And has this been discussed with the root behind res PUBLICA as per POPULUS -- and what about the adjective R in SPQR -- it's not just populus but populus romanus. And would the patres be considered POPULUS in, say, regal days? Input? Feedback? Thanks  Yes. This is a good place to slow the vocabulary down. Res publica is not merely “state,” and populus is not merely “population.” Res publica is literally the public thing, the public affair, the common matter, the res that belongs not to a private domus or gens but to the politically organised civic body. But that civic body is not any aggregate of inhabitants. It is the populus Romanus. The adjective Romanus in SPQR is doing real work. Senatus populusque Romanus is not “senate and people” as two sociological masses in the abstract; it is the Senate and the Roman people, a historically constituted, legally recognised, ritually legible civic agent. Rome is not just where they live. Romanus marks the public person under which the collective can will, command, vote, declare war, make treaties, and possess a res publica.  This matters for the Hortensian point. The question is not simply whether populus means “everybody.” It is whether the plebs, acting in their assembly, can produce an utterance that counts as the will or law of the populus Romanus as such. The Lex Hortensia does not merely extend a warm moral vocabulary. It alters the institutional path by which the Roman people may be made to speak. In Gricean terms, the utterer-status changes. A plebiscitum, previously vulnerable to being heard as the resolution of a part, is now to be heard as law binding the whole. The meaning of populus is therefore not just lexical but procedural: who may count as the public speaker when Rome says “we”? The R in SPQR prevents a sentimental reading of populus. It is not the universal people, humanity, or the crowd. It is the Roman people, constituted by citizenship, ritual, military obligation, voting order, legal capacity, and memory. The phrase senatus populusque Romanus is a formula of corporate personality. It presents two organs, or two named components, under one public identity. The Senate deliberates and advises; the populus commands, elects, legislates, ratifies, judges, or is represented as doing so, depending on period and procedure. But the whole formula is Roman through and through. It is not peoplehood before law; it is peoplehood as already juridically and historically shaped. On the regal period, yes, the patres would be part of the populus in the broad civic sense, but not identical with it. The old Roman picture distinguishes patres, clientes, plebs, curiae, gentes, and the king’s imperium in ways that are partly historical, partly annalistic reconstruction, and partly later Roman self-explanation. In regal days, “the people” as a political body is normally imagined through the curiate assembly, the populus organised by curiae. The patres are the leading fathers of gentes and the source of the Senate’s early authority, but they are not the populus tout court. They are within the populus Romanus as its aristocratic and advisory or senatorial element, while also standing over against the rest by rank, ancestry, sacral prestige, and access to office or auspices. So one should resist two simplifications. First, populus is not simply plebs. The plebs are a component that becomes increasingly central and politically articulate, but populus Romanus is the civic whole. Second, populus is not simply patres. The patres are foundational and privileged, but the formula of the public thing needs more than the fathers. The whole drama of the early Republic is that these terms are unstable in practice. The patres would like to speak as if their order guards the public thing; the plebs insist, by secession and legislation, that the public thing cannot be public if the plebeian body is merely used but not heard. This is why res publica is conceptually tied to populus but not reducible to it. The res publica is the common affair of the populus Romanus, but it is administered, interpreted, defended, and often monopolised by institutions that claim to know better than the whole people what the public thing requires. That is the Roman ambiguity. The public thing is “of the people,” yet the people may need magistrates, Senate, auspices, priests, laws, assemblies, and procedures before it can act as a people. In Gricean terms, there is no bare collective meaning. There are authorised forms of uptake by which a collective utterance becomes valid. The Hortensian settlement then becomes a semantic-political correction. The plebs’ secession says, by action, that “public” cannot coherently mean patrician-administered commonality while excluding the force that makes common life possible. The Lex Hortensia answers by altering the force of plebeian enactment. It does not abolish all hierarchy, and it certainly does not create modern democracy. But it makes it much harder to say that a plebiscitum is merely the utterance of a lower part. After Hortensius, the plebeian legislative voice can bind the Roman civic whole. That changes what it is, practically, for the populus Romanus to speak. A dry Speranzian formula might be this: populus in Rome is not a head-count but a public grammar. Romanus tells us whose grammar it is; res publica tells us what is at stake when that grammar operates; SPQR tells us that the Roman public speaker is never a simple one-mouth creature. The patres were certainly in the populus, but they were not allowed, forever, to mean the populus. The Lex Hortensia is one of the moments at which Rome learns, reluctantly and procedurally, that the public thing must sometimes be saved from the fathers by allowing the people to count as the People.

 The Marcus Curtius Throwing Himself into the Chasm statue in the Borghese Gallery is a composite work featuring a 1st–2nd century AD Roman marble horse and a 1618–1619 rider carved by Pietro Bernini. [1, 2]

No, it is not included in the classic text Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900 by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny (which you likely referred to as Petty lure of the antique). The book catalogs highly replicated, purely ancient "canonical" statues, whereas this piece is a Baroque hybrid "integrative restoration". [1, 2, 3]

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Provenance of the Sculpture

The statue is a pastiche, meaning its history is split between its ancient and early modern components: [1]

• The Ancient Horse (1st–2nd Century AD): The horse torso and head are ancient Roman relics. Based on the chisel and drill work on the mane, archaeologists date the carving to between the late Augustan and early Antonine eras. It was unearthed during an archaeological excavation in Rome during the early 17th century. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Baroque Addition (1618–1619): Cardinal Scipione Borghese acquired the damaged ancient horse fragment. Rather than leaving it as a fragment, he commissioned Pietro Bernini (the father of Gian Lorenzo Bernini) to perform an "integrative restoration". Pietro carved the rider, Marcus Curtius, heavily modifying the horse’s positioning to look like it was leaping downwards. [1, 2, 3]
• Display History:
  • 1620s–1770s: The completed sculpture was originally built high into the exterior façade of the Casino of the Villa Borghese, set against a relief background to make it look as if the horse was leaping from a cliff.
  • Late 18th Century: During the massive neoclassical renovation of the villa overseen by architect Antonio Asprucci for Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese, the statue was brought inside. It was placed in its current, highly prominent location on the ceiling/wall framing of the Salone (Entrance Hall), where it remains today. [1, 2, 3, 4]

