Remoria (also spelled Remuria, Remora, and Remona) is a place associated with the legendary

founding of Rome The founding of Rome was a prehistoric event or process later greatly embellished by Roman historians and poets. Archaeological evidence indicates that Rome developed from the gradual union of several hillfort, hilltop villages during the Prehi ...

Romulus and Remus In Roman mythology, Romulus and (, ) are twins in mythology, twin brothers whose story tells of the events that led to the Founding of Rome, founding of the History of Rome, city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom by Romulus, following his frat ...

where, according to Roman tradition,

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Dionysius of Halicarnassus (, ; – after 7 BC) was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus. His literary style was ''atticistic'' – imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime. ...

, ''Roman Antiquities'', 1.8587. Remus saw six birds land and which he chose as an

auspicious Auspicious is a word derived from Latin originally pertaining to the taking of 'Augury, auspices' by an augur of ancient Rome. It may refer to: * Luck, the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable positive or negative events ...

location for the future city. Some variants of the legend say that Remoria was also the place where Remus was buried after he was killed by Romulus.

Location

Roman historical sources provide conflicting information about the exact location of Remoria. While some sources place it on the peak of the Aventine, others place it on a hill near the

Tiber The Tiber ( ; ; ) is the List of rivers of Italy, third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the R ...

, at a distance of either 5 Roman miles or 30 stadia downstream from the Palatine hill.

Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

identifies the summit of the Aventine as the ''auguraculum'' and the tomb of Remus but refers to it as ''Ρεμώνιον'' (''Rhemónion'') or ''Ρεμώνια'' (''Rhemónia''), noting that it was contemporaneously called ''Ριγνάριον'' (''Rhignárion''). Later generations of historians have used literary and archaeological evidence to build a hypothesis that places Remoria on the left bank of the Tiber, further south of the city. During their study on the walls of Rome, the archaeologists Antonio Nibby and William Gell placed the site on the location of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in the Ostiense quarter. In a 2003 essay, the archaeologist and historian Filippo Coarelli notes that the legendary figures of Romulus and Remus, first appearing in the historical record no earlier than the 4th century BC, were substituted into an earlier myth of the founding of Rome by the

Lares Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ) were Tutelary deity#Ancient Rome, guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an ama ...

, twelve sons of the deity Acca Larentia (etymologically, ''Mother of the Lares''). Remus represents the Roman plebs, thus explaining his traditional association with the Aventine hill, where the plebs staged a

secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

in 449 BC. By combining the figurative location of Remoria at a place associated with the plebs and the literal location at a distance of 5 miles from the ancient city (a symbolic number representing the limit of the archaic '' ager romanus'') on the banks of the Tiber, Coarelli argues that the location of Remoria is in the sacred grove of the goddess Dea Dia near the Via Campana, in the present-day zone of Magliana on the right bank of the Tiber. During the Kingdom and early

Republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

, the grove was an important site for auspication and haruspication in the care of the Arval Brethren, a college of priests tracing their descent from Romulus and the sons of Acca Larentia. In this view, Romulus and Remus represent the dichotomy between the ''Urbs'' (city) dominated by the patricians and the ''Arva'' (farmlands) dominated by the plebeians.

References

{{Reflist Roman mythology Ancient Roman geography Ancient Roman religion Romulus and Remus