ABSTRACT
Efforts to understand early Germanic kingship, whether before the end of the Roman Empire in the west or in the Germanic kingdoms created in the fifth and sixth centuries, encounter the problem of terminology used in Latin texts. The term regulus is common in earlier Latin historiography. Thus, Sallust's terminology indicates that rex and regulus could be interchangeable terms, but his use of regulus for the joint heirs only in the period following the death of King Micipsa makes it seem that the meaning of regulus here as petty king, kinglet, or chieftain is improbable. Germanic peoples also often had shared rule by kings, often close relatives, so it is not surprising that reguli also are encountered among them, especially in the late fourth century in the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus. Livy's older contemporary Varro wrote a three-book manual on agriculture, the Res rusticae, and, as usual in antiquity, he referred to the leader of the beehive as a rex.
