Throughout human history, there have been reports of human children raised by wolves. The first such story involved Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers who founded Rome.
It seems there was an Italian king, whose brother decided he could do a better job; the brother deposed the king, slaughtered his male heirs, and forced the king’s daughter to become a Vestal Virgin. While the Vestals were sworn to chastity vis-a-vis humans, nobody said anything about gods or demigods – and the chick was quickly knocked-up by either Mars or Hercules (when asked to be more specific, she would only shrug and point out that it had been dark.)
Ok, clearly the offspring are destined for greatness. The new king (who had apparently not heard about what happened with Oedipus) decided the best thing to do is drown the twins as soon as they're born.
As anyone who has heard about Oedipus will have guessed, the boys didn't die: it's complicated, but, the river Tiber bore them up, they were suckled by a she-wolf (who just happened to have some extra milk she wasn't using), fed by a wood-pecker (who'd jarred his brain so badly he couldn't tell the difference between human infants and baby wood-peckers), and, eventually, fostered by shepherds who raised them to be, yes, shepherds.
(At some point, I’d really like it if someone could explain to me how being raised by shepherds to be a shepherd somehow imparts all the military education needed to become a warrior-king … I mean, clearly it does: we have Oedipus, Romulus, and David, to mention just a few – I’m just not at all clear how looking after sheep somehow makes someone a bad-ass.)
Eventually, the twins find out what an ass-hole their grand-uncle has been (shortly after they find out that the new king is their grand-uncle), and kill him, restoring the original king to his throne. Unwilling to await their inheritance, the boys decide to just go right ahead and start their own city.
There's a catch: Romulus really thinks the Palatine Hill would be an awesome place to build a city, while Remus is just as convinced the Aventine Hill would be better. Eventually, they decide to submit the question to augurs --- except that each of them claims his augur has sided with him!
There are several sensible things that could have been done at this point: they could have gone to a different augur together, they could have thrown some dice, or tossed a coin, or picked a hill they could both agree on (there were seven hills in that particular area), they could have had an arm-wrestling match, or they could just have each started his own damned city on the hilltop of his choice.
It is an important rule of fiction that the characters can NEVER do the sensible thing --- because everyone lives happily ever after and there's no story, and, if you haven't guessed it yet, this is fiction, so none of the sensible options was followed. Romulus killed Remus, founded his city on the Palatine Hill, and called it Rome, after himself. (The fact that the city eventually encompassed ALL of the seven hilltops in that region, including the Aventine, must have set Remus spinning in his grave. On the plus side, we haven’t had to deal with a city called ‘Reme’, so things can be said to have worked out for the best.)
The population of the city quickly swelled, but it was mostly by taking in displaced men; it quickly became apparent that there weren’t enough women to go around. As it happened, the neighboring Sabine tribe had lots of women, but it seemed they were unwilling to share. The Romans figured this sort of selfishness ought not to be allowed, and they pulled off the famous ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’, under cover of darkness.
Now, while it’s true that the term ‘rape’, in those days, had a meaning closer to ‘abduct’ than the purely sexual connotations it bears today, let’s face it, the Romans weren’t interested in ransom, and they didn’t take all those women because they needed housekeepers! It can be assumed, therefore, that quite a few of the activities associated with the modern use of the word transpired.
The Sabines, meanwhile, couldn’t help but notice their wives and daughters had all gone missing at the same time, and a quick check of the ladies room indicated they weren’t all in there, talking. At about the same time a suspiciously large group of tracks was found leaving Sabine territory on a direct heading for Rome.
Rome won the war that followed, and absorbed the Sabines into their community, whereupon it became necessary to find someone else to fight.
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