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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Childhood of Rome by Louise Lamprey
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
+online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: The Childhood of Rome
+
+Author: Louise Lamprey
+
+Release Date: May 31, 2011 [Ebook #36296]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF‐8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME***
+
+
+
+
+
+                       [Illustration: Cover image]
+
+ [Illustration: Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the
+                                 curve.]
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE CHILDHOOD
+                                OF ROME
+                                   By
+                                L. LAMPREY
+
+                          WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+                            EDNA F. HART-HUBON
+
+                      [Illustration: Printer’s sign]
+BOSTON
+LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+1925
+
+
+
+
+
+                           _Copyright, 1922,_
+                      BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+                           MAITLAND C. LAMPREY
+
+
+
+
+
+                               INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that these stories are not meant to be
+taken as history, even legendary history. The tales of the founding of
+Rome and of the early life of the Italian races are many and
+contradictory. It is quite possible that future discoveries may disprove
+half the theories now held on these subjects. There must have been,
+however, heroic semi-savage figures like the Romulus of the legends, and
+the aim of the author has been to re-create in some degree the atmosphere
+and the surroundings in which they may have lived.
+
+The various customs and events introduced here were not, probably, part of
+the history of one generation. It is possible, however, that as a tree
+grows from a seed, the laws of the future city were foreshadowed and
+suggested in the relations between the Romans as individuals and between
+the town on the Palatine and its neighbors.
+
+It will be observed that the forms of Latin and Italian names used in
+these stories do not follow the usual classic Latin style and end in “us.”
+It is said by some authors that the original immigrants from whose customs
+and traditions Roman civilization developed came from Greece, and in that
+case such Greek forms as “Vitalos” might have been preserved long after
+such clipped forms as “Marcus” and “Marcs” became current. Inasmuch as
+Italian peasant names hardly ever end in anything but a vowel it seems
+illogical to take it for granted that in a colony of farmers, such as the
+men who founded Rome, the names would all have taken the classical Latin
+form at first. They would have been much more likely to vary according to
+the ancestry, dialect and intelligence of the family. Later they would
+tend to a conventional form as certain families of distinction set a
+standard for others to follow and took pride in keeping their own speech
+correct.
+
+In short, the period described here is a transition stage, and like any
+age of the founding of a new civilization, contains incongruous elements.
+It has been stated that even in the great days of the Roman Empire the
+number of people who actually spoke correct classical Latin was extremely
+small in proportion to the whole population of any city.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE LIVING LANGUAGE
+
+
+  Sing a song of little words, homely parts of speech,
+  Phrases children use at play, songs that mothers teach,—
+  Who would think when Rome was new, they used that language then—
+  Table, chair and family, map and chart and pen?
+
+  Sing a song of stately ways, camp and square and street,
+  Consuls, tribunes, governors, the legion’s myriad feet,
+  If those wise men so long ago had not known what to say,
+  All they gave us readymade we should not have to-day.
+
+  Clear and straight and brief their talk in country or in town.
+  Lucid, vivid, accurate the thoughts that they set down.
+  Still the world is using words that bear the Roman stamp—
+  Coined in forum, villa, temple, market place or camp.
+  Still our thoughts take day by day those shapes of long ago—
+  If you read the dictionary you will find it’s so.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+     I.   THE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE           3
+    II.   TEN FAMILIES                  17
+   III.   THE SACRED YEAR               28
+    IV.   THE BANDITTI                  40
+     V.   THE WOLF CUB                  55
+    VI.   BOUNDARY LINES                68
+   VII.   MASTERLESS MEN                81
+  VIII.   THE BEEHIVE TEMPLE            94
+    IX.   THE SQUARE HILL              108
+     X.   THE KINSMEN                  117
+    XI.   THE TAKING OF ALBA LONGA     130
+   XII.   THE RING WALL                140
+  XIII.   THE SOOTHSAYERS              152
+   XIV.   BREAD AND SALT               161
+    XV.   THE TRUMPERY MAN             174
+   XVI.   THE GREAT DYKE               184
+  XVII.   THE WAR DANCE                196
+ XVIII.   THE PEACE OF THE WOMEN       208
+   XIX.   THE PRIEST OF THE BRIDGE     224
+    XX.   THE THREE TRIBES             233
+   XXI.   UNDER THE YOKE               243
+  XXII.   THE GOAT’S MARSH             251
+          A ROMAN ROAD                 261
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around      _Frontispiece_
+the curve
+                                                                    PAGE
+Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were                    12
+hurrying to shelter
+The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar                         21
+All the young voices took up the song                                 33
+The people gathered in the public square                              45
+Whoever they were, it was proper at this time to offer                59
+food to strangers
+“I have seen something like this before,” he said                     72
+The lad went straight down the mountainside with his                  79
+wolf at his heels
+The little maidens walked soberly together                            96
+The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or              103
+lambs
+“Victory! Vic-to-ry! Romulus forever!”                               132
+Then they blessed him and crowned him with the victor’s              139
+crown of laurel
+A plan of Rome in classical times, showing the seven                 144
+hills
+The copper plow was drawn by a white bull and a white                147
+cow
+They sat together that night and watched the moon sail               161
+grandly over the flood
+Mamurius lifted her in his strong arms and carried her               170
+through the door
+Toto spread out his gay cloth upon the ground                        178
+There was a gleam of bright metal in the hole they were              203
+digging
+Emilia was allowed to sit with them and spin and sew                 216
+His mother molded for him men and animals                            235
+Far away, in a cavern on a mountain height, there lived              259
+for many years an old shepherd
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    I
+
+
+                           THE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE
+
+
+Marcia, the little daughter of Marcus Vitalos the farmer, sat on a
+sheltered corner of a stone wall, making a willow basket. Basket weaving
+was one of the first things that all children of her people learned, and
+she was very clever at it. Her strong, brown fingers wove the osiers in
+and out swiftly and deftly, as a bird builds its nest. The boys and girls
+cut willow shoots, and reeds, and grasses that were good for this work, at
+the proper time, and bound them together in bundles tidily, for use later
+on. The straw, too, could be used for making baskets and mats after the
+grain was threshed out of it.
+
+A great many baskets were needed, for they were used to hold the grain,
+and the beans, and the onions, and the dried fruit, and the various other
+things that a thrifty family kept stored away for provisions. They were
+also used to gather things in and to carry them in, and sometimes they
+took the place of dishes in serving fruit or nuts. Almost every size and
+shape and kind could be made use of somewhere. The one Marcia was making
+was round and squat and quite large, and it was to have an opening at the
+top large enough to put one’s hand into easily, and a cover to fit.
+
+The house in which she lived was one of the oldest in the village on the
+slopes of the Mountain of Fire. It was so old that there was no knowing
+how many children had grown up in it, but they were all of the same
+family,—the family of the Marcus Vitalos Colonus who built it in the first
+place. This long-ago settler was called Colonus, the farmer, not because
+he was the only farmer in the neighborhood, for everybody worked on the
+land, but because he was an unusually good one, a leader among them in the
+understanding of the good brown earth and all its ways.
+
+His sons after him took the name Colonus, for among their people it was
+considered very important to belong to a good family. As soon as a man’s
+name was mentioned his ancestry was known, if he had any worth the naming.
+The ancestor of all this people was said to have been Mars, the god of
+manhood and all manly deeds. Their names showed this, for the common ones
+were Marcus, Mamurius, Mavor, Mamertius and so on, with some other name
+added to describe their occupations, or the place where they lived, or
+some peculiar thing about them. Plautus meant the splay-footed man;
+Sylvius, the man of the forest; Marinus, the seaman,—and there had been a
+Marcus Vitalos Colonus in this family, ever since the first one. Marcia’s
+elder brother, two years older than she was, had this name, but he was
+usually called Marcs, for in their language the last syllable was apt to
+be slurred over.
+
+It was very quiet in the village just now, for all the men were off
+getting in the harvest. The grain lands and the pastures were some
+distance away, wherever the land was suitable for crops or grazing. Every
+morning, directly after breakfast, every one who had anything to do away
+from the village went out, and usually did not come back until supper
+time. It was said that the first Marcus Vitalos was the leader who had
+persuaded the people to settle down in one place instead of moving about,
+driving their herds here and there. It was said also that he began the
+custom of a common meal in the middle of the day for all the men who were
+working on the land. This not only saved time and trouble, but made them
+better acquainted and gave them time to talk over and plan the work during
+the hottest part of the day. When the day’s toil was finished, each man
+returned to his own house and had supper with his family. The houses were
+built, not too near together, around an open square. The wall around the
+house enclosed the sheepfold and the cattle sheds besides. The people
+worked and played together for much of the time, but there was a certain
+plot of ground that came down from father to son in each family and
+belonged to that family alone. Nobody else had any rights there at all.
+
+The people were very careful to do everything according to custom. Almost
+everything they did had been worked out long ago into a sort of system,
+which was considered the best possible way to do it. Certain customs were
+always observed because the gods of the land were said to be pleased with
+them. Whether the gods had anything to do with it or not, these children
+of Mars were certainly more prosperous than most of their neighbors, and
+had many things which they might not have had if it had not been for their
+careful ways. The soil of the sunshiny mountain slopes was rich and
+fruitful and easy to work; the clear mountain waters were pleasant and
+wholesome, and in certain places there were hot springs which had been
+found good to cure disease. It was not strange that they believed the gods
+took especial care of them and would go on being kind to them so long as
+proper respect was shown.
+
+Marcia wove her basket, putting a band of red around the curve before she
+began to draw it in, and her thoughts went far and near, as thoughts do.
+
+The family spent very little time indoors when it was possible to be in
+the open air. The mother sat spinning in the doorway, and the baby played
+at her feet. The father was harvesting, and Marcs was out with the sheep.
+The next younger brother, Bruno they called him, had gone fishing. Supper
+was in an earthen pot comfortably bubbling over the fire. It would be
+ready by the time they all came home. Marcia had had her dinner and helped
+clear away before she came out here. Although the people had some
+vegetables and herbs, their main crop was grain. It was a kind of cereal a
+little like wheat and a little like barley, with a small hard kernel, and
+they called it “corn,” which meant something that is crushed or ground
+into meal. When it was pounded in a mortar and then boiled soft, it made
+good porridge. Boiled until it was very thick, and poured out on a flat
+stone or board to cool, it could be cut into pieces and eaten from the
+hand. The children had all they wanted, with some goat’s-milk cheese and
+some figs. Marcia could hear them laughing and shouting as they played
+with the pet kid. He was old enough now to butt the smaller ones right
+over on their backs, and he did it whenever they gave him a chance.
+
+Marcia was rather a silent girl, with a great deal of long black hair in
+heavy braids, level black brows over thoughtful eyes, and a square little
+chin. As she began to draw in her basket at the top, she was thinking of
+the stories the old people sometimes told about a long-ago time when their
+ancestors lived in another and far more beautiful place. There the rivers
+ran over sands that gleamed like sunshine, and all the land was like a
+garden. The houses were larger than any here and built of a white stone.
+There were stone statues like those she and Marcs sometimes made in clay
+for the children to play with, but as large as men and women and painted
+to look like life. The gods came and went among the children of men and
+taught them all that they have ever known, but much had since been
+forgotten. So ran the story.
+
+Sometimes in the heart of this mountain there were rumblings underground,
+as if the thunder had gone to earth like a badger. The old people said
+then that the smith of the gods was working at his forge. The noises were
+made by his hammer, beating out weapons for the gods. The plume of smoke
+that drifted lazily up from the deep bowl-shaped hollow in the mountain
+top came from his fires. To these people the mountain was like a great
+still creature, maybe a god in disguise. The forest hung on the slopes
+above like a bearskin on the shoulders of a giant. Up higher were barren
+rocks and cliffs, where nothing grew.
+
+Marcia looked up at the mighty crest so far above, and then down across
+the valley, where the stubble of the grain fields shone golden in the
+westering sun. The river, winding away beyond it, was bluer than the sky.
+She wondered whether, if her people should ever go away, they would tell
+their children how beautiful this land was. But of course they never would
+go. They had lived too long where they were ever to be willing to leave
+their home on the mountain. No other place could be like it. The floods
+that sometimes ruined the lowlands never rose as high as this; the
+wandering, warlike tribes that sometimes attacked their neighbors did not
+trouble them here. They belonged to the mountain, as the chestnut trees
+and the squirrels did.
+
+“Me make basket,” announced her little sister, pulling at the withes, her
+rag doll tumbling to the ground as she tried to scramble up on the wall.
+“Up! up!”
+
+“O Felic’la (Kitty), don’t; you’ll spoil sister’s work! I’ll begin one for
+you.”
+
+The Kitten had got her name from her disposition, which was to insist on
+doing whatever she saw any one else doing, just long enough to make
+confusion wherever she went. What with showing the little fingers how to
+manage the spidery ribs of the little basket she began, and working out
+the braided border of her own basket, Marcia’s attention was fully taken
+up.
+
+She did not even see that Marcs was driving in the sheep until they began
+crowding into the sheepfold. The walls of this, like the walls of the
+house itself, were of stone, laid by that long-ago Colonus, and as solid
+and firm as if they were built yesterday. The stones were not squared or
+shaped, and there was no mortar, but they were fitted together so cleverly
+that they seemed as solid as the mountain itself. They hardly ever needed
+repair. The roofs, of seasoned chestnut boughs woven in and out, seemed
+almost as firm as the stonework. This place had been settled when the
+farmers had to fight wolves every year. Even now, if the wolves had a hard
+winter and got very hungry, they sometimes came around and tried to get at
+the sheep. Then the men would take their spears and long knives and go on
+a wolf-hunt. But that had not happened now for several years.
+
+Why were the sheep coming in so early?
+
+Marcs looked rather disturbed, and he was in a hurry. Bruno too was coming
+home without any fish, an unusual thing for him; and he looked both scared
+and puzzled. The mother was standing in the door, shading her eyes with
+her hand and looking at the sky. Marcs caught sight of the girls in their
+corner.
+
+“You had better pick up all that and go in,” he called to them. “Pater
+sent us home as quick as we could scamper. See how strange the sky is.”
+
+They all looked. Little Felic’la, with round eyes, dropped her basket and
+pointed.
+
+“Giants,” said she.
+
+It did not take much imagination to see, in the dark clouds spreading over
+the heavens, huge misty figures like gigantic men, or like gods about to
+descend upon the earth.
+
+“Mater,” said Bruno, “the spring and the stream have dried up.”
+
+The father was hurrying up from the grain fields, and the boys ran to help
+him manage the frightened cattle and get the load under cover. Other
+flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hastening to shelter. The sky
+was growing darker and darker. Blue lights were wavering in the marshy
+lands by the river. The fowls, croaking and squawking in frightened haste,
+huddled on to their roosts, all but Felic’la’s pet white chicken, which
+scuttled for the house. Birds were flying overhead, uttering some sort of
+warnings in bird language, but there was no understanding what they said.
+
+[Illustration: Other flocks of sheep and other men with oxen were hurrying
+                               to shelter]
+
+Suddenly there was a crash as if the earth had cracked in two. Everything
+turned black. The air was filled with smoke and dust and ashes raining
+down from the sky.
+
+Marcia caught up her little sister and the baskets together and groped her
+way to the door. Her mother darted out to drag them in and barred the door
+against the unknown terrors outside. The boys and their father were under
+the cattle shed, with the stout timber brace against the door; it had been
+made to keep out wild beasts. In the roar of the tumult outside the
+loudest shout could not have been heard.
+
+The terrific detonations above were heavier than any thunder that ever
+rolled down the valley, sharper than any blows of a giant hammer. The
+earth trembled and rocked under foot. Then came a pounding from all sides
+at once, like the trampling of frantic herds. An avalanche of dust and
+cinders came through the smoke hole and put out the fire. Part of the roof
+had fallen in, for they could hear stones tumbling down on the earth
+floor. Through the opening they saw a crimson glow spreading over the sky.
+Only the beams in one corner, the corner where the mother and her children
+were, still held firm.
+
+At last the rain of ashes was over, the stones no longer fell, and it was
+light enough for them to see each other’s faces. They had no way of
+knowing how long they had crouched there in the dark, but they had been
+there all night. The house had no windows and only one door. Now the
+father and the boys were trying to get the door open against a heap of
+fallen roof beams and thatch and stones and ashes and broken furniture. In
+a minute or two they got it far enough open to let them in.
+
+“Are you safe, Livia? And the children?” The man’s deep voice was shaking.
+But even as he spoke he saw that they were alive and unhurt. He took his
+baby boy from his wife’s arms, and put the other arm round the two girls,
+while the little boys clung to him as far up as they could reach. Livia
+sprang up at the first sight of Marcs and Bruno, for Marcs was bleeding
+all down one side of his face and his shoulder, where a stone had glanced
+along.
+
+“I was trying to catch the white heifer,” he said rather shamefacedly,
+“but she got away. It’s only a scrape along the skin—let me go, Mater.”
+And before she had fairly done washing off the blood and bandaging the
+cuts, he was out from under her hands and out of doors after Bruno.
+
+Cautiously they all went out, and stood outside the wall, gazing about
+them. Everything as far as they could see was gray with ashes and cinders
+and stones. Here and there the woods were on fire. Far up toward the top
+of the mountain, one tall tree by itself was burning like a torch. An
+arched hole was broken out in the cliff above, and down through it flowed
+a fiery river of molten rock, like boiling honey or liquid flame, cooling
+as it went. Ravines were broken out, great slices of rock and earth had
+fallen or slid, and the river, choked by fallen trees and earth and rocks,
+was tearing out another channel for itself. The very face of the earth was
+strange and unnatural.
+
+The walls of their own house and of most of the others in the village had
+been wrenched and thrown down in places by the twisting of the earth. Then
+the roof had given way under the pelting rocks. In the corner where Livia
+and her children had taken shelter, one timber, a tree trunk set deep in
+the ground, had held firm and kept the roof from falling. The same thing
+had happened in the narrow cattle shed. They went on to see how their
+neighbors had fared.
+
+There was less loss of life than one might have expected, considering that
+the oldest man there had never seen anything like this. The people were
+trained to obey orders and look out for themselves. The father was the
+head of the family, and in any sudden emergency the people did not run
+about aimlessly but looked to whoever was there to give orders. The
+children had each the care of some younger child or some possession of the
+family. Even Felic’la, trotting along beside Marcia, held tightly in her
+arms her white chicken. The chicken was trying to get away, but Felic’la
+felt that this was no time for the family to be separated.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    II
+
+
+                               TEN FAMILIES
+
+
+Whatever the strange and terrible outbreak of the Mountain of Fire could
+have meant, the people had no thought of abandoning the land. Within a few
+days they were repairing or rebuilding their huts and returning to the
+habits of their daily life. Centuries might pass, more than one such
+calamity might befall the village, but there would still be men living on
+the same spot where their forefathers lived, on the slopes of the Mountain
+of Fire.
+
+All the same, a great change had taken place, and they felt it more as
+time went on. They began to see that the land that had once brought forth
+food for them all would not now feed them with any such abundance. They
+would be lucky if they could secure enough food to keep them alive. Some
+of the fields were burned over by the lava stream; some were ruined by the
+dammed-up river. Cattle and sheep had been killed or had run away. Much of
+the grain and wool and other provision for the future had been destroyed.
+It was a very hard winter.
+
+Yet rather than leave their homes and be strangers and outcasts without a
+country, they endured cold and scarcity and every kind of discomfort, even
+suffering. Outside the land they knew were unknown terrors,—races who did
+not speak their language or worship their gods; soil whose ways they did
+not understand, and very likely far worse troubles than had come upon them
+here. Most of the people simply made up their minds that what must be,
+they must endure, because anything else would only be a change for the
+worse.
+
+There were a few, however, who did not take this view. The first to
+suggest that some might go away was Marcus Colonus. He spoke of it to a
+little group of his friends while they were in the forest cutting wood.
+Sylvius, whose wife and children were killed when the stones fell, and
+Urso the shaggy hunter, who never feared anything, man or beast, and
+Muraena the metal-worker, a restless fellow who knew that he could get a
+living wherever men used plows and weapons, all agreed that if Colonus
+went they would go. If ten heads of households joined the party, it would
+make a clan. But first the head of the village must be consulted.
+
+Old Vitalos was the grandfather of Marcus Colonus and related in one way
+or another to nearly every person in the village. When his grandson came
+to him and told what he had in mind, the old chief stroked his long white
+beard and did not answer at once. He seemed to be thinking, and he thought
+for a long time.
+
+Before written histories, or pictured records, or even songs telling the
+history of a people, were in use, the memories of the old folk formed the
+only source of information that there was. As old men will, they told what
+they knew over and over again, and those who heard, even if they did not
+know they were remembering it, often remembered a story and told it over
+again, when their time came. The experiences and the wisdom that old
+Vitalos had gathered in the eighty years of his useful life were stored in
+his mind in layers, like silt in the bed of a river. Now he was digging
+down into his memory for something that had happened a long time ago.
+
+When he had done thinking, he spoke.
+
+“My son,” he said, “you tell me that you desire to go forth and make your
+home in another land.”
+
+“I desire it not, my father,” said Colonus, “unless it is the will of the
+gods. I have thought that it may be best.”
+
+He did not know it, but while the old man’s mind was busy with the past,
+his keen old eyes were busy with the strong, well-built figure, the
+stubborn chin and the fearless eye of this man of his own blood. Colonus
+walked with the long, sure step of the man who knows where he is going.
+The fingers of his hand were square-tipped and rugged, the kind that can
+work. He was Saturn’s own man, made to work the land and produce food for
+his people. He would not give up easily, nor would he be dismayed by
+difficulties.
+
+“And where will you go?” was the chief’s next question.
+
+“That I do not know,” said Colonus. “Yet something I do know. The mountain
+folk are not friends to us, and we should have to fight them. Their land
+is all one fortress, not easy to take. To the sea we will not go, for we
+know nothing of the ways of the sea-tamers. Perhaps our gods would not
+help us in those things, which are strange to our lives. There remains the
+plain beyond the marsh, where the river runs out of the valley. I have
+been there only once, but I remember it. Around it are mountains, and the
+plain itself is broken by low hills, as we have seen from our heights. In
+such a land we might live according to customs of our forefathers. The
+little hills can be defended, and if enemies come we can see them from far
+off. Is this a good plan that we make, my father?”
+
+The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar, which burned in his house
+as in every other house of the village; then he looked keenly at his
+grandson.
+
+      [Illustration: The patriarch looked at the fire on the altar]
+
+“There are two ways of living in a strange place, Marcus Colonus,” he
+said. “One is, to live after the manner of those who are born there, obey
+their gods, learn their law, eat their food, work as they do, join in
+their feasts and their games. The other is to fight them, and drive them
+away, or make them your servants. Which is your choice?”
+
+Colonus hesitated. “My father,” he said, “to take the first path, I must
+change my nature and become another man, which I would not do even if I
+could. Here or in another country, or in the moon if men could go there, I
+should be Colonus, the farmer,—not a sailor, or a trader, or any other
+man. To take the second way I must be leader of many fighting men, and
+this is not possible, since if we go we must take our wives and children.
+It is in my mind, my father, that there may be a middle way. If we hold to
+our own customs and are faithful to our own gods and to one another,
+surely the gods should keep faith with us. If we hurt not the people of
+the land where we go, but stand ready to defend ourselves against any who
+try to attack us, they may allow us to live as we please. If not, then
+must we fight for the right to live.”
+
+The old chief smiled. “My son,” he said, “you are wise with the wisdom of
+youth. Yet sometimes that is better than the unbelief of age. It is better
+to die fighting strangers than to die by starvation, or to fall upon one
+another, and I have had fear that one or the other might happen here, for
+truly the land is changed. It may be that this plan of yours shall end in
+new branching out of our people, the Ramnes, and in new power to our
+gods,—and if so, surely the gods will lead you.
+
+“Now I have a story to tell you, and you will give careful heed to it, and
+not speak of it lightly, but store it away in the secret places of your
+mind. Sit down here, close to me, for I do not wish to be heard by any
+listener.
+
+“Many years ago, before you were born, or ever the road was made over the
+marsh or the bridge across the river, our people were at war with a
+strange people from the north. My son, whom you resemble, went to fight
+against them and did not come back. Whether he died in battle and was left
+on some unknown field we did not know. We never knew, until in after
+years, one who was taken prisoner with him came back, his hair white as
+snow, and told what he had seen.
+
+“In that country of which you have spoken, where a plain stretches away
+toward the sea, and is guarded with mountains and divided by a yellow
+river, there are people who speak a language like ours and are sons of
+Mars, as we are. Some live in the hills and some in the plain, and some on
+the Long White Mountain. Beyond the river the people are strange in every
+way and their gods are also strange and terrible.
+
+“Now among the people of the Long White Mountain was a chief with two
+sons, and when he died the elder should have been ruler in his place. But
+the younger one, an evil man, stole into his brother’s place and killed
+his sons, and forbade his daughter to marry. Here my son was taken as a
+captive, and he became a servant to that chief.
+
+“The daughter of the elder brother was a fair woman, and my son was a
+strong and comely man, and in secret they married. Then did my son escape,
+thinking to come back with an army and bring away his wife with their twin
+boys. But the wicked chief discovered what had been done, and killed the
+mother and the children, and sent a war party after my son to kill him
+also. He could have escaped even then, for he crossed a river in flood by
+swimming. But when they called to him that his wife and her two sons were
+dead, he returned across the river and fought his pursuers until they
+killed him. Then he went to find his beloved in that unknown country which
+is neither land nor water and is full of ghosts.
+
+“Now it is in my mind that if that evil chief is dead, the people of his
+country may welcome you among them. Or if he is not dead, and the elder
+brother still lives, he may be your friend, since we are of one race and
+speak one language. In any case it is well for you to know what has
+happened there in other days, for before we plant a field we desire to
+know whether wheat, or lentils, or thistles, or salt was last sown there.
+I was told also that the evil man who killed the mother and the babes
+declared that the father of the children was the god Mars himself, not
+wishing that any kinswoman of his should be known to be a wife to a
+captive and a stranger. Now, my son, go, and peace go with you.”
+
+Colonus rose and bowed to the old man, and went home.
+
+Now the way was clear to prepare for the emigration, and from time to time
+others came to talk about it and join the company. Besides the four men
+who had made the plan in the first place, there were finally seven
+others,—Tullius, who knew all the ancient laws and customs well, Piscinus
+the fisherman, Pollio the leather worker, Cossus, an old and wary fighter,
+the two Nasos, quiet and able farmers (all of whose children had the big
+nose that marked the family), and Calvo, whose great-grandfather had
+bequeathed to his descendants a tendency to grow bald young. Calvo already
+had a little thin spot on the crown of his head, though he was not much
+over thirty. Among them they had all the most necessary trades and could
+supply most things they needed. But every one of them was also a good
+farmer; in fact, in such migrations the settlers were most generally known
+as _coloni_ or farmers. They had to understand the care of the land in
+order to get through the first years without starving to death, for there
+were no cities where they went.
+
+Muraena could make unusually fine weapons, and he took care that each of
+the party should be provided with the best that he could make. The grain
+was chosen with care, for when they found the place for their settlement
+they would want it for seed. The finest animals were chosen to stock the
+farms. The women who were not going made gifts of their best weaving to
+the housewives who were. The lads who were old enough to fight gave
+especial attention to their bows and their slings, and spent a good deal
+of time practicing.
+
+All the men who had agreed to go had sons and daughters except Sylvius,
+and most of the children were old enough to do something to help. They
+were very much excited, and secretly most of them were rather scared.
+
+There was no priest in the company; that is to say, there was no man who
+had nothing else to do, for that was not the custom among the Ramnes. They
+chose a man they all trusted for this office. Tullius was chosen priest by
+the _coloni_. It was due to his advice that the water jars and the leather
+bottles for water-carrying were well selected, strong and numerous. It was
+a hobby of his, the drinking of pure water, and he believed it had more to
+do with health than any other one thing. He also believed that the gods do
+not protect the careless and the lazy. For instance, if a man were to pray
+to Mars to keep his house from being destroyed by fire, and then burn
+brush on a windy day in summer, when the wind was blowing that way, and a
+spark happened to light on the thatch, Mars would not be likely to put it
+out. He would let it burn. If the gods went to the trouble of saving
+people from the consequences of not using common sense, they would show
+themselves to be fools, and not in the least god-like. Tullius prayed at
+all proper times, but when he was working he worked with his head as well
+as with his hands. He said that that was what heads were for.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   III
+
+
+                             THE SACRED YEAR
+
+
+In the month of spring when day and night are equal, and the young lambs
+frisk on new grass, a company of young men and girls went slowly out from
+a little town on the eastern side of a great mountain range. The long
+narrow country stretching out into the sea, which is now called Italy, is
+divided by this range lengthwise into two parts, and in the earliest days
+of the country the people on one side had hardly anything to do with those
+on the other. On the coast toward the sunrise were many harbors, and
+seafaring men from other countries came there sometimes to trade. On the
+other side, the young people who were now setting their faces westward did
+not at all know what they would find.
