1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The History of Rome," Livy presents a monumental narrative that chronicles the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, blending historical fact with rich, rhetorical storytelling. This complete edition in four volumes captures Livy's distinctive literary style, characterized by its eloquent prose and vivid characterizations, reflecting the socio-political ethos of ancient Rome. Spanning from its mythical origins to the early days of the Empire, Livy's work not only serves as a historical account but also as a moral commentary on the virtues and vices that shaped Roman civilization, offering insight into themes of fate, moral decay, and the ethos of a republic facing internal and external challenges. Titus Livius, known as Livy, was a Roman historian born in 59 BC whose experiences in a turbulent political landscape profoundly influenced his writing. His dedication to preserving Roman history stemmed from a desire to imbue future generations with an understanding and appreciation of Rome's glorious past, amidst a world marked by turmoil and decadence. Livy's meticulous research and philosophical reflections position his work as a foundational text in the study of Roman history and civilization, exemplifying his quest for moral exemplarity in societal governance. "The History of Rome" is highly recommended for readers interested in understanding the complexities of Roman history and its enduring legacy. Livy's engaging narrative not only enlightens readers about ancient Rome but also invites contemplation on contemporary issues regarding governance, ethics, and civic duty. This comprehensive work remains an essential scholarship for both enthusiasts and serious historians alike. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
THE HISTORY OF ROME (Complete Edition in 4 Volumes)
Table of Contents
Introduction
This collection presents Livy’s The History of Rome in a complete four-volume arrangement, offering a continuous reading of his monumental narrative of Rome’s past. Written by Titus Livius in the late first century BCE and early first century CE, the work undertakes to trace the city’s emergence from traditional origins to the world power familiar to Livy’s contemporaries. The present edition gathers the text in an accessible sequence, inviting readers to encounter the scope, texture, and moral reflection that have long made this history central to the study of antiquity. It serves both as literature and as a resource for historical understanding.
Livy’s overarching project is to present a connected account of Rome’s development across centuries, moving from legendary beginnings into periods anchored by written records. He is concerned with causes and consequences, with the formation of institutions, and with the interplay between character and circumstance. The narrative proceeds chronologically, illuminating how civic practices, political offices, and customary law take shape, and how Rome’s fortunes evolve. This comprehensive sweep enables readers to follow the transformation of a small community into a polity of wide influence, while observing the recurring pressures—internal and external—that test, refine, and at times imperil the commonwealth.
The purpose of this collection is to gather the full run of The History of Rome as arranged in four volumes, thereby preserving continuity while allowing manageable points of entry. Each volume advances the same sustained inquiry: how virtue, discipline, and governance shape collective life, and how memory preserves or distorts the past. Livy’s history is not merely a record of events; it is also a reflection on reputation, moral exemplars, and the uses of historical experience. The set thus furnishes a unified canvas on which readers can examine patterns of action and motive across changing social and political conditions.
The work belongs to the genre of classical historical prose. Within this principal form, Livy employs elements characteristic of ancient historiography: reported speeches, character sketches, annalistic framing, digressions on customs and law, notices of religious observance, and occasional antiquarian explanations. The narrative often incorporates legendary material in its early stretches, moving toward more documentary periods as sources become firmer. Battle descriptions, diplomatic exchanges, and civic debates appear as parts of a single narrative design rather than as separate genres. The result is a literary history that integrates storytelling with analysis, documenting both institutional continuity and human contingency.
The unifying themes that bind these volumes are the education of character through history, the responsibilities of leadership, and the endurance of institutions under strain. Livy continually returns to questions of civic virtue, public duty, and the limits of power. He is attentive to how prosperity and adversity alike test communities, how ambition can serve or subvert the common good, and how laws and customs channel conflict. Religious rites and omens, as Livy presents them, form part of a shared civic language that orders public life. Fortune, discipline, and prudence intersect throughout, shaping outcomes without erasing human agency.
Stylistically, Livy is a master of clear, elevated prose capable of both breadth and intimacy. He constructs expansive narrative arcs and then narrows to vivid scenes that clarify motives and reveal character. His reported speeches, a hallmark of ancient history-writing, crystallize competing principles and interpretive lenses rather than transcribe verbatim exchanges. Livy’s compositional rhythm balances year-by-year continuity with set pieces that punctuate and interpret turning points. The diction is dignified without being obscure, and the transitions are engineered to keep causality in view. This combination of architectural control and dramatic immediacy helps sustain attention across long spans.
These volumes remain significant because they shape the framework through which later ages have understood early Rome and the Republic. Livy is a principal witness for institutions, customs, and events not otherwise documented in such detail. His history became a touchstone for education, rhetoric, and political thought, informing debates about liberty, law, and the responsibilities of office. As Latin prose, it exemplifies clarity and amplitude. As historical writing, it demonstrates how narrative can preserve, evaluate, and sometimes question collective memory. Scholars, students, and general readers continue to turn to Livy for sources, models, and moral reflection.
A reader-friendly path through this collection is to keep in view Livy’s dual commitment to record and interpretation. Early portions contain legendary narratives alongside civic and religious practices, presented as meaningful traditions rather than as strict reportage. Increasingly, the history rests on written accounts and public records, but Livy still emphasizes the role of character and chance. The four volumes follow this evolution without breaking the thread of inquiry. Each section stands on its own while contributing to an arc that treats Rome’s growth, conflict, accommodation, and reform as recurrent, interwoven features of public life.
The division into four volumes serves practical and interpretive ends. It allows the reader to pause at natural junctures, consider the consolidation of institutions, and observe how Livy calibrates scale—moving from the local to the expansive as Rome’s sphere widens. Within each volume, recurring structures organize the narrative: annual magistracies, rites and portents, debates on law and policy, and accounts of negotiation and warfare. The arrangement underscores Livy’s method: durable frameworks persist while circumstances change. Readers can, therefore, trace long continuities and sudden shifts without losing sight of the meanings Livy draws from particular episodes.
Authorship under Augustus provides crucial context without determining the history’s substance. Livy writes in a period of restoration and reorganization, which heightens his sensitivity to origins, precedent, and renewal. He neither confines the past to a mirror of his present nor abstracts it from contemporary concern. Instead, he treats history as a reservoir of exempla, useful for reflection, not for simple imitation. The volumes invite consideration of how civic order is built, how it frays, and how it can be repaired. Livy’s perspective—retrospective yet engaged—encourages a measured, critical reading rather than deference to authority.
