was to be found the sacred
symbol of that settlement, the "outfit-vault" (-mundus-) as it
was called, in which the first settlers deposited a sufficiency
of everything necessary for a household and added a clod of their
dear native earth. There, too, was situated the building in which
all the curies assembled for religious and other purposes, each at
its own hearth (-curiae veteres-). There stood the meetinghouse of
the "Leapers" (-curia Saliorum-) in which also the sacred shields
of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the "Wolves" (-Lupercal-),
and the dwelling of the priest of Jupiter. On and near this hill
the legend of the founding of the city placed the scenes of its
leading incidents, and the straw-covered house of Romulus, the
shepherd's hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree
towards which the cradle with the twins had floated, the cornelian
cherry-tree that sprang from the shaft of the spear which the
founder of the city had hurled from the Aventine over the valley of
the Circus into this enclosure, and other such sacred relics were
pointed out to the believer. Temples in the proper sense of the
term were still at this time unknown, and accordingly the Palatine
has nothing of that sort to show belonging to the primitive age.
The public assemblies of the community were early transferred to
another locality, so that their original site is unknown; only it
may be conjectured that the free space round the -mundus-, afterwards
called the -area Apollinis-, was the primitive place of assembly
for the burgesses and the senate, and the stage erected over the
-mundus- itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community.

The Seven Mounts

The "festival of the Seven Mounts" (-septimontium-), again, has
preserved the memory of the more extended settlement which gradually
formed round the Palatine. Suburbs grew up one after another, each
protected by its own separate though weaker circumvallation and
joined to the original ring-wall of the Palatine, as in fen districts
the outer dikes are joined on to the main dike. The "Seven Rings"
were, the Palatine itself; the Cermalus, the slope of the Palatine
in the direction of the morass that extended between it and the
Capitol towards the river (-velabrum-); the Velia, the ridge which
connected the Palatine with the Esquiline, but in subsequent times
was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the
Fagutal, the Oppius, and the Cisp