Rome, between Arcadia, Troy, and Hercules: discover the Greek founding myths that shaped the identity and memory of the Eternal City.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Before Romulus, in the first light of dawn, when the mist still rose over the hills of Latium, the destiny of a city yet to exist was already being woven in the stories of poets and the memories of peoples. Even before Romulus traced his furrow on the Palatine, many traditions circulated about the origins of Rome. These myths were not all Latin; some came from Greece, nourished by the ancient Arcadian tales, maritime expeditions, and Trojan alliances. Rome, the future mistress of the world, was already dreaming of itself as the heir of gods and heroes. One must imagine these tales told by the fireside, by Greek settlers living in southern Italy, or passed down by Hellenic poets eager to weave links between their civilization and those peoples of Hesperia. The Arcadians, the Pelasgians, the Trojans, but also Hercules and Aeneas, came to inscribe their names in this teeming tapestry of origins.
Through them, Rome forged a genealogy equal to its ambitions: universal, glorious, and divine. The hills of Latium then formed a still-wild landscape, covered in dense forests where wolves roamed, crossed by the Tiber, that mighty river destined to become the lifeblood of the future city. The Aborigines, the Rutulians, and the Latins already lived there, cultivating fertile lands and fighting for their territories. Yet this archaic Italy was not isolated: already, Greek, Etruscan, and Phoenician ships frequented its coasts, bringing goods and tales. These founding myths served both to legitimize the settlers and to unite the peoples. They acted as an imaginary diplomacy, a way of saying: “We share the same origin, we worship the same gods.” Rome’s destiny thus became a question that transcended Italy. Some ancient poets, like Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Virgil, insisted on the role of the gods: from the very beginning, Jupiter, Venus, and other celestial powers clashed to decide which people, which lineage, would have the honor of founding Rome. Thus, human history intertwined with divine design. Rome, even before its birth, was not a city among others: it was already perceived as a universal project, a place where the memories of several worlds—Greek, Trojan, Latin—would converge. The multiplicity of these stories reveals a profound truth: there was not one Rome, but many possible Romes, mythical faces overlapping before that of Romulus emerged.
Arcadian Roots: Pallas, Evander, and Pallantium
Pallas, son of Lycaon and mythical ancestor
At the beginning of this mythological journey stands Pallas, son of King Lycaon of Arcadia. According to certain traditions, this prince became the eponym of the city of Pallantion, lost in the Arcadian mountains. From him sprang an illustrious lineage: his daughter married Dardanus, the ancestor of the Trojans. Thus a first link was already being woven between Arcadia and the Troad, between Greece and what would later become Latium. Through this marriage, Aeneas himself, the Trojan hero, found himself connected to Arcadia by blood. This detail, apparently trivial, would become a powerful narrative tool: it allowed the Greeks to claim that Aeneas’s arrival in Italy was not a coincidence, but a return to a land where his ancestors had already left their mark. Lycaon, the father of Pallas, is himself an ambivalent figure. Mythology tells that he dared to deceive Zeus by offering him human flesh. The god, furious, struck him with his thunderbolt and turned him into a wolf: hence the word “lycanthrope.” This lineage, marked by transgression and savagery, gives Pallas a dark, almost unsettling origin. Yet his name became synonymous with prestige in Arcadia. Ancient authors, like Pausanias, stress that Pallantion was a city of great antiquity, renowned for its ancient cults. By linking it to Rome, the Greeks offered the Romans an antiquity comparable to that of Greece. This gave Rome a temporal depth that placed it on the same level as the great Hellenic cities.
Arcadia, in the Greek imagination, was a pastoral and remote land, a symbol of purity and antiquity. To say that Rome descended from Arcadia was to connect it to a primordial source of civilization. Moreover, the parallel between Pallas and Aeneas is striking: both are marked by exile, wandering, and the necessity of founding a destiny elsewhere. Their stories resonate like two echoes, two stages of the same path leading to Rome. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian, does not hesitate to recall these filiations to justify the Greek legitimacy of Rome’s origins. Thus, at dawn, the Greeks presented themselves as the spiritual tutors of the future city.
