Acca Larentia- Roman FigureMortal"Foster Mother of Romulus and Remus"

The She-Wolf's Twins

Faustulus found the infants at the Lupercal cave on the Palatine, nursed by a she-wolf. He brought them home to his wife. Acca Larentia raised Romulus and Remus alongside her own children.

Livy and Plutarch both note the double meaning of lupa: she-wolf, and prostitute. Some Roman writers suggested there was no wolf at all. The shepherds called Acca Larentia lupa because she sold her body, and the supernatural story came later. In this version she was the only thing standing between the twins and death.

The Larentalia

On December 23, the pontifex maximus and the flamines walked to her tomb in the Velabrum, the low ground between the Palatine and Capitoline, and performed funeral rites. Macrobius records the festival among Rome's oldest observances. The rites were for a mortal woman, not a goddess, yet the head of Rome's priesthood conducted them in person.

Tarrutius

Macrobius preserves a second tradition that reads like a different woman's life entirely. In this version, Acca Larentia was a courtesan who won the love of the Etruscan Tarrutius and inherited his estates. When she died, she left the land to the Roman people. The public rites at her tomb, in this telling, were Rome's repayment for the gift.