After the founding of the city and the tragic ending of the day, Romulus
went away, no one knew exactly where. He was gone for some time, He told
Marcus Colonus that he was going to Alba Longa, where some of his men
still were as a garrison for Numa. But he did not stay there many days.
Although he was the founder and in one way the ruler of his city, this did
not mean that he was obliged to stay there to settle all its problems.
Most of them were solved by the common law and common sense of the
colonists. Their ruler had no authority over them contrary to custom, and
custom would apply in one way or another to almost everything they did.
Hence the young man was free to go wherever he saw fit.
The fancy took him to cross the river and see the old woman who had told
him when he was a boy that he was to be the ruler of a great people. He
found her still alive, though so old that her brown face looked like an
old withered nutshell. She glanced up at him keenly.
“Welcome, king,” she said.
Just how much she had heard of his life from traveling traders and
vagabonds, no one can say, but she seemed to know a great deal about it.
She told him that when he returned to his own country, if he followed
certain landmarks and dug in the ground at a certain point near the river
bank some distance from Rome, he would find an altar and a shield of gold.
The shield, she said, had fallen from heaven, and was intended for him,
because he was the especial favorite of Mars, the god of war. He did not
take this very seriously, but he found himself much interested in the ways
of this strange people. Their priests knew how to measure distances, and
mark out squares, and consult the stars. Their metal workers, dyers and
potters knew how to make curious and precious things. The fortune tellers
had a great reputation all over the country. Their name, soothsayers,
meant “those who tell the truth.”
The old woman told him that it was a great mistake for those who were born
under a certain star to try to get away from their fate. If a man were
born to be a ruler and a commander of men, it was useless for him to try
to make himself a farmer or a trader. It would be far better for him to
keep to what he could do well, and buy of others what he needed. This
struck Romulus as directly opposed to the ways of the villagers as he had
seen them. They made for themselves everything they possibly could, and
all of them were farmers. He began to wonder where their future would lead
them. A man like Colonus, or Tullius, or Muraena, or Calvo knew enough to
direct other men. There was not one of the ten who came out from the
Mountain of Fire who was not far superior to most of the people in the
country round about. They were quite as fit to be rulers of a tribe as he
was; in fact, they were more so, in many ways. But if they had stayed
where they were born, they would have gone on to the end of their days,
working with their hands, and owning only their share of the common crop
and the flocks and herds of the village. Here in the land beyond the river
it was different. The powerful nobles and the priesthood ruled, and other
men served.
In talking with the soothsayers, he heard a great deal about the influence
of the stars. The priests also put great faith in this. They divided the
sky into twelve parts, or houses, as they called them, and each of these
was ruled by some star named after a god. In the course of the year the
sun passed through each house, or sign, in turn. If a man were born in the
house of the Ram, which was ruled by Mars the red planet, he would be like
Mars,—a warrior, bold and fearless, and not afraid to venture into new
fields and to do things that other men had not done before. If he were
born in that sign when the planet was in it with the sun, he would be more
a son of Mars in every way. If Venus, the planet which ruled love, were
also in the sign, he would be ruled by reason even in his love affairs,
and his marriage and his wars would be more or less connected. All these
things, according to the soothsayers, were true of Romulus.
Romulus was acute enough to see that these people knew him for a chief,
and that some of what they told him was flattery; but he was not sure how
much of it was. He had not wandered about his world for twenty-odd years
without seeing the difference in people. He knew that the great art of
ruling men successfully lies in understanding their different characters
and not expecting of any person what that person cannot do. The rules of
the villages were very well for a small place, where all of the people
were related. But how would they fit such a miscellaneous collection of
people as seemed likely to gather in the town by the river? His mind was
gradually getting at the problem of governing such a town in such a way
that instead of being a little island of civilization in a sea of
wilderness, it would be a center of civilization in a country inhabited by
all sorts of people who would look up to it and be ruled and influenced by
it. Such an idea, to Colonus, to Emilius in the Sabine village, or even to
the old chief Numa on Alba Longa would have seemed wildly impossible. It
seemed to Romulus that if a band of outlaws had been welded into an
effective fighting troop as he had welded them, a country might be made up
of a great many different sorts of persons living peaceably together. He
grinned as he thought of such a man as his old captain, Ruffo, obeying all
the customs of the colony and giving his whole mind to the tilling of the
soil and the raising of cattle. It would be like trying to harness a wolf,
or stocking a poultry yard with eagles. The thing could not be done. And
yet, when it came to keeping order, Ruffo was wise and just and kind.