+
+They were all of about the same age, and they looked grave and a little
+anxious; some of the girls had been crying. The day had come when they
+were to leave the place where they had been born and brought up and go
+into an unknown world, and it was not likely that they would ever come
+back.
+
+They belonged to the Sabine people, who used to live on the banks of the
+rivers not far from the coast, and kept cattle and sheep and goats, and
+raised grain and different kinds of vegetables, and had vineyards. The
+land was so rich that they had more food and other things than they
+needed, and used to trade more or less with the strangers from other
+countries. So many strangers came there and settled in course of time that
+the first inhabitants were crowded back toward the mountains, away from
+the sea. Then war parties of Umbrians from the north came pushing their
+way into the country, and the peaceable farming folk were obliged to
+retreat still farther up the rivers into the mountain, and clear new land
+and settle it. This happened all a long time ago. It was not easy to live
+there, and they were poorer than they used to be, for so much of the land
+was rock and forest that they had to spend a great deal of their time
+getting it into a fit condition for either grain or cattle or anything
+else. But they learned to do most things for themselves, as mountain
+people do; they were not afraid of hard work or danger, and although they
+lived plainly they were comfortable.
+
+But even here they were not let alone. About twenty years earlier, before
+any of these boys and girls were born, the Umbrian war parties came up
+into the higher valleys, and the Sabines had to fight for their very
+lives. They won the war and drove back the invaders in the end, but it
+began to seem that some day they would be wiped out altogether and
+forgotten.
+
+After this war there were some hard years. Many of the men had been
+killed, and the fields had been neglected when the fighting was going on.
+Where the enemy came they trampled down and ruined the vineyards, and
+burned houses and barns, and drove off the flocks and herds for their own
+use. That one year of war almost ruined the work that had been done in
+half a lifetime. If they were to be obliged to spend half their time
+defending what land they had, every year would be worse than the last.
+
+Finally Flamen the priest, the man most respected in the central and
+largest of the towns, spoke of an old custom called the “sacred spring.”
+It was a method of making sacrifice to the gods when things came to a very
+evil pass indeed. In a way it was a sacrifice, and in a way it was a
+chance of saving something from the general ruin. Flamen believed that if
+they kept a “sacred spring” their guardian god, Mars, would help them. All
+this happened a long time before the calamity that drove the emigrants to
+set out from the Mountain of Fire. There are all sorts of reasons why
+people change their place of living and begin new settlements in a strange
+country, but in those days it was a much more serious matter than it is
+now, and it took almost a life-and-death reason to make them do it.
+
+When villages agreed to keep a sacred year, as these finally did, they
+gave to the gods everything that was born in that year. The cattle, sheep,
+goats and poultry were killed in sacrifice, when they were grown. But the
+children born that spring were not killed. They were taught that when they
+were old enough they were to go out and build homes for themselves in
+another land, trusting in the great and wise god Mars to show them where
+to go. If this was done, even though the Umbrians attacked the country
+again and again, and killed off the people or made them slaves, there
+would still be Sabine men and women living in the old ways, somewhere in
+the world. And now the time had come for them to set out to find their new
+home.
+
+Flamen the priest gave a daughter in the year of the sacred spring; Maurs
+the smith gave a son. Almost every family in all the country round had a
+son or daughter or at least a near relative who was going. Some of the
+young people were married before the day came for them to go; in fact,
+there were a great many brides and grooms in the party. The parents had
+given their children plenty of seed grain and roots and plants, cuttings
+of shrubs and trees and vines, animals and fowls to stock their farms,
+provision for the journey, and whatever clothing and other goods they
+could carry without the risk of being delayed or tempting plunderers to
+kill them for their riches. Everything that could be done was done to make
+their great undertaking successful.
+
+At daybreak on the day that had been decided upon, the farewell ceremonies
+began. Hymns were sung and a feast was held, prayers and sacrifices were
+made; there were all sorts of farewell wishes and loving hopes and
+instructions. Nothing, however, could make it anything but a very solemn
+occasion. The young people must go beyond the mountains, for on this side
+they could have no hope of finding any place to live. No one knew what
+awaited them. But whatever happened, no one would have dreamed of breaking
+the promise made to the gods. A pledge is a pledge, and not the shrewdest
+cheat can deceive the gods, for they know men’s hearts.
+
+          [Illustration: All the young voices took up the song]
+
+Flam’na, the wife of young Mauros the maker of swords, looked back just
+once as they lost sight of the village. Then she led in the singing of the
+last of the farewell songs. She had a beautiful voice, clear and strong
+and sweet; her husband’s deeper tones joined hers, and then all the young
+voices took up the song as streams run into a river. The fathers and
+mothers heard the wild music of their singing floating down from the
+mountain forest as they climbed the narrow trail. They were following a
+path which the young men knew from their hunting expeditions, which led
+around the shoulder of the mountain to a pass through which they could
+cross and go down the other side. Now that they were fairly on their way,
+the care of the young animals they were driving, all of them full of life
+and not at all used to keeping together in strange woods, took up most of
+the attention of the whole party.
+
+On the western slopes, as far as the hunters had ever gone, there were no
+people living in villages—only scattered woodcutters and hunters, and here
+and there a poor ignorant family in a little clearing. If they went far
+enough down to reach the upper valleys of streams or rivers, they might
+find just the sort of place they wanted for their new home. Others must
+have done this in the past, or there would never have been the custom of
+the sacred spring, for the emigrant parties would have been all killed off
+or starved to death. The young men said that what others had done they
+could do, and they went valiantly on, chanting a marching song.
+
+In these spring days, as time passed, the mornings were earlier and the
+twilights later. They lived well while their provisions lasted, and there
+was game in the forest and fish in the little streams. They always carried
+coals from their camp fires to light the next fires, and in the cool
+evenings the leaping flames were pleasant. They also kept wild beasts from
+coming too near.
+
+There were three groups of the young people, from three different
+villages. At night they gathered in three camps; each “company” which ate
+bread together was made up of relatives and friends. After they had
+crossed the mountain pass and before they had gone very far on the other
+side, they halted for a day to talk matters over and decide what to do
+next. It was very important now to take the right course.
+
+The youths gathered under a huge oak to hold a council while their wives
+and sisters and cousins busied themselves with affairs of their own. The
+men would have to do the fighting, and the girls were quite willing to
+leave the general plans to them. They were a sober and serious group of
+young fellows as they sat there in the dappling sunshine. It was enough to
+make any man serious. Mars had brought them so far without any serious
+mishap, and he might go on protecting them all the rest of the way; but
+the question was, how to discover what was best to do. All the ways down
+the mountain looked very much alike, and yet one might lead into a country
+inhabited by fierce and cruel enemies, and another into a barren rocky
+waste, and another to a fertile valley.
+
+Mauros was their leader, so far as they had one, but he called on each man
+in turn to say what he thought. There seemed to be a good deal of doubt
+about the wisdom of so large a party traveling together. The chances were
+against their finding a valley large enough for all to live in. They were
+not likely to find so much cleared land or good pasture in any one place.
+If they were to separate, and each party took a different direction, one
+or another certainly ought to be able to find the right sort of place.
+Perhaps all of them would. Even one of the camps was strong enough to
+defend itself against any ordinary enemy. They were all young and strong,
+active and full of courage, and as time went on they would be traveling
+lighter and lighter, for the provisions would be eaten up and the spare
+animals killed for food. They decided to do this, to offer a sacrifice to
+Mars and pray to him to direct them. The next morning all were ready to go
+on and waited only for a sign.
+
+Each of the gods had certain favorite animals, birds and plants. Mars had
+plenty of servants he could send to do his will, and surely he would show
+them what to do.
+
+Flam’na stood with her cousins, watching Mauros as he stood in the center
+of the silent group under the great oak tree. The fires were flickering
+slowly down to red coals, and a little wind blew from the west. Suddenly
+their lead-ox, the wisest of the team, lifted his head and sniffed the
+breeze, pawed the earth, bellowed, and plunged down a grassy glade,
+followed more slowly by the other oxen and the whole party in that camp.
+The ox was one of the beasts of Mars. Nothing could be clearer than this.
+Mauros turned and waved a laughing farewell to the other camps, and raced
+on to make sure that the ox did not get out of sight. Before they had gone
+very far they came to a tiny brook, which went chuckling on as if it knew
+something interesting. They followed it downward and began to find more
+and more grass as the valley widened and the trees grew less thick.
+Finally they found a place where the water was good and the soil rich, and
+there was room for all their beasts to graze. They called the town they
+built there Bovianum, after the ox of Mars. They were sometimes called by
+their neighbors the Bovii, the cattlemen, for herds of cattle were not
+very common in that part of the country.
+
+In the camp to the right of this, not long after the departure of the ox,
+one of the girls saw something red moving high up on the trunk of a tree,
+and pointed it out to her brother. His eyes followed hers, and soon all
+the company gathered in the edge of the woodlands, watching that scarlet
+dot among the thick leaves. Then, with a sudden rush of little wings, a
+green woodpecker flew down from the tree top and perched on a bough just
+over their heads. He looked down knowingly into the upturned, eager faces,
+and with a cheery call flew away down a ravine, and alighted again.
+Breathless, wide-eyed and silent, they ventured nearer. He beat his tiny
+tattoo on the bark as if he were sounding a drum, and flew on. Now scarlet
+was the color of Mars, the drum was his favorite instrument of music, and
+Picus the woodpecker was his own bird. Following their little feathered
+guide, they went farther and farther north until they found a home among
+the spurs of the Apennines. They called themselves the Picentes, the
+Woodpecker People, and their children all knew the story of the sacred
+spring and the bird of Mars.
+
+The third company had no time to watch the others, for some wolves had
+winded their sheep, and the young men had to run to fight them off. Some
+of them chased the skulking gray thieves for some distance and came back
+with the news that the wolves had led them southward to a rocky height,
+where they could look over the tops of the trees below and see an
+uncommonly fine place for the colony. This was as plain a sign as one
+could ask for, and the whole party, in great satisfaction and relief, went
+on to the home that the wolves had found for them. The wolf was another of
+the beasts of Mars. This settlement took the name of the Herpini, the Wolf
+People.
+
+All three of the Sabine colonies prospered and grew strong, and although
+they had little to do with each other they lived in peace with relatives
+and neighbors. There came to be many villages on the slopes of the
+Apennines in which the Sabine language was spoken. This was the last time
+that they were forced to keep a Sacred Year, for the Umbrian war parties
+left them alone, and perhaps did not even know where they were; and the
+mountain land was pleasant and fertile, out of the way of floods. There
+was no reason in the world why the brave young couples who founded their
+homes here, and worked and played and kept holiday, and loved the green
+earth as all their forefathers had loved it, should not be prosperous and
+happy, and they were, for many a long year.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    IV
+
+
+                               THE BANDITTI
+
+
+When the Sabines came to the western side of the mountain range, they did
+not try to plow much land at first. They had to find out what the land was
+like.
+
+People who lived by pasturing their cattle and sheep wherever it was
+convenient hardly ever settled in the same place for good, because the
+pasture differs from year to year even in the same neighborhood. A
+hillside which is rich and green in a wet year may be barren and dry when
+there are long months with no rain. A valley that is rich in long juicy
+grass in spring may be under water later in the summer. Herdsmen need to
+range over a wide country, and especially they need this if they keep
+sheep. The sheep nibble the grass down to the roots, and when they have
+finished with a field there is nothing on it for any other animal that
+year. But the true farmer, who uses his land for a great many different
+purposes, can shift his crops and his pasturage around so that he can have
+a home, and this was what the Sabines wished to do.
+
+For a farm of this kind, a place between mountain and plain is best, with
+a variety of soil and good water supply. In such a mountain valley as the
+Herpini chose, with wooded heights above it, the roots of the trees bind
+the earth together and keep the wet of the winter rains from drying up, so
+that there is not often either flood or drought, and almost always good
+grass is found somewhere in the neighborhood. The people began by raising
+beans and peas to dry for winter, and herbs for flavoring, and in the
+summer they had kale and other fresh vegetables. Now and then, for a
+holiday, they killed a sheep or a young goat or a calf and had a feast.
+The heart and inner organs were burned on the altar for an offering to the
+gods; the flesh was served out to the people, cooked with certain herbs
+used according to old rules. For vineyards and grain fields, which needed
+a certain kind of soil, they chose, after awhile, exactly the ground which
+suited them, and plowed their common land, and sowed their corn and
+planted their vines.
+
+Most of the farm land was worked by all the people in common. This was a
+very old custom. There were good reasons for it. In farming, the work has
+to be done when the weather is suitable. The planting or haying or
+harvesting cannot be put off. By working in company the men saved time and
+labor, and if one happened to be ill the land was taken care of all the
+same, and nothing was lost. Also, in this way all of the land suitable for
+a certain crop was used for that crop. Nobody was wasting time and
+strength trying to make rocky or barren soil feed his family, while his
+strength and skill were needed on good ground. The third and perhaps the
+best reason was, that in this way the houses were not scattered, but close
+together, so that no enemy could attack any one in the village without
+fighting all. The village was clean and wholesome, because no animals were
+kept there except as pets. The flocks and herds were taken care of by men
+and boys trained to that work. Each man had for his own the land around
+his own house, and every year he was allowed a part of the common land for
+his especial use, but he did not own it as he owned his house and lot,—the
+_heredium_, as it was called.
+
+Everything connected with the cultivation of the land was in the hands of
+twelve men chosen for it, called the Arval Brethren, or the Brethren of
+the Field. It was their work to see that all was done according to the
+well-proved rules and customs, that the gods received due respect, and
+that the festivals in their honor were held in proper form.
+
+In a society where people have to depend upon each other in this way,
+there is no room for a person who will not fit in, and who expects to be
+taken care of without doing his share of the work. Here and there, in one
+village and another, a boy grew up who shirked his work, took more good
+things than his share and made trouble generally. Sometimes he got over it
+as he grew older, but sometimes he did not; and if he could not live
+peaceably at home, he had to be driven out to get his living where he
+could. There was no place in a village ruled by the gods for any one who
+did not respect and obey the laws.
+
+These outlaws did not starve, for they could get a kind of living by
+fishing and hunting, and they stole from the ignorant country people and
+from travelers. They were known after awhile as _banditti_, the banished
+men, the men who had been driven out of civilized society. Some of them
+left their own country altogether and went down to the seashore, or into
+the strange land across the yellow river. The people in the villages did
+not know much about them. They were very busy with their own concerns.
+
+There were two great festivals in the year, to do honor to the gods of the
+land. One was in the shortest days of the year, early in winter. This was
+the feast of Saturn. He was the god who filled the storehouses, who sent
+water to drench the earth and feed the crops, who looked after the silent
+world of the roots and underground growing things generally. When his
+feast was held, the harvest was all in, the wine was made, and it was time
+to choose the animals to be killed for food and not kept through the
+winter. For four or five days there was a general jollification. No work
+was done except what was necessary. There was feasting and singing and
+story telling, and some of the wilder youths usually dressed up in
+fantastic costumes like earth spirits, and wound up the holiday with
+dancing and songs and shouting and all sorts of antics. Sometimes a clever
+singer made new songs to the old tunes, with jokes and puns about
+well-known people of the place. These songs were always done in a certain
+style, and this style of verse came to be known later as Saturnian poetry,
+and the sly personal fun in them was called satirical. It was part of the
+joke that the singer should keep a perfectly grave face.
+
+         [Illustration: The people gathered in the public square]
+
+The other festival came in the spring, when the grass was green and the
+leaves were fresh and bright, and flowers were wreathing shrubs and
+hillsides like dropped garlands. It was in honor of the beautiful
+open-handed goddess called Dea Dia, or sometimes Maia. One spring morning
+the children of the village could hear the blowing of the horn in the
+public square, and then they all understood that the priest was about to
+give out the announcement of the festival of Maia. They crowded up to
+hear, even more excited and joyous than the older people.
+
+There were no books or written records; not even a written language was
+known to the villagers. The priest of the village, who kept account of the
+days when ceremonies were due, and the changes of the moon, gave out the
+news, each month, of the things which were to happen. The months were not
+all the same length, and no two villages had just the same calendar. The
+year was counted from the founding of the city, whenever that was, and
+naturally it was not the same in different places. The people gathered in
+the public square, waiting to hear what Emilius the priest had to tell
+them.
+
+He was a tall and noble-looking man, generally beloved because he always
+tried to deal justly and kindly with his neighbors, and was so wise that
+he usually succeeded. The person who paid him the deepest and most
+reverent attention was little Emilia, his daughter, who believed him to be
+the wisest and best of men. She stood with her mother in a little group
+directly in front of him, looking up at him with her deep, serious blue
+eyes, in happy pride.
+
+Emilia was six and a half years old. This would be her first May festival,
+to remember, for she had been ill the year before when it came, and one’s
+memory is not very good before one is five years old. Her bright
+gold-brown hair curled a little and looked like waves of sunshine all over
+her graceful small head. It was tied with a white fillet to keep it out of
+her eyes, and in the fillet, like a great purple jewel, was thrust an
+anemone from a wreath her mother had been making. Her mother dressed her
+in the finest and softest of undyed wool, bleached white as snow. She wore
+a little tunic with a braided girdle, and over her shoulders a square of
+the same soft cloth as a mantle; it looked like the wings of a white bird
+as it shone in the morning sun. On her feet were sandals of kidskin, and
+around her neck was a necklace of red beads that had come from far away. A
+trader brought them from the place by the seashore where such things were
+made. From this necklace hung a round ball of hammered copper, made to
+open in two halves, and inside it was a little charm to keep off bad
+spirits. The charm was made of the same red stone and looked like the head
+of a little goat.
+
+Emilia had never in her life known what it was to be afraid of any one, or
+to see any one’s eyes rest upon her unkindly. The world was very
+interesting to her. It was filled with wonderful and beautiful things,
+especially just now. Each day she saw some new flower or bird or plant or
+animal she had never seen before. Spring in those mountains was very
+lovely. It hardly seemed as if it could be the real world.
+
+The people were all rather fine-looking and strong and active. They worked
+and played in the open air and led healthy lives, and being well and full
+of spirits, there was really no reason why they should be ugly.
+
+Emilius told them when the feast of Maia would take place. The moon, which
+was called the measurer, was all they had to go by in reckoning the year.
+The feast was to be the day after it changed. Emilius repeated the names
+of the Brethren of the Field, and mentioned things that should be done to
+prepare for the feast, and that was all.
+
+Far up on the heights of the mountain above, in among the rocks where
+nothing grew except wind-stunted trees and patches of moss and fern, there
+was another settlement of which the village people knew nothing. Two of
+its men happened to be farther down the mountain than usual, hunting, when
+this announcement was made. They got up on a rock overgrown with bushes,
+where they could look down into the village, and lay watching what went
+on. They were not beautiful or happy. They looked as they lay on the rock,
+spying over the edge with their hard, greedy eyes under shaggy unkempt
+locks, rather like wild beasts.
+
+One was a runaway from this very place, and he knew it was nearly time for
+the May festival. His name was Gubbo, and he had been cast out of the
+village because he was cruel. He liked to torment animals and children; he
+liked to compel others to give him what he wanted. When finally he had
+been caught slashing at the favorite ox of a man he had had a quarrel
+with, he had been beaten and kicked out and told never to come back. He
+had wandered about for some years, and then joined the banditti on the
+mountain.
+
+These banditti came from many towns; some were even of another race, of
+the strange people beyond the river. There were not very many of them, but
+there were enough to surprise and beat down a much larger number if
+circumstances favored. Their usual plan was not to fight in the open, but
+creep up near a place where stores or treasure happened to be kept, when
+the most skillful thieves would get in and carry off the plunder to the
+hiding-place of the others, who stood ready to fight or to act as porters,
+whichever might be necessary. If they were chased, the best runners drew
+off the pursuers after them and joined the rest of the band later.
+
+They did not spend all or even very much of their time in their mountain
+den. They had picked this country as their headquarters because it was
+largely wilderness above the farming belt. The rocks held many caves and
+good strongholds. Often they went off and were gone for perhaps a month at
+a time, prowling about distant settlements, or haunting the roads the
+traders traveled. Many a luckless merchant had been knocked on the head
+from behind, or dragged out of his boat and drowned, by these thieves,
+with no one to tell the tale.
+
+They had found the Sabines here when they came, and it had not seemed
+worth while—yet—to quarrel with them. The scattered country folk, who went
+in deadly fear of the robbers and did whatever they were told, said that
+the farmers could fight, and kept watch over what they had, and had very
+little but their animals and food stores. There was no use in provoking a
+war with them. The better plan would be to terrify them so thoroughly that
+they would give the bandits anything they asked, to keep the peace.
+
+There was no use in upsetting these quiet folk so that they could not
+work. They could be told that unless they brought to a certain place, at
+certain times, grain, cattle and other provision, and left them for the
+outlaws, something terrible would happen to them. They certainly could not
+hunt the mountains over for the band, and they could not know how many or
+how few there were. This plan worked well in other places, and it would do
+very well here.
+
+The leader, the oldest of the robbers, had once been a slave, and he knew
+all the things that are done to slaves who resist their masters. The
+others were afraid of him, and there were very few other things in the
+world of which they were afraid. He listened to the report of Gubbo and
+his companion, and sent them back to watch the village during the time of
+the festival, see who the chief men were, how well off the people seemed
+to be, how many fighting men they had, and where they kept their grain and
+other stores.
+
+For five days one or the other of the bandits was always watching from the
+edge of the rock. If they had been the kind of men to understand beauty,
+they must have owned that the festival of Maia was a beautiful sight. But
+it only made them angry and bitter to think that they could not have all
+the comforts these people had. Often they did not have enough to eat, and
+then there would be a raid on some village, and all the men would eat far
+more than was comfortable, and drink more than was at all wise, and the
+feast usually ended in a fight. This festival in the village was not at
+all like that.
+
+The young girls had a great part in the dancing and singing and
+processions of Maia. A tall pillar, decorated with garlands and strips of
+colored cloth, had been set up, and a circle of white-robed little
+maidens, with wreaths of flowers on their heads, danced around it. Little
+Emilia sat sedately in the center, wand in hand, and directed the dancing.
+There were stately processions, and marching and countermarching of white
+figures bearing garlands; the oxen appeared with their horns wreathed in
+flowers; blossoms were strewn all over the public square as the day
+passed. The blessing of Maia was asked upon the springing grain, now
+standing like a multitude of fairy sword blades above the brown soil; upon
+the bean and pea vines climbing as fast as ever they could up the poles
+set for them; upon the vineyards, every vine of which was tended like a
+child; and upon the orchards, all one drift of warm white petals blowing
+on the wind. The chestnut trees were a-bloom and looked like huge tents
+with great candelabra set here and there over them; and the steady hum of
+the bees was like the drone of a chanter.
+
+When the day was over, and all the people were asleep, the spies went back
+to the den in the rocks and told what they had seen.
+
+The chief decided that these people were to be let alone all through the
+summer and early fall, until all their stores of wine and grain and fat
+beasts were in, and they went afield to get nuts in the forest. That would
+be the time to strike. The child of the head priest could be carried off,
+perhaps, or the son of the chief man of the village. Then one of the
+country people would be sent to tell the villagers that unless they agreed
+to furnish provisions at certain times and places, the child would be
+killed. That would bring them to heel.
+
+So the summer passed, and the unconscious, happy people prayed for a good
+harvest.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    V
+
+
+                               THE WOLF CUB
+
+
+The new moon was rising above a wet waste of marsh and tussock and
+tasseled reeds. A man and two boys climbed hastily up a hill. Before them
+they drove a bleating, cold, rain-wet, bewildered flock. As any shepherd
+will admit, sheep are among the silliest creatures in the world, and if
+there is any way for them to get themselves into trouble they will do it.
+Even so small a flock as this had proved it abundantly.
+
+A dry time, when all the grass in the usual pastures was burned brown or
+eaten down to the roots, had been followed by a rainy fall and winter. The
+shepherd and his two foster sons—his wife had long been dead—left their
+hillside pastures by the river and went with their flock wherever they
+could find any grass. They meandered about for some time on the great
+plain that was usually too wet for sheep; that grass was rank and
+sometimes unwholesome, but it was better than nothing. When the wet
+weather began, they were on the other side, and they edged up among the
+foothills of the mountains that stood around it, wherever they could
+without getting into trouble with people who had cattle there. They would
+have had more difficulty than they did if it had not been for the wolf cub
+which the taller of the two boys had tamed. He was named Pincho, and he
+seemed to be everywhere at once. No sheep ever delayed for an instant in
+obeying him.
+
+For hours they herded the tired flock up and down, among hills and
+gullies, until they came on a little hollow among bushes, out of the way
+of the water, where they could stop and get a little sleep. The man and
+the boys were all three wet, cold and hungry, even hungrier than the sheep
+were, for they could not eat grass; hungrier than Pincho, who now and then
+caught some sort of wild creature and ate it on the spot. They ate what
+little they had left, and then one kept watch while the others slept, by
+turns, in the driest place that could be found.
+
+When it was light enough to see, they looked about to find out where they
+were. Farther down the slope and to one side of them was a village, and
+the people there kept sheep and also cattle. Nobody seemed to be doing
+much work, for half the men were standing about talking, and the shrill
+note of a flute player came up the hill as if it were a signal.
+
+The boys did not know what this meant, for they had never been near a
+village on a holiday,—and not often at any time. But the shepherd knew; he
+knew that it must be a feast day, and he told the boys that if they wished
+to go to the village and see what was going on, he would look after the
+sheep. They must not try to go in unless they were asked, and they ought
+not to take Pincho; some one might see him and kill him for a wolf, not
+knowing that he was tame.
+
+But Pincho had something to say about that. He had no intention of being
+left behind, and the shepherd had to cut a thong off his sheepskin cloak
+to tie up the determined beast. Then when the boys were about two-thirds
+of the way to the village, something came sniffing at their heels, and
+there was Pincho, with the thong trailing after him; he had gnawed it in
+two.
+
+His young master only laughed. “Here, Pincho!” he said good-humoredly, and
+as the young wolf came and licked his hand he made a loop of the trailing
+end and thrust his strong brown fingers into it. And so they came up to
+the edge of the village where the people were making ready the feast,—two
+boys and a wolf.
+
+The lads were both rather tall for their years, and moved with the wild
+grace of creatures that constantly use every muscle and never get stiff or
+lazy. They wore only the shepherd’s tunic of sheepskin with the wool
+outward, and a braided leather girdle to hold a knife and a leather pouch.
+In his left hand each held a crook, with a sharp flint point at the other
+end so that it could be used as a spear if a weapon were needed. The
+taller led the wolf, which fawned and licked his bare feet; the other, who
+was not quite so dark of hair and eye, was playing on a reed pipe, taking
+up the call of the pipers and weaving it into a simple melody. For a
+moment the people did not know who they could be. All the shepherd boys in
+that neighborhood were known. Surely only gods come out of the forest
+would be accompanied by a wolf.
+
+They did not enter the village. They halted on the outside where they
+could look into the square and see what was going on, and they stared in
+silent wonder, like animals.
+
+The fact was that they were so hungry that if they had dared, they would
+have rushed on the tables and seized the bread and meat and honey cakes,
+and run away into the forest to devour them as if they were wolves
+themselves. As it was, the intelligent nose of Pincho caught the maddening
+odor of meat, and it was all his master could do to hold him.
+
+[Illustration: Whoever they were, it was proper at this time to offer food
+                              to strangers]
+
+Whoever they were, it was proper at this time to offer food to strangers,
+and if they were gods or wood spirits this was the way to find it out. The
+wife of Emilius the priest, a tall and gracious woman, took up a flat
+basket-work tray and filled it with portions of the various good things on
+the nearest table. By the way they took the food and ate it, she saw that
+they were probably only hungry boys. Pincho got the bones, but only when
+it was certain they were not mutton bones. He had never been allowed to
+find out what the flesh of a sheep was like. This was a portion of a
+yearling calf.
