Name: The Mythology of Ancient Rome Went WAY Deeper Than We Thought
Uploaded: 2025-07-30T18:14:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Mythology of Ancient Rome Went WAY Deeper Than We Thought' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Mythology of Ancient Rome Went WAY Deeper Than We Thought' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-30. Transcript available.

And what was the religion at the time? Did things start to change from
mythology into
actual religion during Rome? I think those two things are very linked. The
Romans are very
religious people. They were very into ritual and sacrifice, and they took it
really, really
seriously. And when we look at the myths that they told about themselves, the
first king of Rome is
Romulus. And what was Romulus? Romulus was a warrior above all. And this is
actually like what the
Romans are above all. They are the children of Mars. They do war. They're
really good at it. That's
why they conquer the entire Mediterranean world. They're better at it than just
about anybody else.
So it's a very masculine society? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's the patriarchy to the
max. And they were
very martial society. And they're sort of- Martial society? Martial society.
And their political
institutions are mirroring their military institutions. And the consul and
their leaders
are simultaneously, you know, they're the political leader, but also the leader
of the armed forces.
This is actually what their job is. Wow.
The other role of the consul, however- The consul?
The consul, right, which is, you know, one of the key leaders in the Republican
era, is overseeing
these critical sacrifices and critical rituals that the Romans felt that they
had to perform and needed
to do in order to stay on the right side of the gods. And that was the job of
the political
leadership was to defend the city using the armies and to make sure that the
gods were happy by making
the proper sacrifices. And so the second king of Rome, this guy called Numa, he
was all about religion.
And so when they tell this story, they're like, the first guy is war. And then
the second guy comes in and he's like,
we need religion to like guide this in like an ethical way and like to make
sure that we're not just like insane barbarians,
that we actually like have an ethical and moral structure to our society.
And those are the two things. And then the next, there's legendarily like seven
kings of Rome.
Like there's seven hills, there's seven kings of Rome. Like, you know, seven's
a lucky number.
It kind of always has been. And so when you, when we talk about the seven kings
of Rome, there's like,
it goes like warrior, religious guy, warrior, religious guy, warrior, you know,
religious guy in
because those two things go hand in hand. Like one side, the other one side,
the other. So even
that's even still today in our society, it kind of seems like it's like there's
two parties sort of,
and it's one, it's one side, the other one way, the other. Yeah. And, and then,
and what those sides
and what they are change and their values change over time. Yeah. And, and when
we talk about them
being a religious people, you know, this is, this is a sort of pagan polytheistic
religion. And
there, so there were different gods, right? And we, and we know these gods, a
lot of them were
borrowed from, from the Greeks. So it's, you know, it's Jupiter is, is Zeus and
there's, you know,
Minerva and there's, you know, Bacchus and, and all of these, you know,
different gods that are out
there. So they didn't have religion in the sense of like, there was one thing
that everybody did and
was a part of, and everybody went to church on Sundays. There were just, there
were different
temples in different places. And like one city, their patron would be Apollo,
another city, their
patron would be Diana. Right. And so it would, it would change from time to
place. And so they had
this very open-mindedness towards religion and how you practiced religion. When
they, when they would
come across a new society and by come across, I mean conquer, they would often
incorporate those
religions or they would, or they would make sort of what they were doing, their
religious sacrifices,
their gods. And they would be like, oh, this is analogous to our thing over
here. It's probably
two aspects of the same God that we're talking about. And it would all just be
integrated into one
thing. You hear the fable about Romulus and Remus, right? Can you tell me that
fable of how Rome
was founded? This is like kind of a mythological fable. Do you know what I'm
talking about?
Oh yeah, for sure. It's, and it, and it is one of those, like, these are
archetypical,
this archetypical mythos, right? And what it is, is we have a couple of babies
who were put into like
a little, like manger thing and sent down a river. They had to be purged
because there was a king who
was afraid of them. These, these are very standard stories. I mean, these are
biblical stories in the
same way. And they allegedly, you know, wash up into some reeds and then a wolf
comes along and they
suckle. Yes, there it is. They suckle at the teat of the wolf. And then they
grow up big and strong
and they wind up, you know, oh, oh, they do overthrow the king who was afraid
of them and found
their own city. And I was actually just talking about this with some friends
the other day,
because there's a great bit in Livy, who's one of the great, you know, Latin
historians who was
writing at the time. L-I-V-V-Y? L-I-V-Y. L-I-V-Y. Yeah. And he was, he was
around during like the age
of Augustus. So, so he's writing about stuff like this is 750 years later. Like
he's, he's talking about
this and he's like, well, you know, it doesn't really seem plausible that it
was a wolf.
So I'm thinking that maybe it was like a, maybe it was like a corruption of
language and that there
was like a local prostitute whose name was wolf and she was the one who got, so
it's, so it's really
funny, like watching him sort of wrestle with the mythos of Rome, like even
trying to make this like
a true story. At that time. At that, even at that time. And because he's 750
years in beyond all of
that, like we go back 750 years from now, like we're, you know, we're like in
Robin Hood days.
