ABSTRACT
The will of the people is most clearly seen in the theatre and at the shows. As an Etruscan city in the sixth century BCE and an independent state in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, Rome from its genesis was shaped by institutions, religious rituals and social practices. The Triumphal Fasti, for example, record triumphs from the regal and the early republican period, Festus confirms the antiquity of the triumph, and Livy assigns a triumph in the first decade of the republic to the consuls of 505 BCE, Marcus Valerius and Publius Postumius. Archaic Rome is a barely documented society, and even in the case of the late fourth century, when a vigorous interest in the viewing of spectacle, including presumably ludi, is signalled by Gaius Maenius addition of spectator balconies to the shops of the Roman Forum, the city has left little trace of its theatrical interests.
