After the government of Alba was thus transferred to Numitor, Romulus and Remus were seized with the desire of building a city in the locality where they had been exposed. There was the superfluous population of the Alban and Latin towns, to these were added the shepherds: it was natural to hope that with all these Alba would be small and Lavinium small in comparison with the city which was to be founded. These pleasant anticipations were disturbed by the ancestral curse—ambition—which led to a deplorable quarrel over what was at first a trivial matter. As they were twins and no claim to precedence could be based on seniority, they decided to consult the tutelary deities of the place by means of augury as to who was to give his name to the new city, and who was to rule it after it had been founded. Romulus accordingly selected the Palatine as his station for observation, Remus the Aventine.

Remus is said to have been the first to receive an omen: six vultures appeared to him. The augury had just been announced to Romulus when double the number appeared to him. Each was saluted as king by his own party. The one side based their claim on the priority of the appearance, the other on the number of the birds. Then followed an angry altercation; heated passions led to bloodshed; in the tumult Remus was killed. The more common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped over the newly raised walls and was forthwith killed by the enraged Romulus, who exclaimed, ‘So shall it be henceforth with every one who leaps over my walls.’ Romulus thus became sole ruler, and the city was called after him, its founder.

THE GEESE ON THE CAPITOL

Ab urbe condita, Book V

Livy

Translated by J. H. Freese, 1893

This famous story from Livy’s history of Rome reveals how the Roman Capitol was once saved from ruin by the cackling of geese. In the fourth century BC, the Romans and Gauls were in conflict with one another. While the Romans laid siege to the nearby city of Veii, the Gauls overran much of Rome before attempting to conquer its Capitoline Hill. A number of geese, sacred to the goddess Juno, were kept here. When the Gauls began to scale the hill in the middle of the night, the birds began to squawk, alerting the Romans to the approaching danger. Could one of the Romans’ bravest men, Marcus Furius Camillus, ‘the dictator’, having returned from exile, now vanquish the Gauls? The Roman people later founded a temple to Juno on the Capitol to honour her and her geese.