She-wolf (Roman mythology)

• 1. Introduction

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  The she-wolf, called lupa in Latin, nursed and sheltered the infant twins Romulus and Remus in Rome's founding myth. King Amulius of Alba Longa had ordered the twins abandoned in the wild, and the she-wolf took them in. She kept them in her den, a cave called the Lupercal, until a shepherd named Faustulus discovered them. Romulus later founded Rome and became its first king. The sight of the she-wolf nursing the twins became one of the most recognizable icons of ancient mythology. But which version of her story is the true one? And why did a Roman religious symbol end up on artifacts from distant medieval lands? Centuries later, a twentieth century government would reuse it to promote its own idea of empire.

• 2. Origins

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  Some scholars trace the she-wolf myth to the indigenous Etrusco-Italic peoples of Italy as much as to the Greeks who influenced it. Wolves posed the chief threat to communities across the northern Mediterranean. That fear could easily curdle into superstitious dread and admiration for the animal's power. Trade links between the Etruscan cities of Tarquinii and Miletus may also have helped carry the myth into Italy.

  One legend holds that the Hirpini people took their name from the Osco-Umbrian word for wolf, hirpus. A wolf is said to have led them to the site of their first colony. The tale of the Lupercal cave itself is thought to predate the story of the twins. The Roman god Mars regarded the wolf as a sacred animal. Historians still debate whether the myth connects to the ancient festival of the Lupercalia.

  Leto, the mother of the god Apollo in Greek myth, reportedly took the form of a she-wolf. She did so to escape the goddess Hera while giving birth to him. Rome's own chroniclers would later turn these overlapping traditions into a handful of rival written accounts of the twins' rescue.

• 3. Rival Accounts

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  Three writers give what are considered the "canonical" versions of the myth: Livy, Plutarch, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. All three drew heavily on the work of Quintus Fabius Pictor, considered one of Rome's earliest historians. His account has since been lost, but it originally described the she-wolf and her rescue of the twins.

  Some accounts have the twins left along a riverbank, others say they were cast directly into the water. The servant given the task either had second thoughts, or simply could not reach the water's edge because of the flooding. Either way, he left the twins in a pool of standing water at the foot of the Palatine Hill. Depending on the telling, they were found after their basket washed up at a fig tree, or it had rested there from the start.

  Dionysius of Halicarnassus adds a detail: heavy rains had raised the river so high that Amulius' servant abandoned the twins early. He never reached the spot he had intended, further along, where the current ran stronger. The basket carrying them drifted with the receding floodwater until it struck a stone, tipping the twins into the mud. The she-wolf then arrived, lowered her teats to the crying infants, and licked the mud from their bodies. A shepherd tending his flock stumbled on the scene, ran to fetch his companions, and a small crowd gathered to watch. The twins clung to the wolf as though she were their true mother. When the men began making noise to try to scare her off, the she-wolf simply withdrew into a cave. Greek colonists had once held that cave sacred, with an altar to the nature god Pan.

  Livy tells a simpler story. The servants dropped the twins in the standing water purely out of laziness. The fig tree was simply the first spot they reached, and they assumed the twins would drown regardless. The twins cried in their basket until the waters receded and left them on dry land. The she-wolf came down from the hills looking for a drink when she heard their cries. Plutarch's version has the frightened servant leave the twins on the riverbank instead. Rising water then swept the basket away and carried it gently to the fig tree.

  All three writers note that the Latin word lupa carried a second meaning: slang for a prostitute, not just a she-wolf. Plutarch alone preserves two entirely different accounts that leave the wolf out altogether. In one, the twins are fathered by Hercules after he wins a dice game, with their mother serving as the unwitting prize. In the other, the twins are switched at birth by their own grandfather for a different pair of infants. They are then smuggled out of the city, raised by shepherds, and later educated in the nearby town of Gabii.

  Long after these written debates settled, sculptors and coin makers would give the she-wolf one simple image to carry across the ancient world.

• 4. An Image Takes Shape

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  The Etruscan Bolsena Mirror shows the she-wolf and the twins surrounded by human and animal figures. Its many details, including its exact age, have resisted any real scholarly consensus. What is clear is that it matches other mirrors made as bridal gifts. This one comes from 4th century BC Euritria, dated perhaps to around 330 to 340 BC.

