My SO is writing a story in which a character fancies himself as an expert of Greek and Roman mythology. There is a particular myth that I have vague memories of, but couldn’t find anything about it either in Edith Hamilton’s book or on the 'Net.
I seem to recall a myth in which twin brothers actually claw or eat or otherwise extract themselves from their mother’s womb, thereby killing her. This would be a perfect myth to make reference to in this story she is writing, but I can’t find out what it is. At first, I thought it was Resus and Romulus, but that does not appear to be the case.
I can’t help you on your actual question (although I seem to recall something of this sort regarding the birth of the Titans, the precursors to the Greek gods).
In the interests of accuracy, I do wish to point out that Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus.
Castor and Pollux, the Gemini, were born of Leda and and the Swan, who was Jupiter/Zeus travelling incognito in the interests of tearing one off. Leda bore an egg or eggs, from which the Gemini sprang.
In some versions of the myths, Zues’ siblings were thrown into Tartarus by Chronos to prevent their birth. In others, they were swallowed by Chronos and rescued by Zues.
In another version, Rhea (wife of Chronos) hid each of the seven siblings in turn, slipping Chronos a large rock in swaddling clothes to swallow. Zeus was to be the last (and here my memory is hazy), something happened that caused the stones to tear out of Chronos’ stomach.
OP you might be misremembering the story of Romulus and Remus. They did not fight/attack one another at birth, but Romulus did kill Remus later on. A brief version of the story can be found at:
Edith Hamilton’s work focusses primarily on Greek mythology because the Romans invented relatively few myths of their own. Most “Roman” myths are just Greek myths with the names changed to protect the immortal(s). Hamilton refers to a few specifically Roman myths in her book e.g. Pygmalion and Galatea, but there aren’t many. She have left out the story of Romulus and Remus because it falls more under the aegis of tradition/legend (a form of history) than mythology (a form of literature).
You might also be interested, as a metaphor for your story, in the cannibal mites. Can’t find a cite now, but Gould has written about them. The eggs hatch in the mother’s interior and the young eat their way out.
As I remember the Chronos story, he swallowed all his children - the big-name gods like Poseidon, Hades, Hera, and so on. When it was Zeus’ turn, Rhea slipped Chronos a rock in swaddling and he swallowed it. This allowed Zeus to grow up, become powerful, and ice Chronos. Zeus’ siblings, being gods, were still alive and managed to emerge in some way or another from Chronos’ carcass. Then they flew off to Olympus; and BOY were their arms tired.
This is not exactly the most enlightened opinion. Edith Hamilton focuses on Greek mythology because it reflects her particular biases. The Greeks did not invent their mythology any more than the Romans did theirs: both represent the infusion of new and/or foreign beliefs into baseline religions tradition.
The Romans invented a tremendous amount of mythology, much of which is substantially different from the stories the Greeks told. In fact, almost all of what we know about mythology in fact comes from Roman sources, especially Ovid’s Metamorphoseon. In many cases, the Roman equivalents are told with considerably more skill. For example, it is a little-known fact that in the Greek tradition, Orpheus is actually successful in his rescue of Eurydice from the underworld. Only Ovid and Vergil among the major authors change the ending. What do you know? Their story is passed off as “Greek” mythology.
The story of Romulus and Remus is the definitive myth of Roman statebuilding, which makes appearances in Livy, Vergil, Ennius, and other important Roman authors.
I don’t mean to sound like I have an axe to grind. I love Greek as much as I love Latin and the Roman tradition. It’s just that the study of Roman literature has suffered tremendously due to innocuous-seeming biases expressed by MJH2 above.
Thanks for all the help, guys. While none of these seems quite like what I was thinking of (could I have imagined it?), there are a lot of interesting ideas here that might be useful.
I found the story of Namita particularly intriguing:
"She impregnated herself with her big toe, and gave birth to twins. At her own request she was killed so that from her blood the first human beings could be created. "
Pardon me. I did not mean to sound unenlightened or biased against the Romans. Perhaps my answer was too short to be clear. I was simply making the point that the myths in Edith Hamilton’s work were by and large Greek stories, which the Romans borrowed and, in some cases, altered slightly from the original.
I was not impugning Roman mythological literature or narrative skills. But the fact remains that many of the stories in Ovid are not substantially original Roman myths, but adaptations of earlier Greek stories – and therefore should not be passed off as “Roman” myths.
Why is it incorrect to refer to Greek or Roman myths as “inventions”? At some point someone – whether Roman, Greek, Dorian, Mycenaean, Minoan – must have invented the core story which is then passed down. If a Roman poet changes a Greek story to give it a different ending, is this not invention, regardless of whether it reflects a religious belief or just good story-telling?
I apologize if I offended you, Maeglin, but I don’t think I was expressing seemingly innocuous biases. I was expressing what I had learned in my (admittedly limited) classical education, in both traditions. If something I have said above is substantively incorrect, please enlighten me and I will happy to admit my error.
It seems reasonable to me that the core mythology of both Romans and Greeks (and other peoples) descends from the common mythology of the Indo-Europeans. (I read this hypothesis somewhere quite a few years ago, but I’m afraid I can’t find the reference.) There certainly would have been a lot of additions, subtractions, and alterations in each lineage, and borrowing between Indo-European lineages. Think about it this way: just because Thor resembles Ares and Odin resembles Zeus, you can’t assume that the Norse “stole” their mythology from the Greeks. There certainly was more borrowing between Greece and Rome than between the ancient Norse and either of them, but mostly because contact was easier and more frequent in the Mediterranean.
I see your point. Similar conceptions of “the gods” and associated worldviews meant that ancient religions influenced one another in a sort of “free association” way, with each culture borrowing and expanding on familiar (or new) ideas as it came into contact with new cultures. btw: Odin was associated with Mercury/Hermes, not Jupiter/Zeus; sometimes the correspondences weren’t the ones that we might think were obvious.
I wasn’t suggesting that the Romans “stole” Greek religion because they had none of their own. I realize that the Romans had their own religion prior to contact with the Greeks, and that this religion was enriched and expanded upon by Greek influence.
I was saying/suggesting that at the time the Romans came into contact with Greek culture, the Romans’ mythology was not nearly as elaborate, and their gods were not perceived/conceived of as such distinct, super-human personalities (characters, if you will) as they were among the Greeks. The Romans made the obvious associations: this Greek God is the same as our Jupiter, this one our Mercury – and, having relatively few of their own stories about these gods, they borrowed the Greek ones. What we think of as classical mythology is primarily a Greek derivation. I think it is an important thing to remember.
Obviously the Romans didn’t stop there; they embellished and improved upon the myths in their own way, and went on to tell original myths and epics of their own e.g. Vergil’s Aeneid. But many of the foundation stones of Roman literature were borrowed from the earlier, Greek literature.
Or so I was taught. Perhaps I was taught incorrectly, or perhaps current scholarship on the topic supports a different perception. That’s what I’m hoping Maeglin can clarify for me.
The one thing that I think perhaps I did misspeak was to refer to original Roman stories (the Aeneid) as history and historical tradition, and not as mythology. This may reflect my personal bias that I have a hard time thinking of epic poems as “mythology”. To me the Aeneid, as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey, are something far more than mythology.
Course not. I didn’t mean to speak strongly. The study of Roman literature often has to contend with so much Atticizing bias, which the Romans themselves often perpetuated. I’ll try to clarify what matters I can, but certainly my word is only so authoritative. If anyone is interested in further reading, I would be happy to oblige with bibliographies.
This statement is indeed partially true, as far as I know. First, it does depend on one’s definition of “substantially original.” Roman authors were so conscious of the Greek tradition that they frequently cast their stories in Greek molds even if the stories themselves are startlingly original. Furthermore, it is often difficult to tell whether the stories were invented by the authors or were part of an earlier mythic tradition. Identifying allusions and originalities of thought is an important task for classical scholars.
