Dioscuri (Castor & Pollux)

At the top of the Capitoline Hill, the smallest of the seven hills of Rome, is the Campidoglio, a piazza designed by Michelangelo. The stairway leading to the top is flanked by a pair of restored classical statues of Castor and Pollux, gods of ancient Greece and Rome. They were the twin sons of Leda, and brothers of Helen (of Troy) and Clytemnestra. In the myth the twins shared the same mother but had different fathers, which meant that Pollux was immortal and Castor was mortal. When Castor died, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together and they were transformed into the Gemini constellation.