SILK UNCOVERED, NO.1
It was a warm Spring day in the mid-8th century BC where the air hung heavy with the weight of a legend, as if the very air understood we had stepped beyond the reach of parchment and ink, and into the breathing pulse of a myth.
In awe, we let our gaze wander across the land of Alba Longa. It was an ancient city, founded by Ascanius, son of Aeneas, perched upon the Alban Hills where the future ghost of Rome yet slumbered in the soil.
Alba Longa was not a grand marble city as those said to have been inhabited by the illustrious and powerful Greek Gods, but rather a long and narrow settlement clinging to a ridge above the stillness of Lake Albano. Here, the simple dwellings of wood and wattle-and-daub huddle together in a quiet intimacy, held within the austere and protective embrace of sharpened wooden palisades.
The air carried the heavy perfume of woodsmoke from the nearby hearth, the crisp, invigorating breath of the surrounding pine trees, and the damp, earthy fragrance that rises from the lakeside.
Below, the dark and volcanic eye of the lake reflectes the bright, cloudless sky with the clarity of a polished mirror, while in the distance, a shepherd guides his flock across the slopes and into a vast, rolling sea of chlorophyll.
At the Zenith of this Ancient society sat Amulius, a tyrant whose authority was forged in the cold fires of betrayal. Having seized the throne from his elder brother, Numitor, he cast him into the shadows of banishment – a ghost in his own lands, a King without a crown.
To ensure that Numitor’s descendants could not ever reclaim what was rightfully theirs, Amulius ordered the execution for Numitor’s sons and forced his only daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a Vestal Virgin to prevent any further male heirs from challenging him. Rhea Silvia, now a priestess sworn to thirty years of chastity, and the tending to the sacred Fire of Vesta, was bound to a vow that was not her own, and breaking that vow would have carried heavy consequences for her. The question of her own desire mattered little against the weight of a decree that carried the ultimate penalty, for any fracture in her devotion would have been followed by the death penalty, and Rhea Silvia would have been sentenced to being buried alive.
To Amulius, it seemed he had finally extinguished every flame that carried a threat and quenched the very last sparks of danger.
And yet, despite Amulius’ desperate efforts, Rhea Silvia fell pregnant and gave birth to twins in the modest quarters of the sacred precinct dedicated to the Goddess Vesta, the guardian of the hearth, home, family and the sacred fire.
This was no grand convent like the “House of Vestals”that would grace the future . Rhea Silvia lived in an era where the Vestal Virgins had no elaborate palace to reside in yet.
The space was dim and poorly lit, the floor was but beaten-earth, low wooden beams held up the ceiling, and the walls were made from woven branches that have been plastered with clay – a small constellation of simple rooms near the sacred hearth of the community. Light filtered in slender fragments through the doorway as Rhea Silvia underwent the heavy pains of labour. The atmosphere was one of enforced quiet and piety, but the tension that was lingering in the air was almost palpable as she was attended to by women of the household and older, more experienced priestesses.
Outside, a gentle breeze that carried more than the bouquet of Spring moved through the trees of the Alban countryside, for it was whispered that the father of the twins was Mars, the God of War, himself, who came to visit the daughter of Numitor one night in her sacred grove.
As Amulius learned of the birth, his rage was immediate and untamed. Furious at the threat to his rule, he ordered the newborns to be drowned in the Tiber. Those infants cannot be allowed to live!
The twins were taken from her mother, and a servant of Amulius carried them in a shallow, woven basket down from the hills and toward the wild und unruly river, several miles away.
In this era, the Tiber was not the channelled, bridged river that it is known for today, but a powerful, meandering force of nature. It was wider in some places, prone to sudden flooding, with marshy banks, reed beds, and wooden edges, alive with the deep, clear waters pouring down from the Apennines.
The Gods, on the other hand, seemed to favour the twins, for the servant that was tasked with the gruesome deed took pity on the newborns, and instead of drowning them himself, he placed the wooden basket in the waters of the Tiber, abandoning them and leaving Romulus and Remus to their fate in the roaring current of the waters.
The basket was carried downstream and washed ashore at the foot of the Palatine Hill under a wild, sacred fig tree whose roots clutched the earth like ancient fingers.
It was here, in the shadowed embrace of the Lupercal, that the twins came to rest and found their sanctuary in a damp, rocky grotto with a small spring softly trickling inside. Moss and ferns clung to the walls while the constant drip of water turned into a serene and almost soothing thrum.
The entrance to the grotto was shielded by trailing vines, wild bushes and the thick, gnarled roots of the fig tree that overhung the cave from above. Damp ferns and lush greenery from the grove added to the sense of a hidden, wild sanctuary where the river met the hill. It was a place between lands, neither fully river nor fully land.
Here, between the wilderness and the first stirrings of human fate, a she-wolf had come to the cave, drawn by the thin, piercing sounds of the crying infants.
The Lupa lowered her head, and the twins were nursed by the wolf as if they were her own children, while a woodpecker – sacred to Mars – kept his watchful vigil from the branches above.
Not far from this hidden grotto, where the land gentled into a clearing of vibrant emeralds, where the air carried the perfume of freshly cut grass and crushed, wild herbs, the shepherd Faustulus and his wife, Acca Larentia, have made a humble hut their loving home. It was a simple dwelling of the old Latin way – wooden posts driven up deep into the earth, walls woven of branches and thickly plastered with clay, and a steep thatched roof that smelled of dried grass when baked by the sun.
