Roman historical sources provide conflicting information about the exact location of Remoria. While some sources place it on the peak of the
Aventine, others place it on a hill near the
Tiber, at a distance of either 5
Roman miles or 30
stadia downstream from the
Palatine hill. Later generations of historians have used literary and archaeological evidence to build a hypothesis that places Remoria on the left bank of the Tiber, further south of the city. During their study on the walls of Rome, the archaeologists
Antonio Nibby and
William Gell placed the site on the location of the
Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in the
Ostiense quarter. In a 2003 essay, the archaeologist and historian
Filippo Coarelli notes that the legendary figures of Romulus and Remus, first appearing in the historical record no earlier than the 4th century BC, were substituted into an earlier myth of the founding of Rome by the
Lares, twelve sons of the deity
Acca Larentia (etymologically,
Mother of the Lares). Remus represents the
Roman plebs, thus explaining his traditional association with the Aventine hill, where the plebs staged a
secession in 449 BC. By combining the figurative location of Remoria at a place associated with the plebs and the literal location at a distance of 5 miles from the ancient city (a symbolic number representing the limit of the archaic
ager romanus) on the banks of the Tiber, Coarelli argues that the location of Remoria is in the sacred grove of the goddess
Dea Dia near the
Via Campana, in the present-day zone of
Magliana on the right bank of the Tiber. During the
Kingdom and early
Republic, the grove was an important site for auspication and
haruspication in the care of the
Arval Brethren, a college of priests tracing their descent from Romulus and the sons of Acca Larentia. In this view, Romulus and Remus represent the dichotomy between the
Urbs (city) dominated by the patricians and the
Arva (farmlands) dominated by the plebeians. == References ==