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Romulus and Remus were the twin brothers and main characters of Rome's foundation myth. (The pronunciation in English is different from the Latin original Rōmulus and Rĕmus). Their mother was Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Before their conception, Numitor's brother Amulius seized power, killed Numitor's male heirs and forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity. Rhea Silvia conceived the twins by the god Mars. Once the twins were born, Amulius had them abandoned to die in the Tiber river. They were saved by a series of miraculous interventions: the river carried them to safety, a she-wolf found and suckled them, and a woodpecker fed them. A shepherd and his wife found them and fostered them to manhood as simple shepherds. The twins, still ignorant of their true origins, proved to be natural leaders. Each acquired many followers. When they discovered the truth of their birth, they killed Amulius and restored Numitor to his throne. Rather than wait to inherit Alba Longa, they chose to found a new city. While Romulus wanted to found the new city on the Palatine Hill, Remus preferred the Aventine Hill.〔Dionysius of Halicarnasus, ''Roman Antiquities'', 1.85〕 They agreed to determine the site through augury but when each claimed the results in his own favor, they quarreled and Remus was killed.〔Ovid has Romulus invent the festival of Lemuria to appease Remus's resentful ghost. Ovid '' Fasti'' 5.461〕 Romulus founded the new city, named it Rome, after himself, and created its first legions and senate. The new city grew rapidly, swelled by landless refugees; as most of these were male and unmarried, Romulus arranged the abduction of women from the neighboring Sabines. The ensuing war ended with the joining of Sabines and Romans as one Roman people. Thanks to divine favour and Romulus's inspired leadership, Rome became a dominant force, but Romulus himself became increasingly autocratic, and disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances. In later forms of the myth, he ascended to heaven and was identified with Quirinus, the divine personification of the Roman people. The legend as a whole encapsulates Rome's ideas of itself, its origins and moral values. For modern scholarship, it remains one of the most complex and problematic of all foundation myths, particularly Remus's death. Ancient historians had no doubt that Romulus gave his name to the city. Most modern historians believe his name a back-formation from the name Rome; the basis for Remus's name and role remain subjects of ancient and modern speculation. The myth was fully developed into something like an "official", chronological version in the Late Republican and early Imperial era; Roman historians dated the city's foundation to between 758 and 728 BC, and Plutarch reckoned the twins' birth year as c. 27/28 March 771 BC. An earlier tradition that gave Romulus a distant ancestor in the semi-divine Trojan prince Aeneas was further embellished, and Romulus was made the direct ancestor of Rome's first Imperial dynasty. Possible historical bases for the broad mythological narrative remain unclear and disputed.〔The archaeologist Andrea Carandini is one of very few modern scholars who accept Romulus and Remus as historical figures, based on the 1988 discovery of an ancient wall on the north slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome. Carandini dates the structure to the mid-8th century BC and names it the ''Murus Romuli''. See Carandini, ''La nascita di Roma. Dèi, lari, eroi e uomini all'alba di una civiltà'' (Torino: Einaudi, 1997) and Carandini. ''Remo e Romolo. Dai rioni dei Quiriti alla città dei Romani (775/750 - 700/675 a. C. circa)'' (Torino: Einaudi, 2006)〕 The image of the she-wolf suckling the divinely fathered twins became an iconic representation of the city and its founding legend, making Romulus and Remus preeminent among the feral children of ancient mythography. ==The legend in ancient sources== Modern scholarship approaches the various known stories of Romulus and Remus as cumulative elaborations and later interpretations of Roman foundation-myth. Particular versions and collations were presented by Roman historians as authoritative, an official history trimmed of contradictions and untidy variants to justify contemporary developments, genealogies and actions in relation to Roman morality. Other narratives appear to represent popular or folkloric tradition; some of these remain inscrutable in purpose and meaning. Wiseman sums the whole as the mythography of an unusually problematic foundation and early history.〔.〕〔. A critical, chronological review of historiography related to Rome's origins.〕 Cornell and others describe particular elements of the mythos as "shameful".〔Cornell, pp 60–2: "these elements have convinced the eminent historiographer H. Strasburger that Rome's foundation myth represents not native tradition but defamatory foreign propaganda, probably originated by Rome's neighbours in Magna Graecia and successfully foist on an impressionable and ethnically confused Roman people." Cornell and Momigliano find this argument impeccably developed but entirely implausible; if an exercise in mockery, it was a signal failure.〕 Nevertheless, by the 4th century BC, the fundamentals of the Romulus and Remus story were standard Roman fare, and by 269 BC the wolf and suckling twins appeared on one of the earliest, if not the earliest issues of Roman silver coinage. Rome's foundation story was evidently a matter of national pride. It featured in the earliest known history of Rome, which was attributed to Diocles of Peparethus. The patrician senator Quintus Fabius Pictor used Diocles' as a source for his own history of Rome, written around the time of Rome's war with Hannibal and probably intended for circulation among Rome's Greek-speaking allies.〔The escape of Aeneas from Troy and his foundation of a "New Troy" in Italy was not an exclusively Roman ancestor-myth. It is represented by 4th century votive statuettes from Etruscan Veii and was known in archaic Latium. Beard et al., pp. 1-2..〕〔Fabius wrote in Greek, the Mediterranean ''lingua franca'' of the time. His narrative began with the arrival of the Greek hero Herakles in Italy. Plutarch claims that Fabius' history follows Diocles "on most points". Wiseman, pp. 1-2..〕 Fabius' history provided a basis for the early books of Livy's ''Ab Urbe Condita'', which he wrote in Latin, and for several Greek-language histories of Rome, including Dionysius of Halicarnassus's ''Roman Antiquities'', written during the late 1st century BC, and Plutarch's early 2nd century ''Life of Romulus''.〔.〕〔.〕 These three accounts provide the broad literary basis for studies of Rome's founding mythography. They have much in common, but each is selective to its purpose. Livy's is a dignified handbook, justifying the purpose and morality of Roman traditions observed in his own times. Dionysius and Plutarch approach the same subjects as interested outsiders, and include founder-traditions not mentioned by Livy, untraceable to a common source and probably specific to particular regions, social classes or oral traditions.〔. Modern historiographic perspectives on this source material.〕〔.〕 A Roman text of the late Imperial era, ''Origo gentis Romanae'' (The origin of the Roman people) is dedicated to the many "more or less bizarre", often contradictory variants of Rome's foundation myth, including versions in which Remus founds a city named Remuria, five miles from Rome, and outlives his brother Romulus.〔Cornell, pp. 57-8.〕〔. Translation and commentaries.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Romulus and Remus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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