MYTH, history, and legend, have associated the Palatine Hill with much that is romantic.

At or near this western angle of the Palatine Hill are centred all the incidents connected with the earliest myths of the origin of Rome. A swarm of myths cluster round this spot. In the earliest mythical age-long before the foundation of Romethe hero Æneas landed from his ships on the banks of the Tiber, approached the Palatine Hill on this side, and found the king, Evander, and his people celebrating a festival in honour of Hercules in a grove in front of the city. Eneas, having declared his name and lineage, was welcomed by the king; after the religious ceremonies had been duly performed, the aged king led the hero Æneas from this part of the hill, in order to show him the altar of Hercules, the gate of the nymph Carmenta, and thence to the Capitol, guiding him back to the Palatine by what was afterwards the Roman Forum. On this western side of the hill the great Æneas slept beneath the

* This lecture was given at the western corner of the Palatine, Jan. 19th, 1882.

roof of the lowly abode of King Evander, reclining on a bed of leaves and the hide of a Libyan bear. The upper part of the hill was, according to the same mythical account, the original citadel of the city of Evander; for Virgil tells us that Evander was the founder of the Roman citadel.

Beneath us was the spot where the Vestal virgin, Rhea Silvia, as Ovid tells, came to bathe, and there, when wearied, she lay down to sleep; and in that spot the god Mars saw her and became enamoured of her. Yielding to his embrace, she became the mother of twins. On the discovery of their birth, her uncle Amulius ordered the babes to be drowned in the river Tiber. The cradle in which the twins were sent adrift was stranded at the foot of the Palatine, and overturned under a fig-tree. A she-wolf which had come to drink of the stream, carried them into the cave close by, and suckled them, where they were found by Faustulus, the king's shepherd, who took the children to his own house, and gave them to the care of his wife, Acca Larentia. The twins were brought up with his twelve sons, and they became the stoutest of them. As chiefs of the herdsmen of the Palatine they had a quarrel with those of Numitor, on the Aventine. Remus is led away; Romulus rescues him; the descent from Numitor is discovered, and the latter restored to government. Romulus then builds his city on the Palatine, and encircles it with walls.

Such is the early mythical account of the origin of Rome.

Niebuhr has shown that the chief source of these early myths, or 'poetical legends,' as he calls them, were the Annales Pontificum,' and the 'Laudationes Funebres,' early poems composed in commemoration of a deceased person, delivered in the Forum by the nearest kinsman. According to Cicero, they always returned to the family and ancestors; that is to say, the descent of the deceased was traced from the first fathers of the race. But Cicero and Livy both complain of the falsifications which crept from these panegyrics into Roman history. The Romans, in fact, notwithstanding all the veracity which they otherwise possessed, had an extraordinary vanity with regard to political and family relations, deeming themselves bound in duty to extol their State and their families. For this reason forged victories and triumphs are contained in these laudationes. Cicero's assertion, 'Laudationibus historia nostra facta est mendosior,' is acknowledged also by Livy.

The first scanty notices of early times were taken from outlines derived from the songs of the Vates. These poems were changed in passing from mouth to mouth; and from these, combined with the laudationes, history arose. These are the materials whence historians derived their facts.

'I am convinced,' Niebuhr writes, 'that great part of early Roman history has been handed down in songs; that is to say, all that has life in it, all that has pith and meaning and coherence. This is to me as evident a truth as any in the world. To these belong the history of Romulus, that of Tarquinius Priscus,

down to the battle near the Lake Regillus, and others. The passage in Varro, and a fragment of Cato, in Cicero, purporting that the Romans sang the achievements of the ancients to the flute, speaks distinctly to the fact. Three inscriptions on the tombs of the Scipios are poetical. Besides this, there are, without any doubt, preserved in Livy detached lines from the lay of Tullus Hostilius and the Horatii.

'In composing history, men consulted the annals of the Pontiffs-wrote out in good faith what was found in them-and put in what they found in the lays or poems, whenever they thought it would best suit, little caring whether it closely tallied or not.'

Lord Macaulay has followed out further these views of Niebuhr, and has illustrated them in his 'Lays of Ancient Rome.'

'The early history of Rome,' he writes, 'is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War; the cradle laid among the reeds of the Tiber; the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the women rushing with torn raiment and dishevelled hair between their fathers and husbands; the wrongs of Lucretia, the heroic actions of Horatius Cocles, of Scævola; the battle of Regillus, won by the aid of Castor and Pollux; the touching story of Virginia, are among the many instances which will at once suggest themselves.'

In the narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine imagination, these stories retain much of their genuine

character. Nor could even the tasteless Dionysius distort and mutilate them into mere prose.

Ballad poetry is a species of composition which scarcely ever fails to spring up and flourish in every society at a certain point in the progress towards refinement: an interesting story invented and embellished, and put into a form which others may easily retain in their recollection, will be always highly esteemed by a people eager for amusement. Now we have direct evidence of unquestionable authority that the early Romans had ballad poetry.

Ennius speaks of verses which the Fauns and Bards were wont to chant in the old time, when none had yet studied the graces of speech, when none had yet climbed the peaks sacred to the goddesses of Grecian song. 'Where,' Cicero mournfully asks, ‘are those old verses now?'

Contemporary with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pictor, the earliest of the Roman annalists. His account of the infancy and growth of Romulus and Remus has been preserved by Dionysius, and contains a very remarkable reference to the ancient Latin poetry. Fabius says that in his time his countrymen were still in the habit of singing ballads about the twins, 'Even in the hut of Faustulus.' So these old lays appear to have run, 'The children of Rhea and Mars were, in port and spirit, not like unto swineherds, or cow-herds, but such that men might well guess them to be of the blood of kings.'

Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of the Second Punic War, mentioned this lost literature in his