Foundation Myths: Athens & Rome
Why Cities Needed Foundation Myths
Every great city of the ancient world told stories about how it came to exist. These were not simply fairy tales: foundation myths gave a city its identity, its prestige and its claim to divine protection. They answered the question “why are we here, and why does this city deserve to flourish?” by anchoring the answer in the actions of gods and heroes. Athens claimed the goddess Athena as its patron; Rome traced its ancestry to the Trojan hero Aeneas and through him to the goddess Venus. These stories were told and retold in art, literature and public ritual — they shaped how citizens understood their city and its place in the world.
The Naming of Athens: Athena and Poseidon
The Athenians told a story of a divine contest for their city. Two Olympians — Athena and Poseidon — both wanted to be patron of the new city, and Zeus ruled that the one who gave the most useful gift to the citizens would win. Poseidon struck the ground of the Acropolis with his trident and a spring of salt water gushed forth — powerful, dramatic, a reminder of his dominion over the sea. Athena struck the earth and an olive tree grew. The citizens (in some versions, judged by the gods; in others, by the people themselves, with the women voting for Athena) chose the olive tree, and Athena became the city’s patron. The city was named Athens in her honour.
The olive tree was enormously meaningful to Greek life: olive oil was food, fuel for lamps, and a sacred substance used in religious ritual and to anoint the bodies of athletes. Athena’s gift was practical where Poseidon’s was merely impressive. The myth encoded a civic value: wisdom and usefulness matter more than raw power. The sacred olive tree on the Acropolis was tended as a holy relic for centuries. Ancient sources reported that when the Persians burned Athens in 480 BC, the tree sprouted new shoots the very next day — a sign, the Athenians said, of Athena’s undying protection.
The contest between Athena and Poseidon was depicted on the west pediment of the Parthenon, the most prominent sculptural programme in Athens. Both deities were shown at the moment of the contest, flanked by the Olympian gods as witnesses. By placing this myth at the heart of their most sacred building, the Athenians permanently embedded their divine foundation story in stone.
Theseus and the Adventures of Athens’s Hero-King
Athens also celebrated Theseus, its own heroic founder-king, whose adventures were displayed on the Theseus Kylix, now in the British Museum (catalogue number 1850,0302.3). This red-figure cup, made around 440 BC, shows seven episodes in total: the Minotaur at the centre (tondo), and six bandit and monster encounters on the outer ring — Kerkyon, Prokrustes, Skiron, the Bull of Marathon, Sinis and the Krommyonian Sow. The cup is a striking example of how a single portable object could carry an entire heroic biography. The choice of adventures depicted sends a political message: Theseus makes the roads and the sea safe, he defeats the monstrous enemy, he brings civilisation — just as Athens itself claimed to do for the Greek world.
The Founding of Rome: Romulus and Remus
Rome’s foundation myth was recorded by the historian Livy in his Early History of Rome (Book 1). According to Livy, the twins Romulus and Remus were descended from the Trojan hero Aeneas through the line of kings of Alba Longa. Their mother was a Vestal Virgin, Rhea Silvia, who had been made a priestess to prevent her from having children (and thus potential heirs who might threaten the king). The god Mars, however, came to her and fathered the twins — giving Rome its legendary divine ancestry through the god of war.
The king ordered the infants to be drowned in the Tiber, but the river was in flood and the basket carrying them was set down on dry land instead, at the foot of the Palatine Hill. There, according to Livy, a she-wolf found the abandoned infants and suckled them; later they were found and raised by a shepherd and his wife. When they grew up, they overthrew the wicked king and decided to found their own city. A dispute arose over which of two hills to build it on, and an argument about the omens (Romulus saw twelve vultures; Remus saw six) led to Romulus killing Remus. Romulus then built Rome and became its first king.
Livy presents the Romulus and Remus myth as reflecting key Roman values: the twins were suckled by a she-wolf (strength and ferocity), raised by a shepherd (humble origins, closeness to the land), and their divine father was Mars (Rome’s military destiny). The killing of Remus was a disturbing detail, but it established that Rome would have one founder, one king, one destiny — not a divided city.
Aeneas and the Trojan Origins of Rome
Before Romulus and Remus, Rome traced its ultimate origins even further back, to Aeneas, a Trojan prince and son of the goddess Venus. Livy records that after the fall of Troy, Aeneas led a band of survivors westward, eventually arriving in Italy and founding Lavinium. His son Ascanius later founded Alba Longa, whose line of kings eventually included Rhea Silvia — and thus Romulus and Remus. This Trojan origin story served a brilliant political function: it made Rome part of the Greek mythological world (Troy was a major player in the greatest of all Greek myths, the Trojan War) while simultaneously asserting Roman independence — they were not Greek, they were Trojans, the Greeks’ defeated enemies, reborn as something far greater. Virgil’s Aeneid made this origin story the national epic of Rome.
Plutarch, writing in the late first century AD, wrote biographies of famous Greeks and Romans in parallel pairs, each pair exploring a Greek and a Roman who shared similar qualities or roles. He paired Theseus (founder of Athens as a unified city) with Romulus (founder of Rome) and wrote an explicit comparison of the two. Plutarch noted that both heroes had uncertain births (divine or semi-divine fathers, mothers of uncertain status), both unified scattered communities into a single great city, and both committed acts of violence — Theseus abandoning Ariadne; Romulus killing Remus — that cast a shadow over their achievements. Plutarch’s comparison is a sophisticated literary work that invites readers to think about what kind of character a founder needs and what moral compromises city-building demands. For this exam, the key use of Plutarch is to show that ancient authors themselves compared Athens and Rome through their foundation heroes.
Modern historians do not take the stories of Romulus and Remus or the contest of Athena and Poseidon as literal history. However, there is real archaeological evidence for early settlement at Rome and Athens. The question is not “did it happen?” but “what did the myth mean?” Foundation myths told citizens who they were, who their city belonged to, and what values it stood for. They were performed in drama, displayed in public art, and recited in religious ceremonies. Even Livy, writing a careful history of Rome, included the Romulus and Remus story while acknowledging that such tales “adorn” the origins of cities — he did not expect his readers to believe every detail literally, but he recognised that the stories shaped Roman identity in ways no dry list of facts could replace.