Roman Legends: Three Stories To Reflect

Roman legends present a strange combination of human beings with fantastic natural elements and mythological animals. In fact, they contain much more.

The classical legends, especially the Greco-Roman ones, aimed to offer a feeling of patriotism among their inhabitants, promoting enormous enterprises that served both to understand the origins and history of the empire and to educate the population to the values ​​of their time.

The Roman legends that arouse more reflections

In a certain sense, the idea of ​​the classical world as cultured and almost exemplary has persisted to this day. Thus, a good number of Roman legends can serve as food for thought.

They explain the world today beyond their fabulous narratives. This is due to their broad cultural and symbolic content, which is why they are used daily by psychologists and professionals from various disciplines to exemplify the world we live in.

The she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome

In an attempt to give an almost divine origin to powerful Rome, the legend of the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus, the two founders of an empire that would have marked 10 centuries of history of mankind , spread .

A servant saved the twins from certain death and hid them on the banks of the River Tiber where they were cared for by a she-wolf who nursed them hearing them cry. Later, the shepherd Faustolo will take them with him and raise them with his wife, Acca Larentia.

The she-wolf was a sacred animal for many cultures, including the Etruscans, a people who lived in the Italic lands before the Romans. However, from this legend we can extract other reflections.

How much our actions can change the world, for example: who would have told that servant or shepherd that from his acts of kindness one of the most powerful and great empires the world has ever known would be born?

The sorceress Circe and the King Pico

The Roman legend of Circe and King Pico is perhaps less known, but no less suggestive. In it we find Pico, son of Saturn and father of Faun, married to the nymph Canente.

Pico was a primitive diviner accompanied by a woodpecker, also considered a prophetic bird. However, the man did not return the love that Circe, the sorceress of the island of Aea, had for him. The woman, therefore, decided to transform him into a bird with prophetic powers like the animal that always accompanied him.

It is curious how in many Greek-Roman fables and legends we often find unrequited loves that culminate in a tragic, vindictive or dramatic way. The trend today is instead to learn how to better live our emotions.

It is important to know them, to control them as much as possible and, above all, to understand them. Otherwise, anger, revenge or rage can be a constant, as we see in many classic fairy tales.

Roman legends: Hercules and Cacus

One of the protagonists of most of the Roman legends is undoubtedly the great Hercules. So much so that Virgil, probably the greatest Roman poet, narrated his adventures to defeat Caco, half satyr and half giant. This story is also represented by a sculpture in Piazza della Signoria in Florence.

Virgil dreamed of shaping an almost divine Roman origin. He then wrote the Aeneid , which narrates the adventures of Aeneas, a descendant of Troy, a city from which he escaped once he fell into Greek hands to found Rome on the Italian coast.

The tale of Hercules and Cacus is one more element that adds to this divine origin. The giant, after having stolen some red oxen in the Tiber valley, is discovered by Hercules, who dismember him in revenge.

This story is said to mark the beginning of the cult of Hercules. It also represents an anthropological key to understand the commercial evolution of the area. However, once again we observe revenge, the victory of the strongest and the punishment of morally reprehensible acts.

Conclusions

Roman legends, always analyzed from a contemporary point of view, allow us to reflect on equally classic themes. Morals, ethics, revenge, justice, emotions… For thousands of years we have tried to understand them. Will we ever be able to?