+
+The matron’s little daughter, a straight, slender, bright-haired child,
+came with her, and when Pincho sniffed curiously at her little sandalled
+feet she did not draw back, but stooped and patted his head. The boy with
+the reed pipe, when he had finished his share of the food, sidled away
+toward the musicians, but the other one stayed where he was, his arm round
+the shaggy neck of the young wolf, and they asked him questions. He
+explained, when they were able to make out what he said—for he spoke in a
+thick voice as the peasants did—that he and his brother lived with a
+shepherd on the other side of the great plain. The shepherd had told them
+to ask whether they might let their sheep graze here awhile, until the
+water had gone down so that they could get back. Emilius the priest and
+some of the other men were there by this time, and they said that this
+would be allowed.
+
+“Why do you stay away from your own village on a holiday?” asked the child
+straightforwardly.
+
+“We have no village,” the boy answered. “We live by ourselves.”
+
+The little maiden knit her straight, dark, delicate brows. People who had
+no village and lived by themselves had never come to her knowledge before.
+She thought it must be very dull not to have any holidays, or playmates.
+
+“Do the sheep and the wolves live together in your country?” she asked,
+watching Pincho’s wedge-shaped, savage head as he gnawed his bone.
+
+“No; but Pincho is not really a wolf. He is my friend.”
+
+“How can you be friends with a wolf?” persisted the small questioner.
+“Wolves are thieves and murderers. They kill sheep. If they killed only
+the old sheep, I would not care. The old ram with horns knocks people
+down. But they kill the little lambs.”
+
+“Pincho has never killed a sheep.”
+
+“Emilia, my child,” said her mother, “it is time for the dance of the
+children.” And she led her little daughter away.
+
+The boys of the village were very curious about Pincho. He had been caught
+when he was a tiny cub and his mother had been killed. There were two
+cubs, but the other one died. This one slept at his master’s feet every
+night. The lad beckoned to his brother, who began to play a curious, jerky
+tune, and then the boy and the wolf danced together, to the wonder and
+entertainment of the villagers. Then in his turn the boy began to ask
+questions. What was a holiday and why did they keep it?
+
+The boys explained that there were many holidays at different times. There
+was one in the later days of winter called the Lupercal, in honor of the
+god who protected the sheep. That was the shepherds’ festival, and when it
+took place, the young men ran about with thongs in their hands, striking
+everybody who came in the way. The day they were now keeping was Founder’s
+Day, in honor of the founder of their town.
+
+This was puzzling. How could one man found a town? A town grew up where
+many people came to live in one place.
+
+“Nay, my son,” said a white-haired old man, the oldest man in the village,
+who had sat down near the group. He spoke in the language the shepherd
+spoke, so that it was easy to understand him. “That is nothing more than a
+flock of crows or a herd of cattle that eat together where there is food.
+The man who founds a city determines first to make a home for the spirits
+of his people, as a man who builds a house makes a home for his family.
+His gods dwell in this place, and he himself will dwell there when he is
+dead, and his spirit is joined to theirs. Without the good will of the
+spirits there is no good fortune. How can men know what is wise to do, or
+what is right, if they do not ask help of the gods, as a child asks its
+father’s will? Have you never heard this? Has your father not told you?”
+
+“We have neither father nor mother,” said the boy, but not
+shamefacedly,—even a little proudly. “We were found when we were little
+children by Faustulus the shepherd who is to us as a father, and we serve
+him.”
+
+This did seem rather strange. Some of the village people drew back and
+whispered among themselves. Could the lads be gods or spirits indeed? They
+were strong and handsome—but who knew what things lived in the forest?
+
+“Nay,” said Emilius, “they have eaten our salt.”
+
+“The shepherd sometimes prays,” the lad was saying thoughtfully. “He prays
+when he has lost his way. I asked him once when I was very small what he
+was saying, and he said that he prayed to his god. He said the god was
+like a man, but had goat’s legs and little horns under curling hair, and
+played on a reed pipe. My brother said that he had seen him in the forest,
+but I never did. When the shepherd sees anything unlucky, he makes the
+sign of his god—thus.”
+
+He held up his fist with all the fingers except the little finger doubled
+in; this, with the thumb, stuck straight up. “He calls it ‘making the
+horns.’ ”
+
+“The people across the river have many gods,” he went on cheerfully. “Once
+I ran away and found a boat, and went over there, to see what it was like.
+The priests watch the flight of birds for signs; and the people give a
+great deal of time to fortune telling. An old witch told mine for love,
+and she said that I should rule over a great people. Then I laughed and
+came away, for I knew that she must think me a fool to be pleased with
+lies. She said that their laws were taught the priests by a little man no
+bigger than a child, who came up out of a field which a farmer was
+plowing.”
+
+The priest Emilius smiled. “My son,” he said kindly, “these things are
+foolish and lead to nothing. If you will stay with us and help to tend our
+flocks, you shall learn of our gods, and live as we do, sharing our work
+and our play. But unless you obey our law we cannot let you stay. The gods
+are not pleased when strangers come into their sacred places.
+
+“The founder of our city is as a kind father who watches us and sees what
+we do, whether it is good or whether it is evil. Our children are his
+children, and our fortunes are his care, as they were when he was alive
+and ruled his people wisely as a father. This is why we honor him. Will
+you stay with us and be our herd boy?”
+
+The lad stood up, his staff in one hand, the other in the loop of the
+wolf’s collar. “We owe the shepherd our lives,” he said, with his proud
+young head erect. “We will go back to him and serve him until we are men.
+When I am a man, I think I will found a city of my own.”
+
+His brother laughed. In a flash the lad turned on him and knocked him
+down. Emilius caught him by the shoulder.
+
+“My boy,” he said sternly, “there must be no quarreling on a holiday. Go
+back to your own place, for you are right to cherish your foster father.
+In good or bad fortune, in all places and at all times, it is right to
+return kindness for kindness, to show reverence to the old who have cared
+for the young.”
+
+The villagers, puzzled, curious and a little afraid, watched the two wild
+figures and their strange companion move away into the long shadows of the
+woodlands. They did not come back when any one could see them, but about a
+week later there was found at the door of the priest a basket woven
+roughly but not unskillfully of the bark of a tree, lined with fresh
+leaves and filled with wild honey and chestnuts.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    VI
+
+
+                              BOUNDARY LINES
+
+
+The boy with the pet wolf did not come again to the village where he had
+first seen a holiday feast and heard what religion was, but he saw a great
+deal of it for all that. His brother never cared to go back and seemed to
+take no interest in what he had seen.
+
+Pero, one of the shepherds, while out looking for stray lambs on the
+hills, met the youngster and his wolf coming down with two of the woolly
+black-faced truants. They had been hunting, the boy said, and had come
+across these lambs far up on the heights where lambs had no business to
+be, and brought them back. When the shepherd asked the lad his name, he
+said the Cub was as good a name as any. The shepherd was an old man and
+had seen many queer things in his life and heard of queerer ones. He had
+found that most frightful stories, when one came to know the truth of
+them, were some quite natural incident made large in the eyes of a
+frightened man. This boy might, of course, be a wood demon, and his wolf
+might be another, servants of some evil power, but the shepherd had never
+seen any such beings and he did not know how they were supposed to look.
+When he offered the Cub a piece of his bannock, made with salt and water
+and meal and cooked on a hot stone, it was accepted and eaten, and Pincho
+the wolf ate some of it also. Pincho would eat almost anything. But that
+ought to prove that they were no devils, for if they were they would not
+have eaten the salt.
+
+Pero was a little lame from a fall he had had several years ago, although
+he got about more nimbly than some younger men. He found the help of this
+wild youth and his wilder companion very convenient at times. After awhile
+he began to see that the Cub was very curious about the customs of the
+Sabine village. He did not ask many questions, but he would listen as long
+as Pero would talk. Many a long still hour the two spent, on the grass
+while the sheep grazed, or coming slowly down the slope toward the village
+at nightfall, but always, when they came near the village gate, Pero would
+look around presently and find that he was alone.
+
+The first time that Pero noticed this curiosity was one day when they were
+high above the village so that they could look down on a level stretch of
+land where the men were marking out a new field. Boundary lines were very
+important with any people as soon as they stopped wandering from place to
+place and settled down to work the same land, year after year. Of course,
+it takes more than one season to make any plot of ground produce all it
+can, and no man cares to do a year’s work of which he gets none of the
+benefit; there must be a clear understanding on the subject of the
+boundary.
+
+In the beginning there were no writings, or deeds, or public records to
+mark the line of a farm, and the only way to protect property rights was
+by ceremonies which would make people remember the boundary lines, and the
+landmarks which it was a horrible crime to move.
+
+Pero began by explaining that every house of the village had to be
+separated from every other house by at least two and one half feet. As
+each house was a sort of family temple, the home of the spirits of the
+ancestors of that family; naturally nobody but these spirits had any right
+there. Two families could not occupy the same house any more than two
+persons could occupy the same place. On the same plan, each field was
+enclosed by a narrow strip of ground never touched by the plow or walked
+on or otherwise used. This was the property of the god of boundaries,
+Terminus.
+
+The boundary line of each field was marked by a furrow, drawn at the time
+the field was marked out for the village or the individual owner. At
+certain times, this furrow would be plowed again, the owners chanting
+hymns and offering sacrifices. On this line the men were now placing the
+landmarks they called the _termini_. The _terminus_ was a wooden pillar,
+or the trunk of a small tree, set up firmly in the soil. In its planting
+certain ceremonies were observed.
+
+First a hole was dug, and the post was set up close by, wreathed with a
+garland of grasses and flowers. Then a sacrifice of some sort was
+offered—in this case a lamb—and the blood ran down into the hole. In the
+hole were placed also grain, cakes, fruits, a little honeycomb and some
+wine, and burned, live coals from the hearth fire of the home or the
+sacred fire of the village being ready for this. When it was all consumed
+the post was planted on the still warm ashes. If any man in plowing the
+field ran his furrow beyond the proper limit, his plowshare would be
+likely to strike one of these posts. If he went so far as to overturn it
+or move it, the penalty was death. There was really no excuse for him, for
+the line was plainly marked for all to see.
+
+The Cub looked down at the solemnly marching group, the white oxen, and
+the setting of the posts with bright and interested eyes.
+
+    [Illustration: “I have seen something like this before,” he said]
+
+“I have seen something like this before,” he said. “Everywhere it is death
+to move a landmark. In some places not posts but stones are used. The dark
+people across the river say that he who moves his neighbor’s landmark is
+hated by the gods and his house shall disappear. His land shall not
+produce fruits, his sons and grandsons shall die without a roof above
+their heads, and in the end there shall be none left of his blood. Hail,
+rust and the dog-star shall destroy his harvests, and his limbs shall
+become sore and waste away.”
+
+Pero stared in astonishment. “Where did you hear all that?” he asked.
+
+“When I was younger I ran away and crossed the river,” said the Cub
+calmly. “They are strange people over there, not like your people. They go
+down to the sea in boats. I went in a boat also, but I did not like it.
+There was a fat trader on the boat, and when we were outside the long
+white waves along the shore, and the wind came up and rocked our boat, his
+face turned the color of sick grass. Perhaps my face did also; I do not
+know. We were both very sick. After that I came back to tend sheep again,
+for I do not like that place.
+
+“They have a god called Turms there who is the god of traders, and of
+thieves, and of fortune tellers. They pray to him for good luck, for they
+believe very much in luck. He is sometimes seen in the shape of a beggar
+man with a dog and a staff that has snakes twisted about it, and a cap
+with a feather in it.”
+
+The Cub stood up laughing and slipped away down under the rocks with his
+wolf; it almost seemed as if he had flown. As Pero stared after him, he
+remembered that the lad had an eagle feather in his pointed cap, and his
+staff had a twisted vine around it. But the next time they met the boy was
+so clearly only a boy in a sheepskin tunic that Pero called himself an old
+fool too ready to take fancies.
+
+The Cub had spent time enough on the other side of the river to know
+something about the people, and he had interesting things to tell. They
+enjoyed bargaining and spent much time buying and selling. They could make
+fine gold work, bright-colored cloth, and brown vases with black pictures
+painted on them. Their walls were often painted with pictures. When a
+trader from that country, named Toto, came to the village, Pero remembered
+some of the things he had been told. The people bought some of his
+trinkets, but by what they said of them when the brightness was worn off
+and the color faded, he was not a very honest merchant. Pero remembered
+then that this people had the same god for trading and for stealing.
+
+The Cub said that he had been to other villages along this mountain slope,
+and they seemed to be as separate as if they were islands on a sea of
+waste wilderness. They did not have their feasts on the same day, they did
+not measure time alike; in some ways they were almost as far apart in
+their ideas as if they had been different kinds of animals. And yet they
+all spoke nearly the same language and worshiped in much the same way. If
+they knew each other better and met oftener they would be all one people,
+strong enough to drive away their enemies. If he and Pero could meet in
+this friendly way, surely others could. But this was a new idea to the
+shepherd, and he was not used to thinking. When the Cub saw that he did
+not understand he began talking of something else. The invisible boundary
+lines were too strong to be crossed.
+
+Often, late at night, after Pero had gone home, the Cub would lie on a
+high rock that overlooked the village, looking down at the twinkling
+circle of lights that meant altar fires in homes. Then he would look up at
+the twinkling points of light in the sky, and wonder if the gods lived
+there, and if the lights were the altar fires of their homes. If he had
+known that Pero once half believed him to be a god in disguise, he would
+have been very much surprised. He was only a boy, without father, mother
+or home, and he wished he knew what lay before him in the life he had to
+live.
+
+He could keep sheep, he could hunt, he could fight, he could run and swim
+better than most boys of his age, and there was no beast, fowl, bird,
+reptile, fruit or tree in the wilderness that he did not know. But there
+seemed to be no place for him to live among men unless he was a sort of
+servant. This was not to his liking. He had never seen any man whose
+orders he would be willing to obey. He had seen some who were wiser, far
+wiser than he was, who could tell him a great deal that he wished to know.
+But he had never seen any to whom he would be a servant. A servant had to
+do what he was told and make himself over into the kind of person some one
+else thought he ought to be. The old woman who was a witch had told him
+that he was born to rule, but he did not see how he could, unless it was
+ruling to command animals. To rule men he must live where they were, and
+so far as he could see they had no place for him.
+
+His brother never seemed to have such thoughts. Give him enough to eat and
+drink, a fire to warm him in winter and a stream to bathe in when the
+summer suns were hot, and his reed pipe to play, and that was enough. He
+would spend hours playing some tune over and over with first one change
+and variation and then another. Even the wolf, now grown large and
+powerful, with his gaunt muzzle and fierce eyes, was more of a companion
+than that. He was always ready for a wrestle or a race or a swim with his
+master. The two of them were feared wherever they went, and treated with
+unqualified respect.
+
+One day the Cub lay on his favorite rock, hidden by a low-sweeping
+evergreen bough, when he heard shrieks and outcries. Peering over the
+edge, he saw that in the edge of the woods below, where some women and
+children were picking up nuts the men had shaken down for them, something
+was happening. Half a dozen fierce men had rushed upon them and caught up
+one of the children and run away, so quickly that by the time the fathers
+and brothers got there no one could say which way they had gone. They
+joined some others hidden in the woods, and came straight past the rock
+where the Cub was watching. They were going to keep the child until they
+got what they wanted. He could hear them talking. The biggest man had the
+child on his shoulder. Her little face, as he got a glimpse of it, was
+very white, but she did not cry out.
+
+The boy rose and followed them with his wolf at his heels. He knew a
+spring some distance above, where he thought they would be likely to stop
+for a drink. They did. They were far enough away by this time not to fear
+pursuit, and they had passed a rocky place where they could hold the
+narrow trail against many times their number. But long before the men
+could get up there they would have gone on.
+
+The Cub crept up, inch by inch, until he was within a few feet of the
+savage, careless group by the spring, and behind them, on a bank about six
+feet high. Only the child was facing him. He showed himself for an
+instant, and laid a finger on his lips, and beckoned. She struggled free
+from the man who was holding her, striking at him with her little hands,
+and he laughed and let her go. Even if she tried to run away, they would
+catch her. But she only staggered unsteadily toward the bank, as if to
+gather some bright berries there.
+
+The instant she was clear of the group two figures hurled themselves
+through the air,—a man and a wolf, or so it seemed in the moment or so
+before the thing was over. There was a snarling, growling, breathless
+struggle, and then the two strange figures were gone, and so was the
+child, and the bandits were nursing half a dozen wolf bites and various
+cuts on their shoulders and arms. Some they had given each other in the
+confusion, and some were from the long, keen knife the Cub had ready when
+he leaped among them.
+
+The lad went straight down the mountainside with his wolf at his heels and
+the child on his shoulder, and came out on the path that led upward just
+as the men from the village were coming up. He set down the child, and
+with a cry of delight she rushed into the arms of her father. A spear
+hurtled through the air from the hasty hand of one of the men, who had
+caught a glimpse of a brown shoulder and a sheepskin tunic. The Cub
+disappeared. He was rather disgusted. If that was the way that the
+villagers repaid a kindness—
+
+ [Illustration: The lad went straight down the mountainside with his wolf
+                              at his heels]
+
+From his rock he watched them returning with the child, all talking at
+once. It seemed to him a great deal of talk about what could not be helped
+by talking. He called Pincho, and only silence answered. He slid off the
+rock and retraced his steps. When he reached the place where he had set
+down little Emilia, he found the body of his pet, quite dead, with a spear
+wound straight through the heart. Then he remembered that in the flash of
+time when the spear was hurled, Pincho had sprung at the man. He had taken
+the death wound meant for his master.
+
+Pero never saw the boy with the wolf again. When he heard Emilia’s story
+of her rescue, he was inclined to think that they were gods after
+all,—Mars himself, for all any one could say. But the Cub, feeling much
+older, was far away, and it was long before he returned to that
+countryside.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   VII
+
+
+                              MASTERLESS MEN
+
+
+The story the robbers had to tell, when they returned to their captain,
+was not a very likely one. It was so unlikely that they took time to talk
+the matter over thoroughly before attempting to face him. Perhaps it would
+be better to tell a lie, if they could concoct one that would do. The
+trouble was that they could not think of any explanation for their
+failure, that was likely to satisfy him any better than the plain facts.
+
+Of course it seemed impossible that a man and a wolf should be traveling
+peaceably in company,—to say nothing of taking a child out of the hands of
+several strong and reckless men. But even so, where had they gone? One of
+the men had been quick enough to thrust with his spear at the wolf as he
+got it against the sky,—and it went through nothing. He forgot that the
+motion of an animal is usually quicker than the human eye, on such
+occasions. Moreover, though two of them went back down the path until they
+could hear the voices of the villagers, there was no sign of man, wolf or
+child. The conclusion they felt to be the only one possible was that the
+villagers’ gods had come and taken the child away from them, in the form
+of the wolf and the man. In that case they must be very powerful, so
+powerful that it would not be safe to attempt anything against that
+village in the future.
+
+Gubbo, who came from that village, assured them that its gods were
+powerful indeed. He had not, when he and the other man were watching it,
+seen anything like this man and wolf apparition, and it was certainly
+remarkable enough to attract attention. Neither had the country people
+ever mentioned such a thing. Privately, Gubbo did not believe much in
+gods, but he was afraid of them for all that, because he was not sure.
+Gubbo’s father had impressed upon him very hard that if he did wrong, bad
+luck would surely overtake him. The patience of the gods was great, but
+they knew everything, and in the end no man could escape them. Gubbo,
+wincing at the pain where the wolf’s teeth had caught him, was
+uncomfortably wondering whether his bad luck had begun. There had never
+been any other failure to kidnap somebody, when men were sent to do it.
+Perhaps the bad luck in this case came from the fact that one of the party
+was attacking his own relatives and friends. There would be more bad luck
+when the chief of the bandits heard of this thing. Gubbo decided to dodge
+any further trouble if he could, and he lagged behind and quietly slipped
+away, to find some other way of making a living. He intended to go on
+traveling for a long time, to be out of the way of his former comrades.
+
+It was just as well for him that he did this, for the men who returned to
+the den in the rocks and reported to the chief had a very bad time of it.
+The leader was executed, and so was the man who had had charge of the
+child. Of the other three, one died of the bite of the wolf and the others
+were very ill. After that, not a man of them could have been induced to
+join in an attack against that village. The chief wisely did not press the
+matter. After all, that was the nearest village of all those in their
+range, and it might not be altogether prudent to arouse the anger of the
+fighting men. It might lead to discovery.
+
+The Cub, as he made his way back to the hut of Faustulus, was doing a
+great deal of thinking. When he was younger he had sometimes dreamed of
+being captain of a band of outlaws, because that seemed the only chance to
+be captain of anything, for a fatherless boy. But he had no taste for
+kidnaping children or being a nuisance to peaceable and kindly people.
+Merely to think of those scoundrels made him hot all over. He would have
+liked to follow their trail up to their very den, for he had an idea that
+he knew where it was. One day, when he and Pincho had been hunting
+together, he had seen a place where men evidently lived, and lived without
+any sort of peaceful farming or other business. If that were the den of
+the banditti, they could easily make themselves the pest of the
+countryside, and what they had done would be nothing to what they could
+do. Although he did not himself know it, this boy was the kind of person
+whose mind leaps ahead and sees possibilities for others as well as
+himself,—evil as well as good.
+
+One day he asked his brother how he would like to gather the masterless
+men of all that neighborhood into a band of soldiery, to live by hunting
+and by fighting for any chief who would give them their living. They were
+growing too old to live much longer as they had lived. Perhaps if they
+could gather followers enough, they could go somewhere after awhile and
+make a place for themselves. First they might go to the Long White
+Mountain, where there was a rather large town, and see what the prospect
+was for such an undertaking. They had already taken part in one campaign,
+with some of the boys of the neighborhood, under the names of the Wolf and
+the Piper. All of the troop had some nickname or other. There was the Ram,
+whose head would crack an ordinary board in two; the Snake, who could
+wriggle out of any bonds ever tied—they had tried him time and again; Big
+Foot, Flop-Ear, Long Arm, and some others. They found the captain they had
+followed before glad to use them again and give them ordinary soldier
+rations. On the second night of their life in camp, a broad-shouldered and
+slightly bow-legged individual came and asked to see the head of the band.
+Gubbo did not recognize the young leader, but the latter knew him the
+moment he saw him. Gubbo explained that he had been a member of a company
+of banditti, had become disgusted with their ways, and left them. He would
+like to make an honest living.
+
+“What can you do?” asked the youth consideringly.
+
+Gubbo said that he could teach tricks in knife work to almost any man;
+also he could wrestle.
+
+“Try me,” said the Wolf, slipping out of his heavy tunic. He enjoyed the
+rough-and-tumble that followed more than he had anything since he used to
+play with his wolf. This man really was a fair match for him. Gubbo was
+taken into the band.
+
+“He is a brute,” said the Ram bluntly.
+
+“He is,” said the leader. “But he can teach you fellows something.”
+
+They learned a great deal from the villainous-looking newcomer, though if
+he had not been a little afraid of the young head of the troop, they might
+have paid a heavy price for their learning. The latter found out by
+judicious questioning that the den was where he had supposed it was. After
+a time he began to see that Gubbo was doing his men no good. The man was
+cruel, treacherous and base. Two or three times he had played tricks which
+others were blamed for. One day Gubbo heard that a merchant was coming
+along the road to the mountain villages, and at the same time he was sent
+on scout duty that way. He watched in the bushes until the man came along
+slowly, muffled in a long mantle, with a donkey loaded with panniers. He
+seemed to be old; his beard was white. Gubbo sprang on him; the man turned
+in that instant and met him with a knife thrust. Then the Wolf
+straightened up, dropped his white goat’s-hair beard and wig, and went
+back to camp. The bad luck that Gubbo feared had got him at last, and
+nobody mourned him at all.
+
+Wolf and the Piper and their troop spent some seasons in fighting and
+adventure, and then they disappeared. It was said that they had separated.
+
+This was true, but they had separated for a purpose. If the company went
+together to the lair of the banditti they might as well go blowing
+trumpets and beating drums; it would be known long before they came near.
+Their orders were to go by twos and threes, and when the moon was full to
+meet near a certain great rock that overlooked the valley where the river
+became a lake and then went on. One by one, as the young leader sat
+watching on this rock, dark forms came slipping through the shadows and
+joined him. Last of all came his brother, who had guided some of the party
+by a very roundabout way.
+
+When all were there, and sentinels posted, he unfolded his plan. Above the
+place where they now sat, among the tumbled rocks of a narrow valley, was
+the headquarters of a most pestiferous company of robbers. For years they
+had terrified and despoiled the people of the villages, and if any
+resisted they were tormented almost beyond endurance in many different
+ways. The people were expected to turn over to them at certain times and
+places practically everything they produced, except just enough for a bare
+living. Whatever the banditti did not use themselves, they sold for things
+that could not be got in the villages. The villagers never knew what they
+were to be allowed to have at the end of the year, and often they suffered
+for food and warm clothing; but they stayed there because they knew
+nowhere else to go. It was a miserable state of things.
+
+His plan was this. They were to steal upon this den of banditti and take
+it by surprise. Gubbo had said that it was not fortified to any extent,
+because the chief relied on the locality not being known. They were to
+kill the chief and such men as could not be trusted to behave themselves
+if they had a chance. Perhaps some would join the troop and abide by its
+rules. They would take the stronghold for their own, and keep it as a
+place to return to when they were not busy elsewhere. Then, instead of
+making enemies of the villagers or keeping them so terrified that they
+dared not refuse any request, let them make a friendly agreement. If the
+people who lived in these valleys gave them a certain tribute three or
+four times a year—a certain part of the crop, whatever it was—they would
+take care that there was no more plundering and kidnaping, and the farmers
+could attend to their own affairs in safety and comfort. If any enemy came
+against the people, too great for the Wolf and his soldiers to encounter
+successfully, the fighting men of the villages would be expected to help
+them, but they would undertake to keep the region clear of banditti. In
+return, if any one asked whether there was a band of outlaws hiding
+thereabouts, the villagers were to say that they did not know where there
+were any, and that would be the truth.
+
+The plan was approved, as the young chief knew it would be. He had talked
+it over beforehand with each man separately. If the people were ungrateful
+enough, after the den of thieves was broken up, not to agree to the plan
+proposed, they could take their chance with other thieves, but he thought
+that after what they had been through in the last few years they would be
+willing to agree to almost anything.
+
+As men are apt to do when they are much feared, the banditti in the
+rock-walled ravine were growing rather careless. The scouts of the Wolf’s
+troop were able to follow their movements closely. On the following night,
+when their destruction was to take place, the robbers were all in camp,
+having just returned from one of their expeditions to bring up supplies.
+The fat calf and the fowls and other provisions were sizzling and stewing
+over great fires. There was plenty of new wine. From a trader’s pack some
+of the younger men had got little ivory cubes with figures engraved on the
+sides, and were playing a game of chance. Their huts were furnished rather
+luxuriously, with fur robes, wool garments and gay hangings, but these,
+like their clothing, were stained and injured more or less by the fighting
+that usually took place over the plunder. The chief did not care what his
+men did in camp so long as they obeyed his orders. He did not wish them to
+do much thinking; he preferred to do all of that for them. He would have
+been surprised indeed if he had known that some of them did think and had
+almost made up their minds that they had had enough of him and of his
+methods and would go somewhere else.
+
+As he grew older, the robber captain was fonder of eating and drinking,
+and now he sat on a handsome ivory stool near the fire—for the night was
+chilly—waiting for the meat to be done to a turn. The cook was a stout,
+short, bright-eyed man, a slave from across the river, and there was very
+little that he did not know about preparing rich dishes.
+
+It was a windy night. The wind howled among the trees and down the ravine
+as if it were chasing something. It was like the howling of wolves, though
+there had been no wolves on that part of the mountain for a long time. Far
+to the right of the camp there was heard a noise like the cry of a child.
+Far to the left there was a bleating like a lamb. These were the signals
+arranged by the attacking force that was coming silently through the
+woods, and the sentinels went out a little way to see what a lamb and a
+child could be doing up here. They were knocked down, bound and carried
+off to a safe distance. By the time supper was ready in the ravine, the
+men in the woods were lying on the bank above, all around, looking down
+into the stronghold. The huts were ranged in two rows down the hollow,
+with a line of fires between and the fronts open. The entrance below was
+blocked by a log gate. But the men now ready to attack the place could
+climb like goats; they had all been brought up among the hills.
