Dr Simon Elliott

Remus wants to use the Aventine Hill, which later becomes one of the fabulous sort of districts for people to live in.

So all well and good, but they fall out and ultimately Romulus kills Remus, of course.

So there's a first learning experience there about the Roman world.

It's gritty.

It's violent.

It's gritty and it's violent.

And they know it.

They know it.

And they're raised by wolves.

But Dan, there's another mythological story as well.

It's never ending in the Roman world.

So the second mythological story is Aeneas, who's a refugee from the Trojan Wars.

Then Aeneas lands somewhere near Anzio, so a precursor of the Second World War invasion.

Lands at Angio, like the Second World War.

And then his son is the one who actually, in this mythological story, founds the town Alba Longa, where Rea Silvia came from.

So it's all very confusing.

It's confusing for me.

I'm sure it's confusing for you and our listeners as well.

It was confusing for the Romans.

So we have the great Virgil coming up with the Aenid, his astonishing poetic narrative, where he ties them together.