Ficus Ruminalis

The Ficus Ruminalis is thought to be a wild fig tree that had religious and mythological significance in ancient Rome. Roman tradition has the Ficus Ruminalis located near the small cave, known as the Lupercal at the foot of the Palatine Hill.

The name Ruminalis was connected by some Romans to rumis or ruma, "teat, breast". The goddess Rumina was associated with breastfeeding, and her name clearly relates to Ruminalis (Rumina-lis), with both Rumina and Ruminalis being associated with the same fig tree.

The tree is associated with the legend of Romulus and Remus. According to the legend, the tree stood at the spot where the floating makeshift cradle of the two babies landed on the banks of the Tiber. There, the twins were suckled by the she-wolf and, soon after, discovered by Faustulus a local shepherd. Faustulus then took the twins to his humble hut, and presented them to his wife Acca Laurentia. The couple raised the boys righteously and made of them two worthy individuals, who eventually took command of the region and founded Rome.

The legend of Romulus and Remus, associated with the Capitoline She-wolf and the Ficus Ruminalis, constituted a very important element of the Roman culture and daily life. The legend was depicted in murals, mosaics and coins everywhere in the empire. One example of coins representing the legend of Romulus and Remus, is the silver denarius minted around 137 b.C.E. The coin show the Ficus Ruminalis tree in the background, and the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus in the foreground, with Faustulus observing the scene from one side of the tree.

A statue of the she-wolf was supposed to have stood next to the Ficus Ruminalis. In 296 BC, the curule aediles Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius placed images of Romulus and Remus as babies suckling under her teats. It may be this sculpture group that is represented on coins.

The Augustan historian Livy says that the tree still stood in his day, but his younger contemporary Ovid observes only vestigia, "traces," perhaps the stump. A textually problematic passage in Pliny seems to suggest that the tree was miraculously transplanted by the augur Attus Navius to the Comitium. This fig tree, however, was the Ficus Navia, so called for the augur. Tacitus refers to the Ficus Navia as the Arbor Ruminalis, an identification that suggests it had replaced the original Ficus Ruminalis, either symbolically after the older tree's demise, or literally, having been cultivated as an offshoot. The Ficus Navia grew from a spot that had been struck by lightning and was thus regarded as sacred. Pliny's obscure reference may be to the statue of Attus Navius in front of the Curia Hostilia: he stood with his lituus raised in an attitude that connected the Ficus Navia and the accompanying representation of the she-wolf to the Ficus Ruminalis, "as if" the tree had crossed from one space to the other. When the Ficus Navia drooped, it was taken as a bad omen for Rome. When it died, it was replaced. In 58 AD, it withered, but then revived and put forth new shoots.

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