Potitius strode through the busy marketplace and crossed a wooden footbridge that spanned the muddy Spinon. He walked past the Ara Maxima, where a few of his wine-befuddled relatives still loitered at the scene of the feast. He continued on to the foot of the Palatine, where he scaled a steep stairway hewn from the rocky hillside. The stairway had been made long ago, after the demise of the monster Cacus, to remove the threat of what had been an inaccessible cave. The hillside was no longer unscalable, thanks to the stairway, and the cave itself, an accursed place, had been filled in with stones and dirt. Brambles and clinging bushes had grown over the spot, so that little trace of the cave remained-nothing more than a bare outline that could be discerned only by someone looking for it. Potitius knew the history of the Stairs of Cacus, as people called the steep trail, and his father had shown him exactly where the cave had been located; whenever he passed it, Potitius uttered a prayer of thanksgiving to Hercules. But the Stairs of Cacus also served a purely practical function; it was the shortest route to the top of the Palatine.
At the top of the Stairs grew a fig tree. It was older than Potitius and, for a fig tree, very large, with branches that formed a wide canopy. After scaling the steps, Potitius welcomed the cool shade offered by its dense foliage. He paused to catch his breath, then gave a cry when something struck his head. The projectile was soft enough to cause no damage to his scalp, but hard enough to sting. Potitius was struck again, and then again.
From above, Potitius heard laughter. Rubbing his smarting head, he looked up and saw his two friends sitting on a high branch, grinning down at him. Remus began to laugh so hard that it appeared he might fall from his perch. Romulus hefted a green, unripe fig in his hand.
“Stop it, you two!” cried Potitius. He saw Romulus cock his arm to hurl the fig. Potitius dodged, but too late. He yelped as the fig struck his forehead. Romulus was known for a sure aim and a strong arm.
“Stop it, I said!” Potitius jumped up and grabbed the end of the branch upon with the brothers were sitting. Using the full weight of his body, he swung back and forth. The soft wood yielded without breaking, and the motion was violent enough to upset the twins from their perches. With shrieks of laughter, they both came tumbling down.
The two of them recovered at once, tackled Potitius, and used their combined weight to pin him down. All three were gasping, barely able to breathe for laughing.
“What’s this?” said Romulus. He reached for the amulet of Fascinus and held it up, so that the leather necklace was pulled taut. A shaft of sunlight, piercing the fig leaves, glinted off the gold. His brother joined him in gazing at it.
Potitius smiled. “It’s the image of the god we call Fascinus. My father gave it to me, after the feast. He’s says that-”
“And where did your father acquire such a thing?” asked Remus. “Stole it from a Phoenician trader?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Fascinus is our family god. My father received this amulet from his father, who received it from his father, and so on, back to the beginning of time. Father says-”
“Must be nice!” said Romulus curtly, no longer laughing but still holding the amulet and gazing at it. Potitius suddenly felt self-conscious, as he sometimes did with his two friends. Potitius came from one of the oldest and most respected families in Roma. Romulus and Remus had been foundlings; the swineherd who had raised them was a man of little account and the swineherd’s wife had a bad reputation. Potitius’s father disapproved of the twins, and it was only behind his father’s back that Potitius was able to associate with them. Potitius dearly loved them both, but sometimes, as now, he acutely felt the difference between their status and his own.
“And what does this Fascinus do?” said Romulus.
Remus laughed. “I know what I’d do, if my manhood had wings!” He flapped his arms, then made a lewd gesture.
Potitius was beginning to regret having worn the amulet. It had been a mistake to think that the twins could understand what it meant to him. “Fascinus protects us,” he said.
“Not from flying figs!” said Remus.
“Or from boys who are stronger than you,” added Romulus, regaining his high spirits. He released the amulet, reached for Potitius’s arm, and twisted it behind his back.
“You are
“But why should we do that, when there are two of us?” Remus seized Potitius’s other arm and gave it a twist. Potitius yowled in pain.
It was always thus with the twins: They acted in concert, as if they shared a single mind. Their harmony was one of the things that Potitius, who had no brothers, admired most about them. What did it matter if no one knew their lineage?
The infant twins had been discovered by the swineherd Faustulus in the aftermath of a great flood. The Tiber often flooded, but that flood had been by far the worst than anyone could remember. The river had risen so high that it submerged the marketplace. The marshly lake that fed the Spinon became a little sea, and the Seven Hills became seven islands. After the water receded, the swineherd Faustulus had found, among the flotsam, two infants in a wooden cradle on the slope of the Palatine. Many people who lived upriver had died in the flood. Since no one ever claimed the twins, it was assumed that their parents must be dead. Faustulus, who lived only a stone’s throw away from the fig tree in a squalid little hut surrounded by pigsties, raised them as his sons.
Faustulus’s wife was named Acca Larentia. An unkind joke told behind the twins’ backs claimed that they had been suckled by a she-wolf. As a small boy, when Potitius first heard this joke-told with a leer and a wink by his cousin Pinarius-he thought it was literally true; only later did he realize that “she-wolf” was another term for a whore, and thus an insult to Acca Larentia. Pinarius had also told him that the names given to the twins by Faustulus were a rude play on words-Romulus and Remus referring to the two
“A vulgar, dirty man, hardly better than the pigs he raises!” That had been the pronouncement of Potitius’s father about Faustulus. “As for Acca Larentia, the less said, the better. They’re hardly fit to be called parents, the way they let those boys run wild. Romulus and Remus are none the better for it-a pair of wolves, raised in a pigsty!”
But even those who most disapproved of the twins could not deny that they were uncommonly handsome. “Only Romulus is better looking than Remus,” went the local saying, in which the names could as easily be reversed. “And only Remus can compete with Romulus,” went the response, for the twins were by far the fastest and strongest of all the local boys, and delighted in any opportunity to prove it. To Potitius, it seemed that the twins were everything a boy could wish to be-good-looking, athletic, and unfettered by a father’s control. Even when they ganged up to inflict a bit of misery on him, Potitius found it exciting to be in their company.
In unison, the twins released him. Potitius groaned and rubbed his shoulders to relieve the ache.
“So?” said Romulus, looking at his brother. “Should we tell him, or not?”
“You said we should.”
“But I’m having second thoughts. He’s all high and mighty with his fancy amulet from his father. He looks down on nobodies like us.”
“I do not!” protested Potitius. “Tell me what?”
Remus looked at him slyly. “We’re hatching a plot, my brother and I. We’re going to have some fun. People will talk about nothing else for days afterward.”
“Days? Years!” said Romulus.
“And you can join us-if you dare,” said Remus.
“Of course I dare to,” said Potitius. His shoulders ached so badly he could barely lift his arms, but he was determined to show no pain. “What is this scheme you’re hatching?”
“You know what people say about us-what they call us behind our backs?” said Romulus.
Not sure how to respond, Potitius shrugged, and tried not to wince at the pain.
“They call us wolves. Romulus and Remus are a pair of wolves, they say, suckled by a she-wolf.”
“People are stupid,” said Potitius.
“People are frightened by wolves, that’s what they are,” said Remus.
“Especially girls,” added his brother. “Here, look at this.” He reached for something at the base of the fig tree and drew it over his head. It was a wolf’s pelt, fashioned so that the head of the wolf fit over his face and formed a
