The Childhood of Rome

by Louise Lamprey

The people were all rather fine-looking and strong and active. They worked and played in the open air and led healthy lives, and being well and full of spirits, there was really no reason why they should be ugly.

Emilius told them when the feast of Maia would take place. The moon, which was called the measurer, was all they had to go by in reckoning the year. The feast was to be the day after it changed. Emilius repeated the names of the Brethren of the Field, and mentioned things that should be done to prepare for the feast, and that was all.

Far up on the heights of the mountain above, in among the rocks where nothing grew except wind-stunted trees and patches of moss and fern, there was another settlement of which the vil[pg 50]lage people knew nothing. Two of its men happened to be farther down the mountain than usual, hunting, when this announcement was made. They got up on a rock overgrown with bushes, where they could look down into the village, and lay watching what went on. They were not beautiful or happy. They looked as they lay on the rock, spying over the edge with their hard, greedy eyes under shaggy unkempt locks, rather like wild beasts.

One was a runaway from this very place, and he knew it was nearly time for the May festival. His name was Gubbo, and he had been cast out of the village because he was cruel. He liked to torment animals and children; he liked to compel others to give him what he wanted. When finally he had been caught slashing at the favorite ox of a man he had had a quarrel with, he had been beaten and kicked out and told never to come back. He had wandered about for some years, and then joined the banditti on the mountain.

These banditti came from many towns; some were even of another race, of the strange people beyond the river. There were not very many of them, but there were enough to surprise and beat down a much larger number if circumstances favored. Their usual plan was not to fight in [pg 51]the open, but creep up near a place where stores or treasure happened to be kept, when the most skillful thieves would get in and carry off the plunder to the hiding-place of the others, who stood ready to fight or to act as porters, whichever might be necessary. If they were chased, the best runners drew off the pursuers after them and joined the rest of the band later.

They did not spend all or even very much of their time in their mountain den. They had picked this country as their headquarters because it was largely wilderness above the farming belt. The rocks held many caves and good strongholds. Often they went off and were gone for perhaps a month at a time, prowling about distant settlements, or haunting the roads the traders traveled. Many a luckless merchant had been knocked on the head from behind, or dragged out of his boat and drowned, by these thieves, with no one to tell the tale.

They had found the Sabines here when they came, and it had not seemed worth while—yet—to quarrel with them. The scattered country folk, who went in deadly fear of the robbers and did whatever they were told, said that the farmers could fight, and kept watch over what they had, and had very little but their animals and food stores. There was no use in provoking a war [pg 52]with them. The better plan would be to terrify them so thoroughly that they would give the bandits anything they asked, to keep the peace.

There was no use in upsetting these quiet folk so that they could not work. They could be told that unless they brought to a certain place, at certain times, grain, cattle and other provision, and left them for the outlaws, something terrible would happen to them. They certainly could not hunt the mountains over for the band, and they could not know how many or how few there were. This plan worked well in other places, and it would do very well here.

The leader, the oldest of the robbers, had once been a slave, and he knew all the things that are done to slaves who resist their masters. The others were afraid of him, and there were very few other things in the world of which they were afraid. He listened to the report of Gubbo and his companion, and sent them back to watch the village during the time of the festival, see who the chief men were, how well off the people seemed to be, how many fighting men they had, and where they kept their grain and other stores.

For five days one or the other of the bandits was always watching from the edge of the rock. If they had been the kind of men to understand beauty, they must have owned that the festival [pg 53]of Maia was a beautiful sight. But it only made them angry and bitter to think that they could not have all the comforts these people had. Often they did not have enough to eat, and then there would be a raid on some village, and all the men would eat far more than was comfortable, and drink more than was at all wise, and the feast usually ended in a fight. This festival in the village was not at all like that.