True or False: Romulus raised chickens instead of ruling his empire.

False.  However, our playwright was obviously inspired by on of Romulus’ predecessors, Emperor Honorius.  Honorius, widely considered one of the worst Roman emperors, reigned from 393 to 423 AD and apparently was a keeper of poultry.  Rome was sacked for the first time during Honorius’ reign. 

Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote:

the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West" and who "passed the slumber of his life, a captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the Barbarians.

Procopius, a late antique scholar, mentions a story where, on hearing the news that Rome had "perished", Honorius was initially shocked, thinking the news was in reference to a favorite chicken he had named "Roma".   Watch our Romulus do something similar in Act I!

In The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius by John William Waterhouse (1883), Honorius feeds his pigeons, indifferent to the news that Rome has fallen.