Myth, History and Archaeology

T.P. Wiseman is Emeritus Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. His books include Remus: A Roman Myth (1995), The Myths of Rome (2004) and The Lost History of Roman Drama (forthcoming).

• List of FiguresIntroduction1 The Start of a Long Story1 Review of Andrea Carandini, La nascita di Roma2 Review of Andrea Carandini, Rome: Day One2 Reading Carandini1 The exhibition2 Divine kings and mythic memory3 What were the Lares?4 Twins and Quirites5 The altar and the trench6 Giornale di scavo3 The Prehistory of Roman Hellenism1 Romans and Greeks2 Greek in Latin4 The City that Never Was: Alba Longa and the Historical Tradition1 The city2 Pliny on archaic Latium3 The dynasty5 Velleius Mythistoricus1 Beginnings2 Hercules3 Campania6 Gods in Roman History1 Visible gods2 Audible gods3 Believers and agnostics4 Popular belief5 Ambivalence7 Memory and Stories: An Anthology1 Memory and history2 The historian’s problem3 First pseudo-solution4 Second pseudo-solution5 History and fiction6 Dramatic presentation7 Information and education8 Ritual and remembrance8 Alföldi’s Early Rome and the Latins1 Dogma2 Evidence3 Authority9 Archaeology and Legend: The Grave on the Palatine1 A site with a history2 The memory fallacy3 Whose grave was it?4 Making it too easy10 From Romulus to Tarquin: Reconstructing Rome’s Expansion1 An exemplary work2 ‘Hypercritics’3 Multiple foundations4 Roma quadrata and the pomerium5 Gates and walls6 The beginning of Rome11 The Migrant Queen1 Theiosso2 Elissa3 Dido12 Herakles at Hartland1 An unexpected temple2 An ocean-going hero comes to Rome3 The tin route13 Not the Tomb of Romulus (but perhaps something more interesting)1 Ossa Quirini2 A pignus?14 Plutarch, Dionysius and the Creation of Romulus1 Dionysius and Plutarch2 The wars of Romulus3 Myth creation4 A Latin founder5 Expanding the hero’s story6 Uniting the peoples7 Contemporary evidence8 Plutarch’s perspective9 Rome before the culture wars10 Conclusions15 The Black Stone and the Tomb of Romulus: January–June, 18991 Finding it and naming it2 The reaction3 ‘Non è in alcun modo sostenibile’4 Festus (and Verrius Flaccus)5 The Horatian commentators (and Varro)6 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (and Varro?)7 The lions and the pillar8 Chronology and stratigraphy9 Faustulus and Hostus Hostilius10 What has been learned?16 Making Myths: Hostus Hostilius and his Grandson1 Two items in Pliny2 An explanation in Macrobius3 A catch-up paragraph in Dionysius4 A burnt page in Festus5 A battle in Livy and Plutarch6 King Tullus7 The historical Hostilii8 Wartime festivals9 Two urban praetors10 The backlash17 Propertius on Triumphs and Tarpeia1 The house-door’s complaint2 Triumphs3 Tarpeia before Tatius4 Tarpeia the betrayer5 Varro and the Vestal6 Roman stories7 Back to the house-door’s complaint18 Orosius, Justin and the Afterlife of Myth1 Rewriting Romulus2 Artwork captions3 Tapestries4 Romelus and Remelus in Cornwall5 ‘Where did you learn this story?’Epilogue 2025BibliographyIndex