Were the last 3 kings of Rome actually Roman?

Answer 1

According to the Roman tradition, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus was a half Greek and half Etruscan from the Etruscan city of Tarquinii. His father was Demaratus, an aristocrat form Corinth, in Greece, who sold pottery to Etruria. He moved to the Etruscan city Tarquinii with his workshop. His mother was an Etruscan noble woman. Tarquinius Priscus moved to Rome because he could not pursue public office in Tarquinii because he was half foreign, whereas Rome did not bar foreigners from public office. He presented his candidacy for his election to the Roman kingship and the Romans elected him as king following due Roman process.

Servius Tullius was the son of a Latin woman who was enslaved when the Latin city of Corniculum was captured by Rome. He grew up in the royal household and was treated like a son. Tarquinius Superbus was the son or the grandson of Tarquinius Priscus (the Roman tradition is confused about this).

There is a fashionable theory that they were Etruscan kings and that the Etruscans conquered Rome in this period. Howwver, this is just that, a theory. It has been challenged. Its evidence base is flimsy to say the least and it is based on implausible assumptions. Recant archaeological evidence suggests a different picture.

1) The Romans tradition does not mention any Etruscan domination. This theory claims that the Romans lied about their history to cover up the shame of having been conquered. This is highly implausible. Peoples did not do something like this. The Romans did not hide shameful episodes of their history, such as being sacked by the Gauls in 390 BC, or their famous humiliation at the Caudine Forks in 320 BC.

2) Etruscan civilisation decayed by the 1st century BC. Hardly any Etruscan writing has survived. Therefore there is no documentary evidence for this theory.

3) Another key assumption of this theory is that the Romans were a backward people and that the Etruscans were a superior civilisation. Rome owed its early urban development (the construction of the Cloaca maxima, a drainage canal which was later turned into a sewer, and the massive temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus) to the Etruscans, who were supreme engineers. This is no actual evidence that they were built by the Etruscans or that the Romans were backward at that time. It is also claimed that the mentioned temple was Etruscan because the statues on its roof were made in Veii, an Etruscan city just ten miles from Rome. However, it is possible that because Veii statues were among the best, the Romans commissioned Veii sculptors to make the statues for them. The Etruscans were next door neighbours. The river Tiber was the border between the Latins and the Etruscans.

4) The Romans said that Tarquinius Priscus introduced some Etruscan customs into Rome. It has been claimed that this is part of the evidence for the Etruscan domination. However, this is not true evidence because the Romans could have been happy to introduce these customs even without domination or invasion.

5) The theory cannot explain how the Etruscans or which Etruscans would have conquered Rome because of the lack of documentary evidence. The Etruscans did not have a unified state under one ruler. Etruria (land of the Etruscans) was a collection of independent city-states, twelve of which were the most prominent ones. Therefore, the conquest of Rome would have had to have been carried out by one city-state or an alliance of three or four city states. We do not know whether this would have been possible.

More recent archaeological excavations have showed that Latium (land of the Latins) at that time was strongly influenced by the Greek city of Cumae (near Naples) just 125 miles south of Rome, that the Latins were fully engaged in trade with both Greek and Etruscan trading networks in western Italy and that there was a fabulously wealthy aristocracy. This challenges another assumption of the theory; that Rome was dominated culturally by the Etruscans (the Greeks were just as important) well as the assumption that the Romans were backward.

For a critique of the Etruscan domination theory see T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome.