Book 2

1.1. The city of Rome lies in the western part of Italy upon the river Tiber, which empties into the sea at about the middle of the coast, and it is distant a hundred and twenty stades from the Tyrrhenian Sea. The first of its recorded occupants were certain barbarians, natives of the soil, called Sicels, who had held many other regions of Italy as well, and of whom not a few memorials, by no means obscure, have lasted down to our own times, among them certain place-names said to be Sicel, which betoken their ancient habitation there.

1.2. These the Aborigines drove out and themselves held the place, being descendants of the Oenotrians, who dwelt along the coast from Tarentum as far as Posidonia. This was a sacred band of youths consecrated to the gods, sent forth, it is said, according to the native custom by their fathers to occupy whatever land the divine power should grant them. The race of the Oenotrians was Arcadian, coming out of the country then called Lycaonia but now Arcadia, having gone forth of their own will in quest of a better land, with Oenotrus, the son of Lycaon, as leader of the colony,

1.3. from whom the nation took its appellation. While the Aborigines held the country, the first to become their fellow-settlers were the Pelasgians, wanderers from the land then called Haemonia but now Thessaly, in which they had dwelt for some time; and after the Pelasgians came Arcadians out of the city of Pallantium, who, making Evander their leader of the colony — a son of Hermes and the nymph Themis — built their town beside one of the seven hills which lies very nearly in the middle of Rome, naming the place Pallantium after their fatherland in Arcadia.

1.4. Not many years afterward, when Hercules came down into Italy, at the time he was leading his army home from Erytheia, a certain part of his force, Greek in race, was left behind and settled near Pallantium, beside another of the hills now built into the city, which was then called the Saturnian hill by the natives but is now called the Capitoline by the Romans. The greater number of these were Epeans who had been driven out of the city of Elis after their fatherland had been laid waste by Hercules.

2.1. In the sixteenth generation after the Trojan War the Albans joined both these places in one settlement, enclosing them with a wall and a ditch. Until then they had been folds for cattle and sheep and lodging-places for the other herdsmen, since the soil there yielded abundant grass, not only the winter pasture but the summer pasture as well, owing to the rivers that cool and water it.

2.2. The race of the Albans was a mixed one, drawn from the Pelasgians, the Arcadians, and the Epeans who had come from Elis, and last of all from the Trojans who came into Italy after the capture of Ilium, whom Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Aphrodite, led. It is likely that some barbarian element also, surviving from the neighbouring peoples or the ancient inhabitants, was mingled with the Greek. All these together were called by the common name of Latins, after a man named Latinus who had ruled over those places, the names belonging to their several nations being taken from them.

2.3. The city, then, was walled by these peoples in the four hundred and thirty-second year after the capture of Ilium, in the seventh Olympiad. Those who led out the colony were twin brothers of the royal line: the name of the one was Romulus, of the other Remus. On the mother's side they were descended from Aeneas and were of Dardanian stock; but as to their father it is not easy to say with certainty from whom they were sprung, though they are believed by the Romans to have been the sons of Ares.

2.4. Yet they did not both continue as leaders of the colony, for they fell into strife over the sovereignty; and the survivor, Romulus, the other having perished in the battle, became the founder of the city and gave it a name derived from his own. The number of those who shared the colony with him, out of the great multitude originally sent forth, was small, namely three thousand foot and three hundred horse.

3.1. When, therefore, their ditch was finished, their rampart completed, and the houses had received their necessary appointments, and the occasion demanded that they should also consider what order of government they would use, Romulus called an assembly of the people, at the prompting of his maternal grandfather, who had instructed him in what he ought to say. The city, he declared, was for a newly founded one sufficiently adorned with both public and private buildings; but he asked them all to bear in mind that these were not the things of greatest worth in cities.

3.2. For neither in foreign wars, he said, were deep ditches and high ramparts able to afford those within an untroubled confidence of safety, but guaranteed one thing only — that they should suffer no harm from a sudden inroad of enemies, being caught unprepared; nor, when civil disturbances seized the commonwealth, did any man find in his own house and dwelling a refuge free from danger.

3.3. For these things, he said, were devised as consolations for men's leisure and ease of life; with them neither is the man who plots against his neighbours prevented from being wicked, nor does he who is plotted against gain confidence that he stands beyond danger; and no city that has been made resplendent by such things has ever become happy and great for any long time, nor, on the other hand, has any been hindered from becoming great and happy because it failed to obtain a costly private and public outfit. Rather there were other things that preserve cities and make them great out of small:

3.4. in foreign wars, mastery through arms — and this comes about by daring and by training; and in civil disturbances, concord among those who take part in public affairs — and this, he declared, the temperate and just life of each citizen was most able to furnish to the commonwealth.

3.5. Those, then, who both practise the arts of war and master their desires best adorn their own fatherlands, and it is they who provide walls impregnable for the commonwealth and dwellings secure for their own lives. But valiant and just men, who cultivate the other virtues as well, are produced by the form of the constitution, when wise men have established it; whereas men soft, grasping, and slaves to base desires are made to carry out wicked practices

3.6. by an ill constitution. And he said he had heard from his elders, men versed in much inquiry, that many colonies, great and arriving in prosperous regions, had — some of them — perished at once by falling into factions, while others, holding out for a little while, were forced to become subject to their neighbours and, in exchange for the better land they had held, to take up the worse fortune, becoming slaves instead of free; while still others, few in number and coming into regions not at all desirable, continued first free and then rulers over others. And of neither the good fortune of the few nor the misfortune of the many was any cause other than the form of the constitution.

3.7. If, then, there had been among all mankind a single ordering of life that makes cities happy, the choice of it would not have been hard for them; but as it was, he said, he learned that there were many constitutions in use among both Greeks and barbarians, and that he heard three of them all most praised by those who employed them — yet that none of these constitutions was unmixed, but that to each were attached certain inborn banes, so that the choice among them was hard. And he asked them, after taking counsel at leisure, to declare whether they wished to be ruled by one man, or by a few, or to establish laws and entrust the management of common affairs to all.

3.8. "And I," he said, "am ready for whatever constitution you may establish, and I neither think myself unworthy to rule nor refuse to be ruled. As for the honours you have conferred upon me — appointing me first leader of the colony, and then giving the city its name from mine — these are enough for me. For these neither foreign war nor civil strife nor time, that withers all fair things, shall take from me, nor any other spiteful fortune; but both while I live and when I have departed from life it shall be mine to enjoy these honours through all the rest of the ages."

4.1. Such was the speech that Romulus, recalling it from the instruction of his maternal grandfather, as I have said, delivered before the multitude. And they, after taking counsel among themselves, made answer thus: "We have no need of any new constitution; but having received from our fathers the one approved as best, we do not change it, both following the judgment of our forebears, who, we think, established it out of a greater wisdom, and being well content with our fortune. For we could not reasonably find fault with this fortune, which, while we were under kings, has furnished us with the greatest of the goods that fall to men — liberty, and dominion over others.

4.2. Concerning the constitution, then, this is our resolve; but this honour we judge to belong to no one more than to you, both for the sake of your royal lineage and of your valour, and most of all because we have had you as leader of the colony and have come to know in you great ability and great wisdom, learning it by deed no less than by word." When Romulus heard this, he said he was well pleased to have been judged by men worthy of kingship; yet that he would not accept the honour until the divine power also should sanction it by favourable omens.

5.1. And when this too was according to their wish, having appointed a day on which he meant to seek a sign from heaven concerning the rule, then, when the time came, he rose about dawn and went forth from his tent. Standing in the open in a clear space and having offered the customary preliminary sacrifices, he prayed to Jupiter the king and to the other gods whom he had made leaders of the colony that, if it was their will that the city be ruled by him as king, fair signs might appear in the heavens.

5.2. After the prayer a flash of lightning passed across from the left to the right. Now the Romans hold lightning that passes from left to right to be auspicious, whether they were taught this by the Tyrrhenians or were led to it by their fathers — for some such reason, as I am persuaded, as this: that the best seat and posture for those who divine by birds is the one facing east, whence come the risings of the sun and the moon and of the planets and the fixed stars, and the revolution of the universe, by which all that is in it comes now to be above the earth and now below it, beginning thence accomplishes its circular motion.

5.3. And to those who face the east, the parts that turn toward the Bear are on the left, and those that lead toward the south are on the right; and the former are by nature held in higher honour than the latter. For the pole of the axis, about which the revolution of the universe takes place, is raised up from the northern parts, and of the five circles that gird the sphere the one called arctic is always visible on this side; while on the southern side the one called antarctic is depressed and invisible in that quarter.

5.4. It is likely, then, that those celestial and aerial signs are most powerful which come from the most powerful quarter; and since the parts turned toward the east have a more sovereign portion than the western, and of the eastern themselves the northern are higher than the southern, these would be the most powerful.

5.5. But as some relate, from of old, and before they learned it from the Tyrrhenians, lightning from the left was held auspicious by the ancestors of the Romans. For when Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, at the time he was being warred upon and besieged by the Tyrrhenians, whom King Mezentius led, was about to make his last sortie — which, despairing now of his affairs, he was about to undertake — and with lamentation was beseeching Jupiter and the other gods to give favourable signs for the sortie, the sky, they say, though it was clear, flashed with lightning from the left. And as that contest had the most fortunate of issues, this sign continued to be reckoned auspicious among his descendants.

6.1. At that time, then, Romulus, when he had received firm assurance from the divine power, called the people together into assembly, and having declared the oracles, was appointed king by them; and he established it as a custom for all who came after him to take neither kingship nor magistracies unless the divine power also sanctioned it for them; and this usage concerning the taking of auspices continued long to be observed by the Romans, not only while the city was under kings, but also, after the abolition of the monarchs, in the election of consuls and praetors and the

6.2. other magistrates appointed according to the laws. It has ceased, however, in our own times, save that there is left a kind of image of it for religion's sake. For those who are about to take the magistracies pass the night in the open, and rising about dawn make certain prayers in the open air; and some of the augurs present, who draw their pay from the public treasury, declare to them that lightning has appeared from the left — which has not

6.3. appeared. And they, taking the omen from this utterance, depart to assume their offices, some supposing this very thing to be sufficient — that there has been no contrary or hindering omen — others doing so even against the will of the god who forbids; for there are times when they force the matter and seize their offices rather than take them.

6.4. Through such men many armies of the Romans have perished utterly on land, and many fleets have been destroyed with all their crews at sea, and other great and dreadful reverses have befallen the city, some in foreign wars, others in civil dissensions; but the most conspicuous and greatest occurred in my own day, when Licinius Crassus, a man second to none of the commanders of his time, led an army against the Parthian nation, the divine power opposing, and bidding a long farewell to the countless omens that turned him from the expedition. But concerning the contempt of the divine which some men show in our times, it would be a long task to speak.

7.1. Romulus, then, having been thus appointed king both by men and by gods, is agreed to have been formidable in war and a lover of danger, and most prudent in setting forth the best constitution. I shall recount his deeds, both the civil and the military, such as one might make matter of record in a historical narrative.

7.2. First I shall speak of the order of his constitution, which I hold to be the most self-sufficient of all political orders, both in peace and in war. It was of this kind. Having divided the whole multitude into three parts, he set over each of the divisions the most distinguished man as leader. Then, dividing each of the three parts again into ten parts, he appointed equal leaders of these also, the bravest men; and he called the larger divisions tribes and the smaller curiae, as they are still named in our day.

7.3. These names, rendered into the Greek tongue, would be: the tribe, phyle and trittys; the curia, phratra and lochos. And of the men, those holding the leadership of the tribes were phylarchs and trittyarchs, whom the Romans call tribunes; while those set over the curiae were phratriarchs and lochagoi, whom they name curiones.

7.4. The phratrae were also divided by him into decads, and a leader ordered each decad, called a decurion in the native tongue. When all had been distinguished and arranged into tribes and phratrae, he divided the land into thirty equal lots and assigned one lot to each phratra, having set apart what sufficed for shrines and sacred precincts and having also left some land for the commonwealth. This was one division made by Romulus, of both the men and the land, the one that embraces the common and greatest equality, of such a kind as this.

8.1. But there was another division of the men themselves, the one that distributes privileges and honours according to merit, which I am about to describe. Those distinguished by birth, praised for their virtue, and well off in money — as wealth went in those days — and who already had children, he separated from the obscure, the lowly, and the poor. And those of meaner fortune he called plebeians, or, as the Greeks would say, demotics; those of the better sort he called fathers (patres), whether because they were elder than the rest, or because they had children, or because of the distinction of their birth, or for all these reasons together — taking his example, as one might conjecture, from the Athenian constitution, which still endured at that time.

8.2. For the Athenians, having divided their people into two parts, called those of the distinguished houses and powerful in money eupatrids, to whom the leadership of the city was committed, and the rest of the citizens agroikoi (countrymen), who had control of none of the public affairs; but in time

8.3. these too were admitted to the magistracies. Now those who relate the most probable account of the Roman constitution say that for these reasons those men were called fathers and their descendants patricians; but others, referring the matter to their own envy and traducing the city into ignoble birth, say that they were called patricians not for these reasons, but because they alone could point to fathers — implying that the rest were runaways and could not name free men as their fathers.

8.4. As proof of this they offer that, whenever the kings thought fit to summon the patricians, the heralds called them by name and by their father's name, whereas the commons certain attendants gathered to the assemblies all together, sounding ox-horns. But neither is the heralds' summons proof of the patricians' nobility, nor the sound of the horn a token of the commons' obscurity; rather the one was a mark of honour, the other of speed. For it was not possible in a short time to call the multitude by name.

9.1. When Romulus had thus distinguished the better from the worse, he next set about legislating and prescribing what each class ought to do. The patricians were to perform the priestly offices, to hold the magistracies, to administer justice, and to take part with him in the management of public affairs, devoting themselves to the business of the city; the plebeians were to be released from these occupations, being both unversed in them and, through lack of means, with no leisure for them, but were to farm, to raise cattle, and to ply the gainful crafts — that they might not fall into faction, as happens in other cities, either through those in office insulting the lowly or through the base and needy envying those in high place.

9.2. He entrusted the plebeians to the patricians as a charge, allowing each of the common people to choose for his protector whomever he himself wished — adopting a Greek and ancient custom, which the Thessalians long continued to use and the Athenians at the first, but turning it to better account. For those peoples treated their dependents arrogantly, laying upon them tasks unbefitting free men, and, whenever they failed to do anything commanded, scourging them and otherwise abusing them as though they were bought slaves. The Athenians called their dependents thetes, from their servitude, and the Thessalians penestae, reproaching them with their lot in the very name.

9.3. But Romulus dignified the matter with a seemly title, calling the protection of the poor and lowly patronage, and assigned wholesome functions to both, framing their associations to be humane and civic.

