Livy

From the Foundation of the City

Preface and Book 1 Chapters 1-29

Preface Whether I am likely to accomplish anything worthy of the labour, if I record the achievements of the Roman people from the foundation of the city, I do not really know, nor if I knew would I dare to assert it; 2 perceiving as I do that the theme is not only old but hackneyed, through the constant succession of new historians, who believe either that in their facts they can produce more authentic information, or that in their style they will prove better than the rude attempts of the ancients. 3 Yet, however this shall be, it will be a satisfaction to have done myself as much as lies in me to commemorate the deeds of the foremost people of the world; and if in so vast a company of writers my own reputation should be obscure, my consolation would be the fame and greatness of those whose renown will throw mine into the shade. 4 Moreover, my subject involves infinite labour, seeing that it must be traced back above seven hundred years, and that proceeding from slender beginnings it has so increased as now to be burdened by its own magnitude; and at the same time I doubt not that to most readers the earliest origins and the period immediately succeeding them will give little pleasure, for they will be in haste to reach these modern times, in which the might of a people which has long been very powerful is working its own undoing. 5 I myself, on the contrary, shall seek in this an additional reward for my toil, that I may avert my gaze from the troubles which our age has been witnessing for so many years, so long at least as I am absorbed in the recollection of the brave days of old, 6 free from every care which, even if it could not divert the historian's mind from the truth, might nevertheless cause it anxiety.

7 Such traditions as belong to the time before the city was founded, or rather was presently to be founded, and are rather adorned with poetic legends than based upon trustworthy historical proofs, I purpose neither to affirm nor to refute. It is the privilege of antiquity to mingle divine things with human, and so to add dignity to the beginnings of cities; 8 and if any people ought to be allowed to consecrate their origins and refer them to a divine source, so great is the military glory of the Roman People that when they profess that their Father and the Father of their Founder was none other than Mars, the nations of the earth may well submit to this also with as good a grace as they submit to Rome's dominion. 9 But to such legends as these, however they shall be regarded and judged, I shall, for my own part, attach no great importance. Here are the questions to which I would have every reader give his close attention —what life and morals were like; through what men and by what policies, in peace and in war, empire was established and enlarged; then let him note how, with the gradual relaxation of discipline, morals first gave way, as it were, then sank lower and lower, and finally began the downward plunge which has brought us to the present time, when we can endure neither our vices nor their cure.

10 What chiefly makes the study of history wholesome and profitable is this, that you behold the lessons of every kind of experience set forth as on a conspicuous monument; from these you may choose for yourself and for your own state what to imitate, from these mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result. 11 For the rest, either love of the task I have set myself deceives me, or no state was ever greater, none more righteous or richer in good examples, none ever was where avarice and luxury came into the social order so late, or where humble means and thrift were so highly esteemed and so long held in honour. 12 For true it is that the less men's wealth was, the less was their greed. Of late, riches have brought in avarice, and excessive pleasures the longing to carry wantonness and licence to the point of ruin for oneself and of universal destruction.

But complaints are sure to be disagreeable, even when they shall perhaps be necessary; let the beginning, at all events, of so great an enterprise have none. 13 With good omens rather would we begin, and, if historians had the same custom which poets have, with prayers and entreaties to the gods and goddesses, that they might grant us to bring to a successful issue the great task we have undertaken.

1 First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. 2 They then experienced various vicissitudes. Antenor, with a company of Eneti who had been expelled from Paphlagonia in a revolution and were looking for a home and a leader —for they had lost their king, Pylaemenes, at Troy —came to the inmost bay of the Adriatic. 3 There, driving out the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, the Eneti and Trojans took possession of those lands. And in fact the place where they first landed is called Troy, and the district is therefore known as Trojan, while the people as a whole are called the Veneti. 4 Aeneas, driven from home by a similar misfortune, but guided by fate to undertakings of greater consequence, came first to Macedonia; thence was carried, in his quest of a place of settlement, to Sicily; and from Sicily laid his course towards the land of Laurentum. This place too is called Troy. 5 Landing there, the Trojans, as men who, after their all but immeasurable wanderings, had nothing left but their swords and ships, were driving booty from the fields, when King Latinus and the Aborigines, who then occupied that country, rushed down from their city and their fields to repel with arms the violence of the invaders. From this point the tradition follows two lines. Some say that Latinus, having been defeated in the battle, made a peace with Aeneas, and later an alliance of marriage. 6 Others maintain that when the opposing lines had been drawn up, Latinus did not wait for the charge to sound, but advanced amidst his chieftains and summoned the captain of the strangers to a parley. 7 He then inquired what men they were, whence they had come, what mishap had caused them to leave their home, and what they sought in landing on the coast of Laurentum. 8 He was told that the people were Trojans and their leader Aeneas, son of Anchises and Venus; that their city had been burnt, and that, driven from home, they were looking for a dwelling-place and a site where they might build a city. Filled with wonder at the renown of the race and the hero, and at his spirit, prepared alike for war or peace, he gave him his right hand in solemn pledge of lasting friendship. 9 The commanders then made a treaty, and the armies saluted each other. Aeneas became a guest in the house of Latinus; there the latter, in the presence of his household gods, added a domestic treaty to the public one, by giving his daughter in marriage to Aeneas. 10 This event removed any doubt in the minds of the Trojans that they had brought their wanderings to an end at last in a permanent and settled habitation. 11 They founded a town, which Aeneas named Lavinium, after his wife. In a short time, moreover, there was a male scion of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.

2 War was then made upon Trojans and Aborigines alike. Turnus was king of the Rutulians, and to him Lavinia had been betrothed before the coming of Aeneas. Indignant that a stranger should be preferred before him, he attacked, at the same time, both Aeneas and Latinus. 2 Neither army came off rejoicing from that battle. The Rutulians were beaten: the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. 3 Then Turnus and the Rutulians, discouraged at their situation, fled for succour to the opulent and powerful Etruscans and their king Mezentius, who held sway in Caere, at that time an important town. Mezentius had been, from the very beginning, far from pleased at the birth of the new city; he now felt that the Trojan state was growing much more rapidly than was altogether safe for its neighbours, and readily united his forces with those of the Rutulians. 4 Aeneas, that he might win the goodwill of the Aborigines to confront so formidable an array, and that all might possess not only the same rights but also the same name, called both nations Latins; and from that time on the Aborigines were no less ready and faithful than the Trojans in the service of King Aeneas. 5 Accordingly, trusting to this friendly spirit of the two peoples, which were growing each day more united, and, despite the power of Etruria, which had filled with the glory of her name not only the lands but the sea as well, along the whole extent of Italy from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait, Aeneas declined to defend himself behind his walls, as he might have done, but led out his troops to battle. 6 The fight which ensued was a victory for the Latins: for Aeneas it was, besides, the last of his mortal labours. He lies buried, whether it is fitting and right to term him god or man, on the banks of the river Numicus; men, however, call him Jupiter Indiges.

3 Ascanius, Aeneas' son, was not yet ripe for authority; yet the authority was kept for him, unimpaired, until he arrived at manhood. Meanwhile, under a woman's regency, the Latin State and the kingdom of his father and his grandfather stood unshaken —so strong was Lavinia's character —until the boy could claim it. 2 I shall not discuss the question —for who could affirm for certain so ancient a matter? —whether this boy was Ascanius, or an elder brother, born by Creusa while Ilium yet stood, who accompanied his father when he fled from the city, being the same whom the Julian family call lulus and claim as the author of their name. 3 This Ascanius, no matter where born, or of what mother —it is agreed in any case that he was Aeneas' son —left Lavinium, when its population came to be too large, for it was already a flourishing and wealthy city for those days, to his mother, or stepmother, and founded a new city himself below the Alban Mount. 4 This was known from its position, as it lay stretched out along the ridge, by the name of Alba Longa. From the settlement of Lavinium to the planting of the colony at Alba Longa was an interval of some thirty years. 5 Yet the nation had grown so powerful, in consequence especially of the defeat of the Etruscans, that even when Aeneas died, and even when a woman became its regent and a boy began his apprenticeship as king, neither Mezentius and his Etruscans nor any other neighbours dared to attack them. 6 Peace had been agreed to on these terms, that the River Albula, which men now call the Tiber, should be the boundary between the Etruscans and the Latins. 7 Next Silvius reigned, son of Ascanius, born, as it chanced, in the forest. He begat Aeneas Silvius, and he Latinus Silvius. By him several colonies were planted, and called the Ancient Latins. 8 Thereafter the cognomen Silvius was retained by all who ruled at Alba. From Latinus came Alba, from Alba Atys, from Atys Capys, from Capys Capetus, from Capetus Tiberinus. 9 This last king was drowned in crossing the River Albula, and gave the stream the name which has been current with later generations. Then Agrippa, son of Tiberinus, reigned, and after Agrippa Romulus Silvius was king, having received the power from his father. Upon the death of Romulus by lightning, the kingship passed from him to Aventinus. This king was buried on that hill, which is now a part of the City of Rome, and gave his name to the hill. 10 Proca ruled next. He begat Numitor and Amulius; to Numitor, the elder, he bequeathed the ancient realm of the Silvian family. Yet violence proved more potent than a father's wishes or respect for seniority. Amulius drove out his brother and ruled in his stead. 11 Adding crime to crime, he destroyed Numitor's male issue; and Rhea Silvia, his brother's daughter, he appointed a Vestal under pretence of honouring, her, and by consigning her to perpetual virginity, deprived her of the hope of children.

