Returning the She-Wolf (Lupa) to Cincinnati

The She-Wolf statue was originally gifted to the city of Cincinnati in 1931 (dedicated in 1932) by the City of Rome, Italy, under the fascist leader Benito Mussolini. He donated wolf statues to other towns in the U.S. with some connection to Rome, however faint, such as a town in Georgia by the name of Rome. The Cincinnati connection was the name of the city and the Roman military leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. The statue was modeled after the so-called Capitoline Wolf, thus named as the original is housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, Italy. The date of the original statue is uncertain. Some scholars claim it to be Etruscan from the 5th-4th centuries BCE; others that it is early medieval from the 10th-11th centuries. Other dates have also been suggested. What seems clear is that the nursing twins are additions from the Renaissance (probably late 15th c.).

The statue depicts the story of the twins, Romulus and Remus, who according to folklore, were left on the flooded banks of the Tiber River by their cruel uncle who had taken the throne from their grandfather. They were saved from starvation when a mother wolf heard their cries and supplied them with milk. A shepherd and his wife later found the boys and raised them. Eventually, the twins learned their true identity, forced their uncle from the throne and reinstated their grandfather. Romulus and Remus then built a new capital city, Rome, in the valley where they were found.