Research Catalog

Title

Remus : a Roman myth / T.P. Wiseman.

Author

Wiseman, T. P. (Timothy Peter)

Publication

Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xv, 243 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

• 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, and treat Roman stories as of little interest.
• 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.

Subjects

• Remus (Twin of Romulus, King of Rome)
• Rome > History > To 510 B.C > Historiography
• Mythology, Roman

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-235) and index.

Contents

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.

ISBN

• 0521419816
• 0521483662 (pbk.)

LCCN

94042523

OCLC

• 31607030
• ocm31607030

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries