Before and After Julius Caesar

2. The Reality of Empire
(II) Before and After Julius Caesar

Ancient Rome had had a succession of kings, the last being Tarquinus Superbus in the late sixth century BC. Legend named Rome’s first king, the founder of the city in 753 BC, as Romulus. Since, however, there is no contemporary evidence for such a figure, and since the name can be explained as a projection from ‘Rome’ rather than vice versa, and since a powerful alternative legend of foundation exists as well (see below), the historian may be content to leave the matter unresolved.17 Anyway, from the time they got rid of Tarquinus the Roman people prided themselves on not having absolute monarchs (such as had been, and continued in many parts to be, the norm in Greece). For half a millennium they organized their increasingly expanding territory as a ‘public matter’, a res publica or ‘republic, led by two ‘consuls’, elected annually. As the system developed, other magistracies, again open to annual election, were added, but the consuls remained, a living attempt at checks and balances that might thwart any attempt at sole power. Since our question in this chapter concerns the way sole power came to be exercised, implemented and also conceptualized by Roman emperors in the first century AD, it is important to give some account, however brief, of the route by which that kind of power came to be wielded in the once proud republic...