Hey there, I’m Mike Rugnetta, this is Crash Course Mythology, and today we’re gonna
put on our mythical coats, grab our mythical hats, hop on a mythical mode of public transportation
and get ourselves into the hustle and bustle of mythical cities.
Some of these cities are real, some are fictional, and some are even metaphorical.
But all of them are metropolitain!
Come on, Thoth!
The Bifrost Bus only runs once an hour!
[Intro] City myths can be tricky.
They’re not like other mythical places we’ve looked at-- like gardens, caves, or mountains--because
they don’t belong to the natural world.
They’re man made, or sometimes god made.
And this means that the stories we tell about them can be a little different.
A lot of the stories we have about cities are closer to tall tales, which are fun, but
they don’t meet our criteria for myth, mostly because they’re, well...a little unserious.
A good example of a tall tale city is El Dorado, the city of gold said to exist somewhere in
South America, that really tended to be more of a metaphor for some ultimate prize that
one may search for endlessly… but likely never actually attain.
And some urban tales are almost too serious--they’re places that really existed, with archaeological
evidence and complicated histories that transcend the stories we tell about them.
Probably the best known of these is Troy, whose siege is described in the Iliad.
The archaeological history of Troy is fascinating, but I’ll leave that for Crashcourse Archaeology.
Just kidding.
There’s no Crashcourse Archeology.
[[[Thoth comes on like Indiana Jones.]]]
Or maybe we just haven’t discovered it yet.
Another significant archeological city that has a mythical story attached to it is Jericho.
Jericho is one of the oldest cities in human history, but is probably best known for the
story of its destruction at the hands of Joshua in the Old Testament.
According to the story, the Lord tells Joshua to march around the city walls for six days
with seven priests blowing ram’s horns as they carry the ark of the covenant, a chest
that contains the ten commandments.
On the seventh day, following the Lord’s instructions, Joshua has the army march around
the city seven times and on the seventh circuit he has the trumpets sound and the army shout
its war cry.
According to the book of Joshua, chapter 6, verse 20:
“When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the
men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they
took the city.”
It’s a great story, but archaeologists are still arguing over whether or not a walled
city even existed at the time of Joshua.
And even if it did exist, trumpets probably didn’t bring it down.
Looking at things etiologically, as we sometimes do, is fun, but it isn’t ALWAYS possible
to reconcile myths and historical remains.
This is especially true of living cities, which have to go about their business while
also existing as a repository of stories about them.
Let’s start with a holy site mentioned in the Bible, but still standing today, a holy
site common to all three Abrahamic religions: Jerusalem.
It might be an understatement to say that Jerusalem has been the subject of many stories.
And the imagery used to describe Jerusalem changes dramatically depending upon who’s
doing the describing and when.
Sometimes the city is beautiful, sometimes ugly.
Sometimes Jerusalem is personified as a not especially reputable mythic woman.
This is particularly true during the Babylonian captivity, a time in the 6th century BCE when
the babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar kept sacking Jerusalem and sending Jews into exile.
This all led to some complicated feelings about Jerusalem.
The lamentations of Jeremiah begin:
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!
(1:1) Okay.
A tributary.
Not so bad.
But then it gets unpleasant, Jeremiah continues:
Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is become as an unclean thing;
All that honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness:
Yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.
Her filthiness was in her skirts; she remembered not her latter end;
Therefore is she come down wonderfully; she hath no comforter: (1:8-9)
Yeah I mean, Jeremiah’s ambivalence is maybe understandable.
It’s hard to see your sacred city conquered and destroyed.
Though as for Jeremiah comparing the city to a lewd and unclean woman, it’s not the
only time the Bible deploys the female image unfairly.
But maybe we can read it as a lamentation for a city that was supposed to nurture him
but is now taunting him and other Jews by harboring their conquerors.
The Jews eventually go back and rebuild Jerusalem so hopefully some of these feelings abate.
In the New Testament, Jerusalem is described as a woman again, but this woman is more…
well, clean.
In the Book of Revelation, John invents an idealized Jerusalem, a New Jerusalem intended
as a new spiritual home.
In chapter 12 he says:
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband.
(Rev 21:2) So which is it?
Bride or harlot covered in filth?
... both?
Some cities in the Bible are often classed as places of sin -- Sodom and Gomorrah being
the most obvious example -- but let’s not forget: cities also provide opportunities
for humankind to unite.
For the early Christians, the ideal city wasn’t Jerusalem, but Rome.
We haven’t talked a great deal about Roman mythology in this series, largely because
it draws heavily on Greek sources, but Romans did create their own mythological history,
particularly for their city.
