[4] Although the exact location remains difficult to prove, there is archaeological evidence of Iron Age settlements in the area traditionally identified as the site.

[5] In Roman mythology, Alba was founded by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, as a colony of Lavinium, the original settlement of Trojan refugees and native Latins, which it quickly eclipsed.

[6][7][8] Eratosthenes, the most influential of the ancient chronologists, reckoned that the sack of Troy occurred in 1184 BC, more than four centuries before the traditional founding of Rome, in 753.

[9] The history of the Alban kings conveniently filled that gap with a continuous line leading from Aeneas to Romulus, thus serving as a mythical justification for the close ties between Rome and the rest of Latium, and enhancing the status of Roman and Latin families who claimed descent from the original Trojan settlers or their Alban descendants.

Such was the eagerness in the late Republic to claim a Trojan pedigree that fifteen different lists of the Alban kings from Aeneas to Romulus survive.

[10] When Aeneas and the Trojan refugees landed on the shores of the Laurentian plain, they encountered the Latins, led by their eponymous king, Latinus.

According to Justin, Faunus was Latinus' maternal grandfather, and was the son of Jupiter, rather than Picus; in this account Saturn was the first king of the Latins.

[19] The Latins were alarmed by the arrival of the Trojans, and rushed to arms; according to some accounts, a battle was fought, in which Latinus was defeated, and a peace concluded between the two groups, cemented by the marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia, daughter of the Latin king; in other versions battle was narrowly averted when the two leaders chose to parley before hostilities could begin, and Aeneas impressed his host with his noble bearing and woeful story, leading to an alliance.

Subsequently, Mezentius, king of the Etruscan city of Caere, led an army against the Latins; he too was defeated after fierce fighting, but Aeneas fell in battle, or died soon afterward, and was buried on the banks of the Numicus, where he was later regarded as Jupiter Indiges, the local god.

[6] About thirty years after the founding of Lavinium, when the original Trojan settlement was flourishing and populous, Ascanius decided to establish a colony in the Alban Hills, which, as it was initially spread out along a ridge, became known as Alba Longa.

According to Dionysius, Ascanius died in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, counting from the death of Aeneas, rather than the founding of Alba Longa.

Tiberinus was followed by Agrippa, who ruled for forty-one years, and was succeeded by his son, Romulus Silvius, whom Dionysius calls Allocius.

But as the Tiber was swollen and its banks unreachable, the boys were exposed at the base of a fig tree, where they were suckled by a she-wolf, and then discovered by the shepherd Faustulus, who raised them with the aid of his wife, Acca Larentia.

It is not known whether he had any sons to succeed him in the kingship; the ancient historians report only that the military command was entrusted to Mettius Fufetius, who negotiated that the war be decided by a contest of champions; victory fell to Rome when the Horatii defeated the Curiatii, and peace was restored.

At a crucial point in the battle between the Roman and Fidenate armies, Fufetius, in command of the Alban forces ostensibly allied with Rome, withdrew from the field.

But the earliest surviving records and accounts postdate the period of the Alban kings by several centuries, leaving little basis upon which to evaluate their historicity.

In particular, the tradition connecting the founding of Alba Longa with the flight of Aeneas from Troy was only one of a number of stories about the origins of Rome, and although doubtless ancient, it shows the hallmarks of having developed over a long period.

[35] About the same time, Aristotle related a tradition that Achaean warriors returning home after the Trojan War were driven to Italy by a storm.

In his account of Roman origins, Pictor described a continuous history of Greek exports to Italy, including the landing of Heracles and the establishment of a colony on the Palatine Hill by the Arcadians under Evander, to whom he attributed the introduction of the alphabet.

[44] It was popular in the late Roman Republic for the more distinguished families to claim divine origin, and it was believed that Iulus (Ascanius) was the mythical ancestor of the gens Julia.

In the Forum of Augustus, statues of the kings of Alba Longa and members of the Julian family were placed with Aeneas[49] in the northwest hemicycle.

Augustus' funerary procession reflects the same kind of propaganda as his "Hall of Heroes" and included many of the same statues, with one headed by Aeneas and the other by Romulus.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk living in the 12th century AD, wrote a fabricated history of the kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae).

[58] The ancient historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus is believed to have invented the Alban chronology to fill the gap of centuries between the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome.