Anteias

Anteias or Antias (Ancient Greek: Ἀντείας or Ancient Greek: Ἀντίας) was in Roman mythology a figure in some versions of Rome's foundation myth. He was one of the three sons of Odysseus by Circe, and brother to Rhomos and Ardeas, each of whom were said to have founded a major Roman city, much like the Romulus and Remus myth.^[1] The town of Anteia or Antium in Italy was said to have been founded by, and taken its name from, this Anteias.^[2][3]

This characterization primarily comes to us from the writings of the historian Xenagoras.^[4] Xenagoras was likely writing at a time that Antium was being assimilated into the identity of Rome, Antium having been the capital of the Volsci people before their defeat in the Roman-Volscian wars of the 4th century BCE, after which the Romans sent colonists to Antium to more fully enculturate the city as "Roman".^[5] Modern scholars believe this characterization to indicate that Antium was considered at the time to be a city on equal footing with Rome and Ardea, the cities represented by the other two brothers.^[6]

Notes

1. Malkin, Irad (1998). The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity. University of California Press. p. 188. ISBN 9780520920262.
2. Dionysius of Halicarnassus i. 72
3. Stephanus of Byzantium s. v. Ἄντεια
4. Gruen, Erich S. (1992). Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome. Cornell studies in classical philology. Cornell University Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780801480416.
5. Roselaar, Saskia T. (2012). Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic. Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity. Brill. p. 229. ISBN 9789004229600.
6. Richardson, James H. (2014). The Roman Historical Tradition: Regal and Republican Rome. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 140. ISBN 9780199657858.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Anteias". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 183.