A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why did political decisions require not only rational outcomes, but also procedures justified before the gods?
2. Abstract
Political decisions required not only rational outcomes but also procedures justified before the gods because, in the ancient state, it was not enough to decide what should be done. The legitimacy of rule also depended on how the decision was made.
In early Rome, kingship, war, ritual, marriage, and city formation were still undifferentiated and overlapped with each other. Even if the content of a decision was rational, the community would not easily accept it unless it was seen as having passed through a proper procedure in accordance with the order of the gods.
For this reason, political decisions had to be not just choices of useful outcomes, but decisions that became acceptable through proper procedures linked to divine will, omens, and ritual order.
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 not only as a problem of rational outcomes, but also as a problem of the trust structure through which the ruled accept the commands of the ruling layer. The health of the ruled side is expressed as M × T, or maturity × trust. In founding communities, the larger problem is especially the shortage of trust T that allows people to accept the commands of rule. Therefore, no matter how rational the measures of the ruling layer may be, the rational content of commands alone cannot stably move the whole community.
For this reason, the ancient state used divine will as a mediating device. By presenting the decisions of the ruling layer as “correct before the gods,” it formed a structure of trust that made command acceptance possible.
6. Layer3: Insight
From this, it follows that political decisions in the ancient state required not only rational outcomes but also procedures justified before the gods because rational outcomes alone could not sufficiently integrate the community. The decision had to be felt by the whole community as a “right order that could be accepted.”
In early Rome, kingship, war, ritual, marriage, and city formation still overlapped with each other. For this reason, important decisions such as the selection of rule, the formation of law, and the beginning of war were all connected to communal order through divine will, omens, and ritual order.
A procedure justified before the gods was not a mere superstitious decoration. It was a technology of governance that transformed private judgment into public order, legalized violence, turned rule into acceptance, and made decisions inheritable.
7. Implications for the Present
Modern society does not use procedures justified before the gods 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.
Modern constitutions, regulations, meeting procedures, audits, ideals, missions, and historical legitimacy are not the same as divine will in the ancient state. Yet they answer the same structural problem: it is not enough that a decision is rational in outcome. It must also be accepted as having passed through a proper form.
In terms of OS Organizational Design Theory, the correctness of procedure is a device that allows the measures and commands of the OS to be accepted and carried out by the ruled side in the expected way.
8. Conclusion
Political decisions required not only rational outcomes but also procedures justified before the gods because, in the ancient state, it was not enough to decide what should be done. The legitimacy of rule also depended on how the decision was made.
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 translated rational outcomes into communal order.
Therefore, procedures justified before the gods were not a residue of irrationality. They were a technology of governance that made the commands of the ruling layer acceptable to the ruled, legitimized rule, and maintained communal order.
9. Source Texts
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwatani, Kyoto University Press, 2008
OS Organizational Design Theory R1.29