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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3121 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 23, 2022

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It’s the she-wolf, Hirpa.

Rome’s famous origin story was Romulus being suckled by a she-wolf, whose statue featured prominently in Rome. Lupus was the vulgar Latin for wolf, probably because the earlier word for wolf (Hirpus/Hirpa) was basically made a matter of national security which was relegated to obscurity on purpose:

Supposing for a moment that the swineherd Faustulus was of the Hirpini, then we would have to conclude that Romulus was adopted into the Hirpini tribe and that their tutelary god, Hirpus/Hirpa, became his own. To say that he was suckled by the wolf would then be as much as saying that he had been adopted into the clan. This could be a legendary reading of the historical relationship of the Romans to the native people of the area. The Romans, as newcomers, may have made a pact or treaty with the Hirpini, and part of the mechanism of treaty might have included the adoption of the Romans, through their chief, into the Hirpini clan, thereby giving the Romans natural rights. The wolf-god or goddess then became the tutelary spirit Roma who gave her sacred name to the city, binding the Romans to the Hirpini eternally.

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