Romulus és Remus Veiiben

Abstract

Romulus and Remus in Veii Much has been written in Classics about the relationship between early Rome and the Etruscans, from scholarly articles to secondary school textbooks. Inspired in part by recent research in archaeogenetics, this article argues for the feasibility of an approach which sees Rome and its northern neighbours as political subsystems of the same cultural unit instead of interacting as separate cultural entities. As an example of that, if one reads the early archaeological material of Veii, an Etruscan city neighbouring Rome, and the Roman origin stories transmitted in Latin literature as products of the same culture (temporarily disregarding the linguistic-ethnic divide between the two cities that became so important later on), one can shed light on the vast scale of possible interpretations which could develop in both directions. Keywords: early Rome, Roman myth, meta-historiography, Livy, Etruscans, ethnicity in antiquity, Veii, heroon, casa Romuli