than twenty-six hundred years ago, on the
banks of a small Italian river, known as the Tiber, were laid the
foundations of a city which was in time to become the conqueror of the
civilized world. Of the early days of this renowned city of Rome we know
very little. What is called its history is really only legend,--stories
invented by poets, or ancient facts which became gradually changed into
romances. The Romans believed them, but that is no reason why we should.
They believed many things which we doubt. And yet these romantic stories
are the only existing foundation-stones of actual Roman history, and we
can do no better than give them for what little kernel of fact they may
contain.

In our tales from Greek history it has been told how the city of Troy
was destroyed, and how AEneas, one of its warrior chiefs, escaped. After
many adventures this fugitive Trojan prince reached Italy and founded
there a new kingdom. His son Ascanius afterwards built the city of Alba
Longa (the long white city) not far from the site of the later city of
Rome. Three hundred years passed away, many kings came and went, and
then Numitor, a descendant of AEneas, came to the throne. But Numitor
had an ambitious brother, Amulius, who robbed him of his crown, and,
while letting him live, killed his only son and shut up his daughter
Silvia in the temple of the goddess Vesta, to guard the ever-burning
fire of that deity.

Here Silvia had twin sons, whose father was said, in the old
superstitious fashion, to be Mars, the God of War. The usurper, fearing
that these sons of Mars might grow up and deprive him of his throne,
ordered that they and their mother should be flung into the Tiber, then
swollen with recent rains. The mother was drowned, but destiny, or Mars,
preserved the sons. Borne onward in their basket cradle, they were at
length swept ashore where the river had overflown its banks at the foot
of the afterwards famous Palatine Hill. Here the cradle was over-turned
near the roots of a wild fig-tree, and the infants left at the edge of
the shallow waters.

What follows sounds still more like fable. A she-wolf that came to the
water to drink chanced to see the helpless children, and carried them to
her cave, where she fed them with her milk. As they grew older a
woodpecker brought them food, flying in and out of the cave. At length
Faustulus, a herdsman of the king, found these lusty infants in the
wolf's den, took them home, and gave th