One illustrative problem of the danger of imposing late Republican society onto the early period is with the founder of the Republic himself, Lucius Junius Brutus, expeller of the kings and first consul. How likely is it that for five hundred years the institution of the consuls remained unchanged-two elected every year for two years, acting as heads of state and eponyms? How do we know that the beginning of the list corresponds to the beginning of the institution? We have a list, but it is kind of difficult to know what to make of it. We likely possess an accurate reflection of documents possessed by Romans for at least a couple centuries before 1 BC, but that doesn't mean they are accurate to 500 BCE, and more importantly, we can't assume we have the proper interpretation. We have incidental mentions of other sources that historians at the time used for chronology, and these are generally in agreement, so it is reasonable to suppose that the information we possess is an accurate reflection of an independent Republican archival tradition. This was a list of the consuls of Rome going back to a bit before 500 BCE (hence the traditional dating for the expulsion of the kings), accompanied by the Varronian AUC chronology, compiled during the Augustan period from surviving archival sources. The early consuls are a bit of a tricky issue, because we actually do possess an independent source in the fasti Capitolini.
0 kommentar(er)
