The bronze statue of Lupa (the she-wolf), symbol of Rome, and the twins Romulus and Remus, founders of the Eternal City, stands in Rome's Capitoline Museums. PLINIO LEPRI/ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place

Ancient Rome's she-wolf statue not so ancient?

Date published: 7/12/2008

By FRANCES D'EMILIO

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ROME

For centuries, the she-wolf has been one of Rome's most powerful symbols. But now some experts are contending that the bronze statue in a city museum atop Capitoline Hill might not be so old after all.

New theories suggest that the statue dates from the Middle Ages, and not from Etruscan times, as has long been held.

"It's decisively medieval," said Anna Maria Carruba, a researcher who studied the statue when she worked on its restoration a decade ago. "As I went ahead with my research, I was ever more sure," Carruba said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

While medieval might sound old to modern ears, if Carruba is correct the statue would be more than 1,000 years younger than had been thought--from the seventh or eighth century, or even later, instead of Etruscan times.

The Capitoline Museums Web site says the statue, known as Lupa, or she-wolf, is from the fifth century B.C. and was donated to the museum in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV.

Added separately, in the early 1500s, were the bronze figures of Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome who legend says were abandoned on the Tiber River's banks and survived by being nursed by the she-wolf.

The 30-inch-high bronze is the centerpiece of a museum room named after it, and postcards and T-shirts with its image are popular Rome souvenirs. Mussolini used the image in his regime's propaganda pushing for a return to ancient Roman glories.

In a front-page article this week in Rome daily La Repubblica, Adriano La Regina, who for decades headed the national archaeological office for Rome, suggested that the Capitoline Museums was reluctant to release test results indicating the bronze was medieval.

"The new information about the epoch of the Capitoline bronze have been held back for about a year now from the public and experts," La Regina wrote.

With the future--or rather, the past--of one of the city-run Capitoline Museums' star pieces at stake, museums director Claudio Parisi Presicce insisted that his institution wasn't trying to hide data that could subtract centuries from the she-wolf's existence.

Carruba said carbon dating of bits of dirt and clay indicate the statue was cast in the seventh or eighth century. She also claimed the techniques of casting such a bronze work were developed in medieval times.

Her theory has skeptics.

Alessandro Naso, an expert on the Etruscans at the University of Molise, contended that Carruba's "concluding that it isn't ancient is based on indirect proof."

"Leaving aside the point of pride" about Rome's symbol, "arguments for the medieval are weak," Naso said by phone Thursday.

Archaeologist Nicoletta Pagliardi was also cautious about Carruba's theory. Lupa's origins "are really uncertain," she said in a phone interview.

Pagliardi said the statue would have likely been "manhandled" over many centuries, and so carbon dating might be testing substances that contaminated the bronze long after its creation.

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Date published: 7/12/2008