+
+All of a sudden arrows came shooting down on the careless banditti, and
+almost every one found its mark. Down to the roofs of the huts and to the
+ground came leaping figures, well armed and fighting with the strength and
+skill of trained men. Whenever they could they disarmed and bound their
+men, but the leader of the banditti was an exception to this rule. He was
+killed without a chance to surrender.
+
+When every man in the camp of the banditti had been cut down or
+captured—and about half of them surrendered,—the victors sat down and ate
+the feast prepared for the robbers.
+
+Next day, when things had been cleared up and put in order, each
+prisoner’s case was taken up separately. A few, whose deeds were the
+terror of the countryside, were executed. The rest were glad enough to
+join the troop under the Wolf, on probation. If they did well, they should
+be full members in time.
+
+The people of the villages were thankful to buy protection on the
+reasonable terms offered. They did not know exactly who these men were who
+had rid them of the banditti; some supposed they were a troop of soldiers
+from some chief. They almost never saw any of the band. The tax demanded
+was brought to a certain place and left there, and that was all. Emilius
+the priest often wondered why these men did not ask anything of his
+village, but they never did. Their village was the only one that had
+hardly ever suffered from the banditti. It was very odd. He never
+connected either of these facts with the long-ago visit of the shepherd
+youths and the tame wolf. So matters went on for a year or two. A guard
+was always left at the stronghold, but the men were often absent.
+Merchants and traders learned that they could get these men to protect
+them, at a price, when they were traveling through a strange country. They
+had really established a sort of patrol. The scattered hunters and
+fishermen had walked in desperate terror of the banditti, but they almost
+worshiped the troopers, and they would have died rather than reveal
+anything they had been told to keep secret. When Amulius, the hoary and
+evil chief of the people of the Long White Mountain, heard of these two
+youths who were such excellent fighters and whose men had so good a
+reputation, he tried to find out where they were, but he never could. For
+all the people of the country seemed to know, they might come out of the
+air and vanish into the clouds. It was very mysterious. When the young
+leader heard that Amulius had been trying to find him he smiled, and did
+not make any comment whatever.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   VIII
+
+
+                            THE BEEHIVE TEMPLE
+
+
+The preparations at the village on the Mountain of Fire were completed
+during the winter, and the little company of men, women and children made
+ready to go out into the unknown world as soon as a favorable day arrived.
+It was a more serious undertaking than any they had known or even heard of
+before. Even when their ancestors came to this place, so long ago that no
+one could remember when it was, it was after a lifetime of wandering; they
+were not used to anything else. This company was made up of people who had
+never in their lives been more than a day’s journey from the place where
+they were born, and what was more, hardly any of their forefathers had,
+for generations.
+
+It was made still more difficult and doubtful by the fact that they were
+taking their women and children with them. There was no other way. There
+was not too much to eat in the village, as it was, and there would be
+less, if the men went away for a year and left their families to be
+supported. Although the men would have preferred to go first and explore
+the land, the women were privately better pleased as it was. They felt
+that if their husbands were to be killed they wanted to die too. As for
+the children who were old enough to understand the situation, their
+feelings were mixed. It was exciting and delightful to be going to see new
+lands, and made them feel important and responsible, but when the time of
+leaving actually approached and they began to think of never seeing their
+old home again, they felt very sober indeed.
+
+They left the mountain on the day that was later called the Ides of March,
+at the beginning of spring, and slowly they followed the shining river out
+into the valley. Two-wheeled carts drawn by the oxen were loaded with the
+stores and clothing they were able to take with them. The fighting men had
+their weapons all in order. The boys were helping drive the cattle and
+sheep, and the married women had the younger children with them. Every one
+who was able to walk, walked. The eldest girl in each of the families—none
+was over ten years old—had charge of one most important thing—the fire.
+The little maidens walked soberly together, feeling a great dignity laid
+upon them. Each carried a round, strong basket lined with clay and covered
+with a beehive-shaped lid of a peculiar shape. In this were live coals
+carefully covered with ashes, for the kindling of the next fire. No matter
+what happened, they must not let those coals go out.
+
+        [Illustration: The little maidens walked soberly together]
+
+“What-_ever_ happened?” repeated a little yellow-haired girl, called
+Flavia because she was so fair. She was the daughter of Muraena the smith,
+and the youngest of the ten.
+
+Ursula, the biggest girl, laughed. “If we were crossing a river and one of
+us got drowned, I suppose her fire would be lost,” she said teasingly.
+“But they wouldn’t excuse us for anything short of that.”
+
+“But if it did go out—if all of the fires were put out?” persisted Flavia,
+walking a little closer to Marcia, whose word she felt that she could
+trust. She had visions of a dreadful anger of the gods,—another night of
+darkness and terror like the one they all remembered. “Should we never
+have a fire again, and have to eat things raw, and freeze to death, and
+let the wolves eat us up?”
+
+“Certainly not,” answered Marcia reassuringly. “Father told me all about
+that when I was younger than you are. Don’t you remember how they kindled
+the fire in the new year?”
+
+Flavia shook her yellow head. “I never noticed.” She had been so taken up
+with the chanting and the ceremonies that she had not seen how the fire
+actually blazed up on the altar.
+
+“They do it with the _terebra_ and the _tabula_. The _tabula_ is a flat
+wooden block with a groove cut in it, and the _terebra_ is a rubbing-stick
+that just fits the groove. They have some very fine chaff ready, and they
+move the stick very fast in the groove until it is quite hot. Don’t you
+know how warm your hands are after you rub them together? When there is a
+little spark it catches in the chaff, and then it is sheltered to keep it
+from going out, and fed with more chaff and dry splinters until the fire
+is kindled. They can _always_ kindle a fire in that way.”
+
+“What if the _terebra_ and the _tabula_ were lost?” asked Flavia.
+
+“They would make others.”
+
+“If I rubbed my hands together long enough, would they be on fire?” asked
+the child. She did not yet see how fire could be made just by rubbing bits
+of wood together. In fact, it was so much easier to keep the fire when it
+was once made that this was hardly ever done. It was only done regularly
+once a year, at the beginning of the month sacred to Mars. Then all the
+altar fires were put out and the priest kindled the sacred fire in this
+way afresh.
+
+The girls all laughed, and Marcia answered,
+
+“No, dear, it is only certain kinds of wood that will do that. I suppose
+the gods taught our people long ago which they were. The hearth god lives
+in the fire, you know. I always think it is like a living thing that will
+die without care. Father says that the fire keeps away the wicked fever
+spirits.”
+
+“What’s fever?” asked Yaya, on the other side. “Did you ever have it?”
+
+“No, never; but Father did once, when he was working on the road across
+the marsh, before I was born. It makes all your bones ache as if they were
+broken, and you cannot keep still because the spirits shake you all over.
+You grow hot and grow cold, and have bad dreams, and talk nonsense. Father
+woke up one day when he had the fever, and said that there were great rats
+coming to carry off my brother Marcs, who was a baby then, and he tried to
+get up and kill the rats, when there were none there. And when he was well
+he never remembered seeing the rats at all.”
+
+Although the children did not know it, a blazing fire and wool clothing
+help to keep away the malarial fever of a wet wilderness. The people
+believed that their gods taught them to keep up a fire, to wear clean wool
+garments and to drink pure water, and it is certain that they were wise in
+doing all these things religiously, as they did. When they found a good
+spring on their journey they filled their water bottles and left a little
+gift there for the god of the waters. They kept near pure running water
+when they could, and away from standing water, even if they had to go a
+long way round to do it. In the sudden damps and chills of the lowlands
+through which they traveled the tunics and mantles of pure wool kept them
+from taking cold, and there was very little sickness on the journey. They
+kept to their own habits of eating, and the children were not allowed to
+experiment with strange and possibly unripe fruits.
+
+It was a long time, however, before they came in sight of any place that
+could be thought of as a home. Most of the country they saw was not
+inhabited except by a stray hut dweller here and there, getting a
+miserable living as he could,—simply because the land was not fit to live
+in. They crossed a rolling plain, where the marshes were full of
+unpleasant looking water, and the air at night was full of singing,
+stinging insects that drove the cattle frantic. It was not quite so bad
+near the fires. The insects seemed to dislike the smoke, or perhaps their
+wings could not carry them through the strong currents of air that the
+flames made around them. As soon as possible they moved up toward the
+higher land, and here at last they came in sight of the river of the
+yellow waters, the great river that ran down to the sea. Beyond that they
+could not go without meeting strange people and the worship of strange and
+cruel gods.
+
+Every night the beehive covers were taken off the baskets, and the fires
+were kindled, and in a round hut that was like a big basket lid, a bed of
+coals was made ready for the next day’s journey. It was the duty of the
+ten little girls, the guardians of the fire, to take care of this, and
+they spent a great deal of time around the miniature temple of the fire
+god. One or another was always there.
+
+One night when they were carefully covering the coals with fine ashes,
+Marcia and Tullia and Flavia looked up and saw two strange men standing
+near and looking down at them. They were startled but not at all
+frightened. The strangers would not be there if they were not friends; the
+men would not allow it. The two youths did not say anything; they watched
+for a few minutes, smiling as if they liked what they saw; then they
+turned away. They looked very much alike, and walked alike, and their
+voices were alike; but one was a little taller and darker than the other
+and always seemed to take the lead. They were not like the rude, ignorant,
+pagan people who sometimes came to stare and beg and perhaps to pilfer
+when they found some one’s back turned. They looked like the people of
+Mars. But what could they be doing away out here?
+
+The next day there was great news to tell. In the first place, the fathers
+of the colony had decided to stay here a few days, and let the cattle
+feed, and the women wash their clothing and rest for a little before going
+on. The water was good, and they had learned that it was a safe part of
+the country, though it was too rocky and barren to be a good place to
+live. But that was the smallest part of the news. The two youths were
+their own kinsmen, born of their own people, sons of a son of the old
+chief who had died in a far land many years ago.
+
+This was wonder enough, to be sure, but there was more to come. The wicked
+uncle of the two brothers had killed their mother and father, and told one
+of his servants to take the twin boys down to the river and drown them.
+They were babies then. The servant did not like to do this. He may have
+been afraid he would get into trouble if he did it and any of their people
+found it out later. He may have hated to do the cruel work, for they were
+strong and handsome little fellows. At any rate he put them in a basket
+and gave the basket to a slave, telling him to throw it into the river.
+
+The river was in flood just then, and its banks were overflowed for miles
+on each side. There was water everywhere, and the ground was soft so that
+it was hardly possible to get down to the real river, where the water was
+deep and the current strong. If the children had been thrown into that,
+they would have drowned at once. But the slave did not take time to go all
+the way around the plain to the bank itself. He put the basket down in the
+first deep pool he found and left it to be carried down to the river, for
+the flood was beginning to ebb. Instead of that the basket lodged on a
+knoll and stayed there, not very far from the banks.
+
+  [Illustration: The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or
+                                  lambs]
+
+In flood time, as Ursula had often heard her father the hunter say,
+animals are sometimes so frightened that the fierce and the timid take
+refuge together on some island or rocky ridge, without harming each other
+at all. This flood had come up suddenly and drowned some of them in their
+dens. A wolf that had lost her cubs in that way was picking her steps
+across the drenched plain, when she heard a noise—two noises—from a willow
+basket under a wild fig tree. She went quietly over there and looked in.
+The little creatures inside the basket were not cubs or lambs, but they
+were hungry; any one would know that from the way they squalled. Wolf talk
+and man talk are quite different, but baby talk and cub talk are
+understood by all mothers. The wolf tipped the basket over with her paw,
+and the little things tumbled out in the cold and wet and cried louder
+than ever. Perhaps they thought she was a big dog. At any rate they
+crawled toward her, and plunged their strong little chubby hands into her
+fur, and crowed. When she lay down they snuggled close to her warm furry
+side, and she licked them all over.
+
+A shepherd named Faustulus came that way when the flood had gone down,
+looking after a lost sheep. He found wolf tracks, and grasping his spear
+firmly, traced them to this knoll. He found the gray wolf curled up there
+with the two babies, asleep and warm and rosy, in the circle of her big,
+strong body.
+
+The shepherd did not know just what to do. He thought that if he tried to
+take the children away from her she would fight, and they might be hurt,
+and he probably would be hurt himself. He decided to go and get help.
+Later in the day he came back with some of his friends, and set a rude
+box-trap for the wolf, baited with fresh meat from a drowned calf. When
+they had trapped her they took her home and the children also, in their
+basket. They kept the wolf for some time, and she seemed quite tame; but
+at last she ran away and never came back. They fed the babies on warm
+milk, and the shepherd and his wife both fell in love with them from the
+very first. They heard a rumor after awhile, whispered about secretly as
+such things are, that the chief Amulius had had his two little nephews
+drowned. The shepherd guessed then who the foundlings might be, but he
+kept quiet about it. The city was not too far away, and some one might be
+sent even yet to kill the twins. In the language of the country the word
+for river was Rumon, and the word for an oar was Rhem. He named the boys
+Romulus and Remus, and those were all the names they had. They grew up to
+be fine active fellows, afraid of nothing and good at all manly sports. As
+they grew up, they gathered other young men outside the villages into a
+sort of clan, to protect the countryside against robbers, and to fight and
+hunt and earn a living in one way and another. They had a rocky stronghold
+on the mountain, where they lived, and whenever strangers came that way,
+some one was sent to see who and what they were. That was how the two
+brothers came to the camp of the colonists.
+
+When this remarkable story was told, there was intense interest in the
+strange kinsmen. The girls were a little afraid of them. Their eyes were
+so bright and keen, their teeth so white, and their faces so bronzed and
+stern that they looked rather savage, especially in their wolf-skin
+mantles and tunics. But the boys all wished that they could join the
+patrol in the mountains.
+
+For two days the colonists remained where they were, talking with the two
+brothers about the country. At last it was settled that the very hills
+where the two foundlings had grown up would be the best place for the
+colony to live!
+
+Near the yellow river, there was a group of seven irregular hills which
+had never been inhabited, because the place was far from any town, and the
+neighboring chiefs had no especial use for it. There was good water on
+these hills and pasture enough for all the herds, if the woods were
+cleared off. The hills were so shaped that they could be defended, and
+from those heights they could see for miles and miles across the plain.
+The wild face of Romulus changed and kindled as he talked, and Marcus
+Colonus saw that here in this youth, his kinsman, in spite of his
+adventurous and untrained life and his ignorance of the old and
+time-honored ways, he had found a true son of the Vitali, who loved his
+land and his people.
+
+The colonists crossed the plain to the seven hills, with the brothers
+guiding them, and on the largest, which stood perhaps a hundred and fifty
+feet above the river, they made their camp and set up the beehive temple
+for the last time. Here, they hoped, the sacred fire would burn year after
+year, and their people find a home.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    IX
+
+
+                             THE SQUARE HILL
+
+
+The colony had chosen for their home one of the largest of the seven
+hills, squarish in form and more or less covered with woodland. They began
+at once to fence it around, to keep their beasts from wandering out and
+thieves and wild beasts from getting in, for all this country was very
+lonely. They had done this sort of thing so often since they left their
+old home that they did it quickly and rather easily. It was the habit of
+their people to save time and strength wherever they could, without being
+any less thorough. To do a thing right, in the beginning, saved a great
+deal of loss and trouble in the end.
+
+While some cut down trees that grew on the land where they intended to
+make their permanent settlement, others trimmed off the branches as fast
+as the trees were down, and cut the logs to about the same length, and
+pointed the ends. The boys gathered up the branches and cut firewood from
+them. The brush that was not needed for the fires was made into loose
+fagots and piled up on the logs, as they were laid along the line where
+the wall was to be. This made a kind of brush fence, not of much use
+against a determined enemy but better than none at all. Even this would
+keep an animal from bouncing into the camp without being heard, and in
+fact most wild beasts are rather suspicious of anything that looks like a
+trap.
+
+When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they
+dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted
+the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any
+newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built
+fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall
+takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of
+stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and
+called a sharpened stake a “_palum_.” A fence built of boards set up in
+this way is called a paling fence, and the boards are called palings. The
+word fence itself is only a short word for “defence,”—a defence made of
+pointed stakes planted in the ground.
+
+The earth that was dug up was always thrown inside and formed the basis of
+a low earthwork that made the palisade firmer. It was made as high as
+possible from the outer side by being built on the edge of the hilltop so
+that the ground sloped away sharply from it. The pointed tops of the logs
+were a foot or two too high for a man to grasp at them and climb up, but
+from the inside the defenders could mount the earthwork and look through
+high loopholes.
+
+There was a gateway at the top of a slope that was not so deep as the
+others, placed there so that if the colonists were outside and had to run
+for shelter, they could get in quickly. Almost anywhere else, a person who
+tried to get in and was not wanted would have to climb the hill under fire
+from the slingers and bowmen above. He must then get over the perfectly
+straight log wall, which afforded no foothold, because all the nubs of the
+branches had been neatly pared off, and force his way over the sawlike top
+in the face of men with long spears. No matter what sort of neighbors the
+colonists might have, they would think twice before they tried that.
+
+The gate was made as strong as possible, of smaller tree trunks lashed
+together, and strengthened on the inside by crosspieces. When it was
+closed, two logs, one at the top and one at the bottom, were laid in place
+across it. Some one was always there to guard it, day and night, and could
+see through a little window who was coming up the hill.
+
+Although strongholds like this had not been necessary for many years in
+their old home, there was one, built of stone in the ancient days, and
+never allowed to go to ruin. It seemed very adventurous to the boys to be
+erecting defences like that for their own families. But Romulus and Remus
+had told them that this would be the only way of being quite safe. They
+had a great deal that petty thieves might want to steal; and the chief
+Amulius might take it into his head to send a force to attack them, if he
+knew that so large a party of strangers had come in. When they had been
+there some years, and more people had joined the colony, the seven hills
+could be fortified so that nobody could take them. Colonus himself could
+see that, and it gave him a feeling of confidence and respect for his
+young cousin to know that he had seen it too.
+
+By the time the palisade was finished, not only most of the land within it
+was clear, but the material for the huts was ready and some huts had been
+built. The timber was piled as it was cut, by the boys of the various
+families, on the lots marked out for the houses. The younger children cut
+reeds and grass for thatching and for the fodder of the cattle. They did
+this work in little companies and had a very pleasant time. Sometimes they
+caught fish, or shot waterfowl with their bows and arrows, or set snares
+for game.
+
+Later the men would gather stone for a stone wall in place of the
+palisade, to run along the same line, and then the seasoned timbers of
+their log wall would still be good for building purposes. There was a
+steeper and narrower hill near the river which would make an excellent
+fortress. But the thoughts of the colony now were given to laying out
+farms.
+
+They cleared and laid out wheat fields and orchards and vineyards as soon
+as they found land suitable. As any farmer knows, the sooner land is
+cultivated the more can be got out of it; it is not work that can all be
+done in a year, or two years, or three. This is especially true of land
+never used before for anything but pasture, and much of this had never
+been used even for that. Sheep do not like wet ground, and both sheep and
+cattle, unless they were tended constantly, might stray into the swampy
+low grounds. Drainage would help that land; when some of it was drained it
+would make rich lush meadows and golden grain fields. The land-loving
+Vitali could see visions of richer crops than any they had ever harvested,
+growing on that unpromising plain, if only they could have their way with
+it.
+
+The children who were here, there and everywhere, watching all that was
+done and helping where they could, felt as if they were looking on at the
+making of a new world. It was really almost like a miracle—some of the
+ignorant marsh folk thought it was one—when that uncultivated hilltop,
+overgrown with bushes and wind-stunted trees and with the rocky bones of
+it cropping out here and there, became a trim encampment of orderly
+thatched huts. The beasts grew sleek and fat on the good fodder and
+grazing, and no one had appeared so far who had any evil designs. In fact,
+few persons came near them at all. It was as if they had the new world all
+to themselves.
+
+In the house-building the children helped considerably after the men got
+the timber frames up. Instead of building stone walls, they were going to
+do what they had sometimes done before when a wall was run up
+temporarily,—use mud. They set stakes in rows along the walls, not close
+together like the palisade, but far enough apart for twigs and branches to
+be woven in and out between them like a very rough basketry. When this was
+done the men built a kind of pen on the ground, for a mixing bowl, and
+brought lime and sand and clay and water, and mixed it with tough grass
+into a sort of rough plaster. This was daubed all over the walls with
+wooden spades until the whole was quite covered, and when it hardened it
+would be weather-proof and warm. Small houses built in this “wattle and
+daub” fashion have been known to last hundreds of years.
+
+The thatched roof was four-sided, running up to a hole in the middle to
+let out the smoke. When it rained, the rain dripped in around the edges of
+the hole and ran into a tank under it. The altar with the sacred fire was
+at one side of this tank, and when the room was dark the flame was
+reflected in the wavering, shining depths of the water. The space opposite
+the door, beyond the altar, was where the father and mother slept, and
+later it might be walled off into a private room. Other rooms could be
+partitioned off along the sides. In later times there was a small entry or
+vestibule between the door and the inner rooms. But although the other
+rooms might vary in number and size and use, the _atrium_, the middle
+space, in which were the altar and the _impluvium_ or water pool, remained
+the same. It was the heart of the home. Here the family worship was held,
+and this was the common room of the family.
+
+The plan of the encampment itself was like the house on a larger scale.
+The huts were built around the inside of the palisade, with a separating
+space or belt of land that was never plowed or built on—the _pomerium_,
+the space “before the wall.” In the middle was an open square which was to
+the town what the _atrium_ was to the house,—the common ground, where
+public worship was held, announcements made, and public affairs social or
+religious carried on. Here was the beehive hut with the sacred fire, and
+all other temples or public buildings there might be would open on this
+square. The line of encircling houses made a sort of inner defense line,
+and even if any stranger could have climbed the wall for purposes of
+robbery or spying, it would have been hard for him to pass the houses
+without being found out.
+
+This was the ancient way in which all the towns of this race were built.
+As the towns increased in size, other gates were opened, and streets laid
+out, but always after the same general plan. And as a family never stayed
+indoors when it was possible to work or play in the open air, so the
+colonists did not stay inside their wall when they could go out on the
+common land and make it fruitful. Their descendants are seldom contented
+to live inside walls and streets, where they can have no land of their
+own. They find homes outside, where they can have land to dig up and plant
+and tend and watch, season after season,—and in the thousands of years
+since they began to plant and to reap, they have gone almost everywhere in
+the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    X
+
+
+                               THE KINSMEN
+
+
+While the colonists were clearing the land on the Square Hill, building
+huts and laying out farms, they saw nothing of Romulus and Remus. The old
+shepherd Faustulus came up now and then to look at the work as it went on,
+and plainly thought these newcomers wonderful and superior beings. But the
+wolf’s foster children were fighters, not husbandmen, and this work was
+not in their line at all.
+
+The fathers of the colony were not altogether sorry that this was so. They
+felt that if the hunters, woodsmen, shepherds, soldiers of fortune, and
+outlawed men Romulus commanded should happen to quarrel with peaceable
+people like the settlers, it might create a very unpleasant state of
+things. The brothers themselves were friendly enough, but it was not
+certain whether they could keep their men from plunder or fighting if they
+tried. Such bands, so far as Colonus and his friends had known of them,
+were like a pack of wolves,—the chiefs only held their leadership by being
+stronger, fiercer and more determined than the others. Their group of rude
+huts in the forest was not at all like a civilized town, from what they
+said of it, and they never seemed to give any attention to the gods or to
+worship. Perhaps they did not know much about such things. Even those who
+came from civilized places had wandered about so much that they seemed to
+think one place as good as another. They had no idea of the feeling that
+made their home, to the colonists, dearer than any other place ever could
+be. It was so not because it was pleasanter, or because they had more
+comforts than others, but because it was home, the place where people knew
+and trusted one another and trusted in the unseen dwellers by the fire to
+protect and guide them, and to make them wise and just in their dealings
+with one another.
+
+To the colonists there was a very great difference between the ways of
+different people. The words they used showed it. Civil life began when men
+lived in a city, but this was not a large settlement of miscellaneous
+persons, but a permanent home of men who all worshiped the same gods, and
+obeyed the same laws and took responsibility. A man who did his part in
+the life of such a place was a “citizen,” and the life itself was
+“civilized,” the life of men who served one another and the whole
+community—men, women and children—looking out for its future as they would
+for the prosperity of their own family. In fact, such a body of people
+usually began with a group of relatives, as this one had. Without this
+dependence on one another to do the right thing, there could not be
+civilization.
+
+A “company” was a group who were so far friends as to eat bread together.
+This in itself was a proof of a sort of friendship, for in eating a man
+had to lay down his weapons and be more or less off guard; when men ate
+together they were all off guard for the time. “Community” meant a group
+of families or persons bound together by kindred or friendship or common
+interest, and stronger for being bound together, as a bundle of sticks is
+stronger than separate sticks can be. “Religion” meant something stronger
+still, the binding together of people who felt the same sort of ties to
+the unseen world, who worshiped in the same way, and loved the same sweet,
+old, familiar prayers and chants, and believed in the same unseen rulers
+of life and death.
+
+The various words for strangers outside these ties which bound them to
+their own people were just as expressive. Among farmers who lived on
+cleared land, within walls, the people who did not were “out of doors,”
+the forest people, the “foreigners.” Among a people who all spoke the same
+language, the thick-tongued country people, whose ideas were few, like
+their needs and their occupations, were the “barbarians,”—the babblers.
+And in a place like the settlement they were making now, a little island
+of orderly, intelligent life in a waste of almost uninhabited wilderness,
+the scattered hut dwellers were the “pagans,” the people of the waste. But
+almost every word that meant a civilized family or town had in it the idea
+of obligation. People must see that they could not be lawless and have any
+civil life at all. Civil life meant living together and living more or
+less by rules that were meant for the comfort and welfare of all.
+
+Now the wild followers of Romulus could surely not be united by any such
+law as this. They fought as if Mars himself had taught them, the country
+folk said; but the worship of this god of manhood meant a great many
+things besides fighting. No settlement could be strong where the men were
+free to fight one another, knew nothing of self-control, made no homes.
+Just how much Romulus understood of this, Colonus was not sure. As it
+proved, he understood a great deal more than any one thought he did.
+
+Suddenly, as they always came and went, the twins appeared one day at the
+gate of the palisade and were made very welcome. It happened to be a feast
+day, the feast of Lupercal, which came in midwinter, and the fact was that
+Romulus had found this out and had come that day on purpose. He was always
+interested in sacrifices, omens, and old customs. Remus had brought his
+pipes, and while he played for the dancers some wild music that none of
+them had ever heard, Romulus came over to the older men. He was rather
+quiet for a long time, watching all that went on, and his eyes turned
+often to the fire on the altar.
+
+“My uncle,” he said at last to Marcus Colonus, when they were seated a
+little apart from the others, “I came here to tell you the desire of my
+heart, and now that I am here, I feel afraid. There is much in the world
+that I have never seen and do not know. With you, I feel like a little boy
+who has everything yet to learn.”
+
+This was a surprise to Colonus, and it was a pleasant one. This young man,
+who had fought his way to power and leadership at an age when most boys
+are still depending on their fathers for advice in everything, had somehow
+learned to be gentle and reverent, and not too sure of himself. This was a
+thing that Colonus could not have expected. He did not see exactly where
+Romulus had learned it, but it gave him a feeling of great kindness toward
+his young kinsman.
+
+“There is no need for you to be afraid,” he said cordially. “We are all
+your friends here. We owe you much for your aid and counsel. You are of
+our blood. This is your home whenever you come among us.”
