war afresh, Tarquin, thinking that the weak point of his army lay
specially in the want of cavalry, determined to add other centuries to
the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres which Romulus had enrolled, and
to leave them distinguished by his own name. Because Romulus had done
this after inquiries by augury, Attus Navius, a celebrated soothsayer
of the day, insisted that no alteration or new appointment could be
made, unless the birds had approved of it. The king, enraged at this,
and, as they say, mocking at his art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell
me, whether what I have in my mind can be done or not?" When Attus,
having tried the matter by divination, affirmed that it certainly
could, "Well, then," said he, "I was thinking that you should cut
asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, then, and perform what
thy birds portend can be done." Thereupon they say that he immediately
cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled,
was erected in the comitium, close to the steps on the left of the
senate-house, on the spot where the event occurred. They say also that
the whetstone was deposited in the same place that it might remain as
a record of that miracle to posterity. Without doubt so much honour
accrued to auguries and the college of augurs, that nothing was
subsequently undertaken either in peace or war without taking the
auspices, and assemblies of the people, the summoning of armies, and
the most important affairs of state were put off, whenever the
birds did not prove propitious. Nor did Tarquin then make any other
alteration in the centuries of horse, except that he doubled the
number of men in each of these divisions, so that the three centuries
consisted of one thousand eight hundred knights; only, those that were
added were called "the younger," but by the same names as the
earlier, which, because they have been doubled, they now call the six
centuries.