The Capitoline Wolf

You’ve probably noticed the statue in the center of the roundabout, the Capitoline Wolf. It was a gift from the city of Rome to Merida in 1997. The original statue has been kept in the Capitoline Museums since 1471, but replicas like this one can be found all over the world, in cities like Paris, Buenos Aires, Chicago, and Tokyo. Let’s take a moment to explain the story behind it. The statue shows the legendary she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers said to have founded Rome. According to Roman mythology, their mother, Rhea Silvia, daughter of King Numitor, was a priestess who became pregnant by the god Mars. She gave birth to the twins, but when her father was overthrown by his brother, that uncle had Rhea imprisoned and ordered the newborns thrown into the Tiber River to stop them from ever claiming the throne. Legend goes that a she-wolf found the twins at the foot of the Palatine Hill and nursed them in her cave, the Lupercal, until a shepherd discovered them and raised them as his own sons. In Latin, the word lupa means both "she-wolf" and "prostitute". Some versions of the tale say the shepherd’s wife, who helped raise the boys, was a prostitute, and the wolf image came later as a symbol. When the twins grew up, they decided to found a city on the spot where they’d been saved, but they couldn’t agree on who would name it. To settle it, they turned to augury, interpreting the will of the gods through the flight of birds. Remus stood on the Aventine Hill and saw six vultures. Romulus, on the Palatine Hill, saw twelve. That was enough to declare Romulus the winner. He began to mark out the city by digging a ditch, swearing to kill anyone who crossed it. Remus mocked him and leapt over the ditch, and Romulus made good on his word, he killed his brother on the spot. Harsh, but that’s how, according to legend, Rome was founded in 754 BC.