Romans knew the founding myth was false and used it as a diplomatic tool
Rome's origin myths were not history carved in stone but an elastic narrative Romans used to negotiate, to absorb other peoples, and to digest civil war; the archaeology even contradicts the 753 BC founding date outright.
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In the early tradition, Aeneas never actually reached Rome
In Homer, Aeneas is only a minor prince on the Trojan side; when the city falls he carries his father out, and the Greeks let him go out of respect for that piety. He then wanders the Mediterranean, and many cities claimed he had passed through them — but almost no tradition brings him to Rome. Even in Virgil's Aeneid he merely looks over the ground where Rome would stand, finds a community already there, and turns away. His real attachments are Lavinium and Alba Longa; he is linked to Rome only through the bloodline of his descendants. Jeremy stresses that this thread is "very rough, very vague" — nothing like the direct line later Romans claimed.
— Jeremy ArmstrongRome stitched its foreign policy together with characters everyone knew were invented
The function of these origin stories was not to record history but to serve as connection points. Because Aeneas wandered so widely, many communities could claim a link to him. By the third century BC, Segesta in Sicily was using Aeneas to get close to Rome: "we are both connected to this man." Jeremy says local elites mostly knew the figure was fiction, but it was "useful and pleasant" — it let them negotiate real political treaties on the strength of it. Greek myth used Odysseus the same way, as a diplomatic go-between for one place after another. Rome's foreign policy, in other words, was stitched together out of characters like this.
— Jeremy ArmstrongThe she-wolf nursing the twins predates every written account we have
The Romulus and Remus story we read today comes mainly from Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, all writing centuries after the events. But the core image — twins suckled by a she-wolf — was already standing in the city of Rome around 300 BC, in a statue group dedicated by the Ogulnius brothers, and it appears on early silver coinage. So the story was fixed in elite culture by the end of the fourth century BC at the latest. Jeremy also points out that some details — pastoral raiding, Indo-European mythic motifs — feel archaic, not like something someone in the middle Republic would invent, which implies a long oral tradition behind it.
— Jeremy ArmstrongThe she-wolf is not a metaphor for a prostitute — she is a wolf
"Lupa" means both she-wolf and prostitute, and later writers took it to mean the wife of the shepherd Faustulus. Jeremy's view is the opposite: in the early images it is a wolf, and a wolf that has just given birth is one of the most ferocious animals on the Italian peninsula. Wolves appear throughout the origin stories of Italic peoples such as the Samnites, standing for migration, settlement and ferocity. In choosing the she-wolf, Romans were writing that extreme violence into their own descent. The "prostitute" reading looks more like later Romans humanizing the image in hindsight — he says explicitly that this is only his instinct, not a settled conclusion.
— Jeremy ArmstrongThe fratricide encodes Rome absorbing its own Latin kin
Remus is not just a supporting character in a Roman story; he is a Latin hero in his own right, whose name turns up in other Latin communities, while the name Romulus means, literally, "the Roman." The killing of one brother by the other therefore corresponds to the fourth century BC, when Rome conquered and absorbed the other Latin towns: same stock, yet killed and then integrated. Writing this passage in the first century BC, Livy may also have been using it to answer the trauma of civil war. Jeremy's reading: the story concedes that brother killing brother is terrible, but the point lies in the aftermath — everyone gathers back together into a single community. That is Rome's narrative template for digesting civil war.
— Jeremy ArmstrongRome grew by abducting and recruiting people, not only by fighting
After Remus dies, Romulus turns quickly into a cool-headed founder: he finishes the walls, establishes religious rites, and divides the population into 30 curiae, all of which later Romans saw as the germ of their constitution. He also makes Rome an "open asylum" — anyone willing to come may join — but the arrivals are mostly men, and women are lacking. So he schemes to invite the neighbouring Sabines to a festival and has his men carry off the most beautiful women. Jeremy compares an early city to a shopping mall that has to find ways of attracting all kinds of "customers." For Romans, expansion ran on three mechanisms at once — force, intermarriage and attraction — all of them ways of taking outsiders in.
— Jeremy ArmstrongRomans felt no need to settle on one ending for their founder
Romulus's end is "extremely messy." He disappears while reviewing the army on the Campus Martius and never returns. Two versions dominate: he is wrapped up by lightning and becomes a god, or the senators tear him apart alive — which is hard not to read against Caesar's death. What Jeremy finds most intriguing is that Livy and other writers set the two endings side by side and treat both as acceptable accounts. This founding father can be a god ascending or a tyrant executed by his own people. Romans did not need a single verdict, and that contradiction is exactly what gave later politicians room to take what suited them.
— Jeremy ArmstrongThe founding date was reverse-engineered to line up with Greek chronology
Jeremy cites drilling data from Andrea Brock and others: the Tiber shifted its course around 600 BC, and Rome's geological layout changed with it. That leaves an obvious break between the traditional founding date of 753 BC and the Rome that later served as the city's centre. But he says Romans would not have been troubled by this — in their eyes a city was more a meeting place, an idea and a set of relationships than a physical thing. They used 753 to align with Greek chronology (the first Olympic Games are 776 BC), and anything earlier than that could rest only on "reasonable guesses." The gap between myth and history was not a problem for ancient Romans.
— Jeremy ArmstrongIn their own words · checked verbatim
Well, it's a very sketchy, very fuzzy, very, you know.Tentage just link it's not particularly direct even in the much later literary sources.
Jeremy Armstrong11:09
It is a very violent place.And, you know, that kind of animal.You know, ferocity that that that's coming through and embodied by the shoe Wolf. that that is a part of their origin stories.
Jeremy Armstrong32:06
But what should we do afterwards well exactly what happened when Remus was killed? Everybody came together.
Jeremy Armstrong43:14
he was either murdered by other Romans or he becomes a God these are both equally valid options
Jeremy Armstrong49:30
The Tber changed course, and actually the entire geology of Rome changed pretty dramatically about 600 BCE.
Jeremy Armstrong57:07
Figures
| Rome's traditional founding date | 753 BC | 55:00 |
| Year of the first ancient Olympic Games | 776 BC | 55:00 |
| When the Tiber shifted its course | around 600 BC | 57:07 |
| When the she-wolf and twins statue group was set up | around 300 BC | 22:33 |
| When Ennius was writing | around 200 BC | 16:05 |
Glossary
- Rex
- Usually translated as "king," but Jeremy cautions that the modern meaning of "king" misleads for Rome's earliest leaders.
- Pomerium
- The ritual boundary marked out by Romulus's wall, dividing what is inside the city from what is outside.
- Casa Romuli
- Post-hole remains on the Palatine that Romans regarded as Romulus's own former hut.
- Lupa
- Latin for both she-wolf and sex worker; in the early versions it is the animal, a she-wolf.
How to listen
Anyone interested in Roman history or the politics of myth; editors making history podcasts or writing on Roman subjects especially need the archaeology in the second half.
The opening placement of Aeneas in Homer can be skimmed — go straight to the connection-point analysis after 11:09.