The text types embedded in the narrative reward attentive reading. Reported speeches model deliberation; they are literary reconstructions that expose competing values and strategic choices. Digressions on ritual or law illuminate the foundations of collective life. Notices of prodigies and vows mark moments when public anxiety and resolve intersect. These features do not interrupt the history; they articulate the means by which Livy interprets events. Through them, the reader gains access to the processes by which communities explain themselves, hold leaders accountable, and assign praise or blame—processes as central to understanding Rome as the events themselves.
Taken together, these four volumes offer more than an archive of episodes: they present an inquiry into how a city remembers, judges, and renews itself. Livy’s history endures because it combines narrative power, analytical clarity, and ethical seriousness. It shows how institutions and individuals interact, how customs shape outcomes, and how the past provides orientation without dictating the future. This collection enables a sustained engagement with that achievement in an integral form. Readers may enter for the language, the history, or the reflection on public life; they will find all three consistently, compellingly interwoven.
Author Biography
Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian who lived from the final decades of the Republic into the early Principate. Born in Patavium (modern Padua) in northern Italy, he composed a monumental prose history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, tracing the citys story from its legendary beginnings to his own age. Writing under Augustus, he aimed to present Romes past as a reservoir of moral examples and civic instruction. His work shaped Roman cultural memory, became a foundational source for later writers, and remains one of the chief narratives through which modern readers approach early Roman history.
Little is securely known about his schooling, but his education reflected the rhetorical training typical of an Italian elite under the late Republic. He wrote in an age saturated with declamation and moral exempla, and his prose carries the imprint of that environment. He drew on earlier Roman annalists and on Hellenistic historiography, especially for military analysis. Polybius, among others, supplied models and information for events such as the Punic Wars, while native annalists contributed traditions and chronological frameworks. The civil conflicts that preceded Augustus informed his sensitivity to political instability, even as his historical project emphasized consensus, civic virtue, and exemplary conduct.
Livy seems to have spent extended periods in Rome during the Augustan regime, composing his history over many years without holding public office or command. Ancient testimony portrays him as moving within educated circles and taking an interest in the formation of future leaders; one report credits him with encouraging the young Claudius to pursue historical writing. He also produced other worksphilosophical or rhetorical in characterthat do not survive. Ab Urbe Condita, however, absorbed the bulk of his energies. Its scope, the careful arrangement of books, and the sustained literary craft mark a career dedicated to turning Romes past into an instructive national narrative.
Ab Urbe Condita originally comprised well over a hundred books, likely arranged in larger pentads and decades to aid reading and memory. Only a portion survives, preserving significant stretches of the early Republic and major episodes of the middle Republic, including the conflicts with Carthage. Much of the lost material is known through brief ancient summaries, the Periochae, and through scattered quotations. The surviving narrative is prized both for its vivid storytellingset speeches, sharply drawn characters, and thematic patterningand for the way it gathers disparate traditions into a coherent arc, even when the underlying evidence was uneven or controversial.
Livy wrote history as moral inquiry as much as record, inviting readers to measure present conduct against remembered virtue. He foregrounded exempla, the customs of the ancestors, and the educative power of the past. His handling of sources has provoked debate since antiquity: admirers praised his literary power and ethical clarity, while critics questioned his credulity toward annalistic reports or legendary episodes. Where multiple accounts existed, he often signaled alternatives, yet he privileged narrative coherence and character over archival detail. His work reflects the rhetorical schooling of his era, shaping speeches and scenes to explore responsibility, fortune, and civic duty.
In later life Livy appears to have returned to Patavium, maintaining the reputation of a respected man of letters rather than a political figure. He continued to be read in his own day and into the first century CE, and his name became closely associated with Romes classical past. He died in the early Principate, after completing a substantial portion of his project. Antiquity remembered him as a provincial writer who mastered the capitals literary culture, a perspective that shaped his treatment of Romes expansion beyond the city. Surviving biographical remarks are sparse but present him as a diligent, independent historian.
Livys legacy is twofold: as a principal source for early and middle Republican history, and as a model of historical prose. His books circulated in late antiquity in selections and epitomes, and the medieval tradition preserved summaries and excerpts. Renaissance humanists restored wider access to the text, and thinkers such as Machiavelli drew political lessons from his narratives. Modern scholarship reads him both for evidencehandled with source criticismand for insight into how Romans constructed memory and identity. Despite gaps in transmission, his history remains a cornerstone for understanding Roman values, institutions, and the literary imagination of the Augustan age.
Historical Context
Titus Livius, born in 59 BC at Patavium (modern Padua) and deceased in AD 17, wrote amid the consolidation of Augustus’ Principate. Educated in rhetoric and philosophy, he moved to Rome in the 30s BC, as civil conflict yielded to a new political order. Without holding office, he devoted himself to composing Ab Urbe Condita, a monumental history that aligned moral reflection with national memory. The Roman world he inhabited had emerged from decades of upheaval—Philippi (42 BC), Perusia (41–40 BC), and Actium (31 BC)—and sought stability in law, ritual, and literature. Livy addressed this need by recovering exemplary pasts.
Ab Urbe Condita originally comprised 142 books, narrating Roman history from mythic origins—Aeneas and Romulus, traditionally 753 BC—through the early reign of Augustus, probably to 9 BC. Of this corpus, 35 books survive intact or substantially: 1–10 and 21–45, with gaps in the later sequence. Ancient summaries (Periochae) outline the whole, while fragments and testimonia supplement losses. Modern four-volume editions typically assemble the extant books, summaries, and key fragments to reconstruct the arc of Rome’s growth. Livy’s scope, spanning monarchy, republic, and emergent empire, offers a unified interpretive field for episodes dispersed across centuries.
Livy’s research drew on diverse repositories: pontifical records (Annales Maximi), senatorial decrees, treaties, and legal collections such as the Twelve Tables (451–450 BC). He consulted annalists and antiquarians—Fabius Pictor, Cato the Elder, Valerius Antias, Licinius Macer—and integrated Greek authorities, notably Polybius, for the middle Republic. Public inscriptions organized under Augustus, including the Fasti Capitolini and Fasti Triumphales (set up in the Forum Romanum between 18 and 12 BC), provided consular and triumphal lists. Oral traditions, topographical lore, and family archives further supplied details. Livy weighed conflicting versions, often flagging exaggerations or gaps inherent in early records.
The constitutional evolution structures Livy’s narrative. After the expulsion of the Tarquins (traditionally 509 BC), consuls replaced kings, the Senate assumed advisory primacy, and magistracies proliferated: dictatorship for emergencies, censors from 443 BC to regulate mores and the census, and praetors for jurisdiction. Social conflict produced tribunes of the plebs in 494 BC and successive secessions (494, 449, 287 BC), culminating in the Lex Hortensia (287 BC), which made plebiscites binding on all citizens. The Licinian–Sextian laws (367 BC) opened the consulship to plebeians. Annual consular dating and civic ritual anchor the annalistic rhythm of the whole work.
Italy’s consolidation frames early and middle narratives. Rome engaged Etruscans, Latins, Sabines, Volsci, Aequi, and the great Etruscan city Veii, captured in 396 BC by Marcus Furius Camillus. The Gallic sack (390/387 BC) marked crisis and renewal. Three Samnite Wars (343–341, 327–304, 298–290 BC) and the Latin War (340–338 BC), with milestones like the Via Appia (312 BC), extended Roman hegemony. Diplomacy, colonization, and roads integrated the peninsula. The Social War (91–88 BC) and subsequent laws—Lex Iulia (90 BC), Lex Plautia Papiria (89 BC)—extended citizenship, transforming allies into Romans and reshaping the civic body Livy chronicles.
Mediterranean expansion supplies themes of power and morality. In the First Punic War (264–241 BC) Rome built fleets, devised the corvus, and gained Sicily. The Second Punic War (218–201 BC) brought Hannibal, Trebia and Trasimene, catastrophe at Cannae (216 BC), Fabian delay, and Scipio Africanus’ victory at Zama (202 BC). The Third Punic War (149–146 BC) ended Carthage. Macedonian conflicts (215–205, 200–197, 171–168 BC) and the war against Antiochus III (defeated at Magnesia, 190 BC) extended influence into Greece and Asia. Wealth, slaves, and Greek culture followed conquest, sharpening Livy’s concern for discipline, simplicity, and civic concord.
The late Republic’s convulsions shadow Livy’s moral imagination. Attempts at reform by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (133–121 BC), the Jugurthine War (112–105 BC), and Gaius Marius’ repeated consulships and military adjustments (from 107 BC) altered political and military norms. The Social War (91–88 BC) widened citizenship; Sulla’s march, dictatorship (82–79 BC), and proscriptions eroded legality. Pompey and Crassus rose; Sertorius resisted in Spain; Spartacus’ revolt (73–71 BC) exposed social fracture. Catiline’s conspiracy (63 BC), Caesar’s Gallic campaigns (58–50 BC), and the Civil War (49–45 BC) culminated in the Ides of March (44 BC), a cautionary horizon for Livy’s exempla.
Augustus’ ascendancy contextualizes Livy’s work. Victories at Philippi (42 BC) and Actium (31 BC) preceded settlements in 27 and 23 BC that reshaped Roman governance. Moral and religious renewal accompanied statecraft: the Ara Pacis was decreed in 13 BC and dedicated in 9 BC; the Forum of Augustus opened in 2 BC; the leges Iuliae (18–17 BC) addressed marriage and luxury. Libraries on the Palatine (from 28 BC) and in the Porticus Octaviae enhanced scholarly access. Livy was friendly with the regime yet retained independence, later described as Pompeianus for treating Pompey with respect (Tacitus, Annals 4.34).
Livy wrote within a vibrant literary and scholarly milieu. Virgil (70–19 BC) provided a mythic teleology in the Aeneid; Horace (65–8 BC) refined ethical poetics; Propertius and Tibullus shaped elegy; Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18) dramatized Augustan tensions before exile in AD 8. Antiquarians such as Varro (116–27 BC) and Verrius Flaccus supplied institutional learning; Dionysius of Halicarnassus produced Roman Antiquities around 7 BC; Sallust (86–35 BC) modeled moralized monographs. Public libraries and patronage fostered research. Critics, as reported by Quintilian, remarked on Livy’s patavinitas, a regional coloring in diction that distinguished his expansive, periodic prose.
Livy’s method fuses annalistic structure with rhetorical art. Each year’s entry marshals magistracies, prodigies, legislation, and campaigns. Speeches dramatize deliberation, give voice to competing policies, and test character, while digressions clarify customs, offices, and rituals. He foregrounds exempla—Brutus, Cloelia, Camillus, the Scipios—as moral lenses, praising fides, pietas, and disciplina, and condemning superbia and luxuria. He signals variant versions and the limits of memory, acknowledging embellishment in sources like Valerius Antias. Topographical precision—temples, gates, fora—roots narrative in place, aligning readers’ urban experience with recovered memory, a technique heightened under the Augustan restoration of monuments.
Religion and ritual organize causality and community. Augurs and pontifices regulate auspices; consuls and dictators take vows before campaigns; the Senate orders expiations for prodigies—falls of stones, monstrous births, eclipses—restoring pax deorum. The Sibylline Books, kept by quindecimviri, are consulted in crisis. Triumphs ritualize victory; lustrations cleanse city and army; the Vestal Virgins guard Rome’s fate. Festivals and vows link battlefield and temple, inscribing piety in stone through dedications. Augustan revival of priesthoods and cult sites offered contemporary parallels that validated Livy’s insistence that sound ritual, matched by sound character, underwrites political stability and success.
Military institutions provide a continual index of civic health. From the Servian classes to the manipular legion—velites, hastati, principes, triarii—Livy narrates organization, equipment, and training. Rome’s naval expansion during the First Punic War, including quinqueremes and the corvus, exemplifies innovation under pressure. Command is structured by imperium, auspices, and accountability in triumphs or trials. Strategic debates pit delay against assault, as with Fabius Maximus and Marcellus; Scipio Africanus models adaptive initiative. Later, Marian cohorts and professional armies loosen the militia’s civic bonds, a development Livy judges against earlier norms of discipline and duty.
