magistrate, saying it was a privileged place, and they could so
maintain it by an order of the holy oracle; insomuch that the city
grew presently very populous, for, they say, it consisted at first
of no more than a thousand houses. But of that hereafter.

Their minds being fully bent upon building, there arose presently
a difference about the place where. Romulus chose what was called
Roma Quadrata, or the Square Rome, and would have the city there.
Remus laid out a piece of ground on the Aventine Mount, well
fortified by nature, which was from him called Remonium, but now
Rignarium. Concluding at last to decide the contest by a
divination from a flight of birds, and placing themselves apart at
some distance, Remus, they say, saw six vultures, and Romulus
double the number; others say Remus did truly see his number, and
that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him, that then
he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in their
divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though
Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful
when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a
creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn,
fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only on carrion, and never kills
or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them,
though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles,
owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own fellow-creatures; yet,
as Aeschylus says,--

What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird?

Besides, all other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes;
they let themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a