It’s worth noting that we’re talking about very early days here— Rome was still just a regional power on the Italian peninsula, not the Mediterranean-spanning e

It’s worth noting that we’re talking about very early days here— Rome was still just a regional power on the Italian peninsula, not the Mediterranean-spanning empire we think of today. Also bear in mind that most of these reported incidents happened before 387 BC, when Rome was sacked and most historical records were destroyed. Events before this date are often more legend than fact. Roman culture changed a great deal over its thousand-year span, but most of those (that we know of) came under the later empire, as foreign cultures got folded in. To later-day romans, this period is one they looked back at as the “brave days of old”, when all men were honourable, honest, hardworking, patriotic, that old refrain. Needless to say, history from this period tended to get embellished. The reason for so few successions is likely because it was a nuclear option. Getting an entire city of (very poor) middle and lower class citizens to close up shop and camp out on a hillside in solidarity is a massive undertaking, and even then it probably only worked because of Rome’s militaristic nature and then-lack of a professional army— when the citizens march off, well, that’s all your legions. Let’s hope the Etruscans don’t notice. A final thing to note is that these successions were usually resolved with landmark constitutional changes. These were huge concessions, like the creation of the powerful office of tribune, or the outlandish idea of requiring of Rome’s laws to be written down publicly (the horror!). Successions were a Big Deal.