10.1. The customs that he then ordained concerning patronage, and that long endured among the Romans, were these. The patricians were to expound to their own dependents the laws, of which the latter had no knowledge; to take the same care of them whether present or absent, doing all that fathers do for their children in the matter of money and contracts about money; to bring suit on behalf of their dependents when wronged, if any were injured in their contracts, and to defend them against accusers; and — to say much in little — to provide them all peace, both in their private and in their public affairs, of which they had the greatest need.

10.2. The dependents were to help their patrons in marrying off their daughters, contributing to the dowry, if the fathers were short of means; to pay ransom to the enemy, if any of the patron or his children should be taken captive; to discharge from their own means the patron's private suits, if condemned, or any public penalties carrying a money fine that he incurred — not as loans, but as favours; and in his magistracies and offices of honour and the other expenditures for the public good, to share in the costs as though they were kinsmen.

10.3. And it was for both alike neither lawful nor permitted to accuse one another in lawsuits, or to bear witness against, or to cast a vote against, or to be ranked among the other's enemies. If anyone were convicted of doing any of these things, he was liable under the law of treason which Romulus enacted, and the convicted man it was lawful for anyone who wished to slay as a victim of Jupiter of the underworld. For it was a custom among the Romans, when they wished any to be slain with impunity, to devote their bodies to one or another of the gods, and chiefly to those below; which Romulus did at that time also.

10.4. And so for many generations the associations of dependents and patrons, differing in nothing from the ties of kinship, were maintained even unto their children's children; and it was matter of great praise for men of distinguished houses to have as many dependents as possible, both keeping the ancestral successions of patronage and gaining others by their own virtue. And the contest in goodwill, that neither might be outdone in kindness by the other, was extraordinary in both: the dependents thinking it right to render all service in their power to their patrons, and the patricians least of all wishing to trouble their dependents and accepting from them no gift of money. So self-controlled was their life, that they measured felicity by virtue, not by fortune.

11.1. And not only in the city itself was the common people under the protection of the patricians, but also of the cities colonized from it, and of those that had come over to it in alliance and friendship, and of those subdued in war — each had as its guardians and protectors whatever Romans it wished. And often the senate, referring the disputes of these cities and nations to those who presided over them, regarded the decisions given by the latter as binding.

11.2. So secure, indeed, was the concord of the Romans, which had taken its beginning from the customs established by Romulus, that never within six hundred and thirty years did they proceed to blood and slaughter against one another, though many great disputes arose between the people and those in office concerning public affairs, as is wont to happen in all cities, small and great alike;

11.3. but by persuading and instructing one another, yielding in some things and receiving from those who yielded in others, they settled their complaints in a civic manner. But from the time when Gaius Gracchus, in the exercise of the tribunician power, destroyed the harmony of the commonwealth, they have never ceased to slaughter one another and to drive out exiles from the city, abstaining from no extreme in the pursuit of victory. But of these matters there will be a more fitting occasion for words.

12.1. When Romulus had thus set these things in order, he resolved at once to appoint senators, with whom he was to manage the public affairs, choosing a hundred men out of the patricians. The division of them he made thus: he himself appointed one, the best out of all, to whom he thought he ought to entrust the administration of the city whenever he should lead an army beyond the borders;

12.2. and he ordered each of the tribes to choose three men, those who were then of the most prudent age and conspicuous for their birth. After these nine he again bade each phratra appoint three of the patricians, the most suitable; then, adding to the first nine appointed by the tribes the ninety whom the phratrae had selected, and making the one whom he himself had preferred their leader, he filled out the number of a hundred senators.

12.3. This council, rendered in Greek, can signify gerousia (a council of elders), and is so called by the Romans to the present day. But whether it received this appellation through the age of the men enrolled in it, or through their virtue, I cannot say with certainty; for the ancients used to call both their elders and their best men gerontes. Those who shared in the council were styled "enrolled fathers," and down to my own time they bore that appellation.

12.4. This custom too, then, was Greek. For the kings, both those who inherited their ancestral rule and those whom the people themselves set up as leaders, had a council of the best men, as Homer and the most ancient of the poets bear witness; and the dynasties of the ancient kings were not, as in our times, self-willed and ruling by their single judgment.

13.1. When he had also established the deliberative council of elders out of the hundred men, seeing — as was natural — that he would need some band of youth organized as well, to serve for the guarding of his person and for service in pressing tasks, he chose three hundred men out of the most distinguished houses, the strongest in body, whom the phratrae appointed in the same manner as the senators, each phratra ten young men; and these men he kept ever about him.

13.2. All these had the common name of celeres — as the greater number write, from the swiftness of their service (for the Romans call men ready and quick about their tasks celeres); but as Valerius of Antium says, from the name of

13.3. their leader, who bore this name. For these too had a leader, the most conspicuous, under whom were ranged three centurions, and again under them others holding subordinate commands; in the city they followed him as spearmen and servants of his orders, while on campaigns they were his champions and shield-bearers. And these for the most part won the day in battle, being first to begin the fight and last to withdraw of all the rest — as horsemen where the plain was suitable for cavalry combat, as foot where the ground was rough and unfit for horses.

13.4. This custom, it seems to me, he borrowed from the Lacedaemonians, having learned that among them too the noblest of the youth, three hundred in number, were guards of the kings, whom they used in their wars as shield-bearers, being both horsemen and foot.

14.1. Having established these things, he distinguished the honours and powers that he wished each to have. To the king, then, were reserved these prerogatives: first, to have the leadership of the rites and sacrifices, and that all the holy offices toward the gods should be performed through him; next, to keep watch over the laws and ancestral usages, to take forethought for all justice whether by nature or by compact, to judge himself the greatest crimes and to entrust the lesser to the senators, taking care that nothing irregular should occur in the trials; to convene the senate, to call together the people, to be the first to declare his opinion, and to carry out what was resolved by the majority. These prerogatives he assigned to the king, and besides these the holding of supreme command in war.

14.2. To the council of the senate he assigned honour and power of this kind: to deliberate and cast their votes upon whatever the king should bring before them, and that whatever should seem good to the majority should prevail — this too he borrowed from the Laconian constitution. For neither were the kings of the Lacedaemonians free to do whatever they wished, but the gerousia held all the power over the commonwealth.

14.3. To the common people he entrusted these three things: to elect the magistrates, to ratify the laws, and to decide concerning war, whenever the king should permit — and not even in these did they have power that was beyond challenge, unless the senate also so resolved. The people did not all vote together, but were called together by phratrae; and whatever should seem good to the majority of the phratrae was referred to the senate. In our day the custom is reversed: for the senate does not pass judgment on what the people have voted, but the people are masters of what the senate has decided. Which of the customs is the better I leave open for those who wish to consider.

14.4. From this division not only did the civil affairs receive a temperate and ordered administration, but the military also a swift and obedient one. For whenever he saw fit to lead out an army, there was then no need to appoint tribunes by tribes, or centurions by companies, or commanders of horse, or for each to be numbered off, formed into companies, and assigned his proper post; but the king gave the word to the tribunes, they to the captains, and from these the decurions, receiving it, led out each the men under his own command; and at a single word of command, whether the whole force or some portion of it was summoned, it was present, armed and ready, at the appointed place.

15.1. By these institutions, then, Romulus made the city orderly and well-arranged, sufficiently for peace and aptly for war; and great and populous he made it by the following measures.

15.2. First, he laid it upon its inhabitants as an obligation to rear all their male offspring and the first-born of their daughters, and to put to death none of their children younger than three years, save any child that was born maimed or a monster straight from birth. These the parents he did not forbid to expose, but only after they had first shown it to five of their nearest neighbours and these had concurred. Against those who disobeyed the law he ordained penalties, among them that half of their property should be confiscated to the state.

15.3. Next, perceiving that many of the cities throughout Italy were badly governed by tyrannies and oligarchies, he undertook to receive the men cast out of these cities, who were numerous, provided only they were free, making no distinction as to their misfortunes or their conditions, and to transfer them to himself — wishing both to increase the Roman power and to diminish that of the neighbouring peoples. And this he did, having devised a specious pretext and referring the deed to the honour of a god.

15.4. For the place between the Capitol and the citadel, which is now called in the Roman tongue "the space between two groves" — and was then named from the actual circumstance, being shaded by thick woods on both the slopes that join the hills — this he dedicated as an inviolable sanctuary for suppliants, and built a temple thereon (to which of the gods or divinities I cannot say with certainty); and to the suppliants who fled to this sanctuary he became surety that they should suffer no harm from their enemies, on the pretext of piety toward the divine; and if they wished to remain with him, he gave them a share in the citizenship and a portion of the land which he should win by taking it from his enemies. And they flocked together from every place, fleeing their own troubles at home, and no longer departed elsewhere, held by his daily intercourse and kindnesses.

16.1. There was yet a third institution of Romulus, which of all things the Greeks ought most to have practised, being the best of all institutions, as my judgment goes — one that was both the source of secure liberty for the Romans and furnished no small part of what led them to supremacy: namely, neither to slaughter all the grown men of the cities taken in war, nor to enslave them, nor to let their land lie as pasture for sheep, but to send out colonists to them upon some portion of the territory, and to make the subdued cities colonies of Rome, and to certain of them to grant even the citizenship.

16.2. By establishing these and other like institutions, he made the colony great out of small, as the very facts have shown. For those who joined with him in founding Rome were not more than three thousand foot and fewer than three hundred horse; but those left by him, when he passed from among men, were six and forty thousand foot, and horse not far short of a thousand.

16.3. And he having begun these institutions, both the kings who governed the city after him kept to the same policy, and those after them who took the annual magistracies, sometimes even adding to it, so that the Roman people became inferior to no nation reckoned the most populous.

17.1. But examining the customs of the Greeks against these, I know not how I am to praise those of the Lacedaemonians, the Thebans, and the Athenians, who plumed themselves most upon their wisdom — men who, guarding their noble birth and sharing their citizenship with none, or only with a few (I forbear to say that some of them even expelled foreigners), so far from reaping any good from this proud boasting, were even most grievously harmed by it.

17.2. For the Spartans, having met with disaster in the battle of Leuctra, in which they lost seventeen hundred men, were never afterward able to recover the city from that calamity, but withdrew from their supremacy in disgrace. And the Thebans and Athenians, from the single misfortune at Chaeronea, were stripped at once by the Macedonians both of the leadership of Greece and of the freedom they had from their fathers.

17.3. But the city of Rome, while she was waging great wars in Iberia and Italy, while she was recovering revolted Sicily and Sardinia, while the affairs of Macedonia and Greece were embroiled in war against her, while Carthage was again rising up to dispute the supremacy, and while Italy not only had nearly all revolted but was also bringing on what was called the Hannibalic War — though she was beset by so many dangers at the same time, so far from being weakened by the fortunes of that hour, she even drew from them a strength still greater than before, becoming, through the multitude of her soldiery, equal to all terrors; not, as some suppose, by enjoying the favour of fortune.

17.4. For had it been fortune's gift, she would have gone down beneath the waters from the single fall at Cannae, when out of six thousand horse only three hundred and seventy were left her, and out of eighty thousand men enrolled in the common army a little more than three thousand were saved.

18.1. These things, then, of the man I admire, and besides these what I am about to say: that, holding the causes of cities being well governed to be those which all statesmen mouth but few establish — first, the goodwill of the gods, by whose presence all things turn out for the better with men; then temperance and justice, through which, harming one another less, they are more of one mind, and measure their happiness not by the basest pleasures but by the honourable; and lastly, that nobility in war which makes the other virtues also profitable to those who possess them — he held that none of these goods comes to be of its own accord,

18.2. but recognized that good laws and the emulation of fair practices make a city pious, temperate, devoted to justice, and brave in war. For these he took much forethought, beginning with the rites concerning things divine and superhuman. Temples, then, and sacred precincts, and altars, and the setting up of images, their forms and symbols and powers and the gifts by which they have benefited our race, and what festivals are fitting to be kept for each of the gods or spirits, and the sacrifices in which they delight to be honoured by men, and again truces and assemblies and respites from toil and all things of the kind — these he established in the same manner as the best of the usages among the Greeks;

18.3. but the myths handed down concerning them, in which there are certain blasphemies or evil-speakings against them, he held to be base, useless, and unseemly, and unworthy not only of gods but even of good men, and he cast them all out, and prepared men to speak and think the best things concerning the gods, attaching to them no practice unworthy of their blessed nature.

19.1. For neither is Uranus said among the Romans to have been gelded by his own children, nor Cronus to have made away with his own offspring through fear of their assault, nor Zeus to have dissolved the rule of Cronus and shut up his own father in the prison-house of Tartarus, nor indeed wars and wounds and

19.2. bonds and servitudes of gods among men; nor is any festival celebrated among them clad in black or mournful, with beatings of the breast and lamentations of women over gods that have vanished, as is performed among the Greeks concerning the rape of Persephone and the sufferings of Dionysus and all else of the kind. Nor would one see among them — though their customs are now corrupted — any divine seizures, no corybantic frenzies, no begging processions, no Bacchic rites and secret mysteries, no all-night vigils of men with women in the temples, nor any other of such marvels; but all things done and said concerning the gods are performed with reverence such as exists neither among Greeks nor barbarians.

19.3. And what most of all I have marvelled at — though countless nations have come into the city, to whom there is much necessity to worship their ancestral gods according to the usages from home — the city has nowhere publicly come to emulate any of the foreign practices, as has already befallen many states; but even if she has introduced certain rites in obedience to oracles, she honours them by her own usages, casting out all mythical mummery, as in the case of the rites of the Idaean goddess.

19.4. For sacrifices and games the praetors hold for her every year according to the Roman laws; but her priest is a Phrygian man and her priestess a Phrygian woman, and these carry her about through the city begging alms for the Mother, as is their custom, with images hung upon their breasts and the Mother's airs piped by those who follow, and beating tambourines.

19.5. But of the native-born Romans none goes through the city begging for the Mother or piped to, clad in motley raiment, nor celebrates the goddess with the Phrygian orgies, by law and decree of the senate. So cautious is the city toward customs concerning the gods that are not of the country, and she shuns all pompous show to which seemliness is not joined.

20.1. And let no one suppose that I am ignorant that some of the Greek myths are useful to men — some setting forth the works of nature through allegory, others composed for the consolation of human misfortunes, others dispelling disturbances and terrors of the soul and purging away unsound opinions, and others fashioned for some other benefit.

