Kings of Alba Longa
The kings of Alba Longa, or Alban kings, were a series of legendary kings of Latium, who ruled from the ancient city of Alba Longa. In the mythic tradition of ancient Rome, they fill the 400-year gap between the settlement of Aeneas in Italy and the founding of the city of Rome by Romulus. It was this line of descent to which the Julii claimed kinship. The traditional line of the Alban kings ends with Numitor, the grandfather of Romulus and Remus. One later king, Gaius Cluilius, is mentioned by Roman historians, although his relation to the original line, if any, is unknown; and after his death, a few generations after the time of Romulus, the city was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius, the third King of Rome, and its population transferred to Alba's daughter city.
Background
The city of Alba Longa, often abbreviated Alba, was a Latin settlement in the montes Albani, or Alban Hills, near the present site of Castel Gandolfo in Latium. Although the exact location remains difficult to prove, there is archaeological evidence of Iron Age settlements in the area traditionally identified as the site. In Roman mythology, Alba was founded by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, as a colony of Lavinium, the original settlement of Trojan refugees and native Latins, which it quickly eclipsed. There is some uncertainty in the tradition as to Ascanius' mother; in some accounts he was the son of Lavinia, and grandson of Latinus, the native king who welcomed Aeneas and the Trojans; his elder half brother, Iulus, was the son of Creusa, Aeneas' first wife, who died in the sack of Troy. This was the account favoured by Livy; in other versions, Ascanius was the son of Creusa; Dionysius and Virgil follow this account. However, the two differ where Vergil claims Ascanius and Iulus were the same; Dionysius, on the other hand, makes Iulus the son of Ascanius. In all accounts, Ascanius was the founder and first king of Alba Longa, while Iulus was claimed as the ancestor of the Julian gens.Eratosthenes, the most influential of the ancient chronologists, reckoned that the sack of Troy occurred in 1184 BC, more than four centuries before the traditional founding of Rome, in 753. The history of the Alban kings conveniently filled that gap with a continuous line leading from Aeneas to Romulus, thus serving as a mythical justification for the close ties between Rome and the rest of Latium, and enhancing the status of Roman and Latin families who claimed descent from the original Trojan settlers or their Alban descendants. Such was the eagerness in the late Republic to claim a Trojan pedigree that fifteen different lists of the Alban kings from Aeneas to Romulus survive.
History
Kings of Latium
When Aeneas and the Trojan refugees landed on the shores of the Laurentian plain, they encountered the Latins, led by their eponymous king, Latinus. The Latins were aborigines; that is, the original inhabitants of Latium, a title sometimes used to refer to the Latins before the arrival of Aeneas. Latinus was the son of Faunus, and grandson of Picus, the first king of Latium, who was in turn the son of Saturn. This was the most usual account, followed by Virgil in the Aeneid, and by Eusebius, but there were also several other versions. Picus was also said to be the son of Mars, rather than Saturn. According to Justin, Faunus was Latinus' maternal grandfather, and was the son of Jupiter, rather than Picus; in this account Saturn was the first king of the Latins. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Latinus was the son of Hercules, and merely pretended to be the son of Faunus; Aeneas arrived in the thirty-fifth year of his reign over the Aborigines.Evander and Janus are also sometimes described as ancient kings of the Aborigines; but Livy describes Evander as a king of the Arcadians, as does Virgil, who makes him an ally of Aeneas in the war against the Rutuli. In his Saturnalia, Macrobius describes Janus as sharing Latium with another king, known as Camese.
The Latins were alarmed by the arrival of the Trojans, and rushed to arms; according to some accounts, a battle was fought, in which Latinus was defeated, and a peace concluded between the two groups, cemented by the marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia, daughter of the Latin king; in other versions battle was narrowly averted when the two leaders chose to parley before hostilities could begin, and Aeneas impressed his host with his noble bearing and woeful story, leading to an alliance. Aeneas then established the town of Lavinium, named after his young bride, with a mixed population of Trojans and Latins.
But the new settlers and their alliance with Latinus soon encountered threats from two neighbouring peoples. First the Rutuli, whose prince, Turnus, had previously been betrothed to Lavinia, marched against them. The new allies defeated the Rutuli, but Latinus was slain in the fighting, whereupon Aeneas assumed the leadership of both Trojans and Latins, declaring that henceforth all of his followers should be known as Latins. Subsequently, Mezentius, king of the Etruscan city of Caere, led an army against the Latins; he too was defeated after fierce fighting, but Aeneas fell in battle, or died soon afterward, and was buried on the banks of the Numicus, where he was later regarded as Jupiter Indiges, the local god.
