Romulus

Auguries.

Romulus and Remus take their stations.

It was, to certain appearances, indicated in the flight of these birds – such as the number that were seen at a time, the quarter of the heavens in which they appeared, the direction in which they flew, as from left to right or from right to left – that the people of Numitor's day were accustomed to look for omens and auguries. So Romulus and Remus took their stations on the hills which they had severally chosen, each surrounded by a company of his own adherents and friends, and began to watch the skies. It was agreed that the decision of the question between the two hills should be determined by the omens which should appear to the respective observers stationed upon them.

Result.

New dispute.

An open collision.

Faustulus killed.

But it happened, unfortunately, that the rules for the interpretation of auguries and omens, were far too indefinite and vague to answer the purpose for which they were now appealed to. The most unequivocal distinctness and directness in giving its responses is a very essential requisite in any tribunal that is called upon as an umpire, to settle disputes; while the ancient auguries and oracles were always susceptible of a great variety of interpretations. When Remus and Romulus commenced their watch no vultures were to be seen from either hill. They waited till evening, still none appeared. They continued to watch through the night. In the morning a messenger came over from the Palatine hill to Remus on the Aventine, informing him that vultures had appeared to Romulus. Remus did not believe it. At last, however, the birds really came into view; a flock of six were seen by Remus, and afterward one of twelve by Romulus. The observations were then suspended, and the parties came together to confer in respect to the result; but the dispute instead of being settled, was found to be in a worse condition than ever. The point now to be determined was whether six vultures seen first, or twelve seen afterward, were the better omen, that is whether numbers, or simple priority of appearance, should decide the question. In contending in respect to this nice point the brothers became more angry with each other than ever. Their respective partisans took sides in the contest, which resulted finally in an open and violent collision. Romulus and Remus themselves seem to have commenced the affray by attacking one another. Faustulus, their foster-father, who, from having had the care of them from their earliest infancy, felt for them an almost parental affection, rushed between them to prevent them from shedding each other's blood. He was struck down and killed on the spot, by some unknown hand. A brother of Faustulus too, named Plistinus, who had lived near to him, and had known the boys from their infancy, and had often assisted in taking care of them, was killed in the endeavor to aid his brother to appease the tumult.

Romulus is victorious.

At length the disturbance was quelled. The result of the conflict was, however, to show that Romulus and his party were the strongest. Romulus accordingly went on to build the walls of the city at the spot which he had first chosen. The lines were marked out, and the excavations were commenced with great ceremony.

The building of the city goes on.

In laying out the work, the first thing to be done was to draw the lines of what was called the pomœrium. The pomœrium was a sort of symbolical wall, and was formed simply by turning a furrow with a plow all around the city, at a considerable distance from the real walls, for the purpose, not of establishing lines of defense, but of marking out what were to be the limits of the corporation, so to speak, for legal and ceremonial purposes. Of course, the pomœrium included a much greater space than the real walls, and the people were allowed to build houses anywhere within this outer inclosure, or even without it, though not very near to it. Those who built thus were, of course, not protected in case of an attack, and of course they would, in such case, be compelled to abandon their houses, and retreat for safety within the proper walls.

Plowing the pomœrium.

So Romulus proceeded to mark out the pomœrium of the city, employing in the work the ceremonies customary on such occasions. The plow used was made of copper, and for a team to draw it a bullock and a heifer were yoked together. Men appointed for the purpose followed the plow, and carefully turned over the clods toward the wall of the city. This seems to have been considered an essential part of the ceremony. At the places where roads were to pass in toward the gates of the city, the plow was lifted out of the ground and carried over the requisite space, so as to leave the turf at those points unbroken. This was a necessary precaution; for there was a certain consecrating influence that was exerted by this ceremonial plowing which hallowed the ground wherever it passed in a manner that would very seriously interfere with its usefulness as a public road.

Form of the enclosure.

The form of the space inclosed by the pomœrium, as Romulus plowed it, was nearly square, and it included not merely the Palatine hill itself, but a considerable portion of level land around it.

The death of Remus.

Though Romulus thus seemed to have conquered, in the strife with Remus, the difficulty was not yet fully settled. Remus was very little disposed to acquiesce in his brother's assumed superiority over him. He was sullen, morose, and ill at ease, and was inclined to take little part in the proceedings which were going on. Finally an occasion occurred which produced a crisis, and brought the rivalry and enmity of the brothers suddenly and forever to an end. Remus was one day standing by a part of the wall which his brother's workmen were building, and expressing, in various ways, and with great freedom, his opinions of his brother's plans; and finally he began to speak contemptuously of the wall which the workmen were building. Romulus all the time was standing by. At length, in order to enforce what he said about the insufficiency of the work, Remus leaped over a portion of it, saying, "This is the way the enemy will leap over your wall." Hereupon Romulus seized a mattock from the hands of one of the laborers, and struck his brother down to the ground with it, saying, "And this is the way that we will kill them if they do." Remus was killed by the blow.