20.2. But although I know these things as well as anyone, nevertheless I am cautiously disposed toward them, and accept rather the theology of the Romans, reflecting that the goods from the Greek myths are small and able to benefit not many, but only those who have examined the purposes for which they are made — and rare are they who have shared in this philosophy; while the great and unphilosophic crowd is wont to take the accounts of them in the worse sense, and suffers one of two things: either it despises the gods as wallowing in much misery, or it abstains from none of the basest and most lawless deeds, seeing them attributed to gods.

21.1. But concerning these matters let the inquiry be left to those who have marked off for themselves the speculative part of philosophy alone. Of the constitution established by Romulus I have judged these things also worthy of record. First, that he assigned the service of the divine to many persons. In no other newly founded city, at least, could anyone name so many priests and ministers of the gods appointed at the very outset.

21.2. For apart from those who held the family priesthoods, sixty were appointed under his reign to perform the public rites of the city according to tribes and phratrae. I say what Terentius Varro has written in his Antiquities, a man the most versed in inquiry of all who flourished in his age.

21.3. Next, that whereas others for the most part make the choices of those who are to preside over the rites carelessly and without consideration — some thinking fit to put up the office for sale to the highest bidder, others assigning it by lot — he made the priesthoods neither purchasable for money nor distributed by lot, but enacted that from each phratra two be appointed who were over fifty years of age, who excelled the rest in birth, were distinguished in virtue, possessed a sufficient abundance of means, and were in no way deficient in body. And these he ordered to hold their honours not for some fixed time, but throughout their whole life, being released from military service by reason of age and from the city's burdens by the law.

22.1. And since some rites had to be performed through women, and others through children whose parents were both living, that these too might be done in the best manner, he ordered the wives of the priests to share in the priesthood with their husbands, and whatever it was not lawful for men to celebrate according to the country's law, these the women were to perform, and their children to render the fitting services; and for those who were childless, the most graceful out of the other houses were enrolled from each phratra, a boy and a girl — the boy to serve in the rites until the age of manhood, the girl for as long a time as she remained pure of marriage. These things too he borrowed from the Greek usages, as I am persuaded.

22.2. For whatever services are rendered at the Greek rites by those called kanephoroi and arrephoroi, these among the Romans are performed by those called tutulatae, their heads adorned with such crowns as adorn the images of the Ephesian Artemis among the Greeks. And whatever offices among the Tyrrhenians, and still earlier among the Pelasgians, were performed at the rites of the Curetes and the Great Gods by those whom they called cadmili, these in the same manner were rendered to the priests by

22.3. those now called by the Romans camilli. Besides these he ordained that one diviner from each tribe should attend the rites, whom we call a hieroskopos but the Romans, preserving a little of the ancient name, call haruspex. And he enacted that all the priests and ministers of the gods should be appointed by the phratrae, but confirmed by those who interpret the divine through divination.

23.1. Having established these things concerning the worshippers of the gods, he again divided the rites, as I have said, among the phratrae according to their fitness, appointing to each the gods and spirits they were ever to worship, and ordained the expenditures for the rites which were to be given them from the public treasury.

23.2. And the members of the phratrae sacrificed together with the priests the offerings apportioned to them, and feasted together at the festivals at the hearth of the phratra. For a banqueting-hall was built for each phratra, and in it, as in the Greek prytaneia, a common hearth of the phratry was consecrated. And the banqueting-halls had the same name as the phratrae, curiae, and to our day are so called.

23.3. This institution seems to me to have been taken from the Lacedaemonian discipline of the phiditia, which prevailed in that country at the time, and which Lycurgus is held to have introduced, having learned it from the Cretans, and to have greatly benefited the city: in peace bringing men's lives to frugality and to temperance in their daily fare, and in war establishing in each man shame and forethought not to abandon the comrade at his side, with whom he had poured libations and

23.4. sacrificed and shared in common rites. And not only for his wisdom in these matters is the man worthy of praise, but also for the frugality of the sacrifices by which he ordained the gods to be honoured, the most of which endured down to our own age, if not all still performed in the ancient manner.

23.5. I myself, at least, have beheld in sacred houses the meals set out for the gods on ancient wooden tables, in baskets and small earthen platters — barley-cakes and flat loaves and spelt and first-fruits of certain crops and other such things, plain and inexpensive and free from all vulgar excess; and I have seen the libations mixed not in vessels of silver and gold, but in little earthen cups and pitchers, and I greatly admired the men because they abide in their ancestral customs, changing nothing of the ancient rites for a boastful sumptuousness.

23.6. There are, indeed, things that Numa Pompilius also, who ruled the city after Romulus, established, worthy of record and of mention — a man of surpassing judgment and wise, among few, in the interpretation of things divine, concerning whom I shall speak later — and Tullus Hostilius, the third to reign after Romulus, and all the kings who came after him; but it was Romulus who furnished them the seeds and the beginnings, and established the most authoritative of the usages concerning things divine.

24.1. He seems also to have been the author of that other good order by which the Romans, employing it, kept the city prosperous for many generations, having established laws fair and beneficial, the most of them unwritten, but some also set down in writing. Of these I need write none of the rest, but those which I have most marvelled at, and from which I conceive the rest of the man's legislation also will become clear — how austere it was and hostile to wickedness, and bearing much likeness to the lives of the heroes,

24.2. these I shall indicate by a brief reminder, premising only this much: that all who have ordered both barbarian and Greek constitutions seem to me to have seen the general truth rightly — that every city, being composed of many households, is likely to sail upright when the lives of private men are steady, and to ride out much storm when each man's private affairs go ill; and that the man of sense who is a statesman, whether he be lawgiver or king, ought to legislate those things that will make the lives of private men just and temperate.

24.3. But out of what practices, and through what laws, such men might come to be, they do not all seem to me to have seen alike; rather some of them, one might say, erred greatly, even wholly, in the most authoritative and primary parts of legislation.

24.4. For instance, concerning marriage and the union with women, from which the lawgiver ought to begin, even as nature began the joining of our lives, some, taking their example from the beasts, made the unions of male with female unrestricted and common, thinking thereby to free men's lives from amorous stings, and to deliver them from mutual-murdering jealousies and to rid them of many other ills that overtake both private households and whole cities on account of women;

24.5. others banished from their cities these wanton and beastlike unions, joining man to one wife, but undertook to legislate nothing, greater or less, concerning the guarding of marriages and the chastity of women, but desisted from it as an impossible thing;

24.6. others, again, neither made the unions of love without pledge, as some of the barbarians, nor abandoned the guarding of women, as the Lacedaemonians, but laid down many chastening laws concerning them. Some even established a magistracy to take charge of the good order of women; yet their forethought for the watch was not sufficient, but became softer than it ought, and unable to bring her who was not tempered with a virtuous nature to the necessity of a temperate life.

25.1. But Romulus, without giving a husband grounds for complaint against a wife who had been corrupted or who had unjustly forsaken his house, nor a wife grounds for accusing her husband of maltreatment or of unjust desertion, nor laying down laws concerning the restitution or recovery of a dowry, nor defining anything else of the like — by establishing a single law that covered all these matters well, as the very facts have shown, brought the women to temperance and great good order.

25.2. The law was of this kind: that a wedded wife, who had come together with her husband by sacred marriage, should be a partner in all his goods and rites. The ancients called sacred and lawful marriages, embracing them under the Roman appellation, farreate, from the sharing of the far, which we call zea (spelt). For this was the ancient food, long familiar to them all; and the Roman land bears spelt in great plenty and of good quality. And just as we Greeks, holding the barley grain to be most ancient, begin our sacrifices with barley, calling it oulai, so the Romans, deeming spelt the most honoured and most ancient grain, begin every burnt sacrifice with it. For the custom still abides and has not declined into more costly

25.3. first-offerings. The becoming, then, of women partners with men in the most sacred and primary food, and their coming together for the whole of fortune, took its name from the sharing of the far, and brought them into a necessary bond of indissoluble kinship; and there was nothing that could dissolve these marriages.

25.4. This law constrained the wedded women, having no other refuge, to conform their whole lives to the one will of him who had married them, and constrained the husbands to rule over their wives as a necessary and

25.5. inalienable possession. A wife, then, who was temperate and obedient in all things to her husband was mistress of the household in the same manner as her husband, and on his death became heir of his goods as a daughter of a father: if he died childless and intestate, she was mistress of all that was left; and if he had offspring, she shared equally with the children.

25.6. But if she committed any fault, the one wronged was her judge and master of the degree of the punishment. These matters her kinsmen judged together with the husband; among them were the violation of her body and — what would seem to the Greeks the least of all offences — if a woman were found to have drunk wine. For both of these Romulus allowed to be punished with death, as the basest of women's faults, holding corruption to be the beginning of madness, and drunkenness of corruption.

25.7. And for a long time both of these continued to meet with implacable anger among the Romans. Witness to the excellence of the law concerning women is the long lapse of time. For it is agreed that within five hundred and twenty years no marriage was dissolved at Rome; but in the hundred and thirty-seventh Olympiad, in the consulship of Marcus Pomponius and Gaius Papirius, Spurius Carvilius, a man of no obscurity, is said to have been the first to put away his wife, being compelled by the censors to swear that he cohabited with a wife for the sake of children (his wife being barren); and for this deed, though done of necessity, he continued to be hated by the people.

26.1. Such, then, are the wholesome laws that Romulus enacted concerning women, by which he made them more orderly toward their husbands. But what he enacted to secure the reverence and justice of children — that they should honour their fathers, doing and saying all that the fathers commanded — these were yet more august and magnificent, and had a great difference from our own laws.

26.2. For those who established the Greek constitutions appointed but a very brief time for children to be ruled by their fathers: some until they should complete the third year from manhood, some for as long as they remained unmarried, some until their enrolment in the public registers, as I learn from the legislation of Solon, Pittacus, and Charondas,

26.3. to whom much wisdom is attested. And they appointed penalties against children, if they should disobey their fathers, not heavy ones — permitting them to drive them from the house and to leave them no property, but nothing beyond. But mild penalties are not sufficient to restrain the folly of youth and the wilfulness of their characters, nor to bring to temperance those who have neglected what is honourable; and therefore among the Greeks many unseemly things are done by children against their fathers.

26.4. But the Roman lawgiver gave well-nigh complete power to a father over a son, and that throughout the whole course of his life — whether he chose to imprison him, to scourge him, to keep him bound at work in the fields, or to put him to death — even if the son already happened to be engaged in public affairs, were holding the highest magistracies, and were praised for his

26.5. zeal in public service. By this very law, indeed, distinguished men who, while delivering harangues from the rostra opposed to the senate but pleasing to the people, were winning great repute by them, have been dragged down from the platform and led away by their fathers to undergo whatever punishment should seem good to them; and as they were led off through the Forum, none of those present was able to rescue them — neither consul nor tribune nor the very crowd that was being flattered by them and held all power to be inferior to its own.

26.6. For I forbear to tell how many brave men their fathers have put to death, men led on by virtue and zeal to perform some other noble deed which their fathers had not ordered them to do — as we have received concerning Manlius Torquatus and many others, of whom I shall speak at the proper time.

27.1. And not even here did the Roman lawgiver stop the power, but he even allowed the father to sell his son, paying no heed if anyone should think the concession harsh and heavier than befits natural affection. And — what one bred under the relaxed manners of the Greeks would most marvel at as bitter and tyrannical — this too he conceded to the father, to profit from his son up to a third sale, giving the father greater power over

27.2. his child than a master over slaves. For a slave, once sold and afterward gaining his freedom, is thenceforth his own master; but a son sold by his father, if he became free, fell again under his father's power, and being sold a second time and freed, he was, as at the first, his father's slave; only after the third sale was he released from his father.

27.3. This law in the beginning the kings observed, whether written or unwritten (for I cannot say with certainty), holding it the best of all laws. And when the monarchy had been dissolved, at the time it first seemed good to the Romans to set down in the Forum, open to all the citizens, all their ancestral usages and laws together with those introduced from abroad — that the common rights might not shift along with the powers of the magistrates — those who received from the people the authority to collect and record them, the ten men, recorded this law along with the rest, and it stands in the fourth of the so-called Twelve Tables, which they set up in the Forum.

27.4. But that it was not the ten men, appointed three hundred years later for the recording of the laws, who first introduced this law to the Romans, but that, finding it long established, they did not venture to abolish it, I gather from many other things, but most of all from the laws of Numa Pompilius, who ruled after Romulus, among which this too is written: "If a father consent that his son take a wife who shall be a partner in his rites and goods according to the laws, the father shall no longer have the power to sell his son" — which he would not have written unless, under all the earlier laws, it had been lawful for a father to sell his sons.

27.5. But of these matters enough; I wish also to go through in summary the rest of the order by which Romulus arranged the lives of private men.

28.1. For seeing that the living temperately of all, the choosing of justice before gain, the practice of endurance amid toils, and the holding of nothing more precious than virtue, are wont to come to the civic multitudes not through the teaching of words — among whom the greater part are hard to lead — but through the habituation of deeds that lead toward each virtue, and that the many come to these things by necessity rather than by judgment, and, if there be nothing to hinder, slip back into their nature — he assigned the sedentary, mechanical, and pleasure-pandering crafts, as ruining and corrupting both the bodies and the souls of those who handle them, to slaves and foreigners to ply; and for a very long time such occupations were a shame among the Romans, and practised by none of the native-born.

28.2. He left to the free only two pursuits, those of agriculture and of war, observing that men become masters of their bellies through these ways of life, are less taken by lawless loves, and pursue not the greed that harms one another, but that which wins gains from the enemy. And holding each of these ways of life to be incomplete when separated from the other, and apt to breed faultfinding, he did not assign to certain men to till the land and to others to drive off the spoil of the enemy, as was the law among the Lacedaemonians, but ordered the same men to live both the military and the agricultural life;

28.3. if they were keeping peace, accustoming all to remain at the works of the field — save when at any time they had need of the market, when they should come into the city and trade, fixing the ninth day for the markets; but when war overtook them, teaching them to take the field and to yield to others neither the toils nor the gains. For he divided among them equally whatever land he should take from the enemy, and the slaves and the goods, and so made them gladly accept the campaigns.

29.1. Of the wrongs men did one another he made the trials not slow but swift, settling some himself and entrusting others to others, and made the punishments proportionate to the magnitude of the offences. And seeing that fear is most able to turn men from every wicked deed, he provided much to this end: a place where, seated, he gave judgment, in the most conspicuous part of the Forum; and soldiers, who attended him, three hundred in number, most terrifying in aspect; and rods and axes borne by twelve men, with which they scourged in the Forum those who had done deeds worthy of stripes, and cut off in public the necks of those who had committed the greatest crimes.

29.2. Such, then, was the order of the constitution established by Romulus; for from these things it is enough to conjecture also concerning the rest.

30.1. But the other deeds of the man, both those done in war and those in the city, of which one might make account in a historical writing, are handed down somewhat as follows.

