But as a preliminary step we must look for a moment back to the period of the monarchy. We saw that the aristocratic government which succeeded the last king was probably the result of a reaction from an exaggerated use of kingly power. That the monarchy had undergone a change in the last century of its existence there is hardly a doubt. As often happened in the history of City-States, the monarchy in this case changed into something very like a tyranny, without the interposition of an aristocratic regime between the two; a change which was all the more natural at Rome where the conception of magisterial power (imperium) was so remarkably clear and strong. And the explanation of this change is not wholly wanting. There is much evidence that the last three kings were not of Roman descent. The very name Tarquinius is not Roman but Etruscan, and it was believed by Etruscan annalists that the original name of Servius Tullius was Mastarna. Both these names have been
almost every fact is matter more or less of controversy and doubt. To give full references would be under these circumstances impossible without overburdening the text, and I prefer to tell the reader at once that besides Livy and Dionysius, and the first volume of Mommsen's History, the most valuable works he can refer to are Mommsen's Staatsrecht, either in the German original or in the French translation, so far as it has yet appeared, and Willems' Droit public Romain, which is a concise and useful compendium of Roman political institutions, superior to Ramsay's Roman Antiquities, which is still the only book of the kind we have in English. Professor Pelham's article, "Roman History," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, about to be republished in a separate form, contains a masterly analysis of the events of this period, Ihne's Roman History is pleasant reading in its English form, but of very inferior value to Mommsen.
