“Perhaps I do believe it,” answered Romulus. “Can you tell me the name of the woman who gave birth to me and to Remus, Potitius? No. Then why not say it was Rhea Silvia?”
“But…that would make Amulius your father—the man you killed for a crown!”
“Perhaps. Or was it the war god Mavors who fathered us? Don’t scoff, Potitius! You say you’re descended from that god that hangs from your neck, and you claim that the blood of Hercules runs in your veins. Why shouldn’t Remus and I be the sons of Mavors? Either way, the story makes us out to be the grandsons and heirs of old King Numitor. When we got rid of Amulius and took his treasury, we were doing nothing more than avenging our grandfather’s murder and reclaiming what was rightfully ours!”
There was a long silence, until Remus finally spoke. “Like Potitius, I have reservations about this idea. But I must admit, claiming a royal bloodline for ourselves might solve a great many problems for us, not only now, to pacify the people in Alba, but later on as well, if people hereabouts waver in their loyalty to us, or grow jealous of our good fortune.”
Romulus placed a hand on Remus’s shoulder and smiled. “My brother is the wisest of men. And you, Pinarius, are the most clever.” Pinarius grinned back at him. “And how lucky we are, on this day, to welcome back our oldest and most loyal friend, after so many years away.” He gazed at Potitius with a look of such warmth and affection that Potitius’s feelings of uneasiness vanished, as morning mist on the Tiber vanishes beneath the rising sun.
As their fame spread, more men flocked to join them, drawn by the chance for adventure and a share of the booty. Every day, new strangers appeared in the marketplace, asking for the twins. These men were very different from the honest traders who had been visiting the market for generations, or the hard-working laborers who passed through, looking for seasonal employment in the butchering pens and meat-salting operations. These newcomers were rough-looking men. Some carried weapons, wore bronze helmets or mismatched pieces of armor, and bore the scars of previous battles. Some arrived with nothing more than the rags they wore, and many of these were shifty-eyed and secretive about their pasts. A few were innocent and starry-eyed, adventure-hungry youths smitten by tales of the twins and eager to serve under them.
“What have they done to our Roma?” moaned the elder Potitius. “I can remember a time when you could circle the Seven Hills and not meet a single person you didn’t know by name. You knew your neighbor; you knew his grandparents, and who his cousins were, and which of the gods were most sacred to his household. Every family among us had been here for generations. Now, every time I leave the hut, I feel I’ve stumbled into a gathering of cast-offs and cattle-thieves! It was bad enough when these strangers began showing up among us, straggling in, uninvited. Now the twins have put out a call for such men to come to Roma! ‘Come, join us!’ they say. ‘It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you’ve been, or what you’re running from. If you’re fit to fight and willing to take an oath of loyalty, then take up arms and go looting with us!’ Every cutthroat and bandit from the mountains to the sea can find a home in Roma, up on Asylum Hill. And why not? Cutthroats and bandits are just the sort of men Romulus and Remus are looking for!”
Potitius, who had his own hut now, living near the twins on the Palatine, had come home merely to pay a brief visit, but had found himself trapped by his father’s rantings. His father’s reference to Asylum Hill was particularly stinging. As the number of the twins’ followers had grown larger and larger, room to lodge them had been found atop the high hill directly above the market. It was a natural spot to lodge an army; the two highest points at opposite ends of the hill afforded commanding views of the surrounding countryside, and steep flanks on every side made the hill the most defensible location in Roma. The name which people had lately given to the hill, Asylum, came from the altar which the twins had erected there, dedicated to Asylaeus, the patron god of vagabonds, fugitives, and exiles, who offered sanctuary to those who could find it nowhere else. As a haruspex, and because of his training as a priest of Hercules, Potitius had presided at the consecration of the Altar of Asylaeus. His father’s harsh words about the Asylum and its inhabitants struck Potitius as a personal rebuke.
But the elder Potitius was only beginning his tirade. “And you, my son—you go on these raids with them. You join in the looting!”
“I travel with Romulus and Remus as their haruspex, father. At river crossings, I ask the numina for safe passage. Before each battle, I take the auspices, reading the entrails of birds to determine if the day is propitious for victory. During storms, I study the lightning for signs of the gods’ will. These are the things I was trained to do, during my schooling in Tarquinia.”
