After the founding of the city and the tragic ending of the day, Romulus went away, no one knew exactly where. He was gone for some time, He told Marcus Colonus that he was going to Alba Longa, where some of his men still were as a garrison for Numa. But he did not stay there many days.

Although he was the founder and in one way the ruler of his city, this did not mean that he was obliged to stay there to settle all its problems. Most of them were solved by the common law and common sense of the colonists. Their ruler had no authority over them contrary to custom, and custom would apply in one way or another to almost everything they did. Hence the young man was free to go wherever he saw fit.

The fancy took him to cross the river and see the old woman who had told him when he was a boy that he was to be the ruler of a great people. He found her still alive, though so old that her [pg 153]brown face looked like an old withered nutshell. She glanced up at him keenly.

“Welcome, king,” she said.

Just how much she had heard of his life from traveling traders and vagabonds, no one can say, but she seemed to know a great deal about it. She told him that when he returned to his own country, if he followed certain landmarks and dug in the ground at a certain point near the river bank some distance from Rome, he would find an altar and a shield of gold. The shield, she said, had fallen from heaven, and was intended for him, because he was the especial favorite of Mars, the god of war. He did not take this very seriously, but he found himself much interested in the ways of this strange people. Their priests knew how to measure distances, and mark out squares, and consult the stars. Their metal workers, dyers and potters knew how to make curious and precious things. The fortune tellers had a great reputation all over the country. Their name, soothsayers, meant “those who tell the truth.”

The old woman told him that it was a great mistake for those who were born under a certain star to try to get away from their fate. If a man were born to be a ruler and a commander of men, it was useless for him to try to make himself a [pg 154]farmer or a trader. It would be far better for him to keep to what he could do well, and buy of others what he needed. This struck Romulus as directly opposed to the ways of the villagers as he had seen them. They made for themselves everything they possibly could, and all of them were farmers. He began to wonder where their future would lead them. A man like Colonus, or Tullius, or Muraena, or Calvo knew enough to direct other men. There was not one of the ten who came out from the Mountain of Fire who was not far superior to most of the people in the country round about. They were quite as fit to be rulers of a tribe as he was; in fact, they were more so, in many ways. But if they had stayed where they were born, they would have gone on to the end of their days, working with their hands, and owning only their share of the common crop and the flocks and herds of the village. Here in the land beyond the river it was different. The powerful nobles and the priesthood ruled, and other men served.

In talking with the soothsayers, he heard a great deal about the influence of the stars. The priests also put great faith in this. They divided the sky into twelve parts, or houses, as they called them, and each of these was ruled by some star named after a god. In the course of the year [pg 155]the sun passed through each house, or sign, in turn. If a man were born in the house of the Ram, which was ruled by Mars the red planet, he would be like Mars,—a warrior, bold and fearless, and not afraid to venture into new fields and to do things that other men had not done before. If he were born in that sign when the planet was in it with the sun, he would be more a son of Mars in every way. If Venus, the planet which ruled love, were also in the sign, he would be ruled by reason even in his love affairs, and his marriage and his wars would be more or less connected. All these things, according to the soothsayers, were true of Romulus.

Romulus was acute enough to see that these people knew him for a chief, and that some of what they told him was flattery; but he was not sure how much of it was. He had not wandered about his world for twenty-odd years without seeing the difference in people. He knew that the great art of ruling men successfully lies in understanding their different characters and not expecting of any person what that person cannot do. The rules of the villages were very well for a small place, where all of the people were related. But how would they fit such a miscellaneous collection of people as seemed likely to gather in the town by the river? His mind was gradually [pg 156]getting at the problem of governing such a town in such a way that instead of being a little island of civilization in a sea of wilderness, it would be a center of civilization in a country inhabited by all sorts of people who would look up to it and be ruled and influenced by it. Such an idea, to Colonus, to Emilius in the Sabine village, or even to the old chief Numa on Alba Longa would have seemed wildly impossible. It seemed to Romulus that if a band of outlaws had been welded into an effective fighting troop as he had welded them, a country might be made up of a great many different sorts of persons living peaceably together. He grinned as he thought of such a man as his old captain, Ruffo, obeying all the customs of the colony and giving his whole mind to the tilling of the soil and the raising of cattle. It would be like trying to harness a wolf, or stocking a poultry yard with eagles. The thing could not be done. And yet, when it came to keeping order, Ruffo was wise and just and kind.