+
+The young leader stole a quick look from his keen, dark eyes at the older
+man. He had opened the conversation with that speech, not because he did
+not mean it, for he did; he felt very rude and ignorant among these
+kinsfolk of his, with their kindly, pleasant ways, and practical wisdom,
+and unconscious dignity. He was perfectly honest in saying that. But he
+said it just then because he wished to find out how Colonus felt toward
+him, and how far he could count on his approval and support in a plan he
+had. It would be better not to ask for help at all than to ask for it and
+be refused. The young chief of outlaws was proud. He was also wise, with
+the sagacity of a wild thing that has had to fight for life against all
+the world from birth. He never had really trusted anybody. The weak who
+were afraid to oppose him might do it if they dared. The strong must not
+be allowed to see his weakness or they would take the advantage. The old
+shepherd was kind, but he did not always see danger. Strength and kindness
+did not go together in Romulus’ experience. Even when he and his men were
+protecting the mountain villages, doing for them what they could not do
+for themselves, the people never let them forget that they were outlawed
+men. Because they did not live inside the walls and do just as the farmers
+did, they could not be called civilized. But these men here were his
+kinsmen, and they seemed different. Some instinct told him that with
+Colonus it would be better not to pretend to be wise and strong, but to
+ask advice.
+
+“That is very good of you,” he said gratefully. “But I am not, after all,
+really one of you. I was not brought up as your sons have been. I cannot
+be sure that they would trust me as my own men do. If I were sure—”
+
+And then he stopped.
+
+“Do you mean,” asked Colonus, “that you wish the help of our young men in
+some expedition?”
+
+Romulus decided to risk it. “If it is wise in your eyes,” he said.
+
+“We are strangers in this land,” said Colonus deliberately, “and we must
+be careful what we do. You had better tell me exactly what the plan is,
+for I cannot judge in the dark. If I think it is not good I will say so,
+and we will let the matter drop and say no more. If it seems wise I will
+speak of it to Tullius the priest and the other men, and do all I can to
+help you.”
+
+He suspected that Romulus had some plan for making war against his wicked
+uncle and winning back the place that he and his brother had been robbed
+of. He wished to know more of the young man’s ways of thinking and acting
+before he made any promises. It might be a very good thing if Amulius were
+overthrown, for he was feared and hated even by his own people. The
+colonists were not strong enough to do it themselves, and it was not their
+quarrel, but it was a very grave question whether they would not have to
+fight the soldiers of Amulius sooner or later. He had never troubled the
+few scattered shepherds and hunters by the riverside, but a settlement
+like theirs, if it grew and was prosperous, might attract his attention.
+
+It was natural enough for Romulus to desire to overthrow the man who had
+cast him out of his rightful place, but whether he could do it was another
+matter. The young men would not make any trouble about joining him in his
+war if they were allowed to, for he was already a sort of hero among them.
+But if they drifted into the vagabond godless life of the outlaws in the
+forest, it would be very unfortunate indeed. The only possible way in
+which the settlement by the river could hold its own was by standing
+together and keeping the old proved discipline. The lads had never done
+any real fighting, and it would be a great experience for them. Everything
+would depend on the leader under whom they fought, and Colonus did not
+really know much about him.
+
+Very often conversation goes on without the use of words. This is so in
+animals, who seem to understand each other without any talk at all. There
+is more or less of it even among modern, civilized men. The two kinsmen
+were not so far from the wild life of their ancestors that they did not
+see through each other to some extent. Romulus knew well enough that the
+colonists ruled their lives by ancient customs, and by what they could
+learn of the will of the gods. A man like Marcus Colonus would naturally
+have some questions to ask of a young fellow who paid no more attention to
+old rules and ceremonies than a wild hawk. The youth intended to answer as
+many of these questions as he could, before they were asked.
+
+“A long time ago,” Romulus began, his dark eyes fixed thoughtfully on the
+leaping flames, “when my brother and I were boys, Faustulus the shepherd
+took us farther from our pastures than we had ever been before. We came to
+a place after much wandering, where all the people were making holiday.
+When we asked, being still youths and curious, what holiday it was, they
+said it was the day of the founding of the city.
+
+“They knew the name and the history of the founder of the city, who came
+from a far country with his people, and was led by a wolf to the place
+where the city was to be. Although he had long been dead, he was
+remembered and loved. The priest said that his spirit was often with them
+and blessed them when they did right. He was to them a kind father, who
+never forgets his children.
+
+“Then, not understanding how one man could found a city, I asked the
+priest, and he told me that the city was not a mere crowd of people, but
+the home of the gods and of the ancestors of the people, as a house is the
+home of a man. The unseen dwellers by the fireside require not great
+houses, but when the fire is kept burning they love it as do the living.
+Then I watched and saw the processions, and the dancing, and heard the
+chanting of songs and the sacred music, and all that was done in honor of
+the founder. I saw that the city was the home of a man, living or dead,
+forever and ever. Then I said, ‘When I am a man, I will found a city in
+the place where the wolf saved our lives when we were children.’ My
+brother laughed, and I, being angry, knocked him down. I wanted to kill
+him in that moment. But the priest told me that there must never be
+quarreling on a feast day, because it brought ill luck. I was afraid that
+the founder of the city saw me and was angry. I went away. But from that
+time I have always wished to found a city in this place, and for that
+reason I was glad when your people came and I could lead them here.”
+
+Colonus found this story a touching one. It showed a reverence and
+affection for the things he had not known, which he was glad to see in
+this strong young man.
+
+“And that is your secret desire?” he said, smiling.
+
+“That is my dream,” said Romulus. And he looked at the older man with eyes
+that had a question in them.
+
+“If you are to found a city here,” said Colonus slowly, “Mars must lead
+you as he leads us. If our young men fight in your battles, your men must
+come and live with us and worship our gods and obey our laws. That is what
+a city means. How will these things be, Romulus, son of the Ramnes, son of
+the wolf?”
+
+“My men will go where I go,” said Romulus briefly. “This also is in my
+mind, my uncle, and you shall tell me whether it is a wise plan or the
+hasty vision of youth. There are many in the army of Amulius, my uncle,
+who hate him as much as they fear him. He suspects that we are the
+children he tried to murder, and will try to hunt us down and make the
+people we have protected betray us. Perhaps they will fight for themselves
+if they will not fight for us; I do not know. But there is not one among
+my men,” the youth lifted his dark head in high confidence, “who follows
+me from any other reason than because he wishes. They do not all love me,”
+he added, with a grin that showed his sharp white teeth, “but I am their
+leader and they will die fighting before they will yield to Amulius.
+
+“If then I lead my men boldly against Amulius, not waiting for him to be
+ready, not staying until he sends his slaves to hunt me down, not letting
+him hear of our coming till we are there, I think that we may succeed, and
+then will the land be freed. He himself is old and has not led men to war
+for many years. I think that many in his army will refuse to fight against
+us, and others will yield without much fighting, and when we have come and
+taken his city, the people who obey him now will be glad. But my
+grandfather is still alive, and he, and not my brother nor myself, has the
+right to rule upon the Long White Mountain.
+
+“When my grandfather is again ruler where he has the right, then would I
+come here and found my own city in my own place where the she-wolf saved
+our lives. Was she not the servant of Mars?”
+
+Colonus nodded thoughtfully. “It would seem so.”
+
+“Then shall my people be your people, and your gods my gods,” said
+Romulus, his clear voice cutting the rest like the call of a trumpet. The
+young people on the other side of the square looked curiously at the two,
+the young man and the older one, so deep in talk, and Remus, laughing,
+began to play again. It was a sweet and piercing measure that set all
+their feet flying.
+
+Colonus stood up and took his young kinsman by the hand. “You are of our
+blood,” he said, “and your fight is our fight. We have talked of this
+among us, and have thought that perhaps you would do this. I think that
+our council will be of one mind with me in this matter. The gods guide
+you, my son.”
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    XI
+
+
+                         THE TAKING OF ALBA LONGA
+
+
+Never in his life had Romulus felt in his own soul the strength of kinship
+as he felt it after the colonists agreed to join their forces with his. He
+had made his men into a fighting force when courage was almost the only
+virtue they had, but there was no natural comradeship between them as a
+whole. Here were men of his own people, welded together by all the ties of
+a boyhood and manhood spent together in one place, and they were ready to
+stand by him to the death. It seemed to give him a strength more than
+human. Remus was his brother, but he too was different and did not
+understand. He was no dreamer; he would have been content to go on all his
+life a shepherd boy or a soldier. But these men understood; they looked
+down the road of the years to come and planned for their children and
+grandchildren. That was why they were willing to let their sons go to
+fight against the tyrant Amulius under a stranger and a captain of
+outlaws,—because they saw that in the end the war must be fought, and all
+the men who could fight were needed.
+
+There were anxious days in the settlement by the yellow river, after the
+young men marched away. Even if Romulus won the victory, perhaps there
+would be some who would not come back. And if he failed, the first the
+colonists would know of it would be an army coming to kill or enslave them
+all.
+
+Not quite a month after the departure of the little fighting force the
+watchmen on the wall saw far away on the plain a single running figure. At
+first they could not be sure who it was. The word flew about the colony
+and soon the people were gathered wherever they could get a view of the
+running man. It was toward evening; the long shadows stretched over the
+level ground, and the red sunset made the still waters look like pools of
+blood. Everything was very quiet. They could hear the croak and pipe of
+the frogs, far below at the foot of the hill.
+
+On and on came the racing figure, and now he had caught sight of the
+people on the hill, for he lifted his arm and waved to them again and
+again. It was good tidings; that was the meaning of his gesture in their
+signal language. Many hastened to meet him, but the path down the hill was
+a winding one and those who stayed where they were heard the news almost
+as soon. The runner was Caius Cossus, who always outstripped every other
+lad of his age in the races, and when he came to the foot of the hill he
+shouted:
+
+          [Illustration: “Victory! Vic-to-ry! Romulus forever!”]
+
+“Ai-ya! Victory! Vic-to-ry! Romulus forever!”
+
+His mother began to cry for joy and pride. The other women did not dare to
+yet. They did not allow themselves to be really glad until the small boys
+came scampering in ahead of their elders, to be the first to tell. Amulius
+was dead and Numa ruled in his place, and not one of their own men had
+been killed. Cossus reached the gate carried on men’s shoulders, for he
+was almost worn out. He had had nothing to eat for several hours, and had
+been running all the last part of the way, to get home before it was too
+dark to see.
+
+Caius Cossus lived to be very old, and his long life brought him much
+honor and happiness, but never again, so long as he lived, did he have so
+glad a triumph as when he came in at the gate of the little, rude town by
+the river, and told the story of the fight at Alba Longa to the fathers
+and mothers who had the best right to be proud of it. It was the first
+battle the young men of the colony had ever been in, and a great deal
+would have depended on it in any case. They were strangers, with their
+reputation for courage and coolness all to make.
+
+When the young messenger had had a chance to get his breath and some food
+and drink—and the best in the place was none too good for him—he told the
+story of the campaign from the beginning.
+
+Romulus had separated his force into three companies and sent them toward
+Alba Longa by three roads and in small groups, not to attract attention,
+until they were within a few hours’ march of the town of the chief. Here
+they halted, and some of the outlaw band came up with them, carrying new
+shields and weapons that had been hidden in a cave until the time came to
+use them. The place of meeting was a wild rocky place where not even goats
+could have found pasture, and here Romulus made a brief speech giving them
+their orders. Fortune, he said, always favored those who were loyal to the
+gods. Amulius was loyal to nothing; he was a liar, a thief and a coward,
+and the invisible powers of heaven were arrayed against him. He was not
+afraid that any of his followers would offend the gods. Whatever else they
+had done, they had not bullied the weak or robbed the poor, or turned
+their backs on the strong, or violated the holy places of any city. They
+were to go forward in the faith that the stars of heaven would fight for
+them and against the armies of Amulius.
+
+Some of the country people were there to serve as guides. There was a way
+around the city to the back, where the wall was not so high, and Remus and
+his party would go first and come around that way. The colonists were to
+swing to the left, where a road branched off, and come up toward the gate
+where the barracks were. Romulus himself with his own men would attack the
+main gate just after dawn and push his way in while the troops were partly
+distracted to the left and to the rear. When he gave the signal, a triple
+drum roll, the colonists were to give back as if they were retreating, and
+follow his men in at the main gate and bar it after them. He would send a
+part of his men toward the west gate to take the troops in the rear, and
+if they could drive the enemy out and hold that gate, the city would be in
+Romulus’ hands.
+
+It all went as it was planned. The headlong rush of the young chief and
+his men, who were as active and sinewy as cats, took them through the main
+gate and over the walls almost at the same moment. They had brought slim
+tree trunks with the nubs of the branches left on, for ladders, and
+rawhide ropes on which they could swarm up over the walls in half a dozen
+places at a time. The soldiers were completely taken by surprise, and many
+surrendered at once. The invaders were in the public square and pushing
+into the palace of the chief almost before the bewildered and terrified
+people found out what had happened. Romulus himself was the first to enter
+the private rooms of Amulius, and there he found the old chief dying from
+a spear wound in the breast. The captain of his guard had killed him and
+then offered his sword to Romulus in the hope of being the first to gain
+favor.
+
+“A man who is false to one master will be false to two,” said Romulus,
+with a flash like lightning in his dark eyes. He ordered the captain bound
+and turned over to his grandfather, when he should arrive, for judgment.
+This was not the sort of timber he wanted for an army. If the captain had
+surrendered, it would have been very well, but to kill his master in his
+room, unarmed, for a reward, was black treachery, and it was not the young
+chieftain’s plan to encourage either traitors or cowards.
+
+From the steps of the palace he sent the triple drum roll sounding through
+the gray light of a rainy morning, and heard it answered by the battle
+shout of the young men of the colony, as they came charging into the gate,
+and by the shrill piercing music of the pipes from the company Remus led.
+The three companies met in the square, keeping order and rank as if it
+were a game, and as they saw their leader standing in the doorway in the
+red flame of the torches, they shouted the triple shout of victory.
+Standing there in his armor, above the savage confusion, the white faces
+of the people uplifted to him from the crowded streets, he looked every
+inch a chieftain. He beckoned his brother to his side, and lifted his
+sword, and all was still.
+
+“Ye who know what Amulius did in the days of his brother Numa,” he began,
+“know now that he is dead.
+
+“Ye who know that he killed his own sons for fear they should grow up and
+rebel against him, fear him no more, for he is dead.
+
+“Ye who have been bowed down with the burden of his cruelty and his greed,
+rise up and stand straight like men, for he is dead.
+
+“Ye, the gods of his fathers and mine, who know what he was in his
+lifetime, I call on ye to judge whether his slayer did well to kill him,
+for he is dead.
+
+“Ye, the people of the Long White Mountain, who have heard the name of
+Romulus and the name of Remus, know now that we are the children whom he
+would have slain after he had killed our father and our mother, and that
+we were saved by a wolf of Mars to live and rule our own people now that
+Amulius is dead.
+
+“Ye, the people of Alba Longa, of the ancient home of our race, take Numa
+for your chief now, and be loyal to him and serve him, for he who took the
+right from him is dead!”
+
+There was an instant’s pause, and then shouts of “Numa! Numa!” broke from
+the people. If Romulus had claimed the place for himself they would have
+shouted his name just as readily, but this was not Romulus’ plan at all.
+The headship of this people belonged to his grandfather Numa, and there
+was no question about it. Until the old man was dead, he was the rightful
+chief, and for his grandsons to push into his place would simply be the
+same high-handed robbery Amulius had committed. The brothers were his
+heirs, and they could wait and rule over their own city until they had the
+right to rule here.
+
+This did away with the last bit of resistance. The remainder of the army
+was only too glad to surrender, and messengers were sent off to tell Numa
+the good news and bring him home in triumph to his own place. When they
+had welcomed him, they would come to the hill beside the river and found
+their own city.
+
+It was a day long to be remembered when the Romans returned, the young men
+marching lightly with laughter and singing, their young leaders in the
+van. The people went out to meet them with music and rejoicing, and there
+was a great feast in the colony. But to Colonus the most precious moment
+of that day—not even excepting the first sight of his own son Marcus—was
+that in which the young and victorious Romulus came to him where he stood
+with Tullius the priest, and knelt before them, saying,
+
+“Tell me that I have done well, my fathers, for without your approval the
+rest is nothing. Have I proved myself worthy to found our city, O ye who
+know the law?”
+
+  [Illustration: Then they blessed him and crowned him with the victor’s
+                             crown of laurel]
+
+Then they blessed him and crowned him with the victor’s crown of laurel.
+The outlaw had found his own people.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XII
+
+
+                              THE RING WALL
+
+
+In the weeks that followed the slaying of Amulius, Romulus sat many hours
+each day with the older men, consulting and planning. He was very quick to
+understand all that he heard and saw, and very anxious not to leave out
+the least ceremony proper to the founding of the city. Each one of these
+ceremonies had a meaning. The founder of the city was to the community
+what the father of a family was to his household; he was a sort of high
+priest. It was a strange experience for the wild young chief of a band of
+men of no family,—outlaws and almost banditti. From a forest lair with no
+temple and no altar he had come to a town where the altar was the heart of
+everything. From expeditions planned and directed by himself, in which his
+will was the only law, he was now to be the head of a life in which
+everything was guided, more or less, by customs so old that no one could
+say where they came from. He was no man’s servant or subject, but he was
+the chosen man of the gods, to do their will in the city.
+
+The fathers of the city saw more and more clearly the difference between
+the two brothers. Remus did not, apparently, take any interest in the
+traditions and the ceremonies so strange to him and so familiar to the
+colonists. Romulus had been leader in all their expeditions, not because
+he tried to make himself first and crowd his brother down into second
+place, but because his men would follow him anywhere, and they did not
+seem to have the same faith in Remus. Moreover, Remus did not seem to care
+to be a leader. He never sat, silent, planning and working out a way to do
+what seemed impossible, as Romulus did. Romulus was not a great talker
+unless at some especial time when he had something it was necessary to
+say. He was in the habit of thinking a matter over very thoroughly before
+he said anything at all about it. People wondered at his lightning-like
+decisions in an emergency, but the men who knew him best knew that he had
+often come to them privately beforehand, and talked the whole thing over,
+without their knowing what he was after until the time came.
+
+Remus did most of the talking, in fact. He was fond of raising objections
+and expressing doubts, and Romulus once said with a smile that this made
+him very useful, because if Remus could not pick a hole in his plans no
+one could. It was better to know all the weak points beforehand, instead
+of finding them out by making a failure. This dream of founding a city, in
+any case, was none of Remus’; it was the dream of Romulus, and his doing.
+
+Therefore the Romans were surprised when Remus objected to the choice of
+the Square Hill for the sacred city. In his opinion the one next to it,
+which had been named the Aventine, the hill of defense, because that was
+where the soldiers had encamped, would be the place. There was no sign
+that the Square Hill was favored by the gods. If Romulus considered signs
+and omens so important, how could he be so sure that he had the right to
+choose the place himself?
+
+Romulus’ black brows drew together. He had not thought of it in that way.
+He had intended to choose, so far as he could be certain of it, the very
+place where he and his brother were found by the shepherd, for the sacred
+enclosure which would be the heart of the city. He had talked with
+Tullius, who thought this entirely right; the almost miraculous rescue of
+the two children was a sign, if any were needed. But Remus recalled the
+custom that the priesthood beyond the river had, and that was also found
+among the Sabines, of watching the flight of birds for a sign. He
+challenged Romulus to make sure in this way. Let each of the brothers take
+his position at sunrise on the site selected by himself and remain there
+through the day. Whichever saw an omen in the flight of birds should have
+the right to choose the place for the city. To this Romulus agreed. It
+might have been partly for the sake of peace, for he knew of old that when
+Remus became possessed of an idea he could be very eloquent about it. In
+addition to this, if the omens did favor the Square Hill, there could be
+no question then,—and he believed they would.
+
+It was a still day, late in spring, and most of the birds had already
+flown northward on their usual migration. For a long time none appeared.
+Then Remus gave a shout. He saw winging their way slowly but steadily a
+flock of vultures,—six in all. If that were the only flight observed
+during the day, it would seem that the Aventine was the right hill, after
+all. The sun began to sink and cloud over. Then from the mountains where
+Romulus had gathered his troop, and on which his eyes were resting, arose
+a dark moving spot that spread into a cloud of outspread wings,—vultures
+again, and many of them. There were twelve altogether. The huge birds came
+sailing on wide-stretched, dusky pinions directly over the village of
+huts, noiselessly as the clouds. When they had passed, the sun came out
+again and shot rays of dazzling splendor across the hill, so that the
+people’s eyes, following the strange flock, could not bear the light. The
+gods had spoken, and the Square Hill was the chosen place.
+
+[Illustration: A plan of Rome in classical times, showing the seven hills]
+
+On what would now be called the twenty-first of April, the day when the
+sun passes from the sign of the Ram into the sign of the Bull, in the
+beginning of the month sacred to Dia Maia, the goddess of growth, the city
+was founded.
+
+The first rite was one of purification. Fire, which cleanses all things,
+was called upon to make pure every one who was to take part in the
+ceremonies of the day. The father of the city stood with Romulus near a
+long heap of brushwood. With a coal from the altar fire Romulus lighted
+the pile and leaped across the flame, followed by the others in turn.
+
+Then around the spot where Faustulus had always said he found the
+children, Romulus dug a small circular trench. The space inside this was
+called the _mundus_, the home of the spirits. Here the ancestors of all
+these people who had left their old homes might find a new home, a place
+where they would still be remembered and honored, a sort of sacred guest
+chamber in the life of the new city. These invisible dwellers by the altar
+would see their children’s children and all their descendants keeping the
+good old customs and the ancient wisdom from dying out, just as they
+showed their ancestry in their eyes and hair and gait and way of speaking.
+
+The things that were put in this trench, in a hollow called the “outfit
+vault,” were all symbols of the life of the people. First Romulus himself
+threw into it a little square of sod that he had brought from the
+courtyard of the house where he was born, on Alba Longa. Each of the
+fathers of the colony in turn threw in a piece of sod they had brought
+from their old homes on the Mountain of Fire. This, like so many things in
+old ceremonies, was a bit of homely poetry. When a man was obliged to
+leave the place where he was born he took with him a little of the sod.
+Even to-day we find people taking from their old homes a root of
+sweetbriar, or a pot of shamrock or heather, a cutting of southernwood or
+of lilac. The look and the smell of it waken in them a love that is older
+than they are, that goes back to some unknown forefather who brought it
+from a still older place, perhaps, centuries ago. To the people of long
+ago this feeling was part of religion.
+
+Together with the earth there were placed in the circle some of the grain,
+the fruit, the wine, and all the other things that made a part of the life
+of the people. Finally an altar was built in the center of it, and a fire
+was lighted there from coals brought by the young girls. This was the
+hearth fire of the spirits and was never to be allowed to go out except
+once a year. Then it was kindled afresh by the use of the _terebra_ and
+_tabula_, and all the other hearth fires would be lighted from it.
+
+[Illustration: The copper plow was drawn by a white bull and a white cow]
+
+Now came the last and most important ceremony, the tracing of the line of
+the wall around the city itself,—the _urbs_, the home of the people. This
+of course had all been decided upon beforehand, and the places for the
+gates had been fixed. Romulus wore the robes of a priest, and his head was
+veiled by a kind of mantle, in order that during the ceremony he might not
+see anything that would bring bad fortune. The copper plow was drawn by a
+white bull and a white cow, the finest of all the herd. As he turned the
+furrow he chanted the prayers which he had learned from Tullius, and the
+others, following in silence, picked up such clods of earth as dropped
+outside the furrow and threw them within, so that these, having been
+blessed by this ceremony, should not be trodden by the feet of any
+stranger. One of the strictest rules of ancient religions was that
+whatever was sacred, or made so by having been blessed, should be treated
+with as much reverence as if it were alive. It should never, of course, be
+trodden upon or defiled.
+
+When he came to the places where the gates were to be, Romulus lifted the
+plow and carried it over. These openings in the furrow were called the
+_portae_,—the carrying places. Of course, where there was a gate, the soil
+must be trodden by many feet, and there the furrow was interrupted. It is
+not known where all of these gates were, but the one called Porta
+Mugionis, the Gate of the Cattle, out of which the herds were driven to
+pasture, was where the Arch of Titus stands in the Rome of to-day. The
+Porta Romana was the river gate and there were others leading to the
+common land to the other hills. This first enclosure was afterwards
+sometimes called Roma Quadrata,—the square city by the river.
+
+When the wall was built, a little inside this furrow, the wall also would
+be sacred. Nobody would be allowed to touch it, even to repair it, without
+the leave of the priest in whose charge it was. On both sides of it,
+within and without, a space would be left where no plow was used and no
+building allowed. There was a good practical reason for these rules about
+the wall, though they were so time-honored that no one gave any thought to
+that. The danger of a city being taken was considerably lessened, when it
+was an unheard-of thing for any one to be near the wall for any reason. No
+spy could get over it without attracting attention. The foundations also
+would be much less likely to be undermined if the land next them were not
+used at all.
+
+No human being among the lookers-on who reverently followed the procession
+around this city that was to be, could have told what thoughts and
+feelings filled the soul of Romulus. Perhaps he felt the solemnity of it
+even more than he would if he had been accustomed to all these beliefs
+from childhood. Things that he had dreamed of, things that he had seen
+from a distance as an outlaw and a vagabond, were part of the scene in
+which he was now the central figure. He had the sensitive understanding of
+others’ feelings and thoughts which a man gains when he has had to depend
+on his instincts in matters of life and death. The intense reverence and
+solemn joy of all these grave fathers of families, these gentle and kindly
+women, these children with their wide, wondering eyes, and the youths and
+maidens in all their springtime gladness were like wine of the spirit to
+him. He felt as they felt, and all the more because it was so new and
+strange a thing in his life. The very words of the chant, the smell of the
+earth as the plowshare turned it, had a sort of magic for him. It was
+exciting enough for those who looked on, but their feeling was gathered in
+his, like light in a burning glass.
+
+When the circle was all but completed something happened which no one
+could have foreseen. Remus had followed all that was done with a rather
+mocking light in his eye. He did not believe in the least what these
+people believed. Suddenly he stepped past the others, and with a jeering
+laugh leaped across the furrow. If he had stabbed his brother to the
+heart, it could not have made more of a sensation. It was a deliberate,
+wilful insult to everything that religion meant to these people. All
+Romulus’ hot temper and his new reverence for the ways of his forefathers
+blazed up in an instant, and he struck his brother to the earth with a
+blow. Even one single blow from his hard fist was not an experience to be
+coveted, but Remus would not have been more than stunned if his head had
+not struck on the copper plowshare. He lay quite still. He was dead.
+Whether the gods themselves had willed that he should die, or whether it
+was chance, the blow killed him.
+
+There were places where such an act as that of Remus would have been
+punished with death, but Romulus did not know that. He had struck out as
+instinctively as a man might knock down a ruffian who insulted his wife.
+Such an insult might not be a physical injury, but the intention would be
+enough to warrant punishment. The older men of the colony were inclined to
+think that the gods had done the thing. Romulus himself did not. He never
+got over it, though he never spoke of it. That day took the boyish
+carelessness out of his eyes and set a hard line about his mouth. It was
+the proudest and most sacred day of his life, and now it was the saddest.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XIII
+
+
+                             THE SOOTHSAYERS
+
+
+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 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 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 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 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
+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
+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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XIV
+
+
+                              BREAD AND SALT
+
+
+  [Illustration: They sat together that night and watched the moon sail
+                         grandly over the flood]
+
+The children who had come to the Square Hill learned to know one another
+very well in those first years of the colony. There were about a dozen of
+the older ones who were nearly the same age, and they shared more
+responsibility than children do in a more settled community. When the
+river rose suddenly, and all the animals had to be hustled at a minute’s
+notice to the highest part of the hills out of the way of the waters,
+Marcs the son of Colonus, and Mamurius the son of the metal worker Muraena
+were old enough to be treated almost as if they were men. They sat
+together that night and watched the moon sail grandly over the flood, and
+talked of all the things that boys do talk of when they begin to look
+forward into the future.
+
+It was a wild and lonely scene. The rising of the flood had covered the
+plain for miles, although in many places the waters were not deep. The
+seven hills stood up like seven islands in an ocean, and although neither
+of the boys had ever seen an ocean, they knew that it must be something
+like this. The hill where they had driven their scrambling goats was high
+and steep and rocky and had been partly fortified. It was a natural
+stronghold, standing up above the group as the head of a crouching animal
+rises above the body. All the hills were crowned with circles of twinkling
+fires, and on the highest point of each was a beacon fire which was used
+for signals. Each had signaled to the others that all was right, and now
+there was nothing to do but wait for the morning.