“Before you became a haruspex, you were a priest of Hercules, my son. First and foremost, you are the keeper of the Ara Maxima.”
“I know that, Father. But consider: Hercules was the son of a god, and a hero to the people. So are Romulus and Remus.”
“No! The twins are nothing more than orphans raised by a pig farmer and his whore of a wife. They’re more like Cacus than like Hercules.”
“Father!”
“Think, my son. Hercules rescued the people and moved on, asking for nothing. Cacus killed and stole without remorse. Which of those two do your beloved twins more closely resemble?”
Potitius gasped at the recklessness of his father’s words. If he himself had ever harbored such thoughts, he had banished them once he made the decision to stand by the twins and to bind his fortunes to theirs.
“And now,” his father went on, “they plan to encircle a good portion of Roma with a wall, even higher and stronger than the pickets that surrounded the great house of Amulius at Alba.”
“But surely, Father, a wall is a good thing. Roma will become a proper city. If we’re attacked, people can find safety inside the walls.”
“And why should anyone wish to attack the good, honest people of Roma—except for the fact that the twins have wrought bloodshed and misery on others, and brought home more loot than they have any need for? There are two ways of making a way in the world, my son. One is the way that your ancestors pursued—trading with others peacefully and fairly, offering hospitality to strangers, accumulating no more wealth then is needed to live comfortably, and diligently seeking to offend neither men nor gods. People must barter for the things they need; Roma provided a safe, honest place to do so, and thus it was to everyone’s advantage to leave Roma unmolested. And because we did not pile up riches, we did not attract the envy of greedy, violent men.
“But there is another way of living, the way of men like Amulius, and of Romulus and Remus—to take by force that which other men have accumulated by hard work. Yes, their way leads quickly to great wealth—and just as surely to bloodshed and ruin. It is all very well to bully and rob your neighbors, then use the treasure you’ve stolen to pay strangers to help you bully and rob yet more neighbors. But what will happen when those neighbors unite and come looking for vengeance, or a stronger bully appears on the scene and comes looking to steal the twins’ treasure?
“Ah, but if that happens, you say, there will be a
Potitius shook his head. “All you say would make perfect sense, Father, except for one great difference between Amulius and the twins. Amulius lost the favor of the gods; fortune turned against him. But the gods love Romulus and Remus.”
“You mean to say that
His father, unable to refute these words, fell silent.
The twins agreed that a wall should be built, but they did not agree about its location.
Romulus favored a wall that would encircle the Palatine. Remus thought the wall should be built around the Aventine, further south. Day after day, Potitius listened to them argue.
“Your reasons are purely sentimental, brother” said Remus. “We were raised here on the Palatine, therefore you wish to make it the center of Roma. But no one lives on the Palatine except a few herders and their livestock. Why build a wall around a city of sheep? Or do you intend to drive away the herders and cover the Palatine with buildings? I say, leave this hill wild and open, as it was when we were boys, and build up the city elsewhere. South of the Spinon is the natural place to expand, close to the riverfront. The marketplace, the salt bins, and the slaughtering yards are already pushing against the foot of the Aventine. That is the hill we should encircle with a wall, upon which we should begin to build a proper city.”
“How perfectly reasonable you sound, brother!” Romulus laughed. The two brothers, along with Potitius and Pinarius, were strolling across the Palatine. The sky was dazzling blue with white clouds heaped against the horizon. The hill was covered with green grass and spangled with spring flowers, but there was not a single grazing sheep to be seen; the sheep had all been gathered into their pens, which were adorned with juniper boughs and wreaths of laurel leaves. This was the day of the Palilia, the festival of the goddess Pales. Here and there, streamers of smoke trailed into the sky. Each family had set up its own altar to Pales, and upon these raised stones they were burning various substances: for purification, handfuls of sulfur, which emitted sky-blue smoke, followed by twigs of fragrant rosemary, laurel, and Sabine juniper, then an offering compounded of beanstalks mixed with the ashes of calves already burned, sprinkled with horse blood. With juniper branches, the shepherds wafted the smoke across the penned animals; the sacred smoke of Pales would keep the herd healthy and fertile. Afterward, the shepherds would feast on millet cakes and drink bowls of warm milk sprinkled with purple must.
