Romulus and Remus story interpretations!

Here are a few facts on Romulus and Remus:

* The twins were said to have been born around 771 BC and appear in Roman mythology as the twin sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia, fathered by the god of war, Mars.

* As soon as they were born the pair were placed in a trough and thrown into the River Tiber, in a form of quasi-infanticide tolerated in many ancient cultures when children were unwanted. The trough came ashore and they were found by a wolf who fed them with her milk.

* They were then raised by a shepherd, Faustulus. Reaching adulthood the twins decided to found a town, and chose the place where the wolf had nursed them. Romulus began to build walls on the Palatine Hill, but Remus jeered at the low walls, leaping over them, and an angry Romulus killed him. Not having enough wives for his men, Romulus decided to steal women from the Sabines, an Italian tribe. He held a festival inviting Sabines to it and then carried off the women. This was the "Rape of the Sabine women", which later became a subject for painters.

* The Sabine made war on Romulus. The fighting ended when the Sabine women, who had grown fond of their Roman husbands, rushed between the fighters and begged both sides to make peace.

* Romulus is alleged not to have died, just disappeared one day in a violent storm. The Romans, believing he had been taken up to heaven, worshipped him under the name of Quirinus.

Originally posted by medenaywe It looks like Jesus story,isn't it?

Also sounds like Moses too.

Inside this first answer of question:Did they exist?,We have maybe biggest truth about it here:
"There was a lot of migration and movement around Europe at the time, and for a small tribe or group lead by two brothers to decide to build a settlement in a fertile place beside a river - that makes sense to me. It may have been only a few huts surrounded by a defensive wall in the beginning."
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090518140923AAaLyzM
 Only truth inside was baby boom idea as it looks from here.

The story for the lost kid who had royal blood and was raised as an ordinary person is a common cultural matrix in many cultures. Sargon the Great says this about himself:
"...Sargon, strong king, king of Agade, am I. My mother was a high priestess, my father I do not know. My paternal kin inhabit the mountain region. My city (of birth) is Azupiranu, which lies on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother, a high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me. She placed me in a reed basket, with bitumen she caulked my hatch. She abandoned me to the river from which I could not escape. The river carried me along: to Aqqi, the water drawer, it brought me. Aqqi, the water drawer, when immersing his bucket lifted me up. Aqqi, the water drawer, raised me as his adopted son. Aqqi, the water drawer, set me to his garden work. During my garden work, Istar loved me (so that) 55 years I ruled as king...."http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/sargon.html

Being conceived out of wedlock is the closest real thing to the virgin birth, and the women who conceived so were princesses, queens, or priestesses, not just ordinary peasant women; considering that in ancient times aristocracy was seen as offspring of gods, being a child of a queen or a priestess is the closest real thing to having divine parentage.  The whole story is about deifying someone important - a way to show that this person/persons was from it's very beginning, extraordinary - all the way from being conceived and born. From the story of Dionysus and Oedipus to Jesus, it's the same thing - whoever was considered important was given divine parentage.

Now, on being suckled by female animals, like the goat Amaltea /whose horn became the Horn of Plenty/ who suckled Dionysus and the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, this I see as putting a person in the sacred space of divinities, by potraying him as being suckled by a female animal - actually this is the Mother-Goddess in disguise. There was a reason why female goddesses would be presented with many breasts, like some fantastic creatures - because they are an aspect of the mother-Goddess=Mother Nature who bore those animals and sustains then with her beasts - so, many breasts for the many alive creatures around.
Artemis of Ephesus:


Artemis and Diana, and Bendida and Cotys were potrayed like huntresses - which is the animal-sustaining aspect of the holistic image of Mother Goddess; because hunters venture into the wild, and hunt beasts, in this way sustaining smaller creatures who feed on the remnants of the killed ones - the life on one depends on the death of another creature, and the Mother-Goddess is responsible for death as well as for life of everything alive. Artemis is an aspectf of the Great Mother, and on this Roman coin she is represented as holding in one hand a spear/(medenaywe's blade/ and an animal in the other - the archetypal symbols of the mother-Goddess - life and death are in her hands:

"...silver denarius
Obverse: head of a captive woman of Gaul with long and tangled hair; on left a Gallish trumpet. Reverse: frontal image of Diana of Ephesus, standing dressed in a gown and holding a stag in one hand, a long spear in the other. Inscription on left worn away: SASERNA; on right: L HOSTILIVS. 48 BCE. Syd. 953 ..."http://www.vroma.org/images/raia_images/index10.html

Artemis had several sacred animals, wolves being among them http://books.google.com
/books?id=ztYMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA295&lpg=PA295&dq=artemis+of+ephesus+sacred+wolves&source=bl&ots=b8VVWsx69F&sig=PAL6qsOFPv0XTc4wYI2Va52fJvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_WcwT8aQKZDViALY7pCoAw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=artemis%20of%20ephesus%20sacred%20wolves&f=false
So, in other words, Romulus and Remus were deified by being suckled by a she-wold, who was the symbolic representation of Mother-Goddess, this was necessary as to set them apart of the other human at the time and place, because all founders on nations, cultures, cities or states were deified in order to put the said state under divine protection. I read that that story was Ethruscan in origin, which may be or may be not true, and it wouldn't make a difference anyway, because the Mother-Goddess cult was pretty much the same around the whole Mediterranean.

Good ideas, Sidney, thanks.
Romulus became the first king of Rome, after killing Remus; which reminds me of some Native American and African notions that killing someone one appropriate their power and energy, I have the sense that the killing of Remus somehow happened for a similar reason, since supposedly Romulus killed Remus because of sibling rivalry.

Cyrus is a good idea, the dog thing plays really well here, considering that dogs were the sacred animals of Artemis - she was called "the Great Bitch" and her priestesses were called "Sacred Bitches"; so it's a direct play in the mother-Goddess corner.

Aeneas probably didn't need to be put in the sacred space, he was already there, because his mother Aphrodite seducing his father. I suspect that Romulus and Remus were put of the sacred space because at first their father was not known, and vestals were supposed to be virgins, otherwise the punishment was death. So, the sucking thing came as a proof that they had divine origin, because the natural reaction of w she-wolf would be to eat babies she found, not to suckle them.

Maybe there is something to that -  when the mother is mortal, and the father is a god, then such recognition has to happen, because Sargon mentions that he father was not known, and as such he would be considered a bastard, not with a divine father, if a divine parentage is not proved - hence being suckled by a dog was the proof; Romulus and Remus were in the same position.

In the cases when the father is mortal, this doesn't seem to matter, because a goddess cannot be called "whore", like a mortal woman would be called if she was to get pregnant out of wedlock. Hence, divine mother, mortal father, the case is clear - divine parentage; but  mortal mother, divine father - this have to be proved. Romulus and Remus, Sargon, Dionysus - they are all from the latter case, so they were suckled by animals. Aeneas, Achiles, Gilgamesh were from the former, and they didn't need to prove anything.



Edited by Don Quixote - 06-Feb-2012 at 22:03

(my mistake - wrong)

Edited by Sidney - 01-Jul-2012 at 07:26

On reading your quote, kegger I realized that I could make out a sound in the names which I recognized: