In
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...
, King Numitor () of
Alba Longa
Alba Longa (occasionally written Albalonga in Italian sources) was an ancient Latin city in Central Italy, 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Rome, in the vicinity of Lake Albano in the Alban Hills. Founder and head of the Latin League, it wa ...
, was the maternal grandfather of Rome's founder and first king,
Romulus
Romulus () was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of these ...
, and his twin brother
Remus. He was the son of
Procas, descendant of
Aeneas
In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons ...
the
Trojan, and father of the twins' mother,
Rhea Silvia, and
Lausus
Lausus was the son of the ousted Etruscan king Mezentius, and fought with him against Aeneas and the Trojans in Italy. He appears in Virgil's Aeneid in Books VII and X. When his father is wounded by Aeneas, Lausus steps in between them, and Aeneas ...
.
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.
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...
I.3.10
Rhea Silvia was made a
Vestal Virgin by Amulius rendering her unable to have children on pain of death; however, according to myth she was forcibly impregnated by the god
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...
. Romulus and Remus overthrew
Amulius and reinstated Numitor as
king
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...
in 752 B.C .
[Dionysius of Halicarnassus ''Roman Antiquities'' 71.5]
Family tree
See also
*''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, 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 Golden Bough (mythology)
The Golden Bough is one of the episodic tales written in the epic ''Aeneid'', book VI, by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC), which narrates the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas after the Trojan War.Stookey, Lorena Laura (2004); p. 67.
St ...
Notes
References
Kings of Alba Longa
{{AncientRome-myth-stub
Characters in Book VI of the Aeneid