Romulus

Livy traces Romulus's line to the kings of Alba Longa. Amulius drove out his elder brother Numitor, killed Numitor's sons, and made his niece Rhea Silvia a Vestal Virgin so that she could have no children. She bore twins anyway and named Mars as their father. Livy adds that she may have believed it, or may have wanted a god to carry the blame. Plutarch records a darker rumour: Amulius himself, dressed in armour, was the father.

Amulius ordered the babies drowned in the Tiber. The river was in flood, so his servants left them at the edge of the overflow. Livy says a thirsty she-wolf found them and gave them her teats, and the royal herdsman Faustulus took them home to his wife Larentia. Plutarch adds a woodpecker that helped feed them. Both creatures were sacred to Mars, he says, which is why the mother's claim was believed. Ovid's Fasti has the wolf give her name to the Lupercal, and Plutarch says the priests of the Lupercalia begin their run where Romulus is said to have been exposed (Life of Romulus 21). Plutarch's essay on the Fortune of the Romans credits Fortuna with laying the foundations of Romulus's life and Virtue with finishing the building.

Grown up, the twins lived as herdsmen and raided brigands. Remus was captured and handed to Numitor, who began to recognise his grandson, while Faustulus told Romulus the truth about their birth. The brothers attacked the palace from two sides and killed Amulius. They restored Numitor to the throne of Alba, then left to found a city where they had been exposed.

They quarrelled over who would name and rule it, and took the auspices: Romulus on the Palatine, Remus on the Aventine. Remus saw six vultures first; Romulus then saw twelve. Plutarch reports a version in which Romulus lied about his twelve. The quarrel ended with Remus dead, told in several ways below, and the city took Romulus's name. Livy says the one foreign rite he adopted was the cult of Hercules at the Ara Maxima, as though he sensed that courage could win a man immortality. Plutarch says Romulus drove its boundary furrow with a bronze ploughshare drawn by a bull and a cow, and that the founding fell on 21 April, the shepherds' festival of the Parilia.

To fill the city, Romulus opened an asylum for fugitives and created a hundred senators, the Patres. When the neighbours refused intermarriage, he invited them to games he called the Consualia, and his men carried off the Sabine daughters. The wars that followed produced the first spolia opima: Romulus killed the king of Caenina and dedicated his armour to Jupiter Feretrius, founding Rome's first temple. When the Sabines took the citadel and routed the Romans, he vowed a temple to Jupiter Stator, the Stayer, and turned the battle. Ovid's Metamorphoses adds that when Juno opened a gate to the Sabines, the nymphs of a spring beside the shrine of Janus heated their waters with sulphur and flooded it. The Sabine women then ran between the armies, and the two peoples merged under a shared kingship with the Sabine king Titus Tatius.

After Tatius was killed at Lavinium, Romulus ruled alone and defeated Fidenae and Veii. Livy says he was more popular with the people than with the patricians, and above all with his soldiers. While he reviewed the army at the Goat's Marsh in the Campus Martius, a thunderstorm wrapped him in cloud, and he was never seen on earth again. Proculus Julius later swore that Romulus had come down from heaven to him. In Plutarch's telling, Romulus announced that he would now be their god, Quirinus. Livy says the Romans then offered the crown to the Sabine Numa Pompilius, a man of Cures known for justice and piety (Ab Urbe Condita 1.18).

The death of Remus is told three ways. Livy's first version has him killed in the brawl after the augury, with no killer named. His "more common report" has Romulus kill him for jumping the new walls, with the words "So shall it be henceforth with every one who leaps over my walls." Plutarch says Remus was struck as he leapt the trench, by Romulus in some accounts and by his companion Celer in others. Ovid's Fasti gives the blow to Celer alone, and has Romulus hide his tears, then weep at the pyre for a brother taken from him against his will.

Even the she-wolf had a rational reading in antiquity. Livy notes that some thought Larentia had been nicknamed "she-wolf" by the shepherds for her unchaste life, and that this was the origin of the story. Plutarch makes the same point: the Latin lupa meant both a she-wolf and a woman of loose character, and Acca Larentia, wife of Faustulus, was such a woman. He adds that the priest of Mars still poured libations to her at the Larentalia.

His end is the sharpest dispute. Livy follows the ascent to heaven, but admits that some hinted even then that the senators had torn him limb from limb. Plutarch explains why suspicion fell on them: late in his reign Romulus had grown haughty and ignored the senate. One account he gives has the senators kill him in the temple of Vulcan, cut up the body, and carry the pieces away in their robes. Ovid's Fasti calls that charge false. His Metamorphoses has Mars carry Romulus up with Jupiter's consent, the mortal body melting away like a lead sling-bullet. The apotheosis page compares this with the ascent of Heracles.

As Quirinus, Romulus had a temple on the hill called the Quirinal after him, Plutarch says, and Ovid's Fasti gives him a feast day in February. In the Metamorphoses, his wife Hersilia is carried up by a falling star to join him and renamed Hora. Plutarch records the ancient guesses at the name: from Mars, from Quirites, the name of the citizens, or from quiris, an old word for a spear. He also collects rival origin stories, in which Romulus was a son of Aeneas, or of Latinus and a woman named Roma. Livy counts the kingship from the founding of the City to its end at 244 years. It ended in the revolt that followed the death of Lucretia (Ab Urbe Condita 1.59; Ab Urbe Condita 1.60).