Alba Longa

• 1. Introduction

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  Alba Longa was the city that, according to Roman tradition, gave birth to Rome itself. It sat in the Alban Hills of Central Italy, near Lake Albano, and the ancient Romans credited it as the founder and head of the Latin League. From its royal dynasty came Romulus and Remus. Through the poet Virgil, that same dynasty traced its blood all the way back to Aeneas, a son of Venus herself.

  Yet modern archaeology tells a different story. Classicist Tim Cornell has concluded there is no evidence of a powerful state in the Alban Hills at the relevant time. What the soil actually yields is a chain of small Iron Age villages, each with its own burial ground, strung along the south-western shore of Lake Albano. The grand, league-leading city-state that Roman tradition described may never have existed in anything like that form.

  So what was Alba Longa? A real settlement whose importance was magnified by later Romans seeking prestigious ancestors? A religious centre whose ceremonies outlasted its political power? And how did a city that Rome claimed as its own mother get razed to the ground by a Roman king? Those are the questions this documentary will follow.

• 2. City of Legend and Myth

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  The founding myth begins at Troy in 1184 BC. When the city fell, Aeneas led surviving Trojans across the Mediterranean, touching Sicily and Carthage before landing on the Italian Peninsula. There he was welcomed by Latinus, king of the early Latins, whose daughter Lavinia he married. He founded a city in her name: Lavinium.

  Aeneas died in battle, as Latinus had before him, and his son Ascanius took the throne. Ascanius is said to have built Alba Longa on the slope of Mount Alba in 1151 BC, resettling six hundred families there as a colony of Lavinium. That was just thirty years after Lavinium's own founding. His descendants then ruled the Latins for another five hundred years.

  The grammarian Festus connected these kings to a specific garment detail: he considered them the source of the red or Tyrian purple calceus mulleus that Roman patricians later wore. This is the kind of concrete, specific claim that gives Roman tradition its texture, even when the underlying history is uncertain.

  Romulus and Remus themselves were placed within this dynasty, described as two princes of Alba Longa who were banished at birth during a dynastic struggle. The ancient Romans dated the founding of Rome to the middle of the eighth century BC, treating it as a colony established by these two exiled heirs.

• 3. What the Ground Actually Shows

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  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, working from the same traditions as Livy, placed Alba Longa between the Alban Mount and the Alban Lake, and offered a linguistic note: alba means "white" in Latin, longa means "long", and he translated the name into Greek as "long white town". That geographical placement began a controversy about the city's precise location that has never fully been resolved.

  Since the 16th century, the site has been proposed at various locations: the Convent of St. Paul at Palazzola near Albano, Coste Caselle near Marino, and Castel Gandolfo. Castel Gandolfo is notable because it occupies the ground of the Villa of Domitian, which the satirist Juvenal said was built on the arx, or citadel, of Alba. That connection through Juvenal is as close as the literary sources get to pinning the location.

  Archaeological data, meanwhile, reveals a pattern of small Iron Age villages rather than a single urban centre. Each village had its own necropolis. At the time Rome destroyed the settlement, these communities were still in a pre-urban phase, beginning to consolidate around a centre that may have been Castel Gandolfo, whose significantly larger necropolis suggests it housed a larger population than the surrounding villages.

  The Roman tradition of a city-state powerful enough to found colonies and lead a league of thirty cities is, in Cornell's assessment, implausible and likely anachronistic. The villages in the Alban Hills during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age failed to develop into cities, and are certainly unlikely to have founded Rome.

• 4. The Latin League and Its Rituals

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  Alba Longa was reportedly the leading city among roughly thirty cities in the Latin League, cities described as its colonies. The league's conferences were held by the Ferentine spring, in the valley between Albano and Marino, until the middle of the fourth century BC.

  The sacrifices that held the league together were performed on the Alban mountain itself, a peak from which, according to tradition, all the country of Latium could be seen. The ceremony that grew from these gatherings was the Feriae Latinae, an annual celebration at which all cities belonging to the Latin Confederation gathered under the aegis of Alba. A white bull was sacrificed to Jupiter, and its flesh was distributed among all the participants. The 2nd-century historian Florus attributed the choice of the Monte Cavo site to Ascanius himself, who is said to have invited all the Latins there after founding Alba.

  The significance of the number thirty in the league's structure was not arbitrary. Latin tradition held that thirty was as important to Latin kingdoms as twelve was to the Ionians, a ratio described as four divided into three parts each. The Latin kingdom of Latinus and the Rutulian kingdom of Turnus were each said to have had thirty cities, with Laurentum as the Latin capital before Aeneas arrived.

