Tullus Hostilius Research Articles

POSTĘPOWANIE W SPRAWACH O CRIMEN MAIESTATIS W OKRESIE REPUBLIKI RZYMSKIEJ

Procedural Issues of the crimen maiestatis in Roman RepublicSummaryThe article presents some procedural issues of crimen maiestatis in the Roman Republic. The first approach examines the process by which the public criminal law evolved rules for the protection of maiestas populi Romani, and the application o f these rules in particular cases. This topic is introduced by analysing the concept of maiestas with a particular reference to maiestas populi Romani. The crimen maiestatis was first brought within the ambit of the public criminal law by way of the fragmentation of a particular segment o f a diffuse crime of perduellio. The role of the duoviri perduellionis, as well the origin and nature o f the criminal jurisdiction of the tribuni and aedilesalso are to be discussed. The duoviri are recorded only three times: first there is the Livy’s account of the famous trial of Horatius under King Tullus Hostilius. It is also discussed in the article when and how provocatio against the higher fines was introduced. In the Roman Republic the maiestas cases were tried before the plebs or the comitia centuriata of the people. The lex Appuleia maiestatis established a permanent quaestio maiestatis and brought a particular category of wrongful acts under its jurisdiction.

Auguste et la mémoire royale de Rome

If Augustus claims to be, as it is well-known, a new Romulus, he has also tried to set up his action and public image with regards to current collective representations related to other kings of Rome. Thus, his major religious policy helps him to become a new Numa, while particular attention he paid to priesthood, temple, and fecial rites get him as much closer to Tullus Hostilius than Ancus Marcius. As far as the second part of the royal period is concerned, it is much raised in his historical memory policy: his interest in Sibylline Books, but also in major projects carried out in Rome during his reign have contributed to see him as a new Tarquin, while censuses and both administrative and religious reorganisations of the Rome’s urban space the Princeps conducted remind us of a new Servius Tullius. Augustus systematically using the royal memory of Rome allowed him to hide the monarchical tropism of Hellenistic type of his regime under the guise of a return to oldest national traditions.

Quelques considérations sur les sept rois de Rome (I)

The author takes again into consideration the question about the royal period of Rome. He reverses the usual interpretation according to which it is the traditional list of seven kings of Rome that has permitted to establish the date of Rome’s foundation by a retrospective calculation : in the author’s opinion the foundation’s date is pre-existent in the annalistic tradition and it is from this date that the kings’ list, based on the «empirical principle of generations » , was formed. The author reaches two conclusions : 1. the succession to the throne of Rome happened from grandfather to grandson ¢ 2. the women had an essential part in this process. This scheme works only if the first chief of Roman community is identified as Hostilius (the Romulus’ fellow-soldier) and this Hostilius as the grandfather of Tullus Hostilius, the first king of Rome.

