Founding of Rome

Bronze Age

Archaeological evidence suggests that Rome developed over a long period, but it was definitely occupied by the middle of the Bronze Age. Core samples have shown that the terrain of Bronze-Age Rome differed greatly from what is present now.^[10] The area of the Forum Boarium north of the Aventine Hill was a seasonally dry plain that simultaneously provided a safe inland port for the era's seafaring ships, a wide area for watering horses and cattle,^[10] and a safe ford of the Tiber^[11] with shallow and slow-flowing water even if Tiber Island had not yet formed,^[10] one of the river's major fords between Etruria and Campania.^[2] This advantageous but exposed location was closely flanked by the Capitoline, which at that time rose sharply from the more easterly bank of the Tiber^[10] and provided a ready citadel for defense and for control of the salt production along the river and at its mouth.^[2] The other hills and the marshes between them provided similarly defensible points for settlement.

Accordingly, thick deposits of manure^[10] and ancient pottery shards have been discovered in the Forum Boarium from the middle of the Bronze Age.^[4] Current evidence suggests that there were three separate bronze-using settlements on the Capitoline during the period 1700–1350 BC and in the neighboring valley that later became the Roman Forum from 1350–1120 BC.^[3] Some 13th century BC structures indicate that the Capitoline was already being terraced to manage its slope. Evidence in the Final Bronze Age around 1200–975 BC is clearer, showing occupation of the Capitoline, Forum, and adjacent Palatine. Excavations near the modern Capitoline Museums suggest the construction of fortifications and some scholars have speculated that settlements also existed on the other hills, especially the Janiculum, Quirinal, and Aventine.^[3] The Capitoline currently seems to have been the earliest settled^[12] but it is debated whether the settlements on the other hills were independent, colonies of the Capitoline settlement, or formerly separate villages already consolidated into a single polity.^[13] By 1000 BC, a necropolis existed in the Forum for cremation graves.^[4] By the early Iron Age c. 900 BC, graves started to be placed into the ground. Other cemeteries appear on the Esquiline, Quirinal, and Viminal Hills by the 9th century, containing pottery, imported Greek wares, fibulae, and bronze objects.^[14] Remains from huts on the Palatine have been found that date to the 9th or 8th centuries BC, with accelerating development by the early to middle 8th century BC.^[15]

Eighth and seventh centuries BC

By this time, four major settlements emerged in Rome. The nuclei appeared on the Palatine, the Capitoline, the Quirinal and Viminal, and the Caelian, Oppian, and Velia.^[16] There is, however, no evidence linking any settlement on the Quirinal hill with the Sabines, as is alleged by some ancient accounts.^[17]

The area of the Forum also was converted at this time into a public space. Burials there discontinued and portions of it were paved over. Votive offerings appear in the comitium in the eighth century, indicating a more central religious cult, and other public buildings appear to have been erected around that time. One of those buildings was the domus publica (the official residence of the pontifex maximus), which is now believed to have been constructed between 750 and 700 BC.^[18] Religious activity started also in this period on the Capitoline hill, suggesting a connection to the ancient cult of Jupiter Feretrius. Other offerings discovered indicate Rome's connections outside Latium, with imported Greek pottery from Euboea and Corinth.^[19]

The first evidence of a wall appears in the middle or late eighth century on the Palatine, dated between 730 and 720 BC.^[19] It is possible that the circuit of the wall marked out what later Romans believed to be the original pomerium (sacred boundary) of the city.^[20] The discovery of gates and streets connected to the wall, with the remains of various huts, suggest that Rome had by this time:

acquired a defined boundary ... [and] a more sophisticated level of social and political organisation ... the use of the Forum as a public space point[s] to the development of [a] shared civil and ritual space[] for the inhabitants of all communities, demonstrating an increasing level of centralisation.^[21]

Like other Villanovan proto-urban centres, this archaic Rome was likely organised around clans that guarded their own areas, but by the later eighth century had confederated.^[21] The development of city-states was likely a Greek innovation that spread through the Mediterranean from 850 to 750 BC.^[22] The earliest votive deposits are found in the early seventh century on the Capitoline and Quirinal hills, suggesting that by that time a city had formed with monumental architecture and public religious sanctuaries.^[23] Certainly, by 600 BC, a process of synoikismos was complete and there had been formed a unified Rome – reflected in the production of a central forum area, public monumental architecture, and civic structures – can be spoken of.^[24]

Chronological disagreements

While the Romans believed that their city had been founded by an eponymous founder at a specific time,^[54] when that occurred was disputed by the ancient historians. The earliest dates placed it c. 1100 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;^[36] these dates are attested as early as the 4th century BC. 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.^[51] Ancient attempts to date the foundation of the city were based on the length of the republic, counted by the number of consuls, followed by subtracting of an estimated regal period.^[55] Modern scholars, however, largely reject the estimates of the length of the regal period as synthetic calculations.^[56]

From Claudius's Secular Games in AD 47 to Hadrian's Romaea in AD 121, the official date seems to have used the chronology established by Varro in the late 1st century BC, placing Rome's founding in 753 BC. Augustus's Fasti running to AD 13 and the Secular Games celebrated at Rome's 900th and 1000th anniversaries under Antoninus Pius and Philip I, meanwhile, used dates computed from a foundation a year later in 752 BC. Despite known errors in Varro's work,^[57] it is the former date that has become the most repeated in modernity and is still used for computing the AUC calendar era.^[58]

By the late Republic, the founding had also become closely associated with the Parilian Festival celebrated annually on April 21. This festival was originally concerned with the purification of shepherds and herds of sheep in the countryside around Rome, but eventually became so associated with Rome's foundation myth that it was restructured as the urban Romaea in AD 121. The association with Romulus may have arisen from the twins' supposed foster parents Faustulus and Acca Larentia, who initially raised them as shepherds.^{[citation needed]}

Romulus and Remus

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 pregnant – allegedly raped by the war god Mars – and delivers the two illegitimate brothers.^[59] 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 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 lupa or she-wolf.)^[60] 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.^[61][62]

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,^[63] 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.^[64] 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.^[65]

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.^[66] 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.^[61][67]

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.^[68] 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.^[69]

Aeneas

The indigenous 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.^[70] 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.^[71] 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.^[72]

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 c. 1100 BC. 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.^[73][74][75]

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.^[76] The later descendants of the royal lineage of Alba Longa eventually produce Romulus and Remus, setting up the events of their mythological story.^[77]

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,^[78] 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,^[79] whose labour with the cattle of Geryon was placed in the Forum Boarium by the Romans.^{[citation needed]}

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;^[80] this was in part due to Greek historians' eagerness to construct narratives purporting that the Italians were actually descended from Greeks and their heroes.^[81][77] These narratives were accepted by non-Greek peoples due Greek historiography's prestige and claims to systematic validity.^[82]

Archaeological evidence shows that worship of Aeneas had been established at Lavinium by the sixth century BC.^[77] Similarly, a cult to Hercules had been established at the Ara Maxima in Rome during the archaic period.^[83] By the early fifth century BC, these stories had become entrenched in Roman historical beliefs.^[84] 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.^[85] 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.^[86]

Other myths

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.^[87][88] One story told how Romos, a son of Odysseus and Circe, was the one who founded Rome.^[89] 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.^[90]

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.^[91] 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.^[92] 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.^[93]

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.^[94] 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.^[93]