Please, let me borrow a bit of your first article:

"The Romans, with their practical view and feeling for order and proportion in building techniques, were fond of applying these originally Greek ideas, but only in case of the foundation of new cities, predominantly colonies, or the expansion of occupied cities in the provinces (like Pompei, were quite a few Roman army veterans were settled as colonists) and the building of army camps (castra). A quick view at the map of ancient Rome (Forma Urbis Romae) will not produce the discovery of a Hippodameic city plan in the Eternal City...This makes clear that Rome is a city which developed, in spite of the myth of the foundation of Rome by Romulus. This myth probably functioned as a story in which the Romans liked to explain the unification of a number of loose villages, inhabited by groups or "clans" who had some genetic relation to neighbor groups, all situated around or in the vicinity of what was later to become the central market place of Rome, the Forum Romanum. These groups found themselves unified by some outside intervention: Romulus and Remus, whoever they were, but according to the myth not from that very place but from a town called Alba Longa. A further and probably even more important unification, complete with legal and political institutions, was established with the coming of groups of Etruscans to the town Rome. So, in the myth, Romulus did the ploughing of the sulcus primigenius, which was done at the foundation of a new city, which was to be built. Latin texts that refer to the ploughing of the sulcus primigenius, provide some information, not only about the religious aspects of this tradition, but also about the political and strategic aspects. Ploughing a furrow not only meant to build a ramp, a fence or a wall, but also: to gain control over the countryside surrounding the city, just by building that ramp, fence or wall. Just like the Etruscans and much later the Romans did when they founded their colonies and ploughed the furrow to build a fortification around the city, Romulus was told in the myth to do this, because he might have wanted the little villages on the Seven Hills to unite and to be called one City, which would dominate the surrounding countryside, like it were hers."

Are you, Tanaquil, implying there might be some sort of "truth" behind the "founders" of Rome? What do you others think?