Ruins Support Myth of Rome's Founding

AP ^ | Feb. 14, 2005 | Sarah Barden

[Unam Sanctam]

ping

[speedy]

If they ever find the remains of that giant turtle swimming in an endless sea, I really will have to re-think a lot of historical assumptions. Interesting article, thanks for posting. SPQR.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I was digging in my back yard and found a rock! No telling what that rock could tell me.

[starfish923]

It is always interesting to hear of these things.
I guess that's just another reason why Rome is called the "eternal city." It IS eternally INTERESTING.

Ping.

[Rocketman]

Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, who were suckled as infants by a she-wolf in the woods

I thought they found the dead wolf and two graved from two roamn Gods

[wolfpat]

When I read the first two lines, I got a mental picture of a wolf's den with finger-paintings on the refrigerator.

[Notasoccermom]

Forwarded this to my children's Latin Teacher. Too bad my own Latin teacher is waiting to be excavated. ;-(

[Conservatrix]

[grobdriver]

In Rome's founding myth, the daughter of a king deposed by his brother was forced to become a vestal virgin to prevent her from having children. But Rhea Silvia became pregnant with sons of the god Mars.

IOW, the King's daughter got knocked up out behind the barn, and had to come up with a good cover story.
It was a God! The God Mars did it to me!
Honest!

What? What shepard boy?

[xcamel]

Well, we know what Romulus did, so does that mean Rhemus founded the DNC?

"Vendi Vidi Squalus" - "I Came, I saw, I Screamed like a banchee" - Howard Dean.

[PzLdr]

According to legend, Romulus killed his brother during an argument

[M-cubed]

she-wolf????......Shoot shovel and Shut up!!!

[RayChuang88]

Case in point: Flood legends

I think that was due to humans handing down stories of land flooding that happened in the Northern Hemisphere as the glaciers melted from the last major Ice Age. It's likely that during the last Ice Age there were a good number of lakes formed by glacier-related ice dams, and when those dams broke the result was land flooding on a massive scale.

[eastsider]

Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at Rome's Sapienza University who has been conducting excavations at the Forum for more than 20 years, said he made the discovery over the past month at the spot where the Temple of Romulus stands today.... Where previously archaeologists had only found huts dating to the 8th century B.C., Carandini and his team unearthed traces of regal splendor: A 3,700-square-foot palace, 1,130 square feet of which were covered and the rest courtyard. There was a monumental entrance, and elaborate furnishings and ceramics.

You've been holding out on us ...

[FreedomCalls]

That's a cool statue. It's original and once stood over the entrance to the Senate at the Curia Hostilia in the Forum. The two children are not original and were added during the Rennaissance though. Julius Caeser, Pompey, Catulus, and the rest all gazed upon it as they went to the Senate at one time or another.

[FreedomCalls]

The best story is that is a remembered relic of the Black Sea flood. At one time there was no opening in the Bosporus connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The Black Sea was a small inland lake like the Caspian Sea and at a far lower level. But as the Mediterranean Sea rose from glacial melting eventually it broke through the land barrier and started a MASSIVE flood that caused the Black Sea to rise enormously. It was highly settled around its shores so this would have caused a large migration of people as the settlements around the shores flooded.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

And if you want to go even father back, the Mediterranean Sea was blocked off from the Atlantic Ocean at one time and it too flooded.

[Romulus]

Dude...I'm famous!