I don't write papers

king' was a violent episode. Archaeology has also revealed Publius Valerius as a historical character: at about the right date, `the companions of Poplios Valesios' made a dedication to Mars at Satricum, a Latin town some forty miles south of Rome.(7) But that local warlord seems to have little in common with the democratic constitutionalist of the Roman story.

The trouble with archaeological discoveries is that they encourage the Schliemann fallacy: find the site of Troy, and you've proved the Iliad is true. Even the best modern historians sometimes succumb to this temptation.

The study of early Rome has been put on a wholly new footing by Tim Cornell's brilliant synthesis The Beginnings of Rome (1995). Cornell has no illusions about the tradition on the birth of the Republic: `it has the appearance of a historical romance, and forms a self-contained saga of connected stories! But, he goes on, `there is no reason in principle why the tradition should not be a romanticised vers...