What are some books or resources for the early Republic, like

>>3279076
>>3279076
>>3279076

The truth is that there is no really "good" source about the early years of Roman history. It was a mystery even to Roman historians themselves, who often struggled to piece together the various founding myths into a semi-plausible narrative. Many Romans came to believe that they were descendants of Trojans, you know, like from the Illiad. According to their legends, after the city of Troy was destroyed, a Trojan soldier migrated to Italy, and then eventually his descendent Romulus founded the city of Rome.

As for how Rome became a Republic, the Romans seemed to believe that they first had a series of 7 kings, starting with Romulus, each of which made an important contribution to the city's evolution. However, the 7th king was a cruel and vile man, who drove the Romans to revolt. After deposing this seventh king, the Romans swore that they would never again allow 1 man to have absolute power. From this point on, power would be shared, and there would a constitution with enough checks and balances to prevent a new monarch from ever forming. At least, that's the story.

SPQR by Mary Beard spends a LONG time talking about it if you're still interested after reading that blurb I just gave you.

>>3279470
I know the basic narrative, but I want a fuller picture outside of just basic political details. Does SPQR use a lot of archeological evidence to try to piece together the daily lives of a Roman in this period?

>>3279513

>Does SPQR use a lot of archeological evidence to try to piece together the daily lives of a Roman in this period?

Yes and no. Whenever archeological evidence actually exists, SPQR uses that. However, given that there is very little remaining from Rome's early years, there just isn't much to go on, and so the founding myths are made the center of the discussion for those chapters.

The book spends a long time discussing the legends and trying to extract kernels of truth from them. Things like the seven original kings are impossible to verify or disprove, but since many of them have blatantly supernatural elements included in their stories, historians tend to discount them. Even Roman historians, while being able to eventually construct a semi-coherent narrative from the mess of contradictory stories, often disagreed on the details, and even they sometimes expressed skepticism about the supernatural elements in the stories.

>>3279540
Ok, I'll pick up a copy of it sometime

File: Screen Shot 2017-08-22 at 9.37.26 PM.png (166KB, 717x669px) Image search: [Google]

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>>3279076
see this pic OP