Most
contemporary historians dismiss as fable the tale that Romulus founded
Rome in 753BCE and built a walled city on the slopes of the Palatine
hill where he and his twin brother, Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf
in their infancy.
Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at
Rome's La Sapienza university, has spent 20 years trying to
prove the sceptics wrong and last month he and his team hit on the
final piece of a puzzle he thinks shows the myth has root in fact.
"Archaeology and legend appear to go better together
than contemporary historians thought," Carandini said in advance of a
presentation of his findings this weekend.
"We now have all the elements to show that part of the legend may very well be true."
House discovery
The source of Carandini's confidence is the discovery
of traces of an eighth century BCE house of regal proportions on the
edge of the Forum that dates from the period of the Eternal City's
legendary foundation.
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"We now have all the elements to show that part of the legend may very well be true"
Andrea Carandini,
La Sapienza university researcher |
Lying 10m
below pines growing on the surface of the Palatine and under centuries
of construction from classical to Renaissance times, the palace has a
courtyard and covered inner area spanning a total of 350 square
metres.
Wooden columns marked its entrances, ceramics decorated it and seats sat against the walls of a grand central hall.
It lies by the Sanctuary of Vesta, the Roman goddess
of the hearth, close to the slopes of the Palatine, the site of the
earliest traces of Roman civilisation and where legend has it Romulus
killed Remus before building Rome.
Most historians have dismissed Rome's founding myth
because they argued the city was just a huddle of wattle huts at the
time Roman historian Livy described Romulus fortifying the Palatine and
showing "outward symbols of power".
Change of view
Carandini, who has also found traces of sanctuaries,
a defensive wall and a shingle Forum floor dating from the same period,
said that view will now have to change.
"It is exceptional, a find of maximum importance," he said. "It could only be a palace fit for a king."
Scholars elsewhere, when asked for their reaction to the finds, tended to be more cautious.
"The palace is completely convincing. In the eighth
century BC people tended to live in tiny, sub-oval huts. This structure
is much larger and rectangular. But this does not have a direct link to
the Romulus myth," said Elizabeth Fentress, an archaeology research
fellow at the British School in Rome.
"The tradition is based on royalty and an orderly community, but that does not mean that Romulus killed Remus."