Romulus And Remus And The Similarities Between The Story Of Cain And Abel

Founding of Morality and Marble Everything has a beginning, and with every beginning a narrative must always go along with it. Founding stories are tales of how things came to be, they can be extravagant, tragic and even mythical in nature. Two well-known stories which are often paired together due to their similar nature are the tales of Cain and Abel from the book of Genesis and Livy’s Romulus and Remus. The resolutions in these stories had outcomes which established ideologies on sacrificial violence and transformed the tales into founding stories. However, they are two very different kinds of founding stories which is never taken into consideration, with Cain and Abel being more of a founding story on morality, which condemned murder and sacrificial violence while Romulus and Remus was more of a …show more content…
They both qualify as founding stories, but one is more focused on the faults of humanity and our violent natures, and the other is more a story of how one of the most powerful empires in human history came into existence, which also just happened to contain fratricide. While they do share similarities, the outcomes, and the lack of a moral dilemma in Romulus and Remus creates a far too large rift between them to make a comparison of their themes possible. Founding stories help create a narrative to how something came to be, comparing two narratives such as these is like comparing apples to oranges. They may have similarities such as seeds, and coming from trees, but ultimately they are two very different things and should be appreciated for what they are. Our beliefs, monuments, and identities all originated from a point in our history. Sometimes they have similarities, but ultimately they are their own independent narratives, each telling a unique and powerful