Abstract

Chapter Seventeen of Plutarch's Life of Numa is well known to students of early Rome for the statement that it was the second king of Rome who created collegia for the craftsmen of Rome. Nor is Plutarch alone in his belief: two passages of Pliny's Natural History attribute the collegia of the bronze workers and brick makers to Numa (XXXIV, I; XXXV, 159); Pliny indeed seems to refer to an actual list of collegia in which these two figured. On the other hand, neither Cicero in the Republic nor Livy nor Dionysius displays any knowledge of such an initiative by Numa; an entirely different tradition indeed appears in Florus, according to which it was Servius Tullius who distributed the Roman people between collegia, in the general context of his timocratic organization of the census classes (1, 6, 3).

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call