That's how far away Livy was from the origin of his own city. So the, the myth
isn't true, but how,
but how did it actually begin? I, in my opinion, right. And in, I think in the
opinion of like,
if, if I was going to offer like sort of the most generalized and acceptable
explanation for this,
it's basically that at the Tiber river, which Rome is adjacent to and sort of
runs through Rome,
uh, there, there was a bend in it. So there was an easy place to cross the
river, to ford the river.
And right next to that is a couple of prominent Hills. And if you're in, if you're
a very, very early
society and you're looking for a place to build a settlement, you know, it's
very nice to have some
Hills around because you can build a little fortification on top of it. And if
anybody comes
around to mess with you, you have a really nice defensible position. So it
really seems like
there were just some, some early people who, you know, come across these Hills
who recognize that
there's this nice ford in the river. And now they're sort of on the trade
routes that are running like
up from Southern Italy into Etruria and then, you know, deeper into the
European interior and stuff
that's coming down from the interior and out through Southern Italy. So
location, location,
location. And then, and then, you know, the soil around Rome and, and in that
whole, you know,
swath of Italy is very fertile. So, you know, they plop themselves down, uh,
they've got some good farms
going, they've got trade routes coming through, they have a defensible position
and, you know,
they've actually done, uh, archeological excavations, you know, especially
around the
Capitoline Hill and the Palatine Hill, which is where all of this stuff got
going. And, you know,
the earliest things that they find are not too far off of like this, you know,
alleged 753.
And these are some of the early findings there on Palatine Hill excavation. Wow.
Yeah. And there's, and there's just layers and layers and layers because they,
you know,
they built on top of what had come before them. And so do you think we've found
a lot of the stuff
that's there? Do you think there's still a lot to be found?
There's always more to be found. And actually an interesting thing about just
sort of archeological
theory is that some of these places that you go to, um, they know that there is
stuff that is
buried, that they are intentionally not excavating because that what we have
right now, the tools
that we have right now for archeology, it's, it's inherently destructive. Like
you're going to wind
up destroying things in order to get at what you're looking for and destroying
things in the ground.
Yeah. Destroying, yeah. Just, yeah. Destroying things in the ground. And so
there, there are
definitely places where it's like, we know that there's stuff there. We're not
going to touch it
because who knows, maybe in 20 years or 30 years or 50 years, we'll have better
technology and we can
analyze this stuff and dig into like maybe literally dig into this stuff, uh,
without damaging as much as
we know that we would damage it today.
That's pretty amazing forethought, you know? Um, so when you look, so going
back just to that fable
of Remus and Romulus, right. And Romulus Rome, that was how the name comes,
through, through the fable. Um, like how big was myth and fable at the time
when Rome began?
Very big. I mean, this is, you know, early human societies have all had myths
and legends about
their own origins. Like this is, this is one of like the most basic things that
you will find
in like every society, you know, indigenous tribes in North America, indigenous
tribes in Siberia,
uh, you know, the Romans, Native Americans. We have our own origin myths here
in the United
States of America. Right now we've got, you know, George Washington, like never
telling a lie. Like
these are, these are myths that we, you know, tell ourselves. Christopher
Columbus and Thanksgiving,
whether there's truth to it or not, but it's still, these are myths that we
tell ourselves.
Yeah. And so this is, this is a very common thing to just all human societies.
And so, yeah,
them, them telling this story and it, and it helps you, you know, and it
becomes less about
telling an accurate story of where we came from, as opposed to telling a story
about what kind of
society we want to be right now. What are our values? What are our morals? What
is it that we take
seriously? What is it that we think you should do or not do? And a lot of early
Roman history,
like most of the stuff that we read today to try to glean factual information
from Livy, from Polybius,
from Plutarch, whatever. Um, those guys were using the past to tell moral
stories for a,
for their own contemporaneous audience to get certain things across to people.
Like Marius
had an issue with ambition. Let's explore that. Let's talk about that. And that
was really for
them. The purpose of history was to tell these, these moral stories. And that's,
you know, that's,
that's a very common thing in all societies. And it was certainly true for the
Romans in a really big
way. Dude, having an issue with ambition, what an interesting thing. Ambition's
a dangerous thing,
man. Like it, for, you know, you, we can't do anything without ambition. Like
nobody can do
anything without ambition. I would not have done what I did without ambition.
You would not be sitting
here without a little bit of ambition to go, you know, you want to go think
about it. Yeah. You want
to go do stuff. But if, but it's like, it's anything it's, it's everything in
moderation. If
you indulge too much in ambition, now you're willing to do anything and break
anybody, do, you know,
whatever it takes to get ahead. And now you're into hubris and now the gods are
going to punish you
and not, nobody wants to be, uh, in the land of hubris where the gods are like,
we, we have to
show this person who's actually in charge and it's not him. It's the gods.
Thank you.