has found the foundations of a hut believed to correspond to the
Hut of
Romulus, which the Romans themselves preserved into late antiquity. By the
late Republic, the usual Roman origin myth held that their city was founded by a
Latin named
Romulus on the day of the
Parilia Festival (21 April) in some year around 750BC. Important aspects of the myth concerned Romulus's murder of his twin
Remus, the brothers' descent from the god
Mars and the royal family of
Alba Longa, and that dynasty's supposed descent from
Aeneas, himself supposedly descended from the goddess
Aphrodite and the royal family of
Troy. The accounts in the first book of
Livy's
History of Rome and in
Vergil's
Aeneid were particularly influential. Some accounts further asserted that there had been a
Mycenaean Greek settlement on the Palatine (later dubbed
Pallantium) even earlier than Romulus and Remus, at some time prior to the
Trojan War. Modern scholars disregard most of the traditional accounts as myths. There is no persuasive archaeological evidence for either the Romulan foundation or for the idea of an early Greek settlement. Even the name Romulus is now generally believed to have been retrojected from the city's name – glossed as "Mr Rome" by the classicist
Mary Beard – rather than reflecting a historical or actual figure. Some scholars, particularly
Andrea Carandini, have argued that it remains possible that these foundation myths reflect actual historical events in some form and that the city and
Roman Kingdom were in fact founded by a single actor in some way. This remains a minority viewpoint in present scholarship and highly controversial in the absence of further evidence, with the arguments made by Carandini and others appearing to rest on highly tendentious interpretations of what is currently known with certainty from scientific excavations. The Romans'
origin myths, however, provide evidence of how the Romans conceived of themselves as a mixture of different ethnic groups and foreign influences, The Romans took the foundation of their own new cities seriously, undertaking many rituals and attributing many of them to remote antiquity. They long maintained the
Hut of Romulus, a primitive dwelling on the Palatine attributed to their founder, although they had no firm basis for associating it with him specifically.
Chronological disagreements While the Romans believed that their city had been founded by an
eponymous founder at a specific time, when that occurred was disputed by the ancient historians. The earliest dates placed it BC out of a belief that Romulus had been Aeneas's grandson. This moved Rome's foundation much closer to the
fall of
Troy, dated by
Eratosthenes to 1184–83 BC; these dates are attested as early as the 4th centuryBC. Romulus was later chronologically connected to Aeneas and the time of the
Trojan War by introducing a
line of Alban kings, which scholars consider to be entirely spurious. Most scholars view the move from a foundation date in the 1100s to one in the 700s to have come from Roman calculations from estimates of the lengths of the republican and regal periods. Their attempts to estimate how long the regal period lasted, however, are largely rejected as synthetic calculations. It may also be that the date of the city's foundation was assigned from Greek historiography, especially influenced by
Timaeus of Tauromenium (born ) who may have been the first to move the founding of the city from the era of the Trojan war to the more historical 814 BC. A later intervention, possibly at the hands of
Fabius Pictor (born ) or his source
Diocles of Peparethus, then placed the foundation date within the
Olympiads (ie within "historical" time), settling eventually on .
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (born ) placed it in the first year of the
7th Olympiad, that is, 752/51 BC. it is the former date that has become the most repeated in modernity and is still used for computing the
AUC calendar era.
Romulus and Remus depicting the foundation of Rome.
