The Childhood of Rome

by Louise Lamprey

Aquila had a little plot of his own, where he planted blue flowers, which bees like, and raised snails of the big, fat kind found in vineyards. He was like his mother’s people, a born gardener. The countryman, Peppo, made little wooden toys for him, and among them was a little two-wheeled cart with a string harness, which Aquila attached to a team of mice, but he had to play with that out of doors, because his mother would not have [pg 237]the mice in the house. He had also a set of knuckle-bones which the children played with as children now play with jackstones. His mother molded for him men and animals and even whole armies of clay, so that he could play at war with spears of reeds, and demolish mud forts with stones from his little sling.

His mother molded for him men and animals.

He heard many stories,—some from his father, some from his mother and some from Peppo. He liked best the story of his father’s pet wolf, and always on the feast of Lupercal and the other feast days of Mars he and his mother went to put garlands on the little stone that was raised to the memory of Pincho, in one corner of the garden.

The city was now ruled by three different groups of elders, from the three different races of settlers. They were generally known as the three tribes, and the public seat of the three rulers was called the tribunal. The oldest tribe, of course, was the Ramnian, the people who had come from the Mountain of Fire to Rome. The Tities were the Hill Romans or the Sabines, and the Luceres, the People of the Grove, were the tribe that had collected where the soldiers settled and the outsiders who were neither Ramnians nor Sabines lived. There were three great fraternities—the Salii or men of Mars on the Palatine, the Salii on the Quirinal, a Sabine branch of [pg 238]the same worship, and the new priesthood of the whole people, whose priest was called the Flamen Dialis, the Lighter of the Fire of Jove.

Besides these fraternities there were two important groups of men who were not exactly rulers, but were chosen because of their especial knowledge. These were the six Augurs, who were skilled in watching and explaining omens, and the Bridge Builders, the Priesthood of the Bridge, who were skillful in measuring and constructing and building. There were five of these, the head priest being called the Pontifex Maximus or High Pontiff.

Instead of being a large and rather straggling town growing so fast that it was hard to know how to govern it, Rome was really taking on the look of an orderly and prosperous city.

Sometimes, when the children of the first colonists looked back at the simple village life they could just remember, and then looked about them at the many-colored life that had gathered on the Seven Hills, it seemed to them almost like another world. Yet in their homes they still kept the old customs and the old worship, and the servants they had gathered about them were very proud of being part of a Roman household.

There was one danger, however, which nobody realized in the least. In the great change from [pg 239]farm life to city life, the mere crowding together of people is a danger. The fever which had broken out in the early days of the settlement broke out again. This time it swept away lives by the hundred. The poor people were frightened almost out of their wits, and ran out of their houses and spread the disease before any one understood that it could be caught. Emilia had a maid who came back from a visit to her brother on the Quirinal and died before morning. In less than a week Emilia herself and her little son were dead also, and Romulus was left alone.

Nothing seemed able to harm him. He went among the poorest, and by his fearless courage kept them from going mad with fear. When the fever passed his hair had begun to turn from black to gray.