4 But the Fates were resolved, as I suppose, upon the founding of this great City, and the beginning of the mightiest of empires, next after that of Heaven. 2 The Vestal was ravished, and having given birth to twin sons, named Mars as the father of her doubtful offspring, whether actually so believing, or because it seemed less wrong if a god were the author of her fault. 3 But neither gods nor men protected the mother herself or her babes from the king's cruelty; the priestess he ordered to be manacled and cast into prison, the children to be committed to the river. 4 It happened by singular good fortune that the Tiber having spread beyond its banks into stagnant pools afforded nowhere any access to the regular channel of the river, and the men who brought the twins were led to hope that being infants they might be drowned, no matter how sluggish the stream. 5 So they made shift to discharge the king's command, by exposing the babes at the nearest point of the overflow, where the fig-tree Ruminalis —formerly, they say, called Romularis —now stands. 6 In those days this was a wild and uninhabited region. The story persists that when the floating basket in which the children had been exposed was left high and dry by the receding water, a she-wolf, coming down out of the surrounding hills to slake her thirst, turned her steps towards the cry of the infants, and with her teats gave them suck so gently, that the keeper of the royal flock found her licking them with her tongue. 7 Tradition assigns to this man the name of Faustulus, and adds that he carried the twins to his hut and gave them to his wife Larentia to rear. Some think that Larentia, having been free with her favours, had got the name of “she-wolf” among the shepherds, and that this gave rise to this marvellous story. 8 The boys, thus born and reared, had no sooner attained to youth than they began —yet without neglecting the farmstead or the flocks —to range the glades of the mountains for game. 9 Having in this way gained both strength and resolution, they would now not only face wild beasts, but would attack robbers laden with their spoils, and divide up what they took from them among the shepherds, with whom they shared their toils and pranks, while their band of young men grew larger every day.

5 They say that the Palatine was even then the scene of the merry festival of the Lupercalia which we have to-day, and that the hill was named Pallantium, from Pallanteum, an Arcadian city, and then Palatium. 2 There Evander, an Arcadian of that stock, who had held the place many ages before the time of which I am writing, is said to have established the yearly rite, derived from Arcadia, that youths should run naked about in playful sport, doing honour to Lycaean Pan, whom the Romans afterwards called Inuus. 3 When the young men were occupied in this celebration, the rite being generally known, some robbers who had been angered by the loss of their plunder laid an ambush for them, and although Romulus successfully defended himself, captured Remus and delivered up their prisoner to King Amulius, even lodging a complaint against him. 4 The main charge was that the brothers made raids on the lands of Numitor, and pillaged them, with a band of young fellows which they had got together, like an invading enemy. 5 So Remus was given up to Numitor to be punished. From the very beginning Faustulus had entertained the suspicion that they were children of the royal blood that he was bringing up in his house; for he was aware both that infants had been exposed by order of the king, and that the time when he had himself taken up the children exactly coincided with that event. But he had been unwilling that the matter should be disclosed prematurely, until opportunity offered or necessity compelled. 6 Necessity came first; accordingly, driven by fear, he revealed the facts to Romulus. It chanced that Numitor too, having Remus in custody, and hearing that the brothers were twins, had been reminded, upon considering their age and their far from servile nature, of his grandsons. The inquiries he made led him to the same conclusion, so that he was almost ready to acknowledge Remus. Thus on every hand the toils were woven about the king. 7 Romulus did not assemble his company of youths —for he was not equal to open violence —but commanded his shepherds to come to the palace at an appointed time, some by one way, some by another, and so made his attack upon the king; while from the house of Numitor came Remus, with another party which he had got together, to help his brother. So Romulus slew the king. 6 At the beginning of the fray Numitor exclaimed that an enemy had invaded the city and attacked the palace, and drew off the active men of the place to serve as an armed garrison for the defence of the citadel; and when he saw the young men approaching, after they had dispatched the king, to congratulate him, he at once summoned a council, and laid before it his brother's crimes against himself, the parentage of his grandsons, and how they had been born, reared, and recognised. 2 He then announced the tyrant's death, and declared himself to be responsible for it. The brothers advanced with their band through the midst of the crowd, and hailed their grandfather king, whereupon such a shout of assent arose from the entire throng as confirmed the new monarch's title and authority.

3 The Alban state being thus made over to Numitor, Romulus and Remus were seized with the desire to found a city in the region where they had been exposed and brought up. And in fact the population of Albans and Latins was too large; besides, there were the shepherds. All together, their numbers might easily lead men to hope that Alba would be small, and Lavinium small, compared with the city which they should build. 4 These considerations were interrupted by the curse of their grandsires, the greed of kingly power, and by a shameful quarrel which grew out of it, upon an occasion innocent enough. Since the brothers were twins, and respect for their age could not determine between them, it was agreed that the gods who had those places in their protection should choose by augury who should give the new city its name, who should govern it when built. Romulus took the Palatine for his augural quarter, Remus the Aventine. 7 Remus is said to have been the first to receive an augury, from the flight of six vultures. The omen had been already reported when twice that number appeared to Romulus. Thereupon each was saluted king by his own followers, the one party laying claim to the honour from priority, the other from the number of the birds. 2 They then engaged in a battle of words and, angry taunts leading to bloodshed, Remus was struck down in the affray. The commoner story is that Remus leaped over the new walls in mockery of his brother, whereupon Romulus in great anger slew him, and in menacing wise added these words withal, “So perish whoever else shall leap over my walls!” 3 Thus Romulus acquired sole power, and the city, thus founded, was called by its founder's name.

His first act was to fortify the Palatine, on which he had himself been reared. To other gods he sacrificed after the Alban custom, but employed the Greek for Hercules, according to the institution of Evander. 4 The story is as follows: Hercules, after slaying Geryones, was driving off his wondrously beautiful cattle, when, close to the river Tiber, where he had swum across it with the herd before him, he found a green spot, where he could let the cattle rest and refresh themselves with the abundant grass; and being tired from his journey he lay down himself. 5 When he had there fallen into a deep sleep, for he was heavy with food and wine, a shepherd by the name of Cacus, who dwelt hard by and was insolent by reason of his strength, was struck with the beauty of the animals, and wished to drive them off as plunder. But if he had driven the herd into his cave, their tracks would have been enough to guide their owner to the place in his search; he therefore chose out those of the cattle that were most remarkable for their beauty, and turning them the other way, dragged them into the cave by their tails. 6 At daybreak Hercules awoke. Glancing over the herd, and perceiving that a part of their number was lacking, he proceeded to the nearest cave, in case there might be foot-prints leading into it. When he saw that they were all turned outward and yet did not lead to any other place, he was confused and bewildered, and made ready to drive his herd away from that uncanny spot. 7 As the cattle were being driven off, some of them lowed, as usually happens, missing those which had been left behind. They were answered with a low by the cattle shut up in the cave, and this made Hercules turn back. When he came towards the cave, Cacus would have prevented his approach with force, but received a blow from the hero's club, and calling in vain upon the shepherds to protect him, gave up the ghost. 8 Evander, an exile from the Peloponnese, controlled that region in those days, more through personal influence than sovereign power. He was a man revered for his wonderful invention of letters, a new thing to men unacquainted with the arts, and even more revered because of the divinity which men attributed to his mother Carmenta, whom those tribes had admired as a prophetess before the Sibyl's coming into Italy. 9 Now this Evander was then attracted by the concourse of shepherds, who, crowding excitedly about the stranger, were accusing him as a murderer caught red-handed. When he had been told about the deed and the reason for it, and had marked the bearing of the man and his figure, which was somewhat ampler and more august than a mortal's, he inquired who lie was. 10 Upon learning his name, his father, and his birth-place, he exclaimed, “Hail, Hercules, son of Jupiter! You are he, of whom my mother, truthful interpreter of Heaven, foretold to me that you should be added to the number of the gods, and that an altar should be dedicated to you here which the nation one day to 11 be the most powerful on earth should call the Greatest Altar, and should serve according to your rite.” 12 Hercules gave him his hand, and declared that he accepted the omen, and would fulfil the prophecy by establishing and dedicating an altar. Then and there men took a choice victim from the herd, and for the first time made sacrifice to Hercules. 13 For the ministry and the banquet they employed the Potitii and the Pinarii, being the families of most distinction then living in that region. It so fell out that the Potitii were there at the appointed time, and to them were served the inwards; the Pinarii came after the inwards had been eaten, in season for the remainder of the feast. 14 Thence came the custom, which persisted as long as the Pinarian family endured, that they should not partake of the inwards at that sacrifice. The Potitii, instructed by Evander, were priests of this cult for many generations, until, having delegated to public slaves the solemn function of their family, the entire stock of the Potitii died out. 15 This was the only sacred observance, of all those of foreign origin, which Romulus then adopted, honouring even then the immortality won by worth to which his own destiny was leading him.

