Lupercal
The Lupercal was a cave on the Palatine Hill and one of the most important places of worship in the ancient city of Rome . According to the founding myth of Rome, the twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf there before they were born in 753 BC. Founded the city.
The lupercal lay at the foot of the palatine. It was restored under Augustus . The religious festival of the Lupercalia and the priesthood of the Luperci were derived from the Lupercal .
Italian archaeologists, who discovered a cave 16 meters deep in 2007 while drilling in the Roman palace quarter, suspect that it could be the Lupercal, which, among others, the head of the Roman archaeological authority, Adriano La Regina , rules out. In his opinion it is a nymphaeum , but he also assumes an archaeologically significant find.
The partially collapsed grotto is decorated with shells and marble. The archaeologists measured the cave with endoscopes and lasers , fearing that it would be further damaged during excavations. The height is estimated at eight meters and the diameter at 7.5 meters. During further excavations, the entrance to the holy place should be searched for.
literature
- Samuel Ball Platner , Thomas Ashby : Lupercal . In: A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome . Oxford University Press, London 1929, p. 321 ( online ).
Web links
Press reports on the possible discovery
- Sensational find: the legendary cave of the Rome founders discovered . In: Die Welt , November 20, 2007
- Roman myth: Researchers claim to have found the cave of Romulus and Remus . Spiegel Online , November 20, 2007
- Dieter Bartetzko : A feast for the senses . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 22, 2007
- Sensational find in Rome A feast for the senses . BR-Online
- RP-Online: Just a Nero state room? Expert doubts finding of Romulus grotto . AFP article in the Rheinische Post , November 22, 2007
Remarks
- ↑ Ovid , Fasti 2, 381-424 .
- ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus , 1, 32, 3–4 and 1, 79, 8 .
- ^ Res Gestae Divi Augusti 19 .