She-Wolf and Rome

Antiquity: The She-Wolf and Rome

The she-wolf is central to Rome's history and geography; Rome is seen as a she-wolf, and the she-wolf embodies Rome.
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi stated in 1863 that "Rome has the nature of the she-wolf."
The she-wolf's maternal nature is shown in her rescuing and feeding twins, mirroring Rome's acceptance of diverse people.
The wolf god protected fugitives, who became Rome's early inhabitants.
The she-wolf is also a predator, attacking the weak, symbolizing Rome's conquests and greed.
Rome has a history of preying on weaker entities, destroying cities such as Carthage, Corinth, Jericho, Jerusalem, London, Piraeus, Seleucia, and Troy.
The Latin word "lupa" means both she-wolf and prostitute, linking Rome to the "whore of Babylon" in some interpretations.
The she-wolf's origins and destination are unknown, mirroring the elusiveness and complexity of Rome itself; "For Rome, a lifetime is not enough" (Roma non basta una vita).
The she-wolf represents Rome as the "Eternal City," a place outside of time, and encourages metaphorical interpretations.
The Lupa Capitolina, a bronze statue, is a recognized emblem of Rome, though the word "she-wolf " (lupa) was used in ancient Rome as a name for a prostitute, the she-wolf is today the animal symbol of Rome.
Rome's symbolic and zoological aviary includes Christian doves, imperial eagles and Capitoline geese.
Other animals in Rome include bees (Barberini family symbol), sheep (apostles), stags (Saint Eustace), Hercules' lion hide, cats, elephants, sacrificial sows/lambs, snakes, and Christian-eating tigers/leopards.
Some animals are real (Rome zoo, Museum of Natural History, pets, feral cats), while others are stone/metal representations.
Live animals refer to themselves, while many others represent something else, conveying complex narratives through a diminishing shared cultural code.
The nursing she-wolf on the Ara Pacis is paired with a sow, symbolizing Rome's origins.
A white nursing sow in a dream indicated the site for Alba Longa's founding to Aeneas, explaining the city's name.
The sow was sacrificed to Juno, unlike the elusive she-wolf.
The eagle, sacred to Jupiter, rivals the she-wolf as a symbol of Rome, embodying dominion, omnipotence, and justice.
Geese saved early Rome like the she-wolf saved Romulus and Remus.
A bronze pair of Roman geese is displayed in the Capitoline Museum near the Lupa Capitolina.
The geese's cackling warned Romans of the Gauls in 390 BCE; geese were honored, and watchdogs were crucified for failing to alert the city.
The she-wolf continues to represent Rome's birth legend, blending nature and culture.
Through the she-wolf, nature and the gods sanction Rome's existence and legitimize its geographic and historical claims.
The she-wolf is "good to think" (Claude Levi-Strauss), embodying ideas and relationships central to Roman culture.
The she-wolf is an apotropaic totem for Latial shepherds, placating wolves and symbolizing fertility/danger.
Romans saw the she-wolf as representing solidarity of origin and shared destiny; the she-wolf maintains her territories and continues to haunt Rome’s streets and Western art and literature, because she is good to think.
Andreae states that the she-wolf of the Capitol is charged with an intensity of significance such as is associated with no other emblem, sign, or symbol of any other city, ancient or modern.
The Lupa Capitolina is a masterpiece embodying Rome's tutelary beast and ancient history.
The statue's evolving meanings are shaped by its uses and interpretations; representations are inseparable from their contexts.
The Lupa's meanings are multiple and contested, involving power dynamics and language.
Viewers' reactions to the Lupa Capitolina over the centuries demonstrate how representation affects its meaning.
The statue's viewers' status/power influenced the effectiveness and durability of their interpretations.
Classical scholars have affirmed the Lupa Capitolina's status as a masterpiece of ancient art, influencing modern interpretations.
Mommsen said of the statue, “Rugged and uncouth though it is, this statue moved my spirit more than all the beautiful images that surround it”.
Wolfgang Helbig said about the bronze, “With flashing eye and gnashing teeth she menaces an approaching foe. The terror-striking effect of the head was enhanced by the glittering enamel of the deeply incised pupils, a fragment of which still remains in the right eye”.
Jer´ ome Carcopino calls ˆ the wolf “the most venerable work of Roman archaeology”.
The Lupa Capitolina's appeal comes from her form and the historical attributes attached to her.
Few ancient bronzes survived due to reuse of the metal, making the Lupa rare and significant.
Rolland states that “the power of languor given off by the Italian soil, a languor whose maleficent charm . . . had rusted away the brass of the Roman she-wolf. Rome breathes forth death”. Thankfully, Rolland’s rust is metaphorical and the Capitoline She-Wolf is still in good shape.
The statue was created using the lost-wax method: A clay model was covered in wax, then a clay layer. The wax was melted out, molten bronze poured in, and the clay removed. Details such as the Lupa’s ears and the crown of curls framing the border between the head and the mane were worked on to the wax rather than the clay.
The sculpture was made in one piece, with a single casting of fused bronze.
The Lupa Capitolina is believed to be the work of Etruscan artists from the fifth or fourth century BCE.
