Tullus Hostilius Destroys Alba Longa
Tullus Hostilius was, according to Livy, more warlike than even Romulus. He came to power contemptuous of Numa's religious piety and redirected Rome's energies toward conquest. His reign is defined above all by the destruction of Alba Longa, the Latin city from which Rome's own founders had come. The war between Rome and Alba was decided by a famous episode: the combat of the Horatii against the Curiatii — three Roman brothers against three Alban brothers, chosen to spare both cities from full battle. Two of the three Roman Horatii fell; the third, feigning flight, separated his opponents and killed them one by one. Rome won, but the story's emotional resonance lay elsewhere: the surviving Horatius killed his own sister upon returning to Rome when she wept for her Alban fiance, one of the Curiatii. He was tried for murder and acquitted — a founding moment for Roman ideas of patriotism over private grief. Alba Longa was subsequently destroyed and its entire population forcibly relocated to Rome. This was not conquest in the ordinary sense but annihilation of a city's civic identity. The Albans became Romans. It was a template Rome would repeat many times: absorption rather than subjugation of Latin neighbours. Tullus also fought the Fidenates and Veientes, extending Roman territory on the Tiber. But his reign ended in catastrophe. He attempted to use Numa's priestly rituals without proper knowledge, botched them, and — Livy records — Jupiter struck him dead with lightning, consuming his entire house in flames. The gods, it seemed, had tolerated his neglect for a time but not indefinitely. The contrast with Numa is deliberate in the tradition. Rome required both archetypes: the warrior king who expanded territory and the priest-king who gave the city its moral order. Tullus showed what happened when a city remembered only one half of that pairing.
- Year: 673 BCE
- Category: Military
