A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 2
1. Question
Why did conspiracy, betrayal, and the temptation of royal restoration appear just after rule by law was established in early Republican Rome?
In Livy’s History of Rome, Book 2, Rome expels the kings and begins to form the Republic through the consulship, one-year terms, two consuls, and the strengthening of the senate.
However, just after the republican OS began to form, a conspiracy to restore kingship appeared. Young men close to the royal house did not experience equality under law as freedom. They experienced it as a loss of freedom.
They lost the king’s favor, discretion, special treatment, and connection with the royal house.
This study uses OS Organizational Design Theory to explain this conspiracy not as a failure of the republican OS, but as a reaction caused by users who had received strong incentives from the old royal OS and still had a high dependency on it.
2. Research Abstract
In early Republican Rome, conspiracy, betrayal, and the temptation of royal restoration appeared just after rule by law was established. This did not mean that the new republican OS had failed.
The cause was that some users had received strong incentives from the old royal OS. These users were mainly young aristocrats and people close to the royal house. Their old OS dependency rate was high.
After the expulsion of kingship, Rome tried to move ruling authority from one king to law, terms of office, two consuls, the senate, and the people. From the viewpoint of the whole community, this was an institutional design to protect freedom from the arbitrary rule of the king.
However, for the beneficiaries of the old royal OS, rule by law was not freedom. It was the loss of the king’s favor, discretionary benefits, privileged status, information connection with the royal house, and future hope of restoration.
For this reason, they did not adapt to the new OS. Instead, they tried to reconnect with the old royal OS through conspiracy, secret letters, envoys, and external powers.
Therefore, the conspiracy in early Republican Rome was not simple betrayal. It was a phenomenon in which some users who had lost old OS incentives reconnected with old OS information structures and restarted themselves as a restoration faction OS.
3. Research Method
This study uses Three-Layer Analysis, or TLA, to analyze Livy’s Book 2.
Layer 1 is Fact. It organizes the events written in Livy’s text. In this case, the main facts are freedom after the expulsion of kingship, the conspiracy to restore kingship, the discovery of the conspiracy, the disposal of royal property, and the wars with Veii and Tarquinii.
Layer 2 is Order. It extracts the institutional structure behind these facts. The main structures are rule by law, the transition from kingship to the Republic, the old royal restoration network, young royalists and the privileged group that lost power, the informer slave Vindicius, and the disposal of royal property and irreversibility.
Layer 3 is Insight. It connects these structures to OS Organizational Design Theory. In this study, the conspiracy just after the establishment of rule by law is read through old OS dependency rate, old OS incentives, old OS information structure, and old OS restoration pressure.
4. Layer 1: Fact
At the beginning of Livy’s Book 2, Rome changes from kingship to the consulship after the expulsion of the kings. One-year terms, two consuls, and the strengthening of the senate form the early structure of the republican OS.
This institutional change was designed to prevent the arbitrary rule of the king and protect the freedom of the community. Rome did not simply remove executive power. It redistributed royal power into offices, terms, multiple magistrates, the senate, and the people.
However, soon after this change, a conspiracy to restore kingship appeared.
Young Roman men close to the royal house and envoys of the Tarquin family planned to restore royal power. They did not see equality under law as freedom. They saw it as a loss of freedom. Under kingship, those close to the king could receive favor, discretion, and special treatment.
The conspiracy was discovered through letters sent to Tarquinius. A slave reported the plot, and the evidence was preserved. The conspirators were arrested. This shows that information connections with the old royal house became a route of betrayal inside the Republic.
The king’s property was then disposed of. It was not put into the treasury. It was given to the plebeians for plunder. This was an irreversible measure to cut interest reconnection with the royal faction and fix the plebeians on the side of the Republic.
After that, Tarquinius connected with the people of Veii and Tarquinii and tried open military invasion. At this stage, royal restoration expanded from internal conspiracy to military connection with external powers.
5. Layer 2: Order
Layer 2 shows that the conspiracy just after the establishment of rule by law was not the failure of rule by law itself. It was a reaction by some users who had lost old OS incentives.
The republican OS tried to move the state through law, terms, and procedures. It aimed to govern not by the will of one person or the discretion of the king, but by institutions.
However, rule by law did not have the same meaning for all users.
For the plebeians and ordinary citizens, law was a device that protected them from the arbitrary power of the king.
But for young men and aristocratic houses close to the royal family, law was a device that blocked the king’s favor and discretionary privileges.
In other words, freedom for the whole community was the loss of incentives for the old privileged class.
This group was not only an ideological royalist group. It was a user group that had received concrete incentives from the old royal OS.
The king’s favor gave special treatment to those close to the king.
Discretionary benefits changed the distribution of interests by the king’s judgment, not by law.
Privileged status made closeness to the royal house and aristocratic lineage a political resource.
Information connection made it possible to connect with the royal house, envoys, and external powers.
Hope of restoration gave them the expectation that lost benefits could return if kingship returned.
For this reason, republican rule by law was not a new freedom for them. It was a system change that removed the incentives they had received from the old OS.
The old OS information structure also remained. The Tarquin envoys, secret letters, young men close to the royal house, and aristocratic houses formed a communication network. This network worked as a reconnection route to the old royal OS.