Sol riding in his chariot;
Mars descending from the sky to
Rhea Silvia lying in the grass;
Mercury shows to
Venus the she-wolf suckling the twins; in the lower corners of the picture: river-god
Tiberinus and water-goddess
Juturna. 35–45 AD. In the best known form of the legend, Romulus and Remus are the grandsons of
Numitor, the king of Alba Longa. After Numitor is deposed by his brother
Amulius and his daughter
Rhea Silvia is forced to become a
Vestal virgin, she becomes pregnantallegedly
raped by the
war god Marsand delivers the two illegitimate brothers. Amulius orders that the children
be left to die on the slopes of the Palatine or in the
Tiber River, but they are
suckled by a
she-wolf at the
Lupercal cave and then discovered by the shepherd
Faustulus and taken in by him and his wife
Acca Larentia. (Livy combines Larentia and the she-wolf, considering them most likely to have referred to a
prostitute, also known in Latin slang as a or she-wolf.) Faustulus eventually reveals the brothers' true origins, and they depose or murder Amulius and restore Numitor to his throne. They then leave or are sent to establish a new city at the location where they had been rescued. The twins then come into conflict during the foundation of the city, leading to the murder of Remus. The dispute is variously said to have been over the naming of the new city, over the interpretation of
auguries, whether to place it on the Palatine or Aventine Hill, or concerned with Remus's disrespect of the new town's
ritual furrow or wall. Some accounts say Romulus slays his brother with his own hand, others that Remus and sometimes Faustulus are killed in a general melee.
Wiseman and some others attribute the aspects of
fratricide to the 4th-century BC
Conflict of the Orders, when Rome's lower-class
plebeians began to resist excesses by the upper-class
patricians. Romulus, after
ritualistically ploughing the
generally square course of the city's
future boundary, erects
its first walls and declares the settlement an asylum for exiles, criminals, and runaway slaves. The city becomes larger but also acquires a mostly male population. When Romulus' attempts to secure the women of neighbouring settlements by diplomacy fail, he uses the religious celebration of
Consualia to abduct the women of the
Sabines. According to Livy, when the Sabines rally an army to take their women back, the women force the two groups to make peace and install the Sabine king
Titus Tatius as comonarch with Romulus. The story has been theorised by some modern scholars to reflect anti-Roman propaganda from the late fourth century BC, but more likely reflects an indigenous Roman tradition, given the
Capitoline Wolf which likely dates to the sixth century BC. Regardless, by the third century, it was widely accepted by Romans and put onto some of Rome's
first silver coins in 269 BC. In his 1995
Beginnings of Rome,
Tim Cornell argues that the myths of Romulus and Remus are "popular expressions of some universal human need or experience" rather than borrowings from the Greek east or Mesopotamia, inasmuch as the story of virgin birth, intercession by animals and humble stepparents, with triumphant return expelling an evil leader are common mythological elements across Eurasia and even into the Americas.
Aeneas depicting Aeneas fleeing from Troy. Aeneas carries his father. 's
Aeneid. The epic poem was written in the early first century BC. The tradition of Romulus was also combined with a legend telling of Aeneas coming from Troy and travelling to Italy. This tradition emerges from the
Iliad's prophecy that Aeneas's descendants would one day return and rule Troy once more. Greeks by 550 BC had begun to speculate, given the lack of any clear descendants of Aeneas, that the figure had established a dynasty outside the proper Greek world. The first attempts to tie this story to Rome were in the works of two Greek historians at the end of the fifth century BC,
Hellanicus of Lesbos and
Damastes of Sigeum, likely only mentioning off hand the possibility of a Roman connection; a more assured connection only emerged at the end of the fourth century BC when Rome started having formal dealings with the Greek world. The ancient Roman annalists, historians, and antiquarians faced an issue tying Aeneas to Romulus, as they believed that Romulus lived centuries after the Trojan War, which was dated at the time . For this, they fabricated a story of Aeneas's son founding the city of
Alba Longa and establishing a dynasty there, which eventually produced Romulus. In Livy's first book he recounts how Aeneas, a demigod of the Trojan royal
Anchises and the goddess
Venus, leaves Troy after its destruction during the
Trojan War and sailed to the western Mediterranean. He brings his son – Ascanius – and a group of companions. Landing in Italy, he forms an alliance with a local magnate called
Latinus and marries his daughter
