Romulus - The Man Who Killed His Brother to Build a City

Books & Insights · Plutarch's Lives Series #3

Romulus

The Man Who Killed His Brother to Build a City

📚 Series Contents

1. What Is Plutarch's Lives?
2. Theseus
3. Romulus ← You are here
4. Alexander the Great
5. Julius Caesar
6. The Vessel of a Conqueror — and Its Breaking Point
7. Pericles
8. Cicero
9. The Rise and Fall of Heroes
10. Why We Still Read Plutarch's Lives Today

Every great beginning casts a shadow. The founding myth of Rome is proof of that. The man who built the most powerful city in the ancient world was a child abandoned to die, raised by a wolf, and crowned by the blood of his own twin. Plutarch does not look away from any of it.

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Children Nursed by a Wolf

The birth of Romulus is extraordinary from the start. His mother Rhea Silvia, a Vestal Virgin, is said to have conceived by the war god Mars. The reigning king of Alba Longa, Amulius, had every reason to fear what those children might become. He ordered the twin boys — Romulus and Remus — thrown into the Tiber.

They did not drown. The basket carrying them came to rest in shallow water near a fig tree. A she-wolf found them and nursed them. A shepherd named Faustulus discovered the boys and brought them home to raise. Plutarch records the legend faithfully — and then, characteristically, offers a rational alternative: the "wolf" may have been a woman called Lupa, a nickname common among women of rough reputation, who took the infants in.

"Plutarch neither dismisses the myth nor swallows it whole. He searches inside the legend for the human truth beneath it."

— How to read Plutarch

The Death of a Brother

When the twins came of age, they overthrew Amulius and resolved to found a city of their own. But they disagreed on where to build it. To settle the dispute, they turned to augury — the Roman practice of reading the will of the gods through the flight of birds. Remus saw six birds from his hill; Romulus saw twelve from his.

Each claimed victory. Remus had seen his birds first; Romulus had seen more. The argument turned violent. Remus died — by Romulus's hand, or by that of one of his followers. The accounts differ. The result does not.

The Leap That Sealed ItWhen Romulus began marking the boundary of his new city with a ditch, Remus mocked it and jumped across to prove how easily it could be crossed. Romulus was furious. "So dies anyone who leaps my walls," he is said to have declared. Remus fell where he stood.

Plutarch does not assign blame cleanly. He simply records what happened and what it cost: Rome was founded on a brother's blood. Romulus would carry that weight for the rest of his life.

How to Fill a City

The boundaries were drawn. But a city needs people. Romulus declared Rome a sanctuary — open to runaway slaves, debtors, exiles, and outcasts of every kind. Men came quickly. Women did not.

The Rape of the Sabine WomenRomulus invited the neighboring Sabine people to a festival in Rome. At the height of the celebrations, Roman men seized the Sabine women and carried them off. It is one of the darkest episodes in the story of Rome's founding.

Plutarch does not dress this up. But he records what followed: the abducted women married Roman men, and when war broke out between Rome and the Sabines, the women themselves ran between the two armies and brokered peace. A community born of violence became a community held together by those who had most reason to resent it. Plutarch notes the irony quietly, but he makes sure you feel it.

Romulus the King

Romulus did not only found Rome — he gave it its skeleton. He established the Senate, organized the military, and laid down the basic laws and customs that would define Roman life for centuries. In battle he led from the front. There are accounts of him killing enemy commanders in single combat, dedicating their armor as spoils to Jupiter.

Achievement	What He Did	Historical Significance
Founding of Rome	Built the city on the Palatine Hill, 753 BC	Birth of Western civilization's center
The Senate	Established a council of one hundred elders	Root of the Roman Republic
Sabine Integration	United Romans and Sabines under shared rule	Template for Rome's multiethnic growth

The King Who Vanished

The death of Romulus is one of history's great unsolved moments. During a military review in the Forum, a sudden storm descended. When the clouds cleared, Romulus was gone. The people believed he had been taken up to the gods — deified under the name Quirinus, he became one of Rome's patron spirits.

But Plutarch records a second version: that Romulus had grown autocratic in his final years, and that senators, resentful of his tyranny, had killed him and hidden the pieces of his body beneath their cloaks. The god and the murder victim. Plutarch offers both and decides nothing.

"Even the greatest founder can be changed by power. The disappearance of Romulus is Rome's permanent unanswered question about what it did to the man who made it."

— Plutarch's lens on Romulus

Theseus and Romulus — Two Founders, One Mirror

Plutarch's reason for pairing these two men becomes unmistakable. Across two different civilizations, the pattern is almost identical.

Theseus

• Father uncertain — mortal or god
• Caused his father's death
• Unified Athens; shared power
• Expelled from the city he built
• Died alone in exile

Romulus

• Father uncertain — mortal or god
• Caused his brother's death
• Built Rome; founded the Senate
• Vanished — murdered or divine
• Truth of his death suppressed

Both men built cities that outlasted them by millennia. Both caused the deaths of those closest to them. Both were ultimately consumed by the worlds they created. Plutarch's argument runs quietly beneath the parallel: greatness does not protect you from tragedy. It may, in fact, invite it.

Next Episode

The Young Man Who Conquered the World

The flame that burned out at thirty-three — Alexander the Great.

This series draws on Plutarch's Lives to reinterpret its key figures and moments through a contemporary lens.