Urban growth and infrastructure are vital characters in the story. The Servian Wall and post-Gallic rebuilding redefine Rome’s footprint. Aqueducts—the Aqua Appia (312 BC), Anio Vetus (272 BC), and Aqua Marcia (144 BC)—expand capacity and spectacle. Roads—the Via Appia (312 BC), Via Flaminia (220 BC), and others—bind Italy, structuring campaigning seasons and colonization. Temples vowed in danger and dedicated in victory materialize memory, while archives and law tablets sanctify institutions. Augustus’ building program, including restoring eighty-two temples in 28 BC and opening the Forum of Augustus in 2 BC, overlays Livy’s antiquarian city with a renewed monumental pedagogy.
Social orders and domestic norms shape Livy’s moral frame. Patricians and plebeians, senators and equestrians, citizens and allies navigate the web of status and clientela. The paterfamilias exercises patria potestas, directing lineage, property, and ritual. Women act decisively in crises—from the Sabine intervention to the matrons’ protests leading to the repeal of the Lex Oppia (215–195 BC). Conquest multiplies slaves; manumission creates freedmen whose obligations reconfigure urban labor. Censors police luxury and enrollment; sumptuary laws and funerary customs index anxiety over wealth. Family discipline and civic moderation appear as bulwarks against internal decay.
Economic and administrative transformations accompany expansion. Spoils, indemnities, and mines fuel budgets and urban embellishment, but ager publicus and uneven landholding intensify conflict from the Licinian–Sextian measures (367 BC) to the Gracchan reforms (133 BC). Colonies secure frontiers and distribute citizens, while the denarius, introduced around 211 BC, stabilizes payments during prolonged war. Provincial governance after 241 BC is constrained by oaths and trials de repetundis, yet exploitation by publicani prompts scandal and legal innovation. Grain from Sicily and Africa, silver from Spain, and luxury goods from Greece and Asia test republican frugality and administrative oversight.
The text’s survival and reception shape how all four volumes are read. The Periochae, late-antique summaries, outline each of the 142 books, preserving sequence where text is lost. For Books 21–45, key manuscripts such as the Mediceus and Puteanus provide the base; Books 1–10 descend from a separate tradition. Renaissance humanists revived Livy—Petrarch collected manuscripts—and the editio princeps was printed at Rome in 1469 by Sweynheym and Pannartz. Philemon Holland’s English translation (1600) broadened access. Modern critical editions and translations gather the surviving books alongside summaries and fragments, restoring the narrative’s intended scale and cadence.
Livy’s history became a civic school for later ages. Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (completed 1519; printed 1531) mined republican lessons on liberty, corruption, and renewal; early modern educators used Livian exempla to form statesmen. Modern historiography, epigraphy, and archaeology refine his chronology and correct legends while often confirming ritual structures and institutional rhythms. In the Augustan setting, Livy transformed scattered memories into a coherent moral narrative that could stabilize a traumatized polity. Read as a whole, the surviving books, summaries, and fragments offer a sustained meditation on power, character, and fortune in Rome’s ascent to world empire.
Synopsis (Selection)
The History of Rome Vol. 1
From Rome’s legendary origins and regal era through the expulsion of the Tarquins and the founding of the Republic, it outlines early institutions and the Struggle of the Orders. It closes with Rome’s defensive wars against Italic neighbors and the shock of the Gallic sack.
The History of Rome Vol. 2
Charts Rome’s recovery and consolidation after the sack, describing constitutional evolution and the campaigns that secure dominance in Italy, notably the Latin and Samnite Wars. It proceeds to the conflicts with Pyrrhus that draw Rome into wider Mediterranean politics.
The History of Rome Vol. 3
Focuses on the Punic struggle, especially the Second Punic War—Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, Rome’s setbacks and strategic adaptation, and Scipio Africanus’s counteroffensive. It culminates in Carthage’s defeat and Rome’s ascendancy in the western Mediterranean.
The History of Rome Vol. 4
Recounts Rome’s eastern engagements, including the Macedonian and Syrian Wars against Philip V, Antiochus III, and Perseus, alongside related campaigns and domestic developments. It concludes with Rome’s supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean and the settlement of Greece and Macedonia.
THE HISTORY OF ROME (Complete Edition in 4 Volumes)
The History of Rome Vol. 1
Book I
The coming of Æneas into Italy, and his achievements there; the reign of Ascanius in Alba, and of the other Sylvian kings. Romulus and Remus born. Amulius killed. Romulus builds Rome; forms a senate; makes war upon the Sabines; presents the opima spolia to Jupiter Feretrius; divides the people into curiæ; his victories; is deified. Numa institutes the rites of religious worship; builds a temple to Janus; and having made peace with all his neighbours, closes it for the first time; enjoys a peaceful reign, and is succeeded by Tullus Hostilius. War with the Albans; combat of the Horatii and Curiatii. Alba demolished, and the Albans made citizens of Rome. War declared against the Sabines; Tullus killed by lightning. Ancus Marcius renews the religious institutions of Numa; conquers the Latins, confers on them the right of citizenship, and assigns them the Aventine hill to dwell on; adds the hill Janiculum to the city; enlarges the bounds of the empire. In his reign Lucumo comes to Rome; assumes the name of Tarquinius; and, after the death of Ancus, is raised to the throne. He increases the senate, by adding to it a hundred new senators; defeats the Latins and Sabines; augments the centuries of knights; builds a wall round the city; makes the common sewers; is slain by the sons of Ancus after a reign of thirty-eight years; and is succeeded by Servius Tullius. He institutes the census; closes the lustrum, in which eighty thousand citizens are said to have been enrolled; divides the people into classes and centuries; enlarges the Pomœrium, and adds the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline hills to the city; after a reign of forty years, is murdered by L. Tarquin, afterwards surnamed Superbus. He usurps the crown. Tarquin makes war on the Volsci, and, with the plunder taken from them, builds a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus. By a stratagem of his son, Sextus Tarquin, he reduces the city of Gabii; after a reign of twenty-five years is dethroned and banished, in consequence of the forcible violation of the person of Lucretia by his son Sextus. L. Junius Brutus and L. Tarquinius Collatinus first created consuls.
