Hold The Gold

INT. MAZ' CASTLE - BASEMENT CORRIDOR - DAY

 Rey steps down into the basement corridor. BB-8 follows her. Walking carefully and confused, she is not sure why she's down here. She can hear the echoing sounds of a young girl crying. She heads down the hall... to the very end, where there is a door. It is almost as if a SOULFUL VIBRATION draws her closer. She looks at the door lock -- AND THE

 DOOR OPENS.

 Hesitant, Rey enters.

 INT. MAZ'S CASTLE - CRYPT ROOM - DAY

 Rey moves into the dark, small, vaulted storage room. Old treasures line the floors and walls, but there is something specific Rey is drawn to: on a table, an old wooden BOX.

She moves to it, unsure, afraid, as if an energy from inside the box has been calling her here. BB-8 nervously follows. Rey reaches out, very slowly, to touch the box. A moment heavy with tension. Rey OPENS THE BOX and sees inside Luke Skywalker's original lightsaber. With hesitation, she reaches towards it, but she cannot resist. As her hand makes contact with it, there is the piercing sound of a lightsaber igniting. She moves her hand away, as REY HEARS A MECHANICAL BREATHING sound. 

The CAMERA MOVES, LIGHTING CHANGES -- and we see behind her something impossible: a HALLWAY OF FROM DEEP INSIDE CLOUD CITY. Disembodied voices fill the air.

 YOUNG GIRL

 NO!

 She stands -- looks around, confused by all she sees and hears. -- Turns and sees, through a DOORWAY.

We follow Rey and she runs down the corridor, but it all TILTS -- TURNS -- and she lands on the WALL -- which is now the GROUND -- dried GRASS.  She turns to look -- we PIVOT -- and see a BURNING TEMPLE AT NIGHT. 

We PAN to: R2-D2 -- who watches the flames -- and a MAN appears (LUKE, whose face we do not see). He falls to his knees, reaches out to the droid -- with a MECHANICAL RIGHT HAND.

We PUSH IN ON REY as RAIN BEGINS -- and DAY TURNS TO NIGHT -- and she LOOKS UP -- we TILT UP -- To see we're LOOKING UP AT A WARRIOR as he is STABBED BY A FIERY LIGHTSABER! 

He screams and falls to the ground -- we FOLLOW HIM, revealing Rey again, now in a nighttime battlefield. She gets to her feet, frightened by what she sees. We PIVOT AROUND HER to REVEAL KYLO REN, and the six other KNIGHTS OF REN, who flank him! 

Come back around to Rey, soaking now, as the RAIN STOPS and SUNLIGHT illuminates her -- she turns to look -- we PIVOT -- and see... A little girl. Rey as a child. She is sobbing, hysterical. Unkar Plutt's meaty hand holds her thin arm. She is on Jakku, watching a starship fly into the sky, abandoning her.

 YOUNG GIRL

 No, come back!

 UNKAR PLUTT

 Quiet, girl!

 The ship flies towards the desert sun, which is strangely eclipsed, as if being eaten by darkness. Rey looks around her to see she is..

 In a NIGHTTIME, BARREN, SNOWY WOODS. She's losing her mind, confounded and lost and she gets to her feet, her breath seen in the frigid air -- and then: THE SOUND OF CLASHING LIGHTSABERS! She moves through the woods, toward the sound.

Rey runs, heart pounding, when KYLO REN EMERGES FROM BEHIND A TREE! She stops, SCREAMS, FALLS BACK and LANDS IN:

 INT. MAZ' CASTLE - BASEMENT CORRIDOR - DAY

 She falls back, out of the room, suddenly sitting in the

 hall, out of breath, alarmed and perplexed.

 She HEARS something and turns to look.

 Maz stands at the end of the corridor, realizing what has just happened.

REY

What was that? I shouldn't have gone in there.

 MAZ

That lightsaber was Luke's. And his father's before him and now, it calls to you!