Ovid is perhaps a poor example, for he followed the Alexandrian literary conventions with a great deal of self-consciousness. The hirsutus versus of Ennius, perhaps the greatest early Roman literary figure, are more replete with traditional Roman stories.
On general principle, this is not incorrect at all. But you were making a clear division: on the one hand are the stories completely invented by the Greeks, on the other are the stories which the Romans copied. I object to this division, not the principle of invention in general.
For the record, the Roman authors did not merely change the endings of stories. The changes themselves are more original than perhaps meets the eye. I would refer you to Vergil’s Fourth Georgic, which you can read in English or in Latin here.
Linguistically Odin is related to Zeus. I don’t remember enough old Norse to give you a decent proof, but IIRC the root *dz in PIE signifies a deity. Hence the Latin for god is deus, and the Greek genitive for the name Zeus is Dios. Odin is demonstratably related to the same rooot.
And this is where you are substantially incorrect.
Centuries of Atticizing bias have buried a tremendous amount of native Italian culture and cultural material. Much of it is coming to light today, and there is some fabulous work being done on the native Italian roots of Roman culture.
First and foremost, the Latins were hardly the most advanced Italian tribe c. 300 BC. There was a plurality of languages, first and foremost are the Oscan and Etruscan tongue. Etruscan culture was especially advanced, as the Bronze Age ruins and inscriptions tell us. They had a robust trade with the Celts in Britain for tin, a market which the Greeks tried to muscle into with their colony on the isle of Ischia (Pithekoussai), on the west coast of Italy. The vast majority of Roman mythological and religions traditions come from the more sophisticated Etrurian culture, which in turn did benefit from some contact with the early Greeks. But to say that the institution of Roman religion was one of appropriation from the Greeks is a serious oversimplification and reflects serious bias.
The problem is, the Romans rooted out as many traces of native Italian culture as they possibly could. This makes it hard on the modern scholar. They annihilated Veii, the main metropolis of Etruria, and extinguished Etruscan culture. A brief reading of the first book of Livy is enough to make this point. The Romans also destroyed the Oscan language, the most widespread native Italian tongue even into the first century BCE, when most Italians didn’t know a word of Latin.
Ultimately, there is absolutely no evidence to support the assertion that the Romans did not possess an elaborate, sophisticated religion before their contacts with the Greeks. To wit, Roman literary contact with Greece flourished centuries after the establishment of Roman religion. Romans did not start sending their youth to be educated in Greece or accept Greek culture at least until the age of Cicero, where there was still a great deal of hellenic ambivalence. If you are trying to argue that the Romans didn’t have much of a religion until they began to benefit from Greek literary tradition, then I would point out overwhelming evidence to the contrary, namely inscriptions, artwork, and earlier authors in native Roman metres such as Ennius.
[quote]
Obviously the Romans didn’t stop there; they embellished and improved upon the myths in their own way, and went on to tell original myths and epics of
their own e.g. Vergil’s Aeneid. But many of the foundation stones of Roman literature were borrowed from the earlier, Greek literature.
[/quote
I believe this contention is undermined by the above.
This kind of discussion reveals the substantial differences between the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. In short, the Greek epics are oral, a fact demonstratable linguistically and thematically. They contain a hodgepodge of dialects, and it is often clear when certain portions have suffered omissions and accretions. I suppose you can call them the gestalt of ancient Greek culture, only accessible after the Heroic Age had passed.
The Aeneid, on the other hand, is purely literary. Almost every line is technically perfect, but in may ways it lacks the sheer depth that centuries of retelling provide. However, it is a conscious attempt to build up the Roman state, both creating its mythological roots and giving it ideological justification (though this topic is extremely mired in ambiguity).
Both are far more than mythology, that’s for sure. As is most good Greek and Latin literature. The stories are only the tip of the iceberg.
Thank you, Maeglin, I stand corrected. It would seem that there has been a great deal more scholarship on this topic since my classical studies days, when certain now-debunked biases were, apparently, passed along to me.
Once again, I apologize for unwittingly perpetuating these ideas. As I said, I think my original answer was too brief to be clear either way, which didn’t help matters.