III. The Religion of Republic and Empire

Extract

The Republic is the name we use to describe the characteristic political system of the Romans from the fall of the monarchy until the establishment of the new, though disguised, monarchy of Augustus and his successors. It is a system that we know quite well from its last century or so, because the writings of Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust as well as those of many others survive from that period. From the earlier years of the Republic we have only the historical tradition preserved by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, both of whom wrote in the period of Augustus; their tradition is in fact dependent on earlier writers, but even these only take us back to the middle of the second century BC at the earliest. There is therefore a great gap between the creation of the system in the late sixth century BC and the recording of it at least three centuries later. For the most part what follows describes the situation in the second and first centuries; how far the picture can safely be projected backwards into earlier centuries is, as we have seen, very much an open question. Given the Romans’ reluctance to make basic changes in their institutions, it would not be surprising if the evolution from the monarchic system of archaic Rome to the developed Republican system we know took some generations to achieve.