Founding of Rome
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The founding of Rome was a prehistoric event or process later greatly embellished by Roman historians and poets. Archaeological evidence indicates that Rome developed from the gradual union of several hilltop villages during the Final Bronze Age or early Iron Age. Prehistoric habitation of the Italian Peninsula occurred by 48,000 years ago, with the area of Rome being settled by around 1600 BC.Template:Sfn Some evidence on the Capitoline Hill possibly dates as early as Template:CircaTemplate:Sfn and the nearby valley that later housed the Roman Forum had a developed necropolis by at least 1000Template:NbspBC.Template:Sfn The combination of the hilltop settlements into a single polity by the later 8th centuryTemplate:NbspBC was probably influenced by the trend for city-state formation emerging from ancient Greece.
Roman myth held that their city was founded by Romulus, son of the war god Mars and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, fallen princess of Alba Longa and descendant of Aeneas of Troy. Exposed on the Tiber river, Romulus and his twin Remus were suckled by a she-wolf at the Lupercal before being raised by the shepherd Faustulus, taking revenge on their usurping great-uncle Amulius, and restoring Alba Longa to their grandfather Numitor. The brothers then decided to establish a new town but quarrelled over some details, ending with Remus's murder and the establishment of Rome on the Palatine Hill. The year of the supposed founding was variously computed by ancient historians, but the two dates seeming to be officially sanctioned were the Varronian chronology's 753 BC (used by Claudius's Secular Games and Hadrian's Romaea) and the adjacent year of 752 BC (used by the Fasti and the Secular Games of Antoninus Pius and Philip I). Despite known errors in Varro's calculations, it is the 753Template:NbspBC date that continues to form the basis for most modern calculations of the AUC calendar era.
The legendary account was still much discussed and celebrated in Roman times. The Parilia Festival on 21 April was considered to commemorate the anniversary of the city's founding during the late Republic and that aspect of the holiday grew in importance under the Empire until it was fully transformed into the Romaea in ADTemplate:Nbsp121. Most modern historians dismiss these ancient accounts of a single founder descended from a Trojan lineage establishing the city at specific point in time as fiction.
Cultural contextEdit
The conventional division of pre-Roman cultures in Italy deals with cultures which spoke Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages.Template:Sfn The Italic languages, which include Latin, are Indo-European and were spoken, according to inscriptions, in the lower Tiber Valley. It was once thought that Faliscan – spoken north of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber – was a separate language, but inscriptions discovered in the 1980s indicate that Latin was spoken more generally in the area. Etruscan speakers were concentrated in modern Tuscany with a similar language called Raetic spoken on the upper Adige (the foothills of the eastern Italian Alps).Template:Sfn
When drawing a connection between peoples and their languages, a reconstruction emerges with Indo-European peoples arriving in various waves of migrations during the first and second millennia BC: first a western Italic group (including Latin), followed by a central Italic group of Osco-Umbrian dialects, with a late arrival of Greek and Celtic on the Italian peninsula, from across the Adriatic and Alps, respectively. These migrations are generally believed to have displaced speakers of Etruscan and other pre-Indo-European languages; although it is possible that Etruscan arrived also by migration, almost certainly before 2000 BC.Template:Sfn
The start of the Iron age saw a gradual increase in social complexity and population that led to the emergence of proto-urban settlements in central and northern Italy writ large. These proto-urban agglomerations were normally clusters of smaller settlements that were insufficiently distant to be separated communities; over time, they would unify.Template:Sfn
Archaeological evidenceEdit
There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern Rome from at least 5,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures any Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.Template:Sfn Traces of occupation have been found in the general regionTemplate:Sndincluding Lavinium and the coast near ArdeaTemplate:Sndgoing back to the 15th century BC.Template:Sfn The area was home to the Apennine and Proto-Villanovan cultures before the advent of the more regional Latial culture.
Bronze AgeEdit
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.Template:Sfn 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,Template:Sfn and a safe ford of the TiberTemplate:Sfn with shallow and slow-flowing water even if Tiber Island had not yet formed,Template:Sfn one of the river's major fords between Etruria and Campania.Template:Sfn This advantageous but exposed location was closely flanked by the Capitoline, which at that time rose sharply from the more easterly bank of the TiberTemplate:Sfn and provided a ready citadel for defense and for control of the salt production along the river and at its mouth.Template:Sfn The other hills and the marshes between them provided similarly defensible points for settlement.
