The Legendary Kings: Romulus, Numa and the Origins of Rome

Seven kings, and the first four

Rome's tradition says the city was founded in **753 BC** and ruled by seven kings until the last was driven out in 509 BC. This module covers the first four, down to **616 BC**: **Romulus**, **Numa Pompilius**, **Tullus Hostilius** and **Ancus Marcius**. The three that follow are the Etruscan kings, and they have their own modules. What matters here is that these four are where Rome's tradition puts the founding of the city itself and of most of the institutions it kept for the next five hundred years.

The twins, the wolf and the augury

The foundation story in the order the tradition tells it.

Why does Remus have to die?

The tradition could have had the twins found Rome together. Why does the story insist on one founder?

• Because the city needs a single founder to give its name to, and a clean answer to who held authority first
• Because Remus was a wicked man
• Because that is what the surviving records of 753 BC state
• Because augury always required a death

The warrior and the priest

The tradition makes the first two kings deliberate opposites, and that contrast is the shape of the whole regal period.

Match each king to what he founded

Put the first four kings in order

Arrange the reigns from the founding of the city forwards.

• Romulus founds the city and creates the Senate
• Numa Pompilius fixes the calendar and the priesthoods, and reigns in peace
• Tullus Hostilius makes war on Alba Longa and destroys it
• Ancus Marcius extends Rome to the coast and founds Ostia

Use the passage, do not judge it

The period study gives you an **unseen passage** and expects you to use it for **what it says**. That is the whole job. It does **not** expect you to argue about whether the writer is reliable, how long after the events he wrote, or what his motives were. That skill is real and it is examined, but on the **depth study**, not here. So an answer that spends a paragraph on "Livy was writing centuries later and may be biased" has spent it for nothing. Take the detail out of the passage, add what you know from your own study, and answer the question.

What Numa is credited with

Select the TWO things the tradition credits to Numa Pompilius.

• Fixing the calendar, including which days public business could be conducted on
• Establishing priesthoods including the flamines, the Salii and the Vestal Virgins
• Creating the Senate
• Founding the port of Ostia

The first century of Rome

Tradition dates the founding of Rome to _____ BC. The first king, _____, is credited with creating the Senate, whose first hundred members were the patres. He was followed by _____, a Sabine chosen for his piety, who fixed the calendar and established the priesthoods, and whose reign saw no war at all. The warlike _____ then destroyed the neighbouring city of _____, and the fourth king, Ancus Marcius, founded the port of Ostia.

The pattern examiners are looking for

**"How useful is the tradition of the kings for understanding early Rome? (10 marks)"** "The regal tradition is not a reliable record of individual reigns, but it is very revealing about what Rome believed it owed to its own past. The clearest sign is that almost every king is credited with founding something Rome still had centuries later. Romulus gives the city the Senate. Numa gives it the calendar and the priesthoods. Ancus Marcius gives it the fetial procedure, the ritual by which every later war was formally declared. The reigns also alternate in character: a warlike founder, then a peaceful lawgiver, then the warlike Tullus Hostilius. That rhythm looks more like a way of organising a story than a record of what four men happened to be like. So the tradition is most useful as evidence for how Romans explained their institutions to themselves, and least useful as a year-by-year account of the eighth and seventh centuries." Notice what the answer does not do: it never argues about whether Livy is trustworthy. It works entirely from the content, which is what this paper asks for.

Find the institutions

A summary of Numa's reign. Tap the TWO details that describe an institution Rome kept afterwards.

• Numa was a Sabine from Cures, chosen king for his piety rather than for any skill in war.
• He fixed the calendar, setting out which days public business could be conducted on
• , and he was said to take his guidance from the nymph Egeria at a sacred spring.
• He appointed the flamines, the Salii and the Vestal Virgins
• . He reigned for more than forty years and died an old man, having fought no wars.

How do you start a war properly?

Ancus Marcius is credited with the **fetial** procedure. What was it?

• A formal religious ritual for demanding satisfaction and then declaring war, which made a Roman war officially just before it was fought
• A battle formation used by the early Roman army
• The treaty that ended the war with the Sabines
• The priesthood that tended the sacred flame

Write about a legendary king carefully

Nothing survives from the eighth century BC. Build a sentence that says what is known without claiming more than that.

An unseen passage, used properly

The exam gives you a passage on Numa's reign and asks what it tells us about early Roman religion. Work through how to answer it.

• Your first instinct is to note that the writer lived centuries after Numa. Do you write that down?
• The passage names the flamines and the Vestal Virgins. How do you use that?
• You have five minutes left. What is the best use of them?

Your turn: kings and institutions

Explain what Rome's tradition of its first four kings is useful for, and what it is not useful for.

• Name two kings and say what each is credited with founding
• Describe the alternating pattern in the characters of the first three kings
• Explain why the tradition is better evidence for Roman attitudes than for eighth-century events
• State what this paper expects you to do with an unseen passage, and what it does not