Preface
Whether in tracing the history of the Roman people, from the foundation of the city, I shall employ myself to a useful purpose,1 I am neither very certain, nor, if I were, dare I say: inasmuch as I observe, that it is both an old and hackneyed practice,2 later authors always supposing that they will either adduce something more authentic in the facts, or, that they will excel the less polished ancients in their style of writing. Be that as it may, it will, at all events, be a satisfaction to me, that I too have contributed my share3 to perpetuate the achievements of a people, the lords of the world; and if, amidst so great a number of historians,4 my reputation should remain in obscurity, I may console myself with the celebrity and lustre of those who shall stand in the way of my fame. Moreover, the subject is both of immense labour, as being one which must be traced back for more than seven hundred years, and which, having set out from small beginnings, has increased to such a degree that it is now distressed by its own magnitude. And, to most readers, I doubt not but that the first origin and the events immediately succeeding, will afford but little pleasure, while they will be hastening to these later times,5 in which the strength of this overgrown people has for a long period been working its own destruction. I, on the contrary, shall seek this, as a reward of my labour, viz. to withdraw myself from the view of the calamities, which our age has witnessed for so many years, so long as I am reviewing with my whole attention these ancient times, being free from every care6 that may distract a writer's mind, though it cannot warp it from the truth. The traditions which have come down to us of what happened before the building of the city, or before its building was contemplated, as being suitable rather to the fictions of poetry than to the genuine records of history, I have no intention either to affirm or refute. This indulgence is conceded to antiquity, that by blending things human with divine, it may make the origin of cities appear more venerable: and if any people might be allowed to consecrate their origin, and to ascribe it to the gods as its authors, such is the renown of the Roman people in war, that when they represent Mars, in particular, as their own parent and that of their founder, the nations of the world may submit to this as patiently as they submit to their sovereignty.—But in whatever way these and such like matters shall be attended to, or judged of, I shall not deem of great importance. I would have every man apply his mind seriously to consider these points, viz. what their life and what their manners were; through what men and by what measures, both in peace and in war, their empire was acquired7 and extended; then, as discipline gradually declined, let him follow in his thoughts their morals, at first as slightly giving way, anon how they sunk more and more, then began to fall headlong, until he reaches the present times, when we can neither endure our vices, nor their remedies. This it is which is particularly salutary and profitable in the study of history, that you behold instances of every variety of conduct displayed on a conspicuous monument; that from thence you may select for yourself and for your country that which you may imitate; thence note what is shameful in the undertaking, and shameful in the result, which you may avoid. But either a fond partiality for the task I have undertaken deceives me, or there never was any state either greater, or more moral, or richer in good examples, nor one into which luxury and avarice made their entrance so late, and where poverty and frugality were so much and so long honoured; so that the less wealth there was, the less desire was there. Of late, riches have introduced avarice, and excessive pleasures a longing for them, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing else. But let complaints, which will not be agreeable even then, when perhaps they will be also necessary, be kept aloof at least from the first stage of commencing so great a work. We should rather, if it was usual with us (historians) as it is with poets, begin with good omens, vows and prayers to the gods and goddesses to vouchsafe good success to our efforts in so arduous an undertaking.
1
Now first of all it is sufficiently established that, Troy having been taken, the utmost severity was shown to all the other Trojans; but that towards two, Æneas and Antenor, the Greeks forbore all the rights of war, both in accordance with an ancient tie of hospitality, and because they had ever been the advisers of peace, and of the restoration of Helen—then that Antenor after various vicissitudes came into the innermost bay of the Adriatic Sea, with a body of the Heneti, who having been driven from Paphlagonia in consequence of a civil commotion, were in quest both of a settlement and a leader, their king Pylæmenes having been lost at Troy; and that the Heneti and Trojans, having expelled the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, took possession of the country; and the place where they first landed is called Troy; from whence also the name of Trojan is given to the canton; but the nation in general is called Veneti: that Æneas was driven from home by a similar calamity, but the fates leading him to the founding of a greater empire, he came first to Macedonia: that he sailed from thence to Sicily in quest of a settlement: that from Sicily he made for the Laurentine territory; this place also has the name of Troy. When the Trojans, having disembarked there, were driving plunder from the lands,—as being persons to whom, after their almost immeasurable wandering, nothing was left but their arms and ships,—Latinus the king, and the Aborigines, who then occupied those places, assembled in arms from the city and country to repel the violence of the new-comers. On this point the tradition is two-fold: some say, that Latinus, after being overcome in battle, made first a peace, and then an alliance with Æneas: others, that when the armies were drawn out in battle-array, before the signals were sounded, Latinus advanced to the front of the troops and invited the leader of the adventurers to a conference. That he then inquired who they were, whence (they had come), or by what casualty they had left their home, and in quest of what they had landed on the Laurentine territory: after he heard that the host were Trojans, their chief Æneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, and that, driven from their own country and their homes, which had been destroyed by fire, they were seeking a settlement and a place for building a town, struck with admiration of the noble origin of the nation and of the hero, and their spirit, alike prepared for peace or war, he confirmed the assurance of future friendship by giving his right hand: that upon this a compact was struck between the chiefs, and mutual greetings passed between the armies: that Æneas was hospitably entertained by Latinus: that Latinus, in the presence of his household gods, added a family league to the public one, by giving Æneas his daughter in marriage. This event confirms the Trojans in the hope of at length terminating their wanderings by a fixed and permanent settlement. They build a town. Æneas calls it Lavinium, after the name of his wife. In a short time, too, a son was the issue of the new marriage, to whom his parents gave the name of Ascanius.