Accordingly, thick deposits of manureTemplate:Sfn and ancient pottery shards have been discovered in the Forum Boarium from the middle of the Bronze Age.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Some 13th centuryTemplate:NbspBC 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.Template:Sfn The Capitoline currently seems to have been the earliest settledTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn By 1000 BC, a necropolis existed in the Forum for cremation graves.Template:Sfn By the early Iron Age Template:Circa, 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfnm
Eighth and seventh centuries BCEdit
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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.Template:Sfn There is, however, no evidence linking any settlement on the Quirinal hill with the Sabines, as is alleged by some ancient accounts.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
The first evidence of a wall appears in the middle or late eighth century on the Palatine, dated between 730 and 720 BC.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn The discovery of gates and streets connected to the wall, with the remains of various huts, suggest that Rome had by this time:
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.Template:Sfn The development of city-states was likely a Greek innovation that spread through the Mediterranean from 850 to 750 BC.Template:Sfnm 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.Template:Sfn Certainly, by 600 BC, a process of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} was complete and a unified Rome – reflected in the production of a central forum area, public monumental architecture, and civic structures – had by then been formed.Template:Sfnm
Ancient tradition and founding mythsEdit
By the late Republic, the usual Roman origin myth held that their city was founded by a Latin named Romulus on the day of the Parilia Festival (21 April) in some year around 750Template:NbspBC.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Important aspects of the myth concerned Romulus's murder of his twin Remus, the brothers' descent from the god Mars and the royal family of Alba Longa, and that dynasty's supposed descent from Aeneas, himself supposedly descended from the goddess Aphrodite and the royal family of Troy.Template:Sfn The accounts in the first book of Livy's History of RomeTemplate:Sfn and in Vergil's Aeneid were particularly influential. Some accounts further asserted that there had been a Mycenaean Greek settlement on the Palatine (later dubbed Pallantium) even earlier than Romulus and Remus, at some time prior to the Trojan War.<ref>Template:Harvnb; Verg. Aen., 8; Template:Harvnb. Also noted are modern beliefs in Myceneaean influence: Template:Cite book. Momigliano dismisses such beliefs, however, as overly reliant on "doubtful etymologies and ... unorthodox use of the legend of Evander".</ref>
Modern scholars disregard most of the traditional accounts as myths.Template:Sfn There is no persuasive archaeological evidence for either the Romulan foundation or for the idea of an early Greek settlement.Template:Sfn Even the name Romulus is now generally believed to have been retrojected from the city's name – glossed as "Mr Rome" by the classicist Mary Beard – rather than reflecting a historical or actual figure.Template:Sfn Some scholars, particularly Andrea Carandini, have argued that it remains possible that these foundation myths reflect actual historical events in some form and that the city and Roman Kingdom were in fact founded by a single actor in some way. This remains a minority viewpoint in present scholarshipTemplate:Sfn and highly controversial in the absence of further evidence, with the arguments made by Carandini and others appearing to rest on highly tendentious interpretations of what is currently known with certainty from scientific excavations.Template:Sfn
The Romans' origin myths, however, provide evidence of how the Romans conceived of themselves as a mixture of different ethnic groups and foreign influences,Template:Sfn The Romans took the foundation of their own new cities seriously, undertaking many rituals and attributing many of them to remote antiquity.Template:Sfn They long maintained the Hut of Romulus, a primitive dwelling on the Palatine attributed to their founder, although they had no firm basis for associating it with him specifically.Template:Sfn
Chronological disagreementsEdit
| Ancient historian | Founding year |
|---|---|
| Gnaeus Naevius | Template:CircaTemplate:Sfn |
| Ennius | Template:Circa<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> or Template:Circa<ref>Template:Cite journal.</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Timaeus | 814–13 BC<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Asinius Quadratus | 776 BC<ref>Template:Harvnb, via synchronism with the Eratosthenes' date for the first Olympiad.</ref> |
| Calpurnius Piso | 757, 753, or 751 BC<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Varro and Plutarch | 754–53 BCTemplate:Sfnm<ref>Plut. Rom., 12, claims 21 April 753 BC synchronised with an eclipse; no such eclipse could have been observed in the Mediterranean for several years on either side of that date. Template:Harvnb.</ref> |
| Fasti Capitolini | 753–52 BC<ref>Template:Cite book See Olympiad 6.4.</ref> |
| Dionysius of Halicarnassus | 752–51 BC<ref name=":0">Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:Sfn |
| Polybius | 751–50 BCTemplate:SfnmTemplate:Sfn |
| Cato the Elder and Diodorus | 751 BCTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn<ref>Diodorus, Bibliotheca historica VII. "the city was founded in the second year of the Seventh Olympiad."</ref> |
