Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 A BEND IN THE RIVER
- 2 A STORYBOOK BEGINNING
- 3 IDEOLOGICAL CROSSFIRE
- 4 BIG MEN ON THE CAMPUS
- 5 RES PUBLICA RESTITUTA
- 6 MEMORIALS IN MOTION: SPECTACLE IN THE CITY
- 7 THE CONCRETE STYLE
- 8 REMAKING ROME'S PUBLIC CORE: I
- 9 REMAKING ROME'S PUBLIC CORE: II
- 10 CRISIS AND CONTINUITY
- 11 RUS IN URBE: A GARDEN CITY
- 12 ADMINISTRATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD
- 13 MAPPING, ZONING, AND SEQUESTRATION
- 14 TETRARCHIC AND CONSTANTINIAN ROME
- 15 TROPHIES AND TITULI: CHRISTIAN INFRASTRUCTURE BEFORE CONSTANTINE
- 16 WALLS MAKE CHRISTIANS: FROM FOURTH TO FIFTH CENTURY
- 17 A TALE OF TWO ROMES
- 18 THE ROME OF GOTHS AND BYZANTINES
- 19 CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS
- 20 FROM DOMUS LATERANI TO ROMANUM PALATIUM
- 21 THE LEONINE CITY: ST. PETER'S AND THE BORGO
- 22 VIA PAPALIS, THE CHRISTIAN DECUMANUS
- 23 THE URBAN THEATERS OF IMPERIUM AND SPQR
- 24 HOUSING DAILY LIFE
- 25 CHAOS IN THE FORTIFIED CITY
- 26 THE TIBER RIVER
- 27 HUMANIST ROME, ABSOLUTIST ROME (1420–1527)
- 28 PLANNING COUNTER REFORMATION ROME
- 29 PROCESSIONS AND POPULATIONS
- 30 MAGNIFICENT PALACES AND RHETORICAL CHURCHES
- 31 NEOCLASSICAL ROME
- 32 PICTURING ROME
- 33 REVOLUTION AND RISORGIMENTO
- 34 ITALIAN NATIONALISM AND ROMANITÀ
- 35 A CITY TURNED INSIDE OUT
- Glossary of Persons, Places, and Terms
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - A STORYBOOK BEGINNING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 A BEND IN THE RIVER
- 2 A STORYBOOK BEGINNING
- 3 IDEOLOGICAL CROSSFIRE
- 4 BIG MEN ON THE CAMPUS
- 5 RES PUBLICA RESTITUTA
- 6 MEMORIALS IN MOTION: SPECTACLE IN THE CITY
- 7 THE CONCRETE STYLE
- 8 REMAKING ROME'S PUBLIC CORE: I
- 9 REMAKING ROME'S PUBLIC CORE: II
- 10 CRISIS AND CONTINUITY
- 11 RUS IN URBE: A GARDEN CITY
- 12 ADMINISTRATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD
- 13 MAPPING, ZONING, AND SEQUESTRATION
- 14 TETRARCHIC AND CONSTANTINIAN ROME
- 15 TROPHIES AND TITULI: CHRISTIAN INFRASTRUCTURE BEFORE CONSTANTINE
- 16 WALLS MAKE CHRISTIANS: FROM FOURTH TO FIFTH CENTURY
- 17 A TALE OF TWO ROMES
- 18 THE ROME OF GOTHS AND BYZANTINES
- 19 CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS
- 20 FROM DOMUS LATERANI TO ROMANUM PALATIUM
- 21 THE LEONINE CITY: ST. PETER'S AND THE BORGO
- 22 VIA PAPALIS, THE CHRISTIAN DECUMANUS
- 23 THE URBAN THEATERS OF IMPERIUM AND SPQR
- 24 HOUSING DAILY LIFE
- 25 CHAOS IN THE FORTIFIED CITY
- 26 THE TIBER RIVER
- 27 HUMANIST ROME, ABSOLUTIST ROME (1420–1527)
- 28 PLANNING COUNTER REFORMATION ROME
- 29 PROCESSIONS AND POPULATIONS
- 30 MAGNIFICENT PALACES AND RHETORICAL CHURCHES
- 31 NEOCLASSICAL ROME
- 32 PICTURING ROME
- 33 REVOLUTION AND RISORGIMENTO
- 34 ITALIAN NATIONALISM AND ROMANITÀ
- 35 A CITY TURNED INSIDE OUT
- Glossary of Persons, Places, and Terms
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
THE STORY OF ROME'S ORIGINS IS SURELY THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS foundation myth. After centuries of revision, its received version developed into a bricolage of lively tales calculated to favor early Rome with a sense of destiny. According to the familiar narrative, the twin sons of Mars and descendants of Aeneas's royal line, Romulus and Remus, were set afloat on the flooded Tiber by the usurping king of Alba Longa. Landing beside the Palatine, they were taken in and nursed by a wolf dwelling in the Lupercal, a cave overlooking the Velabrum, and later raised by shepherds. In adulthood the pair resolved to found a community but quarreled over its location, Romulus favoring the Palatine and Remus the Aventine. Each ascended his hill to seek auspicious signs from the skies. More by vehemence than logic, Romulus declared his own augury superior, and in April 753 B.C.E. (the date varies by source) he founded his town on the Palatine by plowing a furrow around it to create the pomerium, which he fortified with a gated wall. This quasi-magical protective boundary, but not the wall, would be expanded repeatedly in future centuries.
Mythical Rome in its infancy confronted many difficulties and ferocious foes, but Romulus, designated king of his people, overcame them all by force or diplomacy. Emphatically, his people had no special ethnicity. By any means necessary, he drew them from various peoples in the region, as when he invited the Sabines to games held in the Vallis Murcia (later the Circus Maximus) between the Palatine and Aventine, only to have his men snatch the young women from the crowd and forcibly marry them. Thus began a series of conflicts and accommodations with peoples of central Italy under Romulus and six successive kings, each distinguished for particular character traits and material contributions to the growing city.
Despite its undeniable mythic cast, a few influential modern scholars take the story of the kings seriously, seeking to match its general outlines, if not every detail, with the archaeological record of the early settlement. This school of thought will not detain us. We are satisfied to observe only that the stories themselves became embedded early in Rome's identity, and thus – because embryonic greatness must be anchored to landmarks – influenced its urban development.
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- RomeAn Urban History from Antiquity to the Present, pp. 10 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016