There were places where such an act as that of Remus would have been punished with death, but Romulus did not know that. He had struck out as instinctively as a man might knock down a ruffian who insulted his wife. Such an insult might not be a physical injury, but the intention would be enough to warrant punishment. The older men of the colony were inclined to think that the gods had done the thing. Romulus himself did not. He never got over it, though he never spoke of it. That day took the boyish carelessness out of his eyes and set a hard line about his mouth. It was the proudest and most sacred day of his life, and now it was the saddest.
XIII
THE SOOTHSAYERS
After the founding of the city and the tragic ending of the day, Romulus went away, no one knew exactly where. He was gone for some time, He told Marcus Colonus that he was going to Alba Longa, where some of his men still were as a garrison for Numa. But he did not stay there many days.
Although he was the founder and in one way the ruler of his city, this did not mean that he was obliged to stay there to settle all its problems. Most of them were solved by the common law and common sense of the colonists. Their ruler had no authority over them contrary to custom, and custom would apply in one way or another to almost everything they did. Hence the young man was free to go wherever he saw fit.
The fancy took him to cross the river and see the old woman who had told him when he was a boy that he was to be the ruler of a great people. He found her still alive, though so old that her [pg 153]brown face looked like an old withered nutshell. She glanced up at him keenly.
“Welcome, king,” she said.
Just how much she had heard of his life from traveling traders and vagabonds, no one can say, but she seemed to know a great deal about it. She told him that when he returned to his own country, if he followed certain landmarks and dug in the ground at a certain point near the river bank some distance from Rome, he would find an altar and a shield of gold. The shield, she said, had fallen from heaven, and was intended for him, because he was the especial favorite of Mars, the god of war. He did not take this very seriously, but he found himself much interested in the ways of this strange people. Their priests knew how to measure distances, and mark out squares, and consult the stars. Their metal workers, dyers and potters knew how to make curious and precious things. The fortune tellers had a great reputation all over the country. Their name, soothsayers, meant “those who tell the truth.”