Evander and the birth of Pallantium on the Palatine
But the true Greek hero to set foot on the future site of Rome was Evander, direct descendant of Pallas. According to legend, he left Arcadia with his mother, the prophetess Carmenta, and sailed to Italy. There, he founded a colony which he named Pallantium, in memory of his native city. This village, settled on the Palatine Hill, would become the cradle of Rome. Evander was not only a migrating king: he was also a civilizer. He introduced Greek writing, taught agriculture, and transmitted numerous cults. Ovid tells that he brought the cult of Pan, which he identified with the Italian god Faunus. It is also said that he instituted the Lupercalia, those purifying rites that would profoundly mark Roman religion. His exile had a prophetic dimension: Carmenta, his mother, had foretold that from his migration a mighty power would be born. This theme of the founding exile, so frequent in myths, reappears later with Aeneas. The foundation of Pallantium is also symbolic: giving the name of Pallantion to a hill of Latium was to transplant Arcadia into Italy. This gesture of memory inscribed an eternal filiation in the landscape. Evander is also said to have met Hercules during his passage through Italy. The two heroes, one an exiled Greek, the other a wandering demigod, are said to have shared a common cult. This detail shows how mythology loved to weave destinies together. The Palatine, where Evander settled, would become the heart of Rome. This topographical choice is not trivial: close to the Tiber, but on a height, it was a defensible and prosperous place. History thus transforms a strategic choice into a mythical gesture. Finally, Evander did not only import cults: he transmitted a pastoral imagination, a musical memory (it was said that he introduced the lyre). Rome, later, would remember him in its religious festivals.
From Arcadian Colonists to the Creation of Mythic Power
When the Arcadians saw themselves as ancestors of the Italic peoples
From the sixth century BC onward, many Greek colonists settled in southern Italy, in Magna Graecia. To justify their presence and create a link with the natives, they told stories: according to them, almost all the Italic peoples descended from ancient Greek migrations. The Oenotrians? Descendants of Oenotrus, a son of Arcadia. The Aborigines of Latium? Exiled Arcadians. Even the Etruscans, some claimed, descended from the Pelasgians of Thessaly. These tales made the Greeks the true founding fathers of Italy. Hellanicus of Lesbos or Antiochus of Syracuse transmitted these versions, attesting to their diffusion. Each people of Italy was given a Greek ancestor: it was a way of rewriting the past to the advantage of the colonists. The Pelasgians, a mythical people considered proto-Greek, were thus projected into Italy as founders of Etruscan cities. Italy became an extension of Greece, a “Greater Hellas.” This appropriation allowed the Greeks to claim cultural legitimacy in relation to the natives. It placed Greece as the universal origin, as the mother of all civilized peoples. Rome, within this framework, appeared as the culmination of a dialogue between Arcadia and Italy. It became the crossroads of multiple filiations, all connected to Greece.
Myth, colony, and trade between Greece and Italy
These mythological genealogies were not mere poetry: they responded to political and economic needs. The Greeks, merchants and settlers, sought to build cultural bridges with local populations. By claiming common ancestors, they facilitated exchanges and legitimized their presence. In the eighth century BC, the Greeks founded cities such as Cumae, Sybaris, and Tarentum. These hubs became centers of exchange where wheat, wine, and oil circulated, along with ideas and myths. Sanctuaries played a key role: Apollo at Cumae or Hera in Calabria became places where Greeks and Italics could meet. Mythology thus served as a common language. To say that the Aborigines came from Arcadia was to create a fictitious brotherhood that made trade smoother. Rome, not yet existing, already placed itself at the heart of this network: a future crossroads city, heir to multiple traditions. The Etruscans, too, were integrated into this narrative: the Greeks invented for them a Greek (Pelasgian) origin, as if to make them better commercial and cultural partners. These stories show that mythology was a form of soft propaganda. It established a cultural peace preceding real alliances. Rome could not have become what it was without this web of tales, which already gave it a shared memory with the Greek world.
Mythic Alternatives to the Greek Foundation
Rhome, the Trojan woman, wife of Latinus
Some stories give a central place to women. Thus, the legend of Rhome, a Trojan woman exiled after the war, tells that she married King Latinus. Together, they had three sons: Rhomos, Romulos, and Telegonus, who founded a city in honor of their mother. This story, transmitted by Callias of Syracuse, highlights the importance of feminine foundations in myths. Here, it is not a hero but a woman who gives her name to Rome. This also illustrates the role of Trojan women in the survival of the Trojan people after its fall.
