Thus "the august blessing of the gods, with which renowned Rome was founded," was transmitted from its first regal recipient in regular succession to his followers in office; and the unity of the state was preserved unchanged, notwithstanding the personal change of the holders of power. This unity of the Roman people, represented in the field of religion by the Roman Diovis, was in the field of law represented by the prince, and therefore his costume was the same as that of the supreme god; the state chariot even in the city where every one else went on foot, the ivory sceptre with the eagle, the vermilion-painted lace, the chaplet of oaken leaves in gold, belonged alike to the Roman god and to the Roman king. It would be a great error, however, to regard the Roman constitution on that account as a theocracy: among the Italians the ideas of god and king never faded away into each other, as they did in Egypt and the East. The king was not the god of the people; it were much more correct to designate him as the proprietor of the state. Accordingly the Romans knew nothing of special divine grace granted to a particular family, or of any other sort of mystical charm by which a king should be made of different stuff from other men: noble descent, and relationship with earlier rulers were recommendations, but were not necessary conditions; the office might be lawfully filled by any Roman come to years of discretion, and sound in body and mind.[1] The king was simply an ordinary burgess, whom merit or fortune, and, above all, the necessity of having one as master in every house, had placed as master over his equals—a husbandman set over husbandmen, a
- ↑ Dionysius affirms (v. 25) that lameness excluded from the supreme magistracy. That Roman citizenship must have formed an indispensable condition for the regal office as well as for the consulate, is so self-evident as to make it scarcely worth while to refute formally the notions respecting the burgess of Cures.
proposal being conceded to the community, a concession which beyond dispute bears the stamp of a later origin. The nomination itself in the case of the consulate was without exception made by the predecessor in office, or the interrex; and as the consulate and the dictatorship were in substance simply continuations of the regal office, the hypothesis which we have embodied above must be regarded as quite certain. Election by the curies was (to judge from the accounts) admissible, but by no means necessary, as the story of Servius Tullius proves. It was probably the custom to make the nomination in public (contione advocata), and the acclamation with which it was received might easily be viewed by later writers in the light of an election.
