the god miraculously stayed the assailants. The temple was duly erected, and dedicated to Jupiter Stator. Renewed and restored from age to age, it continued to mark the traditionary spot, which has been so plainly designated by well-known topographical notices that we are at no loss to identify it even at this day. The Romans valiantly renewed the battle, and in their turn drove the Sabines into the valley. Then it was that the women they had seized descended from the fastness, threw themselves between the combatants, and induced them to accept the pact and ratify the accomplished union with terms of friendship and alliance. The peace thus effected between the fathers and the sons-in-law was again remembered when the daughter of Julius Cæsar was accepted as a pledge of amity by his rival Pompeius.

After this union the Palatine continued to be occupied by the Romans, while the Quirinal was assigned to the Sabines. united people adopted in common the names of Romani and Quirites, the latter appellation being taken, according to the tradition, from the Sabine town of Cures, but more probably in fact from quiris, the Sabine name for a spear. The two kings, Romulus and Titus Tatius, reigned conjointly. The two peoples met to transact affairs in common in the valley between their respective hills, which spot came to be known as the Forum Romanum.

At the end of five years Tatius was slain in a sudden attack of the Laurentines, to whom he had refused satisfaction for violence done by his subjects. From this time Romulus reigned alone over both nations in Rome. He was a brave and victorious ruler, and made successful war upon the Etruscan people of Fiden and Veii. To him was attributed the first establishment of the Roman constitution, to be described more particularly hereafter. After a prosperous reign of thirty-seven years the founder of the Roman state was removed suddenly from the world. He had assembled his subjects for a military review at the Goat's Pool, a spot in the Campus Martins, when the sun became eclipsed, and the multitude was dispersed by an awful tempest. When they reassembled the king had disappeared. He had been carried up into heaven on the chariot of his father Mars. The mourning of the people, still ignorant of his blissful end, was allayed by the vision attested by one Julius Proculus, who declared that on his way from Alba the shade of the hero had appeared to him, and promised protection to the Romans under the name of the deified Quirinus. This legend, like most of the miracles of Roman story, was rationalized by a more sceptical age at Rome itself, and it was confidently affirmed that the tyrant had been murdered and his body concealed by the Senators.

The two allied peoples could not agree on the choice of a suc

CHAP. III.

NUMA AND TULLUS.

51

cessor. For one year the Senators governed in turn, ten at a time for five days, as Interreges. It was at last arranged .o. 39. that the Romans should elect, but their choice should B.c.715. be made from among the Sabines. The name of Numa Pompilius was received with acclamation, and he was invited from his residence at Cures to assume the government. He was reputed the wisest and most just of men, a disciple of Pythagoras, and imbued with all the learning of the times. Moreover he was a favorite of the gods, and under the guidance of the nymph Egeria, whom he consulted in her grotto at the foot of the Cælian Hill, he arranged the rites and ceremonies of the Roman religion. It was Numa who assigned their functions to the Pontiffs, the Flamens, the Augurs, and the Fecials. To him was ascribed the institution of the College of the Vestal Virgins, who should be chosen from the noblest families, and have in their holy keeping the sacred fire, the Palladium, and the Penates of the city. By him was also instituted the College of the Salii, who guarded the ancile, or shield which had fallen from heaven, and danced, as their name imports, in honor of Mars their patron. Numa forbade human sacrifices and the worship of the gods under images of wood or stone or metal. It was not till a hundred and seventy years from the foundation of the city that the simple piety of the Romans yielded to the seductions of idolatry. Further, he encouraged the arts of agriculture, upon which the greatness of the Roman nation was founded almost as firmly as upon arms; he divided lands among the citizens, sanctified their bounds with appropriate festivals, erected a shrine to the goddess Fides, and constructed the famous Temple of Janus, the gates of which were opened in time of war, but closed in peace. During the nine-andthirty years of this happy reign the gates of Janus were kept constantly shut. Assuredly no such golden age ever followed afterwards.

The third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius, was in every particular a contrast to the second. He is chosen by the Sabines from among the Romans. He is devoted throughout his U.O. 81. career to warlike enterprises, whereby he consolidates c. 673. and extends the power of the city. He directs his arms against the people of Alba, with whom the Romans disdained to recognize affinity. But the chiefs on either side determined to avoid the mutual slaughter which would render the victors an easy prey to their common enemy the Etruscans; and the quarrel was decided by a combat of three champions on each side. The Horatii, three brothers, fought for Rome; the Curiatii, three brothers also, fought for Alba. Two of the Horatii were first slain, but the three Curiatii were all wounded and weakened, and fell succes

sively beneath the sword of the surviving Roman. A sister of the Horatii had loved a Curiatius, and disloyally bewailed the victory of her countrymen. Horatius slew her in his indignation. The king refused to judge him, but the Duumvirs undertook the case, and sentenced him to be scourged and hanged. Then at last the murderer appealed to the people, and the people, moved to mercy by the service he had done the state, absolved him from the appointed penalty. Such was the origin of the appeal to the people, by which in later times the Roman citizen might avert a sentence of death given by the ordinary tribunals. Another of the warlike legends of this king relates the punishment of Mettus Fufetius, the chief of the Albans, who had now submitted to the Roman power. The Albans had secretly incited the Fidenates to attack the Romans conjointly with the Veientines, and when summoned to give their aid as allies to Rome had been held back by their leader to await the issue of the conflict. But Tullus was victorious, and wreaked stern justice on the traitor who had wavered by causing him to be tied between two chariots and torn asunder. These and such as these were the wars of Tullus, prolonged through a reign of thirty-two years, at the end of which he was himself struck by lightning, while attempting to verform the appropriate rites to Jupiter Elicius, or the Lightener, as though he had been holy and religious like his predecessor Numa. The god was offended, and slew him.

