Part 8

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.

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

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.