Romulus

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.

For down to the present time foreign peoples call the members of their senate chief men, but the Romans themselves call them conscript fathers, using that name which has the greatest dignity and honour, and awakens the least envy. At first, then, they called them simply fathers, but later, when more had been added to their number, they addressed them as conscript fathers.

By this more imposing title Romulus distinguished the senate from the commonalty, and in other ways, too, he separated the nobles from the multitude, calling the one patrons, that is to say, protectors, and the other clients, that is to say, dependants. At the same time he inspired both classes with an astonishing goodwill towards each other, and one which became the basis of important rights and privileges. For the patrons advised their clients in matters of custom, and represented them in courts of justice, in short, were their counsellors and friends in all things;

while the clients were devoted to their patrons, not only holding them in honour, but actually, in cases of poverty, helping them to dower their daughters and pay their debts. And there was neither any law nor any magistrate that could compel a patron to bear witness against a client, or a client against a patron. But in later times, while all other rights and privileges remained in force, the taking of money by those of high degree from the more lowly was held to be disgraceful and ungenerous. So much, then, on these topics.

It was in the fourth month after the founding of the city, as Fabius writes, that the rape of the Sabine women was perpetrated.[*](Cf. Livy, i. 9.) And some say that Romulus himself, being naturally fond of war, and being persuaded by sundry oracles, too, that it was the destiny of Rome to be nourished and increased by wars till she became the greatest of cities, thereby merely began unprovoked hostilities against the Sabines; for he did not take many maidens, but thirty only, since what he wanted was war rather than marriages.

But this is not likely. On the contrary, seeing his city filling up at once with aliens, few of whom had wives, while the greater part of them, being a mixed rabble of needy and obscure persons, were looked down upon and expected to have no strong cohesion; and hoping to make the outrage an occasion for some sort of blending and fellowship with the Sabines after their women had been kindly entreated, he set his hand to the task, and in the following manner.

First a report was spread abroad by him that he had discovered an altar of a certain god hidden underground. They called this god Consus, and he was either a god of counsel (for consilium is still their word for counsel, and they call their chief magistrates consuls, that is to say, counsellors), or an equestrian Neptune. For the altar is in the Circus Maximus, and is invisible at all other times, but at the chariot-races it is uncovered.

Some, however, simply say that since counsel is secret and unseen, it is not unreasonable that an altar to the god of counsel should be hidden underground.[*](The altar was kept buried in the earth to signify thesecret processes of nature in the production of crops and vegetation. For Consus was an ancient Italian god of agriculture.) Now when this altar was discovered, Romulus appointed by proclamation a splendid sacrifice upon it, with games, and a spectacle open to all people. And many were the people who came together, while he himself sat in front, among his chief men, clad in purple.