ACCA LARENZIA. — According to various ancient authors, but chiefly Macrobius, she was a woman who lived in the time of Anco Marcio. The guardian of the temple of Hercules is said one day to have invited the god to play dice, on the condition that the loser would offer the winner a dinner and a woman. The god won, and is said to have spent the night in the temple with A. L.; in gratitude, he warned the woman not to let slip the first opportunity that presented itself to her upon leaving: that was his gift. And indeed a wealthy Etruscan, Taruzio, struck by her beauty, is said to have married her and shortly afterward left her heir to great riches. A. L., for her part, when she died, left the Roman people as her heir; and the king ordered that funeral sacrifices be performed annually at her tomb in the Velabrum, near the Via Nova. The sacrifices, which took the name of Larentalia (v.) or Larentialia, were held on 23 December by the pontiffs and the Quirinal flamen.
From this popular and evidently very ancient legend, since it is connected with a tomb situated in the locality closest to the primitive center of the city and associated with land owned by the State, one must distinguish other legendary details of clearly learned origin. It was desired to make A. L. the wife of Faustolo and the nurse of Romolo and Remo, and thus to explain rationalistically the legend of the peculiar suckling of the two twins (lupa in fact also means prostitute). Then, when one of her own children had died, she is said to have adopted Romolo in his place and established the college of the Fratres Arvales; finally, when she died, she is said to have left Romolo heir to her possessions, inherited from Taruzio, whom she had married in a second union.
Various hypotheses have been advanced to explain the figure of A. L. symbolically, but each of them encounters the gravest difficulties. Thus, after so much learned wandering, it seems wiser to return to the starting point and be content with what the ancients believed: namely, that A. L. was simply a real courtesan—perhaps living a couple of centuries later than Anco Marcio—who, having no relatives, wished to leave her possessions to the State on the condition that funeral rites be celebrated at her tomb, in accordance with a very common custom in all periods and especially in antiquity.