+
+The smaller boys who had helped were very much excited at first, and
+danced around the fires gleefully, and ate their supper with a great
+appetite; but they went to sleep quite soon afterward. The two older lads
+were the only ones awake when the moon rose, and it seemed as if they were
+the only people awake in the whole world. In the safe and orderly and
+protected life of their childhood they had never seen anything like this,
+or been given so much responsibility. For some hours no one had known how
+much farther the waters would rise, and all the boats had been kept ready,
+and the men had made rafts, to save what they could if the river should
+sweep over the last refuge. But evidently it was not going to do anything
+like that. It had stopped rising already. Faustulus the old shepherd, who
+had lived among these hills ever since he was a boy, said that once in a
+few years they had a flood like this, but that it never in all his
+recollection had gone more than a few inches higher.
+
+These two boys had always been good friends, for they were just unlike
+enough for each to do some things the other admired. Marcs was like his
+father, square-set and strong and rather silent. Mamurius was a little
+taller and slenderer, and very clever with his hands. He could invent new
+ways to do things when it was necessary and when the old ways were
+impossible. He had never built a boat before he and Marcs made theirs the
+summer before, but he had shaped a steering oar that was better than the
+one he copied. On this night they found themselves somehow closer together
+than they had ever been before, and they promised each other always to be
+friends, to work and fight for each other as for themselves as long as
+they lived.
+
+The girls also had their responsibilities, which made them rather more
+capable and sure of themselves than they might have been if they were not
+the children of colonists. After the flood went down it left things wet
+and unwholesome for some weeks, and a fever broke out, of which some of
+the people died. Mamurius’ mother, and Marcia’s two little brothers, and
+two girls in the family of Cossus died of it, and at one time hardly a
+family had more than one or two well persons. Marcia was watching over her
+mother, who was very ill, when Mamurius came to the door with a basket of
+herbs and gave her a handful. He said that he had asked Faustulus whether
+he did not know of some medicine for the fever. Faustulus told him that
+there were certain herbs in his hut which his wife used to prepare in a
+drink, and this drink helped the fever. Mamurius had brewed the drink and
+given it to his father, and taken some himself, and it had done them both
+good. The old shepherd stood in considerable awe of the colonists, who
+knew so many things that he did not, and he would never have thought of
+suggesting anything to them himself.
+
+One night Muraena the metal worker came to the house of Colonus, and sat
+down with the head of the house under a fig tree by the door and talked
+with him. The two had been friends for many years, and now, he said, the
+time had come to make the friendship even closer by an alliance between
+the two houses. He had long observed the goodness and dutiful kindness of
+Colonus’s daughter Marcia, and it was his wish that now she was come to an
+age to be married, she might be his own daughter. He had reason to believe
+that his son would be glad to marry her. What did Colonus think about it?
+
+Colonus had no objection whatever. That night he went in and called Marcia
+to him, and told her kindly that Mamurius the metal worker’s son had been
+proposed for her husband, and that it would be most pleasing to both
+families if the marriage could be arranged. It was a surprise to Marcia,
+but not at all an unpleasant one, and she went to sleep that night a very
+happy girl.
+
+This was the first wedding in the colony, and as the preparations went
+forward, everybody, old and young, took a great deal of interest in it.
+Marcia never knew she had so many friends. Everybody seemed to wish her
+well and approve of the marriage. The wooden chest Marcs had made for her,
+and Bruno had carved and painted, began to fill with webs of linen and
+wool, the gifts of her mother and the other matrons, and some that had
+been spun and woven by Marcia herself. She could see from the door the
+house that was to be her home, as its fresh, new walls arose day by day.
+And at last the day arrived for the _confarreatio_; as it was called, the
+wedding ceremony, the eating of bread. Like the other ceremonies in the
+religion of the people, this was very old, so old that the beginning of it
+was not known. The reason of some of the things that were done had been
+forgotten. Marcia could just remember going to one wedding when she was a
+little girl before they left the Mountain of Fire. All the colonists who
+went out were already married and had children, and until now none of the
+children were old enough to begin a new home.
+
+There was always a certain meaning in the eating of salt together; it is
+so in all the ancient races. Salt was not like food that any two men might
+eat together, like animals, where they found it. It was part of the
+household stores; it was eaten by families living in houses. In some
+places it was not easy to come by, and it was the one thing necessary to a
+really good meal, whatever else there was to eat. When a man was invited
+to share a meal with salt in it, it meant that he was invited to the table
+and was more or less an equal. People who were simply fed from the stores
+of the farmer prepared their own food in their own way, often without
+salt. It was said that the wood spirits, the gods of the wilderness, of
+whom nobody knew much except that they were mischievous and tricky, could
+always be known by the fact that salt to them was like poison; they could
+not eat it at all.
+
+When a bride left her own home to go to that of her husband, it was a very
+solemn proceeding, because she said farewell to her own family, the
+spirits of her ancestors, and the gods of her father’s hearth, and became
+one of her husband’s family, a daughter of his father. All that was done
+was based more or less on this idea. A girl who ran away from home without
+her father’s knowledge could not expect to be blessed by her ancestors,
+the unseen dwellers by the fireside. A woman who came into another home
+without the permission of the spirits who dwelt there could not hope to be
+happy; bad luck would certainly follow. The wedding ceremonies were meant
+to make it perfectly clear that all was done in the right and proper and
+fortunate way.
+
+The day was chosen by Tullius the priest, and was a bright and beautiful
+day, not long after the feast of Maia. The ceremonies began at dawn.
+Before sunrise Tullius was scanning the sky to make sure that the day
+would be fair and that no evil omen was in sight. Felic’la, who hovered
+around her sister with adoring eyes, thought she had never seen Marcia
+look so beautiful. She was in white, with a flame-colored veil over her
+head, and her hair had been, according to the old custom, parted with a
+spear point into six locks, arranged with ribbons tied in a certain way to
+keep it in place. Her tall and graceful figure was even more stately than
+usual in the white robe she wore, and her great dark eyes were like stars.
+
+When the guests were all at the house, Marcus Colonus offered a sacrifice
+at the family altar and pronounced certain ancient words, explaining that
+he now gave his daughter to the young Mamurius and set her free from every
+obligation that kept her at home. When the sacrifice was over, the guests
+wished the young couple happiness, and the marriage feast began. There was
+no one in the whole village who did not have reason to remember the
+rejoicings on the day when the daughter of Colonus was married, for it was
+the richest feast that had ever been given in the colony. The house was
+decorated with wreaths and the best of the wine was served, and all the
+dainties the Roman women knew how to make were to be found upon the table.
+Marcia sat among her maidens like a young goddess among priestesses; they
+were all eager to show her how dear she was to them and how glad they were
+that she was happy. There was not a child in the village who did not think
+of her as a kind elder sister. Now she herself was to be served and made
+happy, and for that day she was the most important person in the eyes of
+all those who had been her playmates.
+
+At last the rejoicings at the home of Colonus were over, and it was time
+for the wedding procession. Attended by the young girls near her own age,
+the bride was taken from her mother’s arms by the bridegroom, and the
+whole party moved in procession toward the new home. In advance went torch
+bearers, and the children scattered flowers for her feet to tread upon as
+she passed. Every one was singing or shouting “Talassio! Talassio!” The
+flute players were making music, and the bridegroom scattered handfuls of
+nuts for which the boys scrambled. When they reached the door of the new
+house Marcia poured a little oil upon the doorposts, and wound them with
+wool which her own hands had spun. Then Mamurius lifted her in his strong
+arms and carried her through the door.
+
+  [Illustration: Mamurius lifted her in his strong arms and carried her
+                            through the door]
+
+Exactly why this was part of the marriage ceremony is not known. Some
+think it was because a bride must not be allowed to stumble on the
+threshold, for that would be unlucky. But it was more likely to mean that
+she was brought by her husband into the house to join in the worship of
+the spirits of the home, and so did not come in without an invitation. As
+she stood in the _atrium_, the middle room where the altar and the family
+table were, she received the fire and water of the family worship and
+reverently lighted the first fire ever kindled on that hearth. She and
+Mamurius repeated together the prayers that thousands of young couples had
+repeated since first their people had homes. Then they ate together a flat
+cake made with the corn blessed by the priest, and Marcia poured a little
+of the marriage wine upon the fire as a sacrifice of “libation” to the
+gods of her new home. This was the _confarreatio_. They felt as if the
+silent, burning fire that lighted the dusky little room were trying to
+tell them that their simple meal was shared by the gods themselves, and
+that the blessing of all Mamurius’ forefathers was on the bride that he
+had brought home to be the joy of his house.
+
+On the next day there was another feast, to celebrate the beginning of the
+new home, and the wedding was over.
+
+“I am glad,” said Marcia’s mother to her husband when they went home that
+night, leaving their daughter and young Mamurius standing together at
+their own door, “that everything went so well, without a single unlucky or
+unhappy thing to spoil the good fortune. Marcia well deserves to be
+happy,—but I shall miss her every day I live.”
+
+She sighed, and Felic’la looked rather sober. She knew very well that they
+would all miss Marcia, but she determined in her careless little heart to
+be a better girl and do so much for her mother and brothers that when her
+turn came, they would all be sorry to see her go.
+
+“I am glad,” said Colonus, “for more than one reason. I have been rather
+anxious for fear that in this new place our young people would not
+remember the old ways as they might if they had grown up in our old home.
+It was important to have the first wedding one that they would all
+remember with pleasure, and wish to follow as an example. I am very glad
+Marcia has so good a husband. Mamurius is a youth who will go far and be a
+leader among the young men. I suppose that now they will all be thinking
+of marriage.”
+
+There were, in fact, several other marriages in the colony within a year
+or two, but nobody who was at that first wedding ever forgot it. Marcia
+was often called upon to tell how the garlands were made, and just how
+much honey they put in the cakes for the feast, and how the other little
+matters were arranged that all seemed to be managed exactly right. In
+fact, that wedding set a fashion and a standard, and as Marcia’s father
+was shrewd enough to see, it is a good thing in a new community to have
+the standards rather high. There was nothing in what Marcia and Mamurius
+did that other people could not follow if they chose, but the simple
+comfort and grace of their way of living did mean that they cared enough
+for their home to take it seriously. Girls who might not have thought much
+about cleanliness, thrift, cheerfulness and beauty began to see, when they
+visited Marcia, how pleasant it was to have a home like hers. She did not
+tell them so; she was herself, and that was enough.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    XV
+
+
+                             THE TRUMPERY MAN
+
+
+One autumn day a little while after the harvest, a squat, brown man with
+large black eyes under great arched eyebrows set in a large head, and with
+unusually muscular shoulders and arms, was paddling slowly in a small boat
+across the yellow river. As he crossed he looked up attentively at the
+range of hills near the riverside, now partly covered with wooden huts. It
+was his experience that villages were good places to trade. They were
+especially so when, as now, pipes were sounding and the people were
+keeping holiday in honor of some god. He had gone to many places with his
+wares, but he had not as yet visited the town by the river. He was not
+even quite sure of its name. Some called it Rumon and some Roma. The
+people of his race were not very quick of ear, and often pronounced
+letters alike or confused them when they sounded alike,—as o and u, or b
+and p, or t and d. He himself was called Utuze, Otuz, or Odisuze, or Toto,
+according to the place where he happened to be. He came from Caere, the
+Etruscan seaport near the mouth of the river.
+
+He had landed on this bank when he went up the river and approached the
+men from the settlement when they were working on their lands outside the
+walls, but they did not pay much attention to him. He could not tell
+whether they did not want his wares, or were suspicious, or simply did not
+understand what he was talking about. Now he was going to find out,—for he
+was of a persistent nature. Perhaps there would be some one at the
+festival who could speak both his language and theirs and tell them what
+he wanted to say. Then it would be easy.
+
+On a glittering chain around his neck he carried a metal whistle, or
+trumpet, that could be heard a long distance and would pierce through most
+other noises as a needle pierces wool. On his back he carried in a sack a
+great variety of small things likely to please women and girls and
+children. He had learned a very long time ago that however shrewd a man
+may be, he will buy very silly things and pay any price you like for them
+when he is persuaded that they will please a girl. He also knew that men
+will buy things for their wives that no sensible woman ever buys for
+herself, and that if children cry for a toy long enough, they often get
+it. But the most important thing was, he knew, that a man who can attract
+attention to himself, no matter how he does it, generally sells more goods
+than one who depends only on the usefulness of what he has to sell.
+Therefore, when he set out on these trading journeys, he put on the most
+gorgeous and gay-colored clothes he could find, decorated with
+bright-colored figures, embroidered, and fringed or fastened with little
+glittering beads and ornaments such as he carried in his pack. Shining
+things were easier to sell than other things, as they were easier to look
+at. The peddler had given careful attention to selecting his stores, and
+Mastarna, the fat merchant from whom he got them, helped him. He wished to
+know more of these people in the town by the river.
+
+The squealing of the peddler’s trumpet reached the ears of the soldiers,
+who were having a good time in their own way. They had their own games and
+frolics and feats of strength, and some of the young men from the town
+were there to look on and perhaps to join. Urso the hunter’s son, and
+Marcus and Bruno the sons of Colonus, and little Pollio the son of the
+sandal maker, were all there, and when they heard the trumpet they sprang
+to their feet. But Ruffo the captain of the guard laughed, and the others
+shouted, and Ruffo said, “By Jove, there’s Toto!”
+
+“_Diovi_” was the general name for “the gods,” and when it is pronounced
+quickly it sounds like “Jove.” The father of the gods was
+“Diovis-Pater”—which in course of time became “Jupiter.”
+
+The peddler had been in their camp in the days before the town by the
+river was thought of, and when he saw them, he came up the path grinning
+broadly, and they grinned back. They explained to the boys of the colony
+that he came from across the river and dealt in all sorts of things that
+were not made at all on this side, and some that were brought from the
+seashore. Toto spread out his gay cloth on the ground and began to lay out
+his wares.
+
+Through long practice he knew just how to place them so that they would
+show most effectively, and many a customer wondered why the trinket did
+not look as well when he got it home as it had before he bought it. The
+colors in the painted cloth were combined in old, old patterns worked out
+according to laws as certain as the laws of music, and everywhere was the
+gilding that set off the colors and seemed to make them brighter and
+richer.
+
+      [Illustration: Toto spread out his gay cloth upon the ground]
+
+There were scarfs such as women wore on their heads, and fillets for the
+hair, and girdles and veils. There were necklaces and bracelets and rings
+and brooches and pins. There were boxes of sweetmeats, and metal cups and
+spoons, and curious little images of men and animals, and strings of
+beads, and charm strings, and hollow metal cases for charms, that could be
+hung around the neck, and pottery toys, and trinkets of all kinds. It
+seemed impossible that so much merchandise of so many different kinds
+could have been packed in that bag, or that a man could have carried it,
+after it was packed. If the things had been as heavy as they looked, it
+would have been too great a load even for Toto’s broad shoulders.
+
+The Roman boys had never seen anything like this before, but they did not
+show any great curiosity. One of the things that the people of Mars taught
+their children, without ever saying it in so many words, was not to be in
+a hurry to talk too much in strange company. They were brought up to feel
+that they were the equals of any one they were likely to meet and need not
+be in haste to make new friends. This feeling gave them a certain dignity
+not easily upset. In fact, dignity is merely the result of respecting
+yourself as a person quite worthy of respect, and not feeling obliged to
+insist on it from other people. The colonists had it.
+
+Pollio picked up one of the sandals and smiled.
+
+“My father would not think this leather fit to use,” he said in a low tone
+to Bruno.
+
+Marcus was looking at a pin of a rather pretty design and wondering how
+Flavia, his betrothed, would like it, when it bent in his fingers. That
+pin had not been made for the handling of young men with hands so muscular
+as his. Marcus paid for the pin and tossed it into the river. He had no
+intention of making a gift like that to any one.
+
+When they handled the charm necklaces they saw from the lightness that
+what looked like gold was not gold. It was so with all the peddler’s
+stock. The soldiers, seeing that the boys from the colony did not think
+the stuff worth buying, did not buy much themselves, nor did they drink
+much of his wine.
+
+Ruffo said after Toto had gone that he did not always carry such a
+collection of trash as he had to-day. Sometimes he sold excellent
+fish-hooks and small tools. Marcus said that if he bought anything, he
+wanted a thing that was worth buying, and they began to throw quoits at a
+mark.
+
+Marcus had seen traders before and dealt with them, but for some reason
+this peddler’s pack set him thinking. In their way of living a farmer made
+most of his own tools, and wishing them to last as long as possible, he
+made them well. It was the same with the baskets, the linen, the wool and
+the leather work, and the other things made at home. It was the same with
+the work done in the smithy of Muraena. He wished to have a reputation
+among his neighbors for making fine weapons. The men always put the
+greater part of their time on their farms, and since they had been in this
+new country, their planning and contriving how to make the soil produce
+more and more had been far more exciting than ever before. Each year a
+little more of the marsh or the waste land would be drained and cleared;
+each year the flocks and herds would be larger and more huts would be
+built. They were founding a new people.
+
+In view of these great thoughts of the future, the glittering trinkets of
+the man with the trumpet looked small and worthless. Marcus began to see
+what was meant by the elders when they spoke of “gravity” as a virtue and
+“levity” as a rather foolish vice. Life depended very much on the way one
+took things; to take important things lightly, or give valuable time and
+thought to worthless objects left a man with the chaff on his hands
+instead of the good grain.
+
+Something his father had told him a long time ago, when he was a little
+boy, came into Marcus’s mind. It was when he wanted something very much,
+and being little, cried because he could not have it and made himself
+quite miserable. His father came in just then and watched him for a minute
+or two. Then he said,
+
+“My son, do you wish to be a strong man, when you grow big?”
+
+“Y-yes,” sniffed the little fellow dolefully.
+
+“You wish to be strong of soul and heart as you are in your body, so that
+no one can make you do anything you are not willing to do?”
+
+“Yes, Father,” said the boy, with his puzzled dark eyes searching his
+father’s face.
+
+“Then, my son, remember this: the strong man is the man who can go without
+what he wants. If you cannot do without a thing you want, without being
+unhappy, you are like a boy who cannot walk without a crutch. If you can
+give up, without making a ridiculous ado about it, whatever it is not wise
+for you to have—if you can be happy in yourself and by yourself and stand
+on your own feet—then you are strong. In the end you will be strong enough
+to get what you really want. The gods hate a coward.”
+
+Now in the long shadows of the fading day, as he heard the far sound of
+the peddler’s trumpet down the river, Marcus found a new meaning in his
+father’s words. He saw that those who wasted what they had earned by hard
+work on that rubbish would end by having nothing at all, because they were
+caught by the color and the shine of things made to tempt them. What was
+there in all that collection that was half as beautiful as a golden wheat
+field? What ornament that could be worn out or broken was equal to the
+land itself, with its treasure of fleecy flocks and sleek cattle, and roof
+trees under which happy children slept? The treasure of the world was
+theirs already, in this plain that was theirs to make fruitful and
+beautiful, and people with prosperous villages. That was the real estate;
+the other was a shadow and a sham.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XVI
+
+
+                              THE GREAT DYKE
+
+
+Although Toto did not find his first visit to the Seven Hills very
+profitable, he had much that was interesting to tell Mastarna when he
+returned. The two had a long talk in their strange rugged language with
+its few vowel sounds. Mastarna was most interested in the gods of these
+strangers. If he could find out what they did to bring good luck and ward
+off misfortune, he could have charms and lucky stones made to sell to
+them. If he knew what their gods were like, he could have images of these
+carved in wood or molded in clay or cast in metal. But Toto could tell him
+very little about these questions. The soldiers at the camp had no altars
+and no regular worship at all, and they moved from place to place and did
+not keep any place sacred. But these people on the Square Hill seemed very
+religious. They behaved as if they had settled down there to stay forever.
+
+“What are they like?” asked the old man.
+
+“They are like no other townspeople in this valley,” said Toto decidedly.
+“They are not like the herdsmen who wander from place to place and sleep
+in tents, or the hunters who live alone in huts, or the fishermen by the
+river or the sailors by the seashore. They are tall and straight and
+strong and very active, because they work all the time. They work mostly
+on their land. When they are not plowing, or digging, or cutting grain, or
+cutting wood, or making things, they are working to make themselves
+stronger. They run and leap and throw heavy weights; they hurl the spear
+and shoot arrows at a mark. They stand in rows and go through motions all
+together, and march to and fro, and play at ball. They do everything that
+is possible to make themselves good soldiers; even the boys begin when
+they are small to play at these games.
+
+“And that is not all. The women work also, but not as slaves. The matrons
+go here and there as they choose, and see eye to eye with their husbands,
+and manage the household as the men manage the farm. The men sit in
+council, but each man speaks of his work in private to his wife, and she
+advises with him. They do not have slaves to wait on them; even their
+great men work with the others in the field. No one is ashamed to work
+with his hands. They build their own houses and their own walls; they
+breed their own cattle. If there should be a sheep gone from the flock, or
+a heifer strayed from the herd, they would know it and search until the
+thief was found.”
+
+“Hum,” said the old man thoughtfully. He was thinking that this must be a
+strong and valiant people, and that if they increased in the valley of the
+yellow river they might become very powerful. “And what are their
+priests?”
+
+“They have no priesthood dwelling in the temples,” said Toto. “Their
+elders are their priests and pretend to no magical powers. They are chosen
+for their wisdom. Their gods are invisible.”
+
+“Hum,” said Mastarna again.
+
+The people to whom he and Toto belonged were called at one time and
+another Tuscans or Etruscans by others, but they called themselves the
+Ras, or Rasennae. They had some towns in the mountains beyond the plain
+where these strangers were. They held most of the country on their side of
+the rivers, as far north as the river Arno, and they had always lived
+there, so far as they knew themselves or any one else could say. They were
+different in almost every way from these strangers of the hills. He
+wondered if his people had anything whatever that the strangers wanted.
+
+“You say that they build walls,” he said to Toto. “Do they build good
+ones?”
+
+Toto grinned. He was nothing of a builder himself, but even he could see
+the difference between the rude stone laying and fencing of the strangers,
+and the scientific, massive masonry and arched drains of his own country.
+“They will find out how good they are,” he said, “after twenty years of
+flood and drought.”
+
+In fact, the worst enemy the colonists had met thus far was water. They
+were used to mountain slopes with good drainage. They knew how to keep a
+field from being gutted by mountain freshets, and how to repair roadways
+and build drains that would carry off the water. They were strong and
+clever at fitting stones into the right place for walls, and they could
+dam up a stream for a fishpool or a bathing place. But this sort of
+country was all new to them. It was not exactly a marsh and not so swampy
+as it became in later centuries, but at any time it might become a marsh
+full of ponds and stagnant streams, and remain so for weeks at a time.
+This was bad for the grain and worse for sheep, and unhealthy for human
+beings. During the next rainy season after Toto’s visit, the farmers had a
+very unhappy time. They discovered that too much water is almost if not
+quite as much a nuisance as too little. In a dry time it is sometimes
+possible to carry water from a distance, but in a wet time there is
+nowhere to put the water that is not wanted, and many of their ditches
+were choked up with débris, and their grain was washed away.
+
+Mastarna was full of patience. He let them toil and soak and chill and
+sweat until he thought they would welcome a suggestion from almost any
+quarter. Then he and a man he knew, a stone worker called Canial, took a
+boat and went across the river to a point where three or four of the
+colonists were prying an unhappy ox out of the mire. The strength,
+determination and skill with which they conducted the work were worthy of
+all admiration. But it would have been far better if the land could have
+been drained and protected by a solid dyke.
+
+Canial looked the bank over with a shrewd, experienced eye, and said that
+if he had the work to do, he would dig a ditch there, and there, and
+there; here he would build a covered drain lined with tilework; and in a
+certain hollow under the hill he would have an arched waterway, so that
+flood water would run through instead of tearing at the foundation of the
+terrace below the vineyards. But he saw no signs that these men in their
+building made any use of arches. He jumped ashore and splashed through the
+pools, which were almost waist-deep in some places, up to where the ox was
+standing panting, wild-eyed and nearly exhausted with fright and struggle.
+Canial squatted down by a rivulet. He did not know the language of the
+colonists and they did not know his, but no words were needed for what he
+wanted to explain. He made a miniature drain rudely arched over with
+mud-plastered stones while they stood there watching. That could be done,
+as well with, a six-inch brook as with a river. It did not take the Romans
+ten minutes to see that he knew more about such matters than they did.
+
+“Caius,” said Colonus to young Cossus, “go over to the camp and find
+Ruffo, and ask him to come and talk to this fellow.”
+
+He knew that Ruffo understood several languages and dialects, and whatever
+it was that this man had come for, he wished to know it.
+
+Ruffo knew enough of the language Canial spoke to be able to make out his
+meaning, and he told Colonus that the stone worker wished to come and live
+in Rome. He would show them how to drain their land and bridge their
+streams. Mastarna would tell them that he was a man of honesty and
+ability. His reason for leaving his own country was a personal one; he had
+had a quarrel with the head priest of his village because the priest
+wished to interfere in his family affairs and make Canial’s daughter the
+wife of his nephew, against her will. There was no safety or comfort in
+his part of the country when the priesthood had a grudge against a man.
+
+There were others in the Roman settlement who had fled there for reasons
+of much the same kind as Canial’s—men who had been robbed of their
+inheritance, slaves escaped from cruel masters, homeless men, and men who
+for one reason or another had found themselves unsafe where they lived
+before. But this was the first family which had wished to come from beyond
+the river. The others all came from places where the public worship was
+not entirely unlike that of the Romans themselves and the people were of
+the same race in the beginning. This was a departure from that rule.
+
+If it had not been for the dyke-building problem, Colonus would probably
+have said no at once. But that would have to be settled before the town
+grew much larger than it was, or they would have to change their way of
+life altogether. They were a people who hated to be crowded. They would
+need land, and land, and more land, if they continued to live on the Seven
+Hills. They must have grain for the cattle and themselves, and pasturage
+for the beasts, room for orchards and gardens, room for the villages of
+those who tilled their fields. Canial seemed to think that it would be
+quite possible to prevent the plain from being flooded, with proper
+stonework and drains, but it would need a man thoroughly used to the work
+to direct it. Colonus could see that Canial was probably that man. Every
+suggestion he made was practical and good, and he knew things about
+masonry that it had taken his ancestors generations to learn. Colonus
+finally said that he would talk it over with the other men of the city and
+give him an answer on a certain day.
+
+Ruffo did not know anything of the gods the people of Canial worshiped,
+except that they were unlike the Roman gods and seemed to be very much
+feared. They had a god Turms, who was rather like the Roman Terminus, who
+protected traders and kept boundaries. They had a smith of the gods,
+called Sethlans, and a god of wine and drunkenness called Fuffluns.
+
+No person, of course, could be allowed to bring the worship of strange
+gods into the sacred city. The very reason of the founding of the city was
+to make a home for their own gods, and to let in strange ceremonies would
+be to defile that home.
+
+It was finally decided that Canial and some of his countrymen who wished
+to come with him should have a place of their own, which was afterward
+known as the Street of the Tuscans. It was a place which no one had wished
+to occupy before, because it was so wet, but Canial and his friends had no
+difficulty in draining it. The only condition he made was that traders
+should be allowed to come and go and supply his family and friends with
+whatever they needed. Women, he said, did not like a strange place much as
+it was, and he should have no peace at home if his wife were obliged to
+learn new methods of housekeeping.
+
+The only condition that Marcus Colonus and his friends made was that the
+strangers should do nothing against the law of the settlement, or against
+the Roman gods, and this they readily agreed to. Canial said that the
+priests in his country demanded so much in offerings that a man was no
+better than a slave, working for them.
+
+All this happened while Romulus was away, but when he returned he said
+that the decision was a wise one. It privately rather amused him to see
+how in this new country the colonists were led to allow the beginning of
+new customs which they regarded with great horror when they first came.
+
+Before another rainy season, the Etruscans and the Romans, working
+together, had made a very fair beginning on the dyking and draining of the
+worst of the marshes and the bridging of bad places. Canial understood how
+to mix burned lumps of clay containing lime and iron, and lime and sand,
+and water, in such a way that when the muddy paste hardened it was like
+stone itself. Tertius Calvo, who happened to be there when this was done,
+tried it by himself. Although what he made was not entirely a failure, it
+did not behave as it did under the hands of Canial. Without saying
+anything—indeed, he could say nothing, for he knew not a word of the
+strangers’ language—Tertius watched and measured and experimented with
+small quantities until he found out the exact proportions and methods
+Canial used. The bit of wall he built finally was very nearly as good as
+Canial’s own work. Calvo was good at laying stones, and had very little to
+learn in that line from any stranger. This mortar, as they found in course
+of time, would stand heat and cold and water and seemed to become harder
+with exposure. By using the best quality of material the work was
+improved. There was no secret about it; indeed, Canial did not object to
+teaching any man who wished to learn all he could.
