Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries.

But as the river had been swollen by rain, the servants tasked with disposing of the infants could not reach its banks, and so exposed the twins beneath a fig tree at the foot of the Palatine Hill.

[2][4] In the traditional account, a she-wolf happened upon the twins, and suckled them until they were found by the king's herdsman, Faustulus, and his wife, Acca Larentia.

[6][8] In a variant of the legend, the augurs favoured Romulus, who proceeded to plough a square furrow around the Palatine Hill to demarcate the walls of the future city (Roma Quadrata).

These men he called patres, the city fathers; their descendants came to be known as "patricians", forming one of the two major social classes at Rome.

The other class, known as the "plebs" or "plebeians", consisted of the servants, freedmen, fugitives who sought asylum at Rome, those captured in war, and others who were granted Roman citizenship over time.

[16][17] To encourage the growth of the city, Romulus outlawed infanticide, and established an asylum for fugitives on the Capitoline Hill.

After personally defeating and slaying the prince of Caenina in single combat, Romulus stripped him of his armour, becoming the first to claim the spolia opima, and vowed to build a temple to Jupiter Feretrius.

[20] Following the defeat of the Latin towns, the Sabines, under the leadership of Titus Tatius, marshalled their forces and advanced upon Rome.

The bloodshed finally ended when the Sabine women interposed themselves between the two armies, pleading on the one hand with their fathers and brothers, and on the other with their husbands, to set aside their arms and come to terms.

[21] The two kings presided over the growing city of Rome for a number of years, before Tatius was slain in a riot at Lavinium, where he had gone to make a sacrifice.

Romulus resisted calls to avenge the Sabine king's death, instead reaffirming the Roman alliance with Lavinium, and perhaps preventing his city from splintering along ethnic lines.

[22] In the years following the death of Tatius, Romulus is said to have conquered the city of Fidenae, which, alarmed by the rising power of Rome, had begun raiding Roman territory.

[23] After a reign of thirty-seven years,[24][25] Romulus is said to have disappeared in a whirlwind during a sudden and violent storm, as he was reviewing his troops on the Campus Martius.

In Livy, following the defeat of the Caeninenses and the Antemnates, the Sabine women begged Hersilia to intercede with her husband on behalf of their families so that they would be received into the state rather than slain by Roman arms.

Roman historians connect Romulus to Aeneas by ancestry and mention a previous settlement on the Palatine Hill, sometimes attributing it to Evander and his Greek colonists.

Images of Quirinus showed him as a bearded warrior wielding a spear as a god of war, the embodiment of Roman strength and a deified likeness of the city of Rome.

[33][34] Ovid in Metamorphoses XIV (lines 805-828) gives a description of the deification of Romulus and his wife Hersilia, who are given the new names of Quirinus and Hora respectively.

While Romulus is a founding hero, Quirinus may have been a god of the harvest, and the Fornacalia a festival celebrating a staple crop (spelt).

Called a "dema archetype", this pattern suggests that in a prior tradition, the god and the hero were in fact the same figure and later evolved into two.

[39]: 60–2  This hypothesis is rejected by other scholars, such as Tim Cornell (1995),[39] who notes that by this period, the story of Romulus and Remus had already assumed its standard form, and was widely accepted at Rome.

[39]: 60–2  Likewise, Momigliano finds Strasburger's argument well-developed, but entirely implausible; if the Romulus myths were an exercise in mockery, they were a signal failure.

In the late 16th century, the wealthy Magnani family from Bologna commissioned a series of artworks based on the Roman foundation myth.

The artists contributing works included a sculpture of Hercules with the infant twins by Gabriele Fiorini, featuring the patron's own face.

The most important works were an elaborate series of frescoes collectively known as Histories of the Foundation of Rome by the Brothers Carracci: Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino.