Ab urbe condita

What would have been the result if that horde of shepherds and immigrants, fugitives from their own cities, who had secured liberty, or at all events impunity, in the shelter of an inviolable sanctuary[*](sanctuary —see Book I. chap. viii.)

—if, I say, they had been freed from the restraining power of kings and, agitated by tribunician storms, had begun to foment quarrels with the patricians in a City where they were aliens before sufficient time had elapsed for either family ties or a growing love for the very soil to effect a union of

hearts? The infant State would have been torn to pieces by internal dissension. As it was, however, the moderate and tranquilizing authority of the kings had so fostered it that it was at last able to bring forth the fair fruits of liberty, in the maturity of its