+
+The greatest debt they owed to their new settlers was the low round arch,
+built with stones set in mortar in such a way that the greater the weight,
+the firmer the arch would be. Another Etruscan trick was plastering over
+the side of a drain or a bank with a mixture of small stones stirred
+thickly into mortar like plums in a pudding. The best of this new way of
+working was that it could be done so quickly. A great deal of the work
+could be done by stupid and ignorant laborers under the direction of those
+who knew how to direct. Men whom they could not employ in any sort of
+skilled labor could help here. Such men were glad enough to come for an
+allowance of food and drink. A certain task was set them, and they had
+their living for that; if they did more, they had an extra allowance. The
+task was called _moenia_, and since it was the lowest and least skilled
+labor, work of that kind later came to be known as _menial_, the work of
+slaves and servants.
+
+The change in the face of the plain in the following years was almost like
+magic. The colonists built dykes to keep the river from overflowing; they
+built drains to carry off the heavy rains; they built culverts; they built
+bridges resting on solid arches; and they made one great drain which
+carried off so much of the overflow water that it made the Square Hill and
+most of the land around it safe. In fact, a part of every year thereafter
+was given to the improvement and protection of newly cleared farmlands by
+stonework. People came from a great distance to see the dyke they built,
+for nothing like it had been done on that side of the river. The people in
+the lowlands villages, relieved from the fear of floods, were proud to
+call themselves the servants of the Romans. In those early years a
+beginning was made of the great engineering work that was to endure for
+centuries. The people of the Square Hill were doing on a very small scale
+what nobody had done before them in that part of the world. In their
+masonry and their farming they gave all their poorer neighbors reason to
+be glad they were located where they were. It was a peaceful conquering of
+village after village.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XVII
+
+
+                              THE WAR DANCE
+
+
+When the country had grown peaceful, and there was no more need, for the
+time, of sending out warlike expeditions, it began to be seen that the
+soldiers who had come in with Romulus or had joined the troops later must
+have something to do. Romulus talked the matter over seriously with the
+fathers of the colony. If these men were to settle down as citizens,
+taking part in the life of the city—and some of them wished to do so—they
+ought to have homes; they needed wives. The family life of this people was
+the very heart of their religion and their society. The father was high
+priest in his family. The public worship was only a greater family
+worship, in which all had a part, old and young, living and dead. The gods
+themselves were often present unseen to receive prayers and offerings,—so
+the people believed.
+
+The question of wives for these men was a serious one. Girls were growing
+up within the palisade on the Square Hill, but so were young men. There
+would be hardly enough brides for all the youths of their own generation,
+even if every girl found a husband. Aside from the fact that the parents
+would not like to see their daughters married to strangers of whom they
+knew nothing, the young folk themselves would be likely to object.
+Although theoretically, marriages were made by the elders without the
+girls having anything to say about it, human nature was much the same
+there as anywhere. In practice, the bride had some choice and the groom
+some independence. Any woman married against her will can make life so
+unpleasant for her husband and her husband’s relatives that common sense
+would lead a parent to avoid such a result. Care was taken to keep a young
+girl from knowing any men who would be unsuitable. A man did not ask any
+youth into his house to meet his daughters, on the spur of the moment. He
+met a great many men at the midday meal which the men ate together, whom
+he would not think of asking to a family supper. He knew a great many with
+whom he would not eat at all.
+
+Here and there a soldier found a wife among the country people, but this
+did not usually turn out very well. The daughters of herdsmen and hut
+dwellers were not trained in the arts which made a woman dear to a
+civilized husband. Colonus and his friends wished the wives of the growing
+settlement to be women who would add to the wealth of their homes and not
+spoil it,—who would love their homes and their husbands, and bring up
+their children wisely, and live in peace and friendliness with the other
+women. The question which had come up was more important now than it might
+be later. A great deal depended on beginning with the right families. The
+men now coming in would be the fathers of the future Rome, and on the way
+in which their sons were brought up the prosperity and godliness of the
+people might rest.
+
+Another possibility was in sight, and it was too nearly a probability to
+look very pleasant. The soldiers could get wives across the river among
+the Rasennae. But that would be a dangerous plan—dangerous perhaps to the
+men themselves and certainly to the colony. Women of a strange land, of a
+race so old and strong as the dark people seemed to be—a country where
+there was a secret council of priests who knew all sorts of things that
+the people did not—such women, married to settlers in the colony, would be
+a constant danger. They would learn from their husbands all that went on;
+they might persuade them to worship the strange gods; they might help to
+break down defences against the unknown power of the foreign priesthood.
+That was a plan not to be thought of for a minute.
+
+Romulus sat listening and thinking, with his chin on his strong, brown
+hand, and his bright dark eyes gazing straight at the altar fire. When the
+others had said what they thought, he spoke. That was his way. He had
+perhaps begun in that way because he was not sure he knew all the proper
+forms of speech or all the matters that ought to be considered in ruling
+the affairs of this people. Now that he was well acquainted with all
+these, he still wanted to hear what every one else had to say, before
+speaking himself. This was becoming in a man still so young, and it was
+also wise.
+
+“There is a plan, my fathers,” he said, “but I do not know whether you
+will think that it is the right one. Very long ago, I have heard, our
+people used to take their wives by capture. In those days a man never went
+openly to ask for his bride. He stole into the village by night with an
+armed guard, choosing his closest friends to go with him. Then suddenly
+seizing upon the maid he carried her off, and she became dead to her own
+family, and one of his people.
+
+“Now this I do not commend, since it is not our wish to war with the
+people around us. To raid their towns as did the men of old time, and
+steal their maidens, would lead to never-ending war. The custom is an old
+one and long given up, and I do not like to return upon a road that I have
+traveled, or dig up old bones.
+
+“In the villages on the heights—in the lower valleys of the mountain range
+that lies _there_—” he waved a brown arm toward the far blue hills, “the
+people who dwell there are worshippers of our gods, and their ways are as
+the ways of this colony, O my fathers. Their women spin, they weave, they
+grind grain, they tend bees, they keep the household fire alive and
+bright, they are fair and pure. These are fit wives for our soldiers—or
+for any man.
+
+“In some of these villages were we known, for we were there in the old
+days. They are not walled villages, they are scattered among the valleys,
+and they have little to do with one another or with strangers. It is in my
+mind that if their women were married here, we and they might be one
+people. Then all the Seven Hills would be ours, and we and they together
+would be a strong nation. But well I know that they would never consent to
+give their daughters to strangers.
+
+“This therefore is my thought. I have seen,” the young chief’s dark face
+was lighted by a fleeting smile, “that sometimes the will of a young maid
+is not wholly that of the old men and women of her people. Forgive me, O
+ye elders, if I speak foolishly, but I think that some of these Sabine
+girls might not themselves be unwilling to mate with my men. Would it be
+so great a crime to take wives from those villages despite the will of the
+priests and elders, if the maidens themselves became in time content?
+Suppose now that I send my men as messengers, to invite these people to a
+festival on the day when the Salii, the Leapers, have their games and
+their feast. They also have fraternities like ours; there is a fraternity
+of the Luperci, and the Salii, and others, among the Sabines. Let their
+young men contend with ours in the games, and their people join with ours
+for the day. They are not compelled to come. If they dislike and distrust
+us, they will stay in their villages. But if it is as I think, many will
+come.
+
+“Then when all are gathered together, and weapons are laid for the games,
+let our young men, at a given signal, seize each his chosen maiden and
+bring her back within our walls to be his wife. In token that they are not
+to be slaves but honorable wives, whose work is to spin, let our young men
+shout as they go, ‘Talassa! Talassa!’
+
+“Have I spoken well, my father?” He looked straight at Colonus. “If ye
+have a better plan, let no more be said of this.”
+
+But there was no better plan; in fact, there seemed to be no other plan at
+all. Romulus knew this very well. There was nothing in this idea that was
+offensive to the general opinion in those days. It was not so very long
+since marriage by capture was the usual way of getting wives. If the
+Sabine girls were brought into the colony the soldiers would be sure of
+having wives with the customs and the same gods of the other matrons. If
+they were brought in a company and lived in the same quarter of the town,
+they would form a little society of their own. It would not be a life
+entirely new and strange.
+
+It was decided that the plan should be tried. If any of the messengers did
+a little courting in the villages, nothing was said of it.
+
+The place chosen for the festival was a plain where there would be room
+for all the games and the feasting and the ceremonies. Romulus and some of
+the young men went out there a few days before the appointed date to level
+off the ground, arrange seats for the public men, and make ready. In
+removing a bowlder which would be in the way of racers, and smoothing the
+ground, Tertius Calvo found his pick striking on something strange. He dug
+down a little way and unearthed a flat stone which seemed to be the top of
+an altar. He called the others to look, and Romulus caught his breath with
+a queer gasp. He remembered something.
+
+  [Illustration: There was a gleam of bright metal in the hole they were
+                                 digging]
+
+“Jove!” said Mamurius, a few minutes later, “Here’s something else!” There
+was a gleam of bright metal in the hole they were digging. The altar, a
+small square one of a whitish stone, was lifted out, and then something
+struck with a muffled clang against Mamurius’ spade. They were all
+excitedly gazing by that time, and when the round metal thing was lifted
+out, and the earth cleaned off it with grass, and it was rubbed with a
+piece of leather, it almost blinded them. It was a golden shield.
+
+Where it had come from, no human creature knew. Nothing else like it was
+ever found in that neighborhood. It may have belonged to some Etruscan
+nobleman in far-off days, when a battle was fought on that plain; it may
+have been part of the plunder of some city; but there it was, and the
+decoration showed that it was made by a smith who worshiped Mars.
+Reverently the young men carried it back to Rome, after they had set up
+the altar on the field where they found it. It seemed like a sign that the
+gods approved what they were doing. It was hung up in the temple, and was
+considered the especial property of the Salii, or Leapers, the young men
+who danced the war dance, for it was they who had found it. But Romulus
+told none of them of the witch’s prophecy that he would find an altar and
+a shield in just this place.
+
+The day appointed for the feast was fair, and early in the morning the
+mountain people could be seen coming across the plain or camped near the
+field.
+
+The soldiers who were to take part in the festival in this unexpected and
+startling way were very far from being the same rude outlaws who had
+followed their young leader to the Long White Mountain. They had been
+living within the bounds of a civilized settlement, and the life had had
+its effect on them. They had seen men handle the spade and the plough as
+if they were weapons, and treat the earth as if it were the most
+interesting thing in the world to study. They had seen how interesting it
+was to change the face of the land, to make a wild and dreary waste into a
+rich farming country, to fight flood and fire and other mighty natural
+enemies,—and win. They had seen, though at a distance, the gracious
+manners and gentle ways of the matrons, the sweetness and dignity of the
+young girls. They had fought and worked side by side with the young men
+who were proud to be the sons of such fathers. Many of the outlaws had had
+ancestors who were strong and brave and intelligent. They had the sense to
+see that if they joined this new settlement they would have a place and a
+power. And last but not least there was a great deal of wholesome comfort
+in the life of this place. To men who had slept unsheltered in cold and
+rain, who had worn sheepskins and wolfskins, who had gone without food,
+often for days, and never had a really good meal unless they had unusual
+luck, the life of the colonists was a revelation. Good beds, fresh
+vegetables, well-cooked meats, cakes made with honey, were luxuries they
+appreciated. The dress of the people was simple enough; a tunic for
+working, and over that for warmth or holiday dignity the large square of
+undyed wool called a toga; a pair of sandals for the feet, a cap or helmet
+for the head, a leather girdle and pouch. But it was a long way better
+than rawhide. In short, these young fellows had discovered that they liked
+a civilized life. They were a very fine looking company as they marched
+down the hill from their barracks and went with their long, swinging
+stride over the plain to the place where the strange, little old altar
+stood.
+
+The games went on, and at the height of the gayety and excitement there
+was a sudden trumpet call, and all was in confusion. Each soldier seized a
+Sabine maiden and carried her off as if she were a child. The men who were
+not so burdened formed a rear guard. The older people were already on
+their way home. Some of them did not know what had happened. Before
+anything could be done by the startled and angry Sabine men, the soldiers
+were inside the walls of the city and the shout of “Talassa! Talassa!”
+revealed that this was a revival of the ancient custom of marriage by
+capture.
+
+The Sabines were angry enough to go to war, But they could do nothing that
+night, for a successful war would need preparations. There was a parley,
+and Romulus himself informed the commissioners that the weddings would
+take place with all due ceremony, and that in the meantime the girls were
+in the city, under the care of matrons of the best families, and would be
+given the best of care and provided with all things necessary for a bride.
+Let there be no mistake about this: if any attempt were made to recapture
+the Sabine girls the soldiers would fight. They had got their brides, and
+they meant to keep them. It was a sleepless night in the town by the
+riverside, but in the morning the Sabines were seen returning to their
+mountains.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVIII
+
+
+                          THE PEACE OF THE WOMEN
+
+
+It is not to be understood that all the people on the Square Hill approved
+of the capture of the Sabine girls. It did not seem to them, of course, as
+it would to the society of to-day, because they considered that a girl
+ought to marry, in any case, as her elders thought best that she should.
+But Tullius the priest, and three or four of the other older men, were
+very doubtful about the wisdom of angering the Sabine men by such a
+proceeding. Naso and his brother objected to the capture because they had
+never heard of such a thing. They were men whose minds never took kindly
+to any sort of new idea. When they made their great move and left their
+old home, they seemed to have exhausted all the ability to change that
+they had. They held to every old custom they had ever heard of, as a
+limpet holds to a rock. But the thing was done, and there was nothing they
+could do now except to prophesy that it could not possibly turn out well.
+
+The women of the colony were curious to know how far the Sabine marriage
+customs were like their own, and whether the wedding would mean to these
+girls what it would to a Roman wife. Marcia asked her husband about it on
+the night of the festival, when the confusion had quieted somewhat. The
+watch-fires of the Sabines could be seen far away on the plain, and in the
+stronghold on the Capitoline Hill the sentinels were keeping watch against
+any sudden attack.
+
+“Ruffo says,” answered Mamurius, “that they have the same customs as ours,
+in the main. The girls are taking it very quietly. I think they stopped
+being frightened when they found they were to be in the care of your
+mother and the other matrons in the guest house. You know Romulus has
+ordered that no maiden shall be married against her will. If she remains
+here until after the Saturnalia without making any choice, she shall be
+sent back in all honor to her own people. There are none among the girls
+who are betrothed to men of their villages.”
+
+Marcia was glad to hear that. During the following days she and the other
+young matrons of the colony visited the captive girls and took care that
+they lacked nothing in clothing and little comforts. The matrons and the
+older men had stood firm in insisting that all possible respect should be
+shown these maidens, just as if they were daughters of the colony. If they
+were to defend the soldiers’ action as a necessary and wise measure and
+not a mere savage raid, this was necessary. Otherwise the Sabine men would
+have a right to feel that they could revenge themselves by carrying off
+Roman women as slaves, and nobody would be safe. It was much better to
+delay the weddings for a few days, see what the mountain people were going
+to do, and give the girls a chance to become a little accustomed to their
+new surroundings. Naso and some of the other men thought Romulus had gone
+rather far in promising that the girls should be sent home if they wished
+to go after a certain time, but he would not move an inch from that
+position. He had his reasons.
+
+After two or three days the scouts came in to report that the Sabines had
+gone back to their villages to gather their forces. It would take time to
+do this, and meanwhile the wedding preparations went forward.
+
+The town on the Square Hill was larger and finer than any of the mountain
+villages, and after the first shock and fright of their capture passed,
+many of the girls began to think that what had happened was not so bad,
+after all. They all knew something about Romulus and his mountain troop,
+and many of his soldiers had been in the villages at one time and another
+on some errand. Apparently these half-outlawed fighters had become great
+men in the new settlement. They had a quarter of their own, in which they
+had built houses for their brides, shaded by some of the forest trees that
+were left when the land was cleared, and furnished with many things not
+known in the mountain villages. It was also true, and Romulus had known
+all along that it was, that many of his men had known something of the
+Sabine maidens, and would have married in the villages before, if they
+could. Considering that the elders of the villages would never have
+consented to such a thing, this was the only way it could possibly be
+brought about. It had seemed to him better to make it a sort of state
+affair than to encourage among the soldiers the idea that they could
+individually raid the villages and carry off the wives they chose without
+any religious authority at all. Romulus heard a great many confidential
+secrets from his men, one by one, that would have surprised those who did
+not know them. He believed that if it could be managed so that they could
+settle down in the quarter which was their own, and have homes of their
+own, they would be as good citizens as any in Rome. But he did not waste
+time in trying, by argument, to make Tullius and Naso and the other
+colonists believe this.
+
+The public square was swept and made clean, and the walls of all the
+houses hung with garlands. The Roman matrons, old and young, had taken
+from their thrifty stores of home-woven linen and wool, robes and veils
+and mantles for the strangers, and provided the wedding feast with as much
+care as if each one of them had a daughter who was going to be married. In
+fact, according to Roman faith and law, these girls were daughters of Rome
+as soon as they became wives of Roman men, and had as much right in all
+public worship and festivals as if they had been born on the Palatine
+Hill. Since they could not be given away by their own fathers, it had been
+decided that they should be treated as daughters of the city, and the ten
+original fathers of the colony should be as their fathers.
+
+The procession came out into the square a little after daybreak, and here
+the wedding feast was set forth. The maidens were veiled and dressed in
+white, and attended by the young Roman girls as bridesmaids, and the
+soldiers were drawn up in military order. The feasting and singing and
+dancing went on in the usual way, and toward the end of the day the
+procession formed again and went down the slope toward the huts of the
+soldiers. At the door of each hut the man to whom it belonged claimed his
+bride; she lighted the hearth fire, and poured out the libation, and ate
+of the bride cake with her husband. It was a strange wedding day, but it
+seemed to have ended happily, after all.
+
+There was only one girl who refused to have any part in the ceremonies.
+When the rest of the Sabine maidens left the guest house, she remained.
+She was still there when a little before sunset Romulus came back to the
+square and entered the room where she sat.
+
+She was a tall and lovely creature, the daughter of the priest Emilius,
+and Ruffo the captain had carried her off, but she would have nothing to
+say to him. He had consoled himself with the daughter of one of his old
+comrades. Her great eyes blazed as she met the look of the young chief,
+and she held her head high, but she did not speak.
+
+“You are the daughter of a great man,” said Romulus. “You are Emilia.”
+
+It was surprising that he should know her name, but his knowing who she
+was made it all the greater insult that she should have been carried off
+by force.
+
+“Long ago,” he went on, “I saw you, a little maid, when I was a poor
+shepherd boy. Your mother was kind to me and gave me meat and wine. Your
+father reproved me when I in my ignorance would have offended the gods. As
+you were then, so you are now,—beautiful as a flower, fierce as a wolf,
+Herpilia, the wolf-maiden. You are the mate for me, and when I saw you at
+the festival, I knew it.”
+
+“You! An outcast!” the girl cried, her eyes flashing in scorn.
+
+“I am of good blood, and now I rule this city. You shall rule it with me
+when you will,” said the chief coolly.
+
+“I would rather be a slave and grind at the mill!”
+
+Romulus smiled. What did this girl know of a slave’s life?
+
+“You had better not,” he said. “But you need not do either. If after the
+Saturnalia you wish to go back to your father’s house, you shall go. But
+you cannot know much about us until you have seen how we live.” And he
+turned and went out.
+
+Emilia did not know exactly what to make of this behavior. She had made up
+her mind that if they tried to make her the wife of one of these
+strangers, she would stab herself with the knife she carried in her bosom,
+or throw herself into the river. But as the days went on and she saw no
+more of Romulus, or any other youth, she was still more puzzled. She never
+connected him with the lad in the wolfskin tunic who had rescued her from
+the banditti many years before. Many stray shepherd boys had been fed in
+their village at one time or another. The Sabines themselves had never
+known that the strange rescuer of the child and the leader of the mountain
+patrol were one and the same. In fact, they had come to believe that the
+little Emilia had been saved by Mars himself, in human guise. Romulus had
+never told of the matter, even to his own men or to his brother.
+
+The young girls who tended the sacred fire now formed a kind of society by
+themselves, like the fraternities of the men. Emilia was allowed to sit
+with them and spin and sew, and she lived in the house of Marcus Colonus,
+all of whose children were now married. She heard a great deal about
+Romulus from time to time, but he never came near her. Sometimes she saw
+him marching at the head of his men, or sitting with the elders of the
+people on some public occasion. But he never looked her way, or sent her
+any word beyond what he had already said.
+
+At first she hoped fiercely that her people would gather an army and come
+against the insolent invaders and destroy them, but as time went on, she
+began to hope that they would not. A war with this race would be long and
+bitter, for they were not the kind to yield. This town would never be
+taken but by killing all the men who could fight, and burning the houses,
+and enslaving the women and children,—and the women were kind to her.
+
+   [Illustration: Emilia was allowed to sit with them and spin and sew]
+
+The settlement was now so large that it covered several of the hills, and
+the high steep hill that stood up like the head of a crouching animal, the
+Capitoline, had been strongly fortified. On one side it descended almost
+straight like a precipice, and from the brink one could see for miles
+across the plain.
+
+The captain of the guard there was one of Romulus’s old comrades, Tarpeius
+by name. He had a daughter who often spent some hours with the other
+maidens, on the Palatine, spinning and gossiping, and singing old songs.
+She was very curious about Emilia’s people and said that her mother had
+been a Sabine girl. She expressed great admiration for everything about
+Emilia—her bright abundant hair, her beautiful eyes, her clear white skin,
+her graceful hands and feet, and her clothes. Especially she admired the
+band of gold Emilia wore on her left wrist. She was like an inquisitive
+and rather impertinent child.
+
+The bracelet was a gift from Emilia’s father; he had ordered it from an
+Etruscan trader; it had been made especially for her. Whenever she looked
+at it, she felt as if it were a pledge that some day she should see him
+again and visit her old home.
+
+One day late in the autumn there was a commotion in the town, and the
+sound of many marching feet. From the plain below came shouting, and the
+far-off sound of drums and pipes. Emilia’s heart jumped. The Sabine army
+was on the way!
+
+Villagers came flying from a distance, wild with fright, and begging to be
+protected within the walls. Some had taken time, scared as they were, to
+drive in their beasts and bring the grain they had just finished
+threshing. Their men joined the defenders, and the women and children were
+sheltered among the townspeople, many of whom were relatives.
+
+The Sabines spread their army all around the Roman settlement. They took
+possession of a hill near by, almost as great as the Palatine.
+
+It began to seem after a time as if the siege might last indefinitely. The
+Roman fortifications were strong and well manned, and they had plenty of
+provision. Now that the marsh was drained, only a most unusual flood would
+drive away the enemy, and they did not seem inclined to storm the hills,
+even if they could. Matters might have gone on so much longer but for the
+thoughts in the head of a girl.
+
+Tarpeia, the daughter of the captain of the guard, watched eagerly the
+Sabine captains, and saw the gleam of the ornaments they wore. One night
+she slipped out by a way she knew and crept past the Roman guards into the
+Sabine camp. She had learned something of their talk from Emilia and
+easily made herself understood. She told Tatius the Sabine general, when
+they brought her to him, that she would open the gates of the stronghold
+to his men for a reward. She would do it if they would give her _what they
+wore on their left arms_.
+
+Tatius looked at the willowy figure and the common, rather pretty face
+with its greedy eyes and eager smile, and agreed, with a laugh. Tarpeia
+returned to the stronghold, and that night, when the darkness was
+thickest, she slid past the sleepy guard and unbarred the gates, and
+waited.
+
+Tatius had no respect for traitors, though he was willing to make use of
+them when they came and offered him the chance. He reasoned that a girl
+clever and wicked enough for this would betray him and his own men just as
+quickly as she betrayed her father and his people. He told his men to give
+her exactly what he had promised her—what they wore on their left arms,
+and _all of it_! As they rushed past her and she drew back a little toward
+a hollow in the hill, Tatius first and the others after him flung at her
+not only their bracelets, but the heavy oval shields they carried on their
+left arms, beating her down as if she had been struck by a shower of
+stones. The garrison, taken by surprise, had no chance. Brave old Tarpeius
+died fighting, without knowing what had become of his treacherous
+daughter. At dawn the stronghold was in Sabine hands. They had won the
+first move.
+
+Now indeed the two armies must join battle, with the odds against the
+Romans. They met in a level place between the two hills but not so low as
+the plain, and the fighting was fierce enough. The Sabine and Roman women
+watched from the walls of the Palatine, and the Sabine girls, some of them
+with babies in their arms, were crying as if their hearts would break.
+Whichever army won, they would mourn men who loved them, for their fathers
+and brothers were fighting against their husbands.
+
+The line of fighting surged to and fro. A stone from a sling struck
+Romulus on the head, and stunned him. The Romans gave back, fighting every
+inch of the way. Romulus came to himself and tried to rally them, but in
+vain. He flung up his arms to heaven and uttered a desperate prayer to
+Jupiter, Father of the Gods, to save Rome.
+
+Emilia could not bear it any longer. She stood up among the other Sabine
+women, her eyes bright and her face as white as a lily, and spoke to them
+quickly.
+
+“Come with me!” she called, moving swiftly toward the door of the temple
+of Vesta where they were gathered. “We will end this war—or die with our
+men! Come to the battle field!”
+
+The women guessed what she meant to do, and with a soft rush like a flock
+of birds, they went past the guards and out of the gates, down over the
+hillside, between the armies, which had halted an instant for breath. With
+tears and soft little outcries they flung themselves into the arms of
+their fathers and brothers in the Sabine army, and some sought out their
+husbands begging them to stop the fighting, and not to make them twice
+captives by taking them away from their homes. A more astonished battle
+line was probably never seen than the Sabine front. The Romans on the
+other side of the field were nearly as much taken aback.
+
+There is no denying that most of the men felt rather silly. There could be
+no more fighting without leading the women and babies back to the town,
+and they probably would not stay there. It dawned on the Sabines all at
+once that if the women who were now wives of the Romans were contented
+where they were, and loved their husbands, it would be cruel as well as
+senseless to force them back to their mountain villages. The war stopped
+as soon as the generals on both sides could frame words of some dignity to
+express their feelings. Emilia’s father, when he found that his daughter
+was unharmed, and had been treated during the past year like an honored
+guest, declared that there should be peace without delay. The conclusion
+of the whole matter was an agreement to form an alliance. The Sabines and
+the Romans were to share the Seven Hills and rule together. All the
+customs common to both should be continued, and each settlement should
+have freedom to govern itself in the customs peculiar to itself.
+
+Romulus came toward Emilia and her father about sunset, after the wounded
+had been made comfortable and the treaty agreed upon. They were in the
+doorway of the priest’s tent. The Roman general looked very tall and
+handsome and full of authority. His shining helmet and shield, short
+sword, and light body armor of metal plates overlapping like plumage were
+as full of proud and warlike strength as the wings of an eagle. He bowed
+before the two; then he looked at the maiden.
+
+“It is nearly a year. The time has not gone quickly.”
+
+“He told me,” explained Emilia, “that if after the Saturnalia I wished to
+return, he would send me home.”
+
+“And do you wish to go home, my daughter?” asked the priest.
+
+Emilia looked up at Romulus.
+
+“I will go home,” she said, “with my husband.”
+
+And the news ran through the camps that Romulus had taken a Sabine bride.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XIX
+
+
+                         THE PRIEST OF THE BRIDGE
+
+
+In the customs of the people who founded the town by the river, there was
+no act of life which did not have some ancient rule or tradition connected
+with it. There was a right way and a wrong way to do everything. In all
+the important work of life, such as the care of the sheep and cattle, the
+sowing of the fields and the making of wine, certain elders among the men
+were chosen to take charge of the management, decide on what day the work
+was to commence and take care that all was done as it ought to be. In this
+new life in a strange place the colonists found that some kinds of work
+that used not to be very important became so because things were changed.
