Thus we have the origin of the Roman people. We see how the early
traditions "mixed human things with things divine," as Livy said had
been done to make the origin of the city more respectable; how ?neas,
the far-back ancestor, was descended from Jupiter himself, and how he
was a son of Venus, the goddess of love. How Romulus and Remus, the
actual founders, were children of the god of war, and thus naturally
fitted to be the builders of a nation that was to be strong and to
conquer all known peoples on earth. The effort to ascribe to their
nation an origin that should appear venerable to all who believed the
stories of the gods and goddesses, was remarkably successful, and there
is no doubt that it gave inspiration to the Roman people long after the
worship of those divinities had become a matter of form, if not even of
ridicule.
This was not all that was done, however, to establish the faith in the
old stories in the minds of the people. In some way that it is not easy
to explain, the names of the first heroes were fixed upon certain
localities, just as those of the famous British hero, King Arthur, have
long been fixed upon places in Brittany, Cornwall, and Southern
Scotland. We find at a little place called Metapontem, the tools used
by Epeus in making the wooden horse that was taken into Troy.
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