Preface:

Human beings’ need for belief has existed since the very beginning of human existence. As primates, we sense a rupture between ourselves and the other animals around us. Our capacity for thought, our individuality, and our consciousness bring with them loneliness and confusion. The uncertainty produced by this confusion and anxiety naturally drives us to seek forces greater than ourselves, forces invested with authority. Who are we? What are we permitted to do? What does the future look like?

This essay was written in collaboration with ChatGPT.

In early Rome—and more broadly across the Italic and Etruscan cultural sphere—space did not automatically possess the legitimacy required for city-building. A piece of land was not considered suitable for founding a city simply because it was occupied. The gathering of people did not in itself imply divine approval. Even control secured through force could at best create a temporary foothold, without guaranteeing long-term stability. In other words, physical possession, population size, and military advantage were, by themselves, insufficient to make a place “become a city” in the conceptual sense.

The legitimacy of a city’s existence had to be confirmed through a complete set of religious procedures, among which augury was the crucial starting point. Augury was not a matter of abstract reasoning; its visible function in practice was to determine whether the gods permitted the action to proceed. Only when augury indicated divine approval could the subsequent rituals—marking boundaries, ploughing the sacred furrow, making offerings, and dedicating the space—be carried out. Only after these procedures were completed was the nature of the space understood to have changed. In this context, augury was not a tool for predicting the future, but a mechanism of authorization. It did not answer the question, “Will this place succeed in the future?” but a more fundamental one: “Do the gods permit humans to establish order here?”

Within this logic, the boundary became decisive. The city line established through the ploughed furrow (sulcus primigenius) and ritual action was not merely a physical line, but the sign that the space had been redefined.

In the tradition, Remus is killed after jumping over the boundary. The key issue is not whether his attitude was frivolous or his words disrespectful, but that he crossed a boundary that had just been established through ritual. If such a boundary could be mocked or crossed without consequence, then the founding ritual would, in practice, be rendered void. Once the boundary lost its force, the very premise of the city’s foundation would be undermined. In that case, the “city,” at the moment of its birth, would lose its religious and orderly meaning and revert to being merely a temporary gathering of people, liable at any time to disperse, migrate, or be replaced by a stronger force.

The act of crossing this line meant far more than a simple violation of space. It implied, first, a denial of the divine approval that had been confirmed through augury and ritual. If the line could be casually ignored, mocked, or stepped over, then the religious confirmation on which the city depended would be weakened, and the foundation of the city’s existence would be shaken. Second, such an act blurred the fundamental distinction between inside and outside. The interior of the city was subject to stable law, ritual, and everyday order precisely because it had been separated from the conditions of nature, war, and violence. Once the boundary lost its force, the interior would begin to slide back toward the same condition as the exterior, and law and religion would no longer hold clear priority.

As this way of thinking gradually became institutionalized, the city boundary later developed into what was known as the pomerium. Within the pomerium, space was defined as possessing a special religious character. Through altars, sacred fire, and ongoing rites, the gods were formally established within the city. Human actions were no longer merely individual or familial, but were incorporated into a shared order between gods and people. In this framework, the division of time, the formation of marriage, the handling of death, and the execution of judgment all acquired a religious dimension, no longer functioning merely as technical or pragmatic arrangements.

The interior of the city was therefore not simply a “safer place,” but a space explicitly integrated into sacred order. Public actions within it were understood as taking place under the gaze and approval of the gods. By contrast, the exterior was not without law or custom, but it did not belong to this sacred civic domain. Social norms and religious practices still existed outside, but they lacked the structure centered on civic sacred order that defined the interior. Military action, temporary domination, and the use of force were more easily justified in that space.

Because of this fundamental distinction, Rome developed a series of institutional arrangements that appear strict but are internally consistent: generals were required to relinquish command before entering the city; armed troops were not permitted to enter freely; and the powers associated with war could not be brought inside. The reason lay not in administrative technique, but in the religious understanding that auspicia (divine sanction) and imperium (military–administrative authority) were incompatible. Their combination would disrupt the order of a space that had already been ritually dedicated and defined.

In Roman tradition, the end of Romulus is deliberately presented as a “disappearance” rather than a death. While addressing a public assembly, a sudden storm arose, thunderclouds gathered, and the crowd was forced to scatter. When the storm subsided, Romulus was gone. It was then proclaimed that he had not died but had been taken up and transformed into the god Quirinus. This is not merely romantic mythmaking, but a narrative design with political and religious function. The manner of Romulus’s departure had to be carefully controlled, because it directly affected the source of the city’s legitimacy.

If Romulus had died at human hands—through assassination, internal conflict, or coup—the founding of the city could be reinterpreted as a failed personal rule. If he had been overthrown or deposed, the authority of the founder would become something that could be revised or revoked. Only the narrative of apotheosis allowed the founding act to be removed from the realm of human politics and sealed as something completed, unquestionable, and beyond reversal.

Ancient historians preserved this official version while quietly adding another possibility: that Romulus, in his later rule, may have been killed by senators or nobles because of his concentration of power. This was not a later conspiracy theory but a subdued addition from the ancient authors themselves, who understood that myth did not equal the whole of historical reality. Yet this alternative was always treated as rumor. It was never developed into a detailed political account with clear perpetrators or process. Its function was not to replace the official narrative but to offer a realistic note explaining underlying tensions: Romulus’s authority may indeed have reached the limits of what the aristocratic community would tolerate.

After Romulus’s disappearance, Rome did not immediately select a successor, but entered a period known as the interregnum. This was not a passive power vacuum but a deliberately inserted buffer period after the founder’s departure. Authority temporarily returned to the Senate, which handled succession in a highly procedural and deliberately cooling manner. During the interregnum, senators ruled in rotation, each exercising supreme authority only for a few days. This arrangement intentionally prevented any individual from accumulating lasting authority: the term was too short to build prestige, and the frequent rotation prevented any faction from consolidating power.

The purpose of this arrangement from the outset was not to govern the city effectively, but to manage political risk. It prevented the city from sliding back into tribal competition or violent struggle. By rotating authority, it incorporated all major families and factions into the transitional structure rather than excluding them. Most importantly, it served a third goal: to find a successor who would not replicate the role of Romulus. Rome did not need a second founder, but a ruler who could bring the city into a condition of normal order.

Rome after Romulus was not a unified whole but a composite of different families, military groups, and old and new settlers. If the second king had come from within Rome, he would inevitably be seen as representing one faction’s victory, reigniting competition. A successor from outside, however, would not be embedded in Rome’s networks of bloodline and achievement, and therefore could not be easily categorized as belonging to any one group. Kingship could thus be partially depoliticized.

For this reason, Numa Pompilius, as a Sabine, fit the requirement precisely. He was sufficiently “external” to avoid involvement in Roman factionalism, yet sufficiently “related” to be accepted by the community. The Sabines lived in the Apennine highlands northeast of Rome, in what roughly corresponds to northeastern Latium and southern Umbria. Their inland, mountainous, and relatively enclosed geography contrasted sharply with Rome’s position along the lower Tiber near the coast. This environment shaped their society: dispersed populations, agriculture as the main livelihood, a conservative pace of life, and political and religious structures oriented toward stability and continuity rather than outward expansion.

Culturally, the Sabines were both opposed to and intertwined with early Rome. The legend of the “abduction of the Sabine women” reflects early tension and demographic integration, while the subsequent merging of Sabines and Romans became one of Rome’s earliest instances of cross-group integration. The Sabines were therefore not an entirely foreign other, but part of the early Roman community, positioned outside the city while remaining within its broader formative system.