The investigation of Aeolian foundation myths continues in this chapter, with examination of traditions of the founding of Boeotian Thebes. Ancestral Indo-European tradition is again evident, as is an Anatolian stratum, one which foregrounds technological expertise of Asian origin.

The first section of this chapter reworks ‘Les animaux dans le Daphnis and Chloé de Longus’ (2005) given to the second Tours colloque organized by Bernard Pouderon in 2002. After reviewing the roles played by animals (often of agents important for the plot), and noting their appearances’ frequent intertextuality with Homer, Hesiod, Alcaeus, Sappho and Theocritus, it turns to terms for the master-slave relationship, whose debut comes unexpectedly late in the novel: οἰκέτης, ‘house-servant’, first at 2.12; δουλεύω, ‘I am a slave’, first at 2.23; δοῦλος, ‘slave’, first at 3.31; δέσποινα, ‘mistress’, first at 3.25; δεσπότης, ‘master’, first at 3.26. It argues that a significant parallel (hinted at by the comparison between the obedience of Daphnis’ goats and that of οἰκέται to their master’s command at 4.15.4) should be seen between different relations of dominance – sheep and goats dominated by shepherds and goatherds; slaves and people of low rank dominated by members of Greek city elites – and that this parallel prompts readers to contemplate the control exercised by Rome over the Greek world and its city elites. Such contemplation is invited by the analogy between Longus’ story of a couple suckled by animals and that of Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf, and by his choice of name for the couple’s son, Philopoemen, that of a historical character whom Plutarch says some Roman called ‘the last of the Greeks’.

The central chapters of this book focus on the development and growth of insular origin legends over time by studying a key subset of themes that came to take on particular significance within this corpus. Tracing the expansion and increasing centrality of these themes over time allows us to witness the influence that individual texts within the corpus of material containing early insular origin legends had on the development of these legends themselves. Chapter Three focuses on kin-slaying, first tracing the influence of the biblical legend of Cain and the classical legend of Romulus and Remus on early medieval authors before examining contemporary evidence for kin-slaying in early medieval legal and historical texts. As insular origin narratives expanded, their authors recognised the narrative need to explain ancestral exile. The idea that a foundational ancestor had committed the crime of kin-slaying was introduced via the Brutus story in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum and proved subsequently popular, as exile was theoretically the legal sentence for this crime. As a narrative motif, kin-slaying allowed a people to retain the prestige of ties to ancient dynasties while embracing political independence in the present moment.

The myth of Trojan origins of the Romans was given new life in the middle of the first century BCE, with the rise to power of Caesar and Augustus. There was more than one way to negotiate the relationship between Greece and Rome that the myth implied. One way was to continue privileging Romulus and the old foundational legend by marginalizing the myth of Trojan origins along with the antagonism between Greece and Rome that it implied (Horace). Another way was to neutralize the antagonism by claiming that the Trojans were in fact of Greek descent ( Dionysius of Halicarnassus). But it was also possible, rather than avoiding the antagonism, to bring it to the fore by presenting the Trojans and, by implication, the Romans as superior to the Greeks (Vergil). Vergil’s solution suited best the new geopolitical reality and the imperial ambitions of Rome. This transpires not only from the Aeneid but also from those imperial Greek authors who recognized that the traditional narrative of the Trojan War did not suit any longer the world in which they lived. The revised Trojan myth they promulgated brought about a thorough revision of the Trojan tradition, which survived into the early modern period.

The myth of Trojan origins of the Romans was given new life in the middle of the first century BCE, with the rise to power of Caesar and Augustus. There was more than one way to negotiate the relationship between Greece and Rome that the myth implied. One way was to continue privileging Romulus and the old foundational legend by marginalizing the myth of Trojan origins along with the antagonism between Greece and Rome that it implied (Horace). Another way was to neutralize the antagonism by claiming that the Trojans were in fact of Greek descent ( Dionysius of Halicarnassus). But it was also possible, rather than avoiding the antagonism, to bring it to the fore by presenting the Trojans and, by implication, the Romans as superior to the Greeks (Vergil). Vergil’s solution suited best the new geopolitical reality and the imperial ambitions of Rome. This transpires not only from the Aeneid but also from those imperial Greek authors who recognized that the traditional narrative of the Trojan War did not suit any longer the world in which they lived. The revised Trojan myth they promulgated brought about a thorough revision of the Trojan tradition, which survived into the early modern period.

Livy’s History is very interested in the way that societies are maintained by belief in a host of shared fictions. The Roman citizenship is Livy’s prime example of this process, as Rome keeps recreating the model of citizenship as more and more new people come into the Roman sphere. The fictive power of the citizenship allows it to be redescribed from generation to generation. The citizenship is not a matter of shared blood or of a shared place of birth; it is a corporate fiction that can in theory accommodate anyone as a member.

One of Plato’s successors, Xenocrates (395–314 BCE), envisioned the human soul as daimonic after death but still subject to fluctuating emotions. He proposed a kind of purgatory in the region below the moon. Daimones who became pure from negative affections traveled from moon to sun to become daimonic minds, ideas more fully developed by Plutarch, Apuleius of Madauros (about 124–190 CE), and Maximus of Tyre (about 180 CE).