Again the Romans choose a Sabine to reign over them. The legend of Ancus Martius, the fourth king of Rome, is a more prosaic reproduction of that of Numa. Ancus was a U.c. 113. peaceful ruler; he encouraged agriculture, restored the B.. 641. services of religion, and promulgated laws for the civil government of the state. But he could not keep the gates of the temple of Janus closed. The Latins and the Etruscans hovered on the outskirts of the city, and required him to protect it with arms and by the construction of fortifications. To Ancus was ascribed the erection of the Sublician, or wooden bridge of Rome, and also of the prison under the Tarpeian Hill. He constructed, moreover, the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. Under him the Romans, as it would seem, first began to practice the arts of commerce. He reigned without a reverse of fortune thirty years, and died in peace and prosperity.

CHAP. IV.

TARQUIN THE ELDER.

53

CHAPTER IV.

THE THREE LATTER KINGS.

THE legend of Rome has made some progress during the reign of the first four of her kings. Romulus was the son of a god himself, and Numa is closely associated with a divine influence, while Tullus and Ancus descend into the ranks of mere mortals. A farther and more important step is made in the imputed records of the three kings that follow. With the first of the Tarquins begins what may be called the local history of Rome; Servius inaugurates the constitution, and from the second Tarquin dates the beginning of constitutional history.

Under the reign of Ancus a stranger had come to settle in Rome. He was the son of the Corinthian Demaratus, who had fled his native country and established himself at Tarquinii, in Etruria. He espoused an Etruscan woman named Tanaquil, skilful in auguries and omens, and at her sage instigation had migrated to Rome. Tanaquil divined from the flight of birds the greatness to which her husband was destined. The stranger bore the Etruscan name of Lucumo, but at Rome he adopted the appellation of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. He ingratiated himself with Ancus, who appointed him guardian of his sons. He won still more the confidence of the people, who favored the artifice by which he dispossessed his wards of their inheritance and secured the succession for himself. The power thus unjustly acquired he used with moderation and wisdom. From his reign date v.c. 135. the earliest notices of the great buildings of the city. B.C. 616. The influence of Etruria first appears in the legend of Tarquin the elder, who drained the Forum and enclosed it with porticos, fortified the hills with stone walls, commenced the building of the Capitol on the Tarpeian Hill, which thenceforth obtained the name of the Capitoline, and enlarged the Circus Maximus for the shows and games which he introduced from the land he had quitted. To this great builder is also ascribed the Cloaca Maxima, the gigantic sewer which even now attests a power and greatness in the early people of Rome far beyond what their reputed history warrants. It has been thought, and not perhaps without reason, that the primitive legends of Rome on which the national history was

founded have done, after all, but scant justice to the real greatness of the city and its people, under the influence of Etruscan civilization. The Romans, however, were content to attribute the execution of these mighty works to the forced labor of captives taken in war with the neighboring nations, and they gave Tarquin the fame of a warlike chief as well as an able administrator. He was the first, they said, to celebrate the Roman triumph; and it was to Etruria that they ascribed the robe bespangled with gold, and the chariot drawn by four white horses, with which so many of their generals afterwards ascended the Capitoline Hill. The same influence which introduced the triumphal ornaments extended no doubt to other Etruscan costumes, such as the habiliments of war, the prætexta of the magistrates, and possibly the toga of the citizens itself. The curule chairs, the lictors, and the fasces are said to be similarly derived. In the story of Attus Navius, the augur, who performed the miracle of cutting the stone with a razor, we may remark the establishment at Rome of the augural science of the Etruscans.

After another long reign of nearly forty years Tarquinius Priscus was assassinated by the sons of Ancus. But they were not allowed U.C. 176. to profit by their deed of vengeance. Tanaquil closed B.O. 578. the gates of the palace, declared that the king was wounded but not dead, and when his end could be no longer concealed, produced his son-in-law, Servius Tullus, as the elect of the Senate, without consulting the assemblies of the people. Roman tradition declared of Servius, in accordance with his name as it sounded to Roman ears, that he was the son of a slave, who had been recommended to the favor of Tarquin by the prodigies which surrounded him, and whose favor he merited by his character and talents. But the writers of Etruria stepped in to claim him for their own, and another legend declared him to have been a genuine Etruscan, who had come with Cæles Vibenna and a band of his own countrymen, and settled as allies of Rome on the hill denominated the Cælius; his real name was Mastarna, which he was said to have changed to Servius. The place of Servius in Roman history depends mainly on the elements of the Roman constitution which were traditionally ascribed to him, of which farther notice will be taken in our next chapter. But he is also to be noticed as one of the great traditional builders of the city. It was Servius who gave to Rome the full extent which it attained during the whole period of the republic. He enclosed in one wall the various fortifications and detached buildings which occupied the seven hills, uniting to the Palatine, the Aventine, the Capitoline, and the Calian the eastern half of the whole enclosure, which comprised the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline. The city thus