Hersilia
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In Roman mythology, Hersilia was a figure in the foundation myth of Rome. She is credited with ending the war between Rome and the Sabines.
Battle of the Lacus Curtius
[edit]In some accounts she is the wife of Romulus, the founder and first king of Rome in Rome's founding myths. She is described as such in both Livy and Plutarch; but in Dionysius, Macrobius, and another tradition recorded by Plutarch, she was instead the wife of Hostus Hostilius, a Roman champion at the time of Romulus.<ref>Dionysius, iii. 1.</ref> This would make her the grandmother of Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome.
Livy tells this tale in his work Ab urbe condita:
Just like her husband (who became the god Quirinus), she was deified after her death as Hora Quirini, as recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses:
Very little concrete information is known about the deity Hora Quirini. According to Georg Wissowa, Ovid created the story of Hersilia's apotheosis into Hora Quirini.<ref>Wissowa, Georg. Gesammelte Abhandlungen Zur Römischen Religions-Und Stadtgeschichte: Ergänzungsband Zu Des Verfassers’ Religion Und Kultus Der Römer’. CH Beck, 1904</ref> On the other hand, T.P. Wiseman argues that the story comes from an earlier Greek source.<ref>Wiseman, T. P. “The Wife and Children of Romulus.” The Classical Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1983): 445–52.</ref>