Rome was famous for rejecting the idea of kingship. For almost 500 years, Rome was a staunch Republic, with rules in place to prevent any one man from gaining too much power. When Julius Caesar found himself king in all-but-name in 44 BCE, he was killed for it by his fellow senators. While his successor Augustus would go on to establish imperial rule, he would carefully and consciously avoid the title rex.
Nevertheless, according to legend, the city was founded in 753 BCE by Romulus, who was chosen as the first king of Rome. Six more kings then ruled, and many were considered good and fair. But the last, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was a tyrant who was expelled, making way for the Republic.
The Idea of Roman Kingship
While the Romans considered the period of the kings an established part of their history, the stories they told about the kings were more legendary. Our main sources for the Roman kings are Livy, a Roman historian writing about the history of Rome under Augustus, and Plutarch, a Greek historian and philosopher writing comparative biographies of the Roman kings and Roman emperors at the start of the 1st century CE.
They present a very “neat” version of the history of the kings. They list seven Roman kings, each ruling for an average of 34 years. This would suggest very long reigns. Even the extremely stable English monarchs only ruled for an average of 24 years each.
In addition, while the sources set out 240 years of Roman kingship starting in the middle of the 8th century BCE, archeology suggests that the city was probably founded around 625 BCE, making the period of the kings only around 120 years.
In addition, each king is given a personality to mirror the developments assigned to them. The pious Numa Pompilius is credited with most religious reforms, the Etruscan Lucius Tarquinius Priscus is described as war-like and is credited with establishing many of Rome’s military traditions. Servius Tullius was born into servitude and rose to kingship, and he introduced social reforms that benefited the poor. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus is painted as a tyrant with few redeeming qualities, justifying the establishment of the Republic. This is reminiscent of how later Roman emperors, such as Nero and Domitian, were vilified to justify their removal.
Therefore, the history of the Roman kings below is a “neat” version that the Romans themselves ascribed to. Each king has a clear character and is responsible for establishing complete laws and traditions that would have been familiar during the Roman Republic. The reality was probably much messier, with religious practices, political groupings, and military customs established in a piecemeal way over decades and centuries.
Romulus: The Mythical Founder (753-716 BCE)
According to legend, Rome was founded by Romulus. He was semi-divine and had regal connections, making him suitably illustrious for the job.
At this time, Italy was characterized by tribal communities, each ruled by its own kings. One such king was Numitor. He was the descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas and Latinus, a king of Latium. Numitor was the king of Alba Longa until he was usurped by his brother Amulius. Amulius killed Numitor’s sons and condemned his daughter Rhea Silva to a life of virginity as a Vestal Virgin. Nevertheless, she was soon discovered to be pregnant. She claimed it to be by the god Mars. When she gave birth to twin boys, Amulius ordered them thrown into the nearby Tiber River. But the servants charged with the task decided to leave them to die of exposure under a fig tree on the Palatine Hill.
According to the myth, a she-wolf came upon the pair and suckled them, keeping them alive until one of the old king’s herdsmen, Faustulus, discovered them. Fully aware of their identity, he raised the young Romulus and Remus. As adults, the boys would team up with their friends to kill Amulius and restore their grandfather to power. The pair, and their band of warriors, would then go off to establish their own city.
Romulus and Remus decided to choose the place they were left as babies as the site for their new city. But they disagreed on where exactly it should be, with Remus favoring the Aventine Hill and Romulus the Palatine Hill. There are various different stories for what exactly happened next, but Remus was killed, and Romulus started to build the city of Rome. The traditional date for the foundation of Rome is April 21, 753 BCE, which was celebrated annually as the Parilia.
Romulus is then credited with establishing the basic foundations of the future great city. He fortified the perimeter of the city with the Murus Romuli and set its boundaries with a plow furrow. All his acts were accompanied by sacrifices to the gods for their favor. He then asked the people, who were basically his band of warriors, to accept him as their king. He was duly elected to the position and made sacrifices to Jupiter, who would become the principal god of Rome.
He then divided his new citizens into three tribes for tax purposes and for military service. We are meant to believe that his city had enough new citizens for Romulus to divide each of his tribes into ten curiae, each composed of roughly ten families. Each curia had to provide 100-foot soldiers and ten cavalrymen to the Roman army. Romulus kept the cavalry as his bodyguard. He also chose 100 men from Rome’s leading families to form the Roman Senate.
