Popiel& The Roman Twins
THE LEGEND OF KING POPIEL AND THE MICE
Once upon a time, when a castle and a town called Kruszwica towered over Lake Goplo, this horrifying story happened... Cruel and unjust King Popiel was ruling his land. He had taken a greedy German princess Rycheza to be his wife. She was a beautiful woman, but she had a heart of stone and she wanted power more than anything. She could not accept that the king was unable to rule by himself: he had to listen to the Council of the Elders. Members of the Council were his uncles and representatives of great families. “This is unbelievable that such a great ruler like you, my dear Popiel, has to listen to those old fools,” Rycheza said to her husband. “There are no such customs on the German courts.” Popiel chased the Elders from the court. He and his wife were contriving a plan how to get rid of them once and for all. Members of the Council were offended by the king and stopped any contact. Popiel was afraid that his uncles would gather troops and attack the castle, so he sent a messenger to invite them to the castle. “I invite you, my honour uncles, and I bow to you,” the messenger said on behalf of Popiel. “Forgive me and come to my feast. May the harmony be among us again.” The uncles forgave the insult, and they hurried to the castle. It was a great feast. Tables were full of food, plates were full of fish and game. When the feast could not be better, Popiel said, “Forgive me for my actions. As a peace sign, let’s drink this mead.” “Cheers! Long live the king!” the uncles shouted. The queen herself went to the cellar for the mead, as she had sent the servants away and started waiting at the table with a cunning smile. Rycheza brought the best beverage and she was watching carefully if everyone drunk their toast. Nobody noticed that neither the king nor the queen were drinking the mead; however, they were encouraging the others to propose toasts. Suddenly, one of the relatives stood up as he wanted to give a speech, but he dropped his cup and the mead spilt all over the floor. He held his stomach and shouted, “Betrayal! Betrayal! We have been poisoned!” The elders started falling off their benches holding their stomachs, struggling to catch a breath. “Be damned, Popiel! You and your family!,” they were shouting. „May your death be more cruel than ours!” When all screams stopped and there was not a soul alive, Rycheza and her husband carried the bodies away and threw them to Gopło. Popiel had broken another law by not burying his relatives. Soon enough, all people in Kruszwica started whispering about a strange disappearance of Popiel’s uncles. “There must be a dark secret behind it,” people were talking. “Nobody left the castle alive. It will end badly. Gods will punish the royal family severely.” A month had not passed by since the fatal night, before one morning Popiel ran into Recheza’s chamber shouting, “It has happened! Mice! Mice everywhere! The curse of the uncles is fulfilling!” Strange mice they were - their eyes were red, their teeth were sharp and oddly big, and they were not scared of people at all. They were everywhere, running around the castle and destroying everything. Even killing them did not help, as more and more of the little rodents were coming out of the lake, where they bred from the corpses of the slaughtered uncles. Popiel got scared to death; he nearly lost his mind. He and his wife got on a boat and started rowing as fast as they could. They were going to a tall tower on an island to look for shelter there. When they reached the land, they ran into the tower and climbed to the top when suddenly Popiel shouted, “Good heavens! It cannot be, mice have just swum the lake and they are climbing the outside walls of the tower; we are dead. Be damned, Rycheza. Why did I listen to your advice?!” Horrible was their punishment for murdering their relatives. Popiel’s family died out and the tower started to be called the Mouse Tower. Till these days, it is not known what has happened with the crown and the scepter which Popiel dropped in the lake while his escape. They are said to bring good luck to the one who will find them…
Here are some links to movies you may find useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pKio3pqN5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amy2WPYDoIg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtM7-_iDvMk
THE ROMAN TWINS
According to the legend, the Trojan Prince Aeneas survived from the destruction of Troy and arrived to the coast of Lazio through the sea. There, his son Ascanio founded the city of Albalonga. After some centuries, one of his offsprings, king Nimitor, was chased from the throne by his brother Amulius, who obliged the Nimitor’s daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a Vestal Virgin. So she couldn’t marry and couldn’t have sons to claim the throne. Nevertheless the girl was loved by Mars, the God of War, and two twins were born, called Romulus and Remus.
The furious uncle ordered that the two babies should be killed. But the servant didn’t have the courage to commit such a crime so he put secretly the infants in a basket and gave them to the Tiber current in the hope that someone would take care of them. In fact a she wolf that was drinking on the river Tiber heard the crying of the babies and saved them.
She took them on the shore, heated them and fed them with her milk. Later the shepherd Faustolo passed in that place, saw the twins and took them to his house, where his wife grew them as they were her own children.
Grown up, the twins discovered their origins. So they came back to Albalonga, killed their uncle Amulius, gave back the throne to the grandad Nimitor and freed their mum Rhea Silvia from the prison. Then they decided to build a city of their own, but they didn’t agree on the location for the new city: Romulus wanted to build it on the Palatine Hill, Remus preferred the plain. They asked the gods and were answered that the one of them who saw the greatest number of birds flying in a certain time and in a certain part of the sky, would be the winner and, as a consequence, would choose the location of the city.
Romulus won, therefore he began tracing with the plow the sacred follow to border the city. But Remus mocked him so Romulus got angry and killed him, becoming the first king of that city. It was the year 753 b.C., the year of the foundation of one of the odest and most famous cities in the world: Rome. The city takes its name from its first king Romulus.
https://it.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=the+legnd+of+romolo+and+remo#id=8&vid=8dd3f24026b8b6ee904fe620fb3e5bc3&action=view
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHN6HIjD9Y0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSexfR0Ubzw