The Roman Nobility, the Early ConsularFasti, and the Consular Tribunate

Abstract

While the general absence of Rome’s nobility from the traditions of the regal period has often been noted, the nobility’s prompt appearance at the beginning of the republican period has elicited little comment. This paper argues that the nobility’s appearance is more significant than its earlier absence, precisely on account of its very promptness and also because the nobility appears primarily with the consulship. Given the special importance that the consulship later came to have, following the emergence of Rome’s office-holding nobility, these circumstances inevitably raise questions about the value of the early consular fasti, and indeed even about the whole premise on which the early fasti are based, namely that the consulship was established immediately after the expulsion of the kings. It is argued here that this premise is anachronistic, and that the early consular fasti are unreliable and often tendentious; it is further argued that this premise is also responsible for some of the confusion surrounding the mysterious consular tribunate. The consular tribunate was a magistracy about which ancient writers quite clearly knew very little, and their ignorance and the inconsistencies in what they had to say about the tribunate inevitably undermine their claim to possess better and more detailed information about earlier times.