[Footnote 4: Livy ignores the more accepted and prettier tradition
that this event took place where the sacred fig-tree originally stood,
and that later it was miraculously transplanted to the comitium by
Attius Navius, the famous augur, "That it might stand in the midst of
the meetings of the Romans"--D.O.]

[Footnote 5: According to Varro, Rome was founded B.C. 753; according
to Cato, B.C. 751. Livy here derives Roma from Romulus, but this is
rejected by modern etymologists; according to Mommsen the word means
"stream-town," from its position on the Tiber.]

[Footnote 6: The remarkable beauty of the white or mouse-coloured
cattle of central Italy gives a touch of realism to this story.--D.O.]

[Footnote 7: The introduction of the art of writing among the Romans
was ascribed to Evander. The Roman alphabet was derived from the
Greek, through the Grecian (Chalcidian) colony at Cumae.]

[Footnote 8: The title patres originally signified the heads of
families, and was in early times used of the patrician senate, as
selected from these. When later, plebeians were admitted into the
senate, the members of the senate were all called patres, while
patricians, as opposed to plebeians, enjoyed certain distinctions and
privileges.]

[Footnote 9: This story of the rape of the Sabines belongs to the
class of what are called "etiological" myths--i. e., stories invented
to account for a rite or custom, or to explain local names or
characteristics. The custom prevailed among Greeks and Romans of the
bridegroom pretending to carry off the bride from her home by force.