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Led by Livy Simulacrum
The compulsory Roman longer period study of OCR GCSE Ancient History (J198/02), taught by Livy — Rome's greatest narrator and its first honest sceptic about its own legends. Three centuries from Romulus to the early Republic across four themes: political change, religious and social change, military change, and separating myth from reality. The whole study turns on weighing legend against evidence.
Led by Livy Simulacrum
The question
Livy begins where Rome began and is honest from the first line: the traditions of these years are closer to poetry than to history. The student narrates the foundation stories — Aeneas, Romulus and the wolf, the killing of Remus, the seizure of the Sabine women — and the first four kings, each with a distinctive contribution: Romulus military and political, Numa religious (the priesthoods, the calendar), Tullus warlike, Ancus reaching the sea. The governing discipline of the whole study starts here: for each story, the student asks what a Roman wanted it to mean and what, if anything, beneath it might have happened — weighing Livy's own caution and the archaeology of the earliest city.
Outcome
The student can narrate the first four kings and their distinctive contributions, explain how the foundation myths functioned for Romans, and distinguish a myth's civic meaning from any historical kernel using Livy's own scepticism and the archaeological evidence.
Sub-units
Led by Livy Simulacrum
The question
Under Etruscan kings Rome becomes a real city of stone — drained, paved, walled, given its great temple and its sewer. The student studies how each king gained and held power, the urban transformation, and above all the reforms of Servius Tullius, who reorganised the whole people into property classes for the army and the vote — a change whose echo runs through all later Roman history. Then Tarquinius Superbus, the Proud, whose tyranny would end the monarchy. The student traces the four sub-themes, weighs the literary tradition against the archaeology of the Etruscan city, and recognises how the tradition shaped the last king into a monster.
Outcome
The student can narrate the three Etruscan reigns, explain the lasting significance of the Servian reforms and the urban transformation, and weigh the literary tradition against archaeology including the hostile shaping of Tarquinius Superbus.
Sub-units
Led by Livy Simulacrum
The question
The Tarquins are expelled — over the rape of Lucretia, in the tradition — and Rome will have no more kings. The student studies the deliberate design of the replacement: two consuls each year, holding the king's power but annually, collegially, and by halves. But the new state is nearly strangled at birth — the exiled Tarquin returns with Etruscan armies (the stories of Horatius and Mucius Scaevola), and behind the war comes the quarrel between patricians and plebeians that will shake Rome for two centuries. The student explains the consulship as an answer to monarchy, the early military threats, and the opening of the Conflict of the Orders, weighing the dramatic foundation stories as shaped tradition.
Outcome
The student can narrate the fall of the monarchy and the consular Republic, explain the design of the consulship, account for the early military threats and the start of patrician–plebeian tension, and evaluate the dramatic foundation stories.
Sub-units
Led by Livy Simulacrum
The question
The long internal struggle that made Rome — not a war against foreigners but a contest between Romans. The plebeians, who fought Rome's wars yet were shut out of office and crushed by debt, found a weapon no army could beat: they walked out. The student studies the Secession of the Plebs and the tribunes it won them, sacred and untouchable, and the demand for written law that produced the Twelve Tables. The deeper point is synoptic: Rome did not settle its class conflict by bloodshed, as Greek cities did, but by slow institutional compromise — the Roman genius. The student connects the four sub-themes across the whole study and evaluates the annalistic source tradition.
Outcome
The student can explain the Conflict of the Orders, the Secession and the tribunate and the Twelve Tables, characterise Roman change as gradual and institutional across the whole study, and evaluate the annalistic tradition as a source.
Sub-units