therefore, I repeat it, conceive on the one
hand Alba with its thirty _demi_, and on the other the thirty Latin
towns, the latter at first forming a state allied with Alba, and at a
later time under its supremacy.

According to an important statement of Cato preserved in Dionysius, the
ancient towns of the Aborigines were small places scattered over the
mountains. One town of this kind was situated on the Palatine hill, and
bore the name of Roma, which is most certainly Greek. Not far from it
there occur several other places with Greek names, such as Pyrgi and
Alsium; for the people inhabiting those districts were closely akin to
the Greeks; and it is by no means an erroneous conjecture, that
Terracina was formerly called [Greek: Tracheine] or the "rough place on
a rock"; Formiae must be connected with [Greek: hormos] "a roadstead" or
"place for casting anchor." As certain as Pyrgi signifies "towers," so
certainly does _Roma_ signify "strength," and I believe that those are
quite right who consider that the name Roma in this sense is not
accidental. This Roma is described as a Pelasgian place in which
Evander, the introducer of scientific culture, resided. According to
tradition, the first foundation of civilization was laid by Saturn, in
the golden age of mankind. The tradition in Vergil, who was extremely
learned in matters of antiquity, that the first men were created out of
trees, must be taken quite literally; for as in Greece the [Greek:
myrmeches] were metamorphosed into the Myrmidons, and the stones thrown
by Deucalion and Pyrrha into men and women, so in Italy trees, by some
divine power, were changed into human beings. These beings, at first
only half human, gradually acquired a civilization which they owed to
Saturn; but the real intellectual culture was traced to Evander, who
must not be regarded as a person who had come from Arcadia, but as _the
good man_, as the teacher of the alphabet and of mental culture, which
man gradually works out for himself.

The Romans clung to the conviction that Romulus, the founder of Rome,
was the son of a virgin by a god, that his life was marvellously
preserved, that he was saved from the floods of the river and was reared
by a she-wolf. That this poetry is very ancient cannot be doubted; but
did the legend at all times describe Romulus as the son of Rea Silvia or
Ilia? Perizonius was the first who remarked against Ryccius that Rea
Ilia never occurs together, and that Rea