The blacksmith and the prince. Mamurius Veturius and the political use of myth in the religious restoration of Augustus

Abstract

The interpretation of the Mamuralia, the feast celebrated on 14/15 March to ritually commemorate the expulsion from Rome of Mamurius Veturius, the blacksmith who made the eleven copies of the ancile given by Jupiter to Numa as pignus imperii, is complex.  Through the analysis of the literary, epigraphic, topographical, and iconographic sources of the festival, the article aims to place the process of elaborating the myth of Mamurius in the political-ideological context of Augustan religious restoration from a cultural-historical point of view.