8 When Romulus had duly attended to the worship of the gods, he called the people together and gave them the rules of law, since nothing else but law could unite them into a single body politic. 2 But these, he was persuaded, would only appear binding in the eyes of a rustic people in case he should invest his own person with majesty, by adopting emblems of authority. He therefore put on a more august state in every way, and especially by the assumption of twelve lictors. 3 Some think the twelve birds which had given him an augury of kingship led him to choose this number. For my part, I am content to share the opinion of those who derive from the neighbouring Etruscans (whence were borrowed the curule chair and purple-bordered toga) not only the type of attendants but their number as well —a number which the Etruscans themselves are thought to have chosen because each of the twelve cities which united to elect the king contributed one lictor.

4 Meanwhile the City was expanding and reaching out its walls to include one place after another, for they built their defences with an eye rather to the population which they hoped one day to have than to the numbers they had then. 5 Next, lest his big City should be empty, Romulus resorted to a plan for increasing the inhabitants which had long been employed by the founders of cities, who gather about them an obscure and lowly multitude and pretend that the earth has raised up sons to them. In the place which is now enclosed, between the two groves as you go up the hill, he opened a sanctuary. 6 Thither fled, from the surrounding peoples, a miscellaneous rabble, without distinction of bond or free, eager for new conditions; and these constituted the first advance in power towards that greatness at which Romulus aimed. 7 He had now no reason to be dissatisfied with his strength, and proceeded to add policy to strength. He appointed a hundred senators, whether because this number seemed to him sufficient, or because there were no more than a hundred who could be designated Fathers. At all events, they received the designation of Fathers from their rank, and their descendants were called patricians.

9 Rome was now strong enough to hold her own in war with any of the adjacent states; but owing to the want of women a single generation was likely to see the end of her greatness, since she had neither prospect of posterity at home nor the right of intermarriage with her neighbours. 2 So, on the advice of the senate, Romulus sent envoys round among all the neighbouring nations to solicit for the new people an alliance and the privilege of intermarrying. 3 Cities, they argued, as well as all other things, take their rise from the lowliest beginnings. As time goes on, those which are aided by their own worth and by the favour of Heaven achieve great power and renown. 4 They said they were well assured that Rome's origin had been blessed with the favour of Heaven, and that worth would not be lacking; their neighbours should not be reluctant to mingle their stock and their blood with the Romans, who were as truly men as they were. 5 Nowhere did the embassy obtain a friendly hearing. In fact men spurned, at the same time that they feared, both for themselves and their descendants, that great power which was then growing up in their midst; and the envoys were frequently asked, on being dismissed, if they had opened a sanctuary for women as well as for men, for in that way only would they obtain suitable wives. 6 This was a bitter insult to the young Romans, and the matter seemed certain to end in violence. Expressly to afford a fitting time and place for this, Romulus, concealing his resentment, made ready solemn games in honour of the equestrian Neptune, which he called Consualia. 7 He then bade proclaim the spectacle to the surrounding peoples, and his subjects prepared to celebrate it with all the resources within their knowledge and power, that they might cause the occasion to be noised abroad and eagerly expected. 8 Many people —for they were also eager to see the new city —gathered for the festival, especially those who lived nearest, the inhabitants of Caenina, Crustumium, and Antemnae. 9 The Sabines, too, came with all their people, including their children and wives. They were hospitably entertained in every house, and when they had looked at the site of the City, its walls, and its numerous buildings, they marvelled that Rome had so rapidly grown great. 10 When the time came for the show, and people's thoughts and eyes were busy with it, the preconcerted attack began. At a given signal the young Romans darted this way and that, to seize and carry off the maidens. 11 In most cases these were taken by the men in whose path they chanced to be. Some, of exceptional beauty, had been marked out for the chief senators, and were carried off to their houses by plebeians to whom the office had been entrusted. 12 One, who far excelled the rest in mien and loveliness, was seized, the story relates, by the gang of a certain Thalassius. Being repeatedly asked for whom they were bearing her off, they kept shouting that no one should touch her, for they were taking her to Thalassius, and this was the origin of the wedding-cry. 13 The sports broke up in a panic, and the parents of the maidens fled sorrowing. They charged the Romans with the crime of violating hospitality, and invoked the gods to whose solemn games they had come, deceived in violation of religion and honour. 14 The stolen maidens were no more hopeful of their plight, nor less indignant. But Romulus himself went amongst them and explained that the pride of their parents had caused this deed, when they had refused their neighbours the right to intermarry; nevertheless the daughters should be wedded and become co-partners in all the possessions of the Romans, in their citizenship and, dearest privilege of all to the human race, in their children; only let them moderate their anger, and give their hearts to those to whom fortune had given their persons. 15 A sense of injury had often given place to affection, and they would find their husbands the kinder for this reason, that every man would earnestly endeavour not only to be a good husband, but also to console his wife for the home and parents she had lost. 16 His arguments were seconded by the wooing of the men, who excused their act on the score of passion and love, the most moving of all pleas to a woman's heart.

10 The resentment of the brides was already much diminished at the very moment when their parents, in mourning garb and with tears and lamentations, were attempting to arouse their states to action. Nor did they confine their complaints to their home towns, but thronged from every side to the house of Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines; and thither, too, came official embassies, for the name of Tatius was the greatest in all that country. 2 The men of Caenina, Crustumium, and Antemnae, were those who had had a share in the wrong. It seemed to them that Tatius and the Sabines were procrastinating, and without waiting for them these three tribes arranged for a joint campaign. 3 But even the Crustuminians and Antemnates moved too slowly to satisfy the burning anger of the Caeninenses, and accordingly that nation invaded alone the Roman territory. But while they were dispersed and engaged in pillage, Romulus appeared with his troops and taught them, by an easy victory, how ineffectual is anger without strength. 4 Their army he broke and routed, and pursued it as it fled; their king he killed in battle and despoiled; their city, once their leader was slain, he captured at the first assault. 5 He then led his victorious army back, and being not more splendid in his deeds than willing to display them, he arranged the spoils of the enemy's dead commander upon a fame, suitably fashioned for the purpose, and, carrying it himself, mounted the Capitol. Having there deposited his burden, by an oak which the shepherds held sacred, at the same time as he made his offering he marked out the limits of a temple to Jupiter, and bestowed a title upon him. 6 “Jupiter Feretrius,” he said, “to thee I, victorious Romulus, myself a king, bring the panoply of a king, and dedicate a sacred precinct within the bounds which I have even now marked off in my mind, to be a seat for the spoils of honour which men shall bear hither in time to come, following my example, when they have slain kings and commanders of the enemy.” 7 This was the origin of the first temple that was consecrated in Rome. It pleased Heaven, in the sequel, that while the founder's words should not be in vain, when he declared that men should bring spoils thither in the after time, yet the glory of that gift should not be staled by a multitude of partakers. Twice only since then, in all these years with their many wars, have the spoils of honour been won; so rarely have men had the good fortune to attain to that distinction.

