Rome was invented in 753BC when Romulus, the son of Mars and a local princess declared himself King of his new city. Or so the story roughly goes. The Founding of Rome is not so simple as is often assumed. For a start, it was almost certainly never founded. Nor was Romulus real. Nor, I’m sure it goes without saying, was he the son of Mars.
The stories are long and winding and conflicting. I shall briefly explain the story as Virgil and Livy understood it, for that is the most popular narrative, and is how people at the time Rome became an empire would’ve known their past.
There was, many years ago, a war between the Greeks and the Trojans broke out when the erratic Trojan Prince Paris stole the wife of Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Helen, as she was known, was the most beautiful woman alive, and Menelaus held her very dearly. He brought a Greek alliance together, and Troy was besieged for nine years. Eventually, the deadlock was broken when the scheming Ulysses (Odysseus) and Diomedes pioneered the Trojan Horse idea. After breaching the city’s defenses, the city state was doomed. The dead Prince Hector appeared in ghost form in front of Aeneas, the son of Venus (Aphrodite), and told him to carry the surviving Trojans to their destined homeland, in Latium (Italy). Aeneas hates running away – Homeric heroes tend to – and it takes a sign from the Gods to send him away. After a series of journeys, Aeneas lands in Carthage, where he meets Dido, its founder and queen. They fall in love, but fate did what fate tends to do, and forced Aeneas to leave Carthage. Dido, heartbroken and angry, threw herself onto a burning pyre, swearing eternal war between Carthage and the Trojans. This became the justification for the Punic Wars.
Aeneas eventually reaches Latium, where he becomes king for three years. He is succeeded by his son, Ascanius Iulus (a blatant reference to Julius), who becomes the king of Alba Longa. Skip several centuries, and Rhea Silvia is a princess of Alba Longa. Her father, Numitor, has been usurped by his son Amulius. When Rhea Silvia is impregnated by the war god Mars (Ares), and gives birth to two twin boys, Amulius is troubled by the threat the children will pose to his rule. He orders them abandoned on the River Tiber and left to die. The river god, Tiberinus, saves them, and the babies are rescued by a she-wolf. Raised by their canine foster-mother, the two babies grow into boys, and are discovered by a local shepherd, who adopts them. They grow up herding sheep completely unaware of their true identities. They eventually get involved in a dispute between Amulius and Numitor, and one twin, Remus, is captured. Fraternal love sends the other twin Romulus, a great military thinker, to rescue him. They then discover their true identities, and join forces with their grandfather Numitor, and place him on Alba Longa’s throne. The two then set out to make their own kingdom.
This leads to a dispute between the brothers, as Remus wishes to build the city on one hill, and Romulus on another. They build independently of each other, and Remus jibes at the pathetic height of Romulus’ city wall, which is so low he can jump over. Romulus, in true Roman fashion, kills his brother in cold blood and continues his work.
He creates Rome, and comes to the realisation he needs a population to have a successful city. He declares it a place of refuge for criminals and exiles, and attracts the lowest of society to make his city’s people. However these are, by vast majority, male. So he hosts a feast, and invites all the wives and daughters of the local Sabine land to feast with the Romans. With them there, he announces to his crooked men that these women will make their wives, and that they should all steal one to become their own. This became known as the Rape of the Sabine Women. The Sabines, naturally somewhat upset by this, declared war on Rome, and the two looked set to destroy one another, when the women intervened, and announced they were happy as the wives of the Romans. The Sabines were naturally completely and utterly appeased by this, and allowed themselves to become part of Rome. The City was made.
This narrative continues, with seven kings named by the histories. Seven was a sacred number to Romans. Marriages wouldn’t take place on the seventh of the month, the city had seven hills, etc etc. This little subtlety marks one of the many that demonstrates the likelihood of Rome’s origin being completely mythical.
The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, had usurped his father-in-law and desecrated his dead body by riding over it in a chariot with his wife, the old king’s daughter. Another event, involving the Rape of Lucretia, a noblewoman, by the King’s son forced the Roman people to unite under two leaders, Consuls, called Brutus and Collatinus. The pair expelled the King, and the Roman Republic was born.
It is at this point we begin to have contemporary sources. The Roman Republic is very much a period we know a lot about, and can cheerfully deem real. The Kingdom of Rome, however, is very much up for debate.
It is indeed likely that Rome was once a kingdom. It is also likely a popular revolt brought republicanism into the equation. However the characters are all too convenient to be fully true. The most obvious example is Iulus. Before Virgil wrote his Aeneid, the character had never been written about, and likely hadn’t been thought about either. He fits too well with the Caesars to be quite plausible. Similarly, Romulus is too convenient. His entire narrative is like an exemplar on ‘How To Be A Roman’. He worked his way to success – yet had noble heritage. He was a brilliant military mind – yet also a peaceable ruler. He was prepared to sacrifice everything for his city – as shown in the Rape of the Sabine Women and the Murder of Remus. He was raised by a wolf, an icon used throughout Roman history to represent its character and pack-mentality. His life from start to finish fits the Roman ideal – a bit too fortunate, by any means. While some historians believe he was real, and some – Mary Beard for example – consider him complete fiction, all agree that the popular narrative ancient historians wrote about simply isn’t true.
The truth is, Rome is simply too old and too complex to ever find a complete answer. We are forever linking the stories to archaeology, and these links are the tools we use to define fact from fiction. The epitaph of Scipio Barbatus, the first famous Scipio, represents the earliest known proof of the Republic. It is this discovery that teaches us a lot, yet provides us with more questions than answers. Our knowledge, before the time of Scipio Africanus and the Punic Wars, leans closer to guesswork and inference.
Overall, Rome has a beautiful and illustrious origin story. However it is just that – a story. What we learn from it is not how Rome was founded, but something altogether more interesting. We learn from it just what it meant to be Roman. Roman, by the beginning of the Empire, was not simply a geographical designation. It was a mentality, a mindset, an idea. Gauls, such Decimus Valerius Asiaticus, were as Roman as the city-born. Famed literary men like Cicero, Ovid, Horace were not from Rome at all. Virgil, for example, was born outside the Roman Empire, and only became Roman when his land was conquered. The importance of Aeneas, of Romulus and Remus, of Brutus and Collatinus, is that they are figures that together culminate to create the paradoxical criteria of Romanism. They don’t need to be real, they simply need to be inspiring.
The History Book 