During or just after the reign of Rome's first emperor Augustus (r. 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.), the Greek geographer Strabo penned his work Geographica and provided a valuable description of many of the peoples and places in the Greco-Roman world. When Strabo reported the “best accredited story of the founding of Rome,” he recounted the tale, “partly fabulous but partly closer to the truth,” of Rhea Silvia, a woman forced by her uncle Amulius to become a Vestal Virgin to assure she would remain childless, thereby preventing the birth of a potential political rival. Notwithstanding her sacred inviolability, Rhea Silvia was impregnated by the god Mars. She gave birth to Romulus and Remus, semidivine twin boys who grew into manhood, defeated Amulius and his sons, and established the foundations for the city of Rome.

Lacking natural defenses and usable arable land, the location for Rome's foundation was suitable “more as a matter of necessity than of choice.” For his part, Strabo forgave the early Romans for not beautifying their city, citing their understandable preoccupation with matters of government and war. The successors to Rome's mythical founders would eventually reduce its vulnerability by building protective circuit walls and defensive gates as early as the fourth century b.c.e. By the reign of Augustus, however, Strabo noted that circumstances had indeed changed. Rome's leaders of the late republic and the first imperial court had not neglected the city's infrastructure; rather they filled Rome with “many beautiful structures.”