A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why did the connection with divine will function not as superstition, but as a technology of governance in the ancient state?
2. Abstract
The connection with divine will functioned not as superstition but as a technology of governance in the ancient state because the state could not yet integrate the community through highly differentiated institutions, bureaucracy, and legal procedures alone. It needed a device that gave transcendent legitimacy to political decisions.
In founding states and early monarchies, kingship, war, marriage, ritual, and communal consciousness remained overlapped and undifferentiated. For that reason, it was difficult to support, through human interests alone, the answers to questions such as why an order was right, why a war was just, who should rule, and why the community should obey.
The connection with divine will therefore worked as a technology of governance that translated personal power and violence into a “right order,” and drew out the acceptance and obedience of the community.
Book 1 of Livy shows that divine will was not a residue of irrationality. It functioned as a device of legitimation that justified founding, kingship, law, ritual, and marriage.
3. Method
This study follows the three-layer structure of TLA.
In Layer 1, the events in Livy, Book 1 are organized as facts, such as founding, marriage, kingship, augury, ritual, legal formation, plunder, and declarations of war.
In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structural categories such as the Heavenly Layer, kingship, priestly groups, religious lineages and recording devices, treaty and declaration-of-war ritual with diplomatic priests, and urban community and civic integration.
This study also uses OS Organizational Design Theory R1.28 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 R1.28, the OS is defined as a decision-making body operated through A, IA, H, and V, and it integrates the community through meaning, judgment criteria, role order, and information structure. Therefore, this article examines the connection with divine will not as a mere expression of faith, but as a higher reference axis that secures communal approval, memory, and legitimacy.
4. Layer1: Fact
What Layer 1 shows is that, in Book 1, the connection with divine will is not a decorative element around the founding narrative. It is placed at the center of state formation itself.
In Chapter 1, Aeneas is accepted by Latinus as a man of noble origin and gains a place of settlement through marriage and alliance. In Chapter 2, after his death, he is called Jupiter Indiges by the people. In this way, the acts of the founder are connected to a divine level, and the origin of the community is transformed from a matter of mere force or chance into an event with lasting legitimacy.
In the story of the birth of Romulus and Remus and the founding of the new city, this structure becomes even clearer. The twins’ origin is connected with divine ancestry, and augury is used when deciding who should rule the new city. Conflict and bloodshed are not avoided in reality, yet augury is still necessary because the right to rule must be accepted by the community as something that has passed through the selection of the gods rather than through private desire. Divine will does not erase conflict. It translates the result of conflict into a form that the community can accept.
In Chapter 7, the ritual origins connected with Hercules, Evander, Carmenta, and the Ara Maxima are narrated. Here, Roman land is reinterpreted not as mere space, but as meaningful space carrying the memory of myth and ritual. A city is not established by walls and land alone. It is given mythic depth so that people can believe that “this order is not accidental.”
In Chapter 8, Romulus first performs sacred rites according to proper ritual and only afterwards gathers the people and arranges the legal order. This sequence is important. Ritual comes before law because rough and mixed people can only be made to obey law if they feel that the law is connected not merely to human command but to a higher order. The connection with divine will thus functions as a psychological and symbolic basis that strengthens the force of law.
In Chapter 9, the abduction of the Sabine women shows the same issue in another form. Normatively, it involves grave problems, yet structurally it shows that even political and violent acts were being connected to communal order through the religious framework of a festival. This demonstrates that the connection with divine will in the ancient state was not a faith detached from real politics, but a technology that made political acts acceptable to the community.
5. Layer2: Order
In Layer 2, the Heavenly Layer is defined as a higher reference axis through which divine will, omens, and ritual order justify human political acts, wars, and acts of founding, and connect the actions of the community to cosmic order. Roman actions are transformed from “mere force” into “right order” through augury, prophecy, oath, sacrifice, and deification. Divine will therefore was not an external faith outside politics. It was a device of legitimation that translated rule and war into forms the community could accept.
The structure of treaties, declaration-of-war ritual, and diplomatic priests strengthens this point. In Layer 2, Rome is described as valuing the form of the “just war,” embedding violence in legal order through rituals such as compensation demands, deadlines, senatorial consultation, and the throwing of the spear. This means that the connection with divine will functioned as a procedural device that made war not a private fight, but an official act of the community. In other words, the connection with divine will worked not to stop war, but to make the community recognize war as a legitimate act.
The structure of priestly groups, religious lineages, and recording devices also shows that divine will was not a one-time mystical experience, but something fixed into a reusable institution through ritual and record. Priestly groups preserved the religious procedures and translated the king’s will into a “correct form.” Because there was record and transmission, later kings could also connect themselves to the same order. Divine will did not stand outside institutions. It functioned as an invisible infrastructure supporting the creation and continuity of institutions.
From the perspective of OS Organizational Design Theory R1.28, the health of the OS in a founding state was extremely low. The people gathered under the OS were not yet sufficiently organized. Even if Aeneas or Romulus understood the survival purpose of the OS and designed proper measures, the information structure IA and the human reward-and-penalty system H that were needed to carry out those measures were still weak.
For this reason, the ancient state used the connection with divine will. Divine will was a symbolic presence to which everyone would listen, and in a founding state it was also a means of forcibly activating an underdeveloped information structure IA.
The same is true for the human reward-and-penalty system H. For example, in Chapter 10, after the battle with Caenina, Romulus carries the armor of the slain enemy commander up to the Capitol and designates it as a sacred place of Jupiter. By connecting the act of war with divine will, he gives legitimacy to the distribution of spoils and honor, and makes the human reward-and-penalty system H acceptable to the community. Without the connection with divine will, even if Romulus spoke of justice, it would have been difficult for the whole community to accept it in the same way.
In this way, the connection with divine will worked by giving shared meaning to the whole community, thereby activating IA, and by legitimizing standards of honor, reward, and loyalty, thereby making H function.
Therefore, divine will can be understood not as superstition, but as a means of integrating an unorganized community into one order.
6. Layer3: Insight
From this, it follows that the connection with divine will functioned not as superstition but as a technology of governance in the ancient state because divine will served as a device of legitimation that translated human acts such as rule, war, law, marriage, and city building into a “right order” that the community could accept.
In founding states and early monarchies, kingship, war, marriage, ritual, and communal consciousness remained overlapped and undifferentiated, and it was difficult to sustain order through human interests alone. The connection with divine will therefore worked as a technology that linked personal power and violence to cosmic order and drew out the acceptance and obedience of the community.
Divine will was not a magical device that removed conflict. It was a political technique that translated the results of conflict and the establishment of rule into a form that the community could accept.
7. Implications for the Present
Modern society does not use divine will itself as a technology of governance. Yet structurally, similar problems still remain in situations where institutions and rules alone cannot fully secure people’s acceptance.
Even in modern organizations, when systems and commands alone are not enough to secure unity and acceptance, the words and actions of founders or past contributors, organizational ideals, and historical legitimacy can be used as higher reference axes. The structure in which Aeneas was revered as Jupiter in ancient Rome can be understood as a classical prototype of this problem.
Even in modern organizations, in order for people to accept why they should follow an order and why a system is right, what is sometimes needed is not only efficiency or power, but also a higher order of meaning above them.
This was the role played by divine will in the ancient state. Especially in founding states, the connection with divine will functioned as a medium that activated underdeveloped IA and H, and transformed an unorganized community into a governable order.
8. Conclusion
The connection with divine will functioned not as superstition but as a technology of governance in the ancient state because divine will served as a device of legitimation that translated acts such as rule, war, law, marriage, and city building into a “right order” acceptable to the community.
What Book 1 of Livy shows is that founding myths and ritual narratives are not peripheral to history, but lie at the core of state formation itself. Therefore, the connection with divine will was not a residue of irrationality. In societies where modern institutions were still immature, it was one of the most powerful technologies of governance for making political decisions acceptable, memorable, and transmissible to the community.
9. Source Texts
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwatani, Kyoto University Press, 2008
OS Organizational Design Theory R1.28