Episode 1. In the Beginning: The Origins of Rome

SOURCE NOTES:Primary Sources:Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book I (trans. B.O. Foster, Loeb Classical Library, 1919; also R.M. Ogilvie, Penguin, 1960)Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books I–II (trans. E. Cary, Loeb Classical Library, 1937)Plutarch, Life of Romulus (trans. B. Perrin, Loeb Classical Library, 1914)Ovid, Fasti, Book IV (on the founding date)Secondary Sources:T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (Routledge, 1995) — the essential modern scholarly treatmentAndrea Carandini, Rome: Day One (Princeton University Press, 2011) — argues for more historical kernel in the mythGary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome (University of California Press, 2005) — more skeptical approachMassimo Pallottino, The Etruscans (Penguin, 1975)Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Profile Books, 2015) — accessible modern surveyOn the Archaeological Evidence:Carandini's excavations on the Palatine from the 1980s onwardThe Forum cemetery evidence: archaic burials indicate pre-urban use of the Forum valleyPietro Romanelli and subsequent work on Palatine hut remainsOn Early Iron Age Latium and Everyday Life:Christopher Smith, Early Rome and Latium (Oxford University Press, 1996)Graeme Barker and Tom Rasmussen, The Etruscans (Blackwell, 1998) — comparative context for Iron Age central ItalyWalter Scheidel, Debating Roman Demography (Brill, 2001) — on mortality and population