 Who founded Rome? When was it founded? In this episode on Ancient Rome Live, we're going to be tackling the big issues. The main myths of Romulus and Remus, but also the myth of Aeneas. We're also going to take a look at the geology of Rome. What an impact that had on the foundation of the city, and also where the Romans would build, and how they would build. And finally, we're going to take a look at the archaeological evidence, going beyond the stories and looking at the evidence of early burials and early inhabitants in the city of Rome. All of this in the episode, Foundation of the City. There are a lot of disparate ideas about the city founder, and when the city was founded. But by the late Republic, the idea is centered on two key characters. The foundation was by Romulus in 753 BC, and it was celebrated on April 21st, the agricultural festival of the Perylia on the Palatine Hill. And the other character was Aeneas, the ancestor of Romulus, a refugee Trojan prince who would escape from the destruction of Troy and made his way to Italy. This was all canonized by the authors in the Augustan period, Livy and Virgil. Earlier Republican historians, both Roman and Greek, actually argued about who the founder was and the date of the foundation, sometimes taking it back as far as 1100 BC and as late as 728 BC. But the Perylian festival, originally concerned with the purification of shepherds and their herds in the countryside, became closely associated with the foundation date, probably due to the fact that Romulus and Remus were first raised by shepherds. The canonized legend held that Romulus and Remus were the grandsons of Numitur, the king of Abulanga in today's Castelli Romani. But when his brother Emulius deposed Numitur and made his daughter Reyes Silvia a Vestal Virgin, she then became pregnant, raped by Mars the god of war and delivered twins, Romulus and Remus. Emulius ordered that those children be left to die along the Tiber River. But they were suckled by a she-wolf in the Lupercal grotto on the Palatine hill and were discovered by local shepherds, Falchilus and his wife Acha Laurentina. Falchilus raised the twins as shepherds who eventually organized the locals and challenged and deposed Emulius, restoring their grandfather Numitur to his throne. And then left to establish a new city where, well, where they had been rescued and where they grew up on the Palatine hill. Each brother took the auguries on a hill to get a sign from the gods. Remus went to the Aventine hill and Romulus on the Palatine hill. Remus viewed vultures in the sky first, a worthy sign from the gods, then Romulus saw vultures greater in number. They got into a dispute as to who was being favored by the gods more and in that dispute the story goes Romulus killed Remus. This later became a quintessential moment in Roman myth that would recall Rome's conflict of orders, the patricians vs. the plebeians, and later civil wars. Romulus went on to successfully found his city on the Palatine hill according to tradition, creating a magical boundary line, the pulmarium, around the original settlement on the Palatine hill. For his new city, Romulus created the asylum on the Capitoline hill, stole the Savine maidens from the neighboring Savine people, known as the rape of the Savine women. He went to war against them, which led to the punishment of Tarpeia on the Capitoline hill and the creation of the Lachus Cursus, the spring in the Roman forum. He ultimately became the god Quirinus. The other great mythological protagonist was Aeneas, the Trojan prince that escaped Greek's destruction of Troy. By the late 5th century BC, there were authors writing about Aeneas' survival, and by the late 4th century, there started to be created the connection of the figure of Aeneas with Rome as it began to more formally have associations and relationships with the Greek world. Roman and Greek historians ultimately worked out the relationship between Aeneas and Romulus. It's in Livy's first book that he recounts how Aeneas, who was the son of and Caesis, the Trojan prince, and the goddess Aphrodite, left Troy after his destruction during the Trojan War. And he went on his own odyssey, bringing with him his young son Ascanius and his elderly father and Caesis eventually arriving in Italy. Here they are depicted in a ship, father, son, grandfather, and their epic odyssey led them from Troy all the way to the Latins, making an alliance with the local king Latinus and marrying his daughter Lavinia. Going to war against other local tribes, finally settling and creating his new city, Lavinium. As a result of his own Iliad, his own battles against the local Latins, Aeneas conquered the Alban Hills, and it was his son Ascanius that founded the city Alba Longa, the dominant city in the region, ultimately descendants of Ascanius would lead to the birth of Ramius and Remus. Thereby setting up an incredible lineage for Rome, as Ramius was the son of Mars but also descended from Venus through Aeneas. We pass on now from mythology to geology, and we're looking at the side of the Capitoline Hill and we can see here two different accretions of volcanic material from eruptions from the Alban Hills just 30 kilometers away from the center of Rome. And this is essential to the history of Rome. Beside the stories, we have to look at the actual physical location of Rome. Without the volcanic eruptions, we wouldn't have those hills where Romulus first founded the city. The Hills of Rome are made of volcanic material that is ejected from eruptions starting a half a million years ago. So you have the Hills of Rome by chance then formed from the deposits of this material in a flood plain. So here we have an example. I'm at the base of the Capitoline Hill. So if you look in each of the famous Hills of Rome, the Palatine Hill, the Capitoline Hill and so forth, if you look beyond the modern accretions and buildings and so forth, when you can see the actual original hill revealed, you get this volcanic material. And of course, initially, it's a prime source for building material. You can extract the blocks and that's why you have early Rome made of tuff, made of the Hills of Rome itself. From the myth and geology of Rome, let's move to the archaeology, primarily tombs. They tell us just how early Rome actually was, how early it was occupied. There are barrels and traces of inhabitations going back to the Bronze Age, 1700 to 1350 on the Capitoline Hill. With business activity focused on the Tiber's nearby river harbor, located by an easy place to forward the river by the Tiber Island, settlements on the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine Hill would grow. Let's take the time period of 1000 BC. We have an acropolis documented on the Capitoline Hill. Here is a standout tomb dating from the 10th and 9th century. Reconstruction of that actual tomb, its skeleton and the grave goods. Contemporarily, we can go down into the area of the Forum where there is a substantial acropolis that would eventually go out of use, but it was in use from the 10th century BC to the 5th century BC. And today this is how it looks in the Forum, right next to the imposing Temple of Antoninus Pius and Felstina. There remains on the Palatine Hill of a hut settlement that date from the 9th to 8th centuries BC with increased subsequent development. Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, major settlements are documented on the Palatine, the Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Kylian Escoline and Velia. Coming back to the Palatine by the mid 8th century, there was a wall circuit around the hill. Larger residences, even places of cult, and more focus on the area that would become the Forum. On top of the Palatine, where we have those huts, they were continually built in the same location. And it was a well-known fact down to the time of Augustus when he built his house in the Palatine that he was literally next to the huts of Romulus, periodically rebuilt in the ancient fashion. Such was the foundation of Rome. It was tied to myth and oral tradition. The geology of the settlements, its hills created by volcanic eruptions and an incredibly rich archaeological record that documents the earliest settlements of what would become Rome. This video was made possible through the C.A.A.S. Washingtonia Award.