LUPA (753 BC): the founding of Rome

A ready-to-teach lesson built around our anthem: the song with its Latin and English lyrics, vocabulary, grammar, questions with an answer key and a legend or history activity. Free to print and use.

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At a glance

Lesson plan (Latin class)

1. Warm-up (5 min). Show the cover. Ask: who are the two babies? What animal? What city? Collect what students already know.
2. First listen (5 min). Play the video with its on-screen lyrics. Task: write down every Latin word you recognise.
3. Vocabulary (8 min). The 12 words below. Students guess the meaning from the English children first.
4. Read the lyrics in pairs (10 min). Latin and English side by side. Pairs answer comprehension questions 1 to 5.
5. Grammar spotlight (7 min). Present tense in the third person, and the command iacite!
6. Real or legend? (8 min). Read the teacher box aloud, then the class sorts the four statements.
7. Exit ticket (3 to 5 min). Translate one Latin line, and write one thing that is legend and one that is real.

Grammar spotlight

• Present tense, third person singular: rapit (seizes), pellit (drives out), parit (gives birth), servat (saves), invenit (finds), nutrit (feeds), caedit (strikes down), cadit (falls). Ask: which letter do they all end in? (-t = he, she, it.)
• Plural command: iacite! = throw! (said to more than one person; from iacio). Compare the singular iace!
• Challenge (Latin II): Sic deinde, quicumque alius transiliet moenia mea (Livy 1.7.2). Find the future verb (transiliet, will leap over). Translation: So perish whoever else shall leap over my walls.
• Roman dates: Ante diem undecimum Kalendas Maias = the eleventh day before the Kalends (1st) of May, counted the Roman way with both ends included = April 21, Rome's traditional birthday, the festival of the Parilia.

Real or legend? (teacher box)

• Legend: the she-wolf nursing the twins, Mars as their father, the vultures, Romulus killing Remus. Even Livy hesitates: he reports that some thought lupa was a nickname for Larentia, the shepherd's wife (Livy 1.4.7), and he gives two versions of how Remus died (Livy 1.7.2).
• Tradition, not record: 753 BC is a date later Roman scholars worked out, not a record from the time.
• Evidence: archaeologists have found remains of huts on the Palatine hill from about the 8th century BC, so people did live there when tradition says Rome began.
• Bonus: on the famous bronze Capitoline Wolf in Rome, the twins underneath were added in the Renaissance, and scholars still debate how old the wolf herself is.

Answer key

History class version (no Latin needed)

Same video and story. Warm-up; watch; read the English column; the Real or legend? sort; discussion: why would a city want a founding story with a wolf and a war god? Exit ticket: one legend, one piece of evidence.

Standards

Standards for Classical Language Learning (2017): Communication (reading and listening to Latin) · Cultures (the founding myth, the Parilia) · Connections (archaeology, history) · Comparisons (English derivatives; founding stories of other nations) · Communities (sharing a Roman name card, optional).

Sources

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.3 to 1.7; Plutarch, Life of Romulus; National Latin Exam syllabus 2025 (nle.org).

Free classroom resource from Anthems Of Empires · anthemsofempires.com · YouTube: youtube.com/@AnthemsOfEmpires. Free to use, print, copy and adapt for teaching. We would be honoured if you keep this line. The song and video are made with AI and directed by humans; the lyrics follow Livy and were checked against the Latin text.