30.2. Since many great nations, valiant in war, dwelt about Rome, of whom none was friendly to the Romans, and wishing to make these his own by intermarriages — which seemed to the ancients the surest mode of cementing friendships — but reflecting that the cities would not willingly come together with men but newly settled, and powerful neither in wealth nor in any brilliant deed displayed, yet that under compulsion they would yield, if no outrage attended the necessity, he formed a plan (to which Numitor his grandfather also assented) to bring about the intermarriages by a wholesale seizure of maidens.

30.3. Having resolved on this, he first makes vows to the god who is the leader of secret counsels, that if the attempt should go according to his mind he would hold sacrifices and festivals to him every year; then, having referred the matter to the council of the gerousia, since the plan pleased them too, he proclaimed that he would hold a festival and assembly in honour of Neptune, and sent word round to the nearest cities, inviting all who wished to share in the market and the games; for he meant to hold games of all kinds, both of horses and of men.

30.4. When many strangers had gathered to the festival together with their wives and children, after he had performed the sacrifices to Neptune and the games, on the last of the days, when he was about to dissolve the assembly, he gives a command to the young men: that, whenever he himself should raise the signal, they should seize the maidens present at the spectacle, each whomever they should chance upon, and keep them pure that night, and the

30.5. next day bring them to him. The young men, then, having stationed themselves in bands, when they saw the signal raised, turned to the seizure of the maidens, and at once there was confusion among the strangers and flight, as they suspected some greater evil. The next day, the maidens having been led forth, Romulus, consoling their despondency, declaring that the seizure had been made not for outrage but for marriage, and showing the custom to be Greek and ancient and the most distinguished of all the modes by which marriages are joined to women, asked them to love the husbands fortune had given them;

30.6. and after this, having counted the maidens, who were found to be six hundred and eighty-three, he enrolled again from the unmarried men an equal number, to whom he joined them according to the ancestral customs of each, pledging the marriages over a sharing of fire and water, as they are performed even down to our own times.

31.1. Some write that these things took place in the first year of Romulus' reign, but Gnaeus Gellius in the fourth; which is the more likely. For it has no reason that the leader of a city newly founded should undertake so great a deed before he had established the constitution. As for the cause of the seizure, some refer it to a scarcity of women, others to a pretext for war, others — those who write the most probable account, with whom I too have agreed — to the necessity of joining friendship with the neighbouring cities.

31.2. The festival then consecrated by Romulus the Romans continued to celebrate even to my own time, calling it the Consualia, in which a subterranean altar, set up beside the largest of the hippodromes with the earth dug round it, is honoured with sacrifices and burnt first-offerings, and a race of horses both yoked and unyoked is held. The god to whom they perform these rites is called Consus by the Romans, whom, rendering into our tongue, some say to be Poseidon the Earth-shaker, and on this account, they say, he is honoured with a subterranean altar, because this god holds the earth.

31.3. But I know also another account that I have heard: that, while the festival is held to Poseidon and the horse-race is to this god, the underground altar was built later to a certain unnamed divinity, the leader and guardian of hidden counsels; for to Poseidon no hidden altar has been set up anywhere on earth, neither by Greeks nor by barbarians. But how the truth stands is hard to say.

32.1. When the matter of the seizure of the maidens and of the marriages was noised abroad to the neighbouring cities, some of them took the deed itself with anger, but others, reckoning the disposition from which it was done and the end to which it came, bore it with moderation. In time, however, it broke out into wars, the rest of them easy, but one against the Sabines great and difficult; to all of which a fortunate issue followed, even as the oracles had foretold to him before he undertook the deed, signifying beforehand great toils and dangers, but that their ends would be fair.

32.2. The first cities to begin the war against him were Caenina, Antemnae, and Crustumerium, making a pretext of the seizure of the maidens and of their not having obtained satisfaction for them, but in truth being aggrieved at the founding and increase of Rome, which had become great in a little while, and deeming it not right to look on while a common evil grew up against all the neighbours.

32.3. For a time, then, sending envoys to the Sabine nation, they asked them to take the leadership of the war, as having the greatest strength and being powerful in money, claiming to rule over their neighbours, and as having been outraged not least of all the rest; for the greater number of the women seized were theirs.

33.1. But when they accomplished nothing, since the embassies from Romulus opposed them and were courting the nation by words and deeds, being aggrieved at the waste of time while the Sabines ever delayed and put off to a long while their deliberation about the war, they resolved by themselves to make war on the Romans, thinking their own force sufficient, if the three were joined in one, to crush a single city that was not great. They so resolved, but did not succeed in coming together all into one camp, the men of Caenina rising up before the rest more rashly,

33.2. who indeed seemed most of all to be urging on the war. When these had taken the field and were ravaging the borderland, Romulus, leading out his force, fell unexpectedly upon the enemy while they were still unguarded, and made himself master of their camp, which had but just been pitched; and following close upon those who fled into the city, before those within had yet learned of the disaster to their men, finding the wall unguarded and the gates unbarred, he took the city at the first onset, and the king of the Caeninenses, who met him with a strong band, he slew with his own hand in the fight and stripped him of his arms.

34.1. The city having been taken in this manner, after he had ordered the captured to surrender their arms and had taken as hostages such children as he wished, he marched against the Antemnates. And finding their force too still scattered abroad in foraging, by his unlooked-for onset he made himself master of them as of the former, and, having dealt with the captured in the same way, he led his force homeward, bringing spoils from those who had fallen in the battle and the choicest of the booty for the gods, and

34.2. performed many sacrifices besides. Last in the procession he himself went, clad in purple raiment, his hair crowned with laurel, and, that he might preserve the royal dignity, mounted upon a four-horse chariot. The rest of his force followed him, foot and horse arrayed in their divisions, hymning the gods in their ancestral songs and glorifying their leader in extemporaneous verses. The people from the city came to meet them, together with their wives and children, on both sides of the road, rejoicing with them in the victory and showing every other kindness. And as the force passed into the city, it met with mixing-bowls full of mingled wine and tables laden with all manner of food, which were set out beside the most conspicuous of the houses, that any who wished might take their fill.

34.3. Such, then, was the triumphal and trophy-bearing procession and sacrifice, which the Romans call a triumph, first established by Romulus; but in our own day it has become costly and ostentatious, tricked out for a display of wealth rather than for a semblance of virtue, and

34.4. in every form has departed from the ancient frugality. After the procession and sacrifice Romulus built a temple on the summit of the Capitoline hill to Jupiter, whom the Romans call Feretrius — not a great one; for the ancient trace of it is still preserved, having its longer sides less than fifteen feet — and in it he consecrated the spoils of the king of the Caeninenses, whom he had slain with his own hand. As for Jupiter Feretrius, to whom Romulus dedicated the arms, whether one wishes to call him the Trophy-bearer or the Spoil-bearer, as some think fit, or, because he surpasses all things and has encompassed in a circle all the nature and motion of things that are, the Supreme — he will not stray from the truth.

35.1. When the king had rendered to the gods the thank-offering sacrifices and first-fruits, before doing anything else he took counsel concerning the conquered cities, in what manner he ought to deal with them, himself first declaring the opinion he held to be best.

35.2. And when both the safety of the leader's counsels pleased all who were present in the council, and their brilliance, and all the other benefits that would come from them to the city — not only at the moment but for all the rest of time — were praised, he ordered to assemble all the women who happened to be of the race of the Antemnates and the Caeninenses, who had been seized along with the rest; and when they had assembled, lamenting and casting themselves at his feet and bewailing the fortunes of their fatherlands, he bade them cease their lamentations and be silent, and said:

35.3. "Your fathers and brothers and your whole cities deserve to suffer every dreadful thing, because they took up a war in place of friendship, a war neither necessary nor honourable. But we have resolved, for many reasons, to use moderate counsel toward them — both eyeing warily the wrath of the gods, which besets all the overweening, and fearing the envy of men, and deeming pity for common ills no small contribution to a common fund, as we ourselves may one day stand in need of another's; and, since you have been thus far blameless toward your own husbands, thinking that this will be no small honour and favour to you.

35.4. We let go, then, this offence of theirs unpunished, and we take from your fellow-citizens neither their freedom nor their property nor any other of their goods. And we grant both to those who long to remain there and to those who wish to transfer their dwellings a choice free from danger and from regret. But that they may no longer offend, and that nothing may be found that shall make the cities dissolve their friendship with us, we hold the strongest remedy, useful alike for good repute and for safety to both, to be this: if we should make the cities colonies of Rome and send to them from here a sufficient number of settlers. Go, then, with good hearts, and twice as much as before cherish and honour the men by whom your parents and brothers have been saved and your fatherlands set free."

35.5. The women, when they heard this, being overjoyed and shedding many tears for gladness, departed from the Forum; and Romulus sent three hundred men as colonists to each city, to whom the cities gave a third part of their own land to divide by lot.

35.6. And of the Caeninenses and Antemnates those who wished to transfer their dwelling to Rome they brought over together with their wives and children, keeping their own allotments and carrying with them whatever goods they possessed; and these the king at once enrolled into tribes and phratrae, being not fewer than three thousand,

35.7. so that the whole body of Roman foot then for the first time amounted to six thousand by the muster-roll. Caenina, then, and Antemnae, cities not without note, having the Greek race — for the Aborigines, taking them from the Sicels, had held them, a portion of the Oenotrians who had come from Arcadia, as I have said before — after this war became colonies of the Romans.

36.1. Romulus, having accomplished these things, led his army against the Crustumerians, who were better prepared than the former. These, having reduced them both by pitched battle and by assault upon their walls — though they had shown themselves brave men in the contest — he thought fit to treat with no further harshness, but made this city too a colony of the Romans, like the former.

36.2. Crustumerium was a colony of the Albans, sent out many years before Rome. And as report carried to many cities both the leader's nobility in war and his clemency toward the conquered, many good men joined themselves to him, bringing with them considerable forces that migrated household and all; from one of whom, a leader who came from Tyrrhenia, named Caelius, one of the hills, on which he settled, is called Caelian to this day. And whole cities surrendered themselves, beginning with that of the Medullini, and became colonies of the Romans.

36.3. The Sabines, seeing this, were aggrieved and laid blame upon one another, that they had not checked the Roman power at its beginning but were about to come to grips with it now that it had advanced to greatness; and they resolved to repair their former lack of judgment by the dispatch of a noteworthy force. After this, holding an assembly all together in the greatest city, and the one of most repute in the nation, named Cures, they passed a vote concerning the war, appointing as leader of the army Titus, who

36.4. was surnamed Tatius, king of the Curites. The Sabines, then, having so resolved and dispersed to their cities, made ready for the war, intending the next year to march against Rome with a great force.

37.1. Meanwhile Romulus too prepared on his side in the best manner, as one about to ward off men valiant in war: raising the wall of the Palatine, that it might be more secure for those within, with higher defences; and the hills lying near it, the Aventine and what is now called the Capitoline, fortifying with ditches and strong palisades, on which he ordered the flocks and the husbandmen to lodge by night, occupying each with a sufficient guard; and whatever other place was likely to afford them security, ditching and palisading and

37.2. keeping it under guard. There came to him a man bringing a sufficient force of Tyrrhenians from the city of Solonium, energetic and distinguished in deeds of war, Lucumo by name, a friend made not long before; and from the Albans men whom his grandfather sent him, many soldiers and attendants and craftsmen in works of war; and grain and arms and all that was suitable to these were abundantly supplied.

37.3. When the preparations for the contest were ready on both sides, at the beginning of spring, as the Sabines were about to lead out their forces, they resolved first to send an embassy to the enemy to demand back the women and to ask satisfaction for their seizure, that they might seem to have taken up the war of necessity, not obtaining justice; and they sent their heralds for this purpose.

37.4. But when Romulus thought fit that the women — since the life with their husbands was not against their will — should be allowed to remain with those who had married them, and that, if they needed anything else, they should take it as from friends, but should not begin a war, the Sabines, yielding to none of his proposals, led out their army, bringing twenty-five thousand foot and horse little short of a thousand.

37.5. The Roman force too was not much short of the Sabine: twenty thousand foot and eight hundred horse, and it lay encamped before the city, divided into two parts — one division holding the Esquiline hill, on which Romulus himself was, the other the Quirinal, not yet bearing this name, of which Lucumo the Tyrrhenian was leader.

38.1. Tatius, the king of the Sabines, learning of their preparation, broke camp by night and led his army through the country, doing no harm to the things in the fields, and before sunrise pitched his camp in the plain between the Quirinal and the Capitoline. But seeing all things held by the enemy under a secure guard, and no strong place left to themselves, he fell into much perplexity, not knowing what use to make of the lapse of time.

38.2. While he was at a loss, an unexpected piece of good fortune befell him, the strongest of the fortresses being betrayed to him by some such chance as this. As the Sabines were passing along the foot of the Capitoline to reconnoitre, whether any part of the hill might be found that could be taken by stealth or by force, a certain maiden spied them from the height — the daughter of a distinguished man to whom was entrusted the

38.3. guarding of the place, Tarpeia by name; and she, as Fabius and Cincius write, was seized with a longing for the bracelets which they wore on their left arms and for the rings (for the Sabines were then wearers of gold and no less luxurious than the Tyrrhenians); but as Lucius Piso the ex-censor relates, by a desire to do a fine deed, to hand over to her fellow-citizens the enemy stripped of their protecting arms. Which of these is the truer one may conjecture from what happened afterward.

38.4. She sent, then, one of her handmaids out through a postern, which no one knew was opened, and asked the king of the Sabines to come to her apart from the rest for a parley, as she would speak with him about a necessary and great matter. When Tatius received the proposal in hope of a betrayal and had come to the appointed place, the maiden, advancing within hearing, said that her father had gone out of the fortress by night on some errand, but that she herself kept the keys of the gates and would deliver the stronghold to them if they came by night, taking as the reward of the betrayal the things the Sabines wore, which all bore on their left arms.

38.5. Tatius consenting, she received pledges from him by oaths, and herself gave them that she would not falsify the agreements; and having fixed the place to which the Sabines should come — the most strongly defended — and the most unguarded hour of the night, she departed and escaped the notice of those within.

39.1. Thus far all the Roman historians agree, but in what is told afterward they are not of one accord. For Piso the ex-censor, whom I have mentioned before, says that a messenger was sent by Tarpeia out of the place by night to disclose to Romulus the agreements made by the girl with the Sabines — that she meant to ask of them their protecting arms, having deceived them by the ambiguity of the agreements — and to ask him to send another force to the fortress by night, that he as general might take the enemy stripped of their arms; but that the messenger deserted to the leader of the Sabines and became an informer of Tarpeia's designs.