We’re going to look at two important myths surrounding the founding of Rome, involving,
you might be shocked to learn: families and violence.
One story of the foundation of Rome comes from Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid.
This is the story of the Trojan hero, Aeneas, who escapes the sack of Troy with his aged
father, his young son, and statues of his household gods.
Eventually he makes his way to Italy where he and his group of Trojans settle.
There, Aeneas marries Lavinia, the daughter of the king of Latium.
Anchises, Aeneas’s dad, dies during the journey, but in book six of the Aeneid, Aeneas
goes to the underworld and his father explains to him the future history of Rome.
Anchises mentions a future descendant called Romulus:
“Of him, my son, Great Rome shall rise, and, favored of his
star, Have power world-wide, and men of godlike
mind.
She clasps her seven hills in single wall, Proud mother of the brave”
That’s right, it’s not Aeneas who founds Rome.
It’s his son who settles at Alba Longa, and a later descendant–Romulus–who builds
the city of seven hills.
But hold the mythical phone for just a moment... who is this “Romulus”?
The story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus begins in Alba Longa where a woman named
Rhea Silvia lives.
Unfortunately for Rhea, Mars, the god of war, is obsessed with her.
And after cornering her in a sacred grove he “seduces” her -- which, I mean, let’s
be real, probably he rapes her.
Now pregnant, Rhea goes to her uncle, King Amulius, for help.
But Amulius is furious.
Instead of helping his niece, he imprisons her.
When she finally gives birth, he orders her twin sons to be left to die on the bank of
the Tiber river.
Abandoned, the twins are suckled by a gentle she-wolf until they’re found by a shepherd
named Faustulus who raises them.
Probably because of their early troubled life–oh but also because they were sort of raised
by a wolf?–the boys turn to crime, eventually stealing some of Amulius’s sheep.
Remus is captured and taken before Amulius for trial.
At this point, Faustulus reveals to Romulus the brothers’ true identities.
Romulus, in good criminal-hero fashion, sets off for Alba Longa to get revenge on his great-uncle
the king.
Romulus kills Amulius and rescues Remus.
He gives the vacant throne to Amulius’s grandfather Numitor and then the twins go
off to found their own city, which brings us to the Thoughtbubble.
Romulus and Remus decide where they were abandoned, on the banks of the Tiber, would be a great
place for a new city, but they can’t agree on the exact location.
Romulus receives a sign from the gods telling him to choose the Palatine hill as the site,
so he sets out to mark the boundaries by digging a ditch.
Remus sets up camp opposite him on the Aventine hill.
Remus, the more headstrong of the two brothers, jumps over the ditch to show Romulus that
it’s not exactly invasion proof.
Romulus, seeing this as sacrilege, kills his brother and becomes the sole ruler of the
new city.
That’s why it’s called “Rome” and not “Reem” and I think we’re all thankful
for that.
Imagine being a REEMAN instead of a ROMAN.
BUGH.
So Romulus has a spot for his city and no rival twin, but he still has one big problem:
not enough people.
So he puts out the word that the hill will be a refuge for the criminals and runaways
of Italy.
And that’s exactly who shows up.
Roman historian Livy calls them “a miscellaneous rabble, without distinction of bond or free.”
But that rabble is almost entirely male, and in order to populate the city, Romulus and
the city leaders invite visitors from neighboring cities to celebrate a harvest festival with
them.
After the visitors arrive, at a pre-arranged signal, the Romans seize all the young women.
And grow the Roman population through ... mass rape.
BUGH Thanks Thoughtbubble.
These stories, like the ones in the Bible, remind us how easily myths can gloss over
or sometimes even glamorize terribly violent actions.
The founding and conquering and defending of cities can get really ugly.
Some myths reflect this, others choose to pretty up their origin stories with magic
and stuff.
The story of Rome’s founding highlights some of the complexity to be found in mythical
cities.
Many cities have origin stories, some more historically grounded than others.
When we’re dealing with actual cities, that have archaeological and written histories,
we often find that the myths surrounding the city jibe with that history.
Jericho was besieged and conquered at some point, though it’s unlikely that trumpet
blasts were responsible.
Rome, built on the Palatine, and became the seat of one of the most expansive empires
in the world.
One empire that relied on cunning and violence, characteristics that we might easily ascribe
to its pro-wolf, pro-rape, pro-conquest, brother-murderer of a founder.
Cities are ambivalent, morally ambiguous places.
Kind of like everywhere else people live.
And with that, we’ve reached the border of our final mythical place.
Next episode, we move on to the first examination of mythical beasts.
Thanks for watching, I’ll see you next time.