Rhea Silvia
Rhea Silvia, also called Ilia, is the mythical mother of Romulus and Remus, the twins credited with founding Rome. Her name appears as Rhea or Rea in some sources, and ancient writers gave her other names too. Yet the woman behind the founders is oddly hard to pin down. Roman authors disagree about who fathered her sons, and they disagree about how her own life ended. Artists and poets kept returning to her anyway. Why was she placed in a temple against her will? Who really fathered the twins, and who believed it? And what became of her once her sons were born?
Numitor, king of Alba Longa and a descendant of Aeneas, was Rhea Silvia's father. In the account Livy gives in the first book of his Ab Urbe Condita Libri, trouble began when Numitor's younger brother Amulius seized the throne. Amulius then killed Numitor's son.
The daughter was next. Amulius forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin, a priestess of the goddess Vesta. Vestal Virgins were sworn to celibacy, and that vow was the heart of the scheme. A priestess with no children would leave Numitor's line without heirs.
Rhea Silvia, however, became pregnant with twins, and the explanation for it split the ancient writers.
Plutarch preserves the fullest explanation of how Rhea Silvia came to believe a god was the father. In his account she went to a grove sacred to Mars to fetch water for use in the temple. There the god pursued her. She ran into a cave to escape him, but it was no use. Afterward Mars promised that her children would be great.
A woodpecker and a wolf sealed her belief. She saw her children cared for by these two animals, both sacred to Mars, and took it as proof of who their father was.
Livy himself doubted these claims about the twins' paternity. He treated the myth in a realist spirit rather than accepting a god in the grove.
Vesta, the goddess whose temple Rhea Silvia served, answered the birth with anger. She made the holy fire in her temple go out, shook her altar, and shut the eyes of her image. According to Ennius, the goddess Venus took a kinder view of Rhea Silvia's plight.
Amulius, for his part, needed no divine signal to decide what to do once he learned of the birth.
When Amulius learned of the birth, he imprisoned Rhea Silvia and ordered a servant to kill the twins. The servant showed mercy instead. He set the infants adrift on the river Tiber, which overflowed and left them in a pool by the bank.
A she-wolf, called a lupa in Latin, found the babies there. She had just lost her own cubs, and she suckled the twins.
Antho, the daughter of Amulius, spared Rhea Silvia from death by intervening on her behalf. Her mother's survival, though, did not last in every telling.
Ennius relates an early Latin tradition in which Amulius ordered Rhea Silvia thrown into the Tiber. Ovid says she ultimately threw herself into the river. In Ovid's Fasti the river Anio pities her and invites her to rule his realm.
The twins grew up and overthrew Amulius, reinstating Numitor as king in 752 BCE.
On the Casali Altar in the Vatican Museums, a bas-relief shows Mars discovering Rhea Silvia. A sarcophagus in the Palazzo Mattei repeats the theme. The Portland Vase in the British Museum, made of engraved glass, carries a scene that has been read as the same moment of Mars coming upon her.
Such images show that the seduction by Mars stayed widely accepted, even after Livy's realist treatment of the myth. Roman artists treated the moment as an invention scene, a type also called a discovery scene. Greek examples include Dionysus and Ariadne, or Selene and Endymion.
In the Museo Nazionale Romano, a relief shows Rhea Silvia asleep while Romulus and Remus are conceived.
Revika Gersht and Sonia Muryink have sorted the images of her conception by Mars into as many as seven different types.
Cassius Dio's Roman History is one of the works that records the story of Rhea Silvia. Livy's first book and Dio's history sit alongside several poets who touched on her in passing.
In Virgil's Aeneid, Anchises delivers a prophecy that Rhea Silvia will give birth to Romulus and Remus by Mars. Her role there is a promise about the future rather than a drama of her own.
The Roman work known as the Vigil of Venus also mentions her bearing of Romulus. Modern scholars have since asked what such brief appearances say about how the Romans valued her.
