Diocles of Peparethos, who seem to be the earliest historians of
the foundation of Rome, is suspected by some because of its
dramatic and fictitious appearance; but it would not wholly be
disbelieved, if men would remember what a poet Fortune sometimes
shows herself, and consider that the Roman power would hardly have
reached so high a pitch without a divinely ordered origin,
attended with great and extraordinary circumstances.

Amulius now being dead and matters quietly disposed, the two
brothers would neither dwell in Alba without governing there, nor
take the government into their own hands during the life of their
grandfather. Having therefore delivered the dominion up into his
hands, and paid their mother befitting honor, they resolved to
live by themselves, and build a city in the same place where they
were in their infancy brought up. This seems the most honorable
reason for their departure; though perhaps it was necessary,
having such a body of slaves and fugitives collected about them,
either to come to nothing by dispersing them, or if not so, then
to live with them elsewhere. For that the inhabitants of Alba did
not think fugitives worthy of being received and incorporated as
citizens among them plainly appears from the matter of the women,
an attempt made not wantonly, but of necessity, because they could
not get wives by good-will. For they certainly paid unusual
respect and honor to those whom they thus forcibly seized.

Not long after the first foundation of the city, they opened a
sanctuary of refuge for all fugitives, which they called the
temple of the god Asylaeus, where they received and protected all,
delivering none back, neither the servant to his master, the
debtor to his creditor, nor the murderer into the hands of the