Lupercal- Roman LocationLocation · Landmark"Cave of the She-Wolf"
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Description
Sacred cave on the Palatine's slope where a she-wolf nursed the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus beneath a wild fig tree. Each February, half-naked priests sacrificed goats at its entrance and ran through Rome striking crowds with bloody hide strips in the ancient rite of the Lupercalia.
Mythology & Lore
The Twins and the Wolf
Amulius, who had seized the throne of Alba Longa from his brother Numitor, ordered the twins drowned. Servants set Romulus and Remus adrift on the Tiber in a basket. The current carried them to the base of the Palatine, where the basket caught in the roots of the ficus Ruminalis, a wild fig tree sacred to Rumina, the goddess of nursing.
A she-wolf came down from the hills to drink and heard the infants crying. She nursed them. A woodpecker, sacred to Mars, brought them food. The shepherd Faustulus found the boys in the cave and took them home to raise with his wife Acca Larentia.
The word lupa meant both wolf and prostitute in Latin. Livy acknowledges the alternative tradition: that a woman, not an animal, saved the twins. Plutarch discusses it at length. Most Romans preferred the wolf.
Evander and the Cave
In Aeneid 8, the Arcadian king Evander walks Aeneas through the future site of Rome. He points out the Lupercal as a grotto sacred to Pan, whom Romans called Faunus. Evander's people worshipped Pan Lycaeus here, Wolf-Pan, and the cave had been holy ground long before any wolf nursed any twins.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in Augustus's time, describes the site adorned with a bronze group of the she-wolf and twins. Augustus renovated the cave as part of his restoration of Roman religious sites.
The Lupercalia
Each February 15, priests gathered at the Lupercal for one of Rome's oldest rites. They sacrificed goats and a dog. Two noble youths from the priestly colleges of Luperci were touched on their foreheads with the bloody knife, the blood then wiped away with wool soaked in milk. At this point the youths were required to laugh. They cut strips from the goats' hides, called februa (from which February takes its name), and ran nearly naked around the Palatine, striking anyone they met with the hide strips. Women sought the blows, believing they brought fertility.
The most famous Lupercalia fell in 44 BCE. Mark Antony, running among the Luperci, offered Julius Caesar a royal diadem before the crowd at the Rostra. Caesar refused it. Cicero, who watched, described Antony as drunk, naked, and smeared with oil. A month later, Caesar was dead.