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The Ficus Ruminalis was a wild ficus tree that had religious and Roman mythology significance in ancient Rome. It stood near the small cave known as the Lupercal at the foot of the Palatine Hill and was the spot where according to tradition the floating makeshift cradle of Romulus and Remus landed on the banks of the Tiber River. There they were nurtured by the she-wolf and discovered by Faustulus. Livy, I.4 Varro, De lingua latina 5.54; Pliny, Natural History 15.77; Plutarch, Life of Romulus 4.1; Servius, note to Aeneid 8.90; Festus 332–333 (edition of Lindsay). The tree was sacred to Rumina, one of the birth and childhood deities, who protected breastfeeding in humans and animals.Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 151. St. Augustine mentions a Jupiter Ruminus.Augustine, De Civitate Dei 7.11, as cited by Arthur Bernard Cook, "The European Sky-God, III: The Italians," Folklore 16.3 (1905), p. 301.
The Augustan historian Livy says that the tree still stood in his day,Livy 1.4: ubi nunc ficus Ruminalis est. but his younger contemporary Ovid observes only vestigia, "traces,"Ovid, Fasti 2.411. perhaps the stump.Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, p. 151. A textually problematic passage in PlinyPliny, Natural History 15.77. seems to suggest that the tree was miraculously transplanted by the augur Attus Navius to the Comitium. This fig tree, however, was the Ficus Navia, so called for the augur. Tacitus refers to the Ficus Navia as the Arbor Ruminalis, an identification that suggests it had replaced the original Ficus Ruminalis, either symbolically after the older tree's demise, or literally, having been cultivated as an offshoot. The Ficus Navia grew from a spot that had been struck by lightning and was thus regarded as sacred.Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, p. 150. Pliny's obscure reference may be to the statue of Attus Navius in front of the Curia Hostilia:Festus 168–170 (Lindsay); Dionysius of Halicarnassus 3.71.5. he stood with his lituus raised in an attitude that connected the Ficus Navia and the accompanying representation of the she-wolf to the Ficus Ruminalis, "as if" the tree had crossed from one space to the other.Richardson, Topographical Dictionary, pp. 150–151. When the Ficus Navia drooped, it was taken as a bad omen for Rome. When it died, it was replaced.Pliny, Natural History 15.77. In 58 AD, it withered, but then revived and put forth new shoots.Tacitus, Annales 13.58.
In the archaeology of the Comitium, several irregular stone-lined shafts in rows, dating from Roman Republic phases of pavement, may have been apertures to preserve venerable trees during rebuilding programs. Pliny mentions other sacred trees in the Forum Romanum, with two additional figs. One fig was removed with a great deal of ritual fuss because its roots had undermined a statue of Silvanus. A relief on the Plutei of Trajan depicts Marsyas the satyr, whose statue stood in the Comitium, next to a fig tree that is placed on a plinth, as if it too were a sculpture. It is unclear whether this representation means that sacred trees might be replaced with artificial or pictorial ones. The apertures were paved over in the time of Augustus, an event that may explain Ovid's vestigia.Rabun Taylor, "Roman Oscilla: An Assessment," in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 48 (2005), pp. 91–92. Taylor conjectures that oscilla were hung from such trees.
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