Romulus was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Many traditions say that Romulus and the people who lived at the same time as him helped create Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions. While some of these traditions include stories from folklore, it is not clear if a real person inspired the story of Romulus. However, the events and institutions linked to him were very important in the myths about Rome's beginnings and its cultural traditions.

Traditional account

The myths about Romulus include several important events and people, such as the miraculous birth and early life of Romulus and his twin brother, Remus; Remus' death and the founding of Rome; the story of the Sabine Women being taken and the war with the Sabines; a time when Romulus and Titus Tatius ruled together; the creation of Roman institutions; Romulus' death or becoming a god; and the rise of Numa Pompilius as the next leader.

According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Rhea Silvia and the god Mars. Their maternal grandfather was Numitor, the rightful king of Alba Longa, and the twins were descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas and Latinus, the king of Latium. Before the twins were born, Numitor’s throne was taken over by his brother, Amulius, who killed Numitor’s son or sons and forced Rhea Silvia to remain a virgin by making her a Vestal. When Rhea became pregnant, she claimed the god Mars had visited her. Amulius imprisoned her, and when the twins were born, he ordered them to be thrown into the Tiber River. However, because the river was swollen with rain, the servants could not reach the riverbank and left the twins under a fig tree at the foot of the Palatine Hill.

In the traditional story, a she-wolf found the twins and raised them until they were discovered by the king’s herdsman, Faustulus, and his wife, Acca Larentia. The brothers grew up with shepherds and hill-folk. Later, they learned about their true identity after getting involved in a conflict between Amulius’ followers and their grandfather Numitor’s supporters. With help from friends, they tricked Amulius into an ambush and killed him, restoring Numitor to the throne. The brothers then decided to build their own city.

They returned to the hills near the Tiber River, where they had been left as infants, but disagreed on where to build their city. Each brother claimed a different hill, waiting for a sign to decide. Remus saw six vultures over the Aventine Hill, while Romulus saw twelve over the Palatine Hill. Remus argued the Aventine should be chosen because it came first, but Romulus claimed the Palatine because it had more vultures. Their disagreement turned into a fight, and Romulus or one of his followers killed Remus. In one version, the augurs (priests who read omens) favored Romulus, who plowed a square furrow around the Palatine Hill to mark the city’s future walls (called Roma Quadrata). When Remus laughed and jumped over the furrow, Romulus killed him in anger. In another version, Remus was killed during a battle, along with Faustulus.

The founding of Rome was celebrated every year on April 21 with the Parilia festival. Romulus first built walls around the Palatine Hill, called the Murus Romuli, and made a sacrifice to the gods. He marked the city’s boundaries by plowing a furrow, made another sacrifice, and began building the city with his followers. Romulus asked the people to accept him as their king. With Numitor’s help, he spoke to them and won their approval. After sacrificing to Jupiter and receiving good omens, he accepted the crown.

Romulus divided the people into three tribes—Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres—for taxes and military purposes. Each tribe was led by a tribune and divided into ten wards, each led by a curio. Each ward received land for the people’s benefit. The tribes and wards were taxed, but for military service, each ward provided 100 foot soldiers (a century) and 10 cavalry. Each tribe thus supplied about 1,000 infantry and 100 cavalry, forming the Celeres, or “the swift,” who became the king’s bodyguard.

Romulus chose 100 men from leading families to form the Roman Senate. These men were called patres, or “fathers of the city,” and their descendants became patricians, one of Rome’s two main social classes. The other class, the plebeians, included servants, freed slaves, people who fled to Rome for safety, prisoners of war, and others who later gained Roman citizenship.

To help the city grow, Romulus banned killing newborn babies and created an asylum on the Capitoline Hill where runaway slaves and free people could seek protection and Roman citizenship.

The new city had many young, unmarried men, but few women. Without marriage to people from other communities, the city might fail. Romulus sent envoys to nearby towns to ask for marriage alliances, but they refused. He then planned to take women from other settlements. He announced a festival and games, inviting nearby towns to attend. Many Sabines came, and at a signal, the Romans captured the women.

The affected towns prepared to fight Rome, but the Latin towns of Caenina, Crustumerium, and Antemnae attacked first. Romulus defeated them, taking their towns and killing their leaders. He vowed to build a temple to Jupiter Feretrius after claiming the spoils of war. Some people from these towns were allowed to settle in Rome.

