Romulus   

government into their own hands during the life of their grandfather.
Having therefore delivered the dominion up into his hands, and paid
their mother befitting honour, they resolved to live by themselves,
and build a city in the same place where they were in their infancy
brought up. This seems the most honourable reason for their departure;
though perhaps it was necessary, having such a body of slaves and
fugitives collected about them, either to come to nothing by dispersing
them, or if not so, then to live with them elsewhere. For that the
inhabitants of Alba did not think fugitives worthy of being received
and incorporated as citizens among them plainly appears from the matter
of the women, an attempt made not wantonly but of necessity, because
they could not get wives by good-will. For they certainly paid unusual
respect and honour to those whom they thus forcibly seized.
Not long after the first foundation of the city, they opened a sanctuary
of refuge for all fugitives, which they called the temple of the god
Asylaeus, where they received and protected all, delivering none back,
neither the servant to his master, the debtor to his creditor, nor
the murderer into the hands of the magistrate, saying it was a privileged
place, and they could so maintain it by an order of the holy oracle;
insomuch that the city grew presently very populous, for they say,
it consisted at first of no more than a thousand houses. But of that
hereafter.
Their minds being full bent upon building, there arose presently a
difference about the place. Romulus chose what was called Roma Quadrata,
or the Square Rome, and would have the city there. Remus laid out
a piece of ground on the Aventine Mount, well fortified by nature,
which was from him called Remonium, but now Rignarium. Concluding
at last to decide the contest by a divination from a flight of birds,
and placing themselves apart at some distance. Remus, they say, saw
six vultures, and Romulus double that number; others say, Remus did
truly see his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but when Remus
came to him, that then he did indeed see twelve. Hence it is that
the Romans, in their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture,
though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful
when a vulture appeared to him upon any action. For it is a creature
the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree,
nor cattle; it preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any
living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are
dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks
mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures; yet, as Aeschylus says,-
"What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird?" Besides, all other
birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let themselves be
seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare sight, and you
can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young; their rarity
and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that they come
to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine origination
to all things not produced either of nature or of themselves.
When Remus knew the cheat, he was much displeased; and as Romulus
was casting up a ditch, where he designed the foundation of the city-wall,
he turned some pieces of the work to ridicule, and obstructed others;
at last, as he was in contempt leaping over it, some say Romulus himself
struck him, others Celer, one of his companions; he fell, however,
and in the scuffle Faustulus also was slain, and Plistinus, who, being
Faustulus's brother, story tells us, helped to bring up Romulus. Celer
upon this fled instantly into Tuscany, and from him the Romans call
all men that are swift of feet Celeres; and because Quintus Metellus,
at his father's funeral, in a few days' time gave the people a show
of gladiators, admiring his expedition in getting it ready, they gave
him the name of Celer.
Romulus, having buried his brother Remus, together with his two foster-fathers,
on the mount Remonia, set to building his city; and sent for men out
of Tuscany, who directed him by sacred usages and written rules in
all the ceremonies to be observed, as in a religious rite. First,
they dug a round trench about that which is now the Comitium, or Court