A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why must the founding stage secure the minimum conditions of command, population, and legitimacy before pursuing institutional completeness?
2. Abstract
In the founding stage, the minimum conditions of command, population, and legitimacy must be secured before institutional completeness, because institutions function only after the community that operates them has come into being. When the community itself is still unformed, it is necessary to secure the minimum conditions for survival before refining institutions.
A completed institutional system works only when there is a stable population base, a command structure that can carry decisions through, and a structure of approval that treats obedience as legitimate. In the founding stage, however, it is not yet settled who the governing body is, who belongs to the community, and who should obey. For this reason, what must be prioritized at this stage is not institutional refinement, but gathering people, unifying command, and establishing the minimum legitimacy of rule. Book 1 of Livy shows, through Roman founding history, that this order of priority is the rational logic of state formation.
3. Method
This study follows the three-layer structure of TLA.
In Layer 1, the events found in Livy, Book 1 are organized as facts, such as arrival, treaty-making, marriage, communal naming, city founding, augury, wall-building, asylum, legal formation, the founding of the Senate, and the acquisition of marriage ties.
In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structural categories such as the Founding Phase, Kingship, Founder / King / Hero, Civic Approval through the Assembly, and Urban Community and Civic Integration.
This study also uses OS Organizational Design Theory and rereads the community as a system composed of an OS, which serves as the decision-making body, and an Execution Layer, which carries out action.
In OS Organizational Design Theory, total system health is determined by the product of OS health and Execution Layer health. The OS itself functions through A, IA, H, and V. Therefore, this article examines the founding stage not as a problem of institutional completeness, but as a problem of the minimum conditions required to activate the OS — namely, a population base, unity of command, and the conditions of legitimacy.
4. Layer1: Fact
What Layer 1 shows is that, in the early stage of state founding, the conditions for communal existence are arranged step by step before institutional completeness is achieved.
In Chapter 1, Aeneas first appears in the land of the Laurentians as one who engages in plunder after landing there. Later, however, he gains the basis for settlement and city-building through treaty, marriage, and alliance with Latinus. What is secured first here is not a completed institutional order, but settlement and a legitimate starting point.
In Chapter 2, Aeneas calls both the Aborigines and the Trojans by the same name, Latins, and thereby integrates the community. The important point is that, before any refined institutional design appears, the name of the community and the unity of loyalty are established. If it is not yet decided who “we” are, then the object of institutional application is also unclear.
In Chapter 3, Lavinium becomes overpopulated, and Ascanius builds Alba Longa. What matters here is not the completeness of institutions, but the securing of a political container that can hold the growing population, allocate it, and turn it into an expanding sphere of rule. If the population cannot be retained, the community cannot move into the next stage of institutionalization.
In Chapter 6, when the new city is to be founded, the question of who should rule is decided through augury. Here the need to determine the legitimate center of command appears before institutional refinement. If the identity of the ruler remains unclear, even a refined institutional structure cannot be enforced.
In Chapter 8, Romulus builds walls with future population growth in mind, opens the asylum, gathers people, and only after that arranges law, symbols of authority, and the Senate. The sequence is clear. First, the base of population and force is formed. After that, institutionalization proceeds.
In Chapter 9, it is said that without women, Rome’s prosperity would last only one generation. Marriage thus becomes a state issue. This shows that even if there is military success and city-building, the state cannot endure if the conditions for population reproduction are missing. Even a refined institutional order has no meaning if the community itself cannot continue into the next generation.
5. Layer2: Order
In Layer 2, the Founding Phase defines its purpose as satisfying the minimum conditions required for a community to exist. Here, survival and population growth take priority over purity, and the preconditions are crisis, migration, a founder, and followers. This means that the rationality of the founding stage lies not in institutional completeness, but in securing the conditions that make the community able to exist.
The structure of Kingship shows the same sequence. In Layer 2, kingship in the founding stage is strongly necessary as the governing center that carries state creation, war, institutional creation, and judgment in one body. This shows that, unlike later stages of rule in which institutions are differentiated, what is first needed is unity of command. In the founding stage, before multiple institutions can stand side by side, it must first be clear where command comes from.
The Assembly and civic approval, as well as the Senate, can then be understood as structures that later stabilize and supplement this unified command. Civic approval transforms rule into the “will of the community,” and the Senate supports continuity. But for these structures to function, the boundary of the community, the center of command, and the authority that deserves approval must already exist at a minimum level. Institutional completeness is therefore not the first condition. It is a later task that is layered upon already secured minimum conditions.
From the perspective of OS Organizational Design Theory, this sequence becomes even clearer. The OS is the decision-making主体, and its health is determined by the product of A, IA, H, and V. But A requires a community whose reality is to be grasped. IA requires a circuit through which information can flow. H requires roles and human allocation. V requires a legitimate center of judgment. Therefore, the problem of the founding stage is not institutional refinement, but securing in advance the minimum conditions under which the OS can exist. Population, command, and legitimacy are those basic conditions.
6. Layer3: Insight
From this, it follows that the founding stage must secure the minimum conditions of command, population, and legitimacy before pursuing institutional completeness, because in the first stage of state formation, making the community itself capable of existing is more fundamental than refining institutions. Institutions gain meaning only when the community that operates them exists. If population is insufficient, if it is not clear who commands, and if the reason for obedience is not yet shared, then even a completed institutional system cannot function.
What Aeneas first secured was a legitimate starting point through settlement, treaty, and marriage. What Romulus first arranged was walls capable of containing future population, a population base through the asylum, and a standard of authority through augury. Only after this came law, symbols of authority, and the Senate. Then, through the marriage problem, a reproductive structure linking the community to the next generation was secured. The sequence here is consistent. The rationality of the founding stage does not lie in creating the best institutional system from the beginning. It lies in first assembling the minimum conditions through which the community does not collapse, command can reach others, people increase, and the next generation can follow. Institutions may operate even in incomplete form, but if population, command, and legitimacy are missing, the state cannot even advance to the stage of institutionalization. Therefore, the rationality of the founding stage lies not in completion, but in securing first the minimum conditions of state formation.
7. Implications for the Present
This point applies directly to modern start-up companies, newly established divisions, and organizations in reorganization.
In the early founding stage, even if a group pursues the completeness of evaluation systems, organizational rules, and decision procedures, institutions will not function if it remains unclear who has responsibility to decide, who forms the core membership, and why others should follow those decisions. What is first needed is a minimum command structure, a sufficient number of people, a basic role framework, and shared legitimacy.
It is also true that more people do not automatically make an organization stronger. But without a sufficient number of people, there can be no role division, no succession, and no execution structure in the first place. For this reason, founding-stage practice should prioritize not “putting a completed institutional system in place from the beginning,” but “first creating the minimum structure through which the community can survive.” In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, this means that before rushing toward complete OS design, one should first secure the minimum conditions that make OS activation possible. That is, one should first build the framework within which A, IA, H, and V can at least begin to operate. Roman founding history shows an early model of this logic.
8. Conclusion
In the founding stage, the minimum conditions of command, population, and legitimacy must be secured before institutional completeness. This is because institutions function only after the community itself has come into being, and in the founding stage the conditions of community, authority, and reproduction are still unformed.
What Book 1 of Livy shows is that a founding state does not aim at completeness from the beginning. It first prepares the conditions that make existence possible, and only after that layers institutions upon them. For this reason, the rationality of the founding stage lies not in institutional completion, but in the prior securing of the minimum conditions that make the community capable of survival.
9. Source Texts
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwatani, Kyoto University Press, 2008
OS Organizational Design Theory R1.26