Aeneas in the context of "Palladium (protective image)"

The founding of Rome was a prehistoric event or process later greatly embellished by Roman historians and poets. Archaeological evidence indicates that Rome developed from the gradual union of several hilltop villages during the Final Bronze Age or early Iron Age. Prehistoric habitation of the Italian Peninsula occurred by 48,000 years ago, with the area of Rome being settled by around 1600 BC. Some evidence on the Capitoline Hill possibly dates as early as c. 1700 BC and the nearby valley that later housed the Roman Forum had a developed necropolis by at least 1000 BC. The combination of the hilltop settlements into a single polity by the later 8th century BC was probably influenced by the trend for city-state formation emerging from ancient Greece.

Roman myth held that their city was founded by Romulus, son of the war god Mars and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia, fallen princess of Alba Longa and descendant of Aeneas of Troy. Exposed on the Tiber river, Romulus and his twin Remus were suckled by a she-wolf at the Lupercal before being raised by the shepherd Faustulus, taking revenge on their usurping great-uncle Amulius, and restoring Alba Longa to their grandfather Numitor. The brothers then decided to establish a new town but quarrelled over some details, ending with Remus's murder and the establishment of Rome on the Palatine Hill. The year of the supposed founding was variously computed by ancient historians, but the two dates seeming to be officially sanctioned were the Varronian chronology's 753 BC (used by Claudius's Secular Games and Hadrian's Romaea) and the adjacent year of 752 BC (used by the Fasti and the Secular Games of Antoninus Pius and Philip I). Despite known errors in Varro's calculations, it is the 753 BC date that continues to form the basis for most modern calculations of the AUC calendar era.

Roman Italy is the period of ancient Italian history going from the founding and rise of Rome to the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire; the Latin name of the Italian peninsula in this period was Italia (continued to be used in the Italian language). According to Roman mythology, Italy was the ancestral home of Aeneas, being the homeland of the Trojans progenitor, Dardanus; Aeneas, instructed by Jupiter, moved to Italy after the fall of Troy, and his descendants, Romulus and Remus, were the founders of Rome. Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italic city-state that changed its form of government from Kingdom (ruled, between 753 BC and 509 BC, by seven kings) to Republic, and then grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Gauls, Ligures, Veneti, Camunni and Histri in the North; the Etruscans, Latins, Falisci, Picentes, Umbri and Sabines in the Centre; and the Iapygian tribes (such as the Messapians), the Oscan tribes (such as the Samnites) and Greek colonies in the South.

The consolidation of Italy into a single entity occurred during the Roman expansion in the peninsula, when Rome formed a permanent association with most of other the local tribes and cities; and Italy's inhabitants included Roman citizens, communities with Latin Rights, and socii. The strength of the Italian confederacy was a crucial factor in the rise of Rome, starting with the Punic and Macedonian wars between the 3rd and 2nd century BC. As Roman provinces were being established throughout the Mediterranean, Italy maintained a special status with political, religious and financial privileges. In Italy, Roman magistrates exercised the imperium domi (police power), as an alternative to the imperium militiae (military power) exercised in the provinces.

Venus (/ˈviːnəs/; Classical Latin: [ˈwɛnʊs]) is a Roman goddess whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.

The Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art and Latin literature. In the later classical tradition of the West, Venus became one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. As such, she is usually depicted nude.

The Aeneid (/ɪˈniːɪd/ ih-NEE-id; Latin: Aeneis [ae̯ˈneːɪs]) is a Latin epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. Written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, the Aeneid comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of its twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the latter six tell of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

The hero Aeneas was already known to Graeco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad. Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome, and his description as a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous pietas, and fashioned the Aeneid into a compelling founding myth or national epic that tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic Wars, glorified traditional Roman virtues, and legitimised the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.

Alba Longa (occasionally written Albalonga in Italian sources) was an ancient Latin city in Central Italy in the vicinity of Lake Albano in the Alban Hills. The ancient Romans believed it to be the founder and head of the Latin League, before it was destroyed by the Roman Kingdom around the middle of the 7th century BC and its inhabitants were forced to settle in Rome. In legend, Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, had come from the royal dynasty of Alba Longa, which in Virgil's Aeneid had been the bloodline of Aeneas, a son of Venus.

According to Livy, Roman patrician families such as the Julii, Servilii, Quinctii, Geganii, Curiatii and Cloelii originated in Alba Longa.

In Roman mythology, King Numitor (Classical Latin: [ˈnʊmɪtɔr]) of Alba Longa was the maternal grandfather of Rome's founder and first king, Romulus, and his twin brother Remus. He was the son of Procas, descendant of Aeneas the Trojan, and father of the twins' mother, Rhea Silvia, and Lausus.

In 794 BC Procas died and was meant to be succeeded by Numitor. Instead he was overthrown and removed from the kingdom by his brother, Amulius, who had no respect for his father's will or his brother's seniority. Amulius also murdered Numitor's sons, in an effort to remove power from his brother for himself.

The History of Rome, perhaps originally titled Annales, and frequently referred to as Ab Urbe Condita (English: From the Founding of the City), is a monumental history of ancient Rome, written in Latin between 27 and 9 BC by the Roman historian Titus Livius, better known in English as "Livy". The work covers the period from the legends concerning the arrival of Aeneas and the refugees from the fall of Troy, to the city's founding in 753 BC, the expulsion of the Kings in 509 BC, and down to Livy's own time, during the reign of the emperor Augustus. The last event covered by Livy is the death of Drusus in 9 BC. 35 of 142 books, about a quarter of the work, are still extant. The surviving books deal with the events down to 293 BC (books 1–10), and from 219 to 166 BC (books 21–45).

Pietas (Classical Latin: [ˈpiɛtaːs]), translated variously as "duty", "religiosity" or "religious behavior", "loyalty", "devotion", or "filial piety" (English "piety" derives from the Latin), was one of the chief virtues among the ancient Romans. It was the distinguishing virtue of the founding hero Aeneas, who is often given the adjectival epithet pius ("religious") throughout Virgil's epic Aeneid. The sacred nature of pietas was embodied by the divine personification Pietas, a goddess often pictured on Roman coins. The Greek equivalent is eusebeia (εὐσέβεια).

Cicero defined pietas as the virtue "which admonishes us to do our duty to our country or our parents or other blood relations." The man who possessed pietas "performed all his duties towards the deity and his fellow human beings fully and in every respect," as the 19th-century classical scholar Georg Wissowa described it. Cicero suggests people should have awareness of their own honor and must always attempt to raise the honor of others with dignified praise. Furthermore, praise, admiration, and honored actions must be beyond all one's own desires, and actions and words must be chosen with respect to friends, colleagues, family, or blood relations. Cicero describes youth in the pursuit of honour: “How they yearn for praise! What labours will they not undertake to stand fast among their peers! How will they remember those who have shown them kindness and how eager to repay it!”

Lucius Cassius Dio (c. 165 – c. 235), also known as Dio Cassius (Ancient Greek: Δίων Κάσσιος Dion Kassios), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history of ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the subsequent founding of Rome (753 BC), the formation of the Republic (509 BC), and the creation of the Empire (27 BC) up until 229 AD, during the reign of Severus Alexander. Written in Koine Greek over 22 years, Dio's work covers approximately 1,000 years of history.

Many of his books have survived intact, alongside summaries edited by later authors such as Xiphilinus, a Byzantine monk of the 11th century, and Zonaras, a Byzantine chronicler of the 12th century.