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BackStory

Capitoline She-Wolf Statue - Controversial or cute?

A Secret Cincinnati secret was recently the subject of some controversy in Cincinnati as a member of Cincinnati's City Council threatened to pursue its removal from Eden Park: https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/wolf-in-sheeps-clothing-councilman-wants-eden-park-statue-to-be-relocated.

 

Here's the story behind the secret

 

Why did an Italian dictator gift Cincinnati with a statue
based on a symbol from Roman mythology?

 

What a statue it is! The Capitoline She-Wolf Statue. Poised
on a marble pedestal in a serene and shaded area at Eden
Park's Twin Lakes overlook is a bronze she-wolf with thick neck
and benign expression suckling two babies. And they're not
mere ordinary babies, but Romulus and Remus, of founders
of Rome fame, according to mythology, the very twin babies
abandoned as infants on the banks of the Tiber River and
saved by the she-wolf.

 

The original, an ancient Etruscan statue that dates back
to the Middle Ages, is in Rome's Capitoline Museums, which
explains the name. Cincinnati's statue is of a more recent
vintage. It was gifted to the city in 1932 by the City of Rome
through an arrangement by the Sons of Italy and courtesy of
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The creator of the Fascist
Party, executed in 1945, wanted to mark the tenth year of
his regime. . .

 

To learn the rest of the story, pick up a copy of Secret Cincinnati.

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