After defeating the Latin towns, the Sabines, led by Titus Tatius, attacked Rome. They captured the citadel by bribing Tarpeia, the daughter of the Roman commander guarding it. Without the citadel, the Romans fought the Sabines on the battlefield. A Sabine warrior named Mettius Curtius is said to have thrown his horse into a lake (Lacus Curtius) to block Roman pursuers. At a key moment, the Romans almost lost the battle, but Romulus vowed to build a temple to Jupiter Stator to keep his soldiers from retreating. The fighting ended when Sabine women pleaded with their families and husbands to stop fighting. The leaders of both sides made peace, forming one community ruled jointly by Romulus and Tatius.

Romulus and Tatius ruled Rome together for many years until Tatius was killed during a riot in Lavinium. Before this, envoys from Laurentum had complained about how Tatius treated their people

Primary sources

Livy, Dionysius, and Plutarch used Quintus Fabius Pictor as a source. Other important sources include Ovid’s Fasti and Virgil’s Aeneid. Greek historians, such as Hellanicus of Lesbos from the 5th century BC, claimed Rome was founded by Greeks and named Aeneas as its founder. Roman historians linked Romulus to Aeneas through ancestry and mentioned an earlier settlement on the Palatine Hill, sometimes attributing it to Evander and his Greek colonists. To the Romans, Rome was defined by its institutions and traditions, which they credited to Romulus, the first "Roman."

The legend reflects Rome’s ideas about itself, its origins, and its moral values. For modern scholars, it remains one of the most complex and debated foundation myths. Ancient historians believed Romulus gave his name to the city. Most modern historians think the name "Romulus" was created from the city’s name. Roman historians dated Rome’s founding between 758 and 728 BC. Plutarch recorded that Varro’s friend Tarutius calculated 771 BC as the birth year of Romulus and his twin. The tradition that connected Romulus to Aeneas was later expanded, making Romulus the direct ancestor of Rome’s first imperial dynasty. It is unclear whether the story of Romulus, the twins, or both were original parts of the myth or added later.

Ennius (active in the 180s BC) described Romulus as a god in his own right, without mentioning Quirinus. Roman mythographers identified Quirinus as a Sabine war deity linked to Mars, the Roman god of war. Lucilius listed Quirinus and Romulus as separate deities, and Varro noted they had different temples. Images of Quirinus showed him as a bearded warrior with a spear, symbolizing Roman strength and a divine representation of Rome itself. A priest called the Flamen Quirinalis oversaw rituals for Quirinus, as established by Numa Pompilius, Romulus’s royal successor. However, there is no evidence of the combined figure of Romulus-Quirinus before the 1st century BC.

In Metamorphoses XIV (lines 805–828), Ovid describes the deification of Romulus and his wife, Hersilia, who were renamed Quirinus and Hora. Jupiter allowed Mars, Romulus’s father, to bring his son to Olympus to live with the gods.

One theory suggests that two mythical figures, Romulus and Quirinus, evolved from an earlier, single hero. Romulus was a founding hero, while Quirinus may have been a god of the harvest. The Fornacalia festival celebrated spelt, a staple crop. Through the dates in stories and festivals, these figures are connected. A pattern recognized by anthropologists includes a hero’s murder, burial in fields, and a festival linked to a harvest god and a food staple. This pattern, called a "dema archetype," suggests the god and hero were originally the same figure but later became separate.

Historicity

The origins of the myths about Romulus and Remus are not clearly understood and are often debated by scholars. Modern historians believe that the many stories about Romulus and Remus are collections of older tales and later additions that were shaped over time. Some Roman writers presented specific versions of these stories as official history, removing confusing parts to support Roman values and traditions. Other stories may have come from common people or folk traditions, and their meanings are still unclear. T.P. Wiseman describes this collection of stories as the "mythography" of a history that is especially difficult to understand.

