browsed in the pasture lands. The owners of these lands would on public
days take off their rude working dress and broad-brimmed straw hat, and
putting on the white toga with a purple hem, would enter the city, and
go to the valley called the Forum or Marketplace to give their votes for
the officers of state who were elected every year; especially the two
consuls, who were like kings all but the crown, wore purple togas richly
embroidered, sat on ivory chairs, and were followed by lictors carrying
an axe in a bundle of rods for the execution of justice. In their own
chamber sat the Senate, the great council composed of the patricians, or
citizens of highest birth, and of those who had formerly been consuls.
They decided on peace or war, and made the laws, and were the real
governors of the State, and their grave dignity made a great impression
on all who came near them. Above the buildings of the city rose steep
and high the Capitoline Hill, with the Temple of Jupiter on its summit,
and the strong wall in which was the chief stronghold and citadel of
Rome, the Capitol, the very centre of her strength and resolution. When
a war was decided on, every citizen capable of bearing arms was called
into the Forum, bringing his helmet, breast plate, short sword, and
heavy spear, and the officers called tribunes, chose out a sufficient
number, who were formed into bodies called legions, and marched to
battle under the command of one of the consuls. Many little States or
Italian tribes, who had nearly the same customs as Rome, surrounded the
Campagna, and so many disputes arose that every year, as soon as the
crops were saved, the armies marched out, the flocks were driven to
folds on the hills, the women and children were placed in the walled
cities, and a battle was fought, sometimes followed up by the siege of
the city of the defeated. The Romans did not always obtain the victory,
but there was a staunchness about them that was sure to prevail in the
long run; if beaten one year, they came back to the charge the next, and
thus they gradually mastered one of their neighbors after another, and