Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
mind, he forsook his popular behavior for kingly arrogance, odious to
the people; to whom in particular the state which he assumed was
hateful. For he dressed in scarlet, with the purple-bordered robe over
it; he gave audience on a couch of state, having always about him some
young men called Celeres, from their swiftness in doing commissions;
there went before him others with staves, to make room, with leather
thongs tied on their bodies, to bind on the moment whomever he
commanded. The Latins formerly used ligare in the same sense as now
alligare, to bind, whence the name lictors, for these officers, and
bacula, or staves, for their rods, because staves were then used. It is
probable, however, they were first called litores, afterwards, by
putting in a c, lictores, or, in Greek, liturgi, or people's officers,
for leitos is still Greek for the commons,
and laos for the people in general.
But when, after the death of his grandfather Numitor in Alba, the throne
devolving upon Romulus, he, to court the people, put the government into
their own hands, and appointed an annual magistrate over the Albans,
this taught the great men of Rome to seek after a free and anti-
monarchical state, wherein all might in turn be subjects and rulers.
For neither were the patricians any longer admitted to state affairs,
only had the name and title left them, convening in council rather for
fashion's sake than advice, where they heard in silence the king's
commands, and so departed, exceeding the commonalty only in hearing
first what was done. These and the like were matters of small moment;
but when he of his own accord parted among his soldiers what lands were
acquired by war, and restored the Veientes their hostages, the senate
neither consenting nor approving of it, then, indeed, he seemed to put a
great affront upon them; so that, on his sudden and strange
disappearance a short while after, the senate fell under suspicion and
calumny. He disappeared on the Nones of July, as they now call the month
which was then Quintilis, leaving nothing of certainty to be related of
his death; only the time, as just mentioned, for on that day many
ceremonies are still performed in representation of what happened.
Neither is this uncertainty to be thought strange, seeing the manner of
the death of Scipio Africanus, who died at his own home after supper,
has been found capable neither of proof or disproof; for some say he
died a natural death, being of a sickly habit; others, that he poisoned
himself; others again, that his enemies, breaking in upon him in the
night, stifled him. Yet Scipio's dead body lay open to be seen of all,
and any one, from his own observation, might form his suspicions and
conjectures; whereas Romulus, when he vanished, left neither the least
part of his body, nor any remnant of his clothes to be seen. So that
some fancied, the senators, having fallen upon him ill the temple of
Vulcan, cut his body into pieces, and took each a part away in his
bosom; others think his disappearance was neither in the temple of
Vulcan, nor with the senators only by, but that, it came to pass that,
as he was haranguing the people without the city, near a place called
the Goat's Marsh, on a sudden strange and unaccountable disorders and
alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and
the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but
with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters;
during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators kept
close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when
the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the
senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the
matter, but commanded them to honor and worship Romulus as one taken up
to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now
a propitious god. The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and
rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who,
canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused and aspersed the
patricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous
tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king.
Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of
noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar
friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius
Proculus by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most
sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was traveling on the
road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and
comelier than ever, dressed in shining and faming armor; and he, being
affrighted at the apparition, said, "Why, O king, or for what purpose
have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city
to bereavement and endless sorrow?" and that he made answer, "It
pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain
so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the
greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to
heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of
temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power;
we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus." This seemed credible to
the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relater, and indeed, too,
there mingled with it a certain divine passion, some preternatural
influence similar to possession by a divinity; nobody contradicted it,
but, laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to
Quirinus and saluted him as a god.
This is like some of the Greek fables of Aristeas the Proconnesian, and
Cleomedes the Astypalaean; for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's
work-shop, and his friends, coming to look for him, found his body
vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they
met him traveling towards Croton. And that Cleomedes, being an
extraordinarily strong and gigantic man, but also wild and mad,
committed many desperate freaks; and at last, in a school-house,
striking a pillar that sustained the roof with his fist, broke it in the
middle, so that the house fell and destroyed the children in it; and
being pursued, he fled into a great chest, and, shutting to the lid,
held it so fast, that many men, with their united strength, could not
force it open; afterwards, breaking the chest to pieces, they found no
man in it alive or dead; in astonishment at which, they sent to consult
the oracle at Delphi; to whom the prophetess made this answer,
Of all the heroes, Cleomede is last.
