Rome

Day One

Andrea Carandini, Stephen Sartarelli

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691180793, 9780691139227
• eBook ISBN: 9781400838066
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

Rome's most important and controversial archaeologist shows why the myth of the city's founding isn't all myth

Andrea Carandini's archaeological discoveries and controversial theories about ancient Rome have made international headlines over the past few decades. In this book, he presents his most important findings and ideas, including the argument that there really was a Romulus--a first king of Rome--who founded the city in the mid-eighth century BC, making it the world's first city-state, as well as its most influential. Rome: Day One makes a powerful and provocative case that Rome was established in a one-day ceremony, and that Rome's first day was also Western civilization's.

Historians tell us that there is no more reason to believe that Rome was actually established by Romulus than there is to believe that he was suckled by a she-wolf. But Carandini, drawing on his own excavations as well as historical and literary sources, argues that the core of Rome's founding myth is not purely mythical. In this illustrated account, he makes the case that a king whose name might have been Romulus founded Rome one April 21st in the mid-eighth century BC, most likely in a ceremony in which a white bull and cow pulled a plow to trace the position of a wall marking the blessed soil of the new city. This ceremony establishing the Palatine Wall, which Carandini discovered, inaugurated the political life of a city that, through its later empire, would influence much of the world.

Uncovering the birth of a city that gave birth to a world, Rome: Day One reveals as never before a truly epochal event.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations.

Aborigines, 33, 37

Acca Larentia, 30, 33, 41, 47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 128

Acqua Acetosa Laurentina, 96

Acron, 93, 111, 153, 155–57

aedes Larum, 71, 80–81, 81–84, 85

aedes Vestae, 85–87, 86, 98–99

Aegeus, 66

Aeneas, 33, 40

ager (countryside), 22, 22n, 46, 50, 51, 53, 96, 103, 108, 113, 114

Ager Romanus antiquus, 107

agger (bulwark), 59

Agrippa, 2

Alba, 46, 113, 125, 126, 128, 130, 139

Alba Longa, 17, 17, 36, 41, 51, 56, 115

Albani, 142

Albenses, populi, 16, 17, 19

Altar of Consus, 56, 134

Altar of Hercules, 56, 134

altar of the foundation, 54, 55

Amor, 55, 136

Amulius, 36, 46, 124, 129

ancile (shield), 69, 70, 139

Ancus Marcius, 10, 18, 30, 32, 73, 115

Aniene River, 18, 114

Antemnae, 112, 153

Antimachus, 136

Appian of Alexandria, Excerpta de legationibus gentium, 162–63

Ara Belvedere, 81

archaeology, 4–5

Arch of Titus, 59, 111

Argei, 102–3, 106, 109

army, 109–10

Arx, 27, 27n9, 31, 46, 88, 92, 94, 96, 100, 103, 112

Ascanius, 33

Asylaeus, 130

Auguraculum, 88

augurs, 41–42, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Palatine
• The Founding of The Forum, The Capitol, And The Citadel
• The Ordering of The Regnum, or The Constitutio Romuli
• Enemies
• Conclusion
• Literary Sources
• Index