11 While the Romans were thus occupied in the City, the army of the Antemnates seized the opportunity afforded by their absence, and made an inroad upon their territory; but so swiftly was the Roman levy led against them that they, too, were taken off their guard while scattered about in the fields. 2 They were therefore routed at the first charge and shout, and their town was taken. As Romulus was exulting in his double victory, his wife Hersilia, beset with entreaties by the captive women, begged him to forgive their parents and receive them into the state; which would, in that case, gain in strength by harmony. 3 He readily granted her request. He then set out to meet the Crustuminians, who were marching to attack him. They offered even less resistance than their allies had done, for their ardour had been quenched by the defeats of the others. 4 Colonies were sent out to both places, though most of the colonists preferred to enrol for Crustumium on account of the fertility of its soil. 5 On the other hand, many persons left Crustumium and came to live in Rome, chiefly parents and kinsmen of the captured women.

The last to attack Rome were the Sabines, and this war was by far the gravest of all, for passion and greed were not their motives, nor did they parade war before they made it. 6 To their prudence they even added deception. Spurius Tarpeius commanded the Roman citadel. This man's maiden daughter was bribed with gold by Tatius to admit armed men into the fortress: she happened at that time to have gone outside the walls to fetch water for a sacrifice. 7 Once within, they threw their shields upon her and killed her so, whether to make it appear that the citadel had been taken by assault, or to set an example, that no one might anywhere keep faith with a traitor. 8 There is also a legend that because most of the Sabines wore heavy golden bracelets on their left arms and magnificent jeweled rings, she had stipulated for what they had on their left arms, and that they had therefore heaped their shields upon her, instead of gifts of gold. 9 Some say that, in virtue of the compact that they should give her what they wore on their arms, she flatly demanded their shields and, her treachery being perceived, forfeited her life to the bargain she herself had struck.

12 Be that as it may, the Sabines held the citadel. Next day the Roman army was drawn up, and covered the ground between the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline, but the Sabines would not come down till rage and eagerness to regain the citadel had goaded their enemy into marching up the slope against them. 2 Two champions led the fighting, the Sabine Mettius Curtius on the one side, and the Roman Hostius Hostilius on the other. Hostius held the Romans firm, despite their disadvantage of position, by the reckless courage he displayed in the thick of the fray. 3 But when he fell, the Roman line gave way at once and fled towards the old gate of the Palatine. Romulus himself was swept along in the crowd of the fugitives, till lifting his sword and shield to 4 heaven, he cried, “O Jupiter, it was thy omen that directed me when I laid here on the Palatine the first foundations of my City. The fortress is already bought by a crime and in the possession of the Sabines, whence they are come, sword in hand, across the valley to seek us here. 5 But do thou, father of gods and men, keep them back from this spot at least; deliver the Romans from their terror, and stay their shameful flight! 6 I here vow to thee, Jupiter the Stayer, a temple, to be a memorial to our descendants how the City was saved by thy present help.” 7 Having uttered this prayer he exclaimed, as if he had perceived that it was heard, “Here, Romans, Jupiter Optimus Maximus commands us to stand and renew the fight!” The Romans did stand, as though directed by a voice from Heaven, Romulus himself rushing into the forefront of the battle. 8 Mettius Curtius, on the Sabine side, had led the charge down from the citadel, and driven the Romans in disorder over all that ground which the Forum occupies. He was not now far from the gate of the Palatine, shouting, “We have beaten our faithless hosts, our cowardly enemies! They know now how great is the difference between carrying off maidens and fighting with men!” While he pronounced this boast a band of gallant youths, led on by Romulus, assailed him. 9 It chanced that Mettius was fighting on horseback at the time, and was therefore the more easily put to flight. As he fled, the Romans followed; and the rest of their army, too, fired by the reckless daring of their king, drove the Sabines before them. 10 Mettius plunged into a swamp, his horse becoming unmanageable in the din of the pursuit, and even the Sabines were drawn off from the general engagement by the danger to so great a man. As for Mettius, heartened by the gestures and shouts of his followers and the encouragement of the throng, he made his escape; and the Romans and the Sabines renewed their battle in the valley that lies between the two hills. But the advantage rested with the Romans.

13 Then the Sabine women, whose wrong had given rise to the war, with loosened hair and torn garments, their woman's timidity lost in a sense of their misfortune, dared to go amongst the flying missiles, and rushing in from the side, to part the hostile forces and disarm them of 2 their anger, beseeching their fathers on this side, on that their husbands, that fathers-in-law and sons-in-law should not stain themselves with impious bloodshed, nor pollute with parricide the suppliants' children, grandsons to one party and sons to the other. 3 “If you regret,” they continued, “the relationship that unites you, if you regret the marriage-tie, turn your anger against us; we are the cause of war, the cause of wounds, and even death to both our husbands and our parents. It will be better for us to perish than to live, lacking either of you, as widows or as orphans.” 4 It was a touching plea, not only to the rank and file, but to their leaders as well. A stillness fell on them, and a sudden hush. Then the leaders came forward to make a truce, and not only did they agree on peace, but they made one people out of the two. 5 They shared the sovereignty, but all authority was transferred to Rome. In this way the population was doubled, and that some concession might after all be granted the Sabines, the citizens were named Quirites, from the town of Cures. 6 As a reminder of this battle they gave the name of Curtian Lake to the pool where the horse of Curtius first emerged from the deep swamp and brought his rider to safety.

The sudden exchange of so unhappy a war for a joyful peace endeared the Sabine women even more to their husbands and parents, and above all to Romulus himself. 7 And so, when he divided the people into thirty curiae, he named these wards after the women. Undoubtedly the number of the women was somewhat greater than this, but tradition does not tell whether it was their age, their own or their husbands' rank, or the casting of lots, that determined which of them should give their names to the wards. 8 At the same time there were formed three centuries of knights: the Ramnenses were named after Romulus; the Titienses after Titus Tatius; the name and origin of the Luceres are alike obscure. From this time forth the two kings ruled not only jointly but in harmony.

14 Some years later the kinsmen of King Tatius maltreated the envoys of the Laurentians, and when their fellow-citizens sought redress under the law of nations, Titus yielded to his partiality for his relations and to their entreaties. 2 In consequence of this he drew down their punishment upon himself, for at Lavinium, whither he had gone to the annual sacrifice, a mob came together and killed him. 3 This act is said to have awakened less resentment than was proper in Romulus, whether owing to the disloyalty that attends a divided rule, or because he thought Tatius had been not unjustly slain. He therefore declined to go to war; but yet, in order that he might atone for the insults to the envoys and the murder of the king, he caused the covenant between Rome and Lavinium to be renewed.

4 Thus with the Laurentians peace was preserved against all expectation; but another war broke out, much nearer, and indeed almost at the city gates. The men of Fidenae, perceiving the growth of a power which they thought too near themselves for safety, did not wait till its promised strength should be realized, but began war themselves. Arming the young men, they sent them to ravage the land between the City and Fidenae. 5 Thence they turned to the left —for the Tiber stopped them on the right —and by their devastations struck terror into the farmers, whose sudden stampede from the fields into the City brought the first tidings of war. 6 Romulus led forth his army on the instant, for delay was impossible with the enemy so near, and pitched his camp a mile from Fidenae. Leaving there a small guard, he marched out with all his forces. 7 A part of his men he ordered to lie in ambush, on this side and on that, where thick underbrush afforded cover; advancing with the greater part of the infantry and all the cavalry, and delivering a disorderly and provoking attack, in which the horsemen galloped almost up to the gates, he accomplished his purpose of drawing out the enemy. For the flight, too, which had next to be feigned, the cavalry engagement afforded a favourable pretext. 8 And when not only the cavalry began to waver, as if undecided whether to fight or run, but the infantry also fell back, the city gates were quickly thronged by the enemy, who poured out and hurled themselves against the Roman line, and in the ardour of attack and pursuit were drawn on to the place of ambuscade. 9 There the Romans suddenly sprang out and assailed the enemy's flanks, while, to add to their terror, the standards of the detachment which had been left on guard were seen advancing from the camp; thus threatened by so many dangers the men of Fidenae scarcely afforded time for Romulus and those whom they had seen riding off with him to wheel about, before they broke and ran, and in far greater disorder than that of the pretended fugitives whom they had just been chasing —10 for the flight was a real one this time — sought to regain the town. 11 But the Fidenates did not escape their foes; the Romans followed close upon their heels, and before the gates could be shut burst into the city, as though they both formed but a single army.

