w his vultures, but that Romulus only pretended to have seen
them, and when Remus came to him, then the twelve appeared to Romulus;
for which reason the Romans at the present day draw their auguries
especially from vultures. Herodorus of Pontus says that Hercules
delighted in the sight of a vulture, when about to do any great action.
It is the most harmless of all creatures, for it injures neither crops,
fruit, nor cattle, and lives entirely upon dead corpses. It does not
kill or injure anything that has life, and even abstains from dead birds
from its relationship to them. Now eagles, and owls, and falcons, peck
and kill other birds, in spite of Aeschylus's line,

"Bird-eating bird polluted e'er must be."

Moreover, the other birds are, so to speak, ever before our eyes, and
continually remind us of their presence; but the vulture is seldom seen,
and it is difficult to meet with its young, which has suggested to some
persons the strange idea that vultures come from some other world to pay
us their rare visits, which are like those occurrences which, according
to the soothsayers, do not happen naturally or spontaneously, but by the
interposition of Heaven.

X. When Remus discovered the deceit he was very angry, and, while
Romulus was digging a trench round where the city wall was to be built,
he jeered at the works, and hindered them. At last, as he jumped over
it, he was struck dead either by Romulus himself, or by Celer, one of
his companions. In this fight, Faustulus was slain, and also Pleistinus,
who is said to have been Faustulus's brother and to have helped him in
rearing Romulus and his brother. Celer retired into Tyrrhenia, and from
him the Romans call quick sharp men _Celeres_; Quintus Metellus, who,
when his father died, in a very few days exhibited a show of gladiators,
was surnamed Celer by the Romans in their wonder at the short time he
had spent in his preparations.

XI. Romulus, after burying Remus and his foster-parents in the Remurium,
consecrated his city, having fetched men from Etruria, who taught him
how to perform it according to sacred rites and ceremonies, as though
they were celebrating holy mysteries. A trench was dug in a circle round
what is now the Comitium, and into it were flung first-fruits of all
those things which are honourable and necessary for men. Finally each
man brought a little of the earth of the country from which he came, and
flung it into one heap and mixed it all tog