 Rey stands, fast. Still overwhelmed, emotional, speechless.

 REY

 I have to get back to Jakku.

 MAZ

 Han told me.

 (reaches out, hold REY'S HAND)

 Dear child. I see your eyes. 

You already know the truth. 

Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're

 never coming back. 

But... there's someone who still could.

 REY

 Luke.

MAZ

The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead. 

I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. 

It moves through and surrounds every living thing. 
Close your eyes. Feel it. 

The light. It's always been there.

It will guide you. The saber. Take it. 

Rey suddenly stands.

REY
I'm never touching that again. 
I don't want any part of this.

And Rey runs off, passing Maz.

Rey's mind is spinning -- she can't take it -- she turns and heads off, fast. BB-8 follows her. TIGHT ON MAZ, watching her go. Maz SIGHS, feeling for the young girl.

 EXT. MAZ'S CASTLE - DAY

 Rey exits the castle, needs to run, but doesn't know where.

 Heads toward the woods.

 EXT. FOREST - DAY

 Rey moves through the foliage, heart racing. Over this, we HEAR a RUMBLING -- intense, an OMEN of something horrible to come.

Luke’s Cave

There is a maze in The Desert carved from sand and rock.

A vast labyrinth of pathways and corridors a hundred miles long, a thousand miles wide, full of twists and dead ends.

Picture it a puzzle.

You walk, and at the end of this maze is a prize just waiting to be discovered.

All you have to do is find your way through.

Can you see The Maze? 

Its walls and floors, its twists and turns? 

Good, because The Maze you've created in your mind is itself the maze.

There is no desert, no rock or sand.

There is only the idea of it.

But it's an idea that will come to dominate your every waking and sleeping moment.

You're inside The Maze now.

You cannot escape.

Welcome to madness.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL (reading): 

“The animal envoys of the Unseen Power no longer serve, as in primeval times, to teach and to guide mankind. Bears, lions, elephants and gazelles are in cages in our zoos. Man is no longer the newcomer in a world of unexplored plains and forests, and our immediate neighbors are not wild beasts, but other human beings contending for goods and space on a planet that is whirling without end around the fireball of a star. Neither in body nor mind do we inhabit the world of those hunting races of the Paleolithic millennia, to whose lives and lifeways we nevertheless owed the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds.

Memories of their animal envoys still must sleep, somehow, within us, for they wake a little and stir when we venture into wilderness. They wake in terror to thunder. And again they wake with a sense of recognition when we enter any one of those great painted caves. Whatever the inward darkness may have been to which the shamans of those’ caves descended in their trances, the same must lie within ourselves nightly visited in sleep.”

BILL MOYERS: 

When we look at the magnificent cave paintings left by our primal ancestors, we realize how the hunters of those early tribes were influenced by their natural surroundings, and by their feelings toward the animals they depended on for food religious feelings. They told stories to themselves about the animals, and about the supernatural world to which the animals seemed to go when they died. And the hunters performed rituals of atonement to the departed spirits of the animals, hoping to coax them hack to be sacrificed again.

Joseph Campbell devoted his life to the study of these myths and rituals. For him, mythic stories were not simply entertaining tales to be told for amusement around ancient campfires, they were powerful guides to the life of the spirit. Campbell’s odyssey as scholar and teacher led him from the exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, which impressed him as a boy, to cultures all over the world. In his words, “Whether we listen with aloof amusement to the mumbo jumbo of some witch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivated rapture translations from sonnets of Lao-tze, or now and again crack the hard nutshell of an argument of Thomas Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale, we’re hearing echoes of the first story.”

In this hour, one of the many I taped with Joseph Campbell during the last two years of his life, we talked about our relationship to the first stories and to the people who told them. Like them, we too perform rituals to enact what we believe about the world beyond this one, and we try to bring our mind into harmony with questions of immortality and our body with its destiny of death.

 

Email to the Universe

Selected quotes . . .