2
The Aborigines and Trojans were soon after attacked together in war. Turnus, king of the Rutulians, to whom Lavinia had been affianced before the coming of Æneas, enraged that a stranger had been preferred to himself, made war on Æneas and Latinus together. Neither side came off from that contest with cause for rejoicing. The Rutulians were vanquished; the victorious Aborigines and Trojans lost their leader Latinus. Upon this Turnus and the Rutulians, diffident of their strength, have recourse to the flourishing state of the Etruscans, and their king Mezentius; who holding his court at Cœre, at that time an opulent town, being by no means pleased, even from the commencement, at the founding of the new city, and then considering that the Trojan power was increasing much more than was altogether consistent with the safety of the neighbouring states, without reluctance joined his forces in alliance with the Rutulians. Æneas, in order to conciliate the minds of the Aborigines to meet the terror of so serious a war, called both nations Latins, so that they might all be not only under the same laws, but also the same name. Nor after that did the Aborigines yield to the Trojans in zeal and fidelity towards their king Æneas; relying therefore on this disposition of the two nations, who were now daily coalescing more and more, although Etruria was so powerful, that it filled with the fame of its prowess not only the land, but the sea also, through the whole length of Italy, from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait, though he might have repelled the war by means of fortifications, yet he led out his forces to the field. Upon this a battle ensued successful to the Latins, the last also of the mortal acts of Æneas. He was buried, by whatever name human and divine laws require him to be called,8 on the banks of the river Numicius. They call him Jupiter Indiges.
3
Ascanius, the son of Æneas, was not yet old enough to take the government upon him; that government, however, remained secure for him till the age of maturity. In the interim, the Latin state and the kingdom of his grandfather and father was secured for the boy under the regency of his mother (such capacity was there in Lavinia). I have some doubts (for who can state as certain a matter of such antiquity) whether this was the Ascanius, or one older than he, born of Creusa before the fall of Troy, and the companion of his father in his flight from thence, the same whom, being called Iulus, the Julian family call the author of their name. This Ascanius, wheresoever and of whatever mother born, (it is at least certain that he was the son of Æneas,) Lavinium being overstocked with inhabitants, left that flourishing and, considering these times, wealthy city to his mother or step-mother, and built for himself a new one at the foot of Mount Alba, which, being extended on the ridge of a hill, was, from its situation, called Longa Alba. Between the founding of Lavinium and the transplanting this colony to Longa Alba, about thirty years intervened. Yet its power had increased to such a degree, especially after the defeat of the Etrurians, that not even upon the death of Æneas, nor after that, during the regency of Lavinia, and the first essays of the young prince's reign, did Mezentius, the Etrurians, or any other of its neighbours dare to take up arms against it. A peace had been concluded between the two nations on these terms, that the river Albula, now called Tiber, should be the common boundary between the Etrurians and Latins. After him Sylvius, the son of Ascanius, born by some accident in a wood, ascends the throne. He was the father of Æneas Sylvius, who afterwards begot Latinus Sylvius. By him several colonies, called the ancient Latins, were transplanted. From this time, all the princes, who reigned at Alba, had the surname of Sylvius. From Latinus sprung Alba; from Alba, Atys; from Atys, Capys; from Capys, Capetus; from Capetus, Tiberinus, who, being drowned in crossing the river Albula, gave it a name famous with posterity. Then Agrippa, the son of Tiberinus; after Agrippa, Romulus Silvius ascends the throne, in succession to his father. The latter, having been killed by a thunderbolt, left the kingdom to Aventinus, who being buried on that hill, which is now part of the city of Rome, gave his name to it. After him reigns Proca; he begets Numitor and Amulius. To Numitor, his eldest son, he bequeaths the ancient kingdom of the Sylvian family. But force prevailed more than the father's will or the respect due to seniority: for Amulius, having expelled his brother, seizes the kingdom; he adds crime to crime, murders his brother's male issue; and under pretence of doing his brother's daughter, Rhea Sylvia, honour, having made her a vestal virgin, by obliging her to perpetual virginity he deprives her of all hopes of issue.
4
But, in my opinion, the origin of so great a city, and the establishment of an empire next in power to that of the gods, was due to the Fates. The vestal Rhea, being deflowered by force, when she had brought forth twins, declares Mars to be the father of her illegitimate offspring, either because she believed it to be so, or because a god was a more creditable author of her offence. But neither gods nor men protect her or her children from the king's cruelty: the priestess is bound and thrown into prison; the children he commands to be thrown into the current of the river. By some interposition of providence,9 the Tiber having overflowed its banks in stagnant pools, did not admit of any access to the regular bed of the river; and the bearers supposed that the infants could be drowned in water however still; thus, as if they had effectually executed the king's orders, they expose the boys in the nearest land-flood, where now stands the ficus Ruminalis (they say that it was called Romularis). The country thereabout was then a vast wilderness. The tradition is, that when the water, subsiding, had left the floating trough, in which the children had been exposed, on dry ground, a thirsty she-wolf, coming from the neighbouring mountains, directed her course to the cries of the infants, and that she held down her dugs to them with so much gentleness, that the keeper of the king's flock found her licking the boys with her tongue. It is said his name was Faustulus; and that they were carried by him to his homestead to be nursed by his wife Laurentia. Some are of opinion that she was called Lupa among the shepherds, from her being a common prostitute, and that this gave rise to the surprising story. The children thus born and thus brought up, when arrived at the years of manhood, did not loiter away their time in tending the folds or following the flocks, but roamed and hunted in the forests. Having by this exercise improved their strength and courage, they not only encountered wild beasts, but even attacked robbers laden with plunder, and afterwards divided the spoil among the shepherds. And in company with these, the number of their young associates daily increasing, they carried on their business and their sports.
5
They say, that the festival of the lupercal, as now celebrated, was even at that time solemnized on the Palatine hill, which, from Palanteum, a city of Arcadia, was first called Palatium, and afterwards Mount Palatine. There they say that Evander, who belonged to the tribe of Arcadians,10 that for many years before had possessed that country, appointed the observance of a feast, introduced from Arcadia, in such manner, that young men ran about naked in sport and wantonness, doing honour to Pan Lycæus, whom the Romans afterwards called Inuus. That the robbers, through rage at the loss of their booty, having lain in wait for them whilst intent on this sport, as the festival was now well known, whilst Romulus vigorously defended himself, took Remus prisoner; that they delivered him up, when taken, to king Amulius, accusing him with the utmost effrontery. They principally alleged it as a charge against them, that they had made incursions upon Numitor's lands, and plundered them in a hostile manner, having assembled a band of young men for the purpose. Upon this Remus was delivered to Numitor to be punished. Now, from the very first, Faustulus had entertained hopes that the boys whom he was bringing up were of the blood royal; for he both knew that the children had been exposed by the king's orders, and that the time at which he had taken them up agreed exactly with that period: but he had been unwilling that the matter, as not being yet ripe for discovery, should be disclosed, till either a fit opportunity or necessity should arise. Necessity came first; accordingly, compelled by fear, he discovers the whole affair to Romulus. By accident also, whilst he had Remus in custody, and had heard that the brothers were twins, on comparing their age, and observing their turn of mind entirely free from servility, the recollection of his grand-children struck Numitor; and on making inquiries11 he arrived at the same conclusion, so that he was well nigh recognising Remus. Thus a plot is concerted for the king on all sides. Romulus, not accompanied by a body of young men, (for he was unequal to open force,) but having commanded the shepherds to come to the palace by different roads at a fixed time, forces his way to the king; and Remus, with another party from Numitor's house, assists his brother, and so they kill the king.
