The relevant point
How Rome came to acquire a monopoly of Aeneas, how his mythical connection with neighbouring Latin cities, especially Lavinium and Alba, grew up over the succeeding centuries, and how the chronological complication resulting from an attempt to harmonize the rival legends of Aeneas (traditionally c. 1175 BC) and Romulus (traditionally c. 750 BC) were resolved are intriguing questions but lie outside the period of this study. The relevant point is that as Rome evolved into a city, so she acquired a pedigree of the noblest descent.
This pessimism pervaded the political atmosphere, and contributed in varying degrees to the new religions in which so many of the best, as well as the most wretched, took refuge, and which in the end burst the old forms and created a new civilization. But to return to Cicero… .