Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/184

 178 THE CITY. BOOK III. writers present the facts in quite another shape, and it seems to us that if we desire to understand antiquity, our first rule should be to support ourselves upon the evidence that comes from the ancients. Those writers do, indeed, mention an asylum — that is to say, a sacred enclosure, where Romulus admitted all who presented themselves ; and in this he followed the example which many founders of cities had afforded him. But this asylum was not the city ; it was not even ojDened till after the city had been founded and completely built. It was an appendage added to Rome, but was not Rome. It did not even form a part of the city of Romulus; for it was situated at the foot of the Capi- toline hill, whilst the city occupied the Palatine. It is of the first importance to distinguish the double ele- ment of the Roman population. In the asylum are adventurers without land or religion ; on the Palatine are men from Alba — that is to say, men already organized into a society, distributed into gentes and curies, having a domestic worship and laws. The asy- lum is merely a hamlet or suburb, where the huts are built at hazard, and without rule; on the Palatine rises a city, religions and holy. As to the manner in which this city was founded, antiquity abounds in information; we find it in Dio- nysius of Halicarnassus, who collected it from authors older than his time; we find it in Plutarch, in the Fasti of Ovid, in Tacitus, in Cato the Elder, who had consulted the ancient annals; and in two other writers who ought above all to inspire us with great con- fidence, the learned Varro and the learned Verrius Flaccus, whom Festus has preserved in part for us, both men deeply versed in Roman antiquities, lovers oi truth, iu no wise credulous, and well acquainted with