BBC - Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit - Episode 1

Mary Beard’s entertaining whirlwind intro to Roman history begins with the origin myth of Romulus and Remus. It pays not to read too much into these early myths, as many scholars think they were Greek inventions simply to explain peculiar Roman customs, and even adapted from pre-existing Greek myths, although the Romans certainly did enthusiastically embrace their wolf-mother as propaganda symbolic of their power. It is a fact that the legendary period of the kings cannot be fitted to match any realistic hi