Ficus Ruminalis

It stood near the small cave known as the Lupercal at the foot of the Palatine Hill and was the spot where according to tradition the floating makeshift cradle of Romulus and Remus landed on the banks of the Tiber.

The tree offered the twins shade and shelter in their suckling by a she-wolf, just outside the nearby Lupercal cave, until their discovery and fostering by the shepherd Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia.

[9] The Augustan historian Livy says that the tree still stood in his day,[10] but his younger contemporary Ovid observes only vestigia, "traces,"[11] perhaps the stump.

[12] A textually problematic passage in Pliny[13] seems to suggest that the tree was miraculously transplanted by the augur Attus Navius to the Comitium.

[18] In the archaeology of the Comitium, several irregular stone-lined shafts in rows, dating from Republican phases of pavement, may have been apertures to preserve venerable trees during rebuilding programs.

A relief on the Plutei of Trajan depicts Marsyas the satyr, whose statue stood in the Comitium, next to a fig tree that is placed on a plinth, as if it too were a sculpture.

Romulus and Remus , the Lupercal , Father Tiber , and the Palatine on a relief from an altar dating to the reign of Trajan (AD 98-117)
A scene of combat, perhaps between Romulus and Remus, described by some ancient authors as having taken place near the Ficus Ruminalis. Pentelic marble, fragment from the frieze of the Basilica Aemilia, 1st century BC–1st century AD.
Faustulus discovers the twins suckling the she-wolf under the Ficus Ruminalis (2nd century AD)
Relief from the Plutei of Trajan , with the Ficus Ruminalis at right