Hersilia (mythology)

In Roman mythology, Hersilia was the wife of Romulus , the legendary founder of the city of Rome .

She was the daughter of the Sabine Hersilius and was one of the women kidnapped by the Romans in the course of the robbery of the Sabine women, whereby she was the only woman who was already married and was kidnapped only by mistake, as the Romans only targeted unmarried women. According to another version, she stayed with the Romans voluntarily because she already had a daughter who was among the abducted women. She became the wife of Romulus and bore him two children, a daughter Prima and a son Aollius (or Avillius ).

The Sabine women, led by Hersilia, step between the fighting to make peace. Painting by Jacques-Louis David

When the war broke out between the Romans and the relatives of the abducted women, she and others acted as a mediator between their husbands and relatives and brought about a reconciliation.

After Romulus' death and his deification as Quirinus , she also became a goddess under the name Hora .

According to another version, she was not the wife of Romulus, but of the noble Roman Hostus Hostilius , the grandfather of Tullus Hostilius , the legendary third king of Rome. Hostilius fell fighting the Sabines.

swell

• Plutarch , Romulus 14-19
• Livy , Ab urbe condita 1,11
• Dionysius of Halicarnassus , Rhomaike Archaiologia 2,45-46; 3.1
• Ovid , Metamorphoses 14,829 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Plutarch, Romulus 14 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.45
2. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.45
3. ↑ Zenodotus of Troizen in Plutarch, Romulus 14
4. ↑ According to Livius 1:11, after the conquest of the city of Antemnae , from which some of the kidnapped came, she mediated by the Romans and caused the defeated Antemnaten to be received in Rome. According to Plutarch, Romulus 19 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.45–46, she mediated between the Romans and the Sabines.
5. ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 3.1; Plutarch, Romulus 14 and 18