Benefactor of Rome
Another tradition holds that Larentia was a beautiful girl of notorious reputation, roughly the same age as Romulus and Remus, during the reign of Ancus Marcius in the 7th century BC. She was awarded to Hercules as a prize in a game of dice, and locked in his temple with his other prize, a feast. When the god no longer had need of her, he advised her to marry the first wealthy man she met, who turned out to be an Etruscan named Carutius (or Tarrutius, according to Plutarch). Larentia later inherited all his property and bequeathed it to the Roman people. Ancus, in gratitude for this, allowed her to be buried in the Velabrum, and instituted an annual festival, the Larentalia, at which sacrifices were offered to the Lares. Plutarch explicitly states that this Laurentia was a different person from the Laurentia who was married to Faustulus, although other writers, such as Licinius Macer, relate their stories as belonging to the same being.
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Famous quotes containing the words benefactor and/or rome:
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)