Foundation of Rome

• Alba Longa

• Romulus and Remus

• Alternative Accounts of the Foundation

Alba Longa

Aeneas founded a new city called Lavinium or the hero renamed the city of Lauretum to Lavinium, after his new wife. Aeneas and Lavinia had a son named Silvius. His reign was long but I had trouble finding anything about Aeneas' death.

After Ascanius (Iulus) succeeded his father, Lavinium became overcrowded about thirty years since it was founded. Ascanius decided to found another city in Latium, which he called Alba Longa.

Alba Longa was situated on the eastern shore of Lake Albanus. It seemed to have become a dominant city in Latium. Thirteen kings ruled after Ascanius before Romulus and Remus were born.

The kings who ruled Alba Longa after Ascanius are listed in Livy's History of Rome as Silvius, Latinus, Epytus, Capys, Capetus, Tiberinus, Remulus, Acrota, Aventinus, Proca, Numitor and Amulius. (See the family tree of Aba Longa.)

Romulus and Remus were born not long after Amulius had deposed his brother Numitor as king of Alba Longa.

Romulus and Remus

In Alba Longa, Numitor was their thirteenth king after Ascanius, the son of the hero Aeneas. Numitor was the father of Ilia (Rea or Rhea Silvia; this may have been her name when she became a Vestal Virgin). Amulius, Numitor's brother, plotted to have him removed. Amulius deposed Numitor and imprisoned his brother.

To ensure that he had no rival to the crown, Amulius had Ilia sent to the temple of Vesta, to become a Vestal Virgin. Amulius hoped that Ilia would never marry nor have a child. However, Mars seduced Ilia and she became pregnant. She gave birth to twins.

Upon leaning of the news of Ilia's sons, Amulius planned to have the helpless infants killed. Upon the advice of the priest Camers, Amulius had the twin infants placed in a basket; they were thrown into the Tiber, in the hope the infants would drown.

It was the normal practice that a Virgin who broke her vows and was seduced, to bury the unfortunate girl alive. Ilia suffered from this fate, after her sons were born. Others said that Ilia drowned herself in the Tiber.

Once again, fate thwarted Amulius' plan. The basket was guided safely by Providentia to the riverbank, where present-day Rome was later situated. The two infants were suckled by a she-wolf, possibly sent by Mars, until a shepherd named Faustulus rescued them.

Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia brought up the twins, whom they named Romulus and Remus. When they reached manhood, the two of them gathered followers and entered Alba Longa. The twins killed Amulius and his adviser Camers. Then they restored their grandfather to the throne, in Alba Longa.

Rather than stay with Numitor and inherit the kingdom from their grandfather, they returned to the site of their rescue. The two decided to found and rule their own city.

Romulus wanted to build the city on the Palatine Hill, and started laying stones for the wall. Remus, however, insisted that the wall should be built on Aventine hill. Remus made a mockery of his brother's work by scornfully leaping over his brother's "mighty wall". In anger, Romulus struck down and killed his brother.

Traditionally, the city was founded on April 23, in the year 753 BC. Romulus decided to call it Rome, naming the town after himself.

To read about the reign of Romulus, see the Seven Kings of Rome.

Alternative Accounts of the Foundation

So far, I have listed Romulus as the founder of Rome and that Romulus' ancestor was Aeneas, the hero who had survived the fall of Troy. According to Virgil and Livy, Aeneas' arrival in Italy was set in a time before the foundation of Rome. That was the legend as it was written by the poet Virgil and the historian Livy, both from the first century BC. However, there are many earlier variations.

The link between the two legends, Aeneas and Romulus, were perhaps first told in the account called Origines, written by Marcus Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Elder or Cato the Censor (234-149 BC). Cato lived through the time of the war against Hannibal (and Carthage) and against Hellenistic Macedonia in the East. The Origines redefined the part played by Aeneas. It seemed that Virgil and Livy used Cato's account as their source for how the Trojan hero migrated to Latinum, marrying Lavionia, daughter of King Latinus. Ascanius, Aeneas' son, founded the city of Alba Longa, and generations of kings ruled in Aba Longa before the twin sons of Ilia founded Rome.

Vergil may have also derived much of his work from Ennius (Quintus Ennius, 239-169 BC), a contemporary of Cato the Elder. Ennius wrote about the wandering of Aeneas in his Annales.

There are other legends, but not all of them were written by Roman authors/historians. The Greeks also took an interest in the foundation of Rome. Two Greek writers, Hellanicus of Lesbos (flourished in 5th century BC) and Damastes of Sigeum said that it was Aeneas himself who founded Rome. But this would mean that Rome was founded sometime around 1175-1165 BC, not long after the Fall of Troy, which was traditionally dated to 1184 BC. This is definitely too early; it was over 300 years before the traditional date of Rome's foundation (753 BC).

However, there is some evidence that figures like King Agamemnon and Midas were not only historical figures, but near-contemporaries of the poet Homer, who wrote about the fall of Troy and its aftermath. Homer himself appears to have lived in the seventh century BC. That means that Aeneas could very well have founded Rome. Still, the evidence isn't conclusive.

Another legend included Rhome, a Trojan woman who followed Aeneas to Italy. The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (flourished in 25 BC) wrote that Rhome was said to be the woman who burned Aeneas' ship because she was tired from their travelling. With no ships, she was forcing the Trojans to settle in Latinum. So Aeneas named the new city after her as Rome. Then there are other variations of the tales of Rhome. One of them claimed that she was not a Trojan, but a native Latin who married Latinus and became the mother of three sons: Romus, Romulus and Telegonus.

Aeneas was a very popular figure in Italy. The earliest evidence of Aeneas in Italy comes from a terra cotta statuette of Aeneas carrying his father on his shoulder, found at Veii, Etruria, dating to the late 6th century BC.

Romulus and Aeneas were not the only ones who were reputed to be the founder of Rome. The Greek writers also put forward the candidate of Odysseus (Ulysses) or his son Romus, whose mother was the sorceress Circe. According to Hesiod's Theogony and the Epic Cycle, Odysseus and Circe had three sons: Agrius, Latinus and Telegonus. This Latinus was the founder of Latium, the region where Rome was located. But this Latinus is definitely different from the Latinus whom Aeneas met in the Aeneid.

Returning to the legend of Romulus, the native legend of Rome definitely had Romulus as their founder, but the original legend was most likely very different from what Livy wrote in the first century BC.

There are doubts and speculations over the existence in the legend of Remus, Romulus' twin. Romulus and Remus were probably originally the name of a single person, but later the two names were separated as the twins. It seemed that Remus might have been a later addition to the legend. Others believed that the plebeians had added Remus to the legend as Romulus' twin, when the plebeians were able to reach the magistracy offices (eg. consul, praetor, censor, etc) which were normally reserved for the Roman aristocrats.

The earliest evidence of the existence of twins comes from the silver coin minted in 269 BC, which depicted the twins Romulus and Remus.

Genealogy

House of Rome