t knowing either what to do,
or what expedient to think of for his security, in this perplexity and
confusion was taken and put to death. This narrative, for the most part
given by Fabius and Diocles of Peparethos, who seem to be the earliest
historians of the foundation of Rome, is suspected by some because
of its dramatic and fictitious appearance; but it would not wholly be
disbelieved, if men would remember what a poet Fortune sometimes shows
herself, and consider that the Roman power would hardly have reached so
high a pitch without a divinely ordered origin, attended with great and
extraordinary circumstances.

Amulius now being dead and matters quietly disposed, the two brothers
would neither dwell in Alba without governing there, nor take the
government into their own hands during the life of their grandfather.
Having therefore delivered the dominion up into his hands, and paid
their mother befitting honor, they resolved to live by themselves, and
build a city in the same place where they were in their infancy brought
up. This seems the most honorable reason for their departure; though
perhaps it was necessary, having such a body of slaves and fugitives
collected about them, either to come to nothing by dispersing them, or
if not so, then to live with them elsewhere. For that the inhabitants of
Alba did not think fugitives worthy of being received and incorporated
as citizens among them plainly appears from the matter of the women, an
attempt made not wantonly, but of necessity, because they could not get
wives by good-will. For they certainly paid unusual respect and honor to
those whom they thus forcibly seized.

Not long after the first foundation of the city, they opened a sanctuary
of refuge for all fugitives, which they called the temple of the god
Asylaeus, where they received and protected all, delivering none back,
neither the servant to his master, the debtor to his creditor, nor the
murderer into the hands of the magistrate, saying it was a privileged
place, and they could so maintain it by an order of the holy oracle;
insomuch that the city grew presently very populous, for, they say,
it consisted at first of no more than a thousand houses. But of that
hereafter.

Their minds being fully bent upon building, there arose presently a
difference about the place where. Romulus chose what was called Roma
Quadrata, or the Square Rome, and would have the city there. Remus laid
out a piece of ground on the