Remus was the first to see six vultures flying, but Romulus saw twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made the beginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen king.

Remus was affronted, and when the mud wall was being raised around the space intended for the city, he leapt over it and laughed, whereupon Romulus struck him dead, crying out, "So perish all who leap over the walls of my city." [Illustration: GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET] Romulus traced out the form of the city with the plough, and made it almost a square.

He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him.

The date of the building of Rome was supposed to be A.D.

753; and the Romans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from the Olympiads, marking the date A.U.C., _anno urbis conditae_, the year of the city being built.