Romulus and Remus

I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to the programme, but a fairly regular Thursday morning date for me is BBC Radio Four’s In Our Time with Melvin Bragg.  If you can’t be near a radio at nine in the morning, it’s on BBC iplayer and usually worth catching.  I’m not sure why it’s called In Our Time, by the way, as that sounds like current affairs.  It isn’t.  The topics discussed range all over the place, from astronomy to Robin Hood.  The format is to gather together three academics, specialists in their field, and launch them at a subject.

This week’s topic was a discussion by experts on Ancient Rome, Mary Beard, Tim Cornell and Peter Wiseman, about Rome’s foundation myth of Romulus and Remus.  Now, at the risk of impinging on my pal, Jane Finnis’s territory, I found it fascinating.

You see, as foundation myths go, it’s very odd.  Very briefly, the twins, Romulus and Remus are the children of Rhea Silva, daughter of King Numitor.  Wicked Uncle Amulius, Numitor’s brother, seized power, killed Numitor and all his male heirs and forced Rhea Silva to become a vestal virgin.  So far, so fairy tale, especially when the god Mars pops in for a fling with Rhea Silva.  The resulting twin boys (difficult to explain for a vestal virgin!) are thrown into the river Tiber to die.  You can imagine Wicked Uncle Amulius dusting his hands together and saying ‘ut 'quod tunc’ or ‘that’s that, then’, laughing evilly and twirling his moustache.  (Moustaches are obligatory for Wicked Uncles.)

However.... a she-wolf suckles them, a woodpecker feeds them and a shepherd and Mrs shepherd find the boys and bring them up as simple shepherds.  Only R+R have charisma, gather followers – lots of them – and are seriously annoyed when they find out about Amulius’s misdeeds.  One ex-Wicked Uncle later, and they’re ready to found a city.  Only, like an ancient version of Escape To The Country, they can’t agree where to put it.  Romulus fancies the Palatine Hill, Remus prefers the view from the Aventine.  Things are said, tempers flare and Romulus kills Remus, gets his way and founds Rome.

Okay... the odd thing about this myth, as unpicked by Mary Beard et al, is that although the Romans told and re-told the story, they were seriously embarrassed by it.  Fratricide was frowned on and they weren’t very happy about the wolf part either. Because the Roman slang for a lady of uncertain virtue was lupa or she-wolf, many preferred to believe R+R had been nurtured by a kind hearted lady generous with her favours.  And why twins?  Twins crop up in myths to explain duplication but R+R don’t duplicate or explain anything; one simply murders the other.  If you’re inventing a hero, he’s a lot more heroic if he doesn’t murder his brother.  There wasn’t really an explanation, just an examination of the oddities of the story and a discussion of how myths and folk-tales come to be created in the first place.

One theory that wasn’t aired was this; what if the heart of the tale is true?  What if two abandoned boys were brought up by wolves?  (I find the woodpecker a bit hard to swallow!) Put “feral children” into Google and you’ll find examples – some very recent – of more or less just that.  The poor kids hardly ever adjust to human society but that could be where the Mr and Mrs shepherd come in.

Interesting, eh?