Faustulus

Denarius of Sextus Pompeius Fostlus from 137 BC. With representation of Faustulus, the twins and the she-wolf

Faustulus brings Romulus and Remus to his wife ( Nicolas Mignard , 1654)
Dallas Museum of Art

Faustulus (also Faustus ) is a figure from Roman mythology . In all versions of the myth about Faustulus he is the foster father of the twin pair Romulus and Remus . But different narrative traditions can be distinguished, which vary the myth in some important details depending on the time of the tradition.

In the older annals , which is represented by Fabius Pictor with regard to the saga and is an important source of the surviving tradition of later times - for example in Dionysius of Halicarnassus - Faustulus was the chief swineherd of King Amulius, who ruled in Alba Longa . While Faustulus was staying in Alba one day, the niece of Amulius and Numitor's daughter , Ilia , came down with the children of Mars and gave birth to twins. The children were abandoned by order of the king, which Faustulus learned of. On the way to his house on the Palatine Hill , he met the shepherds, who had found the twins with a she-wolf, and had them thrown up together with the tub in which the children were carried. His wife, who remained nameless in the older versions, had recently suffered a stillbirth and together with her he now raised Romulus and Remus. He discovered the whole story of his origins for the adult Romulus, then went to Alba Longa with his bathtub to prove his story, but was arrested there and brought before Amulius.

In the more recent annals, which is mainly in the narrative tradition of Gaius Licinius Macer , to which the Origo gentis Romanae from the Corpus Aurelianum explicitly refers, Faustulus was an Arcader who lived on the Palatine as one of the descendants of Euandros' entourage . In this version, Faustulus was married to Acca Larentia , whose nickname was lupa ("she-wolf") because of her previously relaxed lifestyle . He had a brother Faustinus and this Faustinus was the chief shepherd of Numitor. Numitor himself gave the twins to Faustulus to save his grandchildren after he exchanged them for two other babies. Following the request of his brother Faustinus, Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia raised the pair of twins. When it came to a dispute between Romulus and Remus and their respective supporters about the founding of the city, Faustulus tried to mediate and threw himself between the warring parties, but was immediately killed. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a stone lion near the Rostra in the Roman Forum marked the grave of Faustulus, who was buried at the place of his death. Sextus Pompeius Festus connects his grave with the Lapis Niger on the forum.

In addition to these older main lines of tradition, there was another variant, the handover of the twins directly to Faustulus. Faustulus, actually assigned to drown the twins, left them to his wife Acca Larentia, who raised them. From the Augustan period onwards, the most common story was the version according to which Faustulus found the abandoned twins suckled by a she-wolf and raised them together with his wife.

literature

• Rudolf Peter: Faustulus . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1, 2, Leipzig 1890, Sp. 1461-1469 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Wissowa : Faustulus . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VI, 2, Stuttgart 1909, Col. 2090 f.
• Siri Walt: The Historian C. Licinius Macer. Introduction, fragments, commentary . Teubner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-519-07652-7 , pp. 148-169.

Web links

Commons : Faustulus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

1. ↑ Varro , De re rustica 2,1,9.
2. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.79–83.
3. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.79.9 f .; Plutarch , Romulus 6.
4. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1,80,3 f.
5. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.82.3 - 83.2; Plutarch, Romulus 8.
6. ↑ Auctor Origo gentis Romanae 23.5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.84 simply names the author of this version different .
7. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1,84,4; see. also Livius 1,4,7.
8. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.84; Plutarch, Romulus 4,3.
9. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.87; Plutarch, Romulus 10; Auctor Origo gentis Romanae 23.5.
10. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1,87,2.
11. ↑ Festus p. 177 a 32; All that has been preserved is ... stulum nutri ... , which is added to Fau] stulum nutri [cium eius ("whose educator Faustulus").
12. ^ Plutarch, Romulus 3.
13. ↑ Auctor Origo gentis Romanae 21.1, who refers to Valerius Antias .
14. ↑ Livy 1, 4, 6 f .; Ovid , Fasti 3.36-58; 4.854; 5,451-468 and more common