The earliest accounts of the Incas share a certain hesitancy: a recognition, on the one hand, that here was a remarkable polity, the likes of which had not been seen before; and on the other hand, a search for appropriate vocabulary accompanied by cursory and clumsy comparisons between Inca comportment and the comportment, for example, of "moors and Turks," between Andean sacred buildings and the "mezquitas" of the recently conquered kingdom of Granada. Before long, however, a stable theme crept into these comparisons. This was that in some sense, the Incas resembled the Romans. The Roman aqueduct of Segovia was compared to Inca monumental construction, and Inca roads reminded Spaniards of Roman counterparts. Scholarly memories of ancient Rome thus provided sixteenth century students of Inca history, culture and politics with an explanatory context. There existed, however, a further dimension to these reflections about Incas and Romans, a dimension which was rarely if ever stated explicitly, even though it helped to determine what Spaniards observed about the Incas and how they described it. The Romans, as everyone knew, had acquired their power by conquest, and among the regions thus conquered had been the Iberian peninsula. Sixteenth century interpretations of this reality diverged widely. Some historians, perpetuating the ideas expressed in the Primera Cronica general de Espana of Alfonso X, viewed Spanish cultural and national identity as going back to the beginnings of human history in the Peninsula. The Romans had indeed ruled in Spain, but they had done so by virtue of their capacity for equity and moderation and had, for the most part, allowed the freedom-loving Iberians to act not as subjects but as partners and "friends." Other historians, such as Ambrosio Morales and Antonio Agustin, as well as the linguistic scholar Bernardo Aldrete, who subjected ancient sources to a more critical scrutiny, viewed Roman government in the peninsula in less rosy terms. According to them, the Roman presence in Spain had been characterized by periods of bitter warfare, by the exaction of tribute and by the imposition of the Latin language, thanks to which only remote traces of earlier Iberian languages survived in contemporary Spanish.

At the same time, there was one issue on which exponents of these divergent interpretations of Roman governance in Spain and throughout Europe did agree: for they all accepted as valid the Roman claim to sovereignty about which they read in Roman imperial literature and legislation. The extensive ancient literature of Roman self-criticism and of resistance to Roman rule, on the other hand, found little or no resonance in early modern Spain and Europe. Underlying these attitudes was a recognition of empire as a distinct and legitimate form of government, a form of government that differed from national monarchies, aristocracies or republics. A similar recognition also speaks in several early modern histories of the Incas, and indeed was present in writings about the Incas from the very beginning. Miguel de Estete, who was among the followers of Francisco Pizarro at Cajamarca, where in 1532 the Inca ruler Atahuallpa was captured and then killed, noticed a contrast between the polities on and beyond the frontiers of the Inca empire and that empire itself. Describing how Pizarro's company had reached the Inca settlement of Tumbez in Northern Peru, Estete observed:

From this settlement begins the peaceful dominion of the lords of Cuzco and the good land. For although the lords further back and the lord of Tumbala, which was large, were subject to the Inca, it was not as peacefully as from here onwards. For these lords only recognized the Incas and offered a certain tribute, but no more; from here onwards, however, they were all very obedient vassals.

Cieza was deeply impressed by the sheer extent of the Inca empire and interested himself in how this vast territory could have been gained. From his informants in Cuzco and elsewhere, he learnt that the Incas had proceeded by a combination of alliance building and military pressure, but whenever possible had avoided open warfare. This was why the Alfonsine model of Roman diplomacy and warfare in Spain, inspired as these had been by the Romans' perceived capacity for love and friendship, amor y amistad, resonated in Cieza's conception as to how the Incas had acquired and managed to retain their empire. In general, he thought, the Incas approached prospective subjects in friendship, bestowing on them benefits such as inculcating a civilized life style, and teaching agriculture and textile production; here, according to Cieza, was the reason why, frequently, people were willing to obey the Incas without the need for military intervention. When, however, a war did have to be fought, the Incas, who rarely lost a battle, were ready to grant generous terms, and their demand for tribute was moderate. On the other hand, their vengeance for rebellion could be ferocious, and their judicial system was harsh. The Inca state storehouses, for example, were always filled with all manner of supplies for war and peace. When thus the Inca was lodged in his dwelling and the men of war had been accomodated, there was never lacking so much as one single item, however large or small, with which to supply them all. But if thanks to theft or a breach of the peace anything at all was missing (from the storehouses) ..., the (offenders) were punished with great severity. In this matter, the Inca lords adhered so closely to justice that they would not have omitted exacting punishment, even if it had to be upon their own sons.