15 From Fidenae the war-spirit, by a kind of contagion, spread to the Veientes, whose hostility was aroused by their kinship with the Fidenates, Etruscans like themselves, and was intensified by the danger which lay in their very proximity to Rome, if her arms should be directed against all her neighbours. 2 They made an incursion into Roman territory which more resembled a marauding expedition than a regular campaign; and so, without having entrenched a camp or waited for the enemy's army, they carried off their booty from the fields and brought it back to Veii. The Romans, on the contrary, not finding their enemy in the fields, crossed the Tiber, ready and eager for a decisive struggle. 3 When the Veientes heard that they were making a camp, and would be advancing against their city, they went out to meet them, preferring to settle the quarrel in the field of battle rather than to be shut up and compelled to fight for their homes and their town. 4 Without employing strategy to aid his forces, the Roman king won the battle by the sheer strength of his seasoned army, and routing his enemies, pursued them to their walls. But the city was strongly fortified, besides the protection afforded by its site, and he refrained from attacking it. 5 Their fields, indeed, he laid waste as he returned, more in revenge than from a desire for booty, and this disaster, following upon their defeat, induced the Veientes to send envoys to Rome and sue for peace. They were deprived of a part of their land, and a truce was granted them for a hundred years.

6 Such were the principal achievements of the reign of Romulus, at home and in the field, nor is any of them incompatible with the belief in his divine origin and the divinity which was ascribed to the king after his death, whether one considers his spirit in recovering the kingdom of his ancestors, or his wisdom in founding the City and in strengthening it by warlike and peaceful measures. 7 For it was to him, assuredly, that Rome owed the vigour which enabled her to enjoy an untroubled peace for the next forty years. 8 Nevertheless, he was more liked by the commons than by the senate, and was preeminently dear to the hearts of his soldiers. Of these he had three hundred for a bodyguard, to whom he gave the name of Celeres, and kept them by him, not only in war, but also in time of peace.

16 When these deathless deeds had been done, as the king was holding a muster in the Campus Martius, near the swamp of Capra, for the purpose of reviewing the army, suddenly a storm came up, with loud claps of thunder, and enveloped him in a cloud so thick as to hide him from the sight of the assembly; and from that moment Romulus was no more on earth. 2 The Roman soldiers at length recovered from their panic, when this hour of wild confusion had been succeeded by a sunny calm; but when they saw that the royal seat was empty, although they readily believed the assertion of the senators, who had been standing next to Romulus, that he had been caught up on high in the blast, they nevertheless remained for some time sorrowful and silent, as if filled with the fear of orphanhood. 3 Then, when a few men had taken the initiative, they all with one accord hailed Romulus as a god and a god's son, the King and Father of the Roman City, and with prayers besought his favour that he would graciously be pleased forever to protect his children. 4 There were some, I believe, even then who secretly asserted that the king had been rent in pieces by the hands of the senators, for this rumour, too, got abroad, but in very obscure terms; the other version obtained currency, owing to men's admiration for the hero and the intensity of their panic. 5 And the shrewd device of one man is also said to have gained new credit for the story. 6 This was Proculus Julius, who, when the people were distracted with the loss of their king and in no friendly mood towards the senate, being, as tradition tells, weighty in council, were the matter never so important, addressed the assembly as follows: “Quirites, the Father of this City, Romulus, descended suddenly from the sky at dawn this morning and appeared to me. Covered with confusion, I stood reverently before him, praying that it might be vouchsafed me to look upon his face without sin. 7 'Go,' said he, 'and declare to the Romans the will of Heaven that my Rome shall be the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human strength can resist Roman arms.' 8 So saying,” he concluded, “Romulus departed on high.” It is wonderful what credence the people placed in that man's tale, and how the grief for the loss of Romulus, which the plebeians and the army felt, was quieted by the assurance of his immortality.

17 The senators meanwhile were engaged in a struggle for the coveted kingship. So far it had not come to a question of any one person, for nobody stood out with special prominence in the new nation; instead, a strife of factions was waging between the two stocks. 2 Those of Sabine origin, having had no king on their side since the death of Tatius, feared that despite their equal rights they might lose their hold upon the sovereign power, and hence desired that the king should be chosen from their own body. 3 The original Romans spurned the idea of an alien king. Various, however, as were men's inclinations, to be ruled by a king was their universal wish, for they had not yet tasted the sweetness of liberty. 4 Then the senators became alarmed, lest the state wanting a ruler and the army a leader, and many neighbouring states being disaffected, some violence might be offered from without. 5 All therefore were agreed that there should be some head, but nobody could make up his mind to yield to his fellow. And so the hundred senators shared the power among themselves, establishing ten decuries and appointing one man for each decury to preside over the administration. 6 Ten men exercised authority; only one had its insignia and lictors. Five days was the period of his power, which passed in rotation to all; and for a year the monarchy lapsed. This interval was called, as it was, an interregnum, a name which even yet obtains. 7 Murmurs then arose among the plebs that their servitude had been multiplied; that a hundred masters had been given them instead of one. No longer, it seemed, would they endure anything short of a king, and a king, too, of their own choosing. 8 Perceiving that such ideas were in the wind, the senators thought it would be well to proffer spontaneously a thing which they were on the verge of losing, and obtained the favour of the people by granting them supreme power on such terms as to part with no greater prerogative than they retained. 9 For they decreed that when the people should have named a king, their act should only be valid in case the senators ratified it. Even now, in voting for laws and magistrates, the same right is exercised, but is robbed of its significance; before the people can begin to vote, and when the result of the election is undetermined, the Fathers ratify it. 10 On the present occasion the interrex summoned the assembly and spoke as follows: “May prosperity, favour, and fortune attend our action! Quirites, choose your king. Such is the pleasure of the Fathers, who, in their turn, if your choice fall upon one worthy to be called Romulus' successor, will confirm your election.” 11 This so pleased the plebs, that, unwilling to appear outdone in generosity, they merely resolved and ordered that the senate should decree who should be king in Rome.

18 A great reputation for justice and piety was enjoyed in those days by Numa Pompilius. Cures, a town of the Sabines, was his home, and he was deeply versed, so far as anyone could be in that age, in all law, divine and human. 2 The teacher to whom he owed his learning was not, as men say, in default of another name, the Samian Pythagoras; for it is well established that Servius Tullius was king at Rome, more than a hundred years after this time, when Pythagoras gathered about him, on the farthest coasts of Italy, in the neighbourhood of Metapontum, Heraclea, and Croton, young men eager to share his studies. 3 And from that country, even if he had been contemporary, how could his fame have reached the Sabines? Again, in what common language could he have induced anyone to seek instruction of him? Or under whose protection could a solitary man have made his way through so many nations differing in speech and customs? 4 It was Numa's native disposition, then, as I incline to believe, that tempered his soul with noble qualities, and his training was not in foreign studies, but in the stern and austere discipline of the ancient Sabines, a race incorruptible as any race of the olden time. 5 When Numa's name had been proposed, the Roman senators perceived that the Sabines would gain the ascendancy if a king were to be chosen from that nation; yet nobody ventured to urge his own claims in preference to those of such a man, nor the claim of any other of his faction, nor those, in short, of any of the senators or citizens. 6 And so they unanimously voted to offer the sovereignty to Numa Pompilius. Being summoned to Rome he commanded that, just as Romulus had obeyed the augural omens in building his city and assuming regal power, so too in his own case the gods should be consulted. Accordingly an augur (who thereafter, as a mark of honour, was made a priest of the state in permanent charge of that function) conducted him to the citadel and caused him to sit down on a stone, facing the south. 7 The augur seated himself on Numa's left, having his head covered, and holding his in right hand the crooked staff without a knot which they call a lituus. 8 Then, looking out over the City and the country beyond, he prayed to the gods, and marked off the heavens by a line from east to west, designating as ' right' the regions to the south, as 'left' those to the north, and fixing in his mind a landmark opposite to him and as far away as the eye could reach; 9 next shifting the crook to his left hand and, laying his right hand on Numa's head, he uttered the following prayer: “Father Jupiter, if it is Heaven's will that this man Numa Pompilius, whose head I am touching, be king in Rome, do thou exhibit to us unmistakable signs within those limits which I have set.” 10 He then specified the auspices which he desired should be sent, and upon their appearance Numa was declared king, and so descended from the augural station.

19 When he had thus obtained the kingship, he prepared to give the new City, founded by force of arms, a new foundation in law, statutes, and observances. 2 And perceiving that men could not grow used to these things in the midst of wars, since their natures grew wild and savage through warfare, he thought it needful that his warlike people should be softened by the disuse of arms, and built the temple of Janus at the bottom of the Argiletum, as an index of peace and war, that when open it might signify that the nation was in arms, when closed that all the peoples round about were pacified. 3 Twice since Numa's reign has it been closed: once in the consulship of Titus Manlius, after the conclusion of the First Punic War; the second time, which the gods permitted our own generation to witness, was after the battle of Actium, when the emperor Caesar Augustus had brought about peace on land and sea. 4 Numa closed the temple after first securing the good will of all the neighbouring tribes by alliances and treaties. And fearing lest relief from anxiety on the score of foreign perils might lead men who had hitherto been held back by fear of their enemies and by military discipline into extravagance and idleness, he thought the very first thing to do, as being the most efficacious with a populace which was ignorant and, in those early days, uncivilized, was to imbue them with the fear of Heaven. 5 As he could not instil this into their hearts without inventing some marvellous story, he pretended to have nocturnal meetings with the goddess Egeria, and that hers was the advice which guided him in the establishment of rites most approved by the gods, and in the appointment of special priests for the service of each.

