ABSTRACT
Very little factual information is available about the earliest period of Roman history. The oldest historical studies that have survived date from the beginning of the first century AD. The authors of these studies, e.g. Livy, Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, made use of the works of older historians who lived in the third to the first centuries BC and described the history of Rome year by year (the so-called annalists). However, the sections of their works relating to the early period of Rome’s history were far from reliable. Although the annalists had access to a wealth of source material for the period dating from 387 BC up to their own day, there were practically no written documents left for the period before that year. These documents were lost in 387 BC when Rome was conquered and set on fire by the Celts. In order to fill the gaps in the source material the annalists made use of legends; although these legends may have been based partly on history they were certainly not historically reliable. The annalists elaborated these legends using their imagination and sometimes altered the chronological order of the events. Information about the founding of Rome and its early history therefore has always to be checked against information obtained with the help of other disciplines such as archaeology and linguistics.