+This was the case with the priest who had charge of the public ways,—the
+gates, the roads and the walls. In their old home this was not a very
+important office, because the walls almost never needed anything done to
+them, and the roads were all made long ago. Tertius Calvo, who was the
+pontifex or roadmaker, was a quiet man and never had much to say, but in
+this place he had more to do than almost any other public officer in the
+city.
+
+Calvo was a good mason and understood something of what we should call now
+civil engineering. He had judgment about the best place to lay out a road
+and the proper stone to choose for masonry. As the town grew, and the
+farming lands about it were cleared, and more and more persons became
+interested in the town by the river, Calvo, in his quiet way, was one of
+the busiest of men.
+
+He got on very well with the miscellaneous laboring force that he could
+command, and partly by signs, partly in a mixture of the two languages, he
+learned to talk with the stonemason Canial quite comfortably. Gradually,
+as they were needed, roads were made in different directions over the
+plain, and always in much the same way. They were as straight as they
+could be without taking altogether more time and labor than could be
+given, and they were usually carried across streams and bogs instead of
+going around. Calvo enjoyed working out ways to do this. If the plain had
+been really boggy he might not have been able to do as much as he did, but
+it was not really a marsh. It was a more or less level area lying so
+little above the bed of the river that the rise of a foot or two in the
+waters changed its aspect until the Romans began draining it. The people
+were astonished to see how much more quickly they could reach the river
+over one of Calvo’s roads than they could over the old, winding,
+up-and-down paths. The road was built with a track in the middle higher
+than the edges, to let the water drain off, and this track was more solid
+than the edges and far more solid usually than the land on each side the
+road. There was no need for the highway to be very wide, for most of the
+travel was on foot. After a time people began to call the new roads the
+“laid” roads, because they were made by laying, or spreading, new material
+on the line of travel.
+
+The new road was a “street” built up of _strata_.
+
+There was never much trouble in getting men to work on these highways
+after they saw the convenience of them. They could not have built them for
+themselves, because they had not Calvo’s eye for the right place or his
+knowledge of every kind of stone and other road material. The roads led
+out from Rome like the spokes of a wheel, but Calvo did not build any
+roads from town to town. He said it was better not to.
+
+There came to be a proverb that all roads lead to Rome. Calvo’s object in
+roadmaking was to make it easy for outsiders to reach the city and return.
+He was not concerned about their visiting one another. The natural result
+was that Rome got all the trade of a growing country.
+
+Another consequence of Calvo’s road-making system was that it would have
+been very difficult for the outlying settlements to join in any attack
+against Rome itself, because they could not reach their neighbors half as
+easily as they could reach Rome. Calvo saw—what most generals have to see
+if they are to have any success in fighting—that wars are won by the feet
+as well as the weapons of an army. The quicker they march and the less
+strength they have to expend on getting from one place to another, the
+better the soldiers will fight. It came to be almost second nature for any
+Roman to look out that the roads were in good condition, and a general on
+the march took care that he did not go too far into an unknown country
+without leaving a good road over which to come back.
+
+In the course of their wandering about, before they found a place for
+their home, the colonists had not only learned the importance of good
+water but had found out where some of the springs and wells were. Here and
+there, as he discovered a good place for a camp, Calvo caused a rude
+shelter to be built, where any Roman could find a place to sleep and make
+a fire. On some of the roads he and Romulus took counsel together and
+planned the erection of a kind of barrack, so that if they sent a company
+of troops out that way there would be a place which they could occupy as a
+shelter, and if necessary hold against an enemy. They were not exactly
+houses, or forts; they were known as _mansiones_,—places where one might
+remain for a night or two. The practical use of these places proved so
+great that the plan was never given up, and _mansiones_ were built at the
+end of each day’s march, in later ages, wherever the Roman army went. But
+in the beginning there was only a rough shelter like the khans of Eastern
+countries,—walls and roofs, to which men brought their own provisions and
+bedding, if they had any. People had these places of refuge long before
+there was any such thing as a tavern or hotel known in the world.
+
+It began to be seen in course of time that the Priesthood of the Highways,
+or the bridges—for about half Calvo’s work here was bridge building—was
+one of the most necessary of all. Before he died he had four others to
+assist him, and was called the Pontifex Maximus, the high pontiff, and
+greatly revered for his wisdom. He had met and talked with and commanded
+so many different sorts of people, both intelligent and ignorant, and had
+solved so many different problems, for no two places where a highway is
+built are alike, that there were very few questions on which he did not
+have something worth saying. The standard he set was kept up. A road, when
+built, was built to last, and so was a bridge.
+
+But the greatest work of Tertius Calvo, and the one which perhaps made
+more difference in the history of his people than any other, was an
+undertaking which he put through when he and most of the other fathers of
+the colony were quite old men. It was the bridge across the river.
+
+At the point where the Seven Hills are situated, the river is about three
+hundred feet wide, but there is an island in it which makes a natural
+pier. Here Calvo suggested a bridge, to take the traffic from the other
+side of the river and bring it directly to Rome instead of letting it come
+across anywhere in boats. Such a bridge, moreover, would make it easier to
+hold the river, in case of war, against an enemy coming either up stream
+or down.
+
+It seemed like a stupendous enterprise, and even those who had seen most
+of Calvo’s work did not see how he was going to do it. The river was
+twenty feet deep, and that was too deep for any pier building in those
+days. It would be a timber bridge.
+
+More or less all the city took part in building that bridge. There were
+large trees to be cut down and their logs hauled from distant places, and
+shaped to fit into one another. There was stonework to be done at each end
+of the span, and on each side of the island. By the time this work was
+planned, the people were using iron more or less, and found it very
+convenient for many things; but Calvo set his foot down; not a bit of iron
+was to be used in his bridge. It was to be all wood, resting on stone
+foundations. Some of those who had worked with him remembered then that he
+never did use iron in such work. The younger men thought he must have
+reason to suppose that the gods were not pleased with iron.
+
+Romulus had known Calvo for a great many years, although they had never
+been exactly intimate. As they stood together, watching the work go on,
+Romulus said in a tone that no one but Calvo could hear.
+
+“There is no iron in this work?”
+
+“None,” said Calvo.
+
+“The gods do not approve it?”
+
+“Apparently not,” said Calvo. “The fires of Jove burned two bridges for me
+before I found it out.
+
+“Also I have found that iron and water are bad friends, and in a bridge,
+which hangs above water, the bolts would rust. Finally, a thing which is
+all timber, put together without the use of anything else, does not grow
+shaky with time, but settles together and is firmer. There are some things
+a man does not learn until he has watched the ways of building for fifty
+years, and I have done that.”
+
+If Calvo had been like some men of his day, he would have thought, when
+his bridges were burned, that the gods were angry with him for omitting
+some ceremony. But he was a man who noticed all that he saw and put two
+and two together; and he noticed in the course of time that lightning was
+much more likely to strike where iron was. He observed the path of it once
+when it did strike, and saw that it ripped the wood all to splinters and
+set it on fire trying to get at the iron, which it melted.
+
+It is of course true that iron expands and shrinks with heat and cold, and
+when iron bolts are used in wood, the iron and the wood do not fit as well
+together after a few seasons, on this account. So Calvo planned his
+bridges without iron, and they were all made of dovetailed wooden timbers,
+as many old wooden bridges were which remain to this day. Calvo’s
+observations about his bridges tended to make others think as he did. No
+iron was ever used in any of the temples or sacred buildings of Rome, even
+long after it was in common use for weapons, tools and other things.
+
+The way in which the bridge over the Tiber was built was much like the way
+in which Cæsar built bridges, hundreds of years later. It was so
+constructed that if necessary it could be removed at short notice. It was
+never struck by lightning or burned, and it remained until—long after
+Calvo was dead—another pontiff built a new and greater bridge, using all
+his knowledge and all else that had been learned in five generations.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                    XX
+
+
+                             THE THREE TRIBES
+
+
+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 Rome. Any open place for
+public discussion was called a forum—there were nineteen in different
+parts of Rome at one time—but this one was the great Forum Romanum, where
+the finest temples and the most famous statues were. Assemblies of the
+people, or of the fraternities, to vote on public questions were also
+called by the name of Comitium.
+
+Between these two great hills and a big bend in the river was a great
+level space that was used for a sort of parade ground, and this was called
+the Campus Martius, the field of Mars.
+
+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 the mice
+in the house. He had also a set of knuckle-bones which the children played
+with as children now play with jackstones. His mother molded for him men
+and animals and even whole armies of clay, so that he could play at war
+with spears of reeds, and demolish mud forts with stones from his little
+sling.
+
+        [Illustration: 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 the same worship, and the new priesthood of the whole people, whose
+priest was called the Flamen Dialis, the Lighter of the Fire of Jove.
+
+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 farm life to city life, the mere crowding together of
+people is a danger. The fever which had broken out in the early days of
+the settlement broke out again. This time it swept away lives by the
+hundred. The poor people were frightened almost out of their wits, and ran
+out of their houses and spread the disease before any one understood that
+it could be caught. Emilia had a maid who came back from a visit to her
+brother on the Quirinal and died before morning. In less than a week
+Emilia herself and her little son were dead also, and Romulus was left
+alone.
+
+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.
+
+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; he urged all who could to go out into the country, form
+colonies, or at least have country houses. It was the nature of Romulus to
+look at things, not as they affected himself alone, but as they would
+affect all the people. If Emilia could die of fever, if his son could die,
+in spite of all his care, any man’s wife and child could. There was no
+safety for one but in the safety of all. He thought that out in the same
+instinctive way that he had reasoned about the robbers. It was not enough
+to clear out a robbers’ den, or to escape illness once. What he set
+himself to do was to stop the evil. When Naso objected that the gods alone
+could do that, Romulus did not argue the matter. His own opinion was that
+if men depended upon the gods to do anything for them that they could do
+for themselves, the gods would have a good right to be angry. A man might
+as well sit down under a tree and expect grain to spring up for him of
+itself, and the sheep to come up to him and take off their fleeces, and
+the grapes to turn into wine and fill the vats without hands, as to expect
+the gods to take care of him if he used no judgment.
+
+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 had found by experience produced
+results. Romulus had the practical nature of his people. He had heard a
+great deal of miracles at one time and another, but he had ceased to
+expect them to happen. It would be quite as great a miracle as could be
+expected if three different tribes of people succeeded in building up a
+city without civil war.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XXI
+
+
+                              UNDER THE YOKE
+
+
+Many years had passed since the colonists first came to the Seven Hills,
+and Rome was now the city from which a large extent of country on both
+sides of the river was ruled. Romulus had inherited the land of his
+ancestors on the Long White Mountain, and village after village, town
+after town, had found it wise to come under his rule. The way in which he
+managed these new possessions was rather curious and very like himself. He
+let them rule themselves and settle their own affairs so far as their own
+local customs and people were concerned, and so far as these did not
+contradict the common law of Rome.
+
+When the children of Mars first came to this part of the world, people
+called them very often the “cattle-men,” because cattle were not at all
+common there. Many of the customs both of the Romans and the Sabines came
+about because they kept cattle and used them. This made it possible for
+them to cultivate much more land than they could have farmed without the
+oxen, and it also rather tied them down to one place, for after
+cultivating land to the point where it would grow a good crop of grain,
+nobody of course would wish to abandon it. They had a god called Pales who
+protected the herds and was said to have taught the people in the
+beginning how to yoke and use cattle, and the long-horned skulls were hung
+up around the walls of the early temples and served to hang garlands from
+on a feast day. When the “outfit vault” was filled at the founding of the
+city, a yoke was one of the things put in.
+
+In a certain way, all the scattered villages and peoples which gradually
+joined the new colony, although keeping their own land and homes, were
+rather like oxen. They were not equal to the colonists in wisdom or skill
+or ability to direct affairs. They could work, and they could fight for
+their wives and children;—but cattle can work and fight. Without some one
+to govern and teach them, they would belong to any one who happened to be
+strong enough to make himself their master.
+
+The use of the yoke was the one great thing in which the Roman farmer
+differed from these pagans and peasants, and he could teach them that. It
+was the thing which would make the most difference in their lives, in
+comfort and plenty and skill. A man must be more intelligent to work with
+animals and control them than to dig up a plot of ground with his own
+hands. It struck Romulus, therefore, that the yoke would be a good symbol
+to use when Rome took possession of such a village. A great deal of the
+ceremony used in the daily life of the ancient people was a sort of sign
+language. When something important changed hands, the buyer and the seller
+shook hands on it in public. When a man was not a slave nor exactly a
+servant, but a member of the household who did something for which he was
+paid, he was paid in salt, because he could be invited to eat salt with
+his master, and this pay was called _salarium_,—salary. When Rome took
+formal possession of a place, the men passed under a yoke, as a sign that
+now they belonged to the men who used oxen, and worked as they did and for
+them.
+
+Whenever it was possible, some Roman families were sent to such places to
+live among the people and show them Roman ways. There were always some who
+were willing to do this, because they could have more land and better
+houses in that way than in the older town, which was getting rather
+crowded. In this way, the widely scattered towns and villages and farms
+ruled by Rome became more or less Roman in a much shorter time than they
+would if they had been left to themselves.
+
+Life in such a growing country, made up of a great many different sorts
+and conditions of people, is not by any means simple. The Romans
+themselves were aware of this before the first settlers were old men. As
+the sons of these colonists became men, they were proud to call themselves
+“the sons of the fathers.” The word “father” was used in the old way,
+which meant that every father of a family in a village was the head of
+that family. The head of the house was a ruler simply because he was the
+oldest representative of his race. In the same way the houses built by the
+first families within the palisade, on the Square Hill, were called
+palaces, and the hill itself the hill of the palaces, the Palatine. The
+families of those first colonists were known, after a while, as the
+“patricians.” After the Sabines came, there were two groups of settlers of
+the same race, one on the Square Hill and the other on the hill called the
+Quirinal, the Hill of the Spears. The Palatine settlers sometimes called
+themselves the Mountain Romans, and the others the Hill Romans. The people
+who had settled in the place Romulus called the Asylum lived among groves
+of trees, and they were called the People of the Grove, the Luceres. But
+all these citizens of Rome itself considered themselves superior to the
+outsiders, who had sometimes been conquered and sometimes been glad to
+join Rome for protection. The Romans were beginning to be very proud of
+the town they had made.
+
+The Tuscans beyond the river, however, did not all feel this pride in
+belonging to Rome. The town of the Veientines, especially, objected to the
+idea of Tuscans being “under the yoke” of these strangers. When the Romans
+took the town of Fidenæ, the Veientines were very indignant, though they
+did not come to the help of their neighbors, and presently they claimed
+that Fidenæ was a town of their own and set out to make war against the
+Romans. Romulus promptly took the field and won the war. Although he was
+now growing old, and his hair was white as silver, he fought with all his
+old fire and sagacity, and the Tuscans were glad to make terms. They
+offered to make peace for a hundred years, but that was not quite enough
+for Romulus. They had begun the war, and he meant to make them pay for it.
+When the matter was finally settled, they agreed to give to Rome their
+salt works on the river and a large tract of land. While the talk was
+going on, fifty of their chief men were kept prisoners in the camp of
+Romulus.
+
+There was a great sensation in Rome when the news of the peace was made
+known. The army paraded through the streets, with the prisoners and the
+spoils of various kinds, and there was great rejoicing. It was the first
+celebration of a victory by a “triumph”—called by that name because many
+of those who took part in the parade were leaping and dancing to the sound
+of music. Then Romulus proceeded to divide the land he had taken from the
+Tuscans among the soldiers who had taken part in the war. He sent the
+Tuscan hostages home to their people.
+
+Without intending to do it, Romulus aroused a great deal of ill feeling by
+these two things that he did. The patricians formed a sort of senate—a
+body of elders—for the government of Rome, and it seemed to them that they
+should have been consulted about the hostages and the division of land. No
+one knew but the Tuscans might rise up again against Rome, and in that
+case these men ought to be here to serve as a pledge. Moreover, the land
+belonged not to Romulus personally but to the city, and the senate ought
+to have had the dividing of it. It was time to settle whether Rome was to
+be governed by one man, or by the elders of the people, as in the days of
+old. It was not fit that men should hold land who were not descended from
+land-holders.
+
+Not all the elders, or senators, took this view. It really never had been
+decided how far a general who took command in a war had a right to dictate
+in the outcome of it. Generally speaking, in a war, the men who fought
+took whatever they could lay their hands on. They plundered a city when
+they took it, and each man had what he could carry away. In this case the
+city of the Veientines had not been plundered, because the rulers
+surrendered and asked for peace before Romulus had a chance to take it.
+The land which had been given up was a kind of plunder, and the general
+had a right to divide it. This was the view of Caius Cossus and Marcus
+Colonus and his brother, and some of the others in the senate. But
+Naso—who never had enough land—and some of his friends, who never were
+satisfied unless they had their own way, had a great deal to say about the
+high-handed methods of the veteran general, the founder of the city. They
+said that he treated them all as if they were under the yoke, and that
+this was insulting to free-born Romans. In short, the time had come when
+all of the men who wished for more power than they had were ready to
+declare that Romulus was a tyrant. It was quite true that he was the only
+man strong enough to stand in their way if he chose. It was also true that
+he was the only man who was disposed to consider the rights of the _plebs_
+and the outsiders who were not citizens, and had according to ancient
+custom no right to share in the governing of the city at all.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   XXII
+
+
+                             THE GOAT’S MARSH
+
+
+Public opinion in Rome was like a whirlpool. The currents that battled in
+it circled round and round, but got nowhere. Calvo, the last of the older
+men who had been fathers of the people when Romulus founded the city,
+began to wonder if at last the downfall of the chief was near. He could
+not see how one man could make peace between the factions, or how he could
+dominate them by his single will. But it was never the way of the veteran
+pontiff to talk, when talk would do no good, and he waited to learn what
+Romulus would do.
+
+What Romulus did was to visit him one night at his villa, alone and in
+secret. He had sent his servant beforehand to ask that Calvo would arrange
+this, and when some hours later a tall man in the dress of a shepherd
+appeared at the gate, the old porter admitted him without question, and
+there was no one in the way. The two sat and talked in the solar chamber,
+with no witnesses but the stars.
+
+“They do not understand,” Romulus said thoughtfully, when they had been
+all over the struggle between the two parties, from beginning to end.
+“They do not see that the thing which must be done is the thing which is
+right, whether it be by my will or another’s.”
+
+“They are ready, some of them, to declare that a thing is wrong because
+you saw it before they did,” said Calvo dryly.
+
+“The people are with me—I believe,” said Romulus, “the soldiers, and the
+common folk—but they have no voice in the government. Yet are they men,
+Tertius Calvo,—many of them children of Mars as we are. Am I not bound to
+do what is right for them, as well as for the dwellers within the
+palaces?”
+
+“I have always believed so,” nodded Calvo. “When a man makes a road or a
+bridge, he does not make it for the strong and powerful alone; it is even
+more for the weak, the ignorant and those who cannot work for themselves.
+If the gods meant not this to be so, they would arrange it so that the sun
+should shine only on a few, and the rest should dwell in twilight; they
+would give rain only to those whom they favor, and good water only to the
+chosen of the gods. But the world is not made in that way. Therefore we
+who are the chosen of the gods to do their will on earth should be of
+equal mind toward all—men, women and children.”
+
+Calvo paused, as if he were thinking how he should say what he thought,
+and then went on.
+
+“Whether men are high or low, Romulus, founder of the city, they have
+minds and they think, and the gods, who know all men’s souls, hear their
+unspoken thoughts as well as ours. Therefore it is not a small thing when
+many believe in a man, for their belief, like a river, will grow and grow
+until it makes itself felt by those who hold themselves as greater. I have
+seen this happen when a good man whom all men loved came to die. He was
+greater after his death than when he was alive, for the grief and the love
+of the poor encompassed his spirit and made it strong.”
+
+Romulus smiled in the way he did when he was thinking more than he meant
+to say. “I shall be very strong when I am dead,” was his only comment. And
+Calvo knew that it was the truth.
+
+Romulus was now fifty-eight years old, and Calvo was seventy-two. Both of
+them were thinking that it would not be many years when they would both,
+perhaps, be talking together in the world of shadows as they were talking
+now. Then Romulus told Calvo what he was going to do.
+
+This talk took place a little after the beginning of the fifth month,
+which the Romans called Quintilis, but which we call July. In this month
+the sun is hot and the air is sluggish and damp, and in the year when
+these things happened it was more so than usual. The heralds announced in
+the market place, one sultry morning, that there would be a meeting of all
+the people at a place called the Goat’s Marsh some miles outside the city.
+Romulus would there tell publicly why he sent back their hostages to the
+Tuscans and how the lands were to be divided among the soldiers. No longer
+would the people have to depend on what was said by one and another, he
+would tell them himself. Partly out of curiosity, partly with the
+determination that they too would speak, the greater part of the
+patricians also went to hear.
+
+The Goat’s Marsh was no longer a marsh, but it had kept its name partly
+because of the fig orchards, which bore the little fruits called the goat
+figs. There was a plain at the foot of a little hill, which made it a good
+place for any public meeting, and the country people for miles around
+crowded in to see Romulus and to hear him speak.
+
+They raised a shout as his tall figure appeared but he waved them to
+silence.
+
+“I have not much to say,” he began, and in the still air the intense
+interest of his listeners seemed to tingle like lightning before a storm,
+“but much has been said which was not true. I will not waste time in
+repeating lies.
+
+“Ye know that the Tuscan cities were here before we came, and that their
+people are many. We cannot kill them or drive them away, if we would. They
+are our neighbors.
+
+“We made war against them and we beat them, and took their city Fidenæ and
+their city Veii. Before we made peace they had to pay us certain lands.
+Before peace was made and the price paid, there were sons of their blood
+in our power, whom we kept as a pledge that they were willing to pay the
+price. That was all. They were not guilty of any crime against us. They
+were here to show that their people meant to keep faith. When peace was
+made I sent them back.
+
+“If we had kept them, if we had slain them, if harm had come to them, then
+the wrong would have been on our side, and we should have had another war.
+Why should there be war between neighbors? Is not friendship better than
+hatred?
+
+“Some are angry because I divided the lands, which they gave us as a
+price, among the soldiers. Yet who has better right than the men who fight
+the battles? This is all of my story. Ye believe?” Then a shout arose to
+the very skies,—“Romulus! Romulus! Romulus!”
+
+Suddenly the clouds grew black, and lightnings flashed through them. Just
+as Naso was rising to speak, a tremendous clap of thunder shook the earth,
+or so it seemed. Winds swept suddenly down from the mountains and howled
+across the plains, carrying away mantles and curtains and boughs of trees
+in their flight. The crowd broke up in confusion, and the patricians were
+heard calling in distress, “Marcus!” “Caius!” “Aulus!” for in the darkness
+they could not see their friends a rod away. They hastened to whatever
+shelter they could find, and sheets of rain poured from the clouds. It was
+one of the most terrific tempests any one there present had ever known. It
+did not last long—perhaps an hour—but when it was over Romulus was nowhere
+to be seen.
+
+The people had scattered in all directions, but the patricians had managed
+to keep together. When the storm was over, they did not know at first that
+Romulus had disappeared, but presently one after another of the common
+people was heard asking where he was, and no one could be found who knew.
+The people searched everywhere without finding so much as the hem of his
+mantle. It began to be whispered that he had been killed and his body
+hidden away, and black looks were cast upon the public men in their white
+robes.
+
+They themselves were perhaps more perplexed and worried than any one else,
+for they saw what the people thought. It began to dawn upon them that the
+united opinion of hundreds of men, even though of the despised _plebs_, or
+peasants, was not exactly a thing to be overlooked. That night was a black
+and anxious one.
+
+On the following morning, Naso, Caius Cossus, and some other leaders came
+to see Calvo and ask his opinion of the mystery. He had not been at the
+Goat’s Marsh the day before, nor had Cossus and others of the friends of
+the vanished chief. All the men who had been there, of the upper class,
+were enemies of Romulus. It was a most unpleasant position for them.
+
+Calvo heard the story gravely, without making any comment.
+
+The storm had not been nearly so severe in Rome; in fact it was not much
+more than an ordinary summer storm. But when Naso told of it he described
+it as something beyond anything that could be natural.
+
+“Do you think,” asked Calvo coolly at last, “that the gods had anything to
+do with these strange appearances?” Naso could not say.
+
+“There have always been strange happenings about this man,” said Calvo
+thoughtfully. “His very birth was strange; his appearance among us was
+sudden and unexpected. What the gods send they can also take away.”
+
+“Do you think then,” asked Cossus, “that he was taken by the gods to
+heaven?”
+
+“I do not know,” said Calvo. “You say you found no trace of him? But even
+a man struck by lightning is not destroyed.”
+
+The frightened men looked at each other.
+
+Fabius the priest was the first to speak.
+
+“It is at any rate not true that we have murdered him,” he said boldly,
+“and that is what men are saying in the streets.”
+
+“And it may be true that he has been taken by the gods,” said Naso
+eagerly. They went out, still talking, and Calvo smiled to himself. He did
+not know just what had happened, but Romulus had told him that after this
+last appearance to the people he was going away, never to come back.
+Apparently that was what he had done. It did not surprise the old pontiff
+at all when he heard, an hour or two after, that Fabius had made a speech
+and told the people that Romulus had been taken bodily to the skies, in
+the midst of the crashing and flaring of the thunder and lightning, and
+that he would no more be seen on earth. There were some unbelievers, but
+after a time this was quite generally thought to be true.
+
+[Illustration: Far away, in a cavern on a mountain height, there lived for
+                       many years an old shepherd]
+
+It had the effect of settling all quarrels at once. When they had time to
+think it over, both factions agreed that Romulus was right. They could see
+it themselves. Within a few years his memory was better loved, more
+powerful, and more closely followed in all his ways and sayings than ever
+he had been in life.
+
+He never returned to Rome, but far away, in a cavern on a mountain height,
+there lived for many years an old shepherd who became very dear to the
+simple people around him. He had a servant named Peppo who loved him well
+and whom he treated more as a son than as a slave. He had a little plot of
+ground which he cultivated, with nine bean-rows and various kinds of
+herbs, and a row of beehives stood near the entrance to his cave. There
+was nothing he could not do with animals, and the birds used to come and
+perch on his fingers and his shoulders and head, and sing. Even the wolves
+would not harm him, and one year a mother fox brought up a litter of four
+cubs within a few yards of his door. The young people used to come to him
+to get him to tell their fortunes, and if he advised against a thing they
+never went contrary to what he said. When he died and was buried, his
+servant returned to the place from which he came, and then Tertius Calvo,
+who was by that time a very old man, learned certainly where Romulus the
+founder of Rome had gone. But he kept the story to himself.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               A ROMAN ROAD
+
+
+  Once along the Roman road with measured, rhythmic stride
+  Marched the Roman legionaries in their valiant pride.
+  Men of petty towns and tribes, under Caesar’s hand,
+  Welded into Empire then their people and their land.
+  Now along that ancient road the silent motors run,
+  Driven by every ancient race that lives beneath the sun.
+
+  Swarming from their barren plains, wild barbarian hordes
+  Wasted all the fruitful soil—then the Roman swords
+  Leagued with Gallic pike and sling, held the red frontier,
+  Saved the cradle of our folk, all that we hold dear.
+  Now above the towers that rise where Rome’s great eagles flew,
+  Circle dauntless aeroplanes to guard their folk anew.
+
+  Gods who loved the sons of Mars found in field and wood
+  Altars built with reverent care—saw the work was good.
+  Simple, brave and generous, quick to speech and mirth;
+  Loving all the pleasant ways of the kindly earth;
+  Thus they built the stately walls that still unfallen stand.
+  Guarding for their ancient faith the dear, unchanging land!
+
+  Winds and waves and leaping flames all have served our race.
+  Flint and bronze and steel had each their little day of grace.
+  But the lightning fleets to-day along our singing wires,
+  And the harnessed floods to-day are fuel for our fires.
+  Armored through the clouds we glide on swift electric wings.
+  Through the trenches of the hills a joyous giant sings.
+  Light and Flame and Power and Steel are welded into one
+  To serve the task set long ago,—when roads were first begun!
+
+
+
+                                 THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+
+The following changes have been made to the text:
+
+      page 118, “some” changed to “same”
+      page 233, period added after “Rome”
+
+Variations in hyphenation (e.g. “cattlemen”, “cattle-men”; “roadmaking”,
+“road-making”) and spelling (e.g. “Caesar”, “Cæsar”) have not been
+changed.
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDHOOD OF ROME***
+
+
+
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