Roman History

1200 – 264 BCE – Rome’s Founding and the Creation of the Republic

Under Augustus the classical founding date of Rome was established to be 753 BCE under Romulus. Archeologists and historians have largely accepted this date if not the story that supports the date. It has only been through the work of modern historians and archeologists that this date has been revised. 1200 – 1000 BCE now tends to be a more acceptable date for the founding of Rome. This shift in dates has largely come from the advent of carbon dating and recent evidence that reveals decay from a period early then the tale of Romulus and Remus.

From the period prior to 500 BCE there is scant evidence that historians can look to in order to reconstruct the Rome of 1200 BCE to 500 BCE. According to ancient tales the founding of Rome began with the Trojan hero Aeneas, who after the fall of Troy, came to Italy where he met the Greek hero Evander. Together they founded the city of Lavinium and Aeneas’ son, Ascanius went on to found the city of Alba Longa. The twelfth Alban king after Ascanius, Numitor, had a daughter Rhea Silvia, the purported mother of Romulus and Remus. Rhea Silvia was forced into the religious order of the Vestal Virgins after her father was deposed by his brother Numitor. Under the order of the Vestal Virigins she became pregnant by the God Mars and bore two sons, Romulus and Remus. When Numintor ordered the offspring killed, Rhea set them a drift on the Tiber where they later washed up on the future site of Rome. After being suckled by a she wolf they were found by a Shepard named Faustulus. Their miraculous rescue prompted them both to found settlements on the future site of Rome. Romulus, however, soon killed his brother in argument. Romulus invited exiles from all over Italy to populate his city. In order to acquire Women, Romulus and his men invaded a near by Sabine village and absconded with the villages Women. The resultant war caused by this invasion eventually led to reconciliation between these two groups and Romulus and the Sabine king Titus Tatius became the first kings of Rome.

This story displays many classical traits of ancient tales and is the result of a merger between Etruscan, Greek, Latin traditions. Though scant few elements of this story can be proven, the connection between these stories is rather natural. The Etruscan’s during the period before Rome’s dominance were the classical enemies of the Greeks in Sicily and Southern Italy. The claim that Aeneas was the founder of their civilization helped to reinforce the Roman belief that Rome, through the Trojans, was the classical enemies of the Greeks.

In accordance with tradition Rome was ruled from 753 to 509 BCE by seven kings, excluding Romulus colleague Titus Tatius. According to Livy, a Roman historian from the period of Augustus, the Roman Republic was born in 509 BCE through the expulsion of a tyrannical king aptly named Tarquin the Proud. Most modern historians agree that Lviy has taken a rather complex story of dynastic struggles and reduced it to a simplified story of dramatic nature. The story features sex, rape virtue and loyalty and tires in a sense to demonstrate the purification of the city. Historians largely disagree with the true nature of the founding of the Republic, though they all agree that the foundation came with a great deal of violence as Archeological evidence suggests that Rome was subject to a great deal of violence and destruction. The next important date in the creation of the Republic is supposed to come in 449 BCE with the creation of the Law of the Twelve Tables. The tables are reported to be the result of a council called the Decemvirs trying to solve difficult period that threatened the early Republic The Laws of the Twelve Tables represent the first written codification of Roman and have arguably been the basis for every subsequent codification of law in Western History. The laws are written in a style that reminiscent of the Ten Commandments. This fact has led several prominent historians to suggest a connection between the two works.

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