File:Ancient legends of Roman history (1905) (14777334765).jpg

Identifier: ancientlegendsof00pais (find matches)
Title: Ancient legends of Roman history
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939 Cosenza, Mario Emilio, 1880-1966, tr
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Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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nothing excludes the possibility of its havingbeen inscribed in the years immediately following thatcatastrophe. IV There remains but one defence to those who assign thestele to the sixth century,—namely, that in the inscriptionthere is mention of a rex. It is clear (they argue) thatif the rex is an actual king, we are led back to the sixthcentury B.C. But this supposition is not based upon validarguments. There is no reference in the inscription to anyfact which can be ascribed to the political authority of therex. ^ The mention of Soranus recalls, rather, the religiousactivity of the rex. Finally, even if mention had been madeof a political rex, such statement would not have broughtus back to 509 B.C., firstly because it is by no means cer-tain that the kings were expelled from Rome in that year,and secondly, because we do not know the precise time whenthe rex sacrorum was once for all substitued for the politi-cal rex. I shall not delay to demonstrate the falsity of the story of
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EXCAVATIONS IN THE FORUM 29 the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. This I haveproved elsewhere, and the same conclusions had partly beenobtained by Mommsen. It is sufficient to consider, forinstance, the story of the first consul, Tarquinius Collatinus,who, together with Brutus, was invited to resign from office.This tradition was a parallel to that which made the Tar-quins leave Rome as the result of a tranquil revolution. Inaddition, the date, 509 B.C., assigned to the expulsion of thekings is a synchronism utterly lacking in value. The found-ing of Rome was fixed at 814 as well as at 753, when theinstitution of the Ephors was established at Sparta. In likemanner, it was asserted that Rome had been founded in thesame year in which Carthage arose. I omit mentioning many synchronisms somewhat less cer-tain, but shall note that the Roman revolution for which theplebs seceded to the Sacred Mount was placed in more orless the same days in which the Syracusan Kyllirioi expelledthe gamor

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