and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's
scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into
Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times
was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the
Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and,
in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek
tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only
afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their
gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and
fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the
Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever,
thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call
sterling stuff in them.

At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language,
and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is
said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in
the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for
his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the
god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were
the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the Cælian, and the Quirinal.
The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen,
when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their
neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing
all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from
houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.

The history of these people was not written till long after they had