Traditional founding of Rome

The story

A story the Romans told for centuries

How was Rome born? The Romans had a beautiful answer, handed down from parent to child. Historians today consider it a legend, that is, a tale in which real facts are mixed with imagination. It is still well worth knowing, because it shaped the way the Romans saw themselves.

The story begins far from Rome, at Alba Longa, a city in Latium. Numitor was king there, but his brother Amulius drove him from the throne. To make sure that no grandson could one day claim the kingdom, Amulius forced Numitor's daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a Vestal, that is, a priestess of a goddess, a role that forbade having children. According to the legend, however, the god Mars made her the mother of two twins: Romulus and Remus.

The twins and the she-wolf

Amulius ordered the babies to be thrown into the Tiber. The servant given the task did not have the courage to do it and left them in a basket on the river bank. The basket came to rest near the Palatine Hill, in an area called the Velabrum, close to a fig tree and a cave called the Lupercal. There, the tradition says, a she-wolf came up to the newborns and nursed them, while a woodpecker brought them food.

The twins were then found by a shepherd named Faustulus, who raised them as his own sons together with his wife, Acca Larentia. According to some authors, the “wolf” was not an animal: Acca Larentia was called that because of the way she lived, and the story would have grown out of that nickname. This is an example of how historians try to work out where a legend comes from.

When they grew up, Romulus and Remus discovered who they really were, killed Amulius and put Numitor back on the throne of Alba Longa. Then they decided to found a new city on the spot where they had been saved. But they could not agree on where to build it: Romulus wanted the Palatine, Remus the Aventine. To decide, according to the Romans, they consulted the auspices, that is, the signs sent by the gods, such as the flight of birds. A dispute broke out and in the quarrel Remus lost his life. Romulus was left alone and became the first king of the city, which he named after himself.

21 April 753 BC

The Romans counted the years “from the founding of the city”, in Latin ab urbe condita. The writer Varro, who lived in the 1st century BC, set that date at 21 April 753 BC, using the calculations of an astrologer named Lucius Tarutius. It was already a day of celebration, the one for the shepherds' festival called the Parilia. Even today Rome celebrates the “Birthday of Rome” every year on 21 April. Other ancient authors, with other calculations, gave different dates: this is why the date is traditional, not a historical certainty.

What archaeologists say

Archaeologists have dug on the Palatine and really have found traces of huts from the 8th century BC, exactly the period of the legend. They have also found older tombs, from the 10th century BC, and traces of a settlement from the 9th century. This means that groups of people were living on the hill and around it well before 753.

The archaeologist Andrea Carandini discovered on the Palatine a circuit of walls made of chips of tuff, the soft volcanic rock of the area, which would date to about 730 BC. In his view it could be the “wall of Romulus”. In 2005 a large hut-shaped building was found near the Temple of Vesta, which was perhaps the residence of the first kings. Not all scholars agree on these interpretations, but the discoveries show that the ancient stories had a grain of truth.

Modern historians, however, think that Rome was not born in a single day, through an act of foundation. It is more likely that it grew slowly, over several centuries, as the villages on the neighbouring hills, on the banks of the Tiber, gradually joined together into a single community. Scholars call this process synoecism, a Greek word meaning “living together”.

The seven kings

After Romulus, the tradition lists six more kings who ruled Rome until 509 BC: Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud). Together with Romulus they are the “seven kings of Rome”. Some were probably real people, others are legendary figures. With the last, Tarquin the Proud, the monarchy ended and the Republic was born.

A curiosity: the tradition also remembers Titus Tatius, a king of the Sabines, who ruled together with Romulus for a short time, but he is not among the seven canonical kings.

So when we read the story of the founding of Rome, we should not think of it as “true” or “false”. It is a way in which a people explained its own origins, and it joins a real place, the Palatine, to a great story of heroes, gods and abandoned twins.