II.

Myths of the Founding of Rome

The Romans did not develop a myth about the creation of the world itself, but they did attach great importance to the founding of Rome. Two distinct myths developed about the city’s beginnings: the story of the twins Romulus and Remus, and the tale of Aeneas.

The myth of Romulus and Remus is best known from its account in the work of Livy, a Roman historian of the 1st century bc. The twins were the sons of the god Mars and a mortal woman named Rhea Silvia. When they were infants, Romulus and Remus’s great uncle set them adrift on the Tiber River to die. The great uncle had stolen royal power from the twins’ grandfather and did not want the boys to survive to challenge his right to power. But a she-wolf found Romulus and Remus and cared for them until a shepherd discovered them. The shepherd and his wife took the boys in and raised them as their own children. Years later, after restoring their grandfather to his throne, Romulus and Remus decided to found a city of their own. However, the two quarreled, and in the ensuing brawl Remus died. In some versions of the story Romulus killed him, in other versions Romulus’s followers did so. After his brother’s death, Romulus named the new city Rome and became its first king. According to Varro, the date that Romulus founded Rome was 753 bc.

The other legend of Rome’s founding traced the origins of the city to Aeneas, the son of the goddess Venus and the Trojan prince Anchises. Aeneas came from the city of Troy in Asia Minor, which according to tradition was conquered by Greek forces during the Trojan War. The war was fought in the late 13th or early 12th century bc, and it forms the setting for the epic poem the Iliad by the Greek poet Homer. Although Aeneas’s role in the Iliad is small, Roman legend holds that after the war he led a group of Trojan survivors who left Troy and eventually arrived at Carthage, where the queen, Dido, fell in love with Aeneas. But he left her and traveled to Italy, where he founded Rome.

Scholars believe that the legend of Aeneas gained acceptance during the 3rd century bc, when Rome was developing as a nation and its citizens sought to enhance the city’s prestige by establishing a connection to the famous figures of Greek mythology. It was difficult, therefore, for later writers to reconcile the 400-year interval between the story of Aeneas, which took place in the 12th century bc, and the account of Romulus and Remus, which occurred in the 8th century bc. The poet Virgil resolved the problem in his epic the Aeneid, which describes Aeneas marrying Lavinia, daughter of the king of Latium, a kingdom that occupied the future territory of Rome. Through this marriage, Aeneas became the originator of a line of kings and a direct ancestor of Romulus and the Romans.

Most of the other early stories of Rome have to do with the traditional Seven Kings, who were the first seven rulers of Rome. One of the best-known stories about the reign of Romulus is the so-called Rape of the Sabines. According to this story, to ensure the future of Rome, Romulus and his band of followers needed wives who would bear children to ensure the future of the new city. They invited their neighbors, the Sabine people, to a festival and then kidnapped the daughters of the Sabines. A war broke out between the two communities, and peace was restored only when the Sabine women declared their preference for their Roman husbands. The Sabines then joined the Romans in a single community.

The second Roman king was Numa Pompilius, whom the Romans credited with inventing their religious institutions. Artworks depict Numa as a priestly figure with a long white beard. Legend tells that the fourth king, Ancus Martius (whose name means “warlike”), conquered many neighboring towns and greatly increased Roman territory. The sixth king, Servius Tullius, developed the first census, or counting of the population and their property. According to tradition, Servius Tullius also built the first city wall.