ABSTRACT
The stories of Rome’s founding and the so-called Monarchy, or Regal Period, which ended ca. 500 b.c.e., present many problems for the modern historian. As the Roman literary tradition exists, it rests on the mostly lost works of antiquarian researchers, earlier historians, and the writers of patriotic epics and drama. In the late third and early second centuries b.c.e., a number of historians and patriotic epic poets tried to present coherent versions of early Roman history. In addition to the raw materials available for history writing in Rome itself, Rome’s Latin, Etruscan, and Greek neighbors had other customs, oral traditions, monuments, and records that Romans could utilize in reconstructing their early days. The idea that Rome originated with a specific act by a specific founder goes back to Classical and Hellenistic Greek historians who were trying to link Rome with their own “heroic” past.