  The famous Capitoline Wolf statue may be either Etruscan or Old Latin in origin. A discovery made during its restoration in the year 2000, along with radiocarbon dating, has since cast doubt on any ancient date for it. An Etruscan stele from Bologna, dated between 350 and 400 BC, shows an animal, possibly a wolf, nursing a single infant. By 269 BC, a silver didrachm coin offers the earliest known depiction of the complete scene. It already shows the she-wolf's head turned back and down toward the twins.

  Unlike Roma, the city's patron deity, or the Roman eagle, the she-wolf and twins offered an image ordinary people could instantly recognize. That mattered as Rome's territory grew, since a shared symbol helped hold a sprawling world together. By the 1st century AD, the she-wolf appeared throughout Rome and its provinces alike. She and the twins featured on the Ara Pacis, an elaborate altar built in honor of Augustus and dedicated to Pax, the goddess of peace.

  Personal items such as swords, buckles, lamps and statuettes carried the she-wolf's image too. So did monuments, mosaic floors and funerary stones dating from the 1st through the 3rd centuries AD. Coins bearing the she-wolf and twins were minted and circulated widely. Roman colonies struck their own versions too, a way of asserting their own Roman identity.

  Within a few centuries, that same turned head and nursing pose would travel far beyond the borders Rome had once fought to hold.

• 5. Beyond Rome's Borders

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  Carved in the 8th or 9th century, probably in Northumbria, the Franks Casket is an ornate Anglo-Saxon chest. It carries its own image of the she-wolf and twins, alongside a Runic account of their story. Other Anglo-Saxon objects and coins from the same period repeat the same imagery.

  Coins attributed to the Byzantines carrying the she-wolf have turned up at sites in what is now Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, deep in central Asia. An 8th century Sogdian mural found in the same region shows a she-wolf, her head turned back and down, suckling two infants.

  Long after Rome's own empire had fallen, the wolf and twins kept turning up wherever people wanted to claim a piece of Roman authority.

• 6. A Fascist Symbol

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  Benito Mussolini's Fascist government put the she-wolf to work as a political symbol in several ways. It created an organization called Figli della Lupa, or Sons of the She-Wolf, aimed at children aged six to eight. The group formed part of the larger Opera Nazionale Balilla youth movement, an Italian equivalent to the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany.

  Mussolini also gave away bronze copies of the Capitoline Wolf, the famous statue housed in Rome's Capitoline Museum. He presented them to foreign cities as an emblem of Roman power and a thriving 'New Rome'. The statues went to Cincinnati, Ohio; Rome, Georgia; Chiyoda, a district of Tokyo, Japan; and Timisoara, Romania.

  The she-wolf also appeared throughout Mussolini's propaganda and building projects. At the 1937 Mostra Augustea della Romanità, an exhibition held to mark the bimillennium of the Emperor Augustus, the she-wolf served as its central icon. The Fascist regime placed statues and images of her on buildings and in public spaces. These included the area around the Mausoleum of Augustus and the sports complex once called the Foro Mussolini, now the Foro Italico. Some of those images remain visible in that area today.

  Mussolini went further still, changing Italy's coinage and postage stamps to depict the she-wolf as a symbol of imperial authority.

  Long after the regime fell, the same image kept appearing in far more ordinary places, from a coat of arms to a football badge.

• 7. Living Emblems

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  Two Italian football clubs still carry the she-wolf into stadiums today: A.S. Roma and S.S. Robur Siena both use the imagery in their team badges.

  Local tradition in Siena holds that the city was founded by twins named Senius and Aschius, another pair also nursed by a she-wolf. According to the legend, the pair were sons of Remus who fled Rome after their uncle Romulus killed their father. The tale itself cannot be traced back any further than the Renaissance. Even so, images of a she-wolf and twins appear throughout the city, and some of those predate the legend.

  The she-wolf and twins may also have appeared on what may have been the very first silver coin ever minted in Rome.

  The Lupercalia was already considered an ancient festival even in Roman times, and Roman historians speculated about where it came from. Some linked it instead to Lupercus, a god of shepherds and protector of flocks. Whether that link explains the she-wolf's origin, or the she-wolf explains the festival's, is a question ancient Rome itself never settled.