first to make the mistake, and Winkelmann followed Rycquius. Flaminius Vacca tells quite a different story, and says he had heard the wolf with the twins was found* near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winkelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf. struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and, if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks very like the scathing of lightning in the hinder legs of the present wolf; and, to get rid of this, adds that the wolf seen by Dionysius might have been also struck by lightning, or otherwise injured. Let us examine the subject by a reference to the words of Cicero. The orator in two places seems to particularize the Romulus and the Remus, especially the first, which his audience remembered to have been in the Capitol, as being struck with lightning. In his * "Intesi dire, che l' Ercole di bronzo, che oggi si trova nella Sala di Campidoglio, fu trovato nel foro Romano appresso l'arco di Settimio; e vi fu trovata anche la lupa di bronzo che allatta Romolo e Remo, e stà nella Loggia de' conservatori."-Vacca, Memorie, num. iii. p. 1, ap. Montfaucon Dia. Ital. verses he records that the twins and wolf both fell, and that the latter left behind the marks of her feet. Cicero does not say that the wolf was consumed; and Dion only mentions that it fell down, without alluding, as the Abate has made him, to the force of the blow, or the firmness with which it had been fixed. The whole strength, therefore, of the Abate's argument hangs upon the past tense; which, however, may be somewhat diminished by remarking that the phrase only shows that the statue was not then standing in its former position. Winkelmann has observed that the present twins are modern; and it is equally clear that there are marks of gilding on the wolf, which might therefore be supposed to make part of the ancient group. It is known that the sacred images of the Capitol were not destroyed when injured by time or accident, but were put into certain underground depositories called favissæ.* It may be thought possible that the wolf had been so deposited, and had been replaced in some conspicuous situation when the Capitol was rebuilt by Vespasian. Rycquius, without mentioning his authority, tells that it was transferred from the Comitium to the Lateran, and thence brought to the Capitol. If it was found near the arch of Severus, it may have been one of the images which Orosiust says was thrown down in the Forum by lightning when Alaric took the city. *Luc. Faun. ibid. † See previous notice of the Destruction of Roman Remains. That it is of very high antiquity the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced Winkelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf, however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of Romulus. Lactantius* asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late periodt after every other observance of the ancient superstition had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism. It may be permitted, however, to remark that the wolf was a Roman symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in the charges which they make against the * "Romuli nutrix Lupa honoribus est affecta divinis, et ferrem si animal ipsum fuisset, cujus figuram gerit" (Lactant. de Falsa Religione, lib. i. cap. xx., p. 101, edit. varior. 1660); that is to say, he would rather adore a wolf than a prostitute. His commentator has observed that the opinion of Livy concerning Laurentia being figured in this wolf was not universal. Strabo thought so. Rycquius is wrong in saying that Lactantius mentions the wolf was in the Capitol. To A.D. 496. "Quis credere possit," says Baronius (Ann. Eccle. tom. viii. p. 602, in an. 496),“ viguisse adhuc Romæ ad Gelasii tempora, quæ fuere ante exordia urbis allata in Italiam Lupercalia ?" Gelasius wrote a letter, which occupies four folio pages, to Andromachus, the senator, and others, to show that the rites should be given up. Pagans. Eusebius accused the Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue to him in the island of the Tiber. The Romans had probably never before heard of such a person, who came, however, to play a considerable, though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several tokens of his aërial combat with St. Peter at Rome, notwithstanding that an inscription found in this very island of the Tiber showed the Simon Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god, called Semo Sangus or Fidius.* Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned it was thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore, as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus.† The practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church seems to * Eusebius has these words,—καὶ ἀνδριάντι παρ' ὑμῖν ὡς θεὸς, τετίμηται, ἐν τῷ Τίβερι ποταμῷ μεταξὺ τῶν δύο γεφυρῶν, ἔχων ἐπιγραφὴν ῥωμαικὴν ταύτην Σίμωνι θέῳ Caγκτῳ.—Ecclesi. Hist., lib. ii. cap. xiii. p. 40. Justin Martyr had told the story before; but Baronius himself was obliged to detect this fable.-See Nardini Roma Vet., lib. vii. cap. xii. + "In essa gli antichi pontefici, per toglier la memoria de' giuochi Lupercali istituiti in onore di Romolo, introdussero l'uso di portarvi Bambini oppressi da infermità occulte, acciò si liberino per l' intercessione di questo Santo, come di continuo si sperimenta."-Rione xii. Ripa-accurata e succinta descrizione, &c., di Roma Moderna dell' Ab. Ridolf. Venuti, 1766. be thereby identified with that of the temple; so that if the wolf had been really found there, as Winkelmann says, there would be no doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius. But Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and even if he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium,† that is, the three columns by the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, at the corner of the Palatine looking on the Forum. It is, in fact, a mere conjecture where the image was actually dug up; and perhaps, on the whole, the marks of the gilding and of the lightning are a better argument in favour of its being the Ciceronian wolf * Nardini, lib. v. cap. xi., convicts Pomponius Lætus crassi erroris, in putting the Ruminal fig-tree at the church of St. Theodore; but as Livy says the wolf was at the Ficus Ruminalis, and Dionysius at the temple of Romulus, he is obliged (cap. iv.) to own that the two were close together as well as the Lupercal cave, shaded, as it were, by the fig-tree. † "Ad comitium ficus olim Ruminalis germinabat, sub qua lupæ rumam, hoc est, mammam, docente Varrone, suxerant olim Romulus et Remus; non procul a templo hodie D. Mariæ Liberatricis appellato ubi forsan inventa nobilis illa ænea statua lupa geminos puerulos lactantis, quam hodie in capitolio videmus.”. Olai Borrichii Antiqua Urbis Romana facies, cap. x.; see also cap. xii. Borrichius wrote after Nardini in 1687.-Ap. Græv. Antiq. Rom. tom. iv. p. 1522. |