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"I could cite many other Greek historians who assign different founders to the city, but, not to appear prolix, I shall come to the Roman historians.
The Romans, to be sure, have not so much as one single historian or chronicler who is ancient; however, each of their historians has taken something out of ancient accounts that are preserved on tablets in their temples.
Some of these say that Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were the sons of Aeneias, others say that they were the sons of a daughter of Aeneias, without going on to determine who was their father; that they were delivered as hostages by Aeneias to Latinus, the king of the Aborigines, when the treaty was made between the inhabitants and the new-comers, and that Latinus, after giving them a kindly welcome, not only looked after them carefully, but, upon dying without male issue, left them his successors to some part of his kingdom.
Others say that after the death of Aeneias Ascanius, having succeeded to the entire kingdom of Latinus, divided both the country and the forces of the Latins into three parts, two of which he gave to his brothers, Romulus and Remus.
He himself, they say, built Alba and some other towns; Remus built cities which he named Capua, after Capys, his great-grandfather, Anchisa, after his grandfather Anchises, Aeneia (which was afterwards called Janiculum), after his father, and Rome, after himself.
This last city was for some time deserted, but upon the arrival of another colony, which the Albans sent out under the leadership of Romulus and Remus, it regained its original status.
So that, according to this account, there were two settlements of Rome, one a little after the Trojan war, and the other fifteen generations after the first.
- And if anyone desires to look more carefully into the remote past, (281) even a third foundation of Rome will be found, more ancient than these, one that happened before Aeneias and the Trojans came into Italy.
This is related by no ordinary historian, but by Antiochus of Syracuse, whom I have mentioned before.
He says that when Morges reigned in Latium (which at that time comprehended all of Italy from Tarentum to the coast of Poseidonia), a man came to him who had been banished from Rome.
His words are these: 'When Italus was growing old, Morges reigned.
In his reign there came a man who had been banished from Rome; his name was Sicelus.' According to the Syracusan historian, therefore, an ancient Rome is found even earlier than the Trojan war.
However, as he has left it doubtful whether it was situated in the same region where the present city stands or whether some other place happened to be called by this name, I, too, cannot say for certain.
But as regards the ancient settlements of Rome, I think that what has already been said is sufficient.