【collation】

Livy set out to write a brief history of early Rome, celebrating its glories and virtues, propaganda for the reforms of Augustus. What he had to go on were stories handed down over the centuries. They were a mixture of fact and legend.

I ,for one, am looking forward to absorbing myself in antiquity because I'm so deeply tired of the modern world and all the troubles which torment it --Livy.

He believed Rome's mythological beginnings would reveal the stories of heroism and nobility Romans needed to hear. But the stories of Rome's origins were short on Stoic virtues and long on murder, rape, mayhem and fratricide. To his dismay, Livy discovered they echoed the cruel realities of the Roman world of his own day.

Legends told that Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, twins who were cast into the wilderness to die. But the boys were said to be saved by a she-wolf who suckled them. They grew up like savages in the woods. When they returned to found the city of Rome, they were filled with the simple ferocious spirit of their wolf mother. According to legend, Romulus and Remus then led their people to the bend in the river Tiber where she found them, there Rome was born. The year was 753 BC.

But hardly had they founded the city than the two brothers quarreled over who should be king. It was left to the Augurs to decide. Augurs were the priests of early Rome who divined the will of the gods. They studied the movements of birds, the weather, the entrails of sheep before making their pronouncements known as the auguries. The Augurs placed each brother on a hilltop, then waited. When birds flocked over Romulus, they knew he would be the first king of Rome. But Remus refused the augury and the brothers fought. Romulus killed him. The first king of Rome, suckled by a wolf, bathed in his brother's blood, walked away furious and triumphant. It was a fitting augury for the bloodshed and strife that lay ahead.

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