ROME WAS FOUNDED APRIL 21,753 BCE

ROME WAS FOUNDED 

APRIL 21,753 BCE

The tale of the founding of Rome is recounted in traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves as the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, twins who were suckled by a she-wolf as infants in the 8th century BC.[1] Another account, set earlier in time, claims that the Roman people are descended from Trojan War hero Aeneas, who escaped to Italy after the war, and whose son, Iulus, was the ancestor of the family of Julius Caesar.[2] The archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern-day Rome, Italy dates from about 14,000 years ago.

Founding myths and sources
Aeneas

Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598. Galleria Borghese, Rome.
The national epic of mythical Rome, the Aeneid of Virgil, tells the story of how Trojan prince Aeneas came to Italy. The Aeneid was written under Augustus, who claimed ancestry through Julius Caesar and his mother Venus. According to the Aeneid, the survivors from the fallen city of Troy banded together under Aeneas and underwent a series of adventures around the Mediterranean Sea, including a stop at newly founded Carthage under the rule of Queen Dido, eventually reaching the Italian coast. The Trojans were thought to have landed in an area between modern Anzio and Fiumicino,

southwest of Rome, probably at Laurentum or, in other versions, at Lavinium, a place named for Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus whom Aeneas married. This started a series of armed conflicts with Turnus over the marriage of Lavinia.[3] Before the arrival of Aeneas, Turnus was betrothed to Lavinia, who then married Aeneas, starting the war.[3] Aeneas won the war and killed Turnus.[3] The Trojans won the right to stay and to assimilate with the local peoples. The young son of Aeneas, Ascanius, also known as Iulus, went on to found Alba Longa and the line of Alban kings who filled the chronological gap between the Trojan saga and the traditional founding of Rome in the 8th century BC.

Toward the end of this line, King Procas was the father of Numitor and Amulius. At Procas' death, Numitor became king of Alba Longa, but Amulius captured him and sent him to prison; he also forced Numitor's daughter Rhea Silvia to become a virgin priestess among the Vestals.[1]

Forests have a prominent role in the founding myth-when Aeneas arrives at the site that would become Rome it is still forest:
Romulus and Remus

Main articles: Romulus and Remus and Romulus
The myth of Aeneas was of Greek origin and had to be reconciled with the Italian myth of Romulus and Remus. They were purported to be sons of Rhea Silvia and either Mars, the god of war, or the demi-god hero Hercules. They were abandoned at birth, in the manner of many mythological heroes, because of a prophecy that they would overthrow their great-uncle Amulius, who had overthrown Silvia's father Numitor. The twins were abandoned on the river Tiber by servants who took pity on the infants, despite their orders. The twins were nurtured by a she-wolf until a shepherd named Faustulus found the boys and took them as his sons. Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia raised the children. When Remus and Romulus became adults, they killed Amulius and restored Numitor. They decided to establish a city; however, they quarreled, as Romulus was on Palatine Hill, while Remus wanted to found the city on Aventine Hill, until Remus and his followers attacked, and Romulus killed his brother.[1] Thus, Rome began with a fratricide, a story that was later taken to represent the city's history of internecine political strife and bloodshed.

The most familiar date given for the foundation of Rome, 753 BC, was derived by the Roman antiquarian Titus Pomponius Atticus, and adopted by Marcus Terentius Varro, having become part of what has come to be known as the Varronian chronology.[15] An anecdote in Plutarch where the astrologer Lucius Tarrutius of Firmum provides an argument based on a non-existent eclipse and other erroneous astronomical details that Rome was founded in 753 BC suggests that this had become the most commonly accepted date.[16] Through its use by the third-century writer Censorinus, whose De Die Natali was the ultimate influence of Joseph Justus Scaliger's work to establish a scientific basis of ancient chronology, it became familiar.[16]

Recent discoveries by Andrea Carandini on Rome's Palatine Hill have also yielded evidence of a series of fortification walls on the north slope that can be dated to the middle of the 8th century BC.[citation needed] According to the legend, Romulus plowed a furrow (sulcus) around the hill in order to mark the boundary of his new city