Romos, child of Aeneas or Ascanius
Another version makes Romos the son of Aeneas himself, or of his son Ascanius. Rome would thus be directly linked to the Trojan lineage, but without passing through the dynasty of Alba Longa. This tradition underlines the desire to link Rome directly to the Trojan hero, without intermediary.
Romus, son of Leucaria and Italus
Some more local myths claimed that Romus descended from Italus, eponym of Italy, and his daughter Leucaria. Rome thus became the direct heir of the Italian peninsula. This story anchored Rome in its own soil, affirming autochthony as well as greatness.
The son of Zeus, mysterious founder
Finally, other traditions attributed the foundation to a Romus, son of Zeus, once again emphasizing the importance of the divine in these tales. This version shows the desire to elevate Rome to the rank of divine city, protected by the king of the gods himself.
Hercules, the Civilizing Hero and the Sacred Axis of Future Rome
The fight against Cacus at the Forum Boarium
Hercules is not a founder of Rome, but it is impossible to ignore his passage. During his tenth labor, he was bringing back the cattle of Geryon when he crossed Italy. In the valley of the Tiber, he was attacked by Cacus, a monstrous brigand who lived in a cave on the Aventine. The battle was terrible. Cacus had stolen oxen by dragging them by the tail to erase their tracks. But Hercules, guided by the lowing of the animals, discovered the ruse. The hero killed the brigand and freed the region from his terror. According to Virgil in the Aeneid (VIII, 190–275), Cacus spat fire and left behind a hellish stench, symbol of the forces of chaos that threatened mankind. Dionysius of Halicarnassus recounts that the inhabitants of Latium witnessed this victory and saw in Hercules a divine liberator. This myth reflects the passage from barbarism to civilization: the beast that steals and massacres is defeated by the hero bearer of law and order. The very place of the fight, at the foot of the Aventine and the Palatine, already marked a space of confrontation between wild nature and future urban organization. In this struggle, Hercules embodies the archetype of the founder without a crown: he who, through strength and justice, pacifies the territory before cities arise there.
The Ara Maxima, first altar of Rome
In memory of this victory, Hercules erected an altar, the Ara Maxima, in the future Forum Boarium, on the banks of the Tiber. This altar became one of the oldest places of worship in Rome, long honored by the Romans. It marked a place of passage, between the river and the hill, between herding and trade. Livy (I, 7) reports that this altar was maintained by the patrician families of the Potitii and the Pinarii, which underlines the antiquity and nobility of the rite. The sacrifices performed there were strictly codified: the meat had to be eaten raw, in memory of the brutal battle against Cacus. This cultual singularity distinguished the cult of Hercules from other Roman rites, more refined. The Ara Maxima was not only a religious place: it was also a memory inscribed in stone, reminding that Rome owed its peace to the action of a Greek hero. It is significant that this cult endured until the imperial era, proof that Hercules’s victory over Cacus was perceived as an inaugural victory for Roman history. Through him, the Romans associated their destiny with a divine victory over the forces of disorder, anchoring their city in an immemorial sacred framework.
The sacred axis of Hercules and the memory of the hero
Hercules did not found the city, but he left a decisive mark: a sacred and economic axis, linking the river, livestock trade, and the earliest religious rites. This place, occupied by the Ara Maxima, was later integrated into the urban fabric of Rome. Thus, Hercules appears as a forerunner, the one who, before Romulus and Aeneas, symbolically prepared the ground of the future capital. The Forum Boarium, site of the cattle markets, remained closely associated with his name: the Herculia, festivals recalling his victorious combat, were still celebrated there. This space functioned as a gateway to the city: one entered through the Tiber, traded there, and consecrated the memory of a hero. The Romans saw in Hercules the guarantor of prosperity and the circulation of wealth, for he had opened the path of commerce by protecting the herds. Dionysius of Halicarnassus emphasizes that this religious axis was one of the first points of articulation between myth and Roman topography. By linking worship to a concrete place, Hercules became as much a geographic figure as a heroic one. His memory endured in Republican and Imperial Rome, where victorious generals liked to identify with him as the prototype of the civilizing conqueror. The Ara Maxima, with its rites, thus functioned as an invisible foundation stone: not of the walls, but of the symbolic order that would structure Rome for eternity.
