Lars Porsenna and the Early Roman Republic

Introduction

One of the most famous episodes in the earliest Republic, indeed closely connected with the overthrow of the monarchy, is the ‘Etruscan War’ between Rome and the king of Clusium, Lars Porsenna. Every ancient Roman knew of, and all modern students of Rome know of, the defence of the bridge by Horatius, the self-mutilation of Mucius, and the bravery of Cloelia, which forced Porsenna to withdraw and saved the young Republic. The episode has been one of endless fascination and torment for scholars since the Renaissance. The purpose of this paper is simply to survey representative scholarship of half a millennium and to attempt an assessment of current historiography, to see where consensus has been reached, where disagreement stills lies, and what remains to be done.

The Renaissance

We must begin with the man who saved for us almost all the text of Livy which we now have: Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) in his De viris illustribus focussed on Horatius Cocles, but in his letters ad familiares, he mentioned all three famous episodes. ¹ Besides, in his Italia illuminata, he told at some length of the attack of Arruns on Aricia and the story of the vicus Tuscus. ²

Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Decade of Livy (1531) made surprisingly brief allusions to Horatius and Mucius. ³ The man who knew most in this century about the Roman Republic, however, was Carlo Sigonio. In his famous edition of the fasti (1556), he gave only the most conventional summary: he noted under 508 BC that Porsenna made war at Tarquin’s request, and that, in the next year, overwhelmed by the bravery of the three heroes, he made peace. ⁴

The next century, the magnum opus of one of the founders of Etruscology, Thomas Dempster (d. 1625), was published posthumously (1723). Dempster’s work was based on the widest knowledge of sources, quoted at length. He realised that Porsenna imposed terms on Rome. ⁵ The earliest English historian of the Republic, Lawrence Echard, gave, however, a totally uncritical account. ⁶

The first critical milestone was marked by the greatest historian of the Republic in the eighteenth century, Louis de Beaufort. One of his earliest works (his Dissertation sur l’incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’histoire...