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Romulus and Remus Story: Founders of Rome

02/07/2020
     Who are Romulus and Remus? What is your history? These are founding twin brothers of Rome. Legend has it that they were raised by a wolf and later founded the city of Rome. Check out facts about them.

Romulus and Remus:

     According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus are two twin brothers, one of whom, Romulus, was the founder of the city of Rome and its first king. According to legend, they were children of Mars and Reia Silvia, descendant of Aeneas. The founding date of Rome is traditionally indicated on April 21, 753 B.C. (also called "Christmas of Rome" and the feast day of Pales).

TRADITION:

     The first mention of Remus occurs in one aspect of the Aeneas myth, where he has a son named "Rhomylocos", who, therefore, was the father of the founder of Rome, "Rhomus". The first written accounts about Remus come from Greek authors, especially from Helânico de Mitilene (5th century BC) and Quinto Fábio Pictor, who inspired the account of classic authors such as Tito Lívio, Plutarco and Dionísio de Halicarnasso. These authors provided a broad literary basis for the study of the mythography of the foundation of Rome. They have a lot in common, but each is selective for its purpose. Tito Lívio's account is a worthy manual, justifying the purpose and morality of Roman traditions for his own times. 

     He uses at least one source shared by Dionysus and Plutarch but the latter are ethnically Greek; they approach the same Roman subjects as interested outsiders, and include traditions of founders not traceable to a common source, and likely specific to particular regions, social classes or oral traditions. A surviving text from the late imperial period, Origo gentis Romanae (The origin of the Roman people) is dedicated to the often contradictory variants of the foundation myth. Both the wolf and the woodpecker, sacred animals related to the myth of the twins, as well as the rape suffered by Reia Silvia are characteristic of older accounts, such as one of the passages in the Old Testament (Exodus 2: 1-10) .

Romulus and Remus Story:

     In Virgil's Aenida and Ab Urbe he conducts a libretto by Tito Lívio, Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus flees from Troy with his father Anquises, his son Ascânio and the survivors of the city. With this he makes several pilgrimages that take him, finally, to Lazio, on the Italic peninsula. There he is received by the local Latin king who offers his daughter's hand, Lavínia. This provokes the fury of the king of the rútulos, Turno, a powerful italic monarch who had been interested in her. 

     A terrible war between the populations of the peninsula breaks out and as a result, Turno is killed. Aeneas, now married, founds the city of Lavínio in honor of his wife. Her son, Ascânio governs in the city for thirty years until he decides to move and found his own city, Alba Longa. About 400 years later, the son and legitimate heir of the twelfth king of Alba Longa, Numitor, is deposed by a stratagem of his brother Amúlio. In order to secure the throne, Amulio murders the male descendants of Numitor and forces his niece Reia Silvia to become vestal (virgin priestess, consecrated to the goddess Vesta), however, this pregnancy of the god Mars and this union the brothers Rômulus and Rowing. 

     As a punishment, Amúlio arrests Reia in a dungeon and has his children thrown into the Tiber River. Like a miracle, the basket where the children were ended up getting bogged down on one of the banks of the river at the foot of the Palatino and Capitolino mountains, in a region known as Germalo, where they are found by a suckling wolf; next to the children was a woodpecker, a sacred bird for the Latins and for the god Mars, who protects them. Later, a shepherd named Fáustulo meets the boys near the foot of Figueira Ruminal (Ficus Ruminalis), at the entrance to a cave called Lupercal. He picks them up and takes them to his home where they are raised by his wife Aca Larência.
     Romulus and Remus grow up with the shepherds of the region, hunting, running and exercising; they plundered the caravans that passed through the region in search of loot. In one of the robberies, Remus is captured and taken to Alba Longa. Fustulo, then, reveals to Rômulo the history of its origin. This one goes to the city of his ancestors, frees his brother, kills Amulius, returns Numitor to the throne and gives his hand all the honors due to him. Realizing that they would have no future in the city, the twins decide to leave together with all the undesirables and then found a new city in the place where they were abandoned. Romulus wanted to call it Rome and build it on the Palatine, while Remus wanted to name it Remora and found it on the Aventine. As a way of deciding, it was established that it should be indicated, through auspices, who would be chosen to name the new city and reign after the foundation. 

     This generated divergence among the spectators, which generated a heated discussion between the brothers that ended with Remo's death. An alternative version states that, in order to surprise his brother, Remus would have climbed the newly built quadrangular pomerium of the city and, taken in rage, Romulus would have murdered him. Remus was buried in a region south of Aventine, known as Remoria, and the party called Remuria (or Lemuria) in his honor was also celebrated on 9 May. Romulus reigned under Rome for 38 years, with the Abduction of the Sabines being one of the most important events of his reign. Romulus dies on July 11, 716 BC during a storm caused by the god Mars, in which he is swallowed up into the firmament where he is transformed into the Roman god Quirino. In another version Rômulo is assassinated by order of the Roman senate.

LUPERCAL CAVE:

     In November 2007, Italian archaeologists announced that they had discovered the cave in which the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia and where, according to legend, Romulus and Remus allegedly lived. The expert Andrea Carandini said that this is one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made. The cave's identification was not unanimous, however, archaeologists like Fausto Zevi consider it to be a dependency on the imperial palace.

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REIA SILVIA:

     Reia Silvia was the legendary mother of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa, was forced by her uncle Amulius, usurper of the throne, to serve as vestal; thus he forced her to chastity, preventing her from having children who wanted to regain power. However, seduced by Mars, Reia Silvia gave birth to twins, Romulus and Remus, who shortly after birth were thrown into the Tiber by order of Amulius. The river god Ânio, according to some versions of the legend, would have welcomed and espoused her. According to another tradition, after being imprisoned by Amúlio, she would have been released by Romulus and Remus.

AENEAS:

     Aeneas is a character from Greco-Roman mythology whose story is told in Homer's Iliad, and, above all, in Virgil's Aeneid. According to the legend, Aeneas was the most famous of the Trojan chiefs, son of the goddess Aphrodite (the Roman Venus) and of Anquises, son of Capis, son of Assáraco, king of Dardania. He was married to Creúsa, daughter of King Príamo and Hécuba. I had a son, Iulo (in the Roman literature Ascânio). In the Trojan War, Aeneas became the most valiant Trojan warrior after Hector. 

     Favored by the gods, on several occasions he was saved by them during the fighting. When he was wounded by Diomedes, it was his mother, Aphrodite, who saved him. And when he faced Achilles on the battlefield, it was Poseidon who saved him from being killed by the Greek hero. With the fall of Troia, his mother advised him to leave the city, taking his family, as the fate of reviving Trojan glory in other lands would be reserved for him.

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