The oldest Roman stories give a description of the coming of the people
who afterwards inhabited the city, from across the seas. They tell of
the founding of the first township round the Seven Hills, and of the
kings, especially of the last seven, who ruled over the people until,
for their misdeeds, they were driven out and the very name of King
became hateful in Roman ears. Then there are many tales of the wars
between the people of Rome and the neighbours dwelling round them on the
plains of Latium and among the hills of Etruria and Samnium; and the
fierce battles fought against the Gauls who, from time to time, swept
down on Italy from the mountains of the north.
These stories do not tell us much that can be considered as actual
history. But they do help us to understand what the Romans wished to be
like, by showing us the sort of pictures they held up before themselves.
In later times the Romans learned to admire intensely all that came from
Greece. The Greeks had been a great ruling people when the Roman State
hardly existed: and from them much in Roman life and thought was
borrowed. They liked to think that the first settlers on the Tiber bank
came from an older finer world than that of the other tribes dwelling in
Italy. So they told how, after the great siege of Troy by the Greek
heroes, Aeneas, one of the Trojan leaders, fled from his ruined city
across the seas, bearing his father and his household gods upon his
shoulders, and after many adventures, and some time passed in the great
city of Carthage, on the African coast, came with a few trusty
companions to the shores of Latium and there founded a new home.
The descendants of Aeneas ruled over their people as kings. In later
days, however, the Romans, who held that all citizens were free and
equal, hated the name of King. Rome was a republic: its government was
carried on by men elected by the citizens from among themselves, and by
assemblies in which all citizens could take part. The first duty of
every citizen was to the republic: its claim on him stood before all
other claims.
The story of the fall of the last king and of Lucius Junius Brutus, one
of the first Consuls, as the chief magistrates of the new republic were
called, shows clearly how far the idea of duty to the republic could go
in the minds of Romans.