" It was men, of
course, who took advantage of this asylum, for who ever heard of women
who would rush in great numbers to such a place? Rome was a colony of
bachelors, and some of them pretty poor characters too, so that there
did not seem to be a very good chance that they could find women
willing to become their wives. Romulus, like many an ardent lover
since, evidently thought that all was fair in love and war, and, after
failing in all his efforts to lead the neighboring peoples to allow the
Roman men to marry their women, he gave it out that he had discovered
the altar of the god Consus, who presided over secret deliberations,--a
very suitable divinity to come up at the juncture,--and that he
intended to celebrate his feast.
Consus was honored on the twenty-first of August, and this celebration
would come, therefore, just four months after the foundation of the
city. There were horse and chariot races, and libations which were
poured into the flames that consumed the sacrifices. The people of the
country around Rome were invited to take part in the novel festivities,
and they were nothing loth to come, for they had considerable curiosity
to see what sort of a city had so quickly grown up on the Palatine
Hill. They felt no solicitude, though perhaps some might have thought
of the haughtiness with which they had refused the offers of matrimony
made to their maidens.
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