  After Alba Longa was destroyed, Rome assumed its leadership role. Tradition records that during the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, a full-scale temple to Jupiter Latiaris was built on the Alban Mount. Substantial remains of the paved road that once connected this temple to the Via Appia near Aricia still exist today.

• 5. War, Treachery, and Destruction

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  Tullus Hostilius, who succeeded Numa Pompilius as king of Rome, brought a fundamentally different temperament to the throne. Where Numa had been peaceful, Tullus was drawn to war, and the conflict with Alba Longa began with what Livy describes as mutual accusations of robbery between Romans and Albans.

  Tullus handled the diplomatic opening with deliberate cunning. When the Alban delegation arrived in Rome to demand redress, he received them so warmly that they delayed stating their business. The Roman delegates, sent simultaneously to the Albans, made their demand immediately and were refused. That refusal gave Tullus the legal justification he needed to declare war. Livy notes that the war was considered akin to a civil conflict, given that Romans were held to be descended from the Albans.

  The Alban king Cluilius marched his army into Roman territory and dug a large defensive trench around the Roman position. This trench became known by his name. Cluilius then died in camp of unspecified causes, and the Albans appointed Mettius Fufetius as dictator in his place.

  Before battle was joined, Mettius proposed a striking alternative: instead of full-scale war that might leave both sides vulnerable to the nearby Etruscans, let the outcome be decided by three champions from each side. Three brothers, the Horatii from Rome and the Curiatii from Alba, would fight in place of their respective armies. Livy admits his sources disagreed about which set of brothers belonged to which side; he preferred to assign the Horatii to Rome and the Curiatii to Alba.

  Marcus Valerius was appointed Fetial and Spurius Fusius Pater Patratus for the formal treaty-making. Two of the three Romans fell first. Then Publius Horatius, the surviving Roman, killed all three Alban brothers and secured the victory. Alba became, in practical terms, a vassal of Rome.

• 6. The End of a City

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  The final destruction came not from the champion's duel but from a later betrayal. When war broke out with Veii and the Fidenates, Mettius marched with the Romans toward the Etruscans, meeting them on the far side of the Anio on the banks of the Tiber. At the moment of battle, Mettius led his Alban troops away from the fighting, leaving the Roman forces to face the Etruscans alone.

  Rome won anyway. Tullus then executed Mettius for his treachery. He ordered the Roman soldiers to demolish the city of Alba Longa, which Livy characterised as a 400-year-old city. The temples alone were spared. The entire population was transported to Rome, a forced migration that, according to tradition, doubled the number of Roman citizens.

  Tullus enrolled the leading Alban families among the patricians: the Julii, Servilii, Quinctii, Geganii, Curiatii and Cloelii. He built a new senate house, the Curia Hostilia, to accommodate the enlarged Roman Senate. He recruited ten new turmae of equites from among the Albans, along with new legions. The Alban immigrants settled on the Caelian Hill in Rome.

  The Ager Albanus, the territory of the old city, did not stay empty. In the later Republican period it filled with residential villas, mentioned in ancient literature, whose remains are still visible today.

• 7. Sacred Fires and Vestal Virgins

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  The worship of Vesta has a specific geographic logic that begins before Rome. It started in Lavinium, described as the mother-city of Alba Longa, then transferred to Alba Longa itself. When Roman magistrates entered higher office, they would travel to Lavinium to offer sacrifice to Vesta and to the Penates, the household gods the Romans traced back to Troy via Aeneas.

  Vesta herself was sometimes referred to as Vesta Iliaca, meaning Vesta of Troy, and her sacred hearth was called the Iliaci foci, the Trojan hearth. The temple of Vesta at the foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome was presumed to predate the city itself: the hearth of Vesta would not ordinarily be built outside a city's walls, suggesting the sanctuary preceded the settlement that grew up on the hilltop above it.

  The Vestal Virgins who kept Vesta's eternal fire burning are connected to Alba Longa through Silvia, named in Roman tradition as the mother of Romulus. She was a priestess of Vesta in Alba Longa before Rome existed. The institution was formally established in Rome during the reign of Numa Pompilius and endured until the late Roman Empire, when the rise of Christianity brought it to an end.

  The Jupiter Latiaris shrine on Monte Cavo, where the Feriae Latinae were celebrated, points toward how much of Alba Longa's real importance may have been religious rather than political. After political power shifted to Rome, the Alban Mount remained a sacred site, and the road connecting that hilltop temple to the Via Appia near Aricia remains partially intact today.