Plutarch, a Greek writer living under the Roman Empire, wrote the Parallel Lives as paired biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. This life is Romulus, founder of Rome, set beside Theseus, founder of Athens. The story belongs to Italy's early legend, along the Tiber in what is now Rome.

Rome begins with twins, Romulus and Remus, left in a trough on the river and raised among herdsmen after a she-wolf on the Palatine hill. Romulus marks a square of wall with a plough, kills his brother for leaping it, and fills an asylum with runaways. At a festival his men seize Sabine women, neighbors from the hills of central Italy, so the new town can have wives. A dual kingship with Titus Tatius, a Sabine king, ends in a death. Romulus vanishes in a storm on the Campus, the open field by the city, and is worshipped as the god Quirinus.