A few weeks ago, in Nîmes, hundreds of spectators attended the reconstruction of one of the most violent accounts of antiquity: Romulus killing his brother Rémus. In the arena, this myth of almost 2,800 years old came back to life with great reinforcements of helmets, capes and speeches in Latin. And the Empire is reborn, for a weekend. This type of show is not trivial. He says something about our time: our need for readable history, strong foundations, stories in which authority is essential. But what do we really know about Rome at birth? And what remains of the real city today behind these frozen images?
Founding murder: between myth and historical method
It all starts with a crime. Romulus kills Rémus. This fratricide, which the Romans have chosen as a birth certificate of their city, continues to be replayed today – as in Nîmes, where the Roman days have staged this bloody foundation. But what remains of myth in the light of current scientific data? And what are we trying to transmit, by representing it still?
The excavations carried out on the Palatine revealed oval huts dated from the 8th century BC. AD, which correspond to the presumed era of the Foundation of Rome. In parallel, the genetic analyzes of skeletons of this period, carried out between 2019 and 2023, show that the population was already mixed, resulting from contributions from Etruria, the Alps and the Levant. Far from the idea of a unique founder, Rome appears from the start as a composite city.
But the myth resists. Giovanni Brizzi, historian and scientific advisor to the Nîmes show, contacted by email, recalls that this story is not a simple family quarrel. “” The pomerium, the founding furrow drawn by Romulus, is a sacred border. By crossing him, Rémus does not cause his brother: he defies the magic order which protects the city ». The murder is then a ritual act, necessary for the foundation of authority.
Brizzi had to correct several historical errors in the scenario: confusion of names, military anachronisms, against the status of women and deities. The removal of sandbines, often interpreted as a collective rape, was, according to him, a ritualized ability, intended for marriage and accepted by the interested parties.
What historical reading reveals is not the inaccuracy of myth, but its deep structure: a political, coded narration, where law is born from transgression – and where the city is first imposed by the story.
What the excavations of “true Rome” reveal
The image of Rome, with its marble forums and its aligned columns, no longer resists the progress of prospecting technologies. Lidar, photogrammetry, 3D imaging have changed our access to the old strata of the city, to its history more complex than pop culture leaves.
These discoveries move the look. We are no longer talking about a city like its emperors, but a complex urban fabric. The invisibles – craftsmen, slaves, women, children – resume their place. Rome becomes a real city again, crossed by multiple voices.
The “Rome Transforced” program, led by the University of Newcastle (2020–2024), has looked into the evolution of public spaces in the south-east of the city, especially around the Domus Severiana and the Circus Maximus. This research shows a constantly changing Rome, where official monuments rubbed shoulders with mixed areas: warehouses, collective homes, minor places of worship. This urban stratification reveals a living capital, crossed by tensions and local adaptations.
On the economic side, another part of Roman reality appears: the massive use of customs taxes (prices) to finance the Empire. As the historian Peter Edwell reminds us The ConversationRome imposed a 25 % tax (the tetarte) On imported luxury products – silk, pepper, pearls – generating a gigantic tax windfall. But these samples also fed inflation, black markets, and accentuated social inequalities. The Roman economy was therefore as unstable as it is shiny, vulnerable to tensions between tax policy and purchasing power.
Roman libraries or staging history
In this laminated Rome, even knowledge served the staging of power. From the 1st century AD. AD, public libraries become an imperial propaganda tool. The most famous, the Ulpian library, built under Trajan in its monumental forum, adjoins the emperor's funeral column. It was kept both classic texts and administrative archives – as if the literary history and the story of the reign of Trajan were to be read of the same gesture.
According to recent research on the political role of Roman libraries, these buildings operated as controlled places of memory. Some, as in Ephesus or Timgad, also served as mausoleums: the local elites erected their name in the stone alongside the rolls of history. It was not only to celebrate knowledge, but to freeze a story, to register imperial greatness in the city walls.
In Rome, telling the story was never neutral. Architecture, town planning, inscriptions, the libraries themselves participated in a narrative discourse, intended to order the past according to the needs of the present. As historian Harriet I. Flower, Rome “says codified the world through his places “, And his libraries were also instruments of symbolic control.
Even memory was monumentalized, scripted-additional proof that Rome continues to rewrite itself. And this permanent reinvention is at the heart of its fascination.
Rome, between reconstruction and fiction
With its gladiators, intrigue and excessive emperors, ancient Rome remains one of the most represented periods on the screen. From Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000), the Cité des Césars stands out as a favorite decor of epic cinema. The film marked a generation, reviving a Roman imagination based on honor, revenge and political violence. This aesthetic is extended in the series Rome (HBO, 2005-2007), Barbarians (Netflix, 2020) or Domina (Sky, 2021), which combine historical reality and modern dramaturgy.
Video games are no exception to this trend. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Ubisoft, 2010) reconstitutes Rome in the Renaissance era, with precise references to ancient architecture. Total War: Rome II (2013) or Expeditions: Rome (2022) plunge directly into military campaigns and political management of the Republic.
For Giovanni Brizzi, this fascination does not go without deformation. “” Rome is retained for its invincible armies or its imperial orgies, rarely for its right or its model of integration ». This is all the ambiguity of reconstructions. Even well documented, they lean towards the spectacular. “” Disneyland risk is constantadmits Brizzi. Historical rigor is difficult to maintain in a staging ». In Nîmes, a tip has been found: simulate that Hadrian's contemporaries themselves replay the foundation of Rome. A mise en abyme that protects the story … while assuming its theatricality.
© © Arena of Nîmes Official
© Official Nîmes arenas
This popular success says something about our time. We are looking in the past strong stories, figures of authority, a form of political and symbolic clarity. Rome, with its founding violence, its monumentality and its myths, offers a raw mirror to our contemporary imagination. It is not the historical Rome that we are looking for, but a Rome that we can replay in our image.
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
