Remus
A Roman Myth

The first-ever historical analysis of the origins and development of the legend of Remus and Romulus and the foundation of Rome.

Timothy Peter Wiseman (Author)

9780521483667, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 August 1995

260 pages, 16 b/w illus. 4 maps
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

"...Wiseman packs several centuries worth of primary sources and scholarship into a delightfully written argument. Wiseman's Remus is required reading for anyone with an interest in Roman mythology, history, or literature." Cynthia Bannon, Folklore Forum

Romulus founded Rome - but why does the myth give him a twin brother Remus, who is killed at the moment of the foundation? This mysterious legend has been oddly neglected. Roman historians ignore it as irrelevant to real history; students of myth concentrate on the more glamorous mythology of Greece. In this book, Professor Wiseman provides, for the first time, a detailed analysis of all the variants of the story, and a historical explanation for its origin and development. His conclusions offer important new insights, both into the history and ideology of pre-imperial Rome and into the methods and motives of myth-creation in a non-literate society. In the richly unfamiliar Rome of Pan, Hermes and Circe the witch-goddess, where a general grows miraculous horns and prophets demand human sacrifice, Remus stands for the unequal struggle of the many against the powerful few.

1. A too familiar story
2. Multiform and manifold
3. When and where
4. What the Greeks said
5. Italian evidence
6. The Lupercalia
7. The arguments
8. The life and death of Remus
9. The uses of a myth
10. The other Rome
Appendix: Versions of the foundation of Rome.

Subject Areas: General & world history [HBG]