Remorse of Romulus.

As soon as the deed was done, Romulus was at once overwhelmed with remorse and horror at the atrocity of the crime which he had been so suddenly led to commit. His anguish was so great for a time that he refused all food, and he could not sleep. He caused the dead body of Remus, and also those of Faustulus and of Plistinus, the brother of Faustulus, to be buried with the most solemn and imposing funeral ceremonies, so as to render all possible honor to their memory; and then, not satisfied with this, he instituted and celebrated certain religions rites, to prevent the ghosts of the deceased from coming back to haunt him. The ghosts, or specters of the dead that came back to haunt and terrify the living were called lemures. Hence the celebration which Romulus ordained was called the Lemuria, and it continued to be annually observed in Rome during the whole period of its subsequent history.

The institution of the Lemuria.

Precisely what the ceremonies were which Romulus performed to appease the spirit of his brother can not now be ascertained, as there was no particular description of them recorded. But the Lemuria, as afterward performed, were frequently described by Roman writers, and they were of a very curious and extraordinary character. The time for the celebration of these rites was in May, the anniversary, as was supposed, of the days in which Romulus originally celebrated them. The Lemurial ceremonies extended through three days, or rather nights, although, for some curious reason or other, they were alternate and not consecutive nights. They were the nights of the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May. The ceremonies were performed in the night, for the reason that it was in the dark hours that ghosts and goblins were accustomed, as was supposed, to roam about the world to haunt and terrify men.

Description of the ceremonies.

The black beans.

The ceremonies performed on these occasions are thus described. They commenced at midnight. The father of the family would rise at that hour and go out at the door of the house, making certain gesticulations and signals with his hands, which were supposed to have the effect of keeping the specters away. He then washed his hands three times in pure spring water. Then he filled his mouth with a certain kind of black beans for which ghosts were supposed to have some particular fondness. Being thus provided he would walk along, taking the beans out of his mouth as he walked, and throwing them behind him. The specters were supposed to gather up these beans as he threw them down. He must, however, by no means look round to see them. He then, after speaking certain mysterious and cabalistic words, washed his hands again, and then making a frightful noise by striking brass basins together, he shouted out nine times, "Ghosts of this house begone!" This was supposed effectually to drive the specters away – an opinion which was always abundantly confirmed by the fact; for on looking round after this vociferated adjuration, the man always found that the specters were gone!

State of Rome after the death of Remus.

When by these ceremonies, or ceremonies such as these, Romulus had appeased the spirit of his brother, and those of the guardians of his childhood, his mind became more composed, and he turned his attention once more toward the building of the city. The party of Remus now, of course, since it was deprived of its head, no longer maintained itself, but was gradually broken up and merged in the general mass. Romulus became the sole leader of the enterprise, and immediately turned his attention to the measures to be adopted for a more complete and effectual organization of the community over which he found himself presiding.

The story of Celer.

Probable explanation of it.

In respect to Remus, it ought perhaps to be added, that after his death a story was circulated in Rome that it was a man named Celer, and not Romulus, that killed him. This story has not, however, been generally believed. It has been thought more probable that Romulus himself, or some of his partisans and friends, invented and circulated the story of Celer, in order to screen him in some degree from the reproach of so unnatural a crime as the killing of a brother so near and dear to him as Remus had been; – a brother who had shared his infancy with him, who had slept with him, at the same time, in the arms of his mother, who had floated with him down the Tiber in the same ark, been saved from death by the same miraculous intervention, and through all the years of infancy, childhood, and youth, had been his constant playmate, companion, and friend. The crime was as much more atrocious than any ordinary fratricide, as Remus had been nearer to Romulus than any ordinary brother.

Chapter X.

Organization.

B.C. 754

Discussion in respect to ancient dates.

Difficulties.

Nature of tradition.

There has been a great deal of philosophical discussion, and much debate, among historians and chronologists, in attempting to fix the precise year in which Romulus commenced the building of Rome. The difficulty arises from the fact that no regular records of public events were made in those ancient days. In modern times such records are very systematically kept, – an express object of them being to preserve and perpetuate a knowledge of the exact truth in respect to the time, and the attendant circumstances, relating to all great transactions. On the other hand, the memory of public events in early periods of the world, was preserved only through tradition; and tradition cares little for the exact and the true. She seeks only for what is entertaining. Her function being simply to give pleasure to successive generations of listeners, by exciting their curiosity and wonder with tales, – which, the more strange and romantic they are, the better they are suited to her purpose – she concerns herself very little with such simple verities as dates and names. The exposure of the twin infants of Rhea, supposing such an event to have actually happened, she remembered well, and repeated the narrative of it – adorning it, doubtless, with many embellishments – from age to age, so that the whole story comes down to modern times in full detail; but as to the time when the event took place, she gave herself no concern. The date would have added nothing to the romance of the story, and thus it was neglected and forgotten.

