 And this is the city that we're talking about. We're panning from the capital line hill on the tabularium space on to the Roman form, the Colosseum in the distance. Happy birthday, Rome. And we just want to say a few words today about Rome, the founding of the city. According to the Romans was April 21st. Let's talk about who founded Rome, the actual date. Where exactly was Rome founded? The key locations related to the foundation of the city, how the Romans celebrated, and then ultimately, you know, how we're celebrating today and why it still matters. This is a nice alter that we have in the Vatican museums and it actually narrates on four different levels part of that myth that leads to the birth of Ramish and Remus. So it's the rape of Rea Silvia, the abandonment of the twins, and then their discovery by a she-wolf. They're suckled by a she-wolf in a grotto known as the Luperkall. So here she is, the capital line she-wolf in the capital line museums. The date of the she-wolf was contested between the fifth century BC and even in medieval date, but definitely the twins are added in about the 15th century. So we have something that stands as a symbol of the city, still variously interpreted, still argued about, but still a famous symbol of the city. Without the she-wolf, you wouldn't have Romulus founding the city of Rome. And of course, the she-wolf was sacred to Mars. Mars is the father of Romulus and Remus. It all ties neatly together. Who founded Rome? Well, if you look at the history books, we look first at the Greeks, the earliest recorded information that we have by the Greeks, Greek historians writing in Greek, is that it was Greeks that founded Rome. But the most pervasive traditions that are recorded when most the information is being debated in the second, third and primarily the first century BCE, it's either Evander and his Arcadians or it's Romulus descended from Aeneas. So these are our two figures that are gonna be perpetually continually mentioned as they say that and they say that. But of course, for the Romans, it has to be Romulus in the end, going against, let's say, what a lot of the Greek traditions are promoting. There's even another one that says that Romus is the son of Odysseus and Cersei during his own travels that brings him eventually to the area of Elysium, Lazio where Cersei actually lived. And what about a date? Again, we have various dates and over time, you get an agreement, you get a canon that's formed who was the founder, ultimately it's Romulus and when was Rome founded? Ultimately what works out for us is 753 BCE. Now, for the Greeks and the Romans, they had their own way of measuring time and really it was for the Romans each year was named after the two consuls of that year. So it just works out for us today in our measuring system, 753 BC. But you see here, some of the dates that get recorded are at the earliest, the Greek historian, Timaeus 814. The Roman historian, Quintus Fabius Pictor, well, it's writing in Greek, but he comes up with 748. And eventually it's oscillating between just a couple of years, 752, 751 and ultimately 753. And we don't just look at Vero, this contemporary of Julius Caesar, even before Vero, it's Atticus who is a contemporary and pen pal of Cicero. And what we have here is a background scene is the abandonment of the twins, a rare scene only depicted here really is one of their marble version of this. But basically this is a painting from a freedman tomb near Porta Majorae on the Esquiline Hill, which was just a fascinating freeze depicting part of the mythology and this life cycle of Romulus as well as Aeneas. But here we have these dates. So it wasn't automatically the Romans were saying it was 753 BC. People change, people tweak the numbers, people try to figure it out, but you can see here by the second century BC, they're pretty much in agreement that it's around the middle of the eighth century BCE. Okay, where was Rome founded? Well, it was found on the Palatine Hill. We have the huts of Romulus to prove it, even though we know that from about 1400 BC, people are living and frequenting these hills. And of course, tying into that is that you see here Romulus in this painting, this fresco by Darth Pino in the Capital Line Museums is consulting, taking the auguries, looking at the flight patterns of birds. He goes to the Palatine Hill, Remus, his twin brother, goes to the Aventine Hill and the story goes that Remus saw the birds first, but Romus saw more. So who has the better sign from the gods? Who's getting the approval from the gods? And ultimately that dispute is not settled because Remus in some way is killed, killed by Romulus, killed by one of the companions of Romulus and so forth. But we know that the earliest settlement then, according to the Romans, is going to be the Palatine Hill and you can go to the Palatine Hill today, right by the house of Augustus on the left, and you can take a look at right in the tuff, the cuttings from the post holes of the huts going back at least to the eight through 10th centuries BCE. Very, very impressive archeological discovery at the end of the 19th century. And this is the kind of a construct. This is holding Ash, the remains, the cremated remains of somebody. This is in the Etruscan Museum, which we also have