Honour and Fleming says that “The extraordinary realism of the tense, watchful stance – ears pricked, brow furrowed, jaws snarling, hackles rising – epitomizes at its finest and most vividly factual the unidealized, down-to-earth quality of Etruscan art”.
Mansuelli says that “It is certain that the aggressive vigor of the Capitoline bronze, which later became the emblem of Rome, clearly marks it as belonging to the art of the Etruscans”.
Restoration analysis found that the clay within the bronze statue came from a place just north of Rome, a volcanic area located along the Tiber River between Rome and Orvieto – that is, Southern Etruria.
The metal used for the Lupa, conversely, was mined in Sardinia.
Physical findings dates the Lupa manufacture between 480 and 470 BCE.
Brendel says that “Every available evidence counsels us to place the Capitoline statue at the end of the Archaic period, within the singularly productive decades between c. 500 and 480”.
Some say that the ancient bronze Lupa was lost for several centuries and then found again at the foot of the Palatine Hill, in the area known as the Velabrum. Others, including the influential turn-of-the-century Roman archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, believed that the Lupa, along with other Roman bronzes, was never lost and discovered – rather, these bronzes were kept together and preserved from the fall of the Roman Empire onward, in or around the Lateran Palace of the popes.
The statue measures 75 centimeters in height and 1 meter 14 centimeters in length.
S-shaped curls of her mane, reminiscent of a lion’s (and, significantly for this mysterious beast, resembling the outline of numerous question marks).
The expressiveness of this she-wolf ’s body and face remains extraordinary despite the passage of time, as mentioned by Brendel.
Her facial muscles are tense, and the vein running from her nose to just under her right eye is visibly swollen.
The Lupa Capitolina blends attention to live wolves' reality with representational conventions.
Stanley Horner stated that “unusually complex expression in the face of the wolf is more devastating than the Mona Lisa; it can smile and snarl in the same countenance, whichever I wish to project unto it.”
Horner questions and says that “Perhaps it is the wolf, after all, who holds the human psyche; perhaps it is the babies who have turned into animals! The mystery of the sculptor’s motivation and workings pervades my experience”.
The Lupa Capitolina appears to be an unwilling mother, and the twins are a Renaissance addition.
Ancient iconography depicts she-wolves facing the twins, unlike the Lupa Capitolina's turned head.
Sir George Head's 1849 guide describes the she-wolf as inclining toward its adopted offspring, even though the statue suggests otherwise.
Reproductions of the Lupa Capitolina are common in Rome.
It is unknown whether the she-wolf myth preceded or followed the bronze statue's creation.
Carcopino stated that the myth of the she-wolf did not yet exist when the bronze wolf was produced.
Alfoldi says that the she-wolf was the Romans’ totem animal at the very dawn of the city’s history: The bronze, Alfoldi says, came later.
The Lupa Capitolina embodies the past metonymically, despite its physical boundaries.
Steven Saylor’s 2007 Roma presents conflicting interpretations of the she-wolf statue, one questioning the literal tale of a wolf raising Romulus and Remus.
The novel alludes to the story about the founding of Rome and about the rescue of the city’s first king, drawing from the multiple interpretations of these tales.
A bronze she-wolf is located in the Capitoline Museum; the twins under her udders were added in the late fifteenth century.
The statue's whereabouts before the ninth century CE are unknown.
Cicero wrote about a she-wolf statue struck by lightning on the Capitoline Hill, interpreting it as an ill omen of Catiline's conspiracy.
Cicero connects the statue of a nursing wolf with predicting the future in his On Divination.
The lightning strike was believed to portend danger to Rome.
Recent restoration work determined that the lesions visible on the wolf ’s hind legs are not the result of lightning, but rather were caused by an imperfect solidification of the bronze during the manufacturing process.
The Lupa Capitolina was never gilded, unlike the statue described by Cicero.
Ancient images of the she-wolf show her looking at the twins, unlike the Capitoline She-Wolf.
Livy wrote about a bronze beast with twins nursing at the Ruminal fig-tree around 296 BCE, financed by the Ogulnii brothers.
Duliere says that the Ogulnii’s choice of subject demonstrated that a she-wolf ` legend was already circulating by the time of their gift, although it is the statue sponsored by the Ogulnii that gave the story of the she-wolf and twins its unprecedented importance.
Wiseman claims that the Ogulnian monument of 296 bce constitutes “the first clear evidence for the she-wolf ’s sucklings as the twin sons of Mars, and therefore presumably Romulus and Remus”.
The statue was funded using confiscated money from loan sharks.
Quintus Ogulnius was associated with the lex Ogulnia, promoting equality between patricians and plebeians.
The twins might represent patricians and plebeians, reflecting their new equality.
The Ogulnii's monument, an Etruscan animal, expressed sincere subscription to Roman belief despite their Etruscan stock.
Silver coins known as “Hercules didrachme” were issued that showed a she-wolf licking and nursing a set of twin babies in 269 BCE.
Rome created its history and spread its mythology through the image of the she-wolf nursing the twins, tinged with divine approval through Mars’s she-wolf.