They say, too, the body of Alcmena, as they were carrying her to her
grave, vanished, and a stone was found lying on the bier. And many such
improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures
naturally mortal; for though altogether to disown a divine nature in
human virtue were impious and base, so again to mix heaven with earth is
ridiculous. Let us believe with Pindar, that
All human bodies yield to Death's decree,
The soul survives to all eternity.
For that alone is derived from the gods, thence comes, and thither
returns; not with the body, but when most disengaged and separated from
it, and when most entirely pure and clean and free from the flesh; for
the most perfect soul, says Heraclitus, is a dry light, which flies out
of the body as lightning breaks from a cloud; but that which is clogged
and surfeited with body is like gross and humid incense, slow to kindle
and ascend. We must not, therefore, contrary to nature, send the
bodies, too, of good men to heaven; but we must really believe that,
according to their divine nature and law, their virtue and their souls
are translated out of men into heroes, out of heroes into demi-gods, out
of demi-gods, after passing, as in the rite of initiation, through a
final cleansing and sanctification, and so freeing themselves from all
that pertains to mortality and sense, are thus, not by human decree, but
really and according to right reason, elevated into gods, admitted thus
to the greatest and most blessed perfection.
Romulus's surname Quirinus, some say, is equivalent to Mars; others,
that he was so called because the citizens were called Quirites; others,
because the ancients called a dart or spear Quiris; thus, the statue of
Juno resting on a spear is called Quiritis, and the dart in the Regia is
addressed as Mars, and those that were distinguished in war were usually
presented with a dart; that, therefore, Romulus, being a martial god, or
a god of darts, was called Quirinus. A temple is certainly built to his
honor on the mount called from him Quirinalis.
The day he vanished on is called the Flight of the People, and the Nones
of the Goats, because they go then out of the city, and sacrifice at
the Goat's Marsh, and, as they go, they shout out some of the Roman
names, as Marcus, Lucius, Caius, imitating the way in which they then
fled and called upon one another in that fright and hurry. Some,
however, say, this was not in imitation of a flight, but of a quick and
hasty onset, referring it to the following occasion: after the Gauls who
had taken Rome were driven out by Camillus, and the city was scarcely as
yet recovering her strength, many of the Latins, under the command of
Livius Postumius, took this time to march against her. Postumius,
halting not far from Rome, sent a herald, signifying that the Latins
were desirous to renew their former alliance and affinity (that was now
almost decayed) by contracting new marriages between both nations; if,
therefore, they would send forth a good number of their virgins and
widows, they should have peace and friendship, such as the Sabines had
formerly had on the like conditions. The Romans, hearing this, dreaded
a war, yet thought a surrender of their women little better than mere
captivity. Being in this doubt, a servant-maid called Philotis (or, as
some say, Tutola), advised them to do neither, but, by a stratagem,
avoid both fighting and the giving up of such pledges. The stratagem
was this, that they should send herself, with other well-looking
servant-maids, to the enemy, in the dress of free-born virgins, and she
should in the night light up a fire-signal, at which the Romans should
come armed and surprise them asleep. The Latins were thus deceived, and
accordingly Philotis set up a torch in a wild fig-tree, screening it
behind with curtains and coverlets from the sight of the enemy, while
visible to the Romans. They, when they saw it, eagerly ran out of the
gates, calling in their haste to each other as they went out, and so,
falling in unexpectedly upon the enemy, they defeated them, and upon
that made a feast of triumph, called the Nones of the Goats, because of
the wild fig-tree, called by the Romans Caprificus, or the goat-fig.
They feast the women without the city in arbors made of fig-tree boughs
and the maid-servants gather together and run about playing; afterwards
they fight in sport, and throw stones one at another, in memory that
they then aided and assisted the Roman men in fight. This only a few
authors admit for true; For the calling upon one another's names by day
and the going out to the Goat's Marsh to do sacrifice seem to agree more
with the former story, unless, indeed, we shall say that both the
actions might have happened on the same day in different years. It was
in the fifty-fourth year of his age and the thirty-eighth of his reign
that Romulus, they tell us, left the world.
COMPARISON OF ROMULUS WITH THESEUS
This is what I have learnt of Romulus and Theseus, worthy of memory. It
seems, first of all, that Theseus, out of his own free-will, without any