Livy’s Kings and the Phases of Latium Vetus

Developments in the archaeology of Early Rome have greatly improved Livy’s status as an historian, even of the regal period of Rome, from the dire assessments of the previous generation of scholars (e.g. Cornell 1986). I go a step further to suggest that the break indicated in Livy between the first three kings and their successors corresponds to the development of urbanism at Rome ca. 625, and that the earlier kings can be associated with a developmental phase dating to ca. 750-625. To the exceptional single archaeological discoveries of the lapis niger at the beginning of the last century and an early wall encircling the Palatine in the early 1980s (Carandini and Carafa), one can now add evidence that is more impressive cumulatively. The replacement of a single large “huts” (capennae) with complexes integrating domestic spaces and workshops (Rystedt, Bietti Sestieri and de Santis), a votive deposit on the Capitoline (possibly associated with a primitive temple), an “extra-urban” sanctuary and a necropolis on the Esquiline, the appearance of luxury items in graves, and signs of the earliest roads combined with the more high-profile evidence suggest not only the credibility of the Roman tradition of kings, but that a defined aristocracy and a proto-urban settlement had arisen at the time of or shortly after the traditional date of Rome’s founding ca. 750 BC (Carandini and Capelli).T.J. Cornell has argued, however, that the period of the kings needs to be compressed to accommodate placing them after the urbanisation of Rome ca. 625 BC and because just short of 250 years is an impossibly long period for the reign of only seven kings (1995: 121-122). While I argue that it is not necessary to demonstrate the reliability of traditions surrounding particular kings or even the traditional group taken as a whole, the proto-urban phase of Rome roughly corresponds with these stories, especially as they appear in Livy. In addition to features of this phase (the early walls and sanctuaries mentioned above) dating to the period between 750 and 625, aristocratic warrior burials testify to the cultivation of ancestor remembrance based on individual heroic deeds, precisely the grounds upon which Tullus Hostilius seems to have become king in Livy’s account (1.22.1). Moreover, the monumental urban transformation combined with the almost immediately subsequent disappearance of burial distinctions seems to correspond in outline to Livy’s claim that a new public spiritedness and building programme followed the ascendancy of Tarquinius Priscus (1.38.5-7). My argument is thus that the proto-urban evolution (warrior aristocrats, religion without monumentalization, huts transitioning into houses) of the years between 750 and 625 anticipated and made possible the urban monumental revolution of the years following 625 (monumental temples and walls, the formal laying out of the Circus and the Forum) and that traditions of the kings reported broadly coheres with these phases. While we may need more kings, there is no need to down date the regal period as a whole to accommodate the archaeological record.ReferencesA.M. Bietti Sestieri and A. De Santis. 2001. “L’Edificio della i Eta del Ferro di Fidene (Roma): Posizione nell’Abitato, Tecnica Costruttiva, Funzionalita in Base alla Distributzione Spaziale dei Materiale e degli Arredi.” In J.R. Brandt L. Carlsson, eds. From Huts to Houses: Transformations of Ancient Societies. Stockholm.Carandini, A. and P. Carafa. 2000. Palatium e Sacra Via I. Rome.Carandini, A. and R. Cappelli, eds. 2000. Roma, Romulo, Rema, e la fondazione della Citta. Rome. Cornell, T.J. “The Value of the Literary Tradition Concerning Archaic Rome.” In K.A. Raaflaub, ed. Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of Orders. Princeton.________. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 B.C.). Oxford and New York.E. Rystedt, “Huts vis-a-vis Houses: A note on Acquarossa.” In J.R. Brandt L. Carlsson, eds. From Huts to Houses: Transformations of Ancient Societies. Stockholm.

Mettius Fufetius in Livy

Abstract This essay makes the case that Livy's version of the tale of Mettius Fufetius transmits certain facts that relate to inherited ritual practices (horse-sacrifice among them) along with formulas used in early law and diplomacy. Although the author may not be fully aware of the original meaning of all he is handing down (e.g., the etymology of mitis) because he has simply taken materials from his sources without much critical investigation, the traditional elements are important to him because they seem to authenticate this legend about the reign of Tullus Hostilius. For the moralizing historian that Livy certainly is, the treason of Mettius Fufetius and his execution at the command of the Roman king comprise the starting point of a remarkable sequence of episodes in his narrative that demonstrate the dishonorable behavior of Rome's chief rivals in Italy. The legend of Mettius Fufetius thus embodies a kind of “original sin” in the political realm, and becomes the paradigm for Rome's harsh dealing with faithless allies over the next five centuries. The essay concludes that this story typifies many Roman fabulae, insofar as they were often composed on the basis of outdated or unfamiliar idionyms, toponyms, ceremonial words and phrases, and ancient legal terms. In such fabulae characters like Tullus Hostilius and Mettius Fufetius, perhaps mere names in annals and king-lists, become the performers whose ceremonial acts turn into the foundational moments of Rome's public life.