But Romulus’s challenge was that his new community was mostly made up of young male warriors and colonists, all in need of wives. He petitioned nearby cities to allow them to marry some of their women, but the upstart group was universally refused. Therefore, Romulus planned a ruse. He organized an elaborate festival with games and invited the neighboring tribes. Many attended, especially the Sabines, an Italic tribe from the east of the Tiber.
When the moment was right, Romulus gave the signal, and his men kidnapped the women of marriageable age to make them wives. This incident is known as the Rape of the Sabine Women.
This, of course, led to war, but the Romans managed to survive because their enemies were disunited, and they could deal with them one by one. The fiercest battle was with the Sabines, led by Titus Tatius. The Romans looked like they were on the verge of defeat when the women they abducted interposed themselves between the two opposing sides and begged them to make peace. They agreed, and many Sabines joined the Romans as new citizens, with Titus Tatius sharing kingship with Romulus. Titus Tatius is not usually listed among the Roman kings because he died before Romulus.
Romulus himself died in 716 BCE under unknown circumstances. Some suggest that he was killed by a dissatisfied Senate, others that he disappeared in a whirlwind in the middle of a storm, while others claim that they saw Mars come and take Romulus to heaven. Whatever happened to him, he did undergo an apotheosis (Article 7723 Apotheosis). Romulus was assimilated with the god Quirinus and worshiped in Rome for centuries.
Numa Pompilius: The Pious King (715-672 BCE)
According to Roman historians, the transition between kings was highly organized. The Senate took on a caretaker role, with individual members exercising interregnum power for five days at a time until a new king could be agreed upon and voted into power by the Comitia Curiata of citizens established by Romulus. It took them a year to identify and elect Numa Pompilius.
Numa Pompilius was a Sabine prince who married the daughter of Romulus’s Sabine colleague Titus Tatius. He chose to live a life of austerity and peaceful meditation after her death. He is described as a philosopher, not unlike Marcus Aurelius, and as a student of Pythagoras, though that is unlikely due to the dates. He was reportedly not interested in power and believed that Rome needed a warrior king, while he considered himself a peacemaker. But he eventually agreed after receiving auguries that suggested Jupiter supported the decision.
He is also described as having personal relationships with several divine beings, especially the nymph Egeria, who taught him what he needed to know to establish Rome’s many priesthoods and rituals in order to maintain a positive relationship between the city and the gods. He established the flamines, pontifices, salii, and fetiales. While he himself served as rex sacrorum, he also established the position of Pontifex Maximus, chief priest of Rome, to ensure that religious duties were not neglected while the king was away at war. He also established chief priests for Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, and transferred the Vestal Virgins to Rome.
Numa Pompilius is also credited with establishing Rome’s twelve-month calendar and designating profane and sacrosanct days. He set up the various professional guilds and created the temple of Janus. This was important since most of Rome’s temples were promised in response to victory in war. But Numa Pompilius erected the temple of Janus as a symbol of peace. Its doors were only closed when Rome was not at war with anyone. They were closed throughout Pompilius’s reign. The emperor Augustus would later list how many times he was able to close the doors of the temple of Janus in the summary of his great deeds in his Res Gestae.
Numa Pompilius also stands out among Rome’s kings because he died of natural causes. He was widely beloved and people from around Italy came to Rome to pay their respects.
Tullus Hostilius: The Conqueror of Alba Longa (672-640 BCE)
Tullus Hostilius was the grandson of Hostus Hostilius, a close ally of Romulus with a significant military background. He competed with Numa Pompilius’s son-in-law Numa Marcius for power, and Hostilius was chosen because many believed that Rome had become weak during the reign of Pompilius.
Hostilius returned Rome to a more aggressive foreign policy. He is best known for the destruction of Alba Longa, though it was more like a takeover. The reason for the conflict may have been the Alban dictator Mettius Fufetius betraying Rome. He agreed to join them in battle against the Etruscans but also had a secret agreement with the Etruscans to abandon Rome in the middle of battle. He was later captured and killed by having his body tied to two chariots and torn into two pieces.
When it came to war with Alba Longa, rather than engaging in open battle with the Albans, each side chose a set of triplets to do battle as champions. The Romans won, and the people of Alba Longa were integrated into Rome as citizens. The senate was even expanded to accommodate the most important Alban citizens among their numbers. The Curia Hostilia, the first senate house, was built to accommodate the expanded body. Tullus Hostilius is also said to have led successful campaigns against the Fidenae, Veii, and Sabines.
