ed
out, and spaces were parted off for the senators and knights, where they
might each erect seats for themselves: they were called fori (benches).
They viewed the games from scaffolding which supported seats twelve
feet high from the ground. The show took place; horses and boxers were
sent for, chiefly from Etruria. These solemn games afterwards continued
annual, being variously called the Roman and Great (games). By the same
king also spaces round the forum were portioned off for private
individuals to build on; porticoes and shops were erected.
36. He was also preparing to surround the city with a stone wall, when a
Sabine war obstructed his designs. The matter was so sudden, that the
enemy had passed the Anio before the Roman army could meet and stop
them; great alarm therefore was produced at Rome. And at first they
fought with dubious success, but with great slaughter on both sides.
After this, the enemy's forces being led back into their camp, and the
Romans getting time to make new levies for the war, Tarquin, thinking
that the weakness of his army lay in the want of horse, determined to
add other centuries to the Ramnenses, the Titienses, and Luceres which
Romulus had appointed, and to leave them distinguished by his own name.
Because Romulus had done this by augury, Attus Navius, at that time a
celebrated soothsayer, insisted that no alteration or new appointment of
that kind could be made, unless the birds approved of it. The king,
enraged at this, and, as it is related, ridiculing the art, said, "Come,
thou diviner, tell me, whether what I am thinking on can be done or
not?" When he had tried the matter by divination, he affirmed it
certainly could. "But I was thinking," says he, "whether you could cut
asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, and perform what thy birds
portend may be done." Upon this, as they say, he immediately cut the
whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected
in the comitium, upon the very steps on the left of the senate-house, on
the spot where the transaction occurred. They say that the whetstone
also was deposited in the same place, that it might remain a monument of
that miracle to posterity. There certainly accrued so much honour to
augury and the college of augurs, that nothing was undertaken either in
peace or war without taking the auspices. Assemblies of the people, the
summoning of armies, and affairs of the greatest importance were put
off, whe
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