Public opinion in Rome was like a whirlpool. The currents that battled in
it circled round and round, but got nowhere. Calvo, the last of the older
men who had been fathers of the people when Romulus founded the city,
began to wonder if at last the downfall of the chief was near. He could
not see how one man could make peace between the factions, or how he could
dominate them by his single will. But it was never the way of the veteran
pontiff to talk, when talk would do no good, and he waited to learn what
Romulus would do.
What Romulus did was to visit him one night at his villa, alone and in
secret. He had sent his servant beforehand to ask that Calvo would arrange
this, and when some hours later a tall man in the dress of a shepherd
appeared at the gate, the old porter admitted him without question, and
there was no one in the way. The two sat and talked in the solar chamber,
with no witnesses but the stars.
“They do not understand,” Romulus said thoughtfully, when they had been
all over the struggle between the two parties, from beginning to end.
“They do not see that the thing which must be done is the thing which is
right, whether it be by my will or another’s.”
“They are ready, some of them, to declare that a thing is wrong because
you saw it before they did,” said Calvo dryly.
“The people are with me—I believe,” said Romulus, “the soldiers, and the
common folk—but they have no voice in the government. Yet are they men,
Tertius Calvo,—many of them children of Mars as we are. Am I not bound to
do what is right for them, as well as for the dwellers within the
palaces?”
“I have always believed so,” nodded Calvo. “When a man makes a road or a
bridge, he does not make it for the strong and powerful alone; it is even
more for the weak, the ignorant and those who cannot work for themselves.
If the gods meant not this to be so, they would arrange it so that the sun
should shine only on a few, and the rest should dwell in twilight; they
would give rain only to those whom they favor, and good water only to the
chosen of the gods. But the world is not made in that way. Therefore we
who are the chosen of the gods to do their will on earth should be of
equal mind toward all—men, women and children.”
Calvo paused, as if he were thinking how he should say what he thought,
and then went on.
“Whether men are high or low, Romulus, founder of the city, they have
minds and they think, and the gods, who know all men’s souls, hear their
unspoken thoughts as well as ours. Therefore it is not a small thing when
many believe in a man, for their belief, like a river, will grow and grow
until it makes itself felt by those who hold themselves as greater. I have
seen this happen when a good man whom all men loved came to die. He was
greater after his death than when he was alive, for the grief and the love
of the poor encompassed his spirit and made it strong.”
Romulus smiled in the way he did when he was thinking more than he meant
to say. “I shall be very strong when I am dead,” was his only comment. And
Calvo knew that it was the truth.
Romulus was now fifty-eight years old, and Calvo was seventy-two. Both of
them were thinking that it would not be many years when they would both,
perhaps, be talking together in the world of shadows as they were talking
now. Then Romulus told Calvo what he was going to do.
This talk took place a little after the beginning of the fifth month,
which the Romans called Quintilis, but which we call July. In this month
the sun is hot and the air is sluggish and damp, and in the year when
these things happened it was more so than usual. The heralds announced in
the market place, one sultry morning, that there would be a meeting of all
the people at a place called the Goat’s Marsh some miles outside the city.
Romulus would there tell publicly why he sent back their hostages to the
Tuscans and how the lands were to be divided among the soldiers. No longer
would the people have to depend on what was said by one and another, he
would tell them himself. Partly out of curiosity, partly with the
determination that they too would speak, the greater part of the
patricians also went to hear.
The Goat’s Marsh was no longer a marsh, but it had kept its name partly
because of the fig orchards, which bore the little fruits called the goat
figs. There was a plain at the foot of a little hill, which made it a good
place for any public meeting, and the country people for miles around
crowded in to see Romulus and to hear him speak.
They raised a shout as his tall figure appeared but he waved them to
silence.
“I have not much to say,” he began, and in the still air the intense
interest of his listeners seemed to tingle like lightning before a storm,
“but much has been said which was not true. I will not waste time in
repeating lies.
“Ye know that the Tuscan cities were here before we came, and that their
people are many. We cannot kill them or drive them away, if we would. They
are our neighbors.
“We made war against them and we beat them, and took their city Fidenæ and
their city Veii. Before we made peace they had to pay us certain lands.
Before peace was made and the price paid, there were sons of their blood
in our power, whom we kept as a pledge that they were willing to pay the
price. That was all. They were not guilty of any crime against us. They
were here to show that their people meant to keep faith. When peace was
made I sent them back.
“If we had kept them, if we had slain them, if harm had come to them, then
the wrong would have been on our side, and we should have had another war.
