The Sacred Ruminalis Fig Tree Of Ancient Rome

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thehistorianshut
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As told by the ancient Romans, a sacred fig tree survived in the heart of Rome for around a millennium. This tree was known as Ruminalis, and it was connected to some of Rome’s foundational legendary figures and mythological deities, leading the tree to also be nicknamed after these people. For one, according to popular communal belief, Ruminalis was revered for being a tree under which Rome’s founding fathers, Romulus and Remus, once found shelter as babies and were cared for by the local wildlife. The young legends, so the story went, were the spurned children born of a violated Vestal Virgin in the time of King Amulius of Alba Longa. It was said that the Vestal Virgin, named Rhea Silvia, had been impregnated by the war god, Mars, but the godly circumstances of the pregnancy did not dissuade King Amulius from punishing Rhea Silvia for her newfound incompatibility with the Vestal Virgin title. The Vestal was arrested and her twin children, Romulus and Remus, were sentenced to be exposed to the elements and left to die. Livy (c. 59 BCE-17 CE), a Roman historian, described the scene:

“[T]he mother was bound and flung into prison; the boys, by the king’s order, were condemned to be drowned in the river…Accordingly they made shift to carry out the king’s order by leaving the infants on the edge of the first flood-water they came to, at the spot where now stands the Ruminal fig tree—said to have once been known as the fig-tree of Romulus. In those days the country thereabouts was all wild and uncultivated, and the story goes that when the basket in which the infants had been exposed was left high and dry by the receding water, a she wolf, coming from the neighboring hills to quench her thirst, heard the children crying and made her way to where they were. She offered them her teats to suck and treated them with such gentleness that Faustulus, the king’s herdsman, found her licking them with her tongue” (Livy, Roman History, 1.4).

Scholars believe that Livy was being literal when he used the present tense to claim that the Ruminal fig tree, another name for Ruminalis, was then standing in Rome. To put it another way, the tree still existed when he was writing his history.  Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), Livy’s contemporary, also acknowledged the tree’s persisting presence, albeit he admitted that the tree had become a shadow of its former glory. Ovid wrote, “There was a tree (traces of it still remain), which is now called the Rumina fig-tree, but was once the Romulan fig-tree. A she-wolf which had cast her whelps came, wondrous to tell, to the abandoned twins” (Ovid, Fasti, Book II, approximately line 410). Ovid’s passage, besides offering further evidence of the continued existence of Ruminalis, also brought up the curious goddess, Rumina, another patron deity of the sacred fig tree. Unfortunately, little is known about Rumina, other than that she was likely an Etruscan deity, or original Roman goddess, who held influence over breastfeeding and milk.

Shifting focus back to Ruminalis, itself, one may wonder how a fig tree had a continuous presence in Rome for nearly a thousand years? Well, it is complicated. According to the scholar, Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79), the fig tree may have been carefully cultivated, transported, and even replaced with new successor scions propagated from cuttings of the previous tree. Unfortunately, Pliny’s passage on the matter is quite convoluted, creating just as many questions as answers. Pliny wrote:

“In the Forum even, and in the very midst of the Comitium of Rome, a fig-tree is carefully cultivated, in memory of the consecration which took place on the occasion of a thunderbolt which once fell on that spot; and still more, as a memorial of the fig-tree which in former days overshadowed Romulus and Remus, the founders of our empire, in the Lupercal Cave. This tree received the name of “ruminalis,” from the circumstance that under it the wolf was found giving the breast—rumis it was called in those days—to the two infants. A group in bronze was afterwards erected to consecrate the remembrance of this miraculous event, as, through the agency of Attus Navius the augur, the tree itself had passed spontaneously from its original locality to the Comitium in the Forum. And not without some direful presage is it that that tree has withered away, though, thanks to the care of the priesthood, it has been since replaced” (Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, XV.18.77).

Ruminalis, in whatever shape it was in, continued to have a presence in Rome up to the time of Emperor Nero (r. 54-68), when the already weakened tree suffered a noticeable setback in health. At that time, the people of Rome were fearful that the incredibly old tree was going to die, but, to the joy of the Romans, the fig tree continued to cling to life. A Roman historian named Tacitus (c. 56/57-117), while describing events around the turn of the year 58 into 59, wrote, “The fig-tree called ‘Ruminalis’, in the Place of Assembly, which 830 years earlier had sheltered the babies Romulus and Remus, suffered in this year. Its shoots died and its trunk withered. This was regarded as a portent. However, it revived, with fresh shoots” (Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome, XIII.58). Unfortunately, little else is known about Ruminalis’ later history, as the tree was not a topic of interest to ancient Roman historians who came after Tacitus.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Finding of Romulus and Remus, attributed to Andrea Lucatelli (c. 1695 – 1741), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Google Art Project).

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