She-wolf (Roman mythology)
In the Roman foundation myth, the She-Wolf (lupa in Latin) was an Italian wolf who nursed and sheltered the twins Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned in the wild by decree of King Amulius of Alba Longa.
[4] He is considered one of Rome's earliest historians and his now lost work describes the She-Wolf and her episode with the twins.
Dionysius reports that the rains had raised the water so much so that Amulius' servant had to abandon the twins, before the intended spot (where the current was stronger).
After a shepherd happened upon the scene in the course of tending his flock, he ran to tell his companions, and a group gathered to witness the remarkable sight.
She withdrew into a cave that was sacred to the Greek colonists who had formerly lived in the area and held an altar to the nature god Pan.
In another, the twins are switched at birth by their grandfather for a different pair of infants and secreted out of the city to be raised by shepherds and later, educated in nearby Gabii.
[8] The Etruscan "Bolsena Mirror" features a depiction of the She-Wolf and the twins surrounded by human and animal figures.
[11] An Etruscan stele from Bologna, dated to between 350 and 400 BC, depicts an animal, possibly a wolf, nursing a single infant.
By 269 BC, the silver didrachm is the earliest depiction of the complete icon, with the characteristic "turning of the She-Wolf's head" backward and downward at the twins.
She and the twins were featured on the elaborate Ara Pacis, built in honor of Augustus and dedicated to Pax, the goddess of peace.
[14] They have been found on personal items such as swords, buckles, lamps and statuettes as well as monuments, mosaic floors and funerary stones that date from the 1st through the 3rd centuries AD.
[15] The Franks Casket, an ornately carved Anglo-Saxon chest from the 8th–9th century, probably crafted in Northumbria, features the She-Wolf and twins, along with a Runic account of the Romulus and Remus story.
The Sienese have a traditional tale that the city was founded by Senius and Aschius, another pair of twins who were also suckled by a she-wolf.