Because Ascanius was still a child, Lavinia acted as regent until he came of age. Livy describes her as a woman of great character, who was able to maintain the peace between the Latins and their Etruscan neighbours to the north; he also describes the boundary between Latium and Etruria, fixed by treaty after the battle between Aeneas and Mezentius as the river Albula, subsequently known as the Tiber.
The Silvian Dynasty
About thirty years after the founding of Lavinium, when the original Trojan settlement was flourishing and populous, Ascanius decided to establish a colony in the Alban Hills, which, as it was initially spread out along a ridge, became known as Alba Longa. Nothing further is written of Ascanius, who was succeeded by his son, Silvius, according to Livy. Silvius' name was reportedly derived from his having been born in the woods, and Dionysius records a different tradition, whereby he was not the son of Ascanius, but his half-brother, the son of Aeneas and Lavinia. In this account, Lavinia feared that Ascanius, already a young man upon the death of his father, would harm her or her child, as threats to his bloodline, and therefore hid in the woods, where she was sheltered by Tyrrhenus, the royal swineherd and a friend of her father, Latinus. She and her son emerged from hiding when the Latins accused Ascanius of having done away with his stepmother. Silvius then succeeded Ascanius as king of the Latins, in preference to Ascanius' son, Iulus, whom Dionysius identifies as the ancestor of the Julii. According to Dionysius, Ascanius died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, counting from the death of Aeneas, rather than the founding of Alba Longa.Livy records that Silvius founded several colonies, later known as the Prisci Latini, or "Old Latins". According to Dionysius, he reigned for twenty-nine years. He was succeeded by his son, Aeneas Silvius, who assumed his father's name as a cognomen, or surname; henceforth all of his descendants bore the name "Silvius" in addition to their personal names. This was the same process by which the nomen gentilicium later developed throughout Italy. Aeneas reigned for thirty-one years, and was succeeded by Latinus Silvius, who reigned for fifty-one years. The next king, Alba, reigned for thirty-nine years; according to Livy, he was succeeded by Atys, who reigned for twenty-six years, followed by Capys, who reigned twenty-eight years, and Capetus, who ruled for thirteen years.
Capetus' successor, Tiberinus, was drowned crossing the river Albula, which was henceforth known as the Tiber in his memory; Dionysius says that he was slain in battle, and his body carried away by the river, after a reign of eight years. Tiberinus was followed by Agrippa, who ruled for forty-one years, and was succeeded by his son, Romulus Silvius, whom Dionysius calls Allocius. Livy states simply that he was struck by lightning, but Dionysius describes him as tyrannical and contemptuous of the gods; he imitated thunder and lightning, so as to appear like a god before the people, whereupon he and his whole household were destroyed by thunder and lightning, and overwhelmed by the waters of the adjoining lake, after a reign of nineteen years. He bequeathed his throne to Aventinus, who reigned for thirty-seven years, and was buried on the hill that bears his name. He was followed by Proca, who reigned for twenty-three years.
Proca had two sons, Numitor and Amulius; his will was that he be succeeded by the elder son, Numitor, but Amulius drove out his brother, claiming the throne for himself. He had his brother's sons put to death, and appointed Numitor's daughter, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin, supposedly to do her honour, but in fact to ensure her perpetual virginity and prevent any further issue in her father's line. But Rhea was raped, and gave birth to twin sons, Romulus and Remus; she claimed that their father was Mars himself. Amulius had her thrown in prison, and ordered the infants thrown into the Tiber. But as the Tiber was swollen and its banks unreachable, the boys were exposed at the base of a fig tree, where they were suckled by a she-wolf, and then discovered by the shepherd Faustulus, who raised them with the aid of his wife, Acca Larentia. When they had grown to manhood, Romulus and Remus contrived to assassinate their wicked uncle, and restored their grandfather to the throne. According to Dionysius, Amulius reigned forty-two years.
The following year, which Dionysius makes the four hundred and thirty-second since the fall of Troy, Romulus and Remus set out to establish an Alban colony, which ultimately became the city of Rome. As Numitor had no further issue, the Silvian dynasty of Alba Longa ends with him.