Abstract:
Family bonds, and particularly fraternal relationships, play key roles in many of the narratives relating to Rome’s Regal and early Republican periods. In particular, the literary sources for these periods are full of references to brothers standing side by side, fighting for, and in many ways embodying (sometimes quite literally), the various social and political entities which were struggling for supremacy in archaic Latium. The present study will endeavour to tease out some of the nuances of this bond and explain how the concept of brotherhood in early Roman narratives seems to differ from that presented in accounts relating to the late Republic. It will accomplish this using four case studies in early Roman brotherhood—Romulus and Remus, the Dioscuri, the Battle of the Champions, and the archaic sodales—which cover the diverse range of relationships encapsulated in the early Roman concept of fraternity, demonstrating how the current scholarly interpretation of Roman brotherhood, based largely on the principle of equality, does not fully describe the bond as it relates to this period. While equality, and to a certain extent blood, do seem to represent key aspects or preconditions of Roman fraternity, in accounts of the early city it was actually military camaraderie and battlefield unity which seem to have been the defining characteristics. This interpretation of early Roman fraternity shifts our understanding of the relationship toward a more active, and arguably ephemeral, model and sheds further light on myths involving brothers from early Rome and particularly those—like that of Romulus and Remus—which involve the breakdown of this bond.