The cultivated sixteenth century reader might here remember a variety of exempla in early Roman history when fathers punished their sons for rebellion or disobedience. In addition, Vergil's memorable precept, that Rome's task was "to spare the conquered and subject the proud" exactly described the methods of Inca warfare as understood by Cieza. And finally, Cieza, like Estete, thought of Cuzco as the "head of the empire of the Incas and their royal seat." The four royal roads, leading to the four parts of the empire started out from Cuzco's central square; "in this way," added Cieza, "just as in Spain, the ancient (Romans) divided the entire country into provinces, so these Indians took stock of the provinces of this vast land by means of their roads." Even the historian Juan de Betanzos, who had married a sister of the Inca Atahuallpa and was deeply steeped in the historical memories of her kinsmen, on occasion turned to Roman antecedents. He thus compared the religious institutions of the Inca Pachacuti to those of the Romans, and described the older women, Cozcoynacacuna, who were responsible for educating Inca girls as resembling the "Roman matrons" who had been entrusted with a similar task in Roman times.

Such incidental analogies between Rome and the Incas became part of a larger structure when it came to considering the history of the Incas from its very beginnings to the Spanish invasion. The origin of the Incas and the foundation of Cuzco appeared to be veiled in legends. Cieza, who was the first European to try to sort these legends from historical fact, found that different versions of the Inca myth of origins could not be reconciled and therefore chose to follow the account given him by the Inca nobles of Cuzco. Three brothers and their three sisters had set out from openings in a rock at Pacaritambo, the "inn of the dawn." After a variety of supernatural occurrences, Manco Capac, who was one of the brothers had, with his sister consort, founded the city. Their simple abode was later to be transformed into the temple of the Sun known as Coricancha, the "enclosure of gold." However much Cieza respected the Inca nobles of Cuzco, this story of their origins did not satisfy him because of the many obviously mythological episodes that it contained. He therefore interpreted the story historically by rationalizing it. The three brothers from Pacaritambo likely as not had been three brave and valiant men of lofty outlook who originated from some village near Cuzco or arrived from some other part of the highlands of the Andes and, after due preparation conquered and gained their empire.

Similar rationalisations of myths of origin were also current in classical antiquity, and Cieza perhaps derived his method of interpretation from Diodorus Siculus, whose work he mentioned. There was, however, one component of the foundation myth of Cuzco that Cieza, rationalisations notwithstanding, accepted at face value. The Inca rulers claimed that they, like their first progenitor Manco Capac, were sons of the Sun, and that it was at the Sun's behest that they pursued their imperial mission. In accord with this claim, Cieza divided Andean history into a period before, and a period after the advent of the Incas. Before the Incas, Andean people lived separated from each other in scattered hilltop settlements and forts, embroiled in perennial warfare and speaking "strange languages." Government, beyond the episodic dominion of some warrior chief, was unknown. It was the Incas who created nucleated villages and towns at lower altitudes, as well as introducing agriculture and the other arts of civilisation. The imperial mission of the Incas was thus part and parcel of the story of their origins. Indeed, the story of origins ratified that mission. The same is the case with regard to the story of the origins of Rome as told by Livy and other Roman historians. On the one hand, Livy questioned the accuracy of the traditions about the gods and heroes who were involved in the legendary foundation of Rome. But on the other, he integrated these traditions into his account of the unfolding of Roman history, thereby validating Roman expansion as a process that was not simply the product of aggressive warfare but had been divinely sanctioned.

The resulting difficulty was noticed by Garcilaso de la Vega, who had read the early books of Livy with care. There was no avoiding the fact, Garcilaso thought, that the stories of Inca origins were legendary. But equally, it was obvious that the Incas themselves had in some sense believed these stories and had referred to them by way of explaining their conduct, just as Livy's Romans had done with regard to their myths of origin. However, seventy years after the Spanish invaders had destroyed the Inca empire, it was not enough to say on the one hand that the ancient stories were legendary and on the other that they articulated an imperial mission. For, by the time Garcilaso began to write, a number of lawyers and theologians seeking to justify the Spanish invasion had claimed that the Incas had been tyrants and their story of origins a simple falsification.

In the face of such assertions, Garcilaso coined a new term, which he derived from Livy, to describe the traditional stories of Inca beginnings: they were fabulas historiales, historical fables, distinct from pure fiction, but not the same as history. In his childhood, Garcilaso had listened to his Inca kinsmen recounting the historical fables of their forebears, and when he grew older, they instructed him in their laws and government; comparing the new government of the Spanish with that of the Incas, distinguishing different crimes and punishments and their severity; they told me how their kings acted in peace and war, how they treated their vassals and how they were served by them. Beyond that, they told me as being their own son all their idolatry, their rites, ceremonies and sacrifices, their greater and lesser festivals and how they celebrated them ... In sum, they told me everything that they had in their republic.