Aeneas, the Trojan Figure Become Official Foundation
The tragic and heroic journey
But the most famous myth remains that of Aeneas. Son of Anchises and Venus, survivor of the fall of Troy, he embodies piety and resilience. Guided by the gods, he crosses the Mediterranean, facing storms and trials before reaching the shores of Latium. His wandering passes through Carthage, where he meets Queen Dido, through Sicily, where he honors his dead, and through the world of the Underworld, where his father reveals to him the destiny of Rome. Virgil, in the Aeneid, makes him a hero torn between duty and passion, especially when he must abandon Dido, a poignant embodiment of personal sacrifice demanded by destiny. The storms stirred up by Juno symbolize divine resistance to the Roman project, showing that the foundation of the Eternal City could only be achieved at the price of a struggle against hostile forces. The stages of the journey are as many initiatory stations: in Sicily, Aeneas celebrates funeral games in memory of Anchises, inscribing his journey in sacred time. His descent into the Underworld, inspired by Homer but enriched with a new moral depth, reveals to him the procession of future Roman heroes, from Romulus to Augustus. Through this vision, the poet binds the Trojan past to the imperial future, giving Aeneas’s exile a universal dimension. The figure of Aeneas is therefore not merely that of a survivor: he becomes the guarantor of historical continuity, the bridge between destroyed Troy and unborn Rome.
Lavinium and Alba Longa: from exile to dynasty
Welcomed by King Latinus, he marries his daughter Lavinia and founds Lavinium. His son Ascanius, or Iulus, later founds Alba Longa, whose lineage will give birth to Romulus and Remus. This genealogy gives Rome a Trojan ancestry, prestigious and heroic. Lavinium was not merely a city: it housed the Trojan Penates, the household gods carried by Aeneas, which gave the city a primordial religious role in Roman memory. The Romans considered that it was there that the original altar of Troy’s sacred fire stood, perpetuating an indissoluble link with the destroyed city. Alba Longa, founded by Ascanius, prolonged this cycle: it became the metropolis of the Alban kings, ancestors of Romulus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus notes that the length of reigns of these kings was carefully calculated by Roman annalists to ensure a coherent chronological transition between Aeneas and the birth of Rome. This genealogy was not merely a tale: it constituted a true historical framework, used by Roman priests and senators to anchor their city in sacred continuity. Each city founded by Aeneas or his descendants became a stone laid on the path that would inevitably lead to Rome.
Rivalry of myths: Greece vs. Troy in Roman memory
This tradition, emphasized by Virgil in the Aeneid, also responded to a political intention: under Augustus, Rome preferred to claim a Trojan origin—victorious and independent from Greece—rather than a lineage too marked by Arcadia. The opposition is clear: the Greeks saw Rome as their heir, but Augustus wanted it to be descended from Troy, therefore equal, not subordinate. This choice was not insignificant: it allowed the reversal of the myth of the Trojan War, making yesterday’s defeated the founders of today’s victors. The Trojan lineage also helped explain the perpetual rivalry between Rome and Carthage, since Dido, betrayed by Aeneas, became the matrix of an immortal hatred passed down to her Punic descendants. Conversely, to declare themselves heirs of Arcadia would have implied too direct a cultural dependence on Greece—something Augustus wished to avoid at the moment when he was building an autonomous imperial identity. Augustan propaganda thus made Aeneas the paragon of Roman virtues: piety, respect for destiny, sacrifice of personal interest for the common good. Poets, sculptors, and architects multiplied images of Aeneas carrying Anchises on his shoulders, symbol of the weight of tradition borne to prepare the future. Thus, collective Roman memory was reoriented: instead of a Rome daughter of Greece, they chose a Rome heir of Troy, destined to dominate the world by divine mandate.
Sources
- Book: T. J. Cornell — The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC) , Routledge, 1995.
- Web: Encyclopaedia Britannica — “Aeneas (Greek Mythology)”
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The illustrations were generated using artificial intelligence to support the historical narrative and enhance immersion. They were created by the author and are the property of Echoes of Antiquity. Any reproduction requires prior authorization by email.
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