Chicken or the egg question all over again..

Adding to the discussion my fellow bloggers and I had just after class yesterday, I would like to comment on some brief ideas we covered. 



The first is the relation to water and the creation legends we found in all of our assigned cultures. According to Greg Wolf, "Some linguistic possibilities for the origin of the word 'Rome' include the Etruscan word rhome meaning “strength” or 'river.'" This meaning of the word "Rome" makes me question how long this myth has been formulating? Which came first, the myth of those who developed the area or the actual city itself. It's the chicken or the egg question all over again! (The answer is chicken, by the way..)

Another thought I had was about the merge of the two rising cultures. This merge I speak of is the Roman Republic and Greece or other southeastern (in relation to Rome) countries. It made me think about how one culture may not even realize how different they are until another culture realizes it and points it out to the other. F. R. Cowell reminds us that the Romans thought that the early Christians literally practiced some sort of cannibalism

when the Romans heard that the Christians consumed bread and wine as symbolic representations of the body and blood of Christ. I can only imagine that it was like the game "Telephone" where one person starts out with one phrase and tells it to the person next to them and they tell it to the person next to them and by the time it has been passed throughout the whole circle it has been completely morphed. What else do you think this same "Telephone" game has morphed?

Sources

Wolf, Greg, ed. 2003. Cambridge Illustrated History: Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Cowell, F. R. 1976. Life in Ancient Rome. New York, NY: The Berkeley Publishing Group.