Faustulus

When the twins were infants, their usurping great uncle, King Amulius, had them abandoned.

Their survival in the wild, famously suckled by a she-wolf and later discovered and raised by the shepherd Faustulus, was interpreted as a sign of divine favor overriding human malice.

The iconography of the she-wolf nursing the twins became, in fact, one of the most recognizable and widespread themes in Roman art.

The twins grew up as ordinary herdsmen living a simple tribal lifestyle, but with an inherent knowledge that they were the main characters of the events that were going to unfold.

Wherefore Amulius was all the more afraid and ordered a servant to take the boys and cast them away.

This servant's name was Faustulus according to some but others give this name to the man who took the boys up.

Obeying the king's orders the servant put the babes into a trough and went down towards the river proposing to cast them in but when he saw that the stream was much swollen and violent he was afraid to go close up to it and setting his burden down near the bank went his way.

Then the overflow of the swollen river took and bore up the trow, floating it gently along, and carried it down to a fairly smooth spot which is now called Kermalus, but formerly Germanus, perhaps because brothers are called Germani.

And yet it is said that she was deceived into doing this, and was really deflowered by Amelius himself, who came to her in armour and ravished her.

But some say that the name of the children's nurse, by its ambiguity, deflected the story into the realm of the fabulous.

For the Latins not only called she-wolves Lupe, but also women of loose character, and such a woman was the wife of Faustulus, the foster-father of the infants, Acca Larentia by name.

Yet the Romans sacrifice also to her, and in the month of April the priest of Mars pours libations in her honour, and the festival is called Larentalia.

Those places were at that time wild deserts.

A story prevails that the retiring flood having left on dry ground the trough, hitherto floating, in which they had been exposed, a thirsty she-wolf from the neighboring mountains directed her course to the cries of the children, and, stooping, presented her dugs to the infants, showing so much gentleness that the keeper of the king herds found her licking the boys with her tongue, and that this shepherd, whose name was Faustulus, carried them home to his wife Laurentia to be nursed.

Some there are who think that this Laurentia, from her having been a prostitute, was by the shepherds called Lupa, and to this circumstance they ascribe the origin of this fabulous tale.

Thus born and thus educated, as soon as years supplied them with strength, they led not an inactive life at the stables or among the cattle, but traversed the neighboring forests in hunting.

The principal charge made against them was that they had made violent inroads on the lands of Numitor, and with a band of youths which they had collected, plundered the country in a hostile manner.

In consequence of this, Remus was given up to Numitor to be punished.

From the very beginning Faustulus had entertained hopes that the children whom he educated would prove to be descended of the royal blood, for he knew that the infants of Rhea had been exposed by order of the king, and that the time when he had taken them up corresponded exactly with that event, but he had resolved to avoid any hasty disclosure unless some favorable conjuncture or necessity should require it.

The necessity happened first, wherefore, constrained by his apprehensions, he imparted the affair to Romulus.