39.2. But Fabius and Cincius say that no such thing happened, but maintain firmly that the girl kept the compacts about the betrayal. What follows all again write alike. For they say that, when the king of the Sabines came with the best part of his army, Tarpeia, keeping her promises, opened to the enemy the appointed postern, and rousing the guards in the place, urged them to save themselves quickly by other exits unknown to the enemy, as the Sabines were already holding the fortress;

39.3. and when these had fled, the Sabines, finding the gates open, took the fortress, emptied of its guards; and Tarpeia, as having furnished from her part all that she had agreed, asked to receive the rewards of the betrayal according to the oaths.

40.1. Then again Piso says that, when the Sabines were ready to give the girl the gold on their left arms, Tarpeia asked of them not the ornament but the shields; and that anger came upon Tatius at the deceit, together with a reckoning not to transgress the agreements. It seemed good to him, then, to give the arms, as the girl had asked, but to contrive that she should make no use of them after receiving them; and at once, straining with all his might, he hurled his shield at the girl and ordered the rest to do the same. So, struck from all sides, Tarpeia fell by the number and force of the blows, and, buried under the shields, died.

40.2. But Fabius and his school lay the deceit of the agreements upon the Sabines; for, when they ought to have given the gold, as Tarpeia asked, according to the agreements, being aggrieved at the greatness of the reward, they cast their protecting arms upon her, as having promised to give her these when they swore to her. But the events that followed seem to make Piso's answer the truer.

40.3. For she was thought worthy of a tomb where she fell, occupying the most sacred hill of the city, and the Romans every year pour libations to her (I say what Piso writes); of none of which, had she died betraying her fatherland to the enemy, would it have been likely that she should be thought worthy, neither by the betrayed nor by those who slew her; rather, if any remnant of her body remained, it would in time have been dug up and cast out, for the terror and deterring of those who should be minded to do the like. But concerning these matters let each judge as he will.

41.1. Tatius and the Sabines, having become masters of a strong fortress and having taken without effort the greater part of the Romans' baggage, now carried on the war from a position of safety. Many attempts, then, and skirmishes occurred between them on many pretexts, as they lay encamped near one another, bringing to each of the armies neither great successes nor reverses; but the greatest were two pitched battles fought with their whole forces against one another, and much slaughter on both sides.

41.2. As time dragged on, both came to the same resolve, to decide the contest by a decisive battle; and advancing into the space between the camps, leaders most excellent in war and soldiers inured to many contests displayed deeds worthy of record, charging one another and receiving those who charged, and by countercharges again restoring the fight to an even balance.

41.3. Those standing upon the ramparts, spectators of a contest evenly balanced and shifting often to either side, by their cheering and paeans gave much increase of courage to whichever of their own was prevailing, and to him who was hard pressed and pursued, sending forth entreaties and wailings, became hinderers of his sinking to utter cowardice; and by both these things they were forced to endure the dangers even beyond their strength. That day, then, having so carried on the battle evenly, when it was already dark they each gladly withdrew to their own camps.

42.1. On the following days, having made burials of the dead and recovered those wearied by wounds, and having prepared other forces, when it seemed good to them to join battle again, they came together to the same place as before and fought until night.

42.2. In this battle, while the Romans were prevailing on both wings (Romulus himself held the leadership of the right, and Lucumo the Tyrrhenian of the left), the centre being as yet undecided, the one man who prevented the utter defeat of the Sabines and again set the remnant on even terms with the victors was named Mettius Curtius, a man great in bodily strength and brave of hand, but most renowned for shrinking from no fear or

42.3. danger. He was set to lead the phalanx fighting in the centre and was conquering those arrayed against him; but wishing to set the wings of the Sabines, now hard pressed and being thrust back, upon even terms also, he urged on those about him and pursued the fleeing enemy, who were scattered, and drove them as far as the gates, so that Romulus was forced to leave his victory half-finished and to turn back and thrust himself against the victorious part of the enemy.

42.4. The hard-pressed part of the Sabines was again on even terms when the force with Romulus departed, and all the danger had come to be about Curtius and those who conquered with him. For a time, then, the Sabines, receiving the Romans, fought brilliantly; but afterward, as many came together against them, they gave way and saved themselves to their camp, Curtius affording them much security not to be pursued in disorder, but to withdraw at a foot's pace.

42.5. For he himself stood fighting and received Romulus as he came on; and as the leaders themselves fell upon one another, there was a great and noble contest. But now drained of blood and pierced with darts, Curtius gave ground little by little, and from behind a deep marsh received him, which it was hard to go round, the enemy being poured about on every side, and impossible to pass through, both for the quantity of mire that the surrounding swamps held and for the depth of water that stood in the midst of it.

42.6. Drawing near to this, he flung himself with his arms into the stream; and Romulus, thinking that the man would forthwith perish in the marsh (and at the same time it was impossible to pursue him over swamp and through much water), turned against the other Sabines. But Curtius, after much labour, in time saved himself from the marsh with his arms and was led off to the camp. This place is now filled in, but is called from that mishap the Curtian Lake, being very nearly in the middle of the Roman Forum.

43.1. Romulus, pursuing the rest and having come near the Capitoline and holding great hopes of taking the fortress, was worn down both by many other wounds and especially, being grievously hurt by an enormous stone hurled against his temple from above, was lifted up half-dead by those at hand and

43.2. carried off to the wall. And fear fell upon the Romans, who no longer saw their leader, and the right wing turned to flight; but those arrayed on the left with Lucumo for a time held out, taking heart from their leader, a man most brilliant in war who had displayed the most deeds in this war. But when he too, run through the side by a javelin, fell as his strength failed him, neither did they hold their ground, but after this there was a flight of them all, and the Sabines, taking courage, pursued as far as the city.

43.3. But as they were now drawing near the gates, they were driven off by the youth that sallied out against them fresh, to whom the king had entrusted the guarding of the walls, and by Romulus — for he was now easier of his wound — who came out to aid with what speed he could; and the fortune of the contest became swift-turning and held a great reversal to the other side.

43.4. For the fleeing, when they saw their leader appear unexpectedly, recovering themselves from their former fear, fell into rank and no longer put off coming to grips with the enemy; while those who till then were hemming them in and thought there was no contrivance to prevent the very city being taken by storm, when they beheld the sudden and unlooked-for reversal, took thought for their own safety. But their withdrawal to the camp was not easy, being pursued down a steep place and along a hollow road, and much slaughter of them occurred in this rout.

43.5. That day, then, having thus fought evenly and both having come into unexpected fortunes, when the sun was now about its setting they parted.

44.1. On the following days the Sabines were in deliberation whether to lead their forces home, having done what harm they could to the enemy's country, or to send for another army from home and to remain and persist until they should set

44.2. the fairest end upon the war. But it seemed ill to them both to depart with the disgrace of a fruitless withdrawal, and to remain when nothing was going according to their hope. And as for parleying with the enemy about a settlement — which seemed to be the only seemly release from the war — they supposed that it befitted not themselves

44.3. any more than the Romans. But the Romans no less, indeed more than the Sabines, fell into much perplexity what to do with their affairs. For they thought fit neither to give back the women nor to keep them: thinking that on the former course an acknowledged defeat would follow, and that it would be necessary for them to submit to whatever else they should be commanded; and on the latter, to look upon many dreadful things, their country ravaged and the best of their youth perishing. And if they should parley with the Sabines about friendship, they supposed they would obtain nothing moderate, for many other reasons, but most of all because toward arrogant tempers there comes, when an adversary turns to conciliation, not moderation but harshness.

45.1. While both, reasoning thus, and daring neither to begin battle nor to parley about friendship, were dragging out the time, the Roman women who happened to be of the Sabine race, on whose account the war had arisen, assembling apart from the men into one place and taking counsel among themselves, formed the resolve themselves to begin words of reconciliation toward both sides.

45.2. She who introduced this counsel to the women was named Hersilia, and she was of no obscure family among the Sabines. Some say she was already married and was seized with the other girls as a maiden; but those who write the most probable account say she remained of her own will with her daughter; for a daughter of hers too, an only child, had been seized.

45.3. When the women had taken this resolve, they came to the council and, having obtained leave to speak, made long entreaties, asking to receive permission to go out to their kinsmen, saying they had many good hopes of bringing the nations together into one and of making friendship. When those who sat in council with the king heard this, they greatly admired it and supposed this to be the only resource amid their helpless affairs.

45.4. There was made, then, after this, a decree of the senate of this kind: that those of the Sabine race who had children might, leaving their children with their husbands, go as envoys to their fellow-countrymen, and that those who were mothers of several children might take with them whatever portion of them they wished, and act so as to bring the nations together into friendship.

45.5. After this they went out clad in mourning garments, and some of them taking along their infant children. And when they came forward into the camp of the Sabines, lamenting and falling at the knees of those they met, they moved much pity among the beholders,

45.6. and no one was able to hold back his tears. When the council of the leaders had been gathered for them, and the king had bidden them speak concerning the matters for which they came, Hersilia, who had begun the counsel and held the leadership of the embassy, went through a long and moving entreaty, asking them to grant peace to the women who begged it on behalf of their husbands, for whom, she declared, the war had been brought on; and that on what just terms the settlement should be made the leaders themselves, coming together by themselves, should agree, looking to the common advantage.

46.1. Having spoken thus, they all fell before the king's knees together with their children, and remained prostrate, until those present raised them from the ground, promising to do all things moderate and possible. And having withdrawn them from the council and taken counsel among themselves, they resolved to make the reconciliation. And there came to the nations first truces; then, the kings having come together, a compact of friendship.

46.2. What was agreed by the men, concerning which they took oaths, was this: that Romulus and Tatius should be kings of the Romans with equal vote and reaping equal honours; that the city, keeping the same name from its founder, should be called Rome, and each of the citizens in it a Roman, as before, but that all together should be embraced by the common name of Quirites, from Tatius' fatherland; and that those of the Sabines who wished should be citizens in Rome, contributing to the common rites and being assigned to tribes and phratrae.

46.3. Having sworn these things and set up altars upon their oaths, very nearly in the middle of what is called the Sacred Way, they mingled with one another. And the other leaders, taking up their forces, led them homeward; but King Tatius, and with him three men of the most distinguished houses, remained at Rome and received honours which their posterity reaped — Volusus Valerius, and Tallus surnamed Tyrannus, and last Mettius Curtius, the one who had swum the marsh with his arms; with whom there remained companions and kinsmen and dependents, no fewer in number than the natives.

47.1. When affairs were settled, it seemed good to the kings, since the city had received a great increase in multitude of people, to make the number of the patricians double the former, enrolling along with the most distinguished houses, out of those who had settled later, an equal number to the former, whom they called the "younger" patricians; out of whom they added to the ancient senators a hundred men, whom the phratrae selected.

47.2. Concerning these matters, then, well-nigh all who have written Roman histories agree; but a few differ as to the number of the senators added. For they declare that not a hundred but fifty were those who came into the senate.

47.3. Concerning the honours which the kings rendered to the women, because they had brought them together into friendship, not all the Roman historians agree. For some of them write that the leaders bestowed upon the women many other great gifts, and in particular made the phratrae, being thirty in number, as I have said, named after the women; for so many were the women who had gone on the embassy.

47.4. But Terentius Varro does not agree with them in this part, saying that the names had been given to the curiae still earlier by Romulus at the first division of the people, some taken from the names of leaders, some from districts; and that the women who went on the embassy were not thirty but five hundred and twenty-seven; and he thinks it not even likely that the kings, taking away the honour of so many women, should give it to a few of them alone. But concerning these matters it seemed to me neither right to make no mention at all nor to write more than enough.

48.1. Concerning the city of the Quirites, from which Tatius and his men came (for the narrative demands that I tell of these too — who they were and whence) — we have received the following. In the country of the Reatines, at the time the Aborigines held it, a maiden of the country, of the first rank, came to a temple of Enyalius to dance;

48.2. and Enyalius the Sabines, and the Romans learning it from them, name Quirinus, being unable to say with precision whether he is Ares or another holding honours like Ares. For some think that each of the names is asserted of a single god, the leader of warlike contests, while others hold that the names

48.3. are assigned to two warrior divinities. As the girl was dancing in the precinct of the god, she suddenly became inspired, and leaving the dance ran into the inner shrine of the god. Then, having become pregnant by the divinity, as it seemed to all, she bore a son named Modius, surnamed Fabidius, who, on coming to manhood, took on a form not human but divine, and became most brilliant of all in war; and a longing came upon him to found a city for himself.

48.4. Having gathered, then, a great band of those who dwelt about those places, in a very little while he founded what is called Cures — as some relate, naming the city after the divinity from whom report held him to have sprung; but as others write, after the spear; for the Sabines call spears cures. These things, then, Terentius Varro writes.

49.1. But Zenodotus of Troezen, the historian, relates that the Umbrians, a native people, dwelt first about what is called the Reatine country; and that thence, driven out by the Pelasgians, they came to this land where they now dwell, and, having changed their name along with their place, were called Sabines instead of Umbrians.

49.2. Cato Porcius says that the name was given to the Sabine nation from Sabus the son of Sancus, a divinity of the country, and that this Sancus is called by some Jupiter Fidius. He declares that their first dwelling was a certain village called Testruna, lying near the city of Amiternum; and that, setting out from there, the Sabines at that time invaded the Reatine country, which the Aborigines inhabited along with the Pelasgians, and, subduing in war their most famous city, Cotyliae, held it.

49.3. And from the Reatine country, sending out colonies, they founded many other cities, in which they dwelt unwalled, and in particular what are called Cures; and that they held a territory distant about two hundred and eighty stades from the Adriatic Sea and two hundred and forty from the Tyrrhenian; and its length, he says, is a little

49.4. less than a thousand stades. There is also another account told of the Sabines in the histories of the country: that the Lacedaemonians settled among them at the time when Lycurgus, acting as guardian of his nephew Eunomus, gave Sparta its laws. For certain men, aggrieved at the harshness of the legislation and standing apart from the rest, departed altogether from the city; then, being borne over a great sea, they vowed to the gods (for a longing for any land whatsoever had come upon them) that in whatever land they should come to first, in that they would

49.5. settle. And having put in to that part of Italy about what is called the Pomptine plains, they named the place where they first anchored Foronia, from their seafaring (phoresis), and set up a temple of the goddess Foronia, to whom they had made their vows; whom now, by the change of a single letter, they call Feronia. And setting out from there, some of them became fellow-settlers with the Sabines; and on this account many of the Sabine usages are Laconian, and most of all their love of war and their frugal living and their hardness in all the works of life. Concerning the race of the Sabines, then, this is enough.