6
Numitor, at the beginning of the fray, having given out that enemies had invaded the city, and assaulted the palace, after he had drawn off the Alban youth to secure the citadel with a garrison and arms, when he saw the young men, after they had killed the king, advancing to congratulate him, immediately called an assembly of the people, and represented to them the unnatural behaviour of his brother towards him, the extraction of his grand-children, the manner of their birth and education, and how they came to be discovered; then he informed them of the king's death, and that he was killed by his orders. When the young princes, coming up with their band through the middle of the assembly, saluted their grandfather king, an approving shout, following from all the people present, ratified to him both that title and the sovereignty. Thus the government of Alba being committed to Numitor, a desire seized Romulus and Remus to build a city on the spot where they had been exposed and brought up. And there was an overflowing population of Albans and of Latins. The shepherds too had come into that design, and all these readily inspired hopes, that Alba and Lavinium would be but petty places in comparison with the city which they intended to build. But ambition of the sovereignty, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a beginning sufficiently amicable. For as they were twins, and the respect due to seniority could not determine the point, they agreed to leave to the tutelary gods of the place to choose, by augury, which should give a name to the new city, which govern it when built.
7
Romulus chose the Palatine and Remus the Aventine hill as their stands to make their observations. It is said, that to Remus an omen came first, six vultures; and now, the omen having been declared, when double the number presented itself to Romulus, his own party saluted each king; the former claimed the kingdom on the ground of priority of time, the latter on account of the number of birds. Upon this, having met in an altercation, from the contest of angry feelings they turn to bloodshed; there Remus fell from a blow received in the crowd. A more common account is, that Remus, in derision of his brother, leaped over his new-built wall, and was, for that reason, slain by Romulus in a passion; who, after sharply chiding him, added words to this effect: "So shall every one fare, who shall dare to leap over my fortifications."12 Thus Romulus got the sovereignty to himself; the city, when built, was called after the name of its founder. His first work was to fortify the Palatine hill where he had been educated. To the other gods he offers sacrifices according to the Alban rite; to Hercules, according to the Grecian rite, as they had been instituted by Evander. There is a tradition, that Hercules, having killed Geryon, drove his oxen, which were extremely beautiful, into those places; and that, after swimming over the Tiber, and driving the cattle before him, being fatigued with travelling, he laid himself down on the banks of the river, in a grassy place, to refresh them with rest and rich pasture. When sleep had overpowered him, satiated with food and wine, a shepherd of the place, named Cacus, presuming on his strength, and charmed with the beauty of the oxen, wished to purloin that booty, but because, if he had driven them forward into the cave, their footsteps would have guided the search of their owner thither, he therefore drew the most beautiful of them, one by one, by the tails, backwards into a cave. Hercules, awaking at day-break, when he had surveyed his herd, and observed that some of them were missing, goes directly to the nearest cave, to see if by chance their footsteps would lead him thither. But when he observed that they were all turned from it, and directed him no other way, confounded, and not knowing what to do, he began to drive his cattle out of that unlucky place. Upon this, some of the cows, as they usually do, lowed on missing those that were left; and the lowings of those that were confined being returned from the cave, made Hercules turn that way. And when Cacus attempted to prevent him by force, as he was proceeding to the cave, being struck with a club, he was slain, vainly imploring the assistance of the shepherds. At that time Evander, who had fled from the Peloponnesus, ruled this country more by his credit and reputation than absolute sway. He was a person highly revered for his wondrous knowledge of letters,13 a discovery that was entirely new and surprising to men ignorant of every art; but more highly respected on account of the supposed divinity of his mother Carmenta, whom these nations had admired as a prophetess, before the coming of the Sibyl into Italy. This prince, alarmed by the concourse of the shepherds hastily crowding round the stranger, whom they charged with open murder, after he heard the act and the cause of the act, observing the person and mien of the hero to be larger, and his gait more majestic, than human, asked who he was? As soon as he was informed of his name, his father, and his native country, he said, "Hail! Hercules! son of Jupiter, my mother, a truth-telling interpreter of the gods, has revealed to me, that thou shalt increase the number of the celestials; and that to thee an altar shall be dedicated here, which some ages hence the most powerful people on earth shall call Ara Maxima, and honour according to thy own institution." Hercules having given him his right hand, said, "That he accepted the omen, and would fulfil the predictions of the fates, by building and consecrating an altar." There for the first time a sacrifice was offered to Hercules of a chosen heifer, taken from the herd, the Potitii and Pinarii, who were then the most distinguished families that inhabited these parts, having been invited to the service and the entertainment. It so happened that the Potitii were present in due time, and the entrails were set before them; when they were eaten up, the Pinarii came to the remainder of the feast. From this time it was ordained, that while the Pinarian family subsisted, none of them should eat of the entrails of the solemn sacrifices. The Potitii, being instructed by Evander, discharged this sacred function as priests for many ages, until the office, solemnly appropriated to their family, being delegated to public slaves, their whole race became extinct. This was the only foreign religious institution which Romulus adopted, being even then an abettor of immortality attained by merit, to which his own destinies were conducting him.