Dreams of flying appeared in the collective unconscious before the reality of flight existed in technology, and I suspect that if we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely . . .

I suggest that we contemplate what our children look at every Saturday morning on TV. One of the most popular jokes in animated cartoons shows the protagonist walking off a cliff, without noticing what he has done. Sublimely ignorant, he continues to walk - on air - until he notices that he has been doing the "impossible," and then he falls . . .

Daedalus who, imprisoned in a labyrinth (conventional "reality"), invented wings and flew away, over the heads of his persecutors; and Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who flew too close to the Sun Absolute and fell back to Earth. Like Porky Pig walking off a cliff, Icarus' fall contains a symbolism many have encountered in their own dreams . . .

Daedalus means "artist" in Greek . . . Daedalus, inventor of wings that took him from Earth to Outer Space - why does he represent Art, instead of Science? . . .

The genius of an artist, Aristotle says, lies in his texne, the root from which we get our word "technology"; but texne basically means skill or craft, or the ability to make things that never existed before. Negative entropy, i.e., information . . .

The musician and the architect, the poet and the physicist -- all inventors of new realities -- all such Creators may be best considered late evolutionary developments of the type that first appears as the shaman. 

Please remember that shamans in most cultures are known as "they who walk in the sky," just like our current shaman-hero, Luke Rey Skywalker.

The ironies of Swift and Aristophanes, and the myths of the fall of Icarus and Donald Duck, indicate that the collective unconscious contains a force opposed to our dreams of flight. This appears inevitable . . .

But what if we begin to regrow healthy organs of Poetic Imagination and flight? What if we "put on wings and arouse the coiled splendor within," as Liber Al urges? . . .

Joyce did not name his emblematic Artist merely Daedalus, but Stephen Daedalus -- after St. Stephen the Protomartyr, who reported a Vision and was stoned to death for it . . .

Those of us who have no avocation for martyrdom must learn, when we realize how much neophobia remains built into the contraptions of "society" and "the State," the art of surviving in spite of them. In a word, we must "get wise" in both the Socratic meaning of the phrase and in the most hardboiled street meaning. Neophobia functions as an Evolutionary Driver, forcing the neophiliac to get very smart very fast."

Uncle Gutenberg was a bookworm

And he lived on Charing Cross

The memory of his volumes brings a smile

He would read me lots of stories

When he wasn't on the sauce

Now I'd like to share the wisdom

Of my favourite bibliophile

He said a-

Cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

Chapter titles are like signs

And if you read between the lines

You'll find your first impression was mistook

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta-ta!

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta-ta!

Mary Poppins, could you give us an example?

Certainly!

Nellie Rubina was made of wood

But what could not be seen was though

Her trunk up top was barren

Well, her roots were lush and green

So in Spring when Mr Hickory saw her blossoms blooming there

He took root despite her bark

And now there's seedlings everywhere

Which proves

A cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

Chapter titles are like signs

And if you read between the lines

You'll find your first impression was mistook

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Should we do the one about the wealthy widow?

Oh, by all means!

Always loved that one

Well, go on then!

Lady Hyacinth Macaw

Brought all her treasures to a reef

Where she only wore a smile

Plus two feathers, and a leaf

So no one tried to rob her

'Cause she barely wore a stitch

For when you're in your birthday suit

There ain't much there to show you're rich!

Oh, a cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king maybe a crook

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la, ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ra-ta-ta!

You'll find your first impression was mistook (Ya-da-da-da)

For a cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Oh, give us the one about the dirty rascal, why don't ya?

Isn't that one a bit long?

Well, the quicker you're into it, the quicker you're out of it

Once upon a time

In a nursery rhyme

There was a castle with a king

Hiding in a wing

'Cause he never went to school to learn a single thing

He had scepters and swords

And a parliament of lords

But on the inside he was sad

Egad!

