Press Releases 2005

As related by the Roman historian Livy, who lived around the time of Christ, Rhea Silvia was forced to become a vestal virgin by her uncle, Amulius, after he overthrew her father, Numitor, king of the ancient Italian city of Alba Longa. Amulius wanted to ensure she would not have any sons who could attempt to overthrow him. Despite her virgin priestess status, Mars, the god of war, came to her in her temple and conceived with her twin sons, Romulus and Remus. When they were born, Amulius ordered a servant to kill the twins, but a merciful servant set them adrift in the river Tiber.

The twin boys were found by Tiberinus, the river god, and nursed by a female wolf underneath a fig tree. Romulus and Remus were eventually discovered by Faustulus, a shepherd, who brought the children to his home and, with his wife, Acca Larentia, raised the boys as their own. Upon reaching adulthood, Romulus and Remus returned and killed Amulius and reinstated Numitor, their grandfather, as king of Alba Longa.

The two subsequently built a settlement on the Palatine Hill, where they had been nursed by the she-wolf, beginning on April 21, 753 BC, the traditional date for the founding of Rome. During the building, Remus thoughtlessly jumped the unfinished city wall, an omen of ill fortune, and Romulus killed him. Romulus named the city Roma, after himself, and made himself king.

Marchis proposed Romulus as the name of the largest moonlet because the name means "forceful" (rhome in Latin). The name Remus is related to the word "cautious" (remorari) and seemed more appropriate to the smallest moon and the closest to Sylvia.

Romulus and Remus with the wolf (Rome, Museo Capitolino, Courtesy: University of California, Santa Cruz, DeCou Archive)