The Second Founder and the Fourth Function: Constantine after Romulus

The author compares the founding of Constantinople, the second Rome, by Constantine with the mythical founding of Rome by Romulus, and suggests that both rituals involved facets of Domezilian trifunctionality, modified by N.J. Allen's function. Key Words: Constantine, Romulus, Georges Dumezil, Byzantium, Rome, IndoEuropean trifunctionality, fourth fitaction Any 'founding king' will by definition be a figure of some mystery, combining the features of the eponym or ultimate ancestor of the polity with the special potencies integral to one who literally makes Something out of Nothing. In this paper I intend to try to find a pattern of mutuality and equivalence in the careers of two such founders: Romulus, held responsible for the very beginnings of Rome, and Constantine the Great who - approximately a millennium later - would found the Second Rome, named after himself, that is the city of Constantinople. This-serious project is made somewhat easier because of the recent work of N. J. Allen, who, in explicating an important addendum to the trifunctional theories of Georges Dumezil1 which Allen has termed the Fourth Function, has examined and reinterpreted the Romulan evidence in some detail: Romulus has, in fact, become Allen's ideal or exemplary Fourth Function ruler (Allen 1987, especially Allen 1996). Here Allen followed Dumezil in finding that Romulus had combined in himself the key powers of all three of the I-E functions - i.e., (in bare outline) sovereign power, military prowess, encouragement of fecund growth (Dumezil 1966/70: 25). The Romulan stance as 'first king' and as 'magical king' was supported by this combinatory mystery, and, even more, was dramatized by the fact that the Founder was succeeded by kings who evidently represented each of the three Functions in turn: Numa Pompilius as lawmaker, Tullus Hostilius as warmaker, and Ancus Marcius as one who conforme d'alleurs a l'esprit de la troisieme fonction (Dumezil 1968: 273). I do not have the time here to deal with every aspect of Allen's F4 theory, but I do want to underscore certain of his main descriptive points concerning the Romulan biography (other then this king's omnifunctional competence): (a) his semi-divine parentage, Co) the fact of the auspici, that is, the divine or heaven-sent (extraordinary) communication that authenticated Romulus's particular form and vision of his City and, as well, the installation or mobilization of the (ordinary) sacra that followed, (c) the sacrifice/fratricide, wherein Romulus was held ultimately responsible for the death of his twin, Remus, and (d) the death or 'immortalization' of Romulus himself. The drama of Romulus and its details is taken mainly, if not exclusively, from Livy, and so shows that historicizing of myth to which the Romans are known to have been addicted. Now I would like to take up the Second Foundation, and Constantine as the Second Founder; here, I suggest, we confront an event in history that has been extensively recast or surrounded in myth, seeing the founder-figure of Constantine the Great drawn back into what Gilbert Dagron appropriately calls Constantinople imaginaire (Dagron 1984), especially in the source called the Patria, and his deeds laid out or explicated in what Dagron terms patriogsaphy. First, we must react to the overt resemblances that can be set up between one city's foundation and the other - and here we will already have taken note of the infiltration of elements of mystery and the supernatural into whatever bald historical account we possess. We initially assume that a Founder must deploy that combination of potencies seen so clearly in Romulus; Constantine will in fact show these, but we also have to deal with any possibility of a later parallel with the semi-divine paternity of Romulus, identified as a son of Mars. To find this parallel - to make Constantine semi-divine - is not a simple matter, but we know that aspects and even the natures of emperors and gods were thoroughly confounded early on in the Principate, and in the Tetrarchy devised by Diocletian, some decades before Constantine won supreme power, symbolic godhead was assigned to both senior and junior rulers: Diocletian, for example, was declared to be assimilable to Juppiter Maximus Optimus, his junior Maximianus to Hercules, the Divine Son (Alfoldi 1970: 44). …

Sur deux discours-programmes : à propos d'A.K. 3,10,3-11,11

The debate opposing Mettius Fufetius and Tullus Hostilius is anything but a mere scholarly controversy. On the contrary, it places itself under the sign of the αρχαία και φιλόσοφος ρητορική so dear to the heart of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. His manner is both that of the political thinker wishing to explain the everlastingness of an empire considered as having no end and that of the historian for whom Rome was a Greek city, and even the most Greek of Greek cities.