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Why it is Omitted from Taste and the Antique

The landmark book Taste and the Antique specifically tracks 95 world-renowned ancient sculptures that formed the backbone of European taste, art education, and Grand Tour replication. The Marcus Curtius group was excluded for several reasons: [1, 2]

• It is a Heavy Baroque Hybrid: Because a massive portion of the statue—the entire narrative hero—was carved in 1618 by a modern master, it was classified more as a Baroque artwork than a pure antiquarian benchmark. [1]
• Lack of Historical Copies: The book focuses on statues that were widely copied in bronze, plaster, and marble for European palaces. The Marcus Curtius was mostly famous as a fixture of the Borghese estate rather than an internationally duplicated model. [1]

If you are researching other pieces in the Borghese Collection that are featured in Taste and the Antique, you might want to look into the Borghese Gladiator or the Borghese Hermaphroditus (both of which were later sold to Napoleon and moved to the Louvre). [1, 2]

Would you like to explore other hybrid restorations from the Borghese collection, or perhaps learn more about the specific pieces that did make it into Haskell and Penny's book?

 Yes, the tragic Roman story of Virginia, her father Virginio, her fiancé Icilio, and the corrupt decemvir Appio Claudio (who used his client Marco Claudio to falsely claim Virginia as a slave) has been heavily treated by Italian librettists. [1, 2]

This classic historical episode from Livy's Ab Urbe Condita—where a father kills his daughter to save her virtue, sparking a rebellion that overthrew the Decemvirate—was a highly popular subject in Italian opera, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Prominent Italian Libretti on the Decemvir Episode

The narrative has been adapted into several major Italian opera libretti:

• Salvadore Cammarano: One of the most famous Italian librettists of the 19th century (widely known for writing Lucia di Lammermoor), he penned the libretto for Virginia (1850). The music was composed by Saverio Mercadante. Cammarano based his text directly on the celebrated Italian tragedy Virginia by Vittorio Alfieri. Due to its themes of a popular uprising against a tyrannical government, the Bourbon censors banned it. It finally premiered at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in 1866. [1, 2]
• Silvio Stampiglia: A highly influential early 18th-century librettist, he wrote La caduta de' Decemviri(The Fall of the Decemvirs). This libretto features all the exact historical figures you mentioned, including Appio Claudio, Lucio Virginio, Virginia, and Icilio. It was most famously set to music by the prominent Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti and premiered in Naples in 1697. [1, 2]
• Domenico Bancalari: He wrote an Italian libretto titled Virginia, which was set to music by the Venezuelan composer José Ángel Montero. Premiering in 1873, it is celebrated as the first opera ever composed in Venezuela, yet written entirely in the traditional Italian libretto style. [1]
• Fello Giuliani: He authored another 19th-century Italian libretto titled Virginia, which was set to music by composer Niccola Vaccaj and published around 1840. [1]

Summary of Operatic Characters & Roles

In these Italian libretti, the dramatic conflict closely tracks the ancient Roman account: [1]

• Appio Claudio: The tyrannical antagonist and chief of the Decemvirs.
• Virginia: The tragic, virtuous heroine.
• Virginio (Lucius Virginius): Her heroic father, a centurion who stabs her to protect her freedom.
• Icilio: Virginia's passionate fiancé and former tribune who rouses the public against the tyrant.
• Marco Claudio: The client used by Appio to falsely claim Virginia as his runaway slave. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Would you like more details on a specific composer's musical setting of this story, or do you want to explore how the plot changes between Alfieri's original play and Cammarano's opera libretto?

 Yes, Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus were indeed the first two consuls of the Roman Republic, elected in 509 BCE after the overthrow of the last Roman king. [1]

Etymologists have extensively researched the root following the prefix co(n)- (derived from cum, meaning "with/together"), proposing two primary linguistic theories for the second element. [1, 2]

Theory 1: The Root of "Taking" or "Gathering Together" (Modern Consensus)

Modern historical linguists trace the word consul back to the Proto-Italic compound *kom-sel-e-. [1]

• The Prefix: *kom- (which became con-) meaning "together".
• The Root: *selh₁- (Proto-Indo-European), meaning "to take, grab, or gather".
• The Meaning: Combined, the literal meaning is "to gather together". This evolved into the verb consulere ("to deliberate, take counsel, or meet and consider"). Under this dominant theory, a consul is fundamentally "one who deliberates or consults the Senate together with a colleague". [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Theory 2: The Root of "Leaping" or "Going" (Older Alternative)

An older, classic etymological theory proposed by 19th-century scholars (like Wilhelm Corssen) links the second element to a different root: [1]

• The Root: sal-, from the Latin verb salire (meaning "to leap, spring, or go"). [, 2]
• The Meaning: In this interpretation, con-sul means "one who goes together with another."
• Parallels: This theory relies on the structural mirroring found in other Roman official titles:
  • Exsul (Exile) \(\rightarrow \) ex- (out) + salire = "one who leaps/goes out".
  • Praesul (Protector/Leader of a dance) \(\rightarrow \) prae- (before) + salire = "one who leaps/goes before". [1]

While the "leaping/going together" theory elegantly explains the companion nature of the dual-magistracy, modern linguistics firmly favors the PIE root *selh₁- (gathering/deliberating together) as the most accurate origin. [1, 2]