“Perfectly reasonable,” Romulus said again. “But this is not about reason, brother. It’s about creating a city fit for two kings. You say I favor the Palatine because I’m sentimental. Indeed, I am! How can you walk across this hill on the day of the Palilia and not feel the specialness of this place? There was a reason the gods left our cradle on the slope of the Palatine. Truly, this is the very heart of Roma! It’s around the Palatine that we must build a wall, to honor the home that nurtured us. The gods will bless our enterprise.”
“Ridiculous!” snapped Remus, with a harshness that startled them all. “If you can’t listen to reason, how do you expect to rule a city?”
Romulus strained to keep an even tone. “I’ve done a good enough job so far, brother, building an army and leading them in battle.”
“Running a city will be a different matter. Are you such a fool you can’t see that?”
“
“How dare you throw that in my face! Or do you enjoy reminding me of the hours I spent suffering, needlessly, because you wasted time here in Roma—”
“Unfair, brother! Untrue!”
“And because
“Is that what this is about? Take it! Wear it!” Romulus lifted the iron crown from his head, cast it to the ground, and stalked away. Pinarius ran after him.
When they were boys, the twins had never argued. Now they seemed to argue all the time, and their arguments grew more and more heated. From childhood, Romulus had been the more headstrong and impulsive, and Remus had been the one to restrain his brother. But the torture he had received at the hands of Amulius had wrought changes in Remus. His body had never fully recovered; he still walked with a slight limp. More than that, his even temper had deserted him; he had become as quick to anger as his brother. Romulus had changed as well since Alba. He remained as high-spirited as before but was more disciplined and purposeful, and more self-assured and arrogant than ever.
At Alba, Remus had suffered the tortures of Amulius; Romulus had enjoyed the glow of triumph and the satisfaction of rescuing his brother. One had been a victim and the other a hero. This disparity had created a rift between them, small at first but constantly growing. Potitius knew that the argument he had just witnessed was not about the wall, but about something that had gone terribly wrong between the twins, which neither could put a name to or knew how to set right.
The castoff crown had landed at Potitius’s feet. He stooped to lift it from the grass, and was surprised at how heavy it was. He offered it to Remus, who took it but did not place it on his head.
“This matter of the wall must be settled once and for all,” said Remus quietly, staring at the crown. “What do you think, Potitius?” He saw the troubled look on his friend’s face and laughed ruefully. “No, I’m not asking you to take sides. I’m asking your advice as a haruspex. How might we settle this matter by consulting the will of the gods?”
As quick as a blink, a shadow passed over them. Potitius looked up to see a vulture high above. “I think I know a way,” he said.
The contest was held the next day. It was not Potitius who called it a contest, but the twins, for clearly, that was how they thought of it. To Potitius, it was a very solemn rite, calling upon all the wisdom he had learned in Tarquinia.
The rite was conducted simultaneously upon each of the contesting hills. Romulus stood at a high spot on the Palatine, looking north; beside him was Pinarius, in his role as a priest of Hercules. Remus, with Potitius, stood on the Aventine, looking south. At each site, an iron blade had been driven upright into the earth, so that by its shadow the exact moment of midday could be determined. A mark had been made in the ground a set distance from the blade, to mark by the blade’s moving shadow the passing of a precise measure of time. Within that span of time, each brother and his priest would watch the sky for vultures in flight. The priests would keep count of each vulture that was sighted by scraping a furrow in the dirt with a spear.
Why vultures? Potitius had explained his reasoning to the brothers: “The vulture is sacred to Hercules, who was always joyful at the sight of one. Among all creatures, it is the least harmful; it damages neither crops, nor fruit trees, nor cattle. It never kills or hurts any living thing, but preys only upon carrion, and even then it will not prey upon other birds; whereas eagles, hawks, and owls will attack and kill their own kind. Of all birds, it is the most rarely seen, and few men claim ever to have seen its young. Because of this, the Etruscans believe that vultures come from some other world. Therefore, let it be the sighting of vultures that determines the will of heaven in situating the city of Roma.”