Lupa- Roman CreatureCreature · Beast"Nurse of Romulus and Remus"

The Flood

King Amulius of Alba Longa had forced his niece Rhea Silvia into the Vestal order to prevent her from bearing heirs. Mars came to her anyway. When the twins were born, Amulius ordered them thrown into the Tiber. The river was in flood, and the basket carrying the infants did not sink. It washed ashore at the base of the Palatine Hill, near a fig tree sacred to Rumina, goddess of nursing.

A she-wolf found them there. She carried them to the Lupercal cave on the Palatine's slope and nursed them alongside her own young. A woodpecker, sacred to Mars, brought them food. The twins' divine father had not abandoned them. They survived until the shepherd Faustulus discovered them and raised them in his household. The twins grew strong. When they learned who they were, they killed Amulius and founded a city on the hill above the cave.

The Cave

Augustus restored the Lupercal grotto on the Palatine's southwest slope. Every February 15 the cave lent its name to the Lupercalia, a festival so old that even Ovid struggled to fix its origin. Priests called Luperci sacrificed a goat at the cave's mouth, stripped to goatskin loincloths, and ran through the streets striking bystanders with thongs called februa cut from the hide. Women held out their hands to be struck. The blows were believed to bring fertility.

The Other Meaning

Livy himself noted an ambiguity. The Latin word lupa meant both "she-wolf" and "prostitute." Some Romans believed the twins' nurse was not a wolf at all but Larentia, wife of Faustulus, who was called lupa for the older reason. Livy recorded both versions without choosing. The wolf endured as the version Romans preferred.