While Hostilius may have had success on the battlefield, it is reported that he ignored the gods. According to one story, there was a shower of stones on the Alban Mount and a voice could be heard complaining that the new Alban citizens of Rome were neglecting their traditional gods.
A plague descended on Rome and Hostilius fell ill. Scared, he referred to Numa Pompilius’s old records and carried out many sacrifices, but it was to no avail. Apparently, he did not make the correct sacrifices to Jupiter Elicius, so his home was struck by lightning and he burned to death. Another story suggests that he was killed by his own followers who then burned his house to the ground.
Ancus Marcius: The Expanding King (640-616 BCE)
Ancus Marcius was the son of Numa Marcius, the son-in-law of Numa Pompilius, and he was elected king after a short interregnum period. One of his very first acts was to restore the religious traditions established by his grandfather that had been neglected under his predecessor.
This moment of power transition caused the Latin allies to rebel and start to make incursions into Roman territory. Ancus Marcius initially tried to negotiate with them, and when he received a contemptuous reply, he declared war. Ancus Marcius marched from Rome with a freshly levied army and destroyed the town of Politorium. Its people were forced to settle on the Aventine Hill, again increasing the population of Rome through conquest. He also sacked the Latin cities of Tellenae and Ficana, and attacked the heavily fortified town of Medullia, collecting a large amount of loot.
Ancus Marcius also improved Rome’s fortifications and incorporated the Janiculum Hill into Rome, building a wooden bridge across the Tiber to connect it to the main city. He extended the city further to create the port of Ostia, built salt works around the port, and took other coastal areas for Rome.
Ancus Marcius also died of natural causes, but the transition of power upon his death was not straightforward, with neither of his two sons inheriting.
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus: The Triumphant General (616-578 BCE)
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus was probably a rich prince from Etruria who decided to make his way to Rome to seek his fortune. This was following the advice of his wife Tanaquil, who was a seeress. Upon his arrival in Rome, an eagle reportedly swooped in, took his hat, and then returned it to him, an omen of future kingship. He quickly attracted the attention of King Ancus Marcius and was invited into his inner circle. He was even made a guardian of the king’s underage sons.
When Ancus Marcius died, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus ensured that his sons were outside of Rome so that he could present himself to the Comitia Curiata as the new king. Once elected, he quickly got to work consolidating his power, taking populist steps such as increasing the number of senators to 300.
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus waged war with a vengeance. It started with Latin towns revolting as the terms of their treaties established with Romulus expired. The king saw this as an opportunity to incorporate many of these people into the ranks of Rome. He conquered multiple Latin towns and then turned his attention to the Sabines and Etruscans, who had come to their aid.
For his conquests, he was the first to celebrate a triumph, which would later become an integral part of Roman military celebrations. His triumphal procession reportedly established many of the core elements of the later Roman triumph, including riding in a chariot drawn by four horses, wearing a purple garment, use of the curule chair, and being accompanied by lictores carrying fasces, which were symbols of imperium.
After almost 40 years in power, the sons of Ancus Marcius would organize Priscus’s assassination. They created a riot and used the ensuing chaos to strike him in the head with an ax. But they would still not find themselves in power.
Servius Tullius: The Servile King (578-535 BCE)
Servius Tullius was the son of a Latin princess called Ocrisia, who was captured and enslaved by the Romans. She was either put to work in the royal household or made a Vestal Virgin. She soon became pregnant, claiming that it happened when she came into contact with a disembodied phallus. Queen Tanaquil, the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, believed this meant that the father was either the god Vulcan or the royal Lar (household god).
When the boy was born, a ring of fire could be seen around his head, marking him out for greatness. Named Servius Tullius, the boy became a favorite of both the king and the queen. He was given many administrative and military duties and was married to a daughter of the king, Tarquinia.
When a riot broke out at the end of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus’s reign, and he was struck in the head, Tanaquil convinced everyone that he was not dead, just injured and that he had appointed Servius Tullius as his regent. According to the sources, this was Tanaquil’s wish, as she preferred the boy to her own sons. When the death was announced, Servius Tullius was confirmed as the new king by the senate. He was never formally confirmed by the Comitia Curiata, as was tradition.
Servius Tullius was a man of war. He waged war against the Veii and the Etruscans and celebrated at least three triumphs. Nevertheless, he is best known for the Servian reforms, which gave more rights to Rome’s newer and poorer citizens.
