By Charles M. Sumid
Written November, 1980 Revised February, 2018 Copyright 2025
I. The Founding
🌿 REMUS
Born where the she-wolf suckled us—among nettles and ashes,
dreams climbed through rubble, and shadows danced in our crib.
I saw in sleep the curve of a city, marble and thunder,
streets like veins of a titan, pulsing toward empire’s heart.
🛡️ ROMULUS
Steel in my palm, not visions.
I marked the sacred furrow.
Walls rise from rule, not reveries.
Rome shall breathe through order.
🦅 EAGLE
Clashing of fate-born twins—how noble, how familiar!
I soared, and I witnessed:
Blood spilled not by strangers, but by hands of kinship.
Thus the wolf bore brothers—thus the eagle anointed Rome.
🐺 SHE-WOLF
Milk and marrow—that is all I knew when gods were cubs.
My teats fed prophecy; my growl taught them hunger’s law.
Men dream in marble—I birthed them in mud and want,
nursed them on silence, on bone-crack and river-taste.
II. The Conquest of Italia
🛡️ ROMULUS
Hill by hill I claimed.
Steel sang on stone.
Treaties cracked like bread.
Each tribe—a step toward dominion.
🌿 REMUS
The hills whispered warnings—old gods stirred in their valleys.
You march, brother, but forget the tongues that spoke before you.
Italia weeps with olive tears where poppies bloom from ruin.
Beneath your marble, their buried gods still whisper curses.
🦅 EAGLE
I watched each valley’s surrender from my wheeling height—
some bent like wheat in wind, others snapped like winter bone.
Rome grew not from mercy, but from managed forgetting:
history written not in ink, but in ash and silence.
III. Wars of Empire
🛡️ ROMULUS
Sicily’s coasts bristled.
Our anchors bit her stones.
Carthage would learn—
Rome’s hunger travels over water.
🌿 REMUS
I saw elephants march like gray mountains through our gates,
Hannibal’s eyes colder than the Alps that bore him down.
Rome shivered—not in defeat, but in the taste of terror.
Some victories carve scars that senates never mention.
🦅 EAGLE
Above Zama’s dust I spiraled, watching empire’s birth—
two wolves locked in blood-dance, neither born for yielding.
I heard the ashes singing of beauty lost to glory.
IV. The Eastern Conquests
🛡️ ROMULUS
Corinth fell like a song cut short.
Greek wisdom now speaks Latin,
dignified and tamed.
🌿 REMUS
I watched scrolls burn in temples where sages once debated stars.
The East did not fall—it was translated, made safe.
And some truths die in translation, like souls in conquest.
🛡️ ROMULUS
Alexandria opened like a flower made of fire.
Cleopatra spoke in starlight and strategy combined.
Egypt yielded not to war, but to lips that spoke of empire.
🦅 EAGLE
I soared above the Pyramids—their shadows longer than armies.
Egypt does not fall—it absorbs, then reshapes its conquerors.
Even eagles blink when fate wears Cleopatra’s face.
🐺 SHE-WOLF
I scent the desert on their skin, taste honey in their sweat.
My cubs have learned to purr like house-cats, soft and fed.
They wear silk now where fur once grew.
I pace beneath their beds, remembering teeth.
V. The Death of the Republic
🛡️ ROMULUS
The Senate echoes.
Daggers disguised as discourse.
Empire feeds on its own betrayals.
🌿 REMUS
I watched Brutus weep beneath the olive trees at dawn—
not for Caesar’s death, but for the republic in his hands.
Octavian studies power like a mason studies marble:
he sees the flaws that bring down walls, the stress that shatters.
🦅 EAGLE
Above Philippi I circled, watching the last republic die.
The wolf-cubs have grown fangs, but they hunt each other now.
Rome is no longer a city—it is hunger wrapped in law.
VI. The Age of Augustus
🛡️ ROMULUS
Order returns.
Softer names. Gentler titles.
Augustus walks between temples—
a god in training.
🌿 REMUS
He rewrites war itself, calling slaughter by sweeter names.
His genius lives in shadows: turning myth to law, law to marble.
The republic sleeps beneath his gold, dreaming it is still free.
🦅 EAGLE
I perch atop the Ara Pacis, watching peace sculpt its own legends.
Where once I hunted chaos, now I glide through tax records.
Rome no longer roars—it organizes, plans, endures.
🐺 SHE-WOLF
Blood thickens to wine, howls soften to hymns of praise.
My cubs debate in forums where once they fought with claws.
They have forgotten the hunger that made them strong,
the howl that once shook heaven.
Rome lives—but not in my teeth.
Note: The speakers are:
🐺 The mythological She-Wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus
🛡️ Romulus, the founder and lawgiver
🌿 Remus, the dreamer and questioner
🦅 The Eagle, Rome’s eternal witness and imperial symbol
They serve as immortal voices observing Rome’s transformation from wild origins to civilized empire.
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All content © Charles M. Sumid, [2025]. All rights reserved. This includes all poetry, essays, analyses, and accompanying commentary. Use of this work does not transfer copyright or intellectual property rights.
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