Because he never had a wisdom for numbers

A wisdom for words

Though his crown was quite immense

His brain was smaller than a bird's

So the queen of the nation

Made a royal proclamation:

"To the Missus and the Messers

The more or lessers

Bring me all the land's professors"

Then she went to the hair dressers

And they came from the east

And they came from the south

From each college they poured knowledge

From their brains into his mouth

But the king couldn't learn

So each professor met their fate

For the queen had their heads removed

And placed upon the gate

And on that date

I state their wives all got a note

Their mate was now the late-great

But then suddenly one day

A stranger started in to sing

He said, "I'm the dirty rascal

And I'm here to teach the king"

And the queen clutched her jewels

For she hated royal fools

But this fool had some rules

They really ought to teach in schools

Like you'll be a happy king

If you enjoy the things you've got

You should never try to be

The kind of person that you're not

So they sang and they laughed

For the king had found a friend

And they ran onto a rainbow for

The story's perfect end

So the moral is you musn't let

The outside be the guide

For it's not so cut and dried

Well unless it's Dr. Jekyll

Then you better hide, petrified!

No, the truth can't be denied

As I now have testified

All that really counts and matters

Is the special stuff inside

He did it!

Oh, a cover is not the book

So open it up and take a look

'Cause under the covers one discovers

That the king may be a crook

So please listen to what we've said

And open a book tonight in bed

So one more time before we get the hook

Sing it out strong!

A cover is nice

Please take our advice!

A cover is nice

Or you'll pay the price!

A cover is nice

But a cover is not the book

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la

Ta-ru-ra-lee, ta-ru-ra-la-la, la, la!

Written by: Scott Wittman, Marc Shaiman

Lyrics © WALT DISNEY MUSIC COMPANY

ORION FIGHTS FOR EARTH !!

“Jack “King” Kirby was the most influential superhero artist of them all, with an imagination and range that sat comfortably inside a visionary tradition running all the way from Hebrew scriptures and epic mythology through William Blake and Allen Ginsberg. Born Jakob Kurtzberg in August 1917—Jack Kirby was the one of his many pennames that stuck—Kirby grew up in a tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As a member of the Suffolk Street Gang, he was familiar with the thrill of full-on physical conflict in a way that many of his bookish young contemporaries were not. Indeed, unlike Joe Shuster or Bob Kane, who drew fights at a sniffy remove, Kirby dragged his readers directly into the wild flail of fists and boots that typified the real combat he’d experienced. 

His figures captured how it felt to somersault through a crowd of antagonists. His heroes and villains clashed in bony, meaty brawls that could sprawl across page after page. Superman might wrestle a giant ape for a panel or two, but in Kirby’s hands, the fight scenes were a thrilling end in themselves.

Kirby served in World War II as a private first class in Company F of the Eleventh Infantry. He landed on Omaha Beach at Normandy two months after D-day in 1944 and proceeded with his unit into occupied France. There he saw action at the battle for Bastogne, Belgium, enduring frostbite so severe that Kirby almost lost both feet and was finally mustered out with a combat infantry badge and Bronze Star for his trouble. His memories of the war informed his work for the rest of his life, but nonetheless, Kirby portrayed violence as a joyous expression of natural masculine exuberance. 

When American Nazis marched into the building where Simon and Kirby had their studio, demanding the blood of the Captain America creative team, it was Jack who rolled up his sleeves and went to sort them out."

“As the monster-child, Orion, grew to manhood on New Genesis, his life dramatized debates of nature versus nurture, good versus evil, youth versus age, tyranny versus freedom. Kirby was dealing with the big dualities and had assembled his own gleaming pantheon to help him articulate the questions of the age.

Kirby told us that humanity’s better nature would inevitably prevail. That was the story, and we all knew it deep in our hearts. Kindness and understanding could turn even a demon into a holy warrior, but an angel could never be broken to the Devil’s service and would always find ways to soar and to be free. 

The war would never end, but the outcome was never in any doubt.”

BILL MOYERS: 

The mesmerizing character for me is —  

Darth Maul.

