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This is the story of the founding of Rome. Romulus and Remus are two dudes and their Rhea Silvia and they’re all descended from the Trojans and Aeneas. These dudes… I think it’s uh… I don’t remember how they get lost, but they get lost as wee little children from their mama, and they get raised by a she-wolf, which in latin is lupa. So they grow up with the wolf lady and then they go out to found their own city, so they both start building walls around these hills, one being the Appaline and I don’t remember what the second one is, but they’re building these walls right near the river Tiber. Then they get in a fight about whose city will be the ruling city and who gets to name the overall city, so Romulus kills Remus, which is why Rome is called Rome because it’s named after the brother who survived the duel.

Background:

I learned that from a Latin class in middle school from this dude named Mr. Mele. Our school was really big on Latin and Roman mythology and history and stuff. I just like the idea that a city is founded from this like one dude that’s like raised in the wild and that Rome has like this one family tree that you can trace back to ancient history like the Trojans and shit. Basically the focus about a lot of Roman myths fighting another dude and because of that he gets to name stuff is pretty common. I guess I think the Romans really found a need for like individuals to idolize, especially into the empire. I think what’s especially interesting about how these myths are utilized is that there was a hut in Rome proper even into the empire that was left there as a historical landmark of Romulus’s house to legitimize their ancestry and culture to prove they come from Troy and all these heroes and everything.

Context:

This is just a fun fake history thing that I think was just created to give the Romans this heroic background, so similar to the Bible with Cane and Able, and shit, like other stuff like that, it’s just like similar to other stories like that. I think it’s mostly just history at this point cuz the people who valued this story, like their culture is dead now, so really the only occasion to talk about this is in a history class or whatever.

My Thoughts:

This made me think a lot about similar myths of my own culture. For example, as an American, I think the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree is a good comparison because it deals with idealizing one person as the patron of an entire place. Much like the Romans idealized Romulus, we idealize George Washington through these stories even though historically he was actually a pretty crappy general.