Therefore, the conspiracy to restore kingship was not simple personal betrayal. It was old OS restoration pressure created by old OS incentives, old OS information structure, old OS infrastructure, and old OS execution environment.
6. Layer 3: Insight
The main insight is this:
In early Republican Rome, conspiracy, betrayal, and the temptation of royal restoration appeared just after rule by law was established. This was not because rule by law itself was unstable. It was because some users had received strong incentives from the old royal OS, such as the king’s favor, discretionary benefits, privileged status, information connection with the royal house, and the future hope of restoration.
For the whole community, republican rule by law was the institutionalization of freedom. But for aristocratic young men with high old OS dependency, it was the loss of incentives they had received from the old OS.
For this reason, they did not adapt to the new OS. Instead, they tried to reconnect with the old royal OS through conspiracy, secret letters, and connection with external powers.
This structure can be expressed as follows:
Temptation of royal restoration
= old OS dependency rate of some users × incentives gained from the old OS × loss of incentives caused by transition to the new OS
It can also be connected to the OSODT model of post-revolutionary new OS stability:
Long-term stability of the new OS
= health of the new OS × (1 − old OS influence) × (1 − old OS dependency rate)
The republican OS tried to improve the health of the new OS through one-year terms, two consuls, the strengthening of the senate, rule by law, blocking of royal names, and disposal of royal property.
However, users, information structures, infrastructure, and external APIs of the old royal OS still remained. In addition, some users close to the royal house had a high old OS dependency rate. As a result, old OS restoration pressure appeared as conspiracy.
Old OS restoration pressure can be expressed as follows:
Old OS restoration pressure
= old OS incentives × old OS information structure × old OS infrastructure × old OS application × old OS execution environment
In this case, old OS incentives are the king’s favor, discretion, privilege, and hope of restoration. Old OS information structure is secret letters, envoys, young men close to the royal house, and aristocratic houses. Old OS infrastructure is royal property, royal names, and connection with external powers. Old OS applications are conspiracy, plans to restore royal power, external alliance, and military invasion. Old OS execution environment is young royalists, the privileged group that lost power, Veii, and Tarquinii.
Therefore, this conspiracy was not the failure of the entire republican OS. It was a phenomenon in which some users who had lost old OS incentives used old OS information structures and restarted a restoration faction OS inside the republican OS.
This insight can be summarized in one sentence:
Conspiracy, betrayal, and the temptation of royal restoration appeared just after rule by law was established not because the republican OS had failed, but because some users who had gained strong incentives from the old royal OS had a high dependency on that old OS and lost those incentives during the transition to the new OS.
7. Implications for the Present
This analysis also applies to modern states and companies.
First, resistance after institutional reform does not always mean that the new system has failed. It may mean that the new system has cut off the incentives that some users had received from the old system.
Second, resistance is often concentrated in some users, not in the whole organization. The whole organization may not want to return to the old regime. Rather, the group that received strong incentives from the old regime may resist.
Third, users with a high old OS dependency rate may see the fairness of the new system not as freedom, but as loss of freedom. Transparency, fairness, and rule-based management improve the health of the whole organization. But for users who benefited from ambiguity, discretion, and personal networks in the old system, they feel like loss.
Fourth, if the old OS information structure is not handled, resistance appears as conspiracy, secret meetings, and internal betrayal. If old personal networks, informal communication routes, former bosses, old business partners, and external supporters remain, a restoration faction OS can form inside the new system.
Fifth, the stability of the new OS requires observation of old OS influence and old OS dependency rate. It is not enough to build new institutions. It is necessary to isolate, restrict access to, and gradually replace old OS users, old information structures, old infrastructure, old control structures, external APIs, and operational know-how.
In this sense, reform in modern organizations is not only the abolition of the old system. It is the management of old OS restoration pressure by predicting the reactions of users who received strong incentives from the old system.
8. Conclusion
The conspiracy to restore kingship in Livy’s Book 2 does not show the failure of the republican OS. Rather, it shows the reaction that appeared because the republican OS began to cut off the incentives of the old royal OS.
Rome moved from kingship to the consulship. It tried to improve the health of the new OS through one-year terms, two consuls, the strengthening of the senate, and rule by law.
However, the beneficiaries of the old royal OS remained. Young men and aristocratic houses close to the royal family lost old OS incentives such as the king’s favor, discretion, privilege, information connection, and hope of restoration. For this reason, they experienced equality under law not as freedom, but as loss of freedom.
In addition, the old OS information structure had not disappeared. Tarquin envoys, secret letters, old personal networks, and connections with external powers still remained. Because of this, the old OS dependency of some users appeared as conspiracy.
Therefore, the conspiracy, betrayal, and temptation of royal restoration just after the establishment of rule by law were not simple moral corruption. They were a phenomenon in which some users who had lost old OS incentives used old OS information structures and formed a restoration faction OS inside the new OS.
In this sense, the instability of early Republican Rome is an important case for thinking about new OS stability after a revolution.
A new OS does not become stable at the moment when the old OS is rewritten. It must reduce old OS influence and old OS dependency rate, while moving toward a state where it can operate through its own A, IA, H, V, M, and T.
9. Sources
Titus Livius, History of Rome from its Foundation, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwaya, Kyoto University Press, 2008.
OS Organizational Design Theory_R1.31.00.00.