Ancient history begins and ends with the ancient evidence. The evidence represents not only the foundation of the discipline, but the material out of which any argument must be built, and it is not possible to go further than it allows. This is part of the reason why the nature and value of the evidence for early Rome have long been, and remain, matters of considerable and sometimes contentious debate. The best evidence, simply because it is contemporary, is arguably the archaeological, but the sorts of questions that archaeological evidence can answer are often of little help when it comes to matters such as the politics and political structures of early Rome, which are the focus of this collection. For such matters, it is still necessary to work with the literary evidence. However, since the historical value of the literary evidence is so hotly contested, the uses to which that evidence is put and the conclusions that are drawn from it inevitably vary considerably. Despite more than a century of research, there is still nothing even remotely resembling a consensus on how the literary sources should best be handled. This paper explores some of the problems with the evidence for early Rome, considers something of the limits and uses of that evidence, as well as introduces the contributions that make up this collection of studies on power and politics in early Rome.

A tension exists within the literary sources for early Rome, between the supposedly static nature of military authority, embodied by the grant of imperium which was allegedly shared both by archaic reges and republican magistrates, and the evidence for change within Rome’s military hierarchy, with the early republican army being commanded by a succession of different magistrates including the archaic praetores, the so-called ‘consular tribunes,’ and the finally the consuls and praetors of the mid-fourth century BC. The differences between the magistracies and the motivations driving the evolution of the system have caused confusion for both ancient and modern writers alike, with the usual debate being focused on the number of officials involved under each system and Rome’s expanding military and bureaucratic needs. The present study will argue that, far more than just varying in number, when viewed against the wider backdrop of Roman society during the period, the sources hint that the archaic praetores and consular tribunes might have exercised slightly different types of military authority – possibly distinguished by the designations imperium and potestas – which were unified under the office of the consulship of 367 BC.1 The changes in Rome’s military hierarchy during the fifth and fourth centuries BC may therefore not only indicate an expansion of Rome’s military command, as is usually argued, but also an evolution of military authority within Rome associated with the movement of power from the comitia curiata to the comitia centuriata.