I.   ROME: History

1. Foundation: 753 BCE; ruled first by Etruscan kings.
2. Kings expelled / monarchy crushed by the wealthy patricians (land-owning class), ca. 500 BCE
3. Birth of the Roman Republic [res publica]
4. Patricians meet in Senate; plebians excluded, for the most part, from power
5. 31 BCE: Republic collapses; Augustus rises to power
6. Birth of the Roman Empire

II. Foundation stories: Aeneas and Dido

1. Vergil (70 BCE - 19 BCE) wrote the ëAeneidí
2. V.: lost his farm in 41 BCE; received help from Maecenas, a good friend of Augustus
3. V. wrote the ëAeneidí in honor of Augustus--story of Romeís earliest inhabitants.
4. Aeneid--unfinished, in 19 BCE (V. dies)
5. Aeneas comes to Carthage, loves and leaves Dido (the queen), who commits suicide
6. A. stops in Sicily to hold funeral games for Anchises, leaves Trojan woman there to found new colony.
7. Trip to the underworld (cf. Odyssey): Aeneas meets Dido, who wonít talk to him.
8. Trip to Elysium fields: A. meets his father; sees souls of future Romans
9. Meet local king, Latinus in Latium
10. Lís daughter Lavinia had been betrothed to Turnus, but Latinus gives her instead to Aeneas
11. War erupts, to everyoneís surprise.
12. Aeneas forms partnership with King Evander ('good man') and they fight the Latini.
13. Aeneas wins, finally kills Turnus, gets to marry Lavinia.
14. People: Aphrodite, Anchises, Aeneas, Iulus, Dido
15. Places: Troy, Mediterranean, Carthage, Rome
16. Themes: foreign origin (but note later Romulus and Remus), foreign 'bride.'