6 And first of all he divided the year into twelve months, according to the revolutions of the moon. But since the moon does not give months of quite thirty days each, and eleven days are wanting to the full complement of a year as marked by the sun's revolution, he inserted intercalary months in such a way that in the twentieth year the days should fall in with the same position of the sun from which they had started, and the period of twenty years be rounded out. 7 He also appointed days when public business might not be carried on, and others when it might, since it would sometimes be desirable that nothing should be brought before the people.

20 He then turned his attention to the appointment of priests, although lie performed very many priestly duties himself, especially those which now belong to the Flamen Dialis. 2 But inasmuch as he thought that in a warlike nation there would be more kings like Romulus than like Numa, and that they would take the field in person, he did not wish the sacrificial duties of the kingly office to be neglected, and so appointed a flamen for Jupiter, as his perpetual priest, and provided him with a conspicuous dress and the royal curule chair. To him he added two other flamens, one for Mars, the other for Quirinus. 3 In like manner he designated virgins for Vesta's service —a priesthood, this, that derived from Alba and so was not unsuited to the founder's stock. That they might be perpetual priestesses of the temple, he assigned them a stipend from the public treasury, and by the rule of virginity and other observances invested them with awe and sanctity. 4 He likewise chose twelve Salii for Mars Gradivus, and granted them the distinction of wearing the embroidered tunic and over it a bronze breastplate, and of bearing the divine shields which men call ancilia, while they proceeded through the City, chanting their hymns to the triple beat of their solemn dance. 5 He next chose as pontifex Numa Marcius, son of Marcus, one of the senators, and to him he intrusted written directions, full and accurate, for performing the rites of worship; with what victims, on what days, in what temple, sacrifices should be offered, and from what sources money was to be disbursed to pay their costs. 6 All other public and private sacrifices lie likewise made subject to the decrees of the pontifex, that there might be someone to whom the commons could come for advice, lest any confusion should arise in the religious law through the neglect of ancestral rites and the adoption of strange ones. 7 And not merely ceremonies relating to the gods above, but also proper funeral observances and the propitiation of the spirits of the dead were to be taught by the pontifex as well, and also what prodigies manifested by lightning or other visible sign were to be taken in hand and averted. With the purpose of eliciting this knowledge from the minds of the gods, Numa dedicated an altar on the Aventine to Jupiter Elicius, and consulted the god by augury, that he might learn what portents were to be regarded.

21 The consideration and disposal of these matters diverted the thoughts of the whole people from violence and arms. Not only had they something to occupy their minds, but their constant preoccupation with the gods, now that it seemed to them that concern for human affairs was felt by the heavenly powers, had so tinged the hearts of all with piety, that the nation was governed by its regard for promises and oaths, rather than by the dread of laws and penalties. 2 And while Numa's subjects were spontaneously imitating the character of their king, as their unique exemplar, the neighboring peoples also, who had hitherto considered that it was no city but a camp that had been set up in their midst, as a menace to the general peace, came to feel such reverence for them, that they thought it sacrilege to injure a nation so wholly bent upon the worship of the gods. 3 There was a grove watered by a perennial spring which flowed through the midst of it, out of a dark cave. Thither Numa would often withdraw, without witnesses, as if to meet the goddess; so he dedicated the grove to the Camenae, alleging that they held counsel there with his wife Egeria. 4 He also established an annual worship of Faith, to whose chapel he ordered that the flamens should proceed in a two-horse hooded carriage, and should wrap up their arms as far as the fingers before sacrificing, as a sign that faith must be kept, and that even in men's clasped hands her seat is sacred. 5 He established many other rites, as well as places of sacrifice, which the pontiffs called Argei. But of all his services the greatest was this, that throughout his reign he guarded peace no less jealously than his kingdom. 6 Thus two successive kings in different ways, one by war, the other by peace, promoted the nation's welfare. Romulus ruled thirty-seven years, Numa forty-three. The state was not only strong, but was also well organized in the arts both of war and of peace.

22 At Numa's death the state reverted to an interregnum. Then Tullus Hostilius, grandson of that Hostilius who had distinguished himself in the battle with the Sabines at the foot of the citadel, was declared king by the people, and the senate confirmed their choice. 2 This monarch was not only unlike the last, but was actually more warlike than Romulus had been. Besides his youth and strength, the glory of his grandfather was also an incentive to him. So, thinking that the nation was growing decrepit from inaction, he everywhere sought excuses for stirring up war. 3 It happened that the Roman rustics were driving off cattle from Alban territory, while the Albans were treating the Romans in the same way. The man who was then in power in Alba was Gaius Cluilius. 4 Each side, at about the same time, sent envoys to demand restitution. Tullus had commanded his envoys to do nothing else till they had carried out his orders; he felt convinced that the Albans would refuse his demands, in which case he could declare war with a good conscience. The Alban representatives proceeded rather laxly. 5 Received by Tullus with gracious and kindly hospitality, they attended in a friendly spirit the banquet which he gave in their honour. Meanwhile the Romans had been beforehand with them in seeking redress, and, being denied it by the Alban leader, had made a declaration of war, to take effect in thirty days. 6 Returning, they reported these things to Tullus, who thereupon invited the Alban envoys to inform him of the object of their mission. They, knowing nothing of what had happened, at first spent some time in apologies. They said they should be sorry to utter anything which might give offence to Tullus, but that they were compelled to do so by their orders; they had come to seek restitution; if it should be denied them they were commanded to declare war. 7 To this Tullus replied: “Tell your king the Roman king calls the gods to witness which people first spurned the other's demand for redress and dismissed its envoys, that they may call down upon the guilty nation all the disasters of this war.”

23 With this answer the Albans returned to their city, and both sides prepared for war with the greatest energy —a civil war, to all intents and purposes, almost as if fathers were arrayed against sons; for both were of Trojan ancestry, since Lavinium had been planted from Troy, Alba from Lavinium, and from the line of the Alban kings had come the Romans. 2 Still, the issue of the war made the struggle less deplorable, for no battle was fought, and when only the buildings of one of the cities had been destroyed, the two peoples were fused into one. 3 The Albans were first in the field, and with a great army invaded the Roman territory. Their camp they pitched not more than five miles from the City, and surrounded it with a trench. (This was known for some centuries as the Cluilian Trench, from the name of the general, until in the course of time both trench and name disappeared.) 4 In this camp Cluilius the Alban king died, and the Albans chose as dictator Mettius Fufetius. Meantime Tullus, emboldened principally by the death of the king, and asserting that Heaven's great powers would take vengeance upon all of the Alban name, beginning with their king himself, for their unscrupulous war, made a night march past the enemy's camp and led his army into the country of the Albans. This move drew Mettius out from his fortifications. 5 Leading his troops the shortest way towards the enemy, he sent an envoy on ahead to say to Tullus that before they fought it was well that they should confer together; if Tullus would meet him he was confident he had that to say which would be of no less moment to the Roman state than to the Alban. Without rejecting this suggestion, Tullus nevertheless drew up his men in line of battle, in case the proposals should prove impracticable. 6 On the other side the Albans also formed up. When both armies had been marshalled, the leaders, attended by a few of their nobles, advanced to the middle of the field. 7 Then the Alban began as follows:

“Pillage and failure to make the amends demanded in accordance with our treaty I think I have myself heard named by our king, Cluilius, as the occasion of this war, and I doubt not, Tullus, but you make the same contention. But if truth is to be spoken, rather than sophistries, it is greed for dominion that is goading two kindred and neighbouring peoples into war. 8 Whether rightly or wrongly I do not attempt to determine; that is a question that may well have been considered by him who undertook the war; I am only the general appointed by the Albans to prosecute that war. But this is the point, Tullus, which I wish to suggest to you: Of the magnitude of the Etruscan power which encompasses us, and you especially, you are better aware than we, in proportion as you are nearer to that people. Great is their strength on land, exceedingly great on the sea. 9 You must consider that the instant you give the signal for battle, the Tuscans will be watching our two armies, so that, when we have become tired and exhausted, they may attack at once the victor and the vanquished. In Heaven's name, therefore, since we are not content with unquestioned liberty, but are proceeding to the doubtful hazard of dominion or enslavement, let us adopt some plan by which we may decide the question which nation shall rule the other, without a great disaster and much carnage on both sides.”

