How do myths evolve? The question has received less attention than one might think, there being a tendency among myth-scholars to treat the stories they deal with as given and fixed, even though everyone knows in theory that stories told in pre-literate and semi-literate societies are, to say the least, liable to change. What one needs are cases in which successive stages of a myth can be documented, and that - if T.P. Wiseman's enthralling new book is right - is exactly what the foundation myth of Rome has to offer.

LRB 23 May 1996 | PDF Download