Extreme youth of Romulus.

In subsequent times, however, when regular historical annals began to be recorded, chronologists attempted to reason backward, from events whose periods were known, through various data which they ingeniously obtained from the preceding and less formal narratives, until they obtained the dates of earlier events by a species of calculation. In this way the time for the building of Rome was determined to be about the year 754 before Christ. As to Romulus himself, the tradition is that he was but eighteen or twenty years old when he commenced the building of it. If this is true, his extreme youth goes far to palliate some of the wrongs which he perpetrated – wrongs which would have been far more inexcusable if committed with the deliberate purpose of middle life, than if prompted by the unthinking impulses and passions of eighteen.

Varro's astrological calculation.

Ingenuity of it.

A certain Roman philosopher, named Varro, who lived some centuries after the building of the city, conceived of a very ingenious plan for discovering the year in which Romulus was born. It was this. By means of the science of astrology, as practiced in those days, certain learned magicians used to predict what the life and fortunes of any man would be, from the aspects and phases of the planets and other heavenly bodies at the time of his birth. The idea of Varro was to reverse this process in the case of Romulus; that is, to deduce from the known facts of his history what must have been the relative situations of the planets and stars when he came into the world! He accordingly applied to a noted astrologer to work out the problem for him. Given, a history of the incidents and events occurring to the man in his progress through life; required, the exact condition of the skies when the child was born. In other words, the astrologer was to determine what must have been the relative positions of the sun, moon, and stars, at the birth of Romulus, in order to produce a being whose life should exhibit such transactions and events as those which appeared in Romulus's subsequent history. When the astrologer had thus ascertained the condition of the skies at the time in question, the astronomers, as Varro concluded, could easily calculate the month and the year when the combination must have occurred.

Olympiads.

The race of Corœbus.

The result of Varro's computation.

Now, it was the custom in those days to reckon by Olympiads, which were periods of four years, the series commencing with a great victory at a foot-race in Greece, won by a man named Corœbus, from which event originated the Olympian games, which were afterward celebrated every four years, and which in subsequent ages became so renowned. The time when Corœbus ran his race, and thus furnished an era for all the subsequent chronologists and historians of his country, is generally regarded as about the year 776 before Christ; and the result of the calculations of Varro's astrologer, and of the astronomers who perfected it, was, that to lead such a life as Romulus led, a man must have been born at a time corresponding with the first year of the second Olympiad; that is, taking off from 776, four years, for the first Olympiad, the first year of the second Olympiad would be 772; this would make the time of his birth 772 before Christ; and then deducting eighteen years more, for the age of Romulus when he began to build his wall, we have 754 before Christ as the era of the foundation of Rome. This method of determining a point in chronology seems so absurd, according to the ideas of the present day, that we can hardly resist the conclusion, that Varro, in making his investigation, was really guided by other and more satisfactory modes of determining the point, and that the horoscope was not what he actually relied upon. However this may be, the era which he fixed upon has been very generally received, though many others have been proposed by the different learned men who have successively investigated the question.

Probable character of the first constructions at Rome.

According to the accounts given by the early writers, the constructions which Romulus and his companions made were of a very rude and simple character; such as might have been expected from a company of boys: for boys we ought perhaps to consider them all, since it is not to be presumed that the troop, in respect to age and experience, would be much in advance of the leaders. The wall which they built about the city was probably only a substantial stone fence, and their houses were huts and hovels. Even the palace, for there was a building erected for Romulus himself which was called the palace, was made, it is said, of rushes. Perhaps the meaning is that it was thatched with rushes, – or possibly the expression refers to a mode of building sometimes adopted in the earlier stages of civilization, in which straw, or rushes, or some similar material is mixed with mud or clay to help bind the mass together, the whole being afterward dried in the sun. Walls thus made have been found to possess much more strength and durability than would be supposed possible for such a material to attain.

However this may be, the hamlet of huts which Romulus and his wild coadjutors built and walled in, must have appeared, at the time, to all observers, a very rude and imperfect attempt at building a city; in fact it must have seemed to them, if it is true that Romulus was at that time only eighteen years old, more like a frolic of thoughtless boys than a serious enterprise of men. Romulus, however, whatever others may have thought of his work, was wholly in earnest. He felt that he was a prince, and proud of his birth, and fully conscious of his intellectual and personal power, he determined that he would have a kingdom.

Romulus convenes an assembly of the people.