Roman In Roman mythology wolves are mainly associated to Mars, god of war and agriculture. The Capitoline Wolf nurses Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars and future founders of Rome. The twin babies were ordered to be killed by their great uncle Amulius. The servant ordered to kill them, however, relented and placed the two on the banks of the Tiber river. The river, which was in flood, rose and gently carried the cradle and the twins downstream, where under the protection of the river deity Tiberinus, they would be adopted by a she-wolf known as Lupa in Latin, an animal sacred to Mars. As a consequence, the Italian wolf is the national animal of the modern Italian Republic. In Antiquity, the she-wolf was identified as a symbol of Rome by both the Romans themselves and nations under the Roman rule. The Lupa Romana was an iconic scene that represented in the first place the idea of romanitas, being Roman. When it was used in the Roman Provinces, it can be seen as an expression of loyalty to Rome and the emperor. The treatment given to wolves differed from the treatment meted out to other large predators. The Romans generally seem to have refrained from intentionally harming wolves. For instance, they were not hunted for pleasure (but only in order to protect herds that were out at pasture), and not displayed in the venationes, either. The special status of the wolf was not based on national ideology, but rather was connected to the religious importance of the wolf to the Romans. The comedian Plautus used the image of wolves to ponder the cruelty of man as a wolf unto man. "Lupus" (Wolf) was used as a Latin first name and as a Roman cognomen. Slavic The Slavic languages share a term for "werewolf" derived from a Common Slavic vuko-dlak "wolf-furr". The wolf as a mythological creature is greatly linked to Balkan and Serbian mythology and cults. It has an important part in Serbian mythology. In the Slavic, old Serbian religion and mythology, the wolf was used as a totem. In the Serbian epic poetry, the wolf is a symbol of fearlessness. Vuk Karadžić, 19th-century Serbian philologist and ethnographer, explained the traditional, apotropaic use of the name Vuk ("wolf"): a woman who had lost several babies in succession, would name her newborn son Vuk, because it was believed that the witches,