As the golden light cast its mosaic through the thick canopy of oaks along the riverbank, Faustulus, together with his flock of sheep, made his way down the steep slopes of the Palatine Hill, his feet treading familiar paths worn by years of tending the royal herds through these untamed hills.
The gentle rumble that came from the sheep and the occasional bark of his dog were the only sounds breaking the quiet rhythm – until something unnatural caught his ear.
A thin, persistent, almost human cry was rising from the mysterious cave at the foot of the hill.
Drawn by curiosity, with a strange unease running through his veins, he left his animals to their grazing, pushed through the undergrowth of the grotto and discovered the twins. Moved by their fate, he carried them back home to his wife, and together they raised them, naming them Romulus and Remus.
The twins grew up in a simple and modest home. They had learned to help their father with the sheep, and they spend their years in the outstretching fields and up the hills of Alba Longa, never knowing that the land beneath their feet, the land that was ruled by King Amulius, was their own to claim.
They did not have much, but it was enough for Romulus and Remus to grow into tall, strong and fearless men. As they ran barefoot across the hills, the wind whipping around their faces tasting like freedom, they had learned to safely navigate the thickets and marshes along the Tiber, to throw spears, to wrestle and to hunt small animals. Together with other young shepherds their age, they raided neighbouring herds when they felt wronged, and defended their own flocks from wolves and bandits.
Romulus and Remus were known for their courage, their justice toward the weak, and their ferocity against thieves and tyrants.
One day, during the festival of Lupercalia, they were ambushed by a party of Amulius’ men, and Remus, although strong and fierce himself, was overpowered and captured, and brought to the palace before the treacherous King.
Romulus, livid with fury, gathered a band of young warriors and together they went to attack the palace.
The assault was brutal and tumultuous. Many men were hurt and even more were left on the battlefield. Eventually, the battle was won, Remus was freed by his twin brother, and Amulius’ was life was ended.
Numitor, the grandfather of the twins and rightful King of Alba Longa, had been reinstated to the throne after years of exile.
Romulus and Remus, the two infants that had been nursed back to strength by the Lupa and brought up by the selfless shepherd and his kind-hearted wife, were now grown up and given permission to set out to found their own city.
Together, they decided on the site of their miraculous survival for their future realm, but even twin-brothers of royal blood and divine origin were not always to agree with each other, and so the exact whereabouts of their metropolis became a subject of disagreement.
Romulus favoured the Palatine Hill, Remus preferred the Aventine Hill.
To settle the matter, they turned to the Gods through the Ritual of Augury, and the brothers separated. Remus took his position on the Aventine, his curved staff – a lituus – in his hand, and Romulus did the exact same on Palatine.
In silence they waited, attentively watching the skies, both their hearts were pounding with the awareness that the next wings to break the horizon would carry the will of the Gods.
Remus was the first to receive his omen in the form of six vultures in the sky, but Romulus saw twelve, and a fierce dispute erupted between the two of them. Both claimed to have received the favourable omen and, therefore, insisted on victory.
Words of accusation and wounded pride flew like arrows between the two hills, growing sharper and hotter with every breath, until the very air between the brothers seemed to crackle and burn with unspoken betrayal.
Unbothered, Romulus turned away from his brother and began tracing the first boundaries of his very own city. The air filled with the fragrant scent of freshly broken earth as he and his men began their labour, and soon the first walls were raised from the grounds.
Remus could endure it no longer. Beside himself, and with a face darkened by scorn, he strode forward and in one contemptuous motion he leaped across the nascent wall, mocking his brother and declaring that such fragile defences could never hold back a true enemy.
In one single, shattering instant, the last remaining threads of brotherhood snapped, and a blinding rage began to course through Romulus like a river breaking its banks. In the heat of the moment, steel was flashed, the blade found its mark, and Remus fell.
The wind seemed to still entirely, the birds fell silent, and in the heavy quiet that followed, only Romulus remained, standing alone where Rome was being born, declaring:
„So perish whoever else shall leap over my walls.“
Alone in his ambition, Romulus proceeded to build his city upon the heights of the Palatine Hill, now standing as the single ruler who bestowed his own name upon the rising walls of Rome as a lasting testament. It was a moment eventually marked in the ledgers of history by scholars like Marcus Terentius Varro, fixing the date to be the 21st of April in the year 753 BC.
The shadow of fratricide remained an act that became a powerful, yet haunting emblem of the eternal city, serving as a chilling reminder of the brutal sacrifices required to forge an empire and the inevitability of the internal conflict that would wind itself through the centuries of Roman history like a dark and ancient serpent.
In the present day, the figure of the she-wolf nursing the infant brothers remains the most potent emblem of Roman identity, preserved for eternity in a famous bronze statue that commands the attention of all who enter the hushed halls of the Capitoline Museum.
Legend speaks of the twins having been found in the shadowed sanctuary of the Lupercal at the very foot of the Palatine Hill, a place that remains a meticulously preserved archaeological site to this day.
Recent excavations have unearthed the silent remnants of settlements reaching back to the 8th century BC, weaving a thread of historical truth into the tapestry of legend and confirming the ancient timeline that placed the city’s beginning in the year 753 BC.