A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why does the founding of a city require, more than walls or land, a shared story that unites the community?
2. Abstract
A city requires, more than walls or land, a shared story that unites the community because a city is not merely a place where people live. It is a symbolic entity that gives different people the sense that they belong to one community.
Walls can defend against enemies, and land can provide the basis of life. But these alone cannot make people of different origins and interests obey the same order. In a founding city, local people, exiles, defeated groups, newcomers, foreign leaders, and groups entering through marriage are mixed together. Physical concentration alone cannot create a true community.
What is needed is a shared story that explains why “we” live together. Book 1 of Livy shows that the founding of a city depends not simply on securing space, but on the ability to place heterogeneous people into the same story of origin, the same name, and the same future.
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 migration, marriage, city founding, augury, ritual, walls, institutional formation, and the acquisition of marriage ties.
In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structural categories such as the Founding Phase, Founder / King / Hero, Divine Signs / Omens / Ritual Order, 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, an organization is not simply a collection of people and resources. It forms order through meaning, judgment criteria, information structure, and role design. Therefore, this article examines the founding of a city not as a matter of physical space, but as the formation of a meaning structure through which a community understands itself as a legitimate “we.”
4. Layer1: Fact
What Layer 1 shows is that the early stage of Roman founding history is filled not simply with residence, but with narratives of origin and legitimacy.
In Chapter 1, Aeneas arrives in Latium as a wanderer who has lost his homeland, and through his relationship with King Latinus, he is connected to marriage and alliance. The landing of a foreign force is therefore narrated not simply as an invasion, but as a pre-stage of city founding.
In Chapter 2, Aeneas decides to call both the Aborigines and the Trojans by the same name: Latins. This is not only institutional integration. It is also a reconstruction of the community through renaming. People do not become one simply because they live inside the same walls. They must also receive a shared answer to the question, “Who are we?”
From Chapters 4 to 6, the story presents the birth of Romulus and Remus, their rescue, the recovery of their origin, their intention to found a city, and the decision of kingship through augury. Rome is thus narrated not as a place where people happened to gather, but as a city chosen through suffering and destiny.
In Chapter 7, the origins of rituals connected with Hercules, Evander, Carmenta, and the Ara Maxima are presented. This shows that Roman land is interpreted not as mere space, but as meaningful space already layered with myth and ritual.
In Chapter 8, Romulus performs sacred rites and then organizes law, insignia of authority, and the Senate. The important point is that walls and institutions are not presented as isolated objects. They are presented as an order supported by divine will and ritual.
In Chapter 9, the Sabine women are told of lawful marriage, shared civic status, and children as a shared future. Here, the fact of violent seizure is being transformed into a future-oriented communal narrative.
5. Layer2: Order
In Layer 2, the Founding Phase is organized as a stage in which the acceptance of outsiders, marriage, asylum, and symbolic creation are operated together in an undifferentiated way. This means that a founding city is not simply a gathering of people. It requires symbolic and narrative operations that transform heterogeneous people into one community.
The role of the Founder / King / Hero is to supply the activating force that converts disorder into order. This ordering does not mean only building walls. It also includes making people believe who the founder is, why they should follow that founder, and why this land is their city. Therefore, the founder is not only the designer of physical space, but also the starting point of the story through which the community understands itself.
The structure of Divine Signs / Omens / Ritual Order is also important. In Layer 2, divine signs and ritual order function as higher points of reference that connect communal action to cosmic order and thereby legitimize founding, war, and rule. This means that the founding of a city is not simply the occupation of land. It requires people to accept that “there is a reason to obey this order.” Myth and ritual are therefore not ornaments. They are the basis of legitimacy.
The structure of Urban Community and Civic Integration aims to realize population growth, military growth, and expansion of rule through community reorganization. The decisive point is that integration is not only a matter of numbers or institutions. It is also a reorganization that makes people share a name, civic status, marriage ties, obligations, and a future image. To weave heterogeneous groups into one order, a story is needed that answers the question, “Who are we?” When different groups place themselves inside the same story, scattered settlement is reorganized into communal order.
Seen from OS Organizational Design Theory, this becomes even clearer. The OS is the operating body with decision-making power, and its health is determined by A, IA, H, and V. In the founding of a city, “story” is not mere decoration. It is the condition that supports unity of recognition in A, circulation of shared meaning in IA, legitimacy of role order in H, and validity of judgment criteria in V. Without a shared story, there may be people inside the walls, but no true community can rise as an OS.
6. Layer3: Insight
From this, it follows that the founding of a city requires, more than walls or land, a shared story that unites the community because a city is a symbolic entity that makes different people believe that they belong to one community.
A story is the framework of meaning through which a community understands itself. A symbol is the medium that makes that story visible and stable. Ritual and myth are the devices that legitimize that story.
Walls can defend against enemies, and land can provide the basis of life. But these alone cannot make people of different origins and interests follow the same order. In a founding city, local people, exiles, defeated groups, newcomers, foreign leaders, and groups entering through marriage are mixed together. Physical concentration alone cannot create a community. What is needed is a shared story connecting origin, suffering, divine will, marriage, law, and future.
The wandering and alliance of Aeneas, the renaming of people as Latins, the mythic birth of Romulus, the legitimation through augury, the ritual origins connected with Hercules, and the narrative transformation of marriage and future all work to turn Rome from “a mere place” into “a meaningful community.”
The essence of a city does not lie in being enclosed by walls. It lies in making those inside the walls believe why they are together. Walls create a boundary, but a story creates a “we” inside that boundary. Land provides a place to live, but a story transforms that land into a homeland. A founding city becomes a community not by stone and soil alone, but by story.
7. Implications for the Present
This point also applies to modern organizations, cities, and states.
An organization does not become one merely through systems, offices, or personnel placement. The more people gather from different departmental backgrounds, recruitment paths, and value systems, the more a shared story is needed that explains why “we work here together.” This is why vision, principles, founding history, mission, and the story of symbolic leaders matter.
In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, story is the shared context that supports A, IA, H, and V. Even people of different backgrounds can move from conflict to integration if they can locate their own role within the same story of vision.
Therefore, modern organizations also need not only structural design, but also narrative design that unites the community.
8. Conclusion
What is needed for the founding of a city is not only physical conditions such as walls and land. What is needed is a story that transforms them into communal order, memory, and legitimacy.
What Book 1 of Roman founding history shows is that a founding city becomes a community not through the occupation of space, but through a shared story that connects origin, suffering, divine will, marriage, law, and future.
Therefore, a city is not simply a place surrounded by walls. It is an order of people who have entered the same story.
9. Source Texts
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwatani, Kyoto University Press, 2008
OS Organizational Design Theory R1.26