Thus Must Rome Be Told

Let no man say the origin of Rome was wrought by chance. The founding of the city, the greatest among nations, was ordained by Fate and guided by the hands of the gods. To doubt this is to doubt the divine order of civilization. As it was taught to the orators, magistrates, and statesmen of the American republic, so must it be told—not as idle tale, but as sacred history. This was the birth of Rome, and it was the foundation of the world that was to come.

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The tale begins in fire. When the Greeks brought low the towers of Troy, when deceit had breached the walls and fire consumed the halls of Priam, one man was spared. Aeneas, prince of Dardania, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus, was preserved not for his strength in arms, though he had it, nor for his fame, though he deserved it, but because of his piety. He carried on his back his father, led his son by the hand, and bore with him the Penates, the sacred gods of his household. He fled westward across the wine-dark sea, not to escape destruction, but to fulfill a divine mission.

Aeneas wandered. He landed in Thrace, in Crete, in Sicily. He was driven by storms and by the wrath of Juno. He found brief rest in Carthage, where Queen Dido welcomed him. There he might have stayed, for love stirred in her heart, but Jupiter reminded him of his destiny. Aeneas departed, and Dido, abandoned, fell upon her sword, cursing his line. Thus was the enmity between Rome and Carthage born, before the city itself existed. The will of the gods prevailed. At last, the Trojans arrived in Latium.

There, King Latinus welcomed them, for prophecy had long foretold that a foreigner would marry his daughter and found a mighty race. Lavinia, daughter of the king, became the wife of Aeneas. Lavinium was founded, and Aeneas’ son Ascanius, also called Iulus, established Alba Longa, seat of kings and birthplace of empire. The blood of Troy was mingled with the soil of Italy, and through that blood would come Romulus and Remus.

In Alba Longa reigned Numitor, of the line of Aeneas. But his brother Amulius seized the throne, slew Numitor’s sons, and forced his daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity. Yet Mars, god of war, took Rhea Silvia and from their union were born twins: Romulus and Remus. The usurper, fearing the threat to his power, ordered the infants cast into the Tiber River. But the river, swollen with rain, refused the deed. The basket came to rest beneath the fig tree of the Ficus Ruminalis. There, a she-wolf, sacred to Mars, found the babes. She suckled them. A woodpecker, also sacred to Mars, brought them food. Thus the twins survived, protected by the divine.

Later, they were found by Faustulus, a shepherd, and his wife Acca Larentia, who raised them among the flocks and fields. As the boys grew, their strength and virtue became evident. They led bands of young herdsmen, they defended the weak, they quarreled with tyrants. At length, they learned the truth of their birth. With the help of their followers, they overthrew Amulius and restored their grandfather Numitor to the throne of Alba Longa.

But the destiny of Romulus and Remus lay elsewhere. They returned to the site of their miraculous salvation, beside the Tiber, at the foot of the Palatine Hill. There they resolved to found a city. Yet even between brothers, ambition stirs strife. They could not agree on which hill should bear the city. Romulus chose the Palatine, Remus the Aventine. They sought the will of the gods through augury. Remus saw six vultures first. Then Romulus saw twelve. They argued. Was it the first sign or the greater number that mattered? In the quarrel that followed, Remus mocked the city walls Romulus had begun to mark with his plow. He leapt over them, deriding their meager height.

Romulus struck him down. Whether in anger or justice, no man may say. “Thus shall it be henceforth to any who leap my walls,” he declared. From fratricide came law. From blood came order. Romulus buried his brother with honor and continued the work. He built the walls, plowed the sacred furrow, and sacrificed to the gods. On the twenty-first day of April, in the year 753 before the birth of Christ, he founded the city and named it Roma.

The city needed people. Romulus opened an asylum, a place of refuge for fugitives, slaves, and exiles. Men from every land came, and Rome became a city not of a tribe, but of all tribes. Yet a city needs women. Romulus invited the Sabines to a festival. While they reveled, the Romans seized their daughters. War followed, as expected. But the Sabine women, now wives and mothers, threw themselves between the armies. They begged their husbands and fathers to cease. From that moment, the Romans and the Sabines were one people. Romulus ruled jointly with the Sabine king, Titus Tatius, until the latter’s death left Romulus sole king.

Romulus established the Senate, choosing one hundred men from the leading families. He divided the people into tribes and wards. He formed the cavalry, the Celeres, his personal guard. He gave Rome its laws, its rites, its priesthoods. He ruled with strength and vision. And then, one day, he vanished.

It was said he disappeared in a storm while addressing the people. Some whispered of assassination by jealous senators. But most believed, and Livy did not deny, that Romulus had ascended to the heavens and become a god. He was thenceforth worshipped as Quirinus, protector of the Roman state.

This is the history as it was known to the Romans and passed down to the heirs of classical learning. It was not mere myth. To the Roman mind, and to those who inherited the Roman virtues, it was a charter. It was a foundation of state, a story of virtue, strength, justice, and divine favor. When the men who founded the American republic studied the classics, they studied Livy and the story of Rome. They saw in Romulus the necessity of law and order. They saw in Aeneas the duty to family and the gods. They saw in the Senate the power of counsel, and in the Roman republic the dangers of tyranny and the strength of civic virtue.

Rome was not founded in ease. It was not established by consensus. It was born of duty, sacrifice, blood, and divine will. Its founders were not chosen by vote, but by fate. And once founded, it grew by courage, by inclusion, and by the idea that anyone, whether noble or fugitive, could become Roman. The city expanded by embracing those who came to it, not as strangers but as citizens.

The date of the founding of Rome, 753 B.C., became the cornerstone of Roman chronology. From it all years were counted. It marked the first day of a calendar not only of time, but of civilization itself. The Romans called it ab urbe condita—from the founding of the city. It was not merely the beginning of a town. It was the beginning of Rome, which to the Romans meant the beginning of the world.

Festivals were marked by this date. The Parilia, once a rustic festival of shepherds, became the city’s birthday. Under the Empire, it became the Romaea, the most sacred civic celebration. The myth became liturgy. The legend became law.

Modern men may scoff. They may point to archaeology and say that Rome grew slowly from villages atop the hills. They may speak of trade routes and cultural diffusion. They may dig through the layers of the Forum and call the tale of the twins a fable. But they misunderstand what Rome was. It was not merely a city of stone. It was an idea. It was a standard to which all peoples might aspire. It was a beacon of order amid chaos, of justice amid tyranny, of civilization rising from the wild.

When the Founding Fathers of the American republic read Livy, they saw more than history. They saw a mirror. They saw the moral fabric of a people formed by struggle and made strong by laws. They saw a republic born of necessity, maintained by virtue, and lost through excess. In the plow of Romulus, they saw the Constitution. In the Senate, they saw deliberation. In the story of Rome, they saw the pattern of all great nations.

Thus the story of Romulus and Remus is not to be dismissed as idle myth. It is to be revered as the origin of something greater than legend. It is the tale of how men, touched by the divine, brought forth a city that would rule the world. From humble beginnings, with she-wolf and shepherd, through war and augury, through law and sacrifice, Rome was born.

It is fitting, then, that men seeking to build a new republic, far from the Tiber, on the shores of a distant continent, should look to Rome as model, warning, and hope. They did not worship her emperors. They feared her decline. But they honored her founding, for in it they saw the truth: that great cities are not born. They are built. That order must be carved from wilderness. That virtue, not birth, makes a citizen. And that history, rightly told, is the teacher of nations.

Thus was Rome founded. Thus was Rome remembered.

And thus must Rome be told.