Rosanna Lauriola has written an article using Rhea Silvia as an example of a pattern in Roman myth. Rape victims in these stories, she argues, are valued more as mothers and catalysts for change than as individuals in their own right.
Modern fiction has tried to give her more of a life. In David Drake's science fiction story "To Bring the Light", a time-travelling protagonist meets a completely human Rhea Silvia. She is a sympathetic peasant living in a small shepherd community on Palatine Hill, in what would become the city of Rome.
Rick Riordan's novel The Mark of Athena takes a lighter turn. Annabeth Chase meets Rhea Silvia and the god of the river Tiber in the forms of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck's characters from the movie Roman Holiday.
Debra May Macleod made Rhea Silvia the central character of a historical fiction novel titled Rhea Silvia, published in 2022. Lauren J. A. Bear followed in 2025 with Mother of Rome, another retelling of her story.
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Common questions
Who was Rhea Silvia in Roman mythology?
Rhea Silvia, also called Ilia, was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome. She was a Vestal Virgin and the daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa.
Why did Rhea Silvia become a Vestal Virgin?
Amulius forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin after he seized the throne from his older brother Numitor. Because Vestal Virgins were sworn to celibacy, the move would leave Numitor's line without heirs.
Who was the father of Rhea Silvia's twins Romulus and Remus?
Tradition names the god Mars as the father of Romulus and Remus. The Roman historian Livy doubted these claims of paternity.
What happened to Rhea Silvia after Romulus and Remus were born?
Amulius imprisoned Rhea Silvia, and his daughter Antho spared her from death. Ennius says she was thrown into the Tiber on Amulius' orders, while Ovid says she ultimately threw herself into the river.
Which ancient authors wrote about Rhea Silvia?
Livy tells her story in the first book of Ab Urbe Condita Libri, and Cassius Dio covers it in his Roman History. She is also mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid and in the works of Ovid.
Where is Rhea Silvia shown in Roman art?
Mars discovering Rhea Silvia appears on the Casali Altar in the Vatican Museums, on the Portland Vase in the British Museum, and on a sarcophagus in the Palazzo Mattei. A relief in the Museo Nazionale Romano shows her sleeping during the conception of the twins.
All sources
24 references cited across the entry
- 1BookDio's Roman HistoryCassius Dio — Harvard University Press — 1914
- 2BookArchaic Latin VerseMario Erasmo — Focus Pub. — 2001
- 3BookThe History of Early RomeLivy — Heritage Press — 1960
- 4Livy I.4.2
- 5Mars and Rhea SilviaRivka Gersht et al.
- 6BookAncient Roman Civilization: History and sourcesRalph W. Mathisen — Oxford University Press — 2019
- 7BookDio's Roman HistoryDio
- 8The History of RomeB.G. Niebuher — Cambridge, J. Taylor; etc., etc. — 3 April 1843
- 10BookRape in Antiquity: Rape and Livy's View of Roman HistoryJ.A. Arieti — Classical Press of Wales — 1997
- 11The she-wolf is memorialised in the Medieval bronze Capitoline Wolf and is a symbol of Rome.
- 12Plutarch, "The Life of Romulus", 3.
- 13BookDio's Roman HistoryCassius Dio
- 14Porphyrio, Commentary on Horace, Odes 1.2.18.
- 16Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 71.5
- 18JournalThe Portland Vase againD.E.L. Haynes — 1968
- 19JournalAn Augustan temple represented on a historical relief dating to the time of ClaudiusFred C. Albertson — 1987
- 20BookAmoresOvid
- 21BookCatullus. Tibullus. Pervigilium VenerisF. W. Cornish et al. — Harvard University Press — 1913
- 22JournalTeaching About the Rape of Lucretia: A Student ProjectRosanna Lauriola — 2013
- 23BookLest Darkness Fall and Related StoriesDavid Drake — 2011
- 24BookThe Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, Book Three)Rick Riordan — Disney Book Group — 2 October 2012
- 25BookRhea Silvia: Book One in The First Vestals of Rome TrilogyDebra May Macleod et al. — Debra May Macleod — 2022-04-11