When I saw him, I thought of Satan and Lucifer in “Paradise Lost.” 

I thought of the devil in “Dante’s Inferno.” 

I mean, you’ve really — have brought from 

— it seems to me — 

from way down in our unconsciousness this image of —

of Evil, of The Other.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Well, yeah. 

We were trying to find somebody who could compete with Darth Vader, who’s one of the most, you know, famous evil characters now. 

And so we went back into representations of evil. 

Not only, the Christian, but also Hindu and Greek mythology and other religious icons and, obviously, then designed our own — our own character out of that.

BILL MOYERS: 

What did you find when you went back there in — 

in all of these representations? 

There’s something …

GEORGE LUCAS: 

A lot of — a lot of evil characters have horns. 

It’s very interesting. 

I mean, you’re trying to build a icon of evil, 

and you sort of wonder why the same images evoke the same emotions.

BILL MOYERS: 

What emotion do you feel, George, when you look at Darth Maul?

GEORGE LUCAS: 

I think the first thing you’re supposed to react to is fear. 

You’re supposed to go,

 ‘Ooh. You — you wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.'

And I’m not creating a monster. 

I didn’t want to create some ugly — somebody ripped out their intestines and threw them all over their head 

— and it’s — you can’t watch it. 

This is something …

BILL MOYERS: 

It’s actually mesmerizing.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

This is something that is more — 

it works in a different emotional way. 

It’s not repulsive, it’s just — 

It’s something you should be afraid of.

BILL MOYERS: 

Is the emotion you wanted from him different from the emotion you wanted from Darth Vader?

GEORGE LUCAS: 

It’s essentially the same in a different kind of way.

Darth Vader was a — a composite man. 

I mean, he was half-machine, half-man. 

And that’s where he lost a lot of his humanity is that he — 

you know, he has mechanical legs. 

You know — and he has mechanical arms possibly and he’s hooked up to a breathing machine. 

 

So there’s not much, actually, human left in him. 

This one is all human. 

And I wanted him to be like an alien, but I wanted him to be human enough that we could identify with him, because he’s not a sort of a monster we can’t identify with. He’s…

BILL MOYERS: 

He’s us.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

…he’s — yeah. 

He’s the evil within us.

BILL MOYERS: 

I’ve had psychotherapists tell me that they use “Star Wars” sometimes to deal with the problems of their child patients. 

And they’ve said that the most popular character among the children is Darth Vader.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Well, children love power because children are The Powerless. 

And so their fantasies all center on having power. 

And who’s more powerful than Darth Vader, you know? 

And, some, you know, will be attracted to Luke Skywalker because he’s the good guy. 

But ultimately, 

We all know that Darth Vader’s more powerful than he is.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

And as time goes on, you discover that he is more powerful because— 

He's The Ultimate Father 

Who is All-Powerful.

BILL MOYERS: 

This is where I disagree somewhat with our friend Joseph Campbell who said that 

The Young Man has to slay his father before he can become an adult himself. 

It seems to me, and I think you’re right on here, that 

The Young Man has to identify — 

has to recognise and acknowledge that 

He is His Father 

and 

Is Not His Father.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

You know, Joe used to talk about the basic issues that create 

The Mystery of Life. 

Of, you know, birth and death, 

and I like to always add, 

 Your relationship with your parents. 

BILL MOYERS:

Do you know yet what is going to be the transforming of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader?

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: 

You already know that?

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Yeah, I know what that is. 

And it’s sprinkled throughout this episode. 

I mean, the groundwork’s been laid in this episode. 

And the — the film is ultimately about the Dark Side and the Light Side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. 

And we all have those two sides of us and that we have to make sure that those two sides of us are in balance.

BILL MOYERS: 

I think it’s going to be very hard for the audience to accept that this innocent cherub almost of a boy, who’s playing Anakin Skywalker, can ever be capable of the things that we know happen later on. 

