as fundamentally as the Roman sources claim, it clearly radically reduced the political and military significance of Veii and led to changes in Veii’s hinterland of the Faliscans.Footnote ⁴⁸

The Roman victory over Veii, Rome’s capacity to recover from the Gallic defeat, and the community’s increasing control over Latium meant that, by early in the fourth century, Rome was in a strong position and less hemmed in by equals than its Etruscan neighbours. Yet this must have come at a cost. The unbalanced equation of time spent on non-agricultural labour and warfare, as opposed to the food supply needs of a substantial population, bedevilled early societies.Footnote ⁴⁹ Sparta’s solution of a subjugated population providing food for the Spartan Homoioi was not taken by early Rome as far as we can see; instead, if it is correct to see the price for Rome’s neighbours of defeat and treaty with Rome as a demand for sharing in the military burden, presumably Rome both shared the pain and tried to predetermine victory by having a larger army in the field.

The Romans may also have experimented with different models of territorial control. Recent work on Roman colonisation has helpfully forced us to reconsider the purpose of colonies, and the impact they had.Footnote ⁵⁰ The tensions between successful integration, violent repression and failure accompany all the narratives we have of Roman power in central Italy, and it is clear that simple models will not suffice.Footnote ⁵¹ Whatever system emerged in the aftermath of the Latin wars of the fourth century, it had deep roots, both in the geopolitics of central Italy, and in the management of Rome itself and its growing needs.Footnote ⁵²

In many respects, Rome’s early republican settlement looks potentially unbalanced. There was a strong aristocratic element, but the emergence of the plebs suggests an element of conflict. Again, we could see this as pushed to the very beginning of the Republic by later writers, but Rome’s highly segmented society had space for a group just below the aristocracy, and its economy certainly had potential for wealth generation. With a substantial territory, and the competitive forces identified in the archaic period still presumably an issue, choosing to become a more militaristic society may have been a logical decision, because it both bound society to a common purpose and provided resources for continuity. Subsequent arguments would have related to the distribution of those resources, but the notion of the res publica is highly significant,Footnote ⁵³ and would have been critical to the major rethinking we see in the later fourth century.Footnote ⁵⁴

One of the interesting axes of comparison and future development may be a focus on the words which are used to define the Roman mindset. It has been well noted that, in Sparta, a key emotion was shame (aidos) and that this played a central role in encouraging cohesion in war.Footnote ⁵⁵ For Rome, we would probably look to virtus.Footnote ⁵⁶ Although McDonnell’s thesis on Roman manliness as essentially beginning in belligerence has been criticised and needs to be modified, he must be right that one element of the mix is indeed military.Footnote ⁵⁷ Pretty much our earliest evidence, the Scipionic inscriptions, emphasise the balance between physical and mental virtus (fortis vir sapiensque is the pairing attributed to Cn. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, before the phrase quoius forma virtutei parisuma/fuit).Footnote ⁵⁸ Courage and fortitude are part of the fundamental moral universe of the Romans and their neighbours and are ubiquitous in the artistic production of the time, both imported and locally manufactured.Footnote ⁵⁹

Intelligence, however, is critical in the Roman mindset and there is a world of intellectual endeavour which we also need to be unearthing, insofar as it is possible. One way into this which has recently been explored by Viglietti is the possibility of understanding the economic anthropology of Rome and here my previous reference to virtus (as part of Horden and Purcell’s Mediterranean-wide system of honour) returns in force. Viglietti endeavours to trace a history of austerity at Rome, or parsimonia.Footnote ⁶⁰ What is helpful about his account is the way it recovers a justification of economic constraint, in other words, a demonstration of the way in which having little was made into a positive virtue. This is one kind of response to the economic fragility of the Mediterranean ecosystem, and one which then reinforces behaviours which recursively sustain a particular set of behaviours.

It should immediately be noted, however, that a ‘philological’ approach is subject to the criticism that the literature it explores began in the third and not the fifth century BC at Rome. Studying the language of Plautus to uncover the realities of the fifth century BC is self-evidently problematic. At best we need to look for what may plausibly be regarded as deep continuities and work looking at useful comparisons between Rome and the rest of the Mediterranean still needs to be done.Footnote ⁶¹

For this reason, I think the comparison with Sparta may be enlightening. Equality may not have been the Roman watchword, but if the early army was a single classis with a similar economic background, it may have looked rather more like a group of Homoioi. Yet this would not exclude multiple other groups and we know that Spartan society was also far more complex than the picture of a group of equals might suggest.Footnote ⁶² Both Rome and Sparta created social institutions which at least sought to reinforce continuity, even if the reality was more complex. It is interesting that the self-definition of the leading groups at Rome as patres or patricii or equites relates to functions within the state, and insofar as there were hierarchical positions, such as for instance the pontifex maximus or rex sacrificulus or flamen Dialis, they are ringed around with strict constraints. Between the elite, formal distinctions are hard to find, which may be why group solidarity was so important in the face of attempts by the plebeians to access positions of authority. At the same time, it is a matter of considerable interest that Rome resolved a problem which Sparta signally failed to address, which is how to grow. Whilst Sparta in the fourth century was known for a chronic failure of manpower, Rome’s army and population grew continually, and the expansion of the terms of entry into Rome’s elite must have been part of this equation.

