"Very well,"
says Numa, "the head of an onion that I shall take in my garden." "No,"
replies Jupiter, "but I want something that pertains to a man." "We will
give you then the tip of the hair." "But it must be alive." "Then we
will add to this a little fish." Jupiter laughed and consented to this.
[111] In Rome, as in Greece, the temple was called a house.
[112] The remark is Cicero's.
[113] Pliny, Epistles, vii, 27. See another story in Plautus's
Mostellaria.
[114] The letters D.M. found on Roman tombs are the initials of Dei
Manes.
[115] They were called the Penates, that is to say, the gods of the
interior.
[116] In the language of the Roman law the wife, children, and slaves
"are not their own masters."
CHAPTER XIX
THE ROMAN CITY
FORMATION OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE
=The Kings.=--Tradition relates that Rome for two centuries and a half
was governed by kings. They told not only the names of these kings and
the date of their death, but the life of each.
They said there were seven kings. Romulus, the first king, came from
the Latin city of Alba, founded the hamlet on the Palatine, and killed
his brother who committed the sacrilege of leaping over the sacred
furrow encircling the settlement; he then allied himself with Tatius,
a Sabine king.
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