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CASA ROMULI

the house of Romulus on the south-west corner of the Palatine hill, near the top of the scalae Caci, represented by a hut of straw with a thatched roof, that was regarded with great veneration and restored, whenever injured by fire, in the same style (Dionys. i. 79; Plut. Rom. 20; Cass. Dio xlviii. 43; liv. 29; JRS 1914, 196; TF 105). No exact identification with any existing remains is possible.1 It was perhaps the same as the tugurium Faustuli that is mentioned once (Solin. i. 18), and was preserved at least to the fourth century (Not. Reg. X; Hieron. praef. in libr. Didymi de Spiritu Sancto ii. 105, ed. Vallars.). An ' aedes Romuli ' occurs in the list of the Argei (Varro v. 54: Cermalense quinticeps apud aedem Romuli), which evidently stood in some relation to the casa, and it has been conjectured that the casa may have stood within the aedes. Another casa Romuli, probably a replica of the first, stood on the Capitoline hill, perhaps in the area Capitolina (Vitr. ii. 1. 5; Sen. Contr. ii. 1. 4; Conon, Narr. 48, where it is called Καλύβητις . . . γνώρισμα τῆς φαυστύλου διαίτης ἥν ἐκ φορυτῶν καὶ νέων φραγάϝων συνιστῶντες διασώζουσιϝ), but we know nothing of this after the year 78 A.D. (dipl. mil. a. 78, Rom.-Germ. Centralmuseum v. 181; Jord. i. 2. 51; Rodocanachi, Capitole 44; HJ 39; RE iii. 1633, vi. 2091). (See AUGURACULUM, with which one view identifies it; DAP 2. xii. 150-153.)

1 It is suggested (ZA 174) that it may have perpetuated the memory of the existence of actual huts, traces of which were found in the excavations of 1907 (see p. 377). TF 104, 105 identifies it with what is more generally believed to be the fifth sacrarium of the Argei (see p. 53).

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78 AD (1)
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