The Lupa Capitolina originally showed the she-wolf alone, without babies.
The twins were added in the late fifteenth century, emphasizing the Lupa's role as mater Romanorum.
The Spinario was originally part of the same group of Lateran bronzes donated by Sixtus IV to the city of Rome in 1471 and currently is located in a room near the Lupa in the Capitoline Museum.
Winckelmann described them as a modern addition in the eighteenth century.
The twins' sculptor and commissioner are unknown, although the name of Antonio del Pollaiuolo is often mentioned as the most likely sculptor of the twins.
Carcopino says that the twins represent the union of Latins and Sabines.
Other scholars suggest they represent the Roman republican institution of two consuls or the equality of patricians/plebeians.
Twins symbolized fertility and doubled the chances of offspring survival.
Being a twin was a sign of distinction and supernatural predilection.
Romulus and Remus embody rivalry, with Rome created out of fratricide.
Arendt remarks that brotherhood in our society has grown out of fratricide and political organization out of crime.
Auden stated that without the cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent), no secular walls will safely stand.
Wiseman notes Romulus's fratricide of Remus was unique in mythology.
Sibling rivalry is a recurring theme, with Romulus being the second-born founder of Rome.
Despite the remembered death of Remus's brother; what is best remembered of this foundation story and the image that has come to epitomize Rome’s birth in the West is not the death of a brother but rather the rescue of twins; not the flight of birds but rather the feeding of a she-wolf; not the building of walls but rather the breaking down of barriers between humans and animals.
Bowen said that her beloved Rome, “holds in its keeping more than one masterpiece of illusion”.
Like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Rome’s borrowed fleece makes the city appear tamer than it is by telling stories that sometimes correspond – but just as often do not – to the narratives found below the surface, beneath the city’s feral coat.
Andreae says that “Tracing the many phases on which the bronze beast exerted some influence in the course of the centuries, one gains an understanding of Roman history that no literary source, no epigraph, no other art work can open to one more readily and more significantly”.
Restoration reveals the past beyond illusions, removing time's incrustations.
The 1997–2000 restoration returned the original sheen to the bronze Lupa Capitolina.
The restoration of artworks has been described as “one of the most interesting cultural issues in which all aesthetic, historical, and cultural concerns are involved”.
Critics often hesitate to grapple with the issue of the “original meaning,” viewing the artist’s intentions as largely irrecoverable and ultimately irrelevant.
Some hold that “the effects of aging in works of art do not always decrease their aesthetic appeal; moreover, they can increase aesthetic value.” Therefore, “it is essential that we do not remove the effects of aging on art objects”.
Multiple oils and waxes were applied to boost the statue's polish but eventually resulted in an increasingly dull coat.
Helbig attributed the Lupa Capitolina's imperfections to “the maladroit restoration” dating from “these dark ages of art” – the medieval period.
Some scholars believe the Lupa Capitolina dates to the early Middle Ages, not Etruscan/Roman antiquity.
Carruba says that ancient bronzes were melted in separate pieces and then soldered together, the medieval period perfected a technique that allowed each bronze statue to be fused in one piece.
Because The Lupa was fused in one piece, she dates the Lupa to the early part of the ninth century in the Common Era.
One hundred fifty years before Carruba, in 1854 – the theory of a medieval Lupa went through a spurt of popularity in the nineteenth century – Emil Braun, although not ready to discount the Lupa’s antiquity, likewise wrote that “If we came upon this bronze in any other place, we should involuntarily be reminded of the works of the earlier middle ages, with which it has many points of resemblance” – after a scathing critique of this “stiff, unpliant, clumsy . . . certainly not lifeless, but thoroughly styleless image,” produced by “a mere mechanical bungler”.
Carruba says the other bronze statues in 1471 did get restored with the She-Wolf and that maybe the statue of the She-Wolf was newer and thus in better shape than the unquestionably ancient bronzes that accompanied the gift Lupa.
Some work on the She-Wolf’s surface was done with a file – an instrument almost never used on ancient statues.
The shape and arrangement of the mane fram- ing the She-Wolf ’s face and its continuation along the animal’s back are also typical of the early medieval period.
Carruba published her findings in a short book that came out in late 2006, La lupa capitolina: Un bronzo medievale (The Capitoline She-Wolf: A medieval bronze).
Many newspaper articles popularized Carruba's findings, but they were controversial and unwelcome.
La Regina tries to soothe his readers’ anxieties concerning the She- Wolf ’s new dating, stating that “The symbolic values of the Capitoline She-wolf – I need to say this, should unconscious worries provoke some resistance against the new chronological attribution – remain untouched by the progress of knowledge. They live on, and in fact are nourished by, ideals belonging to a metahistorical dimension”.
The Lupa Capitolina transcends all history.
Romans continue to perceive the She-Wolf as ancient, a beastly and maternal incarnation of their earliest past.
The Lupa holds on to the Romans’ perception of their own history.
Carcopino says that “The ferocious grandeur breathed by this rough and intense bronze fascinates us far less, perhaps, than the illustriousness of its provenance and the distance of its past attract us”.