the temple was called a house.

[112] The remark is Cicero's.

[113] Pliny, Epistles, vii, 27. See another story in Plautus's
Mostellaria.

[114] The letters D.M. found on Roman tombs are the initials of Dei
Manes.

[115] They were called the Penates, that is to say, the gods of the
interior.

[116] In the language of the Roman law the wife, children, and slaves
"are not their own masters."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROMAN CITY

FORMATION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE

=The Kings.=--Tradition relates that Rome for two centuries and a half
was governed by kings. They told not only the names of these kings and
the date of their death, but the life of each.

They said there were seven kings. Romulus, the first king, came from
the Latin city of Alba, founded the hamlet on the Palatine, and killed
his brother who committed the sacrilege of leaping over the sacred
furrow encircling the settlement; he then allied himself with Tatius,
a Sabine king. (A legend of later origin added that he had founded at
the foot of the hill-city a quarter surrounded with a palisade where
he received all the adventurers who wished to come to him.)

Numa Pompilius, the second king, was a Sabine. It was he who organized
the Roman religion, taking counsel with a goddess, the nymph Egeria
who dwelt in a wood.

The third king, Tullus Hostilius, was a warrior. He made war on Alba,
the capital of the Latin confederation, took and destroyed it.

Ancus Martius, the fourth king, was the grandson of Numa and built the
wooden bridge over the Tiber and founded the port of Ostia through
which commerce passed up the river to Rome.

The last three kings were Etruscans. Tarquin the Elder enlarged the
territory of Rome and introduced religious ceremonies from Etruria.
Servius Tullius organized the Roman army, admitting all the citizens
without distinction of birth and separating them into centuries
(companies) according to wealth. The last king, Tarquinius Superbus,
oppressed the great families of Rome; some of the nobles conspired
against him and succeeded in expelling him. Since this time there were
no longer any kings. The Roman state, or as they said, the
commonwealth (res publica) was governed by the consuls, two
magistrates elected each year.

It is impossible to know how much truth there is in this tradition,
for it took shape a long time after the Romans began to write their
history, and it includes so many legends that we cannot accept it in