10 Tullus made no objection, though inclined to war by nature no less than by his anticipation of victory. While both parties were considering what to do, a plan was hit upon for the execution of which Fortune herself supplied the means.

24 It chanced that there were in each of these armies triplet brothers, not ill-matched either in age or in physical prowess. That they were Horatii and Curiatii is generally allowed, and scarcely any other ancient tradition is better known; yet, in spite of the celebrity of the affair, an uncertainty persists in regard to the names —to which people, that is, the Horatii belonged, and to which the Curiatii. The writers of history are divided. Still, the majority, I find, call the Roman brothers Horatii, and theirs is the opinion I incline to adopt. 2 To these young men the kings proposed a combat in which each should fight for his own city, the dominion to belong with that side where the victory should rest. 3 No objection was raised, and time and place were agreed on. Before proceeding with the battle, a treaty was made between the Romans and the Albans, providing that the nation whose citizens should triumph in this contest should hold undisputed sway over the other nation. One treaty differs from another in its terms, but the same procedure is always employed. 4 On the present occasion we are told that they did as follows, nor has tradition preserved the memory of any more ancient compact. The fetial asked King Tullus, “Dost thou command me, King, to make a treaty with the pater patratus of the Alban People?” Being so commanded by the king, he said, “I demand of thee, King, the sacred herb.” 5 The king replied, “Thou shalt take it untainted.” The fetial brought from the citadel an untainted plant. After this he asked the king, “Dost thou grant me, King, with my emblems and my companions, the royal sanction, to speak for the Roman People of the Quirites?” 6 The king made answer, “So far as may be without prejudice to myself and the Roman People of the Quirites, I grant it.” The fetial was Marcus Valerius; he made Spurius Fusius pater patratus, touching his head and hair with the sacred sprig. The pater patratus is appointed to pronounce the oath, that is, to solemnize the pact; and this he accomplishes with many words, expressed in a long metrical formula which it is not worth while to quote. 7 The conditions being then recited, he cries, “Hear, Jupiter; hear, pater patratus of the Alban People: hear ye, People of Alba: From these terms, as they have been publicly rehearsed from beginning to end, without fraud, from these tablets, or this wax, and as they have been this day clearly understood, the Roman People will not be the first to depart. 8 If it shall first depart from them, by general consent, with malice aforethought, then on that day do thou, great Diespiter, so smite the Roman People as I shall here to-day smite this pig: and so much the harder smite them as thy power and thy strength are greater.” 9 When Spurius had said these words, he struck the pig with a flint. In like manner the Albans pronounced their own forms and their own oath, by the mouth of their own dictator and priests.

25 When the treaty had been established, the brothers armed themselves, in accordance with the agreement. On either side the soldiers urged on their champions. They reminded them that their fathers' gods, their native land, their parents, and all their countrymen, whether at home or with the army, had their eye only on their swords and their right hands. 2 Eager for the combat, as well owing to their native spirit as to the shouts of encouragement which filled their ears, the brothers advanced into the space between the two lines of battle. The two armies were drawn up, each in front of its own camp, no longer in any immediate danger, but their concern as great as ever; and no wonder, since empire was staked on those few men's valour and good fortune! 3 Alert, therefore, and in suspense, they concentrated their attention upon this unpleasing spectacle. The signal was given, and with drawn steel, like advancing battle-lines, the six young men rushed to the charge, breathing the courage of great armies. Neither side thought of its own danger, but of the nation's sovereignty or servitude, and how from that day forward their country must experience the fortune they should themselves create. 4 The instant they encountered, there was a clash of shields and a flash of glittering blades, while a deep shudder ran through the onlookers, who, as long as neither side had the advantage, remained powerless to speak or breathe. 5 Then, in the hand-to-hand fight which followed, wherein were soon exhibited to men's eyes not only struggling bodies and the play of the sword and shield, but also bloody wounds, two of the Romans fell, fatally wounded, one upon the other, while all three of the Albans were wounded. 6 At the fall of the Romans a shout of joy burst from the Alban army, while the Roman levies now bade farewell to all their hopes; but not to their anxiety, for they were horror-stricken at the plight of the single warrior whom the three Curiatii had surrounded. 7 He happened to have got no hurt, and though no match for his enemies together, was ready to fight them one at a time. So, to divide their attack, he fled, thinking that each of them would pursue him with what speed his wounds permitted. 8 He had already run some little distance from the spot where they had fought, when, looking back, he saw that they were following at wide intervals and that one of them had nearly overtaken him. 9 Facing about, he ran swiftly up to his man, and while the Alban host were calling out to the Curiatii to help their brother, Horatius had already slain him, and was hastening, flushed with victory, to meet his second antagonist. Then with a cheer, such as is often drawn from partisans by a sudden turn in a contest, the Romans encouraged their champion, and he pressed on to end the battle. 10 And so, before the third Curiatius could come up —and he was not far off —Horatius dispatched the second. 11 They were now on even terns, one soldier surviving on each side, but in hope and vigour they were far from equal. The one, unscathed and elated by his double victory, was eager for a third encounter. The other dragged himself along, faint from his wound and exhausted with running; he thought how his brothers had been slaughtered before him, and was a beaten man when he faced his triumphant foe. What followed was no combat. 12 The Roman cried exultantly, “Two victims I have given to the shades of my brothers: the third I will offer up to the cause of this war, that Roman may rule Alban.” His adversary could barely hold up his shield. 13 With a downward thrust Horatius buried his sword in the Alban's throat, and despoiled him where he lay. The Romans welcomed their hero with jubilations and thanksgivings, and their joy was all the greater that they had come near despairing. The burial of their dead then claimed the attention of the two armies, —with widely different feelings, since one nation was exalted with imperial power, the other made subject to a foreign sway. 14 The graves may still be seen where each soldier fell: two Roman graves in one spot, nearer Alba; those of the three Albans towards Rome, but separated, just as they had fought.

26 Before they left the field Mettius asked, in pursuance of the compact, what Tullus commanded him to do, and the Roman ordered him to hold his young men under arms, saying that he should employ their services, if war broke out with the Veientes. 2 The armies then marched home. In the van of the Romans came Horatius, displaying his triple spoils. As he drew near the Porta Capena he was met by his unwedded sister, who had been promised in marriage to one of the Curiatii. When she recognized on her brother's shoulders the military cloak of her betrothed, which she herself had woven, she loosed her hair and, weeping, called on her dead lover's name. 3 It enraged the fiery youth to hear his sister's lamentations in the hour of his own victory and the nation's great rejoicing. And so, drawing his sword and at the same time angrily upbraiding her, he ran her through the body. 4 “Begone” he cried, “to your betrothed, with your ill-timed love, since you have forgot your brothers, both the dead and the living, and forgot your country! 5 So perish every Roman woman who mourns a foe!”

Horrid as this deed seemed to the Fathers and the people, his recent service was an off-set to it; nevertheless he was seized and brought before the king for trial. The king, that he might not take upon himself the responsibility for so stern and unpopular a judgement, and for the punishment which must follow sentence, called together the council of the people and said: “In accordance with the law I appoint duumvirs to pass judgement upon Horatius for treason.” 6 The dread formula of the law ran thus: “Let the duumvirs pronounce him guilty of treason; if he shall appeal from the duumvirs, let the appeal be tried; if the duumvirs win, let the lictor veil his head; let him bind him with a rope to a barren tree; let him scourge him either within or without the pomerium.” 7 By the terms of this law duumvirs were appointed. They considered that they might not acquit, under that act, even one who was innocent, and having given a verdict of guilty, one of them pronounced the words, “Publius Horatius, I adjudge you a traitor; go, lictor, bind his hands.” 8 The lictor had approached and was about to fit the noose. Then Horatius, at the prompting of Tullus, who put a merciful construction upon the law, cried, “I appeal!” 9 And so the appeal was tried before the people. What influenced men most of all in that trial was the assertion of Publius Horatius, the father, that his daughter had been justly slain; otherwise he should have used a father's authority and have punished his son, himself. He then implored them not to make him childless whom they had beheld a little while before surrounded by a goodly offspring. 10 So saying, the old man embraced the youth, and pointing to the spoils of the Curiatii set up in the place which is now called “the Horatian Spears,” he exclaimed, “This man you saw but lately advancing decked with spoils and triumphing in his victory; can you bear, Quirites, to see him bound beneath a fork and scourged and tortured? Hardly could Alban eyes endure so hideous a sight. 11 Go, lictor, bind the hands which but now, with sword and shield, brought imperial power to the Roman People! Go, veil the head of the liberator of this city! Bind him to a barren tree! Scourge him within the pomerium, if you will —so it be amidst yonder spears and trophies of our enemies —or outside the pomerium —so it be amongst the graves of the Curiatii! For whither can you lead this youth where his own honours will not vindicate him from so foul a punishment?” 12 The people could not withstand the father's tears, or the courage of Horatius himself, steadfast in every peril; and they acquitted him, more in admiration of his valour than from the justice of his cause. And so, that the flagrant murder might yet be cleansed away, by some kind of expiatory rite, the father was commanded to make atonement for his son at the public cost. 13 He therefore offered certain piacular sacrifices, which were thenceforward handed down in the Horatian family, and, erecting a beam across the street, to typify a yoke, he made his son pass under it, with covered head. It remains to this day, being restored from time to time at the state's expense, and is known as “the Sister's Beam.” 14 Horatia's tomb, of hewn stone, was built on the place where she had been struck down.