There was thus a crucial difference between ancient histories as told to the young, and a practical, fact based understanding of Inca government, law and religion, such as was appropriate for adults. Nonetheless, the two were inseparable. Having described the foundation of Cuzco by the first Inca Manco Capac as a fabula historial, Garcilaso noted that the doings of this first Inca were emulated by all his descendants, "so that, having spoken of his achievements, we will have spoken of those of all the others." In short, Garcilaso recognized that the character of Inca governance was defined by Inca origins and by how these origins were remembered. The position in ancient Rome had been very similar. In a grief-stricken poem about the Roman civil wars, Horace recalled how when founding Rome, Romulus had killed his brother Remus: It is thus: a harsh fate drives the Romans, the crime of fratricide: for the blood of innocent Remus was spilt on the earth, a curse on all his descendants. Garcilaso viewed Inca origins in a more positive light, but he also recognized that the present was conditioned by the past, even if that past was legendary. "We will carefully tell those events," he wrote, which are more historical, leaving aside many others as irrelevant or too detailed; and although some of what has been said, and of what will be said hereafter may appear legendary, I thought it best not to omit these matters in order to avoid removing the foundations upon which the Indians draw when recounting what was greatest and best in their empire.

Spanish historians of the Incas thought about the Andean past by way of returning, again and again, to the explanatory context of the Roman empire and classical antiquity in general. But this European context could serve no useful purpose without trustworthy Andean informants, without individuals whose understanding of the historical past could be viewed as being in some sense comparable to a European understanding. From quite early on, Spaniards had observed that Inca celebrations were accompanied by the recitation of cantares, of "songs" praising past rulers by way of instructing and exhorting the ruler of the present. For example, Cieza learned from the Inca nobles of Cuzco that when an Inca ruler died, his deeds and character were evaluated and a formal record was composed of these matters which was so reliable that "today they tell among each other what happened five hundred years ago as though it had been ten." This record was in due course recited before the newly inaugurated Inca ruler. "Oh Inca, great and powerful," a wise old man would intone, "may the Sun, the Moon, the earth, the mountains, the trees and rocks and your fathers preserve you from misfortune and make you prosperous, blessed and fortunate above all others who have been born. Know that the things that befell your predecessor are these." And then, saying this, with eyes lowered to the ground, and hands held down, they gave account and reason of all that they knew, which they were able to do very well because there are many among them who have a long memory, a subtle mind and lively judgement, able to give a full account, as we who are here today and hear them can testify."

While Inca governance, and the Incas' ideas about their origins reminded Spanish historians of imperial Rome, the recitations about the Inca past that Spaniards heard in Cuzco had analogues closer to home. Like others who described such recitations, Cieza often referred to them as cantares, "songs." This term had a very specific meaning. A variety of epic poems described as cantares circulated in sixteenth century Castile in both print and manuscript, among the most famous being the story of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar known as the Cid. As early as the thirteenth century, the compilers of Alfonso X, recognizing the historical content of this and several other cantares, integrated parts of them into the Primera Cronica General de Espa a, which circulated in a published version in Cieza's day. Elsewhere, Cieza described recitations about the Inca rulers of the past as romances y villancicos, ballads and carols. These likewise had been widely practiced genres of legendary and historical poetic narration in medieval Castile, and examples of such poems figured in sixteenth century printed collections. When thus Spaniards in Peru listened to "old men" and "wise men" reciting Inca traditions, the experience was not altogether alien.

But difficulties of translation, both verbal and cultural, were numerous. Although Cieza himself appears to have learnt some Quechua, he collected much of his information with the help of translators. However, even the most skilled of translations conveyed the original meanings only selectively, as becomes apparent if we consider some items from among a handful of Quechua terms and phrases that survive within the Spanish narratives that were written in the sixteenth century.

According to Juan de Betanzos who lived in Cuzco and whose knowledge of Quechua was excellent, the Inca Pachacuti, as we have seen, decreed that Inca girls were to be supervised by women known as "Cozcoynacacuna, as we would say, ... Roman matrons." This paraphrase brings to mind socially respected married women of the Roman republican period, such as figured in medieval catalogues of distinguished women. But in effect, the Quechua term contains meanings that have no real European equivalents. Ynaca is a cloth worn over the head by women; at the same time, the term indicates that the cloth in question was a finely woven one, with designs, while ynacca usta was a noble lady of Inca lineage. Different kinds of patterns and qualities of cloth denoted an individual's regional origin, social status and age group. Certain kinds of cloth were produced in the home, but the most precious varieties, such as the ynaca mentioned here, which were woven by specialists who worked under state supervision and patronage, could only be obtained as a gift from the Inca. The term Cozcoinacacuna thus provides a glimpse into the functioning of Inca society that is hinted at by the Roman analogy. But this analogy achieves little by way of alerting the reader to the complexities of Inca society and cultural politics.