50.1. Romulus and Tatius forthwith made the city larger, adding to it two more hills, that called the Quirinal and the Caelian; and dividing the dwellings apart from one another, each made his abode in his own quarter, Romulus holding the Palatine and the Caelian mount (which adjoins the Palatine), and Tatius the Capitoline, which he had held from the first, and the Quirinal

50.2. ridge. The plain lying beneath the Capitoline they cleared of the wood growing in it, and, having for the most part filled up the marsh — which, because the place was hollow, was swollen with the streams coming down from the hills — they established there a forum, which the Romans still continue to use even now; and they held their meetings there, transacting business in a temple of Vulcan

50.3. that stood a little raised above the forum. They set up sacred places and consecrated altars to the gods to whom they had made vows in the battles: Romulus to Jupiter Stator, beside what are called the Mugonian gates, which lead to the Palatine from the Sacred Way, because the god, hearkening to his prayers, had made his army, when in flight, stand and turn to valour; Tatius to the Sun and Moon, to Saturn and Rhea, and besides these to Vesta and Vulcan and Diana and Enyalius and other gods whose names it is hard to render in the Greek tongue; and in all the curiae he set up tables to Juno called Quiritis, which stand even to this day.

50.4. For five years, then, they reigned together, differing about no matter, in which they performed a common exploit, the campaign against the Camerini. For the Camerini, sending out bands of robbers and doing much harm to their country, would not come to trial, though often summoned by them; whom, having conquered in pitched battle (for they came to grips with them) and afterward taken by storm in an assault on their walls, they deprived of their arms and fined a third part of their land, which they divided among their own people. And as the Camerini were maltreating the colonists, on the third day they sallied out

50.5. and routed them, divided all their goods among their own citizens, and allowed the men themselves, as many as wished, to dwell at Rome. These were about four thousand, whom they distributed among the phratrae, and they made their city a colony of the Romans. Cameria was a colony of the Albans, sent out many years before Rome; and anciently it had been a dwelling of the Aborigines, among the most distinguished.

51.1. In the sixth year the sovereignty of the city came round again to Romulus alone, Tatius having perished by a plot which the chief men of the Lavinians contrived against him together, from such a cause as this. Certain companions of Tatius, having led out a band of robbers into the country of the Lavinians, seized much of their goods and drove off herds of cattle; and of those who came to the rescue some they killed, some they wounded.

51.2. When an embassy came from the wronged and demanded justice, Romulus held it right to hand over the doers to the wronged to lead away; but Tatius, clinging to his companions, thought it not right that any be led off by enemies before trial — and that, being citizens, by foreigners; but ordered those who said they had been wronged to come to Rome and have justice done them.

51.3. The envoys, then, having obtained nothing of justice, departed in anger; and some of the Sabines, following them in wrath, fell upon them as they lay encamped beside the road (for evening had overtaken them) while they slept, took their goods, and slew as many as they caught still in their beds; but those who had quick perception of the plot and the power to escape came to the city. After this, envoys coming from Lavinium and from many other cities denounced the lawlessness and gave notice of war if they should not obtain justice.

52.1. To Romulus, then, the outrage upon the envoys seemed dreadful, as it was, and to require swift expiation, as of a sacred law being dissolved. And delaying no longer, when he saw Tatius negligent, he himself arrested those liable to the pollution and,

52.2. binding them, handed them over to the envoys to lead away. But anger came upon Tatius at the outrage which he charged he had suffered from his colleague in the surrender of the men, and pity for those led off (for a kinsman of his too was liable to the pollution); and at once, taking his soldiers, he hastened to the rescue, and overtaking the envoys on the road, took away those

52.3. led off. Not much time having passed, as some say, when he had come with Romulus to Lavinium for the sake of a sacrifice which the kings had to offer to the ancestral gods on behalf of the city, the companions and kinsmen of the slain envoys banded against him, and at the altars he was struck with the sacrificial knives of the cooks and the ox-spits and died.

52.4. But as Licinius and his school write, he had come not with Romulus, nor for the sake of the rites, but alone, to persuade the wronged to remit their anger to the doers; and when the multitude was angered that the men were not handed over to them, as Romulus had adjudged and the senate of the Romans had decided, and the kinsmen of the dead rushed upon him in a body, being no longer able to escape summary justice, he was stoned to death by them.

52.5. Tatius, then, met with such an end, having warred against Romulus for three years and reigned jointly with him for five; and he was brought to Rome and buried with honourable rites, and the city performs libations for him every year at public charge.

53.1. Romulus, established alone in the sovereignty a second time, expiated the pollution incurred concerning the envoys by proclaiming that those who had wrought the abomination should be barred from water and fire (for they had all fled from the city as soon as Tatius died); and the Lavinians who had banded against Tatius he handed over to a court, when they were surrendered by their city, but, since they seemed to plead more justly that they had avenged violence with violence, he acquitted them of the charge.

53.2. Having accomplished these things, he marched against the city of the Fidenates, lying forty stades from Rome, which was then great and populous. For when provisions were being brought to Rome in river-boats — which the Crustumerians had sent to the Romans, pressed by famine — the Fidenates, falling in a body upon the boats, plundered the provisions and slew some of the men who came to the rescue, and, when justice

53.3. was demanded, would not submit to it. Angered at this, Romulus invaded their country with a large army, and, having become master of abundant spoil, was preparing to lead his force away; but as the Fidenates sallied out, he joined battle with them. A fierce contest taking place and many falling on both sides, the Fidenates, being worsted, turned to flight, and he, following close upon them, burst into the wall together with the fleeing.

53.4. The city having been taken at the first onset, after punishing a few of them and leaving a guard of three hundred men in the city, and cutting off a portion of the land, which he divided among his own people, he made this city too a colony of the Romans. It was a colony of the Albans, founded at the same time as Nomentum and Crustumerium, three brothers having led the colony, of whom the eldest founded Fidenae.

54.1. After this war he marched against the Camerini, who had attacked the colonists among them at the time when the city of the Romans was wasted by a pestilential disease; by which the Camerini, especially emboldened and thinking that the Roman race would be utterly destroyed by the calamity, killed some of the colonists and cast out others.

54.2. In requital for which Romulus, when he had conquered the city a second time, put to death those responsible for the revolt, allowed his soldiers to plunder the city, and, cutting off half the land besides that previously given to the colonists and leaving a sufficient garrison, that those within might make no further movement, led his force away. From this campaign he brought home a second triumph, and from the spoils dedicated a bronze four-horse chariot to Vulcan, and set up beside it his own image, inscribing in Greek letters his own deeds.

54.3. A third war arose for him against a city of the Tyrrhenian nation which then had the greatest power, called Veii, distant about a hundred stades from Rome, lying on a high and precipitous crag, and of a size as great as Athens. The Veientines made the taking of Fidenae their pretext for the war, and, sending envoys, ordered the Romans to lead their garrison out of the city and to give back the land which they held, having taken it from the Fidenates, to its original masters. And when they did not persuade them, marching with a large army, they pitched their camp within sight near Fidenae.

54.4. But Romulus, having foreknown their march, had gone out with the best of his force and was ready in the city of the Fidenates. When all was prepared for the contest, both, advancing into the plain, fought, and continued for many hours contending hotly, until night, coming on, parted them, equal in the contest. This battle, then, they fought thus;

55.1. but another battle taking place not long after, the Romans conquered by the wisdom of their leader, who occupied by night a hill not far from the enemy's camp and set in ambush there the freshest force of the horse and foot who had come later from the city.

55.2. Both having come together into the plain and fighting in the same manner, when Romulus raised the signal to those on the hill, those in ambush, raising the war-cry, ran upon the Veientines from behind, and, falling upon men wearied while they themselves were fresh, routed them in no long time. Of them a few die in the battle, but the greater number, casting themselves into the river Tiber (which flows past Fidenae) to swim across the stream, perished. For being wounded and heavy with weariness, they became unable to swim across; and others, through inexperience of swimming, not having foreseen it, their minds distracted by the terror, were lost in the eddies.

55.3. Now if the Veientines had recognized that they had been ill-advised at the first and had thereafter kept quiet, they would have suffered no further greater ill; but as it was, hoping to retrieve their former failures, and thinking that if they should attack with greater preparation they would easily prevail in the war, they marched a second time against the Romans with a large army, both that enrolled from the city itself and that which had come from their kinsmen in friendship;

55.4. and there is again a fierce battle of theirs near Fidenae, which the Romans won, killing many of the Veientines and taking still more prisoners. Their camp too was captured, full of goods and arms and slaves, and river-boats laden with much provision were taken, in which the crowd of prisoners was brought down to Rome by the river.

55.5. This third triumph was brought home by Romulus, far more splendid than the former. And not long after, an embassy of the Veientines coming about the dissolution of the war and asking to obtain pardon for their offences, Romulus imposed on them these penalties: to hand over to the Romans the land adjoining the Tiber, called the Seven Districts, and to withdraw from the salt-works at the mouth of the river; and, as a pledge that they would make no further movement, to give fifty hostages.

55.6. The Veientines having submitted to all these things, he made a treaty with them for a hundred years and inscribed the agreements upon pillars. Of the prisoners, those who wished to depart he released without ransom, but those who chose to remain there, being far more numerous than the others, he made citizens, distributed among the phratrae, and assigned them allotments on this side of the Tiber.

56.1. These were the wars of Romulus worthy of account and remembrance. That he subdued no more of the neighbouring nations was held to be due to the swift end of his life, which befell him while he was still in his prime for warlike deeds; concerning which many and various accounts are handed down.

56.2. Those who make the story of him more fabulous say that, while he was holding an assembly at the camp, a darkness fell from a clear sky and a great storm broke, and he became invisible; and they have believed that the man was caught up by his father Ares.

56.3. But those who write the more probable account say that he was slain by his own citizens. And as the cause of his slaying they bring forward the release of the hostages whom he had taken from the Veientines, made without common consent and contrary to custom; and his no longer treating the most ancient citizens and the enrolled in the same manner, but holding the former in greater honour and despising those who had been brought in; and his cruelty and arrogance concerning the punishments of offenders (for certain Romans accused of robbing their neighbours, men neither obscure nor few, he ordered to be hurled down the precipice, having judged the case himself alone); but most of all because he now seemed to be harsh and arrogant and to exercise his power no longer in a kingly but in a more tyrannical fashion.

56.4. For these reasons, they say, the patricians banded against him and plotted his murder; and they did the deed in the senate-house, and, dividing the body into parts that the corpse might not be seen carried out, departed concealing under their robes whatever part of him each had,

56.5. and after this hid it in the earth secretly. Others say that he was slain while holding an assembly by the new Roman citizens, and that they undertook the murder at the very time, of course, when the darkness also occurred, the people having scattered from the assembly and the leader having been left without his guard. For this reason, indeed, they say that the day on which the calamity occurred is named after the rout of the multitude, and is called even to our own times "the flight of the crowd."

56.6. And the events that befell from the god concerning the union of that man and his dissolution seem to furnish no small occasion to those who make mortal things divine and raise the souls of the distinguished to heaven. For at the violation of his mother, whether it was wrought by some man or by a god, they say the sun was wholly eclipsed and utter darkness, as in night, held the earth; and at his death they say the same thing befell.

56.7. Romulus, then, who founded Rome and was first appointed by it king, is said to have met with such an end, leaving no offspring of his own, having reigned thirty-seven years and being in the fifty-fifth year of his age. For he came to the leadership altogether young, being eighteen years old, as all who have written the histories concerning him agree.

57.1. In the following year no king of the Romans was appointed, but a magistracy which they call an interregnum took charge of public affairs, appointed in some such manner as this. Of the patricians enrolled in the senate by Romulus, being two hundred in number, as I have said, they were distributed into decads; then, having cast lots, they gave to the first ten thus drawn the supreme power to govern the city.

57.2. But these did not all reign at the same time, but in succession, each for five days, during which he held the rods and the other symbols of royal authority. The first to rule handed over the leadership to the second, and he to the third, and so it went on to the last. When the fifty-day term had passed for the first ten kings, another ten took up the office, and from them again others.

57.3. When it seemed good to the people to put an end to the decemvirates, being aggrieved at the changes of authority, because not all the men had like principles or like natures, then the senators, calling together the multitude into assembly by tribes and phratrae, gave it to them to consider concerning the order of the constitution, whether they wished to entrust the common affairs to a king or to annual magistracies.

57.4. Yet the people did not take the choice upon itself, but gave the decision to the senators, as being content with whichever of the constitutions they should approve. To them it seemed good, all of them, to establish a kingly constitution; but concerning him who should reign, strife fell out, from which order he should be. For some thought that the one to govern the city ought to be appointed from the ancient senators, others from those brought in later, whom they called the "younger."

58.1. The contention being drawn out at length, they agreed at last upon this just arrangement: that one of two things should be done — either the elder senators should appoint a king, none of themselves, but whomever of the others they should think most fit; or the younger should do this same thing. The elder accept the choice, and, having taken much counsel among themselves, resolved thus: since they themselves were excluded from the rule by the agreement, to confer the office on none even of the senators who had come in later, but to seek out and appoint as king some man brought in from outside, who would attach himself to neither party, that faction might be most of all removed.

58.2. Having so resolved, they put forward a man of the Sabine race, the son of Pompilius Pompon, a distinguished man, named Numa (one must lengthen the second syllable and accent it with the grave), being of the most prudent age — for he was not far short of forty years — and kingly in the dignity of his form.

58.3. And his fame was very great, not only among the Quirites but also among the neighbouring peoples, for wisdom. When this seemed good to them, they called together the multitude into assembly, and one of them, the interrex of that time, coming forward, said that it had seemed good in common to all the senators to establish a kingly constitution, and that he, having become master of the decision, chose Numa Pompilius as king of the city to take up the rule. And after this, having appointed envoys from the patricians, he sent them to bring the man to the office, in the third year of the sixteenth Olympiad, which Pythagoras the Laconian won in the stadium-race.

59.1. Thus far I have nothing to say against those who have given out the history concerning this man; but in what follows I am at a loss what to say. For many are they who have written that Numa was a disciple of Pythagoras, and that at the time he was appointed king by the city of the Romans he was living at Croton studying philosophy; but the time of Pythagoras' age conflicts with the account.

59.2. For Pythagoras was later than Numa not by a few years but by four whole generations, as we have received from the common histories. For the one took up the kingship of the Romans in the middle of the sixteenth Olympiad, but Pythagoras lived in Italy after the fiftieth Olympiad.

