e arch of Severus, it may have been one
of the images which Orosius[645] says was thrown down in the Forum by
lightning when Alaric took the city. That it is of very high antiquity
the workmanship is a decisive proof; and that circumstance induced
Winckelmann to believe it the wolf of Dionysius. The Capitoline wolf,
however, may have been of the same early date as that at the temple of
Romulus. Lactantius[646] asserts that in his time the Romans worshipped
a wolf; and it is known that the Lupercalia held out to a very late
period[647] after every other observance of the ancient superstition
had totally expired. This may account for the preservation of the
ancient image longer than the other early symbols of Paganism.

It may be permitted, however, to remark, that the wolf was a Roman
symbol, but that the worship of that symbol is an inference drawn by the
zeal of Lactantius. The early Christian writers are not to be trusted in
the charges which they make against the Pagans. Eusebius accused the
Romans to their faces of worshipping Simon Magus, and raising a statue
to him in the island of the Tyber. The Romans had probably never heard
of such a person before, who came, however, to play a considerable,
though scandalous part in the church history, and has left several
tokens of his aerial combat with St. Peter at Rome; notwithstanding that
an inscription found in this very island of the Tyber showed the Simon
Magus of Eusebius to be a certain indigenal god called Semo Sangus or
Fidius.[648]

Even when the worship of the founder of Rome had been abandoned it was
thought expedient to humour the habits of the good matrons of the city,
by sending them with their sick infants to the church of Saint Theodore,
as they had before carried them to the temple of Romulus.[649] The
practice is continued to this day; and the site of the above church
seems to be thereby identified with that of the temple; so that if the
wolf had been really found there, as Winckelmann says, there would be no
doubt of the present statue being that seen by Dionysius.[650] But
Faunus, in saying that it was at the Ficus Ruminalis by the Comitium, is
only talking of its ancient position as recorded by Pliny; and, even if
he had been remarking where it was found, would not have alluded to the
church of Saint Theodore, but to a very different place, near which it
was then thought the Ficus Ruminalis had been, and also the Comitium;
that is, the three columns