Classical Mythology - Roman Module - Week 10: The Foundation of Rome

Week 10: The Foundation of Rome

About Dr. Ashleigh Green

• Dr. Ashleigh Green's research focuses on Roman agriculture, birds, other animals in mythology, and classical reception in the Renaissance.
• She has published on the Roman founding myth.
• Email: ashleigh.green@unimelb.edu.au
• Currently on maternity leave until semester 2 and will reply to emails when possible.

Today's Lecture

• Timeline of Rome
• Overview of Roman society
• Overview of the Roman political system in the Republic
• Aetiology – why founding myths matter
• Introduction to the Roman founding myth
• Content Warning: Brief discussion of rape when introducing the Roman founding myth.

Timeline

• Ancient Greece:
  • Bronze Age: 1100 BCE
  • Minoan: 2000 BCE - 1400 BCE
  • Mycenaean: 1400 BCE - 1100 BCE
  • Dark Ages: 1100 BCE - 750 BCE
  • Archaic: 750 BCE - 500 BCE
  • Classical: 500 BCE - 336 BCE
  • Hellenistic: 336 BCE - 146 BCE
• Ancient Rome:
  • Pre-Roman: 2900 BCE - 753 BCE
  • Monarchy (Regal Period): 753 BCE - 509 BCE
  • Republic: 509 BCE - 27 BCE
  • Empire (Augustan Rome): 27 BCE - 476 CE
  • Foundation of Rome: 753 BCE
  • Fall of Rome: 476 CE

Unification of Italy

• Rome unified Italy through warfare and strategic alliances over hundreds of years.
• Process completed after the Social War ($91/87$) BCE and the inclusion of Gallia Cisalpina ($42$ BCE).

Regal Period (~753 BCE – 509 BCE)

• Historical reality of this period is difficult to reconstruct.
• Most extant written sources come from the 1st century BCE.
• Traditionally, Rome had 7 kings.
• An outrage committed by the son of the last king, Tarquinius Superbus, led to the Romans expelling their kings.

List of Kings in Ancient Sources

The Republic (~509 BCE – 27 BCE)

• Ruled by annually elected magistrates.
• The Senate (conscripted + ex-magistrates) acts as an advisory body.
• Patricians vs. plebeians.
• Importance of citizenship.
• Hatred of kingship; the political system is set up to prevent any one man from accumulating too much power.

Cursus Honorum (Political Career)

• An aristocratic boy typically joins the army from his mid-teens until his late twenties.
• He then embarks on his political career, the cursus honorum.
• In theory, one needs to climb the cursus in sequence, and each post has a minimum age requirement:
  • Quaestor ($32$), Aedile ($35$), Praetor ($39$), Consul ($42$) [patricians could hold these posts two years earlier]
• The cursus also had two extraordinary posts:
  • Censors (ex-consuls only, elected every five years to conduct the census).
  • Dictators (appointed by consuls/Senate for a 6-month period to deal with an emergency; in theory, unlimited power).
• Ten Tribunes of the Plebs were also elected each year to protect the interests of the common people.

The Republican System

• After holding at least one post on the cursus honorum, a Roman politician gained the right to sit in the Roman Senate.
• The Senate contained around 300–1,000 members.
• Senators were almost all extremely wealthy landowners and belonged to the ‘equestrian’ census class (the highest census rating).
• In theory, the Senate was purely an advisory body; however, it contained all the wealthiest and most powerful men in Rome, so one ignored its advice at one’s own peril.

The Roman Senate

• Filled with old, elite men with unthinkable levels of generational wealth and influence.
• Only a tiny percentage of senators had no senatorial ancestors.
• The word ‘Senate’ comes from senex, which means ‘old man’.

Offices and Power in the Republic

• The Republic was governed on democratic principles, though not everyone had a say.
• Senate: Ancient Rome's governing and advisory assembly.
  • Advises Consuls.
• Consuls: Highest elected political office of the Republic, elected annually.
  • Elected by Comitia Centuriata.
  • Elects Praetors.
  • Appoints Dictator.
• Censors: Former consuls responsible for maintaining the census and supervising public morality.
  • Elected by Comitia Centuriata.
• Praetors: Judicial officers who administered Roman law.
  • Elected by Comitia Centuriata.
• Aediles: Looked after public buildings, games, and other government business.
  • Elected by Comitia Populi Tributa.
• Quaestors: Managed financial and administrative affairs.
  • Elected by Comitia Tributa. Appointed by Consuls.
• Comitia Curiata: Principal assembly during the first two decades of the Republic (established pre-Republic).
• Comitia Centuriata: Instituted as a military assembly (established ~450 BC).
• Comitia Populi Tributa: Assembly of all Roman people - plebeians and patricians (established ~357 BC).
• Concilium Plebis: Principal assembly of the common people (established 471 BC; becomes Comitia Plebis Tributa after 287 BC).
  • Elects Tribunes of the Plebs.
• Tribunes of the Plebs: Plebeian representatives (established 493 BC).
• Ordinary Romans: Plebeians, members of the lower social classes.
• Slaves: No citizenship or rights - regarded as property.