And I’m sure you’ll take care of that but, you know, I look at Hitler and wonder what did he look like at eight years old, or Stalin …

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Mm-hmm …

BILL MOYERS: 

… or …

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Well, there are lots of — there’s a lot of people like that. 

I mean, you just — you see them all the time and you — that’s what I wonder. 

I wonder, 

'How can those people possibly exist? How could they live with themselves?' 

[ VODKA ] 

How could they — you know, what is it in the human brain that gives us the capacity to be as evil as human beings have been in the past and are right now.

BILL MOYERS: 

Well, you’ve been probing that for a good while now.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: 

Twenty-five years. 

Have you come to any conclusions?

GEORGE LUCAS: 

I haven’t.

Neo: 

I only ask to say What I’ve Come to Say, after that, do what you want and I won’t try to stop you.

Deus Ex Machina: 

Speak.

Neo: 

The program ‘Smith’ has grown beyond your control. 

Soon he will spread through This City as he spread through The Matrix. 

You cannot stop him, 

but I can.

Deus Ex Machina: 

We Don’t Need You. 

We Need Nothing.

Neo: 

If that’s True, then I’ve made a mistake 

and you should kill me now.

Deus Ex Machina: 

What Do You Want?

Neo: 

PEACE.

(Zion: Temple entrance)

{Sentinels charge the temple entrance, then suddenly stop}

Niobe: 

What are they doing? 

• Morpheus lays down his Weapon •

*to Morpheus* 

What are you doing!?

Lock: 

Morpheus!

(01)

Deus Ex Machina: 

And if You Fail?

Neo: 

I Won’t.

(Zion: Temple entrance)

Niobe: 

{looks up and sees sentinels slowly circling} 

Neo.

Morpheus: 

He Fights for Us.

We All Make Mistakes in Life, Children

It Was Meant to Be.

Don’t Be So Stupid, Grandpa Hit Him with The Car!

We All Make Mistakes in Life, Children.

And You, Young Skywalker —

We Shall Watch Your Career With Great Interest!

The Founding of The Royal House of Skywalker by Titus Livius

Sons of Anarchy 

have a duty, brother. 

 A Mission. 

And we need our goddamn leader. 

King Hamlet II : 

I love you, Filip. 

Chibs: 

I love you, too, Jackson.

"Well, a Director is just someone who has a fetish about making The World the way he wants it - Sort of Narcissistic."

That's you....?

"All Directors....

They're vaugely like Emperors."

- George Lucas 

Always Two There are,

No More, No Less —

A Master and an Apprentice.

— The Rule of Two

 "Curious. I have brought The Sith to their ultimate victory. Through study, I will soon learn how to defeat death. While I may choose apprentices, I will never choose a successor."

 — Darth Sidious, marginalia in The Book of The Sith, in the section titled "Selecting an Apprentice"

"The Sith Order is now a lineage....

It must not end with you! 

I will not allow my new Sith Order to expire because you were unworthy or too protective to bequeath your power.

Know this : Your apprentice will kill you. 

If this fact frightens you, then the Sith Order has already suffered a fatal infection.

Or do you believe that you will live forever? 

You are not wrong to covet the secret, for I have sought to prolong my own life. 

But in the extreme, this leads to narcissism and a lack of focus on The Rule of Two. 

To be a Sith Lord is to outthink your enemies and to plan for every eventuality. 

A proper apprentice will ensure that The Sith endure, no matter what fate may come upon your head."

— The Book of The Sith

An interval of thirty years elapsed between the foundation of Lavinium and the colonisation of Alba Longa. Such had been the growth of the Latin power, mainly through the defeat of the Etruscans, that neither at the death of Aeneas, nor during the regency of Lavinia, nor during the immature years of the reign of Ascanius, did either Mezentius and the Etruscans or any other of their neighbours venture to attack them. When terms of peace were being arranged, the river Albula, now called the Tiber, had been fixed as the boundary between the Etruscans and the Latins.

