Program Information

Legends blend with facts in the story of the founding of Rome. At times, the political motives behind the legends are as charming as they are mysterious.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: Legends blend with facts in the story of the founding of Rome. At times, the political motives behind the legends are as charming as they are mysterious.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: It was said that the twin founders of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus, began life as the victims of a palace coup in the mythical central Italian kingdom of Alva. Set adrift on the Tiber by their wicked uncle, Amulius, they miraculously survived. As befits the offspring of Mars, they became great warriors, avenged themselves on Amulius, restored their grandfather to his rightful place as king, and set out to found a city at the place of their rescue. The two brothers may have quarreled or there may have been a neighborhood brawl, but somehow Remus was killed, and Romulus founded the village that became the future city of Rome on April 21, 753 BCE.

The obvious political character of this narrative in the hands of first-century historian Livy and poet Virgil can hardly be denied, since both the Emperor Augustus and his assassinated kinsman, Julius Caesar, are portrayed as direct descendants of Romulus and Remus. And by extension, they also descend from their alleged ancestor the Trojan hero, Aeneas, who settled in central Italy after the destruction of Troy by the Greeks and whose son founded a dynasty from which the boys emerged.

You see, that is the problem with myth. Its historical value is only as good as one perceives the motives of the myth-makers. This story is really about first-century Rome and its misty, pre-Republic roots and its brightening future. Well, how does one explain the rise of Rome? Well, which sounds better to you--that the seat of a great empire rose from an aboriginal collection of mud-walled shacks beside a swamp-infested river in an Italian back-water, or that its leaders were descended from the Trojan Diaspora, the heroic Aeneas, with its founders born of a god and miraculously suckled by a she-wolf? Well, it doesn’t take much to figure out that this is Julian political propaganda and has little to do with the facts.

Next time: The evidence of archeology.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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