Conclusion

When we look back, most striking is the great variety of uses to which the regal period was put. The extreme rationalized, hellenified modernism of Dionysius, and the atmospheric poverty of Propertius 4. 1 represent the extremes. The tendency to find in the regal period the origins of later Rome, and the fertile traditions of aetiologies which surrounded them, explains why the period was open to so many interpretations. This tendency to aetiology, however, also provides the principle which unifies all accounts of the regal period. In Cicero’s account the tradition of the kings as founders gains a political dimension, with the kings becoming ideal rulers. The concept of the innovating founder is transmuted slightly, so that he comes to act as a model.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Cicero · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics) · Literature · Modernism (music) · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Variety (cybernetics) · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy