LEGENDS OF THE FOUNDING OF ROME.

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city was confined within limits much narrower even than the former.

When the Romans, who were not by nature a literary people, began to study their own early history, they found an endless store of poetical legends, accumulated by national and family pride, with a paucity of genuine records almost unparalleled in the annals of any other people. Untrained in the principles of criticism, and caring but little for the naked truth, in comparison with the illustration of the long story of Rome's greatness, they not only accepted the legends without suspicion, but even adhered to them with a wilful neglect of the better authorities within their reach. The records kept by the Pontiffs were destroyed in the burning of the city by the Gauls; and it was far easier to supply their place from popular traditions, and from the lays of ancient bards in praise of the great patrician houses, than to decipher antique inscriptions, and unravel the truths hidden beneath national customs and institutions. Thus it happened that when, in the Augustan age, the poet Virgil and the historian Livy undertook to illustrate the origin of the people, the latter, equally with the former, composed an epic of the city's greatness, of no authority as a history.*

It is quite unnecessary to relate at length the oft-repeated stories, which trace the origin of the Roman people from the East, and which were developed into no less than twenty-five different accounts of the foundation of the city. The connection of the old Latin race with the Pelasgian stock was recognized by the traditions which ascribed the origin of Rome to the latter, as well as by the very ancient legend, that Evander, flying from Arcadia, sixty years before the Trojan War, was directed by his mother, the prophetic nymph Carmenta,† to build a city at the foot of the Palatine hill, which was called Pallantium from his grandson Pallas, or from the Arcadian town of the same name. This venerable tradition was eclipsed in general favour by the more popular legend of the settlement of a Trojan colony in Italy under Æneas.

* It is beyond our province to discuss the great question of the credibility of the early Roman history, which was first raised more than a century ago by L. de Beaufort in his work, Sur l'incertitude des Cinq Prémiers Siècles de l'Histoire Romaine, Utrecht, 1738, and has been decisively settled by Niebuhr. Besides the well-known recent histories of Rome, the reader may consult the work of Sir G. C. Lewis on the subject, and for a popu lar sketch of the poetical sources of the legendary history, the "Introduction" to Lord Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.

In this name (originally Casmenta) we trace that of the Camenae (Casmenae), the Latin Muses.

One form of the story made Æneas himself the founder of Rome, either alone, or in conjunction with the Aborigines of Latium. This is the favourite account with the Greek writers, some of whom even represent Æneas as coming into Italy in company with Ulysses, while others ascribe the foundation of Rome to a son of Ulysses and Circe. The other form of the Trojan story, so well known from its adoption by Virgil and Livy, is said to have been first embodied in a historical work by Q. Fabius Pictor, the earliest Roman annalist in prose, about B.c. 200. Æneas arrives in Italy, after many adventures in his flight from Troy, marries the daughter of Latinus, the king of the Aborigines, builds the city which he names after her Lavinium, and unites the Aborigines with his Trojan followers into the Latin people. Thirty years later, his son Ascanius removes his capital to Alba Longa. After eleven generations of kings, who reign over the Latins at Alba for three hundred years,* Amulius usurps the throne to the exclusion of his elder brother Numitor, whose only daughter Silvia he dooms to perpetual virginity as a Vestal. But Silvia is visited by Mars, and bears the twins Romulus and Remus, whose cradle, exposed by the order of Amulius on the flooded Tiber, is floated to the foot of the Palatine, and overturned by the roots of a wild fig tree, which became, under the name of Ficus Ruminalus, as profound an object of reverence as the sacred olive of Athena.

*

The twins are suckled by a she-wolf,† fed by a woodpecker, and at length found by the king's herdman Faustulus, who brings them up as his own children. The brothers, with a band of other youths, feed their flocks on the Palatine, while the herdmen of Numitor occupy the Aventine. A quarrel between the two bands leads to the recognition of Romulus and Remus, the slaughter of Amulius, and the restoration of Numitor to the throne of Alba, while the twins return to found a new city at their former haunts. Romulus wishes to build on the Palatine, Remus on the Aventine; the quarrel ends in the death of Remus by his brother's hand, and ROME, the city of Romulus, rises on the summit of the Palatine. To people his new city, Romulus opens an asylum for outlaws and runaway slaves. He provides them with wives by the stratagem so well known as the "Rape of the Sabine women." In the war

* The prevalence of the numbers 3 and 10 among the Latins is seen in these legends:-Æneas reigns 3 years; Ascanius, at Lavinium, 30 years; his dynasty at Alba 300 years.

This part of the legend is commemorated by the celebrated bronze wolf of the Capitol already mentioned as a work of Etruscan art, and said to have been dedicated in B.C. 296.