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The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic by Arthur Gilman
page 26 of 269 (09%)
first no plebeians could take the auspices, as they seem to have had no
share in the divinities whose will was sought, but in the year 300,
B.C., the college of augurs, then comprising four patricians, was
enlarged by the admission of five plebeians. The augurs were elected
for life.] a practice of the Etrurians with which they were probably
quite familiar, for they had been educated, we are told, at Gabii, the
largest of the towns of Latium, where all the knowledge of the region
was known to the teachers.

Following this advice, the brothers took up positions at a given time
on the respective hills, surrounded by their followers; those of
Romulus being known as the Quintilii, and those of Remus as the Fabii.
Thus, in anxious expectation, they waited for the passage of certain
birds which was to settle the question between them. We can imagine
them as they waited. The two hills are still to be seen in the city,
and probably the two groups were about half a mile apart. On one side
of them rolled the muddy waters of the Tiber, from which they had been
snatched when infants, and around them rose the other elevations over
which the "seven-hilled" city of the future was destined to spread.
From morning to evening they patiently watched, but in vain. Through
the long April night, too, they held their posts, and as the sun of the
second day rose over the Coelian Hill, Remus beheld with exultation six
vultures swiftly flying through the air, and thought that surely
fortune had decided in his favor. The vulture was a bird seldom seen,
and one that never did damage to crops or cattle, and for this reason
its appearance was looked upon as a good augury. The passage of the six
vultures did not, however, settle this dispute, as Numitor expected it
would, for Romulus, when he heard that Remus had seen six, asserted
that twelve had flown by him. His followers supported this claim, and
determined that the city should be begun on the Palatine Hill. It is
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