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but also exempted the same element from the necessity of performing military service, was entirely out of harmony with the career of conquest on which the Roman state had entered. The farther the limits of the Roman territory were extended, the more pressing became the need of more fighting men to hold in check the newly subdued peoples within its confines, and to ward off the attacks of enemies from without. The king, as chief executive of the state and commander-in-chief of the army, felt the necessity first and most keenly, and tradition is undoubtedly right in stating that on one or two occasions he took the initiative, with more or less success, in admitting some plebeians to the rights of citizenship. The citizens were naturally loath to lose part of their privileges by sharing them with others, but the military necessities of the case forced them to make certain concessions, and under the constitution which is connected with the name of Servius Tullius the plebeians as well as the patricians, the members of the old gentes, were enrolled in the army. We cannot say with certainty what concessions on the part of the patricians made the plebeians willing to undergo the hardships and expense of military service, and insured their loyalty to the state. It would seem, however, to have been the concession of the right to the full ownership of land, which had probably been denied to them before. From this time on, the plebeians had a stake in the community, and it was to their interest to maintain order within its limits and to protect it from its enemies. This change in their position was of no immediate political significance. They were still excluded from any share in the management of the state, but the establishment of an organization, of which plebeians as well as patricians were members, even though it was a body of a military character, had political possibilities for the future.

II. The Results of Rome's Narrow Policy. It may have been well for the ultimate development of Rome that the members of the old gentes adopted the narrow policy of retaining all political power in their own hands. Had they followed the precedent which Tullus Hostilius seems to have set in the case of Alba Longa, and admitted new gentes on a par with the old ones, the narrow tribal basis of the state might have lasted for an indefinite time. Under the ungenerous policy which was adopted, the right to control the internal and the foreign affairs of the state was the hereditary privilege of a comparatively small body of Over against them was a large and rapidly growing element in the community whose intolerable position would force it to break down the opposing barriers, and thus to overthrow the tribal system on which the state was based. In this connection it is significant that the new Servian organization recognized the individual as an individual and not solely as a member of a certain clan, and that the members of the new body were classified on the basis of their property and not of their family connections.

men.

12. Etruscan Supremacy. It is very difficult to understand the foreign relations of Rome during the reigns of the last three kings, which we are now considering. According to tradition, the first of the three, Tarquinius Priscus, during the reign of his predecessor, Ancus Marcius, came to Rome from Tarquinii in Etruria, and on the death of the king succeeded to the throne. It has been suspected that under the guise of the Etruscan ancestry of Tarquin the conquest of Rome by the Etruscans has been concealed, and it is true that many changes attributed to the Tarquins may be urged in support of this hypothesis, but this conclusion is at least open to serious doubt. The favorable location of the city and its rapid growth would

undoubtedly attract many strangers to the city. These newcomers, as we have already observed, were in some cases admitted to the full rights of citizenship, and it would not have been an extremely difficult thing for one of these naturalized citizens, if he were a leader of skill and ability, to gain the throne. Such a leader the first of the Tarquins seems to have been, and there is no sufficient reason for refusing to accept the tradition of Tarquinius Priscus at its face value.

On

13. Political Changes. The form of government underwent a noteworthy change under the Tarquins in the substitution of an hereditary for an elective monarchy, and in the subordination of the senate to the king. The first of these two changes is indicated plainly enough by the kinship existing between the last three kings, and by the passage of the scepter to Servius Tullius and to Tarquinius Superbus without the observance of the interregnum. The fact just mentioned illustrates also the autocratic attitude which the reigning family assumed toward the senate. the death of the king under the old régime the auspicia reverted to the senate, and that body, through representatives chosen from its own number, exercised the supreme executive power. The assumption of power by Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus, neque populi iussu neque auctoribus patribus (Liv. I. 49. 3), made a serious breach in the theory that the senate was the ultimate depositary of supreme power, gave a dangerous continuity to the king's office and prevented the choice by the senate of a monarch satisfactory to it.

The jealousy which the patricians felt at this usurpation of power by the king led to the overthrow of the monarchy. There are some indications of a rapprochement between the

SECTION II DESCRIPTIVE

CHAPTER II

MONARCHICAL INSTITUTIONS

14. Sources of Information. The same difficulties which beset one's path in seeking to trace the course of political events during the regal period bring to naught in some respects every effort to gain a clear conception of the political institutions of the epoch in question. Our knowledge of these institutions is derived in the main from tradition, from the explanatory statements of Latin writers, and from an investigation of the political institutions of the republican period. Some further light is thrown on early institutions by an investigation of early laws, treaties, legal and religious formulae, and by a study of the fundamental meaning of the titles of the several offices, as in the case of the quaestores parricidii.

Let us confine our attention for the present to the three principal sources, noting at the outset some of the points at which these sources must be used with caution. Many of the descriptions which we find in Livy of the Roman constitution under the kings owe their existence to a deliberate attempt at a later date to account for a political term or usage or institution, which in course of time had lost its original meaning. This same inventive tendency vitiates in some measure the explanations made by the later antiquarians, whose views are also more or less colored by their