Vires/Robur/OpesandFerociain Livy's Account of Romulus and Tullus Hostilius

In a recent article I observed that Livy sees a dialectic at work in Roman history over the course of the reigns of the first four kings. The first king, Romulus, is associated with physical (i.e. military) strength and is devoted to war. His successor Numa is devoted to peace and to the advance of religion, law and the civilizing virtues. The Romulean thesis, having been answered by the Numan antithesis, reasserts itself in the reign of the third king, Tullus Hostilius. This time, devotion to war is even more intense: Tullus isferocior(1.22.2) than Romulus. Excessive devotion to war, however, entailed the neglect of other things: towards the end of his reign, during a plague to which he himself eventually fell victim, Tullus turned to religion, hoping that the gods would end the pestilence if he could balance his Romulean devotion to war with a Numan concern forsacra. But his efforts were too late and inept. It was not until the reign of the fourth king, Ancus Marcius, that a synthesis was achieved. Ancus had amedium ingeniumthat fused the Romulean and Numan tendencies. The adoption of theius fetialeby the Livian Ancus symbolizes this synthesis: theius fetialewas a martial (i.e. Romulean) ritual, but it also acknowledged the Numan claims of religion and right.

The Approach to the Temple of Saturn in Rome

The temple of Saturn, though its ruins on the Forum Romanum are impressive, presents many problems in architecture and planning. It fronted on an important square, the Area Volcani, where there were a number of sacred monuments and where four important streets and a stair to the Capitoline converged. But the principal visual relation of the temple was originally to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline hill above it. The problem of the form and location of the old Aerarium cannot be completely resolved without more evidence than is available, but the reconstruction of the approach to the temple as rebuilt by Munatius Plancus offered by Lugli and now widely accepted must be discarded. It depends in large part on a misreading of a lost fragment of the Marble Plan; this is shown to have been erroneously assigned to this part of the Forum and may belong to the temple of Venus Verticordia near the Circus Maximus. The evidence for Lugli's Aerarium has also been misinterpreted by him. Livy records the building of a porticus in 174 B.C. that ran from the temple of Saturn in Capitolium to a senaculum and curia. It is argued here that this could not have run up along the Clivus Capitolinus but must have run across the northwest end of the Forum to the Curia Hostilia and made a dramatic backdrop to the Forum. Our ancient sources agree that, next to Vesta's, Saturn's was the oldest temple in the neighborhood of the Forum Romanum, but there is no agreement as to how its location is properly designated or when it was built. Macrobius (1.8.1) cites Varro as saying the temple was ad forum and the contract for its construction let by L. Tarquinius, the last of the kings. Dionysius (6.1.4) knows the same tradition. Macrobius is aware of another tradition that Tullus Hostilius dedicated a shrine to Saturn as a victory monument following his third triumph, over the Sabines, and then instituted the Saturnalia. But he seems to feel this need not have been the temple we know. For one thing Tullus' dedication was a fanum, not an aedes, and its whereabouts is not clearly stated. For another, Saturn also had an altar ante senaculum that seems to have had no connection with the temple; the worship at the altar was Graeco ritu and believed to date from time immemorial, primum a Pelasgis, post ab Hercule (Macrobius 1.8.2). We may agree that Tullus Hostilius is not apt to have built a public temple of no obvious utilitarian purpose as a victory monument; that is the gesture of a later

The Death of Horatia

Central to any understanding of archaic Roman criminal law is the trial, as recorded by Livy, of Horatius for killing his sister. It is not just that the case raises so many legal issues; the jurisdiction of the father (paterfamilias) and of the king, the institution of a separate state procedure with two judges (the duoviri), the right of appeal to the people, the scope of the crime of perduellio (usually roughly translated as ‘treason’) and of parricidium, murder, and the use of sacral punishment. But also, on the ability to determine how accurate for the period of King Tullus Hostilius is this account of law and legal procedure will depend our wider appreciation of the reliability of the sources. It must be admitted that almost all modern scholars regard Livy's account as quite untrustworthy.