a video of on Ancient Rome Live, but you have versions of this also discovered on the Palatine Hill that are in the Palatine Antiquarium today. But the idea is even though we just have the post holes, we have a pretty good idea of the architecture associated with it. Key locations, Palatine Hill, the Avantein Hill, where each of the brothers went, the huts, the Lupercal, we talked about on this map here where the she-wolf suckled the twins that washed ashore from the Tiber River, which incidentally is a great place to wash ashore because it's where the force of the river, flowing north to south, is the force of that river is broken up by a big sandbar that's gonna become the Tiber Island. That's the original harbor area. That's where you have the Aria Sacra of San Amobono, where you have temples and trading going on at least from the 7th century. Just beyond it is what we'll develop into the Roman Forum. And then you have this original pomerium, this magical boundary created by Romulus according to tradition that basically hits all of the four corners of the Palatine Hill. And that's the tradition and some of the archeological evidence bears that out that you have an early city formation and even in some parts what's identified as the early walls of Romulus. Again, back to that painting. Here is that scene then in the 16th century where they're showing the plow is being attached to the oxen and then it's Romulus who's directing as a general but he would have been the one that would create that furrow, create that magical boundary line in the land that then would be subsequently followed by the construction of the walls of the early city. Now, how did the Romans celebrate? So there is a festival on April 23rd called the Perilia, honoring the goddess Palaeus on the Palatine Hill. That's where she lived. That's where we get the name Palatine Hill. Palatine comes from Palaeus. Palaeus is honored with Perilia on April 21st. It's a, you know, harkening back to a time when Rome was purely agricultural. It's about cleaning out the stalls. It's about purification. And in part of this process, you start the fire, you light the sulfur, you're sweeping things out and ultimately by this tradition, you jump over the flames, which often has various ideas about why you're jumping over the flames. But is it remembering Aeneas escaping Troy? Is it tied to marking the boundary of the city? You're boiling, you're giving boiled wine. You're pouring milk. You're offering millet to this goddess Palaeus and ultimately with the passing of time, more and more is it associated with the founding of the city. Caesar is going to mark that with some games. Caligula is going to add a procession. And then most famously you can say it's Hadrian that builds his temple of Venus Felix and Roma Eterna. There's the temple right over there on the Velia Hill. I'm looking at it from the Colosseum. So it's not built in 121, April 21st, but they're starting it. It's completed in 135. It's one of the greatest, if not the largest temple in the city of Rome. And it really was magnificent. And then reconstructed after a fire by the emperor Maxentius. But with the games, these games initiated by Hadrian in the Circus Maximus, he calls now the festival of Rome versus Perilia. And think about that temple then, Venus and Rome. Venus, the mother of Aeneas, whose descendants are Romanias and Remus. Roma, the manifestation, the idea made flesh. This is the goddess of the city. Roma actually constructed, conceived by the Greeks when they got defeated by the Romans. How do we worship you? How do we venerate you? They created this goddess. The goddess of represented the ideal of the city of Rome. And then we jump forward to, I don't want to forget Philip the Arab, from 244 to 249, he celebrates 1,000 years of Rome with games in 248 between April 21st and April 23rd. And we of course can't forget the Pantheon today. I've got a video on this on my YouTube channel, youtube.com.com. Sorry, sorry. You've got the light streaming down, hits the doorway on the birthday of Rome, like this, at 1pm, actually in this shot here, it's not quite at the doorway, but the reality of today was it was cloudy and rainy and of course the Pantheon in this current moment is still closed like last year. Here's a good view of the temple of Venus and Rome. You get a sense of how gigantic it is. The columns would have been about 60 foot shafts. The shafts for the Pantheon are 40 foot shafts. So it was a monster temple in the city of Rome. And this is what we think, the depiction of the Colt statue of, we probably think Venus or Rome would probably Venus because of the clothing off of one's shoulder. And anyways, it's a great, great large scale figure that we have in Palazzo Massimo today. And it has been actually repainted in several points, but we do have this wonderful suggestion of what the seated goddess would have been in one of the two abses that were back to back in this magnificent temple. So the Romans enjoyed their history, their founder, and like us, we like festivals and anniversaries celebrating the founding of at the time, the greatest, most successful empire in the Mediterranean was then something to shout out about and the people of Rome and the emperors were very proud to be a part of that tradition.