Whether Tarquinus Superbus ever existed, or the other semi-mythical figures of early Rome, is hard to assess now since we have very few sources for that period other than the historians of the late Republic itself.
While this is true, it is true only in a trivial sense. Those histories fit with what we know of the time and place, and provide a pretty reasonable explanation for how the Roman Republic was created, along with a historical timing which coincides fairly well with definitive archeological facts.
This doesn’t mean that Livy is on the nose accurate, but it does suggest this is much more than a fable. You won’t find many more reliable accounts of anything back that far.
I don’t know. It doesn’t really pass the sniff test.
A period of two hundred and forty years with only seven kings? That means each king had an average reign of thirty-five years. Possible, but seven times in a row?
And consider the way each king supposedly had a specific role to play: Romulus founded Rome; Numa founded Roman religious practices; Tullus founded Rome’s military system; Ancus was the good king; Tarquin the Elder was the bad king; Servius founded Rome’s political system; and finally Tarquin the Proud caused the fall of the kingship. It’s like history as written by George Lucas. You have characters in a storyline rather than real human beings.
My guess is that later Romans took a jumble of history and streamlined it into a more definitive narrative. Events and attributes were moved around and the seven kings we have represent amalgamated archetypes.
And keep in mind that Livy, for example, was writing about events that had happened over five hundred years in the past.
Sure the seven kings with neat archetypes doesn’t pass the sniff test, but that there was an actual bad King called Tarquin Suberbus who was driven out of Rome is far more likely. Wasn’t there still descendants of Superbus around and politically active during Livy’s time?
A few months ago I read Robert Harris’s Lustrum (titled Conspirata in the US), a fictional account of Cicero’s consulship. It went some way in addressing the powers and limitations of that office, including monthly rotation with a co-consul and almost by definition a political rival.
What surprised me was that the term of office was so short. Just one year, and power in half of that time is given over to one’s co-consul.
(I’ve tried once or twice to read Colleen McCollough and found her prose stilted and stifling.)
You could call the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompeii Magnus an “interesting phenomenon.”
No argument her writing is dry to put it mildly but there is some great scenes in there if you persevere. One of my favorite bits is when Julius Caesar was a small child and there is several hundred pages detailing the minutiae of daily life in a roman insula (apartment building )
Perhaps. But there were also people who were politically active in Livy’s time, claiming with all seriousness that they were descended from Jupiter. So you have to take Roman family legends with a grain of salt.
It’s certainly possible there was a Roman king named Tarquin. But the historical evidence we have about him is no better than we have for King Arthur.