The Regal Period in Cicero’s De Republica

Abstract Cicero’s fragmentary treatise on government, the De Republica, includes a short narrative account of the regal period. As background to the examination of Augustan accounts of the regal period, it is important for a number of reasons. First, it is the most substantial evidence from the late republic of attitudes to the regal period and monarchy generally, and as such acts as a counterbalance to the defamatory accusations of regnum in rhetorical polemic, which are anyway quite distinct from the narrative presentation of Rome’s regal period. Second, because narration of the regal period forms only part of the De Republica, the main purpose of which is not the retelling of Roman history, we can observe how that narrative is shaped to a specific end, to illustrate the development of the Roman res publica. The result is an idealization of the regal period, based upon its particular function in the work. The same process can be observed in other authors; Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Ovid. The unique value of the De Republica is that because it is a work of political theory, the forces that shape the idealization are not far to seek. Third, Cicero was a sophisticated thinker, and not content simply to idealize the distant past. As a result, this idealization itself becomes an object of scrutiny, and we can observe Cicero’s assessment of and response to the difficulties of writing this part of Rome’s early history. It is for this that I include the work, and in the next chapter, I shall be extrapolating its theoretical implications. In isolating the problems of regal historiography the De Republica greatly facilitates entry to the Augustan texts.