59.3. And I have a still greater proof than this to give that the times do not agree with the histories handed down concerning the man: that at the time Numa was called to the kingship by the Romans, Croton was not yet a city; for four whole years later than Numa's becoming king of the Romans, Myscelus founded it, in the third year of the seventeenth Olympiad. So Numa could neither have studied philosophy with Pythagoras the Samian, who flourished four generations later, nor have been living in Croton, when the Romans called him to the kingship, in a city

59.4. that did not yet then exist. But those who have written concerning him seem, if I must declare my own opinion, having taken these two agreed facts — the sojourn of Pythagoras that occurred in Italy and the wisdom of Numa (for the man is agreed by all to have been wise) — to have joined these together and made Numa a disciple of Pythagoras, no longer examining their lives, whether both flourished at the same times,

59.5. which I have now done — unless indeed someone shall suppose that there was another Pythagoras, a teacher of wisdom, before the Samian, with whom Numa studied. But this I do not know how one could prove, since no one of note, neither Roman nor Greek, so far as I know, has handed it down in history. But concerning these matters enough.

60.1. Numa, when these men came to him calling him to the leadership, for a time refused and long continued struggling against taking the office; but when his brothers pressed him with entreaties, and his father at last thought it not right to thrust away so great an honour offered, he consented to become king;

60.2. and the Romans, learning these things from the envoys, before they saw the man with their eyes, were seized with a great longing for him, deeming it sufficient proof of his wisdom that, while others honoured kingship beyond measure and placed the happy life in it, he alone despised it as a paltry thing and not worthy of zeal; and when he arrived, they met him while he was still on the road with much praise and greetings, escorting him into the city with the other honours.

60.3. An assembly being convened after this, in which the tribes cast their votes for him by phratrae, and the patricians having ratified what seemed good to the multitude, and lastly the augurs having declared the signs from the divine power auspicious, he took up the office.

60.4. This man the Romans say made no campaign, but, having been pious and just, passed the whole time of his rule in peace and rendered the city most excellently governed; and they tell many wonderful accounts concerning him, referring his human wisdom to the suggestions of the gods.

60.5. For they tell the tale that a certain nymph, Egeria, used to come to him on each occasion, teaching him kingly wisdom; but others say not a nymph but one of the Muses. And this, they say, became manifest to all. For when men at the first, as it seems, disbelieved and thought the account concerning the goddess was fabricated, he, wishing to display to the disbelievers some clear token of his intercourse with the divinity, and being instructed by her, did as follows:

60.6. having invited many good Romans to the house in which he happened to be living, then, having shown those who came that the interior was meanly furnished both in its general appointments and in particular without provisions suitable for entertaining a crowd, he at that time bade them depart, but invited them to dinner in the evening;

60.7. and when they came at the appointed hour, he showed them costly couches and tables laden with many fine cups, and set before them, as they reclined, a banquet of every kind of food, such as it would not have been easy for any of the men of that time to provide even over a very long while. And amazement at each of the things they saw came upon the Romans, and from that time a firm belief was established that some goddess consorted with him.

61.1. But those who remove from history all that is fabulous say that the account concerning Egeria was fabricated by Numa, that those who feared the divine might the more readily give heed to him and eagerly accept the laws he laid down, as being brought from the gods.

61.2. And they declare that he took the imitation of these from the Greek examples, having become an emulator of the wisdom of Minos the Cretan and of Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian. Of these the one said he was a companion of Zeus, and frequenting the Dictaean mountain, in which the Cretans tell the tale that Zeus was reared by the Curetes when a newborn babe, descended into the sacred cave, and, composing the laws there, brought them out, declaring that he received them from Zeus; and Lycurgus, going to Delphi, said he was taught the legislation by

61.3. Apollo. To deal precisely with the mythical histories, and especially with those referred to gods, since I see it requires long discourses, I shall pass over; but the goods which the Romans seem to me to have got from the rule of that man, as I have learned from the histories of the country, I shall set forth, premising in what kind of disturbances the affairs of the city happened to be before he came to the kingship.

62.1. After the death of Romulus the senate, having become master of public affairs and holding the power for a year, as I have said, began to differ and fall into faction within itself concerning the greater and the equal share. For so much of it as was Alban, from those who had set out the colony with Romulus, thought fit both to lead in counsel and to receive the greatest honours and to be courted by the

62.2. newcomers; but those who had later been enrolled among the patricians from the colonists thought they ought not to be excluded from any honour nor be at a disadvantage with the others, most of all those who happened to be of the Sabine race and who, according to the agreement made by Romulus with Tatius, having come into the city on equal terms with the ancient inhabitants, seemed to have given them the same favour in return.

62.3. And as the senate split, so the multitude of the dependents, divided in two, attached itself to each of the factions. And there was no small part of the common people from those who had recently come over to the citizenship, which, because it had aided Romulus in no war and had been neglected by the leader, had received neither a portion of land nor of spoils. This part, homeless and beggared, wandering about, was of necessity hostile to the more powerful and most ready for revolution.

62.4. In such a swell, then, did Numa find the affairs of the city tossing; and first he relieved the needy of the commons by distributing among them a portion of the land Romulus had acquired and a small portion from the public land; then, taking away nothing from the patricians of what the founders of the city had won, but giving the colonists certain other honours, he made them cease their differences.

62.5. And having fitted the whole multitude, like an instrument, to the single reckoning of the common advantage, and having increased the circuit of the city by the Quirinal hill (for it was as yet still unwalled), he then took in hand the rest of his policy, busying himself with these two things, by which he supposed the city, when so adorned, would become happy and great: piety first, teaching men that the gods are givers and guardians of every good to mortal nature; and then justice, through which, he declared, even the goods from the gods bring fair enjoyments to those who possess them.

63.1. Out of the laws and institutions by which he brought each of these to great advancement, I do not think fit to write all, fearing the length of the discourse, and at the same time seeing that the recording of them is not even necessary to Greek histories; but the most authoritative themselves, and those able to make plain all the man's policy, I shall tell in summary, beginning with his ordering of things divine.

63.2. Whatever, then, ordered by Romulus, he found in usages and laws, holding all to have been ordered from the best, he let remain in its place; but whatever seemed to have been left out by him, these he added, appointing many precincts to gods that had not yet obtained honours, founding many altars and temples, assigning festivals to each of them, and establishing priests to take charge of them, legislating very many rites of purity and worship and lustrations and other services and honours, as many as no Greek nor barbarian city, nor those who

63.3. ever plumed themselves most upon their piety. Romulus himself, too, as having become greater than mortal nature, he ordained to be honoured under the name of Quirinus, with the building of a temple and yearly sacrifices. For while the Romans were still ignorant of his disappearance — whether it came about by the providence of a divinity or by a human plot — a man named Julius, of the line of Ascanius, a husbandman and blameless in his life, such as would tell no lie for his own gain, came forward into the Forum and said that, as he was returning from the field, he saw Romulus departing from the city bearing his arms, and, when he came near, heard him saying this:

63.4. "Announce to the Romans from me, Julius, that the divinity who received me by lot when I was born is leading me to the gods, now that I have fulfilled my mortal span; and I am Quirinus." And having embraced the whole legislation concerning things divine, he divided it in writing into eight parts, as many as were the divisions of the rites.

64.1. He assigned one ordering of the sacred rites to the thirty curiones, who, I said, sacrifice the

64.2. common rites on behalf of the phratrae. The second to those called by the Greeks crown-bearers, but by the Romans flamines, whom they so name from the bearing of the caps and fillets, which they still wear even now, calling them flama.

64.3. The third to the leaders of the celeres, who, I said, serving as horse and foot, are appointed guards of the kings; for these too performed certain appointed

64.4. rites. The fourth to those who interpret the signs sent from the gods and distinguish of what matters they are tokens, both private and public, whom from one kind of the observations of their art the Romans call augures, but we should call them bird-watchers, being among them masters of all divination, that concerning things celestial and aerial and

64.5. earthly. The fifth to the virgins who guard the sacred fire, who are called by them, after the goddess they serve, Vestals — he himself being the first to found a temple of Vesta for the Romans and to appoint virgins as her sacrificers; concerning whom it is necessary to say a few words, and those the most essential, as the subject demands. For there are matters that have been thought worthy of inquiry and treated by many of the Roman historians in this place, concerning which those who have not carefully examined the causes have brought forth rather careless writings.

65.1. The founding of the temple some attribute to Romulus, thinking it impossible that, when a city was being founded by a man experienced in divination, a common hearth of the city should not first be established — and that too when the founder had been reared in Alba, in which from of old the temple of this goddess had been set up, and his mother had become a sacrificer to the goddess; and, dividing the rites in two and making some of them common and civic, others private and of the family, on both these grounds they say there was much necessity for Romulus to worship this goddess.

65.2. For neither is anything more necessary to men than the common hearth, nor was anything more proper to Romulus by succession of race, his ancestors being of those who brought the goddess's rites from Ilium, and his mother a priestess. Those, then, who on these grounds attribute the founding of the temple to Romulus rather than to Numa seem to speak rightly in general — that, when a city is founded, a hearth ought first to be established, and that too by a man not unversed in the wisdom concerning things divine — but to have been ignorant of the particulars, concerning both the building of the present temple and the virgins who serve the goddess.

65.3. For neither was it Romulus who consecrated to the goddess this place in which the sacred fire is guarded (a great proof of this is that it is outside the so-called square Rome which he walled; but all set up the temple of the common hearth in the strongest part of the city, and none outside the wall), nor did he establish the services to the goddess through virgins, mindful, as it seems to me, of the misfortune concerning his mother, who, serving the goddess, happened to lose her virginity; thinking that he would not be able, if he found any of the sacrificers corrupted, to punish her according to the ancestral laws, because of the recollection of his own domestic calamities.

65.4. For these reasons, then, he did not build a common temple of Vesta nor appoint virgins as her priestesses, but, having set up in each of the thirty phratrae a hearth on which the members of the phratra sacrificed, he made the leaders of the curiae their sacrificers, imitating the customs among the Greeks, which still take place among the most ancient of the cities. The so-called prytaneia among them are temples of Vesta, and are served by those who hold the greatest power in the cities.

66.1. Numa, taking up the office, did not disturb the private hearths of the phratrae, but established one common hearth of all in the place between the Capitol and the Palatine, the hills being now joined into one circuit and the Forum lying midway between both, in which the temple is built; and he enacted that the guarding of the rites should be performed, according to the ancestral law of the Latins, through virgins.

66.2. There are also certain difficulties concerning what it is that is guarded in the temple, and why it is committed to virgins. Some say that what is kept is nothing beyond the visible fire, and they make the guarding of it committed to virgins rather than to men with reason — because fire is undefiled and a virgin uncorrupted, and to the purest of things divine the most chaste of mortals is dear.

66.3. And they hold that the fire is consecrated to Vesta because the goddess, being the earth and holding the central place of the universe, makes the kindlings of the aerial fire from herself. But there are some who say that, besides the fire, certain sacred objects lie in the precinct of the goddess, unspeakable to the multitude, of which the hierophants and the virgins have knowledge — offering as no small proof of their account what happened concerning the burning of the temple in the first Punic War which arose between the Romans and the Carthaginians over Sicily.

66.4. For when the precinct was on fire and the virgins were fleeing from the flames, one of the hierophants, Lucius Caecilius surnamed Metellus, a man of consular rank, the one who brought home the famous triumph from Sicily over the Carthaginians of a hundred and thirty-eight elephants, despising his own safety for the common good, ventured to force his way into the burning building and, snatching up the sacred objects left by the virgins, saved them from the fire; for which he won great honours from the city, as the inscription of his image set up on the Capitol bears witness.

66.5. Taking this as agreed, they then add conjectures of their own: some saying that there is here guarded a portion of the sacred objects in Samothrace, Dardanus having brought the rites from the island to the city founded by him, and Aeneas, when he fled from the Troad, having carried these too among the rest to Italy; others declaring it to be the heaven-fallen Palladium that was among the Ilians, as if Aeneas had brought it through his experience, and the Achaeans had taken a copy of it by theft — concerning which very many accounts have been told by poets and historians.

66.6. I, for my part, gather from very many things that there are certain sacred objects unknown to the multitude guarded by the virgins, and not the fire alone; but what these are I do not think fit to inquire too curiously, neither I myself nor any other who wishes to keep his duties toward the gods inviolate.

67.1. The virgins who serve the goddess were four at the first, the kings choosing them on the conditions Numa established; but later, through the multitude of the rites they perform, becoming six, they have so remained to our own time, having their abode by the goddess, where by day none of those who wish to enter is barred, but by night it is not lawful for any male to lodge.

67.2. It is necessary for them to remain for thirty years pure of marriage, performing the sacrifices and the other rites according to law, during which ten years they had to learn, ten to perform the rites, and the remaining ten to teach others. When the thirty years were fulfilled, there was nothing to hinder those who wished from laying aside the fillets and the other insignia of the priesthood and marrying. And some did this, very few, to whom the ends of their lives turned out unenviable and not at all fortunate; so that, taking their misfortunes as an omen, the rest of the virgins remain by the goddess until death, and then another is again appointed by the hierophants in the place of her who has departed.

67.3. Honours are rendered them by the city, many and fair, on account of which they feel no longing for children or marriage; and great punishments lie upon their faults, of which the examiners and chastisers by law are the hierophants — scourging with rods those who err in any of the lesser matters, but delivering those who have been corrupted to the most shameful and

67.4. most piteous death. For while still living they are carried in procession on a bier, borne to the funeral appointed for the dead, friends and kinsmen bewailing them and escorting them; and brought as far as the Colline gate, within the wall, they are placed in a chamber built underground together with the burial ornaments, and obtain neither monument nor offerings to the dead nor

67.5. any other of the customary rites. There are many other tokens, it seems, of one serving the rites unholily, but most of all the quenching of the fire, which the Romans dread above all terrors, supposing it to be a sign of the destruction of the city, from whatever cause it may arise; and with many services they propitiate it and bring it back again to the temple; concerning which I shall speak at the proper time.

68.1. It is well worth recording also the manifestation of the goddess which she displayed to the virgins unjustly accused. For it is believed by the Romans, paradoxical though it be, and the historians have made much account of these things.

68.2. Now all who practise the godless philosophies — if indeed they ought to be called philosophies at all — deriding all the manifestations of the gods that have occurred among Greeks or barbarians, will bring these histories too to much ridicule, ascribing them to human boastings, on the ground that no one of the gods cares for any of mankind. But those who do not free the gods from concern for human affairs, but think them gracious to the good and hostile to the bad, having gone through much history, will not suppose these manifestations either to be incredible.

68.3. It is said that once, the fire having gone out through some negligence of Aemilia, who was then guarding it (she having committed the charge to another virgin, one of those recently enrolled and but lately learning), there was much disturbance throughout the whole city and an inquiry by the hierophants, lest some defilement of the priestess had befallen the fire; whereupon, they say, Aemilia, being innocent but at a loss over what had happened, in the presence of the priests and the other virgins, stretching out her hands toward the altar, said:

68.4. "Vesta, guardian of the city of the Romans, if I have for nearly thirty years performed thy rites holily and justly, keeping a pure soul and a chaste body, appear to me and aid me, and suffer not thy priestess to die the most piteous death; but if any unholy thing has been done by me, by my punishment purge away the pollution of the city."

