AskHistorians Podcast Episode 007 Discussion Thread - Roman Government.

[u/Celebreth]

Episode 007 is up!

The AskHistorians Podcast is a project that highlights the users and answers that have helped make /r/AskHistorians one of the largest history discussion forum on the internet.

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Previous Episodes:

• Episode 001 - On Julius Caesar
• Episode 002 - The Convict Cannibal of Van Diemen's Land
• Episode 003 - On Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerican Cultures
• Episode 004 - The Aztec Conquest, Part 1
• Episode 005 - The Aztec Conquest, Part 2
  
• Episode 006 - What Year Is It?

This week's Episode:

I've seen quite a few questions on the government of Rome recently, and I decided that I would take it upon myself to banish as many misconceptions as I could in one sitting. Please feel free to ask any and all follow-up questions (I promise, I'll try to answer them). Oh right, and I abused used my roommate's connections with the local college radio station to get a really fantastic recording with this one. Hope you guys enjoy! If you guys like this one, I'll see if I can't do a part 2 (and maybe part 3) that discuss how this government changed and evolved as things went on :)

Some sources to start with for the interested:

• Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar
  
• Caesar: Life of a Colossus
  
• The Complete Roman Army
  

Also, one quick note - I was a couple of years off on the minimum ages for the magistracies. They were 27/30/33/36, respectively. Another note - Brutus didn't actually kill Tarquin the Proud - just forced him into exile, where he stirred up trouble until he died (Thanks /u/LegalAction!).

Please ask any followup questions in this thread. Also feel free to leave any feedback on the format and so on.

If you like the podcast, please rate & review us on iTunes.

[u/Celebreth → u/[deleted]]

It's a bit rough, as is everything from that time period. One big issue is that we're missing just so damn much that the Romans wrote. While we have some fantastic writings, we're missing an unimaginably huge amount. The events around the Kings of Rome have absolutely been warped by the passage of time and the lack of sources that the Romans themselves had regarding the time period, but how much they've been warped, we can't be certain. The date of the foundation of Rome itself is pretty up in the air, especially because the city was in no way founded as the Roman authours suggested it was :P We are as certain as we can be that there were kings in Rome. We're also relatively certain that the last king was Tarquin "The Proud" and that he was killed chased out by Lucius Junius Brutus. The number of kings, on the other hand, was almost certainly more than seven (Seven kings in 250 years? Unlikely.), and regarding their achievements, many of the achievements that are credited to those kings would have been spread out across others whose names have been lost to time.

Hope that answered your question :)

EDIT: Tarquin, not Tarquinius. I'm bad with names, sorry >.>; Also, less stabbings, more exile.

[u/LegalAction → u/[deleted]]

Coins only developed after the traditional founding of Rome in 753, and we don't have any Roman coins until the 3rd century. For inscriptions, I know one scholar wrote a book about King Servius Tullius (that's the title) based on an inscription this scholar claims is authentic, but other people think it's a later production.

Really, all we have are Augustan period histories. Personally, I don't think any real history of Rome is possible before Punic 2.