Many Spaniards were profoundly impressed by the pan-Andean character of the Inca empire, by the fact that wherever they went, they encountered the same urban planning and the same system of adminstering justice and of managing economic resources. It was this universality of the various forms of public life throughout the Andes that reminded the Spanish of the Roman empire, and gave meaning to Garcilaso's idea that Cuzco was indeed "another Rome." This aspect of the Inca empire, however, which was readily intelligible to Europeans of the sixteenth century, went hand in hand with other aspects, for which there existed no precedents from classical antiquity or the Spanish middle ages.

Unlike European histories that circulated in manuscript or print, Inca historical traditions as expressed in the cantares, villancicos and romances that Cieza heard were exclusive communications. Repeatedly, Cieza refers to the controlled, edited quality of these recitations. When an Inca ruler died, the old men of the people discussed the quality of the life and customs of their dead king and in what way he had benefited the republic and what battles he had won ... These matters being settled among them, along with others which we do not fully understand, they decided whether the dead king had been such that a glorious reputation should remain of him, so that by virtue of his valour and good government he should remain among them for ever. The (old men) then called upon the principal remembrancers ... who were able to give account of what had happened in the kingdom, so that they might evaluate (the record of the reign) among each other. Elsewhere, Cieza pointed out that an Inca's shameful or ignoble deeds and characteristics were deleted from the official record, this being the reason, he thought, why some reigns were so poorly documented. The version of Inca history that was recited at festivals in Cuzco, and that Spanish enquirers studied, was thus a history that had been reviewed by the elite. Furthermore, these versions of the Inca past were in some sense the property of the ruling Inca, in that, as Cieza noted, "these cantares could not be published or recited except in the presence of the ruler," in whose service the "principal remembrancers" mentioned by Cieza did their work of remembering.

The Incas recognized remembering as a formal skill or calling, which is why remembrancers were included as a distinct group in a list of specialized Andean occupations compiled by a Spanish historian. The Quechua term describing them is quipucamayoc. A quipu is a bundle of knotted cords of different colours that encoded narrative or numerical information, and camayoc refers to a person possessing a specialized skill or task. Spaniards regularly described the quipus as a form of writing, or as books, and were profoundly impressed by the accuracy and scope of Inca administrative quipus. They also understood the importance of quipus as a vehicle of preserving historical information, of the cantares, romances and villancicos that Cieza and others heard. However, no Spaniards appear to have learned how to make or read a quipu, a fact which is fundamental in evaluating the impact of European historical perceptions in the Andes.

The preservation of accounts of the Inca past was in the hands of the Inca ruler and, after his death, of his lineage, whose task it was to maintain the cult of his mummified body and to administer his property. Meanwhile, a new historical record was created on behalf of the suceeding ruler, which likewise would in due course be preserved by his lineage; the different Inca lineages in turn were assisted in their task of maintaining the memory of their ancestor's deeds by their quipucamayocs. The Spanish invasion destroyed the very raison d' tre of these historical traditions, which articulated and justified Inca governance as exercized both by the Inca ruler himself and by the lineages of past rulers. Secondly, the nature of the record that was preserved by the quipucamayocs presented a problem of recognition. Given that the quipus, as Spaniards understood them, constituted some equivalent to writing, the skill of reading them did not turn out to be communicable to the new ruling class. Even the much admired administrative quipus of the Incas were immediately translated into writing and into Spanish, and as a result their Andean and Inca keepers were displaced by Spanish notaries and scribes. With regard to historical quipus, this process of displacement was accelerated by the fact that the preservation of the Inca past had been in the hands of the very people who were most severely affected by invasion and conquest, that is, the Inca elite.

