Romulus is a culture-hero in Roman folklore, from Latium (Palatine and Capitoline Hills, Rome). Romulus is the legendary founder and first king of Rome in Roman tradition. As an aetiological culture-hero he is credited with establishing Rome's early civic, military, legal, and religious institutions and with sacral acts that legitimated the city's origins.
According to Roman myth as summarized in the provided sources, Romulus and his twin brother Remus were born to Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin, and the god Mars. Exposed as infants near the foot of the Palatine Hill, they were suckled by a she-wolf until discovered and raised by the shepherd Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia. The twins later restored their grandfather Numitor to his throne after killing the usurper Amulius. Romulus then founded a city on the Palatine, marked its sacred boundary (Roma Quadrata), and became its first king; variants in the tradition attend episodes such as the killing of Remus and the later abduction of the Sabine women.
Primary sources supplied do not provide a standardized physical portrait of Romulus as an adult ruler. The tradition preserves vivid infancy imagery: exposure beneath a fig tree at the foot of the Palatine, suckling by a she-wolf, and upbringing among shepherds and hill-people (Faustulus and Acca Larentia). Later iconographic or literary traditions are not specified in the supplied material; the sources emphasize his formative animal-fosterage and pastoral rearing but do not fix details of clothing, stature, or facial description as king.
The sources attribute to Romulus a set of institution-creating actions rather than supernatural powers: he is credited with fortifying the Palatine (Murus Romuli), ploughing the city's boundary (Roma Quadrata), dividing the people into three tribes (Ramnes, Titienses, Luceres), establishing the curiae and selecting one hundred patres to form the Senate, creating a royal bodyguard (the Celeres), outlawing infanticide in legend, and opening an asylum for fugitives on the Capitoline. He is portrayed as performing sacral acts (sacrifices and prayers to Jupiter) and using augury/omens (the vulture-omens contest with Remus) to obtain divine sanction. The narrative also attributes acts of lethal violence and strategic coercion to him in the founding struggle (killing of Amulius, the death of Remus in variant accounts, and the episode leading to the abduction of the Sabine women), framed as legendary political agency rather than literal historical reportage.
Abandinus
Abandinus is a locally attested Romano‑Celtic theonym known from a single inscribed bronze feather (votive object) dedicated at Godmanchester (the Roman fort Durovigutum) in Cambridgeshire. Scholars interpret him as a local god or male spirit tied to a specific place and possibly associated with a nearby spring or stream; this association is tentative and based on etymological readings of the name.
Abarbarea
Abarbarea is a name attested in classical Greek and Roman sources for freshwater nymphs (naiads). The name appears for at least two individual mythic figures — a naiad wife of Bucolion and a naiad counted among ancestors of the Tyrians — and Hesychius records plural forms that may indicate the name was also used as a class-name (Abarbareai / Abarbalaiai).
Abas
Abas (Ancient Greek: Ἄβας, gen.: Ἄβαντος) is not a single mythic being but a recurring personal name borne by multiple mortals and minor mythic figures in Greek epic and genealogical traditions — kings, founders, seers, warriors, attendants, a centaur, and a youth transformed by a goddess. The name is glossed in the sources as 'guileless' or 'good-hearted' and appears across Argive, Theban, Trojan, Euboean, and other local cycles.
Abellio
Abellio is a theonym attested in Roman‑period inscriptions from the Comminges area of the Pyrenees and reported as worshipped in the Garonne Valley of ancient Gallia Aquitania. Surviving evidence is limited to a small number of inscriptions; scholars have variously hypothesized solar or arboreal associations and compared the name to forms of Apollo or to Celtic Belenus, but the deity's precise role in local cosmology remains uncertain.
Abnoba
Abnoba is a Gaulish theonym and toponym attested in Roman-era sources and inscriptions: a localized deity associated with woods, springs and the sources of rivers (notably the Danube) and simultaneously the name applied to a mountain or mountain range in the Black Forest/Baar/Odenwald region. Roman altars equate her with Diana, reflecting syncretic cult practice in frontier provinces.
Aborigines (mythology)
A mytho-historical label used in Roman and general reference sources to denote the oldest inhabitants of a region (specifically central Italy in the cited Roman context). The term functions as an identity/category for original human populations rather than as a characterized supernatural being in the provided sources.
Abundantia
Abundantia is the Roman divine personification of abundance and material plenty, used primarily in imperial propaganda and public iconography to signify secure grain supplies, wealth, and the promise of a 'Golden Age' under the emperor. She also appears in later medieval European folklore as Domina Abundia / Dame Habonde, a household benefactor in accounts condemned by ecclesiastical writers.
Acamas
Acamas (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάμας) is a personal name recurrent in ancient Greek narrative traditions applied to multiple human characters (warriors, princes, suitors), once to a Cyclops, and once as a hound's name. Rather than a single supernatural entity, bearers of the name appear episodically across the Trojan War, Theseid, and Theban cycles as mortal actors whose deeds intersect with gods and fate.
Acantha
Acantha (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάνθα, 'thorn') is a late or secondary mythological figure known from modern retellings as a nymph transformed into the acanthus plant. The tale that she scratched Apollo and was changed into a spiny-leaved plant is not attested in surviving classical corpora and appears to be a modern compilation or invention rather than a firmly documented ancient myth.
Acerbas
Acerbas (also recorded as Sychaeus, Sycharbas, Zacherbas) is a figure in classical Greco‑Roman accounts of Phoenician/Tyrian tradition: a wealthy priest of Melqart (the Tyrian Hercules) whose concealed riches and murder by King Pygmalion precipitate Elissa/Dido's flight from Tyre and the foundation of Carthage. He is presented as a human priestly figure of high social rank rather than as a supernatural being.
Acestes
Acestes is a Roman/Greek founder-hero associated with the Sicilian city Segesta (Aegesta/Acesta). Presented as son of a Trojan woman and, in one tradition, the Sicilian river-god Crinisus (in animal form), he hospitably receives Aeneas and the Trojans, participates in the funeral games in Virgil's Aeneid (Book V), and functions as an eponymous culture-founder and local ruler.
Achaemenides
Achaemenides is a literary mortal figure introduced into Virgil's Aeneid as a marooned member of Odysseus' crew whom Aeneas rescues on Sicily. In Roman epic he functions as a chance survivor and eyewitness who helps link the Homeric tradition to the Trojan refugees and to illustrate Aeneas' magnanimity.
Community Record
- [1]Romulus - Wikipedia. Wikipedia: Romuluswiki
- [2]Romulus - Wikidata. Wikidata: Q2186wiki
- [3]In fiecare zi de Romulus Vulpescu (archive entry). Archive.org item (not used for Romulus material in supplied excerpts)other
- [4]Tullus Hostilius #history #rome #romans #kings (archive entry). Archive.org item (not used for Romulus material in supplied excerpts)other