How could you leave me like a cast-off thing

And go alone? You should have called me with you:

One sword, one hour, one agony for both!

I piled this wood, I called our fathers’ gods

To let you lie alone here, heartless monster?

You killed yourself and me, your city’s people,

And the Phoenician lords. Come, give me water

To wash these wounds—and if a last breath hovers,

My mouth will take it.” She had climbed the pyre,

And held her sister now, that fading life,

And moaned and mopped the black blood with her clothes.

Dido now strained to lift her heavy eyes

But failed. Around the sword, her breast’s wound hissed.

Three times she rose a little, on her elbow,

Collapsed each time, and with her wandering vision

Searched for the bright, high sky and sighed to find it.

Queen Juno cut this torture short, in pity,

Dispatching Iris earthward from Olympus

To free the struggling spirit from its bonds.

There was no fate or justice in her death.

Her madness brought a wretched, early end.

Proserpina had cut no lock of blond hair

To dedicate this life to Stygian Orcus.

So dewy Iris soared on saffron wings,

Trailing a thousand sun-reflecting colors,

And floated near her head. “I am to take

This gift to Dis and free you from your body.”

Her right hand made the stroke. All living heat

Vanished, and life dissolved into the wind.

ROMULUS AND REMUS

Ab urbe condita, Book I

Livy

Translated by Rev. Canon Roberts, 1912

At the beginning of his history of Rome, Livy (64 or 59 BC–AD 17) described how Aeneas and the Trojan refugees eventually reached the west coast of Italy. Here Aeneas met King Latinus, married his daughter Lavinia, and built a new town named Lavinium. Lavinia, however, had previously been engaged to another king, who declared war. Although his people prevailed, Aeneas later died, leaving behind his son Ascanius. When he grew up, Ascanius built a new city called ‘Alba Longa’, and had a son of his own. Many generations down the line, the daughter of his descendant Numitor, Rhea Silvia, was violated, allegedly by the war god Mars, and gave birth to twin boys. In this story Livy explains what happened after her uncle Amulius, who had usurped her father to become king, ordered her infant sons, Romulus and Remus, to be thrown into the river. Livy was an historian, but the early centuries of Rome’s history were so steeped in legend that he had little choice but to embrace foundation myths like this one.