Lavinia, joining the two into a new group called the Latini; they then found a new city, called
Lavinium. After a series of wars against the
Rutuli and
Caere, the Latins conquer the
Alban Hills and its environs. His son Ascanius then founds the legendary city of
Alba Longa, which became the dominant city in the region. The later descendants of the royal lineage of Alba Longa eventually produce Romulus and Remus, setting up the events of their mythological story. Dionysius of Halicarnassus similarly attempted to show a Greek connection, giving a similar story for Aeneas, but also a previous series of migrations. He describes migrations of
Arcadians into southern Italy some time in the 18th century BC, migrations into Umbria by Greeks from Thessaly, and the foundation of a settlement on the
Palatine Hill by
Evander (originally hailing also from Arcadia) and
Hercules,
Strabo also mentions an ancient myth linking the foundation of Rome to Arcadia and Evander. According to this tradition, Rome was an Arcadian colony founded by Evander. When Evander welcomed Hercules, he followed a prophecy from his mother
Nicostrata and honored him as a future god by establishing a sacred grove and offering Greek-style sacrifices. The Greek-style sacrifices was continued by the Romans and led the historian Coelius to argue that Rome had Greek origins. The Romans also worshipped Evander's mother as the nymph Carmentis. The introduction of Aeneas follows a trend across Italy towards
Hellenising their own early mythologies by rationalising myths and legends of the
Greek Heroic Age into a pseudo-historical tradition of prehistoric times; this was in part due to Greek historians' eagerness to construct narratives purporting that the Italians were actually descended from Greeks and their heroes. These narratives were accepted by non-Greek peoples due Greek historiography's prestige and claims to systematic validity. Archaeological evidence shows that worship of Aeneas had been established at Lavinium by the sixth century BC. Similarly, a cult to Hercules had been established at the
Ara Maxima in Rome during the archaic period. By the early fifth century BC, these stories had become entrenched in Roman historical beliefs. These cults, along with the early – in literary terms – account of
Cato the Elder, show how Italians and Romans took these Greek histories seriously and as reliable evidence by later annalists, even though they were speculations of little value. Much of the syncretism, however, may simply reflect Roman desires to give themselves a prestigious backstory: claim of Trojan descent proved politically advantageous with the Greeks by justifying both claims of common heritage and ancestral enmity.
Other myths There was no single mythic tradition of Rome's founding. By the time of the
Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC), there were some sixty different myths for Rome's foundation that circulated in the Greek world. Most of them attributed the city to an eponymous founder, usually "Rhomos" or "Rhome" rather than Romulus. One story told how
Romos, a son of
Odysseus and
Circe, was the one who founded Rome.
Martin P. Nilsson speculates that this older story was becoming a bit embarrassing as Rome became more powerful and tensions with the Greeks grew. Being descendants of the Greeks was no longer preferable, so the Romans settled on the Trojan foundation myth instead. Nilsson further speculates that the name of Romos was changed by some Romans to the native name Romulus, but the same name Romos (later changed to the native Remus) was never forgotten by many of the people, so both these names were used to represent the founders of the city. Another story, attributed to
Hellanicus of Lesbos by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, says that Rome was founded by a woman named Rhome, one of the followers of Aeneas, after landing in Italy and burning their ships. That by the middle of the fifth century Aeneas was also allegedly the founder of two or three other cities across Italy was no object. These myths also differed as to whether their eponymous matriarch Roma was born in Troy or Italy – i.e. before or after Aeneas's journey – or otherwise if their Romus was a direct or collateral descendant of Aeneas. Myths of the early third century also differed greatly in the claimed genealogy of Romulus or the founder, if an intermediate actor was posited. One tale posited that a Romus, son of Zeus, founded the city. Callias posited that Romulus was descended from Latinus and a woman called Roma who was the daughter of Aeneas and a homonymous mother. Other authors depicted Romulus and Romus, as a son of Aeneas, founding not only Rome but also Capua. Authors also wrote their home regions into the story.
Polybius, who hailed from Arcadia, for example, gave Rome not a Trojan colonial origin but rather an Arcadian one. == See also ==