The Inca past contained many components that were not intelligible or recognizable in the light of the European past, and in the light of Castilian concepts of history. This, and the rapid disappearance of the quipucamayos as a group of experts who possessed a skill of daily political and cultural importance led to the speedy transformation of Inca historical traditions into a unitary, chronologically ordered narrative analogous to European precedents. Spaniards, such as Juan de Betanzos, Pedro Cieza de Leon, and Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who conversed at length with quipucamayocs and other individuals who had lived under and served the last Inca rulers, all expected to find in the Andes a past that responded to European concepts of historical order. That is, they looked for successions of rulers, such as the emperors of ancient Rome, or dynasties, such as ruled the kingdoms of early modern Europe. A dynasty of Inca rulers, son suceeding father, was therefore what they found in the Andes. Once this dynasty was in place, as early as 1551, it was next to impossible to discover how the Incas had actually suceeded one another, and how therefore they had actually projected their entitlement to rule to their many subjects and allies.

Inca historical traditions were composed and preserved on behalf of the Inca elite, whereas European works of history were composed for publication. A monarch might indeed wish to control the content of history, but success was inevitably partial, because, as the poet Horace had already understood very well, once a book had left the author's study, it could never be recalled. Even in the Andes, the survival of oral traditions hostile to the Incas long after the Incas had gone demonstrates that Inca control of historical narrative was only partially successful. Nonetheless, once Spanish historians appropriated Inca history, this history changed both in content and in purpose, precisely because it was composed according to criteria that aimed at inclusiveness and objectivity, and not at a selection of data which expressed an imperial mission and the ideas and ideals of a ruling class. In addition, Spanish historians who wrote, in the last resort, for publication, addressed a public that was defined by its access to literacy and printed books, and not so much by reference to its relationship to the Inca or any other ruling elite. In this way, an exclusive, focused and purposeful communication by the Inca elite was transformed into a much more inclusive and general communication that addressed a European reading public interested in "the things of Peru." The resulting process of displacement, whereby Inca reality was modified and transformed by the new governmental practices of the Spanish, by their learned traditions, and by their methods of propagating these learned traditions as well as information in general, can be further illustrated by examining early colonial concepts of Inca law.

The Roman imperial past equipped Spanish historians of the Incas with a set of concepts that enabled them to locate the Inca empire on a map of diverse political structures that ranged from village communities to city republics, monarchies and empires. Similarly, medieval historical narratives from Castile rendered the recitations of "wise men" in Cuzco accessible to Spaniards with an interest in the Inca past. At the same time, the very recognizability of some aspects of the Inca past veiled from view those other aspects for which Europe offered no parallels. This was also the case in matters relating to Inca law. At the same time, questions regarding the nature of Inca law and the content of Inca legislation raised practical issues such as affected the recording of Inca history only marginally. For history was a matter of describing the past, whereas questions of Inca law and the resulting issue of relating Inca with Spanish law conditioned governmental practice in Spanish Peru. This practical dimension in the study of law gained an ever increasing importance as lawyers and other governmental officials endeavoured to create a coherent and practicable administrative system in the Andes.

That the Incas had a legal system of some kind was apparent even to the first Spaniards in Peru. As Miguel de Estete observed, "this nation (of the Incas) of Cuzco lived scattered throughout all the provinces (of Peru and was engaged) in administering justice." Indeed, before long, cases brought before the Audiencia in Lima forced Spanish lawyers to interest themselves in the nature of the claims that were being made by Andean litigants. Nonetheless, thanks to the breakdown of all order in the Andes that followed the Spanish invasion and wars of conquest, the very existence of Inca law came to be questioned during the early colonial period. It was in these circumstances that in about 1550, the surviving kinsmen of Atahuallpa, wishing to point out that in the past, Peru had been an ordered polity, informed Juan de Betanzos that their ancestor the Inca Pachacuti had issued a set of twenty seven laws or "ordinances" dealing with Cuzco and the provinces of the Inca empire. Following the historiographical fortunes of these ordianances provides a further insight into the interaction between Andean and Spanish perceptions of society and history.

Some of the Inca Pachacuti's laws as described to Betanzos dealt with matters arising in Cuzco, while others concerned the governance of the provinces of the empire. Laws addressed to Cuzco include regulations for the distribution of goods from Inca storehouses and punish theft from these storehouses and elsewhere. There are also laws of marriage, laws covering false testimony and laws regulating the use of fine cloth. Similar laws are repeated in more general terms elsewhere, and a number of them rest on common sense. This is also true of most of the laws affecting the provinces, which regulate the maintenance of roads, bridges and tambos, the conduct of soldiers and of local administration. A handful of laws affecting Cuzco, however, have no parallels of any kind, and would thus appear to record the authentic legal practice of the Inca capital. One such law points to the high risk of fire in Cuzco, where all houses were roofed with thatch, and decrees that if a house caught fire, the neighbours could in the absence of the owner take his possessions, while also being obliged to help quench the fire. If subsequently it emerged that the fire was not caused by owner's neglect, the neighbours were to restore his possessions and help rebuild the house. Another law that gives a vivid insight into the life of the city regulated the raising of children born out of wedlock and related matters:

(The Inca) ordered and commanded that lest young men while still unmarried go after married women and mamaconas, there should be established a certain house where a number of women from among those who were taken in the wars were to live, so that the young men could have converse with them... If one of these women became pregnant, the child was to be raised elsewhere and be called capci Churi, which is to say child of the community.