Slavery

• Rome was the biggest and longest-lived slave society that ever existed.
• Around 6-20% of the population were enslaved (varied depending on when and where you lived).
• A slave could hope to be freed.
• They and their children would become Roman citizens and assimilate into Roman society.
• Many slaves were taken as war booty.
• Gaulish prisoners were often sold as slaves.

The Imperial Period (27 BCE – 476 CE)

• Julius Caesar emerges victorious from a bloody civil war; he declares himself dictator for life and is assassinated in 44 BCE.
• Further civil war ensues; his heir Augustus consolidates power completely in 27 BCE.
• Following Augustus' death, Rome is ruled by emperors until the western half collapses in 476 CE.

Who were the Romans?

• Strongly patriarchal, hierarchical, and transactional.
• Inequality was an accepted part of life.
• Paterfamilias (father of the family) = the leader of every family unit.
• The Republic was controlled by a small group of aristocratic men.
• Patria = fatherland (Rome).
• Patres conscripti - the ‘enrolled fathers’, generic name for senators.
• Guiding principle: higher authorities are owed obedience; those with power have paternal responsibility.

Roman Values

• Pietas – piety, respect for your elders and for the gods.
• Duty – putting the needs of your country above your own.
• Tradition – respecting the mos maiorum, or customs of your ancestors.
• Gravitas – conducting yourself with dignity and restraint.
• Virtus – valor, masculinity, manly courage.
• Frugalitas – temperance, restraint, simplicity, austerity.
• Continentia – self-control.

Religion

• Religion pervaded all aspects of public and political life.
• Romans interested in orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.
• Numina (spirits) inhabited all objects, natural processes & human activities.
• Numen of the door = Janus, numen of the fireplace = Vesta, numen of cereal crops = Ceres.
• Contact with Greece 'hellenised' early religious beliefs.
• Strong Etruscan influence.

Roman Religious Figures (Comparison to Greek)

• Zeus / Jupiter
• Hera / Juno
• Athena / Minerva
• Ares / Mars
• Aphrodite / Venus
• Poseidon / Neptune
• Demeter / Ceres
• Apollo / Apollo (same name in both cultures)
• Artemis / Diana
• Hephaestus / Vulcan
• Hermes / Mercury
• Dionysus / Bacchus / Liber
• Hestia / Vesta

Aetiology – or, Foundation Myths

• Creating a vision of the past is tied inescapably to the needs of the present.
• Ask yourself: how does the founding myth relate to the present? What is its purpose? Why is it being told in this way at this particular time? Why do people want to think of their origins in this way?
• Key words: legitimacy and identity.

The Roman Foundation Myth

• Romans claimed that Trojan refugees led by Aeneas, the son of Venus (goddess of love), settled in Italy and intermarried with native Latins (~1200 BCE).
• Aeneas' son Ascanius (a.k.a. Iulus) founded a city called Alba Longa.
• ~400 years later, Amulius deposed his elder brother Numitor and seized the throne of Alba Longa.
• His niece, Rhea Silvia (a.k.a. Ilia), gave birth to twin sons and claimed Mars (god of war) was their father.

Romulus and Remus

• Romulus and Remus were abandoned by the Tiber River (main river of Rome) and rescued by a she-wolf.
• They were raised by a shepherd called Faustulus and had a humble upbringing.
• As young men, they hunted in the woods, fought bandits, and conducted raids.
• They discovered their true parentage and restored their grandfather Numitor to the throne of Alba Longa.
• They decided to found a city of their own and took auspices to determine who should be king.
• Jupiter, king of gods and men, sent 12 vultures to Romulus as he watched on the Palatine Hill.

Archaic Rome

• The seven hills of Rome: Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian

The Roman Foundation Myth (cont.)

