1.7
Remus is said to have been
the first to receive an omen: six vultures appeared
to him. The augury had just been announced to
Romulus when double the number appeared to him. Each
was saluted as king by his own party. The one side
based their claim on the priority of the appearance,
the other on the number of the birds. Then followed
an angry altercation; heated passions led to
bloodshed; in the tumult Remus was killed. The more
common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped
over the newly raised walls and was forthwith killed
by the enraged Romulus, who exclaimed, "So shall it
be henceforth with every one who leaps over my
walls." Romulus thus became sole ruler, and the city
was called after him, its founder. His first work
was to fortify the Palatine hill where he had been
brought up. The worship of the other deities he
conducted according to the use of Alba, but that of
Hercules in accordance with the Greek rites as they
had been instituted by Evander. It was into this
neighbourhood, according to the tradition, that
Hercules, after he had killed Geryon, drove his
oxen, which were of marvellous beauty. He swam
across the Tiber, driving the oxen before him, and
wearied with his journey, lay down in a grassy place
near the river to rest himself and the oxen, who
enjoyed the rich pasture. When sleep had overtaken
him, as he was heavy with food and wine, a shepherd
living near, called Cacus, presuming on his
strength, and captivated by the beauty of the oxen,
determined to secure them. If he drove them before
him into the cave, their hoof-marks would have led
their owner on his search for them in the same
direction, so he dragged the finest of them
backwards by their tails into his cave. At the first
streak of dawn Hercules awoke, and on surveying his
herd saw that some were missing. He proceeded
towards the nearest cave, to see if any tracks
pointed in that direction, but he found that every
hoof-mark led from the cave and none towards it.
Perplexed and bewildered he began to drive the herd
away from so dangerous a neighbourhood. Some of the
cattle, missing those which were left behind, lowed
as they often do, and an answering low sounded from
the cave. Hercules turned in that direction, and as
Cacus tried to prevent him by force from entering
the cave, he was killed by a blow from Hercules'
club, after vainly appealing for help to his
comrades
The king of the country at that time was
Evander, a refugee from Peloponnesus, who ruled more
by personal ascendancy than by the exercise of
power. He was looked up to with reverence for his
knowledge of letters -a new and marvellous thing
for uncivilised men -but he was still more revered
because of his mother Carmenta, who was believed to
be a divine being and regarded with wonder by all as
an interpreter of Fate, in the days before the
arrival of the Sibyl in Italy. This Evander, alarmed
by the crowd of excited shepherds standing round a
stranger whom they accused of open murder,
ascertained from them the nature of his act and what
led to it. As he observed the bearing and stature of
the man to be more than human in greatness and
august dignity, he asked who he was. When he heard
his name, and learnt his father and his country he
said, "Hercules, son of Jupiter, hail! My mother,
who speaks truth in the name of the gods, has
prophesied that thou shalt join the company of the
gods, and that here a shrine shall be dedicated to
thee, which in ages to come the most powerful nation
in all the world shall call their Ara Maxima and
honour with shine own special worship." Hercules
grasped Evander's right hand and said that he took
the omen to himself and would fulfil the prophecy by
building and consecrating the altar. Then a heifer
of conspicuous beauty was taken from the herd, and
the first sacrifice was offered; the Potitii and
Pinarii, the two principal families in those parts,
were invited by Hercules to assist in the sacrifice
and at the feast which followed. It so happened that
the Potitii were present at the appointed time, and
the entrails were placed before them; the Pinarii
arrived after these were consumed and came in for
the rest of the banquet. It became a permanent
institution from that time, that as long as the
family of the Pinarii survived they should not eat
of the entrails of the victims. The Potitii, after
being instructed by Evander, presided over that rite
for many ages, until they handed over this
ministerial office to public servants after which
the whole race of the Potitii perished. This out of
all foreign rites, was the only one which Romulus
adopted, as though he felt that an immortality won
through courage, of which this was the memorial,
would one day be his own reward.