Livy spent a lifetime writing Rome’s story from a muddy village on the Tiber to a world empire. Book 1 is the origin myth: twins suckled by a she-wolf, a wall, a murdered brother, stolen Sabine women, and a line of kings that ends in rape and revolt. Romulus ploughs a sacred furrow, kills Remus for leaping it, and fills the new city with outcasts. Numa teaches rites in a long peace. The Tarquins bring Etruscan wealth and a throne that stinks of murder.

Sextus, the last king’s son, rapes Lucretia. She names the crime, drives a knife into her breast, and Lucius Junius Brutus swears the oath that ends the monarchy. Consuls — two officials elected for a year — replace a crown. This is the story Rome told about itself: how a people of runaways learned to hate kings, and how liberty, in their telling, was born from a bedroom and a corpse.