Part 7

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:

“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?”

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.

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.