The Founding of Rome

Rome was founded, in the Roman telling, by two brothers who had just given a kingdom away. Romulus and Remus were twins, sons of the Vestal Rhea Silvia, who named Mars as their father. Her uncle Amulius had seized the throne of Alba Longa and made her a Vestal so that she would have no children (Livy 1.3). He had the babies exposed on the Tiber, where a she-wolf suckled them and the herdsman Faustulus took them home (Livy 1.4). Their birth and youth are told on the pages of Romulus and Remus. This page begins where those end.

The founding starts with a killing and a coronation. While the twins attacked Amulius, their grandfather Numitor spread word that an enemy was in the city, to draw the Alban soldiers away to the citadel. Afterwards he called the people together and told them who the young men were. The twins marched through the assembly and saluted him as king, and the crowd ratified it (Livy 1.6).

Why the twins left Alba is told three ways. In Livy they were simply seized with a wish to build a city where they had been exposed. Alba and the Latin towns had people to spare, and the shepherds joined them. A new city seemed likely to dwarf Alba and Lavinium (Livy 1.6). Plutarch gives a practical reason. The brothers would not live in Alba unless as its rulers, and would not rule while their grandfather lived. Slaves and fugitives were also gathering around them (Plutarch, Life of Romulus 9). Dionysius of Halicarnassus makes it Numitor's plan. Numitor wanted the youths to rule a city of their own, and to send away people he suspected of disloyalty (Roman Antiquities 1.85).

The brothers then disagreed about the site. Plutarch says Romulus built Roma Quadrata, "square Rome", and wanted the city there. Remus laid out a strong precinct on the Aventine, called the Remonium (Life of Romulus 9). Dionysius has Romulus favour the Palatine, where they had been saved and raised. Remus favoured a hill later called Remoria, about thirty stades from Rome (Roman Antiquities 1.85).

Because they were twins, neither could claim precedence by age. Livy says they agreed to ask the gods, by augury, which of them would name the city and rule it. Romulus took the Palatine for his station and Remus the Aventine (Livy 1.6). In Dionysius, Numitor himself set the test, and guards stood by each brother to stop false reports (Roman Antiquities 1.86).

The birds came in two waves. Remus is said to have seen six vultures first. Then twelve appeared to Romulus. Each was hailed as king by his own party, one side arguing from the earlier sighting and the other from the larger number (Livy 1.7). Plutarch adds that some said Romulus lied about his twelve, and that he saw them only once Remus came to him (Life of Romulus 9). Dionysius makes the trick larger. Romulus sent for his brother before he had seen any bird. Six vultures then flew to Remus from the right, and twelve showed themselves only after the two met (Roman Antiquities 1.86). Plutarch says the Romans still watch vultures when they take auguries (Life of Romulus 9).

The city was marked out with a plough. Plutarch says Romulus sent for men from Tuscany, who taught him every detail as a religious rite. A circular trench was dug and filled with first-fruits and a handful of soil from each man's native land. Romulus then shod a plough with a bronze ploughshare, yoked a bull and a cow, and drove a deep furrow around the boundary. Those who followed turned every clod inward, toward the city (Life of Romulus 11). That line was the pomerium, the sacred boundary. Where a gate would stand, the ploughman lifted the plough and left the ground unbroken. Plutarch says this is why the Romans held the whole wall sacred except the gates (Life of Romulus 11). Dionysius also has Romulus plough a furrow with a bull and a cow. He says the Romans kept the custom when founding cities (Roman Antiquities 1.88).

Ovid tells the same rite in a shepherd's key. His Romulus digs the trench to solid rock, throws in fruits and local earth, and sets an altar and a fire on top. He then ploughs with a white cow and a snow-white steer. He prays to Jupiter, Father Mavors and Mother Vesta that the city may rule a conquered world. Jupiter answers with thunder on the left (Fasti 4.809-856).

Remus died at the wall, and the ancient writers cannot agree how. Livy gives two versions. In the first, the quarrel over the birds turned to bloodshed and Remus fell in the tumult. In the second, which Livy calls more common, Remus leapt contemptuously over the newly raised walls and Romulus killed him in a rage (Livy 1.7). Plutarch says Remus, angry at the deceit, mocked and obstructed the trench as it was dug. When he leapt across it he was struck, by Romulus in some accounts and by his companion Celer in others. Celer fled to Tuscany, and Plutarch says the Latin word celeres, for swift men, comes from him (Life of Romulus 10).

Ovid gives the blow to Celer alone. Romulus had ordered Celer to kill anyone who crossed the wall or the trench. Remus mocked the low wall and jumped it, and Celer struck him down with a shovel (Fasti 4.837-856). Dionysius prefers a battle. The followers of the two brothers fought, Faustulus died trying to part them, and Remus fell in the fighting (Roman Antiquities 1.87). He gives the wall story only as an alternative. In it Remus leaps the finished wall and Celer kills him with a mattock (Roman Antiquities 1.87). Livy compresses the whole quarrel into a few lines.

Romulus's grief is a detail the later sources add. In Ovid he hides his tears when he hears the news, saying only that so fares the foe who crosses his walls. Then he gives Remus a funeral, kisses the bier and weeps (Fasti 4.837-856). Plutarch has Romulus bury Remus in the Remonium, together with his foster-fathers, before he sets about the building (Life of Romulus 11). Dionysius buries Remus at Remoria. He says Romulus lost the wish to live until his foster-mother Laurentia comforted him (Roman Antiquities 1.87).

Plutarch says it is agreed that the city was founded on 21 April. The Romans kept the day as the birthday of their country. At first, he says, they sacrificed no living creature at the festival, to keep it free of blood. The day was already a pastoral feast called the Parilia (Life of Romulus 12). Ovid ties the founding to the same holiday: the feast of Pales was at hand when the work began (Fasti 4.809-856). Dionysius says the Parilia was one of the greatest Roman festivals, when farmers and herdsmen give thanks for the increase of their cattle. He cannot say whether the day was already a feast or became one because the city was begun on it (Roman Antiquities 1.88).

The year is less settled. Plutarch reports that some tied the founding day to an eclipse seen by the poet Antimachus. He also tells how Varro set his friend Tarutius, an astrologer, to work out the day of the founding from the events of Romulus's life. Plutarch judges that such speculations will attract readers by their novelty and extravagance, not offend them by their fabulous character (Life of Romulus 12).

With his brother gone, Livy says Romulus became sole ruler and the city took his name. His first work was to fortify the Palatine, where he had been raised. He worshipped the other gods by Alban custom but Hercules by Greek rites, the only foreign rite he adopted (Livy 1.7).

A city needs people, so Romulus opened an asylum. Livy places it where, coming down from the Capitol, one finds an enclosed space between two groves. A mixed crowd of freemen and slaves, eager for change, fled there from the neighbouring states. This was the first addition to the strength of the new city (Livy 1.8). Livy calls it an old policy of founders. They gather people of obscure and low origin and give out that they are children of the soil. Plutarch says the sanctuary belonged to the God of Asylum. Romulus gave no one up, neither slave, debtor nor murderer, and claimed a Delphic oracle for it (Life of Romulus 9). Livy adds twelve lictors and a hundred senators, called the Patres. Some thought the twelve came from the twelve vultures, but Livy prefers an Etruscan source (Livy 1.8).