Romulus

And in the times of Varro the philosopher, a Roman who was most deeply versed in history, there lived Tarutius, a companion of his, who, besides being a philosopher and a mathematician, had applied himself to the art of casting nativities, in order to indulge a speculative turn of mind, and was thought to excel in it.

To this man Varro gave the problem of fixing the day and hour of the birth of Romulus, making his deductions from the conjunctions of events reported in the man’s life, just as the solutions of geometrical problems are derived; for the same science, he said, must be capable not only of foretelling a man’s life when the time of his birth is known, but also, from the given facts of his life, of hunting out the time of his birth.

This task, then Tarutius performed, and when he had taken a survey of the man’s experiences and achievements, and had brought together the time of his life, the manner of his death, and all such details, he very courageously and bravely declared that Romulus was conceived in his mother’s womb in the first year of the second Olympiad,[*](772 B.C.) in the month Choeac of the Egyptian calendar, on the twenty-third day, and in the third hour, when the sun was totally eclipsed; and that he was born in the month Thoth, on the twenty-first day, at sunrise;

and that Rome was founded by him on the ninth day of the month Pharmuthi, between the second and third hour: for it is thought that a city’s fortune, as well as that of a man, has a decisive time, which may be known by the position of the stars at its very origin. These and similar speculations will perhaps attract readers by their novelty and extravagance, rather than offend them by their fabulous character.

When the city was built, in the first place, Romulus divided all the multitude that were of age to bear arms into military companies, each company consisting of three thousand footmen and three hundred horsemen. Such a company was called a legion, because the warlike were selected out of all. In the second place, he treated the remainder as a people, and this multitude was called populus; a hundred of them, who were the most eminent, he appointed to be councillors, calling the individuals themselves patricians, and their body a senate.

Now the word senate means literally a Council of Elders, and the councillors were called patricians, as some say, because they were fathers of lawful children[*](Cf. Livy, i. 8, 7.); or rather, according to others, because they could tell who their own fathers were, which not many could do of those who first streamed into the city; according to others still, from patronage, which was their word for the protection of inferiors, and is so to this day; and they suppose that a certain Patron, one of those who came to Italy with Evander, was a protector and defender of the poor and needy, and left his own name in the word which designates such activity.

But the most reasonable opinion for any one to hold is that Romulus thought it the duty of the foremost and most influential citizens to watch over the more lowly with fatherly care and concern, while he taught the multitude not to fear their superiors nor be vexed at their honours, but to exercise goodwill towards them, considering them and addressing them as fathers, whence their name of Patricii.