Book contents
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
Summary
The keepers of the Sibylline books had recorded, that the first secular festival after the expulsion of the kings was celebrated in the year 298, and that from that time forth it always recurred after an interval of 110 years, such being the duration of a secle. This statement is at variance with accounts in the annals, which fixed the celebration of the secular festivals in very different years: these annalists would have no weight at all, if they had really contradicted the authentic books; but on the other hand we have no need to suppose that these books noted down anything more than the close of a secle, and the epoch when the beginning of a new one, according to the precepts of the ceremonial law, should have been celebrated by the people, in gratitude for the continuance of its existence in a new period; without regarding whether the solemnity was deferred from circumstances, as was so often the case with a festival vowed to the gods.
If we go back according to this rule from that first secular epoch of which a historical register was preserved, the end of the first, or rather the beginning of the second secle, falls in the year of the city 78.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The History of Rome , pp. 204 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010