M.'s foray into the murky territory of early Roman history is an intriguing study and in many ways a breath of fresh air in terms of style, content and approach. As opposed to tackling the traditional problems within the much-contested narrative of early Rome, this project adopts a more unorthodox approach and aims to ‘think of that entire people [the Romans] as one personality’ (p. vii) and, using a ‘common sense approach’ (p. viii), to present a rough character sketch of the Roman people from the foundation of the city down to such a time as the historical narrative takes on at least the semblance of factual accuracy. Looking to behaviour, as opposed to the more traditional mores emphasised by Livy and others, M. identifies four key characteristics of the Roman psyche: conservatism, tolerance, aggression and practicality. While some of these characteristics have long been associated with the Romans, they have never been elucidated in quite such a way and M. skilfully weaves them together to form the basic thematic structure of a work which is incredibly wide-ranging, touching on all types of evidence and all aspects of early Roman life.

The project's expressed aim is the search for a Roman ‘national character’ and, while the concept of nationalism in Rome is clearly anachronistic, the desire to characterise Roman behaviour in this way is laudable and a novel approach to this problematic period. The volume is divided into two main chronological sections with Part 1 focussing on the regal period and Part 2 looking at the early Republic down to the year 264 b.c. Each broad chronological section is then subdivided into four subsections devoted to the four key characteristics. Working through each section in order, M.'s concept of Roman Conservatism during the regal period is interesting as it goes much further than the usual Roman obsession with the mos maiorum found in other works. Indeed, M. pushes for a true conservatism and connection with the past in Roman culture. However, the evidence for this is not uncontroversial and M. makes several odd assertions which are not easily reconciled with the full corpus of evidence, most notably that Rome lacked an outward focus during this period (p. 3) despite the obvious importance of trade and the mobility of Rome and Latium's archaic elite. The second characteristic, Tolerance, is also intriguing, although I am not convinced this word is entirely appropriate in this instance. M. argues persuasively for Rome's growth by incorporation, but his suggestion that this was because of the ‘tolerant’ character of the Romans presupposes a cohesive society which had a self-conscious identity and an awareness of the ‘otherness’ of migrants. While this interpretation is clearly possible, and indeed Rome's late republican writers espoused such a model, it is by no means the only interpretation. Herein lies one of the fundamental problems with M.'s approach. Though he is keenly aware of the issues with the sources for early Rome, M. still implicitly accepts some of their basic tenets with significant implications. Most notably M. seems to have accepted Livy's premise that a late republican concept of Roman identity was applicable to the archaic period and that there existed an identifiably ‘Roman’ citizen body which was largely settled in, and focussed on, the urban centre of Rome even at this time. While this assumption is defensible, it is not a given and should not be made unthinkingly, particularly as it underpins much of the subsequent interpretation of early Rome and is what allows M. to search for a distinctively ‘Roman’ (as opposed to ‘Latin’ or ‘Central Italian’) character during this period in the first place.

M.'s study of archaic Roman Aggression should be one of the more straightforward and uncontroversial in the volume, and to a large extent it is, as he rightly identifies the violent nature of life during this period in Central Italy. However, M.'s interpretation of events again presupposes the presence of a cooperate mentality and a strong state, all led by a ‘king’ who was able to assert significant control over many aspects of Roman society. While M. acknowledges the power of the gentes and other groups at various points, it is the cohesive community, or perhaps ‘state’, of ‘Rome’ which seems to dictate the action in his interpretation. Finally M. discusses archaic Roman Practicality, which is a common enough trope (and the usual comparison of ‘Roman engineers’ vs ‘Greek philosophers’ can be found throughout). In this section M. argues that Rome's early practicality can best be seen in the community's early building projects, which he suggests were practical in nature and required a strong group identity. M. also offers an intriguing argument concerning the practicality of Rome's social organisation where the archaic curiae are presented as a social group which existed parallel to the gentes. This builds on the work of a number of other scholars and represents a fascinating, and I would argue correct, approach to this enigmatic institution. However, M.'s argument that the curiae were created via a top-down reorganisation of Roman society enacted by the reges to ease administration is less convincing.

Part 2 focusses on 509 to 264 b.c. In M.'s treatment of Roman Conservatism the power and role of the gentes is immediately emphasised in the early Republic as the events of 509 b.c. are rightly identified as an aristocratic revolution. However, the remainder of the section, which is primarily concerned with using rituals and early political institutions as windows to the past, is more problematic due to the lack of a consistent methodology, particularly in dealing with issues of anachronism in the late republican sources. Roman Tolerance is pushed as a continuation of previous practice, and indeed M. introduces this section with the line ‘There is no reason to think that the Romans of the early Republic were any less open to foreign ways [than those of the archaic period]’ (p. 76). Here M. argues for an inclusive and open-minded society using the examples of Hellenisation, the myth of Aeneas and colonisation as support. While the section is reasonably convincing, it does tend towards a relatively conservative line, for instance adopting E.T. Salmon's still important but rather dated approach to colonisation as its basis. Next, Rome's Aggression in the early Republic is argued through both clan competition and state warfare in a persuasive fashion, although it is clear that M. views all republican warfare as existing within the same paradigm and so never seems to recognise or reconcile Rome's evident early focus on raiding with her later focus on conquest. Finally, Rome's early republican Practicality is again argued for using various aspects of Rome's socio-political system.

As should be expected given M.'s reputation, despite being outside his usual realm of expertise this study demonstrates a very solid grasp of the material in addition to a keen, critical eye for detail in constructing his model of early Roman society. However, the entire study is based on some problematic and unproven premises; it not only assumes that a cohesive and reasonably static society existed in Rome during the regal period and the early Republic, but also that this early society developed in a linear fashion culminating in the Rome of the late Republic. While this is a defensible stance, it is by no means a given one, and unless the reader makes all of the same (very large) assumptions as M. concerning the basic nature of Roman society, from the sixth to the first century b.c., the model very quickly begins to unravel. Additionally, as is true with many other studies which approach early Rome from a teleological perspective, the work struggles to develop a coherent methodology for the evidence. Although M. makes clear his awareness of the problems with the evidence and his general unhappiness with many modern approaches to them, he then often falls prey to the same issues with which he expresses concern.