• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1112 0

and then an empire, its religion was very different from that of the Greeks. It is true that, like the Greeks and other ancients, average Romans frequented temples, made sacrifices, embraced superstition, believed in the power of “augury,” or divination, became fixated on astrology, and honored household deities. But the Romans were far less interested in myth or theology than they were in raw power, order, and Roman glory—enforced through military superiority and the rule of law known as Pax Romana. This is what made Rome tick, as the empire came to dominate the European and Mediterranean world. The Romans were far more concerned with building good roads on which their legions could travel than imposing their mythic traditions on the people they conquered. In fact, historian Charles Freeman notes, “Roman tolerance to local cults and even their readiness to join them was one important way in which the empire was cemented.” When Julius Caesar and Augustus were both deified after their deaths, ushering in an era of emperor worship, it was a consolidation of political power, not a new theology. But it was one which the Roman citizen was wise to acknowledge.

Who were Romulus and Remus?

Unlike the Greeks, the Romans considered their divinities historical persons and used the myths to explain the founding and history of their nation. The best example of this historical emphasis is found in the story of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.

Romulus and his brother, Remus, were the twin sons of the war god Mars (Greek Ares) who had raped Rhea Silvia, the first of the vestal virgins, as she was bathing. For breaking her vow of chastity, Rhea Silvia was imprisoned and her babies taken from her, set afloat on the Tiber River in a small boat.* When the boat came to rest, the infant boys were found and rescued by a woodpecker and a she-wolf—the sacred animals of Mars. The she-wolf cared for the pair until a shepherd discovered the twins and raised them.

The pair became hunters and warriors who were so respected that men agreed to live under their rule in a new city. Romulus and Remus decided to build a city at the spot on the Tiber where the she-wolf had found them. But at the founding, a bitter quarrel erupted between the brothers, and they fought. Romulus killed his brother and wept over his corpse. Recovering from his grief, Romulus built the new city of Rome, supposedly in 753 BCE.

In the city at first settled only by runaway slaves, bandits, and murderers, and with a dangerous shortage of women, the Romans realized that they needed wives. When a nearby group called Sabines came to a religious festival, the Romans rushd through the crowds, seizing the young Sabine women as captive brides, an incident frequently depicted in classical art as The Rape of the Sabine Women. This episode was followed by a fight between the Sabine tribes and Rome. At the request of Jupiter, the Sabine women stood between the opposing armies and demanded peace. The Sabines eventually joined Rome.

The Romans believed that Romulus became the city’s first king, and, according to Roman mythology, he ruled for forty years before vanishing in a thundercloud. Romulus was supposedly the first of seven legendary kings who ruled Rome from its founding until the early 500s BCE. There is little evidence that these seven kings actually existed or that any of the events connected with their reigns ever took place. But it made for a good ending to the story of Rome’s epic foundation.

MYTHIC VOICES

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,

And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,

Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.

Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,

And in the doubtful war, before he won

The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town;

His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine,

And settled sure succession in his line,

From whence the race of Alban fathers come,

And the long glories of majestic Rome.

—VIRGIL, The Aeneid (c. 19 BCE, translated by John Dryden)

Was Homer on the Romans’ reading