REMORIA
a locality connected with the Remus legend. According to
what is probably the earliest form of the tradition (
Dionys. i. 85; orig.
gent. Rom. 23), it was a hill near the Tiber, five miles down stream from
the Palatine, where Remus wished to build the future city, and where
he was buried (
Dionys. i. 87). The same tradition is preserved in Festus
(276):
Remurinus ager dictus quia possessus est a Remo, et habitatio
Remi Remona, where Remona is only a variant for Remoria.
Uncertainty as to the place where Remus took the auspices is seen
in the words of Festus, following those just quoted:
sed et locus in
summo Aventino Remoria dicitur, ubi Remus de urbe condenda fuerat
auspicatus, and in Dionysius (i. 86), where we read that some believed
the Aventine was the place appointed, others the Remoria.
Finally, in Plutarch's version (Rom. 9, 11), the highest part of the
Aventine is the auguraculum and burial place of Remus, but under
the names
῾Ρεμώνιον, ῾Ρεμώνια, or,'as it is now called,'
῾Ριγνάριον(HJ 174).
Whatever the connection between these variants may be, in historical
times Remoria was a part of the eastern Aventine near S. Balbina, and
was apparently identified with Saxum, 'The Rock,' the spot where
Remus took the auspices (Cic. de domo 136; Ov.
Fast. v. 148-150; cf.
BONA DEA SUBSAXANA).
See HJ 181-182;
Gilb. ii. 201-204;
Glotta i. 293-294; Hermes,
1881, 15-17; Merlin 108-109, and literature cited there;
BC 1914, 344-345; CIL 10. 971=vi. 566=30794.
