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They say that his name was Faustulus; and that they were carried by him to his homestead and given to his wife Larentia to be brought up. Some are of the opinion that Larentia was called Lupa among the shepherds from her being a common prostitute, and hence an opening was afforded for the marvellous story.
Certain mysterious female deities, Tarpeia, Acca Larentia, Carna, and Laverna, of whom late ætiological myth had its own explanation, have, in all probability, been rightly interpreted by Mommsen as divinities of the lower world: the commemorative 'sacrifice at the tomb, which we hear of in connection with the first two, was in reality, we may suppose, an offering to a chthonic deity at a mundus.
Others derive the name from velum, a sail; because the exhibitors of public shows used to hang the road that leads from the forum to the Circus Maximus with sails, beginning at this spot. Upon these accounts the second Larentia is honored at Rome.
The Larentalia is a very mysterious occasion, and was supposed by the Romans themselves to be an offering 'at the tomb' of a legendary Acca Larentia, mistress of Hercules. But we have seen reason to think that Larentia was in reality a deity of the dead, and the 'tomb' a mundus: if so, we have another link between the winter season and the worship of the underworld.
He received Larentia, and loved her well, and at his death left her sole heir of all his large and fair possessions, most of which she, in her last will and testament, bequeathed to the people.
In a short time the children were rescued from their exposed situation by a shepherd, who is called Faustulus, and may or may not have been the same with the Faustulus by whom they had been exposed. Faustulus carried the children to his hut; and there the maternal attentions of the wolf and the woodpecker were replaced by those of the shepherd's wife. Her name was Larentia.
Wishing to pay his stakes honorably, and holding himself bound by what he had said, he both provided the deity a good supper, and, giving money to Larentia, then in her beauty, though not publicly known, gave her a feast in the temple, where he had also laid a bed, and after supper locked her in, as if the god were really to come to her.
Others think that the first rise of this fable came from the children's nurse, through the ambiguity of her name; for the Latins not only called wolves lupae, but also women of loose life; and such an one was the wife of Faustulus, who nurtured these children, Acca Larentia by name.
They honor also another Larentia, for the following reason: the keeper of Hercules's temple having, it seems, little else to do, proposed to his deity a game at dice, laying down that, if he himself won, he would have something valuable of the god; but if he were beaten, he would spread him a noble table, and procure him a fair lady's company.
It was reported of her, being now celebrated and esteemed the mistress of a god, that she suddenly disappeared near the place where the first Larentia lay buried; the spot is at this day called Velabrum, because, the river frequently overflowing, they went over in ferry-boats somewhere hereabouts to the forum, the Latin word for ferrying being velatura.
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