The Comitia Curiata was still comprised of representatives of the 30 aristocratic tribes that could trace their line back to the founding of Rome. But Rome had expanded significantly since then and the body, which was formally required to pass laws, was no longer representative. Servius Tullius formed a new Comitia Centuriata, with more tribes and curia added to represent Rome’s complete citizenry.
This reorganization required conducting a census, the first in Rome’s history. This also allowed Servius Tullius to redefine the tax and military obligations of each group. A person’s function in the military depended on their age and the arms they could afford.
The king also expanded the city and added new rampart protections, and then divided the city into four administrative regiones. This organization remained in place until 7 BCE when Augustus created a new 14-region division.
Servius Tullius is also credited with establishing the Compitalia, the festival of neighborhood altars dedicated to local lares, and he permitted slaves and freedmen to participate in the festivities. He may also have struck Rome’s first true coinage, replacing the earlier bullion system.
Like his predecessor, Servius Tullius was assassinated. He had two daughters, both named Tullia, whom he married to the sons of his predecessor, Lucius and Arruns Tarquinius. Lucius seems to have had a passion for his brother’s wife, so each killed their siblings and they married each other.
Lucius Tarquinius then sought power for himself, going to the senate with a group of armed men and denouncing Servius Tullius as a slave who was never properly elected but put in power by the actions of a woman. Moreover, Servius Tullius had been reallocating the wealth and privilege of the aristocracy to the wider citizenry.
When Servius Tullius came to the Senate to defend himself, he was killed by the armed men. His daughter Tullia then drove over his body in a chariot and he was denied a proper funeral.
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus: The Last King (534-509 BCE)
After Lucius Tarquinius denounced and killed his predecessor, he was elected king, and given the name Superbus. He quickly proved himself an autocrat. He took on the authority of a judge in capital crimes and used this power to carry out treason trials, killing any senator he suspected of still supporting Servius Tullius. He also did not replace them, weakening the Senate, which he largely ignored.
He actively sought conflict and used underhanded tactics. Early in his reign, he called a meeting of the Latin leaders to redefine their relationship with Rome. One Latin leader, Ternus Herdonius, warned the others of the new king’s arrogance and said they would not receive fair terms. Unhappy, Tarquinius framed him for an assassination plot and had him brutally and publicly killed, as a lesson to the rest of the Latin leaders.
Having established peace with the Latins, he attacked the wealthy Volsci, carrying off spoils and using them to erect the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. To do this, he had to remove several ancient and sacred Sabine shrines. He attacked the Gabii using subterfuge, sending his son there to pretend he was looking for allies after being badly treated by his father, and then betraying them. While he made peace with the Aequi and the Etruscans, he warred with the Sabines, and following his victory established colonies in their territory.
Superbus is described as a typical autocrat, sharing many characteristics with the emperor Domitian, who was assassinated in 96 CE. As well as his poor treatment of the Senate, and his desire for glory in war, he taxed the people heavily to fund his many building projects, causing widespread discontent.
However, the last straw came when Superbus’s son coveted the wife of another Roman noble, Lucretia, who was particularly loyal and pious. He forced her to be with him by saying that he would kill her and frame her for having an affair with a slave, which would disgrace her family. She submitted, and after the ordeal, revealed what had happened to her husband and father and then killed herself. Her relatives and their allies, including Lucius Junius Brutus, decided to expel the king. Brutus is important because he was the ancestor of the same Brutus who led the assassination of Julius Caesar.
At the time, Brutus was the leader of the king’s bodyguard and was entitled to summon the public assembly. He recounted the many grievous acts of the king to the people and the story of the rape of Lucretia. He convinced the assembly to send the king into exile.
Superbus was on campaign in Italy when he heard the news and tried several times to retake Rome with the help of various Italian allies. He failed each time until he died in 495 BCE.
After the Kings: Dawn of the Republic (509 BCE)
After Superbus was expelled, the Romans decided they no longer wanted kings and created the Republic. While ideologically imagined as a democracy, led by the Senatus Populusque Romanus (Senate and People of Rome), or SPQR for short, it was essentially an oligarchy, with Rome’s aristocratic leaders in the Senate taking on leadership.
To fill the power vacuum left by the king, many magistrates were created, but the most important was the consulship. Elected for only one year at a time, there were always two consuls, so that power was never again solely concentrated in the hands of one man.
While the Roman Empire would emerge at the end of the first century BCE, with Roman Caesars exercising absolute power and establishing monarchical dynasties, the Roman Republic would last for an impressive 500 years. Even after its fall, the title rex was considered taboo and was never used again among the Romans.