So that babies thus born be raised, (the Inca) ordered that there be a house with women from the provinces and villages whose children had died, who were to raise these babies. Likewise he ordered that the lords designated to supervise the affairs of the people should command straw to be laid beneath the bridges of the brook and river which passed through the city, at the edge of the water, and that the babies to whom mamaconas or nobly born ladies had given birth secretly and in hiding should not be killed but should, once they had been born by night, be placed beneath these bridges [and that noone observing a baby being thus deposited should enquire after its origin] and that these guardians should every morning look beneath the bridges to see whether there was a baby and that they should take the babies thus found to be raised by the above mentioned women.

Furthermore, the ordinances of Murua and Guaman Poma reflect the ideas and ideals of a European and Christian legislator, so that these ordinances reproduce a variety of generalized Andean regulation, a number of laws that could only be derived from Judeo-Christian precepts and a tiny residue of legal practice that can be attributed to the Incas. As regards the European layer in these texts, both Guaman Poma and Murua thought, for example, that the Incas prohibited mensturating women from offering sacrifice, a rule which is more likely to have been derived from Leviticus than from Inca or Andean practice. According to Murua, the Incas had the custom of bestowing honourable burial on those of their enemies who had fallen in battle - but according to the much more reliable evidence of Betanzos, the very opposite was the case. Both Murua and Guaman Poma thought that women and the poor could not give evidence in Inca litigation, the former because of their "levity," and the latter because they were likely to succumb to bribes; but a law of this kind presupposes Spanish judicial procedure, and was perhaps invented as a commentary on it. Laws in Murua and Guaman Poma that proclaim Cuzco as the "court and capital" of "these kingdoms" evoke Spanish formulations regarding Madrid as the seat of the royal court, and Guaman Poma's idea that Inca law was to be "observed and obeyed" likewise depends on Spanish precedent. Finally, where Betanzos had distinguished laws affecting Cuzco from those affecting the provinces of the empire, Murua replaced this distinction by one separating law regulating civilian life from the law of war, because in Europe, the latter constituted a distinct juridical category. Legal rules distinguishing conduct in the capital city from conduct in the rest of a country, on the other hand, were unknown in sixteenth century Europe. Murua thus introduced his Inca laws about warfare with the remark: "for the conduct of war, the Inca made the following ordinances," and proceded to describe a legitimate casus belli as viewed by his Incas in terms reminiscent of the declaration of war that according to Livy, Tullus Hostilius had issued against Alba Longa. In such a context, the specifics of Inca legal practice that speak in Betanzos' rules about fires in Cuzco and the care of illegitimate babies were inevitably lost to view, wiped away by exponents of European legal thinking who approached problems with different juridical principles in mind. Their preconceptions were reinforced by individuals born and raised in the Andes, such as Guaman Poma, who were eager to prove to the invaders that the conquered world of the Incas had possessed its own order and integrity; and indeed, a number of Spaniards were eager to prove the same thing. But, in the last resort, the proof could only be conducted by appealing to the legal concepts and the legal language of the now dominant culture.

This same dilemma is spelt out in the manner in which Spanish Peru was governed during the sixteenth century. The lawyers who sat as judges and pleaded cases in the Audiencias of Lima and Charcas had been educated in Spain, and their norms of professional conduct were likewise Spanish. But before long, Andean cases were brought before these experts that defied the legal system in which they had been trained. Most troublesome was litigation involving tribute payments and thus land, because Inca and Andean ideas about rights of access to land did not correspond to Spanish ones. In the face of conflicting claims, the Spanish tended to try imposing one simple rule, namely that ownership of land should be adjudicated to the party who had enjoyed it under the Incas, and that tribute payments should match whatever had been collected by the Incas. While these principles raised a host of unforeseen difficulties, they also reinforced some significant misconceptions about the Andean and Inca past.

