La Lupa-foundation story of Siena

This comes from my Presence of the Past class, which while I don't care too much about columns and arches, I love our discussions and our professor. She has awesome stories, and so does Siena evidently. So this is a little history lesson of Siena, its cool-and it will help me study to recite it to you.

Most places have origin stories or myths which is really fun.Here is a story of Siena that arose in the Renaissance you may recognize parts of it, a little back ground summary to refresh your memory-(at the time of the Roman Empire the Italian society flourished pretty much-culturally/politically ect. and then with the fall of the Empire came the middle ages where there was a decline in wealth. Knowledge was essentially lost that had been formed in the Roman Empire, bad things like the black death and plagues of that sort also didn't help people out. People moved to more rural areas, then with the Renaissance they wanted to go back to that golden time of knowledge (rebirth) and they did this in art ect. They also wanted to be reconnected to the Romans, so that is where this story is coming from we think)

La Lupa (she wolf)
1st part of the story-Roman
When Troy is destroyed (you remember the movie-I mean Brad Pitt hello!) Aeneas the son of the King of Troy escapes with others and arrives in Latium (the region of Italy where Rome is). He founds a city there called Alba Longa and has two nephews, one is king and called Numitore. The other gets jealous of his brother and sends him into exile claiming the throne for himself-Amulio. Amulio then forces his niece-Rhea Silvio (Numitore's daughter) to become a vestal (kind of like a nun) and she is forced to guard the temple of Apollo and be a virgin. He pretty much disinherits her because she looses all her inheritance rights by becoming a vestal. There are records of these facts up until now in the story but it starts getting a little trickier. Next Rhea Silvio has an affair with Apollo (the god) and becomes pregnant. She gives birth to twin boys Romulous and Remus. Right after the twins are born she is found out and put in jail for her sin. Servants however, steal the infants and put them in a basket and into the river (sound familiar to anyone?). The basket stops only when it gets caught in a ficus plant and the boys slow down on the side of the river. A she wolf hearing their cry comes to them and feeds them her milk to keep them alive. Later after she has gone, a shepherd finds the twins and raises them. When the two boys grow up they want revenge on their Great uncle. So they go back and kill him and restore Numitore to the thrown. Eventually Romulous kills Remus and then goes on to found Rome.

Here's where the Siena part picks up- Somewhere before Remus dies he fathers two children. Twin boys, Senius and Ascanius (I see a possible theme-haha). Afraid of their uncle Romulous's wrath they flea Rome but before leaving they steal the she wolf statue from Apollo's temple. They ride to what is now Siena on one black horse and one white horse. When they arrive they make an offering to Apollo and their offering miraculously doesn't melt. Instead, there is only black and white smoke. I think Senius kills Ascanius and founds Siena in the end of the story. That would make sense. Now two very important symbols for Siena are the She wolf and the balsana (I don't think I'm spelling it correctly) which is a black and white shield. Siena's colors even for the soccer team are black and white( they look kind of like refs).

The weird thing about the story though is that there are older she wolf statues in the city, usually without the twins. The she wolf statues were there before the story and the Renaissance time. The real story of the formation of Siena comes from the Etruscans. They are the native people living in the region, before the Romans. The wolf is a sacred animal in many cultures evidently, somthing that our professor said she would teach us about another time. The wolf was a sacred symbol of the Etruscans for example. During the time of the Roman empire there was a road that went through three hill settlements that lead from Paris to Rome. Siena built up around this road with commerce for the travelers. Several Banks were founded in Siena and trade markets, also all kinds of shops for things that the travelers might need. There is more to the story, I just can't remember it right now. Siena is a pretty cool place though, and the road is still a main road here.

Another symbol of the city is the Popolo (spelling again not trustworthy). Its a lion and it represents the people. Siena was always ruled by the people. They even had a law strictly enforced that only middle and lower class people could be involved in the government. So Noble families who already owned banks and industry couldn't govern the people with their power. I think its a great idea. Maybe we should try it in the US. If you or your family have too much money or own too much stock in corporations, you can't be part of government.- I feel like that wouldn't go over too well with those in charge.