Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C.E by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Mars, who were suckled as infants by a she-wolf in the woods.

Part of that tale may be true: Traces of a royal palace discovered in the Roman Forum have been dated to roughly the period of the eternal city’s legendary foundation

Romulus and Remus founded Rome. Or so we’re taught.

They were twin brothers, sons of a Vestal Virgin and Mars, who were ordered by the King to be killed after their birth. They were placed in a basket forthwith, put into the Tiber and left to a watery Fate.

Far from drowning in the river or dying from exposure, the twins were washed up on the river bank to be discovered by a female wolf. The wolf nursed the hungry babies and cared for them until a kindly shepherd stumbled, by accident, across the boys. It’s a familiar story.

So the kindly shepherd and his wife raised the babies as their own. Romulus and Remus grew up hale and hearty and, in the course of time, overthrew the king who had ordered their death. However, when they decided to build their own city along the Tiber River where their basket had washed ashore, they disagreed about the exact location. And we move to another familiar story. They quarreled, and Romulus killed his brother.

Romulus ended up building the city of Rome on one of the seven hills along the Tiber – the Palatine hill – and lived a long life as king of the city.

Not every Roman believed these simplistic stories. One of the questioners was Livy, who researched centuries-old records to determine whether the legend was true. He found some records which described the wife of the kindly shepherd who rescued the twins. It described her as a she-wolf (a bitch) because of her alleged loose morals. Legends evolve, and by Livy’s time - the first century CE - the legend held that the boys had been rescued by a real female wolf — a legend that is still told today.

But there’s another story of the eternal city.

A fragment of writing by Stesichorus, a Graeco-Sicilian poet who wrote not long after Rome’s founding, suggests Rome was named after a Trojan woman called Roma.

Stesichorus told how Roma, with her Trojan fleet, fled the war-torn city of Troy. They arrived in a beautiful place where visitors were “enticed to dream while being caressed by the off-shore breeze.” Roma was captivated by the idyllic spot, and ordered all of her ships burned.

The site was then named after Roma. This is the very same account given by Dionysus of Halicarnassus, who referred to her as Rhome, which means “power” in Greek.

While the myth concerning the Trojan refugee, Roma, has many adherents among modern scholars, the male leaders of Rome, back then - and now - prefer the Romulus and Remus story

Recommended Reading

A Gladiator Dies Only Once : The Further Investigations of Gordianus the Finder
To experience the feel of Ancient Rome, you can’t get much better than Stephen Saylor’s historical mystery novels. I originally started reading Saylor because I like detective fiction, so to have a riveting mystery with such a likeable protagonist as Gordianus is a joy in itself, but throw in the sights, sounds and smells of the Eternal City before the Common Era and you have a real treasure. Highly recommended.