In the Beginning

- According to legend:
   -At the end of the Trojan War, Aeneas escaped the city of of Troy with some other dudes and fled to North Africa.
   -He hooked up with the Carthaginian queen, Dido, and then left.   Before she killed herself, she cursed both her people and any of Aeneas' future children to eternal enmity.
   -Then he went to the west coast of Italy, in the region of Latium, near the ancient city of Laurentum.
      -They were met with hostility by the locals barbarians, the Latins, who tried to drive them off.
         -However, the Latin king (ha), Latinus, offered to make peace instead.
            -He offered his daughter, Lavinia, to Aeneas.
               -This pissed off Turnus, a prince of the Rutuli (a neighboring barbarian tribe) because Lavinia had already been promised to him!
                  -The Rutuli was probably not the actual name of this tribe if this story is true, and they were probably either Etruscans or Ligurians.
                  -So, the Rutuli attacked, but were defeated by Aeneas and the Latins.  However, in the attack, Latinus was killed, so Aeneas then took over the tribe.
                     -Because of this, the Trojans and the Latins began to intermarry.
                  -The Rutuli were pissed off even more at this situation now, so they went to the Etruscans for help.
                     -The Etruscans attacked, but just like the Rutuli, they were repelled by Aeneas and his Trojan/Latin warriors.
                        -As a result, the Tiber River was established as the boundary between the Latins and the Etruscans.
-So who the hell were the Etruscans?
   -Origin is debatable, but evidence suggests that they actually came from Asia Minor!
   -They were the dominant confederacy of the Italian peninsula.
   -They were actually organized into an organized collection of villages, whereas the Latins were just a barbarian tribe.
   -They were artists and craftsmen, and had established trade lines that went all the way into Greece.
      -One trade line went from the region of Etruria (an ancient region of Central Italy) to Magna Graecia (Greek colonies in southern Italy).
         -This trade line went through where the city of Rome would eventually be founded.
-So who the hell were the Latins?
   -Simple herdsmen.
   -Evidence suggests that they were descended from Balkan migrants.
   -They had no arts or crafts, and their culture had a mix of Etruscan and Greek elements, but they were still quite primitive in this respect.
   -They were a warrior people, good at organization and warfare.
   -Worshiped the ancient Greek pantheon of gods.
-When Aeneas died, he was replaced by his son, Ascanius.
   -During this time, the population was growing, so Ascanius set out east to expand the Latin territory.
      -He founded the city, Alba Longa (close to modern-day Rome) as his seat of power.
-Some time passed, and the Latin kingdom grew more powerful and secure.
-Kingship passed from father to son.
-Shit gets interesting when eventually one king, Numitor, had a brother, Amulius, who also wanted to be king.
   -Amulius usurped the throne and drove Numitor out of Alba Longa.
      -Numitor's sons were executed, and his daughter, Rhea Silvia, was forced to become a vestal virgin so she couldn't have children that could usurp Amulius.
         -Unfortunately, after taking the vows Rhea Silvia was raped.
            -She gave birth to twin boys, claiming that the father was Mars (Ares).
               -No one cared, and she was thrown in prison.
               -The twins were supposed to be drowned in the Tiber River, but the river was flooded so they just left the boys nearby the river (?).
                  -Of course, the boys survived, and were nursed back to healthy by a she-wolf.
                     -A herdsman saw this and rescued the boys, taking them back home with him.   He raised them with his wife, and named the twins Romulus and Remus.
-Romulus and Remus eventually grew up, and turned into D&D heroes.
   -They liked to fight and rob brigands.
      -One time some brigands captured Remus and took him to a local lord.
         -This "local lord" was none other than Numitor!
            -The brigands claimed that Romulus and Remus were thieves who had been stealing cattle.
               -Numitor remembered the story he had heard about the twin sons that had been born to Rhea Silvia, and suspected that Romulus and Remus were his grandsons.
                  -The herdsman heard about this too, and told Romulus the whole story about how they had been discovered.
                     -Romulus, Remus, the herdsman, and Numitor all hatched a plan to return Numitor to the throne!
                        -They organized a small army, attacked Amulius, and restored Numitor to the throne in Alba Longa.
-Romulus and Remus then set off to found a new city, one that was located at the same place where they had been left to drown.
   -Whether this story is actually true or not, Rome's location was most likely picked because it lay on a trade route, had naturally hilly defenses, and also was near a river.    
   -2 versions of the story at this point:
      -Version 1: trouble happened when the question came up about who would be the senior leader.  The brothers decided to leave it up to the gods, and both went up to the top of a different hill to await a sign.  Romulus went to the top of the Palatine, Remus to the Aventine.  Eventually, 6 vultures landed in front of Remus, but then 12 landed in front of Romulus.  A fight then broke out because Remus claimed that the vultures landed on him first, so he should be the senior leader; Remus claimed that he had 12 vultures, so he should be the senior leader.  So, Romulus decided to just kill Remus and put an end to it.
      -Version 2:  Remus mocked Romulus by jumping over the partially completed city walls.  This pissed off Romulus because he saw it as disrespectful, so he killed Remus.
      -Either way, Romulus became the first king of Rome in April 21, 753 BC.
-Is all of this true?
   -Probably not.  However, we don't know because Rome was sacked in 386 BC and all of the records were destroyed.
      -However, archaeology kind of supports that the founding date is at least close to being correct.
      -Also, the conflict between the Latins and the Etruscans also seems to be correct as well.
      -This legend includes several tropes commonly found in other cultures origin stories, including divine twins, infant exposure to the elements in which the infant miraculously survives, virgin birth, historical origins lying in a pre-existing epic civilization and hero, etc.