Faustulus and Acca Larentia adopted and raised the infant twins Romulus and Remus after Faustulus discovered them being nursed by the she-wolf at the Lupercal.
Acca Larentia married the wealthy Etruscan Tarutius after Hercules, pleased by her company won in a dice game at his temple, told her to greet the first man she met outside — and Tarutius wed her on the spot.
⚠ This tradition (Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae 35; Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.10) presents Acca Larentia as a courtesan rather than the shepherd's wife of Livy's account — the two may be separate figures conflated under one name.
A temple keeper at the Ara Maxima played dice against Hercules on the god's behalf, wagering a feast and a night with a beautiful woman — Acca Larentia, who was locked inside the temple as Hercules' prize and companion.
Acca Larentia was the wife of the shepherd Faustulus, and later Roman writers called her the true lupa who suckled Romulus and Remus — playing on the Latin double meaning of lupa as both she-wolf and prostitute.
⚠ Livy (1.4) and Plutarch (Life of Romulus 4) both note the rationalist tradition identifying the she-wolf as Acca Larentia, a woman of loose morals whom the shepherds called lupa.
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