According to a tradition which we have no reason to reject, Rome was
founded by settlers from Alba Longa, a city situated on the slope of
the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna. Hence if the
Roman kings claimed to be representatives or embodiments of Jupiter,
the god of the sky, of the thunder, and of the oak, it is natural to
suppose that the kings of Alba, from whom the founder of Rome traced
his descent, may have set up the same claim before them. Now the
Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can hardly be
without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of
Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as
well as a poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned
with oak. A chaplet of oak leaves would thus seem to have been part
of the insignia of the old kings of Alba Longa as of their
successors the kings of Rome; in both cases it marked the monarch as
the human representative of the oak-god. The Roman annals record
that one of the kings of Alba, Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius Silvius
by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or
superior of Jupiter.
Pages:
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437