Ascanius was succeeded by his son Silvius, who by some chance had been born in the forest. He became the father of Aeneas Silvius, who in his turn had a son, Latinus Silvius. He planted a number of colonies: the colonists were called Prisci Latini. The cognomen of Silvius was common to all the remaining kings of Alba, each of whom succeeded his father. Their names are Alba, Atys, Capys, Capetus, Tiberinus, who was drowned in crossing the Albula, and his name transferred to the river, which became henceforth the famous Tiber. Then came his son Agrippa, after him his son Romulus Silvius. He was struck by lightning and left the crown to his son Aventinus, whose shrine was on the hill which bears his name and is now a part of the city of Rome. 

He was succeeded by Proca, who had two sons, Numitor and Amulius. To Numitor, the elder, he bequeathed the ancient throne of the Silvian house. Violence, however, proved stronger than either the father's will or the respect due to the brother's seniority; for Amulius expelled his brother and seized the crown. Adding crime to crime, he murdered his brother's sons and made the daughter, Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin; thus, under the presence of honouring her, depriving her of all hopes of issue.

But the Fates had, I believe, already decreed the origin of this Great City and the foundation of the mightiest empire under heaven. The Vestal was forcibly violated and gave birth to twins. 

She named Mars as their father, either because she really believed it, or because the fault might appear less heinous if a deity were the cause of it. But neither gods nor men sheltered her or her babes from the king's cruelty; the priestess was thrown into prison, the boys were ordered to be thrown into the river. By a heaven-sent chance it happened that the Tiber was then overflowing its banks, and stretches of standing water prevented any approach to the main channel. Those who were carrying the children expected that this stagnant water would be sufficient to drown them, so under the impression that they were carrying out the king's orders they exposed the boys at the nearest point of the overflow, where the Ficus Ruminalis (said to have been formerly called Romularis) now stands. The locality was then a wild solitude. 

The tradition goes on to say that after the floating cradle in which the boys had been exposed had been left by the retreating water on dry land, a thirsty she-wolf from the surrounding hills, attracted by the crying of the children, came to them, gave them her teats to suck and was so gentle towards them that the king's flock-master found her licking the boys with her tongue.

According to the story, his name was Faustulus. He took the children to his hut and gave them to his wife Larentia to bring up. Some writers think that Larentia, from her unchaste life, had got the nickname of "She-wolf" amongst the shepherds, and that this was the origin of the marvellous story. As soon as the boys, thus born and thus brought up, grew to be young men they did not neglect their pastoral duties, but their special delight was roaming through the woods on hunting expeditions. 

As their strength and courage were thus developed, they used not only to lie in wait for fierce beasts of prey, but they even attacked brigands when loaded with plunder. They distributed what they took amongst the shepherds, with whom, surrounded by a continually increasing body of young men, they associated themselves in their serious undertakings and in their sports and pastimes.

Remus accordingly was handed over to Numitor for punishment. Faustulus had from the beginning suspected that it was royal offspring that he was bringing up —

— for he was aware that the boys had been exposed at the king's command and the time at which he had taken them away exactly corresponded with that of their exposure. He had, however, refused to divulge the matter prematurely, until either a fitting opportunity occurred or necessity demanded its disclosure. The necessity came first. Alarmed for the safety of Remus he revealed the state of the case to Romulus. 

It so happened that Numitor also, who had Remus in his custody, on hearing that he and his brother were twins and comparing their ages and the character and bearing so unlike that of one in a servile condition, began to recall the memory of his grandchildren, and further inquiries brought him to the same conclusion as Faustulus; nothing was wanting to the recognition of Remus. 

So the king Amulius was being enmeshed on all sides by hostile purposes. 

Romulus shrunk from a direct attack with his body of shepherds, for he was no match for the king in open fight. 

They were instructed to approach the palace by different routes and meet there at a given time, whilst from Numitor's house Remus lent his assistance with a second band he had collected. The attack succeeded and the king was killed.