The original version of the story of Romulus and Remus, as told by the most ancient Roman annalist, Fabius Pictor, is rendered as follows by Mommsen.[55] “_The twins_ borne by Ilia, daughter of the preceding king Numitor, _from the embrace of the war god Mars were condemned by King Amulius, the present ruler of Alba, to be cast into the river_. The king’s servants took the children and carried them from Alba as far as the Tiber on the Palatine Hill; but when they tried to descend the hill to the river, to carry out the command, they found that the river had risen, and they were unable to reach its bed. The tub with the children was therefore thrust by them into the shallow water at the shore. _It floated_ for a while; _but the water promptly receded_, and _knocking against a stone, the tub capsized_, and the screaming infants were upset into the river mud. _They were heard by a she-wolf who had just brought forth and had her udders full of milk; she came and gave her teats to the boys, to nurse them_, and as they were drinking she licked them clean with her tongue. Above them flew a woodpecker, which guarded the children, and also carried food to them. The father was providing for his sons: for the wolf and the woodpecker are animals consecrated to father Mars. This was seen by one of the royal herdsmen, who was driving his pigs back to the pasture from which the water had receded. Startled by the spectacle, he summoned his mates, who found the she-wolf attending like a mother to the children, and the children treated her as their mother. The men made a loud noise to scare the animal away; but the wolf was not afraid; she left the children, but not from fear; slowly, without heeding the herdsmen, she disappeared into the wilderness of the forest, at the holy site of Faunus, where the water gushes from a gully of the mountain. Meanwhile the men picked up the boys and carried them to the chief swineherd of the king, Faustulus, for they believed that the gods did not wish the children to perish. _But the wife of Faustulus had just given birth to a dead child, and was full of sorrow. Her husband gave her the twins, and she nursed them; the couple raised the children, and named them Romulus and Remus._ After Rome had been founded, later on, King Romulus built himself a house not far from the place where his tub had stood. The gully in which the she-wolf had disappeared has been known since that time as the Wolf’s Gully, the Lupercal. The image in ore of the she-wolf with the twins[56] was subsequently erected at this spot, and the she-wolf herself, the Lupa, was worshipped by the Romans as a divinity. The Romulus saga later on underwent manifold transmutations, mutilations, additions, and interpretations.[57] It is best known in the form transmitted by Livy (I, 3 et seq.), where we learn something about the antecedents and subsequent fate of the twins.