| Fabius Pictor | 748–47 BCTemplate:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Cincius Alimentus | 729–28 BCTemplate:Sfnm |
While the Romans believed that their city had been founded by an eponymous founder at a specific time,Template:Sfn when that occurred was disputed by the ancient historians. The earliest dates placed it Template:CircaTemplate:NbspBC 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;Template:Sfn these dates are attested as early as the 4th centuryTemplate:NbspBC. 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.Template:Sfnm
Most scholars view the move from a foundation date in the 1100s to one in the 700s to have come from Roman calculations from estimates of the lengths of the republican and regal periods.Template:Sfn Their attempts to estimate how long the regal period lasted, however, are largely rejected as synthetic calculations.Template:Sfn It may also be that the date of the city's foundation was assigned from Greek historiography,Template:Sfn especially influenced by Timaeus of Tauromenium (born Template:Circa) who may have been the first to move the founding of the city from the era of the Trojan war to the more historical 814 BC.<ref>Template:Harvnb, noting there is no clear rationale for the selection of 814–13 BC. But see Template:Harvnb, suggesting 814 BC comes from synchronism with the Macedonian dynasty or as five saecula before 263 BC and the start of the first Punic war.</ref> A later intervention, possibly at the hands of Fabius Pictor (born Template:Circa) or his source Diocles of Peparethus, then placed the foundation date within the Olympiads (ie within "historical" time), settling eventually on Template:Circa.Template:Sfn Dionysius of Halicarnassus (born Template:Circa) placed it in the first year of the 7th Olympiad, that is, 752 BC.<ref name=":0" /> The later Chronographia of Eusebius (Template:Circa) accepts this dating, but his Canons notably place the event three years earlier, in 755 BC, while also using Dionysius' date as the beginning of Romulus' reign.<ref>Eusebius Chronographia 109-110, Canones 6-7th Olympiads.</ref>
From Claudius's Secular Games in ADTemplate:Nbsp47 to Hadrian's Romaea in ADTemplate:Nbsp121, the official date seems to have used the chronology established by Varro in the late 1st centuryTemplate:NbspBC, placing Rome's founding in 753Template:NbspBC. Augustus's Fasti running to ADTemplate:Nbsp13 and the Secular Games celebrated at Rome's 900th and 1000th anniversaries under Antoninus Pius and [[Philip the Arab|PhilipTemplate:NbspI]], meanwhile, used dates computed from a foundation a year later in 752Template:NbspBC. Despite known errors in Varro's work,<ref>Template:Harvnb; Template:Harvnb; Template:Harvnb</ref> it is the former date that has become the most repeated in modernity and is still used for computing the AUC calendar era.Template:Sfnm
Romulus and RemusEdit
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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 pregnantTemplate:Sndallegedly raped by the war god MarsTemplate:Sndand delivers the two illegitimate brothers.<ref>Template:Harvnb Template:Harvnb.</ref> 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 cave 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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} or she-wolf.)Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
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,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> 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.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb.</ref>
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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
AeneasEdit
The 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.<ref>Template:Harvnb.</ref> 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
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 Template:Circa. 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.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Harvnb, citing Template:Harvnb.</ref> The later descendants of the royal lineage of Alba Longa eventually produce Romulus and Remus, setting up the events of their mythological story.Template:Sfn
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,Template:Sfn 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,Template:Sfnm Template:Cn span
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;<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> this was in part due to Greek historians' eagerness to construct narratives purporting that the Italians were actually descended from Greeks and their heroes.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>Template:Sfn These narratives were accepted by non-Greek peoples due Greek historiography's prestige and claims to systematic validity.Template:Sfn
Archaeological evidence shows that worship of Aeneas had been established at Lavinium by the sixth century BC.Template:Sfn Similarly, a cult to Hercules had been established at the Ara Maxima in Rome during the archaic period.Template:Sfn By the early fifth century BC, these stories had become entrenched in Roman historical beliefs.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
Other mythsEdit
There was no single mythic tradition of Rome's founding.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> One story told how Romos, a son of Odysseus and Circe, was the one who founded Rome.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn
See alsoEdit
- Natale di Roma, a modern festival commemorating the founding of the city
ReferencesEdit
CitationsEdit
Modern sourcesEdit
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Ancient sourcesEdit
External linksEdit
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