One thing he could see very clearly, and that was that for a long time yet
the colonists would have to give especial attention to disciplined
warfare. He wished that there were more of them. If they ever had a
quarrel with the dark Etruscans beyond the river, it would be a fight for
life, for the Etruscans outnumbered them ten to one. It would be well to
trade with them so far as they could, but there again the customs of the
colonists were against him. There was not much that they wished to buy.
When he left the land beyond the river, he paid a farewell visit to the
old witch, and she told him again that he was born to rule. He hoped that
he was.
When he came back to the Square Hill, he found the fathers of the colony
confronting a new problem, which they had no tradition to help them
settle. The problem was what to do with the new settlers who were coming
in for protection and in the hope of getting a living, but who were not of
their own people. Often they had not intelligence enough to understand
what the colonists meant by their customs. This was something that Romulus
had expected. He had his answer ready. He said that there was a god of
whom he had heard, called Asylos, who protected homeless persons and serfs
who had escaped from cruel masters, and that they might set apart a space
outside the walls and dedicate it to this god. There his own soldiers
could live, and there would be a place for any one who came who would work
for a living. And this was done. The people who came in from various
places seeking protection, and were useful in various ways even if they
could only hew wood and draw water, were called after awhile the _plebs_,
the men who helped to fill the town. There was so much to do, and so
little time to do it, that every pair of hands was of value. It would not
do to let every one who came become a citizen, an inhabitant of the city,
because that might destroy all comfort and order within the walls. But the
town grew much faster when it became known that any man not a criminal
could get a living there.
Another circumstance that made it grow was that the country people and the
villagers from farther up the river began to bring down what they had to
sell. Sometimes the Etruscans bought of them, and sometimes the Romans
did. It was the last riverside settlement before the boats went down to
the sea, and it began to be a trading as well as a farming place not many
years after the colonists settled there.
Trading was favored because farming did not altogether supply the needs of
the people. Now and then the river rose and flooded their land. The only
part of the country they could absolutely depend on as yet was the group
of seven hills, where they kept their herds and flocks. One year, when
their grain was ruined, they had to send across the river and buy some of
the Etruscans, in exchange for wool and leather and weapons. Within the
first ten years every one of the colonists had discovered that men who
make their home in a new land must change their ways more or less if they
are to live. While they are changing the land, the land changes them. The
children of these people would not be exactly the same when they grew up
as they would have been if they had stayed in their old home. Their
children’s children would be still more different. It is possible that a
ruler who had not grown up as Romulus had, making his own laws and habits
and managing men more or less by instinct, might have been bewildered and
frightened. Whatever came up, he always had some expedient ready, and
whatever strange specimen of human nature cropped out in the soldiers, or
the traders, or the pagans, he had always seen something like it before.
At the end of ten years the town on the Square Hill had spread out into a
collection of villages and huts in which almost every kind of human being
to be found in that region might have been seen, somewhere. On the
Palatine Hill lived the original ten families and some of their kindred
who had joined them. On the Aventine were barracks for the soldiers, and
also on the steep narrow hill near the river. Clusters of huts here and
there on the plain showed where hunters and fishermen lived, who came up
the hill sometimes with what they had to sell, or came to buy weapons of
the smiths. In the hollow called the Asylum lived the runaway serfs from
Alba Longa, fishermen from the river bank, pagans and foresters from a
dozen places. When there was a feast, all of these various kinds of
families learned something of the worship of Mars, or Maia Dia, or Saturn,
or Pales, or Lupercus. They all knew something about the laws of the
colony, because the rulers took care that any offense against public order
was punished. It was not a good place for thieves or brawlers or idlers.
There was the beginning of a common law.