27 But the peace with Alba did not last long. The discontent of the people, who criticized the dictator for having confided the nation's welfare to three soldiers, broke down his weak character, and since honest measures had proved unsuccessful, he resorted to evil ones to regain the favour of his countrymen. 2 Accordingly, just as in war he had sought peace, so now in time of peace he desired war. But seeing that his own state was richer in courage than in strength, he stirred up other tribes to make war openly after due declaration; while for his own people he reserved the part of the traitor under the disguise of friendship. 3 The men of Fidenae, a Roman colony, and the Veientes, whom they admitted to a share in their designs, were induced to commence hostilities by a promise that the Albans would go over to their side. 4 Fidenae having openly revolted, Tullus summoned Mettius and his army from Alba, and led his forces against the enemy. Crossing the Anio, he pitched his camp at the confluence of the rivers. The Veientine army had crossed the Tiber between that place and Fidenae. 5 These troops, drawn up next the river, formed the right wing; on the left the Fidenates were posted, nearer the mountains. Tullus marshalled his own men against the Veientine enemy; the Albans he posted opposite the army of Fidenae. The Alban commander was as wanting in courage as in loyalty. Not daring, therefore, either to hold his ground or openly to desert, he drew off by imperceptible degrees in the direction of the mountains. 6 Then, when he thought he had got near enough to them, he brought up his whole battle-line to an elevated position, and still irresolute, deployed his ranks with the object of consuming time. His purpose was to swing his forces to the side which fortune favoured. 7 At first the Romans posted next to the Albans were amazed when they perceived that their flank was being uncovered by the withdrawal of their allies; then a horseman galloped up to the king, and told him that the Albans were marching off. In this crisis Tullus vowed to establish twelve Salian priests, and to build shrines to Pallor and Panic. 8 The horseman he reprimanded in a loud voice, that the enemy might overhear him, and ordered him to go back and fight; there was no occasion for alarm; it was by his own command that the Alban army was marching round, that they might attack the unprotected rear of the Fidenates. 9 He also ordered the cavalry to raise their spears. This manœuvre hid the retreat of the Alban army from a large part of the Roman foot-soldiers; those who had seen it, believing what the king had been heard to say, fought all the more impetuously. The enemy in their turn now became alarmed; they had heard Tullus's loud assertion, and many of the Fidenates, having had Romans among them as colonists, knew Latin. 10 And so, lest the Albans should suddenly charge down from the hills and cut them off from their town, they beat a retreat. Tullus pressed them hard, and having routed the wing composed of the Fidenates, returned, bolder than ever, to the Veientes, who were demoralized by the panic of their neighbours. 11 They, too, failed to withstand his attack, but their rout was stopped by the river in their rear When they had fled thus far, some basely threw away their arms and rushed blindly into the water, others hesitated on the bank and were overtaken before they had made up their minds whether to flee or resist. Never before had the Romans fought a bloodier battle.

28 Then the Alban army, which had been a spectator of the battle, was led down into the plain. Mettius congratulated Tullus on the conquest of his enemies; Tullus replied kindly to Mettius, and commanded the Albans in a good hour to join their camp to that of the Romans. 2 He then made preparations to perform, on the morrow, a sacrifice of purification. At dawn, when all things were in readiness, he issued to both armies the customary order, convoking them to an assembly. 3 The heralds, beginning at the outskirts of the camp, called out the Albans first, who being moved by the very novelty of the occasion, took their stand close to the Roman king, that they might hear him harangue his army. 4 The Roman troops, by previous arrangement, were armed and disposed around them, and the centurions were bidden to execute orders promptly. Then Tullus began as follows:

“Romans, if ever anywhere in any war you have had reason to give thanks, first to the immortal gods and then to your own valour, it was in the battle of yesterday. For you fought not only against your enemies, but a harder and more dangerous fight —against the treachery and the perfidy of your allies. 5 For, to undeceive you, I gave no orders that the Albans should draw off towards the mountains. What you heard was not my command, but a trick and a pretended command, devised in order that you might not know you were being deserted, and so be distracted from the fight; and that the enemy, thinking that they were being hemmed in on the rear, might be panic-stricken and flee. 6 And yet this guilt which I am charging does not attach to all the Albans; they but followed their general, as you, too, would have done, had I desired to lead you off anywhere. It is Mettius yonder who led this march; Mettius, too, who contrived this war; Mettius who broke the treaty between Roman and Alban. 7 Let another dare such a deed hereafter if I do not speedily visit such a punishment on him as shall be a conspicuous warning to all mankind.”

Thereupon the centurions, sword in hand, surrounded Mettius, while the king proceeded: “May prosperity, favour, and fortune be with the Roman people and myself, and with you, men of Alba! I purpose to bring all the Alban people over to Rome, to grant citizenship to their commons, to enroll the nobles in the senate, to make one city and one state. As formerly from one people the Alban nation was divided into two, so now let it be reunited into one.” 8 Hearing these words the Alban soldiers, themselves unarmed and fenced in by armed men, were constrained, however their wishes might differ, by a common fear, and held their peace. 9 Then Tullus said: “Mettius Fufetius, if you were capable of learning, yourself, to keep faith and abide by treaties, you should have lived that I might teach you this; as it is, since your disposition is incurable, you shall yet by your punishment teach the human race to hold sacred the obligations you have violated. 10 Accordingly, just as a little while ago your heart was divided between the states of Fidenae and Rome, so now you shall give up your body to be torn two ways,” He then brought up two four-horse chariots, and caused Mettius to be stretched out and made fast to them, after which the horses were whipped up in opposite directions, and bore off in each of the cars fragments of the mangled body, where the limbs held to their fastenings. 11 All eyes were turned away from so dreadful a sight. Such was the first and last punishment among the Romans of a kind that disregards the laws of humanity. In other cases we may boast that with no nation have milder punishments found favour.

29 While this was going on, horsemen had already been sent on to Alba to fetch the inhabitants to Rome, and afterwards the legions were marched over to demolish the city. 2 When they entered the gates there was not, indeed, the tumult and panic which usually follow the capture of a city, when its gates have been forced or its walls breached with a ram or its stronghold stormed, when the shouts of the enemy and the rush of armed men through the streets throw the whole town into a wild confusion of blood and fire. 3 But at Alba oppressive silence and grief that found no words quite overwhelmed the spirits of all the people; too dismayed to think what they should take with them and what leave behind, they would ask each other's advice again and again, now standing on their thresholds, and now roaming aimlessly through the houses they were to look upon for that last time. 4 But when at length the horsemen began to be urgent, and clamorously commanded them to come out; when they could now hear the crash of the buildings which were being pulled down in the outskirts of the city; when the dust rising in different quarters had overcast the sky like a gathering cloud; then everybody made haste to carry out what he could, and forth they went, abandoning their lares and penates, and the houses where they had been born and brought up. 5 And now the streets were filled with an unbroken procession of emigrants, whose mutual pity, as they gazed at one another, caused their tears to start afresh; plaintive cries too began to be heard, proceeding chiefly from the women, when they passed the venerable temples beset by armed men, and left in captivity, as it seemed to them, their gods. 6 When the Albans had quitted the city, the Romans everywhere leveled with the ground all buildings, both public and private, and a single hour gave over to destruction and desolation the work of the four hundred years during which Alba had stood. But the temples of the gods were spared, for so the king had decreed.