Why should there be war between neighbors? Is not friendship better than
hatred?
“Some are angry because I divided the lands, which they gave us as a
price, among the soldiers. Yet who has better right than the men who fight
the battles? This is all of my story. Ye believe?” Then a shout arose to
the very skies,—“Romulus! Romulus! Romulus!”
Suddenly the clouds grew black, and lightnings flashed through them. Just
as Naso was rising to speak, a tremendous clap of thunder shook the earth,
or so it seemed. Winds swept suddenly down from the mountains and howled
across the plains, carrying away mantles and curtains and boughs of trees
in their flight. The crowd broke up in confusion, and the patricians were
heard calling in distress, “Marcus!” “Caius!” “Aulus!” for in the darkness
they could not see their friends a rod away. They hastened to whatever
shelter they could find, and sheets of rain poured from the clouds. It was
one of the most terrific tempests any one there present had ever known. It
did not last long—perhaps an hour—but when it was over Romulus was nowhere
to be seen.
The people had scattered in all directions, but the patricians had managed
to keep together. When the storm was over, they did not know at first that
Romulus had disappeared, but presently one after another of the common
people was heard asking where he was, and no one could be found who knew.
The people searched everywhere without finding so much as the hem of his
mantle. It began to be whispered that he had been killed and his body
hidden away, and black looks were cast upon the public men in their white
robes.
They themselves were perhaps more perplexed and worried than any one else,
for they saw what the people thought. It began to dawn upon them that the
united opinion of hundreds of men, even though of the despised _plebs_, or
peasants, was not exactly a thing to be overlooked. That night was a black
and anxious one.
On the following morning, Naso, Caius Cossus, and some other leaders came
to see Calvo and ask his opinion of the mystery. He had not been at the
Goat’s Marsh the day before, nor had Cossus and others of the friends of
the vanished chief. All the men who had been there, of the upper class,
were enemies of Romulus. It was a most unpleasant position for them.
Calvo heard the story gravely, without making any comment.
The storm had not been nearly so severe in Rome; in fact it was not much
more than an ordinary summer storm. But when Naso told of it he described
it as something beyond anything that could be natural.
“Do you think,” asked Calvo coolly at last, “that the gods had anything to
do with these strange appearances?” Naso could not say.
“There have always been strange happenings about this man,” said Calvo
thoughtfully. “His very birth was strange; his appearance among us was
sudden and unexpected. What the gods send they can also take away.”
“Do you think then,” asked Cossus, “that he was taken by the gods to
heaven?”
“I do not know,” said Calvo. “You say you found no trace of him? But even
a man struck by lightning is not destroyed.”
The frightened men looked at each other.
Fabius the priest was the first to speak.
“It is at any rate not true that we have murdered him,” he said boldly,
“and that is what men are saying in the streets.”
“And it may be true that he has been taken by the gods,” said Naso
eagerly. They went out, still talking, and Calvo smiled to himself. He did
not know just what had happened, but Romulus had told him that after this
last appearance to the people he was going away, never to come back.
Apparently that was what he had done. It did not surprise the old pontiff
at all when he heard, an hour or two after, that Fabius had made a speech
and told the people that Romulus had been taken bodily to the skies, in
the midst of the crashing and flaring of the thunder and lightning, and
that he would no more be seen on earth. There were some unbelievers, but
after a time this was quite generally thought to be true.
[Illustration: Far away, in a cavern on a mountain height, there lived for
many years an old shepherd]
It had the effect of settling all quarrels at once. When they had time to
think it over, both factions agreed that Romulus was right. They could see
it themselves. Within a few years his memory was better loved, more
powerful, and more closely followed in all his ways and sayings than ever
he had been in life.
He never returned to Rome, but far away, in a cavern on a mountain height,
there lived for many years an old shepherd who became very dear to the
simple people around him. He had a servant named Peppo who loved him well
and whom he treated more as a son than as a slave. He had a little plot of
ground which he cultivated, with nine bean-rows and various kinds of
herbs, and a row of beehives stood near the entrance to his cave. There
was nothing he could not do with animals, and the birds used to come and
perch on his fingers and his shoulders and head, and sing. Even the wolves
would not harm him, and one year a mother fox brought up a litter of four
cubs within a few yards of his door. The young people used to come to him
to get him to tell their fortunes, and if he advised against a thing they
never went contrary to what he said. When he died and was buried, his
servant returned to the place from which he came, and then Tertius Calvo,
who was by that time a very old man, learned certainly where Romulus the
founder of Rome had gone. But he kept the story to himself.