Copyright by Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth (2nd ed.)

In its earliest days, Rome was ruled by kings. About 500 BCE the monarchy, then Etruscan, was destroyed by an alliance of wealthy land-owning families, the patricians, who met together in the Senate, "body of old men," to pass laws and decide on peace and war. Those excluded from this privileged class, the majority, were the plebeians, who especially in the fourth century BCE struggled to gain their own representation, with limited success. Under the Republic, as modern historians call the period of Roman rule after the expulsion of the kings (from the Latin res publica, "business of the people"), elections, usually rigged, were held among members of the ruling pa-trician oligarchy; there were never more than thirty or so ruling families at any time. Under the Republic the legislative branch, we might say, normally held the power, while the normally weak executive consisted of two consuls elected annually. The power of the consuls was checked by their short term of office and the power of veto each held over the other. A consul possessed imperium, the power to command the army and enforce the law, including imposition of the death penalty, a vestige of royal power inherited by the new ruling oligarchy. The symbol of imperium was the fasces, an axhead surrounded by a bundle of rods carried by bearers called lictors, who preceded the consul wherever he went: The rods were for whipping and the ax for beheading.

      Having set up a government by means of a small clique from their own number, the patrician families fabricated a legendary tradition of their own ancestors to bolster their monopoly of power. But the rule--and the wealth--of Rome expanded enormously as in the third to first centuries BCE  the Roman state took over virtually the entire Mediterranean world. By 31 BCE, the Republic gave way to a new monar chy under Augustus. Modern historians call this new monarchy the Roman Empire, when imperium resided permanently in the hands of a single man.       Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE.), a key figure in the disintegration of the Republic, was in his enemies' eyes a man placed personal ambition before the interests of the state. He destroyed the senatorial armies that opposed him and became sole ruler, but was murdered by conspirators.

Caesar's enemies thought that his death would restore the power of the senatorial oligarchy, but Caesar's party rallied under Mark Antony, Caesar's general, and Octavian (after 27 BCE called Augustus, "greater than human", Caesar's grand-nephew and heir. They conquered the senatorial armies and divided the world between them, Octavian taking the West and Antony the East. Antony's infamous affair with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt' and other quarrels led in 31 BCE to a new war and Octavian's final victory. The monarchy instituted by Octavian/Augustus was to last (in the east) until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in . 1453 CE.

Augustus calmed the remains of the old senatorial party by retaining the outward trappings of the old Republican government. The religious, artistic, and liter- ary program that he sponsored, from which come most of our surviving accounts of Roman myth, was heavily propagandistic, with the aim of making the new regime appear to be a continuation of the old Republic.

 Livy wrote an enormous history of the Roman people in 142 papyrus rolls, of which 35 survive, in which he celebrated the political settlement of Augustus, who personally encouraged him. His prose version of the story of Romulus and  Remus is a good specimen of the Roman's understanding of his early past:

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