Although the Spanish invaders had from the beginning perceived a certain unity and uniformity in the Inca empire, this empire was no monolith, but a polity that encompassed a vast range of linguistic, political, cultural and ecological variety. It was, however, one of the paradoxes of the workings of colonial culture and politics in Peru that this variety was increasingly homogenized, at least in a superficial sense. When the Spanish arrived, for example, the people of almost every valley spoke their own language, with "the general language of the Inca, known as Quechua" serving as a sort of lingua franca. By 1700, however, these regional languages had almost completely disappeared, in part because Spanish officials and missionaries only recognized Quechua. This priority assigned to Quechua went hand in hand with the Spanish acceptance of the Inca claim that their's had been the first and indeed the only ordered polity in the Andes, and that before their own advent, Andean people had lived in social chaos and without the arts of civilisation such as agriculture, weaving and architecture. Such a claim appeared credible, much evidence, such as the still functioning Chimu capital in Northern Peru to the contrary, because the theory of political development enshirned in it had important European analogues. Cieza's Manco Capac, for example, who called together people from the vicinity of Cuzco "with love and kind words" resonated not only with the story of the Romans who had governed in Spain "with love and friendship," but also with Cicero's orator, a "great and wise man," who gathered people living scattered in fields and forest retreats into ordered settlements and taught them civilisation. In subsequent historians of the Incas, this Ciceronian image of Manco Capac became ever more elaborate, not merely because the lure of classical antiquity was strong, but also because such a model of the progress of civilisation was reinforced by the manner in which Spanish officials and lawyers formulated their questions and thus organized information about the Andes.

In 1553, the Spanish crown issued one of many questionnaires about tribute payments, which was in due course answered by Hernando de Santillan, lawyer and oidor of the Audiencia of Lima. The lawyer Juan Polo de Ondegardo also responded to this questionnaire, and very similar questions were asked in regional inspections conducted on behalf of the Spanish crown to assess tribute payments. All these questionnaires enquired about the quantity of tribute payments in Spanish Peru, the manner in which they should be collected, and whether they were to consist of cash or kind, while at the same time accepting Inca practice as the crucial point of departure. But this was more easily said than done, as is revealed by the very form of the responses that lawyers in Peru sent back to Madrid. At issue were not merely various practical problems, such as the transition to a monetary economy, and the huge drop in the population of Peru that followed invasion and conquest, but also the very concept of what constituted society and sovereignty.

Before entering on his task, accordingly, Santillan outlined the history of the Incas and their system of government, pointing out that the first question he was to answer "deals with the lords who governed the Indians of these provinces." But all the question had asked was, "What tributes (they) payed in the time of their infidelity ...," the issue of who had governed being incidental to this primary concern of the crown. However, Santillan, and similarly Polo de Ondegardo, were seeking to establish a context in which they could explain the existence and functioning of the threefold division of lands that the Incas had made, one part being for the state religion, one for the Inca and the third for the people, pointing out that this had to be understood before one could discuss tribute. In addition, the division of land in turn was relevant to how one could think about sovereignty in Peru, which also bore on the question of tribute.

These complications were aggravated by a problem resulting from the presence of the Spanish in Peru that was discussed at length by Polo de Ondegardo. The Incas being gone, Spaniards considered themselves entitled to claim as their own lands that had formerly been assigned to the Inca and the state religion, while at the same time collecting tribute from the remainder. But, as Polo pointed out, this resulted in a double payment of tribute, because the Incas had never taken anything from this last category of land. Rather, by way of serving the Inca ruler, people had worked the lands assigned to him and to the state religion, reserving crops harvested from lands that had been assigned to themselves for their own exclusive use. Other forms of serving the Inca, such as weaving and construction, had likewise left this category of land untouched. Spanish demands for what amounted to double tribute payments, Polo argued, were the direct outcome of failing to understand how the Incas had governed. This difficulty, as viewed by Polo, was compounded by a further one, which concerned the status of the individual within the Inca state, or, more precisely, the absence of such status. According to Polo, the concept of personal freedom was unknown to the Incas, because throughout, the Incas had dealt with communities, not with individuals. The Inca ruler had assigned work to be performed in his service not to individuals but to communities, and in each community, the curacas, whose authority and position the Inca had ratified, supervised the distribution of this work. Hence, Polo observed, litigation about land between Andean individuals was practically unheard of in early colonial Peru. Rather, the cases that were heard in the Audiencias were almost invariably disputes between communities.

