001- In the Beginning

The episode traces Rome’s legendary beginnings from Aeneas’s escape after Troy to the canonical Romulus-and-Remus foundation story. The host recounts Aeneas’s arrival in Latium, his marriage to Lavinia (daughter of King Latinus), conflict with local princes and the Etruscans, and Virgil’s portrayal of Dido’s curse that explains later Roman-Carthaginian hostility. Generations later the narrative turns to Numitor, his daughter Rhea Silvia, and her twin sons Romulus and Remus — exposed at the Tiber, suckled by a she‑wolf in the popular fable, and raised by a herdsman. A dispute over augury or the city walls results in Remus’s death and Romulus’s sole rule; tradition fixes Rome’s founding on April 21, 753 BC.

The host balances myth with material evidence: Iron Age habitation on the Palatine and strategic siting on trade routes support a broad chronology, while DNA evidence for an Anatolian origin of the Etruscans aligns awkwardly with the Aeneas motif. The episode highlights how later Roman historians grafted common Indo‑European myth elements onto sparse records (many lost after the 386 BC sack), and notes scholars’ skepticism — including Livy’s own doubt about the wolf story. The narrator closes by previewing the next episode on Rome’s early social practices, population growth, and Romulus’s fate.