07_07_09_Fig Tree

ROMAN FORUM The Fig Tree

The myth about Remus and Romulus is a very interesting myth. It all starts with their parents who are the God of Mars and the priestess Rhea Silvia. Then Amulius made Rhea Silvia a Vestal Virgin, or a priestess for the Goddess Vesta. Rhea was not allowed to be married, and the myth says that the God Mars came into her temple and she conceived her too sons Romulus and Remus. The boys were born and sent into the sea because Amulius was afraid the boys would grow up kill him and overthrow him. The day they sent the boys into the sea were tangled up in the fig tree and a she-wolf found them and took care of them and raised them. Later on in the boys life a Sheppard named Faustulus had found them. He took them to his home and Faustulus and his wife raised the two boys as their own. The boys then killed Amulius and reinstated their grandfather as the king. In 753 BC the twins decided that they were going to discover a city. They fought over what they were going to call the city, so Romulus picked up a rock and killed his twin brother Remus. The fig tree is found in the Roman Forum. The Forum is where the ancient Roman civilization developed. The area of the forum was originally a grassy wet land, and it was drained in the 7th century B.C., buy building the Cloaca Maxima a large covered sewer system that drained into the Tiber River. The forum was outside the walls of the original Sabine fortress, which was entered through the Porta Saturni. The walls were mostly destroyed when the two hills were joined. In 600 B.C. Tarquinius Priscus had the area paved for the first time. The Comitium was lost to the growing Curia and Julius Ceasar rearranged the forum before his assassination in 44 B.C. After his death Octavius finished the work. My experience at the fig tree was very cool. After hearing this myth I couldn’t wait to go there and see the fig tree. Although it is just a myth I had a good time thinking about maybe just maybe they were here once. I did not know this story until I learned about the fig tree. The thing I found interesting though in the myth is that their mom was never mentioned again after the boys were sent off, they never say if she had seen them and known the twins were ok. I had a good experience and a lot of fun at the fig tree mostly for the main reason I learned a cool part of the beginning of Rome.
Maria Falcone, Survey of Art and Architecture in Italy, Berkeley College