• A dispute between Romulus and Remus led to Romulus murdering his own brother.
• Romulus grew the city by attracting outcast young men, runaway slaves, and bandits.
• Noting a lack of women in his settlement, Romulus invited the neighboring Sabines, then abducted their women and forcibly married them to the Romans.
• The Sabine men mounted a counterattack, but the women intervened and begged for peace between their fathers and new husbands.
• The Sabines were absorbed by the growing Roman settlement.
• After establishing key laws and religious practices, Romulus disappeared (or was murdered) and became a god, Quirinus.

Mithridates' Speech (as recorded by Justin)

• Mithridates, king of Pontus and enemy of Rome, said that Rome claims their law is to hate all kings because they’ve had kings whose very names would make them blush: Aboriginal shepherds, Sabine diviners, Corinthian exiles, or Etruscan slaves and servants.
• The most honorable among them is the one they call ‘Proud.’
• Even they admit that their first founders nursed at the teats of a wolf, so the entire populace has the spirit of wolves: insatiable for blood, greedy for control and wealth, and hungry for more.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Account

• Some people thought the story of Mars, wolf, and salvation was ridiculous.
• Like Livy, Dionysius reports a “rational” version of the story.
• When Numitor learned of Ilia’s pregnancy, he found other newborns and switched the babies at birth.
• He gave the purchased babies to the guards to take away; either he’d bribed the guards or plotted the swap with the midwives.
• Once Amulius had the fakes, he did away with them somehow.
• But Numitor gave Ilia’s children to Faustulus in an effort to save them.
• The female who nursed the children at her breast was not a she-wolf, but a woman who lived with Faustulus.
• Her name was Larentia, but she was nicknamed 'the she-wolf' because at one time she’d been a sex worker.

Cicero's Rationalization

• Cicero seeks to praise the Republic and its political customs.
• He rationalizes the myth and does not mention Remus or the darker aspects of the story.
• After Romulus had reigned thirty-seven years, and established those two excellent foundations of our commonwealth, the auspices and the senate, his great achievements led to the belief that when he disappeared during a sudden darkening of the sun, he had been added to the number of the gods; indeed such an opinion could never have gotten abroad about any human being save a man pre-eminently renowned for virtue.
• And the case of Romulus is all the more remarkable because all other men who are said to have become gods lived in ruder ages when there was a great inclination to the invention of fabulous tales, and ignorant men were easily induced to believe them; but we know that Romulus lived less than six hundred years ago, at a period when writing and education had long been in existence, and all those mistaken primitive ideas which grew up under uncivilized conditions had been done away with.

Livy and Ovid

• Ovid is a poet and Livy is a historian.
• Both were writing during the Augustan principate, a time of peace and prosperity under a single autocratic ruler after a series of bitter and bloody civil wars.
• Ovid's Fasti seeks to celebrate various aspects of Roman religion – he praises Mars and presents a straightforward mythic account that downplays or omits the unsavoury aspects.
• Livy presents a more rational and cynical version of the myth, in keeping with his aims as a historian (and, perhaps, his views on the recent civil wars).
• These pleasant anticipations were disturbed by the ancestral curse — ambition —which led to a deplorable quarrel over what was at first a trivial matter. - Livy 1.6.4

Horace's Reflection

• Many Romans saw a bleak message in the founding myth – that fratricide and civil strife were hard-wired into Roman politics.
• The poet Horace, writing around the same time as Livy and Ovid, reflects on the horrors of the civil wars.
• Bitter fate pursues the Romans, and the guilt of a brother’s murder, ever since the blood of blameless Remus was spilt onto the ground to curse his descendants.

Canonization of the Myth in the City

• Though ancient historians argued about the facts of the founding myth, for most people the story of their city – Romulus and Remus, Mars, the wolf, the shepherds, the seven kings – were canonised in the very shape of their city.
• The Lupercalia festival, held annually on February 15, involved the sacrifice of animals in the Lupercal cave where the Romans believed Romulus and Remus had been suckled by the she-wolf.
• Well into the fourth century CE, Romans continued to venerate the Casa Romuli – the place where they believed Romulus had built his first home on the Palatine.
• The temple of Jupiter Stator on the Palatine Hill was said to have been built by Romulus.
• Romans could point to the Tiber River itself and a small fig tree known as the Ficus Ruminalis and explain this was where the twins had washed up.
• They could point at the Palatine and say this was where Romulus took the auspices.