Romulus and Remus

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Romulus and Remus, the central figures of the foundation myth of Rome. According to tradition, the twins were abandoned by their parents as babies, but were saved by a she-wolf who found and nursed them. Romulus killed his brother after a vicious quarrel, and went on to found a city, which was named after him. The myth has been at the core of Roman identity since the 1st century AD, although the details vary in different versions of the story. For many Roman writers, the story embodied the ethos and institutions of their civilisation. The image of the she-wolf suckling the divinely fathered twins remains a potent icon of the city even today.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Mary Beard 11 episodes
  Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge
• Peter Wiseman No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter
• Tim Cornell No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester

Reading list

• Rome: Day One
  Andrea Carandini (Princeton University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000 - 264 BC)
  T. J. Cornell (Routledge, 1995) Google Books →
• The Foundation of Rome
  A. Fraschetti (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• The Foundation of Rome: Myth and History
  A. Grandazzi (Cornell University Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Early History of Rome: Books I-V
  Livy (trans. Aubrey De Selincourt) (Penguin Classics, 2002) Google Books →
• The Rise of Rome, Books 1-5
  Livy (trans. T. J. Luce) (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Times and Reasons: A New Translation of Fasti
  Ovid (trans. Anne and Peter Wiseman) (Oxford University Press, 2011)
• Lives , vol. 1
  Plutarch (trans. Bernadotte Perrin) (Loeb Classical Library, 1914)
• Remus: A Roman Myth
  T. P. Wiseman (Cambridge University Press, 1995) Google Books →
• The Myths of Rome
  T. P. Wiseman (Liverpool University Press, 2008) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Rome and European Civilization
  
  20 Dec, 2001 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Roman Republic
  
  30 Dec, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Aeneid
  
  21 Apr, 2005 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Roman Britain
  
  1 May, 2003 930 History of the Ancient World
• Tiberius
  
  14 Dec, 2023 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Gracchi
  
  3 Apr, 2025 930 History of the Ancient World
• Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
  
  10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World
• Babylon
  
  3 Jun, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World
• Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
  
  13 Feb, 2020 930 History of the Ancient World
• Byzantium
  
  19 Jul, 2001 940 History of Europe

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b01q02t7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q02t7

Auto-category: 292.13 (Roman mythology)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The Capitoline Museum in Rome contains a small but magnificent room known as the Chamber of the She-Wolf.