Polo thought that the Spanish ought to continue governing and taxing Andean people as communities, not as individuals, thereby curtailing their freedom, but at the same time preserving some semblance of the order established by the Incas, while simultaneously avoiding the expense and effort of creating annual census records of tributarios. Practical considerations thus went hand in hand with more theoretical ones. The ordering of political society by reference to groups and to hierarchies of authority, Polo thought, was both universal and beneficial, and he quoted Aristotle to prove his point:

The entire government of our republic consists of the ordained subjection which we maintain in relation to one another, and the restraint imposed on anyone running wild. Examples are readily to hand: children are subject to parents, wives to husbands, servants to their masters; friars to their superiors and clerics to the bishop. In sum, there is noone without a superior whom he fears, and if anyone strays, the force of the law bears on his punishment and judges attend to the law's execution, thanks to which republics have perpetuated themselves and continue to do so until this day.

The image that sixteenth century historians painted of the Incas was to some extent shaped by the shadow of Rome, by the idea that in some sense, the Roman and the Inca empires resembled each other, that Rome provided an explanatory context in which the Incas could be understood. Lawyers thought about the Incas in more practical terms because they were occupied, day by day, with the government of Peru. The specifics of Inca land holding and taxation and other related issues thus occupied their attention much more than did the process of Inca imperial expansion and the deeds of individual Incas. Polo de Ondegardo discovered the mummified body of Inca Pachacuti along with the "quipus and accounts" of his deeds; but, Polo wrote, there was no time on that occasion to enquire what exactly these quipus said, and with this, he continued his discussion of practical matters. Lawyers did not need the Roman empire as an explanatory context to understand the Incas, and altogether referred surprisingly little to European models or antecedents for what they found in the Andes. But that did not mean that they were not also agents of a Spanish historical vision in the Andes, and agents of profound change.

The Incas had brought to the Andes an administrative uniformity that did not exist before, and with it had gone a certain degree of cultural and religious uniformity. But it was in Spanish Peru that Quechua supplanted the many regional languages of the Andes, while Christianity eliminated the many forms of religious and cultural diversity that had been accomodated within the Inca state religion. Yet, the lawyers who were instrumental in implementing this profound transformation were, as we have seen, conservatives in many respects, even though their very conservatism entailed its own mode of innovation. These three features which we have noted in their ideas and activities, a tendency to foster uniformity along with a desire to preserve some part of the Inca order, and a tendency in spite of this conservatism to help implement radical change, are reflected in a document from Laraos of the year 1597. Laraos is situated in the Andes south east of Lima, and originated as a resettlement community which was organized in 1569 by the local governor Davila Brizeno. Twenty eight years later, in 1597, this community produced a document in Quechua and Spanish describing the boundaries of its land, with an accompanying map. According to the Quechua text, the boundaries between Laraos and its neighbours had been established by the Inca Tupa Yupanqui, who had personally walked along the boundary line. On August 8th, 1597, the curaca of Laraos with seven old men again walked this boundary line, inspecting the landmarks and boundary stones that defined it by way of re-establishing the community's claims to the land. The document was signed by the seven old men, the curaca and the Andean notary who wrote it down. On the same page appears the Spanish text, which mentions the same witnesses, along with representatives of neighbouring communities. The map displays the boundary markers and land marks that are also mentioned in the text, but the way in which this map is conceptualized has little to do with European maps. Rather, what it shows is the river dividing Laraos into its upper and lower moieties, each of which is ringed by its boundary on which the land marks form a continuous band.

This document is a testimony of the old and the new in the Andes at century's end, a testimony of continuity along with headlong innovation such as also describes the impact of the Spanish language and Spanish historical perceptions in the Andes. The people of Laraos looked back to the Inca Tupa Yupanqui to explain the existence of their community, even though that community had been created by the Spanish. At the same time, the Inca's claim to rule was expressed anachronistically in Christian terms, for he appears in the document as "Tupa Inca Yupanqui by the Mercy of God." Behind this anachronism and behind the claim that Laraos was the creation of Tupa Inca Yupanqui lurks a profound paradox that characterized the culture of early colonial Peru. On the one hand, the Spanish had supplanted the Incas; regional Andean language were in the course of disappearing, and in the political sphere, Spanish had supplanted Quechua; but on the other hand, the Incas were seen to constitute the essential pre-condition of Spanish existence in Peru. Viewed from the Andean vantagepoint that speaks through our document from Laraos, however, what the Spanish were doing had to remain quite simply unintelligible unless it could be formulated by reference to the Incas. In its own day, Inca dominion had been much contested and fought against. But in retrospect, the Incas legitimated and explained the political existence of Andean people in the present. The Spanish language used by government and in courts of law and presupposed Quechua antecedents, while Spanish government could not function without recourse to a perception of history that included the Incas. However much this was a hispanized vision that had been accomodated to the new political realities of the Viceroyalty of Peru, it highlighted, as Garcilaso expressed it, "the foundations upon which the Indians draw when recounting what was greatest and best in their empire."