8
The duties of religion having been duly performed, and the multitude summoned to a meeting, as they could be incorporated into one people by no other means than fixed rules, he gave them a code of laws, and judging that these would be best respected by this rude class of men, if he made himself dignified by the insignia of authority, he assumed a more majestic appearance both in his other appointments, and especially by taking twelve lictors to attend him. Some think that he chose this number of officers from that of the birds, which in the augury had portended the kingdom to him. I do not object to be of the opinion of those who will have it that the apparitors (in general), and this particular class of them,14 and even their number, was taken from their neighbours the Etrurians, from whom were borrowed the curule chair, and the gown edged with purple; and that the Etrurians adopted that number, because their king being elected in common from twelve states, each state assigned him one lictor. Meanwhile the city increased by their taking in various lots of ground for buildings, whilst they built rather with a view to future numbers, than for the population15 which they then had. Then, lest the size of the city might be of no avail, in order to augment the population, according to the ancient policy of the founders of cities, who, after drawing together to them an obscure and mean multitude, used to feign that their offspring sprung out of the earth, he opened as a sanctuary, a place which is now enclosed as you go down "to the two groves."16 Hither fled from the neighbouring states, without distinction whether freemen or slaves, crowds of all sorts, desirous of change: and this was the first accession of strength to their rising greatness. When he was now not dissatisfied with his strength, he next sets about forming some means of directing that strength. He creates one hundred senators, either because that number was sufficient, or because there were only one hundred who could name their fathers. They certainly were called Fathers, through respect, and their descendants, Patricians.17
9
And now the Roman state was become so powerful, that it was a match for any of the neighbouring nations in war, but, from the paucity of women, its greatness could only last for one age of man; for they had no hope of issue at home, nor had they any intermarriages with their neighbours. Therefore, by the advice of the Fathers, Romulus sent ambassadors to the neighbouring states to solicit an alliance and the privilege of intermarriage for his new subjects. "That cities, like every thing else, rose from very humble beginnings.[1q] That those which the gods and their own merit aided, gained great power and high renown. That he knew full well, both that the gods had aided the origin of Rome, and that merit would not be wanting. Wherefore that, as men, they should feel no reluctance to mix their blood and race with men." No where did the embassy obtain a favourable hearing: so much did they at the same time despise, and dread for themselves and their posterity, so great a power growing up in the midst of them. They were dismissed by the greater part with the repeated question, "Whether they had opened any asylum for women also, for that such a plan only could obtain them suitable matches?" The Roman youth resented this conduct bitterly, and the matter unquestionably began to point towards violence. Romulus, in order that he might afford a favourable time and place for this, dissembling his resentment, purposely prepares games in honour of Neptunus Equestris; he calls them Consualia. He then orders the spectacle to be proclaimed among their neighbours; and they prepare for the celebration with all the magnificence they were then acquainted with, or were capable of doing, that they might render the matter famous, and an object of expectation. Great numbers assembled, from a desire also of seeing the new city; especially their nearest neighbours, the Cæninenses, Crustumini, and Antemnates. Moreover the whole multitude of the Sabines came, with their wives and children. Having been hospitably invited to the different houses, when they had seen the situation, and fortifications, and the city crowded with houses, they became astonished that the Roman power had increased so rapidly. When the time of the spectacle came on, and while their minds and eyes were intent upon it, according to concert a tumult began, and upon a signal given the Roman youth ran different ways to carry off the virgins by force. A great number were carried off at hap-hazard, according as they fell into their hands. Persons from the common people, who had been charged with the task, conveyed to their houses some women of surpassing beauty, destined for the leading senators. They say that one, far distinguished beyond the others for stature and beauty, was carried off by the party of one Thalassius, and whilst many inquired to whom they were carrying her, they cried out every now and then, in order that no one might molest her, that she was being taken to Thalassius; that from this circumstance this term became a nuptial one. The festival being disturbed by this alarm, the parents of the young women retire in grief, appealing to the compact of violated hospitality, and invoking the god, to whose festival and games they had come, deceived by the pretence of religion and good faith. Neither had the ravished virgins better hopes of their condition, or less indignation. But Romulus in person went about and declared, "That what was done was owing to the pride of their fathers, who had refused to grant the privilege of marriage to their neighbours; but notwithstanding, they should be joined in lawful wedlock, participate in all their possessions and civil privileges, and, than which nothing can be dearer to the human heart, in their common children. He begged them only to assuage the fierceness of their anger, and cheerfully surrender their affections to those to whom fortune had consigned their persons." (He added,) "That from injuries love and friendship often arise; and that they should find them kinder husbands on this account, because each of them, besides the performance of his conjugal duty, would endeavour to the utmost of his power to make up for the want of their parents and native country." To this the caresses of the husbands were added, excusing what they had done on the plea of passion and love, arguments that work most successfully on women's hearts.
10
The minds of the ravished virgins were soon much soothed, but their parents by putting on mourning, and tears and complaints, roused the states. Nor did they confine their resentment to their own homes, but they flocked from all quarters to Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines; and because he bore the greatest character in these parts, embassies were sent to him. The Cæninenses, Crustumini, and Antemnates were people to whom a considerable portion of the outrage extended. To them Tatius and the Sabines seemed to proceed somewhat dilatorily. Nor even do the Crustumini and Antemnates bestir themselves with sufficient activity to suit the impatience and rage of the Cæninenses. Accordingly the state of the Cæninenses by itself makes an irruption into the Roman territory. But Romulus with his army met them ravaging the country in straggling parties, and by a slight engagement convinces them, that resentment without strength is of no avail. He defeats and routs their army, pursues it when routed, kills and despoils their king in battle, and having slain their general takes the city at the first assault. From thence having led back his victorious army, and being a man highly distinguished by his exploits, and one who could place them in the best light, went in state to the capitol, carrying before him, suspended on a frame curiously wrought for that purpose, the spoils of the enemy's general, whom he had slain, and there after he had laid them down at the foot of an oak held sacred by the shepherds, together with the offering, he marked out the bounds for a temple of Jupiter, and gave a surname to the god: "Jupiter Feretrius," he says, "I, king Romulus, upon my victory, present to thee these royal arms, and to thee I dedicate a temple within those regions which I have now marked out in my mind, as a receptacle for the grand spoils, which my successors, following my example, shall, upon their killing the kings or generals of the enemy, offer to thee." This is the origin of that temple, the first consecrated at Rome. It afterwards so pleased the gods both that the declaration of the founder of the temple should not be frustrated, by which he announced that his posterity should offer such spoils, and that the glory of that offering should not be depreciated by the great number of those who shared it. During so many years, and amid so many wars since that time, grand spoils have been only twice gained,18 so rare has been the successful attainment of that honour.