68.5. Having said this, and having torn off a strip from the linen garment she happened to be wearing, she cast the band upon the altar after the prayer, they say, and from the ashes, long cold and keeping no spark, a great flame blazed up through the linen, so that the city had no further need of either purifications or new fire.

69.1. But still more wonderful than this, and more like a fable, is what I am about to tell. They say that someone unjustly accused one of the sacred virgins, Tuccia by name, being unable to allege a quenching of the fire, but bringing certain other proofs from probable evidence and testimonies, not true; and that the virgin, bidden to make her defence, said only this — that she would clear the slanders by her deeds;

69.2. and having said this and called upon the goddess to be her guide on the way, she led on toward the Tiber, the hierophants permitting her and the crowd of the city escorting her; and coming near the river, she undertook the daring deed that is proverbial among the first of impossibilities — having drawn water from the river in a new sieve, and carried it as far as the Forum, she poured out the water beside the feet of the hierophants.

69.3. And after this, they say, her accuser, though much search was made, was found neither living nor dead. But, though I have still much to say concerning the manifestations of the goddess, I think these enough to have been said.

70.1. The sixth part of the legislation concerning things divine was that assigned to those called by the Romans Salii, whom Numa himself appointed, choosing out twelve of the most comely young men of the patricians, whose sacred objects lie on the Palatine and who are themselves called Palatines. For the Salii called Agonales, or by some Colline, whose sanctuary is on the Colline hill, were appointed after Numa by King Hostilius, according to a

70.2. vow which he made in the war against the Sabines. All these Salii are a kind of dancers and hymners of the armed gods. Their festival is about the time of the Panathenaea, in what is called the month of March, held at public charge for many days, during which they lead the dances through the city, into the Forum and the Capitol and many other places both private and public, girt in embroidered tunics with bronze belts, and wearing fastened over them togas bordered with purple and edged with scarlet, which they call trabeae (this is a native Roman garment among the most honoured), and wearing on their heads what are called apices, high caps drawn together into a conical shape, which the Greeks call kyrbasiai.

70.3. Each of them is girt with a sword, and in his right hand holds a spear or a rod or some other such thing, while in his left he holds a Thracian shield; this is like a rhomboid buckler with narrower sides, such as those are said to bear who perform the rites of the Curetes among the Greeks.

70.4. And the Salii, in my judgment at least, rendered by a Greek name, are Curetes — named by us from their age, after the kouroi (youths), but by the Romans from their vigorous motion. For to leap up and to bound is called by them salire; and from the same cause they call all other dancers also — since in these too there is much leaping and bounding — by a name derived from the Salii, saltatores.

70.5. Whether I have rightly conceived in assigning them this appellation, he who wishes may judge from the things done by them. For they move to the pipe in rhythm with their armed motions, now together, now alternately, and sing certain ancestral hymns along with their dances. And the armed dance and motion and the noise produced upon the shields by the daggers, if one must rely on the ancient accounts, the Curetes were the first to establish. The myth concerning them I have no need to write, since well-nigh all know it.

71.1. Among the shields which the Salii wear, and which certain attendants of theirs carry hung from poles, being very many, they say one is heaven-fallen, and that it was found in the palace of Numa, no man having brought it in nor any such shape having been known before among the Italians; from both which the Romans supposed the weapon to be god-sent.

71.2. And Numa, wishing it to be honoured, borne by the best of the young men on sacred days throughout the city, and to obtain yearly sacrifices, but fearing both plots from enemies and its stealthy removal, had, they say, many shields made like the heaven-fallen one, a certain craftsman named Mamurius undertaking the work, so that the nature of the god-sent one became indistinct and hard to discern to those who should plot, through the indistinguishable likeness of the works of men.

71.3. The Curetic rite is native to the Romans and very honoured, as I gather from many other things, but most of all from what occurs at the processions both in the hippodrome and in the

71.4. theatres. For in all of these striplings, clad in comely tunics, having helmets and swords and bucklers, march in rows; and these are the leaders of the procession, called by them, after the game thought to have been invented by the Lydians, Lydiones — images, as it seems to me, of the Salii, since they perform nothing Curetic, as the Salii do, neither in hymns nor in dancing. But these ought to be free and native-born and with both parents living; yet they are of whatever fortune. But what need to write more concerning them?

72.1. The seventh part of the sacred legislation was assigned to the college of those called fetiales. These, in the Greek tongue, would be called peace-judges. They are picked men from the best houses, consecrated for the whole of their lives, King Numa having been the first to establish this sacred college also for the Romans;

72.2. whether, however, he took the model from the so-called Aequicoli, as some think, or from the city of the Ardeates, as Gellius writes, I cannot say; it suffices me to say only this much, that before Numa's reign the college of peace-judges did not yet exist among the Romans.

72.3. Numa established it when he was about to war upon the Fidenates, who had made plunderings and raids upon his country, in case they should be willing to come to terms with him without war; which, being brought to necessity, they did. And I think, since the college concerning the peace-judges is not native to the Greeks, it is necessary for me to go through how many and how great matters it has charge of, that to those who are ignorant of the piety of the Romans, which the men of that time practised, it may not seem paradoxical that all their wars took the fairest end.

72.4. For they will be found to have made the beginnings and the grounds of all of them most pious, and on this account most of all to have had the gods gracious to them in dangers. To go through, then, all that is committed to these peace-judges is not easy because of its multitude, but in a summary sketch it is such as this: to watch that the Romans wage no unjust war against any city under treaty; and, when others begin to break treaty against them, to send embassies and first to ask justice in words; and, if they obey not what is demanded,

72.5. then to ratify the war. Likewise, if any peoples under treaty, saying they are wronged by the Romans, demand justice, these men are to determine whether they have suffered any breach of treaty; and if they seem to bring fitting accusation, they are to arrest those liable to the charges and deliver them up to the wronged; and to judge the wrongs concerning ambassadors, and to keep inviolate what pertains to treaties, and to make peace, and a peace already made, if it seem not to have been concluded according to the sacred laws, to annul; and the transgressions of the generals, as many as are committed concerning oaths and treaties, by their judgment to expiate — concerning which I shall make my account at the

72.6. proper times. The things done by them concerning heralds' missions, when they demanded satisfaction of the city that seemed to do wrong (for it is worth not being ignorant of these too, done with much care for things holy and just) — I have received as such. One of the peace-judges, whom the rest should select, adorned in sacred raiment and dress, that he might be distinguished from the rest, came to the city of the wrongdoers; and standing at the borders he called upon Jupiter and the other gods, testifying that he came to demand satisfaction on behalf of the city of the Romans;

72.7. then, having sworn that he was going against a city that did wrong, and having called down the greatest curses upon himself and upon Rome if he should lie, then he entered within the borders; then, whomever he first met, taking him to witness — whether he were of the country folk or of the citizens — and adding the same curses, he went on toward the city; and then, before entering the city, taking to witness in the same manner the gate-keeper or the first who met him at the gates, he went on into the Forum; and there, taking his stand, he spoke with those in office concerning the matters for which he came, everywhere adding the oaths and

72.8. the curses. If, then, they should submit to justice by giving up those liable to the charges, he departed leading the men away, having now become a friend and from friends; but if they asked time for deliberation, he granted ten days and came again, and waited up to a third demand. When the thirty days had passed, if the city did not render him justice, having called upon the gods of heaven and of the underworld, he departed, saying only this much, that the city of the Romans would deliberate concerning them at its leisure.

72.9. And after this he declared to the senate, coming together with the other peace-judges, that all had been done by them that was holy according to the sacred laws, and that, if they wished to vote war, there would be nothing from the gods to hinder. But if any of these things were not done, neither was the senate empowered to vote war nor the people. Concerning the peace-judges, then, we have received this much.

73.1. The last division of Numa's ordinance was that concerning the rites which fell to those holding the greatest priesthood and authority among the Romans. These, in their own tongue, from one of the works they perform — repairing the wooden bridge — are called pontifices; but they have charge of the greatest

73.2. matters. For these judge all the sacred suits affecting private men, magistrates, and ministers of the gods, and legislate concerning whatever of the rites is unwritten and unusual, judging what may seem fitting to them in laws and usages; they examine all the magistracies to which any sacrifice or service of the gods is committed, and all the priests; and the attendants and ministers whom they use for the rites these watch lest they err at all concerning the sacred laws; and to the private men who do not know the rites of worship of things divine or superhuman they become interpreters and expounders; and if they perceive any not obeying their injunctions, they punish them, having regard to each circumstance; and they are exempt from all suit and penalty, rendering account neither to the senate nor to the people, at least concerning the rites;

73.3. so that, if one wishes to call them teachers of sacred things, or sacred lawgivers, or sacred guardians, or, as we think fit, hierophants, he will not stray from the truth. When one of them departs from life, another is established in his place, not chosen by the people but by those very men, whoever seems most fit of the citizens; and the one approved takes up the priesthood, if the auspices chance to be

73.4. favourable for him. The things, then, legislated by Numa concerning the divine and divided according to the colleges of the rites, by which it came about that the city became more pious — besides the other lesser matters, these were the greatest and most conspicuous.

74.1. But the things leading the life of each man to frugality and temperance, and bringing them into a desire for the justice that keeps the city in concord, were very many — some embraced in written laws, others, outside writing, brought into practices and long habituations. To speak of all of these would be a great task; but it will suffice that two of the proofs which have obtained the greatest memory be given also of the

74.2. rest. Of self-sufficiency and of no man desiring what belongs to another, the legislation concerning the marking of properties. For having bidden each man trace round his own property and set stones upon the boundaries, he consecrated the stones to Jupiter Terminalis (of boundaries), and ordained that all should perform sacrifices to them on an appointed day each year, coming together to the place, having established the festival of the boundary gods too among those most honoured.

74.3. This the Romans call Terminalia, after the boundary-marks; and the boundaries themselves, by the change of a single letter from our tongue, they call termini. And if anyone should remove or shift the boundaries, he enacted that the one who did any of these things should be sacred to the god, that to anyone who wished to kill him as a temple-robber both safety and freedom from pollution might attach.

74.4. And this right he established not over private properties alone, but over public ones also, enclosing these too with boundaries, that boundary gods might divide both the Roman land from that of the neighbours and the common from the private. This the Romans keep down to our own times as memorials of the time, for the sake of the religion itself. For they hold the boundary-stones to be gods and sacrifice to them every year nothing of living things (for it is not holy to bloody the stones), but cakes of

74.5. Demeter and certain other first-fruits of crops. But they ought also still to keep faithful the deed for the sake of which Numa held the boundaries to be gods — being content with their own properties and seizing nothing of others' either by force or by guile. But now some mark off their own from others' not for the better, nor as their forefathers handed down, but the boundary of their properties is not the law but the desire of all things — a thing not fair. But concerning these matters I leave it to others to consider.

75.1. Numa, then, by such laws restricted the city to frugality and temperance; and to justice concerning contracts he led it on, having devised a thing unknown to all who had established the famous constitutions. For seeing that of contracts those done openly and with witnesses are guarded by the shame of those present, and few are they who do wrong in such matters, but those without witness, being far more than the others, have one safeguard, the good faith of the contracting parties, he thought it necessary to take pains about this above all else and to make it worthy of divine reverence.

75.2. For Justice and Themis and Nemesis and what the Greeks call the Erinyes and all things like these had been, he held, sufficiently deified and consecrated by his predecessors; but Faith (Pistis), than which there is no greater nor holier feeling among men, had not yet obtained reverence, neither in the common affairs of cities nor in private ones.

75.3. Having considered this, he was the first of men to found a temple of public Faith and established sacrifices to her, as to the other gods, at public charge. And in time, indeed, the common character of the city, having become faithful and steadfast toward men, was likely to render such also the manners of private persons. So venerable a thing and undefiled was good faith held to be, that the greatest oath for each became his own faith, and the strongest of all testimony; and whenever, concerning a contract without witness, any dispute arose between one and one, what decided the quarrel and did not allow the contentions to proceed further was the faith of one of the very parties at law; and the magistrates and the courts settled most of their disputes by the oaths sworn upon faith.

75.4. Such inducements to temperance and constraints to justice, devised then by Numa, rendered the city of the Romans more orderly than the best-ordered household.

76.1. But what I am now about to tell rendered it careful of necessities and a worker of good things. For the man, reflecting that a city which is to cherish justice and to abide in the temperate life needs to abound in the necessary supply, divided the whole country into what are called pagi (districts), and set over each of the districts a magistrate as overseer and patroller of his own portion.

76.2. For these, going round frequently, registered those who had farmed their fields well and those who had farmed them ill, and declared it to the king; and he received the diligent farmers with praises and kindnesses, but reproaching and fining the idle farmers, urged them to tend the land better. And so, being freed from wars and having much leisure from the affairs of the city, and paying with shame the penalty of idleness and sloth, they all became tillers of their own soil, and accounted the wealth from the land, which is the most just of all wealth, sweeter than the gains of war, which have no security.

76.3. And to Numa it resulted from these things that he was loved by his subjects, emulated by his neighbours, and remembered by those who came after; through which neither did civil faction dissolve the political concord, nor did war with foreign nations move the city from its best and most admirable pursuits. For so far were the neighbours from taking the unwarlike quiet of the Romans as an occasion of attack upon them, that even if any war arose among themselves against one another, they made the Romans arbitrators and thought fit to settle their enmities with Numa as judge.

76.4. This man, then, I should not be ashamed to reckon among the first of those famed for felicity. For he was sprung of a royal race and enjoyed a kingly form, and practised a training not the useless one concerning words, but that from which he learned to be pious and to practise the other virtues.

76.5. And he was thought worthy to take up the leadership of the Romans while young, being led to it by them as one summoned for the renown of his virtue; and he continued all his life dealing with subjects who obeyed him in all things; and he drove his age to its furthest, sound, in no way maltreated by fortune, and died the easiest of deaths, withered by old age, the divinity allotted to him from the beginning remaining like itself until he vanished from among men — having lived more than eighty years, reigned forty-three, and left offspring: as the greater number write, four sons and one daughter, whose families are still preserved; but as Gnaeus Gellius relates, a daughter only, from whom was born Ancus Marcius, who became the third king of the Romans after him.

76.6. When he died, the city set on great mourning and made for him the most splendid burial. He lies on the Janiculum across the river Tiber. And concerning Numa Pompilius we have received this much.