Remus
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the twin brother of Romulus, who was the fabled founder of Rome. According to the old myth, Romulus killed his brother. RÉMUSAT, FRANÇOIS MARIE CHARLES, COMTE DE, a French au thor; born in Paris, March 14, 1797, the son of Augustin Laurent, Comte de Rémusat (1762-1823). Rémusat early developed Liberal ideas, and took eagerly to journalism. He signed the journalists' famous protest against the Ordi nances of Polignac, ignac, which brought about the "July revolution," and was elected deputy for Toulouse; allied himself with the Doctrinaire party, and in 1836 became under-secretary of state for the interior; in 1840 minister of the interior, he was exiled after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon. In 1871, he held the portfolio of foreign affairs. He died June 6, 1875. RÉMUSAT, JEAN PIERRE ABEL (rā-mü-sä), a French Orientalist; born in Paris, Sept. 5, 1788. He studied medicine, and took his diploma in 1813; but as early as 1811 he had published an essay on Chinese literature. In 1814 he was made Professor of Chinese in the College of France. His most important work was "Elements of Chinese Grammar" (1822). He wrote also on the origin of Chinese writing (1827), on Chinese medicine, on the topography and history of the Chinese empire, and "Asiatic Miscellanies" (1843). In 1818 he became one of the editors of the "Journal des Savants"; in 1822 he founded the Asiatic Society of Paris; and in 1824 he was appointed curator of the Oriental Department in the Royal Library. He died in Paris June 3, 1832.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's two-line note in 1921 — that Remus was the twin of Rome's fabled founder and was killed by him — is still the substance of the story, and no one has found Remus. What has moved is the scholarship around the legend: T. P. Wiseman's 1995 study argued that Remus was a comparatively late addition to the tale, probably shaped in the fourth or third century BC to express Rome's division between patricians and plebeians, rather than an original half of an ancient twin myth. Archaeology has also embarrassed the legend's most famous image: radiocarbon and thermoluminescence tests reported from 2006 onward date the Capitoline she-wolf bronze to the medieval period, not to Etruscan antiquity, though the suckling twins beneath her were always known to be a Renaissance addition. Excavation on the Palatine has meanwhile confirmed Iron Age huts and an early wall from roughly the eighth century BC — the right date for the traditional founding, but no evidence for the brothers themselves.
Written for this edition, 2026.