Romulus

Romulus was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. According to Livy and Plutarch, he and his twin brother Remus were sons of the Vestal Rhea Silvia and, as she claimed, of the god Mars. Left to die in the Tiber, they were suckled by a she-wolf and raised by a shepherd. Romulus founded the city on the Palatine Hill, ruled it for thirty-seven years and then vanished from the earth.

Birth and Upbringing

Numitor, king of Alba Longa, was driven from his throne by his younger brother Amulius, who killed Numitor’s sons and made his daughter Rhea Silvia a Vestal virgin so that she would have no children (Livy 1.3.10–11). The Vestal was violated and bore twins. She named Mars as their father, “either because she really believed it, or because the fault might appear less heinous if a deity were the cause”. Amulius threw her into prison and ordered the boys to be thrown into the river (Livy 1.4.1–3).

The Tiber was in flood, so the men carrying the children left them at the edge of the water, where the Ficus Ruminalis later stood. When the water went down, a she-wolf from the hills came to the cradle, gave the babies her teats, and was found licking them by the king’s chief herdsman, Faustulus. He took them to his hut and gave them to his wife Larentia to raise. Livy adds that some thought Larentia, nicknamed “she-wolf” by the shepherds, was the origin of the wolf story (Livy 1.4.4–7).

Romulus and Remus Regain Alba

As young men the twins hunted in the woods, fought off wild beasts and robbers and shared their spoils among the shepherds (Livy 1.4.8–9). In a quarrel with Numitor’s herdsmen Remus was captured and handed over to Numitor. Faustulus told Romulus the truth about their birth, and Numitor, seeing the youth’s age and bearing, came to guess that he was his grandson. The brothers killed Amulius, and Numitor was acknowledged king of Alba (Livy 1.5.5–7, 1.6.1–2).

The Founding of Rome

The brothers then wished to found a city where they had been exposed. They agreed to decide by augury who should name the city and rule it: Romulus took the Palatine as his place of observation and Remus the Aventine (Livy 1.6.3–4). Remus saw six vultures first, but Romulus then saw twelve, and each party hailed its own man as king, one side relying on the earlier sign and the other on the greater number (Livy 1.7.1–2).

The quarrel turned to violence and Remus was killed. Livy gives the more common account that Remus leapt scornfully over the newly built walls and Romulus killed him, crying, “So shall it be henceforth with every one who leaps over my walls” (Livy 1.7.2). The city was called Rome after Romulus, and he first fortified the Palatine (Livy 1.7.3). Virgil’s Jupiter prophesies that Romulus, nursed by the she-wolf, will build the walls of Mars and call the people Romans after himself (Virgil, Aeneid 1.274–277).

Asylum, Senate and Army

To increase his people Romulus opened a place of refuge between two groves on the slope of the Capitol, and a crowd of free men and slaves from the neighbouring states fled there (Livy 1.8.5–6). He created a hundred senators, called Patres, whose descendants were the patricians (Livy 1.8.7). Plutarch says he divided the men of military age into companies of three thousand foot and three hundred horse, each called a legion (Plutarch, Romulus 13.1). Livy says he kept a bodyguard of three hundred men called Celeres (Livy 1.15.8).

The Sabine Women

Rome soon equalled its neighbours in war but had too few women, and the neighbouring peoples refused intermarriage. Romulus announced games in honour of Neptune Equester, the Consualia, and at the festival the Roman young men seized the daughters of the visiting Sabines (Livy 1.9.1–6). The Sabine king Titus Tatius made war and took the Capitoline, but the abducted women ran between the armies and begged fathers and husbands to stop. Peace was made, the two peoples were united under joint rule with Rome as the seat of government, and the Romans took the name Quirites from the Sabine town of Cures (Livy 1.10.1, 1.12.1, 1.13.1–5).

Death and Deification

Livy tells that Romulus was reviewing his army at the Goat’s Marsh in the Campus Martius when a violent storm wrapped him in cloud, and he was never seen on earth again. The senators said he had been carried away to heaven and the crowd hailed him as a god, son of a god, king and father of the city. Livy adds that some quietly believed that the senators had torn him to pieces, and that Proculus Julius calmed the people by swearing that Romulus had appeared to him and had said that Rome would be the head of the world (Livy 1.16.1–8). Plutarch gives the same accounts and has Romulus say that he will be their propitious deity, Quirinus (Plutarch, Romulus 27.5–28.3). In Ovid’s version Mars asks Jupiter to take his son to heaven; Romulus is carried off in a storm at the Goat’s Marsh, and later appears to Proculus Julius and bids the Quirites honour the new Quirinus (Ovid, Fasti 2.475–512). Livy gives his reign as thirty-seven years (Livy 1.21.6).

Romulus Sources

Livy 1.3.10–11, 1.4–1.16, 1.21.6; Plutarch, Romulus 13.1, 27.5–28.3; Virgil, Aeneid 1.274–277; Ovid, Fasti 2.475–512.

See Also: Remus, Mars, Rhea Silvia, Numitor, Quirinus, Sabine Women