  The hill on which the Sabines settled took its name from their word for themselves, Quirites, the People with the Spears. It came to be known as the Quirinal. The level place between this hill and the Palatine, where the treaty was made, was called the Comitium,—the place where they came together. Here in after years was the Forum, the place for public debate on all questions concerning the government of Between these two great hills and a big bend in the river was a great level space that was used [pg 234] Romulus himself lived with his wife Emilia in a house which he built on the slope of the Palatine near the river and not far from the bridge, at a point sometimes called the Fair Shore. Here he had a garden, fig trees and vines, and beehives; and here he used to sit at evening and watch the flight of the birds across the river. His little son, whom he called Aquila as a pet name, because an eagle perched upon the house on the night the boy was born, used to watch with wondering eyes his father’s ways with live creatures of all kinds. A countryman who tended the garden, who had been a boy on the Square Hill when Romulus was a tall young man, said that they used to get Romulus to find honeycombs and take them out, because bees never stung him. Aquila had a little plot of his own, where he planted blue flowers, which bees like, and raised snails of the big, fat kind found in vineyards. He was like his mother’s people, a born gardener. The countryman, Peppo, made little wooden toys for him, and among them was a little two-wheeled cart with a string harness, which Aquila attached to a team of mice, but he had to play with that out of doors, because his mother would not have [pg 237] Illustration: His mother molded for him men and animals His mother molded for him men and animals. He heard many stories,—some from his father, some from his mother and some from Peppo. He liked best the story of his father’s pet wolf, and always on the feast of Lupercal and the other feast days of Mars he and his mother went to put garlands on the little stone that was raised to the memory of Pincho, in one corner of the garden. The city was now ruled by three different groups of elders, from the three different races of settlers. They were generally known as the three tribes, and the public seat of the three rulers was called the tribunal. The oldest tribe, of course, was the Ramnian, the people who had come from the Mountain of Fire to Rome. The Tities were the Hill Romans or the Sabines, and the Luceres, the People of the Grove, were the tribe that had collected where the soldiers settled and the outsiders who were neither Ramnians nor Sabines lived. There were three great fraternities—the Salii or men of Mars on the Palatine, the Salii on the Quirinal, a Sabine branch of [pg 238] Besides these fraternities there were two important groups of men who were not exactly rulers, but were chosen because of their especial knowledge. These were the six Augurs, who were skilled in watching and explaining omens, and the Bridge Builders, the Priesthood of the Bridge, who were skillful in measuring and constructing and building. There were five of these, the head priest being called the Pontifex Maximus or High Pontiff. Instead of being a large and rather straggling town growing so fast that it was hard to know how to govern it, Rome was really taking on the look of an orderly and prosperous city. Sometimes, when the children of the first colonists looked back at the simple village life they could just remember, and then looked about them at the many-colored life that had gathered on the Seven Hills, it seemed to them almost like another world. Yet in their homes they still kept the old customs and the old worship, and the servants they had gathered about them were very proud of being part of a Roman household. There was one danger, however, which nobody realized in the least. In the great change from [pg 239] Nothing seemed able to harm him. He went among the poorest, and by his fearless courage kept them from going mad with fear. When the fever passed his hair had begun to turn from black to gray. He heard somewhere of the drink that Faustulus the shepherd had taught Mamurius how to make when the sickness came before, and he remembered other things Faustulus had said of the fever. When the pestilence was gone, he called the fathers of the city together, and they took counsel how to keep it from coming back. Tullius, who was now an old man, said that in his opinion bad water was the cause of much sickness. The fever began in a part of the city where there was no drainage. [pg 240]Naso said that it was all because the people had allowed strangers to come in, and the gods were angry. Romulus made no comment on that. He did not know, himself, whether the gods were displeased and had sent the sickness, but he was sure of one thing. It could do no harm to take all possible means of preventing it. Mamurius said, and Marcus Colonus upheld him, that in the old days on the Mountain of Fire, where the people had plenty of good water and bathed often, they seldom had any sickness. Calvo observed quietly that baths were not impossible even here; it was only a question of building them and conducting the water they had into fountains. An Etruscan he had once known said that he had seen it done in a city larger than this. After the death of his wife and child Romulus seemed to feel that he was in a way the father of all his people, more especially of the people who were outside the ordinary fraternities and families of the old stock. He set his own servants and followers at work, under the direction of Calvo, and with the help of some of the other citizens who thought as he did, a beginning was made on a proper water-supply and a system of public baths. He set the young men to exercising and racing, keeping themselves in condition; [pg 241] None of the Romans, in fact, were really great believers in miracles. They did all they could in the way of ceremony and worship, but they took good care to do also everything that they [pg 242] |
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