Rome the Seven Kings of Research Paper

Another sign of his forward looking and industrious nature was the city wall which he began. This attitude also extended to political affairs. He was responsible, for example, for increasing the number of senators to three-hundred and for increasing the number of knights.

His death as ascribed to treachery by the sons of Ancus Marcius.

6. Servius Tullius

The legend goes that the sixth king of Rome, Servius Tullius, "…had been marked out for a great future by a miraculous fire which played round his infant head as he slept in the palace."

He became prominent in society and married one of the daughters of Tarquinas.

When he became ruler of Rome he completed the establishment of the city walls and was responsible for initiating many permanent institutions. The wall that he built, "extended for about three-quarters of a mile from the Colline gate, and the townwall which enclosed the seven hills, and remained, with its pomoerium, the legal limit of the city, with some minor enlargements, until the erection of the wall of Aurelian (about a.D. 270)

7. Tarquinius Superbus (534-510 BC. )

The seventh king of Rome was a tyrant who by all accounts was concerned mainly with control and power. The name Superbus is correctly translated as ?arrogant, and he was also known as Tarquin the Proud.

After having seized the throne, Tarquinius initiated a period of bloodshed and oppression. As one historian notes, "As Tarquinius gained his power by violence and bloodshed, so he exercised it with cruelty and oppression."

Among his first actions was to put to death senators who had supported the cause of the previous King. Furthermore, he

… revoked the good laws of Servius Tullius, and destroyed the tablets on which they were engraved. He held trials on capital causes in secret and without assessors, in which he could fine, banish, or put to death his opponents. He depressed the Senate, refused to fill up vacancies, and seldom consulted it

Another commentator notes that "He repealed several earlier constitutional reforms and used violence and murder to hold his power."

In the end his bloody tyranny led to intense dissatisfaction among the Roman people. When he was implicated in the rape of Lucretia, a Roman patrician, he and his family were exiled from Rome. As a result of his cruel and divisive rule, the Roman Senate decides never again to appoint a monarch and rather to form a Republic government, which was established in 509 B.C. The new and democratic government would be "Free from the rule of Kings, the Romans developed a strict social status hierarchy that would set in motion the conquest of the Western World."

Conclusion

The allegations directed at despots and tyrants such as Supervbus are commonly accepted as being true. Historians point out that, "There is nothing improbable in them. All we can say against them as historical facts is that there are no authorities to support them within at least two centuries and a half."

Others argue that that the history that we have of the kings of Rome tend to fit into traditional mythical pattern or model. An example of this would be the pattern of evil being replaced by good or excessive power being mitigated by reason, order and compassion. This pattern can be discerned in the myths of the seven kings which tends to follow a sequence of bad rulers being replaced and superseded by good, until the last bad ruler is replaced by a more open and democratic system. Another aspect or theme evident in the history of the kings is the importance of an adherence to the gods and to religion in order ort archive happiness and social stability.

Nevertheless, while the debate about myth or actual factual history continues, what is clear is that in this history we encounter major themes and values that became an intrinsic part of the ethos of Rome. The theme of tyranny as opposed to humane governance and the adverse consequences of power are themes that have shaped not only our view of the power and glory of Roman civilization, but also its moral and ethical growth and development as one of the founding civilizations of the modern world.

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