Have we found the Cave of Romulus?

There’s lots in the news this morning about Italian archaeologists having found the very cave where “according to legend” the famous wolf suckled the abandoned twins – Romulus and Remus – who went on to found the city of Rome. Or at least Romulus did; he murdered Remus in the process.

It’s one of those funny returning news stories, because it was first announced way back in January. Presumably it didn’t get enough attention then, so it’s now being re-run, backed by Mr Rutelli, ex-mayor of Rome and now the Minister of Culture, as triumph for the Italian nation (“ a mythological place has become real”, he said). And sure enough, today, it’s all over the press and the airways.

But is it true?

Well, for a start, it depends on how much stress you give to “according to legend”. For the last ten years or so, there’s been a huge campaign in Rome to find the traces of the “real Romulus”. One tremendously charismatic Italian archaeologist, Andrea Carandini, has boasted of unearthing the traces of Romulus’ own palace, not to mention his original city boundary (the one Remus jumped over and got himself killed). So why not the cave too?

Well the truth is, folks, Romulus didn’t exist. He is a MYTH. So searching for his physical remains is a pretty fruitless task.

But is this the place that the Romans themselves BELIEVED was the cave of Romulus?

That’s a finer question.

And the answer is “maybe”. But, honestly, I still have my doubts.

What has been discovered is a rather elegant underground cavern on the Palatine hill, with a nicely decorated vault, inlaid with seashells, mosaics and marble. No one has crawled into it yet (it’s not exactly stable, so all photos have been taken by “probe” – fleshed out with some sixteenth-century drawings, from a previous “re-discovery”). And it’s not entirely clear from the maps provided where it is, or where it was entered from.  But  it’s somewhere beneath the house – the  rather modest proto-place -- occupied by the first Roman emperor Augustus (hence the “first emperor decides to live on top of Romulus’ cave” aspect of the story).

The place is Roman all right, and it looks for all the world like one of those decorated underground grottoes that Roman toffs went wild about. But that doesn’t mean it’s the "Lupercal", as the Romans called the cave where they thought the twins had been found by the wolf (lupa).

The mysterious entrance is a problem for me. One thing we know about the Lupercal is that it was easily accessible. It was, for example, the starting point of one of the major – and strangest – rituals of Roman religion: the Lupercalia. This happened every year on 15 February, and involved a group of young men stripping naked and running around the city beating any woman who got in their way with goat thongs (a good antidote to the general view that Romans were buttoned up and stuffy – and the ritual that features in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). The whole thing seems to have kicked off in the Lupercal with the sacrifice of a couple of goats and a dog, and then the blood was smeared all over the young men’s foreheads.The implication is that it was easy enough to get to.

So I shall be reserving judgment until I see a bit more of this grotto.

The reassuring thing is that Romans themselves could sometime take a sceptical turn when it came to the myth of Romulus. Not all of them fell for the story of the wolf at all. They pointed out that lupa was also the Latin word for prostitute. So who was it who had found and suckled the abandoned twins . . ?

Comments

[Michael Bulley]

This is how it was reported in Latin on Finnish radio (see the website yle.fi).

Lupercal siue spelunca, ubi Romulus et Remus, conditores urbis Romae, lupa a deo Marte missa nutriti esse traduntur, iam repertum esse uidetur. Archaeologi enim Italiani, dum prope Domum Augustanam in colle Palatino sitam effossiones faciunt, specum conchis et opere musiuo ornatum inuenerunt. Idem animaduerterunt summam cupolam eiusdem camerae figura aquilae albae praeditam esse.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

A small addition to your "Julius Caesar" reference: Caesar asks Mark Antony to touch Calpurnia with the goat-thong because that was thought to be a cure for barrenness.
Romulus and Remus may be mythical but abandoned boys who emerge subsequently into huge significance and brother turning against brother are two potent archetypal (after Maud Bodkin) motifs.

[anthony alcock]

Lupercal: were the young men getting their own back because the women had made fun of their syrupy Valentine's Day cards ?

[John Dillon]

Was it purely by accident that the Italian Ministry of Culture's communique that set off this latest round of press attention was issued on 20 November, the day preceding the feast of the sainted pope who suppressed the Lupercalia, Gelasius I?

[Mary]

Thanks to Roy Lewis. That does make the position a bit clearer. I still think the entrance is a bit obscure...and that it could be a nice nymphaeum rather than a Lupercal. But the jury is out. One does need to think about how it relates to the Lupercalia.
Carol -- you're right. She-wolf is a nice archaism
(like Tony Harrison's 'man-child'), but pleonastics.
Michael Bulley..full marks again.

[Roy Lewis]

The Italian Ministry of Culture published more detailed info on No. 20, 2007 (http://www.beniculturali.it/sala/dettaglio-comunicato.asp?nd=ss,cs&Id=2579), and presumably issued a press release which prompted the second round of news accounts. The published material includes plans and sections locating the cave at the base of the ancient slope of the Palatine, immediately west of the lower end of the ramp connecting the House of Augustus with the Palatine Temple of Apollo. It appears it was buried by post-antique fill, and was probably entered from the west, although the ancient entrance has not been found.
The plans also show the entire Augustan complex of House, Temple, and libraries in considerably more detail than previous drawings. The location makes tremendous sense—in direct proximity to the House of Augustus, the Temple of Apollo Augustus built within the confines of his residential compound, and the shrine of the Roma Quadrata that was said to exist within the Temple precinct. That would place the traditional creche of the founder beneath the monument marking his foundation, in the precinct of the god of such foundations, and the house of Rome's refounder—Augustus! Still, I suppose it could be a simple nymphaeum. I'm inclined to accept that they've found the site Romans associated with the nurture of Romulus and Remus, but some epigraphic or iconographic evidence is needed to secure the matter.

[Michael Bulley]

I don't know whether they were suckled in a cave together, but I've just thought of a good use for them as a poetical mnemonic, the first half of which is ugly enough to be memorable.

quomodo pentametri finis meminisse potestis?
hunc monstrant gemini Romulus atque Remus.

[Carol Maltby]

Mary, what's the source of the "she-wolf" term that is endlessly repeated in the English-language retelling of the Romulus and Remus story? Is it just a thoughtless grasping for Ye Olde Poetic Cliche?

You'd think most people would realize that the infants would be unlikely to survive by suckling on the dugs of a "he-wolf," and thus "wolf" would be adequate under the circumstances.

[Lisa]

According the version I read, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_eu/birth_of_rome they dropped in the probes from a hole above the shrine and further explorations may be planned to find the original entrance, which it suggests is around the bottom of the Palatine.

[DemetriosX]

Not only is Romulus a myth, he is a rather late myth. The earliest mention of Romulus is from the late 4th century BC, and there he is the son or grandson of Aeneas. The earliest known mention of Remus, the wolf, and the rest is 296 BC. The whole story as we know it comes from the second half of the 3rd century. If this is the Lupercal, perhaps there will be some new information about the earlier nature of these myths.