tion of
Rome was favorable in ancient times for rapine, even if it were not a
healthy locality. The first beginnings of Rome were violence and robbery,
and the murder of Remus by Romulus is a type of its early history, and
whole subsequent career.

(M765) Romulus and his associate outlaws, now intrenched on the Palatine,
organize a city and government, and extend the limits. The rape of the
Sabines leads to war, and Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, obtains
possession of the Capitoline Hill--the smallest but most famous of the
seven hills on which Rome was subsequently built. In the valley between,
on which the forum was afterward built, the combatants are separated by
the Sabine wives of the outlaws, and the tribes or nations are united
under the name of Ramnes and Tities, the Sabines retaining the capitol and
the Quirinal, and the Romans the Palatine. Some Etruscans, in possession
of the Caelian Hill, are incorporated as a third tribe, called Luceres. But
it is probable that the Sabine element prevailed. Each tribe contains ten
curiae of a hundred citizens, which, with the three hundred horsemen, form
a body of three thousand three hundred citizens, who alone enjoyed
political rights.

(M766) The government, though monarchical, was limited. The king was bound
to lay all questions of moment before the assembly of the thirty curiae,
called the _Comitia Curiata_. But the king had a council called the
_Senate_, composed of one hundred members, who were called _Patres_, or
Fathers, and doubtless were the heads of clans called _Gentes_. The Gentes
were divided into _Familiae_, or families. These _Patres_ were the heads of
the patrician houses--that class who alone had political rights, and who
were Roman citizens.

(M767) Romulus is said to have reigned justly and ably for thirty-seven
years, and no one could be found worthy to succeed him. At length the
Roman tribe, the Ramnes, elected Numa Pompilius, from the Sabines, a man
of wisdom and piety, and said to have acquired his learning from
Pythagoras. This king instituted the religious and civil legislation of
Rome, and built the temple of Janus in the midst of the Forum, whose doors
were shut in peace and opened in war, but were never closed from his death
to the reign of Augustus, but a brief period after the first Punic war.

(M768) He established the College of Pontiffs, who directed all the
ceremonies of religion and regulated festivals and the system of weights
a