Some stories about Romulus include events that some scholars find troubling or inappropriate. In ancient times, these stories were used in writings that criticized Rome and its religious beliefs. More recently, historian Hermann Strasburger suggested that these stories were not originally Roman but were created by Rome's enemies, possibly in Magna Graecia, around the late fourth century BC. However, other scholars, like Tim Cornell (1995), argue that by this time, the story of Romulus and Remus had already become well-known and widely accepted in Rome. Other parts of the Romulus stories share similarities with common folktales and legends, suggesting they are old and originally from Roman culture. Historian Arnaldo Momigliano agrees that Strasburger's argument is well-written but believes it is not convincing; if the myths were meant to mock Rome, they were not successful.

The Tomb of Romulus is a rectangular chest made of tuff, a type of rock, that is 139.7 centimeters (55.0 inches) long. It was likely taken from the Capitoline Hill. The site was first found in 1899 by Italian archaeologist Giacomo Boni during the same dig that uncovered the Lapis Niger, a stone believed to mark the location of Romulus's death or burial. Boni did not record much about the tomb, and it was hidden again by construction work in the 1930s that built a new entrance to the nearby Senate House. In 2019, new excavations began to honor Giacomo Boni and rediscovered the tomb by 2020. It survived earlier construction because builders made a brick shell to protect it.

Studies show the tomb dates to the 6th century BC, the same time as the Lapis Niger. Its location near important places like the Senate House and the Lapis Niger suggests it had significant cultural meaning. The area's connection to Romulus's death may mean it was meant to be a burial site for him. However, no human remains were found, and the mythical nature of the stories about Romulus's death and burial makes their truth uncertain. Alfonsina Russo, director of the Colosseum Archaeologist Park, believes the site was more likely a cenotaph, an empty monument honoring Romulus, rather than his actual tomb. If the artifact is seen as a sarcophagus, the nearby temple could be compared to heroa, which were places in the ancient world where people worshipped honored heroes.

Depictions in art

The stories that make up the Roman legend, especially the rape of the Sabine women, the tale of Tarpeia, and the death of Tatius, have been important in the study of ancient Rome and have often been shown in art, books, and philosophy since ancient times. This began in Roman history, when Romulus and Aeneas were central themes in Rome's mythical past.

In the late 16th century, the wealthy Magnani family from Bologna asked artists to create artworks based on the story of Rome's founding. One sculpture, made by Gabriele Fiorini, shows Hercules with the infant twins and includes the face of the family's patron. The most important works were a detailed series of paintings called Histories of the Foundation of Rome by the Brothers Carracci: Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino.

Key scenes depicted in these works include:
– Romulus marking the city's boundaries with a plough
– The Asylum (Inter duos Lucos)
– The rape of the Sabine women
– Romulus dedicating the temple to Jupiter Feretrius
– The Battle of the Lacus Curtius
– The death of Titus Tatius in Laurentium
– Romulus appearing to Proculus Julius
– The Pride of Romulus

Artists who created works about these stories include:
– Il Sodoma (1507)
– Nicolas Poussin (1638)
– Peter Paul Rubens (1634–36)
– Giambologna (1583)
– Jacopo Ligozzi (c.1565–1627)
– Attributed to Theodoor van Thulden (17th c.)
– Sebastiano Ricci (c. 1700)
– Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (1640)
– Charles Christian Nahl (1870)

Examples of artworks about Tarpeia include:
– The Vestal Virgin Tarpeia Beaten by Tatius’ soldiers by Il Sodoma (16th c.)
– Tarpeia's punishment, a marble fragment from the Frieze of the Basilica Aemilia (100 BC–100 AD)
– A reconstruction of the Basilica Aemilia Frieze marble fragment
– Tarpeia, an illustration from Pictura loquens ("the Heroic Accounts of Hadrian Schoonebeeck") (1695)
– Tarpeia conspires with Tatius, an illustration from The story of the Romans by Hélène Adeline Guerber (1896)

Other artworks include:
– A print from Romolo ed Ersilia, final scene, Act 3, by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1781)
– Hersilia from a detail of Les Sabines ("The Intervention of the Sabine Women") by Jacques-Louis David (1799)
– Hersilia Separating Romulus and Tatius by Guercino (1645)

The subject for the 1788 Prix de Rome competition was the death of Tatius (La mort de Tatius). Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier won the contest.

Works depicting this event include:
– A version by Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier, now in the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris
– The Death of Tatius by Girodet, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers
– A version by Jacques Réattu, now in the Musée Réattu, Arles

Another artwork is Apparition of Romulus before Proculus by Rubens (17th c.).