Ider et le tricéphale : d'une « aventure » arthurienne à un mythe indien

Au moment où, dans son De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae, il s'apprête à dénombrer les acquisitions successives de la célèbre abbaye, Guillaume de Malmesbury raconte une bien curieuse histoire :On lit dans les Gestes du très illustre roi Arthur qu'à une fête de Noël, tenue à Carlion, le roi arma chevalier Ider, très vaillant jeune homme, fils du roi Nuth, et, pour l'éprouver, l'emmena au mont des grenouilles, qui s'appelle maintenant Brentecnol, où il s'agissait de combattre trois géants malfaisants et redoutés, dont il avait appris la présence. Le jeune chevalier, prenant les devants à l'insu d'arthur et de ses compagnons, attaqua hardiment les géants et, dans une lutte prodigieuse, les mit à mort. Après leur défaite, Arthur arriva et trouva Ider épuisé par son effort, complètement évanoui. Le croyant mort, il se mit à le pleurer et, revenant à son camp, il laissa là le corps, qu'il considérait comme privé de vie, jusqu'à ce qu'il ait pu le faire ramener par une voiture. Se jugeant responsable de cette perte, parce qu'il était arrivé trop tard pour secourir Ider, il établit à Glastonbury, quand enfin il y arriva, vingt-quatre moines chargés de prier pour l'âme du défunt et les pourvut largement de possessions et de territoires pour leur subsistance, ainsi que d'or, d'argent, de calices et d'objets destinés au culte.

Numa and the Pythagoreans: A Curious Incident

Perhaps no Roman, except Julius Caesar, attracted the interest of ancient writers who specialized in religious affairs as much as Numa. His reign was considered to have been a period of unbroken peace, when the civilizing influences of religious laws tempered the savagery of the Romulean era. The Romans ascribed to Numa the organization of much of their state ritual, although they did admit that some of it was derived from the Etruscans and the Greeks. Numa's successor, Tullus Hostilius, failed to observe his instructions relating to the worship of Jupiter Elicius, a god usually associated by the ancients with lightning, to whom Numa had dedicated an altar on the Aventine. The result was that Tullus met his death when a thunderbolt struck his house. In contrast, Ancus Marcius, traditionally Numa's grandson, regarded Numa as his model and caused the instructions for state ritual contained in Numa's Commentarii to be transcribed on to tablets and displayed in the Forum. This king had a successful reign. Such is the spirit of those whose accounts of the Roman kings are still extant, all writers who lived during the late Republic and early Empire. It is clear from the way in which they make Numa the author of complete institutions which could not have received their final form until later times, that every change and every new practice in religious performance needed at least to conform in appearance to the doctrines of Numa. Fondness for apposite etymology led some to associate his very name with the Greek νόμος, a law.

The Rise of Julius Caesar

When Caesar was born, probably in 100 b.c., it is doubtful whether anyone at Rome would have expected a son of this secondary branch of the patrician Iulii Caesares to rise to great eminence in the state. The family, to be sure, was very old; it was said to have come to Rome from Alba Longa when King Tullus Hostilius destroyed the city, and the Iulii kept the tradition alive by maintaining associations with Alba and the Alban gods. But, in spite of the family's antiquity, the nobility of the Iulii, to paraphrase Cicero on another patrician, was better known to men of letters and to historians than it was to the voters. It was not even very well known to men of letters and historians, for the ten or eleven lulii who reached high office in the fifth and fourth centuries hardly average a line apiece in the six books that Livy devotes to their period—books crowded with vivid stories of patrician families like the Fabii, the Manlii, and the Valerii.