63 In the reform which Numa is said to have achieved, and which must have affected the auspices as much as the other articles of religion, he is expressly described as having adhered to the superstition and the obscurity which prevailed in all the heathen creeds. If this were true, it is readily accounted for, not so much by the desire to preserve the majesty of the Patricians in presence of the more numerous classes of their inferiors, as by the simple inability of the reformer to set himself or his Patricians, either, free from the shackles of their ancestors. Numa is not represented as having merely favored the order to which he belonged and by which he was elected; but as having likewise united the clients and the artisans, by distributing them in different guilds according to their trades; 69 and as having further consecrated the temples to Faith and Terminus,70 in which all ranks of his vehement people, were alike interested. A heavenly bosom, it was told in after times, beat with love for the mortal king; and the nymph Egeria gave him her knowledge" in return for his devotion. The more practical testimonies to Numa's excellence are the reports that strangers sought him for their arbitrator, because he was wise and just above their own rulers,72 and that the doors of the temple which he built to Janus were, in his reign, closed in peace.73 68 Cic., Rep., II. 14. Tertullian., Apol., 21 (cited by Angelo Mai). 69 Plut., Num., 17. 70 The god of boundaries. Plut., Num., 16. 71 She was a wise divinity, dai μwv σoon, says Plutarch. De Fort. This temple, or rather this arch, beneath which the statue of the two-faced Janus stood, was soon opened in war, after Numa's death. Tullus Hostilius, elected king from the Latin, as Numa had been from the Sabine tribe, represents the reaction of the rudeness and violence, inherent in the character of his people, against the temporary restraint they had been compelled to bear. But if he was the fierce warrior,74 he was also the superstitious and the popular king. He led his forces against many of his neighbours; and though often hard-pressed by his enemies, he conquered with the aid of champions like the three Horatii, or of the gods, upon whom, in the hour of need, he was always swift to call. After Alba, the birthplace, it will be remembered, of Romulus, was destroyed, its inhabitants were brought, in part at least, to Rome, and some of the principal men admitted to the Curies, while to others were assigned places amongst the Celeres, and in the army.75 Tullus sought, it was said, to increase the dignity of his office by assuming, with the consent of the Curies, the insignia common to the monarchs or the magistrates of the surrounding states; 76 while, as if in return for the grant of the Patricians, he was related to have confirmed the right of appeal, which they must have long possessed, from the sentence of the king or his judges to their own assembly." Such 74 "Ferocior etiam Romulo." Liv., I. 22. 75 Liv., I. 30. The remark of the historian describes the whole history of Rome : -"Roma interim crescit Albæ ruinis." 76 Cic., Rep., II. 17. 77 Neither Livy (I. 26) nor Dionysius (III. 22) mentions it as a new right. Cf. Cic., Rep., III. 31; Pro Mil., 3. traditions describe the spread of independence in spirit amongst the Romans, and the commencement of a more liberal treatment of the people whom they vanquished, in the midst of a flood of strife that rose higher than ever around the seven hills. Strange signs were seen, and fearful calamities occurred; in the midst of which Tullus forgot his prowess, and sought to appease the gods for having spent his days in bloodshed. But when he laid down his arms and turned to prayers, he was struck dead. Ancus Marcius, the reputed grandson of Numa, succeeded. He, too, was a warrior; for the times and the people required a lusty, not a gentle king; 8 yet he did not seem to return from his campaigns as Tullus did, with the single wish to renew them without a day's repose. On the contrary, Ancus made it his care, in the intervals of conflict, to provide for such as were willing to live by peaceful occupations. He opened a port at Ostia, whither his dominion already extended; built a prison for the ruffian and the criminal; confirmed the laws which Numa appeared to have made in vain; and left a name renowned for what he had done in peace as well as in The glory of Ancus Marcius was the foundation of the order of the Plebeians. Having overcome, as the nearly authentic story runs, some of the Latin people, he endowed them with certain rights of citizenship, and gave them a dwelling-place upon the Aven 78 Tempora Tullo regi aptiora quam Numæ." Liv., I. 32. 79" Belli pacisque et artibus et gloria par." Liv., I. 35. tine. 80 The privileges they received were, it is true, of a very inferior kind, amounting to no more than a domicile with which abundant occupation and limited protection might be connected; for, although the strangers retained their places in their own Gentes, or Names, if any such they had, they were enrolled in none of the Roman Names, and were totally debarred, not only from all political authority, but even from the right of appeal, by which, so long as they were not clients, their personal freedom could alone have been secured. It is not, therefore, as a new infusion of freemen that they can be regarded in the time of their introduction into Rome; yet their number and their spirit were full of promise for the future. The first of them may have been the settlers whom Romulus and his allies conquered before their city could be founded; but the influx of immigrants, voluntary or involuntary, from Alba, had already far surpassed the few that might then have remained of the earlier class; and when a fresh host came flocking in from the Latin towns which Ancus overcame, there were enough of the old comers and the new, to have a title of their own, and to be regarded as a separate part of the Roman people. Many named and numbered with the rest still dwelt upon their former lands, or on as much of these as they were allowed, saved from the overthrow that had befallen them; so that a country population was formed, at the same time that the population of the city was increased by the Plebe 80 Cic., Rep., II. 18. Dion. Hal., III. 43. Liv., I. 33. ians. The spirit of the new class was more than commensurate with its numbers. Neither they of whom it was at first nor they of whom it was afterwards composed could forget that they had been free before they had been conquered; and their determination to recover themselves in later times is the lifespring of Roman liberty. The genius of Rome to maintain, as well as to make, its conquests is clear as day in the admission and settlement of the Plebeians. It was not merely that the vanquished were spared, nor even that they were adopted, though as inferiors, by the victors; but it was besides, that the territory which the Romans could neither have tilled nor garrisoned by themselves was cultivated and defended by the very men from whom it had been wrested, because they were allowed to hold a part of it, as if they had never been conquered. We shall see hereafter how the Romans could, at the same time, get the lion's share. For the present, it is more judicious to use the materials we actually have in the legend of Tarquinius, in order to measure the ability of the conquering nation to gain something else than lands or subjects from its wars. Tarquinius or Tarquin, the fifth king, came to Rome from Etruria, in the reign of Ancus Marcius. He was reputed to be of Greek descent, and the Etruscan wife whom he had espoused was said to be greatly skilled in the divination for which her people were celebrated throughout Italy. Thus armed at all points with knowledge of which the Romans had |