Rome's legendary founding is traditionally dated to this day
On this day · 21 April 753 BC
Roman tradition fixes the birth of the city to April 21, 753 BC, when Romulus is said to have marked out its first walls.
By Roman reckoning, the city was born on April 21, 753 BC, when Romulus plowed a sacred furrow around the Palatine Hill to mark its first boundary. The legend has him and his twin Remus, raised by a she-wolf, quarreling over the new settlement until Romulus killed his brother and gave the city his name.
The precise date was not handed down from the founders. It was calculated centuries later by the scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century BC, who worked backward through lists of kings and consuls to pin the event to a single day.
The choice was no accident. April 21 was already the Parilia, an ancient herders’ festival honoring Pales, goddess of flocks. Romans still mark the day as Natale di Roma, the city’s birthday, with reenactments and ceremonies near the Palatine.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
