Rea Silvia 

Not to be confused with Rhea (mother of Aventinus).

Rhea Silvia (also written as Rea Silvia), and also known as Ilia, was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome. Her story is told in the first book of Ab Urbe Condita of Livy.

Contents

The legend

Rhea Silvia, torso from the recently rediscovered amphitheatre at Cartagena.

According to Livy's account of the legend, she was the daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa and descendant of Aeneas. Numitor's younger brother Amulius seized the throne and killed Numitor's son. Amulius forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin, a priestess to the goddess Vesta, so that the line of Numitor would have no heirs; Vestal Virgins were sworn to celibacy for a period of thirty years.

Rhea Silvia claimed that the god Mars, however, came upon her1 and seduced her in the forest, thereby conceiving the twins.2 When Amulius learned of this, he imprisoned Rhea Silvia and ordered a servant to kill the twins, but the merciful servant instead set them adrift in the river Tiber, which had overflown, leaving the infants in a pool by the bank, where a she-wolf, (Lupa), who had just lost her own cubs, gave them suckle.3 Subsequently, Tiberinus rescued the boys and they were raised by his wife Larentia4 Romulus and Remus went on to found Rome and overthrow Amulius, reinstating Numitor as King of Alba Longa.

That Livy's euhemerist and realist deflation of this myth that was central to the origins of Rome was not general, is demonstrated by the recurrence of the theme of Mars discovering Rhea Silvia in Roman arts: the Latinists' "Invention of Rhea Silvia"5 appears in bas-relief on the Casali Altar (Vatican Museums), in engraved couched glass on the Portland Vase (British Museum) or on a sarcophagus in the Palazzo Mattei.

In a version presented by Ovid,6 it is the river Anio that takes pity on her and invites her to rule in his realm.

Etymology

The name Rhea Silvia suggests a minor deity, a demi-goddess of forests. Silva means woods or forest, and Rea may be related to res and regnum; Rea may also be related to Greek rheô, "flow," and thus relate to her association with the spirit of the river Tiber. Carsten Niebuhr proposed that the name Rhea Silvia came from Rea, meaning guilty, and Silvia meaning of the forest and so assumed that Rhea Silvia was a generic name for the guilty woman of the forest, i.e. the woman who had been seduced there.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Mars' discovery of Rhea Silvia is a prototype of the "invention scene", or "discovery scene" familiar in Roman art; Greek examples are furnished by Dionysus and Ariadne or Selene and Endymion. (Noted by D. E. L. Haynes, "The Portland Vase again" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 88 (1968:58-72) p. 67; the Portland Vase features a celebrated depiction of the "invention", or coming-upon, of Rhea Sylvia by Mars.
  2. ^ She "declared Mars to be the father of her illegitimate offspring, either because she really imagined it to be the case, or because it was less discreditable to have committed such an offence with a god." (Livy).
  3. ^ The she-wolf is memorialised in the Medieval bronze Capitoline Wolf, a symbol of Rome.
  4. ^ "Some are of the opinion that Larentia was called Lupa among the shepherds from her being a common prostitute, and hence an opening was afforded for the marvellous story" (Livy).
  5. ^ The theme is sometimes termed the "invention" of Rhea Silvia, in the Latin sense of "invenire", to come upon; compare the "Invention of the True Cross" by Empress Helena.
  6. ^ Ovid: Amores, book III, elegy IV: 'The Flooded River'.

External links

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