SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

It is, however, the story of Servius Tullius that provides the most vivid evidence of the warlords, the private militias and the different forms of migration, hostile and otherwise, that must have characterised this early society in Rome and its neighbours. It has almost nothing to do with the story of Servius Tullius, the Roman constitutional reformer and inventor of the census. Instead it seems to offer an Etruscan view – and it comes from the lips of the emperor Claudius, in his speech to the senate in 48 CE when he urged its members to allow leading men from Gaul to become senators. One of the arguments he used in support of his case was that even the early kings were a remarkably ‘foreign lot’. When he reached Servius Tullius, things got even more interesting. Claudius knew a good deal about Etruscan history. Among his many learned researches he had written a twenty-volume study of the Etruscans, in Greek, as well as compiling an Etruscan dictionary. On this occasion he could not resist explaining to the assembled senators, who might have begun to feel they were on the receiving end of a bit of a lecture, that outside Rome there was a different version of the story of Servius Tullius. This was not the story of a man who came to the throne thanks to the favour, or scheming, of his predecessor, Tarquinius Priscus, and Priscus’ wife, Tanaquil. For Claudius, Servius Tullius was an armed adventurer: