A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why did larger decisions such as war and founding require legitimation through ritual and omens?
2. Abstract
Larger decisions such as war and founding required legitimation through ritual and omens because they were high-risk and irreversible judgments that could suddenly change the direction, sacrifices, and order of the whole community. Rational outcomes alone were not enough to make people accept and obey them.
A small command may work through fear, interest, or temporary obedience. But founding and war involve danger to life, resource mobilization, changes of role, and the reorganization of the community. If the whole community does not accept why it must move in that direction, the decision itself can become a cause of internal collapse.
For this reason, in the ancient state, the larger the decision, the more necessary it became to justify it before the order of the gods and translate it into something the community could accept.
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, kingship, augury, ritual, legal formation, and declaration-of-war ritual. In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structural categories such as the Heavenly Layer, treaties and declaration-of-war ritual with diplomatic priests, priestly groups and religious lineages with recording devices, and the founder / king / hero structure.
This study also uses OS Organizational Design Theory R1.29 and rereads political decisions not simply as a matter of rational outcomes, but as a structural problem of command acceptance and trust formation. In R1.29, OS health is explained as the product of A, IA, H, and V, and V alone does not guarantee total health. Therefore, it is not enough that the content of a decision is rational. What matters is how that decision is accepted by the community through information structure and trust channels.
For this reason, this study examines procedures justified before the gods as a device that translates rational outcomes into communal order.
4. Layer1: Fact
What Layer 1 shows is that, in Book 1, important political decisions are repeatedly presented through a connection with divine will. In Chapter 6, Romulus and Remus do not decide the ruler of the new city simply by strength or age. Instead, they entrust the decision to the form that “the gods who protect this land will choose through augury.” In reality, conflict and bloodshed are not avoided. Even so, augury is necessary because the right to rule must be accepted by the community not as the result of private desire or force, but as the result of a proper selection process under the gods.
In Chapter 8, Romulus first performs sacred rites according to proper ritual, and only after that gathers the people and arranges the legal order. This shows that the rational content of law alone was not enough. Unless that law was presented as something supported by a higher order, it could not unite rough and mixed people into one community. The correctness of procedure was not mere formalism. It was a channel that made commands and laws acceptable within the community.
In Chapter 24, the herald says, “Hear, Jupiter,” and “Hear, Justice,” and performs the demand for compensation and the declaration of war in ritual form. Here, the beginning of war is not treated as a mere military judgment. It becomes an act of the community because it passes through a formal procedure with the gods and justice as witnesses. Political and military decisions therefore required not only rational content, but also a correct beginning justified before the gods.
5. Layer2: Order
In Layer 2, the Heavenly Layer is defined as the higher reference axis through which divine will, omens, and ritual order justify human acts of politics, war, and founding, and connect the community’s actions to cosmic order. Roman actions are transformed from “mere force” into “right order” through augury, prophecy, oath, sacrifice, and deification. In this sense, divine will was not a faith outside politics. It functioned as a device that translated rule and war into forms the community could accept.
The structure of treaties, declaration-of-war ritual, and diplomatic priests also supports this point. Rome arranged rituals such as demands for compensation, setting deadlines, consultation with the senate, and the throwing of the spear so that war would become an official act of the community rather than a private fight. Here, the rational result—such as “the enemy should be attacked”—was not enough. By passing through a correct procedure before the gods, violence was embedded into legal order. Procedure was the device that translated violence into order.
The structure of priestly groups, religious lineages, and recording devices further shows that correct procedures before the gods had to be preserved and inherited as reusable institutions, not treated as temporary inspiration or private ideas. Priests preserved the religious procedures, translated the king’s will into a “correct form,” and, through record and transmission, allowed later rulers to connect themselves to the same order. What the ancient state needed was not only “a successful decision,” but also “a reusable correct decision procedure.”
From the perspective of OS Organizational Design Theory R1.29, this problem can be understood as a condition in which the rationality of V alone cannot support the total health of the OS. R1.29 states that even if a decision is rational in relation to the original purpose of the OS, that alone does not guarantee total health across A, IA, H, and T. The health of the ruled side is further expressed as M × T, or maturity × trust, and command acceptance becomes unstable when trust T is weak.
This problem becomes especially serious in large decisions such as war and founding. Such decisions involve the whole community at once, and if the execution side lacks acceptance and trust, internal collapse or noncompliance becomes likely. In founding communities, both maturity M and trust T are still insufficient. For this reason, the ancient state used divine will and ritual as mediating devices and presented major decisions as “right before the gods,” thereby forcibly raising communal trust and making command acceptance possible.
The larger the decision, the more legitimation through ritual and omens became necessary, because such a decision tested the execution power and trust structure of the whole community at once.
6. Layer3: Insight
From this, it follows that larger decisions such as war and founding required legitimation through ritual and omens because they demanded large sacrifices and irreversible change from the whole community, and rational outcomes alone, or even a small amount of trust, could not secure acceptance and cooperation.
Ritual and omens functioned as devices of legitimation that connected such major decisions to the order of the gods and translated private ambition or accidental violence into “a right decision for the community.” Therefore, the larger the decision, the more decisive it became not only whether its content was rational, but whether it had been presented to the community through a proper and justified form.
7. Implications for the Present
Modern society does not use ritual and omens themselves in politics or organizational management. Yet structurally, a similar problem still remains in modern organizations. Even if institutions and commands are rational, people will not easily accept them unless it is visible how they were decided and by what standards they were justified.
This is especially true in major management decisions. If employees have low trust, or if the level of maturity M is not high enough for them to understand and share the background of the decision, resistance can arise on the employee side. In the ancient world, “divine will” functioned as a medium that drew acceptance from the ruled side. In modern society, divine will cannot do this. Therefore, organizations must either cultivate maturity in advance or build trust beforehand so that employees can more easily accept major decisions.
Otherwise, for example, when business conditions worsen and wages must be reduced, the organization may fail to gain employee acceptance. If the measure is then enforced by sheer force, trust deteriorates even further.
This is the difference between the ancient and the modern case. In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, implementing a major decision requires not only the rationality of V, but also enough M and T for the ruled side to understand, accept, and carry out the measure. Forced execution damages trust. The correctness of procedure after acceptance has been secured is therefore a device that prevents the collapse of communal order.
8. Conclusion
Larger decisions such as war and founding required legitimation through ritual and omens because they were irreversible judgments that changed the direction, sacrifices, and order of the whole community at once, and rational outcomes alone could not secure acceptance and cooperation.
What Book 1 of Livy shows is that augury, ritual before law, declaration-of-war ritual, and priestly inheritance all functioned as technologies of governance that connected major decisions to the order of the gods and translated them into forms acceptable to the community. Therefore, legitimation through ritual and omens was not a residue of irrationality. It was a device of approval that made it possible to implement major decisions across the whole community after drawing out the acceptance of the ruled side.
9. Source Texts
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwatani, Kyoto University Press, 2008
OS Organizational Design Theory R1.29