These arguments stretch far past my cautious certainties to a larger but still general claim. Most of the essays in this volume share it to some extent or another. The claim is that the Roman Republic was not invented in the mid-fourth century; that the prioritisation of the community over individual interests has a deep history. What Hopkins nicely calls the ‘potential of a unified city’ demands our attention as much as the fissive forces of ambition and self-interest.Footnote ⁶³

I conclude with religion, as a further illustration of continuity and change in the difficult period between the sixth and mid-fourth century. Archaic Roman religion is a morass of competing explanations, with comparative mythologists seeking deep Indo-European roots and more sceptical voices seeing later syncretism at work.Footnote ⁶⁴ However, temple architecture remains an indisputable aspect of the fabric of early and republican Rome and beneath that lies the genuine paradox of how Rome organised its temple dedications in the pre-republican period. Was it a specifically regal prerogative? Even if it was, the letting out of contracts for building the temple, or whatever process preceded what was later called locatio, must have involved others besides the king.Footnote ⁶⁵

Religion was everywhere in Rome, as a legitimising force, as a constraint, and as a growing and evolving narrative which accompanied Roman success. This seems to me to be a critical element of the story we need to be able to tell, but it is desperately elusive. However, once again it seems to me that the community is much in evidence, from Jupiter’s various manifestations through to Saturnus and Castor, and through the festival calendar.

The three great temples – towering physically over the community which met in the Forum – offer a web of connotations, towards weather, war, crops, liberation and reversal, safety and divine support. The cult of Jupiter on the Capitol is, in some deep sense, connected with the very notion of Rome’s history, and the custom of hammering a nail into it each year, the association, however legendary, with the first consuls and also with the triumph, mark out its dominance of the civic world.Footnote ⁶⁶ Saturn is the most obscure. Possibly on the site of a previous shrine (Fest. 430L), the early republican temple contained within it the treasury of the Roman people, the aerarium populi Romani. Yet our best understanding of Saturn as a deity appears to relate to his role at the turning of the agricultural year, which has a natural connection to the wealth of the Roman people.Footnote ⁶⁷ The temple of Castor, securely dated to the early fifth century BC, marks a boundary of the Forum, and the cult’s association with the safety of the Roman people, a distinctively Roman interpretation, has been well discussed recently.Footnote ⁶⁸ There is a religious narrative here which is in some ways part of our most reliable text from the fifth century, and it points to a clear concept of a unified city.

The other aspect of this ‘text’ is the early festivals, which are distinguished in calendrical inscriptions from later ones. Of the forty-five such festivals, many reflect the concerns of a community. There is a good treatment of this by Forsythe, but his own reading belies his overall description, that ‘the earliest festivals of the religious calendar clearly indicate that archaic Roman religion was the religion of the Roman peasant farmer, whose survival depended upon his success in agriculture.’Footnote ⁶⁹ The Armilustrium is one of several military festivals; the Quirinalia, Fordicidia, and Fornacalia are distinctive gatherings of the citizen body. Even the agricultural festivals need to be seen in the context of a community – these are not the peasant’s sacra privata but rather the civic expressions of interest in the agricultural regime. These are all part of a religious communication which is operating at a high level of sophistication – a conversation between elite and populace, and elite and the divine sphere, in the public arena, and with the gravest of consequences when failure occurs.Footnote ⁷⁰

The tension between cults of the people and cults of the clans is part of the heterarchic reconstruction of early republican Rome which has become increasingly significant,Footnote ⁷¹ but it is important to recognise that the cults and priesthoods belonged and responded to the broader community, and there seems every reason to assume that they are contemporary with the early phases of temple building. Down-dating the early priesthoods would be a radical and unwarranted step. Augurs, flamines, and pontifices seem to co-exist with the early development of political office at Rome and perhaps precede it. Whilst the priesthoods were in the hands of the elite, they served the community.

We know that the Romans were influenced in their religious choices by the Etruscans, and the Greeks as well. There was an openness to experimentation and new cults throughout Roman history, but, underlying this, the Romans sought repeatedly to obey the ius divinum. Their early calendar reveals a world of gods and religious festivals. Especially connected with agriculture, but also politics, the whole map of the year reflected the needs of the market and the assembly. Whilst this undoubtedly reflects reality, Rome was fast moving away from any sense of an original community as its economy, territory, and population developed.Footnote ⁷² Roman religion was already, by the fifth and fourth centuries BC, referring symbolically to the interests of the community.

The interpenetration of these interests from the archaic period onwards is perhaps one of the mechanisms by which the sort of unity which permitted the types of social choices I am positing emerged. This was a world of fines and assessments of wealth, of sacrifice and punishment, of war and hopes of safety, expressed by and on behalf of a community. My contention is that the festival calendar and the concerns which the great sixth to fifth-century BC temples addressed together constructed a script which underpinned the radical choices of a militarising Rome, and which helped to hold Roman society together when it came under great pressure. Any reading of the early Republic which takes the community out seems to me to offer an unhelpful model of an elite without an audience.

In conclusion, and with all due caution, it seems to me that as long as we try not to depend on the narrative, except in the very broadest outline, and use archaeology as evidence, with only the most certain topographical identifications, a general tradition of military pressure, the Twelve Tables, and the archaic calendar, we may glimpse the basis for a comparative account of early republican Rome. The essays in this volume, with various degrees of certainty, take us further, but one of our greatest challenges remains the question of how to argue any sort of case when so many of our premises are insecure. Profitable areas of future study will include much more comparative work and modelling, to offer possible ways of understanding the evidence we have and finding new ways through the fifth-century crisis.