One thing he could see very clearly, and that was that for a long time yet the colonists would have to give especial attention to disciplined warfare. He wished that there were more of them. If they ever had a quarrel with the dark Etruscans beyond the river, it would be a fight for [pg 157]life, for the Etruscans outnumbered them ten to one. It would be well to trade with them so far as they could, but there again the customs of the colonists were against him. There was not much that they wished to buy.

When he left the land beyond the river, he paid a farewell visit to the old witch, and she told him again that he was born to rule. He hoped that he was.

When he came back to the Square Hill, he found the fathers of the colony confronting a new problem, which they had no tradition to help them settle. The problem was what to do with the new settlers who were coming in for protection and in the hope of getting a living, but who were not of their own people. Often they had not intelligence enough to understand what the colonists meant by their customs. This was something that Romulus had expected. He had his answer ready. He said that there was a god of whom he had heard, called Asylos, who protected homeless persons and serfs who had escaped from cruel masters, and that they might set apart a space outside the walls and dedicate it to this god. There his own soldiers could live, and there would be a place for any one who came who would work for a living. And this was done. The people who came in from various [pg 158]places seeking protection, and were useful in various ways even if they could only hew wood and draw water, were called after awhile the plebs, the men who helped to fill the town. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it, that every pair of hands was of value. It would not do to let every one who came become a citizen, an inhabitant of the city, because that might destroy all comfort and order within the walls. But the town grew much faster when it became known that any man not a criminal could get a living there.

Another circumstance that made it grow was that the country people and the villagers from farther up the river began to bring down what they had to sell. Sometimes the Etruscans bought of them, and sometimes the Romans did. It was the last riverside settlement before the boats went down to the sea, and it began to be a trading as well as a farming place not many years after the colonists settled there.

Trading was favored because farming did not altogether supply the needs of the people. Now and then the river rose and flooded their land. The only part of the country they could absolutely depend on as yet was the group of seven hills, where they kept their herds and flocks. One year, when their grain was ruined, they had [pg 159]to send across the river and buy some of the Etruscans, in exchange for wool and leather and weapons. Within the first ten years every one of the colonists had discovered that men who make their home in a new land must change their ways more or less if they are to live. While they are changing the land, the land changes them. The children of these people would not be exactly the same when they grew up as they would have been if they had stayed in their old home. Their children’s children would be still more different. It is possible that a ruler who had not grown up as Romulus had, making his own laws and habits and managing men more or less by instinct, might have been bewildered and frightened. Whatever came up, he always had some expedient ready, and whatever strange specimen of human nature cropped out in the soldiers, or the traders, or the pagans, he had always seen something like it before.

At the end of ten years the town on the Square Hill had spread out into a collection of villages and huts in which almost every kind of human being to be found in that region might have been seen, somewhere. On the Palatine Hill lived the original ten families and some of their kindred who had joined them. On the Aventine were barracks for the soldiers, and also on the steep [pg 160]narrow hill near the river. Clusters of huts here and there on the plain showed where hunters and fishermen lived, who came up the hill sometimes with what they had to sell, or came to buy weapons of the smiths. In the hollow called the Asylum lived the runaway serfs from Alba Longa, fishermen from the river bank, pagans and foresters from a dozen places. When there was a feast, all of these various kinds of families learned something of the worship of Mars, or Maia Dia, or Saturn, or Pales, or Lupercus. They all knew something about the laws of the colony, because the rulers took care that any offense against public order was punished. It was not a good place for thieves or brawlers or idlers. There was the beginning of a common law.